The Young Turks - Corruption Nation

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

As ordinary workers across the United States watched inflation eat away at modest wage gains in 2021, many corporations—including firms contracting with the federal government—used record-shattering profits to lavish their CEOs with bigger pay packages and reward shareholders with billions of dollars in stock buybacks. Elon Musk has accused Twitter of committing a “material breach” of his $44 billion agreement to buy the company and has threatened to terminate the deal, in the clearest indication yet that the world’s richest man is preparing to walk away from the takeover. The Washington Post has suspended political reporter David Weigel without pay after he retweeted a joke last week that was widely considered sexist, and divided the paper’s newsroom. Legal claims have shed light on founder of faith group tied to Amy Coney Barrett. “I’m not going to help you:' Transcripts revealed a man drowned in Tempe Town Lake as police watched. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA 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. All right, well, the young Turks, you guys are like today, what the heck? I'm in a mood, I'm in a mood. And she's in a mood. You got a lot of work to get to?

Yes, but we're in different moods, different moods. Okay, definitely in different moods. Okay, guys, at the end of the show, we have an election spectacular for you guys. So tons of states, New Jersey, California, Montana, and on and on it goes tonight. So it's normal show, 6.8 p.m. live as it is Monday through Friday. And then 8 o'clock, we started gigunda election coverage. including our own Michael Shore, up for election tonight in a five-man race. It's fascinating, you're going to love it.

So stay right here all the way through to like one in the morning East Coast time. Jism, Lord Mercy, Casper. All right, well, we begin with a story about corporate welfare in America, something that doesn't get much attention in our corporate press. A new report published by the Institute for Policy Studies lays out just how bad. Hadley, corporations in America have screwed over their own workers in 2021 while doling out cash to themselves, to their executives, and to their shareholders. And to make matters worse, a lot of the money that they utilized to do just that came

from us, the U.S. taxpayers. So among their key findings in this study, CEO worker pay, the CEO to worker pay gap, I should say, has grown even wider since 2020. For instance, the average gap between CEO and median, median worker pay at a sample of 300 low wage US corporations surged in 2021, rising to 670 to 1, up from 604 to 1 in 2020. 49 of the publicly traded companies examined in this IPS study had CEO to worker pay ratios above 1,000 to 1 last year. So as we know, inequality in America was already pretty terrible.

And it exploded further during the pandemic. Just a few more statistics for you to show you how bad this problem really is. Specific examples like Amazon, for instance, they paid their CEO, Andy Jassy, a staggering 6,474 times more than it paid its median worker in 2021, a year in which the e-commerce giant, spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants. Also CEO pay at the 300 corporations increased by $2.5 million to an average of $10.6 million last year while median worker pay grew by just $3,556. Rising to an average of, get a load of this, $23,968 as inflation soared to its highest level in decades. So let's just pause for a second. I want you guys to just let those

numbers, like absorb those numbers, understand those numbers, understand what it's like, as many of you already do. What it's like to be a worker who shows up every day, works really hard, generates this revenue for these fabulously successful corporations. And you see that disparity between what the executives make and what the median worker makes. And now that you've absorbed that information, let me remind you of what Joe Rogan thinks the real problem is. Let's watch. One thing that happened during this pandemic was I open, it opened my eyes about human nature. Like I used to be very pro universal basic income. My thought was wouldn't be great if you just had enough money so you could eat and you could pay your rent and then you could pursue what you

wanted to. But the reality of human nature came fully into focus when I realized that one, when some people got all that money from the government, the COVID money, and then they got unemployment, they didn't want to work. You see a lot of people that are, that own businesses that have a hard time finding people work for them. So there's, there's pros to that, right? The pros are people, it's a marketplace that favors the worker, so workers can ask for more money. So you're seeing a lot of places like bars and restaurants and stuff that have to pay more money per hour, which I guess is good as long as the restaurant can stay open. Now, of course, there's no conversation there about the amount of government money that was funneled into these corporations during the pandemic, while ordinary Americans were actually nickel and dime.

So the fact that he's pointing to the meager amount of money that was given to ordinary Americans to assist them during the pandemic and just completely ignoring the reality of the inequality that exists in the corporate world, I mean, it tells you everything you need to know about a man who has chosen to surround him. with a bunch of right wing idiots who only care about saving money in their taxes while screwing over workers. Yeah, I want to talk about how I think Rogan got hoodwinked in is a perfect propaganda vehicle, although I don't think he realizes it. But first, the context is super important, guys. The part of the trick there with Rogan is that he's talking about a small business owner. And a lot of us have empathy for small business owners. Some of us know small business owners at a bar sounds so relatable, right? Ah, you want to want the bar guide and the restaurant person to be able to succeed, etc. But that is not the

majority of cases. The majority of cases are giant corporations. So, and it makes it seem like, oh my God, are they out there being, well, if they can stay in business. But wait a minute. Here, I'll give you a graphic four here. 67% of those firms that they studied spend a total of $43.7 billion on stock buybacks. Billions, billions with a B. Yeah, in one year. That, which benefit company shareholders and help boost the stock-based compensation of executives. So these are not, the overwhelming majority of these giant corporations are not ones that are like barely surviving. Oh gosh, I hope that local borrowner makes it. They're putting away tens of billions of dollars for the richest people in the world.

Meanwhile, the average workers, as Anna explained to you, and now granted in this study of 300 companies, they looked at generally speaking low wage, low wage working companies, but even so, $23,000, that's the average, that's not the lowest, that's the average they were paid. Now if you say $23,000, okay, that's really low, but their CEO only made $35,000. No, but their CEOs on average made over $10 million. And on average, they're giving away billions in buybacks to both shareholders, executives, etc. So I'm going to take one more example, that's Lowe's. Okay, so I'm going to read Graphic 5 to you guys. So they did buybacks too and they explain here. With the $13 billion

that Lowe's alone spent on share repurchases, the company could have given each of its $325,000 employees a $40,000 raise. Isn't that amazing? Instead, its median pay fell 7.6% to just us $22,697. But American workers are lazy, Jank. American workers are lazy. I mean, they're the ones generating the revenue for these corporations. They're the ones who make these CEOs and these executives incredibly wealthy, along with corporate welfare, by the way, that's given to these corporations from the U.S.

government. That's also a part of this equation as well. But, like, I don't understand it. Why wouldn't they show up to work every day, get slapped in the face, and then ask their boss, please, sir, can I have another? I don't understand. It must be because they're lazy, right, Joe? They must be so lazy.

They don't want to work. They just want to sit around and collect government checks and do nothing. But he doesn't bother to look at the wage theft, the greed of these executives. And look, quite frankly, we should expect this. The system is actually working the way it's supposed to, right? I mean, the reason why executives are paid with shares of the company's stock is because, you know, like, that means that they're literally invested in the profitability of the company. The more profitable the company is, the more money they get to make, right?

And what's the biggest cost within any company? It's labor. So they have an interest, like that tension between the worker and the employer is there, not because it's by accident, but on purpose, right? And so they always try to find ways to nickel and dime their own workers, even though their workers are the ones generating the revenue for them in the first place. Yeah. So now he complained about loopholes.

Because of unemployment, they do work to 20 hours, they get a little bit of paycheck, they get to unemployment. Can you believe the average guy is taking advantage of a loophole like that? But wait a minute, the stock buybacks used to be illegal back in 1982. They then made them legal. And how is it a loophole? Well, when you buy back a lot of your own stock, it creates artificial demand, which drives up the price of your stock.

And if you're an executive whose bonus is dependent on the price of the stock, you're going to make extra millions of dollars, even though your company isn't doing any better. It's a giant loophole for corporate executives. And they don't just, hey, hey, I barely got by on unemployment in 20 hours, et cetera. They're shoveling billions of dollars to themselves. And is that talked about 24-7 on Joe Rogan show or any other show on the right wing? No, it's never discussed, never discussed. The reason why I get frustrated with Rogan is because it's ironic.

Because there used to be hope for him. Yeah, yeah, it is. No, because guys, look, Ben Shapiro is part of the fraud. Ben Shapiro is perfectly smart. He knows all of these things, and he doesn't mind helping to rob you. That's the whole point of Ben Shapiro, right? He's supposed to do propaganda, and he's perfectly aware of it. Joe is not aware of it.

He gets spoon fed this stuff by people like Ben Shapiro because 98% of his guests are right-wingers, right? And so, no, no, no, I had some fake left-wingers on, like Jimmy Dooh, who agreed with everything the right-wing says, right? And so since he's captured by, and we talked about this before, by his guest, it's usually audience capture. In this case, his guest capture, he's like, oh, yeah, man, that bartender story, Shapiro told me, sounds really good, man. I'm worried about the bar owners and the small business owners, and he seems more relatable. And that's because he doesn't necessarily have bad intent. When he says, like, well, I mean, I hope the workers make more, I think he genuinely means it. And it makes it easier for people to sw, oh, yeah, I mean, he's rooting for the worker,

but it really is a son bitch lazy worker. That's the problem, right? So spoon feeding him the propaganda helps spoon feed the propaganda to a larger audience. And that's how everybody gets tricked. But at the same time, I don't want you to get too discouraged because it turns out, generally speaking, everybody's on these sons of guns. I just said son of gun. What am I? Joe Biden? Okay. You I'm trying not the curse. All right, so CEO pay, is it too much?

The American people say resoundingly, yes, of course. And I want to get to why that's important, but Anna, tell us about it. All right, well, if you look at graphic eight here, it'll show you how Americans feel about CEO compensation specifically. And as you can see, the vast majority of people who took part in this survey, 73% believe that CEOs of the largest companies are compensated too much. Only 13% say the right amount, 6% of people who are probably CEOs and executives who took part in the survey say that they're paid too little. And 8% say they're not sure. But it's the classic disconnect that we see among what Americans are experiencing, what Americans are feeling, and what's portrayed in our media. It used to just be corporate media.

And now we're seeing the, honestly, the smearing of these workers and upholding this system that's just inherently unjust and unfair by independent sources now, like Joe Rogan, who might not have raised his hand to be a journalist, but people actually tune in to get the news from him, which is a little terrifying considering how impressionable he is, depending on who's in the room with him at any given time. Yeah, and so of the people who think CEOs get paid too much, hold on your seats. 71% of Republicans think the same thing. But when you say the growing gap between CEO pay and worker pay, is that a problem in this country? That's Graphic 7. And you see it's an even higher number. So overall, 87% of Americans agree that it's a big problem, including a whopping 77% of Republicans.

Now, if you ask people on mainstream media, they would say people saying CEO pay is too much, a radical leftist. How do you know it's too much? These are the people who merited it. We live in a meritocracy. If they're rich, they totally deserve. How dare you, you radical leftists?

Well, it turns out 77% of Republicans are radical leftists. Who knew? So guys, that is why they do the culture war. Because even Republican voters hate the fact that the CEOs are robbing them. And they notice, that's why you've seen Tucker Carlson doing fake populism about, oh, big business. The real problem with big businesses, they like gay people. No, the real problem with big business is there a robbing you blind. That's the real problem and that's why they do the transports and the Dr. Seuss books.

And this is Anna's major point and she's absolutely right. The culture wars are a distraction from this robbery. Absolutely. Let's go to one of the people who Let's go to one of the people who also regurgitates pro-corporate talking points, mostly because he's an executive himself, Elon Musk. Elon Musk is making it, Elon Musk is making it abundantly clear that he wants to pull out of the Twitter deal.

Let's just keep it real. And he's looking for any and all excuses to do it. But he is really latching onto this idea that, well, it turns out that there might be bots on Twitter, there might be gambling at this establishment. And I didn't know that. And so as a result, I might not want to go through with this deal at all. Now, anyone who spent 10 minutes on Twitter knows that there's a bot problem on Twitter. He knows there's a bot problem on Twitter.

He stated that very point as he was announcing that he had struck a deal with Twitter to purchase it. But on Monday, Musk's lawyers wrote to Twitter claiming that the company had not properly disclosed the number of fake users on the site. Here are some excerpts from that letter. Mr. Musk is entitled to seek, and Twitter is obligated to provide information. and data for inter alia, any reasonable business purpose related to the consumption of the transaction. Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights and the company's corresponding obligations under the merger agreement. This is a clear material breach of Twitter's obligations under the merger agreement. And Mr. Musk reserves all

rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement. Now, Twitter has denied withholding any information from Musk. They claim that they're acting in good faith and they're giving him the information he wants. But it's pretty clear that Musk is spooked from going through with this deal. And to be fair, this isn't the first time he's waffled on his deal with Twitter. We had previously reported that he had raised this concern earlier, where he tweeted the 20% fake slash spam accounts, while four times what Twitter claims could be much higher. My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings, being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof. This deal cannot move forward

until he does. But I think this probably has a lot more to do with what happened to the stock value of Tesla and also of Twitter, following the announcement of the deal. So we also shared these details with you earlier, but just to check it again, Tesla stock is still down. You could take a quick look at the graphic showing you how it's been down. And that was immediately after the announcement of this Twitter deal. Same with Twitter, by the way. So Twitter is also down. And so maybe that's why he's second guessing this.

Maybe it was just a publicity stunt to begin with. Who knows? Jake, what do you think? Yeah, so this was a roller coaster. Musk is right about some things and he's wrong about some things. So let's see how it turns out. So first of all, when they talk about material breach of a contract, that means we're trying to get out of the deal, period.

The reason you say it's a material breach is because that voids the contract. If it's a smaller breach, you can fix the breach and then continue on the deal. But when you say it's a material breach, you're trying to get out of the deal entirely. So why is he trying to get out of the deal? Well, the price of Tesla dropping and his value, his net worth dropping is a huge part of it. And he basically realized he rushed into it and Twitter ain't worth anywhere near that much. So, oops, he's got buyer's remorse. And remember how he claimed that he was like heroically standing for freedom of speech and all the right wingers are like,

our hero, our night is shining armors here. And he wants to protect principles. What happened to principles? Cash a little bit more important than principles. Of course. So all of a sudden, who I want to stay, stay, stay, who I want to run, run, run, right? So I like that clause about, well, this gives him the right to not consummate the deal, okay? So you, you know what consummate means to take that any way you like.

Okay, now, here's the part he's right about, Twitter's totally full of crap, okay? Under 5% are bots, have you ever been on Twitter? Okay, I mean, and I, Elon Musk is right that it's at least 20%. I mean, the only reason I'd believe the 20% number is because there's tons of accounts that are not blue checks, etc. But if you're in a blue check account, especially one that's in the arena of politics, most of the folks interacting with your bots. I mean, it's close to 60%. Okay, so. Yeah, I mean, like, he knows that. He knows that.

I don't know that he does. No, he does. No, I'll tell you why. So you're more likely to be right. But the counter argument to that is, like right now Ken Paxton, who's official in Texas, is like, Like, well, we should investigate the bots because he's trying to kiss Elon Musk ask because he's, oh, donation, sir, please sir, right? Yeah. Do you not know that most of the bots are right wing?

Yeah, exactly. The overwhelming majority of the bots are right wing. See, the reason I think there's some chance they don't know is because they're all right wingers. They're like, oh yeah, man, the bots. What the hell, man? You idiots, the bots are on your side, right? There's a couple of Democratic centrist consultant BS bots who are like, oh, no, I think Nancy Pelosi's doing a brilliant job. They're super obvious, but they're much smaller compared to the giant right wing bots on there

and Russians and et cetera, and that's totally real. Okay, now, and by the way, Twitter, if you want the deal to go forward, tell us how many bots there are. Be honest, and they're definitely hiding it, okay? The last part of it, though, and this is important to the contract and whether he's going to be able to get out of it. I was leaning towards Musk here. I don't like Musk. I don't like his political views, but contractual and legal things are different, and business is different. But what's right and what's wrong?

Well, you know, this seems material to me. On the other hand, some legal experts made some good points, must rush into this. And he did not put in a specific clause saying, hey, the bots have to be under 5%. He made no mention of bots. He made no mention of anything close to it. So he's relying on really broad general clauses in the contract to try to get out of it. And that's not a sound place to be legally. And then finally he should have done due diligence and in that due diligence before he offered a price and before he offered to buy it, he could have then figure it out how much bots they have.

I mean, but he didn't do that because he's he's rash. Because he's a genius, jink. Do geniuses really need to like get into due diligence? He's a genius. Yeah. Well, oops, it turns out maybe not such a genius. And yes, you need to do due diligence whether you're a genius or not and rushing into a deal before you know what you're doing. Definitely not smart.

Not smart. Not smart. You should have read the contract. You should have thought about the bots ahead of time. What were you doing, Musk? What were you doing? Anyway, well, that's something for Musk to ponder. As we take a break, when we come back,

the Washington Post is in the midst of a kerfuffle involving a retweeted joke. What's the real problem here? We'll get into it when we come back. All right on TYT, Jank Anna and Chris and Blake with you guys, Chris Hutchinson and Blake Cavany, just joined by hitting the join button below on YouTube. We love you guys. Thank you for being part of TYT. You could do likewise. If you're not on YouTube, WIT.com slash join, Casper. Buckle up for some spicy takes, because that's about to happen. Yes.

So the Washington Post has suspended one of its political reporters for one month without pay after he made the grave mistake of retweeting a joke that one of his female colleagues didn't like. Oh, heaven for a fend. So obviously we need to take his wages away. for a month and make sure that he knows he's a naughty, naughty boy. And I'm talking about Dave Weigel here, a political reporter at the Washington Post. We've covered his stories.

We've actually talked about him specifically on the show before. What he retweeted is this following tweet, every girl is by, you just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual. Now, immediately after that, a Washington Post national political reporter, Felicia, Sonmes shared her displeasure with that retweet, okay, and wrote publicly, of course, in a quote, tweet, fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed. And the whole situation kind of snowballed from there. Okay, now Weigel immediately decided to do away with the retweet. So he reversed the retweet and immediately apologized publicly

where he said, I just removed a retweet of an offensive joke, I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm. It turns out that there was also some internal conflict taking place. You know, there's the public display and then internally at the Washington Post, there was a back and forth. For instance, Sanmez also confronted Weigel in an internal company Slack channel. She tagged him and wrote, I'm sorry, but what is this? She then added in the Slack channel that the retweet sent a confusing message about what the post's values are. Okay, before I move forward, because there's so many little elements to this story, I also want to note that Weigel both publicly apologize and then personally apologize

to Sanmez. And I'm really sick of these stories. Okay, I think the fact that they suspended him without pay for a month over a retweet over a joke that some of the, some of his colleagues don't like, Sonmez doesn't like, it's his personal Twitter page, you don't like the joke, you don't have to like the joke. I thought the joke was kind of lame, right? But I'm not such a delicate flower that seeing someone tweet that or retweet that makes me fall apart. And I would venture to say the majority of women in this country are also not delicate,

flowers who lose their minds over a joke they don't like. It is amazing to me that the Washington Post that provides cover over and over again for the very corporate politicians who screw over the American people, including mothers in this country who desperately need paid family leave, who desperately need affordable child care, who desperately need housing in this country, those are the people who by the way get screwed over by the Washington Post every day. Every day. We did a 20 minute long segment on that yesterday where Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager decided to write like this super lengthy piece accounting this supposed melodrama between Joe Manchin and Joe Biden. And that's the reason

why the build back better agenda fell apart, completely ignoring the fact that Joe Manchin has personal financial interests and was going to blow that piece of legislation up no matter or what because he's looking after his own pocketbook. They completely ignored that information. To me, that is far more offensive than Dave Weigel retweeting a joke you don't like. If you're that delicate, get off Twitter, log off, log off. We're dealing with our rights being stripped away from us and this is what your focus is right now. You're offended by a joke on Twitter?

Come on, ladies, wrap it up, move it along, we've got bigger fish to fry. We're not weak, delicate little flowers, okay? And for the prominent reporters who make a big deal out of nothing day in, day out, I've got no interest in it, and I certainly have no interest in pandering to that ideology. It's pathetic. So look, if you, the original tweet by Somers is no problem. She objects to the Wigel retweeting that, I can totally see. How about pull him aside and have a conversation with him privately?

Yeah, I agree, that is a way better way to go. And then he would have apologized to you and taking the tweet down. He wasn't reluctant to do it at all. But okay, you did it publicly, but I'm not going to get on her for that. Okay, she's frustrated by that and she thinks maybe it's simple, you know, how women are treated overall and Wigel is an important reporter, Washington Post. She puts out the tweet. He then immediately retracts and apologizes both publicly and privately.

That is when you go, okay, hey, that worked, great. I'm glad that he retracted it and lessons were learned and women are not. going to be, you know, minimized here in their work, etc. Nope, no, nobody can let it go. No apologies ever good enough. There is no redemption ever for even the slightest offenses or the most ancient offenses. It doesn't matter. Everything's a capital punishment, okay? And by the way, they suspend him. I don't know if she's still satisfied. No one is ever satisfied with anything, okay? That's why you can't apologize. That's why we live in a climate now where honestly, and this sucks because I think in some cases an apology is necessary.

But if you apologize, you are admitting guilt and it's never good enough. And in this case, Wigel apologizing to her internally, directly, not good enough. Apologizing publicly, doing away with the retweet, not good enough. So let's get to that really quick because someone, I came across this response to Wigel's apology, and it absolutely makes sense. So a guy named Rob Henderson shares a study that was done on what the outcome is, what the response tends to be after someone apologizes. A public figure apologizes for something that he or she is done.

Overall, the evidence suggests that when a prominent figure apologizes for a controversial statement, the public is either unaffected or becomes more likely to desire that the individual be punished. And that is exactly what happened with Dave Weigel, where he is now suspended for a month without pay. So like that's the other half of this. We we now like celebrate doing away with people's income, right, making sure that people either get fired, suspended without pay. Like, does it make you feel better? Does that make you feel really good to know that someone is being deprived of their income over your hurt feelings over a joke that you didn't like? I don't

like the joke either. Again, but I sure as hell would not be like this advocate for firing one of my colleagues or doing away with his or her income for a month because of my hurt feelings over a joke I don't like. Like we got what's going on? Like we're dealing with very real problems in this country right now. And the dominant discussion, the big divide over at the Washington Post is whether or not retweeting a stupid joke is acceptable. Yeah. So later in the story, we're going to do a story about how cops let a guy drown. He's dead. They were suspended for a little while, but with pay.

They still get paid, but Weigel doesn't get paid. So that's the crazy disparity in the country overall. But let's talk about media specifically. I remember Martin Bashir made a joke about Sarah, or made a reference to Sarah Palin that people found to be a little too over the top. Now looking back at it, Republicans make references like that, literally eight times a day on cable news, Nobody ever does anything about it, but he was made to apologize profusely, and then they fired him right afterwards. No, apologies never, ever work. In fact, I've seen internal polling that shows, no, it doesn't move the numbers at all.

All it does is cement the idea that you were guilty. Right. Okay, so Trump and the Republicans are right, politically speaking and strategically speaking, to never apologize. So, but our side in an uneven playing field, apologizes nonstop and gets fired anyway, gets punished anyway, gets their income taken from them anyway. Now, and this is important, Dave Weigel is not on our side. Dave Weigel is a mainstream media reporter. Sometimes he does good work, which separates them out from almost all the other reporters, but a lot of times I get super frustrated by his reporting, right?

And I've defended people like Megan Kelly, who I don't agree with at all. So she does something that has had a statement that I 100% disagreed with. But that was on NBC, and they fired her over that identity politics, culture, war issues, etc. But NBC brings on former generals who are defense contractors to hawk their own products. Oh, the Abrams tank is great. And they don't tell anybody the guy's representing Abrams tank. And he's doing propaganda on NBC. It's never an issue.

And how about insulting people? Well, does it depend on who you're insulting? Of course, Chuck Todd on NBC called Bernie Sanders supporters brown shirts. He called us Nazis. That's that. But that's okay. That's okay. Not even a discussion of whether he should apologize, whether he should have his pay docked.

No, you can call progressives anything you want, and there's going to be no repercussions. So the hypocrisy is out of control. And that's the right wing. They're celebrating it. Well, first of all, you don't even know Wigel's reporting. Okay, you're just like, ah, yeah. Wait, what happened? I thought you guys were freedom of speech.

Wouldn't the right wing is celebrating it? Oh, no, it's all over my account. You know why? So I defended Wigel a little bit in the same way that we're doing here. They're like, oh yeah, you see it back in the time, it's your turn. Why does that on my side, okay? And second of all, it's not my turn or his turn. Man, these people have no freaking principles at all.

At all, at all. Like they run around crying about cancel culture day and day out. And then once someone they don't like is canceled or whatever, they love it. They love cancel culture. But for me, this is not about personalities. This is about principles and it's about what actually matters. And I'm so sick of the nonstop distractions. I'm so sick of people.

who have prominent positions in corporate media of all places, like making the story about them. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. I was offended. I was offended. Women are being raped. Women are being sexually assaulted. Women are having their entire bodies taken away from them by the government, which will get to decide whether or not they get to have abortions, whether or not they can take specific types of birth control. But hey, everyone, Felicia Asanmez is very offended by a retweet. Log off Twitter, home girl, log off. Again, bigger fish to fry.

I'm so sick of these stories. It's endless, endless stream of I'm offended, I'm offended. I'm offended, I'm offended. Be offended. There's no constitutional right against you being offended. We live in a country that's diverse, that's full of hundreds of millions of people who have their own thoughts, their own views. There's nothing protecting you from being offended, okay?

If there's evidence that you're working in a hostile work environment, which, by the way, she has sued the Washington Post over that, and that case got thrown out of court. She's filing an appeal. Oh, forget about it. No, I didn't even know that part. That's a very relevant part because it seems like she's trying to bolster her appeal here. Yeah, and she's not, by the way, Sonmez randomly, I don't know if she has anything to Turkish background at all, but in Turkish means one that won't turn off, okay?

So she definitely will not turn it off. Like I said before, if she had made that first tweet, no problem, okay? But guys, I'm asking the whole country, when is it enough? When is it enough when someone apologizes and retracts? Or do we have to fire them all? Guess what? Everybody's going to get fired. And the funny thing is we're the most unbiased people here because you can't fire us.

I own the company and I get to make the decision. I get to make the decisions. So I'm not worried about canceling culture at all on a personal level. At least 12 times different wings, right wing, left wing, middle wing have tried to cancel me. I don't care. They can kiss my ass. Okay? I'm actually looking out for other people.

Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now. I get a free chili dog. Tilly dog, not included. The naked gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st.

I know it's a wild idea. Firing everyone over the smallest defense and the most ancient offense is nuts. And Sonmez, did you ever complain about the corporate bias at Washington Post? No, that's totally fine. Let me analyze all of your stories and see if you were like, hey, Washington Post. How about that one that Anna mentioned just yesterday, Jeff Stein and Tyler Page, this outrageous article that pretends that money in politics doesn't have any effect at all. It doesn't even mention Joe Mache's millions that he's making off of coal and pretends that it's about his hurt feelings. Weren't you outraged by that?

Because that screws over the American people a thousand times more, a million times. We don't have child tax credit. We don't have paid family leave. We don't have lower drug prices because of propaganda that the Washington posted just yesterday. Are you bothered by that? No. But you got a lawsuit and you've got to get famous. So you're going to pretend to be super outraged by a slightly off-color joke instead of the real can't.

that's in mainstream media. Exactly. All right, well, we made ourselves clear on that. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we've got more news, including additional allegations in regard to the religious cult that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett happens to be part of. We've got that story and more coming right up. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys. One comment from Super Chat, Matthew Petronova Tritzen.

Anna doesn't even have kids and is standing up for mothers' rights. I love it. Strong women stand tall. Thank you. I mean, it's not just about mothers, it's about Americans. Like, we all see how much all of us are suffering, right? And the corporate media has aided and abetted the very goons who have caused the suffering and perpetuate the suffering.

So to me, that is worth being offended by. That is worth springing into action in response to. But no, these corporate reporters over at the Washington Post, it's all about them and their hurt feelings over jokes. Okay. Anyway. Let's do it. We now have more details about the serious allegations of abuse against a

Catholic cult that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett happens to be part of. Now, the founder of the people of praise was described as exerting almost total control over one of the group's female members in a sworn affidavit in the 1990s. The Guardian has now reported on the details of that affidavit, and I want to share them with you. Now, the court documents also described alleged instances of sexualized atmosphere, of a sexualized atmosphere in the home of the founder of this group, Kevin Rannigan and his wife, Dorothy Rannigan. Cynthia Karnick stated in these documents that she had witnessed Dorothy Rannigan tie the arms and legs of two of the Rannigan's daughters, who were three and five at the time the incidents were allegedly witnessed to their crib with a necktie. She also said that the Rannigan's allegedly practiced sexual displays in front of their children and other adults, such as Dorothy Rannigan lying with her clothes on and rocking on top of Kevin Rannigan in their TV room. Now again, this was all part of a 1993 court proceeding in which Cynthia Karnik had stated that she didn't want her children to have visitation with her ex-husband because he was part of.

of this religious cult and she was concerned about their safety. Now Karnik also described inappropriate instances or incidents involving the couple and the Rannigan children. The matter was actually eventually settled out of court between the two parties, but there have been others who have corroborated similar accounts or those accounts and have detailed similar accounts. So in an affidavit that supported Cynthia Karnik's written statement, collect how much Humphrey said that she had lived with Kevin and Dorothy Ranagan from 1973 to 1978

when she was a member of the people of praise and confirmed that she had witnessed incidents of inappropriate sexual expression. She said this, when I was part of the people of praise, I was in full life submission to Kevin Ranagan under full obedience to him. And he expected his authority over, he, I'm sorry, exercised his authority over most areas of my life. For example, we were in common financially, which meant that I had to hand over my paycheck to Kevin Rannigan, and he would decide on how that paycheck would be used. Kevin Rannigan controlled my dating relationships, deciding who and when I should date. Now, there

was a third woman as well named Susan Reynolds, who also shared abusive accounts herself. But the reason why we're giving you these details is because understand that, again, Justice Amy Coney Barrett is very much part of this Catholic cult known as, you know, people of praise. And she actually worked and she lived with the Rannigans while she was in college for about two years. Guys, there's tons of disturbing allegations. I want to give you more of them and I want to give you their defense as well, of course. So let me go to graphic six. Members of the people of praise have entered a covenant commitment, they say. say to live together and are expected to share portions of their income and regularly attend

hours long private prayer meetings, which can include exorcisms and speaking in tongues. Now, wait, did Barrett ever do that? Well, let's go to Graphic 5. Barrett 50 lived with Dorothy and Kevin Rannigan in her, in their nine bedroom, South Bend, Indiana home while she attended law school and according to public records. The justice who was then known as Amy Coney graduated from Notre Dame in law school in 97 and two years later married her husband, Jesse Barrett, who also appears to have lived in the Rannigan household. So she believes in these covenants and that at that point, the Kevin Rannigan

makes all of the decisions for her. Later, her husband makes all the decisions for her. So is she consulting him for the Supreme Court decisions? I mean, look, it's gone. She's on the court. This isn't about like, oh, this is a political hatchet job or anything like that. So this is just a conversation about what are we doing? Yeah, what are we doing? Like, so we, nobody was allowed to ask about a religion. But why not? It's, it's definitely a cult.

Here, let me give you more disturbing elements so you begin to get a sense of it. Let's go to Graphic 8. In June 2021, four victims of alleged sexual or physical abuse in the people of praise published an open letter in the South Bend Tribune calling for reforms within the faith group. The suggested reforms included public acknowledgement that there had been, quote, a systemic failure to protect the people who have praised children from abuse, publicly naming of all individuals who have been, quote, credibly accused of abuse or concealing abuse within people of praise or at schools, and placing an equal number of women in their highest leadership positions in the group and giving them an equal vote in all the group's decisions. So there's two different elements here. One is the abuse and the other is the rules overall. Women cannot be part of leadership.

So Amy Coney Barrett is part of a group that says a woman is just not capable of leading. Yet she's on the Supreme Court. Yeah, what's up with that? And no one even asked her about that. The group, of course, is very against gay rights. And then there's the issue of abuse, including the allegations that he, the Rannigan showered with his kids who were like 10, 10 and 11 years old. Okay, so that's super.

were weird, let alone that there's number of people saying definitely child abuse going on here. That's their allegations. So we're not allowed to ask about that. And so no one did. No one, Diane Feinstein when Coney Barrett was up for a lower position in the federal judiciary, once asked about her religion very, very generally. And what did the Republicans do? They lost it. They're like, how dare you? This is persecution. She didn't even get into any of the the details and go, wait a minute, is your husband making the decisions or are you making the decisions? Because it's not my cult, it's your cult that says the husband should make all the decisions. And we know what the treatment would be if the nominee happened to believe

in a different type of religion, maybe Muslim religion, you know, if the- 100%. If the nominee wasn't a pro-corporate contender for either the federal courts or the Supreme Court, we know what the treatment would be. Wouldn't matter how egregious the question would be in regard to that individual's faith, right? Yeah, no, we have a right to know. So she's obviously has massively anti-gay views that's going to affect her decisions. And in a sense, by stripping away the right to privacy in reversing row, which she's signed onto, apparently.

Yep. She has begun to do that. She obviously has no respect for women's rights. She's willing to give away all of her rights so rando that she lived with in Notre Dame, a weird old cult leader who's accused of abusing children. So she has women's rights. She doesn't even necessarily think women have rights. That's unbelievable.

She's on the Supreme Court. And not a single Democrat had the courage to ask her, hey, what's going on with your cult? What are your actual beliefs? Well, the Democrats are worried that Republicans might yell at them. Yeah, oh, my God. And then, oh, my God. Can't have that. No, no, no, we're more religious in the right wing.

We're more fundamentalists than the right wing. We promise, you losers. You think you're getting the Southern Baptist vote? You ain't getting me. You think you're getting the evangelical vote? You're not getting it. So just, God damn it, do your job. This is all so you know the people at the top are not any better than you.

There's a bunch of wackos up there. The ship has sailed. There's nothing we could do about it. I'm just, it's important for you to be informed now that we have all the information. All right. Well, unfortunately, the next story doesn't get any easier. It involves cops standing by and watching a person die. It's an ongoing trend, especially after what we experienced in Yuvaldi, Texas. A man drowned to death in a tempi park as cops essentially just watched it happened and refused to help.

The cops have been placed on administrative leave, as always, but their union is actually defending their decision to literally stand there and watch a man drown to death and refuse to intervene. Now first, let's set up the story. What happened? Well, police responded to a disturbance between Sean Bickings and a woman who's now been identified as his wife. Apparently, they were in some sort of dispute at the Tempe Center for the Arts, which actually sits on a promenade alone or along, I should say, the Tempe Town Lake. Okay, so that is a reservoir. And the cop show up, they try to figure out what the dispute is. His wife tells them, everything's fine, we just had a disagreement, there's no abuse, nothing's wrong. Body camera footage released by the city shows officers approach and speak to a woman who identified

herself as Bickings' wife. As she picked up her belongings off the ground, she explained that she and Bickings sometimes have disagreements, but said that he did not physically harm her. By the way, Bickings was described as unsheltered, so homeless. And so two of the officers then walked over to Bickings, who was seated on a bench facing the water according to the body camera footage. By this point, the officers were running the couple's names for outstanding warrants, which is apparently standard procedure, according to the city. The police later said Bickings had three outstanding warrants, but this is important. Those didn't actually come up during Bickings' encounter with the police. They found out about the warrants after the fact.

Now, that's when Bickings decided to slowly climb over this short fence dividing the boardwalk and the water. When one of the officers asked, like, what are you doing? Bickings said, I'm free to go, right? And so what you're about to see is what happens next based on the body camp surveillance. Let's take a quick look at that, and then I'll explain more. You're not allowed to swim in the lake. How part do you think is going to be able to swim? You got, you're going to keep an eye?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys got to stay in this case it gets out. I'll get that. I'm pretty sure there's like turbines at the base of the dam that get stuck. I got it. So they cut the body cam footage after that, right, they say it's too disturbing to release to the public. I think they should release it. And the reason why I say that is because the public deserves to know exactly what happened.

They released a transcript of what happened afterwards. And I want to get to that transcript. Jank, let me read the transcript first. And then I'll go to you because I think that's the most important part of this story. So Bickings told the officers he was going to drown according to the transcript. No, you're not an officer identified as officer two replied. Officer one then directed Bickings to go to the pylon and hold on. I'm drowning, Bickings said. Come back over to the pylon, Officer 2 said. I can't, Bickings said,

I can't. Okay, I'm not jumping in after you, Officer 1 said, and he didn't. Okay, and as you guys can probably already tell, the cops have not been identified yet. Bickings then begged for help and said moments later, I can't touch, oh God, please help me, help me. And they did not. And eventually his partner got involved and begged them to help her husband. And of course, they refused to do so. They were annoyed with her demands. And it's just incredibly tragic. And the union, of course, is defending the cops to say, well, you know,

it would have been very dangerous for them to jump in the water. And you can hear from the video that we played that one of the cops was concerned about possible turbines in the water that could have been sucking him down into the water. Because in the beginning of the video, you can see him swimming and he looks like a good swimmer. I don't know if the turbines really exist. That's unclear at the moment. But what I do know is you have three cops there. Three cops are now on administrative leave who just refused to do anything.

Okay, so let's understand the logic of the cops here. They said it was too disturbing to release to the public, the video of him drowned. But apparently it was not disturbing enough for them to actually. try to save his life. So we can't even see how awful it was as he was drowning. But the cops saw it in real life and we're like, don't care. Not going in after you. Don't care at all.

You're dying? What am I a cop here to save you? So which one is it? If it's so horrific that the public can't see it, well, obviously the cop did something wrong, right? Nope, cop did something perfectly fine. They said, well, if he had gone in, he might have lost his own life. Oh my God, if you're a cop, you might have to risk your life.

Yes, that's supposed to be part of the job. But this is I've told you guys this a hundred times, a million times. And no one's ever going to fix this. Biden, all the Democrats, all the Republicans are too busy kissing the cop's asses and shoveling more money towards them. No, no, but you're being super unfair to them because they also kneel in Kente cloths and do performative politics and theater. So great job with that. So the reality is, all the cops in this country are trained, you're more important than the citizens, do not ever risk anything, even any kind of harm to save the life of a lowly citizen. Well, of course, unless they're rich, then you must risk everything to protect them and their property, okay?

But if you're the middle class or poor, just let them drown. Who cares? You're not going to get in any trouble at all. Better to be judged by 12 than they carried out by 6. Who cares? That's what we teach our cups because I'll tell you guys, most people jump in to save the guy.

Unless they're trained to be callous, unless they're trained to not give a crap about other people's lives. And that's what we do with our cops. We're like, remember guys, know what else is important. Only you. You are the most important. No, your whole job

is supposed to be to risk your life for others. Otherwise, go be a goddamn accountant. It's a perfectly noble job. You just sit there with numbers. You don't have to enrich your life at all. Okay? So look, now let's get to the horrifying details. He might get sucked in by turbines.

That wasn't a cop. That was a citizen that was there. Cops are like, yeah, whatever, man. Okay, you say, look, look, I get it in the beginning. You go to look into a disturbance. Maybe they fought, but now they're telling you they aren't. You're looking up the warrants, no problem. The guy jumps in, that's a giant pain in the ass.

I got it. I got it, no problem, okay? And then you tell him not to swim out and he's still swimming out. That sucks. Am I getting on the cops or not jumping at that point? No. But when the guy says I'm drowning, maybe you don't believe him in the beginning. Okay, give him as much leeway as you want, right?

But when you don't see him come out of the water for 30 seconds and you say it on the tape and you start to worry that he's going to drown, that's when you jump in. You've got to jump in there. But then you don't see him for minutes. You got to jump in. You got to jump in if you don't see him for minutes. Hurry up. Time is ticking.

He told you he was drowning. And now it looks like he is drowning. Get in there. He said, oh, no, no, I might get a hangnail. I might get a paper cut. I'm going to get wet. That's kind of a pain in my ass. To save a life, that's not my life.

What do I care? I'm a cop. And that's the actual decision they made. And if you're looking for consequences, it would be shocking. if they were fired. Right, as I mentioned, the police union has already run interference on behalf of the cops. I'll get to that in one second, but I just wanted to give you a statement from the transcript from Bikings' wife. So she's begging them to help, begging them to save her husband.

And she says, quote, he's everything I got, I can't lose him, he's going to die. Now, since he was described as unsheltered, I'm going to assume that she's also unsheltered. Imagine having literally nothing other than your partner. And you're standing there with people who could help save him and they just watch him die. And you watch him die along with them, begging them, begging them for help and they refuse to do it. Now, in the aftermath, as I mentioned, they've been placed on administrative leave. The Tempe Officers Association, the city's police union, said in a statement that Bickings's drowning was an awful loss of life.

The union argued, however, that the officers were not trained or equipped for a water rescue and said that an attempt to rescue Bickings from the reservoir would have been dangerous. You know, what I'm also curious about is they didn't even bother to call anyone else for help. Yeah, no, they claim that they called like a boat and a fire department, etc. But it's going to take hours for them to get, you know when they fish them out of the water? Six hours later, nobody jumped in. Nobody jumped in, nobody cared. They say it might be dangerous.

Yeah, your job is supposed to be dangerous. It's like the fire department going, what do you want us to rush into a burning building to save kids and people? That's the job. Yes, that's the job. If you don't want to do the job, then go away and get fired and go do something else. I'm going to read you the exact quote from the Tempe Officers Association. They said, quote, attempting such a high risk rescue could easily result in the death of the person in the water and the officer who could be pulled down by a struggling adult. Oh, wow, you could be in a little bit of danger.

Yeah, that's why you're a cop. Don't ever tell me the cop is the most dangerous job. It's the easiest, cushiest, least risky job in the world. We taught to teach them to be callous monsters who should never, ever take any risk with them their lives and let civilians die. And go, oh my God, hey, look, it's a 12-year-old boy. What are we going to ask him if it's a toy gun or if nothing? Just shoot him dead.

Who cares? That's Tamir Rice. And we can give you hundreds of examples. So now people have lost faith in police. I mean, if you're rich, you haven't lost faith. They'll protect your mansion, don't worry, right? But if you're poor middle class, now you're stuck. You have criminals everywhere, but you're afraid that if you call the cops,

A, they're not going to show up, and B, if they do, they might hurt you. So we're all screwed, and no one is going to do anything about it. This is as dark as I have ever seen America. Yep. Because the Republicans love all of this dysfunction, and that the fact that the country, is turned into a barbaric hellscape, right, where poor and middle class are crushed by corporate rule. Day and day out. And the only people that are protected, though, are the rich and the powerful.

The Republicans love it. They live for it. And the Democrats are indifferent. They just cash checks. Oh, did the corporate donors send the money? Yeah, great. Now, we're not going to do anything about police reform. Let him drown.

Let him get shot into school. We're not going to do any gun control. We're not going to do voting rights. We're not going to do higher wages. We're not going to do anything that we lied about. And the corporate media comes and says, it's all okay, everybody, move along, everybody, move along, it's all okay. This is perfectly normal. It's not normal.

This is barbaric. Well, we come back from the break. We'll get into Matthew McConaughey's speech during a White House press conference today. Some powerful words from him that Newsmax did not take kindly to. So we've got that and more coming right up. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t.

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