The Young Turks - Defunding the Tax Police

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

Wealthy Atlanta community files for “divorce” from the city, plans to create their own police force amid the crime wave. Conservative groups mount opposition to the increase in the IRS budget, threatening the White House’s infrastructure plan. Arizona Secretary of State asks State Attorney General to investigate possible election interference by Donald Trump, allies. Trump is suing literally everyone. Charlie Kirk compares vaccine requirements at universities to apartheid and The Handmaids Tale. What year is it that we’re still shutting down comedy shows? TikTok Christian Karen assumes two kids are on a date at a restaurant, tries to convert them. Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Ashli Babbitt to George Floyd. Tech companies are already building Tucker Carlson’s school surveillance fever dream. A male infertility crisis could be on the horizon. 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. Colgate Total is more than just your favorite toothpaste. It's dedicated to advancing oral health. The new Colgate Total Active Prevention System features a reformulated toothpaste, innovative toothbrush, and a refreshing anti-bacterial mouthwash. All designed to work together to fight the root cause of common oral health issues, such as gingivitis, Plac and tartar.

Use the full routine twice daily and be dentist ready. Shop the Colgate Total Active Prevention System now at walmart.ca. All right, well, the enderks, All right, we do the news, we do serious news, and oftentimes we have fun with it. So, ta-da, young Turks. Great open, isn't it? Nailed it. As always, I'm here every day. Kind of.

So we've got stories about Republicans and Tuck Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, and all of the nonsense. Of course, the Democrats as well. So let's move forward. Let's do it. Yeah, I actually would like to start the show today by discussing a class war that's taking place on a very local level in Atlanta. It has to do with policing. It's the intersection of policing and the class war. So this story is insane, but it gives you a sense of where rich people are at when it comes to funding police. So the wealthy neighborhood of Buckhead in Atlanta is actually looking to divorce itself from Atlanta and become its own city so the wealthy neighborhood can essentially have its own local police department. It can fund its own local police department, which will be separate from Atlanta.

Now, the reason why they're doing that is because in Atlanta, as we're experiencing all across the country, there has been a spike in violent crime. Homicides are up by about 63% to the same time last year and up 43% compared to the same period in 2019. And that's according to late May data released by the Atlanta Police Department. The city has seen more than 300 shooting incidents since the start of the year, up 45% from what it recorded this time last year, and up 55% from 2019. So it's important to know that context. There is an increase in violent crime, not just in Atlanta, which these statistics bear out, but all across the country. This has been an increasing issue, something that unfortunately the GOP has latched onto as their way of rallying supporters to go to the polls and vote for them

in the midterms. And so what does Buckhead this wealthy neighborhood in Atlanta want to do? Well, first off, let me just note, they're known as the Beverly Hills of Atlanta, so it gives you a sense. of the wealth in this particular neighborhood, but apparently state lawmakers introduced legislation earlier this year that could pave the way for a Buckhead City vote on November 20, on the November 22 ballot. Now the Buckhead City Committee says it raised $600,000 to support ongoing lobbying efforts and a commission, a feasibility study that is set to kick off in days. So they've already got this process going and Buckhead isn't the only area in Georgia that's moving forward with this kind of idea, right? Just kind of divorcing itself from metropolitan areas in

the state. Now here's Bill White. He is the head of the Buckhead Exploratory Committee. He's actually the CEO of the Buckhead Exploratory Committee. And in this video, he kind of explains the reasoning behind why they're doing this. in a war zone. That's how we describe living in Buckhead. And what has happened here in the last several years is an incredibly dangerous spike in crime and a complete vacuum of leadership. The police in Atlanta are great police men and women. We love them. They just want to do their job and they're not being allowed to do that. So Buckhead and the beautiful families, a very diverse community. We in fact are the most diverse community in all of Atlanta. We have decided

to file for divorce. And the divorce is final. And what we are saying to the city of Atlanta is we are going to form our own city. We have two bills in the state legislature. We've raised the requisite amount of money we need right now to move this forward. There'll be a ballot initiative on the ballot next November. And we are going to take our city back for the great families of Buckhead once and for all. Now, look, once you hear that this is the Beverly Hills of Atlanta, I'm sure you can

assume that it is not in fact the most diverse part of Atlanta. In fact, quite the opposite. I want to give you that fact check and then, Jank, I want to hear your thoughts. Atlanta is now roughly 51% black and 38% white according to the US Census Bureau. Without Buckhead, Atlanta would become roughly 59% black and 31% white, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution analysis. Buckhead City, if it became a reality, would be roughly 74% white and 11% black. The most diverse part of Atlanta, Anna.

Super diverse. Race has nothing to do with this. Now obviously it's about race and class, clearly, right? Because while he said friendly things toward the Atlanta Police Department there, apparently the Atlanta Police Department just isn't enough for the residents of Buckhead. Yeah. So, first of all, I think Buckhead's known as the Barrel of the South. as the Beryl Hills of the South, so the whole South.

It's not surprising that that would be in Atlanta, but so he says it's a war zone. Look, crime has gone up everywhere, and that's a really interesting topic, and I want to talk about it in a little bit. But is Buckhead a war zone? No, it's not a war zone, okay? So now, his diversity claims are hilarious. By the way, if Atlanta was 75% black and 11% white as, you know, roughly speaking, that wouldn't be that diverse either, right?

It would be predominantly black. But Atlanta actually actually has a very good split, as Anna just told you, of black and white. But for Buckhead, they think 11% black is about as diverse as we want to be. And on top of that, you know, I'll pretend we're the most diverse, which makes no sense at all, obviously, right? But Anna's right. This is, so there's no question that, or I would be very surprised, let's put it that way, if there wasn't a racial component to this.

And I remember going to Grosse Point, Michigan, and there were signs at different places that said Detroit residents not welcome, okay, so. I wonder why. Yeah, or now I don't think that they, they probably didn't say it that way in the year 2018 or so that we were there. I think that it said like you might, you, if you have Detroit, you know, you, if you have Detroit, ID you're not allowed to enter, okay? But why? Because Gross Point is a really rich suburb of Detroit.

No, no, I get it. It's America though, right? Is it a gated community? It must have been, but it was flagrant the way they said, not gated community. I don't remember exactly what the thing was. It obviously can't be a public park, etc., as Anna points out. But whatever it was, it wanted to make very clear, we don't want anybody from Detroit here, okay? And so, and it was, we were shocked that they bothered to put up a sign, because they can just say no when people come in, right? And so is there a phenomenon like that in Buckhead? Likely, right?

But it doesn't really matter if they do it informally now because this guy's saying, let's do it for me, let's separate. Yes. And so now what's the point of separation? I'm gonna get to class in one second. The point of separation is to say, okay, now we want to have our own police, which becomes like basically private security guards and that separate from Atlanta because we're wealthier and we, et cetera,

because police are mainly to protect property in this country, unfortunately. They should also protect our lives, et cetera. But basically, so wall yourself off from Atlanta. So those signs will come next, just like they have in Grosse Point, right? People of Atlanta not really welcome here, right? But even if you said, hey guys, I don't think it has anything new with the race. First of all, welcome to America, nice to know you, okay? You'll find this place interesting because apparently you're not from here.

Okay, fine, let's assume it for a second. In terms of class, they're basically saying, we don't want to give you any of our taxes. Exactly. That's what this is about. It's about essentially taking away a huge source of revenue, an important portion of the revenue for the city of Atlanta and keeping it within this wealthy enclave. So yes, I think that there is a component of race involved, but race and class are very clearly intertwined here and in general. And in this case, they want to ensure that their resources remain within their own little neighborhood. When I say neighborhood, it's not fair.

I mean, this is an area that has a population of about estimated 80,000. I'll give you exact numbers in just a minute. But again, when you look at the median income in that area, it's far higher than what the average is or what the median is when you look at the greater Atlanta area. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, already, I love the comments that are coming in in our member section, Nevine X-Roy said, Buckhead is the most diverse? Yes, dirty blonde, platinum blonde, strawberry blonde, diversity at its finest.

What a total buckhead. Yeah. Okay, and then on YouTube super chat, D. Nichols says, I'm sorry, Moondragon says, nope, D. Nichols, call that city Karen Town. So we have more video about this and it's, you know, it's important to see what the inner workings are here, like how these people really think. Let me just note, though, the reason why this is important is because Buckhead isn't the only part of Georgia that's kind of trying to divorce itself from a broader metropolitan area. For instance, the proposed Buckhead city is just one part of an ongoing cityhood movement across the state. among the roughly 10 new cities formed in less than two decades, all but two are majority

white. So it's important for you guys to have the facts, okay? So as he's speaking to Tucker Carlson, you can understand that while he's saying one thing, he's really thinking something very different. And with that said, let's go to the next video real quick. Tucker, that all those, you know, we're racist or this, that, and the other thing, that is all hateful, very disturbing, unhelpful language that's fearmongering. And it certainly will not stop the crime in Buckhead. What's gonna stop the crime is the establishment of the Buckhead City Police Department.

That's right. We plan on having 300 police officers for a prolonged period of time. There are only 82 cops on the beat in Buckhead right now, the square footage of San Francisco. So he's saying like, look, we've got the same square footage as San Francisco. We have such a, you know, small number of cops, 82 cops. Yeah, but let's look at the population of Buckhead and compare it to the population of San Francisco.

So the residential population base of greater buckhead is currently at about 87,000 and is expected to grow to nearly 114,000 by 2040. Okay, 2040. When you look at San Francisco numbers are a little different, they're a little different. Let's take a look at this graph. Oh, look at that. As of 2019, the population of San Francisco was 874,961. Yeah, the square mileage of your town is totally.

irrelevant. It's not totally irrelevant. You might need a couple more carps if you have a gigantic county and they got to drive further out, et cetera, right? But mainly you're talking about populations. So, but let's go back to class. Guys, I need you to understand why this is a disastrous idea. So if the rich areas of each city start breaking off one by one, they're going to basically build these towers and moats and stuff to keep the rest of us out in this and have more and more private security, but it also drains the resources of the rest of the city and then makes it harder. And then not only you have more income inequality, but you have more conflict. And it sets up, hey, we're not all New Yorkers anymore. That's a Park Avenue city person, right? And that's

a New York resident. And it could get absurd, like the example I just gave. It could be that it's not just the richer part of Brooklyn that's peeling off. It's specifically part of Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue, right? Well, Jesus Christ, you're going to have Fifth Avenue City and Park Avenue City? And the whole point of this is siphon the money out of the general city and make sure that you're super selfish and greedy and keep it only within the richest areas. Any city that goes through that, even if you divorce a racial component of it, you're going to wind up in an absolute disaster.

And then what happens if they start doing it in the states, right? In West Virginia, a very rich part with the mansions, they become their own state, and the rest of you are screwed in the hollers, right? So once you start this ball rolling, it's an epic disaster. Absolutely. And you know, you touched on something that's important, and I want to just piggyback off of it, emphasize it. What we're experiencing with policing right now, and what needs to be reformed, is that

most of the policing isn't about protecting people. It's about protecting property, protecting capital. And so these are very wealthy individuals who want to protect their wealth. And so they see the increase in crime and they panic about it. And they think that the problem is that they're grouped in with the pores. They're grouped in with individuals who are represented by a mayor who, oh, dared to question some of the policing taking place in Atlanta. That's Keisha Lance Bottoms, who of course is not going to face or is not going to go through with re-election. She's actually, you know, going to stop after her mayoral term is up.

And has she defunded the police? No, but she had some criticism or critique in regard to policing in Atlanta. And that led to cops quitting because their morale was low. Okay, so are we just going to, we're never going to be able to hold cops accountable? They're going to get their fee-fis hurt and they're immediately going to quit because morale is low. No, what we need to do is reform policing significantly. And it needs to be considered, honestly, an important job where there's enough training, but more importantly, something that's not an easy job to get into, right?

There needs to be more thorough background checks, better pay, and you need to make sure that you hire the right people for the job. I think that's part of the problem. When you look at actual polling, especially polling of African Americans in America, they actually don't want to abolish police. They want police to protect and serve. They want them to carry out the jobs that they're supposed to do. And that should be something that is given to all Americans, right?

Not just rich Americans, not just white Americans, not just whoever. It needs to be applied evenly to all Americans. And that's not what's happening right now. That's the problem. Yeah. And so I want to go back to the crime issue for a second for two reasons. Number one, guys, it's happening all across the country. So if they're demagoguing in your particular city and say, oh, it's because of, you know, the mayor, it's because of police policies, et cetera.

It's because of criminal justice reform. Nonsense. Not all of the cities are doing that. Not all of the states are doing that. And crime is up in almost all the cities and all the states. So it doesn't have anything to do with that. Likely, it has to do with some sort of reaction to COVID and people being out now. By the way, gun violence is obvious.

It's because there's so much more guns. and you could track the number of guns to the number of gun homicide, suicides, et cetera. So those are the actual phenomenon and not any of the things that they're demagoguing about. Now, I love doing the show with you guys because you're making such great points, especially on this story. In our member section, George McGovern said, wait a minute, Buckhead is rich. They could hire a private police force if they are really in a war zone, right?

And so I wanted to point that out because they actually could. Do you remember the Kardashians and some other wealthy people in L.A. hired private fire departments when the fires were raging in California. You could actually do that and have the fire department just sitting in your backyard ready to go. It's not an actual fire department, but it's people who are ready to fight fires, right? And obviously everybody knows private security guards. Buckhead could hire a whole heap of those folks with their pooled money. So that's why this is not really about crime. It's about money. It's about taxes, right? And so they, they, they think, I don't want my taxes to go into any other fellow Americans, in this case, people

that are part of Atlanta. And this happening all across the country. Then I go to YouTube super chat, and Gail Hefner makes a great point. Little Italy in Baltimore City and Northeast Philadelphia want to do the same as Buckhead, and they've tried for four years to do so. And we have it here in LA as well. All the rich areas are trying to basically secede from their cities, and it's driven. And by the way, remember, as Gail just pointed out, they've been doing it for four straight years pre any crime wave.

It's not about that. It's about greed, infinite greed. Eventually, just like really rich people are going to be like, you know what, I'm my new, on my own city. I declare my own city and I'm going to keep my taxes 100% to myself. No, we've got to be in this together. And so that's why this is an absolutely disastrous phenomenon. And then I wanted to make the same point. D. Nichols said, I'm still trying to figure out why I'm still trying to figure out why. Tucker looks like he just got his favorite toy taken away from him for Brad grades in class. Will he ever fix his face? What's the nonstop perpetual? All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we have more news for you, including how the bipartisan infrastructure bill is in jeopardy because conservatives do not want to fund the IRS. We'll be back with that and more. Jake, you're Anna Kasparian with you guys. News.

So conservative groups are doing what they can to ensure that the IRS continues to be underfunded so wealthy people can get away with evading taxes. That is the latest update in regard to Biden's bipartisan infrastructure bill. The deal that he has struck with members of the Senate, GOP members of the Senate, who might maybe vote in favor of this version of the infrastructure. structure bill. Now, of course, Republicans don't want to increase taxes on the rich. So as part of the deal, what they would do is agree to some funding for the IRS to kind of, you know, be able to recoup some of the money that was evaded or the taxes that were evaded by wealthy individuals.

But looks like various groups, a conservative group specifically, are writing strongly worded letters to GOP lawmakers to remember, to make them remember who their daddies are, right? We're the donors, don't mess with us, do not fund the IRS. Now among the conservative groups spearheading the opposition are the committee to unleash prosperity, which is a funny name. It's very leashed. So you just want to unleash it for the poor billionaires. Right.

Freedom Works, the conservative action project, and the Leadership Institute. They're preparing a letter that warns Republicans should not negotiate with the White. House unless they agree to no additional funding for the IRS. Now, the letter is expected to gain the support of 12 other conservative groups, because you know, wealthy people love funding these conservative groups that then lobby Congress to basically keep this system rigged against workers and people who actually do pay their taxes. And also Jason Pye, who is a lobbyist from Freedom Works, says that enforcement of tax laws is one thing. But what people are concerned about is aggressive audits. And by the way, those aggressive

audits do take place. It's just that since the IRS is underfunded, the aggressive auditing takes place toward people who don't make much money, because their taxes tend to be far more simple and easy to audit, whereas wealthy people takes a lot more resources because their taxes are super complicated. Now, who else is behind this? This is the important detail here. The group's leading the opposition to the IRS budget increase, include those that have received funds for major conservative donors, including the Mercer Family Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and Donors Trust. One signatory of the letter, Phil Kirpin, of American Commitment, worked for five years at Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of the, of course,

influential Coke network. And remember, in the original infrastructure, bill, Biden had proposed $80 billion to help fund the IRS so they can do the correct audits of wealthy people and recoup that money that they've been evading in taxes. But in the bipartisan infrastructure deal, they cut that down to $40 billion. So Biden's already made a major concession here. The question is, will he make more concessions as a result of these conservative groups, lobby Republican lawmakers to refuse voting in favor of the bill if it includes the funding for the IRS.

Okay. You know what this is? This is defunding the police. Yeah. It's just the police of tax cheats, wealthy tax cheats. So when it comes to that, the rich all of a sudden turn around and go, if we don't need any stinking police to look into our IRS tax forms to see if we cheated or not, no way. Defund the police, defund it right away, right?

Isn't that amazing? Guys, who do you think is pushing for making sure that the IRS cannot catch more tax cheats? Probably tax cheats, okay? And it's not a surprise that all those foundations and all those individuals and groups that are backing this effort are incredibly wealthy. The Mercer's got their money on Wall Street, you know, the Koch brothers, their array of companies, etc. So it's like if I was the IRS and I know you can't do this, et cetera, and we have, that was my IP that fell out. But look, those groups are clearly the ones that want to make

sure they're not audited, right? And so it's like waving this giant red flag, we cheat on our taxes. We don't want the IRS to look into that, right? Now, the IRS technically cannot look into it because then that would be going out for political groups. Mainstream media drives me nuts. Washington Post had an article about this where they say, now conservatives are also concerned about the IRS looking into conservative groups. There was a controversy about that. And, you know, later they found out they were also looking into liberal groups. No, later they found out that the IRS looked into more liberal groups than conservative groups.

So the controversy was completely fake. And the reason for the fake controversy was because they wanted to help rich people cheat on the their taxes. That's right. Right? Mainstream media, are you ever, ever, ever going to tell the truth to the American people? So there's only one reason why they want to defund the IRS. It's because they want to cheat on their taxes. This is the most obvious thing in the world. And so that's who the Republican Party is, infinite greed. And remember, this effort to underfund or defund the IRS worked under the Obama administration. And so if you take a look at how much the funding for the IRS has been cut, it's a pretty significant.

amount. So the IRS's enforcement staff declined by 30% between 2010 and 2018, and that's according to the Congressional Budget Office. So again, I mean, what does this do? If you're a worker, if you're an ordinary American and maybe you've been audited, you might think, no, IRS sucks. I don't want to fund that, right? I get it. I understand that. But under this current system of an underfunded IRS, that means that they focus all their resources on auditing people like you and don't have the resources to audit the people who are skirting taxes to the tune of millions of dollars in some cases, right? I mean, there was a recent reporting that showed that millionaires and billionaires have

avoided paying $1 trillion in taxes. I mean, that is an insane amount, and it's because, again, their taxes are complicated and the IRS doesn't have the resources to do the appropriate audits of these people. So the great, get a load of the incredible irony of that ProPublica story that came out. Now the Republicans are using it as an excuse to make sure that the IRS is further defunded. They're like, you see somebody at the IRS apparently leak, which by the way they don't know that it's from the IRS, but apparently someone leaked that the rich are paying almost no taxes.

That's an outrage. Why? Because the rich are paying no taxes and the rest of us have to pay taxes they're not paying. No, it's an outrage that you found out. Those are our beloved donors. How could you do this to them? That's it. We should defund the IRS even more, right?

Guys, like, look, if you're a rational person, you know the Republican Party is all about green. That's all it's about. If you got hooked by like, oh, I don't know, abortion, a race, I don't know, I don't really love black people, et cetera. Okay, that's on you. But they're also picking your pocket. The other ProPublica story that Anna was referring to showed that people who get the earned income tax credit that make $20,000 a year. Those are the working poor. You have to work to get that.

They get audited, the $20,000 people a year get audited at a greater rate than people that make $400,000 a year. Why? Because the process for auditing those people is automated and requires less staff. The process for auditing wealthier people is manual. It requires people to go into there and do a forensic audit of their incredible wealth. So when you defund the IRS, the people who get away with things, the most are the rich, but you're still getting audited, okay? Now, one of the reasons to do this on top of equity and justice and having to fund the

government overall is because when the Republicans scream, for example, how are you going to pay for that? Or Anderson Cooper or other millionaire anchors scream that. In this case, the study showed that if you put in $40 billion into this, which is what they're planning right now in the compromise, that you will get in return $140 billion in revenue. So it actually adds money to the federal government because it's so many rich people that are cheating on their taxes. Let's speak in the language that conservatives understand.

It's a good return on your investment. It's a great return on your investment. The problem is conservatives don't want that kind of return on investment because it's money that goes toward funding government programs that help benefit Americans in general. But I do want to split conservatives here because it really, they're very different. Now, I don't have any love for non-rich conservatives because of all the different social issues that we really disagree on on cultural issues, right? But they don't want the rich robbing us either.

This is rich Republicans that are robbing all of us. So understand, like you guys get mad about rhinos and stuff like that. Ah, you know, you should support Trump and getting reinstated or whatever lunatic thing that he's up to these days, right? Why don't you get pissed about the robbery? You're worried about crime, they're picking your pocket, they're making you pay taxes, while the rich pay almost nothing, okay? And that is done predominantly by the Republican Party.

So get accountability on that. All right, well, let's move on to our next story because I got to be honest, I had been pretty tired of these types of stories because it's all the media was talking about for a while. But we miss some stuff regarding what transpired in the state of Arizona as a result of Donald Trump refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election. So Arizona's Secretary of State is asking the state attorney general to pursue a criminal investigation into Donald Trump and his allies in regard to their attempts to influence the 2020 election in their state.

Now Katie Hobbs said some of the communications involve clear efforts to induce supervisors to refuse to comply with their duties, which could violate Arizona law. Katie Hobbs is the Arizona Secretary of State. Yes, she is a Democrat. The state's attorney general is a Republican, so do what you will with that information. But honestly, their political affiliations are irrelevant when you look at the evidence that's been provided in regard to the Trump campaign's attempts to influence the election. As you said just last week, Katie Hobbs says, Fair Election, are the cornerstone of our republic and they start with rational laws that protect both the right to vote and the accuracy of the results. Hobbes wrote in her letter to Berdovich

seeking an investigation. Arizona law protects election officials from those who would seek to interfere with their sacred duties to ascertain and certify the will of the voters. Now she cited text messages and voicemails from the White House and Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and the Arizona Republican Party chair, Kelly Ward, to the Republican members of the Board of Supervisors, as her reasoning for why there should be a criminal investigation into this. There were two separate attempts, by the way, by Trump to reach Republican supervisor Clint Hickman in the weeks after the election as the president's allies sought to alter the election results. At the time, Hickman was chairman of the board of supervisors, the elected body that oversees elections in the state's most populous county. Now, Hickman received the first call from the White House switchboard on December 31st. While he was out celebrating the coming New Year

with his wife and friends, he let that go to voicemail. And then a second call came on the night of January 3rd. Hickman sought to avoid talking to the president because of ongoing litigation. and let the call go to voicemail. And then you have Rudy Giuliani getting involved as well. And I'll give you those details in just a minute. But, Jank, thoughts. You know, the hilarious part of this is that the Republicans are like, there's been problems with the election and fraud and potential interference by Hugo Chavez.

He probably got out of his grave and came over here and interfered. And Trump's latest theory is the Italians did it. Obviously. Okay, interesting theory, right? But this is actually direct illegal election interference. Someone involved in an election can't call the people counting the votes and apply pressure to them. That's ridiculous.

Of course they can't do that. That's illegal. So since they attempted election meddling, but the election meddling didn't work, does that mean that just talking about this is election gate? Should we stop talking about it? Election gate. Okay. But look, her requests in all seriousness is perfectly reasonable.

If Joe Biden was going around calling election officials saying you better change the voter, you know, there's been problems and you could have political issues and all the different threats, intimidations, and also rewards that they were thinking of doing, oh, you'll be a hero and be celebrated in Republican circles, wink, wink, if you do the things that we want, I would say, that's terrible. Of course Joe Biden shouldn't do. That's crazy. No way, right? Trump does it, of course, all the Republicans are like, election interferes is awesome. Election gate or whatever.

No, totally. No, so now let's move on to Rudy Giuliani, who embarrassed himself repeatedly following the 2020 election and all these court battles where judges were like, bro, do you have any evidence? No, I don't. I'm just wasting your time. That's what Rudy Giuliani did several times. Now, apparently Giuliani had made calls to the supervisors before and after his November 30th meeting in Phoenix about the election committee with a handful of GOP state lawmakers. So he had said, quote, if you get a chance, this isn't a text message that was uncovered by Arizona Republic. If you get a chance, would you please give me a call? I have a few things I'd like to talk over with you. Maybe we can get this thing fixed up. You know, I really think it's a shame that Republicans sort of are both in this kind of situation.

And I think there may be a nice way to resolve this for everybody. And then when it comes to the Arizona Republican Party chair, Kelly Ward, she attempted to pressure supervisors to stop the counting to delay certifying the results and to look into whether voting software added votes for Democrats. Her efforts continued as Trump's legal challenges fell short across the country. When those efforts did not succeed though, various texts or through various texts, she said supervisors were un-American and were playing for the wrong team. So there was all this pressure for officials to essentially go against the will of the people and just give Trump and his campaign the results that they wanted, even though he lost that state.

He lost the state of Arizona, fair and square. Yeah, so Kelly Ward's saying, hey, we could really support you over the next four years. You know, I'm heading up the Republican Party in this state, or you're on American. Gee, I wonder if that's interfering with an election and creating incentives and disincentives, carrots and sticks, et cetera. And he would say, hey, Jake, how do you know that Trump was going to pressure this election official in Arizona? He had to leave voicemails, you know, he didn't get through to him. First of all, I'm sure that he was just calling him randomly. He's like, I'm thinking of calling the dog catcher in Minnesota or maybe the election

official in Arizona in a really tight race that I'm involved in, okay? So first of all, of course, he was calling the interfere in medal. But it's not just that. Remember, he actually did reach the election officials in Georgia and they recorded the call. We heard the call. And in the call, he 100% interferes with the election, medals with it, and puts tremendous pressure to change the results. I mean, there's a thousand.

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More, conditions apply. Some reasons why Donald Trump should be in jail. But in this case, it's just a matter of, they're asking, hey, can we follow Arizona law? Is that, is that possible? Because I thought that the Republicans were a party of law and order. But it seems like whenever the laws apply to them, they despise it, whether they're beating up cops and killing folks in the capital riots or in this case where they're like, well, we don't like election law when we lose.

We just want to be able to interfere and switch the results. And you guys keep insisting on a democracy, that's it. You know, defund the cops or whatever it is that they're pushing for here. But here the Democrats are pushing for people to actually apply the law. And that would be a nice change of pace in America. We gotta take a break. But when we come back, Donald Trump is doing what he does best, filing frivolous lawsuits. We'll give you those details and more.

All right, back on TYT, Jane Hugar and Anna Kasparin with you guys. Guys, we're trying to create some change in the world. So if you can join us at tyt.com slash change, we're gonna try to build a change machine. And that would be amazing, we appreciate it. If you're on YouTube, just hit the join button below. It's so easy. All right, Casper. Donald Trump is doing what he does best.

He's filing a frivolous class action lawsuit. Now I say it's frivolous because it's direct. towards social media platforms that have banned him after giving him so many chances to just abide by their terms of service. But after the capital riots, as we know, he was permanently banned from Twitter and will continue to be banned from Facebook for another two years. Now Donald Trump, who has complained about censorship by social media giants, filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Sundar Pichai, the filing, Trump said, seeks immediate, immediate injunctive relief to allow the prompt restoration of his social media accounts. He also said he's asking the court to impose punitive damages on the three social media giants. That's fascinating that that's what the class action lawsuit says, because he was asked about what his real intentions were during a press conference, let's hear what he had to say. You're successful on this in Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all the social media platforms, let you back on and let everyone else back on uninhibited the way that everyone's supposed to have access.

Would you use their platforms again? I don't know. It's a good question. I don't know. I might not. You know, I'm in a different position because if I put out a press release, you know, I'm getting extremely good pickup. But that's me.

Come on. Come on. I mean, Trump loyalists keep you. like launching their own social media platforms and failing miserably. The latest iteration of that was Gitter. And then like Trump himself, remember the office of Donald Trump or the desk of Donald Trump, which lasted a total of one month because you realize like, oh, actually building your own social media platform, it wasn't meant to be a social media platform, but building your own platform that's meant to get as much attention as Twitter did for him, it's going to take a lot of work.

It's actually pretty hard to do, and he's, you think he's going to put in the work for that? No way. Let's talk about that first, and then let's get to two awesome ironies. So first off, as always, Trump's such a clown. He clowns everything, right? So he's like, Twitter, I don't need a man, I'm going to do my own platform. It's not really a platform. Well, okay, it's really nothing.

It's just a blank page. Oh, you guys didn't like the blank page where only I write? Okay, fine, I'll shut it down from the desk of Donald Trump. Remember the tiny little desk he used to use for those signing ceremonies, so maybe they just overflowed. Why did he do that? Because he's lazy. He doesn't know how to set up a platform, and he's not going to, and he's cheap. He's going to, you think he's going to hire the team that you need 20, 30, 40, 200 people to set up a platform and all those engines.

He couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag. He's got six bankruptcies, right? He'd be like, I'm lost in here. What's going on, right? And so then he files this lawsuit, and this, he has a history of this. He files a lawsuit for publicity and then doesn't follow through. A lot of times he just doesn't, he doesn't even show up in court. They're like, what happened in a lawsuit?

I don't know, Danny got distracted when he had lunch. And so, and in this case, it's like, this is outrageous. They're blocking our voice and I can't get my voice out of it because of this. And it's violated my freedom of speech. Are you going to go on there? No, I don't need them. No, that's, no, that doesn't help your case. No, that's true.

That's a really good point. But obviously he's lying. Like he hates that he doesn't have access to these platforms. Of course, but it's a double loss. He's lying. And it hurts his case, his theoretical case, which probably will never go to court. But I want to get to the two ironies, Anna, because they're so amazing. Number one is, I believe so much in the First Amendment, they took my freedom of speech away.

And that is why I want to make sure that those private companies cannot do what they want to do. But wait a minute, you're taking their first amendment rights away. And you were actually the head of the United States government. They're not in the government at all. The First Amendment is to protect us from the government. So you're saying they should not be able to have the speech rights to platform anyone or de-platform anyone they like as a private corporation. That's the most ironic lawsuit ever.

And then the second part of it is Section 230. He says, it's section 230's terrible. We gotta take it away, okay? Section 230 protects those platforms from the content that people post on there. So if they post things that are libelists, et cetera, then they're not held responsible. Otherwise the platforms would have to do a lot more censorship. They'd have to say, okay, no, that might get us in legal trouble, that might get us in legal trouble, that will definitely get us in legal trouble, and I have to take away all of these

commenters. If they took away Section 230, almost no right-wingers can post anything on social media. It'll be considered harassment, et cetera. It could create legal, this is not just criminal, but civil liability for Facebook, Twitter, and all the platforms, it would devastate the right wing. But Trump thinks, my feet fees are hurt. I've got to shoot people because of my feelings. But it goes even further than that, right? He can't abide by the rules of service or the terms of service. He gets so many chances to just stop breaking the rules. I mean, they could have banned him a billion times and they didn't do it. Now some of you might be saying, look, it's a private company, yes, but this is wrong.

Censorship of individuals on these massive platforms is wrong because for some people having a presence on Twitter or Facebook or whatever is incredibly important for their career, for their business, whatever. Okay, that's fine, but you can't cite the Constitution, right? The Constitution specifically protects Americans from the government censoring them. It doesn't protect Americans from private corporations censoring them. So that's why we have conversations about the possibility of treating these social networks or these platforms as public utilities instead.

Now we're nowhere near that right now because it's not really even being discussed in Congress. I mean, Congress can't even pass legislation to deal with our crumbling infrastructure, which is pathetic. But I understand those concerns, those are legitimate concerns. What we're hearing from Donald Trump and conservatives are not legitimate concerns. And this is why I'm saying this. They keep arguing that platforms like Facebook, oh, they're constantly censoring us guys. Conservatives are censored on Facebook. Okay, let's take a look at the top performing Facebook pages in the United States.

First one, this is from July 2nd. Number one, Ben Shapiro, number two, twice, don't know what that is. Hold on, this is not the right. This is from July 1st, okay, my bad. So let me bring that up. Okay, number one, Ben Shapiro, number two, Ben Shapiro, number three, Fox News, number four, Ben Shapiro, number five, Ben Shapiro, number six, power of positivity, I like that. I do feel that power of negativity is being discriminated against here.

Seven, NPRs, eight, CNN, okay, and then at number 10, you have cat lovers only. But the point here is, most of these happen to be conservative outlets. Yeah. Right? So how are they being censored? I'd like to know. Well, I'll go further. So if you show the July 2nd one, it doesn't matter you can show any day. It's Shapiro, it's Bongino, it's Fox News, it's over and over again. Like on most days, at least eight out of ten are conservatives. So is Facebook discriminating against conservatives? Of course not, right? That's preposterous. Even if Facebook was being fair and hey, look, conservatives are popular and they're getting that stuff, you at least can't say they're

They're discriminating because they're at the top of Facebook, right? But conservatives don't care because it's about whining to the refs. And that's partly probably how they got to the top of Facebook in the first place. Because I know algorithms, we've been dealing with them for a long time here, right? There is no natural way that only conservatives rise to the top in a platform. Because Facebook's not the only platform, there's dozens of platforms, we're on all the different platforms and you see how things go move up and down organically. And so this idea of like, oh, there's all these theories about, oh, no, older people are

on Facebook. No, we're incredibly popular on Facebook. And so it's not that they're discriminating as progressives and not allowing them to exist or to get popular or anything like that. But there is, I have never seen on any platform where only one side rises to the top every single day. So I don't know what the hell Facebook's doing with their, Ale, But that is not natural at all.

That is not what happens organically. And so if Facebook is putting a thumb on the scale, it is in favor of conservatives. And you can see it in the performance every single day. So I'm not saying I have definitive proof that Facebook is cheating, right? But if they're cheating, they're certainly not cheating in favor of progressives, because the conservatives are at the top almost every day. Right, and it might not even be Facebook, right? Facebook, right? Facebook has its algorithms. Conservatives figure out how to game that algorithm

to their advantage, either through bots, upvoting certain things. Or you get what I'm saying? I know that that kind of behavior takes place, certainly, on social media platforms. Twitter's a good example of that as well. Yeah, and I just want to, that's such a great point, because you don't have to, there is, conservatives think about this the wrong way. They think that people get in a room and they launch a conspiracy, et cetera, and they tell the computer programmers, now you write the algorithm to favor the right wing, right? No, but what? There is just doing normal, titling, tagging, all the different mechanics that anybody does to promote their videos, right?

And then there are things that are out of bounds, and it's in the terms of service. And it says, you cannot do this because that's basically cheating, right? Jud Legham wrote a terrific piece about how Shapiro, and it's not random conservatives, it's usually a certain group of conservatives, and almost all the time it's Shapiro. And Legham wrote the piece about how Shapiro was gaming the system in a way that was clearly outside of the terms of service of Facebook. Clearly, right? And has Facebook done anything about it? No. See, and that's where the whining to the refs makes a difference. So when they cheat, Facebook is scared to death or maybe likes it. People have no idea how deeply Republican

Facebook management is both in their politics team, their news team, their board, etc. Either they like that the Republicans are cheating and the right wing is cheating, or they're looking the other way because they're scared of death of the Republicans. Oh, no, no, no, we'll let you cheat. We'll let you do anything. But I guarantee you this, if anyone on the left cheated for 1% you'd be banned for life, right? So, but they- I mean, do you guys really think that Ben Shapiro's content is that popular? I mean, she's a dork. No, it's a total nonsense.

giant dork who does nothing more like I keep track of his podcast mostly like it's all culture war stuff every once in a while he'll talk about the economy those are the podcasts I listen to mostly to get like the other side of economic issues which obviously I completely disagree with him on economic issues but with that said you listen to it and I just I can't imagine popular support or anyone finding his content like a giant group of Americans It doesn't matter. Super compelling. Like to the point where he gets like four spots in the top 10 Facebook list.

Almost every day. Yeah. But Judd proved he was cheating, right? And so now look guys, it doesn't matter how compelling your content is. Like we have super, we were number one on YouTube for years and years and years, okay? But we would never be the top four out of ten every single day. That's insane, that never happens organically, right? And so by the way, we're near the top on Facebook right now.

But do we get four posts every day that's in the top 10? No way, that is not organically possible. There is no amount of content that's compelling enough to produce these results. This is a different day. Three Ben Shapiro's, two Dan Bonginos, Franklin Graham, right? You know, everyone's talking about Dinesh D'Souza and Franklin Graham. I've never seen anyone less compelling in my life. No, come on Facebook.

This is outrageous. And meanwhile, Trump is suing them because they're not conservative enough? Nah, that's insanity. We know the kind of thinking that Donald Trump has, right? He might really believe what he's saying because he has this whole strategy about repeating things. Let's watch. And in a year from now, the fake news will say they've always been on this side. It's amazing.

If you say it long enough, hard enough, often enough. People will start to believe it. Maybe he really believes it. Well, I'll tell you what, that defines Trump's strategy 100%. Absolutely. All right, well, that does it for our first hour. But when we come back for our second hour, conservatives cannot stop themselves from comparing normal, logical policies and guidelines to awful things like Hitler and apartheids. So Charlie Kirk makes an appearance.

We'll talk about that story and more when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.