The Young Turks - Democracy Is Dying And Beto O'Rourke Jumps Into Democratic Primary

Episode Date: March 14, 2019

Money in politics is killing democracy. Beto O’Rourke is running for President. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right, well, the Young Turks, huge show ahead for you guys. Got a lot of different wonderful guests for you.

No, me, Prince Mons-Jabrani, John Ida-roll, these are all guest hosts that we've got coming in. Beto O'Rourke's running. He's got a mixed record. We're going to share the good news, the bad news with you guys. That's really important. I don't want you to miss that. I've got some amazing guests coming up in the third hour of the Young Turks, a Muslim-American that is uniting efforts to help other religions when they are in need.

And then, a progressive who almost won in Texas last time around and closed the 15-point deficit. Amazing stories running again in 2020. Don't miss that. Third hour of the Young Turks is on TYT.com slash live. So we've got a thousand things for you guys. But I'm going to start actually with a story that's a follow-up to something that we covered a couple of weeks ago on the show. Okay? So a couple of weeks ago, I told you about a wonderful story out of the state of Washington. 250 people showed up to a committee hearing. And we were slated to lose that committee hearing, because one of the Democrats on that committee had concerns about a so-called runaway convention.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with getting money out of politics and different ways to do that, there's two ways that you can propose an amendment. One is through Congress, two-thirds of Congress calling for one, and others two-thirds of the states calling for a convention. And at the convention, you propose amendments. So that is the path that we favor because that has led to, and by the way, we're in favor of both paths. We got to get the money out of politics and we must do it through an amendment.

So either way is perfectly great, right? But the convention path is actually more practical and easier to do because you can go state by state. And we've already gotten five states on the board if you want to find out more wolf dashpac.com, okay? Now in conventions, you can only propose amendments and so that's what we're asking to do. 250 people showed up and Senator Hasagawa changes the vote, which was very open. minded and good of him and we got us through the committee and it looked really good. And so yesterday was the deadline for then voting on the floor, the Senate in the state of Washington,

and guess what happened? They killed it. So who killed it and why? Now look, some of the Democrats in Washington had so-called concerns, but I don't want to get into who they were and get into blaming them, some good people in that group, okay? I do want to give credit to the wonderful senators who fought for us all the way, including our sponsor, Senator Kuder, she was fantastic, okay? Speaker Frank Chop in the House side, a total hero on it has been for years after years.

One of the best in leadership I've seen in any state, right? But there are so-called progressive groups in Washington who come out and go, oh, don't do a convention, don't do a convention, that's big change, we don't want big change. You're progressive and you don't want big change. You don't want the most successful way of getting amendments to be implemented. Remember, more than half the amendments, I've told you this before, were because of a pressure from a convention. So even if you want Congress to act, the best way to pressure them is by having a convention

be a real possibility. So why are they not doing this? Because one group, it's not just one group overall that believes this, but it's one group that's driving it, it's common cause. So they pretend to be progressives, they are based in Washington, I've had conversations with them in the past, and they say, oh, no, no, theoretically we want to get money out of politics. Okay, what's your plan? I've asked them in the past.

Oh, we're going to wait for a better Supreme Court, 20, 30 years, demographic changes, 30, 40 years? How long are we going to wait? Oh, we'll just ask Congress, how's that working out for you? I remember a former leader of Common Cause said, hey kid, I've been working, I'm 48, I've been working on this before you even knew what was going on. How's that working out for you? So obviously they do not have a good strategy for implementing this, but they're going around

the country making sure that we do not implement a strategy that actually could get to an amendment. Now, a lot of people in Washington will find this to be unacceptable because they'll say, Jake, you're not being civil. It sounds like you're even raising your voice a little bit. And remember that elites are to be protected. And the work of your volunteers, 45,000 of them across the country are irrelevant. They're not in Washington. I don't know them.

I don't have tea with them. They're irrelevant. But you should be over-the-top polite to common cause as they use their lobbyists to kill all your legislation, and they put out false reports. So what's a false report in this case? It's called the dangerous path. I mean, look at the sound of that. Total fear-mongering 101.

Oh my God, the dangerous path, right? So let me show you some of the volunteers that worked on this, that were wonderful. And they lined up in the hallways, and you know, it wasn't just the one day that we're 250 of them showed up. They just showed up every day, every day. Some of them take off from work, some of them are senior citizens, and some of them are students, etc. Here, go to some of the pictures here. Okay, so they all line up and they say, please pass SJM 8002.

That was the name of the legislation here. They go and talk to their legislators as they come out of hearings, et cetera. So a lot of these people were at the hearings originally. They came in every day. Some of them actually are from the districts of the specific senators. Some of them testified. There are from all walks of life. That's a veteran that gave excellent testimony.

during the hearings, there are teachers, and I'm going to get to the state leader in a second. But all of their work wiped out, and no one in Washington cares, because hey, listen, I don't know them. So I don't have to be polite to them, I don't have to be civil to them, is the philosophy of those groups, okay? So what is it saying this false report by common cause? Well, there's the four main lies, so let me go over them. And yes, if you're offended that I'm calling them lies, I'm sorry.

Sorry, I have the facts, we are 100% correct, and I can prove it and will prove it. And so if you don't want it to be called lies, don't lie. And so it's that simple. So they say, in the beginning, they're like, oh my God, all conventions are going to be unlimited. It's going to be a madhouse. They're just going to propose anything they want on a commission. Well, okay, you need two thirds of the states to call for a convention, right? We just went over that.

That's an article file of the Constitution. So right now, Congress has counted 78 different calls for a convention from 38 different states. Two thirds of the states are 34. So if we already have 38 states that have called for a convention on different topics and we don't have a convention, you know what that means, they cannot be on different topics. It can't be unlimited, we told you that from day one. Now that those 38 states have been counted, we have been proven 100% percent.

percent correct, and now they've started to back away from this talking point. They're like, oh, they could take the money out of politics thing and put it together with the conservative cause for a convention, and then we'll have a wild convention where anything can happen. But wait a minute, we told you they couldn't count the money in politics conventions. Now we're absolutely right. 100 was indisputably right, and you're still like, hey, don't do the money in politics conventions.

Wait, why shouldn't we ask for a convention on money in politics if their conservatives are asking for conventions on other issues. And now you know they can't be counted together. So your whole false talking point that, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I would love to get money out of politics. But I don't want it to be counted with another convention call. Turned out, that wasn't your real motivation, was it? You just don't want a convention on getting money out of politics.

Please don't call yourself a progressive group, call yourself something else, common cause. I don't know, maybe you have common cause with Republicans, I don't know, okay, not to get into their motivations again. Now, so that's a lie that has been absolutely debunked. We moved to lie number two. Conventions have no rules. So this is another part of like, oh my God, there's going to be anarchy, we're going to go to a convention and people just start screaming and they're going to start saying,

oh, the aliens should rule us, the lizard people should rule us, and Alex Jones is going to run the convention. Does anybody really believe that there are no rules in a convention? Come on, man. All you have to do is think about this for one second. Do you know that the different states have had hundreds of conventions? Guess what they all had? Rules.

And rules are proposed for a convention by Congress. So in fact, the last time they thought there might be a convention, Orrin Hatch proposed rules for a convention. What happened? I thought there was going to be no rules. You know that. See, look, if you're a person who's not in this movement, you don't know any of this. And it's totally okay.

And by the way, if you run into somebody online or anywhere in your personal life that thinks that convention can run away, it's not there. fault, but these groups have spread this poison and no one other than us is going around countering it. I'll show you actually the great resources and facts that we have on our side. But there's no major organization with a lot of money to spend on propaganda in favor of a convention to counter the people that are against it. So if someone is wrong about this, don't get mad at them.

Just explain to them what the rules are. I'm getting mad at the people that are spreading the propaganda and the conspiracy theories. So yes, of course conventions have rules and Democrats and Republican state legislators actually get together every year to discuss what the rules of a convention would be. Now if you're a random person and you're an accountant and you don't know that, of course that's normal, but common cause does know that. But they go around pretending there won't be any rules anyway. So then they wonder why I question their motivations, okay.

Number 3, conventions, this is the most important one, can rewrite the whole Constitution. Really? Well, that, I mean, that does sound scary, right? And in fact, in the dangerous path they have this quote, the convention could create its own ratification process, rewriting the U.S. Constitution's state's processes, okay? No, it can't. So let me, first of all, do something very, very simple that everyone can understand. show you Article 5 of the United States Constitution, which apparently common cause couldn't

read. They couldn't find anyone, hey, does anybody have article 5? Does anybody have a copy of the Constitution? No, so we'll tell you, oh my God, we could create its own ratification prices. So here's what Article 5 actually says. It is a convention for proposing amendments, not for ratifying amendments, for proposing amendments. Now if that was unclear, which it is. They go on to say in that same amendment that these will become force of law and part of the

Constitution, quote, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of several states, when ratified. So if they say, well, they could change the ratification process in the convention. No, they can propose to change the ratification process, which would then need to be ratified. If a commission came in and said, I'm just going to scrap all the rules, including the rule about ratification, well, it would be challenged within three seconds and ruled unconstitutional within five seconds. Because clearly in the Constitution, it says conventions are for proposing amendments and you must ratify them with three quarters of the states. So I ask you, why does common cause say something that is clearly, clearly not true? And unfortunately, since other than us, there's very few people out there to object to what

they are saying and prove that what they are saying is wrong, they go around and around spreading these lies. So who else agrees with us, though? I mean, am I alone? No. Here's who the people agree with us. Sources that say a convention can be limited, for example, all only the Department of Justice, the American Bar Association, Congressional Research Service.

We are right in every way imaginable. You can research it yourself. And in fact, we have the sources for you guys. There's a whole podcast that Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig, the top expert in the country on this has done on it. It's on t.t.com if you want, or you can find it anywhere podcasts are. It's called Another Way by Lawrence Lessig. It tells you the history of the ratification.

It tells you how you can find out more information and what the reality is. And if you want more information and you want to go through it yourself and go to all the links, great, I would love that. So go to wolf dash pack.com slash resources. We'll put the link down below, go check it out for yourself, okay? Because we are 100% confident in our facts and we don't need to spread propaganda like the other side. So the last part of the conspiracy theory is the fourth lie.

The original constitutional commission wasn't ratified. What? That's, but wait a minute, we have a country and the original 13 colonies all ratified. So their whole big talking point is, oh my God, remember the original Constitution, constitutional convention, it ran away. Okay, hold on, first off, that was a constitutional convention. This is a convention of, for, and to propose an amendment. Those are two different things.

And if the founding fathers wanted a constitutional convention to rewrite the whole document, they could have put that in the Constitution because they're the ones who wrote it, right? So, but they didn't do that. Instead, they said a convention only to propose an amendment. Okay, so then they say, well, okay, but then they just rewrote the whole thing, and then voila, voila, there it is, we had a whole new constitution, no, not voila. Then they had to go and ratify it. And originally nine of the states had to ratify it and they did.

So what happened to no ratification and all of a sudden there's a constitution? Not true, by the way, there's such a big danger because the one time a constitutional convention had happened, they wrote the United States Constitution, which is arguably one of the greatest documents ever written. And by the way, in that constitution that common cause claims that they care about want to protect, there's Article 5 that says, you should amend this Constitution. And then they turn around and go, in order to protect the Constitution, we should never amend it.

No, then I think you missed the whole point of the Constitution, and you are very, very conservative. Conservatives say, no, don't touch anything, don't change anything. The Founding Fathers said, you should amend this Constitution, and that's why we're giving you two different ways to amend it, because at some point Washington will become too corrupt. And that is exactly where we are today. So, by the way, did all the states eventually ratify? Of course, you know, it's a fun little fact. Did you know that Rhode Island was its own country for a little while and they even wanted

a treaty with the United States of America? And then eventually they're like, you know what, no, actually that constitution you guys wrote is actually excellent. And we also ratified. They all ratified, they're not separate countries now. So if you hear anyone telling you, no, no, no, a convention could rewrite the whole constitution. It is a total conspiracy theory, not backed by any of the facts. So let me go back to our volunteers and show you more pictures, because this is the folks who've

been working on this for years and years and years. And I know no one in Washington, D.C. cares about them, but we care about them. So that's, go back to that picture there for a second. Our state leader is the one in the wheelchair. And God, man, I was with him a couple of weeks ago, and he has been working so hard. And for all this time, he got all these people together and actually the person next to him was also wonderful and they've all been working so hard for years and years. But people in Washington, the progressive groups, they don't know them, they don't care

about them. They're like, oh, but my friend, my friend at Common Cause wrote a report backed up by no facts whatsoever, but they're my friend, they're my friend. Jeff Isnes, your state leader's not my friend, I don't care about his work. So let me show you more. You know, they had these things to support it, and then we realized, oh, no, the Democrats are going to kill it. Not the Republicans.

The Republicans are voting no anyway in this state. The Democrats are not even going to allow us to vote. If we get a vote, we win. If we get a vote, we win. We win every time, if we get a vote. But the number one trick that Washington groups use is don't let them vote. So they switched the signs eventually and said, please don't kill hope. So every age group, every gender, every race, everybody was represented there.

But they killed hope in the state of Washington. So we'll be back because we don't surrender. So we will fight them in the state of Washington. We'll fight them all across the country. We will defeat every one of their false talking points, the lies that they spread and spread and spread, and we will win. So, but they always feign outrage, like, oh, I don't know why you guys are so upset. I don't know why you're so upset.

So what? We keep lying about this process. We've been proven wrong a hundred times, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We're going to keep on doing it. Okay, then I'm going to do this. So please don't feign outrage, okay? So I want you guys to know the truth.

And lastly, guys, we have. We have to keep on fighting, but we do it the right way. We do it in a way that is civil, we do it in a way that is polite, but super insistent. So all those people that showed up in Washington, they're all wonderful human beings. And they all have done it, and the senators were so responsive to them. The speaker was so responsive to them. And actually, when things work well and lobbyists don't kill legislation in the middle of the night without giving it a vote, democracy is actually a wonderful thing.

And we had the vote in the committee, it was great, it was democracy in action. It can happen at the state level, it's happened five times before and we can get it to happen all across the country. But we can't have it happen if they never allow a vote. So we'll be back in Washington and we'll be back in all these states. But tell everybody that we must do all paths to an amendment to get money out of politics. We desperately need change. My God, because we don't have to change pharmaceutical companies run this government.

Health insurance companies run this government. And so now we have 28 million people that don't have any health insurance. If we, Medicare for all polls is 70%. Seven out of 10 Americans want it, but we can't get it. 97% of Americans want federal background checks on guns, but we can't get it. We can't get any of the things that would actually save lives. And then, again, so-called progressive groups in Washington come out there and they block change. And then when you say, hey, please don't do that, you're really hurting the cause of getting

money out of politics and allowing progressive legislation to have a chance. They go, how dare you? I'm offended. I'm part of the elite and I'm offended. So a sad day for you, okay? If you take offense at it, for God's sake, stop lying. A convention is an excellent idea to get an amendment that we desperately, but we desperately, need in this country, and real progressives are for change.

We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host Delfts, the host, Delft, into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be.

Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. They're forgetting money out of politics. Stop ruining the great work of our volunteers and stop ruining any chance to get money out of politics, Young Turks. All right, back on the Young Turks, Jenk and John Iroll it with you guys.

I'm going to read a couple of comments as usual, of course. Bechtu 7-1 says, I live in Washington, and I'm a member of Wolfpack. Thanks to text and emails from Grant, and Grant was amazing. He's one of our volunteers. I reached out to my state Senator Curtis King via email and phone. It felt so good to be active. Before Wolfpack, I had no idea who my state representatives even were. We start over in 2020.

We do. We are going to be relentless. They're never going to get rid of us, and we're going to amend the Constitution. And we're going to get money out of politics. The liberal mom says, just remember, no, that's okay. All right, I started reading it. Remember, common cause took their star ratings away because real progressives told them they're playing patty cakes with the Washington elites.

hashtag Wolfpack. Ben Stone says, Jenk, the news on Wolfpack is so disappointing that it actually breaks my heart. This is why I'm a member. No other outlet will cover this truth but the young Turks, thank you. I mean, imagine CNN caring that we didn't get a state to push for getting money out of politics. I can't imagine them covering when you win in a state, let alone with it fails. Yeah, of course. And if we get close to the panic, it's CNN and Fox News, that'll be the one thing that

they'll agree on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this will actually change the status quo. And they will panic like you have never seen before. And that's why they send their minions out. Anyway, Karen Shea says, conservatives are pushing the amendment to the Constitution to force a balanced budget. Does common cause fight them? Now, Karen, I want to be fair, so they do, okay?

They are opposed that. I don't know if they send their lobbyists on that issue. I would guess that they do, but I'm not in the on, I'm not part of that issue, so I don't know. So it's like, I'm not saying common cause doesn't do anything good in the world. And the people in common cause, I'm sure that they think that they are progressives and they think that they're doing good. But for whatever reason they've decided, again, I don't want to get back into their motivations,

that hey, you know what, a convention would bring real change and we can't have it. So now, by the way, I told them, hey, listen. And we will help you in every way to fight against a balanced budget amendment convention, right? And we'll fight it on the substance instead of your guy's wrong talking point that you could combine calls for a convention. Don't say that, that's embarrassing, that's wrong, the Justice Department, et cetera. I've all said that it's wrong, and they're like, ah, no, you guys don't know what you're

doing. And then Congress counted, and they counted more than two-thirds of the states, and we don't have a convention. So they were wrong, and I was right, and they're still like, oh, okay, whatever. So, all right, last one. An awesome young congresswoman described this sort of politics as meh. Yeah, it seems to be true. Yeah, you're not going to moderate your way to an amendment.

Let's just take the moderate course to an amendment. Moderates are gonna get two-thirds of Congress? No, they're not, they're lying to you. When I wake up and my apartment is on fire, I react moderately. All right, last one, P. Macon-Row on Twitter says, look, Dangerous path, that's the name of the reporters I told you, is the one that we're on currently, not the one that progressives want to lead America down. Exactly right.

I mean, they act like we run Washington. We're like ecstatic that there's now like more than two progressives in Washington, and they act like we have a huge lead on the Republicans. Preposterous. All right, let's go to other news. Okay, let's talk about something interesting. Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke is the latest to announce that he'll be seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency this time around, I have a feeling you're probably

at least somewhat familiar with him after his close but failed attempt to unseat Ted Cruz in last year's Senate race in Texas. He's a guy that got a lot of social media coverage during that race, including going viral on topics like Colin Kaepernick and related things like that. We've talked about him quite a bit, and in this video, we're going to go over quite a bit about his record. Before we jump into the record, though, I do want to talk about one thing that just sort of struck It struck me as odd.

It struck a lot of people today. One part was on the Vanity Fair cover that he was on when he has this quote that he says that I was born for this or something to that effect. Sort of seemed a little bit weird. Many people pointed out, can you imagine any other candidates saying that and how the media would react? But there was something more in the actual interview. He had a weird quote that I read this morning on the damage report.

I want to read it again just because it just seems really weird and I can't imagine, like Imagine, as I'm reading this, if Bernie Sanders or anyone, it doesn't have to be Bernie, anyone had said this. So he talked about before a big speech, and he said, I don't ever prepare a speech, I don't write out what I'm going to say. I remember driving to that, I was like, what do I say? Maybe I'll just introduce myself, I'll take questions. I got in there, and I don't know if it's a speech or not, but it felt amazing, because

every word was pulled out of me, like by some greater force, which was just the people there. Everything that I said, I was like watching myself being like, how am I saying this stuff? Where is this coming from? There's nothing like horrible about that. Doesn't that seem a little bit weird? Sounds like something Ben Carson would say. But it's okay. Look, guys, I care a lot more about policy.

It's a weird thing to say. No, I hear about this stuff. No, okay. Look, and John's right that if Bernie Sanders had said that, people like, you see, this guy's not prepared for office. He doesn't even write his speeches. He's weird. They say things like that.

But it's okay. Look, I'm not worried about it. I'm worried about policy, so let's get to his record. Okay, so let's talk about his actual record, because that's what's interesting about him. That's not necessarily why a lot of people have supported him. He's a charming guy and everything, but we care about what he would do as president. And he does have a few years in elected government as an El Paso area Democrat that we can analyze. So in general, how does he compare to other Democrats. Well, in the 113th Congress, he was more conservative than 76% of Democrats. In the following one, he was more conservative than 79% of Democrats, and then back down to 77% of Democrats, more conservative in the 115th. Now, that is compared to other Democrats. It does not

mean that he is a conservative. If you bring up this graph, you're going to see on the left to right spectrum, the Republicans are all over on the right. So he's more conservative than most of the Democrats. As a comparison, I chose a random other primary contender. You can take a look at, I think his last name is Sanders. Anyway, he's more on the left side of the Democratic caucus, to be fair. But that's a general idea, a general overview of his ideology. Yeah, but that's important because think about what the Democratic establishment tells you and what the media tells you.

So when Bernie Sanders is to the left of the Democratic party, they go, oh, he's not a real Democrat. He's not a real Democrat, right? When Beto O'Rourke is to the right of most of Democrats, about three quarters of Democrats, They go, no, no, no, he's a great Democrat, great Democrat, don't criticize him, wonderful Democrat. Look, they're both in the Democratic caucus. In fact, Senator Bernie Sanders is in the leadership on the Senate side for the Democrats.

He's in leadership, okay? So I'm not questioning that better or works a Democrat. And then they have, of course, the immediate false talking point is, so I guess you want Trump to win. What? What are you talking about? I'd vote for better or work a thousand times over Donald Trump. Now Republicans will take that, you see that vote of fraud.

An immigrant wants to vote a thousand times. Yeah, so look, is better O'Rourke a million times better than Donald Trump? Of course, of course he is. But that's not the conversation you have in the primaries. In the primaries, you decide who is the candidate that is best for the party, and that most suits your point of view. And if you're more right wing than the average Democrat, well, then you like Beto's voting record.

You liked it at least that, hey, it's around 76, 77%, that he's more conservative. If you're more progressive, you like that Bernie's on the left. It's not that complicated. I don't know why the establishment media gets hurt when other media sources like us point out voting records. Shouldn't that be elementary rather than like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, you're helping Trump. What? So how about all your attacks against Bernie Sanders?

Does that help Trump? They're like, no, no, no, that's Bernie Sanders. We're allowed to attack him every day. Well, let's talk about helping Trump. This is a bit overblown, but in terms of voting with Donald Trump's position during the years that he was able to do that. He did it about 30% of the time, which is of course still low, but the average Democrat did that at about 17%.

So he did vote with Trump more often. Yeah, and so 30% is not a horrible number. And by the way, Beto O'Rourke is nowhere near a horrible congressman or a Senate candidate. He's obviously not in Congress anymore. He ran for Senate. And I supported him over Ted Cruz again with glee. I was excited. We would have been a great senator from Texas.

You made an ad. I know. Help him win. That's right. You produced an ad and funded it and ran it in his state. You can't get any more supporter of a better work than I was in Texas, because as John pointed out, we literally, you guys spent money to run ads in favor of him, right? So now, but 30% is not an awful number.

Henry Quayar, also a Democrat out of Texas, voted with Trump 69% of the time. Nice. So seven out of ten times Quayr is like, ah, Democrats are wrong, Trump's awesome, let's go with him, okay? And then they wonder why we want a primary, why the just Democrats want a primary Henry Quay are, because I would prefer Democratic congressmen who didn't vote with Trump. But 30% is way higher than the average, almost twice as high as the rest of the Democrats. So it's a note of concern.

Better Ork is part of the new Democrat coalition. That is a corporate-backed Democratic group. Cause for concern. It doesn't mean you eliminate him, but you'd be crazy not to take. take that into account. The worst of the worst is third way. They're specifically backed by the financial industry, and they want deregulation of finance, which Beto Rourke gave them. We'll get to that in a second. And they say Beto is exactly our type of guy. Uh-oh. So cause for concern. Yeah. And no, look, so I want to get into particular areas, because that's what we care

about. That's why we're going to put a significant amount of the first hour's total duration into breaking this down, even though, like, you've given so many caveats, like, we're not saying he's worse than Trump, we're not saying he's a Republican congressman, but we're also not saying, like, so many people are already in, like, the first month of this primary, like, you should have already picked exactly who you're supporting, you should just talk about that person nonstop, even if they're not making news, and you should only attack the other candidates and imply that they're the devil. He's not.

He's a guy that we disagree with on a number of different issues, as I'm going to describe to you, but not on all issues. So overall, let's read some excerpts from an article in The Guardian by David Sorota, obviously a friend of our network. He said consumer environmental, public health, and civil rights organizations have cast legislation backed by overwork as aiding big banks undermining the fight against climate change and supporting Trump's anti-immigrant agenda. During the previous administration, Barack Obama's White House issued statements slamming two

GOP bills backed by the 46-year-old Democratic legislator. So that is a little bit of the content to the numbers we were reading before. That 30% and the 77% more conservative thing, that's how that actually shakes out, is supporting bills that are willing to deregulate Wall Street, that go easy on fossil fuels and things like that. So that doesn't mean that there aren't some good things. We're going to break down some areas. Some are good, some are bad.

So in addition to supporting the DREAM Act and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, he has called for the closing of private immigration detention centers, denounced the militarization of immigration enforcement, and spoken out against the wall. So on that issue, especially recently, even since the 2018 election, he has been very vocal in opposing Donald Trump's immigration agenda. So that's great. Unfortunately, he did have a vote where he seemed to be supporting the deportation forces. So that's unfortunately better work in a nutshell.

Like mostly good, but weird votes with Republicans for reasons that are at least inexplicable to us. But look, he's been on the show a couple of times already. I'd love to have him back on, not to like, oh, grill him or get him, but like to just legitimately ask him, hey, maybe there was a reason why you voted with the Republicans on that deportation force. So tell us what the reason is. Otherwise, it's just going to hang out there forever and ever and ever and people are going

to go, wait, you're good on the Dream Act, you're good on the other things. Why did you vote with him on that? Why did you vote to deregulate the banks? It's a fair question. Yeah. And he should begin to answer it. And I would like to talk to him specifically to clarify his positions on a couple of the biggest issues, I think, which we're going to get into right now. And by the way, in case people don't know, we have open invitations to all of the candidates to come on our network.

So if you're not seeing them, it's great for you to tell us that you want them to come on, but it's better for you to contact their campaign and say, hey, maybe you should go on TYT. That would be certainly helpful. So the first area, that is Medicare for All. So during his 2018 Senate campaign, O'Rourke initially embraced Medicare for All. But he later shied away from the concept as he tried to position himself as a centrist. He stopped using the words Medicare for all and single payer, and instead opted for sweeping indefinite ideas like universal guaranteed high quality health care for all. During one of his events, it was either, I think it was this morning actually.

So he talked about Medicare for all, but he also used the terminology that we've heard from a lot of politicians where he said that the most important thing is to protect what we have right now, to strengthen it, that sort of thing. You have heard that before. I mean, that's better than the Republican situation where they're trying to throw tens of millions of people off their health care, but not as good as being willing to replace the current system and the private health insurance companies with something like Medicare for All.

So why was I so excited about Beto O'Rourke? I know why a lot of other people were. He was running against Ted Cruz. And Ted Cruz is loathed by progressives, rightfully so. And so did I want Cruz to lose? Oh, with great passion. Okay. But it wasn't just that.

I was excited by Beto O'Rourke, because the first time I ever met him, he said the number one issue he was going to run on in Texas against Ted Cruz was on Medicare for All. And he doesn't take corporate PAC money, and he was one of the first to do that in Congress. There's great reasons to have been excited about Beto O'Rourke. But then in the middle of the campaign, he changed. And he said, I'm not, he's not for Medicare for all. He's for slight improvements on what we have now. Or theoretically for Medicare for all or some form of single payer, but doesn't necessarily

prioritize it with the passion that we wouldn't is instead apparently satisfied with protecting the ACA. Yeah, I hear you, but you guys all know what that means. That means he's not gonna fight for it, he's not gonna, and he had all the opportunity in the world, and we saw John covered one of the debates, Anna and I covered another one of the debates, and we were both like, wait, why isn't he saying Medicare for all? Why is he watering it down? And if he waters it down during the campaign, he ain't gonna do it if he wins.

There's no way, like he could change his mind, he can come on, it doesn't have to be this show, we could go anywhere and clarify what he means. But until you hear otherwise, he's definitely not going to push for Medicare for all. That is clear from his statements. Yeah, and look, the second topic that I want clarification on is the one that's most personally important to me, and I think is going to be one of the litmus tests of this primary, and that is going to be support for the Green New Deal. So he had an interview in the past 24 hours where he spoke.

He spoke amazingly about how supportive he is of the Green New Deal. He used all of the rhetoric that in me on my best day I would use in defense of it, including saying it's the best proposal that I've seen to ensure that this planet does not warm another two degrees Celsius, after which we may lose the ability to live in places like El Paso. And he spoke about it, great. But there are some issues. First is there's lots of sponsors of the Green New Deal, like 64. He doesn't want him.

I mean. Well, he's not in Congress anymore. I understand he's not now, but I'm saying he seems like he's coming into it kind of late. Like how many people have already, including some on the Senate side, have come out in support of this. A shocking number of sponsors. I feel like he's sort of coming in after it's been, like it's demonstrably safe to support at this point.

That's what I'm saying. So that goes to a really important point, again, that either the mainstream media for whatever reason doesn't understand, even though they cover politics, or is choosing to ignore, which is that it's one thing to say that you're for a proposal. It's another thing for people to believe that you are going to fight for it and get it done if you become president. So, like, whenever we say like, hey, somebody might be for the Green New Deal now or Medicare for all now, and I love that and I appreciate that, and I think that they're great senators,

and I hope that they vote in that direction. But, you know, given that they changed their position recently or have come to the issue a little bit later than, or a lot later than some of the other candidates in the primaries, I have caused for concern that they're not being perfectly genuine. Yes. And that's when people in Washington lose it. They're like, did you just say a politician might not be perfectly genuine? And they get all offended.

Are you running their campaigns? I don't. So, but whereas everybody in the audience, all the voters, you can't. You guys know, sometimes politicians are not genuine. So it is fair to ask, when did you come to this conclusion? And I think it is partly relevant to whether you're genuine or not, not only in believing it, but fighting for it and trying to get it done when you're president. Well, and let me flesh out a little bit of why I'm concerned, even though again,

he's, I would say that his public statements about the Green New Deal, I find to be superior to people like Connell Harris, who has spoken in favor of it, but that I still obviously have significant questions about what it would mean in practice for them. And the reason is with him in the past, I guess it's not shocking. He comes from Texas, but he has been very defensive of additional regulations of fossil fuel companies. There's been concern about the donations that he's received from executives at top fossil fuel companies as well.

He's talked about the sort of the choice between renewable and traditional fuels is a false choice. I don't believe that it's a false choice. No, not a false use. And look, he's using, he's, he's used almost exactly AOC's terminology in terms of, or the way that, the narrative that she is pushing in terms of why the Green New Deal needs to not just be about explicitly environmental proposals, that it has to involve a willingness to question sort of some of the structural orthodoxies about our economy, about racial justice in America, all of these related issues. He used that same terminology, but he enthusiastically describes himself as a capitalist, more than he. so than many of the others running in the primary. So that sort of stuff does concern me.

Yeah, no, and look, you could be all over the range. For example, we don't all agree, of course, right? Man, we got a lot of disagreement among the host of TYT and that's normal. And so for example, I call myself a capitalist, so I don't have any problem with Beto O'Rourke calling himself a capitalist. I also don't have a problem with Bernie Sanders calling himself a Democratic Socialist, because the reality is we live in a mixed economy, and so does every other nation. So there's labels between capitalists and socialists, to me, are meaningless.

So I don't have a particular issue with that, but you might, because you're not me, right? So our job is to give you the information and that you decide. So two things that cut in different directions for better or on other issues. So he votes pretty conservative, and we just told you he's from Texas. So you might assume his district is pretty conservative, and that's why he's doing it to represent his voters. No. His district is actually one of the most liberal in the whole country.

It's actually more liberal than a lot of the districts in Massachusetts. So it's not like, hey, he's from Texas so he gets a pass because his constituents are really conservative. They're not. His constituents are very progressive. He is more conservative than his constituents based on his voting record. On the other hand, we just talked about being a leader, and we believe you more if you lead on an issue, on arguably the most important issue, getting money out of politics.

He said he would not take corporate pack money well before other people did. And so he's a leader in that category, and that's a super important category. And others came to it later. And he had that pledge before there was pressure. I would argue that just Democrats created that pressure by saying none of our candidates are allowed to take corporate pack money. And then that put people in a bind and they started to say, oh yeah, I guess me too, right? That's my take on it, if you think we got to that place in a different way, that's fine

and I don't care. But the reason I bring that up here is because Beto had that pledge before the Justice Democrats. And so he should get a lot of credit for that because that means he was genuine about that. Although as we are learning, both with the particular case of him taking the money from fossil fuel executives and in a couple of other cases with different candidates, not taking money from corporate PACs is not the end of the conversation. There are ways around that as well.

So I think he also deserves that credit. I think everyone who signs on to that deserves credit, but we do have to keep watching them. Yes, of course. And then finally, look, when you turn to the financial industry, he doesn't take the corporate pack money, but Third Way loves him, and that's weird, he's a new Democrat, he's not part of the Progressive Caucus, so corporate interest is still very much in favor of him, and then how does he vote? Well, they like him because of how he votes.

So he voted to deregulate the banks a couple of times, including. voting against the Volker Rule or to weaken the vocal rule. That's the one that says you're not allowed, the banks are not allowed to gamble with deposit or money. That's a really bad vote. And he voted a couple of times to reduce the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That makes it biased though. I mean, you want to talk about a contrast. One of them led so much that consumers were protected because of her. The other one voted to lessen the power of the Bureau that protects consumers. That is super relevant. If you don't think that's relevant, then you're in the wrong field. Whether you're in the media or you're a voter, what are you going to vote on? Based on teeth, looks, hair, whether it's good hair, bad hair, what are we voting on?

Oh, do I like him? Do I want to have a beer with him? No, I'm not interested in that. Now they will, of course, always fall back to you, yes, yes, yes, but who's more electable? And everybody in Washington doesn't like Bernie. Who cares what you like or don't like? Or thinks Elizabeth Warren got beat by Trump on his racist terminology or whatever, the crazy things they think in Washington.

But what do the voters think? That's why you go to the polling. That's why you look at their small donor base. You look at other factors. And by the way, again, there is a mixed record. Beto has an amazing small donor base. Now he was running against Ted Cruz, but he did a bunch of things right, no corporate And the filming that he did gave him an air of authenticity that I think, and a legitimate

air of authenticity in many regards. And that made people go, I could trust them more, right? So he did a lot of things right to get to that small donor base. But it's okay to analyze that. It's also okay to analyze his policies. So you guys analyze it, make up your own mind. Yeah. So we've tried to list some positives, some negatives, and I can, I mean, you can only speak

for yourself, I can only speak for myself. I have a preference in this primary that has not changed as a result of him coming. And based on what I've learned, I would obviously support Donald Trump for an additional four years if he's the candidate. Don't say that, man. No, he's the devil. Obviously he's an immoral, evil man. Yeah, and I'll tell you, look, John is making fun of two different sense of people.

One is doctrinarians who think if you're not for a certain candidate, or if you are for a certain candidate, everybody else is the devil, right? But also the mainstream media who then go in the opposite direction and then say that if you don't support the establishment candidates who will obviously win because they have been anointed by us, then you're helping Donald Trump win. But no, the whole point of the primaries to find out who's gonna be against Donald Trump. So that's the thing. I mean, I've already getting those tweets already.

But also, like I tweeted about this recently, like some of the scandals about Bernie recently, it's like people really do think, I can just find a shortcut, I'll find a little shortcut, I'll find some word that he used 30 years ago that I understand isn't actually a slur, but I'm going to imply that it is. Shortcut, don't have to disagree on the policy, he's evil. I'm just so sick of it already. And those are the same guys who will say, how dare you quote Beto O'Rourke's policy record you're helping Trump.

Well, how about your vicious, unsubstantiated attacks against Bernie Sanders, who is, at this point, more likely to be the candidate based on the polling. So doesn't that help Donald Trump? No, nope, nope. We can be hypocrites all day long, the mainstream media and democratic establishment people say. So last thing, electability. So Beto's got a good case to make, because he almost beat Ted Cruz in Texas, that's a pretty

good case, right? And he raised, broke the record for most amount of money raised, and a lot of it was small donors. He raised over $80 million in one race for a Senate race, that's unbelievable. So that's good, that helps his electability. Bernie Sanders, of course, raised more, but it was on a presidential level, so totally apples and oranges, but Bernie Sanders does, is the only candidate that has a larger base of small donors, okay?

So that's also relevant, and Bernie Sanders on the day of the 2016 election had a 12-point lead on Donald Trump. Now I know every hack in Washington goes, oh no, but you don't know, hey, you guys, I don't know progressives, you're all children, you don't know that they would have run a race and that number would have gotten to be a little lower. It wouldn't have been so low that he would have lost, right, and no other person lost. They get so hurt when you point that out. I don't know if you know who's in the White House.

It's not me saying it, didn't make it happen, okay? So anyway, I think that Bernie Sanders has an excellent case to make, that he can get those independent voters, and that, you know, if he had a 12-point lead on election day last time, he might also have a 12-point lead on election day this time. So they both have a decent case to make, and then who's more progressive seems very obvious. You'd have to really get yourself in circles to try to figure out. But you might not be that progressive. So again, on you to figure out how to balance all these factors.

Okay, we've got to take a quick break. We've got a lot more when we go. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers.

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Lots of interesting comments here, I'll do them as quickly as I can. Engineer writes in, Beno says the audience just pulls these words out of them. Does that mean a different audience, pulls something else out of them? Sounds like the definition of a weather-vane candidate, okay? Jorge Bustamante Jr. says, I'm just born to do this seems like, hashtag I'm with him, And we all saw how that worked down in 2016, okay? And Colin, these are all members, says, Beto is a moderate because he's in a red state. He's a far better choice than any Republican.

But I'm putting my support behind Pete Buttigig. He's more progressive and also succeeded in a red state. Okay, that's an opinion. Butt edge, edge. What is it? Pretty sure it's Budhaegh edge. Budajedge edge? Yep.

Okay, my bad. English teacher in 1984 says I'm more interested in Islay than I am in O'Rourke, at least He has a clear position points, not saying that I would vote for him, but I was interested in researching him. Or I was, yep, and Isley's very good on the environment, so that's fair. I love that you guys are thinking about it and looking at the policy positions of all the different candidates. Watch his appearance on the view when he talked with Megan McCain about climate change.

It's pretty awesome. Anyway, I'm just excited for the debates. There's gonna be a lot of great candidates who are good on different issues, and hopefully the sum total of all of that can, in a short period of time, move the Democratic Party a ton. Last thing, you know, I talked about Wolfpack in the opening segment, please wolf dash pack.com slash join. There are no secret donors, you guys are in.

So we can do this together, but we've got to stick together. Wolf dash pack.com slash join to become a member of Wolfpack. All right, what's next? Okay, something fun. Donald Trump is back to threatening violence against his political opponents. This happened in an interview with Breitbart where he said, it's so terrible what's happening You know, the left plays a tougher game. It's very funny.

I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don't play it tougher, okay? I can tell you, I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad, but the left plays it cuter and tougher. Okay, so that's fun. Okay, so look, it's in some ways a word salad as always, and you're always trying to What the hell is he saying, right?

I know what he's saying. But the implication in this case is pretty clear and very dangerous. So he's saying, I have the guys with the guns. And so if you get to a certain point, it's going to be very bad for you. Now that is what fascists say. Look, mainstream media, right wing, you want to get triggered, that's your problem, okay? The people that are authoritarian threaten violence, state violence against their political opponents.

By the way, you know who else does that? Nicholas Maduro. He has control of the military and he says, look, man, the guys with the guns are on my side. What are you gonna do about it? The tough people are on my side. You know who else says that? Ayatollah Khomeini. He says, hey, I got the Republican Guard on my side.

And so what are you gonna do about it? I have the army. I'll CC in Egypt, Putin and Russia, Erdogan in Turkey. They go, I got the guns, what are you going to do about it? And this is Trump now ruining America by talking about I have the people with guns on my side. And if you dare cross me, things can get very, very bad. Yeah, two important things. One, if you are a member of a police department, a member of the military, understand

that Donald Trump not only thinks that hypothetically you would help him carry out some sort of massacre against his political opponents, but also that he puts you on the same level as the Bikers for Trump. So not a lot of respect coming there. But also, I think this is sort of important. We got to put this quote in context. He says, specifically, they don't play it tough until they go to a certain point. Do you want to know what he talked about in the sentence after that quote cutoff? The investigations of his presidency.

Yeah. So look, guys, here's another layer to it. Part of the reason I mentioned some of those other leaders. is that once they've done the corruption in office, then they can't leave. Because if they leave and they lose power, then they will be investigated. And they'll see that a lot of the money got moved out of the country. And if you move the money out of the country, people are going to want that money back because you stole that money.

Now, in this case with Donald Trump, he is not only talking about the federal investigations, he thinks that he is immune from prosecution while he's president. But he is not immune from prosecution when he's no longer president. And he can't pardon himself when he's not president. And then there's a state investigations, which he couldn't pardon himself for and could be in trouble for in a couple of different ways. So now he's got a situation that if he leaves office, he might go to prison. So now he's talking about, well, maybe I could bring in my tough guys at a certain

point. Yeah. So is this guy ever going to leave office? Yeah. And again, this isn't evidence. This is just sort of something to bear in mind. But if you were being investigated and you knew that you were innocent, would you threaten to murder your political opponents? I don't think you'd have to do that necessarily. The only solution I can see, because I agree, hypothetically, once you leave office, you'll be investigated. The only thing that would save him is if hypothetically Barack Obama became president again and decided not to look backward. He's looking forward. Yeah. Yeah. And now, of course, that's what Obama did for Bush and Cheney. But it's very scary talk, very dangerous talk.

And so in a post came earlier this week, Anna and I had a discussion about who's worse, Bush or Trump. And Bush, I argued, is still worse because the Iraq war killed about a million innocent civilians. The economic crash happened caused eight million jobs, et cetera. But Trump's threat to democracy and his dividing us, and Anna made the point that Look, he's hurt our culture. Now we all hate each other, right? Now it's not like we were getting along great and singing kumbaya during the Bush years or

the Obama years, but it has gotten significantly worse. And now he's saying the people in my camp, not only should you hate the other people, but you should get your guns. That is not what America was supposed to be about. And we pride ourselves on peaceful transitions of power. This is literally un-American, and these threats from our president, I've never seen anything this dangerous in my lifetime. Great.

Okay, we're out of time, guys. We've got a great hour coming up with you guys. Mazjibani and Nomi Prince are going to come, and so we'll be right back. 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 slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.