The Young Turks - Den of Vice

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

Kim Potter, the former suburban Minneapolis police officer who said she confused her handgun for her Taser when she fatally shot Daunte Wright, was sentenced Friday to two years in prison. A new study says that 3.7 million more kids are in poverty without the monthly Child Tax Credit. Top Democrats told Axios that the ""hard-left politics"" of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the so-called ""Squad,"" once a dominant theme for vast numbers of elected Democrats, are backfiring big-time on the party in power. Donald Trump's political action committee reportedly spent $375,000 to rent office space in Trump Tower — even though the committee has no presence in New York. Hosts: Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, Francesca Fiorentini 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. Trimmy! Three-a-Tee! Three-a-T! Three-a-T! Three-a-T!

Dream-a-D-D-R-A-T! Whoa, see to drop it. That's what I do. Well, look, are some people saying the Walter Cronkite of our generation? I don't know, I don't know. Is that what Cronkite used to? I think that's how he started the shows, isn't it? Every time.

Yeah, well, let's before my time, I wouldn't know. Yeah, okay, we're just trying to deliver the news here. All right, power panel, young Turks, Jank, Eugger, John Idol, Francesca Fiorentini. We're in a bit of a twitchuation room. If you're listening, it's probably a bituation room. earlier today when we're discussing the stories. It was a pituation room. So we're in it though. We're in it all right. We're not gonna leave you in a tituation room. Let's keep this going,

Jake. Yes. Finally, someone's with me. Okay, all right. Dad jokes from over here, dad jokes from over there. Indeed, indeed. Come on, you love it. I just noticed that John and I are wearing the same new Young Turks shirt. Oh, yeah, he's got a sweatshirt, I got the shirt. Oh look at that, what do we like Wonder Twins? Looking great. Should we activate in the form of a waterfall and a chimpanzee?

Depending on which I am. That's an NFT reference? No, it's not new school, that's old school. Wonder Twins are of course part of the Justice League and you guys should check that all. Yeah, one Ethereum each. Yeah, okay, anyways, obviously the Twitchuation room was a reference to Francesco's show for us on Twitch.tv slash Tiwit, which you should all check out. Damage report, of course, is always on at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 o'clock Eastern. All right, now having said all that,

we got a crazy show for you guys, so let's get it going. Yes, and we experience what we do so often on this show, a jokey, fun beginning to the show, and then incredibly serious in dark news. So we're going to be experiencing that transition now. Kim Potter murdered my son. And he died April 11th. Today, the justice system murdered him all over again. That is the mother of Dante Wright, who was killed by Minneapolis police officer Kim Potter, when Kim Potter says she intended to tase him but used the wrong weapon.

and Dante Wright ended up dying. She was sentenced, finally, today, to two years in prison, of which she might not spend the entirety, and we are going to talk about why exactly the sentence ended up being so low. To catch you up, though, she was originally convicted back in December for first degree and second degree manslaughter in the April 11th killing of Wright, who was pulled over for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. officer officers learned he had an outstanding warrant for weapons possession charge and he pulled away as they tried to arrest him. Video shows that Potter shouted several times that she was

going to tase him but she had her actual firearm in her hand and fired one shot into his chest. Now that brings us to the actual sentencing and the judge in this case who apparently really wanted to focus on empathy for the police officer here is a little bit of that. It is the sentence and judgment of this court that you shall be committed to the custody of the Commissioner of Corrections for a period of 24 months. You shall serve two-thirds of that time or 16 months in prison and a third on supervised release, assuming no disciplinary offenses. I recognize there will be those who disagree with the sentence that I granted a significant downward departure does not in any way diminish Dante Wright's life. Please try to empathize with Ms. Potter's situation. As President Barack Obama once said,

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. So as is alluded to there by Judge Chu, it is obviously not a very lengthy sentence, and she and the defense lawyers, fairly working in tandem there, we'll try to make a case for why that should be the case, why we should not be frustrated by that. But again, bear in mind, two years of which only 16 months necessarily will be served according, assuming good behavior. And by the way, in Minnesota, the ranges for the most serious offense that she was convicted for range from six years to about eight and a half years. Judges are not supposed to be able to go significantly below that without like a real good reason effectively. And she believes that she, that that exists. The judge does. We will get into some of the arguments that were made there, but I want to give the panel an opportunity to weigh in.

Okay, so let's go through a couple of numbers here. She's already served 58 days as about two months. So she'll be out in a little over a year. That's it. Dante Wright, on the other hand, will remain deceased. And so that's the thing about murder. It's permanent. And so she was convicted. This is almost jury nullification by the judge saying, I don't care what the jury said. I like the cop. So a lot of black men have gone before judges in this country. And the judges have said, oh, there's nothing I could do. It's the minimum sentence. Minimum sentence does nothing I could do, even if I wanted to do it. And oftentimes they get way more than a minimum sentence. Well, apparently there was something they could do. Apparently, if it's a white cob, you just ignore the minimum. Who cares?

Over six years, that's the least she's supposed to get. The average, by the way, is about seven years. She's like, I don't care. I don't care. I'm just going to give her less. I like her. I empathize with her. So Dante Wright, we empathize with apparently a little less. So all that talk of empathy and then quoting Barack Obama, that nice touch. Even Joy Reid, noted conservative Democrat, was like, don't quote Obama here. You should have quoted Martin Luther King. When Joey Reed's telling you not to quote Barack Obama, something's really amiss. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, but which way does the empathy slide in your slippery slope of empathy?

And so now one more number for you guys, there's a potential Biden Supreme Court. Michelle Childs. All the conservative Democrats and all the Republicans are pushing for her, of course. So one, she's incredibly corporate friendly. That's obviously why they love her. And I'm so worried the death that Biden's going to pick her. But a story broke today, coincidentally, that she's also really tough on crime. So she'd given a guy who sold eight ounces of wheat, eight ounces, 12 years in prison.

So that guy is getting 12 years in prison, Kim Potter, who killed Dante Wright, is going to get a little over a year. Insane. Insane. No, and you're exactly right. I mean, look, this judge said that this was one of the, quote, saddest cases that she'd ever had to rule on. And mind you, given what she did, we just heard her say, that's not sad because Dante Wright will, is no longer. and his children have to grow up without a father and his mother is to grow up without a son. That's not what she means. She means because she's only seeing this from the cop's perspective.

That's why it's said. And yet, Jenk, my guess is that this judge has also sentenced nonviolent drug offenders for far more years than two years for taking someone's life for the possession of a small amount of illicit substances. Like, I know that to be true. This judge has worked on the bench for 20 years. Okay, but let's put ourselves in the shoes of this police officer. This police officer was a veteran of 26 years working for the police department, 26 years, and still didn't know the difference between their taser and their gun. I don't even know how that works. I wouldn't even understand that because after 26 years of being on the job and you still don't know in a moment of sort of heightened tensions because, oh yeah, this big old criminal has a, you know, an air

freshener hanging from his rear view mirror. That is a sign of a cold-blooded killer. What? I don't even know where to begin to put myself in someone's shoes like that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think look, you can you can accurately say that every part of this is sad. I can even try to imagine, you know, after having done it, how you would feel. That does not mean that you should not spend quite a bit of time behind the bars. And we'll get into the different reasons why. that might be justified. They address that actually. But really fast, I want to talk about what the two sides have been pushing for. The prosecutor had said anything less than four years would be unacceptable. Obviously we don't get anything near that. The defense had been pushing

for a sentence of probation only, no time behind bars. And the reason was that this is a beat, this is beyond tragic, it's unintentional, it was an accident, it was a mistake, and the defense attorney held up a box of letters and cards of support. What does that have to do? Like, does that, how many cards need to be piled in a box before he comes back to life? Like, it's great that she's getting support. What does that have to do with the consequences of her action? And the expectations we should have for cops that they should take seriously whether they are carrying, whether they're using a weapon that is potentially able to kill someone. because of course these less lethal weapons are, or that is almost guaranteed to kill someone.

Should they take it seriously? Should other cops be really sure before they pull the trigger on whatever weapon it is that they happen to draw? They're not sure, just one of them. Anyway, the judge says that there's mitigating factors. It was undisputed that Potter never intended to use her gun. Well, she drew it. Again, like you could be really, if you're real, it's the most important thing to you is to not fire a gun. there were some other measures that she could have taken. But she felt like she had to tase him. Had to.

Can't let him get away after all, that would be inconvenient. We would have to follow him. Anyway, Chu says that there's four reasons for incarceration. Retribution and incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation, saying retribution would be the only purpose served in Potter's case. How is that true? How is that accurate? There's no deterrent to telling other cops.

To telling other cops, hey, it's not just like you roll the die when you draw one of the weapons from your belt. Maybe you should be sure of which one it is. There's no rehabilitation, no extra time to think seriously about the power that you wield over life and death and how careful you should be when potentially meeting it out. I don't know. Look, the judge in this case obviously had a side that they were on and they have all the power in this case. So what do you know, they won? Yeah, to me, the rehabilitation thing stuck out because in the judge's mind, cops are perfect

anyway. So why would they have to be rehabilitated? Just an honest mistake. And so somebody's dead, but he wasn't perfect. Cops are always perfect. They don't need deterns, they don't need rehabilitation. And guys, if you're young, you don't get it, you're right. But what you're missing is the older generation got, and I'm in that older generation, we all got brainwashed into thinking that cops are angels. I'm not joking at all, I'm not exaggerating. Every program I ever saw, TV, movie, news, local news, national news, print news, video news, it doesn't matter. Everything that I'd ever seen told me cops are perfect. Cops never lie, they're always telling the truth on the stand, and the defendant is always lie. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I actually believe that when I was a kid. I did, it took me a long time to get past that. There would be cases where there would be overwhelming evidence that the cop planted something in the scene and I wouldn't believe it because it was cognitive dissonance. Because I had been culturally brainwashed into thinking that cops were angels on earth. I remember when I used to cube and NWA came out with the songs about the police, I was like, whoa, they really are gangster rappers.

I mean, only gangsters would say terrible things about it. Look, I grew up in a nice server. I had no frickin' idea, okay? I liked the music, but I didn't understand it until later, okay? So this is a judge from the old school thinks. I mean, an angel dropped down on earth and made a simple mistake. What are we gonna really apply the law to her, right? Oh, sympathy for Dante Wright, who's dead.

Well, I'll get around to it, maybe, although I didn't really talk about it here. So look, last couple things, you have to understand. She got convicted of first and second degree manslaughter. Those are really serious charges, okay? And the judge basically told the jury, I don't care. I don't care about all the work that you did. I mean, it's so hard because of that programming to get a jury to ever say a cop is wrong in the first place. They do it in this case.

And the judge goes, ah, don't care, don't care. So look, for all the conservatives, by the way, look, I get that people sympathize with Potter. I get that a lot of people think it was an honest mistake. I understand that, right? But someone's dead anyway, right? And it tastes there's nothing like a gun. And so it's really weird, okay, fine, outrageous mistake. But that's the point John is making that we have to make sure that cops understand.

It's not a, no big deal, made a mistake, he's dead, who cares, right? No, it's the guy, he's life is gone. We cannot bring him back, we cannot bring him back. So, so a lot of people wrote in letters, who cares? A lot of people wrote in letters for written house. But honestly, a lot of people wrote in letters for O.J. Simpson. So that doesn't matter at all. And those letters are irrelevant.

The jury's relevant. How many times have we been told? Nope, the only people that matter is the jury, sequester them. Everybody else's public opinion is irrelevant. Oh, everybody thinks that George Zimmerman did it. Who cares? It's irrelevant, irrelevant. Oh, jury acquitted him.

Too late. Okay. And same thing with the written house. Now, the same people saying jury's the only thing that matters when it's written house. or Zimmerman who gets off, now turn around and go, no, jury is irrelevant. When I thought you said it was the only relevant thing. Now you're saying it's irrelevant and we should let the cop off anyway. Gee, I wonder if you're biased.

I just have to put this in a broader context of how sad it is that we don't have real leadership when it comes to the most massive movement, social movement that I think I've ever seen in my lifetime, which does the Black Lives Matter in the streets, movement. Sorry it didn't come in a nice cute little letter on beautiful stationary to put in your box that you could hold up in front of everybody. No, young people took the goddamn streets. Okay, they were out there for months and months and months and were thusly terrorized and and cars driven into them, et cetera. And yet is any Democrat, is any leading Democrat taking up that mantle or are you using the idea that defund the police somehow hurt the Democrats

to your political advantage. Oh yeah, it's the latter. Meanwhile, qualified immunity rolls on and criminals inside the police force and justice system are allowed to keep on committing this. And the last thing I'll say is, Jank, you're totally right. People who have positive views of the police live in communities where there are no police. Of course you like police when you are privileged. You don't ever interact with them. You only call them when you need it. They don't parole your streets. They don't enforce curfews. They don't treat you like you are a foreign country that they are occupying. Of course you like police. And of course, this is what we're all working against. Yeah, I did an interview with a DJ in LA. He's Latino. He actually grew up

partly in L.A., partly in Arizona. He said it was worse in Arizona. I've told the story before. The cops would come and slam them against the fence when they're playing basketball or walking home from school three times a week and he had to carry his report card with straight A's in it in his backpack to show the cops that they shouldn't meet him up too much, okay? I never had to deal with that. I'm a minority, but I grew up in a relatively nice suburb. That to us would have been insane, unheard of. And if they had done that to one kid in that suburb, it would have been probably a national

story. They do it to minorities all the time. And the people in power, including this judge now today, basically saying don't care. All I care about is the cop's feelings and not your feelings. And by the way, also not your death. Yeah. Well, why don't we take our first break? We come back the natural consequences of taking away a program that was highly successful.

And progressives getting blamed for everything after this. All right, back on TYT, Cenk, John and Francesco with you guys. John, take it away. Okay. At the end of last year, the child tax credit was allowed to expire, and what do you know? The following month, just last month, child poverty rose significantly. Nobody could have seen it coming. But we do have the numbers.

The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University said that the child poverty rate rose from 12% in December to 17% last month, an approximately 41% increase in one month. That almost seems impossible, but America found a way. We are number one. The study found that an additional 3.7 million children are now in poverty relative to the end of December, with black and Latino children seeing the biggest percentage point increases. And all it took was taking away one of the most beloved and successful social programs

of the past few decades. And all that it was was for a portion of last year from July to December, parents received monthly payments worth up to $250 per child, as much as $300 if the children were under six years old. 61 million children benefited from this program encompassing 36 million households. And so it was incredibly popular. And that dropped child poverty by about a third. Then you get rid of it, it goes back up by 41%. And all of this, of course, happening during an absolutely terrible public health emergency with a number of different economic knock on effects from that emergency.

And so it was popular, it was working, but the White House was unable to secure an extension of it. And in fact, Senator Joe Manchin raised multiple objections to the child benefit and said it was discouraging parents from working, which we wouldn't want that. I mean, what's worse than that? Certainly not millions of children going hungry every single day. Virtually all Republicans also, of course, oppose the child tax credit. And Washington was really worried about the deficit and stuff, and they were really worried

about people taking advantage of the system. So they killed it, and what do you know, 40% or so increase in child poverty in one month. So guys, it's not theoretical, it's real, and it's not just a statistic. It's 3.7 million American children are now back in poverty. I want to show you the two people most responsible. These are the monsters named Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema, and they single handedly said, yeah, we're gonna drive those kids back into poverty. And they did.

So these are the guys, these are the villains. And again, that's not theoretical, it was their votes that made sure that billed back better with child tax credit could not pass. So you're looking at the two people that, that isn't. Isn't that amazing? Just two people, such power, drove nearly four million kids in the poverty. And they couldn't care less. Okay, now let me show you the guy who is the indifferent leader that allowed them to do it

without a fight at all. And his name is Joe Biden. Where's your fight? Where's your fight? You're gonna brag, you care about your own legacy, of course. Everybody in Washington is obsessed with only one thing, their effing ego, right? And before he was bragging, oh, look at all the big kids, we live. lifted out of poverty. Then Manchin said, no, shut up, go away. I'm not passing your bill.

And Joe Biden said, okay, sure. He's going to fine. There's no problem at all. Where's your fight? Where's your fight? Now, I'm thrilled to tell you, you can no longer brag about it. Okay, I know you were going to, oh, my ego, my legacy, my legacy. Well, now you don't have a legacy either because you don't actually care. You know, when it came to the infrastructure bill that all of your donors benefited from, then we saw Joe Biden fight. He'd go, went and told progressives, you better pass it. Okay, manchester says no to build back better in the child tax credit. He's like, oh, okay, fine. No problem at all. We're moving on. We're, oh, we moved on to voting rights. Oh, we didn't pass that either. I'm moving on from that.

What are you not going to move on from? So they drove those children back to private. Look, we'll give you the, we're not the fake left. We'll also tell you the reality that every Republican is a monster. If you don't know that by now, because you're listening to right or fake left or whoever you're listening to, every Republican is against those children. They happily, gleefully drove them back into poverty. Okay, so, but the Republicans are not in charge. The Democrats are. So this one is on them. They said they would do it and they didn't. And it's just part of this pig-headed American exceptionalism that feeds our bodies to market at gods, we're still in a pandemic. We're just getting over yet another variant, right?

Knock on wood, there's not another. But of course, if there is, Biden's going to say, you didn't see it coming. How was I supposed to know? Oh, my God, you need a mask? Oh, what for? But put on your mask. It is insane. It is always blamed the victim in this country. It is always pull yourself up from the bootstraps in the middle of an effing pandemic. And look, guys, 250 to 300 a month to lift 4 million children out of poverty is not a lot of money, right? It shows you how many people in this country, these aren't children, right? Children aren't owning their own bank accounts by themselves. These are families.

These are families who can't afford, as we all know, an unexpected $400 expense. These are families with $250 a month. They can do so much more. Meanwhile, you got the NYPD busting thieves for stealing baby formula and posing next to it like it's a meth bust. Yep. Come on. And we're supposed to care about petty crime when people are stealing stuff for their children, their babies. So again, like like we're doing, as Jenk and I covered yesterday, $770 billion for the defense budget. And yet untold amount of money we could be making. We could be saving. Where's the money going to come from? If you pay for universal paid leave, family leave, sick leave, if you have expanded health

care benefits, let alone Medicare for all. If you have universal childcare, if you extend the child tax credit, my God, we would be so much wealthier than we are and we would live up to the idea that we are the best democracy on earth. Yeah, and my God, so like this is affected obviously all sorts of families. Let's bear in mind how many conservative families back into poverty now? Oh man, those populace, those right wing populace of Fox News are going to be so angry tonight. Tucker Carlson is gonna do 40 minutes about those millions of conservative families

who are gonna be suffering as a result of this. We're gonna talk in a little bit about political consequences of this sort of thing. It is bad enough if you have been dwelling in poverty ruled over by a government that has never cared and has never helped you. Heads up to Biden, what do you think the people will do after they got a little bit of help for a few months and then were cast back into poverty? Might they be a little bit more angry, actually? And I also want you to remember, everybody is rightfully angry about this story and the numbers

that we just gave you. And they should be. These are the people that are worst off, they've sunk back into poverty. These are not the only people that have been negatively affected by getting rid of that child tax credit. That is the people who shifted below the threshold for poverty. Many, many millions more families have shifted, not necessarily across that arbitrary line, but their lives have now become materially more difficult. Tens of millions of families' lives are now harder as a result of this. I do have one good thing, because I know you like

when politicians call out other politicians. I have an example of that on this particular issue. AOC tweeted in response to this, one U.S. Senator heard stories about people allegedly using the child tax credit for drugs without any evidence or data to back it up. He then used that as justification and nuke the entire national program, causing millions of kids to fall into poverty in weeks, horrifying. Meanwhile, the press talks about it like it's some beltway drama without ever showing the people who are sleeping in bubble jackets with no heat or the kids going hungry waiting for some guy in a yacht to decide if they were fully human or not. It's just shameful all of it.

There you go, yes, I do love that. And again, it's not to vent, it's strategic. You have to put pressure on Joe Mansion. Unfortunately, AOC and the few just Democrats fighting out there are in a vacuum. Because the media just thinks Mansion is cinema or God's gift to humanity, they're so moderate, moderate, moderate, representing their state. state. As we've told you a million times, it's not remotely true. It is not the moderate position. The child tax credit pulls at over 70% across America. The moderate position is to do the child tax credit. And they are not popular in their home states. These provisions, the child

tax credit is intensely popular in West Virginia and in Arizona. Any member of the press that tells you mentioned is doing it because of his home state is a liar or is an incompetent buffoon that wouldn't know the facts if it slapped him across the face. Now, last two things from me. So all of the fake handwringing that Franceschi referred to in Washington, Stephen Ratner, former Obama official and Wall Street Tycoon putting out an op-ed today, saying, oh, we can't do build-back better in any of these provisions because of the deficit. First of all, build-back better is deficit-neutral.

He says, okay, yeah, theoretically, but I don't believe it. You know what is not deficit-neutral? The defense bill. The defense bill is not at all, doesn't care about the deficit, just piles $800 billion on top of the deficit. It is over four times larger than the entire billed back better, let alone the child tax credit, which is a very small part of buildback better. Does Steve Ratner rant about that? Nope, didn't care at all because he's a liar. He doesn't care about defense.

Bill, he doesn't care about the deficit. He doesn't care about debt. All he cares about is money, money, money, not to you. to his beloved corporations instead, which leads me to my final point. Why? Why would you kill a program this popular? If you're a Democrat, aren't you at least interested in self-preservation? So why wouldn't you pass something that everybody in blue and red states loves? Maybe they might love Democrats if you kept it.

No. The donor class says they're getting too much money. It's driving our prices up. wages we have to pay labor up. Yep, we have labor shortages because we gave them crumbs and now they can live off for crumbs $250 a month, now I can't pay them starvation slave wages anymore. So make sure you take away the crumbs and back to the minds. And the politicians say yes sir, absolutely sir, even if it means their own career jumps

off a clip, but don't worry, it won't because the press will always cover for them and and tell you that they're wonderful moderates who are representing their voters. And that is nothing but a huge, disgusting lie. Any final thoughts, Francesco? I mean, it's funny, I agree with you, Jenk, on the last point that they talk about Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin as if they were moderates. But I think the other thing is we've seen that they covered them wall to wall and only about Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin, and they were obsessed with them, they just are

too afraid to mention the donors. They don't talk about all the handouts that Joe Mansion has gotten, all the money that he's made off of the coal industry. They're not talking about the backdoor deals that Kirsten Cinema is making with, you know, trade industries or pharmaceutical companies. They're not talking about any of that. It's almost like they were just sort of woke up and decided to stymie the bill because they must have some sort of like, you know, moderate centrist little fairy dust that

told them that this is going to be bad for us later. No, there's nothing magic about it, it is the money. And I was talking about this on the bituation room, but like, you know, we're talking about with the revolving door project, Max Moran, who was like, look, we need to make enemies. We need to stop being afraid. Liberals, centrists need to be stop of being afraid of making enemies. We won't get anything done unless you make an enemy of the corporate and the one percent of the corporate class and the one percent. Otherwise, it's like, gee, where did it all this poverty come from. I mean, it's the hot dog situation perpetually, you know, but anyway.

Yeah, well, we actually, we're about to transition to an even more hot dogish situation here, if I'm getting the reference you're making there. So why don't we, why don't we move on to this? Pretty much everyone agrees that as of right now, it looks like the Democrats are probably to do pretty poorly in the midterm elections. And if you pay attention to politics a lot, you might think, well, it's probably complex. There's probably a lot of places you can place the blame. Promises not made good on, bad statements, you know, politicians not doing the right. No, no, no, it's super simple actually. Axios has the answer. It's the squad's fault because I found out, as many did, that the squad's politics have backfired. And you should

be very angry about them very much in advance of the midterm elections. Mike Allen tells us that the hard left politics of Representative Alexandria Ocasi-Cortez and the so-called squad. You can just say that they're called the squad. Why are you saying so called? Why are you questioning it? It's so called and the scare quotes. It's both. It's both. It is the squad. You're calling them the squad. Yeah. Whatever. Once a dominant theme for vast numbers of elected Democrats is backfiring big time on the party in power, top Democrats tell us. The push to defund the police, rename schools, and tear down statues has created a significant obstacle to Democrats keeping control of the House, the Senate, and the party's overall image. Did you know Ilhan Omar? What a did it? desexify the M&M mascots, that's on her. Anyway, so they have gone to a representative sample of the many wings of the Democratic Party to source this article. For instance, Matt Bennett, listed as the co-founder of the center-left third way, says it's

what, I had to put that in the description. That's unbelievable. Axios called it the center left third way. It's what we've been screaming about for a year. And Representative Josh Gotheimer, he says what I'm hearing at home and what I'm focused on are common sense bipartisan solutions from tackling grocery and gas prices to cutting taxes and fixing our infrastructure to investing in law enforcement and fighting crime. And well, you know, they had to finally get, you know, like a hardcore progressive. So they've got Heidi Heitkamp who says Democrats are hurting themselves by not speaking out more forcefully against. liberal positions that alienate rural America.

Highcamp told AP, now the brand is so toxic that people who are Democrats, the ones left, aren't fighting for the party. Yes, yes, it doesn't matter if Biden got the White House campaigning as if he was actually a progressive and people were so angry at conservatives that they gave the Dems the House and the Senate too, oh what, the only way we can give you the Senate is an unprecedented to Georgia Senate seats, okay, whatever it takes. for you to switch course. No, forget all that stuff, all those promises, forget every poll about what is popular and what is not. You need to be courting these rural voters, who I will

remind you soundly rejected Heidi Heikkamp when she tried to get reelected in North Dakota. But we should be listening to all of them, Jank. So this is pure propaganda. The Soviet, the old school Soviets, the current North Koreans would be embarrassed to put out a piece like this. So I'm gonna tell you the biggest slide of hand that Mike Allen and Axios did here, which is disgraceful. But first, let me just break down a couple of the quotes that John just gave you. They painted it as it is definitely backfiring. The squad is the so-called squad is horrible and has destroyed Democratic Party. And at the very end, they just say, top Democrats tell us.

No, no, no, you made it seem like that was a definitive fact. And then you just did a little adjunct at the end of that sentence, top Democrats tell us. Oh, so it's not a fact. It's something that was leaked to you by who? To John's point, a range of Democrats? No, the most conservative Democrats, the most corporate Democrats. Did you clarify that for your audience? No, you purposely concealed that from your audience.

You pretended that it was a range of Democrats when in reality, every person you quoted is massively conservative and represents almost completely their I can show it to you on their voting record because I know you don't do research. So now the second thing, center left third way. Thirdway is a literal pack formed by corporations to capture the Democratic Party. It's funded completely by corporations. The whole point of the pack is to drive the Democratic Party right wing, right wing. Everybody in Washington knows that. They don't hide that. And Mike Allen is this, I know the guy. He's a senior report, Mike, you don't know the third way is conservative and you put in

their center left to make it appear that it's a range of Democrats who all agree that the left is wrong, even though center left third way says they're wrong. That is purposeful lying and deceit. Forget us, progressives. I know you hate us and you want to smear at us at every turn. Don't you care about your readers at all? And the answer is obvious. No, you want to manipulate them.

You want to brainwash them, you want to do propaganda in favor of corporate rule, which coincidentally, Mike, is all of your advertisers. Giant corporations, drug companies, defense contractors, giant banks. So they thank you in advance. And they did already by giving you millions of dollars to write this trash. And then he also now comes a sleight of hand. We're going to get into it more in a second. But he says, this is going to be a big obstacle. The Democrats keeping control of the House and the Senate.

But wait a minute, what he talked about were all local issues. And in the article, he focuses on a very local set of elections in San Francisco. Mm-hmm. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Those San Francisco City Council issues have nothing to do with the House and the Senate. What the House of the Senate were working on was build back better. So you made it seem like the progress. The progressive positions that the House of the Senate are working on are deeply unpopular.

So Mike, since you don't do any research, let me do it for you. Are they unpopular? The poll came out. Now this is after Republicans, conservative Democrats, and corporate media battered build back better. After they did billions of dollar of propaganda against them, still a poll just last month. Let's take a look, first of all, build back better across the country, 62 to 31 still popular. Like two to one margin. What happened?

I thought the progressive positions were deeply unpopular, Mike. It almost sounds like you were lying. Okay, now let's break down the issues one by one. Long term care investments still in the shell of build back better that hasn't passed. What's the popularity? 74% hearing coverage under Medicare. Put in there by Bernie Sanders, a progressive position, undoubtedly polls at 72%.

Clean energy and job investments. Oh, green new teal, we heard from Fox News and corporate media combined together. Tell us how unpopular it was 62%, Mike. Housing affordability and prevention, 61%. Paid family leave, 59%. Every single provision, over 50%. Incredibly popular. Oh, but there was a city council meeting in San Francisco.

You see the sleight of hand? Look here, look here. Oh, Mike, I found something unpopular in San Francisco. It represents all progressives. I know all the things that they were working on the House and said, what actually were they working on the House and Senate? No, shh, shh, don't talk about how popular those are. Then Lockheed Martin won't pay Axios. Let's get the, let's blame wokeism and the wokeies and the wokepocalypse and other ways we can talk about woke and lead in very serious New York Times op-ed with the word woke or an Axios piece.

What's so funny about the San Francisco thing, and I used to live there, right? These are parents who are transplants from Pleasanton, which is a suburb outside of SF, moved to SF during the pandemic. Then they got a bunch of tech millionaires and billionaires to underwrite a recall campaign for three school board members because they at some point in the host of things that they're also doing, like trying to maintain a school in a pandemic. So you know, kids don't die. By the way, San Francisco, one of the lowest rates of COVID transition, highest rates of vaccination in the country that one of the things they were doing was

changing the name of a school. And then all of a sudden, they're, oh, they're wokeys. Mind you, it's not an election year. It was a special election tech money pouring into this. And suddenly it's, oh, it's a harbinger of everything bad to come. As Jenks said, it's utter BS. It has nothing to do with the national conversation. I'm excited for the future when we all get, you know, when President Stephen Miller is in office and the three of us and everyone else at TYT were in the press gulog and all the Axios reporters are like, ah, you just shouldn't have asked for universal child care. I mean, it's really on you guys. And we're going to be there like, mother. It's going to be, it's going to be a good brawl in, you know, because this is, this is the center playing into the rights, corp, into the rights culture war at the service of corporations. They're playing into the culture war just as much as the right is, but they're doing it because ultimately they serve the same gods, as Jank pointed out. So I want to give you one more aspect of this absolute trash article.

They say Democrats are losing in poll after poll nationally in the House. That's true. That's absolutely true. Finally, we found something true in the article. Now, you want to know why? And by the way, I stand corrected. Thank you. I made a small error there. Act serious, we actually care about facts.

So it was not San Francisco City Council, as I said earlier in this video. It was the school board. Oh, even more important. A San Francisco school board apparently controls the whole country. It's more national. Okay. Wow, how national? There's a lot of foreign policy.

So now when they ask people, hey, what's wrong with the Democratic Party that they say a San Francisco school board, et cetera, in that polling where the Democrats are getting killed? No. Here, I'll give you a specific poll. They asked people, how much do you think Joe Biden has done for you? Fifty-six percent of the country, not 56 percent of Republicans. 56 percent of the country, that includes a ton of Democrats and independence. So Joe Biden has done, quote, nothing for us. Nothing. And the argument that Axios is making is progressives made him do too much. Well, what am I supposed to call that? That's just a lie, that's just a lie. The polling indicates the exact opposite. You didn't do enough, you didn't fight enough, and you didn't do your so-called agenda, which Joe Biden never believed in. The only thing he ever said that was true was when he told his beloved donors,

Nothing will fundamentally change. Congratulations, Joe. Nothing fundamentally changed. You got your dream. And guess what? The polling indicates the American people hate you for it. But it's okay. You're going to use goons like the reporters at Axios to do propaganda for you.

And you think it's going to be okay. It's not going to be okay. The jury's already in. You guys are going to get slaughtered. And that's why a year before the elections, they're already blaming progressives because they know they're going to lose because they didn't do anything because of their goddamn donors. And that's what this piece is about. And that's what corporate media is about.

And that's why they're trash. And you should never read them. I'm ready to move on from that story. Honestly, I think it is not too early to start blaming Rashida Talib for the Dems losing in 2024. I think she should calm down. I think she's ruining it for us. Honestly, Corey Bush, I'm watching you. You're ruining it anyway.

Okay, with that, we're going to take our last break. But a little bit more fun coming up after this. All right, back on CYT, Jank, John, and Francesco with you, more news. Okay, there is no corruption too petty for Donald Trump. We're gonna describe what a former aide has revealed. And while we go through these details, I want you to bear in mind that Donald Trump, according to Donald Trump, is a billionaire. He has billions of dollars.

Okay, in 2021, Trump's Make America Great Again Pack spent $37,500 a month for 10 months renting space in the Trump Organization building in Manhattan. The former aide says it's a huge scam, I can't believe his base lets him get away with it. That aid works there, letting people into that area. That is not the only way that they funneled money that was donated to them into renting their own properties. Trump's campaign also rented unused space. It was the same monthly amount his campaign had spent there from mid-2017 through the end of 2020.

So for literally years, and all those months, there was at most one person who periodically visited the 7,000 square foot office in Trump Tower, according to this former aide. But Trump insisted on having the campaign continue renting there because the building was having trouble finding tenants. And so all of this is a few hundred thousand dollars. that conservatives donated in small amounts because they just wanted Donald Trump to make America great again. And he took that money and he gave it to himself so that he could set up fake offices in vacant areas of his building. And again, $300,000 is a lot for me, other people around here.

But if you have billions, that is so incredibly petty. And that amount is also fascinating in one other way. The $375,000 that he spent for this unused office space is more than the $350,000 that his Save America Committee donated last year to Republican candidates running for office, which is supposedly the reason that he is raising that money since he himself is not running and will not for some time. So he put more into dormant, dark rooms in his tower than into the future of the Republican Party. And this will end up bothering no Republicans, they won't care. Most will never hear about it, but they won't be bothered. Guys, I hate to keep going back to the same thing, but it is, that's what the answer is. It's the media.

So I tell you all the time about how corporate media is simping for the status quo and cheerleading for it, and they lie ad nauseum in an alternate reality, whereas the status quo is wonderful to all of you, right? Well, right wing media lies to you, of course, on different grounds. And in this case, the right wingers have no idea the degree to which Donald Trump is stealing from them. Do you know that in 2016, after the campaign switched to donor money instead of Trump's money, he increased the rent that he was charging his own campaign fivefold for the offices. they were using in Trump Tower, five-fold. As soon as it was your money, don't you get it right-wingers? No left-winger gave Trump money.

It's not our money. It's yours that he's stealing. When it was his money, no, no, no, no, don't worry about it. When it's your money, he's like charging him five times more. My followers are idiots. Let's rob a blind. He'd get to raise money from you to give to other Republicans, and instead he gave it to himself.

Now, so why don't, if they knew that, would they say? still be okay with it? My guess is no, they wouldn't. But it depends on who's telling them. If I tell them to go, no, Jake's a bad guy, you know, he doesn't even realize that America's not a democracy, it's a republic. That's why we had to do the coup. I don't trust Jank at all, okay? Okay, fine, CNN you don't trust him, you probably shouldn't trust, okay? That's why I'm telling you, it's right wing media. If Tucker Carlson turned on Donald Trump and the rest of the media did, on the right wing, he'd be done in the span of about two weeks. Yes.

He came out and said that he took the vaccine and he lost like a giant percent. Like we did a poll right after that, right? We didn't commission and we reported on it. And he'd lost like 15, 20 points among Republicans. If Tucker Carlson came out and said Trump is robbing you and he showed these same exact facts, people are like, whoa, I didn't know he was robbing me. I'm not in favor of him robbing me. I thought he was robbing Muslims or Latinos or something.

something. Okay, I mean, if he's robbing me, then I'm mad. But they will not say the truth under penalty of law. Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to vote against your own interests. And it's another thing to vote for like the guy who's currently sticking you up at gunpoint. Like, that's a very, that's a very interesting Freudian, I don't know if something's going on there. But like, yeah, Republican voters somehow really like this pain. And of course, they're never going to know about it because it never gets reported on. We will, they'll never know that when they take that little box that said, I didn't not want to stop giving $500 every week to the Trump campaign,

that that was actually going to charge their credit card a little bit more. I will just take issue with the idea that this was empty space. I do think Rudy Giuliani was up there with a go cart, just doing donuts, having a grand old time. I mean, it was his little, it was his home. And you should respect it thusly. Okay. And last thing, like hit the brand. I love this idea that Trump is somehow, oh, he runs the country like his business. Oh, he runs it like, look at his business. Nobody wants to even rent space in, I mean, he's a terrible autocrat. Any other, any other country,

right? You think people don't want to rent space in the autocrats building? Of course they do. Not Trump. He can't even be a good totalitarian. He can't. can't even do demagoguing right. So I gotta state a couple of more facts. To Francesca's point, there's literally a saying in a gambling, the house always wins. Every gambler knows anybody who's gone to Vegas knows that. The house always wins. He couldn't run casinos. They went bankrupt. Yes. They have to put an asterisk now. The house always wins, asterisks, unless the moron Donald Trump is running it. And so the only thing he knows how to do is, fraud and theft. That's why now he's under criminal investigation and is in a lot of trouble

and civil issues in New York, because that's his business, fraud and theft. And so both his PAC and his own campaign charged for Trump Tower and other places that he owns without actually having offices there, robbing you in two different directions. And of course, as usual, the moron Donald Trump has told people, well, I had to do it, because we're having trouble filling up Trump Tower. No, you moron, you're at least supposed to say, no, we actually had offices there. It wasn't for my business interest, it was for the campaign. It was really important that we have an office in the middle of Manhattan.

That's really expensive in a state we're never going to win, right? You had to pretend to say that. Instead, the idiot's like, well, well, of course, I had to rob you because I don't have enough money. And as long as right wing media tells them, yes, sir, you all, if you're in the right wing, Never even hear that. The only thing I will add, because I know that we're over, is I don't know that Tucker Carlson has ever going to do what you were predicting earlier. But he did go off about how having COVID makes you feminized.

Trump was at COVID. And also, I believe it was two nights ago. He did this whole thing about how emotionally well-adjusted people don't freak out when they lose an election. They don't refuse to accept it. They take it as an opportunity to learn. It's a normal part of the process. You can grow and develop.

Now, he said all of this while implying that he was mocking Max Boot and Liz Cheney, but it obviously better fits Donald Trump as well as his base. So I don't know, maybe he's moving in the direction that you were predicting right there. Yeah, he's gonna do a Raiders of the Lost Ark situation where he's gonna switch out the two objects and take out Trump and put himself in. He's, we've already shown you half a dozen ways that Tucker Carlson is in the middle of doing that. And if you think that's gonna make it better, no, we're gonna replace a dumb fascist with a much smarter fascist. Okay, we gotta go. Everybody check out the Twitchuation room on Twitch.t. Everybody check out the damage report. That's on every platform we have,

and it's an awesome show. And everybody stay here as well. J.R. Helen Hahn coming up next, And we're going to make more fun of Donald Trump because he's in even bigger trouble. Another devastating story came out about him today, but also other news of the day as well. 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 at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.