The Young Turks - Devin Nunes Hit With Internet Justice And Trump Cleans House

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

Devin Nunes is only a fan of free speech when it benefits him. Trump fires MORE people! John Iadarola and Ana Kasparian, 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

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Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm Anna Kasparian. Jank Yugar is not here today, which means that I will be able to talk during the show. We'll see, we'll see. Poor Jank, under the bus. No, John Iderola's here. How's going? It's going well. I'm in a really good mood today. Lots of news to get to. I'm really looking forward to hour two. I'm looking forward to hour one, of course. But our two, Mika Alhassen and Francesca Fiorentini will be here. And we are going to talk about these House Judiciary Committee and how they had a hearing on white supremacists today, that hearing was insane. Well, or they tried to at least. Yeah. Some people take it more seriously than others.

It was a roller coaster ride, watching it and encountering some of the crazy arguments coming from the right wing, of course, arguments denying that there is an issue with white supremacy in the country or hate crimes geared toward minority groups. We just live in different worlds. How are you, John? Well, you just showed me a bunch of the videos you're gonna play throughout the hour, so I'm not in a good movie anymore I'm just excited because our country is a gigantic joke like Twitter was the worst thing ever invented and it's just spreading to more and more of our country.

Our government is now Twitter, that's all it is. So it's funny that you say that Twitter is the worst thing ever invented because you are the king of Twitter. I'm definitely not the king of Twitter. I get more notifications on my phone from John's activity on Twitter. than any other type of notification. What kind of notifications? Because I follow your tweets, so I'll get notified every time you tweet something.

Oh, yeah, I tweet a lot. I hate myself. All right. Still the worst place. Okay, so let's get started. I don't want to waste any time. There's a lot to get to. And I want to start off on kind of a lighter note.

Okay. Because it's a story on Devin Nunes, and what are we going to do? That's not how dunking happens, right? I was like, we're going to shoot a free throw. Because he's so stupid, it's easy to mock him. That's what you were saying. It is easy to mock him. Well, you might be wondering why yacht cocaine prostitutes is trending on Twitter.

That is the hashtag that is trending on Twitter right now, and it's because of Devin Nunes. Devin Nunes is now suing McClatchee Group. This is a media organization or an umbrella under which multiple media organizations fall under. And the reason why he's suing is because of a story that the Sacramento Bee had published a few years ago. So let me give you some more details on this. Nunes claimed in a Virginia state court that Republican consultant, Liz Mayer, conspired

with McClatchy reporter McKenzie Mays to spread smears and falsehoods, including an allegation the congressman, quote, was involved with cocaine and underage prostitutes during a 2015 charity yacht party. Now, I read the piece, and that's not what the piece said. But nonetheless, let's hear Devin Nunes whine and cry about how he was allegedly defamed. This is part of the broader cleanup. So remember a few weeks ago, I filed against Twitter that they're censoring conservatives. McClatchy is one of the biggest, the worst offenders of this, but we're coming after the rest of them. I think people are just beginning to wake up now that I'm serious, I'm coming to clean up all of the mess.

So if you're out there and you lied and you defamed, we're gonna come after you. He started that statement by mentioning how conservatives are being censored, and he has now filed two separate lawsuits, one of which is for $150 million toward Twitter, because Twitter's not doing enough to censor like fake accounts, including Devin Nunes' cow, right? Like, he was so offended by that that he had to file a lawsuit against Twitter for not- For quarter billion dollars. Yeah, was it a quarter, yeah, for a quarter billion dollars. And then now you have another lawsuit, which is targeting a GOP strategist, a GOP

strategist along with McClatchee Group. Nunes claims that the article has a number of false statements such as saying that the alleged event took place at a fundraiser instead of a cruise resulting from a charitable donation. Again, I read the piece. The piece does mention that this was a cruise for a charity event. And it did not say that Devin Nunes was at this charitable event. It didn't say that he did cocaine or tried to sleep with prostitutes. In fact, I was completely unaware of that story that was published in 2015 until today when

I read about Devin Nunes' lawsuit. Then all of a sudden I was like, oh, well, is he? He involved with cocaine and prostitutes? What's going on, right? And I'm guessing that a lot of other people weren't aware of that story until today. Well, if there had been a story written, you know, falsely or not, that I had been doing cocaine and sleeping with underage prostitutes on a charity yacht, I would want to make sure that people knew that that wasn't true, that it wasn't a charity yacht.

I was doing cocaine and sleep with the prostitutes on a yacht that had the result of having been from a fundraiser or whatever. So they're focusing on the substance there. So the thing is, look, I also, I didn't remember this, the 2015 thing. And so it seems like this is him being ridiculous, not understanding, is it the Streisand effect? Yes, the Streisand effect, which needs to be rebranded as the Nunes effect, because come on. Yeah.

Which, and by the way, also, if his overall point is that you can't get traction as a conservative on Twitter, well, he's sort of blown that up, no story about me on a yacht's ever gotten 70,000 retweets or whatever, but it's blown up for him. Honestly, though, look, I'm joking, obviously, because he's a joke, and our government's a joke, and our country's a joke. So he's messed up here, right? Because of the Streis in effect. He didn't want people to talk about this, and instead they're talking about it.

And so now he is linked, perhaps forever, with the yacht cocaine thing. And- No, but I love it. How's it going to hurt him in America in 2019? I'll show you how it's going to hurt it. Let's go to the next graphic. I hope you can convince me. Let's go to the next graphic. cocaine prostitutes was trending with nearly 70,000 tweets posted by 10 a.m. this morning,

many of the tweets appeared to be used in a wide variety of contexts, but many of the most widely circulated tweets named Nunez or tagged his official Twitter account. A lot of them weren't about him. It's just about other Yacht cocaine prostitutes. Who knows? I hate when I'm trying to promote my podcast, Yacht cocaine prostitutes, and suddenly it's about Nunes. No, this is about me and my podcast.

Oh, my gosh. No, but again, okay, so let's say all of that's about him. How is it going to hurt him? Does it hurt his chance of getting reelected if he wants to someday or getting a job as a lobbyist someday or writing a book someday or giving speeches someday? How in any way could anything hurt anybody as long as a lot of people are talking about it? Well, okay, so you bring up a very Anna-like point, which is pessimistic and angry and, you know, it focuses on the injustice. American society and politics, and I get you. On any other given day, I would fall in your camp and I would agree with you.

And I do agree with you. But for the purpose of, I don't know, maybe maintaining our mental stability and some level of happiness, can we just dunk on him? Because he drew attention. You're right. He's a joke. He drew attention to a story that no one was paying attention to. And the fact that he's a professional victim, like he has made himself a professional victim.

He is spending time, energy resources. He's neglecting his own constituents by focusing on this non-issue and putting himself in this position of a victim who's been wronged. He hasn't been wronged. He's a man in a position of power. His constituents need to wake up and realize what he's doing, right? And more importantly, okay, what are the consequences for someone like Devin Nunes? The fact that he's upset about this, doesn't that give you a little bit of-

If he's upset, I am. Well, one thing that made me happy was in reading about this. So the most recent, the Yakto-Kine prostitutes, I saw that Devin Nunes' cow had tweeted about it. And in that, I got to see that because of his efforts to shut down the cow, the cow's Twitter account now has like 700,000 followers. It's one of the top five most followed cows in the world now. Why do we have that?

Why do we have the move? Hold on, hold on. Did you just say that it's- I was joking about that part, but yes, it's probably the most followed cow in the world. Right. That is fun. That's true. It's just like if I was, like for instance, if I was Jacob Wall, and I could push Devin Nunes

out of the way and I could be the one that the Yacht Cocaine Prostitutes is about. Would he not do that? If I was Candace Owens, would I want to be the Yacht Cocaine's Prostit's person? I would want to. Yeah. It's all gravy. They love the attention. But he is a joke, you're not wrong about that.

professional victim, like he has now made himself a man in a position of power who has been elected into office is putting himself in a position of an underprivileged, disadvantaged victim. And it's amazing, especially when you consider that the Republican Party has been pointing fingers at people who have dealt with injustice in the country as snowflakes. But who's the real snowflake? You're crying about Devin Nunes' cow on Twitter. I mean, and Devin Nunes' mom. And oftentimes I do think about how Devin Nunes would handle doing what we do, right?

Because it-criticism? Yes, because initially when we covered the story about the Twitter lawsuit, I brought up the fact that if I got a tweet from someone claiming to be Anna Casparian's cow, like I would be amused and then someone created that account. They did. Yeah, and I was amused. It was funny because the type of stuff we see on Twitter on a regular basis. is horrendous. It's way worse than anything that he has mentioned. Now look, there are defamation law.

So if he has been defamed by any given entity, then he has the right to go after them. But he has to prove damages, he has to prove that it's defamation. Proving defamation cases when it has to do with a public figure is a lot more difficult. So look, those laws exist, but what he's claiming is defamation is not in fact defamation. what he's claiming these articles said about him or wrote about him, isn't even what's in the article. So I want to give you a statement from McClatchy, a spokesperson says, quote, with the limited opportunity we have had to review this claim, it is wholly without merit and we stand behind

the strong reporting of the Fresno B. And again, I read it, and it's not what Nunes claims it is, which is amazing. Also, Liz Mayor, who is a GOP strategist, says the following, and she's named in this lawsuit. Free speech means I don't have to be nice to Devin Nunes on Twitter, so why is he suing me? And she also writes, it's vitally important that the entire nation understands what this lawsuit is really about. A sitting member of the U.S. government, specifically a congressman, is trying to stifle free speech, mine, yours, and every other Americans, by using litigation as a country.

to bully and intimidate. And that's absolutely true. Yes, she's not wrong. And the entire thing I think shows on the part of the people involved in it, a savvy understanding of how the media cycle works. So he says that he's been lied about. As you point out, first of all, there's no substance to it. You've read the article, they don't claim the things he says they claim.

But even if they did, like whether he can, he doesn't need to actually prove that they lied about him. He can go on Fox News. bring him on to talk about that. Many people will leave that segment thinking, oh, they lied about him. And if in six months the court case is thrown out, they're not even going to remember that it happened. But they are going to believe that Devin Nunes was the victim of the fake news media. Also, Fox News loves having this segment because in general, people leave thinking the media lies about Republicans and who cares if the court case gets thrown out. He throws

a ridiculous price tag on it to make people think, oh my God, it must be serious if he thinks he can get $150 million, of course, and he gets to get on. Think about how hard it would be to get on a cable news network because of a piece of legislation that you were proposing. Elizabeth Warren has a new bill every day. She doesn't get brought on MSNBC for that, but if she sued the onion, she probably would. No, you make a great point. And we are going to talk about some of Elizabeth Warren's proposals on the show today

in the second hour. She has some great solutions that I hope gained some momentum when it comes to affordable housing in America, but you're right. I mean, these types of stunts and these types of tactics do work. They get media attention specifically from Fox News, and they do allow him to position himself as some sort of aggrieved victim. Which is desperately what they want. That is what they want.

While complaining about victimhood the entire time. That's a good point. But what other thing that I want to bring up before we move on from the story is that his lawyers, if you think Devin Nunes is incompetent, wait till you hear what his lawyers. So his lawyers wanted to make the case that McClatchy or mayor, I can't remember exactly. Yeah, so they were accusing the GOP operative of using bold font when it came to the words Devin Cocaine Woman in the tweets, right? So the lawsuit includes a picture of the tweet showing three words bolded. The accompanying text reads, in her tweet, Mays chose to emphasize the words Woman, Devin,

and Cocaine. Okay, so here's what they did. They did a keyword search. And when you do a keyword search, the keywords are shown in bold, right? So Twitter doesn't have the option to make font or text bold. So this is what we're dealing with. These are lawyers. It's like an old person complaining, like, why do I keep getting ads for erectile dysfunction drugs?

It's like, that's not how technology works. All right, well, let's move on to other news. Oh, you were right, it is fun. Told you. It is fun. Told you. All right, we'll update on the Department of Homeland Security. Following the forced resignation of Kirsten Nielsen as the head of the Department of Homeland

Security, the New York Times is reporting that the Trump administration plans on firing or at least forcing out other individuals within the department. Government officials who asked not to be identified discussing personnel changes before before they were announced, said at least two to four more high ranking figures affiliated with Nielsen were expected to leave soon too. Now behind the scenes, as we've spoken about before, you have an immigration hardliner like Stephen Miller pushing the president to do away with people within the department that he views as hindering Trump's policies or stopping Trump's policies on immigration.

said they expect to see the departures of L. Francis Sisna, the head of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Kathy Neubel Koverick, one of the top deputies, or his top deputies, and John Mittnick, the department's general counsel and a senior member of Nielsen's leadership team. Also, the White House is pressing for the resignation of Claire Grady, the acting deputy secretary, who under law would normally fill in for Nielsen. So Trump did not want Claire to fill in for Nielsen. Trump has already chosen McAllenine, who we talked about yesterday.

And so this is interesting because of course you're going to get some worry from the left, but it appears that there are GOP lawmakers who are not happy with what Trump is doing. And they're very much concerned about the impact of Stephen Miller behind the scenes. But before we get to that, I just wanted to get your thoughts on this story, John. Yeah, look, in the case of any of these particular officials, I have no dog in any of these fights for any of them. I'm sure they were awful in their own way. I'm sure they're going to be replaced by somebody's even worse.

If they're replaced at all because Donald Trump's new MO is to just have acting officials in a lot of these positions. simpler for him. He doesn't have to actually showcase their ideologies in front of Congress. The people and our elected representatives don't get a say, so it works out very well for him. What bothers me more is what they'll be replaced with as a philosophy. So his issue with Nielsen and others were that they weren't tough enough. Well, they're the people that were throwing kids in cages.

So in terms of what they were doing, it seems pretty tough. That's not the word I would use, but I think he would. What he wants is for them to break the law. And Kirsta Nielsen apparently didn't want to do that. I'm not going to give her much more credit than that, she did throw the kids in cages. So he is throwing out these people who won't break the law to presumably be replaced by people who will or will at least allow him to. So your interpretation is correct.

And this story reminds me of an op-ed that was written by a woman who actually worked with Trump and the Trump Foundation for a very long. period of time, I apologize, I forget her name, but she talked about how Trump would, on a regular basis, expect workers to do things that were unlawful, and if they didn't carry out his demands, he would retaliate in some way or the other. And she recounted this one story where he wanted the braille taken out of the elevators at Trump Tower, which is illegal. You can't do that. You have to have that accessibility for people who are blind. And so when one of the workers pushed back on him for refusing to do that, he retaliated in

some way or the other, if I can remember the story correctly. But the whole point of that op-ed was to point to the fact that Trump on a regular basis expects the people around him to break laws. He has absolutely no interest in the rule of law, ensuring that he's doing the right thing. He wants people to do what he wants to do. And if they don't follow through, they pay the price. And I feel like at this point, people who surround him in his administration should be aware of that and they should stop pretending as if their position of power is like some permanent

thing. At some point, you're gonna cross Trump because he's gonna demand something of you that you just can't fulfill because it's illegal. Did we cover the story yesterday about him talking with the border officials in his trip to California and apparently telling them that if a judge tells you to let these people and tell them, no, there's no room, just don't do it. I think Jank mentioned it, yeah. Yeah, so, and then they had to later go to their superiors and say, like, is he really asking

us to break the law? And they were told, no, don't actually do that because you'll have personal liability. I think that it shows that his strategy is, look, I had two easy years where we had control of everything. And even then, the courts sometimes would stop, would oppose me. And now the Democrats are, they're really, you know, they're bothering me. And so I'm done with abiding by the law. I've already long ago bid goodbye to norms, traditions, and things like that.

Now the law as well, and in particular, whatever courts end up saying about my policies. And so, like if he's telling border officials in a public place where there's sources that could conceivably leak it, that they shouldn't abide by court decisions, I mean, what is he saying in conversations with Stephen Miller? When he gets to his new team up and running, and then they start, you know, family separation 2.0 or whatever, and a judge hopefully, fingers crossed it down, if we're that lucky, what is he going to stop doing it? I don't know. Why would we believe that at this point? Well, yeah, and you bring up a legitimate concern because there is, there is reporting indicating

that Trump wants to continue the child separation policy, and the GOP is starting to push back on that. So I'll give you an example. There's Senator John Cornyn, again, a Republican from Texas, And he says, quote, one thing that we all agree on now is families ought to be kept together as much as possible. Now, I want to note, there has been strong talk from congressional Republicans in the past. And then their talk usually fizzles out and they go ahead and support whatever Trump wants to do. So while I might give Senator Cornyn some credit now, talk is cheap, what are you gonna do to actually

put that talk into action and push back against Trump if he does continue on with this policy. Especially Cornyn who's gonna be up for reelection, he's not gonna turn against Donald Trump. Also, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rob John Johnson said he is concerned with a growing leadership void within the department tasked with addressing some of the most significant problems facing the nation. And that has been an issue, especially with the high turnover in the Trump administration. And then finally, I wanted to mention the head of Secret Service who was also recently fired. So he was fired, and I want to clarify something that we talked about yesterday, I mentioned

that he was fired in response to a woman, a Chinese woman, getting into Mar-a-Lago with malware. But that is not why he was pushed out. Apparently, Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff for the Trump administration, had talked to him before that, well before that and told him, let's start getting ready for you to leave and for a transition to happen. And so another interesting tidbit from the New York Times was that Trump on a regular basis would berate him. Trump was convinced that as an outsider, Alice was not popular among the agents. The president even made fun of the director's looks, calling him Dumbo because of his ears.

I mean, we have a child, we have a child in office. And I don't know what else to say about that. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. Okay. So- Wake me up in a couple of years. Actually, maybe not.

Make it like 20. It's such a pathetic time. I know. It's devastating. We got to take a break. But when we come back, we are going to do a deep dive into issues that Democrats and Republicans love to conspire on, and they're usually issues that have to do with fiscal policy. 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 delves 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 unlearn 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. We'll be right back. Oh, hi, Dare.

Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. Member comments. We have Gabby Marita, who's very excited about the display of hosts today. She says yes. Anna White? She said, yes. Oh, nice. I absolutely love it when Anna gets to host the show.

Thank you. First hour, Johnny Ty, and hour two with Francesca and Maita. I don't know how this lineup could get better. Didn't people, didn't someone just request that? Oh, I think it was also Ida as a four person power panel. Yeah, but like they requested that like a day ago and they almost got the whole thing. Yeah, we have a pretty, I love, I love our hosts. I just do.

The neon donkey says, wow, Nunez is horribly desperate to stay relevant. Who's funding this tool's frivolous lawsuits? You know, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, if he's spending his own money on this, great, awesome. I still, I don't want to totally reopen it. I don't see how this hurts it at all. Nothing hurts anybody except that they're not talking about you.

That is it. All right, John's still working to get me in a bad mood. No, I'm not. I'm not. Tamara 517 says, is Devin Nunes in need of money? Herkel says, so if they are going to go after people who lie slash slander on Twitter, Does that include Trump? Which is a great point.

I mean, he lies in, I believe, almost every tweet. Yeah. He said that Obama wiretapped his cell phone. Remember that? Yes, I do. He accused the former president of committing a crime against him, and then just went away. He claimed that 3 million undocumented immigrants in America voted for Hillary Clinton. I mean.

Nothing matters. And I also want to mention one other thing to you, NordVPN. You know, there was no transition. It was so dramatic. I know, I just, we gotta go, we gotta go. Okay, so let's talk about NordVPN and porn, because that's the thing. Did you guys know that there are lawmakers here in the United States who want to make it difficult for people to view porn? Now this has been an ongoing thing in American politics, and so one way that they're trying to do this is by

proposing a bill that would charge people online $20 to access porn each time they want to access porn. But one way, if this passes, which I highly doubt it will, but if it does, here's the good news, you have the option of using a VPN, like Nord, Nord VPN. And what it does is it can totally mislead people about where you're located. So you could be in the United States, but you could use your VPN and make it seem like you're actually in Australia or whatever, wherever you want to be. So yeah, use the URL that you see on the screen right there, NordvPN.com slash

TYT, and you get a giant discount, 75% off for three years and you get the first month free. All right. Do they really want to do $20 a time? I mean, I don't think that bill is going to pass. That's an insane bill. But- No. By the way, like, isn't it kind of creepy that there are lawmakers in America right now who are sitting around thinking about our porn viewing habits?

That's true. Like how about you fix other issues that need fixing? You could raise a lot of money. Oh, you wanna know how we're gonna pay for the Green New Deal? Are you kidding me? People will find a way. People will find a way to get that porn for free. You're crazy.

Okay. Moving on to other news stories. Congressional Democrats are looking to investigate pharmaceutical companies to figure out what it is that leads them to price drugs at insane. highly high prices. And Representative Elijah Cummings happens to be one of the Democrats in Congress who is leading the charge on this very issue. Now here's where things get a little tricky.

Congressional Republicans are encouraging these pharmaceutical companies to avoid cooperating with any type of request coming from Democrats or any type of investigation that they might pursue. So let me give you the details on who's going after the Congressional Democrats on this. Remember, congressional Democrats in this case are doing the right thing. They want to ensure that pharmaceutical drug prices aren't priced at, you know, given prices that Americans can't afford. So Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent letters to a dozen CEOs of major

drug companies warning that information they provide to the committee could be leading to to the public by Democrat or Democratic chair Elijah Cummings in an effort to tank their stock prices. So they're going to the pharmaceutical company saying do not cooperate because if you do cooperate, there is some chance that Elijah Cummings, we don't have any evidence of this, I mean, we're just speculating, but there is some chance that he might leak information to the public that could negatively impact your stock prices. First of all, for the sake of this conversation, let's just give them the

argument and pretend as if there is some merit behind that argument. The Cummings would make it. Which by the way, there isn't, they're completely speculating and there's no reason to believe this argument. But let's say, we give them that argument and say that they're not lying, okay, so what? So what? So you're saying that the stock prices of pharmaceutical companies are much more important than ensuring that the American people have access to affordable drugs they need?

You're disgusting, okay? If you believe in that argument, you're the problem. You should not be representing the American people. Let me give you more details. In their letters, representatives Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, these are the Republicans that we should be looking at to replace with people who actually want to represent the best interests of Americans, just putting their names out there. Leaders of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus write that Cummings is seeking

sensitive information that could likely harm the competitiveness of your country. company, if disclosed publicly. So that's what they're alleging. And my favorite part about all of this is at some point in their letter, they say, like, we're not trying to speculate or anything, we're not trying to, but that's exactly what they're doing. They then accused Cummings of releasing cherry-picked, I'm sorry, they then accused Cummings of releasing cherry-picked excerpts from a highly sensitive closed-door interview conducted in

an investigation into White House security clearances. So John, jump in. Yeah, so I don't know if they leaked anything from that. It's not directly related to this, but whatever. What I think is most interesting about this, first of all, you're right, they are siding with the pharmaceutical companies rather than the people who actually are going to have to purchase these products, which implies that they believe that their electoral future is better secured by having those CEOs on their side than the actual voters, many of whom are going to

have to buy this medication. But what I actually love about this is that there seems to be agreement. Like we didn't see the reply from the pharmaceutical companies, but I mean, they put Jordan and Meadows there to represent their interests. And Jordan and Meadows seem to believe that if people know what these companies are charging, that by its very nature will tank their stock prices. And I think that that's amazing. It is. You should price your products at a level where If people knew the price, your company wouldn't go under, I think. Yeah, and so, look, the reason why this story is so important, look, there are a number of issues where you have Democrats and Republicans working together against the best interests

of Americans. But in this case, congressional Democrats, led by Representative Elijah Cummings, are doing the right thing. They're trying to figure out why it is that Americans pay so much more for these drugs. They wanna do something to stop this type of greed coming from the drug companies. They wanna do this investigation, they wanna have these hearings. And then you have Republicans fighting tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. So again, they are not looking for the best interests of Americans.

Jim Jordan and Meadows, they are not looking out for their constituents. They're not looking out to ensure that we have access to affordable pharmaceutical drugs. They're looking out for the best interests of these drug companies. They want to make sure that their stock value remains high. Yeah, yeah, and I hope that you're right that in the end, Elijah Cummings and the others would actually support legislation that would help to bring down these prices. As of right now, we're not even there. This is just transparency, this is just disclosure, finding out some basic information.

And even that is unacceptable to these companies and their chosen champions in Congress. Now, throughout this story, I've implied that both Jordan and Meadows are lying about the intentions of Representative Cummings. And I have a good reason to believe that, and I'll give you one example. So for instance, the letter that they wrote to the pharmaceutical company quotes Cummings as saying of his drug team, if you follow the headlines, we have already seen the impact they have had on stock prices with regard to drugs. I mean, it has been astronomical.

The letter omits, though, the rest of the sentence where Cummings says saving the taxpayer's money. In fact, we have the full context of the video for you right now. So let's take a look. The waste fraud and abuse is significant because we are saving a lot of money. A lot of people, we have three people, congressmen, on myself. I call them the drug team. And what they deal with is the high price of prescription drugs. If you follow headlines, we've already seen the impact that they have had.

The three people, three people have had on stock prices with regard to drugs. I mean, it's been astronomical, saving the taxpayers money. Yeah, but that's saving the taxpayers. Why would that be convincing to them? Well, why would they, the only reason why they would omit that part of the sentence is because what Elijah Cummings is trying to do is saving the taxpayers money and Jim Jordan and you know, Representative Meadows have no interest in revealing that to people. They love to fearmonger, they love to make it appear as if they're the ones who are looking

out for Americans and their best interests, but that is never the case. This is the worst kind of obstruction. This is encouraging corporations and pharmaceutical companies to avoid cooperating with congressional lawmakers. It's out of control. And this should be a huge story that every media organization talks about as if it's the Mueller investigation, right? Like this is what everyone should be talking about because this is the kind of stuff

that actually works against us on a regular basis, it happens on a regular basis. But it barely gets any attention. Well, and thankfully you have people like Bernie Sanders. He has a plan to bring down these prices. I had Representative Jamie Raskin on the Damage Report to talk about it, to bring them down to the same price as the drugs are offered by the same companies in countries in Europe, for instance. And those sorts of plans are received as if they're radical.

I mean, that's not what's radical. Radical is like a regular person sees this interaction between Cummings and the people who are there just to protect the pharmaceutical companies. That leads one to wonder, why are profit-seeking companies setting the prices for these life-saving medications? Why are they getting to determine the prices in the first place? It's insane. It's obviously resulting in fewer people having access to this medication.

It's obviously resulting in worse health care outcomes and deaths as well. Bernie Sanders, pitched as a radical, is very much a moderate on this issue. A fundamental transformation of that entire industry, that's a little bit more radical. And if people don't get the more moderate result, I think that a lot of people are going to start to be more curious about the more radical forms. I would love that. Maybe we'll see that. Yeah.

All right, well, we gotta take a break. When we come back, we will get to the story that I had promised earlier. There are some issues where Democrats and Republicans are working together against our best interests. I'll give you that story and more when we return. 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.

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If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at tyt.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. Hey guys, welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. I want to tell you a little bit about YouTube membership, because it is a way for you to get an enhanced experience on YouTube. So, for instance, there are host emojis, which I finally got a chance.

to take a look at. And they're cool, they're pretty cool. And also you get to take part in the chat without all the trolls involved unless the trolls also buy YouTube membership for, I believe it's about five bucks. Which when they, when trolls pay to get in our comments, that triggers me a lot. So they shouldn't do that. Yeah, me too. I get triggered.

It's really bad. And I cry liberal tears, so don't do that. Don't pay. It really hurts my feelings when trolls pay to support the show. the show to troll us. I hope they don't do that. So please don't do that. Anyway, so if you're interested in joining, you will see a little join button right next

to our videos or right underneath them. So it's right there, you can see it, red arrow. Just click on that, go through the process, and yeah, you can become a member. So it's cool. It's just an enhanced way of being a Twitter user and you can interact in a different way. Also, I want to read a few TYT lives, but while I look for some TYT lives, John, why don't you tell everybody where they can find the show that you do? Oh, well, I do shows.

One of them is the damage report, you should watch it. You should watch it every morning, actually, because it's live one hour every morning. It's 10 to 11 hour time, and it's whatever your time, we're Pacific. What are you? What do you like? Eastern? You like Mountain, Central maybe? Okay, well, you can figure it out.

There's Google it, and you can figure it out. No, it's a fun show, we break down the news, we have a couple of guests on, today we had an author on who was talking about the new wave of conspiracy theorists, which are basically people who talk about conspiracies but don't have any theories, which was fun. And we had one of the organizers who helped write the Green New Deal for Alexandria Acosta Cortez was on to break down the Green New Deal and how it's going to help to shape the Democratic primary going forward. And we just had a lot of fun.

We talked about news from around the world today. It's a fun show. You should check it out. YouTube.com slash the damage report, Facebook.com slash the damage report, TYT. It's confusing. Don't get it mixed up because it'll send you to porn. I'm kidding, it doesn't do that. But just you get the right one, you know, because it'll waste a couple seconds.

Okay, John, stop talking. Okay. Oh, you good? I was buying time for you. Are you okay? I've been good. Our Twitter. Member comments.

Delora says, right out in the open, corruption continues. Who will stop them? Us, us, we have to stop them. So the corruption continues because voters have allowed it to continue. I think that it's time for us to advocate for ourselves and see what our lawmakers are up to. And I'm seeing way more political engagement today than ever before. So that's a good sign. But we can't rely on mainstream media to draw attention to these stories.

And I'm specifically referring to the pharmaceutical drug story that we spoke about in the last segment. We need to find independent sources of media. We need to look at our lawmakers and what they're voting on, how they're voting, right? Look into their record, who cares whether or not that person seems to be nice or is someone you'd want to have a beer with? I mean, that's old school politics. We're hopefully moving away from that and looking at the actions of our politicians rather than whatever cult of personality they've built.

status zero says Anna, lawmakers are not paid to get things done. I hear you, I mean, it seems like they're not getting things done because they haven't. And we need to hold them accountable. We need to make sure that we elect the right people. And as soon as we realize that we haven't, elect them out. And by the way, run, run. If you're not a public figure, awesome, go run. You're not a target-rich environment.

So you can go out there and represent your community the way that we're seeing. some of these freshman Democrats do in the House, and it's really inspiring. Denise says, what's radical is believing it's okay for people to die in the streets when they are citizens of the richest country in the world. Just my two cents. Couldn't agree more. All right, well, let's move on to some other news. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working together in order to ban the IRS from offering a free

tax-filing service. And the reason why they're doing this is because Intuit and TurboTax are spending a ton of money lobbying congressional leaders to avoid allowing the IRS from offering this service. So the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Representative Richard Neal, who's a Democrat from Massachusetts, passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by representatives John Lewis from Georgia, a Democrat, and Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania. So I'm mentioning the political affiliations here because this is a terrible, terrible piece

of legislation that, again, both Democrats and Republicans are in cahoots on because they are being funded by the very companies that want to continue making a profit from offering tax filing services. In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed

countries have, it would threaten the industry's profits. In fact, the industry has made that clear themselves, and I want to give you their statement. So there's the Free File Alliance, which is all of these companies grouping together and fighting to ban the IRS from doing this. They released a statement saying, developing software or other systems to facilitate tax return preparation may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future. Yeah, that's the idea.

It makes me so angry because there are some people, you have to file your taxes, there's no getting around that, and for some people it really is a financial burden to do so. It can get very expensive, especially if you're a freelancer and you have several 1099s. When you file your taxes, you usually end up paying way more because. of the fact that you have all those tax documents that they have to input into the system. Now, TurboTax, you know, we'll argue, well, we have a free filing service as well. In fact, they do advertise it to some extent, like this kind of ad. Free, free, free, free.

Free. That's right. TurboTax free is free. Free, free, free, free. But there is a very legitimate argument that what really happens is you sign on and you try to take advantage of the free services they offer, and it's nothing more than trying to upsell you and make you spend even more money on filing your taxes. And that is a legitimate concern because I've experienced it firsthand. So real quick, John, I just want to mention how much these companies have spent on lobbying and then I want to get your thoughts. So Intuit and H&R Block last year alone, poor to combine $6.6 million into lobbying related to the IRS filing deal and other issues. Neil, who became Ways and Means Chair this year after Democrats took control the House, received $16,000 in contributions from Intuit and H&R Block in the last two election cycles.

And how pathetic is that? I can't speak for any individual politician, but it's not crazy to think that they were influenced by this money they got. $16,000 is nothing, over two election cycles, that is nothing, how cheap can you be bought? Very cheap. And so look, I had also, I didn't realize that you were going to show some of that. So I looked into their donations and everything too. And it is true that they donate to Republicans and to Democrats, although not necessarily all types

of Democrats. There were Democrats, including AOC and Katie Hill, who were speaking out against this. They ended up supporting the bill because there are other things in the bill that are really good. And they said they weren't willing to jettison those just because this was in it. But I did notice two Democratic senators who had received the most money from Intuit specifically. I don't know about H&R Block. Can you guess either of them? Two Democrats? Obviously, this information is over the past few years, but. I don't know. I only mention it because it's kind of funny, but it's a mansion and Hyde Camp. Oh.

And the thing is, even for them, these are not congressmen, these are senators, it is a pathetically low amount of money. It is, it is. It doesn't take much. I think that's an important takeaway from the story. Politicians can be bought at a very cheap price, and they are willing to sell out their constituents in some cases when it comes to issues like this. And this is, this might seem like a small issue, but for me, it's not.

It's indicative of a larger problem. So oftentimes when we criticize establishment Democrats, we'll have the establishment hit us back with, you're dividing the party, you know, you're problematic, but here's the thing. You guys are doing it to yourselves, right? I mean, no one's forcing you to work with Republicans on banning the IRS from offering a free tax filing service. You're doing it yourself because you decided to accept that money, and that money is more important to you than the American people.

And more important than being able to go to the American people and say, hey, look, when you're going to do your taxes, we've provided a free service for you. Now, there were a lot of high-valued lobbyists who were pushing against us, but we did it for you. That's what we did. They didn't value that as much as they valued $16,000. And it's such a pathetic amount of money because it's an issue that they don't think that people will actually pay attention to.

And unfortunately, they might be right. When really, I'm glad that we're covering this because it raises more fundamental questions like, why are we filing our taxes in the first place? I know some people need to. They've complicated investments, they own a lot of property, they work as independent contractors, whatever. There are people who have complicated returns. But for the vast majority of working Americans, the federal government already has all of

the information necessary to process all of this. There's no reason why we should have to be involved in it at all. So there's the money aspect, you know, the paying $50 or $100 or whatever you pay. I pay like $100 a year. My girlfriend gets her taxes done by a professional, she's responsible, she pays more. And there's also the time and the stress and so much of it can be automated. A lot of countries have automated returns for a wide range of simple returns that a lot of people have.

Bold ideas, John. They are bold. I never even consider that. They are bold. Why are the only things that are automated that like if I ever say a thing in front of Alexa, I'll get ads about it for the rest of my life. Why can't my signing up to vote or doing my taxes, why can't that be automated? Why don't we get anything from technology?

Yeah. Yeah. I like that point. Thank you. You should talk about that on damage report. I will. Where can people find damage report again? The internet.

Come on, John. YouTube.com slash the damage report. Okay, awesome. All right, thank you to John for hosting with me in hour one. In hour two, we're gonna get an awesome panel. Francesca Fioreontini is here. here, and so is Maita al-Hasson. Stick around because we have some awesome stories, including the House Judiciary Committee

and the hearing that they had on white nationalism in America, in addition to Elizabeth Warren's new proposal on affordable housing. Come 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 Podcast at Apple.com. I'm your host, Shank Heuger, and I'll see you soon.