The Young Turks - Don't Look Up

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Attorneys for the Indianapolis doctor who provided an abortion for a 10-year-old rape victim have taken the “first step” towards filing defamation proceedings against Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate activist who’s refused to disavow a racist group to which he once belonged, has won the Republican nomination to be Maryland’s next attorney general. The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill to codify the right to same-sex and interracial marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Hosts: John Iadarola, Jessica Burbank *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews 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. Welcome everyone to the Young Turks. Both Jenk and Anna are out, but hey, we're here. I'm John Adirola. Much more importantly, Jessica Burbank, how's it going? More importantly, John, yeah, I'm, I don't know, it's hard to have much self-esteem in 2022, plus I'm American, so that's a big drag. But anyway, you're pretty cool. What have you been up to recently? What have I been up to recently? A lot of hosting on the Young Turks, man.

It's a great place to be. Yeah. All over. And in fact, in the not too distant future, you're actually going to be leading some episodes of the damage poor. How exciting. That is true. I feel like a godmother that's been, been bestowed a life to take care of in your absence. Exactly. No, I'm very excited. I think that on those days, the damage report will reach peak MMT. That's going to be exciting. So everybody, stay tuned for that. But through the course of this episode, you have a lot to stay tuned for as well. I'm going to be leading us through the first hour.

Jessica will be taking over for the second. And of course, we have a bonus episode coming up after that. But along the way, we're going to be talking about a lot, reproductive rights, climate change. Did you know much of the world is on fire, fire right now. We've got some right wingers being absolute dunderheads about that. And oh, Dr. Oz looking like a fool. So lots to look forward to everyone. With that said, though, Jessica, you ready to jump into our first topic? Let's do it. Okay, we in fact will. The doctor who provided an abortion for a 10 year old rape victim is now suing the attorney general of Indiana for defaming her and her reputation as Todd Rokita.

had, as the story was coming out, immediately began attempting to downplay, implying the facts of the story were wrong or to the extent that they were right, that the doctor was the person we should be angry at. Take a look at an appearance he had on Fox News. Then we have this abortion activist acting as a doctor with a history of failing to report. So we're gathering the information, we're gathering the evidence as we speak, and we're going to to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure. If she failed to report in Indiana, it's a crime for to not report to intentionally not report. Okay, so look, there's obviously a lot of issues with that video. The fact that the

attorney general finds out that this horrific act has happened, that it is compounded by the fact that the law there in Ohio is incredibly barbaric. The thing he's fired up about is supposedly issues with this doctor's reporting of facts about the case about the timeline. That's the thing that he thinks needs to be investigated, not the actual crime itself, which created this situation, not the legislative action in Ohio that compounded that made it far worse that necessitated the 10 year old rape victim having to flee across state lines, just the doctor. And of course, it's even worse because he's not even right about the things he's attempting to distract you with. Just the next day,

Health officials in Indiana released a document contradicting Rokita's claim, which you saw there on Fox News, demonstrating that Caitlin Bernard, who's the doctor in this case, had reported the procedure on the 2nd of July. In that report, she said she'd provided a medication abortion to a 10-year-old abuse victim on June 30th, who was approximately six weeks pregnant, Indiana University Health, which employs the doctor, has also said it conducted a review and determined she had not violated any privacy laws. And so he immediately began defaming her, implying not only that she had committed some sort of legal act in this case, but that she had some sort of history of this. And so thus the lawsuit. In fact, her attorney sent a letter to him saying her client had suffered harm because of his public statements about her, of which you have now seen. Kathleen Delaney, the lawyer says statements that Dr. Bernard has a history of failing to report, which Mr. Rokita indicated would constitute a crime made in the absence of reasonable investigation or any investment. investigation whatsoever. Let's be clear, serve no legitimate law enforcement purpose. Given the current political atmosphere in the United States, Mr. Rokita's comments were

intended to heighten public condemnation of Dr. Bernard, who legally provided legitimate medical care. The lawyer saying intended there, of course, is that's what they think. And it seems like the clearest thing in the world, Jessica, that they were attempting to get people angry at this doctor. But also that that was just a tool of the larger effort to have have people not think about the fact that a 10 year old was forced to flee a state to deal with the product of the rape she had suffered, but that you should be angry about this doctor instead for some sort of bureaucratic thing. Right, absolutely. And this case is not unique. It's not like this anomaly that happened at a time when it was convenient for the left to take this story

and talk about it and make the case for why abortion is a necessary right. That's absolutely not Not the case, the right wants to make it seem that way, but in Ohio on average, someone under the age of 15 children have had abortions, 52 in a year, so one per week. That's a lot. This is something that occurs really frequently. They should do something to address that rather than criminalizing the doctor. It's absolutely insane the misfocus here, if they actually cared about children, if they actually cared about the right to life or the right to good quality life or the life after

it's been born, they would care a lot about those those children, but of course they're focusing the conversation on the doctor. Exactly. Yeah, you know, I'm glad that you cited that statistic too, that, you know, we are probably averaging about one case like this per week. Now, of course, this is, it's been more than a week since this story came out. And, you know, I get that the national news is not going to track down every story like this in the same way that they're not going to focus on every mass shooting. America is a country that is so fundamentally broken that it generates things that should dominate the national conversation far too often for it to be possible for them too. And yet I have to wonder who is the, you know, on average one person who has had to deal with a

situation like this because we can't forget that the fundamental problem is Ohio law and the laws of many states. This sort of case could have happened in, you know, a couple dozen states probably, it can still happen. The horror that we should feel coming out of this case, what was revealed by this tragedy, hasn't yet changed anything. It's still just as possible for it to happen. The only thing that's likely to have changed is the right might be a little bit less inclined to try to pretend that the story didn't exist. I believe that they're probably far more likely at this point to not engage with it at all. I don't think that they're going to even pick this up. They try to do their thing on Fox where they made it about something else.

And once the facts came out, they pivoted to talking about, you know, undocumented migration. But I think in the future, they're just not going to engage with this because they know it's, it's not a topic that they can win on. If people are thinking about the reality of the reproductive right situation in these states, it's never going to look good for them. Right. Yeah, it's not going to look good for them. But also, if you're the type of person who's defaming someone on national television, it's a great. thing that this doctor is suing. I think doctors that perform abortion should be more litigious in times like these when people are saying terrible things about them on television because the

settlement oftentimes in defamation lawsuits is money and the one thing members on the right care about especially the grifters that go on mainstream media from the right care about is money. This is the way you get at them. This is the way you make sure this doesn't happen again. Yeah. And you know, can we put up that B roll that we just had up for a second? Because I think there's a part of this that isn't yet a part of the story, but I would love for it to become a part if we could throw that up. You see Todd Rokita there, but you also see Jesse Waters. Jesse Waters was all over this thing. Like, sure, other people at Fox, the Laura Ingrams and stuff like that, they did try to fool you into thinking that this horror hadn't happened, that hadn't been made worse by choices made by generally elected Republican men. But Jesse Waters was there the whole time. Now, Maybe he was a bit more careful with his language. Maybe he didn't make the specific claims about lack of timely reporting like Todd Rokita did. But he definitely attempted to convince people that this story hadn't happened,

that it's not something you should worry about, that it was all being cooked up by abortion activists or whatever. And of course, it's at a time when Fox News is already facing multiple defamation lawsuits, generally from corporations that were involved in the 2020 election. And one would think they'd be a little bit more careful about that. As of right now, Jesse Waters isn't facing any sort of lawsuits or anything like that. As I said, maybe he's been more careful, but he was just as eager as Todd Rokita to

misinform his audience intentionally about this to use it for his own political ends. Yeah, and one last point on this, the congressional testimony from that anti-abortion activist or she said, well, in this case, it actually wouldn't be an abortion. The attorney general said, that in this case it was justified, but then he's on Fox News bashing the doctor. The right is really falling apart around this issue where there are so many cases where they see it's very clear that there's a reason why abortion is a medical procedure that is necessary and worth protecting and they just can't defend themselves. They're absolutely falling apart. It's insane to watch. Yeah, and that's one of the most telling bits of video that like

if it's justified, okay, you can do it, but it's no longer an abortion, But that just means they don't want to admit that they support abortions in some cases. That's it. The procedure is the same. It of course has the same name. It's such a weird, like people reveal themselves. They reveal their thought process when you press them. And they definitely did that. They know that their position isn't popular. Sure, it's popular amongst Fox News viewers on the right, Republican primary basis. But if they could have won this by convincing people, they would have done that. They wouldn't have set up a multi-decade scheme to pack the judiciary with Christian nationalist zealots. They know that nobody actually agrees.

They're certainly not enough to formulate a majority. And so anyway, look, I think the Democratic plan to talk about this a lot, not really do much, but make sure that people have it on their mind in advance of the midterms. That bothers me deeply because I think that if you are going to sell yourself as being a passionate defender of a set of rights, you should also be defending those rights, not just opining about it. But I think it's not a terrible campaign strategy. And it's going to be interesting to see going forward how the right is going to deal with this. I mean, we had the story coming out of Texas of the, you know, the woman who was forced to carry the dead fetus for two weeks. Like when you set up an absolutely inhumane legal structure as they have in regard

to reproductive rights, it is going to throw out unbearably cruel and horrific stories on a weekly basis, if not more. And we've already it's only been a couple of weeks that we've already experienced multiple of those. Right, yeah, not having Democrats do anything in the short term and not really telling us what their plan is in the long term either if we reelect them during the midterms. That's not a winning strategy. I'm sorry, but everyday voters are not listening to what the Democratic Party is saying every day. And so unless, you know, they actually take action. What people are looking to is them doing something in the meantime. There are a lot of things they can do. AOC has been a great advocate for all of the

things they could do in the meantime. They could build abortion clinics on federal lands. They could try again to codify Roe v. Wade into law. They could, you know, establish networks so that women can get access to abortion pills via the mail in states where, you know, abortion trigger laws have already gone into effect. But they're not really doing any of this. And instead we're getting a bunch of fundraising emails from Nancy Pelosi. This is not going to get people to go out and show up to vote. I think it's an effective strategy to say like, hey, we're on the right side of this issue. But unless like you said, you demonstrate that you're going to protect those values that you claim to have and protect those rights that are in line with your values,

your voters aren't going to show up for you. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, it opens up a possibility right now. So look, supposedly on some area, like I think in turn, we're going to be talking about, you know, codifying the the right to same sex marriage in a little bit. Schumer is saying that he's like working behind the scenes trying to get some Republicans on board or whatever. And I get that that's always the way that they're going to pursue this. And it might be on some issues like trying to get the Senate to vote to codify reproductive rights. They're probably not going to do that.

And so that provides an opportunity. I know that Democrats find the idea of forcing the right to actually filibuster to be unacceptable. They love the filibuster more than we love anything. And yet they don't want people to have to filibuster when they filibuster. But think about if they were to force it right now, knowing what we know about support for reproductive rights, put it up for a vote. And if the right wants to filibuster it, then have them actually do that, have them actually hold the floor for an hour and then a day and then a week and then the next three months if necessary. Have it be indisputable, a constant reminder of how out of step with the majority of the country

the right is. And honestly, do it because it's the right thing to do. But even if you don't have that in you if you're so soulless in a political sense, then do it for political pragmatism. Have the months between now and the midterm elections be that constant reminder, an indisputable reminder that the Republican Party doesn't give a damn about, I don't know, 150 million Americans and what happens to them, but they're not going to do that. They're going to try to like wheel and deal behind the scenes and if they can't make it happen, maybe they'll put it up for a vote once, it'll be filibustered in that they will just shut it down, and then we'll move on and that'll be it.

They're just so bad at the political side of this. Yeah, it's been a long time since Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz read me a bedtime story in 2013 when he was reading green eggs and ham when they actually had to filibuster when they didn't want things to go to a vote and they didn't want Obamacare to go to a vote. And so they had to get up on the mic and talk for hours and make fools of themselves. They did and that's exactly what they should be forced to do right now. And I get nervous because it seems like every time they have close to a margin or they have

a margin in the House and in the Senate, there are always conveniently the exact amount of votes they have the margin of people who are wavering on the issues of the substantive legislation that we're voting on. Right now it's Mansion and Cinema when we're talking about build back better. And when we're talking about Roe v. Wade, we have people like Henry Quayar. But it always feels like the Democrats are playing this game of maintaining the status quo and always ensuring that we have a few moderates that are willing, you know, to not vote so that legislation doesn't pass. And let's keep in mind, people like Nancy Pelosi are benefiting from the status quo. She has a ton of money in stock right now, really teetering on the line

of insider trading every single day with the stock holdings of her and her husband. It's just scary because they're benefiting from the way things are. They don't have, you know, a real inclination to make substantive change. That's really scary because even if we get those votes in the midterms, will anything happen? Exactly, yeah, the only thing I would add would be moderates. Yeah, because shipping, you know, 150 million people of their rights is hardly moderate, but they will always get, the media will provide them with the immense benefit of implying their position is naturally reasonable. Everyone else is a crazy idologue, the position they hold

politically, that's the only reasonable thing. By the way, before we move on, I just want to throw out a couple more things about this. So Caitlin Bernard, the doctor who performed this abortion is I think understandably concerned about what can happen when you're demonized by the right over this. So last year, she testified in a case involving abortion restrictions in Indiana. She said that she was forced to stop providing first trimester first trimester abortions at a clinic in South Bend. She did that after she was alerted by Planned Parenthood that a kidnapping threat had been made against her daughter and relayed to the FBI. So they were Again, the pro-life people were implying that they would kidnap and potentially murder her daughter.

By the way, the names of six abortion providers as well as their educational backgrounds and places of work were listed on the website of a group, an anti-abortion group called Right to Life Michiana in a section of the website titled local abortion threat. Her name was listed amongst other doctors there. And we know that the right periodically likes to threaten violence or bomb one of these clinics or try to burn them down or murder the doctors who are performing there. Again, the pro-life people like to murder these doctors. By the way, that particular group, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett had ties to it. So isn't that fun? They got one of their own on the Supreme Court and accomplished their goals that way.

Anyway, finally, on August 2nd, Kansas is going to be voting on a state constitutional amendment that would clarify that the state's bill of rights does not protect Kansansans right to an abortion. As it stands right now, the judicial interpretation is that it's does. This will not outlaw abortion there, but it is a prerequisite for them to outlaw abortion there. So stay tuned to the next couple of weeks to find out what happens in Kansas as well. I just don't understand Republicans conception of how our government works and democracy in this case because they're totally in favor of amending state constitutions. People, you know, who are elected to public office there can make a reasonable determination of how they should change the state constitution. What if we were to ever think about doing that at the

national level have the people who have been elected to to represent the population there make substantive changes it doesn't apply so why is it that at the state level this is an acceptable thing to do but to have popular policy at the national level isn't what is the mental disconnect that is happening there where that's okay I don't know I mean look there's a bunch of them so it's possible I'm forgetting things but I'm trying to think of like an amendment to the constitution that would be in their best interests like that they would be a fan of I mean look they love to talk about about the Second Amendment, but of course, when it was added, the clear text of it isn't

anything like the way they understand it now, let alone expanding the vote and things like that. Yeah, generally amending the Constitution has not worked well for the right. With that said, though, we do have to take the first break of the hour. Don't worry, we got a lot more coming up after this. In the chat right now, Sarah says John has no idea the bomb he threw into chat. And when I saw that, I thought, well, wait, I said many things in the social break. What do I, what do you mean? And then I saw I am sucks as jank and jessica equals burjank. Omega Shenron Dragon says Doc and Adrian, Dr. Rodrian Esquire.

So there's a lot of combinations you can do. I'm a little bit worried about what's going to happen. Anyway, okay, with that, more news? What do you think? More news? Yeah, I guess we should give more. Okay, in that case, let's jump into this. Oh, the homeless person's probably protected?

Yes, absolutely. Huh. If you were to go and try to move that or take that, You get arrested. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, apologies. We got a little mix up with the video.

Do we have the intro to K block? Let's go to it. Oh, you see, John, you're outside enjoying the sunshine. It's not too hot, is it? No, it's absolutely lovely. It's what, 20 degrees out here, it's perfect. Okay, so what you're seeing is a little bit of video from the UK. An anchor named Bev Turner decided that simply watching the movie Don't Look Up wasn't good enough.

We need to act it out in real life. So in advance of what has become an absolutely devastating heat wave, just said, look, you look like you're not having that bad of a time in this specific spot you're sitting right now. So is this really something that we should worry about? Well, that meteorologist feels like yes, it is actually something we should worry about. So take a look as they proceeded. Early next week, you can scrap 20 degrees. It could well be 40 degrees. I think there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of excess deaths early next week.

The charts that I can see in front of me are frightening. So we all like nice weather, but this will not be nice weather. This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days. It'll be brief, but it'll be brutal. So, you know, we can... So, John, I want us to be happy about the weather. And every single, I don't know whether something's happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.

Because all of the broadcasts, particularly on the BBC, every time I've turned on, anyone's talking about the weather, they're saying that there's going to be tons of fatalities. But haven't we always had hot weather, John? I mean, wasn't the 76, the summer of 76? That was as hot as this, wasn't it? at night. And no, indeed, it was not. You gotta love that. I mean, literally like we're meant to be happy about the weather is it's like an exact line out of don't look up. He, why is he a harbinger of doom? Because that's what he is here to harbing. I'm sure he would love to harbing all sorts of things, but he looks to the future and there's just doom. It's like

when people criticize me for filling the damage report with negative news. You think I want to do this? I wake up and I look around. I harbinge what we produce and so does he. And he predicted there 40 degrees, maybe from the point of view of Bev Turner. That was really, come on, it's not going to be that bad. No, temperatures in the UK breached 40 degrees Celsius. That's over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. For the first time ever on Tuesday, it is the hottest day on record in the UK. And I looked into it. The UK is not new. It's been around for a while. Now, she mentioned, 1976 that summer where they had a heat wave. Well, we can actually compare temperature anomalies from 1975 to 1979 to compare. Look, there are, you see some variation in temperature. That's about

zero to plus one degrees Celsius getting you from the white color to the yellow color. Now, if we jump ahead of 2021, you're gonna see somewhat of a difference, Bev. It's not great right now. And by the the like the top part of the map there isn't supposed to be the hottest generally. That's supposed to be the part with the polar bears and everything. But no, it is bad. That is why meteorologists tend to be a bit pessimistic because even their predictions, which you consider to be insane a week before they happen end up. Yeah, it's it's that bad. Record breaking heat, not just in the UK. It's happened in Japan and China over the past week or two as well but Jessica like he's he's there to provide accurate information he's

he's there to get people ready for this and then these hosts these news actors just won't allow it they they don't like the to be depressed I guess I'm not sure what their plan is what do they think is going to happen that they can keep lying about this until there's no need for news anymore because everyone is fighting each other for clean water and shelter like it's really insane to me that these people These people do the news every single day and they're just okay with saying this on national television. And actually this news channel is being held accountable, which is like the one ounce of good news in this story. So Great Britain news, G.B. News, where this interview happened

on, they're owned by another like Australian very wealthy person, kind of like Rupert Murdoch, but their name is like Angeloos and it's a Greek Australian person. But he's under hot water right now with the public. they started this campaign stop funding hate. And it's because he allows climate deniers on the news channel. He allows people to go on and say terrible things about transgender people. There's rampant racism on the news channel. And so they said, we want the advertisers to pull out. If you're an advertiser, we will boycott you unless you boycott GV News. And so 15 of their biggest advertisers have pulled out in the first four days of that boycott. So that's a piece of good news in all of this.

Wow, yeah, no, actual consequences. I mean, look, what she said was it's unacceptable, like you should, if you're going to be broadcasting to so many people, you should understand a little bit of what the climate conversation is about, but, you know, it wouldn't even hit like the top 20 worst things set on Fox in any given day and they can say whatever they want and there's no consequences whatsoever. So very different countries in two ways. One, they have consequences for saying insane things that also their country is, is on fire right now.

Anyway, it is really bad. I want to give people a little bit more of what that meteorologist had to say this time, I believe focusing on extreme weather events. We are seeing more and more records, more and more frequently and more severely. So, yeah, some people always hop back to the summer of 76, which was a freak event, 40-odd years ago, over 40 years ago. But heat waves are becoming more extreme. This is yet another one, which is coming down the tracks towards us.

And, you know, I don't think we should be too lighted, lighthearted about the fact that many are going to die early next week because of the heat. 40 degrees, the sort of temperature that this country, I'm afraid, just not geared up to cope with. And all the computer models are now in pretty much agreement that it is going to happen. And that is true. They were not capable of dealing with that. The literal infrastructure in terms of railroads, bridges, you know, the airport. They can't deal with this level of heat. And in fact, many people did die. Now, not specifically close enough for Bev Turner or not try to score points off of this. She ended up on Twitter saying

he wasn't wrong about UK not being geared up to cope. Trains, buses canceled, businesses closed, school told pupils to stay home. But we did not see hundreds or thousands dead. We did not, which is true. Yes, people died. Not hundreds or thousands, that is true. Except that thousands did die just like over the channel in Europe, very close by. And, you know, I mean, maybe the fact that it happened there not in the UK, maybe it'll never happen there. But this is, I think, a learning opportunity. If you have to, as has been reported, wrap bridges in foil so that they won't crack, maybe you should start to worry. If the country isn't capable dealing with this heat of country like the UK that has, I think I read three people,

of the homes have air conditioning. Maybe this is something to prioritize. Maybe what people need is not you to put a smiley face on the heat wave, but to put pressure on politicians to do something about it. And I get it, glass houses, I live in the US and we've got, you know, Joe Mansion and everything. But I don't know, Jessica, I feel like the need to double down when you've been proven to be wrong is just it's all too common. Yeah, I don't understand what is going through these people. minds. Like I said, how can you expect to just report the news like the heat waves is this great time with tropical weather for people to enjoy and go to the beach and it's sunny and isn't that great. You look like you're having a great time out in the sun. He was so polite about saying,

you know, actually we can't be too lighthearted about this because it is very serious and we haven't seen temperatures as hot as these. I mean, just listen to what this expert is saying that's on the news channel and maybe go back and do some research afterwards and say like, okay, like, Thanks for your time. Thanks for coming on. But doubling down is just incredibly unhinged. And it goes to show that this news network is playing the role of Fox News in the UK a little bit, but not nearly as bad. Like you said, John, and they are already boycotting the advertisers or forcing the advertisers to boycott the news channel and not advertise on there. And the campaign is called Stop Funding Hate, whereas Fox News, Rupert Murdoch is an owner of

of Genie Energy Company and they regularly have climate deniers on that news channel. But in the UK, they get this this one hint of it, a fraction of what we see on Fox News, and they're all revolting. I think just the comparison there is pretty interesting. In the US, we're much more tolerant of misinformation and hate. 100%. I do agree with you, quite revolting though. Yeah, so many people died. And look, even after this, now we fast forward to we've seen, we've seen the deaths, people literally dropping dead in the street old people dying by the hundreds because the human body can't tolerate the conditions we're forcing it to go through wildfires all over spain to

Portugal wildfires everywhere today she tweets I'm on gb news and I'm angry at all this heat hyperbole it's still hyperbole the guy was proven right it happened like 1100 people died in just a couple countries let alone all of what else is going on around the world but no just Just double down. Why would you ever admit that you're wrong? Oh, by the way, I looked into her Twitter account. She's an anti-vaxxer. Oh, sorry, a skeptic. She's a vaccine skeptic and just wants to have a conversation. Look, again, as we've been saying, it might not be as bad as the version of her that exists on Fox News here. But it's the same sort of personality type. And being willing to admit when you're wrong, even when you being wrong, contributes to untold human suffering is just not a part of that type. Yeah. Unfortunately, oh, continue, sorry. Just that his response is, sorry, I can't be lighthearted about this because people will die. That says it all right there.

Yeah. Yeah, and in terms of what they'll do long term, look, they have been of all thing. You know, they used to deny that it was even happening. You saw a bit of that there. Then they moved to, okay, so things are heating up, but it's like natural cycles of the suns corona or whatever. Then they finally admit that no, that's not actually it. It's us. And then they go to having to be too expensive to do anything about it. Or is the onus really on us? Would we be able to do anything? Look, eventually it's going to be even more indisputable. And by that,

I don't mean that conditions are gonna get bad enough. They're bad enough right now. It's just not tenable. If you look at the youngest Republicans right now, polls asking them about what the federal government should do in regard to climate change, they're like 30 points more supportive of doing more to combat climate change than the oldest Republicans. My issue, My issue is going to be that within 10 or 20 years, they are going to be on a daily basis using these horrific extreme weather events and the generalized inability of our society to function to push their fascist agenda. Like if you think that they're anti-migrant, if they're xenophobic now, wait until the resource wars are sending tens of millions of people

streaming across all national boundaries. It is going to get real dark and climate change is going to be a big part of that. But John, if we do something about climate change, our good air is just going to go to China and we're going to get their bad air. So we can't do anything about climate change. Don't be ridiculous. If you missed it, I'm referencing Herschel Walker's speech recently where he said precisely that. 100%. He's going to be a senator. He has a bad air theory. God, I think he's been breathing bad air. There's got to be some explanation. I think all the football. in the helmet, the brain stuff, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, with that said, why don't we jump into this next story? The man you're seeing there could be the next The man you're seeing there could be the next attorney general of Maryland. He is also, by the way, a neo-confederate white nationalist. Isn't that fun? His name is Michael Perutka. He's a former county council member. And he beat his opponent, Jim Shalek, a former state and federal prosecutor.

Now in November, he's gonna go up against the Democrat. That's gonna be in this case, Anthony Brown. So who is he? Well, until 2014, he served on the board of League of the South, which just on name alone, you probably get a bit of an idea of what they're all about. It's a group which for years has explicitly called for the southern states to secede from the United States. At times, its rationale was explicitly racist. Its website at one point called for succession secession to save the South's Anglo-Celtic culture against cultural genocide from political correctness and immigration. The league is 100% against the federal government

and northern and coastal states. They say they're part of a materialist and anti-religious religious society that they call the empire. In recent years, it has increasingly embraced violence, criticized perceived Jewish power and warned black people that they would be defeated in a future race war. It's so interesting that coming out of a cultural tradition of the Confederacy, that you'd be that eager for another war that you've proven historically to be ill equipped for, but

that's what they're going with. Anyway, this individual, this guy Michael says he's still angry that Maryland was blocked from seceding during the civil war. He believes lawmakers should take a biblical worldview and apply it to civil law and government. And up until this point, he has refused to disavow the League of the South. He left the group a few years ago, but he won't actually denounce them now. And think about what how weird it is to hold a grudge about the fact that Maryland wasn't allowed to secede during the civil war. So they would have an opportunity to be on the losing

side. That's a weird hill to die on. As so many of his ideological compatriarch did during the Civil War. Jessica, what do you think? Yeah, I think this is exactly like you said during election coverage, not too long ago. I think it was last month where you talked about the death of democracy and how it's not going to be some cataclysmic event. It's not going to be dramatic. It's going to be slow, slowly will lose our voice. Our rights will be taken away.

I think our descent into fascism is going similarly where Republicans who are neo-fascists are are getting elected to public office at the local level in certain races where people aren't really looking at and one day we're going to wake up. And such a significant proportion of our elected officials are going to be this brand of white Christian neo-fascists who hold on to the ideals of the Confederacy. And it's very scary because the Democrats aren't acting like this is happening. Yes, the insurrection was a big flux event. But also we saw Donald Trump quietly appoint a lot of justice or judges to the courts that are now going to to rule in favor of them in many cases. The slow churn of overturning Roe v. Wade was a

decades long effort. And so I think it's exactly like you said about the death of democracy not too long ago. Yeah, yeah, it's one office at a time. And we were talking about the attorney general of Indiana going after a doctor for doing her legal and ethical obligation in helping that 10 year old who had been raped to get the abortion that she's so desperately needed. These are the offices that they're taking over. They're taking over school boards. They're taking over state secretaries of individual states and attorney generals as well. This guy, he thinks public education is a communist plot. Again, core part of fascism, you're not supposed to be curious, you're not supposed to learn, says laws protecting abortion and gay marriage are illegal

and unenforceable because they violate God's law and called the concept of the separation of church and state a great law. And I think that the stakes of a guy like this believing that are pretty clear, but I want to remind people of what the attorney general is supposed to do. They're the chief legal officer of the state. They're supposed to deal with what is legal, and he believes what is legal is whatever I in my deranged state think the creator of the universe would want based on my misreading of the Bible. So damn your state laws in your state constitution, damn the U.S. Constitution or federal law. I don't even think the federal government should exist.

It's the empire. I'm going to do whatever I think God thinks. And he will be in charge. He will be able to act on that. And I'm not like Maryland, you know, Maryland isn't California, but it ain't, it's not Mississippi. Like he is not going to be reflective whatsoever of the population there.

But he could possibly win. This is the danger, by the way, of the Democrats, Biden as their leader and the rest of the Democrats accomplishing so little. This guy should have no chance whatsoever in a normal election. And maybe in the end, he'll lose by 40 points. But do you really wanna roll the dice on this? Do you really want to have these be needlessly closer than they would otherwise be. Inaction produces these sorts of things.

I don't know, he's making communism sound pretty good. Sounds like having any functioning government at all is communism according to these guys. They've done a really effective job making it seem like any public good deliverance by our government is common. And that's terrifying because there are still so many voters who grew up during the Cold War era where they were like, communism is awful. And so if you say it's communism, it must be this awful thing. He's literally just talking about public education. Do you want to pay taxes in to a pool of resources and have those dollars go to fund schools that your children can go to and everyone in the neighborhood puts in their dollars to go create this school? I mean, we're really going to go back to the founding days of our country where neighborhoods have to reinvent public schools where all of the parents in the neighborhood pool their resources to develop public schools.

They're really pushing us to reinvent the wheel and just get rid of all government. Having any government at all is communism and we shouldn't do it. And instead we're going to live in a Christian corporate police state. And that will be the United States. Delightful. Well, we're going to take a short break. and take a look at what you have all been saying about our dissent into that corporate police state, but we'll be back in just a few.

Okay, so I'm looking at the comments. And I see this comment from Occam's taser says, I think Jessica is just jank with a Jessica mask on. to make it look like he is taking time off. I don't think so. You'll notice that Jessica hasn't once screamed at the top of her lungs, and I don't think that she's done an accent yet as like some sort of like British Royal or anything.

I'm gonna go, of course. Of course, you haven't dropped anything. I don't know, the evidence that just isn't there. But with that said, we do have news to get to. Perhaps she'll go on an epic, screamy rant in this. Let's jump into this one. I want to make sure that my husband, Phil, can visit me in the hospital. Should I have to go back again, like when I had a triple bypass a few years ago?

I want to make sure my husband has my earned benefits for retirement and Social Security. I want to make sure that my husband is taken care of just like your spouses are taken care of. If I was the entity on the other side of the aisle, I'd be more concerned when my own members accused it of having cocaine-fueled orgies than worrying about the morality of my marriage. I yield back. People understandably get fired up over the issue of marriage equality and Mark Pocan is no exception. Yeah, if if on your side of the aisle, members of your own caucus are talking about your drug fueled orgies, maybe get a lockdown on that situation before you try to stop the LGBTQ plus community from having access to the same rights that other people have.

Thankfully, Mark Pocan side won and last night, the House passed legislation that would repeal the defense of marriage act and enshrine marriage equality into federal law. Notably, the House did that. We're not yet at the point where the Senate is taking it up, yet alone voted on it. We will return to that in a bit. I do want to talk though about the nature of the vote. It was 267 to 157, okay, which means that most Republicans voted against it. Also, the only people who voted against it were Republicans, but I believe 47 House Republicans join the Democrats which as I mentioned enshrines marriage equality also by the way codifies the right to interracial marriage so to some of you Republicans don't get any wise ideas we got out in front

of you on this one but anyway 47 Republicans joined the Democrats and yeah it's it's a minority of their party Jessica but you certainly wouldn't have expected that even just a few years ago what do you think I honestly would not have expected this a few years ago the the far right in the United States has been emboldened and it's about a lot more than just marriage equality because these people have been elected by communities that are okay with them being completely against gay marriage they they want to oppress people who are members of the LGBTQ plus community and so sure they're going to cast this vote against gay marriage but of course you know it's it's going to pass anyway regardless of how they voted but it just signals as to what life is

like for members of the LGBTQ communities in those districts that those representatives are coming from. It's a very hostile environment for them in the United States today. And it's terrifying that in 2022, we are fighting for the same rights that we have been fighting for for decades. It's insane. They're fighting fighting again. Like we're used to continuing to struggle to achieve the same thing we've been struggling for. Like, you know, because we never had single care health care or whatever. It's when you have to do it again that it almost hurts worse, like like knowing that you can legalize same sex marriage and then, oh, they might be coming for that actually in the same way with Roe v. Wade or you could outlaw assault weapons and then,

oh God, they bring it back. And it's that double dipping. Like some things shouldn't be rebooted and the destruction of people's rights I think I would include in that. But yeah, 47, I wouldn't have expected a few years ago. I'm gonna be completely honest. I wouldn't have I've expected it right now. I am actually shocked that so many Republicans would do this, not only because the whole Republican thing and they're awful, but also like what is the right been campaigning on for the past year and a half? Like sure, it's not all homophobia and transphobia.

They've also had their whole CRT thing. There's a lot of racism in there and there's quite a bit of misogyny, let's be clear, but there's so much of a focus on the daily demonization of not just segments of the LGBT Q Plus community, but individuals from it, like lives of TikTok is the most popular thing on the right because they want an endless stream of third grade lesbian teachers that they can personally attack. And so with that as the backdrop, having several dozen Republicans being willing to vote for this is actually pretty surprising. But that said, we've been talking about the history of this. I want to give people a bit of history because if you've started paying attention to politics

in the last few years, you may not know how fast this has moved, even on the Democratic side. Just a decade ago, Joe Biden got castigated for announcing his support for gay marriage before Obama, who at that point was the sitting president, had done his own. Because we need to be clear, Obama didn't come out in support of gay marriage until 2012, 10 years ago. That was just a couple of years before Donald Trump, you know, slid down that escalator. It took a long time. And a decade before that, Biden himself helped pass the defense of marriage act in the Senate. 116 Democrats supported it in the House, nearly as many Republicans as opposed the codification of marriage equality did now. That is about as big of a shift on an issue

of national import that I think that we've seen. I don't know what else. I don't know, Jessica, if you can come up with anything else, but that's about the biggest. Yeah, yeah, it's a big shift and it's the product of a lot of protesting and a lot of of rioting, like people forget that stonewall was a riot. This is something that people were fighting for in the streets for a very long time. And I think in the United States, we tend to, I don't know, turn our presidents into deities. Like Obama gave us, you know, gay marriage became legal under the Obama administration. And so we make him the hero, but Joe Biden came out for gay marriage before him. And also all of those people that were in the streets,

all of those people that were injured and lost their lives fighting for gay rights are the people who got us to this point. And so we can't really make, make a deity of Barack Obama and be like, he got us these rights, because it's really not what the history shows. And so again, to protect these rights, it's probably going to have to be the same thing. It's going to have to be people in the streets to protect those districts where we still have elected officials, you know, governing on behalf of the far right who doesn't want us to enjoy our rights. And that is very scary. It's almost like they say change should be a slow crawl, but instead it's it's a few steps forward and many steps back. And these days it kind of feels like Sisyphus rolling the big rock up the hill and then it rolls all the way back down and we have to start over again.

Yeah, you can tell the different, I guess, education backgrounds of us. She made the Sisyphus reference that I was going to reference Paula Abdul. But anyway, yes, it is in one form or another two steps forward, one step back. In any event, that was the House, we still need the Senate to actually pass it. Is that going to happen? I don't know, more than 20 GOP senators declined to stake out positions on the issue when an Axios reporter asked them about it. Marco Rubio said he's a no, he called it a stupid waste of time, which is fun for his many, many LGBTQ plus constituents that it's a stupid, your rights are a stupid waste of time.

Not a stupid waste of time, so I guess we'll just do it and get it over with. A stupid waste of time, that I will block at all costs. I will filibuster it for weeks. That's how much of a stupid waste of time it is to him. By the way, marriage equality polls at 68% in Florida. You know what that is for Marco Rubio? A liability. And so if you're Chuck Schumer, again, as we were talking about earlier in the show, why not make them filibuster this? Marriage equality nationally is it 71%. It is bad for a politician to stand against something so overwhelmingly positive. And it's not just him, by the way, David Dan tweeted out in Wisconsin, it's 73 to 26. Ron Johnson would vote no. Make him filibuster it. He's up for reelection. Do you want to defeat him or don't you? So whether

you force the filibuster to show how much you prioritize these rights and how you will defend these communities, do it for that reason. But if you can't do it for that reason, do it to take out Ron Johnson, do it to take out Marco Rubio. These are competitive races. You know, and so whether It's, you know, whichever it is, Dr. Oz, make him take a stand on this. Get out there and actually show people that these are issues you care about. Yeah, the fact that they care so much about gay marriage is honestly just creepy to me. As a member of the queer community, it's like why would the party of freedom, the party that wants everyone to exercise their rights and especially the libertarians, it's usually people

on the far right who have extreme views who are against gay marriage, the same people who talk about how important it is to have freedoms in our country. It is insane to me. This is the most intimate aspects of someone's life. And really at the end of the day, all it's about is these people don't look like me. They don't abide by the same traditions as me and therefore I reject their way of life. And I don't want them to be able to practice it in the same country as me because I value my privilege so much that I don't even want to look at it. Yeah, 100%. Do we have time?

Sharia? What do you think? Quickly? I think so, it'll be fun. We need fun. Come on, let me be like the UK reporter. Why can't the news be happy sometimes? Okay, let's talk about this then. John Federman has been absolutely destroying Dr. Oz when it comes to the war of the memes,

just shredding him in social media, making him look like a laughing stock. Now he's getting an assist by the fact that Dr. Oz loves to do that himself. He loves to be humiliated. It's a kink, don't shame it. But anyway, in response to this, Dr. Oz has decided, you know what? I can meme too take a load of this fetterman and so he tweeted out Bernie Sanders and John Fetterman even they can't tell themselves apart. His Bernie Sanders would end the filibuster and so would John Fetterman burned. Ooh call call the burn the the the trauma award for that you got of all exactly you posted it on Twitter where Bernie Sanders kind of popular generally. Second of all, you know what's not popular right now? I would argue the filibuster.

Like, I think that people want politicians who are what like this is doing like work for Federman. I think people should know that he would be vote to get rid of the filibuster. So that's what you got. But that's not all he has. I mean, look, and by the way, Nina Turner ratioed him by just asking, okay. I love that. Nina Turner. Oh my God, this guy loves being humiliated. So then he tweeted out this. I guess like the Spider-Man thing's not good enough. He wants to make sure that you know that Federman and Bernie Sanders are best friends. But like, what point are you even making here? I don't know, I don't know, but he got ratioed again. This time by John Federman who responded with this, graphic design is my passion. That's just terrible. I mean, Jessica, you're one of the youths.

You speak meme. Why can't, why can't Oz get it together in this area? That's a great question. I think fundamentally the right, I cannot meme. I don't know if he's running that account. I want to know who is running that account. Is it an intern? Is it Dr. Oz on his phone? Just like asking family members, like can you help me make a meme? It's like the wizard of Oz. And behind the curtain is just like a dude who can't meme. I don't know who's behind the curtain of the doctor Oz Twitter account, but it's someone who cannot mean. Yeah, if the analogy is about memes, then behind the curtain is the dog with the goggles trying to do science. But he's ill equipped for this. task. Anyway, by the way, Jason Selvick, who's been on the network before, he posted this, I got my picture taken with a tourist who is visiting Pennsylvania. I just love, I love the New Jersey stuff for him. He can't run away from it. Here is the thing though, this is all fun in games with the memes, but the state of the race for Dr. Oz, not going so well. His Q2 fundraising numbers are in and let's see. Fetterman ended up having 5.5 million.

in his campaign account, he raised $11 million in that one quarter over the same period of time to that $11 million from Federman, Oz raised $1.7 million. Now, he lent his campaign $3.2 million. He's overall lent it more than $14 million. He is having to drain his own bank account just to try to reach parity with Federman who's raising money from regular people. It turns out that people in Pennsylvania will donate to politicians who actually live there. But anyway, this is not a thing of just Federman and Oz. It's apparently actually being replicated around the country when you look at small dollar donors. In the 10 most competitive Senate races, the Democrats are outraising their Republicans by more than $75 million. Only one in those top 10 is beating his Democratic

competition. That is Ron Johnson. But at least in that case, it's narrow. When you look at some of these others, it ain't narrow at all. Mark Kelly has raised $23 million. His three potential GOP challengers together have brought in $2 million. And then when you look at Georgia, Herschel Walker has raised $8 million. That is, that's just something that merits thinking about for a long time. But Raphael Warnock has raised $14 million. Marco Rubio has raised 12.7, but his Democratic challenger Val Demings has nearly doubled that in small dollar donations. And so, you know, there's a lot of things that the Democrats are doing wrong.

But in terms of being able to fundraise or at least getting support from people, Jessica, so far they're doing a pretty job there. Yeah, I mean, they have so much money. They can't hire an intern who's a Gen Zier who can just make some memes, man. They're not using their money very well. I don't know. But yeah, it's concerning. I do think that, you know, what wins races is advertisements unfortunately and that's what a lot of the money goes. to and in big dollar campaigns, mailers, things like that.

But I do know that John Federman is getting a decent amount of phone bankers from people who see these memes on the internet. I've seen people who said I went to a John Federman phone bank after seeing these memes. And so hopefully that bolsters their grassroots effort because we have to believe that organized people can be organized money. I would like to believe that. And let's hope that's the case. And these people don't get in office.

But we do know that you can buy elections in the United States. It's happened before and it will happen again. yeah 100% we will be watching for now though that's the end of the first hour don't go anywhere when we come back jessica's going to be taking the reins after this and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.