The Young Turks - Double Trouble

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Last night’s Pennsylvania Debate between Dr. Oz and John Fetterman was a huge mess for so many reasons. Donald Trump straight up told Blake Masters he has to run on election denial to win. Pfizer has planned to sell its COVID-19 vaccine at a 10,000% markup price next year. The United States report card shows the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the American Education System. Host: John Iadarola, Brett Erlich 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. Woo! It's up! Welcome one and all to The Young Turks with me, John Irula, and Brad Ehrlich. You know what? John and I were just gabbing like a bunch of old friends, and we looked up and the show was starting.

That's how well we get along, you and I, John. Yeah, it's like there's not like an actual audience here, obviously. You have to sort of remind yourself that theoretically people are watching you. Yep. But anyway, we're here. It's admittedly a bit of a weird show. When was the last time we did an hour together in person together? The only reason I'm here, John, is because I thought it would bring you joy.

I'm feeling pretty good, actually. Pretty good? I mean, you know, let's not go crazy. But okay. I drove like an hour. Thank you. Hey, it takes me a while to get here too. Anyway, I'm very glad to be here, and I'm even happier that you are here.

Jokes aside, Adrian Lawrence is going to be leading the second hour, which is very exciting as well. And we do have a lot to talk about in this hour, not only recapping the Oz Fetterman debate last night, which I know you watched and just thought was great for all parties concerned. We're going to be talking about proud boys and drug price hikes and a little bit of breaking news, which we're going to turn to in just a second. But if you're joining us now, please hit the like button. Let people know that the stream is live. And you want to do this thing? Yes. I was going to say Anna is out sick today. She'll be back soon. Okay, yes, she is. Hopefully she'll be back soon. Hopefully she's just feeling better. But with that, the news goes on and so must we. Herschel Walker is facing an accusation that he pressured a woman to have an

abortion and paid for it. Don't check the date on this video. This is live. This is another woman who is saying that now. She's being identified only as Jane Doe right now, being represented by obviously famed attorney Gloria Alred. And we have a number of different bits of audio of the one talking about the experience that she had with Herschel Walker back in 1993. Here's the first bit. Herschel Walker says he is against women having abortions, but he pressured me to have one. She's doing a pretty good job of holding herself together as she begins to tell her story. But the actual experience, based on what she has to tell us, was pretty rough.

Here's her describing it. I went to a clinic in Dallas, but I simply couldn't go through with it. I left the clinic in tears. When I told Herschel what had happened, he was upset and said that he was going to go back with me to the clinic the next day for me to have the abortion. He then drove me to the clinic the following day and waited for hours in the parking lot until I came out. He then drove me to get medications and supplies as prescribed and then drove.

and then drove me home. I was devastated because I felt that I had been pressured into having an abortion. After the abortion, I felt that Herschel began distancing himself from me. I fled Dallas within days after the abortion and did not go back to even visit for the next 15 years because I was so traumatized. about what Herschel had put me through. Now, of course, at this point, these are allegations. It's impossible for us to say exactly what happened in their relationship. But she is saying the reason she is now coming out with her story is because she saw

Walker denying the first set of allegations related to an abortion. And she says particularly, I saw him state that the woman's claims were not true because he never signed any cards using the letter H. I knew that was not true because he had often signed letters to me using H. And so she apparently knew that the woman's story was likely true in that case, but says she wants to stay anonymous, fearing reprisals. We'll talk a little bit about the anonymity, but look, there was sort of a concern floating around that considering everything else about this campaign, it seemed unlikely that the first woman

would be the only woman. We can't say for sure that this woman, again, just allegations, will be the only other woman, but it is now too. I'm at a decision point right now where I have to decide whether I'm going to take this with the seriousness it deserves or if I'm going to joke about it, because it's so absurd. The idea that anyone in America has not caught on to the fact that Republican politicians say that they're advocating for stuff that their constituents want while living up to that example, that is a ridiculous thing to think. Herschel Walker is such a walking parody of Republican hypocrisy where they, at this point, you thought Roy Moore was the massive extent that they would go to.

But they have Herschel Walker now who can't even hold down a day job like Roy Moore. he goes out and he doesn't put it he can't he has no excuse for not putting a sentence together and not only that but he has obviously according to what I've seen and the conclusion I personally myself have drawn he has driven women to go get abortions and then later turned around and said I am going to outlaw abortions altogether why as they put you know put your money where your mouth is walk the walk walk walker and volunteer to go to jail because that is what your constituents want. They see it as murder. You then, by their definition, are a murderer. You should be at the mercy of the people in your state, according to what your plan is for the

future of America. And you should go to jail and potentially be put to death because you have committed murder multiple times. By your people's definition, Herschel Walker, you're a serial killer. Yep. Well, by his people's definition and also by the definition that he at least wants his base to believe that he holds. Remember, he doesn't believe that there should be any exceptions. Now, I know that, like, people are throwing that around against literally every candidate. And I get it, some of the candidates who say they support exceptions would vote in favor of bills that didn't have exceptions. But he doesn't support any exceptions. Like, that is what he says. And there's, so there's no exception for incest, no exception for

rape. Obviously, no exception for, I'm a football player. I don't really feel like it. I think that that probably wouldn't be one of the exceptions as well. And this isn't, like, you're judging him based on what he says, what his side says. We don't believe that he necessarily did anything wrong. I mean, maybe ethically, based on what she's saying, it appears to have gone just beyond him expressing an interest in not having a child. He seems to have been very much pressuring her. That maybe goes beyond what most people would be comfortable with. But if he was just honest about all of this and would give leeway to other people that he gave to himself, then we wouldn't have any problem with this.

This wouldn't be a scandal for him. And we could instead focus on the 100 other things that make him wholly unqualified for this position. But this is the life that he says, like there's the life he says you should lead. And then there's the life that he has actually led. and he can talk about being bathed in the blood of Jesus Christ, I feel like it's not up to you at the end of the day whether you've redeemed yourself. I don't think that's how Christianity is supposed to work, that you just say you're good now. It's so bad.

I mean, the golden rule to make it particularly Jesusy is treat others the way you would want to be treated. Come to our side, we do that. We got cookies. Like, you come over, you get to be just a garden variety crappy dude where you know. knock a girl up, you say you love her. You say, I think for both of us, I think I'll stay with you, but we got to get an abortion, then you pay for her abortion, and then you leave her. You get to be precisely that horrible. Under the law, you're fine. Because we know that it's not just a standard for me and a different standard for everyone else. Worse, what Herschel Walker's doing is decidedly

elitist and anti-populist. He is put himself because he can run good and his pals with Donald Trump, Now he is in the inner circle of people who are allowed to do it. And what's frustrating is that, but only that, but the people who are willing to give him a pass so that they can make other people responsible for taking the same actions that their leader that they want to vote for has taken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And along the way, you're totally right about being so at least. I also, we can't say to what extent it's honestly elitist or he's completely lying about this just because he wants to be in the inner circle, I don't, to me, it doesn't really matter, which it is. I would think that if you were a devoted Christian,

you'd care about the difference between those two things. I have no idea if he actually thinks that abortion is wrong now. Maybe he changed his mind after the multiple abortions he pressured women to have. I don't know, maybe he was hit in the head enough times that eventually he's the switch flipped for that. I don't know. But I do know he's a massive hypocrite. Even if it It turned out somehow that this woman was lying, and I'm going to guess that Gloria Olive Red probably looked into it a little bit. They have bits of evidence, by the way. You can see, we're not going to show you the videos for literally everything, but they have

voicemails supposedly from Herschel Walker. You can see a shot of Gloria Al Red playing that, and it certainly sounds like him. They have a photo of Herschel Walker in a bed in Jane Doe's hotel room, which again by itself doesn't necessarily prove that he pressured her to have an abortion. been taken from any number of different women he probably doesn't remember, but they do appear to as with the first woman have some documentation. That said, why don't we turn now to the response? Only seems fair, so we're going to jump ahead actually to video four. Whenever you're ready, let's go to that.

I'm going to just say right now, you know, guys, I'm done with this foolishness. I've already told people this is a lie and I'm not going to entertain the continued security a lie alone. And I also want to let you know I didn't kill JFK either. And right now they said, and why not he got crushed at that debate. Now the Democrats are doing say whatever they can to win this fight to win this seat. But on with them to know, they don't know Hershey Walker. They don't know that I'm from right here, Georgia, and I'm going to win this seat.

Right there, Hershaw Walker has the confidence of a man who doesn't necessarily know much, but he knows who he's trying to appeal to, and he knows how little they actually care about the things they purport to care the most about. This is now two women that say that he pressured them to have an abortion, which in their eyes is murder. They didn't care about the first. They didn't care about the documentation, the check, and the letter, and all. of all of that. The fact that this Jane Doe is anonymous, makes it very easy for them to brush

away the entire thing. But I got news for you, I'll spoil the second season. Were she to reveal herself and were she to have a video that she shot on mini DV of their whole trip to the abortion clinic, if he were to have sat in the viewing gallery for it, they wouldn't care, they wouldn't care. That's why he didn't have to really defend himself. He called it foolishnish, I think he said. He didn't even pronounce the word right. He brushed it aside. It's condescending. He's going to win. He's Herschel Walker. That's it. Why would you say more when no one who's going to be voting for you demands it? It's so ridiculous. Speaking of the viewing gallery, like, where are they doing that statement? Where were they shooting that? You know what they

do? This is, this is even bigger of an insult than him coming up there and saying, like, they're not going to send me to jail for being a murderer. He's also doing. it in front of a freeway. Where are you? You're doing it intentionally so you have background noise so that people won't be able to use that video. Where even are you? Herschel Walker for Senate is at the bottom of an embankment. It's so ridiculous. And on the other end of it, you have a reverend, a well-respected guy who already is doing the job great, Raphael Warnock. And on the other end of it, you've got Herschel Walker who's sitting there, like trying to run faster than the allegations can mount. Yep. And I hope to God that he he cannot run faster than

them. Yeah, yeah. And maybe wait out like, will more stuff come out? We've got what, two weeks at this point? Is there potentially time? Maybe in the same way that his condescending dismissal of the first allegations led to the second woman coming out. I don't know, maybe there's a third woman and a fourth woman that are watching him near that embankment looking like his car flew off the road and they decided that we'll use this. Maybe they're maybe they're paying attention, I don't know. But what I do know is that it won't really matter. I say too often, I oversimplify things and say that it doesn't matter to literally anyone. The polling that came out in the wake of the allegations, it does seem to have heard him by like literally one and a

have points maybe. But I do have to imagine that whatever, whatever influence him being shown to be an utter absolute hypocrite on the topic that is most important of these people, it's going to be most encapsulated in the first one. A second one or a third one or I don't know, maybe he's a Trump or a Bill Cosby and there's 40 hanging out there. I don't think that each one is going to give you a point. We're just at a point in American politics where nobody He cares. Think about the conservatives that are looking at this. Maybe they even think, yeah, he is hypocritical on this. But they also think that Raphael Warnock is a tool of Satan. I mean, yes, they've been told that directly. Marjorie Green says it frequently. So why would

they support him? They've been convinced that the Democrats are literal Satanists. So Raphael Warnick is an obvious hypocritical failed Christian. But that probably seems better than the Satanist, I guess. I don't think any additional people care. That's how I would qualify it. Like, this is Georgia. This is Georgia where it took Donald Trump being the worst president in many, many years. Like, the baseline for a Georgia Senate race should be like 60, 40. And the fact that the Democrat is slightly ahead of a Republican means that a lot of people who do care have done one of two things. A, said, I'm going to be with the man of God, in my opinion, the guy with the reverend in front of his name, even if he's got a D. And I, this is Georgia. I

voted for Democrats as recently as 2001, you know, before the realignment ended and finally went to the Republican way. I think that's the main one. Or they've said, I'm just going to stay home. I'm sitting this one out. And the Alabamaans did it with, with Roy Moore. They're just like, I'm going to sit out, this guy's too much. But I would just say the marginal effect of this kind of thing when it's been proven that he is just not worthy of being a senator is not as huge, especially with the second one over the first one. And the one point is the big thing because already Republican voters are used to looking at hypocritical leaders and saying, at least I know, and this is an art that the Democrats need to learn, is that even if

you're a hypocrite on something, you're at least going to deliver them the thing that they want from a policy perspective, which in this case is making abortion illegal. Sure. Yeah, the fact of illegal for people who aren't as rich as Churchill Walker. I forget who said it. They were like, I don't care what he said. I want the Senate. I don't know if that's Dana Locha. Dana Locha. Yeah, yeah, she really doesn't care, which is definitely how religious value should work. You should be able to just dispense them, like for short-term political gain. For power gain.

Jesus died for their sins. It is a martyrdom in the service of a larger agenda religion. So what's two Herschel Walker babies to them? I guess that's true. Really fast. We'll move on the last video because we've got to show you this. Imagine if the Republican Party of Georgia had just gone to a relatively big tire store and chosen the guy who owns it and ran him.

They'd be up by like eight points right now. They chose the most scandal-ridden person in the entire state. And it's still like that close. They could have chosen any dumb, regular Republican and walked away with this thing. What a bunch of morons. Let's focus briefly on one moron, though, Lindsay Graham. So I've seen this movie. I live 40 miles right over those hills there.

I know Rabin County and I know Dillard really well. People here are not going to tolerate it. There's going to be a backlash in Georgia. Yes, sir. This is coming from L.A. It's coming from an activist, Democratic celebrity lawyer who went to the 2016 convention for Hillary Clinton, and people in Georgia are not this dumb. The Republicans just choose stars.

And for Lindsey Graham to say, oh, this came from L.A., they thought, listen, Dr. Oz came from New Jersey. So you are importing people out of nowhere. You've got people because they're supposed to be celebrities. Now they've learned they just need TV stars and not NFL or whatever, you know, stars from the University of Georgia or wherever he went. Yeah, and look, that's a great point. Look, they know Dr. Oz from TV and Donald Trump from TV and Herschel Walker from TV. Tudor Dixon was a host on right wing media. Carrie Lake. They're all to carry.

I don't actually don't know where Carrie like is from TV host from TV. That's all it is. And why wouldn't it be? They don't need Sarah Palin. That's a great point. Well, they don't need to know anything. They don't have to have experience. Experience, honestly, would be kind of an obstacle.

Just believe whatever it is that we tell you right now. You should believe. Be on the watch because it might change soon. But just believe whatever that is. Vote on the two or three things we actually care about. That's it. Also, for, they don't, we're not as dumb as they think we are. It's like, listen, you're trying to convince them that you're tough,

Lindsey Graham. If they're going to believe that, they're going to believe anything. You're being lied to by a guy who can't lie convincingly, who can't put sentences together. I'm not saying the people of Georgia dumb. I'm saying that Hersia Walker thinks that they are. That's why he's not even bothering to really try to defend himself against these allegations. Okay, with that said, we're going to take our first break of the hour. And we come back, though. Let's talk about the debate that happened last night in Pennsylvania. We'll be back with that in just a minute. Welcome back, One and all, The Young Turks, Giantarola, Brett Ehrlich.

Anna is out, needing to recover for a day, a little bit sick, and Jank isn't normally here, so that checks out. So enough with the Caruso mentions. Exactly. I am sure Jank will talk about it when it comes back. I know, so we generally as hosts agree on a lot, but people do assume that we all talk about and agree on literally everything. I don't live in Los Angeles, so. Exactly. Sometimes I find out things for the first time on Twitter too. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, let's talk about something that happened yesterday, not on Twitter, but on the debate stage, starting with this. And let's also talk about the elephant in the room. I had a stroke. He's never let me forget that. And I might miss some words during this debate, much two words together, but it knocked me down, but I'm going to keep coming back up.

And this campaign is all about to me is about fighting for everyone in Pennsylvania that ever got knocked down. That was John Fetterman. And we did have the first and probably only debate that we'll have in that Pennsylvania Senate race. John Fetterman versus Dr. Oz. Fetterman, of course, is still in the early stages of recovery from a stroke that he had earlier this year, still struggling with auditory processing, still struggling to speak to some extent. We're to get into the substance that was discussed, and there's some pretty fascinating stuff in there. But I know you were watching live that was happening.

A lot of people are saying that this in the end was a mistake that Fetterman shouldn't have done the debate at all. I personally hate when a race doesn't have any debates. This is a slightly different circumstance than usual, but still, it is, I guess it's It's brave, it's transparent to do the debate, knowing that you're experiencing such troubles. There's so many ways to come at it. But when I watched it, I could only watch it for like 30 seconds at a time, and then I had to turn it off. And I also had that instinct right off the bat to say they shouldn't have done this.

Usually there's, well, there's a ton of, there's millions of reasons why they shouldn't have done the debate with Federman, not the least of which is his, you know, stroke and recovery process from it. You, if you're in the lead going into the debate, usually you lose a little of that lead anyway. Debates typically tighten them. That's why people in the lead try as hard as possible to have as few debates as possible. That's just one of the rules of politics. But he wanted to show that he wasn't afraid. And the disparity between their ability to perform on camera between Federman and Oz, it was bigger than normal because Oz has tons of advantages because the guy's a TV host anyway. Yeah. And I would say that, you know,

Herschel Walker, for example, has no excuse not to put a sentence together. And I think that having a debate set up the way it is, I think they probably should have changed the format because of that. They wouldn't ask Tammy Duckworth to run the hurdles and they shouldn't ask John Fetterman to do a debate where he has to process information and speak back in that quick a turnaround. And they did it. That's like asking to find out, you know, who's the best at painting a house by having like a relay race. It's just not, it's not what it's going to take when you're in the Senate. Even the filibuster, which is like the talking thing of the Senate, doesn't have talking anymore. So I don't think that it was necessary to have a bait, the least of which

I don't think it had to happen in that format, especially because just the optics of it. I can talk about debate history, but the optics of having that reverse angle where you see the hosts of the debate with the teleprompter over their shoulders. Every turn was a reminder, not that one person's ideas were better than the others, but a reminder that John Federman had a stroke and Oz did it. And I think that is the most powerful point you can make about it. people need to go out and make that point over and over and over again. And it's other thing that Dr. Oz never had to overcome an obstacle in his damn life.

He hasn't. He, oh, get his job. I mean, the guy's what, a heart surgeon and he's a TV star. The only obstacle he ever had to overcome is relaxing his throat so he could swallow his dignity long enough to huck snake oil and kill dogs to find remedies. I don't know. I mean, I think there's a natural human distaste to murdering dogs. That could be seen as an obstacle and he got past it. So let's give him at least credit for that. Yeah, look, having a debate where the format is give me literally one minute answers to things. Feels designed to hurt the guy who's going to have a little bit of trouble expressing himself vocally. That seems weird. But remember, the debate rules were not up to just John Fetterman. The Oz team was involved too. The Oz team. stopped the Federman team from having journalists in the room that would be able to see exactly how that whole system works. And that was designed, stopping that from happening, was designed to make it so that Tucker Carlson could go live tonight and say that John Federman is a post-humanist cyborg creature or something. They're all saying that he was getting messages beam doing something.

It's complete nonsense. But Oz gave an assist to that because he will always give an assist to fascist conspiracy theorists. That's the substance of the race. I apologize for focusing on that for a minute. Look, I didn't think that his performance was quite as bad as you're saying that you literally can't watch it for more than 20 seconds. I do think that he had trouble. But it just, I'm not going to go into depth that again. We talked about in the damage report this morning, but like, it is not inconceivable that at some point a person could run for office who cannot speak.

What's going to happen when that happens? We, as an advanced society, surrounded by technology and stuff, can't figure out any other way to have a discussion about people's positions. We have to formulate it in the exact same way, focused only on speech and quick turnarounds. Hear this, talk immediately, as if that's how politics works day to day? I was in, right, I think the other formats they could, if I'm Federman, I'm proposing, why don't we have it at a barbecue? you. I don't want to wear a suit. I want to wear a hoodie and shorts in the fall in Pennsylvania. We could have veggie trace. We could have veggie. We could have anything. And start the negotiations there. Because that's another thing that Federman doesn't fit. He does not fit the,

you know, he doesn't, he doesn't fit the mold of your typical politician. Yeah, he's a mayor of Braddock. And he was, you know, he's the lieutenant governor fine. But this is a guy who you see him give official addresses in a hoodie because when he puts on a suit, it looks like a guy who always wears a hoodie wearing a suit. And you put Dr. Oz in a suit and he'll say, oh my God, I don't want to show off because I'm only going to wear my $3,000 suit as opposed to my $15,000 suit. And I'm going to run, you know, it's all a fake snake oil sales job when it's Dr. Oz. And I just think that I was in Pennsylvania recently. I was in Pittsburgh and I was in an Uber.

And there was a guy who drove the Uber and the dude was spouting conspiracy theories saying that JFK was the only Democrat he would vote for, not because of any policy. Only policy he mentioned was JFK was a Catholic and he would never put up with abortion. Sure. But I mentioned universal health care. And he was like, now there's something I can get behind. And if you focus on the on the policy that he's putting forward and you keep it populist and you talk about the working men and women of Pennsylvania, then Federman has been doing that

and he should win. Yeah, but these debates are so stupid. Yeah, it's a ridiculous intersection of the weird lens that class is viewed through in America with weird ideas of authenticity that like John Federman wearing a hoodie makes him I'm disqualifying, but the billionaire Trump is a regular guy. Yeah. I don't understand how that's supposed to work. But anyway, I want to make sure that we get to at least one of the main policy issues they talked about.

Let's jump directly into Dr. Oz talking about abortion. You say that you're pro-life, but you do support abortion exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and to protect the life of the mother, aside from those three exceptions, should abortion be banned in America? 60 seconds. There should not be involvement from the federal government and how states decide their abortion decisions. As a physician, I've been in the room when there's some difficult conversations happening. I don't want the federal government involved with that at all.

I want women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that's always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves. Okay, so if you want local politicians being able to determine what happens to to you and your body and the bodies of people around you, then Dr. Oz is probably your guy. But bear in mind, he's also a massive liar because he said multiple times there that he doesn't want the federal government involved in these sorts of topics. And yet when pressed on whether as a senator, he would vote for Lindsey Graham's 15-week federal limitation on abortion, three times he was asked, three times he refused to answer.

So to be clear, he doesn't want the federal government getting involved to guarantee your rights. But to whatever extent the federal government wants to limit them, he will be a yes vote for that. Yeah, I think the way that he answered the question about Lindsey Graham was pretty straightforward. I mean, he kept explaining it over and over again, and it sounded like he said he would vote against it. But I don't believe him. Even if you think he answered it straightforward, he's answered a lot of things straightforward. Even in what he wanted to sound like a straightforward answer, he's saying, I don't want one kind of political figure in the room with you and your doctor. I want another, and I want the one that agrees with me, period.

He wants the government to tell you what you can do with your body. He is another big government, a-hole, who doesn't believe anything he says and will, and has been chosen because the people who are about to take him from being a TV star to a senator slash TV star. will be owed to something. Yeah. And if you live in Pennsylvania and you care at all about rights, the Constitution, humanity, then you've got to vote against Dr. Ross. Yeah.

Yeah. Really fast. We can't. If you keep getting asked the same question, you keep saying I've already answered that thoroughly and you're being asked to say yes or no and you won't and you just say, I've already been very clear and the person saying you haven't been clear, you can't just keep saying that you've been clear. Because clearly you haven't been clear, would be my answer.

This opens up a discussion about how horrible the host of that debate was. Sure, I agree with you that I don't believe him. I will say that. With that said, let's quickly breeze through this topic. It's an interesting one. We can jump into this video whenever you're ready. I do want to clarify something. You're saying tonight that you support fracking, that you've always supported fracking.

But there is that 2018 interview that you. You said, quote, I don't support fracking at all. So how do you square the two? I do support fracking and I don't, I support fracking and I support fracking and I do support fracking. So that is one of the policy-based responses from John Fetterman that's getting the most attention. In the past, he has said that he's against it. He's never been incredibly clear, bear in mind that earlier this year, a lot of progressives had an issue with his past on this very topic. But it's really where his inconsistency

on a topic combined with his difficulty in expressing himself on the debate stage certainly is not doing him any favors. And I can't see who would come out of that answer liking him more as a candidate. If you're opposed to fracking, you're not going to like that. And if you want to choose a candidate based on fracking, you're probably just going to end up going along with Dr. Oz anyway who's going to let fossil fuel companies do whatever they want. So that seemed to me to be, aside from the overall issue that he might have communicating, that seemed to me to be the biggest misstep policy wise. This is one of those moments where you look at it and say, all right, I'm going to check with the clarification later because it sounded like his ability to

speak was what got in the way. It seemed like every time he tried to go back and edit himself, he just moved on in the sentence and felt like he had already said it, but he was further along, and that's just how it presented it so. And I would say that, listen, Pennsylvania and energy production have a specific relationship. He's running to be a senator representing Pennsylvania. There are many benefits geopolitically to increasing your output of natural gas, even though it is horrible for the environment and the cleanliness of water in the region. Not only, and it also like, you know, make seismic issues happen in places that don't have fault.

So that's one thing. So I would wait for that. But when it comes to that and the $15 an hour minimum wage, there is nothing that Dr. Oz is going to do to help actual people in any actual way. With the abortion, with the $15 an hour minimum wage, and with the fracking policy, all he is going to do, Dr. Oz will only benefit corporations. He wants freedom for corporations and he wants chains for people.

And that's the only thing you need to remember every time you think about Dr. Oz, unless you remember him saying crudite instead of like broccoli and stuff. I can go for a nice tray of broccoli and stuff. Anyway, okay, with that, why don't we get ready for the B block, okay? We're going to fit in one more topic. I'm going to say we're burning through the hour. But whenever we're ready, let's go to that first video of the B block. If you want to get across the line, you've got to go stronger in that one thing. That was the one thing you get, a lot of complaints about me.

Look at Karen. Carrie's winning with very little honey. And if they say, how is your family? She says the election was rigged and stolen. You'll lose if you go soft. You're going to lose that at the base. I'm not going soft. I've never come in to do a rally where the person lost.

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No, I'm just sure. We're going to beat this guy. So as Blake Masters doing a bizarrely performative phone call with Donald Trump for a Tucker Carlson documentary where he calls up Trump and instantly Donald Trump begins castigating him over not being sufficiently supportive of the big lie. Black Master is a guy who on the debate stage, and that's the venue they're talking about, said that the entire 2020 election was rigged by big tech or something. Got the greeting from Donald Trump, you're going soft, you're not, you're not talking about the big lie. Carrie Lake, it's her whole personality now. Now look, Blake Masters did say that he hadn't seen any evidence that votes were actually switched, which is, and this is weird because we're talking about Blake Masters, the truth. There isn't any evidence of that, and so he's actually saying something that's connected to reality.

Now, I'm not going to give him a ton of credit, because I think that were he to become a senator, he's going to do whatever he can in his power to advantage anti-democratic politicians like Donald Trump. But let's identify that at the very least, he's saying this because he thinks it will make it easier for him to win. He is a candidate who is trying to actually win. Donald Trump would love him to win, but Donald Trump is more focused on pushing. the big lie as a concept to save his ego at this point. And Blake Masters has that bizarre smile on his face throughout that talk, which is partly you can chalk it up to the fact that Blake Masters is a very, very weird person. But you know what he's thinking about Trump in that

moment, that he's getting criticized over this when I'm sure he thinks he did a good job in the debate. And he is trailing in the election, but what a weird thing for Trump to focus on when talking to this candidate. All I heard was that this guy goes soft and Mark Kelly's been to space. That's all I'm saying. One guy is an astronaut who has gone to space and the other guy goes soft.

Like that's the thing is the idea that Donald Trump and the Republican Party and people like Blake masters think that they're going to be alpha dogs when they're running against someone who has been to space, who's a literal astronaut who rides rockets that go thousands of miles an hour, crafts that go thousands of miles an hour.

Like Blake Masters, he goes soft. He goes soft. I don't know what to do. It's a problem is, and this is actually in all seriousness, this is their, the way that they operate. They repeat the same insane message over and over and over and over and over again until you realize your only option is to refute it or completely change the conversation. And people try to change the conversation. There's a ton of people who are bad at politics who don't try to change the conversation. And then they always find themselves in the same conversation rebutting in nonsense. But you still have to tell people that the election, there's no evidence that the election was rigged. The election was not rigged. Any sane person will say that it was not rigged and that Trump lost

because he is a loser. Yes. But Trump just makes you engage in this stupid conversation over and over again. And worse, as much as they say that like the right, the left police's language, that's exactly what Trump's doing. Yep. He's policing masters his language. He says, you can't say anything other than exactly what I said, which was the elections

rigged. Yep. And this same dynamic plays itself out over and over again with stuff that when they first say, like, this is insane. What do you mean critical race theory? What do you mean they're going in mutilating genitals of Trump? children in the middle of their development. That's not happening, but they repeat it so much that they're idiot moron friends who have

absolute litmus tests for whether you can belong in their club will cudgel you if you don't say that absolutely insane stuff is true. And I don't know where we fall and what our obligation is other than to come up with something. And we have to base it in reality. I want to base it in reality. But they've got us off in crazy town. And once you're unmoored from reality, that is precisely when fast.

fascism becomes the reality. Yeah, yeah. And look, there's a reason Trump wants the only thing that makes you a Republican or not to be about whether you say that literally years ago he got robbed, then it can be about anything. It has no tie to policy, nothing at all. It's all just about your view about a historic fact about the dear leader. Like if you don't believe that he's never bold anything less than 300 back in the 80s, then you're not a good Republican.

That's what they're setting up. Quick fact check, though, because you brought up that he's a loser. He says at the end of that phone call, I've never done a rally for anyone who lost. I looked into it, and you did do some rallies for yourself. Anyway, with that said, we're going to, boom, roasted. We're going to take our second break of the hour. We come back, though. COVID vaccine price hikes coming.

We're going to break it down after this. Welcome back at all to where it remains of the first hour of the Young Turks with me and hand on the keyboard or whatever. I'm so glad you didn't spill whatever that is. Well, there's very little left in it anyway. I think that we would be okay. Anyway, Brett, it's great to have you here. The hour has raced by. It has. It has. Would you like to talk about a little bit more news? Whatever you desire. Okay, I'm gonna be going home then. Anyway, let's talk about some news. This is actually a really important one. And you're probably not going to hear that much about it. So let's dive into it.

The COVID pandemic is very much still here. While the case counts, number of people in hospitals, number of people who've died have gone down over the past few months, it is effectively leveled off at this point and is likely to rise in the near future, which means that if you have not gotten your vaccine, if you have not gotten the most recent bi-valent booster, now would be a great time to do it. Not only for your own safety, but also for your bank account. because Pfizer has announced that it's soon going to be doing a markup on the vaccine. For uninsured Americans, it's going to rise by about 10,000 percent.

Let's give you all the information. So once the U.S. government uses up the doses it's already bought, which we've been burning through, that's expected to happen sometime in the first few months of next year. Pfizer is going to raise the price to as much as $130 for a single dose of the vaccine. So apparently, Angela Lukin, executive at Pfizer, said that they expect that the vaccine will be made available at no cost to people who have private insurance or government-paid insurance. Looking to not say whether the company will make any accommodations for the tens of millions of people in the U.S. without any health insurance. I'm going to say we could probably guess. I think.

Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, the cost of producing the vaccine is estimated to be as low as $1.18 per. dose. The U.S. currently pays around $30 per dose for Pfizer's shots. So they were already making a tidy profit and they're about to raise the price substantially. Remember Martin Schrelli? Yes. Do you know how much he hiked the price of his seven times or something? 5,000 percent. Oh, geez. And remember everyone said that Martin Schrelli was the most evil person in the world for raising the price 5,000%. This raises a 10,000%.

Now, by my reading of it, we covered this in Embossed earlier this week. Everyone watch Unbossed. Every day, every weekday at 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern, YouTube.com and Facebook.com slash unbossed, T.YT. It seems like it's a $10,000 above cost asking price. 10,000% above how much it costs. So you're making a 10,000% profit. And so we went through and we're like, imagine if other companies priced their products the way Pfizer is pricing.

I love it already. So at the launch of the dollar menu, McDonald's was charging $1 for something that they made a 4% profit on. And so, or yeah, a 6% profit on. And so that is the equivalent of when they launched the dollar menu, McDonald's had the $94 menu. You charging this much based on what it cost them is like McDonald's charging you $94 for a double cheeseburger. And when their executive shows up and that executive says, oh, you know what, it's going to be, won't cost you anything if you have private insurance. Yeah, but they're still getting paid for private insurance. Yeah. It's all a scam. Your job is paying someone that

much. And because of that dynamic, it costs America. Americans pay twice as much per person for health care. So twice as much as every other industrialized nation that has universal state-run health care. We pay twice as much for everything per person. And we die sooner. Yep. And it's because, and when you hear that this system is running at a place in a way where you can raise the cost by the price by 10,000 percent, you think, well, something's broken. But the people who built the system say, uh-uh, it's working exactly the way we continually pay for it to work. Well, at the very least, it is illegal for any of our politicians to invest in Pfizer or anything. That's not true. No, John. You're saying things that make sense to do.

It shouldn't be legal. That's crazy. Listen, because they determine what's going to happen. But yeah, no, of course. Look, it's absolutely insane. It's absolutely insane. And when you see that they're going to be able to do this, the idea that there's going to be any significant strikeback against, you know, gasoline companies doing some more price gouging, like they're not going to do anything about that. The gas companies, at least, aren't going to raise the price of gas by 10,000 percent. But there's seemingly no end. There's seemingly no limit. At the same time, by the way, the WTO has stopped a proposal. to temporarily waive the patents on these vaccines, which would have helped generic versions

of these vaccines be made in countries throughout the world, which by the way, have not had nearly the access to vaccines that we have. As of right now, just 23.3% of people in low income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose. And that's not because they unfortunately trusted Tucker Carlson and decided to go without. Many people would love to get it, but just can't right now, Pfizer is doing everything it can internationally to stop that sort of proposal from going through. Now, in the past, it has been the case sometimes where these companies will say, well, sure, we are, we are charging way more than it costs to make these medications, but we had to develop the drugs in the first place. In this case, though, we paid for that too.

I understand, not 100%, but we massively subsidize the development of these vaccines. So to then turn around after already making a massive profit and decide that we need to up it by four or five times is insult to injury. Right. So with the other ones, we said Operation Warwick, here's a bunch of money, please make it. So taxpayers already paid for it. Okay. With Pfizer, all we did was buy a bunch. ahead of time. Whether if it works, we're going to buy a lot from you. And so they essentially did, not the first one's free, but the first one's super duper cheap. And then when you realize that Pfizer's awesome, you want to stay alive, don't you? Then they jack up the price by 10,000 percent over cost. Yeah, yeah. It's nuts, man. And bear in mind, like, as you said,

like, if you have the insurance, you're still like, it ain't free. It's just, look, it's just, your check. You're paying into that. Right. Someone's paying me. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like you just won't have to deal with the paperwork is essentially what they're saying. You want to take your debit card out at CBS maybe. That's the only thing it's saving you. And then the last thing for everybody to tell all their friends about how it works in America versus other countries. Can we do this? America, we're number one at so many things, including among developed nations, the cost of prescription medication. Yep. Insulin, this, like there's an ALS. medication that's $140,000 per year to have.

It's ridiculous. So many things are so far above price because other countries, they allow the government to buy wholesale. The other countries say, okay, I'm Japan. You want to sell any drugs in Japan? The government's going to buy all the drugs for everyone. So we're Costco in this as opposed to sending someone to a boutique store. And worse, the only part of the government that is allowed to collectively bargain,

negotiate for drug prices is the VA, the veterans. And recently, we wanted a bunch of Medicare to do the same, but that got brought down to 20 medications by 2029, 20 drugs, Medicare only. That is absolutely positively insane. And it's especially weird because there are so many right-wing populist politicians. They must not know about this or that they surely would have stood up for their constituents and fixed it. Trump's the only one kind of saying it. Yeah, yeah, he was also president for a few years.

And he has absolute control over his entire party. One would think that if he really prioritized it, he could probably get them to do something about it. And just the last little bit, when they made collectively bargaining for Medicare illegal when they created Medicare Part B. So in 2003, they just made it illegal to collectively bargain. And they said, well, we think it's a better shot if Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Aetna, they're all going and doing the negotiations themselves. But anyone who's ever been to ballpark knows that if there's like four places to buy a hot dog and they all decide they're going to jack up the prices, you got only so many people offer

health care. And they all are in it together, raising the prices on us. How do I have proof of that? It costs twice as much per person in America for health care, and we die sooner. That is how you win every argument about whether this competition situation works versus the government collectively bargaining on your behalf. Good point. Well, I think that we unfortunately have run out of time. But fortunately, although Brett must go and Brett, thank you so much, not only for joining us on the show, but also joining us here at

The Desk, that's a novel thing. Great to have here. Thank you. Everyone check out Happy Half Hour, which won't be happening today, I'm assuming. It'll happen today. The big question is whether Burbank's going to leave her protests to be on it today. I don't know something about racism and not wanting to drink with me. We will see if Kevin DeLeon steps down in time for happy half hour. In any event, Adrian Lawrence is going to be joining us on the other side, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.combe. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.