The Young Turks - Dropping the D

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

Krysten Sinema has left the democratic party and will register as an independent. The White House praises Sinema for the party switch and reiterates that this will not affect the democratic majority. A Politico writer has blamed progressives for Krysten Sinema’s party switch. The House Passed An $858 billion defense plan. Host: John Idarola, Cenk Uygur, Francesca Fiorentini Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! Drop it, T-YT, T-Y T-Y, T-Y, T-Y T-T, T-Y T-T, T-Y T-T, T-Y T-Y T-Y T-Y T-T. Drop it like it's TYT's new documentary dropping today. All right, big, big day, big power panel.

Guess who's back? It's Francesca, everybody. Whoo. Francesca, good to see you. Good to have you back. Congrats on the baby. Speaking of dropping it. Thank you.

Oh yeah, definitely dropped it. Picked it up though, did pick it up, managed to do that. There is a five second rule on the baby. Pick it up all the time. Don't want to, but I do because, you know, it has my eyes and I cannot abandon the baby. That's fair, that's fair. Anyone want to do babysitting, DM me. No, don't, that's a horrible idea.

Hi. Okay, so Jane Gugger, Francesca Furentini, which you can check out on Twitchuation Room and Bituation Room podcast. So a lot of ituations there. And then of course, John Ida will host the legendary damage report. I have the shirts to prove it. I have like 12 damage report shirts. So we got a lot of news for you guys today.

We also have a lot of things going on in general. Like I just said, documentary mini doc for the members dropped today. So if you remember, check it out today. at t yt.com slash join. Once you become a member, you realize that for the members, you mainly get John Adirola. Okay, there's True North. He's in the mini dock. He's everywhere, okay? And then also today, of course, food for thought trivia. So 100 members will get $100 on free food. Everybody loves Fridays. All right. And it turns out, we lost the Democrat. Kind of. Kind of. All right. So John take the way. Yeah, we normally. Normally on the program, we focus,

like a lot of the media does on the extremes on both sides. Let's now talk about a true moderate, a true radical, and the news she announced today, starting with this. I've registered as an Arizona independent. I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, a growing number of Arizonans and people like me just don't feel like we fit neatly into one party's box or the other. And so like many across the state and the nation, I've decided to leave.

So Carson Cinema, who was, of course, elected as a Democrat and has since then stymied Biden's agenda as much as humanly possible announcing there that she is becoming an independent. Now, we can't forget that it's likely that she was going to be facing a primary on the Democratic side. So she now sort of sidesteps that, although she's setting up. up for potentially a complicated situation for that race that I'm sure we'll talk about. She was on there being interviewed by Jake Tapper, though. And Jake Tapper is, in my view, to media, what she is to the Democratic Party. And so you can probably, what's that?

I said, here, here, that's such a great point. Thank you. You can probably expect the sorts of questions, the way he framed questions to her. We're going to give you a little mashup right here. How does leaving the party change how you do your job? Well, I don't think anything will change about how I do my job. Arizona sent me to the United States Senate to be an independent voice for our state, and I'll continue doing that. What I think is important about this decision and this move is that I'll be able to show up to work every day as an independent and not be, you know, stuck into one party's demands of following without thinking.

Let's talk about practically what this means, because you're the chair of. at least two subcommittees. You're a member of a number of important committees, including Veterans Affairs. Does this mean that you're no longer going to be in those positions because you're no longer a Democrat and the Democrats control the Senate? Well, I intend to maintain my position on my committees and keep doing the work that I've been doing for Arizona. So I don't think that things will change in terms of how I operate or the work that I do in the United States Senate. The balance of power right now is 51 Democrats or 51 votes for the Democratic Party that includes two independents, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. But that's 5149. What you're doing today doesn't change that. It's still basically going to be 51.49. Well, I know you have to ask that question, Jake. But that's kind of a D.C. thing to worry about. What I'm really focused on is just making sure that I'm doing what I think comports with my values and the values of Arizonaans. Her values. She wants to comport with her values and the values of Arizona. Well, to be fair,

some wealthy financiers do live in Arizona, I suppose. Okay, so there she is explaining her thought process and maybe we'll have some disagreement on the panel. I think every word of it is transparent BS. I don't even think she cares that it's clearly BS. You can read that in her facial expressions. She's smug, she's confident that whether the voters of Arizona despise everything coming out of her mouth or not, there's nothing they can do about it. They're stuck with her for at least a couple of years and maybe even longer than that. She does say there that this changes nothing about the way she'll do her job. She would still very much like her committee positions, by the way. She's stopped the Democrats from

accomplishing many of their goals and she's probably going to continue to do that, but she'd love the seniority, that would be nice. So if it doesn't change that, and she's still going to just go and to do her job. The only thing she implied that it would change is that she would no longer feel pressure to comply with everything the Democratic Party wants, as if she has ever seemed to feel that pressure in the past. So maybe I'm wrong. Everything that she said there about why she needed to do this suspiciously close to the end of the runoff coming from the midterm elections doesn't make any sense. That forces on me a need to figure out what the actual motivation is, but maybe we can debate that. Oh, for sure. So look, I think this story is really

important on a couple of counts, but maybe not the count that you're expecting. So, It's important because it shows you exactly how politics works. We love dissecting it. It's gonna give us a CSI moment here where we get to show you the crime scene, right? And there is one thing that's very important about what she did and did not do. I'm gonna get to that in a second and you need to hear that, okay? So, but first I wanna start with her saying, look, I know a lot of people are surprised. Yeah, maybe idiots, and so, or people who don't follow the news.

And those are two completely different categories, right? You're a dentist, you don't follow the news. You're like, oh, it turns out my senator wasn't a Democrat. I didn't know that, right? In Arizona, it's perfectly fine, right? But if you're following the news and you're really surprised, the cinema has left the Democratic Party to become an independent, then you don't know anything about politics. You should just retire today, today. Hand in your notice and move out, do something you're good at, okay?

So, of course, like, this is the least surprising move I have ever seen in my life. Okay, so what is infuriating? is how the media aides and abets her theater. I mean, that's a performance, and it wasn't even a good performance, right? Jake, I've always been an independent in the way that I think, okay? Oh, really? Tell me more about how independent and moderate you are. Because those two words are so positive, as opposed to what you actually are,

which is pro-corporate. Yeah. Okay, so now that's the theater that they set up for you. The entire play is an illusion. So CNN article to go along with that nonsense interview explains how she's always had an independent streak. She never fully bought into the Democratic Party. Earlier in her career, she was part of the Green Party. Well, hold on, hold on.

Does anyone at CNN know anything about politics? The Green Party is to the left of the Democrats. She's now going as an independent to the right of the Democrats. That means she is not consistent. That means she has switched her positions completely on policy. But what do they do? They don't tell you that she switched because she would look like a fraud, right? In terms of her policies, oh, I changed all my positions within a couple of years.

Once the donor money started flowing in, doesn't sound that good. So instead she gets fluffery, right? Well, brave, independent, moderate always end up being thinking for herself. Look at Chris, the cinema, amazing. Wow, what a revelatory move, right? Instead of saying what the reality is, she was funneling. donor money like this. Okay, and she was getting it from Republican donors, Democratic donors, et cetera.

But she miscalculated. And normally you play that game, and the press covers for you. And then you stay a Democrat and you betray your voters over and over and over again. That's the normal playbook. She over did it in how spectacularly she betrayed the Democratic agenda here. So she was going to lose in a primary, guaranteed. That's why she moved to independent to try the mercantial. Rikowsky route. That's a route that Lisa Murkowski tried in Alaska.

That's the actual story instead of this garbage that you're seeing that has no relationship to the truth. Francesca. Yeah, and it's also a way to keep the focus on her, right? It's like how can she still be the headline now that it seems like Democrats are all pulling in the right direction or in the same direction. And honestly, let's be real. Like the re-election of Raphael Warnock was effectively to render either mansion or cinema neutralize them in these critical votes as she and Mansion have undermined the president's

agenda very again like the most basic agenda around basic, you know, civil rights, around health care, around minimum wage, around like you name it, around the climate. And so she's like, no, you can't count on me. I'm mysterious. I'm independent. I'm different now. Look, I've got no sleeves. Wow. And just is just like again, like she is incredibly narcissistic. And and that's just one of the many, many things. And I think it speaks to the corruption of the Senate inherently. We know the Senate is not a representative body. And here you have Kirsten Cinema proving that. How do you ping pong from the Green Party all the way to just being a funnel again for corporate money? It's because you're unaccountable to

voters and I said this I said it this morning on the damage report but like you can't the Democratic Party of Arizona they kicked you out months ago they they gave you a vote of no confidence months ago so okay now you're leaving great honey like you've been gone yeah well why don't we dive into a little bit of the financial underpinnings of this move that we're seeing here Kirstenema wrote an op-ed to explain her leaving the Democratic Party for what it's worth and it's not worth much. She says, when politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party of victory than they are on improving Americans' lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans. That's why I've joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring

my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington. That's interesting. Your focus on the politicians who are more focused on denying the opposition party victory. You seem pretty dedicated to denying your own party, many victories. You're smug about it. It's not just enough for you to stop the minimum wage from being increased. You had to do your theatrics, your little curtsey thumbs down. And that was, I think, the worst move, the move that she made that probably would have killed her in a primary.

You can do bad votes. And as Jenk has said many times, the media's going to cover you and all that. But while she's not an independent or a maverick when it comes to politics, she's a corporatist like many are. She is kind of an independent in that she's a uniquely terrible person. She likes doing the thumbs down. She likes doing the little photos on Instagram of her wearing jewelry and sultan. her constituents. She's not unique in policy, but she's unique in how much condescension she heaps on the people who put her in a position of power. But let's talk about what she actually wants. So previously, she has defied the Democratic Party on a number of different topics,

whether it's a climate bill or billed back better, raising the minimum wage, getting rid of the filibuster to protect either women's rights, reproductive rights, voting rights. In the fall of of 2021, she basically single-handedly scuttled a deal that would have partially reduced the Republicans' Trump-era tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest 1% of individual earners that helped to ultimately crash the party's ambitious build-back better agenda of new social infrastructure spending. Again, she didn't do that in the interest of bipartisanship or for regular Arizonans. She did it so that the rich people's taxes wouldn't go up. There's no other way to see that. Additionally, this summer, she weakened a 15% minimum tax rate in

corporations that often pay nothing in federal taxes and also work to protect the special status afforded to Americans that make their money through high-end Wall Street investments. Again, that's not for regular Arizonans. Much of it, by design, isn't. It's for rich people living on a different coast. Additionally, on August 4th, she announced that she had struck a deal with Chuck Schumer to remove language from the Inflation Reduction Act that would have narrowed a tax loophole that wealthy investment managers use to lower their taxes in exchange for her vote on the bill. Again, there is no other conceivable way to see that move except that. She doesn't care about protecting her constituents. She cares about protecting whether they live in Arizona or

not wealthy people who make their money on Wall Street, wealthy developers, wealthy investors. That's what she's there to do. And to stop changes in the law that would raise taxes on those sorts of people. She's done it time and time again. I didn't hear that sort of thing from Jake Tapper when he was talking to her about what her thought process was on leaving the party. Yeah, so guys, she's trying to brand it as I'm outside of the two party system. This corrupt system in Washington and I'm breaking the mold because I'm an independent, right? It makes it sound like she's a populist. But as John had just showed you, proof to you, Without a shadow of a doubt, and we got a dozen more votes along the same lines,

she actually votes for completely pro-corporate agenda. She's the least populist senator in the whole Senate, and I would include Joe Manchin in there, okay? Because Joe Manchin sometimes works for himself. Cinema is just completely corporate-owned. She's not the senator from Arizona. She's a senator from Wall Street. The hedge funds have no better friend in the Senate, including the Republicans, than Pierce's cinema.

So when the media helps her frame herself as an brave independent bucking the Washington system and makes her appear to be populist, when her votes prove indisputably that she is the exact opposite, that is how the mainstream media lies to you implicitly and gets you to believe the worst politicians, the most corrupt politicians are the best politicians, the most independent, the most moderate, all of these positive. words that they surrounded Kirsten Sema with like a bouquet of roses, okay? The whole point is to trick you. There's one thing that I promised you that was that was really important, and I have to tell you that. So she, it's unclear if she's gonna caucus with the Democrats, I'm not sure that that matters much. They're letting her keep her committee assignments if she had fully left the Democratic Party and was not going to caucus with them at all.

In the Senate, letting her keep the committee assignments would be beyond the pale. I would go out of my mind at the weakness of Schumer and Biden, but that is not the case. It appears that she's staying within the realm of the party enough in the Senate so that it is not going to slow down judicial confirmations. That is the most important part. If she had done that, I would have a much angrier tone, believe it or not, than I do right now. Francesca. No, that's really important. I mean, I think that this is, I think my favorite part of the interview, two points. One is, do you realize neither of them are talking about substance?

No one's talking about issues. What do you stand for? Yeah. What do you believe in? What do you want to get done in Washington? Do you want to give Arizonans a raise? No, clearly. Do you want to codify Roe v. Wade?

Haven't heard you say a peep, honestly. There was a tweet maybe, but no inkling that you're going to. you're going to. We know you don't believe in reforming the filibuster. And Jake, that's a DC thing. Let us worry about that. Remember that little choice moment? That was fun where she was basically, the thing that we've been basically hinging on that Americans have understood is a huge barrier to progress in Washington, which is the filibuster, right? That they now have the votes to overturn like that we've been waiting on baited breath. And no, we cannot count on her. So again, this is just about like how the media and politicians, it's just a horse race and it's just

about power and it's just about who can get more money. None of it is about how to improve people's lives. Where's that conversation? Yeah, yeah, 100%. And the thing about the narrative that she wants to spread that Jake Tapper is helping her to spread isn't just that it's not accurate. It's that it is, it's almost perfectly designed as if by an AI chatbot working with the most advanced neural networking to be the exact opposite of what is actually true. So she says, I want to be independent and step outside of this toxic system. And that's when she switches to Tulsi Gabbard speak where who's to say which is better. They're both really toxic.

And the thing is is that there is actually quite a bit that is similar between the Democratic and the Republican parties. But what is similar about them is exactly what she is down to her very essence. a person who is going to be a roadblock to any federal imposition on the wealthier corporations. That is, that's the thing that Republicans and Democrats can almost always come together on. That they're going to craft legislation that is intended to benefit those people. Anything that is intended to hinder them, higher taxes, regulations, or whatever, is going to be damn near impossible to do, no matter how much regular people actually support.

No matter how clear they are in election after election, she is that with purple hair. That's all she is, is that impulse that we see in both the Democratic and Republican establishments. And so to pitch her as being an alternative that system, when she is like a construct of the system, she's a gallum of corporate corruption in the duopoly, like any journalist who knows anything about the way things work in D.C. should immediately slam her on that. But Jake Tapper works for the same people as she does. 100%. All right, we got to take a quick break. Unfortunately, we're not done with cinema yet. We do have Biden's reaction, buckle up, brace for impact. And then we have the worst media article, well, not article necessarily,

but comments from mainstream media writer that you've ever seen in regards to cinema. Because that competition is broad. Okay, so we've got a lot more. Stay right here. We'll be right. All right, back on TYT, Chank, Francesca, and John, with you guys. John's got more news. I do.

Why don't we check in with the White House to see what they think about this whole cinema thing? We understand her decision to register as an independent in Arizona. The way we see it and understand it, it does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work with her successfully. Now the thing about that statement that I find so amazing is that she's been very consistent, Karin Jean-Pierre, on her message right there. The Biden administration, I might be angry, might be frustrated with this move, but they are not putting out any clear indication of that, which is consistent with the way that they've dealt with Senator Sinema throughout their administration.

To my prior point, here are tweets that had been sent out much earlier in the day before that press conference, before that answer. Jean-Pier puts out these tweets saying, Senator Sinema has been a key partner on some of the historic legislation. President Biden has champion over the last 20 months from the American Rescue Plan to the bipartisan infrastructure law, from the inflation reduction act to the Chips and Science Act, from the Pact Act to the Gun Safety Act, to the Respect for Marriage Act, and more. We understand that her decision to register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority. control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her, which is word for word, a section of what she said in that video. So they clearly have a message that they want to put out. I don't know, like they wouldn't actually say whether

they'd received advance warning that she was going to be doing this. Their refusal to say yes or no can be interpreted obviously in either direction. I guess they want to maintain the best relationship, at least now with the best working relationship with Senator Cinema that is possible, because of course, if she decides to drift even further to the right and become more of an obstacle that could be consequential for some things like judicial nominations. So as of right now, they're not picking any fights with Senator Cinema, so the status quo continues. Yeah, so look, as I explained earlier on the show, she is still going to caucus enough with the Democrats that it will not slow down judicial

nominations. If she had gone fully out of the Democratic Party and was not going to allow them to move the nominees forward quicker, then I would have found this statement by the Biden White House to be the most outrageously weak thing I have ever seen. As it stands, I understand why they're tapping the brakes a little bit on critical. critique of Chris and Cinema for fear that they don't push her over the edge theoretically, and then she starts to caucus with the Republicans. And you could still get judicial nominees through, as they did in the first two years of the

Biden administration, but it becomes much slower and harder, and that's very important for the third branch of government. So I understand, that's why I'm being fair to the Biden administration, give me the context as to why you're seeing what outwardly appears to be an incredibly weak response. Why does it appear to be an incredibly weak response? We take that as a given here. The rest of the mainstream media would be outraged by that. How could you say that?

Everything Biden does is strong and amazing and four-dimensional chess. No, when someone kills 85% of your agenda, giving them roses is not the strong thing to do. It's the pathetic thing to do, okay? So if they didn't have to worry about the judicial nominees, then I would have counseled and they would have, of course, completely ignored my counsel, that they come out and say, good riddance. We are thrilled that Chris and Sinema is leaving and we can't wait to beat her in 2024.

She betrayed everything she said she stood for. She came in as a progressive challenging the Democratic Party and people like President Biden from the left. And hey, I could agree or disagree with that, but at least it was a principled stand. And now we find out she has no principles at all that all she does is serve. her, of course, this is the part they would never say because they also serve their donor masters. But she serves her donors and that is who she's actually going for here. And they should have, they could have in that scenario annihilated her. But do you think they would have done that? My guess is if she'd gotten fully outside the party and hurt them on the judicial nominations,

this statement might have been the same anyway. But don't you think there was like a middle road? That's my thing. It's like, isn't there a middle road? Because as it stands, it doesn't just present project weakness to me it projects fear like open fear it just seems like who's beholden to whom who's leading the party is senator cinema leading the party or is joe biden the president leading the party i'm not sure honestly it seems like joe biden consistently says well we got to wait and see what cinema and mansion think and even now with the you know the re-election of war knock so there's a way to say we're sorry to see her go right isn't you know there's a way to throw a little bit shade because my God has she thrown shade at your entire agenda. So throw a little bit back at

her. And I guess I want to squeeze this in, but I do think it is interesting. As John mentioned, the duopoly, right? Here we are two corporate parties, drenched in money, drenched in dark money. And there are inklings of the Green Party locally, right? But not on a national level and you have someone like Kirsten Cinema sort of running as an independent becoming elected or getting elected and I think it says a lot about the hopes for a third party in this country and what I mean by that is you still need some kind of accountability somehow right it can't just be like well I'm an independent so you're just relying on me myself and I I don't have necessarily a party apparatus I don't have a party platform I understand the Green Party has a platform but you know you guys know what I'm

I'm saying, right? Like, we have so much work to do if we do want to break the two party stranglehold to actually hold someone like Kirsten Cinema accountable. Yeah, well, and really fast just to be clear, unless I'm missing something, she's not making any claim that she's becoming an independent and joining any specific independent party or movement. When she says independent, she doesn't mean independent ideologically, she's aligned with corporatists from both Democratic Republican Party, but she does just mean me. It's the Lieberman model. She is now, if she's untethered from anything. It's even the veneer of a responsibility or duty to her constituents. She is just about herself. There's there's no method to recall her. There's no method to beat her in a

primary. She's just going to be an independent person and cross your fingers that she doesn't somehow slide by as a third party candidate or as a third party candidate result in Arizona being represented by Senator Kerry Lake in a couple of years. Yeah. So Francesca said a couple of things I really want to build on. I think they were really great. So first of all, the real question about Joe Biden's reaction to cinema is whether he's weak or complicit. Because, I mean, he appears to be the weakest man you've ever seen. He constantly is fumbling away any negotiation with Mitch McConnell, etc. He never gets a good deal. This is historically throughout his entire career. I don't want to get back into the whole history of it. We've shared it with you before. So weak is a pretty good

argument, but I think it's not, I don't think it's right. I think complicit is the correct answer. So why? Because in reality, he doesn't mind cinema and mansion killing 85% of his so-called agenda, because he never believed in that agenda. As I've told you many times, you can tell when they put up $15 minimum wage for a vote as an amendment to the first coronavirus bill, he had the two Delaware senators, his top two allies in the Senate vote, no. That means he never believed in $15 minimum wage and didn't want it to pass. Okay. And so he's never believed in his agenda that was negotiated with progressives. It became the unity agenda for the Democratic party. But if Joe Biden was a senator, he probably would vote against it just like Manchin and

cinema does. He's been historically one of the most conservative Democrats in the country. After Manchin helped Cinema kill all of his agenda, he was at press conference recently and he's like, hey, boo-boo to Joe Manchin. Not boo-boo. He said Jo. But I mean, is it any better? He's like, hey, Jojo. If somebody killed 85% on my agenda, do you think I'd call them Jojo? No, of course not. That's because he's complicit. He loves that they're doing this.

Another thing that comes out of the cinema deal is that Mansion gets more leverage. Because now you can't, you know you can't rely on Cinema's vote. She's going to proudly vote against the Democratic Party to get more independent bona fides, right? And then you need mansion again. Okay? And then that allows them to, even though the Senate now, they've picked up a seat, but they're back to the, well, we need manship. Well, we need cinema.

And we need to give them corporate tax cuts to make it, more dirty fossil fuel concessions to make a deal. We need to water everything down to get them a deal. And what do we tell you guys before the election? It doesn't matter how many Democrats you have in the Senate. Remember, Obama had 60 for a while. They couldn't even pass a public option. That's not Medicare for all.

It's just a public option. Because any time you've got more of a cushion, there's some game like this that's played, we're up, golly, gee, we're back in mansion's control. You know why? Because Biden doesn't want to fight mansion and cinema. They're helping him do his actual agenda, which is that nothing will fundamentally change. And then she's, and if you're asking, well, is she going to stay an independent, she's going to become a Republican. For example, if in the next elections the Republicans gain the Senate, no, she's going to go towards power, wherever power is.

The power was in the Democratic Party. She stayed there. Now she gets more power, more control over the bills that she can hand over to her donors by being an independent. And if the Republicans win convincingly and she can get committee assignments out of them, then she will instantly switch to being a Republican. Because she's serving the donors and the donors want her to have maximum power and don't care at all about principles.

Donors, donors and principles. No, they care about the money, Lippowski, which leads me to my final point. So as Francesco was mentioning the Green Party and third party, et cetera. Now look, there's a bunch of guys who've gone independent from the Senate, Joe Lieber Murkowski, now cinema. They all did that because they were primaried from the populist wing of their parties. And they wanted to remain the corporate douches that they are. They call themselves independent and have the same exact corporate agenda and votes in the Senate afterwards. Okay.

Now, in this case, when they do that trick, the media goes, oh, bravo, independent, moderate, wonderful, right? Imagine for a second if Chris and Sinema said the same exact thing, I'm declaring that I'm an independent today, and I've decided I to go back to my roots, and I'm going to instead be the part of the Green Party. Yeah. And I will oppose Biden from the left. What do you think the media reaction would have been? The media reaction would have been, how dare she? What is she doing?

This is outrageous. You know that. You know it if you're a Republican, if you're a mainstream Democrat or a progressive. You all know that the media would have had that reaction. So why do they love it when she's an independent from the right? But they would have hated it if she was an independent from the left. That's because the media is not objective. It's corporate media.

And they're doing a giant play for you guys to drive a corporate agenda. I think we have a perfect demonstration of that right now. All right, let's do it. If you're new to following American politics, if you're new to following American politics and the media that covers, that I can save you a little bit of time. If something bad happens, it's progressive's fault. It might not be clear immediately how it's their fault, but we'll find a way. And so when Kirsten Cinema decides that she's no longer going to be a Democrat, she's going to become an independent, and that's surprising to some people, they will fall to blaming progressives for.

And here we have an example. This is a writer at political magazine, Bill Shear, who reacted to this news by saying, we may have ourselves a Joe Lieberman situation, which, at least on its face, sort of do, in which progressives chase a moderate out of the party, but not out of the Senate. So the moderate, untethered to any progressive base, becomes way more obnoxious. At least in the Lieberman situation, progressives had a plausible rationale for a purge strategy. Lieberman was genuinely terrible in the Iraq War, Connecticut. CT was, is very blue, so trying to take him out came with little risk of handing the seat to the GOP. The intraparty tensions between Sinema and Progressives of the past two years were way more stupid.

didn't hold any position as noxious as supporting the Iraq war. She was difficult about, I think that's supposed to be corporate taxes, but with enough flexibility to make compromise possible. Mainly, the ire was driven by cinema's support of the filibuster, and that was treated as betrayal because so many Democrats treated a party line voting rights bill to be of existential urgency. So look, there's a lot more that we could get into, but there's the taking something like safeguarding people's ability to vote in the face of an all out assault by Republicans in multiple different states with a Supreme Court that's assisting them. Treating that as some sort of like weird thing to be angry about is certainly a look. It's displaying what he thinks

about those topics. Her support for the filibuster, which she never made a plausible case for why it needed to be there, knowing that the ability of the party to deliver on many specific promises it had made and been advantaged in elections based on is sort of a big deal. Her flaunting, her ostentatious thumbs down when it comes to something as simple as raising the minimum wage is clearly designed to spit in the eye of every, not just every progressive in the country, but every Democrat at the very least in the country. Now, if that bothers you, you're being irrational, according to this writer. And you, in being so extreme, have driven a moderate out of the party.

Because again, like so much in media, don't talk about the position she actually takes. Don't talk about the people she's financially beholden to. Just use a term like moderate and centrist that you never have to divine. But people know that it's supposed to be a good thing. They're the reasonable people. And so that's the approach that he's taken. It's our fault. So Bill Shear is a version of Christian cinema in media.

And so I know that because I've known him a long time. He used to be part of the original liberal blogosphere. So he came in as a progressive and so he used to be an ally and he used to come on TYT all the time. But a brother's got an earning a living in Washington. And this has happened to a lot of people that was part originally came in as progressives. There's pollsters like this, there's pundits like this. And so they come in and then eventually they realize there's only one way to get your bread

buttered in Washington. Kiss corporate ass. Okay. So he went from completely left wing. left wing to the most right wing theoretically, I don't know what you call him. Does he still consider himself a Democrat? Or is he just like happy to be a corporate robot? Or is he like mainstream media kicks ass?

Remember all that critique we did of them when we were in when we did those blogs? That was garbage. I love the way they pay me. Okay. Whatever it was, I don't really care. I don't care about his personal psychology. I care that he's lying to you today. So by the way, he mentioned Iraq war, like at least Lieberman was against the Iraq war,

because he was a progressive back then who was furious at Lieberman for voting the wrong way in the Iraq war. So he wants to say like, oh, yeah, well, of course I've been consistent on this. Iraq war important, okay? Corporate taxes, not at all important. Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look while we shed, while we protect corporations and let them take trillions of dollars home. trillions. Look, under Trump, the corporate tax rate was cut, thousands of different taxes were cut. But one of them, the biggest one, was corporate tax rate was cut from 35% to 21%. That blew a giant $2 trillion hole in our deficit and our debt. And that's the thing that

the Republicans pretend to care about. By the way, mainstream media pretends to care about, oh, the deficits did that. Oh, let's cut social security. Let's cut Medicare. Let's cut Medicaid. cut, cut, cut, anything that helps the American people. God damn, paid family leaving child care. Cut, cut, cut, cut. How are you going to pay for that, right? And then you go, all right, well, then we could pay it by,

I don't know, raising the taxes on corporations to half of what we gave away under Trump, for example, right? And then Bill Shugger says, that's no big deal. That's no big deal. The fact that Chris's Cinema protected hedge funds, private equity, Wall Street, all of our donors. Don't look. Don't look there.

My job in corporate media now is to make sure that I love. lie to you, I trick you. Every single day is part of my job and pretend that Krista Cinema is an honest actor and a, oh, golly, gee, if progressives hadn't gotten in the way, you know, she would have stayed a Democrat. And to what end, Bill? To what end? She would have voted the same exact way that is right wing pro-corporate. But Bill Shearer now loves that she votes that way. So he does this fluffery, not only on her behalf, But the extra part of it is what John pointed out in the beginning. Somehow, Kristen Sinema, betraying the Democratic Party by going more right wing is not her fault.

It's not the fault of the right wing. It's the fault of progressives. Well, Bill, if you were trying to do a 100% sellout, congrats you, did it. It's just perfectly played. You couldn't have sold out any more than you already did. Yeah, I mean, it's utter gaslighting too. Sorry, Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year gas lighting, but here we have it. Like again, everyone knows that Kirsten Cinema has been throwing the Democratic Party under the bus the whole time.

She's the one who's been like chasing her own self out of it. She's been the one, you know, who's been leading that charge. And also it's a weird comparison to Joe Lieberman. Remember when we made Joe Lieberman the vice presidential nominee? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we chased him out of the party. No, he got that nominee because he was a supposed moderate, right? I don't know why we do this with vice presidential candidates, but you know, time and time again. And something that we need to mention with independence is who's the most famous

independent in the country, if not the world? Bernie Sanders, right? What do we always hear every time Bernie Sanders does something that's a little bit too much for the people? Oh, a little bit not enough, you know, for the mainstream and for the status quo we hear the line well Bernie's not a Democrat and that's supposed to really sting right that's such a oh well Bernie's not even a Democrat look at your Democrats look at what your Democrats are doing they've done less for people than this independent and yeah so what if he's put up bills that don't get through he's put them up he's had the audacity the courage he's spoken out about it I think that's far more valiant than a corporate Democrat but hey who

Who am I? I don't know. Look, I'm saying one last thing about this. Who cares what you call yourself, right? Yes. So that, man, the answer is mainstream media, corporate media like Bill Sherrill, Democrat or not Democrat? And they're 100% inconsistent about it.

When Bernie Sanders declares himself an independent, like, he can't, don't ever vote for him in a primary, how dare he? He's a betrayer of Democrats. When cinema does it, well, bravo, what a wonderful moderate independent, okay? It's absurd. It's so obvious. that all these media guys are lying to you. It's the most obvious thing in the world.

So what should you actually care about? Call me radical. And by the way, every reporter in D.C. will the policies. So are they more left-wing policies, democratic policies? Or are they more right-wing and Republican policies? So who's better on that? Bernie Sanders, the Independent, or Kirsta-Sinema, the Independent? Well, that's a no-brainer.

Bernie Sanders is more left-wing and more in the Democratic position. and he agreed with the Democratic agenda, Biden's agenda, 100%. Cinema did not. She went to the right of Biden and disagreed with 85, killed, 85% of his agenda. But the people who are paid to lie to you like Bill Shear will pretend that Bernie is the worst Democrat and Chris's cinema is the better Democrat. You see how this game is played now? And the liars in Washington, both the politicians and the media that work together to gaslight the entire country.

going to deceive you so that you acquiesce the corporate rule. Okay, we got to take another break. All right. Now when we come back, we got more yelling for you. The military budget. Gee, I wonder what happened. Okay. All right, but important details when we're returned.

All right, back on TYT, Jank, John and Francesco with you. But also Karen Brenstetter, Bruce Salazar, Lady D, and Yajna just became members. But hold because progressive boomer gifted five Young Turks memberships on YouTube and Lauren McCraig gifted 50 young Turks memberships. Holy cow, that's amazing. And it's a perfect day for it because members today are getting in a mini dock about the 20 years of TYT. And we're giving away $100 gift cards to 100 members today as Food for Thought trivia that we're going to do in the bonus episode for members tonight. So make sure you're remembered today so that you can be part of that.

Lauren, you're incredibly generous and wonderful for doing that for others in the community. If you haven't joined yet, you can hit the join button below the video on YouTube or go so easy. t yt.com slash join all right jock okay let's mix it up and talk about something good news positive won't make your blood boil at all we keep being told that the federal government can't afford to pass policies that benefit regular people that just isn't money there for it and i think i figured out why the house voted to approve the new national defense authorization act today setting the military budget at $858 billion for one year, and that doesn't even represent all the money we will spend on national defense. We're gonna get it up to and possibly exceeding $1 trillion.

Don't worry. But first, the details. The vote was 350 to 80 in favor of this. There were 45 Democrats and 35 Republicans who voted no. We're to get into some of the people who thankfully voted against it, but this is actually more than we initially thought would be in the budget. It's $80 billion more than just last year, $118 billion above two years ago. And by the way, it doesn't include all of the money that goes towards maintaining and improving the U.S. nuclear arsenal, whatever money goes to contribute to Ukraine's defense or veterans benefits, that's all separate. This is just the raw defense close to $900 billion for a single year. Now, what else is included in this? Well, it includes a provision demanded by many Republicans requiring that the

Secretary of Defense rescind a mandate requiring that members of the armed forces get COVID-19 vaccinations. We want our soldiers to be well-equipped and dying of needless respiratory infections, apparently. It provides Ukraine with at least $800 million in additional security assistance next year. That will of course be supplemented many times. It also includes a range of provisions to strengthen Taiwan amid tensions with China as well as funds that develop new weapons and purchase systems, including the F-35 fighter jet and ships made by general dynamics, including, by the way, continuing weapons programs that the Biden administration had tried to cut. It includes a new guided missile destroyer worth $2.2 billion that the Biden administration didn't want. And so how

How do you get to $858 billion? Well, you give every military contractor everything they want and some things they didn't even expect to get. That's how? Yeah, so my main question is, how are you gonna pay for that? Okay, so we hear that every time there's a bill that would actually help the average American paid family, child tax credit, Medicare for all, free college, how are you going to pay for that, how are you going to pay for that?

This is a monstrous bill, laden with pork, like greed, really, really. We see pork just oozing out of every poor, right? And that's why the Republicans and the Democrats all of a sudden found bipartisanship. Oh, they can't agree on anything. Which gender is Mr. Potato head? Democrats say this, the Republicans say that. Critical race theory. It's not taught any or it's not even an issue.

But they can't agree. They have so much disagreement. Giant pork complete and utter corruption going to the donors of both the Republican and Democratic politicians. They have an agreement. In fact, they added $50 billion on top of what was requested. Why? Because they eat the corporate pork. That's what this is about. Now, okay, politicians are going to do what's in their best interest,

and their best interest is to collect millions of dollars in campaign contributions from defense contractors. Where's the media? The media is the one that leads to charge on how are you going to pay for that? Isn't it amazing that no reporters ask, how are you going to pay for this? this monstrosity, this thing that swallows up our entire budget. And look at little parts of it, too. The Taiwan part. Remember when Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan?

We told you, and that seemed like totally out of blue. And TYT told you, the reason she went was so that they could funnel more money to defense contractors go, oh my God, there's a problem with Taiwan and China. It is such a big conflict. We have to sell more billions of dollars of weapons to Taiwan. Oh, some of that has to be funded by the American tax. taxpayer. Golly gee, where did that come out? Well, we told you where it came out of. We told you why she did it. And here it is. Here's the conclusion of it. Did you hear anybody else in mainstream

media tell you that? I mean, who was right and who was wrong? It's in the budget now, right? Came out of nowhere after Pelosi went to Taiwan. And here it is in the budget. We were right. They were all wrong. Turn off the mainstream media. It's not actually news. It's just corporate marketing. Otherwise, they would be furious about the overspending in this bill. Fred. Yeah. I mean, I I think the thing beyond the fact that this money could be used for so many other things that truly make us safe health care, housing, education to name three basic, basic fundamental human rights. It's terrible foreign policy. It just continues to be terrible foreign policy. And I say that as someone who honestly has a little bit of respect for Biden as a vice president, because of some of the agreements he brokered with Iran and with Cuba. know John Kerry had a very big role in that too, but Biden also had a role in that under the

Obama administration. But he's gone completely off the rails, honestly, especially when it comes to China and more and more money to, to be honest with you, to bring us farther from finally addressing climate change on an international level. I know there was a recent, you know, UN climate summit that apparently China is is on board to, you know, work with the United States, but but every time we hand more and more money to like building up, you know, Taiwan's defense, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we get farther and farther from literal survival in this country. And so again, when it comes to the main tree media versus like progressives, and even, you know, we don't do a good enough job in filtering through some of the BS that

we're told about China and actually how to how to really deescalate. Now just throw money at the problem. And I know we're going to get into this, but these are people who do not, who fail the audit every single year. The Pentagon has just money unaccounted for, completely unaccounted. In that mean, meanwhile, you know, people who have are on welfare to work programs because they can't get welfare. Oh, no, no, no, they can't feed their kids unless they're trying to work every single day, taking them away from their kids, etc. The Pentagon, no, they can waste as much money as they want. 100%. And it's a lot of money. So we've given you the raw numbers. Now, let's

compare it because the raw number doesn't really tell you if it's necessary. Maybe if the U.S. military budget next year, instead of being $880 billion was $800, maybe we would be immediately invaded along our north and south borders. I don't know. But what I do know is that it's more than the combined military budgets of China, India, the UK, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea. You can actually see in this chart, the comparison of the two, the whole rest of the world like basically amounts to a rounding error after all of that. China has a very tiny fraction of the military spending that we do, but we will be told that if it was any lower, look, if you try to cut it, you are an insane radical.

If you try to slow the growth, you're a crazy person, despite the fact that we spend more than basically everyone else in the world. Now, some people, thankfully, by the way, that was last year's figure, that chart we showed you. Our military budget is more than 10% bigger than it was in that comparison. There were some who did vote against it. Let's bring up the people who were willing to defy that. There's been a lot of talk recently thrown around about moderates and centrist, and that's being applied to people like Kirsten Cinema. I personally think that opposing a massive, needless, insane increase to our military budget seems pretty moderate, pretty reasonable. It actually comports with what people really want. And you can see

there, members of the squad as well as others, a lot of names that you're going to recognize. Okay, I want to give credit to some of the progressives that don't often vote the right way. I love Katie Porter, where she takes on corporate executives in Congress in those hearings. Jamie Raskins has been a giant in handling Trump and legal issues and many other things. But when push comes to shove, they don't usually vote with progressives. They usually do as leadership tells them to do. In this case, leadership, let's be honest, too, there's a lot less pressure because leadership knew, oh, we'll get Republicans a vote for this as well. Every corrupt member of Congress is going to vote, yes. So we'll have plenty of votes, plenty. Votes are springing out of both parties here when it comes to corporate pork. But still, credit to Raskin, Porter, Chewy Garcia, and the other progressives that went along with the Justice Democrats and voted no on this defense bill. Okay, oh my God, we're out of time.

Yeah, okay, all right, well, that was that. All right, everybody check out, Vitruation Room. That's Francesco's podcast, Twitcheration Room on Twitch.tv slash TYT. Everybody check out damage report everywhere. And you can just type in damage report or TDR and all the platforms. And we've got an amazing second hour coming up for you guys, including, unfortunately, more insane racist attacks. And then the mother of someone in the capital riots explains how deep Trump's betrayal of the right wing was. It's really interesting.

We'll do that when we come back. full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.