The Young Turks - Establishment Dems Say They're Scared Of Progressives And Republicans Adopt Green New Deal

Episode Date: March 29, 2019

Corporate Democrats HATE their progressive counterparts. Republicans now believe in climate change? Cenk Uygur, Nomi Prins, and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Welcome to the Young Turks, fun show ahead for you guys. It's Thursday, but it feels like a Friday.

This has been the longest week ever. Doesn't this week feel long? Interesting, yeah. A lot going on. Yeah. You know, I feel like a lot of my weeks are incredibly long and last one second at the same time. And today, I'm, yesterday was in an angry mood, we got an angry show.

Today I'm in a mysterious mood. The show is a bit of a mystery today. So first, we will go after the Democrats. I'm always amused online when people are like, oh, you guys are just chilling for the Democratic Party. Yeah, that's what we do. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you've never watched the show. Okay, and then new strategy on Green New Deal, and there's a part of that story that

I absolutely love, and it actually involves the Republican reaction. And then, but speaking of Republican reactions and ones that I do not like, the thugs are out. So they are now threatening to arrest their political opponents. And obviously trumped up charges, if you will. Okay, yes, I am in fact here all week. Okay, so a lot to get to today. Great to have you here, Domi. And Anna, let's do it.

All right, let's do it. Earlier we reported on how the D-Triple-C for the Democratic Party obviously had implemented, certain restrictions on individuals who are pushing to primary incumbent Democrats. Now, the reaction is interesting because now you have progressives who are actually willing to fight back against establishment Democrats. Now before we get to that, I just want to note that the person at the heart of this is the head of the DCCC, her name is Sherry Bustos, and you're about to hear from her on Morning Joe and the rationale behind these new restrictions.

a look. We are telling vendors that we do business with. And keep in mind that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, we will raise somewhere around $200 million over the next couple years. That's a lot of money that we spend with different organizations that help elect Democrats. What I'm saying is if you're in the business of helping elect Democrats, we'll do business with you. But if you're in the business of opposing Democrats who are in office or these seats that we're trying to pick up, then we probably don't want to do business with you. Okay, well, that is clarifying. We appreciate her saying that on the record. So Aditya obviously works on the House side, and so she is a representative from Illinois, and she is

more conservative representative within the Democratic Party. I know big shock that they put in a more corporate person to lead their reelection efforts in the House. So she said there, If you're in the business of opposing Democrats, we don't want to do business with you. Well, that part makes sense. But hey, that's the straw man argument. Nobody's arguing with that. But then she added, if you're in the business of opposing Democrats who are in office, we don't want to do business with you.

Well, okay, so then it's not about electing great Democrats. It's not about electing Democrats that'll push for better policies. It's just about protecting your power. And there's, of course, a money element to this. But what she's doing there is business as usual and otherwise known as the swamp. And but what is unusual is the pushback. And so we have great progressives in Congress now pushing back in unprecedented way. But before we get to that, I do want to go to this second clip.

So because now the progressives are opposed to her and this policy. On the other hand, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough thinks it's a brilliant idea. Yeah, let's watch. Boy, and I'll tell you what, nothing new to see here because if when I was in Congress, there was a vendor that was helping somebody trying to primary me, boy, everybody up and down the line would be hearing about it. You don't undercut your own members who are trying to hold onto their seats while you're trying to gain additional seats.

Thank you. Thank you, Joe Scarborough. It's amazing how much they flaunt their sense of entitlement, right? Because that's really what this is. It's undemocratic, small D, and it shows a level of entitlement that should not be allowable, that should not be applauded, no one should be proud of it, and Joe Scarborough is so proud of that sense of entitlement. No, no, if you aren't, simply because you're a Democrat doesn't mean that you're representing

Democratic voters in that district, as we've seen over and over and over again. That's the reason why AOC was able to pull off this stunning upset because she actually reached out to the people in this district who felt that Crowley was not representing them. And so what happened in that race was, in my opinion, the epitome of democracy, regardless of which party it is or whether or not it's a disagreement within the party. Yeah, exactly. And that's good, you know, whichever party it is. I would disagree with this if we're even on the Republican side.

It doesn't actually make a difference. This is all like animal farm-like. It's like all animals are equal, but some are equal more than others. And they're the Democrats that come from the establishment that have established the relationships with the corporations that provide $200 million to the DCCC. That's basically what she said, and that's clearly what Joe applauded. The reality is, yes, it's not democratic, it is a power grab, it is a power retainment. And we change as a country.

The whole reason we've been able to put progressive, more progressive Democrats in office is because people elect them, because the actual people who actually go to the polls, actually vote for them. That's the entire point of why we even have, that's the point of why we should have representatives in Washington representing the people that voted them into those positions. Exactly. So we're gonna get to the fight back against this idea in a second, led by wonderful, not just progressives, but really American heroes, in my opinion.

So we'll get to that in one second, but I wanna make a couple of notes here. on what you just saw. So this is why I warn you about Joe Scarborough on the program, Morning Joe program. And I always say it's the epicenter of the establishment. And so yeah, the establishment is not happy with Donald Trump either. And so they fight back aggressively against Donald Trump. And Scarborough is a former Republican, so he knows how to fight. But don't get deluded into thinking that Joe Scarborough is on your side.

He ain't on your side. He's on the side of the establishment, the status quo, and keeping the government. the elite and powerful, elite and powerful. And he showed out there like, how dare they ever challenge someone who's already in power? And then Sherry Bustos on the Democratic side, it's like, thank you, yes, right? And so I, of course, I agree with Nomi and Anna on the, if it was Republicans, I'd agree, too. I mean, I love when Dave Bratt beat Eric Cantor. I think Dave Bratt was totally hypocritical.

I don't agree with any of his policies. He was, I think, totally lying when he won that election saying that he was going to hold the big banks accountable. But I don't mind populace from the right wing side coming out and challenging. And anyway, that's their business, not our business. I believe in democracy. And so, and then to the idea of why the D-Triple C is doing this. Well, they say, well, look, one of the things is we want to make sure that everybody on the

Democratic side gets along. Well, this would seem to be counterproductive, okay? Because we're not getting along because you started this fight. This fight didn't have to happen at all. Second of all, they're so, of course, it's all about precious fundraising. But this is going to hurt your fundraising because now real progressives are like, why would I give to the D triple C if they're in favor of the elite and the establishment and not in favor of pushing for policies, they just want to keep their power.

That's not interesting. So I think a lot of progressives will think, I don't want to give money to you. I'd rather give it to individual candidates that I actually believe in. So real quick, going back to your point about fighting within the party and how they're trying to spin this as an effort to get everyone to get along. I mean, think about how many freshman Democrats we have right now. This is a direct response to some of those freshman Democrats, AOC being one of them, right? And so how do you think that makes someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez feel when instead

of embracing her and embracing her constituents and what they want? You're rejecting them and trying to put in place certain safeguards in your eyes, I guess, to prevent it from happening again in the future. Like, it's, you're starting a fight. I mean, that's exactly what this is. Yeah, for the people that voted those progressives in it, and for them in Congress. What she's basically saying, what the party's saying is what we knew happened before the last election, which is that, look, we're going to go where the money goes, we're going to go where the establishment principles are,

that we believe to be the establishment principles, if you reject them, if you vote against them, If you have a different opinion, we're not actually representing you when our entire job is to effectively represent the voters. And that, I think there will, there is a backlash against that, which is great, against that type of thinking, that type of old thinking by the Democratic Party. So let's go to that backlash, because I think that the, well, we know the three pivotal players here that fought back. And they're Primalogian, Mark Pocan, the two heads of the Progressive Caucus.

And of course, Rokana. And they have been leading the fight, and I think that they're absolutely American heroes. And I'll tell you why, it's not just because I agree with them on policy and I'm progressive and they're progressive. Think about it. They're fighting so hard to allow a system that would primary them. Yes. Okay?

So they're saying, hey, even though this would protect my privilege, I am dead set against it. And I will fight with all my might to make sure that every. Everyone has a chance, including opposing me, you have got to give them tremendous credit for that. I'm so glad, sorry, I'm so glad you underscore that, because that is what it's saying. It's saying, look, we can welcome different opinions as they change, different people as they change, and different voters to vote in those people as their perceptions and needs and desires change.

I think that is an amazing message. Yeah, and it's a, I think, mark of real leadership, you know, being willing to, you be challenged in the future, should there be a primary challenger. So let's hear from Representative Rokana. He spoke to the intercept and he said the following. The D-Triple C is acting as a monopoly by saying that anyone who does business with them can't do business with any competition. It's the classic antitrust violation and an unfair restraint on trade.

Many progressives in Congress will fight until this rule is changed. I like how he used some like business or corporate lingo there. He's like, maybe this will get through to you guys. Right. Yeah, and the Democratic Party now is fighting against monopolies in several different ways, including Elizabeth Warren doing wonderful work in the Senate to maybe break up some giant companies. But here they are, they say, yeah, that rule applies to you. But not to us, not to us, we're gonna keep our monopoly on power.

And there's these principal Democrats that are saying, not on our watch. Now let's break down further the different reasons, you know, why the DCC might want to do this. So there's politics, there's policy, and then there's money, okay? So first of all, progressives want primary challenges for a number of reasons. One is you bring in diversity. So look at, look, let's talk about the four new Justice Democrats, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib won open primaries, those seats were open because we had people that left Congress.

Ayanna Presley in Massachusetts beat a sitting incumbent Democrat, and so did AOC, beat Joseph Crowley. They beat two white males, and they are both women of color, young women of color. Now that by itself doesn't necessarily, a lot of people are encouraged by that, and I'm encouraged by that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're headed in the right policy direction. In their case, they are, okay, they're very, very progressive and more progressive than the people that they defeated in their properties. But what it does mean for sure is it allows for different people to actually enter Congress. Because if you freeze the current situation wherever it is, well, it will give power to the people

who already had power. So some of these folks were elected decades ago, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. So if you say, no, that's it, we're cutting off access, especially in the Democratic Party. What you were saying is we are going to further empower a lot of the white males that are already in charge. Now, the Democratic Party is way better than the Republican Party, it's not just white males, but those are the folks who had power also in the Democratic Party for all this time. So it's great to have new blood coming in.

And so this is systematically discriminating against people of color, younger people, and women overall. And so that's why the D-Triple see threw in like a cover in the second half of their announcement. They were like, plus we want diversity in consultants. Come on, it's so obvious what you're doing. But policy-wise, the D-Triple-C is basically planting their flag and going, and this has been true for a long time, we don't care about policy. You're progressive, you're not like getting bigger progressive wins, they don't care

at all, whereas for progressives, that's the most important thing. Why do we back AOC or Primalajapal or Rokana? Because they actually want to get Medicare for all, a green new deal, the things that we care about it. I mean, Primala Jayaapal and Rashida Thalib are not my aunts, they're not my cousins, they're not my niece. None of us are related to them. We care about them because they fight for policy positions.

So, and then on the politics of it. Can I jump in real quick, because I actually have a response to what you just said. So we get on the Republicans case because they do whatever they can to avoid standing up for policies that are actually popular with voters. And the way that they do it, and the way that they keep winning elections is they'll redraw districts, they'll gerrymandered, they'll try to pass these ridiculous voter ID laws, whatever they can to rig the system in their favor, that way they don't have to really stand for policies that are popular with the American people.

We criticize Republicans for that, but in this case, we should criticize establishment Democrats because they're essentially doing the same thing. I mean, they're doing it within their party. They're not doing it to rig the system against Republicans in this case, but you know, Democrats are real good at eating their own, like going after their own. But my point is like they don't want to have to stand for the policies. Jenk is absolutely right. They don't want to have the tough conversations about income inequality, wealth inequality,

because those are the conversations that make the donors uncomfortable. That's right. And so again, just rigged the system in your favor, that way you don't have to get challenged by primary challengers. So I think Alex Rojas, and now the executive director of just Democrats, made a point so good that you'll pretty much can't argue against it. She said, make no mistake, they're sending a signal that they are more afraid of Ayanna Presley and Alexandria Ocasor-Cortez winning primary challenges than Henry Quayar,

who votes with Trump nearly 70% of the time. That's pathetic. So, Henry Quayr is now going to get primaried by the just Democrats. And so when the Democratic Party says, I am with the Henry Quayers of the world, they're saying, I don't care if you agree with and vote with Trump seven out of ten times. The guy we're supposed to be resisting. I don't care. All I care about is protecting power.

So it's about politics, it's not about policy at all. But even on the politics they're wrong, I'll get to that in a second. And just to go back to the money aspect. The way they're protecting their powers by protecting the relationships on the corporate side that give them the money to allow them to stay in power. So, yes, they are validating those relationships. If you take a look at, for example, just sitting Democrat in the county next door, Julia Brownlee, who's in Ventura County, she started out sort of more progressive than later her funding, her donors, came from the insurance companies more than sort of the unions. You can just see the shift as someone is more established and shows their sort of more.

establishment criteria in the way that they vote. She, for example, didn't vote to reinstate Last Eagle last go around. She did the first time she came into Congress. You're basically siding with the side that's giving you more of the money so that you can use that to stay in power. And therefore, your policies and how you vote represent that. So this is very much about, yes, maintaining the power, maintaining that influx of money that officially makes the policy for the people that are established because they had the time

in the offices that they were elected to, you know, It is to serve in to actually accumulate that money in those relationships. So it becomes completely circular. Yes. And there's one more angle to that money part, which is not just accumulating money for campaign contributions for democratic incumbents, but also accumulating money for the consultants. And the consultant class. So the D-Trible-C is also known as, quote, the consultant factory.

So, and what they do is they direct people to their favorite consultants. who are, you're gonna be shocked when you find out, mainly alumni of the D-Triple-C. So they have staffers who work in the D-Triple-C, and then they go and set up their own shops to be consultants, and the D-Triple says, you gotta work with those guys, those are the people you have to give all the money to, okay? And when we say we don't agree, they don't agree with us, policy-wise, I don't wanna work with them, they're like, oh yeah, we're gonna ban you for life, and you're never gonna get any of that $200 million, and we're gonna keep it all for our

ourselves and all of our friends who work in the DCCC. That is the height of corruption. Representative Steve Lynch from Massachusetts said, the Democratic and Republican parties are commercial enterprises and they're very much interested in their own survival. He added, the money race is probably more important to them than the issue race in some cases. I would argue in almost every case. But there's a congressman saying, yeah, of course it's about the money, of course

it's about the money, it's never about the policy. And finally, back to the politics. So they always act and they have their TV pundit friends like Joe Scarborough going around, like, oh please, progressives, they don't know how to win, they're not going to win, right? We corporate Democrats are great at winning. Really? You lost a thousand seats in the last 10 years, so I mean, they don't care about facts at all. So the Democratic Party in a lot of ways in the establishment have their own alternative

facts. Losing a thousand seats means we're great at politics, no, it kind of means the opposite. So in the case of Kentucky 6th District, Amy McGrath beat the D-Triple C favored candidate Jim Gray in that district in this last election cycle. She wound up losing it to tough district in Kentucky, the general election, but she was incredibly impressive. And you know what happened next? Now Chuck Schumer in the Senate side is trying to recruit her to run against Mitch McConnell.

What happened? I thought progressors were bad at politics. So why is Chuck Schumer saying, I need that progressive to run against the number one Republican in the country? Because in reality, we're pretty good at politics, okay? So it's not that we're good, bad at politics that they're worried about. They're worried that we're actually good on policy. And if we actually get those policies passed, then their gravy drain comes to an end.

And that's what they're most worried about. When we come back from the break, we're gonna give you some updates on what's going on with the Green New Deal and the Democrats who are pivoting away from it. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, The host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational. aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it,

You must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on a young Turks, a bunch of comments for you guys, as usual, member section first as usual, Mickey C says D-T triple C, wild animals perceiving a threat in a panic, they eat their young. When you started it with wild animals, I'm like, that sounds fun.

Yeah. Okay, well, it didn't end fun. Nasty Habits writes in, as I stated when this first came out, I wrote to the D-Triple C and told them unless and until they stopped this policy, I will only donate to candidates directly and not to the D-Triple-C. Seems like a rational reaction to that story. Sartorial Narwhal says, defending so strongly incumbent Congress people, just after we got a great crop of progressive freshmen is a rebuke of the voters and is meant to scold us into getting

back in line. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And engineer writes, and now that AOC is the incumbent, how will the D-Triple C justify funding a primary challenger? No, they won't do that. But if the establishment decides to go after AOC, more likely Ilhan Omar, they'll be far more crafty than having the D-Triple-C do it. That would be outrageous.

And it would cause, even among the other incumbents that are against them, they'd be like, that's a bad precedent, right? So they won't do it that way. They'll fund super PACs to attack her. That's how they'll do it. Okay? And a lot of this, if I'm keeping it real, the number one organization that funds corporate Democrats during primaries is Emily's list.

So, and that's a great way of hiding their intentions. They're like, what, what, what? We're just being pro-women, but they'll run against women, they'll run against more progressive women. Yeah. They funnel the money through them. Yeah. Do you have more?

Yeah, last one. Pork Chop Express says, I'm just worried that focus pushback between Democrats and progressives will leave the Republicans to gain ground. Nope. Look, look at all the just Democrats that won. Did they have any chance of losing the Republicans? No chance at all. They crushed the Republicans after they won their primaries.

Now I don't even necessarily agree with this, but the just Democrats have said they're only going to primary Democrats in very safe blue seats. So I would go broader than that, but I'm not running it. So there's no threat of Republicans picking up ground in that sense. I want to tell you guys about what's going on in Europe because it's relevant and this information might actually convince you that NordVPN is the way to go. So the European Union has passed its directive. It's known as Article 13 and what it does is if someone uploads copyrighted material or

or what's been determined as copyrighted material, the platform that is hosting material, whether it's YouTube or whatever other platform, is held liable for that copyright infringement. And so YouTube and some of the other platforms are unfortunately utilizing some pretty strict algorithms that don't always get it right. So there might be a fair use case when it comes to copyrighted material. But since they're using algorithms and not real people to figure out what is and isn't copyrighted, They will get things wrong and unfortunately they'll prevent certain content from getting uploaded when it's perfectly fine.

You know how you can get around this if you're in Europe by using NordVPN? Because a VPN can lie about your location, right? I don't know that I would call it lying, but it can't hide your location. To misdirect. No, it lies about your location, let's keep it real, right? Like I use a VPN and I'm supposedly in Australia somewhere and I'm not, I'm not, I'm in LA. So anyway, you get a great discount if you go to NordvPN.com slash TYT, NordvPN.com slash TYT, you get a 75% discount for three years and you get a month free, so check it out.

All right. Hard to argue with that. Yeah. Let's talk about the Green New Deal. Okay. Following the Sham Senate vote on the Green New Deal, Democrats are figuring out what the best strategy is moving forward and passing legislation that will. would combat or at least mitigate climate change. Now, it does appear that some of the Democrats are pivoting away from the Green New Deal, but

they still want to do something about climate change. So for instance, according to the Hill, various supporters of the climate change measure, including AOC, are focusing on new smaller bills in an effort to get back on the offensive on climate change heading into 2020. So before we move on with other details to this story, I think framing is everything. And I'm trying to understand whether or not the Hill is inaccurately framing this. Because the Green New Deal wasn't legislation. It was a non-binding resolution.

It was a list of goals, it was a list of ambitions, it wasn't legislation to vote on. And so the whole point of the Green New Deal was to create a framework in which real legislation can be written. And so they're framing it as they're moving away from the Green New Deal and they're focusing on smaller bills. But I don't know if they're really moving away from the Green New Deal. I feel like what they're doing is still using the Green New Deal as the framework, as was intended, to draw out legislation.

Yeah, so let me clarify. So there's a little bit of wordplay here. So it was a non-binding resolution, so it would not have had the force of law. What they're now going to introduce are bills, which would have the force of law. And so that's not necessarily move, I mean, you can't say they're moving away from the Green New Deal if the Green New Deal vote that just happened was about a non-binding resolution. So the question isn't whether they're moving away from it. The question is, are they choosing to do it in separate distinct parts and bills as opposed

to one grand bill, a huge bill? So let me just give you the headline of this piece so you understand. where I'm coming from, the headline reads, Democrats to move on from Green New Deal, which makes it seem as though Democrats have accepted that they've lost and now they're moving on to something else. No, I totally agree with you. And I read it the same way you did the body of the article as well. Like, okay, they're trying to pick up the pieces after they lost.

No. Yeah. No, in fact, in only one part of the article they mentioned this and then this part is correct. Now they're going on the offense to actually get bills passed that would be part of the Green New Deal. It's not like they're going to something else, and it's not like they're going to something that is less effective or not part of their overall strategy. It is exactly part of their overall strategy.

So let's hear from Senator Ed Markey. He spoke to the Hill and he said the following. We're now in the process where the hearings have started on the House side. after committee have had their first hearings that haven't been held for eight years. And ideas and legislation will start emanating from committee after committee looking specifically at what has to happen. So I love that statement because it just goes to show you that even though this ridiculous vote happened, you know, the vote that Mitch McConnell pushed for for political reasons,

in reality there's an important discussion happening in Congress that wasn't happening for the past eight years. Right. And highlighting that does get us to how do we actually achieve the proposed ideas behind the Green New Deal in actuality. Exactly. And that's really where we need to get to anyway in order to actually implement not just legislation but to find funding for that legislation as well to move those proposals

forward. And that is happening around the Hill. And the question is whether these committees actually, you know, move forward with meaningful legislation, whether they're talking to each other, when they come up with it, and all of that, which is kind of standard of what goes on in Washington. But they are using the positive overall concept of the Green New Deal in order to have those conversations and move stuff forward. Yeah, so, look, I think that the most important thing is how far they move the ball

in that now Republicans are scrambling to figure out how they can pretend to be in favor of fighting climate change. That's a giant difference. I'm going to get the details of that in one sec. But I do want to say, look, we're objective here. So I don't agree with the Democrats in voting present on that non-binding resolution. And the reporting is, and I haven't talked to her or her staff about it, that AOC sanctioned that.

If she did, fine, I disagree. I don't think they should have done that. I think the optics of it were bad. And I think it has partly led the mainstream media slash establishment to write headlines like this. But that's okay, because what's more important is the policy rather than the day-to-day politics of it. And what's also incredibly important, and I know I'm looking ahead, but all of the political

strategy and all the hard work that's happening right now among members of Congress who actually understand the severity of climate change means nothing if we don't elect someone as president who actually believes that climate change is occurring and wants to do something about it, right? So that's why it's so incredibly important that throughout the primary process on the Democrat side, we pick the right person who does want to make this issue part of their platform, who does talk about it, it's front and center in their campaign. And yeah, of course, we need someone who's not a Republican. Well, think about how much strength makes a difference to the point that Anna was just making.

If the press is right, all the Democratic senators checked with a freshman congresswoman to see if it was the right way to vote. What? That is unprecedented by a country mile. You know what it is? It's boss. That's right. She's such a boss.

Well, she had that great line that's my new motto. She said, until you do it, I'm the boss. Okay. Meaning like, go for it. I want you to do it. I want you to take action whoever you are, right? And so, but until, like, if you're not taking action, I'm going to go forward. And so one incredibly strong freshman congressperson has moved the entire Congress.

Imagine what a progressive president could do. Sorry, let me just get to the Republicans for a second. So Lamar Alexander is a Republican senator from Tennessee. He now says, I believe that human emissions are a major cause of climate change. Boom. Okay, we're moving Republicans, man. And he said, but that's the small part of it. The big part of it is, he said, I believe we need a five year project like the one on the scale

of what we did to get the atomic bomb, okay, and he said, we have to use American research and technology to put our country and our world firmly on the path toward cleaner, cheaper energy. AOC didn't say that. A Republican Senator from Tennessee said that. I mean, look, the Green New Deal is about a 10-year plan. Now you got a Republican senator going, no, five year plan. Then Lizzie Graham, of all people, Mitt Romney and Alexander came out and said, okay, fine, we got a different plan, but we got a plan.

We're gonna incentivize businesses to make investment in carbon technologies. Is it a good plan? No. But now they're scrambling for the first time ever to come up with a plan to fight climate change. Proceed from strengths. Yes, exactly. And this is something, like, even if their ideas and their proposals right now are not good,

step number one, and this was a difficult step to accomplish, was to get them to concede that climate change is real and that it's caused by human activity. And so already, there's been a giant win, and giant wins deserve what? Pitfall wins. They do. They do. They do. Just going back, what we were saying about AOC before, I was actually in a moment.

meeting with Congressman Kana before she was elected before that all happened the end of last year and we were talking about how we can fund things like building the country, infrastructure building and so forth. Like how do we take money that's going into sort of Wall Street speculation and sort of redirected into

the real economy for like real people and real jobs and so the real environment? And he at the time was like well what about this Green New Deal? Interesting. And this was before she even came in office and the conversation went along the lines with that. That That's exactly part of it, because the Green New Deal, yes, it is about fighting climate change

and yes, it's about protecting our environment and our resources. But there's also a very strong economic component to it. The fact that we were even calling it the New Deal, there was an economic component to FDR's New Deal. The idea was to regulate industries that are harming the country and the world and to stimulate and subsidize industries and platforms and proposals that will help. And that in turn created jobs, and it created sort of a stronger economy, stronger country. This is saying, well, we're at a point right now where we have other problems coming in,

which is our environmental situation and climate change. And there's ways to make that also a positive economic proposal as well. Absolutely. The largest growth in jobs that the BLS Bureau of Labor Stets just came out with last month and also for the end of last year is in green jobs. I mean, these are not like fake jobs. These are like actual people getting actual jobs and actual green industries that are actually promoting, you know, climate benefit to everybody.

The number of jobs in the solar industry now far outweighs the number of jobs in the coal industry. So, okay, keep it real on that. Rihanna Gunright, who is co-founder and executive director of New Consensus, who's working on the, that's a people's think tank that's working on the plans for a Green New Deal, was on the Young Turks yesterday. And she talked about how we will have significant legislation. She said in about a six month range.

So it is coming, they're not going to wait, they're going to do it now. And finally, back to the Republicans, Matt Gates, I mean, the worst to the worst in the house. The biggest Trump loyalist there is. He's like, oh yeah, okay, I'm introducing a bill and it's going to be called the green real deal. He's so lame. Okay, God. So he is lame, and of course it'll be packed with every kind of goody for his donors

who are all welfare queens, corporations that live off the American taxpayers. It will do nothing to solve it. I can tell you that ahead of time. This guy's a complete another fraud, but think about it. The Green New Deal is so popular and that now they're having to reframe ultra right wing positions as if it's the Green New Deal. It's like, oh, it's popular, I'm gonna try to steal it. I'll call mine the green real deal.

What happened? I thought it wasn't popular. What happened? I thought that you guys were gonna run on it. It looks like you're starting to run towards it instead of trying to run against it. Oops. It's okay. Just accept it, Matt Gates.

You know you like it. What did we tell you guys, man, and you were part of doing this young Turks audience? We said the strong progressives will actually lead towards policy and we were right. When we come back, we are going to dunk on Devin Nunes, who is a brown shirt. We'll be right back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell to advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free

with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. All right, back on a young Turks.

Tomorrow, Tulsi Gabbard is going to be on the show. So we're going to do 3 to 5 o'clock Pacific as we normally do. And then we're going to take a little bit of a break and then come back with a live interview of Tulsi Gabbard running for president 5.30 p.m. Pacific, 8.30 p.m. Eastern. So don't miss that. And then I've got comments for you guys here. Eclecting, Mr. Galena says, the mainstream media using unfair framing to make progressives look bad. I'm shocked.

Last segment he'd written, and if Politico and Mourning Joe agree with you, you might not be a progressive. Randy says, it feels like Republicans are mocking the Green New Deal in order to discredit it and it's working. All the conservatives I see are just laughing off the Green New Deal now. It's infuriating. Randy, I hear you, and the Republicans are very strong when they go on those propaganda attacks, and they're all unified, they all have the same talking point, and they all shadow

from the rooftops, and normally the Democrats cower, and I think in the Senate they kind of did. But we've got our own bullhorns, and they're very, very powerful now. So it's a little bit, and like what I don't like is when the Republicans attack something, people automatically think, well, it's over now. No, it's not over now. We also get to counterattack. So I know it feels unusual because for the last 40 years, the Democrats never counterattack.

So when the Republicans attack, it usually is over. But it's a new day in America, so stay with us, okay? And Jet 53, just a fun comment, those air horns never get old. Thank you, Anna. Thank you. I love that. We gotta find a good fun way to celebrate, like, small victories along the way, and that's a good way to do it.

Totally agree. Jinks Anna on Twitter says, my kid is rocking out to TYT music. I may watch too much TYT. Wrong, there is no such thing. Keep watching. Rex Sol on YouTube super chat says, TYT bringing in holding the idiots into office accountable. You literally are helping to save lives in our idiotic setup of democracy. Thank you for saying that.

And then Jedi Mullet 77 on YouTube super chat says, four words to the corporate Democrats. There I say it? No, don't say it. Is it cussing? No. Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick. Oh, right.

Oh, no. Right. already explained. All right, what else is coming on? All right. I also want to just quickly mention that Nomi Prince is awesome. She's on the panel today, as you can see. And Nomi does these awesome salons for women, and it's known as the Women's Financial Salon.

No money. No money. K-N-O-W. I like it. I like it. That's excellent. Knowledge. Good.

And the next one's April 10th. Yes. And people can buy tickets where? Just come to know me prince.com, LA 630 April 10th. Awesome. Yeah, it's super, super helpful. Okay, great. What's thanks?

Devin Nunes is an ardent supporter of Donald Trump and he will tow any line Donald Trump wants him to. And right now he is advocating for investigations on certain individuals that Donald Trump doesn't like. In fact, I'll let you hear from him yourselves. Take a look. There's a good op-ed today in the journal basically saying, look, if Mueller did not look at the perpetrators, you know, if you don't get to the perpetrators, the fact that they started an investigation into Donald Trump based on nothing, based on no predicate. So where does this go now?

You are looking to make criminal referrals in the next week. Yes, I would start with this. The mainstream media continues to ignore. I would say the people who have been on the Russia gate fiasco for the entire time. I think they're listening, but what I've said my major concern now is, is that the FBI and DOJ falsely claimed that this investigation didn't begin until late July. We now know for certain that that's not true. We're still trying to get to the bottom of that.

Of course, there's still documents that need to come out, but we are prepared and are now drafting a criminal referral. As I think I said on your show, a few weeks ago, we wanted to wait until the Mueller report came out so that we could just, if there was anything in there that might be of interest, but I think we're prepared now to at least submit our first criminal referral. We think it will grab everybody that we need to grab to make sure that there's a proper investigation done, or at least it's our referral over to DOJ. We can't force them to do an investigation, but we think we will give them the appropriate

names and some of the crimes there may be more that have been committed. And then after we, as we continue to get more information, as more information comes to light, we may have to supplement that down the road. This is absurd. I mean, and this is coming from a Republican. Look, I don't have much love for Hillary Clinton, but think about how many times they investigated Hillary Clinton over Benghazi. So to have members of the Republican Party argue, oh, they put Trump through this unfair

investigation, and then they're calling it an illegal investigation. Like, nothing illegal happened in the investigation. They just don't like the fact that Trump was investigated. And by the way, at this point, do your victory lap, right? The Mueller investigation found no evidence of, or no collusion. That was the outcome of it, right? During the election, okay. But it's kind of incredible that, like, just move on.

You guys got it, move on. No, but that's the whole point. They don't want to move on, and they know that electorally they're in trouble. We'd said that before and they put on a brave face, what do you mean, we just won the 2016 elections, and then they got their clocks cleaned in 2018 in the House, a historic defeat for the Republicans. So they're in a panic, so what do you do? If you can't win in a democracy, well, you put on the brown shirts and you go out there and

talk about rounding up your political opponents and putting them in prison. So I told you that they would do that, and here they are on national TV calling for that. So if you're wondering, well, wait a minute, it seems like both sides investigate each other, and I guess if there's a crime, you go to prison. And so what's the difference here? Let me be clear. Okay, so first to Anna's point about Benghazi, if Obama had come out after the first Benghazi investigation was over, and I believe they did nine of them.

That's what the Republicans said, nine Benghazi investigations, okay? If after the first one he said, see, I knew it. You found nothing, which is true. And if this was a witch hunt and a hoax, I'm now arresting everyone that was involved in the the Benghazi investigation. People are, what are you doing? That's insane, you can't do that, right? And instead, he let them do eight other Benghazi investigations, and they all found no criminal

wrongdoing at all, and there was no repercussions, there was no anything, okay? Now on the Mueller case, not only was it not an illegal investigation, but this is how you do it right in a sense. Look, I wish that Mueller's investigation was broader and not just about the election. That's why I clarified it a second ago. It appears that it was only about the very narrow time frame of the election. But they gave the guy a job, and so I'm not criticizing Mueller in that sense. They said, look into if the Russians meddled in the election.

He looked into only if the Russians meddled into the election. And then he found out put aside obstruction of justice where he thinks there might have been a crime. He said in the case of the collusion, it appears he concluded, from what we know now, that there was not a crime during the election. You see, that means it's not a witch hunt. He looked into it. He was overly careful, very narrowly tailored, and came to the conclusion that, no, I don't think this rises to the level of a crime.

That's how you do things the proper way in a democracy and an affair system. You don't just go and arrest people because you don't agree with them politically. You do a legitimate investigation to find out if they actually broke the law or not, right? Now, when you turn to the Republicans, they go, oh, yeah, well, now that you guys investigated us, I'm going to hand in a list of names, you just said it, you heard it yourself, I'm going in a list of names that I want the Department of Justice to go investigate and potentially arrest. It's crazy.

It really just is. It should be just rested. There's nothing else to say. It is ridiculous. Yeah, no, guys, this is super dangerous. It's incredibly dangerous. And they're brazen about it. In the past, they're like the Dick Cheney's of the world would move the chessboard around

and manipulate the bureaucracy and he would lie in a sophisticated way to, but appear to stay within the system. Now they're like, we don't care about the system. And so we're just, I'm going to give you names of people that are my political opponents, and I want the Department of Justice to arrest them. What the, what do you, that's insane. And how can you call the Mueller investigation an illegal investigation if it, as you claimed, it exonerated you?

What kind of an illegal investigation that's a witch hunt says you didn't do it? Right, take the victory. Yeah. And and, and, but it, but it is the game. Nunes cannot possibly care whether these people are, A, investigated and B, found out to do anything but their jobs. He can't, it's, it's really just to sort of continue this circus. and the sort of the tension around the other side of this and to the elections.

And it's boring. Yeah, but it's also, I don't know, on the surface, it seems like, oh, this is just another political stunt, it's boring. But I feel like during the Trump administration, I've learned to not underestimate who these people really are. Because they've shown over and over again that they're willing to do anything and everything, and they are willing to move outside the system. I mean, sorry, Jake, but I mean, just look at it.

at the immigration issue, Trump has completely ignored our immigration laws pertaining to individuals coming in seeking asylum, and he's decided, no, I'm just gonna detain everyone who's seeking asylum, period, right? And I'm gonna take the children away from their mothers. I mean, he's, again, ignoring the laws that we already have when it comes to dealing with this situation. Now, that situation is not as extreme as what Nunes is calling for, but there's no limit to to how cruel, unethical, and undemocratic they're willing to be.

Look, the problem that arises when fascism begins in a country is that the system plays by the rules and the fascists do not. And that is a very dangerous situation. So Mueller played by the rules and came to this result. And the newnesses and the Trumps of the world looked at and go, thank you for that gift, you suckers. And now we're gonna round you guys up. So who are the potential people that they're gonna round up?

James Comey, former head of the FBI, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, and other FBI official, and John Brennan. These are people who ran the CIA, the FBI, our intelligence operations. And what do fascists do? You get rid of the people who could enforce the law against you. And do you play fair? No. You lie and you call things witch hunts and you call them illegal.

And do you do fair investigations that are narrowly tailored? No, you come up with an enemy's list and then you arrest them. And then you say, oh, no, no, I look, they were targeting me, I targeted them, even though those two things are completely different in the way that I just explained it. And so that's it. Since they lost, now I get to arrest them. But that's not how a democracy works. It's crazy.

That is crazy. So I think that the system is incredibly naive thinking that Trump and all these people believe in democracy and believe in our checks and balances when they believe no such thing. We have to be extraordinarily careful here with what they're gonna do next. Luckily, we do have some federal judges who are still doing the right thing, so let's move on to that story. A federal judge has blocked a Medicare, I'm sorry, a federal judge has been a federal judge has blocked a Medicaid work requirement law that was brought up in two states, Kentucky and Arkansas.

Now the Medicaid work requirements were proposed and pushed by Donald Trump. And the whole point is, hey, if you're gonna receive federal money for your Medicaid program, well then maybe you should have a work requirement in order to ensure that these people aren't just deadbeats looking to get a handout from the federal government. And that's the thinking that we've seen from the Republican Party over and over again. Luckily, a federal judge has stepped in. This is U.S. District Judge James Bosberg, and he's in Washington. He issued two decisions finding that Medicaid work requirements for low income people in Arkansas

and Kentucky pose numerous obstacles to getting health care that haven't been adequately resolved by federal and state officials. Let me give you an exact statement from his ruling. He says the Arkansas requirement was arbitrary and capricious because it did not address whether and how the project would implicate the core objective of Medicaid, the provision of medical coverage to the needy. So the argument here is, why are we attaching work requirements and these political talking points to, he didn't call it a basic human right, but I see it as a basic human right.

And so this is healthcare, this is providing people who are needy with healthcare, and we shouldn't attach that to anything else. So I think that this is closer to a legitimate debate. I don't agree with the Republicans and I agree with this judge in this particular case. But I think that if they attach it to welfare itself, that that is a perfectly legitimate debate to have in America. Isn't it attached to welfare though? Well, and in some cases it is.

And we might come out on the side of, and it depends on the legislation and how it's crafted, that no, it's not a good idea in that case either. I got my old conservative roots, and in some cases, depending on how the legislation is, I might vote yes on that. But you cannot attach it to Medicaid because that's talking about people's health care and their lives. So it's one thing to say, hey, listen, if you want federal assistance, you're going to have to work for it for cash payments or whatever it might be.

But it's another thing to say, oh, you have cancer, well, get to work. work, go back to the minds, right? But I can't, I've got cancer. Or even if I could, like this is, are you threatening me with my life? Right. Because they basically are. And what the judge is saying legally is the work requirement in this case is not rationally attached to the purpose of Medicaid.

So that is why it's arbitrary and capricious. So that's why I think his ruling is right on legal grounds as well. Right. The actual definition of Medicaid when it was constructed in 1965 was that it would cover, it would give health care coverage to people that were low asset, pregnant women who effectively weren't working or couldn't work, parents of eligible children who were disabled, people with disabilities, and elderly people living in nursing homes. So, you know, you're not, you know, the entire definition of Medicaid was to provide

additional coverage to people who actively couldn't work. Right, yes. And so that's part of the reason why, not part of the, one of the main reasons why I think the judge's ruling was correct here, but I want to push back on you a little bit, Jank. How dare you? No, actually I want to push back a lot. So you brought up your conservative roots and, you know, maybe these work requirements make sense when it comes to other programs, welfare.

But look, I actually disagree with that. So I think that it makes sense to have certain regulations in place so people aren't taking advantage of it for too long. I don't know, we can have a debate about that. But first of all, most people who need those programs are working. They're already working, right? So the framing that we see from the Republican Party is purposely meant to make it seem as though individuals who need these subsidies or these programs are just deadbeats and they're lazy

and they don't want to work. Also, look, if we're not gonna fix the issue with the minimum wage and not paying people a living wage, well then I don't wanna have a debate about work requirements related to welfare, right? I think at the heart of the issue right now, we have corporations that are taking advantage of deregulation, they're taking advantage of an incredibly low minimum wage on a federal level, and they're not taking care of their workers. So we need to solve that on a much bigger scale, I guess.

And then at that point, when we have a system that's actually fair and does give people opportunities to work and make a living wage, then maybe we can have a discussion about maybe some requirements. But right now, work requirements is ridiculous. And the access to health care. So to bring that even bigger than that, we have an awful healthcare system. Like how good as you look at it? And if people can't get access to it, this is one way to get access. to that component of healthcare that was available to them.

Our healthcare system, much bigger issue, needs to be completely made for everyone. Yeah, now's the time of the program to be fair to me. So let me give you a little bit of context into what I mean by that. So first off, what do I even mean by legitimate and illegitimate? So when the Trump administration says we think we won the electoral, not only the electoral but the overall popular vote in 2016, because 3 million people voted illegally, but that's That's an illegitimate conversation, that's fantasy land. You made that up as a complete and utter lie.

I'm not having a conversation or a debate about that. Then you can go to the next level, and when they say, hey, we wanna get rid of Obamacare, which would get rid of health insurance for 21 million people, but we're better on health care than Democrats are. No, I guess that's better than your outright lie on the election, but it's not much better at all, that's an illegitimate debate. You can say, hey, listen, I think business interests are more important than average. average Americans, so yeah, I'm gonna take away healthcare from 21 million people and I think

that's a better policy. That would be at least honest, but you know you wouldn't win that debate, so that's why you lie about it. When you get to, hey, is giving too much cash assistance, taking away motivation from people for working, I think that then is a completely legitimate debate. Even if you don't agree with that policy, I know, and I was talked about this in the past, when I got unemployment insurance, it was wonderful and it helped me a lot. And I got back on my feet.

But during that six months, I was a little less motivated to get back at it, okay, I'm keeping it real. And so, but Anna, if you say don't take away food assistance, don't take away health care, I totally agree with you. And then your overall point about context is we didn't fix anything. Right, exactly. If we fix all those things and then you want to have a legitimate debate about, hey, for cash assistance or for unemployment insurance, should there be a limit, what should that limit

be? Should there be a work requirement? Man, it'd be refreshing to get to that debate once so many other things are fixed. That's the only thing I'm saying. So that's why I want you guys to have the full context of what we mean. And one other thing I want to know, because this always gets left out of the conversation when it comes to health care, welfare benefits and things like that. It's a system that we've paid into, right?

So when you were working, when you did have a job, you paid into it. It was taken out of every single check you made. And so don't make it, don't allow people to make it seem as though these are just lazy bums looking for a handout. Oftentimes they're a already working, they're just not getting paid enough, and B, they've paid into this system. Yeah, and last point on that, it's because Anna's making a super important point, and this goes into the illegitimate bucket.

So I remember a Republican congressman was asked about the minimum wage once and whether there should be increased. They're like, oh, those bums should get a job. You can't get a wage if you don't already have a job. So yet they already have a job, they're getting minimum wage. So but in their minds, if you're not rich, you're a bum, okay? And earned income tax credits sometimes get the same thing. That's for the working poor.

And the Republicans claim that they're always for tax credits and tax cuts. But when it comes to the poor, they're like, ah, the bums, right? And they wanna cut their earned income tax credit so that they can give more tax cuts to the rich. That is when you know that they are lying, disingenuous, and working for their donors instead of their voters. Exactly. Right. Nomi, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much, guys. It's always awesome to have you. Thank you. Yes, and everybody check out Nomiprince.com and you don't wanna miss those if-salons. Salons, thank you. I was looking for that word that Nomi puts together if you're in town, so April 10th in L.A. Thank you. All right, 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 slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.