The Young Turks - FBI Parkland Survivors Fight Back, Anti-Gun Republican, Black Panther, and Cancer Drug Price Gouging

Episode Date: February 20, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from February 19, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1:  Students fighting for greater gun control. March to participate in the fight for greater gun controls from survivors. Republican donor vows to not donate to any candidate does not fight against militarized style guns. Hour 2:  Cenk & Ana. Move overperforms massively. Black Panther politicized in negative ways. Right wing trolls spreading fake tweets about being attacked by black people at the movie theater. The cost of a vital cancer drug has gone up 15-fold in four years after its new owner hiked prices on nine separate occasions. Lomustine has been used to treat brain tumours, lung cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma for more than 40 years but is now seen by some patients as too expensive. At that point it was being sold for around $50 a capsule. The same dose now costs $768 (£570). NextSource has increased the price nine times in less than five years. A 20 per cent hike in August was followed by a further 12 per cent rise in November, according to analysis by the Wall Street Journal. Prices of other doses of the drug, which the company has renamed Gleostine, have also been increased exponentially. 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. Thank you for watching or listening to this free podcast of the Young Turks. We want to make sure that you get some portion of the show every day. But if you want the full show, which is actually five segments, come become a member and support independent media as well. TYT network.com slash join.

Meanwhile, enjoy the free podcast. All right, back on the young Turks. Lots of stories today. Sorry, I'll do tweets in the next segment. Let's just go right over here and tell you about something slightly positive. Okay. So, a tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida, 17 people dead. Now, people are reacting and fighting back.

And the people that are leading the charge, in this case, kids, students, including a demonstration out in front of the White House. today. Let me show you some of the pictures. Exactly 17 D.C. students lie down in front of the White House today, obviously, to protest their lack of any action in protecting the kids and doing any type of gun control. And they're asking the White House to take action, and I hope they do. And one of the reasons they said that they were doing it is because they said, look, there's been basically one school shooting every other day in the year 2018.

We don't know. It literally could be us tomorrow. That's powerful. All right. Now, some of the students that were in the last shooting in Florida have spoken out and are continuing to speak out, also saying we must take action. Let's go to student Cameron Caskey first. My message for the people in office is you're either with us or against us. we are losing our lives while the adults are playing around. And we have received endless support from your generation. And we thank everybody for that immensely because we really appreciate it.

We don't need you. On March 24th, you are going to be seeing students in every single major city marching. And we have our lives on the line here. And at the end of the day, that is going to be what's bringing us to victory and to making some sort of right out of this tragedy. So I'm going to tell you more about that March in a second and give you the information on how you can participate. But now let's go to Emma Gonzalez, another student from the high school. So what do you say to the NRA?

Disband, dismantle. And don't make another organization under a different name. Yeah, don't make another organization under a different name. Don't you dare come back here? Well, I know that, of course, I know for a fact that's the next story we're going to do for you guys. The conservatives are now attacking the students. but I think that you might have a different point of view if you saw one of your best friends and your classmates getting shot in the head.

So I think that these kids are brave. I love that they're speaking out. They are unfortunately right that the adults don't appear to be doing anything. So here's more from Cameron Casky. Much more that needs to be done and much more that people like Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are not doing. And it's scary to think that these are the people who are making our laws when our community just took 17 bullets to the heart. And it feels like the only people who don't care are the people making the laws. Yeah, it's not that they don't care, to be fair.

They just care more about the checks they get from the NRA. That's what corruption looks like. Last one from Emma Gazelles. Politicians who sit in their gilded house and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent. this. We call BS. They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say that no laws could have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. Well, I'm going to have some facts to back out what she's saying there in a minute. But first, I want to tell you about the different marches that are going on,

how you can participate. The National School Walkout, planned by the woman's March organizers will be on March 14th at 10 a.m. in each time zone. It calls for students, faculty, parents, and others to walk out of school for 17 minutes, one minute for each person who was killed in the Florida school shooting. Here's the website and the Facebook page for them. Obviously, these are complicated URLs. That's okay. We have it down below in the description box on YouTube and in the comment section on Facebook so you can just click on them. Also for the next one. This is the one that the students were talking about. The March for Our Lives is scheduled for March 24th. The details are thin right now, but students and activists plan

to march on Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities. I'm quoting Vox there. Here's their websites and Facebook URLs, also in the description box and comment section, depending on where you're watching this. And Vox continues to explain that both the events will focus on calling Congress to act on gun violence, which is very logical. But, I mean, it should be the least controversial thing on the planet after this massacre and the one before that and the one, you know, we've had four massacres in the last five months. I'm not talking about mass shootings. That's almost every day. Massacres, dozens of people shot. You got in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where they lost 26 people in a church, 58 people in Vegas. Obviously,

Parkland just happened. But it's a controversial position in Washington. The Republicans are like, do something about gun violence? Oh, no way! No way! I, the NRA pays my bills. I'm not going to touch that if my life depended on it, and it might. Steve Scalise was shut. Comes out, he's like, are the checks still clearing? Yeah? Okay, great, I'm still with the NRA. Okay, the day, now here's a third March. The day set for actions is April 20th, which will be the 19th anniversary of the Massacre at Columbine High School, Alternate reporting on that third March, the Twitter account for the national school walkout, which will start a Friday, declares, we are the students, we are the victims, we are changed.

Their Facebook link is right here. And again, these are easy clicks in the description box. And oftentimes also in the eye, if you scroll over the video, there's an eye that pops up there that will also have the links for you guys whenever we talk about links on YouTube. Okay. Now, let me give you some of the stats that shows that Emma Gonzalez is right about gun violence in America. The U.S. makes up less than 5% of the world's population, but holds 31% of global mass shooters.

That is not an accident, and the rest of the data bear that out. The U.S. has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times that of Sweden, and nearly 16 times that of Germany, according to the United Nations data compiled by the Guardian. Gun deaths are a big reason in America is a much higher overall homicide rate than other developed nations. Turns out we are number one. We're number one in killing ourselves with guns. That is literal. It is a fact. And by the way, this is not, hey, the U.S. has 16 times as many gun homicides than Germany, but we're a bigger country.

No, it's per capita. Per capita. We kill ourselves with guns at a rate 16 times. higher than Germany. You know why? It's not a lot of guns in Germany. And there's a ton of guns in America. They get into a fight in Germany. They do, you know why? Because they're humans. And they yell at each other. And maybe they slap or punch each other and that's terrible. Here in America, we get in a fight, grab a gun, shoot someone and kill them. That's why our homicide rate is way higher. And we have the mass shootings to boot. Here, let me show you

another graph on mass shootings. This is a chart that shows you number of guns in the country and then number of mass shootings. Hey, look at that. Turns out the more guns you have, America is almost off the chart there in the upper right corner. The more mass shooters you have. And the rest of the world is in the lower left corner. They don't have very many guns and they don't have very many mass shooters.

Oh, these just all of these studies have to be one-offs. Wrong. Let's go to a collection of studies. In 2016, review of 130 studies in 10 countries published in the epidemi, oh, God, God help me. I'm just going to do that over it. Not today, devil, not today. A 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries found that new legal restrictions on owning and purchasing guns tended to be followed by a drop in gun violence, a strong indicator

that restricting access to guns can save lives. So you have to repeat these super obvious things because it just will not get through to Republican legislators. Now, federal background checks, don't get me wrong, it gets through the Americans, not just the Democrats, but the Republicans. About 93% of Americans are in favor of universal background checks, but the politicians won't do it. So here's another study. If you say, well, okay, maybe they're just in favor of that one small piece of gun control based on Pew Surveys. There are way more adults in the U.S. who believe that gun laws should be stricter overall. That's 52% than those who believe gun laws should be less strict.

That's an 18%. That's a tiny minority. But they are so loud. And the money of the NRA is so loud that 18% of the country teaming up with tens of millions of dollars from weapons manufacturers is drowning out the voice of the rest of us. And finally, one more piece of context from German Lopez at Vox. This has happened dozens of times over the years, talking about the shootings and then the protests. The December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a gunman killed 20 children, six adults, and himself similarly led to calls for action.

Since then, there have been more than 1,600 mass shootings, killing more than 1,800 people and wounding more than 6,400. Many of these events led to speeches and events, but Congress refused to budge every time. Will it be different this time? I hope so, and I hope that all the students and their parents and everyone else goes out to these marches and then says, you know what,

I'm not going to vote for another Republican or Democrat if they're taking NRA money and selling our kids out and letting us, them get killed in one mass shooting after another after another because they'd like another donation from the NRA. We're tired of it. In fact, another story I have in the news for you today is one of the top Republican donors down in Florida said, no must.

I'm not giving the Republicans any more money until they do something about assault weapons. Enough is enough. How many kids have to die? That is a fair question. We should keep asking it until we have the answer from our politicians. All right, I'm going to leave it right there. I can go on and on.

Okay, so now, let's go to, oh, here it is. All right, sorry, guys, give me one more sec. Going on the next story, the good guy, Republican, believe it or not, does exist. At least he's a good guy on this issue, not on other issues. I'm going to get to him next. But first, let me show you the Fox reaction to the students. Okay. 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-Boh-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. So after the parkland shooting in Florida, a lot of the students down there are going to demonstrations.

They're speaking out on television. They explain on TV how they saw their friends get butchered and massacred right in front of their faces. And so they understand the adults aren't going to do anything. our political system is sick. So they're speaking out. Here's some of the stuff they're saying. Delaney Tar says, because of these gun laws, people that I know, people that I love, have died,

and I will never be able to see them again. That's a student at the high school where the shooting happened. A crowd chanted at one of these protests, vote them out, vote them out. There was a sign that said, hashtag never again. And, well, unfortunately, we're on a countdown to it happening again because it always does in this country because we have no gun control. But that is the point of these rallies. And another sign said, hashtag, do something now.

They are right about the fierce urgency of now because we're all on a countdown to the next school shooting. It's a near guarantee at this point. If your kids are in a school somewhere, are you sure that's not the next school to get shot up? There's no way to be sure. The only thing we can be sure about is until we do something about gun control, I guarantee you. I said near certainty, but unfortunately it's not. It's an absolute certainty.

I guarantee you there'll be another school shooting. The only question is where and if it involves your kids. Another sign said simply, don't let my friends die. Okay. So Fox News reported on this and then they sent out a tweet about their article. nothing wrong with that. So I'm glad they did. Some of the comments from the followers of Fox News on Twitter. All right, well, let's just show you. Deplorable Dan with hashtag MAGA writes in, they all need to shut up. Now remember that after a shooting, a lot of times,

people like myself will say we need gun control. Why? Because I'm tired of seeing kids get shot. And I know for a fact that more guns leads to more school shootings, more mass shootings, and more gun homicides. That is true all across the world. 130 studies have proven it out. Okay. What do the right wingers online say? Oh, man, you have no respect for the victims. You know, you're speaking out while this emergency is still an emergency, while we haven't forgotten about it, while we haven't done our delay tactics and never taken any action on it? It is outrageous. What about the victims? As if they care about the victims.

Now they're telling them, why don't you just shut up already? Well, it turns out you don't like their message. You don't like that they didn't like to see their friends murdered right in front of them. And now you're telling me shut up. If it was just one, okay. And look, I grant you at social media. But there is an ugliness out there. Brandon writes in, I wonder how much this kid's being paid.

Yeah, of course. Because you'd have to be paid to be bothered to see some of your best friends murdered right in front of you. Some of the kids literally saw the bullets going into their friends and killing them. Wow, they're being paid. So now here's another obnoxious meme from the right wing. Have they no decency? No, none whatsoever. Let me see this now.

They took an old movie picture and put it up. Oh, you just did the Tidepod challenge. Please tell us all your ideas for gun control. In other words, kids are so stupid. You kids, what would you know about gun control? Well, they know a lot about it. I'm not sure anybody in the country knows more how damaging it is more than they do. They saw it with their own eyes.

Now here's another tweets. Kids using the mainstream media to try to demolish the Second Amendment and have a police state like communist governments, no, that'll never happen. So you think asking your friends, asking the government to do something about your friends being murdered in front of your eyes, is the equivalent of becoming communist? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure those kids, they're all about the communist agenda. Everything for the right wingers is all about like some extreme ideology. It's all projections. Since they're extremists, they think, oh, no, that kid is not disturbed by his best friend being murdered and seeing 17 dead bodies in the hallways of his school. No, it's that the kid's a communist.

Okay, great. I got two more. How could it get worse? All right, well, let's go to Chris Thomas. Wonder if they had rallies planned weeks before this tragedy. Oh, I see. Of course, it's a conspiracy. Oh, I'm so sick of their grotesque conspiracy theories. It's never their fault. They can never take personal responsibility. You're against gun control. We have out of control guns in the country. 130 studies have showed that those guns lead to higher mass shootings, higher schools. school shootings, higher gun homicides over and over and over again.

It is absolutely incontrovertible evidence. So what do you say? Oh, no, man, I bet somebody else did it and they had it all planned out. Yeah, yeah. You people are monsters. So, and here's the last one from Andover in 1982. Change must start within them. Unless they change within, nothing will be accomplished.

Okay, all right, wait, not so bad, but I'm a little worried. And then the final sentence. it wasn't a gun but one of them oh great blame the students who got shot there is no bottom to the right wing barrel there's no one they won't insult there's no one they won't attack and there's nothing they won't do to protect their ideology truth be damned human decency be damned okay now let's go go to the one Republican donor that actually is doing the right thing. I'm trying to be fair.

Give credit where credit is due. So the Republican Party has been taking tens of millions of dollars from the NRA. Donald Trump alone took $30 million. Marco Rubio down in Florida, who promises that there'll be no gun control, has taken $3.3 million from the NRA, and the list goes on. But finally, one Republican donor has had it, and he's actually leading a bit of a countercharge among Republican donors on this issue. So, look, I'm sure that I don't agree with him on almost any other issue, but I commend his strong and brave stance on this one. New York Times explains a prominent Republican political donor demanded on Saturday that the party passed legislation to restrict access to guns and vowed not to contribute to any candidates or electioneering groups that did not support.

support a ban on the sale of military-style firearms to civilians. I'll bless his heart on that one. El Hoffman Jr., a Florida-based real estate developer, who was a leading fundraiser for George W. Bush's campaigns, said he would seek the Marshall's support among other Republican political donors for a renewed assault weapons ban. Now, this is not a minor donor. Colgate Total is more than just your favorite toothpaste. It's dedicated to advancing oral health.

The new Colgate Total Active Prevention System features a reformulated toothpaste, innovative toothbrush, and a refreshing antibacterial mouthwash. All designed to work together to fight the root cause of common oral health issues, such as gingivitis, plaque, and tartar. Use the full routine twice daily and be dentist ready. Shop the Colgate Total Active Prevention System now at walmart.ca. He has given millions and millions of dollars

to different Republicans running for office throughout the years. He himself says, quote, for how many years now have we been doing this, having these experience of terrorism, mass killings, and how many years has it been that nothing's been done? It's the end of the road for me. Now, look, I'm going to get a little cynical here, but I think that the tens of millions of dollars that corporations have, and it is oftentimes gun manufacturers, hence corporations, that funneled the money to the NRA, and then the NRA funnels it to the

politicians. That kind of crony capitalism, unfortunately, will overpower even millionaire and billionaire donors on the Republican side, because corporations will always have more money than individuals. So I hope Hoffman can gather up more people to join this cause, and maybe it'll make a difference, because that's the only thing Republican politicians listen to is Republican donors. But they'll probably be outspent by the NRA. But again, I don't want to discourage it. I I think it's wonderful. Let me give you more context. Republican elected officials in Washington, Florida, have shown no significant interest in considering new gun restrictions after the Florida school shooting.

The party, which has full control of both the state and federal government, has traditionally opposed virtually all new limitations on firearms. And that is absolutely true. But Hoffman is not deterred. He says, if we go from Florida to Las Vegas and now Parkland, you just have to know that there are others around the country just dreaming. about staging another mass murder. That is absolutely true and TikTok, tick-tok until we have another one. It's coming.

It's around the corner. Don't get surprised when it happens. And it'll be another mass shooting, unfortunately, very soon. All right. Now it has spread to other donors as well. Peter S. Rommel, a Jacksonville-based donor who gave $125,000 of Jeb Bush's

Super Pack in 2016 said he was on board with Mr. Hoffman's plan and would only contribute to candidates supportive of banning assault weapons, he said the Parkland shooting was a turning point. Look, it's sad that Sandy Hook was not a turning point. It's sad that Orlando was not a turning point. Las Vegas was not a turning point. Then when Gabby Giffords, a congresswoman was shot in the head, that was not a turning point. Steve Scalise was shot, a Republican congressman, that was not a turning point. But at least for some Republican donors, we have now hit a turning point.

And thank God for that. Hoffman says, I will not write another check unless they all support a ban on assault weapons. Enough is enough. And he says, furthermore, I'm going to email every single donor I know in the Republican Party and try to get them on board.

We really got to start a little movement here. I will take help wherever it comes from and I don't care how much I disagree with Al Hoffman Jr. on other issues. We'll fight on those issues and we'll fight in the battle of politics and ideas and ideology.

In this case, he has taken a bold and correct stance. And hey, Republicans, if these people don't represent you and you're tired of the mass shootings and the massacres as well, and you're worried that the massacre might be coming to your town next because they probably will, then you should join people like Al Hoffman Jr. and others and make sure that the Republican politicians who are blocking any action on this issue are gone and don't represent you. elect other Republicans that are not bought by the NRA. Go to Democrats, do whatever you need to do. But don't give another dollar or another vote to any politician. And by the way, that includes some Democratic politicians.

To any politicians taking money, blood money from the NRA to make sure that they do not do any gun control or take any action on all of these massacres that we're all suffering. Not one more dollar, not one more vote. All right, we've got to take a break here. And when we come back, I'll tell you the story of how the Democrats did the focus group. They tried to find out what voters thought of the Democratic Party. Uh-oh. Race for Impact. You're right in the middle of this podcast.

We've got another great segment coming up for you. If you'd like the full show, which is actually five segments, go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. You become a member. You support the show. You support independent media. And you get the whole two-hour show ad-free every day. Let's go do it now. All right, back in the Young Turks.

We got a lot of stories for you guys in this hour. So I'm just going to read one tweet. End Venture says, kind of sad to think, now that rich people care, something might change. Politicians only listen to the donors. It's true. That was the story about the Republican donor saying, well, I'm not going to give you millions of dollars anymore

unless you're for some small amount of gun control. Yeah. So at least that money talks. And member shoutouts today are Daniel Hill and Jeanette Newman. Today, no post game, because we're doing a double show of Rebel headquarters. Don't miss that. And members, you get all the Rebel Headquarters, whatever you want. You can listen to it, watch it, download it, or stream it.

Of course, same applies to the Young Turks. And that is at TYT network.com slash join. And tonight on Rebel Headquarters, someone who went into Democratic politics and came out a rabbi. Okay, Democrat, a guy walks into the DNC, walks out a rabbi. All right, so we'll explain it in the show. All right. What's next, Anna? We start off with a little bit of entertainment news with a political twist.

Twist. A little twist, so let's get to it. The Disney Marvel movie Black Panther broke all sorts of records at the box office during its opening weekend. And unfortunately, the movie has become politicized in some negative ways. But first, let's start off with the positive. According to reports, the movie overperformed massively by grossing 201.7 million over the three-day weekend, the biggest domestic debut for any film that's not a character, team-up movie, or part of a sequel trilogy. So that's nice.

That's fun. Also, the film was powered in part by the second largest Thursday preview night ever at 25.2 million, as well as the second biggest Sunday in film history, 60.1 million, notching just behind the Force Awakens, which came in at $60.6 million. So Black Panther also represents the biggest domestic debut by a black director. So this is where things, unfortunately, needlessly become political and politicized. So the filmmaker behind this film was Ryan Coogler. He is a black filmmaker.

And also, when you look at the cast, you'll notice that, first of all, the co-writers were all black. And there were no white Americans in featured roles. They were in supporting roles. So nearly half of the film's North American audience, by the way, was female. More than 60% was older than 25, just to give you a sense of, you know, the demographic that went in to see the film. It did well, made a lot of money so far. It's expected to make even more money. But some people decided to take this positive story and turn it into negative one.

We'll get to that in just a second. Yeah. So before we get to the madness on this, already there's some degree of madness. Right wing, why would you be opposed to this? I mean, aren't you betraying yourself by being opposed to? And by the way, let's be fair, it's not all right wingers, not all Republicans, but obviously some that are enraged with us. if there's a million movies that are mainly all white cast, what's the big deal about having a movie that's mainly black cast?

So what? I don't know why that that's an issue. Like, I don't have a dog in any of these fights. I'm not really white. I'm not black. I'm somewhere in between. And I feel like, okay, some movies are white, but it'd be nice to have a diverse set on some of these

so that other people can feel represented. But most of the movies are all white, but this is mainly a white country. And that movie happens to be mainly black. Great. I just don't understand what the big deal is. But it makes black people look heroic. Maybe that's a potential issue. So I want to be as fair as possible when covering this story.

As far as I've seen, and I might be wrong because I don't have eyes everywhere at all times. As far as I've seen, there haven't been politicians or members of the GOP or public figures who identify as right-wing. who have come out and said negative things about this film. However, there have been a number of trolls online who have been spreading propaganda about the black community in regard to this film. So you may have seen some photos pop up on social media, particularly Twitter, which is probably one of the worst places on the internet, where people claimed that they were assaulted by black audience members as they went to go see the film.

Now, all of these accounts have been debunked because the images that are they were assaulted. that they used have been traced back to other issues that have absolutely nothing to do with this film. Let's take a look at a few of the examples. Again, these are all fake. These have all been debunked. The first one shows an image of a bloody towel

or napkin. The person tweeted, was that the Black Panther premiere, but a group of black youth said this movie wasn't for me. I am white. They then proceeded to assault me. I'm heading to the ER now. That tweet was retweeted about 400 times before

it was debunked and taken down by Twitter. So some people are buying into this propaganda. Again, you can't really trace it back to any political group, right? It could just be trolls looking to get a rise out of other people. But the fact that their mind goes there should say something. No, no, I'm going to go further than you. Yeah, I'm going to connect to a group. It's right-wingers.

There aren't progressive racist out there who are like, let me start racist memes. So that is not a phenomenon that exists at any kind of scale in America. Are there right wing racist online who love to start racist memes? Yes. Dime a dozen. And so, and look, I know that a lot of the trolls think that they're funny. And they're like, look, I guess I'm a right winger. But me, racist, no, I'm just having fun.

But you are telling people, and a lot of people don't know you're kidding. And that's your great amusement. Like, ha ha, I'm kidding, but they don't know it. It's kind of a weird backwards thing in comedy, right? Like, comedians are usually successful when other people realize they're funny and then laugh. They get a rise out of, no one realizes that we're liars. Isn't that funny? But in reality, if they don't realize you're lying, they might actually think that black people

attacked a white person. That's an anecdote. It happens to be a fake one. But it could scare people. And if you spread it around and around and around, you do it over and over a year. you have purposely spread this malicious smear against blacks in America that they randomly attack white people. And that's not funny.

That's racist. That's the definition of racism. Black people are bad and violent and attack white people for no reason. By the way, I lied. I made it up because it's not true. But I'm saying it because I'm an effing racist. And also, just own it. I know, but here's the thing.

I don't believe anything on Twitter anymore, including. But, Anna, you're savvy about it. You have any idea how many people believe everything they see on Twitter? I know, but listen to what I'm saying. Not that I, of course, I'm not going to believe this kind of like propaganda, racist propaganda. But more importantly, it's hard for me to believe that it's actual people behind these tweets. And what I mean by that is it could be bots. It could be a small group of people that like to, you know, lead to some divide in the country by using whatever technology they have to, you know,

maximize the number of these types of tweets. That's what I mean. Yeah, I understand. And it could be that initially it was a couple racists here. And then the Russians thought, oh, this is wonderful. Right. Ooh, we love racism. It divides America perfectly, right?

But either way, it's the three R's, right-wingers, racists, and Russians. There are no progressive sending terrible racist memes about black people in America. So that was just one example. There are several other examples, all of which, again, have been debunked. They've been taken off of social media. Another example showed a Swedish woman who had been assaulted before, way before this movie came out, but the person who sent this tweet out said, I went to see Black Panther with my girlfriend and a black teenager shouted, you at the wrong theater and smashed a bottle on her face. Yeah, that's, again, a Swedish girl who was assaulted in a completely different incident years ago. Another example, a man laying in a hospital bed with black eyes.

The person said they threw me out of the theater and said it wasn't my movie. I don't have insurance and can't see. That was 23-year-old Michael Voler, who was hit in the face in London in May of 2017 in an attack that was reportedly precipitated by anger over the results of a soccer game. And it goes on and on. And I'm going to skip a couple of them and just go straight to Graphic 83. One person also used Rob Porter's wife's image to make it seem as though she was attacked while seeing this movie. And they're pretending, of course, that she was a different person.

But that is particularly ironic. The right wing using the ex-wife of a right winger who had committed domestic abuse against her in the allegations that have been laid out recently about Rob Porter. So a Republican beats up his wife, then they use the picture to say black people did it at a Black Panther movie screening. Well, at TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking by matching with the TDC? small business account manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you open select small

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One, if it's the Russians or whoever it is, some people in Macedonia, whatever it might be, right? all I know is it is almost consistently done to the benefit of the right wingers and so they just keep pounding at this issue of race and then they'll turn around and go you guys are race obsessed we're not the one spreading fake news about how black people attack white people randomly you're the monsters that are doing that and if you're and then by the way it was the good news is it was wildly unsuccessful as Anna pointed out huge huge opening weekend. So that's a happy note. The country is not anywhere near as racist as these guys make them out to be and as right wing as these guys make them out to be. They make it seem like, oh, Trump won. So the whole country's racist and right wing. They won't say racist, but they'll say, you know, is against unlimited immigration and banning Muslims and black crime and all that stuff, right? But it turns out, no, a lot of people want to see the movie. And finally, what happened? I thought right wingers were in favor of the free market.

Free market is spoken. They love the movie. So this is you trying to fight back in pathetic ways. And at least there's other things like our show to call you out. That's probably what drives them crazy about our show. Yeah. Let's move on to some economic issues in the U.S. that have enraged me. Oh, you know, before we do that, do we have the J.R. pictures? We do have the J.R. pictures. Can I just show you this because it's just fun for it real quick? So J.R. Jackson is our producer. You guys see him on camera all the time.

He has black superheroes tattooed on his arms. So he had the Black Panther before the Black Panther was cool. There it is. And he's also got Luke Cage on his arms as well. These are all before the shows came out, the movies came. came out and he had done this. So upon realizing that he was into Black Panther prior to this movie even coming out, he decided to buy a loft in Brooklyn.

He is now also drinking organic trade-free coffee or free trade coffee. Because he's a hipster who was onto trends before the trends even existed. But anyway, I love to say told you. This is not really a told you. But apparently, JR, ahead of the time. So movie producers, look at the rest of the tattoos. You'll have your next movie. All right, moving on.

Price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry is not necessarily new news. However, there was a story that kind of went under the radar that I wanted to bring to your attention. Back in December, the Wall Street Journal reported about price gouging in regard to a specific cancer drug that's used for a variety of individuals who have different types of cancer, like brain tumors, lung cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma. It's been around for about 40 years, but over recent years, the price has gone up considerably. To give you an example, it was previously sold for around $50 a capsule. The same dose now costs a whopping $768. Jesus Christ, man.

So back in 2013, the pharmaceutical company that had, that created, this drug and sold this drug had actually sold it to a new startup called NexSource biotechnology. Or, yes, biotechnology. Now, after NexSource purchased it, that's when the price gouging really started. NexSource has increased the price nine times in less than five years. Prices of other doses of the drug, which the company has renamed as Gliostein, has also been increased considerably. Okay. So again, the drug gets sold to a new pharmaceutical company, a startup, and they're like,

you know what? Even though the patent on this drug has expired, no one has created the generic version so we can go ahead and charge whatever we want. Over $760 for one dose of this drug. So this is what crony capitalism looks like. Why? So drug companies do get patents that last for a certain amount of time. It used to be five years. Now, over time, they've increased that sometimes now it's seven years, and for some drugs it's even all the way up to 12 years. And that is the government saying you are not allowed to compete with these people. Now, sometimes those patents last so long that it's not economically viable to create a generic drug. Now, that's oversimplifying. And I'm not positive as to why there wasn't a generic drug in this particular case. Okay, but

But the other way that you have corny capitalism affecting the drug companies is in other developed countries, they have single payer. So what does the government do? It negotiates on your behalf. So if you say, all right, I know that I make a really good profit at $50, but I'd like to charge you $750 instead, the government goes, no, I'm not going to waste a taxpayer money paying you $750, I'm going to negotiate, okay? In our system, this is unreal.

If you don't live inside America, it's got to be confounding to you. The government is not allowed to negotiate drug prices, even though they have enormous leverage because they buy so many drugs for Medicare and Medicaid. They literally wrote it into the law that the government must take whatever price the drug companies give. How is that possible? How could you, I mean, if it was a business and you told the business, you must pay whatever the person is charging, you're down the supply line. You'd be like, that's outrageous.

No, I should be able to negotiate. Right. No, but they took that power away. Why, the drug companies are the number one donors to politicians. And since they give so much money to the politicians, the politicians let them rob us blind. One last thing that's super relevant to this is if you have a single pair, everybody's covered. They don't let the sick die. That's kind of the point of insurance.

But in our insane system here in America, we let people die. We let them die in the streets. That's right. So there are tens of millions people who are uninsured that now they'll be more uninsured because the latest tax plan cut even more from health care. The Republicans now are saying they're going to cut even more from Medicaid and Medicare to make up for their tax cuts for the rich. And then on top, these guys go, well, you got cancer.

You got to take this drug. Otherwise, you're going to die. So I can charge you whatever you're like. And your government is not here to protect you. Nobody's looking out for the citizens. This is a government by the corporations for the corporations of the corporations. Right. Now, some might say, okay, well, even if you have the government negotiating, if there is no generic

version, if there are no other competitors, then wouldn't this company still be able to charge whatever it pleases? Well, that could be the case. But remember, if the government is involved and the government sees this form of price gouging, there might be regulatory retaliation. You know, there might be some oversight. They might look at what the actual costs are. Why is it that they're charging so much per capsule?

And that could change things, right? So by the way, the chief executive of NexSource was asked about why the price has gone up so much. And here's what he had to say. He said that the price is based on development costs. Remember, this drug was already developed. It's been around for 40 years, okay? development costs, regulatory fees, and the benefit the drug provides to patients. Okay, let's stop for a second.

Wait, wait. So right there, he's confessing this drug will literally save cancer patients' lives. And so I know I can charge whatever I want for it, and they have no choice but to buy it if they want to live. And remember, the question was about why does it cost so much? It's not that it costs that much to produce it. He's saying it costs that much because you'll die without it. Ha ha! You might as well have added that to the end of the quote.

And Anna's right about the development costs. Look, development costs are a real thing, and that's why these drugs get patents, and they have patents in a lot of parts of the world. So we understand that concept. Whether the patent has to be 12 years in some cases is a completely different issue. And in this case, you developed and made up your costs decades ago. So I understand that as a concept. For this particular drug, you can't say, oh, I still haven't made up my development costs.

Golly gee, I haven't even made a profit yet. That is preposterous. You know, that's not true. You were making a profit when it was 50 bucks, let alone when it's 750 bucks. I mean, it's amazing because Republicans will, you know, talk about death panels when it comes to providing health insurance for Americans, as if it's, you know, not some sort of privilege, but more of a right. But death panels already exist. The death panels are actually run by the CEOs of these pharmaceutical companies who get to decide how much they charge you for these drugs.

They get to, you know, price them at exorbitant amounts. And if you don't have the money to pay for it, well, too bad. Well, you get to die. That's what you get in the United States of America. The richest country, the most productive country, that's what you get. It's pathetic. And it's amazing that there are no. This story, by the way, again, I want to reiterate this.

It was published in December, and no one talked about it. The only reason why I found out about it was because it was republished by a different news organization, and it came across my desk. And I'm like, how do people not know about this? Why aren't people outraged about this? Well, did it come in the form of a tweet? Because if it didn't, cable news can't be bothered with it. It has to do with real issues. And by the way, it's putting the kidding inside about cable news.

who are the top advertisers on cable news? Oh, right, pharmaceutical companies. Are you having trouble getting an erection because you're 89 years old and you watch cable news? Well, don't worry, here's a drug company who's going to give millions of dollars in advertising. They're not going to touch those guys. The politicians get paid by them. The mainstream media gets paid by them. And lo and behold, look at that.

The politicians don't do anything. And the media doesn't cover it. Final thing for you guys, I want you to understand. This is not capitalism. This is crony capitalism. So I am not in favor of setting prices. So we can get into debates about that, but I think price controls are a bad idea, and I think they pervert the market.

And it winds up hurting the middle class and the poor as well. Okay, but put that debate aside. I want you to understand something. This is not price setting. It is normal in a free market to set limits so that there is not price gouging. So I'll give you an easy example. a natural disaster happens they run out of water and food

now somebody could go in and go now water is no longer a dollar per bottle it's $100 per bottle or $1,000 per bottle and if you don't have it you're going to die and your kids are going to die well the government steps in and says you're not allowed to take advantage of a situation like that that is not price setting that's price gouging

and we will not allow it because we are here to protect our citizens because it's supposed to be a democracy where our representatives represent us and look out for us Unfortunately, we've lost that in this country because we've allowed unlimited legalized bribery. And so our politicians are bought, and they're going to let them do this to us over and over again. Countless people will die because they can't afford it.

It's sickness on a grand macro scale. Thanks for watching. We're listening to this free version of the Young Turks podcast. You know that the full show is at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. If you become a member, you have the full show ad-free. We love you for watching or listening either way. There's going to be a new free podcast tomorrow. You can keep on doing that.

But if you want to get to full show ad-free, t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.