The Young Turks - Financial Advisors No Longer Bound By Your Best Interest, Pruitt's Secret Meetings

Episode Date: March 17, 2018

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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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join.

Thanks for watching. All right, back on the young turks. A couple tweets. Skeptychist Rex says, for $31,000, that dining room table better be able to seat all of Rhode Island. Kelly Kerr says, who was it that said with the tax cuts families would save $1,000 so they could buy a new car or redo their kitchen? They obviously have no idea what things cost. You just ask Carson, right? Or he just got a huge tax guy.

Ishka Bibibble says Carson says that being poor is a choice. Yeah, well, when you come out of the womb, I mean, it's a curious choice that people make. And I've told this many times, but I think it's important to know. African-American average two parent family

for African-Americans in this country, net worth of the family is $16,000. dollars, same metrics for a white family is $160,000. Wow. So when you talk about white privilege, you don't know it, but on average, you were born into a family that had 10 times the wealth of an average African American. So that's kind of how white privilege works. It doesn't mean that you're rich.

It doesn't mean that everything is wonderful in rainbows and unicorns for you. It just means that it's a different situation. So when they pay a guy like Ben Carson to say being poor as a choice, they know it's just a sad joke and a sick joke on all of you guys, including if you're a poor white guy in the middle of West Virginia, Nebraska, or wherever. And Tom Zawaki says the only reason Price got fired is because Trump was mad he was spending more on air travel than him. Which is entirely possible. I spend the most on air travel. I have the best planes.

They're huge, my planes. Well, now they are. That's true. Yeah. So, Sarah, what's going on lately? What are you up to? Well, I, you know, I'm doing this show, sell-by date, and folks can find out more about where it is and where it's traveling what I'm up to following me on the socials. I'm on Twitter at Joan Sarah, and you should know my show kind of has multiple personalities in it, right? I even brought one of them with me. She just is a big fan. Uh-oh, here we go.

Well, listen, hi there. My name is Lorraine Levine. and Sarah Jones brought me here today. I'm a huge fan because I remember in America where, you know, it was actually government by the people for the people. At least, you know, we at least pretended that that was the goal. So anyway, I'm in the show, sell-by-date.

Come to the Geffen because I won't tell you how old I am, but I won't live forever. So come while we're running. I'm doing this show with all these different people in it with their all fans, and yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing it. And Sarah gets to do Indian accents, which I want to do, but I hear I'm not allowed to. You must channel your inner. Really, you have to totally believe in that democracy of a billion people.

See how that feels inside. Then you can do it. Okay, I got to love that. I'm going to come to that alone, everything else. All right, and speaking of appearances, Anna is going to be on in Bernie's Town Hall on Monday. So we're going to have the show normal time, 6 o'clock Eastern on Monday. But at 7 o'clock Eastern, we're going to switch over to the Bernie Sanders Town Hall on income inequality, a topic we were just discussing.

And Anna will participate in that town hall again. So make sure you're here at t-y-tnetwork.com slash live. Is that in D.C. again? Yeah. So cool. And then we're going to have commentary, obviously. We're going to watch it along with you guys here. Then we're going to have commentary afterwards in the studio in L.A.

And if you want to learn more about the town hall, go to TYT. Network.com slash inequality. Okay? All right, what's next, Dana? There is a Senate candidate that I want to inform you about. He is a libertarian and is likely to win the endorsement of the Libertarian Party in his state. His name is Brian Ellison. And he is planning on challenging Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow.

And he says that homeless people are constantly victims of violent crime, which is true. And it's heartwarming and encouraging to hear that there's someone who wants to do something about this, right? But he thinks that the best solution is to provide them with firearms. Okay. As if they were teachers. Right. All right. So let me give you the details of his proposal. And he's being serious. At first, I thought maybe this was a joke. But no, he's being serious. So let's go to Graphic 17. He says, frankly, I think the ideal weapon would be a pistol. But due to the licensing requirements in the state, we're going to have a hard enough time getting homeless people shotguns as it is. So he

specifically wants to provide them with shotguns because the licensing requirements are a little more laxed when it comes to these shotguns. Now Ellison said he and his team would aim to pre-qualify homeless people who wanted shotguns and redeemed suitable candidates to own them. So there's the issue of providing the guns, right? But then where do they get the ammunition for these guns? Well, Ellison's always thinking. He didn't think about this. And he realized that they would provide these individuals with a limited amount of bullets.

And if they are caught using those bullets to shoot cans or anything other than someone who is posing a risk or a threat, then they would no longer give them bullets. Okay, they're going to get five or six shell magazines. First, let's note for the record that this case is a very stable genius. So, but you're going to get five or six shell magazines. And he's like, now, if they run out of them defending themselves, then we'll give them more bullets. Really?

They're going to shoot five or six people? And they're like, my God, okay, this guy, I mean, to be fair, he fired twice in one time. So three people are dead. Now finally we can give the guy new bullets because he used them well. Right. And he says that he settled on pump action shotguns for practicality purposes. Because how else would a homeless person kill someone if he didn't have a pump action shotgun?

Yeah. So again, it has more to do with the licensing requirements in the state. So if you have a pistol, you have to get it licensed. And in order to get it licensed, you need to have an address. And if you're homeless, you don't have an address. So he's like, he's actually thought through some of the details, which is amazing. He also said he's going to sort of pull them to see if it's something they want, because he doesn't want to force it on them.

He said, that's right. He said, they will not be forced to carry shotguns. Well, thank you. We appreciate it. So he's going to go among the homeless and say, you guys want guns? I can't. I mean, I just want to go back to what Michael said. Like, this is, we're at a place now where, like, of course he cares.

I think that's fantastic. this is total madness. Teachers being armed. It's not a solution. Every statistic shows us that when you put the gun in the person's hands, you increase their risk of death or injury. But, I mean, you're basically throwing fuel on the problem. Exactly. And let me also bring up another thing. So, you know, these are homeless people. They're unfortunately living on the street. What happens when they're asleep and their weapon is there? Like, who's going to prevent? another person from obtaining that weapon illegally. And I mean, this is such a terrible idea. Trading their guns for alcohol or drugs or money, selling their gun. Right. You know, without anything they're going to go through the proper registration to sell the gun?

Right. Or are they just going to say, this is my private gun show? The Skid Row loophole. Yeah. So one more quote from candidate Ellison. He says, are you worried about the police being armed with military weapons? I am. The world we live in is a scary world where the police.

who used to dress in short-sleeved shirts and carry a revolver, now have long rifles with scopes and bulletproof vests and armored vehicles. And quite frankly, that scares me much more than a homeless person trying to defend themselves with shotgun. I think you can be scared of both. Yeah. Like, I think it's okay to be scared of. I'm definitely terrified of both.

But just putting more guns into society. Amazing. Yeah, so look, I want to be clear about something. I don't even think this Elsin guy has bad intent. Or is a bad guy overall. Look, he says a lot of things that are interesting. He's worried about over militarizing the cops. He is a libertarian, so he thinks we're doing too much foreign intervention.

I looked into him. Okay, and he cares about minority civil rights. Those are all wonderful things. But he genuinely believes that the answer is always a gun, right? It's some sort of weapon. And so, like, we care about the homeless intensely. And so we think maybe a home. Just a thought, some food, a home, some health care.

And I don't say that just like flippantly, Utah, Salt Lake City actually got built homes to the homeless and found that it was incredibly cost efficient. It solved a lot of their medical problems. It solved a lot of the services that you would normally have to provide. And it was like this counterintuitive idea of like, they're homeless, why don't we give them homes? Right. And it turned out to be genius. other places are trying homes to cut down on emergency room costs, etc., providing some funding for rentals, et cetera. So there's so many different ways to dress it.

But let's also be realistic, and we've talked about this a lot. A lot of the homeless are mentally ill. They didn't choose to be there. They just have an issue, but they also have rights, and it's really complicated. And you want to help them, but you want to respect their rights, et cetera. But I think the very last thing you want to do to help mentally ill homeless people, is to give them a weapon. Because I thought of it selfishly, to be honest,

like the idea of walking in L.A.'s downtown or in San Francisco with, you know, homeless people with shotguns does not sound good to me. I'm keeping it real on that. But you guys made a good point that they're actually more likely to hurt themselves because that's actually what happens when people own guns. Sarah made the point. She's right. 500 people die every single year in America from accidental gunshot wounds.

To give you a sense of context, this is amazing. All gun homicides, gun deaths in Japan combined, even if you triple their population to equal ours, is only 39. Wow. Whereas we have 500 deaths every year from just accidents, let alone homicides and suicides, which is over 30,000. It's amazing. I learned today that the NRA, when they hold their convention,

gun violence goes down around the country every year, or during the five days of the NRA convention every year. I'm researching. Isn't it amazing? I'm researching because I'm going to cover it this year and the convention in Dallas. And when I learned that fact, and I was supported by lots of other research. Correlation does not equal causation, Michael. I'm so sorry. And if you say that, they will shoot you all. Or are the homeless made to do like that. Exactly. That was going to say it gets some homeless folks on the payroll. And thank you for that point about it's just a health issue. Right. Mental health is just a health issue that needs like to be destigmatized. Put guns in the hands of folks. who actually just need care, that's... And plus, the gun control opponents are saying, no, we have to handle, we have to deal with the mentally ill. This is not how you deal with the mental ill.

Well, we, but in America, on a macro scale, we have a mental health problem. Of course we do. Because we think that the right answer for everything, including... 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-B-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 unlearn 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. It's okay, I got the solution. Give a gun. Get a shotgun while you're at it, and that'll solve it. Because the answer is always further weaponry. Yeah, it's amazing.

All right, one more story. All right. A Democrat has stepped up in Maine to challenge a Republican candidate for a state house seat. Now, the reason why this particular race is catching headlines is because Leslie Gibson, the Republican candidate, recently was criticized for some of the statements he made on Twitter in regard to the survivors of the mass shooting that took place in Parkland, Florida. Now, what he said infuriated one woman so much that she decided to challenge him because she realized that he was running unopposed. Her name is Aaron Gilchrist, and there she is, she's the Democratic candidate, and she met the Thursday filing deadline to place her name on the ballot again. against Leslie Gibson, who until then had been running unopposed, Gibson put himself in the spotlight

earlier this month by verbally attacking the two Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school students on Twitter. And the two that were referring to are Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg. So here's what he had to say about Emma Gonzalez, and it was disgusting. Again, this was on Twitter. He wrote, There is nothing about this skinhead lesbian that impresses me. And there is nothing that she has to say unless you're frothing at the mouth moonbat. Unless you're a frothing at the mouth moonbat. Now, I want to share a video. It's a montage of Emma Gonzalez.

So you can kind of get a sense of why the right wing hates her so much and why I absolutely love her. Take a look. What do you think about this idea of arming teachers? It's stupid. Why? First of all, they have Douglas ran out of paper for like two weeks in the school year and now all of a sudden they have $400 million to pay for teachers to get trained to arm themselves.

Really? Really? I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that we will not. You will not. Do you keep it in a lockbox or do you carry it on your person? If the teacher dies and a student who's a good student who's a good, student is able to get the gun. Are they now held responsible to shoot the student who's come into the door? I think I'm going to interrupt you real quick and remind you that the question is actually, do you believe it should be harder to obtain these semi-automatic weapons and

modifications to make them fully automatic such as bump stocks? I love her. I mean, first of all, Emma for president, but also, can I move to Maine fast enough to vote for Aaron Gilchrist? Like how long, how much, you know what I mean? Wait until June. Okay, wait till June. Right, right, right. I think Aaron actually has a good chance of winning.

I'll tell you why. One, Maine has public financing, so anybody's got a shop. Right. Green. So, and the private financing elections. Secondly, the number of problem the local candidates have is no media attention. So the person with more money usually wins because they have a bigger megaphone and the media doesn't cover the local races.

So here, in her case, problem solved. Everybody's focusing on that small local race in Maine. So I think Aaron's got a perfectly good shot of winning that race, which is great. How great would it be of a citizen who's 28 years old, got motivated to action? And she said she had no interest in politics before, but saw that he was running on a pose, was like, we can't let this stand and got into the race. I'm telling you, I think she has a, I can't wait for election night when I tell you, Hey, remember that story of a guy who called Emma Gonzalez, a skinhead lesbian?

Well, that's the former representative from Maine. That would be fantastic. And I want to know something that I just realized as we're doing this story. We try really hard to not say the names of the shooters after the first day or first couple of days of coverage. And I think that we've done a pretty decent job out of not perfect. And I think the media is now heading in that direction overall, which I'm thrilled about. We've been talking about it for a decade on the show. But for the first time, we have victims' names that are much more recognizable in the shooter's names.

So Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg and some of the other students are now really well known, which is amazing. And in fact, what triggered, if you will, this Republican to attack Gonzalez was that Gonzalez's Twitter handle had more followers than the NRAs. And that was the news story that made him a special little snowflake and he needed a safe space from. So that's why he was like, oh, I can't believe this. You know, lesbian has more than my beloved NRA. Because conservatives are so obsessed with like Twitter following. Trump and these guys, who's got more on Twitter? You know, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I had to bring it up because someone made this point on Facebook and I thought it was such a fabulous point.

You know, following this shooting in Parkland, Florida, there were people on the right that were arguing that one of the issues is that, you know, this kid was bullied, you know, he was tortured by the bullying. And if people were just better toward him, treated him better, maybe this wouldn't have happened. But remember, it's the right wing that moans about snowflakes nonstop. Like, oh, special little snowflakes. Oh, do we have to worry about your feelings? So, I mean, you can't use that argument when it's convenient for you? And this was not an issue of a kid being bullied. This was an issue of someone who had no reason to have any access to a gun being able to easily and legally purchase one. Anna, that's such a great point. I hadn't thought of that in that way either, which is their main argument is, no, it's not a gun control issue. Because if we just given the bully a safe space. Right. Right. Or this, the shooter, a safe space from bullies they claim, right? I think that when you shoot 17 people, you're the bully. But in the topsy-turvy conservative world, he was the poor kid.

If he just had a safe space, he'd have been okay. And by the way, the same argument was made when that shooter in Santa Barbara did what he did. And he had made videos about how women wouldn't give him a chance or other female students wouldn't give him a chance. And there were people on the right that empathized with him. So where's your snowflake argument now? They have selective empathy. They love to trot it out when it's convenient for them. That's exactly right.

All right. Everybody check out buy-sell date by-date by Sarah Jones. It's a tricky. Sell-by-date. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. All right, like I said, because it's the play on words. All right, and Michael Scher on I-24. I-24 News.com.

Come find us. So when we come back, whole new power panel, Simone Boyce is here. Gina Grant is here. Gina Grant is here. Yes. So, and we got some amazing stories for you guys, including some of these people who participated in the national school walkout, receiving corporal punishment. They were beaten by school administrators for participating in the walkout. Beaten is a very strong word.

They were swatted. Okay, that's a better way. They're trying to avoid one form of violence. They get, you know, it's like, come on. Swatted. There's one thing I know, violence is the answer. It's always in America. All right, guys, we'll be right back.

Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through. So hold, hold, stay right here. Just want to remind you if you want to get all five segments of the Young Turks commercial free. These are just two of them. Every day we do it. So go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. And you'll get the whole five segments, two hours.

Add free. Do it now. All right, back on the Young Turks, Jank, Simone, Gene. Brent with you guys tweets. Stalkington writes in, or no, stalking lion writes in, I don't care if you're tenor, do you have racist opinions, you should lose your job. As an educator, that woman makes me physically ill. Okay. Riley Grady, on the other hand, says, I'm from rural Montana and had extremely conservative teachers. Luckily for me, they were good at their jobs and made me defend my ideals. So that's lovely to hear. And for, it's not quite an on the other hand

from stalking wine, but it's a different point of view. For a more perfect America, writes in, with a less subtle point, hey lady, what the F are you smoking? Mismatch hypothesis, my ass. So if you don't know mismatch hypothesis is we should match the students to the schools where they will do better. In other words, do black kids really have to go to Harvard? Can't they just go to a lower school?

Well, they'll do better. I'm being a bit of a dick about that, but relatively, but nobody ever says, like, mismatch hypotheses for legacy students, right? Like, is that really rich student really going to do well at Dartmouth? Or should they go to a community college? Yeah, it's just keep it the same way. In the interview, she also says, like, when they say the word segregation, she's like, I'm not for segregation.

Oh, come on, go on. Do you hear yourself? Can we also just look at our priorities as a nation? We spend more on our prisons than we do on our public schools. So I think that... We're just fetishizing resources. Yeah, that's exactly. That's because she's a very stable genius.

Oh, am I plugging this t-shirt that you could find on shoptyt.com? I hadn't noticed. Okay, best-selling shirt we got. Co-fefe is pretty good, too. A lot of the shirts are great, but check it out at shoptty.com. And, of course, everybody become a member at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. And if you do, for example, the Bernie Town Hall, all the members get to watch that whenever they want, which is kind of neat. And I forget to mention, Elizabeth Warren's also at the town hall, and so is Michael Moore and Anna Kasparian.

I think that's the four horsemen of the progressive left in America. Yeah, that's amazing. Four horsemen's a little end of the worldie. I was trying to be like the epic ellipse or like, I don't know, the apocalypse? The Fantastic Four. Fantastic Four. That's better. Way less Deppie.

Okay, all right. Okay, all right, so a bit of a change of gears here. You may have seen news of the bridge collapse at Florida International University. They were building a bridge. It was 950 tons. They called it an instant bridge. And while they were building it, it collapsed on traffic that was allowed to pass underneath it at time.

There's an ongoing investigation as to what went on. Marco Rubio trying to clarify saying things like they were supposed to tighten the cables on it and they ordered someone to tighten it, but before they could be tightened, this happened. But there is an ongoing investigation. One of the companies behind it made a statement in the wake of the event. It's called FIG, FIGG, Brig Engineers, and they released a statement to CBS saying, Our deepest sympathies are with those affected by this accident.

We will fully cooperate with every appropriate authority in reviewing what happened and why. In our 40-year history, nothing like this has ever happened before. Our entire team mourns the loss and injuries associated with this devastating tragedy, and our prayers go out to all involved. It looks like a pretty solid apology. There was that thing in the middle, though, saying that in our 40-year history of this family company, nothing like this has happened before. But news has surfaced of a previous incident.

as reported by WTKR through a Virginia paper saying construction of the South Norfolk Jordan Bridge back in 2012 was put on hold. It was designed by the same firm after a trust used to build the bridge shifted, which sent a 10-foot 90-ton piece of concrete crashing down to the railroad tracks below in June 2012. Four workers were injured in the incident. As a result, the firm was find officially $28,000 $28,000. It's just weird that you would, you know, it's a family company, it's a small company, and then you wouldn't

mention something that happened as recently as 2012. And also, I thought I read that they put it up in like six hours, and that there was plans not even to have this bridge ready until next year. So what's the rush and what's the payoff for, I mean, it's a

footbridge, go around, who cares? Why would they risk people's lives? It's this new construction method called accelerated bridge construction and it was developed. I vote no. A name alone I vote no. Right, right? It was actually developed in part at FIU, which is why I think they saw this as a publicity opportunity.

And it was developed with a couple of other universities, but yeah, the whole idea is it goes up in like six hours as opposed to obstructing traffic for 24 to, you know, or not even like for 24 weeks or however long it takes to build a bridge. We had the, here when they built the bridge over the 405, it shut down traffic for like days, entire days in a time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm never defending anything that they do to enhance the 405 in any way. But because they did that, it didn't collapse and people didn't die. Yeah. So that leads to the most important point, which is like it's, we got to constantly defeat these right-wing mythologies. And so they say, oh, regulation is always bad.

Oh, regulation. Oh, it slows everything down. You've got to deregulate. Well, it kind of depends, doesn't it? Right? So if there's over-regulation, which is entirely possible, then, yeah, you should deregulate a little bit. If Wall Street keeps crashing their economy, I'd step up the regulation rather than step it down as an example. And in bridges, let's keep it up.

Let's keep the regulations out, right? Because if bridges fall, then people die. And it's kind of a bad idea. Look, buildings used to collapse all the time back in the day. We didn't know how to build them to be earthquake resistant, for example, when earthquakes it, right? Or we did know, but there was no regulations enforcing it, so it was cheaper to build a building without those required regulations built in. Yes, that's right. Now, it does cost more to build a building in L.A. now.

But guess what? In the middle of an earthquake, you're super psyched that they built it that way. Right. Because when a 90-ton slab of concrete falls in your head, it kind of hurts. Yeah. Cereball. And MCM, the other company that was involved in the actual construction, said that, or it was reported that they also had 11 violations since 2013 and had been fined $50,000 over that time.

That was reported in Time Magazine through stats from OSHA. Yeah, you know, one last weird point I want to make on the story. So Wolfpack is an organization, get money out of politics. You hear me talk about it all the time. Wolf dash pack.com slash go. It's a donor volunteer. That's right. Get money out of politics.

Anyway, but I'm super proud of the people in it, and there's a lot of veterans in the group because they think it makes sense. It's orderly, and it's fighting for freedom in a different way. There's a lot of teachers in the group because they find it that it helps, because they get frustrated with what happens in their school system and they want to know how to fix it. They logically figure out that it's money and politics. But there's also a lot of engineers. And I talked to a couple of engineers in a row a couple of years ago.

I remember having these conversations with the volunteers, right? And I was like, what drew you to Wolfpack? And one of them made a great comment that I quote from time and time on the show. You can't half build a bridge, right? If you're an engineer, you have to get the bridge 100% right. And so they think Wolfpack is logical. And it brings you all the way to an amendment, which actually solves a problem, which is very nice of them to say. But I was reminded of that reading this story, you can't even 99% build a bridge.

If you're an engineer, you've got to get it 100% right. That's why regulations are important in cases like this. Until it's done, don't let people drive underneath it. Yeah. Not to mention the bridges in America that we don't know where they are, but they've been rated as structurally unsafe unless infrastructure spending goes to fix them. Okay. Let's move on to Katie Perry. Yes. He kissed a girl. Did he like it?

Do you know what I mean by those words? From the season of American Idol that no one asked for, came a kiss that no one asked for. Katie Perry is one of the judges. She's on American Idol. This is a guy. Let's take a look at this gentleman. His name is Benjamin Glace. He's 20 years old. He's never kissed a girl in his life. Of course, the producers told that to Katie Perry. And she was like, have you ever kissed a girl? said, no. So she said, let's remedy that. And she offered what? Her cheek. He went up and kissed her on the cheek. And she was like, oh, that was great. Then she said, can you kiss the other cheek? And as he was going up to kiss the other cheek, what happened? No. Damn.

Turns her face. Boo-ya. Mouth to mouth. It was the kiss. Her around the world is evidenced by this next photo. It knocked him on his buns. That's unbelievable. That's unreal. In the wake of this, he said, would I have done it if she said, would you kiss me? According to this quote, no, I would have said no. I know a lot of guys would be like, heck, yeah, but for me, I was raised in a conservative family and I was uncomfortable immediately. I wanted my first kiss to be special. He was sent home, by the way, because he did not perform well. According to him, his heartbeat was going so fast. But then he came back to qualify his statement saying, I do not think I was sexually harassed because a lot of people came up and said, this is sexual harassment.

it seemed from the previous quote that it was. And he said, I don't think it was sexually harassed by Katie Perry. And I'm thankful for the judge's comments and critiques. I was uncomfortable in a sense of how I have never been kissed before and was not expecting it. Okay, I have enormous mixed feelings about this story. I love this story. Bring it. So, number one, there's something super endearing about the kid.

You know, so I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm not a conservative. But he's a conservative kid and he's 19 and he wanted his first kiss to be special. And for all the kids out there, don't sweat it. It's not going to be that special. Just move on. You have to kiss. Move forward. Also, it's not going to be with Katie Perry.

It will not be. And by the way, getting your first kiss from Katie Perry is pretty special. It's pretty special, pretty neat. I would have taken it. Anyway, so he's cute. He fell down, you know, and he's like, oh, I want to be in a relationship. I don't agree with them. I don't think you need to be in that relationship.

I think he should get going and all that. But I'm awe, to your point, Simone, right? Now, people are saying if you flipped it and Katie Perry was a guy of her age and kissed an 19-year-old girl without permission, people would have flipped out. 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 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 problem. buying 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 the advertisers. ExpressVPN also

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Check it out today. And I don't know. I want to hear you guys out on that. I think this is a pretty big gray area. I mean, I think you're right. If you flip the genders, I would be, I mean, I'm kind of uncomfortable with it. I don't know. So there is a lot logically to sit through, and there's a lot of frameworks that have risen in recent years about power dynamics and races or genders of traditional power and how that affects how you're supposed to interpret it.

And I think it's twofold. So flip it in reverse. There's a lot of things in this that I've covered on various shows where it's like if you flip the races and the response is, yeah, but one race has been traditionally in a position of power. And so that equivalency doesn't really work out. Whatever you feel about that, just know that that is a framework of discourse in America that's evolving. However, if you go back to the power dynamic in this situation, it is a host. There is a host there who is also Katie Perry, a judge in a position of extreme power, and she kissed him. I do think if you go to a more specific level, this guy has not had a kiss, he's 20 years old.

He is in that position where it's like, yeah, she still has cooties. I didn't know what to do. I didn't like it. And he may have liked it. The dominant thing that pull out of it, in my opinion, is she shouldn't have done it. It seems super markety because the last two things, Grace pointed this out on Pop Trigger and we covered it, is, you know, they're doing a lot of marketing about how Katie Perry is in love with various people. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, but as somebody anecdotally who's had one of one of my first kisses, like my, my, my, my third.

third kiss, had to be in a rehearsal space in front of my mom in a play. And they really wanted me to go for it. So I get that this kid was like super uncomfortable. And just because he's a boy who cares, it's still sad. But the thing I couldn't stop thinking about was I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this wasn't Katie Perry's idea. She has producers in her ear. They're trying to make people watch this show. They're trying to create controversy because nobody gives a crap about this show anymore. And they're like, here's, we're sending this kid in. here's how it's going to play out, do your thing. So at that point, it's like she could say, I'm Katie Perry, I don't have to do anything,

or she's like, I want to be a team player, all right, let's just get this done. So I always think who's in her ear and who's putting the pressure on her to do something, whether she wants to do it or not. She seemed more than team player, though. She seemed pretty into the idea. Yeah. Well, you guys have swung me a little bit. Look, my inclination is to scream, let her go, let her go.

It's all in good fun. And, dude, you'll be all right. He'll be all right. And he will be. Okay, but at the same time, when you take into account what Brett said about, I mean, she's about the judgment. I mean, you want to talk about a power dynamic, and she's incredibly rich and famous, et cetera.

So we can't say that about the Weinstein's of the world. And it's not comparable. Weinstein did horrible, horrible, horrible things. But still, I mean, that's a power dynamic. This is a power dynamic. And then Gina's point about, and Brett said it too, the producers, these are highly produced TV shows, then it becomes, you know, doing it for the purpose of manipulation, right? And for the purpose of ratings and all that stuff.

And if we said, okay, let's take a 19-year-old virgin girl, and for ratings, let's have, you know, an older man just kiss her without permission. And then we'll call that guy Donald Trump, right? If it had happened on Apprentice, we'd be talking about it as a political issue. Yeah, and if they wanted to go full Weinstein, they would bring a fern out there with the guitar and he would violate him. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Well, also, okay, I'm sure this kid is like kind of riding the high of this moment of, you know, being kissed by Katie Perry. And I don't think he's going to be emotionally scarred by this, but sexual harassment for a lot of people is something that takes a while, maybe even years, to understand that you were made uncomfortable by it, that it was an uncomfortable moment for you. So he says that he doesn't think it's sexual harassment now, and that's fine. I think we should take him at his word. But how's he going to feel in like five years?

I probably realized that he should have kissed people much earlier and was psyched that it happened with Katie Perry. I don't know. I'm just posing questions. But now you split me to the opposite direction because, and back to where I wanted to go. He said it was a sexual harassment. I'm going to take him out his word. Not guilty. Not guilty.

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