The Young Turks - FRIGHT FOR 15

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

Many Democrats are scared to raise taxes on the richest in the middle of a pandemic, despite reports that show how U.S. billionaires have added $1.3 trillion to their fortunes during the pandemic. 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. All right, well, if you heard that intro music, you know what that means. That's the sound of victory you heard. It is in fact the young Turks. It is Jank Uger, Anna Kusperian. Are we legends of the internet? I don't know. People are talking about it.

They're talking about it. There's hype trains about it or soon to be. Things are happening. Trains are launching. I don't think they launch, but they're doing something. They're going down the track. All right. So do we have critique, constructive critique of the Republican Party?

We do. Are conservative minds a little less capable? drama, intrigue, controversy. That is later in the program. It's just, but it is science. It is science, let's be fair, okay? So, and then do we have constructive critique of the Democratic Party? Yeah, betcha, okay?

So that's what separates us from everyone else. Everybody gets into their partisan corners, whereas we actually care about the truth. All right. Well, Jank, let me just say you are bearing the lead and I don't really understand understand why. Later in the show, possibly in the post game, if we don't have time in the main show, anal swaps. Oh, indeed. Are they a thing? Yeah, this is a real story. They are a thing. But who have they been applied to? That's a big question. That's a question. It's a question. Look, there's a hype sailboat on its way right now to try to figure out the answer to that question. Okay, but so look, that's just for me to try to figure out as we go along. All right, guys. We got super fun shows you can tell. Let's get going.

All right. Well, I want to start off with tax cuts, something that Democrats pretended like they cared about reversing, but it seems like they were lying to you. So Democrats will not reverse the Trump era tax cuts for the wealthy, though they pretended at the time that they found those tax cuts for the rich objectionable. And Joe Biden himself even campaigned on the very idea of reversing Donald Trump's tax cuts for the rich. Now, one Democrat who was too cowardly to identify themselves while speaking to the Hill said this. Billionaires have seen their collective, I'm sorry, I messed that up, my bad. So let me start off by saying that when it comes to how billionaires have been performing financially during this pandemic, new data indicates that billions

have seen their collective wealth grow by $1.3 billion since the deadly pandemic began last year. It's important to understand that statistic. It's important to know about that because every time a Democrat tells you they cannot reverse Trump's tax cuts because of the pandemic, because we're in such a terrible economic situation, understand that they are lying to you because the quote unquote job creators, the people that they've given the tax cuts to in the past are the very people who have done very well for themselves during this pandemic. In fact, America's 664 billionaires now have a combined net worth of $4.2 trillion, a figure that stands in staggering contrast to the economic pain being felt by countless families

across the United States as joblessness, uninsurance, and hunger remain sky high. Now I want to get to a cowardly Democrat who didn't want to reveal his or her name while speaking to the Hill when expressing their concern about reversing Trump-era tax cuts. This person told the hill this. I think we should not be raising taxes. People would accept the corporate tax raised a few points. But beyond that, you're going to have problems, especially in the middle of an economic crisis. Now, there's a very good reason why this person did not want to go on the record and publicly say this while revealing his or her name. It's because this ideology, this take on Trump-era tax cuts is very unpopular, right? But you hear similar statements being made by people in leadership positions in the House

of Representatives, including House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Richard Neal, who said this, expressed concern that attaching tax increases to the infrastructure bill that Democratic leaders plan to move could send Republicans and Democrats into their corners as if they're not already into their corners, as if that excuse is really going to play well with people who actually pay attention to their disgusting cowardly selfish behavior in Congress. And I have more for you, Jank, but why don't you jump in? Okay, so first of all, you're right. That line about sending them to their corners is hilarious. What votes have you gotten from Republicans on policy initiative so far?

My latest count is zero. And so if you think the Republicans are in your corner or near you, you're on a different planet, brother. And look, even the most moderate proposals by guys like Senator Romney are way out there. Some are like, look, we found one that we told you about earlier in the week where we're like, okay, this one's bad, but not awful. Like, and there is some actually interesting and good parts of it, right? Other than that one on child care, They're all super right wing. So if we meet in the middle between their super right wing proposals and the Democrats' moderate proposals, we'll have a right wing proposal.

Why? Why? Why? Can anyone explain to me why the Democrats who have complete control over Washington refuse to act on every single issue? Anna, you misspoke by accident. You said $1.3 billion is how much the billionaires had increased their wealth. during the pandemic, of course, it's $1.3 trillion.

$1.3 trillion. So don't tell me it's going to slow down the economy to take away an extra billion dollars here or there from Bezos. I can guarantee you he's not going to miss it. He might get all emotional about it. Like, oh my God, and Leon Cooper might come back on CNBC and cry a river and stuff. What will I ever do with the, you know, 184 billion I have left? Oh, shut up already. So look, there's, look, I just, we have to strike the right balance. It's not a matter of eating the rich.

It's not a matter of envy. And I hate that stuff, right? But saying that they don't have enough money is deeply insulting and totally counterfactual and an alternate reality. So let me just real quick, during the pandemic, Bezos and Mus, respectively, raise their wealth by 76.3 billion and 158 billion. That's just two guys. Zuckerberg raised his wealth. This is all in one year, just one year, raised his wealth by $41 billion. So, I mean, the Koch brothers robbed and stole and bought off politicians and did every dirtyly trick in the book to get

to $41 billion over their lifetimes after the dad has given them half a billion dollars to begin with. But these billionaires, their wealth is accumulating at insane levels. Well, our general population wealth is decreasing, is getting hammered. And then they say, oh, no, no, now is not the time to raise taxes on the rich. It's never time in Washington. Never. Get real. Right. And look, this story is about Democratic lawmakers who had pretended as though they found They found Trump's tax cuts for the rich objectionable. And now they're totally backing off of their own campaign promises and their own party messaging in terms of reversing those tax cuts. But make no mistake, Republicans are obviously incredibly awful when it comes to this type of policy because of course they support tax cuts for the rich.

They always have. That's been part of their platform since as long as I can remember. But one thing that's really interesting about this moment is how they have this conflicting message. On one hand, in regard to passing Biden's $1.9 trillion economic relief plan, you'll get Republican senators like Senator Kennedy arguing that, what do you mean? The economy is doing so well. We don't need to do anything, right? I mean, he had this line of questioning for the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell just recently. And he's like, GDP's doing great.

We don't need to pass COVID relief. You agree with me, right? But then at the same time, when it comes to, you know, raising taxes, just reversing the tax cuts for the rich that Trump implemented, they'll argue, no, no, no, the economy is actually really, really bad. And if we do this, if we raise taxes, it's really going to hurt people in being able to create jobs. By the way, I mean, the analysis is in, we already expected this, cutting the taxes for

the wealthy did not lead to more job creation. It actually did the opposite. We had more situations where companies consolidated and that ended up laying off a bunch of workers. And that was something that was actually reported by Jonathan Larson over at TYT Investigates. But let's get back to Democrats because Joe Manchin continues to be a problem. And so Senator Joe Manchin told the Hill in early January, for instance, that it would be, quote, ridiculous to repeal the Trump tax cuts while the COVID-19 pandemic is still a burden on the economy. And Congress has a lot of other legislative priorities on its plate, such as addressing the need for more vaccines. Now, allegedly on Tuesday, he backed off of that statement a little bit saying that everything's open for discussion. But

there are more democratic lawmakers. People like Senator John Tester, another centrist this week warned that lawmakers need to be careful about raising taxes when the real unemployment rate is estimated to be as high as 10%. And then he also says, I think there are some loopholes in the code that could be cut out. I don't know that you want to do it right now. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to do it right now. Yeah. Every time Republicans get in office, their very first priority is tax cuts for the rich. And they do it immediately. Every time Democrats get in office, They go, you know, I don't, they're not right now, not, we can't reinstate it all the way. And by the way, we're going to make him permanent.

But not, but like, but no, campaign promises, no, never, never, never. Look, I'm going to go to one of our members here, theater goddess rodent in the member section. Is there any campaign promise that Biden hasn't made noises about not being able to complete during his first 100 days while his political capital is at its highest? So this is the same thing Obama did. Well, I can't do everything at once. I mean, I got to do things one thing at a time. So I only have time for one thing in the first hundred days, actually the first year.

Oh, the second year is an election year. So we can't get anything done. So we're only going to really do one thing, right? And here in this case, they're saying COVID relief, kind of, you know. So look, if Trump hadn't said that he won the election, which is the lie of the year, the lie of the decade, the lie of the century, then we would have to be having a real conversation about what's the lie of the year? Is it the Democrats saying that they do $2,000 checks for everyone? So they're doing $1,400. But even if you're giving that, hey, that's $2,000 overall, it's not for everyone now.

Now they've negotiated it down so that if you're $50,000 are over, likely you won't get anything. Okay? So that's a giant lie. $15 a minute wage. Totally kidding. Not going to do it at all. They're trying to kill it right now. That's later in the show.

Giant lie. And it's so easy. Paid sick leave, nothing. raising taxes on the rich to get it back to where it was pre-Trump. They never even planned to do that ever. It was always a lie. It was always a lie. How many times are these Democrats going to lie and then think like, oh, gee, I don't

know why we lost the next election. Oh, but Biden's not talking about the parliamentarian, the parliamentarian. As if the parliamentarian is president, as if Joe Manchin is president, Joe Biden, who's president? You or Manchin? If it's Manchin, let's go talk to that guy. every day because you're obviously abdicating your responsibility. You're never going to raise tax on the rich, you're all goddamn liars, you work for the rich, keep it real.

Now we do have a poll on this, and so we actually do not have a poll on this, my bad. It's for the minimum wage, my bad. But I do want to add one more thing to this. And it really has to do with some of the influencing factors behind the scenes, which I don't think ever really gets talked about. Now, Jenk, you talk about money in politics all the time. and that is certainly a giant influencing factor. There's no question.

But we also often forget that many of these lawmakers are tremendously wealthy themselves. You think they want to increase things like the capital gains tax? You think that they want to do financial policies that would actually force them to pay more in taxes? So this is data from Open Secrets Dogg at org based on 2019 financial filings that the House of Representatives, representatives and the Senate has to file.

And so if you take a look at how much money these people are worth, and it's general ballpark, they might actually be worth more. But you take a look at that, and we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth, hundreds of millions of dollars. This is for the House of Representatives. You move over to the Senate and you see the exact same thing. Now clearly Republican senators and Republican members of the House tend to be a little more healthier. But you have some Democrats in there as well. And so if you're worth, I mean, in this case with Rick Scott, you know, from Florida, he's in the Senate, he's worth more than $240 million. That is his net worth. These are not people who have any interest in ensuring that wealthy people pay their fair share. There's a giant conflict of interest of people this wealthy serving in Congress in the first place. They're not going to look out for you. They don't have your best interests at heart. And they will.

change their messaging depending on what the policy is to ensure that they don't actually have to do right by you and carry out what's in your best interests. Yeah, I'm so tired of all of this. It's all this fake drama. They're all in on the game, Republicans, especially on the taxes. They're all incredibly wealthy. They're all screwing us. You know how Rick Scott made his fortune? By committing the largest Medicare fraud in American history. That's a fact, you could look it up. And Democrats have lost to him like half a dozen times. The most incompetent loser party you've ever seen. The guy's an outright criminal.

The biggest bank robbery in a sense of Medicare, of our taxpayer money. And then he takes that wealth, and then he buys himself a Senate seat. And then he says, oh, I got a great idea. I'll keep my taxes low. Aha. So that way, I don't have to give back any of the money I stole from you. So it's a bunch of thugs and criminals that run this country. And the Democrats, we're all so tired of your lies.

So here I'll go to our members again. Effecto said, just remember, this isn't the first time that Biden went behind the backs of voters to make tax cuts permanent. He secretly cut a deal to make the Bush era tax cuts permanent. That's absolutely true, you can look that up too. And so is Biden really gonna raise taxes to back to where they were like he promised? No way, no way he's gonna do that. The donors run Washington. And look, I'll say one last time in this story, where else in the media do you see the truth?

Where else do you see them talking about broken promises? By the way, every one of these proposals is overwhelmingly popular in the country. Where else do you see them saying, hey, you know, they're all rich? And you know they're all their donors are all rich. And that's why they constantly cut their taxes and never increase them. Do you ever see that anywhere else in the media? That's because you think the media can't figure it out? They can't read the donors.

Either they're incredibly incompetent, or they're part of this corrupt system. So no, I got news for you, they're not going to increase those taxes. anywhere near where they were, if they ever get to it at all. And it's a yet another broken promise by Democrats, then they wonder why they get their asses handed to them on a regular basis. We got to take a break. And when we come back, I'll show you something that both parties have no problem wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on every year. Come right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing 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.

All right. All right, guys. I'll try to go from angry to happy in this break. Let's see how that turns out. Okay. So first I'm going to read your You got guys comments that are so right. Craig Cray Souffle says, I've been owning more taxes ever since Trump tax cuts went into effect. Tax cuts. We're in such a sad state of being with the corrupt politicians. We continue to stupidly vote for who continue to tax us into an early grave. Well, that's a great irony here.

If you live in a blue state, a lot of you are paying more taxes, not less. Well, I mean, the billionaires got to get paid, right? the multinational corporations took a tax cut from 35% to 21%. A lot of them, as you know, some of the richest ones pay 0%. But your taxes went up. Your taxes went up. Are they gonna fix that? The Democrats said, oh, we're gonna fix that right away.

The first hundred days is the first thing I do. As always, total, another bull crap. No, they're not gonna fix it. Arvark writes in, I've said this a million times, but I'm sick of listening to Democrats run on progressive policies only to wave the white flag as soon as they possibly can because they never cared about policies to begin with. So yeah, look, then some people go back and say, well, then we should have voted for Trump. Well, that makes no sense, please, please, please try to use logic, okay?

On the other hand, okay, yes, we've averted fascism, and that's all, that's all. The Democrats always do the bare minimum, bare minimum, and they get the media to lie for them and to cover up for them. And I'm telling you right now, over the next four years, TYT and the rest of the media is going to be in an unbelievable fight. The media will support these corrupt politicians 1,000 percent, 1,000 percent. Things that don't touch money, oh, there's a sexual harassment scandal. Oh, we can cover that, right? There's something that's about identity politics. So we can cover that, right? About money. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not

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balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Oh, you guys are barbarians for pointing out the things that are true. Irene writes in, These are all our members, t.yt.com slash join. We do this show together. Irene writes in, I find TYT's take on Dems versus GOP to be endlessly depressing, but incredibly accurate. Well, look, our job is to bring you the truth.

And by the way, I mean, look at what kind of an insane talk show we do. And then bring you change. Which other news outlet says, okay, here's the news as accurately as humanly possible. Plus, let's now work together to change it. So we have positive change in the world. 10 Justice Democrats in Congress, 10. Who else did that? You guys did that. All right, speaking of you guys, new members on YouTube Super Chat, Bianca's Piazza West. Thank you for joining by hitting that join button below. It makes a big, big difference.

On Twitch, you got sneaky gaming, been here for two months, kind of sneaky, didn't notice until now. Tanny Dism, three months, Trev, five months, DZT legend, saying four months of using that, Bezos money, love me some TYT. If you have Amazon Prime, it's free for you. Just take a minute. It helps us so much and it's free for you. It's a win-win. Skittled butt dragon makes a point, but probably not about eno swabs. That's later on the show.

Let's make politicians where the donor's logos like NASCAR so we can see who funds them. Totally agreed. The progressive defender, of course, as gifted a sub. And guess who arrived? Choo, it's a hype train. Already it's a hype train. Look, how much more hyped can I get than an instant hype train? in hype trade, other than the Mount Squadmore t-shirts you saw during the break.

Is it shopty-t.com? Is it super fun? I guess. All right, we'll be back. Are you Are we back on the Young Turks? No, we actually are. Thank you, Ghisperian, more stories go.

All right. Right now as Congress is trying to nickel and dime the average American that's suffering from the economic instability from this pandemic, they're also continuing to green light military spending on failed fighter jets like the F-35. In fact, the F-35 has been such a disaster that now Pentagon officials and members of the military, are arguing, you know, that didn't really work out so well. So maybe now we need to develop a new jet. Maybe that's what we need to do. So first, let's focus a little bit about the failure surrounding the F-35. This has been a 20-year project that has been a complete and utter waste of our resources. The Air Force, a generation ago, launched development of what they referred to at the time

as an affordable lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War vintage F-16s and complement a small future fleet of sophisticated but costly and unreliable stealth fighters. So over 20 years of research and development, that lightweight replacement fighter, the F-35, got heavier and more expensive, as the Air Force and lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, packed it with more and more new technology. So it has been riddled with all sorts of bugs and issues, delays. I mean, it's been such a failure that again, now the military is pushing this idea that we need to pay these private military contractors, companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars to develop some new jets. The F-35, the 25-ton

stealth war plane has become the very problem it was supposed to solve. And now America needs a new fighter to solve that F-35 problem, official said. And just to give you a little more background on how terrible and how costly the F-35 is, with the sticker price of around $100 million per plane, it is maintenance intensive, buggy and unreliable. The F-35 is not a low-cost, lightweight fighter, said Dan Ward, a former Air Force program manager. And some might be wondering, okay, well, it's been 20 years since Congress approved the funding for this very program. Why is it that it's taken so long, literally decades, for people to realize it's been a failure? And why are we even entertaining the notion of developing another fighter jet?

Well, Vox did a pretty good job explaining the monetary reasons behind all of this. Let's take a quick look at that video. Despite deep design flaws and constant problems, there have been no serious efforts to cancel or scale back the project. In fact, through more than three years of cuts to defense spending, funding for the F-35 has barely been touched. That's because the project was politically engineered to near perfection. The Pentagon started bidding for the F-35 in the mid-90s.

It would be the largest defense contract in history, and Boeing and Lockheed Martin quickly emerged as the two contenders. Both had loyal supporters in Congress who were very eager to create jobs in their state. It was an intense competition, and when Lockheed won the contract, Boeing supporters quickly mobilized in Congress. Immediately, they drafted legislation proposing to split the work between the two companies. When that failed, they pushed to award Boeing contracts for KC-767 tankers, C-17 cargo planes, and radar-jamming growler planes, ensuring the Boeing factories in their states remained open. Today, the Lockheed Martin F-35 project supports 146,000 jobs across 46 states. Yeah, and they use those jobs as a political shield to take a trillion dollars of American taxpayer money and burn it.

Of course, they don't burn it. They put it in their pockets and their executives are intensely rich. And of course, they give some of it a small percentage to those greedy, corrupt, horrific politics. who burned our money and gave it to their corrupt friends. So let's break this down a little bit further. They said it would be lightweight, as Anna pointed out. And the F-16 is 17 tons, so it's supposed to be lighter than that. The F-35 came in at 25 tons.

Oops, total and utter failure. They then said, okay, it's okay, we're going to make thousands of these. The Air Force alone ordered 1,800. How many did they get? 250 over two decades. So they made a fraction, a fraction of what they were, the number of planes they were supposed to make, making it nearly useless. And a lot of them, of course, were broken, would light on fire before they even took off. It was an epic disaster. So it costs a hundred million dollars per plane. What happened to less expensive? No, no, look, guys, if you bought something and you paid a lot of of money for it and it didn't work. What would you do? You'd be upset and you probably wouldn't

go back to that vendor and you wouldn't buy something else from them, right? We all together bought something for over a trillion dollars. And it turns out it was junk. And now all those same corrupt politicians turn around and go, we got to buy it again. This time we're going to buy a new jet, but the same companies, the same companies are we're going to take another trillion dollars out of your taxes and just move it over to our friends. So guys, we don't live in a democracy, we just don't. So these guys are gonna rob us to the end of time until you take money out of politics. And yes, it's absolute highway robbery and they're all criminals. And look, what would accountability look like? You say, say, oh, well, the guy who ordered it,

the army is, that general is no longer here, I guarantee you, he's working for one of the defense contractors and making millions of dollars. They're all corrupt. Did I just say some of the top generals are corrupt? God damn right they are. They're all working for defense contractors getting rich off of us as they burn our money, all right? And then they pretend to care about deficits. But the accountability is this. If Lockheed Martin, you screwed up a trillion dollars, we're never, ever buying from you again. Never, go sell weapons to Paraguay or something. But likely we should shut you down because you're miserable failures. Well, I mean, the way this entire system works leads to the failure.

It almost guarantees failure. So one of the other reasons why the F-35 fighter jets ended up having so many flaws, design flaws, is because these members of Congress who approve the project allowed for something known as concurrency, meaning that they could begin production of the fighter jets before they do the appropriate tests. And so that actually led to all sorts of design flaws and delays because they would do the production. They would produce these fighter jets without doing the appropriate tests. And then when the military had them and they ended up being all buggy, they would have to send them back in order to get repaired. So it leads to inefficiency. It leads to all sorts of

delays. I mean, it has been a complete disaster from the very beginning. And so it's not just about Lockheed Martin. It's also about the incentives that Congress has to do what they do, which is, no, no, this is going to look really good if I create more jobs in my state or in my district. So let's go ahead and begin production right away because my constituents will love that. And it just ends up being an inefficient, ridiculous mess. And, Jank, to your point, You're absolutely right about some of these generals who have some very strong thoughts about what the money should be spent on. For instance, General Charles Brown Jr., who is the Air Force Chief of Staff, tried to frame this in a different way. And I love this statement because just understand. The jets are garbage, okay?

But he doesn't want to admit that. So this is what he says. The F-35 is a Ferrari. You don't drive your Ferrari to work every day. you only drive it on Sundays. This is our high-end fighter. We want to make sure we don't use it all for the low-end fight. I want to moderate how much we're using those aircraft. No, it's not a Ferrari, it's garbage. Don't let him get away with framing it as the Ferrari that you only want to use on Sundays. Besides which, if that were actually the case, we shouldn't be green lighting projects that cost trillions of dollars, just so the military, can have high grade machinery that they only use on the weekends. No, not buying it.

Yeah. As we just told you, that was not the original intent. It was actually supposed to cost less. It was supposed to be lighter. It was supposed to be more efficient. Look, wasting our money is not the bug. It's the feature. The more of our money that they waste, the more of our money goes into their pockets. So that it's designed to spend a waste a trillion dollars. So I mean, what kind of an insane excuse is, well, I mean, we built this thing for over a trillion dollars, but we don't really want to use it. We just want to take it out on, just have fun on Sundays. Wait, what part of this is fun? It's a killing machine.

And what do you mean low end conflict versus high end conflict? Which high end conflict are we in? I mean, all the conflicts we have is we just launch our plan. We drop bombs usually on innocent people. We kill them when we move on. Where's the high-end conflict? When do we get to use the F-35? And I hope the answer is never.

But the reality is they don't care about any of that. It's not to protect the country. Every politician that talks about protecting the country and laughs behind our back is a liar. What did it cost us? It costs us the education for our kids. You could get free college for all kids that we're kids that wanted at a fraction of this price, a fraction, not even 10%, not even 10%.

So, and let alone health care, let alone our wages, sorry, Lockheed Martin and all the corrupt politicians already spent the money. And then right now, as we talk about the minimum wage, as you'll see just a little bit in the rundown in this show, another story says all the politicians go, we got deficits, there's There's nothing we could do. There's nothing we could do. Oh, did we already put a trillion dollars in our pocket? I guess there's nothing we could do because we already stole all your money.

Yeah, no, there's a lot we can do, which is fire all of you guys. They're asking for massive trouble here. How long can people take this? I hope none of that trouble comes. But this is beyond the pale, man. We're tired of getting punched in the face. Well, let's talk about minimum wage because we do have some updates. because we do have some updates on that for you guys. And Bernie Sanders continues to fight,

so we'll give you the details. President Joe Biden has floated the idea of passing a $15 an hour minimum wage hike through a standalone bill because he has at least either legitimately believed or is pretending to believe that including a $15 an hour minimum wage in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package wouldn't muster the support to pass through reconciliation. It wouldn't have the ability to do so because the Senate parliamentarian would stop it from happening. Now, Democrats can overrule the Senate parliamentarian. They can pass a $15 an hour minimum wage hike through the coronavirus relief package. And if they tried to do this through a standalone bill, that would mean that they would need 60 senators

to vote in favor of it. And let's be clear, with the very slim majority that the Democrats have in the Senate, they would never be able to pass this with 60 senators. And that's something that Senator Bernie Sanders tried to make the case for during a recent interview with Chris Hayes. Take a look. The minimum wage raising it to $15 an hour is very popular, like the COVID relief package more broadly. It got 60% in the state Florida that Donald Trump won beat Joe Biden in. I do wonder if it wasn't in this package, like, do you think you could win a floor vote on it? If you just said up or down.

Oh, no. No. No, you could. No. No. No, no. You could not. As of now, there's not one Republican who will support a $15 an hour amendment. You just, you can't. Let me be very clear about this. The only way that we are going to raise the minimum wage is through reconciliation or ending the filibuster. In my view, I do not see in the foreseeable future getting significant support from Republicans. And he's absolutely right about that, Jank. And you know I love to provide receipts, which I'll do in just a minute. But I care to chime in on what Senator Sanders had to say there?

Yeah. Look, Jayapal also said that she's just Democrat, but you're going to go and run the midterm elections on the parliamentarian wouldn't let us do it? Well, first of all, it's just factually not correct. You could overrule the parliamentarian. So Kamala Harris could do it in one second flat. No, when Joe Biden says we're not going to overrule the parliamentarian, what he is saying is we lie to you. We're just not going to do it. We can easily do it. We could do it in one second flat, but we're not going to because we never had any intention to. We just did it to trick you into voting for us. But instead, we're going to serve our donors, and then

the Republicans will pretend to be populist. They love us not doing it, but then they'll pretend to be outraged by it and later use it against us. And we'll lose your Republicans, and the donors will be even happier. That's what they're saying. That's what they're saying. Not doing the bare minimum in $15 minimum wage is, it's such a core betrayal. They say, they say, they say. They said this was their top priority. They said that it was, and by the way, it's easy, it's overwhelmingly popular. After, again, here we go, corporate media, corporate Democrats, corporate Republicans, oh, it's going to cost jobs, it's going to cost jobs. The studies that are done by independent places, say that is not true, okay? But they come in and they go,

oh, no, it's going to do. So then they put that into the poll. Reuters just came out with a poll today, saying, okay, but wait, wait, wait, wait. What if you lose, your job over it, huh? Even when they framed it that way, in the most insanely pro-corporate way, that's actually not even true. It's like saying, oh, yeah, well, your wages might be higher, but what if you also got punched in the face? But wait, you're not going to get punched in the face. Why are you putting them in the poll question? Anyway, when they did that, still, they couldn't knock it below 50%. It was still at 55%, even with the worst corporate framing in the world of you might lose your job. And it was still 55%. Now, if you take that out of the equation, it's still.

monstrously high. Every state, including every state that has put it as a ballot measure, it has passed overwhelmingly. So if you've got something that's super popular and you said was a top priority and that you can do unilaterally and you don't do it, what does that tell you about, what does that tell us about you? It probably means you're a liar or grossly incompetent. We ask you guys in a poll. I'm not kidding, we got a poll on it. TYT.com slash polls, you tell us. Is it that the Democrats are really so concerned about the rules and regulations of the parliamentarian? And yes, every stupid person in the media actually writes that down as if it's true. Maybe you guys think it's true.

I don't know, you guys vote. Maybe we're hotheads, right? Or they're incompetent. They can't find a way to pass a legislation that over two thirds of the country agrees with. And that they could pass easily on their own. Or nah, they were lying, they never intended to do it in the first place. Okay, if that you took that vote in mainstream media, 98% would say because they care about the parliamentarian. We'll see what you guys say. My guess is you're going to say they're

either incompetent or liars because it's nearly impossible to argue otherwise. All right, well, I promise. So here's what Senate Republicans have in their minds when it comes to offering Americans any relief at all. This is Senator Joe Kennedy, Speaking to the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, I'm sorry, John Kennedy, my bad. John Kennedy, and he's speaking to Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, about whether Congress needs to pass any type of relief at all. Take a look. You have strongly encouraged Congress to pass another coronavirus bill, $2 trillion.

And I guess tell me, if you could, in just a couple of sentences, why. you think we need to do that if we're looking at 6% GDP growth this year. And as soon as the end of this month, we'll be back where we were in February 220. Actually, Senator, I have consistently not taken a position on this bill. So you don't, you don't, you don't have an opinion about whether we ought to pass President Biden's bill? I, as I've said since the December press conference, I think, on every public occasion when I've been asked about it, I've said that it's not appropriate for the Fed to be playing a role in these fiscal discussions about particular provisions and particular laws. That's just we didn't comment on the tax cuts and

jobs act. We didn't comment on the CARES Act. We don't, we just, you know, it's not our role. Okay. So, so your opinion is if we don't pass the bill, you're cool with that. Well, that would be expressing an opinion. So that's what I'm not doing is expressing an opinion. Well, would you be uncool with that? I think by being either cool or uncool, I would have to be expressing an opinion. Oh, God forbid that Jerome Powell weigh in on whether or not Americans need relief right now.

He loves weighing in on whether it makes sense to pump up and artificially, inflate stock values or share values for all these corporations that his, you know, government agency printed money for in order to save them during this pandemic. But, you know, he doesn't want to express an opinion when it comes to ordinary Americans, many of whom provide the labor to make those companies exist in the first place. But I'll move on from that and then talk about Kennedy. He's talking about GDP. Understand what he's doing there. He's trying to express that the economy is doing great, that no one needs any economic relief. The GDP, the GDP, but then you look at the actual reality that most Americans are suffering

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Center. There is no unity, guys. There is no unity in Congress. I'm tired of the ridiculous conversations about working with Republicans. Let's not do something that will upset them because everyone will then go to their corners. Everyone's already in their corner. There is no negotiating with the Senator Kennedys of the world. He's not interested in helping you. He thinks the GDP is the right analytic to look at when it comes to this economic situation. It's ridiculous. So this needs to pass through reconciliation. $15 an hour minimum wage can happen. Democrats need to, I'm sorry, give the parliamentarian the middle finger because she's, her existence is undemocratic. She wasn't elected. She should be considered irrelevant.

And our democratic lawmakers, Bernie Sanders, it needs to pass through reconciliation. That's all I have to say about that. Let's stop debating this as if it's something worth debating at this point. So usual tricks here. And guys, if you watch the Young Turks, You know for a fact that we told you ahead of time this would happen. We told you that as soon as a Democrat gets in, all of a sudden, everybody who didn't care about the deficit at all, didn't talk about it at all for four straight years will turn around and go, deficit. No, we can't help actual human beings. Nope, we already gave all the money to the corporations. Deficit, right?

And there he is, John Kennedy saying, no, deficit, deficit. All the Republicans now in unison are saying deficit. And what are the Democrats say? Oh, well, that's a good point. I mean, we're concerned about the deficit. God, such weaklings and cowards and complicit clowns. So I'm tired of this soap prop. And you know what, guys, here's another layer to it. I watch that whole thing between Kennedy and Jerome Powell. And these are supposed to be the serious people.

And the media takes them so seriously, like, these are the people who know everything. They're so smart. I was stunned at how unprepared both of them were. I've been in business meetings where if you get a slight fact wrong, you're in a lot of trouble, right? These guys, they don't know anything. Kennedy asked Powell, you know, what the rate of growth is for the last quarter. He didn't know. Yeah, you're the Fed chair, and he doesn't know.

He says, what's the Fed rate rate of growth right now for GDP? He's like, I don't know. He doesn't know any of it, right? Oh, very serious Jerome Powell. Then Kennedy's like, didn't you say this? And Powell's like, no, I've never said that. He never even looked it up. Kennedy, with his entire staff, never looked it up. So they both know nothing. It's too. All right. Anyway, you get it. And so this is all a trick to buy all of them to rob us blind. They already gave $4 trillion to the top corporations of the world. Now they're saying, oh, you guys, 79 million of you can't even pay for necessities. Yeah, but are you our donors? No, you can't pay for our campaign donations either. So we don't care. We already printed and gave away the money to the rich.

Now, your wages, $7.25 is $15,000 a year. Full time, full time, no vacations, zero vacations, and you barely make it to $15,100, okay? And people like Kennedy and others are saying, and now the Biden team, oh, golly gee, the parliamentarian. Oh, get out of here, man. It's really pathetic. And then you see democratic robots all over social media, the parliamentarian, we must follow the parliament. Remember when we elected the parliamentarian over Trump? We must, no, it is true.

We cannot do anything we promised. We must break all of our promises because of the parliamentarian. Well, couldn't we just overrule them or her? Yeah, malfunction. Malfunction. We must break promises. We must break promises. No, you try once, once in your life to deliver on promises. They don't care about us. They just care about the donors. They sicken me. When we come back from the break, we'll talk about Andrew Cuomo and the sexual harassment allegations that have been detailed against him. Come right back. Anybody want to take a deep dive, not like a shallow dive, not interested in shallow dives, because then you could hit the concrete, you don't want that, you want to deep dive. More analysis, so lucky for you guys. Deep dive with Jordan Yule, that's on Twitch.

That's on Twitch.TV slash t-y-t. There's apparently a cat involved. It's, they say it's feral. I don't know. Thana Thursdays. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not Thanos Thursdays. And luckily we'll all be here. So check it out. Thursday, it doesn't really say what time. That's an issue. All right, we'll work that out. Just watch 24-7 and hope to run it. It's after post-game. It's after post-game today, everybody. It's after post-game today. All right, and how can you get there? Apparently on a hype boat, because Adiracic says, gave 500 bits, helped and said the hype boat is sailing.

L.O.L. L.L. Indeed. Choo, chew, high sailboat. All right. Holy Beard Dragon gave a thousand bits. We appreciate it. Holy Pierce sounds great right now. Shane Nog, 66, been with us four months, says, Woot Woot or months of hashtag Bezos Bugs for my favorite peeps at TYT. Love you, Jank, and Anna. That is very nice of you.

We love you right back. Classic Tech, eight months, tier one. Hello, MZ, new, use Prime, so easy. King Zeus, Seahawk Dragon. Then look at these wonderful charitable people. E.K. Greens, Cowie Girl, Kawai Girl. Skittled Butt Dragon. Again, six subs.

Too nice. Is it Skiddlebutt? Or is it Scuttlebutt? I feel like you're messing it up. No, it's Scuttlebutt in real world, but his name is Skittled Butt. Ah, got it. Okay, so it's the rainbow, got it. Yeah, well, oh boy.

No, Skittles. I know, I know, I got, I wish I didn't get it, but I just got it, okay? And that's a dragon. That's a thing that happens with dragons? Okay, anyway, the folks who are wonderful on YouTube are Vipalati, just Jack. Jack, Jack, I like that, Jack's on our team, Prog Dragon, I assume as in progressive, Becca Link is Samuel Anderson, they hit the join button below and they were like, you know what, Jenk, you were wrong, it's actually easier than you suggested. And are you guys now American

heroes? I guess. You help get the truth out, you help put out a progressive message, you're the best. Okay, and of course Giant Pie 12 says about about the F-35 story, could have spent the money to help improve people's lives. But greed is king in Washington. Well, that is very literally true. Unfortunately, Puff the Magic Weed Dragon writes in in our member section, F-35, planned obsolescence. Oops, now we need a new one. Give us a new contract.

That's exactly how it works. And nobody's really that stupid. So obviously, corruption is a correct answer. Little Mac G. says, what time is it? TYT time. Also, for anyone who missed it, Anna has an amazing opinion piece in the Hill. Highly recommend the read. Anna, I'm slightly pissed at you because you didn't send it to me. And I miss it. Now I'm finding out from MacG. Or MacG. I have a new one coming up soon too. So stay tuned for that. Everybody, watch them all, read them all. Go.

All right. Turks, Jane canana with you guys. Are we going to do more interesting stories? I guess. I guess. All right, it's a serious story. Go ahead. All right. On the heels of the coronavirus nursing home deaths cover up, a former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has made allegations, detailed allegations that he allegedly sexually harassed her as she worked as his deputy secretary for economic development and special advisor to the governor. Now, she had previously shared some of these details. It did not get as much attention, probably because the media was having its, you know, adoration fest for Cuomo as he was doing his daily

coronavirus briefings. You know, he won a Grammy, not a Grammy, Emmy for that. But Lindsey Boyland has detailed more of these allegations in a medium post. And I do want to share some of them with you. She said that during her more than three years working as an economic advisor in the administration, Cuomo, quote, would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back arms and legs, compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once joked like a college front boy that they should play strip poker, he's like, what is he a child? Like who, who, anyway, there's more.

She documented that what happened, she mentioned, you know, what happened this one time, you know, during a meeting with Cuomo. She says this. As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on my lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking. The idea that someone might think I held my high ranking position because of the governor's crush on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself. And that was something that was communicating. to her earlier, the fact that Cuomo had a crush on her, and there was some indication that she got the job that she had as a result of his crush, which was degrading to her, and it should be degrading to her. She didn't invite these advances, and that's part of the reason why she's speaking out now. Jank, what do you think? Yeah, so look, whenever these stories come up, we're forcing the uncomfortable situation of giving you guys facts in a way that it feels like we're a jury.

it, right? And it's very hard to know unless you do adjudicate it. And so, but I'm going to give you all the context here as much as we can. So number one, on the strip poker story, the other people on the plane do not remember that story. Now, number one, that does not mean it didn't happen. And number two, remember, all the people who still work with Cuomo have a giant incentive to say it didn't happen, okay? And Cuomo is universally known as someone who believes in political bullying. And look, in politics, if you're trying to pass a bill, I get it. Inside your own office, I think it's totally unnecessary, but that is clearly his reputation. Are people scared of him, definitely? So take all of this as context for these allegations, right? And the one where he says that she looks like the girlfriend, a previous girlfriend, but honor, that's passed on through an aid.

And then New York Times asked that aid, did that happen? And the aid said, well, I was kind of joking around about it, right? And so again, that aid's still loyal to Cuomo. I have no idea who's right. But if Cuomo is passing on flirty messages to people that work with him through an aid, that's like weird on a different level, okay? And if that's your job to pass on flirtations so your boss can get sexual favors from other people at work, oh, what a terrible job.

But I don't know, I don't know that that's the case. But I'll say one last thing because it's so important. The one to me that, look, again, I'm not judging any of these, right? But I'm just telling you what different folks are lunch. But she says that he got up and just kissed her out of the blue as she's leaving, right? If any kind of corroboration on that and he should be done, I mean, think about how insane that is. Just like, there's out of the blue, out of the blue. Like I just, I can't understand people.

Like how does somebody assume that that's okay? It's just stunning to me. And but apparently there's still people who think, oh yeah, yeah. If I'm the boss, I just go kiss people randomly and try to sleep with them. I just, I can't comprehend it. It's so insane. I think that there have been a number of things that have been revealed about Cuomo, regarding his character, especially lately that are relevant and help to put this story in context.

I think that it's right to state that we don't know, obviously we're not investigators and And we don't know, you know, how accurate her allegations are. And it's not our place to say. But I take these allegations seriously as all of these allegations and it should be investigated, right? That by actual investigators, people who can figure out what's actually going on. But I bring up his character flaws because, you know, you mentioned how people are afraid of him, Jank.

And just last week, we covered a story about how he called a state assessment. member, a Democrat, and proceeded to basically intimidate and bully him into publicly supporting him and defending him after the revelations regarding how he had intentionally suppressed the number of nursing home deaths by as much as 50%. And he told this assembly member that he would destroy his career if he wasn't willing to defend him publicly. Okay, so So I think that that does shed some light on the type of person that that Andrew Cuomo is. And keep in mind that as the governor of New York, he's in an incredibly powerful position, right? I mean, it's one of the most, if not the most important state in the United States.

So people are certainly concerned about the future of their political careers if they don't defend him or corroborate what his former staffer is alleging, you know, in these allegations. Yeah. Sorry, Anna, just jump in for a second. I think there are two things at least that are clear, right? She definitely did not want any advances. She had, like, everyone seems to agree to that, right? And he definitely thought she was attractive and made that clear. So it seems like everybody agrees to that. Even the aid that passed on the message says, well, I mean, yes, I'm Pat, like it was me saying that, but obviously she got that from Cuomo. who was talking about our attractiveness, etc. And look, guys, do office romances happen from time to time? Yes, they do, okay? We're not telling people not to be human. This is not an office romance. If any part of this is true, she had wanted no part of it.

And he kept insisting. At other time, according to her allegations, he brings her into his room alone and talks about cigars that he got from Clinton. That if anyone who knows politics knows the obvious reference. And why would you do that? was someone who has shown no interest in you, there's no friendly back and forth, there's no connection, there's no nothing. And out of nowhere, you're talking about cigars, like the way Clinton did, and you're just kissing her in the middle of the nowhere. I just, and I looked

at the story and I thought, maybe was this happened like in the 1980s when he had a previous job or something, that would that excuse it 1%, no. But like, I only say that because it's a culture I can't understand. So I'm trying to make some sort of sense out of it. No, it's just according to our allegations that happened a couple of years ago. If any part of it is true, it's over. It's unacceptable. Well, we got to take a break. But when we come back for hour two, I mean, look, we really did save a lot of these incredible stories for the second hour. We got updates on the power situation in Texas and later in the show, U.S. diplomats have been pretty furious with the way that Chinese officials have been testing for coronavirus. That's when

our story about anal swabs comes in. You don't want to miss that and more when we come back. 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. Apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.