The Young Turks - Furry Freakout

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Billionaire, Jeff Yass is the centrist Democrat’s PAC sole founder. Donald Trump has been reinstated with Meta’s software. News nation gave an entire interview to a GOP official about the litterbox scandal that fueled her bill. Republicans are encouraging Joe Manch to retire. One of the largest rail corporations in the United States has bought back an insane amount of its own shares. Host: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! We're going to be able to be. All right, well, the young church, Jake Eugger, John Iderola with you, guys.

You'll never guess which show John Iderola hosts. Oh, White, you're right, it is the damage report. Okay, John's 11th anniversary with the TYT network was earlier this week. That's the golden anniversary. Oh, yeah. I'm expecting my watch. Plus, I have no idea. Is that true or did you just make that up?

I don't think it counts for anything. Okay, all right, yeah, I don't think 11th is a thing at all, at all. I don't even know why we're celebrating it. But nonetheless, here he is. What am I going to do with him? Well, why you should care that we're celebrating it is we do have brand new Dragon Squad March available at Shop TYT. Just a cool, more minimalistic dragon squad. Not everybody constantly wants to have a cartoon dragon on their chest necessarily.

I know weirdos, but still we try to cater to them. Yeah. No, I have, as I've said on old school earlier this week, I have approximately 24 damage report shirts that involve Dragon Squad, joining some sort of thunder or lightning or something. And so, et cetera, so, et cetera. But the new ones are super cool, too. ShopT.com. Okay, look, we got a big show ahead for you guys. Furries are back.

Weow. Okay, Republicans, Republicans are doing their getaway, their retreat at a super posh hotel. Trump's back on Facebook. There's a lot of things going on. A lot of things going on. We've got to cover the news. And then that's what brings us to John Eyed Roller. That's good news for Facebook.

They have a user. Awesome. Anyway, let's get into something we've never before discussed on the young Turks. Political corruption. There are many obstacles standing between progressives and getting elected to Congress. But not all of them are exactly what they might at first seem to be. We're going to give you an example, and it's called the moderate pack. It's a pack they raise money.

And in this case, the way that it's being presented is this. Axios reported last week that the PAC, the moderate pack, is planning to raise $20 million to fight off Democratic primary challengers in 2024 and, quote, scare off progressive groups like Justice Democrats that have backed several successful primary challengers and helped create a growing squad of progressive lawmakers in Congress. So look, already at face value, that's not great. it's a group designed to stop the Democratic Party from ever becoming nearly as progressive as its voters are. So that's bad. But it's actually way worse than that. And when Axios did this reporting, they would just leave you with the idea that this is like another, I don't know, blue dog or centrist Democratic group or something like that. But it's actually worse. The group's only consultant is Greg Schultz, Joe Biden's former campaign manager. So,

you know, having someone so closely tied to the current president who seems to have as his only goal in life stopping progressives from getting elected, that would be bad. But there's some other things that you need to understand as well. And in this case, we have to give a lot of credit to Akela Lacey at the Intercept who dug into this group, not only who founded it, who works in it, but also, and most importantly, who's actually funding this effort to control what sort of Democrats make it through the primary process. So first, the founder and workers.

We have Ty Strong, the moderate pact president and founder, worked for a decade as a financial and business management analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton, before joining a smaller financial firm in Pennsylvania back in 2020 that closed abruptly the following year. He joined the moderate pack in October of 2021. Mary Sue Strong is the chief financial officer at Pro Sync Technology Group, a defense contractor that provides IT services to the federal government. So already you're off to a great start. You've got some financial people tied in with Wall Street. You have defense contractors. You've got some Joe Biden, former people. And here is how they would word their mission for this group. Ty Strong wrote this Wall Street Journal op-ed and said, he criticized what he called a Democratic

circular firing squad and progressive purity tests that have threatened the political careers of centrist Democrats like Mark Kelly and Kirsten Cinema in Arizona. If Democrats in Purple States can't find a way to pivot back to the center and avoid death by circular progressive firing squad, Strong wrote, get ready for Republican control of both houses of Congresses. Congress in 2023. He is not interested in a circular firing squad. He is interested in turning those guns outward towards any outsiders who might want to run for office. In any event, he also said that moderate House Democrats often face primary challenges from the far left while also facing competitive general elections. We've seen the Republican Party cannibalizes moderate faction.

Replicating this on the Democratic side would be a big mistake. So here's the thing. All of that is largely what you might expect. It is a group masquerading is very moderate, when really it's there to advance the interests of defense contractors, Wall Street, and all of that. But can you think of a way that it could get any worse? What if all of its funding didn't even come from bad Democrats but came from Republicans? And in this case, it is true. Since last year, the moderate pack has raised just over $1 million, all of it from a single

donor, billionaire and co-founder of a Philly investment firm, Jeff, yes. I say no in this case. But yes, vice chair at the Cato Institute, yes, has come under fire for using creative money moving structures to avoid some $1 billion in taxes. That's not enough for him. He needs the law to be even more in his favor. Most recently, he's registered as a libertarian, occasionally gives to centrist centrist, local and national Democrats, but the overwhelming balance of his political contributions go to GOP candidates. And so we can get more into how exactly he's avoid paying taxes and how far he's willing to contort the Democratic Party to make sure that his taxes never go up. But that's who he is. That's who this group is. They know where

their funding is coming from. They know that it's Republicans trying to choose what Democrats they'll face in the general election. And all of these people, whether it's Greg Schultz or Ty Strong or Barry's who's strong, apparently perfectly happy with. with giving that level of control over to libertarian Republicans. Jake, what do you think? Well, okay, first I want to look at the silver lining, okay? So when we founded Just Democrats on this show six years ago, everyone in mainstream media and everyone in the moderate Democrats or Republicans,

you name it, it was like, oh, Justice Democrats, what I said? There's no way that's going to work, right? Now they're organizing whole packs funded by Republicans getting millions of dollars. in an effort to make sure we got to stop the momentum of Justice Democrats. Well, that's a hell of a thing, isn't it, guys? I mean, you saw it launched on this show. I remember the goofy segment I did. I was like, well, it's not just that we're seeing economic justice social justice,

but it's also since they're not taking corporate PAC money for just us and hence justice Democrats. You saw all that with your own eyes coming out of my mouth in the corny way that I do it, right? You saw Rokana come on here and said, I'm going to be the first just Democrat. Now look at how scared they are of them. See, they tell you that you can't get anything done because that's a way of depressing you and making sure that you don't fight back. Look at this, when you do fight back, they get scared and they organize their actual friends

which are Republicans to come fight you. Now to the idea of the circular firing squad. Now that's interesting because moderate Democrats also financed huge campaigns against progressive incumbents, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, Corey Bush, etc. So what happened to the circular firing scores? The same guys, not these exact guys, but the same group of moderate, so-called moderate corporate corporate Democrats, and sometimes literally the same exact owners. And that's because they don't believe in, oh, we have to make sure all of our incumbents are

protected. Oh, we don't care where they are on the political spectrum. We just don't want a firing squad where we're firing at each other. But instead of the terrible dastardly Republicans, oh, yeah, I'm taking money from Republicans. And they're using it in attack against progressives in the party. Okay, they're literally creating the circular firing squad. And it is literally Republicans financing firing at other Democrats. It's weird that access didn't go into all of that.

Now that brings me to my favorite point. Of course, John. So look, that's why you need independent media like the intercept. Okay. And so great job in breaking out the actual facts. So who is this the ass queen? Okay, well, he's given $47 million to Republicans before. It's not like he's a little Republican.

So why does he care about supporting the Democratic Party? Wink. It's because he's buying corrupt Democrats and there's a giant silver lining there. Hold on, I'm gonna get to the second civil lining in this store. But he's supporting moderate Democrats because they actually agree, 100% with Republicans on the number one issue that he cares most about, which is tax cuts for the rich. So John's going to get into his tax schemes in a second. But look at how brazen this is.

But yet, Axios, which broke the story originally before the intercept, didn't mention that he's a Republican, as fine-assed Republicans. By the way, also Joe Biden, oh Bernie Sanders, I'm your friend. Don't worry. I'm such a good friend. I'm gonna do all your policies, Bernie. Oh, $15 minimum wage, Bernie. Come to this party. It's a wedding. It's a little red, but don't worry about it. Come on, come on. Come and see, come and see. Yeah. And so, and then meanwhile, the minute he gets in the office, like, I'm not going to do me. He brags about it in a Super Bowl interview. Like seconds after he got into office, he's like, I'm not doing $50 minimum wage. And he screwed Bernie and progresses on everything. Now one of his top allies is heading to group to make sure none of Bernie's allies win.

Okay, so this is what corruption looks like. And that, but the extra twist guys is that the next time we have a contested primary, for example, Nina Turner versus Chantal Brown, everyone in mainstream media will pretend that the progressive is more against the Democratic Party, which makes us sound like they're more Republican. But everyone in media knows it's the Republicans that are financing, calling progressives Republicans. Yep. And the media 100% goes along with it, because they're actually not at the fringes of corruption. The media is at the epicenter of corruption. Yeah. All right, I got more, but go ahead, Joe. Yeah, well, and I don't want to get into

his taxes. I do have to fact check you because as ever, you're spreading fake news. You said that he had spent $47 million in donations. No, he spent $47 million just last year alone in just federal elections. That's a tiny bit of all of the money that he's given over the course with many years in state elections. After all, he backed Republican candidates in Pennsylvania at all different levels last year. So there's a lot of money to spread around. Not enough for him to just mind his own business and go away and never bother us again. There's no amount of money. that will ever cause him to do that. He, like most of the rich in America, has dragon sickness,

and he's ruining our country in his pursuit of pointless wealth. In any event, over six years, he saved $1 billion in taxes, paying an average federal income tax rate of just 19%, lower even than other Wall Street traders, let alone other rich people. That's not a 19% tax rate. That's a 19% income tax rate. and I guess I'm a dummy, I'm not rich. I don't even know how that's legal, specifically to pay that low in income. Like, he's paying a lower rate than you are, dear viewer. Does that seem

appropriate for a guy with billions of dollars? I don't think so. He has a group, by the way, called the Commonwealth Foundation. It advocates to take the state's public policy, this is for Pennsylvania, back to its roots. And the group has drawn criticism for pushing policies that that Yasas critics say help him continue to accumulate wealth while avoiding taxes like cutting funding for schools and public services. So yeah, I mean, look, that puts him in good company with most of the rich in America. This is a guy who has so much money that he can save a billion in taxes alone and believes that in the pursuit of yet more billions that he will never spend, never see, it's pointless wealth, it doesn't mean anything. Your education, your kids' education

should be shoddy subpar services that would affect you and your family and your friends should be cut so that somewhere in an online bank account he'll have an extra zero at the end of an account that he will never tap out. Okay, so John, now I'm going to do a fact check on you. Dang right. Oh yeah, too can play this game. No, listen, it's not a matter of conjecture as to whether he has gone too far in trying to avoid taxes. He's been audited and lost. So that's a matter of fact. So this guy does this on a serial basis. That's how he managed to avoid about a billion dollars and six years in taxes.

That's a billion dollars that could have gotten to your kids' education so they can have an opportunity to be as rich as him. But he doesn't want him to have that opportunity. Look, that's a twofer for them. They save money in their infinite greed because the extra billion would do what for you? Yes, Queen, what can you buy with the extra billion that you couldn't buy now? Nothing, nothing at all. You're just doing it for because you're insatiably greedy. It's actually quite sick.

But the second win for him is, oh, good, no other kids can compete with my kids. No one else can cross the moat. They love destroying opportunity for others like that. That's why his second cause is make sure we destroy the public schools. It's really, it's unbelievably disgusting. So what do corporate Democrats do? Go, yes, queen, you want to destroy opportunity for others and give the rich even more tax cuts. What do you think moderate Democrats were created for?

So they love it, right? And by the way, guys, I'm not, there's there are now leftists who think eat the rich and all the rich are bad and there should be no billionaires, et cetera. And then there's different groups within that. Okay, because John, Jessica, okay? So I hear you, John, but you're wrong. I don't look in this telling other story they explained in a different article that yes first got rich off of this thing where he figured out the stats on a racetrack and which horses are more likely to win etc and then he won like 160,000 along with a couple of other guys and then they won like 750,000 and they're like can you believe this and I was like wow that sounds really good like figuring out a way to win those bets and take it to the racetrack he got back I don't mind him making the money on that that's great okay Later, he went on to do finance in ways that, you know, look, some might say he's great, some might say it's terrible, et cetera.

That's open for debate. That's not the issue, guys. The issue is that he then takes his money and buys politicians. The Supreme Court has allowed for legalized bribery. And we've talked about this many times, wolf dash pack.com to get rid of it. But so he says, oh, okay, this is not enough. Me making money. Let's say he made money in the most pure way you imagine.

Well, it's not really true if you're reading details, but let's say it, right? Okay, that's, then why do you need to go and bribe politicians and say, I want more tax cuts, I want more tax cuts, right? And the goddamn public schools. Like he's didn't say, and the public schools, but he's advocating for policies that we believe lead in that direction. Why do you need to do that? Because you can't help yourself, okay? It's just like the dwarves in Lord of the Rings, right? Just dig and dig and dig until you get the bow log out, okay?

And so that's what these guys are. Okay, now I promise you a second in silver lining. What's the other silver lining? Well, now you know definitively who is not corrupt. Because the entire point of this pack is to fight against people who are not corrupt. Yaz doesn't want him in the Democratic Party. He doesn't want him in Congress at all. He's saying, no, eliminate everyone who won't give me tax cuts.

So, and who are the people that he's targeting? Justice Democrats, because they're the only ones in Congress. not corrupt. They don't take corporate pack money, so they're not wed to people like gas. And he hates that idea. He's like, let's eliminate them so that 100% of Congress is corrupt. So that is a significant silver lining. Now you know who the good guys are.

By the way, these are all facts. You can look up all these facts. In fact, I want you to look up all these facts. And then you're not going to find them in like, we're not right wingers. Oh, Randow Joe said on Facebook. No, these are verifiable facts. Eagle Rifle.net is where I get on my news. No, so read the intercept story, read all the stories about it, read about.

Follow Kayla Lacey. She's been on the network, she's been on the damage report. Yeah, it's terrific, right? And everyone in mainstream media can confirm every single one of these facts. Yet, you will never see a mainstream media article that says next time that it's actually the Republicans, Democrats have gotten in bed with Republican donors to destroy the only non-corrupt Democrats in the country. Yeah.

And that's exactly what's happening. Exactly. Okay, we're going to take our first break. When we come back, though, Facebook is about to get one of its most notorious users back again. We'll have all the details after this. All right, back on TYT, Chanky with John, I'm all over with you guys. And by the way, Brooklyn, I knew there was going to be somebody. Brooklyn has joined us.

By the whole borough, damn. Yeah, and given that 85% of American media is actually based in Brooklyn, oh, that's a big addition to young Turks members. Chuck Todd might be watching. You guys can join Brooklyn by hitting the join button below if you're watching. everybody else tyt.com slash join or if you want to do annual membership win win t yt.com slash spin. Okay, John. Jeez, okay.

Speaking of that annoying noise, let's turn now to Facebook. Donald Trump is going to be reinstated as an active member of Facebook two years after facing a long-term suspension over his role in instigating. Oh, you know, that little coup. Oops. He was banned for two years, and they said in 2021 that eventually it probably would lapse, and that is indeed what they did. They've continued to evaluate the level of threat that he might conduct another coup. They apparently feel like that's probably not going to happen.

So stick a pin in that prediction, and we'll all find out together. Nick Clegg is the company's president of global affairs, and he had this to say about the divisive decision. He wrote that Trump's accounts would be reinstated in the coming weeks, but that he will face, quote, heightened penalties if he breaks the social media giant's content rules, saying the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying, the good, the bad and the ugly, so they can make informed choices at the ballot box. But that does not mean that there are no limits to what people can say on our platform.

Again, lest you believe that Donald Trump's ability to communicate what passes for thoughts in his P-Brain was limited only to whether he was on Facebook or not, I will remind you that he is a billionaire who owns another social media company, actively participates in a number of others, is able to do rallies and press conferences, has acolytes of his posting his missives onto Twitter, many people discussing him, he goes on many podcasts, he goes on many right-wing shows, he appears on newsman. Max and O-A-N. But thank you, Nick Clegg. People had no ability to hear what he was saying. Anyway, he continues to say our determination is that the risk to public safety that existed in January 2021 has... One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter.

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Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Sufficiently receded and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out. As such, we will be reinstating his Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. So not only can he post on Facebook, raise money on Facebook, but, um, His thirst traps might soon be coming back to your Instagram feed. So watch out for that. Yeah. So I'm secretly a little torn on this.

Drops. Okay. So number one, I love the debate about did he instigate January 6th? No, no, I got my money on Pat Leahy, the retired senator from Vermont. Okay. But if it wasn't him, it was probably the Mohandis, Mahatma Gandhi. Who else organized January 6th and instigated it to send them to go it to the capital? How is this a debate?

We constantly have these nonsensical debates. So of course Trump egged them on. Of course he wanted that result. He encouraged it after he knew that it was happening and refused to quality. I said these are all super obvious unless you enter the mind warping play called American media where we debate, it is the sky blue, is grass green. We debate it, okay? So right wagers say Democrats are grass groomers.

Okay, anyways. Now, at the same time, why am I saying I'm a little conflicted on this? Look, he was the president of the United States. His comments were that instigated the riots, et cetera, were oblique. arguably oblique, okay? He didn't say go and kill them. He didn't say go and find Mike Pence and murder him. That was the result.

And he said to his staffers that he didn't mind that result. But he didn't say that on Facebook. He said it to his chief of staff. Okay. And so, and he's running for president. And people like, and Nick Clegg's full of crap. He says, oh, yeah, the threat has receded. What are you talking about?

There was a poll two days ago that Donald Trump, would win the presidency today. If it was held today, he would beat Joe Biden by four points. I think he means the threat of another insurrection. Yeah, and then he would immediately do another insurrection. I mean, first of all, he wouldn't have to because he'd win. But then second of all, when it came time to leave, I mean, then that's a second term, right? He probably wouldn't leave because that's what he does. And he said it a thousand times, right? So the threat hasn't quote unquote receded. But on the other hand, Are we really going to say that the guy's going to run for president and we're not going to allow him on social media?

I don't know. So can anyone who's currently banned from Facebook run for president and they get their accounts back? No, so that's why it's a tough tough, tough. No, I get it. That's why it's a tough, tough question. But John, are you super sure where you would draw the line? So. Oh, I want to be very clear.

I don't especially care. I mean, personally, because I don't go on Facebook, the idea of going and like, it seems like madness to me at this point. And I think they're fully legally allowed as a private corporation to choose who goes on there. I think it's probably unwise for Facebook considering years and years of people, you know, ever increasingly believing that they're having a deleterious effect on democracies around the world, bringing him back on after all the criticism you've rightly received for how much you let him get away with. It seems like a weird choice. people already don't like Facebook.

I don't think this is going to especially help. I would say, they say there's going to be heightened scrutiny. Okay, well, we already know exactly what he's going to do on the platform. He's going to reject the outcome of elections. He's going to encourage people to support other candidates who will do that. He's going to spread Q&on memes. He's going to spread all of that nonsense. So now we get to look and see if Nick Clegg is as good as his word.

Yeah, but so first of all, how is it? different than mainstream media, because as you pointed out, he's all over these other traditional media shows, right? So traditionally, you have to remember that there's a second agenda here. The secret agenda, nobody talks about. Traditional media despises digital media because it's competition and it's competition that's winning. So they want to do every negative article about Facebook, YouTube, et cetera, that they could TikTok as they could possibly do. So they will have, an outlet will have Donald Trump on their air and then turn around and go, I can't believe Facebook would let Donald Trump on their platform.

Wait, you just had them on. You just did a giant story about him. You just promoted exactly what he said on his stupid true social account. So how is this consistent at all? It's not. It's an attack against social media. And so that's part of it too. Let's keep it real.

Now there's another absurdity, which is everybody pretending their Facebook is, liberal or left wing or progressive or whatever. What are you guys talking about? They're like, I wonder why they're letting them back on. Part of the reason they're letting them back on because Facebook is conservative. So look, their executives, a lot of them are Republicans, their entire political team, their entire, almost their entire PR team are all Republicans. Nick Clegg is a conservative from the UK.

So here he is being like, oh, the guy I agree with, you know, 98, Well, well, we've betted him and we think that he might be okay now. What are you talking about? You largely agree with the guy on almost everything. This whole thing is a facade. It's theater. And one other thing. Look, if you look at the top ten posts on Facebook every day, eight or nine of them will be from conservative outlets.

Three to five of them will be daily wire. So every day. So there's only two potential options as to why they're. that's happening. One is everybody's being honest and fair. And it turns out Facebook users are really conservative. And so why wouldn't you let them get the guy that they like? And Donald Trump's not any different than the Republican voters. The Republican voters to this day have him beating DeSantis by like 26 points in the last poll. Why? Not because they're different than Donald Trump, but because they're exactly like Donald Trump, right? So what are you going to do? Ban half your users or

60% of your users or whatever it is. By the way, of course, there's a second option, which is that Facebook executives are so conservative that it's not that the Facebook users are conservative, is that they're letting somehow, golly gee, conservatives win every single day in the content they push out. Well, I mean, we already know that they use content farms and networks of pages to spread the same thing, which is an explicit violation of the terms of service and all that. I don't think that that's the whole reason that they're popular. I think all of their content is the lowest common denominator designed to create fear and hatred and jealousy and all that.

I think that's another argument potentially for Facebook to not have that sort of content flood their service because it makes it a toxic place that people don't want to spend time on. That's part of the argument against Elon Musk's impact on Twitter is that sure, you can you can allow the algorithm to boost this stuff. Will it actually result in a place that anyone reasonable wants to be is a is a different question. Again, they're a private company. They can let on whoever they want. I don't go on there. It doesn't particularly bother me. I just think we need to add some of the context that we have so far.

So I'll add last couple of pieces of context. Look, we're on Facebook, Young Turks. A lot of you watch us on Facebook. So there's plenty of progressives and moderate and insane people on Facebook. They're in a sense we're a partner of there. So they certainly have progressives on and they have deals with progressives. And I don't know that anybody's reading any algorithm to make sure that DailyWire constantly wins on there, but there, but a lot, but like I said, it's one or the other.

It's either that one, which is maybe less likely or, hey, apparently a lot of users are conservatives. So which leads me to my final point, which is, look, a lot of the right wing media organizations on Facebook do really inflammatory videos of black people attacking white people. And it's not like, oh, well, there was a news event and hey, we're just covering it, right? No, they'll go back years, sometimes decades to find old videos and largely pretend that they're new videos because they know that it's super pisses off white conservatives. Yep. And so, oh, here's a clip. They don't tell you it's from 2007 of one random black guy beating up some white person. And they're like, and they push that kind of toxic, toxic stuff day in, day out.

That further radicalizes the audience, divides the country, et cetera. So we're talking about Donald Trump. We're talking about Donald Trump. So, no, that kind of stuff, and much worse, is a lot on all the social media platforms and, in a lot of ways, mainstream media. Super last thing. I mean, look who drove this giant, like, panic over black crime in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, et cetera?

Mainstream media. local news, here's a black suspect, can you believe it? And they would literally test and white suspects and there were way more white suspects wouldn't get as good ratings. Yeah. So they showed more black suspects. Yep. What the hell was that? That was an early version of an algorithm that divided the country and pushed racism brought to you by mainstream media. Yeah. And the final thing, this is the most legitimate reason I think they do well on Facebook is they have countless millions of given to them by billionaires to spend on advertising. I mean, every leftist channel combined, does it spend $10,000 a year in advertising on Facebook?

No, the DailyWire spends literally millions of dollars promoting their posts. So, yeah, it's going to reach a lot more people. That's perfectly legitimate. You can do that. We just should point out that they have this monetary advantage that no leftist organization has ever had or ever will have. Luckily, Stephen Crowder is on it. He's going to stop big con and big tech working together.

Yeah. He's never benefited from the algorithm. Anyway, why don't we move on to our C block? There was some other aspects of that, but don't worry. I'm sure we'll be returning to the nonsense that will be Trump on Facebook. For now, though, whenever ready, let's jump into this next video. Do we have any confirmed sightings of furries in North Dakota schools? You know, I don't specifically have a confirmed number on that for you.

But the talk is that, you know, these kids want to identify as being cats or dogs. And actually the latest one I heard lately was a rock. And therefore, that student doesn't talk in class because rocks don't talk. I'm people with Rocks for Brains can apparently talk if they're brought on to News Nation, I guess. In any event, that is an actual North Dakota state representative. That person ran for office, people donated her campaign, people voted for her, and she now has actual political power. And what is she using it for? Stopping kids who believe that they're metamorphic or something.

And also stopping the kids who believe that they're cats or dogs. and also, of course, discriminating against the trans community. In this particular case, that was News Nation. Leland Vittert actually pushed back against the nonsense that you are hearing. Why don't we get into a little bit more of what this bill is all about? I've seen this before Tony Jungy tweeted about it, the litter boxes and cats and everything else. We actually did a story about this last year. A Nebraska lawmaker had to apologize for this very thing, debunked litter box claim.

Bosselman said during state legislative debate, and now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary? And he had to come back and apologize for it because it was an internet hopes. I can't speak on what he did to tell you the truth there. This really wasn't the basis of what I was attempting to cover in the bill. It just made a provision for the fact that it is. What were you attempting to cover? Actually, my bill is, the premise of the bill is to protect children and male and female.

That counts as a thought to a right way. To protect kids and male and female. Oh, good, that's what it's about. Again, she can't speak to what that guy in Nebraska did. You would think she might be able to speak to the fact that she is spreading the exact same hoax that he was, that we've debunked, a dozen times in the last year, maybe more, I don't know. Again, it doesn't matter. She doesn't care. I don't know whether she actually believes that it's true or not.

I would assume no actual person would believe something so stupid, but, you know, you just saw some evidence. Maybe she does. But either way, it doesn't matter because this is useful fodder in the culture war for right winger. So specifically, I'm going to let you know what her bill does because she apparently has no ability to communicate it. It says, a board of a school district, a public or private school, or a teacher in a public or private school may not adopt a policy establishing or providing a place, facility, school program, or accommodation that caters to a student's perception of being any animal species other than human.

They labeled this an emergency measure. Emergency. It's the last thing that will stop the rise of the catboys, I guess. It's an emergency. It needs to be done. If passed, it would also, oh, just this is a small thing. You should be focusing on the furries. Don't think about the fact that it would ban accommodations for transgender students, including a teacher's use of a student's preferred gender pronoun if the perceived or expressed gender is inconsistent with the student's sex assigned at birth.

So teachers would be banned from doing literally any, even rhetorical accommodations of trans students. Schools found to be in violation could face up to a half million dollars in damages. Okay. So first of all, Lori Van Vinkle might be on to something here. Don't sleep on the furry threat. It's a literary reference, John. It's a literary reference. Okay. You're raising the level of the discourse here. That's what I'm doing. Don't do the B roll. Look at the B roll. In fact, I think that since I made a literal reference, she might put forward a new bill to burn all books in the library just. in case. Okay, so look guys, it's an emergency. That's why she couldn't do the research to find out if there was a single instance of it in North Dakota. Isn't that amazing? She's a state legislator. She wrote a whole bill. Somebody, they put together the bill. Not

her, not anyone on her staff, not any other Republican asked, hey, Lori, is there a single instance of someone actually doing this? You heard what she said during the interview. The talking. What is that? Oh, well, if someone said it, I mean. Well, you know, the talk is, the talk is it was happening back in 2021. And you got the cats, you got the dogs, now they're dressing up as rocks, okay? And like, one of them got so big, they started calling it the rock. And all of a sudden it's in movies.

I've heard him. And now it went from not talking to talking. And it's got the people's eyebrow or something, and I don't know who put it on there. There's nobody dressing up like rocks. You rock, you guys did like Johnson. You guys have rocks in your hands. And these are the guys who got a debate. Okay, next up.

Okay, person who has imaginary theories on kids dressing up as rocks and using litter boxes in schools versus a sane person. Let's see who wins. Republicans, you must be so proud, so proud. I think that they are actually quite proud of this. I mean, imagine how much. work and billionaire money went into producing elected officials who can get elected with not a single neuron between their ears. Like she, do you remember, do you remember the woman that went to

one of the town meetings or whatever? And she said, don't take the vaccine because it makes you magnetic. And then she tried to stick like a coin to her face and it fell off. Yeah. That's your next state representative. I mean, there's not a lick of difference between that woman and whoever it was with the rocks and the furries and whatever. It's the same thing. And again, it's so stupid that it cannot be a coincidence. It's intentionally stupid. Politics is supposed to become so dumb, so nonsensical that reasonable people to maintain

a modicum of mental wellness will check out and will not be a part of this. Like a rock? Like a rock, exactly. But that is the actual goal. It is to make politics, not a place where there's a conservative solution to a real problem and a liberal solution to a real problem, and let's hash it out. No, there is utter madness, okay, the whisperings of the elder things, and then there's a couple of progressives with no chance of getting elected, I guess.

That's the future that they want to create. Look, I'll say it one more time, the media is supposed to be the refs, right? So in this case, credit to News Nation, by the way, not Newsmax, even like a good. I used to be a Fox anchor, it's News Nation, and credit to them for calling around on this. Yeah, exactly. Leland Vitter, right. And so, but the rest of the media, whether, you know, this is an easy one. This is the biggest layup in America.

Like they finally can be like, okay, do we have to call this one even? Do we? No, we don't have to call this one even? Okay, great, all right? Okay. But the refs are supposed to call the fouls and they're supposed to, you know, make the tough calls and set up because without refs, you can't play the game. Because if you don't have reps, the one side will just foul the living crap out of the other side until they win, right?

And that's what we have in America. Because in a best case scenario, the great majority of time, mainstream media goes, well, I can't tell who's following who. I can't tell what's true and what's not true. I'm going to treat Republicans and these kind of insane ideas as perfectly legitimate, right? So I'm then going to equate them to actual ideas, right? The actual policy positions that you can debate. You can debate whether you're in favor of universal health care. That's a legitimate policy issue, right?

And the Republicans are going to say, no, I want 45,000 people a year to die. I don't want us to pay half the amount that every other developed nation pays. I want us to pay twice as much and make sure the drug companies and the insurance companies that profit of off of it can make billions of dollars off our ass and then funnel someone back to me and bribes. I want that. Republicans can make that. That's the legitimate argument, okay? But now we're going, well, I mean, maybe they're furries flying around in schools, and maybe there's cabals of, you know, pedophiles, and maybe Damar Hamlin was killed by the NFL.

I don't know, right? Maybe there's an igneous community? I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Republicans, if you can't tell that your party lost its mind, you probably also lost your mind. Yeah. Okay.

We're going to take a little break. Stop thinking about rocks. We're going to move on to Joe Mansion after this. All right back on TYT, Jank and John with you guys, we got more stories. We do, we do. We have Jank, we have John, and we also have Joe Manchin. Take a look. sports car, luxury yacht, more than one million dollars spent on fine dining. Life's very good for Democrat Joe Manchin. That is just a small snippet of a new ad coming out against Joe Manchin,

dubbing him Maserati Mansion and contrasting the nice sweet life that he has with his fine dining, his yachts, his cars with that of everyday West Virginians. Take a look at the rest. While West Virginians get stuck with higher prices, smaller paychecks and open borders. Democrat Joe Manchin and his Washington pals are living it up and West Virginians are getting left in the dust. Tell Maserati Mansion, it's time to stand up for West Virginia values. Okay, so I love that. They're pointing out all the different parts of his life that are like, you know, too luxurious, too elegant. the million dollars on fine dining, which does admittedly seem like too much. The Maserati, the wearing of aviators?

Is that like a rich man's game or something? I feel like you can get them for $15. But anyway, that is the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pointing out some of the issues with Joe Manchin because they don't want him to be reelected. That is, of course, what he gets for years and years and years of working harder for them than he does for the Democrats. Yeah, of course, the main point here is that all this that he did in the mansion did in service of the Republican Party, and this is how they repay him. Because what did you think they were going to be nice to you? Like, these guys always talk about it that way.

Again, the mainstream media goes along with it, like, oh, well, you know, he's reaching out to the right wing and this a red state and this is really going to work. in this way, he's not antagonizing Republicans. Oh, the Republicans are like, oh, you know what, we don't want the seat in a very red said, we don't want it. We're not going to run against them. Okay. So the second point is, there's the constant uneven playing field. So if progressives did this ad against Mansion in a primary, the general reaction would

be, how dare you, right? Republicans do it, and they're like, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense. There's no controversy, no nothing, right? By the way, we're the fairest show in America, that ad is perfectly true. Yeah. Right. So Manchin does have all that stuff. He is corrupt.

And you, you know, you didn't need to have a corrupt person who's your Democratic candidate, but we do throughout the country. And then, and by the way, it also prevents Manson from running against the number one issue for Republicans in West Virginia, which is corruption. Yeah. Because he himself is corrupt. 100%. And the only part that's not true is the weird reference to open borders.

First of all, he's in West Virginia. I don't think that's the most important issue. And they're definitely not open, you weirdos. No, John, fact check, instant fact check. West Virginia's border is open to Virginia. That's true. Okay, a lot of fentanyl flowing across the border. Actually, that's probably true.

That probably is true, but it's coming from West Virginia. That's probably true. The call is coming from inside the house. Yeah, so you were right. Everything in that ad is true, and it's not too shabby way of showing how corrupt he is. But as we sort of got into on the damage report this morning, did you notice what they didn't point out? Their goal is to show that Joe Manchin is corrupt. And the way they show that is he eats a lot of shrimp and steak. He has sunglasses. He has a nice car, sure. First of all,

it's ridiculous for them to say that they don't support politicians who are rich. All of their candidates are rich. They worship at the feet of a billionaire, okay? So let's be clear about that. But did you notice that they didn't talk about like the coal company that he owns and what effect that might have on when he gets involved in climate negotiations? Did you notice that they only talked about his personal possessions? Not about the wealth he's built up stocks he might have sold with insider information. You'll notice they also didn't point out campaign finance considerations. You can certainly make a very strong case that he is corrupt by talking about all of the people,

especially in fossil fossil fuels that have given him money. But you'll notice they didn't talk about that because they can't talk about that. because they don't have a problem with that. Yep. And now to the favorite part of that for me, the decision to get a British voice actor for an ad in West Virginia. I do the guy, Masanorti and Manchin has caused real problems

for the working class of West Virginia, don't you think? These are the populist Republicans. Like, it didn't even occur to them. Hey, that's super weird to have a British guy pretending to connect with the voters of West Virginia. Because they're like, I do declare what a brilliant voice. Really, really? Okay.

So it would be off to you eat caviar after you finish the ad about mansion eating caviar. Driving girl, Maserati. At least get like some dude from Essex to call him a Mankey Git or something. Like at least choose like a populist English person. Or like a guy with a Scottish background, right? Sure. Because a lot of people in West Virginia. Get Mel Gibson.

Yeah. Although that might rather. But anyway, a lot of people from West Virginia actually have Scottish backgrounds from their ancestors. So if you guys, should I try a Scottish accent? Oh dear God, I'm part Scottish so I'm ready to be offended. No, I'll let it go this time. I'm throwing it back in the water, look at this. There you go.

Okay, anyway, in the future, perhaps on another show, maybe tomorrow we can talk about the fact that he teased earlier this week to Chuck Todd that he might run for president. And Chuck Todd took it totally seriously because he's a serious candidate. Joe Manchin could totally get elected president. That is what Chuck Todd, who makes millions of dollars, analyzing the news had his audience think was accurate. And also, he's now pushing for an end to the payroll cap, the payroll tax cap for Social Security, which is actually interesting. I don't think that's the only thing Joe Manchin wants to do when it comes to Social Security. But I thought that's interesting.

It is interesting. It's also interesting that we were entering the last two years of his term where he would have to worry about reelection. So the first four years, he spent giving billions of dollars to the rich. And right as he's going to election, he's like, you know what, maybe we could increase money going to Social Security if we took just a little extra tiny 0.01% from the wealthy. Huh, interesting. You found your progressive values. What a coincidence.

Yeah. And if we could go to this last graphic, Bernie Sanders was actually saying that we should make that change. And you do not often see Mansion and Sanders pushing for the same thing on the same day. So I just wanted to note that for posterity. if there is a posterity to be noted. Yeah, this is like Mitch McConnell running in Kentucky. And two weeks before the election, he started running ads saying he was in favor of Kentucky's

version of Obamacare after trying to kill Obamacare for year after year after year. Because when they're going to polls, they know the voters themselves are actually progressive. They have to do everything to try to trick them. That's why the next ad that this group's going to run against Mansion is going to have my dad is the voice actor, and it's going to say, you have to vote against mention right away. Okay, and I think that's going to really resonate all through all the hollers of West Virginia. I prefer that to any attempt at a Scottish accent. Okay, you've nailed that one.

Okay, we have a couple of minutes. Why don't we move into our last topic? Union Pacific is one of the largest rail carriers operating in the United States. And if that name stands out to you, it might be because they've been in the news a lot over the last six months or so. They were one of the major rail carriers involved in the White House brokered contract talks late last year that produced an agreement without any guaranteed paid sick days rejecting one of the central demands of rail workers. There were some good things that came out of that, including an increase in pay. But one of the main things they were asking for, the ability to be sick and not have to work anyway during a pandemic was rejected. Now, look, you have to be sympathetic to Union Pacific.

Obviously, they don't have $10 to rub together. How are they going to afford to give workers sick days? They just don't have any cash. Except, of course, they reported $7 billion in net income for 2022 as a whole, which already doesn't sound great from a corporation that was crying poverty all last year, so they wouldn't have to give their essential workers their due, but it's actually even worse than that. Because for that year, for 2022, the company's employee pay and benefits rose by about $500 million or 12%. That's good. That's $4.6 billion they spent. That's far less than the

$6.3 billion they spent solely on repurchasing shares of stock. So it turns out there was some excess money. Money that is so excess, you can just use it to consolidate control over the corporation, a way of boosting your stock price. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual operational capacity of the railroad, let alone the well-being or morale of your workers. And when this news comes out, they know the workers are going to see it. They're not gonna like it.

Well no, the newly elected president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Ed Hall said, instead of buying back their own stock, UP should be investing in their employees by offering paid sick leave, reasonable schedules, and a better quality of life for railroaders. This is the only way the railroad will be able to solve their recruitment and retention problems and keep the trains running. So that's Union Pacific. Two other major freight railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern, are due to report results Wednesday. And I don't know about you, but I can't wait to find out.

Did they get to buy some stock back to? Stay tuned. I mean, I don't know. I'm on pins and needles. They sounded like they were barely sustainable. Because, I mean, they can't even offer one sick day to their workers, or they're probably just about to go out of business. They're about to derail, so to speak.

Yeah. And I mean, at best they're going to be breaking even, right? That is weird that they made, that other company made $7 billion in profit. That seems like they might have a lot of money and that they're just choosing to screw over their workers to make just another dollar. Now, what happens with stock buybacks? Well, there's two main reasons you do it. One is executives' compensation and options are a lot of times tied to the stock price.

So if you buy back a lot of stock, it inflates the stock price, and then the executive compensation becomes much higher. So they have an incentive to go, oh, the most important investment we could make is not in our workers, hell no. In our infrastructure, hell no, making a better product, hell no, my salary, hell yes. Okay, so that's, by the way, guys, they're not angels, they're not geniuses, they're regular dudes that are just saying, yeah, of course I want the money. What did you think I was going to do? Give it to someone else?

No, and which least the second reason that they're doing these buybacks, they're taking it home before people wake up and go, oh, what have you guys been doing, right? There's a lot of attention paid to the railroads because of the potential strike. So there was like extra heat that they normally never see. And there could be a little bit of like, well, if we do buybacks, a lot of that money just gets taken home by the richest people in the company, shareholders, et cetera, et cetera. It's gone. They can never get it because we already took it home. You keep it inside the company. Maybe they figure out we're full of crap and that, hey, this is basically a utility now, right?

I mean, there's a lot of different things that can happen. But of course, it won't happen because who's the one that crushed the workers in politics in this particular case? Joe Biden. Yep. And Pete Buttigieg. They came out and they said, oh, no, hell no, they're not allowed to strike. No, the company will keep all $7 billion. Okay.

And the workers will get no sick days. And if you guys try to strike, there's going to be legal ramifications. Republicans didn't do that. I mean, they would have, and they totally agreed to it. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, they would have crushed it even more. Right. But Biden did. Biden did do it.

He doesn't care about the workers at all. Corporate Democrats, moderate Democrats that mainstream media tells you are these lovely human beings who care so much about the Democratic agenda. Joe Biden doesn't believe in his own agenda. He pretended to be in favor of the unions. And at the most spectacular moment when he could have helped them, he could have forced the company to take their terms instead of forcing the workers to take the Congress to take the company's terms. And as always, moderate Democrats are not at all moderate. They're massively

conservative on economic issues and mainstream media works with them to trick all of you into compliance so that you never fight back against these guys. Yeah, that's why I personally think that moderate centrists should be banned as terms. They're corporate Democrats. They're the locus of their politics is the interests of corporations. That's what it is. But I also want to put what Union Pacific did in perspective because sure, you know, they bought back $6.3 billion of shares. But they're basically broke compared to Chevron, which announced $75 billion in stock buybacks. Wow. Holy cow. And okay, last two things on this. One company. Okay, guys, they were talking about a windfall profit tax because they were, they used the excuse of inflation

to increase prices massively and take home all the money. By the way, these are all natural resources that they are extracting from our land, American land, Saudi land, Venezuelan land. It said they, well, not the Venezuelans, but that's why we're trying to do a coup in Venezuela. But they extract the resources from us, the citizens of all of these countries that own it. Then they make a $75 billion profit at the time when we were most hurt during inflation. they take advantage of that, they buy off all these corrupt politicians, the entirety of the Republican Party, and a huge shock of the Democratic Party, people like Joe Manchin, and to look

the other way, and then the minute they have the loot, they're like, do a stock buyback, do a stock buyback, okay? They're taking it home before we realize we're getting robbed. These are the companies that are causing climate change in the first place. And look at how spectacularly wealthy it's making them. It's injustice on top of injustice. 100%. And the biggest villain here clearly is Bernie Sanders, who spent last year talking about the fossil fuel industry's price gouging. Yeah, but it did, look, he did talk about it and his friend

Joe Biden didn't do a goddamn thing about it. Hey, hey, hey, hold on, sir. A spokesman for the White House responded to this news saying for a company that claimed not too long ago that it was working hard to increase oil production, handing out $75 billion to executives and wealthy shareholders sure is an odd way to show it. We continue to call on oil companies to use their record profits to increase supply and reduce costs for the American people. Whoa, well, John. That's a strongly worded letter right there. I didn't know they were calling on them to do that. Why don't you lead with that? I demand that you voluntarily give up billions. How? How would that work? What would they do? Just be like,

like, hey, you know what? That was a strongly worded letter. And they have called upon us. So you know what? Here's seven of the seven and a half billion. There's not even a mechanism to do that. No. What that is is a statement that spits in the face of the American people and goes, we think you're dumb, you're never going to figure it out, that we're actually on their team. And the good news for the Biden administration is we have the entire mainstream media in our back pocket. By the way, including rightway media. Rightly media never calls them out for this. because they love this.

This is the kind of corruption that right wing media feasts on. So all the certain things that they attack Biden on, they never attack him about what's real. No, the right wing literally spent all year going from gasoline's way too expensive. People are paying way too much. Hey, stop talking about price gouging. It's definitely not that. It's something else. I have no idea what.

And we won't do literally anything to drive down the cost of gasoline, but it's definitely not price gouging. That's what it is. The media is the corruption. They're the ones that are paid to make sure you don't see. see the $75 billion that they just took home. The media is the getaway driver. Yeah.

Okay, we got to go. John, you're awesome. Everybody check out Damage Report. Rayvana, who's also awesome coming in the second hour. And in the second hour, we got some newsies. So including the Damar Hamlin conspiracy theory. But with the real problem with the NFL is, you're going to love it. Come right back.

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