The Young Turks - Ghouls & Goblins

Episode Date: March 4, 2023

Angry Ohio residents confront Norfolk Southern over health fears. Walgreens won’t distribute abortion pills in some states where they remain legal. Trump ‘soft banned’ from Fox News amid clash with Murdoch over election lies coverage. Republican congressman threatens Democrats with jail time in CPAC rant. 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! Bexie! Bexie! Bexie!

Bexie! Bechee! Drop it! Drop it. Drop it. Power panel, Jake, Joe, John I'd roll. I'm a Viglin, everybody. The big, the big is back. Okay, TYT Fantasy Football champion Emma Vigland this year. Yeah, a bit of a controversy. I mean, yeah, it was that, you know, the game ended unceremoniously, so we couldn't really figure out the real winner.

But, you know, in the end, I was still the winner. I was the number one seed. I had the most points at the end of the year. So I count. I'm the winner, Jake, as you said. No, no. A belt's a belt. belt. I get that reference. I need that felt. Fair enough. I'm of course, a host of co-hosts of the majority report. Make sure you're checking that out as well. Another great progressive show. All right, guys, crazy show today. Republicans trying to ban criticism of DeSantis and Florida potentially, at least getting people to register if they're going to criticize him. It seems like they have a real healthy understanding of the First Amendment. We've got a Republican bill in South Carolina to execute women who have had abortions.

That is literal. And we have a neo-Nazi dildo saleswoman. Okay, so that's in the second. Wait, which one? Which one? Well, I don't know. You go to the same one? No, I do not.

I do not go to any of those. Okay, so that's all in today's insane program because the country has lost its mind. Yeah. All right, so without further ado, John Idle. I'm just going to quickly say this because I don't get to be in the second hour, so I can't comment on the DeSantis blogger thing. But I love the idea of like, we're going to protect DeSantis from those mean old bloggers, like a month before Donald Trump is going to make him a laughing stock across the entire country. Yeah, this is not going to protect him in the way that you think it is. In any event, we have other news to get to in this first hour. Why don't we start off with this?

I'm a stop. No one's coming to save us. With pleas for help. I'm begging you, by the grace of God, please get our people out of gas. And stories of illness. There are kids vomiting, nose fleets, numbness in their mouth, numbness in their fingers. Around 200 residents in East Palestine directly confronted a representative of Norfolk Southern for the first time last night. So you have that town hall where residents of East Palestine are recounting all of the different medical side effects that they, their kids, their friends, their families are being affected by more and more animals turning up dead.

Turns out, though, I guess they're all suffering from some sort of mass delusion because according to all of the authorities, there's nothing in the air, there's nothing in the ground, there's nothing in the water that should be causing any problems. Which weirdly does not reassure the people of East Palestine who don't want to just be told that everything is okay when they know it isn't. they want their lives to be made whole or at the very least to have the funds necessary to get out of that place. And so we wanted to update you on some of what they are reporting, as well as, by the way, workers on the cleanup crews have been sent into this area to clean it up, saying they're experiencing nausea and migraines, other medical symptoms as well. And it is not difficult to figure out why. After all, an incredible amount of dangerous chemicals, including vinyl

chloride was intentionally released and burned. They say to prevent a potentially deadly explosion, there are those who say that it was a quick solution to freeing up the rail line to allow trains to go by and that it had much less to do with actually protecting the people of the area. But that is the official story. And so now many of the people there are saying they need to evacuate. They need the funds to do that. And so that's what they're asking for. Here is the reassurances that were provided to them by Derell Wilson, Assistant Vice President of Government Relations at Norfolk Southern. We're going to do them.

We're going to do the right now. We're going to clean up the spike. We're going to clean up the first time. But we are sorry and we do here. Yeah. We did. We did it. You can get you a lot.

You can get you a lot. We are ready. You're out. Get us out. You can see there are obviously many of the people. You can see there are obviously many of the people. in that video worried about their own health, but also especially worried about the health of their children. A lot of people are worried that there could be long-term effects that might not be able to be seen

immediately. And by the time they might be found, well, Norfolk Southern is going to be long gone. The EPA is going to be long gone. Buttigieg will have already run for and failed to get the Democratic nomination for president several times by then. So where are they going to be left at that point? Yeah. So hey, look, we've got a little bit of agreement here between the two political sides. So that's a silver lining in this story, although, you know, silver lining and otherwise toxic cloud. So when the right wingers in East Palestine say, I don't believe the government or the

company, I hear you brothers and sisters, I think you're probably right. So look, guys, even as a left winger, I don't believe the EPA anymore. And so we've lost faith in our institutions. There's a very, very good reason for that. Like the mainstream media will say that and say, tut, tut, can you believe the American people? Can you tell these, believe these terrible progressives saying they've lost faith in our institutions? Terrible right-wingers saying they've lost faith in our institutions. But why did we lose faith?

Because everyone in government is bribed by corporate interests. But that's literal. Yes, it's legalized bribery of the former campaign countries. Millions of dollars. Everyone in mainstream media says, no, it doesn't affect them. Well, you're liars. We all know your liars. That's an outrageous lie.

No one believes you. So now the EPA comes into town and says, oh, don't worry, I tested it. Did you? Well, you read into it, it turns out they didn't test it. Norfolk Southern did. But they said, don't worry, the EPA oversaw it, kind of, a little bit, participated. Well, what the hell does that mean? They're like, well, we want Norfolk Southern to pay for it.

So what? Why doesn't the EPA scientists, neutral scientists do it, and then build Norfolk Southern and have them pay for it? Why are we having Norfolk Southern do there? There's no, look guys, corporations, this, that guy, that idiot, it's not an idiot to be fair. He's just a bad guy. The guy they set out there to do propaganda, right? The guy in that obnoxious jacket or that all yuppies wear, right? He put on a fluffy vest, that means that he's in the field and it's serious.

Yeah, I know. That's exactly what it means. He dressed for the, he played dress up for the occasion. I'm gonna be with the regular people. I'm gonna wear this one without the sleeves. Anyways, that guy, we're very sorry, you know, we really feel bad. No, you don't. First of all, you're part of a corporation.

A corporation is not a human being. It cannot feel anything. Second of all, your remit is to maximize profit and you know it. And you know that you made a calculation, not you personally, but the company did, saying, hey, if we do this in terms of safety, it'll cost this much. If we have this much personnel, we have these many inspections, it'll cost that much. Let's choose not to do them full well-known. that the cost will be derailments.

How do I know? Well, there was 818 derailments in 2022. It's not like they were unaware of them. In fact, they are built into their spreadsheets. This is the cost of doing business. We will poison a certain number of communities. And afterwards, we'll pretend that we're sorry. I'm sure they had a good belly laugh over it.

And then they send this guy out there, and they send the government. But the government is bought. It's Mike DeWine is trying to. wine is trying to get a new deal for railroad companies in Ohio, probably gets funding from them. All the Democrats get funding from them. Buttigieg is the most corporate guy you've ever seen in your entire life. Biden doesn't give it damn. I don't trust the EPA. So right wingers, when you're this one, you're right. You're right to be distrustful. But by God,

understand who's causing what? All of you, the propagandist in right wing media have convinced you. It's the government. They're just law power. the government's three evil guys. Oh business, well, business is wonderful. All yeah, business is great, great, great, great. No, you idiots, the business guys are the ones buying off the politicians. The business guys are the ones making the money. They made billions.

They say, oh, wow, we can't move your kids and grandkids, and we can't clean up the site yet and et cetera. No, you could do all of that because you have billions in profits, billions. You're not close to that. Oh my God, if we do that, we're going to run out of business and all these people are going to lose their jobs. That's not true at all. That's not true at all.

You're just choosing not to do it because you're a corporation and the government is choosing to let you get away with it. For God's sake, right wingers, your instincts here are generally right. Ask for regulations to protect you. Don't ask for Biden to come. Have Biden coming down? I don't care. I don't care. And yell at him.

I know that's what you want to do. Yell at them at the top of your lungs. I don't care. What I care about is then force Biden and Buttigieg. Biden and Buttigieg to push for safety regulations and to protect you like they're supposed to do because they're supposed to be your representatives. But while you're doing that, you have to also push Republicans. Otherwise, Biden is going to have the easiest get out of jail free card. He's going to be like, oh, my great friends, Republican colleagues.

Oh, I love them so much. Well, but there's nothing we could do. They block the regulations. Do you get it, right wing voters? big business has bought both parties and corporate media and right wing media. And they lie to you 24-7. Why? For the most obvious reason of all, the money.

They lied to you because of the money. Please have the right targets. Emma. Yeah, I mean, you're right, Jank. But I think it's important to draw distinction in the fact that the Republican Party, they're bought and sold. And yes, I mean, Buttigieg, right? Like, you can even tell in his language that he's a lot more comfortable with the McKinsey

consulting type language about efficiency than he is about actually being a regulator. A, that's why he goes, we're equal partners in this, us in the railroads. No, you're not. You're their boss. You should act like it. But Republicans want to dismantle the administrative state. Democrats in their current iteration want to kind of maintain it and at least keep the skeleton and alive, but not really do much with it. Progressives, they want to strengthen the administrative

state and the regulatory framework, which is the exact kind of thing that would help prevent this. And that's really the huge difference here. David Dayan and the American prospect had a piece that came out where today, and we spoke to him about it on the majority report, about how the contractor that Norfolk Southern is hiring in this instance has to do error testing has been at 9-11, Hurricane Katrina. It's a contractor that is widely used in some of these more natural disasters. And there has been criticism and lawsuits leveled against them before. You know why? Because they're being hired by the company that's responsible for the toxic spill here. So they're worried about their liability, Norfolk Southern. That's why they're doing all this

window dressing, even doing a town hall. Doesn't it seem like a conflict of interest that the company contracted by the company that is the regional monopoly, by the way, that is responsible for this spill is doing the reporting on air quality? They might have an incentive to downplay the amount of toxic toxicity in the air because their employer, right, they are the client of Norfolk Southern is paying them. And so they're not going to be the ones to say, well, your liability is much greater than you have characterized it to us. No, they're going to downplay it. And so this is why on the left we have to be clear-eyed and focusing on. This is not just like a moment to say, okay, well, we'll tweak some regulations. We'll return to the Obama era breaking system or something like that.

We have to listen to the workers who are getting sick on the job right now as they spoke there. They are saying the union nationalize these railroads. I mean, they are exerting such influence and power. And I know that seems far-fetched, and maybe it is. But we need to have a focus on what the problem is in this instance. And it's that these corporations have way too much power. They're the only show in town. And that's why they're able to get away with this kind of stuff.

They should be properties of the state. They should be nationalized. The group that you're talking about is the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, which is a private for-profit corporation. And you answer honestly, when you heard that it was the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, do you think there was any chance that that was anything other than like the CDC? It's part of the government. No, it's just its name is made up so that it sounds like an unbiased sort of research institute or something like that.

No, they're there to make money and they're doing a good job of it. The only other thing I want to say about the politics of this is this is such a clear situation that happened right here. It's almost, it almost perfectly like encapsulates everything about our politics that the corporations bought the government. the government didn't regulate the corporations or actively took away the regulations. It's a combination of both that left us in the situation where this derailment could happen. A terrible environmental disaster has happened as a result of it, which is affecting the health of many people who don't have the resources to actually clean it up. And now we're just sort of our wheels are spinning. And yet, despite it happening during a Democratic presidency, thus freeing up Republicans to pretend to be bothered by it, which they've done.

and it happening in an area that is thought of as both poor and conservative, meaning that this is a bad thing that's affected conservatives. That has resulted in only like one half of what should have happened. What has resulted is that they're very angry. They've been told night after night on Fox News that this is a war on white people, that this is a race war against white conservatives. They have been taught to hate Pete Buttigieg or Michael Regan, head of the EPA, to believe that they're responsible for this, that they did something.

So they've been activated to think that this is a bad thing. And so I would ask conservatives watching this, you agree? It's a terrible thing, and I agree. It should never happen again. So what are Republicans saying should be done to make it not happen again? Nothing. There is literally nothing that they're, oh, get rid of Buttigieg. Get rid of Reagan.

Yeah, but they didn't do it. It wouldn't replace it anyway. Another Democrat would replace someone. How does that actually stop another derailment from happening? There's nothing. There's no advocacy for better Britain. more people, more safety inspections, even the extremely, the laughable extra precautions that people to judge want, it's not even a precaution. Higher maximum penalties when safety

regulations are violated. Representative Troy Nells said, no, we don't need to do that because the safety record of trains is so great. He said that in the wake of the derailment. So there should be nothing done to stop the derailments from happening. And when they do happen, they shouldn't even pay anymore. So if you're conservative, you're watching this, why doesn't that strike you as odd, that they tell you day after day after day after day, this is terrible, this is an attack on you, this is a war on

you, and nothing should be done to stop it from happening again. That should be, like, all of the alarms should be blaring in your mind from that. And honestly, I think progressives have been trying to do a good job of, you know, raising, you know, what could be done. For instance, more people,

better breaks, all those sorts of things. And unfortunately we have Biden and we have Buttigieg and we know where their loyalties lie, particularly Buttigieg. And so we're going to come out of this with this opportunity wasted to actually safeguard the lives and livelihood of all of these people who could have a demonstration of the proper role of government, the proper role of regulation. But we're just waiting for the media and the government to move on. Yeah, so, look, conservatives, your whole life you've heard law and order, right?

And you like law and order. Everybody likes law and order. Then you hear that regulations are bad. But wait a minute, what's the regulation? It's just a law. That's literally what it is. It's the law and order that you like when it's applied to people, right? But regulations are applied generally to companies. That's why they split it into two and had everyone in the establishment, but especially the Republicans tell you regulations bad. The government should control your lives, but never the corporations. Regulations bad.

Well, what are the regulations? Well, Guardian broke a story about how another railroad company. said basically didn't want to inspect the bearings. And guess what happened in this particular case? The bearings broke. Now, why didn't they want to inspect the bearings? Because it costs more money. So look, this has been happening in the industry for a long, long time.

So the government says, hey, you have to inspect things to keep them safe. And corporations go, I don't want to because it costs me money. But then it'll break and people will be harmed. Yeah, I know, but it'll cost me money. The brakes, you have to replace the brakes and get new bricks. Well, I don't want to, it'll cost me money. You have to have more inspectors. There are more people, staff to run the train so it doesn't cause access.

I don't want you. It costs me money. So what do they do? They send their dogs, the politicians, and here, and there's no difference between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats like Buttigieg. They're both on the same exact team. They play good cop, bad cop. And Buttigieg's role is to go out there and go, oh, golly, gee, we tried out.

everything, but there's nothing we could do. Oh my God, I really wanted to go on regulations, but I couldn't get any. And that's literally what has happened in these two terms. And then the media are the biggest liars of all. And they come in and tell you, oh, Buddha just tried so hard. And Obama, he had, oh man, boy, he also tried. But all this trying, and they just couldn't get anything. And then, oh, Trump, though, Trump was bad.

Trump made it worse. Well, actually, Trump did make it worse. But Biden and Obama were also awful. But nope, nope, nope, nope, no, nope, good cop, bad cop, okay? And everybody, and guys, look, get a load of this irony now. For hundreds of years in this country, black people said they were being abused by authorities, mainly cops, right? Other people too, but cops beating them through, you know, the civil rights era and into the present.

And the establishment, largely through the politicians and the media, told black people in this country, we don't believe you. We don't believe in any of you. We think the cops are always telling the truth, and you guys are always lying. All black people are lying that they're being abused by cops. Guess what, right wingers, now they're doing it to you. So you're all saying, I got headaches, I got nausea, I got all these different problems. My kids have all these health problems, and the government comes in, goes, no, there's nothing wrong.

Corporations, nothing wrong. And then the media, what does the media do? No, they're paying a lot of attention to this, that's a good thing, right? Credit word creditors do. But at the end of the day, they go, well, I mean, people say they've got these problems on the other. hand, the beloved corporations and the beloved EPA and the beloved government and the beloved Buttigieg says there is no problem. So I guess you guys are making it up. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you,

no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now, at Ikea.ca. You're all delusional. Okay, the establishment's always telling the population that they're delusional. It's a form of gaslighting to get you all to go, okay, corporate rule is awesome. Corporations need to save money, so our kids need to get hurt.

They need to suffer the health consequences because these efforts don't want to do inspections. They want to save money. Right wing, wake up. You're half right, your right to be enraged, you're right that they're lying to you. The answer is law and order for corporations as well as human beings. Make the government, your representatives, serve you and protect you. You like that when it's cops? You should like that when it's cops on Wall Street, cops against corporations.

It's not to say that you destroy corporations, get rid of corporations. It just means their job, the job of your representatives is to protect you. That's their number one job. And go ask your goddamn Republican politicians. They hate you guys and they laugh at you behind your back. They're like, let's criticize Buttigin Biden for what? I don't know. We don't want them to regulate.

We don't. We want the corporate profits to come in and for them to give us the goddamn bribes. So don't let them regulate. We'll criticize them for something that's useless. Oh, not showing up. That's perfect. Or paternity leave or whatever, some shallow thing to attack. Oh, Buddhist teacher is gay.

We got them, right? And oh my God, they did this to this town because the town is white or Republican. They didn't do it to the town. They don't give a damn about any of us. The accident happened to happen in East Palestine, but it could have happened five minutes later in Pittsburgh, where it would have mainly affected Democrats. You think the corporations care? They only care about maximizing profit at your.

expense, please rise up against your own politicians. We've done it on the left. Okay, and what do we get for? Nothing but establishment attacks. The mainstream media, how dare you criticize bootage and you bite? Oh, you guys are biased. You're biased. So you like the American people. How dare you? We are right. You are wrong. God damn it, nothing's ever going to get fixed in this country. And Emma, I love you, but nationalizing the railroads, are you kidding me? We're a billion miles from that. I'm with labor on that, though. I mean, but it's still point, I mean, Jank, like, that's what the labor unions are saying, right? So I think it's important to articulate that. They should get real. They should get real.

They should actually push for things that could actually happen. Nationalizing companies that are making billions of dollars. That's just, it's fantasy talk. And you can have long term and you can have long term and short term goals. I mean, both of those things can be true at the same time, simultaneously. We can move towards nationalizing our rail system, and we can also, in the short term, have a push towards a regulatory framework that makes sense. The problem is, is that Pete Buttigieg comes from a corporate McKinsey consulting background, and his ideology is a lot more aligned with the efficiency model that is what got us here in the first place, cutting costs, cutting labor to the point where it's dangerous for those workers to operate on those trains.

And it's dangerous for people in those communities. And to your point about corporations, it's all being about their bottom line, they could relocate these people and give them stipends for a year plus for pennies on the dollar of what maybe they would eventually have to pay out in terms of lawsuits if cancer comes around the corner, which is like literally what the advice. that they're giving to residents of East Palestine, but they don't want to do that because they'd rather take the chance that people here, they might not have the resources to adequately sue us, and we could counter sue, or we could fight them into oblivion. And we have immense resources, and they don't have that. So they could do a lot more than a crappy town hall. They could give a

lot more money so that people don't have to be living in a toxic stew. But they don't want to do that because it's bad PR and they don't like to set the precedent. The other reality about, and I'll wrap up here, but about regulations, even little things like breaking systems that they're more updated is that they don't want to set the precedent that the government's going to come in and tell them what to do, even if it doesn't even hurt their bottom line. They want, and their model is we want to operate with impunity. And so anything that threatens that is an existential threat. And unfortunately, one of the top watchdogs in our that's supposed to cover the sector in our government, in Pete Buttigieg, he, I think, has a lot more of an ideological

tilt towards corporate America than should be allowed in a democratic administration. But alas, here we are. Yep, here we are. Well, we're going to take a break. We come back, though. C-PACs going on. So we're going to risk our sanity by checking in on them. We'll be right back.

All right back on T-Y t-y-T-Jank John and Emma with you guys, John, take it away. It's time to head to CPAC. Let's take a look at this. We are going to create a firestorm. Look, if it's up to me, there's going to be a firestorm. These leftists, these Marxists that have prevailed upon the American people and used the awesome power of the federal government to cow us into fear in our homes, they've got to be put on notice. They've got to be quaking in fear. They've got to be worried. They've got to be losing weight because they're not eating because they're worried that they're going to end up going to jail. The focus on the weight loss from fear is.

But anyway, that was Representative Scott Perry, who was delivering. I think guaranteed applause lines at CPAC was a very low energy CPAC so far, but he got a little bit of clapping for saying that they're going to hunt down and lock up people who made us like weather at home during the storm. Does he remember who was president in 2020? A lot of Republicans seem to be forgetting who was president in 2020. But in any event, he says that they're going to be looking into those who've weaponized the federal government. That's a big talking point of the right recently. They're going to be investigating the weaponization of federal agencies.

And the point that they're making there is that the federal government obviously should not be deployed as a weapon against your political opponents. And to make sure that everyone understands that, they're going to hunt down and lock up their political opponents. It's beautiful, really. It's a nice, circular little process. In any event, he also touched obviously on the vaccine mandates. He took a little bit of time to say that Democrats are going to be banning your gas stove

and stuff. Look, maybe there's a reason people like Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis and I don't know, a whole bunch of them had, didn't take the time out to go to CPAC this year. This is just like any random Charlie Kirk monologue or a little snippet from a Jesse Waters or whatever, except it's the elected officials getting to live out their true dream, which is to be right wing pundits. Yeah. Okay, so look, what am I supposed to do with right wingers?

I want us to get together so we can end corruption, and I know you guys hate corruption. But do you guys get the saying, I'm for freedom and let's lock up our political opponents is contradictory. I'm asking you like basic questions. Do you get that those things are diametrically opposed to one another? I love freedom. Let's lock up everybody who doesn't agree with us. How? How can you possibly say those two things and share those two things at the same time?

But you know what? For the right wing mind, this is the problem with us on the left. We can't understand the right wing perspective. For the right wing perspective, they think, yeah, that's not inconsistent at all. Freedom for me and not for you. That way, I'm on top and you're at the bottom. Mission accomplished. Where's the question? Why is that even hypocritical? Of course, I don't want you to have freedom. Of course I want my political opponents locked up. And of course, I want me to have maximum freedom. I don't have to wear masks. I don't have to give vaccines. I don't have to do anything. But we lock all of you guys up. Hashtag freedom.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, and by the way, guys, right wingers. You don't even realize the target of that trick isn't us. It's you guys. What do I mean by that? Because he says, oh, they're coming to your homes. Who the hell is coming to your homes?

Did anybody come to your home and try to take the gas stove out? To be honest, be honest. That a single person that you know ever come to your home and try to take out of and try to take out of the gas. It's made up. It's totally made up, right? No, they're not coming in for your homes. No, the federal government sometimes regulates big business. Scott Perry and all the Republicans and most of the Democrats are paid off by big business. So he comes down there and goes, oh, if you try to regulate those big business interests, I'm going to have you all rested. Did I do good? Did I good? Can I get to check? Can I get the check?

Okay, that's what this is about. It's an attempt. Hemp to deregulate big business so they can get away with anything they like, including giant balls of flame that go over Ohio. This is just an ass covering operation. And if they could, yeah, of course they'd lock up everyone who's against corporate rule. And you know who they not lock up along with us on the left? You guys, because then you wouldn't agree to big business rule. Look at how you're yelling out of them in East Palestine. They don't like that kind of talk.

That's something that I'll actually get you in real trouble under corporate rule, which is what Republican politicians love. That's why they lie to you guys. Emma? Yeah, the fixation on the gas stove thing is funny to me, because it really is a classic conservative hallmark where they dress up, you know, teeny tiny regulations that are meant to protect people and pretend that any kind of protection from corporate America is some infringement on your personal freedom, as opposed to the corporation that's making you sick in theory, right? And they do that all the time. But to your point, Jank, about the ability of the

conservative mind to compartmentalize and to square circles, I mean, they're doing it by sitting at CPAC, like Matt Schlapp, chairman of CPAC just a few months ago, accused of sexual assault of a man. A man who worked on Herschel Walker's campaign, I believe, is a driver. And it's a little bit more sparsely attended this year. They're not getting the big headliners. I don't think Trump's showing up, right? He might later, but at least not today. I don't know if he's going in person, but he is speaking on Saturday. Okay, well, maybe now Kevin McCarthy. I don't know the full lineup, but point being is that it used to be even more of like a rock star event for these nut jobs. It's much less so this year.

But still, it doesn't really matter like Jim Jordan showed up as well because conservatives really don't have a problem with compartmentalizing. This is my team. I might be a hypocrite. That's okay. But I'm on this team because I believe in a far right hateful ideology. And that is the more important element here. It's the same reason that despite all of this damning evidence coming out in this dominion lawsuit about how Tucker Carlson behind the scene, the scenes is saying that Sidney Powell is a crank and how the entire election conspiracy is complete nonsense, and then public saying the opposite. And then while believing that in private, also trying to get reporters at Fox fired for saying what he believes privately

publicly about the election, there's a reason that that is not going to penetrate the conservative mind is because hypocrisy is irrelevant to them. They are immune. from hypocrisy arguments and hypocrisy shaming. They're operating like they would, like a fascist group would, which is that the goals, the ends justify the means and it doesn't necessarily matter what we believe as long as we're behind, you know, big Trump or big fascist or big Republican Party because this is our team and we're going to die with them. Yeah, and I think it definitely justifies the means ideologically in the end,

but also on a personal level that all of the speakers, like they had Candace Owens, Trump, it's just a series of grifters. That's all it is. Some in politics, some of media. And many of the attendees dream of someday being elevated by Tucker Carlson so they can start making money by line to these people. I mean, they had Steve Bannon speak. He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from conservatives. He said, I'm going to build a wall, give me money, and then he took it and he bought a boat and he gave money to his friends. They just stole money from conservatives. And CPEC's like, oh, that's good. No, you're really good at this griff thing. Come and speak. And no one has a problem with this.

None of the other speakers have anything to say. No conservatives seem to mind the fact that someone who robbed hundreds of thousands of dollars from conservatives. Imagine if I stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from conservatives. You think they'd let me speak at CPAC, but when it's a conservative, that's the whole point. He did it a little bit more brazenly. I think they're a little bit impressed by that. But that's fine, nobody has a problem with the fact that they were so openly robbed.

In any event, we have to get into some of the other culture war stuff that they launched into at CPAC, including this from Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. and Squares there for all of it, giving your customers more ways to order, whether that's in-person with Square kiosk or online, instant access to your sales, plus the funding you need to go even bigger, and real-time insights so you know what's working, what's not, and what's next. Because when you're doing big things, your tools should to. Visit square.ca to get started.

They don't want any gender, they want one gender, they want to attack everything that we've done over the years and go by their ideology. Our country is in trouble and it starts with education until we start recognizing what the left is doing, trying to change family, trying to change the things that are our moral values, we've got no chance. All those Democrats, they just want one gender. I hope they have a reveal party, which one is it? What the hell is he talking about?

Their complaint on a daily basis, the one joke that conservers know is that there's a whole bunch of them and you can just have whichever one you want or whatever, which is the one gender that we want. We're not the ones limiting gender expressions. You guys think there should be two and that's basically it. By the way, I didn't know this about Tommy Tuberville, a guy who's very concerned about kids. So concerned that apparently back when he was a coach, he handed a one game suspension to a player that was charged with the rape of a 15 year old. That's from the Washington Examiner, which I believe is a more conservative outlet. I'm not familiar with that story, but this is clearly a guy who's very concerned about the children. Yeah.

All right, so two things on this. One is the one gender thing is just funny, right? Like a joke about how the left believes in like a million different genders at least makes sense, right? It's not true and we could debate that. But we definitely don't believe in just one. one gender, right? But it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter to you,

Bueville. It doesn't matter to anybody in the audience. They're just like, yeah, the left sucks. The one and the million genders, right? It doesn't matter. It's just like, okay, we don't like people that aren't like us, period. And so this one is,

this one is as oldest time. This one is not one of the modern problems that we have. For conservatives, they believe in keeping things the way that they are. And in the old days, Were there gay people? Of course there were. They just stuffed them into a closet and said if you come out, we're going to beat the living crap out of you, maybe kill you, right? And so, but to the outside world, it looked like, well, there's no gay people, there's no trans people. There's no people that are, you know, non-binary or any of those things. I don't know what those things are. We stuffed them into a dark closet and then beat the living crap out of them. We don't know what they are. So they had a family and they thought it's two kids or four kids, whatever it is, and a mom and a dad. And we liked the way things were. And so this is why that. that appeals to right winger so much. This one is awful, but I get it. I get the conservative mind thinks,

I don't want anything to change. And these guys now letting me know that we've always had gay people, we've always had trans people, it makes me really uncomfortable. So I don't wanna hear it. Instead I'll take a moron like Tuberville who thinks, a 15 year old getting rape's not that big a deal.

It's not worth a two game suspension, okay? But, well, we can't handle one gender or the one gender problem. They like that guy. Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, college football coaches are some of the worst people in America. I will say that. They don't pay their players. They act, frankly, as, I don't know if I want to go to it so far.

They have like an overseer mentality. And it's a lot of black players on their teams that they fight tooth and nail not to pay. and they want complete control over their lives and careers to a point that I think is a bit dictatorial and definitely racially charged those institutions in the South with those big college football schools. There's a reason that they're as invested as possible in ensuring that college football players who make the school millions and millions and millions of dollars and those coaches like Tuberville get paid in the tens of millions of dollars. They don't want the fruits of their labor going to the actual players. It doesn't matter.

if they blow their knee out, can't play in the professional leagues, they should not get paid despite making this university millions of dollars. Regardless, I do think that's honestly relevant to the senator that he is. But the fixation on trans people, they are using this as a wedge to open a door into what Jenk is talking about there with larger discrimination against gay people, LGBTQ people more broadly. They just feel like the gender thing weirds enough people out and it's new enough for some people in society that they can use it as a tool to attack queer, gay, lesbian people more broadly. But the cruelty of their continuous fixation on it is really the point. Like Matt Walsh, I'll never forget when he went back on Joe Rogan show and Rogan had been

in a bit of hot water for repeating the litter box conspiracy theory about schools. And so he actually had a fact check for the first time in years on his program. Matt Walsh said that there were over a million kids undergoing transition care in the country. And Joe Rogan's fact checker guy said, okay, actually I looked it up and it was 5,000 over a few year period. And the reality is that that's actually much closer to the truth. But the right wing wants to amplify and make it think it's like this indoctrination thing so that it becomes a dirty word to be trans and that little trans kids are forced back into the closet because their fluidity with their gender and their desire to live their life as they see fit is such a threat to the conservative mind because they are so deeply closeted themselves they have such little understanding of their own gender of their own sexuality and when they look a little bit deep they get freaked out because they don't have the capacity to be introspective or challenge themselves on that front. So they force all of their pain outward and want trans kids to either go back

in the closet or cease to exist because that's the reality. If you don't allow trans people, non-binary people, gay people, lesbian people, queer people to live their truth, then that's the sentence that you were handing down to them. And for the cruel right wing mind, that's that's the point of all of this. Yeah. By the way, one last thing. If you're right, if you're right, you're catching feelings right now, to us calling you cruel, I'll even say immoral, et cetera.

You've never heard that before in American media. And your outrage, that's how dare we say that? You get that you're cheering for Tuberville a minute ago when he said that the left has destroyed moral values, that we're so immoral, we've destroyed morality. You're used to that your whole life, and you think that's perfectly normal. We should demonize the left, our fellow citizens, and we should say they're immoral and terrible human beings. But when we say, hey, we think it's actually immoral to hate other people just because of their gender, you go, oh my, how dare you call us immoral? The sense of entitlement that the right wing has in this country is unreal.

They get to do everything they want to us, but if we ever fight back, They called us immoral. Yeah, when you don't believe in equality and justice for all, you're both immoral and kind of un-American. Get used to it. We're going to take a little break. We come back, some fun. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John, and Emma with you guys.

And look at all these wonderful people. The fish dancer became a member and then gifted five other memberships. That's amazing. So thank you for doing that. Be it forward. Miss Anonymous 617 gifted a young tourist membership and Swadane dragon gifted five. So all these wonderful, generous people today, thank you guys for allowing us to do honest reporting. we couldn't do it without you, John.

Okay, let's have a little bit fun. Thanks to the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, we know that just a couple of years ago, Fox News, including its biggest stars, Tucker Carlson, Lori, and Grum, Sean Hannity, were so terrified of Donald Trump and his followers that they knowingly spread lies around the election because they didn't want to lose their audience.

Well, fast forward to today, and Fox appears to have come up with what they think is a strategy to stop that from happening in the future. They're just going to try to make it so that Fox fans never hear what Donald Trump has to say at all. They've instituted a soft ban on Donald Trump. Don't call it a shadow ban, right? Wingers would get triggered. But anyway, according to a source close to Trump, everyone knows that there's this soft ban or silent ban.

It's certainly however you want to say, quiet ban, soft ban, whatever it is. Just call it something, man, and move on. Anyway, it's indicative of how the Murdox feel about Trump in this particular moment. An aide who spoke to the publication semaphore said they heard from Fox News directly that the former president was in fact soft banned. So Trump seems to know it, Fox News knows it, and that's what they're doing. The understanding, according to Trump aid, they understanding is that they're not to have Trump on for an interview, because the Murdox have made it pretty clear they want to move

on from Trump. Fox is showing that by not having him on. So this might make you wonder, wait, yeah, it has been a while since Trump has actually been directly on Fox News, quite a while. while. You have to go all the way back to September. In the wake of the raid on Mar-a-Lago, they had him on to talk about that. This might jog your memory about what it was like when Trump was allowed on Fox News. You had said on truth social a number of times, you did declassify. I did declassify, yes. Okay. Is there a process? What was your process to declassify?

There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there's different people say different things. But as I understand, there doesn't have to be. If you're the president of the United States, you can declassified just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it. I just declassified a document at my desk at home, but just by thinking about it. He does have a point, though. Different people do say different things. So people who know what the hell they're talking about say one thing, Donald Trump says another. So he's not wrong there. But anyway, it's so funny that that was his last appearance too, because that is Sean Hannity being told absolute BS from Donald Trump. He appears to know that it's BS, but he can only push back so hard.

because again, like in the lawsuit, he is terrified of turning off Fox viewers. The truth, an accurate reflection of reality, all of that stuff purely optional. And if that would get in the way of getting red hat wearers to love him, to want to pay him money, continue to watch him, they're going to immediately dispense with that. The issue is that this strategy might over time take away a little bit of Donald Trump's influence if people aren't regularly hearing from him. But the thing is, he is running for president now. And he knows what's happening, which means that Fox, which is trying to avoid Donald Trump trying to turn the MAGA world against them, has every reason now to do this.

Fox has decided that they'd apparently prefer having Ron DeSantis and will get to their showing off other candidates. So one half has to assume that this is going to result in a major collision. Okay, so two really interesting parts of this story at a minimum. First of all, this is a war between Donald Trump and Fox News. But the second entry, and by the way, here's another piece of evidence to that. We've already shared so many of the internal emails and correspondence of Fox News about Donald Trump. And it turns out the owner doesn't like him. The host don't actually believe him.

And the executives don't like him. Nobody likes him. They're disgusted by him. But they're also scared of him because of how much control he has over their own audience, right? We're going to get back to that because it's very important. But Murdoch also said that he gave a directive to, quote, make Trump. and non-person. Okay, now that leads to the second point, which is this is what corporate media is actually

great at, and you can, and the genius of this trick is that it's invisible. So this is what mainstream media does with progressives. It's a soft ban. They just never have us on. So that's the best way to go to war is by never presenting the other side. So now, right way media is doing it to Trump. It's a soft man, right? The establishment doesn't like this.

By the way, right week media, mainstream media are part of the same organization, corporate media, okay? They are each individual institutions, they're different corporations, but they're all multi-billion dollar corporations, and they all have the same agenda, which is lower taxes, deregulation, let us gobble up our competition, and no competition, and we get to charge more money, okay? And they, so that's why all of the disagreements you'll see on cable news are over culture. war issues and social issues. On economic issues, they agree 100%. And now Trump's bothering them. So they wanna turn them into what progressives are in the establishment, non people, okay?

So that's how, by the way, you know who's soft ban? I'm soft banned from MSNBC and CNN. Fox News, I don't know about it. I haven't been on there over a decade, I assume. I'm maybe soft or hard band there, but I don't know about that. But I know producers have told us that I'm banned from CNN and MSNBC. Why?

Because you don't even have to ban me. You don't have to ban any progressive. You just never have them on, right? But who's now finally the interesting, the most interesting part for what's going to happen next in this country. Who's going to win? Well, before Trump, I would have said there's nothing, there's no force in America that could beat Fox News. And I've been saying that for a long time and the corporate media was like, oh no, Fox News is fair bells. You guys are so outrageous you progressives saying that they're, you know, that they don't really do news. You remember when Obama said was one thing against Fox News?

It was CBS and CNN and MSM's, those guys all jumped in. How dare you just an attack on the press? They're real news. I plan to work there later for millions of dollars. How dare you? Okay. So I look and Roger Ayles and Rupert Murdoch ran that organization brilliantly and had affected outcomes. They pick who's going to be the Republican nominee almost every time.

But now Trump has escape velocity and they can't rein them back in. And so every time they go to ask real Republican voters, they say Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And they say it on Fox News too. So this dam's going to break. They can't contain Trump. So eventually there's going to be a couple of people in right wing media go, well, the money is in supporting Donald Trump because that's what the audience wants. And eventually that's going to become such a powerful current. it's going to break Fox News's will to resist.

And so I have Trump as the favorite over Murdoch. Oh, my gosh, of course. Trump should be the favorite over everybody in this Republican primary. I mean, he is the Frankenstein monster that decades of right wing talk radio and right wing media has created. The Republican voter has a taste of the fan service that he provides for them. And that's what Fox News had been doing for decades. He's as much of a creature and a creation of right wing cable news and talk radio as any human being on earth, if not the number one creation of that.

And also like evangelical prosperity gospel, because he's a, he's a rich guy and he has like a rich person's branding. I mean, he has a gold toilet, haven't you heard? So he can do no wrong in their eyes. Rich person equals smart, successful, you cannot question them. And that's from decades of evangelical indoctrination, but primarily from right wing media like Fox News. And so the Frankenstein monster is out in the town wreaking havoc. And good luck Fox with the soft band, because it's not going to last once Trump continues to hold on to a lead in the polls in the Republican primary. This disantist dude does not have it. Despite right wing media's efforts

to make him seem like the reasonable moderate in comparison as he tries to ban books and have blogs register in Florida. And just because he went to Yale, that doesn't pass the sniff test with everybody else. That's just for you guys in Washington. It makes you feel a little bit better about backing a fascist because he has a fancy law degree that you might think is a worthy credential. Trump is the same guy, but he actually has charisma. He has the capacity to appeal to the voters that they need to win over in a primary. The problem for right wing media and the base that they have cultivated is that whoever's going to come out of this primary is going to have a damn tough job winning in a general election because they've gone down the fan service

rabbit hole. And that's that's how intense it is that they think DeSantis can be branded as a moderate. I've got news for you. No one, no moderate independent voter cares about like online anti-trans dialogue. That's just for you guys. And so I think Trump's by far the favorite in the election. Yeah, I think he's got those things that you said. But I think he also has, yeah, exactly. He's got the cruelty. He is the master of cruelty. And it's easy to do it to regular people, to the LGBTQ community. Every Republican can do that. Ron DeSantis can do that. But Trump will do it better because he cares even less about other people, but he can do it to other Republicans in a way, better than any Republican. And the sad thing is that these weak Fox executives

and hosts who all don't want Trump to be the nominee might be able to stop him if they had a testicle between them. If they actually came out and attacked him, if they just night after night were to attack him, then maybe they'd have a chance. Maybe other Republicans in elected office in independent media, all again, many of whom hate Trump, might be able to take him down. But instead, it's all this weasily stuff by implication. You've got Tucker Carlson saying that elderly men aren't strong enough to be president. Do you get my drift? I'm not going to say it because I'm terrified. And instead, they're not going to stop him. He's going to bulldoze Ron DeSantis, maybe drive him out of American politics. And then six months from now, Tucker

Carlson's going to do a monologue about how Trump is the best thing ever, but he'll be stewing inside secretly because they're all so weak. They're too weak in cowardly to actually stop him from getting the nomination. That's probably all the time we have, unfortunately. He's got to get out of that social deal, by the way, so we can get back on Twitter. That would be the end for the rest of the Republicans in the primary. It would be the end for Ron DeSantis. Yeah. All right. All right, we're unfortunately out of time. Everybody check out Emma on majority report. Everybody check out John on damage report. A lot of reporting going on.

So any reports? So, damage report, of course, starts our programming at 1 o'clock Eastern, and then we've got a seven-hour block that goes through the Young Turks. Everybody check that out. Thank you guys, really appreciate it. And we'll come back with a second hour where, by the way, we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson talking about weak men.

It is, he tells on himself in a hilarious way. You'll love it. We'll be 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.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.