The Young Turks - Grope-a-Dope

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

In the first hour: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, and Erin Ryan discuss the Senate passing a key procedural step to allow Democrats to pass the COVID-19 relief without the threat of a GOP filibuster. 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. Be my team. Dropy! See my team! See my tea! Drop it!

Drop it! All right. I love it. The power panels are back. I'm back on the power panels. We're all back on screen. Everything's working okay. So Jake Ugar, John Iarola, and Aaron Ryan, who's now columnist for The Daily Beast, and of course, the host of Cricket Media, Systeria. So welcome. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. John, you look better in person than in drawing. Some people don't photograph well, I don't art well, apparently. Yeah. You know I have a theory, John, that you look more Italian in pictures than you do in real life. Do you know this?

Yeah. I have never heard that theory. We're going to have to dispatch some scientists to figure this thing out. Well, the first thing I think that they would stumble upon is the fact that you actually are Italian. So, all right. So we got an exciting show for you guys. Of course, it's a power panel. It's always time for madness in America as long as right wingers are around.

And they certainly are around and causing trouble. But the left wing is also fighting back, which is what we do on this show. So we've got tons of amazing stories for you guys. So without further ado, let's get to it. Let's go to the birthday boy himself. Oh, I just said it. It's John Ida Rolla's birthday. We're a little John obsessed today.

People have been, yeah. Yes. Thank you. Before we go to the stories, this is the worst question, but how old are you now? I'm 38. That's unbelievable. I am. In my mind, you're still a child.

Mine too. Mine too. My wife's too. I'm pretty sure, actually. Not like a literal one, but young, young. Here's what we will not be doing, asking Aaron or my age, particularly my age. Okay? So we're moving forward, John, take it away. Thank you. I think you just took it away, that being my dignity. But anyway, yeah, apparently I'm 30, man, the years pass by quickly. you're headed to grad school and then a decade passes and you can't get it back. You were told that as you were growing up that you should appreciate your youth and the body that you have when you're young. And you think, yeah, I'll get around to that someday. But you don't. And then you're approaching 40 and you try to tell yourself, but 40 doesn't mean what it meant when I was

young. It means something new, something fun. But then you realize you're not really that fun. What do you do? How much did your life change? during the pandemic. You go out the same amount. Anyway, it's great to have the power panel back, by the way. We're all here, Jenks here. We dropped it. That's awesome. All right, I rather enjoyed that. And trust me, if you want to know about a deteriorating body with age,

you've come to the right power panel, at least in regards to this panelist. Is Werner Herzog narrating your inner life? Is that what's happening? But you still got your normal voice and you're sitting there like life, slowly receding from my eyes as death marches ever closer, the unbunked neighbor. Oh God, anyway. By the way, too. Aaron also writes for John's favorite show, always sunny in Philly.

In Philly, so yeah. Yeah. So a lot of good things happening. All right, let's see, John, for God's sake, let's get to the news. Yes, I'm going to try to do the news. I don't really remember how people have sent me a lot of food today. I'm really full, but anyway, I'm going to try to do the news. Okay, last night after something like 14 hours of almost entirely needless, purposeless, non-binding amendments being thrown forward almost universally by Republicans, the The Vodapalooza ended and we did get one step closer to the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill being passed. It was approved early Friday. It paves the way for passage of President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote on

the measure that will be key to enacting Biden's first major legislative initiative. So importantly, it didn't, it's not done. Like we don't now have the stimulus package. With this resolution's adoption, congressional Democrats have now cleared the last hurdle to unlocking the budget maneuver known as reconciliation, which will allow the party to pass the sprawling relief bill without relying on GOP votes, which is probably good because they didn't get any, none. We've been waiting to find out. And like, by the way, we're going to go through some of the amendments that we have. Some Republican amendments passed. So Republican senators went on to the floor and propose stupid amendments, and they got them.

And then they said, oh, have fun with that. I'm not voting for your bill. They didn't get any. And we'll go over some of those amendments in a minute, but I wanted to give both of you an opportunity to talk about us getting one step closer to this $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. For now, I just have one quick comment. If we've already passed the vote or the resolution that would allow for us to pass

the entire relief bill through reconciliation, meaning we only need 50 votes, meaning we don't need a single Republican vote. Why hasn't the bill passed yet? Why are we still negotiating with Republicans if we don't need a single Republican vote? Is it to make them happy? And why do the Democrats want to make Republican politicians happy? They run against them. And if you said, well, it's to make Republican voters happy, but we know for a fact that that's not true, Poll came out yesterday saying that two thirds of Republican voters want the Democratic version of the bill. So if you wanted real bipartisanship, you'd pass the bill immediately. If you wanted to do what you promised the voters, you'd pass the bill immediately.

If you wanted to make Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell happy rather than the entire nation, 80% of whom want this bill passed, well, then you'd pass the bill. So I, and if you wanted to make Cruz and McConnell happy, you wouldn't pass the bill and you'd look to compromise with them. So what are we doing here? I know the mainstream media doesn't like to point out facts because they're inconvenient to their corporate agenda. But the reality is, the only reason we're waiting is because Joe Biden and the Democratic Party wants to water down the bill a little bit more so they can make McConnell and Cruz happy. And it's insanity. I would piggyback off something that you just said, which is the, I think there's been

this really insidious sleight of hand in the media that has conflated, Washington bipartisanship with actual bipartisanship. Like you mentioned, two-thirds of Americans prefer the Democratic version of the bill, the bigger version of the COVID relief bill. Two-thirds of Americans do not want the Cruz version of the bill. They do not want Susan Collins version of the bill. A thing that I think that so-called moderate Democrats are trying to do or establishment Democrats are trying to do is pretend like they're going to be bipartisan because They've convinced themselves that it matters that they do a little bit of play acting toward this fake notion of bipartisanship in order to make voters happy. I don't know a single person, you know, Republican, Democrat, progressive, conservative, who really wants their elected official to pretend like they're going to do something before they agree to do something.

I guess Susan Collins has made an entire career of pretending to be troubled by something and then doing whatever she wants. But I just, I don't understand, I agree with you, I don't understand why the urgency in this mandates that it be done yesterday and it's not. And I think it also speaks to a complete disconnect between people who are working in Washington and the average American. It's, I don't think most of these people shop for their own groceries or know how much a gallon of milk costs. Yeah, 100%. And so look, they still have to write the bill. They have to get all the details hammered out and everything. There is still plenty of time for them to negotiate with themselves because they, as we've talked about, they have, they don't need to negotiate

with the Republicans at this point. And it's been demonstrated them how pointless it is because the Republicans aren't going to sign on no matter what. But they have to get this done by March 14th. Some boosted jobless benefits will expire then and they have indicated that that's when they think they will pass the bill. So it is more than a month away still. And As I talked about on the damage report this morning, the debate that was had about 1400 versus 2000, it's pointless to go over that again. Let's say that I, devil's advocate, they always meant that it would be a total of 2000. It should, they meant it should have been on January 3rd, it should be 2000, and we're just going to finish the job of 2000. Well, it is very notably

not January 3rd right now. And on March 14th, it's going to be even less January 3rd, than it was today. And so if you think that people deserve $2,000 on January 3rd, what about all of that time? What about the six or seven weeks it'll take before they finally get the stimulus? What did they go into like a chrysalis stage? Did they hibernate for the winter? They've been accruing new costs and new debts and their jobs haven't been coming back and the country is in kind of the same bad COVID situation it was back then. So even if you like, Even if you legitimately meant 2000 then, like there's so much more costs now. And if you're going to be passing it on your own, why not shift more of the money of this $1.9 trillion

specifically to the direct payments to make up for the fact that people have a couple more months of rent and paying for food and health insurance and transportation and all of that. So it's just frustrating to see that like we're not accounting for any of that. We're supposed to be so happy with this number that was negotiated a couple of months ago, and the smaller version of it still remains. And I don't understand why Democrats can't over-deliver on this. They have the votes. I mean, unfortunately, Kamala Harris is going to have to treat the Senate like it's a baby that she's babysitting,

crying every two hours she has to go down to the Senate and cast a tie-breaking vote. But Democrats have the votes. And what they could do is actually make these payments bigger. So give people an upside surprise, give people more of a reason to not. vote for Republicans, not vote for people who are going to further choke them. One of the major problems with this, in addition to how much time has passed and how this isn't the $2,000 the Democrats won the Senate on in Georgia, is the fact that, you know, targeting money for people based on what people made in 2019 makes no sense to me.

It also makes no sense that, you know, in the $2,000 means a different thing to different people depending on what part of the country they live in. Like where I live in Los Angeles, it's a lot more expensive to exist than it is in some more rural parts of the country. And the fact that people like Joe Manchin and centrists are holding up payments that would actually benefit people in urban areas more is really upsetting to me. It gives me a headache. Yeah, look, they force us to question their intent or intelligence. Because if you actually want under $2,000 as easy, you say, all right, Republicans, every day you delay, I'm going to increase it by $100. So Monday, it's going to be $2,100. Then my request on Tuesday is going to be $2,200, and up and up and up we're going to go.

When would you like to make the goddamn deal? Okay? You don't want to make a deal? Good, no problem. I have 50 votes, and I don't need a single one of your votes. And so what would you do? If that happened, what would happen? You would send a message to the American people. We're on your side. Democrats are on your side, and we're trying to get you the most amount of relief. Now, just to be absolutely clear, it's two-thirds of Republican voters who want it. For the country, it's 80% of the country who wants it. So is this complicated? Is this complicated politics? Would you rather be on the 80% side or the 20% side? Democrats, if you can't make up your mind, I've got to question your intelligence or your intent. Just pass the damn bill and be done with it. What are we waiting a whole? another month for other than to help your political opponents, you knuckleheads.

Okay, Jesus Christ, let's get under the amendments. Exactly. Okay, so amendments that passed, and we are not going to go through all 500, that should probably go without saying. But here are some that I thought were worth talking about. An effort to block stimulus payments to undocumented immigrants actually passed with eight Democrats in the Senate voting in favor of it, as well as an effort to overturn Biden's blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline, Mansion and Tester among the Democrats voted in favor of that. These are, as I noted earlier, these are non-binding amendments, but I think it's still worthwhile to know which Democrats are in favor of this. And as of right now, that is supposed

to be a directive for the writing of the stimulus bill. Amendments that failed include something to stop the packing of the Supreme Court, has a lot to do with the stimulus bill, blocking stimulus checks to inmates because America will never get tired of demonizing people who are locked up and banning a federal tax on carbon. So a lot of this is just trying to send a signal or being able to say that you pushed for something. But some of it did actually pass. And so at least in theory, it could affect the final writing of this legislation. All right, I remember the Republicans complaining a thousand times about, oh, they never goes, they're putting irrelevant things into a bill. Wait, what is Keystone, Excel Pipeline?

might have anything to do with the COVID relief. They proposed an amendment about Israel's or our embassy in Israel. Well, that's an interesting issue. But what on God's green earth does that have to do with COVID relief? So, and they delayed and delayed by putting all these amendments up for a vote. And the Democrats said it was okay. They let the Republicans, in their minds, at least, score all these political points. Why, again, they want to be bipartisan. And how did that work out for them? And Bernie Sanders pointed this out. So we open up the floor, we let them propose all the amendments. It's as bipartisan as you can get. And some of them even pass. These are all Republican amendments, right?

And then how many Republicans voted for the bill with their amendments in it? Zero, as John pointed out in the beginning. Zero. So not only do we know that the reaching out the Republicans doesn't work generally, not only did the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administration prove that for eight years straight, but they literally proved it in this exact vote. So why are we still talking? As soon as they vote, give you zero votes on a bill that you allowed them to propose 14 hours of amendments on, you go, well, hey, mission accomplished. We did our bipartisanship, we reached out, and they reached back out with a slap across the face, not just to us, but the American people. Well, we're not going to tolerate it. There's a new sheriff in town. We're

We're passing the whole thing right now. But the Democrats have never had that kind of strength. And it appears Joe Biden does not today either. I mean, if they're non-binding resolutions, why don't they just whisper them into jars or put them in a like those light up paper bags that look so pretty at some holidays? It just, to me it seems like, it's like having a wedding. I just had a wedding. Having a wedding is not great, not fun until you actually get to the day.

It's like having a wedding, but let's say you have a mother-in-law who wants to dictate everything that happens at the wedding. Nope, we're not having any meat. Nope, we're having the cash bar. We're doing this. The colors are this. The colors are this. And then she doesn't show up. That is literally what Democrats are doing. They're letting their bad mother-in-law plan the wedding. Just do what you want. Plan your own wedding. It's your day, guys. You're in charge. Guys and girls, you're in charge. This is your day. Make it yours. I really, really. hate all the grandstanding that goes on around bills like this, because at the end of the day, it is grandstanding unless they were planning on piping the vaccine through the Keystone XL pipeline, which maybe that's what they were planning on doing. Really efficient way to transport a lot of liquid. But the thing is, like what is happening now is people like Tom Cotton have gotten a chance to appease lobbyists, appease big donors by saying, well, I made an effort to do this thing. And it is at the expense of the American people. People need relief. Like I said, people need it yesterday. People needed it on January 3rd. People needed it last year. And it hasn't

come to the degree that it should have. And this is what they're doing with their time. This is what they're doing with time that they're being paid for by the taxpayers. It's gross. This is exactly why people hate politics. It is people grandstanding on the taxpayers dime when what we need for them to do is govern and get people what they need. Yeah, Aaron, I can't help but say two things about that. So number one, you're of course right about all of this, but when you put forward legislation, it at least gives you some sense of what they want. And so one of the things we learned about Republicans is that the tax cuts for the rich that Donald

Trump passed, which coincidentally were 1.9 trillion, the exact amount of this COVID relief bill, coincidentally, they say it's not enough. We now want to make them permanent. So it's rolling trillions of dollars. So by the end, it could be $10, $20 trillion for the rich, and 83% of it goes to the top 1%. So they said, we want your checks to be lower Americans, but we want millionaire and billionaires' checks to be way, way, way higher. And we're still negotiating with these guys?

Come on, man. Look, Democrats feel like they need Republican permission to act or to exist. We're here trying to snap you out of it. You don't need Republican permission to lead when you have the House, the Senate, and the presidency. And if you think you do, you're sending a message to people. Remember, everyone, including us, thinks that the Republicans should be in charge. And you might want to remember that next election. It just doesn't get any dumber than that.

Well, let's see if we can make it dumber. We're going to take a short break when we come back a lot more to talk about, including the future of the U.S. involvement of the war on Yemen, as well as strikebacks against voting rights amongst Republicans in a number of different states after this. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly, constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

In each episode of Un-B-the-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UN.F UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. You know, and All right, back during the break, a couple of programming notes for you guys. Anna is not on the show today, but she is on the show today, but she is on If you're in LA, she's on, the issue is with Alex Michelson at 10.30 p.m. Pacific time. And that makes sense because it's in L.A. So if you want to get more information about that,

just remember t.wit.com slash notice. So whenever you go to, if you sign up through tyt.com slash notice, whenever we're in your neck of the woods or we're making an appearance anywhere, we'll send you a note about it. On Sunday, Brett's doing the Sunday stream on Twitch. That's at Twitch.tv slash TYT. It's at 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern, and it gives you a behind, that's fun. That graphics great. A fun behind the current look at how he prepares for our Monday morning production meeting and main show, and of course, he's a senior producer here and puts that together.

Common Rooms on Twitch, a lot of things are happening on Twitch, that seems to be clear. That's at 9 p.m. Eastern, and that's with Brett. Oh, Edwin's gonna be on. You guys are gonna love Edwin. Edwin's our stage manager, the Lafty that you offer in here. And the guy we always check with, because he's the smartest guy in the room. So you'll get to finally see Edwin. Asher, one of our producers and Craig, the other guy, oh my God, what a fun time.

I'm gonna watch that, okay, 9 p.m. Eastern, that's tonight on Twitch. T.Y.T. Craig's the other stage manager and the other laugh you hear from time time. the other guy we check with. All right, theater goddess writes in the member section. Today's the day I learned I'm six days older than John Idarola. Could have done without the existential depressing ramblings and getting old. Tossa coin to your progressive candidate says to be fair I shop for my own groceries every week and I'm never able to remember from one week to the next how much a gallon of milk costs. You know, thank you for saying that because I swear to God I've thought that since George H.W. Bush. So I know how much Coke costs. I buy the little mini

Cokes and three of them at grocery store Ralphs here in LA, three of those six packs are 10 bucks. So I always think that's a good deal. So I grab as many of those as you can, and that's how I got to be this size. But anyways, Jan writes in, I don't care what anyone says. I love the graphic and having drink drop it is the best. Why, thank you, Jan. I appreciate that you appreciate it. We're on the same wavelength. Whoa, breaking news. Lou Dobbs show has been canceled by Fox News. Look at that.

Jesus, Lord Mercy. No. Look into that more. What is on date night now? That is kind of a funny thing to look at. Anyway, lots of happy Bert G. Johns Superchat, including minimal chaos and luck dragon. Thank you guys.

We're going to come right back to regular programming the regular programming in a second. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John and Aaron with you guys. Lots of news. John, let's do it. Let's do it. Sorry, I was going to type something on Twitter to own Lou Dobbs. Anyway, let's talk about this then. One of the big foreign policy-related goals for the incoming Biden administration, for many on the left, was an end to U.S. involvement in the Saudi war on Yemen, and apparently that's where we're headed. Take a look at this. We're also stepping up our diplomacy to end the war in Yemen, a war which has created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.

I've asked my Middle East team to ensure our support for the United Nations-led initiative to impose the ceasefire, open humanitarian challenge, and restore long, dormantions. peace talks. This war has to end. And to underscore our commitment, we're ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales. And this is, of course, important because many Yemenis have been killed. Over 100,000 killed, literally millions displaced, both inside and outside of the country. And the attacks have also crippled the infrastructure. It's led to outbreaks of things like cholera. It's led to to massive starvation. And so one of the worst conflicts that we were involved with for far too long, all throughout the Trump administration, started under Obama, but he never did anything

to stop it. And in fact, escalated by giving ever increasing amounts of weapons to the Saudis, which we now will also be freezing arm sales to them. So that's certainly something. We'll also be naming a special envoy to Yemen to put more pressure on the Saudis and Emirates as they continue that conflict. So this has been a big goal of a number of. of different, mostly Democrats, people like Bernie Sanders and Rokana, but some Republicans as well. And it looks like relatively right out the gate, Biden is going to do something about it. Well, you know, there's some on the so-called left that say that after 19 years of me attacking the Democratic establishment that I'm a shill for Biden and others.

Well, you're going to enjoy this piece of evidence. I like facts and I like when people do progressive things, no matter what part of the political spectrum they're in. So great credit to Joe Biden and his team for getting us out of the atrocities that are happening in Yemen by our so-called ally Saudi Arabia. I also want to give credit to a wonderful progressive Rokana, who was the number one advocate for stopping our aid to Saudi Arabia in regards to the war in Yemen. And as usual, are progressive lead on it. And as usual, we actually get results. That's what happens when progressives lead. But mainly, Biden is in charge here. He made the right decision. I don't agree with every single part of the foreign policy announcements. I think we should, there's some, there's going to be

a time to wrap up our bases all over the world. And we got to do it smart and carefully, and I'm sure Trump didn't. But I'm not, I don't agree with intervention. interventionism as the Democratic leadership normally does and probably as Joe Biden actually believes. But for the moment being, most of these announcements were very good to great and the Yemen announcement in particular was fantastic and welcome news and I'm very happy to see it. I think I was prepared to be disappointed with Joe Biden in when it comes to international affairs. And I agree, this is this is great news and it happened right away. It was clearly a top level priority for him and his foreign relations team.

I, like, just because it's happening so far away, I think what's happening in Yemen isn't something just naturally crosses people's minds in the U.S., but it's really hard to overstate what a tragedy it is over there. The population of Yemen is only 30 million people. So it's smaller than California and more than 100,000 people have died. The surface area of Yemen is so, It's just like unfathomably tragic what is happening over there. And just to back up a little bit from the human tragedy, though, strategically, I think it's really good that Biden is withdrawing support of the Yemeni civil war and halting sales of arms to the Saudis. I think that it might pave a way for us to maybe reenter talks with Iran to possibly reenter the Iran nuclear deal, which is something that I think was also a foreign policy priority for him. Exactly. And we have a little bit on the good, a little bit on the bad. If you were like

Jank, if you were ready to come in and like, oh God, Biden's going to be terrible in this area because, you know, Jank, you spent literally years criticizing Barack Obama's foreign policy in a number of different areas. Well, you're still going to get to do that a little bit. Let's see, we're going to be continuing to provide defensive support to Saudi Arabia against missile and drone attacks from Iranian-backed forces. U.S. forces will also continue operations against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And let's bear in mind that pulling out of the Saudi war on Yemen is not pulling out of Afghanistan, pulling out of Iraq. There's still a lot over there that has to be dealt with. But as Aaron alluded to, the Biden administration has stated

its intention to reenter the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. And I also, I want to jump ahead to another, this is a different topic, but this is, I would say, one of the more morally objectionable things that Donald Trump did in his time as president was he effectively eliminated refugee resettlement inside of the United States. Biden says that in order to rebuild American moral leadership, they're going to be restoring the U.S. refugee program and announced an executive order that would raise the number of refugees accepted into the U.S. in the first fiscal year of the Biden-Harris administration to 125,000, which is actually, by my calculations, exactly the same amount as was in the last

year of the Obama administration, plus the last year of the Trump administration, because he had cut it down to just 15,000 individuals. So a little bit more good news. Yeah, no, I actually don't mind any, but I think the refugee thing is great as well. So that's two really good proposals. And in terms of the protection of Saudi Arabia, look, I loathe their leadership. It's a fundamentalist dictatorship, but they're ostensibly an ally. I don't want to be participated in their offensive wars, but if I don't mind defending them

if they're an ally. And I don't want anyone getting hurt there. So the defensive measures on Saudi Arabia. And if you notice the fighting against al-Qaeda, they said was in the Arabian Peninsula, meaning we're just we're going to protect Saudi Arabia. That's not a reference to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, or anything along those lines. So I didn't see anything particularly offensive in that portion either. I just hope under the Biden administration that there's a more direct through line between any action that we take overseas and direct benefit to people back here in the U.S. because I feel like it's really gotten muddled and there's not really a clear line between what we're doing over there and how that actually helps us or anybody.

And I really think we're maybe moving in the right direction now where hopefully our involvement overseas will be just things that we need to do, nothing more. Exactly, exactly. And hopefully, as we pull out of those things, we can finally get a little bit of money back from the military budget. Because we've had this de facto situation where if you're in war, we'll clearly have to raise the budget. And if you're in peace, well, we have to keep the situation. We certainly can't cut the budget now. Maybe at some point we can talk about that. But there is another topic we need to transition into. So let's move on to this. Georgia, it can't be overstated how important it was to the Democrats, both in the presidential election. as well as in retaking control of the Senate. And importantly, it was also just from a democratic

point of view, like small D Democratic, it was an amazing time in Georgia this last year. Lots of people voted that hadn't before. And they did so in large part because regulations were changed to encourage voting, to make it easier to fight back against some of the rampant voter suppression that Georgia has sort of been ground zero for for a number of years. There was an announcement is last year by Brad Raffensberger, Georgia's GOP Secretary of State that said Georgia was the first state in the country to implement the trifecta of automatic voter registration, at least 16 days of early voting, and no excuse absentee voting. And perhaps as a result of that, you had 1.3 million people voting by mail in the 2020 general election, and 5 million of the state's 7.6 million

voters were automatically registered at the Georgia Department of Driver Services. So they changed the rules to make it easier to vote. Lots of people voted and that can't be allowed. So now the Republicans are fighting back against it. On Monday, the first day of Black History Month, interestingly, Republicans in the state Senate introduced nine bills to restrict access to the ballot, including eliminating automatic voter registration, no excuse absentee voting, mail ballot drop boxes as well as prohibiting third party groups from sending mail ballot applications and banning people who moved to Georgia after the general election from voting in runoff elections. So it was nice while it lasted unless this is stopped. What do you all think about

this? Well I mean you know what this reminds me a lot of the way that zeality anti-abortion proponents have tried to restrict abortion rights in that people who are anti-democracy, anti-democratic small d are kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall here and seeing what will stick. We know that not all of these laws will go into effect because some of them will be, you know, challenged in court and some of them will die in court. But I think a lot of these are going to make it to a Supreme court that is a demonstrated track record of being hostile to voting rights. So some of these are going to be declared constitutional eventually, even though some of these are going to be struck down and, you know, die in the courts. So my big concern is not,

just what's going to happen in 22, but what's going to happen moving forward in our democracy. Now that Republicans have placed conservatives at all levels of the federal court system, including the Supreme Court, I'm really concerned that a lot of the more crazy laws that they're proposing are actually going to stick. Yeah, so the guy who's orchestrating and in charge of taking basically Democratic voters off the rolls and making it harder for Democrats to vote. And in the case of Georgia, in many places in America, that also means making sure that as little African Americans vote as possible, deny them the right to vote as much as possible. That is not anything new in Georgia. In fact,

the guy leading at Barry Fleming is the only guy who led a program that the Supreme Court, the deeply conservative Supreme Court, basically said it's okay to monitor him because he's trouble. So let me explain that a little bit better. So the Voting Rights Act of 1965 said there's a number of states where they have to get permission to change their laws on voting because historically, they have used those laws against African Americans illegally and unconstitutionally to make sure that they couldn't vote. And that's unacceptable. That was the Voting Rights Act, okay? And then the Supreme Court recently, the conservative Supreme Court, rolled that back and said they don't need permission ahead of time. They can go ahead and discriminate all they like. But if it could be

proven afterwards that they, boy, they really don't want black people to vote, then we'll come in and say it's okay. Then you could actually have some regulation of that particular area. And Barry Fleming was the one guy in the one area where they said, oh yeah, that's really bad. What he did to African Americans in that jurisdiction was horrible. And he blocked about 20% of the electorate from voting, they were almost all African American. So Georgia Republicans, who Donald Trump and his fans did not find sufficiently right wing, those same guys, the so-called rhinos and sellouts, nothing of the sort. They're maniacally right wing. They come in and go, oh, let's bring that deeply racist guy who's been sanctioned and have him in charge of blocking

all as many African American and Democratic voters in Georgia as we possibly can. So that's the Republican party, but if it wasn't clear enough, I love this quote from Alice O'Lennick, who is the GOP chair of the Board of Elections in Gwynett County. She said, I will not let them end this legislative session without changing some of these laws. They don't have to change all of them, but they've got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning. Oh, so it's not about voter fraud. It's about you being able to win. And the way you win is by blocking black voters and other people who might vote for Democrats. In other words, you guys are liars and cheaters. Thank you for accidentally admitting it. Yeah, and like I don't think people will

need to be reminded. But, you know, a lot of the people who are putting forward these bills supported efforts to nullify or flip the outcome of George's election. So yeah, no, it's just, it's all motivated reasoning. It's motivated legislating, basically. We don't like the result, and we have such a loosey-goosey attachment to democracy that we'll make it whatever it needs to be for us to win, because the alternative is like changing our platform a little bit or getting with the Times or something like that, and we're not fans of that.

And so they're doing this. And it's not just them, by the way, let's take a look at this. This is a map, Ari Berman shared this on Twitter. These are bills that would restrict access to voting. So far this year, in 28 different states, 106 bills three times as high as last year. Which makes this year sound bad, but also doesn't speak too highly of last year because they were also passing a lot of bills to make voting more difficult there. And if you look at that, you're gonna see basically like all of the states that they lost this time. that they desperately needed to win, they're gonna try to make it much harder to vote.

And the important thing is that we not allow our sort of temporary ecstasy at having won these elections. And you know, we're all excited about the activists and Stacey Abrams and all that that got this done and fought for voting rights. Well, but it's not done. Like at TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean way you have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also

encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back, of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We don't have awesome access to voting forever. The work needs to continue. These organizations and individuals still need to be supported.

And you can bet your, I don't know what I'm allowed to say here, you can bet your ass, I think you can say that. That the Republicans are going to be continuing this crusade against democracy into the midterms and beyond. And we have to be just as vigilant as they are aggressive in pursuing an effective end of democracy. And one thing I do want to add is that when I take a look at attempts to make it more difficult to vote without showing up in person, And one thing that I think kind of gets lost in this is that directly makes it harder for women to vote also, especially women of color, because a lot of times women who are voting also have caretaker responsibilities. The election day isn't a federal holiday. Sometimes it's harder for people, it's hard for people to take off work, figure out someone to take care of their kids. This is something that like can be construed as an attack also on women, specifically women of color who want to vote. But maybe it's not as easy for them. Yeah, in Arizona, the Republicans have introduced at least 34 bills. That's just in one state to take away voter rights. They want to wipe out hundreds of thousands of voters from the voter rolls, and they want

to end mail-in balloting for 3.2 million people in Arizona. They don't want you to vote, and it's very clear, it's not just that they don't want Democrats to vote. They are trying to limit voting rights across the board, specifically. specifically, mostly towards African Americans, and obviously they're trying to do their best in targeting Democrats overall. But basic, but the main drive is just, we want less people to vote. Republicans do a great job of doing voter turnout. We always turn out. We, for the mythical, magical abortion issue that Republicans are never going to do anything about because they want

us to just keep turning out for that. So we've, we do voter turnout amazing, right? For everyone else, we just want to make sure you don't vote, don't vote, we hate democracy. We invaded the capital and tried to end democracy through violence. What part of we hate democracy did you not understand, right? And so look, I have a controversial opinion on this, which is that I think the blue states should do whatever the red states do. So if they block, you know, democratic areas from voting by limiting, for example, voting boosts, I do the same exact thing in blue states. only to Republican areas. So like Maricopa counties, they would greatly reduce the number of voting booths because

they think it's more Democratic. Okay, great, wherever I have Democratic legislatures and governors, I would go in and say, oh, look at that, a huge, Kevin McCarthy's district is in California. There would be nary a voting booth in his district in the Republican areas if I was in charge. And why? Do I like that? Is that fair? No, I would do that until they, you know, with the Republican.

would do, they'd get, they'd do hearings, they'd get all over TV, they'd cry and cry, oh, they don't let us vote. Okay, great. Now let's go sit down at the negotiation table, let's talk about what you're trying to do in Georgia and Arizona. Because if you want to cry about it, well, let's let's talk it through and talk about how evil you are and how much you hate democracy and how you, I can prove it in other states. But if you don't fight back, All there is is Democratic complaining without actually doing anything about it. I mean, you know, you bring up Arizona and I think that's very, that's really interesting. Because Arizona for the first time since I can remember has two Democrats representing it in the Senate.

One of the major blocks between the Senate, the federal government and passing a law that would provide federal protections to voting access is Senator Sinema, one of Arizona's senators who is against eliminating the filibuster. If Democrats could eliminate the filibuster, they could pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and they could actually enshrine at the federal level access to voting that is fair for people across the country. But it just, it's one of those like brainbendingly stupid political moves that one of Arizona's senators is endangering her political future and her party's political future for question mark. I don't know. Yeah. Well, we've got more news to get to, but we do have one. one more break, so everyone stick around. We'll be back in just a few.

All right. Two Sundays from now, it's going to be February 14th. That's a bit of a relevant date for a lot of us, but it's also relevant for TYT because that is our anniversary. We are going to be 19 years old, or you could say birthday. So we've been around for 19 years, which is amazing, unbelievable. As a reporter once told me, your competition is a graveyard. So now we made it that far thanks to you.

you guys, since that's a Sunday, we're gonna celebrate it on Monday, February 15th. And so me, Anna, John, J.R. Aaron, Dave, Steve, Ben, Brett, we're all gonna be here. We're gonna do the regular show. And then of course, on top of that, we're gonna do at 8 p.m. Eastern, this special for you guys, where we're just gonna goof around and have a lot of fun and talk about the old days. So if you're a young church viewer, my guess is you'll absolutely love it. And don't worry, it's not like last year, there's no fundraising. Okay, we're just having, keeping it real. That's what we do. Okay, here we go. We're going to Twitch. Oh my God, I see the emojis. Oh, those emojis are disastrous of my drawing of John. It has begun, and it is, it's a plague upon the land. Let's just be honest about it.

It's just something, man. I want to get it framed in the studio. Yeah, Brett, I don't Brent, I don't know if you can take a shot of it and put it on screen. But anyway, Twitch.tv slash TiD, you guys can see it. C. Missile gave a thousand bits. Thank you. Dragon's Song Yes says, welcome back, Jank. I miss you, but I'm excited to read your book soon. Happy Birthday, John.

So shout out to both of us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. And if you want to pre-order the book, I'm not going to argue with you. Justice's Comingbook.com. Justice's Comingbook.com. There's a chapter in there for now, tentatively titled, Why Republicans Suck.

Okay, so not mincing words. All right, Anthony Chickens is in their third month. Power panel day, excited about that. Raw Milk just signed up. Amazon Prime, it's free for you. So it takes about a minute, 10 seconds, depends on whether you're already on Twitch. And we get the revenue for it, so it's a win-win for everybody. Princess Chris, six months in, shoe gaze dragon, Georgie gifted five subs, socialist teddy bear

gifted a sub. How socialist of you, thank you, and how teddy bear of you. Platinum, Yeti gifted five subs, AJ Duennis, of course, gifted five subs. T. Barnabas gifted five subs. You guys are so generous. What are you guys, progressives? Tell me what to put, gifted two subs and doll steak gifted a sub. Steak sounds good. All right. Elizabeth Jacob writes. on Super Chat just got here. And I just want to say that hearing Mrs. Vice President saying as a tiebreaker, I vote affirmative gave me big goosies. I love it. And I'm here for it. We'll be right back with the radio.

All right. All right. with you guys. I am going to read two comments here from YouTube super chat. Verushka Franceschi writes in, can you please have Aaron on more often? She always brings up things no one else does and articulates her views beautifully. Oh, that's so nice. That is. Very nice and very true. And then Kimberly McNaught says, Fox canceled Lou Dobbs. Happy birthday dragon daddy.

I mean, he was like he's not even the top five of ones that I hate the most, but I'll take it. I won't take that. No, we're hurting people's eyes. That's the new emoji on our Twitch channel, Twitch.TV slash TYT. Yes, that's my drawing of John Iderola. Yes, it is inappropriate and unacceptable. And it also is a failing grade on a test of whether you're having a stroke. Is it becoming too easy to make emotes?

I'd argue yes. Yeah, by the way, you're right. It's emotes not emojis and person, man, woman, camera, TV. You're recovered. You're recovered. Okay, you want to do some, no, not news. Do you want to do a story anyway? Let's do this. Sure. Lately, Congresswoman Marjorie Green has that a lot of explaining to do.

Let's add this to the pile. There we go. And then I've got to do one more thing. I always do this. I just love this. He is. He is. He's fantastic. This guy right here is great. Stayed it up in there in the mucky swamp. Diane always has him in the but it's amazing. I don't understand. Does this happen at political rally? Jane, you held things like that. I knew anything like that. Aaron, what were you going to say?

I'm going to say how dreadful, how utterly dreadful. That's the only word I can think of when I think of this. The second thing I think is, is this like open mic night at Hitler's retreat? Because it's just as painful as an open mic night in a pre-pandemic Manhattan basement. There's a bunch of guys looking at their phones telling jokes that are also about comedy. Nothing is funny. This is horrible, horrible. We need to stop making people want to be funny because people like Marjorie Taylor Green try it and it hurts me.

It hurts me in my soul. Yeah. So first of all, I like that we're coming full circle. She seemed to have grabbed him without permission, as he bragged about. Second of all, let's just for a second think about what Fox News would say if that was AOC doing that to a poster of Barack Obama. I wonder what they would say, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. Okay. So, but if you're a Republican family values are not important, nothing is important,

let's just go for it, right? And and they think that's so scandalous how she wants to grab his genitals. It's so great. She's so wonderful. But by the way, there is something symbolic there as well, which is now kissing his proverbial ass is not enough. Now we're going to the front, okay? And so that is a way of showing fealty. And I'm not, this is not. This is not not a gender thing because most of the people that live inside Trump's ass are men like Matt Gates and Lindsey Graham, et cetera. So and that in order to succeed in the Republican Party, you now have to rub at least Trump's proverbial crotch. So that's where the Republican party is. I'm sure they must be so, so proud the party of family values.

It's just, I have politicians that I like. Sure, I'm sure that we all do. But like the cult with Trump is so weird where I'm never going to win people over that think and maybe both of you do that Trump is charismatic. I don't buy it. I get that like they like him or that he's alpha and strong. These are things that people believe that I've never understood. I think that so much about him. his weaknesses and his failings just scream a constant undercutting of those characteristics. But what I know for sure, and we can put up that video again, that is not the silhouette of his body. And like the cartoonists, why do you have to draw a politician to be hotter? Like, if he wanted to have a six pack, he could work out. Same goes for me. We've both chosen not to. This is what the result of it is. That's not what it looks like. That face, if that was ever his face, it was 40 years ago that that was his face. And yet they want to imagine that this person is this physically perfect incarnation of conservatism. And maybe it's because there's so

little to him in terms of his actual values that are what they say they want. There's really no platform there for them to really get into. It has to just be a, he hates our enemies and look how admirable he is. So we're going to draw them with big shoulders and stuff like that. And it's not just them. You know, the Krasensteins did their little like book of Mueller and Mueller was ripped. Muller ain't ripped either. Like you can be attracted to people. People are attracted to people. It's natural. It's unavoidable. But like trying to like conjure up by force of will, excessive horniness is one of the weirdest parts of modern politics. Yeah, it really feeds into the whole, this is sort of a cult at this point, because what's

kind of a, you know, a touchstone of a cult is everybody wants to screw or is screwing the leader, or the leader wants to screw everybody. And I mean, some of them are figuratively getting screwed by the leader, some are literally getting screwed by the leader. I just, I don't get it. I don't get it. Trump is not an attractive man. that he's repulsive. And the fact that all of these people have decided that he is, he's, you know, Fabio in the 80s on the cover of a bodice ripper. It makes me feel, I, when I watch stuff like that, I don't feel like a person. Because I'm like, am I, okay, we're allegedly both people, but I've never related to anything less than what I'm seeing right now. What are you?

We're not the same. We're so not the same. I truly don't get it. And also, you know, not to be catty, but meow, she's not his type. He wouldn't go for her. No. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Look, it's so, it's so funny. Like they, the, the stereotype of the Democrats were that like, oh, we're the freewheeling, you know, more, you know, sexually liberated party, right? But on the left, no one's allowed to make any sexual references, right? Not at all. Like, not even if you're joking, nothing, right? I mean, the idea of anyone on the left touching the crotch of a cardboard cut out of a male or female leader is insane and would never be tolerated.

Like, I don't even want to get into examples, it's super obvious. But on the right, they're like, yes, yaha! Like, yes, I agree with you guys, I don't understand the obsession with Trump or let alone as genitalia, but I understand at least a little bit of, a little bit of why they like Trump as a fighter for them because they feel like, oh, he's saying this. the things that I think, including the terrible things, and he doesn't care what anybody thinks, and I like that he's just as bigoted as I am. So I get that part, right? But back to Marjorie Taylor Green. She also said in that speech that Democrats are the un-American party. Again,

as usual, Democrats get outraged by that and blah, la-la, I'm not outraged by it at all, because that's her opinion. My opinion is Republicans are un-American, and I have overwhelming evidence to support what I'm saying, including the fact that they just invaded the U.S. Capitol And it attacked our democracy and tried to destroy it. So by definition, that makes you un-American. And those are the people that Marjorie Taylor Green in specific was cheering on. So her talking about people being un-American, hilarious. I don't know anyone more on American than Marjorie Taylor Green.

And then I'm never going to let the Jewish space lasers go. And at every conference until she specifically apologizes for it. Or says, yes, I believe it. And this is it, apparently. And by the way, Margaret Taylor Green would take this as evidence. She, see, I read it. There is no question about it on Facebook.

She did a post. In fact, I went back and reread it today because it's so nuts and I wanted to be a thousand percent sure. Yes, she says it might be true that the Rothschilds have built a space laser and that they're using it to zap the forest to start fires to make more money. Okay, invoking the Rothschild name is one of the oldest, deepest anti-Semitic tropes, and it has led to the massacre of millions of people in the past. And so if you're talking about a Rothschild space laser to make money, and by the way, get people killed, that's how she

started the Facebook post. You're a very dangerous person, and you're a lunatic, and every reporter should ask you that every time until you disavow your horrific anti-Semitism. You ought to American piece of crap. I mean, I also think that like, let's just think about this. If, if Jewish people are doing all of the things that people like Marjorie Taylor Green and the brain worms that dictate everything Marjorie Taylor Green says, let's say they're doing all those things. Who would have the time? How would the Jewish people have time to run Hollywood to set up a space laser, start wildfires? How are they controlling the media? Gosh, I mean, if they're really doing all that, we should be impressed instead of mad because that's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's

lot of work. Aaron, it's all science. Sorry, John. So if there was a secret cabala people who were controlling our government and building space lasers and had the power to do all of this, you know what they would do is sort of randomly starting forest fires for like a really complicated plot to maybe make a little bit of money? Instead, they would print trillions of dollars maybe at a place like the Federal Reserve, and

then they would transfer it to the people who are actually running the country, like maybe corporations. Oh, right, they did do that. And it wasn't the Jews. It was multinational corporations that actually give money to politicians. Their backgrounds are all very diverse. Congratulations to them. Okay, it is not about a race or ethnicity or a religion. It is about the fact that people who pay our politicians bribes then get them to literally print money for them to the tune of trillions of dollars. That's how you would do it because that's a way easier way to make money. Duh. So Marjorie Taylor Green gets partial credit for that answer. Is that what you're saying? That's pretty good. Unfortunately, Jenk, I think we're probably out of time.

I see. Okay, sad day. All right, you got to check out Aaron Ryan on Crooked Media's hysteria podcast. And she's a columnist of The Daily Beast. So make sure you're reading her over there. Obviously, the damage report is now at this point, a little bit legendary. John is the dragon daddy over there, and it is his birthday. I feel like, I was going to say, you don't know him anything, but just check him out. He's really good. Thank you. All right.

Much love, guys. I'm coming back in the next hour with J.R. Jackson and Adrian Lawrence. We have more disaster stories, including from My Pillow Guy and Laura Ingram, wait to get a load of the new insanity they have planned for you. We'll be 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.co slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.