The Young Turks - Holiday Horror Show

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Elon Musk touted the results of a Twitter poll and called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to kill a major spending bill. Sean Hannity didn’t really believe Trump’s claims about 2000 election fraud. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) redoubled his opposition to Kevin McCarthy’s bid for House Speaker with a scathing essay on his various gripes with the congressman. Candace Owens has no issue with people waving the confederate flag. Wall Street landlords who’ve stockpiled $110 billion are lying in wait for their biggest American home-buying spree yet. Host: Michael Shure, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Merry Christmas, bitches. Three-a-Tee! Free watching! Free-a-T! Three-a-T!

Oh, my God, my voice sounds so weird. Okay, thank you or Michael is sure with you guys. I do have a cold, not COVID, but cold, that's why we're at home. But we soldier on. We soldier on. This is the pre pre pre Christmas show. So it has to go forward. And it could be glitches from time to time. Anyways, we got nothing but love for you guys. We got Turks and Jerks coming up next week. We got Brent Ehrlich on ABC coming up. We got a lot of things coming up. We got crazy fun stories for you guys. And we're going to get started with a little bit of Elon and a little bit of omnibus. Michael, go. Hey, Jake. And yeah, it's it's sort of crazy. You know, Elon Musk has Twitter and he thinks that he is the decider of everything. And so what does he do? I mean, because there's nothing more scientific than a Twitter poll. And now that he owns Twitter, he decides to put to a poll whether or not a $1.7 trillion a bill should pass both the Senate and then subsequently the United States House of Representatives. Musk, though, went on Twitter, found that the Twitter poll that he did, he asked people, and we can look at it here, should Congress approve the $1.7 trillion on the bus spending bill? Well, 71% of the people

said no, and 28 or 29% of them said yes. So obviously, you know, Jank, my whole life, and this goes back to the early days of the presidents of my lifetime. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, always went to Twitter to see what the people thought of a bill, because that's the way it worked. So lo and behold, Elon saw that it didn't work. He goes back on, and he thought that that should influence the majority leader of the United States Senate. He wrote at Senator Schumer, at leader McConnell, this poll should influence you. And he said the public has spoken there overwhelmingly against this giant spending bill, as if somehow at that point, that's the way the Senate should go. Well, there's a couple of issues here, and then we'll get to the bill itself. But first of all,

okay, let's acknowledge all the obvious things that's wrong with a Twitter poll. As Michael mentioned already, obviously on scientific, anyone who doesn't know that, especially someone like Elon Musk, who claims to be a great engineer. I suppose he is, but who knows anymore, right? She knows how deeply unscientific it is. Second of all, there's bots. So anybody can make that poll. Third of all, non-Americans can vote on it. Fourth of all, it's a Twitter poll. Are you kidding me? Okay. And but the second issue is. But can I add one thing, the people that follow Elon Musk, one would presume, are overwhelmingly supportive of Elon Musk, who is, overwhelmingly not supportive of this legislation. So again, I mean, we don't have to make other

arguments for why this is foolish. But, but again, it's worth pointing that out. By the way, so that's true. And there's two other giant problems with this insane Twitter poll. But the other day I did a poll on because we've got Turks and Jerks coming up. That's at the end of the year. We do a special it'll be next Thursday after the Young Turks at 8 o'clock Eastern. Turk of the Year, Jerk of the Year. We have a bunch of candidates and we basically picked the hero of the year and the jerk. And recently on Twitter, I did a poll who should it be Elon Musk or Joe Manchin. And look, I will not abide by the results of the Twitter poll, just like Elon Musk. He says he abides, but that never does.

But it turned out that Elon Musk won. So then while that's scientific, it's over. It's over. Elon Musk is the worst person in the world. Can I ask you an aside question here? I was there at the genesis of Turk and jerk when we used to do it of the day or of the week at some point. And Ben and I were passionate that it should have been spelled J-U-R-K, like T-U-R-K and J-U-R-K. Has that ever been brought in? It's been brought up many times and rejected over and over again. Put it to a poll, put it to a damn poll. We gotta put it to a Twitter poll, because Twitter polls aside everything.

But the one thing we can't change it all, apparently, well, you'll have to see it in the special, if it's true or not. But Elon Musk, the jerk of the year, because it was in a Twitter poll, Twitter polls never lie. The fact that it's, the fact that it's people that are following me and likely to find Elon Musk a jerk, obviously not relevant. Not at all. Yeah. So now Elon, I don't know if he's that stupid. Like there's some chance that he is. Like he thinks these things are real. There's some chance, of course, that he doesn't. But but is there any chance that anyone who voted in that poll has, actually read the bill, including Elon Musk. No, of course, they have no earthly idea what's in the bill. That's going to lead me into my second issue, which is that, yeah, maybe they should reject the bill. But not because of this. In fairness, nobody who's voting on the bill in real life,

not Twitter, has read the entirety of the bill either. I mean, you have committee members, and those committee members or the people on the committees have staff, and those staff members report back to their bosses on Capitol Hill and the Senate. Of course, senators will have some of their special interests that they look at to see whether or not they should support or not support it. But at the same time, this is the kind of thing where certainly the people on Twitter haven't read it. And certainly none of the people that are voting on it have read the entirety of it. It's about 4,000 pages. So that can be expected. But they are certainly more knowledgeable about what's in the meat and potatoes of a spending bill as it pertains to their state.

their districts or their special interests that they hold at heart. So that's where they have a leg up on Elon. Yeah, it's such a dumb, dumb poll is the month is 1.7 trillion too much. How would you know? How do you know it's not supposed to be 1.5 or 1.9? What would you cut? What would you keep? Would you cut defense?

Would you cut subsidies to Tesla? What would you cut, right? It's 40, the real poll is it's 45 billion too much, Elon. Yeah, well, that's, no, that's not a poll, Michael. You don't need a poll on that one. The 44 billion that he paid for Twitter, definitely too much. But look, the final part of this is that, so look, they're gonna pass it, you're gonna tell us about it because it always passes.

But the reality is even if that 71% were true, Congress wouldn't give a damn. That's not how bills are made. They don't care about public policy and what the public thinks at all. They care about what their donors want, and that's what that bill is. If Elon made that point in a more interesting and sophisticated way, then I'd be all in, but this is just about the dumbest way you could make that point. Yeah, no question. Although I will say in a spending bill like this, it's not just as cynical,

but it's not only about the donors, it is about being reelected. So it's about bringing pork back to your district, if you're in Congress, to have some kind of legislation that says, oh, this guy did this or this woman did this, I'm going to vote for them next time. So it's not only about the money, money. In this case, in a spending bill, it's about getting reelected with the votes. The money will help you later on. But certainly, this is about appealing to people who are going to remember things that you did. Let's get to it. It was a bill that had to pass the U.S. Senate first and then would be pushed on to the U.S. House. The U.S. House saw that bill pass the Senate today.

They will be voting on it tomorrow. And these bills typically are everything that's good and everything that's bad about Congress. So I say everything that's good. This keeps the country going. This keeps the military going if you're into that sort of stuff, but it's good for local economies that house the military. And so in that essence, and the people that supply the military. But it's also good for the, it also brings up, you know, a lot of issues and pushes back on things like Title 42. We'll get to that as well. But it also has things like Patrick Leahy, head of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate. Well, it turns out this bill has four things being named after Patrick

Leahy. It has one thing being named after Richard Shelby, the FBI building in Alabama will be the Richard Shelby FBI building. He is the minority on that. He's the ranking member on appropriations. Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, when he heard that Richard Shelby was going to be getting something named after him in Alabama said, I'm surprised there's still something that wasn't named after him in Alabama. So it's a lot of that, a lot of the things that make us cynical about politics, which is always what you see in a bill. But there is some meat and potatoes here. This bill, It's about, you know, government funding expiring now at midnight. And we'll look at, we can bring a graph at number three and what Mike Lee tried to do.

He tried to put in a poison pill to stop this, to trying to sneak something in on Title 42, as I alluded to. The government funding set to expire at midnight Friday, senators failed to reach a deal Wednesday night to advance the $1.7 trillion on the bus spending package that passed today. as Democrats push back against Mike Lee's last ditch effort to stop or to extend Title 42. Title 42 is a CDC title that kept people because of COVID, rendered them unable to cross the border. It's sort of a COVID stipulation that is set to expire. So, Jenk, this is a big part of it. It got to a vote in the Senate, but it was turned aside. It's important the way it happened.

Yeah, so let me add the last two things here. One is Michael's right, you need to pass some omnibus bill. You can't just shut the government down and the government does essential things. So don't believe the hype from right wingers who say the Republican, that the government does nothing. Unfortunately, it is laden with pork and it is laden with goodies for back home and for donors. So if you could cut that out, that would be awesome. But neither side really wants to do that at all. But also, in terms of the Mike Lee effort. So he's, the way that that would have worked is the progressives,

there's enough progressives believe it or not in the House that they could have blocked this bill if it had a poison pill in it like Title 42. Title 42 says we should not allow any immigrants and even if they're seeking asylum and their lives are in danger, et cetera, basically. And apparently there are good enough Democrats in the House that insisted that that not be in. So it would have killed a whole bill. And that's what Mike Lee was trying to do. But interestingly, he wanted an exception for the filibuster.

Now these are the same Republicans who were like, no exceptions to the filibuster. But as soon as he wanted this to pass, he said, wow, you gotta give me an exception to the filibuster. Which leads me to my last point about how, hey, look at that. Maybe Democrats do do some decent things every once in a while. When Mike Lee asked for it, I got nervous because I don't have a lot of faith in Joe Biden in Democratic leadership. And I thought there's some chance that they would give him an exception to the filibuster because they secretly want to keep Title 42 because they're worried about immigration issues and a lot of people crossing them border and that Biden was going to go knee jerk, conservative. So the way he was going to allow that to happen is go, oh, golly gee, I guess there was nothing we could do. We made an exception to the filibuster and just got in there. But you know what? Credit to Biden and Democratic leadership.

They didn't do that. They said, no, if we have to deal with a filibuster, you have to deal with a filibuster. And that's why it lost Senator Lee's proposal and the overall bill passed without it. And John Thun, the senator from South Dakota is the minority whip in the Senate said as much. He said, this is what happens when you control the Senate. And this is why we didn't get our way. And this is why this poison pill was averted. Well, what they consider a poison pill on the other side was averted. So you do have to look at the leadership having been able to maneuver this.

And, you know, again, this is something that that happens in the U.S. Senate every, you know, every couple of you have to keep the government going. But there were some things in this bill that are worth pointing out. There is $45 billion in aid to Ukraine. There is an overhaul of the electoral counting law that makes it much more difficult to overturn presidential election, a certified presidential election. In Congress, there is money that was put aside as well for prosecution. of January 6th, of the accused on January 6th. So there's a lot that went into this that I think was supported by Democrats across the board and is going to be something that's very difficult for Republicans to vote against.

Some of them have said that they're going to do it in the House. Yes, that's all I got out. Okay. Well, I mean, that's that's that, but it's important stuff. We know the way it proceeded and we know what's going to happen going forward, Nancy Pelosi, who, by the way, got a federal building name for her in a bill that she is going to vote on and pass in San Francisco tomorrow. That's going to be in front of it. She said in her last press conference as speaker that that is going to go to a vote tomorrow.

And so that's where the spending bill lies. It is a right of passage literally in Congress, and that's where we are. Jenk, I want to turn now to some more poison pills, and those are the ones that have been given out by Sean Hannity now for quite some time. There's a major lawsuit against him, against Fox News, from defamation lawsuit from Dominion. You'll know Dominion is the vote counting machines and the people that have they've gone after said that this was a skewed election. Well, it turns out that John Hannity now says all along he knew it was. He was asked under oath in an August deposition. If he agreed with the theories that voter fraud and Democrat, and there was voter fraud and democratic interference in the election,

he said, I do not believe it for one second. This is from the New York Times. And that was from the court testimony, I do not believe it for one second. This is someone who went on television and talked about it as if it was fact every single night all day long. And on the radio, on podcast, this is someone who pushed that theory, that false theory. And he now says, Jank, that he didn't believe it for one second. Yeah, look, this is a double whammy against Fox News. This is devastating. And it also goes to show you, man.

Hannity is not that bright. Every lawyer in the building in Fox News must have been ripping their hair out. Because let me tell you the part that that is not getting enough attention about this. In order for Dominion to win, by the way, a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Fox, they don't have to just prove that Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell and others on Fox News were lying about them. They have to prove bad intent, malice, okay, that Fox News, News knew that it wasn't true and they put it on there anyway. That is a very tough standard. But Hannity just helped them prove it because he said, go ahead, Jenk. He just helped them prove it. Yeah, he just said, yeah, I knew, I didn't believe it for one second. And we have clip after clip of

him airing those theories out, even though he didn't believe it. That's bad intent. That's balance. It is. This is November 30th. Sidney Powell, one of the attorneys that was trying to say that this was the case going on his show the very same month that Joe Biden won the presidency. And this is what Powell said when she came on his, or if we can go to number two here, she on the Hannity show tied together Trump Bogieman as the Daily Beast noted in the write up, including the dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, liberal philanthropist George Soros, communist Chinese money and the CIA. That's from David Fulke and on NPR. So he kept entertaining this. And again, if you think that this is a minor part of our press,

this is someone who is on the most watched cable network on probably the most watched show, though I don't know that to be the case. And this is what people are seeing. They're seeing him say these things and then come around and said, I didn't believe it for a second. What does that say about Fox? Yeah, and Hannity is actually the second most watch. Tucker Carlson's number one. But Tucker Carlson also implicated here, also took a deposition. The judge cut off the lawyers before they said the exact quotes that Tucker Carlson said. But it was clear from the record that Tucker Carlson hemmed and hawed and tried to avoid the question of whether he knew that the charges of vote rigging was false. But apparently according to the lawyers, basically, although not as in starker terms as Hannity made it, said it, agreed, yes, they knew that it wasn't true. And they carried it anyway. Let's talk about the lawyers on the other side, right?

I mean, this is Fox News. This is a behemoth. So going up against Fox News, a pretty tough thing to do. And people thought that Fox probably had an advantage to some degree in this case. As a matter of fact, Jeremy Peters of the New York Times wrote that the high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News. Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were in effect saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite. That requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those that were making the decisions at the network. Well, in Delaware Superior Court on Wednesday, yesterday in Delaware, the Dominion's lawyers argued that they had obtained ample evidence to make the case that in fact, they know that Fox knew what was going on.

One lawyer for Dominion said not a single Fox witness so far have produced anything supporting the various false claims about the company that were uttered repeatedly on the network, not a single Fox witness and had produced any. evidence here. And this is, you know, it's affirming to people like you and me and the people that are watching this, most of them anyway, who knew this, right? Who knew that Fox was going on was telling other people that they were fake news when in fact, they were purveying the fakes news that we have ever seen in this country. And they knew they were doing it. It was performance art. Yeah. And so guys, buyer beware, now you know they, and notice that when they're on air, they lie 24-7. The minute they get into a courtroom and lies have actual legal consequences,

where a guy like Sean Hannity who makes $40 million a year might have to go to jail if he tells a lie on the record, all of a sudden he's like, yeah, of course I was lying the whole time on air. I didn't believe it for a second. All of a sudden, he tells you what's actually true. And you've seen this over and over again. In other cases, is, you know, Fox attorneys making the claim that no one would, no reasonable person would believe any of our anchors on air. They say such outrageous things. How could any reasonable person believe them? But at the same time, Fox executives know full well that people believe them. Of course people believe them. Of course they're doing it. It wasn't just Hannity,

where we have, it's important to know that it wasn't just Sean Hannity that was doing this. So the Fox executives knew it. In fact, this is in number five, this included Mead Cooper. This is coming from Dominion's lawyer, Stephen Shackleford. Mead Cooper oversees primetime programming for Fox News and the primetime star Tucker Carlson. The lawyer Shackleford said many of the highest ranking Fox people have admitted under oath. They never believed the Dominion lies. He said, naming both Ms. Cooper and Mr. Carlson.

That's also from the New York Times. And then he went on to describe how Tucker Carlson had tried to quote, squirm out of it at his deposition when asked what he really believed. So this is, you know, this is company-wide. This isn't limited to Sean Hannity who's not a jury. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with

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we report you decide. He showed up at many events for Donald Trump and for other senators. I saw him at a Ted Cruz rally. So in fact, he is somebody who is not a journalist, but he is the person in this case, who is the kind of front and center, but it went all the way throughout. Yeah, and there's another giant problem for Fox News in this lawsuit, they're going to lose a lot of money, man. They're eventually going to have to settle, and it's going to be for a monster number. Because Fox News is part of a larger corporation, Fox Corp. And Fox corporate executives sent memos basically admitting, we know this isn't true, and trying to get it under control, right? And they were not able to get it under control.

But that shows that the larger and more profitable Fox Corporation was also involved, which means they're going to lose even more money. So it has an effect on how much Fox News can lie if they lose about a billion dollars for it and might make them a little bit more gun shy. So that could be an interesting effect of this. We'll see if, but that would be a major, major pivot for Fox News. If they had to tell our anchors to tell the truth, that would change the entire content of the channel. I'm not joking. Yeah, no, no, it's it's dead right. And that's why even some of these people who have been looking at this, you know, from the Donald Trump world, have been looking at Fox, have said, we're done with Fox because it seems like, you know, Lou Dobbs leaving after the Smartmatic

case, this lawsuit, people sort of acquiescing to what's happening with this lawsuit at Fox within the walls of Fox, a producer at Fox reportedly begging Janine, to producers to stop Janine Piro from going on and talking about lies. All of this stuff getting out said, eh, go watch newsmax, go watch OAN because they're more on our team. This is going to hurt Fox from both sides. Could go to a jury trial if it doesn't settle in April of next year. I can't imagine Fox wants a jury trial, but it certainly would be great to see a jury of 12 people say that Fox knew that these lies were going on.

We have a lot more on today's show. I'm Michael Shore with Jack Uger. This is the young jokes. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Michael with you guys. Also Carly Teplets and Shanayne Bay 69. They just became members. They also became American heroes. They hit the join button below the video on YouTube.

You can do it at t.yt.com slash join. I'm gonna read one super chat here because you guys have been wonderfully generous. This is the last show before the holidays for us. And so we're gonna have Friday and Monday off. We'll be back on Tuesday. But Michael Malbon wrote in, Merry Christmas, TYT community. I always missed the Friday. Power panels for work, but I do get to watch tomorrow.

I know I'm a day early, but I'm super pumped and I don't care. Drop it. And Michael, you know, I'm partly reading that because we should have dropped it today. Because we're on a Thursday. Will you do anything we want? We're wild and crazy like that. So you never know. I'm apparently doing anything I want, so everybody else should be able to do it.

Okay, so guys, I'm going to read more of your comments during the social breaks. You guys are amazing. Keep it coming. And thank you for joining as well. All right, so let's go to the next story. I can't wait to vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. But if Donald Trump believes that Kevin McCarthy should be Speaker of the House, then Donald Trump is wrong. Oftentimes, Kevin McCarthy is the embodiment of the worst features of the Congress. I've seen the way the guy acts in leadership, and there's no gusto there. There's no strength.

There's only slower surrender than yesterday. And I don't want to be in Congress if that's the case. Slower surrender than yesterday. That is Matt Gates, who represents the first district in the state of Florida. And he is on the warpath for Kevin McCarthy. When Congress does return for the 118th Congress next term in January, the first order of business for Republicans will be voting on who their speaker is, Kevin McCarthy. He's trying to corral the votes. You see there that he does not have Matt Gates vote, nor does he have the votes of some of the other sort of freedom caucus or far, far, right members of Congress.

But Matt Gates today did not pull any punches. Again, he had an op-ed in the daily caller saying, among other things, every single Republican in Congress knows that Kevin does not actually believe anything. He has no ideology. Some conservatives are using this fact to convince themselves, that he is the right leader for the moment. As McCarthy is so weak, he'll promise anything to any one. Gates goes on to say, as his mentor recently confessed, and he's talking about that,

he lies, he'll change the lie if necessary. McCarthy doesn't just respond to pressure from the right during several important junctures in the past decade. We've seen Kevin McCartney, sorry, Kevin. I look at that, Kevin McCarthy. I did what I always make fun of people for doing, but Kevin McCarthy. So he went after Kevin McCarthy for among other things, voting on a $40 billion, which turned into about 46 or 47 in the Senate version, a billion dollar aid package for Ukraine, his support for a no-fly zone over Syria during Obama's administration, allegedly buying into what he calls the Russia hoax. And then his vote in favor of removing Confederate monuments from the U.S. Capitol building. A lot of that has already happened. And these are the sort of things that a conservative like Matt Gates doesn't like to see. Gates goes on in this op-ed in the daily caller saying leaders don't wait to see what the crowd wants.

Leaders also don't take orders from lobbyists. McCarthy, who was previously honored as one of the tech industry's best friends in Congress, opposes legislation that would break up companies like Amazon and Apple. Why exactly again, are we supposed to coordinate a man whose top advisor is a corporate lobbyist for the likes of Pfizer? So he is on a war path for Kevin McCarthy is Matt Gates. He has a big microphone in the media. He also has one in the very right wing of the House caucus there. Jank, this is exactly what Kevin McCarthy didn't want, but it is not surprising in a fractured Republican caucus. Yeah, I don't really know what's going to happen when they had this vote, because it looks like McCarthy is going to be blocked. And then I don't know what step two is, and I'm not sure that Matt Gates knows what step two is. I'm going to come back to that in a second. But first I'm going to tell you, this story is complicated because Matt Gates is right about half of things he says. And it gets more complicated because he's so overwhelmingly wrong about the other half. So when he says, oh, McCarthy shouldn't take down Confederate monument, shouldn't agree to take them down. Well, that paints the Republican Party is more radical, which it is, but it would paint it that way.

And they just lost elections in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and all these places because they're considered too radical. So Gates's ideas about how Republicans can win better is just flat out wrong. And it's not good for the country. The vaccine mandates is more radical right nonsense, never agreeing to compromise on any bills. So the government shuts down as radical nonsense. But on the other hand, when he talks about the special interests that influence Kevin McCarthy, that is 100% true.

When he says Kevin McCarthy is a well-known liar who lies about everything, that is 100% true. When he talks about lobbyists and Pfizer influence in Kevin McCarthy, that's also 100% true. And part of the reason now other Republicans are getting mad at Gates and Boehbert who are on that side, but curiously not Marjorie Taylor Green, we can come back to that, but they're getting mad at Gates because they're like, hey, we all take money from Pfizer. We all take money from corporate lobbyists. What are you doing here? But that's why I actually really do want to, in all earnestness, give Gates half credit here because he does not take any PAC money. And you can see here that he's free from their influence. And it's, and it's leaving a mark.

And I applaud that part. I don't know why you give him half credit. He should get full credit here. I mean, on that score anyway. No, on that score, give him full credit. But on his argument against McCarthy, half of it is nonsense. Well, of course, it's nonsense. And it's nonsense. They delight in fracturing and having power. You'll remember that the last time McCarthy almost became speaker, they couldn't agree on McCarthy. McCarthy withdrew his name in the speaker's race. And Paul Ryan became the speaker that was in the wake of John Boehner sort of being forced out to a degree. And then Paul Ryan came on and now Ryan supports McCarthy. But again, if you look at the scoreboard, and that's what Gates points out here. Number 6, it says, in sports, when the team loses games and is supposed to win, the coach gets fired.

In business, when earnings vastly missed projections, the CEO is replaced. In Republican politics, a promotion shouldn't be failures chaser. Now, Kevin McCarthy was the minority leader when Nancy Pelosi, as she has been speaker. I don't know what the equation here is about being winner or loser. They now control the house, and I don't see that read. but from a very conservative standpoint, they're saying that he had to cave in order to get where he needed to go. But what this highlights more than anything, and the horse race for McCarthy is going to be difficult. But this highlights the kind of fracture that exists between the very right of a party that seems at its most moderate to be way to the right of the country.

But they are sort of imploding, and it is a kind of a blueprint for what their presidential election looks like as well, with a lot of people, Gates among them, as you heard, at the beginning, supporting Donald Trump in 2024, having supported him all the way since. And then other people like DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Christine Nome or Tim Scott, whoever runs, trying to hang on to that moderate part of the party. And this is problematic at every turn, both in legislation and in elections. Yeah. So look, he might be a little bit more than half right, because it's also true that, yeah, McCarthy lost the elections in the house. He was supposed to win by a much larger majority.

He was supposed to have a 20 seat lead. They only have a four seat lead. So you are rewarding losses and then that doesn't make sense. On the other hand, what Matt Gates doesn't tell you is the reason they lost a lot of those races is because they listened to Matt Gates's hero, Donald Trump. And so that was also complicated. And but here again, I'll give credit to Matt Gates. he, and a transition to, okay, but what's going to happen?

He actually proposed a number of anti-corruption legislations, Gates did. That is, that are pretty good. That are like 80% good. And so if I was Gates and you really meant it, I would say, you know what? I'm going to block McCarthy's leadership here. And I think that's just using your leverage and power. I tell progressives to do it all the time. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

But it appears that he doesn't have a plan for who would replace McCarthy or what happened, what you do with that extra leverage, which is like, you know, as I yelled at like the fake left, et cetera, who were trying to do that ridiculous, you know, force to vote stuff with the speakership of Pelosi. I was like, yes, but you have to have a plan. What do you do with the leverage? What do you do with the power? Who do you want a speaker? And I actually have an idea what in this case, what Gates should do if you want to be productive is say, look, after they meet him in the first round of voting, come back and go, all right, we'll vote for you, but only if you agree to introduce those anti-corruption bills. And that would get something significant and real done. And then I would give Gates a ton of credit for that. But I don't know if he really means it. So we'll find out. Yeah, we will. On the other side, you have Marjorie Taylor Green, his partner in crime along the way in terms of MAGA and conservatism. And very quickly, we'll tell you that she published and give her the time in daily caller as well. If Republicans want to get things done, there's only one choice for House Speaker.

What do you think she picked? Kevin McCarthy, actually. One thing in number eight here will do very quickly and then we'll go to a break. Perhaps more than any Republican, I'm ready for our majority because I believe there's real work to be done to save our country. And the last thing I want is everything blown up on day one simply because a few dislike Kevin McCarthy, who is promoting the very agenda, they believe in. And so as you see that, you see there's even fractures among the people that fracture. And this is going to be very messy, whatever happens.

And we'll have to see when that vote happens after the first of the year. This is Young Turk. We will be right back after this. Drop it. It. receive Christmas power panel on TYT, Ugar and Shore, okay. Power panel too. Plenty powerful enough.

The smartest collection of American intellect in one room was when Jefferson dined alone. So, you know, we can still say that the most powerful panel that there is is, it doesn't have to have, you know, seven people. No, no, it doesn't. And I think we're right there with Jefferson. So I think good point on that one. Okay, anyway, I love our members. I love the huge super chats that are coming in for Christmas. I appreciate you guys.

You asked that's why we did it. And it makes sense since we don't have a show tomorrow. All right, now having said that, let's go to our next story. Hi, thoughts on the Confederate flag. I do not see a problem with people whose family members died fighting for that flag to be able to wave it high. As if you need me to tell you, that was the Candace Owens podcast, which I'm sure all of you caught, especially since it was the Christmas podcast. That was yesterday. She went on to give the reasoning, crazy, crazy reasoning for what she just said and why people should be able to proudly display

the fabulous stars and bars. Here's Candace Owens. It is historical. And the idea that your son or daughter went and marched in a war. People are just so stupid. They think they were fighting for slavery. Those people who fought were piss poor. They never had a slave a single day in their life. They fought for the South and their sons signed up, went to war. And now they're told that even having the flag or having any pride for their dead relatives is something that is wrong and dirty and backwards and racist and associated with slavery. People are so ignorant about slavery and the numbers on slavery. I mean, the idea that everyone had slaves in the South

is so stupid. It was the incredibly uber wealthy. People be believing that everyone today had a yacht. I mean, it's just so, I'm just going to stop running to go out. The answer is people should be allowed to keep their Confederate flags and waive them because it represents an element of history.

It's an extraordinary thing. I mean, I kind of don't know where to begin with Candace Owens. It is not at all. Just let me say that, like people who own yachts today. And the owning of one slave is enough if it was represented by the Confederate flag to say that because not everybody had slaves, there was nothing to do with slavery and why the Confederacy fought the Civil War is about as wrongheaded in history as you could possibly be.

And then let's talk to, let's listen to what people or read what people wrote in Slade, Jamel Bowie, of course, who went to UVA, speaking of Thomas Jefferson. According to the 1860 census taken just before the Civil War, more than 32% of white families to be Confederate states own slaves. 32%. That's not as many people as own yachts. Of course, this is an average in different states had different levels of slaveholding. In Arkansas, just 20% of families own slaves in South Carolina. It was 46% in Mississippi. It was 49%. Let's just take that. In Arkansas, only 20% of Arkansas.

own slaves. So no big deal. They go on to say slavery was at the foundation of economic and social relations and slave ownership was aspirational, a symbol of wealth and prosperity, like a yacht, right? Whites who couldn't afford slaves wanted them in the same way that today most Americans want to own a home. Many whites couldn't imagine Southern society without slavery. And when it was threatened, those whites, whether they owned slaves or not, took up arms to defend that way of life. to say to the Civil War as represented by the Confederate flag, the Confederacy, if that was not about slavery, then, I mean, if you're able to say that was not about slavery, you are a fool, you are naive, and you are trying to tell people things that are simply not true. It's why I hope you missed yesterday's Candace Owens podcast. All right. So a couple things here. So Brightwing does this all the time. And I want to give you guys a heads up about it so you can start seeing it for yourself.

They set up straw man arguments. She's like, ah, it's so stupid to say that everyone, every white person in the South owned a slave. Who ever said that? I don't know anybody who's ever said every white person in the South owned a slave. You just made that up so you can say that it was stupid. And then what it does is it tricks right wingers into thinking,

ah, yeah, you see that? The left wing's wrong about this whole issue. Well, first of all, we weren't wrong about anything. She made up a strong man argument that no one ever says. And secondly, that has nothing new with the rest of what actually happened. And so, and even if what she said was true, and by the way, I didn't know, I thought it was a smaller number, to be honest with you, those numbers that Michael just read us are amazing. 49% of white people in Mississippi owned slaves with their families did. Wow, that is a much higher percentage than I thought.

And the thought that the other 51% of Mississippians were just somehow opposed to slavery, you know, that's just for those 49. These are people who were fighting for a way of life. It was how they made their money. It was how they kept their prices down. It was how they rented their land. It was how they raised their horses. Everything having to do with agrarian life in Mississippi was based on slavery. And that is why they fought the Civil War. And so, come on, that you think that it was, you know, only a certain percentage owned slaves. All of them fought for the idea of having slaves. And as Jamel Bowie said there, they also fought for the aspirational part of owning slaves. And even if what Candace said was true, well, does that mean that the war wasn't about slavery?

No, it means that poor white people in the South were used as suckers to go and die so that rich white people in the South could own slaves. That doesn't make it any better. Arguably could make it worse. They were, the poor white people were also used a cannon fodder by the rich, which is exactly what Republicans want to do now with poor people. And they can to someone's loves use the poor as an excuse, use them as cannon fodder. Let's go fight whatever wars we want for the rich. It goes, it's the same story over and over again.

And guys, look, this is not a Donald Trump thing. This is not a new right wing media thing. people in the South and Republicans have been saying for 50 years now that the Confederacy and the Civil War wasn't about slavery. It is the most absurd, insane conspiracy theory there is. What was it about then? Peach cobbler? No, of course it was about slavery. That's not even remotely in dispute. Just because they yell it so loudly doesn't make it anywhere near true. It was 100% about slavery. And by the way, The guys who declared civil war against America wrote in the documents, we are declaring war against

America because we would like to keep slavery. It's not at all in dispute, okay? So by the way, Candacea knows that. But she gets paid to attack other black people. And she gets paid by who? Rich white folks. So that's how this game is played. And finally, I want to ask you. So look, you're Jewish. Couldn't you make the same? Couldn't she make the same? Couldn't she make the same argument, oh, what, these good German soldiers, they didn't do anything wrong. And it was their sons that went and fought in this war for Germanic pride. And now you just want to take away their swastika flag that they were so proud of. Right. And not everybody hated the Jews in Germany. And they fought that war. Yeah, I mean, it's it's not an exact

analog, but it's certainly similar. The best argument is the one you just made. what was it about if it wasn't about slavery? Why did they have a civil war if it wasn't about slavery? They had a civil war because of slavery. And that's exactly why it went to war. That's exactly why they fought. It's why they protected. It's why reconstruction happened. It's why they made deals at the end of the civil war that allowed slave states to, in some cases, still endure. If you look at the election of 1876, it was about compromise. It was all based on slavery. And slavery is the root of that and the cause of that, and it's upsetting that people just can't admit that. It's history now, right?

I mean, what is the defense of saying what Candace Owens is saying? Why say it? Why? Because they want to persist with this white power act and make people feel as if it's okay to hang your flag because of what it represents and it doesn't represent slavery because they want votes and they want to sway a certain political segment. It's a disgusting for a woman of African-American descent to do that, frankly, Candace Owens. But it's also, it's repulsive to the sort of core of American education and belief.

And it was the darkest, worst part of American history and to excuse it for no reason. And also for lies to say, oh, it's only because of a certain percentage say that. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, that house must be awfully comfortable. Okay, let's do the next story. This one, not a great story. It's bad news. It's corporate slumlords are now, our landlords are are getting 100 billions of dollars to snatch up homes from regular Americans. They want to create a society of renters, which of course goes into the American dream,

cuts into that. These facts are from James Rodriguez and Daniel Geiger of insider. Institutional real estate investors have earmarked as much as 110 billion to purchase or build single family rental homes in the coming years, according to an estimate by Zellman associates of real estate research and investment banking firm. The sum is the largest ever amassed by investors to acquire American houses, enough to add almost 400,000 homes to the already expansive inventory of roughly 700,000 single family properties now controlled by corporate landlords. And to give an idea of what this means is that the whole idea of owning a house is part of the so-called American dream. The people that are

are these investors in general in the way that this works. I think we're looking, we're looking at some graphics here about it right now that your anchor is not really keeping up with very well. But basically what happens is these public companies focus on single family rental investments as a way of amassing all of this property. And then they have these assets on hand that they can sell and make a ton of money from big corporations, alternate asset firms. Think of Coleman. Colbert Cravis, you think of Blackstone, and then wealth managers as well. So these kind of, you know, these kind of investments, not nefarious, but they undercut the ability of Americans to pursue the quote unquote American dream, which is owning a home. It forces people who are now unable to live in homes to have to pay rent, to have landlords, and to squander all of their earnings and have no appreciable assets because those assets are in the hands of these banks. anchors, maybe not perfectly told because I didn't keep up with the story that was being told. But I think you get the idea here when $110 billion is going into a fund to buy people's homes,

single family homes, something is wrong with America at its very economic core. And I think this is a disturbing thing. It should be something that everybody is talking about right now. Yeah. So, Michael, we've been talking about this story for a while. And, you know, Anna is rightfully obsessed with the housing market and, and how it's taking away opportunities from the average American. So we do this one and we tip our too strong coffee to Anna on this story. And but in this particular article, I began to understand the depth of it. Excuse me, guys, I got a call today.

They're soon going to take over 9% of the housing market overall, both rentals and, buying houses. And when they do that, guys, what it does is it takes your ability to accumulate wealth away from you. Did you know that the average white family in the country has about eight times the wealth of the average black family? And do you know why the number one reason for that is? It's not any of the other discrimination. All of that has a giant factor, etc. But number one by a landslide is discrimination in housing. Because black families were not allowed to own houses for a long time than own houses in nice areas of towns, etc. They got redlined. They were not able to accumulate wealth. And whereas white folks in this country were

and other people of different races were to different degrees. So it makes a giant, giant, difference in where you start in life, if your family had a house where you guys paid a mortgage and wound up getting the increase in the real estate market for your house and have the mortgage pay off a portion of what you own for the, oh for the house. When you pay rent, you get nothing back. You're not paying off the mortgage. You're not accumulating wealth. You're not doing anything. And so what's happening now is giant financial companies have realized, wait, why aren't we getting in on this? If houses are so great to own, and that's how American citizens have mainly accumulated wealth in this country, why don't we just take it from them? We're bigger.

We have more opportunities. We know when to buy low and sell high. We can drive markets. We can drive prices and then we'll accumulate the wealth and we'll make everybody pay rent. And then all the money will come to us instead of average American citizens. Honestly, Michael, if you're looking at it purely from a financial perspective, it is a logical plan. And that means that this market is not going to be 9%. Eventually it'll be 90% of the home. So buy them all because it's too logical not to. Right. And then you have 40, 40 years from now, you have a senior population that has no nest egg, that has no retirement, that is unable because they've spent all their money on rent and have no appreciable asset,

which is the American home and what it's meant to do. So you're creating another massive crisis of people who are going to grow old in this country where Social Security won't be able to have their ends met. And then they have nothing to show for it at the end of their life of working. and having a job, all they do is they have the rent that they've paid. And that goes right away, as you said. Guys, one more thing about this. This is another way that you're going to be shackled to corporations and must serve them.

And understand that it's not a conspiracy and there's no secret memo written. This is the invisible hand of the market. This is what Adam Smith talked about at the very foundations of capitalism. So when people make money doing something, they're going to do it more and more and more. And so since individual Americans and families were making money from houses, it was only a matter of time before corporations realized we would rather make that money. That's best profit for us to take. So, and with their financial power and leverage, they're going to bulldoze the average American citizen. And then you're not going to accumulate any wealth at all.

And then you're going to have to serve those corporations even more. There doesn't have to be a memo written for the invisible end of the market to eventually crush us. And at Christmas time where everybody is watching, it's a wonderful life, this is the actualization of Mr. Potter, buying all the houses, buying all the land, and everybody having to give money to him because the savings and loan that is financing mortgages goes out of business. I mean, that's exactly it. It's verbatim. And that is why you root for Jimmy Stewart in that movie and not Lionel Barrymore. And Lionel Barrymore is going to be. doing this right now. Yeah, and last thing on this, look, our entire corporate rule has become Mr. Potter, as Michael's pointing out, and that's a good nickname for it. And guys, capitalism doesn't have to be this way. I think a lot of the young think, yeah, well, this is late state capitalism. This is exactly what it does, right? And certainly in America, that's true, okay? But it doesn't have to be in other countries, sometimes we call them socialist, Sweden, Denmark, the northern European countries, they strike a different balance.

Now, again, you can call socialism or capitalism. It doesn't really matter. It's a mixed economy. But what they do is they have a democracy that protects the citizens from corporations. Here in America, we've let that go. So now we have out of control crony capitalism and what I would call corporative. where corporations take over everything. That's not the same as capitalism. In capitalism, you have free markets and competition. In corporatism, you use the government to end competition. And all of this is inevitable.

The minute you allow bribery, and that's what money in politics is. So now you will not have any politicians to protect you from Mr. Potter, and he's going to run roughshout over you. We've got to regain our democracy so we could have some sort of safeguard, against these behemoth corporations that are taking over every part of our lives. All right, we are out of time in this hour. Michael, you were awesome. Thank you. We appreciate it. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. And in jerks, J-U-R-K-S. Or jerks, C-E-R-K-S. What about that? Oh, I'm not sure that I want to promote that, but it's out-of-the-box idea. I like it.

All right. So guys, next time we got Ray Vaughner, we got some bangers in that. Now, new right-wing conspiracy theory, because Marjorie Taylor Green is supporting Kevin McCarthy, she's a swinger. Oh, you're going to love it. We'll see you in a minute. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. ad-free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t I'm your host jank huger and I'll see you soon