The Young Turks - Hollywood's Second Strike

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Hollywood actors' strike appears imminent after SAG-AFTRA negotiations fail. Sen. Ron Johnson argues against the rich paying fair share to ensure social security's survival. Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo. Republicans attacking FTC chair Lina Khan have received at least $400,000 from the PACs and employees of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. At least 11 of them have received donations directly from the companies’ lobbyists or executives. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, welcome the young church, Jane Hugh Grant and Casparan with you guys, an amazing show ahead, tons of interesting topics, including including former Fox executives pleading for mercy, saying, please forgive us for what we've done, because this is abhorrent. So that is an amazing story among many others. But we start with kind of breaking news. We do. So let's get right to it. Nobody wants a work stoppage. But if our leadership is saying that the deal isn't fair, then we got to we got to hold strong

till we get a deal that's fair for working actors. It's the difference between having health. care and not for a lot of actors and we got to do what's right by them. That was Matt Damon at the world premiere of Oppenheimer. And shortly after that comment, he and his fellow cast members actually walked off of their own premiere because a deal has not been reached by the union representing the actors and the studios. And as a result, the strike is on. About 150,000 actors will be on strike beginning midnight. And it's because they have not reached a deal with the AMPTP, which of course represents. Which represents the major Hollywood studios. So I want to give you guys some details on what this means. First of all, it has been

decades since this type of strike has taken place among the actors. It's been over 40 years since the actors walked off on strike, and it's been over 60 years since the actors and writers were both on strike at the same time. In fact, in 1960, this is just a fun fact. When the actors and writers last went on strike together, the president of SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, was Ronald Reagan. But here is what the president for SAG, Fran Drescher said, of the unsuccessful negotiations. I cannot believe it, quite frankly. How far apart we are on so many things, how they plead poverty that they're losing money

left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment. You cannot keep being dwindled and marginalized and disrespected and dishonored. The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI. This is a moment of history that is a moment of truth. If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble.

We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business. Who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family? Most of Americans don't have more than $500 in an emergency. And those are some powerful statements. In fact, the entire press conference is up online and I highly recommend you all watch it because you'll notice a lot of similarities between the workers who have complained in other contexts before and what the representatives over at the Screen Actors Guild are saying about the precarious nature of acting these days and what the job has kind of turned into, how much

the job has changed with streaming and with AI, and how during these contract negotiations, what really stood out to her was how they want to just keep going along. as if things haven't changed. They want to negotiate the same way. They want to pretend as if the industry hasn't changed. And that obviously puts the workers, the actors in this case, at a significant disadvantage. So the two sticking points, and we've talked about this before, include wages and also, ensuring that there are safeguards in place to protect jobs as the AI technology continues

to advance and continues to kind of infiltrate this industry. Now, the exact details of negotiations and why they broke down are not fully known yet. Meanwhile, the studios insist that they have offered their best provisions, given the state of their finances. I'll give you the details on what they claim and show you some of the pay for top executives in just a moment. But before I do, Jenk, I wanted to open it up to you. Yeah, so a couple of small points first. Fran Jescher was criticized for being too soft before in these negotiations. So she kind of had to give a fiery speech.

And she did. And she gave a good fiery speech. So I think that probably shores up her standing a little bit with her own members. That's good smart thinking and optics and marketing. Let's keep it real. But that stuff is important because to some degree they're trying to win over public opinion, which then leads to the Oppenheimer walkout, which was kind of brilliant. Absolutely. Yeah, they moved up to premiere by an hour to make sure that the stars could walk the red carpet. But then they waited for the stars to walk out and then declared the strike. because the stars wanted to walk out during the movie and not be there for afterwards when they normally would have been to answer questions in that context, right?

And what did that do? It created everyone talking about the Oppenheimer walkout, which is good, smart thinking when you're trying to win over public opinion. Oh, Robert Downey Jr., oh my God, all these famous people, I know those guys. Oh, what are they complaining about? Oh, we showed you the clip from Matt Damon. Turns out, not everyone is rich and famous like Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr. turns out a lot of them just need healthcare because they're working actors and it's really,

really hard. Right. That's how you do it. There is a way to win on these things. Remember, look, the Screen Actors Guild represents more than 150,000 actors. And I think this is a common misconception all across the country. When you hear actor, you think of people like Matt Damon. You think of people who are big names in the industry.

But the vast majority of actors and actresses actually happen to be people who, you know, people who work in the restaurant industry just to make ends meet and hope for, you know, gigs that they audition for. And they love the craft. But they're not super wealthy off of the acting they do. There are very few actors who actually make it big time and rake in tens of millions of dollars. Now with that said, I do want to get to the reaction from the studios. So AMPTP, the said the studios offered the union the highest percentage, increase in guild minimums in 35 years and substantial increases in pension and health care contribution caps, among other proposals. Now, that's pretty vague and we don't know the specifics,

but here's something that really did stand out to me. And it was something that a friend of mine had kind of warned me about prior to this being confirmed, but now it seems to be confirmed. The way they want to use AI in the industry. So let's go to this tweet. The studio's AI proposal to SAG AFTRA included scanning a background actor's likeness for one day's worth of pay and then using their likeness forever in any form without any pay or consent. Meaning they get that one time payment and then it's gone, it's over, right? They can then use that actors or actresses likeness forever without ever having to pay that individual again. And let's also go to how some of the other executives have responded to this.

So see the Disney CEO Bob Iger gave a pretty harsh critique of SAG and the WGA today on CNBC specifically. Iger said the labor situation is very disturbing to me. Coming after the ravages of COVID, he continued, this is the worst time in the world to be adding to that disruption. I understand any labor organizations desire to have its members to be compensated fairly based on the work that they deliver. Okay, and then CNBC's David Faber said the conclusion to be drawn from Iger's comments was that the guilds are not being very realistic. Iger responded, no, they're not.

And maybe we should consider Bob Iger's salary a little unrealistic, given the complaints that we're hearing from the guild right now. Iger collected $65 million from Disney in 2018 alone, which is 1,424 times the company's median employee salary. Forbes placed Iger's net worth at around $690 million in 2019. He retired in 2020, but returned to Disney's helm in 2022 for a cool target annual salary of $27 million with all bonuses. On Wednesday, he signed a contract extension that grants him $4 million more in possible bonuses, bringing the annual target to $31 million. So look, I give you that information because it shows you the disconnect and the incredible

wealth that blinds him to the reality that the vast majority of actors here are facing, especially with the advancement of AI technology. Yeah, so look, guys, I get why Iger salary is so high. From a business perspective, he drove the Disney price, stock price way up. He takes a certain percentage of it. It happens with a lot of executives. Having said that, you don't get to say that your actors and writers are making too much. when some are can't even pay for health insurance and then pay yourself that kind of salary.

So you can have one or the other. Pay yourself that kind of salary and pay all the actors and the writers, et cetera, no problem, okay? Everybody's boat is rising. Okay, I'm good with it. But you can't say I don't have money and then you paid yourself all that money. Look, let's talk about, let's put up the last five years salaries for the different executives. And these numbers are eye popping. They're out of control. David Zaslov, the guy who earned it the least, I'll tell you why in a second, nearly, what is that? Jesus, $498 million over the last five years. That is half a billion dollars for a guy who didn't create anything.

But guys, what could he do? I mean, what could these executives do? I mean, they're just, they're living in poverty. They can't afford to pay more. Yeah. Yeah, well, so let's keep going real quick. Ari Emanuel is a giant agent, but probably top agent. In Hollywood, okay, $347 million, read Hastings from Netflix, 209 million,

Bob Iger, 195 million, Sarandos from Netflix, 192 million, and Murdoch, of course, owns Fox Corp, $175 million over the last five years. Okay, so those are monster numbers. Look, I just gotta say, Murdoch, you might hate him, Iger, Hastings, Sarandos, but they've done some amazing things in their careers. Laslav's just like a brando middle manager who wound up having good political skills inside a company and getting to the top. He barely created anything at all. So these guys just sliping off all of the money, right? And then go, well, of course there's no money left.

That's because I paid myself $500 million. That is not convincing. Not one percent convincing. So, okay, now the last part of this is super important. The writers have been on strike for quite a while, and now the actors have joined them. But basically the rumor, it's not even really so much rumor, is discussions in Hollywood about strategy, is that people think that the studios are going to hold out on the writers all the way through October, and they're going to try to, quote, bleed them out. Oh, yeah, I mean, there was an executive who, of course, didn't have the courage to say this with their identity open to the public. But this individual gave an anonymous quote.

I want to read it for you right now. So the end game is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses. A studio executive told deadline, acknowledging the cold as ice approach. Several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it a cruel but necessary evil. No, not necessarily. Harry. And so what the actors are going to do is super important. Because if they get a mid offer, obviously the negotiates are going to continue. They can't do anything without the actors. They can go for a while without the writers with like crappy scripts and bad stuff and reality shows and stuff like that, game shows. Even then you need writers. But they can patch it together, right?

But without actors, you can't do a movie, you can't do a TV show. So if the actors hold down and go, no, we're with the writers and we're going to stick with the writers, then the studios make the wrong gamble, and they're going to get hurt. And eventually they're going to get hurt bad enough that the stock price is going to start to go down, and then they're going to start to panic about what? Their own bonuses. Okay. Most important thing in the world, Jank.

Exactly. The minute Zasloff starts to panic about his bonus is the minute the writers have a shot at this, okay? So the actors have now joined the writers, so the writers have a fighter's chance. Yeah. But if the actors make a deal and the writers haven't, the writers are in a world of trouble. And that's just the reality of it. Well, you can help support, you know, SAG and the striking actors. I reached out to my friend to see if there's any way to help. And so she provides, a list of things that could be helpful. I want to read them to you right now. You can join the picket line, you can donate supplies.

That includes food, ordering pizzas, publicly show support. And you can also purchase official SAG AFRA merchandise. The other thing I wanted to just quickly point out is that there is a website that you can contribute to. It's basically like a strike fund, and that's SAG after.org. And my friend also sent me entertainment community.org. as a website you can go to to also contribute and help support them through the strike. And I think you're right, Jank. I think that analysis is spot on.

I think the solidarity that the actors are showing with the writers is super important. It does help to uplift the striking writers. I really hope they don't concede and agree to a crappy contract. Let's just put it that way. And I'll give you one last example here. So just because I happen to me in media and just randomly too, I happen to know a bunch of actors, right? A friend of mine who's a good friend who, you know, we knew each other when we're both struggling is dollar bill from billions, right?

So Kelly, you coin. And he's in the Americans, he's a great, great actor. And so I give you him as an example because for, and sorry Kelly, I didn't ask your permission. So he struggled for a long time, right? And not struggling in a bad way, he's doing Broadway, he's doing plays, he's an actor, he's a working actor. But in terms of money, he was hurt dog and I was hurt and we were hurt together, right? So now he's doing all right. Now he's not Matt Damon or I think.

Sorry again, Kelly. Jesus. He's got to be. Okay. What does it feel like under that bus? I know. Seriously, he's a great actor, right? But I'm just saying he doesn't have a mansion in Beverly Hills or anything like that.

So, but he's okay. He's okay now. He needed the help when he was coming up. And so don't forget that for every great actor you see, whether it's Matt Damon or Dollar Bill or any of these great actors that you love in your shows and your movies, et cetera, that there was a giant stretch for most of them, a long stretch, decades of barely making the bills with extra work and doing two, three different jobs, et cetera. Those are the guys we need to help in this strike.

So keep that in mind. Absolutely. All right, we're going to take a brief break for now. When we come back, there's yet more fishy financial stuff happening with Justice Clarence Thomas. And I also want to talk about Ron Johnson's statements in regard to Social Security gives you a sense of exactly what the Republican Party thinks about the very programs that we are entitled to because we pay into them. That and more coming up. All right, back on TYT, Janganana, with you guys, and also Denise White. Denise, thank you for joining.

We appreciate it. She hit the join button below the video. TYT.com slash join for everybody. All right, Casper. Well, we unfortunately have to talk about Republican Ron Johnson, so let's get to it. Again, on the lower in the income scale, you're getting a lot more than what you paid in. If you're in the high income, you're not getting what you paid in. And wasn't that sort of the deal?

This was not a general welfare system. This wasn't, you know, this was really designed, you know, we're going to make you save for your retirement and then you're going to get back what you paid in. During a hearing on Social Security yesterday, Republican Senator Ron Johnson asserted that the program, which serves as an economic lifeline for literally tens of millions of Americans, unfairly takes from the rich to support lower income retirees. Now, during the protecting social security for all hearing, not only did Johnson essentially insinuate that his own constituents are dumb for not understanding social security, he seemed to attack the program overall. And I want to show you what he had to say in this next clip. When I talk to Wisconsinites, they just have a basic misperception about social security. I mean, I think this was originally sold as okay, we are going to, as a nanny state, we're going to make sure that you're going to have to. have money for retirement, so we're going to extract wages from, or taxes from your wages,

and we're going to set up an account for you so that we're going to save it for you for your retirement, because we don't trust you to save for yourself. So most people think, well, that's my money. And in fact, a part of it is. But as Senator Grassley was talking about, if you're in a low income group, you're getting a lot more in return than you ever invested in. Senator Johnson, I would love nothing more than for you to just get out of the halls of Congress. And for God's sake, please go do a national tour touting how much Republicans want to decimate Social Security. Want to know why? Why don't we go to his state of Wisconsin and see how ordinary Americans, not tremendously wealthy Americans like Senator Johnson, how they feel about Social

security. 84% of Wisconsin voters, 50 and older, say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate for Senate who will protect social security from cuts. So look, this argument that he's making is meant to essentially set the tone for cutting social security, for potentially privatizing social security, maybe even increasing the retirement age before an individual can collect Social Security, these are the various ways in which the Republican Party has fought historically and continues to fight today to essentially dismantle a program that is incredibly popular and again serves as a lifeline for tens of millions of Americans as we speak. So do you remember that moment when Joe Biden said they were gonna cut Social Security

of Medicare or they were the Republicans were planning to to do that and the Republicans booed. They're like booed, no way, that's not true. Well, you just saw it. Ron Johnson said That's exactly what we should do. He's like, oh, yeah, it's a misconception about how social security is good. It's not. It's a nanny state program and they take money from your check. And then instead of giving it to me and my donors, they give it back to you with even more money on top. Wait, what?

Yeah, thank you for admitting it. So now he says, oh, the poor, the rich are so poor, they give so much more than ever. 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 science-backed ingredients, designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes,

poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24, seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Everyone else do they? Let's look at Graphic 3. Graphic 3 shows you the percentage of your income that people put into Social Security, so the bottom 20%, they put in a little bit less 8.4% than the average. The middle class pays up to 10.4%. They pay the biggest chunk, right?

By the time you get to the richest 1%, they're paying about 3.1%. A much, much smaller percentage of their income than the poorest 20%. And let's explain why. I mean, we've explained this on the show before, but it's really important for people to know, right? You, For wealthy people, they don't pay social security taxes on the entirety of their income. There is a cap. So let's say we're talking about someone who makes a giant salary, right? After you earn a certain amount of money each year, the federal government stops taxing you for social security. The vast majority of Americans never hit that cap, never surpassed that cap.

But the very wealthy, right, they get to a point where they've, I forget the exact number this year, right? But it gets to a certain point in your income where you're no longer taxed for Social Security. So the way he's framing it makes it seem as though the poor are stealing from the rich, right? It's not fair. The rich are paying into the system. They're paying way more into the system and they're getting way less in return. But they get taxed less when you consider the percentage of their income that ends up getting taxed for social security. So his sophistry is, he says, well, look, basically in essence what he's saying,

when you look at raw numbers, if you make $250,000 and you pay, you know, let's make up a hypothetical here so the math is easy, 10%, you're giving $25,000. But if you're only making $25,000 a year and you give 10%, you're only paying $2,500. So the guy making 10 times as much is putting in 10 times as much in raw dollars. Yeah, that's because he's making $250,000. The guy's making $25,000 can barely survive. And he still puts money in. He still puts a lot of money in, right? And so now they're saying, no, above that number, which is around, you know, around that $200,000 mark.

No, we don't want to pay it. But that's it. That's enough. I don't want to pay it anymore. And it's up to you guys. Now, gee, I wonder which side Ron Johnson's on. Right. Now, I'm going to explain the progressive position in a second.

But to give you a sense of why Ron Johnson might think what he does, let's look at graphic four. Let's see how much, which camp Ron Johnson is in. Oh, he's the sixth richest person in the Senate with an estimated net worth of over $39 million. Guys, can you imagine, like, this is a thing that drives me crazy. Can you imagine being that wealthy and being upset about Social Security taxes? No, it's, no, and he's so, look, this is important. So he's personally wealthy, and if you have that kind of money and you still need more, there's something deeply wrong with you, right?

But that's not the main issue here. The main issue is all of his donors collectively have maybe trillions of dollars on the line. And so they're all telling him, you better make sure that they don't touch our money, okay? Crush the poor and especially crush the middle class, but do not let them touch our money. And like a dog, he goes out there and goes, so is the security, who needs it, man? Remember when we were booing and saying that we wouldn't cut so security? We were lying. As always, we're Republicans, all we ever do is lie, lie, lie.

And by the way, the leader of the Republicans in the House, Kevin McCarthy, the one who just swore up and down that they weren't going to cut Social Security of Medicare. Now he's saying, look, man, painful cuts have to be out on the table. So we're going to have to put those cuts. We told you, we told you, giant, enormous liars. Look, politicians overall are huge liars. I know mainstream media says they're noble people, okay, but Republican politicians almost never tell the truth. And so the progressive proposal, sorry Anna, would add generations of solvency to Social Security.

So you would, for generation after generation, you would never have to worry about Social Security running out. And people would get $200 a month extra in Social Security. My parents on Social Security, they would love $200 more per month. All you have to do is tax everyone instead of having a maximum cap. That's it, it's super easy to solve. solve. The rich just refused to help. I do want to go to one more video of Ron Johnson.

Okay, so let me set it up. So further arguing during Wednesday's hearing that Social Security was not meant to be a general welfare system, Johnson turned to Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Executive Director Amy Hanauer, who testified that our tax system raises far too little from those with the most to ask what he called a very simple question. So let's watch. What was that very simple question? Out of one dollar of income that any American makes, how much should be the maximum amount the government takes out in total? What is the total maximum tax rate on a dollar of income?

I think we should think about the kind of country we want to have and then have. I just want a percent. I mean, you've already thought about that. How much should we ought to take out of one dollar of income? You know, we had 400 billionaires who paid less than 8% tax rate, so more than that. The top 1% pays 40% of all income taxes, okay? I don't know at what point in times a fair share. It is telling that I can never get a progressive witness to tell me what the maximum percentage is.

They want to tax $1.00 of income. Senator, when we consider all taxes, the top 1% pays about 24% of taxes. And they make 22% of income. That's pretty fair. They're still paying a higher level of tax than they get in the income. So we can argue with that. that in a society where the wealthiest are getting more and more of our income, they can afford to chip in more to maintain the systems that enable them to build that wealth in the first

place. And that's what they, that's what the Republican Party wants to avoid having to be honest about. It's the percentage of income that the wealthiest among us end up paying toward taxes. And when you consider that those earning far less are contributing a much larger percentage percentage of their income to taxes. How can you not get a, like when you look at the anger in the country, can you not understand where it's stemming from, right? The state, the system is unstable, right? Or what the system is producing right now, the failures of Congress, the unmitigated

greed that you witness, not just among corporate executives, but among members of Congress who themselves are incredibly wealthy. That leads to an unstable society. Okay, the inequality that we're experiencing right now when it comes to both income and wealth is leading to the anger, it's leading to the division, and Ron Johnson wants more of it. He wants to decimate one of the most popular social programs in American history. It's just amazing to me how like they look at the inequality and they're like, we want more, we want more.

Yeah, and they say it brazenly. So look, last thing is that a Democratic Senator made the point I was going to make, which is pretty rare. So way to fight back, Sheldon White House, Democratic Senator from Rhode Island. I told you sometimes he's actually quite a brilliant guy and doesn't make some good points. So that little magic trick that Ron Johnson did, I mean, why don't you tell me how much we should tax a dollar? Tell me a random dollar, how much we should tax it. So White House responded, it would make a very big difference to me in how much we should be taxed on a dollar of income,

whether it was the first dollar of income of an individual or their billionth dollar of income. Exactly. It's a magic trick. When I made $24,000 a year, every dollar you taxed me, like literally took food off my table, right? When I was a cable news anchor, it didn't matter at all. I'm being honest with you. It didn't matter at all. So it makes all the difference.

Where is that dollar that's being taxed? The marginal rate, the top marginal rate, only goes to the richest people above a certain number. It doesn't apply to you guys. And the rich hate that. Yeah, they're like, oh, it's just so we can afford because we can afford it. You're taking a little bit more from us. Yeah, that's how a fair society works. But they don't want a fair society. They want every advantage for themselves. So guys, I wanted to give you an accurate number. And so for this year, for the year of 2023, any income above $160,200 is no longer taxed for Social Security. Okay? So everything up to about $160,000 is taxed for Social Security. Anything above that

amount, not taxed for Social Security. Not taxing above 160,000 is insane. It's look, they get taxed on other things. But we all put into Social Security. We all get it out. It makes us a unified country. We're all, it's a rare thing where we're all in it together. And the rich go, yeah, but only up to $160,000. And then they have goons like Ron Johnson, both for his own interests and for his donors' interests that fight you like hell while pretending they're on your side. All right, we've got an update on the Clarence ongoing issues with Clarence Thomas and money kind of being fishy in his orbit.

So several lawyers who have had business before the Supreme Court, including one who successfully argued to end race conscious admissions at universities, paid to a top aide to Clarence Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas, some transaction, some money through Venmo. Now I wanna just give you this caveat as we continue. I think this story was a little premature. I kind of wish that the journalist reporting this story would wait a little bit and get a little more confirmation and do a little more investigation before putting this out there. Because I do agree that there are problems with some of the relationships, close relationships that Justice Thomas and his wife have, with business interests. I am concerned with in the very least the appearance of corruption,

the appearance of conflicts of interest, especially when it comes to his relationship with Harlan Crow. But with that said, I think that stories like this, and I'll give you the details in a moment, will start to make it seem like a witch hunt when I don't think that it's a witch hunt. I think that the previous reporting absolutely is important and brings up important questions about

our Supreme Court justices and whether they should be allowed to have these kinds of financial transactions, these kinds of trips with wealthy business interests, while they are hearing cases that these business interests certainly have a stake in, Jane. So in this story, there is one critical fact that is missing, as far as I know when I last looked at it, that will make all the differences to whether this is a BS story or an enormous story. So let's give you the story and you'll see. So again, this has to do with payments by lawyers to a now former clerk, or aid, I should say,

to Justice Thomas by the name of Rajan Vashinit. And so this person served as Thomas's aid from July of 2019 to July of 2021. And the payments were made in connection to a 2019 Christmas party. So the AIDS Venmo account, which was public prior to requesting comment for the article and is no longer, showed that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. Okay, the amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either Christmas party, Thomas Christmas party, CT Christmas party or CT Xmas party in an apparent reference to the justices initials. Now, despite the description of the payments, it is unclear. It has not been

confirmed what the Venmo payments are specifically for. But since every single one of them mentioned Christmas party and they were sent in November and December, I would venture to say they literally have to do with the Christmas party. I don't know if there was a cover charge. That would be strange. But nonetheless, according to his resume, this aides duties included assisting the justice with the administrative functioning of his chambers, personal correspondence, and his personal and office schedule. So I'll give you a few more details about this.

Who were the lawyers who were sending these payments via Venmo? You had a gentleman by the name of Patrick Sawbridge, a partner at Concevoy McCarthy, who recently successfully argued that affirmative action violated the United States Constitution. Also, you have Kate Todd served as White House Deputy Counsel under Donald Trump at the time of the payment and is now a managing party at Ellis George Cipollone's law office. And you also had Albert Lynn, former Solicitor General of West Virginia, who played a key role in a Supreme Court case that limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. There were others as well, but those three really stood out.

Okay, so as I was reading this story, I went through a couple of waves. So first off, they said Christmas party former clerks. And I was like, they used to work there. They went back for a Christmas party. I'm not sure that's a big deal. Okay. But then I saw they had cases in front of the Supreme Court, almost like at least four of them did, I believe. No, no, I don't even go to Christmas parties and don't send in 25 bucks for the Christmas party. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter.

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Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Party, don't do any of that because it looks like a conflict of interest that looks really bad. And you, so don't do that. Then I said, wait a minute, how many Christmases did they go to? Oh, they went to one Christmas and there were seven payments. And then I was like, hmm, that seems weird. Then I got to the critical fact that's missing, which is how much? Right.

Because if they went to the party and they said, hey, I'm going to chip in 35 bucks for the cookies and the smear or whatever they had at the Christmas party, smear, eggnog, I don't know. All right, 35 bucks, hey, don't do that either. It looks bad. It's a little bit of a conflict of interest, but everybody's going to survive. It's not that big a deal, right? If instead it turns out it's $35,000 they sent, seven of them,

then we got a different story and a massive corruption scandal, right? Yeah, yeah. So can someone find out how much they sent in? That's why I'm saying, like, I just think. As the story is right now, with the details we have right now, it was premature. They needed to wait, in my opinion, right? How did they see who they were, but they couldn't see how much? That's interesting.

You can set on Venmo, you can do complete privacy settings where none of your transactions are open to the public, or you can do settings where no one sees the amount, but they see the transactions between two individuals. Do you get what I'm saying? No, absolutely. And look, authorities should look into it, and they should absolutely determine the amount. because what if it is $10,000 from all seven of them or $100,000? That would be massive corruption. That would be bigger than any of these other stories.

But if it's $25, let's move on. Let's move on to the next thing. Right. Okay, so I have another question for you. And I don't know how I feel about this, but because it's a fact of life and I don't even know if you can really get around it. So we're talking about lawyers here who clearly had a previous relationship with Justice Thomas.

They're friendly. And let's say there's nothing fishy at all with the Venmo payments. We find out that it's $5, $25, not a big deal at all, right? But aside from the financial stuff, the close relationship with lawyers who are going to have, they're going to argue cases before the Supreme Court, right? Them having that close, cozy relationship, partying during the holidays and stuff. You know, that's how I party. I don't know about you guys.

Oh, yeah, with the schmerems. But partying with the shmirs, okay, no, but seriously, I mean, that has an influence, right? So, like, when you talk about a workplace dynamic and, like, when the guys, they're hanging out on the weekends, knocking back a few drinks, like, the argument is that might put the female employees in the company at a disadvantage, right? I've heard those arguments before. But I think the stakes are much higher when it comes to the Supreme Court. The stakes are much higher when it comes to the cases the Supreme Court hears. Is there any concern about that cozy relationship, friendly relationship? Definitely.

So look, there should be reasonable rules. That doesn't mean, hey, somebody clerked for you and they've got cases in front of the federal judiciary at large. You could never see them again. I don't know about that, right? But if they've got cases in front of you, I don't care how close you were. No, of course you can't hang out with them. Be like, oh, what do you think I? How do you think I should rule in your case?

I probably, you know, knock down another bud light. No, no, bud light. Set it up and shoot a, right? So, like, no, you can't do that if they've got case of running. And these guys definitely had cases in front of Clarence Thomas. So they shouldn't even been at the Christmas party, to be honest. Yeah. And look, and by the way, that's easy.

That's an easy conflict of interest case. You should not do it. The reason we're saying if it's $25 let it go is not because it isn't wrong. It's just that it's wrong, but minor compared to all the other things that the Supreme Court justices are doing where they're raking in tons of money. Okay, final question, I can't help myself. And I know that it's definitely an Armenian cultural thing because like if I was hosting a holiday party

and I like asked or even if I didn't ask, but I took $25 from people who wanted to pitch in, I know exactly what my parents would say. They'd be like, Anamot, like what are you doing? Don't do that, right? Don't accept other people's payment, right? Yeah, you're hosting a party. Like, don't do that.

But I know that's a cultural thing to some extent. No, no, I don't think so. No? I think, like, yeah, like we have Christmas parties here. As people were walking in, give me money. Hey, hey. There's a cover charge, $25. Okay, $25, Bart, I need $30 from you.

Okay. No. But so, Justice Thomas, Justice Thomas, what do you do with? What are you doing? What are you, Anamot. Okay. Anomot. All right.

Anyway, all right, with that said, why don't we take a quick break? We've got more for you when we come back, including Big Tech, getting big mad at the Federal Trade Commission. They're going after Lena Khan, hardcore, and we'll tell you how and why. All right, back on TYT, Janganana with you guys, and Progressive B on Twitch, gifted us up. We appreciate you. All right, Anna, what's next? Well, we've got another hearing to talk about. Today, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee held a hearing to specifically question Lena Kahn. She's the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and they are concerned about her ongoing investigation into

Twitter. Now coincidentally, those same Republicans have received quite a bit of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases from big tech companies who don't appreciate Lena Khan because she has been far more aggressive than previous FTC chairs in bringing up antitrust cases. And we're going to talk about that a little more in just a moment. Now, the Judiciary Committee chairman, Jim Jordan, would have you believe that this hearing is about Khan's so-called obsession with Elon Musk. Let's watch. why are you harassing Twitter Congressman thanks for the question

as you might know the FTC's work on Twitter goes back a decade back in 2000 I'm not talking about a decade I'm talking about now 12 demand letters in 10 weeks 300 over 350 separate request you've demanded of Twitter why are you harassing them Twitter has a history of lax security and privacy policies.

You've asked for every single communication relating to Elon Musk, not communications that he just sent to someone or some communications he received, but any time he's mentioned, that actually seems more than harassment. That seems like almost an obsession. Why is why such an intense focus? I mean, she was answering your question and I was actually interested to hear what she had to say, especially when it comes to privacy, security. you know, matters that impact every single user on the platform. But as we know, this is more about theater rather than doing the right thing and allowing for the individual who's sitting there and testifying to answer the goddamn question you're asking her. But anyway, go ahead. So my very part of this story, the best part by far is, you know, all those Republican politicians are like, oh, Big Tech, man, the shadow banning conservatives.

We got big problems with them, man, big problems with Big Tech. Turns out they're all getting bribed by big tech. So what do they do now? They turn around and help them. Oh, you frauds. Let's give you details. All right. So Sludge wrote about this in detail.

And they do a good job specifically focusing on, you know, the corruption angle and all of that. We examined the campaign contributions from big tech companies and found that Republicans on the panel have received at least $400,000 from the PACs and employees of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, META, and Microsoft. and that at least 11 of them have received donations directly from the company's lobbyists or executives. Jim Jordan, who repeatedly attacked Lena Khan in recent months, is certainly a recipient of this kind of money. Over the course of his career, Jordan has received at least $76,000 from employees and packs of the five big tech companies, including $38,000 that came from the pack of Google. Now, in 2018, a man by the name of Adam Kovicev, do you know how to say this guy's name? Kosovozvich?

No, I do not. Okay, so a guy by the name of Adam Kovicevic, Kovacevic, there we go, donated to Jordan. At the time, he was the senior director of Alphabet's lobbying team. Okay, so according to the report from Mother Jones. Kovacevic spearheaded efforts at Google to bolster the company's relationships with members of the GOP, including by getting the company to sponsor a reception at the conservative political action conference in order to court the people who influence conservative lawmakers. Kovacevic has since founded a big tech lobbying group called Chamber of Progress that is funded

by Google, Uber, Mehta, Apple, and other companies. and that has been lobbying Congress against legislation that would limit the ways big tech companies could use their market power to gain advantages against competitors and consumers. And again, I really want to reiterate because this is important. The attacks against Lena Khan make a lot of sense when you consider how she has treated her role relative to previous FTC chairs. Okay, we have antitrust laws. Those antitrust laws are incredibly important.

And she has actually wanted to, you know, enforce those antitrust laws. The big tech companies do not like that. They like the acquisitions. They like to essentially squash their competition by buying them out. She gets involved and she tries to challenge those acquisitions. I would actually like her to go further. I think that's the right thing to do. In fact, I covered a story just yesterday where I would like to see, you know, the ability for, you know, the FTC to halt some of the acquisitions that these private equity firms are making in the healthcare industry.

But that's beside the point. It's just a good explanation for why she's been targeted by tech companies and the politicians who are funded by the tech companies. So listen, I don't necessarily agree with the Democrats on this one or maybe even Anna in this case. But I'm huge, but I should tell you my enormous bias, right? So both meta and Alphabet are big partners of ours and so I don't know what would happen if they were broken up. I can name you a couple of dozen industries easily that have a much bigger monopoly than Facebook, Google, etc. I'm just being honest with you with my bias. I don't know if it's my bias or my actual opinion.

It's hard for me to even tell, right? But having said that, like if you said to me now, would you break those companies up? would not, okay? But that to me, that's not the point here. The point here is the hypocrisy. So all those Republicans who said, oh, big tech is terrible. And they got all of their followers to believe them. I mean, I saw all those segments on Fox News. Oh, big deck, it's crushing conservatives. And remember how they were saying they're suppressing diamond and silk, right? And they had all these different conspiracy theories about how awful the big tech was. Now they've all turned around. Now they're not saying they turned around. They're still pretending to be tough

on big tech. But meanwhile, they've been bribed. So when it push comes to shove and they're in the hearings, they're like, no, no, do not touch those big tech companies. Those guys, oh my God, they should get everything they want. Huh. Interesting. Then your reaction to that seems a little different after you took the bribes. Oops, I mean campaign contributions. Why are you so mean to Elon Musk? Why are you asking him questions? We don't like that. Yeah, and then let alone the Elon Musk standing over there, right? He's like, now, Elon, look at me, I'm doing a public, Elon. I'm defending him. Money, money, money, money, money, money. And Google and meta, some money, money, money, money. Okay, now one guy that I have to point out their hypocrisy

even more, and I'm like, I'm genuinely curious what he's going to say about this. You remember Matt Gates came on our show? I know. There's a little bit. There's a little, okay, go All right, let me set it up, and then you tell me what happened, okay? So Gates and us, we fought like crazy. But there's one part that I agree with him on, and I've given him credit a couple of times on the show. He says he does not take corporate pack money. He's a very, very, very rare Republican who doesn't take corporate pack money. And I said, look, you could be crazy, but at least you're honest crazy, I could live with it.

No one's paying you to be crazy. Yeah, exactly, right? Well, I'll read you this portion of the story, and then Anna, you give us the color on it. Committee member, Representative Matt Gates, has been a partner to a congressional Democrats on legislation designed to rein in anti-competitive behaviors of the tech giant. So that's good. He's at least not being a, like, that's an interesting stance for him to take, right? But he's still taking money from the industry PACs and lobbyists.

Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft PACs have each made donations to Gates' campaigns. So what happened to not taking corporate PAC money? Okay, so as much as I would love to have an aha moment and say, we caught you. We didn't really catch him here. Okay, so our wonderful producer, Taylor, double-checked this. And while the reporting here is true, there's important context for you to know about. So those companies donated to Matt Gates during his initial run for Congress back in 2018. He swore off money from PACs in 2020.

So you know what, can I tell you something? Yeah. I'm super glad that I didn't know that as we were doing this story, because that part of the production came in later. Reason is, look at that. Now, my thesis is, and that's why I set this rule when we found a just Democrats, that you cannot take corporate PAC money. If you do, it's going to bias you. Matt Gates now no longer takes PAC money, so apparently he is consistent on this. And look at us, we care about facts.

And we're fair. Interesting. Anyway, after he stops taking corporate PAC money, all of a sudden he joins the Democrats and says, yeah, this is anti-compet. competitive, we should rein in big tech, just like I've been saying. So I disagree with Matt Gates and the Democrats on that, but at least Matt Gates is being consistent then. And why is he being consistent? Because he's not being bribed anymore. Yeah. Also, even though Matt Gates supported regulatory measures against big tech, he did co-sign a letter along with 10 other House Republicans that criticized Khan for going against too many corporate murder. But look, I mean, the point still stands.

If you're signing on to things or if you're pushing for policy out of principle, it's genuinely what you believe, I might disagree with you, but at least I know this is genuinely your perspective, this is what you're genuinely pushing for. When there are financial interests at play, business interests at play, and they're giving tens of thousands of dollars, you know, through super PACs or whatever to your campaigns, then I question whether you actually believe what you're fighting for. Yes, exactly right. Look, the bribes always win at the end of the day.

And you know that, and everyone in America knows that, except for mainstream media reporters who are like, what? Money in politics, I bet that doesn't affect Jim Jordan or any of these other politicians. If you say so, but no one believes you, and that's why you lost all credibility. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we're going to talk about former Fox execs who are now saying

we're so sorry we're sorry for this that and more coming up Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks support our work, listen ad-free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple

podcast at apple.com slash t-y-t I'm your host Shank Huger and I'll see you soon