The Young Turks - House PASSES Border Wall Funding And Is A government Shutdown Likely?

Episode Date: December 22, 2018

The House has passed a spending bill that includes Trump's $5 billion in border wall funding, but will it pass the Senate? A government shutdown is a likely gift for federal workers as disagreements over the border wall funding loom. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS 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. Hungry now. Now. What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are, grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peat.

Peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh, hungry, oh, Henry. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five-star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome the Young Turks. Thank you, Grant, expiring with you guys.

We will have other hosts join us as we go along today. On Friday, we have a ton of news, plenty of Trump asking to do, yes. But I believe that we also have the beginning of Trump derangement syndrome. And so that's heavy language. But I'm beginning to see the signs of some Democrats who are opposing Trump just for the sake of opposing him on things that we should be thrilled about. So we'll get to that a little bit later in the program. If you can notice a little bit here, I will take a one shot on me so you can see it better.

The Amplify shirt is in. Oh, I love this shirt. Okay, it's got the little TYT at the top, it says Amplified Progressive Journalism. It's establishment, not definitely not establishment, established in 2002. And then it says in small letters by the lightning rolling thunder. I love the rolling thunder part. It's hidden in there, but it's awesome. So this is the one that folks are getting if they give $150 or more to the Amplify program.

So that's a lot of you now, bless your hearts. Don Lemmon's up on Amplify, okay? So let's keep giving it in TYT membership to the media, because ever since we started the program, all that has happened is they seem to need it more and more. But it's a really good picture of Don Lemon. It is, bless his heart. He's a good looking gentleman. He looks like he's 25, it's crazy, because he's like 60.

No, he's not 60, but he's older, like he's an older gentleman, he's in his 50s, I believe. I don't know. He is, he is. No, we're gonna look that up. It's being looked up right now. All right, that sounds like alternative facts to me. Our fact checkers are on the mission. Our fact checkers slash stage manager is on it.

So, anyway, how old is he? 52. Oh my God, Don Lim is 52? I know things. Well, that's the biggest news we've broken in TYT history. Anyway, so please take part in TYT.com slash Amplify. Anything under a thousand bucks goes to journalism students. Well, actually now, 500 bucks and above gets it to some.

The 500 buck ones are podcasts, $1,000 ones are television, New York Times, Washington Post, Politico. And that would be wonderful. You guys have participated in it. And I want to keep reading your names as you guys do throughout. $500 also gets you on the honor roll on TYT.com. A thousand bucks gets you on a literal plaque out there. And the crazy folks has shop TYT. Now with a more ridiculous sale, 30% off, but it has to be about winter gear.

Sorry, you're not getting 30% off of summer gear, it's just not happening. But you gotta use the promo code winter 30, winter 30 to get 30% off of winter gear. So go nuts right now on that. And lastly, I'm super excited about our specials next week, three back to back to back, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And they'll range from super fun things like three hour old school special and flashback Friday games to a serious look at the year behind us in 2018, including Turk of the year and Jerk of the Year.

We need your votes, by the way, t.yt.com slash Turk Jerk to vote on who should be the person of the year and the goat of the year, if you will. And as I told Anna yesterday in our head nearly exploded. What's goat? Goat of the year. Goat is like bad guy, so the jerk of the year, basically. Oh, okay. It's a little bit more complicated.

Anyways, so it's definitely not the greatest of all time. That's not what I was thinking. I'm like, what? You know that lingo? Yeah, okay. All right. No, that would be, that's a different category. We should do that category one day.

Some people call me goat. Yeah, maybe the other guy. Anyways. Okay. Thy.t.com slash jank. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say the host competition would say otherwise. But anyway, let's move on. Okay, just super last thing.

I figured out the lessons to life. Like Central, I figured out life. I'm gonna talk about it on old school and that three hours special. We're gonna need three hours for it. So don't miss that. It is gonna be super interesting and fun. Let me see what that thermometer is. Last thing, and then we've got to get going on shutdowns and withdrawals and walls, et cetera.

40,400, it's ambitious, but by the end of the show, can I see 40,500, trying to get to 42,000 by the end of the year. We only have 10 days left. It is time to panic. All right, Casper, let's get going. All right, my hair is kind of a mess. No, you're fine. Don't banquets it. Okay?

Okay. All right, let's move on. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a stopgap bill that would fund Donald Trump's border wall to the tune of $5 billion. That is what Trump asked for, and it turns out that the House got together and gave him exactly what he wanted. Now, there are some issues, and the issues arise once this bill gets to the Senate. Now, the House passed the stopgap government funding measure in a 217 to 185 vote that includes

$5.7 billion for Trump's wall and also border security, raising the odds that a shutdown will begin Friday, meaning today, at midnight. Now, why? Why is it likely that this will lead to a government shutdown? Well, the bill, according to multiple reports and multiple senators, both Republican and Democrat, say that the bill is not expected to pass the Senate where Democrats have rejected money for Trump's wall. They do not want to appropriate the $5 billion for the wall. In fact, Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican, was quoted as saying, why move to proceed

a bill that has no future? Let's do one that actually can pass. Now, Trump is trying to rebrand this as a Democrat government shutdown, even though earlier he had taken the position that he'd be proud to shut the government down over the issue of this border funding. But nonetheless, here is what he is saying about it today. And now the Senate is looking at it. We just had a meeting with some of our great senator, Republicans, and lasted for a long time.

Tremendous enthusiasm for border security. And I think I can speak for them very strongly when I say they want to see something happen on border security. The Republicans and the Senate, as you know, are taking it up today. And it's really up to the Democrats, totally up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown. It's possible that we'll have a shutdown. I would say the chances are probably very good because I don't think Democrats care so much about maybe this issue, but this is a very big issue. It's up to the Democrats.

So it's really the Democrat shutdown because we've done our thing. When Nancy Pelosi said, you'll never get the votes in the House, we got them and we got them by a big margin, 217 to 185. So now it's up to the Democrats as to whether or not we have a shutdown. I hope we don't, but we're totally prepared for a very long shutdown. Now, despite his best efforts to place the blame on Democrats, remember just last week, it was Donald Trump who took the mantle of a government shutdown over the border wall. Take a look. If we don't get what we want one way or the other, whether it's through you, through a military,

through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government. Okay, absolutely. And I am proud, and I'll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government. shut down the government for border security, Chuck. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not gonna blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn't work.

I will take the mantle of shutting down. I'm not gonna blame you for it. I will take the mantle of shutting it down. All right, well, congratulations. It does appear that this will, this is dead on arrival in the Senate. Based on what we know so far, there are Republicans who don't wanna sign on to this piece of legislation. So we'll see what happens.

But look forward to a 25% government shutdown by midnight tonight. Okay, so first, Trump's backpedaling on calling of the Trump shutdown and taking the mantle, hilarious, totally to be expected. Again, if you're a Trump supporter, I guess you're just like, yeah, whatever, the guy's a weirdo, liar, hypocrite, but I don't care. All right, fine, I'm done with it. All right, point two, the Republicans' reaction in the Senate were hilarious, and I want to share that with you guys. Of course, Trump did it in a tweet.

So apparently some Republicans were meeting and they found out that Trump was not going to agree to the deal. They're like, oh, for God's sake, right? And then many of the other Republicans found out when reporters told them. So reporters found Susan Collins, they asked her, she's the Senator for Maine. She said, are you ruining my life? Okay, that was her question. And they're like, no, no, we're serious.

That's what's happening. Yeah. Someone's ruining your life, but it ain't us. So, God, I love this story so much. I love it so much. Because look, all of these senators had already left town. It's like Christmas break, they're like, all right, the president earlier this week. He agreed to finally signing a spending bill that didn't include the funding for the border wall.

We're good, we're good. So a lot of them had already left town. And so then someone approaches Susan Collins, a reporter does, and she finds out for us. I don't know, the billionth time that Trump is an unhinged lunatic. And that's, they're gonna have to take up this issue in the Senate now. But we'll see what happens. I mean, I don't think this is gonna pass, but we'll see. Okay, well, look, I'm gonna get to that in a second.

What's gonna happen at the end? We'll discuss that. And actually, there's a big part that I agree with the Republican strategy on, not policy, but strategy, so I'll get to that in a second. But I wanna finish out the reactions because they're hilarious. They told Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee, he just burst out last. And they're like, why are you laughing? He said, well, why not?

And then he went on to say, leadership has no guidance right now. I think they're just sort of swirling around over there at the White House. But this is my favorite quote. He said, I don't know. Who knows? Does the person sitting behind him at the White House know? Who would know? Who would know?

I love it. You can't make this stuff up. The reason he says he loves it is because he's retiring. So he's like, hey man, that's your problem, not my problem. But of course the lunatic in the White House doesn't know. doesn't know. Nobody else in the White House knows. And he'll change his mind the next second as we just showed you on who owns the shutdown. So let me give you the rest of his quote because I thought it was funny. Graphic 7, he says, y'all have fun. I'm getting ready to fly to Chattanooga.

Leadership has no guidance right now. I think they're just sort of swirling around over there at the White House. Yeah, I like that y'all have fun. Okay, I'm headed out to Chattanooga. Okay, they told Orrin Hats, Republican from Utah, he also burst out laughing. And he's been wildly supportive of Trump. Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said, I think it's all very fluid. And you know the president may change his mind a couple of times. He said that. Republican senator from Missouri said that.

They know, they know that Trump's an idiot and fickle and a hypocrite. They all know it. They laugh because they're like, okay, the idiot again switched his mind and he'll switch it again and again and again while we try to keep up with them. So what I find interesting is that now we can see the tipping point and the tipping point with Republicans starting to turn their backs on Trump. And I think it's because of a number of things. I think that this drama that continues to unfold with the spending bill is part of it,

but a small part. I think it has to do with Trump's decision to pull out of Syria, Afghanistan, Mattis, resigning. Now all of a sudden you see all of these members of the GOP. Kind of openly and transparently indicating that they're not on Trump's side, on a number of issues. No, he's in a political death spiral. Anything else is ignoring the obvious.

And so, all right, now what are they right about strategically? Look, the Freedom Caucus, I can't stand them, I totally disagree with their policies, but on the substance of the politics, they're right. What they're saying is, hey, if you don't fight for the wall now, the Democrats gonna have the House on January 3rd, we'll never get the wall. Well, that is true. So that is why I, if I was on the Republican side, I'd be livid for if Trump didn't fight. And I'd say, this is the time.

You don't have any other time. That's it. I have a question for you about a different GOP strategy that goes against what the Uber Conservatives want. So one of the arguments that actually persuaded Trump early on to just sign on to the spending bill without the money for the wall was, hey, why don't we bring this? fight back up later, right, when Democrats do control the House, and they're not going to want to give you the funding for the border wall.

But at that point, if we do shut down the government, we can easily blame it on them without taking the responsibility that we would take right now. Yeah, so well, look, that's all political games, but that's, so let's talk about that. So here are a couple of options about how this gets resolved. So number one is, at some point, they just get to a deal. So what does a deal look like? They can say, hey, we're not giving me the $5 billion for the wall, but hey, you could take the existing money that's already in the budget and take it out of defense and put it towards

the wall. That's your call and they can, now the Democrats would have to sign off on that, but I can see them signing off. Right now they say they won't, but we'll see, okay? They could make a separate deal. In the last government shut down, the deal was supposed to be able to give you money for the wall if you allow the dreamers to stay. Yeah, and what a great deal that was. Yeah, and that, of course, did not materialize.

That was a lie by the Republicans to get the Democrats to cave. It was a convenient falsehood, mostly convenient for the Democrats so they could save face while going through another humiliating capitulation as they do every time. Okay, so that's a possibility where they come up with some sort of compromise, which I would categorize. is Democrats caving in, okay? And so that's possible. Next thing is Democrats take the House on January 3rd. So they could say, no, the old House bill is nonsense, we're gonna do what the Senate's doing, which is a continuing resolution we all agreed on until Trump threw a monkey wrench into

it. So, okay, so now we give it to Trump, and then the pressure's on Trump to veto it or sign it, okay? And so then we'll have to see what he does, maybe he does sign it, maybe they throw a fig leaf on it, so it's basically the Republicans caving. Now, I suppose they could just keep going and going. But if they do, that leads us to the last option, which is if they go past January 3rd and Trump won't sign it, somebody's gonna have to concede.

And in that scenario, that's where Anna's gonna owe me 50 bucks. Oh my God, first of all, those were not the terms of- Here we go. The government is shutting down tonight, unless something miraculous happens and Democrats are so pathetic that they actually, you know, add to the 60 votes necessary to pass this in the Senate. So in other words, I'm saying if the government shuts down tonight, you owe me 50 bucks. All right, that's not interesting, we'll talk about that in a post game. But in terms of the specifics of how it gets resolved at the end, past January 3rd, if it gets

to that point, well, look, the Democrats, if you're wondering why they could capitulate, They're preselected to be weak. We've talked about that a thousand times. But specifically on this issue, two, their donors are jittery about the stock market, and they are in a lot of ways the corporate Democrats, sometimes even more responsive to their donors than the Republicans. But third is a point we often neglect, which is a lot of the unions then panic. Because the unions have all those government workers, and they donate a lot of money to the Democrats.

And so they then turn around the Democrats and go, you better not let those guys get furloughed. You better not let them miss a paycheck. And the Democrats break out in a cold sweat, panic. And that is why they always concede. So if you've got Republicans versus Democrats in a game of chicken past January 3rd, I've never seen the Democrats win a game of chicken, like literally never in 20 years of covering politics. So that doesn't mean he'll get all $5 billion and then it'll be directly for the wall. But some sort of compromise where he gets some of what he wants is entirely possible depending

on how long he holds out. And he's crazy and they're not. So he could hold out for a long time. Okay, so two main things I want to bring up. First, just take a quick blast to the past to when there was debate over how to, you fund the government when the dreamer issue came up. Now, during those negotiations, Chuck Schumer had offered Donald Trump $20 billion for the border wall if, you know, there were protections for the dreamers written into that legislation.

Now, of course, that didn't happen, and I'm glad it didn't happen because now we're having a discussion about $5 billion as opposed to $20 billion. So that goes to your point about weakness on the, you know, part of Democrats. But also proves, yet again, that Donald Trump is not a good negotiator. Donald Trump is a horrible negotiator because now he's gone from potentially getting $20 billion for the border wall to now debating ways of getting the $5 billion he's demanding. And more importantly, he's gone from referring to it as a border wall to now steal slats, right?

Which I think is an important thing to bring up. So essentially, it's a fence, it's not a border wall, it's not a big, beautiful wall. And the border wall is gonna cost upwards of $70 billion based on some estimates to build. So you give them the $5 billion now, and then what? And then what? You think that the House of Representatives is going to go along with your nonsense spending for this border wall? They're not, they're not.

So those are great points by Anna, and just to add to it at the end here. You know, they've only done 33 new miles of fencing since Trump has taken over. and anything else was just refurbished parts of the fence. So with an extra $5 billion, you're only going to get a tiny more than that in a fraction, even if you were to get it. And if we're not talking about a wall and we're talking about a fence, Hillary Clinton was in favor of offense. So now all of this is totally meaningless.

It's just symbolic. So there is no substance behind this. They're just playing political games, especially Trump, because he now admits its offense. He admitted that it was his shutdown, and I'm sure that when press, he knows that $5 billion doesn't cover the whole wall. So it's just a small portion of fencing. There's some chance Hillary Clinton could have gotten more fencing than Donald Trump. Yeah, he totally bungled this, there's no question.

But I do want to leave you with Chuck Schumer's comments about everything that's been going on because he's still talking like a tough guy, and I like that, I hope that his actions matches words, he says, quote, the Senate will take part in a pointless exercise to demonstrate to our House colleagues and the president what everybody knows. There are not the votes in the Senate for an expensive taxpayer-funded border wall. And he also says, abandon your shutdown strategy, you're not getting the wall today, next week, or on January 3rd when Democrats take control of the House. Those are strong words, and I hope he follows through.

Don't hold your breath. We'll see. All right. We'll be right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

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

you must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Drop it. Drop it. Samberg joins us. Joe, good to have you here. Good to be here. All right, brother. Joe is one of the

founders of Aspiration Bank and one of the biggest fighters for earned income tax credit in the country. You know, you and Roe Connor are in a competition for who gets most credit. That's a good competition to be in and has extended it for millions of people in California, and that helps the working poor. So great to have Joe with us. Now, we got a lot to get to, but I, I I want to read some names for you guys as we've been doing throughout the membership drive. The new t-shirt is in, Amplified T-shirt, and that's part of this campaign. And by the way, Jade neighbor is the person who designed this shirt, okay? And thank you, Jade, it's a wonderful shirt.

John Grine from Brighton, Colorado, $150, everybody with 150 or more gets a t-shirt. Frederick Ott from the United Kingdom, that's excellent, thank you, Dave Ketchum, from Florida. I recognize your name from a lot of campaigns. Oh, $500. Thank you, brother. Go on the honor roll on TYt.com as well. Alyssa G from Illinois, 150, Parker Adelson from Santa Monica right around the corner. Maybe we'll run into you, 150 bucks.

Sean Baird from San Diego. There goes progressive change campaign committee from the Amplify program, thousand bucks. So that is one of the best progressive groups in the country. And to get all their leadership, Young Turks membership is fantastic, guys. It's very, very thoughtful, I love it, and thank you, Sean. There's so many more up there, yes, for progressive groups, but also for members of the media like Don Lemon, Morning Joe, and so many are out there. So please participate right now at t.wit.com slash Amplify.

Let me read a couple of comments for you guys, Gabby Marita, as usual, with a good comment. She says, I never supported Trump will become the new litmus test for reasonable Republicans, Like I was never in favor of the Iraq war was just a few election cycles back. True enough, sure. No, but you can't find anyone that voted for Nixon. I hope one day that'll be the same for Trump. Of course they did, but they're too embarrassed to say. Jay M. Frazier says, Fox News breaking out with Trump yesterday, Hatch Corker and Roy Blunt

today, all these rats jumping the ship, I love it. And finally, Tom Zawaki on Twitter says, House GOP finds $5.7 billion to fund border wall, But nothing for Puerto Rico's electric grid, no money to fix the water in Flint, and make it harder to qualify for food stamps. Priorities people, priorities. That's exactly right. And their priorities are fear and hatred as opposed to hope and help. All right, Anna's got more on the shutdown.

Yes, I do. Now that it appears likely that the government will face a partial shutdown by midnight, some are asking what does that mean? What kind of impact will it have on both the government and the United States? Well, according to the Hill, shutting down the government would force thousands of federal employees to work without pay, and that includes agencies like the Secret Service, transit security, and border patrol agents. So they would have to work without pay.

In some cases, government employees would be furloughed or they could get back pay once the government is back in operation. But what's interesting is hearing from GOP lawmakers and representatives who think that this is no big deal. In fact, let me give you a statement from Representative Mark Meadows from North Carolina. He says it's actually part of what you do when you sign up for any public service position. It's not lost on me in terms of the potential hardship. At the same time, they know that they would be required to work.

Hold on, let's just be clear about a couple of things. First of all, it apparently is lost on you in terms of potential hardship because you just said, what's the big deal? That's what they signed up for. Second of all, let's note that lawmakers will not be subject to the pay freeze. So they will continue to get paid. And they are among the laziest people in America. To be fair, they do work really hard on the phones raising money for their campaigns.

But they barely work to begin with. This J.R. Jackson, our producer, you know, it's one of his pet peeves. They're barely ever in town. And whenever you bring them back in town, they're always outraged. But while they make everybody freeze their salaries, the congressman will continue to get paid. The problem with this is it's just a continuation of what I call the sports centerization of politics. That to the people who are leading the game, it's like a video game.

And they don't think about the real life consequences. in the case here of the workers who will be furloughed, who won't get paying time for Christmas, and even more broadly of the Americans who are going to be affected in an economy that will be hurt by all of this political uncertainty. And let's be real, Democrats have shut the government down before as well. And I don't think it's a good idea when we have Democratic presidents. I don't think it's a good idea when we have Republican presidents. We need to get out of this video game approach to politics and understand what's really at stake.

So I like that you mentioned the video game nature of politics, because it's not just true of our lawmakers, it's true of our electorate as well. And if you look at various policies and you poll Americans in a way where you don't let them know about the party influences behind the policy, you know, they have completely different views. So we just did a story this week about the Green New Deal. And the vast majority of people, both Democrats and Republicans who were pulled on the policy were in favor of the policy. But the researchers had to make sure to take out anything that indicated that it was a left-leaning policy. Otherwise, the voters or the respondents would probably react differently, especially Republicans. And by the way, you can reverse it when it comes to a GOP policy, and Democrats are asked what they think about it. If they know that it's a GOP, a policy that the GOP is pushing, Democrats are less likely

to be in favor of it. So look, it has a lot to do with our lawmakers, but our voters need to wake up, wake up. Do what's right for the country as opposed to your political party. Yeah, look, we're not calling things even like the mainstream media, and the Republicans have shut down the government far more than Democrats have, and the Democrats usually are the first to buckle and reopen it and giving into Republican demands. But right now, the Democrats are in the middle of doing what Anna and Joe were just talking about, which is Trump is saying I'm going to withdraw troops from Syria, Afghanistan, et cetera.

And Democrats are like, no, what do you mean? No. We've been in favor of withdrawing those troops for all this time. All of a sudden, because Trump's doing it, we're going to be against it. That makes no sense. But let's go back to these monsters here on their absolute callous nature of how they're dealing with this shutdown. So if Mark Meadows wasn't enough to infuriate you, let's hear from Representative Scott Perry, he's a Republican from Pennsylvania.

And Scott Perry, who currently represents about 10,000 federal employees in Pennsylvania's fourth congressional district, says that he's not worried about a government shutdown. He says the following, who's living that they're not going to make it to the next paycheck? Oh, half of Americans maybe? Right. But that's the thing. So here's a guy who has half a million dollars in assets, right? Which actually is not that much compared to some of our other.

lawmakers, but still, he's good, he's chilling. He doesn't have to worry about not collecting his paycheck in response to a government shutdown. But then he has the audacity to turn to people, many of whom are his own constituents and say, well, what kind of way are you living where you're living paycheck to paycheck? Let's, let me give you the numbers real quick, and then we'll jump in. Thousands of Pennsylvanians work in the federal jobs that pay less than $44,000 annually. The bottom 20% of American households have an average savings of less than $8,750, meaning for many, going without a paycheck or two could actually present real financial hardship.

That way understates it. I was gonna look up the number of Americans that would be basically wiped out by a $400 loss, but Joe's on the show, so I didn't, Joe already knows it. Thanks. Well, one of two Americans couldn't afford a $400 surprise expense without going into debt. Three of four Americans couldn't afford a $700 surprise expense without going into debt. So we're talking about three of four Americans who are a few blown tires on their car, broken wrist, a busted pipe in their apartment away from financial crisis. So as you say,

this is audacious. It's also the height of ignorance. This is America. A majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, which is why this whole attitude from the Republicans is so offensive. and, again, incredibly ignorant. Right. They're so out of touch. It's amazing. Like, they don't even know, like, the struggles of their own constituents. They don't care about the struggles of their own constituents.

Perry has also expressed his opposition to a federal minimum wage. Of course. Saying basically, well, it's okay. You could just get a higher paying job. Oh, is that right, Congressman? Is that how it works? We just show up and they go, I would now like an executive job. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

That's what I'd like, right? I came up with a brainstorm on the minimum wage. Yeah. This is what I think we should do for members of Congress who don't support a federal minimum wage. We should have their salaries set by a vote of their constituents. Oh, wait a minute, now we're on the salaries, right? Yeah, that's right, free market, baby. Because in the case of the congressmen, their employee is, their employers is us, right?

And so as their employers, we would get to set the wages. So let's do a ballot referendum. Do you want to do that? My guess is if you set it at minimum wage, which would be excellent, and they would be in a cold sweat panic, and the voters would probably love it, my guess is that the minimum wage would start to go up dramatically, right? Whereas in this case, Perry makes $174,000, as Anna pointed out, the politicians' salaries are the only ones that don't stop, all of the government workers, but these politicians

keep getting paid. So it's like, oh, what's the big deal about missing a paycheck or two? I mean, if you don't vote against that guy, what are you doing? I mean, why don't you just say, okay, yeah, just come in here and punch me in the face, take money out of my pocket, and I'll still vote for you. All right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we are going to discuss what's happening with the stock market and also a pretty devastating story involving a black man who just wanted to cash his paycheck.

At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices.

But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EXPRE SVPN.com slash TYT. t yt check it out today check we hope you're enjoying this free clip from the young turks if you want to

get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media become a member at t yt.com slash join today in the meantime enjoy this free second all right welcome back to the young turks jank joe and anna with you guys uh joe we've been doing a membership drive there's only 10 days left and then we had this fun little thing where we're competing with the host internally who could sign up more members. I've been trying to catch Anna for as long as she's had the lead, which is almost the entire time. This week, I made a concerted push, and I started at around about 69 behind her, and then

unfortunately it went backwards into the 70s, the 80s, then the 90s, and now I have the latest numbers, and all of a sudden, her lead is bigger. It's 99 people now that you have a lead on me. So, I'm going to catch 22. If I say t-y-t.com slash gang, if I don't say it, it's giving up. If I do say it, more people sign up under Anna. Keep saying it, keep saying it. Okay.

I love it. I love every part of it. All right, well, it is what it is. And there's only 10 days left, which makes my job a little difficult. But I don't give up, although I don't have a good plan B. No, but like, understand what this guy does, like behind the scenes. All these TYT live videos on YouTube where he's plugging away, trying to get people. Like, and he does that to motivate me to do the live videos over the weekend, which is, like,

that's the only time I have off, even though I'm writing for no filter. Yeah, well, I'm gonna give it a shot here because we've got a four day weekend coming up because of Christmas, right? So I'm gonna do a ton of YouTube lives for you guys, okay? WIT.com slash jank, don't forget. Okay, Amplify shirts in, do t-y-t.com slash amplify, let me read comments. Okay, progressive Todd says, Congress and Senate, it won't affect the rich, so who cares? Let's keep playing our little games.

That's a fair summary of their position. Justin says, oh, really, public servant, this is something that public servants sign up for. Then why don't we take your paycheck away? I'm probably going to have to cover the mortgage for my mom during this madness. This is entirely unacceptable. And speaking of which, unprecedented madness says, maybe the just Democrats can introduce a bill that the Senate and Congress or the president or any of the White House staff does not get paid either.

The problem is being able to pass that in time before the government shutdown ends, but it is a good idea and certainly at least something that they should rhetorically fight for. Can I jump in on that? Yeah. So Congress made sure in their previous spending bills to fund. their salaries through 2019. So that's the reason why they're gonna get paid. Because when it comes to their own paychecks, they'll take care of that right away.

But when it comes to funding anything else, no. That's literally prioritizing themselves over everyone else. So like there might be a shutdown coming, make sure we get paid and everybody else gets screwed. That's right. And then they wonder why people can't stand politicians. Weird how that works. Last one, Jane Locke says, and I bet all those furloughed have understanding landlords, bank, credit card companies who will totally wait on their payments without any penalties.

Actually, I did not mean this as a plug, and I would say this if Joe wasn't even here, if you had your money at aspiration, they might be understanding. That's true. That's right. It reminds me of all the banks who foreclosed on soldiers that were overseas when they were fighting out wars. Yeah, yeah. Just absolutely outrageous. All right, so check of the thermometer.

I was trying to do something hard here. Get to $40,500 by the end of this show. Let's see if we've made progress. Started at 400. Now we're at 429. We have made progress. All right, t-y-t.com slash join is neutral. Can we get a deal?

Okay, no shutdown, all right. You don't have to do Jank or Anna, just do join. Let's just go forward, okay? All right, Anna, what's next? All right. Stories involving people calling the cops on black individuals who are just living life and doing nothing wrong have flooded the headlines throughout the entire year. But what about black Americans who go to the bank and just attempt to cash or deposit their

paychecks, their hard-earned paychecks? Well, many black people throughout the country actually have a difficult time doing that, because some bank tellers automatically assume that the checks are fraudulent. That's what happened to Paul McCowns from Brooklyn, Ohio. He is a new employee at an electric company, and he visited a local Huntington Bank branch. Since he wasn't a regular customer at the bank, he was asked to present two forms of identification, as well as a fingerprint, and he readily offered all three. So far, everything's fine.

I've had a similar experience, right? It makes sense. You want to make sure that there's no fraud going on or identity fraud. But this is when things start to get bad. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I saw an episode of Blackish, you know, and they're kidding around about how the dad gets easily triggered if anybody says anything that sounds slightly racist, right? So this is not one of those situations.

He's like, oh, okay, I'm at a new bank, no problem, here's fingerprints, ID, anything you need. He did everything that was asked of him. Exactly. Just be absolutely clear about that. So let's go to Graphic 21. Then things start to get a little shady. So bank employees were still suspicious of the roughly $1,000 paycheck, and after several calls to his employer went unanswered, they declined to complete the transaction.

At that point, McCowns just left the bank thinking, Okay, well, they don't believe me, it is what it is, I'm just gonna leave. But the teller called the police on him. And the police showed up and they detained him. They detained him until, and put him in the back seat of the police cruiser until they could get a hold of his boss. And at that point, the boss let the cops know, no, no, no, yeah, he's my employee, yes, he got paid, yes, that is a check that was given to him.

It is not fraudulent, please let him go. It's insane, and apparently this happens quite often, and I'll give you some other examples. We need to call this what it is, it's a hate crime. It is a hate crime. And until we change the law, this is going to keep happening. You know, in a context of business and civil law, if you frivolously sue people, you get in trouble. We need a law so that you can't frivolously call the police on in particular people of color. What was done to this individual is a hate crime, and it needs to start being treated legally

like it's a hate crime. So that's a really interesting point. Let me back it up with a couple of examples and a quote here. So Paul Butler is a professor at Georgetown Law and the author of Chokehold Policing Black Men, and he talks about and writes about unnecessary 911 calls and what they lead to. He says, when the police are called on African Americans, it has a very negative impact on those black people, even if they are not arrested or beat up or killed. But remember, unfortunately, that is a very real possibility in today's America.

And we have a lot of instances where an innocent person has 911 called on him, but then the cops think, oh, he might be armed, uh-oh, and then you've got a massive, terrible situation. But Professor Butler's point is, even if that doesn't happen, it has significant negative consequences. He says, you're required to justify your existence and your presence in a white space. makes you feel like less of a citizen and less of a human being. It's impossible to overstate the adverse consequences. And that is exactly right, because they put Paul in this case in a situation where he

to constantly justify his existence and his humanity. Yes, I'm a real person, yes, that's a real check, yes, I have a real job. We don't believe you, we don't believe you, we don't believe you. We don't believe you, you need identification, et cetera, fine, okay? We don't believe you, we're not gonna give you the money, not fine. We don't believe you, we're gonna arrest you, even though we have no evidence that what you're saying is wrong, right? We're gonna call the cops on you preemptively, because we just, we, you're black, we don't

believe you. And you know, we had a cop on the show once who said he's white, anyway, but he was talking about policing African Americans and how brutal cops have been throughout. He said, African Americans in this country have unanimously been telling you that cops have been abusing them for over 100 years. Did you think they were all lying to you? And unfortunately, for a lot of folks in this country, the answer is yes, they just don't believe them no matter what happens.

And that is a crazy extra burden to put on some of our citizens. And the thing is, if you're a minority in America, especially if you're a black man in America, there's no winning. There's literally nothing you can do to win. Let's say you're struggling financially and you need some help. Automatically, people make all sorts of assumptions about you and they push all sorts of stereotypes about you. But even if you do what everyone demands that you do, right, go out there, work hard, earn

a paycheck, earn a living, you still have to deal with this. Like there's no winning. There's literally nothing that some black men in this country can do that will erase years of stereotypes and nonsense about who they are and what they're about. I guarantee you in the comments below, there'll be some people who say, oh, yeah, you should have gotten a job. No, he had a job. That's the whole point he's trying to be, but he doesn't matter because they're not listening.

They don't care, they see the race and they're done with it, right? Now, we on the other hand, defend everyone. If it happened to a white guy that's also terrible, but historically and currently disproportionately It happens to African Americans. More famous examples, black women playing golf have cops called on him. They're in the middle of a golf course. How could they have possibly snuck out and done what wrong? That's insane.

Somebody eating at Subway was like, oh, well, he's eating a sandwich at Subway. Why would anybody call, like, but seriously, like, if you're a right-winger, if you see a white guy on a subway, would you just be like, oh, we gotta call the cops on him? No, you know you wouldn't, you know you wouldn't, and so you know you wouldn't have to deal with that. Entering their own apartment buildings, barbecuing at a public park where there's a barbecue pit, right? And then babysitting white children, all these different jobs, they're in the middle of their

jobs, but my favorite one was a 12-year-old boy who got a job mowing lawns, and the neighbors called the cops on him. And the person who hired him, the woman who hired him was like, I don't understand how, why would a person up to no good come and mow my lawn? That doesn't make any sense, right? And like who, like, is it a ruse to rob? I mean, I don't know. And it's a 12 year old.

And yet, this is what black people deal with all the time in America. And so for other people to say, no, I don't acknowledge it, and I don't care. and it doesn't matter, and they're just whining. It is maddening. And, you know, it's amazing that black folks in this country are not more angry. Can we agree we have to have hate crimes legislation that calls and treats these acts what they are, which are hate crimes? I don't know if I, I disagree with you on hate crimes.

I feel like that, I think this is discrimination. I think that there should be consequences for the teller, because clearly, this individual was profiled and judged based on the color of his skin. But hate crimes, I mean, I just have an issue with- Yeah, I think one of the issues that's gonna come up is you don't want people too reticent to call the cops. But the problem is, you know, these folks are calling the cops, like it's, you know, they're taking, they're using it like a takeout service, delivered, right?

Oh, I'd like this black man picked up, he's in my neighborhood, by the way, a black female politician canvassing for votes, called the cops on her, right? Her mom, who was a grandma and her tiny little kid, were sitting outside in a van. They're like dangerous, called the cops on him. Jesus Christ. So I'm not sure what the right answer is, because it is a balancing act about calling 911. But I do know maybe the most important, at least first step is for everybody in the country to at least acknowledge it, it's not asking for too much.

But unfortunately, a huge percentage of this country go, no, I hear. I hear no evil, I see no evil, I speak no evil, and I never, ever want to hear about racism. And for whatever reason, it gets under their skin. Like, but you're not the one being arrested, they are. All we're asking for is tiny bit of empathy. And they find, and they get triggered by that. That simple request for empathy needs them, you know, makes them want to find a safe space. And we're supposed to have, we're supposed to have regulations in place that protect people.

people based on their sexual orientation, color of their skin, if they're minorities, right? And I just find it so interesting that when situations like this happen, you know, the bank took responsibility for it, they apologize, end of story, that's it. It appears they're not going to deal with any type of consequences. But then, I mean, if you are a broadcaster and you accidentally curse on a live broadcast, you'll be fined a ton of money for that, right? So the consequences for accidentally cursing are much more serious than a bank. you know, calling 911, calling the cops on someone who was trying to cash his hard-earned

paycheck that was not fraudulent in any way. Like, think about how ridiculous that is. Like, what we prioritize in this country, the types of people who actually get punished and those who don't. Yeah, again, if I don't plug in for hate crime? Yeah. To be clear, we would have proportionality in the punishment. So a hate crime that would be calling 911 on someone because they're African American would

obviously get punished differently than a hate crime that was violent. But, you know, Martin Luther King in his Unfulfilled Dreams speech in March of 68 had a great line, and I'm going to paraphrase it, and it went something like, you can't legislate what's in someone's heart, but you can make laws that will prevent them from lynching you. Similarly, we've been talking about trying to engage people's empathy, but the reality is all we can do is create laws to prevent this from happening, and we may agree to disagree, but I just believe with a lot of conviction that until we make it illegal and penalized to call people just because of racial factors, it's not going to stop.

All right, so that's your range of options for what you could do about it, but the fact that it is real is inescapable. All right, let's go to the next story. All right. The stock market is not doing well. In fact, it's doing poorly. It's not doing strongly, as Trump would suggest. In fact, if you look at the numbers, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 464 points or 2% falling

to a 14 month low, while the S&P 500 and NASDAQ composite slid 1.8% and 1.6% respectively. Now, this is a big deal, especially when you take a look at what kind of record it sense since the Great Depression. And this was actually pretty shocking to me, but let's go to Graphic 29. Without a rebound, stocks are on track for their worst December in decades. It would also represent the first time since the Great Depression that markets closed the year lower than they started. That can't be true.

It is true. It must be in the Great Recession. No, depression. I fact check that. Really? Yeah, it's pretty amazing. That's shocking. We're in a lot of trouble.

It's the worst December in decades. That's absolutely clear. Yeah. And so, look, my thesis was that Trump is incompetent and it's not an accident when you bankrupt six different companies. You know, one time you fell on hardship, it happens twice, you're a serial entrepreneur and you know, and it didn't work out. Six times, you're just a terrible, and you started with $413 million that your dad left

you. You're a terrible business person, you don't have any economic sense at all. And he doesn't do his homework, he doesn't know the consequences of his actions. Is he going to crash the market? Of course he is. And then they put in place a giant tax cut for the rich in corporations which led to stock buybacks, which led to artificially inflating the stock market. This was absolutely inevitable.

And then on top of that, if he didn't throw enough fuel onto that fire, he's like, oh, I'm gonna shut the government down and almost every one of my cabinet members is going to leave in a panic, and I might be, you know, colluding with the Russians and a foreign agents and, et cetera. I mean, like, the whole place is on fire. Of course the market's crashing. So there's a number of different factors. You mentioned a few of them.

So the government shutdown is definitely playing a role. There's also the trade wars, ongoing trade wars, that of course Trump is playing a huge role in. There is the fact that the Federal Reserve increased the interest rates again this week. So that played a role as well. And then, yes, the government shut down. So it's a combination of things. But one of the issues that I think no one's talking about was that the stock market was artificially

inflated to begin with, with all these record corporate stock buybacks. And so this was something that pretty much every financial analyst that you could listen to predicted. And the question is, is it going to continue getting worse? I mean, I would assume so, but of course I don't know for sure. Yeah, and one more thing, the Fed is considering hiking rates, and that also, I don't want to say it hurts the market. It just, I think people react normally, and they have in this case by the prices going down in the market. There's very good reasons to raise the rates if you're the Fed, so that's why I don't want to criticize it.

No, I'm not criticizing it. I think it makes sense. But it does usually mean that the market has at least a temporary dip. And so look, some of this stuff might rebound at some point if they don't, you know, they reopen the government and fix some of the mess. But that's only temporary. In the long term, just like I said with Bush, there is no hope for a recovery. The guy's not capable of a recovery.

And so it will only crash further. There are no signs that Donald Trump has a secret strategy on the economy and the people around him are smart enough to be able to turn this thing around. The only signs that exist are, it will get worse. So I wanna, do you wanna jump in? Well, I would, thanks. The relevance of this obviously is to people's ability to retire. We talk a lot about the retirement crisis in America.

Most people won't be able to retire the way things are going. And what I've seen often is that we all have. talk about the need for people to set aside savings when the real origin of the retirement crisis is that people aren't earning enough income. I mean, believe it or not in the organizing we've done with working class Californians around EITC, folks have said to us, well, why don't you have some of those folks save the EITC they get? And I'm always dumbfounded by that because people are using their EITC to pay for food, utilities, rent, health care. The problem with retirement in America, isn't that people aren't saving enough, it's that wages aren't high enough.

Yeah, so you don't have enough disposable income or money left after you pay the bills to put it into retirement. And also, you know, to add to that, this is a perfect example of why Social Security is so important. To have retirement money that you can rely on in your, you know, in your retirement obviously, that isn't tied to the stock market. What if the stock market crashes like it did during the Great Recession right as you're planning on retiring? You're in a lot of trouble if you've made the wrong investments and it's too risky, whatever

it is. It's too risky, it's too attached to risk, whereas Social Security offers you that supplemental income in your retirement that'll give you a little bit of security and stability. And finally, look, this is the stock market is what the Republicans always say, it's okay, the markets are up, so everything is fine. And in reality, of course, most working Americans don't have a lot of money in the stock market. Wealthier Americans have a lot of money in the stock market.

That's why the political class is obsessed with the stock market, because that's the donor class that funds them. But even so, now that the market's crashing, okay. So your one claim to fame, Donald Trump and the Republican Party was, oh, yeah, the markets are high. By the way, the guy who brought them up was Obama after Bush had crashed him. So here we go again, here's another Republican president and another stock market crash. So that was the one thing you claim to do right.

It turns out you can't even do that. Have you noticed that the stock market seems to do a lot better under Democrats? Yeah, that's just the fact. You could look it up, you know, go as far back as you need to. You started Clinton if you want, go to Bush, go to Obama, go to Trump, and you will see an incredibly clear pattern. It is hard for politicians to have a short-term effect on the economy, okay? But if you've been in office for eight years at the end, yes, you do get some macro picture

as to how you affected the economy. And that jury is in, and it is damning for the Republicans. So I want to look at the patterns, but I mean, obviously the stock market experienced that sugar high right as Trump got elected. I'm wondering if that happens with every Republican president, right? Because there was that huge spike when Trump gets elected. because, I mean, why do you think the market spike like that? It's because of deregulation, the private prison industry, their stocks went up.

You know, they just know that these huge corporations are going to get giant handouts, and I think that's what plays a role. But then once the policies go into effect, it negatively affects the market. Anyways, okay, let's take a break. Okay, thank you, Joe. Thanks for having you here. All right, brother. You too.

We got more coming up for you guys, including Madison. his resignation and the effects that that is happening because conservatives are actually flipping out over that and I still have not gotten to my agreement with Donald Trump. We'll talk about that as we go along as well. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members,

only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.