The Young Turks - Inflation Nation

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers published a warning for Democrats that urged them not to dismiss inflation as “transitory.” Wall Street is set to see the biggest bonus increases since the Great Recession after a busy and profitable 2021. On-time mail delivery has plummeted under Postmaster Louis DeJoy - forcing veterans to wait longer for prescriptions, seniors to scramble to pay bills without their Social Security checks, and communities to feel less connected. Women in the U.S. are being jailed for having miscarriages. A new book claims that Steve Mnuchin and Mike Pompeo discussed removing Trump after the Capitol attack. Hosts: Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right. All right, well, we're on Turks, Jake, you ran and Hispanic Hispanic with you guys. Jake needs to give me space to set up the story. I need to. I need to. That's what we're starting with right off the top. Right, that needs to be established, okay? And we should really adjudicate that on air.

And that's a good idea. Okay, is there any other show like this? You gotta be crazy, dog. Okay, and then number two, we've just said it ahead of time. On tonight's show, we're gonna give you at least a seven out of ten. We could do better, we could do better, but let's see what it looks like, but at least a seven out of ten, so buckle up, okay? You know, my trick is to set expectations low. That is a quote from Bush, yes. All right, Casper, in all seriousness, kind of. All right, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has been raising red flags in regard to inflation. And I wanted to be fair to him because the media narrative of the argument that he's trying to make has been twisted into something that he's not saying.

In fact, if you're watching corporate news, cable news, it's very likely that you'll hear them argue that Larry Summers is worried about how the federal government is providing too much social spending and how that leads to inflation. But that's actually not what his argument is. We're gonna get to his argument in just a second, but here's a little montage of cable news hosts, basically twisting what Larry Summers has been saying. Larry Summers, he pointed this week to the $1.9 trillion American rest plan that was passed earlier this year in March, he said that's a major reason behind the rising

inflation, something he called at the time, quote, the least responsible macroeconomic policy we've had in the last 40 years. Is it possible that Americans are suffering now from high prices because the Biden administration overstimulated the economy with all of this money going into the economy? The inflation thing is so real that everybody acknowledges it now. And of course, it's not just Republicans. I mean, Larry Summers has worried about it openly and Joe Manchin worries about it quite rightly. And the problem Joe Biden has is that it's going to affect the passage of billed back better. They've already created a lot of harm this year with the previous $2 trillion package they passed earlier this year without a single Republican vote. It created raging inflation, which Larry Summers, the last honest Democrat in town admitted was going to happen, predicted was going to happen.

So the best way to sum up the impact of this package, if the Democrats pass it, and of course it'll be all by themselves, is they double down on all the mistakes they've already made this year. Yeah, well, I thought you put it well, I mean, and Larry Summers deserves a lot of credit. Now, Larry Summers just published an op-ed in the Washington Post, and it is fascinating how he explicitly mentions that he doesn't think that doing away with the build-back better agenda is the right solution to tackling inflation. Now, he does say this, excessive inflation and a sense that it was not being controlled helped elect Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and risks bringing Donald Trump back to power. And look, to be fair, he does get a few things wrong in this op-ed.

For instance, he argues about the price of oil, saying that the price of oil, the most important global determinant of inflation is very high and not expected by forward markets to decline rapidly. He probably should have mentioned the fact that the OPEC cartel manipulates the price of gas by basically holding back production of oil, didn't mention that. But whatever, he mentions that oil or gas prices are inflated right now. But he does have this moment of clarity, and this is the relevant part. He says this, let's not compound errors that have already been made with far too much

fiscal stimulus and overly easy monetary policy by rejecting build back better. The legislation would spend less over 10 years than it was spent on stimulus in 2021. Because that spending is offset by revenue increases and because it includes measures such as child care that will increase the economy's capacity, build back better, will have only a negligible impact on inflation. Instead, what he focuses on in his op-ed is the Fed's monetary policy. And guess what? He's exactly right about that.

Let me give you his argument real quick, Jake. He says the Fed should signal that the primary risk is overheating and accelerate tapering of its asset purchases. What is referring to right here is what's referred to as quantitative easing. Given the house price boom, he writes, mortgage related purchases should stop immediately. Because of inflation, real interest rates are lower. As money is easier than a year ago, the Fed should signal that this is unacceptable and will be reversed.

The focus is on monetary policy, and he's actually right about that. But you have cable news pundits and anchors taking his words and twisting it to to apply to social spending by the Biden administration. Yeah, so I know there was a lot of financial terms in there, but let's spoil it down a little bit further. So just to be absolutely clear, Larry Summers is saying the heart of the problem is the Federal Reserve printing too much money, okay? That's the monetary policy, okay?

So he says specifically in the op-ed that build-back better will have only a negligible impact on inflation. So almost no impact at all. And he explains why, because it's already paid for, etc. So they took, I know, right, they took that statement and twisted it to say, oh, build back better is what's going to destroy inflation. And Larry Summers, Larry Summers, Larry Summers, Larry Summers, Larry Summers, right? So guys, the reason why that's so important, and by the way, it's almost all the press, here's a Mediate article, and I generally like Mediate, but Clinton chair, this is the headline, Clinton Treasury Secretary warns Democrats that dismissing inflation, quote, risk bringing Donald Trump back in 2024.

That makes it sound like if you pass bill back better, that's gonna lead to inflation. And Larry Summers, the Clinton person is warning you, the Democrat is warning you, you better not do that because that's gonna bring Donald Trump all the way back. Because you have to always tie it back to the boogeyman, right? And so Larry Summers have intends that. because he thinks, if I just mentioned Donald Trump, everybody will pay attention. And the thing that they'll take away from this is if you don't listen to me, Trump's gonna come back. So that part worked out perfectly for him.

But the second part, they just took his words and twisted it. Totally. And so why did they do that? Because the media cherry pricks its experts. They could have taken a progressive expert. By the way, you said, oh, well, yeah, but Larry Summers is a big guy and well known, incredible, because he was Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, so what? Robert Reich is an incredibly, you know, credible economist who

was the Labor Secretary for Clinton. So you could take Robert Reich's articles and everybody could be talking about Rice says pass it and it'll help their economy. Rice says pass it'll help the economy. But they never quote him. They only quote Larry Summers and then on top of that they cherry pick within Larry Summers' op-ed and in fact twist it to mean the opposite of what he said. It's so fascinating. And so why does almost everyone in the media do that? from Fox News to CNN, because they don't want you to pass a bill that could raise corporate taxes. And so they're trying to kill that bill in every way imaginable with every dirty trick they have in the book. They never did any of that when they were giving four trillion

dollars to the largest corporations in America. Yep. There was no fear mongering, there was no cherry picking, et cetera. So now you see what the agenda of corporate media, is, it's to help corporations, not you. He even writes this, financial regulators, he writes, need to step up and be attentive to the pockets of speculative excess that are increasingly evident in financial markets. And I mean, look, it's hard to know what he's specifically referring to there, but as we've seen, 2021 has been a record year for corporate stock buybacks, it has been a record year for private equity firms buying up single family residential properties.

We just did a story about how Zillow is looking to offload thousands of homes that it acquired as part of its home flipping venture that didn't work out so well for it. So you know, there's all sorts of waste and bad behavior at the very top. There's the monetary policy that provides cheap money to corporations and to banks, of course, And of course, this is meant to provide liquidity. I just think it's all super, super fascinating stuff. Because again, most of his focus, as it should be, has been on the Federal Reserve. And the Federal Reserve has had the biggest impact in regard to inflation in the housing market.

Because where do you think the private equity firms got that easy money from? It's because of the Fed's monetary policy, right? And so last two things for me on this is that also think about the argument that the press is making. You have to listen to Larry Summers. Even if they were telling the truth about what Larry Summers said, if you have to listen to Larry Summers, otherwise Trump will come back. Well, who did Larry Summers advise earlier? Hillary Clinton.

Did Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump or did she lose to Donald Trump? So they're saying now remember the one person who lost to Donald Trump, their top advisor is telling you how to not bring Trump back. Well, wouldn't that Trump in the first place if it wasn't for people like Larry Summers and all the Clinton advisors. But it's amazing how they twist the facts in mainstream media. We're not talking about Fox News here. This is alternative facts on mainstream media.

Well, if you don't want to lose the Donald Trump, you have to listen to the Clinton people who lost to Donald Trump. Amazing. And then finally, I'm going to give last words to one of our members, because it's such a great point. T.Y.T.com slash join to become a member and be part of the show, right? Or you can hit the join button below on YouTube. Rayser wrote in, no mention of the unfunded $2 trillion in tax cuts for the rich and corporate under Trump contributing to inflation, not to mention the deficit in national debt. That's a great point, guys, because we mentioned the trillions they gave to corporations under

COVID relief earlier. He's talking about the Trump tax cuts. So we've talked about how it adds to the debt and deficit, but he's adding a really good point there, which is, wait, if you're worried about inflation, there's a good way to get money back into the government and out of the economy. and in a way that is fair and just, you would raise taxes on corporations and the ultra wealthy that Trump cut to the tune of $2 trillion. That's a great way of bringing down inflation.

So is a single cable news anchor talking about that? None, zero. Have any of the papers written about that? No, because if it's the rich, they must be protected. Only you have to make sure that you cannot get any benefits of that bill. By the way, every one of them now also talking about how, no, the wages are too high. It's contributing to inflation. I've now read half a dozen articles where they're like, the wages shouldn't be this high, lower the wages.

That's what's causing inflation. And then they say, by the way, I'm sorry, Anna, they say, okay, how are people going to afford milk and gas? And our solution is take away their wages. Oh, come on. You guys don't care about the average American. You're a bunch of liars, almost every one of you. All right, well, let's talk about wages and more importantly, bonuses because there are some workers in this country, if you want to call them workers, who are expected to get

massive bonuses this year, despite all the fearmongery we hear about people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, not really getting much in pay raises, but still, it's a big deal when that happens. So Wall Street is set to see its biggest bonus increases since. basically more than a decade. So this is data that was released by Johnson Associates. They look at, you know, the pay scale and what's expected when it comes to pay increases among these Wall Street firms. And here's what they found. This year's expected increase are the largest since 2009, when several business areas were projected to receive bonuses

that were 30 to 60 percent higher than the previous year, according to Johnson Associates. Now overall bonuses for investment banking underwriters are forecast to jump 30 to 35% from the year prior while investment banking advisors and equity traders can expect a 20 to 25% year over year bonus increase. So what is the justification for these pretty significant bonuses? Well, the argument here is, well, you know, the Wall Street firms are also experiencing a labor shortage, so we need to pay more in the form of bonuses to retain talent, to ensure that we retain these wonderful hard workers. The other argument is booming deal activity, a hot IPO market, and climbing equities means bankers and traders are in line for outsized performance-based compensation.

I wanna just show you this chart that CNBC put together that gives you a sense of just how much these bonuses will be for various people working in Wall Street. So investment banking, underwriting, as I mentioned, 30 to 35% increases in their bonus, sales and trading, you've got 20 to 25% investment banking. If you're working in an advisory role, on average, you're seeing a 20 to 25% increase in your bonus, and private equity is getting a nice bump as well with 15 to 20%. Now, when they talk about increased business activity, I'm curious if they're referring to any substantive business activity or if they're just talking about wheel in and

dealing in the stock market. Because one thing that we've also noticed this year is that corporate stock buybacks are at record levels. And remember, a lot of these Wall Street firms, a lot of banks are receiving cheap money from the Federal Reserve thanks to their monetary policy. And so what do they do with that money that they get from the Federal Reserve? Are they investing in businesses? Are they doing something that that's actually beneficial for American workers or the economy? Or are they just paying themselves? Well, S&P 500 companies in recent weeks have disclosed buybacks totaling $145 billion for the third quarter. And the total is likely to surpass $224 billion by the time all reports are in. That would be above

of the $223 billion in buybacks recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018, which was a record. So just because you're seeing these pay raises or these bonuses among these Wall Street firms doesn't mean that they're actually doing something that's beneficial to the economy. They're taking advantage of cheap monetary policy, to the cheap money that they get their hands on, and they're finding ways to invest it in themselves. Yeah, so look, guys, I wouldn't mind the bonuses. And I understand why they do it. And they don't have a labor shortage like Wendy's does.

But people are making money hand over fist. And so that does create a hot market for hot bankers. God help us, right? So I understand all the economics behind that. But the part that they never talk about in moments like this is, yes, but what happens when it crashes. So if it turns out it was a bubble and there was no real value there that they were creating, and later all those stocks crash and you lose money from it, do those bankers then give back their bonuses? No, of course not. No, they take home all the bonuses. And then

they go, there was nothing we could do. And then they say, well, look, you got to retain our top level talent here to run these banks, even if they crash. Why do I say all this? Because it already happened. This is the second largest increase since 2009. Why was there such a big increase in 2009? Because the crash was in 2008. And so after the crash, they still got some bonuses, but in 2009, they went back to big bonuses, right? Right, but what type of policy was implemented under the Obama administration to basically recover the economy? It was quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve. So the same monetary policy that the Federal Reserve is engaging in right now.

And that policy creates this unequal and unjust economic recovery, where those at the very top, in the case of 2008, those who actually destroyed the economy get paid handsomely and everyone else suffers. Now, mind you, one other thing that's so important here, everyone on cable news is demagoguing about inflation, and they're saying part of the problem, I did a segment on this about Stephanie rule, but I've now seen a number of them do this. Part of the problem is higher wages, they say, for the average American. It's leading to inflation.

No one has done a story about too many Wall Street bonuses leading to higher wages, leading to inflation, but they get way more money than you guys do. I mean, that overall, their wage increases is monstrously higher than yours. And they can say, hey, I deserved it, blah, blah, blah, but you can't say the average guy. is making too much money because he moved up from $7.25 to $7.75 an hour, and we got to make sure his wages don't go up at all. And congratulations to the Wall Street bankers. They get another couple of million dollars apiece, right? And that doesn't affect inflation. Exactly, exactly. So their hypocrisy is hilarious. All right, we gotta take a break. When we come back, we've got a

fantastic story. It involves one of my favorite people, Representative Katie Porter, asking some tough questions in regard to what's transpiring over at the post office. We've got that story and more when we come back. All right, back on CYT, Jake and Anna with you guys. News. All right, let's do it. Representative Katie Porter wanted to ask some questions about what's been taking place at the post office. Because chances are, you might have noticed that it's taking a lot longer to get packages,

to get your mail or even to get your checks. And so she wants to know if the policies that Lewis DeJoy, the Postmaster General, who was appointed by Donald Trump, has had an impact on the ability for the post office to perform its job, right, and getting you the packages that you need. So she had written this on Twitter. On time, mail delivery has plummeted under Postmaster Louis DeJoy, forcing veterans to wait longer for prescriptions,

seniors to scramble to pay bills without their social security checks and communities to feel less connected. Postmaster DeJoy needs to go. Now whether or not he will go is something that we'll discuss in just a moment. But before we do so, I want to turn to this video of Representative Katie Porter speaking to Melina Perez. She is the post offices deputy inspector general for auditing. The post office just went through an audit, and you're going to get some details about just how much the post office has been harmed by DeJoy's policies. Let's watch. The audit found that by the spring of 2020, mail delivery was right around 92%. That dropped to 80% by the fall of 2020, and by January of 2021 was hovering at around 61%. When did Mr. DeJoy take over his postmaster?

Do you know? At the summer of 2020? The summer of 2020. So June of 2020. And what happened after he took over? City rate of on-time mail delivery go up or down. Went down. And I'm a professor and I used to grade

great to a lot of grading. And 92% is considered widely like an A minus. 80 is considered hanging on, hanging on to the lowest possible B. 60% is at best a D minus. The Postal Service delivers 48% of the world's mail is an institution. It is a civic treasure. And we let it get all the way. What you found is we let it get all the way to that D. V-minus level. So you know she's serious when she's got that whiteboard ready. And to be sure, Lewis DeJoy has been pretty destructive to the post office. Implementing policies that lead to, first of all, banned late or additional trips to deliver mail.

He has decommissioned hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines. He's also removed some mail collection boxes from the streets. And these changes have led to significant delays. And not to mention, he's got all sorts of business ties and conflicts of interest that play a role in this as well. I'll give you more details on that in just a second. But, Jank, why don't you jump in? So, DeJore's obviously got to go. There's the issue of all the mail being delayed and we used to have the best post office.

I mean, we rightfully bragged about how great our postal service was. And they would deliver and rain, you know, shine or snow sleet, etc. Boy, did I bundle that one. No, you nailed it. Okay, anyways. And now they don't. Now they don't. Why?

The Republicans destroy everything in government. So they go, oh, government doesn't work. And then they come in and they smash it to pieces and go, see, it doesn't work. Yeah, after you screwed it up. That chart was the shan on the whiteboard was perfect explanation of that. But there's a reason why they're doing it because it's not just because they want to get the post office and and have FedEx, UPS, and other companies pick up the slack and make much more money, charges a lot more, and DeJoy himself has companies that compete with the

post office, it's mental, it's absolutely insane, okay? So they're destroying it on purpose for private interest, but also because of mail-in ballots. And in the last election, 25,000 to 50,000 ballots came in too late to be counted, because now Now the post office sucks under DeJoy, and that's on purpose. So in 2022, if they don't fix it, a lot more, now that it's deteriorated even more, a lot more will come in too late and not be counted. And now the mail imbalance heavily favored Democrats. So Biden doesn't fix this, he is a moron of epic proportions and like the most pathetically

weak leader we've ever had. So this is a layup. Now, how you get rid of DeJoy is difficult. That part, like the decision is a layup, the execution is difficult, but I can tell you how to do that in a minute. Right, exactly. And look, before you do, because I do think that's important information, I just want to kind to give everyone a little more background in regard to what Lewis DeJoy has been up to, but

more importantly, why it is that the post office has been under assault by Republicans, right? The biggest assault happened in 2006 under the Bush administration. So I wanna go to graphic five here, the United States Postal Service has reported net losses of nearly $100 billion since 2007. Now that stems in part from 2006 legislation that required the agency pre-fund more than $120 billion in retiree health care and pension liabilities, a requirement that labor unions have called an unfair burden, not shared by other businesses, and certainly not shared by government agencies.

Remember, the post office is a government agency and it's expected to run like a business that pre-funds pensions for retirees. It's absolutely insane. Now in regard to Louis DeJoy, what is he done specifically? Well, as Reuters had reported, the US Postal Service reports $4.9 billion in 2021 in net losses, right? They also write that the United States Postal Service implemented new service standards that slow some first class mail deliveries as part of efforts to reduce red ink. The new standards revised one to three day service standards to one to five days impacting

about 40% of first class mail. And as I mentioned, Postmaster Louis de Joy in March announced a plan to cut $160 billion in predicted losses over the next decade. That means he's gonna fire a bunch of people. He says we have years of inflicted damage to fix that will necessarily, necessitate us taking some continued uncomfortable actions, DeJoyce said. So it's abundantly clear that his first and foremost, like the first priority he has is to dismantle what's left of the post office.

And also consider the fact that he has those conflicts of interest. There should be an investigation into whether or not, under his leadership, these contracts are being given by the post office to the corporations or the companies that. has ties to. Okay. So now, how do you get rid of them? First difficulty is that the president cannot directly fire the postmaster general. That's because we want that post to remain independent of day-to-day politics. Now, did Trump keep it independent? No, he put a guy who wants to destroy the postmaster office for his own profit into that position. But it is true that the president cannot fire the postmaster general. So you can't undo that. It is what it is.

And you have to be fair in how you assess whether the president is taking aggressive action enough. Like if I thought he could fire DeJoy and he wasn't, I'd go nuts. I'd be like, just fire and what the hell's wrong with you? But he can't, right? Okay, so does that, for most Democrats, that's the end of the conversation. They're like, well, okay, that's good enough for a surrender, right? No.

So who can fire DeJoy? Because obviously he can be fired like anybody else. Well, there's a nine person board. And whoever is the president, that party gets to have five out of the president. the nine seats. Now, here comes Democratic incompetence. Three of the Democratic seats are vacant. Obama tried to fill them. Senate Republicans blocked it because they actually care about their jobs and they care about their base. And they said, well, we don't care, we're going to block everything, including the post office. Democrats, when Trump was in charge, was like,

me-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b. Couldn't block a goddamn thing. Trump packed that board with not only five Republicans when he was in charge, but he put, he replaced the Democratic. that was leaving with a Democrat. Yeah, someone who supports Trump, a so-called moderate. Yeah, and who actively supports the joy. Exactly. So now, almost everybody on the board supports the joy, because Trump packed it and the Democrats have done nothing,

nothing to fight back. There's just a grotesquely incompetent party. Okay, now here's what they could do. It's actually now relatively simple. You fill the three seats, you have another Democrat on there. And by the way, if you wanted, you could actually replace that Democrat to be extra safe, right, if you needed to. And then a Trump appointed Republican is going to step down in December.

That's it. Now, if Biden doesn't do this, that's then you, then he's the weakest, least intelligent president we've ever had, okay? So then you appoint a Republican that is against the judge. against the joy. There's a million Republicans who are never Trumpers, et cetera, et cetera, super easy to find. If you can't pull that off, Trump did it.

Trump's barely conscious. He's like one of the least intelligent people you've ever met in your life. And he got a Democrat to say he'll vote with Trump every time, right? So if Democrats can't do the same, nah, they're just, they don't want to win. So it's next month, let's see if Biden does it.

But you know how Democrats are, I'd be pretty shocked if he did just elementary things to appoint those five guys, get rid of DeJoy, and bring the post office back to competence for both the male reasons and mail-in-ballot reasons. Look, there's one key difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And honestly, Joe Biden can be replaced with any other generic Democrat. Donald Trump, regardless of how much you might like him or hate him, doesn't matter, okay? He's a steamroller. And if you want something, doesn't care about what the laws are, doesn't care about what the rules are, he just goes for it.

And no one stands in his way. Whereas Democrats, it's almost as if they preemptively look for excuses for why they can't do things. And not almost, that's exactly what they do. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and part of the reason is, and other Republicans do this too, it's not just Trump. McConnell is a great job of steam rolling. McConnell's a little more sophisticated. Yeah, and McConnell's part of the people who did this and protected joy, et cetera. Why? Because corporate Republicans would love to destroy the government, and that's what they're doing here. And they want to privatize everything so their donors can make more money.

And in the case of DeJoy, he is the donor. He's a Republican donor who runs these businesses, et cetera. So, but the Democrats, their donors tell them, no, no, no, no, don't take any action. Hey, I got shares in FedEx, I got shares in UPS, I got this, I got that. You better not take any action. So, and if they even do anything slightly aggressive, their donors, yell at them at the top of their lungs and then guys like Biden who are already by nature weak are like, oh, the donor yelled at me. I swear nothing will fundamentally change. I'll keep everything

Trump kept in place. Look, here's, it's not even proving us wrong. I'm saying, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt. I'm saying basically it'd have to be a moron not to fix this next month. But if he doesn't do it, then hey man, it's a layup at this point. Yes, you can't fire the joy, but you can definitely do the board. By the way, if none of that worked for mysterious reasons and, you know, because all they're trying to do is find excuses, right? If you really wanted to do it, here's what you could do, whether it's DeJore or any board member. Oh, let's look into your business interests. I bet we find something interesting there, right? In the minute you publicize a couple of things they've done wrong in business,

because there's nowhere in the world DeJoy didn't do things wrong in business. In fact, I think we covered that earlier during the Trump era. And then you start to put pressure on. He's okay, okay, okay, okay, I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I was going to leave anyway, right? But that's hardball tactics, I would do in one second flat that Biden would never do in a million years. But it doesn't matter, he doesn't need to do that. He could just replace the board members if he has a pulse. All right, let's switch gears. This next topic is very different from Postmaster General Lewis DeJoy, but it's an important story.

So let's talk about it. Women in red states, and in some cases, even blue states like California, are being charged with even convicted of manslaughter if they suffer from a miscarriage. Now one of the most recent examples is from the state of Oklahoma where a woman by the name of Brittany Pula was charged and convicted with manslaughter. Now Pula was just about four months pregnant when she lost her baby in the hospital in January of 2020. This October she was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for first degree manslaughter of her unborn son.

Now what's happening across the country is certain states are passing these laws that consider a fetus, a human life, right? They're called personhood laws. And what they also do is if a woman suffers from a miscarriage, they will specifically ask whether the woman has taken any illicit drugs, they'll even do tests to ensure that the woman hasn't done illicit drugs. In this case, Pula had in fact admitted to using illicit drugs and the medical examiners report did find traces of methamphetamine in her son's liver and brain.

Now it's important though to note that the medical examiner did not determine the cause of death or what actually caused the miscarriage. The examiner did not determine the cause of death for the fetus, noting genetic anomaly, Lacenta abruption or maternal methamphetamine use could have been contributing factors. So I'm gonna get into more details about what's taking place. We've covered this story throughout the years and unfortunately it's just getting worse. Some of these states have become more and more draconian as this type of story just kind of gets ignored and politicians just kind of let it slide. Yeah, I'm gonna go to graphic four here because I want to give you a sense of the scale of it.

From 1973 to 2020, the national advocates of pregnant women has recorded 1,600 such cases where women are prosecuted in the country for miscarriages, not abortions, miscarriages, with about 1,200 occurring in the last 15 years alone. So this is not an isolated case, it's happening women all across the country, and then, in fact, here, let me give you an example, let's go to Graphics 6 now, in one California County, two women were jailed for allegedly killing. their babies after experiencing stillbirths and testing positive for illicit drugs. Murder charges against Chelsea Becker were dropped this year after she spent a year and a half

in jail because she couldn't afford the $2 million bail, okay? Yeah. They dropped the charges, they dropped the charges, but already she spent a year and a half in jail. Believe it or not, out of the two California cases, she was the lucky one. The other woman was convicted and is still in prison. Adora Perez is about a third of the way through an 11 year sentence for manslaughter after she pleaded guilty to avoid the harsher charge of murder, she's currently trying to appeal. Now again, this has to do with women who might be addicted to an illicit drug.

And as we know, this country is still grappling with an opioid epidemic. The issue has been completely ignored as of late, but it still exists. people are still suffering from this pharmaceutical company fueled epidemic. And to punish a woman who's pregnant and suffers a miscarriage for it, I think is the wrong way to go. If anything, if a woman is pregnant and happens to be addicted to a drug, you want to create an environment where that woman feels comfortable coming forward, looking for help so she can have a healthy pregnancy. But when you have these types of punitive measures in place,

that creates a situation where women are going to be terrified to come forward. They're going to be terrified to look for help when they need it the most. Okay. And so two other important parts of this story. One is it's not just for drugs. In different cases, women have been prosecuted for falling down and having a miscarriage. I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating. Another case, giving birth at home. But wait a minute, a lot of people give birth at home.

Well, no, you should have done it. By the way, the right wing should be furious about that, right? Why is the government making you go to a hospital, right? No, are you giving birth at home? Well, we didn't like the way you were giving birth. Okay, and it led to a stillbirth. That's it, you're going to prison. You're going to prison for murder.

This is insane. Okay, and so, and by the way, unfortunately, in a lot of pro so-called pro-life countries, this happens, In El Salvador, a woman was sentenced to prison for 30 years for having a miscarriage, and she died in jail. And so now, it's almost as if these types of laws are not really about preserving life or anything like that. It seems like it's more about punishing women. Absolutely, but not just women, but you're gonna be shocked to find out that women of color

are overrepresented, okay? And I guarantee you, it's not in the articles that we read, but I guarantee you if you dove into the numbers, the poor would be deeply overrepresented of any color, okay? And so how can I prove that? Well, 6% of American pregnant women admit to using illicit drugs, 8.5% drink alcohol. So that's millions upon millions of people, even if you just took the drugs number, right? Did millions of women get prosecuted for this? No. Because if a lady from the suburbs has one too many dairies, is a is a judge who's in her same demographic going to say, oh, shame on you, you criminal. You're gonna say, I know, but that looks like Susie, who I know, right?

Et cetera. Whereas a woman, there's drugs and she's poor, you see these poor people, they have no responsibility at all. And by the way, it doesn't even have to be a situation in which the judge or, you know, the person making these decisions has like a racial bias, right? It could just be that we have a justice system set up that provides better defense for individuals who have the money to buy better defense, right? Like that's a better attorney.

That's absolutely right, Anna. Like the woman who spent the year and a half in jail when they dropped the charges, because she didn't have the $2 million for bail, whereas a wealthy person could have walked the next day, right? But on top of that, judges are biased, honestly, towards upper middle class and upper class defendants, that's who they are. So when they see someone like that, they see, oh, that looks like my neighbor's kid, or that looks like my aunt or whatever. When they see poor people of any color, they think the criminal class, right? And I think it's mainly subconscious. I'm not saying all judges are bad

people, but that's what you saw in, for example, in the Stanford rape case. Oh, the guy lost a swimming scholarship. Isn't that punishment enough? There, but for the grace of God goes that judge's kid. So in this case, guys, there's also the issue of drugs. When it's, they used to call them crack babies when everybody was demagoguing about this and they took it out on minorities mainly. But now we have Oxycontin. So now it's across all races, right? But are wealthy and middle class white women being punished at the same rate if they're

taking, if they're addicted to drugs while they're pregnant, no way that's happening. Yeah, and just to be super, super clear, no one, regardless of their race, regardless of their economic background should be prosecuted like this if they suffer a stillbirth or miscarriage. I mean, that is a traumatic thing for a woman to go through. You want to create an environment where women feel comfortable coming forward seeking help if they are addicted to drugs. This is just meant to punish women, much like many of the anti-abortion laws that have already passed in red states are meant to do. Just punish women for their sexual activity. In this case, punish women for any activity that could have maybe contributed to a miscarriage.

Guys, they're taking over control of your bodies, it's not at all an exaggeration. One of our members of course came in, ice cream and cake and cake said we get a little closer to living in the real version of Handmaid's Tale every day. And it's in this case, it really is true because that means the minute you get pregnant, you've lost complete control over your body, okay? Because not just because of abortion, but because of miscarriage. So, oh wait, you know what? You were three months pregnant and you drove too fast, got into a car accident.

You shouldn't have driven 65, you should have driven 55. That hurt the fetus. Now your life is not important, okay? We'll put you in prison and one of the women that you see there, 11 years. We'll take away your life, your liberty, we'll take away anything we want because you're our chattel, okay? But the baby inside you, hey, that might be a male, that might be boy, so the baby's important. But it's by the way, it's not a baby, it's a zygote in a lot of these cases. The fetus, the embryo is important.

Your life, your body, your freedom is not at all important. And that's exactly what message the government is sending. And in this case, it's only the right wing. The right wing is saying women do not deserve to control their bodies. They should not have the same freedoms that men do. And it's disgusting. When we come back from the break, another mainstream media reporter, publishing another book about Trump that we got to talk about. So we'll talk about that and more when we return.

All right, back on TYT, Jen Canana with you guys, news. ABC's Jonathan Carl has written a book about the Trump presidency, claiming that Steve Mnuchin, former Treasury Secretary under Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office following the January 6th riots. Now, according to reporting, Mnuchin talked to other cabinet members about using the amendment on the night of January 6th, on the night of January 6th, the day of the attack and the following day, Mnuchin spoke to Mike Pompeo, Trump's Secretary of State, and an avowed loyalist. Now apparently Pompeo even went so far as to ask about a legal analysis for that process,

right? Like how would it play out? Is it worth doing? Can we actually get it done? But the analysis determined that it would take too much time considering that Trump only had 14 days left in office and any attempt to force of forcefully remove him would be subject to legal challenge. And so of course, Mnuchin and Pompeo were reached for comment, Mnuchin did not comment, but there was an interesting response from Pompeo's team. Okay, so Mnuchin did not comment for Carl's book. Carl writes that Pompeo responded only after Carl told Trump, the former secretary of state had not done so.

Pompeo, through a spokesman, denied there had ever been conversations around invoking the 25th amendment, Carl writes. The spokesman declined to put his name to the statement. Okay, guys, so let's get some conclusions and then I'll give you more context. Number one, that means it definitely happened. If it didn't happen, Manuchin and Pompeo were the closest to Trump. They would immediately come on and go, no, that's a ridiculous fake news. There's no way that happened, right?

Manuchas still hasn't commented. He did it. There's no question he did it. Okay, and Pompeo, only after getting pressured by Trump, with an anonymous spokesperson person putting out a statement so that they can't be caught on a lie? Come on, it definitely happened. It 100% happened, okay. So in the words of my father, okay, whose cares?

Oh, I care a thousand percent, everyone should care a thousand percent. Okay, tell me why, I want to know. Okay, so that's the two closest people to Donald Trump. Mike Pompeo was the most loyal throughout, and Mnuchin basically was the president on domestic and economic issues, Trump handed it off to Mnuchin. And that Treasury Secretary and State Department head are the two out of the four biggest cabinet officials. So if those two allies of Trump thought this guy is crazy, we should remove him from office

for being mentally unfit. That means literally everyone around Trump knows he's absolutely bonkers. And I don't mean like in a fun way, oh, he's bonkers. There's no, like a lunatic mentally unfit for any office. That is his closest advisors, his closest cabinet officials. But yet in the country there's a debate about, oh well, should he be president? Should he be president? The guys who work with him the whole time say he's cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

No, but here's my problem, right? Because you'll see reports like this. You'll hear about White House lawyers threatening to quit if Trump does X, Y, or Z. But when push comes to shove, they don't do nothing. They don't really do anything, right? And so Trump, regardless of how much the people surrounding him disagreed with him, regardless of how much they saw him as a threat to the country, they all like nodded their heads, went along. They served as yes men for Donald Trump. Oh, that's 100% right, but there's two different sets of people we're talking about. If you're talking about the people in power, then I share

your skepticism completely. They're not going to do anything. So in this case, why they And didn't they take the action? One, they were gonna run out of time, and that's fair, they probably were, right? But it would have been important symbolically, super important, in my opinion. And two, a lot of the cabinet secretaries that were outraged had already resigned after January 6th. So remember, Elaine Chow is Mitch McConnell's wife, and she resigned in protest saying this, the president is nuts, I can't believe this happened, right? She's not those exact words, but she resigned in protest.

And so did Betsy DeVos. So if they had kept DeVos and Chow and these two, they, and Pence, they might have had enough to say the president is literally crazy and we must remove him from office. That's not Democrats that said, that's Republicans. Now they didn't do it because of what Anna said. So we don't have to worry about, hey, are Republicans gonna be strong enough to defy Trump? There's no chance of that. Are the Democrats going to be strong and effective enough to be able to fight Trump?

Almost no chance. No chance. Right. So that isn't the issue. That's the first set of people. The second set of people are the voters. If the voters all actually knew that everyone around Donald Trump thinks he's mentally unfit, that could affect their votes.

And certainly, Anna, even if you say no, 40% of the country is utterly hopeless, if you told them Trump is literally nuts but hates brown people, they would still vote for him, okay, I might. I think that's too high a number, and I think half of Republicans are in that category. The other half are more questionable. But remember, there's independence, and they would be greatly swayed by that. They would be. It's in the polling.

You could see, they are, they sway back and forth on the issues, okay? And so, but hasn't been explained to the American people enough? No, Trump's top allies thinks he's nuts, right? And the answer is no. So the next time he goes into election, the Democrats will barely bring it up. The media will just do their standard yelling at Trump and call him a racist and stuff. And the American people will never find out the guy is an actual lunatic. Yeah, I think it would have zero impact.

Even if the media was constantly talking about, by the way, over the last two days, they have been constantly talking about this Mnuchin, Mike Pompeo story, right? I don't think it has an impact on his base at all. And I think what the issue is, look, what did Donald Trump in in the 2020 election? Was it because of all of the maniacal things he did while he was in office? No, it was because of what happened to the economy and what happened to the country during the COVID pandemic. His handling of the COVID pandemic was really the only thing that persuaded voters to turn

against him and go with Biden. And by the way, when you look at the swing states, Biden didn't beat him by that much, which is terrifying. But I can prove my point definitively by telling you about the power of media and using it right. If Biden's secretary of state and secretary treasury said they were we had credible reporting that they were considering using the 25th amendment because they thought Biden was mentally unfit. He wouldn't even make it through the term. Okay, because you know, Fox News would go ballistic. Every conservative media outlet in the country would repeat that literally a billion times, okay?

And they would say, I'm mentally unfit, crazy, lunatic, lost it, senile, even his top and, my God, his Secretary of the Treasury, they both think he's a lunatic, right? And then CNN, MSNBC would be like, is he lunatic or is he mentally unfit or is he senile? Which one is it? But either way, he should be removed. Should Kamala Harris be president? Should it be Pete Buttigieg?

They would all talk about it nonstop. When it's Trump, tiny bit here and there, and then they'll drop it. So you see my point, the power of media, if the Democrats, if the media were, if the Democrats were competent or the media was honest and actually could get information, actionable information to the public, it would make all the difference in the world. I think the Democrats need to give voter something to vote for, right? Everything that they've done has relied on painting Donald Trump as a maniac. Like that's all they do, and it has not worked.

Well, Anna, I'll end on this. Okay, it is enormously possible to do both. Trump used to attack everyone 24-7 and they were all effective because they were amplified. So it wasn't like Trump wasn't like, well, I can't attack Clinton and Eric Holder at the same time to pick two random Democrats. No, he'd attack both of them and he'd tear both their guts out, right? And the conservative media would amplify it and he'd do it twice a day, eight times a day. So Democrats are like, wait, we can only do one thing at a time and mildly. Look, man, if we're progressive, strong progressive ever gets in charge, you're going to be

amazed at what's possible because Democrats your entire life have never actually put up a fight on anything. They could do it on policy, they could do it on this issue, they could do it on every issue, but they're they're super weak and they can barely get out of bed. All right, that does it for our first hour. When we come back, back. Now you have right-wing moms looking for bounties on teachers. That story and more when we come back. 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 Podcasts at apple.com slash

t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.