The Young Turks - Inflation Nation - August 15, 2025

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month Shopify trial and start selling today at ⁠shopify.com/tyt Donald Trump claims inflation is “down to a perfect number" and gets fact checked by conservative media. Bakari Sellers and Scott Jennings join forces to attack Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani. A new scoop reveals a White House “loyalty rating” for companies. Hosts: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur & Jordan Uhl SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com 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. Let's go! Hey, guys, Friday! Begha! Dropy All right, power, power panel.

Jake, Eugen, Jordan, Yule, John Iderola, it feels like the oldest, we're all in studio, what the bejesus is this. All right, it's the online news show, The Young Turks. It's 2016 up in here. Yeah, I know, right? Here comes Bernie. Well, here comes Roe. Maybe? Good.

Maybe Bernie? Here comes Stuart. Think about it. Okay, so look, we got a lot of news for you guys, of course, as always. The Uniparty is a fascinating creature. So you're not going to be surprised to find out that they have joined forces the Transformers have to fight against Mom Dottie. So we've got more on that today. We've got more on.

the inflation, and by the way, so we're gonna start with that, but there's a couple things throughout the show, it touches on the, like, what's gonna happen with both the markets and Donald Trump, and I think that the answer is not good news for either, I've been talking about that now for about a week, but more information on that has come in, and so this is going to affect politics in a massive way, but let's tell you in the heart of the story. So, John, what do you go? Why don't we get some of the actual numbers and that we can discuss, we're gonna start with this. So we had the worst inflation in the history of our country. And now our inflation is down

to a perfect number, a beautiful number, hardly any at all. Headline number is whoppingly big. Oh my goodness. Up nine tenths of a percent, up nine tenths. We have breaking news right now and a spike in the producer price level of inflation. All sale inflation. So much higher than expected, Adam. What is this? Not what we wanted to see, not what anyone wanted to see. But I think this is tariffs. Because that's how tariffs work. And Trump unfortunately is the last person in the country to realize that. He claimed as you saw yesterday that it was down to a perfect number, barely anything.

It's the highest that it's been since 2022. Maybe in fantasy land, the numbers are moving in the right direction. But unfortunately for Trump in America, the Bureau of Labor Statistics at least as of this week still puts out accurate information. And it doesn't uphold the idea that he wants to spread that his economic policy is best. benefiting Americans. And you saw the pundits there, but it's not just the pundits that are freaking out. The American people see what's happening and the numbers are already moving very much in the wrong direction for Donald Trump.

So we're gonna get to that, including all the new inflation numbers. But, Jank, I hadn't been expecting this. I was waiting next month for the jobs report. What was your reaction when you saw the inflation numbers? Yeah, so the inflation numbers are bad. They're gonna have a number of consequences. One is that the interest rates will not be lowered as much as people were hoping for, because now the Fed's going to get jittery about weight.

Is inflation going to skyrocket? And if it does, you don't want to cut rates because that'll add fuel to the fire of inflation. So they're actually trying to protect the economy, but along with the economy, Trump. But is Trump the moron going to see that? No. Because you're like, me what cuts? Yeah, but brother, your tariffs are driving up the inflation. If you get what you want, it's going to be way worse for you, right?

And so what you're going to see in this segment is, one, we're going to tell you about all the ramifications of this and why I call Trump a clown. In that little short clip that we showed you in about a minute in the longer, in the longer version of a minute, he has three spectacular lies. But I don't even know if there are lies. I don't know what's in his head. Like, does he think they're true? Because he doesn't know that much.

So, but all of this is going to catch up with them. Number one is we're going to show you here, it's catching out with them in the polling, and that's going to be a huge issue for the Republicans in the midterms and beyond, right? And number two, it's going to catch up with them in terms of the economy. And the possibility of stagflation is here now. And I've got something that is not in the news that I want to tell you guys about that in regards to unemployment. And I think that Trump is going to, like this is, okay, look, you've seen. a million thinks he's done wrong, right? And there are a lot of things to be concerned about.

But in terms of the economy and what decides elections, I'm spotting that iceberg. It's not, we're not, you know, he's not gonna hit it imminently. It's not like, oh, two days from now or even two weeks from now. But I can now on the horizon see the iceberg that Trump is headed straight towards. So we'll tell you more about that. Yeah, and to be clear, it's not like Biden took control and didn't get us enough out of the path. This is him aiming at it. This is Trump's, like this, none of this needed to happen. This is all voluntary.

But let me give you some numbers, and then we'll jump into the back and forth discussion. So what we're talking about here is the producer price index for the month of July, the PPI. And that aims to track prices of all output from U.S. producers. This includes goods and services that are purchased by other producers, sold directly to consumers, and exported to international buyers. It's less of an individual consumer thing and more of like a wholesale thing. And so in some ways, what it does is it gives us an early heads up of the sort of extra inflation that's eventually gonna hit the actual consumers.

It tracks how inflation impacts consumer prices, but at the retail level, sorry, that's the CPI, the PPI tracks it during the initial production of goods and services, one level sort of before it hits the actual store shelves. And here's what it found, an increase of 0.9% from the past month, 3.3% from a year ago, which is much higher than the projections had been. It was expected that it would be about one fifth as much on a monthly basis and about half is significant from last year. But you can take a look at this chart going all the way back to 2021. And you can see that in fact, it's right basically on the level of what we were having in the middle of 2022. In the tail end

of the darkest part of the pandemic, he has managed to shoot us all the way back up to that. And so that's sort of what we're talking about here. And think for a second what Donald Trump has been advocating for in the economy. Now I'm not talking about the tariffs that are causing a bunch of this, but who does he want to sack? He wants to get rid of Jerome Powell, too late Powell, who won't cut the rates, not by like 0.25 or 0.5. Trump, just like a day ago, was like it should be three or four points lower. Looks like maybe Jerome Powell wasn't too late in this case, maybe thank God they didn't cut the rates in half. a couple of months ago.

No, no, I mean, look, this is what I'm saying. Like, he might not be lying because he's just that dumb. Like, the idea of cutting interest rates by three or four points is maniacal. No one in planet Earth would even consider that idea. That's not a thing, that's not a thing. So like- Not in what go, over the course of five years, maybe. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, in one cut, I mean, that would be so drastic, it would lead to massive consequences. It's when you say things like that, what you're saying is, I don't know anything about the economy, period. You should disqualify anything I'm saying because I'm a fool. It's like saying, I plan to have a negative 20% unemployment rate. And you're like, that's not a thing, man. It's just not, okay. So in that short clip that we showed you in the beginning, the longer version, first

of all, he says we have perfect inflation. And then you saw the three people that we, but to be fair, that's fake news, right? No, those are all of his supporters, including Maria Barteromo. And she's like, what the hell is going on with inflation? This is a huge number, right? So she, like, that's not the person who, like, she's trying to help Trump, but she's genuinely shocked by the number. And why is everybody so shocked about it, like a 0.9 or whatever?

Guys, the markets are all about expectations. So when you're expecting a 0.2 and you get a 0.9, that's a giant number in that context, right? And he's talking about these, this is the kind of inflation numbers we saw as COVID was hitting and we were having massive supply chain problems. Those supply chain problems drove most of the inflation and got it to the point where the American people were so mad that they brought Trump back in. He's bringing it to those levels with no supply chain issues, with no outside natural disaster happening. He's just choosing this maniacal path.

And as you're going to see in a minute, it's clobbering his approval ratings when it comes to inflation and the economy. And that's the number one thing that people care about. Number two lie that he had was the foreign countries are paying us at record rates. Brother, how many times we have to tell you, man? Look, you can make a different argument for tariffs, and you should try to make a logical one. I'm rebuilding the stealing country, companies in this country. All right, all right, not exactly, but at least it's like a defensible argument, right? But when you say the foreign countries are, but they're literally not paying us.

That's not how tariffs work. We've gone over this 2,000 times, and he cannot get it in his head. China doesn't pay you, the company that imports it pays the tariff, then usually passes it on to the customer. And what's happened now is for a little while, because he tacoed back and forth, they didn't, the full tariffs didn't start to hit. The second thing that happened was, he's like, you better not raise your prices all the companies, otherwise I'm going to have Kid Rock shoot up your beer cans or whatever, right?

And so everybody's like a little skittish, and I said it's not going to hold, they're They're corporations, corporations are in the maximizing profit business. So guess what they've gotten back to doing? Maximizing profit. So they're passing the costs on to you now. And that's why you're saying inflation skyrocket. So that's two things massively wrong that he doesn't understand. And the third one is, he said, oh, yeah, the tariffs have brought in billions of those.

Maybe trillions. No, not maybe trillions. We would notice trillions. It's not even close. He says outlandish things like, my people were like, here, here's an extra $29 billion. But we don't know where it came from. We don't know where the numbers are. We're all stupid.

Okay. And Trump's like, I bet it's the tariffs. This is his retelling, right? We looked at the numbers and sir, you're right. It is the tariffs. Come on, man. If that's true, fire your entire staff. You can show you exactly where the numbers are.

And I'm not in the government. So look, we're going to get to how this is hurting him. I'm going to get to the unemployment disaster that's headed in our way. But Jordan, what do you think so far? I mean, there's a couple of things I'm really worried about here. And first, like you mentioned, Jank, the push to fire Jerome Powell is just like really concerning. Either trying to gin up these charges over or these accusations over the reconstruction or the repairs to the Federal Reserve building. And this is to exert pressure.

I mean, Jank just laid out how this would be disastrous, how inflation would rise. It could potentially skyrocket if they were to drastically or even to some extent cut rates. If they were to re-implement quantitative easing, it wouldn't be helpful in this moment, as much as some people might want it. And what they're trying to do is what we've seen all over the federal government, and that is to apply pressure and take control of seemingly independent aspects of our government, or in this case, an independent entity. It's a further encroachment of our rights, our institutions.

The government, and he is ultimately chipping away at our democracy, as we're seeing in the takeover in D.C., to some of the more boring and dry aspects of what he's doing. In this case, we should all be concerned. And the other aspect I'm looking at is how the right and talking heads on the right are trying to justify this or explain this away. And to some extent, it's really entertaining to watch how they are increasingly unable to justify these tariffs and maintain that there's no inflation that everything is going well. because it's like Jank laid out, news you saw in the sought, they can't explain it. All they care about is dollars and cents. That's it. For a lot of these people in financial channels or or at institutions or media outlets that care about money, it's impossible to ignore. And I'm getting a little bit of enjoyment

watching them panic. Yeah, and the funny thing is just knowing like all the people around him, assent, Lutnik, they all know what's going to happen. They have to pretend that they don't. They all have to go on TV and pretend, oh yeah, no, I don't understand how trade deficits work. I don't understand how tariffs work or who pays, but they do know. So none of them are surprised by this stuff coming out. I take sunny side up eggs and I plop spaghetti with butter on top of it. You can mix it. So as you can see, that's a bit of a disaster.

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But that said, why don't we get to some of the effects? Once this hits, once it devastates families' finances, what's going to go on in terms of the political ramifications? Well, the American people are not at all happy with Donald Trump's handling of either inflation or the economy. And here's a little bit of CNN's Harry Enten describing how bad the numbers are for Trump. Look, voters on Trump in inflation. He won the 2024 election because he was more entrusted on inflation than Kamala Harris was.

led by a margin of nine points. Look at where his net approval stands today, though, on inflation. My goodness gracious. In of the gutter, we go, underwater we go. He's 25 points underwater. My goodness gracious, that is where the Little Mermaid is, and he is matching the Little Mermaid. Yet if Republicans in Congress think that they can escape the wrath of the voters

when it comes to inflation, I have a bit of a rude awakening for them. Trust which party more on inflation? You go back to the 2022 midterms. Look at this. Republicans led by 13 points on which party was more trust in inflation. Look at where we are now. Nearly a 15-point shift in the Democrats' direction. It's within the margin of error, but the Democrats up by a point.

What is the top issue for you right now? It's a runaway. It's inflation. It's 34% compared to the economy, which is basically very similar at 16%. Medicare and Social Security at 14%. But the bottom line is voters, and Paul after Paul after Paul say that Donald Trump has taken his eye off the ball off the big issue. of the day, which is inflation.

I really should have gotten into that game. I didn't know that there was such an element of color commentary, like how much fun you can have, like inflation numbers have, they've gone too deep, they've dug too deep, too greedily, they're down with the bell rock now. I could have a lot of fun with that, but the numbers are really bad. And I think the biggest problem for, I hope at least, if we're living in a rational society is like under Biden, you have inflation that for a variety of reasons is bad, if improving at the end of his term. Supply chain issues obviously drive up prices,

let alone, you know, they pumped a lot of stimulus in the economy, which everybody forgets, by the way, that the first two rounds of that, I think, were under Donald Trump, but everybody pretends that Biden did all of it. But anyway, so Biden wasn't seen to be doing enough, quickly enough to stop it, and he wasn't good at communicating what he was doing. Donald Trump is not only, as I said earlier, intended, like doing this without any regard, like he's choosing to do this. None of these tariffs need to happen. None of this needs to be going on. But then also, he's not only not empathizing with the American people, he is actively

gaslighting them every day, spitting in their face with stupid comments like, oh, it's a perfect number, it's down to nothing, prices are down, gas is less than $1.90 or whatever, like he is telling them not to believe their lying eyes when they're at the pump, when they're in the store, how can that possibly be a good strategy when people are already against you on the topic? Yeah, so there's, the gas lighting is super important because that's what Biden tried and the Democrats tried. Oh, no, Biden is young and dynamic. Behind the scenes, trust us, right? And oh, yeah, we're going to pass all of our priorities. Wink, right? And then they don't pass anything in Biden's eye. And so they lost all credibility. That's why the Democrats are in the 20s now in approval rating. Even at a time when Trump has started to light himself on fire, the Democrats can't pick up steam.

So if you think, oh, well, that's terrible for the, if you're on the left or you're a Democrat, et cetera. No, what I'm telling you is that's about to happen to Trump. Because in the old days, the reason why the Democrats got caught is because in the old days, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, et cetera, would tell you, no, he is young and dynamic. Shut up. He is young undynamic. And in fact, they did until about three months, you know, three, four months left, right? So, and that would work. But because there's so much online media and other forms of media, it stopped working. Especially after the debate, in the case of Donald Trump, yeah, Fox News in the old days and Trump himself, they had the two giant amplifiers and they were like, and they would just blast that message out. And the right wing would never hear any other message. So they would just believe that that was the news, right?

Now they're getting the news from all over the place, Rogan and Dylan and all this different places, right? Podcasts and stuff. So now Trump's going to get caught because his outrageous lies are too easily disprovable. And none of that matters, guys. What matters is, yes, but what am I paying for eggs? What am I paying for food and gas and clothes and those famous toys? You're going to get $30 or $2, right? You're not going to be able to trick people.

Democrats keep kept thinking, oh, no, we won't deliver on anything. And we'll just trick people into voting for us. Now the Republicans have always done that. The corporate teams of both sides. That's their playbook. That's all they ever do, right? So now the Republican so-called populists, who are never populace to begin with, the Trump team, are like, oh, yeah, we'll just trick them. We'll just have Donald Trump lie and Fox News lie.

It stopped working. So here's a number of, now let me describe the iceberg. Okay, actually, first, let me give you the polls that we're doing, because I'm super curious what you guys are concerned about. So on TYT, we have, which worries you most right now? Ongoing inflation and high prices, sounds pretty concerning, be as high interest rates. and that's still going to be an issue and now going to be a bigger issue or tariffs. Okay, so that's up on t.t.com. In the live chat, and we do the show live six o'clock Monday through Friday, make sure

you're checking it out. How worried are you about rising inflation, not at all slightly, moderately, extremely. So look, I don't know that I would say extremely right now, but I'm curious what you guys think that's why we do the polls, and then we like you participating in being part of the show. Okay, so now let me describe the iceberg. So, first of all, one of our members wrote in on t.yt.com, he has a funny handle. Jank's left tricep of fury. Fair enough. Says, you think inflation is bad now.

The tariffs have barely kicked in yet. It's coming. That's totally true. The lower level tariffs have begun to come in. When the higher level tariffs come and then what, stay two, three, six months? Oh, no, we're going to hit that iceberg straight in the middle. Okay. So that's giant problem number one.

Giant problem number two for him is outside of the economy. That's he's losing credibility with his own base. So I described all of that context for you guys, because now when he says, oh, of course, Epstein files never existed, and there were no clients. In the old days, that's all the right wing would have heard. Oh, apparently Epstein files never existed.

Trump would say it, Fox News would say it, nobody would say otherwise. Charlie Kirk and others would go, oh, of course, the files never existed, right? right? And they would have gotten, now they can't get that message out. And everybody knows, yeah, the files existed, you jackasses, right? And his subservience to Israel would have never been noted. Forget Fox on CNN or MSNBC. That's a very last thing anyone would have talked about in mainstream media. So now everybody, including the right wing more, but they actually know,

the independence the most, are like, what are you doing, man? I mean, at every turn, you're not America first, you're Israel first, right? The reason why it matters in the context of this conversation is, now with an eroded credibility and a dispersed media, Trump comes in with his usual load of BS, and he thinks he's going to be able to sell it. Now, he's going to find out it's like Trump water and Trump stakes and the three Trump casinos and every other business that he's bankrupted. At some point, you run into a brick wall of reality. Now, the last thing that I promise you guys, that's so important. AI, look guys, I mean, I wear two different hats here, right?

I host the show, but I also run this company. So I actually know folks in the business community in a way that others are not as familiar with, right? Just by the very context of that, of the CEOing that I do, right? And I'm telling you right now, everyone I talk to in the business community, AI is coming and it's going to wipe away a ton of jobs. like people are going to be shocked at how quick and severe it is. So not imminent like tomorrow, but imminent as in six months from now, people are going to

you that reaction we showed you in the beginning with about the 0.9 inflation increase. They're going to be like, what is the unemployment number? No, this can't be real. So if you hit unemployment and inflation at the same time, boom, you ran right into the iceberg is split to ship in half, and everybody's in the water. So that's where Trump's headed right now. If we get the numbers at all. Yeah, if we even know what the accurate job. No, no, that's, so that's a great point, Jordan. And see, the market and corporate rule has this advantage, right? It has a thousand disadvantages. But when they have unreliable

numbers, they're going to panic. Okay, if they sense unemployment's going up and inflation is going up, and they start to, and right now, they don't sense any of it. The market's totally lull to sleep. They're like, yummy tax bill. Mm, deregulation and tax cuts. And they're on that high. Oh, they're like, oh, and Trump's a chicken anyway. He's going to chicken out. Oh, none of these inflamed tariffs are going to matter. And they're like on this, and now I'm beginning to hear, as I said earlier in the week, the thing that you hear right before crashes. Oh, this is a change. This is a different type of market. No, this one is going to just keep

going up. Okay, we're almost done with icebergs right there, right? So when, so they're not going to hold on Trump. They're not going to stick with like there will become a point where they start to panic that they're not getting real numbers. And then they're going to hit Trump. Yeah, and you'll have the ADP numbers as well. You have some insight into the reality of the situation. But I will say, already starting to see some employers lay people off because of AI. So it's starting to happen. I know multiple people who've had their jobs affected. Some are laid off or reclassified because of AI. Or they saw layoffs at their company. It's, it's scary and this is all in service of profit for these corporations. They don't care about you,

the worker. But one thing the Democrats can and should be doing right now is fighting for and making central to their messaging going into 26, a robust, progressive populist platform and then delivering on it because you could make the argument that to some extent the Biden campaign through its collaboration and strategic alignment with some element with some element, of the Bernie campaign in 2020 led to them beating Trump. It certainly wasn't enough, and they had nothing to point to meaningfully going into 2024. You can pave the way for long-term political success if you not only make it central to your party, but actually fight and deliver on it. And I don't, I'm not going to hold

my breath. Well, look, honestly, that's why I started Rebellion Pack, because they're never going to learn. You have to just beat them, right? And so you have to show them by example. If Ojetta and Randy Bryce win in their districts and J.D. Shulton wins Iowa, maybe, oh, oh, economic populism, oh, that's how you do it. Like with Mamdani, they're like, oh, you propose new things. We didn't, the morons literally didn't know that. They're like, I thought you just tell them, shut up and we'll do nothing for you and we're better than the Republicans. What, that's not a winning strategy, right?

No, it's not. So they're immovable. The Democratic leadership is so corporate, so corrupt. We have a story on it later in this program. They are totally and utterly immovable. You have to just move around them, right? If Democrats don't go towards economic populism in 26 and 28, they'll give up a golden opportunity. I mean, this is going to be a change moment, I think 28 is, like Obama.

Obama had a moment in 2008 where he could have done massive change, and he chickened out and didn't do it, right? This time, you have to do it, otherwise you'll kill the Democratic Party. You have to promise it and you have to deliver it. If you don't do that, bye-bye Democratic Party. They'll never, ever trust you again. On the other hand, if you do do it, my God, in the middle of desperation, which is I think where we're going to go, if you then deliver for the American people and give them some sort of salvation and you lift their wages and you reduce prices,

they'll love you for 40, 50 years, just ask FDR, right? So, guys, as dark as the times are now, like if the, as I was going to say the sentence, I pulled it back, I was going to say, if the Democrats play it right, then it's also an enormous, amazing opportunity to change the country for the better. The problem is the beginning of that sentence, if the Democrats play it right. Okay, RebellionPact.com, let's make them play it right. Yeah, and as many people know, it is difficult to get someone to learn a lesson when their paycheck or campaign donations rely on them not learning that lesson.

Yes, exactly. But we will see. Okay, we're gonna take a short break, lots more after this. Ezier in 1963, Willow Logical WF Danio also with us, because they just became members. And every member is a part of the show. And I'm a producer of the show in a sense. So we appreciate you guys. Hit that join button below on YouTube, do that or t.com slash join.

We really appreciate that. All right, John, what's next? Okay, let's jump into something. I think the panel is going to like starting with this. I actually feel like this is an instance. Two of you have tangled a couple times in this show. But if I listen to you, and you haven't spoken on this yet, but I've heard you talk before about it. Neither one of you seems to think that Zoro and Mamdani would be good for the country.

So on that panel, you have Bikari Sellers, a liberal, you Scott Jennings, more of a Republican, and they don't often get along. It's kind of the whole point of these shows for them to fight, but in this case, Casey Hunt did accurately find something that they agree on, which is that Zoran Mamdani is the absolute worst, and he needs to be stopped. Now, not everybody hates him, not even every establishment Democrat hates him. So we're going to have to give credit to a few. We'll get to David La Axarad in just a bit. But first, one of the big ones historically is Barack Obama. And apparently, the New York Times reports, some Democrats panicked over Mamdani,

or I would put that in the present tense. Obama called him, he actually reached out to him. And so according to the Times, they had a lengthy call back in June in which Obama congratulated Mamdani, offering him advice about governing and discuss the importance of giving people hope in a dark time. And it isn't just Obama. Others in his orbit, either currently or back during his presidency, have shown an interest in Mamdani, including John Favro, who was a speechwriter, Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor.

And as we said, David Axelrod, who served as Obama's chief campaign strategist and also senior advisor, apparently stopped by his campaign headquarters as well. And he actually appeared on CNN and was asked about Mamdani. First of all, he's a Democratic nominee in the city of New York. And he has ignited a sense of hope and a sense of enthusiasm, particularly among young people, and change, yes, among young people in that city by focusing on the issue that actually is the issue nationally, which, but it's accentuated in New York where prices and costs are very, very high. And rents are very, very high. And that is affordability. So I think he's an intriguing guy, and I was happy to sit down with him. necessarily agree with all of his solutions, but I think he's raising the right questions. And I think it wasn't an accident that he won. And so we can get to the video at some point, Baccarcellars apparently wasn't buying that there's

sort of a link between the two, between Obama and Mamdani. And I did consider briefly that this could be an Obama thing where like behind the scenes to reach out to him, it generates some headlines that looks like you're tapping into this youth progressive thing. But hypothetically, maybe behind the scenes are still opposing him. Maybe I'm being overly cynical. What do you guys think? Yeah, I think there's three different buckets here. So, but first I'm curious what you guys think, because this is one of my favorite questions.

It's in the live chat. Who hates Mumdadi more? A, establishment, Democrats are B, MAGA, okay? Because it's a competition, it's a race. And I have my thoughts on that. So there it is, live chat is during the live show, obviously, which is. is 6 o'clock every day, Monday through Friday. And yeah, I agree with you guys, overwhelmingly establishment Dems.

So Maga has issues with him because, ah, he's a communist, he's a Muslim, he's this, he's that, right? But that's kind of standard fair. They think Kamala Harris is a communist. I mean, it's hilarious, right? They think Barack Obama's Muslim, whatever, right? But establishment Democrats, like Bakari Sellers and Hakeem Jeffries are like, like you could see the rage when they talk about Mum, Donnie. They despise this guy, okay?

And so why? Because they represent the donors, and the donors don't like Mumdani. And there's two reasons why they don't like Mumdani. One is, let's keep it real, Israel, right? So A-PAC has set the word out. You are not to back Mumdani. So that's why Akeem Jeffries, we'll show you in a little bit. It's like, I'm not going to endorse them.

A-Pak, what should I do? Right, like just anyway, they're hopeless. They're totally hopeless. Bakari Sellers basically works for APEC, that's a long story. So of course they're gonna, and what do we tell you guys on the actors all the time, right? When it's social issues, now you guys, she says, right? It's not her fault, the CNN anchor says, oh, you guys normally disagree. Yet they disagree over, oh, trans this, and that, and culture war nonsense, and Sidney, right?

But when it comes to any economic issue or any issue that affects the donors, Huh? What a surprise. You guys completely agree, right? Of course they do. They're the Unip Party. And by the way, when Tom Massey or Marjorie Taylor Green opposes spending more money on Israel, all of a sudden the establishment of Republicans agree with the Democrats. Oh, yeah, outrageous, how dare you, right? So the Unip Party is going to come from, the establishment Democrats, most especially here. But there's a second bucket, right? That's the Obama bucket there by themselves. Then there's a third bucket, which is the voters.

So the voters, look, I think that it's pretty clear. We've shown you the polling on it. So he's winning the young, he's winning overall, he's winning Jewish voters in New York. He's winning young Jewish voters in a landslide, right? Etcetera. So like all of this propaganda against them isn't moving the numbers. So the voters are largely cautiously on the side, cautious because it's change. It's different.

So they're not sure what to make of it yet. Honestly, most of his proposals, nobody's ever tried. So, but they're excited about the idea of change. So the voters are clear, the establishment is clear. The people who are not clear, you're right, John. I'm not clear on Obama either. I have massive skepticism and cynicism towards anything Obama does. My sense of it is, and I'm curious what you all think,

is that they got a note, basically, from the audience through Pod Save America and other things. Obama has to seem to care. It seems like he's in his castle. And the prince never comes down from his castle unless he's affected, right? So anytime like it touches him, like the other day when Trump went after him, huge job, put out a statement, right? Oh, you guys are like the house is burning down?

No, whatever, dude. And so I think this is the Obama team going, oh, no, no, we are engaging. Look at us. We care about this New York election. Obama will now call Mom Donnie. And we are looking for someone new. And if the Obama team's looking for someone new, in my opinion, and I hope I'm wrong about this, and they really might have changed. So I've got an open mind on it.

But usually they're looking for somebody like Obama. Change on the outside, continuity on the inside. So maybe they're sensing something in Mom Donnie that we're not seeing right now, where they think, maybe we can work with this brother. Oh, yeah, change, change, but remember, be cool. Now, I hope they're wrong about that, and I hope I'm wrong about that analysis. And maybe they woke up after 20 straight years and realized, oh, maybe going all corporate is not the way to go. And if anybody's going to wake up and be smart enough to realize that, it would be Obama, Axelrod, and the rest of them.

So that jury is out. I'm not sure. What do you think, jury? Yeah, I think for me, it's, I'm just going to wait and see. He's already, Mom, Don, he's already under a ton of scrutiny. It's going to be a brutal general election. You're seeing the attacks from people on the Democratic side with Bukari Sellers, as Jank mentioned.

Super pro-Israel goes back years with Yadelsons, goes back years with A-PAC, even pro-Million dollar pack to elect pro-Israel Democrats. That's why he's pretending like he's upset or concerned about Mondani. But when it comes to some of these Obama-era figures calling to congratulate him, personally, not going to read any more into it than that. It is a big task being the New York City mayor. That seems like an impossible job and Mamdani will probably be subject to a lot of legitimate criticism if he is elected.

So we'll wait and see, I think the best course for everybody on the progressive left is just to see when he's in office, how he governs and criticize based on actual decisions, actual policy, his governance style versus who calls to congratulate him. I just think it feeds into the right and the establishment. Democrats attacks on him. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just add one quick thing. I forgot to mention the second set of donors that hate Mamdani, and that's corporate goons, who are like, oh my God, he's going to raise my taxes by two or three points. This is an outrage, communism.

So when the corporate guys joined the Israeli supporting lobby, oh my God, that is a super powerful combo. So that's him taking on the full brunt of the establishment. Yeah, why don't we briefly turn to the second of those groups? those groups, because as much as we can learn about like Obama and them, about who they're supporting, a lot of us are probably wondering how the Democratic Party is going to act going into the midterms. What sort of candidates are they going to get behind? And it feels like the opposition to Mamdani is a pretty strong signal that they haven't learned any lessons from the past elections, and they're going to keep going for, you know, centrist, corporate

friendly candidates. But as a great example of that, we're going to turn first to Hakeem Jeffries. Against all odds, Hakeem Jeffries is still refusing to endorse Zohran Mandani, who I think won the primary 12 years ago. But apparently they haven't been able to speak, and he hasn't been convinced of anything yet. And so here he is on CNBC talking about this. You have not publicly come out endorsed and endorsed him yet. And I'm curious what you're thinking.

Well, he ran a strong race in the primary, obviously, relentlessly focused on affordability, which is a big problem, of course, here in New York City, along with every other part of the United States of America. And he outworked the opposition. He outmessaged the opposition and outorganized the opposition. But now during the general election, of course, he's going to have to demonstrate to a broader electorate, including in many of the neighborhoods that I represent in Brooklyn, that his ideas can actually be put into reality. Yeah, so the weird thing about that is he's pitching it as, I haven't endorsed him, but it's only because he hasn't convinced the voters yet.

But Hakim, we have access to polls. they're overwhelmingly supporting him. It seems like they have convinced the voters. He just hasn't convinced you, perhaps because you don't want to be convinced. And maybe it is that as we've been talking about, it appears that for whatever reason, A PAC money and affiliated money, they don't want Zorn Mandani elected. And Hakeem Jeffries kind of has a dog in that fight because he's received $1.74 million $1 million from various PACs supportive of the right wing government of Israel.

You can see them listed below, that's a lot of money. It's not his only big donors that might have a dog in this fight. A-PAC is on the list of the top five, Black Rock and Apollo Global Management, Lockheed Martin, MetLife, which is behind insurance and all that. So all of those are, they represent small dollar donors and his constituents in Brooklyn or whatever. Geez, I don't understand any politicians in America. How can they get reelected when it is so obvious how little they care about regular people? But anyway, the guy's very popular, he's already running laps around Cuomo, who I guess, by the way,

since he's not willing to go against Cuomo and endorse Mondani, I guess Cuomo has still the interest of the voters. I mean, not in the polls, but evidently there's something about Mandani that worries Jeffries. And nothing about Cuomo, none of the corruption. corruption stuff, no other sexual harassment stuff, none of that stuff raises to the level to be a reason to endorse Mandati. Although I am sure that if I were gonna back and look at what Hakim Jeffries has said about Donald Trump and his various corruption and sexual harassment scandals, I'm sure he rightly centered it as a reason to oppose him as a candidate. But now,

maybe he just keeps out of the fight. And maybe Cuomo cruises back into office. He seems fine with that. Guys, you see what's happening? I mean, look, I've been doing the this for 23 years on the Young Turks, 20 years online, oldest show in online history, right? And so I've got to cover these guys for most of their careers. And so when we used to say stuff like this on the Young Turks 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, like Hakeem Jeffries is an obvious sellout. Look at all of his donors. And he had the same donors back then, right? People would have, five years ago even, outrage. And there's no support from anything. A couple Pro Bernie shows, there were good allies, like we held down the fort in the old days,

the online left, right? But mainstream media would have canceled you to know. And in fact, they did. That's why I'm banned on all three cable news networks, because I say outrageous things like Hakeem Jeffries obviously works for the donors. And if you say that, you're banned on cable news. That is outrageous. And if you add APEC, yeah, T-Semite, right? So like, like, if right now, no one on cable news is allowed to say that the obvious, Hakeem Jeffries does not work for the voters. He works for the donors. I mean, are you kidding me?

Lockheed Martin, Apollo management. Remember when he went and begged Silicon Valley for money after the election? He's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we'll sell out to you as much as Donald Trump will. And then-Jank, to be fair, I think Lockheed Martin builds a lot of bombers in Brooklyn, actually. That's my comment, yeah. Okay, so, and then on A-PAC and all the Israeli lab, guys, that's not just a normal, Hey, you know, we're in normal times and even then funding Israel doesn't make sense. But okay, we could live with it, whatever, it might.

No, no, he is actively taking a massive amount of money from PACs that are not just neutral on Israel, that are in favor of the right wing genocidal government of Israel today. And he's like, oh, you guys are right wing religious lunatics in the middle of a genocide. Oh yeah, of course, please give me your money, give me your money. Oh, yeah, Mom Donnie's a problem. Real pro, I don't know. I don't know about Mom Donnie. By the way, if you say, hey, you know, I don't want to support your corporate Democrat

that you put up in a race that's an obvious loser, right? He'll be like, how dare you? Unity, right? What happened to unity? Okay, I was going to add an adjective. But anyway, what happened to unity? No unity, all lies. But now I gave you that context on history because now when we talk about it,

People are like, well, that's obvious that Hakeem Jeffries is corrupt, right? Before it was the most outrageous thing you could possibly say. Now when cable news guys, an idiot New York Times reporters and editors are like, oh, that's just how it's conspiratorial that he might be working for the donors. People look at them like they're in a zoo. Like, hey there, have you figured anything out yet? No, me like Hakeem Jeffries, me not see donors, me not see millions. of dollars. What's Israel? What's corporations? I don't know anything. Okay. Now they look

like idiots. Those guys who used to bully us the whole time. Now they're getting bullied for doing obvious marketing and propaganda for the powerful. Yeah. I mean, they have thrown some of the most disingenuous and ridiculous attacks at Mamdani. And they've tried to make him answer for things he didn't say. We've talked about that in the past. But also on that CNBC segment, Akeem Jeffries was asked about Mumdani and his proposals for more rent control, rent stabilization in New York. And Jeffries said that it is a legitimate issue that has been raised that Mamdani lives in a rent control department despite not meeting the income criteria. And he's like the Mamdani campaign is gonna have to answer

for that. First of all, it's not true. He lives in a rent stabilized unit like 40% of renters in New York. But if Akeem, was legitimately concerned about the price of housing, housing affordability, accessibility. Why is he taking money from BlackRock? The private equity firm that has been driving up the cost of housing across the country. Does he care about this or does he just want to tank Mamdani's chances? Yeah, and look, and on the rent stabilization, I could debate whether that's relevant or not. But what you can't debate is whether Cuomo scandals are relevant or not.

And somehow Hakeem Jeffries can't find the Cuomo scandals, which are gigantic and way, way larger than the tiny little, oh, I'm going to nitpick your rent on your apartment in New York. You found that needle in a haystack, but you miss Cuomo's haystack? Come on, come on. Look, I used to say this stuff, and I was a heretic, and I was the outcast. Now, this is why I say I love the populist woods. Now they're the outcasts, now the people's pretending that Akeem Jeffries is an honest actor and a politician who's representing all the Democratic voters.

Sound like idiots because they are. I think we should take another break, but we've got more to this. All right, back on TYT, Junk, John and Jordan. With you guys also, Joshua Forster. Joshua, thanks for joining. We appreciate it. He hit the big, beautiful join button. Fat, Sat, or you're awesome, gifted five subs on YouTube.

We appreciate you guys, John, what's nice? Yes, okay, let's have a little bit of fun with this. According to new reporting, the Trump White House has quietly put together a corporate loyalty scorecard that ranks over 550 companies and trade associations based on how passionate Unfortunately, they supported his big billionaire tax cut bill. And in this loyalty scorecard, you get rated on a variety of different things. That includes social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, attendance at White House events, maybe you go to the ballroom, other engagement related to the mega bill. And I love that it includes things like social media posts, it's kind of like, you know, the social capital thing that they always rail against in China, except he's just got it for corporate America. This goes right over all their heads.

They don't mind. Anyway, the organization's support then gets ranked as strong, moderate, or low. And I know you're dying to find out which corporations were the most deferential to Donald Trump and his bill. That includes Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for America, trade organization, and the Steel Manufacturers Association as well. And to give you an example of it, there's a lot of these. But AT&T at one point announced, quote, plans to more quickly build fiber,

infrastructure, thanks to pro-investment policies in the one big beautiful bill act passed by Congress, although bear in mind because apparently Starlink is making a big play for that pot of money to move away from fiber, which is what it was originally set up for when it was passed under Biden, he's just continuing it in this bill. And instead, no fiber, can't do that, go for the satellite internet. And of course, the CEO of Starlink bought Donald Trump in the last election for a quarter billion So AT&T's loyalty as it so often does with Donald Trump might not actually end up paying off. And now that it's been revealed, the Trump White House is just openly admitting that this is a thing that they did.

One official said it helps us see who really goes out and helps versus those who just come in and pay lip service. And apparently, if you're not ranked high on this, don't worry, you won't necessarily get invested by Pam Bondi just yet. you still have a chance to raise your score. So for instance, if you now boost your public advocacy around other administrative priorities, maybe anti-DEI stuff or something like that, then maybe you can crawl up those rankings. And so yeah, they're doing it, they call it a dynamic scorecard, and that's the thing they're working with right now. Yeah, so look, Trump's a blunt instrument, so he'll just say it, and that's so unusual

for politicians. Oh, yeah, I got a list of all the corporations who kiss my ass and bribe me. If you haven't bribed me enough, then I'm not going to work with you, okay? And all right, well, whatever else that lacks, it doesn't lack clarity, right? So, but do you know that Clinton's also had a list? And the press would talk about it all the time. They'd mention it in paragraph A17 or whatever, right? And you'd be like, huh, interesting.

And I always thought like, it's kind of like a weird way to like, oh, by the way, Clint's have an enemy's list, and if you get on it, you're screwed forever in Washington. But if they like you, you'll get a lot of goodies. And they just move on like it's totally normal. Not framed as like big headline, corruption, right? Because corruption for so long in Washington, including today, is perfectly normal, right? So, but for Trump, he gets a slightly different standard, partly because he's so brazen about it. He was just like, yeah, these are the people bribing.

I like bribes. Who doesn't like bribes? Right? Whereas the Clintons were like, oh, no. They were far more sophisticated. No, these are not bribes. And the enemies list is not people who didn't pay us bribes when we demanded it. No, no, no, no, no.

This is just, you know, political, normal hardball politics. Normal hardball politics, no problem at all. I don't see any corporate donors, and that's our mainstream press the whole time. So does that mean, okay, then we should let Trump slide on this? No, the exact opposite. Guys, he told you who's going to be a populist. Look, again, Democrats, independents, you understand this, right? But for the portion of independence, I voted for Trump, and for the lighter portion of MAGA,

he told you he was going to be a pompous. Like the radical right, they're never going to, they got blinders on. And so you can't reach them. But that's okay, they're not a big percentage of the country. A lot of the Trump voters are now beginning to see with their own eyes. He said he was going to bring down inflation. Now inflation is going up. What the hell, right?

He said we're going to have peace in Russia and in Gaza on day one. what the hell. He said he was going to release abstin files, what the hell? He said he was going to be America first. Now, it's Israel first, America 28th. What the hell, right? So they're beginning to see all this.

So now when they see this brazen corruption from the guy who was pretending to be a populist and drain the swamp, they're like, so it's not America first. It's AT&T and Cisco and DoorDash and whoever to hell bribed you first. And us, maybe at the end.

Exactly, guys. In him being blunt, it's ironically a more sophisticated strategy accidentally because people since he would just say things, right? And he had no consultants that he would listen to and he's out of control. It gave the air of authenticity to a guy who's a pathological liar, right? So but now he has abused that air of authenticity so much that he's. Even his own voters are beginning to see, oh, there ain't nothing authentic or populist about this. He's the same old greasy politician who takes the donor money and does exactly what the donors want.

To which I say, of course, that's what we told you. I mean, just looking at this list, it's interesting because Uber, DoorDash, United Delta Airlines for America, These are all people who were subject to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crackdowns on junk fees, the way they have exploited workers. I'm sure United and Delta and Airlines for America are celebrating having a very lax anti-union administration now, despite Sean O'Brien's best efforts. I mean, this is just, they'll do whatever. Because now it's, hey, do whatever you want. Charge them fees. Go ahead. Hide the fees. Take advantage of these workers, these gig employee workers. Of course they'll do that. They're totally selling it. They don't care. And it's kind of comical how it's just so brazen with how they're shaking down all these companies. Yeah. Oh yeah. Celebrate what we're doing. Promote us. Buy into our culture war nonsense to distract people from what's actually happening. But as we've talked about throughout this hour, I think, I think there is some segment of the Republican base that is waking up to it, and it's impossible to explain away. We've seen it on a couple different issues from inflation now to this, the corporate control and capture of our government is out in the open.

And there's one other thing that I think is kind of funny but disheartening at the same time, and that is how the right, So the part of the right that hasn't recognized what's happening, to watch them go from oh, government overreach, Biden shouldn't be involved in the markets, we got to protect the free market at all costs, and the way the nanny state has influenced our personal decisions can't be tolerated. This is an encroachment on our rights, our liberty. Michelle Obama telling us to eat healthier is a violation of my sovereignty to, yeah, the president just shaking down the biggest Fortune 500 companies, nothing to see here, that's fine. Yeah, it's sort of like so much that's confusing to me where like we had things,

we had systems, some of which sometimes accidentally or intentionally actually benefited you. But now he's come up with like a worse version of it that only benefits him. Like we used to in theory regulate corporations, that's all gone, we don't do that anymore. But he's gonna regulate their social media activity just to benefit himself. We had like work visas and then like he deported a bunch of people and they said, well, I'm gonna come up with a place. plan just so that like the people working on farms could come back in with a special work visa and sometimes it convinces Maga but sometimes not like sometimes like you said they see through it like they were sold that he was gonna be anti-war and he already bombed Iran and

he's participating in ethnic cleansing maybe sending in US troops they're they're pulling up they're drawing up war plans for Mexico right now so they don't buy some of that and then you see weird things where it's like Donald Trump has to be personally involved in this where You probably saw the announcement recently where he's like he wants a stake in NVIDIA for their foreign sales. He wants to, no, he was a cut of what they sell. And he wants a stake in Intel, which a guy like me who's interested in communism. I like seizing a portion of the means of production, so I'm into that when Trump does it,

I guess. But like getting a cut of what NVIDIA sells, we used to have a corporate tax to do that. Why did you get rid of the corporate tax? And now you want to get a portion of their profits, we already had that system. It's because he wants credit for it and he wants direct control over it. It's why recently it was revealed and like the prime minister of Vietnam's not even hiding it that he used the threat of higher tariffs to get faster approval for his Vietnamese golf course.

They're just admitting that he did that. Jesus Christ. They threw villagers off their land, they're bulldozing it. They gave them rice and $12 a square meter just so he can get his golf course. It was just revealed this week. He called up the finance minister of Norway to talk about tariffs and said, oh, by the way, I want the Nobel Peace Prize. He's clearly using the threat of higher tariffs to get the Nobel Peace Prize rather than

you don't like getting peace. And so all of this just feels like such a cheap, crappy version of like a TV mobster where all of it's for his own benefit, everything is weirdly turned into a worse version of what it was. And I'm just, I'm waiting to see how much of it is actually convincing to his cultists. Yeah, last thing is that I'm seeing the silver lining, which is look, I said right after the election that I'd rather be in the populous woods than an establishment prison. And in the establishment prison, you couldn't talk about corruption, Democrats or Republicans.

Like, everyone in media would shut you down and they'd call you a conspiracy theorist. You think that these politicians are working for their donors? Ridiculous. You think millions of dollars affects politicians, conspiratorial, right? I look, you you think like really did that happen like hundreds of times to me, right? Like I had reporters laugh at me saying like you think politicians are affected by millions of dollars. I'm like, you think they're not? You think they're not, right? So we were persona non grotto for saying the most obvious things in the world.

And now in the populace woods, now that there's a prison break, now that mainstream media is screwed, No one believes them anymore. What's happening is Trump getting caught, just like the Democrats got caught. Like a lot of the Democrats are like, no, no, no, no, the establishment is okay. It likes the Democrats. Let's just stay in the prison. It's nice and comfortable, right? No, like, you couldn't stay there anyway.

It was, all of this propaganda was never going to work. And that they, the establishment of Democrats, you think they helped you? They didn't help you anyway. And that's why people got so mad, so they got caught. The Democrats got caught, caught. Now Trump is going to get caught. Look, I said almost a year ago that Trump's voters were going to turn on him on the issue of Israel. When I said that a year ago, that was considered absolutely nuts, right?

And now just go on X and say something about Trump and Israel and then see what MAGA does, okay? And the independent voters especially, right? They're like, what the hell, man? We thought we were getting America first. And they're so mad that whenever Trump goes out there, Trump goes out there, oh, Israel, we have to serve Israel, right? So he got caught on that, he got caught on the Epstein files, and he's going to get caught on this. So I'll make the prediction now. By the time he leaves office, a huge percentage of his voters are going to realize how

corrupt Donald Trump is and how he's been corrupt all along. And they're going to be furious at him. Because when Trump voters get mad, they don't get a little mad. They get a lot mad, right? And they thought he was one of them and that he was going to lead them out of this mess that they perceived to be in. And they're right about being in a mess, right? And they're right that the powerful are not serving us. When they realize he is part of the elites and that he's always wanted to be their buddies and now he gets to be the mob boss you're talking about, John, and do a lot of favors and get favors. He's the kingpin of the elites now. They're going to hate that. the populist woods now and he's gonna get caught. Hear me now, quote me later, although

that never happens. Hear me now, yell at me now and forget about it later. Never, never acknowledge you're right. Anyways, okay guys. Hear me now, write a book about it next year. Right, and pretend it was your idea. All right guys, we got a second hour coming up. Jordan's gonna stay because he likes us so much. John, yeah, he's gonna get damage report ready for Monday. Yeah, maybe banished to the populist woods. All right, check out damage report every day 1 o'clock Eastern on YouTube, on t.com, et cetera. We'll be right back.