The Young Turks - Keep Money OUT Of Politics And PROOF Republicans Don't know Anything

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

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You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jank U Gran and Kusperi. That sounded very gravely in the beginning right there. How you doing, Casper? I'm good.

All right. Hope you had a good weekend, everybody. And you as well, Anna. No, I see the dirty tricks you're playing behind the scenes, Yugar. What on God's Green Earth? I hope you had a nice weekend. Is dirty tricks behind the scenes? No, no, I see your dirty tricks using that, you know, t-y-t.com slash jank URL everywhere

you can. And it's unacceptable. I don't even know what you're talking about, like on Twitter. Because like you did all sorts of like Facebook things over the weekend. I did Facebook things. Yeah. Well, look, if you worked as hard as I did, I guess that you would get to do those things as well.

I don't know. Do you guys see the abuse I get from this guy? Unacceptable, t-y-t.com slash Anna. Jake, okay, two can play at that game. Stick it to the man. Okay. Help me stick it to the man. All right.

So actually, we're, let me just, we got an amazing show for you guys. The first two stories are amazing. The second one we're gonna do is, it's an absolute must watch, but we're gonna get to that in a couple of minutes, so don't worry about that. And then it trumps, you know, drain continues. And yes, the fight between progressives and corporate Democrats also continue, super relevant. We have new numbers on how well the different Democrats in the presidential race are doing in Iowa, super important, all that we're gonna get to in a little bit.

But we are doing a membership drive, it's almost over. There's only two weeks left, and we're trying to get to 40,000 by the end of the year. We actually had a pretty good weekend. Let's see where we are right now, okay, 39,341. Oh, we're so close. Okay, guys, I think we're, like, we're almost there. So everybody sign up through t.com slash jank and we'll get it over the top, okay? Look at this guy, look at this guy.

So, Casper, you have, I know, it's these guys, the daily abuse I get from them. Oh, please, please. Okay, anyway. Anyway, you have demoralized others, Anna, with your lead in this competition among the hosts to sign up people, but not me. I don't get demoralized easily. I've got two weeks left. Let's sprint.

Because you're honestly the only person I want to demoralize. As Ben once famously said to you in a race that we had, you cannot intimidate the intimidator. Well, and by the way, you did prove that to be true because during that race, he intimidated me by breathing heavily, like right behind me as that race took place. It scared the hell out of me. Well, for the next two weeks, expect to say, man, ah. The mouth breather. Come on, founding the company should be worth something.

D.D.com slash change. Yes, yes. Anyway, okay. So, all right, so we're also doing the Amplify program. This is all part of the same membership drive. And we've got a whole bunch of new things for you guys on Amplify. I'm gonna read names in the next section for all the people who participated over the weekend and today.

But we decided to put out some podcasts and those are actually a lower number. So that's the only ones we're doing for under a thousand. And if you're wondering why we pick the numbers, it's based on our best guess on how how many staffers they have, and the podcast don't have as many staffers. So we put up Mark Maren's podcast, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. I know it's only a little political, but it's a great podcast, and a lot of people love that podcast. It'd be great to get him Young Turks membership as well as his team.

The Joe Rogan Show, interesting. He recently had Lawrence Lessig on his podcast, which I appreciate him doing that because It's important for people to understand, you know, the corruption that takes place in politics. And obviously, Professor Lessig does a great job explaining all that. Yeah, and so look, Rogan has a lot of right-wingers on, but he does have left-wingers on as well as Lessig, Jimmy Dorr, Kyle Kalinsky have all been on recently. I think maybe he's a little scared of me, but that's okay. So let's get him some membership and see we can open up his mind a little bit, t.yt.com

slash amplify. So, and those are all just 500 bucks. That also gets you on the honor roll on t-y-y-t.com as well, and gets you the Amplify t-shirts. Anyway, morning Joe team. Now this is the bigger packages for the TV guys. They have a ton of staff. And also print journalism, New York Times, Washington, D.C., Washington Post, Politico. And then we've got two interesting ones, Daily Show and then Colin McEnroe show on NPR. Someone requested that. And so we want to make sure that we get our message, progressive message out to all those guys. Let's participate if you can at t.y.t.com slash amplify.

Okay, so lots of amazing news to get to, so let's start, and I'm going to take the first story, okay? So just Democrats are working with a number of other progressive groups to bring you a wonderful program. And that is to get some of the best and hardest fighting progressives onto some of the most important committees in the House. Now let's keep it real, Democratic leadership, most especially Nancy Pelosi, has already made some deals with right-wing Democrats. And they put a lot of pressure on her about the speakership position, and there was some concessions,

including to a group that wants to work more with Republicans. Great. So a great number of progressives are elected, first thing that happens is Democrats. That's pledged that they will work more with Republicans. Okay, that is not the direction that the American people voted for. Now, they can make up for it if they also reward progressives. Now, the reason why progressives want to get on committees is very different than the reason that corporate Democrats do.

So there's some important committees like ways and means that controls taxing and revenue and appropriations which addresses funding and how you spend the money, financial services committees are really important one for the banking industry. And corporate Democrats, for example, one of the corporate Democrat groups is called the New Democrats. The New Democrats are very pro-Wall Street, pro corporations, so they rush onto those committees so they can do two things. One is passed totally pro-corporate legislation.

Two is get rewarded for that by getting money from those same corporations. In fact, recently in 2016, a congressman from New Jersey one, he's a new Democrat. pro-corporate Democrat, immediately got on the Financial Service Committee, and he was rewarded by the banks by campaign donations of $1 million. Now, the reason we want progressives on those committees is because, not because they're going to raise money from the banks or any of the other corporations, these folks don't take corporate back money. We want them on there for policy.

I know it's a whole new day for Democrats, and that's like, they keep asking like, yeah, but what's your real play? No, that's not real play. We actually care about policy. So here are the folks that we want Democratic leadership and specifically Nancy Pelosi to put on the committees. So Alexandria Acaccio-Cortez, of course, and we want that on the Ways and Means Committee. That is arguably the most powerful committee in the House.

Now that should be a no-brainer. I'll tell you what their excuses in a second and why that excuse is preposterous. But let me go through the whole list for you guys. Pramila Jayapal want on, she's already on judiciary. We would also like her on, I'm sorry, she's already on Ways and Means we'd also like her on judiciary. She needs an exception to a rule to make that happen to be able to sit on those what are considered A committees, but she has certainly earned it.

She's amazing leader for progressives. She's a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus co-leader of that, and we need her on the Judiciary Committee for so many of the things that are going on, including the Trump investigations, but we also need her on the powerful Ways and Maines Committee, and she's earned that by being one of the absolute top leaders for progressives. She was already in Congress. Roe-Conno was also already in Congress, also should be on Ways and Means, has been a fantastic leader for the progressive community, first ever Justice Democrat.

Rashida Taleb is a freshman coming in. She would be perfect for the Appropriations Committee. I'm gonna show you how you're gonna help on this in a second. And then also, Katie Porter. Katie Porter is not a Just Democrat, but was backed by P-Triple-C and is a wonderful progressive. And so that's the thing that matters. It doesn't really matter what the group is. It matters if they're great progressives, and Katie Porter certainly is, and she'd be fantastic

on financial services, and she's also an incoming freshman. So here are the groups that work, and if you notice there at the bottom, the way you can help is go to justicedemocrats.com slash key committees, okay? Now, if you go there, we'll have a link down below if you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook later, please go to that link, please tweet it. It sends a tweet to Nancy Pelosi herself saying we want these progressives on these key committees. If you don't put it on, it is obviously an insult to all the progressives that got you elected and says, yeah, it's cute, we'll take your window dressing, but we're not going

to give you a real power. So as progressives, we should demand that power that we have earned through our votes. Now I want to give credit to all the wonderful groups that have been working on this. CRETO action put a lot of this together. So they're fantastic. Demand progress, Democratic Socialists of America, democracy for America, obviously justice Democrats, four out of the five people there that we're looking for positions are just Democrats.

Progressive Change Campaign Committee, wonderful, helped Katie Porter so much and other progressives as well. Progressive Democrats of America, ultraviolet, and I want to really point out Social Security Works as well, wonderful organizing work by them behind the scenes, Alex Lawson and some of the others. So now, again, one more time, it's justdemocrats.com slash key committees. And the final point that I want to make for you guys is they say, well, look, three of those folks are incoming freshmen, and freshmen, by an informal rule, don't get to go

on those committees. First of all, why? There's no reason why. And it's basically, hey, you have to earn your dues, et cetera. Well, they earn their dues by, I would say, upending the political system and creating change and fighting for that change in unprecedented ways, and by winning 40 new seats. So it is not a normal circumstance. Second of all, do freshmen get to go on some of those committees in the past?

Yes, actually after 2008 crash, they made an exception when Democrats won a lot, picked up a lot of seats in 2006 and created 11 new seats on the Financial Services Committee, which went almost exclusively to corporate Democrats. And they raised a tremendous amount of money from the banking industry, and lo and behold, out of the 33 turncoat votes that worked with the Republicans under the Trump administration to deregulate the banks were new Democrats, the corporate wing of the party. So if they get to have 11 new seats when it serves their financial purposes, progressives should get to have those seats, not anywhere near that many, just five in these important

committees to at least represent us and fight for policy. So please get out there and you can make a difference. By the way, your pressure that you guys put on whether it's the young tourist audience or if you spread it far and wide to all the progressives online, has worked in the past. They would now a majority of the Democrats in the House support Medicare for all when they did not in the beginning. That was the just Democrats taking a lead nearly two years ago. And then so many other groups pushing forward all these progressive groups and you guys,

and they're doing something similar with Green New Deal now. They started with only a couple of people that were in favor of the Green New Deal when Sunrise movement and just Democrats and Cassio Cortez at the protest in front of Pelosi's house. Do you know what the number's up to now? Over three dozen. So why? Because of public pressure.

It works, and yes, they are a little concerned about their seats. And Nancy Pelosi, who this is being addressed to? You already helped the right wing. So do you really mean it when you say that you're a progressive? Really? I mean, this would be the bare minimum. And if you don't even do the bare minimum, well, then you're sending a message loud and clear whose side you're on, and it won't be progressives.

But hopefully you guys sending this to her will make a big difference, and obviously I'll keep you updated on whether they get those seats. Okay. All right. All right. Let's go to the second story, which is one of the most important facts that you will hear. Yes, exactly. So I want to start off with this study because it really informs every other political issue

that we're going to discuss on the show today and in future shows. So let's get to it. Political scientists from Columbia University and UC Santa Barbara wanted to look into senior congressional staffers to figure out whether or not these staffers, these very people who set the legislative agenda, really understand the pulse of the people. Do they really understand what their constituents want? And through this study, the political science has found that actually there's a huge disconnect between what these staffers think and what their constituents are looking for in terms of policy.

Now senior staffers tend to believe that voters support much more conservative policies than they actually do. The stunning misperception can largely be explained by the disproportionate attention lawmakers and their aides lavish on donors and special interest groups. So since these lawmakers and their congressional aides spend so much time fundraising, they're in this bubble where all they hear is what the donors want, what the donors are pushing for. And unfortunately, that not only corrupts them, but it also misinforms them about what their actual

constituents want. So in August of 2016, the authors sent out a survey to the chiefs of staff and the law. legislative directors of every House and Senate office. They targeted these senior officials because they play a crucial role in the policymaking process, connecting the preferences of constituents with members of Congress. Now after the staffers filled out this survey, the authors compared the AIDS responses, according to the Washington Post, to actual district level public opinion on the issues. measured by large national surveys like the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

All right, so here's what they found. In none, again, none of the five areas are staffers estimating their constituents' preferences for any degree of relative or absolute accuracy. Legislative aids in Republican offices were particularly bad at estimating their constituent support for various policies. Now in the beginning of that graphic, it talks about the five different, you know, the five different categories or policy positions. Those policies include repealing the Affordable Care Act, minimum wage.

Some of the major issues that we talk about quite a bit on the show, enacting universal gun background checks, regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and investing $305 billion in infrastructure. So those are the issues that they were surveyed on. And again, the staffers completely conflicted with what the constituents wanted. So super important part of this is in which direction? that they conflict. So you're gonna get a little bit of both sides do it here in one case.

But some stunning part of this will be clear. Because if you say in the beginning, hey Jake, this is not the most interesting story I've ever heard. And earlier in the live show you declared it that it's gonna be one of the most interesting. And that one you'll want to forward to friends and family, et cetera, right? Well, the fact that they don't know what their constituents want is to some degree on But the direction in which they're wrong is the most important part. And so, and that part is to others potentially very surprising.

If you watch the Young Turks regularly, probably not, but it's really going to confirm for you through data what we have suspected and feared about Washington. So it appears that staffers, particularly Republican staffers, overestimate how conservative their constituents are. So I'll give you some specific examples. On the question of gun background checks, staffers and Republican offices underestimated public support by a whopping 49 percentage points. Democrats underestimated too, though, by 11 percentage points.

All right, so two things there, right? All that the Republican staffers ever here is gun control is terrible, nobody ever wants it, et cetera. That's not remotely true, depending on how you phrase the question, it sometimes gets into over 90% of Americans want some federal background check. One famous poll was 93%. Now, you think Republican staffers think that 93% of their constituents want federal background checks?

No, in their world, they're surrounded by the NRA and extremists and lobbyists, and that's gonna be a huge part of this in a second. And they go, oh, yeah, no way, I mean, it may be at most half one gun control. No, that's not true. An overwhelming majority you want it. I mean, being off by 49% is preposterous, it's ridiculous. But notice that the Democrats are off by 11%, but in the direction of the Republicans, not in their own direction.

That will be a consistent theme here. A consistent theme with the exception of the Affordable Care Act, which we'll get to in just a second. But one thing that I wanted to point out, in terms of my own read of this and my own perspectives prior to reading about this, I always just assumed that our lawmakers and their staffers knew what the public wanted, but voted against them anyway because money talks and that funding from the donors is just too alluring. Like how are you gonna turn that down and listen to your constituents?

I mean, that's unheard of in a corrupt political system like the one we have right now. But no, it turns out that we are, look, we're all products of our experiences and the bubbles we live in. And this is the bubble they live in, they live in that donor bubble. They spend no time communicating with their constituents. So if they don't have that communication, how are they gonna know what the public wants? I mean, we sit here and we talk about public opinion polls. They don't even take a step to look into those very polls that we report on.

They don't care. But we do often talk on the show about the Washington bubble. And so a lot of is reinforced by the donors and the lobbyists, as Anna's pointing. And that is, I mean, we're gonna give you all the numbers. consistent all throughout. Democrats do not lean in the direction, in a leftward direction for the staffers, except for Obama and Karen, I'll explain why on that too. On every other issue, they lean to the right.

They are incorrect in thinking that their own constituents are more right wing than they actually are. They're not right wing. So part of it is the overwhelming majority's lobbies to notice, but also they turn on TV. What do they watch? They only watch cable news, and they turn on cable news, and every anchor tells them, country Center right. Don't worry about the polls.

The polls are nonsense. Worry about, you know, what the establishment thinks, what conventional wisdom is. Now you say, hey, Jake, that's, is that really fair? The cable news really ignore polls? All the time, all the time. Medicare for All, polls is 70%. You never, ever hear that on television. On television you hear, it's a fringe idea, it's a radical idea, it's a new idea, it's an idea

that a couple of young progressives that just won elections are in favor of, but the mainstream is not in favor of that. They will repeat that over and over. By the way, Washington Post, New York Times also says the same thing. So they look at the, and then when you get at the polling of the different candidates, they'll look at a poll that shows Bernie Sanders leading, and they'll say, no, he's not. What do you mean that he's not? I remember them doing this all the way back with a public option under Obama, and public

option would test really well. CNN once did their own poll, showed the public option was incredibly favorable, turned around in the same segment and said public option is not. favored by Americans. Your own poll that you just read on air, said it's favored by Americans by a large margin. But in their minds, they cannot get past the bubble. The right wing is always right. And now this is data, this is not just our opinion.

They polled them on all these issues. And even the Democratic Stafford's like, oh yeah, right wing's always right, oh, I bet our constituents are so right wing. Totally not true. So I, look, I think that the media certainly plays a factor. And I want to be clear in stating that this is Jenks analysis that I happen to agree with. But the political scientists here didn't talk about media, but they did talk about the influence of the lobbyists.

I think that there's another part of it though that the political scientist didn't touch on that I think should be investigated by researchers, not authorities or anything like that. It's the culture, right? Because there's a culture difference between those on the right and those on the left. The squeaky wheel always gets the attention. And when the right wing is passionate about something or if they feel like they've been wronged in any way, they whine about it over and over and over again. And they don't let it go.

You don't see the same type of messaging from the left. And so I think that influences or informs the perception of Democrats as well. All they hear from is the whining and the crying from the right wing as opposed to maybe some of the left-wing constituents who don't whine as much, but feel passionately about issues. No, but also the Democrats' great disdain for their own voters. It screams through the data. And it, but also they reject anything that enters their bubble that's progressive. They say, oh, no, no, no, our progressive constituents, progressive organizers,

progressive, you know, media, to be dismissed, no, we reject them. I don't know if they're rejecting, I think that they just underestimate them. You see what I'm saying? No, I think they love the money and it's convenient for them to reject progressives because they don't lean towards the money, they lean towards policy. In fact, we have a stunning admission at the end of this story. Don't miss that admission either because that's, I mean, at least they were honest about it. I'm surprised at how honest they were, but let's give you more of the facts.

All right, so when it came to the Affordable Care Act, that was the one category, the one policy where Democrats actually didn't overestimate how conservative the country is. Democrats underestimated support for repealing the Affordable Care Act by 24 percentage point, while Republicans overestimated support by 10 percentage points. So again, this is the one area in which Democrats actually leaned to the left in terms of their perceptions of what the public wants. Now, my analysis for why that is the case is, well, there was a lot of lobbyists that went and told the Democrats, oh yeah, they're gonna love the mandate.

And you just make them buy private insurance, and then let us raise the rates on them any way we like. They're gonna love it. So Democrats are like, oh, our constituents love the Affordable Care Act. The parts that allow the private insurance to still rule over us, they apparently are in love with that part. Oh, we can't negotiate drug prices. My lobbyist tell me that American people love that, so that's part of it.

So in that case, it's still the lobbyists and the donors, just they happen to me on the Democratic side there. And if they turn on MSNBC, MSNBC has got their pomp. palms on and they'll be like, affordable care act, the whole country loves it. They love every part of it, every part of it, right? That's just not true. They love certain parts of it. Look at the polling, look at the actual polling.

Why are we more, I would argue, consistently right on our political prognostications? It's not just because we're more progressive and the country's more progressive, it's that we actually can read a poll in an unbiased way. And so people have been saying while it was being formed and after it was formed, that they are still concerned about the prices in the affordable. Care Act. But Democrats are like, nope, I don't see it, I don't see it, right? So that's the one time that the progressive, that Democratic staffers are theoretically

more progressive, although I would argue that that's not a more progressive position. I bet if you pulled those same staffers on Medicare for all, they'd be massively right-wing compared to their constituents, right? Because they did not get any lobbyist or MSNBC pressure on that. But even if you can see that, four out of the five areas that they tested, the Democrats, again, were not wrongly estimating to the benefit of progressives. They were wrongly estimating to the benefit of Republicans and conservatives. I'll give you one more example for you, carbon dioxide regulation.

Republicans underestimated public support by 20 percentage points. They're like, the public doesn't want that, no, the public definitely wants it. But even Democratic staffers underestimated by five to nine percentage points. Why? Because they live in Washington. And Washington is a million times more conservative than the rest of the country. That's right. Now, look, the criticism toward Democrats, I think, is warranted, but I don't want anyone

to make the mistake of thinking that Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same when it comes to this issue because they're not. So the political scientists also mentioned that overall, AIDS in Democratic offices better understood public opinion in their districts by a margin of about 13 percentage points. So they're still corrupt. They're just not as corrupt as Republicans are, but we want all the corruption out. Yeah, and isn't that the point we always make for you guys? Look, if you're saying which party's more corrupt, it's super clear, and the data indicates

it, the Republicans are, the ones, and which party matches the ideology of the country? Well, the data is super clear. It is not the Republicans or their staffers, okay? So on the other hand, it doesn't mean the Democrats have it just right, like you hear on MSNBC. They're wonderful and they're saints and they never do anything wrong. No, they are too conservative. And so the, and on television and again, in the mainstream press, Washington Post in New York

Times, they will frame it as, hey, when the Democrats are wrong, they are too far to the left. That is not true. They are too far to the right of the country and their constituents. Please, for God's sake, journalists and editors all across the country invest in someone who could read a poll. It's not that hard. Anybody can read it. It's just numbers.

And now I want to get to the last two parts because I think the last admission is maybe the most remarkable. So I'll read here from the next part. AIDS who reported more reliance for policy making on business-oriented interest groups had a poorer understanding of constituent preferences than did AIDS who relied more on groups drawing their membership from the general population. So if you listen to, let's take two examples, a group that represents the oil companies like ExxonMobil, you would be more wrong about where your constituents stand than if you

listen to the Sierra Club, which largely has members from the actual public, okay? So that could apply to liberal or progressive groups. The bottom line is if you're listening to multi-billion dollar corporations, they're not going to tell you what Americans believe. They're going to tell you what they believe, and they're going to pretend that Americans also believe that because they are lobbyists. They are lobbying for that position. You're not supposed to be stupid enough to believe them, but it isn't about stupid.

It's about money. They come with checks. You don't come with checks. They come with checks. So here comes the stunning admission. In fact, 45% of senior legislative staffers report having changed their opinion about legislation after a group gave their member a campaign contribution. This is the, again, this isn't, you know, the researchers making an assumption or this isn't

their perspective. This is based on the own admissions by these senior staffers in this survey. They admitted it. And remember, 45%, that's just the people who admitted it. That's a shockingly high number for the people who admitted it. The real number is way, way higher. So only 45% had enough temerity to say to a pollster, oh yeah, they came in with a check, and then I changed my opinion, and so did my representative, or your representative, isn't that

funny? No, they were representatives of Chamber of Commerce, right? When they came in with a big check, we all of a sudden decided, you know what, I think the American people love climate change. I think they love the idea of the earth warming up and all of us. getting flooded out and extreme fires and storms, they love that idea because ExxonMobil just gave me a lot of money to tell me that they love that idea. So wow, if 45% admit it, it's probably 90% who do it.

And this is exactly what's wrong with the sickness of this system. This is corruption 101. So if you don't end the private financing of elections, you will never fix this system. The right wing will be monstrously right wing and monstrously wrong about where constituents stand, and the Democrats will be too right wing. And that is exactly the reality that we have lived for these past couple of decades. And the reason is not because they actually changed their mind, not because, oh, golly, gee, they calculated wrong, no, the reason is because they took the money.

They got bribed to be quote unquote wrong. It's wrong for you, it's right for them. If you do public financing, they might actually listen to the public interest. If you do private financing of elections, they will always work for private interests and against you. Look, I happen to think you should join Wolfpack to get the money out of politics. We need an amendment, we need to go above the Supreme Court. This is when we need to go all in.

If we don't fix this, nothing gets fixed. But by God, join any group you like, but you have got to get into the fight. If you don't fix this, they're telling you, they're rubbing it in your face. They're saying, yeah, of course, I got a check. That's why I do what I do, like I would listen to you in a democracy. I'm not going to listen to the donors. Don't let him get away with it. Wolf-pacck.com slash join.

Get in right now and make a difference. Oh, you're going to leave the tease to me. You're going to leave it to me. Oh, you know what, actually, no, seriously, I want to add one quick thing here. I actually want to give credit to Christopher Ingram, who wrote this for the Washington Post. Now, I often criticize the mainstream media, and I just did for the Washington Post as well in this story, okay? But we always give credit where credit is, dude.

This is a wonderful story. It's not being picked up by almost anyone else, but Ingram deserves tremendous credit for, all he had to do was find it, it's not that hard, but he's the only one doing it. He's actually written a great number of stories that were actually fair and accurate. So you should give him credit for that, and you should give credit to Washington Post for at least running this story. All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to give you all the details on the federal judge's ruling on striking down the Affordable Care Act. What does that mean for you?

And later on, we will discuss a possible government shutdown by the end of this week. And like I said, we're going to get to the polling on the progressive candidates for president, and CNN does it again. I mean, they look at the poll, they show you the poll, and then they totally ignore it. Okay, we'll show you that later in the program. All right, back on a young church, guys. Lots of wonderful updates on Amplify. Let me just get through it. Jeff Manzer from Brooklyn, 500 bucks goes on the honor roll.

Thank you, Jeff. Really appreciate it. Adriana Cassell from Rhode Island, 150 bucks. Everybody giving $150 bucks gets the Amplify T-shirt. It's powerful. It's awesome. We'll all be getting it soon. Gabrielle Gray from Massachusetts, $150.

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We super appreciate every donation there is. So still Rogan's podcast, Mark Marins, and others up there, and also Morning Joe, New York Times, Washington Post, et cetera. In fact, let me just read this. The hippie shake writes in in the member section. The fact that Rogan has right-wing guest listeners as well as left. is exactly why we should amplify his show. If we only amplify our message to progressive figures and shows, we only create an echo chamber

and don't change minds. So I agree, that's why we have a lot of these folks on there. Morning Joe definitely needs a progressive message as well as Politico and some of the others. Last comment, Jeremy Kohler says, I finished my first semester of law school last week and was taking a much needed nap this afternoon. By the way, congrats Jeremy. I woke up five minutes before the show as if my body knew I needed. to see Anna and Jenk throw down over the membership drive, Made My Day.

And Jeremy, I'm sure, of course, you're telling all your friends like a good American. To sign up under my name, D-YT.com slash Janke. Okay, guys, a couple of extra things for members. Tonight, we've been promising you hostmates, and we're gonna have hostmates for you. Oh, it's tonight. It's tonight that they can watch it. Tonight is the night is the night of love. We actually have not seen the final product either.

Okay, I'm just going to go past that. Okay, singing should deduct points from the membership driving. Together forever is never enough. Okay, so, all right. All right. Well, luckily on hostmates, Anna and I were actually on the same team. Otherwise, there might have been violence. Anyway, we'll show you a clip of that real quick.

Welcome to hostmates. Marijuana. Marijuana. Yes! Yes! I want to say booze. This is so inappropriate. You know what we call this? Overconfidence.

I love watching that bicker. It's so good. He's claiming that he knows turrets better than I. What is happening right now? She talks about musicians that I swear she's making up some of the day. She doesn't see this part of the show, right? She can if she's a member. Okay.

In my experience, you've said, this is a great outfit. I'll tell you who bought it. You're named Michael. I am, yeah. I'm a millennial black woman. The minute it starts, I want to win so bad. Awesome. All right, look, you can do t.y.com slash join to become a member.

But I keep forgetting to tell you guys, we still have tyt.com slash holiday, so you can get a week free trial. So, get a free trial for a week, and you can check out hostmates, which is dropping tonight. And then lastly, tomorrow, this second hour of the show will be just for members. So it's a membership drive, we hope that you will get good value out of the show and we want to provide the extra value for the members. So please, t.t.com slash join, and second hour will be just for the members live tomorrow, Okay? All right, Anna, what's next?

All right. Last Friday, on the last day of open enrollment, a federal judge out of the state of Texas struck down the Affordable Care Act and deemed it unconstitutional. Now, according to the New York Times, the federal judge struck down the entire Affordable Care Act on the grounds that its mandate requiring people to buy health insurance is unconstitutional and the rest of the law cannot stand without it. So this is important to keep in mind, the fact that congressional Republicans successfully repealed the federal mandate, which essentially forced individuals to buy private insurance

or they would get penalized later. Now, in doing so, in repealing that part of the Affordable Care Act, that kind of opened the doors for a federal judge, like this one, to deem the law different and their for unconstitutional. And the reason why I say different is because the Affordable Care Act has actually withstood several legislative challenges and the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act on two different occasions. Now when the Supreme Court upheld the mandate as constitutional back in 2012, it was based

on Congress's taxing power. Congress, the court said, could legally impose a tax penalty on people who do not have health insurance. But once Congress repeals the mandate. Well, then, you know, the law is up for a different interpretation, which is what happened here. Now, Judge Reed O'Connor said that the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress's tax power. And finally, the judge said that he would not parse the ACA's provisions one by one, but had to invalidate the whole law,

including the expansion of Medicaid and the requirement for employers to offer cover. to workers. So this really puts all of the protections of the Affordable Care Act in jeopardy. Now, of course, Democrats are planning to appeal this decision, they plan on fighting back. And for the moment being, the law will remain in place the way that it is. However, if it goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court strikes it down, that means no more protections against private insurers dropping you for pre-existing conditions. No more caps for out of pocket expenses.

Children can't remain on their parents' insurance until the age of 26 anymore. So there are all sorts of protections that made the Affordable Care Act a mixed bag. Now it forced you to buy private insurance, which is a huge downside, but the protections would go away if the Supreme Court strikes this down. So I want to be clear about this because unfortunately, as usual, the rest of the media won't be. But the first part, they're clear about, the second part I'm worried about. So who wanted to take away all these different provisions?

It's absolutely clear. The Republican Attorney Generals in all these different states sued to make sure that you are not covered if you have a pre-existing condition. Another one that we didn't mention is annual lifetime limits on coverage will be permitted again. So if you have cancer, but your insurance has a limit, $250,000, $500,000, a million, whatever it is. And your surgery is taking through long, your chemotherapy is taking too long, your treatment

overall is taking too long. Oh, well, it costs too much money. Well, what happens after that? Okay, I ran into my lifetime cap, so what happens? What happens next is you die? We don't give you any more money and you go ahead and die. That was the old system before Obamacare. Now the Republicans said, we want to go back to that system.

It wasn't something that you could argue, it wasn't, hey, can you really parse out what their intention is? No, they went to court to take away these provisions, to end the Affordable Care Act that protects you from those provisions, right? So they're very clearly 100% responsible for all the things that will flow from that. The second person responsible is Donald Trump. He's like, well, he desperately wanted to kill Obamacare, so you would be at the mercy of his donor class again with the insurance companies and drug companies, et cetera.

Well, he couldn't kill it through legislative means, so he said, all right, I'm going to make the mandate so that you don't have to pay it, zero dollars. Now that could theoretically be a good thing. But he knew the trick, and not him personally, of course he's an idiot, but his staffers did. And so then they bring it to a Republican judge, and this guy is appointed by George W. Bush, and he goes, oh, now technically since the mandate doesn't cost anything, that's the mandate. That's a loophole that allows me to say it's unconstitutional, even though the Supreme

Court in 2012 said it was, but that's only because they charged you money and that was a tax and hence within their taxing power. Now that it's not within their taxing power, I can kill the whole bill. That was the whole intent. So Trump is responsible. I'm sure he's bragging about it now, we'll give you his quotes in a second, right? And then the third person responsible, obviously is the Republican judge that killed this provision. Now, as Anna said, it's not the law of the land yet, it gets appealed up.

There'll be, you know, it'll go to the circuit court and then it likely will eventually go to the Supreme Court. But if the Republicans succeed in this, what I don't want is the mainstream media coming out and going, oh, well, now you can be, you know that there's 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions? So you'll all be subject to being denied again or paying higher rates again and being bankrupted when you can't pay your health insurance bills, right? And then when we know who did it, it will be 100% because of the Republicans, the media will go,

I can't tell. I don't know, later, later Trump said that he wanted to protect you from preexisting conditions. He didn't, he did the opposite, but he said it, so I'm gonna say he said, she said. No, no, he said, she said here. The Republicans, they should own it. Look, I was gonna say they're guilty, but apparently they don't think they're guilty, they're celebrating today. Let's note all the people celebrating today that you might have to be denied again because

they're a preexisting condition, that you might have a lifetime cap. And all these monstrous provisions are coming back. And all those Republicans are celebrating on rooftops today. So they might be celebrating privately, but publicly, many congressional Republicans are remaining quiet because they understand how unpopular this really is with the American people. Now, that's not to say that the American people love the Affordable Care Act, but if you look at the specific protections that it offers, of course the public loves that. I mean, look, this is a testament to what happens when you pass legislation that's flimsy.

And what I mean by that is, look, Democrats got the messaging wrong. Democrats got the policy wrong because, again, it was a huge handout to private insurance companies, it was complicated, it was difficult to understand. We work in this industry, we read about this stuff every day. We research this stuff every day. I still didn't know about every protection that the Affordable Care Act gave us. I'll give you an example. I didn't know that there were caps on out of pocket expenses, right?

And so I didn't learn that until this year when my husband had surgery. The surgery alone cost $40,000. That's what the doctor charged. That's not including anesthesia, right? But there's a cap on how much I pay out of pocket thanks to the Affordable Care Act. If it weren't for that, I don't know how much I would have ended up spending out of pocket. So that is a protection that's important for a lot of people, myself included, right? The protections for preexisting conditions.

All those things needed to be messaged more effectively to the American people. But you know what, if Democrats are terrible at messaging, which they are, they could have gotten in front of this issue by just passing universal health care, by fighting for universal health care. That way you don't have, you don't leave the door open for Republicans to come in and slowly but surely dismantle your big shining achievement. Yeah, so look, we're fair here. We criticize Democrats and Republicans, but for the things they should be criticized for.

And we do not call it even just because there's a neutrality fetish or that Republicans or someone else is going to yell at us. We don't care about that, so we care about the facts. So the Affordable Care Act has problems, it does not have adequate price controls. It's what we said from day one. From day one, we said it should have had a public option. Now we believe Medicare for all is the right option. And you know what, if you, Republicans, you're celebrating taking away Affordable Care Act,

if this ruling holds, be careful what you wish for, because progressives, 100% will fight for Medicare for all next. And we pulled the Democratic Party in that direction. Already 70% of the American people agree with us. So we will get you much better protections than what even Obamacare offered. But if they say that Democrats and Republicans, you cannot tell who was for denying you based on pre-existing conditions, the caps, and all the things that we've outlined here. If the press makes that mistake, which they often do, that's nothing but aiding and abetting

a lie and Republican propaganda. For all the criticism we lay on the Democrats, they definitely were for these provisions. No ends or buts. So if you like those provisions, they should get all of the credit. Almost every Republican voted against it, has tried to repeal it over 50 times, and now use this trick in the courts to try to take it away from them and are now celebrating that you're now going to be subject to over the top insane what they call free market capitalism, which is go ahead and die on a street corner and we don't give a damn about you.

One final thing I want to add to this story is commentary, essentially, by Politico. They wouldn't deem it commentary, but it is. So this is an article written by Caitlin Prisco, and toward the end of her piece, she says the following. Let's go to Graphic 38, please. Democrats who grabbed 40 new seats in this year's midterms, in large part by relying on a message of healthcare, have not shown an appetite for crafting a new law, vowing instead to fight Friday's ruling.

So Caitlin, you write for Politico. As a political reporter, you should do a little research because there are Democrats, many of whom are freshman Democrats in Congress who are fighting for a different type of health care law. It's called Medicare for All, and you should look into it. I mean, how do you not know that? Yeah, now if she were to write instead a lot of incoming Democrats and current progressives are for Medicare for all, but the Democratic leadership is skeptical about that and would

like to have a smaller change or just protect the status quo. That would have been correct, that would have been accurate. But without that context, it makes it seem like there's no Democrats who actually want to fight for a better proposal, and that's not remotely true. And now, if you want to write an article about how the Democratic leadership is trying to prevent Medicare for all, that's a super fair article. I would love to see that article because that's true. And Democratic leadership, they're gonna show us either way, right?

Because you're either going to put it up for a vote or you're not. You're either gonna fight for it or you're not. We're gonna tell you those facts, no matter where they fall, okay? And one last thing, I promise you, Trump bragging, among the different things he bragged on Twitter about was he said, as I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an unconstitutional disaster. You don't even know what the Constitution contains, please. Yeah.

And so, and then he says, now Congress must pass a strong law that provides great health care and protects preexisting conditions. Mitch and Nancy, get it done, okay? Now, so he ruins it. He sets it on fire, and he did the trick again, as we told you to say, oh, now you're not going to have to pay any taxes on the mandate, which then undermine the whole law. Then after taking away all of your protections, he's like, we're going to get it. Strong healthcare.

What's your counterproposal? Nothing. And then the reason, part of the reason I brought up that tweet is I want you to understand the next trick that's going to happen. Because they are, because getting rid of preexisting conditions is so popular in the country, Republicans pretend to be in favor of it. They are not, as we just explained. Any report of that rights that the Republicans are in favor of keeping protections on preexisting

conditions is, again, they're just lying on behalf of the Republicans. They fully supported taking away those protections. They fully, fully supported it. Did you support it or did you not support it? Don't tell me later you might bring back those protections because you ended the protections in the first place. So that's point one. But when they come back and say, oh, we want pre-existing condition coverage, right?

They're gonna say now, in order to do that deal, you're gonna, we want a package that includes being able to sell health insurance across state borders and a whole. Christmas tree of wish list of health insurance companies and drug companies. Why? Because that gets rid of regulation. That makes them, that allows them to charge you even more and protect you even less. And they're gonna hold preexisting conditions hostage for their demands to help the health insurance industry even more.

I guarantee, quote me now, hear me now, quote me later, and you will, I will, I'll show you, that is exactly what the Republicans do. And I know I'm on a war path, but I can't stand anymore, the mainstream media calling it even. So here in this case, the first part they get right, the Republican Attorney General sue to make this happen. Then get the second part right. So the Republican Party is in favor of at this point repealing the protections that Americans

say they overwhelmingly want. That is what they're in favor of, and that is what they celebrate today. We have to take a break. When we come back, we're gonna talk about a possible government shutdown by the end of the week and what Stephen Miller has to say about funding for the border wall. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t.yt.com slash join today.

In the meantime, enjoy this free second. Joe costs, just give $150.com slash Amplify. More journalism students will get Young Turks membership because of that. He's from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Thank you, Joe. Really appreciate it. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data.

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ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to expressvpn.com slash t-y-t, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Stefani Giacopazzi from Santa Cruz. That's a pretty cool name.

Okay. No, that's an awesome name. Stephanie Giacopazi. Okay. So, Santa Cruz, California, $150, you get a t-shirt as well, thank you so much. And now let me go to member comments. Meg says, damn, as a recent cancer survivor, I hope I keep my health insurance until President Sanders signs Medicare for all into law.

Man, we're going to go back to the dark ages. If it goes to the Supreme Court and they take it away, there's going to be chaos. So anyway, Ruth M. says, no doubt that these folks are required to purchase a lot. auto insurance in their states, but think nothing of it. So what's the difference? Yeah, I mean, were the Republicans all up in arms about having to buy on, the government makes you buy car insurance? It's con-constitutional.

No, there was no money in that, so they never cared. They don't care now. No judge in Texas ruled that unconstitutional, total horse crap. In fact, Billy runaway in Twitter says driver's licenses are now deemed unconstitutional. At least the car is yours part is, yeah, I don't know. Are they gonna do anything about that or no? But here's my favorite comment of the day. Mr. Hat and Klogs from the member section says, our family had our annual Christmas party

this past weekend. They're mostly conservative, so I figured what the hell, why not wear my new TYT ugly sweater? Okay. And says, best decision ever. Okay, now I do object to calling it an ugly sweater since my face is on it. Was that the intention, though, to make it an ugly Christmas sweater? I believe so, yeah. Okay.

Nailed it. They were the awards. I know. I wore to a holiday party with my wife's friends and my friends last night. Sure she loved that? Yeah. No, no, she did, because you were supposed to wear an ugly sweater. Okay.

And they were like, mission account. No, look, it's fun. It says, ho-ho, homo progressives. It has been a Santa thing. But Wendy's friends, my wife's friends were like, I want one, okay? They're like, where do I get? What I said, shopty.com. Which, by the way, speaking of which random panic holiday sale today, 20% off of everything

right now on shopty.t.com, you got to use the code holidays, okay, use the code holidays, and you're going to get 20% off of everything, including that wonderful, beautiful sweater with my face on it, okay? And last thing is YouTube Super Chat. Luck Dragon says, I'll never understand how anyone can't support single player coverage. My one year old nephew had heart surgery one month after birth and is partially deaf. Screw the GOP and corporate Dems if he loses coverage. I mean, look, you should be mad, you should be, I rate.

If you know, you got a one year old, a one month old, and their lives are in jeopardy because They wanted to play these games to help health insurance companies keep on robbing us. You know, Canada pays half of what we do, half, and they have better coverage. So our system is sick, and if we let people die in the streets like we're doing today and would be even worse if you took away the Affordable Care Act, it's monstrous and it cannot stand. You should vote them all out of office. Okay, and by the way, on the tweets, the campaign to let Nancy Pelosi know, to that we want certain progressives and key committees, you know, it sounds complicated,

it's not. You just go to justdemocrats.com slash key committees, and all you do is press yes. You put your email in, you press yes, and it sends a tweet for you. And that's all you got to do is send a tweet. So it's super simple, I hope you take part in that. All right, Anna, what's next? We are set for a partial government shutdown by the end of this week if congressional Democrats and Donald Trump refused to come to an agreement regarding the $5 billion Trump

demands for the border wall. Now, this debate over the spending bill appears to be a bit of a game of chicken, a game of chicken that I'm hoping that congressional Democrats win. But nonetheless, here's Stephen Miller, one of Trump's advisors on CBS, talking about how he does not plan on budging, and Trump certainly doesn't plan on budging. Take a look. We're gonna do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration.

And that means to sit down? This is a very, if it comes to it, absolutely. This is a very fundamental issue. At stake is the question of whether or not the United States remains a sovereign country, whether or not we can establish and enforce rules for entrance into our country. The Democrat Party is a simple choice. They can either choose to fight for America's working class or to promote illegal immigration. You can't do both.

So that's Stephen Miller doing what Stephen Miller does. He hates immigration, specifically immigration from countries like Mexico, Central American countries. But it's not surprising to hear him say any of this. I just really wanted to show you the clip because of his hair. Look, we're gonna talk about the spending bill in a second, but why did he think that was a good idea? Did he really think he was gonna pull a fast one on people? I don't know, maybe he just wanted to look like the monster that he is.

No, but like, it didn't help him at all, at all. It only hurt him. And I didn't think it'd be possible to be uglier, but he managed. So congratulations. Anyway, let's get to the spending bill and the border wall. Yeah. So they always say the American people, the American people, never backed up by any facts, polling, or data, of course.

The reality is that American people don't want to shut down, even as it was. If it's over the border wall, or in fact, specifically if it's over the border wall. Generally speaking, 54 to 29, they oppose the government shutdown. That's overwhelmingly on the side of don't shut it down. This jackass comes on TV, they're like, the American people want us to shut it down because it's such a central issue. Not remotely true. Yeah.

Okay? Well, the American people really want the wall right away. That's also not true. Recent polls said, 69% of Americans said it is not a priority that should be funded now. Over 50% said it should never be funded. But seven out of 10 Americans say, well, if you're gonna fund it, you certainly should not fund it now. So it's not even a priority to fund in the first place, let alone to shut down the government. So everything Stephen Miller told you, as usual, is a lie.

Right. And again, members of Trump's administration. do this regularly, they go on various new shows, and they will tell you the exact opposite of what the reality is, that's not surprising. But what's interesting is how, look, both Democrats and independents overwhelmingly go against what Stephen Miller just said right there. But what they want to do, what Trump specifically wants to do, is appeal to his base. And one of his promises, probably his most famous promise to his base was that he was going

to build this border wall. So he's hyper focused on that because it's a way of delivering to his base while also kind of deflecting or neglecting all of the other controversies that he's involved in. Because it gives his base more justification to continue supporting him, right? All right, yeah, yeah, yeah, he might have broken a bunch of laws and he's under various investigations for breaking those various laws, allegedly breaking those various laws. But hey, at least he's delivering on the border wall, even though, again, it's going to be a taxpayer-funded construction, even though he promised Mexico would pay for it.

Look, there's one part that I don't agree with some of the Americans that are polled. Now, we're lucky, we're progressive, so almost every poll shows that Americans agree with us on almost every issue. So the only folks here that I have a slight beef with is the 30% say that they would would blame both parties equally for a government shutdown. That's an easy knee-jerk reaction to have. I don't know, there's Democrats Republicans. I don't know any of the details.

I don't care. If they shut it down, I guess it's their fault, both they're false because they couldn't come to an agreement. That's just not fair or true. And here I'm gonna defend in an ironic kind of way, the corporate Democrats, who I am normally very opposed to, but facts matter, okay? So do the Democratic, does the Democratic leadership want to shut down the government under no circumstances?

They will try to avoid that almost no matter what happens to the point where they will be cowardly. So that's my ironic defense of them. And they will not stand up for progressive positions. If they think that the markets are going to get jittery about the government shutdown, not because they will claim it's because, oh, there's government workers and important government work and that we don't we don't want that jeopardize, that we just care about. For some Democrats that might partly be true, but overall, it's mainly because their donors

have all their money in the stock market and they don't want the market to crash. So they'll like, if it gets close, they were like, last time they're like, oh yeah, we care about the dreamers and we will stand strong for the dreamers. And Trump said, no, you won't shut up. And Schumer was like, okay, okay, don't shut it down, whatever you do, don't shut it down. I'm so scared, right? When does the defense come in? Okay, no, the defense is they're not equally responsible.

for shutdowns. The Democratic leadership doesn't want to shut down under any circumstance. True. So Trump, on the other hand, bragged last week. You saw it with your own eyes. Yeah, you could call it the Trump shutdown. I'm going to shut it down because the wall is so important. And I told everybody and I'm going to do it. It's going to be the Trump shutdown. So how is it both sides? It's not both sides. In this case, the corporate Democrats are not guilty of wanting a shutdown. They don't want it at all to the point of it. screwing over progressives. But Trump says he wants it, he's totally responsible.

And by a two to one ratio, Americans agree, okay? But for the 30% that can't make up their mind, this one's exceedingly clear. So one other thing I wanted to add though was the fact that, you know, even though we've criticized them quite a bit, for the time being and things could change, it appears that Democrats like Chuck Schumer are, you know, remaining strong. on this issue. They refuse to give the funding necessary or the funding that Trump wants for the border wall. And so I'm gonna go to Schumer's clip in just a second.

But one other thing I wanna add is that, look, it's not even 100% up to Democrats. I mean, Democrats do have a lot of power in terms of approving the funding or appropriating the funding for the wall, but on the Republican side, Trump doesn't have the votes in the House in order to pass the funding for the wall. So it's not just about Democrats. With that said, though, I do commend Democrats for the time being, for what they're doing, and here's an example of what I mean. President Trump should understand there are not the votes for the wall in the House or

the Senate. He is not going to get the wall in any form. Now we Democrats, Leader Pelosi and I, offered the president two options as to how to avoid the shutdown. And we should not let a temper tantrum threat. push us in the direction of doing something that everybody, even our Republican colleagues know is wrong. Those two options are the kinds of things that Republicans have supported in the past. And when you talk to them privately, even publicly, a lot of them have said a CR is much preferable to a shutdown.

They just have to have the guts to tell President Trump, he's off on the deep end here. And all he's going to get with his temper tantrum is a shutdown. He will not get a wall. So I wanna give context there, it's really important for what's gonna happen next as well. So the Democrats have already offered $1.6 billion in funding for the wall. So don't think like that they're being tough guys and they're offering nothing. No, they offered, you know, that amount of money. Can I jump in really quick?

Yeah. Look, I don't know if it could be used for construction for the wall, but they appropriated some money for enhanced border security. Yeah, to be fair, yes. The $1.6 billion is a broader category, but yes, it could also be used for the wall. Okay, so now Trump says, no, I want $5 billion. The overall cost of the wall is estimated to be between $20 and $70 billion. So it's not like Trump would even finish the wall with the $5 billion.

It's basically a fight for a show, which is what Trump wants. All he wants is a show, right? And so, hey, we're gonna do a lot of histrionics over what would be at best a quarter of the funding for the wall. And then Schumer says, hey, we want to do a continuing resolution. That's what a CR is, and we made two different offers than they have. And what the Democrats want is, especially if they're going to give any more funding for the wall, they want something in return.

It's usually something that it's not great for progressives, in my opinion, something that corporate Democrats want, et cetera, et cetera, right? But if Trump offers something in return, could Schumer take it then? It's certainly possible. And as you can tell, even from that, where he's standing strong, he's still like, well, look, there are ways out here. We definitely don't want to shut it down. I mean, we're offering two different options.

So if you think that Democrats are going to hold strong, I- Let's wait and see. Let's wait and see. Okay, you're hopeful. That's crazy, tall. I know, I don't know what's wrong with me. That's crazy, tall. No, I am hopeful because there's a lot of tough talk coming from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, more than usual.

When it came to the last fight over the spending bill and protections for DACA, they weren't as strong, at least publicly, and they certainly weren't strong in the actions that they took. I mean, Chuck Schumer essentially just said, oh, Mitch McConnell promised me a standalone bill for DACA recipients, so I'm just going to take his word for it, and then he went ahead and helped to pass the spending bill. Who knows what's going to happen this time around, but something feels different. Yeah, and I'll tell you why they're more emboldened. It's because of what Anna said originally, which is Trump doesn't even have enough Republican

votes in the House to pass this legislation. So it's not just the Democrats don't want the wall funding, some portion of the Republicans don't want it either. You know why? Because it's really, really unpopular. That's why. Nonetheless, if Trump, all he has to do is offer them a little something, right? Oh, in return, I'll let you help some conservative Democrats in Indiana and West Virginia.

with like, helping conservative Democrats, okay, stovetop, I'm staying. But I could be wrong, we're gonna find out, okay? So we got two votes here, Jay, R, why don't you be the tiebreaker? No, I was leading towards that and honestly the main reason is because Trump doesn't know what he's doing. So he's one who went out for, he doesn't know politicians don't say that I want to shut down the government, they always blame the other side no matter what. He did, he went straight to TV, brought cameras in and said, hey, it's gonna be on me,

it's my mantle, that was the first ridiculous thing he did. Even Republicans are like, so he's already served it up for him to catch the blame. So that's the first thing. They're like, okay, no matter what we do, now what happens, we can go back to this sound bite that he got. It wouldn't be something to happen behind closed doors. Everybody saw it. It's the point where you can ask his supporters, who's responsible again?

And you can say, watch the clip. That's really, I think, the main reason. He gave it to him. He doesn't know what he's doing. The art of the deal. He doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, I hear you guys. I would just be stunned if there wasn't.

moment in any negotiation where the Democrats don't surrender. All right, we'll see. So I still vote no. Let's see what happens. This will be fun. All right. You want to take a bet? Well, look, if you challenge me on air, I'm always going to say yes.

Yeah, sure. But like, it'll be hard to define us the Democrats folding, but maybe not. Maybe it'll be obvious. Yeah, I think it would be obvious. Showshout 20 bucks? 50. Okay, all right, fascinating. All right, we'll go for 50.

All right. Oh, we shuck on it. Okay. All right. All right, we got to take another break. So let's do that. When we come back, Paul Ryan is pushing for increased immigration, but from a very specific place. We'll tell you from where when we return. 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. At apple.com slash TYT. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon. Thank you.