The Young Turks - Kevin McCarthy Resigns

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the ousted speaker, announces he’s leaving Congress. Leaked audio of heated meeting reveals hostages’ fury at Netanyahu. Ryan Grim discusses his book titled “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution."" Democratic Presidential candidate Cenk Uygur discusses the big mistake for Florida Democrats to cancel the presidential primary and more. 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. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited.

Sorry. Smurfs. Only theaters July 18th. We're going to be able to be. Welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Casparian, and is it Wednesday? I believe it is. Today's show is going to be bananas, absolutely bananas. I'm super excited about it. We've got two banger stories right at the top. We're going to talk about former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, basically quitting his job. He won't even serve out the rest of his term. We'll talk about what that means for the Republican Party and more in just a bit.

We'll also talk about some leaked audio coming from the freed Israeli hostages. They had a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, and it did not go well for Netanyahu. So we'll share some of that audio with you along with other details of that story. We're gonna have two guests on in the first hour of the show today. Presidential candidate, Jank Yugar, will be joining us a little later on. And we're also going to be talking to journalist and author Ryan Grimm. He has a new book out about the squad. And boy, are there some elements of hot goss in that book that you're definitely gonna

want to know about, some behind the scenes information regarding some of the more controversial moments between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the establishment, lots to get to. So I'm super excited for today's show. Second hour, we'll have John Iderola come in and cover some more news of the day with us. And then after all of that, we're gonna have some special coverage today, the Republican primary debate is taking place tonight, and the good news is that TYT will have a Democratic presidential candidate response to it. It will include Mary Ann Williamson, Jank Ugar, and Dean Phillips. They're going to discuss their policy oppositions to what Republicans are proposing, of course.

They're going to talk about their own platform and their own policy positions, so you can definitely check that out tonight. That'll be taking place tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern time, 7 p.m. Pacific, right here, t.yt.com. And by the way, you can become a member and support the show and everything that we do here at tyt.com slash join. All right, without further ado, let's talk about one of the bigger stories of the day. And it involves a prominent member of the Republican Party in the House. Newly ousted, GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced through a Wall Street Journal piece that he's quitting, he is resigning from his position as a member of the Republican

party in the House of Representatives, he won't even serve out the remainder of his term. So now the narrow majority Republicans enjoy in the House is about to get even narrower. And there are some Republicans speaking out against what McCarthy. decided to do here, namely Marjorie Green, so we'll get to her in just a moment. But first, some details. So the piece that Kevin McCarthy published is in the Wall Street Journal. It's titled, I'm leaving the house, but not the fight. My work is only getting started in my next chapter. Now keep in mind, he's quitting before his term is even over. So it's hilarious to frame this as I'm a fighter and I am going to fight for you even though my constituents in central

California voted for me and trusted me to at least serve out my term. But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to quit. So in it, he writes the following. I will continue to recruit our country's best and brightest to run for elected office. The Republican Party is expanding every day. And I'm committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders. It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets. Okay, let's just pause for a second. No, no, no. The problem is the endless gridlock in Washington,

unless there's an issue in which donors legally bribed members of both parties to get legislation passed. Typically, it's legislation having to do with more military funding. And when I say military funding, I'm not talking about money that goes into the pockets of the brave men and women who make up our military. I'm talking about the defense contractors who make money off of weapons of war and definitely benefit from increased military spending. The idea that, oh, it's just that, it's just that Washington's just doing too much. We'd be doing too much, and that's the problem, is ridiculous.

But let me continue. He continues to write, I started my career as a small business owner, and I look forward to helping entrepreneurs. Oh, Kevin, you know you've been helping the business community your entire career. And risk takers reach their full potential. The challenges we face are more likely to be solved by innovation than legislation. And what I also found hilarious is that he suddenly tried to call out corruption. And so he writes, despite the best attempts by special interest groups and the news media to divide us,

I have seen the goodness of the American people. They are what will ultimately uphold the enduring values of our great nation. We all have a role to play in that effort. Now keep in mind, the wonderful Americans that he purports to give a damn about are the same Americans who overwhelmingly wanted to reject Donald Trump's tax cuts for the rich. But he helped push that kind of legislation through, certainly in the House. He has gone against the will of the American people when it comes to various policy proposals throughout his entire career. And speaking of which, we should talk a little bit more about what the earlier years of his political. career look like because he was part of a group of Republican lawmakers who like to call themselves

the young guns. You know, the young guns 10 years ago had an interview with PBS. I'm going to show you some excerpts of it. But before I do, let me give you more information about it. It included Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, N.S, Kevin McCarthy. They even wrote a book about how they were, you know, the rebels within the Republican Party and the House of Representatives. The young guns, A new generation of conservative leaders. Yeah, they're all gone now, every single one of them. But without further ado, let's get to know the Young Guns a little more. And this is, again, an older interview.

This is from 2010. Let's watch. Young Guns, a new generation of conservative leaders, is a roadmap of sorts for how the GOP should govern if Republicans win control of the U.S. House of Representatives this fall. It's written by three up-and-coming Republican congressmen. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Kevin McCarthy of California. Is it, did they? I mean, what a, it's amazing to look back at things because, you know, typically these types of stories, they pop up every once in a while.

I think you could say the same of the squad, right? It's a new group of lawmakers and they want to come in and, you know, shake up the system. They want to stir the pot, they really want to change things. And what's amazing about the young guns is that they really wanted to present themselves as further right, more willing to serve as obstructionist to any type of democratic agenda. And I thought it's just so fascinating to see how in the end, they kind of got destroyed by the voters moving even further to the right, further to the right of them. And I want to go to the next video because remember, McCarthy says, I'm gonna continue to fight,

And so in his words, that fight means I'm going to encourage people to run for office, I guess. Let's actually go back to that statement, again, published in the Wall Street Journal where he says, Graphic 2, I will continue to recruit our country's best and brightest to run for elected office. That's what he said in the piece that he published in the Wall Street Journal just recently. Now let's go back 10 years and hear what he told PBS when he was one of the young guns. The whole concept of young guns is about ideas. What we've done is we've taken the brand of young guns that Fred Barnes gave us to go out across the country and find candidates that were willing to challenge Democrats based upon

principles that would solve problems because you're right. We talk about the wrong policies of the Democrats, but we also talk about the wrong policies that the Republicans have of why they got fired. So 10 years ago, similar goals to what he claims to have today. which means like nothing's really changed with Kevin McCarthy. I don't think he's really sat to think about what his goals are or what he wants to accomplish or what he wants his legacy to be. One thing that I do know about Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans who have chosen to either resign or no longer seek public office, a lot of people are retiring, is that they see the Trump era of the Republican Party as incredibly difficult, dysfunctional. I mean, McCarthy experienced that firsthand in regard to the whole speakership debacle and how easily he was voted out by eight unruly, rebellious Republican members of Congress.

And that was spearheaded by Representative Matt Gates, of course. And Matt Gates, you know, epitomizes what the MAGA wing of the Republican Party looks like. And that's really the dominant flavor of the Republican Party at the moment. And so it is shocking that in this current era, someone like Kevin McCarthy who came onto the scene as the rebel, as the one who is going to push the party further to the right, is now considered someone who's not right wing enough to really get the support that Republican voters are willing to give to the more far right wing of the party, the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. So I don't begrudge him for wanting to quit, but I think it's a terrible move to just resign. without serving out the rest of your term. It's unfair to his constituents, and it's unfair to his Republican colleagues. And that's why Representative Marjorie Green, who's actually been a fierce defender of McCarthy's,

is kind of furious about this decision. She posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, now in 2024, we will have a one seat majority in the House of Representatives. Congratulations Freedom Caucus for one and 105 representatives who expel our own For the other, I can assure you, Republican voters didn't give us the majority to crash this ship. And then she signs off on that post by saying, hopefully no one dies. I don't know what that last line is a reference to, I don't know what she means by that, but she's not happy. And the reason why she's referring to a single Republican member that gives them the majority is because since McCarthy has refused to serve out the remainder of his term, and since he is a representative out of the state,

of California, that means a Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is going to handpick who his replacement is going to be, or he's going to call for a special election. And so it's, it doesn't look good for the Republican Party, that's for sure. And I do think that the Republican Party has a lot of trouble ahead, because what they experience in the midterm election, I think, is going to maybe play out in some of these congressional races in 2024. And what I mean by that is obviously Trump is going to endorse some of the candidates, the Republican candidates. And the people he tends to endorse are people just like him. They might do well in primaries. They might do well among, you know, hardcore Republican voters who are pro MAGA.

But once they get to a general election, independents aren't necessarily on board. And really, a lot of these elections come down to those independent voters. So we'll see how this all plays out. But I can understand why someone like Marjorie Green is frustrated over the decision that McCarthy made here. And by the way, I should also note that Representative Patrick McHenry, who briefly served as kind of like an interim House Speaker, he is also announcing that he's retiring at the end of his term. So he's not pulling McCarthy by just resigning without serving the rest of his term. and McHenry again served as acting speaker during the three weeks in October following McCarthy's ouster.

McCarthy will join the more than three dozen House members who have announced that they will not seek re-election in 2024 because they are either retiring or seeking other office. So young guns, I guess they were gun for trouble because each one of them is gone, including McCarthy. Let's move on to some other news today. Since we have so many interviews today, we're not going to do a lot of in-depth coverage of the war in Gaza. But there is one story that I think is incredibly important for you to know about. So let's get to it. I want to play a clip of one of the women in this meeting. She herself was a hostage with her children.

They were freed, but her husband is still inside. She says that no one was doing anything for them, she says, and that Israeli shelling actually wounded them. Take a listen. You will return them all. They will not wait 50 days. They will not wait another year because you claim that they are strong enough. You have no information.

You have no information. The facts that we were shelled, the fact that no one knew anything about where we were. You just heard from a freed Israeli hostage just tearing into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his handling of the war in Gaza, over his handling of the hostages that remain captive in the Gaza Strip. And really, it's no secret that the family members of these hostages had been tearing into Benjamin Netanyahu. and the current coalition government over its handling of a number of issues involving this war. There had been reports indicating that they were furious with Netanyahu and certainly concerned about the well-being of the hostages given the aerial bombardment that has been leading to incredibly

high civilian death tolls on the Palestinian side. But now we really have a better understanding of that rage and the rage that the freed hostages and their family members have about the military operations that BB is overseeing in Gaza. So with that said, let's talk a little bit more about what was heard in this audio and what's been reported about it ever since. So it's important to know that the audio was actually leaked to an Israeli news site known as Wynet. This is why we know about the meeting that NetNihahu had with the freed hostages and how

they actually feel about his leadership. The same freed hostage that we heard from earlier in the story is, um, what we're who we're going to read some quotes from now because later in the audio, she also told Netanyahu, quote, the feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us. The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and we were wounded. That's besides the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza. So I've been dying to know what the hostages had been experiencing in regard to the aerial bombardment that's been taking place in Gaza. Because remember, when Israel blocks the entry of humanitarian aid, that means food, water, fuel, when Israel engages in these aerial bombardments, in this bombing, it's not just simply going to impact the Palestinian lives that have been lost, which is by the way, deplorable and terrible enough.

But if they genuinely cared about the hostages, they would maybe reconsider whether these military operations make sense because the hostages are dealing with, you know, these actions as well. And here we have a hostage making abundantly clear that they were terrorized by the shelling. They were terrorized by the bombing. And some of them did in fact get injured and wounded as a result.

Now, Hamas had made statements like that previously, And they should be dismissed if you ask me, because of course Hamas is going to say that. But if you have a freed hostage calling out Benjamin Netanyahu in this private meeting, which luckily we have audio of, then it means, no, no, no, there is now evidence coming from the mouth of one of the freed hostages that these military operations did jeopardize their lives. Now, she also says that throughout the time we were there, we felt abandoned twice. once on September, on Saturday, October 7th, when you did not protect us, and a second time, every day that passes, that we are not released. We didn't believe we would be there for so

long. So they felt that the Netanyahu government was not really interested in freeing them, in saving them. Netanyahu, of course, disagrees with this take, and we'll get to his statements in just a moment. But the former abductee also continues referencing her husband, who is is still held captive and she's really worried about him for good reason. She says, do you think the men are strong? My husband would beat himself every day. Punch his face until it bled because it was too much for him and now he is alone and God knows under what conditions.

So she desperately wants action and what she is not in favor of is what the IDF is currently considering, which is flooding the tunnel system in Gaza with seawater. We'll also get to that in just a moment because there's concern that the remaining hostages are being held in those tunnels and drowning out the tunnels means drowning out potentially the hostages as well. And then she also says, and you want to topple the Hamas government to show that you have bigger balls, there is no life here that is more important than others. None of us there deserve any less treatment than any resident of Israel.

Return them all and not in a month, two months or a year. So she's incredibly clear and my heart breaks for her. I can't imagine being in her shoes having a loved one held captive in the Gaza Strip by Hamas. I would be beside myself and I would be just as furious, if not more furious with Benjamin Netanyahu. So I give her a lot of credit for being willing to confront him about this and being willing to share what she experienced firsthand as she was held captive in the Gaza's strip. At one point in the audio, people actually started chanting shame or shouting shame at Netanyahu, and Netanyahu decided, now was a good time to actually defend my military actions. He argued, well, listen, if it weren't for the aerial bombardment applying pressure

to Hamas, we very likely would never get any agreement to exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners, right? But what's interesting is some of the other individuals who were previously held captive and now have been freed are arguing, no, I think maybe you should free all of the prisoners do it now. We want our family members back. We want our, you know, fellow Israeli civilians back. Now with that said, referring to reports that the Israeli military is considering flooding Hamas tunnels in Gaza, she says this. And you're talking about washing the tunnels with seawater. You are shelling the root of tunnels in the exact area where they are, meaning where the remaining hostages are. The girls ask me, where is their father? And I have

to tell them that the bad guys don't want to yet release them. And it's unclear if she's referring to Netanyahu when she refers to the bad guys or if she's referring to Hamas or maybe both. But I say that because she's just completely dressing him down, Netanyahu, and she's just totally tearing into him. And so I feel like she meant that statement for Netanyahu, but I want to be clear that it's unclear who she was referring to there. And she also adds, quote, you put politics above the return of the kidnapped. Now, this freed Israeli hostage wasn't the only one at the meeting who was absolutely incensed by Netanyahu and the IDF. A former captive from kibbutz near Oz, who was recently released as part of the deal, also told Netanyahu the following, I experienced captivity and I understand its hardships.

Every day in captivity was extremely challenging. We were in tunnels, terrified that it would not be Hamas, but Israel that would kill us. And then they would say Hamas killed you. That is an incredible statement. It really is. I mean, confronting Netanyahu about this is an important thing to do. And I'm very happy to hear that this former hostage was willing to say that to him, to his face.

But it's also so true. I mean, imagine you're already scared for your life. You've already been kidnapped. You're already, you know, in tunnels, in some cases, sweltering heat because there's no ventilation in those tunnels. It is a scary, scary situation. You don't know what happened to your other loved ones. as the atrocities were being committed. And then on top of all of that,

they're hearing and experiencing the aerial bombardments as well. I would be afraid for my life as well, not just due to the fact that I had just been kidnapped by Hamas, but because my own government, which should be working hard to save me, to free me, is engaging in aerial bombardments that could very likely kill me, and it seems like they don't even care.

Like, that's the sense that they were getting. is why again, I give this hostage a lot of credit for sharing that perspective with Netanyahu. Now, I don't think it's going to be persuasive, we'll see, but it is important for him to be confronted by this perspective. There's more though. One man related what family members had told him after being freed, quote, they were under constant threat from the IDF shelling. You sat in front of us and assured us that it does not threaten their lives. They also roam the streets and are not only in the tunnels. They are mounted on donkeys and carts, meaning the hostages. You will not be able to recognize them on the street and you are

endangering their lives. It is our duty to return them now. So again, yet another individual, in this case, a family member of one of the hostages making abundantly clear, you're risking the lives of our loved ones through these military operations. A parent whose son was kidnapped, told the meeting, it was his son's birthday and asked, what do you have to say to him? He saved people there. You abandoned him. And again, I just want to emphasize that it's not just the aerial bombardments. It's not just the military operations conducted by the IDF that they were concerned about. They also brought up the fact that food was sparse. It was difficult to find food because of the humanitarian blockade. Every day that passes is a game of roulette

in their lives. Why don't you release Palestinian prisoners? Please or release them all and bring them hostages back. They live on borrowed time. And I want to just give you one other moment from this meeting in which Netanyahu felt the need to respond to some of the criticisms. So referring to a dog tag with the name of a hostage that he had been given, Netanyahu said, quote, the dog tag you gave me is by my bed, it's in my heart. But the father retorted, you don't put it on your neck because you're ashamed. To which Netanyahu responded, absolutely, absolutely not. When Netanyahu said Hamas was to blame for the end of the truce,

an individual identified by Wynet as a family member of a released hostage replied, nonsense. So look, there's a lot of reporting about how the truce came to an end. Fog of war, I've felt uncomfortable with all of these reports because it's hard for me to parse out what is true and what is not true. Obviously, Israel is blaming Hamas. Hamas is blaming Israel. I'm not going to repeat the lies of either side, and I'm not going to misinform anyone in my audience about it. I think we're going to have to wait and see how the truce really fell apart. But in the meantime, it is interesting to hear from the actual hostages in a closed-door meeting, right?

Like I don't buy the BS about like, oh, the hostages as they were being, you know, released by Hamas, heavily armed Hamas said that they were treated really well. They seem super happy. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to fall for that. But I do trust in their statements and what they're willing to say behind closed doors to Benjamin Netanyahu's face. And so I think that everyone should consider what they have gone through, what they are worried about. and the critiques that they are sharing in regard to Benjamin Nanyahu's government and how

they have carried out this war in Gaza. All right, we're going to take a brief break when we come back. Ryan Grimm will be joining us for a discussion about his latest book, The Squad, and whether progressives are really fighting for us in Congress. We'll be right back. Welcome back to TYT. I'm your host Anna Casparian, and I'm super excited for the conversation we are about to have. Joining us now is journalist and author Ryan Grimm, who's actually out with a brand new book, The Squad, AOC, and the Hope of a Political Revolution. Ryan, this book was a pleasure to read.

I love to hear you said that's really music to my ears. Yeah, you're a great writer. Yeah, it's, it might not be a happy story necessarily, but I want people to like just enjoy the experience of reading it. Oh, for sure. And I did. I did. And I found the book incredibly enlightening because as you read through it, you're inevitably going to be reminded of so many controversial moments in, you know, the Democratic Party in which there was division among the progressive wing and the more establishment wing. But learning about what was going on behind the scenes in those moments was so important, for me at least. It helps me have a better understanding about AOC, the squad, and where things might have, for lack of the better word, gone wrong. Because I think we had a certain vision for them or of them.

And it didn't really jive with reality. Yes. Yeah. Right. If you sort of like reverse engineer it, go back through it like you were talking about. And if you see it unfolding, you know, day to day, week to week, month to month, from their perspective, but with our kind of vantage point, looking back, you see, like, oh, okay, I see where, I see where we were wrong in our perceptions of, and our hopes of where

this was going to go. I see some decisions that could have been made differently. But I also see this, the way that this all coincided in such a haphazard way that it was kind of destined to unfold the way it did in some ways. You're so right, you're so right. Okay, so I want to go through all of it. So let's actually start off in the beginning. And it's actually where you begin your book, right?

In 2015 with Bernie Sanders launching his presidential campaign. And you know, in that portion of the book, what was very evident to me and what you kind of weave in and out in your storytelling was this tension between identity politics and the economic populism that Bernie Sanders represented. And so can you talk a little bit? about that because I feel like Bernie had difficulty striking the appropriate balance in 2016 and then I think he went too far in 2020. AOC in her campaign appeared to strike the right balance between identity and economic populism. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, and because Bernie was kind of caught off guard and whenever he would get hit on it, and I have a scene where he got protested, he goes out, and it's actually interesting to remember, so he goes out, it's 2016, end of 2015, early 2016. And he's doing a rally in Seattle. And so he needs some elected official to come out. But basically nobody has endorsed him. And Pramila Jayapal is out there who's known as a progressive. She's running for Congress at the time.

But she hadn't quite endorsed him yet because she was like, I have some concerns. You know, where are you on guns? Or you know, just she lists a couple things. I think race was one of them. What's your criminal justice platform? But I like him and that was enough like, okay, you're speaking. We don't have anybody who has even endorsed. She's like, but I haven't endorsed yet, he's like, that's fine.

So they speak, he gets interrupted, you know, one of them, multiple times he gets interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters, they grab the mic and it's, you know, it's outrageous that you haven't done X, Y, and Z. So then afterwards they go to a bar, him, Jane, Primal Jayapal, and he's just kind of stewing. And you can just see it, just like, don't they know what I did in the 1960s? Right. Like I marched with, you know, with Reverend King. I like did all the housing desegregation work that I did in Chicago. And you can, you can imagine how somebody who feels like they have been involved in this their whole life would react to that. And somebody like him who has that much pride does not like getting pushed. And she was like, look, that's great. And you should lean into that, talk about it. But that's the 1960s. Like you've got to you got to update that a little bit. And he, works on updating it at that point, but then Hillary Clinton sees her opening. Yes, can I read an excerpt from your book?

Yeah, for sure. Because I thought this was, I see this happening with the Democratic Party all the time, weaponizing race, identity, all of that stuff. So Grimm writes in his book, when Hillary Clinton in Nevada in February of 2016, finally recast Sanders' critique of the big banks as a way for him to avoid confronting racism, the Democratic voting base had been primed for the attack as a reasonable one. And that attack is that Bernie Sanders doesn't care about social justice, he doesn't care about race related issues. Which is so funny to me because it's really the other way around.

What mainstream Democrats, corporate Democrats like to do is lean into culture war issues to avoid having a real discussion about the bread and butter topics. So she kind of flipped it and used it to her advantage to kind of try to destroy Sanders. But she had this incredible way of framing it where she called him a single issue candidate. And the single issue is like economics and class and like how well you're doing materially in your life. And most people are like, that's not what I think of when I think of the word single issue. Because it's what are the other issues beyond that?

And then she's like, then she says, if does, well, breaking up the banks and racism would would break up the banks end sexism. And then she's like, but I would break up the banks if I have to, of course. Like I'm not saying I won't break up the banks, but would it end racism? And you could be like actually. Yeah, exactly, actually. Actually, redlining was one of the instruments by which we like implanted white supremacy at an intersection of oppression. Yes, yeah.

But she wasn't, it wasn't a serious question. So you can't come back with like a serious critique. It's just her way of saying he's, you know, he. is not actually that progressive because he doesn't take seriously these other concerns. And so, yeah, she she primed the audience to be ready for him to see him as some type of retrograde Bernie Brobe, you know. Do you think, you know, do you think that that trick that's been used over and over again by corporate Democrats against progressives has kind of led to what we're experiencing today in

in which you do have some students on college campuses, progressive students on college campuses, like refusing to condemn Hamas for instance, referring to Hamas as freedom fighters. And then of course they get branded as anti-Semites for doing this, and they don't care. Like they don't care at all, they keep engaging in these types of protests. Is it because the effectiveness of that type of labeling, right? Whether it's racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, it's just, it's kind of lost its luster in power? I think among, I think for some people, they have been called kind of racist, extremist,

sexist, anti-Semitic, whatever, so many times cynically that they stop hearing the critique. And so sometimes, some of them behave in ways that are genuinely described as that. But there's no mechanism left to call them out on it. It's amazing. Nobody has the tools anymore because it's like, no, actually that is anti-semitic. What you just said, that's anti-Semitism, like it is, or that's racist. Like what you just, and like, well, you said that when I was opposed to the occupation in the West Bank and you said that was anti-semitism.

Why am I supposed to listen to you? The undermining of the ability to call that out is one of the kind of collateral consequences of this and just doubles up the cynicism because not only are you weaponizing this in order to get it in the way of a movement that's trying to improve people's material conditions, you're also, you know, worsening the very things that you claim and that you're using to make them better. That's such a good point. It's awful.

No, I totally agree, it is awful. All right. Like the ADL now. Yes, yes. So what's- When the ADL says, tells Elon Musk after like a rabidly anti-Semitic post and then he condemns Palestinians and like bans from the river to the sea or whatever from his site, and the ADL is like, you're good then, cool, all right.

I know, it is amazing, right? Then if the ADL can't call out anti-Semitism anymore, because they've lost other credibility, you're going to have more anti-Semitism. That's, yeah, their ability to label people as anti-Semites, again, loses its power because of the fact that they're willing to provide cover for someone like Musk. It's important to have those institutions that can have credibility. Yes, that can be trusted, absolutely. Okay, so since we're kind of talking about Israel a little bit, let's get into it in regard to AOC,

because as you detail in your book, there was a, the first moment AOC's confidence was pierced, was during an interview with Margaret Hoover on the topic of Israel. And it's interesting because what AOC said in the context of that interview was so incredibly mild, especially considering some of the stuff we're hearing today. And so detail that and what that, I think that that was what kind of set the trajectory for AOC kind of going closer and closer to ingratiating herself with like the mainstream Democrats. I'll make my case after you kind of describe that conversation and how it all went down. Yeah, so June 26th is when she wins her primary against Joe Crowley and it very quickly

becomes clear. On that night, everybody thinks Joe Crowley losing is the big story. Like within days, people realize, oh no, Joe Crowley is going to be a footnote. He's going to be the trivia question of who did AOC beat. It becomes very clear that she's the real news from that night. She's doing every interview. She's crushing the interviews. She's eventually even like getting late night requests, which is just there's never been a, not even a freshman yet getting on the late night show. Like, that just doesn't happen. And so they're saying yes to absolutely everything. So they say yes to this Margaret Carlson firing line interview at the very end of the interview. So I want to pick up something that you said back in May 2018 during, this is during the great march of return,

which people have gone back now and re-examined because it was this civil society-led nonviolent protest in Gaza that Hamas eventually endorsed it under pressure from Gaza civil society, but this was not their idea. It was not the way that they wanted to approach it. Every Friday people would meet, they would picnic, and then they'd have a peaceful march to the fence, look out at the land that their grandparents and parents used to live on, and then kind of march back. Eventually, IDF starts shooting at them, and the UN counted some ungodly number of injuries and deaths as a result of this. So after one of them, they killed like 37 people in a day, and AOC posts during the campaign, during the primary, you know, silences complicity. If 37 unarmed protesters were killed anywhere else in the world, if it was in Ferguson, it was in Puerto Rico, we would stand up.

This is unacceptable. And she gets asked about that. And she's like, I was just looking at it from a human rights lens. Right? Like if it happened in Puerto Rico, I would condemn it. If it happened in Ferguson, it happens in Gaza. I condemn it. And you can see like, she's like, uh oh.

Like right away, she's like, uh oh. And then you see Margaret Carlson's like, what's your view on the Israel Palestine question? Like just a wide open question. Disaster. It's like, she's like, well, I see it through the lens of of an activist and the human rights and the conditions and the occupation of Palestine. She's like, you just said the occupation of Palestine, what do you mean by that?

And you can, and then she's like, did I, and you can see in her mind, like, did I just step on a landmine or not? Because you know that there's third rails in this issue, did you, and she's like, well, I just mean the conditions and the occupation. Like, and then she taps out, like, I'm not an expert. Yeah, totally. And I actually remember that in the headlines. I also remember various other instances in which she was asked about foreign policy. It's really not her wheelhouse and it's not where she's the most comfortable. And she said, like, at my Bronx dinner table, it wasn't something we talked about.

Summerlee told me the same thing. She's like, even the Pittsburgh Assembly, I mean, the Pennsylvania Assembly, where she's serving in Pittsburgh. She's like, we didn't talk about this. Like, it's not an issue that for us, like, she saw it also just as a civil rights issue. So the thing that stood out to me about that moment was it did pierce her confidence. But then after that, I just think her confidence overall was just so damaged. She was so worried based on your writing about being accepted, which is so different from what I previously thought about her.

I thought of her as someone who was, you know, chosen by the Justice Democrats, propped up by the Justice Democrats because of her anti-establishment, you know, messaging because of the fact that she kind of wanted to come in and fight against the corruption. And but that is not who she is and I didn't realize that. She's actually someone who doesn't like conflict. She's someone who actually wanted to work with people to affect change, which, you know, I think that's a naive way of looking at things. But tell me more about that.

Tell me more about what sets her apart from what I think most progressive voters thought she would be. Yeah, and I think she also had this 24-7 kind of right wing Fox driven, like, echo chamber just telling lies and just attacking her constantly as this, like her name ID was higher among Republicans the first like year and a half than it was among Democrats because of this. And she's getting attacked as this puppet of Soros, because, you know, Fox audience hasn't heard of, you know, of Justice Democrats, so they have to say Soros. So she's a Soros puppet. She's always getting called stupid, which I, which I thought was like

so idiotic on their part, like she's a very smart person, like very savvy, sophisticated smart person, like just clearly, like whether you like her or not, she's smart, but constantly getting called an idiot on television by these Fox News hosts who are themselves mostly idiots, which has got to be the even harder, like this, this idiot is calling me stupid, oh my God, you don't have the IQ of a Jesse Waters? It's like my God. No, and look, it's brutal, especially when you're a young, beautiful woman, the stereotype surrounding that. And so you're very conscious of it. Like I can imagine how difficult that was.

And so on the one hand, she wants to prove that she's a serious person, you know, that she's that she's there to legislate, that she's there, you know, to make change, but to do it in a way that is that kind of they, like you said, they accept her. Corbin Trent, who became her communications director for the first six months, and then left in a not great fashion, kind of Pelosi basically like get, you know, get rid of these people. Interesting. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. So was he and Schuikarabardi fired? Corbin basically was. Now, he stayed on with the campaign. And so, you know, firings in the political world are not the same as firings in like a corporate world. Well,

actually, there's some corporate worlds where they are. It's like you're fired, but actually we're to keep you on as consultant because it's better that way for everybody. And so it was more of one of those for Corbin. Shroycott, I think he could sense that it was just time to, you know, it's time to wrap it up. Like they had kind of hit a, hit a wall. That's her chief of staff at the time. But so, and he pointed out, I can't remember if I put this in the book or not, I think I did. At the end of the first, her first year or her first term, she put out like a two minute video of like her accomplishments.

And from Corbyn's perspective, like her major accomplishments, you know, putting the Green New Deal on the map and making climate change like a central thing for the Democratic Party that they could no longer avoid before, calling out corruption, like reshaping the way that a huge base of voters understands the Democratic Party. and taking the fight to them. Like, that's what he would list as her achievements. Her two-minute video included a little bit on the Green New Deal, but was a two-minute huge, like, list of legislative accomplishments. Like, some, like, ones that, and all of them are meaningful to some people. Like, she got, for instance, like $10,000 during, I guess this would have been later, but she got $10,000 for funeral expenses for people who died of COVID.

Oh, wow, okay. And her district was hit hardest of any district in the country. So like that that is a thing that like matters to real people. But from Corbyn's perspective, he's like, we're trying to lead a political revolution here. That's great. And you can do that on the side, but like the thing that we should be really focused on is like messing these people up and like taking over. When did the miscommunication happen? Because that's not what she wanted to do. That's not what she wanted to engage in, right? And so how did that get lost between them?

Because I didn't know either. I would have thought that she was a fighter, she came in as a fighter, and, you know, oh, it's the establishment that kind of beat her down or beat her to submission. But no, it turns out that she didn't want to be in conflict with them. But she has those, like she has the Bernie politics. You know, she, you know, worked extremely hard for Bernie Sanders. So it wasn't just a couple door knocking. Like, that was like a huge passion, passion for us during the campaign,

helped set up the campaign office in like in the Bronx. And then she went, and she was a big TYT watcher. And I think partly, you know, TYT was doing a lot of coverage of the Keystone XL, you know, protests, she, she went to Standing Rock. And while she was in Standing Rock, that's, and she saw the like passion of the water protectors and others there, it's when she decided like, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go for it. And her brother had nominated her for this Justice Democrats thing.

So her passion was real. It's, it, it, it's, and then, at that time, she's one of 435. Mm-hmm. Like, that was their plan. They're going to have, in every single house race across the country, they're going to run, they're going to run a populist candidate, whether a Republican or Democrat. And it was only a year into that, that, that whole thing is falling apart. Yeah.

And they have, they have like six that are maybe viable. Because they didn't recruit Ilhan and Rashida, you know, those are, those, they had their own political careers before, same with Ianna. So then they all threw their eggs into AOC as kind of a marriage of convenience. I got to ask you, since you mentioned TYT and AOC watching it, there was a moment in your book where you talk about how, you know, someone working for Crowley's team, Lauren French, kind of brushed off something one of her friends said at a dinner, one of her friends, friends was like, oh, there's a lot of enthusiasm about this Alexander Ocasio-Cortez. What do you think about that? And French just brushed it off and said, she'll get 10% of the vote and a job at the young Turks. So my question is, how is Lauren French doing? How's our home girl doing? What is she doing with her life? She said she was going to go into the private

sector. She didn't. Yeah, actually she might have by now. She went to work for Ben-ray Lujan, you know, the former D-Tripple-C chair. Shocking, shocking that she did that. We could Google it, I haven't, I haven't kept up with her. Well, we did Google her and we learned that she is obsessed with spearfishing. Oh, cool. Spear fishing is cool. I agree to disagree.

It's not my thing. I mean, I've never done it, but it seems cool. I don't know. I've seen someone engage in it. I did not like it. Are you going to offer a job at the Young Tarts? I mean, we couldn't hire O.C. Listen, Lauren.

I mean, we might need. someone to like provide examples of bad analysis to our audience, so we'll consider you. She wasn't alone in missing that one. But yeah. She wasn't alone. But that was the weekend before the election. So that's like. It's amazing. It's so delicious. 10% and a job at TYT. Well, what I loved about that comment was the elitist attitude and the unearned confidence that, you know, elements of the establishment Democrats, like they just display it here and there. And they realize how much it turns people off, how much it turns voters off. But anyway.

Is it true? Would you guys have hired her? No, hell no, are you kidding me? Like what use would she be here? That's probably good on camera, I don't know. I don't know. I actually never heard of her until today. Oh, not Lauren, I'm in AOC.

Oh, AOC, no. If she had lost. You guys did hire Nita actually a couple years later. That's not a bad point. So Lauren was like. Yeah, no, I mean, look, but at that point we hadn't hired any candidates candidates who had run for office and didn't make it. So like, Lauren was prescient.

She, what, what was communicated to me in that passage in your book is that they're paying attention to us, hey, they're paying attention to us, they're paying attention to our message, they can't stand us, and I revel in it, I enjoy it, I love it. So shout outs to Lauren French. All right, so we're running out of time, but I got to ask you a few other things real quick about the behind the scenes drama that was going on with Justice Democrats, because apparently AOC had some disagreements in regard to the fundraising necessary for her congressional run. So Walid Shahid was not so happy about her unwillingness to fundraise, and that actually led

to a moment where it seems as though the Justice Democrats kind of abandoned her during her race. Well, she certainly felt that way. So there was this, right, and nobody likes, you know, I think it's actually kind of a feather her in her cap to hate the fundraising. The people who like the fundraising tend to be psychos. Totally, I agree, totally agree, yeah. But yeah, the exchange, the text exchange is, it's like,

Walid is texting AOC like, hey, you're supposed to be doing call time today, like, I don't see any call time in here. She's like, I've been texting. You're like, you can't text, that's not how it works. And she sends a screenshot of somebody who gave $250 over text. And Waleed didn't know it, but I learned later, Shortcott was like, you know who that was? That was my wife. That's amazing. That gave that $250. And then she tweeted at that time, I went back and noticed it lined up with a day.

She's like, you know, consultants, like why won't more working class people run for office? Also consultants, you need to be on the phone eight hours a day and raise $200,000 from your close network of people. Terrible. Like if you don't have a network of people who can open their wallets and give you a couple hundred thousand dollars, then you're a normal person. And then you can't run. And then they wonder why there's no working class people. So yeah, so Justice Democrats at the end of December 2017 realizes, like, instead of 435 new members, we might get blanked and get zero. And so Walid and some others, we're making the pitch, we need to go all in just on AOC. Like she's the one that has the best shot to win with the resources that we have. Corey Bush ended up getting cut off. That's right. Yeah. To, and for good reason, salty about it for a long time after that. Because a lot of promises were made. And it promises based on, you know, a hope and

aspiration. It wasn't like they broke promises and stole money. It was like it just, they thought they could build a national movement and get people enthusiastically donating like they did to Bernie Sanders. And that just didn't pan out. And so they had to narrow it down. But before they could finally make that decision, the word went out to all the candidates, like, we're not going to be able to support you in the way that we thought we were. And Rachel Lears, the documentary filmmaker who was finally remembers that, like that week where she would contemplate, like, do I drop out? Like, can I do this alone? Like, I only went into this because there was this support. And she decides to go for it. And then they turn around

and they come and they say, okay, we have decided we're going to be able to go in, like all in for you. And like Alexander Rojas of Justice Democrats goes and runs the field. Chorikot helps the operations. Corbin helps do the press. And for the last like month to six weeks, they're all sleeping on couches and working 24-7 with her with her current team across the finish line. And so but for a moment there, she thought, she definitely thought that they had pulled the plug. That's amazing.

Look, we haven't even scratched the surface of his book. And I guess that's a good thing because we, one, encourage you all to go buy it and read it. So thank you for being generous with your time. I wish we could dedicate the whole show to this conversation. So you've got the printed version. This is, yes, oh, here we go. So check out the book. That's for you. There we go. Oh, thank you. I bought, I bought your book, but I'm glad to have another copy. The Squad, AOC, and the hope of a political revolution. Definitely check it out. And Ryan, thank you so much for being on. Thanks for having me. All right. We're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, Democratic presidential candidate, Jank Uger will be joining us to give us some updates on his race. some of the questionable shady behavior happening in various states to keep him and other Democratic challengers to Biden off the ballots. We'll be right back. had an awesome interview with Ryan Grimm, but we're about to have another awesome interview. Joining us now is Democratic presidential candidate, Jank Uger. Jank, how you doing, dog? I'm good, I'm good.

So there's a lot I want to ask you about because there's been one kerfuffle after another in the various states that have basically prevented you from even appearing on the ballot. And so earlier this week, I covered what happened in the state of Florida. So you will not be appearing in Florida on the ballot. And more importantly, Florida has decided to just cancel their democratic primary. Yeah. So now several other states today actually have done something very similar, which we can get to in a minute. But in the case of Florida, Anna, they have a rule in the state that if there's only one person on the ballot, they cancel the election entirely.

So in, and they were supposed to hand in all of the names of the people running to the Secretary of State of Florida, the Democratic Party was at the end of November. And they contacted us a day before that and said to all three campaigns, none of you will be on. And we said, why? We reached out. We did all the right procedure. And they said, oh, there was a meeting on October 29th that there was no public notice that we were going to do this presidential. ballot issue at. And since you guys didn't magically know that, and we asked if you had any supporters there. We asked if there was a Biden supporter and Biden was the only one. So he's the only one that we put on there. But the bottom line is, it's, they're showing their hand. They're basically saying we don't want any Biden challengers. We're doing secret meetings. We're making sure we're doing every trick in the book to make sure that not just me, but no challenger is on the ballot against Biden.

Right, because typically, you know, it's a corporate Democrats versus the progressive candidates. But in this case, it appears that there's an orchestrated effort, and I'm speculating when I say orchestrated effort, I want to get your thoughts on that, but it seems as though there's an orchestrated effort to squash the possibility of a genuine Democratic primary. At a time, by the way, when Joe Biden is polling poorly, and at a time when Joe Biden's campaign is making it abundantly clear that we must vote for him because Donald Trump is a threat to our democratic process. Well, yeah, it's very hard to make the case in the general election that democracy is on the line when you're canceling elections in the primaries. Right.

So at a bare minimum, it is terrible fodder to give to the Republicans for if they'll turn around and say, what do you mean? We had primaries and we let everybody run against Donald Trump. And he won fair and square, whereas Biden prevented people from, running against them. And so, all right, is it really Biden? Well, he picked the leadership of the DNC, no question. And we know for a fact at our campaign that the DNC reached out to the state party in Arkansas and told them, do not put them on the ballot. So they are calling state by state, particularly against me. But now again, they're showing their hands of Florida in a couple other states where they're just trying to cancel the election entirely. But so, I mean, I want to ask Jamie Harrison,

who is the head of the DNC, so are you pro discrimination, because that's what it looks like. You're saying that I should have less rights than you. I would fight for Jamie Harrison's right, even if we don't agree politically. But he is saying, not only will he not fight for my rights as a naturalized citizen or the rights of 25 million other Americans, but that he's actively going around saying, please discriminate, please make sure that you take away his civil rights. So that's who Jamie Harrison is, and obviously Joe Biden picked him. Okay, I got to ask you, so Arkansas, like we were under the impression that you were making history in Arkansas, that you were going to appear on the ballot as part of the Democratic primary. But then you get word that, no, the state has reneged on what they had previously told you, and you will not appear on the ballot.

Yeah, so here's what happened. In that case, the DNC calls the State Democratic Party. The state Democratic Party actually was heroes and said, no, we're gonna put them on the ballot. So thank you to all the Arkansas Democrats, thank you. And so they then say to us, yes, you're on the ballot. We call the Secretary of State to make sure because they just need the approval of the Democratic Party. Normally that's how it proceeds in Arkansas. And they say, oh, yes, you're definitely on, you're on the website. Here's a picture of the website and you being on it as a candidate.

So they bothered to do that, and we have it, and that's what that was our documentation. And there was, and now we had approval from the Secretary of State and the Democratic Party in Arkansas. And then a day before they're set to, you know, make it public who's on the ballot. The Secretary of State in Arkansas says, no, we changed our mind on Jenk and he's not allowed on. That's crazy. So we've got Florida, Arkansas. We had previously covered what happened with you in New Hampshire.

They argued that you can't be on the ballot because you're not a naturalized, you're a naturalized citizen, you weren't born here. And then the fourth state is Nevada. Are there any details about what happened in Nevada that you want to share with the audience? So real quick on that, guys, there's two, and Anna, there's two different issues here. One is the constitutional issue with me, and the other is just generally keep everyone you can off the ballot because Joe Biden is so weak, we're worried he's going to lose to one of you guys. And it's not just, If you remember, McCarthy didn't actually win, Eugene McCarthy didn't actually win New Hampshire, but he came close enough to Lyndon Johnson that Lyndon Johnson saw the writing, handwriting on the

wall. And they're trying to prevent a situation like that where one of us gets into the 30s or 40s in one of these states. And then Biden looks ridiculously weak and is forced to drop out, right? So that's why they're trying to block us in Florida. And let me give you a quick update on that and I'll come back to my particular issue, right? So now today, North Carolina, and Tennessee have said no one's allowed on the ballot other than Joe Biden. What? Yeah. Okay, but how is this okay?

How, okay, I, this is me commenting, I get it, but like, how is Biden going to make a point about how Donald Trump is a threat to democracy as he himself and the Democratic Party is working real hard to go against the will of the American people, Democratic voters. They're not giving Democratic voters a voice. Look, they very well might nominate. Well might nominate Biden, it might not be an issue for him. But my point is they're not even giving voters a chance. So there's two parts of that too, Anna.

That's exactly right. First of all, they're saying to Democratic voters in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, we're stripping of your voice. We don't want you to, we don't care what you think. We don't care how you, who you want to vote for. We're gonna shove a candidate down your throat and we're gonna take away all your options. But by the way, democracy's on the line in the general election. Crazy.

Okay. And so that's point one. There's no dispute about that is millions and millions of Democratic voters who now get to no say at all in who their presidential candidate is going to be. And this is particularly problematic at a time when the incumbent is so low in the polling. He's a 37% favorable, 59% unfavorable. No political analysts in the right mind would think that he could do a 22 point comeback. And so they're saying not only are we going to take away all your choices, But we're gonna force maybe the most unpopular Democratic candidate of all time onto you, okay? So that's point one. The point two is they're basically admitting we're worried. We're worried that Jank or Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips, a junior congressman, meaning like, hey, Marianne and I are outsiders, and Dean's been in politics for about six years or so. And they're saying, no, that's Biden can't handle it. He can't handle it.

Now, if I was the president of the United States and I had the same exact situation, I have to like, bring it. Great. I want debates. I want elections. Why? It's not just because it's the right thing to do and the fair thing to do, but also because I want more press coverage of our side. I want to go and make the case and not only for the Democratic Party, but for myself. So if I was a president and I'm in a debate and with guys that I'm, you know, will very likely beat, right, in that hypothetical, then I get to say to the American people over and over again, why you should elect me, hey, I'm going to do paid family leave,

I'm going to do lower drug prices, I'm going to increase your wages. That is hundreds of millions of dollars in free media that Biden is flushing down the toilet and so is the Democratic Party because they're afraid they're going to lose to one of us. And so that is, that's really, it's pathetic and it's undemocratic. And so it's a giant problem. By the way, the one other thing I'll note, and I don't know if you saw this story or these headlines, but Biden is serious about running for reelection. He's been fundraising like crazy over the last few days.

And during one of the fundraisers this week, he said that, you know, he wasn't really thinking about running for reelection until he realized that Trump is running in this election. He feels that he is the best person to beat Donald Trump. It's almost as if he's not aware of the polling and how much of honestly, a risk it is for the Democratic Party to kind of latch onto Biden's second term. Yeah, so first I'll say, look, if you're angry about your voice being taken away and voters voice being taken away, even if it's just a protest of a dollar, go to jankforamerica.com and help out our cause so we can keep fighting this on democratic principles that the ANC is

trying to force upon us. When it comes to Biden, Anna, look, I think it's a legitimate conversation about how much mental decline he's had. How do you look at, you're down 24 points on the economy, you're down 19 points on jobs, you're now losing younger voters, 0% chance of winning if a Democratic candidate has lost younger voters. Now Trump is at 40% with Arab American voters and Biden's at 35%. Wow. You've lost Arab American voters to a guy who said he would ban Muslims from the country. I mean, you really can't be any worse of a candidate. And so, and And now this guy who is obviously in some form of senility thinks he's the only one who could beat Trump, he's in a disastrous situation where he said 15 points lower than when he barely

beat Trump the last time. And apparently he doesn't realize it. Like it's a real question, has anyone in the White House sat Joe Biden down and told him, hey, brother, you're 15 points lower than when you last ran against them. And now you're losing last poll, he's losing by eight, and he's got to win by five. to win the Electoral College, has anyone at the White House told him what day it is? And the fact that he has a terrible chance. And every, and he's that he's 13 points lower than a generic Democrat.

That's crazy. But it's a serious question. And the press should ask Joe Biden, do you know you're 13 points lower than a generic Democrat, that any Democrat other than you would have a much, much higher percentage chance of beating Donald Trump? Maybe he just doesn't even know. And Anna, one last thing about that that's really important. Saudi Arabia obviously is an excellent relationship with the Trump family, right? $2 billion to Jared Kushner, the golf courses being used by the PGA, et cetera, and live that at Saudi Arabia bond.

We all know the history of Saudi Arabia and the Trump family. Saudi Arabia basically controls international gas prices. They sure do. So if right before the election, the Saudis jack up gas prices. And the way they would do that is by withholding production avoid. to lower the supply of oil, which would translate to higher gas prices. Yeah, and so if they do that, gas prices go up right before the election. A sitting incumbent president is toast. Biden or not Biden, you can't have an incumbent president

that is this week and can be rocked by anything that happens in the news. If let's say Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania is running, you can't pin gas prices on the governor of Pennsylvania, But they will definitely pin it on Biden. And the Saudis will almost definitely jack up the gas prices at the end. It's guaranteeing a Trump win. So this is the biggest political malpractice of our lifetimes. So what are you and the other Democratic candidates going to do about this? There were some reports that in response to Florida canceling its Democratic primary,

you guys were considering a potential lawsuit. So where are you with all of that? So in the case of Florida, it's all three of us, we're doing, our campaign is going to, to do an implementation challenge next week. And an implementation challenge says to the DNC and the Florida Democrats, you have to follow your own rules. Here are the rules that you clearly, clearly violated. And so you have to put us back on the ballot.

The problem is, now the Florida law says that we can't go back on the ballot because, and Republicans run Florida. Okay, so the Democrats, that's why they waited. They said, oh, we had the secret meeting in October 29th, and we told you on November 29th. But why did you wait a month to tell us so that this exact situation would happen? And you go, sorry, we cheated, but it's too late now because the Republicans won't let us put you on the ballot. So, okay, if that's the case, we never had that election.

I mean, that's a stone cold fact. That's not arguable. That election is not going to happen. Wow. And then Biden says that should be my delegates. Why? Wait, wait, let me get this right. You should have all the delegates of an election that didn't happen?

No. And as I said in a press conference earlier, okay, then I claim all the delegates. I have just as much of a right to the delegates as he does. We're both in the race. And so there was no election. And, you know, look, will I be willing to compromise at some point and say there's four of us in the race and all four of us should get a quarter of the delegates? Maybe we'll have to negotiate that. No, I'm being dead serious.

I know it sounds funny. But he has no rights to those delegates at all. I mean, I agree. He feels entitled to them. But there was no primary election. No, you can't say there's no election, but we think Joe Biden won. Yeah. That's not a thing.

That's not a thing at all. So that's all three of us. For me, very likely we're going to sue the state of South Carolina, okay? And because they took $20,000 of our money. Okay, by the way, you guys, like a lot of people in the audience sent that in, average folks sent that in, you know, grandmas, grandpas, I know because I have the letters, right? Average of $30 apiece. And the Democratic Party and Jamie Harrison are saying, we're just going to steal it.

That is, by the way, that is insane. So you have to spend a considerable amount of money to make it on the ballot in various states. And so in some cases, they'll take the money and then tell you're not going to appear on the ballot. Yeah. That's crazy. So now that forces us to sue them. And now we need money to get our money back, let alone get on the ballot. Wow.

So jankforamerica.com, we appreciate it. By the way, there's a ton of events that I want to tell you about if we can in a second. So in this case, South Carolina has said given only the reason of constitutional reasons. In other words, you're not a natural born citizen. But that is not their decision to make the FEC, the Federal Election Commission has said naturalized citizens can run. The Supreme Court has said that naturalized citizens cannot be treated as second class citizens.

They must have the same rights. It was not a presidential case. But they did cite the 14th Amendment and said, it says all persons born or naturalized must have equal protection, and they cannot, and discriminating against naturalized citizens is impermissible discrimination. That is the Supreme Court. So where does the state of South Carolina get off saying, no, we know better than the Supreme Court? We're going to make a rando decision on a constitutional law matter, and we're going to discriminate actively against 25 million Americans who are naturalized citizens. They have no right to do that. So we're going to take them to court, and we're going to win on the core constitutional issue, and we're going to liberate 25 million Americans. And they're finally going to be equal citizens.

So we're all sick of being treated as second class. So finally, tell the audience about the events you have coming up and how they can help support what you're doing here because this is something that goes beyond you, you know, what you're fighting for to ensure that there is equality among those who are born here and those who are naturalized citizens. That's incredibly important. So how can they support you? Well, so this is really important, guys, because we very literally need you. In Florida, we need about 20 Democrats to sign an affidavit to say, yes, I wanted to vote,

and they wouldn't let me vote, and this is outrageous, okay? So go to jankforamerica.com. You'll see, you could give us your name and email at the bottom of the front page, or you can go to events, that's a separate tab. And so in Florida, we need Florida Democrats to join our case. It's not a civil case, it's a direct case of the DNC and the Democratic Party in Florida. In Arizona, we need to go collect signatures, and it's, if you pay a company, it's very expensive. But if we do it together, we can do it.

And I'm going to go on Friday and Saturday, and I'm doing a town hall about it, which I'll tell you about in a second. But Arizona also in the under events page on jankforamerica.com, you can come join me in Arizona. We'll go collect signatures together. By the way, that's called democracy. That's beautiful. That's people working together to go actually put us on the ballot. And by the way, after you work hard on that, as people have in different states for us, If they then reject us again, they're basically slapping you across the face.

Yeah. Okay, and then finally, I'm doing a town hall on Friday. It's gonna be a two o'clock Eastern. And under events, you could also see how you can RSVP to that town hall, because I want to make the campaign much more interactive now. So yes, we really appreciate any funds that you send us $1,000,100, whatever you can afford, jankforamerica.com, but also the volunteers to get signatures to,

to help us do affidavits in Florida, all those different things. So come in the town hall, we're going to talk about how do we do this together? Not just my campaign, but all of us. How do we as Democratic voters start a rebellion and fight back against the DNC who's trying to cancel elections all across the country? Love it. So please help out if you want to basically fight back against the undemocratic actions of the DNC. And, you know, definitely check out all the events that Jank is going to be doing.

Thank you, Jank. Hopefully we'll have you on again soon to give us updates on any progress you're making with efforts to fight back against what Democrats are doing. I appreciate that. And I just say last word is that, guys, we're not going to give up. Like, this is not a, a lot of people think like, oh, are you going to drop out? Because you didn't get on a couple of ballots. Hell no.

No, when they do illegal, unfair practices, I double down. So we're going to fight even harder and we're going to make sure that you get justice because it isn't just about me. It's about you guys. You guys should get the vote. And they're trying to take that away from you. All right. We're going to take a brief break. When we come back, I'm going to read some of your thoughts and comments on everything we've been talking about on the show today. So stick around. We'll be right back.