The Young Turks - Kill Shot

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which represents West Virginia coal miners, urged Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Monday to revisit his opposition to President Biden's Build Back Better plan. Nate Silver's data journalism blog, FiveThirtyEight, is a political website with no politics — or rather, no politics beyond a mute approval of the status quo. Former President Donald Trump just announced that he will be holding a press conference on the one-year anniversary of the January 6th Capitol riots. The two deputy district attorneys, who prosecuted the trucker sentenced to 110 years in prison for causing a fatal pileup on Interstate 70, exchanged a trophy-like gift featuring a truck’s brake shoe after the guilty verdict. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease doctor, is calling for the firing of a prominent host on Fox News following comments the host made suggesting activists ambush Fauci and go for a rhetorical "kill shot" to his credibility.  Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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But we got plenty of fun news later in the program, okay? We do. Yeah, and we have animal on animal violence, although all animals are innocent. They are. So there's lots of twists and turns here. And even an animal hero, but first, the human animals. Yes, beginning with Joe Manchin. So, the coal miners union in West Virginia is urging Senator Joe Manchin to reconsider his position on the social spending package, also known as Build Back Better.

That's the social spending package that Manchin announced that he would be voting against during a recent interview on Fox. Now, it turns out that the bill is, wow, unsurprisingly popular among workers in states like West Virginia, especially mine workers or miners who have noticed that some of these provisions would really dramatically improve their lives. The labor union noted that the bill includes an extension of a fund that provides benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung disease, which expires at the end of the year. The United Miners of West Virginia, they also touted tax incentives that encourage manufacturers to build facilities in coal fields that would employ thousands of miners who lost their jobs. Okay, so this is the least shocking development imaginable. Now, of course, you'll hear from corporate media, you'll hear from corporate

Democrats, you'll hear from people like Nate Silver who will make the argument that this type of legislation is not popular in a state that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. But when we're talking about bread and butter issues, it doesn't matter if we're talking about it in the context of a Democrat or Republican, these are provisions that improve people's lives materially, and that's why you have the coal miners speaking out and urging Joe Manchin to support it. Now here's a statement from the union president. He says, for those and other reasons, We are disappointed that the bill will not pass. We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will keep coal miners working and have a meaningful impact on our members and their families and communities.

Now, there are other provisions that they favor in the build back better agenda. For instance, the president also added in his statement that the spending package includes a provision to penalize companies that deny workers the ability to unionize, a measure taken from the larger pro-union pro act that Manchin claims he supports, okay? And the union president also says that this language is critical to any long-term ability to restore the right to organize in America in the face of ramped-up union busting by employers. But now there is no path forward for millions of workers to exercise their rights at work. And so one other note, this particular union has honored Joe Manchin in the past.

In fact, they named Manchin an honorary member just last year. And in response to that, Joe Manchin said, quote, standing alongside WMW, I'm sorry, UMWA members, while they fought tooth and nail to secure the pension and health care benefits they rightfully earned has been one of the greatest honors of my life. Well, now he's got a chance to prove it. So we'll see what happens. But I love that the miners union has come out and urged Manchin to change his mind on this. Okay, this is really important for a number of reasons.

So there's the excuses that Manchin has that corporate media absolutely loves. So excuse number one is, well, West Virginia doesn't want bill back better. Well, that's not true, you break down the provisions and they're intensely popular. paid family leaves at 70% Medicare negotiating drug prices at 83%, taxing the wealthies at 68%. And we go on. So it's just not true. And people like Nate Silver who apparently don't do polling, they do manipulation of polling, right?

Looks at it goes, wow, you know, the latest version that Mansion cut in half made it, by the way, he doesn't say this, but it actually cut its popularity nationwide by almost half, right? When they cut the funding, they did not add popularity. They subtracted popularity, significantly so. And Nate takes the worst poll and pretends that it represents everything, and doesn't even bother doing West Virginia's specific polling. I tell you all that because they love to use that as their number one excuse when it isn't true.

The people of West Virginia do want those provisions, and they want nearly every provision in buildback better when we can prove it to it. excuse is coal miners. They go, oh, my mansion isn't doing this because of his donors. He cares so much about the coal mining jobs. And West Virginia, they make it seem like every job in West Virginia is coal mining. You know how many jobs in West Virginia are still coal mining? 11,418 jobs.

Now 11,000 jobs, that's a decent amount. But in the context of West Virginia, it's still tiny. It's not like, oh my God, no, it's a tiny, tiny percentage. Okay, now, on top of that though, do the coal miners actually agree with Manchin? No, they just told you. No, we don't agree with Manchin. Exactly. We like this bill.

So there's absolutely no excuse for Mansion. The only real reason left is he's doing it because he got paid to do it and because he owns a coal company. By the way, credit to the New York Times, Jonathan Weissman's been writing a number of good articles about this and he wrote one today mentioning Manchin's coal company and his fossil fuel energy donors. They talked about campaign contributors. The New York Times.

Is the New York Times doing reporting? I know. It was weird. Oh, the exception proves the rule. But hey, look, seriously, though, credit where credit is due. If they did that every day, I tell you to read the New York Times and how great they are, right? So, wait, hey, we broke through a little bit. But outside of that one report, still people are pretending that Mansion is an honest,

principled legislator when everything, including the coal miners, indicate he's a crook. And one thing that I wanted to bring up is how I'm noticing this trend of individuals who love to provide cover, who love to play interference on behalf of bad actors and corrupt politicians like Joe Manchin, making this argument that, well, you know, you want to focus your ire on Joe Manchin. But what about the 50 other Republicans in the Senate? Okay, let me, let's not Let's address that real quick. They don't matter, okay, this is a bill that was supposed to pass with a simple majority through the reconciliation process.

Democrats spent an entire election cycle, in fact, they spent every election cycle talking about how much better they are than the Republican Party, how they want to represent the little guy, unlike the Republican Party, how the Republican Party is such a giant threat to the American people, but don't worry, Democrats are gonna fight back against that because they're so different. So if they campaign on this understanding that Republicans are going to be obstructionist, that Republicans are not going to want to work with them, that Republicans do not care about the policies that they claim to care about, why are we now trying to shift the blame

over to Republicans? No, no, no, no, no, no, Democrats have a majority. It's a slim majority, but if they pass this through reconciliation, they just need simple majority to pass it. Yes, that means they need every single Democratic senator to vote in favor of it, and they They need Kamala Harris to break the tie. So yes, Joe Manchin is single-handedly blocking this legislation. We don't need a single Republican to vote in favor of it.

I don't want to hear about Lisa Berkowski, I don't want to hear about any other Republican senator, I don't want to hear about the moderate Republican senators, they don't matter. Don't campaign on how you're so different from the Republican party and then turn around and say, no, no, let's blame the Republicans. No, you guys are in power, there are no excuses, get it done. Yeah, guys, look at all the other media outlets, right? Losers, they're losers, speckless losers. You should be wary of the fake left that never criticizes the Republican Party.

That's a weird stance. Every Republican is wrong on this issue. That's easy. Obviously they're wrong. But actually that is also a criticism of corporate Democrats, because corporate Democrats constantly tell us, no, Republicans, we're working with them. Mitt Romney, my child tax credit. Murkowski. Are you kidding me?

Shut up already. And stop defending Republicans, you're gross. So we're very clear. The Republicans are definitely guilty. On the other hand, when you go to corporate media and they're like, no, no, it's just the Republicans, poor Democrats, there's nothing they can do. Well, that's just counterfactual. As Anna just laid out, the math is not complicated.

You have enough senators to do it on your own. So pretending that it's just the Republicans that are blocking you is absurd. And Joe Manchin is not just Democrat and hence the Democratic Party should be held responsible, but everyone who promised that Joe Manchin was going to vote for this bill, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer. They, of course, should be held accountable. And when we say that, by the way, now the Democratic establishment trolls are back in social media. I know, I love it. Go ahead and cry. Go ahead and cry, pay for the trolls.

I find it hilarious because that is honestly the action of, Losers, losers who know they're losers, so they have to literally pay for bots to give people the illusion that, you know, people are on their side defending them, that they did everything they can do. No, they're losers. I mean, we're talking about the party that had a super majority in Congress when Obama got elected in 2008. And what did Obama do with that power, with that political capital? Just one failure after the next, after the next, which is why I want to show you this graph real quick. This is from Open secrets and it shows the political donations given by the minors union to both Democrats and Republicans. And if you notice, the campaign contributions to Republican candidates has actually gone up considerably since 2014. You want to know why? Because the Democratic Party is no longer able to claim that they're the party that represents workers in this country. They have abandoned workers, they have failed workers, they failed average Americans. And so, I mean, can you really blame voters who got Obama elected twice? Voters in states like Florida abandoning the Democratic

Party after one failure after the next, after the next, after the next, after the next, they have to take some responsibility for it. But they think they can play all these little games and fearmonger about the other side and somehow escape defeat. No, they will be defeated. They deserve to be defeated. And as I've said before, we don't deserve the Republican Party. But this is what we've got. This is what we're dealing with. Yeah. Last thing is that, you know, at least the right wing and the fake left wing trolls are aggressive, right? It's kind of a weird backhanded compliment to them, right? But if Democratic establishment bots and trolls are hilarious, because they're like, it's not fair. There's nothing they can do. Why won't you

acknowledge there's nothing? They're impinent. Please acknowledge that the Democrats are impotent and that's why we should vote for them. That's not a great case. And they're like, but your guys are being too mean by stating the truth so clearly. Okay, all right. Well, guilty is charged. Yeah, go ahead and cope. Yeah.

Anyway, we're not done with Nate Silver. So let's talk about how he's responded to Joe Manchin. Nate Silver believes that voters in West Virginia actually want to get price. gouged for pharmaceutical drugs, and they actually enjoy not having the safety and security of things like paid family leave. In fact, in a tweet, the questionable statistician said this. If you believe statements such as poll show build back better is super popular in West Virginia, then I have a bridge to sell you. BBB polls just barely better than break even nationally. It is not going to be popular in a state Biden loss by 39 points.

Now, it's true that West Virginia did not favor Biden, but they're not being asked to support Biden. They're being asked to support legislation that has very specific provisions, which, by the way, wow, shocking, have been polled and they don't barely break even. So I want to get to those details in a moment. But before I do, I just want to note that Nate Silver is the exact type of person who not only gets a lot of polls wrong himself, by the way, but seems to really want to. to preserve the status quo. So for instance, organized workers in West Virginia actually love the legislation. Coal miners union urges Mansion to reconsider opposition to Biden plan. Who is against the build back better agenda? West Virginia Chamber of Commerce supports Mansion's rejection of build back better. Oh wow, what a shocker. So I want to go to

one poll, but we've had, we have a few that we can give you data from. This one is from data for progress. It's the one that we've cited before. And it shows how West Virginians feel in regard to build back better. And wow, what a shocker. So even with all those Republican voters in West Virginia, 57% of likely voters support the legislation. Including 43% of Republicans, which is a big number among Republicans. And especially in a given the context that they're telling them that it's a Democratic plan. Now, as we're gonna show you when you get into the specific provisions, it is far, far more popular.

And if you're wondering, hey, I don't get it. Well, how could the provisions in the bill be really popular? And then the overall bill is slightly less popular, okay? Well, there's a good reason for that. It's called marketing. And so the Republicans say, oh, it's terrible. I can't believe it, it's the worst. Then Mansion and cinema and other corporate Democrats come and go,

oh, it's too expensive, it's gonna create the deficit, inflation, it's terrible, right? And then mainstream media comes and goes, oh, it's too big. How are you going to pay for that? How are you going to pay? It's way too big, way too big. It's terrible, right? And then right wing media, of course,

bashes the living crap out of it. And then Democratic leadership comes in and says nothing, nothing at all, right? So that's every once in a while of these pundits, right? I can't believe how little they know about politics. They're like, I don't get it, man. The provisions are so popular. I'm not just talking about bill back better. This happens in almost every bill.

But when you say Obamacare, it becomes less popular. Isn't that weird? No, it's not weird. It's marketing. People don't know the details of each bill. When you ask them the details, they love it. When you say it's a terrible, awful bill in both parties and all the mainstream media agree, then they go, I guess it's a terrible bill, right?

And even so, it's still popular in West Virginia. Nate, do you do any polling at all? Any at all? Or is your job to manipulate the polling to try to support the status quo? Well, we'll get to Nate Silver's political instincts in just a moment, but I want to stick to the polls for now and give you the popularity of the specific provisions that are included in the legislation. Well, some of which were previously included in the legislation, but were later stripped out because of Joe Manchin. So when it came to paid family and medical leave, oh, wow, real popular. So this is, you know, obviously polling both Democrats and Republicans, and with both parties included, 70% of likely vote.

voters in West Virginia support paid family and medical leave. That's shocking. I thought that West Virginians were just so different from every other human being. I thought that they loved the idea of not having that protection if they, you know, had a new baby in the family or needed to take some time off because someone was sick in the family. But, but wow, it turns out that they're just like us. West Virginians just like us, let's give you more. Child care, 66% of likely West Virginia voters favor that provision, help with child care, financial help with child care.

I want to go to expanded child tax credits. What a shocker, 61% of likely voters are also in support of that, as are 59% of voters in favor of the universal pre-K that is part of the build back better agenda as well. Now let's go back to the child tax credit because that is real popular. all throughout the country, but also, of course, with West Virginia voters. This is a different poll. Okay, so I found a separate poll that asked voters about that particular provision. Here's what they found. This is from parents together action.

They represent 2.5 million families across the country. Parents overwhelmingly, 86% reported that the monthly payments have made a huge difference for their families. And 88% said they made them less anxious about their financial. finances, less than 4% of respondents said the payments don't make much of a difference. Again, this is West Virginia specifically. And here's what the respondent said would likely happen if the child tax credit program ended. And by the way, the last payment was made last week.

It's done. Unless build back better passes with this provision, the child tax credit is over. 30% said that they would no longer be able to afford their rent slash mortgage, 27% said that they would need to start spending their savings just to meet their family's most basic needs, and 26% said they wouldn't be able to buy enough food. But you know, Nate Silver believes that since West Virginia didn't support Biden in the general election, they must love not having any support from the federal government that would materially improve their lives. because that's the big brain action happening at 538. So there's a lot of people who do polling. You could wonder, hey, how did Nate Silver get famous in the first place? Now you can say, hey, listen, he did a better job than the rest of the mainstream media in polling past elections like 2012, right?

And there's some truth to that, and we've covered that in the past. But the other reason why Nate Silver was picked out of the obscurity of all the different pollsters is because he fit a narrative that mainstream media liked. Okay, so hey, take each poll and tell everyone how progressive positions are unpopular despite what the polling say, okay? Ignore nine out of ten polls that say one thing. Like, hey, for example, in this case not a policy position, but a candidate, Bernie Sanders. Tons of polls in 2016 had him performing better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton did. And Nate Silver would take one where he didn't and go, that's the one, and then he would be brought on to the morning Joe and celebrated and et cetera.

And he's in a sense paid to ignore polls he doesn't like. And the mainstream media doesn't like and corporate rule doesn't like. So in this case though, it's deeply embarrassing. Almost all of the polling is against him. And then they go around saying, well, I mean, paid family leave, only polls at 70% in West Virginia. How could we possibly pressure mansion into it? Barely breaks even, barely breaks even. And he says he's got a bricks to sell us.

Are you insane? Do you do any actual data at all anymore? Or is it just, oh wow, I mean, Republicans and corporate Democrats are awesome. Who cares about the goddamn polling? That's what Nate Silver has devolved into. I'll give you one more than Anna didn't give you. So negotiating drug prices through Medicare, polls at 83% in Virginia. What part of that is unpopular?

So all right, give me the goddamn bridge, Nate. Give me the goddamn bridge. Those are the polls. You on the other hand, what was his tweet? If you believe statements, such as the polls show BBB's super popular in West Virginia, that I have a bridge over the river to sell you with no, actually, no quote of any polls. No. No citing of any polls at all.

Like, oh, I just say they don't agree with corporate rule. Well, where's the goddamn numbers, Nate? Nah, no, just, okay, you're now totally lying. He's conflating the lack of popularity that voters in West Virginia feel for Joe Biden with how they feel. about the various provisions that are included in the build back better agenda. But I'm not done with Nate Silver in regard to his political instincts. I think that's worth discussing briefly as well. So I just want to remind you all that Nate Silver actually reminds me a lot of the head

of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, Robbie Mook, because Robbie made a lot of mistakes because he was obsessed with data, data, data, data, data, he made all of his decisions based on data. He was like the science guy. He made a lot of bad choices, made a lot of mistakes. And when I read into Nate Silver's previous predictions and what really drives him, he just reminds me of him, of Robbie Mook. Now, in 2016, remember, Nate Silver put Trump's chances at winning the presidential election at 29%. So how did that work out for you? But let me give you more. And by the way, Anna, can I just say real quick on that? They give him credit for that because they say, well, he did better than other idiot mainstream media.

who loved Hillary Clinton so much, they thought she had a 200% chance to win, right? That's damning with me. I, on the other hand, went on ABC this week and said Trump was going to win, okay? Who was right and who was wrong? So, and I hate Trump, but I don't let my bias get in the way of actually reading data. Whereas Nate Silver can't read any data apparently without going, the status quo is great. This confirms the mainstream media's, I mean, mainstream and establishment politicians are all awesome. Because why? He's cherry picking to fit his agenda.

So the New Republic had a pretty great piece on Nate Silver and his political instincts. And Aaron Tims writes this. As he recounts in the signal and the noise, his interest in it was the result, or interest in politics, was the result of frustration rather than any affection for the political process. He only began paying attention when politics threatened his economic self-interest. In 2006, Congress banned online poker from which Silver had by that stage made $400,000. And his political awakening was assured. Okay. By the way, that's actually the one thing that gives me respect for a nation.

Really? He's like, he's worried about his online, I don't care about online gambling, but I love how he's like, oh, like, regulations. I mean, think about what drove him, right? His financial interest and regulations. And you're going to see why he loves corporate rules so much in a second. But Nate, I'll also, happy to take you on in poker. Though he later dressed it up as a noble transparency initiative, Silver initially saw data-driven political forecasting as a business opportunity. And nothing about that transactional view of politics has left him in the year since.

This is why, for example, Silver has characterized the financial crisis as a failure of prediction rather than a failure of policy. Absurd. Big brains. Big brains. Let me give you one more. No, because you know what leads to actual events in the real world? Predictions, not policy. Policy does not affect anything. It just floats in a cloud. But once you make a prediction, that makes things come true. Really? Can anybody be that dense? And it is why 538, which Silver conceived in 2008 while drunk on Cajun Martini's waiting for a flight out of New Orleans, remains to this day a political website, with no politics, or rather, no politics beyond a mute approval of the status quo. So Anna, that's interesting you picked those quotes, because I thought the most interesting part of that new republic piece was Nate Silver saying that he was somewhere between,

and this is curious, I don't know what he meant, somewhere between a liberal and a libertarian. First of all, a libertarian red flag, okay? That means I hate regulation, Republicans are right about everything. Okay, and corporations are right about everything, deregulate them, okay, and give them tax cuts. Okay, but then he went on to say that he was somewhere between Gary Johnson and Mitt Romney. Yeah, makes sense. Where's the liberal part? I mean, even if you take liberal as the pejorative, I still don't see one in there, right?

So, no, it turns out you're between a libertarian and a corporate Republican, which, by the way, actually explains everything. And so that's why he checks picks the data that always supports the establishment instead of actually looking at the real numbers. So that's why I want to play poker with him. I don't even know if he's telling the truth or exaggerating and doing more marketing with that $400,000 gain in poker. Right. But if he cherry picks like this, no, no, no, my data indicates that my jacks are better than your aces. Oh, yeah, yeah. Does it?

It's not how the real world works. And that's apparently he has great trouble reading numbers. But guys, I just want to say, it's not just about Nate Silver. Mainstream media is amazing. Jonathan Chate wrote, and he's super respected in Washington circles, wrote that Manchin's feelings were hurt through this whole process. And that's why he voted against Build Back Better or killed it. They didn't get to a vote yet.

And he views that as perfectly normal. Even if it was true, the feelings of someone in the elite is way more important than what all of his voters want. Oh, 30% of them can't pay the rent or mortgage? Who cares? The feelings of an elite have been violated in Tim Poole's basement. No, okay, that's another reference. Anyway, so guys, think about how absurd that is. And then you know what his suggestion was to fix it?

He said, Biden should apologize to Manchin. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. I wish you hadn't told me that. All right, we got to take a break. That is so embarrassing. It's humiliating. Jonathan Shait is so embarrassing. How, how, are you serious right now?

You should apologize to one of the most powerful men in the country over his hurt feelings? Really? That after Mansion slaps you across the face that your reaction to show strength and leadership should be to grovel at his feet. Oh my God. And by the way, that idea is taken a hold and on five. in Washington. And by the way, now on social media, I don't know if they're trolls, bots or if they're actual pathetic human beings, but they're all going around saying, oh, no, Biden should apologize. If Biden just apologizes to mention this will all be fixed. The weakness and the

pathetic nature of Washington knows no bounds. Hard-hitting journalists Jonathan Chait, ladies and gentlemen. All right, well, we got to take a break. When we come back, Donald Trump has made an announcement in regard to the one-year anniversary of the January 6th riots. What did he have to say? We've got that story and more would we come back. All right, back on CYT, Jenkins Anna with you guys. News. All right. Well, former President Donald Trump has made an announcement in regard to the quickly

approaching one-year anniversary of the Capitol riots. on January 6th. And the announcement is that he plans on giving a press conference. Is it to ease the nerves of his supporters and tell them that the 2020 election wasn't actually stolen? No. It could be to incite more violence on that day because in his statement, he attacks the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th riots.

And he says the following. Why isn't the unselect committee, as he says, of highly partisan political hacks investigating the cause, the cause of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged presidential election of 2020. So he decided to keep going with that. Does anybody notice that they want to stay as far away from that topic as possible? The numbers don't work for them or even come close. No, I'm pretty sure that they have not only addressed the topic, but they've done it repeatedly. States where Trump lost, states like Georgia, for instance, have done multiple recounts and have not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud.

But he's, again, perpetuating this lie about the election being stolen. And on top of that, he says that he's going to do a press conference on the day of the one-year anniversary of the January 6th riots. So buckle up, brace for impact, as Jink would say. And I hope there's a lot of security in D.C. Yeah, is he going to tell him to attack the Capitol again? No, wait, wait, not attack. Just, I need you to be really strong. I need you to walk down to the Capitol.

You know, it's, and I'll be right there with you. And then he runs back to the bunker. So look, it's mental, but everything Trump does is mental. So, and everything he does is over the top. But to be fair to him, which this will be ironic. It turns everything into a debate, and so it partly works. So if Trump hadn't gone over the top, January 6th would have been an obvious tragedy, and it would have been a blight in American history, and it is, right?

It's all those things. And everybody would have agreed, because on the day of, you saw the text from the Fox News hosts, from all the Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr., all of them saying, oh my God, this is terrible. This is going to destroy the Republican Party. But what Trump did was, he said, no, I'm going over the top. No, it was great. No, it was Antifa.

No, it was a patriot purge. No, it was this. Yeah, yeah, it's real hard to blame Antifa, right? Tucker Carlson, when you have Trump himself, not only admitting that his supporters are the ones who did what they did that day, but he's trying to enable them and provide cover for what they did. No one's address. They were up, they were angry because the election. was stolen from me. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah, so, but since Trump did that instead of

apologizing for things like, hey, my supporters wanted to execute my vice president, just maybe a private apology to Mike Pence. Nope, nothing. And what happened? All the Republican voters rallied. Now 30% of the country, 30 to 40% of the country thinks January 6th is something to celebrate. Like, oh, those are good patriots going in there to do what was right, okay? And now they'll probably get a huge crowd for Trump. And who knows, maybe they'll attack the Capitol again. Because we live in crazy times. We're going to show you later in the show, Kyle Rittenhouse,

Celebrating with fireworks and his standing ovation in a conservative crowd. They're like, oh, he killed a couple of people at a, you know, Black Lives Matter protest. Yes, yes, we love this guy. So they're not going to love Trump doing a speech on January 6th to rub in the riots? No, they're probably like it, and then they'll turn it into a debate. Should we have fascism or shouldn't we? Should we have democracy or not?

Let's debate it. Also, Michael Flynn, who was Trump's former national security advisor for like a few days before he had to step down, is now suing the select committee to avoid having to turn over his phone records in this investigation. And it seems like all these people around Donald Trump are really going. out of their way to hide the communications they were engaging in and all of that. Go ahead. Yeah, one last quick thing here, guys. Part of the strategy that's happening here is if you turn it into fake political debate,

then when people go to get prosecuted, either for not cooperating with the committee or for their actual actions that provoke the violence, they'll say, oh, they're just prosecuting us because of politics. They don't agree with our politics, and that's why they're coming after. prisoners, right? So it's a strategy to fend off criminal prosecution for actual crimes. By the way, if they committed them, I don't prejudge it at all. I have no idea what Mike Flynn or Steve Bannon or any of these guys told the people who actually broke into the Capitol and committed the violence. That's what you need the evidence for. But if there's no evidence on them,

then they should obviously they shouldn't be charged with a crime. But if there is, we shouldn't give in to their crying about how this is political. No. All right, we got to take a brief break, but when we come back, a story involving a trucker who just got sentenced to 110 years in prison for an accident. We've got that story and more when we come back. All right, back on TYT. Jankan, I got distracted because the thugs over at shoptyt.com have a 30% off sale. What in the world? For winter solstice, that's a thing? Oh my God, I'm so excited about winter solstice. I'm not even kidding.

So today is, I believe, the shortest day of the year. Yeah. But don't worry, after today, little by little, the days get longer. That's true, that's true. I'm so excited. Is that blue I see? It is. You can get the new hoodies in blue too at shopt.com.

Okay. Pocket in a pocket, animate them famous. I do love those hoodies. I have two of them. Oh, you have to use the code winter 30. You can make sure you use that code, winter 30. All right, Anna. All right. Prosecutors in Colorado are facing much-deserved backlash after they celebrated the injustice of a truck driver

who just got sentenced to 110 years in prison for an accident. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. He was involved in.

Now, let me give you some details about what this case involved, and then we'll get to the prosecutor's celebration in just a moment. Now, this was a crash that happened in the state of Colorado in April of 2019. The truck driver was a 23-year-old. He was driving a semi-Rohel Lazaro Aguilera Medeiros, is the name of the truck driver. And his semi-truck ended up crashing into stopped traffic on the highway. It caused a 28-car pile-up. Four people tragically died.

Six others were injured. And he was not under the influence of any type of substance. he passed drug and alcohol tests. Now, he says, and this was not something that was contested, this was something that both parties agreed on, the brakes on this semi-truck gave out. They malfunctioned, they were not working. And he said as he was on trial, that he wishes that he would have like crashed into a wall and just taken his own life instead. He has a tremendous amount of remorse. He feels awful for what happened.

Of course he's apologized to the families of those who, who had tragically died on that day. But nonetheless, the prosecutors pursued a case against him. And he was charged with literally dozens of charges. And the jury unfortunately found him guilty of six counts of first degree assault, vehicular homicide, 10 counts of attempt to commit assault in the first degree, two counts of vehicular assault,

one count of reckless driving, and four counts of careless driving. Now, what happened during the trial? Well, according to the Washington Post, central to the ensuing criminal trial was whether Aguilera Medeiros was responsible for a break malfunction that caused him to ultimately lose control of the vehicle. A jury in October found him guilty on 27 counts, including vehicular homicide, and he was sentenced last week to 110 years in prison, which is, I'm sorry, that is an insane sentence, period. Now, the jury, members of the jury have now come forward, one of whom has said that had she known that he was going to face this mandatory sentence, she would not have found him guilty. Okay, like she would have wanted to prevent it from happening because she finds it unjust. But let me give you more details on what happened. He said that he lost control of his truck after its brakes failed and that he tried to pull over.

to the shoulder to avoid stop traffic, but there was already a semi parked in the shoulder. So there was really no good option in that case. And also the crash happened as he passed one of the state's runaway truck ramps. In court, the prosecutor, Kayla Wildeman, argued that either the defendant didn't catch it like he was supposed to or the defendant drove on his breaks the entire way and cause them to be that way. And remember, we're talking about a 23-year-old. And there are some issues with the company, the trucking company he was working for at the time. I'll give you those details in a second. But before issuing the sentence, Judge A. Bruce Jones said he did not want to see Aguilera Medeiros spend the rest of his life in prison, but added that he

did not have the discretion to hand down a lesser sentence. Meanwhile, an online petition, for Colorado Governor Jared Polis to commute, his sentence has garnered more than 4.5 million signatures. And by the way, workers in the trucking industry are also pushing this petition, and they are threatening to boycott the state of Colorado in their delivery routes or their trucking routes if this truck driver does not get pardoned by the governor. So there's a couple of different issues here. Number one is the law. And look, sometimes it drives me crazy when people get concurrent sentences rather than consecutive sentences. A good example recently is Derek Chauvin. He pled guilty to federal charges, so he got a big prison

sentence, but it doesn't really matter because it's going to be served concurrently, meaning at the same time as the prison sentence he got for the state charges. So there isn't that much point in convicting someone and saying you get no extra time for the extra offenses, right? On the other hand, when you make it mandatory that they be consecutive, you get injustices like this. Well, for each one of those counts, we're going to have you serve one after another, after another, after another sentence. That's how you get to the 110 years. No, you cannot have that be an ironclad rule that no one has discretion over. So Colorado's got to change that law, and now there's a lot of pressure to change that law.

Then you get to the second issue, which is the case itself. Four and a half million signatures, I've never seen anything like that. That is a giant number of signatures for a very specific case. I'm serious, I don't remember ever seeing that many signatures on a case like this. And I think we need to juxtapose the way the law is applied and how unevenly it's applied across the country. Now, I know that some states have stricter laws than other states. We're not talking about uniform federal laws here. But when you look at what happened with Ethan Couch, do you remember Ethan Couch?

Yeah, of course. In the state of Texas, he was driving drunk, okay, driving under the influence. He was 16 years old at the time, crashed into people who were stopped on the side of the road. He killed, I believe it was, yeah, he killed four people himself. And this was the case where the judge didn't want to give him a tough sentence because of his affluenza, meaning he grew up in an affluent environment and didn't understand the consequences of his action. So, you know, what can you do? I mean, don't sentence him to any time behind bars.

And he received probation, okay, for 10 years probation, no prison time, until he actually violated his own probation and then was given 720 days in jail. Oh, 720 days. Okay. So Anna makes a great point there. And I had not connected those two cases and you really should because it gives you a sense of selective prosecution, right? And selective consequences.

I mean, that affluents a case, of course, broke the record on it. irony. He's so rich, he doesn't understand the consequences of his actions, so we'll give him no consequences for his actions. Right. What? So, and in his case, he was drunk, he was negligent, he was all of those things, and four people died, zero prison sentence originally, right? In this case, the guy is not negligent. There was no alcohol, no drugs, no nothing in his system, and they came in with a weak-sauce prosecution of he must have used breaks too much earlier in the trip and it worked and it worked and he got convicted and he gets a hundred and ten years in prison and gee which one was rich

which one was poor and which one got 110 years and which one got zero right who could afford a defense attorney who could make a decent case versus in this case we're talking about a Cuban immigrant who clearly I mean he was a truck driver he's not someone who is suffering from affluenza or has the resources necessary to defend himself in court the way someone with the resources would be able to do. But I want to also just touch on the trucking company that this now 26 year old was working for.

And again, he was 23 years old when this crash happened, okay? And apparently citing records from the federal motor carrier safety administration, Global Trade Magazine reported in 2019 that 30 violations were reported out of 19. inspections over the course of two years for this trucking company. Okay, it's the Houston-based Costello-03 trucking LLC. That's the name of the company. And so some of the safety violations had to do with the brakes on their trucks. Like the fact that this guy is, he just got sentenced to 110 years in consecutive years in prison for an accident.

You think he wanted to kill people? You think he wanted to crash into stopped vehicles on the highway? Like he's he's not a dangerous murderer. It's insane. So they say, well, you got to have accountability. Okay, then how about accountability for the people who actually might be responsible because they weren't taking enough safety precautions with their trucks? Oh, no, they're a beloved corporation.

They're actually wealthy. Bingo, yeah. So we can't do anything to them. They're wealthy. and they're the most powerful and special people in the world, corporations. Or you're an actual human being who didn't do anything wrong, 110 years in prison. And then the prosecutors brag about it. Yes, and I want to get to that because that's important.

So the prosecutors celebrated his conviction and his prison sentence. So Kayla Wildman or Wildeman, a deputy district attorney who worked on this case, posted a photo on Facebook of a break shoe adored with a shiny plaque that was engraved with her name, the case's number, and the words I-70 case. She and Trevor Mortitsky, a fellow prosecutor in the office, made it for her as a gift. And so she later either deleted this or made the post-private because it's not available to the public any longer. But of course, people had taken screenshots of it. So there it is. There she is bragging about what happened here. Get yourself a trial partner as great as Trevor. He turned a brake shoe from a semi-truck into

a momento. Oh, how sweet. Very sweet. Someone, unless he gets pardoned, will serve the rest of his life in prison for a literal accident having to do with malfunctioning brakes on a semi. That honestly, 23-year-old should not be driving in the first place. 23-year-olds aren't even able to rent cars. Like, let that sink in for a second. Anyway. Look, we've covered dozens of cases here where people with power, wealth, and fame get no prison sentence, no matter what outrageous thing they do. Corporations, they can kill almost anyone and get away with it.

They have all the human rights and they have non-human rights, right? But if you're a regular person, prosecutors will put up a trophy. for the injustice that they got against you and go, ha ha, we're so good at crushing the poor. Okay, by the way, why can't we have poor fluenza, where we say, hey, you know what? Poor people decided they were going to treat rich people with the same care and empathy that they've been treated with. That can't happen in a country that's governed by corporate rule. Yeah, there's no way. Of course, if you tried that at all, the prosecutors would have put up a monument after they sent you to prison for a thousand years.

All right, well, let's move on to more right-winger's inciting violence. Fox News host Jesse Waters was one of the speakers at the Turning Point USA event known as America Fest. Great name. And he was clearly inciting violence during his speech. And that violence was directed toward Anthony Fauci. Let's watch. Now you're going for the kill shot. the kill shot with an ambush deadly because he doesn't see it coming this is when you say

Dr. Fauci you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world you know why people don't trust you don't you boom he is dead He's dead. He's dead. He's done. Now you do that 30 seconds. It's all you need. 30 seconds. Now you get that footage to us. You get it to Fox. You get it to human events. You get it to Bright Bar. You get it to Daily Caller. You get it through the turning point pipeline. Imagine Tucker Carlson teases out of the A block. Coming up. Brave college student confronts Lord Fauci at dinner. Exclusive footage right back. Get us that. That's what we want. So Fox News has, of course, defended Jesse Waters and what he had to say there,

arguing that, no, no, no, come on. He wasn't inciting violence or anything. Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it's more than clear that Jesse Waters was using a metaphor for asking hard questions to Dr. Fauci about gain of function research. Okay, so this is the cutesy little thing that right-wingers love to do, where they use specific language that typically incites violence in order to describe, you know, tough questions,

or what they would like to do to take some politician or political opponent to task. We're living in an era of political violence, we see it happening on a regular basis, the FBI has noted multiple times that one of the biggest threats to national security in the country right now is right wing extremism. Maybe don't use the word kill shot. Maybe don't talk about Fauci's dead. And remember, he's talking about this in the context of the pandemic where everyone's frustrated, right wingers are angry, everyone's angry. Everyone has experienced nearly two years of various, you know, important parts of their lives, essentially being taken away just to keep people safe in the middle of the pandemic, right? So using it in that context where people are already feeling rage is also dangerous, but he doesn't care.

He knows what he's doing. He knows what he's doing. This is what they do. So let me give more detail on his strategy here, because this is not an accident. That was far too many references. to killing for it to be a slip up or just a political analogy said, you know, on the fly. So, and this is actually a fairly common thing that the right wing does. Number one, he's clout chasing. He knows that when he says something that controversial, everybody's going to cover it, and he's going to make national news, and everybody's going to be saying the name Jesse Waters. Number two, he's adding in plausible deniability so that he not only gets the clout,

but we'll pretend to be a victim later. So you can go, I was saying the phone, you can see it, the context. I was saying just get an answer for him on the phone and that's way that way you'd be dead and murdered. I mean, but it was just on the phone because of politics, right?

Plausible deniability. Ha ha ha ha ha, I didn't do anything wrong, right? Guys, going a little too far in how you talk about politics or using an analogy like they should get eviscerated or, you know, Hey, they got killed in the elections.

It was a bloodbath. Those are normal. And here you've seen us say, nah, that one's not a big deal. That one's not a big deal. Those are normal political talk, right? A kill shot, I've never heard that as a political analogy in my life, right? Ambush, deadly, boom, he's dead, he's dead.

That's five very graphic, very violent references that are not normal political references at all. He knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted attention. But there is a potential consequence of that. And I don't know if Jesse Waters is happy about that consequence or just doesn't care about it. Remember, 28% of Republicans have said in two different polls that it's time to resort to violence. And that's about 30 million people. And you don't need, you just need one. So what right wing is doing constantly is asking for stochastic terrorism. That's a fancy term that just means, I'm not telling you, Bob, you should go kill Fauci. I'm just putting it out in the world. Wouldn't it be great if there was an ambush and he was dead,

boom, with a kill shot? I mean, of course, by asking him questions. And you're hoping that one of the 30 million, interprets you wrong, and goes and actually kills them. And that way, your political opponent is dead, and you've intimidated the hell out of everyone else. And this is exactly how fascism works. It's the exact same thing Trump did and Republicans did in the lead up to January 6th, exactly the same thing. Just communicate in a way that incites violence, but ensure that there's plausible deniability. And this is just the way it works. You know, we're dealing with, this is what we have in the country, which is so devastating, okay? We have one party that's full of, like, violence-loving, stochastic terrorists.

On the other side, you have feckless, flaccid Democrats that, like, couldn't fight for their own agenda if their life depended on it. I mean. Yeah. And then, by the way, Tucker Carlson won't then turn around and get super upset when protesters go to his house. Now, I agree with that. You shouldn't go to people's house, and you certainly shouldn't be talking about killshots of people you don't agree with. But Fox News wants their crazed, armed audience to eat that political violence analogy up and perhaps act on it. And the Fox News hosts then get more famous off of it, right?

But when it comes to just protesting them, they're like, how dare you? We are elites. You can't protest us. Your speech is violence. We ban you. Oh, by the way, we hate cancel culture. Do you? All right, well, that does it for the first hour. We will lighten things up for the second hour.

So stick around for that. We will dunk on Fox News as Kennedy, who, you know, just has a real smart take on student loan debt. And then later in the show, we'll talk about killer monkeys because they do exist. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jan Yugar, and I'll see you soon.