The Young Turks - Knocking on Kevin's Door

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

The Speaker Of The House drama continues as alliances are made and parties are betrayed. AOC comments that the chaos the republican party has caused proves how reasonable progressives truly are. The GOP infighting is getting heated between Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochu in New York just nominated a conservative judge to fill the position of Chief Judge. A video shows cops handcuffing a black WSJ reporter conducting interviews. Host: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Adrienne Lawrence Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! Three-a-Tee! Three-a-D-R-D! Three-A-G-D!

Three-A-D! Dream-A-D! Three-A-D! Drop it like it's the 13th vote for the Speaker of the House. Shop t.y.com. There you go, shopty.t.com. Adrian of course, host of overruled at rebel headquarters and like Kevin McCarthy has been overruled. Thirteen down, maybe just one more to go.

We're gonna give you all the details. McCarthy was on the ropes, but it looks like he might have been playing rope-a-dope with Matt Gates. Spoil the whole thing. I'm not gonna spoil the beans. That's my thing. That's your thing. It's meaningless now. That's your thing.

God damn it. I ruined it all. All right, let's try to have a decent show anyway, even though I have ruined it from the beginning of the show. All right, the roller. During the first break, I'm going to look up some story from the second hour, and I'm going to spoil it. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. This serves me right.

Okay, let's, and also the host of the second hour. Okay, let's have some fun. We're going to start off with this. Rosendale. Heaven. Harn. Hearn. So things didn't necessarily go on day for exactly as Kevin McCarthy would have won,

at least up until the 13th vote, which he lost, even though he was able to cut the opposition by more than half. And we're gonna project forward where that might go. But first of all, here are some of the names that did flip in this 13th round of voting. You can see a number of different flipped names there. The final vote, Victoria Sparts, had been voting present for some of them, but she was always going to vote for Kevin McCarthy. So that one doesn't necessarily count. But Andy Harris eventually signed on as well. And that left us after 13 votes. It's crazy that it got to that many with just a few people remaining. Matt Rosendale, Andy Biggs, you got Lord Bober, Matt Gates and Crane as well. So that Core 5, which is just enough with everyone

in attendance for Kevin McCarthy to not become a speaker, if they hold strong, then he will not be speaker, regardless of their threats or their offers or their phone calls from Donald Trump or whatever. But he says that he has the votes. They're going to be coming back at I believe 10 p.m. Eastern, I think it might be. 10 p.m. Eastern. I have dramatic announcements in a minute. Keep going. Well, when that happens, they will at least have the 14th vote. If that

doesn't succeed, he has already said that it is possible they will be called into session throughout this weekend to make sure that actually happens. But he says he has the votes. He already did the counting. The 14th will be it. What do you both think? All right. First dramatic announcement, it looks like Kevin McCarthy

is going to be Speaker of the House. Is it premature after he's 0.13 so far? Yeah, of course, it's a little premature. That's why it's a slight prediction, but it's not a very bold prediction. Dramatic announcement number two, Matt Gates looks like he's on the ropes. MacArthur used to be on the ropes, but now Gates is, and he's certainly sound conciliatory, which is very unlike Matt Gates. So it looks like him and Bobert are now beginning to come to terms of that they might lose.

Now, let me show you one of the reasons they might lose. Let's go back to that list of the Republicans who are flipped. First of all, the fact that it is this large is obviously relevant. But I want to point out a couple of names on there. So number five, Donald's. He was a very important part of the holdouts, the fact that he has buckled. Actually, I think is slightly predictable but important. Number 10, Chip Roy, big flip.

So he's one of the most conservative members of Congress. members of Congress, the fact that he is flipped is super relevant. But number 12 there, that's the big one, Paul Gossar. And Gossar is a bona fide lunatic. If Gossar is flipped, this thing is probably over. He was supposed to be one of the die hard holdouts against McCarthy. There are two Republican Congress people that are not in Washington right now. That's why they're waiting for them for the 10 o'clock vote tonight, okay?

Probably with those two and, you know, he's got something and McCarthy has one other vote probably in his back pocket. He will, he will finally get what he's looking for. But my main dramatic announcement for a little bit later in the, in this segment is were the, was the Gates faction correct in what they did? And I think first, Adrian, what do you think? All right, so I don't necessarily know if they were right in what they did. You know, I know I find it to be very interesting that they're now down to five. I like to call them the fascist five. And I'd like to think that they are very much agents of chaos.

And so I don't think they've ever been negotiating a good faith here. I don't think there was anything that they could be provided in any way that would make them look at the situation in a rational, logical way. and entered these debates with the thought of maybe we can come to some kind of agreement that suits everyone's needs. No, not at all. Again, I think they are agents of chaos. And I think that's in part because they are just this unyielding far right kind of agenda as members of the house. And they want to cause upheaval. And so I think this is the start of that. And it's very much a reflection in their actions. But I don't necessarily know that all the individuals that they initially had on their side will support them at the end of the day if they continue with these type of antics

throughout their time in Congress. Yeah, I definitely want to have that conversation about whether this was all good strategy. If we can, let's hold that off to the B block. That's where I've got that. But for now, though, look, you were right. When I saw Gosar, I thought, well, first of all, I thought that I had read it wrong when I first read that he had flipped. I didn't believe it. And so since he had pitched himself as such a diehard, I guess my question then would be what caused him to flip. It's possible that he just forgot what his previous position had been, that a different part of his brain was in charge at that point.

He is legitimately insane. Was it the concessions, which we can briefly go back over those? He agreed to propose a rules change that would allow just a single member to call for a vote to oust him as speaker. As you go through that, John, I just want to comment real quick on each one of them. So on that issue of one person being able to say, I want a new speaker, right? Well, that goes to Adrian's point, agents of chaos. So they could, we can go through these 14 votes again and again and again.

Anytime one guy raises his hand, he goes, nah, I'd like to do it again, okay? So, but at the same time, it is a concession. It used to be five. Now it's just one. So they did win something. Yeah. Yeah, and it doesn't, it doesn't mean too much, like, procedurally. If you couldn't get five people to agree to call for the vote, then you were never going to win the vote anyway.

It's more symbolically, to me, it's making Kevin McCarthy bow down before you. It's symbolic moves to show, no, you are going to be hemmed in. Even if you become speaker, we're going to continue to hound you on important votes and things like that. But then you've also got, okay, how many members from the Freedom Caucus are going to get to serve on the House Rules Committee? They're going to be moving that up to, at least as of what had previously been reported, one third of the committee would be from the Freedom Caucus. So they'd be able to figure out a lot about which bills actually come for a vote and under what circumstances. Hold on that one.

I say that is substantive because they could actually affect a lot of what they vote on based on what the rules are for what they vote on. So it's both substantive and, to Adrian's point, agents of chaos. Because if you're on the Rules Committee, you can throw a lot of monkey wrenches into the rules and make things much, much harder to go forward or much easier if it's tax works for the rich. So, but it is substantive and they did win something there. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, it's technically substantive. It's not as substances as it would be if it was, and we'll talk with this later, like the squad wanting to make sure we can pass certain bills. And of course, the Senate can

it down and of course it can be vetoed. So long term, not necessarily super important, although if they were to take over the Senate in the White House in 2024, then it's probably important that they'll be able to do this. of specific bills, which are, again, technically substantive. So Lauren Bow would have been talking about some sort of border security bill. I don't know why they needed to twist Kevin McCarthy's arm to do this. Did anyone think that over the next two years, they weren't going to try to do some like draconic sort of border bill? I don't know why that was a hard point in the negotiations, but they acted as if it was. But also a bill on, for instance, term limits on members. That one,

I think is an interesting thing to debate. I don't know how much that I actually trust that the people who are pushing for it would actually support it if they thought it was going to go through. Lauren Beller and Matt Gates don't want to be term limited out of their time in Congress, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're more principle than I'm giving them credit for. Yeah. So those two are very substantive because they're policy. So give them credit that they cared enough to get some sort of policy concessions. Now is term limits is the more substantive one and is part of Matt Gates's anti-corruption agenda. It's the worst part of Matt Gates' anti-corruption agenda.

The other four items are actually pretty good, okay? And term limits is debatable, but it was the weakest of his proposals. So they took the weakest anti-corruption one. Yeah. And don't worry, they know the Senate's going to vote it down anyway, even if the House passes it. So it is a little bit of showmanship for sure. The border security one, well, look, that one seems like a layup for Republicans. On the other hand, $15 minute wait seemed like a layup for us, and that didn't happen.

So you never know. So probably they'll lose on all those things, but at least they got concessions on votes that they might not have otherwise had. Yeah. Okay, I got a couple more than Adrian. I'm curious to your thoughts. They also got a 72 hour notice from release of legislation before voting on it. It's a minor thing. It's like mainly a shot at, pot shot at Nancy Pelosi for dropping bills.

and then quickly voting on them, but they don't read the bills anyway. Let's keep it real neither to the Republicans. Vote on a balanced budget amendment that is also substantive. And that one, I don't know where that one's going to go. That one can cause trouble, okay? And then individual votes on each of the 12 appropriation bills and excluding earmarks from such bills. Excluding earmarks? Very substantive.

And then votes on individual appropriation bills could be substantive. So honestly, guys, like, I thought their strategy would have been way, way, way better if they had picked one thing and focused on it throughout. And every time the press said, oh, they're just wasting time, or they're just being jerks, they were like, no, we have an anti-corruption agenda. And they put together and they put forward Matt Gates' entire agenda on that. Again, it sounds like I'm giving Matt Gates a lot of credit.

No, he's terrible on everything else, but we're a rare show in media that's honest. And so his anti-corruption agenda is pretty good. If they just focus on that, that would have been a home run for them because then the country would be on their side no matter what the media said. So they didn't do that. That would have been a way better strategy. But as it stands, they did get a number of concessions. And if you use your leverage and at the end of the day you get concessions, I got to say well played. I don't know if I'm the only person in media that'll say it.

But I think that they got something quasi real and maybe actually real out of it. And so that's how you play politics. That's my thought. Adrian, what do you think? No, I completely and totally agree with you. I think in part what they did, even though people might see the advancements of concessions as being somewhat small and not necessarily meaningful, what they did was pepper these changes with potential problems that they could interject to either slow them down or speed them up,

whatever they prefer. But by interjecting these options, it gives them a whole lot more power in order to control what gets done so that those who fill their coffers, whether it be the lobbyist or the big companies or whatnot, that they can continue to cater to their needs. And also, again, I think this is a display of power. This is letting the other members of the GOP know that they plan on being chaotic and getting in the way of any potential progress and that they need to be essentially, I wouldn't even say respected as much as it's kind of need to in terms of they want. their far right mentality and that their goals treated seriously and advanced through the GOP's agenda, and that this is a display of that, even if it looks like these advancements and these concessions are rather small minutia. I'll hold my thoughts for the B block when we were going to talk about that. But anyway, I do have a question, though, related to this entire process, because the interesting

thing is that it appears that if he succeeds, and even to the extent that he already has flipped a bunch of the holdouts, it's because of the package of concessions that came out. The weird part about it was that those concessions appeared to have been solidified before all of the votes yesterday, and yet he hadn't gained a single vote as of then. It is possible that it wasn't down in writing, or maybe they added a couple of key things to it that wasn't in the initial reporting. But it seemed as if the concessions had been not well received by the holdouts as of yesterday. I'm also curious about, like, Kevin Carthy, if he gets the speakership tonight, or even if he gets it tomorrow, next week or whatever, eventually people will even, they'll forget about this. It'll be a historic footnote or whatever.

His reputation will be what it's going to be. I think that a lot of trouble still lies ahead, even if he becomes the speaker. There's no reason to believe that these holdouts or some portion of them won't do this same sort of thing on every one of the appropriations bill and the debt ceiling lift. And God knows what else, any other thing where the government actually needs to function. Though, is Donald Trump, remember, he had made those calls, personally, personally appealed to each of these holdouts. And unless that had a delayed effect, just like the concessions, that didn't move a single person. So if Kevin McCarthy wins, then maybe it was a good strategy overall that Donald Trump encouraged people to vote for him. He can say, hey, I endorsed him. I look good, don't I? But his endorsement didn't appear to have moved the needle at all.

And I wonder, will that be lost on people? What do you think his reputation? What might it take coming out of this? Yeah. So I think Trump is totally irrelevant in this for better for worse. Like so I don't think he moved the needle. I don't think he got hurt any much worse than he already was. The only way he's really going to get hurt is right with media.

And they have turned on him. We've talked about that. But I don't think this affected it much at all. I think two things that changed between the 12th vote and the 13th vote was that no. I think that McCarthy did add a couple of extra concessions to the list as far as I saw. And what he might have also done is say to people like ghosts are, okay, fine. Not only are we going to have three instead of two Freedom Caucus members on the Rules Committee, but you're going to be one of them.

Dear God. Right. And so those are the kind of, you know, willing dealing that, by the way, they're kind of supposed to do in politics to get to a deal and to get to a compromise. So, but I don't want anybody to get what I'm saying wrong. I thought if it ends like this, I think actually the hard right wing did play it right. But what difference does it make? I mean, they're all competing about who's going to serve the rich more and better and shovel even more trillions of dollars over to the rich donors.

So like Matt Gates did a big fiery speech about how the only reason Kevin McCarthy is getting votes because he raised half a billion dollars and he's the LeBron James of special interest fundraising. That's all true. And I'm glad he said it. And by the way, on that, he has more courage than progressives do. He was very clear about that. We'll talk more about that on the show. But having said that, what difference does it make? Because Matt Gates is going to say, I'm now going to use the extra power that I have to get the rich even more money. Well, then it's Kevin McCarthy agrees with you. Anyway, you guys are having a circle, you know what, about who can pleasure the rich more. It's so substantively on policies that,

pass at the end of the day, it will have no effect at all because they're all deeply, deeply in love with their donors. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it did seem like Trump getting involved here actually hurt him more than anything in terms of having Lauren Bobert and Matt Gates be dismissive of whatever Trump wanted and saying he got it wrong. It essentially said you are not the leader of the right anymore and your thoughts are not relevant here. And so I really think that it made Trump look as minuscule as he is. And it said that you don't play a role. And we are doing what we want to do, notwithstanding whatever your thoughts are. So I actually think it hurt him more trying to get involved and McCarthy trying to get him involved in some way, thinking that it would

sway people. Yeah. We're gonna see. I mean, I also, one final thought, I do wonder some of those possible last minute concessions, like you said, like whether it's the spots on the rules committee or I know, I think it was Harris wanted some subcommittee of appropriations, wanted to be the chair of that. Maybe he got it. I don't know yet. We won't know for a little bit. But if he did and if Kosar got rules or whatever, then somebody didn't. You know, the people who actually stuck with, stuck with Kevin McCarthy who might have had far more seniority than these chuckleheads, they've now been pushed out. They can look forward to two years of continuing power amongst the craziest members of the caucus.

I'm wondering what some of his longtime allies are actually thinking about this process coming out of it. Yeah, they're not going to be too happy. That's why they hated those 20 guys so much. Yeah. Because it was personal for them. Yeah. In any event, we do have to take our first break.

We come back. We're going to be talking a little bit about contrasting this with some progressive attempts to use power. We'll be back in a second. All right, J. Hugar, Adrian Lawrence, John Idaerlo, back on TYT, but I have these American heroes who have now joined us, as for Graves, Olosola, Udentan, Jennifer Markano, and then Joe Winterton with being awfully generous on Super Chat as well. We appreciate all of you guys. First three I read, new members, hence new young Turks, hence they are the show. They help us put this together.

All of our members are amazing. Hit the join button below on YouTube or t.com slash join and come spread. I think as the Christians would say, the good news. So not often good news, but it's at least honest news. Okay, John. Okay. Let's jump into it. For years now, any progressive policy proposal, any,

bill, whether it's Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, anything like that. No matter how needed it might be, no matter how supportive by the American people it might be, no matter how supported by academia and studies, it might be, no matter how in line with the mainstream it might be, has been presented to the American people by most politicians on the Democratic and Republican. 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 didders July 18th. As sides as well as the mainstream media as radical, as out of the mainstream, as unacceptable, possibly communist. And in light of what's going on right now, some progressives have an issue with that. The fact that no matter how reasonable they are in fact being when it comes to policy, they are presented as extremists.

And comparisons are made between them and some of the lunar, members of the Freedom Caucus. Well, they're up to all sorts of shenanigans this week. And so commenting on that, we have an interview with the independent by Representative Alexandria Ocasic-Cortez, who had this to say. I mean, I think it just highlights how extraordinarily bad faith those accusations of progressive unreasonableness are, even when they come from our side of the aisle, which they very often do. I think whether you're Democrat, Republican, or independent, what this whole episode really indicates and shows us is, again, just how bad faith and substance less the argument and accusation is that progressives are just

as bad as those insurrectionist Republicans. And she talked a little bit about some of the demands of progressive politicians saying, when we make demands and pull the line on something, it's based on policy, on substance, and something that frankly, frankly, usually every time has a path of possibility. We offer a plan B and we look at the reality and push ourselves. Yes, push as hard as we can, but we also have an understanding of what is best for the country. And I think that that's interesting. I know that we're going to have an interesting conversation about this. I actually think while she's commenting on the strategy of the holdouts who didn't want to support Kevin McCarthy,

I actually think the point that she's making will be more accurate later on. Stopping Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker for a week or something, sure looks bad for Kevin McCarthy now. We get a good chuckle. But if he becomes speaker, then we're all going to move on and eventually forget that it happened. There's not that much damage that can be done there. Some of the concessions that were made of them could be damaging in the long run. God only knows what the Rules Committee is going to look like, but I'm far more worried about what's going to happen amongst the Boberts and the gates and all that when, for

instance, the debt ceiling needs to be raised or other incredibly important base level functions of government need to happen, and those are held up for weeks for personal grudges and things like that. And I do think that we will continue to see comparisons between, you know, Rashida Talib on student debt or Ilhan Omar on health care to whatever it is that's driving Matt Gates and Lauren Bober on any given day. Yeah. So on the one hand, I agree nearly 100% with what AOC said.

When they say that the squad or just Democrats are the same as these extreme right wing in the Freedom Caucus, it's an absurd, indefensible point. It's the kind of point that corporate media makes on purpose to make it seem like any change is terrible, terrible. But wait a minute, doesn't depend on what kind of change? Like, oh, my life is mediocre right now, I'd like some change. All right, great, I'm going to slash your tires. Then you'll have some change.

Wait, no, no, no, no, I didn't want that. I wanted positive change. Oh, I'm going to get your gas money. Oh, that's positive change. I like that. Doesn't it make a difference what the change is? No, I'm a cable news anchor, all change bad. It was hard to say all change bad.

In fact, it was paid millions of dollars to say all change bad. Okay, so let's talk about the issues that and John brought up one of them. The right wing, the extreme right wing says, actually most of the right wing says, oh, debt ceiling, we shouldn't raise it. Now most of the Republicans don't mean it because they work for the donors, and the donors definitely want the debt ceiling raised. And by the way, the Democrats are like, yes, we're going to raise the testing. Yes, yes, yes, donors, don't worry, don't worry, okay?

So that's a huge factor in this. But overall, should they raise the debt ceiling? Of course. We already spent the money. Not raising the debt ceiling means, eh, we're just not going to pay our bills. And you know what happens then? The dollar crashes, the economy crashes.

Certainly the U.S. economy crashes in a giant way. That's why the donors don't want it. But that's why we don't want it either. We don't want the economy to crash. You're going to get worse than anybody else. Threatening not to raise the debt ceiling. That's just like, that's like suicide bombing equivalent in politics, saying I'm going to destroy the whole goddamn country because I'm an idiot and I'm an anarchist, right?

And so, but I doubt even Matt Gates means it. They just use it as a trick, go, all right, fine, we'll raise the death ceiling if you give another trillion dollars to the rich. Okay, but that's insane to even threaten. On the other hand, progressives like AOC want paid family leave. I don't change if you're a cable news anchor, right? Or work at the New York Times. Paid family leave polls at 80%.

How could 80% of the country be radical? If they're radicals, justice Democrats are, progressives are, and 80% of the country agrees with them, are you sure you know what the word? radical means, okay? Because all of mainstream media, yes, for the uninitiated, including your beloved New York Times, for a lot of people on the left in the center, they think the New York Times is the Bible, brought down by God, okay? No, the New York Times despises change, and they don't care at all what the goddamn changes. In fact, and I'd say this is generally for mainstream media, they're much more worried about progressives because they have proposals that

are very, very popular. And if you give them a tiny bit of oxygen, they can actually pass. And so that's a real threat. Whereas the debt ceiling is just for, it's just to move the Overton window and it's just theatrics and everyone knows it. But they will not report it to you under penalty of law. So, okay, so that's my agreement with AOC. The problem here is, no, you're still too defensive.

play offense. So she's saying here, you see that? We were so reasonable in giving into Nancy Pelosi. No, but you shouldn't have given into Nancy Pelosi. So there's so many issues they could have fought a thousand times harder on. And by the way, so they're like, you see how the right wing clowned itself? Yeah, the media piled on. They were always going to do that.

By the way, they didn't actually clown themselves as we talked about earlier in the show. They got seven, ranging from small to significant concessions. So that's seven more than they had before. So it was actually relatively well played. But imagine if progressives did that. Not on goofy forced to vote things of like, oh, I'm going to get them to vote on Medicare for all and that there's no God and whatever other things that they are imagining, right? I love Medicare for all.

But it had a zero percent chance of passing last year. I mean, last term. If you think that's not true, you don't know politics at all, okay? In order for it to pass, you have to build a great number of steps. And we should be building those right now when progressives in Congress are not doing nearly enough. But there are many other proposals that we have that could have passed when we had the majority in Congress and we had the presidency, $15 million wage, paid family leave,

child tax credit, we can go on and on and on. So imagine if progressives had held up Congress for any vote and said, We want $15 minimum wage. It pulls at around 65 to 70%. Then what are you going to do? Even corporate media would be like, I mean, it's a radical, higher wages for everybody. Nobody wants higher wages, right? And then they get more unpopular and the progressives get more popular.

Okay, that's how you play this game. Stop being defensive. Go on the goddamn offense and you shouldn't brag about how you complied to Nancy Pelosi. You just say, next time wait till you're just, see what we do to Hakeem Jeffries, but they would never say that, because that's the third rail in Washington. The beloved Democratic colleagues cannot be touched. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. The thing is, is that when it comes to the squad and, you know, the progressive movement there in Congress, it seems that they very much share a core principle

or ideology, at least with the vast majority of the Dem base there in Congress. And I think that That is what is extremely different here from what's going on with these Freedom Caucus holdout, these fascist five, is that they're operating under a whole different set of principles in terms of their far right agenda, the disconnect in terms of them levying these retributive, I'm getting back at you kind of things when it comes to McCarthy. And also it seems that these fascist five kind of holdout, what I'd like to think is that they're really sending this larger rallying cry. Because as we've seen across the globe, there have been a number of countries in terms of their government standing up in that right wing kind of mentality and mindset, whether it be Italy or Israel or these other nations. And I think that that's kind of what Gates and Bobert and the rest of them are trying to do here to get the headlines to say we've got a far right faction in our legislature too. And we are wreaking havoc and causing change too. And so that is something that very much, I think it's very very disturbing and it would be really great if the progressives had that same radical nature

in Congress, but unfortunately based on what we've seen and also as you've noted, Jenk, that people don't want to touch that third rail in Washington. I don't necessarily think we're going to see that kind of radical pushback and movement as we're seeing from these far right members of Congress right now. Yeah. Final comment I make about this is, I think while some in the media have just been totally against any holdouts for any reason from the very beginning. And while I've been, I've laughed at the fact that he's lost all the votes. From the very beginning, I've been saying on the damage

port, they are under no obligation to support anyone for Speaker. I just have two small problems with the way they're doing it. It's not any, it's not fundamentally any problem with them trying to hold out for concessions or whatever. The more minor one is, be honest about what you actually want. I don't like politicians lying to us. I don't like when Kirsten's cinema votes against the bill and says it's for one reason when it's really to protect your donors. I don't know like when Lauren Bovert says that she'll vote for Kevin McCarthy when he goes down to the one member threshold and then he doesn't, she doesn't vote for him. She was lying, I think we should be honest. More substantively, though, they're doing all of this stuff, getting all

these concessions and the vast majority of it is either symbolic or personal. Like they're not actually staking their political future on something that will benefit their constituents, some bold policy that the actual economic establishment is against. So I know a lot of people are to try to draw these these big lessons about this experience and try to say, you know, they should do the exact same thing. Well, they should take, they should learn some lessons from it and they should be willing to do it regardless. But we didn't see Lauren Bobert willing to torpedo her career because she can't take the fact that too many people in her district can't afford health insurance or whatever. Like that's not what we had. It's about getting on

to committees. It's about making a name for themselves in the media. And, and that I don't think is as praiseworthy. They were successful in their goals. I just take issue with their actual goals. Yeah, I have one more thing to say, too. Look, at this point, progressives have nothing to lose. It's not like before they were bullied because, oh, if you guys don't get in line, we won't pass the one thing that Joe Manchin wants. But that worked.

They're like, okay, okay, okay, we'll take 15% of what we were originally hoping for because it's better than 0%. Look, I don't think it was, I don't think they did, had good leadership. I don't think they had good strategy or courage. Yeah, I said it, okay. I thought they were very weak in how they fought back. But at least I understood, hey, 15% is better than 0%, right? But now they're going to get 0% anyway.

The Republicans in the House are going to block everything. So there's no reason to hold back for any reason other than, oh, I don't like being bullied by Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic establishment and Joe Biden and corporate media. Well, if you don't like being bullied by the establishment, then you shouldn't have pretended that you were against the establishment. Your job, if you're in the squad, if you're a Justice Democrat, is to fight them. It's not to say, hey, we are so respectable and respectful, and we will just sit here and do nothing. You have two years to kick ass now, because you're not going to win the votes anyway. So why would you then bow your head to people who are opposed to you? And yes, I mean Democrats, say, oh, Republicans are bad.

That's the easiest thing in the world and it's irrelevant. Okay, it's relevant when you're fighting against them in an election. It's not relevant while you're legislating for these two years. What is relevant is, for example, here I'll tell you, we're, we're not destructive on TYT, we're constructive. The reason that we have the passion, the energy, et cetera, is the fight for you guys. But you have to be strategic. So, for example, if progressives were to say, come hell or high water, we demand a vote on $15 minimum wage, well, the Republicans would go, no, no way, we're not going to do

a vote on higher wages. Good. You see how you put them in a bad spot, right? And then you pound on it and pound on it and pound on it until the entire country knows Republicans, and by the way, corporate Democrats are against higher wages. Yep. And by the way, yes, as you do that, the Republicans will say, oh, yeah, a Democratic senators voted against the $15 minimum wage last time. And then you know what you say at that point? You say, God, damn right, they did. And I can't wait the primary them. Oh, oh my God,

but that would be disrespectful. We would be playing hardball politics. Yes, yes, that's what you're supposed to do. And so, but are they going to do that? She said we push as hard as we could. I agree with everything else you said. The media paints you completely wrong, but at the same time, you did not push as hard as you can. And right now you have no excuse left, not to push 200%, but they probably won't. Okay, we're going to leave you with that for now. We're going to take a quick break, but come back. We've got more to talk about.

All right, back on T-Y-T-Y-T-J-John and Adrian with you guys, but also Axel the Ghost, Steve Pfeft and Scott Ritching, they all just became members and also became American heroes. It's P-I-F-T by capitalized, I don't know. Anyways, all right, I love you guys. Thanks for doing the show with us and getting the word out. And I'm going to read one quick comment from Twitch. There's a lot like these. But Kruger like Freddie wrote in, I have so much respect and love for Adrian.

I hope to be half as accomplished one day. Oh, so kind. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with John. That's a big, aw. Okay. All right. Does that earn a blue apron gift card or just laughing?

If you make us, oh. No, no. Oh, it's too many compliments. So I know I don't want fake compliments. These are real authentic comments. So I'll take either. No, I don't want to anybody's up. Anyway, we gotta keep going, but you guys are amazing.

Thank you for writing and insane night. Okay. You can check out Adrian, by the way, on Rebel Headquarters. Her segment is called Overruled. Make sure you're all watching that. All right, John, sorry. Nice, nice. Okay, let's jump into a fight.

Okay, we got a fight. Okay, we got a fight. Ian Fury is a spokesperson for South Dakota governor, Christy Noem, and he was reached out for comment on a topic. That almost doesn't matter what the topic was, and decided to go like both barrels blazing at Ron DeSantis. And this is going to be about abortion, kind of, technically, but it's really about 2024, and that's what makes it so much fun. So he was contacted by National Review reporter Nate Hoekman about the quote unquote transgender lobby in South Dakota. Fury responded with a lengthy statement rejecting any implication that Governor Noem is

overly cozy with the major lobbying groups that helped kill a long line of anti-gender ideology bills in the state. But in a follow-up email, he pivoted to an unprompted diatribe. This is in the words of the reporter who reached out to him about the contrast between Noem and DeSantis' records on the issue of abortion, which, And I can't stress this enough, is not what he had been asked about at all, or Florida, or any of this. He argued that Governor Nome was the only governor in America on National Television defending the Dobbs decision. He then queried, where was Governor DeSantis hiding behind a 15-week ban? Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don't have a right to live?

DeSantis, he continued, just terminated his pro-life secretary for HSA, Simone Marce. the most pro-life member of his cabinet. Florida right to life is embarrassed by Governor DeSantis' record, so they invited Governor Nome to speak at their annual conference in October 2021. He closed out the email by speculating as to whether National Review was no longer pro-life, because that's the message you send by carrying water for Governor DeSantis. So, geez, if I was Nate Hochman, I mean, I don't know, Nate Hochman, this is for the National Review, probably a bad guy, but I don't know. I don't think he knew what he was. he was signing up for when he reached out for a comment from Governor Nome.

But anyway, look, it's technically the spokesperson, and we've yet to see what like DeSantis's spokesperson will respond with. But this is clearly initial little blows for 2024 from two people who are at the very least B, if not in the case of Nome, tier C candidates. No, I love this because A, it has begun. Gentlemen, start your engines, in this case, ladies and gentlemen, because number one, it's a fight between two potential 2024 candidates, and they're now finally hitting each other. I haven't seen Republicans hit each other in the presidential race since, you know, all the way back in 2016.

And even then, they barely hit Trump. And oops, that was a mistake. So here they are, and we're really early on, right? The primaries are in about a year, and this is the first real punch. So the fight has commenced. Also note, interesting, that it is not about Donald Trump. Now apparently Noam's camp thinks Trump is not relevant, and they're hitting DeSantis. Okay. Now, by the way, be careful with that strategy.

That's what happened in 2016 when no one hit Trump, and they just hit each other, and next thing you know, Trump won. But it is interesting that she thinks the water is safe to attack other potential Republican candidates, okay? And if she thought, no, Trump's going to win this thing, even showing that you're interested in running would have been a third rail. So it does go to diminished power for Trump for sure, okay? Now, John, though, the National Review, yeah, it was a bit, if seemingly random, how much this guy, you know, unleashed on DeSantis.

I don't know if it was Ian Fury or Nick Fury. But it is not as random as it looks. Almost all of writing right wing media is blanket supporting DeSantis. That's true. So I think that, for example, you say it would be interesting to see what DeSantis is going to reply. My guess is not going to reply at all. You know why?

Because he doesn't need to. He has right wing media doing his work for him. It's like a finally. a wall has been built, but it is to protect Ron DeSantis. So they were writing an article to randomly crap on Christine Nome on the transgender issue. And don't worry, she hates transgender people just as much as other Republicans do. And she said, oh, you couldn't control your lobby in South Dakota. And what a random weird attack against Nome, right? And it's done on behalf of DeSantis. And that's why Nick's brother, Ian, sends this.

fiery response back. Yeah, Adri. I find it very entertaining to a certain extent. I used to teach media messaging. And in that was teaching people how to pivot when they didn't like the question. And this was a hell of a pivot. It was damn near and about faced with maybe an uppercut in it. It just, it really told you that this is what I want to talk about.

And this is what I'm lashing out about. And I just don't think it's that great of a look for Nome. And I think you're absolutely right, jank. I do not think DeSantis is going to engage in any way. in any way, because as you mentioned, he has right wing media on his side. But I just definitely don't think this is the way to go about it in terms of being so aggressive to the point where you just kind of look not only out of pocket, but kind of like you're not necessarily working with a full deck.

But if that is the way in which gnomes people want to go, God bless her. I just don't know how far the Lord will deliver them blessings. Yeah, I want to add just one more thing, because it's something that I had missed that happened last year at CPAC actually. CPAC actually. And I guess this, what I'm gonna read for you makes what you just saw the second hit against DeSantis from Nome, because we did have one earlier. And it represents, I think, a much more significant potential weakness for DeSantis. Who knows if it'll end up mattering. But the idea that you're attacking him for a 15 week ban because he should have done a 14 week

ban, it seems a little bit weak to me. I think most Republicans believe that Ron DeSantis would make abortion illegal across the entire country if he had the chance to. But back in March of 2021, you had CPAC and during their straw poll for 2024, one in which that did not include Donald Trump, by the way. Nome actually placed second after Ron DeSantis, which is interesting. And at her speech at that event, she said, what we've got Republican governors across this country pretending they didn't shut down their states, that they didn't close their beaches, that they didn't mandate masks, that they didn't need to issue shelter and place orders. Now, I'm not picking fights with the Republican governors, all I'm saying is that we need leaders with grit, that their first instinct is to make the right decision, that they don't backtrack and then try to fool you into the fact that they never made the wrong decision.

And that, there's a couple people that that could in theory be about, but it pretty clearly is Ron DeSantis for very briefly and begrudgingly shutting down Florida and then eagerly opening it back up and allowing as many Floridians as possible to needlessly die from COVID. Yeah. And she's also referring to Abbott. By the way, South Dakota, one of the few states that had a worse death rate from COVID than Florida. So she's literally bragging about how many more people she got killed than DeSantis. But guys, I'm going to disagree with you guys a little bit. One, she's getting media attention. If everybody's supporting DeSantis and it looks like it's a coronation, you've got to somehow get media attention. So I think that's the right place. Second of all, remember, Republican voters love anything that's very. vicious. That's true. Yeah, so she was so when her guy viciously attacks to Santas and takes a more right wing position on abortion, they're going to like both of those things. Don't think in terms of us, think in terms of the voters they're trying to reach. But finally, speaking of voters that we want to reach, we're doing a super random poll on the story. We started with the

cat fight intro, which we've used many times before. And we're wondering now, is it a little out of date. Is it, there was like if there were two women in the story, we'd have never run the intro, okay? In this case, there was one woman in the story. A lot of times when we were in hand, it was technically two guys. But there was a woman behind the guy, right? And, and, but often we run it with two guys. But still, cat fight, you know, it's a good question. I don't know. That's what we're asking. If I knew, I wouldn't ask you. Should we stop doing the catfight intro, yes or no? TYT.com slash polls. Let the American people decide. And the results of this poll will be binding. Okay.

Like, just in case the vote goes wrong, Bart's like, no, we're doing it again. Or actually, it wouldn't have been Bart. But we got, we got one more. Adrian, what do you think? Well, I, about the catfied intro? Yeah. I was going to ask Maverk, but I don't know, well, hey, he's right here bothering me. But as far as the intro goes, I thought it was relatively gender neutral by virtue of the fact that there were male faces on it. But if there is something synonymous, that would be, I guess, not conjuring up some kind of sexist thing, then go for it. But otherwise, it didn't bother me. I think we could come up with a cool new segment that gets across the same idea.

That's my view. But it is a funny intro. I do like, it's so old school. Sarah Palin's on it. Yeah, like that's what it was made. I know. So by the way, we'll have the link to the poll in the description box below. Go ahead and tell us what you think is the right direction. All right, John, what's next? Okay, let's jump at a probably your last story starting off with this. I do want to announce that today I nominated an individual, an exceptional jurist, Judge Hector LaSalle, to be the chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals is the highest court in the land. It's a position of great authority and prestige. Okay, so this is really fascinating.

So you have Kathy Hockel, governor of New York, who is going to be trying to appoint Hector LaSalle, who had been appointed to the appeals court by former governor Cuomo before his massive scandals and all that to elevate him. And here is the issue with that. She does not need to take a guy with the record of Hector LaSalle and give him this position. We don't have time to run through his entire record necessarily. But whether you're talking about labor rights, women's rights, regulations on the police, oversight, a lot of these different topics, He has a record that particularly in New York, where they have so much democratic representation in the state legislature, that they very much could have a far less right wing candidate to be elevated in the way that Kathy Hockel is elevating him right now.

A number of members of the Democratic Party in New York are speaking out against it. At least a dozen state Senate Democrats publicly opposed Lassel, including the chamber's deputy majority leader. By the way, Democrats currently control 42 seats in the 63 seat, New York Senate. So these defections mean that LaSalle cannot be confirmed without Republican votes. And I would just ask you the question, if you have to go to the other party to get this judge, why not just get a judge that your party isn't so vigorously opposed to? Yeah, I mean, look at to what we're seeing in Congress right now. The Republicans could have had Kevin McCarthy as their speaker 12 votes ago.

If they just went to the Democrats and got a couple of conservative Democrats who definitely would have played ball for some minor concession, right? In my opinion. But they're like, no, going to the Democrats is heresy among Republicans. Whereas Democrats are like, well, we could go with the progressive wing of our own party or we could go with Republicans. Easy question, easy answer, Republicans. Why?

Kathy Hockel, like most established from Democrats, are actually Republicans, and especially on economic issues and judges decide a lot of cases, including, by the way, not just criminal cases, but civil cases against corporations. Yeah. So the corporate donors of Hockel, and by the way, before her, Andrew Cuomo, who stacked the New York courts with wall-to-wall conservative justices, right, all to please their donors. And why can they get away with this brazen betrayal of their own voters? Because the media never calls them out on it.

They just go, oh, what a wonderfully moderate Democrat, Bravo, right? And in fact, if she sided with the progressives, probably New York Times and others would yell at her. Yep, no, you're absolutely right. And I was going to bring up that exact fact. The fact is that Andrew Cuomo was just the same. You know, the establishment Democrats that are really just masquerading as right-wingers when it comes to actually lifting up with the people. And Kathy Hockel is no exception as a Republican in Dems clothing.

You know, it's New York being that democratic stronghold of a state. It really is the epicenter when it comes to wealth and a lot of things in the United States in terms of progress and what people want. And the thing is is that the people have already elected so many members of legislature there that are representative of their belief system, are represented of their democratic principles. And yet you have individuals like Hoko out here doing her damnedest to counteract that just so she can appease her donors. And it is just so incredibly disheartening because not only does it alienate the people, but what it does is it bolsters up the wealthy and continues to feed what

they want. It's just so incredibly just again disheartening, especially because these people got these next to their names when that's not who they are, much like Mayor Eric Adams. Yeah. Yeah, look, the media, is absurd because they will tell you that the millions of dollars that Hokka and Cuomo took from corporate donors didn't affect these decisions at all. That they just randomly, they were like, hey, you know what? Even though we're Democrats, why don't we go really conservative for judges that vote on and decide issues that affect billions of dollars for corporations when they get sued?

Yeah. Why don't we do that? Oh, just randomly, just randomly. Because when it comes to economic issues, we're super conservative. But New York Times, never dare point that out, okay? And by the way, when they run for office, what does almost all of the media do? All the way from local news to radio to cable news to the newspapers. Incumbent, radical, I'm sorry, the primary against the incumbent is a radical thing to do.

And why are they're just creating lack of unity in the Democratic Party? Why don't you unify behind the more conservative Democrat, the more corporate Democrat, the more right-wing Democrat? Oh, these pesky progressives trying to actually be Democrats, right? And in fact, they will often paint the progressives that are better Democrats as Republicans because they're daring to challenge a Democratic incumbent. And so that's why you get the result that you do because the refs are bought and the politicians are bought. So the whole system is bought by the rich and powerful. So no matter how many times you vote for what is ostensibly the left-wing party in a deeply left-wing

state like New York, you're never going to get left-wing judges because of the donor system and the corruption. And you're never going to get in a media that's going to be honest with you about that. I think we're out of time. Yeah, we are definitely out of time. All right, everybody check out John on Damage Report, great hosts of that program every day here on the Young Turks network, the TYT network, and Adrian is on Rebel headquarters, great videos. Make sure you check that out.

Now, in the next hour, oh, buckle up, brace for impact. One of the biggest conservatives in the country accused of molestation of a male staffer. Damn, we'll be 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 at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.