The Young Turks - LA On Fire

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Residents flee as wind-fueled wildfires destroy homes in Los Angeles County. Report on Trump Documents Case May Never Be Released. How Dems fumbled the ball and gave up the NLRB to the Republicans. Scott Galloway Goes on Epic Tirade. CFPB issues rules to remove medical debt. Hosts: Yasmin Khan & John Iadarola SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the show. This is the Young Turks. I'm Yasmin Khan and I'm here tonight with John Iderola. You guys might notice that Jank and Anna are not here tonight. And we're going to tell you exactly why that is with our first story.

So, John, how are you feeling tonight? I'm good, obviously, L.A. is. going to get into is in kind of a difficult place. Thankfully, at least where I'm at, it's a little bit removed. But happy to be doing the show, all things considered with you. Of course, and I am, of course, here in Texas. We have our own separate issues that we're dealing with in Texas, but nothing quite as bad as what's going on in L.A. right now. And that is our first story. We're going to talk about these wildfires right now. Devastating wildfires and high winds continue to ravage the Los Angeles area, killing at least two people and causing thousands

of others to flee. Tens of thousands of people are currently under evacuation orders across L.A. County, and as of now, the fires are zero percent contained. The high winds in the area have made battling the fires nearly impossible for firefighters, and unfortunately, it doesn't appear that they will be able to make any kind of progress until those winds die down. As of last night, winds were still reaching 90 miles per hour, which for context is the equivalent of a very strong category one hurricane, and today they're still seeing gusts of up to 50 miles per hour. Pilots have been doing their best to fight the fires from the sky, but the winds have thwarted all of their efforts. According to Brent Pascoa, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, he said it's really unsafe for the pilots to be forced. flying in the canyons when the winds are that high. We're hopeful that they'll die down,

but we have to be optimistic at this point. Emergency workers have been working nonstop with many firefighters working for over 24 hours straight, but Los Angeles County is simply not equipped to deal with fires of this incredible scope. And speaking of scope, the Eaton fire has consumed over 10,000 acres as of yesterday, and the Palisades fire has burned through 5,000 acres. To aid in the firefighting effort, the Department of Defense is sending help by order of President Biden. According to the Pentagon, both the California and Nevada National Guards are adding two modular air firefighting system units, and 10 Navy helicopters with water delivery buckets are being sent to help with aerial suppression. So this is obviously horrifying to witness,

even in areas where the fires aren't direct threats to the people or property power outages and water shortage problems are happening all over Southern California. I am not in California right now, but John, you are and our friends are out there. We have more on this story, but can you tell us a little bit of how things are over there? Yeah, so, you know, obviously, myself and my family, we've been following very closely. there's been concern that this could be the fire that breaks through into what people consider more like, you know, L.A. proper. Like, everybody knows, even if you're not close to California, the California has struggled with wildfires for some time. This year, there have been fires throughout California, but it had seemed up until this point, like a bit of a lighter season.

And I think maybe, at least for me, I sort of put my guard down. I thought that we had kind of gotten through it. And now all of a sudden, these absolutely devastating fires sprout up in the, you know, the northwest and northeast of L.A., they don't often seem to get quite this close. But the interaction of the winds, as you said, absolutely insane winds with the fact that we didn't have the amount of precipitation leading up to this period that you might expect in an average year with California has just been a really a bad combination. And the wind in particular means that not only does a fire spread much more quickly, but all. Also, it's capable of sending embers off for an extended distance and starting up new fires. And so we've seen quite a bit of that. And so that's been sort of the concern in Santa Monica and even in Culver City, the possibility

that far from where we consider the main borders of the fire to be, that you could all of a sudden have one sprout up. And so the concern is pretty widespread throughout the area. Where we're at, you know, it's quite far. Obviously, you can see the massive smoke cloud hanging over the city. the air is really bad. Like myself and my family, you know, we're all like heavily congested and everything. And so I imagine for kids, people with, you know, respiratory issues, maybe a lot of people coming out of COVID that might have somewhat impaired respiratory systems, it's obviously dangerous

for them too, even if they're not that close to the fire. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's crazy to think about whenever you think of, you know, the air quality is bad, how that can really directly impact people and their families. And you were talking earlier about how bad the wind is. Part of the issue with the wind also is that these planes are dropping things from the sky, hoping to help put out the fires. But before it can even hit the ground, the winds are just blowing them out of the way. So nothing is getting down. That's why they're at a zero percent containment rate right now. But there's more of this story, because whenever there is a natural disaster, people always want to point a finger at someone. Many people are blaming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for cutting $17 million from the LA Fire Department's budget

while increasing the police budget by $126 million. This is a graphic that was shared by the LA City Controller. And the caption there reads, the decrease for the fire department was the second largest cut to come out of the budget. However, it has been reported that she actually wanted to cut $23 million from the fire department. Whether or not that amount would make that much of a difference regarding a disaster of this scope, who's to say? We don't know. But to make matters worse, Bass isn't even in L.A. right now.

She is in Ghana. On X, she posted a message to her Angelino saying, our L.A.F.D. and LAPD.HQ teams continue to work overnight to protect Angelinos affected by fires in L.A. Angelino should be advised that the windstorm is expected to worsen through the morning and to heed local warnings, stay vigilant, and stay safe. Thank you very much. That was not remotely helpful and understandably. Her comment section is lit up with her angry constituents who feel that they've been abandoned. Meanwhile, President-elect Trump is blaming California Governor Gavin Newsom for the fires, arguing that back in 2020, Newsom blocked a Trump order that would have diverted water from the northern part of the state, specifically from the Sacramento-San-Walking Delta to the drier southern part of the state.

Newsom cited environmental issues when blocking Trump's order, and the two leaders failed to reach any kind of consensus on the issue. In September of last year, Trump promised that if he was elected president in November, he would block aid to California for wildfire relief, just to stick it to Gavin Newsom. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, Newsom was able to work with the Biden administration on the issue. And while Southern California is obviously very dry, the water situation in L.A. has actually been better. It is actually better now than it has been in so much.

many years. So Trump's ire might be a little bit misdirected, but perhaps the most misdirected of all is Don Jr. He posted this on truth social today, asking, can we rename D-E-I-2-D-I-E, since that's what seems to happen to the people downstream of those who place woke virtue signaling far above competency? So I don't even know what he's on about. I assume that maybe he's mad at the mayor of L.A. as a woman of color, even though the mayor is voted on democratically and is not appointed by anyone. But the fact that he didn't even have to elaborate on that thought is annoying because not because he didn't elaborate, but because he didn't feel that he needed to, right? He knew that if he just said something crazy, his followers would just fill in the gaps in

their own minds and somehow make sense of it. John, I'll get your thoughts in a minute. But I just want to say that while it's tempting to blame individuals, even powerful individuals, like the governor or the mayor or whoever for massive natural disasters. There always is two sides to them. There's the disaster itself. And then there's the response to it, which is too often also very disastrous. Generally, I don't think finger pointing is helpful, although I will concede that the L.A.

mayor tweeting from Africa while her city is on fire is problematic. But, you know, wildfires are natural and normal. You said it yourself, you know, there is a wildfire season. And Angelinos, I would expect, are used to some degree. of wildfire. But, you know, we're certainly seeing weather patterns across the country, across the globe, really, the scale and scope of which are unprecedented. And weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable. The jet stream is a muck, right? The oceans are warmer throughout the year. All of these things have massive repercussions across various aspects of

life on this planet. And we can blame Karen Bass or Gavin Newsom or wokeness or whatever. But we're not going to get to the root of the issue in doing so. And even if we're we did, getting to the root of that issue isn't going to do much to help those who are currently watching their city burn. And we can only hope that adequate resources are allocated where they will be most helpful and that people are able to get to safety. John, what are your thoughts on all that? Yeah. See, what I just heard from you is why you're never going to be president, because all you did was talk responsibly about, you know, the nuance of allocating you didn't insult anyone. You didn't call anyone scum or anything. You didn't insult a fish.

Donald Trump did on true social. I specifically left that part out of the story because I can't bring myself to say it. You can say it, though. The worthless smelt. I hate that fish. Worst fish ever. Absolute utter nonsense from him. So look, with Karen Bass, if they had the $7 million or whatever, would it make a

difference? I have no idea. Maybe a little bit, probably not that much. But if people want to draw from the fact that they cut that funding while massively increasing the police funding, that this is indicative of priorities. then I think they should certainly do that. What I find about Donald Trump so amazing is I saw he went right from a posting on true social images of Canada as part of the U.S. To a bunch of messages about the fires.

He didn't even pretend to care about the people being affected by it. There wasn't even like one message of, you know, my thoughts and prayers, like a pointless message. Like my thoughts and prayers go out to the people whose homes are being burned to those who've already died. None. It was instantly Gavin Newscum and conspiracy theories about fish and fire hydrants and whatever. And he attacked Biden and that's it. That's all. By the way, he's already the guy that I think you acknowledge this already promised on the campaign trail. If they have fires, I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to pre-abandon the people of California. Now, I know if you're a conservative listening to this, you think, well, a lot of those are liberals. Okay, well, forget about that.

Who cares if they burn? He pre-abandoned California Republicans. which there are many. It's not like it's 70% liberal up in here. A lot of these areas, particularly the areas that are burning right now are very wealthy areas. There's probably tons of Trump fans up there. And he already told you, I'm going to let them burn. I don't even care what happens. And the only thing I'm even going to do when it starts to happen is try to score points against Biden and Gavin Newsom because of DEI or whatever. I don't even understand what Don Jr. is talking about there because Gavin Newsom and Joe Biden are like the whitest guys that have ever lived. They're straight white Christians. What more do you want out of

them? But anyway, this incident, Donald Trump, thankfully, has very little to do with the reaction to this. So this is like the last fire season we'll have in California where people who theoretically don't want the world to burn will be in charge. Unfortunately, next year, it'll be him. And maybe they won't dispatch those assets. Maybe he'll be just as vindictive as he said. But this is the period that we're that we're entering into. And for many conservatives in other parts of the country, it may be easy to write off California in its fires or whatever. But how do you think he's going to respond to, you know, winter devastation, cold, you know, blizzards and stuff in Texas or hurricanes hitting, you know, Florida or the East Coast or whatever. Like, you're going to have

disasters too. How is he going to respond to tornado damage? How is he going to respond to, you know, a train derailment or something? Like, is he going to care? Is your area going to be sufficiently Maga that he'll actually care or will he just tweet a whole bunch about his grievances? Stay tuned because you might get a chance to find out over the next four years. Yeah, well, here in Texas, I think we know by now that we're very much on our own whenever some kind of natural disaster happens. You know, we'll get some kind of aid, but we really don't, we can't rely on our governor to help us a whole lot and we can't rely on the president or the incoming president.

I don't know. Well, maybe in Texas, you know, maybe he might like us because he does like our governor, but, you know, we have our own issues with the power grid, and that's actually kind of an issue right now as the temperatures are starting to drop here in Texas, and we all know what happens whenever the temperature drops in Texas. Also, all along the Ohio River Valley and the northeast, up in New England, they're expecting some wintry weather going forward. So, you know, this is only January, right? This is just the beginning of the year. They are predicting that weather-wise, it is going to be kind of a rough year.

Right. So Trump is getting inaugurated in just a couple of weeks. It's kind of scary. I mean, it is, it is scary to think that, you know, just the fact that anyone would be in that kind of a position of authority. It's not an authoritative position, though, right? He's in a role as a caretaker, right? Whenever you decide to become the president of the United States, you're saying, I'm responsible for all of these American people and all of these American interests abroad, at home, wherever. And Trump is just like, he's so select. about where he decides to help people, even though it's his job to help people. It's his job to deploy resources to areas like California, like Texas, like New England, whatever. And he just like shirts his responsibility all day long. And then these people, you know, reelected him into office. And there are real life consequences whenever he does things like that, right? People suffer for it.

And it is very sad. So, uh, really fast can I just mention, um, I got a message from my wife saying that apparently Bass has returned. She did rush back from her trip, which and so she is in the area as the recovery is continuing. I know. I was getting like PTSD of Cancun Cruz over here reading that she was in Africa. Well, and at least she didn't head out after it happened like cruised it. That's true. Yeah, she was already there. She already had plans to be there. She was there for a presidential inauguration. So it was good of her to come back. Her tweet though was wildly unhelpful. I don't know. Did you find it helpful to you, John, in L.A.?

I mean, it's not going to do anything, but it's, I guess, the sort of thing that a politician does. I don't hate it. I mean, she rushed back. She's cord. Like, doing the actual work is the part that's important. Social media isn't going to help. It can only potentially hurt. And Donald Trump, I think, gave us a lot of examples of that.

Yeah. All right. Well, on that note, let's take our first break. We will be right back. Welcome back to the show. I'm Yasmin Khan here with John Iderola. We're in Burjank and Anna tonight. Let's get into this next story.

Let's roll the tape. I defeated deranged Jack Smith. He's a deranged individual. I guess he's on his way back to the Hague. And we won those cases. Those were the biggest ones. and the press made such a big deal out of them, but we did nothing wrong.

We did nothing wrong on anything. And the people saw that. What you're saying is the, and I'm just hearing that, that they're not allowed to issue the report. So if they're not allowed to issue the report, that's the way it should be. That's great.

Eileen Cannon, the judge who oversaw Trump's classified documents case in Florida, is once again stepping in to help him. She temporarily blocked the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report, detail in Trump's refusal to give back that trove of classified documents that he took from the White House and just, like, kept in his house. And now federal prosecutors are saying they do plan to hold off on releasing that part of their investigation. Now, if you will remember,

Trump won the presidential election back in November. And that is when this whole saga began. Once Trump had been reelected, Jack Smith dropped both federal cases against Trump because of a longstanding DOJ policy against pursuing criminal cases against sitting presidents. But Justice Department regulations also required Smith to file a report about his work to Attorney General Merrick Garland explaining why he brought the charges that he did. And there were two volumes to Jack Smith's report. One was about the classified documents case and the other was about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Now last weekend, a draft of the classified documents report was shared with Trump's team. This is reporting from the New York Times. It says Trump's lawyer

wrote a letter to Garland, arguing that the draft they had seen was one-sided and a lawless stunt designed to politically harm President Trump. The lawyers also complained that the draft made baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump's incoming administration. Then on Tuesday, Judge Cannon issued the injunction blocking it from coming out. So, in their court filing on Wednesday, prosecutors acknowledged that publicly releasing the volume about the classified documents case was legally problematic. That was because even though Trump's role in the matter has ended, the case is still active with regard to his two co-defendants, Walt Nata and Carlos de Oliveira, and any new revelations about it could harm their

efforts to defend themselves. So Garland decided not to release the classified documents report until all proceedings against Nata and de Oliveira are over, except that process is probably going to continue into Trump's second term. And as president, he could choose to just pardon those two men and end the case altogether, which means we probably will never get to see what was in that report. But do not forget, there were two volumes to Jack Smith's report. And the Department of Justice does intend to release the second part to the public and to Congress despite Trump's protests. And this is the one about Trump's efforts to overturn the loss of the 2020 election. When exactly it will be released and whether it'll contain any new damning information is still unclear.

But John, you know, we knew that this was coming the moment we saw those election results pouring in. Of course, it's very frustrating because so much time and money has been spent on these cases, not to mention all of the emotional labor that people across the country have put into them. Other nations have dealt with similar scenarios. and it didn't take them four years to investigate and prosecute them. There is more to this story, but I got to ask, was it all for nothing? That's a depressing question. It often feels like that's the question that's most applicable about basically everything in our politics.

I don't think so. I think, you know, even the ultimately unsuccessful efforts to get, you know, to get the facts out and to hopefully get consequences for Donald Trump's elite. legal acts, almost certainly had an effect on the election. It's very easy to look at it and be like, well, he still got elected, so what was the difference? But, you know, margin of victory matters, coattails matter, the effect on the Senate and the House, state legislative races, all of that still does matter. And also, I think, you know, because I'm not a member of the MAGA movement, I think

facts matter in their own right. I think the truth is an important thing. I think it's worth knowing what's actually going on. Obviously, Donald Trump feels very differently about his base. He doesn't want them to know a damn thing about all that he did. One would think that for a guy who claims he hasn't broken any laws, he's really doing a lot to hide what was discovered from his base. Weird that that doesn't bother them more.

But you mentioned in the beginning there, you said, you know, not super surprising. And the over, the abstract outcome that something was done that stops consequences. is for Trump, at least for a while, is certainly not surprising. The part of it that was surprising to me was, Eileen Cannon, like, she's popping back. I thought you were done. I thought you already did all the damage you can do. Give someone else a chance to corrupt the system and protect the rich and well connected from consequences.

I don't even know what part she has in any of this. Like, didn't she shut down all the stuff she was involved in? But look, maybe she doesn't think that she clinched a nomination of the Supreme Court yet and she needs to try to do a little bit more to make sure that that happens. But anyway, all of this, not just what she did, but now, you know, there's 20 different things that judges and the SCOTUS have done that Merrick Garland did to protect him. All of it is utterly corrupt. We have, you know, very different justice systems depending on who you are and how rich you are.

It doesn't bother the MAGA movement or conservatives, but it definitely should because this is the greatest indicate, this is the greatest evidence of the point that they always make that there is a deep state, that there are elites. This is the proof of the thesis that they keep saying. They just don't mind because it's Donald Trump. Yeah, no, things don't apply to him. And, you know, we were talking about working hard during the break. No one works harder at not doing her job than Ealing Cannon. And she is working for that Supreme Court nod. So we'll see how that goes for her, I guess. but Trump's legal woes don't end with all of that, right? There's more because now he's also asking the Supreme Court to step in to delay his

sentencing in the hush money case, which is supposed to take place on Friday. This is from the Washington Post that says in their petition late Tuesday, Trump's attorneys told the Supreme Court that the president-elect is immune from criminal proceedings and that his sentencing should be postponed while his appeals continue to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government. The judge in the case, Juan Merchant, he has rejected the president-elects immunity claims and a state appeals court judge on Tuesday denied Trump's request to stay the sentencing, which is why he's now turning to the Supreme Court.

If they don't intervene and the sentencing happens, Trump will be formally classified as a felon before taking office. John, what do you think the likelihood of something like this is that it would happen? The Supreme Court definitely seems to be friendly to Trump, but they have surprised us before. Maybe I'm being a little optimistic, but what do you think? That I think that what would happen, that they like indefinitely suspend the sentence? Yeah, yeah, that they give Trump what he asks for, right? Otherwise, he's going to be a felon and the president, and we've never had a situation like that before.

Okay, so I often feel now, especially after the election, I feel simultaneously way too cynical and way too naive at the exact same time because I guess I expect that anything they can do to protect him from consequences, they will do. But that said, especially in the early part of last year, there were some things the Supreme Court did that did not give him what he wanted. And I guess I would say, like he's not going to go to prison. whatever sentence he gets is going to be symbolic. It's going to be a label.

You're a felon or whatever. It's not going to be actually taking away his freedom. It's not going to impact his, it's not going to impact his wealth necessarily. Like maybe there'll be a finite guess, but it's not going to severely impact him. It doesn't stop him from exercising power as president. So it almost seems like the perfect thing to let through.

Because then they get to be like, well, hey, look, we allowed him to be sentenced. Are we not merciful even? And he is crying. foul about it. But like, he already got the part that matters. He's not going to prison. So from the Scotus's point of view, from the concertist's point of view, why not just let this through? You get to like, in a very shallow way, pretend to be balanced. And it doesn't really hurt him anyway. That's what I think anyway. Pretend to be balanced. Yeah. Like there's so much optics

in all of this politicking that it is getting very exhausting. And I think that's a very relatable statement that you made at the beginning when you were talking when you said that you feel just what did you say naive and also just like pessimistic about I said I simultaneously feel too cynical and too naive yeah cynical and naive yeah just like because nothing that makes sense matters anymore it seems like right like there's all these indicators that things could go one way or the other and then at the end of the day someone does some back room deal and then this thing goes through when it really never should have gone through in the first place right so our job is more complicated by all these things because our job is to look at the things in front of us and kind of analyze it and

you know look at historical information and like things that we know from our own personal lived experiences and from our educational backgrounds and all these things and make educated informed analyses of what's going on in the world and in the country and it's like we can't even do that anymore because none of that even matters right because all everything every conclusion that you come to it's like well this is probably what should happen and any other year, decade, this is probably what would have happened, but who knows? Because all of everything these days is unprecedented. So what a fun time. What a fun time for us to be doing this job, too, John. You've been doing it a lot longer than me, though, so you would know.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm so looking forward to the next four years. All right, we're going to take another break. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. I'm Yasmin Khan with John Iderola. We're in for Jenkin Anna tonight. Let's get into this next story. We already knew that the Republican succeeded in regaining control of the National Labor Relations Board back in December. But now a Democratic congressman has revealed the reason

why that happened. And it turns out that it came down to either the incompetence or the willful ignorance of his own party. In a thread on X, Congressman Roe-Kana explained how Democrats needlessly gave up majority control of what he describes as America's leading labor law enforcement agency. The NLRB helps to protect workers who want to organize from union busting practices and cracks down on businesses that retaliate against union workers. The board is made up of five members that are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Last month, the five-year term of one Democrat on the board named Lauren McBaron was set to expire. So Chuck Schumer moved to re-elect her to the board for another term, which would have secured a three-two Democratic majority through

2026. That, it was reported last year that a vote to move ahead with the nomination of Lauren McFerrin, who currently chairs the NLRB, failed 49 to 50. Had she been confirmed to another five-year term, it would have cemented a Democratic majority on the agency's board for the first two years of the incoming Trump administration. Now, Trump will likely be able to nominate McFerran's replacement. And we can guess how that's going to go. Here's how the Democratic fumbled it according to Roe Kana. This is a thread from his ex account, so buckle in. On the morning of the 11th, Senate Democrats had a chance and Mansion were absent that morning, but we delayed the vote for what I'm hearing described as no reason until Vance and Mansion

returned, deadlocking the vote at 49 to 49. We then failed to get word to Vice President Harris quickly enough to come and deliver the tie-breaking vote. In the 90 minutes that transpired, Senator Manchin, of all people, returned first, swinging the vote in the other direction and seating the NLRB to MAGA control two years earlier than necessary. These procedural blunders have massive implications for the American people who deserve better from their elected officials. American workers deserve an explanation. It will hurt the young folks organizing at Starbucks and the workers organizing at Amazon.

It is inexcusable and inexplicable that we did not prioritize. prioritized confirming the NLRB appointees like we do federal judges and have seated the board two years before we needed to. So either the Democrats were too incompetent and lazy to make sure they kept majority control of the board or they intentionally gave it up to Republicans. Either way, it's not a good look. Other former Democratic lawmakers joined Kana and slamming the party, including Congressman Tim Ryan, who wrote, How do Dems expect hard working class people, white, black, or brown to follow them into battle for a higher standard of living when the Dems keep doing dumb things like this? The incompetence is why we have bled working class voters for a long time. Thank you, Rokana.

So Tim Ryan seems to be touching on something that a lot of us here at this network have been feeling for a long time that so many of our issues in this country are less about racial or political divisions and more. more about economic inequities and workplace and justice. And if Rokana is frustrated with the Democratic Party, he's certainly not alone, although he could have gotten there faster. The rest of us have been frustrated for some time. Some of us are so frustrated that we've even stopped voting for the Democrats altogether, or at least we're not as excited to do so as we used to be. John, do you think the Democrats will ever get there, you know what, together?

I mean, as long as it doesn't really matter to the. those in leadership, whether they win or lose, in terms of keeping their positions, having influence, getting donations and all that, I mean, why would they significantly change if they don't need you to hold onto their position? I mean, the Democrats lost. It was, it was fairly devastating. And the leadership is all the same. There was no, there was no penalty. There was no punishment. And it's not to say that they can't, you know, just by happenstance or random chance decide to, you know, run things a little bit differently or campaign a little bit differently next time, but they haven't been incentivized to. Imagine if they had all been cleared

out after that election. Well, then whoever took their place the next time around would be really worried about the consequences of the election, which would be convenient because then that would match their constituents who are also incredibly worried about the consequences and stakes in the election. So I hate that there aren't those consequences. But when it comes to this, like, I've tried to figure out, like, Roe, I love that he's willing to identify that this happened. And he's, it's, it's not necessarily pointing to blame at any individual, but it's pretty scathing. The picture that it paints of what happened. But like he, he lays out these two possibilities that it's incompetence or it's like it's a willful act.

And like, it seems more willful to me, allowing someone like Joe Manchin as one of his last acts in Congress to get this done. But I don't even understand, like, why at this point would you allow him to? It's not like you need to give him this so that he'll vote your way in two months or on a judge or whatever. He's out of here. What's the point in helping him out? And then I thought, well, maybe this is like strikeback for something that this incumbent previously did.

But I haven't seen any indication of anything that they did that would cause them to prefer allowing mansion to nuke them being brought back and instead giving the seat over to Donald Trump. I don't understand. But the funny thing is this sort of reminds me a little bit of the situation with Obama and the Supreme Court as we transitioned from his presidency to Trump the first time around. It's like it's not enough that Donald Trump has, you know, like all like basically the entirety of the status quo economic powers and all that in the US, the justice system protecting him from consequences. They also just decide to offer things up to him every time as if what he was getting wasn't already enough. And so I don't understand this.

I don't know at the end of the day which of those two theses is more likely to be correct, but I don't like either of them. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it did give me flashbacks to RBG and like that whole saga that went on. And there's definitely other comparable moments in our nation's history that feel like this. And, you know, you can argue that this isn't the most consequential vote. But really, it does. It affects so many people.

And these are the things, like the things that don't grab the biggest headlines. Those are the things that a lot of people are going to. feel whether or not they know why they're feeling them, right? Whether they know why certain things are the way that they are, then you can go back and be like, oh, it's because of this, but then it's too late, right? So what are you going to do at that point? So it is very, it's very frustrating. It feels like the gamification of our American political system, right? Everything feels very strategic and everybody's just playing in game, playing their hand that they were dealt. It feels like like Catan or like Siv 6 or something like that, you know, so very, very frustrating. But that's

Thank you for trying to put it in terms I would understand. You're welcome, John. I appreciate that. No problem. All right. Let's get into this next story. Let's roll the tape. percent of U.S. households are struggling with some sort of medical or dental debt when a quarter or 20 percent of households with kids are food insecure. And yet we have one man, Jensen Huang,

and I like Jensen, who is now worth more than Boeing. I mean, something is wrong here. Our broken economic system could lead to full-on revolution. And we will get to that a little bit later. But first, let's watch Galloway explain how he believes the ultra wealthy are robbing the rest of the country. The average tax rate on the wealthiest 25 Americans is 6%. Corporate tax rates are at their lowest point since 1939. Now, the bottom 50% don't pay much federal income tax, but they pay a lot of usage and consumption taxes.

But this misdirect talking about tax rates misses the point. It's the tax code, which has gone from 400 pages to 4,000. And that 3,600 pages, quite frankly, is there to screw the middle class and continue to transfer more money to the super wealthy. The fastest growing demographic group in America is not seniors. It's not Latins. It's billionaires. We have 500 billionaires 10 years ago.

We now have 2,500. So if you want to cram more and more wealth into a smaller group of people, we're on our way. So here's another useful statistic to wrap your head around just how broken the American economy is. The typical Fortune 500 CEO had already made more money. by January 2nd, then the average U.S. worker will make this entire year. Fun. Galway also stated that he believes income inequality is always self-correcting, but how that self-correcting takes place is not always pretty.

Here's the clip. The good news is it's self-correcting. This level of income inequality is usually self-correcting. The bad news is the means of self-correction are typically war, famine, or revolution. These individuals have weaponized government, and we risk, revolution, whether it's CEOs being murdered in the street, whether it's a Me Too movement that had righteous components of it or Black Lives Matter? What are these movements? They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality.

And the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is because for the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents we're at 30. So it wasn't just Galloway who was criticizing the billionaire class. We have criticized Joe Scarborough many times on this show, but today we'll give him a little bit of credit for what you're about to see. Take a look at this. And I say this is a small government conservative.

This is a threat to American capitalism. We can look at a lot of different threats facing this country. But moving towards this sort of oligarchy, With all of these monopolies, and I've always told the story before, you know, during COVID, somebody called me up and said, hey, you need to invest in the stock market. I mean, I don't really do that. I don't, I don't trust the stock market. He goes, just invest in the monopolies.

I go, the monopolies. He goes, yeah, meta, you know, invest in Mac and Amazon and Microsoft. And he named five or six. And they are. They're like you just said, they're monopolies. Lena Con tried to break it up. And you seriously would have thought that Karl Marx was marching down, you know, Wall Street. And you combine that combination that you're talking about with the fact that billionaires are getting richer and richer by the second.

All right. So kind of interesting, John, how these ideas that we've been talking about in this network for so long are, finally becoming a bit more mainstream maybe. And it's an interesting shift, but that's maybe the frustrating, the frustrating part of being a so-called progressive. By definition, you're always pushing ideas and concepts and waiting for everyone else to catch up. So, John, do you think that these ideas will catch on in any kind of meaningful way? Or do you think maybe they're already starting to make inroads with people? Because we are starting to see people on both sides of the aisle, look at these millionaires and billionaires and say, this isn't fair. I'm struggling. Why, why have

they made more money than I'm going to make in a year by January 2nd? Yeah, I think, I think there's like multiple levels for that. I think that, yes, undoubtedly, the concern, the frustration about the distribution of resources, about income inequality is spreading. I think it doesn't always produce what would seem to be a sensical political outcome, but I think it partially explains the result of the presidential election. So I think even MAGA people are getting frustrated. They're seen. I mean, look, they've been as indoctrinated as anyone to believe that billionaires are inherently better than them. But eventually, you know, if you're struggling to feed your family, there'll start to be some cracks in that. And it'll take more than just a Sean Hannity monologue

to make you think that it's better that there are more billionaires and you literally can never own a home. And the reason I mentioned Sean Hannity is because he on his radio show this week was like, worried that he's hearing Maga people talking about wanting to tax the rich. And he was like trying to reassure it. No, no, no, no, no. Our populism is fake. You seem to want real populism and we're not interested in that. You can't tax the rich.

I'm rich. I make $25 million a year. And so that was nice. In terms of like taking root more broadly, I don't follow Scott Galloway's work a ton. I will assume that this is consistent with what he's been doing. For Joe Scarborough, it feels almost too convenient that it's, happening now. So, like, you can have the right position, but when do you have it and what do you want to do about it? Like, it is way easier to advocate for this sort of thing when the Democrats

won't be in charge and can't be pressured to do anything about it. Like, you can talk about the stuff. Trump isn't doing anything about it. And will he be advocating for these same sorts of things with the Democratic primary next time around rolls around? Are they going to be advocating for like a Bernie Sanders or an AOC? Or is all this talk about billionaire is going to fade away and then they're just going to be going for whichever Democratic centrist governor is being promoted by the party next time around. Like having the position is good. It's not everything. You have to actually learn from it. And that remains to be seen whether that's going to happen. Yeah. And Joe Scarborough, he's in a kind of a tepid position right now because the Trump

administration is incoming. Joe, I believe, still identifies at least as a fiscal conservative. and we know that he's definitely in a different tax bracket than most Americans are. So he has his priorities in one place, but he's reporting on MSNBC, which is still, as far as we know, a left-wing outlet or a left-leaning outlet, I'll say. And, you know, they got a lot of flack, Joe and his wife, Mika, and specifically those two for going and trying to make nice or play nice with Trump. And so I wonder if he's like trying to teeter that line a little bit. Scott Galloway is like, he does touch on.

a lot more progressive ideals. He's an NYU professor. I think he's not quite as far left as, you know, some other people might want him to be. But he is left enough that he would be the guy to bring out some of these ideas on a mainstream show like MSNBC. But you know what is funny? What we're seeing now is Trump is making all these insane headlines about how he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico and he wants to declare war on Denmark and take

over the Panama Canal, all these things that he's saying. and all up in the comments, people are like, how is this going to bring down the price of eggs, right? Like, just I feel like the veil is starting to fall maybe a few months too late. Maybe it would have been nicer if this happened a few months ago, right before November maybe. But, you know, I think maybe this is the ship that needed to happen just to wake people up and maybe we'll get there four years from now. So any final thoughts on that, John, before we move on to our last story? I certainly hope so. again, and that wouldn't be any justification. They wouldn't make it good that it happened,

but we should try to draw even from terrible events any good that can possibly come. It is our job in the media, and it's the job of everyone watching this that cares about what happens in America to do whatever it is that we can with whatever platform we have to make sure that when it comes around to choosing candidates, advocating for policies and platforms the next time around, we make sure that people learn the right lesson from the experience of 2024. and not the lesson that likely the Democratic establishment is going to want them to learn. All right. So we have one more story for you before we break for the second hour.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has just implemented new rules that would remove medical debt from consumer credit reports. And the way it works is that under the new policy, these credit reports can no longer include past due medical bills. And companies that obtain a person's credit history cannot evaluate their application based on outsource. medical debts. Now, this does not mean that the medical debts are forgiven. Rather, the new rules remove roughly $49 billion in unpaid medical debts from Americans' credit reports. The prohibition targets all credit reporting companies, including TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. The CFPB estimates that the new rules will help 15 million Americans out. It also argues that some past due balances are erroneous and reflect amounts that were either already paid or greatly overstated.

Rohit Chopra, the agency's director, said people who get sick should not have their financial future upended. The CFPB's final rule will close a special carve-out that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe. Debt collectors who their entire existence relies on badgering Americans about unpaid debts are super salty about this. And also some Republican leaders are threatening to overturn the policy because, of course, they are. Last month, Senator Tim Scott went after Chopra for broadly pursuing a unilateral partisan agenda, he called it, and he called on the incoming Trump administration to limit the CFPB's powers. Furthermore, Equifax told the government in August

that it is not permitted under federal law to demand such a change, arguing that the CFPB failed to present sufficient evidence that medical debts are reported erroneously. The company, along with Experian and TransUnion previously said that they would stop, including past due medical debts under $500 on credit reports. Under $500 is nothing, though, when you're talking about medical debts. But the lobbying group, ACA International, which represents debt collectors, separately defended its work to recover rightfully owed consumer debt, which it said had enabled organizations to survive.

I can't imagine lobbying on behalf of debt collectors, but ACA International has already sued the CFPB over its new set of guidelines limiting how unpaid medical bills can be collected. John, look, a lot of jobs are being made redundant these days, either by AI or by, you know, the changing world that we live in. And it appears that no job is safe, not even debt collection jobs. But that aside, always very frustrating when people are more worried about parasitic debt than they are about the livelihoods of millions of

Americans. What was it? 15 million Americans would see their lives benefited from this, from this act. And this sort of ties in with the last story a little bit, the elimination of this debt or even just preventing this debt to negatively impact people's credit scores. This could significantly lessen the overall financial burden of so many people. And overall, that would be a good thing. But you know, it's bad for business and bad for Republicans. life in this country is just a struggle between people and businesses and the people we always seem to be losing. What are your thoughts, John? Yeah, my thoughts are twofold. First of all, I want to say, so stuff like this, which isn't directly a thing that Biden did, but it's a thing that

happened under Biden in an agency or whatever is sometimes when I'm evaluating like the value of a presidency, I often forget about little things like this that they start to add up over time And they do help a lot of people. There's been a lot of things like this around student loan debt and, you know, the focusing on junk fees and stuff like that, which is good. And I think deserves recognition, not just by us, but also, and I apologize, I now point to a lot of things that I declare to be like the perfect example of the gap between the truth and the lie of the Trump administration and the MAGA movement.

But this is a perfect example of it. So if you're a MAGA person, what is it about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau trying to make it easier if you to switch banks, trying to limit how much you can be fined for over withdrawing, trying to limit the junk fees that credit card companies and telephone companies and airplanes can charge you. What is it about that that bothers you? Like, that they've taken your position, your interest at heart rather than the business. Like, is it just enough? Can Jesse Waters just say that it's socialism? And you'll be like, you know what? That's true. I want to be fined more in the future.

I don't understand why you would be against this because they say, okay, Donald Trump in the MAGA movement say, we're going to come in and you've all been voiceless and we're going to be your voice and we're to fight against the deep state and the establishment and whatever, but they're literally saying we are going to roll back the power of the consumer financial protection bureau. So Kathy Kraninger, who led it under Trump the first time, says there will be pretty significant change from the direction the agency has been going in. And I think in a positive way.

So I don't know for sure that she's going to be leading it again. She already has a job. It probably doesn't matter what the job is. But just so you know, she's the chief executive of the Florida Bankers Association, a lobbying group whose board of directors includes executives from Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, PNC, and Truist. So she probably has your best interest at heart. They're going to make it possible for these companies to screw you over and nickel and dime you

in a million different ways. Why do you want to be attacked and find and be hemmed in? Why do you want the government to take the bank's position rather than your own? That's not a rhetorical question. I want a literal goddamn answer to that. I do not understand why the Amaga movement says they want the establishment to be hurt. They want their interest to be advanced. And yet every day Donald Trump proves that he's going to do the exact opposite of that.

And they don't seem to mind. I don't, I don't hear you, yes. Sorry. My bad. I did that yesterday, too. Yeah, that's the problem, is that you're the one asking the question. They're not asking that question of their leaders, right? And they're not the ones who are questioning things.

And we got to end the first hour, but it was a very, I loved your analysis, John. But the only thing that I kept thinking about the whole time was, you know, the movie Robin Hood Menon and Tice? There's that scene where Chappelle. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I grew up with that movie. so I understand the world through that lens. Whatever that says about me, but that part where Chappelle's character

is addressing the people of Sherwood Forest, and it's like, oh, people of Sherwood Forest, you've been had, hoodwink, bamboozled, run amuck. And that's what it is. That's three times I've said that one word in one show, and I had to fit in one more. And on that note, we were going to wrap the first hour. I think you have Sharon and J.R. Jackson in the next hour.

So stay tuned for that. We'll see you guys later.