The Young Turks - Mitch McConnell Loves Political Corruption And Joe Biden Gets Cringey

Episode Date: March 9, 2019

Senator Mitch McConnell blasted legalization aiming to limit corruption in politics.Joe Biden's past comments come back to haunt him. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS  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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you.

It power, power panel. I'd like to remind the audience that I'm 48. But still a child. Okay. I know. Do things right. I also take away points. Okay, we've got carrots and sticks. What are you?

Can we take points away from you? I know, right? But now we're doing a fun game where they squeeze the points out of me. So they go, squeeze Baba, and I'll go, but ding. Okay. John Ida Rolla, Jen Cougar, Anna Kasparian, we got a wonderful first hour for you guys. And we have a wonderful show for you guys. So later on the program, we win CNN bends to our will.

to our will. I like that. Yeah. Now, was it really us? Yes. Okay, we'll see, we'll see. Okay, but no, they did the right thing and I want to commend that. Well, no, I, okay, we'll say that for later in the program.

Martin Screlli, with a ridiculous report out of prison, he's just, he's unreal. There was actually a small part of that where I was like, oh, that's kind of fun. And then I was like, oh, no, not fun, not fun, he's a terrible guy. So that's a little bit later in the program. We're gonna have a fun show, and we're gonna start with corruption. We are, we're also gonna start with a correction that I need to make. It's very important because you guys need to know everything that's accurate. So yesterday we did the story about how the DNC had banned Fox from the Democratic primary

debates, and we played video featuring a former deputy chief of staff for Barack Obama. Upon further review and also through her tweets, it became clear that she was not criticizing the DNC for refusing to allow Fox to carry one of the primary debates. She says that she was irritated that the DNC had ever considered allowing Fox to host the debates in the first place. Yeah, I'm glad that she corrected a week or she clarified, we corrected and everybody else I hope corrected it as well. But yeah, and the way that Scarborough questioned her, it was totally unclear.

Right. Because he seemed like, oh yeah, rock and roll, Fox should have the debates, right? Yeah, that's why I was, but the beginning of her statement was confusing to me because I wasn't clear whether she was for Fox or against Fox. And then as the interview continued on, because of Joe Scarborough's line of questioning, it appeared that she was in favor of allowing Fox to carry the debates. Either way, she's clarified and I want to make sure that we don't mischaracterize her argument in any way.

Yes. Okay, and I just want to tell you guys a couple things to look out for over the weekend. I'll just tell you real quick right now. So CNN is having town halls. We can't show you the town halls, it's on Sunday. But what we can do is live play by play coverage. So we're gonna do a fun way, we're gonna do it live on folks' phones. So John is gonna do one hour, Brett's gonna do another hour, and Malcolm Fleshner is gonna

to do. Malcolm is off and on aggressive, progressive. He's gonna cover Tulsi Gabbard, Brett's gonna do Buttig, and John is gonna do John Delaney, okay? So you guys look out for that, it's gonna be free for everybody, but of course right afterwards, we'll put it up for the members, so you guys can watch it anytime you want. TYT.com slash join, obviously, but in this case, in order to watch them, YouTube.com slash TYT is a very easy way to go, okay, to watch them. But meanwhile, over at Facebook, because we've got a lot of different channels, we're covering

all of the Bernie rallies over the weekend as well. So don't miss any of those, that stuff live. And then obviously we'll have the tape afterwards as well. So that's Facebook.com slash rebel HQ, okay? Facebook.com slash rebel HQ. Okay, lots to get to. John, what's up? So much to get to, let's see if we can.

Today, House Democrats succeeded in passing their first big priority for the new Congress. That is a massive anti-corruption and campaign finance bill. Every House Democrat president voted for the bill, and every House Republican voted no. So it's gotta be controversial, right? A lot of radical policies in there. And we've talked about this a number of times over the past few months, but I just want to give you a quick run through of what was actually in the bill before you find out why it is likely to go no further through the U.S. government.

The bill would establish nationwide automatic voter registration, election day registration, and two weeks of early voting in every state. It would curb gerrymandering by requiring independent commissions to draw congressional matters. instead of partisan state legislatures. To reduce the influence of mega donors on elections, it would create a small donor matching system to publicly finance congressional campaigns and require dark money groups to disclose their donors.

And finally, in terms of ethics, it would enact new ethics reforms, among them requiring the president and vice president, along with future candidates for those offices to release 10 years of personal and business tax returns. That seems unnecessary because what president wouldn't do that? Just give us the information we need. Now, of course, every single element of that is apparently a total non-starter with the Republican Party right now, as becomes clear when you go to its next stop, which would be in the Senate.

And here's what Mitch McConnell had to say about it. This is a terrible proposal. It will not get any floor time in the Senate. I believe we can actually win elections against people who vote for this turkey. taxpayer funding of elections, partisan take over the FEC, and no real concern about the only obvious election fraud we had in the last election as a result of ballot harvesting. This is a solution in search of a problem.

What it really is, is a bill designed to make it more likely Democrats win more often. Nothing else. So if they want to talk about getting rid of ballot harvesting, I'd be open to that. Beyond that, I don't think it's saying anything in here is salvageable. All right, get a load of the nerve of this guy talking about turkeys with a neck like that. I didn't know if you were gonna go there, but we were all thinking it. I would say the nerve of the ballot harvesting comment, I think is better, considering

that insofar as there has been fraud related to something like ballot harvesting, it was a Republican that was doing it. It wasn't long ago, you could acknowledge that. And in general, like he wants to use a terminology because he doesn't want you to know what he actually is opposed to, and that is either individuals or groups of. assisting those who can't personally deliver their absentee ballots to make sure that their vote is still counted, which to me sounds like democracy, just like every other element of this. I mean, they're saying this is a power grab, a power grab to let people vote, to make sure

that they can register, to make sure that they have the day off work to vote. Like, if that is a power grab, if that makes it impossible for you to win, your party's got more fundamental issues than you're willing to admit at that press conference, Mitch McConnell. So I wanna break down what he said a little further. So to just expand on what John is saying, taking people's balance and handing them in is helping people vote. Taking people's ballots and changing them, as the Republicans did in North Carolina, is ballot harvesting.

And so McConnell, to get to his credit, is really audacious. I mean, he brings up a cheating that the Republicans did in this election cycle in 2018. And that election got, was not certified, and they're gonna redo the election. I don't ever remember an election being redone at the congressional level before. It's unprecedented at the level of cheating that the Republicans did. So he turns around and saying, well, the Democrats helping actual citizens vote is the same thing as our cheating, but he doesn't say ours, he never mentioned that it was the Republicans who did it.

So he's so outrageous, but break down three more things, but go ahead. I have to jump in on your first point. Obviously, I agree with you, I don't know if it's audacious for him to do this. I think if anything, it's savvy for him to do it because who's going to challenge him? Are the reporters listening to that press conference going to challenge that blatant lie that he just told? Of course they're not. So are the Republicans who consider themselves right wing?

Are they going to fact check it or challenge it for themselves? Probably not. So he will get to lie and he will get to twist something that the Republican, you know, did and then blame Democrats for it, and then he'll go unchallenged. And that lie will live on in the minds of who knows how many Americans. So I'm gonna take three quotes from the video you just saw. He says, I don't see anything in here salvageable referring to the bill. The bill is huge.

So one part of the bill is ethics and where it says, hey, if you do sexual harassment of your staff, you have to pay for it instead of the taxpayers. So that's not salvageable? It's not salvageable. No. He's like, no, no, he doesn't see anything good in this bill. So if you do discrimination, you do whatever, like if a congressman or a senator is terrible to his own staff, it's so bad that he's got to pay damages.

He says, no, the American taxpayer should pay instead of me and my friends here in Congress. So that's who Mitch McConnell is. Number two, he said, it's designed to make it more likely to Democrats win more often. Now, does it say anything about, hey, we gotta twist things or even, of course, not going to say twist things, but is there anything in there that puts the thumb on the scale for Democrats. No, what it does is it says we want to make it easier for everyone to vote. It doesn't say Democrats, it doesn't say like, you know what Republicans will do, they'll

say, okay, we're gonna take away voting areas in places more likely to vote Democratic, like areas that are have students, minorities, et cetera, right? And we're gonna put more voting areas in areas that are rural, white people more likely to vote for Republicans. See, that would be putting your thumb on the scale. Democrats do not do that in this bill. What they say is, we wanna make sure everybody can vote. White, black, Latino, rural, urban, it doesn't matter, right?

And Mitch McConnell is like, you want people to vote? This is obviously Democrats trying to win elections. Well, thank you for your admission that Democrats are more likely to win if people vote and that you've been trying to block that vote your entire career. But finally, we get to the point, the last part of his statement that I think is the most important. He says, this is a solution in search of a problem. So you don't think there's any corruption problem at all in Washington.

No one agrees with you. I mean, every single poll ranges from 82 to 93% saying there's a massive corruption problem in Washington and it needs to be addressed. Now the reason Mitch McHell says that, because he is the single most corrupt person in Washington and probably the single most corrupt person of my lifetime. Now, it's not to say that he's as personally corrupt as Donald Trump who runs two-bit scams and as a con artist or Duke Cunningham. By the way, these are all Republicans who went to prison for his corruption, et cetera, right?

But on a systemic level that affects the whole country, no one defends corruption as much as Mitch McConnell does. He is the head of the swamp. So he is worse in that sense than Donald Trump. He is more corrupt, he's more the swamp. So if you are looking for patient zero in why Washington is a disgusting corrupt cesspool, it is Mitch McConnell. Yeah, and the issue is, I mean, you mentioned a couple of individual things that are

in there that are indisputable, you can't actually go on the record saying that you're against that because it seems ridiculous, but we don't get to do that. There's no forum to say, okay, Mitch McConnell, here are 15 elements of it, I want you to say if you're in favor of against individual elements, we don't get to do that. If he runs again, he could skip the debates if he wants to. It's probably safe enough. Republicans have given up on doing town halls for literally like at least two years now. They've decided that they're not going to do it because the people actually go.

Because they're cowards. Yeah. Exactly. And there apparently is little price to pay for being on the anti side of the should we be a democracy question. So this is why. There's little price to pay because in order to face the consequences, the public needs to know.

Like there needs to be widespread outrage over the fact that Mitch McConnell is in favor of corruption and that he refuses to allow the Senate to even vote on this, right? So here's everything played out the way that it was supposed to play out. Like let's keep it real. House Democrats knew that Mitch McConnell would block this legislation. And I think what they were planning on doing or what they were banking on was, okay, he is going to refuse to do a vote on this, and then the media is going to cover it, and it's going to make the Republican Party look really bad because it appears that they're in favor

of corruption, right? But here's what I think Democrats, House Democrats, got wrong. They forgot the fact that the media doesn't care, right? The media is not making a big deal about this. Earlier this week on NPR, a guest came on to talk about the Ilhan Omar controversy, and she She made the argument that, you know, Democrats really wanted a lot of focus and attention on HR1, and now everyone's distracted by this Ilhan Omar story. No, but you're in the media.

They're distracted by the Ilhan Omar story because that's all you've been focusing on, right? So look, the American people don't get the information that they need, right? The gatekeepers of information still exist. They push out and really amplify the stories that they want to amplify. And stuff like this, it actually impacts every single American and undermines our democracy, doesn't really get much play. Yeah, so look, this is a good moment to give credit to Democratic leadership because HR1 is really good.

And the main thing we care about on this show, overwhelmingly so, is policy. Are you pushing good policy or not? But they always find a way to, you know, snatch, defeat from the jaws of victory. So how so in this case? I'm gonna back up Anna's point with a little bit more detail. Because we want to be constructive. So how else could they do it? It's easy to criticize, right?

Well, what creates a lot of media coverage? Policy? No, the media hates policy discussion. Because they'd have to say, like if they had to discuss the essence of this bill, well, you know, Mitch McConnell is corrupt, he is protecting the donors. So for example, now they can't ever say that because they do political correctness. They don't want to give you the truth. They want to give you politically correct things.

Republicans and Democrats have an honest disagreement. No, they don't. Mitch McConnell wants to protect his donors. And he's filed several cases in court protecting the identity of the donors, etc. Disclosed Act is a part of this legislation. It doesn't say you can't legally bribe politicians like we have now. It just says, you have to tell us who's bribing you above $10,000, okay? It doesn't use the word bribe, that's the rest of you, we all know, the conservatives

know, everybody knows it, it's a bribe, but that's okay, it doesn't use that. language, it says, just tell us who your donors are. Mitch McConnell and the Chamber of Commerce and all the big business interests, like, oh my God, this would make our First Amendment rights limited. Wait, first of all, speech isn't money, but okay, fine, the Supreme Court's corrupt, too. But why would it, but it's not limiting your right to spend the money, but it would embarrass us and it would make us a little bit more reluctant to buy off politicians. Well, why are you embarrassed?

If you think it's your First Amendment rights, I'm not embarrassed about it. this morning, any policy positions, we scream it from the rooftops. The reason you're embarrassed is because you know you're buying off politicians for your own personal interest, that's why you're embarrassed. See, now, the press can say that. They can maybe say it a little bit more polite than I am, but they could ask a very legitimate question any time a Republican comes on, sir, what would be the harm in anyone knowing if a donor gave you money for your candidacy or for an issue or gave money for advocacy?

If they believe in those issues, like making sure that Americans have lower wages, shouldn't they be proud of those policy positions? Why do they want to hide? But no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna call it even. So how can Democrats, now back to constructive, how can Democrats fix this problem? Because the media is not going to voluntarily help them, okay? And it's not about helping them, it's about covering it right, okay? You can cause a controversy, because if the media doesn't like policy, which it doesn't,

they love controversy. So why does it always fall on us to do what the Democrats should be doing on their own? Nancy Pelosi, after passing HR1, should have called a press conference saying Mitch McConnell will not introduce it in the Senate because he is the most corrupt politician of our lifetime. Now, if she did that, what would happen? Controversy! Controversy, oh my God, it was personal. Nancy Pelosi sniped on McConnell, let's all cover it, cable news will rush to it, right?

And then we might accidentally have a conversation about, wait, why is Mitch McClose? McConnell Corrupt. Wait a minute, he wants to hide the identity of all the donors? Why does he want to hide their identity? Wait a minute, these guys can give millions? In fact, the big business guys, billions of dollars to politicians and then get exactly what they want, that's the conversation you want to start. So HR1 is a terrific start, but you've got to finish it.

You've got to continue that conversation. And if you don't, he's just going to kill it in the Senate and he's going to drown him. By the way, I will say this though, it's not going to be that easy for him. At that press conference, normally McConnell, he never gets ruffled in any way, shape, or form. He's always like very boring, placid, et cetera. That was as animated as he gets. Oh my God. Okay, believe it or not.

Why was he using such strong language, which he normally doesn't? Normally he's like, we're gonna win, you guys are gonna lose, we have all the money, whatever, this press conference is over, okay? So in this case, he's like, no, no, this has no chance, it's a turkey, okay? Why? Because there's a lot of Republicans who are up for election next time. in 2020, and they're worried. They're gonna vote against an anti-corruption bill?

And Mitch McCau says, the American people don't want that. The American people are what, pro-corruption? Are you mental? That's why you've got senators in Colorado and all these other places. Lisa Murkowski and Alaska already had proposed something similar to the disclosed act before. And so he's gonna, if they put it up for a vote, he's gonna lose some Republican senators, and he's actually a little worried it might pass. Yeah, he's definitely scared.

And the Republicans up for reelection are also concerned that money in politics could hurt their chances of getting reelected. So they're worried about outside money pouring in to defeat them. And so look, money in politics works both ways, right? They might take advantage and exploit that corruption, but that same corruption can come back to bite them. And so that's part of the reason why some of those Republicans in the Senate wanted to pass this legislation.

And I, look, in that sense, the Steyers and Soros, there's so many others, right? The Republicans always just point them out because they're Jewish, but on the, are, are, but those Democratic donors are, in a sense, accidental American heroes. Now, would I take their money out of politics too? God damn right, I would. I take everybody's money out. Coke brothers, Mercer, Soros, Bloomberg, it doesn't matter, okay? But since the Republicans are now a little scared of that money from the left billionaires,

left-wing billionaires, now all of a sudden they're like, well, I mean, dark money in politics. I mean, when it was coming to me, I kind of loved it, but now it's coming against me. And I'm a little bit of a panic here, right? And so that little twitch they got going is wonderful to see. I love the smell of corrupt politician panic in the morning. And so that's kind of where we are. Probably sweaty. Yeah, I would imagine so.

So all the Democratic donors, keep going, keep going. If the Republicans are going to give, you give in that, and so if you guys want to come to a deal where we take all the money out of politics, let's do it, let's do it tomorrow. Wolf dashback.com. So we gotta take a break. Let's do that. Sorry, I just- You did it. You're in charge.

I had to be the cop that stopped it. It's international woman's day. I know. You're right, I needed to stop talking. No, no, I was actually worried that he was going to keep talking. So I'm like, we've got to go to break, all right, we'll be back. But when we come back, what do we have, John? A lot of news.

Joe Biden. Yeah, we got Joe Biden. I was hoping to get there quicker, but that backfired. Okay. Is Joe Biden racist? Dromes. Devastating quotes from the past. We'll talk about.

We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, The UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew

about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're up, brooding and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course

of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on the Young Turks. Let's read some comments for you guys. Jurosau, in the member section, says, I love how quick two UITs to correct themselves when they report something incorrectly. Well, thank you. Joyce says, of course, more Democrats would win elections. We're a center-left country that has our votes suborned and stolen by gerrymandering.

Matthew says McConnell, I do declare we'd never win again if this was passed. Okay, I added the accent, I assumed it. Ronjid says, if Bernie becomes president, I assume he becomes head of the Democratic Party, Hence, he could make it mandatory for all Democratic candidates and incumbents to not take corporate PAC money. No, unfortunately he can't. He could lead the way, he could strongly suggest that they do that, and he would have led by example by winning without corporate PAC money, but he cannot unfortunately mandate it.

He could change some of the DNC fundraising rules like Obama did initially, but yeah, he can't do it for candidates. That's right. Tommy Too Strong writes in, already a fun name by the way, Pelosi can't call out Mitch by name. She lives in a glass house, hashtag Justice Dems. That's true. That's an interesting point. Made by a lot of the viewers, by the way.

And thank you guys for all being members and participating in the show, t-y-t.com slash join to become a member. And last two ones are from Twitter. Veritnes writes in, yes, McConnell, it is a power grab, but for the people, which is, by the way, nearly exactly what Rashida Talib said in response to McConnell. So that's, you're thinking like her. That's good. Ted Oruchin writes in NPR's coverage of this entire week.

Was both establishment, corrupt and nauseating from Ilhan Omar to Venezuela to providing cover for all the Republican bad behavior? Are you still in their corner, Anna? How and why? Sorry, I was tweeting to Mark Dice, who was exploiting my family suffering to make his stupid talking points. So I did not hear anything that you just said. I was pretty sure that was the case. Oh well. Yeah. Okay, don't worry about it. Yes, I'm right on NPR. We can move forward. Okay. No, no, hold on though. Hold on. Now I know what that was about. No, look. NPR has commentators on it, and then they have reporting, and more importantly, NPR, more than any other mainstream media outlet I've ever dealt with, is willing to have progressives

on to make their case. NPR is the only place that's been willing to allow me to come on and make my case aggressively so and not punish me for it later. So that's why I like NPR. I'm just keeping it real with you guys. Them and Larry King are the only people that me have me on all the time. Yeah, or almost any progressives. So that's a fair point.

All right, let's keep going. Okay, let's do something fun. We all know that Joe Biden has a long history of saying controversial things, making gaffs, and on certain issues, he's got a troubling history. And so we knew that as we got into this potential run again in a Democratic primary, some of these things would be popping up, and this week we've got a big one. And this comes from Biden's interview by the people paper back in 1975, he was talking about racial integration via busing, which was at the time a controversial issue, and his position

on it was passionate. So we've got a few quotes from him. Here's what he said. I do not buy the concept popular in the 60s, which said, we have suppressed the black man for 300 years, and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start or even hold the white man back to even the race.

I don't buy that. Okay, let me be clear about a couple of things. On the one hand, this quote was from a long time ago, and I think that's super relevant. But on the other hand, I want you to know, at the time, he was a United States senator. So he was the sixth youngest senator ever elected, and that was in 72, so he's three years into his term here when he's making these comments. Yeah, he's not 15 or anything. Yeah, that's right.

And the comments are bad. Trying to segregate black Americans into the rest of the country at that point was not trying to hold a white man down. I mean, that is, that is definitely cringe-worthy. And if somebody said that today, they'd be done. They'd be in the Republican Party. They'd vote president on the anti-hate bill. Yeah.

Now, that doesn't mean that people can't change, okay? Yeah, of course. So we're going to have two different discussions here. How bad are these comments? And then is that still Biden today? But the comments so far are really bad. Yeah, well, it gets worse. So he says we've lost our bearing since the 1954, Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case.

To desegregate is different than to integrate. I am philosophically opposed to quota systems. They ensure mediocrity. This is probably the worst part, though. The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, chicanos, or whatever, in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with. I mean, I can come up with some more.

Some more raises up. But it goes on to say... The later, Donald Trump would say, hold my beer. Yeah. What it says is, in order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin, to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blonde-haired blue-eyed son. That's racist. Who the hell do we think we are that the only way a black man or woman can learn is if they

rub shoulders with my white child. Can I skip ahead to the first part of the conversation about how bad these are? They're terrible. They're very bad, extremely bad. Yes. I mean, come on. And later he went on to say that you're going to stunt their children's intellectual, now referring to white kids, the children's intellectual growth by busing them to an

inferior school. So which one was it, Joe? Is it that, hey, suggesting that black kids need to go into white schools is racist? because it's saying that they have to be next to white people in order to learn, or is sending your kids to black schools like totally unacceptable? Because those schools are clearly inferior. You see the problem there in the dichotomy? No, the reason why they had the busing, the reason why they wanted to integrate was because

it wasn't that schools that black kids go to are by definition inferior and the ones that white kids go to are by definition superior. No, it's because they had given funding to the white schools. and they were really good and he'd given no funding to the schools that had black and Latino kids in them. And that's why they were miserable. So that's why Biden and the other white people did not want to send their kids to the school that they had defunded, right? And they didn't want to give more funding to that school. They wanted to keep it for their kids.

And then the very idea, not only the white kids going to the black schools, that was a non-starter. And if you want to be quote unquote fairdom, okay, back then people were on fire on this. issue and I don't know who's with people more more racist than 75 or they're more racist than Trump era, but back then the idea of sending your kids to a black school, even for so-called liberals, was like, hey, look, I want integration. This is basically what all of what Biden's quotes are going towards. I'm a liberal, I want integration, but not with my kids, right? I'm not sending them to a black school, those are terribly inferior, and I'm not going

to fix them either, don't get me wrong. And then, but you sending black kids to my school, nah, even that's a bridge too far. I don't want it. So these comments are bad, real bad. So let me add a little bit of context before we launch into the discussion. So spokesman for Bill Russo said, Bill Russo, spokesman for Biden said, Joe Biden is today and has been for more than 40 years in public life, one of the strongest and most powerful voices for civil rights in America.

His long commitment to civil rights has repeatedly been recognized by many of the most important civil rights organizations in America. And to that end, some leaders of civil rights organizations have said that they consider him to be an ally. So with all of that, what do you think? But Bill Russo also said that Joe Biden still does not believe in busing. Yeah, that's true. Wow.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So I'll give you a last piece of context and then we'll judge. Okay.

Right. Can we bring back the Supreme Court? Yeah. So look, of all the different things that were done to integrate, busing was probably among the very, among the top of most controversial. Now, it doesn't mean that was the most wrong. It was the most controversial because people get really touchy about their kids, understandable. That part's understandable, but why, right?

In this particular case, they're like, as I just told you, you're going to bust my kids to a crappy inner city school. Yeah, but then let's lift it up. Like, let's make those schools better. And if they were integrated, all the schools would be better. And now Russo turns around and says, again, Biden's spokesperson, says, you see that? Joe Biden said that the busing wouldn't help fix the problem of lifting up minorities in this country, and it hasn't been fixed, so he was right. No, no, he was not right.

No, because we never bothered to fix and fund those schools in other areas. Yeah. And can I just briefly mention that we talked about a study, I think, last year showing that desegregation effectively, not by law, but in practice, is actually on the rise in a number of different areas of America now. Yeah. Yeah, and the last piece of context is, could Joe Biden have been re-elected-segregation is on the rise in a lot of areas of the country?

Yeah. Could Joe Biden have been re-elected back then? So his election would have been in 78, and when he made these comments to 75, he was halfway through his term, if he was in favor of busing, there's a good argument to be made that he would not have been reelected, even in Delaware. So keep that in mind for whatever it's worse. Now, now let's move on to how bad is it today and how much is Joe Biden changed. I have to add one more thing before we get to that discussion.

It's quick. Look, one of the biggest issues facing public schooling throughout the country is the way that these schools are funded. So I know that the LAUSD has tried to mitigate this issue and not rely as heavily. or solely on property taxes, but in the majority of districts throughout the country, property taxes are used to fund the school. So if you live in a wealthy area, obviously the property taxes are going to be much higher, which means that you have more resources for the schools in that neighborhood.

If you're living in a poor neighborhood, if you're coming from a lower socioeconomic status, and unfortunately most of the time, these are minority individuals, you don't have as much funding for your schools, because you live in a poor neighborhood with less in property taxes. So we never have a discussion about that, right? We never have a discussion about fixing that problem. It is a systemic problem that we just continue with because I don't know why. I don't know why it doesn't get.

I know why, because I've talked to people who are good on other issues, you get to the funding of the schools and they're like, not with my kids, no way, no way, I'm gonna give maximum amount of money for my kids' school, and if the other schools don't have enough, that's That's their problem. It's not my problem. I don't live there. I live here. Yeah, but you don't live on an island.

For all the people out there who think of everything in this individualistic way, you don't live on an island. You will suffer the ramifications of your own ridiculous ideology and mentality. If you only think about it as it's me, me, mine, mine, my kids, my kids, my kids, well, okay, I'll give you an example of what I experienced today. The homelessness issue is so bad, right? So bad, because the housing crisis is so overwhelming in areas of the areas of. Los Angeles, that there are homeless people, I live in a good area, right?

But there are homeless people living in tents on the sidewalk in a so-called nice part of L.A. This morning walked to the side of my building and homeless people are defecating on the side of the building because they have no place to go. So if I'm selfish and I want to say me, me, me, me, and I'm gonna live in my nice neighborhood, your nice neighborhood means nothing. If there's a huge population of American suffering living on the streets and they have nowhere to go, like you're not gonna enjoy your life if you continue on with that mentality.

And so conservatives are talking about limousine liberals and 98% of the time it's total horse crap. People with money actually doing good in the world and they're trying to shame them from doing good, which makes no sense. But in this one case, there is a little bit of an argument to be made. So I'm not letting the conservatives off the hook, they're even worse on this. But we have done segregation on almost a deeper level now. We made it more sophisticated, and a lot of liberals went along with it.

And how do we do that? We said, okay, we're gonna have private schools and charter schools, and all the wealthy folks, including the rich liberals, took all their kids out of the public schools and put them into private schools, and then drained all the resources out of the public schools. Now the public schools in places like LA and New York are a disaster. Why? Because the rich kids aren't there anymore, so we left them to die, right? Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size.

Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. So now we got resegregation to John's earlier point. It's a disaster and nobody's doing a damn thing about it. Let me ask you a question, so sort of to launch us into a how significant is this, a little hypothetical for you, what would the reaction be like if Bernie had said all of these exact things? Oh, great point. That is a great point.

I would be outrage as I am right now. Oh, I know, but obviously you would be consistent, but I'm saying what would the reaction be like? Oh, so John, I don't know why I didn't think of that, but that's such a wonderful point. Right now they'd be declaring his candidacy over. Everybody on cable news, this would be the top story, he'd swamp anything else, and they'd all be saying Bernie Sanders is obviously racist and what a terrible person and we knew it and he's got to get out of the race, he's got to get out of the race. Now, you want me to show you what Bernie Sanders was doing, not even at that time, but even earlier. So this is important context.

While Biden is saying, no, not with my kids and I don't want him next to black kids, Bernie Sanders in 1963. So 12 years earlier than Biden's comments earlier, right? When there was even worse racism, worse segregation was doing this. Let me show your graphics 27 first. So that's him getting arrested for protesting. You don't want to know what? Segregation. He demanded that the University of Chicago integrate the buildings that they own.

They did projects to trick the university and to discriminate against black people because they were and they proved it by sending him black people. couple first, they'd get rejected, then they said in a white couple, Bernie Sanders helped organize that back when he was a student, and then went to the university and said, you're busted, we knew you were racist, and then he did citizens to make sure that they would segregate their buildings, and then he chained himself to two African American women to make sure that the kids in the schools would be treated equally, because they were giving in Chicago, they were having the black kids go into little trailers that had no air conditioning and no heat in the middle

Chicago Winter and had rats in it. Meanwhile, there was 380 empty white classrooms in Chicago. That's when he chained himself and said, no, you gotta give equal funding to African Americans in Chicago. Does he get any credit for that? Almost none in the media. Instead, they pervert it like he has the race problem. Twelve years later, Biden is going around saying, I don't want my white kids next to black kids.

And it's a story, it's not a massive story. Okay, so that's important context. Now, but we are not going to make the same mistake as the mainstream media. We're gonna be fair, look, do I think Bernie Sanders' policies today are better than Joe Biden's? Yes, okay? Does that mean I'm gonna judge Biden unfairly? No. And so I am mixed on this story.

That is, Jesus Christ, that's over 40 years ago, right? And about 44 years ago, that's a long time. And Biden has done a lot of great things for civil rights since then. So if you think this is the only thing Biden stands for, that is not fair, okay? And can people change? I mean, we've gone over this a thousand times on the youngsters. Of course they can. As he's shown that he's changed in a lot of ways, yes.

His spokesperson coming out today and saying he's still against busing, whoa, I didn't see that coming. That is not, one, it's not politically smart, but more importantly, two, if he still believes that, and he still thinks that integrating is like quotas, then I'd go back to wait. Then he didn't change, and then that's terrible, right? The correct way to have reacted to this, and I would hope that he would mean it, is that he should come out and go, let me explain why I was wrong back then. and go through why I thought what I did, why it's the parts that I think are wrong, and

if he thinks some parts are right, then he should defend them, and what my current day positions are, and then talk about his history and helping civil rights along in the Senate. That would be the right way to handle it. So far just saying, you know, yeah, we were right about busing. I didn't, I'm surprised at how poorly that Biden is handling this. Yeah, I agree. So, you know, I don't know, what do you guys think? Do you, I mean, is this a game ender?

Is it that strong? I mean, it's a terrible thing, but it is 44 years ago. Yeah, it is 44 years ago. That's a long time. I agree. The next time he's interviewed, and look, if he launches his campaign this weekend, he's going to have a big sit-down interview. He's going to have a CNN town hall 10 minutes later.

This has to be asked. I'm sure that it will be asked at the first debates in June and July, it will be asked, and we'll have to evaluate what he says about that time and what he thinks now, what policies he's putting forward. And look, because he's talking there, primarily he's discriminating against African Americans, hypothetically, that's the community that's going to decide. It's not on me to decide whether it's been long enough or anything like that. But it's our job in the media to make sure that people know important things about these candidates. And in a time when all these questions are being asked of Bernie Sanders about reparations and things like that, he's not

the only person that has a position on that or related issues. I mean, we all agree, what What the mainstream media is doing in painting Bernie Sanders as having a racial problem. First of all, that's not even true. It drives me crazy. Oh, did you know he lost South Carolina overwhelming? Yeah. Did you know that 76% of Americans had no idea who Bernie Sanders was in 2015 when he ran, began to run for president?

He had no name recognition. If you don't give that context, come on. And the Clinton family with a positive image in the African American community, that's It's an enormous factor in stuff. You leave all that stuff out, you're purposely smearing Bernie Sanders. If you smear him and you glide past this for Biden, you betray your bias. But again, we also have to make sure that we're being straight up here, right? So because we like his Sanders policies better, doesn't mean we should be unfair to Biden.

So okay, last thing, Anna, what do you think? How bad is it? I think it's pretty bad. And while his views might have somewhat changed, I mean, he still disagrees with the busing policy. So I'm not like, maybe his rhetoric has changed, but his policy idea hasn't really, or his policy position hasn't really changed. I think what's far more important is to look at his record. And, you know, he's been in power in one way or the other, either in Congress or in the executive branch and has had the ability to influence racial tensions. here in the U.S. And so what has he really done? I mean, he's referred to as an ally,

but what has he really done? Police shootings involving unarmed black men blew up in the news during the Obama administration. Did the Obama administration do enough to address that? And I love the point that you made, John. It's not really up to us to forgive him or not. I think it's up to the black community to take a look at his record, take a look at what he said in the past, and make a decision for themselves. It's not on us to forgive him. But I'm not, I'm definitely more critical than you guys are. I'm just keeping it real.

Yeah, and of course the Latino community too. And finally, look, the one thing we all agree on is Biden's got to come out and answer this at some point. And so that'll help you decide whether you think he's passed it or not because those comments are clearly very, very problematic. So, it's, he can come out and say it was 44 years ago, here's my real opinion, but he's got to do that. He doesn't just get a pass from anybody if he doesn't address the issue.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, we gotta take another break, guys. We got a lot more where that came from. Chelsea Manning is now, might be arrested again. We'll tell you why, and man, you want to talk about not getting enough credit, absolute American hero. All right, I'm gonna get back into it.

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And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-V-P-N dot com slash. t yt check it out today you're right back we hope you're enjoying this free clip from the young turks if you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media become a member at t yt dot com slash join today in the meantime enjoy this free second all right back on a young turks jank anna and john with you guys i'll do the best i can there's a thousand comments here uh jam braskey from the member section says writing off someone's

toxic ideas simply because it was a different time, erases the efforts of progressives at the same time who did not have the toxic beliefs common for that time. So great point, Jam, thank you for writing in on that. Logo says a lot of people are saying that it was 44 years ago so it doesn't matter. However, we are here to choose the best candidate. Yes. Who do we choose the guy who had racist policies in the 70s or the guy who literally marched with the oppressed in the 70s?

Another great point. Okay, and Manda Kruger says integration is so important because it makes it impossible to target a school for lower funding based upon race. We know we have an institutional cultural problem with race. Integration takes the wind out of the sales of bigots. Three for three guys, all excellent points. And aerodynamic 88 and Twitter says, this is Biden's super predator comment. Not good.

It's actually worse. Yeah, significantly worse. And one of the reasons I wanted to make sure that we covered this is, like for everybody in the media who seems to believe, oh, if Biden's He's got this. He's just gonna take like a cakewalk. And there was a news report earlier this week. It was like, Biden is still second guessing because he thinks people might be critical of him. Like, what do you think should happen?

Of course we're going to. And the only reason that this stuff didn't come up in the past times that he ran for president is that he never did that well. If he had become the front runner, people would have been digging through newspapers and C-SPAN and stuff like that. We're just getting started with that. That's gonna happen for everybody. But Joe Biden is gonna have decades of that that's gonna come out. Let me take you something.

If he had run in 2016, you know how quickly Hillary Clinton would have found those quotes and put them out? She would have devastated him with those quotes. And she would not have had anywhere near the fair discussion we just had. She just would have been like, yep, no, he's racist. Racist, racist, we gotta get rid of him. The Obama photo that they put out. Yes.

Anyway, why don't we turn to other big news? Yes. Okay. Chelsea Manning was taken into custody once again today, this time for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigation. She is saying that she is not going to cooperate with this and is once again being persecuted. Judge Claude H. H. Hilton, a federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Manning must stay in civil detention until she testifies.

Manning had vowed not to cooperate in the investigation, even though prosecutors granted immunity for her testimony. Now, on Twitter, she put out a statement about why she is doing what she's doing and said, I will not comply with this or any other grand jury, imprisoning me for my refusal. to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly stated ethical objections to the grand jury system. The grand jury's questions pertain to disclosures from nine years ago and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony. I will not

participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech. Now there's a lot about this investigation that we don't necessarily know, as she was alluding to, there's a lot of secrecy. But the case is apparently part of a long-running criminal inquiry into WikiLeaks and its leader, Julian Assange, that dates to the Obama administration in which the Trump administration revived. Manning said on Thursday that prosecutors on Wednesday had asked her a series of questions about WikiLeaks before the grand jury, but she had responded to every question by saying that it violated her constitutional rights. This is fascinating. First of all, it's

devastating, the fact that Chelsea Manning has been taken into custody over her refusal to testify in this incredibly secretive grand jury situation. But it's also fascinating in that the Trump administration revived this case against WikiLeaks. And we had reported on this earlier when there was some evidence to indicate that Trump was planning to, or at least the federal government was planning on doing this. And this is more evidence that this is going on. It is top secret. It is sealed.

There's no transparency and we don't know the details of it. But they're going after Julian Assange. And I'm just curious what Julian Assange's opinion is on all that. Well, I'm pretty sure it's strongly against. But yeah, on the other hand, anyway, he did seem to be fairly supportive of Trump in other instances, let's put it that way. So Wigileaks and I have had disagreements about that and about the time. timing of the release of the emails that they did.

I covered those emails, I think there was nothing wrong with releasing them, releasing them a couple of hours after the Hollywood Access tape was interesting. They claimed, to be fair to them, that no, it was the Clinton people who released the tapes before they knew that they were gonna, Wikileaks was going to release the emails. Okay, so you can look that up and judge for yourself, which one is right about that. But part of the reason I tell you that now is despite whatever disagreements we might have, It's an absolute outrage to try to prosecute WikiLeaks over these leaks. In the first place, we're not talking about the emails, this is prosecutions of the war logs.

But this is what Chelsea Manning leaked. That's why she went to prison for seven years. And it is to show the war crimes that we committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. What she did was a service to this country. Wikileaks publishing them is what any decent media organization could have done and should have done. And by the way, did do. Yeah, after WikiLeaks published them for which I have always defended them 100% and

continue to defend them 100% on, then the Washington Post, New York Times, Guardian, they all printed them. So should we send them all to jail? So let's be clear about this. I mean, the New York Times has printed a lot of things that were leaked to them through official channels, through people working in the government. Should we round them all up? And by the way- Are you tempting Trump right now? No, but the thing is, you have to understand that if you say it's okay to a resident- Julian Assange or to go after WikiLeaks in this instance, you better be careful for what

you're signing up for. I know the Democrats and MSNBC, et cetera, have demagogued around Assange. Oh, he caused us the election! No, no, no, I know you had nothing to do with it, right? It was Assange that cost you the election. But because of all that propaganda, and the Republicans hated him in the first place, so now the whole establishment says it's all Assange's fault. But once you agree to arrest Assange, then don't cry later when Trump's.

rounds up Washington Post and New York Times reporters. Because you're saying anyone who prints government secrets should be arrested. You've destroyed freedom of the press if you agree to that. Now, I will say I don't watch as much cable news as a lot of people. But as of right now, I haven't seen anyone pushing for that. And at least the reason it was revived is because people in the Obama administration felt like, well, look, obviously we're frustrated about all this, but we don't necessarily like the precedent that could be set.

So that's why it was made dormant and needed to be revived later. And I was going to say, could you think of anything more unjust than Chelsea Manning being dragged back into this after already serving one and a half Paul Manaforts in prison? Obviously, there's a lot of injustice in our system, so you probably can think of something, but Jesus, leave her alone. Right. Well, I mean, what are you hoping to prove at this point? Maybe they think there's something that we haven't seen yet, some other crime.

But, like, how, like, I was obviously frustrated as you were at the time with Obama. and saying, you know, we're looking forward, we're not looking back in terms of war crimes and things like that. But there comes a point when you can stop looking back on something that we've already been through all of it. Whatever damage you think was done was done a decade ago at this point. Well, I have a question about all of this because in this case, in this new case, I guess, they granted or said that they would give Chelsea Manning immunity if she testifies, cooperates.

But immunity for what? I mean, hasn't she already served her time for the week? Theoretically implicating herself in other crimes. And they don't even necessarily have to think that she did commit some, they could just think it's possible. No, no, this is the government punishing its enemies. This is the government targeting freedom of the press, freedom of speech. So all the right wing who scream about freedom of speech when they want to say racist things,

are you behind Chelsea Manning? Are you behind Julian Assange? Are you talking about that injustice to freedom of speech today? I don't see you. Well, to be fair, Jenk, Ben Shapir was going to start defending Chelsea Manning once he gets done protecting Ilhan Omar. Right, and once he gets done cashing his checks for the only speech he cares about. So now, look, I'm gonna go further, I wanna give you a quote from Edward Stone.

He tweeted, this graph 14 guys, and obviously he released secret government information that also let us know that our government was illegally spying in on us. Of course, no one suffered any legal consequences for the illegal spying, but they're looking to punish the person who told you about the illegal spying. So Snowden tweeted out, Manafort, 47 months for a lifelong carnival of criminality, including, by the way, betraying America and being a foreign agent, Petraeus, zero days for trading the country's highest secrets for a more favorable biography, manning 35 years for revealing evidence of actual war crimes to the press, your sentence derives from your proximity to power.

Absolutely. A hundred percent, right? No truer words have ever been spoken. So the judge in Manafort's case is like, but he was an upstanding citizen otherwise. What do you mean otherwise? It was, he was a lifelong criminal and he hid his criminal proceeds, he hid the fact that he was a foreign agent, but he just has a nice suit on from the money that he stole. And so you think, oh, that's a guy that looks like me.

Chelsea Manning, not a person that I would run into at the cocktail circuit, let's crush her. So now let's turn to Manning for a second in that regard. The incredible bravery to say these are war crimes, I'm gonna risk everything to expose those war crimes. And then she gets put in prison, she's continually stripped naked for no reason, tortured by every international standard, put in solitary confinement for no reason or for things like having a magazine that everybody else had, and the list goes on and on.

So after suffering that brutal treatment and then finally being released from prison, she risked going back to prison on principle. Yep. Do you know anyone that brave? I don't know that I know anyone that brave. So I think Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning will go down as amazing. amazing American patriots and heroes. And the people who today speak out against them will bear a mark in history as people

who did not believe in America and our Constitution. And later they will pretend to have been on their side all along. And that's what they do every time. The bad guys in history do terrible things and oppose the good guys and try to crush the good guys at the president. And then later go, oh yeah, yeah, I was always with Martin Luther King. Oh, I believe it did that you shouldn't judge people by the color of the skin like Martin Luther King said. So later these hypocrites will turn around and pretend that they were on Chelsea Manning's side all along.

But where are you today when she needs you? And look, Obama, yes, I said one of the best things he did was commute the rest of her 35 year sentence. On the other hand, he pursued her to the ends of the earth. He pursued Snowden to the ends of the earth. Same with WikiLeaks. Yes, he made the case dormant. But he didn't close it, he didn't close it. He used the Espionage Act against reporters for stories he didn't like.

His administration like all other administrations leaked. Was that ever pursued? Were the people in power ever put in prison for those leaks of government information? No, never, never. But if it's something damaging to the government, go crush the powerless, go crush the brave, go crush patriots. So they pursued Assange to the end of the earth as well, and because he didn't close that case as usual with Obama, and he, well, one thing Obama did not like was being challenged.

Wait a minute, how dare you, everyone in the press has to say how great I am. And if you challenged my government, I will open a case against you and I will pursue you. And he left that door open. Now Trump walks through that door and is now trying to crush Assange, WikiLeaks, anyone else that would ever give you information about the government, including Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Those are the heroes, and in this case, the government, as usual, unfortunately, are the ones that are looking to oppress us and take away our rights.

If we don't fight back on this, all of freedom of the press is in grave, grave jeopardy. And these right wingers who go against these people are with them when it's convenient and then turn on them in their time of need, you think the government won't then use that power to take away the rights of right-wing blogs? Depends on who's in government, right? But then you'll panic and go, oh my God, freedom of speech. Freedom of speech, I wanted to say racist, bigoted, sexist things. I need freedom of speech.

I didn't know they were going to do this to me. Yes, this is when you fight. You fight for people doing the right thing, whether you're left-wing or right-wing. Chelsea Manning, indisputable American hero. All right, we're out of time. Look, we got a whole other hour coming up for you guys, and then now we're a post game where Friday postgame is arguably among the most fun that we have at this network. So, tyt.com slash join it to get the third out of the Young Turks today.

TYot.com slash trial for a free week of trial. And I want everybody to check out John's amazing show, Damage Report. It's on every day. It's our morning show. And if you're a member, you get to watch it live. You get to watch the video of it. But all of you guys, you can watch clips at facebook.com slash the damage report, TYT. So go bookmark it.

Check it out. Thank you, John. And we got another great guest when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad free. Access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple. slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon