The Young Turks - Mutants & Marxists

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Trump rejected lawyers’ efforts to avoid classified documents indictment. GOP Rep. James Comer aims with Biden dig At Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it backfires spectacularly. House GOP panel releases budget that would "destroy social security as we know it." In "climate-wrecking" reversal, Shell ditches plans for oil production cut and hikes dividend. Hosts: John Iadarola, Farron Cousins, W. Mondale Robinson. 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. Welcome back one and all to another episode of The Young Turks. I am John to roll at Jankanana, still off somewhere in the wilderness. Search parties are maintaining hope We're not ready to quit just yet. We'll find them. But for now, we don't necessarily need them because we've got an amazing duo joining us in the first hour here. First of all, Mayor of Enfield, North Carolina, founding principal of the Blackmail Voter Project. Monail Robinson, welcome back to the program.

It's good to be back, bro. It's good to see you. It's great to have you here. And host of Ring of Fire, Faren Cousins, back once again. Glad to have you here as well. Always a pleasure, John. Thank you. It's great to have you here. By the way, it's great to have both of you here because it's not often that outside of the the context of a Friday that we do a panel and it's just a different vibe. It's fun. We've got some fun stories to talk about, you know, fun light topics like social security and stuff. So I think that we're gonna have fun with it. So thank you to both of you. That said, everyone out there watching, we've got an awesome hour for you, lots to talk about, including we've got social

security, we've got how Donald Trump may have totally screwed himself over by not listening to his lawyer and instead listening to a guy cosplay as a lawyer. We've got Republicans being made fools of by AOC and others. And then we even have a second hour of the show, Adrian Lawrence is going to be taking over, joined by Benny Carollo

and Trey Crowder. So two and a half awesome hours of show awaiting you. But with all that said, why don't we jump into our first topic? And you know what? I'm going to make some people uncomfortable by doing that, but I'm not going to give up on the American people. And this isn't the end.

This doesn't solve all the problems. This is the first step. I'm going to announce a commission coming forward from the speaker from bipartisan on both sides of the aisle. The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It's Medicare. Social Security interest on the debt. So you only have 11% to look at this budget. That was just a few weeks ago with Kevin McCarthy saying that he's going to get this commission together to look into what to do about Social Security, Medicare and Medicare. Medicaid, if you're like me, you're on the edge of your seat. I don't know what he's going to propose. An expansion of benefits, a cut of benefits, it could be either who's to say. We're still a little bit out from that, but we already have a pretty good idea of where the vast majority of the Republicans in the House are going to go because we have this new budget plan that was put out by a subset of the Republicans, 175 of them by the way. And in their proposal, They would gradually raise Social Security's full retirement age, the age at which people are eligible

for the full benefits of Social Security that you will have paid into for decades and decades by then to 69 up from the current level of 67 for those born in 1960 or later. Which by the way, they often say, you know, that they're really, they're only targeting like people that are super young, haven't really gotten much like, you know, skin in the game yet. But I feel like that's a pretty broad timeline actually. And that is a pretty big difference. If it's 67 now, and for those of you out there, it's 69, that is two full additional years of labor, two full fewer years of actually drawing those benefits, benefits, which after this plan, if it gets passed, will likely be smaller anyway. Two full, that's thousands and thousands

of dollars and a lot more hours of labor before you can finally get some time off. We have have a lot more that actually makes it even worse than that. But I want to give both of you a chance to jump in. Starting with you, Mondale, what do you think about what looks like it could be the plan for the Republicans? Well, it seems like their plan is successful in making sure that black people don't ever get retirement since the average age of black people in America is about 60.8 years. So it's like you can you can qualify for Social Security right before, you know, you have eight months left to live. I think it's absolutely disgusting that the idea of fixing the debt is taken away from the poorest people while in that, while we still give tax cuts to people with planes and helicopters and stuff like that.

Faron? You know, we we just came off a year where for the first time in decades and decades and decades, U.S. life expectancy fell. Like, we're no longer expected to live as long as we were 10 years ago. So it's not just, oh, well, we'll extend it two years because people are living longer. No, we're not. You're taking away two years of retirement for us so that you can keep giving money to the people who do not need it. That is what's happening here. And they're doing it after months of swearing up and down, screaming at President Biden during the state of the Union that we're totally not cutting Social Security. We're not cutting Medicare. Yes, you are,

and you're doing it right after you threw tantrums for the first half of the year saying that you weren't. Exactly. Yeah, they were so indignant. How dare you imply that? No, you can't look at my notes. You can't see them yet. They'll be coming out in a few months or whatever. But I do like that your mind went to the exact same place as mine in terms of life expectancy. But it's even a little bit worse because in the notes for this RSC budget proposal, it says specifically why they feel like they can raise the age before you can start getting the full benefits. And they say it would also make modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy, which as you've already implied is the exact opposite of the truth. Just to be clear,

life expectancy at birth for women in the US dropped 0.8 years back in 2021. For men, it's a full year from 74.2 to 73.2. So Mondale, if it makes you feel better, white men might soon catch up in terms of not being able to draw eventually from Social Security. But like it's bad enough that now you'll get five years on average before you die. But then they go and lie to you that we're only doing this because you guys are living longer. And look, one of the reasons, you know, there's a lot that they will do that I think is incredibly cruel, incredibly heartless when it comes to these sorts of programs. But I often think about like how much money was saved by the fact that they were able to convince tons of people to not take COVID seriously and to get

needlessly sickened, many died. Well over a million people died, disproportionately older. I'm not saying that that was a conscious thought process necessarily, but they could be pretty cruel and heartless when it comes to saving money, doing literally anything to stop taxes from needing to go up. And that, of course, is a potential solution to this problem. As of right now, if people watching this don't know, just the first $160,000, $200 of wage earnings are subject to Social Security's payroll tax, allowing the rich to stop contributing to the program early each year. So your wages likely, the entirety of it is taxed for Social Security. For the wealthy, it can be just a small portion. Now you could raise that cap and that would

solve the problem, but it would create a new problem, which is slightly higher taxes on the wealthiest people in the country. Thoughts? Listen, I think it's we should we should be extremely clear when we say things like Republicans are proposing something is the exact opposite of the the truth. No, Republicans are the exact opposite of the truth. It is, and that's not a good thing as a progressive because it makes the liberal, the so-called liberal wing of our party more closer to Republicans. They want to, want to negotiate more, and it's pulling our party to the right, saying that what they believe, the extreme ideas of them, like cutting social security, like kicking people off Medicaid, like making sure poor people stay poor and giving tax cuts

to rich people, is part of our conversation now as if this is normal. We used to have this this policy in this country, allegedly, think about when the first famine happened, 1932, when people were poor, not because of anything they caused themselves, but because of a crash, that we would take care of these people. We would make sure that people had enough to survive. I don't know what happened in this country. I'm lying. I know exactly what happened in this country where we said poor can be demonized.

It's when black people became available for these services or when it was said, okay, you can't send people to your been fighting World War II and then bring them back as veterans and not give them the GI Bill to put them in the middle class. So let's demonize poor people. Okay. You know, I also think that we have to understand with this legislation. This has now been out for what, 48 hours-ish? Where's the message from the left? Where's the message from the Democrats? Why has Biden not walked up to a podium and been like, oh boy, remember what I told you earlier this year? Look at this. I mean, I know, sure, it's only been 48 hours, but it's also already been 48 hours. And this administration, everybody on the left needs to be harping on

this. They actually, excuse me, the draft of it came out last Friday. So we've known about it for seven days. This should be the big story, especially due to the fact that they spent so many months saying President Biden's lying. We'll never do this. We're not going to touch your social security. I mean, Trump's even been hitting Ron DeSantis for wanting to do it for God's sake. Why are the Democrats not already producing the ads and putting them out on TV talking about what they're doing right now? They could do it. They're just not. Fairns being nice. It took us, what, 60 or 50 years to get caught up on the pro life argument? We got 50 years before we respond to this. Let's get serious.

I agree with you that it seems like more than enough time for Biden and others to respond to it. It's also, by the way, I checked. And it is enough time for people like Kevin McCarthy who are not a part of the RSC to come out and say, no, we don't agree with that. That's crazy. We're not going to do that. They're not saying anything. He's not saying anything about the fact that 175 of the Republicans that he's going to have to try to whip, you know, on whatever Billy comes out with already like this plan. They want it. been mighty quiet. But anyway, I don't want people to think that this is just about social security, while the recent budget plan from Republicans does intend to dramatically cut your Social Security benefits rather than even starting a conversation about possibly raising taxes on the wealthy Americans, it's just it's not a part of the conversation. That is not where it stops. Now, you might think coming out of all the debt ceiling conversation that Republicans are really focused on keeping the deficit low and they're really worried about the national debt,

Well, if you want to maintain that thought, you're gonna want to click away because their proposal also would call for massive tax cuts by proposing a permanent extension of the individual tax provisions of the 2017 Trump GOP tax law. So Trump tax cuts, which extended for years. And the way that they were able to pass it was by saying back then that it's not going to be permanent, we're just going to do it for a few years. Now they want to make it permanent. CBO estimates that that would cost $2.5 trillion over 10 years. We already lost over $2 trillion on it. They want to double down on that while also talking constantly about how big of an issue of the deficit and the debt are. But it's not just overall debt. They also want to mess with Medicare. They want to start a premium support model that would subsidize private insurance plans. So effectively, as with everything else, taking public money and putting it into private insurance. The plan also contains a provision

that would force disability beneficiaries to wait five years instead of the current two before becoming eligible for Medicare benefits. So they're effectively messing guys with all of these different programs. They're not happy to just start with one. Medicaid, God only knows what's going to be left of it after they're done with it. But what do you all think? I also want to point out because there is one very important part of that that was not mentioned. It also calls for dramatic federal cuts to the nationwide school lunch program. So part of what they're also fighting for is to take food out of the mouths of hungry children. It's like if you put in one of those AI prompts, like come up with the most evil Republican place.

And this is what it is. And they're like, yep, looks good to me because this is everything Republicans have ever wanted. Tax cuts, social security cuts, Medicare cuts, taking food away from hungry, poor people. It's the most evil thing you could imagine. And it's going to make it to the house floor. And that's the worst part about all of this. It could become their new reality. And they're not even afraid to let people see this. They have no shame. They love it. They embrace it. And it just blows my mind. Every time I read this thing, it blows my mind. Well, I think, I think you are absolute accurate except one thing. You said the worst part about it is it's going to make it to the House floor. No, the worst part about it is Democrats are going

to start negotiating and poor people will lose some of these services. Some of these features will get, we will lose people to this. This is, this is basically legislating death for poor people. And that's not hyperbole. I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but we should be really clear about that. Some people only meal, some kids only meal happen at school. So the idea that you're trying to cut lunch free and breakfast, you're trying to starve kids. And it is absolutely disgusting that we call ourselves, you know, this prosperity nation. And I don't see it at all, especially when you see so many more than 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and some even less than that. It is absolutely disgusting for sure. Yeah, 100%. By the way, in terms of the school

meals. I was watching a video of Elise Stefanik, who was freaking out that the Biden administration had considered a regulation that would replace chocolate, like flavored milk, with regular milk. And they were implying that this is insane, woke communism going out of control. But get rid of all of the milk for free. That's suddenly fine. So the kids better be able to drink chocolate milk, as long as they can drink any milk. As soon as we have the chance, We're just going to take away all of the milk from them, and that's perfectly fine. It's such twisted priorities. But I do want to throw out one other thing, because Mondale, you brought up that the negotiations are going to begin.

This RSC thing is a Republican thing, but what Kevin McCarthy is going to set up, he says is going to be bipartisan. He's going to get some Democrats on his side. Now, since Biden is the president and theoretically can veto whatever they put out, it doesn't seem like there's any electoral benefit to any Democrats to sign on to this. But that doesn't mean that there's not some sort of benefit in terms of campaign donations, jobs once they leave office. So do you expect that he's going to get what he wants? And in the House, possibly for the Senate version, we are going to have some Democrats crossing over. Any particular names cross your mind that you think could become a big part of this? What's that a Republican Democrat guy from West Virginia? Oh yeah.

Joe Manchin. Oh yeah, him. So I mean, but that's he's not the only one. one that comes to mind. Let's let's be honest. The Democrats sold us out in the, in the, and the, the, uh, the deficit. I mean, when we, what was what we just saw was a failure to be on the side of people. We allow Republicans to hold us hostage every chance they get. And Republicans don't even mind. They told us Barack Obama was going to be a one-term president. And when they couldn't do that, they said, well, we're not going to give them the chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice. What do we do when we have the power to do that, or even expand the court? We sit silent. We sit idle and tell you,

the world that just gave us the Senate, the House, and this is, I'm talking about 2020 results, and also the White House, we tell them what we can't because cinema and Joe Manchin don't want to play with us. Get out of here. Like, where's the pressure from our side to keep people in a line? I appreciate the Republicans walking and talking all the craziness they want to and then stick into it. I just wish we had the goal to do that on our side. Yeah. You know, I think that's a really good point, especially when we're looking at it as the fact that Republicans always start these so-called negotiations from the most extreme point possible. It's like they come out and say, listen, we're going to burn down the house, yaw negotiate on what you want to get out of the house while

it's on fire. But instead of the Democrats saying, well, hold up, maybe we just don't set the house on fire, Democrats immediately start, okay, well, so the house is burning, we accept that we'll take the pets and maybe a couple of the kids. We can't get them all. And it's just coming from this position of weakness already surrendering to the crazy without ever stopping to say absolutely not. We're not going to burn the house down. So we're not going to negotiate on what we have to pull out of it. And so we always come from this position of weakness to start off. And that's how Republicans continue to win no matter what the issue is. And like you said, this isn't going to become law.

Biden's going to veto it, but there's going to be horrible things that do come from it because we're starting from such an extreme position. Yeah. John, both of you guys know this. Let's think about this for a second, all right? We have never got anything large. No victories on our side came from bipartisanship. Everything that we got, we had to exclude them, right?

So why are we praising bipartisanship when they don't care about it at all? Actually, bipartisanship in Republican will get you unelected. Talking like that will get you unelected. Yet and still, we keep talking about, oh, we want a bipartisan effort. For what? We want, we should be doing what supports this big tent party we say that we are a part of. And I don't see us fighting like that. And I think that's going to come back to bite us in this general election coming up. Yep, yep. And look for now, they have this narrow majority in the the House, but theoretically the Democrats can take it back next time. And I personally think that isn't it nice that in your quest to regain control of the House, the opposition party

is spending their limited time and limited power trying to steal kids, steal meals from poor kids, force you to work a couple more years before you can retire, and also take control over your bodily autonomy away from you. But again, you have to actually talk about that. And as Farron pointed out, I don't know, Biden, he gave one speech recently. I guess that's something, I don't know. I feel like you could get out there, buddy. But anyway, that's our first block. We're gonna take a little break. We come back. Donald Trump was not doing himself any favors of the last year when it comes to legal theory. We'll break that down and how consequential it might be after this.

Welcome back one and all. This is the first hour of The Young Turks. So much more to get to. And we've got some fun stuff. So guys, why don't we jump right into this? It turns out that Donald Trump might have screwed himself over when it comes to this classified document scandal in more ways than one. I mean, the first one, the first one, is pretty obvious. Don't steal documents, you crazy, crazy man. And when they ask for you to give them back, just give them back. But beyond that, he might have screwed himself over in other ways too. See, he had someone who tried to help him out. A lawyer, Christopher Keese, who I believe he paid in advance, smart of Christopher Keyes to ask for that. It implies that he's probably one of the smarter

lawyers on Trump's team. Anyway, at one point, this is back before the arraignment. This is back before the special counsel, he came to Trump, and his plan was he wanted to quietly approach the DOJ to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges. His idea was that Merrick Garland and the DOJ under Biden and Biden himself, they're gun shy. They don't actually want to arrest another politician from the opposite side. So he could take the temperature down by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents. And in return, Donald Trump does not have to spend the rest of his life in jail. It seems like a pretty good place. But to Donald Trump, no, because that would require him to not fight and to give up documents

that he is sure are his. And so he wouldn't accept it. He said no. Some of his other cronies around him in his inner circle told him, yeah, you're right, you should fight instead. Don't give in. And a couple months later, you have the special counsel. And fast forward to today, he's facing these charges. And it's a pretty significant thing. Now interviews with seven different Trump advisors say that he misled his advisors as well, telling them that the boxes that remained after he'd given some back to the National Archives contained only newspaper clippings and clothes. He just straight up lied to the people he pays to keep him out of trouble. He repeatedly refused to give the documents back, obviously, even when some of his longest serving advisors

warned of peril and flew down to Florida to beg him to return them. Eventually, he returned 15 boxes early last year. He still had 64 more to go, but he told his advisors, no, I gave them all back. Put out a statement. I already complied. Just dooming them to potential legal trouble, dooming his lawyers too, who he also lied to. By the way, John Kelly, who spent quite a bit of time working in the close vicinity of Donald Trump says he's incapable of admitting wrongdoing. He wanted to keep it. And he says, you're not going to tell me what to do. I'm the smartest guy. in the room, which seems insane. It seems impossible. But Donald Trump chooses who's in the room with him. So there is still a possibility that he's the smartest guy there. But anyway, it gets

even worse, but there were people on the inside that were trying to get him to avoid this whole thing. Just focus on the reelection bid, but he didn't want to do it. He wanted the documents more. Faron, what do you think of this? I think it's the weirdest development so far that we have seen in this already very weird story because Trump paid Keese three million dollars. Like Keyes has three million dollars from Donald Trump paid up front. And he's like, hey, listen, you paid me millions of dollars from my legal expertise. Here is my legal expertise. And then Trump says, that's great. But no, no, I'm gonna go listen to the idiot over here that didn't go to law school that I didn't pay $3 million to because he just seems a lot cooler than you. He's also the same guy

that also told me to just say that the 2020 election was rigged and that worked out super well. Fair. So I'm totally taking his advice here too. You want to explain who that is that you're talking about? Yeah, that is of course Tom Fitten, the the guy running judicial watch, who again, no legal training. He's got a degree in English instead of, you know, going to law school, where you would want somebody to run a group like judicial watch, you know, should come from. But he didn't, whatever. And that's who Trump listened to. He's got his lawyers. And he did have some competent ones. I think Keese is a competent one. And they were telling him, his advisors were telling him, the campaign was telling him most of these folks, not all. But dude, just do this.

Just give them back. Make it go away. Oh, and by the way, after you do it, we can fill out the paper. paperwork and you can probably get them back. It's as simple as that. They're just not going to be in your bathroom for a couple months. Can you live with it? And no, no, he couldn't because he is the most stubborn human being on the planet. And the rest is history pretty much. Yeah, I listen guys, I can't when I when I when this broke, I was dying laughing. Like you got to be You're kidding me. This is, this cannot be real. Any parody from Dave Chappelle or anybody couldn't be this dumb. Like, it would be like, this is too far fetched. No one would ever do that. And then Trump was like, ah, I'll do it. And not only will I do it, I'll keep doing it.

This is beyond ridiculous, right? Like, the idea that you're listening to judicial watch, not attorneys. But for Trump, $3 million, $2 million, what is it? I'll just send an email or I'll just get indicted on some more charges and raise $7 million more dollars. It doesn't really matter. It's dumb Republicans money, right? He don't really care. Like, it's this idea. Trump don't really pay people anyway, so this idea that I can just fund raise off

every indictment. I'll just keep racking up indictments thinking polls are going to be my way. But he's going to prison for this. I mean, and if you are a prosecutor, you are doing the butterfly. And for you guys who don't know who the butterfly is, it's a dance from the 90s that took a lot of energy, but it was so fun to watch. Prosecutors are doing a butterfly with Donald Trump because it's never a case where everybody you're calling as a witness is the who's who of the defendant's inner circles. But every January 6 was like this, this has been like this, every case against him is a who's who of this guy's who of this guy's in a circle.

You have no angle of saying this person wants to hurt Trump for this reason. Trump is the reason and it's beautiful for me. I love it. You're going Trump. Let me ask you both quick, quick reactions. The theory was they don't actually want to prosecute him. They'll take an out if you present it. Just give the documents back. We'll do some sort of little deal. Do you think that that would have worked? I do 100%. Like this DOJ did not want to go after him. They worked with them for nearly a year to not have to go after him. They're like, here's all the off ramps. And he's like, nope, I'm going full speed down the interstate buddy, try to keep. up. They didn't want to do it. I still feel like they kind of still don't want to do it,

but he did it to himself. And Mondale's right, it is hilarious. This is the funniest thing because it's all rooted in his incompetence and his stupidity. The two very things that he refuses to admit even exist. So we just get to sit back and watch and laugh because it is very funny. You want to know, I agree 100%. They absolutely wouldn't have charged him. They would have would have took that on realm and called it a victory and it would have been the end of. We probably would have never heard of, you know, Marlago Gate, right? Never. But here's, here's, here's the irony of it. Trump and Biden are basically equal after the indictment. Had Trump not done this and not talked about the election being rigged, he might be 50 points ahead of Biden right now

on his reelection campaign, the irony of being Donald Trump. The irony. Okay, so thank you for your quick reactions. I want reactions to this too, because I pondered this earlier today on my pre-show and probably I'm putting too much mental energy into it. There's probably nothing there, but I would like your opinions because Donald Trump decided to put out what seems like a combination, self-congratulation, as well as bizarre and cryptic attack against those who oppose him. He put out a message on true social saying, Really big fundraising, even greater polls since the radical left indictment hoax was initiated by the misfits, mutants, Marxist and communists. Thank you. So I have my theory about what the

mutants references to. I don't remember him talking about this in the past. Is that just a random thing he was going for like the M alliteration? Or why are we talking about mutants? I was I was waiting until like Deadpool 3 dropped and then we can start talking about mutants joining the MCU. Why are we talking about mutants now? You know, that that's actually a really good, you know, subtitle for Deadpool 3. Deadpool 3 misfits, mutants, Marxists, and communists. I think they should totally get on that. But it is just, I don't even know. I mean, this man just seems to have mental breakdowns on social media all day, every day. And so it's so hard to really keep up and analyze all these things because there's just weird things happening in his, it's like a mad

libs inside his own brain. And he gets to fill out the mad libs and it still doesn't make any sense. So we're just watching in real time as his brain crumbles into dust. And I don't even know what else to say about it. Madel thoughts. There's nothing to say about it. So we should just not, because that is a fact. Sure. I mean, his brain is just falling apart and we're watching. It's like Kanye West as a white 70 plus year old man. This is all we watch. No. He just needs some cool shit. Yeah, Donald, like Donald Trump, like is maybe the guy with the least athletic experience in the last half century who definitely seems to have CTE. It is weird how that works.

Was the apprentice more physical than I remember? I didn't watch a lot of episodes. Was he like firing people and then tackling them? I don't know. Anyway, with that said, Anyway, with that said, why don't we move on? I'll leave the mutants to the MCU and whenever we're ready, we can jump into this next video. The gentlelady is concerned about raising the age, the regulation that limits the age for pilots when there's a shortage of pilots, but they're okay with the President of the United States who's more than 20 years older than the minimum age. Mr. Chairman, since you're referring me, it's not age, it's training our time. So that's James Comer, who like most Republicans would love to make AOC look like a fool.

he was much more effective at ruining his own reputation because this this happened during this house regulation hearing. It's a death by a thousand regulations. The Biden administration's campaign to bury America in red tape. Okay, so the general idea is government regulation under Joe Biden is wrecking your life. It's ruining America. What they're talking about there is Republican attempts to roll back the number of cockpit training hours required for commercial pilots to be licensed. And AOC thinks, hey, maybe let's not do that. Maybe let's not make it way easier to become a pilot, like reasonably easy, but not way easier. And I think that that's probably a good idea because we've had a lot of transportation related crises in America

under Joe Biden. The fatality rate from automobiles is way up over a few years ago. trains are crashing left and right, pretty much the only thing we have right now is that planes are not routinely dropping out of the sky. And Republicans seem to be like trying to complete like transportation catastrophe tic-tac-toe. And like they just need they just need some planes to ram into some things or something. But anyway, Comer didn't even seem to understand, not just the general topic, but what she was talking about. So let's jump to this next video. What we are seeing right now is, Republicans trying to roll back a rule on the number of hours that pilots must require in order to train, in order to be licensed.

I'm amused that the gentlelady is concerned about raising the age, the regulation that limits the age for pilots when there's a shortage of pilots, but they're okay with the president of United States who's more than 20 years older than the minimum age. Mr. Chairman, since you're referring me, it's not age, it's training hour time. The number of hours that an individual is training, not the age. Well, part of the regulations, the age as well. Chair recognized Mr. Armstrong from North Dakota. Yeah, there are regulations having to do with age. That's just not what she's talking about, obviously. She was very clear.

We thought we should play the context, you understand. He just was so, like, giddy, like, I want to joke about Biden's age. I don't care what's happening here if it makes sense. Anyway, what do you guys think about the scuver? Listen, fair, that's right. We want people to be older than 62.5 days, you know, 1,500 hours is what you need. You need to be older than 50 hundred hours to fly a plane. So AOC needs to get her stuff together.

So can you, this guy, tell me you didn't read your homework without telling you didn't read your homework. What was, he's not listening to her. The idea that when women say men don't hear them when they're speaking, this was a video. This was, we saw it in in real time on the congressional floor. This is ridiculous guys. Like how could you and didn't in order saying, oh, I misunderstood. The arrogance was, well, it also addressed its age somewhere in there. Yeah, but we're not talking about that.

I literally just read something about training hours. But who cares about, who cares anything about safety? We need less people checking on trains. We need less people checking on the depths and the security of our bridges. And we damn sure need less people with less training in the cockpit of planes behind steel doors that we already can't see what's going. Let's give them a drink too, why not? It's really funny too, because even if Comer was correct, and that is what AOC was saying, she would still be right. Like we don't want to say like we're doing in all the other industries,

Like, sure, let's put the 14 year olds back in the mines. Let's put them in the slaughterhouses. Hell, let's put them in the cockpits. Those dang kids need to be flying the planes after school. Why are they not up in the sky? This is so idiotic. Like, we're not talking about, you know, some weird regulation that says if you're walking along a road on the left side, you have to have a partial hat, you know, some weird things out there. This is literally. literally tons and tons of steel and glass and metal, carrying hundreds of human beings on it, flying at 400 miles an hour, 30,000 feet in the sky. Missiles filled with people, we probably need to be as strict as we can with that so that hundreds of people aren't dying every day because Republicans didn't understand what AOC was trying to say. Yeah, it's a great point. By the way, look at how convenient this is for the Republicans. Let's say that they got what they wanted and they drastically cut the amount of training you need. And then a plane crashed. What would happen right now if a plane crashed in America

under Joe Biden, under Pete Buttigieg? You think they'd be understanding? They'd be like, well, you know, this is going to happen because we just got to make sure that the planes go and say in the airs and we don't know they would be attacking all out. They would be making the biggest crisis possible. Like they are creating conditions of utter chaos knowing that they will benefit from the chaos. It's weird incentives that not a lot of people comment on. The the talking point would be nobody's talking about all the plans that land safely every day. You want to focus on the one crash we had. That's how stupid they are. That's what it would be. And they would also they would also say because of because of our new law,

we have more pallets. So it's just one dead pilot, but look at all the new pilots. Yeah, 100%. We're replacing them faster than we could bury him. By the way, I also just want to point out the whole point of that from James Comer was to be like, paha, you like an old president, your president's old, Biden's 80 years old. He's not a spring chicken like the president that James Comer supports who's 77 years old. Look, maybe when I turn 80, I'll I'll wish that I was 77 again, but it feels like roughly ballpark a similar-ish age. And he's acting like it's the difference between like Kennedy and Nixon or something. Anyway, with that said, we're going to take another break.

But when we come back, we promise you this on yesterday's show. We're going to check in on some oil company promises of how they're going to cut emissions. They got a lot of good press, but have they actually been doing it? We'll break down the numbers after this. Welcome back to what remains at the first hour of the Young Turks, everyone. I am John at Roel Robinson. Fair and Couss join me. Thank you guys for being here. We got a few more things to talk about. Why don't we jump right into it? There's been a lot of pressure by environmental activists to get fossil fuel companies to invest

in alternative forms of energy, stop focusing so much on oil and gas. And there have been some victories over the years. Or at least it seemed like there were. You might recall headlines like this one from back in February 2021, greener pastures, shell plans steady drop in oil business. Isn't that great? Shell, that's a major oil company. They're going to be getting out of oil. And you know what? They were proud of it too, because they actually put out their own personal press releases. Shell accelerates drive for net zero emissions with customer first strategy. Customer first. Not anybody else, not the board, not the investors, the customer. Okay, so that was all back in 2021. It's been a couple of years. They're probably well on their way towards that net zero thing.

They got them so many positive headlines, right? No, they announced this year that they're going to be halting their plans to cut oil production each year for the rest of this decade, locking in tons, literally many, many tons of emissions throughout the rest of this decade. In fact, they're going to be investing $40 billion in oil and gas production between 2023 and 2035 compared with just 10 to 15 billion in low carbon products. I hope that that's a really efficient investment if they're going to reach net zero like they said they were going to a few years ago. By the way, they had previously said that their oil and gas production would fall by 1 to 2% each year through 2030. And the thing is, honestly,

we'd already gotten some heads up. Even just a year after the initial claims, they already seemed like they were expanding their gas business despite their pledges. And now we find out that, no, they're gonna put a lot more money. Well, maybe there's a good reason. You know, maybe their oil production is way less, you know, bad for the environment or something. No, It's just they think that they're going to make more money that way. Like literally, their CEO is coming out and just saying they're emphasizing financial returns for investors. He told the New York Stock Exchange that he wanted to, quote, reward our shareholders today and far into the future. And while saying that he wanted to lower emissions, he also repeatedly emphasized his belief that oil and gas would be required for the long term.

Which is a cool sentence, except that it sort of ends early. Required for the long term, period. required for the long term, for what exactly? For the long term survival of the human species? No. For high profits? Maybe. Maybe that's what it requires. But I do like that he's rewarding our shareholders today and far into the future. Not that far into the future because eventually those shareholders will be like scrapping with marauders for like a little bit of water that was found at the bottom of a jar or

something. But for a little bit they're going to make some money. What do you guys think? I think they tricked us, man. I think net zero was a code word for them. Net stood for not even trying to get the zero carbon emission. I mean, we didn't know. We didn't know. They actually did speed up this process with increasing their investments in gas and oil. I think, man, I am terrified about what day I'm going to wake up and the world's going to be too hot for us to live here. I know that sounds a little freaked out, but I'm a country boy who love trees. And I see the effect of what cutting down trees and also digging, for oil is causing, we are dropping ice. Antarctica in our lifetime, we're going to see Antarctica in the summer months without any ice in it. That means polar bears are dying. The net effect of us allowing this type of debauchery to continue is unbelievable to me. We are in a dangerous position and the fact that people play with the climate, I just don't know what to say. I'm nervous.

Yeah, I think it's funny that Shell, you know, is talking about all this stuff. Oh, the shareholders, the shareholders, the shareholders, listen, first and foremost, you came out and made a promise and a pledge to change your company, which of course caused more people to buy your stock. When you now come back and say we are not doing that, those people who had invested now under false pretenses, I don't know, kind of sounds like a lawsuit to me. So that's one problem they got to worry about. Second issue is that any one of these oil companies, if it's Shell, Exxon, BP, Chevron, it doesn't matter. They would be rich beyond their wildest dreams if they finally were the ones to take that step and say, you know what? We're devoting half of our workforce not to drilling for oil. They're making solar panels. We, you know, Chevron, Shell, whoever it is, Exxon, we're the only name in solar panels now. You know us, you trust us.

It would be the biggest financial boom for those companies they have ever seen. And it's been that way. They could have started it, you know, when the technology was evolving over a decade ago and not only made tons of money for their greedy little selves, but accidentally saved the planet in the process. And they said, no, we'll stick with the easy money. We already got the drill's going. Yeah. And now we're just hurtling towards that, you know, point of no return at full speed. Yeah, it does feel like it, man. I like your idea, by the way, of the class action lawsuit. But I messaged my legal contact and he doesn't think that it's a good idea. It's Tom Fitten. And if he says no, then you can take that to the bank. But anyway, look,

it's not just Shell. Shell looks particularly bad this week. But there was a report. court by ESG book and looking at these sorts of claims that have been made over the past few years by large corporations, they found that large companies are either more likely to contribute to extreme levels of warming or are not disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions at all years after making these sorts of pledges. Because it turns out that you get the good PR either way. Like you know, like you'll be watching a news channel and you'll see like an ad for BP or something about how they're investing in solar. Like, yeah, you can just, you can just, you You could just say stuff, it turns out, and they'll take your money on CNN, they'll run your

ad. Doesn't, you don't have to actually do it. Anyway, by the way, before we move on, I do also want to let you know, we can't play the video, unfortunately, but Greta Tunberg was speaking at the climate conference in Germany this week. And she was talking about the lack of political will that has led to a seeming narrowing window to limit overall global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. She called the not phasing out of fossil fuels that we're seeing indecisions like with Shell, a death sentence to countless people, and already a death sentence to people in areas that are being affected more greatly by climate change already. By the way, to remind you of how significant that this is, even though I know our audience

is more likely to know this than most people, the UN said this week that 110 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. Now, that's due to a number of different things, including war, but climate effects, disasters, catastrophes are another reason for that. They say that 70% of the world's refugees and displaced people come from some of the most climate vulnerable countries. I will remind you, by the way, of stuff that we've covered in the past, including the floods in Pakistan, absolutely devastating, massive drought in the Horn of Africa. At least 364 million people this year will need emergency assistance just to survive, but shell shareholders are going to do slightly better for the next few years.

And that is after all, what life is about. Anywho, why don't we move on to our last topic with the little time we have remaining? Whatever you want, we can jump into this. Women weren't equal before Roe v. Wade. It was just a beginning. And now it's gone. I'm running for lieutenant governor because the Republican plan isn't this year's 12-week abortion ban. It's next year's total abortion ban.

We're talking about 50 years of precedent, not just legal precedent, but how three-jured. generations of women have lived their lives. There, there is a bit of an ad from state senator Rachel Hunt, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor who had wanted to make this issue, kind of like a centerpiece of her campaign. Now you can find that full video if you would like on Twitter. What you won't do is find it being like pushed to you via advertising. And they explained to HuffPost that their campaign had set up a budget with Twitter to advertise certain certain videos, but then they noticed the money hadn't been spent and the ad hadn't been boosted.

When they reached out to Twitter to inquire about the holdup, an employee said that the video was blocked from promotion because of the mention of abortion advocacy, saying specifically, ah, yes, the mention of abortion advocacy is the issue here, which is just the best way to word that, I think. Anyway, the employee went on to seem to imply that there might be some sort of change coming to their regulations for advertisement, which currently don't allow you to advertise political content. But as of right now, the fact that she wanted to make this a bigger part of her thing, have it pushed out, seems like it would be consistent with Elon Musk's radical commitment to the First Amendment or whatever it is that he says. This is consistent with their

regulations. But guys, I'm curious what you think about it. I am shocked. that Elon Musk has not kept his promise to allow for the full freedom of expression and freedom of speech. I just, I can't even comprehend what is happening. Does he know this? Have they tried tagging him in a tweet? Like those little snitch taggers do all the time on Twitter. Concerning. But seriously. And honestly, from a business standpoint, really, they're cutting themselves off from a huge source of revenue by not letting these politicians or the advocacy groups go out there and advertise and get the message out there to people. I mean, from a monetary policy, it makes zero sense. But especially from a point of view of people need

this information, it's very damaging to the public itself. Is he literally trying to crash Twitter? Is he trying, is he own tribal as well? well. Do we not know this? He has stuck in travel. Like, what is he's literally, I don't, I can't even understand this. This is absolutely bananas to me. The fact that we're now taking social media, which has so many eyes, which has done so much in the past two presidential elections, we're now taking it and restricting how we get out politics. When I, we do studies at a black male voter project and a major source, more black men get their new source from social media than they do TV. And I think the idea.

idea, what Farrens said is absolutely true. You are absolutely kneecapping yourself when you're blocking political ads. And it's not really political ads because you don't care what Trump says. And we know your algorithm is pushing it. You just care about certain issues that you don't agree with. And the citizenship ideal on the Republican side and also Elon Musk is false. It's just you can't say anything I don't agree with. And I'm gonna block you because I can. You know, I'm sorry, I hate to jump in, but I've got to build off that because it was such a good point. If he allows these political ads or advocacy groups to go out there and pay for their messages, that does screw up his little algorithm that of course is pushing all this right wing material.

So I don't think we'll see a policy change because there are liberal groups, progressive groups, that do have money and he doesn't want them interfering with his, you know, pushing all these right wingers on you. So I don't think we'll see a change. Well, one thing that might limit them isn't necessarily their money, but that according to the regulations, I believe you do have to be a subscriber to Twitter blue to advertise. And I think if I had a pack, that's a line I'm not crossing. That's all I'll say. By the way, I will say what I have said since long before he took over Twitter, none of this actually has basically anything to do with freedom of speech. It's a private

platform. They can have whatever regulations they want. That's true under Elon Musk. If he wants to have no political content, he can do that. If he wants to only allow paid advertising, for right wing political content, he can do that. But then in turn, I can use my free speech to point out whether his standards are ridiculous or stupid, or as Farron points out, self-destructive, or inconsistent with your personal brand and the brand that you want for the company. We can point out all that. It's all legal, doesn't really have to do with the First Amendment, but we can point out if it's just the latest stupid, inconsistent, hypocritical move from this guy. That list is getting long. Anyway,

That is unfortunately all the time we have guys. I wish that we had hours to talk, but it was a lot of fun for both of you. Where can people follow your work until we see you next? Mondale, you want to go first? Yeah, I'm Mandel Robinson on all social media platforms and I'm also a Rebel HQ contributor. Awesome, Farron. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I'm at Farron Balanced and then YouTube.com slash the Ring of Fire and YouTube.com slash Ferran Balanced. Awesome. Thank you to both of you. Thank you, everybody, for watching.

Adrian's going to be taken over on the other side, so don't go anywhere. T.Y.T will be right back. 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.com at apple.com slash TYT. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.