The Young Turks - No Dem Left Behind Virtual Town Hall

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Cenk Uygur hosting the "No Dem Left Behind" virtual town hall featuring National Spokesperson Richard Ojeda and a coalition of Democratic congressional candidates running in deep red, mostly rural districts.  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. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome here to once again, No Dem Left Behind's Town Hall. We have an amazing guest here that's going to host tonight by the name of Jink, Yugar. and let me just say a few things about Jink.

Jink is the host and founder of the Young Turks, the largest online news show in the world, serves as CEO of the Young Turks and also co-founder the Justice Democrats. In 2019, Jink was selected by the Pointer Institute to talk to young journalists about the presidential campaign. With the verified global audience of more than 250 million views a month and 14 billion total video views,

TYT is considered one of the most watched online news network. networks in the world. So we are absolutely honored, Jank, for you to take away from your very busy schedule to come on here and hang out with no dim left behind candidates. And I will go ahead and turn it over to you. All right. Wonderful. Thank you. That's a very kind introduction. I appreciate it. We can't keep up with my bio because we're actually now up to over 500 million views a month and 19 billion views overall. So, but mainly I wanted to point out is my first day with this backdrop. And I couldn't get it quite right, but especially my outfit.

But then I realized, no, it's actually perfect because I think I'm a one-man blue wave with this shirt and background. And that's exactly what we're pulling for here tonight. We want a blue wave that gets all you folks in a Congress. I love what No Dem Left Behind is doing. So, you know, this in a different era that you see, in a sense, this used to be called the 50-state strategy, this revolutionary idea of, hey, how about we try to win everywhere? I love it. And I love that you guys have the courage, and I know how hard it is. Trust me, I know how hard it is, to run for us office, and so does Richard, right?

we've been through some political wars and so thank you for doing that and for representing everybody in every part of the country so let's get started let's i'd love to and i think the audience would love to meet you guys and then we'll ask some questions so go ahead you want us you want him to introduce himself first jane yeah that would be great so uh how about we start with cindy uh dr cindy bonnier uh could you please introduce it yourself yeah absolutely thanks for being here and thanks to everyone at no denb left behind as well as all of our supporters so I am dr. Cindy Banyay I am running for US House of Representatives in Florida Congressional District 19 I'm a mom and small business

owner and I'm fighting for our water our health and our community and I decided to run because after years of serving nonprofits in our community I got tired of seeing the corruption I got tired of seeing the old boys network and I got tired of seeing people in our community routinely disregarded. I am running to be the servant leader that the people of Southwest Florida deserves, and I hope everybody will join me in building a Southwest Florida where the sun shines on everyone. All right, love it. Let's go to Tom Palsowitz next, and he's, of course, from Wisconsin's 5th District.

Yeah, so I'm Tom Palsowitz running in Wisconsin's 5th District. This is the second go-round for us. We started with a district that was 40 points different, and we now narrowed it down to 10 points. And that's the thing. It's really getting people to run everywhere. In Wisconsin is gerrymandered. And it's been one of those states where Republicans just think they get to choose whatever it is, agenda they want to run and whatever they want to do. And when I saw that, I just felt like, especially after that 2016 election, had to jump in, had to do something.

I feel very strongly that everybody has a role to play. I'm a Navy vet. I was on a submarine for four years. I was on working in banking for 15 years. And I've run my own small business for the last 15 years. And it really is. People just cry out for leadership. And people really want progress over partisanship. They're tired of it. They're tired of the divisiveness. And that's what I love about being part of this group, because we're all going through exactly the same things. But we're all really great people. And the thing I see is we're all bringing a level of integrity that is much needed in Washington today. All right. That's great. Devin Pandy from Georgia's 9th District. Devin, go ahead. Yes, my name is Devin Pandy. I am running to represent Georgia's 9th, Congressional District, better known here as the Mighty 9th. And I am a 21-year five-deployment combat veteran. I am fighting for the people who haven't been able to fight for themselves for a very long time. I got into this because I started realizing after I retired that things in the civilian world are very different than they are in the military world.

We are taken care of pretty well in the military. And when you get out, you realize that, hey, the things that I thought that I was fighting for, they're not actually happening. And so you have all of these people on this panel today, all of these coalition members that are here to actually fight for people selflessly. We're not here to enrich ourselves. We're here to do the work. And I am proud to be a part of No Demet Left Behind.

I'm proud to be endorsed by T.YT Army, Georgia. And I'm very glad to be here. Thank you, Jank, for being here and hosting this. And I'm ready to, I was fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. And I'm about to go fight in Washington. I love it. Devin, first of all, anything with a nickname is awesome, so I'm instantly a fan of the Mighty Ninth. Second, how long did you say you served in the military?

21 years, three months and seven days. Not that I was count. Okay. You served for 21 years. When did you join when you were five? Five and a half. Okay. Okay, you look incredibly young, so God bless.

All right, Mia Mason is next. She's Maryland's first district. Yes. Thank you to all of our coalition. Honestly, I'm running in Maryland's first congressional district from the hills all the way down to the floors of the Chesapeake Bay, out to the Ocean City, which is on the Atlantic Ocean. It's a gerrymandered district.

It's an R14-plus district. And right now, we're at a two-to-one lead to all of our Maryland ballots. And as a veteran, a friend and an advocate of all of our communities, regardless of where they came from, we know that we must go to D.C., represent our communities, and restore equity, and equality that is being stripped away by this administration and by those who don't represent us. They're bad leaders, and I'm seeking to remove those leaders, because as a veteran myself, like Devin, you know, I served, you know, 20 years.

I did five combat tours as well, most of them in the Navy, and then two in the Army. And I have to tell you, you know, we know how to fight. We know how to adapt and overcome. And we're ready to do that in Washington and represent our communities. Because when we came back home, some of us, like myself, ended up losing our jobs, our car, our home, everything, and almost our pension because a president and others have decided to try to fire us and standing up, help everyone, including ourselves, so that we don't have to face the same discrimination ever again. All right. That's amazing. So I don't know how you all served 20 years and fit in the rest of your life. Okay, but it's, and I love that you're coming back to serve in another way. Look, I'll tell you a real quick story before I want to ask you guys a really important question about the environment. We had actually, believe it or not, a moderate Republican. We found one that exists in the country is a state legislator in Vermont. And she gave a great speech in favor of getting money out of politics. And she said, I lost my son. in Iraq. And he didn't die for freedom over there so that we can give it away here. So I love that you all have stepped up after serving the armed forces to serve in Congress.

If we can get principal folks like UN, I think it may get a giant difference. So let me throw this out for everybody. We've got wildfires raging throughout the country. I'm in California, and we literally can't breathe out here. And I, I, I, I believe it or not, it doesn't look like it, but I go jogging regularly. And I can't do that because it actually is counterproductive. It hurts your health if you go outside to jog these days, let alone just the orange skies. You've seen it all, and it's throughout the country, not just California. So what are you all planning to do on this incredibly important issue of the environment?

And what are you things the best path forward? I'll start up I can tell you that for the last three days because of these wildfires out in California today this morning my eyes started burning and I was indoors I had to go get filters put them on box fans and start filtering my own air in my home so climate change is real that is something that is now climate recovery because we've passed that tipping point if it's affecting us all the way on the east coast from the wildfires in the west coast you know this is something that we have to do on a federal level to take action now must enforce our EPA protections and make sure that they're fully funded so that we can drive all of this climate change and protect it at the highest level because we know that others aren't going to help us at all we have to do it ourselves yeah look to your point Mia my son came a couple of days ago and said dad why is this guy orange and I thought maybe the fires were close. No, it turns out they were very far from us at the time,

but the size of Connecticut was on fire in the middle of California, that 3.2 million acres. And so it's climate change isn't coming. It's here. So Cindy, I know you wanted to jump in next. Oh, yeah, I was just wondering what order we were going to go in, but I'm happy to jump in any time. I'm in Florida, guys. We got, what, five names start? coming down at us, that's climate change right there. These super powered storms, we're at the end of the alphabet. No one's got to figure out, you know, what, what letter is going to be next? Because we've run out of letters and we still have two and a half months left of hurricane season.

Hurricanes have, you know, destroyed areas that some of our no damn left behind compatriots are working to serve over in Louisiana. And my home was hit by Irma a couple years ago. So this is very top of mind for people in my district. The unfortunate thing is, is we have climate deniers running for this seat. And they don't care that they are putting everybody in jeopardy because of it. They don't see the connections. They would rather take money from their corporate donors and just call it a day and go to Washington, D.C., and have a nice time. But that's not what I'm about.

I am a supporter of the Green New Deal. I'm a supporter of the state level initiative in Florida lovingly called the Florida Green New Deal where we are working to connect the state and the national efforts so that we can actually have substantive change, green technologies, good building structures that are sustainable so that we can work and combine the green movement with jobs and economy. They have to be connected together. So that's a passion for me and I'll tell you what. I am a part-time instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University in the Department of Political Science. Today, I was teaching about global warming. For seven years now, I've been teaching that class on global studies and have that component. It's scary because half the class doesn't come back after the global warming session, because that's the level of denialism we have here. And I'm working every day with my students and in this district to change that.

Yeah, one of our viewers on TYT today made a great point. when the fires came both the left wing and the right wing put on their mask because you couldn't breathe. Apparently, it doesn't take your liberty to put on a mask if it's a fire, so maybe you should do it on other health situations as well. And Cindy's right, there's five named hurricanes in the Atlantic right now, only the second time in history that has ever happened. And so we're going to jump around on the topics, but Tom, I know you got endorsed by a number of the top of,

environmental groups. So I wanted to make sure that you got in on this topic. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. You know, the challenge is, is climate deniers have gone from. It's not happening to some of them are now saying, well, it's happening, but we can't do anything about it or we're not really feeding into it to now it's too expensive to do anything. And what we're really seeing around the country and around the world is the cost of being climate deniers is actually growing in comparison to actually doing something about it. And I just think as we move into the next level, especially our energy grid, We need a great infrastructure plan to completely redo our energy grid

and bring a lot more, I would say, clean energy to everybody around the country. And I think there's some interesting things that I think will be happening in the future here that we'll be able to take advantage of. You know, I don't know about cold fusion, but, you know, just room temperature, superconducting, battery capabilities, all these things are going to give us the ability to redo things. But we have to start investing now because, and I think that we don't have until 2050. I really think that we need to target by 2035 unless we want to leave this problem to our children and grandchildren. And, you know, just like the federal debt, if we don't start doing something now, we're just leaving them our problems because we were too, we just, we didn't have enough integrity to actually work on the things that we need to work on.

Right. So, guys, I'm going to jump around a little bit to quite different questions because otherwise we will never make it in time. So, Devin, let me ask you about coronavirus. Trump downplayed it again a couple of days ago. So what's new, right? So what do you think is the right way to handle it? What do you think, what would you suggest, for example, President Biden to do in tackling this coronavirus epidemic? First thing to do, and we need to help him with that.

Now, when it comes to coronavirus, one, trust your scientists. trust the science. It is there for a reason. There is a reason why these colleges and universities train and educate people in science, because science is what leads us to great technology, to saving the planet. And so that's what he needs to do. He needs to trust the scientists. Also, he needs to be honest and upfront with the American people. We can hand We've handled the disasters in the past. We can handle this. Let us know exactly what is going on,

how we can protect ourselves, how we can protect our neighbors, and then allow us to do so. Don't think that just because you would be too scared, that we will be too scared to protect ourselves. Give us the information. Give us the proper, correct methods,

and then just go from there. I mean, I'm flabbergasted right now because this is just common sense. Why do we have to have this conversation right now? It is very, very, it is quite infuriating. Yeah, there's just some simple basics that we never did. So the fact that there's even a debate about mass is insane. But testing and contact tracing should have happened. Mia, let me ask you this.

You know, we've got to the, the United States military that you were part of that are so amazing and we're considered the leaders in the world and we say we're bringing freedom to folks and from time to time we do, right? And but now we have done literally worse than any third world country in responding to this pandemic. We went for first to worst on Trump. Worse in cases, worst in deaths. So, I mean, look, how do you reach the voters? in a way that they go, right, worse is not good. Like, how do you break through and get them to understand that?

Well, I definitely recall the times that when Trump said, we're going to make America first, and then every other country came out with their own, we're a first video, and right now with this pandemic, they're first. You know, and here we are dead last with more Americans dying every day because we've done nothing. So to reach them, you know, we have to be able to go and canvas and start talking to them again. That's something I'm excited about because we're getting out the vote.

And even if I have to wait until October to get it done and hit the last 30 days and hit doors, we just know that, you know, we have volunteers and know them left behind across the entire nation. We're calling. We're texting. We're mailing every state and district to help our coalition. And, of course, they're returning in favor to call back into our district. as well. So these are the things that we have to do to make sure that we reach out to our community. So if y'all want to help look at the bottom of the screen, support No Dem Left Behind and join.

Yeah, definitely, guys. Look, in races like this, you're not going to get a ton of money coming into non-income challenger Democrats. So you've got to help on the financial front and on the volunteer front if you can. And Cindy, let me go to you on that. because that kind of combines these two issues. One, you've got to figure out, you know, what's the right way to handle this pandemic? But two, you also got to figure out how to campaign. So, you know, normally I'd ask you, what's the energy on the ground? And I will ask you that.

But how do you also make sure that everybody's safe as you're trying to build up as much energy as you can in the ground? Yeah, well, I'll tell you, you know, I don't know what you've heard about Florida, but we are rocking and rolling with the COVID here. And we have a pretty senior population in my district in particular. So we have to be extra careful. Our team, we have masks everywhere that we go and we make sure that we are practicing good hygiene,

social distancing. We even have a collaboration office that we've been using that we regularly sanitize twice a day, in fact, and have strict protocols around it. So we're doing things different. we absolutely are. We're doing no knock, lit drops. We are doing a lot of things virtually. We have to. But I'll tell you what, we are actually reaching far more people than we would have been able to in person because everybody was there. We had to sit in front of our computers. We had to connect this way. And I will say it's a testament to my campaign, my team, that we were able to adapt in that way. I launched a podcast. I do regular Facebook lives. No Dem left behind has been killing it. with town halls just like this.

This has made all the difference. It has gotten our names out there, and it enables us underdog candidates to make up that gap. And that's what we've been doing. But otherwise, you know, like I said, we're still largely virtual here because we have to. Yeah, that makes sense. Tom, I want to let you weigh in here.

And I'm curious, I mean, Wisconsin is an enormously important swing state. So are you guys also somehow finding a way to make sure Biden wins too? Oh, yes, we're absolutely working on that. But I'm going to start with COVID, because especially in Wisconsin here, we have the tail wagging the dog. I mean, the whole idea is we're trying to reopen and reopen and reopen to save the economy. And all it's doing is exploding cases. We had our worst day yesterday in Wisconsin. We're in the top three worst states in the country right now.

in fact our president is up north in upper wisconsin right now as we speak and um and he's there no mask in a group of people no mask and every single republican in the state of wisconsin is out there basically pretending there's no pandemic as they campaign they're doing in-person house parties they're you know they're they're just going out there and they're just pretending that it's not happening and it's causing this huge problem and then for our campaign though and one of the reasons that we're running is to make sure Donald Trump is not president again. And I realized a long time ago that the fifth congressional district, which is in between Milwaukee and Madison, is one of the keys in the country right now. And like I said before, we've taken this

40-point district and turned into the 10 points. If our numbers are right, Joe Biden has already won the state of Wisconsin. And so we're pushing hard to make sure that happens because we've already flipped over 50,000 votes just in our district alone. So that's been the key to what we're working on and we're working up and down ballot but like cindy said we've gotten very very creative with what we're doing and we have to but i would agree with cindy that that people are much more responsive there's a lot of people that aren't on the fence anymore and they're active they're engaged and they're ready for change and i will tell you in my area there's a lot more biden signs than i ever would have been that's awesome well that's good to hear because i i remember the day that i

got really worried that Hillary Clinton was going to lose the election. The day that a Wolfpack volunteer, who, again, trying to get money out of politics, said, hey, listen, we've gone, I don't know, maybe 100 miles in Pennsylvania without running into a single Hillary Clinton law on side. It's Trump, Trump, Trump. She's going to lose. She's going to lose. And so now to see some energy on the ground for Biden,

and to see you guys making a difference on that, too, it's so great. in time you're absolutely right if you are closing 30 points in your district it should be game set match uh in wisconsin uh for biden you know after 2016 you never know knock on wood two two two and keep fighting keep fighting so now speaking of which sandy let me go back to you on the supreme court um where does that rank on the list uh for you in terms of if the republics were to maintain uh their control of the Senate and the White House, you know, how devastating is that, and how much of a reason that it turned out is that, especially in a state like Florida. Well, I thought you were going to come to me because you were talking about fighting.

I used to be a professional blocker. But I digress. So this is extremely important because I will tell you the Republicans, this has been their strategy the whole time, right? This has been their strategy to get people elected up and down the ballot, to get the presidency. This was the promise, the compromise of the evangelicals to put conservative activist judges into the benches early on so that they can build that pipeline and get up there and change Roe v. This is nothing short of an attack on women's rights and women's freedoms. And what I always tell people in my district is that freedom means I don't owe you an explanation for anything.

The decisions with my body and my provider are for me alone to have. These are things that have been determined in our country to be our rights. And I think that if people really put it in that frame of mind, that this is going to affect our freedom, this is going to affect poverty. This is going to affect the lives of people around the country, then they will get activated. And so that's why I use the freedom thing because a lot of people talk about that in my district. And it's been resonating. So I'm really hoping that people will take it seriously that will turn out to vote because we, absolutely cannot afford to have the benches filled with conservative activist judges that

will roll back women's rights. Yeah, so the idea that wearing a mask is against freedom, but intruding inside a woman's body is not against freedom, that doesn't make any sense at all. And so, Mia, you know, on this issue alone, I really think that Republicans have betrayed themselves so they always say that they're against big government and then they want a government so large again it's inside actual human beings telling you what to do with your body and getting between you and your doctor in a sense isn't that the biggest big government thing you could possibly do it is because they're also pushing religious freedom when it's actually a lie you

know they want small government and they want the big government to be completely defunded so it can't even work. You know, they've dismantled, like, every agency from the inside. And they basically put an enemy within our country, and it was Donald Trump. And then to come after everyone since day one with a ban on immigrants, and then going after people of color for housing, then going after people for the same sex, going after employers, going after employees, then going after us in our military, You know, that was completely unjustified, and we're still fighting those legal battles now,

and we need to be able to get those judges out. And the best way that we can do that is elect proper officials, and then eventually get the laws change so that if we have a bad president, we have a bad Senate majority leader, they can't do this again because our judges are elected by the people. That means more progressive judges to actually understand what the people need versus what's written in a book written by man who believes that everybody should be a piece of property and we're not. So, Devin, we're almost out of time, but I've got to ask you about this.

Again, you were in the military, and Trump now corroborated by five different press outlets with nearly a dozen sources between them, calling fallen soldiers, suckers, and losers, and saying, well, what was that? for them. They didn't even make any good money off of it. How does that make you feel as someone who put his life on the line for the United States? You know, I refuse to allow myself to be

deterred or even feel offended by someone who has lied, cheated, and lived his life in fear all of his life. I have comrades who didn't come back for more.

I have comrades who came back for more and were never the same. In many ways, I am not the same. I am sitting here right now in pain, in pain, doing this because it is my duty, doing this because it is my responsibility to the American people to make sure that they are being taken care of. So when someone who shirt his responsibility, what, three or four times, wants to call my brethren, my sisters and brothers at arms, suckers, and

losers, I will gladly be a sucker and loser if it means that I actually love this country. If I actually will stand up for this country, if I actually will fight and willing to die for this country, he can't tell me

anything. Yeah, love it. Tom, last word here. I'm going to go back to the court for a second because, look, if we're being realistic, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has some serious health concerns. If Trump wins re-election, we could go to 7 to 3 on the Supreme Court. How many decades does that take to overdue? And so hence, I mean, there's a thousand reasons why this election is so important. But is that among the top? Oh, absolutely. And that to me would be

devastating. But I'm going to go back to something that Mia said is that, you know, one of the reasons why the Supreme Court is so important right now is because the legislators aren't working. We're not actually passing laws and we're not doing the job. And it really is important to get people to Congress who actually want to do the job. We've got to get Mitch McConnell out because it keeps bottling things up. It works the same way in Wisconsin. We've got a state senate majority leader who just refuses to vote on anything. And we need the machinery of government to work for the people. And that is the reason why you need to elect people that care about getting the job and doing the job and making sure it's done right. And I just want to, I want to thank

Devin for his words that he just said there. Because, you know, part of this, though, is this outrage machine just, we've got to get off of it. You know, everything that Trump says is just an outrage. He has not changed from who he is from day one. And it's time to move past that. We've got to, we've got to figure out the post office. We've got to figure out health care. We've got to figure out climate we've got to get to work and do some things we got to get off this train of being outraged because there's no more room to be outraged anymore it's time to vote yeah absolutely okay guys thank you so much first of all for putting it up with my bad math obviously it would be six to three not seven to three on the supreme court uh and tom palsowitz uh everybody remember

that's wisconsin's fifth district devon pandi the mighty ninth in georgia obviously now everybody knows it. Mia Mason in Maryland's first district and then in Florida's 19th district, Cindy Banyet. You guys are amazing. Good luck in the race. Go get them and everybody make sure you're supporting.

Thank you. Thank you. At this time, I think, Mia, are you going to get everybody in line back up? We are. And, Jink, if I can take this time because I know that a lot of your audience is going to be tuning into this and watching this. You know, one of the things about No Dem Left

behind that it is so special is that we are the ones that are going down into the red rural districts and we're picking the fight and the truth is is if we don't put in the groundwork how can we ever expect these seats to flip from red to blue and you know one of the great things about our candidates right now is everybody here we feel that we are going to pick up a few seats we're going to flip a few seats from wet to blue but make no mistake about it if we don't flip a seat from red to blue on November the 4th we're back in the fight we're going to continue pushing forward until we absolutely turn these seats from red to blue? That's exactly right.

And guys, it's so important to know what Richard's referring to there. If you run twice, your chance of winning is infinitely higher. And we've seen that over and over again. So Marie Newman did not win in Illinois when she ran. In that case, it was a primary first time around. But she did win the second time around a big difference. So right now, Carr Eastman is running in Nebraska, barely lost by a point in a half. Now she's in great shape to win right in the middle of Nebraska for a Democrat.

So now let's go to the next panel here because there's so many great folks to introduce you to. Let's go one by one in the introductions. Alan Ellis is running in Florida 17th District. Alan, go ahead and introduce yourself. Hello, everyone. Thank you, Jing, for taking the time to be with you. us this evening. My name is Alan Ellison. I'm running for the United States House of Representatives to represent Florida 17th Congressional District, which is the largest congressional district

in the state of Florida covering nine counties. And so I'm running so that we can have a true representative in our Congress. Right now we have a Trump surrogate who will do anything to basically audition for a job with the president. That's the way I see it because he's doing everything that literally works against the people. We live in Florida, so we're going to get hurricanes. This guy literally voted against Hurricane 8 relief funding twice. And, you know, we have to have people who represent all of us. So this campaign is about improving the quality of life.

We're going to get into some of that here, but I want to thank you all for taking the time to join this No Den Left Behind Town Hall. Thank you. All right, excellent. Let's go to Lindsay Simmons. Thanks. She's from Missouri's 4th District. Hi, thank you for being here with us and for helping to amplify all of us amazing rural candidates that are running in easily winnable districts.

I, you know, I am not a politician. I am an army wife. My husband is currently deployed with a bounty on his head, which makes me a nasty woman married to a loser, which I'm delighted by. I got into this race because my husband was deployed to Syria in 2017. A month after he left, I found out that I was pregnant with my first kiddo. And it took me four days to let my husband know he was going to be a dad. A little bit after that, he was sent to a new forward location where it was difficult to maintain a regular supply chain. And he had to rely upon the local systems of Kurdish allies to provide additional supplies like food and shelter. Thankfully, he came home safely. But a few months later, I got to watch the president shake the hand.

of Vladimir Putin, who had sent Russian militants to attack my husband's unit, and then we abandoned the allies who actually stood with us. So I went to my congresswoman to try and explain why this was so devastating for military communities like timeline, and she couldn't give me the time of day, so I decided to take her job. And the next day, her office called to apologize and see if we could work something out. And what we're going to work out is her retirement, because people in my district have had enough. They have had enough. And what we have seen out here is that my story moves my district 26 points.

And no one knew that because no one's bothered to pull out here in over 20 years. And what happens when you show up and you give a shit and you show people that they have value is that they support you. And so that's what every single candidate in No Dem Left Behind is doing. And I am so proud to be a part of this coalition. So thank you. Well, everybody knows that I'm not shy about my opinions, and I'm not a traditional journalist that hides his perspective. So, Lindsay, I'm proud to say that I agree with 100% of what you just said, and the way you said it.

So, all right, let's go to Blair Walsingham in Tennessee's First District. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being on tonight. I'm Blair Walsingham. I'm running for Tennessee's First District for U.S. House. And we are a very red R plus 28 district. I have 12 counties. It's a very wide span and very, very rural. And people out here are very much ignored, left behind and suffering.

I've seen just poverty cripple my communities and there's no opportunity for a better future. So I decided to step up as an average hardworking American, as a mother of four, as a small business owner, who wants to bring real solutions to the table to help everybody out here. Make sure that they can have electricity, water, food on their tables,

but also these higher levels of opportunity, real job careers, home ownership, and everything that has been so out of reach for the people out here in my communities. And I'm just so inspired by all the other candidates on here tonight. You all have great stories. And America is going to see this big blue wave crash down and bring so much prosperity to people. And that's really what we're here for. All right. Excellent. Sorry, by the way, that Ben Shapiro is moving to Tennessee.

I don't know if he's going to be, if he's in your district, but sorry that we had to send him over there. All right, Gary Wegman is from Pennsylvania's ninth district. Dr. Gary Wegman, go ahead. Thank you, Jake. And unfortunately, Tennessee's loss is California's game. But the way it is, it's great to sit back and listen to my fellow grassroots, No Dems left behind speak, because they're just so inspiring. Here in Pennsylvania's ninth district,

I'm running against a first-term incumbent who failed the whole one town hall in over a year and a half of office before the COVID pandemic struck. And everything that he's written has always been from an us versus them perspective. And the public that I'm running with here in the ninth district is just tired of this politics of division narrative coming from Washington, D.C. We want to see real solutions to real problems. As a health care provider for 37 years, I understand our health care issues, and I also understand that it's number one on the minds of our small businessmen that are the ag community, which makes up our largest business sector in the 9th District. So I'm happy to bring my skills that I've gleaned from a lifetime in health care.

I'm also a fifth generation farmer. I was harvesting fruit yesterday in my vineyard. We've got a lot of insights into the problems of the people here in the 9th District. They want a real person that can't be simulated in Washington, D.C., that understands farming, understands health care, and understands that we need to start getting things done, echoing everything that my fellow candidates have said earlier. Gary, were you a dentist? Yes, I am, still.

Oh, you, okay. Book of Wisdom 2,000 today, still doing it. Okay, all right, because I love that two-pin that you have. That's great. What can I say? All right.

That's great to see. Okay, let's go to Adam Christensen. Adams from Florida, of course, everybody's from Florida. Florida's third district. Hey, Jane. It's going to be on. Yeah, my name is Adam Christensen.

I am actually running for the third district, which, as you know, is Ted Yoho's current district. So we are trying to replace him, basically tear down his machine. I am the youngest Democratic candidate in the country. We won our primary, actually, with basically our entire staff under the age of 23. And basically, the reason that we are running, the reason that I'm running is because in every single person on here, we actually have a vision for the way that we want the future to look. We have sat back and we have seen the way that other people have done it, and they just have not changed anyone's lives.

lives have never changed and we've gotten very good at seeing through BS my my first job I ever created the first diverse company I ever created that was literally my job was looking at products that large suppliers were selling to see whether or not small family owned companies we're going to get screwed and what we understand is that is the way that basically our entire world has been built the world that we know right now it is just like that it looks pretty on the outside it has great marketing but underneath it's completely fraudulent and so every single person here that is what we are running to replace that is what we were running to fix and that is the reason that all of us are here fighting for places that nobody has really

fought for before not only because we believe in it but because we are playing a different game and we know we can win and that's what we're doing all right that's great and remember everybody uh you need that kind of energy that adam's team has and and that he has and we need it from you guys too whether you're volunteering uh or you're donating especially for these campaigns uh it's it's absolutely crucial. So I know like Jamie Harrison in Georgia, I'm sorry, South Carolina raised a million bucks recently because of the stuff, Lizzie Graham is saying, that's great. We've got to get Lizzie Graham out. But those guys are doing a great job of raising a ton of money. These folks you're seeing here with no demos left behind, they need it. They need

it right now. So, Alan, let me start with you. Obviously, a lot of energy in the streets after the George Floyd murder. And, you know, Trump is basically threatening martial law, and he's trying to scare, as my kid would say, he's trying to scare a bejeezus out of everybody telling him, oh, no, the suburban housewives, you know, protesters are kind of rioters and looters are coming with lots of undertones and overtones there. So how are folks reacting in your district in Florida and what's your sense of what the right direction to go there is in policy?

You know, in my district, it's a mix. You know, I see the people that are in support of what the president is saying, but I also see a growing number of people that are in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. When you think about the movement and where it's come and where it has gone, it has gone global. You have people in France. You have people in South America, Asia. They are all in support. And so what I try to tell people is that you need to be on the right side of history. Find out why African Americans are complaining so much that their lives don't matter.

They feel as if they have been. overlooked for too long. They have been targeted. They feel as if their lives don't matter. So I want to make sure that people understand that the claim black lives matter does not mean that yours don't. It just means that black lives matter also. And so that's the thing that I always want to say. But from a policy standpoint, you know, I think that we need to push for or push Mitch McConnell to get off of his ass and get the bill signed in the Senate that the Congress has already passed in the House. And that is the George Floyd bill. It's also known as Justice and Policing of 2020. And so that bill brings forth measures to increase

police accountability across the board, allowing there to be a national database of collection of complaints against law enforcement officers. It's very unfortunate when a law enforcement officer hurt someone of color, kill someone of color, and then is able to go to another state and get a job as a law enforcement officer again. Or leave that post and someone starts a GoFundMe account

and the officer makes millions of dollars. You know, we have to have policies in this country that hold even law enforcement officers accountable. I also believe that we need to make sure that law enforcement officers are getting more training. I'm a small business owner. I have my certification in cosmetology and a degree in political science. But as a cosmetologist, I actually have more training as a cosmetologist

than a law enforcement officer in the United States has to be a police officer. And when you think about law enforcement officers in Europe, they have less fatalities, less police brutality claims brought against them. But the other factor is that they have at least two. years of training. When you think about how law enforcement officers come onto the scene, one of the businesses that I had was a security guard company. I implore law enforcement officers. I've gone through the police academy. I know how they're trained. I know that when they come onto the scene, they are trained to subdue the situation. But when you come across

someone who is fearful and fearing that if they comply with you, that they're going to lose their life, it creates an awkward situation that could turn deadly. As a law enforcement officer, when you come onto the scene and you're dealing with someone that maybe have a death situation, disability, or some type of mental impairment, it creates a situation where training becomes even more necessary. And so that's my stance on the issue. Makes sense. Yeah. So, you know, it's such an interesting view into the conservative mind. When you say Black Lives Matter, they automatically.

assume that it is to the exclusion of any other life. Why? That's not what it says. It doesn't say only Black Lives Matter, but they add the only because of the mindset of it's either my rights or your rights. It's America. Why can't it be everybody that writes? I mean, how is Black Lives Mattering a controversial position? But they made it one. So, Lindsay, you're in Missouri. that's where the McCloskey's went out there with their, you know, assault weapons because they said they were going to be, they were afraid they were going to get killed and burnt down, et cetera, when no one else put them out a weapon. But I am curious in your district, you know, what has the reaction been to Black Lives Matter

and in the Trump propaganda run? Well, we got to make something very clear just right out the gate here. The McCloskeys didn't even know how to hold their fight. I've been shooting guns since I was five and let me just tell you my daddy would have ripped that right out of my hand if you could ever see me go out hunting the way that those two people did. They have no idea what they're doing. They are more a danger to themselves. It's ridiculous. Anyone who actually knows anything about firearms knows that they look like a low rent reboot of Bonnie and Clyde. It was ridiculous. Black Lives Matter in rural Missouri has taken off and it is thriving. And I represent 24 rural suburban counties, and in almost every single one of them, there were multiple days of Black Lives Matter and rallies. In my hometown, our local police department marched with the protesters in a show of solidarity. And so this myth that this is something that's only happening in the cities, and this myth that really the president wants people to believe that the fight for equality and the fight for justice and equity is somehow violent at every turn is also, we all know, a complete

myth. People in Warnsburg, Missouri, Marshall, Missouri, Sedalia, Missouri, Lebanon, Mexico, Columbia, Belton, the list just goes on and on and on, these smaller towns that stood up and said, hey, we're going to stand with our neighbors. And I think that what you see from that is that a change really has come in the narrative. It's a combination of young people, It's a combination of different communities of color standing up. And really, there are law enforcement officers who want this too because they don't want bad cops in their ranks. And what we see happening is that we have a president

who's more concerned about controlling his citizens than governing them. And so he continues to put out lie after lie after lie and then decides to gas the protesters so he can hold a Bible like it's the first time he's ever seen the book. So no, we don't have time for that. out here. It's not true. And there are just thousands of people in my district and in my community who are standing up for what they know to be right. And I'll just add one additional item to that before my kid comes here and start screaming is that in military communities, which are usually

prohibited from engaging in politics, you have people in military communities putting out Black Lives Matter flags and signs on post to show solidarity with their brothers and sisters. And that is incredible. Yes. I mean, you're in the military, you're in the trenches. So you better, I hope to God you believe Black Lives Matter because they're right next to you. And you guys are fighting together protecting each other's lives. So Adam, I'm worried about running out of time.

So let me combine a couple of issues for you. I mean, in Florida, obviously you've got these racial tensions. as well, Trayvon Martin, and another half a dozen shootings were in Florida. You've also got the issue of reopening, DeSantis rushed to reopen, and now you've got colleges and public schools, high schools, et cetera, which are in a difficult situation. It is like, I got a friend whose daughter is a freshman. They want to be freshman in college. They want to go to school.

on the other hand as LSU just announced almost every football player they have as coronavirus so what do we do here on both issues I think there's a couple things that we have to realize is that the reason that this got so bad and the reason we are in this spot is because we were not prepared as a country to prevent anything like this. If we had universal broadband internet, then we would have been fine having kids stay at home and be able to actually do learning online, but we don't have that. If we had universal health care, I mean, as we all know, if one person doesn't have health care in the middle of the pandemic, then everyone else is at risk. We didn't have these basic things that could prevent everything from getting worse. On top of that, the desperation that the pandemic has caused, on top of obviously all of the job losses, all of everything else, it's just causing people to be more desperate. And what that is doing is that is actually exasperating the way that people feel about each other. I spoke to a lady last night on the phone. Her name is Crystal.

She was driving yesterday in Clay County. Clay County is now famous where I'm at because, well, it's sheriff, old sheriff before he was arrested for four felony charges, said that he was going to go out and he was going to do. deputize every legal gun owner and send them after protesters. Well, this lady is driving down the street next to Zagsby's, and a counter-protester runs into the street and stabs her 12-year-old daughter through the car window with a flagpole, and he is now arrested. This is the kind of anger that really just desperation brings out. We have to prevent these kind of things from happening in the first place, and we have to understand that people are people and they matter. It does not matter what part of the political spectrum they are. You need to value every single human being. And so, thank you.

Thankfully, this girl is okay. She's got a couple bruises. But I think the humiliation of what happened to her and just the understanding, this is happening everywhere. People's anger is exploding everywhere. It's for a lot of different reasons. But we have to head that off. And, you know, if you would like this girl is amazing and she is a huge K-pop fan. And if anybody would like to, you know, tell her that, number one, it's okay.

It's not okay. But we're standing with you. And we love you and we want you to be okay. And you want to send, you know, a gift to her. She loves K-pop. And you want to send it to our campaign headquarters so we can get it to her. That would be absolutely wonderful. But that's really what it is.

You have to understand that people are people. And we need to be able to build our society from the ground up, not the top down. And at the end of the day, that saves money. It saves time. It makes it so that we don't ever feel the worst effects of everything in our society. We're able to head those off. And so I think that that is the world that most people at this point, that's the one they want to have, but it's not the one that they see.

Yeah, well, Capeop already did a number on Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so keep it going. All right, Blair, you're not only in a red district, you're in a red state. So I'm just a little bit of morbid curiosity in terms of are people wearing masks there indoors, and then what do you think is the right approach for the pandemic in getting the right balance? absolutely my district is very torn between the fear of the pandemic and the fear of violence and the highlight of the divide that the media plays out right in front of their eyes so they ignore some of the issues because they're confused about the messages that have been coming out and they're acting out of fear and desperation locally and nationally I've seen us move

forward in some of police reforms and a solidified message on how to deal with the coronavirus But I think if we focus more on lifting all of our communities up to make sure that they have the opportunities and they know that there's security and hope for our future and know that they have these good values, but they're only seeing half of the picture right now. We need to make it so they see the bigger picture so that they can feel good about themselves and good about the future. A lot of the confusion comes with schools being shut down and then they're reopened and now they're shutting down again due to COVID. But the problem is amplified in a lot of these rural communities because they're dealing with high levels of poverty. So many of these families rely on the schools not only for an education, but for child care and even meals. The bottom line for me is that we need to adjust our expectations of the different systems we have in place and learn from this and move forward as a smarter nation and make sure that all of our communities have the resources they need in place to avoid further similar situations and a further divide in this country.

Yeah, Gary, I want to combine two issues for you, too. This is for short on time. First, on coronavirus, I wanted to get your thoughts on it, too. Because look, on the one hand, we all want our kids to go back to school. On the other hand, again, I'll give another football example. Texas Tech, 75 football players have coronavirus. So what's happening is, as to Blair's point is, we close the schools, open the schools, and then invariably, people we get coronavirus and we shut them back down. And so it's a tough issue in terms of getting the right balance in reopening the economy, et cetera. And then I also want to ask you about Trump's incredible disrespect of the military calling false soldiers, suckers and losers and how that plays out in your district. Okay, let me take it, Jake. If we're going to call ourselves the United States of America,

then we have to want to start behaving like that. As a health care professional, I'm a strong advocate for single-payer universal health care. And this would have afforded us as Americans a unified message from the top down that all 50 states could have adhered to. Allowing the states to have to compete against themselves to try and write this from whole clock to get it right

was the wrong way to go. Okay. We're in the middle of a world, pandemic, and we're talking about dropping out of the WHO or not participating with that, I just think that we've got to set our priorities and go with what the intelligent and scientific response should be. Okay, I have four institutions of higher learning in Pennsylvania's ninth district, and they're all currently either virtual or running off some form of hybrid model. My middle child's totally virtual in her college experience, and my 10th grader

is in kind of a hybrid school block class model where they're not switching classes as often so they don't have to break down, wipe down, etc. It's working so far for them. But, you know, look, we're going to have to have our kids not fall behind in their education, but we have to stop and think about where we're at. Many of us have returned to work, and we need to remember that we don't have to get it 100% right all the time. We see. simply can't be. Okay? So this is collective trauma that is going to echo through our society for many years, and we can't expect our kids to have a normal year of education. There's just absolutely no way that's going to be. So we need to adjust our expectations, Jake, from what

that normal education is going to look like this year. And I've talked about real-time testing before in previous virtual town halls that we've had, and I'll say it again, we need real-time testing. If we have to wait two weeks to find out the results of a test, we can't practically go back to school and go back or stop the community spread in any case. The development of a vaccine and real-time testing should be our top priority. And when we have real-time testing, we can have our schools and our universities open back up safely. Now, with regards to the disrespect that we've heard coming from our current commander-in-chief, I strongly suggest everybody listen, and in my 63 years, I never would have thought that I would have heard high-ranking members of the military, former joint chiefs of staff, such as General Colin Powell, Admiral Mullen, former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, questioning about their concern of the president's lack of maturity in his role and how it affects his ability to lead. I have a serious problem with those who disrespect the military and our veterans,

but Janket goes deeper than that. We have continuously failed our veterans when they return to civilian life. Just this morning, Alan posted on Twitter that 18 to 22, I think it was 18 to 22 veterans commit suicide every day. We have to do better at supporting them. We have to do better with health care, with reentry into civilian life, and we have to stop sending our young men and women into endless wars that we have no business being in the first place. Placing our soldiers into harm's way by declaring war is the role of Congress. And it's time we elect representatives who will honor this responsibility and not abdicated.

That's how you really respect our military. Make sure that the military intervention that we do is rare and only used as a last resort. Hey, I have close family and friends who have served, and you can ask them or ask any member of the armed forces, and they'll all agree. So, Lindsay, I suspect you might have strong opinions about this. So the president not only called members of the military, suckers and losers, your husband's in the military. But he also said he doesn't understand why they're doing it. And he said, there's no money to gain. So why would you risk your life for your country?

yeah and my husband's currently deployed too so he also has a bounty on his head and i think that you know i'll be very honest my husband got into the military because he wanted to do something that was bigger than himself and he's a pilot and he flies helicopters because he thinks it's cool and he loves his work i mean he just loves his job i mean i would be really honest about it like that man loves his job and he has has loved it until recently and it's because we have a commander and chief who does not value his service and doesn't value the service of other of other members of his unit especially members of the LGBTQ community this president has said that their sacrifice and their service is not wanted and that they shouldn't even be in the military

I think that when you have leadership that fails morally, that fails objectively, that fails professionally, you have a loss of morale in the military. And I think that our senior leaders see that and to what Gary was saying, to have people like a former Secretary of Defense Mattis come out and make those remarks. I think what they are seeing is that loss of morale, and it's their attempt to let the men and women in uniform know that their leadership values them, even though what they're hearing from the top says otherwise. Yeah. All right, Blair, I know Andrew Yang was on here recently and talked about UBI. Have you adopted UBI in your platform now? I absolutely have adopted UBI into my platform. It was a main reason that actually made me want to run, seeing all the poverty out here.

Do you want me to go on on that one? Sure, yeah. Sure. I'm all about freedom and I'm all about financial security, and nothing screams that louder to me than a universal basic income. So we refer to our version the same as Andrew Yangs, which was the freedom dividend, and that can be a tough thing to sell out here in a rugged lifestyle where you know you're hardworking Americans and you don't want a handout.

out. So explaining that this dividend is something that we all deserve as Americans is quite literally very difficult in this area. But it really affects some of our biggest problems out here, poverty, crime, abortion rates, things that really resonate with the voters of my district. So I focus on that message to try to educate them on how it would revitalize our communities and make it so not only individuals out here could thrive, but also our small business owners. It would just really bring our community to a higher standard of living altogether. Right. Well, if Andrew was helpful in influencing folks in that direction, I'll give it a shot, too, because, you know, this system that we have now, you know, you say Blair that in Tennessee, they're worried about, hey, I don't want a hand-up. Meanwhile, multinational corporations get billions of dollars. In fact, now trillions of dollars in handouts. And so, and that's seemingly all our congressmen do, especially the folks you guys are running this. uh so uh can i get uh folks to to uh sign on to a constitutional amendment to get money on politics and then the private financing of elections absolutely i think we all yeah agree on that all right that looks universal i'll take it back there you go hey i'll end on this story uh so uh richard was running uh in a really red district as well in fact maybe I think it might have been the single most red district, plus $49 for Trump.

And, you know, as some of you know, he closed it by 37 points. It was an amazing run. And in the midst of that, we got excited about Richard's run. We're showing all these ads, et cetera. And a guy from Wolfpack sends me a picture of Richard in a Wolfpack meeting to get money out of politics. I said, oh, wow, after we did that stuff, he went to a Wolfpack meeting. He said, no. He was at that meeting years ago because he was already trying to get money.

on the politics. So thank you, Richard, for your service to the country, both in the military and as a state senator. And thank you to all of you running. So make sure everybody, please get out there and support everybody on this call. Adam Christensen from Florida's third district, Gary Wegman from Pennsylvania's ninth district, Alan Ellison from Florida's 17th district, Lindsay Simmons and Ms. Missouri's fourth district and then Blair Walsingham in Tennessee's first district.

Thank you all. You guys are amazing. Let's go win these races. Thank you. Jake, thank you very much for taking the account to come here. We also have Natalie Klein that's running in the first district of West Virginia. And we also have Rob Anderson that's running against Clay Higgins in Louisiana's third.

So, hey, we absolutely love the fact that you took the time to come here and highlight our amazing candidates. It's everybody out there, check them out. I guarantee you that if you listen to what they say, you're going to like what you see and throw them a couple bucks because Lindsay Simmons winning in Missouri will help you if you live in Portland, Oregon. If you live in Chicago, Illinois, that's how it is. Sapper's clear the way, everyone all the way.

All right, thank you, everybody. Let's go have a picnic behind the field behind Gary. It looks amazing. Socially just this picnic if we win. Good night, guys. Thanks, Jay. Thank you. Good job, Jay.

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. at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.