The Young Turks - Not Guilty

Episode Date: November 20, 2021

Jury Finds Kyle Rittenhouse Not Guilty | House Dems Pass Build Back Better With No Gop Support | Mccarthy’s 8-Hour Speech Against Popular Policies | Ohio One-Ups Texas W/ Even More Draconian Abortion Law Hosts: John Idarola, Cenk Uygur, and Morgan Harper 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. Three-a-teen, three-a-chee, three-a-chee, three-a-chee, primar-tee, prim-a-te, prim-a-te. Drop it. Drop it. But we don't have great news for you. So it is what it is.

Joining us is John Iderola and Morgan Harper. She's back. Morgan is running for Senate in Ohio, an incredibly important race. And she's of course a former consumer protection attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Marguyen, how you doing? Pretty good, pretty good. Good to be here. All right, good to have you. Of course, everybody get ready to Morganize at Morgan Harper.org. Org, so but unfortunately, there is good news in the show today, but unfortunately we're

going to have to start off with bad news from the Writtenhouse case, John. We do, yes. Kyle Rittenhouse has been found not guilty in the shooting and killing of two men and the attempted killing of a third by a Wisconsin jury after four days and over 25 hours of deliberations. The panel also cleared him of attempted intentional homicide for severely wounding Gage Grosskroyd's, a 27 year old paramedic from suburban Milwaukee who was there that night volunteering his medical services. Rittenhouse was also acquitted on two counts of recklessly endangering safety.

I mean, they say there that he's a paramedic, but he wasn't holding an assault rifle, so he doesn't seem like an authentic medic in this context. In any event, we want to show you a little bit from the announcement. As the first count of the information, Joseph Roosevelt, we the jury find the defendant Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty. As to the second count of the information, Richard McGinnis, we the jury find the defendant, Kyle H. written house, not guilty. As to the third count of the information, unknown male, we the jury find the defendant Kyle H. written house not guilty. As to the fourth count of the information, Anthony H. H. H. Rittenhouse, not guilty. As to the fifth count of the information, Gage, Gross Cores, we, the jury find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty. Members, the jury, are these your unanimous verdicts?

Is there anyone who does not agree with the verdicts as read? Would you wish the jury pulled? So bearing in mind that previously they had gotten some sort of length technicality that got rid of the weapons charge, from the perspective of our judicial system, he did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong, don't get into his motives, his actions were perfect, he shouldn't have made any different choices, everything he did is fine, and that is unfortunately I think the lesson that some individuals are going to take away from this. If you had had an interest in grabbing a gun and going somewhere and ending up in some sort of situation, well,

you can now be assured on two things, you already knew that you'd be able to raise millions of dollars to crowdsource your defense, you'd become a celebrity on the right, and now you've been told by the state that it's probably totally fine legally too. So I know we might disagree about some of the specifics of this, but the incentives of this is providing for more potential vigilantes, and Fox News is doing everything they can every day to encourage more people to do this, is that you do not have to fear legal consequences. Yeah, so look, there are at least two different issues here, and we'll have to talk through both of them at a minimum. I think there's a bunch of other peripheral issues like the world's

worst mom. So I want to get back to that later. But the two issues are, did the jury rule correctly and should he have been convicted, should he have been acquitted in the case as a matter of law? And Morgan, I'm curious about your thoughts on that in a second as well. And then the second issue is, is what he did okay. Okay, now if I don't think that it's quite sending the message that John said in from a legal perspective, I don't when someone is not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that doesn't mean that the state is saying what they did was okay. So O.J. Simpson was also I'm sorry, quitted because they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it.

It doesn't mean the state of California thought that it was great what OJ Simpson might have done, okay? Now, I think he did it, and in the case they're in the house, just because he gets acquitted, does not mean the state thinks it was hunky-dory, they just couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. It's going to lead to the second issue in a second. But why did they rule the way that they did? Well, we told you all along, it was a tough case as we were covering. it because, look, there was, first of all, the legal standard is really important, guys. And we didn't get this completely right throughout, and I want to clarify it here.

Most states say that when you go to a self-defense argument, as Rittenhouse did, the burden of proof then shifts, and you've got to prove an affirmative case of self-defense. That is not the case in Wisconsin, which greatly helps Rittenhouse and makes this ruling even more understandable from a legal perspective. In Wisconsin, you still have to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, which makes it much harder. Now in the case of the first person that he shot, it was Rosenbaum who had thrown a plastic bag at him, but someone has shot nearby. He heard the gun sound, then he apparently thought something was being thrown at him. He kills the first guy. The second guy hit him with a skateboard. Now, I wouldn't

kill anyone if they hit me with a skateboard, but I know the right wing. They're very fragile, very weak. And so they think, if you look at me kind of wrong, I'm afraid for my life and I'll murder you. But in the case of the law and the jury here, I don't think the jury is the issue. I don't think that this was an atrocious ruling. I'm curious what you guys think, because they're put in a situation where one guy, you know, they have to say beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act his self-defense. I think the real issue is as a matter of precedent in the in the country, do we want people walking around with weapons provoking people? And then as soon as they're threatened in any way, start to kill people. Because if this is the standard,

we're gonna have massive vigilante violence in this country. So but before I move on to that topic, Morgan, what do you think about the legal ruling? Yeah, I mean, I think you're right in the sense that we have now put laws on the books all over this country that do green light exactly they're saying vigilante justice. We have individuals that are serving as the jury executioner all in one based on some kind of feeling that they're having. And so that's not exactly the jury's fault, that's a problem of our legal system. And these types of inconsistencies, one, are what continue to breed extreme distrust of our justice system. But then also, yeah, I think this is a It's a scary moment where we continue to unleash people who believe that they can take matters into their own hands based on their individual impression of any given perceived threat of danger.

That's really, really scary. Yeah, the whole thing, look, I care about the implications of this far more than the individual details of the particular case. But there's just, this leaves us with a thousand interesting questions. So if, like if it's just self-defense of the first case, so someone shoots nearby, so he gets to kill someone nearby. carry a gun and any time you hear a loud noise you get to shoot someone. Like that's that's insane. You should have to prove that there was a good, and then after he shoots the first person, anyone else nearby with a gun would have presumably heard that shot.

So they get to shoot someone that's standing near them too. This is insane and one of the most frustrating things for me about the right wing response to this is many of them will immediately say, well it's self-defense, it's law. You are not allowed to express any issue with the way self-defense is defined generally in this individual state, the way that it's adjudicated, who generally gets to use that defense. And we're just supposed to take it as given. We're supposed to just accept that the law as written is obviously right. It's not designed, nor in effect, does it have particular outcomes? And we're being told this, I tweeted something to this effect earlier, by people who spent the

last half century trying to strip away women's reproductive rights. They've never just complied with the law and thought, well, if it's the law, then we can never question it whatsoever. We can never wonder if it should be the way it is. And here it's just a law, everyone shut up and let's only focus on the last 30 seconds. So anything before 30 seconds before he started killing people, you can't question. So you can't show him talking on video about how he'd like to kill someone. You can't wonder why he would bring a gun to this sort of situation. Why did he have to be there in the first place?

What media had he been consuming that was encouraging these sorts of vigilante things? you should only pay attention to the three or four seconds before the shot and that's it. Well, I'm sorry, I can't be so idiotic is that. I have to wonder what went into it, what decisions were made, and whether it's the law in Wisconsin that you should consider that or not, I think we should. And I would say, by the way, they generally don't want you to think about any of this stuff. And yet they've all settled on this bizarre, not even legal argument, because they'll never be explicit about it, that you should not be bothered by the murders because,

hey, it turned out one or two of the people he shot had done bad things. Never mind that he didn't know about that. Never mind that even if he did, he doesn't get to just execute bad people when he comes across him on the street. But they think the motivations of the people who died should go into our evaluation of this, but not the motivations of the guy who took a gun he never should have had across state lines and went to this protest. All of that is worthy of at least discussion and possibly legal reform, I think. So now let me fully agree with John on the societal points at play here. So first of all, guys, think about one of the points that John just made.

So it's self-defense if you hear a gunshot, you could just turn around and shoot someone. Well, then under that theory, someone nearby could have shot Rittenhouse and said, well, I heard a gun shot, and he had a gun. So Rosenbaum didn't have a gun. At that point, he didn't have a plastic bag, he'd already thrown it. Yeah. So he had no weapon at all and a jury just ruled it's self-defense to shoot that unarmed man and kill him, okay, because you heard a gunshot. Well, a lot of people heard Rittenhouse's gunshot. Could they have just executed him on the spot? Just, and the answer is yes, according to the ruling we just had. If you hear a gunshot, now, what if the person you're shooting is a cop? What if you heard a cop shooting, but you didn't bother looking and you just. turn around just like Rittenhouse did, you just turn around, boom, execute the cop. Well, you heard a gunshot, that's self-defense. Okay, and guys, the skateboard, it's insanity.

The one good job that the prosecution did was it was in the closing argument when they said, does anyone else have a right to self-defense? Or is only the person with the weapon allows self-defense? Well, one of them had a gun, so presumably only the person with the biggest gun has a right to self-defense. Yeah, so did that guy have a right to self-defense as written house was literally shooting him, right? Then the guy with a skateboard, did he have a right to defend himself from, he hurt shots, right? Just like Rittenhouse did. They say, Rittenhouse can kill someone if he heard shots. Well, Huber heard shots, and he was defending himself with a skateboard.

So does he have no rights at all? Does that mean as a society now, and the gun manufacturers are going to be thrilled with this decision, does that mean as a society now, We all have to be super heavily armed. Otherwise we lose the right to self defense and we can be killed at any time. This just became an incredibly scary country. If it wasn't already very scary to begin with, with Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and countless other cases, Morgan. Well, yeah, and just a lot of the names that are coming to mind for me as we're looking at

what are our laws on the books, what are we allowing, what do certain laws open the gateway to? I mean, Tamir Rice, Tyrone King, Henry Green, people who have been killed in Ohio in interactions with law enforcement that were, that have also been justified to an extent by the laws on the books. And what is the end result of this? It is chaos. We are living through chaos and that is no way to run a country and but it is exactly the plan of people who profit off of that chaos. Okay, yeah, go ahead. The way that I forget who put it this way, But the way I read it was, the last person alive is innocent. That's what it is.

You better be the last person alive and then you were the one defending yourself. Everything else is just collateral damage along that path. Well, John, let me agree further with you. So everybody saw a written house crying on the stand and everybody wondered, is it real, is it fake, et cetera. But there was a lot of people had sympathy for, oh my God, a poor kid. Well, how about Huber? So he never got to cry on the stand because he was murdered or now killed,

officially killed, not murdered. And so you never got to see him crying, you never got to see him do anything. He was killed as a young man in the streets because a maniac was running around with an AR-15 shooting anything that he perceived to be a threat after he started going in there, in my opinion, with a confrontation of bringing in weapons

to a protest in the first place, right? So now that leads us to two other things. Just let me dispense with this real quick. The mom is the world's worst parents. worst parent. She drove a 17-year-old with an AR-15 into what she perceived to be a dangerous riot. Oh, you want to go into the middle of a dangerous riot? My 17-year-old son? Here, I'll drive you across state lines to do it. Oh, here's an AR-15, so in case a butterfly floats by, you just murder everyone, okay? I'm sorry, kill everyone, okay? She's a despicable

parent. No sane parent would ever do that. But the right wing in this country, is crazed. They're crazed. They can't wait to shoot people, which leads me to the biggest culprits of all. The written house fans or supporters. Yes, that includes all of them. All of the Alex Jones, the Tim Pools, the Joe Rogans, the millions of crazed Rambo wannabe right wingers in this country who are like, oh yeah, hey, why don't I just bring weapons? Oh, Self defense, murder, murder, murder, murder. They just want to kill. So they go into the middle of protest with these goddamn weapons

looking to pick a fight, and then the minute written house actually shoots these people, they're ecstatic. They love that he killed them. They love that he killed them. That's why they're his fans. What is there to be a fan of? If the shoe's on the other foot, and some guy goes into the middle of a right-wing protest with an AR-15 and he's progressive, and he goes, oh, well, they provoked me.

Somebody threw a plastic bag, the other one in a skateboard, so I killed him. I don't become a fan of that guy. Yeah. I don't become a fan of that guy. I say that's insane to go in the middle of a protest with an AR-15 looking to pick a fight so you can kill people. But the rightly in this country is steeped in violence. They're soaked in blood and they can't wait to kill. So guys, America, I hate to say it because I love this country.

But America has now become a super scary place where people are constantly killing each. other and getting away with it. Yeah, and it's by the way, it's convenient for the right because look, just today you will be thinking about this and not about the fact that the House Pact passed Bill Beck better. So the fact that you might save $1,000 a month on insulin, they don't want you thinking about that sort of thing because it might lead you to believe that the government can make your life better, that perhaps it owes you something.

And generally, you should be terrified, you should be terrified, we're gonna tell you all the people you should be scared of so that you will never ever again think about your economic situation, how the government has failed you, and why, who it's actually serving. They love the focus on all of this stuff. They scare people like Kyle Rittenhouse constantly with their nonsense and then use the murders of people like him to scare you further. Now we're going to be talking about both because we have an obligation to. We believe that there is some sort of ethical obligation when you're involved in journalism, but they don't. They love the idea that you will just constantly be lusting for blood,

terrified, jealous, suspicious. That's what they want. They turn people into these crazed, bloodthirsty, terrified individuals knowing that that sort of population is never going to pose any sort of risk to the most powerful and wealthy people in this country. Well, that's the exact dynamic we have here in Ohio. I mean, on the other side of this Republican Senate, on the Republican side of the Senate race, J.D. Vance, Josh Mandel. I mean, these are people that are just stoking the fire of this hatred and violence. suspicion of people around you and using it for their own political gain. So, I mean, that's the stakes of things in Ohio. We have a lot of these same types of laws on the books.

And it is, it is a scary time and why, you know, the Senate race is so important. Yeah. Now, we do have a very brief bit of commentary about this big decision from President Biden. Here is what he had to say. Look, I stand by with the jury as it concluded. The jury system works and we have to provide money. That's literally all of it. Vice President Kamala Harris also said the verdict speaks for itself. So that's- Profiles and courage.

It's all you're- It speaks for itself conveniently so that she doesn't have to speak. Yeah. Just look, other people on this panel do not necessarily agree with me. We all have our own different opinions, okay? But it is more cowardice of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, in my opinion, to sit there and go, well, okay, the jury speaks for itself, what can I do? I knew, okay, white people don't hate me, black people, I don't really care, but anyways. And oh, he didn't technically shoot black people.

He went to go shoot black people, wind up shooting two white people. So he went there thinking, oh, it's a black protest or riot, let me grab my AR-15. So Kamala Harris, oh yeah, you know, in the past, she's a cop, and then everybody was like, no, no, no, she had to do what she had to do, and she had to put away, you know, all these poor people and African Americans, the Latinos, and she had to, she had to. she out to, but she's actually super brave progressive. No, she's not, no she's not. Where's the, where's the courage today on Rittenhouse?

Where's the courage? As usual, Biden and Harris are hiding in a bunker. Just that's real, that's the reality and I don't care whose feelings it hurts in Washington. And I just want to contrast, those are like basically the two leaders of the Democratic Party in the executive branch. That's what they had to say. Well, others on the right have other things to say. The right is fighting over itself to employ Kyle Written. House. You have Paul Gossar, Madison Cawthorne, and Matt Gates, all wanting Kyle

Rittenhouse to come be their intern. Some of them just purely for the blood. Matt Gates might think that he has a teen sister. I don't know what his motivations are in this particular case, but they're all desperate to show their audience. We love the vigilante. And if you go ahead, we have this absolutely cringeworthy thing from Ann Coulter that I'm sure she thinks she's doing ironically. I got news for you. It's cringe if it's serious, it's cringe of its irony. But they consider him to be a hero. He is their Spider-Man, basically.

So on the Democratic side we have, the verdict speaks for itself. I have no thoughts about literally any component of this, cultural, legal, nothing. I'm not worried about any precedents whatsoever. I think it's perfectly fine, apparently, for them to worship this guy as some sort of living God. And on the right, they're putting his face on posters, they're imagining someday that they'll be able to vote for him to go to

Congress. Yeah, I mean, we desperately need, we need leadership, right? And leadership isn't always being afraid of what might alienate certain people from voting for us. Leadership is sticking to what we believe. It is being true to our values. It is standing up for the people, most of the people in this country who are finding all of this abhorrent. And pushing that out there, that message, that's what leadership is. And that's what we are desperately in need of in the United States right now. So last thing on, Morgan's point there, because look, it's, we're not unaware of the political realities in this country, so progressives are generally speaking far more sophisticated about politics

than a normal corporate Democrat. Corporate Democrats just listen to what the consultants say, we actually bothered to read the polls, we can see what's popular or not popular, and we can still stick to our principles, okay? But so I'm not unaware that Barack Obama lost a huge approval ratings after he supported Henry Louis. Lewis Gates, who is, was an African-American Harvard professor who the police accosted in his own porch and getting into his own house. Obama was 100% right to support him. But nonetheless, he lost popularity when he did, because a lot of white people in this country said, wait a minute, I mean, that's not, if a cop goes to assault a black professor in this country, he should get

to do that. Whether it's fair or not fair, it doesn't matter. And I can't believe Obama. would be fair to a black professor at Harvard, that's outrageous. And they were really mad at Obama for that. So it's in the polling. There's no question about it. So will a lot of racist white people get super mad at Biden and Kamala Harris if they say, hey, I get why he was acquitted, but he should not have got in there with a weapon and he was morally culpable. Yes, yes, a giant percentage of this country will catch feelings,

because they're generally racist right wingers who don't like to talk about race unless it's killing people, right? And applauding killing people. But that's where Morgan's point comes into effect, which is you gotta have courage to lead. You cannot change that dynamic in this country until you show leadership and you tell people why it's wrong. Hey, would you want to speak their language? You have to speak to them in like, in colors and stuff. Now I know you're okay if you went to go shoot black people. But what if you're, it was a black guy who came to a right wing rally with a weapon and a Trump fan threw a plastic bag at him. Do you think it would be okay for the black guy or the Muslim guy or an Antifa guy

to kill people at a Trump rally? Well, maybe, maybe that gets them to go, oh, well, I don't want a black guy doing that. A Muslim, no, I don't want a Muslim to go to any rally with a with a weapon, let alone a my rally. Oh, there's a rally of people who are mad about a board of education. Hey, don't worry about a couple of antifa guys are gonna show up there with an AR-15. Are you guys cool with it? You're cool with it, right? Some right-wingers will pretend, oh yeah, yeah, I'm cool.

It doesn't matter, I'm coming with a tag. That's because you want the violence. Yeah. And we have no leadership here. So at a critical moment, social moment in American history, honestly, we had two leaders, Biden and Harris, who sat it out. And of course the right wing were monsters. Those three guys, they're like, I want to hire the killer.

If you killed left wingers at one of their protests, that is the qualification. Writtenhouse was 17, he doesn't know anything, he's never had any meaningful political experience at all. His only experience is killing people he thought were left wingers. And for three US congressmen, they say, murder, that's what I want, or in this case, now technically, He just killed him, he just killed him, okay? So, but the qualification is the death, is the fact that he shot and killed them. They're disgusting human beings. And if Biden and Harris and other Democrats can't bring themselves to say the bare minimum,

well, the jury's in on that as well. No leadership, none, zero. This is the problem with the Democratic Party. Complete utter weakness. We should probably take a first break. All right, we got to take a break. Again, I only speak for myself here. So we have got to get progressives to change this dynamic.

I'm so sick of Democrats constantly capitulating to Republicans. I just can't stand it anymore. All right, we got to come back. We'll be back. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John, and Morgan Harper is with us today. She's running for Senate in Ohio, Morgan Harper.org. I'm going to read one last comment here from YouTube super chat because it's a rich powerful. Zara, Sarah, and go throw it in.

I live in Wisconsin. If I get in a fight to defend myself, the person of myself would be charged because there's zero tolerance for it. How the freak does he get away with this? There's supposed to be no self-defense here. Well, now, Zara, honestly, it's way worse than that. If you get into any fight and another guy has a weapon, they can just kill you. And they will get away with it. And so that's now America.

Super scary. Okay, John. Okay, let's turn to potentially more positive news, although there's going to be some angles that are not so much. Early this morning, the build back better bill passed in the House. The vote was 220 to 213. One Democrat voted against it for reasons we'll get into. No Republican supported it. So many components of it, so much good it can do.

Not one of more than 200 Republicans actually supported it. So it of course now has to go to the Senate and the Senate is the cave in which Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema dwells, so God only knows what would be left of it once it's done with them. But at least as of passing the House, it offers universal pre-kindergarten, generous subsidies for child care that extend well into the middle class, expanded financial aid for college, hundreds of billions of dollars in housing support, home and community care for older Americans, a new hearing benefit for Medicare and price controls for prescription drugs. More than a half a trillion dollars would go towards shifting the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric cars,

which is the biggest climate-focused investment in U.S. history. The bill would cap insulin prices specifically at $35 per month for Americans with diabetes. The bill also, also guarantees four weeks of paid leave, which of course, we sort of fairly uniquely as a country have never offered. Now almost every single one of those things that I just listed were larger or stronger, funded longer, more all encompassing before they were gradually whittled down over the course of the past few months. But even with what is left, this would be the largest investment outside of investment in the military, to be clear that the U.S. government has made in poor and working class and middle class Americans, at least in my

lifetime. Although again, as I said, it does still have to go to the Senate. And we already know Manchin has said just this week, he's still against paid leave being in there. God knows what he'll make of the climate-focused spending, considering his own personal investments. Okay, so I want to be clear on both sides of this. So first of all, there was a ton of stuff taken out of this bill. I'm not at all happy with this bill. So first of all, let's just go through it real quick. The lowering of the drug prices they did is comical. It's tiny, it's minuscule, it's meant to mask the fact that they're not actually lowering drug prices. Dental and vision could have been covered under Medicare. That was stripped out. Free community

College has gone. Half of climate change is gone. The funds dedicated to that. The billionaire's tax is gone. Moving any of the Trump tax cuts for the rich and for corporations is gone. The weeks of paid leave is gone. That's right. It used to be 12 weeks of paid family. Now it's on four weeks. And in the negotiations, they were negotiating between 3.5 and 1.5. This lands at 1.75. So gee, I wonder who won. The conservative corporate Democrats won on the negotiations. Honestly, we got nearly slaughtered. The CBO says, by the way, it's 1.63 in fact.

Yes, okay. It's almost 1.5. And by, so I'm gonna get to how it's gonna be way worse in a second. But would I vote yes? Yes, I would. And so the provisions that remain, some of them are excellent, including a corporate minimum tax and all the things that John read you. And to me, if they had taken out lowering drug prices,

and paid family leave completely, then it would have been just the slap in the face and none of the progressive. But other than, oh, universal pre-K is also in there, there'd be one and a half progressive priorities left. And that's only because they were approved by corporate interests like universal pre-K corporations really like, okay? And I would say, no, this was a force of a negotiation. But they did put four weeks of paid family leave. You can call it anything you like, But it's the beginning of paid family leave in America and other provisions are excellent. Sometimes as painful as it is, you got to vote yes. But of course, the problem is it is not this version of the bill.

Nothing is passed yet. It's just past the House. It's also got to pass the Senate. Whether they're going to go to the Senate and Mansion and Sinema are going to shred this. And what's going to remain is going to be an absolute joke. You can, that's guaranteed, write it down in stone if they pass anything at all. We'll talk more about that in a second, but first Morgan, what do you think of the bill overall? Yeah, I mean, you can't deny this is like John said.

I mean, probably about the same age, you know, one of the biggest investments we've certainly seen in our lifetime, sure. But we need to start focusing. And I know I know this audience is that it's not just Democrats, it's better kind of Democrats. And the fact that any of this stuff is really up for negotiation that we're going to be arguing about whether there should be paid family leave in this country or whether or not we should have elderly folks that have access to vision and dental. care as they age or whether anyone should ever not have access to those things, but that's another story. That's the crazy part. But we need to get something passed. And the other thing that I would just say in terms of how we're going to message this and talk to people about it, we have to recognize that we need people who are going to be authentic and really able to say that they're

on the side of people to then make the case for why this stuff matters. And that's one of the problems when we have a disconnect of a corporate party that isn't connected to the grassroots and doesn't have those relationships to really sell what all of this is going to do for the American people. Yeah. Yeah. And so now, of course, the real problem is when it goes to the Senate, they are already saying, Manchin is saying he's against paid family leave, so they're just going to take it out. So the six just Democrats that voted no on the infrastructure bill did that because they didn't want to lose leverage in the Senate. Well, they were 100% right. We have no leverage in the Senate, none.

Now, we could have leverage if people called out Joe Manchin and put public pressure on Manchin and cinema. But apparently, there's not a single Democrat elected right now that is willing to do that. I'm being honest with you guys. And some of those folks I love. But Bernie would not call out a fellow Democrat and really fight them publicly under penalty of law. He's not going to do it. Nobody else is going to do it. So they have no other leverage and Manchin is going to shred this bill, cinema.

And by the way, half the corporate Democrats in the Senate, those guys are just proxies. There's so many corrupt Democrats in the Senate who are gonna love taking out all the provisions that actually help you. And at the end, they'll have a joke of a bill that won't have half the stuff in there. And then they'll pass it, only the ones pre-approved by Chamber of Commerce. And then they'll call it historic. And that's how this game is played. And it'll be deeply depressing.

We'll tell you that it was a joke, it'll go back to the House, I'll say vote no, everybody will vote yes. And that's the same game that's been played my entire life in this corporate controlled country. It's controlled, it controls the Republicans 100% who all voted no, because Chamber of Commerce told them not to. Their donors told them not to. It controls 80% of the Democratic Party and about 100% of the mainstream media. Yeah, effectively, look, I think that the past week or two has been so perfect in demonstrating what we have in the U.S. government, two philosophies, which are not Democratic and Republican, it's progressives and the billionaire defense force.

They will give you anime videos of women of color being murdered, they will terrify you about riots. Can we skip ahead of the last graphic? I want to show you literally what was being broadcast on Fox while the other networks were at least covering the fact that this bill had passed. It's that the artificial Christmas trees are in short supply. They do not want their audience to even conceive of the possibility that government could help them with the crises that face them. So they just don't cover it.

Did you know, by the way, that there's another 2,000 person caravan moving its way up from Latin America? More fear, just be terrified. Your life is going to hell, your economy, your economic situation is in shambles. It'll never get better, certainly not if we're in power, but make sure that that happens. because you should be very scared. There's brown people marching towards the country and you can't get a damn Christmas treat. And that's it.

And then the little bit that is left in the bill is there only because of the progressives, but the other side of the billionaire defense force, the mansions of the cinemas, make sure that it's as small as possible. And we're like desperately trying to get through to people that there is a better way. And it is so difficult because the billionaire defense force has about a million times the funding that we do. Whether it's, whether it comes to the form of CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News and Ben Shapiro, it's all the same thing, they serve the exact same people. All right, look, Morgan's been on with us a number of times on TYT, but now she's running

for Senate in Ohio. And Morgan, it's a super difficult question, but if you were in the Senate, what would you do under these circumstances? Fight like hell. I mean, this is why I'm running for the United States Senate is to minimize the power of people like cinema mansion who have no desire to help the American people who through their action are actually enabling everything that the GOP is trying to do fear monger and avoid any type of economic change from people living in this country. And so, you know, the other thing I would add there is a lot of people have no idea what we're talking about, right? Because whether media is not covering it, because they're only watching Fox News,

and so we have to go directly to people. I talk to people every day in Ohio. If you ask them what's in build back better, they have no idea, zero idea. That is a failure of communication. And that is only going to change by electing people who really have the ability to connect with folks on the ground. And also an understanding of what the policy is and a desire to get into the U.S. Senate and really change something. So that's why we've got to flip the seat. We have to win it. We have to win it not just by a Democrat, but by a Democrat that's really going to get in there and fight for the people.

So Morganharper.org's website, but I'm going to say one last thing on this. Guys, when it goes to the Senate, progressives and everyone else should insist that the House version pass. And I know they're already giving up on the House version, which makes it totally, this vote that they're celebrating, since they've already unilaterally and preemptively given up on this version, the fact that it passed means if I'm being honest with you guys, And that's my job, to be honest with you guys, it really, I'd like to celebrate it. And if it passed overall, I would tell, like I told you earlier, I'd say yes and great, okay? Not great, but yes, I'll take it. Okay.

But this passing the house means nothing. They said already, we're giving up on this version. So my point is, don't give up on it. You know, we'll get you a petition, we'll do everything we can, we'll ask you to participate, We'll ask you to send it to Congress people, et cetera. But it's our stand has got to be passed the House version. If you don't pass the House version, then Biden's promise of just trust me. Remember, that's how he got the Progressive Caucus to vote for it in the House,

to vote for the infrastructure in the House. Just trust me. Well, what did that mean? What did that mean? But we're gonna find out. If it means, trust me, I'm gonna get the House version passed. I'll turn around and give Biden all the credit in the world. Because all I care about is results, all you should care about is results because it affects you. Now, and to Morgan's point, if paid family leave is in there, then every Democrat can go out there and go,

we finally got you paid family leave. We were the last country, almost the last country and are certainly the last developed country that did not have paid family leave, but that Democrats delivered. And we got you paid family leave. So when you get, when you deliver a baby now, you don't have to immediately rush back to work. You're going to have four weeks of paid family leave. We did that every Republican voter, no. Every Republican wanted you to go back to work the day after you delivered a baby.

Now that would be excellent framing and you would win elections. But they won't do it because they're corrupt. So they're not going to pass paid family leave. They're going to get mansions to take it out. And then they're going to have nothing to run on. Democratic Party 101, leadership is terrible. We've got to get new progressives in instantly and turn this party around. Otherwise, they're so weak.

They're so hopeless that another Trump like fascist could win in 2024. And right now, that is definitely direction we're going in. For God's sake, pass the House version. And then yes, Morgan is right. Bragg about it. That's politics. You're not supposed to sit in a corner and go, I don't want to fend Republicans.

You're supposed to go out and they can say, we did it. And these sons of bitches were going to drive you right back into the minds. The minute you delivered their baby, they're not pro-life. They're not pro-life. They hate you and your baby. And they want to drive you back for corporate profits. Corrupt the sons of bitches taking money from Chamber of Commerce, taking money from all these oil interests.

But our Democrats, they suck. And they don't do that. And they're never going to do that. So brace for impact. 22 is probably going to be a disaster, 24 could be an epic disaster because there's no leadership. If this version passed the Senate, I turn around on all that. But this version ain't going to pass the Senate. Instead, we're going to get the usual mealy mouth nonsense from Democratic leadership

and whatever scraps they pass if they pass anything at all, the corporate media will cheer and call it historic. And it won't work because it won't actually affect anyone's life. Okay, that's the sad reality. We gotta take another break, more news when we come back. the government from ever delivering for their constituents. Kevin McCarthy gave a massive speech last night. It was eight and a half hours long. He didn't stop until after 5 a.m., which broke the record for the longest house floor speech in the modern era. His speech was longer than the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I found it far less compelling. It was pretty

random, though. It went to some weird places. We want to show you just a couple of little excerpts. Here's the first. You're celebrating it when inflation is at a a 31% height, gas prices, Thanksgiving, a border that in a few months breaks every record of the last three years combined. I'm also excited for Thanksgiving, but I don't understand what that had to do with it. But anyway, that at least sounded kind of like it was addressing the substance. He did say the word inflation after all. But he found time for a lot of weird stuff too.

Look at this. I can look anywhere I want, Mr. Speaker. I, Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe the amount to control one party rule wants. They now want to dictate to a member of the floor of where I can look. Are you afraid of the basis of the information in the bill? Sir, I'm gladly to look at you, Mr. Speaker. There's a difference between addressing and looking. I know one party rule wants to control every element of our lives.

Yeah, so there's more than 200 Republicans in the House, and that is their leader. That is the best of them. Yeah, he spoke for eight hours. He wanted to break Nancy Pelosi's record. She's spoken for a little over eight. He got to about eight and a half. Who cares? You know, so he said nothing of note.

Here, I'll read you want to, Representative Jamie Raskin's tweets. He said, it's a feat of epic proportions to speak for four hours straight. And that was only halfway through at that time. and not produce a single memorable phrase, original insight, or even a joke. McCarthy thinks he's a wit, but so far he has proved he's only half right. Now, see, that's clever, half wit. So McCarthy had none of that. Look, this is not a substantive point.

I think he literally sounds ridiculous. And when he then winds in a nonsensical way for eight hours straight, And now we have Thanksgiving. Like it doesn't make his ridiculous voice sound any better. It just makes it doubly worse. And it was like, guys, the main takeaway is no substance. How could you speak for eight and a half hours? And not even like enrage us.

Like you would think that he would say something of note where we'd be like, oh, well, that's talking point is incorrect or that's not right. or, oh, you know what, I don't agree with that policy position. What is there, what is the Republican policy position? So he's speaking against build back better. Did he talk about, oh, paid family leave sucks. I don't want anybody to have it. Lower drug prices is terrible.

I want higher drug prices. You know, I'm glad they took out community college. I don't want any of you guys to get educated. If you do, you might not vote for Republicans. Did he say anything of substance about the actual policy and what Republican proposals are? No, because they have no proposals, they have no policy, all they have is culture war. Hey, we're white, all you white folks vote for us, we're not gonna do anything for you, we're just gonna give more tax gets to the rich, but hey, at least we're white, wow, how

compelling. That is the leader of the Republicans in the House, Morgan. But the thing is, but they're winning, right? And so, I mean, I want to join in the mockery, but the problem is, it's working. And so in order to actually do something about this, we don't waste time negotiating with them. We cannot elect corporate Democrats that are willing to come down and compromise. I mean, let's look at insulin, for example, that you pointed out. Yes, $35 cap, big impact.

But you know what the average price is that other people across this globe are paying $10 because it's a hundred year old drug. So let's stop wasting time on these people. We have to figure out what's our agenda. And then again, talk to people about it, make our case for why we are different, why they should believe in us. Why aren't we just as crazy? We haven't allowed, we have allowed them to just completely dominate and we have to get out there and give a real alternative that is compelling. Yeah, exactly. Like you need to be able to run on contrast and the contrast has been minimized.

Now, you have him and over 200 Republicans who do not believe that the government should ever do anything. Their policy position is that on policy, they're against it. And you only need policy to solve problems. They represent the wealthiest people in the country. They have no problems, the only potential problem they have is their taxes going up. So we need to make sure that people understand that because the people do not agree with them on any of the substance, but we also, as Morgan said, need to deliver. And assuming that something passes they will, but it'll have been slower than it needed to be. We went through endless months of negotiation only to produce a worse bill,

and every component of it is weaker than it could have been. So what gets through will help to address people's problems, but less than it might have. So we could have had an amazing contrast. It could have been six months ago they could have passed this thing and they could have demonstrated, look, you went through four years of Trump, what did they do? They built a bit of wall, they banned a religion, and that was pretty much it. Oh, they also caged some kids, that's true. Now you bring in Biden, we pass COVID aid, and then a couple of months later,

we protect American democracy, and then we pass this social spending bill. They could have done that, they did not do that. They didn't have the leadership in the party, and there were so many status quo Democrats that had no interest in any of this happening, that they just slow down the process, stripped away what made it popular. And that makes it so much more difficult to both actually solve the problem and to maintain your hold on power. Why would the people support them next year if this is all they can deliver at this pace,

shrunk down so much? So last thing for me, at least on this. Can progressives get eight hours on the floor of the house to show you all the polls that indicate that every provision in this bill is intensely popular? including with Republicans, including in red states. Can they show the monsters of the right wing who oppose every popular provision that actually helps the American voter? Can we do that?

No, we're not going to do that. They're going to speak for eight hours and the Democrats are going to be mute. Well, if one side doesn't fight, to Morgan's point, we have no chance of winning. We have no chance of winning if our side doesn't fight back forcefully. You can give that eight hours, you can split it up among people, give it to AOC, give it to Katie Porter, give it to Jamie Raskin, give it to Jamal Bowman, let him go to work, right? Where we have policy. Well, and better yet, or hit the streets, hit the streets, you know, talk about this.

Go to some real people, right? I mean, how many people are sitting around watching what anybody in Congress is talking about on the hill? No, we've got to go to where the people are at. That is how we win. We cannot continue to play that game. We are losing this game because they are making a mockery of government. They don't care. And we have to get directly to the people.

That is the only way that will have any credibility, and at the heart of it is also to what John was saying, being as different as possible in the sense of not being corporate Democrats, not taking money from big pharma. If you're really about everybody having insulin and not dying because of the medical condition, they have no control over, then you don't take money from big pharma and you fight light hell to make sure that insulin is free. This is what we can be, but only if we start electing people who actually care to fight for it. Yeah, so mortgage is running for Senate in Ohio and she's not taking corporate pack money. And obviously that makes a giant, giant, giant difference. And there are other Democrats who are, and they will not be able to fight Republicans. They won't get can't say, hey, why did you take the drug money and vote for higher drug prices? Oh, right. Oops, you took the drug money too.

Morgan's not taking any of that money. Morgan Harper.org. Last two things here, Kevin McCarthy did only make one piece of news there. He said that if the Republicans retake the House, they're going to give committee assignments back to Paul Gossar and to Marjorie Taylor, So the worst people in Congress, they're going to elevate. And Democrats again just can't figure out a way to combat it, oppose it, etc. And I'll give the last word to Jamie Raskin, who is a progressive and who is one of the smarter members of Congress and vice back in his own way. He said, I must admit, Kevin McCarthy has accomplished one thing.

America is no longer awoke. So after an eight- That's not bad. Yeah, after an eight and a half hour incredibly dull speech, that is a fair conclusion. Yeah. All right, one more story. Okay, let's do this. Ohio is following in Texas's footsteps and actually traveling a little bit further in their attempt to effectively nullify women's reproductive rights. They have this House bill 480 that would make abortion at any stage of pregnancy illegal. HB 480 in Ohio goes further than SBA in Texas by criminalizing abortion

after the point of conception, the point when an egg is fertilized. The text of the bill explains that legislators design the law to ensure medical providers make all reasonable attempts to keep a pregnant person and their quote unquote, in their words, unborn child alive using language that shifts how the law interprets when life starts. And so bear in mind, this is also similar in some ways to the Texas law. It's also turning every Karen in Ohio into someone who can sue you if you're even tangentially involved in someone exercising the rights that they've had longer than any of us have been alive. But they're not giving you a few weeks. They're not making it only effectively

impossible for you to exercise this before you'd even know you're pregnant. They're just taking that entire step out and saying the second that there's fertilization, when conception has happened, that's when it becomes illegal. And people can snoop in and they can sue the doctors and the nurses and someone who perhaps escorts a woman into the clinic so that the bloodthirsty protesters don't literally kill her. All of them can now be sued for $10,000 because again, they want our country filled with vigilantes. So the people who are costing the patients cannot be sued, but the people protecting the patients can and will be sued. Just so you understand how perverse this law is. But Morgan Harper is running for Senate in Ohio. So Morgan, what do you

think? Yeah, this is another example of how the GOP in our state legislature are 100% on the side of stripping away all sorts of constitutional rights. And yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of attention paid on Texas because, you know, not only is their state legislature passing bills like this, but they also have a governor that people see as pretty repulsive. We have Mike DeWine, who folks like to think of as pretty reasonable, but then he's overseeing a party that is going even further in its legislation in trying to, you know, get rid of access to abortion altogether.

It is disgusting. The only way that we can do something about it is by codifying Roe v. Wade into law. We need to expand the Supreme Court to make sure that that body is less radicalized. And to do anything right now, we also need to reform and get rid of the filibuster. So the pathway to do something is clear at the federal level. And in Ohio, we desperately need federal action because our Ohio state legislature is not on the side of protecting our rights. Morgan, Ed, do we know if DeWine is going to assign this if it passes? Not sure, not sure. But what's very clear is that, you know, he is also placating a Trumpian base. And as we've talked about all evening, that base will take us into the, the farthest depths of disgusting behavior and trying to not just, not just strip away abortion rights, but make no mistake about it. This is a, this is a gateway to try to just strip away all sorts of other rights that, you know, and try to discriminate against people for all sorts of reasons and unleashed this vigilante culture. So that's the state of affairs in Ohio, it's why we desperately need better federal leadership

because we've probably lost our legislature for the next several years to these types of folks in laws. Yeah, and guys, I understand one more thing about this draconian law. It's worse than Texas because you don't even have six weeks. So as soon as you have theoretical conception, it kicks into effect. So that might actually affect some forms of birth control as well. So we're going so far back now. Now we're back at the, you know that the last time I saw the stat, which was a number years ago during the Sandra Fluck controversy, if you remember that.

And that was because Obamacare had provisions related to birth control. 99% of adult women in America used birth control. And a lot of Republicans are against it. They want to ban it. And this would actually ban a couple of forms of birth control because of when they take effect. So this is, it's totally nuts. Yep. It's American Taliban.

It's really nuts. Yeah, I mean, I talked to so many women, especially in Ohio. I was at a rally in Mason, Ohio with some older women. And they're just in shock that this is where we're at, that we're even having to fight this fight again. And, you know, it's, it's really depressing. But it's why people have to be mobilized right now because yeah, we are under attack. And I do want to shout out the activists and organizers that are doing whatever they can to educate people throughout Ohio on this. We have a lot on the line right now.

All right, well, we do need strong Democratic leaders and strong progressives. Otherwise, you know, same thing will happen in Ohio that happened in Texas. Our side will fold. The Republicans will win. You'll only hear their message. their message, you'll ever hear our message. So that's where we fight back here. Everybody on the show agrees to that for sure. All right, Morgan Harper is running for Senate in Ohio. It's Morgan Harper.org if you want to check out all of her issues and what she stands for. Morgan, you've been amazing. Thank you for joining us again. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And of course, John is the host of Damage Report. Check that out at 1 o'clock Eastern every single day, Monday through Friday. It's a fantastic show. And then when we come back, we've got Jackson Squared and an amazing series of stories. Black Santa's back. Uh-oh. What is right-wing reaction going to be? Peg and Kelly's going to lose it. Yeah, and Republicans look to cancel Sesame Street.

Not joking. We'll be back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen to ad free. Access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to ads. Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.