The Young Turks - Pardon Me, What?

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

Biden should pardon Trump...really? Top US companies admit to hiking prices to pad their profits. Ticketmaster offers to exploit concertgoers more transparently. Intelligence officials say the US has retrieved a craft of non-human origin. Ron Desantis thinks Trump is soft on abortion. Abbott signs the “Death Star” Act that limits municipalities’ ability to self-govern. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), Ramesh Srinivasan (@rameshmedia) and John Iadarola ((@johniadarola) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com 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. Dreamarge, Dreamy, Dreamy, Dreamy, Dreamy, Dreamy, Dreamy, Drop it like it's a UFO. All right, Power Power Panel, Jake, or John Iderlo, of course, hosts of the damage report, and Remesh Sir and Abusson. He is not only a UCLA professor, was the author of Beyond the Valley, how innovators around the world are overcoming inequality and creating the technologies of tomorrow.

Ramesh, good to have you back on. Thank you guys for having me again. Great to see you both. No problem. Great to see you. All right. So it turns out UFOs are real, told you, and a little bit more nuanced than that in this story, but not that much more. And then we'll get into politics.

But first, aliens. Yes. Yes. They say the truth is out there, but today the truth is in here. Oh, damn. And I'm going to reveal it to you. I don't actually really know anything, but we're going to talk about it either way. It's now been well over a week since we were promised that Congress is going to be looking into these claims that have been made recently about UFOs and extraterrestrials and government programs developing advanced weapons.

And yet nothing appears to have been scheduled yet. And so people are left wondering, what is there to these claims that have been made? If you haven't been following this, we're going to catch you up. There's a whistleblower, David Charles Grush, who has a lot of experience in this area. Aerial objects, extraterrestrial objects, and he's revealed quite a bit. He is a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, a veteran of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, as well as the National Reconnaissance Office. He served as the reconnaissance offices representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021.

From late 21 to July 22, he was the NGA's co-lead for UAP, the unidentified aerial phenomena. That's what they're now calling UFOs, or that's what fancy people and ties are calling them, and a representative to the task force. So has a background in this area, and here are the claims that he has made. He said that recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through to the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. is that we believe that they are extraterrestrial because of exotic origin, materials, meta analysis of blah, blah, sciencey stuff.

Now, Grush said that he reported to Congress on the existence of a decades-long, quote, publicly known Cold War, or sorry, unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material. A competition with near peer adversaries over the years to identify UIP crashes and landings and retrieve the material for exploitation, reverse engineering to garner asymmetric national defense advantage. Which are my favorite type of national defense advantages. Anyway, he says that this program has been illegally shielded from proper congressional oversight, and that he's been targeted and harassed because of his investigation. There has been some write-up of this, but as we have talked about over the past week or two,

since the initial claims have been made, not a ton of really high-level national discussion about it. And there are theoretically reasons for that. This person has a lot of experience crush in this area. area. And there are other high profile individuals from the military and from intelligence agencies that have vouched for his experience and integrity. But there are issues in terms of what evidence has been presented. I mean, effectively no specific evidence has been presented. But even to what extent their second or third hand evidence is still very much in the air. So to go back to the intro, would love to find out when Congress is going to do these

investigations, they said they're going to. We've got some updates, but what do you both make of this? Okay, bloop, bloop, bloop, they're here. It's over. Everybody panic. Okay, no, you don't have to panic. And I'll explain why in a second, aliens are more likely to be friendly than you think. So that is just my theory. Okay, so that's a fun one. They look friendly. Look at it. Look at it. Yeah, I mean, geez. Okay, so that is not real footage. We just want to be Now look guys, there's one giant problem here in the evidence, and then I'm going to tell you a number of things that make me think, no, they're definitely here. And then let's talk about what the implications of that are. So number, the giant problem is no one yet in the public has

gotten the secret evidence, right? There's no pictures, it's no video of the craft that, Grush or anyone else is talking about or this potentially several different alien craft that we have apparently captured along with other governments, right? And it is a bit shocking that between the U.S. government and other governments that no pictures of video have leaked. Now here comes a giant butt. Well, on the other hand, this guy's leaking, right? He doesn't have the pictures of the video, but he is telling you, no, I definitely saw it. And everybody that the reporters talk to swear up and down that he's credible and the people he's attached to are very credible storied record in terms of his service to the country, et cetera, et cetera.

So you're imagine these are not like loons, and there are loons in the government, right? There are MAGA and right-wing guys who believe anything. So we have no evidence that this guy is anywhere near that just to be clear. Yeah, no, we definitely don't. And I'm only pointing this out because it seems to be abundantly clear. To be clear, he is not saying that he has seen the craft or the aliens. Yeah, he is saying that there is, there are, they do exist and that they do exist and there are photos and video. But he also has not seen the photos of the video.

Yeah, so he hasn't even seen the evidence of the real object. Well, he just saw it right here on the Young Turks next to you. So I, there you go, worldwide exclusion. I missed it because I was looking at you. Wow, oh well, too bad. Just like Bigfoot. You look away for a second. Okay, now all kidding aside.

So that's an important, important reservation. But remember, it's not like there isn't any video. We've all seen the videos of the unidentified flying objects that are flying way faster and in a way that no human craft that we know of can possibly fly. And that's not conspiracy. That's out in the open. Those videos have come out from the U.S. government before. And Congress is having hearings.

Barack Obama says, something. Okay, now he's not very clear about something. something, but he's heavily hinted at it, right? So when you put all this together, and the most important factor here is without any of that evidence, there was already logic. When you add this stuff in, it makes the logic kind of on a sailboat. Any scientists will tell you, it is a near statistic impossibility for humans to be the only life forms or all the life forms on planet Earth being the only life forms in the universe.

That's near impossible. So, and none of them are smarter than we are? We're a bunch of knuckleheads. We barely came out of the womb, right? And we're all like, wuga, ouga, if I see alien, I smash it. Aye, aye, aye, right? So I imagine in the billions of years that the universe has existed, other life forms have come about on other planets,

and they have advanced further than we have, and hence can do the kind of space travel that would have them come here. That's the logic already. now when you add in the extra evidence, it seems like it would be very surprising if all of these people were making it up and that there were no aircraft that anyone had ever recovered. And I'm going to add one last thing to it. Look, there's tons of conspiracy theories that go around and just because a lot of people say it doesn't mean a damn thing, okay, or doesn't necessarily mean a damn thing. On the other hand, people saying that they saw UFOs, et cetera,

for timing memorial kind of does feel a little bit like black people saying we got beat up by cops timing memorial and no one ever believes them right then one day you go wait what if they were all just telling the truth right and no one ever believed them because like oh yeah the chances they're a UFO I mean somebody could be more advanced than us apes down here can you imagine right yeah I could definitely imagine so I think we're almost there I'm going to tell you why you don't to worry but remesh is smarter than both of us so what do you think well definitely on the topic of aliens i don't claim to be any sort of expert at all but then just sort of checking out the graphics and reading the story it made me think of that movie that spoof on independence

day by tim burton mars attacks do you all remember that movie yep yeah that was just hilarious right so i think i think though you can't you any level of humility or understanding of the nature of the cosmos and I grew up watching Carl Sagan would would be would incline one to recognize that there must be many other forms of life that exist in this universe because we're so infinitesimal I remember that word infinitesimal and so that sense of humility that there are probably many other types of non-carbon based life that exist around you know throughout the universe I think is a is an important sort of recognition in a way that can actually maybe move us human beings out of our anthropocentric mindset toward recognizing something far larger than ourselves.

But in the meantime, I think there are some real turf wars being connected to questions of space. First of all, the privatization of space, right? We see drone operators and the militarization of space, right? Space force, other kinds of ventures, right? So space traditionally for many cultures around the world, including here in Mexico, the now what communities I'm going to visit tomorrow is seen as a commons right spaces like related to our beliefs who we are we are of space we are star dust right in that sense but instead we can actually see political and economic forces looking for new terrains to new terrain to control and extract value out of and that we see from the privatization and so on of space so I think just the the story itself is important in the sense that it can humble us all But I think we also need to look at who is or is not included in our ventures in space. And also recognize as black peoples have been telling us for many years from Gil Scott Aaron to more recently a tribe called Quest, two of my favorite musicians.

Black people aren't really part of the space discussion. We're stuck here, as they say, are whitey on the moon to quote Gil Scott Heron right there. Can I give you a little bit more updates, including the dead body of the alien? All right, hold on, we have that coming up. Go ahead, John. Well, it turns out that in his story, the dead bodies are not only aliens, they're humans as well. So I want to give you just a few of the additions that were made by, Grush in an interview with News Nation.

So he stated that the vehicles were, quote, not necessarily extraterrestrial, but by that he does not mean that they necessarily were just from Earth. He believes that they might have come from another dimension, stating, quote, as somebody who studied physics, where maybe they're coming from a different physical dimension as described in quantum mechanics. Also possible, it's outside of my level of knowledge about any of that, although I have watched a lot of Star Trek. But he also hinted that some of the alien beings were malevolent and had even killed humans.

He implied that there is some kind of secret agreement between the government and aliens and that people have been murdered to protect the secret. So look, all of that is based on what we know about Earth governments plausible. They would definitely do a deal behind our backs for their own personal gain or whatever. And they would definitely kill people to cover up. I have no doubt about that. It just does really seem like it is a very long time horizon for like nobody from any of these governments came out with like undeniable evidence or anything. You have these like trading back and forth of power in the United States government. I know that we understand that there's not necessarily a huge distinction between some of those governments even when the party switches.

But also there's there's the question of motivation. So if we believe that the aliens exist, which I do, I don't doubt whatsoever. that they exist somewhere, but somewhere is super big, and time is super long. I mean, it's entirely possible that, you know, like countless trillions of civilizations developed and then died off four billion years ago. And everything is just so big, and the timeline is so long that it's not just that alien life has to exist, it has to be close, and it has to be at the same time as you. And so presumably it is based on what we're we're seeing here. So then they come and they like hover over a cornfield. They crash a lot,

by the way. Apparently there's crashing everywhere. They're killing some humans, but only I guess a few isolated ones. Like what are they doing here? They seem pretty disinterested. And we only care insofar as we can take their technology and build something out of it. But is there anything that we've built in the last 50 years that is such a crazy leap forward that it had to have come from a a UFO, and in the last few decades, we've barely even done a space travel ourselves. So where are the advantages coming from all this equipment that we've recovered? We barely still have the space station. We're relying on billionaires, I guess, to maybe go kind of in the atmosphere and then back down.

Why aren't we halfway to Pluto at this point? Yeah, well, so let me tackle all of that. So first of all, look, these different witnesses say that Grush is unassailable, but you know, you read some of those comments that I think slightly assailable, right? Without knowing anything else, but the shootouts between the aliens and the humans seems very unlikely. So and remember, he hasn't personally seen any of this. So I, that's the part where I go, ah, and then in a different interview he talked about how

they had also recovered the dead bodies of the pilots of the alien aircraft. Again, if you haven't seen it, how do you know it? Maybe he saw the documents. So I'm trust me, just don't take this at face value like, oh, it's over, right? Yeah, I think he's definitely telling the truth. This is definitely the case. It's just we're talking about odds and likelihood, etc. And we say no one's leaked in that's surprising except for the fact that he just leaked and and they did have hearings before, etc. So, So it's, there's plenty of information on both sides. And I'm going to clarify this, even though it's hilarious.

None of the videos and pictures we showed you are real, okay? Because in this day and age, you never know. And I did say there is a real video and there is, but those weren't it, okay? And so, okay. Pretty high death. Why do I think aliens wouldn't attack us? Because we evolved in a very specific way here on Earth. Evolution is real, right?

and the kind of apes we are are territorial. So like our cousins, the chimpanzees, who we share 99% of our DNA with, when they get to a part of the woods that they would like to take control over, they take control over it. And they're very territorial about it. And if other, even other chimpanzees get into the area,

they will attack and they will protect the resources that they have. That's the kind of being we are as well. We're very territorial. So we assume when we project that the alien life forms that we have no literally earthly idea about or non-earthly idea about, we're like, oh, they're going to attack us. No, no, that is very unlikely that they would have evolved in the same way that we did. We don't even know if they're carbon-based. You think they're going to attack us like a bunch of monkeys? No, we're the apes, not them.

Okay, so like that, and then, oh, there's some, the conspiracy there's like, you're coming here because they need to harvest us. They didn't evolve on this planet. There's a near 0% chance that they could consume us. They would have consumed the things that they evolved consuming on their planet for whatever they consume for energy. We don't know that it's even other life forms, right? The idea that they could come on a planet they didn't evolve on and think that the animals there were. would be yummy. To say that that is unlikely is, is, it just doesn't do it justice.

Very, very, very unlikely, okay? So don't panic about aliens and UFOs, et cetera, but it is super interesting. And I would add one more thing to what Rema said, which is, and it relates to what John was talking about at the end, don't worry, John, we're gonna look at everything and discover everything. The minute we find very, very valuable minerals on other like asteroids, meteors, planets, et cetera, in which case Elon and Bezos and the others are going to do a mad rush there. The U.S. government's going to say whoever gets their first owns it. Okay. And that's usually what we do in America. And then we'll start to own space and planets and it'll be a wonderful

mess. Yeah. Yeah. Can I, I'll say one quick thing. which is that I think when we talk about space or even aliens or other forms of life, it's partly allegorical. It's partly like how we may want to think of ourselves and what we are and who we are. And I liked that you mentioned Star Trek earlier, John, because that's one vision of what life could look like with our species in relation to other species or more generally the cosmos, more federation based, more dialogue based, more communion based. Just like we could have we could also be we're pretty close in our DNA to bonobos who resolve their disputes through sexuality rather than violence like the chimpanzees.

So I think just as we look at stories like this, we have an opportunity to cast a type of mirror back on ourselves and make decisions about how we want to be and who we want to be as a species more largely. And I think all of this is very relevant given the climactic challenges and the the whole discussion of the Anthropocene and all of that. Yeah, and Ramesh is right. The bonobos are also 99%. of our DNA, slightly variation, obviously, somewhere between the chimpanzees and the bonobos, and they do resolve things through sex. That might explain the probes that people have talked about in their abduction stories. Yeah, I'm kidding. Okay, yes. I'm not about the bonobos, but about the probes. No, that's true. We looked into it. I'm going to end this with two of my fears.

One that I just developed, thanks to Ramesh, actually. Ramesh, please don't say anything more factual about the bonobos because the Republicans are going to try to boycott them or something if they find out. They're woke monkeys with their sexuality. But anyway, my other fear is, so we were talking about Elon Musk and Bezos and all that. And the reason they become so notable in space travel, space travel is, you know, it's very expensive. So only the very expensive can afford to engage in it. And only like the richest jerks would want to individually do it because they have something to prove and everything. So what if aliens are like us in that way, too?

What if the only aliens that travel here are like rich alien a-holes? Like alien Bezos is the only one. And it's like he finally comes out of the ship and he's just a jerk and he's cringy. He uses the like the same crying emoji every time. If I was the president, I'd say no vacancy. No vacancy. Please go back home. He flatly stated that he will give all of his money to his. for-profit space company, which is called Blue Origin, he being Jeff Bezos.

So that says everything we need to know. That's interesting. Yeah. Anyway, and I think the aliens are just waiting for Trump to win again. So they could finally land and go take us to your leader. This is going to be easy. Way easier than we expected. We're going to take our first break. When we come back, more aliens after this.

All right back on T. Yank, John Ramesh and Nikki Canning, Nikki just joined. We appreciate it. They hit the join button below the video. That's cute and beautiful. so you can click on it and become one of the young Turks help us bring out honest reporting to this country and to the rest of the world. That was what the convention was about that I can't tell you about. Okay, John. Yeah, okay. Well, you know what?

I think you put in a long week of work at a conference that totally happened. So we should reward you with a story that I think you're going to enjoy quite a bit. We have no idea at this point if Donald Trump is going to face. any legal consequences in terms of jail time for the many charges that he's facing. There's a lot of different outs that he has. He could become president and pardon himself. Some of the jurors, you know, could be big pro-Trump people and they could go his way. He could be innocent, I suppose. But what if there was one other way that he could be saved?

What if he doesn't have to pardon himself? What if Joe Biden just does it for him? I was, I think, quite a bit persuaded by something I read the Washington Post. You take a look at this, arguing that that's what should happen. Biden should pardon Trump, really? And you know it's a good point that you're making when you have to put the really afterward. But no, they're making the case. It's not just Geraldo anymore.

Now it's in the pages of the Washington Postop, Ed section. And the entire thing's amazing. You should read the entire thing, but we're going to give you a little sampling of some of the arguments that are made. Because remember, they're trying to convince Democrats to be okay with this, the idea of Biden saving Donald Trump. So it starts with, in his 2020 victory speech, Joe Biden declared that, quote, to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow, and a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America. And they go on to say, if he wants to deliver on his promise to heal the country, he could do so with one action, pardon Donald Trump. That's the action that will bring us all together and heal the great divides that we're experiencing.

They say the threshold for the sitting president's administration to indict the leading candidate of the opposing party should be extraordinarily high. High enough to mitigate the suspicion held by 80% of Republicans and almost half the nation per ABC News, Ipsos polling, that these charges are politically motivated. Indeed, millions of Americans believe that our legal system is being weaponized against Trump and, by extension, against them. Millions will see Trump's prosecution as illegitimate and any conviction as unjust that will further erode public confidence in our judicial system and the principle of equal justice under law. There are a couple of other points we make that we will get to. But why don't we start with that? The idea that you have to pardon him because if you convict him, his base will think that that's unfair, when the reason that they'll think it's unfair is because Trump and Republicans keep telling them that it's unfair. It's not like they went to the library and read a bunch of books and came to that conclusion.

They have been sold for years that there should be no consequences for literally anything. Pardoning him would take away the consequences, so they would seem to be right at that point. So do you find that to be persuasive that because so many people will never accept that this is legitimate, no matter what comes out, what evidence he could be on tape. Doesn't matter that Biden should pardon him. Yeah, that's why I thought OJ should have been pardoned too. too. I mean, a lot of people didn't accept that verdict, but obviously it was true. Well, in that case, they didn't have to pardon him. But I'm sure that these same people would

have made the argument had he been convicted. A lot of people don't think he was guilty, so they should be pardoned. No, of course, it's an absurd standard. I'm going to come back to it. So, look, when he says it's a time to heal, I think what he means is H-E-E-L. Right. So don't get him wrong. He's saying that Biden shouldn't pardon him in his next term, if it gets to that point as a way of healing the country after the election, he's saying Biden should pardon him now. No, no, hard pass. So it doesn't, the reason that the right wing is going to this is because there's no defense

of Donald Trump. They've now tried it all over television, and it's getting humiliating. And they go to the double standard first, like, oh, yeah, we do about healing. And then Joe Biden, the Corvette, and the Mike Pence and stuff. He had a couple of papers and stuff. Yeah, what about that? They go to that because they can't defend Donald Trump. He definitely did it.

He's on tape admitting he did it. His excuses are I laser-eyed it. If I just hear the papers rustling, it's declassified. None of these things are remotely true when you go to court. You can't possibly say that because you get laughed out of court and into prison. right? So they got nothing left. So they're like, well, the Democrats are super weak and their leaders are super dumb. Maybe if we just tell the Biden, hey, the really classy bipartisan thing to do, Joe, would be to pardon him. And I don't think that that's a crazy strategy. I mean,

I would be, look, is Joe Biden going to pardon him now? No, I don't believe that he's, even Joe Biden is that mental about bipartisanship, right? But after, if he wins another term, which again, is a fantastical idea. I don't think he has any chance of winning another term. But if he did, would he consider pardoning Trump then? If you think he wouldn't, you don't know Joe Biden at all. Joe Biden can't wait to pardon Trump. But doing it before the election is even beyond his weakness.

I don't even think he could heal that. much. I'm gonna come back to the 80% of Republicans in a second, but first or match. Well, yeah, I mean, I've been watching your coverage and you all discussed in great detail how Biden sold out in a way any sort of real, you know, progressive values or the progressive base with the debt ceiling discussion, right? So, you know, here's someone who is willing to sort of capitulate before actually holding any grounds or necessarily having any leverage on, you know, for the most part in during this administration. So in a sense, it wouldn't be surprising in that sense. But it also allows me the opportunity to ask a question that I don't see

discussed very often in relation to this Trump indictment, which is in this country, a felon can be elected president, but a felon can't vote, which is really interesting if you juxtapose those two together. I think only in two states can a felon vote. There's some period of time after the conviction that that they could, that there's some period by which they could not vote. So I think it's interesting because I think what has not occurred has been a clear differentiation about how and in what ways Trump has abused his own corruption relative to the corruption of the leading Democrats, right? So that's why, you know, I've been watching a lot of coverage of Trump supporters saying, well, this is a double standard because, you know, Hillary and

Biden and et cetera Biden are also corrupt in various ways. But the ways, this is a markedly different and a markedly escalated form of corruption that Trump has engaged in here. And I don't think that's been sufficiently explained, certainly not to the wider American public. But I also think it's very telling because if Trump is able to get away with all this, and I would say that's entirely possible in a lot of different ways, including being convicted and pardoning himself, he will be able to basically double down or triple down on on what he's already showed and been very clear about in these couple revealing moments in his in his own political history where he gets on the stage with all the other Republicans that says I bought you out. I bought you out. I bought you out. And I bought Democrats out. That's what I do. I buy people out because the entire system is corrupt as you've talked about a lot, jenk over the years. Or even this kind of I can kill someone on Fifth Avenue, whatever that comment was, right? So I think there's a, so what needs to be done is a precedent that shows justice actually matters. shows how this is a violation of justice.

And in the other cases, it's not as egregious or it's markedly different. And I think if that doesn't occur, it's going to have the disastrous effect that, and that's likely to occur, that the Washington Post, you know, op-ed, which I thought was over the top is describing. But if it, but the key is the discussion around how Trump is particularly egregious because it's all personal for him. It's all narcissistic and he doesn't give a damn about the law at all. It's just all about him. One solution to that is to call a wambulence. So just because you're wrong doesn't mean we should appease you. If 80% of Republicans thought that 2 plus 2 equals 5, which at this point there's an excellent chance they do.

Does that mean we change it to 5? No, it's still 4. I mean, what if 80% of Republicans said the Unabomber should have been like, I know he committed suicide recently? But by the way, lately, he had actually been gaining a followership among the right wing. before he came into suicide because those are the times we live in. What if 80% of them were like the unit bomber should be let go? Are we supposed to let him go?

What if they said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be let go? It's okay, 80% of them said it. Who cares what they said? That's not a thing we do in America where we run a poll and we're like, okay, but what do Republican voters think about this criminal? That's not a part of the judicial process. And besides which, what would happen if you did that? You know what would happen?

They would immediately go, we knew it, we were right. it, we were right. See, even Biden had to let him go because it was a witch hunt. Thank you, Biden, for finally admitting that you're a crooked a criminal and a witch hunter. 100% of that 80% will say that. Okay. So how would that do any healing? That wouldn't do any healing at all. And yes, obviously the point that the John and Ramesh are making this is the most important one. It would also be a giant green light, a blinking green light, even though that's such a thing doesn't exist, saying break the law, especially if you're a Republican. Members are writing in now. I love doing the show of members. Here, I'll read you one real

quick. Nevinix says, if the roles were reversed, do you think a Republican president pardons a Democratic former president? You have your answer. Of course a Republican wouldn't even consider it. Like imagine, Trump gets in, he's like, you know what, I'm going to pardon under Biden and Joe Biden, assuming that they came, whatever, right? Assuming that they came up with evidence they don't have on Joe Biden at least. And so, no, they would never do that. They would never even contemplate it. But notice that the Washington Post chose to run this op-ed because they think, no, the Democrats would contemplate it. You just have to suggest it. And the Democratic leadership is so pathetically weak that they would think about breaking the

rules to help their opponents. Yeah. Well, look, both of you seem to not be. buying this yet. And so I apologize, I'm supposed to be giving it. It's best chance to convince you. There's just a few more quick arguments. Let's see if this wins over either of you. A Trump trial would be one of the most divisive events in the history of our republic. It would set a new precedent and create enormous pressure on the next Republican president to go after President Biden, his family, and other Democrats. I'll pause for a second to say, and that would be flipping the script. They haven't been willing to investigate Biden up until this point. There was nothing on Hillary Clinton, on Bill Clinton, nothing like that. This would change everything. And to remedy what harm?

Despite Trump's best efforts to obstruct them, federal agents recovered the documents they unlawfully possessed. And there's nothing in the indictment to indicate evidence that the intelligence in Trump's possession was obtained by foreign governments or intelligence services. That last bit is true. Before that is not. There are still documents. The document that he showed off at the New Jersey Club or whatever, they don't have that yet. There are still very likely documents that we don't have. Anyway, he closes by saying, in pardoning Trump, Biden would be a true statesman. Sparing the country, the ordeal of a trial would go a long way towards repairing the nation's frayed political fabric. He would display the kind of leadership

that has been missing in Washington, and he would drive Trump crazy. Yeah, Trump would hate it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trump would hate not going to prison. Oh, that would stick in his craw. But this is maybe even better. With one action, Biden would eliminate the next. narrative of a deep state conspiracy that is helping to fuel Trump's political comeback. You sort of already hinted at that, but yeah, that would be it. Trump and right-wing media would just be defenseless. There would be nothing they could pivot to to make their followers still believe that there's a deep state. It would confirm to the QAnon people that all of it's true.

No matter how close he comes to oblivion, I guess it was all part of a plan because now he's a free man again. Like, come on, this is either the greatest lack of imagination in history or more likely, it's just wishful thinking. That's all it is. Well, no, it's trolling Biden. And Biden is a fool. And so it's not inconsistent. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options.

to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. It's believable that he falls for the trolling. I mean, if it runs in the Washington Post, it will definitely get Biden's attention. And his little bunny ears will go up.

Like, oh, do I get to make Republicans happy? Oh, that's my favorite thing in the world is making Republicans happy. So it's not, not inconceivable. I'm going to go through those courts a real quick. One, he says, you know, this could be the most divisive trial. I have an easy answer. Then tell Trump to plead guilty.

Why don't we run that op-ed in the Washington Post? Then we would get rid of the divisiveness. Trump says, yeah, I did it. I'm a criminal. He goes to jail. There's no divisiveness left. He's the one creating the divisiveness. Number two.

No, Jake, write that op-edge and submit it to the Washington Post. I'm sure they'll carry it. That's balance. Right, right. They'll want that balance right away. Because I hear that they care a lot about neutrality and balance. That's why they're writing progressive columns and opeds there all the time. Okay, and then he said, well, you know, if you did this, it would take away the incentive for Republicans to lock up former presidents like Joe Biden.

That's just a threat, guys. He's saying, if you don't let go of Trump, if we win, we're going to unfairly in prison as many of views we possibly can. Okay, I'm not moved by that threat. In fact, that makes me want to do the rule of law more. And John is right. Oh, what? You're going to start investigating Biden too late. You're three years too late.

And on Hillary Clinton, remember what they said about her. All the way back in 2016, they chanted, lock her up. Lock her up. Now all of a sudden, you don't want to lock up political opponents? Oh, please. Please, Republicans can't wait to lock up political opponents. And in their case, for absolutely no reason. And then the last one was my favorite, though.

He's like, you know what would make Trump really upset if you just let him off scot-free? Man, that would really get under his skin. You ought to try it. And this is really an insult to Biden's intelligence. And I'm not sure that they're wrong on that count. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. I think that when we look at leading elites, Democratic politicians, they are often

governed by two major values. One is they play scared. They want to avoid whatever is considered most calamitous to them. So that's why we see all this critique, for example, of Brother West running in the People's Party, though I personally would think it would be great if he ran as a Democrat. So he could face off with Biden and if Biden ever wanted to do a debate. And the other value is one of not really having values and being sort of caught into in Neal liberal corruption, you know, cycles. So if you want to do healing, you really want to do healing and you want to do healing in relation to Trump supporters, you go to Trump supporters and you talk with them about their grievances and what you're actually going to do to support them,

which is really addressing working class large-scale economic issues and jobs and the economy more generally. And, you know, the best, the best attack dog on Trump right now is Chris Christie. And I think that's absolutely absurd that the Democratic Party can step up and actually show how different and how violating Trump is compared to their own elitist transgressions. I watched the pod save the whatever it's called the country interview with HRC last night that made me want to vomit. It was just so snooty and just thumbing the nose down. Like, I'm better than all of you. You've got to stop the elitism, get in line with working people, including Trump supporters, want to do real deep healing, recognize the racial and other forms of violence that have led to where we're at today. We don't need to be guilty about it.

We just need to recognize recognizing history allows us to move on on almost a psychic level. So there's a lot of healing that Joe Biden could represent. The question is, is he's actually going to stand up for such healing or not. Yeah, no, he's not. Okay, I answered it. That was quick. Okay, he's not going to do anything for the rest of his political career. Okay, we've got to take a break.

When we come back, we've got more important news for you guys. Come right back. John's got stories. I do. Here it is. Starting in September, Live Nation will automatically list all prices up front for all tickets to events and more than 200 venues of its own benefiting over 30 million customers. And we'll give customers the option of an all in price for all other tickets.

sold on its platform. So right there you hear what seems like good news, a good development from President Biden. People have been very furious with Ticketmaster and other ticketing services over the past year. And he's saying there that now they have all voluntarily agreed. And you know it's good because they volunteer to do it to disclose junk fees up front. So rather than seeing a price for a ticket and then you go through an interminable process to finally get to when you can buy it. to owe it's three times expensive because they tacked on a bunch of nonsense. Now you'll know about the nonsense up front.

And that is great because people don't like that and they also don't like when tickets cost a lot. The issue is that none of this necessarily drops the price of the tickets. It could. There could be behavioral things where it makes people more hesitant because maybe they hide the junk fees so that by the time you get to them you have a feeling of ownership sort of vested in that product. But there is nothing that requires them to lower.

their fees to eliminate their fees, it starts to make you wonder, like no wonder they volunteered to do this in the first place. And we're gonna talk through some of the history of this and why we've gotten to this point where Ticketmaster and Live Nation and Sea Geek and all of them feel pressured enough that they would be willing to engage in this with Biden. But I will also say that it kind of reminds me of the Republican student debt plan that came out this week. They had four different bills that come together and they are the Republicans reason that Biden does not need to cancel debt. And they almost all are like this. It's like, you'll know more about how much college costs. But like this, none of it cuts the cost of any

of it. It's all just disclosure. It's not actual regulations that make things more affordable. What do you think? Yeah, real quick, when they say they volunteered for it, that means it doesn't have any teeth. There's no regulation that corporations voluntarily sign on to, that actually checks them. Otherwise, they'd fight it to no end. They'd send in lobbyists and lawyers. We've seen this movie thousands of times. And any time that they volunteered to do something,

it's usually basically a disguise that they put on, a veneer. So it seems like they did something. And Biden gets credit from the mainstream media. Oh, congratulations, historic agreement with Ticka, Limeznor, lineation, et cetera, and everybody chuckles all the way to the bank, okay? So now the second thing is, it kind of proves that there's an oligopoly because, like, normally the way that competition and free markets would work is, hey, if Ticketmaster is putting on too many fees and charges that it's too expensive, well, I'll go to Live

Nation. Well, if Live Nation is doing, I'll go somewhere else, and et cetera, oh, there's only a couple that are available, and they somehow agree that the fees should be about to same. That's why we need the government to do something because we've got an oligopoly, right? And that's when the government is supposed to actually step in and regulate because it's obvious that the free market is not working in that case and competition has been reduced. And that's when you get Democrats into office to say, don't worry, we're not going to do that. We're just going to have them volunteer for something that's usually meaningless. Ramesh. Yeah, I'll never forget a couple of the concerts I went to back in the day where the artists specifically said

we're not going to work with the ticket masters of the world. And that's just a that's just a reminder. So I think of groups like I saw Prince back in the day only charged $20, including any fees. I used to watch Fugazi back in the day when I was like a punk rocker. And it's a punk, all was a punk, you know. So you know, these are intermediaries and they're like platforms, They're not very dissimilar, they being like Tickenmaster Live Nation from an Airbnb or any other platform, right? The value is provided by the artist and the venue. We pay for it. They are in the middle, a corrupt intermediary, I would say corrupt because they extract so much out of the equation. And so disclosing to one, oh, actually, this is how much it actually costs is better than nothing,

but it doesn't make it affordable at all, as John you pointed out, right? And so if we really want change, then we have to think about the affordability and shifting the economy so we don't have corrupt intermediaries hogging up all the money, grabbing all the data when it comes to tech, you know, kind of intermediaries, which all of these are increasingly in that space, and hiring nobody and owning almost nothing and providing almost no service at all other than simply, you know, providing us a digital ticket and e-ticket, you know, if you will. So, you know, I think that right now there's a huge opportunity to actually get to the bottom of it, right? The pressure should be on Biden to deal with this ending moratorium on student debt to actually fight like hell for at least his fairly milk toast plan as opposed to the plan that I supported, which would be canceling student debt as per the debt collective and other groups. So maybe better than nothing, but transparency, which this is an even deep transparency into their business practices, transparency. transparency is the bare minimum of a democratic accountability, and you're totally right. This is oligopoly. This is not a free market, let alone anything that may be more public interest. And the real reason we don't have really robust regulation is because our regulators

are corrupted by these industries, right? So that's why you see Biden, everyone like holding hands, chilling, hanging out with that nice like campfire setting, saying that this is our great announcement and he's going to take political credit for it. I just don't think it's going to make much of a difference for what really matters. Well, you know, we'll know, we'll be able to look back in a couple of years and see if it made literally any difference, maybe it will, maybe it won't, but by then we'll have already had all the time necessary for the political value to have been extracted from this. Because despite this having nothing baked into it that lowers the cost and it's

seeming totally uncertain whether it will, there's already headlines like in the LA Times to jump ahead of graphic four, how Biden and Taylor Swift beat Ticketmaster. Yeah, yeah, I bet. I bet the board of Ticketmaster is just like weeping today. We've been crushed. There's nothing left to us. Come on, how are you guys going to decide that they beat? They did it voluntarily.

Yeah, so I got to say one more thing about that. Look, guys, this is what corporate media is a part of their job. So the way that every one of these dramas unfolds, whether it's debt ceiling or Ticketmaster or fill in the blank, okay? So the republicans ask for something incredible and extreme usually this not in this case is corporations that are just doing something that's extreme enough that the populace is agitated by greatly agitated by it but something extreme and then the Democrats come along go oh no not on our watch and then the Democrats do something incredibly weak and soft and go problem solved when actually the problem is not at all solved they're playing good cop bad cop and and then if you know that and you watch like the young turks, you go, wait a minute, my prices aren't any lower, I'm mad, right? But if you watch corporate media, which is both mainstream media and right wing media, they're like, boy, Biden, he crushed the kid mass. And right wing media might paint it as like, can you believe how much he intruded into poor

ticket masters right to corporate, okay? They could corporate all day long and made this could affect their profits at some future unknown date, even though it doesn't today, right? But they'll all be like, Biden, what a world beater. that it looks like he has the appearance of having done something. And then everyone forgets that there was a corporate problem in the first place. And then corporate media gets a giant check from an advertiser. Maybe sometimes involved in that particular story.

And then all of a sudden they pass the money around. They're incredibly happy. And you're paying the same exact price for that ticket. Yeah. You know what I call it, Jenk? It's a Trojan horse move. It's very similar to, I don't know how if you all read that book, Winners Take All. It's a really good book. It basically says how the system, like those that are right essentially behind the tax code,

that essentially means that they don't pay any taxes, bazillionaires, right? And stave off any form of regulation, have nice foundations. And sometimes they do a couple good things. But what that does is it redirects attention from the actual structural bases by which injustice and inequalities are amplified and generated, right? So now with these headlines and clickbait and all of us oversaturated with information, I'm going to be like, oh, that's cool. Biden, you know, took on Ticketmaster, maybe pick up a few progressive votes. But in reality, what's actually occurring is perpetuating

a particular type of toxic extractive business model. We do have to move on to another topic. But if you want to find out more about this, I have an op-ed. I'm writing. It's called Biden should pardon Ticketmaster. Really? It's going to be a banger. That one might get published, actually. Yeah, that would definitely get published. I got to go. Anyway, Why don't we talk about something different, but not that different. We're going to stick on corporate corruption for just a little bit. Inflation has been terrible over the past few years. Regular products that you probably have to buy services you have to pay for,

routinely getting jacked up prices over the past few years. And there were a lot of different explanations as to why prices had to rise so much. Progressives might say that it was just a behavior that the corporations wanted to engage in, but you were crazy if you said that, don't say that. And you were told by the media, no, it was COVID or it was supply chain issues or the sun got in their eyes or they're allergic to gluten. I don't know. They came up with a lot of different stuff. Now fast forward to the present day, they've gotten the profits off of the jacked up prices for a few years. And corporations feel freed up to finally just admit what progressors were saying all along.

We made more money because we raised the prices. That's all it is. And oh, by the way, they're not going down. We have multiple corporations that are just so happy. Now, they're not going to the media necessarily to say this, but they're telling their shareholders. And so Kimberly Clark is a multinational that owns Huggies and Kleenex as well as a lot of other stuff. During their Q1, 2023 earnings call, the CFO revealed that, quote, pricing has continued to be a big driver behind our top line growth over the last three quarters. The CEO bragged about operating in, quote, essential categories that have less elasticity.

By the way, in 2022, their net income increased 6.3% year over year to nearly $2 billion. They were able to reward their shareholders with $1.7 billion in stock buybacks and dividends. Isn't that always the way that it works? Another corporation, Tyson owns Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farms, those sorts of things. Their executives touted, quote, significant pricing power of our portfolio with a year-of-year increase of 7.6%. They also saw additional billions in earnings, and then they also spent more on stock buybacks, but only a bit. They only increased it by 948.5%. So again, like we could go through other corporations. It's all out there. They have to report

this eventually. But isn't it frustrating that like the good progresses. Bernie Sanders, in the moment, we're talking about this. Gas is not higher just because of Ukraine. is not higher just because of the issue with the trains. The prices are higher because they're choosing to make the prices higher. And as the profit report started to come in, that should have been the end of the myth. You can say that the price has to go high because the costs are higher. But if your profit is going up by a massive amount, then the game is done at that point. But the issue is all of the media outlets who had a duty to make sure that people understood this is why it was happening,

the people who own those own stock in these companies, they wanted the price to be jacked up because they'll make more money off of it. And a rich person does not spend a thousand times as much as you do on gas and chicken. It's a very minor thing for them. But when you're paying every dollar that you make, it's a big deal to regular people. So I actually think this is not as big of a problem for corporations as it is of corporations as it is of the media and politicians. So here's what I mean by that.

Look, I was talking to a small business owner that I know and I said any chance that inflation goes down at some point. And he said, no, because look, we already raised prices and you could fill in the blank on who we is, right? And it's pretty much almost all the companies, now it's breaking news when a company has not raised prices, like Costco didn't raise prices, and that was a big deal. We didn't raise prices on membership, not a big deal, but I am saying it, and I feel good about that. And so it was a choice and we chose not to, and other bigger companies chose not to as well. So, but once you raise the prices and people pay it, there is no business that's going

to bring the prices back down, okay? That's just the reality, let's move on, okay? You're not going to be able to fix that. So now that turns to the issue of these, of the media and politics. So saying that inflation is real, true, the media should say that. What's causing it? Well, when they say things that aren't true about what's causing it, that's a lot. a big problem. Now, when it comes to COVID and supply chain issues, those were real,

they did partially cause it. So I'm not saying don't say those. I'll come back in a second. But there was one thing that definitely did not cause it, which the media usually gave the top culpability to, wages. And we showed it to you here on the Young Turks. We showed you MSNBC anchors and Fox News anchors and CNN anchors. And they all magically agreed. The guys who are not supposed to agree, they all agreed. The real problem was wages were too high, and that's what was causing inflation. And that is just not true. It's an atrocious lie, and it's meant to keep your wages as low as possible while they're jacking up the profits.

So it's one thing to make extra profits, brag about it in your investor calls, and then send the loot back to your shareholders. That's partly how things work, right? It's another thing for media to come and say, no, the CEOs who chose to do that, it's not them at all. It's the workers, that's the problem. Their wages are too high. And look, you go back and watch the tapes, okay? It's not just Fox News. Stephanie Ruhl did that.

Almost every cable news anchor blamed, and CNBC 24-7 blamed higher wages. Now, have any of them come back around and go, oh, well, now the data's out conclusively? No question about it. It wasn't the wages. It was profit taking. It was corporate Americas and multinational corporations decisions. I got news for you. CNBC did that story zero times. Ramesh. Yeah, yeah, very consistent with that. It's striking that there's never any public analysis or disclosure or oversight around how much actually costs increased due to the supply chain or other sorts of structural issues or the pandemic, right? Because what we do know, as you both just said, is that profits amidst this all are at record highs, stock buybacks are at highs, right, as you reported on, and bonuses for execs are at possibly record highs as well. So I think it's pretty, it's pretty telling, right? It's an excuse. It's an excuse to engage in more disastrous actions toward workers and consumers. Right? Inflation isn't some actual magic economic structural outcome. It's a function of choices that corporations make around how much to sell things for for

their own purposes. So if there is an excuse to hike up gas prices, the fossil fuel companies will do that. And the response to that is pretty much nothing by the Democrats because they're not willing to really address the real issues, though some like Elizabeth Warren and Sanders do point out the correct, you know, who's actually the culprits, but it doesn't get to the mainstream media at all, as you just said. And then in addition to that, we don't really see any sort of disclosure or analysis around how this is actually able to create and generate even greater corruption for corporate execs and generate a response that is populist in its nature by the

Republicans saying, oh, well, we're just going to drill more, destroy the planet, destroy local communities poison people and have energy independence because that's the only other palatable outcome for the fossil fuel industry, right? Because then it's like more business, right? More business. So actually the master are the corporations. And so I took this story and applied it to the fossil fuel industry because I think they're the most egregious of all. Yeah, so I'll end on that. Look, instead of fighting back against the higher gas prices by pointing out corporate profit taking in the oil industry, fossil fuel industry, which Biden could have easily done. Not only Bernie Sanders, but Roe Kana and other progressives, did a great

job of pointing it out and proving their case. Biden chose not to do that. Democratic leadership chose not to do that. And, you know, they tell you, oh, my God, Democrats have to make a big difference. Do they? Because those same companies get over $20 billion in subsidies every year from us. They take money out of all of our taxes, out of our checks, and give it to ExxonMobil is some of the most profitable companies in the world. How come when Democrats get in charge, whether it's Clinton, Obama, or Biden, they don't get rid of these subsidies, some of them which have been around for over 100 years where they're giving money to the most profitable companies that don't need it at all for no goddamn reason. And they take our hard-earned money

to do it. How come they know? never do that, because they're all so corrupt. Do not believe the mainstream media when they tell you, oh, Republicans, when they take money, that's terrible. When Democrats take it, they're angels. It doesn't affect them at all. We have, they never regulate corporations and we have all these billions of dollars in giveaways and subsidies because, oh, golly, gee, there was nothing Democrats could do. No, they're choosing not to do anything about that or inflation in regards to what corporations are doing, because they're funded by those same corporations. That's on this reality-based earth, not on the alternate

reality that Washington and mainstream media live in, where Democrats are angels and unaffected by all that cash that they get. Okay, we are way out of time. Everybody check out Ramesh's book Beyond the Valley. Everybody check out Damage Report. And we're going to come back with another fantastic hour in just a minute. 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 Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Yugar, and I'll see you soon.