The Young Turks - Part 3: Bernie’s Birthday Bash

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Part 3: TYT's Bernie Sanders Birthday Bash where we celebrate the progressive movement and take a look at Bernie in the early years, his time in Congress, and his legacy. Hosted by Cenk Uygur, Emma Vigeland, and Ben Dixon. Guests will include Nina Turner and Brianna Wu.  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. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you'll open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business.

Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. All right, back on the Young Turks, Bernie Birthday Bash. So we were trying to make it the 40,000 in this special, I don't think we're making it. We're always Cuban it real on the Young Turks. Right now we're 36,571, and we'd be lucky to make it to 37,000. But if you get help, that would be amazing, t.yt.com slash go. Look, sometimes I refer to us as the mother ship. We've launched a decent amount of progressive careers here in the last 18 years.

And I'm awfully proud of that. And nobody can dig that away. Even if something goes wrong, those folks are in the universe and there's nothing you can do about it. The TYT cinematic universe, the TYT progressive universe, something along those lines. So I hope we can do it for another 18 years. I hope that we are here in 2022 and 2024. But my greatest hope is that we actually help to bring you change, the change that you actually need in your lives like healthcare for everyone, college for everyone, and I could go on and on and in fact, I might quote you guys on your priorities soon in a second.

But speaking of quoting you guys, let me do it again, let me give you some names. And then we're gonna give our special guests that I've been teasing. So share the stream if you can before we get there. Okay, William L. in Goldsboro, North Carolina give $27, E&K and Phoenix, 15, Sandra S in Brooklyn, 15, Steph C in Melbourne, 15, and Jacob L in Lake Butler, Florida, five bucks. Every time I see all those numbers, whether it's like an astounding number, some folks who've given $15,000, it's a couple of times. And it just, it floors me. Or it's $3. I think about your circumstance, how much you probably need that $3 and that you're willing to give it to make the progressive voice stronger. And, you know, so the

way that I view it at TYT, we owe you two things. One is to make your progressive voice, voice as strong and loud and effective as possible. And two is change. We owe you an effort at trying to get you as much change as we possibly can. And so thank you to everyone who makes that effort possible. All right, now let me read some of your comments and then we'll get to the special guest. So John Campbell Reese, these are all members wrote in, I'm sitting in the UK wishing the Labor Party over here had a Nina Turner.

The corporate neoliberals have hijacked it again. And he says the only progressive thing about the new Sir Starmor is his forename. So it's a long message, but I appreciate it. And we all need Nina Turner's in our lives and our political lives. Cerberus Alpha slash My Black Life Matters and love Brianna Wu, found a perfect person to rep Rebellion Pack. Thank you, appreciate that. We love her too. Let me come back to Susie. TYt.com slash join to get your comments read more often, and to get all of our programming on our, and you could do that through our website. So in terms of people who've joined up through

YouTube, Adolfo 562 Vail just joined up and Ryan Shelton did as well. And always forward to Rote, TYT rules on YouTube super chat. And I love you guys for using YouTube super chat too. And last one from there for now, I'll come back to it, Jason Trestraffi. Worst pronunciation ever, but it's hard. It's a play on catastrophe with the first name Jason. Anyways, we punch back for the win, best slogan for the movement, figuratively and politically, of course, love you guys and appreciate everything you do, hashtag Nina Turner for everything.

But I like that, I'm seriously gonna consider the byline for Rebellion PAC to be we punch back. Love it. See, we do the show together, we do the packs together, we do all of it together. All right, now let me give you the yes. Look, it's gonna be short, as you'll see here, but it's important. So we asked a lot of folks to participate in Bernie's birthday bash that we're doing here at the Young Turks. He turns 79 today. Let me officially say, happy birthday, Bernie. We had others come on and say the same, including Nina Turner and many other progressive stars here. But we brought on one other person. We asked them to participate, and he did. He sent in this video, and he wanted to make sure that everybody knew what a big fan of Bernie Sanders, he is. So without further ado, let me give you that video. Bernie, happy birthday. It's hell turning 60. I know, but I tell you what, pal, you have more energy than most people I know that are 30. Thank you for your commitment and continued commitment.

And I wish you the happiest of birthdays, I really do, pal. Thank you. Thanks for being my friend. So I love that Joe Biden sent that video into us to share with Bernie because that's how you bring the party together. Look, you also bring it together through policy. And obviously, we're looking forward to making that happen. And that's more important than anything else. But for today, it's a wonderful move by the vice president, hopefully soon to be president.

I've talked to Joe Biden a couple times in the past, I've told you guys about it. Hopefully we'll have him here for an interview one day as well. But that I believe is his first official appearance on the Young Turks, and we want to thank him for that too. We've got, and in this case, it is not a hyperbole, the most important election of our lifetimes. So there is two folks, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who came in first and second, and the primaries this time around, both telling you the same thing. We played Bernie's clip for you earlier in the show when he spoke of the DNC and said, my God, it's never been

like this before. And we've got to win. We cannot let Trump take away our democracy. So it's a beautiful moment to come together and make sure that we all win this election. Now afterwards, we'll have our disagreements, no question about it, and there'll be plenty of time for hashing those out. And no one doubts that the young church will do that aggressively, and I'm sure for his part and for their part, Biden's team will as well. But for now, Let's all fight together because we have got to win this thing. And take it from me who has told you in previous elections, this one is not the most important. That was not the most important.

They're doing hyperbole on the media. This one is not hyperbole. This is democracy on the line. So let's fight and win this one together. Okay. Now, again, like I said, I love this. that Joe Bynne sent that in, and it's a really good start for Unity. So let me, before I get back to you guys and read some of your comments, before we run out

of time, I just wanted to say a couple of words about what I think about Bernie Sanders. So today's Bernie's 79th birthday, and we did this birthday special forum here at TYT, and Joe Bynne was nice enough to send a nice birthday message, Nina Turner was nice enough to join us and Brianna Wu and Ben Dixon and Emma Viglin and Bernie himself in a lot of ways as we showed you his videos all the way from the beginning of his cure all the way to now. But for my point of view, you know, I've been asked this question actually a thousand times because a lot of folks in the rest of the media genuinely don't get it. They're like he's not the slick as politician, he is sometimes acerbic, and what is it that

you guys love about Bernie, whether it's us at TYT or obviously us as a proxy for the progressive movement. And if you're progressive, it's not that complicated to you, but it's important for us to tell others. And so the two most important things are consistency and policy. So Bernie Sanders, as we showed to you today for two and a half hours, the guy has never wavered. In that famous clip where he's yelling about policy in Congress when he was in the house in the early 1990s, he yelled out, no, I will not yield. And that really could have been the slogan for his entire career. He lost four times, never getting above 6% of the vote when he first ran for office, almost

gave up, but ran for mayor of Burlington, one by 10 votes at the age of 39, made it into Congress around his 49th birthday, and then he lost a couple more elections, and he just kept on going. And so all throughout he had the same message, income inequality, corporations taking over our government. These are not new things. It started happening in the late 1970s, Bernie noticed it immediately, and he pounded that message, and he was right about it, he was prescient about it from the get go, from the 80s to the 90s, all the way to now. The corporate takeover of our government is real, it's done through campaign contributions, it is bribery out in the open than almost all the politicians participate in. He has had the courage to call it what it is.

And that leads to the second issue, which is policy. And I know they just can't believe it. the cynics and the skeptical people that are both in politics and in the media in Washington. They just can't believe that anyone is genuine and actually cares about policy. Well, he does. He's proved it a thousand times. That is why Bernie Sanders didn't pick the progressive movement. The progressive movement picked Bernie Sanders. We could have gone with anybody in 2016. Why not Martin O'Malley? He was younger, he was more telegenic. He could argue that he, he He gave better speeches and he was certainly well prepared. His consultants told him when to take off his jacket and debate and when to roll up his sleeves

and he did it. But we could tell that he was trained by the consultants and he didn't have Bernie's track record and his consistency and his principles and his honesty and his policies. So if you're looking forward to the future and trying to figure out who progress is going to back next, if you're looking for shiny objects, you're looking in the wrong place. We're looking for policy and whoever is going to champion it without any fear and who will not yield. And look, I'm gonna add a third thing that I think all of us feel in our bones.

And it's unfortunately, and a lot of the media doesn't like to say because they're friends with the politicians and they need access to the politicians. But the reality is most of us don't like politicians. the polling shows that overwhelmingly. Why don't we like politicians? Because we think they're fake. But Bernie Sanders was like Diogenes. I mean, we were looking for the one honest man, and he was the one honest man. I mean, you might agree with him, you might disagree with him, but nobody thinks he's BSing. Does anybody think that guy is fake? Nobody thinks that. He has been and continues to be super honest. And that is an incredible rarity in politics. So if we can find one more person

like that who is honest to their core, who's going to stay true and principled, and who does those policies we care so much about, getting money out of politics, Medicare for all, Green New Deal, College for All, criminal justice reform, getting out of the endless wars, And the list goes on. Higher wages. Well, then we found the next Bernie Sanders. But for now, the great news is Bernie Sanders is still the Senate. And we still have him. And he's still our leader holding up that lantern in the darkness. So Bernie, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for providing that light for so long through the darkness and for being our beacon. Happy birthday.

that blows out that candle. Okay, so I'm gonna give you guys the last word here. Emmond Alvi on YouTube Super Chat says, wow, you are not kidding about the surprise. Told you, you didn't think Joe Biden would make an appearance on Bernie's birthday match, right? But he did, and I wasn't kidding, and I don't. So Jane Marcotte just joined up. You could join as well by hitting the join button below. Join button below.

Guys, don't forget, most importantly today, t-y-t.com slash go. Actually, we almost made it to 37,000, 36,965. Look, we're not asking money for giggles, okay? A lot of folks work here, and we do a ton of programming for you guys on a lot of different platforms. And we're top five in all social media platforms, thanks to you guys. And we get that message out to 500 million views at least, and potentially hundreds of millions of actual human beings every month, and we do that with you guys.

So thank you, and let's please keep it going at t.com slash go. Let's make that progressive mic so loud that we're going to overcome all the rest of the media by 2024, and I believe that is definitely possible. So thank you, Kydo, Natalie, David, Megan, Steven, these are all people who just donate love you guys forever t yt.com slash go and we will see you tomorrow thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon