The Young Turks - Part 4 TYT Live: Election Day 2020

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Election Day Part 4: Hosted by Adrienne Lawrence, Nando Vila, and Benjamin Dixon TYT is Progressive Headquarters on Election Day. We’ll be tracking the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and key progressive races around the country featuring a rotating panel of guests. Stay tuned for exit polls, state returns, down-ballot races, and more! 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. Hello, and welcome into this special coverage because it is Election Day. Happy Election Day 2020. I'm Adrian Lawrence, and I'm going to be hosting this hour alongside two gentlemen. likely no well, Mr. Ben Dixon and Nando Villa. Welcome in gentlemen. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Awesome. How is your election day going? Pretty good. I spent my morning watching

Champions League soccer. So it was a nice, it was a nice calm before the storm. That's a good thing. I mean, it's a day. It's the busiest day of the years like the Super Bowl and the high holy day combined. So it'll all be a blur. Nope. And you're absolutely right. And it feels like the last few weeks have been the playoffs this is the Super Bowl. And yeah, it's been pretty wild. And it also has been a wild four years because we've waited for this moment this whole time. And what, within the last year, Trump has really been hammering home that he's going to work hard to undermine this election and our faith in it. And stacking the courts, doing all sorts of nonsense. You know what? Here he is telling you himself.

This scam that the Democrats are pulling. It's a scam. The scam will be before. the United States Supreme Court, and I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation. We're going to have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. But people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transferal of power? We want to get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very peaceful, there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation. Right? The governor counts the ballots, and we're watching you, Governor, very closely in Philadelphia.

We're watching you. A lot of bad things. It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were to be flat on November 3rd instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate. And I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. Now, Ben, I know a lot was said during that and you were shaking your head. What really resonated with you most from that footage of Trump's many attempts to undermine our

elections. The fact that our democracy is so fragile that we really don't have any mechanism to really get rid of him if he chooses to not agree to a peaceful transfer or power. The concessant speech is the usual mechanism, but that's almost like a gentleman's agreement. That's not, that's nothing that's enshrined in the Constitution. And so as long as our democracy does not take into account that we're not always going to have someone who is rational and reasonable or civil to agree to a peaceful transfer of power. If we don't compensate for that, then we're going to face this in the future, if not tonight. Yeah, sounds absolutely right. Nando, did you have any thoughts on that? No, I think that's absolutely right. I think Trump, the last four years of Trump have

shown that he figured out the cheat code that you can essentially do whatever you want if you're president and you have to like dare them to stop you. And if they don't try to stop you, then there's nothing they can do. And so much of our system is built around these kind of established norms. Like you said, a gentleman's agreement, you know, that comes from this constitution being so old that it designed to be implemented by people who kind of all knew each other and had social ties to each other, not this big, sprawling, multiracial, giant 100 million, 300 million plus person democracy with everyone participating. And so, yeah, I think that this, it's just been remarkable how front and center that's been, just how weak our system is, just how dependent

it is on good behavior just because, not because someone forces you too. So yeah, it's, yeah. It makes me laugh because you're absolutely right, how this almost this unspoken element of decorum is underlying the vast majority of our democracy. And the fact that Trump has no sense of etiquette. He has no low. He will go and do whatever he can get away with. And we've seen that most recently with the Supreme Court. And I'd love to be able to talk a little bit about that, being a lawyer and loving the law. You know what? It seems that now we're at this point where the legal landscape has truly been set by Trump, who has really taken advantage of the judiciary. First, when we look at SCOTUS, what, we have a six to three conservative majority there

with Chief Justice Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett now, all on the side of the conservative party. And, you know, when what, Justice Roberts becomes the swing vote, you got a real problem. That's indeed what we have. And then also looking that three of them worked on Bush v. Gore, Roberts, Barrett, Kavanaugh. All of them were on the legal team down in Florida back in 2000, helping Gore or helping Bush, I should say, take the presidency. And then now we already know Barrett is active in working on cases, whether she'll actually recuse herself is such a problematic issue. You know, Ben, what are your thoughts on this? You know, I have no doubt that she is going to play a role if this goes to the Supreme Court,

because that's why she's there, right? We're trying to pretend as though we don't know that that's what she's going to do, or at least conservatives are trying to pretend as though they don't believe that she's going to do that. But there's another thing that this exposes, right? It exposes that a lot that happens in the Senate and their relationship with confirming judges is also about just agreements. It's about norms. It's about the expectation that you're not going to have a party in power that's willing

to break and bend every single rule in order to obtain power. And so that's another way that we have to look at reforming this country because we can't continue doing it based on the way that the founding fathers is established. because Republicans broke it. Yep. That sounds absolutely accurate. These Republicans are really not necessarily acting in terms of what's best for the nation, but what's best for the party or the individual selves.

And we got to see that at this rubber stamped hearing where Justice Barrett didn't answer any substantive questions. Yet we also knew that she was an extremely conservative, absolutely far right, individual who would not be representative of the ideologies that are in the larger, broader society. And Nando, what are your thoughts on Mark? Well, I was frankly pretty shocked at how little resistance the Democrats put. You know, they always made the point that like, oh, well, we can't really stop it. So we might as well not fight it. And that's just, I think, the wrong mentality. Like there is something to a fighting, a losing battle, even if you know

you're going to lose, kind of like a noble defeat, kind of rallying up your base, rallying up, rallying people up, making an issue out of it, making political hay out of it. All of those things have value. And it was actually very terrifying to me because, as you said, we have this 6-3 majority, probably for the next several decades. And it's if they will, they are well positioned to block even any mild redistributive reforms that we would ever want. Like, you know, they almost blocked the ACA when Obama passed in.

That was like a heritage foundation of law. You know, you can't, anything else beyond that? Like you can't imagine any Democratic president, even with the Senate or Congress getting it past the Supreme Court. So the question is, will the Democrats do something about it? And it just goes against so much of their nature, which is so deeply ingrained, these sort of like hardcore institutionalists like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the leaders of the Democratic Party.

Will they do something to fight back, to take the country back? from this minoritarian far right incredibly pro-corporatist ruling cabal that we have. And their behavior during the Barrett confirmation hearings, which was just laying down, Diane Feinstein hugging Lindsay Graham, thanking him for just such a wonderful, you know, confirmation hearing. It's just so against their nature, beyond any, are like more broader political differences that I might have with them. It's just the institutional nature of their of their being is so ingrained that I just, something has to happen. They have to do something, but I have very little hope that they will. Yeah, no, I definitely think this sense of decorum and not getting your hands

dirty, it's really put us all in a really bad situation. When we do need people to step up, get a little wild, you know, get a little, get a little rowdy and tussle on behalf of our democracy in our people. And so that's what we need from the Democratic Party, not issuing hugs. But to stay on the court's issue, but let's talk a little bit about claims in terms of Trump's journey and how he could get to SCOTUS, even though we know he's going to be illegitimate and how he gets it done, the reality is that there are certain paths for him to get to court. The first is an abuse of power claim. And that would be like if a state official certified the election early or tried to insert their own electoral representatives in the conversation. And so Trump could challenge that.

And there's also a ballot count dispute. That would be another type of claim, which it seems Trump has definitely been teeing up as well as the Republicans, whether it was what just yesterday in Texas trying to get drive through voting ballots annulled or in North Carolina trying to cut back on the mail and ballot review period. It seems to be everywhere. So Ben, let me ask you, When you look at these kind of claims and them being avenues for Trump to use to get to the court, what do you see as more likely to come to pass? You know, unfortunately, I see the likelihood that a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of state or Republican state legislature will engage intentionally in one of those behaviors so that they can take it to court. And then the obvious question would be like, what court would see these political machinations and give them,

and hear the case, well, it would just so happen to be a court that is stacked six to three with a conservative bench. Yeah, that sounds about right. You, Nando? Yeah, well, I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and I'm old enough to remember the 2000 election. I was in Miami-Dade when it happened. And, you know, think about that. That was 20 years ago.

I mean, the Republican Party has become far more brazen than they even more back then, which was shockingly brazen. And they basically stole that election. It was close, but they stole it. And today, 20 years down the road, with Trump at its head, Trump is just the latest manifestation of a party that is beyond any sort of parliamentary decorum. It's just completely brazen. So I would not be surprised if some Republican state legislature plays ball and tries to steal

it. I mean, I guess the question is, how will we fight back? I mean, in 2000, it was Bush v. Gore. We didn't really, like, there wasn't as much of antipathy toward Bush then as there was in 2004. It was just kind of these two nominees. There was no incumbent, no incumbent, obviously Trump is very hated. So I could see like a more furious reaction if they try to do it, which will throw sand in the gears. But, you know, something has to be, some element of the people have to fight back.

We can't really rely on the Democratic Party to fight back, as we've seen through the, through the Barrett nomination. And so yeah, it really is going to be up to us because they're going to try to do something. It's just the question is whether they'll be successful. But I have no doubt that something will be tried. No, absolutely. And they're already gearing up for it. We can hear Trump, we can hear it in his voice and all the claims he makes trying to undermine and just put this irrational thought in people's minds that the election will be decided tonight,

that all the ballots should be counted today. All of these things that have never been part of the process, he's making them up hoping that he can, hey, let's call it quit so early, and that he can take this election and really shut it down. And something that the Republicans really have been focusing on is Pennsylvania. You know, that's what 538 calls that tipping point state, meaning that essentially it can determine who ends up taking the presidency, and it's kind of a big deal. And we saw how we had Republicans from Pennsylvania running to SCOTUS a few weeks ago, trying to get absentee ballots thrown out and the review period shortened. And SCOTUS said that they're not going to review the

case until maybe after election. And I would really assume that they did that because they want Barrett to go ahead and be a part of the court, which is very problematic. And we know this could really tee up something that's Bush v. Goreworthy, since we saw Kavanaugh and Gorsuch issue rulings last week in which they pretty much said they're going to defer to state legislature. And state legislature in Pennsylvania happens to be majority Republican. Ben, how do you see this? Yeah, you know, that's the, that's a sad part about what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with such a gross miscarriage of democracy that if Joe Biden doesn't

completely obliterate Donald Trump tonight, that they have successfully stacked the courts on the federal level, the state houses on the state level, obviously, such that they can snatch away a victory from the majority of Americans. And this speaks to what has to be reformed. If we are afforded the opportunity to seize power tonight, legally, right, without stealing, I'm saying, seizing it through democratic means, then we honestly have to have a conversation and we must have Democrats in power who are willing to do what's necessary to reform this government in the ways that we see Donald Trump has exposed our weaknesses. Yeah. Nando, what are your thoughts?

I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, it's, we cannot allow this to become a new normal, the way we kind of allowed the new normal to become that if to pass a law in the Senate, you needed 60 votes. That used to not be the case. You used to need 51 votes. Now you need 60 votes. And that's just become the new normal. We cannot allow the new normal to be where the Republicans can win elections with a minority, whereas Democrats can only win elections if they get like a super majority. You know, if they blow them out by so much that they can't steal it. You know, so if the question is like, if we do manage to win, if the Democrats do manage to win, how will they reform the system to ensure that it becomes more democratic?

The sort of boring nuts and bolts things that Republicans focus on all the time, which is how do they assure that they remain in power, even though that there are fewer Republican voters in this country than there are Democratic voters. Outside of the inherent biases of the system, like the Senate and things like that, just like literally, you know, passing DC statehood seems like an obvious no-brainer. Abolishing the Electoral College is an obvious no-brainer, just flagrantly anti-democratic part of our system. You know, like, will the Democrats allow this to become the new normal, even if they win? Will they do the whole, we're going to look forward and not backwards? We're not going to take stock of anything that happened. We're just

going to let the national nightmare fall behind us and wake up to a new America. No, like, that's just that, you know, Pandora's box has been opened. We cannot allow that to happen ever again. Yep. And I definitely agree with you on that. Something needs to be done. So we don't all have this happen a decade from now. And on that note, we are going to take our first break of our election day. Welcome back to TYT special election day coverage. I'm Adrian Lawrence, joined by Ben Dixon, Nando Villa. And gentlemen, I already love your insight. We got to talk about the court. So I love to talk a little bit more about something. I also find to be extremely entertaining, which are hypotheticals. And since we can't have a complete palate cleanser with no politics and no election, this will be a presentation of hypotheticals that surround this election. So if you wouldn't mind entertaining me, Let's talk about what if, what if it looks like Trump's winning and they declare he's won,

but the counting isn't over. You ask you? I think a lot of it will depend on how the networks react and how especially cable news reacts. I mean, cable news, I used to work in cable news, it's just not built for this kind of thing at all. I mean, there's so much pressure to be first, to be quick, to be, you know, to make past judgment on something and, you know, that whether they'll be able to like hold the line and be like, okay, let's take a breath. Let's say it. I mean, obviously Fox News is going to declare him the winner. But like will CNN, will like MSNBC, these people kind of jump the gun and and be pressured into declaring him a winner and then having to re-declare, like undeclare him. I mean, again, it's all these norms that we keep talking about. The fact that we rely on the networks to call it rather than some. thing in the government, like some electoral commission or something to say like, okay, this is now the president is won. So I think a lot of it will depend on that. I think that if that happens, if Trump does declare a victory, it will create a huge amount of chaos. And it's just going to be

impossible to predict how that plays out. Yeah. The only, I agree with everything you said. With one exception, I think that with the exception of Fox News, if CNN, MSNBC and NBC and ABC and CBS have not learned their lesson and understand how important it is for them to not go along with pressure coming from this White House, then our democracy never stood a chance in the first place, because the media has entirely too important of a role to play in the sustaining of this democracy for them to not have learned the lesson of the last four years. Now, I fully expect that somebody at Fox News is going to make a declaration that Donald Trump won. If Donald Trump makes that declaration first, I don't even know that we can count on the entirety of Fox News to go along with it. But I'm quite sure if Sean Hannity is on anyone's panel, he's going to declare a victory for Donald Trump the moment Donald Trump declares a victory for himself. Yeah. No, and I wouldn't be surprised if Baby Tucker also does something asinine as well. But something that I don't know, I feel a little bit about in terms of media is they have just as much incentive to, you know, call this early to keep this charade going. And I don't mean members of the media for mainstream. I mean kind of the powers that be that control them. They're boards. They're their directors. The people who make the big money and are at the top. And in the ownership pool, we know they're in the 1%. They do not have any issue in terms of the things Trump is doing.

So if any directives came from the top, I just I would not be surprised. But to move on to another what if, you know what if it looks like Biden is winning and it's really tempting to call it. What are you going to do? Well, I mean, again, if Biden's winning it in on election day, it means he's probably winning in like a historic landslide, right? I mean, that's all we know is that there's been, you know, I think 100 million votes cast already early, which is a record. And we know that the vast majority of people voting early are voting Democrats. So Biden's winning in the in-person voting, the ones that you're counting

on election day, it seems very clear that then he's probably winning like a historic landslide that he's winning by like 11 or 12 points. Not to sound like super in the tank, but like if the media networks start calling it for Biden on election day, like that means he won by like 12 million votes or something crazy like that. Whereas, whereas if it's close in a certain certain key swing states, I mean, I just, I don't think that they'll, that they'll jump the gun for Biden. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I don't think they'll jump the gun for Biden, but, but hear me, hear me out on this. I'm going to shamelessly say that we need to end it tonight if Joe Biden is in the lead the same way Donald Trump and conservatives are going to shamelessly say end it for

for Donald Trump if he if it's even remotely close. Because why should we in an effort to seem not to seem hypocritical give them an opportunity to go through their political machinations that could then turn around and still a legitimate victory from Joe Biden because we didn't want to play hardball. I'm gonna play hardball and without any shame I'm gonna say Joe Biden won if there's any, if it's remotely close and he has an edge, let's call it. Yeah, no, no, you absolutely right, Ben. That's hypocritical and it is shameless, but I can get behind it. So I think that that's fine.

You know, hey, whatever those other people need to hear so that they will shut down the nonsense brings me great joy. So you know what, let me ask you, I know we don't have a slide for this, but the what if popped in my head given revelations that came out today. So we heard from the Pentagon's head of the military stuff, they said today that if something goes down and there needs to be a peaceful transfer. power. They don't want to get involved. Don't get the military involved. Don't come for us. We won't come for you. And so let me ask you all, how do you think this is going to play out if Trump

will not surrender and leave the White House? Boy, you know, if that happens, I think that we're in for a real crisis. I mean, in terms of like, I mean, I think there's going to be certain federal agencies that are going to stand with them. I mean, I find it very plausible that ICE and, you know, Customs and Border Patrol, maybe even the FBI, certain local police departments and things like that support him and are willing to, you know, are willing to use force to support him and maybe other ones, like I'm guessing the military, I suspect the military is not, is not very high on Donald Trump, like will, will, you know, I barely want to think about it because it just seems crazy to me to that we've even come to the point where we can discuss

this seriously. But, you know, I think that we will see certain federal agencies support him and certain ones abandoning him. And then it'll be just a question of like, you know, who blinks first. Yeah. I have to approach this in two different ways. Like if we're just thinking rhetorically and the hypothetical, then I think the statement is the truth is that it's a shame that at the end of the day, America really doesn't have anybody in charge of it, right? That there's no, that there's no real Leviathan here other than our agreements that we have between gentlemen, so to speak, based on this, you know, this 1776 document, right? That's, that's the terrifying notion that if somebody just ignores those norms, they can

destroy our democracy. That said, I fully expect that the Democratic Party and the people who win, right? I expect them to go ahead moving forward with their transition team, moving forward with their army of lawyers, just like Donald Trump is going to have his army of lawyers. And if there's going to be a crisis, let it be a crisis of two governments. And then let's see who blinks first. Like a Vichy Democratic administration. God help us all. Set up a capital somewhere else.

Hey, don't come for us and we won't send for you. You know what, if California sees the union, I'm good, but I've been saying that for years. It was nice knowing you, we can do this, we can do this better, I'm good. But no, it's going to be very scary as far as I'm concerned if we do have a situation where people's allegiances get split. Because the reality is that US attorney, although we know Bill Barr is a very special creature, they took an oath to uphold the laws of the United States. But so many of them seem to be positioned to go rogue. So if they do put us all in a a situation where we've never encountered this kind of behavior and we'll either have to call

on local authorities or state or even, as I covered for TYT overruled today, militia. It's going to be very scary in new terrain. But moving on to another hypothetical, let's go back to the thought of who wins and how they win. So what if Biden wins and the Dems take over both houses? Do you think they're going to make the GOP regret their moves? Well, if it were up to me, they would institute all those kind of technocratic reforms around basic democracy that I was talking about. But I also that they should prosecute, investigate all the myriad crimes of the Trump administration. I mean, there was one of Barack Obama's most critical mistakes early on in his administration was not going after the war criminals

and the Bush administration. This is something that has been going on presidential administration after presidential administration, going back to Ford, pardoning Nixon. We had H.W. Bush pardoning all the Iran contra criminals. It just creates a situation in which you create the culture of impunity that exists now within the American ruling class. So if I was the dictator of the Democratic Party, I would say investigate all the criminals, like just make political hay out of it, throw people in jail and institute all of these sort of basic reforms, whether it's abolishing the filibuster, the Electoral College, giving DC statehood,

and probably even just ignoring the Supreme Court to ensure that the Democrats are able to actually govern. Will they do that? I suspect not. I mean, Biden, when asked about packing the court, he said, which it's not like necessarily maybe the reform that I would do, but that he's going set up a commission full of liberals and conservatives to study the issue. And it's like, come on, dude, that's just nonsense. The only expectation I have of Joe Biden, and I've thrown all of my support behind him at the expense of my reputation and supporters, right? But the only expectation I have of Joe Biden is for him not to be a fascist and not to destroy our institutions. To that end,

I appreciate that Joe Biden will be elected and we will have the opportunity to replace Democrats in the Senate and replace Democrats in the House who are not willing to enact changes that we absolutely need. So in other words, thank you, Joe Biden, win. But now we got a primary the hell out of the Democratic Party because I have no confidence that they're going to do what needs to be done. Nope. I definitely agree with that. And kind of to touch upon something that Nando said in terms of this culture of impunity, I agree with you. I think they need to go after all of them, whether they're on the Democratic side or the Republican side, if they engaged in shenanigans to their benefit, whether it was insider trading or some kind of corruption, they need to be

called to task. The thing that concerns me on why it won't necessarily happen is, number one, it seems that so many of these people in power have other powerful friends that they've built favors up for for years. And also there's this class elitism going on where the thought that, hey, if this senator can actually be held accountable for their behavior, my God, what'll happen to me? So it almost seems that they don't want to run afoul of that sense of decorum in respecting those class boundaries, which are very problematic. But to go on to another potential, what if, what do you think would happen if Trump wins the White House, but Democrats take the Senate? Then nothing, then literally nothing. Just, you know, more gridlock, nothing, no major reforms

will pass. We'll go, America will probably go for another decade without literally any sort of major laws being passed. Incompetence from the executive branch, factlessness from the legislative branch to do anything about it. Like if that is, you know, a divided government that is like kind of something that politics nerds love, for whatever reason, is a disaster. It's a disaster everywhere, not just in the United States, but in the United States specifically, it's a huge disaster. In Latin America, it's a recipe for a military coup. In the United States, it's a recipe for basically nothing. This is why, like most European governments, cannot have legislative and executive branches that are independent of each other. They actually

flow from the legislative branch because you cannot create the situation where laws cannot be because there's gridlock in the United States with with ideologically coherent political parties, if there is divided government, there is going to be gridlock. Nothing will pass. What about you, Ben? I love that answer because it really speaks to the need for us to reform our system to something along the lines of a parliamentarian system because of the nature of the gridlock that would ensue. That said, you know, what should the Democrats do if they take the Senate? they should impeach the hell out of Donald Trump again and get rid of him, period, full stop. And then if they don't do that, then that just gives us a reason as progressives to primary

the hell out of Democrats, because if they don't have the backbone, I had to choose my words very carefully there, if they don't have the backbone to impeach a man who has presided over the deaths of 250,000 people and they will leave him in power to preside over another 250,000, then they don't need to be in Washington, D.C. No, they don't. And that's exactly what I was thinking, in terms of this is perfect for impeachment territory if the Dems take the Senate. And I absolutely agree with you that if they wouldn't leverage that position and that power, I, uh, no, they clearly are not on the Democratic side. And they are clearly not here for upholding justice, the law, and our democracy. And I don't have time for those people. Absolutely. But we do have time for a

few more what ifs. So let me hit you with it. What if Trump loses? Who's Trump's 2.0? Will it be the Neo cucks like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Wait a minute, what did you call him? Neo cucks. Someone wrote this out, you're going to have to forgive me. I don't know what that means. No forgiveness necessary. No, no, they're the biggest cucks in the history of the universe.

Donald Trump said Marco Rup, sorry, that Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer. And now, like, like, it's the most cucked person in America. He called his wife ugly. He called Ted Cruz's wife. So I didn't mean to interrupt you, Adrian, but that was the best description I have ever. heard in my life. He's the most pug person I've ever seen. Yeah. So I think about this a lot. And I actually, if Trump loses, I think Trump runs again in 2024. And I think Trump wins a Republican primary again in 2024. I don't, you know, I don't buy the Tom Cotton hype.

I agree that Tom Cotton is, Tom Cotton is a dangerous fascist, but he's just got like anti-charisma. And I think that a huge part of Trump's appeal is that he's fun. I mean, in a way, like for for the people who like him, you know, he's a fun. He like you watch one of his speeches and he jokes around and he's, you know, he's loose up there. It doesn't sound like a regular politician. And once they've gotten that, they're not going to be able to go back to sort of a guy who sounds, you know, just uses the same old words, the same kind of, it's just not going to work. And then there's going to be a lot of people trying to imitate that Trump style, but Trump is so weird. He's such a unique figure. Like there's no one really like him. So it's going to be this like very

weird struggle for power with the Republican Party. And if Trump loses, I suspect that no one's going to sort of rise up to take up that mantle. No one's going to have his level of popularity or his level of just ability to suck the oxygen out of things and just attract all kinds of attention like he does. So he's going to fill that vacuum again in 2024. And I suspect he'll win in 2024 if he does choose to run. Wow, Nando. He'd win the primary?

The primary, the primary, for sure, the primary. What do you think, Ben? I have to agree, and you guys are in L.A., so I don't know if you've even, it's a show that's set in L.A., Lucifer. One of my favorite shows to binge right now, and I'm thinking Donald Trump leaving the Republican Party losing and trying to replace him with Tom Cotton would be like dating Lucifer and then turn around and trying to date Detective Dan, which is like such a downgrade in terms of the excitement and the exhilaration. And if you're talking about this from a very sociopathic perspective, like look at the people who are going to these rallies, they're willing to go out there and get COVID-19 just so that they can have this this exhilarating moment with Donald Trump. And do you think anybody is going to do that for Detective Dan? I mean, for Tom Cotton. No, absolutely not. And so there's going to be a vacuum for power that Donald Trump is going to stay on the sideline for the next four years tweeting out to fill in to make people feel good about losing in 2020. He will always. be their president from Twitter. Yeah. That's actually really scary.

Yeah. Go ahead, Ando. No one can own the libs like Trump, if that makes sense. Like the conservative movement since it's like furious reaction to the New Deal in the late 1970s. It's been driven by people like Phyllis Schlafly, like Ronald Reagan, like George W. Bush, and like Donald Trump, who like are very, very skilled at making the liberals go crazy. I mean, that's a very famous for the Schlafly line. She always used to start her speeches by saying, I just want to thank my husband for letting me speak tonight.

I love starting my speeches like that. It drives the lives crazy. That's literally like, you know, that's, that is the conservative movement from the late 1970s through to today with Donald Trump being like the sort of prime exemplar of it. And there just is no one else that can do it as effectively as he can. So I just, I think the Republican Party would enter into a period of uncertainty in crisis. Other people will try to take up the mantle of Trump. I mean, you saw that pathetic speech that Marco Rubio gave at his rally.

He's trying to play, cosplay as Trump. I mean, he looked extra little to me. And he just doesn't have the, he just doesn't have it. He just doesn't have it. I don't know, I'm sorry. You know what, Nando, there have been a lot of petite men over the course of history that have led the way Napoleon. Yes, but no, my fear would definitely be Trump if he'd left the Republican Party,

potentially starting his own party. Because like you said, he's essentially built this little group of minions who will like essentially really kind of crawl around and do whatever he wants to do because he does have that magnetism that bullies on the schoolyard have. And unfortunately, it really speaks to a lot of Americans. But that is where we are. And we do have to go to break. But before we do, I want to thank you both for joining us. And can you tell us where they can find you? Nando. At Nando Arvila on Twitter and on the Jacobin weekend show every Saturday. And you can find me on Twitter at Benjamin P. Dixon, and you can also find me here on YouTube, the Benjamin Dixon show.

Thank you, gentlemen. And as you viewers all know, TYT is the home of progressives. We've supported numerous progressive candidates over the years, and we'll be following their races tonight during our election coverage. And because we are all in this together, well, we want you to get to. know some of these candidates. So here is a short compilation that features a few of the most progressive candidates. And we are talking about how they're running today. And also, the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter Mastercard

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during our continued Election Day coverage. So please enjoy it and make sure to stay tuned throughout the day. Thanks for listening. you the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you