The Young Turks - Pence Subpoenaed

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Rail company offers $25,000 to the town it poisoned. Former VP Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by a special council investigating Trump. George Santos was charged with theft back in 2017. A Wall Street Journal opinion piece speculates that Joe Biden Is Bernie Sanders. A bill could regulate scientific theories within the school system in Montana. Temple University is charging their grad students thousands of dollars for going on strike. Host: John Iadarola, Wosny Lambre, David Shuster 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. Woo! It's up! Drop it! Drop it! Street!

Unidentified! Street! Spotty! Spotty! Over the West Coast of the United States. I'd be more concise, but they're just, they're being really tight-lipped about this thing. Was it a balloon? I don't know.

We'll have to wait and find out. But what I do know is that I'm John and Rola sitting in for Jank Huger. And we're very lucky today to be joined on The Young Turks by Wazdi Lombay. very glad to have you here. Contributed to TYT. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be on with you guys today. Glad to have you here. And the king of Rebel HQ, David Chuster, welcome back to the show. Good to be on with you guys. Thank you. Good to have you here. We've got a lot of news. Some would say too much news.

And most of them are probably producers for this show. So I don't know how we're going to get to all. But there's a lot, including some developing news on the ongoing document scandal, Mike Pence's home being investigated, other buildings soon to be investigated. Is Joe Biden Bernie Sanders? No, but there's an interesting op-ed that we're going to debate. And should scientific theories be discussed in school or just stuff that's facts, according to people who probably flunked every science class they ever took in their life? We're going to have a debate in the latter half of the show about that. But, oh, and then, of course, you're going to have an awesome second hour of the show. Jared Jackson's going to be taken over. So definitely prepare yourself for two and a half hours of fun. With all that said, guys,

Are you ready to jump into some big developing stories? Oh, yeah, let's do it. Okay, let's in fact do it. Norfolk Southern is the company responsible for the devastating train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. It's a multifaceted disaster, the initial crash, fires as a result of it, and of course, the controlled burning of a number of different toxic substances. But don't worry, they have said that they're going to be making a donation to the town to assist in the cleanup. $25,000. And they looked it up.

There's 5,000 people in East Palestine. So that's $5 a person. Yay. Anyway, we have more information on the. Oh, by the way, the company's worth $55 billion. We don't have to do any math on that. It's just a really big number, and I thought it was noteworthy. So the show was talked about on the Young Turks just yesterday.

They brought on David Soroda of the lever to break down details of it. And this is a story that I think you're definitely going to hear a lot more about on a national level. It's been a little bit for some reason below the surface up until now, but wait until you hear some of the developments in that story. In case you're not familiar with the base facts, though, about 50 cars derailed in East Palestine at about 9 p.m. Eastern time as a train was carrying a variety of products from Madison, Illinois to Conway, Pennsylvania. Apparently 20 of the more than 100 cars were classified as carrying hazardous materials that's defined as cargo that could pose any kind of danger,

including flammables, combustibles, or environmental risks. So there's a variety of different chemicals that in theory could be on there. But the one that's made the most new so far is vinyl chloride. When that's burned, which it was, it produces hydrogen chloride, a highly volatile substance that can bind with water vapor to produce hydrochloric acid. It can also produce fosgene, a toxic gas that was deployed as a chemical weapon in World War I. Now, aside from the toxic byproducts of it, it's odorless and hazardous that lingers in the air, but also can get into soil and groundwater, it's linked to liver and neurological damage, as well as several types of cancer, and a whole bunch of it was burned off. And that was the solution to the problem. So obviously, not solved from the point of view of the people of East Palestine, and they have a lot of concerns about how long term the aid is going to be. The company says that this 25,000 is not the extent of it, and they're in it for the long haul.

I would use different terminology considering your inability to move cargo even on a short haul right there. But anyway, guys, we have other updates. I just thought that that initial overture of $25,000, I mean, they're going to spend $25,000 to fly some of their execs out to give a speech next week or something like that. It's such a meaningless amount of money. But starting with you, Dave, what do you think about this? You know, when I first heard this, when I first read it, I thought, no, this must be a mistake. It's like $25,000 for each resident, right? Because you're talking $55 billion company. No, $25,000 for the entire town. That's outrageous. You might as well not even give any money at that point.

Just say, well, we're not giving any money yet because we need to find out what people need. It's just insulting. If this is what they're going to do, the first offer, the first help to the community is $25,000. That is absolutely absurd. And it shows what a terrible, terrible company, Norfolk Southern really is. Moss? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I watch this and the first thing that comes to my mind is why are these people able to just come up with a number themselves? It's almost as if we should have a government and a court system and prosecution and people who can actually hold them accountable. Like the citizens of this small town, they can't do this collectively by themselves. They can't hold a corporation with this much resources. accountable. This is what we have a government for. When you transgress against people in this manner and fashion, you need to be held accountable by a greater body than yourself. This idea is like, yeah, yeah, no, this is the down payment on how I'm going to screw you guys over four years to come. It's absurd. It definitely is. Look, if you're worried that long term,

You know, we're going to check in on this in 10 years or something and, oh, what do you know? The cases of various types of liver failure or 30% higher or something. Like, I have no idea, just speculation. You would hope that you would have something like the government to make sure that to whatever extent your life can be repaired after that. And in no true sense, can it really be that you'd have that. But as of right now, you don't really have a functioning government to do that. you have $25,000 and maybe in 15 years, John Stewart will give a speech and so hopefully they'll give you a little bit of aid. That's what you've got going for you. No government,

little donation, maybe a guy from the Daily Show. That's what you have. What we have right now is thankfully David Serota doing some great analysis of the variety of ways that the government has purposefully failed in advance of this and it almost certainly will continue to fail in the wake of it. So for instance, there were potential provisions that could have stopped particularly hazardous chemicals from being transported on trains. But hey, what do you know? They have more money to lobby in the train industry than people who are worried about getting sick. So no, you're able to transport quite a bit. That is probably not a good idea. So there's that. Also, the braking system, which by the way, the company says that it was a mechanical failure,

that it wasn't specifically a braking system failure, although those two things could definitely combine and wait to find out more. The breaking systems of some of these trains are referred to as civil war era. And in theory, you could strengthen the technological requirements, the safety requirements when it comes to breaks, but you would have to be able to donate more than the trade manufacturers do. And that's a big issue. So bear that in mind as we go forward. Now, to their $25,000, they say we've established a family assistant center to address the needs of the community and support those directly impacted. They say that the center is helping evacuees with necessities, accommodations, and reimbursements. The $25,000 is merely an initial

donation. It followed on, we're in the community for the long haul, although bear in mind, as of at least when we're filming this, they have not stated that they'll cost, that they will cover the costs related to the derailment ensuing fire or the actual contamination. I would probably get them down on that, very specifically, so they can't get out of it if I was them. But in any event, they have $25,000 right now to give to the community. Do you know what they've had tons of money to spend on the past? I know what you're thinking, probably safety stuff, right? No, not necessarily. They have spent millions of dollars on executive bonuses and billions of dollars on stock buyback, which is just every company's favorite thing to spend money on. Stuff to avoid

crises like this or, you know, to compensate people for the disruption of their lives and potentially the disruption of their health going forward. That requires a little bit of more pressure. But stock buybacks, they are always ready to go for those. Was, we've heard a similar sort of story when it comes to fossil fuels recently. It's just it keeps coming back to that. It never stops. And it's not as if we have any rules in place to stop it. And, you know, quite frankly, the most deranged and psychotic wings of the capitalist class have been telling us essentially since the 80s that, you know, what we need is to sort of dismantle the regulatory state.

Deregulation is gonna lead to all this innovation and greatness and profits and they're gonna find new ways to poison your family and, you know, maim your children with this horrific toxic waste spillage. Like, and again, like, there is no regulatory state. There's no way for anybody to enforce these rules because that's what they've been working at for 40 years now. Now it's so that these people can have the right to do something like this.

And instead of heavy fines and heads rolling behind a massive, you know, F up that could have been avoided, they get, they don't even get a slap on the wrist. They get to choose how much they give people and move on with their lives. Well, I'll just add to that, I mean, it's a great point. And just to explain again for people who don't know what a stock buyback is, if a company say buys up their own stock, take some of their money and borrows some money to buy their own stock, their stock price essentially artificially goes up. And what does that do? It gives the executives more compensation because of more bonuses. It gives more money to the investors.

There used to be a time when stock buybacks were frowned upon were somewhat illegal. And you'd have to take, say, $10 billion and invest in your actual infrastructure or your research and development or things that would make you more productive and more efficient and safer for your consumers. But it's all the rage now in this American capitalism, of 2023, no, instead of actually investing in your company's productivity or safety, no, you invest in your stocks so you can artificially raise the stock price and raise the quarterly different ends and give yourself if you're an executive more money, it's outrageous. And by the way, hydrochloric acid, if I remember correctly, Jean, when I was like in seventh

grade science, that was the chemical that we made and a couple of kids in the class ported in the fish tank of a teacher they didn't like, those fish died within like 10 minutes. And I imagine that those kids, maybe they're now running Norfolk Southern at this point with their future, but it's it's a horrible, horrible chemical. I heard about that actually. I heard one of the kid gave a quarter to the teacher and I was like, don't worry, this is just an initial donation. I'm in it for the long haul, peace. Anyway, and by the way, thank you for the explanation of stock buybacks. I have this mistake of constantly assuming that everyone tunes it every single day. It's like, you know, going to watch like quantum mania and they assume that you've seen Thor, too.

I know that people don't know everything. So thank you for explaining that. And and was rightly points out, this is at the end of the day what a government is for. And a reminder, by the way, that when we hear about regulation, generally when you hear about it in the media, it's about how it's holding back economic output and it's chains on the productivity of corporations at all. It's literally just protections for regular people. When a train full of hazardous waste is barreling through your town,

whose interest do you want the government to have? the person who's going to profit off of getting that through as fast as possible or the people who have to live next to the smoldering wreckage of a derailed drain. And so spare that in mind going forward. The government has a role. It's important. It's about incentives. What incentive would a company like this have to do the right thing and take the necessary steps to make sure things are as safe as possible if there are no consequences otherwise? Yeah. Like, why would I do that? Why would I devote resources to this? thing that's not a real issue for my company. Of course, there are actual real living,

breathing human beings who this might affect. But you know, corporations aren't human. So why should they care? Exactly. And for Republicans, this is just going to be one more, well, look, this is just going to be one more government bailout for another corporation, right? Because instead of asking Norfolk Southern and putting more money in the front end for safety, now it's going to be up to the government to clean up this mess in Ohio and clean up and deal with all the health issues. And again, this is where Republicans sort of lose me because they don't want government involved, but now it's going to cost us even more as a community and a society to deal with the mess because Norfolk Southern couldn't be bothered to deal with basic

safety precautions. Exactly. David, that's because it's personal responsibility for you people, right, for you. And maybe we're wrong, maybe the CFO of Norfolk Southern's watching. It's like, hey, no, we're committed. Okay, well, prove it, prove it. And maybe Buddha judge is watching. He's like, no, we're totally going to regulate the brakes and everything. Okay, we'll prove it. We would love to see that. I'm sure the people of towns like East Palestine would love to see it even more.

Okay, with that said, why don't we move on to other news? This is our regularly scheduled news. FBI agents conducted a search of an Indiana property belonging to Mike Pence, former vice president of these United States, potential president. I know he's definitely eyeing a run. Well, they went to Carmel north of Indianapolis and they took a look at one of his buildings. What they found was one additional classified document. They spent five hours searching and they did turn up one more classified document that had

previously been found during the voluntary search that Pence and his team conducted. The search which the advisor described as thorough and unrestricted also yielded six additional pages without such markings, which is an interesting way to word it. So you found a classified document, you found six pages that didn't have markings. Does that just mean you found paper? I don't understand what that means. Does a regular person understand what that means? Did he only have six other pages?

Anyway, the pences weren't there. They were traveling at the time. And bear in mind that while we're going to be focusing on the additional document that we're was found, the subpoena that was put forward by the special counsel this week is not just about this search. Okay, so we're also going to get into what could potentially come up during testimony. He wants him to come in, by the way, to speak about what happened on January 6th, according to a source inside the special counsel's office. They wanted to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the election as well, and what actually happened

during the insurrection. And of course, he had a lot of those conversations. And in particular, when it comes to the hairbrain scheme that Mike Pence could just decide to give the election to Trump, which no logical, reasonable person believes, but Trump sure seemed to want you believe to believe it. That is something that Pence could definitely speak to. Whether he will actually do so is a totally different question because he is known as a hawk on executive privilege, which is a nice way of saying he doesn't feel like he should be accountable to anyone. I don't know why we word things in a way that protects elites. He doesn't care about you little people and your concerns about the excesses of power and the

executive branch. In any event, the most important takeaway from this is that there was one additional document. There will be searches of other properties. But David, what do you make of this? Does this really change the scandal for Mike Pence or for Biden and Trump who are facing their own document scandals? I think the most interesting thing about all of this is that Mike Pence who wrote a book that basically nobody read.

Well, the one person who did read it, the special counsel's office, and this might be their way around executive privilege, because if Mike Pence is talking about some of these events as he does in his book, then he can no longer claim executive privilege over the same conversations which are in his book. So there it goes for his own edification. He writes a book. Nobody reads it. But now because of the book, he's not going to be able to assert executive privilege on some of these conversations. That is classic Mike Pence. He's such a hack politician. It's like the idea that this dude is eyeing a run in 2024 as if anybody ever asked for Mike Pence, he got foisted upon us, but you know, by the Trump campaign. And so he was, you know, just de facto there as the guy's little lap dog. But you know, these guys have obfuscated and skated from rule of law the entire time. meaning the Trump regime. And more importantly, why I think he's really safe is that his opposition being the Democrats, Joe Biden already being caught red-handed with classified docs himself,

is all you need to know about how far this is actually going to go. Because they're not going to do it to Joe. So, you know, you can't have it both ways. And, you know, that's always the answer for everything. It's like, oh, yeah, we did it too. But, you know, Joe's is probably a little bit better. They don't have the moral ground here. And so I don't think anything's going to happen to Pence because of that. Yeah. I think was absolutely right. I don't think Pence is going to face any trouble.

I don't think Biden's going to face any trouble. But this could conceivably, this could cause a few more waves for Donald Trump. If the prosecutor is actually feeling that they might be close to an indictment of Donald Trump for his handling of classified documents of Mar-a-Lago, Pence's testimony could be what maybe puts them over. So I'm sure Donald Trump is not very happy these days. So I actually want to ask you follow about that because that's kind of interesting. Look, Pence, as Woz says, it seems ridiculous that he thinks that he could win. Man, some people just cannot see themselves.

Google Ted Cruz. But so he wants to run. And obviously his chances would improve quite a bit were Trump not to run. And if Trump were in jail, theoretically Trump's chances of running would go down at least a little bit. So there would seem to be an incentive for Mike Pence to reveal what he knows, which is that Trump tried to initiate a coup and reveal all of that. The aides are seeming to imply, and maybe this is just, this is just PR in advance of it, that he doesn't want to, he's going to have whole areas that he walls off.

And in fact, a judge might have to force him to reveal what he knows when it comes to the 2020 election and January 6th. It's also possible that he is genuinely worried that were he to reveal these sorts of things and Trump were to talk about that, it could poison the well amongst MAGA voters against Pence. If they feel like Pence is like a turn cloak, then maybe that could ruin him. So I'm curious how both of you think Pence will manage this complex social situation around the testimony that he might be obligated to give. He's going to fold.

He's going to default to, he's going to default to backing Donald Trump, right? And the thing is, backing Donald Trump tends to like get you off, get you to skate when he's in power anyway. I just don't see any scenario where this guy turns on Donald Trump. And you know, like Mike Pence is just a career politician, he doesn't know any other way. The idea that this guy would show any level of bravery or spine or any of that. And that's a great picture. By the way, like that, it's just I have a hard time envisioning that. I don't know about you guys.

No, I agree. I don't think he turns on Donald Trump, no matter what sort of incentives or no matter what a judge as I think Pence will go in front of the grand jury. He'll be asked about the book and I'll say, you know, you wrote in this passage about January 6th and such and such. He wrote about these documents and I'll say, I don't really remember that was ghost written. Or I had an author who wrote the book for me and I can't really recall what what this was all about. I think he'll punt and that'll be annoying and frustrating to the courts and the prosecutors and the grand jury. But I think Waz is right.

There's no way, I think Mike Pence turns on Donald Trump and he's going to make it clear, oh, by the way, that he's not going to turn on Donald Trump because he he knows that as crazy as a Republican primary may be, Donald Trump is still a tour to force. And Pence, if he's going to have any shot, needs to have Donald Trump essentially out of the race, but without Mike Pence's fingerprints on it. And his fingerprints will be all over it if Donald Trump in fact gets indicted. Yeah. Yeah, that is a, that seems to be the only path. And that is a narrow one. And that would still leave him having to deal with DeSantis. And I don't see how he put how he even theoretically comes out on top on that. But anyway, appreciate your thoughts. Okay, with that, we're gonna take our first break. We come back somehow George Santos found a way to hide

even more crimes in his past and we'll reveal the details after this. And was and David. We got more news. Why don't we jump right into this? A lot of people have opinions and a lot of people want to say a lot of things. Here's a reality. I'm human. I've made mistakes. I've made peace with those mistakes and I've come clean on those mistakes. You'll notice he said he's come clean on those mistakes. Not all of his mistakes, not all of his crimes, just the ones we've already uncovered. It would be nice if he would just lay it all out, a tell all, an expose, maybe a Hulu show or something, because somehow, I don't know how he has more crimes in his past, or at least alleged crimes.

So we're going to give you the details today. This is, there's multiple genres of George Santos crimes. This is the dog category of crimes. Because apparently back in 2017, he was charged with theft after $15,000 worth of bad checks in his name were, used to purchase puppies from dog breeders. Just days after the checks were made out for quote, puppies, according to the memo lines, George Santos held an adoption event at a Staten Island pet store with his animal rescue charity, Friends of Pets United, according to the store's Instagram account and a person who attended the event. So one of the bounce checks was written

out to Jacob Stoltzvus, a dog breeder in Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania in the amount of $775 for puppy and dated November 22nd, 2017, according to a copy of the check. Just three days after that check is dated, Santos' animal charity Friends of Pets United held a puppy adoption event at the Staten Island Pet Store, Pet Oasis. Now, in his defense, all theft charges against him were dropped and his record was expunged, at least his United States record, the Brazil one is outstanding, after he reported that his checkbook had been stolen. But his behavior surrounding his involvement adoption events remains controversial.

We're going to give you more details on that. But I just do want to know, the world is a complex place. Anything can happen. But if your checkbook were to be stolen, it seems weird that it was used in fraudulent ways to buy things directly relevant to your plans for the weekend. Like, it's not like they went out and bought a car or something. They bought the thing you're doing an adoption event for? Why would they do that?

I don't know. I'm trying to make sense of it. Was, what do you think? This guy is truly remarkable in his fraudulent. Just the idea that he's writing bad checks. That's like the original fraud. This is like Leonardo DiCaprio, catch me if you can stuff. A fraud.

It's not enough to lie about going to NYU. It's just like verifiable, that's the bad part about his lies. It's not like somebody goes to like Tibet and they say they met a monk who taught them the meaning of life or whatever. It's like, nobody could check that and nobody would even try, but like NYU, they can just call. Yo, this guy go there, no, like it's just mind boggling. So the fact that we're in the bounce checks, fraudulent checks portion of this guy's fraudulent

career is just amazing, honestly. It also makes me hate lawyers because I guess in the story, he had a lawyer back in 2017 who somehow convinced the Pennsylvania state police to let it go. She attested that, oh, yes, he had four checkbooks and one of them was stolen. And so, you know, let's expunge this. If the lawyer had bothered to realize that, no, these are hot checks for, as you said, John, the very puppies that he was involved with as part of an option the next few days, she might have said, you know what, I'm your lawyer, but I'm not going to represent you on this one because, you know, I'm concerned about my own reputation. This thing thinks. And never mind, you know, the poppies. There's also, of course, the story you might get into about the veteran who had a GoFundMe page and he stole money from the veteran and the dog died. I mean, when you start, I think a lot of Americans will forgive you for your lies, for making up stories, for making up things about your resume. But when you start doing things that hurt animals, household cats and cats, you are in deep trouble. And I think that's why George Santos doesn't recover from this. I agree. Yeah, yeah, we have talked about. And you should, everyone should remember that he allegedly, stole thousands of dollars that was intended to go towards treating a dying dog's cancer. Instead, the money disappeared and the dog died. That's a fun series of sentences to be forced to say by your elected representatives. But anyway, look, I am a regular person. I am not a detective by trade. I'm not even an amateur like Charlie Kane on poker face or anything. I just look at what I see. And so here's a guy who suffers a crime. His checkbook is stolen. And the person,

goes and buys dogs when he's going to do an adoption event in a few days. Okay, that's one coincidence. He's a guy who allegedly fled Brazil for committing Czech fraud. So kind of similar to this whole same thing. And I don't know, it just, it kind of seems like too much at a certain point. There's one other detail, by the way, add this. And bear in mind, this apparently wasn't Santos. I don't know. The New York Times reported this week that Santos had not. unusual request for the pet store owner after an adoption event at Pet Oasis. Okay, he asked Avassado, Daniel Avasado, to make a check with the proceeds out to his name instead of the name of the charity. Avasado said he refused, but later noticed when he looked

at his bank records that the check had been changed to the way Santos wanted it. Okay, so someone stole his checkbook to go buy dogs fraudulently that they wouldn't pay for. The dogs apparently were acquired, I guess, because he had the event that he then wanted to be personally paid for. The store owner very reasonably thought, well, that's weird. I'm working with a charity, so I'm not going to do that. And then it gets changed anyway by a guy who, again, has already faced accusations of check fraud. How is this a thing that the New York Times is only investigating? How is this not a thing that the cops are investigating?

I don't know what you could add to this to make it more suspicious at this point. He is just the ultimate supervillain. This is, this is, you can't put this in a movie. People would be like, all right, come on, this guy's too cartoonishly evil and insane. But like here we are with this Santo story, at first when it was just like, oh, he lied about his name and he flubbed his background and some fake activists, right wing gaze or whatever. Like, you know, that's stupid and you know, you should be who you say you are and it's like, all right, cool. Now he's bouncing checks and getting puppies killed and it's this is too much. It's truly too much.

Yeah, I go back and forth between thinking, okay, we've got the Freedom Caucus and then we have the clown caucus. And some days I think Marjorie Taylor Green is the chair of the clown caucus. And then George Santos, another shoe drops with him. I think, no, no, no, it's George Santos. The fact of the matter is for people who are following the politics of this, this is I think one of the reasons why Republicans are trying to, you know, they're stripping Santos from committees, there's a growing movement to try to get him out. out of Congress, they know that the longer George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Green, for that matter, are out there and are looked at as evil lunatic, sociopathic, fringe type of people.

That is terrible for Republicans, it's great for Democrats. So if you're a Democrat, just hope George Santos keeps hanging in there. Yeah. And I'm not gonna lie, John. I'm always surprised when Republicans find some level of, all right, even this is too ugly for us. I remember when, you know, the great Steve King from Iowa insinuated that the only people that had ever invented anything of any use ever were European whites. And they were like, all right, Steve King, like, you know, we love the white people, but this is kind of a bridge too far. Yeah, George Santos is finally reaching that threshold of like embarrassment that even Republicans feel shame for. Yeah, 100%. We have one other person

who is for the first time in a very long time actually demonstrated some shame. I'll have that for you a second. This is more of a question for the audience. I don't run a dog charity, although that seems fun. Maybe I'll switch over to doing that. When I think dog charity, what I think is like raise money for a vet's dying dog's cancer. I don't then think you steal the money, but the setup for it sounded good. What I don't think is go to dog breeders, buy dogs, take them to pet stores, and sell them. That's not a dog charity. That's a dog business. Am I wrong? I mean, I can be wrong. Maybe this is a totally normal fundraising thing. That just seems like you're selling dogs at a profit.

Well, you know, John, I mean, Santos did, I mean, create the Chihuahua breed and the poodle breed. And he's got, you know, so he's got a long history of being an expert on dog, oh, maybe not. Yeah, scientists could only invent a chow. He's the one who got to the second chow. Okay, he broke the chow barrier. In any event, you know how bad it's got to for him. So he told Newsmax on Thursday evening that after Mitt Romney chewed him out, calling him a sick puppy and stuff, trying to put it in terms he'd understand, he started to walk away and Kirsten Cinema told him, hang in there, buddy. Santos added that she was very polite, very kind-hearted, unlike Romney, who he claims has always had prejudice

towards minorities. Okay, so that was a nice moment where that could be true. I don't put anything So Curson Cinema was nice to him. Curson Cinema, by the way, is one of the most blatant tools of the 1% in corporations that we've ever had in government. She is totally brazen about it. Okay, she doesn't care. When she tries to stop the minimum wage from going up, she gives like, meh, like she does not care.

She has no shame. But when she heard that Santos had said that, she denied it, saying that it's a lie, they never spoke. That's how toxic he is. Oh my goodness. Yeah, even cinema doesn't want anything to do with them. Wow. It's amazing.

Okay, well, with that, why don't we turn to something a little weird, something a little fun perhaps? Joe Biden is our president. Obviously a lot of progressives would have preferred Bernie and looking forward to 2024. Hey, maybe we get a progressive, but hey, maybe we don't need one because according to a new op-ed, Joe Biden is Bernie Sanders. That's an interesting thought. Let's take a look at the evidence presented by Daniel Henninger. Subtitle of the piece says Democrats thought a socialist couldn't win the presidency in 2020. Well, they've got one now for 2024. And this is the description of Biden's state of the union that inspired this op-ed. Biden said he would ban resort fees, impose a cap on concert ticket fees, and ban fees for people wanting to sit together on planes.

Then he said something about getting involved with whether a person can quit a job as a cashier at a burger joint to take the same job across the street. Even Karl Marx wouldn't have thought to propose so much flat-earth socialism. Far from done, Mr. Biden moved on to home care, housing, pre-K, teachers pay, student, at mental health, and addressing the crime crisis with counselors, social workers, and psychologists. The economic populism proposals Mr. Biden outlined resemble Xi Jinping's national champion policies for China. And the speech's most publicized moment was the Republican cat calls when Mr. Biden said the party wants to cut payments for Social Security and Medicare. The White House reportedly is thrilled Mr. Biden goaded Republicans into denying any such intention,

consider the bottom line. Mr. Biden has taken even a conversation about reform of entitlement spending off the table. So look, it is not that he didn't say some of those things. The interpretation I think is a little bit wild. He did say some of those things. And on some of those things, I think that Biden means it. But simply just taking a bullet point list of the things a president says, whether on the campaign trail or most importantly, perhaps, in the state of the union address where I don't know if everyone knows this, but you're not legally required to do the things you say you're going to do in a state of the union address. And it appears based on history that presidents know that, to assume that, oh, thus, he's

the same as Bernie Sanders. He will prioritize the same as Bernie Sanders. He'll fight the same as Bernie Sanders. That seems to me to be going a little bit too far. Was, what do you think? Just, you know, another psychotic, deranged mouthpiece for Capitol. It reminds me of, you know, you have your hyper religious ante who's like obsessed with Jesus and church and, you know, your girlfriend shows up with an anklet and she calls her a harlot. This is exactly the lunacy we're talking about with these Wall Street Journal types. It's like anything to the left of, you know, General MacArthur, you're a sicko. tree hugging crazy Kami Pinko idiot. And like this is no nuance to anything,

any of this analysis like none of it. And then you know, they give the whole game away when literally the two most popular government programs in existence, Social Security, Medicare. The idea that Joe Biden would say, yeah, that's untouchable. And you know, he wouldn't approach it. That's crazy. He he wants to make Americans unhappy and sicker and poor.

What the hell? That's crazy. It's just these people like literally they're psychotic. Yeah, I would have just had. I mean, nuance is a great word. Lack of nuance, lack of intellectual sophistication. Because if there was any intellectual sophistication, and I would have figured this kind of op-ed would come from the New York Post,

not the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal used to have op-ed writers who would understand that there are different degrees of Democrats. But all too often now, we see whether it's the Sean Hannity's, the Wall Street journals, everybody thinks, everybody in the right thinks Democrats are monolithic that because Democrats believe in, you know, protecting the environment, then we're all socialist and we're all crazy. And, you know, the fact that you have a major political party where so many people in that party have this sort of broad brush that they apply to everybody and think that, oh yeah, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are the same. That's, that's ridiculous. And that's the difficulty that Democrats have. You're dealing with people who are not right. not intellectually capable of drawing basic distinctions about anything. 100%. Yeah, you could you could point out that, hey, if you were to look at all the different proposals that Biden mentioned at the State of the Union, that is in a variety of ways, perhaps a little bit more all encompassing than progressives might have predicted in the lead up to 2020. And you might have a case there. Now, of course, we can still have a debate

about whether any of it will actually happen or whatever, whether he really means it, we could have that case. But to immediately jump to, it's socialism. It's, well, you know, if the government stops a company from being able to make your employment contingent on you not working at a different burger place if you leave, well, then that's all Karl Marx would want. That just goes way too far. I don't know Daniel Henninger. I don't know his politics. I don't know if this is supposed to be a thought experiment or whatever. I just thought it would be an interesting stimulus to conversation.

But it just, again, like David was saying, there are gradations of Democrats. and personally, like trying to pitch a program, Social Security, let's start there, that's existed for decades and decades and decades, that if you don't give in the Republicans on, at the very least, raising the retirement age, then you're a little bit suspicious. You might be a little bit radical. I think that's crazy. I think that since Social Security began, America is way more powerful, way more rich. I think the American people have improved their productivity year after year after year after year for literally decades.

I think that if you don't think the retirement age should be lowered, you the radical personally. What have we been working towards as individuals and as a society for a better part of a century? Cranking out more and more and more constantly getting paid less and less and less, the chance of owning a home going lower and lower and lower. That's crazy. The status quo is insane. But we're being told that if we don't have, allow them to continue to chip away, then were Marxists by default? That is a crazy framing. And then I'm not even blaming Daniel Henninger for this. That's effectively what much of the conversation is about, even trying to disarm our concerns by saying, oh, it's off the tables now because of Biden. It's not off the tables. It's not done until it's done. And when Kevin McCarthy's

having meetings with Joe Biden that they both come out of saying we're great meetings, That should send a chill down your spine if you're worried about being able to, you know, retire with dignity someday. Well, and John, that gets right to sit to the simpletons in terms of how Republicans view social security, right? They don't look at it as a program that has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty. They don't look at it as a program that's efficient, that's helpful. They only can see it as a government program. Yeah. And God forbid, we should have a government program that is actually helping people that is actually working.

So in their mind, without looking being able to look at any of the nuances, they're blinded by their own labels. Government program, it must be bad. We have to privatize it. We have to do something different with it. That's, and again, that's how simplistic the GOP is on issue after issue. And the best part about this, this is why the credibility is just none. And I think people see right through this. You could pull this communist crap when the president, the Democratic president is Barack Obama. So because he's black, he's vaguely radical. Never mind the amount of, never mind Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner's portion of his regime.

Never mind the fact that he raised tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street for both of his campaigns. Never mind those truths, right? Like it'd be hard to be more pro-capital, pro-Wall Street than Barack Obama. except Joe Biden, right, the guy, the freaking senator from Delaware who threw his whole body in front of bankruptcy reform. Delaware, the state, the tax haven state for banks. Like, that's where Joe Biden comes from. This guy is so pro bank, pro business, pro capital. Like, it's absurd. It's just crazy. And so that's why these people lose all credibility. And I really don't think this stuff has effect on normal same people because it's Joe Biden we're talking about here.

Let me really fast, I just want to touch base with you coming out of the State of the Union. What does your gut say is the odds that Joe Biden does run for reelection based on what you saw at that state of the union? I mean, I'd put it at 80%, 90%. He's definitely going to run because, you know, as we know, people don't just give away power. They'll just say, oh, I think I'm about done being the most powerful man in America. I'm done. I'll just let Kamala or some other Democratic Party lackey have the position. There's no chance.

And guess what? He's the best candidate that they got. That's just the hard, cold truth of it. He's the best they got. And he knows it. I'll agree. I think it's at least 80%. But here's the other thing about it is Joe Biden.

I mean, look, he's dispelled this sort of myth that he's tired or that he's Sleepy Joe, whatever the Republicans want to call him, he had a lot of energy, a lot of focus to be able to have that interaction with the hecklers at a state of the union speech. The other thing is Joe Biden has figured out what could win, right? And that he, by lifting up the fringes of the Republican Party, by leveraging the extremists, he's able to paint the Republican Party as it is as unappetizing to the American people. And usually when you're a president running for a election, it's a referendum on you. But Joe Biden has figured out, no, no, no, no, he may pull the same strategy that Barack Obama did with Mitt Romney. Make it all about Mitt Romney in his elevators. make it all about the Republican parties dominated by the Freedom Caucus, by Marjorie Taylor Green, by George Santos, by people who want to take away your social security. That is a winning strategy. He knows it. The Democrats know it. The polling shows it as well. Okay. Well, with that, we're going to take our last break. We come back. One more story. Don't go anywhere.

You guys watching live can't tell, but I'm getting mocked, okay, behind the scenes. Anyway, I was corrected during the break and I always love when members of our audience correct me. When they're right, when they're not, I will burn you to the ground. A turn cloak is the term used for a treacherous, disloyal person who has betrayed those who put their faith in them and that's according to a wiki of ice and fire so you know take that to the bank or whatever anyway I'm getting called Merlin up in here it's a real term get used to it I'm gonna name one of my short stories after it actually anyway was David you ready for one more story yes okay let's talk about this graduate students working at Temple University

are going on strike too as many movements are raise their wages get better quality of life, better health care. In response, the university is canceling your health care and charging them thousands of dollars. This is unprecedented, and we want to give you all the details. So on Wednesday, so just two days ago, some members of the union who have been on strike since January 31st, is not that longstanding, received an email from the university saying, actually, why don't we bring it up? And you can see the actual email that was sent out. As a result of your participation in the TUGSA strike, your tuition remission has been removed for the spring semester. You now owe the full balance listed in TU pay, which is due

by Thursday, March 9th. If your balance is not paid in full by the due date, you will be assessed a $100 late payment fee and a financial hold will be placed on your student account. This hold will prevent future registration. What are the students who received this email, Madison Ingram, responded with LOL for my convenience, because of course it says for your convenience, you can make payment online by clicking TU pay student account. Yeah, very convenient to be forced to pay up immediately for the entirety of the thing because you don't like that they are providing an example for their students perhaps of the power of labor and how it needs to fight for its own interests. In any event, they wouldn't strike back on January 31st after an impasse

and negotiations over benefits and pay. Currently, graduate students who work as TAs, RAs, and graduate assistants receive less than $20,000 per year in compensation. Graduate workers want the university to raise that to $32.5,000. The cost of living in Philadelphia is nearly 77,000, so it wouldn't even match that even after the raise they're asking for. They also, by the way, want better health care coverage for workers' dependents. It's so bad that if they have to cover their dependence on their health care plans, they can end up spending somewhere between 30 to 86% of their income on insurance premiums for their dependents. Obviously, that's not sustainable, not even remotely.

And there are graduate students in similar positions, as TAs, RAs, and all of that. In universities, not that far away making significantly more money. So there's a precedent in the area for their demands. David, what do you think about this? This is terrible for Temple University. I mean, it used to have a pretty good reputation as a great academic institution, undergraduate and graduate. But the idea that a graduate student would be having to survive doing their graduate studies,

doing their TA work, helping to teach classes. is on $20,000, that's insane. You cannot have a family, you can't have kids if you're in graduate school. Once upon a time, I was a kid, my parents were in graduate school and they had me and my brothers. And back then, you know, 50 some years ago, it was actually a pretty decent life if you were in graduate school. But our society has decided, ah, to hell with universities, to help with graduate students. We don't care. And as a result, their salaries have never kept up even with inflation.

And now living as a graduate student means living in poverty, literally. And that's who we want our students to be learning from. That's insanity. Yeah, I mean, just imagine, you know, John, getting full-time pay for full-time work, such a novel concept. And I think that the most important part of this to me, especially as it pertains to the university system that we have in America, where these fools jack up the prices every single year, because they know the costs will be underwritten by the federal government in the form of student loans,

So they're all richer than ever. And so this idea that they can't afford to pay the people who help, you know, basically undergird the education system at any given school is absurd. And again, our government is subsidizing this. Like kids think it's a given that they should take out these exorbitant loans to go to these universities. And they get that money right away, you know, and people have to pay it back later. So this idea that a university, again, they're richer than ever. The costs have skyrocketed in the past decades on the cost of college.

Just the idea that they're underpaying anybody, much less graduate assistants. It's absurd. Yeah, no, 100%. In this case, I can speak with some experience. I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin in the government department. And I taught classes, I gave lectures, I did office hours, I proxious. I proctored exams. I ran an experimental media lab. I assisted professors in research programs. I tutored athletes. I probably did other stuff that I'm not even remembering. It was pretty

important, I think. And thankfully, at least as of then, I can't speak to the condition at UT right now. They did allow you to live. I mean, it wasn't like a fabulous life. I was constantly worried about growing broke, but they covered your tuition. They provided a stipend and all that because they knew that the system would grind to a hall if they didn't have those graduate student workers. And by the way, if they had not done that, if the benefits had been 20% worse, I wouldn't have been able to go. And the thing is, I understand for regular people, let alone those who have had their mind poisoned against higher education by the right wing, you might think, well, boo-hoo for the graduate students. They're in a doctoral program that's so removed from my life. And in many

perhaps it is. But the people who are doing all of those roles, the ones I just listed before, they're the ones who are in the future are going to be the professors. They're going to be the scholars. They're going to be the ones hopefully coming up with new stuff for people to continue to learn. They have to get to that phase. They have to go through the graduate student phase. And we could be cutting off the future of American academia, scientific research, technology and all that by not properly appreciating the graduate students we have right now. What they did in this particular case, making them pay immediately, there is, as far as we can tell, no precedent for that. No other university has conducted themselves in this way, let alone trying to shut off their health insurance almost instantly.

Now, thankfully, it appears that that was reversed because the union pointed out that legally they have to provide 60 days of health insurance. And by the way, it's supposed to be a thing where you cannot remove it without the 60 days. It appears that the university manually overrode that. But that has apparently been fixed. Because of the union, they've been able to reverse that. But that said, I want everyone to get fired up about this and put pressure on the university. I know that this might not be the sort of position that you have. But as we always say, our power, our influence, our ability to influence these institutions, does rise and fall together.

That's why we focus on the rail workers and people who work at Starbucks and who work the warehouses at Amazon. And yes, indeed, the graduate students at universities like this. This is very much a situation where a rising tide raises all boats. And so we need to constantly be vigilant, even for people who might work very different sorts of jobs than we do. Any final comments, guys? I just add that Temple University is not struggling financially. There are some universities that are having a difficult time in terms of their finances. Temple University has a pretty sizable endowment.

So even if the university is crunched in numbers and said, okay, well, maybe it's going to cost us a little bit more to pay the graduate students. So maybe it would be easier just to bust the union. But don't do that. You can afford to do this. It's the right thing to do for your community, for the university, for these graduate students, for the undergraduates they teach. Don't be cheap. Don't bust them this way. Beautiful said, guys. Thank you. By the way, just randomly, I don't know if we cover this in the main show, but I saw that Nintendo had like a bad, like, last quarter, whatever. And in response, they raised their workers pay by like 10%, apparently to motivate them or whatever. fire like you got constantly remind people they they got a whole different work culture around work in japan than we do like it's just it's just different yeah yeah 100 percent like we obviously we focus here at t yt on the united states and i get it this is where we live or whatever but there are other ways to run corporations to run universities to organize your police to you know organize jails and prisons and things like that there are amazing alternatives already working

in many other countries. It's almost like our elected officials should start to take inspiration from those. In any event, that's all the time we have for the first hour. First of all, Wazi Lombray, great to have you here as always. Where can people follow you? Bringer.com for all of my MBA coverages, of course, subscribe to Woke Bros. Wherever you get your podcast, me and Nando Villa, we talk about politics, those drop on Thursdays. And yeah, keep it locked to TYT. I pop in every now and again.

Awesome. And David, if people head over to Rebel HQ right now, what are they going to find? What have you been working on? We got a great story up right now about a place you know well, John. Danbury, Connecticut, the corruption of the local government in Danbury, Connecticut exposed by one of the nation's best constitutional auditors. There was just a trial. It's fascinating what came out in terms of the corruption of the state's attorney's office, the police, the town clerk. It's kind of ugly as well.

But go to Rebel HQ on YouTube or Facebook. You can search me, David Chuster, and also find me on Twitter at David Chuster. Awesome. Thank you, everyone. I'm John Arola. Host the Damage Report every weekday. definitely something you should check out. Jared Jackson is going to be leading us through the second hour in just a bit, so don't go anywhere. We'll see in a few. at apple.co slash t yt. I'm your host jank huger and I'll see you soon.