The Young Turks - Plan of a Tax

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Nancy Pelosi admitted that the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill will be reduced in size and scope before it is voted on. Democrats may add a carbon tax to the budget reconciliation bill. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has reportedly told her Democratic colleagues that she will not support any tax hikes on corporations or wealthy individuals. A new poll shows that a large majority of Republican voters want former President Donald Trump to face a primary challenge in 2024. Hosts: Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you'll open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business.

Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. All right. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jake you Granic, is sparing with you guys. Today's a clarifying day. Is it a little bit? Yeah, uh-huh. So we're seeing a little bit better now. So what they're going to do with the two giant bills, the corporate bill and the actual bill, actual infrastructure bill. So Thursday's D-day, as you're about to see in a second, and we'll see what the actual so-called plan is. And I am intensely

curious as to how it's going to go. But a lot of piece of evidence have come in today. We're going to share that with you guys, and then we'll get on to crazy Republicans after that. So it's called the news. Let's do it. All right. Well, we begin with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already provided a pretty significant concession to corporate Democrats who do not want to spend $3.5 trillion on the budget reconciliation bill. So she made this concession in the form of an interview on ABC over the weekend. Now, there aren't any specific numbers, but her messaging is certainly telling.

So let's take a look. I know the Budget Committee passed a resolution calling for $3.5 trillion, but it sounds like you acknowledge that the final number is going to be somewhat smaller than that. Yeah. I mean, that seems self-evident. That seems self-evident. The fact is, is that this is the excitement of it all. It's just in real time. exploitation of a few people not in agreement being called a division in the Democratic. Everybody overwhelmingly, and I think even those who want a smaller number, support the vision of the president. No, no, not everybody supports the vision of the president. And let me be clear, the budget reconciliation bill includes all of President Joe Biden's provisions that were stripped away from the corporatist infrastructure

bill. So the corporate Democrats who are pushing back against the budget reconciliation bill are very clearly against the agenda that Joe Biden had laid out. Okay, so let's be clear about that. One other thing I want to mention is that the budget reconciliation bill was already negotiated down to $3.5 trillion. Initially, Bernie Sanders was shooting for somewhere between $5 trillion and $6 trillion. So to make it appear as though, you know, 3.5 trillion is the highest starting point in the negotiations is just a complete, and utter lie, and for her to say like, well, you know, the number's gonna come down, that's self-evident, is it self-evident?

I mean, seemed like she was holding on, she was claiming that she was gonna push back against any attempts to cut this legislation down, and now it seems like she's ready and willing to do so, which isn't that surprising to be honest. Yeah, so look, there are things that are enormous mysteries here. So I want to get to that in a second. But now at least one thing is clear, as we suspect it, and this is the easiest one. Do corporate Democrats and Democratic leadership? They used to be one of the same.

Now there's a tiny bit of a schism. There's the corporate Democrats represented by Mansion and Cinema. It's actually a much larger group than that, but they're just using those as a convenient, rotating villains for today, right? And now there's Democratic leadership, which is slightly different than the corporate Democrats, for the first time, probably in my life. They've always been the same until now. So which way was Democratic leadership going to go? Were they intent on passing this bill at all? Or was it always a trick and they were going to kill it right after the corporate back plan gets passed, right? And were they really trying for $3.5 trillion? So the first part of that has come in. Here's Democratic leadership saying, no. Of course we weren't really trying for three and a half trillion dollars. And so that's, I'm gonna file that one under a least surprising event in this whole saga, okay? And it's a classic democratic leadership to negotiate against yourself publicly if it's really against yourself, right?

The reality is they also want the number to go lower because they're actually negotiating with their own corporate donors. That's what the mansion cinema drama is all about, right? But if they were serious and they weren't lying, you would never go out publicly and say, like let's say you're at a car dealership and a guy is offering it to you the car for $20,000 and you want it for $15,000, you wouldn't say, I'll definitely take it at $20,000, but I'm starting at 15. Like, everybody knows that, right? So you wouldn't do this if you actually want a three and a half. That's clear.

Now the things that are unclear, do they actually want it at all? I think it looks like overall big picture that they do, but they wanted it in a much lower number. Leadership does. Corporate Democrats don't want it at all. They don't want it at all. And we're going to show you that game. So is it going to happen? Well, I've never seen the corporate Democrats opposed to Democratic leadership. So who's stronger? Probably the corporate Democrats. It's the only thing that could be stronger than Democratic leadership. Because normally when you have an authoritarian message in Washington, especially from the Democratic Party, and they say this is how it's going to be done, that's how it's done 98% of the time, if not 100% of the time. So here we have it, a drama we've never seen before.

So progressives are in a different camp. They're in the $3.5 trillion, and we meant it camp. And now we're on a collision course here. Let's see how it turns out. We'll see how it turns out. I have some predictions. But before I get to those predictions, I actually want to go to other parts of. the interview with Nancy Pelosi, because as some of you might have noticed, today is September 27th,

and Nancy Pelosi had made a pledge, a promise, if you will, to corporate Democrats in the House regarding holding a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. That's the corporate bill that we're not big fans of. She was supposed to have that vote today. It's already passed in the Senate. That vote did not happen today. And so over the weekend, George Stepanopoulos asked Pelosi about that, and here's what she had to I know you said the infrastructure bill is going to pass, but the leader of the Progressive Caucus in the House, John LaPrya Paul, is balking. She said on Friday that voting on this bill tomorrow is an arbitrary date, adding that more than 50 members will vote no if you first don't have agreement on the broader social investment bill. So are you confident these progressive members are going to vote yes, even though she says no? Well, let me just say we're going to pass the bill this week.

I promise that we would bring the bill to the floor. That was, according to the language, that those who wanted this to brought to the floor tomorrow wrote into the rule. We will bring the bill to the board tomorrow for consideration. But you know, I'm never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn't have the votes. Strong words from Nancy Pelosi because Representative Jayapal, who, you know, George Stepanopoulos should probably get a little acquainted with her, just totally butchered her name, but nonetheless, has made it very clear that progressives will defeat the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the corporate handout bill, unless they get a vote on the

budget reconciliation bill first. Now Pelosi says, we're gonna pass the bill this week, and she claims that she will not bring that bill to the House floor for a vote, unless she knows she has the votes necessary to do it. So look, the situation hasn't really changed much. It's a game of chicken and really the only hope we have is progressive lawmakers holding on, holding true to their promise of defeating the corporate bill unless we get what we want and what we need from that reconciliation bill. There's a lot of pressure for them to fold and so far they haven't done so, but we'll see how it plays out.

Well, look, it looks like I think I found the loophole because I kept telling you, I've never seen anything like this in politics. I know how the game is normally played. Corporate Democrats in Democratic leadership, tell progressives, oh, sure, sure, kick the ball, they take the ball away, et cetera. But here they were doing a lot of different things that contradicted that playbook. So what did I just hear in that clip that makes me think, okay, maybe this is what they're going to do? So Pelosi says, no, we meant it. We're actually going to have a vote on this, the corporate-backed one, and then she says, and it's going to pass. But wait a minute, progressives just told you it's not going to pass until the $3.5 trillion

one or whatever the number is, but the actual infrastructure plan passes the Senate first and then the House so that it's a bill, and then we pass the corporate-backed one, right? It looks like Pelosi's going to say, no, we're going to pass the real one in the House, and then we're going to pass the corporate back one in the House, and that's what I meant. Well, that doesn't accomplish anything, because the $3.5 trillion one, the real one, they're going to kill on the Senate. Yep. So it looks like they're playing it really, if that's how it turns out at the end,

And that's the loophole that she created. Well, I said we're going to vote on one before the other. I didn't say both houses. Do you think we're morons? And by the way, we're going to find out. We know where we are. We're not. We can see that game very clearly.

If progressives go, oh, okay, I guess they will pass it in the Senate at some point, then they are morons. If they pass the corporate back one first, there's a 0% chance. The larger one passes. 0%. No chance whatsoever. Negative 45%. There's no chance. I'm positive about that. Okay. So if the progressives do as we think they're going to do as if they said a thousand times over publicly that they're going to do and they're going to vote no on the corporate backed one, is Pelosi going to be flummox? Is she going to be like, okay, then I thought, wait a minute, she seems weirdly confident. Either she doesn't know what she's doing at all, which is a distinct possibility. Can people understand what she's saying on air?

she's barely coherent. Well, there's one more clip I want to get to, Jank, because that might help bolster the argument that you're trying to make because George Stephanopoulos was confused by what she was saying and had a follow-up to the answer that you just saw. Let's take a quick look at that. In order to get the votes to pass it, it sounds like you're going to need agreement on the broader social investment

to build back. You're right. And so that is going to happen this week as well? Well, let me just say, we're prepared, we're ready. Yesterday, the Budget Committee passed out the build back better legislation at the full $3.5 trillion. So it was the number that was sent to us by the Senate and by the president. Obviously, with negotiations, there'll have to be some changes in that. The sooner, the better, so that we can build our consensus to go forward.

So she seemed a little tripped up by that follow-up question. Maybe she wasn't expecting it. But what do you make of all of this? So there's only two potential answers. One is Nancy Pelosi is incoherent and doesn't know what's going on. And so she thinks, oh, we'll just yell at the progressives. And I'll get all my friends in corporate media to yell at them on Thursday. Because the vote's happening on Thursday, she scheduled it.

That ship has sailed. So, and we'll do the same playbook we always did. And the progressives will vote no. And she'll be surprised because she's out of touch and can't believe she couldn't bully them into it. Right? Or she has secret Republican votes. Think about that. Like people always say, oh, no, the Republicans are never going to vote with the Democrats. You have to have the just Democrats vote with the moderate Democrats in order to pass anything. Do you? It depends on how many of them there are. Can Kinsinger and Liz Cheney, who have been so buddy-buddy with Nancy Pelosi and

Stanley Hoyer, now turn around and deliver six to 12 extra Republican votes in the House so they can turn around to the progressives and go, sorry, this trap was a little different than the other traps. Thank you for playing along, you suckers. We're actually, Democratic leadership has always been corporate Democrats, and we just laid an ambush for you in a way that you didn't expect. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a possibility. I think that's a difficult strategy to accomplish. And I mean, look, it really depends on who you believe, right? Jaya Paul could be bluffing in regard to the number of progressives who are willing to block the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She claims that it's about half for caucus. She says it's 50 people.

There's, look, if that's true, then Jayapal's a great leader, and I want to give her terrific credit on this issue. She holds all 50, and they all vote, no. She deserves a ton of credit. We don't know what's going to happen ahead of time, so all you skeptics out there, you have to give her the credit if she delivers, okay? Now, if it turns out that it's the opposite, it ain't 50, it's the Justice Democrats. There's 10 of them. them, right? And the other 40 are generally cowards. And so when Pelosi goes, boo, they'll be like, okay, okay, okay, what do you need me to do? I'll sign, I'll sign. I swear to God, I'll sign. Please don't have Jake Tapper yell at me and call me a radical instead of a moderate.

I want to be a moderate so bad. If that's the case, then yeah, they can get, they might be able to get 10 Republicans. So we'll see. I don't think that Pelosi's an idiot. I don't. And I don't think she's confused. I think she knows what she's doing. And now it's become clearer, considering your commentary on this story, they're going to vote on both bills. No, she said it. There's no question they're voting. They're going to vote on both bills. And if the House, even if they vote on the budget reconciliation bill first and they pass it, on the same day, they're going to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And progressives will definitely carry out what they promise to do, right?

That they won't block that bill as long as they get the vote on the reconciliation bill. Remember, that bill does have to go back to the Senate. The Senate voted in favor of the three point five, like the framework, the $3.5 trillion. But the House version of the budget reconciliation bill is very likely to get voted down in the Senate. Yeah, guys, so I know a lot of this can get confusing because there's the House, the Senate, there's two versions of the bill. But the bottom line is, if the House votes yes on both, the corporate back bill one is done.

It already passed the Senate and it becomes law, okay? Then they have to go back to the Senate for the three and a half trillion one. And that's where it will meet a guaranteed death if the House has already passed the corporate version. So it's a very, the bottom line on it is, for progressives in Congress, the vote is very simple. They must vote no and they must vote no in very large numbers to make sure that there aren't enough Republicans to outvote them by joining in. If they don't do that, then it is definitely their fault.

If they do vote no and Pelosi finds enough Republicans to join her, okay, well, then the entire hand is revealed. Progressives will then have no excuse anymore to pretend that Nancy Pelosi is on their side. Because she will have ambushed them in the biggest, like, ambush of their careers and humiliated them by showing everybody how dumb they are. And so if that's true, then will you, for God's sake, understand, she is not your friend or ally. By the way, again, none of this has happened yet. If I'm wrong, and somehow Pelosi pulls out a magic rabbit trick out of her hat where she gets the Senate to vote on the larger bill first.

Okay, great. Then I'm happy to say, oh my God, I was wrong about her the whole time. She is a master strategist and a master legislator. And oh, my gosh, she got the progressive version done, and the progressives were right to trust her. She's mama bear, okay? I will say all of that on air, and they could tape it and replay it over and over again until they're happy, okay? But they're not going to pull them something out of their hat on the Senate side. So, and probably Pelosi will show herself to be the corporate goon that I've always suspected that she was.

In fact, proven a thousand times over that she was. But this is the last tilt, because remember, well, last thing, guys, a lot of the establishment, and establish her media say, no, Jank, you misunderstand Pelosi. First of all, they, a lot of them say this, she's a master legislator. That's hilarious, let's put that aside. She kind of is. I mean, if this plays out the way that I suspect it's going to play out. The way I outland with the Republicans crossed.

Yes, then she is. But not, she's a master legislator not on behalf of the policies that actually materially benefit her own constituents' lives, but on behalf of corporate donors and corporate interest. And Anna, that's exactly where I was going with it. So if it turns out she does this thing where the Republican trick, right? Well, it's going to prove another portion of the establishment media and Democrats are wrong. They say, no, Jank, at the end, she's going to be a progressive because she's retiring and she wants her legacy to be these really important progressive bills. And she's been waiting her whole career and playing this corporate game so at the end she could trick the corporate people and pass this amazing progressive legislation.

If that's true, great. Wonderful. It's still not great because she should have had a whole progressive career until the very, not at the very end. But I'll take it because we're at the very end. But if it turns out that's not the case and she uses Republicans to screw us, it doesn't matter. I'm never going to get establishment media or Democrats to ever say, oh, you were right. It turns out she's a corporate goon that is wholly owned subsidiary of her donors. But that will be the case if that's the way that the votes go down. Well, we'll find out by the end of the week. For now, though, we've got to take a break.

When we come back, we'll talk a little bit about why Kirsten. in cinema is allegedly against raising taxes on the rich. We'll see you in a few minutes. All right, back on TYT, Jen Canana with you guys. If you weren't frustrated enough yet with corporate Democrats, good news. We've got a lot more frustration. Okay, and unlike the rest of the media, we'll actually tell you what's actually happening. The New York Times had a shameful article by Kristen Cinema, like many of the rest of the media. Well, I'll explain when we get to it. Well, I mean, she's pouring over spreadsheets, Jane.

I mean, oh, she's worried about the debt, you know, she's accountant-like focus. Okay, that was political in New York Times is just as bad. That was Axios. Oh, Axios, you're right. Thank you, sorry, Politico. I don't blame you for mixing him up. Yes, I hear you, but we should get it right. All right, well, let's move on to that story.

So, corporate Democrats like Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin are opposed to tax hikes on the well, In fact, they're even against reversing Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the rich, which is by the way, one of the things that is proposed by progressives in order to raise the revenue necessary to pay for the budget reconciliation bill. That's the bill that includes all of the programs that would actually help to benefit the lives of working Americans, things like Medicare expansion, free community college, negotiations on prescription drugs, so Americans aren't price gouged by pharmaceutical companies, you know, those kinds of programs. Well, apparently Kirsten Cinema gave an interview to a local

Arizona publication claiming that, look, I mean, raising taxes on the rich, that's great and everything, but she's really, really concerned about climate change, which, by the way, the budget reconciliation bill deals with in the most robust way, legislatively speaking, okay? So Senator Kirsten Sinema's resistance to tax hike or tax rate increases to pay for the Democrats' ambitious social policy and climate legislation has set off a scramble for alternatives, including a carbon tax, international corporate tax changes, and closing loopholes for businesses that pay through the individual income tax system. Now, I just want you guys to understand how modest the proposed tax increases really are. And these modest tax increases are the very tax increases that

Kirsten Cinema has been legally bribed by her corporate donors to be against. That's the correct way to frame this story. So as the Times reports, House and Senate leaders agree that the budget legislation would largely be funded by returning the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent from the 37% level to which President Donald Trump lowered it in 2017. They also agree that the corporate income tax rate should rise from 21% also set in 2017. Now the New York Times conveniently left out what the proposal to increase that tax rate is, right? Like from 21% to what?

Not back to 28%, not back to 35%. No, no. Right now, Democrats are saying, listen, the corporate tax rate was 35%. Trump lowered it to 21%, Biden wanted to increase it to 28%, but how about we go to 25%. Kirsten Cinema is like, no, not gonna do it, I'm against it. Okay, fascinating. By the way, she voted against Trump's tax cuts for the rich. Funny how she's now against reversing those tax cuts.

Now, cinema, by the way, continues to pretend like she's concerned about other things. including climate change, which makes no sense considering she's against this reconciliation bill, which deals with climate change. Let's go to Graphic 5. She says in Arizona, we're all too familiar with the impacts of a changing climate, from increasing wildfires to severe droughts, to shrinking water levels at Lake Mead, damage to critical infrastructure. These are all things that we're dealing with in Arizona every day. We know that a changing climate It costs Arizonans, and right now we have the opportunity to pass smart policies to address it, looking forward to that.

So why does she give a statement like that, especially since she's simultaneously against the budget reconciliation bill, which deals with climate change? Well, because she's setting the stage for a carbon tax, which could be pretty regressive, right? So it really depends on how that kind of carbon tax is written into the legislation. But if there aren't carve outs for working Americans, it ends up being a regressive tax. So you basically avoid raising taxes on the rich and implement a regressive tax that affects everyone, but certainly it impacts the middle class and working class far more.

Yeah, there's a trick in there too. So there might be a second reason why she's proposing carbon tax, which I'll get to in a second. But first, I want to explain why the cinemas in the mansions of the world are never held to account, because the mainstream media is their great protector. So there's a whole article, you can read it, Democrats consider adding carbon tax the budget bill in the New York Times, and they say her policies are inscrutable, that you can interpret that in a couple of different ways. They call her iconoclastic, like as if she's some sort of like, she's Steve Jobs or something.

But you could say, hey, they also means you can't quite figure her out, but she sounds very important. Okay, those are minor, all right? But at the end, what's missing is the most important part. But at the end, they say a crucial test of whether Ms. Cinema would support a carbon tax. Now pause here. Now what is the crucial test for cinema? If you're watching this show, you very likely know, or if you're a sentient human being,

you know that the crucial test for cinema is how much she's going to get paid by our donors. But the New York Times does not end the sentence that way. They end the sentence with, a crucial test of whether Ms. Sinema would support a carbon tax would be its effects on the Arizona economy. Oh, she cares so much about the Arizona economy. That's why she just took over $960,000 in checks from people who are looking to kill this bill. Because she was just heartbroken about the Arizona economy. Which way is it going to go?

She's so heartbroken about workers in Arizona that she voted down a federal minimum wage increase. Well, how is it going to affect the Arizona economy? I mean, she poured over her spreadsheets, as Axio said, and she's like, her accountant-like focus, which is iconoclastic, was brought to bear upon the Arizona economy, and how is it going to be affected? Are you guys actual reporters? I mean, this is supposed to be the paper record. This is a joke. Never did they mention in this article, or pretty much almost in any article about Chris's cinema in her vote, her real motivation, which is the giant amount of money she's taking from donors. If you're a reporter, you don't believe that, retire, retire and become a dentist.

Yep. You think $960,000 does not affect her vote? You're a moron of epic proportions. So I actually want to get to specific figures because it is fascinating because you'll get this lengthy, dense New York Times piece, right? Pages and pages long. And all it is is garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, right? ridiculous, like, they provide cover for people like cinema. That's the Kabuki Theater.

And so you have to rely on independent sources to help break down what the true motivations are. Look, propaganda isn't just what gets published. It's what does not get published with these types of publications, right? And so Jake Johnson over at Common Dreams, you want to give him a shout out because I think he does great work. I love the articles that he publishes. He gets into it.

And he gives specific examples. The government watchdog group, accountable.us, estimates that cinema had received at least, at least, $923,000 in donations from industry lobbying groups that are currently working to kill or water down Democrats reconciliation package, which has been dubbed the Build Back Better Act. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its leadership boards have donated nearly half a million dollars, $448,000 to the Arizona Democrat, and that's again, according to accountable. U.S. And Open Secrets does a great job in helping people, especially the electorate, follow the money so you can understand what the real motivations are. It has nothing to do with what's

in Kirsten Cinema's heart. It has nothing to do with her concern about the local economy in Arizona. It has nothing to do with her concern about climate change. It has everything to do with the system of legalized bribery that persuades lawmakers, corporate Democrats like Kirsten cinema to turn on her own constituents, turn on her own campaign promises, and defeat legislation that would materially improve Americans' lives. That's what's really at play here. And the fact that the New York Times, amidst that information time and time again, tells you everything you need to know about these legacy media outlets.

Yeah. Now when you go independent media, obviously there's unfortunately a lot of ways you can go, right? You can go in the crazy direction, you can go, oh, I heard on right-wing independent media that it was the lizard people who did it, and Fauci, of course, and Bill Gates. So, or you can go to actual source of news that have facts. So in this case, let's stick with a $923,000 number, and you can see, you can click the link,

you can see exactly where the donations came from, and you could trace it. So it's not like, oh, it's a crazy conspiracy theory that she took the money. No, it's a fact that she took the money. And if you ask the New York Times editors and reporters, they would acknowledge that she actually took that money, and it does come from exactly the sources who want to water down or kill this bill. They would acknowledge that.

They wouldn't, okay, so then they would say to you, what? We don't think it's relevant to her consideration. Because you didn't mention in your article at all. Our theory is, it's the number one motivating factor. By the way, our theory is shared by more than 90% of Americans, okay? Now, the New York Times says the American public are a bunch of morons, they don't know anything. If they knew it, they would know that politicians are noble and principal. And we're having a conversation about what they think in their spreadsheets is the right number based on policy and their undying love for their own voters.

No. No, but guys, all right, so now you all know, that's absurd. So if the New York Times mentions that she says she cares about the Arizona economy, fine. That's her position. You should state that in an article. If she gives the quote about climate change and how much she cares for it, they see that at the very least mention she's voting against climate change. That's what she's threatened to do. You say, she says if you threaten to raise taxes $1 on my beloved donors, I will kill climate change, let's say.

You don't think that was relevant to note in your article? Pretty relevant. Yeah. Okay. Now, okay, but you want to give her whole side and you want to give the whole Kabuki theater. But on top of that, don't you think you should mention the $923,000? Or if you're a New York Times reporter editor and you say it is not relevant, you're either, and I swear to God, there is no other choice. These are your only two choices.

You're either an idiot and don't understand politics at all. If you think politicians don't care about donations, I can't imagine anybody could be that stupid. Or you're part of a corrupt system and your job is to pretty up the news so it doesn't look like corporations rule us all and that the politicians serve the donors. Hence, you're part of the corruption. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I think that that might be more likely. I mean, look, we're speculating here, but here's a handy dandy chart.

I want to show you this chart. It was put together with data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. And they show exactly what would happen to the household income of Americans, right? And they break it down by class, they break it down by income. If they actually implement the tax

increases on the wealthy that I think are incredibly necessary. So the poorest 20% would actually receive far more in terms of their household income. They would essentially receive a significant tax cut. Once you get to the top 4%, or the richest 1%, they would experience, obviously, more in taxes, right? So the richest 1% would pay 4.3% more in taxes. Ooh, how will they survive? And that 4.3% increase in their taxes is everything, right? They're just not rich enough. They don't want to engage in that redistribution of wealth, even though, look, they,

every once in a while you'll come across like a conservative who's like, oh, you know, all they want to do is class war. There's been class warfare in this country for decades and decades and decades. The class warfare has been launched against working Americans by the top 1%, who have not pay their fair share, who literally get tax refunds when they file their taxes, even though they get to take advantage of incredibly low corporate tax rates, incredibly low, you know, top tax rates, especially compared to what they historically were expected to pay. So they don't want to see Americans' lives improved if it means that they're gonna have to pay just a little

bit more, just a little bit more in taxes. And by the way, we're not even talking about going back to like New Deal era taxes. We're talking about not even fully reversing the Trump era tax cuts for the rich. We're not even going halfway at this point in reversing the Trump era tax cuts for the rich. And they still can't have it. They still can't have it. Because apparently before Trump cut their taxes even further, right? Like they weren't making enough money then. Yeah. It's just it blows. Look, the greed is, it is what it is. These people are acting in a rational way. They want to maximize their profits. And so the question is, do we have a government that interferes on behalf of the American people who have elected these people in positions of

power? Or do we have a government in this neoliberal system who only interferes on behalf of corporate interests? And right now, it's the latter. That's it. That's all we see time and time again. Yeah. So, look, Bernie calls Democratic socialism. I call it Democratic capitalism. But if you do not have democracy to check capitalism. Capitalism will run amok and turn into corporatism and then we will live under corporate rule. And by the way, I got news for you. That already happened. We are under corporate rule right now. They rule everything. And our corporate machine is going to set things, the rules in a way where you survive on the lowest possible salary and they get maximum profit. Yes, by definition they will. By definition, they must maximum.

maximize profit. So they have to keep your salaries as low as humanly possible. That's where democracy comes into play, and it checks capitalism. If you say, hey, I don't like capitalism, my own, socialism, whatever, we can argue about definitions. But you cannot argue that democracy should not check capitalism, because if you argue that, we're going to wind up in what we have now, a brutal system where the rich get everything, corporate rule is complete, and all the donors have bought almost all the politicians, and it's over. And that's where we are today. And so, Look, on the specifics of this bill, when cinema says carbon tax, there's a second reason why she says that.

It's because it's a poison pill. Once you put a carbon tax in there, two things are going to happen. One, mansion's then going to turn around and go, oh, that affects coal. I can't have it for West Virginia. Exactly. Exactly. Now you have Mansion versus Cinema, supposedly, but that's just gamesmanship. They're both serving the same corporate donors.

So she says, I have to have a carbon tax. He says, I definitely won't do a carbon tax. Well, golly, gee, we're at logger heads over our spreadsheets. And the New York Times will write these, at best, gullible articles about the principles of Joe Manchin and the principles of Kristen Sinema. And golly, gee, the donors got everything they wanted again. But what a coincidence it is. And then another reason why the carbon tax is a poison pill is because then the Republicans

scream their heads off about how gas prices are going to go up. And yes, they have a couple of provisions there to prevent that, but it doesn't matter. The Republicans don't care about facts. They're going to scream that anyway, and they're going to say your home heating bills are going up. And in the winter, they're going to scream and scream about it. And then Biden's going to get scared, and he's going to pull it. It's a guarantee.

It's a guarantee. So it is an obvious poison pill. And by the way, New York Times didn't even mention that it's a poison pill. This, the journalism in America is pretty much dead. And it's just, they're courtesans of power, that's all there. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, the CIA had a plot to kidnap and possibly assassinate Julian Assange. We have that explosive story and more when we come back.

All right, back on the Young Turks, Jane Canana with you guys, now devastating, potentially deadly. Yes. Well, the CIA under the Trump administration was plotting to kidnap and possibly assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Now, this was something that emboldened the CIA, especially under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's leadership. Pompeo was certainly targeting Assange in a far more aggressive way, especially compared to the Obama administration. I'll get to those differences in just a second. But according to this explosive report from Yahoo News, some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request sketches or options for how to assassinate him. Discussions over

kidnapping or killing Assange occurred at the highest levels of the Trump administration, said former senior counterintelligence officials. Now, there seemed to be no boundaries. And the fact that there were no boundaries, was very much something that was pushed by Mike Pompeo. Now, these plans for an all out war against Assange were sparked by WikiLeaks, ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools known collectively as Vault 7, which the agency ultimately concluded represented, quote, the largest data loss in CIA history. Now, just to give you a little more context about

Vault 7, it was, I mean, it was, it came in dozens of parts on the WikiLeaks website. And it essentially informed the American people and the world about how the CIA would identify certain security vulnerabilities in the technology that we use every day, things like iPhones. And rather than help to protect the privacy and security of Americans, I know it's laughable to even propose that, the CIA itself took advantage of those vulnerabilities in order to spy on unsuspecting individuals. Now WikiLeaks obtained that classified information and then proceeded to publish it. They redacted certain things, of course, anything that would pose a threat to national security.

But none of that even matters because the American government was incredibly embarrassed, Pompeo was livid, and so now we get to Pompeo. Pompeo asked a small group of senior CIA officials to, or officers, I should say, to figure out the art of the possible when it came to WikiLeaks, said another former senior CIA official. He said, nothing's off limits. Don't censor yourself. I need operational ideas from you. I'll worry about the lawyers in Washington. And listen, in order for that to happen, there needs to be a very specific classification regarding WikiLeaks. And what is that classification?

Well, in order for the CIA to do anything questionable unilaterally, meaning without any oversight from the federal government, the offending group or offending person needs to be identified as an offensive counterintelligence, you know, group or person. And that's exactly what Pompeo did in this press conference. This is from 2017. Watch. Individuals such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seek to use that information to make a name for themselves.

As long as they make a splash, they care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security. WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is.

A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. A non-state hostile counterintelligence service. Those were the words that Pompeo needed to utter in order to give the CIA unchecked power to go after Julian Assange. And that's what they attempted to do. And now we're learning the details about what they tried. So we'll get to more details in a second, Bajank. So is it theoretically possible that someone could be a foreign agent who's actually taking CIA material and making it public under the guise of journalists?

I can think of an extreme case where it is theoretically possible. Oh, we have the nuclear codes, okay? And it has no journalistic value other than the fact that you could disable the nuclear codes or maybe launch the nukes with the nuclear codes, but we published them anyway, okay? All right, maybe in that literally nuclear case, I could see it. But it would have to be near that extreme. So in this case, in Vault 7, it looks like there's plenty of reasons that this is information that is relevant to the American public.

If it turns out your iPhone can get tapped as an example, right? And the CIA knows of a loophole. And instead of closing it so that your private information won't be hacked by either just nefarious forces, robbers, et cetera, or foreign governments or our government, right? And they sit on it because they're thinking they might want to spy in on you. Bingo. Right. Is that relevant public information?

Hell yes. Is that just doing that so that other governments can win? No, no, that's the real journalism, okay? Now look, Assange has done some things where I go, why are you doing that? That doesn't look like journalism to me, which is offering up like $100,000 bounties for stories. Well, then somebody's going to give you that information that you're looking for, whether it's real is a different question, right? But that is not normal journalistic practices.

And I think he gets themselves into trouble by doing that. And I don't think it's necessary. I don't know or care about his motivations. All I care about is, is it actual journalism or isn't it? In this case, it is. But by the way, guys, even if it wasn't, you're going to murder them? I mean, these goons, they're back. Like in the bad old days of CIA going around going, oh, things that are opposed to us

or corporations or anything that keeps us in power, let's just murder them. And so now in the Trump era, apparently they were back to murder. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that hasn't really changed. I mean, the multiple attempts to orchestrate a coup in Venezuela is an example. And I'm actually fascinated with the incompetence by today's CIA because back in the past, they were ruthless. And so the incompetence is, I guess, a positive thing because I don't think that the CIA should be orchestrating coups in other countries.

But nonetheless, in regard to this explosive story, it's fascinating to see just that this significant difference between the Trump administration and the Obama administration. And remember, Obama was not friendly to whistleblowers, okay? Oh, he was terrible. Obama's foreign policy was awful. There's no question. But in comes the Trump administration with Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. And he, Pompeo specifically, puts this mission to get Julian Assange on overdrive. So WikiLeaks was a complete obsession. of Pompeo's. After Vault 7, Pompeo and Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel wanted vengeance

on Assange, and that's according to a Trump administration national security official. Also Pompeo and others at the agency, here's some specifics, proposed abducting Assange from the British embassy and surreptitiously bringing him back to the United States via a third country, a process known as rendition. The idea was to break into the embassy drag Assange out and bring him to where we want, said a former intelligence official. Now, when you look at the Obama administration, the question of whether Julian Assange can be considered a journalist or whether WikiLeaks can be considered a journalistic publication was front and center in their decision making, which, of course, didn't really matter that

much to Pompeo and to the Trump administration. Now, let me go back to the Obama administration and the type of negotiations and talks that were happening back then. So there was a fundamental change on how WikiLeaks was viewed, said a former senior counterintelligence official. When it came to prosecuting Assange, something the Obama administration had declined to do, the Trump White House had a different approach, said a former Justice Department official. Nobody in that crew was going to be too broken up about the First Amendment issues. So for all the First Amendment warriors out there who love Donald Trump, love conservatives, and think that they actually value the Constitution in our First Amendment rights, where are you at? But let me give you more.

Again, going back to the Obama administration, top intelligence officials lobbied the Obama White House to redefine WikiLeaks. And some high-profile journalists, as known as information brokers, which would have opened up the use of more. So they wanted to reclassify essentially Wikipedia or WikiLeaks as information brokers rather than journalists, right? And so in order to do that, that would have opened up the use of more investigative tools against WikiLeaks, potentially paving the way for their prosecution, according to a former official. It was a step in the direction of showing a court, if we got that far, that we were dealing with agents of a foreign power, a former senior counterintelligence official said. Now look, this not only impacts those who work at WikiLeaks, it impacts journalists altogether, right?

Because if you are a journalist who reports on a leak, a whistleblower has provided you classified information, well, if we set a precedent where we prosecute and demonize WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, that gets extended to other reporters and other journalists. So guys, this is an insane conversation. They're like, oh, we're thinking of kidnapping from the British embassy and then we're going to put them a burlap bag. Were we going to go take him somewhere and dismember them? Remember, it's the Trump administration.

approved of a journalist being dismembered by the Saudi government, that's literal. They've certainly tried to help cover up. Yeah, it's a fact. I mean, Trump said, okay, yeah, but they, you know, we make a lot of money off them, and he let them go. We know for a fact that they chopped up Khashoggi, who was a Washington Post columnist. And now here's the American government saying, we're thinking about murdering Assange. Does it matter too much if they were going to dismember and were they going to gouge his eyes out? What were they going to do? These goons, these murderers that work at the CIA, including Pompeo, or at least considering murdering.

And so, look, Obama administration was terrible. And anyone pretending that they weren't terrible on the issue of journalism is just lying to themselves because they're just front for the Democratic establishment. He used the espionage act against reporters. And what did Trump do? He used the espionage act against Julian Assange, because Obama opened the door. Because Obama was like, oh, the most important thing. Obama is his ego, my legacy.

Oh my God, these people have besmirch my legacy. Hunt them down, okay? Now Trump's like, oh, hunt them down and kill them. Okay, so I always wonder why Trump didn't pardon Assange, because Assange, arguably, whether he meant to or not, wound up helping Trump a lot in the 2016 election in terms of releasing the Democratic, the info about the Democratic campaigns, but not the Republican campaigns. I don't know for sure if he had the ones on Republican campaigns, but he was, he certainly had the Democratic ones and he certainly released it and it certainly did a lot of damage. So I would have figured that Trump who loves anyone who helps him would have just pardoned him, right?

But he did. But it turns out it's because Pompeo wanted to murder him. And so they were at loggerheads. That goon, Haspel, who a lot of people in the establishment like, she might get an MSNBC show one day. Okay, she's the worst. She tortured people. She covered up the evidence of torture. and now, of course, she was thinking about murdering somebody.

That's who the CIA director is. That's who Aspel is, and a lot of Democrats like her. So be honest about it. By the way, Anna's totally right. How about all you people pretending to be progressives? Oh, no, no, Trump's better than Obama on these things. No, he's not. Not even close.

No, you're disingenuous, gargantial liar if you say Trump is better than Obama on this. They're both terrible, and Trump is clearly worse. Okay? So now, on the issue of murder, so there you've got three possibilities. One is, well, we didn't like and we thought he was revealing some sources, so we wanted to kill him. Okay, A, not remotely good enough, that's insane. By the way, good point by perpendicular time in our member section. He said, hostile intelligence service takes one to no one, doesn't it, Pompeo?

And that made me think, hey, wait a minute, I could probably put together a better legal case that Trump was helping hostile intelligence services than I could that Assange was. So we're going to kill him? No, that's insane. Of course not. Of course we shouldn't do that. So why isn't it also, of course, we shouldn't kill Assange? Oh, the elites versus the not elites. Okay.

And then, of course, the next layer is, no, I didn't think he was a journalist. I had a debate about whether he was a journalist. So I decided to settle that debate by chopping his head off or putting a bullet in his head. Is that how we settled debates in America, theoretically a country that believes in rule of law? Or, oh, yeah, no, I knew he was a journalist. I just wanted to murder him because he did things that hurt my feelings that I didn't like. It embarrassed me at the CIA that he got this embarrassed. Oh, you couldn't be embarrassed.

Hey, look, if you're embarrassed, you might strike out and hit the wall or something. At the CIA, if they're embarrassed, they look to murder you. So this is a great story, by the way. Great to Yahoo News. And by the way, who's one of the guys who broke it? Old friend Michael Isikoff. We tell you there are great reporters in the country. He's one of them.

That's why he's been featured here more than almost any other reporter. There's not a lot of them, but there are a couple that are still doing great stories like this last thing. is that these guys report the story. Do you see it on cable news 24-7? I mean, if all the other journalists, the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, were really worried about journalism? And when Trump said enemy of the state,

oh my God, they were livid, right? Now, well, those goons at the CIA are still in this administration. Is there going to be pressure for Biden to fire him? Are the rest of the journalists going to stick up for not killing Assange? I doubt it. I think basically they'll go, he ain't one of us. He's not one of us.

We'll do whatever you say, government. We'll follow whatever the CIA says and later we'll hire them to be news anchors. I'm begging you, please. Assange, they'll throw him under a bus. I just told you I disagree with some of the things that Assange did. But that doesn't mean you should kill him. Are you insane? But they are.

The people in power in America right now are that insane that they had that conversation. Trump administration did. And by the way, under Biden, no one's been fired so far. To be fair, the story just came out. Also, to be fair, he won't fire them. And you know it. All right, that does it for our first hour. We're going to take a brief break.

But when we come back, Chris Wallace continues grilling GOP lawmakers and right-wing governors like Greg Abbott. That video is something you definitely want to. to see. And later in the show, Joe Rogan is still terrified about vaccine mandates. We'll give you that and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.

Support our work. Listen ad-free. Access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon. Hey, can you have me that 1116th? There you go. Thanks. So, you're still loving your new garage?

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