The Young Turks - Poll Reveals Truth About AOC

Episode Date: August 24, 2019

A recent poll reveals how voters really feel about AOC. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Dan Evans, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five star rating. Thank you.

Drop it. A fascinating power panel. Dan Hector, John Adler, Dan Evans, dad from the internet, it's on the internet. It's far better to be in Los Angeles than on the internet. It's a terrible place out there. The internet is a wonderful and scary and horrible place all at the same time. Well, over in this corner of the internet, we got some great stuff for you guys. We don't only do interviews on Fridays, but today we're gonna make an exception for the guy who is going to beat Steve King.

J.D. Shulton is running as Steve King. He almost beat him last time. He's coming for him again, and you gotta support him anyway. Really interesting stories, also how he's gonna combat this lunatic in Congress. He would be an American hero if he takes him out. Is he worried that Steve King has a lot more time to campaign since he doesn't serve on any committees anymore because of how offensively awful he is? Does Steve King still raise money from corporate donors?

Does Steve King go to work in the morning? What does he do? Yeah, I don't know. Anyways. He has a Patreon sin. Watch. Yeah, probably. Well, luckily we'll ask all those questions to J.D. Shulton, his opponent in two hours.

So at 8 o'clock Eastern, we'll do that for you guys. You know, next week's power panel is not going to be on YouTube and Facebook. Just keeping it real for you guys. We're going to do it live on the television platforms that we're on. Roku, Pluto, Zumo, and YouTube TV. And obviously also for our members on TYT.com as well. You always get all of our programming. But check us out.

If you have a Roku, make sure you're watching us on there. We've got a 24 hour channel, same with Pluto and Zumo and YouTube TV, so those are great places to watch all of our programming. And of course, if you want to be a member, you get all of it at t.com slash join. All right, so with lots of stories, the first one's amazing, love it, love it, love it, love it. It's my favorite story. My second favorite story is Monopoly, the Socialism Edition.

I wondered if you'd like that. Oh, I have thoughts. I have. I played the game. Of course you have. This guy, this guy. Of course, naturally. All right, comrade Dan, all right.

Okay, all right, go ahead. Okay, let's start off with something Jane, get sure to like. You might remember just a few months ago, Axios posted the results, such as they were, of an anonymous poll from an anonymous group that purported to show that AOC and other progressives in Congress like her are bad for the Democrats. And so this was an article that initially came out and generated a lot of attention. AOC's defining the Dems. the swing states, and you should be worried, Democratic Party.

And in the initial reporting, Mike Allen said, these are the white non-college voters who embrace Donald Trump in 2016, but are needed by Democrats in swing house districts. No, they're not. The group that took the, well, hold on, spoiler alert, the group that took the poll, shared the results with Axios on the condition that it not be named because the group has to work with all parts of the party. That's why they said they didn't want to be named, I would say sheer cowardice because they didn't want to get dragged across the internet by AOC and are millions and millions

of fans. But here is the issue. We don't know the group. We don't know who leads the group. We don't know how they conducted the survey. We can sort of get an idea of what they were going for since they seem to exclusively talk to people who would not support AOC and would never support a Democratic candidate anyway. So do I.

Exactly. I don't know which group it is, but it doesn't matter. It's a corporate Democrat. But the thing I wanted to clarify before John went on is the Republicans didn't do this poll. The Democrats, the corporate Democrats, and the leaders of the party spread it. everywhere. This is them attacking their own again for the hundred time in a row. And it's gonna be relevant to some of the stats we're gonna tell you. And it was around that time that Nancy Pelosi was talking about like, oh, they have their internet

whatever, but that's all they have. And so this was really great for a certain type of person, because then the Democratic leadership uses it as fuel to attack some of their most dynamic and interesting and passion inducing members. But also Donald Trump started using it. So good Good job to the anonymous organization that started it. Bad job if what you wanted was an accurate poll though, because now we have one. We have the group, we have the methodology, data for progress made this available online, take a look at this. It's a number of different groups and individuals, their net favorability.

Now this is politics, and so in general net favorability is negative, but there were certain positives. Both clean energy companies and climate activists are viewed positively, but then you get into the individuals. What you find there is that AOC is right up at the top, right next to Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, a OC at a net negative 6. Now that may sound really negative, but when you look at other prominent politicians, you've got Donald Trump is down there at a negative 14, Nancy Pelosi at a negative 17, Mitch McConnell's at a negative 29, that's actually double negative, which is not how it works. And so now we actually have a survey from battleground states.

So what now, anonymous group? They actually talk to voters, and it turns out that AOC might well be the face. She might well be defying the Democratic Party, but it looks like a good thing compared to the other options that the Democratic Party have. So before we go on to even more great polling for the just Democrats and all progressive politicians, especially compared to the corporate Democrats and the Republicans, I want to go back to the original poll that was done. So it's a Democratic group that does a poll of basically the biggest Trump demographic

there is. So white, uneducated voters. Now, they do that poll full well, trying to knowing and trying to get a result that says people are not, don't like AOC, okay? Now, and the other thing that they polled was socialism. So that you poll core Trump supporters on that, then you turn around and you leak it to the press, and then you give it to the Democratic leadership, who of course asked for it in the first place. And Democratic leadership spreads it everywhere. So I know this even beyond what's in the

press reporting. Okay. So every member of Congress was like, oh, do you know how unpopular the just Democrats are? AOC and Ilhan Omar, Rashida-Talib. We should throw them under a bus. They're really unpopular. They're hurting all the rest of us. The Trump voters said so. Trump voters don't like her. Do you? Okay, so it's so incredibly disingenuous. They, or maybe they are stupid. They're like, oh, we're this close to getting the most deplorable people in America to vote for us. If it wasn't for that, gosh darned AOC, hardcore Trump supporters would have supported Nancy Pelosi? Only an idiot would make that claim or believe that claim, which is about 98% on Washington. And by the way, it is true.

And even the new poll that's actually accurate went on to show that hardcore Trump supporters dislike AOC even more. Okay, now, or in Ilhan Omar, even more. But they're hardcore Trump supporters. They voted for Trump. They weren't about to switch over and vote for Ilhan Omar. It's preposterous. But under any in all polls, Democratic leadership, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, poll worse. In every instance, it doesn't matter.

But that's not getting spread around all around Washington. Why, we have an uneven playing field on two counts. So number one, progressives don't fight back enough. Like they, AOC gets a lot of press and you think Omar Talib, et cetera, I mean, look at how strong there and they're wonderful and Bernie and Warren. Yes, but no, internally, colleagues, colleagues, colleagues. So they keep getting punched in the face in Washington and not fighting back. If I was in their staff, I would put this in every mailbox of every Democrat and go,

Nancy Pelosi is hurting us in the polling, and I'm going to give you more and numbers in a second. She is second worst only to Mitch McConnell. She's a disaster. It's true. She's a train wreck. But progressives wouldn't do that because they're too goddamn nice, okay? Whereas the corporate Democrats, they'll shiv you in the middle of the night and then pretend that they care about unity and colleagues. There's one of the reasons. So the hardcore Trump supporters, why is they're the big unfavorability? Because it's commonly known as the Fox News effect, but it's actually Fox News MSNBC effect. Fox News attacks AOC, and Omar and I had a Presley, et cetera, so much more so that poisons the pool with hardcore

Trump supporters and conservatives against those particular congresspeople. So some people know that, and that's the Fox effect, right? But MSNBC never rises to their defense. So their favorability does not go up equally among Democrats. Now if Young Turks, for example, and I just pick this as an example because it's an actual progressive news organization and network, and I literally don't know any others in terms of television, video, et cetera. If we were shown in as many places, et cetera, then you would balance out.

But MSNBC goes, oh, corporate Democrats are amazing, here's Claire McCaskill, we're paying money to. She just lost running as a corporate Democrat in Missouri. Tell us how we win elections, right? Oh, A.O.C., I don't know about A.O.R. And constant criticism on mourning, Joe, and by all their stupid Republican and corporate Democrat, consultants, so you have an uneven playing field. But even so, according to the new polling, the corporate Democrats poll 1,000 times worse.

We're gonna get into the numbers. Dan. It's so amazing to me. First off, I love data for progress, because they're some of the only people doing real data analysis work on things that are usually overlooked by the media technocracy, things like radicalization on the right, et cetera. But with this, like this data, this poll is so obvious that if I were working in the the Axios political, like media bubble right now, I would go home this Friday, pour myself

a bottle of scotch on the rocks and just, yeah, whole bottle, and just like think about myself. Just really think, because what's also happening in addition to what you're saying, Jank, it's not just a Fox News MSNBC effect, but the elites who work at some of these organizations who have these preconceived notions about 2020, like, oh, Biden's definitely going to do well. Then polling eventually supports that because the feedback loops out of order, they're not going to look at this and go, oh, I guess it's wrong. I guess AOC is actually really popular for progressives, and we're going to change every sort of approach we have towards progressive politics.

Of course, that's not gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah, because it's not, just sorry, to finish that thought, it's not because they're actually stupid, it's because they're biased. Yeah. And they, but their bias is so thick that they literally can't see straight. They can't, they can't see the facts. You'll show them this poll, first of all, they won't get it because they won't be stuffed

into their inbox, like the corporate Democrats bothered to pay to try to politically assassinate just Democrats, I don't, I just mean it politically, but they did, they did a hit job on them. Now, there's no one paying to spread this poll around and putting it in every, and going to calling every media organization, are you covering this, are you covering this, are you covering this like they did with the old poll meant to go after progressives? So that's a giant disparity and leads to some of that results. But even if they did see it, they'd be like, no, I don't, no, I think the other poll's better. But the other poll doesn't even tell you who did it.

and has no reliability at all. This shows you the data and downloads the data you could check it online. I'm not good with internet. I saw another poll that said Joe Biden's awesome. It was done in my house between me and my wife, but I saw another poll, right? Like they had dinner after work with some of their buddies and were like, hey, what's going on? Oh, I think this. And that's what they think politics is.

They don't actually pay attention to the information. It's all like a friend circle thing. Yeah, or they think, well, you know, I don't need polls, I read a tweet by Nate Silver. I think I have an idea of where the data lies. You know, we have people in DC, why don't we put in everybody's mailbox? But I'll also say, one of the reasons I find this data even more interesting is because as we know, Fox News and right wing media generally, they have not stopped talking about AOC and Ilhan Omar for like nine months now.

It is just constant and it's all lies not reflective of their actual policies. Sometimes accidentally, Sean Hannity will post a list of their policies and it looks really good and he looks stupid by comparison, but they have talked about them nonstop, attempted to do as much damage as they can to their reputation. And so you would imagine that Trump supporters would have them foremost on their mind in terms of awful Democrats, awful lives, awful progressives, and still far more popular. Far more popular, I would imagine than people like Mitch McConnell, some elements even of the Republican establishment who are not popular on the right wing.

So here, I'm gonna give you more tests because I love them. So the first one that John mentioned was just favorability overall. So all the politicians are negative, which is already awesome and funny. But Elizabeth Warren's at the very top. Do you hear that on television all the time and in the print? She's not getting terrible coverage, but are they saying, oh, she ranks the best in favorability over and over and over? No, they keep talking about how Biden's the most electable. Yeah, but just in battleground states, those ones aren't important.

Yeah, that's right. Well, actually, I'm going to get the battleground districts in a second. This is the overall one. Well, Ilhan Omar, she polls at minus 12. Remember, all the politicians are minuses, okay? Well, that sounds pretty bad. So obviously we can't follow her. We've got to follow Nancy Pelosi.

What does she pull at? Oh, no, negative 70. Well, okay, how about Chuck Schumer? He's, man, that's leader of the Democrats in the Senate, real stuff. Negative 19, okay? Who's the most unpopular person in almost every one of these polls? Mitch McConnell. This is overall polling.

It's not of Democrats. It's overall point, minus 29 for Mitch McConnell. People despise Mitch McConnell. I mean, you don't see that on television, okay? But overall, he is loath by the American people. So now we go to battleground districts. So number one politician in the country. Again, Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Party actually polls pretty well.

It clocked in at zero, which is impressive for politicians. Now you might say, well, Jake, that doesn't sound impressive. Well, where do the Republican Party come in? Minus 35. In battleground districts. Folks, you love to see it. Zero to minus 35, okay? Wow, holy cow, all right?

So AOC had a sheet come in near the very top. Elizabeth Warren's number one, among actual politicians of the ones that they polled. Bernie Sanders is number two. Ionna Presley's number three, these are all the most progressive people in the country. people in the country, then AOC, then finally Joe Biden. Wait, I thought Joe Biden was the most electable in the battleground areas. But it turns out, AOC is significantly more popular than Joe Biden in battleground areas. And also, I think that we should add on to that, that in the same way that I was just saying

that Fox has focused heavily on AOC and other members of the squad, I mean, Joe Biden has done his best to not talk about his platform. He joined the race later than a lot of the other candidates. And so to some extent, he's been insulated from the criticism that is going to come his way. People are going to find out more about him as the race goes on. Like not only insulated, but like he's screwed because his campaign strategy is Joe, you know everything about me, but just deal with it. That's basically his campaign strategy now once people start to learn all the bad things about him.

So but again context, so Elizabeth Warren is top politician with a net, one favorability. Okay. AOC comes in after Sanders and Presley at 4th at minus 5, binds at minus 7. So where does Pelosi? Minus 21. They hate her in the battleground districts. And people keep saying, oh, it's because she's progressive or liberal.

And that's what, if you turn on television and you read the New York Times, Washington Post, they will get this wrong 100% of the time. Battleground areas are worried that she's too liberal. How about AOC? And AOC is obviously, everybody knows AOC is more liberal. She pulls 16 points higher. How about Elizabeth Warren? She pulls 22 points higher.

Everybody knows, Bernie Sanders. Is anybody gonna make an argument that Bernie Sanders is anything but liberal or progressive? And he pulls way above Nancy Pelosi, way above her. Finally, on that battleground one, guess who's the most unpopular politician in the country? Mitch McConnell, of course. worse than Donald Trump at minus 41. That is the Republican leader in the Senate in battleground districts at minus 41. Okay, so what you see in the mainstream media honestly is alternative facts.

Last one, because this is one of my favorites, they actually pulled Trump voters, literally. Now these are Obama to Trump voters, but they all voted for Trump, and I'm shocked that they voted for Obama, but all their patterns indicate they like the Republican Party and they like So it's unsurprising that Trump does really well in this because they voted for him. Republican Party does really well, okay, you get that. Even the fossil fuel companies are positive. For Trump voters, they're like, huh. That's sick.

Destroying the planet, you say, huh? Well, maybe, yeah, I can live with that. Anyway, with all other Americans, they poll terribly, but with Trump supporters, they're like, yes, we don't need this planet, we'll go to another one. Anyway, so we are told, well, and the previous. polls seem to indicate, the one that was widely publicized. Well, I mean, the Trump supporters don't like AOC. That's why we should be against AOC.

I mean, I can't, every time they say that, I can't stand how irrational that is. It's so dumb. I can't believe anyone said it out loud. Anyway, so, well, in this case, look at that. AOC is right above Nancy Pelosi. Rashida Taleb is way above her. Ilhano Omar, also above her. So what did Pelosi come in with?

that Trump voters. I mean, I'm not the one saying Trump voters are important. I think 25% of the country that's going to vote for Trump no matter what, never ever bothered to get them. We should be insulting them. We should be fighting against them. They're never going to vote for you. Are you that dumb that you'd cost your own base, millions of people who could get energized

and vote to try to get one Trump supporter that's part of the deplorables? Are you that stupid? And the answer for the Democratic Party is not really, they pretend to be that stupid because what they want to do is say, now remember, that's why we have. to vote for all corporate interests, okay? And that's what the Trump supporters want. That's why we have to do it, right? Anyway, you ready?

What does Nancy Pelosi poll at? Minus 62. Now, I don't think it should be the standard, but the corporate Democrats said that should be the standard for whether you support a Democratic politician or not. Well, I guess Nancy Pelosi should be fired immediately. In every one of these, she's almost every one of these, she's the second least popular politician in the country after Mitch McConnell, and this one, unsurprisingly, she's the least popular.

Yeah. And so even by their own standard, the progressus poll way better than democratic leadership. And by any standard, democratic leadership should be embarrassed, humiliated, and immediately stepped out. Because they're costing us elections. We can't afford to lose a Donald Trump by having Pelosi and Schumer in charge. We should probably take our first break. All right, let's take the break.

We got a lot more where that came from. Just getting fired up. David Koch passed away. We will have a nuanced, complicated look into his life. He is, of course, one of the Koch brothers. We'll do that when we... We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-Bing the Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations

are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies. debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary,

and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must have learned what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training, or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the... On July 18th, get excited. This is big. For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry.

Smurfs. Only dinner's July 18th. Course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. And get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on the Young Turks, Viscuus Creightson. This is an amazing panel, love it. Why, thank you.

That's very nice of you. I want to take that as mainly a compliment for Dan. He's big on the internet, big fans on the internet. It's true. Brent DeCorn writes, shout out to my friend Brad, a fellow TYT member. Hello, we're keeping score of which of us gets more comments read on air more, so hopefully here's another point for me. Well, there you go, Brent to Corn. And speaking of points, anyway, stay tuned, stay tuned.

We've got, not today, but later we have interesting news about that. But I love that you guys are friends. I like with friends joining up and become TYT members. I like even better if you're TYT members and become friends. And we're trying to do that at a lot of different places we're going, including Houston. So anyway, half Coke, half stale Coke writes in. Speaking of Third Way, they lost a key financier today, pouring one out. We're going to talk about that in a second.

And Vitoris writes in, do I have my history? wrong, didn't Monopoly start as a game show people, to show people how socialism worked then was bought off and changed? Hold. We're gonna get to that history in a second. Brenta Gorn, again, man, you're racking up the points, brother, says, I got off work early today and I was going to catch up on sleep, but then I saw that David Koch died and I knew I had to see TYT's live reaction.

So that's next, but last one is Gabby Marita with this interesting comment. Why is John Adirola? That's what everybody's asking. Why is he? That's a lot to unpack with that question. I don't know what that means either, but I like it. You know what? New nickname.

Johnny Y. You done it. You done it. You done it. Growing up, I wanted a nickname. I shouldn't have wished for that. Yeah, be careful what you wish for. Anyway.

All right, Johnny Y, you're right. Okay, let's turn to something serious. Gabby, pay attention, okay? Today, David Koch, one half of the incredibly powerful, both in a place, and economic since Koch brothers passed away. His death comes after he stepped down from his corporate and political roles for health reasons back in June of last year, having been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer almost three decades ago.

Politically, this is obviously incredibly important because he and Charles Koch have been incredibly influential, as I implied earlier. Massive donations of their own to a number of different political causes and politicians, organizing groups that had a massive effect on politics. Now, depending on where you are on the political spectrum, the impact of that, you could view it as positive or negative. We'll see how the panel comes down on that. But I have a number of different facts about both their political philosophy and also just

some interesting facts about David Koch as well. I did want to mention just because I had never known this, but he actually was once on the presidential ballot back in 1980 as the nominee for vice president for the Libertarian Party. I actually have mentioned that a couple of times because he ran against the president Ronald Reagan. Oh. If you can't beat them, buy them. Oh, great point.

Dan from the internet. So why don't we get into their political philosophy a little bit, if you've somehow gotten this far in American politics without knowing who they are and what they stand for. Charles and David Koch worked together closely in their decades-long effort aimed at rolling back environmental and business regulations and at voting Democrats out of office. Dating back to the 1970s, they helped found and fund libertarian organizations. But in the ensuing decades, they shifted their efforts towards more straightforward support

of Republicans. It was during President Barack Obama's administration that the coax dramatically escalated their political activity and became two of the most important political funders on the right. Now in terms of what their efforts were toward, the coax are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry, especially environmental regulation. One section from Paul Mason's clear bright future says that David Koch called for the abolition of the federal authorities regulating air transport, electoral law, environmental protection,

food standards, and the energy grid, together with all state privatization of education, basic health care, and that's provision of education, basic health care, and retirement pensions. They did want the privatization. It was the provision that they did not want. And so, I mean, we're talking about basically every aspect of life. they had a view on how the government should get out of it effectively. And your guys are going to be shocked to find out that view happened to coincide with their financial interest.

Well, it's just a wild coincidence. Speculation. Unbelievable coincidence. So, look, I think that the reporting has gotten a little bit better during the Trump era. I think that in the past, if one of the Koch brothers had passed away, most of the news organizations wouldn't have even necessarily pointed out how. tilted they were against the Democratic Party. I mean, to say the least, they spent

hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defeat Democrats and elect Republicans. I think that it would have been a passing mention. They would have talked about their charity otherwise more. And even within the political landscape would not have been as clear. So they were fairly clear in a lot of the articles, but still not good enough. Because

one of the things they're doing is feeding into the propaganda that the Koch's brothers have some sort of philosophical libertarian principles and that that's what's driving them. No, corruption is driving them. So there's a wonderful book, Coke Land, you should check out. And in Cokeland, they explained, and I actually covered this story a long time ago when it first came out.

We've been around forever. So not when it first, first happened, but when the details of it came out again, in the beginning of Coke Industries, which is one of the largest private industries, private companies in the country and in the world, one of the things they got busted for was stealing oil from Native Americans. So they were supposed to buy the oil from Native Americans and they did, but they would systematically rig it so that it read lower number than what they were actually getting. And they ripped them off of tens of millions of dollars.

When they were caught back then, and this was decades ago, there was actually a democracy and a functioning government. So there was some chance that there was going to be not only civil penalties, but criminal penalties. They might even go to prison because if you steal $10 in the street, you're going to go to prison. If you steal $10 million, you should still go to prison, right? And this is how they built their empire based on greed, avarice, et cetera. So they realized during that, oh, if we don't want to go to prison, we should buy off government

officials because they're the ones who run the government. So they started contributing. And right around then is when the Supreme Court started to change the laws and saying, you actually can start giving independent expenditures, campaign contributions, etc. So one of the first politicians that they bought off, I mean, gave campaign contributions to was Bob Dole from their home state of Kansas. And then they went purchased a senator from Oklahoma because their main criminal case was in Oklahoma.

Another wild coincidence. I mean, there's 49 other states other than their home state. They happened to pick to one state where the senator could affect their own criminal case. Charles Coke was actually the brilliant one. So David is the one who died is, you know, he was his brother and I don't have any idea of David's intelligence and I don't want to speak to that. But Charles Koch came up with a plan of, oh, if we want to just be crooks, why don't

we buy off the cops? So basically the government being the cops in this case, they went on to not only purchase whole senators, almost the entire Senate, and definitely the entire Republican, but they conversion side of the Senate, but they went on to then create think tanks to create policy papers about libertarian principles, i.e. tax cuts, and I don't have to pay my employees and I could poison the environment and set up in a giant infrastructure in Washington, D.C., meant to profit themselves because of corruption. That's the actual story of the life of David and Charles Cote. Yeah, what you're getting at is just the amazing, like the big crux of what

people should get from this, is that the coax have influenced three aspects of our society. They've influenced politics by directly giving, like, legalized bribes to politicians. But they've influenced education, because what they'll do is they'll buy a department somewhere and it'll become the Charles and David Koch Center for Libertarian Economics Studies or whatever. And so then you have students and faculty who are then influenced to teach the free market side of things. And then where those students go, to think tanks, to places like the American Legislative

of exchange counselor, Alec, or Americans for prosperity. So they not only just figured out a way to corrupt politics, but they corrupt the information sources around that, which makes it harder to actually fight against them. And that's the true evil of the coax. You know, you framed it that way, and I want to give you a kind of a haunting analogy, there's a very large cult in Turkey led by a Muslim fundamentalist. And one of the ways that they influence things is they seed, as they give money to, and then co-opt, judges, prosecutors, cops, teachers, media, okay?

And the other thing that they do is they set up madrasas, which are schools where they teach their version of Islam and their version of so-called facts. And as you see, the Koch brothers funding schools, think tanks, endowed chairs, and media, which they also financed. Track down a classic liberal and give them a little boost, you know. And you take all the, they put these giant seminars, they do them twice a year in Colorado and California, they're bringing all the other rich Republican donors and they show them, look, this is how we do corruption.

This is corruption 101, here's who we bought off, here's the results we got. Now do you guys want to invest in this? And they're like, yes, because for the millions of dollars they spent on politicians, they just got a two trillion dollar tax cut, the upper class in this country. So all the rest of the rich are like, David and Charles Koch, yes, thank you for perfecting corruption in America. And so that's his legacy. Don't give me this horse crap about libertarian principles.

Every time they donated, it went to their bottom line. And to be fair to them, I've always said they were very smart, and it was a great return on investment. I mean, a politician is the best thing you could buy in America. And one more thing, look, these are, in my opinion, terrible people that influence the country in a disastrous way. But he's dead now, and our politics have coarsened. And so you don't need to do anything other than point out his record.

And things are too ugly as it is right now. So I actually am upset when they die. I wanted to have them see Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren become president. I wanted to see the pain in their face. I wanted them to see the progressive takeover of this country because we're gonna do it. So it's a shame that David Koch has passed away. But I don't believe in, once someone dies, they become a saint. No, David Koch and his family have done irreparable damage to this country.

By the way, one other thing you should know about the family. You know how they got their original fortune before they started ripping off Native Americans and literally stealing oil? Their dad, Fred Koch, worked with Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and helped Stalin crush people and made the family fortune that way. David Koch even joked around about, hey, how do we get rich? We old fashioned American way. We worked hard, we did all the right things, and then our dad died and left us hundreds

of millions of dollars. Yeah. Okay, and that hundreds of millions of dollars came from Stalin. His dad apparently felt bad about that and then decided that he was going to go super right in America and try to crush progressives over here. I just want to mention one other thing too, like you mentioned the growth of that fortune. So supposedly their combined fortune, the two most known coax, was $110 billion. Just giving an idea, like Trump says that he's a billionaire, but like the gap between them

and Trump is like the gap between Trump and us, basically. Like that's how wealthy you can be. David Koch, he has all these homes and everything, he has a yacht that he keeps in the And he leaves it there and when he doesn't use it, he rents it. In a week, it's $500,000. Like just mind-numbingly wealthy. Because I mean, there's so many funny parts of that story. I have a yacht that I can't really access it.

I mean, how many times do you go, right? And then I have $110 billion, but I still rent my stuff. I mean, you want to do an Airbnb on your mansions? Okay. And who has, how many people are in there, are there in the world? They could rent a yacht for a week for $500,000. Answer, too many. Yeah, that's true.

Every billionaire is a policy failure. That's a hill I die on. Yeah, that's just what I was thinking about, actually. And it's one more random fact. He survived the plane crash at LAX back in 1991 that killed 34 people. Okay, Howard Hughes. Is that crazy? At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cyber criminals.

And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online. secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from The Young Turks. If you want

to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t yt.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, just two quick comments for you guys. Tracy in the member section says, great lead in music, Bartholomew for the second segment at TYT. Thank you. He's getting credit.

Thank you very much. All right. He had that ready to go. You knew that that was coming, Bartholomew? Okay. And then on Twitter, Robert Sanderas says, you know what GOP, David Koch's platform was as VP. And there's not a joke idea.

There's a lot of David Koch comments I'm not reading, okay? Oh, geez. But anyway, he said, destroying Social Security. That is true. I remember reading about that. He ran on a platform of Social Security. Eh, who needs it? Well, if you're a billionaire, you don't need it.

See, I like hearing that, though, because you always hear that politically people get more cynical as they get older. But he always, to his last day, he still believed he could destroy Social Security. Yeah. You know, he had that idealism. Well, you know, look, that is a slight testament to our whatever remains of our democracy that however many billions of dollars they spent against it, they still can't get rid of Social Security.

That's why they don't want Medicare for all. They're like, man, if people find out that they could have single-payer health care like the rest of the world, they'll never let it go. Exactly. Okay, let's turn to something equally depressing that might make you cynical. You've probably seen any number of instances where groups like the people like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer and all of these neo-fascist organizations go to a city and wreak havoc. And you might think that's why they're doing it.

They seem to enjoy getting in fights. They want to destroy our country. But it turns out that they actually have another strategy. And the recent event in Portland, we have the leader of the proud boys on video describing exactly why they're doing what they're doing. We're going to keep coming out here. We're going to keep wasting his resources. He's going to call all the agencies that he's called. He's going to call the National Guard, the FBI, all of those people.

And we're going to keep coming out here until Ted Wheeler does something. What do you say to residents to say, we're paying taxes for this, and you're just wasting our resources? Do they pay federal taxes like I do? All of them pay taxes. Perfect. Then this is just as my city as my home back in Miami. This is the United States of America. So you've come here from Miami to waste the resources of Portland?

That wasn't our original intent. But you just said that's what it was. Now it is. That is what passes for logic on the right. So that individual and fellow proud boys leader Joe Biggs, they flew to Portland from Florida to host that rally. A multi-jurisdictional police force of 700 was deployed, as well as businesses being shut down. And to give you an idea of the cost, it looks like they were successful.

The closures cost local restaurants and other businesses an estimated $3 million in revenue. And taxpayers will likely be on the hook for millions more due to the police. response. And so they also released a press release in case you think that was just one guy with one offhand remark. First of all, he's a leader. Second of all, the press release said the gathering was never about bringing carnage or violence to the city of Portland. It was about financially crippling the progressive hotbed until they take action against Antifa. And so he specifically in that commentary mentioned the mayor of Portland. In response to that, Wheeler decried his statements, but didn't say whether he'd allow the group to continue to host the

events in Portland, issuing this statement, I have one clear message to anyone who says they're going to continue wasting the city's resources over and over again. Stop wasting our time, stop wasting taxpayer dollars, stop hurting our businesses, we have a city to run and lives to lead. Which sounds strong, but they've told you what they're doing and you say, stop doing it? I don't think they're going to stop. Like I would believe it's so much more if we didn't find out just a couple of months ago that the Portland police were actually in contact with some of these like far right

protesters. Sometimes they're called proud boys and just called this or that, whatever. But like we know that law enforcement, as is happened throughout history, is more willing to work on the side with the right naturalists than they're working on the side of anyone against them. Yeah, the mayors of the major cities are Democrats. And so they should get a hold of their police departments and make them do their jobs. So in this context, again, proud boys not being very bright, like their hero Donald Trump, said the quiet part out loud.

And the reality is there are, you don't have unlimited free speech rights. So before you panic, let me explain what that means. There's time, manner, and place restrictions that you could put on speech. So for example, the classic example is you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Now if you wanted to do a protest in a city, you have every right to do that. And I support you doing that no matter where you are on the political spectrum. And I think we should pay money out of our taxes to provide security for that. But if you ask for a protest or a rally every single day, well, that would not be a reasonable way of doing a protest.

And you would not get a permit for 365 days out of the year. And it doesn't matter who you are, you wouldn't get that permit. Now when this group says out loud, oh, we don't actually care about our speech, we're just trying to waste your money, well then the mayor is completely within his rights to say, okay, well, then you're going to get certainly less. If any protests allowed in the city of Portland, thank you for being stupid and admitting that it isn't about your speech rights. And so he would have a much more solid grounds.

If I was the mayor, I would still, despite all this, despite knowing that they're trying to waste the money, I believe in the First Amendment so much, I would let them protest once a year. More than once a year? And then, if you want to come out and you want to do it without. a permit, I'm going to send them the cops. You know why? They work for me. And I would tell the cops, what did Trump say?

Remember the good old days, how people would be carried out? No, I wouldn't do that because I'm a progressive. But I would say, go do your job. They do not have a permit and they will not be allowed to walk one inch in that area without a permit. They want to go harass the citizens of Portland, which were progressive? And you think we're going to let them do that outside of the law? No, I gave you a badge, go do your job.

I could go even further because, like, I just have, I have no patience or empathy for any of these people because text messages were leaked from this most recent rally. And they say things like anything that happens to you, whether it's someone takes off your hat or hits you with silly string, say that's assault. Like, if we want to inflict as much damage as possible, the cops aren't going to let us fight long, but they'll let us fight. Like, they're playing this four-dimensional chess game with racism. and strategy because they're so small, that's kind of all they've got, while the government and the left is not really having a proper response to it. So I would just say, no, you don't get permits for protesting. If you come out, we're gonna call the cops and I would be a lot more like strong with

how strong the cops should be. Well, so look, what they're trying to do is they're trying to, since they're small, they're trying to use leverage, which makes sense. And the leverage they think they have is the police departments. They think the police departments are right wing and quasi-fascists like them, use violence as a part of their living, right? So they think they have a natural ally there. Now, if that's true, well, that's deeply problematic.

And unfortunately, a lot of the coordination in some cities have shown that that is true. Now, if you're a Democratic mayor of a city, you need to crush that. I'm not talking about anything extra judicial, extra legal, extra democratic, no, no, no. We elected you to be the leader of that city. If the police are working with fascist organizations, I mean, we should first. Fire you immediately if you don't put an end to that and eradicate that virus within your police department. In fact, you should use the police for what they're supposed to be. Protect the citizens, keep the peace.

So if these guys come and try to leverage the police, it should work in reverse. You do not have a permit. You're not allowed on the streets. How many times have they done that to the left in America? A million, right? Do your jobs, do it equally and fairly. But I think the last part's the most important part. I mean, we're burying the lead in a sense.

They also said in this case, this is a quote, this is a pure optics operation. If you're looking for your fourth degree, for your fourth degree, and I explain what that is in a second, this is not the event to do it, okay? So what is the fourth degree? You get the fourth degree in Proud Boys for assaulting someone. So they're saying, okay, assaulting someone is not bad, that's normally what we do. Some events are for that. That's right.

strategy, like fourth degree is their fourth part of the initiation. The first one is literally, I swear to God, being punched by a bunch of proud boys while you named breakfast cereals. Yes, and so it's like a gang. And it's, and they took that from other gangs in the sense, except the serial part. And that's why when John read you the earlier quote, from a actual press release, the gathering was never about bringing carnage or violence to the city of Portland. That is, they're explaining.

Now normally that's what we do, right? And they tell their guys internally, now this is the one time you're not going to get your fourth degree when you go assault people, right? We're actually just doing this for optics and we want to waste their money. So this is an exception to our normal rule. So their normal rule is violence. So I don't mind calling them fascists at all. They're right-wing guys who go out there to do protests, propaganda.

Protests would be totally fine. But the propaganda and the violence makes it completely and utterly unacceptable. If you're cops anywhere in America and you see proud boys and you know that they earn their degrees by being violent, do your goddamn job. And if you see any of that, arrest them on the spot. If you see it. And the only thing I want to add is, I mean, I think everybody who pays attention to this can look at this organization, listen to what they say about themselves, and no, they're

a fascist organization, they want to fight and possibly kill people. That's what they're there for, they can say that they're there to oppose Antifa. I guess that's the person they want to assault. The thing that bothers me about it is the ambiguity, the muddying of the water that's provided by right wing media and the president. Donald Trump loves these groups, he's vigorously opposed to Antifa, the people who oppose fascism, which would tell you something about his political philosophy. But Fox News has been defending these people hardcore.

They have Andy no, I think he, the right winger posts online. He calls himself a journalist, but he has no ethics whatsoever. The latest grifter, if you will. Exactly. Just today, video came out of him embedded in a group of proud boys. As they're talking about assaulting a cafe, he's smiling and joking around with them. So he loves to pretend that they're nonviolent. It's the leftist, Antifa, where the violent ones, whereas he's in on the game.

He's joking around as they talk about assaulting innocent people at a cafe. And then if anything happens, whatever, if some of the tear gas they throw goes back in their eyes, Tucker Carlson will have them on that night to talk about how mean Antifa is to them. And so for anyone who's watched groups like this come about historically in other countries and wondered, how did it get this way? Why didn't anyone stop them? Maybe they had a Fox News, maybe they had other right wing media at that time who was helping to defend them as they got more powerful, more embedded inside of police departments and

things like that. Well, we know that they had a propaganda outlet and Goering was the head of it, and here we had a propaganda outlet where Ails was the head of it. And so, look, last thing I'll say is Trump even said in a tweet, that he's considering labeling Antifa, anti-fascists as a terror organization. But full well knowing that these right-wingers are planning to do violence, never says a word about him. In fact, in this Portland gathering where there was both sides, he only called out Antifa and called them potential terrorists and did not call out the people who actually came and to waste people's money and as a matter of course does violence. because he's not on the side of the anti-fascists, he's on the side of the fascists.

In America, we fought against fascists in World War II. Does that make everyone's great-grandparent a terrorist? Like, follow the logic, it doesn't work. Well, look, our veterans that fought in World War II were literally Antifa. They were anti-fascists. And so Donald Trump and the rest of the right wing, if you're a true American and you were a patriot, You would hate fascism because we fought a whole war against them. But nonstop, what does the right wing do?

They back enemies of the United States of America, confederacy, the largest enemy we ever had, and now the fascists in Italy and Germany, they're talking about in proud terms. Okay, let's go to the next story. Yeah, the only other thing I want to say about that, sorry for putting up the B-roll. What I love about the proud boys is it's not often that like someone chooses. to name themselves what you would name them if you were in charge. Like, as their enemy, I want them to have the ridiculous name proud boys. And they just did it themselves. I love that.

Look up their logo. That's all I'll say. Exactly. Oh, geez. Okay, let's move on. I've wanted to somehow sneak a story about board games onto this show for a very, very long time. This isn't the one I was hoping for, but we've got monopoly, but this time for socialists. Let's take a look at an image. You can see the actual cover. Monopoly socialism. Winning is for capitalists, which should give you. some idea of where they're coming from in producing this. This is in Monopoly Socialism, an official version of the game. It's manufactured by toy company Hasbro, a big corporation.

Players move around the board contributing to community projects, quote, unless they can steal projects to get ahead. What are they? The Koch brothers? Exactly, according to the description. When players pass Go, they get a $50 living wage as opposed to the usual $200. Oh, I get it because under socialism, you make less money. I guess that's the idea there. except for the fact the whole point of the living wage is to increase your wages. That happens to be a little inconvenient, but continue. I love this game. I think it's hilariously ridiculous.

I think it's an admission of defeat by Hasbro that they can't possibly get young people to play their games. But I'm not offended, I'm amused. But it is deeply amusing. Now here's the thing. So I know Ted Cruz got all worked up in defense of this, and suddenly every right-weemite organization that's never been interested in gaming in their life. is like, this is the best game ever.

Why are you guys taking it so seriously? It's just an analysis of socialism, which is interesting because the game has things like, and this is from the description, by the way, working together might seem ideal, but chance cards can abruptly shake things up with things such as lousy neighbors, vegan meatloaf, and bad plumbing. And so that's the issue. If you wanted to have a monopoly socialism, that is a critique of socialism in the same way that the original monopoly was a critique of actual monopolies under capitalism,

You could do that. What does vegan meatloaf have to do with anything? And so to me, and I haven't played yet, we do have a person on the panel who has. This seems to me like just another cheap version of monopoly for millennials. It's just making fun of anything you affiliate with the younger people, because clearly your audience, your target audience are boomers. It's just boomers. Young people aren't buying these.

Young people know that there are tens of thousands of other board games they could buy. They're not buying this. And so let's turn now to one of these millennials, you've played this game, Dan. Gen Z, mind you, just to freak you out a little bit more about your age. Yeah, yeah, I played this game with one of my friends. He brought it home, like my roommate brought it home, and said, this exists. And so, of course, we had to play it. And, like, everything about the story kind of annoys me, because obviously the right wing

is taking it to use and say, oh, look, here's what socialism's really like, and people are unhappy about it. And there are people on the left who are needlessly, like, saying, oh, this game isn't exactly what socialism is like. Do you expect, like, what, Hasbro to be Marx-Angles reader or something? Like, it's not any of this how it works. Well, so my reaction to that would be, there are many monopolies. There's tons of them.

You've probably been given a monopoly at some point in your life. And whether you like Rick and Morty or Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or whatever, Seinfeld, there's a monopoly for that thing. And so also, why not? There could be monopoly socialism. But the thing is, in none of those other cases, is the theme used to attack the theme. Rick and Morty isn't attacking Rick and Morty or Rick and Morty fans. You know, Game of Thrones Monopoly isn't attacking Game of Thrones, it's just using

that theme. Only in this case isn't designed to mock the theme that it's chosen. But the reason I love it is because I think it accidentally mocks themselves. So they're like socialism where you eat health food, okay, because you'd like to be unhealthy. Okay, look, I eat unhealthy and it's obvious, but I'm not weirdly proud of it and I'm not like That guy, he looks good because he's healthy. What a weird thing, right? But it gets worse.

They mock schools and hospitals because apparently those are socialist things. Look at these people working together to bring their kids in school to learn. I don't even read it as monk. They called the health care hospital like health care for all hospital or something like that. So it's trying to play off of Medicare for all thing. And all this is, no pun intended, a game because socialism is popular in the zeitgeist right And of course, people like my roommate would of course buy it.

So in that case, it's working. But no, it's not gonna actually teach anyone about socialism. No, but even that, look at it. Look at it. No, healthcare for all. So what would be your version, which is ideal? Healthcare for some and others die. Capitalism.

Like literally. Probably. Wait, I got more. You have more, really. Yeah, whenever anything bad happens, it's because of a vote. Okay, they're like, we're gonna confiscate people's wealth. with some sort of vote. First of all, some sort of vote is called democracy.

And second of all, it happens all the time, except it happens in the real world. And you confiscate our wealth to give to oil companies, for example. Oil companies, you have billions of dollars in subsidies every year from the taxpayers. And their excuses, while we had a vote, and you guys put in a Republican, so you're an idiot. So I confiscated your money. And I gave it to the richest corporations in the world, suckers. So in their version, look, I'm not even a socialist, I'm a capitalist, but in their version, they're like, oh, now they have votes that help regular people. Socialism.

So the thing that frustrates me, and perhaps I'm one of those leftists who gets too triggered by this, and I know the right wing thinks that's just a thing that the left does, well, I would ask you, how's your cured doing that you sled chamber? How your Nike is doing that you set on fire because they dare to have a person in a commercial. Anyway, don't disrespect, don't disrespect New Balance Nation here, John. Exactly. I'm wearing new balances, but I would also wear Nikes. So I identify as a Democratic socialist, and maybe I'm just especially angry about this today, but it's because there was the thing with Trump where he was like, I hereby declare that corporations have to do this.

And so everybody was responding, everybody, centrist online, were saying, that's what socialism is. But that's not what socialism is hereby declaring that corporations do something. I see socialism brought up on the mainstream media, it is some ridiculous farcical idea of what it is, when it's not particularly complex, and there are plenty of people on the activist side, on the politician's side, on the academic side, that could explain it to you. But we're not allowed to actually have any understanding of what socialism or democratic socialism are in this country.

And so it's silly to say that a game should be an example of that, something that could educate you, but I could name any number of games that are actually educational while being more fun than I'm sure this is. So it was an opportunity to perhaps get young people to play Monopoly again when they've moved on from that decades ago. But they've chosen not to. They want to sell a few copies of this to boomers who are going to laugh at those millennials once again.

And that's it. It doesn't go any farther than that. Okay. But if Monopoly socialism has to be like exactly accurate, then I should just live my life against the rules of cards against humanity. And everything that's on the cards, I should just literally do it. I think you should try that for a week and film the experience. So, look, again, I believe in capitalism.

So if they make money from this, let them make money from it. What do I care, right? And it doesn't offend me, let goofballs be goofballs, right? That's a free country. I just, every part of this game is hilarious. Minimum wage increase, sucks to be a small business odor, pay the bank $100 from the community fund. It doesn't make sense.

It's a community bank, so like everyone has the money. No, no, no, but the community fund is giving it to the privately owned bank. And it's a minimum wage increase, it goes to the workers, why would the work, the minimum wage increase that helps the workers pay a bank from a community fund? It makes no sense at all, but they're right winger, so it doesn't have to. And, oh, my last part of the rules that I love is at some point you run, you get a card or something like that, you run out of money. And the only way to keep things going is if the players donate money.

They're like, don't it, the socialists like to do donations. Now remember, the main right-wing logic for we don't need taxes is because it's okay, we're gonna do charity. And people do charity, I mean, all the churches, et cetera, so we don't need the taxes because of charity. Now they've turned around like, people who would do charity, stupid socialists, who would try to help other people? Capitalism is awesome, okay?

So if you are a capitalist, you should be way more offended at this game than the socialists And by the way, and if this is like your introduction to board games, let me just tell you. There are a lot of awesome ones out there. Tweet me, I'll give you a recommendation. And Monopoly, of course, ironically, was originally invented by feminist comedian Lizzie Maggie. It was called The Landlords Game. And of course, a guy stole it and then sold it to Parker Brothers. And the Parker Brothers then violated copyright laws.

And it's called capitalism, baby. Tax the rich. All right, we've got to take a break. When we come back, they ready. Here comes Ida Rodriguez. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Yugar, and I'll see you soon.