The Young Turks - Rep. Rashida Tlaib Did NOT Mince Words About Trump And Was Sworn In Amidst Ridiculous Conservative Criticism

Episode Date: January 5, 2019

Rep. Rashida Tlaib had some harsh words for impeaching Donald Trump. Rep. Rashida Tlaib was sworn in using Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Quran. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS 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, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Drop it. Obviously, Power, Power, Power Panel.

John Irola, Nomi Prince, Anna Kusparian. My name is Jane Huger. Novi's last book is, I love the titles of your books, so that's why I love saying them. It's not to plug them, which is because they sound so good. Collusion, how central bankers rigged the world. That's how you write a title, okay? For other titles, other people's money, the corporate mugging of America. Another one, it takes a pillage.

They're violent, aren't they? That's good and accurate. Descriptive, yeah, that's visual. Yes, I love it, I love it. Well, today there's an amendment introduced, and it's kind of awesome. And I think you should go a little further, and I think it should challenge corporate personhood. So that's part of why I love your books, because like the number, it might now actually be the number one myth on television and in Washington that Americans love big business, right?

Like people like, oh no, you're gonna wanna run a big business candidate. Why? Based on what polling, what evidence, Americans hate big business, hate them. So I think that if you did an amendment end corporate personhood, it would be shockingly popular. And of course, it would be despised by the elite. And that's why it has all those money from big business. That's the entire point. Big business is what makes individual votes more important and also overrides them at the same time. That's the whole entire point. Their amassment of money and influences is the definite problem. Yeah. Do you not think that that would

get a fair shake by CNN or MSNBC or Fox News, which are gigantic corporations? Well, we're gonna, in the show today, we have a story of CNN anchor asking Ocasio Cortez if she's a radical for one of her suggestions. We'll discuss whether that position is actually radical. A lot of just Democrats under fire today, but for all the wrong reasons, Rashida Taleb attacked twice, Cassio Cortez attacked twice for civility and wrong dancing on two different issues, let alone substantive stuff, so we will counterattack. There's only one person who should be criticized for wrong dancing, and that's you,

Jake. Well, I know, she has the tape, she has receipts. I'm just kidding, actually, Jake's a very fun dancer. Yeah, you know, so we'll talk about it in their Cascio-Cortez story, so we've got a lot of fun stuff, including the shutdown, et cetera, tons of stuff to get to, and including good news today, and so that doesn't happen often. So, but we have it today. So, oh, and speaking of good news, I knew there was one last thing I want to tell you guys,

and that's TYT Army, congrats. I'm gonna probably do a video about it over the weekend, but they got the Hill to correct an article. Oh, damn! The Army operates independently, okay? I didn't even know they were doing that. And so, so that was wonderful. So if you want to join that, successful, awesome Army, t.com slash Army, and thank

You know everyone who sent love to Ocaser-Cortez, Tulsi Gabbard, and Rokana for their no vote on PAYGO. And I was just out there talking to the aggressive, progressive guys. And Malcolm made a hilarious point. He's like, yeah, I mean, when I was phone banking to get voters out, I was like, now remember guys, we're gonna do PAYGO, okay, and they were like, oh, yes, then I'm gonna go vote, right? And Jimmy was like, yeah, and we promise it, it'll be the first thing we do. Like, no real voter wants PAYGO, not one, not one, anyway, okay, but we're on the good news.

Well, and good news on that really fast that Alexandria Ocasa-Cortez has signed on. She's introducing legislation with Pramilla Jaiapal to get rid of it today. Okay, so that's awesome. Jaiapal now stepping up and immediately introducing legislation on Medicare for All. That's awesome. So there is plenty of great news today and good just Democrats and progressive stepping up and doing the right things today. So, and thank you to all of you who I would argue put the appropriate pressure to do that. It's our job to keep them accountable.

matter how much we like them or support them. In fact, more so because we liked and supported them. So thank you guys for doing that. All right, John, you got a lot of news. Let's do it. Okay, so much. We'll see what we can get to. New Congresswoman Rashida Talib has made Republican heads explode all over the country because

of her calls for Donald Trump to be impeached, not because she's asking for it, but because of the words that she used while asking for it, as you'll see in this clip. And when your son looks at you and says, Mama, look, you won, bullies don't win. And I said, baby, they don't, because we're going to go in there, we're going to impeach the . Dear God. But seriously, that's the response. All over the place. We were watching a clip from Fox News, which we're going to show you a second.

The way people are talking about, it's like, it's difficult to be more fake than usual on these news stations, but they're more fake than usual about this. They're acting like children in response to this swearing. So look, she also co-wrote an op-ed today in the Detroit Free Press describing exactly why she thinks he needs to be impeached. And we are going to have her detailed explanation in just a little bit. But Donald Trump, obviously the target of her ire there, was asked about this and he gave one of the most, I mean, he's got to know what he's doing, but you'll see, it's ridiculous.

About the freshman congressperson's comments specifically about- Well, I thought her comments were disgraceful. This is a person that I don't know, I assume she's new. I think she dishonored herself and I think she dishonored her family. Using language like that in front of her son and whoever else was there, I thought that was a great dishonor to her and to her family. I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America. Yeah, it's much more honorable to your son to cheat on his mother while she's pregnant

with him. Oh yeah, that's a very honorable thing to do. Let alone the fact that you've used the same exact words in front of your sons and the whole country and the whole in your family. I mean, no, John, I don't think he's aware. I just think he's in the moment and he thinks I'm gonna attack her and his hypocrisy has never been an issue for him. He's oblivious and indifferent to his lies and hypocrisy.

So, you know, like Trump's a madman and we're gonna give you a clip here showing you Maybe he might have used similar language or maybe the same exact language. But the rest of the media is what I cannot abide. Like them being shocked and chagrined and now all of a sudden demanding decorum. Yeah, exactly. I only wish in that video that Malania had been in the background listening to him speak. It would have been great to see her try to control her eye rolling. So let's go to a little bit of that media.

So first here is clip, I believe this is the Fox News one. She used a profanity. She cursed out the president and called for his impeachment. I just wonder what this says about decorum in this new era of divided government and the new Congress. Well, it shows you kind of what's on the mind of Democrats right now. They're into name calling. We even had one of the congressmen yesterday call the president Hitler. Now she's using obscene language to describe this president.

Listen, if they want to come to Washington and engage in this type of nasty, ridiculous outrageous rhetoric, instead of focusing on the issue at hand, that we have a crisis at our border, people in this country are dying, and those deaths are 100% preventable, then they're going to have a very difficult time in this town and with their constituencies. Again, shocked and chagrin. But let's acknowledge that Rashida Talib has performed a public service, a very important one, because there are a lot of conservatives around the country who have criticized snowflakes for getting triggered. never having experienced that emotion themselves, they're clearly experiencing it today.

Yeah, to be fair, the one thing I think Rashida Tileve did wrong was she should have given a trigger warning because there was gonna be a microaggression coming up to people who wear red hats. That's right. And so, but I love the anchor there, like, that look of like, she's so concerned. The fake concern, right? About decorum. What does this mean for decorum?

She's never used a bad word in her life. Neither has Trump, neither is anybody on Fox or any other sort of station. But they just, they kind of did what Trump did, which is that they just completely ignore the entire point of what she was saying. They ignored why he should be impeached, why impeachment proceedings should, you know, be incurred. And just went straight to the language, just went straight to the word, just totally deflected the entire concept, which is exactly what he did. Yeah, so I wanna talk about the mainstream media overall, not just Fox News, but first,

Let's, I mean, let's give you the wonderful hypocrisy here. You know, the White House person that you saw in that clip said, like, this is nasty. The Fox News hosts, it violates decorum. Let's see if anybody else has ever violated decorum before. Our country's going to hell. It's going to hell. What the hell are we doing? Knock the hell out of them.

My tax proposal cuts the hell out of taxes. I don't give a damn. He gets the nomination. They're going to sue his ass off. We'll beat their shit out of them. Let them beat the shit out of ISIS also. They're ripping their shit out of the sea. We're going to knock the shit out of ISIS.

Going to knock their shit out of it. Whoever the hell brought this mic system, don't put the son of a bitch to put it in. I'll tell you, you shouldn't pay the best. But it's political bullshit. She said he's a . And you can tell them to go to go to themselves.

You're not going to raise that price. You understand? Listen, your, you're going to. Look, we had to bleep all of it, but the last one that he used, I think you could tell which ones were which overall, but the last one he used was the same exact mother effort thing that Rashida Talib said. Same exact one! But to be fair, I remember when Fox News did this segment saying, we have violated decorum

here. Well, he uses less syllables. Like, she actually, like, I was just looking at the math on that, she kind of did sort of four syllables. in her decorum violation. He kind of just uses one at a time. It's all, you know, so maybe that's really the issue. It's the complexity issue.

So I just want to bring up, okay, so we see the hypocrisy. And for far too long, there's been this double standard when it comes to the behavior of those on the left versus the behavior of those on the right. The right wing gets to do and say whatever they want. In the era of Trump, no apologies, right, and it's worked out for them. And the left should have learned, and I think is finally starting to learn, a very valuable lesson.

You don't buy into that narrative, you don't buy into that double standard, you speak the way that you feel comfortable and you don't apologize for it. And so I love what I'm seeing from the left right now, decorum was thrown out the window a long time ago, right? If we had Republicans who were playing by the same rules, then I would say, yeah, okay, we We want civility, we wanna have a situation in which we work together, but we're not living in that world. There's no interest in collaborating, negotiating, working together.

We're now dealing with two weeks of a partial government shut down. And look, words matter, but I would argue that actions matter way more. I mean, you want to talk about decorum. Let's talk about the intentional cruelty of the Trump administration and all the pain and suffering that they've inflicted on all these people, including children who were ripped away from their parents at the border, please spare me your nonsense, fake concern about decorum. Well, yeah, and in terms of actions, I mean, if you want to compare like-to-like with Congresspeople and how they should act, apparently we now know, you know, saying mother

effort, that violates decorum, assaulting a reporter on the eve of your election doesn't violate decorum, apparently. If you're Duncan Hunter and you call your opponent a terrorist and then buy yourself shorts while saying, eh, I'll pretend that we're sending them to the military, I'm gonna use campaign funds to buy myself shorts and say and giving them the vets, doesn't violate decorum. So again, very different standards there. Yeah, well, to both of your points. First, I'm gonna go to Graphic 3 here, Rashida Tilly with an awesome tweet.

She said, I will always speak truth to power, hashtag unapologetically me. Yes. Okay, that's how you do it, okay? Don't let them bully you, and that was the whole point of her speech. That was a great move on party that she was at, by the way. But to the mainstream media, if you are reporting this as some sort of violation of civility or decorum, without giving the context that Donald Trump has destroyed decorum and civility, you are a terrible reporter.

Because without that context, you've done a great disservice to the truth, which is that this decorum, if it existed at all, was shattered by Donald Trump. It no longer exists at all. So we do not accept an uneven playing field. We just don't accept it. By the way, I am principled on the issue of cursing, which is hilarious, but I never minded Trump's cursing. I think that the demands for civility by a lot of Washington elite is also has a second

purpose, which is to protect the status quo. Hey, everybody take it easy, don't rock the boat, don't get too excited, let's keep the status quo going. So I didn't mind it when Trump did it, and we were honest and fair about that, and I certainly don't mind it when Rashida Taleb does it. Exactly. Yeah, we don't mind, when he says, you know, go into the audience and knock them the F out, we don't care about the F part.

We care about the political violence part. Exactly, the actual assaults are a problem. Exactly. Now, one other bit of context, that it would be awesome if the media were to engage in. Like, if you want to do a full news cycle about Rashida Talib, if you want to dispatch all of your reporters around DC and follow her around and hound her on her first full day in Congress, you can do that, but how about ask her not just about the word she used, but about the case that she is making?

So she says that we should impeach him, which is obviously that's huge. You know, a sitting congressperson says we should impeach a president. Maybe you should ask her why, okay? No, just the language? Okay, well, thankfully, she went around them and she published an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press, and here is some of what she made in terms of a case for impeaching him. We already have overwhelming evidence that the president has committed impeachable offenses, including just to name a few, obstructing justice, violating the emoluments clause, abuse,

using the pardon power, directing or seeking to direct law enforcement to prosecute political adversaries for improper purposes, advocating illegal violence and undermining equal protection of the laws, ordering the cruel and unconstitutional imprisonment of children and their families at the southern border, and conspiring to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments. I don't think any one of those things she's saying there is even really debated. I mean in two different ways. I mean that there's no counter evidence and that people don't even talk about it generally.

But she goes on to say, because many people, when they talk about the possibility of impeaching the president, they talk about it in relation of the special counsel's investigation. She mentions that, but that is not her prime concern. She says, whether the president was directly involved in a conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 election remains the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. But we do not need to wait on the outcome of that criminal investigation before moving forward with an inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives on whether the president has committed

impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors against the state, abuse of power and abuse of the public trust. And that's very true, that's true historically, and that's kind of the point that, you know, I was making the beginning, it doesn't matter how you say, how you get to the fact that there needs to be an impeachment process started. There's a multitude of reasons for it. And I like the fact that she kind of didn't just focus on the Mueller investigation, which has been most of what is discussed when impeachment is even brought up on any of the networks

on the left or the right in the middle. The fact that she delineated all of the reasons why ultimately he has abused the power of that office and he has had conflicted issues of business and potentially political connections, not just with respect to what Mueller may or may not find, but with respect to his entire organization throughout when he was campaigning, when he got in, and until now, there's a lot to dig into. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, and look, I understand the, the very much.

of waiting for the Mueller report to go forward if you're going to go forward on impeachment because you might have a number of different crimes you have to add to the docket for what to impeach him on. But if Mueller comes in with something that is not, you know, that does not add to that list. First of all, that would be shocking, okay? But it's fine. I mean, if he says that he just didn't do it, then great, okay, no problem at all. But we already have a felony, I mean, and part of what Trump does is he floods the zone.

He does so many things wrong, so many things potentially illegal, that you're like, wait, are we supposed to focus on the tax fraud or the fact that he's got the Saudis to move to his hotel and give him $250,000 or that he won't let the FBI headquarters move because it's across the street from his hotel or the fact that he did campaign finance violations, etc. But to me, like the one right now that even without Mueller, you have a guy going to prison for three years, Michael Cohen, because of campaign finance violations. that he coordinated with Donald Trump. So that is an absolute clear felony, crime, any other president, we wouldn't be having

conversation. We're having a weird, ironic conversation about whether to impeach Trump because of, like, he's committed so many possible crimes that should we keep waiting for other crimes to be unveiled before we go forward? Any other president, one crime, the one that Cohen's going to jail for, would be plenty that we would definitely be having impeachment conversations, especially if he would was a Democrat. It's a typical Trump strategy, right?

And I don't think that it's an intentional strategy, but much like the news cycle, he floods the crime cycle with so much that you don't know what to focus on, right? There's just too much to focus on at one time. And I do think that there's value in waiting for the Mueller investigation. We talked about it, or the report from Mueller in this investigation. We talked about it on the show yesterday. But what Rashida Taleb wrote in that op-ed really shows you, you know, the difference between her perspectives on Trump and how to move forward versus how Pelosi wants to

move forward, because Pelosi wants to avoid any type of impeachment proceedings until the Mueller report comes out. And if the Mueller report is damning, I would assume Pelosi would want to go forward. But I just, I love the fierceness that we're seeing from these freshman Democrats. And I know there's obviously people who disagree with her now, have disagreed with the idea of impeachment now for the last two years. I guess two different reasons. One is, well, you know, how does if we were to impeach, how does that affect the 2020 election?

Or, well, if you impeached him, then you get Mike Pence. Those are both political concerns, but she's not coming at it from a political point of view. She's coming at it from a substantive point of view. She says in her op-ed, and you should read the entire thing, the reason we have impeachment in the Constitution is to defend the country from a criminal president. And she lists all of the damage that she's done. And she says, I'm not gonna wait around for two years because maybe it'll help me in an election. if I think that he is violating the law and it's hurting the American people.

If you care about the actual substance of what he's doing, then in that case, if you believe he's committed a crime, you cannot wait around. You have a moral imperative to actually act. So whenever we talk about something, we try to put the link in the description box below. So we'll put her op-ed so you can read it in the description box below if you're watching this later on YouTube or Facebook. So please check that out, I think it's important for you to get the whole substance. And John's absolutely right.

I mean, politics, you wanna have that conversation, that's interesting, but we elected these people to be substantive. And she's saying, we must act on the policy implications for the whole country. And it's, yes, there's important policy implications for Medicare for all, et cetera. But you also allowing a criminal president to be above the law is devastating for our democracy. So we must act. And if you can, on Monday, I believe actually, on the damage report, the co-author of that op-ed is gonna be on my show, the damage report, I'll be interviewing about that.

So, you know, tune in then. And I just, again, the whole entire initial conflict of interest upon which he got, you know, basically has skirted his entire presidency, whether it comes from the Mueller investigation or whether it comes from an outside source. It does need to be investigated. It's something that reporters have been talking about, that the analytical organizations have been talking about. He continues to have business interests throughout the world that we know not that much

about the finances for that. 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 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. are involved in countries for which he is also in charge of making policy.

Yeah. That needs to be something that we care about and investigate. Absolutely. All right. We actually have another Rashida Taleb story for you guys. So I'll do that one. So Rashida Taleb in the news a lot today, she got sworn in on Thomas Jefferson's version of the Quran. So Thomas Jefferson had his own version of the Bible, which is actually more controversial

because he ripped out a whole bunch of pages he thought made no sense at all. And so it's called the Jefferson's Bible. Why is that controversial? You know, religious people do that today all the time. They might not physically rip out the pages, but they don't mention the parts that are pretty terrible. Yeah, that's certainly true. They're like, don't eat shrimp.

We're going to rip that part out. Hey, gay people, keep that one in. Keep that I went in. But Jefferson largely kept the wonderful stuff about helping other people. Now, that's super relevant to the history of our country because Jefferson, obviously, one of the Founding Fathers, and Madison wrote the Constitution, but he partly based it on what's something that Jefferson had written earlier. And so he did not believe that we should be a Christian nation.

And he was very explicit about that. I mean, you don't get any more explicit than, I don't like these portions of the Bible, I'm gonna rip them out. So I mean, anything you hear from evangelical right-wingers telling you that the Founding Fathers wanted this to be a Christian nation is a total and utter lie. It's a preposterous lie. In fact, we're gonna prove it in the text of the Constitution in a second as well. So, and Jefferson also had a Quran.

And Rashida Taleb is not the first person to do this. Keith Ellison did the same thing. She's the first Muslim American woman in Congress, along with Ilhan Omar at the same time. But she's actually the third Muslim overall. Andre Carson and Keith Ellison were Muslim members of Congress. So it makes sense for her to get sworn in on a Quran. That's her religion. What else would she do?

Of course, the right wing did not see it that way. So rage online, like America is vanishing. What do you mean, it's vanishing? So you mean your power to dominate over others is vanishing. That part is true, and that's what sets you in a raise. But let me, I mean, there are so many of these tweets, and they're all hilarious and ridiculous, so you can't do all of them. But I'll give you a quick sampling because they're fun.

Fed up American, which is already an awesome handle, says, there should be a lawful. that you swear on a Christian Bible or not serve at all. You live in America, and our constitutional rules are republic. Giving security clues to nonbelieves of our republic lowers our security from hostile nations. I don't think he's read the Constitution, possibly not the Bible either. Of course, of course, okay, so I'm gonna read you the Constitution because apparently right wingers are stupid and have never read anything at all, especially the United States Constitution. He said, if she doesn't believe our republic, that she should not serve, and we must abide

by the Constitution, that's what it means to believe our republic. That part I agree with. So here's the First Amendment. It might be hard to find, I don't know, it's complicated. Has anyone ever mentioned the First Amendment before? It is first, so let's read it for you guys. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

So it couldn't be any clearer, if you love the American Constitution, you should never consider establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another. If you don't like the American Constitution and you believe in, hey, other forms of government like Iran has or Saudi Arabia has, where you say a religion should rule our government, well, great, then move to Iran or Saudi Arabia. But you're un-American, you're un-American. So understand, Rashida Talib is a thousand times better American than you, because she understands the country.

So it's hilarious to say that you should swear on the Christian Bible or not be allowed to serve at all. That is the exact opposite of what the Constitution says. But these idiots aren't done. Captain Mike 26 says, our nation is doomed to become a liberal cessable. Muslims, of course, misspelled, are soon to take over. I think that's intentional. The Muslims.

Yeah. Oh, so clever, so clever, but my favorite part is this. Mainly they're accusing her of being racist against whites and Christians. She's Muslim, is just her existence an offense to you? I mean, my God, how triggered are you, right? But look at that last line. White voters are generally stupid morons. But wait a minute, that's racist against white people.

She didn't do the racist thing, you did. Complex. Okay. That's complex. weirdos. They're like, I can't believe I share racist shoes against whites, because whites are stupid morons. What? Okay, and I'm not done.

R. Roebuck about the Quran. It's the book of Satan and should not be allowed in the United States. They all should be gathered up and burned. Wait, what does Satan do? Oh, he gathers up people and burns them. Oops. I mean, not two brain cells between them, between all these different. tweeters on the right wing.

And what's amazing is they write that down and they don't realize how stupid it is. No, and the anger behind it, it's stupid, it's unaware, it's ignorant, it doesn't utilize Google, and it's angry, and that's the issue. Yeah, and what were all of these nonstop debates regarding religious liberty about, right? When the debate came about regarding whether or not a baker should bake a cake for, again, gay couple. The argument was we have religious liberty.

The argument coming from Republicans, from the right wing in America was we live in America, we have constitutional protections for religion, right? For whatever religion you practice. And so we need to support and protect religious liberty. But I get it, like in their minds, religious liberty is only extended to one specific religion and that's it. No, but that's such a great point, Adam, because I don't, you're gonna make me bake a cake. You're gonna make me make a cake, right?

Well, in your ideal world, you would make her swear on the, of a religious text that she doesn't believe in. I mean, you want to talk about a religious violation. It doesn't get any more significant. That's not a cake. That's your religious text. Now, to be fair and more comprehensive, Muslims do believe in the Bible. They believe that the Quran is the third book, the Old Testament, New Testament, than the Quran. But still, the Quran is the final version in their.

vision of this. And so, of course, making them just swear on something else doesn't make any sense at all. And then finally, not about Rashida to leave. Kirsten Cinema, she got sworn in as well. She is a corporate Democrat. I got no love for her. I generally don't like her policy. She votes with Trump far too much, but I have to give her huge credit here.

I mean, it's just a matter of her existence, in a sense, but something she chose to do symbolically as well that I loved. She is openly bisexual and openly atheist. So the part that I love most is she swore on a law book instead of any religious text. I do like that. And that's awesome. Okay. Yeah, we did Harry Potter.

And my other favorite thing is, Harry Potter is funny, is that the person is swearing in the senators is Mike Pence. Damn. So, so good. Was his wife there? Right. Well, there was another woman in the room, I hope the wife was there. If mother's not there, I don't know what is he doing.

Can I point out one other thing because you've been attacking the right wing a lot, and I feel for them a little bit. So I want to reassure them. Anytime you feel concerned about what book someone is swearing on, reassure yourself in the knowledge that swearing on a book doesn't do anything. It doesn't mean anything. You can use any, I can do it on this paper. Now, look, if you care about a particular text, use the text you care about.

Fine. If we're going to make people put their hand on a piece of literature, Then you do whichever one you want. But it doesn't mean anything at all. There's no magic in it. There's no sorting hat. This is the real world. And the Republic is about the land of the free.

And it just goes back to the fact that anyone who actually believes in that believes that you can swear on any piece of literature you want. Like the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, which is, you know, could be a thing. All right. And look, guys, our jobs to deliver the truth to the best of our abilities to do so. And so you always gotta give credit where credit is due just because you disagree with someone about one thing doesn't mean you disagree with them about everything So that's partly why I'm giving cinema credit here because I love that she's sworn on a law book even if I don't like her other policies And and the fact that she had to have Pence or Pence was forced to swear in a bisexual when he's a known homophone And he's a right-week evangelical Christian and he had to swear her in on a law book instead of the Bible

Oh, you know what I call that, America. All right, let's see a quick break here. We've gotten it pretty long, of course. But we have so much more. The attacks against Ocasio-Cortez are hilarious. Just when you think they can't outdo themselves. They did it, they did it. And there's substance from her, which brings out more attacks, but I'm going to defend

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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 not learn 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 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. Turn.

All right, back on a young turks, a couple of member comments for you guys. Chris Durand says, why are the right-wing snowflakes getting so upset about Thelib's comments? I thought they like straight shooters who tell it like it is. She's just counter-punching. Yeah, John just read me a tweet from Rick Wilson, who's actually Republican strategist who's against Donald Trump, and he said, what happened to the after feelings crowd, right? So they don't seem so tough anymore.

Chris Trevino with a really interesting point, even John Adams, who in many ways, the father of the U.S. evangelism movement, was against establishing or connecting the U.S. with religion, because it also damages religion, by the way. That's another reason not to do it. And finally, my favorite comment, Floyd, you knocked this out of the park. Trump should have been sworn in on a coloring book. I picked the best coloring book. I know how to color inside the lines better than anyone else.

Ever. Look, you know what, we're gonna go old school on this one. I know it's a real pain in the ass for our crew, but we gotta get Claude a t-shirt. I mean, when everyone on the panel, L-O-Ls, okay. So, Croyd, we'll find you a way to get your t-shirt. Shop t-y-y-t.com, you pick the one you like. All right, John, what's next? Okay, now let's have a little bit of fun.

The Wright's newest plan to destroy Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has failed in epic fashion. Here is the video that they honestly thought would do her in. So we unfortunately can't play the audio because it is an actual song. We'll try to get her to do these sorts of promotional dances to public use music in the future. But there, you're seeing, this is back in 2010, I believe, or at least it was posted by BU in 2010. Right. It's, they're doing the breakfast club dance and having fun and enjoying youth.

How dare they? So they must be destroyed. How dare she? Yeah, how dare she? So this was spread by a Twitter account called, to give you an idea of how serious this person is politically, anonymous Q. Lots of credibility there. Got the Q there.

It's probably random Q. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. saying, when they spread this, here is America's favorite commie know-it-all, acting like the clueless knit which she is. The response was such that that person deleted their Twitter account. And as I pointed out on the damage for it this morning, it takes a lot to shame a cue believer on their beliefs enough that they flee the internet. Right.

Yeah. By the way, she just know nothing, you know, from high school, it was from college. Yeah, it says BU. It says Boston University right there on the shirt, right? And she wasn't the only one doing it, she didn't do it now, she did it in college. So the accusation, and so it's not just this one guy. Then of course the right wing went all in and they were all like, ah, we got her, ladies and gentlemen, she's dancing with this clearly not allowed.

Okay, what is this? Footloose? Right? They're like, the Republican Party has become like the villains in footloose. Do not let anyone dance. By the way, the other country that does not allow dancing, I believe I'm not positive, is Saudi Arabia. No, no, I mean, they strike me as the religious police, right, going around, making sure

that people have their beards, making sure that people don't have any fun. I mean, isn't that very similar, a similar take on a super innocent video of a college student dancing? Are we outlying dancing in America now? Yeah. Land of the free guys. And by the way, look, this actually fits in comedically into a trend in their attempts to take down, you know, I would say whether you like their part.

policies are not charismatic politicians. So this is what they have on AOC. With Beto, they pointed out that he skateboards and he was in a rock band. And with Obama back in the day, they had that photo of him smoking what might have been marijuana, might have just been a cigarette that's cooler than any photo I've ever been in my life. And they think these are how they destroy people by making them super relatable and attractive. But really, I mean, who are you guys?

I mean, you think that it's like she, when she was in college, she should not have danced? I mean, when Donald Trump got out of college, he ran out of Vietnam. I had a fake doctor's note and let other kids die for him. That's okay, that's okay, but did he ever dance? I mean, what kind of weirdos are they? I mean, if you tried to find a way to turn off to American people more, you couldn't do it. So thank you. So I- Go ahead.

No, because the level beneath that is like they don't understand voters, just at all, because voters clearly don't dance. So if you can detach them from Alexander, then you say. Somehow, I don't know, get your person back in Congress. It's weird. So I just, I feel like there are certain politicians who can't win regardless of how they act, what they do, what their past is. And when I say certain politicians, I mostly mean women, okay?

Women, if they present themselves as too serious, they, you know, they don't go out of their way to have fun or if they do have fun, they try to conceal it. considered, oh, she's too stern, she seems like a bitch. Like you hear that over and over again. I mean, look, Hillary Clinton was a very flawed politician. I had lots of issues with her on a policy standpoint, but a lot of the criticism that she got had to do with the fact that she seemed like she wouldn't let loose. She seemed like she was too, you know, buttoned up or whatever.

Whereas with AOC, you know, she's young. She made history as an incredibly young woman who got voted into Congress, and she was in college not too long ago as a result of that. And so, yeah, she danced in a video, it's not that big of a deal. And here's the thing, so there's that double standard when it comes to women in general. But I also notice that there's a little bit of a double standard when it comes to the Republican party. So look, I hate, hate, hate when anyone goes after Melania Trump for her past modeling career, right?

She was a model, plain and simple, who cares? Don't shame her for that. If you're on the left, please avoid doing that. I hate it. But for the right wing, you're gonna go after AOC for being fully clothed and dancing, but you're gonna give a pass to the president's wife who did a lesbian, semi-nude photo shoot. No, I mean, look, let's, and we didn't even get the lesbian pictures, but. Now imagine, and this is not against Melania, it's against the people attacking Alexandria

across curtis. Imagine if she had pictures like that. Imagine if she had pictures like that. It's that double standard, which is why I like what the response was from Alexandria. She basically did an entire new dance video in the halls of Congress. And I thought that

was the awesome own-it response, and that's why she was elected. And those are the kind of people we need in Congress. And you know what? It doesn't actually matter if they're from the left or the right. It's the people that actually own their past, own their connection. to voters and are taking it into the halls of Congress.

Exactly. And not apologizing. That woman is not apologizing, and that is cool. Oh, God. It doesn't get any better than her doing that dance in front of the plaque of her name. So awesome. To taunt the losers. And the American flag.

Home of the Free. American flag. Oh, and by the way, we can't play the music, but the song is war, what is it good for, absolutely nothing, which I don't think was just randomly selected. I love that that is the song. That is the song she chose to dance to, a nice little added thing for leftists there. I think you guys are absolutely right about how the American voter is reacting to this. They're basically, I think, saying, if you can't dance, well, then you're no friend of mine. That wasn't even quite right.

It wasn't even the right quote. Anyway, but like we're having fun and we're laughing everything, but understand that the reason they spread it, the reason why, not just the first guy spread it, but people like Stacey Dash were like, Well, well, well, well. They actually thought they had something is because they are, we know, we've talked about this a hundred times, they're terrified of her positions because they're so popular. That is why Hannity had one of the most ridiculous own goals of himself when he put up her platform and people around the country are like, that looks good for the left. Wait, wait, wait, universe free healthcare?

Exactly, exactly. What they need to do is convince you that she's crazy. And that is why they will only show carefully selected video screenshots of her with her eyes wide, and that is why they're showing her dancing, because they see that, and they don't see youth, they see, oh, she's out of control. We gotta convince people that she's crazy. Did Claire McCaskill retweet any of those? I don't think so.

However, I will say, I mean, like, so if someone put it out on Twitter that normally the gap needs to spend millions of dollars to get an ad like that, like she's gonna do the dance on Ellen any day now. Like people are gonna be doing this dance, other politicians are gonna be digging through their archives to find stuff like this, you fools. By the way, one last thing. You know that Donald Trump also danced, but he danced with the Saudis. So you did not complain when he danced with people who, even before Jamal Khashoggi,

on a regular basis behead people, right? Let alone all the disastrous wars and let alone all the times they've attacked us, right? And fun of the people who attacked us. So dancing with them is cool, but dancing when you're in college and having fun, not cool. The hypocrisy of the right wing knows no bounds. Trump's real good at the dumbo-mobo. We should probably take our last break. Oh, okay.

All right. We have so many other stories. Oh, okay. And good news coming up. All right. 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 and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

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In the meantime, enjoy. this free segment. All right, back on the Young Turks. The person who sent the comment in yesterday in the last segment that we want to give a t-shirt to you're apparently supposed to take a link of your comment and send it to orders at t-y-tnetwork.com to get the shirt, okay, orders at t-y-tnetwork.com. I'm gonna read only one tweet here because we're running short on time. Jill Ronan said, if only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could have been a wholesome student, you know,

like that Paragon of Virtue, Brett Kavanaugh. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. Great point, Jill. Thank you. All right, what's next? Important stuff.

On this weekend, 60 minutes, Anderson Cooper interviews Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So we don't know everything that they spoke about, but one excerpt from it has been released, and in it they talk about the possible need to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for programs like a Green New Deal or Medicare for All, universal education, and things like that. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's willingness to talk about the possible need to raise the top marginal tax rate. I use that term very specifically, because most headlines are not using those terms, to 60 to 70% is causing most people in traditional media to lose their minds.

So she said, there's an element where, yeah, people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes. And when Cooper pointed out such a tax plan would be a, quote, radical move. That was his word. She said that she embraces the label. I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country. Yeah, if that's what radical means, call me a radical. And since then, the 60 to 70%, and usually the headlines just say 70%.

They just jump to the highest one, just says she will raise taxes to 70%. Can you just quickly explain what marginal means in this case? Because I think people are unfortunately very easily, you know, they buy into the propaganda. Not necessarily confused, but misinformed. It's not their fault. It's just the way that it's being reported. Yeah, and they're specifically purposefully misinformed. I won't be able to explain it as well as know me, so know me feel free.

Well, when we're talking about marginal tax rate, we're saying that up to a certain amount of the income of, say, the highest income bracket is taxed at lower percentages. And the idea would be that the amount that they make over a certain barrier on that, they would get taxed by, you know, it's 50, 60 or 70%. And it should be noted that when you use the term radical, one of the highest marginal tax rates was under President Eisenhower, who had been General Eisenhower, you know, sort of during World War II, then was in the president during one of the highest growth periods in the United States, where he actually was a proponent of a higher marginal tax rate and a

higher corporate tax rate in order to build the country. Yeah, so I just want to give a little further context that Ocasio-Cortez also gave. She said, look, when you're not going to get tax 70%, so there used to be a lot more tax brackets. So, and even someone making over $10 million in the example that she gave, they do not get taxed at 70% for the whole $10 million. They only get taxed 70% for the dollar after $10 million. So in the brackets keep going up as you go up. And so one of the points that economists make is about utility, the more persuasive arguments

are not just that it gets the federal government more revenue for more investments in things like highways, schools, hospitals, etc., bridges, but it actually improves their economy because it gets the money to the people who are more likely to spend it and grow their economy. But the utility arguments are really interesting one, because they're like, look, Mark Zuckerberg is not going to get very much utility from $10 million and $1, whereas if you're in a lower tax bracket, a lot of us, right? You get a lot more utility out of that extra dollar that you get to keep because his marginal

tax rate at 10 million is higher, yours can be lower. I mean, that context is completely missing from almost any of the articles except Matthew Iglesias did a wonderful job at Vox. And I do want to say one more thing about the word radical. I like this, she owned it, that's two different ways to go on that. And Thomas Jefferson was a radical, George Washington was a radical. Martin Luther King was a radical. So that's a great way of going about it.

The other way to say is, hey, you're talking to Aniston Cooper, his family, I don't know if they're millionaires or if they have hundreds of millions of dollars, his mom is Gloria Vanderbilt, and then he's been on television for a long time. Look, I could argue especially historically and internationally, you paying the low tax rate that you do, Anderson Cooper, is actually radical. It's radical in the context of history, and it's radical in the context of the rest of the world. You pay a ridiculously low rate, and you have loopholes that allow you to even escape more taxes.

I think that that wealth inequality that we have in this country is actually, what's radical. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would, what if we said, okay, you have a top tarst marginal tax rate? I'm not gonna say a specific amount, just X, a variable. And then I'm gonna lobby government and over some decades, I'm gonna get it cut to a third of what it once was.

That seems pretty radical, but that's actually what happens. So to add on to what Nomi said, let's talk about the historical context that from what we've seen from the interview, either Anderson Cooper is not familiar with or just chose not to mention when labeling her position as radical, here is how radical it is. bring up this chart, it is exceeded by the situation that we had in the U.S. for literally decades. That shaded lighter green, that's the highest marginal tax rate. And you can see that for decade after decade, it is significantly higher than 60 or 70%, topping

out, I believe, at 94% for a short period in time. But weirdly, as they were able to spend more and more money on elections, and they got more and more control, and we allowed more and more lobbyists and all of that, gradually it goes down and down and down. That backsliding, I would say, is pretty radical. Going back to what we had during a period of the highest levels of economic growth in human history ever observed, isn't radical. It seems like a pretty good call, actually.

Yeah, even if you don't believe that the incredibly high marginal tax rate at the time, and it was incredibly high, 91% is almost as high as you can get, didn't lead to the economic boom. It is inarguable that it at least did not prevent the economic boom. We had the biggest economic boom in American history between Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson and the tax rate, highest marginal tax rate was between 70 and 91%. And there is a good argument to make, as we just outlined a little while ago, and that some of the top economists in the world make, that it actually did create the economic boom, because

it put the money back into circulation in the economy. And that was actually the argument that Eisenhower used. And the argument that Johnson continued to use was that that dollar in people's population pockets, if you multiply that by more people's pockets, has a more stable pattern of growth on the economy because it's going throughout the economy than if it's just money that's accumulated and not taxed at the higher echelons of society or in corporations. Those growth periods on that graph, when taxes were that high on a marginal level, also coincided with corporate taxes being involved in accreting into the country as opposed

to loopholing themselves out of it. Well, and we can actually briefly bring that up as well, because at the same time that that highest marginal tax rate has been going down, if you see this chart, the corporate tax rate also gradually over time. And by the way, that ends at 2011, the effective corporate tax rate with Donald Trump's, you know, tax cuts. It's around 10% right now with his tax cuts if you actually bring in all of what's being on. But didn't come back to the country that was supposed to come back to the country. And the last piece of context that's really important, guys, is the other sign always talks about redistribution and wealth. They already did it. Yes.

They redistributed the wealth from the middle class to the top, okay? They did that by lowering corporate taxes and lowering tax on the rich. And what did that do? As a proportion of the rest of the taxes being paid, the payroll tax went up significantly. And the payroll tax is the one you pay into for Social Security and Medicare. And that one, the rich get capped. They actually do not pay after a certain amount. So it is the most regressive tax we have, meaning the one that the middle class pays the

most. So they redistributed the wealth of themselves. And then they turn around and we, when you say, hey, maybe we should correct that, they go radical, radical. Even Inglacius did a wonderful job, really great information in his article on Vox. And we'll put the link down below for him. He had to go out of his way to say like, now I know this seems crazy, okay? And the right wing say that Ocasio-Cortez is a no-nothing, right?

But I mean, get a load of that irony. It's in fact them that know nothing, they know nothing at all. They don't know our history, they don't know economics, and all they know is who's paying me, who's my donor, I'm gonna serve them. And look, and if you're a corrupt Republican politician or a lot of Democratic politicians, I at least understand your motivation. But for the media, I mean, what is your motivation? No, but a lot of people in the media are rich, Jank.

Like we've talked about this a lot, and not everyone, right? But the Anderson Cooper's of the world, as you mentioned earlier, they're rich, they're rich. They don't, I don't want to speak for Anderson Cooper, but there is this solidarity within the media to call people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez radical because they want to protect their own profits and their own money, right? And they don't necessarily think about it in a malicious way. I doubt Anderson Cooper before the interview was like, how am I going to get Ocasio-Cortez? I don't want her raising my taxes.

No, no. It's just their assumptions, their group think and the bubble that they live in, they're like, oh my God, raising my taxes would be radical because then instead of having $485 million, I would only have $435 million. What would I do with my life? Those are made up numbers, by the way, I don't know how much Anderson Cooper has. And we know, but to me- You nailed it actually. But look, it's not just the really wealthy television anchors, a lot of the mainstream media,

including, you know, otherwise decent publications like New York Times, Washington Post, they're reporters who are not that rich, have these built-in assumptions. The assumption is, this is a center-right country, the right wing is right, higher taxes is radical, lower taxes boosts economy. None of that is fact-based. They also live in alternative facts. Yeah, yeah, and let's, so again, we point this out a lot. It is weird that we end up with all of the faces on the nightly news are insanely rich people.

Yeah, of course. Of course. Not only are they geographically concentrated, but they're economically concentrated in a weird way. And for some reason, they don't understand the concerns of real people. That's weird. Yeah, and one final thing I wanted to just quickly add to this is I think that there needs to be a frank conversation among Americans in general about the reality of the American dream, right?

Because I think that right now we still have a huge portion of the population that's convinced, even though they're living in poverty in a lot of cases, even though they're struggling to put food on the table for their children, they're convinced that higher times. taxes for the wealthy is a bad idea because they think they're eventually going to get there themselves. You're not, okay? Very few of you will. I'm sorry, this was a very hard realization that I had to come to myself.

It's very unlikely that you're going to be so rich that you're going to have to pay a 70% marginal tax rate after $10 million a year, like it's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen. But it might happen. They're not going to make more than $10 million a year. It's a very small group of people in America. You're forcing me to say one super last thing. Look, it is far more likely to happen if there's a higher marginal tax rate because that would create opportunities for you to move up, okay?

But you're killing off your own opportunity when you say the rich should pay a lot less. It burns the bridge so you can't cross it. Okay, let's go to the next story. Okay, and just a heads up, there's a lot of components to this. So you've got better than mine. Okay, we've got new Congress, and they've got some legislation queued up. But what are the people really want? What do they want coming out of this new Congress?

Well, let's bring up some polling data on the top issues amongst independent voters specifically. Look at that. Culture of corruption at 75% is the top issue. Now, the other ones are also incredibly important as well. Social Security, Medicare, Economy and Jobs. Right kind of change is an interesting sort of vague statement. But healthcare and prescription, all of that. But they do put culture of corruption even above things like health care and jobs, which is pretty amazing.

when you think about it. And okay, well, I mean, culture is sort of a vague concept. What can you actually do about it? Would they want Congress who they don't trust and don't like to do anything about it? Well, if you bring up this next poll, you'll see that they do actually really want some legislation to try to reform this overwhelming support. I mean, that's 84% amongst independents. You're talking about 72% amongst all voters.

So we- 82%, I don't know, I'm not good at numbers. Okay, yeah. Well, here's my favorite part. So overall voters say 82%, yeah, do something about the corruption. And the fact that like when just Democrats, for example, ran on that issue, that was the only litmus test, you're not a lot to take corporate PAC money, we're gonna run uncorrupted. The establishment was like, oh, that's funny. Like, really?

You don't think that's a winning issue? That's unbelievably, you don't think that's a winning issue. Once again, mainstream media living in alternative facts, no, corruption is the number one issue in the country. But my favorite number was the 11%. 11% are like, nah, corruption's fine. No, and to be fair to them, it's not corruption or uncorruption. That's why the 82% number is even more impressive.

Do you think we should reform government ethics and control money in politics? And so they were specific enough. And so 11% go, no, don't control the money in politics. I think it's freedom when the Koch brothers buy all my senators and congressmen, right? And okay, but that's 11% of the country that's a tiny, tiny minority. The overwhelming majority of the country says, yeah, of course it's corruption, of course that's So that's what they want, and we have an idea, we've had for some weeks actually, of what HR1, the first bill out of this new Congress will be, and it is complicated.

It involves a lot of different things, but they really do get to the heart of those sorts of concerns. We'll go through some of the components and briefly comment on whether we think it's up to the task. But the first section is public financing of campaigns powered by small donations. The standout part of that would be at least under one proposal. The federal government would provide a voluntary six to one match on donations. for candidates for President and Congress up to $200.

So a regular person who could donate $25 or $50 or $100 would have much more effective value so that those people who are running for Congress and President don't necessarily need to go to wealthy people. They can appeal to the regular masses, us serfs and peasants. So that's a pretty significant change there as well. Yeah, I think that's actually the best part of the law. Look, I think HR1 is fantastic. I think it's a great start.

You know me, I would have made it even tougher. But I'm not, today's not the day the nitpick, okay? Because this one, this is super important. When you're given half a loaf or in this our case, look, you can think it's a quarter loaf, you can think it's three quarters of a loaf. But the first question you should ask is, yeah, but what's the downside? And in this case, there is no downside. So go, yes, absolutely.

Take whatever percentage of the loaf you think it is and let's go forward. So it's a wonderful bill put forward and credit where credit is due to Nancy Pelosi, to Democratic leadership, to the co-sponsors. And six to one is I think the best part because it would make a huge difference because it would impact, it would mean that your donations are multiplied by six. It would take you and make you six times as strong. Well, we love that. We want to empower people.

Yeah, and the other, there's two other parts of that that are really good. One is that means more people can actually run because they don't need to find as much There will be sort of a matching of funding of six to one, which is awesome. And the other thing that's actually in this bill, which usually this is the kind of stuff that'll get cut out. Hopefully it won't, if it ever gets to vote into the floor and goes through, is to prohibit the coordination between the super PACs and the money that's coming in amassed beyond that $200 minimum or beyond whatever the contribution minimum is per person from unduly influencing

what happens to that individual candidate in that campaign. And if you can get both of those things in, together, I think they're super powerful. Yeah. Unsuperpack, but super powerful. Exactly. And so somewhat related to this, also having good with campaign finance, the bill would support constitutional amendment to end Citizens United, which again, that specifically does not go as far as we would like it to, but that would certainly be a nice step in the right direction.

As you said, requiring super PACs and dark money political organizations to make their donors public and also not coordinate with the candidates. It would require disclosing any political spending by government contractors and slowing the flow of foreign money into elections by targeting shell companies. So the sort of, I guess, closed loop of companies that get in with the federal government, get these big contracts, take the money from the overblown contracts, to then lobby the government for more contracts, this could hopefully fight against a bit of that. Yeah, so all these provisions are good, the Disclose Act is good.

Look, if you're asking, okay, Sir, Jane, what do you want? Why do you think this is half a loaf, even though, again, it's a great start? Well, look, number one, an amendment, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit because one was proposed and that's also great news. But what would I want the amendment to do? Like the Disclose Act, it's fine, they can't get the Republicans to say yes, so it'll fail in the Senate, that doesn't mean they shouldn't do it, they should do it, they should pass it, and then show that the Republicans are in favor of corruption.

So that's, I love it, right? But I would say, and all private financing elections, and Republicans, you're never allowed to complain about George Soros. again, if you vote for private financing of elections. That's what Soros does. He privately finances elections, as do the Koch brothers and the Mercer's and Sheldon Adelson and Tom Steyer, both on the left and the right. Let's end it all, end it all.

If they do private financing, they will work for private interest. If we do public financing, they'll work for public interest. And they have in the past, don't buy the mythology that it's never been good in this country. And I love that in the amendment portion, they mentioned Buckley v. Vallejo. Pre that decision, not Citizens United, but if you go back to 1976, we actually had a system that worked, and that's why part of the reason why we had economic booms, that's why we had great domestic legislation that protected us, environmental protection agency, OSHA, and I could list Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all that came about in an era where we

did not have corruption, or certainly not at the industrial level that we have it now. Second thing I would do is end corporate personhood. So corporations are not people, my friend. They're just not. They're not human beings. They should have no constitutional rights. They should have legal rights but not constitutional rights. That's a very important distinction.

So they didn't go anywhere near that here. And me finding out who is bribing them is a positive step, but I'd like to end the actual bribery. Yeah, exactly. So moving on to areas of ethics, again that gets into the polling that we were talking about earlier. It would require the president and vice president to disclose 10 years of his or her tax returns. Candidates for president and vice president must also do the same.

This seems like a weird inclusion because, look, I'll admit my data is only good up until a few years ago, but everyone had. Except- Of course. So they're not going to vote for this. No, no, no, no, no. There's one other person, Bernie Sanders. I think that that's why they put that in there. Yeah?

Yeah, because why Trump's not a candidate anymore? He's the president. They already said president, why bother saying candidate? Right. So they can get Bernie Sanders tax returns. Yeah, I mean, look, I get it, but that's okay, and they should get his text. And be fair, I think he'll give them. Yeah.

Yeah. Other areas of ethics, stopping members of Congress from using taxpayer money to settle sexual harassment or discrimination cases, I don't know how that was ever legal. I know, right? Sit down with a regular person, hell, go to a cafe in Iowa. They love doing that and talk to a regular person, do you think they should be able to use your money to settle their sexual harassment cases? No one would understand that, but thankfully they'll be changing that.

Also, giving the Office of Government Ethics the power to do more oversight and enforcement, put in stricter lobbying registration requirements. That's something. Yeah, by the way, none of these are going to happen. Right? Because he said they're going to come into effect, and I just want to be clear about that. It's still wonderful that they're putting it forward and putting the Republicans on the spot, but Mitch McConnell has said, this is a non-starter, I love corruption, I have no interest

and ethics, I will not even discuss this in the Senate. Exactly. Now, in the area of voting, they would create new national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out rather than opt in. Early voting, same day voter registration and online voter registration would also be promoted. Those are all good moves. That's another reason why it's not going to happen. The Republicans are like, are you going to get more people to vote?

Hell no, no. It's not democratic. Yeah, we're not interested in democracy, no way we're going to do that. I, being as this, will not happen under this, ultimately with the Senate, or really actually a lot of the Democrats and Republicans that are in Washington right now, but it would be really cool to have them not be able to buy shares in the companies over which they also juristic legislation. It'd be really cool if they couldn't hold Goldman Sach stock, for example, which many people

in Washington that are involved in Congress do. That would be awesome. So a couple of just real quick shoutouts on that, Elizabeth Warren has a terrific bill in the Senate, Jamie Raskin in the House, they've been working on issues like that. Yeah, I feel that if you're a corporate Democrat who's against that, you don't have the right to go after Trump for his conflicts of interest. Because if you believe that our lawmakers should have the right to invest in companies that they would, you know, that would basically influence their policymaking, then first

First of all, you don't believe in democracy. You believe in people having the ability to get elected into office and do things specifically to enrich themselves. And that's not democracy. I mean, it's crazy that we don't already have laws preventing that from happening. Exactly. Yeah. You know, one last thing about it, I don't want to get too skeptical about it not happening,

because there is some chance. And so how would you get the Republicans in the Senate to actually be ethical? That is a conundrum. But there is a way, because there's 25 Republicans that are right. up for election in 2020, and a lot of them are in swing states, and they're in a cold sweat panic. Some of them right now are going, why do we shut the government down? I don't agree with Trump, I don't agree with Trump, please, let's reopen the government.

They're already panicking two years out. So Mitch McConnell might say, hey, I'm not bringing it up, but at some point the senators from Colorado, Arizona, and those different states where they're in a lot of trouble, they're going to go, Mitch, you got to bring it up, I got to vote no on corruption. Otherwise, I'm toast. And then can you swing enough Republican votes to make it happen in the Senate? Maybe. And so that's why this is a terrific start.

And the last thing is I don't want to just not mention something else that's very important, which is the democracy for all amendment. And so that was brought forward by, and it's bipartisan, so that's great. They got one Republican to go along in the House, and you should give them tremendous credit, John Catco from New York's 24th District. It's okay to disagree on policy issues with Republicans and Democrats. As long as they're honest and they believe in democracy and Katko apparently does, you want to get money out of politics and then have a real debate in a marketplace of ideas, wonderful.

So tremendous credit to Katko, but also Ted Deutsch, Jim McGovern, and Jamie Raskin, always a great, great fight around this issue. The Democracy for All Amendment does some great things saying that yes, you can regulate spending on elections, of course you can, and you could certainly regulate spending by corporations on elections, and that would get written into the Constitution. And then, again, I would want it to be even more so and say, no, we're just ending the private financing of elections and we're ending corporate personhood. But a wonderful, wonderful start here by some heroes in Congress, credit where credit is due.

In fact, look, we have the TYT Army, and oftentimes there's a lot of things that are wrong in the world, and they go and try to address that. And sometimes that's, we hope, constructive critique. But we also want to encourage positive things in the world. So, and we had a lot of success recently, and you should thank those congressmen. And we'll send you an email about it if you're in the TYT Army, if you're not, tyt.com slash army. So send all these folks emails, tweets, Facebook messages saying thank you, thank you for fighting

to get money out of politics and fighting for an amendment. We deeply appreciate it. It feels good to get people credit and to have Democrats do the right thing. Makes you want to dance, but you shouldn't in case you ever run for Congress. All right, awesome. John, Nomi, thank you so much. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it. There's so many more amazing stories for you guys. Come right back. 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 podcast at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.