The Young Turks - Secret Stash

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Around a dozen classified documents from Biden’s Vice President terms, have been surrendered. Around 7,000 nurses have gone on strike in New York. Millionaire and sock-trader extraordinaire Virginia Foxx has just been elected chair of the Education And Workforce Committee. The GOP is the most unethical organization in politics thanks to George Santos’ latest stunts. Shocker, Republicans have voted to rescind IRS funding. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, well, being on church, Jake Hugo had to compare with you guys. Sometimes you have to do the intro with this voice. All right, fun show ahead for you guys. The Republicans have gutted ethics and given everything to the rich, to which we all say collectively, of course. Okay, so we've got all those fun details. Caspar, how are you doing?

I've been better. I can't stand the online left. I think that they're incredibly destructive to progressives and actually getting anything accomplished in this damn country. So that's where I'm at right now. But I'd like to move on with our rundown. Would you like to start with that? I think so. I don't think I want to get into that other topic, so let's do the news. Maybe we will in the bonus episode, but why don't we actually talk about the news of the day, starting with this? All right. The classified documents were discovered in this building about a mile from the White House at the offices of the Penn Biden Center, a foreign policy research institute set up after President Biden left the vice presidency. According to a source familiar with the matter,

the classified documents are small in number and were found in November in a box among unclassified material. Ah, yes, the big controversial news story of the day is that President Joe Biden had classified documents in his personal office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. Now, of course, this has led to all sorts of comparisons, conflations with the classified documents controversy involving Donald Trump, we're going to tell you the differences in just a moment, but first, let's get to the facts. There were roughly 10 classified documents in the president's office, which he hasn't actually been in for a few years now because he stopped using that office when he began his campaign for president. But what we do know is that his personal attorneys were cleaning

out the office. They came across the documents, immediately notified the national Archives and the National Archives immediately notified the Justice Department. Now, White House counsels say that the documents were discovered on November 2nd of 2020, so last year, when personal lawyers for the president were cleaning out his space. Now the documents that were marked classified were found in a locked closet. They were not strewn about his office. They did immediately contact both the White House and the White House lawyers reached out to the National archives and Merrick Garland has already referred the investigation to a U.S. attorney based in Chicago,

John Lausch, who is in fact a Trump appointee. And apparently he is wrapping up his investigation into this because, as you guys know, this occurred or the discovery of the documents happened sometime ago. And so it was immediately referred to this U.S. attorney for investigation. Now, Trump has reacted to it and so has the right wing. We're gonna get to that in just a moment, including kind of sussing out the differences between Trump and Biden on this issue. But before I go to you, Jank, let me just say one thing. There are differences.

With that said, can we just get some competent people in government, please, who handle classified documents like they're supposed to? So I'm not gonna give Biden a pass because there's less classified documents, documents in his possession or the fact that he did the right thing and immediately notified the National Archives and the DOJ. You shouldn't have mishandled the documents. You shouldn't have had them in your possession in the first place. And now, you know, the Biden team is really overcompensating by literally handing over all boxes of all documents from the office, including personal documents that are in no way classified whatsoever. And I'm talking about

50 plus boxes of documents just to prove a point that Biden's not trying to hide anything or do anything illegal. But with that said, if you're going to leave the White House and these are documents dating back to his time as vice president, just do your due diligence and make sure you're not in possession of classified documents. I don't think that's too much to ask. Yeah. So there's gigantic differences between the Biden documents and the Trump documents. And so, guys, to Anna's point, do I have a motivation to get Biden to pass on anything? No, should you take home classified documents under any circumstance? No. So if this maybe is the equivalent of being a pick pocket, which sucks. And so I mean, that's such a like cheesy thing, right? Now it's a weird analogy because he didn't really intend it. So it's not it's not a great analogy. But I'm trying to provide scale for you guys. as Trump's crime is like a aggravated robbery, armed bank robbery.

You know, like it's, it is far, far more severe. And so both the partisans talking about, oh, what Biden did nothing wrong, Trump did nothing wrong. No, they both did something wrong. But Biden did wrong was tiny as we were about to explain, but wrong, what Trump did wrong was terrible and super dangerous. If you hear Republicans conflating the two, they're either, I mean, there's a poll that I did on Twitter, can they not understand the differences, which are super simple?

Or do they not care? And they're just trolling the national media because they're like, who cares what's true? Let's pretend it's the same thing anyway. Yeah, of course, but of course they're going to do that. They have a political incentive to do that. They are making these conflations. You have Donald Trump. just making up things like Biden allegedly giving classified documents to China, which makes me think, did Trump give classified documents to a foreign leader? Because why is he floating this? Here's what he wrote on truth social. Biden giving China highly classified documents would be a bridge too far. I certainly wouldn't do that. Wait, did you do that? Anyway, he continues. Not a good situation for our country to be in. No, Anna, I'm positive about what that means. Now, me being positive doesn't stand up in a court of law, okay?

Let's be clear about that and they're gonna have to prove it. But somebody doesn't walk into the room and go, I didn't give away national documents to a different country unless they had that top of mind, okay? And so I think the distinction he's trying to lay out is, I didn't give national secrets to China. I wouldn't do that, but would he give it to maybe an allied country like Israel for a certain price or Saudi Arabia,

which is technically an ally for a certain price. That I think he would definitely do. So weak and incompetent that even if there is that even if he did do it, the Democrats would wait like 18 years before looking into it. And so we're never going to goddamn find out. And it drives me crazy. Because if he didn't do anything like that, he, I mean, there's no conceivable way that you took over 300 classified documents home by accident. Okay. But if he was stupid enough to do it by accident, I'd like to know that too. I don't want to just hang out there forever. But with Trump, you never know, because nobody ever goddamn investigates.

Yeah, and like, look, let's just, let's just cut to the chase, okay? Nothing's going to happen to Trump, nothing's going to happen to Biden, okay? The sham investigation into, you know, Trump's possession of classified documents. Yes, he was rated, mostly because the National Archives really wanted those documents back for good reason. But do I think that Merrick Garland is really going to file serious criminal charges against Donald Trump and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. In fact, prosecute him to the fullest extent of the executive order that Trump himself signed when he was president of the United States in regard to the mishandling of classified documents. The answer is no, I don't think so.

I think that this is a lot of theater, a lot of people freaking out publicly in the media about it. But I don't think anyone who is considered elite, I don't think anyone in a position of extreme power in this country ever really faces real consequences for their actions. But let me continue, okay? So Kevin McCarthy, of course, Republican Speaker of the House says of Biden, he's had these classified documents. And what has he said about the other president with classified documents? Yeah, he criticized Trump for his handling of classified documents in an interview with 60 minutes. So congratulations in bringing that up. Great job. You also have Republican Representative James Comer, the incoming House Oversight Committee chairman. He has some very serious questions, Jenk, about this. whole debacle, what's the difference in what President Trump did versus what we now know President Biden did? We want to know exactly what documents were taken by both President Trump and now President Biden, you don't want to know about, you don't want a real investigation to the Trump,

let's keep it real. But anyway, he continues and want to know if they're gonna treat President Biden any differently than they treated President Trump. Well, why don't we actually delve into the differences here, starting with this video. This department is investigating former President Trump's handling of classified documents with over 300 found at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI seized some of the documents after the former president failed to comply with multiple requests to return them for over a year. Former federal prosecutor, Scott Fredrickson, says there are important differences between this Biden inquiry and that involving former President Trump.

How significant is it that these documents were self-reported, voluntary? turned over? I think the self-reporting here is probably the single most important part of this situation. It indicates a lack of intentional conduct. It's completely different from the Mar-a-Lago case, which tends, based on reporting, to indicate there was intentionally activity to take those documents. So that is exactly right. On one hand, you have Biden who, through his personal lawyers, discovers that he is in possession of some classified documents, 10 of them, immediately lets the National Archives know, immediately allows the DOJ to not only know about it, but also refer an investigation to a Trump appointed federal prosecutor.

That's very different from how Donald Trump handled the incident. In fact, the whole reason why the FBI ended up raiding Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is because he would not hand over. the classified documents that the National Archives knew he was in possession of. That's why it had to get to that point. So I have a lot more to say, but Anna, can you put up the graphic of the differences here between the two so that everybody can see. Here, I could take people through it too. Very clearly difference. Yeah. So Trump did not notify authorities. Biden did. Trump did not cooperate with investigators. Biden did. Trump did not work.

willingly returned documents. Biden did. Trump required the FBI to raid to retrieve documents. Biden handed them over voluntarily. Trump demonstrated criminal intent. Biden did not. Trump pressured, I'm sorry, possessed hundreds of documents. Biden did not. And the number of documents is also relevant because can you take home 10, two dozen by accident? You shouldn't. and whatever consequences are attached to that, you should pay those consequences, whether you're Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump. But I guess you could. Hundreds of documents, and then you hide them from the National Archives, you hide them

from the FBI, and then they catch you, this is Trump, and then you hand over some of them, but not the most sensitive ones. And then they are forced to raid you, and then you still hide documents. That shows absolute criminal intent. I want to keep these documents because I intend to do something illicit with them. And they, by the way, were one other distinction. The Trump documents had some nuclear secrets on there that literally, and we know that. The Biden documents, we don't know what's in them.

We don't know if they're innocuous or very important, right? So what the hell did Trump take those things on purpose for? And by the way, if they proved that Biden took it on purpose and had a nefarious intent who was going to sell it to someone else, I'd want them prosecuted. I'd want them in jail because I'm not a liar like the partisans in America, whether they're Democrats or Republicans. So, and we say, for example, Pelosi and McConnell, Mainstream media says Pelosi's an angel, when she takes a billion dollars from donors and McConnell's a devil, right? When media says McConnell's an angel and Pelosi's a devil, they do the same exact thing. No, it's both corruption. But in this case, it is not the same exact thing. Biden's is far more minor. So if you see anyone pretending that it's the same thing, you'll have to understand that they don't understand simple concepts if they read the story or they're lying to on purpose, which describes about 98% of right wing media. Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know that you're in a weird, twisted news cycle when you have Carl Rove of all people.

from the Bush administration, bringing out a whiteboard on Fox News to demonstrate the differences between the Biden classified documents issue and the Trump classified documents issue. So I don't want to play the video because I just wanted to spare you guys the disgust and discomfort. But there he is with his whiteboard. Yeah, look, and it's so sad that Karl Rove is in the 2% of honest right wing media. And everyone else is like, oh, same thing, same thing. Why don't they're arresting Biden? And but mainly they don't want Biden arrested because they love the elites too. You think Fox News doesn't love the elites? Fox News is nothing but elites, right?

But it's not even about Fox News loving the elites, Jank. It's not about loving the elites. It's about knowing that everyone in that group has some skeletons in their closet. Let's keep it real. I think this story in particular makes that abundantly clear to me. And that's why we're the only ones that'll tell you we want accountability for Biden and Trump, but proportionally, right? What everyone else will tell you is, well, if Biden did it, then you should let Trump go.

Or if Trump did it, then you should let Biden go. Because the reality is the media is also filled to the rim with elites. And they don't ever want the elites being held accountable. So they're likely going to use this as a perfect excuse to wash their hands of it and say, Yes, once again, for the billionth time in a row, we've let powerful people cheat and break the law. All right, let's take our first break. We're going to get into the nurses strike that's currently taking place in New York City. And we're also going to talk about other stories that are important, including the first order of business for Republicans in the House following their takeover of the House of Representatives.

Super important stories. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. all right back on t yank and anna and of course arthur ashbrook uh arthur ashbrook just signed up by hitting the join button below the video you can do that as well t yt.com slash join where you own an annual membership and win a lot of prizes t yt.com slash spin Win, win, win. All right, so we got a lot of news for you guys. So back to the Salt Queen. All right, so a lot of labor activity still happening in the United States. This time it involves nurses in New York City, and it deserves us to have a discussion, so let's talk about it.

More than 7,000 nurses from two New York City hospitals are entering their second day of a strike, While tentative contract agreements were reached with a majority of hospitals under strike warnings, Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Bronx have been unable to reach a deal. As a result, thousands of nurses have walked off the job and this strike did in fact begin on Monday of this week. Now this is an important strike and it has to do with a lot more than what these frontline nurses, what these workers are getting paid. In fact, they have already been offered a 19% pay raise. But this isn't about pay, or it's not simply about pay.

For the nurses, what's more important is to ensure that there is adequate staffing, so patients get adequate and proper care. And so far, they have not seen a real effort, according to them, from these two hospitals in ensuring that they hire enough nurses. So the ratio of nurses to patients is a lot more reasonable and a lot more safe. The workers have been put in the unfortunate position of having no other choice than to strike, said Mario Kelento, who's the president of the New York AFL-CIO, of which the New York State Nurses Association is an affiliate. Now, the top concern, again, for the striking nurses is the fact that some of them end up seeing as many as 20 patients at a time in a single day. And that is too many patients for one nurse. You're just not going to be able to provide the adequate. quit care necessary for these patients to feel safe, healthy, you guys get the point. Now workers say that they're often forced to work through breaks and don't have time for meals

while there are at where while there are times when one nurse in the emergency room department could be responsible for up to 20 patients. And guys, that is insane. An emergency room nurse responsible for 20 patients is crazy. But let me continue with the rest of that graphic. So the president of the union says that's far higher than what is commonly accepted, which is usually three patients assigned to one nurse. So just think about the difference there, the disparity, right? Usually nurses see three patients. At this point, the staffing issues are so severe that they in some cases end up seeing as many as 20.

So I do want to go to this next video real quick because it's important to hear from the nurses themselves and why they've done. decided to take this drastic step. Let's watch. We're sitting up for patient safety and advocating for patient rights and nurse rights in our hospital. We have 500 vacancies in a hospital of 3,000 nurses. And that's not enough to take care of the amount of patients we have. Because our patients are not being cared for the way they need to be cared for,

the way they deserve to be cared for. And we are risking our license and we're risking patient lives to prove like this. And that's not acceptable. So we're advocating for nurse ratios, staff ratios, which helps prevent a nurse from having eight, nine, ten patients, which is insane and very dangerous. It helps keep the comfortable accountable for when things like that happened. And it also incentivizes that the higher more nurses to prevent that. And, Cheng, just to give you an idea of how short staff they are, the union says Montefiore has failed to fill 760,000,

160 nursing positions vacated during the pandemic. They want the hospital find every time it violates staffing ratio agreements. So I mean, I'm curious what you think about this because it takes a lot for the nurses to agree to even do a strike, knowing that it could actually harm patients while they're doing the strike. But they felt like it was a necessary thing to do considering they didn't feel they were giving them adequate care anyway because of how short staff they were. Okay, so this is another one of those stories that it completely depends on what outlet you read to understand the whole story. So what mainstream media never shares with you guys is the salaries of the executives and how they compare to the nurses. And so I bring that up because it's going to relate to the staff staffing shortages in a second. So I read in mainstream articles that the nurses are going to get a, they're being offered a 20% increase in salary.

And if you just read that, you're like, wow, that sounds pretty good, right? Then they explain, well, that's over three years. And it's a 7% increase, and a 6% than a 5%. Okay, okay. There's a lot of inflation, but maybe that's good. I don't know the context, right? Then you look at their executives. Their executives have grown by about on one of the hospitals, 8.5% every single year for over a decade.

And then you look at the other hospital, and it's nearly 13% every single year for over a decade. So apparently they have the money for some folks, right? But still the nurses are mainly not asking, even in the height of inflation. By the way, all those executive increases when there was no inflation, or certainly not anywhere near this level, right? So then, and you go, okay, well, is the staff shortage is even that important? Maybe I'd ask for more money, right? So now here comes the context that you need, 20 to 1. Now, if you don't work in the hospital business, I don't know, can one nurse take care of 20 people, 40 people, 10 people?

What do I know, right? Well, they've studied it. And the studies indicate that in order for people to be healthy in the hospital, the patients, it should be about 3 to 1. You might say, I don't believe in the studies, okay? Well, first of all, you shouldn't say that. Okay, second of all, when you look at what other states have done, it gives you some guidance as to what is reasonable. So, for example, in California, the ratio, depending on the part of the hospital could be as low as one to two, sometimes as high as one to four. Wow, wait a minute.

But let's take the highest one. So one nurse for four patients. In New York, in those two hospitals, it's one nurse for 20 patients. patients, that's asking a nurse to do five people's jobs at once. Now, why would they do that? To keep costs down. And now, even if you've paid the nurses a little bit more, but you don't have to hire four other nurses, of course your costs are going to be way down. And so it's not, this is not a small issue. This is a giant issue because they're being made to work for like in place of an army of nurses that you would need. And I think the messaging coming from them, coming from the nurses on strike right now is incredibly important. It's important to listen to them because they're not framing this as we want more money and that's what this is about.

Which by the way, they deserve to make more money for the work they do, especially when you look at the executive salaries at these hospitals. But aside from that, the point that they're making is I can't handle the fact that I am not giving my patients the care they need and deserve. Judy Gonzalez, who's an emergency room nurse, says this, this statement really stood out to me. Quote, I don't feel like I'm doing a service to my patients. I have patients who grab my shirt and I can't help them because I have something, I have to do something else. And I related to that as someone who was at the hospital with a family member who was a patient dealing with a nurse who was overwhelmed. And it creates a lot of tension, a lot of conflict. The nurse is overworked.

overwhelmed. The patient is angry because they don't feel like they're getting adequate care. It creates a terrible situation. Again, inadequate care. And it's in my opinion, really important to show solidarity with these nurses. And any nurse that decides that a strike makes sense under these types of conditions, because it's not coming from a selfish or greedy place by any means, not even close. It's coming from a place of actually giving a damn about the work they do and ensuring that there's a system in place that that takes care of the patients and gives them the care that they need and deserve. So I love the way that they're framing this. I love that they're fighting for this. And hopefully they reach a good agreement soon. But one other thing I wanted to quickly

mention is that Kathy Hockel, governor of New York, wanted to prevent a strike. So let's go to Graphics 6 here. So Hockel has called for binding arbitration to stop the workers from striking. But as we know, arbitration agreements are often skewed toward employers and strip unions and workers of power. As such, while the hospital supported Hockel's call, the union rejected it. Yeah. So I want to go to two member comments here because I think they're so on point. One is from t.yt.com. That's boomer dragon cat. And they wrote in staffing was one of the reasons I left hospital nursing 20 years ago. I would walk off the job before being handed responsibility for 20 patients. That's my license on the line. So to give you a sense of how, and by the way,

many others have written the same exact thing, 20 to 1 is a ratio that is totally unsustainable, but we got to make profit, profit, profit, profit. And by the way, these hospitals are supposed to be nonprofit, but they make unbelievable profit anyway. You know why? Because then they're going to funnel it to executive pay. Over 10 executives at each hospital make over a million dollars a year. That's a lot of money for especially for a nonprofit. Now one more member, this is from YouTube now, our YouTube members, Andrew Danielle Roden, tired and stretch nurses is just plain dangerous. This is not a Republican or Democratic thing, nor is it's a money thing. This is about safety. But Andrew, here's the deal, brother. You're absolutely right

about that if we had a functioning democracy. And you're also right that it's not a Democratic or Republican thing. It's a politician thing. So look, here's the Democratic governor of New York, not backing the nurses, backing the hospitals. Why? Because all of our politicians work for corporations and donors. So they don't care about your safety at all. And they don't care about the nurses. All they care about is where's the money, Lubowski? So that's the sick corrupt system that we live in. And it leads to results like this. Well, let's go to one of your favorite topics, Jank. Government corruption, especially when it comes, to leadership in Congress, and this story is a doozy, so buckle up.

has just been given a pretty critical leadership role in the House. Now North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Virginia Fox has been named as the chair of the House Labor Committee, which has been renamed the Committee on Education and the Workforce. And her first order of business will be to protect her investments in fossil fuel companies. Now in the spring of 2021, the Department of Labor initiated a rule to implement two climate change related executive orders from President Biden that directs its secretary to suspend a Trump era rule that requires retirement plan fiduciaries. These are financial advisors who invest money on behalf of their clients, of course,

to select investments and investment courses of action based solely on financial considerations relevant to the risk adjusted economic value of a particular investment or investment course of action. That's a lot of words to say that Biden reversed a Trump era rule that essentially forced fiduciaries to avoid considering things like environmental impact of their clients' investments, the future of environmental technology, like don't consider any of that stuff. And it It was just like a roundabout way of the Trump administration to avoid investment in renewable energy to ensure that investment in fossil fuel companies remain. Now, the Trump era rule, again, was designed to restrict so-called ESG investing in which investment managers limit their exposure to companies that contribute heavily to climate change and factor in other metrics like workplace diversity and corporate transparency. Now, you know who absolutely despise the fact that Biden reversed the Trump era rule? Virginia

Fox, because Virginia Fox is heavily invested in fossil fuel companies. You want to know who else really, really didn't like the Biden reversal of the Trump era rule? Fossil fuel companies who also donate heavily to Virginia Fox. And so in July of 2021, Virginia Fox gave a speech about what Biden did, and she was real upset about it. Let's watch. The left's woke agenda is putting the retirement savings of many Americans at risk. The Biden administration's proposed rule would require retirement plan managers to consider environmental, social, and governance factors when making investment decisions for workers and retirees. These factors can include a company's carbon footprint, hiring practices,

and whether it is unionized. ESG factors are subjective and arbitrary, making them a perfect weapon for the left. Forcing ESG standards on retirement accounts is a clear violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which requires fiduciaries to put the financial interest to plan participants first. ESG requirements pressure investors to subject retirement savings to low, yield investments. This is irresponsible. But it doesn't subject them to low yield investments, especially when you consider the fact that there is an effort, not just nationally, but internationally, to invest in the development

of renewable energy in order to at least mitigate to some extent the impact of climate change. But Jank, I don't know, I could be wrong about this. Maybe the fact that there's some potential insider trading and corruption going on with Representative Virginia Fox doesn't matter at all. Well, good news, there's an easy way to find out. So for example, she says, for example, there's a woke agenda and of course they say the Republicans say we're for freedom. And that's why we're doing this and we want you to be able to invest in any investment vehicle for the workers. Okay. All right. So let's find out who's right and who's wrong, right? So for example, could you have a woke agenda?

Yeah, actually you could. It's possible. So for example, let's take an extreme example, if a Democratic administration were to say, all right, the only people we're going to invest your retirement money in is funds handled by lesbians and Muslims. Okay, but I would say what that's mental. Okay. And, you know, even if my group qualifies and, you know, and I'm born Muslim and Sarah, I'd be like, why would it help to just have Muslims? That doesn't make any sense. No, it's super important. that you get the most amount of money into those retirement accounts, that's a thousand times more important than any political correctness, et cetera, et cetera, right? So is that what the Biden plan actually does? No, no, not at all. In fact, the Republican plan takes away your freedom. How? Well, they, the Republicans say, even if you have an ESG, that's the investment vehicles, I say, look, I'm going to invest in the X, Y, and Z, but not into oil, not into fossil fuels. Even if that investment vehicle makes more money for the workers and does a better job, the Republicans say you're not allowed to invest into it.

But wait a minute, why wouldn't you want the workers having more money and having a clean environment? Because they're in the pocket. Exactly. Because the point isn't, certainly they don't care about the environment. You already know that. But it's certainly not to protect the workers' retirement benefits and income. No, it's the protect the oil companies that they're directly invested in. I thought the Republican Party was really well known for caring about the worker.

You know, I thought the Republican Party wanted to increase workers' wages and wanted to make sure that their retirement accounts were intact, that pensions were intact. Weird, weird, jank. Yeah, I mean, but the thing is, Anne, as you know, the Republicans lie about stuff like that with such regularity and they pretend to be in favor of the works. I'm just trying to protect your retirement money, right? That's why I don't want the woke agenda of the Democrats. And I swear to God, I guarantee you 99% of Republican voters, if they know about this issue at all, have no idea that they're Republican politicians and their right wing media is lying to them. that in fact, it's the Republicans that are blocking freedom and the choice to make more money, not less money in their retirement accounts. And part of the reason for that is, of course, as we've

always say, the Democrats never fight back and the mainstream media never clarifies, especially on an issue like this that sounds a little obscure, sounds a little, you know, hard to suss out all the differences. In reality, as we just explained to you fairly easily, it's not difficult at all, But they bury it in complexity so you don't realize that the Republicans are trying to rob you. Right. And it's really the job of the media, in my opinion, to help decode this kind of stuff and make it easy for people to understand and digest. Because the role of the media is to inform people about what's really going on. Look, I get it, right? Like the nonstop drama and theater that goes on in Washington, the interpersonal issues, the fighting. All of that stuff gets the clicks, it gets the attention, and people love it.

But at the end of the day, this is the stuff that actually has an impact on your day-to-day life. And in this case, as we're talking about your retirement account, it has an impact on whether you have enough to retire, whether you'll ever be able to retire. These, first of all, fiduciaries who, you know, the difference between a broker, if you know, you've hired someone to manage your money. And a fiduciary is a broker makes a commission off of whatever investment vehicles they sell you on. Whereas a fiduciary literally legally has to have your best interests in mind. Okay, politicizing that role is pretty freaking disgusting. And that is what the Republican Party under now, the leadership of Virginia Fox in this committee is going to attempt to do. She's going to hold hearings on this.

She's going to attempt to reverse eventually the Biden era rule. And if she does, if she holds hearings on the Department of Labor's reversal of the anti-ESG rule, she would be doing so after making, this is Graphic 3, hundreds of trades in the stocks of fossil fuel companies that would likely benefit from having the Biden administration's actions on the matter reversed. Sounds like a bit of a conflict of interest, no? Sounds like, you know, she will be not only in control of, but also privy to policy that will have a direct impact on her investments. Let me give you more. Nearly half of the money Fox and her spouse invested in 2021 appears to have been in shares of fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil and

Plains All-American Pipeline. And she has since made dozens of stock trades in oil, gas, and pipeline companies. Guys, it's really important to understand. Any debate or discussion we have about parliamentary tactics and Congress, any discussion we have about elections, none of that stuff even matters when we have this system in place that allows for the policymakers to have this conflict of interest that leads to them becoming fabulously wealthy as they're serving as public servants. There's that issue. There's money in politics and the corruption that comes with. It's just we got to change the system. Otherwise, no, policy that actually benefits ordinary Americans is really going to get through.

Yeah, so let me tell you how the Democrats are similar to Republicans and different to Republicans. What Virginia Fox is doing here is basically the Mansion model and Joe Manchin is a Democrat. So Mansion realized, hey, I get all these campaign contributions from the coal companies and the fossil fuel industry. But that goes to my campaign. I can siphon off of it. I can get famous and powerful and turn that into money. But why don't I just start a coal company? and then I could use my government power to enrich it. And that's exactly what he did. So he gets the campaign contributions and directly money into his pocket now.

And he protects the coal companies industry 100% while he's in office, abuses his power to enrich himself in two different ways. Virginia Fox looks over there at Manchin goes, well, that's a good idea. I don't want to start a whole company, but I'll just dump like half of my investments and she's very rich into oil companies. and then I'll favor oil companies totally unfairly in every law that I pass. So that way, I'll get their campaign contributions and get richer off of them. Okay. So that's the sick model that both parties use. But on this issue, the Republicans are wrong and the Democrats are right.

Okay, so you shouldn't, it's crazy to say, even if a fund makes more money, because it does something positive in the world, we don't want it. That's nuts. And by the way, on fiduciary responsibility, we've covered this in a previous story, Republicans literally have voted against the person investing your money, having a fiduciary responsibility in making sure it delivers the most for you instead of them. The Republicans say no, if the banker takes your money and makes more money for himself and abuses your trust, that should be legal. So as much as the Democrats infuriate me on 99 topics, this ain't one of them. Here, there is a clear difference between the parties and the Republicans are basically saying, look, man, rob anyone you want as long as you're a corporation, because I'm also part of the robbery.

We got to take a break. When we come back, we'll discuss how the Republicans in the House have decided to strip the ethics committee of really any power it has in investigating unethical actions by members of Congress. We'll also talk about how they have already passed their first bill, gutting the IRS. What does that mean? We've got that and more coming up. Don't miss it. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys and also Stacy.

Stacy Allen just became a member by hitting the join button below the video on YouTube. We appreciate it sister and now you're part of the Young Turks and you help make this happen. Everybody can do that at t.com slash join. Casper. Well, we've got an update on George Santos and this one's even more of a doozy if you could believe it. Freshman Republican congressman George Santos has once again been exposed for lying and this time. Not only could he potentially face criminal charges, so could the individual he hired to pose as someone he wasn't in order to get campaign donations. Now specifically, Santos paid a campaign staffer nearly $100,000 over two election cycles to impersonate Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff.

No, it's insane. So let's get to the details. What do we know? Wealthy donors received calls and emails from a man who said he was Dan Meyer, who happens to be McCarthy's chief of staff during the 2020 and 2020 election cycles, according to two people familiar with the matter. Now, his name was actually Sam Meal and he worked for Santos raising money for his campaign, according to one GOP donor who actually contributed to Santos's campaign. Now, McCarthy's team was first alerted to the scheme back in August of 2021. I think that is an important piece of information considering what Republicans are willing or not willing to do about George Santos. We'll get to that in just a moment. Santos claims that he was not aware of the impersonation and fired Meal as soon as he found out about it, which seems untrue because first off, you should just assume everything this guy says is untrue since he's been caught in so many lies.

And also you should keep in mind that he hired meal not once, but twice, both in 2020 and 2022. The Santos campaign paid meal approximately $50,000 for his work in 2020 and approximately $42,000 for his work during the 2022 campaign. And guess what? In the latest Santos campaign, where he was ultimately victorious and won a seat in Congress, he raised $3 million. And it appears that he raised some of that money through lying to donors by having someone impersonate Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff. In fact, one Republican Jewish coalition board member who donated to Santos's campaign wrote in an email essay to colleagues that what Santos did is disgusting, he deserves to be humiliated and held in contempt. But it doesn't seem like there's much will among the

Republican Party to hold him accountable for these lies. I'm going to show you proof of that in just a moment. But, Jank, I wanted to jump to you first. Yeah, I have the answer. The answer to will they do anything about it? So Anna's going to explain to you how they're going to gut the ethics department, and that's going to help Santos. But on Santos specifically, look, they could throw him onto the bus. He's new there.

He doesn't have any power. He's deeply embarrassing. And if they do nothing about it, then you know, well, Republicans are totally comfortable with obvious outrageous liars. Now, most of us already know that. His name is Donald Trump, right? It's not like they don't have a clear track record on this. But because the mainstream media says, oh, well, you know, this and that, but Santos is clearly a liar, et cetera. It feels different, right? Because Santos has less power. Okay, so are they going to throw him under the bus where he belongs? No. Let me read you Steve Scalise's answer when he was asked about an ethics

investigation into Santos, Scalise is the number two Republican in the House now. He said, this is something that's being handled internally already. That means they're not going to do anything. But let's keep going. He says, obviously there were concerns about what we had heard, just concerns. And so we're going to have to sit down and talk to him about it. And that's something that we're going to deal with, just like there's a lot of other things we're going to have to deal with. In other words, not a priority, handled internally, not going to go to any investigation. They're going to talk to him. go, you're a liar? Oh, good news, so are we. So we're not going to do a goddamn thing about it.

And why? It's because of two facts. Since the house is now so close that Republicans not will only have a four-seat advantage, number one, Kevin McCarthy needed Santos's vote. Otherwise, he'd had to get six holdouts to switch instead of, you know, what he already had to get. So he made a deal with Santos, obviously. You vote for me, and I looked the other way about all your goddamn lies. I do it with Trump all the time anyway, right? And the second relevant fact is Santos won in a Biden district. If they had got rid of them and they had another election, a Democrat might win and they might lose that seat entirely. Exactly. So the Republicans are definitely going to look the other way and let Santos service term without any repercussions.

You're exactly right about that. The seat that Santos won was previously held by a Democrat, So they certainly would risk a Democrat taking over again, should they oust Santos. So that was the number one thing I wanted to mention. But your point about how Kevin McCarthy needed Santos's vote is so on point. And I embarrassingly hadn't even considered that. But yeah, you're right about that. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention is House Republicans aren't going to do dittily squat because they said as much in a recent press conference.

So here is Steve Scalise, who is now the House. House majority leader answering a question from a reporter about whether or not George Santos will be held accountable. Let's watch. You saw him seated last week. There were no challenges to that. This is something that's being handled internally. Obviously, there were concerns about what we had heard. And so we're going to have to sit down and talk to him about it. And that's something that we're going to deal with, just like there's a lot of other things we're going to deal with. Now, don't you worry. Number one, he was sworn in without controversy. So good for us. Number two, we will, we will exchange words with Santos. Believe you, me, words will be exchanged.

He will have a stern talking to and we will move on. Okay, great. Yeah. And by the way, if you didn't notice, he's also taking a pot shot of Democrats there. And he's like, those losers didn't even object when we swore him in. He's right about that. Yeah, and he's like, as usual, they lay down like floor mats for us. And since they didn't object, we're going to take it as there's no problem here at all. Now, to your point earlier about gutting the House Ethics Committee, that's one of the first things that Republicans did after, you know, the swearing in ceremony. So the House imposed an eight year term limit on board members. And this is like an independent body that's tasked with investigating unethical behavior or alleged unethical behavior by members of the House. So since they imposed

that eight year term limit and they did it purposely because it would immediately remove three Democrat appointed board members. Gee, I wonder if that's a coincidence. It's not. They also implemented new rules that require four board members to sign off on any staffing decision that prevent the office from hiring staff after one month. That leaves basically no time for the office to fill their vacant positions, let alone hire any additional staff. And you want to know something? Santos is rubbing this all in our face because he was asked about it in an interview and here's what he said. I think it's fantastic. It's a good thing for transparency. It's a good thing for Americans, man. Yeah, I mean, if I was considered the most unethical member of Congress,

I would think it was fantastic that they were gutting the Ethics Department too. They're a joke, but you want to hear a twist on this story? The Republicans last time they got the majority tried to gut the Ethics Department in the same exact way. But it was actually Trump back in 2017 who tweeted out that they shouldn't do that. Okay, well, ready where credit is due and they backed away because Trump said so in a tweet. So now that is shocking, but our job is to deliver the news to you guys and that actually did happen. And so score one for Trump there and we're the fairest show in America. But the Republicans overall are like, there ain't nobody want ethics around here.

Where's the money? Let's take, take, take, lie, lie. And that's, and one of the reasons, by the way, is because they realized their voters don't mind. Their voters get lied to by the Republicans as a matter of like professional, that's part of their profession. That's what they do. All they do is lie. And I disagree. I think that you're making the assumption that Republican voters are privy to this. I would be shocked if right wing media were covering this story.

If right when media was running segments on the fact that these people in positions of power just gutted an independent government agency that's tasked with investigating them, should they be accused of carrying out unethical behavior? They don't know about it. And your distinction is excellent. And so let me be clear. If the Republican voters knew the actual facts and it was delivered to them objectively, they would hate it. So good point on the clarification. Now, having said that, they fall for every trick a thousand times over. Trump lies to them a billion times.

And they're like, oh, take my money again, lie to me again, take my money again, right? And so when Democrats do that, we call them out on it. Nobody in mainstream media does, but we do, and we say that's not right, don't do that. But for Republicans, when they get lied to by guys like Trump, they like it, because they want to hear pretty lies about how they're superior. And then when Trump says give me money and I'm going to spend it on X and he never spends it on X, they keep it on giving it to him anyway. So that's the distinction that I'm drawing. When we come back from the break, we'll talk to you about how House Republicans have just passed a bill allowing for wealthy tax dodgers to get away with their actions.

That and more coming right up. 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 at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.