The Young Turks - Shoot to Kill

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

MAGA rally goers at West Palm Beach waited for Trump, but he never showed up. Three in four voters support banning lawmakers from trading stocks. The president of Kazakhstan gave a shoot-to-kill order against protesters. A conservative media critic published a column on Friday despicably accusing Rep. Jamie Raskin of “milking” his son’s suicide. From his hospital bed, Steve Bannon’s ‘Real America Voice’ field correspondent Ben Bergquam blames Biden for not holding China accountable for the “China Virus,” BLM and Antifa. 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. Be my team. Dreamartee! We march! Dreamartee! Dreamartee!

Dreamartee! Dreamartee! Dreamartee! Drop it. Drop it. Power panel, Jane Cougar, John Iderola, Ben Corolla. All right, so big, big show ahead for you guys. We've got a super fun announcement in the second hour that you guys are going to love.

So it's got something to do with my t-shirt. We'll get to that later. But Ben, this is the first time. Before we get started with anything else, is the first time I'm on with you since you announced that. And help me out with the phrasing here, transitioning or etc. Yeah, yeah, yeah, trans. So for anybody that's wondering, my pronouns are she, her, right? I know I don't quite look it right now.

It takes actually like a lot of work to be like femme presenting, especially if you haven't done like hormones or anything. It's like a whole entire thing. But I'm really excited about it because like literally all of you awesome people in the TYT audience, everybody at worksite, TYT has been super fantastic and really amazing about it. So I really appreciate it. Yeah, so look, I.

I have to explain to folks who are not familiar with it, that it's the same person, okay? So yeah, because we're in the year 2022, we still have to explain that stuff. But Ben, I still need stuff explain to me because I'm old school. So as you are getting to a point where you present, do we call it transitioning? Is that what we call it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like, I mean, like for a lot of people, they kind of never like consider the like transition is a process that kind of like never really ends because like, I mean, even if somebody does hormones, it'll take like literally years before like everything like completely changes. And it's it's kind of like, you know, it's a, it's a long process.

Yep. And and so by the way, not only same person, same galaxy brain, you can check out on Twitch. tv slash t yt all right um i got actually two brains with me because you're john think tank's logo used to be a big brain so it did a small brain squish between two galaxy brains I think that's how the commentators on youtube will describe it trust me that some of them will okay all right now having said that we got crazy stories so john take it away we do i think in this story, especially Jenk has an angle that he is going to be fascinated by. Okay, earlier this week, Donald Trump canceled his planned speech on January 6th. Thanks God, because that would have been a horrible, horrible idea. But to mark the occasion,

some of his supporters decided to make a pilgrimage to his home in West Palm Beach and go and sort of gather outside, show their support for him. Now, they are disappointed. that he made the decision that he did, they wanted him to speak, they want him to announce that he's going to be president in a week. They're crazy. So they're a little bit disappointed that he didn't do that. One of them, an organizer for the protests we're talking about here, says we still consider President Trump our president. What's gone on this past year is a joke, this is not our country. Our planet or our reality, we are floating in the ether. I don't I don't know what they think. They still believe that he's going to become president. They believe some crazy things. They also believe one particular crazy thing, which is anything that Donald Trump tells them, because apparently they were told he would come out and see them. And after all, they traveled all the way there to go see him. He doesn't have a job, so he certainly got time, but he stiffed him. They were told that he was going to come out and say hi to them, but he never showed.

So they just flew their flags and thankfully for our purposes talked into cameras. And we're gonna play some of that video for you. But before we get to the first video though, I do not just remind you, this is hardly the first time that Donald Trump has made a very specific claim to them and not come through. This is their anniversary gathering for January 6th. And remember that while lots of terrible stuff happened on January 6th, one thing that didn't happen was Trump making good on his promise to participate in the march and the riot. He said he was gonna do it and he didn't do it

because it involved physical activity. I don't know why at this point they would believe anything he says. But regardless, we do want to find out a little bit of what they think about the country and about the world. So let's take a look at a clip of one of the protesters. About the 13 elite bloodlines that have robbed us all blind, all our life and bamboozled us, all our life and our life has been nothing but a lie. But we stand here in truth, in his light, Right. Okay, normally when people say in his light, I think they mean God, I'm fairly certain there, he means Donald Trump. But, Jank, I know that this 13 elite bloodlines thing interested you. So tell me what you found out about that. Yeah, I looked into it because

I'm like, look, anytime they start talking about bloodlines, et cetera, it's going to devolve into anti-semitism. Okay, write it down in stone. So, and look, and look, I'm gonna partly blame Democrats for this in a second. So if you're corporate Democrat or mainstream media, buckle up brace for impact. But so first of all, are the Republicans detached from reality? Of course, only 20% of Republicans believe that Biden was legitimately elected. So the great majority of Republicans are completely detached from reality. So we're not one of those shows that picks aside and only does marketing.

for them. We tell you the whole truth, okay? So now, what are the 13 bloodlines? Well, I was relieved to find out they, all the families on the list were not Jewish. Were some of them? Of course, right? But not all of them were. I was like, hey, that's a slight win, right? The Mervingians was there. I think they watched probably a little bit too much matrix. But, but the main, Of course, a person that they, and family that they thought was in charge of the whole planet is the Rothschilds, which is a very old school anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about how they secretly run the world. So wait a minute, this is all Republican lunacy. What does this have to do with Democrats? Well, look, the reality is there are only a few number of people that have a massive amount of wealth in this country. What was it? Five people now have the equivalent of 50% or the bottom 50% of America,

the same amount of money. It's just, it's stunning the income inequality. It's true in America. And by the way, I think those top five, none of them are Jewish in reality in the real world, right? And so, and then that class of people then give money to politicians. They're the donor class. connected in any way through religion, race, ethnicity, or any of that. They're connected through another color, green, the color green. But Democrats in the mainstream media say, nope, no, that's not true. First of all, Democratic leadership thinks income inequality is no big deal at all. They just helped to kill $15 minimum wage legislation.

So they, you know, from not giving a damn to income inequality all the way through to completely denying reality that donors control politicians, well, Guys, let's be honest, they're living in a completely different reality, too, that everyone else on planet Earth thinks that the politicians care about the millions of dollars that they're getting from donors. Yep. And sorry, one more thing about that. Once you, the media says, no, we black is white and white is black and donors don't have any affected. And Nancy Pelosi, for example, has raised a billion dollars, a billion dollars. And the media says, no, that doesn't affect her at all.

Well, that leads to people looking for solutions. And so it makes it much easier to herd the right wing into, well, you see, well, you know that isn't true. You know that isn't true. So you know what the real answer is, the 13 bloodlines and the Illuminati and Jews and et cetera. And that's why we're in this dark, dark place in American history right now. Yeah. Ben, your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean like, okay, first and foremost, Trump, not showing up for all these people. I think it's hilarious. It's JFK Jr. all over again. And so I love it. I'm here for it. Thank you, Donald Trump for doing that. But like seriously, these conspiracy theories thrive because people feel like they don't have control. Because I mean, I mean, look at Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos through Amazon controls like an economy within Amazon that is the size of like a country in and of it. itself. So yeah, like none of us have control over how Amazon does things, right? It's not like a democracy. So people are correct in feeling like they don't have some degree of control. And like the Democrats are just saying, no, no, like don't you see everything's all hunky dory? This is wonderful. And then so instead of having like a critique of like capitalism and income inequality and like all of like the real material problems, you know, money and politics, they instead just decide to focus on like lizard people and like just dive into the deep end.

Mm-hmm, 100%. It's one of the most frustrating things about these conspiracy theories is that some of them are just totally deranged to have no relation to reality. Some are almost like a like a foggy mirror version of reality. Like the idea that 13 specific elite bloodlines control everything is absolutely nonsensical. The idea that the wealthy control a lot of things is true. It's just not it's not as clean and glossy as the conspiracy theory version. The idea that the rich have too much control over the economy and politics is objectively true,

but how they exercise it, their relationship to different sectors of American society and the different political parties is more complex. And so what the conspiracy theorists need is an easy explanation. They are largely driven by anxiety about a chaotic world and they require simplistic explanations, even if like in theory you could actually care about this sort of thing. And also often their conspiracy theories are oddly detached from the best possible evidence for them. Like the QAnon people don't care at all about the actual elite pedophiles that have been discovered in high profile in the past few years, even though that is like the best description of what they believe to be true. This guy with the 13 elite bloodlines, is he constantly

attacking Elon Musk or as, you know, Jank mentioned, you know, Jeff Bezos or any of the actual rich People know it's all these like fake ones from books from 75 years ago. It's just, it's all nonsense. And well, it gets into other areas as well. So let's show you a little bit more. This is a woman talking about American democracy at that protest. What is the difference between a democracy and a republic? A democracy is mob rules. A republic is freedom, liberty, justice, all of that. The people rule. That's no, no, honestly, I was actually a TA for poly side courses. So I get to say no, you fail, you did not pass that test. There are distinctions between democracy and Republic and America does have components of both. There are advantages and potential negatives to both systems or any sort of combination of the two systems. But it is not that one inherently has more freedom and liberty. There's a certain sort of freedom and liberty to the mob rule that she pretends all democracy is.

Take a look at January 6th, they were pooping on the floors. Those are people who felt very free. But anyway, Jank, what do you think about her political explanation? Yeah, I mean, look, you don't have to go as deep as the difference between democracy and a republic. She said democracy's mob rule in a republic, the people rule. Wait, what? So, no, if anything, in a democracy, the people rule.

rule more, the republic puts a layer between the people and ruling. So it, but again, none of this has to mean anything. Words no longer have meaning and and again I blame some of this on the establishment. I mean, how long have they divorced words from their actual meaning in Orwellian ways? You know, when they allowed Dick Cheney to change the word torture to enhance interrogation, when they started calling anyone they opposed terrorists and now dictators in places like Kazakhstan as will cover later in the program whenever there's a rebellion where people are seeking freedom they call them

terrorists so since words have no meaning she doesn't have any idea of distinction between a Republican and democracy nor does she care she's just been told and this is the most important part guys now right-wingers are being told that a democracy is a bad thing now why do you think their leaders are training them to say democracy is a bad thing. Do you think it's because they're going to be in favor of democracy? No, they're going to be in favor of ending democracy. And they're not going to replace it with a republic.

They're going to replace it with authoritarian rule. And guess what they're going to call it? A republic. And then she's going to think it's freedom when it's the exact opposite. Yep. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, like, because here's the thing, within, United States history, there's been mob rule. And when I say mob rule, I don't mean the tyranny of the

majority that people will talk about. I mean literal mobs. During the reconstruction era, there were elections that were literally rigged by the Klu Klux Klan. There were elected officials that were killed and driven out of town by the clan. And that was mob rule. And so what these Republicans really want is they just want to return to that. That's what they want. Because what they're scared about about democracy, what they're scared about democracy is. is the same reason why they're stripping away voting rights from people and purging people from voting roles. They're just racist and they don't want people of color to be able to vote. They don't want people of color to be represented in Congress. And they especially don't want like,

you know, poor folks and poor people of color to be represented in Congress. And so when there seems like there might be some demographic changes or some political changes, you know, maybe more left-wing ideas get more popular, that's when they start storming the Capitol. And they're They're trying to quite literally bring back the actual mob rule that existed in the United States. Yeah, I gotta say something about that because Ben is so right and so glad he said those things. First of all, I mean, I forgot, yeah, you know what mob rules? January 6th, that's literally mob ruled. It was a literal mob that stormed the gates and was chanting about hanging Mike Pence

and killing Nancy Pelosi and killing their own vice president. It doesn't get any more mob rule than that. And I guarantee you that lady cheered it on. Guaranteed, right? Well, in this, sorry, continue. Yeah, go ahead, John, go ahead. Well, we do have one more video. Do you wanna get to that?

Yeah, I was just gonna say one last thing. You know what else was mob rule? The Tulsa Race Massacre, right? Greenwood District and so where they literally had a mob of white, again, always right wingers, go and murder all the successful black people in town and burned a place down. That was Black Wall Street back in the day okay and so and who that was that's their guys that's their guys that's right

wingers and so they've always been in favor of mob rule and that's why a democracy bothers them because they're now feeling like oh no we might get out voted and we were never interested in democracy we were only interested in power whether we got it through mob rule democracy didn't matter but there's no way we're giving out power without resorting to violence first. Exactly, yeah, they were sort of they were willing to operate under a system with some of the trappings of democracy so long as they thought they had a good chance of winning, even if that chance was itself derived by gerrymandering and voter suppression for literally centuries and all that. We we go wrong when we assume that democracy, not big

democracy as a political system, but as a value, as a belief that that is the way the system should operate is in any way attached to the values that modern day right wingers have. It's simply not. It is something that leftists generally value, even if it doesn't produce wins for us. Because we believe in equity and compassion and understanding and getting people involved and letting them live their best lives. All of those things can generate a desire for democracy. For them, it is simply a means to an end. And if it will no longer produce that end, they will dispense with it, even if they still want to have a little bit of the terminology.

In any event, I wanna go to this video in one sec. I did wanna read just one comment because you made the reference to the Matrix and it was a great reference. We gotta talk about the newest matrix, by the way. But trans vampire Carmilla says they couldn't have watched Matrix. If they did, they'd claw their eyes out because it's a trans allegory. Which is true, but they're also dense. So it's entirely possible that they wouldn't get it. They look at the lessons that many right wingers drew from Fight Club.

Look at the way some people can watch The Last Jedi and not think it's the way. the best Star Wars movie. People watch movies and come to weird conclusions. But anyway, one of the protesters at Trump's rally wanted to talk a little bit about the Biden White House, and here's what they had to say. America, you guys, this is America and we can't have somebody in the office that is, doesn't even know really that he is there possibly, but also that the oligarch, excuse me, in his office or writing all his material and he's just, you know, verbatim, just speaking it out. And I don't think he really understands what's happening.

Again, similar to what we were talking about before, there's sort of like a frustrating kind of tenuous connection to reality, but it's cloaked in absolute insanity. The idea that he has no idea that he's even in the White House, look, if that makes you feel better because you've been triggered by your loss in 2020 or whatever, then that's fine. The fact that you got beat by a guy who has no idea what's going on seems even more embarrassing. But sure, go off. But the idea that oligarchs behind the scenes are largely determining what political leaders do is in some ways true. The issue is that she doesn't then connect that to, well, what about when the Republicans are in charge? Then they're just awesome individualists.

You literally are protesting or protest, you're gathering outside the home of a multi-billionaire. He is an American oligarch and you want him back in power. How do you not make these connections? Yeah, it's because they never got that information, John. They listen to right wing media and right wing media is filled to the rim with absolute liars. So you could tell proofs on the pudding, right? We tell you Mitch McConnell has raised nearly a billion dollars. Nancy Pelosi's raised nearly a billion dollars.

They're raising them from oligarchs. That is completely true. Both the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans are 100% corrupt. And by the way, you know who else raised tons of money from corporations and oligarchs? Donald J. Trump. So you know who doesn't? Bernie Sanders. So progressives actually do not take money from corporate packs.

Donald Trump does every Republican, sorry, nearly every Republican does. There are some now populists like Matt Gates who don't, okay? See, we're honest, we're fair. And by the way, that video of that particular woman, it really wasn't that wrong. I mean, does Joe Biden have any power? No, not really. I don't think he can veto his own donors at all. I think his donors can veto him.

So then is he really president? The donors have not, look, I believe Joe Biden's president, the minute he passes a bill that the donors don't want. It's never happened. It's never going to happen. And it's not about Joe Biden. That was also true of Trump. That was also true of Clinton and Obama. Oh my God, I said Obama.

Oh, no, every media person attacked me. I said Pelosi, every media person attacked me. It's partly this mainstream media that's driven the right wing crazy. Because are the oligarchs in charge? Of course they are, right? And so she just, the problem with the right wing media is that they pretend that the most corrupt people in the country. Like Mitch McConnell, which actually, by the way, now they're pretending that less to be fair, right? And Donald Trump, somehow when they take corporate pack, many, they're angels.

You turn to cable news, they say what Pelosi takes corporate pack money, she's an angel. They're both obviously lying. Yeah. Yeah, and the most frustrating part about it is this narrative that they build around like strategy, right? Like, and that's the most infuriating lie because one of the ways that they trick people, like, because random voter who are centrist, they say like, oh, we really care about health care. We really want all these things. But you see, Nancy Pelosi is such a smart galaxy brain that she has to take that corporate pack money, you see, because it's such a good strategy. And then they put out these things like the rental

assistance program where it was aggressively means tested and end up being very slow. And with these compromise policies that have these weird random like flaws that are built into them as sort of compromises, actually weaken the policy, make them less popular, and lead to even more people feeling alienated and left out by the system. Yeah, I want to say one more thing. Actually, I want to give it to one of our members, happily Vax wrote it, well, if Trump is still president, he cannot run again in 2024. That's actually, of course, constitutionally true, but they treat the Constitution as a punchline,

right? They don't even know what a constitution is. If you ask them, you know, is the U.S. Constitution the same thing as the Bible? I bet you like half of Republicans say yes. If you ask them, is the Constitution in the Bible or the Bible in the Constitution, like 85% of them will answer one or the other not realizing, duh, it's obviously a trick question, right? They have no earthly idea, they haven't studied civics, they don't know anything about our country. All they want is power.

And by the way, guys, let's note the deep irony of that. They're like, can you believe the oligarchs are in power? It should be us. Wait, shouldn't it be all of us? Shouldn't it be a democracy? Shouldn't we rule together? Isn't that the whole point of America? And right now, the right wing's answer is a resounding no, no.

And again, to be fair, the establishment's answer is also no. It should only be the oligarchs who completely control. policy making right now. Well, why don't we take our first break? Lots to get to after this. All right on CY All right, back on CYT, Jank, John, I'm Ben with you guys, John, go. Okay, let's do it.

A recent poll shows that a majority of voters believe that members of Congress should not actually be trading individual stocks in large part because of the access they have to secret early information that can inform their financial decisions. But while that might not surprise you, how popular that position actually is just might, as well as how unpopular it is amongst those in Congress. So three quarters of voters overall agree the members of Congress should not be able to trade stocks while serving in office. This is a survey commission, by the way, from the conservative advocacy group convention of state's action. So 76% of voters believe that lawmakers and their spouses have an unfair advantage in the stock market. Just 5% of respondents

approved of members trading stocks while 19% gave no opinion. That is about as overwhelming a response to a poll question that I've ever seen. Now that's just one poll, but we can put it in the context of we've talked about this for months. We know generally what people think. But here's the surprising part, not the 76% overall, but that it's 70% of Democrats, 78% of Republicans, and nearly 80% of independents believe that. So I want to pause there, like the fact that it's bipartisan would be surprised enough. The fact that there's actually a larger percentage of Republicans, I mean, look, when you really think about it, I think it sort of makes sense from a certain point of view of conservatism, as well as the fact that

This isn't the sort of issue that Fox News has really weaponized over the past couple of decades. So it's not a thing where a random conservative being asked about this can just think, okay, what did kill me tell me to think? They might have to actually cross, you know, like interface the actual issue they're being talked about with their value system. But this is looking like, based on this, this is an issue that in theory could be a big winner if any politicians weren't financially incentivized to hold a very different position than the vast majority of Americans. Right, well, before we get to Nancy Pelosi's point of view on this and then the media will of course adopt whatever her point of view is and repeated ad nauseum

because she is their queen. Let's just clarify a couple things. First of all, you've heard me say on this show a number of times, I actually think the Republican voters are ahead of of the Democratic voters in figuring out how bad corruption is in this country. And boom, there it is, told you. A slightly bigger percentage of Republicans than Democrats think that corruption in terms of the inside of trading in Congress is worse. And so why is that, by the way? Democrats are supposed to be a working class party, etc.

It's because the greater percent, and I looked this up for a different reason today, but a much greater percentage of Democrats believe the mainstream media. And the mainstream media tells you the powerful and the lead are awesome. They never do anything wrong. Inside of trading is all is fantastic. And you should never question the powerful. So unfortunately, a decent number of Democrats have totally internalized that. And that's a cult in and of itself. But overall, another told you so is still the overwhelming majority of the country says, Yeah, we hate corruption, we hate the politicians making money off the information they have and we don't have, and that's an unfair advantage. And one more lie that it exposes about mainstream media is the mainstream media claims they love bipartisanship.

Oh my God, they have agreed to an infrastructure bill that is totally latent with corporate pork. I mean bipartisan. I love bipartisanship. Well, great then you guys should be thrilled about this. We have bipartisan overwhelming bipartisan agreement. By the way, independent support the most because independence, part of the reason why they're independence is they can't stand either party and they realize both parties are corrupt, right? So they have the highest number. So, but it doesn't mean, we all agree, we all agree, boom, bipartisanship, we've got it.

Only 5% of the country disagrees. So is the media demanding action on this? No, of course not. The queen has said that it is perfectly acceptable, so they're moving on. Yeah, and I think that like one of the things that I've seen when I've worked on campaigns in the past and especially doing like caucuses and stuff like that is there's a contingent of the Democratic Party that is to say Democratic voters who have two beliefs. The first belief is that they themselves are a very smart person. And the other is that Democrats elect very smart people. And the problem is when you have this internal belief that you're unquestionably a smart person is that. that if anybody comes in with a new idea or something different, you're scared of your new idea being criticized and then people questioning, oh, is this person really smart? And so they tend to point

to the person with the most authority around them and say, well, this person, well, Nancy Pelosi must be smart, right? I mean, she's the speaker of the house. Of course she's smart. So I'm going to say what Nancy Pelosi says. And my frustration is that from my experience, those are some of the most involved people. Like those are the people who like really make it their business to be like local officials within the Democratic Party to always show up to caucuses and to definitely show up to primaries. And they just have this sort of mentality of we should elect smart people. We should vote for Pete Buttigieg because he knows seven languages. I mean, but not really. Don't speak Swedish to him, you know, like. And that sort of mentality,

I think is one of the reasons why there's more Democrats that are willing to say, oh, I'm sure there's some sort of galaxy brain reason why Nancy Pelosi is trading in the stock market. You know, it's just because she really is buying into America. That's what it is. You know, it's definitely not corruption. Yeah. So we're going to show you Pelosi's clip, but I've just got to say Ben's show is called Galaxy Brain and I was a Galaxy Rain Pro. I had not heard that before. And that is exactly right. I mean, it resonated with me instantly. Almost every so-called moderate Democrat I know, they're obsessed with being smart and that the people in power are so, so, so smart.

Oh, Jake, how could you possibly know? I mean, they are the great and wholly powerful people. They're the smartest people on earth. And what you connected in terms of, that's why they're so afraid of new ideas. It's brilliant, Ben, exactly right. Exactly, and a great plug for the show. I need to start slipping the damage report into my comments here.

I keep forgetting that. Okay, so really fast, let's go to that video. Here's Nancy Pelosi, explaining, explaining her incredibly unfinancially biased position on stock trading amongst members of Congress. You should members of Congress have there's thousands be banned from trading individual stocks while serving Congress? No, I don't know to the second one. Because this is a free market and people, we are a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that.

So it might occur to you watching this that that's a stupid point because of course, Of course, we're not in a free market, but it's an especially stupid point considering exactly what she's being asked about because the entire point is that you all have access to secret information is by its very nature, not a free market. It's a very, very unfree market when you're making decisions to benefit yourself financially. Whether those are just having secret information, which then warps Wall Street, since you can act on these things and regular people can't because they're not in these meetings, or when you're potentially actually choosing to pass or not pass certain types of legislation or stuff legislation with pork

for certain industries and not others to benefit yourself as well. And that is on top of the insane corruption of allowing you to be handed large sums of money by individuals or corporations. None of this is acceptable to any regular people, as is evidenced by the poll we showed you. The only issue is that everyone who's in a position of power largely, aside from a couple people who talk about these issues a lot like aOC talks about individual stock ownership Elizabeth Warren does other than that they're all in favor of her position maybe they won't come out and say it and they won't bumble their answer as much as she does but they hold the same position and why wouldn't it they it's in their own financial

interest to do so yeah well look let me do say damage report on our video um and oh you young turkey okay no it's seriously i just have A quick comment to make, and it's doubling down on what John said. You remember that all this came up originally because the senators were caught doing insider trading when they had information about COVID that the public didn't. And instead of warning the public about the health dangers, et cetera, they went and made millions of dollars in stock trades. So that is the exact opposite of a free market when you have an unfair advantage.

So Nancy Pelosi acts like a Republican there where words have no meaning and they she lives in an alternate reality where the opposite of a free market is actually the free market. Since she said that, it's never been an issue because the queen spoke. So all the Democrats were done with it, the Republicans love the corruption. And the media said, well, our queen has spoken. So obviously we'll now lay down. Yeah, then final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, like, the real thing is how can you be a fair arbiter of legislation if you have a buy-in, right?

Like, I mean, that's the thing, right? If they were investing in companies that would have profited off of the pandemic getting worse, where are they going to stand on doing anything about the pandemic? If they're talking about rolling out, if they're talking about rolling out like protections for renters, right? During a pandemic that people might lose their income, they might get evicted. How can they fairly craft any type of legislation if they're landlords themselves, right? A lot of elected officials are themselves landlords that try to evict tenants, if not directly, then indirectly through like the stock market like real estate investment trust, right?

Like these are tools, right, that like they have access to. They own all of these things. So I mean, really at this point, like, why are we giving pensions to people who are, you know, deeply invested in this economy? We're supposed to pay them. them so that they're not getting money in other places. And it's absolutely like pathetic and ridiculous that the United States is in this position where these the like these companies to a certain extent don't even need to bribe the politicians, right? Because the politicians are profiting in the same way that the companies are personally through their stocks. Yeah. By the way, as Canadian in Hawaii made a great point,

stock in Congress should be like playing the lottery. You can't participate if you or your immediate family works for the lottery company, simple. That's a great point. By the way, So, you know, when there was a big focus over the past couple of congressional cycles about, you know, campaign finance and corporate donations and things like that, there were pledges to not accept these sorts of donations. So whether it's from particular industries, like there was the no fossil fuel money pledge or just in general to not accept donations from corporations, is there any sort of pledge to not, you know, to not participate in individual stock ownership to only play the market, you know, in the broad sense, you know, mutual funds and those things like that. Like that's an obvious, we should be putting them to the question on this topic and finding out where they stand. It is inarguably corrupt to use the information you have.

And yet they largely, aside from Nancy Pelosi, are never required to even talk about it. You know, China, I feel like we should push for that. Yeah, it's not a bad idea at all. And for one of the reasons why, by the way, is if you ask Republicans to participate, because remember, they agree more than Democrats do in terms of the voters. they would probably think, oh, this is easy. We'll love doing this because all the Democrats will say no. And all the Republicans would be super happy to sign on to this pledge.

And they will have a rude awakening when they realize not a single Republican politician wants to sign on to this because they're justice corrupt, if not more corrupt than the Democrats. Yeah, we should work on that. Anyway, I think we should take our second break. When we come back, we're gonna talk about the protests already deadly, potentially turning even more deadly in Kazakhstan. and more after this. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John and Ben, with you guys. John, take it away.

Okay, let's do it. This week, Kazakhstan has been experiencing protests as a result of price controls being removed for liquefied natural gas, which resulted in the cost of this fuel nearly doubling. It's incredibly important in Kazakhstan. And so people were infuriating. That is sort of a layer on top of long simmering concerns about political issues, economic issues, and thus protests have come forth. As a result of days of protest, violence has increased with protesters being violently attacked, even killed already. And that was before the president of Kazakhstan put out a statement ordering police to shoot

protesters with no warning. They were already seemingly perfectly willing to do that. But now they have the stamp of approval of the political leadership of Kazakhstan. To catch you up a little bit, the protests began just this last weekend in a city with historical import in terms of past protests in Kazakhstan. It spread across the country, including to the former capital. We want to show you a little bit of what this has looked like, so take a look at this. Across this vast country, scenes of tension and turmoil. In Almaty, running battles lasted on into the night. The police struggling to maintain control in this Kazakhstan's biggest city.

This is the fourth day of protests, what began as demonstrations over energy prices, now morphing into something more serious. They said Kazakhs wouldn't take to the street, says Rafik, but we've grown tired. We've had enough. And now as a response, the police have become increasingly violent. There is this multinational security force that has moved in. The protesters have been fairly clear about their political aims, both in terms of price controls on that fuel as well as political reforms that they'd like to see. Obviously, the regime is not interested in that. And thus now we have this change in policy.

This is a video we're going to show you right now of the president of Kazakhstan. on Kasim Jomart Takayev talking about what he wants the police to do. Prioryists, for the previous-noisseur, government and personal immociest to use in relation to the right-ahranitling

organ and army, me, done a request to open to fire on perjation without pre-upredgaining. We've got to have a deal with with armed and

and prepared bandits, like the most and the other people, and the people,

and terrorists and they're going to unctusage. And it will be done in the

time. So it's taken less than one week to take these people protesting over fuel prices

and turn them into armed bandits and terrorists. And of course, if you call them all armed

bandits and terrorists, you don't have to listen to to their concerns. It doesn't matter

if Maybe legitimately, there are some people involved in the protests who have engaged in acts of violence. It might be a small percentage, it will now be used to tar, literally all of them. Or there are serious concerns about the possibility that planted provocateurs have been engaging in limited acts of violence to justify the responsive violence that we've already seen and look like it's going to be even worse in the near future. Jank, what do you think? Yeah, so we as in America started this nonsense about calling all of our opponents terrorists. And it will not end. So now authoritarian leaders all across the world,

their favorite talking point is anyone who opposes them, terrorists. So and their second favorite talking point is these are foreigners coming into metal with what we're doing here. And so the foreigners came in right as the prices went up in your country. Well, that's a nice coincidence. Look, by the way, it's not like it doesn't happen. The CIA has done it number of times, by the way, the Russians have done it in other countries at different times.

They both do it, right? And CIA used to do it all the time. They do it now, but they just suck at it. Okay, so it's not impossible, but so then you look into the details, number one, you see, no, was clearly an uprising of popular people based on all the news reports, the videos you see, the interviews that you see, and the facts on the ground of what caused it, right? And when you see a manufactured CIA coup in Latin America, for example, we can show you the telltale signs of it. They don't seem to appear here. And then the last part of it is very important. So the Chinese say, the Russians, of course, say, ah, boy. And they send them the troops. We'll get back to that in a second.

The Chinese have a border with Kazakhstan, but much more importantly, have multi-billion dollar energy deals with Kazakhstan. So they say, atta boy, yeah, go crush those protestors, I mean terrorists. And America doesn't seem to mind much, why Chevron has a giant deal in Kazakhstan. So all the people that stand to make billions of dollars are a okay with this obvious repression and, you know, gross behavior. I mean, here's a president that said shoot to kill without warning. But hey, as long as everybody's making money, they probably isn't going to be any difference at all. Yeah, I think one of the most terrifying aspects of this is the fact that this is probably going to be happening in more places, right? Energy price is increasing.

And instead of shifting to like renewable energies or anything like that, they will put in place austerity measures and then use violent force to maintain those austerity measures. And like as we see a growing income inequality and increased energy consumption due to things like cryptocurrency mining, you'll see like the rich people who want to see that like increased cryptocurrency mining, increased energy consumption. You are going to want you're going to see a lot more of this basically like relentless consumption, refusal to switch to like renewable energies. And then the austerity measures when they come, like if anybody protests it, this this violent force. And it's sort of a tale as oldest time because the United States has done this to other countries all over the world. But as climate change sort of accelerates these crises

and income inequality accelerates around the world, you're basically going to have world leaders who are going to have incredibly rich people that are like, yeah, this is fine, don't care about poor people worrying about gas prices or anything like that, do whatever you need to do. And so to me, I see this and I kind of see like what might come. And I, And I see the United States having sort of created a model for countries to do this. Yeah. And just to get out in front of people who operate in perpetual bad faith, I'm only specifically speaking for myself, but I have a feeling that Jenk had been probably agree with me. In utilizing our progressive values and advocating for the economic and physical well-being of

the protesters in Kazakhstan, that is in no way saying that we should be invading to fight the Russian security forces. You shouldn't have to put out those sorts of of caveats, but the internet is a cesspool and so you do have to, unfortunately. I want them to not be shot, I want them to be able to actually make a living. I want them to be able to participate in the internet during these protests, those sorts of things. The same sorts of values I have for people here in America, I also weirdly believe should be given to people in other countries, but that does not mean that I advocate for an invasion of that country by the US military, just to be clear in advance of those sorts of

things. Well, John, I will pick up on that real quick. Yeah, so we condemn brutal authoritarian leaders all across the world, including here in America. But there are some people who see the stormtroopers coming in from Russia to crush a rebellion seeking freedom. And they will very likely say, atta boy, oh no, this authoritarian leader, he probably represented. that's 95% of the people of Kazakhstan. No, when Putin sends in 2,500 troops, I believe they're peacekeeping troops. Yeah, no, only America does bad. When other authoritarian leaders do bad, that doesn't count at all.

They're just lovely, peaceful people. I hear that's what award winning journalists say. You can go and ask him, by the way. Go ahead, ask him if Putin is doing something wrong here. I guarantee you they kiss his ass. Yeah, why don't we move into our last story of the hour? Steve Bannon, for his real America voice, has a field correspondent named Ben Bergquem, who regrettably, like so many Americans these days, has recently come down with COVID.

And in fact, has a serious case of it, is in the hospital receiving oxygen. Now for some right wingers, experiencing how bad COVID can be, can be an enlightening, eye-opening experience that provides a new perspective or empathy, he is going to go in a slightly different direction. And here's a bit of video of him talking about who he's actually angry with following getting COVID. We've been on a ventilator. So I'm praying. Thank you, Lord. My angels are with me. I absolutely know it. God wins. But the Democrats have to be held accountable. China has to be held accountable. And Tifa and BLM, who terrorized our country for four years, have to be held accountable.

Where's BLM? Where are Antifa? Where are they now? They were simply used by the Democrats to steal the election, to intimidate judges, to intimidate politicians, and to intimidate the American people to shut up and sit down. That's why we still have people in Guantanamo, D.C. being terrorized right now, tortured right now. They don't care about the actual truth. They don't care about fixing the country. If they did, they would have held China accountable for this. If they did, they would have BLM and Antifa accountable. Okay, like with a lot of right wingers, there's just a mishmash of a lot of different things all thrown in there. I think he's mad at Biden and China specifically for COVID, because they all believe that it's like a bio weapon that China has introduced to America. And for some reason, they don't accompany that view with the belief that thus we should take it seriously and vaccinate or anything. He's also mad at BLM and anti-fascist. He wants to know where they are. Well, presumably, since they were the only ones riding at the Capitol, they're the ones that are locked up and yet for some reason he seems to think they're patriots. It's so weird. It's like this

thing where like their Antifa until they get to the prison, they shut the gate and then they become patriots. It's really weird. But anyway, I actually feel bad that he got COVID and that he's on a ventilator. That's terrible. I lost a family member to COVID. I know how terrible it is. I wish that he and others like him would learn, but I'm guessing at this point that that's not going to happen. He put out a tweet recently saying this is today. With everything I've gone through these last two weeks, I can unequivocally say, I thank God I didn't get vaccinated. He's on a ventilator with COVID. Now, I don't know for sure that if he had been vaccinated, it would have been a less serious case. But that is what all of the science tends to say. He believes that he's like,

the only thing he's got going for him is that he didn't get vaccinated. Jank, I don't know, can you make any sense of that? Yeah, he's an idiot. There I explained it completely. So I'm going to say something that'll bother some people first, and then we'll get to his incredibly absurd comments. He says since he apparently survived, God wins. So how about the nearly 800,000 people who didn't survive COVID in America? Did God not win on those? How about the five million dead all across the world? Did God not win on those?

No, it doesn't matter. Anything that doesn't affect me doesn't exist. Yeah, God only cares about you, schmuck of the world, okay, that's probably true, ridiculous. And then, okay, I get it, the anti-Asian stuff, oh, it came from China, but John makes a brilliant point. Well, if it's a bioweapon from China, why don't you defend yourself, jackass? Secondly, remember when the Republicans used to talk about personal responsibility? This idiot doesn't get vaccinated, he gets really sick because he didn't get vaccinated, just like the scientists told him, just like the doctors told him.

Where does he rush to, by the way? He rushes to doctors. What happened? I thought you didn't believe in doctors. All of a sudden, please, please doctors save my life. Oh, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, right? God didn't win, doctors won. You should get on your knees and thank those doctors who you called liars on your show over

and over again. All 99.99% of doctors say get vaccinated, okay? And here's this jerk after having survived because of doctors that then turns around and says, no, it's Black Lives Matter that did it. Okay, which of course is the last and most salient point here. I mean, what a bunch of lunatics. He said, well, where's BLM? What the hell do they have to do with your COVID?

I mean, I could, if you asked me to find a way to blame black people for his condition. I couldn't have done it. I mean, I couldn't, I don't know what fantasies you have to conjure up to get there, but he got there instantly. He's like, oh, you know who's at fault for me being an idiot? Black people, all right, if you say so brother. Okay, they're just all so deeply stupidly racist.

I can't stand them. Yeah, I mean, there's also the note of like he's complaining about why aren't these leftists taking COVID seriously. They are, they're getting vaccinated, wearing masks, staying inside, avoiding public spaces. Leftists are taking it seriously. I mean, unless the only leftist this person is paying attention to is like Jimmy Dorr, right? Like, no leftists are taking COVID seriously, okay? And like when it comes to the intersection with Black Lives Matter, I know a lot of anti-racist activists who we're talking about the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on people of color in

the United States of America because of the like the, you know, the air pollution that they have to deal with because of racism in where we put like polluting factories and like the the racism and employment and the fact that a lot of people of color are doing service work that leads to more exposure to COVID-19. So like they're taking it seriously and they're organizers that have been talking about this for two years now. So I don't know where this guy's been. Yeah. Well, it looks like despite, you know, doing absolutely nothing to protect against this, Ben is so far alive, hope so. Hope gets through this totally fine. But others who share some of the same ideology recently have not. We don't have graphics for this.

But Doug Kuzma, a 61-year-old, a podcasting conspiracy theorist, apparently caught COVID at an Alex Jones, Eric Trump, and Michael Flynn attended Super Spurter Conference, and following 10 days in a hospitals, succumb to COVID, an absolute tragedy and a needless tragedy. Kirsten Weldon, who's a leading figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, who says that only idiots get vaccinated has now, as you're probably already predicting, died of COVID. Another needless tragedy. Both of these are just very recently, and you can add them to. to a list of many, many figures in conspiracy theory circles and right wing media and right wing pastors as well who have advocated for doing nothing in the face of COVID and then have actually true believers all given their lives for it. Yeah, and this idiot wakes up from his ventilator and goes, where's BLM? Where's BLM? No, you should have been asking, where's the vaccine? Can I pretty please get it? Are you moron? You're lucky you survived. I'm not sure the rest of the planet

is. I think that's all the time we have. Yeah, definitely. All right, everybody check out Galaxy Brain, Ben Corolla. Thanks for being on. We appreciate it. And John, damage report. Everybody's already checking it out. Definitely make sure you're watching it. Much love, guys. Big announcement coming up when we come back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen to ad-free. only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.