The Young Turks - Shots Fired!

Episode Date: December 18, 2021

Mitch McConnell is subtly showing his support for the January 6th Committee. Given the weak slate of potential Democratic primary candidates in 2024, could Hillary Clinton run again? Bernie Sanders torches Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for 'arrogance' and 'acting like Republicans.' Tucker Carlson said, "Yes, COVID has killed a lot of people. So has prostate cancer. Imagine telling people about your prostate every day for the next two years." Hosts: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Farron Cousins 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. Drop it. Power Power Panel. Look at this, Farron Cousins! And hence the dropping of the Ring of Fire that I did before we dropped the Power Panel.

Of course, Farron Cousins, a host of Ring of Fire. Ring of Fire, secretly, one of the most popular progressive shows on the planet. So, Farron, you don't often trend on Twitter because you don't say dumb things like I do. That is the way. So that's why it's a secret, but I see the numbers. And so it's great to have you, brother. It's really great to be here. Yeah, my Twitter game is exceptionally weak.

I always send out things. I'm like, this is totally going to be funny and then nothing. So I just stay off it for like two days after that salking. No, no, that's your problem is you're not challenging people to Turkish oil wrestling matches. That's that's the key farron. Okay. All right, sounds good. Listen, guys, we got a full show for you ahead.

Some of it is fun as, you know the drill. Some of it's super fun. Some of it is super disastrous. but an unlikely hero emerges out of the very first story. What? No. Hold, this is drama. Don't even do that.

And not only that guy's later in the program, I might defend Steve Crowder. Can I go? Honestly, it's almost the holidays. I got to listen to this. This show's on fire. I'm going to go. Audience, come with me. Let's go.

Ring of fire, that is. All right, all right. Okay, John, go ahead. Okay, I don't even want to intro it now, because now you see who we're talking about. Do you want to have this turn into a hero thing? Okay, fine, let's do it. Mitch McConnell, apparently deciding to mix it up near the holidays, has announced his apparent support for the goals of the January 6th Commission.

He thinks that they're actually maybe onto something, and there might be value to their findings. Let's hear him tell it. You made headlines recently when you said it will be interesting to reveal all the participants that were involved. Can you expand on that comment? Well, my point was, we're watching the investigation that's occurring over in the House, reading about it like everyone else, and it'll be interesting to see what facts they find.

And Liz Cheney kind of leading Republicans there? What have you thought of her performance so far on these committees? I don't have any evaluation of the performance of the committee. I think the fact-finding is interesting. We're all going to be watching it. It was a horrendous event. And I think that what they're seeking to find out is something the public needs to know. Okay, so aside from everything else that he said there, even referring to it as a horrendous event is novel.

I haven't heard the right even imply that it was bad in literally months at this point. I would like to hope that maybe this is Mitch McConnell deciding to belatedly get a little bit back at Trump for his new nickname of McConnell. where he calls him the old broken down crow or whatever. I don't know if that's what it is, but Jenk, you're into this. Oh, I love this. You're on Team McConnell. I would definitely not go that far. Hold, hold.

But no, but wait a minute. Real clear politics. Run the headline. Okay, no, no, they're going to run a worse headline. I'm going to give him a worse headline. But of course, nobody's going to watch the whole clip. Let's keep a real except of you guys. Okay, so you're going to get it.

Could Mitch McConnell be a hero? Hold, hold. I need you to understand. a bunch of things, okay? So first, let's discuss this context. Then we'll talk Mitch McConnell a little bit, and then we'll come back to that question. So the reason why this is important is, so first of all, John is absolutely right. The normal talking point for the right wing and all Republicans is January 6th, what name so? No big deal, a bunch of tourists coming in the Antifa and the FBI, sabotage them, poor son guns, their patriots, release them from

Balrog prison or whatever. They are. Mixed up a few things there, but I like it. I like it. I like it. I forgot the one in Batman Dark Night. Anyways, so what was it, Craig? Arkham.

Arkham prison, right. Do it with it as you please. Okay, anyways. So, okay, so it's noteworthy that Mitch McConnell saying, yeah, January 6th was bad. And he's also adding in, we should find out what happened, as in May in maybe Republicans could agree to consequences for things that happen, at least some portion of Republicans. Okay, now that gets around two. Round two is, okay, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, they've been fighting for a while. And I'm using this analogy far too much on the

show lately, but it's a little bit like Turkish oil wrestling, right? And so you pour olive oil all over yourself, stripped down nearly naked except for jean shorts, and then you grapple, you grapple. And in Turkish oil wrestling, it goes on, no time limit. It goes to, you goes on until someone is pinned. And so, so far they've been squirming around on the ground. And so for a while, Mitch McConnell would get the upper appears to challenge Trump and goes, January 6 is bad, I vote not to impeach, but oh, he's been a naughty boy. And you go, oh, okay, well, that's interesting, it seems to be a real fight there.

And then Trump will roar, and then for a while, McConnell was going back to, yes, sir, I hate you, but yes, sir, right? Now he's come all the way back around to, no. We're fighting and we're going to fight publicly and behind the scenes and now game on. It looked like McConnell was going to basically surrender, but now this indicates he is not going to surrender. And now they are into the later rounds of the oil wrestling. So like this is no longer, hey, this is going to just flame out. Because guys, so you understand this really important context, most Republican politicians are betas, okay?

They're super weak. So they seem to be bullies, but the minute you push back and go, your wife is ugly. They go, okay, please let me phone back for you. I'm sorry. They go, oh, Donald Trump is unacceptable and a liar and outrageous. Give me, sending his phone number to everybody, go ahead and threaten his life, right? I'm so sorry, Donald, I love you, right? So now, McConnell's never been one to whimper like that, but he was standing down.

This, I think, is fairly definitive saying, I am not standing down anymore. This is a real fight. And so the part, Ferran, where it could become, you kind of can become a quote-unquote hero is, you know, we all know, there's no chance that any Democrat is going to be Trump on rhetoric, politics, marketing, strategy. Like, if we're going into 2024 with just Trump versus generic corporate Democrat, I'm very, very worried about that, right? But a guy who could beat anybody in politics is Mitch McConnell.

And before I go to Farron, though, I want to be absolutely clear. I agree with none of Mitch McConnell's positions. I despise the man. I'm just talking in the context of McConnell versus Trump. All right, Farron, thoughts. You know what? I agree with you on that. Like everything Mitch McConnell does is absolutely terrible.

And I don't agree with any of it. He truly is an evil genius. But the second part of that is that he is, in fact, really good. good at what he does. This man, every move he makes, every word he says is calculated. This is not an off the cuff kind of guy that has to walk back comments later. He knows exactly what he means when he says it and he's thought about it ahead of time. This was a calculated move by Mitch McConnell. Now the question, obviously, that we're trying to answer here is what's the calculation, right? Where is he going with this? Is he hoping to expose some of the crazier

members of the Republican Party so that maybe they can get them out and move on to just being evil instead of both evil and crazy. That's a possibility. Is it because of the fight with Trump? That's certainly a very real possibility. He doesn't want to have to go back to that, just like most of us do not want that either. So there's lots of different things that play here, but I do find it odd as well that he wouldn't even say anything bad about Cheney. And, you know, that's a big deal too. because that has become really the tipping point within the Republican Party. I mean, you had the group of 50 send a letter to McCarthy this week saying you have to kick Kinsinger and Cheney out of your Republican caucus because they're not showing complete deference to Trump.

And so for Mitch McConnell to take a stand by not taking a side in that, that also tells us something. And I think what we're seeing is Mitch McConnell finally getting it not just through his head, but through the head of enough Republicans in the Senate, that this guy has no power, right? This is just some elderly man sitting down at a golf course in Florida who can't even tweet at us. What the hell are we so afraid of? Yeah. And I think that overall is what's kind of permeating the Senate right now as Trump tries to get people to dethrone McConnell and nobody's signing on to that either. So McConnell has the upper hand with this, and I think that's what he's trying to show us.

So I want to continue on with that. So let's try to figure out what the calculus is and what could potentially come from this. And we're going to try to work this through this rashly. So stop with the simping, please, Jenk, for McConnell. I understand that you stand him. I get it. Anyway, so, okay, he's trying to imply here, hey, let's take the January 6th commission a little bit more Seriously, I'm not gonna just bad mouth that even though as we've pointed out, he opposed the creation of it. And he did say that Trump was morally and practically responsible for January 6th, but he also didn't think it was worth actually convicting him in the Senate.

But okay, let's leave that behind. So looking forward, what can potentially come from the January 6th commission that would serve some sort of interest of Mitch McConnell? So you could have PR stuff, like we find out more and it looks bad for people, whether for Trump or his chief of staff or people like Jim Jordan or now we're finding out Rick Perry. A lot of them look bad in this. I personally think none of that can harm them in any way. The worse they look, the better it is for the right. Like it's not, all these texts just came out. How much damage did that do to literally anyone on the right? And then of course

there's potential consequences, like something actually being done that could lead to Trump not running in 2024 or having less interest over endorsements during this primary cycle that's coming up. And I don't know exactly what form that would come in either. I find it inconceivable that the Democrats will actually do something that sticks, that stops Trump from running or anything like that. So if not that, then it's just we're going to have a conversation about it. And they've so closely, like they have a stranglehold on the narrative around their approach to democracy and the insurrection, the same way that they do with COVID, that nothing can happen in the news that will shake right-wing media off the positions that they're on. I don't think that most

of the base is reachable. I don't think they're listening to Mitch McConnell or any media that's going to fairly report on what the January 6th Commission is doing. So other than as like a random pot shot for Mitch McConnell to take it him, I don't know what could potentially come out of it, but I would love for you to give me an idea of something. I'm going to. Okay. So look, First, I'm gonna go to one of our members because we've got the smartest audience in the world, and I love doing the show with you guys. So sign up at t-y-t.com slash join. Anyways, BitRicks on the res, right, saying McConnell doesn't do or say anything if it doesn't increase his power or pocketbook.

There's much less altruistic reason for his statement. That is of course correct. But the reference to the pocketbook is smart. So Mitch McConnell clearly represents the corporate class of the Republican Party. He is the king of that class. And so Mitch McConnell is raised probably around a similar number. Pelosi just revealed she has raised about a billion dollars throughout the course of her career. And McConnell is likely at around the same number.

Okay. So when McConnell says something, that is corporate donors talking. He is their representative, right? So that's why we hate Mitch McConnell. And that's why our long term war is with. Mitch McConnell and the corporate class of both Republicans and Democrats. But in the short term, we might need these corporate goons to help defeat the fascists, so we survive to get to the long term.

And so now, that doesn't mean you ever vote for them. That's a much more complicated issue, right? And so, John, if corporate donors and executives have made the turn, then it's not just about McConnell. It means others are also turning and will continue to turn. And that that might stop Trump from running? No. So what it could do is you are right to point out the rhetoric, right? The rhetoric is what is important.

And here it's the money versus the mouth, right? And Donald Trump's rhetoric has dominated even billions of dollars in corporate money that, remember, corporate money here is also very complicated because a big percentage of the time that Trump was either running or in office, corporate money was on his side. He's a fake populist. He loved taking their money, right? And when they wanted the tax cuts, and he cut corporate taxes more than anybody did, they loved him. And so he has helped corporations and corporate rule in America more than anybody. But now they think he's out of control. And like, hey, you were a good boy with the tax cut, good boy. Now you're being a bad boy. Because we

have a good system already with McConnell and Pelosi, we run everything and the corporate media, we'll just parrot whatever we want. Now, corporate media is already against Trump, so that's not going to help. Mitch McConnell doesn't help with that. But can those donors and executives turn some of the right-wing media? Because if they turn some of the right-wing media, and that's the hard part, I agree with that. So if they turn some of the corporate media, I mean, the right-wing media, which is also corporate, by the way, well, then you would have a rhetorical advantage. And that marketing is everything in politics. Why is Biden getting clobbered? Because right way media is always against them. And when mainstream media turned

against them, when he decided it was drawn from Afghanistan, and they're like, tut, tut, Tau, Lockheed Martin does not approve, okay? Then all of a sudden, everybody piled on to Biden. Oh, and inflation and this and that. And next thing, you know, Biden is in the, you know, dumpster. He's, it's a dumpster fire overall, right? So if you do that to Trump, it actually will have the same results. It's just they never have, right? So how John asked reasonably so? Well, you know who's a corporate Republican?

Rupert Murdoch. And so if Murdoch says, I mean, it's almost a scene out of succession. If he goes to Hannity and says, we're paying you $40 million a year, you're going to turn and we're not going to have this conversation. And you'll see the turn first from Doocy on Fox and Friends. Okay, and then things will start to follow if that's the case. And then at that point, they might kick out Tucker Carlson, and Tucker Carlson becomes the new populist, Trump, et cetera.

And I hope that doesn't come to fruition by 24. But you got to start turning, and the way that they could apply pressure is, okay, Mark Levine, you have a radio show. Oh, yeah, I love Trump, I hate the corporate girls, blah, blah, blah, blah. With withdrawing advertising, you're going to lose 40% of your pay. I love Mr. McConnell, he's got to figure it out. None of those guys have any principles. That is your best impersonation, by the way.

Let's not just gloss over that. They don't have any principles. If their bosses tell them to turn, they will turn. And so if that starts to happen, hey, game on, game on. Because there's no way in the world that Democrats, can I get agreement on this issue, that Democratic leadership is going to figure out how to beat Trump in a marketing battle? I mean, we have an idea of it in our B block, if you'd like what their strategy is. Yeah, no, no, that's not going to happen.

So unfortunately, we need a corporate Republican to come in and save the day. That's the sad, sad state of affairs in America, in my opinion. Farron, final thoughts on us? There's also the possibility that we might all be reading way too much into this, right? You know, there's a chance, Mitch. Hey, this is our whole job, Farron. Don't blow up our spot. But think about it this way.

Mitch McConnell took a strong stand right there by literally not taking a position on anything. All he said was, I think the public needs to see this. And he can wait out the long game and say, okay, if nothing comes out of it, he'll say, see, the public needed to know that. Or if there's all these crimes, it's a public needed to know that. So he took the right position by taking no real position so that whatever happens from this point forward, and say, yeah, see, I told you, the public needed to know this. I win again. So there's the possibility that that's there as well. And his statement literally just meant, look, I'm just going to let it happen. I'm going to sit back and keep, you know, blocking all of the good

things, everything that everybody wants. Y'all deal with that over in the house. So who knows what's really real in this situation, but I'm hoping eventually we do find out. That sounds very reasonable, but it's not nearly as much fun. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, we have to go to our first break. I'm just gonna throw out. I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote Bart. Now, he was wrong when he said this, but from where we're sitting right now, I just, I assume, 2024, I think Trump is gonna win.

I think everything is lining up in terms of what the Democrats are doing. It's what we said they would. They're biffing everything. and they're gonna put up some awful candidate in 2024 unless we stop them with a good progressive. So that's the other side of this. Yeah, look, we'll talk about it in the next segment, but that is, that's why you need someone like McConnell to take him out, because the Democrats have almost no chance. So I was very confident that we were going to win in 2020.

And by the way, I was wrong. We barely won in 2020. But I was very, like I was very worried in 2016, I'm now way more worried. about 2024. Like, we are massive underdogs against the Republicans in 2024, because Democratic leadership is the worst, the worst politicians in American history. All right, unless you watch corporate media, in which case they're master legislators. All right, we'll be right back. Right, back on TYIT, Jay, John, and Faron with you guys.

Another amazing news story coming up now. Who's going to be our nominee in 2024? Buggle up, race for impact. Okay, go ahead, John. Yeah, what would be most frustrating than there she is? Anyway, Joe Biden's poll numbers are not looking good, especially with young voters. So he might well not be the Democratic nominee in 2024.

So if we have to choose someone else, the op-eds have already started to make suggestions. And these are from people, I want you to understand, that very much have your best interests at heart. For instance, Joe Concha, who used to be a host on Fox and Friends, he thinks maybe it should be Hillary, given the competition. And his argument is, there may be a rematch coming in the 2024 race for the White House, but we're not talking, God help us, Biden, Trump. Instead, 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is an interesting prospect to consider, particularly if an 80-something President Biden decides not to take a second term. So why would they go from Biden to Hillary? Well, he considers a couple of other options. He says, Vice President Harris, she's at 28% approval.

Andrew Cuomo, no longer governor on thoroughly disgrace. Governor Gavin Newsom, he had to spend time and resources just to avoid being ousted in Deep Blue California during a recall election earlier this year. I don't even think that's a particularly good argument against him. I think they're much better ones, but whatever. Yeah, that's a terrible argument. That has nothing to do with anything. And I don't like Gavin Newsom. I don't either, but that's not why he wouldn't be the candidate anyway.

He won easily in that election. Exactly. And that's just state level Republican nonsense. Whatever. So if not them, well, obviously we're not going to consider any progressive. So instantly you go back to Hillary Clinton. She's 74 years old, he says, which is like being bathed in the fountain of youth compared to Biden. Okay, I guess. Now, he has more to say about this. But I have, look, I don't follow Joe Conscious's career. Maybe he's become, like, awesome since Fox and Friends. This feels like trolling, both because it's a former host on Fox and Friends, and because, and I say this is a person who published op-eds on the Hill, it's an op-ed in the hill. This seems like it's intended to infuriate us, but I don't discount the possibility that there are some establishment Democrats that do sort of pine for Hillary Clinton, and would love for her to be the candidate.

Of course. Okay, so that's my reaction to does Washington want it. Now, here's my reaction to the possibility. No! There's no, there's no amount of buckling up that would be sufficient for that scenario. You cannot brace for that impact. It would be just epic disaster. Landslide. Yeah.

So this goes in the bucket of people never learned because they're paid not to learn. All right. So the Joe Concho part of this is relevant. It's his op-ed. And so the question is, is he just spitballing here, or is there something in the zeitgeist in D.C. where people are starting to actually think about this and it's bubbling up, right? Well, Concha is a rare non-insane Republican, so I'll give him that, okay. But I would say, whether he agrees or disagrees is a different question, that he's more in the corporate Republican wing.

And when you're in the corporate wing of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, then you're in the zeitgeist of D.C., and you, that's the upside is you have a sense of, what's gonna come next, you know, because people are talking about things and there's buzz about things, right? The downside of it is you're completely disconnected from the rest of the country. And you live in a bubble that exists only in Washington and can, and we can't communicate with that bubble. The bubble doesn't communicate out. It's just an island of insanity, a different kind of insanity than Trump. It's the insanity where Hillary Clinton is popular. And people love the establishment and they can't wait for Hillary to bring the status grow back. Yeah. Because that's the problem with Biden. He's not status quo enough, right?

He's not conservative Democrat enough. He's done nothing enough. Like Hillary Clinton would do more nothing. That is not a winning message in the country. The country's in a massively populist mood. But inside the Washington bubble, they're like, so you're saying Hillary. No, you're not. No one is saying Hillary outside of that Washington bubble. And they've totally lost track with the rest of the country. So she would have a 0% chance of winning. It's an absurd idea. And if we're bringing Hillary back, then I'm bringing Bernie back. Okay. All right, apparently age is not an issue. So the timeless wonder can rise again. Fair. Well, you know, Joe Concha actually was on Fox and Friends yesterday morning talking about how the American public

has turned against buildback better. They don't like the things in the build back better act. So if you needed any kind of information about what Joe Conscious says about being plugged in with the American. Yeah, the guy's totally off the rails on that one because the polls show us the exact opposite of that. And that might be why he's saying, what about Hillary Clinton? Why don't we just bring her back? Yeah, let's just play all of the political greatest hits, right? You know, why not find another Bush to go ahead and throw in the mix as well? Because that's just where we're headed.

It's this damn dynasty of the same people all the time and the same advisors, the same consultants, the same people in the bubble you're talking about. And that's why it's always the same because it's not just the candidates, it's the old guard itself, right? The actual establishment, the people running the parties, the people behind the scenes, the people raising the money, you know, same consultants, advisors, all of it. It doesn't ever change until, you know, generations die off naturally. Yeah. And until we can pierce the bubble, I don't know how we change that. Because I do think Hillary Clinton's name will likely be floated for 2024. You know, as you said, Biden's numbers are terrible.

Harris's numbers are terrible. Neither of them have emerged as a real leader throughout any of this this past year. Yeah. And so who is next? Who is on deck? You know, Bernie, yes, he's getting up there. That's going to play against him. Plus, the establishment will never let that happen. You know, you're not going to get a Katie Porter coming in. You're not going to get any member of the squad. You're going to end up with probably Newsom or Hillary Clinton. I mean, really, that's what we're looking at. Or if they can clean them up enough, they may even try to throw Cuomo in there. Who knows what these people are capable of? Which Cuomo. That's what we're looking at here. It's a complete horror show right now. Yeah.

Well, I do agree with that. I think the one thing potentially we have on our side is that the next couple of years are going to be absolutely devastating. And I think that you're going to have a lot of anger. And I think we had a lot of anger leading up to Bernie's run. I think Bernie broke through because he was really speaking to a lot of frustration. Well, we are going to have a lot of frustration coming up. So that's my only hope that some progressive might be able to break through this.

But I do want to read just a little bit more of this sort of conventional wisdom that's floating around out there. In the Washington Post, Fried Zakaria has an op-ed titled The Puzzle of Joe Biden's unpopularity, which I just think it's awesome. I don't think puzzles should be tough. I think they should be very easy. It makes you, it's like a power fantasy. Anyway, and then I came across, this is an article by Chris Siliza, 11 Democrats who could replace. Joe Biden in 2024. He doesn't even rule out Kamala Harris. Like he thinks, sure, I mean, she's the vice president. Why not? He also says Pete Buttigieg is the most naturally talented

candidate in the 2024 field. Jesus, can you imagine those debates? And then he has a list of nine other people. A lot of them are like not national figures. They're, there's stripes, centrist of different stripes. He does throw out Elizabeth Warren and Stacey Abrams as nods to progressives. He doesn't consider anyone to the left of either of them. And look, it's still years away, so I guess who cares? But this is what they're prepping for. Like, I don't think Chris Eliza would have a problem with Hillary Clinton being the nominee yet again. And it's just, it's already bubbling up. Okay, so let's a couple of things here. First of all, 2024, as things stand now, hopefully things will change, is shaping up to be epic disaster.

So Republicans have a massive advantage. Democratic leadership is is the worst. They couldn't, like, the only person Biden could beat in a race might be Hillary Clinton. So like, they have no chance. And so, but there's no progressive that the corporate media would ever, ever give any oxygen to, let alone fight, give positive coverage to. Any progressive. I mean, they didn't to Bernie, and he got really far in 2016.

Yeah, okay, I hear you, I hear you, but corporate media will try to destroy any progressive who runs and mainly through the silence like oh yeah like for example we here let's give the common example Nina Turner if Nina Turner runs they but we're not gonna cover that at all where's Trump where's Trump I love Trump let's give me a billion dollars more two million dollars more okay Nina Turner we're not gonna cover that right so that's what's gonna happen just keep it real I'm being honest with you guys so progressive winning is very hard well and then when you look at the the establishment candidates it's a it's a it's a

nightmare. Biden is awful. Kamala Harris is awful. Inside the bubble, they love Pete Buttigieg. I know tons of people in New York and D.C. And I swear to God, in their bubble, they think that he's like a, he would electrify the country. They're like, he worked at McKinsey. Like he would just come in there with his PowerPoints and God, oh my God, he is so, I mean, Harvard. He's so smart. Oh my God, we love him. Let me ask you a question. You have to choose. 24. It's Buttigieg or it's Clinton? Nothing's worse than Clinton. So you're like don't, don't create headlines.

I don't know. Right. And now you're going to say like, now John's creating a headline. Jenks says Buttigieg should run. No. So look, so it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare for 2024. And inside the bubble, there's like they also do this for Republicans.

Like all of the media together, ABC, CNN and everywhere was like, Chris, Christ. Chris Christie's such an important, powerful, important person in politics. And then he sold like three books, and two of them were to his grandmother. And she passed away, so I don't know who it was. No, I don't know any of that. But he sold nothing because they think, oh, Chris, people love corporate republicans like Chris Christie. We love him.

Don't you love him? And the answer was, no, we don't love him. They still are on Marco Rubio. If you get a poll in Washington right now, they're like, oh, most statesmen like, blah, blah, Marco Rubio, obviously, right? Like no, he's a boy. Everybody knows he's a boy. And then, yes, there's some level of trolling and ambush here with the Hillary Clinton.

This is a classic corporate Republican ambush. Like, well, look, if the Democrats really wanted to do something right, I mean, they'd run bin Laden. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, okay. So, but usually they'll throw out some corporate Democrat like Nancy Pelosi. And because they know that other people inside the public would be like, wait a minute, he's on. to something. People love Pelosi. They genuinely believe insane things like that. Anyway, so the bottom line is, and last thing about Free Zakaria on the puzzle of Joe Biden. Guys, I need you to understand how they just have no idea of the outside world. I know you think these are smart

people. They're powerful. They're rich. They're someone famous. They've got to know something. no day. No, Frisicario, who appears to be intelligent, I read the article, it's amazing. He's like, I don't know why. I mean, Biden is so likable. He's done so many things and economies is such great. I don't know. Like, are you kidding me? He's done nothing. He's the world's worst self-promoter. He thinks bipartisanship and the filibuster are more important than things like paid family leave that poll at, you know, 75% and lowering drug prices that poll at 90%. And he's like, no, I think that the parliamentarian is more important. And Farrein's like, well, that's obviously true. Doesn't everybody love the parliamentarian?

Right? This is such a mystery. No one can figure it out. So, and those guys are in charge of the party. So they're going to nominate a whole heap of Buttigieg's and you'd be lucky to get out with no Clinton, right? You think they won't bring Terry McCallif back? Right? There is no end. to how bad corporate Democrats are at politics. So you got to, at this point, you got to hope for a miracle. Otherwise, it's almost certainly going to be a Republican who wins. Yeah, I don't think there's really any way around it, at least where things stand right now. Obviously, yeah, we get three years. Things are going to change.

But the question is, are we doing anything to change them in a positive way right now? Student loan repayments begin on February 1st. The White House has made it clear, we're doing nothing about it, we're not going there. And so even though Biden promised $50,000, whatever it was that he was going to forgive, he's not doing the simple things he could do to try to show people just a little bit of what good Democrats can do. And as long as you hold that away from them, you're literally taking money out of their pockets. It's going to be a bloodbath. And he's not doing anything to write the ship at this moment. And the guys, the reason why I say it's nearly hopeless is because Biden is incapable of changing.

He's not going to go and be like, that's it. I'm drawing the line on Mansion and Cinema. I've had enough of these corporate Democrats. I'm going to call them out and I'm going to put real pressure on them. And we're going to get rid of the filibuster. We're going to pass all these bills. No, he agrees with Mansion and Cinema anyway. It's all a lie.

The $10,000 that he could get rid of student debt, he promised it. It was a super clear promise. He could do it with executive authority. no question he can. He's choosing not to do it because he was lying. He, the only time he told the truth was when he was speaking to his best friends, the donors. And he told him nothing would fundamentally change. And the donors love that and the rest of the country despises that. There, Farid, I solved the puzzle. Okay, why don't we take our second break? We come back. I know you've got thoughts about what Bernie Sanders did last night. Yeah, Bernie went after

And it was it good enough? It's certainly an interesting story. We'll come back. All right, back on TYT, Power Panel, Jank, John, and Farron Cousins from Ring of Fire with you guys. All right, so John's got more important. Actually, before we go to that, Leptin-Soup 337 wrote in on Super Chat, Turner Sanders 2024 or bust. I like that you got...

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Why not? Let Sanders rest a bit. I got other names you can put on there. Okay. All right, John. Okay, let's do it. So normally the way it works is if the Democrats are in control, one Democrats say Joe Manchin can stop them from accomplishing virtually anything.

He can stand in the way of it, never has to answer for it. And he never really gets criticized for it. Well, most of that is still true. But in this case, he is actually being criticized at least a little bit. In this case, by Bernie Sanders, as you'll see. You've got 50 people in the Republican caucus. We have gotten no support from them to lower the cost of prescription drugs, to expand Medicare. So you've got 50 Republicans who are not prepared to do anything for the environment of working families.

You've got 48 people in the Democratic caucus who are prepared, and a president of the United States prepared to think big. and you have two Democrats who, in my view, are kind of acting like Republicans. And to me, I respect other people's points of view. But I do not respect the arrogance of any member of the Senate who says, you know what, I'm going to torpedo this entire bill supported overwhelmingly by the American people. And you've got two people who say, you know what, hey, if you don't do it my way. I don't care what the president wants. I don't care what 48 of my colleagues want.

It's my way or the highway. And that I regard is arrogance. Certainly arrogance in terms of presentation backed up by a whole bunch of corruption and lack of interest in democracy representing people or doing what's necessary to benefit their constituents. So Mansion, as of right now, has once again thrown, I guess, into jeopardy as if anybody was expecting the buildback better to be passed this year. It's not going to be.

He wants either the expanded child tax credit to be taken out or basically everything else or I would guess everything altogether to be passed taken out of it because he doesn't care. He's not interested. And so it's not getting passed this year. The closer we get to the midterms, I don't know why that would strike us as increasing the chance that it'll get passed. And so things are not looking good for build back better. If only someone had predicted that they wouldn't actually make progress on this if they decided to do the bipartisan one first. I wonder who could have predicted that. Okay, so by the way, we're not like, yes, us, but really the six just Democrats who voted no, because they said if you give Manchin the infrastructure bill he wants, of course he's going to destroy the other bill. They were right. Not one person in Washington has given them credit, even though it is indisputable. Okay, so now on Bernie, look, I love that he's being more aggressive because what do you have to lose anyway? Mansion just killed it.

They said they were going to pass it by Christmas. now that's not the case. Once you blow past the deadline and you don't put a new deadline on it, nah, nah, nah. And how are you going to get past either child tax credit or nothing else or no child tax credit? I mean, it's so eviscerated. What they want to do was eviscerate it and then pass like a sham version that actually did one or two good things and then call it historic. Oh my God, it's like the most important thing in the world. Now mansion a cinema ruining that. They're not even going to be able to pass a mirage. So that's part of the why they're angry.

So Bernie Sanders says, well, we got nothing left to lose. All right, I'll go on TV and I'll take a couple of shots at him. So is that correct? Yes, good. That is a very positive step forward. Is calling him arrogant and Republican-like, that big a deal? No. So how would you actually move him?

You would start talking about his corruption. And then he'd catch all sorts of feelings. And then he would pretend, oh, I was going to pass it, but now I'm not going to. And then you go and hit him again and again and you talk about his coal company. You talk about his daughter who stole from the people of West Virginia, got a golden parachute, and outsourced jobs from West Virginia. You start talking about all those things. You're going to catch his attention, and all of a sudden you're back in negotiations, okay?

But Bernie, I mean, I would be shocked if he had that in him. And certainly no one else has that in him in Congress. So no, they'll take a couple of tweaks. Mansion will be fine. He'll go back on his yacht. That's also half hybrid. It's a hybrid. It's good for the environment.

It's a hybrid between a yacht and a mansion. And he'll drive his Maserati there. He'll be fine. But I want to give credit where credit is due. At least Bernie's on the right path. Yeah. He is. And I've got to tell you, it's a little disappointing that, you know,

that's what the president should be doing, right? I mean, I know Biden can't get as mean as Bernie was in that segment, but Biden has that bully pulpit that is just gathering dust right now. This should be the job of the president to go out there to the public and sell his policy, sell his bills to them and let them know, hey, I'm waiting to give this to you, but they are saying you can't have it. So maybe we need to put some pressure on them. That is the president's job to sell this. It's great that Bernie's out there doing this. You know, it's wonderful that he's talking about this, that he's calling them out, that he's with the striking workers in Michigan.

Well, we have this other guy who says, no, I don't like this. Oh, and by the way, also this week, Mansion comes out and says, nope, I'm not going to support your ban on drilling in the Arctic. So sorry, I'm killing that as well. That's another one that kind of flies under the radar there. But Mansion's killing everything that he can get his hands on because of his financial interest here, because of his donors, because of all of it. And I do think it's time that he gets called out for it by the people in power. You know, we do it all the time.

But sometimes you've got to have the big guys, the big wigs up there making those same claims to the public to a much larger audience so that people wake up. and understand what's really happening and why they can't have these nice things that they need, not just that they want, that they need so they can survive in this country today. Yeah, and we're not seeing aside from like Bernie, you know, there's this code of honor. You wouldn't besmirch them. You certainly wouldn't point out that one representative is corrupt because then you could be attacked in the exact same way. The media is not going to do it because of a generalized lack of interest. If you're making $5 million a year, the The prospect of losing your tax credit seems pretty meaningless.

You don't care about $300 a month. And you're certainly worried, as the politicians are, the rich politicians of your taxes going up. And so there is this unspoken alliance between the media, of which they love to make these distinctions supposedly between left and right mainstream media, like CNN, C and Fox. They go to the same dinner parties, it's the same people. They just disagree a little bit on maybe the LGBTQ issues, and that's basically it. And so it doesn't matter to mention that one quarter of all seniors in West Virginia don't have any of their natural teeth.

He didn't care, he got rid of dental coverage from the bill. He doesn't care that one six of his constituents, not constituents technically, but the people living in West Virginia are kids who would be benefited by this child tax credit. He's gonna screw them all over and we know economically West Virginia is doing really badly. Like it just, there's no expectation that it could hurt him in any way. It's not gonna hurt him financially. Passage would hurt him politically. You remember when cinema did her little thumbs down and she was really like spit in our face. And some polls came out and showed that it was hurting her approval. Have you seen anything like that out of West Virginia?

Like he's been just as much a roadblock to virtually every part of Biden's agenda. And it seems like he's probably gonna be just fine come reelection. You know why? Because the twirling thumbs down got a lot of press. And then people, People are like, oh, what's she saying thumbs down to? Oh, higher wages. Oh, I hate her, right? Whereas with Mansion, they never lay a glove on him. So they're like, yeah, they talk about Mansion.

They got like older Democratic voters that watch MSNBC are mad at Mansion. But like they never go to West Virginia and they never actually like get his actual constituents because they, they're all corrupt. So they don't want to talk about, you know what Mansion just did? He just robbed you of lower drug prices because he takes tons of money from drug companies. companies. So he wants you to pay more. Well, MSNBC can't say that. That's all their advertisers, right? And Menendez can't say that. I pick a random Democratic senator because he takes maybe more money from drug companies than mansion this. And by the way, Bernie's wrong about one thing. He thinks, my God, it's just Mansion and cinema that's blocking this. And 48 senators and the president agrees. I love you, brother, but that just isn't true. Biden agrees more with Mansion than he does with his own so-called agenda. He kind of halfway, loves that mansion is killing all these progressive proposals that Biden never believed in, right? And the plan was always to have mansion to kill most of them. He's just killing too many. So that's the only disagreement there. And if it wasn't mentioned or cinema, and

you know, they always say, oh, I like more Democrats. My ass under Obama, we had 60 Democrats in the Senate. We had a super majority. They couldn't even use the filibuster. And you got Mitt Romney's health care plan. That's a fact. And that's all you got. They didn't do any other reforms. They didn't even increase the minimum wage. They didn't do anything. If you got rid of Manchin of Cinema, another two would pop up. Oh, well, it turns out it's Coons and Carper.

Oh, my, oh, nobody could have seen this. Give us more Democrats. Wink, wink, wink. Get out of here. So until Bernie and the rest of the progressives in Congress rhetorically take on their colleagues, their corrupt Democratic colleagues, you're never going to say. see any actual movement because you're not going to move the national conversation. Yeah. And the problem is like you pointed out, you do kind of have to have somebody that

is pure because otherwise they're going to throw it right back at you. You know, you can't attack this guy's fossil fuel donations when you're taking just as much. You can't go after the big pharma donations when they're your top donor. So you do have to either get money out of politics and we know these people are not going to move on that. Or you have to be able to support these politicians. And hopefully we get a hell of a lot more of them coming up in 2022 that aren't taking the corporate money, you know, really pure politicians. I mean, that's what has to happen.

And unfortunately, to go that route, which is what we do have to do here, that's still going to take so many cycles before we finally get things going here. And a lot of people don't have that time to wait. Yeah, I'm going to give you guys. You know, I don't have another answer for it, though. Yeah, I'm going to give you a tiny bit of hope and then we got to go. So look, first of all, if you want to get money out of politics, wolf dash pack.com, left wing, right wing, it doesn't matter. We hate the corruption.

Number two, look, I started Wolfpack. I also started just Democrats. And there was one rule I insisted on. It was no corporate PAC money. So you're not waiting for politicians to act out of the goodness of their heart. It's a rule. You cannot take it. Otherwise, you're not a just Democrat.

And what happened? The six that voted, no, and voted the right way on the infrastructure bill, were all just Democrats who don't take corporate PAC money. So it actually can work, it has worked, we just need to make it larger. And get a load of this, guys. The future is completely ours. Do you know what percentage of the country is under 55? It's 61%. Now, you're not surprised by that. You know, obviously, most people are under 55. Okay, do you know what percentage of people that read the Washington Post are under 55 years old, 14%. So mainstream media has nothing but 70-year-olds watching it and reading it. So they are huge voters, but tick, tick, tick, tick.

I have no offense to the older voters, okay, and we have plenty of older viewers and we love them, and they're actually some of the most progressive people on earth, okay? But generally speaking, those older voters watch Rachel Maddow and she she perched them right into Pelosi and Schumer and Biden, Hillary Clinton. And they're very powerful today because they vote in much greater numbers. But there's not that many of them. And every day, less people watch mainstream media, less people read mainstream media. Because the real problem is mainstream media poisoning people's minds with, oh, corporate Democrats, surrender to the Republicans is a great idea. they're geniuses. No, you need an actual fighter on our side who says, no, surrendering to

corporate rule is not genius. It has destroyed the Democratic Party. Let's fight back. The minute the fight back starts in earnest is the minute we start winning. Okay, really fast. Okay, we're gonna go through this super quickly. Tucker Carlson has spent a year and a half effectively trying to ensure that you know as little about COVID as possible, that you take it as unsuriously as possible and that rhetorical war that he's waged on you being prepared for this crisis has evolved over time. Early on, he admitted that masks worked and he thought that you should socially distance. That dropped off after a few months and it just got worse and worse from there. He turned totally anti-vax. I think he was actually a pioneer in that in mainstream media

and the rest have tried to follow in his wake. And most recently, despite thinking that getting COVID feminizes you, he actually has a new argument. He thinks that not only should you not care about COVID, but you shouldn't even talk about COVID. Well, why? Because it'll scare people, it'll hurt the economy or something. No, his argument is much more mundane than that. Listen to this. If you find yourself living in a place where people are still talking about COVID nonstop, two years in, it is time to move. Not just because your neighbors have been brainwashed, though obviously they have been, but because your neighbors are boring. At this point, it is simply not an interesting topic for your private life. Yes, COVID has

killed a lot of people, so has prostate cancer. Imagine telling people about your prostate every day for the next two years. People would know that you were a narcissist. No one would sit next to you at dinner. You would be boorish. And that's exactly what COVID talk sounds to the well-adjusted among us. Well-adjusted. He is indisputably. You may not be able to to actually point to a person who died this year and say they died because they made the bad decision to trust Tucker Carlson. He has definitely led to the deaths of countless people. But what's borish, what's not well adjusted is to talk about it, perhaps to ask if someone has gotten their booster shot, ask if they know a little bit about Amacron. Do we have any more

information about whether it will actually be more mild than the Delta variant? Oh, sorry, I apologize if I'm boring the audience right now, talking about the largest public health crisis of the last hundred plus years. But think about how far the rhetorical war had, now his argument is just, don't talk about it, it bores me. What a pathetic position for a guy with millions of viewers on a daily basis to take. Okay, I actually think it's a little worse than that. So first of all, why is it a topic of conversation in the first place? Because of you guys. So are we constantly talking about the polio vaccine?

No, because the right wing media didn't go on a war path randomly against the polio vaccine. If they had, we'd be talking for two years about the polio vaccine. It was a decision they made to talk about COVID to try to convince you not to take the vaccines and not to wear masks and that that was going to somehow make you more manly, right? So if you shut up about it, Tucker, it actually kind of will magically go away. And so it's if it's 100% your fault that we're talking about it. Otherwise, it would have been a vaccine like every other vaccine that we all take and is mandated by the schools and work and military and everything else. And we never would have had a conversation about it.

And we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, which I think is part of the point which I'm going to get to in a second. And you want to talk about people boring others with COVID conversations. That's all the right wingers ever do. Oh, does you know, man, this is the government trying to put the chip in you. And then it's Gates and Fauci, man, freedom man. You take the dewormer, you get the worms out. Okay, your guys stop, like, will never stop talking about it. We're like, okay, guys, let's move on.

Things are getting better. We've said that on the show like 12 times, right? And they're like, oh, yeah. Right? I'm Rebecca! Okay, like, so don't come at us, come at your fellow clowns. But so why is he doing this is part of the interesting question. Oh, but side note first.

This is hilarious. He's like, you know, the people won't want to sit next to you at a dinner party. Is that what most people are going to? Are they going to dinner parties nonstop? Like socialite, air of the Swanson, Fortune Tucker Carlson. He speaks from his own elitist perspective so much and he has no idea he's doing it. I mean, is that what the valets, parking or Bentley are saying? I don't think so.

I'm such a populist. I have a flannel shirt. I just bought it. But anyway, why is he doing it? This is the second time he's now come out trying to get past COVID. In fact, he said on the last time that if you get COVID, it might make you more feminine. So don't get COVID. I think that he's gotten to a point where he's like, we've killed off too many of our own voters.

Like, he's turning, no question. He's trying to get beyond killing off his own viewers. And so, look, that's two in a row. You get three and there's no question he's decided for whatever reason. But I think my best theory is like tens of thousands of dead Republicans in swing states. No joke. That could affect elections. And there's the unvaccinated are dying at 10 times the rate.

And now the unvaccinated are almost all Republicans. So he's probably thinking, man, we need Arizona. I gotta stop telling people not to take the vaccine implicitly. Fair. And you know, we see that here in Florida too. We've had 62,000 people die just in this state of COVID. So I do think there's a little bit of an awakening, but obviously these people like Tucker,

they've gone too far. You know, they can't walk it back now and be like, all right, fine, go get vaccinated. So they do come up with the dumbest things, possible, like, hey, if you get COVID, you know, we don't know what that's going to do to your manhood, but it's totally not good. So please don't get COVID because, you know, your junk there. You need to protect it. So it's going to be, it's going to get weird, guys. It's going to get we've already seen because they do have to protect their audience. They have to protect their

voting base. You can't continue to let these people die left and right like they are currently doing, you know, what was it, four times more likely to die of COVID than a Democrat? I mean, being a Republican is a preexisting condition at this point. It's a comorbidity. They finally understand we have to do something, but we've already trashed the vaccine. We've trashed masks. So maybe we talk about the generals. I don't know.

That's where Tucker's at now. And I promise you, it's going to get so much weirder as it goes on. Well, I assume one indication for you then would be if he actually comes out strongly in favor of that pill, the new Pfizer pill. Oh yeah, yeah, there you go. Which I've doubted they would, but I guess we'll see. No, no, look guys, remember it. The right-wing audience is the most impressionable audience in the world.

You just have to say something to them, they'll believe it instantly as long as it's a right-wing are saying it, okay? So you think they can't turn around on the vaccine and say freedom means taking the vaccine? I know it seems impossible, right? But they've gotten them to believe impossible things time after time after time. So, and John makes a great point, the vaccine might be a little too late, but when the pill comes out, I wouldn't be surprised at all that they're like, no, vaccines are not government interference, but the government telling you to take the pill, that's a great idea.

Okay, please stop dying. We're gonna lose Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Okay. All right, we're out of time. So I will end on Mika Gelfand saying in super chat, Senate parliamentarian 2024. I'm amused by it. And MacBain said, Farron, Jenkins, John, indisputably, a super entertaining power panel, and then had a suggestion to build a wall around you, Farron, in Florida,

because you were the most important citizen of Florida, and you needed to be protected. So I like all that. Everybody check out damage report. Love you guys. We've got a whole other hour coming up, and that hour is bananas. Okay, the Fox gets sued. Am I going to defend Stephen Crowder? Wait, what?

All that when we return. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.