The Young Turks - Sloppy Joe

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

American workers are demanding almost $80,000 a year to take a new job. The House Freedom Caucus will ensure that we’ll have yet another government shutdown. "Classless and stupid": White House hits back at RNC over post mocking Biden for petting a dog. "Kaitlan, Kaitlan, Kaitlan!" CNN interview with Vivek Ramaswamy gets heated after Collins brings up his "controversial comments." HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com 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. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too.

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But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients, designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves.

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So we've got a little bit of Vivek. I've got a new nickname for him that I'm going to try it out. Some of the old school folks already know it from last night. Okay. Anyways, or maybe I did it on the show yesterday. We'll find out. There's a couple stories about him. He's trending.

And then Donald Trump's going to turn himself in again for the fourth time. We got important details is he going to get a mug shot? Interesting. We'll find out. Okay, we'll find out. We're going to go Fulton County today. So forward. All right. Well, we begin with the important and substantive story about Logan Paul's girlfriend and whether or not he did in fact break up his engagement with her. I'm kidding. Although I am fascinated by that story, maybe we cover it tomorrow. For now, though, let's start off with some economic news. It's incredibly important. It would take a yearly salary of nearly $80,000 for workers today to leave their current jobs and switch to a new job. And that's according to a new survey that was done by the Federal Reserve of New York. Let's break down their findings a little further.

So the average reservation wage, the lowest annual pay that workers would accept to take a new job, increased to 78,600. $45 in July. And again, that's according to the New York Fed's most recent survey of consumer expectations. That's up from about $72,900 a year earlier and $69,000 in July of 2021. So that's an increase of about 8%. And again, I want to be clear, this is what it would take to essentially lure workers away from their current jobs in order to work at a new company or a new job. Respondents told the bank that they'd expect an annual salary offer of $67,416 upon being offered a job, a record reading in a survey that started in 2014, up from 60,310 reported a year prior.

The increase was broad-based across age, education, and income groups, but was most pronounced for respondents above age 45, and for college graduates, the report said. surprising to me. Like the older you get, the less you are willing to accept, you know, bad pay, poor treatment in the workplace. You're more willing to speak up for yourself and demand more, but also individuals who go to college and get the incredibly expensive degree that typically puts them in debt usually persuades them to demand more pay in order to, you know, pay off that debt and also get their money's worth when it comes to all that time effort they put toward their higher education. So I'm gonna break this down even further when it

comes to demographics because there is a little bit of a difference when it comes to men and women and what they expect or what they demand. Before we get to that, what do you think, Jank? Okay, so first of all, this is really good news. This is good news that we haven't gotten in a long time. I remember saying on the show for so long, 40 years of stagnant wages, then 45 years of stagnant wages. And now wages are actually going up a little bit. So that's Terrific news in America. Of course, make sure media sees this and views it as bad news. Because they say, oh my God, it's inflation. No, we already had inflation, brother. We need wages to keep up with inflation so that you can pay for the things that now costs more.

Now, I'm going to break down for you guys why there is some truth to how this would lead to inflation under normal circumstances and why we're not under normal circumstances. in a little bit. Okay, so just briefly, I do want to talk about the demographic differences here because there are some differences between men and women. Let's put up this graph that shows you what I'm referring to here. So pay expectations among women in the labor force also rose to the tune of 11% in the past year, but it also rose twice as fast for men. However, there's still a huge gap or gender gap, I should say, when it comes to

what's an acceptable salary for men, the average reservation wage was. about $91,000. And for women, it was about $25,000 lower than that at $66,000. Now, that might be because of the fact that men and women typically work in different positions, right? And based on what their average pay is for the job they're doing, you can see a difference in the pay, right? So I don't know if they're comparing similar jobs here when they show that that expectation gap when it comes to higher pay. But I do think that's an important caveat to mention. There's also, of course, differences in expectation based on other socioeconomic factors. The reservation wage for people whose household income is below $60,000 peaked one year after

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic at about $50,800 and has fallen by more than $3,000 since then, while the figure for higher earners continued to rise. That's to say that individuals, who worked, you know, higher paying jobs, white collar jobs typically have increased their expectations when it comes to pay. Those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder have actually lowered their expectations to some extent. So with all of that said, I do want to consider how the high cost of living these days is factoring into all of this and how it really does make sense that workers are demanding more. Let's watch. Take a look at some of the most essential expenses for Americans.

The median monthly rent in the U.S. is $2,029 as of June 2023. That amount already accounts for over 46% of the Americans' median pre-tax income. Americans spent on average $690.75 on food every month, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That amount is significantly higher than any of USDA's estimated grocery bills, including more generous and liberal food plants. At the out-of-pocket health expenditures that cost the average Americans $96.42 every month, and you get a total expense of $2,816 for renters,

and $2,744 for homeowners. That amount already accounts for 85% of the median take-home pay for average American renters, and over 82% for an average homeowner. This is excluding other essential expenses like transportation, child care, and debt payments. No, I mean, this expecting higher pay makes all the sense in the world when you look at the cost of living. But Jenbc will come in and say, well, a higher salary and higher wages for workers usually translates to inflation and we don't want that, right? So I'm going to just quickly give you a few excerpts from a piece that was written in CNBC. Jeff Cox wrote this piece.

So the number is significant in that wages increasingly have been recognized as a driving force in inflation. While goods prices have abated since pushing overall inflation to its highest level in more than 40 years in mid-2020, other factors continue to keep it well above the Fed's targeted rate of 2%. At their July meeting, Fed officials noted that wages were We're still rising at rates above levels assessed to be consistent with the sustained achievement of the 2% inflation goal according to minutes from the meeting. In other words, the Federal Reserve is saying, look, inflation's down, but it's still a little sticky and it appears based on the reporting over at CNBC that the Fed, to some extent,

is blaming higher wages for that inflation. Before Jenk explains what the reality is, I just want to note, look, CNBC is all about providing information to investors who want to maximize their return on investment. And as a result of that, all of their coverage seems to be anti-worker pro-corporate because corporations maximizing profits translates to a higher rate of return for the investors. So that is the reason why you get this kind of framing and this kind of coverage over at CNBC. I think that media literacy is really important. So you're not let astray by the way they frame these topics. Now Jank is going to break it down further. So go ahead.

Okay. So when they say this is increasingly recognized as a driving force in inflation, Who's recognized it as such economists? No, economists have known that higher wages can lead to inflation for all of economics. Everybody knows that that's a possibility. No, they're talking about their own coverage. And I go to CNBC fortunately or unfortunately all the time. And in almost every one of these articles, they say, wages is the problem. Wages, wages, wages.

Now as Anna pointed out, if you're a worker, that's not the problem, that's a solution. But if you're a company, you, that's a double win when the media frames it that way. First of all, you want your workers' salaries to be as low as possible because that's your expenses for the average corporation that doesn't care about its employees. And then second of all, you want them to be the fall guy for inflation when in reality you're driving up the prices and you're making that decision. So I say like, look, normally if you had a healthy, efficient market, inflation can, I'm sorry, higher wages can drive up inflation depending on how much it is. partly because your wages are higher and that theoretically makes the cost of the products higher and also partly because you then have more money to spend and when you do you drive up demand which also could drive up prices. Okay so then you say well okay then I guess they're right. No

because this is not an efficient market. This is a very inefficient market and we have the evidence to prove it we've shown it to you in dozens of stories that we've covered where in the shareholder meetings, the CEO's brag, oh, it turns out we didn't have to raise prices this much, but we did, and it turns out the consumer was able to bear it. So we increase and increase. Why are they bragging about that? Because they're telling shareholders, look at all this extra profit that we got you guys by using inflation as an excuse to maximize profit. Now, I get their motivation. I'm a business person. I understand they want to maximize profit. And that's why they're bragging about it.

But they are revealing 100% certainty, especially the retail stores and the grocery stores. Most of all, we had a lot of quotes from them saying, we don't have to raise the prices this much. We're choosing to. But publicly, when they go and talk to the press, they go, oh, the wages. Oh, the goddamn wages of the average, man, that's the real problem. And the press, especially CNBC, loves that framing and does that marketing for them. In reality, the reason why the prices are so inelastic, meaning that they're not actually responding to market forces, and hence the inefficient market, is because they basically have monopoly or oligopoly power now. They've consolidated these industries so much that you don't have real competition, which, by the way, if you're a right winger, you should hate that because competition is the essence of capitalism.

And Adam Smith warned when he wrote about capitalism, you have to make sure they don't set up monopolies or oligopolis. Otherwise, the consumer is screwed and the market is screwed and capitalism is screwed. And what we have today is not capitalism. It's corporatism. These corporations have taken over. They've captured the government and they have used that to get rid of regulations that will limit how much they could merge. So they have merged and merged and merged until they have complete control over pricing. That is why these markets are terribly inefficient and why you must get higher wages to match the increases that they're driving through to maximize profit. Absolutely. So just to buttress's point and reinforce what he's saying here, I want to provide the receipts. Let's start off with a study that was done by the Economic Policy Institute because they wanted to look into how corporate greed and price gouging was contributing to inflation.

And if you look at this graph that they put together, you'll notice that, you know, corporate profits as a result of, you know, the price gouging has increased significantly. For instance, over half of the bump in inflation, 53.9% can be attributed to fatter profit margins with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. And this isn't normal. So for instance, between 1979 and 2019, profits only contributed about 11,000. to price growth and labor costs over 60%. Non-labor inputs, in part, an indicator for issues in the supply chain are also driving up prices more than usual.

Things haven't been smoothed out since the coronavirus pandemic and how it impacted are pretty fragile supply chains. So that has also contributed. But look, the Economic Policy Institute, some people like to brush it off as, oh, it's a progressive organization. They're going to, of course, be anti-corporation, pro-worker, and they're going to skew the results. I don't believe that, but if you do, let me give you more information, different receipts, this time from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. They released a report in May of this year, and here's what they found. Labor cost growth has a small effect on non-housing services inflation, as well as inflation overall. The estimates imply that the recent surge in the employment cost index explains only about 0.1% point of current elevated inflation readings, a negligible portion of the 3% percentage

point increase in the core personal consumption expenditures measure. And I mean, like, there's other examples. We've covered this extensively. Even the Wall Street Journal of all places, admitted in two separate pieces that corporate profits is what is leading to inflation, not higher wages. Here's one example, that was a headline written by the Wall Street Journal in May of this year. Why is inflation so sticky? It could be corporate profits. Some companies might have been raising prices faster than their costs have increased. And the New York Times has covered this, again, blaming corporate profits instead of, you know, honing it. on how rising wages has allegedly translated to inflation.

So the evidence is out there. And I do think that considering the cost of living, considering the evidence that we showed you in terms of how much it costs to put food on the table, asking for better pay makes all the sense in the world. Yeah. And so my last points are just to point out that facts are real. So the chart we showed you there is indisputable. corporate profits are driving inflation far more than labor costs are. And look, you know it's true

when the Federal Reserve and the Wall Street Journal both have to concede, it's corporate profit taking for sure. And so there's actually no real dispute over it. The numbers are very, very clear. The only reason why, and by the way, if you watch mainstream media, and I encourage you to do this, I mean, kind of, right, you will see, or you read their articles, you will see that they will not tell you that consensus. It's not that the consensus doesn't appear in their papers at all. And Noam Chomsky's written about this decades ago. No, they'll give you the facts, but the framing is the important part.

They'll give it to you in one article when they're talking about that specific issue. But when they go back to talking about any other political angle, in this case, the rising wages, they will frame it as, no, forget all of the data that we showed you earlier. we're going to blame it on the workers and say it's their fault and they and they shouldn't get as a high a wage, right? So and finally, and even the good news today, and it is good news, it's always great when wages go up for the average American. But you have to be cognizant that it's, we're looking at averages here, which means that there's a bifurcation in our system. Yes. And so in America's the richest country in the world by a lot, but the great majority of us don't feel that.

right? And 40% of the country is going to get knocked out by a $400 bill at least. And so what gives? Well, it's actually relatively simple. The people at the top have an extreme amount of money and it skews the numbers. So in this case, it's white collar jobs that are skewing the number for blue collar jobs. And so some of you have written in already members and we love doing the show with members and saying, wait, I don't see that in my wages at all. That's right. That's because of the bioterty. bifurcation. So even if your wages don't go up that much, somebody that's got a white color job, their wages went up a lot. So then the average goes up and people go mission accomplished when it wasn't accomplished for you at all. So I don't want this to be,

you know, endlessly depressing. I'm just giving you the full range of facts and overall still a good thing that wages are rising and it is pulling up some of the lower and middle wages as well. Yeah, you're right in mentioning that disconnect, that bifurcation. The one final thing I'll mention in regard to that is when it comes to some blue collar workers, some blue collar jobs, there's even a divide there among those workers. Because if you have, let's say, union representation, like the teamsters with UPS drivers and delivery workers, they've gotten a huge pay raise as a result of that union representation, right?

And so that's why when we talk about some of the negative aspects of the government, or how the economy is playing out for some people. What gives me a little bit of hope is seeing places that typically would not have unionized or even had discussions about unionizing, organizing their workplace, right? That's where you see some silver linings and hopefully that trend, especially among blue collar workers, continues. Anyway, we're gonna take a break. When we come back, we're going to focus on how the far right House Freedom Caucus

is planning on basically shutting down the government again. We'll tell you what they're demanding from Democrats when we return. who just joined at as a premium member. Jeff, you're awesome for two reasons. Thank you for joining him being one of us. And secondly, when you join at the higher levels or you upgrade to the higher levels, which you can do through the join button too, you allow us to keep prices at $4.99 for everyone else.

So we appreciate you everybody does saying cloud dragon gift to the Youngst membership and Vicki Gray gifted five. So you guys are American heroes. We appreciate you. Thank you for helping the community. Speaking of the community, tonight in the bonus episode for the members, I'm going to explain TYT's core values. So we wrote those up recently.

I want to share them with you guys. I mentioned about it on a different show, but we've got to mention them here on the Young Turks. So all the members, make sure you're sticking around for that. I think it should be a really interesting conversation tonight on the bonus episode. All right, Anna. All right. The far right House Freedom Caucus seems to be scheming for yet another government shut down. And the way they're doing that is they are using their slim majority in the House of Representatives as leverage to play hardball.

and make all sorts of demands that, for now at least, the Democrats and the Biden administration claim are non-starters. Here's what you need to know about this impending hostage situation, which plays out over and over and over again. I'm kind of exhausted by these recycled stories, these recycled tactics, but nonetheless, here you go. So to keep the government funded, Congress needs to pass 12-yearly appropriations. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging.

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bills by September 30th. Now, so far, Congress has managed to pass one of those appropriation bills, which is not a good sign because currently the Senate is on recess. They don't even come back from recess until September 5th. And the House won't return until September 12th. I mean, do they do anything other than recessing and fundraising while they recess, of course? No, it's really amazing. Hey, guys, do you all get August off the entire month of August? insane. Okay, like the, the, the, the, our legislators are like the French. I don't even think the French, you know, holidays, as much as our members of Congress do. Yeah, that might, yeah, but they took the English system for everyone else, the protanical system where you have to all work 24-7.

But for themselves, they took the French system and then you're right, Anna, doubled it, tripled, quadrupled. I'm telling you, when I ran for Congress, I checked, they work only half the year. And then still Marjorie Taylor Green comes out and goes, oh, they're making. I think it's work too hard. It's, it's, this is way too much. I can't even run my side hustles efficiently. All right. So since, uh, things are looking pretty grim for the government funding bill,

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, is trying to pass what's known as a stopgap bill. It's a continuing resolution to solve the issue, which will keep the government funded, um, at the levels that they're currently at for a particular period of time. Now, McCarthy has not specified how long that period of time would be. But nonetheless, the House Freedom Caucus is essentially blocking that plan. And they're saying that in order to get their votes for this continuing resolution, they would need to get some of their demands met. Now, what are those demands?

Of course, they want to cut spending below what Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden had negotiated as part of the debt ceiling bill. Okay, that doesn't surprise me at all. They always want to cut spending. When they want to cut spending, it's usually focused on a lot of social programs, but they want to cut spending on other things like foreign aid. But they want to increase spending when it comes to other things like construction of the border wall. So a sweeping GOP border bill that has stalled in the Senate addressing the unprecedented weaponization,

they claim of the Justice Department and the FBI, in a nod, of course, to Donald Trump, who has been indicted in two federal cases, and then they also want to end woke defense department policies. Okay. And when it comes to the border bill in particular, they want to restart border wall construction. They want to significantly increase the number of border patrol agents. They want to restrict the federal government's use of humanitarian parole and make it more difficult for individuals to obtain asylum. And they want to enshrine the Trump policies of migration protection protocol, MPP, and asylum cooperation agreement, ACA. And so they want asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while pursuing asylum in the United States.

You'd have to work that out with Mexico, of course. And as far as I've been hearing, officials in Mexico are getting pretty tired of this type of immigration policy from the United States. And they want asylum seekers from Honduras and El Salvador to basically go to Guatemala. as a safe third country to pursue asylum instead. Yeah, all right, they're going to shut down the government, guys. That's the conclusion. And so look, there's several stages of this.

This is a continuing resolution because they don't have enough time to put the bill together yet. The final bill is going to pass theoretically in December that funds the government. But if you don't pass the continuing resolution, you run out of money. And the government shuts down. So they're threatening to shut it down now. Normally they would threaten to shut it down in December. These are the games that everybody plays, right? And then is this time different than the other times?

The answer is yes, and I'll explain more why in a second. But in terms of will they be able to shut it down, I think almost definitely. Why the Republicans only have a five vote advantage in the House? And the House Freedom Caucus is, I think, over 40 people. So they have plenty of votes to block a Republican-only bill. then McCarthy would have to get the Democrats on board. I'll come back to that in a second. But why would the Democrats definitely not vote for this?

Because of several things. One is the weaponization of the Justice Department is not explained, and neither is the woke defense department. These aren't serious people. Yeah, these are just, these are all just talking points. They never explained it. And presumably later, maybe they will put together an actual proposal to put the Pentagon back to sleep so that it's not woke.

But I don't know how that's going to work. I don't know if they're going to do hypnosis, et cetera. But the Democrats can agree to spending cuts all day long because their donors also want that. And that's how the game is normally played, where the Democrats go, we're not going to give you any spending cuts. And the Republicans go, oh, yeah, I'll shut down the government. I won't raise the debt ceiling, et cetera. And the Democrats go, oh, no, I can't believe it.

Their donors and our donors agree. I mean, I mean, they made us do it. Okay, golly gee. So that's how this theater is normally played, and mainstream media comes in and brainwashes. They used to brainwashed the whole country. Now they mainly just brainwashed Democrats and into believing in the theater. And they're like, oh, wow, this is a new thing. The government shut down.

We've never seen it. This is amazing. Oh, they got the Democrats, there was nothing they could do. They had to give into these unruly, uncontrollable Republicans. Golly, gee. So I'm with Anna. I'm exhausted of covering that stupid theater. It's never real. In this case though, no, the Freedom Caucus wants blood and they have a political

motivation outside of the woke Pentagon and all that garbage. Yes. They want the economy to suffer so that Biden loses and Trump wins. It's not hard at all, it's not complicated. So McCarthy also wants that, but he's stuck between his donors and wanting to tank the economy in favor of Trump. So I think, so he'll eventually go get Democrats, I think like in December or January or February or whatever the hell they get them, right? But in the beginning, the Freedom Caucus is going to deliver on their threat. And McCarthy's not going to go get Democratic voters right away because he's worried

about getting voted out by the caucus. So they'll shut it down, is my guess. I totally agree with you. I think they are going to shut down the government. And look, they want to cause. enough damage where it hurts Biden? Because if they shut down the government, and by the way, when they shut down the government, that means certain government agencies stop getting funded, which means certain services that people rely on will no longer be available until a spending

bill passes, right? And so people are going to get frustrated and who are they going to blame? Are they going to get into the weeds of how these negotiations happened and what kind of schemes politicians are playing? No, they're going to blame the commander in chief, the guy who's in charge. they're going to blame Biden. So that political motivation certainly exists. And one other thing I wanted to mention, because that wasn't the end of their demands. The other thing they're demanding is they want to oppose a blank check for Ukraine after the Biden administration's new request for billions in additional aid.

In fact, on August 11th, Biden did in fact ask Congress for an additional $24 billion in aid to Ukraine. Yeah, so now in the old days, and political reporters can't do any analogies or any examples that aren't at least 20 years old, because God forbid they should catch up to the modern days. But in the old days, when New Gingrich shut the government down, Bill Clinton said, I'll be your Huckleberry. Go ahead, shut it down. Let's see how it goes. And it backfired on the Republicans, and it helped the Democrats. So the Republicans have been gunshot and do it ever since. And every time they threaten it, the reporters come out with, oh, you remember New Guinea? Right? But these are different days brothers and sisters. Back then, first of all, Bill Clinton was good at one thing, which is he could talk to the average American. Marketing. It's marketing. That's what it is. And he was a really good communicator. And he found a way and he was totally right in that case. He wasn't always right, but he was right about that to say, yeah, it was them that did it. And there was no question, right? Now, first of all, one of the differences is Joe Biden is a terrible communicator.

terrible. So what he'll say is, oh, my Republican friends, you know, I can't quite give them everything they want. And but I'll take half the blame. And so then it'll get super cloudy. And then the Republicans now have a machine, a marketing machine, they did not have in the 90s. Fox News started in 96, okay? They now have this awesome media machine. And it will roll out And it'll say, oh my God, they're sending all the money to Ukraine. It should be America first. And I can't believe how much overspending they're doing. And by the way, and here's another critical fact that I read about this.

So when they shut down the government, their theory is, and I don't know that it's exactly right, but that a lot of the government over 50% easily will be able to keep going, and they'll only shut down things that they think aren't going to affect people that much. I don't know if they're right about that, but if that's true, then they'll go to the Vivek Ramoswamy talking points and said, oh, well, we wanted to shut down half the government anyway. Those are bureaucrats that are inefficient, and that right-wing media machine will roar, and Biden will do nothing to counter it, in which case he will get blamed for it. And then the Republicans think, win-win, how do we get this lucky? We shut down the government, our opponents get blamed for it, and our extreme base is thrilled because they think they're going to get a border wall. and we're going to put the Pentagon back to sleep and all of these demands that we want.

It looks like they're fighting for them and they get a political win out of it. I would be shocked if they didn't shut the government down. All right, let's move on to some updates on, well, Biden's visit to Maui and some of the perceived foibles and actual foibles. Let's do it. My, what's the boss's name? How are you doing about it? Catch the boots out here? That's a hard time, man.

Believe it or not, the moment that you just witnessed of President Joe Biden visiting Maui following these fires essentially led to Biden getting under fire by the Republican National Committee. In fact, they put this out on X, formerly known as Twitter. Biden gets distracted by a dog. That's some hot ground, man, referring. to the literal hot asphalt that the dog is standing on, which makes me like Biden more. There's nothing wrong with him noticing the dog, patting the dog on the head, and noting the fact that the asphalt ground is too hot for that dog. But nonetheless, if you are going to

go after Biden in regard to his, you know, behavior around the Maui wildfires, he's a target rich environment. What are you guys doing? You're guys going after the one moment where he shows his human side and shows how sweet he is to a dog? This is the endearing thing that you guys are talking about here. Yeah. Look, I haven't seen the Republicans be this wrong in a long time. When it comes to populism and how to appeal to the average voter, don't get me wrong. Like, their policies are abhorrent. They don't make any sense. But when it comes to politics, they run circles around the Democrats. They do. Democrats are like, hey, where'd they go? they go, Allah, we got hit again in the back of the head, right?

Another way to put it is the optics, right? The messaging, the optics. This is not about policy. This is just about the politics. Yeah. So in this case, though, they seem to have lost their touch. You're going to attack a brother for petting a dog? Like, that's the worst politicalistics I've ever seen.

I don't know if they got Trumpitis. Trump doesn't like dogs. So maybe they're like, okay, that's it from now on. We all hate dogs. America, mega, hate dogs, hate dogs. But brother, you might, that might be the one thing that MAGA can't go along with Trump on. I mean, you found it. Congratulations. They're trying to paint Biden as aloof, as someone who's easily distracted, doesn't really care.

But this ain't it. In fact, the Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates tweeted, he's petting one of the dogs that's working hard, searching for remains so survivors who have lost loved ones can have closure. This criticism is classless and stupid, and I agree with Bates on that. But my favorite reaction to the R&C tweet was the following by guy named Kevin Tripp. Is R&C research run by cats? That was great. Look, guys, someone else wrote this too. I talked about it on old school last night.

I don't even understand this line of attack. Like, Biden gets distracted by a dog. who what that is the worst attack I've ever seen that's some hot ground man like Biden has said a lot of weird things that's not among them the cute little dog has the boots because the ground was on fire and you're going to criticize Biden for that it's just nonsensical because why we're in a world now where logic and facts don't matter so they're like I don't know it doesn't matter just say anything about it that's not a bitch like dogs we got them right because no one cares about logic. Okay, so let's move on because there are actual, honestly, foibles by Biden

that I think are worth discussing areas where you could, you know, criticize him. And I want to talk about those right now. So look, when President Biden met with some of the survivors of the Maui wildfires, I guess he wanted to connect to them to some extent, wanted to show that he understands the pain that they're feeling. And so when he was in Lahaina on Monday, he said that he could relate because he suffered from a fire himself. Let's take a look at that video. I don't want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it's like to lose a home.

Years ago, now 15 years ago, I was in Washington. Do we meet the press? It was a sunny Sunday. And lightning struck at home on a little lake that's outside of our home. not like a big pond and hit a wire and came up underneath our home into the heating ducts, the air conditioning duct. Make a long story short, almost lost my wife, my 67 Corvette, and my cat. We were insured we did not have any problem, but being out of our home for a better part of a year, It's difficult. I can only imagine what it's like to lose your home completely.

It was a kitchen fire, and they didn't lose their home. I mean, look, it's worse than that. The fire department called it, quote, insignificant. Okay, what are you doing? What do you do? You can't, don't do this. This is so stupid. So let me give you a few excerpts from a piece about this 2004 fire. He once said that he knew what it was like to have a house burned down with my wife in it. Last year, he also told survivors of Hurricane Ian in Florida that he had lost an awful lot of his Delaware home in the fire. But the Cranston Heights Fire Company, which responded to the 2004 Blaze, described it to the New York Post as an insignificant fire that did not

lead to multiple alarms or need a widespread incident response throughout the county. Guys, it's like me responding to the floods in Juneau, Alaska, which we covered last week, by saying, I know what it's like to suffer from a flood and lose my home. In fact, a pipe burst in a common wall in the condo building I lived in and it flooded my kitchen. And I mean, like when he says we had to leave, they had to move out for a long time, Is it because the kitchen was being renovated? Like what is he talking? Honestly, probably.

Dude, what are you doing? What are you doing? This is so dumb. So I literally had a kitchen fire when I was in college for guys living together. We go out on Halloween, we come back, the fire departments inside a courtyard of the building that we're living in. We're like, oh look, our neighbor is house burnt down. And we're like, wait a minute, that's not our neighbor, that's our house, okay? And so I was wondering if Biden in the speech, because I saw the headline first, then I watched this speech.

And I wondered, is Biden going to say, hey, look, just like we did, we had a kitchen fire. It didn't burn the whole place down. But it like all of our furniture, all of our clothes were absolutely, it's like smoke-infested. We had to go to dry cleaning. We had to get new furniture. And it was a giant mess. I would say, like if I was trying to relate to these people, I wouldn't bring it up at all. No, definitely not.

I would say, and we were knocked out of the house for a couple of months, et cetera, et cetera. But that's at best like 1% of what you guys live through. I cannot imagine a hundred times what I experienced, a thousand times what I experienced. Like I was like, if he frames it that way, I'm good with it, right? Instead I watch the tape and he's like, I almost lost my wife in that insignificant fight. No, you didn't, brother. You didn't almost lose your house, you didn't almost lose your wife. The fire, come on.

The fire was out within 20 minutes. No, come on, brother. 20 minutes, don't stop doing this, stop doing this. And it's not the first time he's done. That's the problem. He keeps doing it. It's not the first time. It's not the millionth time.

The guy's a serial fabricator slash exaggerator, okay? So Trump will make up wild, outrageous lies that have no connection to reality. So it's kind of more glaring. But what Biden does is he'll take a tiny little story and he'll blow it up into something huge that isn't true, right? So for example, did he go to South Africa during apartheid? Yes, he did. Now if you leave it there and go, I went there to support Nelson Mandela, do the best I could. Good enough.

That's great, that's wonderful, right? You don't have to exaggerate beyond. He's like, I got arrested with Nelson Mandela. But you didn't, brother. You didn't. And that's a terrible lie. Don't say that. And I remember when we brought that up during the primaries.

People got so mad at us. They got, exactly. Mainstream, I mean, like, think about how insane it is. That mainstream media is like, how dare you bring up something that's true? You're hurting his chances. Wait, I thought we were all supposed to be objective. No, he's hurting his chances. He's hurting his chances.

Can we just please acknowledge the fact. that you literally have members of the media getting mad at other members of the media for reporting the truth and holding politicians accountable because they're worried that Trump might beat Biden in the presidential election. I think Biden should be worried about Trump beating him in the presidential election. You're just not making these stupid lies and these stupid speeches. So look, guys, we're constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? You got the Republicans who are like, don't pet dogs. And you're like, what? Why did you make that up about this guy, right? And we're honest about it. We defend him on that. And then Biden turns around

and says these ridiculous things during the speech. And so, and look, guys, I'm going to be honest here, as we always are, and we'll get tremendous blowback for it. Usually that's how it works. He's too old. I know everyone at home is going, well, of course, you're not going going to get a blowback for that. That's the most obvious thing in the world. I just saw that tape. That dude's too old. To be fair, I saw that tape too. He did have Riz. You don't have any kind of Riz, man. So although he once almost lost his house to a Riz. Okay, so anyways, or maybe his wife, he didn't.

So bottom line is, this guy is very hobbled. And the Democrats are like, no, no, it's okay. We'll wheel him in like we do with Diane Feinstein. And we just hope that Trump's a candidate and hope that he doesn't win, even though right now Biden and Trump are tied. I mean, all the monstrosity of Donald Trump, and Biden is tied with him. Now, this is madness to go into the election with Biden. Total madness.

But when we say he's too old, he's obviously too old. People in Washington are like, how dare you? Okay, whatever. Go lose. Go lose. See how you like it. When we come back from the break, we will discuss Vivek Ramoswami's multiple controversies over like the last 24 hours.

Lots to get into. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. Now, where's Mandela? Well, Mandela's dead. All right, back on TYT, Jenk, Anna, a number of American heroes, Paul Pons 805, Mel Q, S-Daze, Lonnie, Darrell, Harris, you guys are all amazing. Thank you for hitting the join button below and becoming young Turks members and helping us do honest reporting and Jay Jesper 82. Add it again,

five YouTube memberships this time, total American hero. We appreciate you all. Casper. Let's talk a little bit about Rott Maswami's contentious interview with Caitlin Collins. We'll put a gun in every Taiwanese household, train them how to use it. That is how you make Xi Jinping think twice. Do you really think that would be? a sufficient plan to deter a Chinese invasion if it includes long-range missiles, ground troops, an aerial blockade, a naval blockade. All of the different measures here. Caitlin, Caitlin.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramoswamy had a contentious interview with CNN's Caitlin Collins over his suggestion that arming the people of Taiwan with firearms could potentially help them defend themselves against an invasion by China. Now let's watch more of that conversation, how it went down, and then we'll talk about the reality. Caitlin, of course it's not sufficient. You take that tiny little clip when I've articulated at the Nixon Library last week a one hour's speech with a whole range of deterrence. That is part of it. But I've also said that I would pull Russia out of its military lines with China. I've also said that we would bolster our partnership with India to be able to close the Andaman Sea and

the Malacca straight. I've also said that we would actually send a signal very clearly that we will defend Taiwan, moving from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity to say that we will defend Taiwan until we have semiconductor independence in this country. And so yes, part of this is turning Taiwan into a porcupine. I think exporting our second amendment is a relatively free or low cost way to do that. But I find it laughable that you will take that. clip and then put words into my mouth as though that was a sufficient deterrent. Caitlin, with due respect, that's a joke. I will not allow someone to put words in my mouth to say that I ever said that was sufficient.

I'm not putting words in your mouth. I'm simply asking out something you said. We played a quote that you've made. Speaking of another comment that you've made. I never said it was sufficient. So I went into his full speech at the Nixon Library and he's actually telling the truth, hyper focusing on what, to me, was more of like a throwaway statement or something to kind of like attract potentially campaign donations from the NRA. It's just not the, it's not really a good

representation of something more comprehensive that he shared during that speech about his foreign policy. You might disagree with his foreign policy. And honestly, I think that what he actually said during his speech, some parts of it were incredibly naive and we can get into that. But I want to provide the receipts and show you what he actually said during that speech. Before I do, briefly, Jank, what are your thoughts? Yeah, so I was set to disagree with him because I think he put that part in the speech, both to appeal to the base and to get the media to talk about it because it's so outrageously stupid, in my opinion.

But once I watch the speech and the interview, I think that he is right about the core of what he's saying, which is he didn't say sufficient. And saying sufficient changes the entire tenor of what he was saying. So let's get into what he actually said during his speech. I think it's actually interesting, maybe a discussion about foreign policy and whether or not he's right. So during that speech, again, it was last week at the Nixon Library, he said that one of the first things he wanted to do was end the war in Ukraine. He says that he refuses to use the resources of the United States on the Russian invasion in Ukraine when we should be using our resources on the invasion on our. southern border. So right off the bat, obviously I disagree with his framing there entirely.

But nonetheless, he also would stop arming Ukraine, which would force Ukraine to give up territory like the Donbos region and essentially agree to like some sort of peace agreement with Putin. And then he would agree to do something else that he claims Russia wants. So let's take a look at that. the single greatest military threat that we face in the U.S. today. I will end the Ukraine war on terms that require Vladimir Putin to exit his military alliance with China. The deal I will do with Vladimir Putin is simple. We will freeze the current lines of control.

We will further make a hard commitment. that NATO will never admit Ukraine to NATO. I will require that Russia exit its military alliance with China. I will require that Russia remove its nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, the strip of Russia that borders Poland. And I will require, pursuant to my modern Monroe doctrine, that Russia remove its military presence in the Western Hemisphere, not in Cuba, not in Venezuela, not in Nicaragua, you're out.

And in return, we will reopen economic relations with Russia, just as Nixon did with China. Now, cutting off Russia economically with economic sanctions has not been persuasive to Putin. Keep that in mind. I think that it's naive to think that if we make a commitment to preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, that Putin would agree to like end his alliance with China. I, that's the area where I think Vivek Ramoswamy is being incredibly naive. But he does think that if he succeeds in that, in basically having Russia end its alliance with China, that would have an impact on China's foreign policy in Taiwan.

So I want to go to the next video and then we'll get your thoughts, Jake. Let's watch. The argument goes that if Putin walks away with parts of the Donbos region, that that will somehow cause Xi Jinping to be emboldened. to think he can walk away with impunity if he takes a piece of Taiwan. I think it's actually the reverse. That's true. Today we are driving Russia further into China's hands. And Xi Jinping's calculus is that the U.S. will not want to go into conflict

with two different allied nuclear superpowers, Russia and China, at the same time. But if Russia is no longer in China's camp, is no longer a 2000, 1,001 treaty ally as they are today, then Xi Jinping will have to think twice before going after Taiwan. Okay, so very curious what you think about his foreign policy so far. Before I go to you though, clearly he's talking about a lot more than just arming the people of Taiwan, right? So relevant to the conversation with Caitlin Collins.

Yeah. So first I'm gonna tell you three things that I think Vivek's wrong about, and then three things that the media is wrong about in covering him. So in terms of the foreign policy speech, there's three layers to it. First one is fairly standards Republican talking points now about freezing the action where it is now, basically giving Dombas to the Russians and stopping all to Ukraine. I don't agree with it at all, but it's not crazy. I mean, it is crazy in my opinion, but it's not crazy to Republicans. It's perfectly normal within Republican circles. Then he gets into these fun ideas about, oh, we're going to get Russia to withdraw from Cuba and

Venezuela, et cetera, and we're going to get them out of the area next to Poland. And we're going to do this grand deal with China, totally, utterly unrealistic, not how diplomacy works. You don't think that will be enticing to Vladimir Putin? Yeah, I'm sure he's this close to it. Besides which, the whole thing's based on a fantasy that we're going to get into military conflict with Russia and China, that they're going to gang up on us. They're not going to start a giant war against us.

We're not worried about it. We're worried about, hey, are we going to have regional conflicts that start to spiral out of control like Taiwan, Ukraine, et cetera. But he makes it sound like as if they're going to attack us all at once. China sells to us more than they sell to anyone. They would ruin their own economy if they got into a significant conflict with America. So look, I don't think any of that makes any sense. I think it's a little childish.

But that's a disagreement. Republicans have to go radical these days. If you just do a normal, logical diplomatic solution offer, the Republican base will hate it, right? So, okay, but the third layer is this. Let's arm the Taiwanese with AR-15s. Now, that's so over the top and ridiculous that it's meant to draw media attention.

It's meant to, he's catfishing. He's like, oh, yeah, and then I'm going to give all the folks. in Taiwan, AR-15s and hand grenades. Come on, media, anybody out there, anybody out there? And by the way, I respect the, you know, hate the game, don't hate the player, right? I respect what he's doing.

In fact, the just Democrats should do, but with rational things, he's saying, shiny object, shiny object, come attack. Now, then he's going to say, hey, I got this thing where we're going to give up on Ukraine, and we're going to support the Russians and the Republican voters like that, right? So it's a fine strategy in terms of optics and politics is terrible on the policy. But what is the media reaction? Instead of bringing it down like we just did.

Okay, so Caitlin Collins says, so you think just giving guns to the Taiwanese is sufficient? But he didn't say sufficient. No. He laid out a 48 minute speech where that was a small part of the whole thing. And when you frame it that way in a dishonest way, then it's mana from heaven for him. Because then he gets to be a victim of the media too. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

So you're feeding right into him. He could like if I'm on Vivek's team, I love how that went, right? Totally. Yes, now I'm the hero fighting back against CNN and I caught him in a lie. By the way, right? And by the way, look, honestly at this point, I don't, I don't trust CNN. I don't trust any legacy media organization on reporting all of the facts as I'm reading or watching what they're putting out into the world, right?

Which is why now, like, you have to go to the source material. This is what they're claiming about his speech, go watch his speech and figure out whether or not they're telling the truth, right? Because again, that was one tiny line or one tiny part of this lengthy speech. He even got into the third part of this, which was how he would get India involved in helping to essentially protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. Let's watch that. Combine with that, a renewed commitment to our partnership that we may expand with India.

Hard commitments to close the Andaman Sea and block the Malacca Strait if required in the form of, in the position of potential conflict arising around Taiwan, India would happily do that if we gave them a trade deal that looked similar to what we have already with Chile or Australia. So, you know, his argument is if India shuts down, you know, that straight, China would be cut out from its energy needs. And so that's an area of leverage that he would implement in order to essentially, it would be a deterrent to an invasion by China, okay? So look, again, I have issues with the policy, but let's have a discussion about the

foreign policy as he's setting it out. Instead of hyper focusing on one tiny part of it to make it appear as though he's just a lunatic who has no real solutions and just wants to put guns in everyone's hands. Yeah, so look, there's more about the media. So if you're wondering, well, is he being ridiculous or is the media being absurdly biased? The answer is both, both. So if it was just that CNN thing, you say, okay, look, they say it sufficient, they shouldn't assess sufficient. Let's move on, right? No, then they go on MSNBC and they ask Bikari Sellers.

I think, no, I'm sorry, I think that was CNN again. They asked Bacari Sellers about Vivek and his foreign policy. Now, mind you, they play a clip of him playing tennis without his shirt on, which he purposely put on the internet to get attention like RFK Jr. He's playing all the tricks, right? Anyways, so they bite into, they get catfish on that. And then Baccari Sellers says, this guy's a lightweight. He's going to get exposed in the debates because he doesn't know anything about foreign policy,

unlike those accomplished politicians. Get out of here. To be fair, Bricarcellers, didn't say unlike the accomplished politicians. But that is this clear insinuation. In reality, that was an interesting foreign policy speech. I think it was ridiculous in that it was wrong and unrealistic and naive. But it's not like he didn't have command of the material. I mean, how many times did he mentioned the Malacca Strait?

He seems obsessed by it. And how many other politicians know the Malacca Strait? In that debate, he's going to get exposed? Nah, you know, look, they're so biased. But not, it's not just that they're biased, right? If you exist in a media bubble, like, I don't think Bakari Sellers sat down and watched that speech. I don't think Bikari Sellers has any idea what Ramoswami's foreign policy is. And the reason why I say that is because if you exist in CNN, where everyone is hyper-focusing on this one tiny part of his

speech, then you're not getting all the information. And so that arrogant, elitism that you hear in that commentary comes from a place of ignorance, which is so ironic because he thinks, no, no, no, I know better. Ramoswamy has no idea what he's talking about. He's going to get crushed in the debates. And finally, I got to give you one headline from Huff Post, because this is the other thing that drives me crazy. Here's what the headline reads, Vivek Ramoswami's mansplaining to CNN's Caitlin Collins

riles up critics. Where was the mansplaining? That's insane. Total insanity. I mean, this is a gift from the gods to Vivek Ramoswami. They're being insanely biased. So Bacari doesn't do it just out of arrogance and ignorance, which is in plentiful supply for him and the entire crew at CNN, MSNBC, all those dumbass pundits.

Oh, the establishment knows best. The politicians are so smart. Oh, outsider. Boo! Outsider, what we need to know, lightweight. Every outsider is a lightweight, every outside. It doesn't matter how many degrees they have. It doesn't matter if they're on the right or the left.

Bikari sellers at every pundit on cable television. despises every outsider. They're seething about it. Now, the third example I was going to give was the one Anna just gave about health posts. Where the hell's the mansplaining? The guy's a candidate for president, and unfortunately he's polling a third right now in the Republican party. You ask him about one of his policy positions.

You even forget that you incorrectly summarize it. You ask him about his policy position, he explains it. And then you call that mansplaining? That's crazy. So can a male candidate not ever explain their policy positions to a female anchor? If it's a male candidate that they like. Yeah, this is no, look guys, this is how they lost all credibility. This is why America can't stand the mainstream media and can't stand this kind of crap.

And then what does it do? It makes them accidentally embrace Vivek because Vivek looks like he's the opposite of that. And much worse, it makes them embrace Donald Trump because he's looking. looks like he's fighting against that. And anytime a populace rises up on the left to also challenge the mainstream media and the establishment, but with logical and popular proposals, what do they do? They sent out Bakari Sellers and everyone else to, and Caitlin Collins and stuff, to look down their nose and I'm going, Outsider, lightweight, our beloved politicians are the ones

that are correct, they're the ones that know everything, do they? the insiders have ruined this country, absolutely ruined it. And instead you have these clowns here, and they don't even know how to actually attack his proposals that didn't make sense in the first place. But you need to know policy in order to actually execute that. And God forbid that anyone on television should ever learn policy. Well, Vivek is also flirting with 9-11 related conspiracy theories, including the notion that it was an inside job.

So we're gonna get into a discussion about that as well when we come back. from the break stick around thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad-free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon