The Young Turks - Surveillance State

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Rishi Sunak will succeed Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister. Voters dropping off their ballots have reported being harassed and recorded. Senator Ron Johnson was shocked when an interviewer gave him the figure that corporations had made $2 trillion in the second quarter. Trump and DeSantis continue their petty drama after DeSantis endorses someone Trump doesn’t like. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. It's up! All right, well, come to the entrance, Jake Eganica Sparion with you guys. Are we going to have an excellent show for you guys? I'm not sure. It's going to be all right. All right.

It's going to be all right. Yeah. Stories are show show today in my opinion, just keeping it real. The most honest show in America, okay? Totally. So we do have a couple of fascinating stories for you guys, only a couple. Anyways. No, they're interesting, but like, you know, sometimes there's a story in the rundown where

like after I'm done producing it or after someone on the team is done producing it, like, I'll read the details and just feel so enthusiastic to share the news with people. people, even if it's bad news, it's like, it's something that I care about, like deeply, passionately. Today it's like updates on stories we did previously, you know, Great Britain's in a lot of trouble. They can't get their act together. Their electoral system is a little questionable if you ask me. We'll get to that later. We're going to talk about, you know, corporate greed. The yush. The yush. The yush. The yush. Okay. All right, most honest show in America. No one else would ever say this about their own show before we get started.

All right, anyways, we do have something in the bonus episode that I am looking forward to a lot. And that is how right wing racist got scammed. Oh, that's a great story. You guys are going to love that. All right. It's a good time for your member. I'm still giving away a hollis, a lot of gift cards. All right, t.com slash strength.

All right, Casper, let's get. Let's do it. Well, it looks like the UK is dealing with a prime mess. Having served as Chancellor throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, his resignation came as one of the most damaging to Boris Johnson in July. After the resignation of Liz Truss, the 42-year-old quickly reached the threshold of 100 nominations from the parliamentary party for his name to appear on the online ballot for the party membership. And on Sunday, he confirmed his readiness to serve. That's right, Britain's former Treasury Chief, who is absolutely not an attractive man. and I'm not going to purve out regarding his looks at all, is Rishi Sunak.

He has been named the Prime Minister of Britain following the resignation of Liz Truss, also from the Conservative Party. And of course, she served the shortest prime minister term in Great Britain's history, only six weeks. Now, while some headlines seem to be hyper-focused on the fact that he will be the first person of color to lead Britain, The fact of the matter is he actually represents more of the trickle down economics that really has harmed the economy in the UK, and I'll get to those details in just a moment. But it's important to also emphasize that he came to power not through a public vote, not through a general election, but by his own party essentially deciding that he would be the one to fill the role that Liz Truss stepped down from. Now, after losing out to trust in the summer, Sunak is on his way to Downing Street after his leadership race rival, Penny Mordaunt, withdrew from the contest at the last minute.

Now, the whole thing, again, is super and democratic. While trust became Britain's leader after being voted in by Conservative Party members, less than 1% of the electorate, nobody has voted for Sunok to become prime minister. So we previously talked a little bit about how this whole system works. The party with the prime minister who steps down, in this case, it was originally Boris Johnson, then later Lish Trust. That same party gets to decide who then fills the role after the resignation. Now he claims he wants to focus on stability, meaning economic stability, something that the UK is certainly struggling with right now. But he also says that he wants to unify his party because

there are many divisions within it, there are also many challenges that he will have to deal with. Britain's rampant inflation and rocketing energy and food prices have thrown the economy into chaos, a menace made worse by trust's disastrous handling of public finances, which has left the nation's fiscal reputation in urgent need of repair. Sunok will also likely be forced to transport, to preside over unpopular spending cuts at a time when workers in key sectors, including transport and health, are already striking over pay. And, you know, his family has a little bit of scandal, which we'll talk about in just a moment. But I also want to note, you know, when he was the head of the Treasury in the UK, he did implement some programs that were positive. So for instance, they refer to it as the furlough scheme, meaning since they were shutting down companies,

they wanted to encourage those companies to furlough rather than just fire those employees. And in the meantime, the government would give grant money to the employees who were forced to stay home due to shutdowns, covering 80% of their wages. And I think that was not only a popular program, I think it was a smart program. It helped to lower the unemployment rates, which could have been disastrous, considering the fact that so many businesses were shutting down in the middle of the pandemic. But, you know, it's mixed. It looks like he and his wife have tried to dodge taxes considerably. I'll get to that in a moment. Before I do, Jank, why don't you jump in?

Yeah, first of all, yeah, sure, let's note he's pretty. And that's going to actually come into effect in policy in a second. And I'll connect it to. But first, to clarify why he didn't get a single vote, even within the Tories, they didn't vote because everyone else dropped out. His main competitors dropped out. So he very literally did not get a single vote and became Prime Minister of UK, which is kind of amazing. So now, on to more important matters, what's he going to do, right? So on the upside, he was against some of trust his policies, even though they're in the same party.

Okay, that's good. Okay, on the downside, he has very similar disastrous policies, because they're all right wing, they're all conservative, they're all rich, and they all want tax cuts for the rich, which leads us to why he's pretty and why one of the reasons he was in trouble. His wife is enormously wealthy. One of the wealthiest families in originally in India, Okay, then obviously they moved to UK, also educated in America. He also worked at Goldman Sachs, so I'm sure he's taxes for the rich, that's sure a giant problem for him. No, he loves it, of course, except he did tax increases for everyone in the UK when he was the finance minister, but conveniently left a loophole in there that his wife and him

could exploit to protect their $835 million fortune. How convenient, how convenient. So I actually want to talk about that more because to me, that shows what his character is and more importantly, what his priorities are. So good looks aside, his character obviously matters, especially at a time when people in the UK are struggling to pay energy bills, struggling to put food on the table for their children and their families. And so I want to go to the next clip that kind of touches on the scandal involving the tax dodging that was taking place within his household. Let's watch. This spring, his reputation suffered a blow when it emerged his multimillionaire wife avoided tax in Britain through non-domiciled status. And that he himself held a U.S. green card for 19 months after becoming Chancellor.

After gaining only 43% of the vote against Liz Truss in this summer's runoff, the former Chancellor has been in political retreat, a no-show at the Conservative Party conference. But since the winner called time on her premiership after only 44 days in office, The loser has emerged the main contender to replace her. Now he is replacing her and I wanted to kind of elaborate a little more on his personal wealth along with what those tax dodging schemes were. So between them, he and his wife are believed to have built a combined fortune worth about $820 million around double the wealth of King Charles III and Camila, who's the queen consort,

whatever that means. Now, the Sunday Times named them the 22nd richest people in the UK. And the first time around 17 million, including a Santa Monica pent. So the couple own a ton of property as well, including some property here in the United States. They privately owned four homes worth around $17 million, including a Santa Monica penthouse valued at around $7.2 million. dollars. And Sunok's wife, in regard to the tax dodging that took place, exploited a special legal status to avoid paying British taxes on the million she earns in dividends. Okay. So that's just money that she has invested and that money makes money for her without actually doing anything. So she earns dividends from the IT business founded by her father in which she held an

estimated $835 million stake. The opposition labor leader accused Sue, of breathtaking, breathtaking hypocrisy for raising taxes on others as his own family apparently reduced their own liabilities. And Sunok himself held a US green card while serving as Britain's finance minister. And that essentially meant that he has declared himself a permanent American resident for tax reasons while also overseeing tax hikes for everyone else. It's pretty incredible. Yeah. And so that's why I was saying jokingly that him being pretty is is relevant. because they say their wealth combined is between 820 and 850. Then they explain that at least 800 million of that is from her.

So maybe he chipped in, maybe didn't. Damn. Well, to be fair to him, to be fair to him, he earned millions working at Goldman Sachs and he earned those millions through hedge funds. So he was wealthy himself, but certainly not to the same extent as his wife. Yeah. And so when you're trying to hook up with someone who's family has nearly a billion dollars, you better be pretty. And way more importantly, you better give him a tax loophole. High tax for everybody else, tax loopholes for the rich. And so, hey,

mission accomplished, good son-in-law gives you that giant gift probably worth tens of millions of dollars to the great detriment of everyone else. Now, look, I don't know if he was supposed to trust his policies on some principled, you know, reason, or if he's just doing it, because trust was one of his main competitors within the Tories, right? But right wings are going to, right wings are going to right wing. And so he's not in favor of like, you know what, let's end austerity and let's make sure we do the right thing for the British people. No, he's going to double down on austerity. Yes. He's going to do more spending cuts. And he's going to take it from the, from the hide of the British people.

That's what right wingers always do in every circumstance. And they're all hypocrites. So he was also involved in the party gate scandal that had, you know, created issues for Boris Johnson as well. All right. And then finally, guys, look, there's some chance that they quote unquote let him have it, including Boris Johnson, who probably could have won the vote if he pressed forward. But it's not clear.

So why did they, quote, unquote, let him have it if they did? because it's a hot potato right now the economy is a hot mess. They can't fix it and certainly no right wing position is going to fix it. And they're like, well, I don't know, tax cuts for the rich. But trust just tried that. So they're out of ideas, that's their only idea. So my guess is they thought this guy's an outsider, he's super ambitious. Give him the hot potato, have him bungle it and then we'll blame it on, right?

That's usually a wrong political strategy, he's the prime minister now. And he's going to have every opportunity to fix things, including his political career. Will he actually take advantage of that opportunity? Unlikely, because generally, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people at all, right? But unfortunately, in our politics, whether it's US or UK, a lot of wealthy folks have come in and all they've ever done is look out for themselves. And he already has a track record of doing that. So it's unlikely he'll do anything to help the British people. Well, let's move back to the United States for some domestic news, because Justice

Clarence Thomas has weighed in on something that Jank seems to agree with. So there might be some drums here, let's discuss. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginny Thomas was involved in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election has decided to place a temporary hold on an order that Senator Lindsey Graham appear before a Georgia grand jury that is currently investigating GOP schemes to disrupt the state's 2020 presidential election. So before I give you some details, details on this decision by Clarence Thomas, who should have recused himself considering his wife was again involved in these attempts to overturn the election. A grand jury in Atlanta wants

Graham to testify about calls he and Trump had made two Georgia election officials soon after Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. Now prosecutors say Graham has unique knowledge about the Trump campaign and the multi-state coordinated efforts to influence the results. of the 2020 election, essentially overturn the results, you know, giving the rightful winner, Joe Biden, the ability to become president. Now, Graham himself has also been accused of asking the Georgia Secretary of State to toss out ballots to essentially ensure that Trump wins the state of Georgia as opposed to Joe Biden. Just a quick refresher on that, let's watch. you came away with the impression that he essentially wanted you to look for ways to toss out

mailing ballots what exactly did he say to you well he asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters and then i got the sense it implied that then you could throw those out for any really would look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures so that's That's the impression that I got. But we've got signature matching in place. We have signature match when you request the ballot, absentee ballot, and then we have signature match when it comes in. And then with our new online absentee ballot portal, that has photo ID. And so we feel really confident that the election officials have done their job. And that's what they're charged to do is do their job and make sure the signature match.

Now that was Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, who was pressured not only by by Lindsey Graham, based on that interview with CNN last year, but also pressured by Donald Trump to overturn the, not overturn the election results, but essentially to find the votes. That was what Trump said in a recorded phone call that was shared with the public. And, you know, Lindsay Graham has denied trying to get the Secretary of State to toss ballots. In fact, he was asked about that, and he flat out denied it. Let's just watch one more video, and then Jenk, we'll go to you. Can you clarify this conversation you had with the Secretary of State in Georgia? Did you or did you not ask him to throw out votes? No, that's ridiculous. I talked to him about how you verify signatures. Right now a single person verifies signatures and I suggested as you go forward. Can you change it to make sure that a bipartisan team verifies signatures and if there's a dispute come up with appeal process?

So he called his staff calls Saturday trying to hook me up. up with the media outlets so I could say something nice about him. I thought it was a nice conversation. Why is a senator from South Carolina calling the Secretary of State in Georgia anyway? Because the future of the country hangs into balance. Does it though? I mean, it seems like it's pretty well. It really does. Does it? And the idea that there's one person confirming the signatures is ridiculous. But I mean, that's what Lindsay Graham did. He ate it and abetted and also played a part in in what transpired on January 6th, of course, but what has continued to transpire with

a huge portion of Republican voters genuinely believing that the election was stolen from Trump when it clearly was not. So, Jenk, tell us a little bit about the, you know, Justice Thomas decision here, because you say that it's not unprecedented. Yeah, so I don't think it's outrageous at all except for one giant thing, which we'll get to in a sec. So the substance of it is, Just Thomas is saying, look, the question at hand in this case is, can Lizzie Graham avoid testifying to the Georgia grand jury because of his position as a United States Senator? There is a speech or debate clause in the Constitution, which protects national politicians in certain things that they say. So is the speech or debate clause related to this?

Well, that's what the trial has to determine, right? The case that Lizzie Graham is bringing, saying, no, I don't have to testify, right? And I think that that's a fair question. I don't think that it's a super easy question, and I think it probably has some nuance, right? Now, by the way, it looks like the 11th Circuit, which is very conservative, two out of the three judges there are Trump appointed, are leaning towards ruling against Lindsey Graham. Okay, that's what it looks like for now, but but is it an interesting case? Yes, is it like it's not a Rudy Giuliani type of case where it's just outrageous and there's no real claim, right? And and Thomas is saying, well, you can't have him go testify and then do a case on whether he should testify. And I think that's probably right. So I think Thomas's decision is correct. Now the outrageous thing is the what Anna alluded to, which is wait a minute. Why is Clarence Thomas ruling on this case? His wife is a potential co-conspirator in the overall plot.

That's insane that he would adjudicate this case. The fact that they haven't taken him off that and he hasn't accused himself or Chief Justice John Roberts hasn't ruled that he can't participate in these cases is a true outrage. And it's basically the Supreme Court saying, yeah, we're above the law. And there's literally nothing you can do about it. Yeah, no, it's insane. It really is.

I mean, it's, at this point, it just feels like another Democrat-led investigation that's going to lead to nowhere, and it leads to fatigue among the population, among the public, in regard to the investigations themselves. And it also makes people like Trump look like a big winner because he seems like he gets away with everything, like the culmination of most of these investigations is that there's no criminal charges filed. And I also want to note that in this particular case, even though there are accusations that Lindsey Graham called the Secretary of State in Georgia to pressure him to essentially toss out ballots, he's not the subject of the investigation. The grand jury, the prosecutors just

want him to testify before the grand jury as a witness. And Lindsey Graham, of course, thinks it's nothing more than a fishing exercise. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. But I hear what you're saying about Clarence Thomas. But it's amazing because, I mean, his involvement gives obviously the optics of a biased decision. He should recuse himself. Yeah, I'm just going to say two quick things about that. Look, here's another reason why Chief Justice Roberts is definitely making the wrong decision in allowing Clarence Thomas to rule on these cases. Because in this case, Thomas is probably right on the law. But you ruin it by having Thomas. Thomas say that is actually bad for the right wing.

The optics would be way better for them if they say Thomas recuses himself. And Alito said it was perfectly fine, right? And they might even get one of the left wing justices to say that it was fine in this particular case. And that's why you shouldn't have conflicts of interest because it makes everybody question whether you're being fair or not. Now the last thing is the point that Anna made. And I just, you know, sometimes I'm a little slow too. Because I realized, I realized recently, like, we've been hearing about these, oh, Trump charges, Trump, oh, charge is coming. Yes, Trump. It's been two straight years of that, right? And particularly

heating up in the last couple of months, but no charges ever come. And then I realized, oh, a huge part of this is Democrats just campaigning. Yes. Yes, yes. And so they think this is smart campaigning, oh, we'll just drum up charge. But the charges are real. You should actually bring them. You should bring them. If they weren't real, I would despise you for bringing up trumped up charges, if you will, against the guy who didn't do it. In this guy, case, the guy did do it. But they're not planning to do anything. They're just using it for politics. And I projected my decency onto democratic leadership, which of course I should have never done. And so, And as a matter of political electoral strategy, that's disastrous.

It generally doesn't have anything to do with people's actual lives. You're not going to win an election that way. And you look like feckless losers who keep saying, he did that be wrong. And they're not doing anything about it. Yeah. It's the usual disastrous strategy by Democrats. Yeah, 1,000%. So we'll see how this plays out.

For now, though, we got to take a brief break. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including voting. Voter intimidation going down in the state of Arizona. We'll give you the details on that and more. Don't miss it. All right. Back on TYT, Janganana with you guys. Darren Graves just became a member, Darren Smart, he just hit the join button below. That was easy, that was on YouTube. But look, you might not be on YouTube. You might be looking

at your TV and your living room going, where's the join button below? I don't see it. That's my cabinet. No, for those, for you guys, it's just as easy. TYT.com slash join. Boom, I solved it. Casper. All right, well, let's get right to our next story. make any kind of statement or anything. I'd like to get in the sunken getting some vitamin D. So you're getting vitamin D or you're watching the drop boxes? Both, yeah. Has anyone responded to you driving through?

Has anyone said anything? Before I say anymore, I need to call somebody. Okay. Who are you going to call? Maybe just one. Okay. What organization are you with? It's clean elections.

Elections USA? Clean elections, USA, okay. Vigilantes have taken to voter intimidation in the great state of Arizona and the gentleman who just refused to answer any questions in the interview you just watched is definitely part of Clean Elections USA, the group that's spearheading this effort to essentially show up at drop boxes and I'm gonna guess do more than just get vitamin D. Now according to their website, Clean Elections USA is in fact recruiting people across the country to basically watch ballot drop boxes in an effort to detect fraud. Now, before I give you any more details,

let's just say for now the billionth time that there has been absolutely no evidence indicating that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020, that there were any issues with widespread voter fraud even before 2020. The Trump administration, the Trump campaign in particular, had many opportunities to prove that there was widespread election fraud, and they failed to do so before the courts in as many as 60 cases. So with that said, let me tell you what this group is up to, again, clean elections USA. We are looking for true patriots to take a stand and watch the drop boxes.

We want to gather video and live witness evidence of any ballot tampering that takes takes place in real time, the site states. Now, they aren't just taking pictures. There's more to it than that, which by the way, I mean, isn't it great to live in a surveillance state at a time when you have one major political party putting all sorts of paranoid thoughts in the minds of voters, many of whom certainly love their guns. Now, earlier this week, Steve Bannon hosted a woman by the name of Melody

Jennings on a podcast called Bannon's War Room, soon to be Bannon's prison cell. Now, Jennings is introduced as the founder of Clean Elections USA. Quote, we are posting pictures up of these mules. People are getting the word. They are showing up. Our people are showing up and gathering around boxes and shutting this stuff down. Now, cases of voter intimidation are increasingly being reported in states like Arizona. Arizona officials, in fact, sounded alarms about voter safety after two armed men, also vigilantes of course, dressed in tactical gear were standing outside of Maricopa County ballot drop box just this past Friday evening. Officials were flagged by the complaint that read, quote, camo-clad people

taking pictures while an early ballot was dropped off outside the Maricopa County election headquarters. Jenk, jump in. So look, what you really need is a balancing act, right? And that's true of almost every issue, and it's certainly true in this issue. So now that I've said that we're going to do a reasonable balancing of interest, obviously Avery at Winger has already turned it off. No, I just want you to shout about mules, right? So we'll get back to the mules in a second. But how would you do a normal balancing act here? Because you don't want to say they have a system where nobody verifies the vote and there's no one observing the vote and anybody can do what they want. I would hate that system, right? And you don't want to do a system where,

armed thugs come up to people with a gun and put a gun to their heads and go, who'd you vote for? Right? Or what are you doing here? We can all agree that we don't want either one of those extremes, right? So we need to balance. So how would you balance? Well, one of the things that you would do is you would have, for example, people from both parties be election observers. Now, right, when you're ready, I got great news for you. That system already exists. Yeah, thank you. That's a current system we're in. Yeah. Thank you. I was a little worried, Jank. I'm like, why are you letting these lunatics frame the conversation as if there's a problem with election monitoring? And let me just note that on a federal level, the party that has consistently

voted against any type of funding to bolster election security, Republican Party, Republican lawmakers, always vote against that, always. Of course, they don't actually ever want to do anything. They also vote against funding for mental health treatment right after they said, oh, it's not the gods, It's mental health. They just go to the next day. They go and vote against it because they're unbelievable liars. And the media never calls out the entire Republican Party for being liars. They just call it even. So they think they're just going to let us lie. So we'll just do it. So in this case, are there election monitors? Yes, guys, there's already election monitors. Okay. So now I know that the Republicans agree with me that you can't have what's happening

today, which is armed people showing up and monitoring in a vigilante way what's happening at the voting booths. Why? Why do I know that the Republicans would actually agree with me? Because I could, because it already happened. In 2008, just two, just two black panthers wearing a black jacket and black berets showed up in Philadelphia. And one of them had a billy club. Okay. They launched a federal investigation. They're like, there's just. people, the Paris look paramilitary, right? And they flipped out. They're like, this is voter intimidation.

How can white people vote if there are black people around, right? Now they're sending like armed thugs all across Arizona and other states. And they're like, whoa, whoa, we're just monitoring elections, wink. And now look, not all of them are armed and not all of them are thugs. And I'm sure that a lot of them got brainwashed by right ring propaganda. And here's another thing you need. You need evidence. Like, so for example, a lot of people said, hey, Bernie had the, you know, primaries rigged against them in 2016 by the DNC. Well, you could prove that based on how many debates or how little debates, when they had the debates, what they did with the money, etc. But a lot of people said, no, the votes themselves were rigged. But they didn't have enough evidence for that. So we never said that because there just wasn't evidence for it. But on the right wing side, they're like, no, dude, propaganders did a video about mules. Everybody knows mules cheat, okay? That's good enough evidence.

No, you don't have any evidence because there isn't any evidence. So stop terrorizing people like lunatics. No, but like, I mean, just really let the reality of this whole situation sink in because you're referring to a man who put out a ridiculous, unfounded, documentary regarding election fraud. None of the claims can be verified. And the individual who put that together was, that's right, convicted and served time in prison for breaking election campaign finance laws. So I mean, not really a trustworthy individual, but it doesn't matter.

Because if the conservative media bolsters that documentary, what was it like 2000 mules or something like that? I forget the title of it, yeah. As long as the right wing media bolsters it. and lends credibility to it, then some portion of the Republican electorate will fall for it. And so, look, I think these people who are showing up at the ballot drop boxes genuinely believe that they're fulfilling a patriotic duty in protecting election security. Now, of course, it ends up being like intimidation and people feel uncomfortable going to those drop boxes

and dropping off those ballots. But they are being incited in many ways by both a right-wing politicians and the right-wing media? Yeah, no, of course. Unfortunately, the source of almost all the problems in America is the media. It's unfortunate in a lot of ways. It's actually supposed to hold a government accountable. It's supposed to hold a powerful accountable. We're in media.

We don't want media to be the number one problem, but unfortunately it is. And in this case, it's right-wing media that just gives you one lie after another after another. And mainstream media is perfectly happy to play along with these. nonsense games that they have and they never clarify what the reality is. And so look, if you want voter verification, I'm ready to sign that bill in a thousand different ways. If you say, verifying the vote is making sure black people don't vote, no, I don't agree to that. I don't agree to that. And if you say, oh, no, I don't want to do vote by mail because that hurts Republican

chance of winning. No, that's not a thing. I don't agree to that. But if you say, here's what we should do to make sure that our votes are the actual votes. I love it, and I'm happy to sign out of that bill. But funny enough, no Republican has ever introduced that bill. Right, right. And you know, and I just want to emphasize, it is intimidating, especially like there's one voter in Phoenix who says that his wife was being photographed and her license plate on her vehicle was being photographed after she had dropped off her ballot at a ballot box. That is super super intimidating, especially for a woman, right, having a bunch of dudes like taking pictures of her and taking pictures of her car. And so it has a negative effect on our democracy.

It is not a good thing at all. And I don't want that intimidation happening. It doesn't happen from the left wing at all, if ever. And with the right wing, it seems to be their regular stunt. It keeps coming back up. This isn't a new story. It just keeps happening over and over and over again. All right, let's move on to some other news, including something in regard to the topic of inflation. Let's discuss. in the second quarter, you don't think cracking down on record high corporate profits would do anything to cool prices in our country? First of all, you just said that oil profit were $2 trillion in the second quarter?

I said, no, I said business profitability, that's the commerce department, said business profitability rose to a record high, $2 trillion in the second quarter. Our economy is only $23, $24 trillion large. I think you just incorrect at that figure. But anyway, let's move on to, we're not going to agree on this. When Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson was confronted with the fact that corporate greed is leading to inflation in this country, he was shocked by it. He was in complete and utter disbelief. And of course, when we talk about corporate profits, we talk about the amount of money, or I should say profits they're able to do simply by prowsy.

price gouging Americans with their products and basically citing inflation or the cost of these products going up as the reason for why they're jacking up the prices. But at the end of the day, when you listen to their earnings calls, it's abundantly clear that they're just piggyback piggyback off of the inflation narrative to jack up their prices even when they don't need to. And that allows them to increase their corporate profits. Now, we looked at some more data. In fact, Here's a graph showing corporate profits from 1950 to quarter two of 2022 using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. And note that those graphs only account for non-financial industries. When you include the finance industry, the numbers are actually much higher.

But you can see in this graph just how much corporate profits have gone up. Certainly since the 1990s, I'm sorry, the 1950s. But even if you compare like that. the last few years, you can see how corporate profits have increased. Now, in quarter one of 2021, it was $1.6 trillion. Quarter three of 2021 went up to $1.85 trillion. And then quarter two of 2022 were up to $2.1 trillion in corporate profits. Now, in fact, if you take a look at the CEOs of utility companies, for instance, you'll also notice that, you know, maybe their pay has a lot to do with the inflation that we're all dealing with. An analysis of securities and exchange commission filings by utility drive found that the CEO

of California-based Pacific Gas and Electric, also known as PG&E, the largest utility firm in the United States that has sparked many wildfires that have destroyed the lives of many Californians, thanks to the fact that they don't want to spend any money updating their equipment, received $51.2 million in total compensation in 2021, an increase in of 640% compared to her previous year's salary. And this is what we see across the board. You literally have the corporate executives bragging about price gouging Americans during their earnings calls with investors.

Yeah. So the GOP has an idea of why we have inflation. It's the goddamn Biden and the Democrats, they just gave way too much to the American people. And it's largely the American people's fault. Now, that problem, that idea has two different problems. Okay, number one, it ignores the fact that we printed trillions of dollars and did not give it to the American people, we gave it to the bankers and to the giant corporations. So they always leave that part out and the mainstream media never holds them accountable

because they're also a giant corporation. All of them are in mainstream media. So the talk of, oh my God, what caused the inflation? Econ 101, anyone who's gone to college, anyone who's taking Econ knows, if you print trillions of dollars in money, you're likely going to cause inflation. But remember, they printed it and gave it to the bankers. Okay, and then they passed a much smaller bill for the rest of us. So it's amazing that everyone in the media leaves that out there by proving that they're doing corporate propaganda and not real news. Okay, number two is they said, well, it's what happened

here with the Democrats and they cause it. Really? Because let's go to Graphics 6th year. And let me show you global inflation. If it was just the US and the Democrats who did it, America would have the worst inflation and everybody else would be totally fine. But as you see here now, let's look at it. Oh, America's got 8.2%. That's bad. That's not great. That's not a good number. Wait, the European Union has way higher. So does the UK, so does Germany, so does Italy, so does Spain. How come all those countries are higher than America's? And by the way the UK has a right wing government, okay? And a lot of them have right wing governments. So right wing, left way, it doesn't seem to matter. America, other countries, it doesn't seem to

matter. It's almost like it's a global macroeconomic event. Interesting. Okay, now, but when you get to the second layer of it, it's not just macroeconomics. That's certainly a part of it. That's what you're seeing in all the countries. But there's also price gouging. And that's also why you're seeing in all the countries because these are all multinational corporations that run businesses in almost all of those countries. So now let's go to Graphics 7. So this is from a story we did last week. So this is a CEO of a supermarket chain. And he explains why they're raising prices so much. He said last summer, or they explained here in a macro prospect, last summer Kroger's CEO, Rodney McMullen said that, quote, a little bit of inflation is always good in our business because

quote, customers don't overly react to increase in prices. So what that means is, hey, we can price guys a living hell out of them, get corporate propaganda called mainstream media to cover for us, get Republicans to pretendants to Democrats or some other nonsense thing that they made up. And then we can gouge all day long and take all the money out. Now, how do I know they're gouging? Because if it was truly just macroeconomic forces forcing inflation, both they would get hurt and the customers would get hurt. We would get hurt potentially equally. That's how normally market forces work. But that's not happening. Not only are they shifting all the pain onto us, but they're adding an extra layer of profit onto it. How do I know that? The numbers that

Anna just read you. It's a verifiable fact. And that's why Ron Johnson flipped out when the reporter asked him about it. Because wait, if the company's just had to pass on all the price increase to you guys. Why are they making record profits? Why did they make even bigger profits than before inflation? Oh, it looks like they're price gouging. And that's what our Republican Senator goes, no way. I'm not even talking about this. This is really dangerous. Those are my beloved corporate daughters. So credit to the reporter for asking a good question that rarely happens in American media. Extremely rare. I mean, it's public radio. So I think you have your best shot with public radio when it comes to those kinds of questions. But again, guys, I mean,

there has been some analysis done on earnings calls with corporate CEOs, and they just say it. And the reason why they have to say it is because they have to be frank with their shareholders. If they're not frank with their shareholders, they, of course, if they're lying to their shareholders, they can deal with fraud charges, which is laughable. I don't know if that ever really happens. But at the end of the day, they need to tell their shareholders, no, you have made a great investment because, again, we are exploiting the inflation narrative. to our advantage and just price gouging our customers to ensure that we can increase our profits and of course return on investment for these shareholders. So one other thing I wanted to just

quickly mention is the impact that this is having on ordinary people, which has in fact been devastating. Now, as we know, there has already been a problem with inequality, but that inequality has grown even more. And when it comes to individuals who need to to pay for, like let's say their utility bills, PG&E, for instance, is one of the main utility companies here in California. You know, there's some analysis done by the Bank of America that shows that nearly 20% of U.S. citizens or U.S. households either missed or have been late on a recent utility bill due to financial difficulty. I mean, just unbelievable, but they don't care. They don't care. If we're about to enter winter, people are going to freeze to death,

they don't care. They're making their record profits. That's all they care about. Yeah, and PG&E is an absolute disaster here in California. And they wanted to lower their costs so they wouldn't bury their telephone lines. The telephone lines keep falling and causing fires. And they're like, yeah, well, why don't we just make the taxpayers pay for it? And our customers pay for it. And they did. They passed out almost all those costs to us. And their CEO just got $51 million last year. So wait a minute, what happened to inflation? And oh my God, we all have to struggle together. It doesn't look like she's struggling.

No, they just, not only they pass the costs on to you, they just give themselves giant salaries, even if their companies are failing, even if they're disasters. Why? Because there's no one left on the beat, okay? There are no cops on Wall Street. The Republicans took them all away and the corporate Democrats were thrilled to have the same situation because they have the same donors. And finally, guys, the only place where, this is so ironic.

where you're going to get any kind of honesty in America is on a shareholder call. Not because they're going to be held criminally liable if they say something wrong. That's true, but there's, again, there's no cops on Wall Street, so they don't care about that at all. But other investors can sue them if they say something wrong. You can't mess with other rich people. You'll have a civil lawsuit, besides which they want to brag in those shareholder calls, and there's no accountability anyway. Is the media going to hold them accountable? Never, right?

So they go on there and go, we rip. them off. We are the best at ripping them off. And they get more investment. And the band marches on. All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, the feud between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis is heating up. We'll tell you how. Come right back. All right, back on TYT, Jank and out with you guys, but also Hunter. Hunter, Womble. Biden? No, unless he's going by Womble these days.

It's fun name. Can you imagine if Hunter Biden was like a fan of the show? Was checking us out on the reg and then every time we bring up how we don't care if he gets investigated, like sure, do it, who cares? his feelings get hurt. Yeah. That'd be kind of awesome. Yeah, you never know, man, a lot of people watch. Anyway, but the real Hunter, thank you for joining. We appreciate it. Hunter hit the button below on YouTube, but everybody else, t.yt.com slash join. Can we also, sorry, Jank, let me, we're not done with Hunter yet. Can we just acknowledge how badass the name Hunter is? Yeah, totally agree. There used to be a

show named Hunter when I was growing up in the 80s. And it was like a former football player. I was like hunter, yeah. I was like yeah. Yeah. That's like killer. I am now. And then I was like Hunter, yeah, I got bought lots of laptops, gave them to Randos. Anyways, I was reading a member comment during a social break. Lorena said that they enjoy Anna's wisdom, honesty and detailed facts. Thank you. 2018, but got a hook on 2016 on one of Jenks Rants and I appreciate your honest covers. Thank you. Thank you, Lorraine.

We appreciate it. All right, you're kind of awesome. All right, let's give you more news. Let's get into like the high school drums of politics. Why not? Yes. Looks like Trump is upping the ante on his feud with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Now of course, Trump doesn't like anyone stealing the spotlight from him and Trump

also cares far more about himself than the Republican Party. So before I get to Trump attacks on Ron DeSantis, let me give you the context necessary to understand what Trump is so upset about. Now apparently Ron DeSantis decided to endorse a candidate who's actually been very critical of Donald Trump. His name is Joe O'Day and he is the GOP Senate nominee, Republican Senate nominee in Colorado. Now, in the GOP Senate primary in Colorado in June, Trump actually endorsed his opponent, state representative Ron Hanks, who lost to O'Day, a construction executive. O'Day has said that Trump should not run in 2024, though he said he would vote for him

if he ends up being the GOP's presidential nominee. Now, last week, O'Day said that he would actively campaign against Trump, whom he called a black eye for the United States. In fact, that was certainly a fun interview. So let's just take a look at a snippet of that conversation. You have said Donald Trump could have done a lot more to stop January 6th, the insurrection, the violent attack on the Capitol from happening. Do you think what happened on January 6th should disqualify him from being president again?

Look, I believe that the January 6th was a black eye on the country. I've been very vocal that I thought he should have done more to. keep the violence from heading towards the capital. Anybody that was violent at the capital or tore something apart, they should be held accountable. We've got processes in place that hold people accountable. And we need to move the country forward. I don't think Donald Trump should run again. I'm going to actively, I'm going to actively campaign against Donald Trump and make sure that we've got four or five really great Republicans right now, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, they can run and serve for eight years.

No, I'm not a big fan of Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or even this guy. But he did win in the Republican primary for this Senate seat in Colorado, and that's good news. And you would think that Trump would care about Republican Party power. And he would put whatever conflict he has aside to now endorse the Republican candidate. But that is not the case. Now, after it was reported that Ron DeSantis was endorsing O'Day, Trump was very upset about it. And through Truth Social, he posted this. There's this rhino character in the great state of Colorado, Joe O'Day that's running against the incumbent Democrat for the United States Senate, who is having a good old time saying that he wants

to distance himself from President Trump and other slightly nasty things. No, it's pretty nasty things. you're nasty guy. Anyway, he continues to say he should look at the economy, inflation, energy independence, defeating ISIS, the strongest ever border, great trade deals, and much more before he speaks. Maga doesn't vote for stupid people with big mouths. Good luck, Joe. Well, again, Joe O'Day won. So I guess Republican voters do in fact vote for non-Maga candidates. But let's also just note that Trump himself says that he had strengthened the border. So, I mean, If he strengthened the border, I'm sure we're not having any type of immigration crisis, right? But again, Ron DeSantis decided to even do a robocall on behalf of O'Day.

And in that robocall, DeSantis says, hello, this is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. America needs strong leadership and desperately and desperately. That's why I'm endorsing Joe O'Day for U.S. Senate. Colorado, please vote for Joe O'Day, right? Just very simple robocall. Trump saw a report about that robocall. and just posted that article with the caption, big mistake. Is it? Is it?

Okay. My favorite part of the story is when Trump says, mega people don't vote for stupid people with big mouths. I got pretty good evidence that they do because right next to me is a picture of a stupid man with a big mouth. Okay. So I mean, that is literally, nothing that MAGA votes for more than stupid people with big mouths. Okay, that's that's like MAGA 101. So, but of course, that's not the issue here. The issue is that Donald Trump says, me no like him, me, me, me no like him, okay? And so of course, all the MAGA land goes, he no like him, he no like him. And they all, and all the minions go throughout the land,

spreading the word. And DeSantis comes in here. Look, I don't know if DeSantis was doing just the most regular robocall of all time and had agreed to do that like three weeks ago or something, right? And then he gets ambushed this situation. Or if he did it to kind of prod Trump a little bit. But remember, DeSantis isn't saying anything publicly against Trump, right? But Trump sees that DeSantis made that call. He takes that opportunity to punch DeSantis in the face and posts about, Oh, yeah, huh. Big mistake, DeSantis. That one doesn't like the cry baby.

Let me cry baby just like him. Big mistake, Ronnie, big. All right. And you would think that tough guy, Republican voters wouldn't like that kind of crying. Welcome to America. They love that type of crying. Right. And, you know, it's fun drama to begin with, as you said, right?

Yeah, and it's drama that hurts the report. Republican Party. So like, please, more of this. Give me more. Injected in my veins. It's like the most exciting thing that's happened today. Yeah, look. So the reality is now let's talk about who's going to win in this cat fight, right? So first of all, Anna, you're right, the number one winner is the voters of Colorado because they'll get a decent senator because Trump is actively telling everybody don't vote for the Republican candidate. Is that going to hurt the Republican candidate? Of course. And then what we're going to hurt? will he do afterwards? He'll come out and say, I told you was a big mistake to talk against me.

But I mean, it was partly because you then ambushed him, right? So he's just so unbelievably selfish. And I love it. Like in this context, it's fantastic. Because all his enablers, you know, all those people in the federal government who have enabled him, who have led credit, decided to lend credibility to him and this notion that he actually looks out for the American people and the Republican Party, it's all a lie. And now the chickens have come home to roost. He won't endorse or support the Republican candidate for a Senate seat. Oh, delicious. Yeah, I hear you. But look, the reality is that guy was probably going to lose anyway. He was, and that's why he's saying those things against Trump, because it's a now,

Nowadays, Colorado's more blue, less purple, right? And so Michael Bennett, the least exciting candidate in American history has a significant lead on that guy. So Trump's going to brag about how he, you know, it was a big mistake after the election anyway. And he doesn't care at all about other Republicans. Remember, he doesn't have a policy agenda. So he doesn't need more Republicans in office to get something done.

He already passed tax cuts for the rich. It's all about his own ego. So what does he care how many Republicans? are in Congress. He cost them two senators in Georgia for sure. He told everybody in Georgia, don't vote, don't vote, don't vote. And then the Democrats barely won anyway, right? So if he hadn't said all that, they probably, the Republicans probably would have had those two seats in Georgia. So and, but Anna, this does create one problem, but no joke on this one. If you, if the Republicans pick a candidate that Trump, that doesn't kiss Trump's ass, Trump will attack

that candidate and then that candidate will have less of a chance of winning. If they pick a candidate that does kiss Trump's ass, well then Trump will back that candidate and increase voter turnout. So that creates an incentive for the Republican Party to be an entire party of ass kissers. And so that's where we are today. I mean, I think that ship has sailed, Jank. And I think that Ron DeSantis endorsing a candidate who is not friendly to to Trump is honestly an exception, not the rule. And remember, DeSantis, even though he doesn't really engage in the fight with Trump, Trump seems to be the one throwing jabs here and there.

He knows, he knows that when it comes to the possibility of running for the Republican ticket in 2024, the person he's going to have to duke it out with is Donald Trump. So I think DeSantis knows who his enemies are. And so let's see, I mean, I'm definitely interested in seeing how this fight plays out. Yeah, last two quick things here. Don't get me wrong. This is ass kissing is bipartisan. So if you don't kiss Biden or Pelosi or Schumer's ass, both Democratic Party and the mainstream media will turn on you in a fury. Look at what happened to Nina Turner in Cleveland. The main ad run against her ad nauseum

was she once criticized Joe Biden. How dare she? She did not obey. She did not kiss Biden's ass enough. Her opponent, Shantle Brown, ran nonstop ads saying, I will do nothing but kiss Joe Biden's ass. And she won. So let's keep it real on both of those factors. And at the end of the day, though, between DeSantis and Trump, DeSantis is giving him rope and thinking that that will hurt Trump at the end. But it never has. And so my guess is at the end of the day, Trump comes out ahead because he's the one in the public eye. and DeSantis is moving in the background. And that's old school politics that I don't think is going to work in there.

All right, that does it for our first hour. When we come back for our second hour, we'll talk about Adidas, how they have still failed to drop Kanye West following his anti-Semitic statements. And we'll do a little history lesson about what Adidas was up to during Nazi Germany. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.