The Young Turks - Tennessee Massacre

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

School shooting in Nashville leaves six dead. Israel convulsed by strikes, protests as President urges Netanyahu to halt judicial overhaul. How Cigna saves millions by having its doctors reject claims without reading them. Donald Trump uses first major rally of 2024 campaign to criticize those investigating him. Trump rally crowd eerily quiet as he acts out Ron DeSantis crying and begging for his help. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: http://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. Woo! It's up! All right, welcome the Young Turks, Jake Eur and Anna experiment with you guys today. Unfortunately, a day of yet another tragedy, which we will start within a second, and tons of controversies.

So all we have is controversies. We never have any answers, we never have any solutions, we never have anything ever fixed in this country, but we do have a lot of controversies. Anyway, first the tragedy. Well, we have yet another school shooting in America. So let's get to the details on that. Three children and three adults were gunned down in yet another school shooting this time in Nashville, Tennessee. This took place at a Christian grade school in Nashville. The three students who were killed were all nine years old.

And the three adults ranged in ages 60 to 61. Now, the shooter has been identified as a 28-year-old who was in possession of two assault-style rifles and a handgun. Audrey Hale is her name, a Nashville resident, according to three law enforcement officials on the matter. Now, here is some sound from Don Aaron, who's a spokesperson with the Nashville Police Department. Afterwards, we'll give you more details on what occurred. Officers entered the first story of the school, began clearing it. They heard shots coming from the second level. They immediately went to the gunfire.

When the officers got to the second level, they saw a shooter, a female who was firing. The officers engaged her. She was fatally shot. We know that she was armed with at least two assault-type rifles and a handgun. She entered the school through a side entrance and traversed her way from the first floor to the second floor firing multiple shots. We now know that there are three students who were fatally wounded as well as three adults inside the school. We are working to identify those victims. So the name of the school is the Covenant School. Again, it's a Christian elementary.

And just to give you more details on the shooter, Hale, Audrey Hale. A 28 year old woman who lived in the Nashville area and was once a student at the school was the shooter who carried out the killings before she was killed by police. According to the police chief, she identifies as transgender. Jank. Okay, so there's a number of issues here, let's think in one by one and get to transgender at the end here. So first of all, I want to congratulate the cops. They were not afraid to engage in this case, unlike Yuvaldi. And they got to her before more death and

destruction. So unfortunately, three kids are dead and three staff members who are all above the age of 60. So as usual, horrifically tragic. Unfortunately, as usual, nothing will be done about it, the primary culprit, no matter what the identity of the shooter is, is always the same thing. It's assault weapons that make it much, much, much, much easier. There's no way in the world that woman who did the shooting could have killed three kids and 360-year-olds and 61-year-olds, et cetera, with a rope, a knife, a lawnmower. No, it's the assault weapons that lead to far, far greater deaths. It's the most obvious thing in the world.

We've proven it with 2,800 different stats every single time. We're the country with the most amount of weapons. We're the country with the most amount of mass shootings, the most amount of gun homicides, the most amount of gun suicides. If you think that's a coincidence, you're math challenged, okay? It's definitely the guns, definitely. You don't like that because it hurts your feelings because you like the the protection of a gun or you like to play around with it or whatever it is, okay, it hurts

your feelings, but it's still a fact. And so that's definitely the number one issue here. Now Republicans will try to obfuscate with no, we need less doors, we need mental health. Oh, we're not going to fund it. Every time you propose mental health funding, they say no. So Republican politicians are well-known liars. By the way, it is in this case way more the politicians than it is Republican voters, because a giant percentage of Republican voters, over 80% of Republican voters want universal background checks. That's the bare minimum. Right, right?

But Republican politicians go, I don't care, I'm being bribed by gun manufacturers. So I don't care that over 80% of my own voters want universal background checks and they don't want criminals to get guns. I don't care because I'm getting bribed. But by the way, Republican voters, why don't you challenge your own politicians? Try it for a change. See how you like it. Yeah, let me just also reference, because what you're saying is right. I mean, polling indicates where Americans stand on common sense gun legislation,

including Republican voters. But at the same time, you have various state lawmakers. For instance, there was a story we were going to do today about Florida. We'll probably do it tomorrow. Florida has scrapped the requirements for permits in order to purchase weapons. and they've also decided that they're going to do away with any type of training regulation or training requirement when obtaining the weapons. I mean, it's just gratuitous and unnecessary.

I mean, you could totally be in favor of law-biting citizens having access to guns while also being against these types of weird deregulatory efforts by Republican lawmakers. I don't understand why they do this, especially given what the polling indicates. Well, I know why they do. Number one is the bribes as we explain. Number two is unfortunately, even though a majority of Republicans want some common sense gun regulations, the most avid part of the Republican base says, I don't care. I want a tank.

I want a rocket fired missiles. I want, Tim Poole literally said everybody should have nukes. Okay, great. So like when you have the lunatic fringes of either party driving the debate, this is the situation that we wind up in. because, now look, to be fair to the Democrats, they never listen to their base. So it's that it doesn't have anything to do with their base. Okay, that's to be fair to the Democrats. The Republicans actually do care about their base.

Unfortunately, they serve only the most extreme end of their base. Those two things combined makes any kind of gun regulation nearly impossible in this country, even though the overwhelming majority of Americans want it, right? So look, what's the bare minimum? Universal background checks over 90% of Americans want it overall. and limiting the amount of bullets in a magazine, super popular would easily pass if we actually if we lived in a democracy. And then assault weapons is a little less banning assault weapons is a little less popular,

but still a great majority, near 60% want them banned. Again, if we lived in a democracy, that would actually also be relatively simple. But none of the gun manufacturers want to ban, and they keep bribing every Republican politician. And if you're a mainstream media reporter, you're not calling it a bribe, you're not really a reporter. Okay, so now back to the identity of the shooter. So lately there's been this weird phenomenon where sometimes the shooters pretend to be trans. This doesn't look like one of those cases, but honestly we have no idea because it's in the first couple of hours here. And there's always a fog in the midst of this kind of a shooting in the immediate aftermath. Right, the details

are still developing. And I think the identity of the shooter in terms of their gender is honestly irrelevant. Yeah, unless, I mean, we don't know what the motive is yet, right? So this is a Christian elementary school, this is a former student from the school. I don't know if there was something that happened in the school that, you know, traumatized this shooter and led to what happened. We don't know. But my point is that identity might be relevant, but as far as we know right now, it is not.

We don't know anything else. No, and look, it depends on what you mean by relevant. So number one, in terms of shootings, no one should do them. I don't care what your identity is, it's a terrible, immoral thing to do to go shoot kids. There's never any justification for it, okay? So number two on the identity, if it's a minority, like so sometimes my background is Muslim. I'm atheist now, but I'm identified as Muslim, and my family's Muslim. So whenever there's a Muslim shooter or a Muslim bombing, we get all the heat.

We get our rights taken away. We get ostracized. So it's the very worst thing a Muslim can do is to do some sort of violence, right? Because it explodes on all of us, right? It's the most counterproductive, the most ridiculous thing to do, right? And so if, if it turns out she's trans, she's done great damage, great damage to that community. Because you saw Tucker Carlson last week saying the only people who should have their guns taking away are trans people. And now if this turns out that way, the right wing's going to lose its mind, okay?

So don't ever do violence in any category because it's horribly immoral and totally counterproductive. So but that all being said, guys, the reason why any of these people do shootings, Muslim, trans, straight, white is the bottom line is yet they've got massive personal issues. But if we, but it's a country with 330 million people, there's going to be a certain person, even if it was just one percent. of us. That would be 3.3 million people. And what do we do in America? We hand all of them a giant weapon, a weapon of war and say, have at it, Haas. That's the number one problem. I know I'm not supposed to say this, but I have no hope left, like 0%. Okay, we're going to keep doing these stories. They're going to keep happening. More children will be murdered day in, day out, endless shootings, whether it's a mass shooting or otherwise. It doesn't

matter. There's gun violence all over the place. You have one part of the country or one area of or one side of the political conversation talking about abolishing police and prisons while we're simultaneously dealing with more and more gun violence every single day, every single year, it's endless. And then on the other opposite end of the political spectrum, you have people who think their guns are more important and easy access to guns are more important than anything else. That's their number one issue and they will fight like hell to ensure that they protect what they think are their rights. At the same time, I do want to go to a woman who, I

I think shares a lot of the frustration that we're expressing on the show today, because she and her son were mass shooting survivors. And when Fox was covering this story, this latest mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, she decided to use that as an opportunity to speak some truth. So let's watch that. We survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening?

How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens. It has overtaken cars. Assault weapons are contributing to the border crisis and fentanyl. We are arming cartels with our guns and our goose. loose gun laws and these shootings and these mass shootings will continue to happen until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation. She was visiting Nashville for a family vacation and this is what they had to deal with. So we've been talking lately about now double victims and triple

victims and how many mass shootings have you been through because this is the insanity of this country. It is not normal, which goes to the point that Anna and this woman are making. The people in power, will all lie to you today, and they'll all pretend that they're outraged. None of them are actually outraged. Explain why in a second, okay? Because that sounds like, oh, wow, really? They seem really moved by it. No, if you're moved by it, you take action, okay?

None of them will do anything about it. They will all cover it up, and next time it might be your kids. And they're not going to care that time either, and they're not going to do anything then. They're not going to do anything afterwards. They're not going to do anything afterwards. and they'll all pretend every time like it's a big surprise. Oh my God, another shooting at a school. What a big surprise.

Our hearts are broken. No, they're not. So why do I say that? The guys who want the guns, just like Hannah said, fight like hell for the guns, right? The people who don't want the guns and who want to protect our kids and everyone else, they don't fight like hell. They don't. Nope.

Okay, so first of all the Republican politicians are guilty. 100% of them vote to make sure we cannot protect our kids under any. God damn circumstances. Certainly the ones who are taking massive campaign donations from the NRA. Show me one Republican politician that says, yes, let's have universal background checks. Yes, let's limit the number of bulletin of magazine, etc. You can't. At the federal level, they're all corrupt. They're 100% corrupt. Republicans, get it through your thick heads. We have. We're better than you on this. You've spotted corruption first, in my opinion, okay? And the right wing was great and going drain the swamp. I hate the swamp. Then what did you do?

Then you totally drop the ball. You let corruption run wild. You'll never challenge your politicians on corruption. Here I am telling you, Democrats are also corrupt. We're the only ones who ever say it, right? So what do Democrats do? They go, oh, I can't believe this. I'm so outraged.

Oh, my God, we're going to fight next time. No, you're not. Shut up all of you, including guys like Chris Murphy who make a reputation on this. I will tell you what, I am most animated by this. I like going on TV after shootings and pretending that I care. Really? What did you do? Did you ever fight? Did you ever fight anywhere near as hard as the people who want to keep the guns? Nope. Oh, but your beloved colleagues, politically, rhetorically, you need to attack them. You need to crush them. No, you wouldn't do it. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. You care so much more about being polite. And by the way, this goes double for progressives. Progressives, you're supposed to fight. You're supposed to fight. Nope, nothing. Oh, you can I'll put out a tweet. Okay.

So let me, let me give you guys an example of what the right wing did in accomplishing the stripping of reproductive rights from women. Okay, so after Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in the 1970s, it would take five years for a single evangelical leader to speak out against abortion. Because it wasn't really about abortion for them. It was about using abortion to accumulate political power. Stay with me, I know this sounds like a really weird tangent, but it'll make sense. Now, Paul Wyrick was the evangelical who really took the leadership role in getting religious people in this country against reproductive rights. And you want to know how he did it, he would go to church parking lots and just throw pamphlets

full of like, you know, aborted fetuses and all this like gory imagery to scare people. And also in that case, to misinformed people about abortion, okay? And that started changing the hearts and minds of people at these churches all across the country. That tactic worked. Now, there is no successful, I mean, there's no effort to message to the American people on this issue, right? There's no effort to fight back against the false narratives that we keep hearing from right-wing media over and over again when it comes to guns, how everyone has the right to easy access to guns. No one's fighting back.

I mean, really think about it, okay? Imagery of aborted fetuses was enough to convince religious people to be against abortion. We never see what happens to these children when they're gunned down by assault rifles. And to be sure, those are awful images. I don't want to see those images, incredibly difficult to see. But I think by censoring that, it's really sanitizing the reality that we're all living in right now. 100%. They should, Anna, that's such a great point.

And the media is 100% complicit in this. They should show every dead kid. They should show every dead victim of every one of these massacres. Because then, you know what we'll do? We'll all throw up together and go, God damn it, that's enough. But right now, the Republicans are evil, and they say, we don't care. We're not going to do anything. In fact, if you try to do something, we're going to make sure we tear it down.

So don't tell me you're heartbroken. Don't tell me you care. When you are the ones preventing any action on this, then the Democrats, the corporate Democrats, the establishment of their, that's 90% of the Democratic Party, they have no heart, they don't care, they got, they'll never fight for you, never, and progressives, they have no strategy. Hey, is there a single progressive in the country? Legislators out there, we got you elected. Do you have any strategy you fight back on this? Here, I'll give, I'll help you out. I know that'll greatly offend you. I don't have status, okay? You do something simple like we.

did point out how many Republicans want universal background checks. Then say this son of a bitch colleague of mine is denying 80% of his own voters and show a picture of a dead kid and say, the Republicans did this. Vote them out. Vote them out there for massacres of children. Will you see anything like this by any goddamn legislator? No, we elected a bunch of losers that sit around with no strategy, no heart, no fight. So this will happen again and again and again. And Next time, yes, it might be your kids or my kids or anyone's kids, because there are no legislators here who actually fight for you and who care about a goddamn thing. So that all you'll get is stupid little lies today about how it's going to be okay and

they're heartbroken. They don't care about us. Let's take a break, regroup, and when we come back, we've got some international news out of Israel. All right, back on TYT, Jankana with you guys. Chris Birch gifted five Young Turks memberships on YouTube. Chris, we appreciate it, brother. All right, Anna.

All right, let's do some international news. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yov Galant. Now, why did he end up firing him? Well, because Galant had some thoughts about his judicial overhaul, which posed a threat to national security. Now, protesters gathered outside of Netanyahu's home in Jerusalem, and protesters set large fires on Tel Aviv's main highway. There you see his now former defense minister who spoke out, well, he didn't even speak out against what Netanyahu wants to do with weakening the Supreme Court in Israel.

He just simply said, listen, there are mass protests, there are reservists for the Israeli defense forces who are not happy about this. And in protest, they are refusing to serve. That is posing a threat to national security, so Netanyahu, maybe you should pause on this weakening of the Supreme Court. Netanyahu didn't like that and fired him, but the update to the story is now Netanyahu has agreed to put a hold on the judicial overhaul, arguing that if he didn't do so, it would lead to civil war within Israel. Now, we do have some more details on this story. Let's take a look at the next video.

Netanyahu removing Yoav Galant, a member of his own Lakud party, after Galant called for a pause in the government's controversial plan to weaken Israel's judiciary, essentially stripping its power to have final say on Israel's laws. The plan triggering weeks of massive protests, an estimated 300,000 citizens marching Saturday, many alleging the plan is a power grab that could make Israel an autocracy more like Turkey or Russia. We all have to fight for our rights because of the plans of Benjamin Netanyahu that want to turn this nation into a dictator. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what.

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Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. The unprecedented anger spreading to Israel's military with hundreds of reservists refusing to report for duty. So again, those reservists refusing to report to duty or for duty is what eventually I think persuaded Netanyahu to put a pause on this and definitely persuaded his now former defense minister to speak out against the judicial overhaul. Now Israel's parliament was poised to vote this week on the first pillar of the overhaul, which would give the coalition a majority on

the committee that appoints judges, although some appointments would still require compromise. other parts of the overhaul aim to limit the Supreme Court's jurisdiction and allow a simple majority of lawmakers to override the court's decisions. And lawmakers on Monday pass the bill out of committee as scheduled in preparation for a final round of voting. But again, let me just reiterate, Netanyahu has agreed to put this judicial overhaul on pause. Jank. Okay, I want to congratulate the Israeli citizens, because that's how you do protest. That's how you fight back. So great part of Jewish culture is questioning authority.

It's taught all the way back in, you know, basically school where you go to temple. And it's part of the, not just the social culture, but the religious culture as well. And so here it is where they say, no, no, we're gonna fight back against authority. And they did what a lot of countries couldn't do. So I originally from Turkey, Erdogan did something very similar in Turkey that Nan Yahu is doing here. and the right wingers of all the religions, all the backgrounds, Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Nanjahou, they all do the same thing because what unites them is not religion. What unites them is their right wingers who want authoritarian power.

And unfortunately, in Turkey, they lost that fight. And Erdogan was able to restructure the Constitution and then stayed around for at least a decade more, right? So thank you for winning on behalf of Israel and on behalf of, at least for now. Okay, we got a huge caveat on that coming in a second. and on behalf of the whole world. But the caveat is that Netanyahu says, no, we're going to go back to this discussion at the end of April. And he had to promise even more extreme right-wing zealots in his own, very extreme right-wing

government that don't worry, we're going to come back and try to end the judicial independence in Israel. And by the way, one of the reasons people are fighting so hard is not just because of corruption, but Israel has a good reputation for fighting corruption, much better than the American. America does, but also because if they are able to reduce the power of the judiciary in Israel, the religious right will be able to start imposing religious laws on secular Jews in Israel, and they don't want that rightfully so, and that's part of why they're fighting back. But I'll add a second asterisk here.

Wouldn't it be amazing if there was the same kind of protest to free the Palestinians? that would show an amazing action on behalf of humane and moral citizens that I have a lot less hope for because but now we know it's apparently possible right when secular and left wing and reasonable and rational Israelis stand up they could do amazing things I wish they would do it on the other issue as well but this is an excellent fight but they got to keep it going because they're going to be back. You know, and you have labor unions that played a huge role in this as well, calling for a general strike.

So, for instance, Israel's largest labor union called for this general strike. As part of the general strike, banks, government offices, utility companies, and some schools will also close their doors, said a spokesperson for Histadrout, Israel's largest trade union. It would be the first such strike in the country for over, a decade. I have no doubt that that played a role as well in Netanyahu's decision here. And just to give you the exact statements coming from the now former defense minister. So Galant said on Saturday that the overhaul had sparked division within the military

that was becoming a national security threat, as scores of reservists have said that they won't serve in the military if the overhaul passes. He said the rift was causing a clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the country for that message, he got fired, but eventually Netanyahu conceded and decided to, at least for now, put a pause on his efforts to overhaul the Supreme Court. But I don't put it past him to immediately go back to this as soon as things die down a little bit. Well, he's going to, he said he's going to come back to it at the end of April, and he made a promise to the right wingers in his government. So you can't let up at all. I mean, it's not to say,

that you should have the same level of protest the next day, right? But when they come back for it, I mean, I hope you do. I hope you have endless protests to make sure it never happens, right? But when it comes back, then you really got to get up and at them again. And anyways, I'm preaching to the choir. They're doing a fantastic job. Again, that tactic of saying I'm not going to serve in the IDF, if X, a lot of Israelis could say if we continue to imprison the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And that would be amazing, we're not anywhere near that yet, but one last piece of credit. In this case, it wasn't just labor, it was also business community in Israel that said, no, this turns us into a third world country, or I don't know if that phrases out of use these days. But anyway, this is not who Israel is. We can't attract business if we don't have a decent judiciary. So labor and business work together here as part of this victory. So great job there as well. All right, let's move on to some more disastrous news out of the United States.

major health insurance company known as Cigna is now using an automated system to deny patients' claims in seconds without even really looking at the claim in question. So one doctor denied 120,000 patient claims in just two months. Now understand that Cigna, much like other health insurance companies, employ doctors who take a look at claims and make decisions as to whether or not the health insurance should provide coverage for those claims. And so in this case, we're talking about the doctors within the health insurance companies making these decisions, but are they really making the decisions when they lean heavily toward using automated systems that just do the dirty work for them.

So this story, again, was reported by ProPublica. Before we get to those details of Cigna's Terrible System, let's briefly explain how that system is supposed to work. Okay, so many states have laws and or regulations that require insurance companies to run claims by a doctor before the claim can be denied for medical purposes. The doctors are supposed to review the patient's medical history and the company's coverage policies before making that decision. That requires actual thought, actual analysis. Using an automated system clearly is not going to do the clients, the patients, any service here. Instead, Cigna's automated system called PXPD makes all of those decisions on behalf

of the doctors based on a pre-made list of approved treatments for certain conditions. So the doctors then sign off on the claims in batches. Let's give you some commentary from people who are closer to this story. One former Cigna doctor, for instance, said this, we literally click and submit. It takes all of 10 seconds to do 50 at a time. So let's pause for a second. For all the moderate Democrats who argue that doing away with the private health insurance system that we're falling prey to today does away with our choices, our freedoms, our freedoms, we can't have a single payer system because that does away with our options. Are these options that they're talking about where health insurance companies just use automated systems to give you the middle finger when it comes to.

health care that you might need. But let me give you more. Over a period of two months last year, Cigna doctors denied over 300,000 requests for payments using this method, spending an average of 1.2 seconds on each case, corporate documents show. So none of this is really surprising to me, Jank. The whole point of private health insurance is to make money, to maximize profits. And one of the ways they do that is by collecting all that premium money. And then once the patient needs care and coverage for that care, they'll give them the middle finger and say, no, sorry, we don't provide coverage for that. They can't even bother to have a doctor make that decision. They're just relying on automated systems now to do it. Okay, so I'm going to tell you

exactly how they decided to do this, who's responsible. But to give you more numbers or back up Anna's numbers, look, the claims got to be, one doctor did 60,000 claims in one month. Come on. This is a joke. On average, reviewing the claims took 1.2 seconds. 1.2 seconds, you reviewed the claim? Okay, according to California regulations, the reviews must be, quote, thorough, fair, and an objective investigation. Do you think you could be thorough and fair in 1.2 seconds? That's a joke. So what happened was here, in fact, I'll quote ProPublica for you guys, They hired a new doctor in 2010. His name is Dr. Alan Mooney, and he was managing health insurers companies owned by Blackstone.

The private equity firm, when Cigna tapped him to help spot savings in its operations. I'm going to give you an example of one of those savings. There's apparently a nerve test that's necessary to help folks with a particular condition. And it doesn't cost that much. And since if you're doing a real review, the doctor, time is worth a lot of money. So the review might cost a couple hundred dollars to the company. So if something is like under that, they used to just say, just give it to them.

And it's better than paying the doctor to review the process, right? Well, in this particular case, they realized, oh, well, we can give a technical reason for why we're denying it. And in the past, they used to say yes to this nerve test every time. They switched it to know every time. And in this case for signative effect is 17,800 patients, they save 2.4 million people. Now, the reason I give you that example, which is a relatively small one, is because when an executive sees in a balance sheet that he's going to save $2.4 million and hence make $2.5 million more in profit, he cannot say no. If he says no, he will be fired and the board will replace him with someone that says yes. You can't say, oh, well, you know, because I think it would be nicer, it would be better.

It would give better health insurance. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, but how do we make more money? What's? So guys, this, you hand our lives to private health insurance, and they will literally kill us for a profit. I mean, that's what they're doing right now. That's what they've been doing for a very long time. And they will continue doing it.

They will continue doing it. Because it's all about making money. It's a business. That's what a business does. It's so incredibly frustrating that we have so many broken systems within this country. And we all just keep going along as if it's totally normal. It's not normal. This is not normal.

For instance, when ProPublica reached out to Cigna for comment on this story, Cigna's like, no, no, no, you guys don't get it, though. We're using these automated systems to provide more coverage to the patients. I mean, as if we're idiots, right? On top of what they're doing, insults injury. They have to insult our intelligence here. And so a former Cigna executive disagreed with what Cigna's little twist is on the story, arguing they were paying all these claims before.

Then they weren't. You're talking about a system built to deny claims. Put yourself in the shoes of the insurer. Why not just deny all the claims and see which ones come. back on appeal. From a cost perspective, it makes sense. Insurers are very good at knowing when they can deny a claim and patients will grumble, but still write a check. Guys, let me give you numbers on that too. Apparently, only 5% of people appeal. Okay. So again, if you're a business executive and all you care about is numbers, and that is what

all their CEOs and all their boards, that's the only thing they care about. You say, wait a minute. Now, if I say yes to all these claims or half these claims, I got to pay the doctorate review them, which is very expensive, then I say yes to a certain percentage of them. That's all, a ton of expense. That's going to add up to literally billions of dollars, right? Or I say no to all of them, and only 5% appeal, and then I got to deal with 5% instead of 100%. From a business perspective, that's a no-brainer. You're literally going to make billions of dollars more by denying the coverage. if you don't do it, you will be fired and replaced by a guy who does do it. It's a machine and it's a machine meant to deny us health care coverage. That's why no other developed nation does it because it's brutal. It is the government saying we're going to prioritize corporations' profits over our citizens' lives. That is why, at a bare minimum, now the numbers are higher than this. One of the numbers I saw that I still used from the old days is 45,000.

people a year die every single year in America because they don't have access to private health insurance. That number is zero in every other developed nation. We let stadium full of people die every year so that these guys can make billions more. That's exactly right. And look, we're picking on Cigna because that was the focus of the story. But don't make the mistake of thinking Cigna is the only health insurer that does this. In fact, United Health also does it In response to questions, according to ProPublica here, United Health said it uses technology that allows it to make fast, efficient, and streamline coverage decisions based on members' benefits plans and clinical criteria and compliance with state and federal laws.

The company did not directly address whether it uses a system similar to Cigna. But it does, in fact, use an automated system to give you the middle finger when you need them to actually provide coverage for the care you need. Okay, so last two things here. One is personal experience. I just got denied twice on two different drugs. Now I realize. It's freedom, Jake. Yeah, no, there's no hope. Yeah, okay, we can appeal, but it doesn't matter. It's a machine. It's not a person. It's making that decision in 1.2 seconds. It's going to deny, deny, deny, okay? So, and see how long you can last before you die fighting their denials, right? So this is obviously a sick system. Who's in favor of it? Almost, well, look, this is just a fact. Every politician, both Democrat and Republican, outside of progressives. So this one is the easiest one of all because corporate Democrats go, yeah, I know this phenomenon.

I don't care, Cigna, United Health, and all these guys give me tons of cash. They just drown Nancy Pelosi, Akeem Jeffries, all these Joe Biden, all these Democratic leaders in cash on top of cash. Those are all bribes. They know only take the bribes knowing this. And they're bigger lies than the Republicans. Every Republican is opposed to universal health care single payer, right? But at least they tell you that. Well, the Democrats go, oh, my God, I'd love to have universal health care.

But there's nothing I can do because I just got private. I mean, I mean, this private health insurance is so important. You don't want to lose your doctor. Yep. Except they deny you your doctor all the time. All the time. They deny what your doctor says. Doctor says, give them the prescription and they deny it.

By the way, doctors sometimes just decide, I'm not going to take that in. anymore, right? Because maybe they have difficulty in getting claims approved or authorized by whatever health insurance company they're having issues with. So then the doctor you like to go to suddenly doesn't take your insurance and you're left. That happened in my husband recently. Then he's left to figure out who he's going to go to next. That happened to me recently. Okay. Look, that's that's why when the media says like, oh, if you go to public insurance, you might not be able to keep your doctor. What are you talking about? We can't keep our doctor under private insurance. Okay, and a friend of mine, I've told you this story before in Kansas got stage four cancer like out of the blue. And but luckily he found a specialist in Denver. They're like out of network. You'll have to die. Out of network. So they deny you the doctor that can save you your life.

This is insanity, right? And lastly, you know, in this case, ProPublica, great job. Wonderful reporting. This is what journalism looks like. One of the few places, honestly. ProPublica, the lever, highly recommend, the intercept. Yeah. That's about it.

No, there's a couple others, but not much. All right, guys, we got to go. When we come back, like I said, a lot of controversy today. We'll be right back. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna and Nikki and Detox Nurse Wendy and recycled 365. They all just became members. We appreciate it. You make this show possible.

And if we speak for you, that is honestly, I'm being literal here. I know I'm corny, but that's an honor. And so we appreciate every member. TYT.com slash join. All right, Anna. Well, it looks like Fox News has some thoughts about Donald Trump's rally in Waco, Texas. Let's discuss. Instead, the president of the United States, the former president of the United States opened up with January 6th video, which is insane.

He should be running from that period. I don't care his point of view. That is not a good thing for him. I thought that was absolutely. That was Brian Kilmead calling Trump insane for supporting the January 6 rioters during his campaign rally in Waco. Texas over the weekend, there's a lot more from where that came from. Why don't we hear more from Kilmead and then we'll get into some other Fox News hosts going after Trump, but Jake can't help himself, so go ahead, Jank. Before you do that, in that clip, did you notice Rachel Campo Stuffy,

I think that's her with her eyes being like this? Okay, so let's watch to see what the other two reactions are in the next clip. This is such an opportunity for Republicans, just to say, look at what we did. Look at what he's doing. Look at what we had. Look at what he's doing. And I think for President Trump to spend 80% of his time complaining about court cases instead of just looking at his own record and what he would have done. Let me tell you what I would have done to SBG. Let me tell you what I would have done over to Syria if they, if we are guys got hit for the 74th time and twice in two days. He does that or other candidates do that. They're going to be unbelievably successful because that's going to be the conversation at the kitchen table.

Instead, the president of the United States, the former president of the United States opened up with January 6th video, which is insane. He should be running from that period. I don't care his point of view. That is not a good thing for him. No, this is one of those rare instances where Jank interrupting me makes a lot of sense because I didn't notice that before because I'm looking at kill meat. He's the one speaking.

But look at the discomfort. Rachel Campos Duffy and I don't know the name of the other guy. experiencing as Kilmead is trying to very gently critique Donald Trump for opening his rally with the January 6th choir, by the way, to honor them the rioters who broke into the Capitol and caused all this havoc. So first there was the Campos Duffy's look over like towards him. But the other interesting thing was the constant looking to presumably producers. They're like, what do we do? What do we do? Should we step in? This is, is this. Is this? Is this legal? Is this allowed?

He says things that are against Trump, that's good, that's what we're doing. Oh, we're doing that now. Okay, all right, then I won't say anything. Okay. Which, by the way, they are. Kilmead's a good team player. The memo at Fox is, it's okay to hit Trump, we're supporting DeSantis. Now you gotta balance it out so you don't lose the entire audience.

So Kilmead's actually towing the company line here. And notice Kilmead never criticized Trump before Murdoch made the turn and said we're in favor of DeSantis instead of Trump. That's exactly right. And I have noticed that, by the way, Will Kane is the name of the other Fox and Friends host in that video. So Fox has seemed to turn on Trump to some extent, considering all the negative commentary he's been getting on the network. Another example is actually Stuart Varney, who didn't take kindly to a moment where Trump apparently threatened violence against the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Now, he did this in the context of social media. He was on truth social and he posted an article that included imagery of Trump like wielding a bat around.

Trump shared the image of himself holding a baseball bat with Bragg's hands up. So the New York Post covered it and they included the image of this on their front page. On his truth social platform Thursday, as he devoted his day to attacking the prosecutor for pursuing a case over Hushman. payments to poor adult actress Stormy Daniels, the bat image was pulled from an article that he shared but was not removed. Okay, so Stuart Varney, who was also a giant Trump supporter, was not happy about this. And honestly, I think what he's about to say provides a lot of common sense to the Republican Party if they're genuinely concerned about winning in the next election, but it doesn't matter. For diehard Trump supporters, they're not going to hear

any of that. So without further ado, let's go to the last video here. I don't think America wants that kind of behavior in a presidential candidate. I think they're tired of it. I don't think they like to see him wielding a baseball bat prior to some possible charges in court. I just don't think it goes down well with a majority of people. What do you say? Well, yeah, no, I think you're exactly right about it. And I think that even in 2016, people would have rather not had to turn to somebody like Donald Trump. How do you think independence in this country will react? I don't think he's trying to win independence right now.

I think he's trying to win the election without independence. Right, but he's got 30% of the Republican party as his base. He may get them, but if he doesn't have the independence, he can't win. So in at least two separate discussions, Stuart Varney brought up the bat photo and clearly was not happy about it, but he's actually making a good point and honestly a point that Republican leadership, I'm sure is concerned about, which is why they're trying to prop up DeSantis. Donald Trump does well with the Republican base. Clearly, he does not do well when it comes to the rest of the electorate, namely the independent voters who get turned off by some of his antics.

That's what hurt Republicans during the midterm elections, right? All the Trump candidates, most of the Trump candidates didn't perform well once they made it to the general election. Yeah, so there are no good guys here, but let me break down to two different camps. Rachel Campostofi was the one that kind of halfway debated him for about three minutes in one of those instances that we just showed you. And she kept going back to, well, it's a two-tier justice system and Donald Trump and his fans are just complaining about the two-tier justice system. What? Yeah.

Okay, yeah, let's talk about the two-tier justice system. if anyone else committed the kind of tax fraud that Donald Trump had committed, the kind of financial fraud that Donald Trump committed, they'd be in prison right now. 100%. I talked about this on Friday's show. It's that the right wing, especially the elites within the right wing, have never been held accountable their whole lives. There's almost no rule of law for them.

So that's why when the idea of being held accountable is a new concept of them. For the left wing, we're always under the thumb of the law, right? But for a lot of the powerful people in the right wing, they've never heard of it, right? Like the idea that a rich Republican go to jail, that's just, it's just such a foreign concept. That's why they're like shocked. They're like, this, did you guys know that in the justice system that if you break the law, you can go to jail? Yeah, the rest of us all already knew that. The ironic thing is there is a two-tier justice system.

You're just in the tier that never gets held accountable. And now you're shocked to find out that you might be held accountable. Anyway, so that's that camp that says we can break the law if we if we want to because we're right wingers. The Stuart Varney camp is, guys, you're going to cost us the election and how we're going to get tax cuts for the rich if you cost us to election. He doesn't care about the bats or anything like that and neither does Murdoch. They're just like we need those independents. We need to trick those independents into voting for us. That's right.

So we do more tax cuts for the rich. No, that's exactly right. So it's not like he's a good guy. He's just pointing out elementary politics. I know, but that's the amazing thing that like pointing out elementary politics to the viewers is just taking this massive risk because of how they're going to react to it. 100%. By the way, we have that on the left too. If you point out super elementary politics, the extreme leftists, they're like, no, okay? So everybody's got their incredibly counterproductive litmus test. But anyway, the right wing has mastered the course in that. Unfortunately, it's the majority of the party, not a fringe little part of it.

So now, last thing is, Trump, he does an ode to the January 6th rioters in the beginning. Okay, look, kill me these outrages if this is the first time he's ever heard of it. We're all super used to it. But my point isn't that. My point is, so if you're doing an ode to them, forget the ode, why don't you give them money? They're in prison now. They need legal health. You have hundreds of millions of dollars that you raise from people, including probably people in that crowd,

in Waco, Texas. So, so why don't you come out to the speech? And by the way, you get tons of children. Say, you know what? I'm giving $100 million to their defense fund. I'm gonna cover their legal fees. Or I'm just gonna forget you more. You probably don't need anywhere near $100 million.

I'm gonna cover their legal fees. He's not given them one time, zero dollars. Nothing. That's what he's given them. Because Trump is a fraud. He's the most obvious con man in the world. Right wing. I don't like your brand of populism.

The economic stuff, we can maybe one day off in the future, and often the future unite on, your culture war stuff is toxic, but if you're gonna pick a populist, couldn't you pick one that was a quarter honest, whose main thing isn't robbing you guys? I mean, he does the biggest robbery of you, not us. The problem is Trump is a showman. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. So in a political environment that has increasingly become more about culture wars and cults of personality, someone like Donald Trump who can dunk on other Republicans as well as he does is appealing to the voters, right? Because all of us, it's not just Republican voters. All of us at this point

have been so conditioned to expect so little from our elected lawmakers and from our politicians. And so politics has just turned into a blood sport. It's turned into a massive, ridiculous reality show. And that is what I think a lot of voters judge candidates on to some extent. No, Anna, you're 100% right. You're forcing me to say one last point. Forcing. Yeah, you're forced. You made me do it.

Trump got past the goalie. He got past the goalie because he was a celebrity and he was a clown. So the mainstream media thought, oh, celebrity, we always cover celebrities. And oh, he's a clown, so it's harmless, right? So progressive populace can't get past the goalie because the goalie's the media. And they're like, oh, they're like, oh, progressives, they actually care about American citizens. No, block, block, block, don't cover them, don't cover them, don't give them any press. Because if you give us press, we might attack and be really popular like Donald Trump is.

The unspoken iceberg of support that Donald Trump has is because, partly because he attacks the establishment. They never talk about that. Yes, some of it is because of the racism, bigotry, sex, and et cetera, right? But a huge part of it is he just says F you to the establishment, which people love. He's the first to get past the goalie. So he's collecting all the FTA establishment vote. That should be progressives collecting that, but we cannot get past the mainstream media.

If we're being honest, they're actually our biggest opponents. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk a little bit about Trump's rally and how he decided to go after Ron DeSantis yet again. But what was really interesting was how the crowd reacted to it, which I personally did not expect. So we've got that story and more coming up. Don't miss the second hour.

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. slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon