The Young Turks - Terrible Takes

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Joe Manchin promises he can negotiate Congress’s debt ceiling. Ilhan Omar calls out the GOP over their xenophobia. Mr. Beast is going viral again for paying for 1000 people’s eye surgery. A new study shows that the U.S. spends the most on healthcare but has the worst outcomes. Republicans' strategy to get rid of Trump? Death. 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. Woo! It's up! All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jane Cougar, Anna Kusparan with you guys. There's a couple stories in this show that is going to make me surprisingly angry.

Oh, surprisingly. Yes. Surprisingly, everybody. And so you're, of course, wondering, where does the surprise come in, Jank? Because I might have seen you angry once or twice on the young terms. Once or twice. Yes. Well, the surprise comes in in which stories?

Probably the first one. Interesting. Well, I'm more amused at the first one. No, you will not be. Okay, let's see how it turns. He has not seen the videos yet. Okay, well, I've seen some of that. But it's also in a later story as well, but let's get going.

Well, we begin, unfortunately, with Tim Poole, something that we don't do in the first hour most days. But it has to do with the Tyree Nichols story and get a load of this. This is the result of defund the police. This is the result of the attack on the police. I'm sorry, this is reality. This was not a case of white supremacy. This was five black cops beating a black man to death. They caused the problem, then they complain, we were right the whole time.

No, dude, we hired these cops because you called this out. Now look where we are. That's Tim Poole's commentary on the brutal beating of Tyree Nichols, who died in a hospital three days after Memphis police officers beat him to the point where he was in critical condition. Now, what's interesting is he is referencing a post-millennial article. while making his commentary, and it's abundantly clear that he didn't even really bother to carefully and critically read the article that he's citing there. I'm going to go to one more clip, and I'll tell you exactly what I'm referring to.

I do believe, and maybe people don't want to hear it, Tyree Nichols would be alive if he simply got out of the car, said, okay, I'm sorry, okay, yes, yes, sir, got on his stomach, put his hands behind his back. He didn't. He resisted. He fought, he fled, they chased him, they pinned him down, and they went nuts. I'm not saying these cops are good guys. I am not saying they're justified. I'm saying, when you're dealing with a bear, a grizzly bear, do you scream at it and throw rocks at it? Or do you slowly back away while talking? I bet he had drugs on him. I bet he had some kind of drugs on him. Dude, I'm not trying to impugn his honor or integrity, but if you want to come out and you want to be like he was a skateboarder,

I'm going to be like, I'm a skateboarder, I've been skateboarding my whole life. I can tell you this, skateboarders do drugs. So I just want to be very clear that Tim Poole is 100% speculating on Tyree Nichols having drugs on him. But even if, even if in the future we learn more details and it turns out that he had something on him, Does that give the cops the right to beat you to death because you are in possession of narcotics? Yeah. I mean, really ask yourselves, okay, both right wing, left wing, everybody. I don't care what your political affiliation is.

Do you want to live in a country and a society that tells you there is state-sanctioned murder by cops if they catch you with narcotics? Which they didn't. Which they didn't, again, for the billionth time, yes. So Anna predicted before we started that I would get angry at this story and it turns out she was right. So I had seen the video of Poole talking about how they asked for this and... That Black Lives Matter asked for this. Yeah, and then we gave it to them. What did they ask for?

Well, they certainly didn't ask for a black guy who was completely innocent to be beaten to death by police. So presumably he is saying, and by the way, Like, the consumers are already dumbing up without pretending you're even dumber. Like, oh, I don't know what he's talking about. What did they want? He's clearly implying they wanted black cops to be hired. And because black cops were hired, look at the lowered standards, got us lower results. And by the way, every right winger now, I see on social media, they've already picked up this talking point,

is talking about the real problem was lowered standards. So it's really black people's fault. And of course, we lowered this. You didn't even know when those cops were hired? I do. Thank you. I know when the cops were hired, and I think that's really, and that's why I say he didn't even bother to read the post, by the post-millennial, I think it's a conservative publication, right?

But even so, if you carefully read it and critically read it, you'll see that these, like, the latest policies of the Memphis Police Department implemented, which did lower the standards, happened after these cops were hired. So let's read a few excerpts from the article that was cited by Tim Poole. Memphis Police Department recruits no longer needed an associate's degree or 54 college credit hours and could just get by with only five years of work experience. In 2021 and 2022, please remember these years, they're important. Recruitment was struggling so badly that the department offered $15,000 signing bonuses. Last year, the department also reportedly lowered the fitness requirements doing away with the timed physical ability test.

The department even offered waivers for felons to join the force, according to the New York Post. Fascinating, that's great. Well, these changes wouldn't have had any impact on the cops who beat Tyree Nichols to death because they were hired before the standards were lowered. So let's actually go to another excerpt from the post millennial. According to an NBC news report, to Darius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmett Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justice, Smith, these are the cops who beat him, all had been Memphis Police Department officers for just a few years when the fatal beating of the 29-year-old father occurred on January 7th. Okay, so that makes it seem like, oh, maybe they were hired after the standards were lowered,

except they specifically referenced the cops that were hired the most recently, right? So Bean and Haley in particular have only been on the floor since August of 2020. So that means, by definition, every single one of them was hired before the so-called lowering of the standards. Let's get even more specific, folks. Let's give you the receipts. Let's give you each individual cop and their actual hire date. Okay, maybe Tim Poole learned something here. Thaddeus B in age 24 was hired in August of 2020. Demetrius H. 30, a former corrections officer, was hired in August of 2020. Emmett Martin the 3rd, age 30, was hired in March of 2018, Desmond Mills Jr., 32. Former jailer in Mississippi and Tennessee was hired in 2017, and Justin Smith, age 28,

was hired in March of 2018. It's almost as if this notion, this narrative, that the lowered standards within the police department leading to this brutal beating and murder really isn't an accurate analysis of what happened here. And he was talking about defunding the police in other parts of the video. Wait, what part of a $15,000 signing bonus is defunding the police? Yeah, 100%. So let me get this right.

They poured more money into policing and try to get people to join it. And then they got folks that weren't involved in this situation at all. And we have no idea if they're good or bad, but we do know they have more money, not less money. So did defund the police win? No, not remotely. Did it win there? No. Did it win nationwide?

No. Did we pass a single reform bill, let alone defund the police? we even passed a reform bill saying, hey, please do not choke people to death. We actually tried to pass that, and the House did pass it. And the Republicans in the Senate, along with the disgusting conservative Democrats like mentioned, said, nope, no way, no way, no way. Cops should be allowed to choke black people to death. Well, you tell me, that's not what they voted, because they did vote that.

They did vote that, because Republicans are despicable monsters. Okay, so now they turn around and go, oh, you see that? We defunded them by giving them $15,000 extra. And that's why we had these guys, the whole thing is so explicitly racist. In the beginning, I was amused by it because it's so over the top. Oh, this is what you wanted. And look at these black officers and what they did. What me, I'm not racist.

You know to this day, some of the dumbest people on the internet, Say, no, no, it's okay. I listen to liberals like Tim Poole. I know, it's amazing. It's amazing. Okay, just pause for a second. He's like one of the most racist guys in the country. And they're like, oh, no, no, it's okay. This is the liberals like Tim Poole. But what's interesting is how Tim Poole, he has this analysis that on one hand seems to go after the cops. I mean, it is interesting that there's, oh, they got hired because of lower standards. don't think that I'm not aware that their race has something to do with part of the reason

why he's even saying that to begin with, even though the facts don't bear it out. Facts don't bear it out. So in this one case where you have black cops beat a black man to death, well, Tim wants it both ways, where he goes after both parties, goes after Nichols for, by the way, just completely smearing him and alleging that he might have drugs on him, even though there's no evidence to prove that point, and also going after the cops about, you know, their qualifications of being hired in the first place. Yeah, so look, that's actually the part that made me angry when he started going after

Tyree Nichols personally. No, I'm not impugning his integrity. That's exactly what you're doing. But I'm going to make up that he's a druggie, because look at him, he's black. No, you look like a stupid druggy who can't get laid and brags about it on the internet, He had no drugs on him. There's literally evidence that he did not have drugs. Those thugs, the cops that went and murdered him, checked everywhere for drugs, including

their buddies who were all sitting there laughing and totally indifferent to his death. They checked and checked and checked to justify their murderous friends, and they found no evidence of drugs. But it doesn't matter, Tim Pool goes, oh, it doesn't matter, so what, he's dead, they murdered him, he's the victim. On the other hand, he's black. Must have been a druggie, okay? One final thing that I'll mention about this because it's important. And it shows you what the desire, the quest for money and funds does to a person. Tim Poole made a name for himself initially as someone who went to cover Occupy Wall Street.

I remember that. And I remember, this video exists. I remember talking about it when I hosted a show with Michael Brooks on Jacobin. We showed the video. He was hassled by cops as he was covering Occupy Wall Street. And he was furious. Oh, the cops, the police state, this, that crying and crying. What a victim, right?

Because when there is unjust police behavior that targets people like him, unacceptable. But when you have a very clear case, it's so clear. I mean, you couldn't get clear of police brutality, police murder. And it affects a black person in Mississippi, I'm sorry, in Tennessee, no, it's totally fine. I mean, we got to find excuses to both in a weird way provide cover for the cops, but then also question whether the cops were qualified, probably because of their skin color. Not probably, definitely. Yeah. Look, if you guys don't know how Timple got tiny bit famous that we bothered to talk about him, he used to come on this show and other shows, left wing shows, as Anna pointed out, when he would go to Ferguson, etc.

And back then he was like, oh, I'm with the people and I'm with. I don't know about Ferguson. He went to Occupy for sure. Yeah. So I think he did. But you guys can confirm that, et cetera, right? So, so he goes and pretends to be a left winger and pretends to be concerned about the plight of black people, et cetera.

So then as a left winger, he starts doing a show, it's totally not popular because he's not an interesting person, he's not an intelligent person. And then he stumbles upon a winning solution for him financially. which is racism and so he became known as the guy on the left who blames black people for everything so you would watch his show and just rando out of nowhere everything would come back to it's black people's fault and then the right wingers love that they were like and it's the old Dave Rubin jimmy door model right oh i am on the left but trust me it's the left's fault for everything and especially black people okay that's Tim's specialty to be fair to

indoor. They don't do that particular specialty as much. Not yet. Okay. So, so this guy is a professional whore. The minute he got money out of that, he was like, ooh, never mind being on the left. I mean, I'll still pretend, right? But remember guys, black guy's fault for dying and the black guy's fault for killing him, but it's not the cops' fault who are mainly white cops are awesome. White people are awesome. It's always the left and black people that are at fault. And by the way, he said he resisted. You can watch. Watch the video, the New York Times is the count, but you can do your own count. 71 times they gave him contradictory or confusing commands, which were literally impossible

to comply with. Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. Show us your hands as they have his hands in their hands, as they have him like under their control subdued completely. I mean, it was so clear, even with what the cops were saying, the body camera, the footage, it's all there. You can hear it for yourselves.

They are bragging about beating him, looking forward to beating him, bragging about beating him after they beat him, right? Like their comments made it so clear that they had this lust for going after people as viciously and violently as they did. But, you know, Tim Poole, this is his job. This is what he does, right? This is what he does. Could you imagine how Tim Poole's audience would react if he had factual, reasonable analysis? of that case, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't like it. It would really put his whole operation

in jeopardy, wouldn't it? Yeah, look, it's more of an indictment of the country than it is of him. Because 100%, once he went with the spiel of I'm on left or I'm moderate, but I'm racist, the viewers poured in. And that is super sad as a statement for the country and what works. So look, we built this gigantic network on the idea that people are decent to one another and it worked. Unfortunately, the quicker and easier route is just say things that are terrible. And there's a significant chunk of the country that will love you for it. So now he has an audience that every day tunes in for that racism under the cover of, oh, we're just being moderates or something.

I mean, I mean, if you just looked at things factually, you wouldn't know that everything is black people's fault. Okay, that's the essence of his show. It's disgusting, and the people who like it are even more questionable. We're going to take a break, switch gears when we come back. I'm going to talk to you about how Joe Manchin plans to aid and abet the Republican Party in gutting Medicare and Social Security. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna, with you guys, also Jeff Ron and Max Sims. They just joined by hitting the join button below the video on YouTube. We appreciate it, guys.

You make this show possible. All the members do. TYT.com slash join. All right, Anna. Well, we've got some updates on Democratic efforts to help. Republicans gut social security. Let's watch. The White House says that they want Congress to pass a clean debt ceiling increase.

No negotiations with Republicans at all. Is that a mistake? Corrupt Democratic Senator Joe Manchin says that it is a mistake to avoid negotiating with Republicans on a must-pass debt ceiling bill that really they are going to vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling because he thinks, you know, we really should take a look at social security and Medicare, some of the spending, there are some issues there. So in other words, he wants to aid and abet Republicans in gutting social security. And today the New York Times came out with a report explaining what his tactic will be.

He says this, we're going to have to bring a group of Democrats together that is willing to work and meet Kevin McCarthy halfway, meaning House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. So look, I think that that statement alone is so telling, Jank, because it ain't just about mansion, it's about the corporate capture of the Democratic Party and how it's just a handful of Democrats who are willing to gut social spending programs. There's a bunch of them in the Senate alone, and he wants to get them together. And he's like, you know what, we already got a coalition working in the House. So I want to build that in the Senate too, because both parties want to gut your

Social Security and Medicare. That's the reality of the situation. All right. So look, there are things that are super obvious, but we have to state them as if they're dramatic news because a lot of the establishment in this country, mainstream folks, good folks, a lot of them, got brainwashed by establishment media. So they believe things that aren't remotely true that are hilariously false. So in this case, all these senators take literally millions of dollars from donors.

The donors have very specific requests. In fact, when Trump got into office, this is in my book, there's quotes from donors saying, you better pass tax cuts, otherwise we're going to stop donating to. That is a quid pro quo. They're saying this is exactly what we want. We want, we gave you a couple of million dollars. Now we want a couple of billion dollars back. Or in that case, the tax cuts were a couple of trillion dollars back.

And they say it out loud in public. They're quoted in the press. Okay. So they want redistribution of wealth to the very top and they literally paid for it. And a lot of mainstream media will almost all of it will completely ignore that fact. But if they ever touch it at all, they will never mention Democrats. So now wait a minute, I hate Republicans and I don't want a Republican only Trump to win. But I'm being honest with you guys.

The media loves conservative Democrats, loves them. And so when they see Joe Manchin, they won't tell you the obvious truth. That guy takes bribes for a living. So when he is told to redistribute wealth, it's not just tax cuts. They need the money from somewhere, otherwise the country's going to go, the government's going to go broke. So they're going to take it from you. Yep.

So they're coming to take her Social Security and Medicare. And what did they get called in return for that? Instead of being called the monsters and crooks that they are, the media tells you they are moderate. Well, that sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Well, here's moderate Joe Manchin looking to rob you of all the money you work for your whole life. What a moderate position. There is no reason for Democrats to negotiate with Republicans on raising the debt ceiling.

No reason at all. None. You want to know why? Because it's a must pass bill. If they don't raise the debt ceiling, the global economy and their stock portfolios collapse, they don't want that. Okay? And so even Manchin himself in the context of that New York Times piece says,

I think we all know we're going to vote for the debt ceiling. All right, then why are you negotiating? Because he wants to cut spending that actually benefits the American people. And what's so gross is how he lies to our faces. He insults us. So same interview. I want to go back to his conversation with Dana Bash because Social Security and Medicare came up. And look at how he lies.

And I'll tell you why he lies. I'll provide the receipts to prove that he's lying. Let's watch. In my state of West Virginia, 60% of the people that are retired right now live with Social Security and Medicare. To scare the bejes how they're going to be, they're going to be their cuts on the line or you're going to decimate those two. That's not going to happen. Take that off the board right now and look at ways that we have wasteful spending that we can be held accountable and responsible. He wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.

He doesn't say it there because he's like, oh, the people of West Virginia, same people who would have benefited from a minimum wage hike. same people who would have benefited from the social spending provisions within the build back better agenda that were defeated by Joe Manchin, okay? He claims that he cares about them and they want to maintain their social security. Except just a few weeks ago, in a conversation with Maria Bartaromo on Fox business, he was pretty transparent on what he wants to cut. Let's watch. Let's take our trust, the trust funds, whether Medicare, Social Security, or Highway Trust,

You can't let those go defunct as far as, and what we're saying is we have a trust act. And we would put different committees, bipartisan, by camel committees together to look at each one of the trust and come up with solutions of how you fix it. We're not getting rid of anything. And you can't scare the bejesias out of people saying we're going to get rid of social security. We're going to privatize that. That's not going to happen. But we should be able to solidify it so the people that have worked and earned it know they're going to get it. So something I want you guys to be aware of and pay close attention to because it's going to be a top.

I've already seen Republicans do it and now Manson's doing the same thing, okay? They try to pretend like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to, we're not going to cut Social Security in Medicare, we're not going to privatize it, we're just going to do things like raise the retirement age, which by the way, is cutting social security, okay? It is putting off your retirement because they want to cut Social Security and avoid raising taxes. Right now, the wealthy don't pay the same percentage in social security tax as you do, okay? After a certain amount of income, they stop getting taxed for social security altogether.

You know what you could do if you're really worried about funding the social security program, lift that tax cap entirely. It only benefits the rich. And the rich are terrified of that happening, which is why the rich lobby politicians like Joe Manchin and members of the GOP to Get the retirement age up even higher. Right now it's 67, they want it up to 70. That is a form of cutting social security. Don't let them lie to you. The minute you hear, we're looking to strengthen social security or fix it,

those are code words for cut it. Now, you say, well, Jake, how do I know to trust you? I mean, you say one thing. I just saw imagine say another thing that he's looking to fix social security. That sounds like maybe he might add to it. Well, there's a thing called facts. They have to actually write bills and proposals, and they have to put them forward. And the proposals he's talking about is to raise the retirement age.

And when you do that, so let's take one year, right? Hey, their retirement age is 67 now. They move it to 68. You know what happens in that extra year? You do not get the money that you would have normally gotten. That is tens of thousands of dollars. When they move it to 70s, their proposals are, you might miss out on, it depends on your situation, but 50,000 or more, they're literally stealing from you.

Yep. That is money you put in your whole working life, it's not their money, it's called an entitlement because you are literally entitled to it because you put it in through your taxes. Now Joe Manchin says, I want to rob you. I want to take that $50,000 and put it in the donor's pockets. And every son of a bitch reporter goes, he's a moderate, he's looking to strengthen Social Security.

By the way, there is a proposal to actually strengthen Social Security by adding to it. It's a proposal I don't told you about it's being pushed by Bernie Sanders. They're saying, hey, you know what, if you actually allow the rich to get taxed on social security further, it'll solve it. We don't have to lower the retirement age, we don't have to cut, we don't have to do any of that stuff. In fact, we can add to it. And good news, they polled it. And you know what the polling indicates?

Over 70% of Americans are in favor of that proposal. Even what is clarified to them that it would raise taxes on the rich. They say, yes, I want it, more than seven out of ten Americans. It has a zero percent chance of passing. Do you want to know why? Because almost all of our politicians are corrupt. They all take bribes, and the media is paid to trick you and to lie to you into pretending that they're not taking bribes and that they're not redistributing your money to the richest

people in the country. Final thing, Mansion, much like members of the Republican Party, keep clean. that they're just, they're so concerned with out of control spending. And you know what? Me too. Me too. I am concerned about out of control spending. I mean, we could look at our defense spending, which wastes a lot of money on all types of military weaponry. In some cases, military weaponry that doesn't even work. Okay, we've spent millions, if not billions on that. But okay, let's, if they're worried about that because of national security concerns, which I'm not buying for a second, why don't we take a look at other

ways that the government wastes money. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute reported that direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry totaled 20 billion per year with 80% going toward oil and gas, which is weird because Chevron reported $72 billion in 2022 profits. Do they really need those subsidies? No, no, no, guys, this is not negotiable. You understand what they're doing, and it's not theoretical, it's happening right now. They're taking $20 billion of our money. You work so hard and then you pay those taxes and it's really painful. Remember the rich pay almost no taxes, some of them, not all of them. But the reason why Biden, a rare good move that he did, we increased money for the IRS to do audits of the rich is because above 10 million,

it's like 0.01% get audited. I don't have the facts right in front of me, but we did the story before. It is comical. They purposely cheat on their taxes because they know they can get away with it. You have to pay it. You have to pay those subsidies to the richest companies in the world. Seventy-two billion dollars in profit in one year is unheard of. For one oil company. For one oil company. And you had to pay higher gas prices. They took all the money home. And they said, now, add insult to injury. Give me 20 billion more from the average man. Yeah. And sons of bitches like Joe Manchin, help them rob you blind like that. Yep. And sons of bitches in mainstream media go, no, he's not robbing you. No, those are not bribes. No, they're not

crooks. No, they're moderates. This is the moderate reasonable position to rob you blind. No, I've had it with mainstream media. I know most of them are totally clueless and they don't know anything about politics or news. Go get a different job. I'm begging you to go get a different job. I'm sick of your corruption. Stop robbing Americans. That's what you do every day. And the media is the getaway driver to that robbery. All right, well, let's move on to other Democrats who are very concerned about committee assignments and what they did not get assigned to. Let's do it.

This is, you know, as my colleague said, Bakersfield BS, this is all pretextual. And I don't accept the premise that this has anything to do with the conduct of any of the Democratic members. This is merely the weakness of Kevin McCarthy's speakership that he's so reliant on these extreme members. I mean, how can you, on the one hand, suggest that these are some kind of legitimate basis for unseating Democrats from committee? and put someone like George Santos on any committee. The hypocrisy just grabs you by the throat. That was Adam Schiff, of course, Democratic congressman, who is furious that he was kicked off committees now that the House Speaker is Republican Kevin McCarthy.

Now, he wasn't the only one complaining, as you can see in that video, Ilhan Omar, Eric Swalwell, you know, and other Democrats are similarly furious. We're going to go to some of their statements in just a moment. But before we do, Jank, this was a story that animated you, and I think it animated you for good reason. So go ahead. Okay, so we're supposed to care about these committee assignments. Why are we having this conversation? Okay, so here's what they're going to do on committees for the next two years.

Nothing. No, but literally. And by the way, so people who, look, how do you know? Who's right? who's wrong? Is it Anderson Cooper or is it me? Or is it Joey Reid? Or is it Tucker Carlson? Who's right? Who's wrong? Well, that's why I do predictions. That's why I will tell you ahead of time and you can see it with your own eyes. I guarantee you they will do nothing positive for the next two years. Nothing that has anything above 50% popularity in the poll.

How's that for a simple prediction? Because I can't guarantee that they won't cut Social Security and Medicare. I can't guarantee that they won't do devastating, horrible cuts that are deeply unpopular in the country, because that's what conservative Democrats and Republicans always do, right? But anything popular is a 0% chance. So Adam Schiff, what the hell are you going to do on that committee? So it's about his personal power. He's like, I have been affronted.

I will come on here and raise money because I am now running for a Senate seat in California. I am the victim of Kevin McCarthy. Who cares? What the hell are you going to do on that committee? Adam Schiff has never proposed anything interesting, ever. Have you ever fought for a $15 million wage? universal health care. Oh, I once voted for it, right? Get the hell out. Did you ever pressure your colleagues in the Senate to pass it? Well, I would never. Those are my beloved Democratic

colleagues. They are much more important than the voters. So stop the yapping about committees. I don't care. No one cares. The main committee is oversight where they're going to launch Hunter Biden investigations for the next two years. Oh, is Swalwell on that committee? I like Swalwell. But it doesn't matter if Swalwell's on the committee. This is nonsense. sense? It's just, the thing is, you know, during the first two years of Biden's administration, when Democrats had control of both chambers and Congress, the House did pass important legislation. So I don't want to minimize that, but they did so knowing that the legislation would make its way to the Senate where it would die because Democrats want to maintain that legislative filibuster, right?

So it's real easy to do the political virtue signaling of voting in favor of legislation that you know your constituents want when you know that that legislation is going to die in the Senate and your donors will still be happy. Like that is honestly, like the thing that we need to change first and foremost is how this system is set up entirely. So your committee assignments don't matter if we need literally 60 Democrats who aren't corrupt in the Senate for that legislation to ultimately pass. Yeah, we do honest reporting and analysis here.

So I'm going to be honest with you guys. There's two category of Democrats in the House. One is the suckers, and those are the progressives. And I've talked to them, they genuinely believe that it was going to pass in the Senate. Oh, come on. I know, I know. It seems unbelievable that they would believe that. But they totally believed it.

They even thought Green New Deal was going to pass. Come on. Are you serious? Those are the guys, they were calling them Biden, FDR 2.4. I know the minute he walked in. The media was doing that to be fair. And no, and progressives, they really believed it. They had built this committee and they thought it was a bridge.

And Biden and Clayne did a brilliant job of suckering them in. Like, oh, come on in. We're going to have a great wedding. It's going to be a little red, but come on in. It's going to be great. We're going to give you all these progressive things. Biden said on day one at the Super Bowl interview. I'm not going to do $15 or that one's going to be difficult.

Dude, you got in like three days ago. How did you decide it was difficult already? It was now the second group, the much, much larger group, 90% of Democrats in the House, they never meant a word of it. This is all games to them. It's all theater. By the way, the reporters also know it's theater. The only people that they don't share the news with as to the fact that they're all playing

in an act is you guys. They never tell you, oh, by the way, we're all full of crap. None of this is real. We all know it's not going to pass. And again, there are some reporters that fall into the sucker category. And they're always like, I wonder if it passed the Senate. Now, guys, you can tell, again, we tell you what's going to happen ahead of time. Well, if we were, if we were the radicals and we were wrong and mainstream media was so right,

how come we are proven right every single time and we'll be proven right again? Here, watch the committee assignments. I told you, they're irrelevant. Will they pass anything? No, you can see it. Two years from now, you can come back. We weigh them, weigh us, see who was right and who was wrong. We've been doing this for 20 years now.

You, I'm not as well. Anyways, okay, so, oh, Adam Schiff is missing a committee assignment. And yes, there's a false equivalencies. Yes, it's frustrating. So these guys, and this they're right about. They're like, wait, we kicked off Marjorie Taylor Green from a committee because she thought Jewish space lasers were starting fires. Okay, you're kicking off Schiff because he impeached Trump. He just did his job.

So don't get me wrong, Schiff and Saulwell and Omar's are right about the content, the substance of it, right? And what does the mainstream media do? Well, I can't tell. They're both kicked off of committees, and I guess it's even an Ilhan Omar's an anti-Semite tit for tat, and no one can tell. What am I a reporter? Am I supposed to figure it out? No, I'm supposed to be neutral. Well, what if both, by the way, what if the Republican and the Democratic positions are wrong?

And you're in the middle of those two positions. How's that neutrality working out for you? What an insane standard. All that the media is telling you, when they say we're neutral, we say whether they're Democrats or Republicans, we're balanced and neutral. They're saying we don't do the news. We just report political correctness. And the correct thing to do politically is to tell you they're both equally right. That is the worst journalism in the world.

So that's what we have to deal with. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including a story involving Mr. Beast, a popular YouTuber who is getting backlash for doing something pretty good, actually. We'll tell you why when we come back. All right. All right, back on TYT, Janganana with you guys. Moondragon, wonderful as usual, gifted five young tourist memberships on

You guys are amazing. I love how you're a family and you stick together. Anna. Well, we have a story involving someone doing something good, but getting backlash for it. So let's go. You pay for my surgery? Yes. Seriously? You know what? Here's $10,000. It's making it even better. Is she okay?

We're going to go fix more people's eyesight. She's squeezing hard. The wildly popular YouTuber known as Mr. B. has faced some pretty ridiculous backlash after he decided to pay for eye surgery, 4,000 people so they can see again. Sounds like a great thing. But before we get to the backlash and why people are mad at him about this, I think it's important to understand what he did. So let's get to those details. So the surgery that he paid for is cataract surgery, essentially, right? The surgery or in the surgery, the cataract, which clouds the normally clear lens of the eye, is vacuumed out. Following this, the cataract is replaced with a new artificial lens,

which allows the individual having the surgery to see again. So this eight minute long video profiles multiple individuals who had the surgery done because of Mr. Bees' charitable effort here. And so that led to a lot of backlash from people on the left, on Twitter specifically. Now, the right, by the way. Well, the right wing is going to do what it does. Okay, but I want to focus mostly on the left because I think there's a way of handling these kinds of stories that makes a lot more sense than attacking an individual. But before we get to that, I want to give you an example of someone who was impacted by this effort.

So one man who was blind for 62 years expressed gratitude toward Mr. Beast for the procedure. Another man who lost his job because his vision was impaired was thrilled to be able to work again. A teenage boy who has been blind since his birth was ecstatic to be able to be able to. to drive for the first time. Look, at the end of the day, regardless of what you think Mr. Beast's motivation was for doing this in the first place, he had a real impact on these people's lives. It is a good thing. I don't care what he's done in the past or what kind of criticism you might have. You can take a look at one thing that someone has done and judge it for what it is.

It was a good thing to do, a kind thing to do. But you wouldn't know it based on some of the stuff I've seen online. So I'm going to give you a few examples. And there's a lot of this stuff. So here's one person who says, he is literally the antichrist. He's performing our society's equivalent of miracles through these excessive acts of faux generosity and is garnering everyone's undivided love and admiration in doing so. He will start subverting Christ's teachings next and preaching self-action. I mean, this thread was so unhinged that I had to give you a few examples. That's got to be a right wing, right? No, he's on the left. And I'll prove it. Let me give you more.

Let me give me, he thinks he's on the left. Okay, the reason I dislike him so much is because he paints this disingenuous veneer of altruism and goodwill over content that's primary purpose is to appeal to the senses and satiate the viewer's insatiable appetite for opulence and the material. Okay, there we go, back to the left. Yeah, no, 100%. There's more. He is similar to Andrew Tate, who, by the way, got arrested for human trafficking, okay? in the sense that his content appeals to the most shallow level of reality and is a vehicle through which his audience vicariously lives out their desire for wealth.

But Andrew Tate is at least somewhat open about this. Mr. Beast is more subtle, opting to instead unconsciously encourage materialism by associating it with virtue, thereby undoing the wildly, or I'm sorry, widely held notion that there is a fundamental disconnect between capitalism and altruism. Bro, put the textbook down for a second and live in the real world. He did something nice. And attacking someone who did something nice is stupid, in my opinion. There should be a critique on our system that has literal Americans rely on the whims of wealthy people.

So instead of going after one person that you seem to be a little envious of, let's just keep it real. It would be far better to make a critique, an actual accurate critique, about how our health care system is so broken that Americans are living, honestly, lives that are worse than those living in undeveloped countries. Yeah, all right, I have a lot to say about this. Number one, envy's a hell of a drug. So get off the crack of envy. And it's here, I got two words you should say to Mr. Beast. Thank you. A thousand people can see now, because, of what he did. They couldn't see before. There's a kid who never saw and now he sees the world. Are you insane to criticize that? There's people who are now lost their sight, couldn't work anymore, impoverished, now can go back to work. I'll go on and on because there's a thousand of those stories. They couldn't see it now they can. And you want to criticize that? Oh, it's something about material world and I've got verbal diarrhea here.

And I think I'm so smart. I'm going to use all these words to make an incredibly kind gesture look evil. No, no, you're a loser. Okay. And so go cry about that. No, the guy did something wonderful. And I've never heard of Mr. Bees doing anything wrong before. I'm not saying he's an angel, but where are people getting this stuff?

They seem to have a problem with him creating content about this. this, right? What did you want him to do? Put it and do it in a cave? I guess so. I don't know. But like, I don't care. I don't care.

It's not about Mr. Beast. Okay, if there's anything to criticize here, it is about systems. It is not about an individual. Okay, Mr. Beast is not a literal antichrist. That is insane. Here's another example. Well, that was a dead giveaway that you're a lunatic.

So, I mean, and there's tons of these people calling him antichrist because his name is Mr. Beast. God, how mentally weak do you have? to be. His name is Mr. Bees and he helped people so he must be the antigrist. Okay, all right. Well, Jank, apparently he engages in something known as Philanthrocapitalism. As this one Twitter user says, philanthropy capitalism, he is exploiting poor people's problems

for views and money and giving them basic human needs in return, never addressing why they don't have these in the first place. Now that very last part, I think is a totally fine critique. critique, okay? But Mr. Beast is not, he doesn't do like political analysis. He's not some Marxist. He's not putting out, you know, Marxist content on Twitch and YouTube and stuff, right? He does something completely different. He, I would have liked to see that critique of our healthcare system and how it leads to that. There was a little bit of it in his, in one of his tweets and a little bit of it in his video, which I'll get to in just a second. But before I do,

I think it's important to think of the fact that, well, you know, there's a lot of claim that he's making money off of these efforts. But I looked into this and it turns out that so he runs a second YouTube channel called Beast Philanthropy where all profits from ad revenue, merch sales, and sponsorships goes toward various charitable efforts, including a food pantry that he opened in 2021 because he's a really bad guy. Oh, no, no, you can't. Anna, you don't understand.

If you're a bad guy, like oil executives, and you're destroying the planet and making $72 billion a year, like Chevron just did, okay, you're a bad guy, et cetera. Now you make a lot of money doing good in the world. You fix people's eyesight, you feed them, et cetera. You're also bad. Wait, why are they both bad? Because some on the left have this insane idea that if anyone's doing good in the world, they should immediately give away all of their money and all of their power and go hide in a cave.

that way they can't help anybody anymore, but that guy's going to feel better because he's not going to feel as much envy, okay? The critic is going to feel great. Oh, good. Mr. Bees isn't helping anyone anymore. No, the real, honestly the real fighter here are the real fighters are the ones on Twitter criticizing him because they're actually accomplishing. Yeah, how many eyes did you fix? I know. How many people did you help? But guys, look, again, my point isn't to, even though we've been pretty vicious toward these tweets and I don't regret it, it's not about, any individual. Like, I want the left to just be smarter in how they engage in discourse, especially online, because they love attacking one another. They love attacking individuals,

not all leftists. I think there are a lot of people on the left who are principled and understand the critique lies in how our systems are set up, right? But when you go after a person trying to do a good thing and you make it about the individual, you start losing the argument, right? It's a massive distraction. It's unnecessary. I think Hassan had a good reaction to this. He critiqued, like he's immediately said, and I think this is the right comment, right? I can't believe we live in a country where people have to rely on a content creator to get a surgery that honestly takes 10 minutes for this surgery, right?

And just going back to Mr. Beast and some of what he had to say, one part of his video kind of very briefly touched on. on how screwed up the system is. Let's watch that real quick. They can't see, but we have all the technology to fix it. Yep, half of all the blindness in the world is people who need a 10 minute surgery. Crazy. Yeah. So not only are we helping people here in America, but we're also going to other places around the world.

Because unfortunately, nearly half the population with curable blindness doesn't have access to this surgery. So I wanted to provide this to as many people as possible. So it would have been really nice for him to elaborate on that further. Why? Why is it, right? He didn't because he's not a political person or political content creator from what I've seen so far at least. He's not. I don't even know what his politics is.

And I don't want to know and I don't care. He brought attention to this issue. He is not a political YouTuber, but he brought attention to an issue that desperately needs attention. And it's not just about blindness, guys. Our government does not have universal health care. We're the only developed nation that doesn't have it. And that is the problem. And and our system costs twice as much.

If it didn't cost as much, we could actually cure blindness for all those people where it is curable in the country right now, just like that. But our government is so brutal that it is choosing not to do what a YouTuber just did. They're leaving it to YouTubers to fix people's eyesight because our own representatives are scum. Let us do the politics. We'll tell you, we'll tell you super clearly. Joe Manchin, other Christian cinema, all Republicans. Joe Biden, by the way, everyone who is against universal health care is saying, I don't mind those people being blind, let alone the 45,000 people a year that die

because they don't have health insurance. Exactly. That is how brutal we, we allow the deaths of a stadium full of people. And you know what? If Mr. B saved a thousand of their lives, I guarantee you some bitter, envious leftists would come on and go, oh, he didn't do enough? And why didn't he save his, their lives anyway? Is he trying to make money off of it? Why didn't he just let them dying and instead not have any money? That would be great if he didn't have any money. What is wrong with you people? Take the

win. It's called thank you. Look into it. Finally, I just, this quote from Michael Brooks comes up a lot for good reason, and I want you guys to just remember it when you get tempted to attack individuals. Because again, attacking individuals is a distraction. And all it does is lead to infighting and it leads to losing, which honestly the left does a great job with in the United States. Be ruthless with systems. Be kind to people. That's it. That's the whole thing. Look, guys, last thing, the Andrew Tates of the world, Alex Jones, Crowder, all temple, all those guys, they make tons of money by spreading poison into our culture, racism, sexism, et cetera, over the top, misogyny, hate on top of hate on top of fear, right? Those are the right guys to fight. Then you take a random guy who's making a ton of money and using it for good has a ton of attention, $130 million subscribers.

and using it for good and you attack him? No, do better. Do better. Take the win. When someone does something kind with their money, you should applaud that. You should encourage that. What do you want them to do? All be scumbags? Oh, you want them all to take their money and use it for bad things? And then be like, okay, good. At least you're not a hypocrite. You're just a bad guy in everything you do.

No, you want them to use their money for good. That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. It's so simple. Yeah, I mean, look, and I'll put it in my context, okay? The work I do, the research I do, the segments I put together and produce, I do it because, yeah, I want those videos to do real well, have a lot of viewership, inform a lot of people, and also contribute to my livelihood. That doesn't make you a bad person.

Yeah, well, now that you brought that up, but let me add two things to it. One, if you're a leftist, you're supposed to be in favor of people making a living. So what is this weird standard where the Republicans in the right wings should be super rich, but everyone trying to help folks on the left should be impoverished so you feel better. What a weird insane standard. And for us, I view every video as a message in a bottle. And so we reach on an average month 400 million views. We're bad people and we're literal antichrist.

That is 400 million messages in a bottle to do the right thing and not the wrong thing. And if you say no, you shouldn't do that because you make money. And Bart, the audio guy makes money and John makes money and the editor makes money. But none of you should have a living. Well, then we can't do the show and nobody ever gets the message. Would that make you happier? For some of them, yes. Absolutely.

For some of them, they would love that. So just get, just look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. But anyway, he, Mr. Bees is not doing political messages. He's not doing messages about it. But what he is doing is reaching a broader audience that is non-political. A hundred and thirty million people, a lot of them very young. And what's the lesson that they just got? Be decent to others.

Isn't it wonderful when you can give them a miracle of eyesight? Hey, if you've got money, do something good with it. people happy. That's the message he put in a bottle. Again, the correct response to that is thank you. All right, that does it for the first hour, but we're not done talking about health care. When we come back, Ben Shapiro had a curious take on obesity and life expectancy here in the United States. We'll address that with actual data and facts. And then later, we'll lighten things up, I think. No promises, though. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.combe. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.