The Young Turks - The Joe-mance

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

The Republican Party wants to raise your taxes, not corporations, to pay for an infrastructure plan. Progressive talk show host reveals: I was offered a lucrative job to become a conservative. New details shed light on Rep. Matt Gaetz’s Bahamas trip, plus other new details. 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. Welcome, everyone. You're watching TYT with Anna Casparian and John Ida Rola, hosted the damage report, Daddy Dragon. And I just have one question for you. John, do you love it when they call you Big Papa? Nothing you've just said is true or accurate or real in any, nothing, none of that's true. That's not what I hear. That's not what I hear.

That's what you say. We're going to have a bonanza for you guys today. A huge show, lots of updates, including updates on the infrastructure bill. Later in the show, we're going to get into a little bit of foreign policy and discuss Biden's decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan. That'll be in the second hour with Nando Villa. And is there a bromance afoot with Joe Manchin and Joe Biden? I hear based on reporting from the Hill, excellent, accurate reporting from the hill that they share the same first name. Bromance. What? Romance. No, it's one of the most embarrassing things I've ever read.

And I can't wait to tell you guys what else was in that piece. But I can't believe that That was even cited. Like, they're really good friends, you know, they got that same first name. Okay, sounds great. Anyway, but we should start off every day. We should start off by giving you guys an update on Biden's infrastructure bill because negotiations are already taking place, bipartisan meetings are happening in the Oval Office. And some of the outcomes are not so great for those who want to avoid regressive taxation to

to pay for the infrastructure bill. So President Joe Biden met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers who want to lean more toward regressive taxes in order to pay for his infrastructure bill rather than increase corporate tax rates. Now Biden is apparently willing to consider these proposals. And that's really what we should be focusing on here. And what we should focus on fighting as much as we possibly can. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Republicans said they remain opposed to raising taxes on corporations and pushed for a narrower package, meaning much of what we like in that bill is something that is likely gonna be proposed as, you know, something that Republicans are

gonna propose stripping from the bill. Biden showed an openness to breaking his proposal into smaller parts and considering different ways to pay for it, according to the lawmakers who attended that meeting. And we're gonna quote a few of them in just a minute, and it is pretty infuriating. But Biden, according to the Wall Street Journal, said he was prepared to negotiate on the extent of the infrastructure project as well as how we pay for it. I think everyone acknowledges that we need a significant infrastructure bill or increase in infrastructure. It's going to get down to what we call infrastructure. Okay, that's what he said, citing water and broadband internet as examples, I'm confident that everything is going to work out perfectly. But he did emphasize that

he does not want the infrastructure bill to add to the deficit. And that's already a red flag, because this is the talking point that Republicans will use as leverage to get him to essentially cut things out of the proposal and possibly shift the funding away from the wealthy and more toward ordinary Americans. And by the way, Republicans are just saying it flat out. So for instance, Representative Don Young from Alaska said in an interview after the meeting that the American public should participate in paying for the package to make them more invested likely through some kind of mileage fee so that electric vehicles also pay for using roads. He said that. He said that openly and transparently. Keep in mind that it was just reported today, John,

that the IRS is losing out on one trillion dollars in taxes by tax dodgers at the very top. So these people are not even paying what they're supposed to pay in taxes, which is honestly, when you could consider all of the loopholes and deductions they get to take advantage of, ends up being a smaller percentage of their income compared to what working Americans have to pay. But it's amazing that that's the talking point that we're hearing now. Maybe American, ordinary Americans who are already squeezed by this terrible economic system, maybe they should pay more into this. Sorry for cutting you off. Classic close-minded Anna. She can't see what we see a future with an America full of new

roads and bridges and green buildings and all that. And a bunch of Americans just looking around saying, I just don't feel connected to any of this. I don't feel like I gave. It's so insulting. Like you, I, you could at least just say we want to tax, you know, the electric cars. Don't come up with this completely insulting thing about just being in it together because it's a very easy response to say electricity is already taxed just like gas. We tax gas for the cars, we tax electricity for the cars, we also tax the cars, by the way. And we pay to register it. Electric cars already contribute that's so massive.

I agree with you about the red flags. Now, him saying that he doesn't want it to increase the deficit doesn't have to be a red flag. In theory, you could just tax corporations are the wealthy enough to pay for it and you could get whatever you want, $2 trillion, $3 trillion, $4 trillion, and have it not increase the deficit. But in reality, it probably is, that's probably not going to be how it actually goes. And the deficit doesn't matter. They don't, they demonstrated that for four years, Republicans don't give a damn about it. Why is Biden so readily playing into the most obvious cyclical con that we've identified? We know exactly how this works. And so the entire thing, highly frustrating. And if he is going to be negotiating, that's why

when they rolled out the plan, we were nervous about the starting figure. Because Biden doesn't strike us as a sort of person where that number is likely to inflate, but they're already talking about how it might shrink. Yeah, exactly. The people who are talking about how this infrastructure bill might shrink are actually Democrats. As the Wall Street Journal report, some Democrats expect several provisions in Biden's plan, including some of its labor protections, to be ineligible for approval under reconciliation. So that's their way of saying like, the parliamentarian will come to the rescue on this too. Don't worry. So, and I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. I definitely think that that will be the outcome. I definitely think that the infrastructure bill, even with all of

its flaws, certainly has room to be slimmed down further. And it's just infuriating that while we didn't hear anything about a parliamentarian under Trump's administration, now that talking point is used as a strategy to defeat some of the more popular provisions in proposed legislation from the Biden administration, including the $15 an hour minimum wage. And now in this case, they're not being very specific in what they're referring to, but some of its labor protections. And they don't really have to be specific because that is what they're going to target. I mean, we all know that.

And it's not something that is unique to Republicans. It's certainly not unique to Democrats. This is something that corporations certainly want to do away with. Anything that strengthens labor, they want to do away with. So it's also, in my opinion, a foreshadowing sign for the, the fate of the Pro Act, which is a piece of legislation meant to make it easier for employees to unionize and have collective bargaining power. And honestly, if we really want to have any say in these types of policies, as workers, you need to have labor power. But it's difficult to

get it when you have an incredibly corrupt Congress. And I wonder, you've probably seen And many people watching this have probably seen what I've seen, which is when they announced that the infrastructure plan was so and so and we're going to pay for it with these new taxes. A few corporations came out and they're like, yeah, no, that's totally cool. And like I was reading articles about like the nation's wealthy silent on tax increase and all that. And I was like, that's a little bit weird. Usually, you know, they holler a little bit when you start talking about that. But what if they were already reassured that it wasn't going to happen? Or what if they just had good cause to be confident that it wouldn't happen?

happen, why make a big fuss out of it if you don't think that it's that there's any chance that it actually passes? There were very few outlets that reported on the US Chamber of Commerce meeting with Biden in the Oval Office in the lead up to the relief bill, the coronavirus relief bill. Very little reporting on that. I think it was like common dreams and maybe the daily poster that reported on that meeting. But immediately following that, Biden gave up on a $15 an hour minimum wage immediately. So they don't really need to make a big stink about tax increases or anything like that.

They just need to set up a meeting with Biden in the Oval Office and they'll get what they want. And that's exactly what happened with the relief bill. Well, speaking of Biden, one of my favorite stories today has to do with Biden's bromance apparently with Senator Joe Manchin. So let's discuss. The fine reporters over at the Hill published a laughable and embarrassing piece about Joe Manchin's alleged bromance with Joe Biden. Now, I don't deny that they probably have a friendly relationship. It's just some of the framing in this piece that I have an issue with and I want to bring to

your attention. So the title is inside the surprisingly close Biden Mansion relationship. And one of the first paragraphs argues that Mansion has always seen himself in the Biden mold, someone who's willing to cross party lines to find a compromise. They shared the same first name. Wow, wow. Wow. And the working class roots, as well as a willingness to work together on heated issues including gun reform. Now let me be clear, but Manchin is not willing to work with Biden on gun reform. Mansion doesn't even want to do away with some of the federal background check loopholes.

Essentially, he wants to protect the ability for private sellers to sell to one another without background checks. So I don't know where that framing comes from, but John, I mean, who cares? they share the first name and so that's all they do. They do. We double check to make sure, but yeah, like he's willing to work on gun reform? What? Is he willing in the future to pose with fewer guns in his campaign advertisements? He pitches himself as basically a Republican on guns. Look, in this story substantively, which I'm sure we're going to get to in many different ways, Joe Biden and Joe Manchin are the bad guys. With that particular thing, though, it's the, it's the writers. Why did they write that? Why and why did the edit

to allow it. Yes, their name is the same. We understand that their name is the same. That doesn't mean anything, we're not children. But believe it or not, I mean, look, you and John Boehner, you guys really get along because you guys share a first name. And so as a result, you know, you guys are buddies, you guys are willing to work together on gun control. Just because of that. We both hate Ted Cruz. We have that in common, but that's about it. We both drink, I don't know, occasionally cry. That's, those are the three things that are bromance, is resting on. Okay, so look, believe it or not, that's actually the most benign part of the framing in this

article. I want to go to the rest of it, which I do find a problem with. And it's not just the hill that's using this framing. I'm seeing it all over the place and we need to correct it. So Manchin acknowledged that he and Biden, who are separated by five years in age, grew up in the same era of Democratic politics, and both have looked out for the same predominantly unionized working class voters throughout their careers. Have they? Have they? What was Joe Manchin's position on raising the minimum wage earlier this year? And like, that's on the authors again. Too much. Too much. He's looking out for workers, but let's not pay them $15 an hour. And I also want to remind you all of who Joe Biden is, okay? Because there's no amount of positive PR or spin

that can erase what his record was. So I want to start off with the first video. This was during the Democratic primaries in early 2020. Bernie Sanders did an interview to essentially call Joe Biden out on his record, and he's right about everything he lists here. Take a look. Joe Biden voted and helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq, the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country. Joe Biden voted for the disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China, which cost us millions of jobs.

You think that's going to play well in Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania? You know, Joe Biden has been on the floor of the Senate talking about the need to cut Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid. Joe Biden pushed a bankruptcy bill, which has caused enormous financial problems for working families. Yes, enormous problems for working families. Yes, the trade deals that we've made with China, the trade deals through NAFTA have shipped millions of jobs out of this country in the search for cheap labor to exploit. So he's right about that. I mean, I don't know how that really helps workers, much less unionized workers in America. I don't know, spoiler alert, it hadn't, it hasn't, it's been a disaster. But that framing just continues to live on in an article after article, all due to Biden's willingness

to spend a little more money than previous Democratic administrations. A little more, yeah. Yeah, and I'll never understand why, like, Biden supposedly being so, much better for workers than, I don't know, Lieberman, I guess, Blanche Lincoln. That is, that's enough. He did, he did one or two things or whatever. So now that makes him special. Look at that. He's got workers' backs. Okay, well, what about politicians that like their backs more? Nope, extreme, don't like it, suspicious. I don't like that at all. Why is that not a net good to be even more supportive? And not just decades ago, but like actually right now. I don't understand that. It's like they like a little bit of flavor on their politicians,

but like let's not get crazy and like really start actually spending money on these people. Basically it's just speeches or that he rides the train. They like the performative stuff a little bit, but they don't want anything large that's going to be expensive. And we're actually seeing that play out in the approach to things like the $15 minimum wage, which is fine if you're going to like that sort of thing, but don't write an article about how they have this romance that will survive, the sun exploding into a red giant and make it about how they share this love for the working class when not just the past few decades, but indeed just the past month or two proves that there is only so far that will go and it's really not that far from the point of view of the working

class. How about when you're going to write something about how they're great champions for the working class, you ask the working class whether that's true. You ask workers, Maybe go down to Bessemer, ask them who their champions are amongst politicians. But no, it's just it's some disconnected writers talking about disconnected politicians that haven't existed in that world for literally decades outside of the occasional train ride. So Mansion continues, right? So Mansion wants to draw this similarity between Biden and FDR, which to be fair to Manchin, he's not the only one doing that. So the Hill writes, Manchin says he speaks regularly with Biden.

He seemed, he estimated he's spoken to Biden five or seven times since he became president and expects to be invited to the White House soon to discuss infrastructure. And then this is his direct quote, next to FDR, this person, meaning Biden, understands this process as well, if not better than anyone I know. And so like the FDR conclusions that people have, just because Biden's willing to spend a little bit more money, is what's driving me crazy. Because as we've talked about on this show before, the big difference between Biden's infrastructure proposal and what FDR did is FDR actually made systemic changes.

He had actual permanent programs that benefited the lives of so many workers. We haven't seen that from Biden yet. An upcoming proposal might make the child tax credits permanent, but even so, it's not a universal program that would, you know, obviously benefit the lives of people who don't have kids. Like what kind of permanent programs are being proposed for people who don't have children, right? And that's not to say I don't want the child tax credit. I think that it's a fantastic provision and should be made permanent. I'm just saying that even if that passes, you still can't get close to what FDR was willing to do and succeeded in doing through the new deal. Go ahead, John.

Yeah, and his bill, I mean, it's difficult to do one-to-one comparisons, but it's at least like five times smaller than the new deal, possibly even more so. So I feel like yeah, that's worth taking into account. Yeah, it's frustrating for to hear the comparisons without them yet being earned is frustrating. Anytime you hear about how much he wants to be like FDR, it's like a person who's like planning to go to the gym talking about how much like like Hercules they are, like but shouldn't you do it first before you start taking the accolades? And then, but this is even worse, this is like if that guy has a friend who's trying to stop him from going to the gym being like he's basically Hercules already. He doesn't even

need to do this stuff. Like you know what you want that meeting for. I don't even know why why didn't you go with the Republicans. It's the same meeting. Don't tax the rich, don't do as much. That's all it's going to be. It's going to be let's really narrow it. So the government doesn't do much for people and but okay, so that's a negative. I get it. But then what we get out of that is the rich don't have to give. That's all the conversation is going to be. And he's going to try to limit as much as possible. I'm sure he's going to talk about infrastructure is just asphalt. I'm sure that is going to be his contribution to the political conversation. We don't need him. We don't need him. He is powerful because he can derail the entire thing. Okay, he can hold us hostage.

That's how the media needs to be covering this. This is not a buddy comedy. Okay, he's the guy standing and maybe cinema and maybe some cowardly Democrats who won't even like Mansion and cinema identify yet how awful they are. He is the one standing between us and relief. That's it. That's the only thing that the Hill and Politico should be saying about it. Of course, they're not going to. Right. In fact, there's a very clear double standard in the way that they're willing to cover someone like Joe Manchin who serves as an obstacle to to passing even Joe Biden's agenda and certainly has no interest in helping to pass any type of progressive agenda. But when you see progressives try to fight corporate Democrats, the headlines

are very different, the framing in these articles. And this isn't even an opinion piece. This is supposed to be straight news reporting, which is hilarious to me. But the framing of it is very different if you have progressives who are willing to withhold their vote as a block in order to ensure that they get some of their favorite provisions in the legislation in these must pass bills. And also, I mean, we had a lengthy discussion about how progressive shouldn't be afraid to use that leverage. And unfortunately, they haven't been. But I do want to leave you with this one final part of the article that I thought was interesting because Democratic strategists are a big part of what pulls lawmakers, Democratic lawmakers further to the

Right. And this is a clear example of that. So Democratic strategist and Capitol Hill veteran, Jim Manley, said it's smart for Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Chuck Schumer, to give some room for the two to maneuver, meaning Joe Manchin and Joe Biden. The last thing they should be doing is overreacting to the demands of activists. And to be clear, they don't. They don't overreact to the demands of activists. They barely react to the demands of activists. In fact, Joe Manchin is downright combative when it comes to these demands. And Joe Biden, you know, he'll start off by saying like, I want to bring the country together. I want to work together. Sure, I'm open to all ideas. And he might come out with something that seems okay, certainly not as robust as we would like to see. But all it takes is a few meetings with bipartisan lawmakers, a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce. And all of a sudden we're talking about a bill that is stripped of its progressive provisions and a bill that shifts the

the costs from honestly millionaires and billionaires corporations to people like the two of us, people watching the show, in the form of regressive taxes like a gas tax or a tax on electric vehicles. It's just that's the way it works. That's the way it works. It's incredibly frustrating. Yeah, and if really, sorry, I'll keep it fast, if they're going to have this little supposed to battle where we're supposed to believe that Biden is secretly fighting to be FDR 2.0 and like, oh, he's really going to deal with Mansion, but don't worry, just to hang in there. I think that we would be able to have a little bit more faith if simultaneously Biden was actually doing some of the things he can do independently in that area. Okay, we, it would be a little bit

easier to say, no, he's definitely going to get that $15 an hour minimum wage. He's a fighter if today he signed student loan debt cancellation. Like if he did that, if he, I don't know, This is a far lower bar, but if he actually raised the cap on refugees coming in. If he were doing these things that he can do that Joe Manchin, it doesn't matter what Joe Manchin thinks about it, that would at least show he's willing to act. But when you're just getting engaged in these back and forth with Joe Manchin and you're not doing the independent stuff, why would we have faith? Why would it be anything other than suspicious at this point?

Exactly. All right, let's move on and talk a little bit about how right wing propaganda works in America and it's far more organized and it's certainly well funded than most people even realize. And it's important to be aware of that so you can suss it out when it comes across on your computer screen or on television. So we hear a lot of complaints about cancel culture from the likes of conservative idiots like Josh Hawley who claim that companies like Coca-Cola are going to cancel you, the consumer, if they don't like you. Obviously, he's trying to weigh in on Coca-Cola and other companies paying lip service to people who are outraged over Georgia's voter suppression bill. But really, when you take a step back and look at cancel

culture, the very people who cry about it the loudest tend to be the individuals who implement it. And that's certainly the case when you look at certain organizations that are funded by the Koch brothers, who literally fund groups that have the sole intention of intimidating intimidating professors into basically halting all of their messaging, anything that might share real information with students about our history, how broken our economic system is. And I want to give you this example. So The Intercept wrote a fantastic piece. Alice Speary is the one who authored it. And she talks about a group known as campus reform. And so over the last year, she writes, campus reform has targeted hundreds of college professors like Hatmi, and you should

read about Hatmi's story in this piece, leading to online harassment campaigns, doxing threats of violence, and calls on universities to fire their faculty. Now, Professor Hatmi's story revolved around the fact that members of campus reform approached him about, you know, some advice, some counseling, and he decided not to work with the organization after there was was a little bit of a Google search and you realize what campus reform is really about. And there are too many ties to white nationalists, white supremacists, and it was obviously his right to say, no, I'm not interested in working with this organization. Well, there was consequences to that.

They decided to attack him, list him on their website, put him completely out of context, and that led to a very clear harassment campaign that luckily he was not intimidated by. But others aren't so lucky. The professors were targeted over a variety of liberal positions, but a majority were singled out over their comments on race. And black professors were predominantly, or disproportionately, I should say, targeted. Those who discussed topics like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and Palestine were especially subjected to threats.

And guess what? Not only do the threats come pouring in, but the people associated with campus reform also reach out to college administrators and essentially pressure them to fire the professors, which sounds a lot like canceling to me. But we should talk about, yeah, you know, I'm going to get to how this is funded and just how perverse and prevalent this is. But before I do, John, immediate thoughts. Sure.

It definitely sounds like cancellation. It sounds like these professors say things that are politically incorrect, I guess, from their point of view. Campus reform is a group that we actually spent a long time talking about on TYT University way back in the day. They've been doing this for a long time. And I'm glad that you're pointing out not only because it's a demonstration that right wing canceling and all of that has been going on for a long time, but that it's going on in like the specific battleground that the supposed free speech warriors on the right have focused on the most. They say that the issue with colleges is that there's no free speech for conservatives. That if you are conservative

and you believe the wrong things, you will be shunned, you'll get bad grades or whatever. And this entire time they've been trying to fire people for believing talking about the wrong things. It's so specific. And like they know what they're doing. They know the game that they're playing. I might point out a ridiculous bit of hypocrisy on like Tucker Carlson's part when he comes to cancel culture because we need to understand that he's doing it. But I'm far more frustrated with people like like Bill Marr and articles about cancel culture that try to pretend that this is genuinely some sort of left wing thing. That like yeah, no, we really have to allow for like politically incorrect speech which the left is coming for. No, no, just some people don't like

some things. And sometimes the left it does it, sometimes the right that does it, sometimes it's centrist that does it. That is just how the world works. That is indisputable. But the narrative about censorship, I think that is something that we actually need to engage, And we can't simply like just let Bill Maher win and just say, yeah, you're right, it's just on us because that allows them to do stuff like campus reform is and get away with it because there's no convenient narrative to fit it in like they have for cancellation. Yeah, you're exactly right. And I think the big difference between and look, I think that it can be pretty toxic, right? I do not agree with progressive-minded people

going through tweets from 10, 15 years ago and then deciding to engage in a pressure campaign to get that individual fired based on what they tweeted a long time ago. Like I think people are capable of changing and I think that that culture is incredibly toxic. I don't like it. But the difference between what we're talking about here with campus reform and the toxicity I just mentioned is that this is a well-funded, orchestrated effort to essentially propagandize students propagandize individuals watching the news and trick people into thinking that their ideas are the right ideas, the popular ideas. We certainly see that with troll farms on social media. Anytime a conservative tweet something that's obviously incredibly unpopular and actual

professional polling shows that these policy proposals are unpopular, they'll just have troll farms that pretend as if it's incredibly popular in order to sway public opinion. and persuade people into thinking that their thoughts are actually incorrect. And look, there have been consequences, unjustified consequences for these professors. There was a survey done on some of these professors who were targeted by campus reform, and 12% reported facing disciplinary action as a result of a campus reform story. And three people said that they actually ended up losing their jobs as a result. So this is exactly what Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter pretended to be so concerned about on college campuses.

Oh, they don't like us, they don't like our speeches, they're trying to cancel us. This is supposed to be a place where you have a free marketplace of ideas, a free exchange of ideas. Understand that that was nothing more than a personal branding exercise that unfortunately in the short term did work out for them. But again, you take a closer look and you see what the reality is. So let's talk about how campus reform is funded. Campus reform is published by the Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that has trained conservative activists for four decades, to your point, John, through the generous funding of billionaire donors like the Koch family.

The institute reported more than $16 million in revenue in 2018 alone. And they certainly do have ties to white supremacist groups, just to give you a few examples. Matthew Heimbach, a neo-Nazi activist, former Y-A-F chapter leader, and once Leadership Institute trainee, told Huffington Post in 2016 that the Institute, quote, trained this entire next generation of white nationalists. The institute also employed Kevin Deanna, another former Y-A-F leader, who started the campus-based white supremacist group, Youth for Western Civilization. And when they're approached by these organizations, understand that especially for college students,

the offer is pretty lucrative and hard to pass up. And I think that you're also seeing this with progressive, independent talk show hosts, all of a sudden, suddenly they're spouting right-wing talking points. I think they get approached with money offers. And I'll give you proof of that in a minute. But in the case of campus reform, the site paid $50 per story or $100 if they included video or photos. Soon, campus reform established a tiered system.

After publishing four articles, a correspondent could rise from bronze to silver and make $75 apiece. After 15 articles, they would rise to gold and receive $100 per story. Look, I'm gonna keep it real with you guys, that's actually more money than what some professional writers make writing freelance. And it's just for a college student, that's certainly appealing. It's very lucrative and that's how they get people hooked. And John, before I get your final thoughts on this, I do want to show what I was talking about when it comes to left wing hosts, getting approached by right wingers to essentially shill for the right wing. David Pacman shared an

experience he had and I think it's telling. Let's watch. Had a lunch with them. And they said to me, listen, what you're doing is interesting. It's fine. You know, my show was much smaller at the time. But the right is far more well funded. And what I'm wondering is, would you for X amount of dollars become a conservative and do conservative radio? Like how much do you care? How much is this about your politics versus how much of this is about money and business? Because I think that you're good, but the left just, this was when online was far less dominant and terrestrial radio was still the thing. The left just doesn't do well on talk radio. The right does. And, you know, I could get you a job making X if you were to do right wing radio and somehow shift to the right. At the time, X number of dollars was about three times what I was making. And I said, no, I couldn't live with myself. I'm not playing a character here. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan,

you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of On The Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it.

The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time.

So I believe David Packman. I believe him because it goes along with what I've seen personally in the media, but also it's the same, John, it's like the exact same. They ripped a page out of the playbook from campus reform. Campus reform offers a way for student writers to build up a portfolio, a chance for their stories to go viral and access to a steady stream of media gigs, pay close attention, with the most high profile being appearances on Fox and Friends or Tucker Carlson tonight. Even non-writers can benefit making $50 for tipping the site off to supposed liberal abuse.

Yeah, if I were in college, I would just, I would have, like, me and a friend just abuse that, like, keep calling each other lefties to get the money. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs.

Only dinner's July 18th. Yeah, I'm not surprised that these organizations exist. They don't have to truly turn a profit. They get given huge amounts of money that's then just flooded in these things. Like those articles that the kids are writing probably aren't earning anything like that for the actual companies, but it doesn't matter. It's a service that the right needs. They need to generate the illusion of content and authenticity. They do the same thing with shows too, infusing huge amounts of advertising into the lamest independent voices.

And if you put enough advertising online, billboards, all of that, you can get some people, some trolls to watch this stuff. And it doesn't have to actually earn money. It might eventually, but it doesn't have to because the true money is in things like tax cuts, deregulation, all of that, which this helps to ensure. It's frustrating. It's very frustrating. But I can understand if you're in college getting $100 to write a little article, that would be really appealing. I worked as a barista and as a waiter in college. That might have seemed really a feeling if they'd offered it. And I'm sure if you're higher profile, you're probably pulling in a lot more money. I mean, look at people like Dave Rubin, who supposedly was a lefty and

then started getting paid big amounts of money to give speeches about free speech on campus ad, specifically to put a bow on this, getting huge amounts of money that he never could have earned actually doing something like what he truly believes, if he can be said to have any true beliefs? Right, right. And, you know, it's the best thing to, I guess, combat it is to know that it's happening. And it's a well-oiled machine, well-funded, and you see it everywhere. I remember when the Koch brothers had the strategy of just infusing science departments with a ton of cash in order to prevent any real academic work on climate change. That was their initial strategy. But obviously this is a much darker strategy. And of course, campus reform has

a website that makes it appear as though they're doing actual unbiased reporting. But clearly with their agenda in place, it's anything but unbiased. We gotta take a quick break. When we come back, an insane story involving a military man. in South Carolina harassing a black man who lives in the neighborhood. We have that story and more for you when we return. Welcome to our social break. I'm sad this is the first social break of the show today because of our tech issues, but I'll get through them as quickly as I can. I do want to read from Peter low frequency in our super chat section who says, love the pre-show segments you've been filming Anna. You guys should check that out. I successfully did one today. You have a beautiful

kitchen, but I'm very confused by your drawer banks, having knobs on the top row and pulls on the lower rows, please comment. It's very simple. It's just a design that I like. So I went with it. It's fun. But also- No, there has to be more to it. The knobs might just be for the drawers, and then like the cabinet doors, I think I have pulls for them. But you got to switch it up. You don't want everything to be too uniform and matchy, matchy. You get what I'm saying? would never do that. Affectos writes it and says, Republicans, this corporate tax will come back and they'll be taxing you, just you wait.

Also Republicans, let's tax the poor people, not corporations. I know, they're just like, let's not even go about it in any type of roundabout way. We want to tax people who are less fortunate in order to pay for this infrastructure bill. Salaam writes in and says is Tucker Carlson's world or in Tucker Carlson's world of all white people, Who would pick the grapes? Who would process the industrial meats? Who would mow the lawns? Funny how his kind of white people run for the hills when it comes to actual work. Can you imagine Tucker Carlson mowing a lawn? I don't want to imagine I'm doing anything else.

All right, I'm gonna move over to our live reads. We do have some fun programming coming up. So we're doing a special for Earth Day next week on April 22nd. And you can watch it anywhere you watch our show. It's on most of our platforms. So check that out Thursday, April 22nd at 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time, 5.30 p.m. Pacific. And we're gonna have a good time. We're gonna talk about the Earth. John loves it. John loves talking about Earth. So it's gonna be- Top five planets. Easy. And then also happy half hour airs tonight after our podcast. post game show, you could check that out at Twitch.tv.T. At 8.30 p.m. Eastern time, 530 p.m. Pacific.

Also, happy half hour is available on demand for Twitch subscribers and TYT members. Just make sure that you link your Amazon account to become a subscriber for free. And then you have to renew that every month, right? I think that's the strategy. So if you've done it once and then a month later, you're like, hey, how come I'm not subscribe? What's going on? It's because you have to do it again. do it as many times as you want, which is great. We have about 20 seconds left, so let's read from approval who says, but can Manchin and Biden agree on a favorite color? Let's get some more reporters on the case. I agree, hard hitting. Ink Dragon, yes, Biden and Manchin are just great at looking out for union workers. We can tell because the percentage of unionized

workers in this country has gone up in the decades that Joe and Joe have been in politics. Wait, exactly. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian and John Ida Rola with you. Let's get to our next story. There's been a disturbing video circulating on social media that shows a white couple harassing a black man for walking around in the neighborhood. Now I want to start off with the update to the story, which is a good update. The person seen harassing the black man in this video has luckily been arrested.

But when we come back from the video, I'll tell you who he is and why this is a problem, not just in this story, but when it comes to the U.S. military and policing in America. Take a look. Go away right now. Hey, they've already been called. They're just waiting. You know what, maybe you should hang on a little longer. Let's see how it goes.

Then we won't have to get the report by ourselves. What is it you doing here? Then walk. Okay, and that's what I was doing since you came out of our house. Well, you've been here like 15 minutes now. Let's go. Walk away. Keep walking. Walk away.

I'm walking. Walk away right now. You need help? You got this on camera. I'm happy to help you. Uh-uh. I didn't hit you. There's a difference between pushing you.

You were the aggressor, buddy. You were aggressive on their neighborhood. Someone came running. Walk away. You walk away. You walk away. You're talking to my wife right now. That's your wife?

Walk away. Walk away. Take it out. You do walk away or I'm going to carry your ass out of here. What do you want to do? You better not touch you. Or what? What are you going to do?

Let's go. Walk away. I didn't do anything. I'm about to do something to you. You better start walking. I do anything to her. You better start walking right now. You come after me like that?

I ain't coming after you. You're in the wrong. You're in the wrong. Remembering, get out. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech.

And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect your. you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important.

ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-V-P-E. dot com slash t y t yt check it out today is he in the wrong neighborhood why would he think he's in the wrong neighborhood that seems strange john we have just sorry i think he just wanted to add that

onto the end so that you understood the entire context of who he is and what this little thing is about i think it's pretty clear with that last comment so for those of you wondering the person in the video doing the harassing is jonathan pentland he is he is is a US Army Sergeant First Class. Pentland has been at Fort Jackson in Columbia since at least 2019 and has worked as a drill sergeant at the garrison. According to a document from the Secretary of the Army, Pentland was promoted to Sergeant First Class in April of 2020. We're not done showing you what that interaction look like. We have one more video. Let's take a look at that.

Get out. Where? Where's your house? What's your address? Maybe we should walk you home. You can't walk me home. Well, you bet you want to bet what I can do? I live here, sir. Okay, what's your house? Right now, you're harassing the neighborhood.

I'm not harassing anyone walking through the neighborhood. I live with you, sir. Where? Check it out. We are a tight-knit community. We take care of each other. How long do you live? How long do you live?

How long have you been living here? Why is that even matter to you? How long have you been living here? It doesn't matter. You know what? Get the hell out of my house. face. Get out of my face. You walked up to me. Check it out. I ain't playing with you. You either get your ass moving or I'm going to move you. You smell drunk. You want to bet? I'm about to show you what I can

do. I'm going to walk away. Walk away. I'm walking. You keep following me, sir. There only one way out So shortly before we went live today, what broke in response to this story is the fact that Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has addressed this incident by arresting the real haraster, which was the U.S. Army Sergeant that you saw in the video, the sheriff confirmed that Jonathan Pentland has been arrested in charge with third degree assault and battery. The charge carries a maximum penalty of $500 or 30 days in jail. And if you're wondering what the military had to say about this, at first, there was a response about how, you know, this isn't something that we condone. Let me get you the exact statement. This is by no means condoned by any service member. We will get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. And then, you know, Later, the sheriff's department was like, there's a lot of misinformation out there. We don't know what's going on.

But now we know that Pentland has been arrested for what he did. And there's apparently stuff that happened off camera, stuff that we did not see that led to this conflict. But he's a young man who lives in the neighborhood. And since this, you know, Army sergeant has never seen him before, he's a threat. He doesn't belong there. He needs to leave. And just think about how, if you don't look a certain way, you're not going to be questioned like that.

That's just the point I want to make. 100%. Yeah, yeah. And he's not even, he's doing all of this on film. Like the fact that everybody has a video camera, one would have thought it would have moderated our behavior a little bit to be a little bit more social. But no, no, people are still just as terrible. He's proud of every bit of that. He's talking about it exactly like any, let's just keep it real, any racist would. You're in the wrong neighborhood, we're a tight-knit community, we watch out for each other, all that stuff. You know, like less than a century ago, there were sundown communities.

Now you have the racist drill sergeant who's talking about how he's harassing the neighborhood, dude just walking. Like imagine a neighborhood where you can't walk around without some apparently drunk smelling skinhead walking up to you. That does seem like kind of a bad neighborhood. He sort of has a point. He's demonstrating it right there. Yeah, I'm glad that he was arrested. I don't know what's wrong with our country. I don't know why people are so terrible to each other, but the the fact that we all have video cameras makes us constantly aware of it, at the very least. And the sheriff who again initially refused to release any type of strong statement about what happened and then later announced that an arrest was made is now

saying that the young man was a victim and he will not face any charges. Okay, great. The sheriff, Sheriff Lott also confirmed the victim is not a juvenile. So he obviously looks very young, but he's not a juvenile and clearly he was doing absolutely nothing wrong. We know that based on what the police have found through their short investigation. I gotta be honest, I'm actually pretty surprised at how swift the action was. I really didn't think that there would be consequences for him. So now the real question is, what will the military do? Are there consequences in that regard? And look, the problem with the military and policing is we know there's evidence showing that white supremacists have intentionally infiltrated local police departments

and the military with the intention of carrying out, you know, their race war. And even though we've had that information for how long now, nothing's done about it. There isn't a robust investigation into white supremacy within the military's ranks. None, none. We don't hear anything about it. So this doesn't shock me. Because we know what happens whenever anything like that has talked about, let alone announce, the right wing would absolutely lose their mind. Tucker Carlson has done multiple shows this year about how it is completely illegitimate for any branch of the U.S. government to be concerned at all about domestic terrorist, white supremacists, any of that.

All right, let's move on. We do have an update on Congressman Matt Gates, who is still being investigated by the DOJ. We're now learning that federal agents executed a search warrant and seized Congressman Matt Gates' cell phone in the winter, last winter. And this is part of their investigation into possible sex trafficking of a minor. So I want to reiterate that even at this point, there have not been charges filed against Matt Gates. But we are learning more and more about how this investigation unfolded and just how serious it appears to be. I don't know where this is going to end, but I can tell you what we know so far. For instance, around that time when agents had seized his phone, they also decided to seize his former girlfriend's phone.

Before she went into work in the morning, she declined to talk to Politico about this. The investigation also centers on a trip that Matt Gates took to the Bahamas in 2018. And it appears that that was quite a trip with private jets full of women that were possibly hired through websites like seeking arrangement. In the Bahamas, Gates was joined by two GOP allies, Halsey, Bashir's, then a state legislator, and Jason Pirozolo, a hand surgeon and Republican fundraiser for Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. And that's according to three sources, including one who was part of the group that actually went to the Bahamas to party. Now, because of this ongoing investigation, it appears that Bashir's specifically decided to kind of step down from politics.

At the time, coronavirus was cited for the reason, now it seems like there might be a different reason. And among those on the trip, the former minor, who is the key to the investigation, we're talking about the woman who was a minor at the time, allegedly, whose presence on the trip was previously unreported. Now, according to one of the women in the group who spoke on condition of anonymity, everyone on the trip was over the age of 18, including the woman in question who had turned 18 months before the trip, she said. So there are some women who are familiar with those events who are partially defending Matt Gates by saying that, you know, the woman was there, but she was already 18 at the time. The woman's testimony would obviously be crucial in this investigation,

but so far it's unclear whether or not she's cooperating. And previously through the messages that Matt Gates and Joel Greenberg were sending each other, it appeared that she was unwilling to cooperate and they were kind of celebrating that. But for now, there are two possible issues for Matt Gates. Number one, did he pay for the travel of a minor so he can have sex with her? That's a federal crime. And also, did he engage in paying for sex and paying for the travel for the individuals he had sex with. Those are also federal crimes. It's known as the Man Act, and if you violated that, he could face some serious prosecution for it. Yeah, and he certainly seems like he's aware of some of these things. I mean, he's taken positions far outside of the

norm of his party on things like revenge porn and like sex trafficking. It seems like a thing that has been on his mind. The Bahamas trip seems like potentially problematic to him. It might not even be the most important part. I mean, multiple different sources now, CNN and the Daily Beast have looked at receipts for payments that have gone out to multiple people. It's still possible that all of this has nothing to do with prostitution, but it seems increasingly difficult to imagine how all of these incredibly suspicious payments don't have any sort of sinister, you know, explanation. Well, let me give you- But by the way, even if it doesn't involve underage people, at the end of the day, perhaps it

doesn't just suspiciously close to 18 years old, but it still seems incredibly likely that there was at the very least prostitution. So to your point about suspicious payments, in 2018, Gates sent $900 to Greenberg, who by the way is facing several charges for stalking and sex trafficking, who then sent three young women various sums of cash that amounted in total to $900, via the Venmo app, it's kind of amazing that they didn't make any of this private, but you know, criminals tend to be dumb. That money was described as being for tuition and school, which by the way, if it's proven to be used for sex trafficking or anything shady, it just

makes it even more disgusting that they listed it as tuition and school. Like, especially when you consider that student loans and student loan debt, paying for college is so astronomical that women do resort to sex work in order to be able to pay their tuition. So like it's just the whole thing is pretty gross. Yeah, maybe it's just honest. Maybe that is what they think the money is going to go towards. Or maybe they think it's a joke. Maybe they think it's kind of funny that the system has been set up, that it's so difficult to pay for education that people might and during a sex work specifically to defray the costs. Yep. So we'll let you guys know if there are any updates to that story.

I feel like there's a slow and steady drip of developments to the Matt Gates story, which to be honest with you, I hate. I wish we could just get all the details now and be done with it. But that's where we're at right now. John, thank you for hosting with me today and bearing with us through all of the technical glitches. But everyone go check out the damage report. It airs Monday through Friday on our network. You could check it out at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. Everyone loves the damage report. Everybody.

Thank you. We got some glowing reviews lately. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Everyone will be back in just a few moments with Nando Villa. The second hour has lots of great stories, including an update on troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. Stick around.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon