The Young Turks - The Young Turks 12.14.17: Net Neutrality DEAD, Dan Johnson, Sandy Hook and Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

 Hour 1: Segment 1  Cenk. FCC repeals net neutrality despite 84% of Americans being against the repeals. Kentucky lawmaker Dan Johnson fatally shot himself Wednesday, two days after allegations surfaced that he had molested a member of his church when she was 17 years old, officials said. Segment 2  Cenk & John. Today marks the 5 year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. During the Thursday White House press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked by Margaret Brennan of CBS News that since Sandy Hook has now been eclipsed by the Las Vegas massacre, what has President Trump done or what does he plan to do to protect the American people against a similar type of tragedy. Since, it seems, there’s always one around the corner these days. Huckabee Sanders quickly deflected the question, turning the topic broadly towards Trump’s favorite talking points, border security and vetting processes — despite the fact that both of the aforementioned tragedies were committed by U.S. citizens with legally obtained weapons. Brennan continued to press Huckabee Sanders, asking her point blank if the administration is looking for ways to prevent domestic shooters on U.S. soil. “Absolutely, I know that’s something that the Department of Homeland Security looks at and talks about and works on every single day,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a person in this country that wouldn’t like us to find ways to protect people.” When Brennan interjected, Huckabee Sanders snapped, “Well I don’t think there’s any one thing you could to that would have prevented either one of those, ah, instances, those horrible, horrible tragedies.” 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. Thank you for watching or listening to this free podcast of the Young Turks. We want to make sure that you get some portion of the show every day. But if you want the full show, which is actually five segments, come become a member and support independent media as well. TYT network.com slash join.

Meanwhile, enjoy the free podcast. All right, welcome to the Young Turk. Young Turks is a heavy day in a lot of ways in the news. I know it happens quite often. But we've got the death of net neutrality, which I'm going to tell you about in a second. We've got a literal death that I'm also going to tell you about soon. And then we've got someone who came out with a preemptive admission of sexual assault, the name we might recognize.

So that was a fascinating way to go. go about things so and and but some good news in the show too also talking about people's demise Blake Ferenhold's career is done so that's a Republican that's gone we'll tell you why and and then as you're about to see in a second some of the alt-right guys might be in a world of trouble so that's also pretty good news too and that one more piece of good news is it's Christmas season and you guys are going to get three months of membership for 25 bucks at T. RT network.com slash gift. Go. All right. Now the news. Okay. Today, okay, sorry, I got distracted by the camera. Okay. Today, a terrible day for the internet,

terrible day for America. The FCC voted for a brief second. The vote was delayed because there was a bomb threat. Never ever do that. That's terrible. We fight. with politics and with our voices and our ideas, as terrible as this decision by the FCC is. Anyway, they, of course, got back to business, and Ajit Pai, the FCC commission chairman, cast a deciding vote to kill net neutrality on the Internet. So the Internet, as we know it, is not going to exist anymore. And so I want you to be clear about what I mean by that. It's not that the Internet's going away.

it's going to be here, but instead of having the government set the rules and the rules that they had set was for companies not to interfere and for the government not to interfere and to allow freedom on the internet. Now, you know that's true because you're on the internet. And if the government had set regulations that slowed down your websites or charged you more, you would know it. They didn't. They kept things free on the internet. And, you know, if you're progressive, you might think, oh, that's the government doing something right again. If you're a right winger, you might think, hey, that's the first time the government's ever actually been in favor of freedom. Whatever your perspective is, it's totally fine, but you know what the internet was. Now, the new rules are corporations that are the internet service providers, Risen, AT&T, Comcast, etc., can now set the rules and regulations of the internet.

And they can set them to their own advantage. They don't have to serve the public. They don't have to keep the internet free. their only goal is to maximize profit, and they could do many things to make that happen, including discriminate among different websites, which is a disaster for the entire internet. It's a disaster for your pocketbook, and it's also a disaster politically for all across the spectrum, because do you know for sure which way Verizon is going to go when they start to discriminate based on content?

Well, I don't know. And if you think you're a right winger and so the multi-billion dollar corporation is going to be on your side, you might want to think about that again because Verizon owns Huffing the Post. They own AOL, Yahoo. And so a lot of those companies own what you would consider liberal Hollywood. So to hand off the internet to just a couple of private corporations is a disastrous idea. So now let me give you details of what happened today. Huff Post reports the repeal rolls back, so-called Title II regulations that classify the Internet as a public utility and which, among other things, required Internet service providers or ISPs to treat all the data traveling on their networks equally.

Those are the old rules, okay? Without the protections of Title II, those ISPs, the Internet service providers, can now legally begin treating data from some websites differently than others. My guess is the first to go will be the right-wing sites because they hurt customers. You don't want to alienate all those Latino customers, African-American customers, gay customers, Muslim customers. So if you're spewing all that nonsense, good luck with the speed of your website, okay? If you're progressive and you're looking to overthrow the established system and not have the corporations rule us all, Well, good luck with that too.

Okay, I don't think the multi-billion dollar corporations are on your side either. So, of course, now the question is, will they? Before the companies were saying, oh, the idea that we would slow down websites or throttle your websites or in any way affect them. And to treat it so that we would make more money and our competitors would make less money, we would never. Except it turns out now that they were about to get the rule passed and they just did, they are singing a different tune already. So, last week, Comcast quietly altered a net neutrality pledge that had been on its website since 2014, removing a promise that it wouldn't, quote, prioritize internet traffic or create paid fast lanes,

and replacing it with a much more cautious pledge to, quote, not block throttle or discriminate against, lawful content, if Comcast decides on a whim to change this pledge again next week, it absolutely can. But now the government's not in charge anymore, the public's not in charge anymore, corporations are. So if they want to change their definition of what they consider to be lawful, well, you know, I don't like that kind of pornography. I'm going to block that among the many different decisions they can make.

But there the most important part is, well, we're going to promise not to block the way. websites, but I'm not promising anymore that there won't be fast lanes and slow lanes. Guess who's going to be in the fast lane? Everything related to Comcast, guess who's going to be in the slow lane? You. And they literally took away the pledge that they will not prioritize internet traffic. So in other words, they will prioritize internet traffic. They will have a monumental advantage.

Anything associated with those giant corporations will have an enormous advantage. Everything else will have an enormous disadvantage. So now we go to Michael Powell. He's the National Cable and Telecommunications Association president. So he's going to explain, no, come on. No, these corporations will act out of the goodness of their heart. Really? So here's his lame excuse.

He says there are a lot of things in our society. We don't expressly prohibit, but it doesn't mean that they're going to happen. There's no law that says I can't paint my house hot pink, but I assure you I have no intention of doing it. Oh, that's so lame. Let's think about that analogy for a second. He's saying, well, just because Comcast and Verizon and ATT could set the rules to their own advantage, but doesn't mean they're going to.

Yes, but in your analogy, you have no incentive to paint your house hot pink. But in the real world, there are billions of dollars on the line. If you're going to get paid billions of dollars to paint your house hot pink, I guarantee you, you would paint it hot pink. So this is not like, oh, what's Comcast in the mood for today? First of all, that's unacceptable. That's why we have a government to protect the public. So that corporations don't rule us, we rule ourselves.

That's why we're supposed to have a democracy. But that's gone now because all of our public officials, unfortunately, have been bought off. So this is gross. So, yes, of course they will change it to make more money, which then is to our disadvantage. I don't mind them making money. Of course, they're allowed to make any money they like, and they make plenty of money as Internet service providers. What they shouldn't be allowed to do is to do discrimination on different websites and different platforms for their own financial benefit. They're messing with the public domain here, and that's the old rules.

Okay, now, here's more. The Health Post explains, in addition to repealing that neutrality, the new FCC rules also strip state and local governments of the power to enact their own laws. laws regulating broadband service. So not only are we making sure to kill the internet freedom here, but I'm also going to make doubly sure that the state local governments can't go around giving you freedom. No, you're not allowed to stop those giant corporations from setting the rules for everyone in America. By the way, these guys pretending to be conservative.

I know in reality, almost all the conservative voters and people on the internet are on the same side is the left and the middle in this case. It's the one thing we're all united on, okay? So, but these guys pretending to be conservatives, I thought that you guys were for states' rights. All of a sudden, they shredded states' rights. They don't care. The only thing they care about is corporate rights and corporate profits.

So I do want to give credit to the two FCC commissioners that voted against, Clyburn and Rosenworsal. Let me show you, Jessica Worssel, as she made her impassioned plea against what they did today. I dissent from the corrupt process that has brought us to this point. And I dissent from the contempt this agency has shown our citizens in pursuing this path today. This decision puts the Federal Communications Commission on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public. Here, here. Unfortunately, the right side lost today. So the fight is not over. Now let's talk about what we're going to do next in the fight back.

Immediately after Thursday's vote, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pledged to sue to halt the FCC's actions. They later said that there would be multiple states that are involved in that lawsuit saying, no, they're actually going to step up and try to protect the internet and going to go to court if they need to. And then there is political action. In Congress, Senator Ed Markey, who has been great on this issue throughout, joined with with 15 other senators to contest the FCC decision via a Congressional Review Act resolution. I'm going to tell you more about that in a second. The fact that there's only 15 senators doing that is outrageous, though.

Great credit to those 15. But Republicans like John Thune saying that they're going to help. And Susan Collins, well, this is the time to help. This is the time to join. And I don't know why every Democrat in the country wouldn't be on the side of net neutrality. as always with the corporate establishment Democrats who also take donor money from these same corporations, they're a little slow to protect your freedom.

So maybe they got throttled, to be fair. Maybe they're in a slow lane already. Now, but giving credit to Marky, who's been a champion on this, he says, we will fight the FCC's decisions in the courts. We will fight in the halls of Congress. With this CRA, Congress can correct the country. commissions misguided and partisan decision and keep the internet in the hands of the people, not big corporations. So bless his heart for fighting on that. It's a little churchillian there,

if that's a phrase. So the Republicans should enjoy that too. We shall fight in the halls of Congress. We shall fight on the courts. We shall fight on the internet, but we shall never surrender net neutrality. Okay, so just to explain a tiny bit more about what that CRA is. Let's go to this next tweet. So Jonah Green points out that Congress is next, he's right. It's called a Congressional Review Act, and as he explains at the bottom there, the CRA lets Congress nullify actions by agencies like the FCC. Most bills need 60 votes in the Senate, but the CRA only requires a simple majority in the House and the Senate. Now, this is largely been used by the Trump administration to have Republicans get rid of Obama-era regulations, but he could also be used. by Democrats and Republicans if they are earnest about it,

the couple of Republican senators that claim to be on our side on this, it could be used to overruled FCC. So call your Congresspeople, call your senators. That is next step because I agree with Ed Markey. And again, rare issue we're all united on here. We shall never surrender. Okay. Now, one last point about that, because this is so,

awkward and uncomfortable, and I wanted to show it to you because that's what we do. Okay. So today the FCC ruled to kill net neutrality, and the siting vote was their commission chairman, Ajit Pai. He is constantly trying to make himself look cool as if killing freedom on the internet is somehow a hip thing to do. It is not working, but it didn't stop him from trying one last time. This is his really awkward way of trying to tell people, no, it's okay. I also use the internet. Aren't I neat? Now, don't look while my former employer of Verizon and the other internet service providers take control over the internet and do whatever they want, because I'm going to try to distract you with memes and the Harlem shake. What the

hell are you doing? So, by the way, as you watch this incredibly awkward video, understand that everything you're saying is not true. You say, you can still do stuff on the internet. Yeah, you can't, if you pay more, to Verizon, Cockcast, AT&T, and the others, or sometimes you can't do that stuff because they'll slow down those websites. So this is him trying to be cool. It's the worst. And by the way, he went and did this with a daily caller.

I'm going to tell you at the end, one of the people in the video on what she was up to, but the daily caller selling out all the other conservative websites that'll probably be first on the list to get blocked or to get slowed down. So, but hey, man, if you're getting paid, And you want to sell out the entirety of the internet. I get it.

Try to make Ajit Pai look cool. Good luck with that in Denver. Here's the horse crap they came up with instead. Recently, there's been quite a bit of conversation about my plan to restore internet freedom. Here are just a few of the things you'll still be able to do on the internet. After these Obama-era regulations are repealed, you can still gram your food. You can still post photos of cute animals, like puppies. You can still shop for all your Christmas presents online.

Yes, got the bulk deal on fidget spinners. Yes, those eclipse glasses are so cheap. You can still binge watch your favorite shows. You can still stay part of your favorite fan community. You can still drive news right into the ground. You can do the hall of them. a Harlem shake from five years ago. Oh, you're so cool.

I didn't notice while you destroyed the internet. He's going around crying on TV. Like, I don't understand why people don't like me. I'm so cool. Yeah, yeah, you're really cool, dude. Yeah. It's not about you, man. Nobody gives a damn about you.

Nobody knew about you before. Nobody wants to know about you. And nobody cares that you are pretending to like Game of Thrones or whatever the hell you're pretending to do. The only thing we care about is, what are you doing? I know you think everybody on the internet is stupid. I'll just trick him. I'll do a thing with Star Wars, the Harlem Shake.

And then they won't notice that I took away freedom on the internet. No, we noticed, idiot. We noticed. We know what net neutrality is. You think we didn't notice when the father of the internet said, don't do this is going to destroy the internet? You think we didn't notice when the guy who invented the World Wide Web said the same thing. You think we didn't notice when millions of comments were sent in saying,

don't do this. We know exactly what's going on. It's just pathetic. What the Daily Caller did there is pathetic. pie's pathetic. By the way, one of the people dancing in the Harlem Shake with him was Martino Marcota. Well, she is one of the people who pushed a Pizza Gate conspiracy. Class acts all around. So, oh, I'll go do a video with a person who pretended that there was pedophiles in a pizza chain and they drove people crazy until some guy showed up and

started firing inside this pizza chain, well, filled with innocent people. Oh, they're so cool. and they almost got people killed and now they'll destroy the internet with me and you guys want to do the Harlem Shake fuck no we don't no we would like net neutrality and we would like you to fuck off okay

I didn't think I was going to go there at the end but I did okay let's go to Dan Johnson next we need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing 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 Un-B-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 not learn 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. This is a sad story, guys. So we told you about this guy earlier in the week, Dan Johnson.

Hey, he's a Republican state legislator in Kentucky. He got caught doing things he shouldn't be doing. Of course, he vehemently denied it. And I'm just going to give you a little bit of background here before I tell you what happened yesterday. On Monday, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published an expose with an accuser who was a friend of his daughter, saying that Johnson raped her when she was 17 years old. She alleged that the assault took place in 2012 at a New Year's Eve's Sleepover Party when he was a pastor. He's pastor of this church where he claims to be, you know, the pope of the church. It doesn't really mean anything.

It's not important. He wanted to excuse his action. So he went to that heart of fire church. And I'm going to show you a part of that video. Before he did this, he sang a hymn about the baby Jesus and all that, and then he said this. In the midst of all the accusations, you know, there's some things that are really important, I think, that are being hidden in this. There are people that have had abuse. There's workplace abuse.

There's all of that. But at the same time, I think that there's been people that have taken that now and just use that for political stones and political rocks. This allegation concerning this lady, this young girl, absolutely has no merit. There is no anything. Yeah, he says there's no anything, as you're about to see. He apparently didn't believe that himself. More details here. The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting had published an expansive report on Monday,

accusing the Republican State Representative of Molesea young women, but also committing arson and lying to his congregation and constituents. about his achievements. Now, everybody asked him to step down, not just Democrats, but also the Republicans. Mack Brown, who's a Kentucky Republican Party chairman, had said, following today's extensively sourced and documented story from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, we once again find ourselves in a position where we must call for him to resign this time from the Kentucky General Assembly.

So the sad news here, other than all the wrongdoing that he did, is that Dan John Johnson, yesterday apparently committed suicide. He went to a bridge and seems to have shot himself. So he has passed away. Part of the reason that I'm doing this story is because don't do that, man. Look, I'm not a religious person, so I don't believe in all that finding Jesus or whoever else you find as soon as you're caught. But I do believe in redemption, even for guys as vile as him. In the past, he'd gotten in trouble for making the Obamas look like monkeys.

I got, as clear from the last segment, I'll tell you now, too, I had no love for Dan Johnson at all, not 1%. But what would have been a better route? A better route is admit what you did and then look to become a better person, look to make amends. So might you go to prison? Yeah, if you rape that 17-year-old girl, you might not only, you would lose your job and you might go to prison, but at least you'd still be alive. You'd still be, you wouldn't have left your family to fend without you. But the issue here isn't that. It's that it's pride.

Pride gets in the way. Well, if I get caught and it looks like I got caught here, I'm going to be embarrassed. And I can't stand that embarrassment. I just think the far, far better approach is to try to come to terms with it, to try to make amends, to still be there for your family. So nobody's happy about this result, and it's an absolute shame what has happened all around here. But look, I partly tell you this because one day, I hope to God you're not in a situation as dire as Dan Johnson, and I hope you haven't done anything close to what Dan Johnson has done. But one day, you'll be in a tight spot because we all are, and you'll get despondent because we all do. So understand that there's always a better way, that there's a way to get to a better way.

better spot, even if it's incredibly painful. He could have had decades to make immense. And instead, he's now gone and his family is left alone. So it's a very, very sad day. And everybody wishes it hadn't come to this. There's a thousand better ways to take responsibility than to do this. Okay. Now, last story from you. For me for you guys today. And then John's going to come in and we're going to do a lot of show together. Okay. This one is also a disturbing story, but has a bit of a happy ending or potential happy ending. Okay. 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 you from eavesdroppers and cyber criminals. 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,

P-P-N.com slash T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. So there's a lot of allegations of sexual harassment, and it appeared that Chuck Schumer might be next. He's the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. There was some stories going around about how he might have harassed someone that worked

with him. turns out that's not remotely true, and the rest of the story is where it gets really interesting. So NBC News reporting that their apparent smear, which was first reported by news website Axios, took the form of a fake legal document alleging inappropriate behavior by Schumer toward a former staff member. Well, they found out very quickly that it wasn't true, and I'm going to show you how in a sec. But NBC News explains Schumer during an unrelated news conference on Wednesday morning said his office would pursue, quote, every legal path against the sender. Well, uh-oh. Schumer then said, it was a phony allegation, forged, false from start to finish.

Well, that's what he claims, but, you know, this saying we believe the women, right? So how about the woman? Is it a real woman? Yes, it is. It's a former staffer that worked with Chuck Schumer from 2009 to 2012. Well, it turns out this mystery was not hard to unravel. All they had to do was talk to her. So here's NBC News on that. A draft legal document accusing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of sexual harassment is a forgery. The woman purported to be his accuser told NBC News on Tuesday night. The woman said that the allegations are false and that she has asked police to investigate. More details here, reported by Katie Hunt and Alex Johnson. The woman, a former staff member, said that the claims in the document are, quote, completely false.

Quote, my signature is forged. Even basic facts about me are wrong. I've contacted law enforcement to determine who is responsible, said the woman who spoke on condition of anonymity because she believes she's the victim of a crime. Then, Chuck Schumer's office put out a statement. His spokesperson Matt House said, we have turned it over to. Capitol Police and ask them to investigate and pursue criminal charges, because it is clear the law has been broken. We believe the individual responsible for forging the document should be prosecuted to the

fullest extent of the law to prevent other malicious actors from doing the same. Now, there are a lot of malicious actors out there who try to smear people online. I've talked to you about them. A lot of them are on the alt-right, and they think it's funny. They think it's a legitimate way to conduct a political debate. You don't have to be right. You could just lie. And you could lie in any way you want and smear anyone you want with any terrible charge that comes into your mind.

Well, it turns out not if you do a forgery. And that might be some significant legal trouble. Well, here they thought they were being really clever because it was going to be a double whammy. So let me go to law and crime, that website to explain. The false document was sent out to multiple media outlets and journalists who quickly settle on the complaint's lack of authenticity. Their original genius idea was, we'll smear Chuck Schumer, and it doesn't matter if it's proven to be a lie.

Almost everything the alt-right comes out with is proven to be a lie at some point. But the big headlines will be what everybody remembers, and at least we'll have smear them for a certain percentage of the population, who'll then never hear the correction and never hear the truth. Ha-ha, we'll have gotten Chuck Schumer. and if we can, maybe we'll get people to believe it, and then we'll run them out of town. That would be amazing, then our lives would work. And then secondly, if it turns out we get caught later, but the press ran it, we'll say,

ha, I got you, fake news, but we tricked you into running a fake story. Now, it turns out they didn't trick them, and almost all the outlets picked up that it was fake, and it turns out it isn't fake news, they do a pretty good job of fact checking, right? So who is behind this? So right now the police and the authorities are not sure, and we're going to let that investigation play out. Can't wait to find the results. But here's one piece of evidence.

Charles C. Johnson, who's one of these alt-right trolls, wrote before the story broke, currently reading the sexual harassment settlement documents of a major Democratic U.S. senator, and he wrote also, quote, Michael Cernovich and I are going to, end the career of a U.S. Senator. Oops. My guess is that the authorities will want to talk to those two and try to figure out why they were speaking in that way before this news story broke.

What do they know that the rest of the public did not know? And what did he mean by those comments? It was definitely not nice knowing you. If people go to prison over this, that would be fantastic. Finally, a little bit of justice for all of the preposterous smears and outrageous things that were said about innocent people throughout. Now, we'll have to see if that's what it comes to fruition. We'll have to see if these guys are involved or not involved. That's for the authorities to decide.

But whoever did it can't wait to see justice. It's going to be a great day in America. So whoever did it, bye-bye. We'll be right back. Right in the middle of this podcast, we've got another great segment coming up for you. If you'd like the full show, which is actually five segments, go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. You become a member, you support the show, you support independent media, and you get the whole two-hour show ad-free every day. Let's go do it now.

All right, back on a young turks, Jane Hugar, John Ina, Rola with you guys. I'm going to read some comments here. First one is from YouTube Super Chat. It's in reference to something we talked about yesterday, but I want to read it to you guys because it's kind of neat. Top Damage Wizard, a guy that you probably would like, John. He's well known. Wrote, USA Today Sucks Balls Rant, got me into activism. Wow.

If that, you know, look, guys, from time and time I hear that, I'll go to a conference or something, I'll run into an activist and they'll say, you guys got me started. God, that feels great. That specific rant. I mean, and for that, in that case. That rant was not in response to the editorial. That was based off of their actual front page Iraq War reporting, right? Yeah.

Okay, yeah. Okay, I thought I remember correctly. Ben Manquist ran into Itchua, Chutei, Ejafour. Sorry, I'm so sorry about that. And he said that he recited like half the rant from Mexico. Really? Yeah. That's pretty badass.

Yeah, he's an actor, though. They're good with lines. They are. No, man, look, if we did anything good in the world, God bless. All right. Michael Napin writes in on Twitter. Why do corporations have to own everything? Well, see, it's our job to make sure that they don't because we're the ones who created them.

But if you write the code to say maximize profit, they will try to own everything because that's what you're programmed to do. We're supposed to be in charge, but we're not anymore. They've taken over. It's the robots that have taken over. Yeah, and this is one where it felt like we'd won, and then we'd won, and it got really close, then we won, and then elections have consequences, we don't win anymore. Elections have consequences. Okay, Mark says, how will this affect the TYT network? Well, Mark, that's actually not clear. As I've said in previous cases, it could be that, hey, we're outsiders and they'll slow us down, right? Or charges so much we can't afford it. But our two biggest partners are Google and Facebook. They can pay the ransom.

And almost all of our partners can pay the ransom. But they're being good guys because that could actually kill all their competition. And I actually think that they've done, even though they would have to give money to the Comcast, Verizon, etc. Which could trickle down to hurting us. Yeah. But not necessarily, but it could. Right. But it could kill off anything that isn't on Google or Facebook and might actually help them.

Silver linings. Yeah, so they have, but they have decided to do the right thing and fight for net neutrality. And so it's theoretically possible that, hey, sorry, you didn't make it into Google Preferred. You didn't make it into Facebook partnerships, so you're done. And we would have an advantage, not a disadvantage. But that's terrible. I don't want that. I actually believe in a marketplace of ideas and a free marketplace.

So, but it could also hurt us too. Okay, so L.L. Bishop writes in, getting very tired of Donald and his, this crew giving our property away to business interests. That's right. Bear's ears, the national parks and the internet, among any others. And then finally, Sean of the dead says, congratulations, Ajit Pai. You're now the Martin Shkreli of the internet. Karma's a bitch and one day you'll get what's coming to you.

But guys, okay, the Martin Shkreli point is fine. But don't say this stuff about, you know, you'll get what's coming to you and stuff. I know it's, look, I'm mad at them. A lot of people are mad at them. Especially that video, which was like the most condescending thing. I've ever seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, right? But it isn't, it really isn't personal.

You know, the right wing, I think, has read Solensky way more than the left wing has. And apparently, rules for radical say make it personal. But, okay, but I don't care about that. I, if it wasn't Ajit Pye, it'd be some other random dude, right, that Verizon paid off for Comcastor 18D paid off. Yeah, Trump was going to put someone in who was going to accomplish this. Yeah. And if you, like, first of all, if you do any of the nudge and pi, that's terrible and immoral and you'll lose the moral high ground and they'll make their job easier, not harder, right? Then they'll become victims. Don't do any of that, let alone the fact that it's like, just don't mess with them personally. Don't do any of that. Weing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. So. No violence. We've got to fight back and effectively and politically and we can and we will and will win. Okay, and when progressives went in 2020, we will reverse this at a bare minimum, even if Congress doesn't act now, okay?

So it is, it's very understandable to get frustrated at the guys who voted the wrong way here to take away Internet as we know it. But it would have just gotten some other schmucks to do it. We are, we're stacking up a big tab on things we've got to reverse when things finally go back to rationality. And the thing is like, you know, maybe there's like this huge wave and things are easier to get things done than usual. But it has never been the case that it's just, let's do everything we want right now. Everything is a goddamn battle. And so let's not keep having to add things that'll take a month or three months out of President Sanders' first term.

Let's try to keep things somewhat rational so that he can actually push the country forward rather than just trying to bring things back to what we had a few years ago. But I want to be clear about this, man. This is why it's so important to elect a progressive Democrat rather than a corporate Democrat in the 2020 primaries. So it's very important in 2018 primaries too. But for the president, we can't have another Barack Obama come in, have Bush and Cheney moved a ball 90 yards down the field and Obama move it back five yards and then declare

victory. No, if they moved it 90 yards down the field, we're going to move it a fucking 100 yards. We're going to score. We're going to go through the end zone and into the fucking locker room. So this stuff is unacceptable. So if you have a progressive president, yes, on day. day one, and we're not messing around, net neutrality is back, and if you don't like it, that's your fucking problem, okay?

Our elections that we win also have consequences. So hopefully in the right direction. All right, we've got to do the rest of the news. Okay, and we're going to start off on some light material. Unfortunately, no, today's actually a pretty dark day in the news. There's going to be a lot of sexual misconduct and consequences for it, but something even darker to begin. Today marks the five-year anniversary of the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

On that day, which even though it's been five years, I still remember when we saw the breaking news and when we did that show, I can't believe that five years have gone by. But on that day, 20 children and six teachers were killed. Here are their pictures. Those children are incredibly young, so young. The thing that got to me, John, is that they would have been sixth graders today. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, they'd be developing personalities and interests, having ideas about what they would want to go on to do in their careers, maybe.

And unfortunately not, their lives were taken. Thanks to a monster, here are their names. We hopefully will not forget them. It's one of the reasons on days like this, we like to look back and recognize those who are unfortunately taken from us. You see there are the children's names, and then at the end, the names of the teachers. And thankfully, because it's an anniversary, there's a lot of conversation on social media, profiles of the children and the teachers, you know, some details about their lives. I saw Jake Tapper was tweeting out individual facts about each one of them.

And so it's important that we do remember the victims. But we do have to recognize at the same time that while a certain group of people will look back and think about this, Many won't and many more won't act. And so it's not really a surprise that in the five years since that, there have been at least 1,576 other mass shootings with at least 1788 people killed and over 6,000 wounded as well. And in these mass shootings, those woundings in some ways can be almost as terrible as deaths. We're talking about in many cases wounds by assault rifles, dreadful life-changing wounds. Now that's generally, but even if we're going to go back to something like Sandy Hook,

nearly 1,000 children under the age of 12 have died from guns in the U.S. in just the last five years. 1,000 kids under the age of 12. That's one fatally shot every 44 hours, the equivalent of every other day. And this has been allowed to happen because too many people, especially people in power in this country, do not look back on Sandy Hook and remember what a tragedy it was. of never having something like that happen again. Very often, they're thinking about their donors, whether from the NRA or from conservative organizations that don't want to see any sort of gun control that could stop that sort of act.

And if we could bring this up, Harper's put out a tweet today talking about the consequences, summarizing the number of bills that have strengthened gun control since Sandy Hook at 14 and the number weakening it at 37. So those are our priorities, at least on a state level, as a country. not to say that we haven't achieved anything. There have been positive moves in terms of legislation in some states, typically the states that were already doing better when it comes to gun control. We should start calling this by its proper names. It was the Sandy Hook massacre. And we are allowing massacre after massacre after massacre. And we are allowing these folks to terrorize us. And I don't

just mean the shooters. I mean the lobbyists and the politicians that enable the shooters that basically put those weapons in their hands and say have at it, Ha'Hoss. I mean, you think in this country, there's not a certain percentage of the country that has significant mental issues that is in other ways crazed.

Some obviously have nothing to do with violence. Some small percentage of people who have mental issues are violent. But it doesn't have to be a very big number. It doesn't have to be a very big number at all to produce 1,700 mass shootings since Sandy Hook in the last five years. How many massacres are we going to allow before we do something? And the answer is thousands.

Yes. And it's only gotten worse. Orlando was a bigger number. And then Vegas was an even bigger number. Yeah. And our politicians that are supposed to represent us, instead of course, to represent their donors, and they collectively are saying, we don't care. We don't care that those kids died.

We don't care that we have nonstop massacres almost one a day in this country. And we're never going to protect the citizens because we get paid by the NRA. Now, we do want to at least talk about there were attempts over the past few years to do something to try to address some of the specific, the most egregious mass shootings. So we're having, unfortunately, a project problem with one of our graphics, but Joe Manchin, along with one other senator in the wake of Sandy Hook, put forward a bill that would have required background checks for all private gun transfers rather than simply, you know, through the federal systems. And unfortunately, thanks to an incredibly deceptive smear campaign

by the NRA, that did not pass. At the time, Barack Obama said this. The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it would create some sort of big brother gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. And in fact, the bill would have strengthened the illegal prohibitions against any sort of organized federal registry while allowing background checks for private gun transfers. So that died. In 2013, about one month after the Sandy Hook shooting, Senator Diane Feinstein introduced a bill with 24 co-sponsors. That would be a new version of the assault weapons ban of 1994, which expired a decade later. Now, in that case, Democrats and Republicans, thanks again, in no small part to an organized lobbying campaign by

the NRA and other pro-gun organizations, voted that down. And so no assault weapons ban, again, after Sandy Hook. And most recently, after the Vegas massacre that we talked about, in which thanks in no small part to bump stocks, the ability to turn a semi-automatic weapon into functionally an automatic firearm. We have the automatic gunfire prevention act of 2017. That was in, after the shooting in October, Diane Feinstein and Representative Carlos Curbello introduced a bill to ban those bump stocks.

The only purpose of which is to effectively break the law. That bill was stalled when the NRA voiced its opposition. And while we are being told that they are looking into the possibility of banning bump stocks, months are passing by. And now you can go and you can get one of these devices if you want and you can replicate the Las Vegas massacre. The federal background check law that John mentioned first had a 93% approval. If you can't pass something in a so-called democracy that has 93% approval, you might not be in a democracy. Yeah. Now, if you're concerned about the possibility of one of these shootings continuing and you know that there have been attempts to pass bills but they have been shot down,

sometimes, you know, by the NRA and their donations, generally by the Republicans, in some cases, assisted by some Democrats as well. Well, you know, now we have, we have Donald Trump and he says that he's going to protect us. He's the one person who can solve our problems and protect us. So on this anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about what he is doing to help stop these sorts of massacres from taking place. And here was her response. Today is the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre in which so many children were killed. Since that time, what does President Trump done to try to protect the American people against a similar type of massacre? Does he think anything's been done?

What is the administration trying to do? Is there anything at the executive level that he thinks needs to be undertaken? Look, I think that there are a number of different ways that we look to protect our citizens every single day. one of the areas that the president has been outspoken about, not necessarily to those two instances, but just more broadly speaking in terms of national security and protecting individuals, certainly through border security, stronger vetting processes, and looking at whether or not there are other regulations that we could put in place that would offer protection. These weren't people who entered the United States.

Right, and I said I'm speaking more broadly in terms of national security as a whole. And look, this is a president who knows that his number one responsibility is to look for ways to protect American citizens. And we try to do that every single day. And whether or not there's a regulation that could be put in place or not that could have prevented those things, frankly, I'm not aware of what that would be. Maybe something to stop the gun from being sold in the first place. That seems like it would have had an effect. And so her answer is we are going to do nothing to stop. this sort of massacre, except to convince you that the true threat is scary Muslims from

abroad. So the number of mass shootings we have dwarfs the number of terrorist attacks. Dwarfs. So if you're actually worried about your family's safety, you should be worried about a shooter near you, not some foreign invader or Muslim terrorist or even a right-wing terrorist. Yes, right-wing terrorists act out in America about at twice the rate that Muslim. terrorists do, but even they are small compared to random mass shooters. So terrorism is fairly infrequent. Thank God for that. I wish it didn't exist at all. But mass shootings happen

at the pace of about one a day. And every time, when it happens in your neighborhood, you get surprised. Don't be surprised. We're terrorizing ourselves. The real terror is right here at home, it's these non-stop massacres funded by the NRA. I mean, we told you the stat that a kid under 12 dies thanks to guns every 44 hours. Imagine if a scary

Muslim terrorist killed a child in America every 44 hours. Oh my God. The country would shut down. Oh my God. If a Muslim terrorist... But it's a gun, so we like those. Wow. That's a great way of putting it.

So every other day, if you heard in the news, another child under the age of 12 has been killed by a terrorist, and another one, and another one, and another one, and it's a bloodbath, it's an endless bloodbath that never ends. What would we do? We'd rip the world apart in endless wars to try to address that. But when it's ourselves doing it with nonstop guns and weapons everywhere, because our politicians are corrupted, we go, oh, well, 93% of Americans believe there should be federal background checks. I guess there's nothing we could do. You know what we're doing?

We're surrendering. And it's unacceptable because we're all getting killed out here. Literally, literally, our kids are being killed. And our politicians do nothing because they're completely corrupt. And the NRA laughs all the way to the bank. It's gross. And of course, Donald Trump isn't going to protect anyone. The only thing he cares about is demagoguery to protect his own political interests.

He doesn't have any interest in actually protecting your family. And so this is the fifth anniversary. At some point, perhaps Jank and I, we will be looking back 10 years after Sandy Hook. And I hope that at some point something will have been done. But based on the experience of the last five years, I don't have a lot of hope. Okay, we've got to take a break, guys. I know it's a heavy day, but we do have more stories, including the guy I told you about a pretty famous person comes out with a preemptive admission of sexual assault. It's a fascinating moment in history.

We'll talk about that when we come back. Thanks for watching. We're listening to this free version of the Young Turks podcast. You know that the full show is at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. If you become a member, you get the full show ad-free. We love you for watching or listening either way. There's going to be a new free podcast tomorrow. You can keep on doing that.

But if you want to get the full show ad-free, t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. 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