The Young Turks - The Young Turks 12.27.17: AT&T Jobs, Voter Fraud, American Airlines, and Hillary Clinton

Episode Date: December 28, 2017

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from December 27th, 2017. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1: Cenk & Ana. AT&T plans to lay off and fire more than a thousand workers starting early next year. Across the Midwest, an estimated 600 workers were notified they were being laid off by the company on December 16, a week before AT&T announced it was doling out $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 of its employees in celebration of the Republican Party’s tax overhaul. An appeals court Tuesday said that a privacy group suing President Trump’s so-called voter fraud commission was not itself a voter, and thus could not bring a claim alleging that the commission had failed to protect voters’ privacy in seeking states’ voter roll data.  Hour 2: #1 cause of stress of Americans. American Airlines has apologized to two black professional basketball players who were kicked off a plane in Dallas after a flight attendant accused them of stealing blankets. Vanity Fair has apologized for a video in which six of its Hive editors attempted to make arch New Year’s resolutions for Hillary Clinton, while sipping champagne. 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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. that's at t-y-tnetwork.com

slash join. Thanks for watching. All right, welcome for the Young Turks. Jane Cougar, and a Casparian is back, everybody. Hi, everybody. It's good to be back.

It's good to have you. I'd ask you, how's Miami? But I guess we'll probably save that for a post game. Yeah, sure. I actually went out in Miami. Wow, wow, that is something. I have some stories. Yeah, I have some stories for you.

Okay, great. So t-y-tnetwork.com slash gift to become a member. That's three months of membership for $25. Get it for your friends and family. It's not too late. Go celebrate New Year's Eve or whatever for them to do that. Anyway, so today's show, we've got a lot of hypocrisy on the right, from corporate America, warnings about social media. Boy, are those merited.

Tomorrow's show, I believe we're going to do turks and jerks, so you don't want to miss that. And there might be other fireworks, so you don't want to miss that either. All right, anyways, let's get going. All right. Donald Trump signed the tax overhaul into law, which, of course, is a huge handout in the form of tax cuts for corporations and the top earners in the country. And in response, AT&T said that they're giving these $1,000 bonuses to its employees. However, news has just struck that AT&T also plans on laying off around 2,000 of their employees in the new year. So let me give you some of these numbers that have just been reported.

Across the Midwest, an estimated 600 workers were notified they were being laid off by the company on December 16th, a week before ATNT announced it was doling out the $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 of its employees in celebration of this tax overhaul. The Post, meaning the New York Post, also reported that AT&T has recently laid off 215 high-skill technician jobs in nine southern states and plans to fire nearly 700 workers in Texas and Missouri, beginning in February. So the reason why this news is relevant is because the big argument that major corporations like AT&T made in favor of this tax overhaul, which again are just tax cuts, was that it will help them hire more employees. It means more job creation,

which is good for the economy. But in reality, time and time again, what we see from these corporations is that they're usually willing to cut jobs as soon as they get these huge tax breaks. Yeah. I think the most important quote is actually from the CEO of AT&T, Randall Stevenson. He said tax reform will drive economic growth and create good paying jobs. Wrong again, Randall. And you knew that that was wrong. You just did that so you can get rich and so you can get your precious tax cuts and distribute it mainly to, yes, obviously to some shareholders, which is normal. but also to yourself, because if you hold shares in AT&T, that's going to come back to you. Obviously, you're going to get huge bonuses, et cetera, from this.

And what did you do? Did you beat your competition in the market field? No, you just captured the government, and you paid off. And Randall Stevenson has been paying off Republicans for decades. Those are things that we call now campaign contributions. is legalized bribery. So you give money to politicians, and he gave to the Trump in this last cycle. He also gave $34,000 to the Republicans in this cycle.

But he's given for decades and decades and decades to Republicans. And this is his payoff. So he's going to get incredibly rich from this. And he must have laughed and laughed as he said, oh, we'll create more jobs. As he knew, they didn't make this decision yesterday. One of the layoffs that Anna just told you about was on December 16. as you knew you were laying off workers. That's right.

That's funny. And then the union went on strike and forced you to give a thousand dollars per employee. Then you went and turned that around and said, oh, it's because of Donald Trump, I've decided to make out of the goodness of my heart to give a thousand dollars per employee. You got your hand caught in a cookie jar when that was an obvious lie because the negotiation had been going out for over a year. Then now AT&T says, well, I mean, maybe we'll give him another thousand. $1,000. Yeah, and maybe we'll trust you. So I think you're right in speculating that they're lying about the bonuses because, again, those bonuses were given out to the employees because of the union fighting on behalf of its employees. And then again, as they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they said, well, maybe we'll just add another thousand. We'll see how that goes. But, you know, there should be a follow-up to see whether or not they follow through on that. Now, we reached out to AT&T to get a statement from them in regard to these layoffs. And I want to read you the statement that they did give us. It's by Marty Richter, who is the AT&T corporate communications person. He says, we're adding

people in many parts of our business that are experiencing higher customer demand. At the same time, technology improvements are driving higher efficiencies. And there are some areas where demand for our legacy services continues to decline, and we're adjusting our workforce in some of those areas. So I want to just quickly reply to that. So they're making the argument that those who are getting laid off are the individuals who work for the landline component of AT&T. And they're saying, well, technological advances essentially make their jobs antiquated. But again, they are also laying off high-skilled technicians who live in southern states. High-skilled technicians are obviously still very relevant to the business, but they're laying them off as well.

So when they say efficiencies, that means you're getting fired. And look, I don't, I want to be clear about this. People get to run their business any way they like. And so, and some of their parts of their businesses are legacy, are antiquated. A lot of people don't have landlines anymore. There's other parts of their business that they need to suck up to the government for. And that's why they're in the middle of, you know, being very. very kind, let's say, to Donald Trump and helping him with his propaganda with false talking points. Why? Because they want their merger approved with Time Warner. They wanted to kill net neutrality. And Donald Trump delivered the head of the internet on a stick for them. And they're

thrilled about that. And they're going to make billions upon billions of dollars based on that. So there's a reason why they're second up to the government. Now, and of course the giant tax cuts that they got. So if you want to say, hey, listen, you know what, I'm restructuring here. And I can't keep employing the people that used to set up your land lies because there's just less demand. We get it. We understand that. But you don't get to say at the same time that you're creating jobs in order to trick people into voting for your tax cuts that you're going to keep while you fire people. So it isn't us getting into the weeds of how to run your business. It's that we can't stand you going out there and doing propaganda and lies so you can take those

tax cuts and put it in your pocket while you fire these people. Just be honest about it. And I know that's too much to ask in this case for multinational corporations. So I want to kind of look to the future and talk about the ramifications of this tax law and how it's going to affect the country because the next thing that the GOP wants to focus on in regard to government programs is welfare reform. They've been very open and honest about that. And what does welfare reform mean?

It means cuts to these programs that we've paid into, right? Cuts in programs that help the needy, whether it's food stamps, just any type of government assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, all that stuff. Now, their argument is going to be that, hey, our tax reform is going to stimulate the economy and create new jobs, thus making some of these welfare programs unnecessary. So the cuts make sense. But we know very well based on case study after case study that these corporations, especially after they merge, by the way, only lay people off, only cut jobs as much as possible because

they want to help their bottom line. So I think we're going to lose jobs. And then Republicans are going to pass this welfare reform. I think people are going to be in a lot of trouble. And I think it might take a while for us to really notice those ramifications, but I have no doubt that they're coming. So look, do I have an issue with mergers and then what, what you, you know, consolidation after a merger?

Generally, that's getting in the weeds of other people's business. In the case of these giant, giant media companies, well, you know, they keep gobbling everything up. At some point, it's a fair question to ask about monopolies. And I think this might be a good point to ask that question. And they don't want you to ask that question. That's why they go and say, oh, Donald Trump, what a wonderful guy. What a wonderful, wonderful guy.

Now, don't ask about our monopolies and make sure you approve that merger. And so, a corporation doesn't care about you. It doesn't care if they take away your Medicare and Social Security. It actually will lead to higher profits for them because they redistributed the wealth to themselves with these giant corporate tax cuts. So it's not going to shed a tear for you. It's not a person. It's a corporation.

We programmed it to maximize profit. It will crush you. And then go on TV and tell you that it did it for your sake. So don't believe the hype. And so the thing that frustrates me about this story is that when Trump says anything, everybody on cable news repeats it a thousand times, even if they point out slight inaccuracies or large inaccuracies, but they say it over and over and over again.

So almost everybody in the country heard, oh, AT&T is wonderful because of the tax cuts. given a thousand dollars. Very few people heard the correction that that was negotiated over a whole year by the union. Almost no one heard that. And almost no one is going to hear that in fact they're firing people. This is exactly why we did the TYT Investigates series. Because they're not creating jobs. It's one giant, the only job they created is a con job. And that's what they're doing to the American people right now. We need to talk about a relatively new show called the 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 Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the 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. Moving on to some other news.

After the election, Donald Trump couldn't handle the fact that even though he won the electoral vote, he did not win the popular vote. In fact, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the millions. And Trump's response to that was that there was voter fraud, that millions of people voted illegally. As a result, he created something known as the Election Integrity Commission, which wanted to investigate this so-called fraud. Part of their investigation included the collection of voter roles in every state. Now, of course, that brings up some privacy concerns, and as a result, an organization known as the Electronic Privacy Information Center

filed a lawsuit. Now, there is some pretty devastating news in regard to this lawsuit, because an appeals court in Washington has just ruled against Epic or the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Now, in its ruling, the three panel, the three-judge panel said the following that the electronic privacy information center is not a voter. As far as the record shows, it has no traditional membership, let alone members who are voters. Unsurprisingly, then, it does not claim standing on behalf of any voter whose data is likely to be collected. The nonprofit group sued the panel in July to halt its attempt to gather publicly available voter data from states, which, by the way, includes people's names, addresses, birthdays, and also their social security numbers,

the four final digits of their social security numbers. Yeah, so look, this is an arguable decision. They're not judging the merit of the case at all. They're just saying that you don't have standing, meaning that you're not the person who can sue them. There might be other people who can sue the administration, but it's not you because you're not directly affected because you're a group and you're not a voter. Okay, so I hope a voter sues. So the problem with authoritarian governments, and we've now seen this across the world, is that once they win in a kind of a democracy, they almost always don't get them. majority of the vote. And as you know, famously, Donald Trump did not get a majority of the vote.

And so they sneak in through whatever means, and in this cases, are incredibly antiquated and preposterous electoral college system. And then they go, oh, well, now that we're in, let's now start to rig the system. So that even though we're grossly unpopular, Donald Trump's popularity is at 32%. He ain't going to win any election that way, right? But all of a sudden, they get all the voter information. God knows what they can do with that. So one of their main goal is to fight voter fraud. Chris Kobach is the leader of that witch hunt. And it's a lie.

It's a lie. It's infinitesimally small. Every single news organization that has looked into it has shown you that it is barely negligible. What is gigantic is voter suppression when they get like a hatchet man like Kobach to go and try to eliminate a bunch of voters so that, hey, look. You might have the majority of the country, but I eliminated a lot of your voters. And Donald Trump talked about rigging the system. Why? Because every conservative does projections. Whatever's in their head, they attribute it to their opponents.

He wants to rig the election. So he said, oh, beforehand when he thought he was going to lose, it's rigged, it's rigged. Afterwards, he's like, oh, it's awesome. Yeah, it's wonderful, right? Right. Now he goes about rigging it. Right. Well, and he's so egotistical that he can't handle the fact that he lost the popular vote

and won't take any responsibility or ownership of the fact that he is an unpopular president and goes ahead and says, oh, it's fraud, it has nothing to do with me. Okay, but here's the thing that I have an issue with. Is anyone comfortable, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, liberal, progressive, conservative, is anyone comfortable with the federal government or the Justice Department in this case collecting all of this information on every voter in the United States without telling us what they plan on doing with that information, without telling us how they plan to safeguard that information. Some of that information, sure, is publicly available, but are you comfortable with, you know, the last four digits of your social security number, your address, your phone number, all of these things being collected and monitored by the federal government?

That is literally, that's the definition of big government. That is big brother watching. So for all of those conservatives out there who are always arguing for smaller government, you should be really concerned about the fact that they're doing this right now, that they're fighting tooth and nail to collect all of this information about every voter and they plan on monitoring them. That's not okay. You know that if Hillary, Clinton, or Barack Obama did it, you'd be losing your mind if you're a conservative.

And you know what's not fair, Jank? We would be losing our mind. If Obama or Hillary did it, we would be losing our mind. We would be sitting at this desk right now arguing. about this. We would be, you know, talking about how it needs to stop immediately. We would be in favor of those who were suing them. But we're not in a fair fight. And that's the frustrating part about it, right? You have one side that wants to play fair. You have the other side that has no interest in playing fair whatsoever, right? As long as it's a person from their tribe,

a person from their party, they will support what that individual does tooth and nail. But you've got to keep in mind that Republicans won't be in power forever. And when Democrats come into office and they get to utilize these same strategies, are you going to be in favor of it? Well, that's another problem with the uneven playing field. Look, if it's an established from a Democrat, I have no idea what they're going to do, and they might abuse it. And so good luck with that, okay? But I don't want them doing that.

But if it's a progressive, they know it's their, well, like what is Bernie Sanders going to abuse this to rig elections? It's inconceivable, and they know it. They know that by and large, the right wings are guys are the only cheaters. So they're like, well, let's set up a system where we can cheat. the other suckers won't do it because they're honest. So, look, God help us all if you got an establishment Democrat who wants to do stuff like this, too, because I don't put it above them, you probably don't put it above them.

And I don't want people cheating. But look, and so that you're clear on this, local governments have voter roles because you have to know if the person voting is a citizen, has, it lives there and can vote. That is normal. That happens all across the country. That is no problem. This is the federal government collecting this information for what, and they won't tell you why. If it was Obama, you would say it was to set up FEMA camps.

If they wanted to get information about your guns, you'd be in the streets. Yeah. But they're getting it about you. That's a little bit more personal than your gun. And you're like, oh, yeah, as long as this is my orange leader, I'm fine with it. It's not fine. It's intrusion into our privacy and anti-democratic moves like this are not fine, no matter who's in charge.

We've got to take a break. When we come back, a conservative commentator has an interesting idea for rewarding Republicans who voted for Trump. It involves your taxpayer money. And we have lots of stories later, including Orrin Hatch, planning on running again. Yeah, well, I think the drama behind who's actually trying to kneecap him is a really interesting part of that story. So we'll share that with you when we come back.

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Do it now. All right, back on the Young Turks, Jane Canana with you guys. All right, I'm going to read YouTube Super Bowl. chat every time you guys write in a message there it helps the show so thank you m k h o m e r o i don't have no idea m k homero anyway uh jank you and anna and t yt rock even with what's been going on with t yt positively and negatively t yt remains too strong a hashtag t yt 2018 hashtag never give up well thank you are our homero um and And some people think that we will.

They're going to be sorely mistaken. Anyways, Jeremy Kohler writes in on Twitter, hashtag Ti-T-T-Live. Love Anna's reaction when Jank makes horrendously corny jokes like that. I'm not even sure which one you're referring to, but it could be any of them. Anyway, Captain JinglePants says, I disagree with Jank here. Trump's real base will not care what Trump destroys. They'll use cognitive dissonance to justify blaming others from the faults of the dumbest potus America has ever had. Sir jingle pants, I happen to agree with you.

Well, Sir Jingle Pants, to-shay. Anyway, woke poppy says, I'm on holiday in Hawaii, but I'm still keeping woke watching TYT. Well, mahalo to you. and dances with says LMAO, Jenks, Gullum, is the worst I've ever heard back to Bain. Yes.

All right. This is the moment of my correction. All right, guys. Oh, here I'll read you with the members of the day real quick. Garrett Smith and Diana M. Francisco. So you guys are awesome. Thank you. Today for the members, we've got a lot.

We've got a post game. Of course, everyday rebel headquarters. We've got two, I've got at least one wonderful progressive candidate for you guys and some updates as well on important progressive news. And old school tonight, Matt Achity is going to be joining for the first time. You got bread on there and you got Malcolm Fleshner. So it's always fun when Malcolm is in the middle. I know he loves that joke. Okay.

So if you want to watch TYT and get all of the shows, TYT Network.com slash. gift. It's a limited time offer. So three months for 25 bucks. Check it out. All right, what's next, Anna? An outspoken Trump supporter is filing a sexual assault complaint against Trump's former aide and an individual who helped with this campaign. Cori Lewandowski. She claims that Corey Lewandowski slapped her in the butt twice during an event celebrating Trump's first year in office. Her name is Joy Via. And you might be familiar of via during the campaign when she wore a Make America Great Again dress and essentially defended her decision to do so on Instagram. She's a singer of Argentinian and Italian descent.

And there is the dress that I was talking about. That was at the Grammys, by the way. That was at the Grammys, yes. And she got a lot of attention for that. Now, I don't know whether or not she's still supportive of Trump. That's not what this story's about. but it is about her filing a complaint with Washington's Metropolitan Police Department on Christmas Eve in regard to the sexual assault allegations against Corey Lewandowski.

Here is what she told the press about the situation. I'm wearing this silver suit and stretchy pants and after the photo, he smacks my ass really hard. It was completely demeaning and shocking. Now, they were posing for a photo together. She continues to say, after VIA threatened to report him for sex. harassment, Lewandowski reportedly replied, go ahead. I work in the private sector. And then at that point, she alleges that he smacked my ass again. So she initially didn't want to come forward with these accusations because she was worried about backlash from Trump supporters. However,

one of her friends went public with what happened. And a lot of her friends were urging her to report what occurred. And so after that, she decided to file charges with or file these accusations with police. Every once in a while, conservative women are shocked and chagrined to find out that conservative men don't really respect them and treat them with the same way that they treat guys. So we did the story a little while ago about the all right women who were shocked to find out that the men thought that they should immediately be barefoot and pregnant. and one was getting criticism for not being married and pregnant by the age of 23.

And the others seemed like they were not being respected for their actual talents and ideas. Another one complained online the other day that they were sending her nonstop penis pictures. Really? All right guys, right wing guys, sending you those kind of pictures nonstop. I wouldn't have guessed that. Okay, now, of course, guys, look, this is not strictly a conservative thing. Of course, we've seen the Harvey Weinstein's of the world. We've seen monsters from all ends of the political spectrum.

Okay, but Cory Lewandowski is a guy who, this is not this first police charge from the campaign, from just the last couple of years. Remember, of course, he faced Mr. Meter Bannery for what he did to a right-wing female reporter. From Breitbart. From Breitbart. From Breitbart, which then caused a huge rift at Breitbart. she eventually left there. The charges were later dropped, but it doesn't, just because she shouldn't be surprised by

it doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean like, so he should have never done it and she's pursuing charges, good. Yeah, I'm glad she's pursuing charges. And I know that the backlash can be intimidating and scary, but regardless of who you're filing these charges against, it's important to come forward and fight because this type of behavior is unacceptable. Now, Corey Lewandowski was asked about this situation on Fox business, and here is his reply and his way of trying to weasel himself out of this situation or answering the question. Take a look. Of course, I'd like to have your response to Villas' accusations.

Well, Charles, I think as someone who's been through this, you understand that there is a due process and there is a process which they will go through to determine a person's innocence, which I think you've been through. and you understand it and you respect it. Yeah, I think everyone understands and respects it. But a lot of people are wondering why someone who is so close to President Trump, as you are, someone who's been rooting for President Trump like Joy has, what would motivate her? What do you think is motivating her with these accusations where she says she has at least two witnesses? You know, Charles, that's a question for her.

I'm not here to speak for Joy. What I am here to do is to speak for me. And what I am going to do is to let the process play forward, just as you did when you're accused of sexual harassment in your own case. So Charles Payne has been accused of sexual harassment by Scotty Nell Hughes. But he was cleared. He was cleared, yeah. And so Cori Lewandowski tries to deflect by talking about Charles Payne and what he went through.

But he didn't deny the accusations in that interview, which I thought was interesting. He just kept talking about due process, due process. So I thought that was telling. So let's just clarify a couple of things. So I've defended a couple of Foxen's anchors on this before, as I have ripped into others that were guilty, like Roger Ailes, the guy who ran Foxons, Bill O'Reilly, who had all those settlements for the sexual harassment that he did. But people will, every once in want to throw Sean Hannity in the mix. And I got no love for Sean Hannity. I think he's a bad guy.

I think his program is terrible, et cetera, et cetera. But no one's ever accused him of anything. So I think it's totally unfair to lump him in with the others. Charles Payton got accused but was cleared. And so, and you know why Lewendowski went on there. Just so he can say, as you know, Charles, it wasn't an accident that he picked that show to answer the charges to. And it's kind of a skeevy move. And it puts Charles Payne in a bad spot because he was clear of the charges.

But it makes it seem like, oh, yeah, we're all innocent. Are we're all in this together? And Payne's like, well, I mean, she says she has two witnesses. He's doing the right thing there. I might disagree with Charles Payne on other stuff, but he's asking the right questions. And so, and look, his reply about a due process, well, everybody, like, no one is saying you shouldn't get due process. Of course, I mean, these are criminal charges, sexual assault. Should Corey Lewandowski get due process?

Of course, of course he should. Nobody's saying lock him up without any new process, right? But what Charles Payne, a Fox business anchor there is asking you is, yeah, that's fine. You're going to get due process, but did you do it? And I guess he didn't want to answer it. But if he didn't, then he probably shouldn't have gone on the show. Yeah, totally agree. Well, I think that this is yet another example of,

of a woman being mistreated in a pro-Trump environment. And so, again, like, as you said, it shouldn't be that surprising. I mean, their rhetoric is reinforced by their actions. And Cory Lewandowski doesn't seem to be very apologetic or remorseful for anything that he's ever done. Okay, let's move on to something else. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives. 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

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Donald Trump has a history of attacking people that he disagrees with on Twitter. And Mika Brzezinski, of course, was one of those individuals in 2017. Now, Politico spoke to five different public figures who have been aggressively attacked by Trump on Twitter to get their perspective of what it was like, what the backlash was like following those tweets. And Mika Prisinski had the response that I thought was the most interesting, so I wanted to share it with you guys. Now, she talks about the, you know, notorious tweets regarding how she had a facelift and how she's unintelligent. Let me give you a reminder of what those tweets said. Donald Trump had tweeted on June 29th, I heard poorly rated Morning Joe speaks badly of me. Don't watch anymore. Then how come low IQ, crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mara Lago three nights in a row around New

Year's Eve and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a facelift. I said no. That is the president of the United States tweeting like a high school troll. Now here's what Mika Brzezinski had to say about her reaction to those tweets and then some of the backlash that she's received throughout the year. In the past two years, I've lost my best friend to pancreatic cancer. I've gotten divorced. My oldest daughter had this harrowing day on her college campus. We thought she had been kidnapped. My father went into the hospital and died. And right after my dad died, my mother had two heart attacks.

And a month after, and a month later, the president tweeted. So she's kind of setting the stage and giving some context into what her personal life was like right before Trump made those tweets. The ones about the facelift were humorous. I wasn't on the same page as everyone else. I feel embarrassed if people think I was embarrassed. I got Botox. I'm very open about that stuff.

it didn't hurt me. So the tweets themselves didn't seem to really bother her that much. But then she kind of talks about what her enjoyment level in regard to her career has been like under the Trump administration. And I certainly agree with this. I'm getting more hate now than I've ever gotten in my life. I can't read it. I'm working on unplugging more because it's the worst I've ever seen it. Co-hosting Morning Joe is a job I used to love. Now it's a job I have to do every day. I make a point of taking days off because I have to keep my thoughts in check. One shrill moment will be ripped on the internet. I don't love it as much, but I feel like, I feel really like, damn it, I'm going to work. It's like she took the words out of my

mouth. It's kind of amazing, you know? Yeah. So this is another problem with the bad actors in the world, which is that they beat you down and then you have to survive them. And so look, we're pretty strong here, hence the hashtag too strong, right, that we talk about all the time. We've got shirts at shopty.com about it. So, but you have to survive it. And Mika had never experienced that before. We've experienced it for a long, long time, even before Trump, with Trump and the emboldening of the alt-right trolls has gotten worse and worse.

It gets worse every single day, right? Yep. But before she was safely ensconced in her television world and everyone gave her accolades and we're, oh, Mika, you're wonderful, wonderful. And now, and Morning Joe is a conservative show. She halfway pretends to be progressive sometimes, right? Whatever. It's okay, whatever her point of view is.

But my point being there is she would have gotten mild criticism from the left before. She's never experienced the right like this before. And like anyone who experiences it personally for the first time, they're like, whoa, I had no idea how vicious they are. And they are. They're nasty little trolls. And they love it. They're like, yes, we've ruined people's lives. We feel good about ourselves.

Right, exactly. They go on these defamation campaigns and they're to some extent successful in them. And it sucks because they're playing with people's lives. They're playing with people's reputations, and it's tough to, you know, remain motivated to do your job on a daily basis. But look, Mika Brzynski, I mean, compare Mika Brzynski's commentary to actual progressive pundits that are, you know, more aggressive and way more opinionated and the kind of hate that they get and the lack of security or protection that they have, right? Mika Brzezinski is, in my opinion, at least relatively speaking, doing well financially, has a lot of resources to protect her from some of the very specific threats that people like us get on a regular basis.

And so my second point is, yeah, whatever, too strong. I guess I can describe myself as that. But I think more than anything, I'm a stubborn bitch, right? So I'm a stubborn bitch. And I'm not going to let anyone dictate the decisions I make in my own life and my own career, right? No level of intimidation, no level of threat, no level of anything is going to convince me otherwise. I am going to do my job every day. Yeah, it's going to be tough.

It's going to be harder. It's not going to be as enjoyable. But no one is going to silence me because they disagree with my political opinion and because, you know, they have this love of obsession with Donald Trump. So I loved what she had to say because it felt good to know that there are other people out there that have the same feelings about their career path and what they're experiencing right now with the political climate. Yeah. And look, it's, I've criticized Morning Joe a thousand times. And so no one here is saying that people are above criticism. No. And I and from time to time I've been harsh in my assessment of it, right? But there are lines that people who care about others don't cross. And if you've never experienced the internet where right-wing people attack you and they make up things one after another after another in a purposeful attempt to smear you and discredit you, you don't know how it feels. It's an amazing thing, right?

And so we don't do that. We do criticism of the establishment. And we go, here's why. Here's what our issues are. Here's what we think they did wrong. And it's about policy. And it's about things that matter in the world. Because we believe in fairness.

And there's a whole world out there that finds fairness to be a weakness. And so they think, oh, you're playing by the rules. That's stupid. I'm going to try to ruin your life by going outside of the rules. And so, and these TV folks have never been touched before. And so when they get that onslaught, they're amazed by it. And I have great sympathy towards Mika in that regard. Yeah, me too, absolutely.

And since it's largely a conservative show, they've also never been hit by the monsters on the right. So when they meet the monsters for the first time, they go, whoa, yes, that's what we we're warning you about. Let's take a break. When we come back, I will tell you the number one thing that Americans are super stressed about. Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks.

Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do, because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and come watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. come become a member thanks for watching either way 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