The Young Turks - The Young Turks - December 21, 2020

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

What's really in the new Coronavirus "relief" package? Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks. 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. All right. Welcome to the Young Turks, Jank and Anna with you guys. As always, in these hectic times show stuff with news. There's no end to the amount of news that's happening based on COVID relief. Bynes, Biden's incoming administration, Trump's outgoing administration, which doesn't realize they're outgoing. So all that is today. And I want to remind you, obviously, as we're coming up on Christmas week here, or we are in Christmas week. So you can give the gift of TYT. So you can go

to tYT.com slash gift. And apparently they're also giving you a gift for giving a gift. So you get a $5 discount from shop tyt.com. So it's apparently a good time to act. So check that out. And I love the idea of you guys spreading this to other progressives. And I say other right wingers or right wingers, and that's great too. But you know what? The people you probably need to spread it through the most is mainstream Democrats that only watch cable news. Because I think those are the folks that are now going, wait a minute, I don't think what they're saying exactly right, especially after I listen to progressive shows. All right. And of course, we're almost out of time. There's only nine days or 10 days left for our almost year long fundraising

drive. We're almost at the end here. Let's show you where we are, the thermometer. And we were trying to get to 2 million. There's actually 106 more on that because folks that sent in money directly to us. So we're almost there, but not that close. A little bit of both. So anyways, so if you can, guys, everybody who gives money becomes part of the change that we're trying to create. But if you can't, and it's tough times, obviously, take care of yourself and your family first. But we appreciate everybody. All right, Anna, let's get started. All right, well, we begin with news regarding the coronavirus relief package. Congress is slated to pass a new coronavirus relief package after negotiations have ended with something that both

chambers of Congress appear to agree on. Now, I want to be clear that regardless of what a headlines say regarding $908 billion in new coronavirus relief spending, the fact of the matter is that the way the legislation has been written indicates that about $429 billion of unused money from the CARES Act will be repurposed as part of this relief package, which means that In terms of the relief package portion of this bill, about $479 billion is new funding for relief. Now I give you those numbers because it's important to know what Congress has signed on for. And unfortunately, no reporter has seen the entirety of the language in this bill. Unfortunately, most members of Congress haven't seen the entirety of the language in the bill.

They've just received the bill and it's about 5,000 pages long according to what Representative Alexander Andrea Acacio-Cortez says, and they're being pressure to vote in favor of it within hours. And so here's what we know so far. We know that it's tied to the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill for the fiscal year that began in October of this year. And so when you look at the final number, it's about $2.3 trillion. Now what does it include? The relief portion of this, what does it include?

Well, let's start off with the stimulus checks. As we know, Republican lawmakers fought pretty aggressively against providing direct checks to Americans. But now, according to what we know, the legislation includes $600 stimulus checks per person, including adults and children. That means a family of four would receive about $2,400 up to a certain income threshold. So this money will in fact be means tested. The amount of money a person receives in these direct checks will start to decrease starting

at $75,000 in the 2019 tax year, depending on their income, of course. Anyone who earned more than $99,000 in 2019 will get absolutely nothing in terms of a direct check. Now, the unemployment benefits are also included in this relief package, and they've been pared down even more, which is incredibly disappointing. Congress will extend unemployment benefits of up to $300 per week. The benefit it would kick in as early as December 27th and run at least through March 14th. That means that Congress is providing only 11 weeks of unemployment. Remember that they originally were considering 16 weeks of unemployment. They whittled it down to 14 and then they finally ended up at only 11 weeks. So that's beyond disappointing, especially when you consider the fact that

most Americans are not even going to have access to the vaccine until late spring, early summer. So if congressional lawmakers are thinking, oh, no, we're good now. I mean, we have a vaccine. Everything's been solved. That's clearly not the case. The one upside of how the unemployment language is written is that the benefit will cover gig workers who traditionally are not covered under unemployment benefits. So that is a little bit of good news. There are other elements of this bill that I want to share with you, Jank. But first, I'd love to hear your thoughts about what we know so far. Okay. So first of all, I don't want people thinking that how they sprung it on the rest of the legislators is a small point. If you get a 5,000 page bill plopped on your desk

and they say you're going to vote in two hours, that means there's no way in the world you and your entire staff could ever read it in that two hours. That means only leadership decided what's in the bill. They basically are telling all of your representatives, especially the progressive ones because the conservative ones will go along anyway. They're not an issue. Those guys, and I mean conservatives on a Republican and Democratic side, those guys almost never read the bill. So progressives are much more vigilant. So they want to go through and see what's right and wrong. And that's exactly why both Republican and Democratic leadership don't want them to read the bill. So they just go push it right through jam. And then if they don't

vote for it, ah, you guys are against getting people on employment, et cetera. So that's a trick. And it's an important trick. Secondly, look, I partly can't blame the press too much because of the situation that the bill is so large. And they just got it too. But they have to clarify this super important point that we're making here. If at least $429 billion is repurposed from the original CARES Act, and McConnell says it's more. But let's take the 429 number. That means this is not. a $908 billion bill. It's a $480 billion bill. Now that's still a number. It's not the 1.8 that Pelosi turned down. It's not the 2.2 she proposed earlier. It's not the 3.4 they proposed it before that. But just you got to be accurate about what the number is. And it doesn't appear that almost any of them are being accurate about it in terms of what's in this particular bill. I have more thoughts on what's what the particulars are, but Anna. Yeah, no. And I think that is an important point because when it comes to, you know, bailing out corporations or spending government resources on the wealthy, well, there's no problem. There's no real debate. But they certainly did nickel and dime Americans with how this relief bill has been written in regard to ordinary Americans, right? And so look at the short amount of time that people will get access to these unemployment benefits, went from 16 weeks to 11 weeks.

Obviously, the amount of money that they're going to receive per week has gone down from $600, which was in the CARES Act, to only $300. And keep in mind that many Americans are in desperate need of financial relief right now, right away, and to put out a $600 means-tested direct check at a time of absolute crisis is shameful, it's embarrassing, it's pathetic, and it's what you can expect from feckless lawmakers and greedy Republicans who are looking out for their courts. Donors. Now when it comes to small businesses, it's important to know that there is some money appropriated

specifically for them, although understandably there's concern that you're going to have major corporations dip into this money as well as they did with the CARES Act. The bill includes more than $284 billion for first and second forgivable paycheck protection program loans, expanded PPP eligibility for nonprofit organizations and news outlets, and modifications to the program to serve small businesses, non-profits, and independent restaurants. Now, churches and faith-based organizations will also be able to qualify for this money as they did with the CARES Act. I also want to note, though, that businesses who take advantage of this money will get

considerable tax benefits, considerable tax deductions. And we'll talk about that in more detail in an upcoming story on our show. But just for now, I think it's important to mention that businesses that receive PPP loans and had them forgiven, will be allowed to deduct the costs covered by those loans on their federal tax returns. While the issue had been a point of contention, Senator John Thune said the costs would be deductible under the final agreement. Remember, that is tax-free money that small businesses were receiving as part of the PPP program. And so they're going to get two tax advantages through the way this legislation is written. The package also includes a tax break for corporate meal expenses, urged by the White House

and denounced by Democrats, dubbed the three martini lunch tax deduction by opponents. The tax break was promoted by Trump as a way to revive the restaurant industry. So the idea here is to encourage corporate executives and people, you know, with privileged jobs to go to restaurants to have, you know, meetings and then deduct the bill because they're engaging in business. But there's definitely opportunity for abuse for this kind of tax deduction. And so this is what we get. This is what we're dealing with, something that overwhelmingly benefits the privileged and nickel and dimes, people who are in desperate need. Yeah. So in terms of the particulars of the bill, I want to be clear. There's some things that are not great as Anna just pointed out,

including the three martini lunch tax exemption that is not going to help restaurants. You're not going to have twice as many lunches. They're just gonna, it's gonna help business interests. Let's keep it real, and mainly executives. So, and there's definitely really good things in the bill. So I wish they extended unemployment more, but they did extend it. I wish all the money in there that went directly to Americans was more, but there's some in there. They're paying for vaccine, so that's good. And they're helping small businesses. That's good. So full picture here, definitely some good stuff in there, some actually a small amount of bad stuff. There's one thing that isn't in there that's good, which is the liability issue, which the Republicans are trying to push for all the businesses to get. Now, having said all that, the number one issue is the size. So the Democrats said they were going to get $3 trillion worth of relief. And it's now gotten whittled down to less than half. a trillion. And so our members are already writing in. Engineer writes in in our member section about the unemployment insurance 16 weeks to 14 weeks to 11 weeks of unemployment. Sounds

like the master legislator is at work again. And so, and that's right. And so now Pelosi, you know, whittled down that amount to an amount, she said, I mean, four times as much she said was unacceptable. And at every point in the negotiations, the Democrats honestly lost. And so to be fair, not every point, but almost every point. And they always reset after they move the goalposts. After the McConnell says no to everything. Then the press goes, okay, now we're not talking about three, two, or one trillion anymore. Now we're talking about just this tiny little field. And within that field, the Democrats got one or two things and the Republicans got a a bunch of other things. No, remember the original battle plan was to go for, like I said,

nearly 10 times this amount and they just couldn't get anywhere near it because as usual, democratic leadership is awful at politics and negotiating. So there are other important points that I want to make about this legislation. First off, one positive outcome is that it will not include a corporate liability shield, meaning that it doesn't clear these corporations from liability if their employees get sick or die as a result of their negligence at the workplace, right? So the Tyson Meat Packing Plant story that we've been telling you guys about, those employees who are currently suing for wrongful death can continue to move forward with that lawsuit, and I think that's important considering the details of the allegations there. Also, there is an

expansion or I should say extension of the eviction moratorium, which I think is is certainly not enough because what it does is it kicks the can down the road without really offering Americans the aid that they need in order to pay their rent. Because once that moratorium is lifted on January 31st, which is what's indicated in this legislation, people are going to owe back rent to their landlords. And a recent study indicated that the average American who is relying on this moratorium is going to owe about $5,400 in back rent as soon as the moratorium is lifted. And that's pretty disastrous. There are also some other things included in the government spending portion of this legislation that I want to share with you

guys. About $1.4 billion has been appropriated for Trump's border wall, which I think It's a weird time to spend any resources on that. There's also $500 million for Israel in the package. There's no student loan relief included in the package. And, you know, there's also no funding for state and local government in the relief portion of the package. And so, no, I'm going to lie. I can't lie.

Like, there are certainly a lot of downsides to this. But lawmakers who want to do the right thing are kind of pushed or backed up into a corner because Americans are desperate. And as these negotiations continue, people are starting to get angry about, you know, the fighting about, you know, how long do certain benefits last, how much should certain benefits be. People are definitely insulted at the small amount of money that will be sent to them in direct checks. But overall, people are just in an incredibly desperate position right now. Anna, are you just to be clear here, the border wall funding and Israel funding, that's in the overall spending bill. That's not just the COVID bill. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, and I want to be

clear in that, like the reason why this is such a big bill is because it combines two different things. The government spending bill and the relief package. It groups it into one thing that they're going to vote on, based on reports they're going to vote on today. And how much was that number again for the border wall in Israel? So for the border wall, it's $1.4 billion. And I do know that that's part of the government spending bill, a portion of the bill. And then the Israel money is $500 million. So $500 million for aid to Israel in this package.

Yeah. So I know that Republicans often say, why are we giving any money to any foreign? country, why don't we take care of our people here first? America first, right? Then wait, why in the middle of a pandemic are we giving $500 million to Israel? Now the reality is Israel gets way more than that over the course of a year. I mean, last I checked, it was $3 billion. It's probably increasing every year. So I don't know, it's a good question. So I know when countries suffer a catastrophe and we're the good guys when we come and help them, like Haiti, you know, when they went through their natural disaster and other places, but I just, I don't know why we're

giving money for a border wall that is going to stop immediately. Every dollar of that border wall is a total and utter waste. Biden is not going to continue the wall. Nobody's going to continue the wall. You might as well take, so there's no way that it's going to ever going to get completed. So the $1.4 billion is a total and utter waste. You might as well flush down the toilet. And then they tell us we don't have money to do health care for everybody and we don't have money for COVID relief and on and on and on. And see, this is why people get frustrated because Washington doesn't care about you. They care about their donors and an agenda that makes no sense. So I'm just going to say it one last time. Pelosi started the negotiations

at $3.4 trillion. They in the House passed the bill for $2.2 trillion. In new funding, right now there's only 480 billion. So she she got at most 15% of what she originally wanted. Any reporter who calls her a master legislator is not really a reporter. They're just a really, really sad sycophon for people in power. Yeah, look, I'll say one final thing. And it's that Nancy Pelosi, and we'll talk about it in more detail later as well, Nancy Pelosi made purely a political calculation prior to the election. And that calculation was to turn down a more robust relief package that was being proposed by the White House because she knew that there was a possibility that it would help Donald Trump's chances of getting reelected. That's what it was

really about at the end of the day. And that's the reason why she decided to reject that package And then immediately sign on to this slim package, this skinny package that doesn't give Americans the relief that they absolutely need. I understand the risk in doing what I think would have been the right thing in signing on to the original relief package. But I mean, when you consider the devastation that Americans are facing right now, you understand the weight of the issue. You know, eight million Americans have fallen into poverty since the last summer. That is insane. And they have been completely neglected by our lawmakers. I'm not placing all of the blame on Nancy Pelosi, but I do think she made a mistake prior to the election. Yeah, no question. But let's be

fair. Chuck Schumer, also to blame. Chuck Schumer, I mean, Mitch McConnell was not in favor of the White House package either. So it probably would have failed in the Senate anyway. But I think it would have been far more powerful for Pelosi to put the ball in McConnell's court and then aggressively campaign against him and his unwillingness to provide relief to Americans. But that's not gonna say one last thing. It's Mitch, I don't blame Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell serves the rich and only the rich. So he actually, by his own standards, did a great job. He made sure that the American people got as little money as humanly possible and businesses got as much as humanly possible. That's his job and he did it really, really well.

The problem is Pelosi and Schumer are supposed to fight for us and they're the ones who usually throw the game. All right, we got to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to continue this discussion, including what the majority of Americans wanted in this relief package, according to polling, and how disconnected our lawmakers really are from ordinary people who desperately need relief. We'll be right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR.

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Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must have learned 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. Thank you. All right, back on TYT during the break here.

Let me read your comments. Meg from the member section said, the days are longer from here on out. Hopefully my will to live will return with the sunlight. Meg, hang in there. Look, the younger generation is all progressive. So trust me, there's tons and tons of tons of hope out there. We're going to win, but it's just a little longer timeline than you realize. But yes, since we're past the winter solstice, I feel great because I love sunlight.

Is that blue I see? I suppose. All right, eclecting mistletoe writes in over eight months since the last relief package, but now they have to vote on a 1,500 page bill in a matter of hours with practically no scrutiny. There must be something, many things in there that's not meant to help the actual people who need it most. To which I say, of course. And by the way, the other reason why they're doing it in such a hurry is they got to get home. They got to get home to their donors. Their donors are waiting for all the fundraising calls and the fundraising calls. They got to get home. Trigger incarnate says this year showed me without a shadow of a doubt that Americans will swallow anything without complaining. 90% of the rest of the world

would have already burned the government to the ground and started again from scratch, $1,800 total over a course of one year, they explained. So yes, there's a lot that the Americans will take, but things are bubbling over, as a lot of you know, and people have got to start taking action. As by the way, we have been saying for years on this show, Angelic Dreams, Tippy the Tank, L Hot Mess Politics, Barbara Murphy, all just joined on YouTube by hitting the join button below. You guys are awesome and we love you for it. t yt.com slash join everywhere else. Michael Goldman says via Justice Democrats, aOC just got passed up as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Seems Henry

Quayar played a big role in sabotaging the Congresswoman as a retaliation for her support of Jessica Cisneros. We must defeat him next time. Brother, I'm already on it. I'm lining up endorsements for Jessica. I'm trying to do everything I can behind the scenes. And of course if you do things behind the scenes in a smart way, people will attack you for not being progressive enough. Anyway, yes, I just said that. And so in terms of Quayar and an AOC, so what? So she gets passed up in the Energy Committee. She's still a thousand times more important than Quayar. So don't progress is in Congress. You should not worry about stupid little petty political tricks like Quayar. Oh, well, you didn't get the spot you wanted on the committee. So what?

We're gonna come and take you out of Congress and you're gonna lose all of your power. I guarantee it. As soon as Jessica's rerunning, I'm going to share her website with you guys. And generic user says, can you explain why there's no money left from CARES or why there is money left over from CARES? At this point, nothing is surprising. But when SBA PPP loans ran out, why wasn't the money used? It's very complicated. It has to, partly with the fact that it's going to Federal Reserve and what the Federal Reserve does with it. But I did want to tell you, When they ran out of money at the PPP, they did reload. So let's be fair and let's be factual on that.

And now more money is on the way. And Terry Clements, thank you. We'll be right back. I don't know. Ha, ha ha ha ha. And, uh,

yeah, and the uh, All right. All right, back on the Young Turks. share news with us as breaking in the middle of a show. And I had not seen this. Steven Scales, longtime viewer and member wrote in Bad News, Jenks, Steelers legend Kevin Green has passed away.

In honor of him, I donated $91 to t.com slash go. Well, Stephen, you're awesome. Thank you for doing that. But every time these athletes pass away, man, that I watched and loved, it's so sad how young they die. It's there. It's just amazing. Anyway, Stephen, thank you. Thank you for the update. I love doing this show with you guys. Anna, what's next? All right, well, the think tank data for progress recently did a survey to see where Americans stand on the relief bill and the portion of the bill that actually directs

checks or payments directly to them, also known as relief checks or stimulus checks. And oh, wow, what a shocker, the majority of Americans would like to see a $1,200 check as opposed as opposed to the measly $600 that's currently being offered in the legislation that Congress is likely to vote in favor of. So again, this is data for progress. They found that 93% of Democrats, 83% of Republicans, and 87% of likely independent slash third party voters would support another one-time payment of $1,200 to most Americans as a coronavirus relief measure. Now, even that number, in my opinion, considering how long Americans have gone on without real robust aid is not enough. You know, you have progressive members of Congress who have demanded $2,000 payments that are reoccurring, but that is not what's being offered in the latest, you know, proposal for relief. Representative Ilhan Omar spoke out against this saying, at this point, we should all wonder what it would take for members of Congress to listen to their constituents and support this.

I support it, call your member to find out if they do too. Bernie Sanders had a similar message saying maybe, just maybe. It's time Congress listened to the American people and sent $1,200 survival checks to working class Americans who are in so much desperation right now. And look, to be clear, before the election, the White House had offered a relief package that was still not great, but it was certainly much better than what's being proposed by Congress right now. It was a $1.8 billion, I'm sorry, $1.8 trillion proposal, I should say, that did include direct checks to Americans to the tune of $1,200. Nancy Pelosi rejected that. She made a political calculation, knowing that there was a possibility that approving that bill would help Donald Trump in getting reelected. And so she's being asked about that decision now, for good reason.

CNN's Manu Raju wanted to ask her about it, and she ran away from the question, let's take take a look at what that scene was like. We also have in the legislation direct payments, which are not in the Republican bill, to America's working families. I would like them bigger, but they are significant. And they will be going out soon. So my mistake, that's what she said on the House floor. But Manu Raju had tweeted in a series of tweets that Pelosi.

wouldn't answer my question about why the $900 bill deal is more acceptable to her than the $1.8 trillion offer Mnuchin made to her this fall. Asked again in the hallways why this proposal is more acceptable than the Mnuchin plan. Pelosi didn't respond. But Schumer, who was walking with her in the hallway said, ask Mitch McConnell. And he also continued to say that it's true that McConnell and Senate Republicans objected to Mnuchin's $1.8 trillion plan. But so voted Pelosi, who said in October, quote, this proposal amounted to one step forward, two steps back. And so, you know, it's, look, the point of this story is they don't care. Whether it's a Democrat, you know, a corporate Democrat or a Republican, it doesn't matter what the majority of Americans want.

The Democratic Party clearly is not afraid of its own constituents, which is why 93% of Democratic voters can say they want relief. They want more money in these direct checks and then congressional lawmakers will fold and go along with, you know, the measly $600, which again is not enough. The two, the $1,200 is not enough. It's inadequate. But they couldn't even get that amount, which is infuriating. So guys, look, the fact that the Republicans are the bad guys is super obvious to who anyone who's paying just a tiny bit of attention. So they're the ones who blocked a $1,200 check. It's factual. There's no counter argument.

Now, does that mean the Democratic leadership did a good job and are the good guys? Absolutely not. They're just as guilty. And so let me explain why. So the $1,200 check, as Anna told you in the beginning of this story, is enormously popular. Now, first of all, when you have 93% of your own part, party saying fight for it, that's it. You don't need anything else. I don't care if 1% of Republicans say yes. If 93% of your party says fight for it, Nancy Pelosi and I'm sorry, Judge Schumer

should fight for it. But they never do that. Oh, our base, we despise our base, we would never do what our voters wanted. But second of all, 87% of independence wanted it. Guys, 83% of Republican voters wanted. So what excuse does Pelosi and Schumer have for not insisting on $1,200? Oh, Mitch McConnell's going to vote no. Yeah, we all know that. That is when you beat the living hell out of him politically. That's when you go on TV and you go, Mitch McConnell just stop your $1,200 check. 83% of Republican voters wanted. And by the way, Republicans, you know who betrayed you? Mitch McConnell, then we'd all be on your side. And you know what else? 88% of Americans would be on your side. What drives me nuts is not how evil Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are. And

yes, as you can tell, Democratic leadership weakness is despicable. But the media, for Christ's sake, man, they always go out. There was nothing Pelosi or Schumer could do. Nothing they could do, nothing they could do. How about they could fight for 88% of American voters? If a politician says, I cannot win on an issue where 88% of the people are on my side. Well, then you are a joke. And as a reporter, you should point out, they're a terrible, terrible politician, a terrible negotiator. So that's just obvious, except almost no one in the media says that. Oh, I wouldn't want to offend Pelosi or Schumer. Oh, that's a third rail. Now, on the other hand, I want to You have a lot of credit to Manu Raju.

Those are good questions. When he says, wait a minute, you said no to the $1.8 trillion. So, and you were saying it was two steps back. Well, you just agreed to, and he thinks it's $908 billion, but it isn't, it's $480 billion, because a lot of the money was already in the original CARES Act. So you just said yes to half a trillion when you said nearly $2 trillion was a step backwards. So that is exactly the right question. She dodged it because she hates that anyone,

not saying or reveal pen and doing as they're told. And then Chuck Schumer makes a mistake of answering and says, ask Mitch McConnell. No, we're asking you, you're the one who didn't fight for your voters. Right, I mean, yes, exactly. So I think most people acknowledge that Mitch McConnell served as an obstacle in these negotiations. There's no question about it. But there wasn't an aggressive fight, at least as far as I could see by Democratic leadership. And that's an issue. In fact, like what I think is so interesting is Nancy Pelosi's unwillingness to even play politics when it comes to this very obvious question that she should be expecting from reporters. Like running away from Manu Raju, not a good look. How about you take maybe five minutes to think about what your strategy should be once a reporter asks you this question. But she didn't even feel the need to do that. Her aides didn't even feel the need to prepare her for, again, a very obvious question.

that reporters are going to want her to answer. You can't say a $1.8 trillion offer from the White House is not good enough, and then turn around after the election and urge members of Congress to vote in favor of something that spends far less money on providing relief to average Americans. It's just the sense of entitlement, the unwillingness to fight and do the right thing on behalf of your own voters, your own party, people who are depending on you and relying on you right now, you right now. It's just, you know, the sense of entitlement drives me crazy. You can't answer the question because you didn't even think, didn't even care to have an appropriate, you know,

political answer prepared for this. And I mean, obviously I wasn't going to buy any of it, but it doesn't matter. Like it's just, it's one more insult to what's been going on. Just this, I don't care. Yeah, I'm not going to answer your question. I'm going to walk away. Yeah. I don't even care if you really, but that really shows you exactly what's been going on and Washington for the last 20, 40 years. So because when a Democrat in leadership, a corporate Democrat is asked a tough question by a reporter, they're totally and utterly surprised by it. They haven't had it their entire careers. So they're like, what? That's a good question. No, I didn't prepare for that. Are we supposed to answer questions now? No, no, no, directed to

Trump or Bernie Sanders or anyone who isn't part of the corporate oligarchy. I'm not answering your questions. And she gets genuinely super mad. This is the second or third time that it's happened recently. And she's like, looks at him like, who do you think you are? I run this place. So and the last thing is, as Anna pointed out, when it was $1.8 trillion, but they thought it like Pelosi thought if we pass us, it might help Trump before the election. And it might heard Democrats seeking election. She voted no, she didn't do the deal. Because it affected them. But now after the election, she takes a quarter of the money because she thinks it only affects you. Who cares that I gave up three quarters of the money

you could have had. That doesn't affect me at all. And by the way, she's generally been right about that. With the exception of Monter Roger's question there, largely she's gotten a free ride her entire career. And no matter what heinous thing they did or what collapse in negotiations they had to the Republicans, the D.C. media would always upload. Oh, here, like this. Oh, Nancy Pelosi, so brilliant. Master legislator, bravo! Only taking a quarter of the money. Bravo! And so, no, she's never been good at this. And that's a fact. So I think it's worth, you know, doing a story that solely focuses on the tax breaks for businesses, because even Steve Mnuchin wasn't in favor of some of this stuff.

But based on what we're hearing about this legislation so far, it will include tax deductions for the privilege. So the coronavirus relief package includes tax deductions that overwhelmingly, the coronavirus relief package includes tax benefits and deductions that overwhelmingly benefit the privileged and business owners. So the tax breaks are so ridiculous that even Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, spoke out against some of them, especially the so-called double-dip tax benefit that comes along with PPP, the program that's meant to help small businesses during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 relief package, as Bloomberg reports, set for a vote in Congress would clarify that business owners can deduct expenses paid for with PPP loans, which can be forgiven by the government without incurring a tax. The deduction benefit could generate more than one $100 billion in tax savings for business owners, according to the Brookings institution. For business owners paying the top tax rate, it generally means they can save as much as $37 on their taxes for every $100 of tax-free PPP money they received. Like that number should blow everyone's mind and everyone should be angry about it. Steve Mnuchin, as I mentioned, was against it. The legislation would actually override

Mnuchin and the IRS who have blocked businesses from writing off rent, utilities, and other business expenses paid for with tax-free money. The agency says the tax code prohibits that sort of doubling up of tax benefits. I also want to note that the $300 that Americans will receive an unemployment benefits for 11 weeks, right, $300 per week for 11 weeks, that is not tax-free. It is not. So that is considered taxable income that Americans, will have to essentially, you know, pay back to the federal government once they file taxes in the beginning of the next year. And that just shows you how on one hand, you have businesses who get these tax-free, forgivable loans, which they can then use to deduct from their taxes when they

file. And then on the other hand, you have average Americans who desperately need unemployment assistance. That money is considered taxable income. And one video that I want to toss to before we go to you, Jank, here's Republican Senator Ron Johnson. pretending as though he cares about the debt whenever they're having discussions about providing real relief to average Americans. Take a look. When I came to the Senate,

we were a little over $14 trillion. Our GDP was over $15 trillion. We're actually below 100% of GDP. Now, I know I'm using a lot of numbers right now, and I'm going to use more because that's part of the problem. And one of the reasons we are $27.4 trillion in debt is we only speak about need, we only talk in terms of compassion, we all have compassion, we all want to fulfill those needs. We just don't talk in numbers very often. We don't analyze the data.

We don't take a look at what we did in the past and see, did it work? Just want to note that Ron Johnson voted in favor of Donald Trump's tax cuts, which cost the government $2 trillion over a decade. So Ron Johnson does not actually. care about the debt. When it comes to tax cuts for the rich, always on board, 100% of the time. Well, it goes further than that, Anna. He actually benefited to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand dollars himself personally from those tax cuts. So a couple hundred thousand dollars for Ron Johnson, that's not numbers. That's compassion. But when it's $1,200 for you, we got to talk about numbers. Who cares about compassion? I already got paid, man. That's what he's saying.

I already got a hundred times what you got, 200 times what you got. And so the government is only compassionate to incredibly rich people like me, Ron Johnson says. And guys, why do we constantly get mad at the Democratic Party? Because these Republicans are so easy to beat. You just, all you've got to do is fight them. And all of the Democrats say, don't, don't, don't, whatever you do, don't fight our beloved Republican colleague. Dick Durbin, just spent the last week kissing Republican ass. He went out and gave a speech about how Donald Trump did amazing things with Operation

Warp Speed, and we have to thank him. You're pathetic, man, you're pathetic. When Ron Johnson gives that speech, somebody should get up, and Bernie half did this. He went after him, but he should have said what we know to me the facts that David Sorota wrote about, which is, hey, listen. You already made a couple hundred thousand bucks of the bills that we passed. So don't you dare tell us that the average American can't afford $1,200. But is there any chance that anyone outside of Bernie would do that in the Senate?

0% chance, 0% 0-0-0.00. Democratic leadership, no chance at all that they would ever fight back effectively against Republicans. So it's just, I can't stand it. Yeah. Look, since you're talking about Democrats, I think it's important to point out that in some cases, they're actually far worse than even you're describing because, you know, House leadership includes chairs of incredibly important committees, including the House Ways and Means Committee, which of course, Representative Richie Neal is the chair of. He's a Democrat. And he, by the way, transparently on his own website, neal.house.gov indicated that he absolutely wanted. businesses to be able to double dip with this tax benefit. I'm going to just read you a few excerpts from his page on his website where he says, consider a company that gets a $100,000 loan and whose owner has a 22% tax rate. If the business pays $100,000 worth of deductible expenses and has the loan forgiven, that would provide a $22,000 tax benefit on top of the loan

forgiveness. Members of Congress say this benefit is exactly what they intended. So he's saying, Like, no, no, no, this is what I want. This is exactly what we intended. Here's a quote, as we expressed to Treasury during the development of the PPP, we did not intend to deny the deductibility of ordinary and necessary business expenses, nor did these small businesses expect to lose deductions for their business expenses when they applied for a PPP loan. Remember, the PPP loan is tax free. They're not paying taxes on that money, which can be a forgivable loan, right? And so, The people who signed that letter, by the way, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, Senator Ron Johnson, a Democrat from Oregon, and of course, Representative Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts. It's just absolutely horrendous. Look, look, I actually think there's two separate issues here. Number one, in terms of the actual double dipping for the small businesses, if you just own up to it and apparently some of them have, yeah, I just want to get more money to small businesses.

This is another way of getting money to them. Okay, that's one thing. And I can actually can actually totally live with that. But when you say, I don't want people to get unemployment and the direct check, because that would be double dipping for the average American, you're saying, I don't actually want to help citizens. So I would never double dip for an actual American voter. But for small businesses, and that's better than big business, I'll let them double dip. Okay, well, then you obviously have hypocrisy. But to me, the worst one is not in terms of the size of it, but in terms of how galling it is, is the three martini lunch tax exemption. So they say, oh, Trump's like, oh, it's for the restaurants. You're not going to go to lunch

twice, okay? No, it allows you to deduct all of that from your, from your business expenses. So that means all the executives are going to get to go to lunch for free, basically. Like, there's nothing that helps the richest people in the country, just like for fun more than this. Like the big giant tax cuts help them more, et cetera, financially. But this is them kind of like rubbing it in your face and laughing about it. Of course, the biggest advocate was Larry Cudlow, but are we surprised that he would be in favor of three martini lunch tax exemption? Yeah. And by the way, that amount would be 100% deductible.

The entire amount spent on these dinners, it's not like, oh, a portion of it is tax deductible. No, the entire restaurant bill is considered tax deductible based on how this relief package is written. Anyway, we have to take a break. But when we come back, finally, we have some election vendors fighting back against Donald Trump and his campaign lawyers and some of the ridiculous allegations they're putting out there about election fraud. We'll give you the details on that and more when we return. I'm going to be able to be. I mean, and then, you know, and I'm going to be.

And then, you know, I'm going to be. I mean, uh, uh, mrs. Uh, and then uh,

Oh, and I'm going to be. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Mm-hmm. All right. All right, guys, back on the Yachters, first of all, plan your change. If you have wanna round up your change that every time you make you a purchase through your credit card or debit card to plant a tree, perfect opportunity for you guys. TYT.com slash trees and you can do that. And so it's really easy to hook up. You'll see it.

Now I want to go to your comments. Mickey C says, are you going to address that it was Bernie who got us to $600? He was on the floor demanding $1,200. Meanwhile, pretend Dem Joe Manchin fought him on it. Mansion said unemployment or a check. Can't have both. I don't see Bernie getting any credit for at least getting us that much. Thank you, Mickey, for pointing that out.

That's right. And nobody in media is, and we should have done it more aggressively in the earlier stories. Again, that's why I love doing the show with you guys. And I will go on forward. If Bernie hadn't fought, you wouldn't have gotten the $600. That's a fact. Did anyone in media ever give him credit? No, zero, zero.

Instead, Stephanie Ruhl on MSNBC yelled at him. Oh, you never get anything done, she said. It's outrageous. So now theater goddess writes in, Ron Johnson is saying the right things, but completely missing the point because when you look at the numbers from our compassionate policies doing the right thing usually saves us money. That's right. And so by the way, I can give you tons of ways to save money and progressives can, but they

don't want those ways because those go to their donors, of course. And a jack flexing tricep says, so Ron Johnson wants to look at the numbers. to make sure that they work. I guess trickle-down economics didn't work, so we need to repeal tax breaks for the wealthy. Yeah, you want to look at numbers? You want to look at numbers? I'd love to look at numbers.

But again, that would require one other Democrat, other than Bernie Sanders in the Senate, to counter these gargantuan liars over and over again. And I want to, Terry Clemmas I mentioned last time, he wrote in on Super Chat, Love you guys, just upgraded a producer. Merry Christmas and Happy Everything, Terry, YouTube. brother, hit the join button below like Terry did to become a young tourist member, and I'll get to Twitch a little bit later in the program. Love you guys. We'll be right back.

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Back on a Young Church, Jenkin, Anna, with you guys. Anna, take it away. All right. Well, as most of us know, right-wing disinformation outlets have been regurgitating and repeating accusations, unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud on their platforms, indicating that Donald Trump had the election stolen from him by Joe Biden. But now it turns out that the software company that's being accused of being involved in election fraud has decided to fight back. Smartmatic is the software in question here. They've been accused of being the software that's used

on Dominion voting machines and it allegedly has a back door that allows for votes cast for Donald Trump to be switched to Joe Biden. No evidence of that. In fact, Smartmatic wasn't even the software that was used in the election in the battleground states that these Trump campaign lawyers have been talking about. So as a result, Smartmatic realize these ridiculous disinformation campaigns aren't going to stop and we need to sue. So again, let me reiterate Smartmatic wasn't even used in the contested states. The company, now a major global player with over 300 employees, pulled out of the United States in 2007 after a controversy over its founders, Venezuelan roots. And its only involvement this November was with a contract to

help Los Angeles County run its elections. Now lawyers representing Smartmatic sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax, and OAN, demanding that they immediately forcefully clear the company's name and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. And so as a result, if you were closely watching Fox News recently or some of these other right wing disinformation outlets, you'll notice them using very similar language in debunking what they had previously said on their shows about SmartMatic and these voting machines. Let's take a quick look at a compilation of what that looked like. There are lots of opinions about the integrity of the election,

the irregularities of mail-in voting of election voting machines and voting software. We've heard concerns about both voting machines and voting software. We have heard concerns about both voting machines and voting software. One of the companies is SmartMatic, and we reached out. to one of the leading authorities on open source software for elections, Eddie Perez, for his insight and views. Specifically, a company called Smartomatic. This week, we reached out to Eddie Perez for his insight. Specifically, a software company called SmartMatic. This week, we reached out to Eddie Perez for insight. Eddie is the global director of tech development at the Open Source Election Technology Institute.

We ask him for his assessment of SmartMatic and recent claims about the company. We asked him what he knew about Smartomatic and the claims some have made about that company. We asked him what he knew about Smartmatic and the claims some have made about that company. So I don't know, Jank. It appears that they're just reading a script that was sent by lawyers in order to avoid, you know, paying the consequences of what they've been engaging in for weeks now, which has been disinformation. So they're worried about that defamation lawsuit. And I love how they're not taking person. responsibility. Some people, some people have said, you know, there have been differing opinions, but let's let's talk about what the truth is here. You know, some people have been spreading false information. Yeah, it's you guys, it's you guys. You're facing a lawsuit and now you're debunking your own garbage on your air because you're forced to by lawyers. All right, a couple of important parts of this. First, side note, but important, that's why I call them news actors and not news anchors. They're just given a script and they read it. The script could be one for a lunatic like Lou Dobbs. And then he goes, oh, smartmatic, it's fixing everything, it's drinking everything, ah, right?

And Glenn Beck, you remember how he used to walk around the room when he was on Fox News and do the chalkboard and it looks so authentic? I know for a fact that he rehearsed that all day long. It was a script. So they're all actors. And the question is, who's the director? So at CNN, the director says, remember, we're in favor of all corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats. but against anyone outside of that spectrum. At Fox News, it's generally speaking, it used to be Roger Ailes, and he would literally write

memos that got uncovered. They were featured in Out Fox and many other places where he would tell them what to say. And he would say, and the VPs of Fox News in the old days, old days isn't like a year ago or two years ago, would say, call Obama a Marxist, call him a communist, call him a socialist. And the news actors would get on and go, oh, of course, as everybody knows, people are saying that Obama's a Marxist, right? So in this case, who's directing? The lawyers are. And the lawyers told them, you morons, they're going to sue the living hell out of us. And then we're going to have to fire all of you, one, because we have less money, two, because you just caused

us a giant sum of money. What do you think we're doing here? We're trying to make money. That's what Fox News is about. I don't know if people are. By the way, that's also what CNN is about. So like, it's easy to beat up on the right wing. When you talk about the establishment stuff, though, and they go, oh, no, no, CNN's doing it out of the goodness of their heart. So I do, okay, so I do want to also show what the rest of the segment look like. And they all use the same person. They even referenced him in that compilation we showed you, Eddie Perez. So let's just take a look at what the debunking look like. Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic Software was used to flip votes anywhere in the U.S. in this election? I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic

software was used to delete, change, alter anything related to vote tabulation. What about Smartmatic and Dominion? Do you know if they're related, whether one owns the other, whether Dominion uses Smartmatic software? Both Dominion and Smartmatic have individually and respectively put out very clear statements from their corporate headquarters, each of them indicating they are independent companies, they are not related to each other. Have you seen any evidence of a connection between George Soros and Smartmatic? I'm not aware of any direct connection between George Soros and Smartmatic. Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries? No, I'm not aware of any evidence that Smartmatic is sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign

countries outside of one customer in Los Angeles County. SmartMatic has no presence in the voting technology marketplace in the United States. Well, it's it for me tonight. I'm Lisa Booth, filling in for Judge Janine. Thank you so much for watching. So that is where we stand right now. We will keep investigating. That'll do it for us. Yeah, that's where they stand right now. Again, I mean, of course, this is due to the lawsuit. And I should also note that Smartmatic, the software company, is different from Dominion, which has the voting machines, but Dominion is also suing. Dominion voting systems has hired another high-powered libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who has threatened legal action against

Sidney Powell and the Trump campaign. Let me just give you a quick statement from Claire. He says, we are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action against Sidney Powell and many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion. And by the way, William Barr was pressured by Donald Trump's campaign to seize Dominion voting machines. And he basically said, no, there's no reason to do that. Okay, so the reason that you saw that really bizarre way of presenting it on all of those shows where there's like someone saying, is So Marmatic owned by George Soros, right? And then the guy answers is because they didn't want to humiliate their anchors by having Dobbs, Barteroma, et cetera, go out there themselves and go, we were lying the whole time. None of it is true. It's not owned by Soros. They didn't run anywhere other than L.A. County were unbelievable liars. So they did. this package where they have what was it true and then they bring a rando guy to go no it wasn't

by the way I didn't love the way he phrased it either we have I'm not aware of any direct evidence that it's linked to George Soros no it's not like the source at all what do you mean I don't care if you're aware or not aware of it and then you don't need there's no evidence not just direct evidence and smartmatic guys look if you want to look at how we run these these voting machines, like when we're, when there isn't already an election that's done. And you want to talk about, hey, future elections, before we know who won and lost, and I'm trying to rig it in reverse. But so we don't know who won for 2022. You want to look at the machines? Let's look at the machines. Let's see how they work. But you guys are cuckoo for

Cocoa pops. And you actually hurt the effort to verify all the votes. Because you're like, A smartmatic rigged man with Hugo Chavez and Soros. You smartmatic was only in L.A. county. Did they rig L.A. for Biden? When you're that dumb, you really can't help the cause at all, even your own cause. So, but the most important part here is bottom line is that all of these guys were wrong. And the fact that they're airing that shows that Fox made a calculation. No, we're not right about this if they sue will lose.

We must run this on air. Now, did it make up for all the things that they did? No, they've run that story a thousand times and they did that correction, in my opinion, a weak sauce correction only once. By the way, what was the audience reaction? They were livid. They're like, this guy doesn't even know Hugo Chavez. Of course his ghost rigged it.

It's giddy. Why'd you put them on, man? I'm going to go watch newsbacks. You know what happened on newsbags today? They issued the same apology. Yeah. And look, we'll give you more details on William Barr, basically going against what Donald Trump is demanding when we come back from the break. But you don't want to miss that story because Trump is still trying to overturn the results of this election. And he's even considered martial law. So we'll give you all the details and more when we come back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.