The Young Turks - The Young Turks - December 9, 2020

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

The Trump Campaign is joining in an insane lawsuit in Texas in a last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola 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. Welcome, friends. You're watching The Young Turks with Anna Casparian and John Idarola. And today's show is going to be bananas. We will have the legendary Senator Bernie Sanders on the show today. John and I will be interviewing him together. John, how are excited are you?

I'm not totally cool. It's like the same as every day. Yeah, yeah. Not a big deal. You're just wearing a suit for any other reason. No, I do all the time in the pandemic and I wear pants and shoes made out of leather. Anyway, yeah, I was going to ask you right before we went live, how many times have you interviewed or spoken with Bernie Sanders?

I'm fortunate. I've talked to him on the show several times. Shortly after the 2016 election, he was doing those town halls and I went to DC to kind of MC for a few of them. But he's just, the thing that I love about Bernie Sanders outside of his policy proposals and the fact that he's been fighting for working people his entire political career is how he refuses to give up. And I find a lot of inspiration from that. So I feel fortunate to have, you know, communicated with him as often as I've had in the past. But I'm really looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have with him today about, you know, congressional lawmakers and their seeming inability, inability to pass coronavirus relief. So we'll talk about that, get some insight from Senator Sanders.

And, you know, we'll also talk about how easily the House passed the defense bill with a very. veto proof vote, meaning that so many members of the House voted in favor of it, including Democrats, of course, that it is- Well, the difference, Anna, is that with the defense bill, American lives are on the line. So, well, we'll talk about it. We'll break it down further for you guys. But for now, why don't we get started with Texas and what's currently happening with these ridiculous and frivolous election fraud lawsuits. So Donald Trump has unsurprisingly decided to intervene in the Texas election lawsuit that has no merit and is likely to fail in the Supreme Court. However, it was filed by the Texas Attorney

General Ken Paxton. Texas announced this week that they're filing the lawsuit directly with the Supreme Court against four battleground states, of course, four battleground states that Joe Biden won. And what they're alleging is that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin was engaged in unconstitutional behavior when they decided to expand mail-in voting as a result of the pandemic. So what did Trump say? Of course, one of his buffoonish tweets, we will be intervening in the Texas plus many other states case. This is the big one, our country needs a victory. And unfortunately, 17 other attorneys general signed on to this lawsuit as well. Again, it is very unlikely that they're going to win in this case.

But why would the Texas Attorney General want to file this ridiculous lawsuit? They have absolutely no evidence of voter fraud. These are laws that were, election laws that were decided by lawmakers or politicians in these individual states, who's Ken Paxton, an attorney general from Texas to tell these other states, these battleground states, what their election laws should be? Well, interestingly enough, the Michigan Attorney General spoke to CNN this morning about what might be motivating Paxton. We should take a look at that video. We should note that A.G. Paxton, you know, is a member of the Trump campaign, very involved with that. Also, that he is currently under federal indictment for securities fraud and also being investigated by the FBI.

So I see this more than anything as an effort to ingratiate himself to a man who could potentially provide him with a presidential pardon. These crooks, it's incredible. And just to give you a little bit more context into the allegations of securities fraud, Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 for felony securities fraud charges is facing fresh criminal allegations from eight of his top deputies who said they believe he broke the law by using the agency to do favors for a political donor. The FBI is investigating Paxton over those claims. What he engaged in, John, is probably so bad because we've legalized bribery in this country.

So the fact that he can even be criminally charged or accused of something like this means that he probably engaged in something horrible. But I wanted to get your thoughts. Yeah, it takes a lot of work in the area of campaign finance to find a way to break the law. Dinesh D'Souza is one of the few people bold slash stupid enough in recent years to have actually found away. The other one was for securities fraud, correct? Yeah, no, he's he's politically connected and probably wealthy. The fact that he's up on charges for that too implies that, man, this is a really reckless guy. Because Kelly Loughler and David Perdue and Loughler's husband have demonstrated how much you can get away with perfectly legally, if not morally.

Look, it's not a bad plan. I get it. And why wouldn't it work? Donald Trump has joked recently that he's going to pardon everyone who ever spoke to him. So yeah, it's, this is what the Republican Party, like in terms of the people who are elected and the media are. It's just, you know, do this big demonstrative vice signaling thing to show loyalty. It doesn't matter how clownish it is. It's the people who are going to be paying attention to this have self-selected as the most gullible people in the country. And so whether it fails or not, it's a win for him. There's no, there's literally no downside. You can lose case after case after case after case. And it's not like, like are Trump's fans? Are Trump's boosters in the media?

Are they embarrassed at all about his track record? In court, they're not. They're just always looking to the next thing. And if this falls apart, they'll probably just do that too. And as we learned in recent weeks, there have been instances of presidents, Gerald Ford, for example, who have issued preemptive pardons, meaning you can actually pardon someone before they've even been officially convicted of or charged with a crime. It's just an, it's really an insane standard, especially when it came to like Nixon. Nixon hadn't even been criminally charged for the Watergate scandal and Gerald Ford had issued a preemptive pardon. So possibly this is what Ken Paxton is hoping for And how, of course, Ken Paxton, who possibly engaged in criminal activity is the Attorney General of Texas.

But the Attorney General of Michigan was challenged a little bit by her accusations here. So let's hear how she handled that. You're suggesting a connection there between the indictment of the Texas Attorney General and his pursuing this case. Do you have evidence that there's a connection there? Well, I just think it makes common sense because of the ridiculous nature. this lawsuit. And I mean, think about it. You have the Texas AG trying to disenfranchise the votes of some 39 million people who live in these four other states that the Texas AG does not represent. 21 million people voted in those states. Each and every one of those states,

of course, is a state that went for Joe Biden. In my state, nearly 155,000 more votes for Joe Biden than for Donald Trump. And yet the Texas AG is seeking to set aside all that and to allow to have our Republican legislature basically substitute their votes for that of those millions and millions of people who voted in their states and overturned the will of the people. She's absolutely right. Because if you look at what the allegations are and what the Texas Attorney General and now 17 other attorneys general are asking for, it's just they do want to disenfranchise voters. They want to make it so these particular states don't count in the electoral college count. So their electoral college votes will not count toward the

official total. It's just absolutely and utterly, it's terrible. I mean, this is the most undemocratic ask you can imagine. And so let me give you more details on what they're asking for and what they're alleging. So through this lawsuit, Paxton claims that the pandemic era changes two election procedures violated federal law. Why? How? I mean, some of these laws were actually challenged in courts. And judges clearly sided with the election laws and did not find them unconstitutional or illegal, federally speaking. Paxton, in a filing to the High Court, Paxton claims the four battleground states broke the law by instituting pandemic-related changes to election policies, whether through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot

integrity. Again, the courts didn't really see an issue with these election laws prior to the election taking place. In Pennsylvania, specifically, which by the way, isn't noted in the Texas lawsuit, there were Republican lawmakers in the state legislature who voted in favor of the election laws they implemented as a result of the pandemic. And then they turned around and tried to sue in one of these like phony election fraud cases. It's absolutely shameful. Paxton claimed that these changes allowed the voter fraud to occur. They have no examples of voter fraud. They have no evidence of voter fraud. A conclusion experts and election officials have rejected and said the court should push back a December 14th deadline by which states must appoint their presidential

electors. So that deadline is quickly approaching, and it's just abundantly clear what they're trying to do. And to be clear, it is very unlikely, based on the fact that the Supreme Court rejected the Pennsylvania lawsuit, it's unlikely that the Supreme Court is going to go along with this nonsense. But you never know, you never know. Unless they rejected the previous lawsuit to clear the path to this one, because that one was too narrow and it only had to do with one state. This has to do with all of them. So in one fell swoop, they could overturn the entire thing. And of course, there's very, very, very, very little chance that they'll do that. But we have to pay attention to this because they could, in theory, they have a super majority.

If they decided to, if a group small enough that they could fit around the table I'm sitting at decide that American democracy is done, they could overturn it. It seems impossible. That's why we're not freaking out more than we already are, but they could do it. The entire thing is, it's like the perfect example of American politics. It is stupid BS that we're forced to pay attention to that has nothing to do with people's lives or livelihood, but we have to pay attention to it because it could go through. It could overturn the election. Exactly.

Exactly. No, this is the daily struggle with this story because I hate it. I hate how stupid it is. is, how it just keeps going, it doesn't end, like, please just let this end already so we can focus on other news. But this is the exact type of Republican behavior where if you're not paying attention and if you're not making it very clear that the media is on to you, I mean, they do all sorts of shady deals, shady policy negotiations, all sorts of things that violate our rights if they're able to do it without us noticing or paying attention, which is why we do need to

pay attention. Two more things I need to just quickly mention. So when it comes to Ken Paxton and this Supreme Court lawsuit, or the lawsuit he's filing with the Supreme Court, there are certain members of his team that have decided to kind of, I guess, abandon this effort, not be part of it. As the Texas Tribune noted, conspicuously absent is the agency's top lawyer for appellate work. Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, who typically argues the state's state's cases before the Supreme Court and did so as recently as last month, none of Hawkins deputies is listed as contributing to the case, nor are any of the agencies hundreds of other attorneys. So, you know, these people know that this is a nonsense lawsuit. Georgia's deputy

secretary of state, by the way, Jordan Fuchs is livid about what's going on. He says the allegations in the lawsuit are false and irresponsible. Texas alleges that there are 80,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Georgia, where by the way, they did a hand count. Twice, I think. Twice, yeah, you're right. They did it twice. But they don't bring forward a single person who this happened to. That's because it didn't happen. There wasn't fraud. They're unable to prove it. And it's just really, it's dangerous what they're doing, not necessarily because I think that an actual successful political coup is taking place. I'm just worried about what this is doing to the already hostile climate in the country between Trump supporters

and pretty much everyone else. Yeah, and really fast, if they can do this, if other states can sue to overturn the results of elections in states that aren't a party to the lawsuit, with the idea being that at a federal level, the outcomes of individual states affects all states, all states, so theoretically they have standing or it affects them in some way. Okay, well, if you can do it, we can do it. You know, when Georgia suppressed the vote in 2018 or whatever, or when Texas did in previous elections, and that led to either Republican senators being elected or perhaps led to Trump winning in those states theoretically, then we can challenge those. We can do this all day long for the rest of time. And that is, at least in

theory what the Supreme Court would be opening us up to if they actually give this the time of day. But again, if they do give this the time of day, then those sorts of concerns are the least of our concern because we are very much not living in the country we thought we were if they decide to take this up and overturn the results of those multiple state's elections. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, I really want to fill you guys in on coronavirus aid before we do our interview with Senator Sanders. So let's get right to it. There's a new and critical update to the coronavirus negotiations that are taking place between congressional lawmakers and the White House. Now yesterday it was reported that the White

House was urgently asking GOP senators to approve one-time $600 direct checks to Americans as part of the coronavirus relief bill. And at that time, it really did seem as though the Trump administration was outflanking Democrats in Congress from the left. But now it's abundantly clear that that's not actually what's going on. It turns out that the one-time $600 check that would be sent to Americans would be a trade-off for essentially getting rid of the federal unemployment aid of $300 per week. Okay? That tradeoff seems pretty ridiculous. And so Nancy Pelosi talked about it a little bit today. She certainly clapped back. But before she did, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin released a statement arguing this. Speaker Pelosi and I spoke

today at 5 p.m. And on behalf of the president, I presented a $916 billion proposal. This proposal includes money for state and local governments and robust liability protections for businesses, schools, and universities. Now, Pelosi wasn't buying it, mostly because she had some insight that most others didn't have. And she says, while it is progress that leader McConnell has signed off on a $916 billion offer based on the bipartisan framework, the president's proposal, which cuts unemployment insurance by $140 billion compared to the framework. is unacceptable. So she says it's a non-starter. I absolutely agree with her on that. And there are all sorts of issues in regard to the liability protections that are offered by Republicans.

But before I get to that and Katie Porter shredding Republicans for it, John, why don't you jump in? Yeah, I find it very difficult to comment on this because the contents of the package changed so often. I mean, just yesterday Mitch McConnell was saying that it was a a prerequisite that the liability protections would be in there. But now it is again. I don't know, or maybe it isn't. I don't know. I honestly don't know. We don't know what is in the bill until after it's passed and usually not even then. Usually we're not sure even at that point, especially, you know, the amount of money that we're talking about. But it isn't like it's, it's again, it's perfect that they've come up with a financial tradeoff, the one-time

payments versus basically cutting off the unemployment aid that makes sense to people on uninsurance that plan to die in the next week and a half. It makes financial sense to them or people who aren't yet on unemployment insurance and haven't wised up to the fact that the federal government is still effectively doing nothing to stop the spread of the virus. And so it's going to get worse and more businesses are going to get shut down. And so a lot of people that aren't currently unemployed are probably going to end up unemployed by the end of this dark winter. And this is, as we'll probably end up talking about with Senator Sanders, this is shaping up to be the last thing that they'll do.

Like we've waited it almost a year and this, I'm trying to search for a word that I'm allowed to use on this network right now is the last thing that they're going to do, insult to injury in every possible way. Yeah, it's just, it's so, so shameful, especially when you put it in the context of how easily the funding for defense for the Pentagon is going to pass, probably with a veto proof vote in both the House, which already happened, and the Senate, which is likely to happen in the future. That's $740 billion. Every year the number goes up for the most part. And there's no debate about it. It's just going to happen. But I do want to also talk a little bit about the liability

protection or liability shield, which Mitch McConnell seems to only care about. Like, that's the only thing that he's been pretty insistent on. It seemed like maybe he can bend to Democrats' will on it if there were some pretty significant tradeoffs. But Katie Porter did a great job in explaining why this is a horrendous provision in the stimulus bill. She says, you may have heard that Democrats and Republicans have agreed upon spending $900 billion to fund yet another round of small business loans, support hospitals and essential workers, and help the 10 million people who lost their jobs through no faults of their own. Everyone at the negotiating table, including Senate Republicans, have agreed to a compromise except one. Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring it to the floor unless it wipes away all COVID-related lawsuits filed that allege injury or death. due to corporate negligence.

And she goes on to say that these lawsuits represent the worst of the worst examples of disregard for human life, cases filed on behalf of nursing home patients and grocery store workers who died because the company in charge of keeping them safe, prioritized cutting costs over protecting them. And I think one of the best examples to share with you guys is what is happening now with a Tyson meatpacking plant where Tyson is facing. a wrongful death lawsuit because dozens of their workers got sick and died due to their negligence. CNN has more details on that. Let's watch. According to the allegations,

the plant manager of the Waterloo facility organized a cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many employees would test positive for COVID-19. In the end, more than a thousand employees would catch the virus, about a third of the nearly 3,000 working at the plant. I'm scared. Ernest Lattaker spoke to CNN's Gary Tuckman in April about his conversation with Tyson's HR department. They told me, I was, I was safe. And they told me that everything was okay. And they told me I'll have a better chance of catching the coronavirus going out to Walmart than in Tyson. Come to work. You're safe. The Tyson employers also allegedly told their employees to ignore any symptoms they might be suffering from contracting coronavirus and to just keep working. Yeah. It's just insane. Yeah, no, the era of self-regulation of plants like the Tyson one needs to change, which is why it's good that the Department of Agriculture is going to be controlled by Tom Bilsack, who while he was governor of Iowa said that they should.

self-regulate. Anyway, but we'll talk about that more later. So, yeah, I, I just, I can't, it's just so insult. And the thing is, look, the reason that the liability shield is obviously such a priority for them, even though, again, as of yesterday, Mitch McConnell was saying that it wasn't important, isn't just because of all of the cases that we have right now or we'll have in the next couple months. Those are bad and could be very expensive to these companies. But you know what's more expensive than a bunch of lawsuits all at once? It is years or decades of lawsuits. And COVID isn't a thing that either killed you or you survived. We are only beginning to understand the long term damage that can be done to people's vascular system, their heart, their lungs, their reproductive system we're finding out more recently too, as well as mental health issues. This is going to be one of those things where we're going to learn more and then there's going to be class action lawsuits. And those are going to be coming for literally years unless they're all cut off right now at the source. So they're talking about short term COVID

liability. I don't think that that is the end game for them. I think they want to shut off possibly years of lawsuits about the sort of negligence that we just just saw in that video. Of course, of course. Yeah, I'm with you on that. All right, we usually take social breaks where we read some of our members' comments or do live reads. But today, since we're interviewing Senator Sanders live on the show, we're actually going to take a proper break. Since we're going to do that, I'm going to read a few member comments right now, including one from David Sursa. And you can become a member, by the way, by going to t-y-t.com slash join. He writes in, I'm sure there are plenty of establishment Democrats that have absolutely no issues with the liability waiver and are probably pushing for it themselves.

I mean, Sursa, I don't blame you for thinking that. So far, I haven't seen any particular names floated in the news in regard to wanting that liability shield. But it always goes back to corporate donors and lawmakers ensuring that they appease the wishes of these corporate donors. And so if you really take a step back and look at who these donors are, oftentimes on many issues, they're the same for Democrats and Republicans. Spice Boy Wannaby writes in a member section and says, I'm with you, Anna. I'm tired of this election coup attempt.

I'm getting almost nostalgic for the pre-2016 corruption. I'm tired of having to think about how Trump makes Bush Jr. look good. Yeah, I, you know, I know that there's a lot of like laundering going on for Bush Jr.'s A reputation, but let's not forget some of the horrendous behavior he engaged in both here domestically and with foreign policy. Many of the tax cuts that he passed for the wealthy, the wars that he started, he was basically Donald Trump with a friendly face, really, and a friendly kind of funny because he was incredibly not smart way of communicating. Anyway, so please share this stream if you're watching live. It's the best way to get the message out about this show. And we're about to interview Senator Sanders when we come back from this break.

So again, share the stream, like the stream. It's one of the best things that you can do to help support this show. We love you guys. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-Ewing 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 them.

conventional wisdom. In each episode of On The Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it, the New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today, and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Welcome back to the Young Turks, Anna Kasparian and John Ida Rola with you. Joining us now is Senator Bernie Sanders to talk to us a little bit about the coronavirus negotiations taking place right now. Senator Sanders, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. I want to start off by, you know, before we get into the nitty-gritty of how these negotiations

are taking place, I think it's important to share some sobering statistics with our audience regarding how much this pandemic has exacerbated inequality in America. A recent study found that America's 651 billionaires have gained so much wealth during the coronavirus pandemic that they could fully pay. for one time $3,000 stimulus checks for every person in the United States and still be better off than they were before the crisis. The collective net worth of U.S. billionaires now sits just above $4 trillion, nearly double the combined wealth owned by the bottom 50% of the American population. I see that it's pretty clear that inequality was a problem in the country

prior to this pandemic. And now we're seeing a lack of real financial relief for the American people because of this inability for congressional lawmakers to make a deal. Can you tell us why that is? The defense bill was incredibly easy to pass in the House. It's likely to pass in the Senate with a veto proof, with a veto proof vote. When we talk about spending on the defense department, more money than the next 10 nations combined, $740 billion, as you just indicated, bipartisan support, not a problem. We don't even talk about it. Tax breaks for billionaires a couple of years ago, trillion dollars, not a problem. Massive amounts of corporate welfare to the fossil fuel industry, what is the problem? Just with the destroying the planet, so what?

Give them hundreds of billions of dollars. But when it comes to a moment in American history, The working families of America today are in worse economic distress than any time since the Great Depression, hunger, soaring, tens of millions of people facing eviction, half of our people living paycheck to paycheck. Suddenly we're very worried on or about money. For Wall Street, not a problem. Defense Department not a problem for the children of America and working class people, a major problem. So here is what's going on, and I want everybody to hear this. All of you will recall that it wasn't so many months ago where the Democrats were fighting for several trillion dollars, okay, in benefits to workers, the hospitals, the states, the cities, you name it, a good bill. Right now, we are down to $350 billion in new money, $550 billion to be.

carried over from the CARES Act all of $900 billion. This proposal does not include one nickel for direct payment to workers in terms of what we had in the CARES Act, which was $1,200 for an adult, $500 for a kid, and only $300 in supplementary unemployment benefits. This is a weak bill, a weak bill, a fraction of what the Democrats had originally fought for. So I'm going to do everything that I can to make sure that Congress does not leave for its Christmas vacation until we take care of the needs of working families. Senator, one thing that has been sometimes in the deal, sometimes apparently not in the deal. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell said that the corporate liability shield wouldn't necessarily need to be in there, but today it seems like it's back on the table.

Is that the sort of thing that will be or should be a deal breaker, either for you or for other Democrats in terms of supporting this fight? One of the things, the direct payment is also for me a deal breaker. This is a total outrage. You have had major corporate interest often in the food processing business, the meat processing business, who are treated their workers in the most irresponsible manner, where hundreds of workers have become ill. Some have died. You have seen in Amazon some 20,000 workers who have been infected. We don't know how many have died. If you give them a green light, and if you say, no problem, you don't have to take any responsibility for your treatment of workers in the safety provisions or lack of safety provisions that you are provided. What you're saying to every corporate interest in America, you can do anything you want, and there is impunity. And that is an outrage, which must not be allowed to happen.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you on that. I mean, just looking at what happened to employees at the Tyson meatpacking plant and how Tyson is now facing, I think, a very justified wrongful death lawsuit. That really hangs in the balance based on the next stimulus bill that passes if, you know, hopefully there is a stimulus bill that passes. I wanted to ask you a little bit about some of the political calculations made by congressional Democrats, in particular Democratic leadership. You know, Nancy Pelosi seemed to be playing hardball prior to the election when Donald Trump was

urging Republican lawmakers to sign on to a $1.8 trillion stimulus bill. And I was willing to give Pelosi the benefit of the doubt. She said that the liability shield was a non-starter. She would not sign on to that. And, you know, demanded more, demanded better. And at that point, Trump, of course, had some incentive to pass a relief bill because it could have helped him with his election. Now it appears that she's very much willing to sign on to legislation, a stimulus bill that's far weaker. And I'm specifically talking about what the bipartisan senators had proposed last week. It is a watered down bill. It does not prevent.

one time direct checks to Americans, it does have a liability shield in there for corporations. She said that congressional lawmakers should support that. What's your response to that argument? I disagree. As I indicated earlier, we have gone from over $2 trillion down to $350 billion in new money, not a nickel for direct payments at a time when so many of the people working families in this country are really suffering. So I think what the Democrats have got to do is draw a line in the sand and stand up and fight back and say, we have already made major, major concessions, but enough is enough. Working people in this country are going to get that $1,200 check they desperately need,

and the $500 for the kids. I'm trying to understand sort of the stakes for this bill, you know, what ends up being in it, because obviously it's been many months since the last bill, since the CARES Act. Is it your assumption, is it fair to say that? that regardless of what ends up getting past, that that will be pretty much it, that that's going to be what the federal government? No, I don't think so. I think, I mean, obviously it depends on what happens, you know, with the pandemic and hope to God the vaccine is distributed as quickly as possible and it is effective. And hopefully let the economy rebounds and people go back to work

and have the incomes that they need. But if that does not happen fast enough, it is our obligation to make sure that we do everything we can to protect the workers and their kids in this country. And I think, you know, Biden probably feels the same way. But here's another point that I want to make, which has not been discussed enough. If the Democrats cave on this issue, essentially what you are conceding to McConnell and the Republicans is that we're going to go along with austerity economics, that we have accepted the argument that after huge amounts of money for the, the military and corporate welfare and Wall Street and everybody else, that right now,

we got to go into austerity. You know what that means? That means nothing, that we're not going to do anything significant in climate change, in infrastructure, in childcare, in expanding health care. We're not going to do anything significant in terms of pushing forward the agenda, the halfway decent agenda that Biden has supported. So this moment right now is not, Not only how we deal with the crisis today, it is how we look to the future and whether we're going to fight to protect working families or whether we go into an austerity moment. You know, I love that you mention that because after four years of Donald Trump, his tax cuts for the wealthy, his tax cuts for corporations, we're suddenly hearing Republicans, you know,

ring the alarm regarding deficit spending. It doesn't really seem like they care too much much about deficit spending when it comes to tax cuts and handouts, you know, in corporate welfare. And so that kind of lingo, unfortunately, seems to be somewhat persuasive among a portion of American voters. What can Democrats do to maybe improve their messaging on how that talking point is complete and utter nonsense meant to engage in austerity politics? First of all, when we invest, first of all, with terms of climate change, there is no option. You're going to spend a lot more money repairing the incredible damage done to this country by climate change than getting the world to go forward and transforming our energy system. So I'd rather put money into wind, solar, energy efficiency, new transportation, new agriculture, rather than having to rebuild communities destroyed by terrible destructive actions.

Second of all, when we rebuild our infrastructure and create millions of jobs at the end of the day, the economy is going to grow. The tax base is going to grow. So investing in education, and infrastructure, in climate change, in healthcare, keeping people healthy rather than forcing them to go to the emergency room actually saves us money. You know, I wanted to ask you, Senator, about a point that was raised yesterday on Twitter by Representative Pramila Jayapal, who took issue with the terminology of stimulus checks, sort of pointing out that for most people, this is not about stimulating after a bad Q1 and we want to make the economy a little bit stronger. This is about survival. This is about

not being thrown out of your apartment. Is this a possible area where the language that's being used on this really important area is sort of playing into the way Republicans seem to think about and talk about this bill rather than the Democrats who seem to understand that lives are actually on the line? Well, I think, you know, Pramiller is, of course, absolutely right. It really is quite amazing to me, the degree to which my Republican colleagues are very worried about corporations getting protection for irresponsible behavior in terms of the coronavirus and getting their workers sick. They're very worried about that.

But when children in America go hungry, when working people are going to get a very evicted from their apartments when people have no health insurance, it is incredible how there is a blind eye to that suffering. And we've got to get people to stand up. I mean, this is one of the things working on right now, why I'm on the show right now. Hey, folks out there, if you think it is important that the government does the right thing for working people, get on the phone, call up your representative, call up your senator, and tell them that if we We could bail out Wall Street, we get corporate welfare of the fossil fuel industry, we can protect the working families of this country in this terrible moment.

Senator Sanders, you know, calling your, you know, your lawmakers, demanding change, demanding action, unfortunately hasn't yielded the results that Americans have been hoping for, the results that Americans need. And so there have been a lot of conversations among the left regarding what can be done to win on these issues. And one of the things that I've noticed is, is that even in red states like Alabama, you have Amazon workers who are working to unionize in other debates among leftist circles. You're hearing arguments about how we need to really organize and approach this with a possible general strike. I wanted to get your thoughts on those actions. Do you think that that's a good strategy to move forward and demand change among congressional lawmakers.

Well, I think we need to mobilize the grassroots of this country and working people in general. What you didn't mention, Anna, is that in Florida, a state where Trump won by, I think, three points. The minimum wage passed by, I think it was 10 points. The agenda that we are fighting for, healthcare for all is a human right through Medicare for all, creating millions of jobs through a green, deal, rebuilding our infrastructure, canceling student debt. Do you know what? Those are popular ideas. And we've got to get candidates out there who are prepared to stand up and fight for those ideas and grassroots organizations to organize people to support those candidates. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. You know, not just about maybe a week ago, Representative Pelosi was quoted something to the effect of saying that the bill doesn't necessarily need to be as strong as we had been pushing for in the past, the Democratic Party, because we have a game changer, which is a president who is coming in, who's going to respect the science. That seemed to me to indicate a disconnect with how the pandemic is still on a day-to-day basis affecting regular people and how a president in 58 days is great, but we're about to enter a period of 3,000 plus deaths a day. Is that just

a misstep or like when you talk to senators and representatives, do they get how bad it is out there when it comes to the day to day effect of the pandemic? Some do and some don't. I mean, and it saddens me immensely and it talks about the corruption of the political system that representatives from the poorest states in this country, the poorest states are often the most reactionary. And why that so is subject for another discussion. But clearly, we have got to mobilize all over this country at the grassroots level on the issues that the American people care deeply about. We are winning the ideological debate. The people understand healthcare is a human right. They got to have a minimum wage, which is a living wage,

at least 15 bucks an hour. That climate change is real. We've got to address it, et cetera, et cetera. And now we need to mobilize people in support of candidates who are prepared to fight and implement those ideas. Senator Sanders, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us about the stimulus bill. And thank you for continuing to fight on behalf of the best interests of Americans. Thank you very much, Anna. John, thank you. Have a great night. Hopefully we'll talk to Senator Sanders again soon. But for now, we have to take one more break in this hour. Let's do that. And when we come back,

We will talk about how Representative Ilhan Omar is ripping the congressional lawmakers in the House that voted overwhelmingly to support the defense spending bill. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad-free. Access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.