The Young Turks - The Young Turks - November 18, 2020

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

Democrats to Chuck Schumer: why did we lose so much!? 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

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We're watching The Young Turks. I'm Anna Kasparian. Joining us today, as always on Wednesdays, is John Idrola, host of the damage report. And a good friend and colleague of mine. Hi, John. Hello, friend and colleague. I'm glad to be here with you in both capacities.

Yes, yes. John is a great person. He is the head of the Dragon Squad, also known as Dragon Daddy. Watch the damage report. That's where you'll kind of get what that's all about. But we have quite a show for you today. We're going to talk about how Senate Democrats are reacting or responding to the fact that they have failed so far to take control of the Senate. There are some similar themes to what we heard from House Democrats in that.

that fiery call that, you know, Abigail Spanberger was involved in, but I'll give you the details on that later. And then later in the show, in the post game, which will be open to the public today, we're going to talk a little bit about leftists and why they hate Thanksgiving, according to Charlie Kirk. But before we get to all of that fun stuff, just a few announcements for you all. Your online activity, your online activity needs to be protected, and the best way to do that is through a VPN. Luckily, you can get a good discount on PureVPN by going to tyt.com slash pure. It is the internet security you need, and you get a seven-day trial for only 99 cents, plus 62% off a yearly plan. Again, just go to tyt.com slash pure. Also, I don't know about you guys, but I'm a huge fan of trees.

And every time you go shopping and use a card, you can actually plant trees, Simultaneously, learn more about that by going to t-y-t.com slash trees. And finally, ShopT-Y-T, I don't even know who's authorizing them to do this because this is insane. They're doing 10 days of Black Friday, day one, let me give you the deets, day one, take 15% off everything using code flash kickoff, flash kickoff at shopt.com, everything, including that shirt that you're wearing. Look at that fancy shirt, cognitively there. I know, this is a funny one. I love it. It's easy to, like, forget the crazy things we memorialized in shirts, but you're not going to want to forget this one.

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What? Damn, pace to be a member. The manager is out of the building, and they've gone insane. They've gone, you're killing me, Larry! Okay. All right, well, let's get to the news. We have a good mix of dunking on both Democrats and Republicans, and they certainly deserve it. Let's begin with Democrats, though.

So, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had a lengthy phone conversation over the weekend with Senate Democrats who were concerned about the fact that the Democrats failed to take control. of the Senate following the 2020 election. And there were similar themes to what we heard about regarding the House Democrats and the call that they had with Nancy Pelosi. But luckily in this case, there were some progressives who spoke up and defended progressive policy proposals. So let's start off with what we know so far. One Democratic senator who spoke to the Hill on condition of anonymity said this. We shouldn't have lost this election. You can You can't explain it away, but the reality is Republicans have been beating the hell out of government since the Reagan years, and saying Democrats are the defenders of bad government, and that's what the American people believe. We can't get an invitation to the dance unless we overcome that. And the way we overcome that is having some things that are wins. So there isn't a lot of specific language there, which is frustrating to say the least. But I mean, I guess anyone can interpret that in any way they're.

would like. But my interpretation is, hey, Republicans seem to have a message that's working, whereas Democrats don't seem to have a message that resonates with people. And maybe we need to focus on some wins, meaning maybe we need to focus on policies that positively impact people's lives economically. And so let me give you more. There were, of course, some centrist who whined about the socialism word, even though, with the exception of Bernie Sanders referring to himself as a Democratic socialist, there weren't really senators running on insanely like left-wing socialist policies. So here's what we found out. The two most common knocks on our candidates were socialism and defund the police. So again, John, same thing we heard from

House Democrats who were complaining about their congressional losses. And so before I give you more details, jump in for a second. Do you think we're being too tough on them? I mean, it's hard to say exactly because they are anonymous. And as you said, at least that first quote, there's not a lot of specifics to go by there. I guess it's sort of like a Rorschach test. I instantly assume, you know what, probably not a progressive because the odds that they are is like, what, two or three and 50 or 48. So I would assume that it's sort of, it's like saying we need to do something, we need to have a win,

but it's coming from what I believe to be an unacknowledged position of incredible weakness, that as you said, they have a message, you described it as a message that wins, I might describe it as a message that they don't even try to counter. If the argument has been for decades that Democrats are the defenders of bad government, and that people get angry because the government doesn't seem to do much, use that in an election year where the economy is destroyed and people are dying by the thousands from a pandemic that the government is not using. The Republicans don't get to say that the Democrats of the party of bad government

when they occupy every seat of power and do nothing as people lose their jobs and die. Maybe do a little bit of jiu-jitsu there and flip it around on them. And then on those wins, maybe actually deliver something that does fix people's problems. And I don't know that that's going to happen. Even in the things that seem like a slam dunk, Chuck Schumer saying, Biden should cancel $50,000 of student loan debt, doesn't take legislation. We can do it almost instantly. And Joe Biden has indicated in the past he's interested in doing that.

Now, with every day that we get closer to inauguration, there's more stipulations and limitations and means testings and all of that. You know what that seems like? that seems like best case scenario is something the Republicans are going to use to attack it. And it's going to help less people. Maybe help more people for once. Because even though the Republicans have been running on that message, the Dems still win almost every election. They still win the popular vote.

Use that for something. Actually earn that support that people are giving you. But they don't want to. And the people are giving them advice on how to do that. Those are the ones that they then turn in attack. You know, and there is a very noticeable difference between how Republican lawmakers treat their constituents or respond and react to their constituents versus how Democratic lawmakers do. Democratic lawmakers seem irritated by their constituents. They don't necessarily listen to

them. They seem to fail to understand the economic frustrations that many Americans are facing right now. They seem to completely neglect the economic component of this discussion. which I just, I don't understand. At the same time, you look at Republicans and Donald Trump for better or worse, right? They care so deeply about playing into their base. I mean, to the point where they feed into some pretty toxic and dangerous behavior in this country, particularly Donald Trump. But Donald Trump, remember, wanted to invade Iran approximately 58 times during his first term.

And one of the reasons why he hasn't, despite the fact that he, you know, is this impulsive lunatic is because he knows that his base doesn't have an appetite for war. So I'm giving you that example to kind of juxtapose what we see from Democrats versus Republicans. Democrats need to make the case that they're better for their constituents, that they would have better policy proposals, but they also need to stop like slapping their supporters around as we see over and over again. But anyway, luckily there were some progressives who spoke up during this meeting. Progressives argue that Republicans have moved further and further to the right and that Democrats have followed them in the right word drift of American political debate that were so disconnected from working Americans, said one Democratic senator.

So we don't know exactly who said that. But luckily, there were some voices of reason in that conversation. And so AOC put out a little bit of a cryptic tweet today, kind of poking fun at some of the rhetoric that we've been hearing, both among how. Democrats and Senate Democrats, she said this, if you say socialism three times in a mirror, a corporate lobbyist back candidate grows their wings. Yeah, the metaphors are a bit mixed there, but, you know, that happens to me too. It's funny. And yeah, it's this mythic quality that we give to that word that even if you take for granted

that it works, that, you know, that it matters that they call you a socialist, this is not new. They've always done it. They will always do it. You could run Chuck Grassley as the Democratic nominee. They'd call him the socialist, Chuck Grassley. They're calling Joe Biden a socialist. They're calling Joe Biden a socialist. The guy who was up on that debate stage talking about how much he loves fracking.

No, that guy is not a socialist. He's not. I mean, the guy who had his meeting with Wall Street donors to tell them, don't worry, nothing will fundamentally change under my leadership. That guy's a socialist, really? They're going to call their political opponent's socialist. no matter what. The question is, is your leadership, right? The way that you're representing your constituents powerful enough to overcome name calling by Republicans. And clearly, it's not.

And so if they're worried, they need to reconsider what their priorities have been. And it is hard to reprioritize when maybe your campaign donors don't want you to focus on economic solutions. But I can tell you this, that would definitely fire up voters, and it would lead to quite a bit of support, especially at a time when we still haven't received another economic stimulus package as this epidemic, I'm sorry, as this pandemic rages on. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about Michigan, because we had some bad news yesterday, but luckily, that story developed into a little bit of good news. So, Republicans in the Wayne County Board of Canvassers in Michigan blocked the certification of the presidential results.

Now, that was the big news yesterday, but luckily that county, which includes Detroit, did vote for Joe Biden, and now it turns out that shortly after blocking the certification, that board later unanimously voted in favor to certify the election results. So the Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, has more on this. Let's watch. The Wayne County Board of Canvasers actually reversed their past decision and voted 4 to 0 to certify the full results, including the city of Detroit, for Wayne County. Now, why would they do that? Well, it appears that the truth won in this scenario.

Basically, the evidence is clear there were no irregularities. There was no evidence of widespread fraud. And in fact, there were simply minor clerical errors as we were discussed. actually less clerical errors than in past election. And that really isn't a valid reason, in my view, and apparently ultimately the board to invalidate and silence the voices of voters in the state's largest county. So I think they did the right thing. They performed their duty and they certified the election for the voters in Wayne County.

Now, I do think it's problematic that the two Republicans on that board refused to certify the election results initially. and they did so while repeating some of the, like, lunacy coming from Trump's campaign. And there should be consequences for that, even though they reversed course later. And I do want to tell you why this was such a giant problem. Because remember, Wayne County includes Detroit, which overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden, and, of course, is a predominantly African-American part of Michigan and part of the county. And so the head of the NAACP in Detroit, Reverend Wendell Anthony, actually called the board out on their initial decision. And I think his words are powerful.

So let's take a quick look at what he had to say. You have extracted a black city out of the county and said the only one that are at fault at an issue is the city of Detroit where 80% of the people who reside here are African Americans. Shame on you. Shame on you for leading to this level of coronavirus. You have disavowed your right to even sit in the seat that you occupy. You are a disgrace as relates to the ability to have a free and impartial election in this nation. So if they had refused to certify the results in Wayne County that would have impacted the state of Michigan in regard to the presidential election. So President-elect Joe Biden won Michigan by more than 148,000 votes of,

victory made possible by a strong showing in Wayne County, where he netted more than 322,000 votes over President Donald Trump. The initial party line deadlock would have put Biden's Michigan victory in jeopardy. But projections indicate Biden will win 306 electoral votes, which means he'd still become the next president, even in the unlikely scenario, that he doesn't get Michigan's 16 electoral votes. And so far, it appears that he will get those electoral votes. Yeah, which means that they're willing to do this seemingly unprecedented impossible thing where they just pick and choose which cities based on racial composition they want to count in which they don't, knowing that even if they do that, they have to also do it in other states.

It wouldn't be enough there. Trump would still lose, but they're willing to do it. Even though it's a long shot there and it's a long shot in other cases, they're willing to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people on the long shot chance that it would. works in some other area. And it is amazing that we're seeing this, not only in Detroit, but also, you know, Atlanta, we're seeing much the same thing in Georgia, that it's really sort of completing the full Republican approach to democracy going forward. We'd had two thirds of the strategy up until this election, where before the vote, if you were black, you were going to find God knows how many obstacles to registration and actually being able to vote

and all of that. When you go to vote, you're going to have to wait in long lines because they've selectively called polling or ballot places to vote in areas where black voters are more common and you're likely to get intimidated and there'll be proud boys and all of that. Now, even if you go through all the obstacles leading up to election day and you actually go and manage to vote, now they are becoming incredibly comfortable with just selectively trying to weed out your vote afterward. It's like the closing of the circle there. And it would be nice to think that this is just a Trump thing, that Trump's crux.

crazy, and so he's got Rudy Giuliani going off there, and that's why you're seeing this, but is it going to be? Is Tom Cotton or Tucker Carlson in four years? If it's what, like, imagine if it was just one state. This isn't a nut, like Detroit flipping wouldn't actually get Trump the presidency, but what if it was? What if in the next election it's just one state? Do you think that they're going to be shy? Like Florida? Yeah, but Florida or God knows where. You know, maybe it's Arizona next time. Maybe it's Nevada. Maybe Las Vegas. Maybe their votes need to not count next time. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, and I love that you brought up all the various ways in which the Republican Party, under the leadership of Donald Trump, tried to

intimidate voters or spread all sorts of disinformation regarding mail and ballots. We also had Louis DeJoy, who's still currently the Postmaster General dismantling the post office's ability to process an influx of mail and ballots. I mean, to be quite honest with you guys, I did not think that based on all of the actions that were taken by Republicans prior to the election, that it was going to be a free and fair election, I didn't think that Joe Biden had a chance because of all of these various disadvantages. But he managed to win 306 electoral votes, despite all of those challenges, despite the voter intimidation. And yeah, Republicans just pivoted on to a different talking point and a completely different narrative of how this entire election

was rigged. The fact that you have Republican lawmakers right now who behind the scenes acknowledge that Joe Biden is the president-elect, but then publicly enable Donald Trump, tells you everything you need to know about Republican lawmakers. They are out for themselves. They only care about their own political futures, their own careers. It doesn't matter if our democracy is completely destroyed in the process of their own self-serving actions. That's our government. And so I think I can understand why so many people are not so trusting toward our government, but we need to change that. We need to elect these types of people out.

And the only way to do that, to be quite honest with you, is to actually listen to the American people and what they genuinely want in this country, what they need to live happy, prosperous lives. And right now, I'm not really seeing much of, you know, much attention to those issues by either party. Anyway, we'll have four years to talk about that in more detail. But let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about how Trump is retaliating

against government officials who aren't going along with his disinformation campaign regarding the election. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies,

debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational,

aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. Just a quick correction on one of our partners that I told you about during the last segment. So if you're looking to get a VPN in order to protect your online activity, pure VPN is the way to go. URL to check out is tyt.com slash pure VPN. TYT.com slash pure VPN. Also, as you guys know, we are fundraising to keep TYT sustainable till the end of the year. That's when our fundraising efforts will be over. So each month we're trying to raise a certain amount of money. Let's take a quick look at where we are with our fun thermometer. All right. So the goal for

November is 200,000 and we're up to 71,066. If you have any interest in contributing, any amount helps, even if it's a dollar, five dollars. We love being able to only be accountable to you guys. And so having you guys fund this show gives us the opportunity to do all the programming we do, all the specials we do. And we really, really appreciate it. TYT.com slash go is where you can contribute. I don't think most people know how expensive daily operations in the war on Thanksgiving actually are. Like somebody's got to smash those pumpkins, round up all the stuffing and burn it before it can be eaten. And that takes a lot of money.

I can't wait to talk about that story. We will, we will. But let me just say, minus what the historical, like, context is, right? I love Thanksgiving. I love, like, what Thanksgiving has, like, morphed into, right? I love being with family. I love eating a good meal with family. It's just, anyway, we'll talk about conservatives and their lunacy later.

But right now, let's talk about Trump's lunacy because that's still happening. So Donald Trump has fired the top cybersecurity official over the fact that this official had the audacity to say that we had an election that was totally safe, that didn't have any problems, no widespread fraud. But of course, that goes against Donald Trump's narrative that he lost as a result of widespread fraud, fraud that he and his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani in particular, have failed to provide any evidence of. And so what did Trump do? Well, he fired Christopher Krebs and he did so on Twitter. Here's what he wrote. The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020

election was highly inaccurate in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, not true. Poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, not true. Glitches in the voting machines, which changed votes from Trump to Biden, also not true. Late voting, not true. And many more. Therefore, effectively, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, which is a clunky name for a government agency, I must admit.

But nonetheless, this is what Trump does. He retaliates against any government official who doesn't go along with his complete nut or lies. And if there were widespread voter fraud, he and his law. lawyers through the dozens of lawsuits they filed in key battleground states could have proven it at this point. They could have provided evidence, but they have failed to do so. And John, before I get to you, I do want to show this quick video detailing exactly why Donald Trump would want to fire someone like Christopher Krebs.

Christopher Krebs headed the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Just last week, the agency called the 2020 election the most secure in American history contradicting the president's claims of voter fraud. Krebs told CBS News last night, he was expecting to lose his job, adding he has no regrets. So he was expecting to lose his job because he knew that saying the right things and being honest with the American people would put a target on his back. And as he expected, Donald Trump fired him the way that Donald Trump would fire someone over Twitter like a complete and utter child. And the way he wrote it. Therefore, effective immediately.

Chris Crabbs has been terminated. Like, he's, again, it's like they're using the language to try to make it seem as if this is official, and I am a very strong man who's making strong decisions. I'm kind of a strong man. It's Twitter, it's Twitter, you little twit. Like, it just makes

you come across even more petulant and angry. And the fact that his statements about Chris Krebs doing a fact check on his election misinformation, the fact that those tweets themselves are marked by Twitter as containing election misinformation is just like, I just love it. But there's one, there's a little bit of good news, a little bit of bad news. The good news, as I discussed in a live video earlier today, is that Chris Krebs, apparently

as part of acknowledging that he was probably going to be fired, set up a new position inside of CSA beneath him and beneath his immediate successor, both of which are sort of political appointments that can easily be terminated, another person that he chose that is not going to be as easy to fire. So this is not one of the cases where Donald Trump is necessarily going to immediately get the political hack and flunky that he wants in charge of that agency. So that's good information. The bad news, I guess, is that like with the changes to the Department of Defense over the past couple of weeks, seeing Donald Trump, you know, this embattled wannabe strong man on the verge of, in theory, conceding or maybe not, clearing out all of the people who dare to show

any disloyalty to him doesn't mean that he's going to seize power or whatever, but these are the things you would do if that was what your plan was. Yeah, it's, how do people not see how undemocratic Donald Trump is? How do you, like, I get feeling frustration when your preferred candidate doesn't win. I totally get that. But I also understand being able to share frustrations over a political loss while also understanding the importance of protecting our democratic process. And to see all of these right wingers who claimed that athletes kneeling during the national anthem was so offensive to our troops, what about what you're doing right now? I mean, they argue that our troops fight for our freedoms.

They fight to keep us free. But in this case, you have Donald Trump retaliating against people, government officials who are doing their jobs appropriately, doing the right thing. But they had the audacity to speak out or contradict Donald Trump's lies about election meddling or election fraud. And as a result, that's totally fine. Because, hey, it's Donald Trump. As long as Donald Trump says it, it's totally fine to dismantle our democratic process.

Great. But these people don't get to like say whatever they want to say about Colin Kaepernick or whoever, not supporting our troops or not respecting our troops when everything they're doing right now is enabling the type of undemocratic behavior that our troops are supposed to be fighting against. Anyway, I do want to also share Krebs, the last tweet in response to this put out by Krebs, he said, honor to serve. We did it right. Defend today, secure tomorrow. Hashtag protect 2020. So I know nothing about his politics. It doesn't matter. He stood up for himself and that's very rare to finding government these days. And there was a funny moment too, because as you probably noticed in that tweeting, he misspelled tomorrow. And he like quote retweeted it, I can't believe I misspelled tomorrow. Like in his like strong final message, tempo. They really are like you and me. I know. All right, well, let's move on to some coronavirus news.

There's been a flood of positive news related to coronavirus. Now, Donald Trump has very little to do with it, of course, because of his incompetence and lack of leadership and responding to the pandemic. However, we've heard from two different pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Moderna, that they have shown promising results for a coronavirus vaccine in their trials. So they are now applying for emergency authorization use with the FDA. And if things continue to go well with testing, vaccines could be widely available later in 2021, likely in the spring.

Now, Donald Trump actually isn't happy about that. And it's not that he is concerned about getting the vaccine quickly enough so people say, you know, we can save lives, so health care workers aren't worried. about risking their lives as they're treating coronavirus patients. He doesn't care about any of that. What Donald Trump is upset about is that he's worried that he's not going to get the proper credit for helping to develop a vaccine. Now, my commentary on this is a little mixed. Let me give you the details. So prior to the announcement of those breakthroughs with Pfizer and Moderna, Donald Trump had brainstormed with AIDS and close associates about ways he could promote the vaccine to the American people.

According to two individuals with direct knowledge of his private comments, the president had said he envisioned large, public, mask-free events and rallies to celebrate the success of Operation Warp Speed, the private public-private partnership to develop a vaccine. So this was his plan when he assumed he was going to get reelected. And now that he has not been reelected, he's fuming behind the scenes because once the widespread rollout of these vaccines happens in the late spring of 2021, Biden's likely to get credit for it as opposed to Donald Trump. Now should Donald Trump get some credit for it? A little bit, a little bit. And I'll explain why.

But before I do, John, why don't you jump in? Yeah, I, he's such an a-hole, man. He is, he really is. Yeah, we got a vaccine. Everybody gathered, we got a vaccine. It's like announcing the cure for cancer inside of a microwave. Very x-rays for everybody. It's just, like, even on the way out, he has to be an a-hole.

And I agree, deserve some small credit. Although he really needs to think this out, because not that he's gone super public saying he should get credit. There's a few tweets and stuff like that. But in like three months, he's going to be tweeting constantly about how nobody should take the vaccine because it's bad and it's the, like something. He's 100%. And Fox News, by the way, is going to be telling everyone out to take the vaccine. It's, you know, it's the government getting into your bloodstream and everything. So not that they have to be consistent. Their followers won't remember any of this anyway. But it's just, it's sort of rich that he just for a very brief period of time, wants credit

or something he hasn't shown interest in for months and will eventually be demagoguing against. Yeah, and he was planning on doing like these press conferences where he was going to unveil various headlines, negative headlines about his handling of coronavirus and then he'd be like, but now they're a vaccine. So he wanted to do this whole like strike back vengeance thing and he's upset that he's not going to be able to do that now. But anyway, Trump has been complaining about how he's unlikely to get credit pretty openly. So here's an example of one of his tweets on this. He says, another vaccine just announced this time by Moderna, 95% effective. For those great historians, please remember that these great discoveries,

which will end the China plague, God, he's such a bad person, all took place on my watch. Okay, all right, Donnie, okay, okay. Let's all calm down. Let's talk about the details and whether or not, he deserves some credit. So much like other administrations, the federal government does provide research and development money for a lot of these pharmaceutical companies who then create various medications, drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, and then they proceed to turn around and gouge the American people. So does the government help fund the research and development of drugs and vaccines? Yes, absolutely. Did that happen in this case? Yes and no. So So Pfizer actually did not take any of the federal government funding under Operation Warp Speed.

They did take money from the federal government by essentially allowing the federal government to buy a large volume of doses of the vaccine, right? But in that sense, the government is essentially a consumer buying doses of the vaccine for the American people. But Pfizer did not take research and development money from Donald Trump or the Operation Warp. Speed initiative. Now, Moderna did. Moderna took quite a bit of money, and I think it's relevant to mention that. So, Moderna took about $1.5 billion for 100 million doses of the vaccine, but prior to developing the vaccine, they did take $1 billion in funding for the design and testing of the vaccine, and that money did come from Operation Warp Speed. So there you go. We're fair here, right? I'm going to dunk on Donald Trump where he deserves it, and he definitely

deserves it when he's being like a little baby about not getting the proper credit. But in this case, with Moderna, he did provide the funding. And I think that he deserves credit for that. But any opportunity he has to do something well, any opportunity for positive coverage of his actions, he immediately diminishes it or destroys it by acting like a complete nutter child. A quarter million Americans are dead because of how poorly you've handled this pandemic, you should be more concerned about ensuring that you help to save people's lives, but instead he's concerned about like, I'm not going to get to do my little party. Yeah, and get more people sick.

Yes, so with one more than the other, he deserves some sort of nominal credit. I think that the reason that he's claiming credit for both when one was provided funding to and the other was not, is that he doesn't know and he doesn't care. He has absolutely no idea because, and this is probably going to be a mindblower, and I don't know for sure, I'm going to guess he had absolutely nothing to do with the funding for this. I mean, he's president technically, but I doubt he set the level. I doubt he was coordinating with them. He literally hasn't even gone to a coronavirus task force meeting in months. It happened under his watch, but did it have anything to do with him? No, it's very easy to

give away other people's money, honestly. And in sort of the context of his overall approach to coronavirus, I'm not going to work too hard to give him credit. And by the way, If he wants to get credit for the coronavirus related things that happened under his watch, this is not the only thing having to do with the pandemic that happened under your watch, buddy. Whether you were actually watching or not, a lot of bad stuff happened. As you pointed out, quarter million people already have died. Maybe 100,000 more will die between now and when you're finally kicked out of the White House. All of that also happened under your watch.

I have a feeling that whether the American people in the end credit him or Joe Biden, or I would argue maybe the scientists the most with getting the vaccine, I think history will remember his effect on the pandemic pretty clearly. Also, I mean, he knows what's likely to happen because he was ready and willing to take credit for the economy when we know damn well that the economy had already begun to improve under Obama. And then as soon as Trump's elected, you know, he just had the opportunity to ride that wave. And by the way, the huge caveat to that is the economy improved for people invested in the stock markets.

But that's not the case when it came to the vast majority of Americans, many of whom don't have the income necessary to invest or save. But he loves to take credit for things that he hasn't accomplished. So he's worried about someone else doing that to him. And I just think it's hilarious. Frida Lucha from our member's comment says, my little brother, who is 13, said that Trump, is like a kid tweeting, you can't sit with us because you're not in the cool club anymore, Chris Krebs. I love it. Chris Krebs, of course, the security, cybersecurity official who was fired because he went against Trump's ridiculous, deceptive voter fraud narrative.

Anyway, you can become a member by going to t.yt.com slash join where we read your comments and respond. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break when we come back. We already have some Pretty bad news coming out of President-elect Joe Biden's upcoming administration. He just chose someone to serve in his administration who does not have a good record when it comes to climate change. We'll give you the details on that and more when we come back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data.

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I feel like randomly letting you guys know that we're currently working. on plans to go back to a two hour show. It's in the works. I'm not going to give you a firm date yet because things can obviously change. Coronavirus is surging, so we got to be careful. But I'm really looking forward to filling you guys in on my home projects, because that's what we used to do in the post game. We used to talk about personal stuff. Wait, you've been doing some? Oh, yeah, of course. Like news, it's not even about news. It's my way of being creative. Like, that's my, I guess my artistic creativity is home stuff.

Like remodeling, redecorating, learning how to do things with my hands. I love it. It's so good. I love power tools. Anyway, power tools are fun, man. That sounds awesome. Like, yeah, I mess with the mitre saw and a table saw and a circular saw. So much fun.

Anyway. You own multiple saws? I do. I love them. So I have no room. to store them because I live in a condo, but it doesn't matter. I find I find ways to like, I'm like a little squirrel with power tools. I have them like buried like all over the place.

Anyway, all right. Oh, I wanted to read some comments real quick. So no more trigonometry says maybe Democrats would win more seats if they stopped running as Republican light and undermining progressives. Totally agree. And no more sugarometry. I recommend you read the full article on that meeting with. Schumer because they did, some of the senators, Democratic senators did bring that up.

They had a problem with the fact that Schumer backed Amy McGrath, for instance, who was certainly Republican light. And they could have gone in a different direction. They've now been blacklisted from the party. Well, probably. Lieutenant Mack McGee says, of course socialism and defund the police were used as GOP battle cry. Even fellow Democrats are criticizing them, which validates it, totally agree. What Dems should be doing is supporting and attacking the GOP instead of just playing defense. Yeah, I think that's the best point. I just wish that they were a little more united. There was a little more solidarity. I mean, you certainly see that on the right. And I wish they

came up with an offensive battle plan rather than constantly playing defense. Gabby Marita says Russian election interference isn't half as sinister as the election interference being attempted by Republicans. You guys are the best. All right. We, you know what? I'm going to read one super chat. Thomas Johnson says it is critical that progressives push Joe Biden to live up to his promise regarding a public option in health care. In addition to getting more people health care, the public option would expose inefficiencies of the private system leading to single payer down the line. Thomas, I could not agree with you more on that statement. However, this next story that I'm about to share with you is foreshadowing. But who knows? Maybe if progressives fight hard enough. If we can get some things accomplished, we'll see. So Louis, Louis, I don't know why it's not coming out. Louisiana congressman, Cedric Richmond, who has taken vast contributions from the fossil fuel industry, will serve in President-elect Joe Biden's administration.

So this is a problem, especially considering what Richmond has been chosen for. Richmond, a national co-chair to Biden's presidential campaign, will leave his house seat. to serve as a senior advisor with the title of director of the Office of Public Engagement. Richmond is also expected to serve as a liaison with the business community and climate change activists. So as someone who's taken a considerable amount of money from the fossil fuel industry, it's strange to put him in a position where he would be dealing with any type of climate activism. In good faith, anyway. In good faith, exactly. And I think it is important to look at his record.

I want to give you some details on how much money he has taken from the fossil fuel industry. So during his 10 years in Congress, Richmond has received roughly $341,000 from donors in the oil and gas industry. The fifth highest total among House Democrats. That includes corporate political action committee donations of $50,000 from energy. Entergy, my bad, okay, from Entergy, an electric and natural gas utility, $40,000 from Exxon Mobil. and $10,000 apiece from oil companies Chevron, Philip 66, and Valero Energy. It gets worse. Richmond was ranked in that money.

I'm sorry, Richmond has raked in that money while representing a congressional district that is home to seven of the 10 most air-polluted census tracks in the country. And also during the climate crisis that has battered his home state of Louisiana. Richmond has joined with Republicans to vote to increase fossil fuel exports and promote pipeline development.

He also voted against democratic legislation to place pollution limits on fracking. And he voted for GOP legislation to limit the Obama administration's authority to move stringently, to more stringently regulate the practice. So he not only takes money from fossil fuel companies, he also acts on that influence by those campaign donations. So, John, as someone who cares deeply about climate change and in cover. it extensively on your show. I love to hear your thoughts. They're not good. Bad. Yeah, no, it's yay, great. You know, and it would be one thing if it was,

like, you could, in theory, he could have chosen this guy for a number of different positions that have very little to do with climate change. I mean, I would argue that the range of jobs that have to do with climate change are pretty broad, but you could have found something a little bit more removed from directly serving as the liaison to these sorts of groups, but they haven't. Either because of a conscious decision that they don't care about this, a lack of commitment to proper, not vetting necessarily because it's public information, but actually caring enough to prioritize choosing someone without these sorts of ties, or theoretically, as a trial balloon, just to let people know, you know, what direction they're going in

in terms of their staffing. And when I saw this sort of thing, obviously initially you had that paying of like, oh, come on, seriously. And I think that that's sort of a residual thing where leading into Biden choosing his cabinet, if you'd asked me, is Biden going to keep all of his promises? I would have said no. But you can still have that latent hope that, hey, maybe he'll do the right thing in a way no politician does, which doesn't turn out to be true.

And what I then retreat to is the position of, how did we? we present Joe Biden when we were supporting him for the months leading up the election, very consciously as our preferred opponent out of the two. And this is the sort of thing an opponent does. And then you have to respond accordingly. And thankfully, people who care about climate change are responding to this, putting pressure on them to not actually keep him on that position. We'll have to see how successful that is. This is a very low-level, minor fight over climate change. There are far more important ones. We need to win this to really have any hope of winning the bigger ones.

Right, yeah, I think you make a great point there. And I think that this is just the latest example, because I think there have been many that demonstrate how Biden is going to just really follow through on this moderate, centrist messaging that we got from him during the election. He didn't hide it. I mean, Biden was really the only candidate who, from the jump, just said that, no, I think we need to work with Republicans. I think that, you know, leading from the middle is the way to go.

You know, as I've mentioned, a billion times on the show, he told his Wall Street donors that nothing will fundamentally change under his leadership. The only difference between Biden and Trump is that the bleeding needs to stop, and Biden will stop the bleeding. And what do I mean by that? Things devolved so quickly under the Trump administration. And I'm talking about just basic rights, basic protections. And our democratic process has been in jeopardy under the Trump administration.

But when it comes to policy proposals that I desperately want as someone on the left, I'm not going to be naive and think that Biden's going to deliver. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't at least try, that we shouldn't fight and hold him accountable as much as we can. Now, Congressman Cedric Richmond, Congressman Cedric Richmond as, a pick for Biden's administration is such a bad look that Kamala Harris literally ran away after being asked about it. Let's take a look. How involved in cabinet positions and appointments have you been with President-elect Biden? Very much. And have you, how do you feel about Representative Cedric Richmond? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. See you later. I shouldn't believe

I've been very involved. So what do you think about Richmond? I'll see you later. Bye, got to go. Can I can't answer that question. So obviously as someone who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel industry, having Cedric Richmond in Biden's administration is a problem, especially if Biden, on one hand, claims that he cares deeply about climate change.

And then on the other hand, you know, says that he wants to protect fracking and then pick someone like Cedric Richmond to serve in his administration. Yeah, totally. And seeing her respond that way, and so quickly, like the question was not out. Like, it wasn't even finished at that point. I would, like, I would naively want to interpret that as this is her very plausible, deniable way of registering her frustration with that pick, maybe, in theory. I mean, after all, she has presented herself during the primary as someone more critical of fracking than Joe Biden. But it could also be that she is just fully aware of the conflict going on publicly around this right now and doesn't want to weigh in, but is perfectly comfortable

with him serving the administration. We're going to need more than just a quick nope to know for sure. Right. Yeah. And I mean. And one of the last, other final thing, she's very involved in the process, and they are going with that guy. That's right.

That's right. And progressives are already fighting the potential, the potential Biden pick of Heidi Hyde camp in his administration. She would, she's being considered as head of the USDA. And she was certainly a moderate, if you want to label her nicely. But she does not in any way represent what progressives want in the federal government. And it's an issue, especially considering some of her conflicts of interests that would impact some of her decision making as head of the USDA. So so far we're getting some pretty bad signs from Biden's picks.

but we'll keep you guys posted and updated on it as we learn more. All right, one more story for you before we end the first hour. In the battle between Trump loyalists and the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, Trump just got destroyed. He got destroyed because the Secretary of State, of course, he's the Secretary of State of Georgia, has come out and basically delivered some cold, hard facts about how Trump's disinformation campaign led to Republicans staying home and not voting in Georgia. So in a recent interview, Raffensberger said there were 24,000 Republicans in Georgia

who actually did vote during the June primaries, but then didn't show up to vote on election day. Here's what he said. They did not vote absentee because they were told by the president don't go to absentee. It's not secure. But then they did not come out and vote in person. He would have won by 10,000 votes. He actually depressed, suppressed his own voting base. But it's so true.

I mean, it's, John, take it away. Do you want people to vote or don't you? Well, I mean, we already know that answer. But you get that, like, some people support you. And this is not a new thing. When whenever Republicans do the thing where they try to stop college students, from voting if they originally lived out of state. They do that because they know that on balance it takes away the rights of more Democrats than Republicans. But every single time they do that,

they do still disenfranchise some Republicans. They're just comfortable with that because they don't care about those people. But like overall in a close election, maybe do the thing that results in more of your people coming out, especially if you're as confident about how committed and passionate your voters are. You've been saying that month after month. Well, then actually, rely on that and have people vote and assume that you can win based on that. Yeah, it is pretty incredible, right? Because I remember prior to the election happening, there were a few Republican lawmakers who spoke out. I mean, they didn't speak out publicly, but they did speak to reporters to say, look, we're concerned that this is going to, you know, he's unwittingly

suppressing Republican voters by spreading this disinformation about mail and ballots. And that didn't get as much attention as I thought it would. And I was curious to see if their predictions would come true. And it did. So at least in some cases, like in Georgia, where the election was somewhat close, Trump could have won, but his misinformation ended up coming back to Biden in the butt. And Raffinsberger and his wife, unfortunately, are receiving all sorts of pretty terrible death threats as a result of Donald Trump attacking him. Kelly Loughler and David Perdue are demanding that he stepped down, even though he did his job appropriately. There was no widespread voter fraud.

One message sent to him and his wife read this. Your husband deserves to face a firing squad. You better not botch this recount. Another message read. Your life depends on it. A third message sent to the Republican officials' wife said, The Raffinsbergers should be put on trial for treason and face execution. So that's what they're unfortunately dealing with.

But I do give him a great deal of credit. I don't agree with him on policies. We're not in the same political party. But I do give him quite a bit of credit for sticking to his guns and understanding the importance of maintaining our democratic process. It's hard to come by in government these days, especially among Republicans. Postgame is next free for everyone. We'll see you there.

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