The Young Turks - They're Lying To Us

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian Cenk & Ana call out all Progressives, and lay out the terms for Pramila Jayapal's resignation from “We are finally at the place we have been asking for — demanding over the last several months — which is two bills moving together in the House and we’ll get them both done,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal says. Sen. Joe Manchin was a headliner at a secretive Coal CEOs’ meeting. Cori Bush vs Joe Manchin. Democratic voters say they’d rather have someone else as 2024 nominee over Biden. Woman billed $700 after sitting in ER waiting room for 7 hours, leaving without treatment. Biden blasted for new Iran sanctions ahead of nuclear talks. Why Daniel Hale deserves gratitude, not prison. Elon Musk goes after UN World Food Program director on Twitter. The billionaire who hates the wealth tax says that ‘there’s no sympathy for billionaires’ and that the ultrawealthy are being attacked ‘for no reason.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jank you're Anna Kasparing with you guys. I'm gonna surprisingly chipper mood given the surrender we're gonna talk about in a second. Me too. Right? Yeah. Don't worry guys. Don't you worry your sweet little heart over it. We'll be livid within the 60 to 120 seconds, okay? No, I'm a little like Trump

in that he believes energy is finite, which is why he doesn't work out. I think that my rage and depression is also finite. So at some point last night after like, I was literally crying in the kitchen as I was making dinner over like progressive surrendering and I just felt so depressed and I was like, I'm going to make a decision to not be depressed tomorrow. Like regardless of the bad news, because we got to, we got to gear up, we got to give people what they want, we got to give them the news. Well, we gotta get, we gotta do it. But I like that there's, you know, the downside of shortages that we have like labor shortages

and stuff, but you apparently have a depression shortage, like you just ran out. There's nothing you could do, which is like the best thing to ever run out of, right? So now having said that, stock up, because we're gonna give you more bad news. Yes, yes. All right, well, of course, we're going to start off today by giving you an update on where we stand, where Democrats stand on the budget reconciliation bill. Well, here are the details. So in a closed door meeting with her caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged House Democrats, including progressives, to vote in favor of the budget reconciliation bill and of course the bipartisan infrastructure bill, also known as the corporate handout bill.

Now, she is expecting a vote on these bills by the end of the week, on Thursday specifically, although she's trying to keep her powder dry, as they say in politics, and not announce a specific date as she has in the past. Now, Pramila Jayapal is very much part of the negotiations, considering the fact that she's the leader of the progressives, and she continues to disappoint us today. Now, Pelosi told Democrats at Tuesday's morning caucus meeting that hopefully by midday, they will be able to freeze the design of the reconciliation bill. She said leaders are waiting for mansion and another key Democrat, Senator Kirsten

Cinema of Arizona, to weigh in on final provisions over climate change and lowering prescription drug costs, and by the way, more on that in just a minute, and the immigration provisions which remain in flux. Now Pelosi said that the next step is to bring the Biden package to the rules committee. She plans on doing that by Wednesday of this week. meaning tomorrow, which would pave the way for a vote as soon as Thursday on the bill, as well as a companion, $1 trillion infrastructure package. Remember, that infrastructure package is not really $1 trillion.

It uses money that was appropriated specifically for COVID and has a little over $500 billion in new spending. The remarks were conveyed by a person familiar with her comments who requested anonymity to share to share details about this private meeting. Now, really the big question is, where does Joe Manchin stand, right? And Joe Manchin, even with all the concessions that he got from the Biden administration, from the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, still refuses to commit to voting in favor of it.

He claims he's waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to weigh in on how this would impact the overall federal budget. Manchin said he's open to voting for a final bill, reflect. Biden's big package that moves our country forward, but he said he's equally open to voting against the final product as he assesses the sweeping social services and climate change bill. And of course, he's got these massive conflicts of interest since he profits so handsomely off of the fossil fuel industry, particularly coal. Jank, I'm going to go to a quick video of Mansion from today, and then we'll open it up. Let's watch. Basically, it's time to do something.

The president's over there. He went there. He asked for something before he left, and everyone ignored it. I didn't ignore it, and I thought it was something that could have been done. It was very easy ask. Just vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill has a tremendous amount of clean energy in it. It would have helped an awful lot, and it does an awful lot more than we've ever done before. They can even do that because they were saying it's not.

The perfect is going to be the enemy of the good if we don't sit down and be rational about what we're doing. So there you have it. Mansion continuing to apply pressure on progressives. And Representative Jayapal is about to deliver, so thoughts. Yeah, all right, first Pelosi presses progressives to give up. Of course, of course she does. Look, if you watch this show regularly, you will see that we're almost never wrong about these things. And I'm not saying that in a bragging way, I'm saying that so you can see with your own eyes exactly what happens in politics,

and that you could see that it's all theater, it's all fake, right? So the Pelosi pretended to be with the progressives all along. We were the only ones who told you she's not with them. She's going to run out the clock and at the end pressure them to give mansion what he wants. And that's exactly what happened. So that's happening right now today. Okay, number two, there is upside here. We're fair.

We don't take like one random side, including, by the way, the progressive side and say, oh, no, no, no, progressive legislators are always right. People are used to that here in America because our media is so terrible. So mainstream media supports corporate politicians no matter what, right-wing media supports Trump supporting Republicans, no matter what, we don't do that here, okay? So now the good news is it looks like they're gonna have a written bill in the House. And so now Biden mansion, no, not mansion, Biden is saying yes, the Senate will definitely pass that version, that House version they're about to pass.

There's no promise that that'll actually happen. Yeah, no, no, there's a promise from Biden. There's a promise from Biden, but that really means nothing. No, no, that's okay, I totally agree, that's what I'm trying to get to. Yeah. So Mansion, on the other hand, says, I do not promise it. He was very clear in his press conference. He said, it is equally likely that I will vote no.

So later when Jayapal, as you're gonna see now, she's like, I trust and love these people, my God, they would never, a politician lying, a corporate politician lying, it would never happen, my beloved Democratic colleagues, right? Well, later, Manchin will say, I didn't lie. I told you before you surrendered that I wasn't going to necessarily vote for your bill. And then Biden will say, oh, Joe, Joe, Joe, he apparently calls him Joe Joe. It's very cute. Okay, hey, Joe, Joe, you promised those rascally progressives, you remember? And Manchin at that point will pretend to get offended about something that happened in the meanwhile. He needs to say, oh, well, I was going to, but I didn't even say it, though.

I wasn't, but I would have out of good faith. But since they did XYZ, I can't do that anymore. So they're getting rooked and played as hard as you could possibly get played. And the planning here has been atrocious. It has. So right now, the ship is this close to sailing. And it doesn't look like there's any progressive revolt at all. So Mansion is about to get everything he wanted.

That's exactly right. And you're right in terms of progressives, lacking. any strategy. Progressives did in fact have leverage because we're talking about the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and their corporate donors endlessly salivating over the pork in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which would of course go to them. That's why they're salivating over it. But the worst part about all of this is the lack of leadership for the Progressive Caucus. And without further ado, I give you Representative Pramila Jayapal. Let's Let's watch.

This week we will have votes on both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better Act together, which is what we've called for for weeks. So we finally got what we've been saying and we're glad that people listened to us. He was saying, he was saying trust me on Thursday though. But we didn't have the bill. And he did not ask for us to vote on that day. He said, I need votes on both bills. And we have been saying for months, we are not going to vote just on an idea or a

a promise or a framework, we're going to vote on legislation. The minute we have legislation, we can look at it, our members can decide whether it is good enough, which we feel very good about, then we will pass both bills. And I think that is what we've been saying for weeks. I don't understand why anyone's confused about it. I take offense to the way that she framed it there because she's lying. This was not their strategy from the jump. Your strategy initially was to refuse voting on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until

there was passage of the reconciliation bill in the Senate. Now they've complete, like she's completely surrendered and she's saying, no, we're gonna vote on both bills and pass both bills before we get passage of the reconciliation bill in the Senate. Even that stripped down, paired back reconciliation bill, we still don't have a commitment from Joe Manchin, but Pamela Gaiapal was saying, well, Biden promises that he'll get it done in the Senate. So we're gonna go ahead and do this.

Okay, well, that is a change in strategy. That's why people might be a little confused, as she put it. But don't act like, you know, this has been a consistent strategy among progressives. And all of a sudden people are confused and don't know what's going on. No, you changed what you were doing. And it's very clear to everyone paying attention. So look, I know in Washington, everything is about personal allegiances. So which side are you guys on, which politician's side are you on?

We're not on any politician's side. So I like Jayapal. I've met her, she's a very nice person and she's definitely a real progressive, okay? But she's wrong here. And furthermore, in this case, she's crossed the line. What she's saying is not true. It is definitively not true. They said that they would not pass the infrastructure bill in the House

until the reconciliation, the bigger one, pass the Senate, not in the House, passed in the Senate, because that was the whole point of that trade. Now she's pretending that they didn't say that and they meant that they're gonna pass them together in the House. Well, that's just flat out not true. And we're not gonna tell you that it's true. I don't know if that's what her expectation is that the media is just supposed to work for her. Okay, and by the way, John Berman credit to him, he actually has really good questions in that CNN interview and he held her to account. So she had to give this ridiculous answer. Now, the second part of it is, as I told you earlier, the fact that they're going to have a written bill, at least is something because it's tangible.

Now, what's in the bill is, I think, pretty bad to approaching terrible. So we'll get to that later. But at least they'll have a written bill. Okay, now, then comes the question, who's right and who's wrong? Jaya Paul says here, if you get past the fact that she's not telling the truth about the order of things, but it's okay. Let's say that they're going to pass it. It looks like they're going to in the house. They're going to give them both.

Then it's going to go to the Senate as a written bill from the House, concrete. Will they vote on that bill and pass it? She says Biden says definitely, okay? And I'm telling you right now, no way. Now you're going to get to see on your own who's right and who's wrong. I'm telling you right now, the minute they pass the infrastructure bill, that's the corporate backed bill, they lose all leverage instantly. They have literally zero leverage.

I wish it weren't the case, but that's the case. And so what is mansion going to do it? what any sensible negotiator would do. I changed my mind. In fact, I didn't even change my mind. I told you ahead of time that I was equally likely to vote no. And you're an idiot and surrendered to me anyway. I mean, look, it's uncomfortable, but it's true.

Who would surrender to a guy who said, I might not even give you what you want? How is that a negotiation? No, that's just a surrender. That's all it is. You can pretty it up and you can get offended at us for calling it what it is. But it's at this point, like embarrassingly obvious. Yes. So is Manchin going to vote yes, and cinema going to vote yes on that house version

of that concrete bill? My guess is no, they will not. The only thing they'll do is they'll then strip it out even further, this already sucks, and they'll strip out more provisions than anything that hurts their corporate donors, even $1. And then they'll say, now you could vote on this piece of trash that we handed back to you at the house. And then that way we'll all get to do fake marketing about what a historic bill was. And if you don't vote for it, we'll browbeat you.

say, oh my God, these guys are, no, well, the deal is off if they're not going to vote on the piece of garbage we gave them, or they won't pass it at all, and then they'll laugh their ass off at you. Okay. And when that happens, Jayapal should no longer be the leader of the progressive caucus. That's obvious. The only thing that would prevent that is the feelings of the people in the caucus. Now, if I'm wrong, though, if she gets that concrete written bill passed, I think It still sucks, but at least she would be right about that and you give her credit for that. I don't even really think we need to wait and see what happens with the paired down reconciliation bill to make a decision about Pramila Jaya Paul's leadership. Her leadership has been awful.

There has been a lack of strategy, an unwillingness to use the leverage the progressives have, and I think that the worst scenario is very likely, and that worst scenario is that they're going to pass the corporate handout bill and possibly not get passage of the reconciliation bill, which with everything that's been taken out of it, there are still some important provisions, right, including universal pre-K, something that is not being means tested, something that applies to everyone universally, right? So that's huge. I mean, that's essentially childcare. And we've talked about the child care provision and how that's lacking in everything. But what's also interesting, Jenk, is during that same interview on CNN, Jayapal was asked about Representative

Rokana, who is also a progressive, he's part of the Progressive Caucus. And just last weekend, he was doing his rounds on the Sunday shows, giving his interviews about the reconciliation bill. And I thought the way that Pramila Jayapal answered questions about his appearances was telling. So let's just quickly watch that. One of the things I saw over the weekend was your colleague and member of the Progressive Caucus, Rokana, went out into the the Sunday shows. And he said on Sunday, which is before you've announced, and now you're crystal clear. You're a yes on both bills. You want the vote right now. Congressman Kana said it Sunday. He basically said it first. And after he said it, Ron Klayne, who's the White House chief of

staff, who according to political and others, you've been in conversations with pretty intensely for the last month, Ron Klan sends out not one, not two, not three tweets gushing over over Rokana. And one of them is a retweet of Gene Sperling that said, thank you for for your leadership, Rokana. And I just was, it struck me as the White House picking members of the Progressive Caucus that they're more happy with there. Well, look, I mean, people are gonna do whatever they're gonna do. I represent the caucus.

Most of our members have stayed with not getting out in front of the caucus. But you know, if somebody wants to say they're gonna vote for the bill, that's fine. When we say yes, we say yes. When we say no, we say no. And people should learn that that, I don't say that unless I know I know I don't say that unless I know I have the votes. So why did Kana do that though? Because that is true.

Rokana gives these interviews. He says that he's a yes vote on the honestly stripped down reconciliation bill. And so it was that, I know it's ridiculous to think that progressives even have any strategy, considering the lacking strategy in this whole reconciliation debate. But did Rokana go out there and like, you know, basically take it for Pramilla Jaya Paul ahead of time? No, no. What was that?

Look, I don't know for sure, and we could settle it because Roe Kano is going to be on the show on Friday, so we'll ask him. And but it looks like Jayapal was not happy that Roe Conner went out first. And so, but it doesn't really matter because if you're the leader, you just say, yeah, he's not the leader, I am, and I speak for the caucus. And but you have to back that up, it has to be true, right? And if so if Ro or anybody else had said, oh, yes, we're going to take both from mansion and you're and I'm the leader and I that's not where we're at. I come out tomorrow and

we go, no, we're not. And that's it. We're done with it. And then his points become irrelevant. So it just takes strong leadership. So I want to reset the discussion to talk about some of the provisions that are now going to be implemented in the reconciliation bill, at least in the House, right? Again, there's no promise that it'll pass in the Senate. But prescription drugs are apparently back as part of this discussion. Let's discuss. So Joe Manchin made it abundantly clear that he is not in favor of Medicare expansion. Joe Manchin has not been in favor of allowing for Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. Now we're hearing, though, that the House has managed to include a provision in the reconciliation bill that

they plan on voting for, that includes kind of like a half measure, if you want to be generous and call it that. So the New York Times reporting today that the prescription drug deal is limited. Starting in 2023, negotiations could begin on what Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon called the most expensive drugs, treatments for cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as anti-coagulants. Sorry, I have a hard time pronouncing that word. Now most drugs would still be granted patent exclusivity for nine years before negotiations could start and more advanced drugs called biologics would be protected for 12 years. So, Jank, it's again, if you want to call it a half measure, I guess you could, but not really.

I mean, this isn't the same thing as allowing for Medicare to negotiate all drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies, the final deal includes a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket expenditures for older Americans facing catastrophic health issues, a strict $35 monthly cap on insulin expenses, and automatic rebates on drugs whose prices rise faster than inflation. Now, again, it really depends on whether or not the reconciliation bill ends up passing in the Senate, but what are your thoughts on, you know, this paired back version of the drug negotiation provision. I think it's a joke.

I don't understand. Like my understanding right now is reporting from Bloomberg is that we're gonna get to negotiate 10 drug prices, 10, just on 10 drugs. And that starts in the year 2025. Oh wow, I didn't know you guys were gonna be this generous. I thought maybe it was gonna be seven or six drugs we're gonna negotiate. There are thousands of drugs. This is a joke.

This is a joke. It's if it's all it is is a face saving gesture so you don't, so you're not humiliated and you could pretend there was a compromise. But in that in reality, when you realize how pathetic it is, it's actually more embarrassing. And I think they can get all the way up to like 25 or 35 drugs in the year 20, 28, yep. Okay, wow, seven years from now we might be up to a couple of dozen drugs we can negotiate out of the thousands and thousands of drugs there are in America. You know what that is? That's not negotiating drug prices.

That's making sure you don't negotiate drug prices while pretending you did. Now, of course, what will happen next is corporate media will go along with this charade. And they'll say, oh, historic transformation. Two to three drugs will be negotiated 17 years from now. I mean, it's a joke, guys. It is. Any real reporter would tell you that is a ridiculous, pathetic joke. Even if that provision wasn't included in the final version of the reconciliation bill, Democrats were still going to do the PR.

They were still going to pretend like this was a life-changing, unprecedented piece of legislation that would overwhelmingly improve everyone's lives. Now, look, there are still some decent provisions in the reconciliation bill. But you've got to look at what Biden had promised, what he campaigned on, and what the final reconciliation bill looks like. No paid family or medical leave. You do not have a permanent child tax credit. That was something that Biden was really trying to celebrate as one of his major agenda items.

Also the penalties for utilities that refuse to switch over to renewable energy. They got rid of the benefits or the rewards that utilities would get. They do in fact move to renewable energies. There's so many important parts of that bill that ended up getting scrapped as a result of the de facto president, Joe Manchin, and Joe Manchin still hasn't committed to voting in favor of the reconciliation bill as it stands today with all those provisions stripped out, including two years of free community college, gone. So I just, I don't, look, Democratic leadership has been awful, progressive leadership has

been awful, but I also want to just really reiterate the failure of the Biden administration, which insisted on dividing his agenda up into two different bills because they wanted Republicans to have a seat at the table. Remember, Republicans were at the White House engaging in these negotiations with Biden, why? And now they want to turn around and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't focus on corporate Democrats, focus on Republicans and how they stopped us from doing what we needed to do. No, you don't get to blame Republican obstructionists, when in reality, you're the one who invited them.

You're the one who brought them, gave them a seat at the table, and you decided to divide this bill up into a corporate handout bill and a social spending bill that honestly looks nothing like it originally did. It's dispiriting to be a Democrat because your own party is so weak. They're such liars that, you know, there's nothing to root for. The one thing you got to give the Republicans is as loathsome as Donald Trump is, is he's a lunatic, a narcissist, he's a con man, but he gives them something to root for, right? He seems like he's fighting for them, like, oh my God, I hate immigrants as much as you do. And they're like, yeah, and they get excited by that, right? For us, the only thing we ask for is policy.

We ask for higher wages and better health care, et cetera. And they will not give that to us under penalty of law because it's corporate rule. And so Biden has been lying about this from day one, I don't care who it offends. Let all of Washington cry over it. Oh, he's an honorable man. How could you say to get out of here, man? He told the donors that nothing would fundamentally change. Negotiating 10, 10 drug prices is nothing fundamentally changing.

The number goes up to 30 in the year 2028. Everyone who's rational knows that that is pathetic and that it's a cover job for the for you allowing corporate donors to get everything they wanted. So now what's more dispiriting, of course, is that the progressives go along. And now they'll be forced to walk the plank and do marketing for this awful so-called compromise as if it was historic transformation. And Representative Jayapal, the so-called leader of the Progressive Caucus is already doing that on TV. Oh my God, before I saw the details, I saw her on TV bragging about this, about how. How they got, oh, you wait till you see the lowering the drug prices that we're going to do.

This was it? This was it? Nah, no, no. So our jobs tell the truth. These compromises are the worst things I've ever seen. Universal pre-K, the corporations wanted it anyway. The corporations have gotten everything they wanted, we got a couple of crumbs. And it's the same story every time.

So you're not wrong to be disillusioned, and if they want us to love, to you guys to cheerleaf so you'll vote for Democrats? Why? Why? So I know on the social issues, on the social issues, but on the economic issues. Barely even the social issues. Barely, but what did you do? Did you do voting rights? You didn't do voting rights. Police reform? You didn't do police reform. Why the hell are we voting for Democrats? And then they'll do the same tired trick. Aren't you guys exhausted by it? Yes. What will they do? They'll blame us. They'll blame young Turks in specific. You guys lowered the voter turnout.

If you just lied to people and told them we got negotiated all drug prices, when we had a perfect lie going and we were going to just do 10, it's 10 guys. There's no argument. It's not like there's 12 drugs in the country. There's thousands of drugs in the country. 10 is a joke. And so we're not going to lie. So note progressives in Congress.

We're not going to lie for you. That's not how progressive media works. This is a terrible so called compromise and you're gonna walk the plank on it. We all know it and then you're gonna get mad at us for not defending a terrible deal. Well, I got, here, here's a news break, do a better deal. Oh, but there's nothing we could do. But we had you run against corporate Democrats because corporate Democrats' excuses, there's nothing we can do. If the progressive excuses, there's nothing we could do, then we elected the wrong people.

So, oh, that's so harsh, that's so harsh, you're screwing over the voters by pretending this is a real deal. That's actually mean. That's actually not delivering. Us telling people what you're actually doing is not the mean part. The part where you got, ah, screw it, let's do a face saving gesture. That's the part that sucks for everybody. This is the worst news, I wish I never had to deliver this to you.

But that is what just happened. And by the way, after all of that, and after all that humiliation, Manchin and Cinema might vote no anyway. Sad. All right, when we come back, I got to do one special segment. Just real quick, guys, it's important for you to know what they could have done. Because they always say there was nothing we can do. That's not true. When we come back, I'll tell you what they could have done.

Right back. All right, back on the Young Church, Jank and Anna with you guys. But we want to be constructive here. So I wanted to do one more thing for you guys. So as we've seen now, it looks like the progressives are going to give in and they're going to give Manchester Cinema Biden and Pelosi the vote that they want on the corporate backed infrastructure bill and they're going to pass their version of the build back better bill.

But there with no guarantees that it's going to pass the Senate. We think that is a surrender. we think that is a terrible deal and Biden is in mansion I'm sorry mansion has said he might not he might vote no anyway despite progress is giving them everything they wanted so now you guys know that you've seen the details of it we've covered it now the question is what is there anything they could do about it well this is where bad leaders would tell you oh well golly gee there was nothing we could do well so I want to be constructive here right and if you're gonna have critique you should have an answer for what the alternative is so here's

alternative, you do correct planning and strategy. So six months ago, three months ago, two months ago, even two weeks ago, what you say is, here are my red lines, and I am not under any circumstance moving off those red lines. Now you have to, but you can't bluff, it has to be real. And you have to be willing to sink the bill or go back into another set of painful negotiations. And if you say, well, I'm not willing to do that, well, then you're going to lose. That's just how negotiations work. If you say ahead of time, you signal that you'll give the other side everything they want, they'll just take it all. So if someone really strong had one in Congress, like say Nina Turner, what she could have done is just pull two other progressives. They just need three progressive votes

in the house. That's it. And say these are our red lines and there's no way in the world we're going to move off of them. But guys, you have to be realistic and practical. You can't say everything's your red line, but pick two giant ones that got negotiated away that are incredibly popular, like lowering drug prices, 88% popularity, paid family leave, over 70% popularity. If you can't win on those, you can't win on anything. So you draw your red lines. Now that first part is fairly obvious. The second part is the part that current day progressives apparently cannot do and will not do,

but need to do. And it's going to freak them out when I tell you this. It's not going to freak any of you out. You have to play hardball. And so if I was in those negotiations, I would hope that if Nina was in those negotiations, which she would do, well, let me just speak for myself. What I would do is I would go in and say, Senator Manchin, I know we're cordial and friends and I'm happy to go out to lunch with you anytime you want, et cetera.

But within this room, we're gonna do negotiation for our voters. So you're gonna have to deal with me as it is, okay? And what I'm telling you is, we're gonna give you your bill, the infrastructure bill that you planned out with corporations, and we want and return this bill. And if we don't get it and you don't say yes through our red lines, it's okay. Everybody's free to do, you're a senator, I'm a senator, whatever those circumstances are, okay? But what we're going to do is destroy your reputation. And you might think, oh, that's not going to work or that's too rude, but I am going to do that.

Every day, me and my allies are going to take turns on the floor of the House or the floor of the Senate, and we're going to tell people about your donors, one by one. And we're going to say you're the most corrupt senator that America has ever had. And we're going to make you the poster child for corruption. Now already, Bernie's out, Gaya Paul's out, they would never, ever, ever do that. In fact, the mere suggestion would offend them to their sensitive core, right? But guys, this is politics, and you don't play politics for fun. You play it so you can pass bills that affect people's lives.

And you think Mansion wouldn't be affected by that? You're wrong. He would be deeply affected by that, as long as you're not bluffing. And if he says, no, yeah, I am offended, I'm not going to do the bill. then you start on day one you hit you know he's the number one recipient of coal coal oil and gas money now that should be obvious probably a lot of you know it if you watch this show but if you watch mainstream media nobody knows it right and we're going to outline your donors then we're going to move on to your own personal wealth and how you have it in coal and how you made five million dollars

and you've got another other five million dollars in wealth and we're going to embarrass you and embarrass you and embarrass you. If you sink our bill, we sink your career. That's actually hardball. Yes, it would definitely work. And if it didn't work with Mansion, after you obliterated his reputation, and everyone in the country despise them, then when you turn to cinema, she said, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, okay, what do you need?

What do you need? If you're not willing to do that, you're not a strong leader. And because you're worried about offending people, you have personal friendship. with or relationships with, instead, you're hurting the voters because you're not willing to use something in your arsenal. The progressors in Congress, I've said it a thousand times, I love them, but they've never called out corruption of Democratic colleagues. They started to a tiny bit around the edges on TV in this round.

No, you have to be willing to say he takes money from oil companies and he sold you out because of those legalized bribes. If you're not willing to say that, you have no leverage. And that's why you go around saying there's nothing I could do, and then mansion wins and we lose. All right, we're going to take one brief break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about surprise medical billing. There's a specific case in Georgia that will blow your mind. We've got that story and more when we return.

All right, back on TYT, Jen Kananah with you guys. read one super chat here. Fab Dragon said, we don't listen to TYT because we haven't formed opinions. We listen to TYT because TYT represents the wants and needs of 60% plus of American opinions. That is the, I thank you. I think that's the most true thing that anybody said in terms of comments about TYT. Yes, they think we're making this up. We're, we see what you're saying. We see the polling. All we're doing is trying to represent you guys. And anyway, the politicians can believe it or not, I don't care anymore. All right, Anna.

All right, a woman in Georgia was hit with a surprise bill from the emergency room, even though she waited in the emergency room but didn't receive any treatment. She waited so long that she ended up leaving without seeing a doctor. And it was for a pretty serious injury. So Taylor Davis said that she went to the Emory Decatur Hospital ER in July. for a head injury, she says, I sat there for seven hours. There's no way I should be sitting in an emergency room, an emergency room for seven hours, she said.

Now a couple of weeks after she went to the emergency room and did not receive any treatment, she got a surprise bill in the mail. That was nearly $700. So she shared a screenshot of the bill for $688.35. She actually thought it was a mistake, as most normal people would think. think because again, she didn't get to see a doctor, she received absolutely no treatment. The only thing that happened was she showed up to the emergency room, checked in, and then waited for seven hours without any treatment.

Now she did reach out to the hospital to try to figure out what's going on, she thought this was a mistake. So I called them and she said it's hospital protocol, even if you're just walking in and you're not seen, when you type in your social, that's it. You're gonna get charged regardless. An email sent to Davis by the hospital, the financial services employee, states, you get charged before you are seen, not for being seen. Well, that doesn't make any sense.

So apparently makes a lot of sense because Georgia is not the only state that has this issue. In fact, Georgia isn't even the most expensive state in regard to what's referred to as an emergency room visit fee, right? That's tacked on to your emergency room. Bill, right? So most people don't. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking

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Moderate severity ER patients are billed an average of $3,102 before insurance. Yeah, guys, this is unbearable. They're asking for a revolution and not just a political one. I'm trying to keep it political. I want it to be political. But what insanity is this? This is total corporate rule, and they're crushing us to pieces. So let's break down what happened to her.

First of all, you go to the emergency room, they don't treat you for seven hours. They say, we have a wonderful private system, do we? That's our private care in America where you wait for seven hours and don't even get treatment. When you went to an emergency room, so if there's government, you're gonna have big lines. We already have big lines. Yeah, we have big lines for a patient who has a head injury, which is pretty serious. She should get medical attention immediately and she didn't. It's insane.

All right, now this is the most important part. They literally charged her a hundred dollars an hour for not treating her. Every hour that she waited there not being treated with a head injury, they charge her $100 for not treating her. And then they have the audacity to write emails telling them, well, as soon as you step in, the minute we start not treating you, we're charging you. No, that's Alice in Wonderland. By the way, it doesn't happen in any other country.

Our corporate media is gaslighting you are telling you this is normal. This is not normal. Government tyranny, hey, right wing, idiots, government tyranny isn't the mask or the vaccine. It's making you pay this bill for no goddamn reason. No, no, no. The thing is, tyranny is bad when the government's involved, right? But tyranny, good when it's done by corporations. So corporate tyranny, awesome.

By the way, I believe that tyranny in any case is awful, which is why I think we should decommodify health care completely. There shouldn't be a profit motive behind it. The fact that there's a profit motive behind it with a flaccid, you know, Congress that refuses to do anything about it allows them to do this kind of stuff without ever being held accountable. There's no regulations preventing them from doing this. They do it because they can.

So look, this is, for whatever it's worth, let's start a hashtag corporate tyranny. For stories where corporations absolutely rob you blind and your government does nothing to help you. So Bernie calls a democratic socialism, I call it democratic capitalism, but it's the same thing. The idea is relatively same thing, the idea is in democracy is supposed to check the and the abuses of big business. If you just leave big business to run things, what are they going to do? They're going to maximize profit.

We all know this because we're not reporters. Reporters go, I don't know what companies are going to do. Do they make a profit? Is that what they try to do? They try to maximize it. I never heard of that. So because why? Because they're part of corporate rule.

They're part of corporate tyranny. So they tell you, oh, it's normal for you to get robbed. You go to the emergency room to see a doctor. They rob you of $700. That's a literal robbery. robbery. They're saying you pay us $700. By the way, if you don't eventually, they say, oh, well, we put it transferred here, here, here. Now it's the government that you owe, and we're putting you in jail. Because debtors, presidents are back. We explain that in another

story. Okay, so guys, now we're all scared to death to go to the doctor. I talked to a friend of mine over the weekend. He's like, when I was getting my insurance, they explained me how they can do surprise billing on me. So they're now just saying it. Oh, we're going I do surprise, they said they could send my lab tests to a doctor that's out of network and I'll never know it and then they'll charge me $2,000 and he said, I don't have $2,000. That's right, there's no transparency at all when you go visit the doctor, which is why so many Americans, even with insurance, don't go to the doctor to receive the preventative

care that they need, right? So look, this is something that really should be talked about more because you look at a country like Cuba, right? Cuba with all of the economic issues that it has as a result of the United States and its embargo, they're cut off. Cuba is considered a state sponsor of terrorism because of what the Trump administration labeled it as. So it's not just the United States that refuses to do trade or work with Cuba, it's the international community because they're terrified of retaliation from the United States. I give you that context because it's important. They don't have the resources that we have here in the United States, but they're so good about preventative

care. You have doctors and nurses literally showing up to people's homes regularly to make sure everyone's okay because they know they can't afford for anyone to get ill to the point where they don't have the treatments necessary for these people, right? So the average life expectancy in Cuba, 78 years. You know what it is in the United States? 78 years. With all of our wealth, with all of our resources, with the, you know, top of the line medical treatment and care. But it doesn't matter if you can't afford it. And we don't do anything about preventative care in this country. We discourage people from getting preventative care.

So guys, it's not to say that Cuba's a paradise. That's the right-wing talking points that they say about that we think, right? It's to say that we're really rich in America collectively. And Cuba isn't for all the reasons that Anna explained. But if you think it's for other reasons, it doesn't matter. You know Cuba's poor and they need, they got cars from the 1950s, etc. But even they can afford to actually give healthcare to their citizens. They prioritize it.

And so they, we have the same life expectancy, but almost every other measure, the Cuban people are actually healthier than the American people, even though they're that poor. That means that we can definitely afford it. Our government is choosing not to give us health care. And so when you get robbed by these corporate health corporations, health corporations with the surprise bills and you will all almost all of you will get robbed. You will all get surprised bills because when the government does not stop them, they go,

oh, well, this is like we won the lottery. We're just going to take $700 from you, $2,000 from you, a thousand from you. We're just going to rob all of you and the government's going to let us. There are no rules. There's no refs. Why? Because they pay them bribes. We call them campaign contributions.

And then they will send in their corporate media thugs to yell at you at you. and tell you what do you want to be like Cuba? Oh my god, you're all these guys, you know, this is outrageous. Now you should all just pay whatever the corporation say and shut up about it. No, you don't deserve healthcare. We pay twice as much as every other developed nation, twice as much. Not 5% more, not 25% more, twice as much. And every one of those countries has better health care by every metric than we do.

That means we got robbed of an extra amount of money. That whole second amount, we got 100% robbed by corporations and the corrupt politicians that they bribed. That's what America is. All right, let's move on to our next story because I might agree with Elon Musk of all people a little bit. Oh, fascinating. Yeah, so Elon Musk is offering to sell some of his Tesla stock if the United Nations can show that $6 billion would

would help to alleviate world hunger. Now before I give you the details of the story, let me just note that there are two different things going on, okay? On one hand, you have Elon Musk who's consistently crying about having to pay taxes to a country that provided the seed money for Tesla and many of his business ventures that have made a fabulously wealthy. But that's not what this story is about. This story is about the UN World Food Program.

Director David Beasley was recently on CNN and he specifically called out Elon Musk and other tremendously wealthy Americans and essentially called on them to do their part in donating money to this organization to alleviate world hunger. Let's hear what he had to say. US billionaires alone have gotten over a trillion dollars richer during the pandemic. You're asking those billionaires who are going to space the lights of Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos to help. Are they helping? The governments are tapped out.

And this is why, and this is when that the billionaires need to step up now on a one-time basis, $6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reset. It's not complicated. And this is what's heartbreaking. I'm not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year. We have a one-time crisis, a perfect storm of conflict, climate change, and climate. COVID, it's a one time phenomenon.

I've got 43 nations with 42 million people in IPC level four, knock it on famine's door. Just help me with them one time. That's a $6 billion price day. Jeff Bezos's net worth increased just last year during COVID was 64 billion. I'm just asking for 10% of your net worth increase. Just last week, Elon Musk had a $6 billion net worth increase one day, one day. So there's obviously some truth to what Beasley say.

But, you know, the world food program has some issues, which I'll get to in just a second. Following that interview, they put out a tweet saying a one-time donation from the top 400 billionaires in the United States could help save the lives of 42 million people this year. Now, in response to that, Elon Musk tweeted this, if the world food program can describe on its Twitter thread, on this Twitter thread exactly how $6 billion will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it. And so he's challenging them because there is concern that some of that funding, some of those donations are misappropriated, right?

And there is some truth behind that. There are also some issues with Beasley, which I'll get to in just a second. So for instance, in 2019, funding was a record $8 billion, of which the largest donors were the United States at 3.4 billion, and Germany at 886.6 million. Contributions were insufficient to cover identified needs of food insecure populations with a funding gap of $4.1 billion, and that's according to the World Food Program Annual Performance Report. So they obviously raised a lot of money in 2019, and their analysis of that was it wasn't

enough. So it's just interesting to hear Beasley say, like, no, just this one time donation of $6 billion would change everything. Now, $6 billion, he claims, will not solve world hunger, this is Beasley, but it will prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration, focus on that for a second, and save $42 million, or I'm sorry, 42 million people from the brink of starvation, an unprecedented crisis, and a perfect storm due to COVID slash conflict slash climate crisis. Now he likes to focus a lot on migration and the migration crisis, because he was actually

tapped by the Trump administration to lead the world food program specifically to end migration to the United States. That was a huge part of the reason why Trump chose him. I have more details about it in just a second, but Jenk, you want to jump in? Yeah, look, in a sense, both are right and both are wrong. Elon Musk is being incredibly obnoxious by saying, oh, give me all your accounting on this Twitter thread. Me, me, me, me, me. If you actually wanted to solve world hunger, you'd reach out privately and say, is that really true? Can I see the documents? I'm not looking to publicly embarrass you, but if it's,

it really can be done and you can convince me, I'd be happy to do it. If I was in his position, 2% of your net wealth, you still look guys, it's nearly impossible to spend one billion in your lifetime. He has over 200 billion. I mean, it is, it's the how selfish it is for not just Musk but Bezos and so many of the others to not do it, it's indescribably greedy. Okay, now that doesn't mean that the organization is right or its leadership is right. So Anna, more details on. Yeah, so as foreign policy reported,

so Beasley has struggled to win over some career staff at the agency's Rome headquarters, who felt he hewed too closely to U.S. foreign policy and handed out perks such as business class flights to Geneva in violation of the World Food Program policy to members of its inner circle or his inner circle. So look, I do have an issue with too much reliance on like NGOs and these types of organizations to end massive crises that should be dealt with by governments, right? So in the case of the United States, what I find really, really interesting is the world food program, because of the fact that the United States has so much control over it, right?

because it donates a pretty significant portion of its funding. It basically insists on the agriculture being purchased from the United States, as opposed to the farmers in the countries where they're trying to alleviate hungry. And you know what that does? That screws over like the farmers, right? They get basically priced out of the market as a result of that. So they're actually doing some harm in the way that they carry out their charity work. And then as Jonathan Larson over at T.Y.T. Investigates reported recently, while assuring Musk of transparency, because he did respond to Musk and claim, he claimed that he would be transparent, Beasley didn't mention the role he has played out of the public eye as a leader inside the family, a purposely opaque organization with the history of smuggling evangelical Protestantism, including homophobia and misogyny in charitable packages. The family also serves as a networking,

for right wing activists working to roll back LGBTQ and reproductive rights. Yes, so look, the problem here is it's, and I'll say that even of what we're telling you here in our reporting. It is relatively easy to pick apart any program. In this case, this is a Trump appointee and they're forcing people to give money to American, through the American government, the critique is 100% valid. 100% valid, okay? Having said that, greedy pricks like Elon Musk go around going, well, the government shouldn't do it, I don't want you to raise my taxes, no way, no way.

You just rely on charity. Then you go, okay, then why don't you give me the charity? Oh, hell no, unless you give me all the salaries and I humiliate you publicly and then use it as an excuse not to give it to you, I'm not gonna give it to you, I was going to give it to you, but I'm not because of this, this, this. You got a lot of BS excuses, Elon, you're full of crap, okay? You're enormously full of crap. You're hoarding all of that money.

And you're one of the, you're literally the greediest person on earth. And your buddy Jeff Bezos that you guys are having some sort of measuring contest with, oh yeah, my rocket looks more like a penis. We all see it, you morons. You think you're so smart because you have all this money. And you built giant fallacies to go into space and we're starving down here. And you go, oh yeah, you have the government do it, but don't have the government do it. Me do it, but don't have me do it.

Ha ha, you never got any of the money, did you? We cook it all, you can't bury it with you. Even if you built a giant tomb, what the hell are you gonna do with $200 billion? Guys, if you're not rich, because we're not, none of us are rich, you, you, but I know wealthy folks, okay, and I know what that, like, it's, and you don't, Chris Rock said it, Chris Rock said it. If poor people knew how much money rich people have, they'd be a revolution overnight. Okay, they have, it's so much money. You cannot spend a billion dollars. Unless you're buying a sports team, you cannot spend one billion, let alone 200 billion.

Our minds cannot comprehend how much money that is. And that greedy little prick, Elon Musk, sits there going, no, mine, mine. You've turned into Gallum and you don't even realize it. So, oh, have fun on Twitter, making fun of poor people. God, you're so cool. All right, that does it for our fiery first hour. When we come back, Leon Cooperman is back. He's crying again.

He thinks the billionaires are just, you know, unfairly being picked on. So we'll hear from him. And also, Lauren Bobert, who is bragging about delivering babies in the back of trucks. Awesome. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at

apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon