The Young Turks - Threatrics

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Democrats are pretending like Biden is about to engage in a sincere effort to raise taxes on the rich. Florida Republican pitches bill to eliminate the Florida Democratic Party. The Hill writes a celebratory article about a Congressional hockey game between “The Lawmakers” and “The Lobbyists.” Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms threaten to block “healthy” food labeling guidelines in court, claiming the rule limits their free speech. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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. Woo! It's up! All right. All right, well are we on time, Jake Jueger, Attica's married with you guys. Listen, I'm afraid we're about to have an excellent show.

And I need you to be afraid. Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to have our finest hour. Maybe not our finest. I don't know about all that. Imagine the next hours when we peak. Like it goes down. And from then on, it's just downhill. That would be bad.

That would be bad. I would not want that. But you're going to want to stare around for the next hour and find out, isn't it? Yep. I would. I would. All right. Well, let's talk about a story.

that I noticed is getting more and more traction when it really shouldn't because it's a ridiculous idea. It's not going to happen. So, let's do it. I want to make it clear. I'm going to raise some taxes. Many of your billionaires out there, you're going to stop paying at 3%. It's not a joke. No, it is a joke, because no, he's not. Let's just keep it real. Now, what President Joe Biden was referring to there is his upcoming budget proposal, which is probably the most irrelevant effort from Biden during his administration. Why? Because he was unable to pass tax increases for the rich when Democrats had the majority in the House and the Senate. What makes him think there's even a little chance, a tiny minor chance that he's going to get tax cuts passed?

So this is more, in my opinion, of the posturing and the theater to make it appear as though he supports certain things when in reality, when he had the opportunity to pass it and he had the opportunity to fight for it, he didn't do so. So please spare me this made up drama that's now ensuing among the Democrats because Democrats in some of these purple states are like, oh no, I'm facing a tough reelection. I really don't want Biden to do this. Please don't do this. Biden, please don't do this, Biden, please. Come on. Okay, that's exactly how they said it. I saw it. I do want to do a minor correction.

You said tiny minor. No, it's tiny, mining. Tiny mining. Tiny mining. Sorry. Apologies. I want to make sure we get the facts right. Okay.

Now, I'm going to tell you why Biden's doing this. I'm going to tell you why the Democrats are crying. I'm going to tell you why they did this story in the mainstream press. I'll hit you with one of them now and then the others later. Why is Biden doing it? Do you know what raising taxes on the rich polls at? Now, if you're in Washington media, you're going to guess 10%, 9, 8, which one, like a bunch of communist, young kids probably, it polls at 76% among the American people. Yeah, that's right. Over three quarters of Americans say, God damn right, tax the rich. That's why Biden is doing a fake attempt to tax the rich. He doesn't want tax to rich.

He already knows, and is absolutely right, it has no chance of passing. it had no chance of passing when he had the majorities in both houses. Yeah, guys, look, let me give you just one of the reasons why I believe he's not being sincere in wanting to raise taxes on the rich. One of the things that he did right out of the gate when Democrats had the majority in the House and the Senate was he proposed a corporate tax hike from the 21%, which Trump, of course, had lowered from 35%, right? So Biden campaigned on, I'm going to reverse the Trump-era tax cuts for the rich.

So you would assume reversal means going back to 35%. But his proposal right out of the gate was not 35%. It was 28%. With no details on whether or not he was interested in cutting the corporate tax loopholes, like let's keep it real. He was never sincere about reversing the tax cuts for the rich. His first proposal made that clear. Okay, I'm going to give a tiny bit more context to that because I love that story.

He's like, I'm a reversing and we're going to be back to 35%. No, 28%. Their mansion said, no, 25%. And you know what they settled at? No, 21%. Yeah, exactly. They didn't move it one inch and they never intended to. And what the press is doing here is total theater.

We'll get back to that in this second. Yes, so let's go to the hill. Not literally, the publication is what I'm referring to, where one of their headlines reads, Biden to trigger tax fights Senate Democrats don't want. I'm going to read you a few excerpts. Biden will trigger a fight over raising taxes when he introduces his budget plan next week, something the Senate Democrats who face a tough road ahead to protect their majority aren't clamoring for, especially in West Virginia, Montana and Arizona.

Manchin waved aside a question about raising taxes in a deficit reduction package. When asked about adding tax hikes to a deficit reduction deal, he said, quote, we ought to be worried about the $31 trillion in debt and how we got here so quick. Well, the $2 trillion in tax cuts for the rich that passed in 2017 under Trump certainly contributed to that. But he's got no interest in reversing those tax breaks because Homeboy's wealthy himself. Let's keep it real. We want 100%. Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about all the debt we have, then obviously you'd want to

increase taxes on the rich so that we could lower the debt. Where's the question? But of course, the question is, how much am I getting bribed by those same wealthy folks that mainstream press is never going to talk about? But here's an interesting, like, thing they also don't mention in the article, which gives you the most important context for this. They say a tough road ahead for some Democrats in swing states and red states. West Virginia, making it seem like the people of West Virginia want tax cuts for the rich,

which is which they most definitely do not. Even though West Virginia is read, it's also the most, one of the most popular states. And they hate the rich more than almost any other state. And so if you polled, look, I haven't seen a poll in West Virginia as specific about raising tax on the rich, but my guess is it would be higher than the national average of 76%, right? But they make it, the press makes it appear, oh, I mean, Manchin and Tester in Montana, he can't do it because the red states love the rich so much and they don't want them touched at all. Yeah.

That's totally nonsense. The real reason why it's a tough road ahead for them is because in those swing states, they need tons and tons of cash to compete. And where are they going to get the cash? Well, they're going to get it in the form of legalized bribes. Yes. From the wealthy and from these corporations. Yes.

That's why their reelection would be made tougher because they can't take as many bribes if they vote for this. But they never clarify that in the press. Of course they don't. Of course they don't. Because as Jank mentioned earlier, when you poll the American people in regard to raising taxes specifically on the wealthy, it polls incredibly well. In fact, during the Trump administration, as he was trying to market and sell his tax cuts

to the American people, the majority of Americans, poll after poll, there were multiple polls indicating that his tax plan was not popular. But they went through with it anyway because it's self-dealing, right? not only for their donors, but you've got to also keep in mind that there are so many wealthy people in Congress. And at that time, with Trump in office, I'm sure he and his family members benefited from those tax cuts as well. But to your point, Jank, one other excerpt that I want to read from the Hill, putting tax increases front and center when Democrats have to defend 23 Senate seats in the next election is causing jitters because Republicans are sure to latch

on to Biden's proposal to try to paint the Democratic Party as at large as a tax, as a bunch of tax and spend liberals. Look, if you're not bought, if you're a Democrat who is not bought by corporate donors, go ahead, go ahead, Republicans, please market what you're marketing. Please, please go to the American people and let them know that I want to raise taxes on the rich. Or actually, no, please don't do that. That would be very, very bad. Right? No, if you're uncorrupted, that's free advertising. That's free campaigning on your behalf. Excellent. Go do it. Have fun. You know, this article was actually kind of a masterpiece in corporate propaganda because it helped everyone involved both through acts of omission and

commission. So they never told you, hey, those battleground states will be made tough for the Democrats because they can't do as much fundraising if they do this. I mean, don't you think that's the most relevant fact in the story, but you left that out entirely. But it's not just the ax of omission. How about the ones that they are doing? So they say, okay, taxes spend liberals, that's how they'll be tarred. But wait, why would they be tarred if three quarters of the country is in favor of it? You're making it seem like raising tax on the rich is unpopular by the way that you're framing it, although you never stated a poll. So you didn't technically lie, right? But you framed it in a way that makes no sense at all. In fact, it's the opposite of what

It's true. And then the third thing that's in there is a giant, thank you, Joe Biden, who's an enormous corporate Democrat. So the correct way to write this article is President Biden suggests the tax increase on the rich because of how popular it is in the country, full well knowing that it has no chance of passing because of the bribes that his Democratic colleagues and the entire Republican party take. Exactly. That is actually what is happening. But you get none of that sense from this story. But it's okay because we can decode the nonsense and propaganda here at TYT. Boom, you're welcome.

All right. Well, let's take a little trip to Florida where apparently the state lawmakers are done with all the important relevant work, so they have all this time left over to troll people. Florida state senator Blaise Ingoglia has decided to propose banning the Democratic Party through a waste of time piece of legislation that's really just meant to troll his opponents. Now what do I mean by that? Well, he has proposed something referred to as the ultimate cancel act, trying to draw attention to cancel culture, which he alleges is just indicative of the left. And none of that is going on with the right wing as they're literally banning books in school

libraries in the state of Florida as we speak. But nonetheless, let me give you the details about his proposal here. The ultimate cancel act filed Tuesday by the state senator would require the state's division of elections to immediately cancel the filings of any political party whose platform had previously advocated for or been in support of slavery or involuntary servitude. Now, as you guys can clearly see, that proposal doesn't note Democrats specifically, but he's referring to Democrats because of the history of the Democratic Party, which we'll get to in just a second, but a little more on the bill. The bill called SB 1248 would require Florida officials to notify all registered voters who belong to any canceled parties that their part

parties no longer exist. It would also change their voter registrations to no party affiliation and provide procedures for those voters to update their affiliations to an active political party. So, look, Republicans have a super majority in Florida. It's clear that he's trolling here. At least that's what I think. That's what others have said about this proposal. Who knows if they're actually going to go through with it? But the reason why they're referring to Democrats here is because of the fact that the Democratic Party back in the day, especially the Southern Democrats, were not in favor of ending slavery. Okay, so, but then there was the whole realignment. We've talked about this a billion times on the show. The Democratic

Party of today is very different from the Democratic Party back then. And this is just a way to make a point about like, well, the left goes around canceling everyone. Why don't we cancel their entire party? Okay, so first of all, obvious theatrics, right? So is this a pressing issue for the citizens of Florida? Is this going to affect your life? Hey, you know what? If they pass this bill, then I'm going to feel good about owning the lives. Yes, yes.

I'm not going to have any more money or health care or the environment's not going to be better. Our community is not going to be any more protected. But we're going to own the lives. Well, you know, it's all entertainment now, bread and circus. So maybe the Republican voters will love it, right? But it certainly doesn't help your life other than psychologically where you need a lot of help. But the essence of the story is about the great deception that the right wing does, which I think the media lesson get away with. They do, yes.

So this is the beginning of chapter three in my book, Justice is Coming. It's called a Southern strategy. This is what the Republicans did. Nixon decided, hey, the Democrats used to be the party that was in favor of slavery. That's true. Remember, the Republicans say, oh, we're the party of Lincoln. I mean, Lincoln was a Republican, technically true, right? So are they actually the party of Lincoln?

No, they switched sides. And after Lyndon Johnson passed Civil Rights Act, invoting Rights Act, Nixon is a well-documented. In fact, two heads of the Republican National Committee have admitted this and apologized, said, Yes, when we saw the Democrats pass civil rights act, we decided to become the racist party and go and try to get those voters in the South that would then abandon the Dixiecrats who they were supporting because the Democrats were the more racist party. So now let's go get those racist voters. That's just a flat out fact. It's actually one of the most elementary facts about American politics that there is. Every single reporter knows a Southern strategy.

And they know that the Republican leaders have apologized for it, even though they still. do it. And yet they never share with you that, no, wait a minute. When you say you're the party of Lincoln or the Democrats who are in favor of slavery, you are leaving out the most critical fact in American political history. Intentionally. Intentionally. Right. And of course, I mean, I don't want to say, of course. I'm going to go ahead and speculate, though, that part of the reason why they're doing away with certain curriculum in states like Florida, history curriculum, is because they don't want students to know about the reality of what happened with the Southern strategy and all of that. But anyway, putting that aside for a second, I mean,

it's an interesting trolling attempt for a guy who belongs to a party where I can recall a few people coming out and trying to sanitize the institution of slavery with all sorts of nonsense about how, well, some slaves were actually treated really well by their slave masters. You know, they were fed. Yeah, they were beaten and everything they did was by force. But, you know, some of the slave masters, they weren't so bad. I mean, I can't, how many times have we done stories like that? And you know how many times it's been Democrats that said that? Zero.

And it's, and by the way, like a hundred years ago, it would have been probably almost exclusively Democrats. There was certainly plenty of racist Republicans back then too. But, but mostly Democrats. But in the last 40, 50 years, that's the Republican Party. They chose that path on purpose. And guys, we're honest. in our reporting here. So as the Republicans are absurd for saying that the party of Lincoln,

the Democrats are also absurd for saying that they're the party of FDR. FDR was a progressive that's further left than Bernie Sanders. And right now he would be attacked by everyone in Democratic leadership as a radical progressive left winger anarchist Antifa. Okay, so both parties have done their switches. The Republicans on the issue of race, the Democrats on the issue of economics. Can we also talk about the notion of involuntary servitude? Because again, his proposal says that we need to ban any party that has, you know, advocated for or been in support of slavery or involuntary servitude. I remember when states like Florida decided to open businesses back up prematurely in the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and essentially said the teachers

or any employees who were uncomfortable going back to work because you know the virus was still killing a ton of people still had to go back to work too bad because if you don't if you don't go back to work what happens you lose your job you lose your livelihood you might end up on the streets I feel like that might fall under the category of involuntary servitude to some extent mm-hmm look if we In the Republican hypocrisy, we'll never get out of this story. It's just such a, look, look, at the end of the day, he's getting exactly what he wants, right? He wanted attention.

Congratulations, you got your attention. Yeah. But, I mean, again, trolling the left might make some of the Republican voters in that state feel good, but what does it do to improve your life? All right, one super last thing on the media, these kind of theatrics wouldn't work and they would backfire if we had honest journalists who would then say in every article about this, oh, by the way, you should all know that the party's swore. because of the southern strategy on the issue of race, and the Republican Party is now the one that is by far the more racist. And then, well, you wouldn't want to mention that you were the party of Lincoln, you wouldn't want to do these kind of games if you knew the reporters were going to be honest about who the Republican Party is today. And by the way, part of the, as I explained in my book, part of the reason I get so mad at the media is because they didn't tell me. And that's why I was a Republican when I was younger, if I knew they hated all the others, including my family, I wouldn't have been a Republican.

Can you please be honest with the American people? When we come back, we've got more news for you, including super fun congressional hockey game between lawmakers and lobbyists. I mean, what's wrong with that, right? So cool, we should celebrate. And the Hill did. So we've got that and more coming up. All right, back on T.O.T. Jank, Anna, Danielle and Bufuro with you guys. They just signed up. It's Daniel Garofalo. So you guys are awesome. Thank you for doing that.

Now you're part of the Young Turks. You see us do something good? You get the credit. You see us doing something wrong? That's on us. Okay, hit the join button below the video on YouTube. All right, Casper. Well, congressional lawmakers had a fun. hockey game with lobbyists and we should celebrate. At least that's the sense I got from reading about it in the hill, which just blows my mind because there's no mention of how problematic it is that the corruption is so baked into our system that you got these congressional lawmakers having hockey games with lobbyists all out in the open and everyone's like, yeah, this is great. Now, the cover story is that they're doing it for charity.

What's the cause? Raise money for women in hockey, which I don't want to get the hockey people mad. So I'm just going to move on. Now the headline, really, really? Apparently we're not moving. No, no, we're not moving. Really, we need congressional lawmakers to play ass lap football with lobbyists for women's hockey. Really?

Okay, guys. So first of all, in this case, I suppose it would be ass slap hockey rather than football. But you get what I'm saying. Of course. By the way, I Google that phrase. That's not a phrase. You say it all the time. Yeah, I made it up. Oh. I like it. Okay. So, but guys, the reason why what Anna is saying is relevant and not just a random dig at women's hockey is because like this is the top cause. This is why you guys had to get together. No, you guys wanted to get together so that the lobbyists can influence the lawmakers and the lawmakers can take tons of bribes from that. Yes, that's exactly right, right? So nothing against women's hockey.

I just, that's the cover story and they couldn't even, they were too lazy to find a better cover story. That's my point. So they raise $150,000 doing this, okay? Now let's give you the headline from the Hill. Lawmakers trounce lobbyists, an annual charity hockey game. And you know what? That's about the only time lawmakers trounce lobbyists,

because most of the time lobbyists own our politicians. And the corporate donors that they represent own our politicians. So in the piece, Emily Brooks writes, after the House of Representatives gaveled out for the week of, for the week on Wednesday, House Majority Whip, Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, traded voting sheets for a sheet of ice and laced up for the Congressional Hockey Challenge. Whoa. Emmer and the rest of the team lawmakers beat team lobbyists eight to three after taking an early lead, marking the, marking the, the fifth consecutive win for the lawmakers in the 13th annual charity game. That's my favorite part.

Okay, so one of the lobbyists is a former goalie for a professional hockey team. It's so obvious they're throwing the game. It's hilarious. Okay, eight to three, one of the legislator dudes like 98 is. No, no, no. House majority whip Tom Emmer. I've seen his moves. Uh-huh.

He's smooth. Really? No, of course not. Are you kidding me? I'm like, is this like a Kevin Costner kind of situation? No, definitely not. How dare you? This guy's Emma Fudd, you know, he's got a mansion and a yacht.

Anyways, it reminded me of Putin. Do you remember the propaganda video? We showed up Putin playing hockey against the Russian national team, and he scored five goals. Of course he did. Of course he did. Yeah, totally. I mean, grandpa's like goals. around the rink like this and the hockey player, the national hockey players, like the best players in the world are like, oh no, he got past me. Oh, he scored another goal. Come on. Come on. And so these love, the lobbyists are like, oh, oops. They got past the professional hockey goalie again. So let's talk about which lobbyists were there. By the way, I should note for the congressional lawmakers who couldn't make it to the game, they sent their staff, right? And the staff,

Those are the ones who take up the meetings with the lobbyists for the most part as well. So the corruption continues. But nonetheless, I wanted to give you some names that attended the hockey game. Trevor Hanger, who's the senior vice president of a company known as Forbes Tate was there. Now, he made headlines a few years ago as an emergency backup goalie for the Washington capitals. So I think that's what you're referring to, changing. They scored eight goals on them against a professional. Eight goals.

Okay, Eddie, go ahead. So I did a little research on Forbes Tate because obviously I didn't know what that was. And here's what their statement is on their website about what their company does. Our team has a history of working with government officials, C-suite executives, I bet you do. From Fortune 100 companies and leaders to some of America's most dynamic organizations, often fostering new development of new and sometimes non-traditional partnerships. Okay, my favorite part is the second half of this. Our knowledge of the context, or I'm sorry, our knowledge of the complex anatomy of government

decision-making processes opens doors to our clients across the nation's capital and around the country. We have developed and continue to maintain productive working relationships with local, state, national, and international policymakers that allow us to provide security. integrated solutions for our clients. I mean, the corporate speak for something as simple as we help companies bribe politicians is amazing. It is. It really is amazing. It could be said in one sentence and that was it, what Anna just said. Look, this is when a lot of the people in Washington are like, these progressives, they're so mean. Yes. And they don't even want us to just

have fun every once in a while. No, I don't. Remember comedy like C-O-M-I-T one? like getting along with people cordial, God, they're such barbarians. We prefer civility in cars. No, no, no, guys, I have the same standard for this as I do with the White House Correspondents to me. If it was the exception rather than the rule, then I'm perfectly happy with it. Oh, my God, play hockey, smashing to each other. Lawmakers are like, this is the one time I'm going to take it out on the lobbyist.

Coming in here, bothering me all the time, boom! And no, you can't get what you want in the bill, right? No, instead, they're ass slap hockey. They're like, hey lobbyists, oh, hey, lawmakers. I got the money coming for you later. We'll make out tomorrow, right? Thousand percent. This is the rule, not the exception.

That's why it's kind of disgusting. Other people who were there in terms of the lobbyists. Nick Lewis, who's a senior vice president at UPS's legislative affairs office, so he's just the lobbyist for UPS. And also Michelle McGregor, who's a senior strategist at Oric, if you're wondering what Oric is, it's a law firm for venture-backed companies. But I bet they won't give any money to the politicians. So, yeah. I mean, look, that you're right, Jank. The reason why this stands out so much to us

is because this is not the exception. This is the rule. This is the majority of what elected lawmakers do. Fundraising, meeting with lobbyists, getting bribed, legally, of course, because our Supreme Court has baked it into our political system. And what also caught our attention was, as always, David Serota's incredible reporting, he's been calling out how the corruption is not only baked into our politics, but it's also baked into the way media reports the news. So he provided an incredible example of how Politico has been featuring sponsored content from Norfolk Southern. Yeah.

And it's just, it is incredible stuff. So let's go to graphic eight. I'm sorry, let's go to graphic seven. To try to shut down this new regulatory push, the railroad industry's top Washington lobbying group is running ads that look like native content touting rail companies alleged commitment to safety in Politico's huddle newsletter, a so-called play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, all while the industry urges policymakers to hold off on issuing new regulations. Now, of course, this is super relevant right now, considering Norfolk Southern's train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. It's been a big controversy, it's drawn a lot of attention to the lack of regulation, safety protocols when it comes to the rail industry. And here is what the sponsored ad look like. You see the Politico logo on there.

And then you also see a statement from the Association of American Railroads, which of course Norfolk Southern is part of. When it comes to safety, 99.9% is not enough. While 99.9% of all hazmat shipments that move by rail reach their destination safely, we know a single incident can have significant impacts. Yeah. So this is amazing in a couple of ways. Number one, what native content means is content disguised to make it look like it's real articles, right?

So a lot of people, the overwhelming majority of people that see that will not see this thing that says presented by, right? They'll see the giant political, it makes it look like it's a political article. Then they read the quote and the quote sounds like, oh my God, the railroad industry is so great. They're safe 99.9% of the time. What else do people want? They don't mention that that 1.1% of the time creates unbelievable accidents, hazards, balls of fire over Ohio and other states, et cetera, right? It's greatly misleading.

And why does political print that for the money, Lubowski? That's why. But to get a load of the second twist here, political criticized the lever because they said the lever is trying to fundraise off this disaster. Wait, what were they doing? They were asking for their readers to subscribe like the New York Times says. Right. That's literally the business model of every paper in America. But political didn't like that Cerroda. That the lever did good reporting on East Palestine, reporting that Politico would never do an

a million years because they would upset their corporate sponsors? Is that what you're referring to? So they go out of their way to say, can you believe what the lever's doing and how they're getting money from their readers, outrageous. And then they go take a bag of cash from the guys who caused the accident. And they don't, no, but that's not biased. No, guys, why don't we upset political further? And if you have the funds available, please subscribe to the lever.

Because honestly, I said it before I'm to say it again, their reporting on the train derailment in East Palestine was essential, essential in understanding how the effort to deregulate the safety protocols happened, how it worked across multiple administrations. So I would love nothing more than to upset Politico by increasing the subscriber base for the lever. So please subscribe to them. Okay, by the way, number one, we say that because no matter what happens, we're honest. with you guys and leverage on fantastic reporting. And number two, there's nothing wrong with progressives backing other progressives.

Yes. Something very right about it. Almost no one else does it. I want, and and Sarota and everyone else there is doing a fantastic job. Politico is a joke. Sarota also pointed out that Punchbowl news is having an event where they're talking to a Republican congressman, Patrick McHenry from North Carolina. And it's sponsored by Apollo managed, global management, a private equity company.

So these outlets, and they think that is perfectly normal, we get money from private equity, we get money from the train companies, we get money from pharmaceutical companies to do reporting. Do you or do you get money to do marketing? All right, well, you're going to love this story, Jank, because it has to do with corporate speech. And the corporate speech that lies to us, apparently you should be protected. collected. The FDA has been threatening to crack down on food companies that label their packages as healthy when in reality the product they're selling is anything. Now, the cereal companies are not happy about these threats.

They love labeling unhealthy, sugar-laden cereals as healthy. And so they plan on fighting back. How are they gonna do it? Well, by claiming that what the FDA wants to do violates their free speech rights. So more details on this, the rule from the FDA seeks limits, or the rule limits cereals, for example, to know no more than 2.5 grams of sugar per serving in order to be labeled as healthy. A restriction food manufacturers claim would exclude over 95% of ready to eat cereals on the market. That's why big cereal is very unhappy about this proposed rule.

A few weeks ago, the biggest cereal producers in the country like Kellogg's and General Mills threatened to file a lawsuit because, as I said, they claim that what the FDA is trying to do here violates their free speech rights. The rule, if finalized in its present form, the companies wrote, would be open to legal challenge in that it violates the first amendment by prohibiting truthful, non-misleading claims in an unjustified manner and also exceeds FDA's statutory authority in several ways. Now, the reason why I wanted to talk about this with you, Jank, is because unfortunately, there is precedent indicating that corporations are people with constitutional rights. Oh, yeah, for sure. This is actually what led to the destruction of our democracy

in the first place. It was all fruity pebble's fault. Okay, no, seriously, guys, there's this particular issue and then the larger issue that Anna is talking about. In the case of this particular issue, is it really a freedom of speech issue? So corporations have glommed on to this Republican idea that we'll just call everything freedom when we abuse our employees, our customers, et cetera, et cetera, or the general public. So can you say, hey, this is vitamin C when in reality it's poison? No, you cannot say that. You don't have the freedom of speech to call something healthy for you when, for example,

if it was toxic or poison, obviously not, obviously not, right? That's the government's job is to regulate that. Regulation just means laws. They pass a law so that these companies can't rob us, hurt us, et cetera, right? And the companies hate that. So they go with the help of the Republican Party and go, freedom. We need freedom to say that fruity pebbles is broccoli. Okay.

And then it's, I mean, their explanations here are hilarious. They're like, well, cereal has a lot of nutrients. Does it? No, it doesn't. And they're like, well, it could. Could have a lot of nutrients if you eat it with other things at breakfast. Come on, guys. Do better. How about you just eat the other things and not the cereal?

And by the way, like, look, for the longest time, and I think for some people still, children eat the cereal for breakfast. Like, as they're, whoop, stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now. And get a free chili dog.

Chili dog, not included. The naked guard. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. First meal of the day. Oh, I'll give you a sense of how bad it is. Yeah. And look, I did it and look at me.

And the serving sizes, by the way, the suggested serving sizes are so small that typically children eat double that amount because like who's going to eat like a little handful of fruity pebbles if they're going to have a cereal for breakfast. If I remember right, it's 24 times that amount of sugar that you're supposed to have. 24 times, okay? And they got high fructose corn syrup in there. Those guys are a huge part of the lobbying organizations that's pushing this agenda. But the overall thing that Anna mentioned in the beginning is the Supreme Court has ruled that in different instances, although they didn't technically rule that, it's the longer explanation is in my book, Justice is coming.

Chapter 4, you're going to love it. But the short explanation is they said corporations are human beings, human beings have speech rights. By the way, money is speech, and you have unlimited speech rights. So that means you have unlimited right to spend money in politics. That's how they were able to bribe every single politician and absolutely destroy our democracy. But in this case, now they're saying, not only do I get to bribe all the politicians, wait a minute, I'm a human being over here at Lucky Charms. And so I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and say that I have speech rights to lie to you. Insane. So you can't say that I'm not. healthy, you have to allow me to pretend that I'm healthy, full well knowing it isn't true.

Okay, now I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's related, because every time you talk to a right winger about the necessity for Medicare for all, for single payer healthcare, the argument inevitably ends up pivoting to, well, Americans are too fat, you know, that's the problem, that's why our healthcare system is so expensive, Americans are just so fat, they can't control how fat they are. It is so difficult to stay in shape in this country when you have incredibly deceptive marketing in regard to the foods we're eating. There are all sorts of subsidized things in our food, things like high fructose corn syrup, of course, because corn is subsidized, those kinds of things that fatten us up, right? And really, you have to go out of your way

to learn about these things. And if you don't have the resources for that, you have no idea what you're putting into your body and how it's having a negative impact on your body. The other thing is, let's just keep it real. Okay, when it comes to academic research on what is healthy and what is not healthy, what you should eat, how you can have a healthy diet, a lot of that is also funded by the very food companies that want to convince you that they're unhealthy foods or whatever unhealthy thing they're selling on the market is actually really good for you. That's going on as well.

There's all sorts of deceptive nonsense happening that makes it incredibly difficult to really suss out what is and is not healthy. And the deceptive marketing is certainly part of that. Yeah. Guys, to say that you have unlimited rights on anything does not make sense. You don't have the right to yell fire in a crowd of theater because it might hurt other people. You don't have the right to say that your product is healthy when it isn't healthy. So pretending that it's all these things that it isn't, Anna's right, not only it can the government regulate that, but they absolutely should regulate that, but on top of that, it does make us more overweight as a country. Look, they have nonstop propaganda these companies, and that's their job.

Their jobs to do marketing, but our jobs as citizens is to regulate them through our representatives, right? So I'll get back to one of their marketing in a second, but they're saying that no, I should be able to flat out lie to the customers. Oh, one of them is they say, well, this is really helping vulnerable communities because cereal is less expensive. So it's going to minorities and stuff like that. No, no, no, I know. I'm in that vulnerable community. No, no, cereal is not that inexpensive. Let me also just note that. Well, as I said many times earlier, when I was a struggling talk show host for a long, long time,

and I had made no money, I would ration the cereal. And it is a lot less expensive compared to other items of food because there's so much you can get out of one box. That's true. So I was in that vulnerable community, and I did exactly what they were talking about. But you didn't have to lie to me and tell me that tricks are good. for your health. That's an absurd lie. Yeah. I got to do it. I understand it, right? But don't brag that you're helping vulnerable communities. Yeah, my favorite argument of theirs, which is along the same lines is, no, actually cereal's excellent for your health because you eat it

with milk and milk has calcium and so you're welcome. That's the milk. That's not the cereal, let alone the fact that you're filled with high fructose corn syrup that makes. By the way, that's why when I was poor, I gained weight because you eat really unhealthy food because it's cheap and the cheap food is filled with toxic sludge, but they don't want you knowing about that. And that's what the story is about. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including the funding behind all of the

insane people who show up to school board meetings and yell at the school board members. Who's behind it? Great reporting here by Walker Bragman that I want to share with you, so don't miss it. All right, back on TYT, Chank, Anna, and a number of American heroes. Holy Beardragon is one of them, because he gifted five subs on Twitch. Way to look out for everybody else. Love you for it. Ricottis or Ricodeus Rex and Mary Ann Kane just became members on YouTube.

So you guys are amazing. Everybody, you can do it at t.com slash join. Be part of the positive change we're trying to create in this country. Casper. Any other comments? No, I'm going to save the really nice comment about you, later. Ah, okay. All right, fine. Let's do it. This book is a very clever and very subtly written, attempting to promote an agenda that is sexual in nature. When you look up this book on

Destiny Discover on the schools and county website, the book says this book is about two male penguins that fall in love. What could the intention of this book be? You got two male penguins that are falling in love. And in our society, I'm sure that's not getting it anything. God says homosexuality is a sin. So perverting the grace is saying, you're loved anyways. And Jesus did not say to the adulteress who was going to be stoned by people, go and keep sinning and committing adultery. He said, go and sin no more. I want to ask you, who gave us the institution of marriage? It is the almighty God who made the heavens in earth who made each and every one of us in his image, male and female, for his glory and

alone. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask you, believe that sodomy is a sin against the Almighty God. This is not the time to ask questions. I'll be glad to talk to you afterwards. What is going on? And why does it feel as though all of a sudden there are all sorts of of people showing up at school board meetings, panicking over the kinds of books that are offered in school libraries. Is it an organic effort or is there something else happening here? And some pretty excellent reporting by Walker Bragman kind of unloads on the shadowy billionaires behind the scenes who have funded this effort by a group, a conservative group known as moms for Liberty. Now they claim to be a grassroots effort. They're just trying to take over the public

school system to root out the woke agenda. But this reporting shows that it's anything but organic or grassroots and there's quite a bit of dark money behind it. So let's get to the details, shall we? According to Brackman's reporting, Moms for Liberty, MFL, has emerged as a national force boasting more than 200,000 members or so-called joyful warriors. and 200 chapters in 44 states. The 501C4 social welfare nonprofit has a connected 501C3 charity and several political action committees. Now, the group was founded at the height of the pandemic.

The founders of the group were salty about the fact that schools had shut down, that students who would return to the classroom had to wear masks, and they wanted to do something about it. So they decided to form moms for liberty. And then all of a sudden, they're featured on conservative media. They're getting all this funding. What's going on here? Now, MFL has been rallying parents against transgender accommodations in schools, the teaching of honestly any race-based curriculum. So they call it critical race theory, but that's really just a catch-all for anything that touches on the history of racism in this country. And also, Also, they want to root out anything having to do with LGBTQ plus rights.

Now, I'm going to get to their funding in just a moment. But before I do, Jank, I mean, the right wing, any cause they have, it's a well-oiled machine. They've got this infrastructure set up that I'm going to be honest, it's enviable, right? Oh, 100%. So look, I love this piece by Walker Brigman. One, because it exposes this group as fake grassroots and it's an interesting story in and of itself. But two, because it's a great story of how the imbalance is created between the right wing and the left wing. Whenever a group pops up, even if it started as grassroots in the beginning, like two randos start to decide to form a group.

Well, what happens? Two things happen in the right wing side. One is money flows in, right? Instantly billionaires that have invested interest in X, Y, or Z, hating gay people, hating black people. But mainly it's usually for other property. because they will come in and fund groups like this. And you see this group instantly starts getting secret donors in huge amounts, right? And then the second thing that happens is right wing media is very well organized.

So they start appearing on all the shows. Yes. And get extra publicity. That then fills their coffers with small donors, which then allows them to pretend they were grassroots all along, when that's actually a very small percentage of the funding that they're getting behind the scenes. Right? And then that takes random groups that started as nothing, and boom, elevate them with money and media. In fact, in 2021, all of a sudden, they received this massive contribution from a mystery donor.

And I should note, part of the problem is that dark money is allowed, right? So they do not have to disclose who their donors are. But through Bragman's reporting, we learn quite a bit in regard to like who's behind funding this effort. And then in terms of the right wing media, I mean, all you have to do is Google Moms for Liberty. And you'll see them on Tucker Carlson show. You'll see them on daily wire.

You'll see them all over the place. Because that's the one thing, let me just, this is a side note. And it's mostly directed toward the left. That's the difference between the right wing and the left wing media. The right wing, because they're so well funded and there's plenty of money to go around, they don't have to, I guess, fight for limited or scarce resources. They're very friendly with each other and they work together to amplify whatever cause they're working on or whatever cause they care about. Whereas on the left, there's so much infighting that it's nearly impossible to amplify the message that we want to amplify because we're too busy fighting each other.

You get what I'm saying? I do. And there's two reasons for that too. So look, but the third benefit that these right wing groups get is once right wing media has legitimized them and the amount of money that they have raised, quote unquote, legitimize them. then mainstream media covers them nonstop. So then they get into this virtual circle of nonstop coverage. Now let's go to the left wing as Anna is talking about. What happens there? Well, there's some corporate democratic groups that pretend to be, you know,

care about a cause or two, right? And they go through a similar process. They're funded by, you know, democratic billionaires, et cetera. But they never, ever push for progressive proposals because that would defeat the whole point. So if you're a genuine progressive group, well, no legislators come to. to help you. That it's even the most progressive legislators are very low to help progressive groups. They think, I don't know if they think it's beneath them. I don't know what it is, okay, but they won't help you. Money, there's no money for progressives. There's even the Democratic donors want

tax cuts, deregulation, et cetera. They don't want to help progressives who would raise their taxes and give people health care and get them higher wages. So there's just no money. So there's no promotion. And then in terms of progressive medium, I've been interviewing folks like this for years on TYT. I don't see almost anyone else doing it, right? So there isn't any cavalry outside of us to help folks. So, and then that leads to the second phenomenon, which Anna was referring to, which is, okay, number one, you didn't have any help to begin with. None of the infrastructure to the right wing has. And then second of what, we have a problem on the left, which is we love to tear each other apart. Okay. So if a group is doing well,

you name the category, right? But if a group's doing well, most other progressives will, or leftists, et cetera, whatever. So portions of the left wing will attack that group. Yeah, 100%. And if God forbid, any of their leaders or something, did something wrong, like when they were 13, they'll be like, oh, huh, okay, that's it. We don't even need the right wing. We don't even need the corporate guys. Right.

We're going to tear you down. Yeah, exactly. So then that creates a system where the right wing is constantly being lifted up. And the progressive left wing is constantly being ripped down. And then those groups don't get extra press from the mainstream media. So then our message never gets out. And the right wing message gets out nonstop. Now let's talk about the money behind this organization, Moms for Liberty.

So business aligned right wing groups had long been fighting to restore economic normalcy amid the pandemic, waging a war on public health measures and schools quickly emerged as a battlefront. An April 2020 school reopening guide from consultancy McKinsey & Company estimated that 27 million Americans needed child care to work. And companies, corporations, rely on the public school system as child care for their employees. When public schools are shut down, parents can't afford the astronomical prices associated with private child care companies. And so they have no choice but to stay home and provide the child care because what's the point of working if your entire paycheck is going to go toward child care for your kids so

you can work. Now, so that is what made the companies so obsessed with the issue of schools reopening, right? And so they were lobbying hard to get the schools to reopen as quickly as possible because they wanted their workers back in the office. So after campaign finance record showed that Moms for Liberty had paid for, okay, so the people behind, let me backtrack for a second. So the original founders of Moms for Liberty, three women, woman named Tina Descovic, Tiffany Justice, and Bridget Ziegler, and her husband, by the way, is Christian. Her husband, Christian is a Sarasota County Commissioner. So he's involved in politics in Florida. Now, after campaign finance record showed that Moms for Liberty had paid Ziegler's husband,

husband's company, $21,000, she distanced herself from the group, but she's still involved. She's just not in the group, right? With that said, in 2021, 70% of Moms for Liberty's total $370,000 in revenue came from contributions and grants. Of that, 40% came from a single anonymous $100,000 donation, nearly 60% of its contributions and grants total 40% of its overall revenue came from just five anonymous donations, okay? Only about $28,000 or less than 8% of the group's total revenue came from other revenue, which includes sales of merchandise, okay? So the big donations are coming from dark money donors, and they're not disclosing who they are.

And so they have connections to the Council for National Policy, CNP, and they've been described by the New York Times as a little known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country. Okay, the Betsy DeVos's family, they're part of this organization and Betsy DeVos, lo and behold, ended up being a keynote speaker for the Council for National Policies like annual event and also the Moms for Liberty event as well. Then there's Morton Blackwell. He's a member of the Council for National Policy and the president of the Leadership Institute, which is a Virginia-based dark money outfit dedicated to training conservatives to get involved in politics. The Leadership Institute was the largest sponsor of Moms for

Liberty's 2022 annual conference. MFL co-founder Ziegler, who has since left the group, is the current director of school board programs there. So that's why she's still involved, although she's not still in the group. And MFL's website directs parents to the Institute and other CNP-connected sponsors of its 2020 conference, the Coke funded Heritage Foundation, of course, a D.C.-based conservative think tank that we talk about quite often. And so it's the Koch brothers. They're behind it, clearly. The same players that we are all familiar with on the right, the big funders on the right,

they're the ones behind this effort with Mops for Liberty. So you get a progressive reporter and all of a sudden they're exposing what's actually happening behind the scenes. Now, have you ever read any mainstream media articles about this group that explained to you that, no, they're just funded by billionaires. They make it, the mainstream media helps them with their propaganda by making it appear that it's a grassroots group that is worried about a war on parents. That's the propaganda that they use. Now, in reality, it's actually funded by guys who are doing a war on teachers because teachers give to the Democratic Party, the teachers union does. And they want to privatize education so they can make a profit off of it.

And the way to do that is to destroy public education. Did you ever get that sense from any of the mainstream media coverage of this story? No, you get the sense that, oh, these are actually aggrieved parents that are so worried. And they all got together and they're just worried about how the Democrats are going after parents. No, total nonsense. You guys, you can tell how much they lie with that fun little t-shirt fact, right? So the leaders of the group are like, oh, we're making it. money mainly from the t-shirts. We sell so many t-shirts. That's out, yeah. But they know

their own books. They know that that's 8% of their revenue. Why are they saying that 8% of their revenue is the major way that they make money? Because they don't want you to find out. They're actually funded by these right-wing organizations with a completely different agenda that they're not telling you at all. Exactly. All right, we got to take a break. So when we come back for the second hour of the show, it's when the fund begins. Okay, We're going to talk about an oil baron who got scammed three separate times and lost billions. So, I mean, do I need to say more? It's going to be a party.

Don't miss it. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.