The Young Turks - Tilting at Windmills

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

A West Texas mayor resigns after refusing to help with the snowstorm, claiming “the city and county… owes you NOTHING.” Trump rips McConnell in a lengthy statement after being acquitted in his impeachment trial. Plus, new polls show Republicans love Trump even more now that he’s been impeached twice. 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. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too.

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because he had a few pretty awful town hall answers yesterday during his CNN town hall. So we'll talk about that, we'll give you guys an update on where the conversation is really going when it comes to increasing the federal minimum wage. And my favorite part of that story has to do with the constituents. in West Virginia, who are upset at Joe Mansion for not fighting for a $15 an hour minimum wage. You guys got to get active. People in West Virginia need economic help too? That's crazy. He should look into that.

It's shocking. He should do some research. So we're going to get to all of that later. Listen, Trump has come out of his golfing vacation. He's now attacking Mitch McConnell. We're going to get to that as well. But I actually want to start off with a story that might seem like a small story, something that's just hyper-local. But I really do think it's indicative of the type of mentality that we're seeing among politicians today.

So, John, if you're ready, let's get right to it. I'm almost ready. I'm good. Okay, good. All right. Well, let's talk about what's happening with the mayor of a West Texas town. The mayor of a West Texas town, Colorado City in Texas to be specific, has resigned following a pretty awful social media post that has received so much backlash for very obvious reasons. Now, as we had shared with you in an earlier show, Texas, along with several other states, are dealing with frigid temperatures.

Texas is really dealing with the brunt of this winter storm because of the uniquely terrible position. the state has been in when it comes to its power grid, there have been rolling blackouts as a result of that. People have been left in the cold without power to heat themselves. It's been a complete and utter disaster. And so understandably, there have been constituents, there have been people who have been reaching out to their local politicians hoping that they would get some assistance. But Tim Boyd, now the former mayor of Colorado City in Texas, is not too happy about that. He doesn't think that you should reach out for any type of help from your elected leaders.

Let me give you just some excerpts from the post that has since been deleted. He writes, no one owes you or your family anything, nor is it the local government's responsibility to support you during trying times like this. Sink or swim, it's your choice. The city and county, along with power providers or any other service, owes you not. nothing. There's more. Let me remind you all that more than four million Texans have been left without power in the state. And Texas really prides itself on ensuring that their utilities are privatized. They believe in market competition. And what's the argument that we usually

hear, John, from people who argue that free market capitalism is the absolute best? Well, I mean, You pay for, you get the best service, right? Sorry, I'm answering the question that I asked to you, but go ahead. Mostly what you had said. No, no, but seriously. Yeah, yeah, that it's supposed to produce the best outcomes and natural incentives, blah, blah, Invisible Hand. Yeah.

Yeah, but these power companies, they owe you nothing. I mean, they expect you to pay for the service, but they owe you nothing. So let me give you more from what he had posted. If you don't have electricity, you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water, you deal without. And think outside the box to survive and supply water to your family. Only the strong will survive and the weak will perish. I feel like he wants people to break into his house and steal his stuff.

Like if he has what, like what are you going to do? You're going to complain. We're thinking outside of the box here, buddy. You got a problem with me, huh? Should I unrope you? Well, survival of the fittest and all that. Yeah, so what do you, so you don't want a government, you act like you don't want a society. What do you want exactly? You want anarchy and yet you ran for mayor, so that doesn't really seem consistent. I get, I get that there are people who are so antisocial that they might think something like that. Usually it's as a result of you being privileged to not be one of the houses

that lost power and you just assume something about you naturally makes you better. I do not understand a politician posting it. They must have thought, well, I guess, you know, Trump, Marjorie Green, anything goes? Just say what you think. Maybe there are actually limits though. Yeah, limits when people are desperate and seeking help from their elected politicians, and I know this is a local politician. And when you get this kind of response, I mean, look, I get that there are conservatives, certainly conservatives in Texas who believe in small government. But I would venture to say that even those small government Republicans are understanding of the fact that what Texas is experiencing right now is exactly what government

is supposed to take charge of and provide services in order to protect people so they don't die, right? Like the whole point of the government is to be able to protect its people. And that's not what this government's doing. That's for sure. That's not what this mayor had any interest in doing. I don't know why he had any interest in being mayor. I mean, I think that should probably be looked into. Salary maybe. I don't know. I know. So someone in the chat in a Twitch chat was like this is like Mad Max. And I get it like, you know, sink or swim, survival, the fittest and and all that. But the thing is that even in Mad Max, Morton Joe does give some water. Like he gives handouts. This guy's meaner than the dictatorial post-apocalyptic leaders of Mad Max.

I mean, speaking of handouts, he mentioned that specifically, writing bottom line, quit crying and looking for a handout. Get your asses, get your asses and take care of your own family. I just, it's just, it's so callous and so disgusting. And he claims that he had posted that as a private citizen because he allegedly had resigned prior to posting that. I'm not really sure I believe him, to be honest. He says he resigned on February 12th. And he partly doesn't even regret. Yeah, exactly.

And the city's website, by the way, also still had him listed as a mayor because guess what, he was still the mayor. My guess is this post received so much backlash that he agreed to resign. And he did also, you know, he took down the post and then he posted something else. And you would think maybe he had originally posted when he was in the heat of the moment. He's frustrated, he's getting contacted by so many people, it's just out of his hands. He doesn't know what to do. You know, maybe he had a lapse in judgment. I know I'm giving him too much of the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not even, I'm not even buying it, right? But he didn't even really apologize. The post that he put up later was this. I won't deny for one minute what I said in my post this morning. I was speaking as a citizen as I am not the mayor anymore. I apologize for the wording and ask that you please not harass myself or my family anymore. And what he's referring to regarding his family is the fact that his wife jumped in to defend him.

And then I guess people were also, you know, not so complimentary toward his wife. In fact, according to him, his wife also lost her job as a result of her own input in this. That's what he's claiming in the new post that he put up. And he also says this, I admit there are things that are said all the time that I don't agree with, but I would never harass you or your family to the point that they could lose their livelihood such as a form of income. No, I mean, you maybe wouldn't harass people, but you certainly would neglect people to the point where they could potentially lose their lives in the middle of a winter storm where their

power has been shut off and they don't have access to water. That makes you a pretty bad person. Yeah, and I guess it's, whether it's true or not that he resigned, and it almost certainly isn't that he had already resigned, this is still what you think? Is it better in some way that a private citizen who apparently is weathering the storm okay thinks that everyone else who wants age should stop complaining. I guess it's less of a crisis because you can't have your leader doing that, although that is apparently who he was when he was the leader. And should he seek political office in the future, this is what he thinks about the role of government in its relationship with the citizenry. Look, yeah, don't harass his family, I guess. I don't know.

If I had any more advice to him, I would say, bottom line, dude, quit crying and looking for a social media handout, get off your asses and take care of your own family. No, but see, we don't actually think that. This is how he thinks about the world. We want you to join us in society, which is a much nicer place to live. Yeah, and I mean, even one of our members had commented about what's going on in Texas right now is pretty awful. And this member had remembered the fact that Texas had sent California rakes when we were dealing with some pretty severe wildfires. And, you know, was a way to kind of rub the fact that we were suffering in our faces, which is a pretty horrendous and hideous thing to do. And so, you know, the suggestion is to mock Texas for having such

an awful power grid and overwhelmingly privatized system that has only hurt the residents of Texas right now. And, you know, I made this argument about like, we want to be better than that. We want to see people in this country as people, regardless of their political beliefs. We don't want people to suffer. There's all sorts of innocent people suffering in Texas right now, and it's not right. But little did I know that Texas had its own politicians that wanted to see their own people suffer. That's what we're dealing with in this country. I mean, it's not just in a federal level of government. I mean, even with a hyper local politician, such as a mayor of a town of 4,000 people, he just decides to openly, transparently give his own constituents

the middle finger. And he has no remorse. He's completely unapologetic about it. In fact, he ended up making himself out to be some sort of victim because of his wife allegedly losing her job after she had engaged in the same commentary, basically. So it's just, it's pretty devastating. I'm glad that he's stepped down. He has no business representing anyone because he doesn't care about the best interests of anyone other than himself and his family. And that's not the type of person who should be a politician or any kind of representative in government. Yeah. All right. Well, John, there was a story that broke today. And it has to do with, sorry, I'm like exhausted. I had insomnia last night. But let's get to the next story.

So Donald Trump has been missing in action lately. And honestly, it's been a little bit of a relief. The news cycle hasn't really been dominated by his tweets and his nonsense. But Rush Limbaugh, died today. And Trump was invited on Fox News to share his thoughts. Maybe he has some kind words for Rush Limbaugh. Maybe he wants to reflect on the memory of Rush Limbaugh. But remember, it's very on brand for Donald Trump to do what you're about to watch in this wonderful compilation put together by Jordan Yule. And he was one of the people that said we were going to win. He thought we were going to win. Well, Rush thought we won. And so do I, by the way. I think we won substantially.

And Rush thought we won. I was disappointed by voter tabulation. And a lot of other people feel that way, too. But Rush felt that way strongly. And many people do. Many professionals do. I think it's disgraceful what happened. We were like a third world country on election night

with the closing down of the centers and all of the things that happened later. And I don't think that could have happened to a Democrat. you would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat. We don't have the same support at certain levels of the Republican system. And he was furious at it. And many people are furious. You don't know how angry this country is.

He was somebody that really felt that was a very important victory for us. We should have had it, that we did have it. But he was somebody that felt that was a very important election. I did too. I mean, I did too. You see what's happening now. We play golf together a little bit. He was a very strong guy, physically very strong. Hit the ball a long way. He finally said something about him. Look, I will say this. His commentary about Rush Limbaugh and him remembering Rush Limbaugh was certainly far more kind than anything I have to say about Rush Limbaugh. So I'll give him that.

But of course, I mean, it's so on brand for Trump to make this about him and about repeating, by the way, the very same lies that led to a violent riot in our nation's capital where, you know, a cop was killed. Five people total died. He was impeached for it. I mean, it's just unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He's emboldened. by the fact that he never has to suffer the true consequences of his actions because Republican lawmakers are so pathetic, so weak, so cowardly, so backless, and so self-interested in their own political careers, that they'll let him get away with anything, anything, including doing something that incited violence toward them as they were in the Capitol, But you know, counting electoral votes. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. It is amazing. I found your hypothetical to be amazing, the hypothetical where there was some riot that you were talking about, which is something that would happen, had this happened to a Democrat. I, the whole him, I, you guys said before the show that he had called in and had talked about how he won. I had no idea how long it would go on. And I imagine that wasn't the whole thing.

That's the sort of thing where like in an episode of Seinfeld, it'd be a montage, it'd just be like an ashtray with more cigarettes like in it. He just kept talking and talking and talking and talking and that's insane to me. He's been gone for weeks. This is the first, at least for me, maybe he did something else. This is the first I've actually heard him speak since the inauguration and now I have to assume that every minute from then to now has been filled with him just repeating, it was a terrible thing, the thing that happened with all the things that happened and they stole it and how could they? And he still, but to do it because he knows it doesn't matter.

Like he can continue to say it was stolen. The mob was right to try to overthrow it. We didn't have enough support from certain levels of the Republican party structure to do what? I don't know, but presumably to steal the election. And no, no one who voted to acquit him has to explain themselves. They're not going to face any questions about that. It's just absurd. He might never stop talking about this. Remember how long he spent talking about Hillary Clinton after he already beat her? He was obsessed with that years after he won. What is it going to be like years after he lost? John, the Obama birth certificate thing. I mean, he doesn't let things go. And it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, disproving whatever he's believing in any

given moment. You're right. I mean, he is going to push this lie, regardless of what the consequences may be for everyone else. Obviously, he doesn't get to suffer the consequences. Yeah. Dude, just let it sink in for a second. I know we've said this before, but it never gets old. Like, it's shocking every time I really stop and think about it. On the day of the riots, Trump told his supporters that he was going to march to the Capitol with them, giving them a reason to believe that the violence that they were about to engage in, breaching the Capitol building. Everything they did had some legitimacy in it, right? Legitimacy to it because the president of the United States is encouraging us to do it. In fact, he's going to be there with us.

And he turned around and went to the White House and watched TV as these He's insurrectionists engaged in the criminality that they're now facing federal charges for. Yeah. And Trump's not going to save them from their criminal charges. They're on their own. It's just amazing. And he just keeps doing it because, hey, I mean, if the Republican Party refuses to hold him accountable,

why would he stop? Yeah. Well, we gotta take a break. When we come back though, Trump isn't done speaking. He is now attacking Mitch McConnell and doing it viciously, even though Mitch McConnell voted to acquit him in his second impeachment trial. We'll be right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-Eing the Republic, or UNFTR.

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and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR. in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Oh. Oh, so I guess since John's on this show, I got to try to sell you guys on TDR on TikTok, so you guys should totally follow the damage report on TikTok. So all you guys should totally follow the damage report on TikTok. So all you do is

is search the damage report and you'll find it and you should definitely follow it because it'll be awesome. John, do you post like dancing videos on there? Is that what's going on? I have not yet. Oh, okay. Looking forward to it. It's gonna be great. Jason Carter dance. Oh, that's something. I think people would prefer that actually. No, no, I've seen you dance. I think people would also prefer to see you dance. You should do it. It'll be good. Also, happy half hour is on Twitch. You should already be checking out our Twitch channel and happy half hour only sweetens the deal. So you can check it out tonight after the post game at 8.30 p.m. Eastern time, 5.30 p.m. Pacific.

And as you guys know, the host of that show is Brett Ehrlich. And the best part about it is that you get good news and good booze. So check that out at twitch.tv slash TYT. Moving on to member comments, Brad Boxwine writes in and says that the city and county owe you nothing. Also remember, pay your taxes. Exactly. By the way, can I also say, like, what drives me crazy about like the local tax wars is, you know, Texas has much higher property taxes than California does. So when they're like, Texas doesn't have state taxes. No, they find a way to tax you no matter what, because they still have to pay things.

Like they have to pay for services. So if they're not paying, if you're not paying through sales taxes or property taxes or whatever, they'll find a way. Like Florida, they don't have state taxes. Yeah, but you got to pay every time you use a road. Like every, every highway is a toll road, every single one. Like, it just drives me nuts. Anyway, moving on. Bolu writes it and says, I work for a company that has a regional office in Dallas and my co-workers in Dallas have like four hours of power every 10 hours. It's a total nightmare. Man, I really feel for you guys.

Please do whatever you can. And by the way, if there's anything we can do, anything our audience can do to help support, maybe send blankets, you know, stuff to help you guys keep warm. Let us know because no one should be suffering the way that you guys are. And it's just absolutely sad that the government has abandoned you, the local government. Kofifei writes in and says, I hope the citizens stop paying taxes after this. There's no point anymore if the government isn't going to step in when they're in need. Colorado Blue Blazer, I think we should finally call Republicans what they are, barbarians.

Some of us fight for civilization. Some want to live outside of civilization. Republicans want to destroy civilization just like barbarians. Totally agree. Let's get back to the show. Welcome back to TY-Y-T-Y-T-ROL with you. Everyone check out the damage report on TYT network, where John is a host. And I mentioned it during the break, but I'll mention it here.

Happy Half Hour airs tonight after our members-only post-game show. Check that out on the Twitch channel at 5.30 p.m. Pacific, 8.30 p.m. Eastern at Twitch.t.tv. And of course, you can become a member by going to t.yt.com slash join. And I mention that you should definitely check out the damage report tomorrow because my co-host is going to be one Anna Kasperian. So it should be really fun. It will be fun. I do really like doing your show. So I'm excited about it. It'll be a great time. So let's talk a little bit about the ongoing feud with Trump and Mitch McConnell because it's just getting spicier. And I hate both of these people, so it's kind of fun to watch.

So Donald Trump took a break from his sulking golf time at Mar-a-Lago to attack Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. While McConnell, of course, voted to acquit Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection, Trump is still very upset with him because he gave a scathing speech claiming that Trump bears the responsibility of inciting that insurrection. And so in a letter that he's written to Mitch McConnell, and I'm not going to read you the whole thing, it's very lengthy, you know, he actually uses some adult vocabulary and decent grammar. So part of me thinks that he's not really the one who wrote this, but he certainly agrees with the message. He argues that Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, true. And if Republican senators are going to stay

with him, they will not win again. We will never do what needs to be done or what is right for our country. Well, that's also true. And neither would Trump, obviously. We had four years of absolute disaster. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse making America great again and our policy of America first. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate, John, compassionate leadership. That's what Donald Trump wants. Donald Trump, who incited a violent riot in the nation's capital as lawmakers were counting electoral college votes for the rightful winner of the general election, Joe Biden. He's the guy who wants compassion, you know, and we're just not going to get it with Mitch McConnell. So we got to, we got to reject

Mitch McConnell and go with more Trumpism if we want compassionate America. I mean, he's a compassionate, positive force. Like he told one group, I forget exactly who, but he gave an inspirational speech saying that he loved them and that they're very special. It's a compassionate guy. Yeah, it's just a feud. It's, we've been hearing all about Trump versus Mitch McConnell, you know, Marjorie Green made it about that when her whole thing was going down, obviously the whole conversation

about what should happen with impeachment really came down to is this Mitch's chance to finally reassert control over the party. Maybe he'll vote to convict, maybe. And he didn't, he didn't do any of that. And yet they're still attacking him, all of them. Like Matt Gates is attacking him, Marjorie Green, Trump, like they feel that they they lost the election, they lost control of the Senate, but they feel like they're on top of the world. Like they've proven everything they need to. And now they just have to wait to find out, what form Trump is going to come back in, whether it's going to be supporting candidates, himself a candidate, media, whatever, they're still all, they are definitely sure that it's

going to be him. And that Mitch McConnell, despite all of these successes, I think us as his opponents, we can clearly see the stuff he's done that's been effective, they either take it for granted or don't even care about it. Mitch McConnell succeeded in confirming hundreds, literally hundreds of Donald Trump's federal judge picks, like nominees, hundreds of them. And honestly, part of that was a giant failure on the part of Chuck Schumer, who struck a deal with Mitch McConnell in order to fast track some of these confirmations. But legislative wins. I mean, Mitch McConnell certainly delivered when it came to passing Trump's tax cuts, really the only real policy. that Trump was able to pass. But when it came to most of his policies, most of it, or most of his

agenda, Mitch McConnell played along with him, refused to go against Trump, really? I mean, one of the only cases I can think of where Mitch McConnell clearly acted against what Donald Trump wanted was when he insured the passage of a veto proof, you know, veto proof bill to fund the the military, the National Defense Authorization Act. So I mean, it's just amazing how even though Mitch McConnell voted to acquit Trump, it's just not good enough because he gave that skating speech. And then later, over this past weekend, McConnell also wrote some sort of op-ed that also upset Trump because Trump does bear the blame. He is the one who's responsible for riling people up and encouraging them to do what they did in those riots in the Capitol.

Trump also writes, my only regret is that McConnell begged for my strong support and endorsement before the great people of Kentucky in the 2020 election, and I gave it to him. He went from one point down to 20 points up and won, how quickly he forgets. Without my endorsement, McConnell would have lost and lost badly. Now his numbers are lower than ever before. He's destroying the Republican side of the Senate, and in doing so seriously hurting our country. Remember, Mitch McConnell doesn't have to seek re-election for six years. So that's probably what made him feel empowered enough to give that speech. But if he was feeling so empowered, he should have voted to convict Donald Trump. Like the half measure is a really weird strategy,

especially coming from someone who I disagree with wholeheartedly when it comes to politics. But Mitch McConnell's not a dumb guy. He's usually very strategic and pretty effective. Yeah, he's far more evil than he is dumb. And I don't know if he would have been able to, if he really wanted to convict Trump, if he and eight others, I forget exactly what the number, nine others, he and nine others, if he would have been able to get them. I don't know that he would have necessarily. But I just like the stuff, the tax that Trump is making against Mitch McConnell, I get it.

You want the party to be aligned behind you rather than him, but like, Is Mitch different than he was two months ago? I don't think so. I think you, whatever awful attributes you're attributing to him he had then. So how stupid were you to put your strong support and sway the election by 21 points in a day and a half? That was a dumb thing for you to do then, wasn't it? But no, like none of this, it's all, again, it's all whatever he wants it to be. So he simultaneously, you have to believe this, from the point of view of his fans, can come in and give 21 points.

to Mitch McConnell. And at the same time, even though he was campaigning for Purdue and for Leffler, they lost, but that has nothing to do with him because Mitch McConnell's such a drag that he can overwhelm the vote in a redder state. Even though Trump was able to overwhelm Mitch McConnell's lack of charisma and dour demeanor in his own home state, none of it makes any sense. Trump had some effect on some of the elections and they lost the House and they lost the Senate. Yet he comes out of losing the, he lost the White House, he lost the Senate, he lost the House. And they're all sure, as we'll get to eventually with Lindsey Graham, they're all sure that, no, he's still a massive winner. Mitch McConnell, who won re-election, is the loser. Trump,

who lost it all aside from the Supreme Court, is the true winner. And they think that without feeling any, they don't question it at all. It's obviously true that they would rather lose and complain about how they actually won with a landslide, then just actually win. They prefer Trump's way. Well, it's really, it's really interesting to see what's happening with the Republican Party right now because they certainly did lose, but not by much. I mean, I think it was tens of thousands of votes total in certain states where Biden was able to pull off a win. The electoral college is still, yeah, incredibly undemocratic.

Yes, it is, it is. It is. And look, the way that this with the gerrymandering, the electoral college, it undeniably gives Republicans an advantage when it comes to the general election. There's no question about that. But my point is, what it appears is the Republican Party, meaning the politicians, people like Gates and Lindsey Graham, they're hyper-focused on appeasing Republican voters, whereas I think a smarter strategy is to look at, you know, voters in general and think about what you can do to increase the number of people who are willing to vote for your party. And I don't know how this is going to play out in the future, but I highly doubt independent voters are watching what's happening

with the Republican Party right now and thinking like, yeah, this is great. I want that. But what, you know, Lindsey Graham is terrified of is Trump's base. He's afraid of Trump's insane stately loyal Republican voters. And so he's made a political calculation. Matt Gates has made a political calculation to really latch on to that and not really do much to expand the Republican voting base. And I don't know if that's a winning strategy. The only thing I do know without a shadow of a doubt is that Trump's base is in fact loyal and they're unwavering in their absolute devotion to Donald Trump. So that might end up hurting Mitch McConnell somehow down the line. There are calls for new Republican leadership in the Senate as a result of Mitch McConnell's

scathing speech against Donald Trump. We'll see how it plays out. But I do know that Trump, I'm sorry, I do know that. 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 a TD small business account manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to 20 $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Mitch McConnell desperately wants to rid the party of Trumpism, but that is not going to happen

when you have Republican lawmakers like Matt Gates, you know, like Josh Hawley, like Lindsay Graham, you know, basing most of their political messaging and campaigning on pandering to Trump's base, you know, Trump isn't just going to go away unless Republican lawmakers stop talking about him, unless the media, the right-wing media stops talking about him. And they're not going to stop. So Mitch McConnell is kind of stuck in a tough spot. And I don't envy him, but I'm also kind of enjoying watching this because it was people like Mitch McConnell who empowered and emboldened Donald Trump, like paved the way for people like Donald Trump. So- One of the many people that thought, yeah, that thought, I can use this.

This won't possibly hurt me. And for Mitch McConnell, maybe it won't. I mean, he's going to be in the Senate for the rest of his life or whatever. But for what his conception of the Republican Party, what it's supposed to be, yeah, it's still a massive impediment to it. Yeah. And by the way, I should also add that he went after Elaine Chow. Going to, going back to your point, John, Elaine Chow was appointed by Donald.

Donald Trump as his transportation secretary, he didn't have to do that. He's the one who chose her as transportation secretary, and he writes this. Likewise, McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family's substantial Chinese business holdings. And he's referring to business holdings that, by the way, Elaine Chao is involved in as well. He does nothing on this tremendous economic and military threat. Okay, I mean, again, you appointed her. And you seem to not have a problem with the conflicts of interest involved with Elaine Chow serving as your transportation secretary.

But okay, I mean, I guess everything is everyone else's fault. You don't share the blame at all. It's like, how, what is he, hired dozens of people that he's had to attack or that the right has ended up agreeing are all traitors? Like, why does he keep surrounding himself with the worst people in the world? and why does that never reflect poorly on him? We hire the best people. All right. Well, let's move on to our next story.

All right, great. So now that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are openly feuding, people like Lindsey Graham are concerned that Mommy and Daddy are fighting. And he shared those concerns during a recent interview on Fox News. Let's hear what he has to say. Mitch McConnell working with Donald Trump did a hell of a job. They're now at each other's throat. I'm more worried about 2022 than I've ever been.

I don't want to eat our own. President Trump is the most consequential Republican in the party. If Mitch McConnell doesn't understand that, he's missing a lot. But my beef is not with Mitch McConnell because he has the same policy views I do. My beef is that we need to knock this off. Kevin McCarthy is the leader of the House Republicans. He's taken a different approach to President Trump. I would advise Senator McConnell to do that as to President Trump.

In that poll, you own the Republican Party, my friend, but 55% of the people wanted you impeached and removed. You are the hope of the future of conservatism, President Trump, but we've got to make some changes to get back to White House in 2024 and have a Republican majority and the Senate and the House in 2022. I believe the Democrats are doing all they can to help us. just need to help ourselves. If you can get past how pathetic Senator Lindsey Graham is and how watching him grovel

like that on cable news is incredibly uncomfortable, the underlying message here is actually correct because recently Politico and Morning Consul did a poll and they found that 54%, meaning the majority of Republican voters, said that they would vote for Trump in 2024. And that's up from 42 2% in January in the immediate aftermath of the riot. So after the Senate impeachment trial, after all of that evidence that was presented by the impeachment managers, all it did was increase the support for Donald Trump among Republican voters. The only other Republican, by the way, who received double digit support in this poll was former President Mike Pence, vice president, Mike Pence, who got a whopping 12% of Republican people were saying that they would

vote for him. And I don't even think 12% actually mean it. I think they're naming the ones they can think of. And I don't think, first of all, I'm not that bothered by the fact that his numbers are going up because the point of impeachment wasn't to get his base to turn on him. It was to solidify in other people's minds what he actually was and make sure that that's what history reminds it as. And ideally to get some consequences, but that was never going to happen. why wouldn't his numbers go up? What new Republicans are there? What Republicans have assumed a sort of higher profile since then? There's really not, I mean, there's probably less Republicans in the news thanks to Biden winning than before. Like you're not really seeing Pompeo.

Josh Hawley's been hiding in a Hobbit hole for the past eight weeks or so. Like, I don't see why his numbers wouldn't go up. With what Lindsey Graham said, I get that I talked about this in the TDR pre-show today, I think he's kind of right that it's the only option they have is to double down on Trump because the Republican Party in the best of times pre-Trump didn't necessarily have much policy-wise that they wanted to run on. And whatever last vestiges of that they had was gone by the time Trump lost three election. Trump himself wasn't even, he literally did not have a platform. The Republicans didn't pass a platform during the 2020 campaign. And so what are they, what are they running on? Health care policy? We'll see it in two weeks. Like that became

such a joke. They don't, they don't have that. There's the wall and some vague reference to infrastructure. Like, there's no, there's no policy they're going to run national campaigns on or a national set of congressional campaigns on. They just really have to hope that they can get the Trump fans to come out because they don't have the policy and they don't have any other personality that they're going to run on. I mean, like you can get conservatives fired up by talking about cancel culture, like did you hear a trans students playing sports? Like that's all their media talks about. But you're not going to like win over independent voters by that, I don't think. Like Lindsey Graham is pathetic,

but he's also not necessarily wrong. If you assume that they're not going to try to appeal on policy to these voters, then what else are they supposed to run on then, hey, Trump's back. Well, also Lindsey Graham, At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN.

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And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EXPRE SVPN.com slash TYT. TYT, check it out today. Is probably sitting back and reading tea leaves because one of the least popular Republican lawmakers right now is Mitt Romney. And there's this whole notion about Trump supporters feeling the way they do as a result of their socioeconomic situation because of economic anxiety.

But Mitt Romney, although I'm very suspicious of him and I don't believe him for a minute, has proposed a decent, I mean, a pretty generous child tax credit, which wouldn't just be a tax cut. People with children would literally receive money deposited in their bank accounts per child every month if Romney's plan passed. Now, there are all sorts of issues with Romney's plan. We talked about that in great detail on this show. I highly recommend you go back and watch that on our YouTube channel. But it doesn't matter. I mean, it speaks to the issues that we've been told that Trump supporters allegedly care about. Mitt Romney also just proposed his version of increasing the federal minimum wage. They're not interested. It seems like they're

not really, and I'm specifically talking about Republican voters who are supportive of Trump. They're not swayed by economic policies that could really potentially better their lives. They have genuinely become voters who are just loyal to Trump and what he represents. And to be quite honest with you, he certainly didn't represent economic stability for them. He represented massive tax cuts for the wealthy. That's what he did. That is the only thing that he really accomplished while he was in Congress. I mean, in office. I think that they could in theory. But I think that there has been this spell cast on them by originally right wing media.

and now right wing politicians who are basically indistinguishable from right wing media, they act exactly the same on social media, they appear on the same shows, and they hope that when they lose office, they'll get a show on Fox Nation. So it's pretty pretty much the same thing, which is like you tell them that the government will never be able to help you. Those damn libs or they're just doing all these benefits to help black and brown people or whatever. But they are hurting economically. They've got student loan debt and they've got medical bankruptcies and things like that. But they've been convinced that the true problem is section 230 or cancel culture or whatever. And they just, they get so caught up in that. And, and, you know,

it's laying on a foundation of a predisposition towards homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, all of that. So they're ready to turn their attention to the people that they hate. That's totally true. But I think in theory, like if Tucker Carlson, like if he was an actual population, or whatever, rather than the fake thing that right-wing populism is, which is, I say economic elites, and then I talk about lesbian panda bears or whatever, I think he could get them to focus on these things. And they could even come up with some right-wing version of a plan to fix income inequality or medical debt or the health insurance crisis or the opioid crisis or whatever. They just don't, they don't care to because they're doing well enough

electorally. You know, they lost, but they've still got a bunch of senators and stuff like that. They've got the judges to protect them. And fundamentally, Republican politicians and Republican media share the fact that those problems are ones that might work like to get new voters, but they don't themselves consider those to be problems. They don't care about that. They're not feeling any of that. And government action to solve those problems would cost money that might demand tax raises that would actually affect them. So they don't really have an electoral or an immediate financial or ideological reason to treat any of these crises with the serious like concern that would seem a party would have to to be nationally competitive.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. And I think that's a good theory. What will be interesting, though, is to see how this all plays out because the Republican Party is certainly fractured right now. I know I have my own predictions and my own thoughts about which way it's headed. And things are not looking good. for the Mitch McConnell's of the world, but it is pretty entertaining to watch Senator Graham attempt to mend the relationship between McConnell and Trump. We'll see if that works, I doubt it, but we'll fill you in as we learn more details. We've got to take a quick break. Let's do that, and we'll be right back.

You know, Hey guys, welcome to our social break. Okay, God, there's so many great comments. I'm going to read as quickly as I can, okay, because I want to get to as many as possible. Time Potato writes in and says, is it possible that Trump is so stupid that he actually thinks he did a great job as president? Yes, that he made strides toward making America great again, and the country needs him to save us? Yes, I genuinely think that he is completely delusional. Think about what his upbringing

was probably like. His father was probably the toughest on him. But when you're born in that kind of privilege and wealth, you're surrounded by people who are constantly telling you how great you are. And I'm sure he's had that his entire life. So I'm sure he genuinely believes that he somehow saved this country when in reality he's thrown it in complete disarray. Gabby And Rita writes it and says, that letter from Trump is basically just a long-form series of tweets. Yes. Between that and his rambling nonsensical tirade on Fox News, I'm getting a sense that Trump's brain is utterly melting without the emotional crutch that Twitter was to him for so long. I just, I know, I know that like, I have disagreements with people on the left on this. I hope he remains banned on Twitter, okay? Please don't at me. He is a disaster. He should be banned. All right, moving on to our super chats, Mike B writes in and says, I wonder how far the money Trump sent on, how far the money Trump spent on the wall in Texas would have gone in fixing

their power grid in Texas. Understand though, Mike, that their power grid in Texas isn't like, it's not like, oh, there need to be like some infrastructure updates. No, the problem is that they tied their energy and that utility specifically to the markets. Like, it's all privatized, all deregulated. And yeah, I mean, it's so deregulated that they didn't think to put de-icing equipment on the wind turbines, which is part of the reason why the wind turbines did freeze. But the wind turbines are not the problem. The problem is that there were no energy reserves because with private companies, there's no incentive to have energy reserves.

Why would they? It's not profitable to do so. They're not regulated to do so. So that's the problem here. For Bezia says the form of the traveler will be Mr. Stay Put, John. Let's be real. Stay puffed? Stay puffed.

It's a, I don't know what any of this is. Stay Pupped Marshmallow Man Ghostbusters reference. Choose the form of the destructor. The traveler has come. I got you. I got to go back and watch that movie. Jason R also writes it in our super chat section. So the GOP plan is to secure 100% of the minority of the electorate for people who support trickle-down economics.

No wonder that math works for them. And again, like think about how they've successfully structured things through gerrymandering. So they just, they can win with a minority of the vote. All right, we gotta get back to the show. Let's do it. Thank you. Hey, everyone, welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. Now let's move on and talk a little bit about the coronavirus and when people can expect schools to open. I know parents are

definitely ready for that. So Joe Biden, Biden recently had a town hall on CNN. And there's been a lot of confusion about when schools can expect to be open amid the coronavirus pandemic. Now, earlier, we heard that Joe Biden wanted to ensure that schools open, that specifically the majority of K through eight schools open by the end of his first 100 days in office. He actually rebuffed that earlier claim that was made by his press secretary, Jen Saki, that the president's goal was to have the majority of schools open at least one day a week in person in the same time frame. So again, different messaging from different people within the administration. It has been confusing. And so he addressed

that during the town hall. Let's take a look at how that went down. Your administration had set a goal to open the majority of schools in your first 100 days. you're now saying that means those schools may only be open for at least one day a week. No, that's not true. That's what was reported. That's not true. It was a mistake in the communication. But what I'm talking

about is I said opening the majority of schools in K through 8th grade because they're the easiest to open, the most needed to be open in terms of the impact on children and families having to stay home. So when do you think that would be

K through 8 at least 5 days and 1 I think we'll be close to that at the end of the first hundred days. We'd have a significant percentage of them being able to be opened. My guess is they're going to probably be pushing to open all summer to continue like it's a different semester. Do you think that would be five days a week or just a couple? I think many of them five days a week. The goal will be five days a week.

Now it's going to be harder to open up the high schools for the reasons I said. It's just like if you notice the contagion factor in colleges is much higher than it is in high schools or grade schools. So I definitely understand the need to reopen schools, especially for younger students. I mean, I think about my own niece who's, you know, four and a half. And having that interaction with children her age is so important being cooped up at home all day long with stressed out parents can't be good for her. And I'm sure that so many other families are experiencing the same thing. But what's missing from this conversation, in my opinion, is the fact that schools across this country are not funded equally. And so we keep talking about schools as if they're a

monolith. Like they're all funded the same. They all have the same capabilities. They have the same resources in order to purchase masks, to ensure that they can actually implement the social distancing guidelines, to ensure that their classrooms are smaller, meaning less students, to ensure that the classrooms are more ventilated. I mean, this isn't, it's not a question of, oh, when do we just get to turn the lights back on and have everyone go back to normal with these schools? There's a deeper question here that I feel like isn't being addressed regarding the inequality among our schools, the lack of funding for our public schools. And I'm sorry, I respect the concerns of the educators who would be tasked with putting their

own lives at risk by going back to the classroom. And if you're a teacher who is teaching at an underfunded school, you do have legitimate concerns. And I just feel like this conversation has just been used as a political flashpoint by Republican lawmakers right now, which this is politics. I guess it's fair, but it's also pretty ridiculous considering how absolutely disastrous the Trump administration was at handling this pandemic. But John, I wanted to get some of your thoughts on this because, again, it's important for schools to open, but maybe I'm missing something. Maybe they have talked about the inequalities and funding. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess town halls like this are where we're supposed to learn more about their thought process.

When it came to topics having to do with COVID, I didn't like a lot of what I heard. I mean, look, obviously Biden's going to be better than Trump. Like nobody doubts that Trump was horrible. He didn't care what happened and he lied as if he was being paid for each lie when it came to COVID. But I also worry that people assume, oh, well, the adults are in the room. So they're going to do everything possible. in the best possible way when it comes to COVID. I mean, after all, Fauci is there. It's got to be great, right? And I think that, yeah, it's going to be better.

But I think people are, they're setting their expectations too high and their levels of suspicion too low. In that same town hall, he spoke to, it was a kid and a mom, I believe, about the kid was worried about getting COVID and wanted to know about vaccines. And he said some stuff that I have no doubt he thought I'm reassuring a kid. But he said things that was just untrue about kids being effectively unable to get COVID and having basically no chance of transmitting it, which, yes, there's lower rates than other groups, but we criticize Trump and the Republicans nonstop for saying that sort of stuff

is a justification for opening schools. And I don't want to see Joe Biden in the first couple of weeks of his presidency, whether it's to reassure a kid on LiveT or not, spreading misinformation that a lot of people, you know, he got 80 plus million votes, they're going to trust. And when there's questions, I think it was to Kamala Harris recently about whether we'd be doing these openings before teachers are vaccinated. Well, I don't understand why you're being so evasive about that. They're talking about a timeline to reopen schools in the first hundred days. I just Googled it and there's 3.2 million teachers. We can't vaccinate 3 million teachers in the next 100 days. We're already doing 1.7 million

vaccinations. Why is that an impossible goal? Why are they being so evasive of? about stuff I'm having to do with COVID. I just, I don't get it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I'm so happy that you brought up all of the other concerns regarding the Biden administration's response to the coronavirus. You know, with the caveat that yes, this administration clearly takes the pandemic more seriously than Donald Trump did, but there are problems with the way they're refusing to give

us clear answers on school reopenings and whether teachers are going to be vaccinated in time. Biden reiterated that he believes that by July, we will have 600 million vaccine doses available to ensure that everyone who wants a vaccine can get vaccinated. Let me also note, this is a side point, but because of the winter storm, there's been quite a bit of difficulty in delivering the vaccines. It's been pretty disastrous. But the severe weather conditions isn't something that the Biden administration can control. But I do think they can control their messaging and be absolutely clear.

And more importantly, please talk about the funding, talk about, look, we want to get these schools open. We want to make sure that everyone can go back to school in a safe and healthy manner. But in order to do that, something that Republicans claim they want to do because Republicans are already campaigning against Biden using this very issue, if they genuinely care about it, let's go. let's fast track the economic relief bill and let's make sure that our public schools get the funding they need in order to open safely. It's easy messaging. And I just feel like he drops the ball on this issue all the time, which opens the path for bad faith actors like Senator Roy Blunt, Republican, using this as a way to attack Biden as if they were any better in addressing these issues. I think everyone is hearing the same thing from their constituents.

Kids are not learning what they ought to learn, and this is having a huge impact on the way families hope to live. And to be sure it is having a huge impact on families, especially mothers who are now expected to mother 24 hours a day, teach their children, do the jobs of teachers, and then on top of that work their full-time jobs because we all know that you need a dual income household in order to survive in this country. You know, it's just such a terrible situation. Yeah.

I know that we're close. Yeah, a lot of his answers about things like student loan debt cancellation and stuff like that. We're very frustrating. Yeah, Nando and I will talk about that in hour too. But I can't wait to get to that story. Let's actually end the first hour, though, with some positive news because believe it or not, there is positive news. And it's a quick story.

I just think it's important to share it with you guys. So Black Lives Matter had the message of defunding the police. And I think a lot of bad faith actors tried to twist that message and make it appear as though they just want to abolish the police altogether. But really it was a conversation about funding, meaning redirecting the money that we spend on policing towards services that can actually better people's lives. And a good example of that is what is now being proposed by the Los Angeles. United States Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country.

They are rethinking their school policing program, and they're reorganizing how these resources are being spent. So the school district's meeting agenda noted that money will go from the police agency to a black student achievement plan to empower community groups, improve student literacy, and reduce the over identification of black students in suspensions, discipline, and other measures. This is really, really great news, guys, especially when you consider that this is a school district that has 600,000 students. They're focusing on actually providing more opportunity for their students as opposed to policing them and making them out to be criminals when they're just minors.

And if you're wondering, well, I mean, how bad is policing on school campuses? It can't be that bad. It's pretty awful. And more importantly, it disproportionately impacts the lives of black students. Vox did a good explainer on this a few years ago. I want to quickly show you that video, and then we'll discuss. It started in the 90s when schools responded to fears about crime with zero tolerance policies, which mandated suspensions and expulsions for certain violations. They also cracked down on little things like talking back or uniform violations. The hope was that it would keep bigger problems from bubbling up. But as a result, out-of-school suspensions have doubled since the 1970s,

and they keep increasing, even though juvenile crime rates have now been dropping for years. Around the same time, the number of police officers stationed full-time inside schools has increased by a third between 1997 and 2007. Ostensibly, they were there to prevent mass school shootings, like the one at Columbine. But they end up being a way for schools to basically outsource discipline to the police. police. Schools with officers have five times as many arrests for disorderly conduct as schools without them. Sometimes, the results are shocking. But the less visible effect is that schools are feeding the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Consider the fact that

schools are more likely to have an officer on their campus if the student population is more than 50% black. You might assume that that's because there's more crime at these schools, but although students at police schools are more likely to be arrested, they're not actually more likely to be charged in court for weapons, drugs, alcohol or assault, at least according to one study. During the 2010-2011 school year, one in six public school students in the U.S. were black, but they accounted for one in three arrests at school. So I think that video did a pretty good job in explaining why the policing on these campuses, has been so devastating for black students and why it's such a great idea to redirect some of this funding toward providing opportunities to ensure that black students excel, that they're given opportunities to shine.

And they aren't just automatically treated as if they're criminals or people engaging in bad behavior. They're kids, we're talking about minors here. And the school to prison pipeline has been a really big problem for a long time in this country, something that the ACLU has been fighting against for decades. In terms of the policy, I think it's great. I think it's a great demonstration of the philosophy, you know, going beyond slogans or whatever and the misinformation that was spread around it. In terms of actually like expanding it, using these sorts of things,

and once we get data back from it to convince people, I think that it could be helpful. But I also wonder to what extent the sorts of things this effort is fighting back against like the over policing and all of that. I think that there's a lot of people who support those sorts of things and not because they were initially shown facts or statistics. Like they think they think there are communities that need to be policed more. They're naturally suspicious of certain communities and I think it's going to be very hard. It's always going to be a battle to do this sort of thing because so many people take for granted that their entire communities that are irredeemable, that you're naturally or more disobedient, those sorts of things.

And that's one of the battles going forward. So, you know, more power to any, you know, any area, including LA that's actually successful in passing it. Yeah. Well, I mean, we need leaders to lead and not pander to the worst thoughts of people out there who refuse to listen to the evidence and do the right thing. So hopefully the school board moves forward with this and we'll give you updates as we learn more about how it impacts the community. Anyway, John, thank you for doing the show with me today. And everyone, check out the damage report. I'll be on tomorrow. So it'll be a great, it'll be like one of the best shows. Duh. It's on at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. And for our two, Nando Villa will be joining us. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. 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