The Young Turks - Tiny Johnson Probs

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Trump endorses Mike Johnson ahead of a crucial House speaker vote. Insiders claim that Elon Musk, referred to as a ""shadow president,"" is starting to irritate Trump. A DNC chair candidate agrees that Democrats should embrace corruption. Symone Sanders comes to the realization that class-based political organizing is the right way forward." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome to the Young Turks, Jake Ugar, Anna Kasparian, with you guys. Oh my God, it's the last show of 2024. How fun, how interesting, okay. And- Is it? Is it fun and interesting?

Oh, I bet it is. I mean, we're gonna talk about people's regrets. And I think they should have a lot of regrets. My regret is that people didn't listen to me. Same. Same. Okay, seriously, we'll get to that story a little bit later. Obviously, I'm lying from the Polymarket Studios and Anna's lying from the Pelican

Studios or whatever that is in our home. Okay. Anyways, all right, we got a lot of news for you guys on Trump and Biden as usual. Biden's on his way out, but he's still making news. All right, Casper, what do you got? Well, Uger, it appears that the United States might be coping with a wounded Johnson. Take it away. Why are you not committed to Speaker Johnson as the next Speaker of the House?

The margin is so small for Johnson with those votes. And the hardliners have already said, you know, with the debt ceiling, anything like that, that they're not willing to move on that. So I don't think that it's going to be a productive time for them. I think that the narrative is going to be driven by President-elect Musk. I'm sorry, I mean Trump, and that will be a huge indicator of how things are going to go. I mean, he is a fine Christian man. He's not a religious man.

He's a Christian man, and he doesn't cheat on his wife. Well, congratulations on that. There are differing opinions among Republican lawmakers in regard to whether or not House Speaker Mike Johnson should be reelected for that leadership role. And President-elect Donald Trump has now finally weighed in on this issue and has chosen to endorse Mike Johnson. And he's getting a little bit of backlash for doing so. Now, before we get to the backlash, here's what Trump had to say. In a lengthy post, he made it clear that he believes Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hardworking, religious man.

That seems to be repeated by a lot of people that he's a religious man. But nonetheless, he also continues to say that Mike Johnson will do the right thing and we will continue to win, Mike has my complete and total endorsement. Now, Johnson responded to Trump on social media saying, thank you, President Trump. I'm honored and humbled by your support, as always. Together, we will quickly deliver on your America First Agenda and usher in a new golden age of America. And Elon Musk responded to that, saying that Speaker Johnson has his full support as well. But remember, just a few weeks ago, Musk himself had expressed some doubts about Speaker Johnson, and now he has gone along with what Trump wants, which is an endorsement of Mike Johnson here.

And so this has led to a lot of disagreement among Republicans. So it really does show you that there is a difference in this upcoming Trump term versus what we experienced in 2016, where it seemed like everyone would just fall in line with what Donald Trump wanted. So House Republicans have said for weeks that Trump would have the final word on whether Johnson keeps the gavel or is replaced, but not all Republicans are buying what Mike Johnson is selling. Namely, Representative Thomas Massey, who posted on Twitter and said, I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of speaker Paul Ryan. We've seen Johnson partner with the Democrats to send money to Ukraine,

authorized spying on Americans, and blow the budget. And that's really the heart of the disagreement in regard to Speaker Mike Johnson. You have one wing of the Republican Party arguing, hey, Homeboy is spending way too much money and we want to scale down the government. He's doing the opposite. Elon Musk responded to Thomas Massey saying that, you know, look, let's just let's give him a shot. Let's see how it goes. And just like with the H-1B visa fiasco, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk are absolutely at odds on this issue as well. In fact, here's a clip from Bannon speaking at Turning Point USA. Let's watch.

Clearly, Johnson's not up to the task and he's got to go, right? He's got to go. So Johnson be Speaker of the House? President Trump, these are your people. It's not just Johnson. Clearly he has to go. He doesn't have that. He doesn't have what we call the right stuff, right? That combination of guts and moxie and savvy and toughness. What is the strength of our movement? It's resilience. What does Trump admire most? It's resilience. You can punch MAGA in the face and they're going to get up off the canvas and they're going to punch you back three times harder. This is what we've done. Now, what does this all mean? I mean, sure, there could be some Republicans who are not in favor of Mike Johnson, but maybe he would still have enough votes from the Republican caucus to secure his reelection. He needs 218 lawmakers to vote in his favor. And currently, there are only 219 GOP lawmakers. Thomas Massey has already made clear that he is not going to vote for his reelection, meaning he can't lose a single GOP lawmaker after that. And we're hearing from some Republican congressmen, including Chip Roy. It doesn't look like he's got the votes. Take a look.

But at this point, Congressman, does he have that support or not? Yeah, right now I don't believe that he has the votes on Friday. And I think we need to have the conference get together so that we can get united. And people say, well, Chip, who would you choose otherwise? There are a lot of great members of Congress. Mike's a friend and maybe he can answer the call and he can deliver an agenda and a plan. Byron Donald's is a good man and a good friend. I supported him.

I nominated him two years ago. Jim Jordan's a good man and a good friend. There are other members of leadership in the conference who could do the job. But what we need to do is unite around a plan to deliver for the president. Right now, I do not believe the conference has that. And we did also hear from one other GOP lawmaker. That's Representative Victoria Sparts, who spoke to Fox and Friends yesterday and said, quote, if we don't have a speaker with the courage, vision, and the plan, and if Speaker Johnson

wants to be speaker, then he needs to lay out the plan and commit to that plan, not like what he did last year. So obviously, she's expressing her discontent with the job that Mike Johnson did last year and has not committed to voting in his favor on Friday. But there are others who have said favorable things about Mike Johnson, which we'll get to in just a minute. But first, back to you, Jank. Yeah, so I know why Trump endorsed Johnson. They told them you've got a tiny Johnson problem. And he said, believe me, we've got no problems there.

Totally in favor of Johnson. Okay, kind of stealing from your joke. Anyways, so look, the underlying problem is massive and it cannot be resolved. I'm going to explain that in a second. But I have got to do a side note here on what did Burchett mean by he's not a religious man, he's a Christian man. I don't even know what that means. What's the major distinction? Is he saying, don't worry, he's not Jewish? I don't know what he means by that. And then everybody talking about, oh, no, it's okay. He should handle the budget because

he's religious. How are those things related? And imagine a world where they're like, oh, no, Ilhan Omar should definitely be the speaker of the house because she's a good Muslim one. That's so weird. In fact, why don't we go to that video, Jank, since you skipped ahead and you're already talking about it before we watched it in context. Let's watch. Mike's been a good friend to me and there's nobody more honest that I've ever dealt with in Washington. I mean, he is a fine Christian man. He's not a religious man.

He's a Christian man. And he doesn't cheat on his wife. And I find that very appealing in Washington, D.C. Oh my God. man, husbands be cheating in D.C. That's the message I got from that clip. Yeah, I still don't know what it means, but I, but there is one thing I do know. Apparently everyone else cheats on their wife in D.C. So, okay, I guess Mike Johnson's got that for him because if he cheated on his wife,

he'd have to tell his son it'd get awkward. But it would. Yeah. Okay, now back to the main event here. Guys, there's no way to resolve this because Elon Musk and Donald Trump started talking about cutting two trillion dollars from the budget. There ain't no two trillion dollars to cut. So that's a fairy tale. And so later in the show, we're going to talk about how Donald Trump is now realizing. Turns out, some of the things they promise are very hard. Yeah, I know, I know. But two trillion is absolutely impossible. And on top of that, if you really wanted to cut from the deficit or the debt, you would do a lot of things that made logical sense.

You would raise taxes on the very rich. You would raise tax on corporations. You would cut from the Pentagon. You would cut to oil subsidies. And tons and tons of subsidies that corporations get, none of that is. going to happen or if any of it happens, it's going to be really right around the edges, right? But certainly not enough to make a dent in $2 trillion. And so then they're going to go try to cut what? Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and all the programs that the American people love. And then they're going to run into a buzz saw. So they just cannot possibly resolve it. So yeah, Thomas Massey, I've given him credit a million times from being honest guy. He's doctor knows, he says no to everything, he doesn't want to spend a dime. Yeah, but that's

not really how the real world works. So that's the reason Mike Johnson handed in that budget is because the Republicans have a history of huffing and puffing and go, oh my God, we're going to take care of the deficit, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they never ever do. It's a giant lie. Although the only thing they ever do is keep the spending around where it is, cut a couple of programs that help average Americans because they don't, those are not their donors and they don't care about them at all. And then they'll do giant tax cuts for the rich. And that's all they ever do. entire life. That's the entire purpose of the Republican Party. So now they talked a big game about cutting. They can't cut anywhere near this much. And they certainly can't cut without

pissing off average Americans in a big, big way when they cut from them instead of their beloved corporate donors. So they're stuck. They're stuck. They're going to fight like crazy for the whole time. Remember, they only have one person lead in the house. He needs 218 votes become Speaker of the House, they only have 219. Massey's out. That means they can't lose anyone else. So they'll probably come back in line because Trump will make them. But it doesn't really resolve anything. And so they're on a collision course with reality. And I don't know how that one ends. Well, look, I do know that there are areas where there seems to be widespread agreement among Republicans. And I think some Democrats is, well, maybe not Democrats. But look, for someone like Massey,

Cutting funding to foreign wars is huge. So I think that if he gets that concession, he'll be willing to sign on. The sticking point with Mike Johnson has been his willingness to sign on to more military funding for Ukraine under the Biden administration. And so I do think that, look, the random arbitrary trillions of dollar figure that the Doge department had stated is just a ridiculous out of nowhere figure, right? But if you want to cut funding, I mean, the only area that I can think of that would make sense would certainly be the money that we spend on defense, the money that we send to foreign wars. I mean, we'll see if that happens, but you're right. I mean, there seems to be fundamental ideological differences between the old traditional Republican wing of the party

and the more America first wing of the Republican Party. And so, well, again, we'll see how it plays out. But I agree with you that they're not going to be able to cut as much as they claim they want to cut. And I don't think that they're going to target Social Security and Medicare. I mean, look, it's a third rail of politics for a reason. And Trump has made clear over and over again that he's not touching Social Security. So I don't think he will. Okay. So the bottom line is, so they'll cut from Ukraine for sure.

They will not come from Israel, for sure. Maybe they do like a cosmetic cut on the Pentagon. I mean, I would hope for a deep cut, and that's what I'm pushing for. But we'd be lucky to cut $100 million. I mean, the right wing shows are talking about cutting $400 million, I'm sorry, $400 billion from the Pentagon. If they do that, I'll give them all the credit in the world, right? And so that's what we want, and I think that'd be great.

But that would be shocking beyond belief, right? I'd be thrilled to get a hundred billion dollar cut out of this corrupt Washington. But even if they do that, even if they cut the Department of Education, and they leave Medicare and Social Security alone, but they cut Medicaid, right? And that's going to upset a lot of people, including their own base, right? And they cut and they cut on all these things that are not even peripheral, but they take out big chunks, like I said, a whole Department of Education. They're still not going to get anywhere near.

Forget the $2 trillion number. They're not going to get anywhere near balancing the budget. It's not going to be close because they will not touch the rich and they will not touch corporations. So, I mean, you've got the far right populace saying crazy things like we should stop all immigration, Steve Bannon said that. But they're also saying increased corporate taxes. Is there any chance that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are going to listen to that? Raising corporate taxes, almost no chance at all. So there's, I'll say it right now.

There's no way in the world Donald Trump balances the budget, period. It's a massive budget, and no one's really been able to balance it. So I think that's a good prediction. Yeah, and it's because they don't want to. To be fair, Bill Clinton did balance the budget. And so that was, that was a, you know. A different time. Yeah, I got you.

But they actually raised taxes, and they cut some spending, and they did the things that need to do to balance the budget. And the last Republican president to leave office with a balanced budget was Dwight Eisenhower. They never, ever do it because they'll never, ever increase taxes on their beloved rich donors. All right, let's move on to a story that's kind of been a mainstay in this new Trump era, and it has to do with an alleged rift between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Take it away. Other Democrats have begun calling Musk, not Trump, the president, President Musk. I mean, what do you make of the role that's been off of that that Musk is playing

here? I mean, who is in charge do you view in terms of who you have to negotiate with? That's a great question. I don't have the answers right now. I think that the narrative is going to be driven by President-elect Musk. I'm sorry, I mean Trump. Elon Musk and the vexed. Ramoswamy, the tech overlords who appear to be running Trump's second term agenda, rely on highly skilled immigrants to power their enterprises. There is this ongoing and growing narrative in the mainstream media and among Democrats that the real incoming president is not Donald Trump. It's actually one of his billionaire donors, Elon Musk. He's really the shadow president. And there are some reports alleging that as a result,

Donald Trump is souring on Elon Musk, and that is if you are to believe some of the anonymous sources who spoke to Mediite about this matter. So they say that Trump is allegedly growing weary of Musk's presence and that his antics are drawing a little too much media attention that Trump doesn't see as favorable. In fact, one person says 100% Trump is annoyed. This is from a Trump insider who worked on the 2024 campaign and spoke. to Mediite. There's a Chinese saying, two tigers cannot live on one mountain top. Another Trump insider told Mediite, quote, there was likely an allure to the alliance between the president's elect and Musk in the beginning, but it seemed like it could go ugly.

Trump is Trump. I think it's just the way Trump is. Someone that is around that much and having influence would be a bother. I mean, the guy came in. gave a boatload of money and wants to take over the place. I'm just going to pause right here. This Trump insider sounds a little bitter, right? Like, I'm wondering if this Trump insider is leaking things that are embellished or maybe engaging in some hyperbole to kind of snipe at Elon Musk. I don't know how much of this is manufactured or how much of this is real.

But I'll give you one more quote from this individual. They say that the media is portraying Musk as a co-president. that Musk is a character actor. There is only one executive producer, one lead in this TV show, and that is Trump. Elon will have his role, his focuses, but he is meant to disrupt the status quo in Washington, and Trump is weaponizing him. So with all that chatter in mind, Jank, how real do you think this is or do you think that this is kind of manufactured in order to, you know, basically put a wedge between Trump and Elon Musk?

First of all, quick note for the audience, Anna's at home today because two tigers cannot be on the same mountain. People are saying. Okay, so this is a real conundrum for Donald Trump because it's the two things he loves most. Money versus MAGA. So the one thing that he's good at and this could lead in a very bad direction for the country or sometimes I think it could lead in a good direction, which is he, is way more responsive to his MAGA base than the Democrats are to their base or anybody else is to their base. So as a political figure, that's not such a bad thing. You should be responsive to your voters. And so now his voters want some things that we massively disagree with. So that could be,

that's why I say it could be bad for the country in some ways, right? But the fact that he's responsive to any voters is such a huge difference than, you know, my entire career covering politics where both corporate Democrats and Republicans couldn't care less about their voters. So on the other hand, if there's one thing Trump cares more about, it's money, money, money, money. And Elon has an infinite amount. So there's a thousand different ways that Elon Musk can get Donald Trump money. While he's in office, after he's a leaves office, and I would be very surprised if Elon Musk didn't suggest some of those ways to Donald Trump already. I would be very surprised if that wasn't at the very front of Donald Trump's mind.

So so far we've had a couple of fights and including the H-1B visas and Trump has come out on Elon Musk's side every single time. Now we have another problem which is that Elon Musk is uncontrollable just like Donald Trump. So if he was savvy and didn't have ADD, he would wait for Trump to say something and then he would back it up. But instead of doing that, he's going out in front of Donald Trump. and making it appear that Donald Trump is following him.

That is a very, very bad idea, right? So he's not even bothering to like pause for a second to do some degree of political strategy that would be savvy for him. So there is a bit of a freight train collision ahead and Donald Trump hates anyone else taking the spotlight, but he loves money so much. So that's why I got no prediction on this one. I don't know how it resolves itself. I don't know if Musk basically becomes president because he's promised Trump a couple of billion dollars.

Or at some point, Trump goes very disappointed with the leader of my doge. Very disappointed. Okay, we're not picking the best anymore. Okay, so, and then does Musk try to use X against Trump? Do the people on X rebel against Musk? Those are some serious heavyweight dramas. and they're almost certainly coming down the pike and and I don't know which way it ends. So a couple of things. The whole debate on the H-1B visas, you're correct in that Elon Musk got

wrapped up on the in this online debate. Trump really wasn't involved in it until he was asked about it. And at that point, he sided with Elon Musk. In the case of endorsing House Speaker Mike Johnson for reelection for the speakership role, Donald Trump was the one who came came out and decided to endorse Mike Johnson and then Elon Musk followed along. So what I'm noticing, well, he did. I mean, he said, all right, you have my full support to Mike Johnson. He did. But also told, hold on, and then told Thomas Massey, all right, let's give him a shot.

Let's see how this goes. But prior to that, prior to Trump's endorsement, he was sharing his discontent toward Mike Johnson and how he was handling the effort to fund the government. that was before Christmas break. So I don't know. We'll see how this plays out. And you're right. I mean, these types of relationships

tend to be a little fragile with Donald Trump. But the other factor in all of this is the insane amount of money that Elon Musk, you know, of course contributed to Trump during the campaign. And the other thing that I'm noticing, Jank, is Steve Bannon

hasn't been getting his way. And I wonder if that has more to do with Susie Wiles, his, you know, obviously his, the head of his campaign and his incoming chief of staff, or if it has more to do with Trump's just wanting to side with Elon Musk over the campaign contributions. But interesting things are happening and we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, so a couple more things. So first of all, just to be clear on the Massey thing, Massey's opposed to Johnson. And so when Elon must then

an hour after he said, oh yeah, I agree with Trump, let's go with Johnson, then said to Massey, yeah, maybe, you might be right about being against Johnson, let's see how it plays out. That's kind of saying, hey, everybody, I don't necessarily agree with Donald Trump. And that's a risky card to play, man. An hour after you back, Johnson, just giving you a heads up on the dynamics that Elon might not even know he's not that. He's never been involved in politics and he just blurts out anything that's at the top of his head. So it might be less strategy and just being a little bit of an amateur on this stuff. In terms of Steve Bannon, yeah, he's being super aggressive against Elon Musk. I mean, he keeps having Laura Lumer

on. Laura Lumer keeps pointing out, hey, you know, he's a big donor and these tech bros aren't really pro-American and, and Laura Lumer said, hey, maybe we should do campaign finance reform. I mean, what world do we live in? That is amazing, interesting bad fellows here, right? And so, and Bannon, like, tried to calm her down a little bit and said, hey, you know, maybe there's some misunderstandings, et cetera. But then he did say bayonets forward and, you know, that they're never going to surrender. They're never going to give in to any of this stuff, the H-1B visas, any of.

immigration. Now he's saying, let's get rid of all legal immigration. So obviously, I massively disagree with that. But so Susie Wiles has made it tougher to reach Donald Trump. And Susie Wiles has also said that if you're part of the administration, you're not allowed to tweet until you check with her. The only person who's ignoring that is Elon Musk because he's not technically part of the administration, also because he's Elon Musk. So last thing. Besides which, that's never going to work anyway. I mean, we know from experience. Yeah, but I hear you, but like the the smaller characters in that play don't want to mess with the chief of staff for Donald Trump, right? And he's given her a lot of latitude. And so they're not going to want to mess with

Trump or Musk either. So they're going to want to keep their powder dry. Like I don't see Stephen Miller jumping into the middle of this because what if he picks the wrong side and then Trump dumps him. And remember, he unceremoniously dumped Bannon because Bannon had said some bad things about them in a book. So that's always possible. But last thing is, is it real or is it manufactured this kind of conflict between the two? It's a little bit of both. So look, of course the Democrats and people on the left are egging this division on by calling him President Musk and all that stuff. And they know that that's going to get under Trump's skin and that's why they're doing it. On the other hand, yeah, I mean, Trump can be controlled by money. He has

been controlled by money before, and Elon has all the money in the world. So, and remember, guys, in the past, Elon gave, as in like, that would just happen, Elon gave money to his campaign, Miriam Edelson gave money to his campaign, Melon did, et cetera. But now they can just give money directly to him through a lot of different ways that are now legal because Donald Trump has a giant public company on the stock market. So at this point, the promises are no longer campaign. contributions. They are direct, gigantic potential checks to Donald Trump himself. And if you don't think Donald Trump cares about that, you don't know the brother at all. So the only red flag that I've seen so far is obviously the allegations that Elon Musk is going to be the shadow

president is something Trump felt the need to address. And he did that while speaking before Turning Point USA. So I just want to play that quick clip. Let's take a look. The new one is, President Trump has seeded the presidency to Elon Musk. No, no, that's not happening. But Elon's done an amazing job. Trump, later joking, the South African-born Musk, who helped Trump kill the original bipartisan spending deal, couldn't be president. You know why?

He can't be. He wasn't born in this country. So I thought that was interesting. Like the need to address that, I don't know if it's because it's getting under his skin or if he just wanted to make that joke about it. But the whole point of a shadow president is that this individual would not actually be known as the acting president. It would be the person behind the scenes, essentially like a puppet master, kind of like how Dick Cheney was with George W. Bush. Yeah, Elon running at some later point when Trump's not in office. is not at all relevant. So that comment made no sense. And as you know, I think that that

Trump is wrong about that. I believe that if you're not born in the country, you can still can run for president because of the 14th Amendment. But none of that is relevant. He's deflecting because the real question is whether Musk is controlling Trump. And he's avoiding that by talking about some future election. But you can tell, he doesn't like it. And that's not, and that's not surprising at all. He hates anyone else getting the spotlight. So that's why, it's It's such a giant conflict, and he's spotlight, precious, money, precious. And by the way, where MAGA is, is not at all clear either. There's a lot of tech pros in MAGA, and there's a lot of banning fans in MAGA.

And then there are people that are not in either one of those camps. So this thing could be a wonderful, interesting mess. When we come back from the break, we'll talk a little bit about how the big lesson some Democrats learned from the shalacking, the experience in the last presidential election is that maybe they need to be a little more corrupt. We'll be right back. The only reason I'm here is because you are a friend. Well, why don't we check in with the Democratic Party?

They're currently in the middle of trying to pick. someone to be the head of the DNC, and one of the contenders has some pretty stupid ideas. We need to make greater use of the flexibilities, not to do things illegally, but we need to be making greater use of the flexibilities in the law, especially for moving money around. Moving money around. It seems like that's the only thing the Democratic Party has any interest in these days. That was Martin O'Malley, who's running to be the new head of the Democratic National Committee. And he thinks that the party could benefit from maybe just a little more corruption, maybe a little more working with the super PACs. Now, Jen Socky asked O'Malley about comments that

Harris's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley, Dylan, and advisor David Pluff made during their post-mortem on Pod Save America, we had actually covered this clip ourselves, but just as a reminder, here's what they had to say. He had an army of Super PACs that were so coordinated. I'm sure there's some legal way they were communicated, but like. I'm sure it was legal. Yeah, right. Or illegal.

We have to stop playing a different game as it relates to Super PACs than the Republicans. Love our Democratic lawyers. I'm tired of it. Okay. They coordinate more than we do. I think amongst themselves, I think with the president, campaign. Like, I'm just sick and tired of it, okay? You know, to Stephanie's point, clearly it is not legal what they're doing, but we're at a disadvantage when our folks are playing by a different

set of rules than they are. I just think at the end of the day, this is important. Again, this is not at the top of the reasons that we had a different outcome here. But, you know, to win close races, you kind of want to be maximizing every piece of the arsenal. And so I think this is something we we really have to reflect on and make some adjustments going forward. Or maybe don't an empty vessel who doesn't have opinions or policies of her own, maybe offer voters something to vote for, maybe don't engage in a massive cover-up in regard to the incumbent Democratic president who's suffering from severe mental decline and had been for the four years that he was president.

I mean, those are other things that maybe they can take away from the failure of the Democrats in the presidential election. But no, I guess they just can't have that. Instead, they're thinking about playing with that fine line between illegality and legality when it comes to coordinating with super PACs. So basically, they want the DNC to collude more with the super PACs that raised unlimited amounts of dark money in order to support their campaigns. And O'Malley, by the way, agrees with this. That was his takeaway as well. Take a look. I think there's a lot of merit to that observation, and that's what I've heard as well talking to people, both lawyers and also people within the DNC. We need to make greater use of the flexibilities, not to do things illegally, but we need to be making greater use of the flexibilities in the law, especially for moving money around, spending dollars appropriately on things so that, say, Hakeem Jeffries and his congressional candidates don't have to.

to spend that money on if we can do it as a party. So we need to make better use of all of the flexibilities that are in the law because Lord knows we're getting pounded because of some of them. We need to make sure that we are playing by this new and ever developing set of rules without compromising our principles. We're not above the law. We believe in a republic where no one's above the law, but we do have greater flexibilities than we're currently using. Yeah, I hate these people so much. So to be clear, Let's actually get familiar with what the laws indicate. So federal law also prohibits super PACs organizations that are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations and individuals from donating to candidates and their campaigns or coordinating with them.

However, super PACs and outside groups have continually pushed the legal boundaries between coordinated and independent campaign spending. For example, many single candidate super PACs are run. by the favored candidates, former campaign staff, or political allies with intimate knowledge of the candidates, campaign strategy, and needs. And that's the kind of stuff Martin O'Malley apparently wants to do more of, you know, really play with that legality line and test the boundaries when it comes to corruption. It's the big takeaway from the election. Jank. Yeah, he said, well, sticking to our principles, to which I would ask. What principles? Exactly. What principles? No, no, I literally, I don't know what he means.

What principles is he talking about? They love money in politics. They're saying, I want more money in politics, more corruption. So what principles are you talking about? So this Democratic Party, as it currently stands, is hopeless. So they lose an election because they're perceived as more of the establishment and the elites. And Donald Trump runs a populist campaign and wins all seven swing states. And these, I don't know, I'm not supposed to call them dumb, I know, but like these idiots come back with, oh, we should have raised more money from corruption and corporations and the establishment and the elites. But you already way out raised Donald Trump. And we told you, you're too obsessed with the money. The money isn't going to actually get the job done.

You actually have to have a message that American people believe in and then have your candidate say that message. They're like, no, no, no, we'll just get a plastic robot here and we'll feed her the talking points and we'll weigh outraise Donald Trump and then we'll win. But that strategy didn't work. And what is it? What do these idiots think now? Let's double down on that strategy. Plus, let's throw in a little bit more cheating and get really close to the boundary of doing crimes. to push this forward.

So they're hopeless. That's why I'm, look, guys, that's why I get so frustrated with progressives that are in Congress. They think they're going to negotiate with these guys and incrementally make them better? No, you're not. You're just telling yourself a pretty little lie. No, these guys are never going to get better. They all got into power because of corruption. So their takeaway after losing an election based on corruption was, oh, we needed to do more

corruption. So dumb. Go ahead, Anna. What the Democrats seem to really fail to understand is that the corporate money, the big donor money, and the strings that are attached to that cash, conflict with what the Democratic base wants. So as the Democratic base expects their elected lawmakers and, you know, the incumbent president, if he's a Democrat or she's a Democrat, to address their concerns, it's incredibly difficult to do that when their concerns conflict with what the donors want. And that is a growing problem for Democrats. And since they can't recognize that, they think,

No, no, no, we just need more money. We need more money. But Kamala Harris outraised Donald Trump. And she wasted that money, right? The money that Kamala Harris's campaign raised, which was around $1.4 million, a billion dollars, if I can remember correctly. I mean, imagine spending all of that

and having your campaign go into debt to the tune of $20 million. It's not about the lack of resources here. That's not the issue for the Democratic Party. And in fact, the resources that they do get, oftentimes they get to the detriment of the campaign because of the strings attached to that cash. And so look, I agree. They are hopeless. They are definitely hopeless that these are the takeaways from the shalacking that they suffered in the election. Yeah. So to speaking of the voters,

why is Martin O'Malley saying these things on TV? There's three reasons why. Well, number one, he's in the same Washington bubble. So he thinks, oh yeah, people love it when we take billions of dollars from corporate donors and then serve corporate donors. They love that. So let me go ahead and tell them how much more corporate donations I want to take and then use semi illegally, okay, in the campaigns. But the two other reasons are bigger. So remember who the voters are when you're voting for the chair of the DNC. So there's a lot of good Democrats there, like Bernie supporters, delegates that are more progressive, there's a bunch of people who are popular. But there's also tons of voters who are greasy, corrupt democratic politicians and democratic operatives. And all those

guys absolutely love corruption. And they love getting that campaign cash from the DNC. They love getting paid off of it. They love getting power from it. And a lot of them are worried and this is an internal DNC fight that's really important. A lot of them are worried, oh my God, if they take super PAC money out of the primaries, all of us guys who are corrupt, which is 95% of the party, won't be able to win in primaries. We'll lose to, you know, progressives, populace, et cetera. So no, no, no, no. So that's why Martin O'Malley is saying to those Democratic politicians and operatives, don't worry, I'm pro corruption. So he's appealing to those particular voters. And this third thing that he's doing is, Rahm Emanuel is suggested

by the Obama camp, because the Obama camp is the establishment. So, I mean, money in politics, Obama loves it, Rahm Emanuel loves it, et cetera. So they wanted to put Rahm in. And again, it's the exact opposite of the lesson they should have learned from this election. So But then, but they worried that Rahm Emanuel is such a, you know, a magnet for criticism because he's been so wildly, you know, against the Bernie wing of the party and very loudly so and aggressively so. So Martin O'Malley's their backup option. So if Rahm Emanuel runs into too much problems, they go, oh, don't worry, we got

another, hey, calling to the corrupt bullpen, let's bring out Martin O'Malley. And if you're thinking, hey, wait, don't I remember Martin O'Malley from somewhere? Yeah, he was the other guy in the beginning of the 2016 primaries. And back then, mainstream media was saying, well, obviously, Bernie Sanders is not relevant of Bernie Sanders. Right? And they were like, but Martin O'Malley, maybe he could make a run on Hillary Clinton. Martin O'Malley, he's such an interesting corporate douche. He's so wonderful.

And every time he'd go into debates and he'd roll up his sleeves and we used to make fun of that, Like that was his way of being like, ah, yeah, I'm such a regular guy, man. And of course, what did we say? We said Martin O'Malley is going to get a clown and he's not going to get any votes. And Bernie Sanders is going to rise. They thought we were wrong and they were right. And eight years later, they've learned zero lessons, none. All right.

Do you want to go over the list of contenders? Yeah, real quick. Yeah, real quick. Let's look at these. So these are the people that are potentially in the race. Ben Wickler is being pushed by some progressives, but he's the one that kept people off the ballots in Wisconsin, and he did it because he got orders to. So lost a lot of democracy.

Yeah, oh yeah, preserving democracy by killing it. So I used to like, on a personal level, I got no problem with Ben, right? But what he did in Wisconsin was unacceptable. So Ken Martin is an interesting guy. He's chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party, more connected to. Tim Walls, some good solid Bernie folks are behind Ken Martin. Marianne Williamson, people go say, ha ha, Marianne. No, ha, what?

I would much, 10,000 times rather have Marianne Williamson as a head of the DNC than a Martin O'Malley or a Ram Emanuel or half these guys on the list. Because why? At least Marianne is honest and she's not corrupt. And if they say to her, okay, now we're going to have a primary. But remember, wink, wink, wink, primary. but make sure that the corporate Democrat wins, which is what they're going to tell whoever wins ahead of the DNC. The question is, and why this is so important, is if they listen to that, if they have an establishment guy or someone who's willing to work with the establishment, they'll go, oh, absolutely, sir, yes, sir, sir, when would you like to, no debates, no primaries, or very small, or just cheat and funnel the money to the corporate candidates, no problem, sir. Well, Marianne won't say no problem.

She'll definitely fight against that. And, you know, will Ken Martin, I hope, I hope. So there's a couple of interesting candidates in there. And the rest are either not huge players or pro establishment, which makes them useless. We'll see what happens. But for now, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about some lessons learned from the election. Simone Sanders, who worked on both Biden's campaign in 2020

and Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2016, says something correct. But it goes again something she said previously. I really can't wait to share that story with you, so stick around. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys, 20% off membership today at TYT.com. And last day for contributions, we appreciate all of you guys. Thank you for helping us build a bridge to the future. You guys are amazing.

Anna. Well, Simone Sanders, who has worked on both Bernie Sanders' and Joe Biden's campaigns, has an interesting piece of information that she has learned from this past. last election. And I think she's right about this. So take it away. This has literally been going on since Brent Hampton, but I mean, Reverend Justice Jackson, Dr. King, right? Heck, Bernie Sanders talked about organizing across class as well. He did. And that is something that Simone Sanders is now giving Senator Bernie Sanders a lot of credit for, even though she previously spoke against it. But it's okay. Once you come to the

right conclusion. You deserve credit. Now, she made that passionate point and defended Bernie Sanders over the weekend focusing on how, look, there needs to be more organizing and more messaging on class-based politics as opposed to identity-based politics. And so Simone Sanders used to work for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in 2016. And we are glad to see her fighting for him now because again, a few years back, she was actually taking shots at him for sharing that same message. And we're going to get to that in just a minute. But first, Jank, initial thoughts. Yeah, look, I feel bad sometimes criticizing folks. I know how that feels. But there's a lot of Johnny come lately with epiphanies without apologies, right? So a lot of identity politics was played

in the Democratic Party. We'll come back and talk more about that after I a minute gives you the rest of the story. So the clip we just showed you is just a small piece of what Simone Sanders had to say about class. So for context, she was actually responding to the ongoing fight within MAGA over H-1B immigration visas. And so with that in mind, here's more context of what she was saying. The reality is, is when you aligned just along, if we're going to just specifically talk about white people for a second, okay? If we just talk about aligning just across race, we are seeing the divisions happening right now.

The billionaire, the white billionaires, Elon Musk is not saying, yes, I'm fighting for the little guy. Yes, I'm out here, you know, looking out for the forgotten white man. He is saying these folks are mediocre and let me get somebody else to do it, which is why folks, white, black, Latino, Native American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and otherwise, we have to look at organizing across class. Okay? Because the reality is what they said, as Michael said, what they said about black people all those years ago, and they still trying to say it about us to be very clear. Now they're saying it out loud about people who are not black, about you.

I mean, this is the reason why politicians advocating for universal economic policies tend to perform better in political polling. They tend to get reelected. It's messaging that appeals to a broader group of voters, I just, I don't think that that's a smart point at all. I think that that's like a very common sense point. But we've been gaslit with the identity politics for so long. And anyone who would say what we're saying right now would be browbeaten as like a race, I'm sorry, a class essentialist, which is a ridiculous point to make. These economic policies that especially were advocated for by Bernie Sanders would have

honestly disproportionately helped black women who are overrepresented in minimum wage jobs, for instance. And so I just think the class-based policies and messaging and political campaigns tend to do better. And yeah, when you start divvying people up based on identity, based on race, based on gender, based on all of that stuff, well, it honestly is more conducive to like political infighting and all sorts of nonsense that ends up being counterproductive for the party. And I think the Democratic Party has experienced quite a bit of that. Yeah, so there's a couple of factors here. First of all, identity politics in the modern politically era was started by the Republican Party

when they did the Southern strategy. And so the Southern strategy was, hey, Lyndon Johnson got a lot of the Dixiecrats in the South that were Democrats to vote for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. So that presented an opportunity for Republicans to go pick up voters in the South that wanted to maintain segregation and wanted to maintain Jim Crow and that were honestly racist. And so it was an avowedly racist strategy started by Richard Nixon. Excuse me. So that's how the Republicans started it.

And then but when you turn to the Democrats, recently they too have done a lot of identity politics. And so South Carolina is a really good example of that and it's within the Democratic Party. So they move South Carolina to the first state to vote this time around, not that they allowed much voting in the primaries anyway, places like Florida just canceled the primary elections because that's how Democrats have been, authoritarian within their own party. And so why did they move South Carolina first? And why did they have all this anti-Bernie Sanders talk in 2020 about race?

So because Bernie Sanders did great in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and he won all three of those in 2020. I'm sorry, they moved South Carolina to first in 2024, right? And so South Carolina came in fourth and saved Joe Biden and South Carolina had saved Hillary Clinton and James Clyburn and other African American leaders all said you have to vote for the corporate Democrat. The corporate Democrat is more in favor of African Americans. So a giant, giant lie by Clyburn and almost all the other folks that were in the upper echelon of Democratic Party, but it worked. They made it appear that Clinton's and Biden were more in favor of African Americans than Bernie Sanders. And they would set up traps for Bernie Sanders

where they would say, well, in Iowa, you got more white voters. And in New Hampshire, you got more white. I know there's more white voters in those states. So, oh, you don't want South Carolina to be first, huh? Are you against black voters? And they did this over and over and over again, and Simone Sanders herself did something akin to that as well, even though she worked for Bernie in the past. So what were they doing? They were using identity politics against Bernie Sanders to help, by the way, a super old white man and a white lady with an enormous amount of power. Okay, so it was so callous having nothing to do with their concern about actual policy. It was just used as a way to not attack Republicans, but attack fellow Democrats by using identity politics.

Now, there's two other things that they use identity politics for, and that is democratic elites who are minorities say, it's really important to have representation. Now, it's way more important to have higher wages for black folks, Latinos, everybody in the country, white people, everybody, right? It's much more important that they all have health care. That affects their lives infinitely more. But that was an argument. The argument was, don't worry about policy.

Representation at the very, very top is what's important, almost always said by Democratic. who was a minority, right? And so that doesn't mean all Democrats who are minorities fit into that, of course not, right? And a lot of good progressives and populists are minorities, and I'm a minority. But you don't see me going around going, well, the most important thing is Muslim representation at the very top, okay? Because that's an absurd thing to say. That's ridiculous. And so, no, the people, the voters matter much more, but they never go in that direction.

And finally, sorry, but it's absolutely true. Some in the Democratic Party use minorities as human shields. And they go, if you don't agree with my opinion, then you're attacking vulnerable communities. But wait a minute, we have a different idea for how to serve those vulnerable communities. For example, one of the ideas that the elites had was if we just put a couple of black and Latino people at the very top, that'll help them. Our idea was, why don't we actually get them higher wages in health care? That'll help them a lot more. And then, no, you're hurting vulnerable communities.

No, we're not. You're hurting them. But that's just a line that people use to privilege their own perspective and their own position within a Democratic Party in the left wing. So none of this help. It's elementary politics that you serve all voters, not just some voters, if you'd like to get more of them, elementary. Yeah, I mean, look, diversity of thought is not something that seems to be

celebrated by the Democratic Party. And so I think that's an issue. And look, just to give you a perfect example, I mean, think about what happened with the California Senate seat after Senator Diane Feinstein passed away during her final term. I mean, at that point, California governor Gavin Newsom was able to appoint someone to that vacant seat until the election was held. And Barbara Lee, a black Democrat who was planning on running for that seat, you know, wanted to be a contender, wanted to be chosen. And she was known for her progressive politics. And guess what?

Her representation was not something that was favored by Gavin Newsom and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. So there you have it. But I do want to talk a little bit about where Simone Sanders was on this issue back in 2019, because as I mentioned, she did work for Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in 2016, but by 2019, she became a senior advisor for the Biden campaign. And so apparently she took issue with something that Bernie Sanders had said during an interview with GQ. So let me first start with what Senator Sanders said, and then I'll get to her response.

Again, this was in 2019. So Senator Sanders said, there are people who are very big into diversity, but whose views end up being not particularly sympathetic to working people, whether they're white or black or Latino. My main belief is that we need to bring together a coalition of people of black and white and Latino and Asian American and Native American around a progressive agenda, which is prepared to take on an extraordinarily powerful ruling class in this country. That's my view. Many of my opponents do not hold that view.

And they think that all that we need is people who are candidates who are black or white, who are black or Latino or women or gay, regardless of what they stand for, that the end result is diversity. And then Bernie hasten to add that diversity is enormously important, but there was a bigger goal to change society and create an economy and a government that work for all people. Simone Sanders took issue with that statement, even though she seems to agree with it today. Back then, in February of 2019, she responded by saying, has he learned lessons since 2016? Yes. He has been actively working since 2016 to reach out to various communities to be on the ground and listen to folks.

He has been to South Carolina a few times, which is really important. But some of the language is going to be problematic. Nobody is saying that, and in a race where there are Latinos and women and black women, people will use it against him. I don't care how many times you go to South Carolina. You say things like you said to GQ because you think it's appealing. It's alienating to some folks. As a young black, as a young black millennial, I don't like hearing it because it speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding about race and gender and what people are looking for. So what are people are people looking for Simone Sanders? I mean, like, I wish that there was a follow up to that statement.

Okay, so if Bernie Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about and you know better, what are people looking for? Yeah. I just, yeah, it's just frustrating. And I do think that, you know, identity politics was specifically used as a weapon against Bernie Sanders in 2016. And it changed the way that he campaigned in 2020. And while he did perform okay in 2020, he wasn't, you know, as explosive as popular as he was in his 2016 campaign. Yeah, so I don't understand what the problem with our GQ interview was at all. He said everything he said was perfectly fine. He said, let's reach all people.

And the reaction was, that's problematic. How on God's green earth can that be problematic? So now the good news is Samo Sanders is back to agreeing with us. Okay, so I'll take it. But I don't say that dismissively. Look, what would be great is if she and other people like her said, yeah, we went too far in that direction and it didn't help politically. It didn't help strategically. And I see that Bernie was right. That would be amazing. But she's not going to say that. Right. So her saying that we got to get kind of beginning to say we got to get past identity politics and actually go towards class and discussing that so that it addresses all of us. I'll take, look, I've been telling some friends on the far left to take yes for an answer. I'll take yes for an answer.

So thank you, Simone. I appreciate it. And I like that she's going in this new direction. That's wonderful. I also want to address something that one of our YouTube members just wrote in on. Leanne Scott said, this analysis is problematic. The identity politics that gave us desegregation lifted the economy for everyone, recognizing the institutional nation of racism was the only way to make it possible.

But, Leanne, the only thing I disagree with you on is. desegregation is not identity politics, segregation was identity politics, saying, oh, white people and black people should be separated, they should have different rights, etc. That's core identity politics. De segregation is just getting to equality and justice. So here, one last example as a matter of policy. So black and white people spoke potter at about the same rate, and black people are arrested at about 3.7 times rate, right? About four times larger rate than white people are. So you don't need to blame white people for that. They didn't do anything wrong. But do you have to fix that system, the institutional racism built into that system so that there's justice? Of course.

But that's not identity politics. That's just making things fair and equal, which is where we all want to be. Identity politics is when people say, well, Bernie Sanders might be the better candidate, but you should vote for this other person because they're a more representative of X community or Y community or Z community or use it for whatever other political advantage they have within the Democratic Party or use it to exclude people and to go away from justice and equality. So that's why I want to be super clear about that. We're all in favor of getting to a point where we have justice and equality of opportunity. All right, let's take a break.

And when we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk a little bit. about lessons that Rachel Maddow has failed to learn after the election. We'll be right back.