The Young Turks - Trump's Taxes

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

Donald Trump's tax return exposes the finances he is so proud of. Almost 80 members of congress have violated a law to prevent insider trading. Elon Musk’s net worth has dropped significantly. An AI has written cover letters, however, the hiring committee says they lack personality. A survey says that most Americans today would not be able to afford their house today. Host: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Jordan Uhl Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! Three by three, three my team, free my team, three by team, three my team, three by three. You kidding me, that's power panel.

Jake, Yugar, John Airola, George Yul, are you kidding me? Okay, man, we're on a roller. So, you know, John, has anyone ever, come back in the frame. Has anyone ever giving you the nickname? Out of the millions of nicknames that you have of Rola? No, I've been waiting my whole life to finally come. I've written it on my vision board, but no one, I knew you'd get there eventually. For sure.

If you were on a football team, your name is John Adirola. It's inconceivable you wouldn't be called Rola. Okay. I really missed out then. Yeah, you did. Rolla, get the water, okay? That's what fresh do. Why am I getting the water in this example? Why am I not like, hey, run for another touchdown? No, because you were a freshman and they're bossing you around. That's true. So that's, you know. That's fair. All right, you'll be fine. Jordan, good to see you as well. Wonderful, thank you for having me.

Okay, God bless. As you can tell, I'm in a mood. Let's have some fun. Let's talk about Trump's tax returns. Let's do that. Okay, for the first time ever. Earlier today, it finally happened. After years of struggle, some of Donald Trump's taxes have been released.

Not an executive summary or a few top line points or whatever, like a bunch of the actual documents. And already, there is some interesting stuff in there, although I assume it will take time and people with a particular expertise in looking into this stuff as well as some investigation to figure out quite a bit more. But the most important thing is going to really surprise you. It turns out, and we double check this, he wasn't paying much in taxes for multiple years. It shows that he paid little, if anything, in income taxes compared with his gross income over six years so far, because we already had some information, including

the four in which he served as president. He apparently lost thousands of dollars in income from 2015 to 2017, largely due to net losses tied to real estate and other businesses. For instance, on his 2017 tax return, Trump claimed business expenses and other losses and deductions in excess of $279.5 million, significantly reducing the amount of taxi owed. Those deductions include fun things like the helicopter expenses that you pay every year, like yours probably, and foreign taxes paid as well. So that gives you an overview of what's happening. here. But when they say like significantly reduced his taxes, that doesn't really sell how significant it is. For instance, in 2017, he paid $750 in federal income taxes. In 2020, he paid

nothing, nothing at all. He's an amazing businessman. And somehow his businesses lose so much money every single year that he never owes anything. And yet according to him, he gets richer and richer. It's amazing how that works out. Maybe it's something we should look into. Now, the interesting thing about this is some of those numbers are highly specific. For instance, the year in which he paid $750. And if that number stood out to you, it might be buried deep in your brain. You might be remembering a little debate performance where he was actually asked about that specific thing. Take a look at this. I know that you pay a lot of other taxes, but I'm asking you the specific question. Is it true that you paid $750 in federal

income taxes each of those two years? I paid millions of dollars. in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax. And let me just tell you, there was a story in one of the papers. I paid $38 million one year. I paid $27 million. Show us your tax returns. I went, you'll see it as soon as it's finished. I'm asking you a question. Will you tell us how much you paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017? Millions of dollars. You paid millions of dollars? Millions of dollars. So not seven hundred and dollars. And you'll get to see it. And you'll get to see it. When it turns out is way after the point when maybe it could have made a difference.

But no, regardless of his lies, the millions of dollars, no, he paid exactly $750 in that exact year that they're talking about. He is just blatantly lying, which as we know guys will probably have no effect whatsoever. But it's good to know it. Yeah. All right, there's a lot of things that I love about this. There's only one thing that's a down there, which is will he ever be prosecuted for any of this. Come on, don't be ridiculous. Of course not. Rich people are allowed to break the law in America. Welcome to the country if you don't realize that.

So now, Johnny Wright's point out that hilarious moment in the debate where he's like, no, I totally are true, bet the $750. Now we find out it's 100% true. It's his billionth lie in a row. George Santos looks like a rank amateur compared to Donald Trump. Will any Republican voter care? No, they've never cared. They don't, it's not that they like him despite his lying. They love the fact that he's a giant liar. They love it. I mean, if you told Republicans a truth, like, hey, you know what? You're actually not superior to anyone. And you should actually pay your taxes like everyone else. You should follow the laws like everyone else. And you're not genetically or naturally any better than any other human being. They would despise you. They want you to lie to them. That's why they picked this guy. Okay. So the second hilarious part, today, he's

attached an article from Forbes as he was raging about this, saying that his net worth is $4 billion. Why? Because the returns show you he isn't anywhere near a billionaire, right? So he's like, oh yeah, I once tricked Forbes and to say that I've got $4 billion. Ha ha, got you. No, not got you. We see your taxes. Where's the money, Lubowski? But it gets funnier, of course. Let me read you an article from NBC News from July 15th, 2015. Donald Trump's campaign claims he's worth over $10 billion. And then he made $362 million in income last year. Okay. So he's worth over $10 billion. But now, remember, forget the tax returns. Trump himself just sent out an article saying he's worth $4 billion. Seven years later. So where did the $6 billion go? Did Trump

lose $6 billion over the last seven years. No, of course not. He's just pulling numbers out of his ass. If you can't tell the Trump is lying, I swear to God, either you have cognitive difficulties and you should look into medicine or I don't know if medicine can even help you, or you have psychological problems that makes you enjoy liars like Donald Trump. I don't think that most of his base is even going to care about this. We've heard this talking point even back to the 2016 race. You know, Hillary hit him for not paying his taxes and he said, that makes me smart. You know, Biden did the same thing in 2020.

Most Republicans are not going to care that he doesn't really pay his fair share. This really, this really is about his image and standing among the elite. And so much of his protection around this and trying to block it. I mean, if you saw in this reporting, the IRS didn't even audit him. while he was president like they should have. So you could infer that that was him directing the IRS not to do that or they were scared of him or something. But really, this was ultimately about him trying to protect his status and image among the wealthy

elite. He wants other billionaires to think that he is, he belongs in those ranks. He wants people to think he's wealthy because that's really his image. You know, the lines about being a disruptor or an outsider in politics only goes so far. far, but I think a lot of people see him as a success on the right. And they saw him as a successful businessman. And they determine that by his wealth, which as Jen points out, you can just tell Forbes you're worth a certain amount of money and they'll apparently just run it. There's no real fact checking in those lists. So him trying to hide this. And that's what his response informs

that. He's so upset because he wants people to think he's much richer than he is. And really, That's just, that's just the American way. Everyone loves to pretend that they're richer than they are. Exactly, yeah. No, if you wanted to impress us, don't get a Forbes to write an article. Tweet at a 19 year old activist about how many cars you have. That's how you impress people with your luxury and excess. Anyway, that's sort of focusing on stuff happening here domestically. There were some revelations outside of that, though. Revealed today when three years of Donald Trump's taxes were finally released into the public is that he had some bank accounts, located inside of the United States. So for instance, between 2015 and 2020, he had a bank account

in, that was in the UK. Along the way, there was Ireland, I believe. Specifically for our talk, though, between 2015 and 2017, he had bank accounts listed that were in China. And interestingly enough, that also came up in a debate in the last presidential election. Take a look at this. You've never invested from your business. You've personally promoted your properties abroad. A report this week, which was referenced, does indicate that your company has a bank account in China. So how can voters know that you don't have any foreign conflicts of interest? The bank account you're referring to, which is everybody knows about it, it's listed.

The bank account was in 2013. That's what it was. It was open to do. It was closed in 2015, I believe. And then I decided, because I was. going to do, I was thinking about doing a deal in China like millions of other people. I was thinking about it. And I decided, I'm not going to do it. Didn't like it. I decided not to do it. Had an account open and I closed it. So according to him, in the time that he is talking about, it had already

been closed for a year and a half. That wasn't, that wasn't true. It lasted into the first year of his presidency. Now, did that affect anything? Did it influence the way that he dealt with China? I don't know, I don't have any specific evidence to that effect, but he was either completely mistaken about a foreign bank account in his name, or he's openly lying about it. And it would be one thing if it was just an oversight or something like that. But bear in mind, the topic of China was pretty important for Donald Trump at that point when they were doing that debate, because they were smearing Biden at that point as a puppet of China, like specifically saying you couldn't trust Joe Biden because of his business connections with China.

That was a big talking point on the right. Biden's income tax returns and financial disclosures, which did not require three years of conflict to get. He just put them out, show no business dealings or income from China. So this feels less like an oversight and more like just projection. He is putting on to Joe Biden the things that he knows he was trying to cover up. Yes, so he apparently had about $55 million in gross income for more than a dozen countries. But look, to be fair, would Donald Trump really take his own personal financial interest and put it above others?

Of course, of course he would. Got aren't right wingers unbelievable? If Bernie Sanders did all this stuff where he's like, wow, you know, I got a favor of this country and that country and I'm never going to pay any goddamn taxes and lie after lie after lie, he wouldn't still be the considered the leader of progressives. Not not within a country mile. No way, right? But the right wing, every time they see another outrageous lie.

by the way, lies where he rips them off because we're all paying taxes, including the MAGA chudheads. They're sitting there paying taxes and taxes and taxes. And then Trump goes, and he said it again today, Jordan. I mean, in the release today, shows how good a businessman I am, did I make no money at all? And did I pay no taxes, even though I'm worth $4 billion? No, that doesn't show that you're a good business, ma'am. That shows one of two things and maybe both. One, you're an awful business man. You never, ever make money. All you have is literally decades of losses.

And by the way, there's some truth to that. There's a lot of truth to that. Remember, his dad gave him $413 million and he lost all of it. So when he's deducting the taxes for losses, that part is the only part that's actually true. Because he sucks in business. He never makes any goddamn money. Only two things he's ever made money from his dad. That's why he's Donny Boy.

It's whenever he went bankrupt, we go crying to daddy. Oh, yeah, he had lots of money again, right? And then the other thing was the $400 million he made from NBC because of the apprentice. So, and was that really his doing? No, he was a sad little puppet. The producers put up there, they're like, he's famous. He's a well, well-known clown. Okay, idiot.

This is the line you say. You're fired. Okay. They fed him all of his lines. He could have been anybody. They could have put in anybody there. He's so useless. And so, but he got an unbelievable amount of money from that.

What did he do with the $400 million? He lost it. He lost it. He's such an idiot. And this is who the right wing looks up to. And then so either he's a terrible businessman or he's a giant tax cheat. And while you pay your taxes, he doesn't. And he rubs it in your face.

Either way, that's, you've got to be a chudhead to root for this guy. You really, I mean, why don't you just tell him, punch me in the face while you're at it? He would, he would gladly do it, and maggie guys would probably love it. Yeah, I think you touched on it, Jank. I think what we're really seeing in these tax returns is how he exploits the deduction system. And when you do it to that grade of an extent where you're paying nothing or 700, on millions of income, he's not a billionaire, but he's still bringing in millions every single year. It just shows how easy it is for the wealthy to exploit that system. And from the looks of it,

they just bury his accountants bury the IRS in paperwork. He's return each year is several hundred pages long. And with an understaffed IRS and tons of political implications if they do audit him, that could look bad for them. But He just makes it extremely difficult to verify all of these write-offs and deductions that he's claiming every year. So if we really want to create a level playing field, that's like a great place to start. And like I agree with Jenk, he's probably not going to face any punishment for this. But if they do, it does seem like the greatest likelihood would be, you know, how they got Al Capone. He's just tax fraud.

He's claiming things on these deductions that don't really seem to add up. A $40,000 speech with $38 some thousand dollars in. expenses. That doesn't seem realistic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I got to add one thing to what Jordan's saying. Look, I don't want anybody to misinterpret me. If you actually cared about justice, would you prosecute this guy? Of course. Would you have ample evidence from these tax returns? Absolutely. Look, he has pages of pages of deductions that he calls other business expenses. That's not a thing. Okay? So if you did that, would you be prosecuted? Hell yes, you would. You would definitely be prosecuted. Okay, but here's a hilarious example. He has DJT Aerospace LLC. I didn't know he built rockets too. So you go into space. No, it's for a stupid helicopter. And he rents out the helicopter and he actually makes money for me. In fact, in 2017, he made $42,965. Now, do you want to know what he said his expenses were for the helicopter? $42,965. That's not a thing. Your expenses don't magically equal to the dollar your revenue from something. So if you see that as an IRS agent, that's not like a little red flag.

That's like a giant was chicken lot red flag. Like, I am cheating. I am a liar. You should definitely put me in jail, right? And of course, since he's, you know, relatively rich until he burns through the next set of money that he has. And he's, and he's of course very, very powerful. So I mean, the IRS agents probably had spent a new deduction themselves for a round it depends for everyone. They're supposed to audit the president,

no matter who the president is, every single year, except they were cowards. They've been cowards for over a decade. Are you ever going to audit the guy and publish it and hold them near account, or are you all unbelievable cowards at the IRS? And the answer is, of course, when it comes to the elite and the powerful, they'll stand down, they'll stand down. You, they'll crush into oblivion. Yeah, a couple really quick facts, and then I have a question for you. So one is when he references paying millions of dollars in income taxes during the period that Chris Wallace was talking about, that's an exaggeration no matter how you look at it. But there is one way in which it's almost kind of true. He did pay one million dollars,

in 2017 in foreign taxes. He paid less than a thousand of the U.S., more than a million dollars internationally. And he didn't do it because he was feeling charitable, as we'll get to. He did it because the law demanded it. You can set up laws to require rich people to pay taxes. And in that case, even someone as paying averse as Donald Trump will actually do it. Our laws could look like that. He could have been paying these millions of dollars over the last 20 years, but we just choose not to, different choices between different countries. Also, by the way, they did get into his charitable giving. He constantly talked about how charitable he was. In 2019, he did actually give about $500,000. I mean, God only knows if that was actually

cash or if he was what he was considering charity. But he did give some money then. None in 2020, but it was a pretty easy year. Everyone was doing good. They didn't need any help, I guess. By the way, he said that he donated his over $400,000 a year presidential salary every year of his presidency. What happened in 2020? Maybe he was worried about not being able to find another job after he lost reelection. I don't know. Also, I only mention this because it does contain at least an implicit threat.

But he has responded to this being released. Are you interested in that? Sure. I mean, it could lead to an insurrection. So I suppose we should get to it. Here is what Donald Trump has- But I don't think it's going to though. Sure, I think in this particular case,

I don't think his fans are going to be all that defensive towards him. But here is what Donald Trump had to say when three years of his taxes were released earlier today. The Democrats should have never done it. The Supreme Court should have never approved it. And it's going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The Great USA divide will now grow far worse. The radical left Democrats have weaponized. everything. But remember, that is a dangerous two-way street. The Trump tax returns once again

show how proudly successful I've been, and how I've been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises. So he gets to defending himself. He runs an amazing business that just happens to lose $50 million every single year for decades. I guess it's still good somehow. And he's creating jobs, even though he's losing all this money. That's actually charitable of him. But he does say that somehow his tax is being released. His taxes are being public in a way that literally everyone else who's run for president's taxes have been public will lead to horrible things for so many people.

And now it's a two-way street, even though, as I said, they were already giving out their taxes. Biden's taxes are already out. What are you going to do to them at this point? But there is a bit of a threat there. I guess that's part for the course. Yeah, so I don't think this one's going to work, so I'm not that worried about it. But he's doing his usual physical threat, because he's a fascist. So he's like, if you will release my taxes, horrible things will happen to you, right?

And in the old days, yeah, you know, on other issues, his fans probably would have tried to hurt people. They've done that a thousand times. The FBI raids him, he's like, this is going to be very dangerous for you. and then people threaten to bomb the FBI, try to shoot at FBI headquarters, and et cetera, et cetera. So that's his ways of releasing vigilante terrorist violence. He's very used to it, obviously did it in a spectacular fashion on January 6th. Now, in this case, why am I unconcerned about this terrorist wannabe? Because, really, I mean, are the chud heads of the right?

and apparently that's my favorite word today, that chuddy, that they're like, oh, I can't believe they released a rich man's taxes. And it shows that he's paying less taxes than me, I'm going to go kill someone for him. Okay, maybe, maybe there are people that chuddy, okay? But I, this has got to be the smallest violin in even MAGA history. Like, can you believe they showed what a tax cheat I am and how I've been ripping you off all these years, that's going to inspire people to get really mad on behalf of the rich man to go hurt other people. Maybe I'm being too generous, but I don't even think the right wing's that dumb. No, I think this is going to be more of just defense of Trump. They'll double down on he's a smart businessman. This just shows what a genius he is, that he isn't paying

taxes, never mind that they're yet like Jank is saying, they're paying much more than him and federal income tax relative to their income. But what I thought was funny was his threat, oh, this is dangerous. And there's a lot of people on the right saying, well, what do you want next? You want the Supreme Court to release their taxes? Yeah, that'd be good. I'd like to know where Brett Kavanaugh's debt went. Where'd that go? How did that get taken care of? I'm not really worried about financial privacy for the most powerful people in this country. I think more transparency would be a spectacular thing. So all of their defenses of Trump in this moment really seemed tone deaf and like they haven't really thought through the consequences of their own

veiled threats. Yeah, I just largely feel bad for them. I do. I mean, this guy who claimed he had 10 billion in 2015, now he says he has 4 billion. Where's the money, Lubowski? There's no, It's not in his tax filings at all. And he just tells people, it's such a good, it's so good in business. When you lose all your money, that means you're proudly successful. And people listen to that. And like Jordan said, they 100% believe it. Oh, yeah, the best businessman lose all their money.

I love this guy. He's so smart. If you say so, okay, I just, I know what you guys are trying to do. You're trying to own the libs by having. must have sympathy for you if you believe that load of crap. I'll take your first break. Yeah. Okay, we'll be right.

All right. So first of all, remember the panic. So you've got only two days that boop, boop, boop, like a day and a half left on a winter sale. Winter collection is shopt, t.com. And we worked with the top fashion designers in the world. I mean, there's nothing as fancy as garbage bags like you see Kanye did for Gap. But the winter collection is amazing. They're raving about it in Paris, but you get 30% off in the next day and a half.

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. But this is how we're going to lose all of our money and then be proudly successful in our taxes when we write it off. Okay, shop t.yt.com. Come rob us. Winter collection, 30% off shopty.com. All right, let's go to members. Louby writes in as in rockola.

Okay, now you're on to something. Rock and rolla, come on. How is that not our next movie that's for just for members? Of all of the names to give me. Just start everything that's just for members. You're going to give me a nickname that references music. Why don't have it be about football? Yeah, well, yes, I agree that that

would be living less fitting. Nonetheless, we move forward, rock and rolla. Shadows writes in, what a hell of a power panel. Beautiful. Okay, Louis Seifer writes in, drop it like the Times Square bald. Oh, that's a good one. I should have thought of that one. Damn. Ecclectic miss writes in it's the last Trump lead story of 2022. Da-da-da, I don't know how to say that, that, da, da, anyway, Jake's tricep fury says, and that does sound furious. I guess so sick of people shoving it on our face that they pay no taxes and there's nothing we could do about it. Can I get a hell yeah? Can I get an amen? And Republicans, meanwhile, are like, yeah, it's John,

I bet so much in taxes, but Trump didn't. That's why I'm fired for. And, you know, Jordan, you said as a percentage of their income, it's not even as a percentage of their income. 2016, 2017, he paid 750 bucks. Everybody pays more than 750 bucks in taxes. 2020, he paid nothing. So it's like very literally raw number, we pay more than he does. Tail Wagon Dragon says, China. China. Chanty says, Jank has been saying for years that Trump is not as rich as he claims. Hashtag Jake was right.

Look, I'm not saying you should that put that all over Twitter. I'm just, okay, other people are saying it. I'm just, my job is to read these comments. Tail Wagon Dragon says the orange head headed beast who speaks lies would pay his Fair share. In tax? L-O-A-O-L-A-W-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A. Back on T-YT, Jank, Jordan, and Rock-N-Rola. John, take it away.

Thank you. If you hadn't added the John, I would not give you the news right now. Anyway, with that said, let's talk about some corruption. It took a ton of pressure from a few good members of Congress, as well as diligent work by journalists to raise the issue of members of Congress, effectively using insider information to enrich themselves by trading in stocks. And the pressure grew and grew and grew until earlier this year, Nancy Pelosi finally admitted that something had to be done and the practice had to be banned.

And so it's not going to happen. It was supposed to be in this on-the-bus spending bill. The bill is out. It's not in there. I guess there wasn't room. I mean, the bill, after all, is only 4,155 pages. It's got a ton of stuff for the government, for individual members of Congress, their pet projects, but no language banning members from trading individual stocks despite a bipartisan congressional push to do so.

So many people who seriously wanted that to happen and they just couldn't get it to happen. And so what do we have? Well, we don't have that, but we do have the Stock Act, okay? So Congress passes a decade ago and tended to combat insider trading. Now it doesn't ban the practice, but a key provision in the Stock Act mandates that law lawmakers publicly and quickly disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child. So that in theory, were they to use information that they got in a meeting to buy some

stock, you'd know it immediately and you could do the same thing, except they just don't abide by it. Insider has identified 77 members of Congress in their most recent analysis who have violated even that minimal disclosure requirement. And you're probably wondering, well, now. that we know who they are, what's going to happen? What are the enforcement mechanisms in the Stock Act? Well, it's possible at this point. I want to get ahead of the news cycle, but it is possible that they might have to pay as much as $200 as a fine. It's often waived, though,

so they're probably not even going to have to do that. And to give you an idea of what we're talking about, like the amounts and the delay between when they do the trade and when they disclosed it. It is comical at this point. Rand Paul was 16 months late in disclosing that his wife bought stock in a biopharmaceutical company that manufactures an antiviral COVID-19 treatment. I'm sure he didn't get any. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I thought doing it antiviral. I thought COVID didn't even exist. Rand Paul, what happened? I thought you beat it in the bushes of your name with your, in the dispute with your neighbors. That sounded weird. Okay, my friend Paul, it turns out of you're making money off the vaccine.

Oh, you politicians amuse me. And the people who believe in you amuse me even more. Sorry, John, go ahead. No, no, that's, look, it's obviously in something where they could get insider information and 16 months. So good luck using the fact that the spouse of a senator is moving on a stock. It's not going to help you at this point. Look, there are people like Democrat Susie Lee, because again, this is in both parties, 200 stock trades, together amounting to $3.3 million, not disclosed.

Mo Brooks, by the way, didn't disclose a sale of Pfizer stock worth up to $50,000. Weird that he was dealing with Pfizer when they've made up this whole pandemic and everything. But no, there's Representative Catherine Clark, one of the highest ranking Democrats in the House, weeks late in disclosing 19 stock trades worth as much as $285,000. Last year, a Republican from Tennessee didn't disclose more than 700 stock trades together worth as much as $10.9 million. And so this, the fact that the Stock Act might as well not even exist, it only serves to give us an excuse to talk about this topic at this point, combined with the fact that

Nancy Pelosi, who did not want to ban individual stock trades in the first place and was only forced to because people kept being gauche and bringing it up over and over again, has succeeded in killing it as an issue. And now the Democrats are already going to be in charge. Now, in theory, the Republicans who, during the last campaign, brought up the fact constantly that Nancy Pelosi wasn't outlawing this, using it as an example of how corrupt the Democrats were, that they weren't banning this. Well, now they have a great opportunity. They can ban it. They can prove that they're the ones that are against corruption, the ball is in their court. I don't think they're going to use it. Yeah, by the way, if the Republicans actually did ban the personal trading of stocks

for the Congress people, but give them all the credit in the world. God bless. You know what? I mean, this is a bit shocking, but Matt Gates actually has some pretty good anti-corruption proposals that he has. If by the maybe he could use the leverage of the Kevin McCarthy vote to insist that those get a vote. I'm just saying, Matt, think about it, right? And I'm giving credit here on good anti-corruption stuff. Now, are the Republicans likely to pass a single anti-corruption bill? Unless it's total fraud. And it's just meant to trick you into thinking they did anti-corruption. I would be shocked. But I would tell you the truth. I would be happy to tell you if they pass it. But they very, very, very likely won't because they're just as criminal as anyone else.

But normally it's the Republicans that are, you know, do the, like, wheeling and dealing, et cetera. You think that's the popular conception of it, partly because mainstream media, let's be honest, favors Democratic leadership, okay, and protects Democrats. And you saw it in Sam Bankman-Fried. He said, oh, I gave the Democrats publicly because I get PR credit for it. I gave the Republicans through dark money because you're going to get criticized for it. Democrats take the same money, do the same wrong things with it. That's campaign contributions. In this case, it's their own personal money that they're trading with. So I'm going to read you four others, other than the ones that John read you, because I just think it's hilariously symbolic.

Okay. Tom Carper, Democrat from Delaware, senator, four months late disclosing his wife's sale of stock in a gold mining company. These guys are like, it's like Elmer J. Fund in Congress. Anyway, Senator Bill Haggerty, a Republican from Tennessee. month's late disclosing stock trades on behalf of his dependent children. I read that to one to you because like half of this stuff is inherited. In his case, he's the kids are going to take his money, but half these senators got money from their parents. Senator Cynthia Loomis, a Republican from Wyoming, was several days late, which is not that big a deal, let's be honest. Okay, so we're fair. But she was several days late in purchase of, in August of up to $100,000 in Bitcoin. So my point here is not, hey, oh my God, she was a couple of days late.

They were a couple of months late in reporting stuff. Number one issue here is people doing the insider trading in the first place with the knowledge that they have. Number two issue is the ones that did not disclose for a long time that were trying to actually hide what they were doing. And that includes Democrats and Republicans. The third issue, which is what I'm talking about here is it's hilarious the way that they make money. And it's kind of representative of who our political elite are, which brings me to Senator Gary Peters, Democrat from Michigan. Peters was must late disclosing a purchase of up to $15,000 worth of stock in KKR Capital Corp. That is a giant private equity group.

So we've got gold mining, we've got private equity, we've got Bitcoin. Oh, and here we go, Senator Dan Sullivan on the opposite end of the scale that I was talking about earlier, Republican from Alaska. Weeks late, this goes in the sale of two stock holdings he had inherited. So these are the royals that rule us all, Jordan. Yeah, and this goes beyond just them reporting late, too, like you said. The Stock Act, if it's a $200 penalty for reporting late or for any violation of the Stock Act, it's just a $200 fine to do whatever you want. Like when you, when the penalty is only a small $200 fine for the wealthy, and many of members of Congress are wealthy, that's nothing.

It means it's effectively legal for them. It's just a little bit more expensive. But if you look at how Congress have performed, how their portfolios have performed, you have multiple, I think dozens of members of Congress who are just, apparently, they belong on Wall Street. They're way outperforming the S&P. I mean, they would be the top, you know, a hedge fund manager on Wall Street with their performance, which shows it's not that they, you know, are crunching the numbers or just really are good at analytics. It's that they're operating on inside information.

Or they're doing things and knowing, like I think Loomis was a big proponent of crypto in general. So she's holding it and then going out and saying, oh, we need to incorporate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into people's retirement portfolios, which is a big push. There's a big bipartisan push there. She stands to benefit from the inclusion of cryptocurrencies into retirement portfolios. So they have a huge conflict of interest that they're even owning any of these stocks, let alone buying and selling them while in Congress. And like you're saying, Republicans could do this. They said they wanted to, but it's very easy when they're out of the opposition party and out of power. Now they're going to have it. This could be a huge win for them and like I agree. I agree

with Jake. I would applaud if they did it. But I think the hollow populism that we've demonized and decried for the past several years is really going to show its face yet again. They're not going to do it. It sounds good in the press. It sounds good on social media. But now that they're actually going to have control of the house, they won't do it. Yeah. Okay, why don't we move on to something else? We've got people making big money. Let's turn in the opposite direction now. This year, Elon Musk has made history, by setting a record that only a rich businessman like him actually could.

This year, he has lost more wealth than anyone in history. And you honestly love to see it. So he lost more than $200 billion over the past 13 months. To put that in context, it is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Greece. Okay, the amount lost is also more than the net worth of the now world's richest person, Bernard Arnold. And so let's put it in perspective graphically. So over the last quarter, if you take a look at this, he's lost, I'm going to say somewhere around $90 billion just in that one quarter. I haven't been paying attention to the news, so I don't know what he's been up to in the last quarter, probably rigorous due diligence.

on his business obligations, I assume. But over the course of the year, if we bring this up, you can see that there have been ups and downs, and it's entirely possible that he could totally reverse this. But the trend, especially in the last quarter, has been devastating. And overall, he's lost just about half of his wealth through the course of just this year. What do you all think? Well, first, let me start by doing this. I'm super sad about it, and I don't know how he's going to survive on the $130 billion or so that he has left.

I think he should probably do more damage to the world and try to make more. But okay, look, I think one of the interesting things that we have learned this year through the Elon Musk saga is that basically we have gotten it through our mainstream media, this cultural brainwashing that the rich are really smart and that they have earned everything. It's meritocracy, right? You hear that all the time. So if Elon Musk has $338 billion as he used to in November. November 2021, that he must have merited the most amount of money. He must be the person most full of merit in the world. But what's weird is all the merit that he lost in the last 12 months. All of a sudden, he's a less meritorious person. No, wealth comes from a lot of different ways. Inheritance, his dad owned emerald mines.

His mom was a model. I mean, he grew up in tremendous wealth to begin with. with. He went to Silicon Valley where you could just walk down the street and make half a billion dollars in that era. So I'm not saying that he didn't earn any of it. He's not like Donald Trump, who's a clowns of all clowns and has never done anything but lose money. So he obviously had a nice run for a while to say the least. But you can see here, they're not some sort of demigods. They're just regular guys. And as you see them bumbling and fumbling hundreds of billions of dollars away, you see that that mythology that media told you was never true in the first place.

You know, Elon's wealth has been inflated over the past several years, primarily by Tesla stock. And a lot of that was speculative investment on these ludicrous promises that Tesla was going to you know completely self-driving cars solar panels a ton of like charging stations it was framed as a technology company and not a car company and additionally you know part of his wealth is also from space x there's a huge amount of federal subsidies and grants in space x so it's like another inflation point from federal dollars into space x but on the tesla point finally now people are are starting to see that that is not going to happen is cars keep killing people. They're catching on fire. The self-driving technology is not working properly. They're being investigated by the

federal government for more deaths and injuries because of these cars. They're like in cold weather, the doors are freezing shut. They don't seem as practical as they initially seemed, especially when you have domestic manufacturers making a much more affordable car. Because the test, because Tesla's are at such a high price point, they're relegating themselves to a niche market where really the only people who want them are the wealthy or people in his like, you know, cult of personality. They are going to be the ones that keep shelling out 50 grand for a car when you have, you know, a 20 or 30 grand domestic alternative. That's much more reliable and doesn't have all these extra bells and whistles that put you in more danger and put people

around you in more danger. If you just want an EV, you can get one, a union made domestic EV. It's out there. So I saw this, I can't remember who wrote it, but I saw a piece last night, basically saying the reason that the stock is tanking beyond his behavior on Twitter, which is a big part of it, it's that investors are really starting to realize that auto manufacturing is not a winner take all game. It never has been and it never will be. There's always going to be a ton of competitors that keep prices low. And when they keep selling these cars for 50, 60, 70 grand, they're just going to get priced out. People aren't going to want to pay for it when you have a more reliable, cheaper alternative.

Yeah, I'm going to jump on that for a second too, because Jordan makes a really great point. Tesla stock was the most overpriced stock. You may be in American history. It was absurd. The amount that he has lost in Tesla stock over the last year is more than all of the other car companies value combined. That's, that's insane. That's insane. That's how much it was overvalued, let alone what it's valued now, which goes to show you all the geniuses on Wall Street ain't geniuses either. They were the morons who bought into preposterous, completely unbelievable

hype. I remember people telling me, oh yeah, Tesla, man, it's magic. Oh, yeah, it's going to go forever. It's not a car. It's something else. Well, it turns out you guys are idiots. No, it's a car. That's what it is. And it's not, and apparently not a great car. So I think it's got more to fall, but that's don't ever take financial advice from anyone, okay? But for what we do, that's for the future. For the past, okay, the proofs on the putton. And it turns out all the Wall Street guys are just bros. They're like frat guys who are like, yeah, dude, did you hear? Musk is killing it, man. Musk is a genius.

I'm gonna put it in Tesla, dude. Well, what happened? Geniuses. Yeah, and by the way, maybe going to the new year, a company that has lost so much of its stock price in just one year, maybe it should have a CEO who's there occasionally and remembers that he's running that corporation. Maybe that would be beneficial, something to look into in the new year. Anyway, we're gonna take our second break of the hour.

When we come back, we're to be diving into AI text generation and how it might help you get a job after this. All right, back during the social break. Let's go to t.y.com members first. Scales 1203 writes, and John looks like an assassin masquerading as an accountant. Okay, I did not positive what it means, but I love it and I think it's totally true. Vettadal set writes in, we needed John hat in the shop. We can call it a roller derby.

It's a big. a thing. No, I see it now. I see the disguise as an accountant, but an actual hitman. The hair makes a difference. Yeah, I totally see it. This feels anti-Italian somehow. It does. It feels slightly, you know, problematic. But we're going to roll with it. Anyway, we're going to roll it with it. All right, boomer dragon cat says, wow, getting rich off of COVID, yet one of the worst tormentors of Fauci and the Senate. What an ass about Rand Paul. Oh, cool. All right, we go to Twitch, Poikat writes, and the thing I love about TYT and it's different shows is that everyone has their own ideas about things. The only real thing they have in common is that they're all leftists or left leaning and they want what's best for people.

Yeah, isn't that amazing? Well, I've told the story a couple of times when I was at MSNBC, all the executive producers get together in a morning call and decided and I thought, oh, and I literally asked my executive produce so we don't repeat stories, right? So that's why you guys are coordinating. They're like, no, so we do repeat stories. whatever's the hottest we're all going with, we're all going to repeat it throughout the day. I was like, yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea. So we don't do that here. We let people have their actual opinions. Okay, Jack Strax writes in all Trump does is lie. It's his only real skill. And that's actually true because he's good in marketing and marketing and he could be done with absolute truth, but often done with lies. And that's his one true talent. Chipmunk PDX says liberals want to pay their a fair share of taxes if the money goes to improve the lives of its people.

Conservers want to pay as little as possible. And don't care if it actually hurts people. Yeah, unfortunately, that's true, right? Wings like, oh, this hurts someone else? And, okay, whereas that would really bother a left winger. And that's part of the disparity that we have in our view of taxes. Oh my God, I'm going to run out of time. That's outrageous.

somebody says I was wrong. I ran out of time. I can't read it. I do. All right, back on TYJank, Jordan and Rola. And I'm going to read just two quick comments from our YouTube members. Deanne Loso writes, and sitting home recovering from shoulder surgery and couldn't ask for a better power panel, seeing Dragon Daddy, Jordan Yule, and a silly Jenk makes my evening happy New Year's. I am indeed. Today I am silly jank. And I think we're all

having fun with it. Let's be honest. And then the last thing is a night parade dragon says, if Batman was real, he would be the world's least weird billionaire. It's a hilarious and devastatingly true comment. Oh no, $100 gift card. You're getting a blue apron gift card. You're a YouTube member, so you're qualified email at rewards at tyt.com. They will make sure that it is you and you will get $100 in free food because we love our members. I'm not saying t.yt.com slash join. I'm not saying to join buttons right below the video on YouTube. But those words have been spoken. John. Yes, okay. Those words have been spoken. They were thought up by a human, but not all words are. There's a tease for you as we launch into this.

Over the past month, a new AI chat bot called ChatGPT has been drawing a lot of attention and big predictions about how it might cause problems with automatic generation of school assignments, essays, maybe even scripts and novels someday. But we want to stick with business because what if you could use a chatbot like this to help you get a job? Not necessarily in making up your entire resume, I'll leave that to George Santos, but maybe writing a cover letter or something like that. So there was an experiment done in this area, and we're going to get to it in a second. But just in case you're not that familiar with how these AI chatbots work, take a look at this. Alongside chat GPT and Dali 2 is GPT 3, a natural language system that can also write, argue, and code. And chat GPT uses an upgraded version of this to create text at incredible speeds. According to a statement from open AI, we've trained a model called chat GPT, which interacts in a conversational way.

Dialogue format makes it possible for chat GPT to answer follow-up questions, admin its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. The software itself has been trained by AI and machine learning, with massive amounts of text data from various sources. It corrects grammar, it summarizes difficult text into simple concepts, it converts movies into emojis, and it fixes bugs in Python code. And so you can see there the basic idea of how this works. Now I've used chat GPT quite a bit and I think their description there was quite accurate,

both of how it works, some of its limitations, but when it comes to getting a job, we're gonna talk about an experiment that was run by Beatrice Nolan of Business Insider, who used chat GPT to look at job descriptions and put together cover letters to try to potentially get hired for that job and used it to give to the people who evaluate these these sorts of things to see what they thought of it. So one of the jobs was for a social media assistant. Another was for a purchase ledger clerk. And the two different recruiters that evaluated these cover letters said that they looked like they'd been written by genuine candidates. It was not in any way immediately clear that these were entirely produced by an AI chatbot, not by an

actual human. One who works for Reed, Chris Wilshire, said, we would likely think this was written by a genuine candidate and follow up with a screening call. The structure of the letter is good, but it lacks some detail around the company they're applying for. Stephanie Petrie of Jobber says their writing style is not what I would expect from someone in that role. Their tone is too formal and dry, and I'd expect them to show more creativity and character. And by the way, in my own use of chat GPT, it does tend to start off pretty formal, pretty dry.

But the thing is, you can take something that it's generated, for instance, a cover letter like this that the tone might not be right for. And you can say, I want you to remake this, but be more conversational, use more slang, maybe throw in a joke, and it will reevaluate and do that. And so this experiment was like the most simplistic version. You feed in a bit of information about the job, and then the first pass of what it produces is what you give. But if somebody was willing to put in just a little bit of time to add a few extra facts, maybe tweak the style a little bit, I can see this potentially being used by people to get inquiries from people hiring.

I can even see it being used to replace talk show hosts. I have actually done some research and that's largely what's happened on CNN and MSNBC for several decades. Well, by the way, 100%, there you go. I mean, if Wolf Blitzer's real name, is it Chad GPT? I don't know what is. Okay, so look, I think this is an interesting sign of the times. because everything is about to be fake. We've got deep fakes, we've got videos now where it is really hard to tell if they, if that's the real person or not the real person in the video, you got pictures that are nearly impossible to tell that's been around for quite some time.

And and now you've got things that can be written and created that sound very human, either a formal human or maybe even a less formal human. So we're about to enter a trippy world. I mean, it's already super trippy. I mean, just ask your parents what they think and they'll tell you some nonsense they read on Facebook that is even close to true. But we're about to supercharge that. Jordan, what do you think?

You know, I don't know how I feel about it. I agree with you, Jank. the future is really strange and uncertain and the role, not just like deep fakes and things like this, like AI generating images or art and now text, but also just the way social media has been fully integrated into our lives and a key component of our lives, it just seems deeply unhealthy. But since we're almost at a time, it's the end of the year, I'm going to argue that this is a good thing. Because applying for jobs sucks, applying for job after job. If you're really desperate to find a job, the worst part is the cover letters.

Because most employers don't even read them. They read the first graph, they look at your resume, and they decide within 30 seconds whether or not they like you. Like, I'd say on this issue specifically, go for it. Spam, chat, GPT, and fill out those stupid cover letters. In, in 2023, I really hope we can move beyond requiring a cover letter or a written statement or writing assignments. All is extra homework for these jobs, especially when doing that, there's no guarantee you're even going to get a callback. It is such a hurdle for people to apply for these jobs over and over and over again, especially if they're desperate to find work. I say go for it. I don't care. I'm just going to be a contrarian on this point.

I think that's fair. So, yeah, I agree and disagree. First of all, I remember when I supply for jobs, cover letters were the worst. I hated cover letters. Why do you make me write this thing that is obviously inauthentic, okay? But Jordan, as it turns out, you're wrong. Sometimes people do read the cover letters because I did have one cover letter that I wrote that was very authentic. It was a job I really wanted.

And Frank Luntz did reply back saying it was a wonderful cover letter. That is a true story from about 20. seven years ago when I was graduating from law school. I was a political nerd and I knew Frank Luntz was an incredible pollster, which is true. He's the top Republican pollster. And back then I was a Republican. And I wrote this heartfelt cover letter. And he said, man, damn, that was good. Nonetheless, didn't hire me. Maybe he sniffed out lib somewhere in there. And it's going to go wrong. So he was right about that too. But look, one of the things that I have a problem with is nobody's going to write an actual homework assignment from now on.

I mean, my kids already cheat on spelling grammar nonstop. The minute they're on the computer, the computer fixes all their spelling. So they don't know how to spell anything. And then, and now since John explained that you could personalize things on chat GPT and say, you know, because in the old days, so I created exams for troubled students on some silly TV show that I was a part of. And half the kids just took giant blocks from Wikipedia and put it into their papers. It was hilarious because it's like they're barely trying. Like someone would leave Wikipedia.com on there or dot org, whatever on there, right? And I'm like, guys, this is this is awful, right?

But if chat GPT could personalize it, which it sounds like you can, we're going to have no idea that the papers are fake. Everything's going to be fake. I know, I vote no, let the record note that my vote is irrelevant and the future is fake. John, my last question to you is, so what do you use it for? That's legit. Well, really fast I'll say, I disagree with your last point. I don't know how to express my thoughts, but I'm going to use my computer for a second and have it come up with a counter argument, which it could totally do, by the way. So I've tried to use it for creative stuff, trying to help me in like honestly for my fiction writing like doing some like world building

stuff trying to get it to be creative and synthesize different things. The limitation is that it's not a particularly creative. There are big limitations. It's not super creative. It effectively reads a bunch of stuff online and will tell it to you. It doesn't know if what it's saying is interesting. It doesn't know if what it's saying is true. It knows that things are facts in that it's found them somewhere, but it can't evaluate critically whether the things it's saying are true, it tends to use a similar voice from topic to topic. And so after you've used this a lot, you can almost tell when something has been produced by it. It's not clear to someone who's new, but there are ticks that it uses. It is already incredible and I'm sure it'll get

better. But I've found it to actually be quite limited, at least in the way that I would want to use it. All right, so we'll have to wait a tiny bit before the future becomes completely fake. Fair enough. All right, Jordan, before we go, Look, everyone knows you're on American. Everyone knows that you're the host of DeepDive on our Twitch channel. That's twitch.tv slash tyt. But I noticed your tats on your arm, okay? And I was wondering if they were pens.

Pends? Which one? No. See the ones on the right that we're looking, no, not that side. Front face, there you go, that one. That looked like maybe a series of pens because you were out of pens. No, it's skeletons hugging. Aw. The lovers of Baldaro.

Oh, I got that. Fascinating. Yeah, nice. There we go. Now it's in frame. Kind of. Okay, well, we'll have to take a deep dive on that later on Twitch. Dot TV slash TiT.

Obviously, Rollo is the host of damage report. You're checking that out. Everybody is. Much love, guys. Second hour is bananas. This twist on the Andrew Tate's story or Awesome. We'll do that when we come back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.

Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.