The Young Turks - Tucker's Therapist

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

House Democratic moderates threaten Pelosi’s strategy and demand an immediate vote on the infrastructure bill. Britney Spears’ father Jamie Spears agrees to step down as her conservator. Census data shows that the US white population dropped the most, while multiracial and minority populations grew. Tucker Carlson mocks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for fear of being raped during the Capitol Riot. 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. Dream-a-Tee! Dream-a-T! Dream-a-T! Drop it! You know, Craig, you're supposed to give me a countdown. Real professional, buddy. Thanks.

Anyway, I'm John Earl. It's a power panel. And we've got Adrian Lawrence. Adrian, welcome back to the show. Hello. And we've got this guy. I don't remember, is that Ben? I can't tell. Michael Shore has returned from his long exile. Michael, I think the last time you were on the network, we, we were were like two presidents ago. We didn't have Trump back and we hadn't yet had Biden. So what have you learned in your long travels? I've learned very little that I didn't know the night we thought we had Biden, but we weren't sure. You know, I've learned quite a bit. I mean, look, I learned that I was in Georgia the night that I thought I was going to be the lead because the Democrats took the Senate

and I was there covering John Ossoff and Rafael Warnock's wins, and that was January 6th, so I wasn't the lead on that night's broadcast. So a lot has happened in America since then. Democrats did take the Senate, but I mean, geez, it's been crazy. It has been a crazy time, but I'm very glad to have both of you on the program. In not very long, we're going to need to be tapping into Adrian's legal expertise to try to figure out the latest development in the free Brittany legal struggle. But through the course of this next hour, we're going to be talking about the census, about some of the obstacles that are cropping up in the path to passing, the infrastructure

bill, and we've got a lot of other news besides. So thank you everybody for joining us. We've got an awesome second hour coming as well with Jared Jackson, Nando, and Francesca. So you're not going to want to miss that either. But we've got a lot to get to. So why don't we jump into this first story. Nine conservative Democrats in the House have decided that the path that it seemed to have been agreed on, that neither the bipartisan infrastructure bill nor the reconciliation package would pass without the other passing as well. Well now, as we're getting farther into that process, they've decided to flex their nine-member muscle. So we have this letter from

Representative Vicente Gonzalez saying eight colleagues were joining. They're trying to get basically the bipartisan bill passed as fast as possible, straight up or down vote without delaying it for the month or so it's expected to take for the reconciliation package to be written up and eventually considered. I want to give you a little bit from the letter. It says some have suggested that we hold off on considering the Senate infrastructure bill for months until the reconciliation. process is completed. We disagree. With the livelihoods of hardworking American families at stake, we simply can't afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this once in a century bipartisan infrastructure package. We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan infrastructure investment in Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law. Now, there's a couple of issues that I immediately take with that. One, these are packages that are going to be doling out money over the course of a decade. A month here or there doesn't seem all that crucial in getting that money out, but also there,

that second bit that I read you seems to imply that not only do they want to vote up or down on the bipartisan bill immediately, but even if their like desires aren't granted there, and it turns out that the consideration of both will come in a month or two, they seem to be implying that this cover, that it's just about doing it in time, doesn't actually matter. They will not do both at the same time. They want the first, which then leads one to speculate as to exactly why that would be. Now, there's more that we're going to get into, including a response from the Speaker of the House. But Adrian, when you saw that this letter was coming out, what was your first reaction?

I felt like this was a potential hostage situation, except for it's the American people who are being held hostage, while individuals and legislature go ahead and go on their power trips to accomplish what will essentially best serve them as opposed to the people. And so I think it's really, it's unfortunate. It does get in the way of what Biden has planned. I don't necessarily know how Pelosi plans to go about it. But I really think that I would prefer representatives who do a little less moderation and more sincere, heartfelt effort completely being on the Democratic left side as opposed to

that, you know, wishy-washy in the middle, let's go ahead and interfere with our own party's bill. Michael? Yeah, I mean, look, this is always illustrative of how difficult it is to be a Democratic leader. This has nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi specifically or Mitch McConnell specifically. It's a lot easier to be the Republican leader than the Democratic leader. And this is the perfect example. Here they thought they had a coalition, they had a lot of Democrats that wanted this in the House, They were going to push it forward.

They were going to be a team. Yeah, there are some people on this letter who are in tight races, who are in purple districts, who some, I think one or two who won in Trump districts in 2020. So these are people, you know, Philemon Villa in Texas signed this letter. He's not even running again. Ed Case and Hawaii signed this letter. He's not being primaried significantly. I mean, he's won and lost that seat a few times in his career.

But he's a Democrat and with a Republican challenge. and in the second district of Hawaii, Kaikahela, isn't even being challenged all by Republicans thus far in 2022. So the politics of this, while it seems that these are people who are sort of more conservative, they're also people who are really stirring a pot that they, that most Democrats don't want to see service. As a matter of fact, Tom Malinowski, another representative from New Jersey today, Josh Godheimer, who wrote the letter also from New Jersey, Malinowski came out and decried it. He said, no, no, no, we cannot do this. This is the chip that we have to play. this is what our power is about. That's why it's difficult to be Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans

talk about having a big tent, the Democrats have a bigger tent to deal with. And of course, Henry Quayar is on the list as well. If I was Biden, I would probably be inviting Jessica Cisneros to the White House right now. Just hang out. Just talk about what's going on at the border and everything. Maybe go see Jungle Cruise or something, publicize it, send some photos out. But so look, I get what you're saying, Michael, about the fact that it doesn't seem like all of them are necessarily being driven by like short term like election concerns. And I wouldn't have expected that they were. I assume this is about getting the bipartisan bill done so that they can then exert additional pressure onto the reconciliation process to strip it down as much as possible. That's what it feels like to me. It feels like this isn't about making sure that they deliver for the American people with the bipartisan bill immediately. It's that they deliver for people who don't want a lot of money to be spent in the reconciliation package that's going to be considered because, of course, the price tag is three and a half times larger, at least now. I expect that there's going to be a lot of forces that are trying to chip massive chunks out of that.

So we've referenced, you know, that it's difficult, I guess, for Nancy Pelosi right now. So what do you do then? What is the advice? How do you manage this? You have this group of these nine who are saying, you know, we want to vote right now. And that really says a lot more about what they think about the reconciliation package than about the bipartisan bill. And then you have potentially a much larger group of progressives who are saying, if you give in to these conservative of Democrats and delink the two pieces of legislation, then we will not vote for the bipartisan one. So with all of that being considered, what is the path? And I know that we're sort of inclined to talk about Nancy Pelosi, but I think that we do also have to consider Joe Biden and what he can

do, remembering, of course, that presidents, in theory, at least can act. This is his agenda. He's been working for longer than I've been alive to become president to pass this thing. These nine members are saying, we're going to kill it. Like we are perfectly happy potentially killing your agenda. So in that case, what do you do? I'll start with you in this case, Michael. Yeah, I mean, this is in classic politics, which we still don't know if they exist anymore, they will again. Letters like this were perfectly common.

You're trying to get some concession from the White House for your district or from the speaker for your district. trying to get a promise to be on a special committee to lead a congressional delegation to Paris, whatever it is. You put your name on this letter because you know that you have a little bit of currency with the leadership. In this case, though, we don't know because we don't know if the Congress works the same way it traditionally has. So if you go in with a skepticism, which you have to here, you think that, okay, these are people that are going to try and sink the ship because of their election. In a way, I find it curious that Philemon Vela and Ed Kayser on this, but another way, maybe it is encouraging to know that they're just trying to get leverage and now they have importance, the same way that Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema do in the Senate. Now you have the speaker who will certainly be talking here. You'll have Steny Hoyer, you'll have other members and committee chairs talking to these nine members trying to get them to come over to their side. Democrats are pretty unified, behind wanting to do this because they know that the president wants it done. And of course, the White House has the most power in this case.

But again, that's going off of the classic politics. If classic politics don't exist anymore, and I'm not as sure as I was that they do, then this becomes very, very difficult for the Democrats. The president wants to pass the infrastructure bill. He does want this money out there. He wants it spent. But he also knows that his power within his party and with the caucuses on Capitol Hill, the Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill come from being able to get some of these more progressive

and more far-reaching initiatives done in this $3.5 trillion bill. So he wants to see it happen. I don't think he's going to inject himself, but he's speaking to Nancy Pelosi a law. Adrian, if you were Joe Biden, what would you be doing right now? I'd see what else I could do to barter in exchange for them essentially getting off this potential movement in this moment. I'd see what they want, as Michael has noted. Is there something else that we can do? Because as we know that this is a big part of what Biden probably would like to consider to be his legacy.

So his opportunity to get this passed, it is very narrow. And I know they have about 10 days right now. And so I could see that there is going to be a lot of a lot of phone calls being made and a lot of things being offered. And Biden is essentially going to be working for his position over the next 10 days in order to hopefully get this done. Well, we should at least give Nancy Pelosi a chance to respond. And so here she is talking about the path going forward, at least as of today.

I'm not taking up that. I mean, people want me to take it. Oh, take it up. No, I think we were able to get support for the bigger package, the $3.5 trillion, because there was the other bipartisan package. And I think we're able to get the bipartisan package because we had the $3.5 trillion. So they are, shall we say, compatible in my view. Okay, so unfortunately, that doesn't really get into, okay, well you're saying you get support, but clearly it's also generating at some form of opposition, whether it's we will actually kill this opposition, they're at the very least, as Adrian and Michael are implying, trying to get something out of this. So I guess I want, from the both of you, based on what you've been seeing, you know, Michael, you were talking about trying to figure out whether the old way

of doing politics, you know, is still true. The way that the White House might bargain with members of the House and stuff like this. Do we expect that in the end both will pass, that both will pass but the reconciliation bill ends up being far smaller than 3.5? That, I mean, some budget has to pass clearly, but that they're just going to abandon most of this social infrastructure. What do we think in, you know, in two months, assuming this gets done in that time, actually will pass? Do you think that one of these sides is going to blink and we will have something like these two bills in the end? Adrian? I actually, I have no idea how it can go just because, you know, we have come out of this

place where it almost seems like a very much a new era when it comes to politics and I really do not know essentially how these individuals choose to proceed because I think we had of just a certain level of gamesmanship, gentlemen's agreements, and all of these things that we relied upon and post the Trump administration, now none of those things necessarily hold true. And so the idea that they can potentially

bargain or barter for things, that is something I hope is still in place, but at the same time it may not be, and they could end up killing this opportunity for Biden to seal his legacy. Yeah, and Michael, like, they're sort of implying there might be a threat to the reconciliation package,

both cinema and Manchin have said that they won't support the reconciliation bill at the size that it's at now, even though in the beginning of this process, Manchin said he wanted it to be more than $4 trillion. Now, 3.5 is too much. So what are your expectations? A lot of that is just posturing. I think if you're a Democrat, you should have some optimism about Joe Manchin in that he is a little bit like what Susan Collins is to the Republicans. He flirts with the other side, but by and large, on big things where he has said things like he has said before, he usually sticks to that. He also wants to be governor of West Virginia again, and Democrats don't want him to run for governor of West Virginia. So they want to give him some stuff to make him stay in the Senate because they know whoever replaces him in the Senate is going to be a Republican, and they care much more about that.

But I think to answer your benchmark question here, I think that, look, there are 220 Democrats in the House. There are three vacancies. There are nine people holding this up. I think that's what happens generally. And I think that they will eventually the nine will blink, as you put it, to some degree, maybe not every single one of them and the ones that don't have to. They'll figure out which ones can and which ones don't have to. And they will find some way to barter this out a little bit.

They're also going to, you know, I think that what they're going to see, what you are going to see, is a lot of other House members speaking about what they don't like. in this. They're certainly going to pair this bill down. The White House knows it's going to be paired down. The speaker knows it's going to be paired down. I don't think it's, I don't think it will come to the floor unless it has a lot of what's meant to be in it, in it, but it's going to be paired down. There's no question. Frustrating times ahead. We'll just have to wait and see how frustrating. John, John, that's sort of how this stuff works, right? It's always frustrating until the bills are passed. Every single big piece of legislation. If you read the history of the

civil rights bill, if you read Graham Rudman-Hollings, If you read a lot of those old bills, and I don't recommend them because they're really dull. But if you do that, this is what happens. You have some people who push back on it from within their own party for reasons that are obvious and some less obvious. And they come out with something. They say, I can live with this. So maybe it's Henry Quayar in Texas. They pair something down and he can go back and run and say, hey, look, I was able to get this done.

It wasn't my favorite. They also, they can lose a couple of them. So let's say Henry Quayar stays with them and they get six of them to stick and two of them to be wishy-washy for a while. I think this is this is going to be politics, but we'll see. I'm going to be over the optimistic. Stephen in those examples like that Henry Quare can go back to his district and say, hey, I got a chunk of money taken out that would have gone towards your health care or dealing with climate change. It's going to make this area even more uninhabitable. It's just it's so frustrating the entire process. And it isn't just that's how he's won. I mean, that's whether you like Henry Quayer or not, that's been his. ticket in that district and it's worked for him. I don't think it will obviously continue

to work for him. I don't think he liked the census, but I do think that that's, that's kind of how this stuff works. So it's frustrating to an extent, but then, but it's expected to. Yeah. Very frustrating. Anyway, we're going to take our first break. When we come back, we got a lot of other news to talk about, so don't go anywhere. I'm John on with Adrian and Michael, and now we turn to the law. So Adrian, get ready, we're gonna need you. I'm ready. Let's talk about this.

In the most recent development in the campaign to free Brittany, her father apparently will be stepping down as conservator, although there is some debate as to what the timeline will be and exactly why that might be happening. So to catch you up, Britney Spears recently came forward publicly with serious accusations, against her father, saying she was overworked without any breaks, drugged with lithium, and prohibited from having more children after her conservators did not allow her to remove her birth control device. The pop star added she wanted to charge Jamie Spears, her father, with conservatorship abuse. So there are, you know, the possibilities of additional legal

efforts ongoing. Those might be influencing some of what's going on behind the scenes. But we want to give you a little bit of the court filing that Britney Spears' father recently submitted saying there are in fact no actual grounds for suspending or removing Mr. Spears as the conservator of the estate. And it is highly debatable whether a change in conservator at this time would be in Ms. Spears' best interests. Nevertheless, even as Mr. Spears is the unremitting target of unjustified attacks, he is after all the main victim and all this. He does not believe that a public battle with his daughter over his continuing service as her conservator would be in her best interests. So even though he must contest this unjustified petition for his removal, Mr. Spears intends to work. with the court and his daughter's new attorney to prepare for an orderly transition

to a new conservator going on to say that he's continuing to serve dutifully and there's false accusations and a whole bunch of other stuff. All of it's available for you to read online if you want. So Adriene, I want to go to you. So how significant is this change and is this simply like acceding to her wishes or do you think that there might be some other reason for the the change. I think the change is coming as a result of potential backlash in addition to the possibility that Jamie Spears could essentially face more exposure in terms of people, you know, looking behind, jumping into records, diving in. That is what Brittany Spears's attorney, Matthew Rosengarde, is aiming to do, to oppose Jamie Spears to see, hey, how was this money

spent? How have you been acting as the conservator over this conservatorship? Because one thing we do know is that Jamie Spears was making about $5 million from Britney Spears' conservativeship. He is in a position where he was filling his pockets and claiming that it was in his daughter's best interest. So Brittany's attorney, Matthew Rosengart, will, as he has said, he will be looking deeper. He's going to be jumping into accounts, doing audits, and seeing how was this money spent and was it spent in a way that it did further that conservative ship? Because if not, there are some people who are going to have to owe money and pay back what they took from Brittany. Michael, thoughts? I mean, first of all, I think there's a rule when you have conversations about things like that, that somebody on every panel has to say,

I wouldn't want to be around their table at Thanksgiving, and then everybody can chuckle. So I'll do that, but I didn't mean it. Look, I think this is, I mean, I'm obviously going to defer to the lawyer here. And what Adrian says is far more learned than what I know. But it does seem as if the lawyers got in touch with Jamie Spears and said, hey, man, we got to go in another direction here. And, you know, I think, though, that there, you know, I don't know very much about conservatorship and the abuses. But if it's happening to Britney Spears, it means it's happening to a lot of people you've never heard of. So there's, you know, that's what's cool about the law is the cases like this become landmark.

And people can say, oh, it's Britney Spears. It's a soft story. when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. This is anything but a soft story, and not every conservatorship has to do with as much money or as much control,

But this will impact other people. And I think there's an importance to that. Yeah. You know, there's more of this. I want to give us the response from the attorney for Britney Spears. But first, I had a question for you, Adrian. So we will eventually get to the fact that they still plan investigations. As you point out, he's already made millions of dollars, which I just cannot, I cannot

believe how that is possible. But do we expect that if there are some sorts of, you know, like civil lawsuits against him, I'm assuming they could go after that money, right? Oh, absolutely. They can go after whatever he's holding to disgorge whatever he had taken from the conservative ship that was not lawful, wasn't reasonable. It was not really anything more than an abuse of his power because he's had this conservative ship over Brittany for at least, I believe, 13 years since 2008, claiming that she basically couldn't

take care of herself because that's generally what conservative ships are for. But this woman is an adult. I believe she is two children who are probably in their older teens now. And she is entitled to spend the money that she earned and worked so hard for however she wants to spend it. And this thought that her father had said, you all have not seen the drug use. You haven't seen what goes on behind closed doors. Who even knows what her father's thoughts truly are in the sentiment? But I can tell you the fact that this woman here is being controlled to the extent she is under this conservative ship should really raise a lot of red flags for a considerable number of people.

Yeah, and look, I, there's a lot that I don't know. I am not just not a lawyer, but I'm basically the opposite of one. But like, the fear seems to be that she'll waste her money. Okay. You don't, they don't see the drug use that goes behind doors. Okay, Jamie Spears, how much do you drink? Like on an average, average week. How much do you, have you ever done weed?

Like, what? We're expecting that he's some sort of, like, teetotaler or something. Like, how, I understand that they're illegal implications, if they're saying that she's literally breaking the law, I suppose, even though I don't think that those laws should be there. But if she's not literally breaking the law, I don't understand how considerations about her potentially wasting her money even enter into it. How does that even become a part of this conversation? Exactly. She is an adult. So whether she chooses to spend all of her money on pot and hang out on the couch all day, that is something she is entitled to do.

And so allowing her to be an adult and to use spend and do whatever she wants with the money she's earned, that is what she's entitled to. And by virtue of the fact that her father was able to step in those years ago and make this conservative ship permanent is wild. And it is wild that it is still going on. And as Michael has noted, it really should signal to us that there are a lot of people out there who may be subject to conservative ships that are completely unlawful. And yet you have a conservator who is taking money just like Jamie Spears is and continuing to enjoy just profiting off controlling someone else. Yeah. Well, I want to jump to the where where they're attempting to make sure that we know that there will still be these investigations.

Matthew Rosengarde, the attorney for Britney Spears, says, we look forward to continuing our vigorous investigation into the conduct of Mr. Spears and others over the past 13 years, while he reaped millions of dollars from his daughter's estate. And I look forward to taking Mr. Spears' sworn deposition in the near future. So there had been a previous reference to, I'll step down, totally. But I want it to be orderly, and I want the court to, in their words, include a resolution of matters pending before the court. So is it possible that as a part of stepping down as the conservator, he could be protected from any of any future challenges or investigations? Is that something that a judge would allow considering what Britney Spears and her lawyer have said?

No, I don't believe that that would be a possibility. You know, anything is kind of possible with a court order. It doesn't mean it can't be overturned. But in this circumstance here where there are potential allegations that Jamie Spears was using the conservatorship improperly or taking funds that were excessive and were not serving the conservativeship, that is something that the court should want looked into because we have to remember, conservativeships are used to protect people who cannot necessarily take care of themselves. These are people who maybe they are suffering from mental health or some kind of mental illness. or something in some way has made it so that they cannot truly care for themselves. And so they need the court to oversee it to a certain extent. So in the event that Jamie Spears was abusing his power as being the conservator of this conservatorship,

I think that that is something that the court would just very much be interested in diving into and seeing that be exposed and also seeing him being held to account. Yeah. Michael, any thoughts about where this might go? Yeah, I wouldn't want to be around their table at Thanksgiving. Awkward. Finally, let me just throw out there and see if either of you have thoughts about this. Of course, I understand that this should be clear, but I think the news that he is stepping down, or at least plans to step down, you know, people have been pretty worked up about this, especially for the past few months where it's re-entered the popular consciousness. But of course,

it's not the same as she will now be free. He will step down, and some other conservator will be appointed. I guess the implication is that it's someone that her and her lawyer would be more favorable towards. So I guess that's an improvement of her condition. But how significant of an improvement is that? Oh, I think it could, it could really change things significantly because if this individual is more objective and neutral and realizes that they have a job and their job isn't to pilfer off their daughter's estate and everything their daughters worked for, then I think it would be more likely that there's a possibility that Brittany could essentially go free, shall we say. Because who we need in that role is someone who is truly objective and neutral and who is willing to step aside and to also tell the court, hey, there is no need for this conservative ship to continue to stay into place.

We think that she should be able to manage her own money. Things are fine. We'll move on. As opposed to the position Jamie Spears has taken, which is a thought that my daughter's unstable and healthy, you don't see what goes on behind the scene. she needs me to protect her patriarchal nonsense. And so getting someone in that role who would actually do the job and do it objectively is really what Brittany needs in this situation. Okay. Well, with that, why don't we switch things up and talk about something very different?

We've been awaiting the results from the census and we now have a little bit of data to jump into, including such little tidbits like the US has now grown over the past decade by about 7.4%. That is the least that it has grown in a period of a decade for about eight decades. It still seems like it's growing a lot, but that does stand out. And of course, while you have overall growth, you also have shifting populations from some areas of the country to others. The South and the West have been growing more than other parts of the U.S. But beyond that, some of the, I would say the, I don't know, I guess most interesting conversation

that's been going on so far since the news broke this morning is about the changing racial demographics of the United States, as well as how this might intersect with gerrymandering and the distribution of political power in the near future. So let's put up a graph that's going to show you how different racial categories, again, self-reported racial categories in the census have been shifting as multiple, I believe, Senai have now passed. Not Hispanic white respondents have dropped below 60% for the first time in history. And you can see other racial categories either growing or staying around the same percentage. Most notably, perhaps, the percentage of the population identifying as Asian has risen from just 2.8% back in 1990 to 6.1% in 2020.

Still a small segment of the population, but more than twice as large as it was. And so this is obviously depending on where you sit politically generating either sort of a conversation about the fact that the United States is diversifying and all that. Or I've already seen a little bit of the right wing starting to freak out about it. And so that's probably our political reality going forward. We'll get into the political implications. But in terms of the rate of growth, the way people are moving around the country and the changing percentages of sort of racial demographics, what are some of your thoughts, Michael?

I mean, you know, the stuff that you're talking about now is fascinating to see that Phoenix has now passed Philadelphia, for example, is the fifth largest city in the country. And that kind of, you know, statistical stuff I find amazing. The other side of this is I, and I don't think enough people are talking about this, there was a real role. reluctance on the part of many in this country to take part in this census, partly because there was a fear that at the time when this was being issued that the Trump administration was going to come down on immigrants because, you know, illegal and legal immigrants are to fill out the census. It has nothing to do with your status here. It's who is here and where they are.

And so I have to assume that there was some underreporting of those numbers and they may have, you know, sort of factored that in in a way that the census. takers and the Census Bureau does. But I have to think that a lot of this is conservative and these cities and states are going to see further changes if there is any kind of softening. And I wouldn't presume that there would be in the way that the argument is made before the next census. But I think it's fascinating to see where people are right now and where Hispanic majorities are growing around the country and in point of fact where they're not. And then I know you're going to get to the politics. You look at some of these states that have

governors who are so upset about immigration and they have one, two, three, six percent in a Latin population in those states. It's surprising. Adrienne? Yeah, so this is very interesting. I was primarily a little bit shocked, I guess, by the fact that the largest growth that they saw in any group is mixed race. And it really says that a lot of people in our nation are not adhering to the generations of the past. Those restrictions of only white people can be with white people, black people, black people. Those antiquated ideologies are not holding steadfast and people are living their lives.

They're loving people who they love, regardless of color, and that's a beautiful thing. But at the same time, we're going to see a lot of the white supremacy pushers push a little backlash because they want to maintain that dominance in numbers. And when we truly look at those numbers, I think Michael's right that they are conservative. Because we also have to realize that when it comes to race, there's no category for brown. So you might have an individual who is like, let's say some from the Middle East, maybe Osama bin Laden. You give him a box to check and he's going to have to check white. So we have to realize that white numbers are already inflated to begin with when it comes to actually how our nation operates when it comes to race. And so when you actually strip it down and look at the truth, it definitely seems that white is very much in the minority.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you point out. First of all, I'm glad that we have the data on people identifying as more than one race. But then even with that, of course, these labels are, I mean, there's a ton of problems with the way that it's historically been done and that even currently. So, yeah, there's a lot that we don't know necessarily. I'm like, Michael, I love diving into the numbers, but I can only imagine how much is actually being washed away, as in the example that Adrian just used. I just want to throw out, I did see the under 18 population is now majority people of color for the first time at 52.7%. You know, not surprising considering the other numbers that we're looking at here. As Michael pointed out, Philadelphia has dropped below Phoenix, but also all 10 of the largest U.S. cities saw their population, populations rise in the past decade. I think I read that Buffalo's population went up for the first time in many decades. Three big cities in Texas, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas outpaced the national average.

We'll see what a couple of years with their energy grid does to all of these new transplants from other states. New York City grew by nearly 8% defying predictions that its population was on the decline. Now, it is possible that some people left during the pandemic after filling out the census, I guess, but it hardly seems as if most of New York is running away. But I want to get into the politics, too, because we can't talk about the census without wondering what effect it's going to have on the distribution of political power. We're just getting some initial reactions from people who do sort of this work. But according to Nate Cohn, the data was less favorable to Republicans than some experts expected,

with rural areas and white people share the population shrinking, while traditionally democratic cities and increasingly democratic suburbs grew. But it's also pointed out that Republican-controlled legislatures will still get to redraw 187 maps compared to Democrats 84. And so, sure, the raw numbers might not be exactly what the Republicans would hope, but they're still the ones who are going to be working with those raw numbers. And of course, the judiciary that's going to be approving or denying a lot of these maps that we're going to be seeing not far off in the future is far more conservative than it was after a few years of the Trump presidency. So Michael, like I know you probably had some

expectations going to this process about how it might affect the distribution of congressional seats and all that. Has your opinion changed at all now that you're seeing some of the data? You know, for me looking at the data, my opinion hasn't changed. From the people, from me looking at the people who I trust who look at this data, certainly it has. And I think when you look at a lot of the people who look at redistricting and gerrymandering and how, you know, Texas is the most glaring example, right? 23 of 36 house seats are held by Republicans in Texas, there are going to be two more house seats there. You see where these population shifts, four out of the ten largest growing cities in the country, are suburbs in Texas.

So it's Frisco and McKinney and Conroe and a fourth one in Texas. So you're going to see the Republicans there say, okay, you know what? Instead of having parts of a city like Austin have Republican representation and some Democratic representation, let's just make a Democratic district in Austin and that way we can move it out and we can get our two seats outside of Austin and outside of San Antonio or they can just be pure Republican. So they get to sort of for the next 10 years say we're going to have these Republican seats that's going to go on in Texas, may go on in Florida to a degree. But some of the other states I think are, there's a bit of a surprise as to how much the Republicans thought they were going to have and what they're not going to have.

So that's why I think you see Nate Cohn and Nick Porosanti and some of the others saying that, look, this wasn't as good for Republicans as they thought it was going to be. Any train thoughts? I think that we're going to see a lot more action from political leaders who lean more toward the right and also in support of things that would continue to maintain white supremacy as we recently saw. With the federal government shooting down that CRT training bill for federal workers and how that impacts us, the fact is that you're going to have. people on both sides of the aisle who are concerned that white people will lose their supremacy, lose their dominance in this country. And as a result, I think we're going to have a lot of subtle forms of backlash. And you're going to see people essentially align with groups that they generally haven't aligned with because of that whole racial scarcity feel of the need

to maintain power. And so I think it'll be very interesting to see how politics ends up playing out in the next few years. Yeah. You know, I would add to that though that the power is also to be, When agents has maintained power, it's important to know that even though you may have Democrats on one side who aren't happy with the fact that it's the whitening of America is stopping, I think that they're also motivated by the fact they want to stay in power. And they know that in order to stay in power, that it's important to make sure that these districts are protecting Democrats. And that is kind of, it's kind of, I would be a little less suspicious of Democrats in this case because they want to protect their power. So for the wrong reason, I'm less suspicious. Michael, really fast, because, you know, we've been talking about how this is going to play in a gerrymandering. You gave an example of how it might play out in Austin, but we could see a similar sort of thing going on in Georgia, you know, and that sort of thing.

And obviously, the fears are about Republicans gerrymandering because when we look at the biggest, differences between, you know, like share of congressional seats that go to a party and their actual support among the populace. The worst examples generally seem to be Republican. But of course, Democrats are going to be trying to make the most of these numbers as well in the states where they have the ability to do so. Now, we could just avoid the whole thing and not allow the gerrymandering by passing something like for the People Act, which is entirely within the power of the Democrats to do if they actually all wanted to do it. Does anything about this change the likelihood of that bill passing?

I mean, I would say no. Well, you know, yes, if the bill is going to pass is a better way to say. If the bill's going to pass, if something like for the People Act is going to pass, it's going to take a blatant result coming from the next set of redistricting results. So I think that the heightened awareness is important. And then when you see the sort of look, if you had done this, this wouldn't have happened. Right now, it's all theoretical. Of course, it's in action, but in terms of people seeing what can happen by not doing it,

I think that that will have an effect. So I think there's a reason to think that it's important to keep an eye on this. One other thing to add, and I know we're probably quick here, we think about new districts, right? We think about what I talked about in Texas. But California, which is so blue-rich right now, after Gavin Newsom deals with his recall election, There are districts that went Republican in 2020 that had been Democratic in California. Those can be redrawn to be Democratic friendly, and that's where Democrats can get some of those seats back. You don't need new seats necessarily to redistrict. There's states where that can

happen as well. Yeah. Well, and demonstrating that Democrats do do it as well. I personally think we should just get rid of the whole thing and have districts that make some rational sense. But I guess that not in this economy. I mean, if you look at Iowa, Iowa has four districts, or maybe there's a fifth, but it's basically a square, like it crosses the state and they're all evenly divided. It's a beautiful districted state. I don't trust that either. Anyway, are there really even numbers of people in those four, Michael? Are you sure of that? Exactly. Anyway, we're going to take our last break of the hour, but buckle up. We're going to be coming back to Tucker Carlson weighing in on something that has absolutely nothing to do with him. But he knows his audience, and he's going to demonstrate that after this. Welcome back, everyone. The first hour of the power panel, still got a few more minutes.

Before we get into our final stories, I did want to let you know that there's more content coming up than just this. First of all, Jared Jackson will be taking over in the second hour, joined by Francesca and Nando. But then later on today, there is a common room available at Twitch.tv slash TYT. Brett Ehrlich will be leading, it looks like he's just labeled as the young Turks there. But anyway, you got Brett Ehrlich, Adiana Vega, Luke Null of S&L, and Jordan Ewell will be joining as well. Apologies again to Brett, I know he wanted me to be on it, I apologize, I'll be soon. Anyway, also, you can always look forward to the appropriately titled Sunday stream available on Sundays via stream, stream, Brett Ehrlich, keep talking, covering politics, see what's going on, a lot of fun.

That is at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, 3 p.m. Pacific time at Twitch.tv slash TYT. And possibly your final reminder that the multicast that you might be watching right now of this on the Damage Port channel, this is the final day. So starting on Monday, if you would like to watch the Young Turks Live show, which I hope that you do. It is freely available for all. No subscribership or anything like that required at YouTube.com slash. the Young Turks at the same time, you just do have to watch it at the Young Turks YouTube channel rather than potentially on the damage report. Now that's it. Are you both ready for kind of brutal story here? Okay, let's do it. Sure. About a week ago, Representative

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about the fact that during the insurrection on January 6th, she was worried not only about physical violence from the crowd that was chanting that they wanted to hang Mike Pence, but that she was worried about sexual violence as well. Now, many people know she has talked about previously that she is a survivor of sexual assault. This is something that she both knows about and is rightfully afraid of. But none of that is going to stop someone like Tucker Carlson from turning this into another opportunity to attack the representative, as you'll see here. Tess wasn't even inside the Capitol on January 6th.

But she and Lindsey Graham were on the same page. We know that because occasionally Sandy Cortez tells us about her lived experience on January 6th. During a recent special on CNN, Sandy Cortez, does she ever stop talking about herself, by the way? She explained she wasn't simply afraid of being murdered by Ashley Babbitt. She also was also worried about being raped. There's a lot of sexualizing of that violence. And I didn't think that I was just going to be. be killed, I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.

So what sounds like what you're telling me right now is that you didn't only think that you were going to die. You thought you were going to be raped. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I was. Sexualizing, get a therapist, honey. This is crazy. These people are mad because they thought the election wasn't fair. Now, you may disagree with that, but it wasn't about you, surprise, surprise. Sexualizing the violence, I was going to be raped by Ashley Babbitt. Imagine some Republican lady saying that about a BLM riot. There's thousands of rioters descended on neighborhoods and burned businesses all over the country.

Kenosha, Portland, Georgetown, Green Bay, Wisconsin. What would have happened if some Karen said that? It was sexualized violence. Can you imagine? Probably go to jail for that. Well, he had that bizarre chuckle. I personally found that to be one of the most sickening things I've ever seen displayed on the the mainstream media. He will of course suffer no consequences whatsoever. The amount of time

Fox devotes to talking about him and his thoughts every day will only increase, as will his paycheck. But Adrian, what did you think about all that? Well, I thought it was very ignorant of Tucker Carlson. It really shows that he has no idea what it's like to live as a woman, particularly woman who has been sexually assaulted. But it is always something that plays in your mind being attacked at all times. That's why we carry keys between our our fingers when we are going to our car. We're always looking around because the fact is that women are always under attack. And you had a group of individuals who took issue with the change of administration.

They weren't just taking issue with Joe Biden. They were also taking issue with Kamala Harris. And the fact that there are more women and diversity and change being had, they do not want change. There were predominantly a lot of white males who were in there. And also we've seen the in-cell movement and rise. And also for Tucker Carlson to say that, oh, as a woman, she shouldn't have been concerned about a sexual assault because it was just about people who weren't happy with the election. Get out of here. Then why were those individuals so comfortable throwing around the N-word and saying that they were going to kill and murder people predominantly who were black and as a result of that? So it's like get out of here. This is the mentality of these individuals. It's about oppression and keeping people in their place, individuals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yeah. Michael, you know, earlier this week, Tucker was saying, I don't know why Democratic Congress people won't come on my show. They call me a white supremacist, but I don't call anyone names. Why not just talk to me? I don't know. Do you think should they be more open about going on this guy's show after what you just saw? And Charlie Kirk earlier this year tried to get Congressman Errs. Swalwell on by doing the same thing. Hey, we're trying to show both. You know, and he said you think that there was an insurrection and people die.

you don't think that there was an interaction and people die. And so there is a real disconnection on both sides. But a few things here that are wrong with what Carlson said. First of all, everybody and Tucker Carlson knows this well for having been doing this for as long as he has, everybody knows that the capital is not just the capital building. It is the office buildings that are connected by hallway and by train, by subway train, private subway train just for the Capitol to the main building of the Capitol. There were people from the insurrection that went into the congressional office building.

She heard footsteps. There were police who went to her office knocking on the door that she thought were insurrectionists. Nobody knew what was going on that day. So for her to feel that kind of fear is totally normal and totally natural. And she was right because they killed people that day. So everything she says is right. And the other part of it is that, you know, Tucker Carlson saying what would happen to a Republican? Well, if it was BLM, you saw what happened in St. Louis with the McKinney's standing on their front lawn. And they said that they were afraid that they were going to be killed. They did exactly that. And they were lauded within the community so much so that they're, you know, toying with the idea of running for office now. So they were elevated because of the position they took. They weren't expirated for it by a lot of people. people. And so that sort of what if it were, what if you know, it's that, what if Obama did this thing? No, it's unacceptable. And you know, bravo to Congresswoman Ocasio Cortez for saying what she said in light of the fact that she knew she was going to get this blowback from somebody like Tucker Carlson.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I cannot imagine what, you know, women serving in government in high profile positions like her, Ilhan Omar, must experience on a daily basis. I can only guess enough to know that Tucker Carlson wouldn't make it a couple of hours based on how he reacted when protesters were across the street from his house and he freaked out. Or when he contacted a foreign national and the NSA looked at one of his letters. And so he spent a week talking about how the NSA was trying to shut down his entire show. He's telling other people that they're too sensitive and that they never stopped talking about themselves. But I knew when we played that video last week, I just felt sick.

Not just because what AOC was describing was so horrifying, but I knew how the right would use it. Because I posted a tweet about it, and I got a couple of hundred responses from lizard brain conservatives attacking her, often sexually and violently. But no, but it's not about that. But he knows his audience. It's not sexualized. It's not misogynistic, surely. He just chooses to call her Sandy when that's not her name. And he calls her honey coming out of the sot, even though that's insane.

Or saying that she should get therapy because, of course, women are crazy. And he just chose a photo of her at random that he thought made her look as crazy as possible. But none of this is misogynistic. This is all in her mind. Like, I know that the term gaslighting has been thrown around a lot recently, but this feels like a pretty classic example of it. Yeah, he just chose that randomly. I'm sure he makes up little nicknames for Louis Gohmert when he talks about him too.

I know, the whole thing just makes me so sick. Look, I haven't been watching cable news for 20 years or whatever. Maybe it was always like this. Maybe you would work your base up into a rabid froth of hatred against people like this. And that's just the most expected thing. But it feels sick. It feels new to me. I just knew that it was going to come, and he did not disappoint.

We only have a couple more minutes. Any final thoughts about this? You know what? It seems that something that he's taking advantage of is also the fact that he's conflating this notion that rape and sexual assault, sexual violence, is about sex, as opposed to power, and being able to humiliate someone, having that upper hand on them. And the fact is that when he conflates that and he just makes it about sex, he trivialized. When we know that that is not the case, so essentially keeping his viewers dumb and keeping them peddling these lies and that rape apologist's kind of mentality, that is something Tucker is also buying into because as you have observed, these are his followers, his audience, the people that listen to him. Those people are in cells. They have issues with race. They have issues with gender. And as we're going to see is those people are going to continue to promote his ideologies in our society. And it's just making.

us worse as we continue to essentially regress. Yeah, that's what's feeling like. Well, that is, sorry, did you have a final thought, Michael? I just said amen, that's what people sort of say at the end of things like that. That is. Yes, Michael, it is mostly good to have you back, Michael. Anyway, no, it's been too long. If you're a member of the audience who isn't familiar with Michael,

Michael has been around since the beginning, there wouldn't be TYT without Michael. But Michael, what you need to get used to is we've got a lot of awesome people from the past years, too. So, Adrian, thank you for being a part of all this. Much appreciated. Michael, thank you, as always hope to see you around more. For those of you watching at home, Jared Jackson is going to be taking over in just a few minutes, joined by Francesca Fiorentini and Nando Villa as well. So you're not going to want to go anywhere.

We're going to be gone for just a few minutes, but we'll be right 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.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.