The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - August 24, 2020

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Trump is desperate for a win. Ana Kasparian and Aida Rodriguez discuss on The Young Turks. 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. What's up, What's up, everyone, Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm Anna Kasparian. Joining us today is Ida Rodriguez.

Ida, it's so good to have you. Good to be here. Happy to see you. I'm happy to see you. It's like one of the few things that keeps me going. I was like really excited when Brett told me that you were doing the show today and I know our audiences as well. So you guys, make sure that you write in and share your thoughts, your comments, your

concerns. We will read some of those comments when we come back from our breaks. Also, just a few notes about programming. We will be covering the R&C all week long. I want to say fortunately, but I can't because it's a nightmare, and I'm sure that it's going to be a pretty divisive event. But nonetheless, we're going to have a great panel of hosts covering the RNC throughout the week. So make sure you check us out live at t.yt.com slash live at 8 p.m. I'm sorry, 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time, 5.30 p.m. Pacific.

we will do play-by-play coverage of the RNC. And we have a lot of news to get to today, so I'm not going to waste any more time and get right to it, give you an update on coronavirus. So following pressure from the Trump administration, the FDA has authorized emergency use of plasma treatments for coronavirus patients. Now, some people are concerned about the way that this emergency approval was given by the FDA, some are worried that Donald Trump's pressure and politicize the fact that he politicizes the issue is what led them to make this decision, possibly hastily. And this treatment is specifically

referred to as convalescent plasma, which is created from the blood of individuals who have recovered from the coronavirus and has been used to treat other viruses such as MERS, SARS, and Ebola. There have been some promising results, but not promising enough, especially when you consider the way Donald Trump sold it over the weekend. Take a listen. The FDA has issued an emergency use authorization, and that's such a powerful term, emergency use authorization for a treatment known as convalescent plasma. This is the only possible, and it's only made possible because of Operation Warp Speed to deliver treatments and vaccine to save lives. We're removing unnecessary barriers and delays, not by cutting corners, but by marshalling the

full power of the federal government. Through this study, over 100,000 Americans have already enrolled to receive this treatment, and it has proven to reduce mortality by 35%. It's a tremendous number. Based on the science and the data, the FDA has made the independent determination that the treatment is safe and very effective. Now, prior to the FDA agreeing to approve this for emergency use, Donald Trump repeatedly accused the agency of essentially making politicized decisions about treatment options in order to hurt him for his reelection campaign. In fact, he even accused the FDA. of being part of the deep state.

Here's an example. What went into the effort for this to be approved for COVID-19? And was that hold-up political in nature? Well, I think that there might have been a hold-up, but we broke the logjam over the last week, to be honest. I think that there are people in the FDA and actually in your larger department that can see things being held up

and wouldn't mind so much. It's my opinion, a very strong opinion. and that's for political reasons. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with life and death. So we are being very strong and we are being very forthright and we have got some incredible answers and we're not going to let them be held up

because every day is lives and we're not going to let that happen. Now Donald Trump claims that, you know, fast-tracking approval through emergency use authorization is not a political move by Trump. But remember, Trump is desperately looking for any type of solution to coronavirus, not because he's concerned about the number of people who have already died, more than 175,000 Americans. He's concerned about how this might negatively impact his chances of getting reelected.

And let me remind you all that in a recent interview with Axios, when he was confronted with the fact that so many Americans had died as a result of his own incompetence, his response was, it is what it is. So the only time I see anything politicized in regard to this virus is mostly, to be fair, mostly from the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself. I think that Democrats could actually do a better job in highlighting what a complete and utter failure Donald Trump has been in responding to this virus. But the FDA commissioner, Ida, completely denies that they were pressured into approving the use of convalescent plasma as an emergency use treatment. FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said the decision was made in the independent judgment of experts

and scientists at FDA and that the convalescent plasma showed promising efficacy as a treatment for coronavirus patients. Those scientists have concluded that COVID-19 convalescent plasma is safe and shows promising efficacy, thereby meeting the criteria for an emergency use authorization. And look, the one positive part of this is there have been some promising results in a little over 30% of the cases. This is by no means a cure-all for coronavirus. But what makes this different from, let's say, a vaccine getting emergency approval is that there are tens of thousands of Americans who have already received this treatment during, you know, their recovery. And the costs luckily do not outweigh the benefits. So it is different from like, let's say,

a new drug or a new vaccine going on the market without any type of real rigorous testing beforehand. But I wanted to get your thoughts, Ida. Well, my thoughts are poor American people that have to rely on the voices of the corrupt and the negotiable when it comes to their livelihood, especially those who are not affected by what happens from these, from coronavirus and things like that, because they are in a bracket where they are protected and they have all of the, you know, they have all of the protections and they have the best doctors and access to the best health care so they can afford to experiment with this stuff at the expense of the American people. And then people wonder why there is mistrust of the government from all sides because we just don't know who to trust.

And that's causing chaos amongst the people because everybody is up in arms because people are dying. And it's the people that we know that are dying because we're not in that tax bracket. I don't trust Donald Trump and I just don't trust any of these organizations at this point because everything is political at this point. And it's not just Donald Trump and his administration who's doing it. It's just a shame to watch it all play out because the people who pay the ultimate price are the ones who can't afford to live in this moment. So when they say, you know, something like 30% of the people, you know, when you think about those treatments and the people who have access to that, I don't know anyone who's had this treatment, you know, and I don't know anybody who knows anybody who's had this treatment. So again, the elite class and people who have access, who have money and have power have an opportunity to see these things. first before everybody else and then we get to be the guinea pigs.

And so when I think, you know, also Donald Trump is, he sucks right now and he sucks for the last four years. Everybody knows that he's a failure. He read that for the first time in front of the cameras. He had never seen that paper before. He was having a difficult time reading the basic words. It's not like when he recited his haiku last month to talk about his cognitive skills, he was having difficulties with words that people win spelling bees in the sixth grade with. So he is so vested in this and how it affects the average person that he didn't even take the time to read this and familiarized himself with it before he gave it to the press and the American people. And let me just remind you, and I will continue

to remind the people who follow Donald Trump. Nobody in social intelligence more than he does and his administration does. Every single time they politicize something, they say trigger words like deep state and they hit you with the Benghazi and the emails. All they know is that you are emotionally driven by the things that he says. While he's poking at you emotionally, things are happening in the background that are affecting your livelihood every day. Yeah, absolutely. And I love the point that you made about how, you know, this is something that apparently certain individuals have already had some access to. As I mentioned, convalescent plasma has already been used to treat roughly 70,000 Americans who have contracted the virus. I hadn't really heard much about this

treatment beforehand. And don't get me wrong, I mean, I want this, if it's proven to be effective, I want all Americans to have access to it. But even if it is, even if they do somehow manage to conduct the medical trials that are necessary to focus on how, this treatment specifically impacts coronavirus patients. Once it gets approved by the FDA, is it going to be readily available to everyone in the country? With the way that our healthcare system is set up, that's highly unlikely. And so, yes, Trump is a failure. Trump is a complete and utter disaster when it comes to this virus. There's no question about it. But I think that the United States has been in a uniquely awful position to deal with a pandemic like this.

And by the way, there were warnings of a mass pandemic and how ill-prepared we are back in 2006 during the Bush administration. And no one did anything about it. And even as we're in the middle of this pandemic right now, even as we see tens of millions of Americans lose their jobs and the health care that comes along with those jobs, we don't have a single political party in this country, viable political party, that actually has a real solution to that, a feasible role. robust solution, and that includes Joe Biden's campaign, keeping it real. So I do want to move on to the next video because, you know, there were, there was an awkward moment during Trump's press conference about this. Some of the reporters were concerned about the efficacy and also the conditions under which the FDA approved this for emergency use. Let's take a quick look at that.

In announcing this today, you said that the FDA has made the independent determination that the treatment is safe and very effective. Yet Dr. Hahn just said it was showing promising efficacy. So which of the two is correct? Well, I think I'll let Dr. Hahn answer that question. So under our legal authority for emergency use authorization, this is not the same as an approval, but it's an authorization and allows us to expand the access to this.

And our data, we know we're going to continue to collect data. We knew that for all of our emergency use authorizations. the nuances of the language around the authorization that we use in the legal aspects. It's a promising treatment. It's not, you couldn't say it's very effective just yet. So I would say that a 35, if you're one of those 35 out of 100 people who these data suggest or show survive as a result of it, this is pretty significant for that person and their family. Okay. This is a very big day. Today we've been looking forward to. Thank you very much. Great question. Was there pressure on you, Dr. Hahn, to authorize this? Mr. Dr. Hahn? Could you answer that question?

So part of the problem with approving this for emergency use is that it essentially opens up the market to this particular treatment for coronavirus patients, making it incredibly difficult for scientists to recruit patients for their clinical trials. So there's a problem with actually proving the efficacy of this treatment for coronavirus patient. So that's one side of the story. And then you also have to consider how certain data was allegedly cherry picked in order to prove the efficacy of this treatment for emergency use. And CNN actually had a pretty decent segment about that. Let's go to that last video. What the studies show is that while this might work, we don't know if it works.

And what the studies really show is that the Trump administration is cherry picking data to make this treatment look better than it might actually be. They chose a death rate that looked at seven days out after treating people what happened seven days out. That's okay, but why not look 30 days out? The seven day death rate looks better. It's a better number. So they chose that one when they should have chosen the 30 day one. So let's take a look at what those actual numbers show. The Trump administration says 35 percent decreased death rate when you treat people with convalescent plasma early in their hospitalization versus later on. That's when you look at the seven-day death rate.

When you look at the 30-day death rate, it's actually only 23.6 percent lower. So that is a difference. That was not pointed out by the Trump administration. They chose the better number that is less reliable. And this part is actually even more important. This death rate can be explained, this lower death rate can be explained by other factors. You don't need to be a medical genius to know that earlier treatment is always better. If these patients were getting plasma earlier, what else were they getting earlier?

They were in the hospital earlier, so they were getting remdesivir, steroids, other things earlier. That could explain why they had better survival, not necessarily the plasma. So I think that's a really good explanation about how difficult it's been to prove the efficacy of this treatment. Because they're relying on data that consists of customers, patients, I mean in America, essentially customers, but patients who are getting all sorts of treatments at the same time simultaneously. So there hasn't been like a controlled study to again prove the efficacy of this plasma treatment.

This is just, I'm exhausted. It's just- You know what this is that it's funny how at the- When they talked about the numbers earlier on with coronavirus, only certain, only a certain number of people died, right? Only a certain number, as if that number of people was significant. Now this man is standing here and say, I'm sure that for those 35 people and their family members, those people's lives matter. So it's funny how when the numbers are, the numbers show how incompetent they've been in addressing this, they're minimal and they mean nothing. But when they make a little bit of progress, a little inch of progress that is still not fully effective and proven, the number is, it's a big deal.

And that's such a play on words for the people, the American people, because I still want to know who are those people that were privileged enough to have this treatment because we never heard about it. So, of course, those people matter because they probably belong to a group of people who matter to them. That is not a reflection of all of the people in America. And that is why we have this continuous problem with this elite form of thinking. Yeah, I think he makes such a great point. And one other thing that I want to just note, look, even if this treatment is somehow tested appropriately and proven to be incredibly effective, which by the way, I hope it is.

I hope it is. I want there to be a solution to this pandemic, even if it helps Donald Trump politically. I mean, so many people are dying. The United States accounts for about 5% of the world population. We also account for 25% of the global coronavirus deaths. We are uniquely terrible in how we've responded to this. And again, I think it has to do with the way this country has been set up. And it's been compounded by an absolutely tragic, incompetent, horrible, self-interested president. But, you know, even if it gets proven, keep in mind that Donald Trump has put out so much misinformation that there's a great deal of distrust toward what he says. And so like if you look at the list of things that he has pushed for during these press conferences, he was, first of all, late on masks. We all know that. He promoted hydroxychloroquine, claimed that he was taking it. Of course, I don't believe him for one minute. Floated the idea of bleach and or disinfectant injections, UV light under the skin, alien T. Okay, well, this crazy woman suggested alien DNA, demon semen.

There was the My Pillow Guys plant extract. And the numbers, the numbers are really high. I know earlier I said more than 175,000 Americans have died. But I mean, that was the number that I saw yesterday. So every day we have more than a thousand people dying in this country as a result of how we have responded to the pandemic. And we need to make sure that we don't approve certain drugs or certain treatments. based on Trump's political pressure. We need people who are willing to stand up to him.

And unfortunately, I think that he does have some impact on how the FDA chose to approve this particular treatment for emergency use. Anyway, we have to take a quick break. When we come back, we have more news for you guys, including yet another day of testimony from Postmaster General Lewis DeJoy. It was way spicier today. Can't wait to show you those videos and more. Come right back.

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or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime so search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time Welcome back to TYT, Anna and Ida with you. Ida, there's some serious love for you in the members' comments. I'm going to get to that in just a second, but first a few announcements.

We have joined aspiration in partnership to do a sweepstakes for an e-s scooter. We have talked about this on every single episode of the show since this launch. So you should know the details by now, but just in case you don't. Go to t.y.t.com slash green summer to learn about your chance to win. Even if you have an account with aspiration, you can still enter for a chance to win. Again, all the details are at tytt.com slash green summer. Also, today's the first day of school. I know that better than anyone because I'm teaching again this semester online, which is interesting. But if you're looking to get some new gear for school, all you need to do is go to shop TYT and you get a 20% off

discount. So you can get t-shirts, hats, cool pins for your backpack. Go to shopty.com and then site wide. You don't even need to put in like a promo code. Shop t-y-t.com. Go nuts. Go on a shopping spree. All right. Oh yeah, and then the members comments. This is like my favorite part. So happy biker guy, by the way, Ida writes it and says, Ida, my mommy favorita. What on das, miha? I just really liked that one. I don't know.

Perpendicular time says Trump has removed FDA oversight of the vaccine process and is pursuing convalescent plasma, a modern equivalent of variolation. The precursor to vaccination, we're stepping back through the centuries at an alarm rate. Yeah, I didn't ever talking about that actually during, before the show started, about how, you know, I feel like we've been frogs in like slowly boiling water, but things are so bad right now. And I can't stand the people who are in denial about it, who think like you're just, you're speaking hyperbole when you talk about the severity of the situation we're in, whether it has to do with this election and what Trump is trying to do the post office,

or what's happening with this pandemic. It's terrifying. Anyway, all right. Well, let's get to the rest of the news. And let's talk about the post office, because there are some updates on that. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was testifying before the House Oversight Committee today. And there's no question that today's testimony got a little more spicy than what we've seen before. Members of the House were much more tough on DeJoy, and a good example of that was the line of questioning that we heard from Katie Porter. Let's watch.

Mr. DeJoy, thank you for being with us today. What is the cost of a first class postage stamp? 55 cents. What about to mail a postcard? I don't know, ma'am. You don't know the cost to mail a postcard? I don't. I'll submit that I know very little about a postage stamp. Do you know about within a million or so?

Can you tell me how many people voted by mail in the last presidential election? No, I cannot. To the nearest 10 million? I will be- Is that a no, Mr. DeJoyer? I would be guessing, and I don't want to guess. Later, Katie Porter asked if the Inspector General finds that there is a severe conflict of interest with DeJoy serving as Postmaster General, would he step down? And he essentially said, no.

He doesn't see why he would need to. And by the way, Ida, I mean, that video didn't surprise me at all because we already know that during Louis DeJoy's confirmation hearing for Postmaster General, He needed help to get through answering very basic questions about the post office. He has no expertise in the post office. The only thing he knows about it is that the companies that he has a vested interest in would love to see the post office destroyed because they want to destroy competition to increase their profits. And remember, again, Lewis DeJoy does have conflicts of interest because he's invested in those

companies, in those competitors. And yeah, I mean, this is such an enlightening moment because, you know, on one hand, you have this man deny that he's single-handedly dismantling the post office before an election where there's going to be a giant influx of mail-in ballots, but then the way he answers the very specific questions that are asked of him makes it abundantly clear that he's trying to dismantle the post office for political reasons, political and also financial reasons. That's right. You know what's interesting. to me is that when you look at all of the people who are destroying this country, they all look alike.

They all have something in common in them in the gender, the race, the, you know, sexual preference, heterosexual, straight white males. And you know, when people, when we talk about these things, people think that it's a feminism agenda that wants to take the man down or that people of color want to take people of color down. I am sure that there are thousands and thousands of white young men in this country that come from humble beginnings that would be efficient at doing these types of jobs. But this is a group of people that belong to this elite group based on being grandfathered in into these positions of power. And they all look the same. And they all have been in power so long that they're constantly throwing temper tantrums.

And they're quite mediocre. Because I guarantee you that if anybody, any one of us were the postmaster general, the Piper, whatever you want to call them, we would have, we would know every inch of our business and we would have to, because especially you and I as women, we would have to be twice as good at the job, three times competent to be able to hold that position. And we would not be able to afford to not be able to answer a question because it would be an aha moment for whoever was cross-examining us. When you look at these people, they are, they're all in this criminal gang, right? You want to point at Bloods and Crips and MS-13, people who are starving for scraps and resorting to crime as a result of their survival. But you look at this gang, and what are

they doing? They think it's laughable, that they're uninformed, they're disconnected with the population. They don't know anything about what's going on in real life for us, because they're unaffected. Look at this smug guy. This is what, they call you smug, they call a jank smug. That's smug. This man does not know what is going on in his place of business. And any person who belongs to any marginalized group who cannot afford not to know any part of where they work. And I just think it is a great, this is a moment in history where it's all, we're now starting to see the faces of all of the people who have been running us into the ground for profit and benefit. You're so right. You know what people like Lewis DeJoy and Donald Trump at

every single member of Trump's family remind me of. The kinds of people who go to like a Kroger or any type of grocery store where they have a section dedicated to like nuts and candy that you can buy by the pound, right? And like they show up and they're like, oh, that's for me. And they just like raid it. They're just like snacking on the nuts and the candy and they think they don't, you know, they think that it's theirs to raid. It's their personal stash of nuts and candy while the rest of us have to work real hard to have the means to buy the nuts and candy. Like I know it sounds like a ridiculous analogy, but it's the sense of entitlement, right?

Where they don't care about doing the moral thing or the ethical thing. They don't care about the general public. They see opportunities to raid resources for their own personal enrichment and their own personal wealth. And we have seen that happen time and time again, it's certainly more pronounced in the Trump era because Donald Trump doesn't try to hide it. Like he's so, he's the least sophisticated person on the planet. And so he doesn't have the ability to, you know, hide the terrible corruption and thievery he gets involved in. Same goes for the people that he, you know, helps to push into positions of power within the federal government. And so you see it happening before your very eyes. The frustrating thing is to hear Republican lawmakers consistently gaslight you. and make you think that you're not seeing or try to make you think you're not seeing what your

own two eyes are seeing. Now luckily there were some very, very strong Democrats who asked some pretty tough questions during this hearing. One of them was Rokana. And so I want to take a look at those highlights. Our defense department, we don't tell them you have to go sell weapons to make revenue to serve the American people. We don't say that about our health service or the national institute of health why should we have a different standard for the postal service why do you have to go make a profit instead of just serving the american people sir it's an interesting and good question and it's not that we need to make a profit it's to be self-sustaining which means cover cover at least cover your costs but why it's such a

small i'm i'm not a legislator i'm the postmaster do you know i mean do you know the history do you Do you remember the time in the Postal Service history where that wasn't a requirement? I do in the 70s. Actually, it was from 1840 to 1970. We funded the Postal Service. We didn't require them to make a profit because we thought people should in rural America and other places and our veterans should serve. And one of the reasons people serve in the Postal Service who've served in our military

is they view it as public service. I mean, does Lewis-Derjoy know anything about the Post Office, like anything at all? And Ida, he's right. Rokana, of course, is the one who's right in this conversation because the post office is a government agency. And the fact that it's being thought of as some sort of business that needs to turn a profit is absolutely ridiculous. We don't think of any other government agency as something that needs to have a profitable business model. Only the social programs that benefit them are the programs that they want to keep in place, right? Not just mailing votes, but benefits for elderly people, social security benefits, people who are on food stamps, people who have medical stuff that they tend to.

There are people who, I mean, you can be privileged enough where your whole life is online and you can do everything digitally. But there's a great number of people in America who have to depend on the post office for basic necessities and survival. And so only people who, you know, the talk about socialism and communism in this country, how it's always being, you know, it's being poked at people just to scare them because of what happens in places like Venezuela and China and Cuba. But we all know that in America, we have a lot of socialist programs. But these programs are only here to benefit these people. Our taxpayer dollars fund the salaries of people who send their kids to the better schools, have the best health care. and while we struggle and wonder where our funds are being misappropriated to. So when you see someone like this in the post office saying this is because they're not thinking

about a lot of those people who actually vote for Donald Trump, who are poor and don't have resources and have to wait on things from the post office, unfortunately many of those people don't have the education because they also are in areas where their education system suck. Because again, those programs don't matter because Ivanka gets to go to an Ivy League school. And Eric, even though he looks confused all the time, can go to a good school. So here we sit here and talk about these social programs, but these social programs are benefit to. But poor people, marginalized people, average people who don't have trust funds. So of course they want to do away with it and make profit for it.

Like they do everything else, while the people who don't have jobs and are worried about getting evicted are funding and lacing. the pockets of the people who are selling us vitamins and all the things they scare us and telling us that we need right now because of this pandemic. And the great big circle of BS continues to go around around while those of us at the bottom keeps struggling. And then they wonder why people say that one day the poor will eat the rich. You know, in a moment I'm going to skip ahead to video B3, just a note for the director. But before we do, I just wanted to respond to what you said, Ida, because you're absolutely right. You know, there's never any call to dismantle the Federal Reserve, which printed literally trillions of dollars during the pandemic and handed

it over to banks and corporations. I mean, when it comes to that kind of cash give away, there's never any call to dismantle it or to stop it. But when it comes to the crumbs that the American people are fighting for because they just need something to survive. Oh, then we talk about dismantling it, we talk about the cost effectiveness of the agency, and make no mistake, okay? Yes, Republicans right now absolutely want to dismantle the post office because there are political reasons to do so. There's a way of disenfranchising voters during a pandemic by making it increasingly difficult for people to vote by mail. But in the past, during the Obama era, there were plenty of, you know, Democratic lawmakers

who wanted to defund the post office, who thought that it needed to be privatized. Kevin Drum, who's a liberal writer in the media, still thinks it's a good idea to privatize the post office. It's absolutely disgusting. Mattie Glacier's back in 2012, okay, was in favor of privatizing the post office. So, you know, now all of a sudden the chickens came home to roost and they're like, oh, this isn't so good. It's not a good idea.

Of course it's not a good idea. This is a government agency that provides a fundamental important service, not just to Americans living in big cities, but Americans living in rural areas where delivery services, privatized delivery services, refuse to deliver anything because it's too costly for them. So let's just keep that in mind. And the post office is expected to fund pensions 75 years in advance. That was something that was implemented by the Bush administration to make it increasingly difficult for the post office to stay afloat. Now, with that said, one of my favorite moments from DeJoy's testimony involved Representative Lynch.

So here's Representative Stephen Lynch, not holding back, going off. Let's watch. After 240 years of patriotic service delivering the mail, how can one person screw this up in just a few weeks? Now, I understand you bring private sector expertise. I guess we couldn't find a government worker who could screw it up this fast. It would take them a while. The president is running this post office like a business, like he said. He's running it into the ground as he has declared bankruptcy a few times on his own businesses. In an effort to apply the facts, the real facts, not the alternative facts based on what you have actually done,

One can only reach, as a fact finder, we can only reach two conclusions. One, either through gross incompetence, you have ended the 240-year history of delivering the mail reliably on time, or the second conclusion that we could gather is that you're doing this on purpose and that you're deliberately dismantling this once proud tradition. The gentleman's time has expired. Now, Lynch did actually manage to ask a question, and we'll get to that in just a second. But I only have one tiny little correction, which is Donald Trump did not go bankrupt a couple of times. He went bankrupt six times after inheriting $413 million from Papa. So let's watch the question that Lynch wanted to ask.

The gentleman may answer his question. My last question is this. Thank you. What the heck are you doing? What the heck are you doing? Time has expired. Thank you, sir. The gentleman may answer. First of all, I would like to agree with you on the heroic efforts of our

650,000 employees across the nation and the history of the Postal Service for the 250-year history of serving the American public. Will you put the machines back? I'm very proud to lead to the organization. The rest of your accusations are actually Will you put the high-speed machines back? No, I will not. You will not.

You will not. Well, there you go. There I go, what? These machines. Madam Chair, let the witness answer the question, and he has gone over time. Order, order, order. I really love that moment with Representative Lynch. And also, Ida, Lewis DeJoy refuses to reinstall the mail sorting machines that have already been taken out of service.

And that's relevant because the initial plan was to take about 671 of them out of service. More than 600 of them have already been taken out of service. So the damage has already been done. When Lewis DeJoy says, oh, I won't make any more operational changes moving forward. Well, that's nothing because, again, the damage has already been done. Yeah, of course, they've already laced his pockets. You know what I'm saying? He's already, if you look at the way that, listen, people are telling their,

children, you watch these people and don't you behave this way. We have never seen, I mean, all the thuggery that's been going on in our government for centuries that we never have had access to. And thank God now that we're able to see it because now we can actually see what our enemy looks like and what we need to fight. But the lack of the audacity of these people to be able to say defund the post office, which a lot of people need, but want to kill you when you say defund the police, police when a black man just got shot in the back in front of his three children, Jacob

just got shot in the three in the back. But when you say defund the police and which means let's reprioritize when it comes to law enforcement because they are becoming a problem in this country. But when you, but they are so happy to tell you let's get these post office this post office out of here because we need to make more money. It lets you know where the priorities are. The priorities are not the people. The priorities are where with the corporations making the money, them getting richer. They have a little group that needs to be disbanded. And that's why, you know, he, did you see, these are public servants. I will not, I will not, right? Remember I will not American people. They, they, we're supposed

to be telling them what to do. They work for us. And they are telling us, I will not. So that just You know where we stand with this administration and with these public officials and these people who are holding offices, who are very wealthy, by the way, very wealthy, exempt from a lot of the realities that most of Americans have to deal with, telling you that they will not, as if they're your parents. We need to be very, very alarmed at this moment. The tone and the delivery and the language and the words that are being spoken by the people who are in power are slowly. releasing the shields and they are just speaking openly because they're letting us know and they're putting us in our place. And we're sitting around here arguing about semantics and having arguments about things that are insignificant canceling people for the wrong stuff on Twitter while our democracy fades away. And that's what we need to be worried about. That was perfect. I can't add anything better than not. So I'm going to leave it right there.

We've got to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the shooting that took place in Wisconsin over the weekend. And it is graphic, so I want to warn you guys well ahead of time. And if time, we'll talk about Rahm Emanuel and how he's urging the Democratic Party to move further to the right. If we don't get to that story, we'll do it in the postgame, become a member at t.com slash join. We'll be right back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us, and story and selling our data, but that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous

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And keep in mind that it is August 24th. So we're not in good shape. And I'm just asking for some help. If you guys can, just go to t.yt.com slash go where you can donate and help keep TYT sustainable. Also, a few member comments from the break. Kier says the Republican Party is steep. in political anarchy, bereft of policy, and following the whims of a demagogue.

You're absolutely right about that, and we have a story for it in the post game. You can become a member by going to t.t.com slash join. Spot the cat says, if I was facing Katie Porter, I'd be cramming all night and day before. Seen her in action, never ask a question that you don't know the answer to. Yeah, she's always very well prepared. And, you know, I think that most progressive, no, every single progressive woman I've seen in these hearings absolutely kills it. Because Ida, as you said earlier, and I think you're absolutely right, you just have to go above and beyond as a woman, especially in a political

arena to prove yourself. And there are also people who actually care about doing the right thing and providing proper representation to their constituents. So, you know, part of it is having to prove yourself, but I think that a larger part of it is they're smart women who didn't do this for power. They did it because they want a better country. And it's really good to see that. Yeah. Okay, well, the next story is awful and difficult to watch. So I just want to give you all a warning. There is a graphic video in this story. But this is what the reality in America is for many black men, a story that we've talked about countless times, and we have yet another horrific example of it. Cops in Wisconsin shot a black man several times in the back as he calmly

walked into his own vehicle. His three children were in the car as he was shot in close range. The witnesses who were there before the police were called to the scene said that Jacob, Blake, that was the victim here, had broken up a fight between two women in the neighborhood. And even though it's unclear what happened immediately before the video we see, what is absolutely clear is that Blake did not pose any type of imminent threat to the cops. In fact, the video that we're about to show you, as graphic as it is, makes it very obvious that he was not the aggressor, the cop who shot him several times in the back was. Again, it's graphic warning. Let's take a look.

but he is still alive, although he's in critical condition. The man who was shot identified by Governor Tony Evers as Jacob Blake was airlifted to a Milwaukee hospital and is in serious condition. At least half a dozen witnesses said that Blake had tried to break up a fight between the two women outside a home and that police had attempted to use a taser on the man prior to the shooting. Then they heard at least seven gunshots ring out. It's, I don't, I don't even know what to say.

The thing that drives me crazy about these stories other than just how cruel and hideous and awful it is, is the inevitable feedback that we hear from right wingers on social media. Well, why was he ignoring the police? Oh, is that a death sentence? Is that all it takes? The cops are not supposed to open fire unless their lives are in danger, okay? And honestly, in this day and age, does anyone really question why a black person would be afraid of the police and maybe would want to walk away or run away from them? You know, the thing that's interesting is that, so for, so a lot of people, you know, are shocked. Those of us that grew up in black and brown communities, I grew up in a community that was half and

black and Latin in Miami, you know, Liberty City. This is Monday. You know, this is, since George Floyd's death, since all of these marches, there has been no decrease in the numbers of people being murdered by these race soldiers. And the reason I call them race soldiers, because the truth of it is, is that law enforcement has been infiltrated by these white supremacists, and you can't say things because if you are, you can be falsely accusing somebody and you don't have statistics. We don't need statistics to know that the behaviors that are being carried out by some law enforcement officers is identical to the behavior that they have during slavery, during Jim Crow. And so the dehumanization of black lives, you know, people say that when

I come here, I try to sweep everybody under the rug and I say people of color. No, I'm very specific when it comes to black people, because when I talk about black people, I'm talking about my daughter and my son, who when people, my son walks down the street, nobody knows that his grandmother, one of his grandmothers is from Puerto Rico, and the other one is a descendant of an American slave. So when I talk about black people, I'm very specific, and that the fact that they have targets on their backs in this country, we have targets on our backs in this country, and you watch this kind of stuff, it's like, I don't, at this point, I'm like, it's appalling, it is horrible, we need Jacob to live because we need to give a face and a voice to these people, because unfortunately,

We have to speak for George Floyd. We have to speak for Breonna Taylor. So we need him to be alive at all costs. And I hope that black people in Wisconsin are surrounding their hospital and making sure that that man lives because he needs to be watched at all costs. Now I'm going off the cuff here because we just don't trust law enforcement at this point. So the fact that three little babies were in that car, just like Philando Castile's daughter was in that car when he was murdered, it's just Monday.

So for us to sit here and act like we are just shocked about what they've been, what they're doing that they've been doing forever, I want to know what we're gonna do, because they're not coming to save us. They don't care about us, and they surely don't care about black men and black women in this country. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. And the Philando Castile story, there was no justice in that story. No. The cop was acquitted in that case, and we had video. We had video of what happened. We had video of Philando Castile making it clear that he had a licensed gun in the vehicle. He was complying, he wasn't doing anything wrong. And that gun, that cop shot that gun and murdered

him anyway, right? With this story, with Jacob Blake, this particular police department doesn't require their cops to wear body cams. So we may never know what happened before he was shot in the back in close range. I mean, I feel like we already have quite a bit of evidence to show that what the cop did was excessive force. He was not posing an imminent threat. And by the way, I mean, if you're in a scene like that as a black man and you have your babies in the car, I mean, any person, any human being, you want to protect your kids, which is why I think he was calmly walking to his car and trying to get to his kids. But anyway, I also, yeah, go ahead, Ida. I'm sorry, they also assumed that because a black man was on the scene, that he was

automatically guilty. He was there breaking up a fight, breaking up a fight, probably trying to keep the police to come from there separating two other people from fighting, because we know what the consequences are. And they show up and immediately try to taser him and arrest him without knowing what's going on. And that's what they do all the time. This is not an exception, this is the rule. So we're tired. We don't want to hear this boy anymore. We don't want to have the, you got Black Lives Matter signs on your windows because you don't want your windows broken. You're donating to organizations. We need white people to put their privilege on the line and to save black lives because that's where we are right now. We don't

need to hear any more rhetoric. We don't need to hear no songs. We don't need to hear no speeches and no more no more Zooms. If you really want to make a change with this and we need to defund the police and we need to clean it, gut it out, then it didn't put your privilege on the line so that our people can live because that's what's happening right now. All right, the postgame is next. Become a member, t.com slash join. Yes, we will talk about Kellyanne Ann Conway leaving the White House. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to 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, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.