The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - August 7th, 2020

Episode Date: August 8, 2020

Trump: I'm Banning TikTok in September Unless… | Students PUNISHED for Sharing Photos of Crowded School During Covid Pandemic | Why Is Trump Warning People About New Zealand? | CNBC FREAK OUT After Bernie Sanders Proposes New Tax Bill 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, everyone, welcome to TYT. I'm Anna Casparian. Joining us today is J.R. Jackson, because Jank is still away, but he'll be back on Monday. J.R. How you doing? What's up? Should I like yell or something? Do I need like an American flag background or something so I can go and make the full substitute? You know, when you have a substitute, you want to make sure that the person is nearest to the original as possible. So, I mean, I don't know about that. I think you bring your own talents of this show. But it's really good to have you. By the way, I love, I got to say, I know that it's mostly your partner, but the decor is on point. Oh, well, you know. Yeah, I'm going to dispute that mostly assertion you just made. It is 100% my wife that does this and zero of this.

I figured, I figured. Well, you know, J.R., there's something that we've been talking about in pretty much every episode of our show lately. And it has to do with a sweepstakes that we've engaged in with Aspiration, one of our partners. We're giving away an e-scooter, which is nearly worth $2,000. And how do you feel about it? that cool picture of yourself in the ad. Is that me? Well, I'm waiting for the royalties. I'm waiting for a free scooter myself, I guess, for promoting it so greatly. I think we can check the numbers. We'll see how much things have exploded since we started with that particular ad. Well, I think it's doing really well.

And for those of you who are wondering, oh, how do I enter for a chance to win this e-scooter that makes anyone on it look super cool? Just go to t.yt.com slash green summer. you'll learn all the details of how you can enter to win. Even if you're banking with aspiration right now, you still have an opportunity to enter to win. So again, go to t.yt.com slash green summer to learn more. Also some programming notes, TYT will be having a special next week titled, What Does the Future Look Like? It'll be on Tuesday, August 11th at 730 p.m. Eastern time, 4.30 p.m. Pacific. And Jake will be talking to a number of great guests about what we should

plan for and what we can expect in the future, including Andrew Yang, Derek Johnson, Dolores Suerta, Nomi Prins, Nicholas Thompson, Tiwa Chang, Tamara Tolls, O'Loughlin, and many more. So make sure you check that out. It'll be a great special. In addition to that, there will be some great programming on Twitch that you should check out. So we're going to do Common Room tonight. So check that out at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, 6 p.m. Pacific on Twitch.tv slash TYT. Again, that's twitch.tv slash tyt. And then it'll feature Brett, Brooke Marks, J.R. Jackson, and Adiana Vega. And then tomorrow, more programming on Twitch. John Iderola is hosting a watch party. Link your Amazon Prime to your Twitch account.

account and join John for TYT movie night. And that'll take place, again, Saturday night at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. All right, cool. Let's move on to the news. There's a lot to get to, including a big update on TikTok. Donald Trump has officially issued an executive order banning social media apps, TikTok, and we chat within 45 days, unless these companies get sold to a U.S. company. And, you know, so they'll no longer be operated under a Chinese-owned parent company.

Now, there are many theories as to why Trump is doing this. We'll talk about that in just a second, but first let's get some of these details. Now look, the order luckily does not state that the U.S. Treasury should take a cut of whatever deal happens from a sale, something that Donald Trump was pretty insistent on earlier. But what we know so far is that the order regarding TikTok prohibits after 45 days any transaction by any person or with respect to any property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States with Bite Dance Limited, the Chinese company that owns the social media platform. So Trump talked about his motivations behind doing this. I think that what he's saying publicly is very different from what the private

motivations are. But let's take a listen to what he's had to say about this. And then we'll talk about the reality. Here's the deal. I don't mind if, whether it's Microsoft or somebody else, a big company, a secure company, very, very American company buy it. I did say that if you buy it, whatever the price is, that goes to whoever owns it, because I guess it's China, essentially, but more than anything else. I said a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States because we're making it possible for this deal to happen. Right now they don't have any rights unless we give it to them. So if we're going to give them the rights, then it has to come into this country. It's a little bit like

the landlord tenant. Without a lease, the tenant has nothing. So they pay what's called key money or they pay something. But the United States should be reimbursed or should be paid a substantial amount of money because without the United States, they don't have anything. So it'll close down on September 15th, unless Microsoft or somebody else is able to buy it and work out a deal and appropriate deal. So the treasury of the, really the treasury, I guess you would say, of the United States gets a lot of money, a lot of money. All right. So just to clarify, that was on August 2nd. He hadn't yet issued the executive order. But just to give you some more information about the order, Trump's order does allege

that TikTok, quote, automatically captures vast swaths of information. from its users, like pretty much every other Silicon Valley company in existence, such as location data and browsing and search histories, which threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to American's personal and proprietary information, potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage. I mean, I would be surprised if you have. federal government employees utilizing TikTok. If this is a known national security concern or some sort of issue where the Chinese government would spy on government employees, then maybe government

employees should download it on their phone. And I don't think that it's really like something that government employees are doing. It's not like some widespread issue. Teenagers mostly use TikTok. And they have fun with it. They use it to communicate with their friends and engage with them. That's not to say that I don't believe that spying would take place. I absolutely do believe that this type of data collection would happen. But my point is that this type of data collection happens across the board. All sorts of information about us gets collected by social media platforms. Is it a little worse that it would be a foreign country?

Sure. But, you know, I don't think that this is really the motivation behind what Trump is doing with these bands on Tick-Tac and we chat. Yeah, the question when anything that Donald Trump does becomes, what is the motivation? How is this going to help him? I don't think that's much of a stretch anymore to take that as the approach. How is going to help him? Look, we're in August.

The election's coming up. He's already paranoid. He's doing many other things to try and promote himself to get reelected. So where does this fit in, you know, because of the battle with China? Then he also wants to have, you know, continuing with the negative view of, of China when it comes to coronavirus because how it originated and he said the language has become they sent it to us. They sent it to us. So I think it could be another step in this fight with just a full complete anger towards or characterization of the way China is versus

us, good guys versus bad guys. When as you pointed out already, as far as this comes, and we can see that. I mean the other things, you know, there's there was issues about stealing of information and intellectual properties, all those things, right? When it comes to something like this, you wonder, what is it right now? Why right now? TikTok didn't start in, what, June of 2020, you know? So it's not one of those things we're like, oh, man, this new thing just popped up. You know what's happening here?

So I guess it's the, there's the tariff battle, there's the money that's exchanging, there's businesses that do business over there that he wants to limit. All those are happening. But it was one part that I also did read. Remember his Tulsa rally and the horrible showing that it got and the fun that was made of him and then the sicknesses that some people caught from that rally, all that went down. And also, but the main thing for him, he didn't care about people getting sick. The main thing was the horrible turnout. There was some rumors that people on TikTok were saying, hey, you guys, this builds information, buy up tickets, free tickets for his show, and then don't show up, watch, and it's going to be so funny.

And I'm not sure how much that contributed to it, I think minimally, but that's one of those things that could get under a thin skin person like Donald Trump and be like, TikTok is the reason. He goes after Twitter and Facebook. And I don't know if he's going after Instagram, but he's going after all of them for any small thing they've done that have hurt him in his mind. This could be just enough of a thing to push him all of the tipping points. Look, I think that you're right in that the Tulsa rally got under his skin. But the motivations to ramp up. potential war with China existed far before this Tulsa rally took place. So I think that that's a bigger issue here. So for instance, look, in the 1990s, when we started to really trade with China and that really started to explode, you know, there was this understanding that the United States would engage in trade negotiations with China with the United States seeking cheap labor. There's no question about that. I'm sorry, cheap labor, which would lead to cheap consumer goods, which would also, you know,

distract Americans and consumerism away from the fact that inequality was increasing significantly, beginning in the 1990s, right? And then at that point, though, there was this almost like an unspoken agreement that China could grow, but not in a way that would threaten the hegemonic power of the United States. And so there was really this pivot toward China or China policy during the Obama administration. And unfortunately, now you have someone like Trump who has all these people in his administration and all these advisors who he speaks to that literally have a vested interest in challenging China as a hegemonic power.

So look, China was able to make some moves with its stimulus plan back in 2000. 2008 that helped prevent the entire world economy from completely collapsing. So that was when people started to notice, hey, maybe China is more than just a country we can exploit for cheap labor. Then you have this issue with China really accelerating and expanding its own military spending. So just to give you some ideas, in 2018, there was $240 billion in global arms sales. That's a lot of money, okay? 59% of that account came from the United States.

But by 2019, China really did skyrocket on the global scale when it came to its own arms. It only expanded arms sales, but was able to really compete with the United States in providing arms for cheaper prices. And so by 2019, out of the 15 highest performing defense companies in the world, six of them operate out of China or from China. And Secretary of State, Mark Efsper, was working for Raytheon, okay? He was a Raytheon lobbyist before he started working for the Trump administration. And what they agreed to do was, you know, this is common, a deferred compensation package.

And so he wouldn't get paid until 2022. And his pay would be based on the value of Raytheon stock. So Mark Esper is one of the people within the Trump administration. who's been pushing for this type of rhetoric, right? Just this ramping up of war with China and keep in mind that he literally has a vested interest in doing that. So this whole TikTok thing, I think is part of that puzzle, right? Because you think Donald Trump is really concerned about Americans being spied on? You think Donald Trump is concerned about anything other than himself?

Of course not. What we do need to do, though, is take a step back and look at the bigger picture and understand and like the historical context behind the motivations today, and also, you know, the swamp that Trump has really surrounded himself with, you know, the Mark Espers of the world. You know, Steve Bannon said, there's no question. War with China is inevitable. And that kind of stuff should terrify you. Because, you know, these are the types of people who have in the past successfully engaged in wars that we should have never gotten involved in. I'm sorry. Mark Esper, I think I misspoke.

I think I said secretary, he's secretary of defense. I think I said secretary of state. That was my mistake. My bad. I mean, I think we got you. Things like, but we always have to, of course, then back it up and say, oh yeah, nobody's saying that China does everything perfectly. So let's just bake that all then now.

We already understand that China and many of their policies and things with the ruling party there aren't always on the up and up. So we can get that out of the way and understand that even though things like that happen, we can also continue to hold our officials feet to the fire to make sure they're doing things correctly. Because sure, no one wants their information stolen. No one wants their personal information picked up by some random person. But think about how often you guys out there, you download an app, and it says,

these are all the things that we're going to have access to, things that we're going to attach from your phone, things we can do, post for you, take things off, friend, unfriend, all those things can happen in many apps and we bowl right through, right? So it's understanding that and understanding how many people use TikTok, I can get the fear. So your barriers could be around government officials, people that actually do things where someone is in need of their information and things that are on their phones as your restrictions. But I think to make it a broad thing, he also has the opportunity to then, as he's been asking for, we can get lots of money, a lot of money, a lot of money. That's definitely another motivation.

And maybe people that are smarter than him are trying for the other things like what Esper's doing with his bank accounts, but they can appeal to Trump by going, hey, we can make some money off of this. And he's like, I'm in. That's all he's thinking of. Yeah, for sure. Of course, of course. And remember, China really does pose a threat to our Silicon Valley economy.

It does. China is a real competitor, especially since they're first and the most advanced when it comes to the 5G technology. And so, again, there are actual vested economic interests behind the decisions and the rhetoric that we're hearing from the Trump administration. So just be aware about that. It's easy to get caught up on a more granular level, especially with stories. about what's happening with TikTok and WeChat. But if you, again, take a step back and you look at the bigger picture, you'll understand that, again, it's money behind these decisions and the corruption that we see with people like Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

And with that small thing, one small thing for me is the fact that teenagers and young folks use this, because I don't touch TikTok, but, and I understand it, I just don't, I'm not entertained by it. But so that's also something you have to factor in. And two, how much just regular Americans, especially folks that are sitting at home during quarantine or at least have limited access to going outside, how much they enjoy something like this and don't really care about their information being stolen and how that would make him look back. Because let's not forget, being a politician, getting reelected is also another form of a popularity contest. And if they don't like how you've taken away their favorite app, that can sadly affect your chances. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's talk about actually let's take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about two students who got suspended for telling people the truth about how unsafe their school has been after opening prematurely during the coronavirus pandemic. And then later in the show, we'll talk to you about Bernie Sanders' latest proposal when it comes to providing health care for Americans and how CNBC had a meltdown about it. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and JR with you. Let's read some member comments. And then we'll take a look at the thermometer, see where we're at. Anna's right, though, from the member's comments, says, he, meaning Trump wants to suppress left activism. I'm 29 and have TikTok. And let me tell you, Gen Z is far to the left of me. I love it. Well, let me just say, it isn't just Trump who wants to squash any type of left activism. That's a common goal among many. politicians in this country, both on the Republican and Democratic side, Craig Cray-Ce-Souffle says, maybe Ivanka should give up all those patents and trademarks. She acquired from, you know, China. And Meg says, I don't know, friends, this seems like big government. I thought Republicans hated big government. That we all, I mean, come on, we all knew that was a lie. I mean, it was abundantly

clear when it came to social issues. But now that China is rising as a world power and threatens again, the hegemonic power of China, of the United States. Of course, like now we're seeing them get involved in, you know, business dealings. All right. So let's take a quick look at the thermometer. See where we're at with the fundraising effort that we have. TYT.com slash go to contribute. And we're at 15,144, which, by the way, is higher than I remember it.

I didn't do the show yesterday. I did it on the day before, Wednesday. And we were at like 11,000. So hey, hey, thanks guys. Again, you can contribute by going to tytt.com slash go. All right, Jerry, you ready for our next story? I'm already. All right, let's do it. So two students from Georgia say that they were suspended after they publicly posted photos of crowded hallways and students failing to wear masks, again, going against the CDC guidelines for safely reopening schools. Now this comes as new cases of coronavirus do surge in most major parts of the country, including in Georgia. Now following the backlash as a result of these two students

getting suspended, luckily the principal, at least called one of the students that we know of and said that the suspension has been reversed. But first, let me give you the details on why these students were suspended in the first place. So the photo show students, as I mentioned earlier, They are packed into hallways between classes, not appearing to practice social distancing, and with few masks visible amid the coronavirus pandemic, they went viral after being shared by the account, Free Your Mind Kid on Twitter. So let's take a look at what that tweet looked like. And it includes the image that, you know, I certainly saw floating around the internet over

recent days. You see that packed hallway. And obviously, no one seems to be really following the CDC guidelines for. were being in school amid this pandemic. So Hannah Waters is one of the students who ended up getting suspended. She's 15 years old and initially she was, she was slapped with a five day suspension, out of class, out of school suspension. And she remained defiant.

She felt that it was important to share the details of what was going on. Here's an example of a photo that she shared with the world, with the internet. And then she shared the following quotes with BuzzFeed News. She's like, the policies I broke stated that I used my phone in the hallway without permission, used my phone for social media and posting pictures of minors without consent. But she says that she felt the need to do it. She needed people to understand how unsafe the situation was. Not only did my school open, but they have not been safe.

Many people are not following CDC guidelines because the county did not make these precautions mandatory. And after the two students were suspended, there was an announcement on the intercom meant to really threaten other students who are thinking about posting online. So I want to take a quick listen to that. Anything that's going on social media that is negative our light without permission and photography, that's video, the same thing, there will be consequences for those students. or anyone who sends out those pictures.

So please be careful and not send out things. You know you have news media who want to contact people and get more things. Please be mindful. Please be careful. And again, there will be consequences for people who send things out. So the effort by school administrators has been, okay, we need to put a lid on this, make sure that students don't feel in any way comfortable sharing what the reality is on the ground. on the ground at this school, and then, you know, basically find a way to cover up the fact

that this district hasn't taken coronavirus seriously at all. In fact, let's take a listen to a conversation that went down in late May, which perfectly sums up how school administrators really didn't take this threat seriously. It's like y'all are saying, I want to as a board member, you know, encourage us to start back normal on August 3rd to the availability of the law that we have. The assumptions of the CDC guidelines, I want to remind everybody, CDC is not a governing authority in this state. All they can do is make recommendations. I would like to see Pauline County lead the way and as an absolute normal return to school on August 3rd that we can possibly do unless the governor or the

State Board of Education does not allow us to do it. There's a lot of assumptions going around about this. It's going to be unattainable, just like Ms. Cobb said with budget cuts. There's no way you can do this. I personally, I don't like to use this language, but those CDC guidelines, in my opinion, are complete crap. And I want our students, they've missed a lot already. I know some of us have missed a lot in our personal lives, but it's not fair to these kids to continue to cram something down their throat that's not affecting them. And I want to commend Dr. Otot for your comments. I want to commend you guys for working on this budget. But I want us as a school district in Pauline County to lead the way in an absolute normal return to normal activities on August 3rd if we are allowed to by law without buying into the hype that is out there that's going to keep us from doing it.

And right now, that's all it is is hype. There's no law. There's no recommendation. There's no, there's nothing that's going to force us to have to do what is going around social media and in the news media right now. Okay. So, JR, they think it's just hype. Are we paying attention? This is how it's been working from the whole process. So Trump and his administration, including Betsy DeVos and vice president, everybody is in front

of cameras talking about how safe and awesome and perfect is going to be if you just go back to school. When the CDC puts out particular guidelines that says, hey, if you are going to go back to school, do it this way so that we can have as safe of a return as possible. Now, when that came out and then Trump decided to complain on Twitter about how much these things are unattainable too costly. Who cares? Children don't get sick anyway. Let's move on past this. You see the next step is, and they, oh, I'm sorry, and they also said DeVos was good on this. Every school district is different. We have to allow them to implement things the way that works for them and their students. Why do we trust people like this guy who was sitting at a school

board meeting in May and talking about how kids are barely affected by it, who else will be here say that, how we need to reopen the schools fully. It doesn't really matter that. much. People are losing their experiences. You might lose some experiences if you die. Also, no talk about the teachers. We'll talk about the staff. We'll talk about the way they could be affected. Who cares about those people? Because Trump knows in states like Georgia that are headed by Brian Kemp, the governor there, they're going to continue his same policies. So as again, the school board never mentioned, hey, so the governor, until someone tells me, we have to do something responsible, we're not going to do anything.

responsibly. So we continue to go through this, this, this explanation and these ridiculous points about allowing people to just do it the right way and they'll do it the right way because the pressure comes from where you're actually encouraging them not to do the right thing. And then when children show up and say, hey, high schoolers, not not adults, high schoolers that have to take pictures of the situation and go, this looks bad. Somebody's going to get sick. Hey, this isn't, this is not attainable. This is something we can't sustain here. When they do that, then you punish them.

This is how we operate in this country. We don't punish the people who are throwing around misinformation, who are now not listening to scientists and doctors and people who research this stuff. We're going to listen to people like Donald Trump, Betty DeVos, and Mike Pence, who have what kind of medical reason or backing for what they're saying. They have a monetary reason for it. They have a re-election reason for doing it. All those are going into now your children being at their school.

Now, these next parts are alleged. There's been two kids that have allegedly in this school district, maybe even in this particular school that have not tested positive for it because it doesn't affect them at all. And then once it does affect them or maybe doesn't show enough symptoms for us to care about their life, then maybe they'll pass it on someone else. Maybe they go back home and give it to this next person. We don't really know it because they packed a thousand kids in a school. Only on a three, they went only three days this week, by the way. That was their precaution to go three days this week and then take the last two days off to they can reassess what they've done. This same guy, I'm sorry to filibuster this, but this same school board member has been on Twitter responding to some people who are on this thread talking about this problem going, don't you guys have better things to worry about right now?

Because the first three days of our school have been flawless and perfect. No, they have it. This is flawless and perfect to you. And the reason they don't want the pictures out there is because he needs to be able to say our school is flawless and perfect and they can't have the proof of otherwise to make them look bad. Well, you know, there was so much backlash over the two students who were censored and who were punished for telling the truth about what the conditions were in the school, that they did reverse those suspensions. But regardless of what happens on a school-by-school basis, even if they're super effective

in censoring people, you can't censor what the data indicates. And if you look at the data in the state of Georgia, I mean, you'll notice. the upward trend in the number of new coronavirus cases, right? So when they, when they saw that upward trend, they decided, right? The school board decided in this case, in Paulding County, that, you know what, we're going to ignore that. We're going to go ahead and open anyway, and we're going to do exactly what Trump does. Pretend like there is an issue and just come down hard on anyone who tries to contradict that messaging. And that's exactly what they attempted to do with these students. And in the meantime, people are going to get sick. People are going to

die. And it's unnecessary. It's really unnecessary. You know, it's one thing to say, like, we need to reopen our schools and we're definitely going to follow the CDC guidelines. But in this case, I mean, the school officials were defined from the beginning. They didn't take it seriously from the beginning. They opened prematurely anyway. And unfortunately, innocent people are going to pay the consequences of that. Well, let's talk about one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in the news lately. And there's been a lot of ridiculous stuff. So, the Trump administration is warning Americans that it is very dangerous to travel to New Zealand during the coronavirus pandemic. And look, to be fair, it is dangerous for people living in New Zealand. For Americans,

though, you should know that the United States now has 2.2 million confirmed active cases of coronavirus, while New Zealand has a total of 23. 23 cases. So a new travel advisory by the U.S. Department of State has warned citizens to exercise increased caution in New Zealand due to COVID-19. The advisory came after New Zealand reported only a handful of new cases after being COVID free in the month of June. So there were no confirmed cases in the month of June. And then just recently there were a few confirmed cases. So though two to three new cases have been reported on a daily basis, there is no resurgence in community transmission with August 9th to mark 100 days since community transmission last took place. They're doing this thing that we can't figure out.

It's called tracing the virus, contact tracing. Of the four travel advisory levels, New Zealand, by the way, is marked as level two. Exercise increase caution on the U.S. State Department website. Now, New Zealand, again, recorded no new cases on Thursday of this week, while the United States recorded over 58,000 in one day. With a total case count of just over 5 million, the U.S. has over 2.2 million active cases. as well again, New Zealand has just 23 active cases out of over 1,500 total cases of coronavirus. So I don't know why the State Department did this. It's just beyond goofy and laughable.

Yeah, honestly, if the people that were heading up our response to this were as critical and as close to trying to solve this issue here as we are as far as talking about the problems other countries have. We may not be in the situation that we're in right now. We talk a lot about other countries and the things that they're doing all the time, even when it does make sense in this case, just so we can have another name out there. Again, I don't know if there's something about a quota, about the number of countries you can have on a list that you have to warn is at a heightened level of fear. Just you can take a level of fear off of America. I don't get it. I can be concerned about China. I can be concerned about Italy and France and Spain and still also.

be concerned about my own country. Why is that so why is that the strategy? And again, I'm speculating that it's the strategy, but only because they keep talking about every other country when anyone asks a question about our country. He goes, well, in another country, I don't live in that other country. I don't know why we're still talking about it right now. I'm not traveling there because they won't let me because of where I live. Yeah. No, it's true. Talking about other countries for. It's, it is pretty ridiculous. You just brought up such a great point. So New New Zealand's actually been one of the stricter countries when it comes to travel during the pandemic. So they are only allowing citizens of New Zealand, people who live in New Zealand

to travel back to New Zealand with a valid passport. But yeah, even if we wanted to take the risk and travel to New Zealand, ooh, it's so dangerous, we wouldn't be allowed in. And I think it's for good reason, especially coming from the United States. Yeah, we have this isolated mentality here so that as long as we listen to each other, at least our leaders about who we really are and what our stance is amongst ourselves, there's a certain percentage of Americans that will believe that over everything else. And maybe that's the only people they're trying to speak to because it can't be to everyone else that sees the reality. So I guess if you're going to have a conversation with someone like this around the table,

they may go, well, you know what's happening in other countries. And then they actually do forget that it's happening here. I'm still not sure how that can happen. Just to give you guys some more sobering statistics, and this is actually a statistic I've shared before, but every time I'm reminded of it, it blows my mind. With only 4% of the world's population, the United States has accounted for 22% of coronavirus deaths. And so there was a pretty good piece in the New York Times about how the United States is really unique in how much we've failed in responding to coronavirus, particularly because of the resources we have in this country. So among the richer countries in the world, we're the only one that's failed in responding effectively to this pandemic.

And as the Times reports, one country stands alone as the only affluent nation to have suffered a severe sustained outbreak for more than four months, the United States. So just to give you some more stats, over the past month, 1.9 million Americans tested positive for coronavirus. keep increasing. That's more than Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined, okay? And also, as we've reported on before, this has clearly disproportionately impacted black and Latino communities. In fact, they contract the virus at roughly three times as high a rate as white residents. And one final part, and I really loved this portion of the piece

because it's absolutely true. It is a large country, meaning the United States, at the nexus of the global economy with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. The tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical outcomes, including higher infant mortality and diabetes rates and lower life expectancy than in most other rich countries. We had a system in place to fail. And unfortunately, what exacerbated this pandemic was also the lack of leadership and the incompetent person sitting at the White House.

But don't be mistaken, even if we had a competent leader in office, our system was still uniquely positioned in a way that would make it incredibly difficult to overcome this pandemic. And that's something we need to talk about and really accept and change. Yeah, and anyone that had any kind of belief that is, you know, it isn't American, had a belief that America has things put together because they hadn't experienced how we actually operate. It's becoming glaringly obvious the problems that we have here when it comes some like this. And the reason why these stats to talk about we're the biggest affluent nation to have suffered this much of a severe problem is because we're talking about the money that's involved. You have to put resources to change things. We have to put resources to make sure that vulnerable communities don't experience it at a higher rate like we've seen as well. We don't want to put money to things, and that goes directly to these negotiations when it comes to the next relief package.

This is our mentality. If you listen to our administration and our politicians speak, they talk about how much Americans don't deserve it, how much they're looking for handouts, how much they want to be lazy and sit at home, all these things, while we're in the middle of a pandemic. So the money part of this wealthy nation is irrelevant. We might as well be a third world country because it's getting hoarded by certain people to keep it from others that don't matter. That's how nations work that are that are funneling money straight to the top, kind of like what we're doing. So our wealth and our riches and everything we brag about are useless if the American people don't get to benefit from it. What's the point? Yeah, I mean, you bring up a great point.

And after the break, we're going to discuss how Bernie Sanders is attempting to add a little equality to this system to ensure that, you know, the billionaires who've actually profited handsomely off of this pandemic, share some of that wealth so people can pay their health care bills. We'll talk about that and more when we return. What's up, guys? Welcome back to TYT, Anna and J.R with you. I'm going to read one member comment and you can become a member by going to tYT.com slash join. I bathe in a billionaire banker's tear says,

this is like living in an insane asylum built inside out so that you're the only sane one. Yeah. I mean, I do feel like that sometimes. It's just, it's so, it's frustrating, beyond frustrating to like hear the constant lies that go unchallenged every single day. But it is what it is. Not to say that I don't want to change it, but anyway. All right, well, let's talk about the wealth tax. Sorry, I'm kind of out of it today, guys. I'm exhausted and I'm doing my best, but bear with me. This next story is a really good one. So, Well, tens of millions of Americans continue to struggle financially.

The unemployment rate is still at 10.2%. There are a select few, though, who have made a killing during the pandemic, and many of them are Silicon Valley billionaires. So Senator Bernie Sanders actually has a pretty smart proposal of imposing a 60% wealth tax on these billionaires, but not on their entire wealth, only on the wealth that they acquired during this pandemic. And the whole point behind it is to help pay for Americans' medical bills. Again, during a pandemic where many are getting sick but don't have the means to pay for the treatments they need to stay alive. According to the Hill, Sanders introduced legislation to impose

this 60% tax on billionaire's wealth gains from March 18th through the end of the year and to use the revenue raised by the tax to direct Medicare to pay all Americans. out-of-pocket health care expenses for one year, for a one-year period. So in a press release, Sandra said the following. At a time of enormous economic pain and suffering, we have a fundamental choice to make. We can continue to allow the very rich to get much richer while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Or we can tax the winnings a handful of billionaires made during the pandemic to improve the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans.

I don't believe that this is a radical bill. I really don't. And I'll explain why. But before I do, I want to turn to a panel of people on CNBC who absolutely do believe this is a radical bill, but failed to have any reasonable argument for why they feel that way. Take a look. If the taxes were calculated right now,

based on the gains we've seen in the market, here's what some billionaires would pay. Jeff Bezos would be on the line for nearly $43 billion. Elon Musk would pay $27.5 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, well, he'd have to pay about $23 billion. And Walmart's Walton family would pay nearly $13 billion. Other shareholders who might not otherwise be sympathetic with the Jeff Bezos would become sympathetic with the Jeff Bezos is because he would have to sell his shares

to actually pay the tax bill, in which case all of a sudden there would be an overhang on the stock and people would get upset about whether, you know, the value of their stock is going to go down effectively because he has to sell his shares. Oh, oh, is the value of their stock going to go down? Is that going to happen while all these people get health care for a year during a pandemic? Oh, poor babies. Let me explain to you what, let me explain to you the labor, the intense labor, it takes to be an investor, okay? You talk to a broker, you invest money in a company, and then you

sit on your ass and do nothing. That's, that's, oh, are they going to lose a little bit of their money? By the way, money that like grew from them literally doing absolutely nothing. And this is not a 60% wealth tax on all the wealth that these people have made. This isn't a wealth tax that will be implemented from now till forever, like it's till the end of the year, for a full year, actually. Yeah, so a one year period starting retroactively on March 18th when the pandemic really started to hurt people. Anyway, JR, I'm sorry, I'm filibustering now, but it's just so unbelievably frustrating to like, they're just so transparent about it. It's like, okay, I mean, On one hand, like people die, right?

On the other hand, though, these investors who earned all this money by doing nothing, they're going to lose out on some of that investment. Come on. These are the things. These are things that will get poor people or middle class people fighting with each other because they think somehow they're invested in the riches of billionaires. There's something that we've been convinced that something about them making billions and billions of more dollars has something to do with our prestige.

So we can say, hey, look, we've got a few hundred billionaires in our country. Great job. Do you think those billionaires care about you at all while we're caring about them? And the money that they made, not by themselves, not by themselves. My wife orders two or three Amazon packages, a day to this house. And you know what happens? There's somebody at our bus. I'm sorry, not our house, our apartment.

But where if you get a buzzer at the door and someone goes, hey, it's Amazon. It's Amazon let me in. And so Amazon comes in. I don't think that driver has got stock options. I don't think he's worried about having to put up $12.9 million billion for anything because he doesn't got it. He doesn't have any access to it. He never will because he works for this guy who has it all.

And by the way, his working for that guy who has it all builds his empire. Why do we not see that? And why is there no worth in those people? I mean, not even the maybe lucky people that happen to work for Bezos. And then I work for Tesla and work for the Walton's and all they stuff. So they don't even get the privileges of being a part of building this up. Even the lowest levels of that company, why don't they get these riches too since they're part of it all? And by the way, there's another caveat, which you might have got, you might be getting to.

And I'm sorry to step on that is if you became a billionaire since March 18th, you're off the hook, bro. Or if you were a billionaire and you didn't profit from March 18, you're off the hook, kid. Exactly. We're still worried about all these problems that these billionaires are going to have to put up. What kind of problem? So that's exactly what I wanted to bring up when I said that this bill is not radical, right? It's not radical. And let me just clarify because I got confused for a second.

So they wouldn't even be taxed this wealth tax for a full year. They would be taxed from March 18th to the end of this year. So it's not even a full year of wealth taxes, okay? And it's only on the wealth that they managed to accumulate, again, during this pandemic. And it would provide one full year of health care coverage for every single American, which I would argue is super important in the middle of this pandemic. Let me give you some more numbers to show you the reasoning behind this. And I think that it's actually a brilliant proposal.

So Sanders' office cited an estimate from the Progressive Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies that found. that a 60% tax on 467 billionaires' wealth gains from March 18th to August 5th would actually raise about $422 billion. How insane is that number, right? But again, if you are a billionaire and you somehow managed to bungle this and you didn't find ways to exploit the pandemic to make more money, you're not going to be taxed simply because you're a billionaire. Again, this is about earnings during the pandemic. The group said, In a press release, by the way, there are an additional 176 billionaires in the United States,

but those billionaires currently wouldn't have to pay Sanders' tax because they either have seen their wealth decline from March 18th through August 5th, or they joined the billionaires list during that period and their wealth growth in that timeframe was not greater than $1 billion. So it's not a radical bill. It's incredible to me how the feelings of shareholders is valued over and over again, over the actual health and well-being and lives of people, of people. But that's what this system calls for. That's what the whole point of this system is. So, you know, we got to change the system. The reason they got people fighting amongst themselves over some crumbs, I think Nancy Pelosi once was talking about

how crumbs are supposed to be given to regular people. And everybody lost their minds and pulled their hair out on TV. Like, can you believe you called it crumbs? But they put up those numbers on CNBC about the things that those four groups and people have to pay. That is what they'd have to pay. You know what? It wasn't characterized. How much they made to have to pay that much? So if you think, what, $13 billion is a huge number, that's what they'd pay because they've made more than that. That's not what we've been talking about. We're talking about, well, whoa, is them. They'd have to pay out so much. How much have they gained? We haven't talked about. Those numbers weren't put up. And I tweeted this before.

when someone tweeted about an athlete that came up missing the MLB player and they talked about how much money he made as they're talking about him leaving because he didn't want to be playing him. It's COVID. We never talk about rich and powerful people and how much they've made in the decisions they make that screw over other people in the news reports. We don't say, hey, so Jeff Bezos, who made this many billions of billions and billions of dollars has this policy. We don't say that. Instead, we say, poor Jeff Bezos, who has to pay, but it doesn't even have to. Proposal is saying he has to pay billions of dollars to do something to help this country that helped him become the billionaire that he is, bro.

I don't- Jared, I got to jump in because during that conversation on that CNBC segment, they tried to make the argument that Jeff Bezos sharing, I'm sorry, selling a portion of his shares in Amazon, by the way, again, he doesn't have to sell all of his shares. He just has to sell a percentage of his shares that would account for the 60% wealth tax that he'd have to pay. But they tried to lie to the audience and make it seem like if he did that, then he might lose ownership of the company.

Are you kidding me? You think people are that stupid? But they do, they do. They insult their audience every single day. And so I think it is important to know the numbers. Yeah, they're worried about him losing those amount of shares because he might lose control of this company, but they're definitely not worried about someone losing their life or their family losing life or someone losing their job and not unemployment is undercutting their entire life

or they're getting overpaid, as they like to say, on unemployment for people. They're on their asses over this, but they're not on him over how much he's made sitting back. Well, the question is, how invested are they personally in Amazon or the companies that they listed in that segment, right? And so there's always this conflict of interest that makes me sick to my stomach, especially when it comes to some of the financial reporting that we see, right? Those conflicts of interest should be kept in mind. And they seemed a little worried about whatever, whatever it is that they're invested in. Anyway, this is capitalism. It's true. So we have a post game coming up, and we're going to talk about a lot of different stories. One, we didn't

get to in the main show. So Marquita Bradshaw, who is she? Incredible candidate who won the Democratic primary for a Senate seat in Tennessee. We'll give you the details on her and more. And we're going to talk about George Bush selling his little book of pictures. But there's a lot of irony in that story. George Bob Ross Bush. Yeah, yeah. No, it's amazing what mediocrity, you'll get people like George Bush. Can you imagine thinking that people would want to buy a book of our paintings? We should try it and see what happens first, though, because, I mean, it's been enough time. The rehab of his name, we'll see if that works out.

Yeah. All right. So we'll talk about that and more in the postgame. TYT.com slash join to become a member. Everyone else, have an awesome weekend. Have an awesome night. We'll see you soon. 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, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.