The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - December 13th, 2019

Episode Date: December 14, 2019

Mitch McConnell is toeing the line for Trump in a big way. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Hasan Piker, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT Network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you.

It's all right. All right. Welcome to the Young Turks, Jake Uyghur, John Ida-Rola, Hassan Piker. Good to have all you guys here. First ever, first hour panel for me, I think. Oh, is that right? No way. Yeah.

I don't know if I'll be able to handle the political commentary. commentary version of the show, but try my best. It's fun to try new things from time to time. Yeah, hour one and hour two have almost no distinction. So that's from the old days. Okay, so, and we do have an hour three for you guys here on Friday. We do members only post games for a whole hour. So check that out at t.t.com slash join.

I've got a great update for you guys on a program that we launched yesterday that involves you guys, which I love. It's a great, great update. And we've got campaign news, of course, especially on impeachment. But one of my favorite stories of the day is John Idaurola versus that NRA dude. I can never, is a bongo, bongo, what is it? I think that's it. It's banned on Gino.

Von Gino? Yeah, Van Gino. Fun fact, he blocked me on Twitter because I asked him to leak his steroid routine. After threatening to sue me. I was just, I'm asking. You can say I don't take any steroids. In fact, he blocked me before we'd ever spoken on Twitter. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that is fun. I don't even know how he knew who I was. Nothing says brave guy, like owning a bunch of guns for some hypothetical scenario in which, you know, sickos are gonna come into your house and kill you, and also blocking people ahead of time on Twitter. Yeah. So, well, no, but you're gonna love that story, because John's clapbacks, as it were, are fantastic.

I mean, I, sure, I'm just, I'm interested in the facts, that's all. I'm interested in, so hopefully we can learn something from all this. All right, well, who are you going to learn? Stereid routine, potential. Also that. Okay. If he has one. We know nothing about that.

All right, John, what's nice? Let's turn to the big news of the morning. With a vote being held this morning, we are now one step closer to Donald Trump potentially being impeached. The House Judiciary Committee voted to approve two articles of impeachment against him, paving their way for votes in the full House of Representatives next week that could make him only the third president in history to be impeached. Now, if that does happen, it will then move to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell will listen with an open mind to the evidence that will be presented.

I can't keep it up. I'm not that good an actor. But he does have plans, though. And so he joined Sean Hannity last night as a sign of how seriously he's taking this entire thing. And here is what he had to say about his strategy. Everything I do during this, I'm coordinating with White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president's position and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can. We don't have the kind of ball control on this that a typical issue, for example, comes over for the House.

If I don't like it, we don't take it up. We have no choice but to take it up, but we'll be working through this process, hopefully in a fairly short period of time, in total coordination with the White House counsel's office and the people who are representing the president in the well of the Senate. Well, exactly how we go forward, I'm going to coordinate with the president's lawyers. So there won't be any difference between us on how to do this. Again, I'm going to take my cues from the president's lawyers. It's checks and balances. The famous thing that Congress is supposed to do.

Yeah, I'm really glad that they're just mailing this one. Yeah, I have to think that somewhere underground, the bodies of the founders are just, like, clapping a little. because things have worked out exactly how they hoped. So, look, guys, one of the things I'm amused by is that Republicans often say, and they have said it a lot about this impeachment proceedings, I can't believe how political the Democrats are. It looks like they're not even considering the evidence with any degree of impartiality. And then McConnell comes down and goes, oh, no, I'm not going to consider the evidence

at all. I'm already working with one side. Remember, the senators are supposed to be the jurors in the trial in the Senate. impeach in the House, and then the House sends House managers over the Senate to prosecute the case, and the senators are supposed to be the jury. From time to time, if a Democratic senator said anything about, well, you know, I'm troubled by Trump, like, what do you do to see? He's not being impartial, he's not being impartial.

Now, McConnell, Compton, of course we're not going to be impartial. Not only that, I'm going to take my orders from the White House who is on trial. Okay, I mean, could you imagine if jurors in the rest of the world did that? They're like, we just want to let the judge know ahead of time. We will be voting with a defendant under any and all circumstances. But anyway, let's have fun and do a trial. I think a third party investigator needs to come in and take a look at what's going on in this impeachment proceeding and then maybe do a potentially violent coup in America.

That's what we do normally when it happens in Bolivia or other developing nations in Latin American countries. We're like, oh, wait a minute, this seems like, this seems to be seen. some trickery going on in your elections process or in your constitutional process. I don't really like it. We're going to make sure that we now facilitate a right-wing coup in your country, killing multiple people. That's okay when we do it.

Let's just be clear. You are being sarcastic there. I'm being sarcastic. It's difficult for some people to understand. Sarcasm is hard for some people. I know. I would never endorse the disgusting foreign policy of our imperialist states. Yes, but it's a ridiculous state that we find ourselves in because, like, they share a party.

We know that he's going to have his back. But hypothetically, like he's an old man who's worked his entire life on this career as a politician. He's risen to an incredible level of power, heading up the Republican Party in the Senate. And he is effectively saying whichever, like, reality TV star we put in his president, just talk to him. He can do whatever he wants, I'm not gonna get involved. Yeah. Because he got what he wanted already. Yeah.

point, putting the kidding aside, it does show the hypocrisy of what the U.S. does from time from moment, especially the Republican Party, when they say, well, look, if other countries have not followed the process of their constitution, have not followed and had fair processes in different ways, they say, well, that justifies a violent overthrow of their government. Now, it's preposterous when we do it in Latin America, obviously it would be preposterous here. But just a hypocrisy of them saying, we don't care, we don't care about the law, the Constitution, or any of the normal democratic processes, we're just going to do whatever is right for our party instead of our country.

It's overwhelming. If any Democrat had said 10% of what Mitch McConnell just said, all the Republicans and all the media would go absolutely nuts, can you believe these Democrats are not in being impartial jurors. So if you think the fix is in, yes. But I will disagree with one thing that a lot of reporters are saying. They then turn around and go so that it's a foregone conclusion that Trump will be acquitted in the Senate. No, no, no, no, no. It depends on how long it takes. So right now, this is Mitch McConnell saying, I just checked my polls. I think I'm still okay. And Chuck Schumer in his infinite stupidity, as usual, has put up a super weak opponent against me. So I think

I'm going to be all right. So I'm back in Donald Trump. And he says, I don't think, I don't any of the Republicans are going to break with us, and maybe the Democrat, one, a couple of Democrats might. You never know what Democrats. They're craving. They might. But in terms of the Republicans not breaking, no, no, no, no, he cannot guarantee that at all. It all depends on their poll numbers and their home states when they're up for re-election. That is the only thing that matters. And if anyone reports anything otherwise, just understand they don't understand politics. Why don't we go to Mitch McConnell, effectively making the prediction. So perhaps someday you'll be able to laugh in hindsight.

But here's what he had to say last night. The case is so darn weak coming over from the House. We all know how it's going to end. There's no chance the president's going to be removed from office. My hope is that there won't be a single Republican who votes for either of these articles of impeachment. And, Sean, it wouldn't surprise me if we got one or two Democrats. It looks to me over in the House, the Republicans seem to be solid. and the Democrats seem to be divided.

Do you see any possible defections? I doubt it. I doubt it. There's a zero chance the president obviously would be removed from office, and I'm hoping we'll have no defections at all. Okay, so all that video as well as video, we can't show you right now, but it was him talking about the strategy of blocking Obama's judges in the last year,

and then he laughed. It's one of the creepiest things I've ever heard. Just bear all that in mind when jerk of the year time rolls around. Yeah, so McConnell going to be going to make. Right? And so, by the way, it's the job of the Democrats to fight back. Somebody, for God's sake, step up to the plate. I mean, this guy is the heart of corruption.

All he ever does is take bribes from corporate contributors and the NRA and sell out the American people over and over again. Are you ever gonna fight back against this monster named McConnell? And this is supposed to be the issue that unites moderates and the left and liberals, okay? So this is it. This is an erosion of the constitutional checks and balances right before our eyes. It's not the first example, especially when it comes to McConnell. He's been doing this very transparently for some time now.

It showcases very perfectly that the Republicans have no interest in defending the Constitution. I'm not even super fond of the Constitution myself, but hey, if you constantly talk about how we need to defend American democracy and how the Democrats are real patriots, you have to step up. At what point will, like at what point will we actually push back on any of this in a serious way? Yeah, look, I am a fan of the Constitution, but the Democratic Party should be all over this clip.

It's always the sound of silence. They should come out and say, Mitch McConnell is obviously abdicated his responsibility to the Constitution. We're looking for him to step down out of his role. The Republicans should appoint someone who is impartial. In fact, maybe he should recuse himself from the entire trial since he has declared ahead of time that he will under no circumstances be an impartial juror. See, that would be a strong response.

They always say, oh, there's nothing we can do. No, there's a lot you can do. You're just choosing not to fight McConnell. And I also think that we need to do something, but it has to be pretty urgent. Like I think this should be treated similar to climate change. This is not a problem that could be solved in 20 or 30 years. Uh-oh. What's up?

I mean, it is being treated similar to climate change. We're denying that it exists? Yes. Yeah, because the issue is that Mitch McConnell has apparently figured, out and Trump figured out that his voters, these conservatives who say that they love the Constitution, they love democracy and all that, they don't care about any of that. They want what they want and they don't care if American democracy has to be run through a shredder to get it.

The blatant lie about you can't confirm Obama's judge in the last year, just last night he told, Sean Hannity, that he's going to in the last year put through Trump judges. And there's no price to be paid on the right for that. They don't care about hypocrisy, they're not interested in that. They don't care about, democracy is convenient if they believe that they can still win through it. And thanks to gerrymandering, the way that the Senate is structured, a lot of things like that. For the time being, they can, but they are already prepared to move past that. Look at the opinion polls.

The support for some alternative to democracy is rising steadily on the right. And why wouldn't it? They've seen that they have people like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump that can win while having no respect whatsoever for the system. of government we're supposed to have. Agreed. Yeah. Okay, well, why don't we take our first break? When we come back, we're going to turn from the troubles we're having here to I hear the UK's

going to have it a rough time too. Yeah, I will talk about that. And what actually went wrong when we return? We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and power. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be.

Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTRTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought. thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must have learned what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training 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. All right, back on the Young Turks. Jenny writes in, hello from Canada fellow TYTors. Hey, Jenny. How you doing?

Bernie Bros. writes, And thank you to whoever added that Cartman quote in the opening, genius. My gay marriage, that's who? That would be Bart, I'm sure. That's what I do. Oh, I got you. That's what he does. My gay marriage writes in, is it normal for jurors to coordinate with the defense?

I thought the Republicans have been crying about this process not following court norms. Exactly right. Thank you for writing in. And last one is from Twitter. Eddie O'Donnell writes in. And so he's not a senator for the American people. He only takes things he likes to the floor, got it, good to know. I know we're all really shocked McConnell is like this.

There's a couple of bills that McConnell is steadfastly refusing the vote on. One is of course gun control, and another is the federal minimum wage as it passed the House, but he will not bring it up for a vote. Paper ballots? In the Senate. Securing our elections? That's another one. A lot of stuff.

That's because Mitch McConnell hates higher wages for the average American. The problem is that, like, as the people who oppose him, there's no way for us to use that information to hurt him. Yeah, I wish there was. We've been trying to come up with something, but drawn a blank. He's ironclad, can't do it with Teflon. Okay, can I, just before we jump in the back of the news, I wanted to let everyone know that you're probably familiar with our live stream and watching TRT content on YouTube, Facebook, places like that. But you can also enjoy our content in a number of other locations, including Comcast Xfinity X1 and Xfinity Flex, Pluto TV, the Roku channel, YouTube TV, Zumo, and of course, tYT.com.

As a note, TYT will no longer be available on Hulu after December 20th, but don't worry because you've got all of those different places to enjoy our content. Visit the How to Watch page on TYT.com for more information. And with that, why don't we jump back into the news? Last night, potentially the most important election in the UK for a very long time, and it did not go well for the left. The British electorate voted Thursday, resulting in a 78-seat parliamentary majority for Boris Johnson and the worst showing for the opposition, the left-wing Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.

In nearly 100 years, I take a look at a graphic from the New York Times showing how the vote ended up going down and you can also see in this next graphic the share of the electorate how it's shifted over the past four years with the conservative share trending up ever so slightly with each election. Yeah. So last time I made a prediction before the British elections and said that Corbyn could win, people said your preposterous, he has no chance, he was 20, I believe he's 24 points behind with six weeks left ago.

He closed it down to four and nearly one last time. This time I did not make any such prediction. Why? Well, several different things have happened, and we might disagree a little bit on the panel here on this, I don't know. But one is, I think we'll all agree on, is there has been nonstop propaganda against Corbyn from the right, the left, the media, every single person in power is united against Corbyn in the U.K. And so how much of that propaganda can anyone withstand is a good question.

And now it's been years and years and years of he's the worst, he's the worst, he's wrong. The right wingers are right, he's wrong. The corporate people are always right, okay, whether they're right on or the left. This is true, unfortunately, in way too many countries. And then, but the biggest factor is that he was not running against an establishment in Now, Boris Johnson is a complicated figure, obviously, I've been in politics a long time in the UK, but he is known to be more of a populist. So the reason I said Corbyn would do well in the last election, but not necessarily in this one, is because it's not about left versus right, it's about populace versus establishment.

And so the right-wing populist in the UK had a clearer message this time around, just like the fake right-wing populist Donald Trump did in in 2016 versus the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. So populism won again, it was just a more coherent propaganda-backed populism that the right wing presented in the UK. So that is the dynamic that is playing out in every election and now several times in the UK itself. And then finally, look, Corbyn is significantly to the left of anyone in American politics.

So there were some issues that I certainly didn't agree with. And so I don't want to get into nitpicking, especially now the election is over, et cetera. But I don't want anybody to think that, oh, he has the same views as Elizabeth Warren, right? No, no, he was way to the left of Warren, Bernie Sanders, et cetera. Because right now the propaganda now in the corporate media in America is Corbyn and Sanders were the exact same thing. So let's make sure we go with Biden. So we're gonna have some examples of that.

Can I push back on some of the stuff that he said or should I wait? Yeah, no, no, go for it now. Okay. One, of course people are cynically using this labor defeat as a way to attack Bernie Sanders. Not as much Elizabeth Warren, but definitely Bernie Sanders. And there is no Brexit parallel in America, and this was the Brexit election. So it's a really silly parallel to engage in, it's just a cynical attack. These people don't know what they're talking about if anyone ever says like, oh, well,

Bernie Sanders versus Jeremy Corbyn, they were both too leftist, too far left, and that's why why we need to go back to the center, like Michael Bloomberg pointed out recently. This is incorrect. One, because of what I just mentioned as far as the Brexit parallel, Jeremy Corbyn did not have a consistent position on this. And he also was stuck in a rock, stuck between a rock in a hard place because labor, his own party was also split on remaining or leaving. He was more of a, in the leave camp originally, but then he had to concede to the remainers

in his own party. Let me just pause real quick there to say, Hans is 100% right about that. And when you can't straighten out your own message within your own party, you're in a world of trouble in the election. Yeah, so he thought potentially this would be, he could win the best of both worlds, maybe some Lib Dems who were also interested in remaining, he ended up losing the, to both parties. So that was a terrible decision, I think, and I criticized them early on as well, but he also was in a really uniquely terrible situation.

But most importantly, as a consequence of all of the overwhelming anti-Corbon message, directed by everyone in the most coordinated, most deliberate smear campaign I've ever witnessed in my entire life and throughout history, Jeremy Corbyn's popularity diminished versus Bernie Sanders is currently the most popular politician. I think the fourth most, like he goes up and down in the polls, but he has the highest approval rating, highest favorability rating out of any politician running right now higher than Joe Biden even. So Jeremy, yeah, Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, was deeply unpopular.

So there is no parallel between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. And I love Jeremy Corbyn, I think he was great, but unfortunately, the people of UK did not feel the same way about him. Yeah, I just want to be clear, I agree with Hassan's analysis. We've had a two-hour debate about capitalism versus socialism on Agiprot, which is one of our shows for members. You should check that out. TYT.com slash join become member, check that out. So he agrees with Corbin more than I do, and that's our political disagreement. But in terms of analysis, I think he's spot on.

And his policies were popular as well. So that's the other unique situation here is that the UK is technically supposed to be more to the left when it comes to economic issues than the United States. As we know, they have a fully nationalized health care service. Now, the best indication that his policies were popular is nine years of austerity have caused the NHS to suffer significantly, so much so that even the Tories were lying basically about how they were gonna finally fund the NHS. Three days before the election, Boris Johnson was like, oh, we're gonna put more money in

NHS. We didn't do it for nine years. We're gonna do it now. And the media backed it. The media never questioned it. The media refused to talk about the potential collusion between America and Donald Trump and Boris Johnson's camp on privatizing certain aspects of the NHS as a consequence of the post-Brexit, like trade deals that they need to engage in. So the media was absolutely colluding. And the reason why I'm mentioning this, the reason why I'm stressing this is because this is going to happen in America. It's already been happening, but it's definitely going to become a larger issue that we on the left need to be aware of and need to figure out a way to push back against.

Because as Bernie starts winning some key primaries, we are going to see a lot worse attacks. It's already started, the Federalist was asking people whether or not Bernie Sanders was an anti-Semite because he endorsed the labor party. Like insane, just insane, and they will do it. These people are all ghouls, okay? They will do this. So get ready and figure out ways immediately to push back against this. Yeah, I agree, well, I'm gonna jump back a little bit to something earlier we're saying.

It's harder to campaign when you're trying to, you know, to appeal to two groups that are at loggerheads over the most important issue being debated, whereas Boris Johnson had a much easier job of just trying to appeal to people who want to get the hell out of there and they don't care at how what happens. But at the same time, one of the things that labor ran up against was the two sources of information that people should be able to rely on to go into the voting booths knowing what's actually going on. They couldn't.

You rightly point out that much of the mainstream equivalent media there was just hyped with attacking Corbin. That's what they were using their time on. They didn't have time to fact check the Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party was taking advantage of that with the other form of media online ads and things like that. We covered study on the damage report, 88% of their ads had documented falsehoods in them. Just clear obvious falsehoods, like how many hospitals are you saying that you're going to to build.

They would say 40 in an ad, they'd never actually said that. All their public speeches said six. They were lying about the priorities of the Labor Party, where they were gonna put money, all of that, and it didn't get fact-checked. The online people who are, the online platforms that are promoting these ads, they're taking money, they don't care to actually fact-check it, and the media didn't care enough because they were busy demonizing Corbyn. Yeah, corporate media not being fair and honest, and the conservative party lying in ads,

Wow, that does sound really weird. I'm sure we wouldn't see anything like that here in the U.S. So why don't we turn now to, we started to allude to, people are trying to learn something about America from this election. I would say learn the right lessons from 2016 before you start trying to apply other countries' electoral lessons. But Joe Biden had this to say, look what happens when the Labor Party moves so, so far to the left. He goes on to say, he comes up with ideas that are not. able to be contained within a rational basis quickly. Yes, I am taking advice on how to be rational and together from Joe Biden.

But he's saying basically they did the same thing. They're just they're promising things that they couldn't possibly do. Yeah, Joe, you know, I don't know if you know this. I literally am not positive you know this. You're in the Democratic Party. The Republicans are supposed to criticize the left, not you. You're in the party that is the left, or at least it's supposed to be. So, I mean, what an insane situation.

Labor Party is very roughly analogous to the Democratic Party here in America. And a guy who's vying to be the head of the Democratic Party and their nominee, he turns around and goes, ha ha, look at how labor lost, yes! Well, there is a party that's analogous to the Democratic Party of the United States in the UK. It's called the Lib Dems, and they are deeply unpopular. So yeah, take a, if you want to take any sort of like serious lessons from what not to do, don't be like the Lib Dems.

Yeah, and also like we're allowed us, we're allowed to speculate about what a strong progressive candidate could do as a presidential candidate. And the reason we can do that is because we've never had one, so all we can do is speculate. But I love people like speculating about something that we have actual evidence on. Joe Biden's saying the way you lose to the far right is you run a far leftist. The way you win obviously then is to run a centrist like we did in 2016. We have the evidence from 2016, why are you pretending that we don't know what happened? happens when you run a centrist against Donald Trump?

Yeah, there's no question about it, but it's like, look, Biden does it, he's running and he's a centrist, I get why his motivation at least. Corporate media, where are you? Has anyone in the media ever said, hey, we ran it, just what John just said, we ran a centrist or the Democrats ran a centrist against Donald Trump and the centrist lost? That's simple, simple fact, almost never, almost never. Any discussions of the context of who is more likely to defeat Donald Trump? I have seen thousands of articles written about that.

And I'm not sure I've ever seen a single reporter say, oh, by the way, we know one thing, centrist already lost to Donald Trump. Never. It's amazing. They have their own alternative facts. Hell, go back to 2004, we did the same thing then. Go to 2000. I mean, Al Gore, compared to some, good on some of the issues, but he was.

He wasn't a crazy, wild-eyed liberal. Yeah, John Kerry. We've done this many times. Hey, let's be safe guys, John Kerry, okay? John Kerry's a good centrist Democrat and he's gonna- military record? Yeah, and so the Republicans will respect that he's reaching out to them, blah, blah, blah. No, loses to an unloosable idiot like George W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton loses to an even more unloosable idiot like Donald Trump. By the way, so when did the Democrats win? Barack Obama came in and said, I'm a progressive, whether you believe him or not. But then at the time, we did, and he said change and hope, and I'm gonna do big change, big change. Well, to be fair. And people voted for big change against who? Against Hillary Clinton. But no, the mainstream media will never acknowledge the simplest political facts in this country.

Technically, the slogan was hope and change for those who want it. To be fair. Yeah. There is, wait, are we, are we done with this, or? It's up to you, do you have something to say? Oh, I always have something to say. Okay, well, let's hear it. There is just, there is just so much more to say about this issue, especially because, look,

like, I need to stress this, okay? They're coming for Bernie Sanders. It's going to happen, and we need to, we need to stop listening to the woke scolding. We need to stop listening to the cynical attacks launched against progressives. They did this with Ilhan Omar. They're going to keep doing it. They're going to do it to Bernie Sanders over and over again. We need to be able to fight back.

And unfortunately, just like in the UK, there was no left-wing media to push back against this. Donald Trump gets attacked fairly. And sometimes I would even say a little too far and unfairly by a largely liberal mainstream media by the press, right? But he has Fox News. He can go to the largest and most popular news network in the country, and they will promote his agenda, they will defend him relentlessly.

So just, we are running a grassroots campaign, this is going to be a very difficult battle, but it's going to happen, just stay strong and don't believe these cynical smear merchants who happily defend Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and would even go so far as to defend friends of Jeffrey Epstein because they're in positions of power. They do not have any sort of loyalty to anything but capital, and that's it. So why don't we turn to more of the primary, actually, an update on Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders brags that he has not received any money from billionaires, and you can sort of understand why that would be a point in his favor in this primary.

The View recently discussed this policy, and they did not all agree that that was a good thing. So Bernie Sanders has boasted that he's the only candidate to not accept campaign donations from billionaires. But that policy is not going over too well with this competition. Well, he's the only one who's been able to really get this sort of like grassroots money coming towards him, $25, $10. The others can't. He's the only one who is able to pull it off at seems, right? Who else has done that? I just, you know, money has been in politics for a really long time.

rich people have been sort of running the world and the world of politics for a really long time I you know it just is what it is in my opinion and since Citizens United the Supreme Court basically said that a limit on money is a limit on free speech and so there's just been so much money in politics I don't understand now why people are like

oh now you've got these Democratic billionaires you know spending so much money it's not fair It's just kind of been the way of the world for a really long time. So I'm going to admit up front that I don't watch the view very often. But the few times that I've seen a clip, I've seen Sonny go toe to toe with Megan McCain and say things that make a lot of sense. That entire thing was just, it was the saddest political, like, just like fatalism. Yeah, the rich have always been in charge.

So what are you going to do? I don't know, something about it so that it doesn't continue for the rest of our lives. Bernie Sanders seems to have a plan, and we just talked, in the intro, they talked about how it's benefiting him in terms of grassroots support for his candidacy. So to respond with like, yeah, but they're powerful. I don't know, what are you going to do? This is what happens when only 11% of your country is participating in labor unions, okay? Our workforce has no infrastructure to make demands against capital.

There are many different outcomes of this that we talk about quite frequent. only on this show as well, for example, productivity rates increasing tremendously over the course of the past 40 years while wages have remained stagnant. And that is all the ongoing dynamic between capital and labor. Workers have certain interests, bosses have different interests or owners of the business have different interests. And if they have all the money and they have a higher concentration of wealth and power and they can buy out politicians, then whose demands are people going to hear?

Are they gonna hear the workers or are they gonna hear the bosses? They're of course going to hear the bosses. And it's unimaginable to them because they have no way. They have no history of fighting back against this in recent times. The last time we had any sort of serious grassroots uprising was Occupy Wall Street, which was largely vilified and turned into a spectacle by our, again, corporate media. So there is no infrastructure. We need to build that, which is part of the reason why I love Bernie Sanders is because it's more

so about a movement and not just electing a singular person into a position of power. And I think that's what's really important. No matter what happens, we need to have stronger unions in this country. We need to restore power back to the average citizens in this country. Black, white, yellow, gay, straight, doesn't matter, every single person. And we need to organize, and we need to make demands, and we need to ensure that our government finally starts working for us and not for the 1%. So let me agree and disagree with that clip a little bit.

First of all, I agree with their wonderful Christmas spirit. Man, that set looked fun. Yeah, that set was very Christmas. I liked it, I love Christmas. All right. Some trees in here? So now, kidding aside, let's get to the substance. First of all, they're right about the malady.

The politics is drowning in money. And I'm not against billionaires per se, so I don't know if that means I disagree with Bernie on that. But Tom Steyer is not a guy that I'm going to vote for in this presidential primary, but he's done amazing work on fighting for the environment against climate change disaster that we're in. He's actually done, put a lot of money into grassroots progressive work. So if you have a billionaire who's putting money to empower people and to spread a progressive message, and by the way, during the run, he's constantly talking about how corporations

rule our government and they have too much corporate power. And that is absolutely right. So I applaud that, I don't have any problem with that, I prefer Bernie Sanders as a candidate, but I think that Steyer is being helpful there. On the other hand, the real issue is Sonny points out, but then gets too defeatists about, is it's not just one or two billionaires running for office. The much bigger problem is that we allow for wholesale auctions rather than elections. So people can give as much money as they want through dark money through super PACs.

Sheldon Adelson is bragged about putting $30 million into a candidate, $50 million to support a candidate. So this is absolutely unbelievably outrageous, the system is outrageous, the system is corrupt. But of course the part I disagree with is you can't just throw your hands up and say there's nothing we can do. No, there's a lot you can do, you can organize, you can work together, and you can actually pass an amendment to solve this. That's what Wolfpack's trying to do, wolf-pacac.com, okay?

And so if you sit on your couch and accept defeat, you will have defeat. If you rise up, every generation of Americans has actually gone and made a giant difference. We've had amendments go in droves, they go in three to four blocks, they go one after another once amendments begin. Every generation says amendments are impossible, then they do three or four of them. Okay, so they give you that mythology so that you never fight back. Don't believe the hype, go fight for an amendment to get money out of politics and publicly finance all elections right now.

And you mentioned two forms of ways that they can corrupt the process, and we're experiencing both literally right now. As we speak in Iowa, New Hampshire, Steyer to a lesser extent, but now Bloomberg to a much greater extent, they are running millions and millions of dollars worth of ads. And they might in the end get a couple of percentage points from it. Perhaps never before has as much money been spent to move a needle as little as it will be moved. And yet they can be taken seriously and they can make it on the debate stage because of that.

I agree, I like Steyer a lot more than Bloomberg, but I don't think that he got those donations organically. The way, it was set up to make sure that people have a base of support and we saw that you can game the system. I don't know why people trust Steyer when he literally built the largest, like the The largest don't know email list he could by creating the anti-Trump thing that he did and blasting ads even before, years before he ever said he was going to run for president. Back then, I was like, this guy is going to run for president.

And that's precisely why he's building this anti-Trump list so that he can hit them with the inevitable presidential nomination. And he can start building a grassroots-backed billionaire candidacy. Look, if you feel sad, I just want you guys to remember one thing, okay, if you feel like things are looking really poorly, things are looking really bad, there are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen. Yeah, it's a great point about history. Look, on Steyer, I agree that him building that list through the so-called impeachment push was a bit cynical, to say the least. On the other hand, it did help push towards impeachment. I'll take the wins whenever I can get them.

And then Bloomberg has been great in fighting for gun control. Now, having said that, all of this gets washed away. I don't think Steyer would ever do this. But with Bloomberg, I'm significantly concerned. All this gets washed away if all of this is a cynical attempt to set up a third party run, to pretend some sort of faugh grievance and go, wow, if the Democratic Party had been fair to me, you know, I would have backed Bernie Sanders. But since he's the nominee and he's so extremist and they were on.

unfair to me, I guess I'm gonna have to run as a third party candidate, spend a billion dollars in advertising helping my friend Donald Trump so that he could win instead of Bernie and I could keep my tax cuts. Which are way more than a billion dollars, hey look at that, I made money again. If Bloomberg does that, he will be a villain for the ages. Yeah, if he announces that, it's because he wants Donald Trump to have a second term. So he can put that in his Wikipedia entry at the end of the day if he wants. So the first way that they're manipulating the current primary is through all that advertising,

flooding the early states, but the second way is right now. So the view really liked Pete Buttigieg when he came on the show initially. I don't know if they still support him, but they did early on. Well, he just spent the last couple of days attending high dollar fundraisers in New York City. And so I wish that I could go on the view, I'm an online progressive so it's never gonna happen. But I would ask them, why do you think that Wall Street was so happy to see Pete Buttigieg? He doesn't have any kind of record. It's not like they're saying, you know, we know what you have accomplished and we think

you're the man for the job, he's clearly making promises for the future. And what promises is he's making that's making Walt, like Manhattan millionaires and billionaires, so excited to see him. Why is he spending two days there? He's not in Iowa, by the way, the money he's making Manhattan is being used to run ads in Iowa, but he's not spending time in Iowa. So what is that about? If you're feeling fatalistic, well, wait until you have Pete Buttigieg as your nominee, then

you can lock in for no change for quite a while. Yeah, and to me, the most important point is that whether it's a billionaire that is who is economically conservative like Bloomberg, just simply buying the government himself, or a number of billionaires and getting together and buying a Biden or a Buttigieg, really what difference does it make? Biden told wealthy donors, I promise you nothing will fundamentally change. And if you're a millionaire, billionaire, you love that kind of talk. And that's, Biden made it very explicit because he's a poor politician.

Buttigieg, on the other hand, gives you great, wonderful, hey, you know what I'll do? I'll tell you that nothing will fundamentally change in Norwegian. Okay, still the same message. Yeah. Why don't we take our second break? So we've got a couple more stories we want to fit in for those at the hour. We'll be right back, guys. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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We hope you're enjoying this free clip from The Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media become a member at t yt.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. Hey everybody, welcome back to the first hour. As some of you might be aware, there were some developments today in the California 25th district race. And of course, Jank is on TYT today, but he's on as a host and not as a guest. And so to respect the distance between TYT and his candidacy in the district, we're not going to be covering that story on today's show. But if you would like to find out Jenks' thoughts, developments on that, you can go to

Jenks' Twitter and his official Facebook page. Okay, so back to the show. Let me go to YouTube super chat comments first. Andrew Grus says, if the left went too far in Britain, why then did the centrists lose their elections? Biden's logic doesn't pass the basic logic test. This is very similar to what Hassan was saying. Thank you for using YouTube super chat.

Joseph Laundrie says, I love you guys, you are the light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. Keep doing what you do. Thank you, Joseph. We appreciate it. And thank you for using YouTube super chat. Back to the members now. Quid pro Cuomo writes in, it is what it is. I hate that term.

It's just a lazy excuse to do nothing about a problem. It's just a way to accept defeat. Unfortunately, I agree. Unfortunately, because Sunny's actually a very good progressive host. I wish he hadn't gone in that direction. Hard not to get discouraged about the system, though. I understand. Okay, Missy says, Hassan on fire, Jenk on fire, John on fire, yes, I feel so much better now.

Thank you, Missy, and thank you for being a member. TYT.com slash join to become a member. And really interesting question by Donald Trump's wig, it'll be interesting to see, well, it is what it is, if you will, it will be interesting to see if Scotland starts to reconsider their recent choice to stay in the UK. They chose to stay in the UK when they were united with the EU. interesting question. Scotland, if you don't know, is way more progressive than the rest of the United Kingdom. And so as Boris Johnson wins, they might be reconsidering a lot of things.

And then finally, math wins, writes in, I think the win-win idea is going to cost a massive TYT growth once the medium slash large traffic websites start to include it. I've made my income off of affiliate sales on various websites I run since 2001. And this program makes me want to get the link up everywhere I can. Love you guys. Thank you. Awesome. So let me give you guys an update. This is a program we launched yesterday.

We're always trying to find ways to empower you and create win-win so that we win together. And so in this case, we're asking you guys to sell membership, obviously only if you want to. You don't have to do anything. But if you do, you get commission on it. So when we get membership, you make a little bit of side money, which is great. And I'm super happy about it because it might help you in your life. I know I could have used it at different times in my life, including now.

And it helps us spread the progressive message and make this a sustainable business. So if you, by the way, updates, 250 people have already signed up to be TYT affiliates in one day, okay? And now they're all just getting started and it's a process, it's actually really easy. So far, everyone seems to be getting it. You just go to TYT.com slash win-win and they will walk you through the process and you just get a link and you're sending out to people when they sign up through that, you get the commission. But last thing on that is so yesterday he told you there was one sale so far from you guys.

It was I think Dana Manning who made the first sale. So that's a piece of TYT history. Now we're up to four sales. Okay. Just put the first one on the wall. Yeah, if we wanted to like me see you guys. Our sales have quadrupled since we started the program yesterday. It's only four.

But hey, we're on the board and we're getting going. So I love it, keep it going guys. Hopefully we can set up a situation where we all went together. and spread the progressive message. All right, John. Agreed. Okay, let's get back to the news. Today, there are two stories out there that both involve a boycott of a debate.

One involving Donald Trump, one involving the Democratic primary contenders. And I think that we can learn a lot about the priorities of the two sides when you look at these two stories. The first with Trump is that President Trump is discussing with his advisors the possibility of sitting out the general election debates in 2020 because of his misgivings about the commission that oversees them. according to two people familiar with the discussions and not that familiar with Donald Trump because that's definitely not the reason. But he says that he might just skip all of the debates because he doesn't think that the commission will be fair in choosing the right moderator. They're very clear. It's not about who he's going to be debating. He's not scared or anything. He's just worried about the commission. No, to be fair to him, that's totally true. I mean, when you have bone spurs in both feet, you know, what are you going to do?

You can't show up to a debate. You got to run. I can stand for that long? Yeah. Seriously. It's hard to run when you got the bone spurs, but still, you're gonna find a way to do it. Remember this is a guy who didn't attend a debate because Megan Kelly was going to be one of the moderators. She had been mean to him, by the way, she had not.

She just asked them very normal, straightforward questions. But he's like, that is slightly challenging from a Fox host at the time she was at Fox News. Oh my God, and then he started crying and stuff, and then ran away, did a fake fundraiser for For veterans. I mean, this guy is the biggest coward you have ever met in your life. So I'm reminded when like the little bird landed on Bernie's podium and it was like a nice moment. And Trump had that eagle that he was trying to take a picture with in his office and the eagle

just spreads his wings. And Trump's like, what is he did on? Right? It's so scared. So of course he's running for his life. He doesn't want to answer any questions. He's a coward through and through. It's smart though.

Because, like, he already has his base. He already has his network that is going to do propaganda for him regardless of what happens. So why would he go and debate anyone, really? And by the way, I think this is more so because he doesn't want to debate Bernie Sanders. I legitimately believe that the one candidate that will absolutely destroy him is Bernie Sanders, because as you guys have also correctly pointed out, he is an actual populist, a left-wing populist, and is powerful in all of the ways that Donald Trump lies to his audience about, like, actually protecting Medicare and expanding it and caring for the American working class.

He has a track record that Donald Trump can attack, whether it be his NAFTA decision or the Iraq war. So, you know, he would be pretty powerful against someone like Joe Biden, for example, and I think he would probably jump at the opportunity to dunk on Joe Biden, considering Joe Biden is weak in all of those same areas that I mentioned that Bernie Sanders is strong in. But the real reason why he doesn't want to do this, I think, is because he doesn't have to. Yeah. It's possible.

No, go ahead, John. I know. Yeah, I think he's scared. I think that he knows that he did poorly in the three debates that they had back in 2016, even against Hillary Clinton, he did poorly. He says he won, but he knows that he didn't win. And he's scared of that happening again. And that's fine, you can be scared.

I just think it's weird that we live in a country where for conservatives when presented with weakness, they invariably see it as strength. They think that it's a strong move to cowardly run away from the debates. I've never understood that. So look, that's the Trump stories, that he might not do the debates at all, or it might be a bargaining tactic, whatever. But the Democrats are also considering boycotting a debate, not the general election ones. Oh, sorry, can I jump back in on the Trump one?

Sorry to go out of order, guys. So I wanna address two things that John and Hassan said, actually three. One is, John's absolutely right about the facts. Clinton won all the debates according to the polling, so it's not really in dispute, and her numbers went up after every debate. So all this talk of like, oh, Trump, you know, he attacks people in debates and you have to be really careful with him. No, the bungling fool lost every debate there was.

At least in the general election, and the Republicans are so pathetic, he won many of the primary debates against other Republicans, but mainly based on how corrupt they are. Now to Hassan's point, Donald Trump asks his advisors, hey, can we cancel student debt too? Because now that's considered the most far left idea. It's not just about college for all, it's not about free college at the public universities. This is canceling all student debt. And apparently he brought in Betsy DeVos and Betsy DeVos was like, no, no, no way we're canceling student debt. family has money in that industry.

And so of course she said no. But look at how telling that is. Apparently he was saying like, hey, we gotta compete with these guys that are doing these populous things like Bernie talking about canceling student dead. So it's not actually in dispute. He is afraid of true populace. That's a fact reported on by some of the top newspapers in the country. But it's amazing that they report that.

And then all their political analysts drop it right afterwards. None of them ever mentioned that the candidate he is clearly told his advisors he's worried about is the populist candidate Bernie Sanders. And lastly, I'm not debating at all or not showing up to things. He's also not showing up to his own trial in the Senate. He didn't show up to the impeachment hearings, even though he's been invited over and over again. He famously once said, if you take the Fifth Amendment, that means you're guilty. So if you don't show up to your own trial in impeachment, not by my logic, but by Trump's

So-called logic, he's definitely guilty. And if you don't show up to the debates, that also means you have no ideas to offer. You are clearly the worst candidate. So that's not a dispute. And Trump followers, I'm quoting Trump, so you have to believe it. Listen, the one thing I'll say about Donald Trump, and this might trigger liberals, but he is definitely a good demagogue. He knows how to read the room well, and he knows what the expectations of his constituency

is, unlike a lot of establishment Democrats who don't care about that at all or act like they know what their constituents want when in fact they have no idea. So whether it be racism or whether it be like left-wing populism, actual left-wing populism to pad that racism around, this is, he understands that American people do want these things. And they are, they're popular. And for more on that, read my most recent editorial on the Hill, why Trump is wise to to fear a socialist opponent. We go into the ways that he's tried to pretend that he is a populist of this sort in the past.

But we also have the Democrats that are considering not taking part in next week's debate. All seven of the Democratic candidates who qualified for next week's presidential debate are vowing to boycott the event to stand in solidarity with a union that plans to protest outside the debate's venue. The union of food service workers, unite here local 11, is fighting for better wages and benefits and informed candidates on Friday that there could be picketing on December 19th at Loyola. Marymount University. And so the candidates not wanting to effectively cross the line are saying that unless it's

resolved before the debate, they're not going to take part. Yeah, look, credit to them for sticking with their values. And all of them doing it, which I did not expect. Yeah. Well, look, unions are a thing that is a rare thing that unites both progressives and centrist Democrats. Progressives care about them because the labor movement is so important. And you've got to have leverage when you're negotiating with a giant multinational corporations.

It's the only way you're going to get higher wages. Centrists care about them because they give money to politicians. So they're like, oh, money, good, good, good, good, good. Like my corporate donors, I get this, I understand this. Unions, what do you need? So that's why both Biden, Sanders, well, all of them, Biden, Sanders, Warren. And again, Yang is a total of wildcard, but he was one of the first to come out and say, yes, we should not cross a picket line. That's why they all agree.

Yeah. I didn't see Buttigieg. Has he weighed in yet? I don't know if Heditch. It says all seven. Oh, and now it's all seven. All seven. Because in the beginning, Buttigieg was not on that list.

Yeah. But he must have checked with his Wall Street donors. And they say, yeah, yeah, you've got to pretend like the rest of them. Come on, keep going. Oh, geez. No, this is good. More power to him for using this and dropping it on Sodexo, like ongoing labor dispute, using this as an opportunity to have their demands met.

Very cool. Keep it up. Yeah. All right. At a time? That's up to you. It's up to me. I mean, we're technically out of time.

Oh no, we didn't get to your story. Okay, we gotta do your story as quickly. Okay, then we gotta run through this pretty fast then, okay? Because I know that people are chomped a bit for that awesome second hour. It's coming up. Okay, so one of my pet piece for a long time has been how you always see right-wing books on bestseller lists, even though there's been evidence for literally decades that think tanks, the R&C, groups like that are buying up huge quantities of the books to make it seem as if they are organic bestsellers. And so I've done some videos on this in the past on the damage report, and right now I'm writing an op-ed about this. And so to sort of update my research, I went to the bestseller list for this past week to see,

is there anyone new on the list that has been using these bulk buys to appear to be a bestseller? And lo and behold, I did find one. It was new this week on the week that I saw. This is exonerated by Dan Bongino. And what you'll see there under the word Mueller is a dagger, okay? And so what is that dagger about? Well, the New York Times says that they go through how they define sales, and they say that when included, bulk purchases appear with that dagger symbol.

And so all of this is freely available on their website, both the explanation of it, and you can go back any number of weeks in the best sell list you want. You'll see most books don't have the dagger, some books do have the dagger. I have identified by looking through a year of this data, a trend where almost all of the nonfiction daggers are for conservative political books. But anyway, so I was getting ready to write this editorial, and I put out a tweet identifying what I just showed you, the most recent book, which was Dan Bongino, which led to him losing his mind.

He had a public meltdown and directed it at me. And I'm not a therapist, honestly, I can't help you through these issues, but I'm not going to show you all of the back and forth that happened, partially because it's hard for me to find because he blocked me, like a true brave man, and also because you can go and see it if you want, but I want to give you a bit of an idea of what the back and forth was. Now, bear in mind, this is an NRA, like a person who did shows for them or whatever. So he's a tough guy, and that's going to come through. So he said at one point, how many books have you sold, Chump? We're crushing it. Well, you're sitting in a snuggy in Mama's basement

begging your friends for gas money. You're a disgrace, and you got wrecked because you got nailed in a lie you couldn't back up. Now take your medicine and go back to the basement. So I responded, I think, reasonably. Is this satire or something? You can't honestly think that that childish tweet is what? Masculine, tough? How old are you? I mean, I'm not 100% sure that his son had, like, hijacked his Twitter and was tweeting at me. And I just want you to bear in mind as we go forward with this. When he says got caught in a lie, my initial tweet has the evidence, the dagger is right there, he can go see it. He, quote, retweeted me, which means that he was tweeting the evidence too. Now, he doesn't acknowledge it, his fans don't acknowledge it,

but I would honestly say at this point, I know we're going to have fun with this, if you believe that the dagger shouldn't be there on your book. Don't take it up with me. I don't work for New York Times. You need to contact them because their data shows that bulk purchases were a part of what got your book onto the bestseller list. John, you were absolutely brilliant. It was almost AOC-like.

I do want to read a couple more tweets in a second. But what's amazing about conservatives is you state a fact and then he says, you're lying, man, you're sticking facts, you lies, I wreck you. And it doesn't really, nothing matters after that. Because his side, they don't care about facts. So they're like, yeah, wrecked. Why? Why was he wrecked under one circumstance?

It doesn't matter. How do you guys not see it? He's alpha dog. He just alpha dog the heck out of you, John. I know, I know. I haven't recovered yet. Look, I was crying for a long time. I love this.

I love this because, like, I already mentioned this in the beginning. But Dan blocked me because I was trying to figure out if he was taking steroids. Like I was just like leak your steroid routine king. And honestly, it's because he looks good. He's hot. Yeah, he's really hot. And I want to know, I mean, look, thank you for putting his beautiful skull on there, on the TV there. It's great.

I want to know. I want to know more about what he's been doing. And he blocked me, which I just wanted to. engage him in the marketplace of ideas and genuinely learn from him. Free speech is a no-no. Yeah. So weird. A couple of things I probably should have mentioned.

So before he started tweeting at me, he had had me blocked. I'm not sure why we'd never spoken before. He just blocked me. But I will say I'm learning a little bit about his blocking strategy because after this whole back and forth went by, I started getting tweets from people of screenshots of them blocked by him. And it appeared that after our confrontation, he started blocking anyone who had even even witnessed it, whether they tweeted or not. If they liked something, he tweeted them.

He's tweeting people that have never been blocked, he's blocking people that have never been blocked before in their life. Well, it was fascinating because he would unblock you to respond, and then block you right away afterwards, because apparently he needed a safe space. Uh-huh. I mean, they do exactly what they charge others of doing, like now, oh, you're wrecked home, forget the facts, whatever. Block him, block him, block him before you spouse, for God's sake, block them.

Okay, I gotta run to my safe space. And then they use the word triggered all the time. I mean, look at his totally out of control tweets. I've never seen anyone more triggered in my life. Can I read my favorite one though? Yes. He always looks like he is, he's like on the verge of having an aneurysm from like how angry he is.

He's got like veins popping out of his skull every time he talks. It's awesome. So look, this paragraph is taken from a mediate wrap-up of this. And I just, I enjoyed how the author Caleb Acarma awarded this. He said, Bonjino, who is a 45-year-old man, then tweeted the following before blocking I had a roll and retreating from the back and forth, take your medicine, chump, I know it must be hard to get wrecked, but you're a liberal, and therefore you're probably used to lying and then being coddled and celebrated for it, back to the basement, chump, you got wrecked.

Well, he's wrong, because I'm not celebrating you. Oh my God. I live right free inside your head. I own you by being an idiot. Hold up, hold, hold, hold. Because he clearly has a spirit animal, but I haven't decided which of two it is. It's either a wrestler from the 1980s or possibly Eleanor Sheldstrapp from The Good Place with her, Yeah, basic.

It's one of those two things. Is it like a catchphrase? That's what I tried to respond to him because- Yeah, I got to read John's response. Okay, but I love this so much. Let me set it up because I saw that. I started to tweet a response, and before I could send it, he had already blocked B again. So he goes with the rank to take your medicine.

So John calmly responds, I'm gonna be honest with you, Dan. I don't know what this take your medicine thing is. Is that like a catchphrase of yours? We're not on a sitcom, this is real life, you can talk like a human. If it is his catchphrase, I think you got wrecked is better. I would go with that. I think like he just embodies the, he's just channeling like one million reply guys on Twitter that like all have avatar photos of themselves wearing these tight Oakley's

that they're like heads popping out of it as they like yell into their camera from a car. Like that's what it is. He's just, that's the constituency of conservatives, he's like angry car rank guy. And Dan was lucky enough to be elevated to a status where he could do that exact same thing but on TV, which is why it's awesome. I think it's great, that's a real, look, that is a real Republican constituent. Unlike Ross Dowthead or Brett Stevens or any number of these like never Trump Republicans that they parade around or a bunch of Democrats, for example, who are a very conservative themselves.

This is a real Republican. So I love this, okay? I love you, Dan Bongino. Please unblock me. And also leak your routine king. I just want to be as swole as you, dude. It's what? Like, I don't get it.

Share the info. You know, maybe that's what he means by take your medicine. Yeah, oh yeah, he's like, TRG! Do a cycle of clembuterol, you'll get like me. I think I had a couple of ibuprofen after that, but yeah, just bizarre. Anyway, the important thing coming out of this is not about me or him, particularly not him. It's that they are doing this thing with their books. You can find the dagger literally every week, and the thing is lots of political books make it on there without it.

Michelle Obama's book has been on for 46 weeks, never once had the dagger, and other conservative authors have made it on there too. When I started doing my research, and this will be in the editorial, which is coming out in a couple of days, I expected, oh, Tucker Carlson and Bill O'Reilly, I'm going to out you guys. No, they didn't have the dagger. So you can make it. Wait, but I think Don Jr. had it, right? Wasn't this like recent thing? Oh, in my editorial, it's a murderer's row of the right, including online popular intellectual gladiators that I will identify in the editorial. Teasers.

For Donald Trump Jr., his books were bought in mass by Turning Point USA. And the R&C, which spent $94,000 on it. Oh my God. Sarah Palin did a mass buying of her own book using other people's money, of course. And so, look, last thing to leave you guys on, why? Why do they do that? Because what kind of sense does it make to just circulate the money? It's because what the right-wing billionaires do is to buy propaganda.

So whether it's folks that are online, that are getting huge speech money, just flat out funding, and all their models are not based on profit making at all, they just give them the money. And that's why they buy these books in bulk, because what they want to do is they want to propel it into the New York Times best seller in the book example so that more people will see it. So more people will think like, oh yeah, all of us having guns and massively increased homicides It's such a great idea. And while we're doing that, why don't we cut taxes for the rich?

Another brilliant idea. No, but it's also accruing social capital, dude. That's the most significant thing here. They're manufacturing consent and they're cultivating social capital so that all of the elites who are relatively more liberal than they are, of course, will then treat them as peers and as equals, regardless of the barbarian views that they have or the barbaric views they have, Unlike those dirty leftists who can never make it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, except for Chappo, which they did, but still, but without a billionaire daddy.

Yeah. I gotta say one more thing, because the thing is like I identify, there's a couple different types of this. There's Mark Levin who, it's like 14 weeks in a row, dagger, dagger, dagger, dagger, dagger, he wants to stay on there as long as he possibly can. There are other people that can't afford that, because it is expensive. You gotta get a lot of these books bought through these bulk purchases. So there was this guy who contributed to Fox News.

He did it for one week, he was in the teens or something. The next week he was gone. He was only there for one week and had the dagger, but do you know what he got for that? His Twitter bio says New York Times best-selling author for the rest of his life. And I will let you know, as a person who does a thing, I have, you know, billions of views on YouTube, doesn't count for anything for getting booked on anything. Bill Maher's never gonna have me on or whatever. But you know who they have on?

Best-selling authors, that's who they have on. So if you can buy your way onto that list, you can get on all sort, you can be on the daily show maybe, you can get on CNN and MSNBC and Bill Maher, and they will treat you like a person who's accomplished something real, even if it is resting on like a bed of sand. All right, guys, we've got to take a break. Everybody check out Damage Report. Haas has got his own Twitch channel. You should check out. Twitch.tv.combe. You don't have to say it quick.

Okay, we got a lot more coming up for you guys, including Nikki Haley's tortured explanation for why the Confederate flag is racist and not necessarily racist. She's definitely not racist for supporting it, but she does love the racists who do. you're going to love that we'll be right back thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad-free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon