The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - February 26th, 2020

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

Why was the South Carolina debate crowd so pro-Bloomberg? John Iadarola, Emma Vigeland, and Jayar Jackson, 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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Hey, everybody, it's The Young Turks once again. I'm Johnny DeRola and Jared Jackson and Emma Vigland are both here. It's no longer a panel, this is just normal.

It's just what we've got. Yeah. This is the future. Right. And the reason for that is that Jen and Anna are off doing important things, and eventually they'll be back to help us talk about other important things. But in any event, we've got two great hours. I'm going to be leading for one, Emma, for the other.

J.R. is going to be here as long as we can keep them. Yeah. So that's good. And throughout those two hours, we're going to talk about a number of things. There's a lot coming out of last night's Democratic debate. We're just a couple of days away from South Carolina. And in fact, not that many more days away from Super Tuesday. So we are going to be talking a little bit about that as well.

Emma, in the second hour, what are some of the things we can look forward to talking about? Oh, well, there was an ABC reporter who was suspended, I think unjustly. So I'm gonna get passionate about that topic, I would say. And now I need to look at the sheet, yeah, Biden. That's a good start. Well, it's all, you know, I care about so many topics, I can't even think about the ones I prepared for. Biden lying about Mandela and his protests there in South Africa and much, much more.

Yeah. Where's Mandela? Apparently dead. That's what- He's dead. It's going to be hard to have the weirdest lie about Mandela, but Biden is working on it. Now as I alluded to, South Carolina is coming up soon and you're definitely gonna wanna tune in. And I know what you're thinking, wait, what are you talking about tune in?

It's on a Saturday. Surely you guys won't be here, but no, it's just too important, so we will. You can tune in on Saturday, February 29th for the Young Turks South Carolina primary coverage. You can join myself, Emma, JR, and Adrian Lawrence as well for live updates and analysis. Coverage will begin at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific on, I almost said the whole thing, at DOT.com slash live. There were some H's and some T's and some P's in there. We also will have members-only coverage starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific time. And look, this is obviously important because it's a primary, but also it's the last thing

that can even theoretically provide momentum going into Super Tuesday, which we have high hopes for, and so I don't think you're gonna wanna miss that. But anyway, with that, why don't we launch into our first story, we're gonna be talking about the debate for a little bit. Did you notice that the crowd was oddly animated during last night South Carolina Democratic debate, but not necessarily in ways that make sense to a rational mind? few examples. At least I didn't have a boss who said to me, kill it the way that Mayor Bloomberg. Never said that. I've said to one of his pregnant employees. People want a chance

to hear. For the record, if she was a teacher in New York City, she would never have had that problem. We treated our teachers the right way. And the unions will tell you exactly that. Well, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Warren is... I'm sort of statistic the other day. When I came into office, zero New York City schools were in the top 25 of the state. When I left, 23 out of 25 were from New York City. We've cut the gap between the rich... Mayor Bloomberg has a solid and strong and enthusiastic base of support.

Problem is, they're all billionaires. Now, if you look, on the other hand, Okay, so there were booze, and as we're laughing along to it, it's not just like, oh, boo, it's like, boo! She casts a spell on our village, boo! That's what it sounded like, that's, and by the way, if this is your first debate that you're turning into, that's not normal. No, and I mean, yeah, the Democratic base loves billionaires and gets really offended when, you know, Bernie Sanders goes after them. Also is really in favor of insensitive abortion comments. I mean, why boo a female candidate talking about that?

That's entirely out of whack with where the Democratic base actually is if this audience was representative of that Democratic base. And if it was purposely not representative of that base, that would make a lot more sense. obviously we'll get into the details. Oh, it's so fun. Again, this is the third time I get to talk about this because this crowd was awesome. So, I mean, I cut up a few of those moments and I left out the part where, I mean, the cheers for everything that Bloomberg said, and then the booze for anyone else who said anything towards him that wasn't working out.

So I did cut out the one moment when Bloomberg said, I did have a ham sandwich this morning and they went, whoa! And then also Bernie Sanders said, hey, you know, Blank Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on ads And they went woo, it's all true, it's just true, it's what's going on. I mean, not the ham sandwich part. I suspected you were trolling us. Just sorry. So it was strictly based off of making sure that it sounds a certain way and you create

this narrative from the crowd. Now we felt some of these moments, there's been moments in the crowd when they respond. And actually one of those victims that was Mike Bloomberg in his first debate. He was trying to fend that things happened in his company and the way he joked with female employees, and there was pauses, and there was groans from the audience at that other debate. They were like, ooh, I don't know. That's normal, and people get startled by something, and they kind of murmured to themselves, but the outward booze, this was a different kind of level.

Yeah, you're so right, just the primal screams, like her entire family was killed in front of her. Exactly. Right? Bahr! Yeah, no one, to the audience, no one's going to die. Just relax, okay? Yeah, and look, we're, we're, something is obviously up. Nobody, nobody was watching that and thought this is a rational set of applause and booze.

It's like the laugh track for a sitcom got on a delay or something. Something is up, but we don't necessarily know exactly what, although people have been trying to figure it out. So let's walk through a little bit of what we've tried to discover, at least. Speculation on Twitter that, by the way, that hypothetically that it wasn't randomly biased in some way, but that Bloomberg had been evolved was only amplified by a local, news article that went viral, which claimed tickets started at a whopping $1,750 to $3,200 for donors looking to sponsor a package of events, including the debate.

An update was later published to indicate that these ticket options were removed from the Charleston County Democrats' website. So I say that for full disclosure, I don't, no one knows for sure exactly when it was removed or if it was removed that you couldn't actually still buy the tickets in some form. We do know that during past debates, such as the one that took place in Miami, Florida last year, Donors were able to purchase sponsorships for access to the debate night and related receptions, and many wondered whether a similar arrangement may have been what gave the audience a pro-Bloomberg vibe.

The South Carolina Democratic Party, which had access to some of the tickets for the evening, said explicitly that it did not sell individual tickets. And we should point out that a Bloomberg campaign official said the campaign did not pay people to attend the debate and cheer for Bloomberg. So we don't know for sure yet exactly how you can do. you get the tickets and all of that. But I want to be clear, we have criticized crowd reactions in the past, but we don't do it just randomly or always.

Multiple debates have gone by that we haven't said anything about it because people cheer when they cheered, it makes sense. They boo perhaps sometimes, but rarely. But you know a stacked debate when you see it. Bloomberg is not at 70% in the national polls. Bloomberg is not known for a devoted fan base, particularly in South Carolina. So it simply doesn't make sense that he would have the most passionate yellers. It's like they had seven Jank Uyugers in the audience all cheering for him.

It doesn't make sense that they would be cheering for New York City schools when they're in South Carolina and don't really have any connection to that. And again, booing Elizabeth Warren, that comment should make you uncomfortable. Jank pointed it out last night. It shouldn't make you just yell at the top of your lungs. But when they say donors were able to get access to this debate, that might be. makes sense. When I said it sounded like that woman had her entire family killed in front of her, it was maybe

the equivalent for some of these donors who spent so much money pouring into the Democratic Party and then Bernie Sanders is the likely nominee at this point. It's very traumatizing for them. Yeah, the Bloomberg campaign fine, they denied it and said, fine, we didn't buy tickets. I'm willing to buy that, fine, let's go with that route. We'll take your word for it because at the end of the day, I don't think it worked, of all. So whatever the plan, even if it wasn't a plan, even though it was just a group of folks

that sat together and happened to have seats together and we're like, hmm, hey you guys, let's go ahead and boo and cheer at the same time. Whatever level it was that this group did what they did, it didn't work. So I don't think a bunch of people are going to go, oh man, that debate really went to Mike. And but the thing is, it still seems coordinated. So say we all decided to show up at one event and we said, and we saw each other like, oh, Emma, hey, what's up, John, hey, you know, let's make sure that Bernie gets

It's a lot of good cheers. It's still coordinated and not organic, whether or not you're paid to sit there or not. Your supporters of his, which is obvious, for whatever reason, and then you are still trying to swing the tone of the debate in your direction. Yeah. Let me give you one other bit of information. So this is coming from a spokeswoman for the DNC who tweeted, let me give you the facts. The tickets were divided up between the DNC, the campaigns with equal allocations.

So theoretically, they all had the same number of supporters. The South Carolina Democratic Party, CBCI, CBS, and Twitter. We invited local and community leaders and DNC supporters. This is the most diverse audience. And look, that might be, this probably means nothing, but I will remind you that that same DNC spokesperson who just put out that statement was on Fox News earlier this week attacking Bernie Sanders viciously and dishonestly over his comments about Cuba under Castro. And so can we necessarily take for granted that what?

A spokesperson for the DNC is saying is going to be honest when they clearly have taken sides in this primary, and in particular, when this spokesperson is known for being sent out to right-wing media channels to do hatchet jobs on the frontrunner. No, hashtag unity, right? That's what she represents. But I don't trust the Bloomberg campaign saying that they didn't give out tickets or pay people to be there. I'm sorry, I don't trust them.

And I certainly don't trust the DNC. Why would I? So there's really no one who's neutrally confirming this information. So I know it's shady and I know that the audience reaction does not match the actual perspective of the Democratic electorate. So that's where I'm at right now. We don't know what happened, but I don't fully buy what the DNC and the Bloomberg campaign is putting out there. And I will also remind you that we talked this morning on the damage report about some of the limited polling of what people thought about that. that debate performance for all of the different candidates, and they didn't overwhelmingly think

that he did a great job. And so they also, the people in the crowd weren't reflective of the audience at home. But I will just say this, and again, we don't know for sure, although potentially if they did purchase tickets, I mean, like the Bloomberg campaign has as many leaks as the White House, so maybe we'll find out about it. But if the question is, did the Bloomberg campaign use money as a stand-in for support, like, the consideration is going to be different that it is for any other. campaign in here because they have done that from the very beginning.

They bought all the ads so they didn't have to run in the first four contests. They paid off a bunch of mayors to give him endorsements when he finally ran. They've got these fake social media managers texting all of their friends when they don't even support Mike Bloomberg. They're paying off influencers on Instagram to make memes about him when those people don't support them either. They're using this platform for influencers to have them make video testimonials about Bloomberg for money again when they don't actually support Bloomberg.

Like, we could go on and on. At every step of the way, they have used his vast financial resources to pretend that he is a support that has never actually manifested in any sort of genuine grassroots, authentic and passionate fashion. Well, you have no reason to do that if you actually don't care about those people that will be part of a grassroots organization towards your campaign. So if you're not going to serve those people that would be energized by your policies, then you can't get them no matter what.

The only recourse you have left is to do it this way. Yeah. Yeah. With that, we should probably go to our first break, but we do have a lot coming up. Really fast, I did want to get a couple of members' comments because you guys have been talking to us about this story. So let's see, no more trigonometry sent in a comment saying a fake crowd cheering for Bloomberg while he runs ads in the middle of the debate, no problem there.

Totally true. And again, remember, the DNC changed the rules effectively to allow him on the debate stage. So again, you have to take with a massive grain of salt. Everything that the DNC says about this. After he donated to them. Exactly. Dr. Doctor said, I can't believe Bloomberg bought the audience, I was so mad I had to donate to Bernie again.

And what limited information we have about donation patterns yesterday imply that a lot of people actually did that. And so thank you to our members for sending those comments. You misread the tweet, he said, backed, not bought. Exactly. You can become a member of going to t.com slash join. And yes, with that, we are going to take a short break, but lots of more to get to. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-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 powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-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 UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you 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 unlearn 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. Leftless. Welcome back to the Young Turks, everybody, Emma and J.R. and myself, a little bit of commentary from you before we get back to ours. Gabby and Marita said Bloomberg's audience had a level of artificial enthusiasm, usually only reserved for pageant moms or maybe minor league sports

mascots on meth. That is totally true. Oh, and also, so we have hashtag TYT live. You can leave comments with that hashtag, we might read them. Grizzly Gallagher had a great point. And I don't know why I didn't put this together, but isn't it weird that the debate audience was vocally supportive of Bloomberg when he's not even running in their state? Yeah. He effectively, like, I'm not saying they're all going to take it this way, but he flipped off the state saying, I don't need to campaign to you.

I can bypass you and go to Super Tuesday, and they're losing it for a guy that they literally can't vote for. It's just, there's no way. There's no way it's authentic. It's so weird. Please, please, if you're involved in this campaign and you were part of this plot, leak it's a Ken Clippenstein. Anyway, I did also want to let you know that if you enjoyed this sort of conversation

I would like this sort of conversation, but with us at a restaurant, that's a possibility. Thanks to our aspiration sweepstakes, this is the last week that you can register for it. It involves getting a round trip flight, hotel, and dinner in LA with Jank and Anna and myself. registering for the sweepstakes gives you sweepstakes entries. So despite the fact that there isn't much time, you still have a very good chance of winning. You can see all the details there and you've probably heard us tell you many times, but you can head to TOT.com slash dinner in LA to register now and get more information on how exactly it works.

But I look forward to the meal, perhaps it'll be with you. And with that, why don't we jump back into it? Okay. The candidates are making their last push for votes in South Carolina and Pete Buttigieg wanted to show that he was supportive of the working man and woman. And so he went to where a fight for 15 protest was going on, but it didn't exactly work out the way that he planned. Here's a bit of video.

We're going to be a president. We can't be un-president. We swear what's complaining on a man-outly. We can't be un-president. We swear what's good-treated so-man-a-tick. We can't be a president. We swear what's been playing in some man, we can't be un-prison. Okay, so if you're just listening to the protestors, he's now fleeing, he's running down the street, he's being pursued by AIDS or security, I'm not sure.

There's some protesters following him, too, but he is dead set. He's not looking at anyone. He's just eyes straight. Don't look left, don't look right. Don't acknowledge anyone's around. He just walk, walk, man, walk. And is going on for a really uncomfortable time. Okay, so he is, he's engaging with one of the activists now.

Okay, and so, you know, about the race today. What other committee? How, wet structure barrier, are you going to change for the back? Okay, and so, you know, about five seconds later, he was gone. And I sort of get it. They're chanting. Pete can't be our president. Yeah.

Right. Which is amazing. Pete can be our president, something, where was 15 in South Bend? In South Bend, yes. Right, right. Which is a very good, spontaneous chant because it kind of rhymes. President in South Bend. Maybe they're ready for any of the candidates to come out.

Oh my God. They got a brutal sire one. Bloomberg, don't you dare? No. Actually, please go try to talk to the fight for 15 protests. I've got protesters, I've got to see what chant they have in store for him. Yeah. There was a couple things.

First of all, I love black folks. I mean, that's who we saw there. Of course, it was more than just black folks there as part of the protest, so bear with me. But there was almost a beat with that chant. There was, you know, first there's the overlaying, which we heard. We can't, no Pete for president, where was 15 in South Bend? But underneath it, there's a, uh, uh, uh, it's like we had a layered beat, man, we make

it happen, no matter what, you're gonna hear us. And if you don't like it, it's just gonna be stuck in your mind, like a top 40 song. And he just like, his smile just melting as he's just melting as he's just, he's gonna he hears what's happening, I mean, it probably took him a second, but yeah, he got it eventually. And number two, you show up at this event, and you're Pete Buttigieg, and you know who Pete Buttigieg is because you're him. And you don't know what your history is on things like the minimum wage, and you show up at this event where activists know your history, you think they're going to just forget or just you show up and oh, now you're running for president, Pete, we're not going to be. Well, you're assuming his self-awareness outweighs his arrogance, which is a very big assumption with Pete Buttigieg. I think it's a little bit more complicated for Pete Buttigieg than that, because so I wanted to find out, because I'm not familiar with his record on that particular issue in South Bend.

Most Americans aren't about any issue involving Pete Buttigieg in South Bend, because despite the fact that he's been running for president for a year, we're just about the only people that ever sent a reporter there to find out. And so I did a little bit of research, and here's the thing. The minimum wage in Indiana is 725. In March 2019, the South Bend Tribune called for a $12 minimum wage. Columbia, South Carolina newspaper, the state reported that Buttigieg successfully raised the minimum wage for South Bend city employees to 10-10 an hour back in 2016, but ran into a roadblock with Indiana state law that, quote, prevented local municipalities from instituting a higher mandated minimum wage for all businesses.

So look, it's just for city employees, and he wasn't pushing for $15 anyway. But here's the thing. He hypothetically did try to raise at least some people a little bit, and he has been saying for more than a year that he does support a $15 minimum wage. And so here's the thing, I can't, I can't look into his mind, I can't say if that's any more genuine than any of his other positions. He seems to have wavered on it less than, for instance, Medicare for All, which he used to love and now thinks it's the work of Satan who is the devil.

But he has given people no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of that. And that is why those people who hypothetically would hear out other candidates, they're not interested in Pete Buttigieg. They don't trust him fundamentally. Well, why would they? He's not standing for anything in terms of policy at all. He's just staking himself as the middle ground between Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders, who he says is two extremes.

And he's the very intellectual and well-spoken person in the middle, who's also very young. His older supporters love that. But I also think there's another layer to this. He has been doing this tour where he's trying to get photos with black people. people. Ryan Grimm tweeted about it where he, it was this very awkward moment where there were four black women in the diner and he just, his aides went up to them and asked if he could take a photo with them and they laughed after he left saying, oh, you know, he just wants to take a photo

of us because we're like four black ladies or whatever. And this is exactly what he's trying to do here. I mean, come on, that's, are we pretending like that's not the motivation that his staff and that he himself had some sort of photo op? So of course, in addition to his, you know, the way he's been campaigning recently, also they can tell that this is inauthentic and for the cameras. Yeah, there were the fake endorsements for his, I believe it was the Frederick Douglass plan. Right.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, it's part of a pattern. Yeah, it's traditional politics. It's the way he thinks everything's supposed to work, the way it used to work. You just go take your photo ops and the people there are so excited to see a presidential candidate, they're like, oh, yeah, great. Because usually when you see maybe someone that's recognized or celebrity or whatever, your favorite sports hero, you're like, oh, can I take a picture with you?

It's never the other way around. I met Tim Duncan once in the mall. Tim Duncan didn't say, hey, can I take a picture with me? No. Why is the guy who's known and who's supposed to be the figure, the one asking for pictures because he gets something from it? And if you notice, as he was walking out, the one you said he did talk to one protested To his credit, right?

But that was, you know, everyone else behind him. I recognize those faces. Those are reporters from major networks, CBS, NBC and all those guys. There's like three of them, following him and have the mic in his face. So he knows who to talk to, he's like, I still gotta get this photo out here, okay, they're chased me out, but at least there's, I forget her name, she's the CBS, I believe. Yeah, I forget her name. So, and then right there in the blue shirt, he's from Fox.

So if you, if you, this gets a couple shots of me talking to one of these constituents who's been yelling at me, at least maybe I can get a positive look here. It's still, if I'm gonna talk to anyone, it's not going to be to these reporters who are gonna ask me, how do you feel about how these folks are yelling at you right now? And his campaign hasn't exactly been super friendly to press. I think he only has one pool reporter. Biden has been extremely cagey to press, way more than I think, well, I'm not, I'm excluding Bloomberg, just people when I've been on the road, seeing how different campaigns

have responded, but Buttigieg is up there. And also I'm sorry, one more thing, I'm gonna let you finish, Doug. But if you have an agenda, if you have policies, going back to what you were saying about if he had actually something he could stand on, if he had principles, if people are out there and you have these seven things that are your platform and what you want have happened when you become president and someone says, hey, what about this? What about that? You can maybe answer those things because you have actually a perspective.

You don't have nothing to say. If you have nothing to say, you'll get chased away. If they have something against you, you can address those things. Even if you were wrong with foreign about it, you can say, yeah, you know what, I missed the ball in that. This is where I stand now and I'm gonna tell you why I believe in that. If you have principles, you can voice them. If you have none, you have to run.

Yeah. Yeah. And look, if you're watching this and you're a Buttigieg fan, it's probably pretty clear that we are not supportive of his candidacy. But I do want to note, way back more than a year ago at this point when they had their first set of like town halls and Buttigieg was running, I did live commentary of it. And I was generally fine, I gave him, I think, a positive review. I mean, obviously I wasn't going to end up supporting him, almost certainly I wasn't going

to. But it's as we learned more, we realized who he was, and his appeal is not designed to stand up to that sort of scrutiny. And he has reap the benefits of that. I will also just quickly point out, I saw someone tweet, and it's very true, one of the worst things about being the same age as Pete Buttigieg is that I know he'll be running for president the rest of my life. And yeah, you think this is his last run if it doesn't work out?

Nope, it's gonna go on and on. But he's not the only candidate in the race, so why don't we turn to another? South Carolina is coming up fast. And in terms of endorsements, politicians who could potentially endorse one of the candidates in the state, Jim Clyburn, current House Majority Whip is, he's up there as one of the most important, if not the most important, and he has now chosen to endorse Joe Biden, as was expected as of at least the last week, if not longer. So we're gonna show you some video of Congressman Clyburn doing the endorsement.

There's gonna be two videos. In the first, he talks mainly about his late wife, but stay tuned because he does tie it into Joe Biden. So here's that. I was next door at the Nance Breakfast, and they have established an award in my wife's name, my late wife, and they decided that I should be the first recipient of that award. We met on South Carolina State's campus come March 15th, 60 years ago. I'll always remember that day because that was the first day that I was arrested.

And I met her in jail on that day. We often talked about the leadership of this country. And there's nobody. who Emily loved as a leader in this country, more than he loved, Joe Biden. And we talked about Joe all the time. So we're going to have more in just a second, but I guess we're not too surprised that the endorsement is coming. It had been previewed this week, and it didn't seem, you know, even going back months, like it was unlikely to happen, but probably important in the last push towards the primary.

And I don't think you mentioned it just that he's from South Carolina. Oh, sorry, if I didn't mention that. Yes, that's why I mean in the state he's the most important endorsement because he doesn't represent it. It was a very moving speech, and I mean, clearly he's known Joe Biden for a long time. I just wish he was endorsing a candidate that was more reflective in the candidate's politics of the, you know, the sentiment tinged with history and social justice that he was espousing there, you know. in addition to the beautiful discussion of his wife, late wife. Let's go to the other than because I thought so we do have more videos. So here's a bit more of Congressman Clyburn.

Joe Biden and I used to spend a lot of time doing TV stuff together. We got to know each other. I know Joe. We know Joe. but most importantly Joe knows us. That's right. That's important.

And I can think of no one better suited, better prepared. I can think of no one with the integrity. No one more committed to the fundamental principle. to make this country what it is.

But my good friend, my late wife's great friend. Joe Biden. So Joe Biden has apparently been courting the endorsement for several months. I don't think he could have hoped for or expected any more than that. That's gonna be effective for people who were considering Biden. Good speech for Joe Biden's purposes. I don't know, I don't like endorsements. I don't think they help that much.

I think when newspapers say we endorse so-and-so and opinion pieces and the editorial board say we endorse, hey, come out and vote for them because we said so, oh, we interviewed the minutes, do that. I think it's all a bit of an archaic process. And people would go on to because they didn't have as much access to the candidates as we do now, you say, oh man, that guy knows a candidate and I trust him, so I'm going with what he says. All that being said, this is absolutely effective with all of that.

I was going to say, this seems a bit different than a newspaper. And the AOC's Bernie Sanders endorsement could have saved his campaign. And we all never know it's counterfactual, but it gave him a boost after his heart attack. Yeah, that's how powerful I think. And actually how much people take his words, the weight of his words to heart. Because if all that, and I still believe all that. But there's some figures in a certain way that they put things and give it to you, even if you still don't agree, because it doesn't, it isn't, I can have changed my mind, right?

But there's plenty of people that it will, because our trust, a representative Clyburn, and he gave us reasons behind it. His late wife was this civil rights icon like he is, and they fought, and man, this is who he chooses? Like, I get it. And this is, it's a rare time when, in my opinion, it's a rare moment when you can get someone who, to do this and it actually is effective. Yeah.

Yeah, I fundamentally think that individual endorsements are very different than newspapers. endorsements. Newspaper endorsements mean nothing. No. You don't think the New York Times one mattered? No. The split. I think the, I think like the Des Moines Register might have mattered a little, but it didn't

end up affecting. I thought it was like, okay, this is kind of a good get for Warren because I thought it was between her and Biden, ended up not helping her. Yeah. I think even individual ones don't really work that much. I mean, people have mentioned before, Tim Duncan was in a Bloomberg ad. He didn't say I endorse Mike Bloomberg, but he said this is what Mike Bloomberg did when we had this relief, I think it was, because he's from the Virgin Islands, he goes, when we

need this kind of relief, Mike was there, we did this, he donated this, he gave that, he was given his story about what Mike Bloomberg had done, so in a way it's an endorsement, yes. Yeah. But I don't think anybody's in this, I, again, like I'm in Australia's randomly, I did meet Tim Duncan once and I thought he's a great, very cool guy, it's not going to force me to vote for it. Yeah. Just because Tim Duncan, good for you, Tim, but it's nothing to do with me, you know.

I will say, I think this is probably the most references to Tim Duncan we've ever had And John is silently dying. Yeah. I'm okay. Hey, you know, I'm just getting back at all the Lord of the Rings things. It was a Lord of the Rings or was it? It was Lord of the Rings. Oh, it was Lord of the Rings?

I don't know, they're all the same. Is it Star Wars or Star Trek? Stop it. It could be both. Why not? You think I can't talk about both now? I will make references to each before this show is over. But let's talk a little bit more generally about South Carolina.

South Carolina is just a couple of days away and Joe Biden has gotten the big, uh, uh, uh, uh, Congressman Clyburn endorsement that he was hoping for. So what does that mean going forward? Will he end up winning? Let's just go to a bit of, as weird as this is, I was on Chris Cuomo show last night, and I was asked about sort of the stakes for Biden and for Bernie in South Carolina. And here's a bit of what I said. Already looking amazing for Bernie Sanders.

I have no doubt that if Biden wins, he's gonna have a great Saturday night. But what is Monday and Tuesday? What are those gonna look like? Looking to California, to Texas, across the map. The polls are looking great for Bernie Sanders. So it would be great for him to go four for four. And we should at least acknowledge that he pulled off a record three out of three for the last two decades.

But Super Tuesday is coming up very soon. There's not a lot of time to transition from South Carolina to a big investment across the entire country. That's exactly the point. You don't have time. So what you need, Baccaris, you need the win. Okay, the only thing that would be better is if someday I tossed to me on CNN and in that appearance, I tossed to me on TikTok.

But anyway, so the point I was trying to make largely was everybody's hoping for one last burst of momentum. But what momentum can there be? You potentially win on Saturday, and you have two full days before national contests. So it's a little bit of time to get money, sure, but then you have to actually spend that money. You have to set up advertising campaigns. You have to do all that stuff across so many states.

I think a lot of people are banking on momentum that can't necessarily. necessarily have the time it needs to have a big effect on Tuesday. Unless word gets around that Bernie Sanders won the first four contests or got the popular vote in the first four contests. I know you're more skeptical of that potential outcome than I am, but look. Do you all want to go on the record? Well, you want to- Predictions?

Well, what's your prediction? Bernie wins. Yeah, so I'm gonna say, oh, I'm gonna be the villain. Yeah, that's fine. Wait, so- I'm the observer of this bed. I'm the one who gets to, I'm the record keeper. Why do you think that Bernie's gonna win? Look, I just think the odds are good.

I would say 60% chance Joe Biden still wins, right? But I want to make it interesting and I want to be right if it turns out that way and I get to rub it in your face. This is a sort of betting strategy that makes me wanna play poker against you. I agree, I think he has a 60 or 70% chance to win and thus I think he's going to win. And I say that because we're gonna go through some of the polls. But also, look, I have read accounts from people that I trust that going back through the last through a few cycles of South Carolina primaries, that one of the ways the polls tend

to be inaccurate is that they tend to underestimate older African American electoral participation. And so for candidates who have that support, they will tend to outperform. And there are examples going back through multiple races. And if he is already up and there's a possibility that the polls can be biased against him, In this case, I think there's a good chance that it'll win. But Biden is also overrepresented in every poll. So then maybe it'll cancel out and he's up in the polls. But then they're tied in some polls, so we're not going to know.

Well, let me, let me, so you say they're tied in some polls, I have a graphic, so I'm going to read my graphic. Oh, geez. Okay, so Joe Biden has 35% support in the Clemson University poll released just days ahead of the contest. Tom Steyer is second at 17, so 35 down to Tom Steyer at 17, Bernie is at 13, and Then Warren and Budajed today On July 18th, get excited

This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry! Smurfs. Only dinner's July 18th. Klobuchar at 4.

Now, there are other polls where they're much closer, and do you never know? Wasn't it? Didn't Brett say this was an outlier? Where was Biden in that? Yeah, but Brett's not on the panel. He can't say that. You don't have to say it for him. I am his spokesperson. He's talking to me. But anyway, look, I understand everybody wants to be enthused and excited and nobody wants the

brakes to be pumped. But I'm just saying, I don't think you need to be worried about the possibility. If you're a Bernie Sanders supporter, I'm saying, as I am, that Biden might win. If Biden wins that helps out Biden a little bit, by the way, it certainly hurts Bloomberg, who wants to position himself as the only alternative to Bernie Sanders. And Super Tuesday is coming up just a couple of days later, and it's looking great for Bernie So I make the prediction because I think that's what the numbers are indicating, but it is not anything approaching the end of the world for Bernie Sanders.

But it's like you brought the one outlier poll just because you knew we'd have this conversation so you could point to this poll that has Bernie Sanders in like an insurmountable hole when the other polls aren't showing that. It's the most recent poll that I saw. That's why I chose it. I guess the question then becomes whoever- throw this at you. Okay, wait, hold on, one second.

Okay, let's go to the real clear politics average of all of the polls. You're gonna see a chart, it's got a lot of lines. Biden is the green line, Bernie is the blue line. So you can see on average, Biden had been holding at between 35 and 30. And then recently, probably because of his multiple losses, he has dropped off. He has in a couple of different polls, you can see the different data points there, jumped back up. And while Bernie is still on average in second, there is a difference there, like a 10 point gap

or an 8 point gap. Yeah, so the question is whether, whichever way it happens, like, okay, so. Biden wins, and then Bernie ends up second, but it's close the way that Iowa was, right? You've been that close. That's kind of when it's based off of the expectations, because Biden has been waiting on South Carolina since Iowa, you know, so- Since last March, I think. So like this is one of those situations where, and sorry for the third's fourth reference, but if you, if there's a must win sometimes, this is a must win.

For Bernie Sanders, this is a, it'd be great if we won, and if we end up a, you know, close second, we're still doing well. This isn't a killer. This is a must win. So the pressure is more on who's expected to win here. And here's another sports reference to kill John. Dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things when you're a bad franchise and you don't know how to manage your cap and you don't know how to manage your team. You usually can't come up big. And Joe Biden's campaign does not know how to manage his team.

He has never won a primary in his entire life and has run for president three times. Second place in Nevada was the highest he's ever done. But possibly to be exceeded on Saturday. And I will say that I believe that Super Tuesday is the battle of Ministerreth. It's the last stand of man. But if you don't win Helms Deep, you don't get to Minnestheirth. So South Carolina is Helms Deep, okay? And I think maybe in this analogy, Clyburn is Gandalf, coming at the last moment.

moment to help him or something? Is Helm Deep like a grocery store in South Carolina or something? I'm going to educate you so much about Helms Deep and all that. Let's get to Gallum. But anyway, we do have a lot more to get to. So we're going to take a break. We'll come back, read some of your comments. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free time. segment. Welcome back to what remains of the first hour, everyone. There's a bunch of comments. I can't read them all, but I'm going to read some. So as expected, there were some tweets like this. hashtag T.R.T. Live. Aaron Martinez says, sorry, John, but I'm with Emma. Bernie Sanders will win South Carolina. I'm pandering. Like, oh, is it an unpopular position? I'm just taking the, I'm just taking, like, the good odds, you know? I think he has a decent shot. So I want to stake my claim.

I could maybe come back and dunk on some people. I know, exactly. Dunk on some people. Name that movie. Brian Newton Rose said the past few shows have been a great treat with Emma, J.R. and John. Thank you. Very nice of you.

Let's see, Sarama Kanuku said, I am so happy I became a TYT member. This is a member comment, by the way. Thanks to the daily education and barrage of facts from the TYT panel, I've convinced three of my centrist co-workers to support Bernie Sanders. Thanks, TYT, hashtag, TYT is gold. No, you're gold. Okay. Gold like the one ring, which I'm gonna work in the next story.

No, I'm kidding. Anyway, there was one, I don't know if it's going to transition to voice the same, but I just loved it too much. It's a member comment from You've Just Been Klobuchar who says, like it's sort of like a script. In Pete's limo after they get past the activists, random aide, softly to the beat. Pete can't be our president, Pete, angry glare, aide. Sorry, sir, I can totally see that happening. Okay, with that one more note before you get back to the news, I did want to let you know that

I am gonna be a part of Politicon's new weekly podcast, that is how the heck are we gonna get along. I'm gonna be there on the March 4th live podcast taping in LA, yep, the day after Super Tuesday. You can go to t-y-t.com notice for more info on how to get a ticket. And it's in the script, so I guess I can say who's on it now. So get a little of this. So I'm going to be on with Lauren Chen, who I believe is with the blaze. I'm not 100% sure, but that basic idea. Adam Carolla, interesting.

Interesting. And former congresswoman Katie Hill. So that should be interesting. And it's got host Clay Aiken. So it is going to be an hour-long taping. It's just, it's like mad libs for political, but anyway, it should be a lot of fun and it's really nice of them that they're having me there. And so if you're in LA, you know, go to that website and you can possibly be there for

the live taping. And with that, let's launch back into the news. Mike Bloomberg is not actually participating in this weekend's contest in South Carolina, ostensibly he doesn't think that he needs to, the same as with the other states that we've already passed through in both caucuses and primaries. He is looking to Super Tuesday. But despite the fact that he's not going to be on the ballot in South Carolina, the people who are and the fight that they're about to have isn't necessarily going to be helpful no

matter what happens to Mike Bloomberg. And so we have not, at least very often, given much credit to Nate Silver. He's said a lot of things that seem unsupported by the data. But in this case, he has a couple of tweets that I want to read just for you to think about as we proceed through South Carolina when you're thinking about Mike Bloomberg, who I think that we all should considering the resources he brings to this race. So Nate Silver of 538 said this, Bloomberg is in quite a lot of trouble. His national polls have stalled out or begun to reverse themselves.

He's fallen to 11% in our California polling average. In other Super Tuesday states, we aren't seeing the leads we saw pre-Nevada debate. It's a lot of stuff in the teens and low 20s. It's not even clear what he wants to happen in South Carolina. If Bernie wins, Bernie may open up a very formidable lead by Super Tuesday, and though Bloomberg might be second, A, it's likely to be a distant second, and B, there's much more evidence of a Bloomberg ceiling than a Bernie ceiling. If Biden wins South Carolina, the race remains more open, but Biden will have a fairly clear

claim to be the best alternative to Sanders, and per our projections, would likely finish comfortably ahead of Bloomberg in, I'm not sure if that's- Super Tuesday, thank you, delegates. So Bloomberg might be in a fairly distant third place with, you know, a lot of the delegates already allocated at that point and a media and democratic establishment looking for a centrist alternative. And if they have to choose at that point between the guy who has some delegates and the guy who is far less, they're probably gonna line up behind Biden who they'd prefer anyway. Well, yeah, they would prefer him anyway, but also Bloomberg's arrogance could have screwed

the one opportunity for a contested convention potentially. because they would have to line up behind one of the centrist candidates. And Bloomberg just being the most arrogant prick in the entire world could have really undercut Biden's chances to make his case there. And Nate Silver just really laid it out, well, because they are splitting those votes there as the kind of centrist, more traditional, well, at least in Biden's case, Democratic candidates, and helping Bernie out, I will take it, I will take it. Yeah, it's such a good question.

And what is the end game here? Because, okay, Buttigieg was getting all this props for having some foothold starting right with Iowa. So he gets this many delegates, oh man, he's in the race. But we're not giving props to Klobuchar because she didn't get that many or Steyer. What has Bloomberg gotten? Because literally he's not competing. He's just throwing ads out there.

So what is your route to the nomination if delegates aren't it just ads? You want to make yourself look good later? Surrogates have gone on TV and have said that they wanted to position themselves as an alternative to Bernie Sanders if he goes in with the majority or plurality into the convention. But you're undercutting that very option for Biden by running at all. But Bloomberg doesn't want it to be Biden. He wants it to be himself more than I think he even wants to undercut Sanders. Although in the end, I think, you know, he cares about his tax cuts more, more than anything. Likely. Yeah.

Yeah, and look, we've been talking now for a couple of weeks about a certain number of candidates clogging up the vote makes a contested convention more likely, a critical mass beyond that, as long as there is a frontrunner, which there is nationally, actually makes it less likely. To give you an example, I saw a poll today of California, and I don't remember the exact numbers, but effectively what it was was, Bernie Sanders was at like 42. You had Elizabeth Warren at, I think, in the 20s, and then you had a whole bunch of centrists at 10 to 13%. If that was the final vote in California, give or take, it's not exact, but Bernie Sanders

would get like 300 delegates, Elizabeth Warren would get like 100, give or take, effectively. And that is because there are too many centrists. In general, that's our issue with America, but there's too many centrists in California you're running and so they're in a weird, it's not the prisoner's dilemma, but it makes me think of the prisoner's dilemma where all of them know, they all acknowledge that the fact that all of them are staying in makes it less likely that any of them will actually be able to rise as the alternative and, in fact, increases a chance of a contested convention, but while they all acknowledge that, none of them has any true incentive to be the one to drop out first, and so

they just stick around, they stick around. And Klobuchar, who's at 4% in these polls, still thinks, Well, why should I be the one to leave? Well, they are prisoners of their own ego. One might say. Thank you for that help. Now, just a little bit more information going forward from 538. They're doing projections on the current state of some of the state polls. Understand, for a lot of states, there are a few, if any, polls.

But this is a basic idea of how they think it might go for a few. And let's bring up the graphic, you can see that like for California, they think there's an 89% chance. that Sanders is gonna win in California, a 52% chance in Texas, 43 in North Carolina, and these, I'm not just choosing it because it's Bernie, I'm choosing it because he's the highest chance in that state. Virginia, he's got almost a 50% chance, a 60% chance in Massachusetts. Yes, Minnesota, Klobuchar's state is split evenly, by the way, between Klobuchar and Sanders, but again, Colorado, 83, like, it is fairly clear, and normally, historically,

The Democratic Party should be so thrilled by this. Look, we can avoid a long, drawn out, painful and expensive primary. That's the way they always say it. Except this time, the clear frontrunner is Bernie Sanders, and they could not be more frustrated with it. It's painful in another way for them. The whole fact of people staying in the race, I think part of it is, again, it's a different kind of elector.

We talk about James Carville, and he's his thoughts about the old square of people running for office, especially the presidency. People didn't have as much of a reach, you know, online donations wasn't a thing. So people were drying up on money way, way more easily than they can do now. I mean, Colabotra has a decent performance in what? Is that New Hampshire when she had a decent performance? Yeah, I think she did okay. Yeah, and she did well exceed the expectations in Iowa.

Right. So even though those weren't like wins and they weren't overwhelming and they wouldn't bashing anyone else or taking anyone else's spot, it was enough for her to get enough money. Elizabeth Warren is well, getting with money to continue to go. So they're like, well, yeah, sure, I'm fourth, and it was about to be Super Tuesday, and I'm barely holding on, but I've still got money. Why would I stop now? So I think it's going to change the game of the way things happen.

So therefore, your majority, and we're comparing it to 2016, your majority winning some of these races doesn't have to be 60, 70% anymore, you know, because it'll be down to two or three people. We still have seven, how many people on the debate stage? Seven were on the debate stage more than seven are running. Yeah, so then that's going to get split up much more. So a number's like 30, 40%, like Bernie got in Nevada is gonna, is more, is a dominating number now in the way it used to be.

Yeah. I think, I don't know, maybe it's, maybe it's something particular about this cycle. So, I mean, we've been talking a lot about arrogance and so we have to factor that in. If there wasn't the arrogance though, my advice to Bloomberg would be, you stupid idiot, drop out, give Biden $500 million, say, you know what? I found his debate performance to be just too compelling in his pitch to South Carolina, perhaps his performance in South Carolina, it's just too good. So I'm dropping out before Super Tuesday and I'm throwing all these ads into Biden.

If he's just concerned about his taxes, then that's what he should probably do. It would be terrible for the party, it'd be terrible for America, but he should do that. His presence would be worse. Well, I mean, yeah, so that's the dueling thing within Mike Bloomberg, right? Is that he wants to have lower taxes, he doesn't want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee. He says he will offer a billion dollars to whoever the nominee is. I promise you he's not gonna actually do that if Bernie Sanders is the nominee. And Bernie has already said he's not going to accept it, so it doesn't matter.

This is just a carrot that he's dangling for the rest of them. But if he really only cared about his taxes, then again, he would do what you're exactly doing. But when you're someone whose ego is that big and you're that big of a potential, I I don't know, demagogue in his own way, and it's scary to think about the prospect of Bloomberg making a case at the convention, then, you know, you have to keep going because his money and his ego, it's this cyclone that has entered the electoral process. And he's not going to stop until he feels that the need to stop, and he has unlimited funds to continue doing so.

So weird flex offering. How much did he say he's going to give, whoever's going to be the candidate? I think, I mean flippantly, obviously. A billion, I think he said so. So many of those weird flexes where people, it's half of that statement is more about saying you don't have a million dollars to get away, right? That's half of the, I think, I mean, of course, I'm speculating, I don't know his mind. But part of that whole idea is to say, you know what I have, I can do this, and you

know what, you guys care about that only because that's been his life. It goes back to illustrating who he is, hey, I can buy politicians, let me show you guys now and he expected everyone to go, oh yeah, I would take that, I would take that billion Because that's his wheelhouse. He doesn't even realize how much more he's damning himself by saying things like that. I really did think as arrogant as they are that one or two of them would drop at this point, just for their own personal ideological reasons that they don't want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee. It's-

What's to help the one who's doing better? Exactly. And by the way, from my point of view, good, I want all of them stay in forever. Get some more in. Come on, come on, all of you, you're joining in. You got buddies, right? You got Citrus buddies. From their point of view, though, it's madness, you fools.

And less, as James Carville said, the only game in town is a stop burner from getting in 1991. And maybe that's what it is. But look, we've talked about how a contested convention would play out, what it would mean. The idea that they would hand it to anyone, let alone that they would hand it to Mike Bloomberg is madness. I can't say for sure that the party would be destroyed, but if it wasn't destroyed, it wouldn't matter? What would the party even be if they chose to do that? It would lose. It would certainly

lose. Certainly lose. And we would have, because of an obsession with corporate donations and protecting the wealthy, the Democratic Party would have handed the reins to another right-wing oligarch who would certainly lose to Donald Trump and potentially destroy the Democratic Party forever. Yeah. I do want to read one of the member comments that were sent in about this story, Gabby and Rita, with a great point. I was being a bit loose with my language. But she says, Bloomberg isn't a centrist alternative, he's a right-wing authoritarian. You're of course right. I mean that he is attempting to present himself as that alternative, the same as a Biden

or a Klobuchar, but you're right. We shouldn't use the framing that he wants. Don't concede that point, John. You said what you said. You meant it. You know what you're talking about. Tell Gabby you appeared on CNN last night. That's true.

I'm gonna go take my grievances to Chris Cuomo. No, Gabby, in the future, if you want to correct me, could you at least slip in some sort of reference to Lord of the Rings of Star Trek. But anyway, thank you for the comment. As always, you can become a member at 2.8.com slash join and send in comments that might get you attacked by J.R. So with that, though, we do have to take a break. We've got a whole other hour, though.

Emma's going to be taking the reins. It should be a lot of fun. So we'll see you in just a few. 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.