The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - February 27th, 2020

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

The DNC is up to its old tricks again. 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

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The Young Turks. Emily's here. Hi! It's good to have you here. Yeah, it's great to be here. We decided to mix it up slightly. JR, rather than starting with us, we'll be joining in just a little bit, but in the end it will be.

Me and you and J.R. It's been a fun week so far. Yeah, and J.R. has to pop in and out because he's a very busy, busy man. Very busy person, but he will be joining us. We've got two hours. I'm going to be leading the first. Emma's going to be leading the second, as you've probably grown accustomed through throughout the week.

And we've got some big stories that we're talking about in just a little bit, perhaps the biggest story. The New York Times interviewed more than 10% of all the superdeliates, and it turns out they are indeed plotting in back rooms to potentially take this thing from Bernie Sanders. You conspiracy theorist, complete internet whack job. Yeah, it's a conspiracy theory that they admitted to enthusiastically. To the New York Times. So we can't, we can't deny it anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's not Project Veritas, but it's something.

Something. It's something. Okay, so we're gonna do that then, a similar topic, but Elizabeth Warren was talking about it last night. And then Donald Trump wants to make inroads with black voters for the general election, and he's got a new sort of retail strategy, which we're going to be delving into as well. With that though, what don't we launch it in the news? Let's do it. Okay.

Today, the New York Times released what I consider to be a bombshell. The results of their interviews with both a number of superdelegates, as well as leaders in both the state and national Democratic Party showing that the conversation that's been going on over the past month, the possibility that if Bernie Sanders enters the Democratic National Convention with a plurality but not a majority of delegates, they do indeed think that their job should be and indeed they will take the nomination away and give it to one of the people who got less support, less donations, less votes, less delegates, all of it. Yeah, it's unsurprising. It's something we thought was going to happen for a really long time

or something that was hinted at, but the gall of them is still shocking at this point. They're the Democratic Party, but there's nothing democratic about them. And what this does is only further bolster Trump's claim that he's the one to dream the swamp. Because what seems swampier than taking away the candidate who won the most votes and installing your own centrist who will inevitably lose to Trump because that narrative only reinforces everything he ran on in 2016? Exactly. And look, we've been talking about what this would mean if they attempt to do this.

That is referenced in this New York Times article. I love the wording that they use for it. So they say dozens of interviews, Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they're not just worried about Mr. Sanders candidacy, but are also willing to risk intra-party damage to stop his nomination at the convention in July if they get the chance. Risk intra-party damage. all it is, it'll be some damage if the person, potentially, look, yes, could it be a one percentage difference between him and number two?

It could be. It could also be that he has 49% of the vote. And if that's the case, there would be intra-party damage if they were to, like I've been saying all week, give the middle finger to literally millions of voters and say that whole thing that we just went through. All those primaries, all those caucuses, wasn't that fun? Didn't mean anything though. We're gonna take it, we're gonna give it to Klobuchar or Buttigieg.

or God only knows who, and we've got some names that popped up in this article that are going to be a real trip. Well, I would argue that perhaps, well, it's just insane that they're considering doing this, but you get into it and then I'll make my point. Sure. So look, they talk to 93 party officials. All of them are super delegates who could have a say on the nominee of the convention. They found overwhelming opposition to handing him the nomination that he will have the most delegates towards. if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority, which is still, it's possible.

It's, you know, I don't know if it's a 30% chance, a 40% chance, but there is certainly a chance that that could happen. Only nine of the 93 they interviewed said that Mr. Sanders should become the nominee purely on the basis of arriving at the convention with a plurality if he was short of a majority. And I understand, less than 10% of those that they talked to said that he should get it, even though literally every single time that the superdelegates have gotten involved, they have given their support. to the person with the most delegates. Doesn't matter. Plurality, majority, the person who had the most, they always supported. Now, suddenly, that is so extreme an idea to do that, to continue to do what you've always done, that they're going to finally flip on that, and only 10% think that that's how they

should act. Yeah, and their whole argument is that it's about who would defeat Donald Trump. It is so obvious that that's not your primary concern, because Bernie Sanders polls better In all of the states that you need to defeat Donald Trump, then the other candidates that you're trying to prop up, it's so obvious that they are honestly willing to maybe destroy their own party, press self-destruct on their like robot bodies and just completely end the party rather than have Bernie Sanders be the nominee because he's that threatening to the very interests and institutions of the people that are in that party, right?

So the consultant culture, the constant handouts, the contracts given to people, the fact that these people are employed, the reason they're so freaked out by this is because they've done a terrible job. They lost thousands of, a thousand seats under President Obama and have like just, they lost to Trump, obviously. And so Bernie Sanders, they know when he comes, if he were to win and be the nominee, he'd clean house and then would represent a fundamental shift in everything they've come to know, in their employment status, in all of their.

friends, and so that's why it scares them so much. So let's not pretend this is about defeating Donald Trump. You are pretty much people who are overseeing this democratic process, who are trying to manipulate it, so it helps you out and your employment out, as opposed to the country. It's sick. Yeah, look, we're gonna, we've gotta get to these quotes, but I just wanna just say, you know what I haven't seen? I haven't seen like a DNC official on MSNBC or, you know, even one of the centrist.

Let's say Klobuchar or Buttigieg, they all say, we need someone who can beat Donald Trump. You know what they never do after that? Pull out the head-to-head polls with Donald Trump and show that they're the one to do it. Or if you're like a pundit and you're afraid, oh, Sanders won't be able to do it. We need someone who can beat him. They never say, and here's all the evidence that he's not the guy. They never do that. Do you think it's because they fundamentally don't think that the evidence is valid?

Or is it just because it's inconvenient to what they're saying? I saw a poll today, head to head, dem candidates, all of them versus Trump in Pennsylvania. Seems like an important state. Maybe we should win it. You know who has the best chance against Trump? You're not surprised. It's Bernie Sanders. You know how significant it is?

He's literally the only one beating Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. All of the other Democrats are losing in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, one of the states that lost Hillary Clinton the election because it flipped. It was very close. And even Bernie Sanders is only up by a few points. The others are all down. So when they talk about electability, they don't give a damn about the chances. They care about their chances, to your point, of staying gainfully employed under a Democratic nominee that's going to run, give them money, and then lose.

Yeah, let's get to the people who are willing to speak on the record to the New York Times because that's how cozy they feel in their powerful positions that they'd be willing to put their names to this crap. Exactly. Jay Jacobs, New York State Democratic Party chairman and a super delegate, said that superdelegates should choose a nominee they believed had the best chance of defeating Mr. Trump if no candidate wins a majority of delegates during the primaries. He then whipped out a fat stack of polls. No, sorry, he didn't do that. He didn't. But he did bring it up. And let's see, Representative Jim Himes, also Super Delegate says, we're way, way past the day where party leaders can determine an outcome here. But I think there's a vibrant conversation about whether there's anything that can be. done. That's a heavy butt. That's a heavy butt. That's a very heavy butt. That's a thick butt. Whether there's anything that can be done. That's how you talk about hurricanes, viruses. Is there anything can be done? Come on, let's have a vibrant conversation. Let's have a vibrant conversation about what it means to live in a democracy. How about that? Can we have that, Representative Ims? Oh, unless it's characterized as a republic. Exactly. Well, we're going to get to that. I'm teeing you up so well today. You are, you are. We're like two off from that. But yes,

Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee said, if you could get to a nomination and pick Sherrod Brown, that would be wonderful. Not running. But he's not running. But that's more like a novel, yeah, maybe a novel, a fictional novel in which he is running. Donald Trump's presidency is like a horror story. So if you could have a horror story, you might as well have a novel. Why don't we have a romance at this point, honestly?

Sherrod Brown is not running. And do you know how many people have called out at the injustice that they don't get to vote for Shared Brown? I don't know if there are any. Him, presumably. You know what this isn't? It's not a story of any kind. It's just real life.

So perhaps we could behave within the confines of reality. I don't really know, Steve Cohen, who I've met, by the way. Pretty nice guy. You talk about novels all the time? I just, the amount of people in the Democratic establishment who think this is an acceptable point of view, it's just shocking to me. I know it shouldn't be shocking at this point. But still, like, could you, 93?

93. 93. It's a lot. Yeah. Okay, so, Representative Don Baer of Virginia says, at some point, you could imagine saying, let's go get Mark Warner, Chris Coons, Nancy Pelosi, somebody that could win, and we could all get behind and celebrate. Oh, Nancy Pelosi, she has like a bottom floor single digit approval rating. I mean, it's not that low, but it's certainly one of the lowest of elected officials in the country.

I mean, I think she could. Dumb, dumb person. You don't think she could pick off some moderate Republicans to vote for Nancy Pelosi? All your friends like Pelosi, no one in the country likes Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders has one of the highest popularity favorability ratings of any politician. Get out of Washington, go into the real world. It's unmanening. Yeah, yeah, I try not to, but I do read about what happens there at least.

Okay, so there are other names being floated. Honestly, if it's a novel, let's just put a, like, Gollum or something, like that would make a good story. Okay, William Owen, Tennessee DNC member says, Michelle Obama is the only person I can think of who can unify the party and help us win. This election is about saving the American experiment as a republic. It's also about saving the world. This is not an ordinary election. Notice he said saving the American experiment as a republic, not saving it as a democracy.

Certainly. He's a Democrat. He's more interested in the republic part of that point. Save the republic, save the world. Exactly. to all Michelle Obama, who is never been a politician in her life. I like her. She's great.

She's great. I love, love working out. I mean, not that much. I don't know. I'm losing my mind. That is a possibility. Now, let's just add a little bit of context to that last one. We haven't been delving too much into any of these individuals, but William Owen is

Tennessee DNC member. Also, according to, I believe it was Lee Fang at the Intercept. runs a lobbying firm called Asset and Equity Corporations, who has donated to Senators Mike Rounds, Dan Sullivan, those are both Republicans, by the way, and gave $8,500 to a joint fundraising committee designed to benefit Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. I am so glad. But thank God he's giving us his opinion on who should be the Democratic nominee. It's not just an opinion, something that could affect things.

93, who spoke to the New York Times. Can you imagine how many more who didn't speak to the New York Times? By the way, and so we're going to talk a little bit more later on about superdelegates and how they used to vote, how they're voting now, a little bit of context for that because they're talking to superdelegates. He worked in 2018 to block a Sanders-back plan to weaken the role of superdelegates in the nomination process. He said at the time, according to Politico, if we don't have a vote, then what good are we?

Well, you got money, you can give it to Mitch McConnell. You still got that. That's what you got. So let's add a little bit more, don't break your pen. Sorry. Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, added that she would not support Sanders even if he enters the convention with 40% of the pledged delegates, saying if 60% is not with Bernie Sanders, I think that says something.

I really do. I mean, one thing it might say is that we still have like nine or ten people running for the presidency, even though the vast majority of them know they don't have, you know, a chance in hell of actually winning. I hope that maybe. I hope Globetar stays in until November. I mean, seriously, stay in everybody. Make sure that you're splitting up that moderate vote so that the undemocratic hacks at the Democratic

National Committee are unable to actually pull this off. Because this is scary. This is not a joke, no longer a drill. The Bernie Sanders, the ability for the Democratic National Committee to actually sabotage Bernie Sanders in a way that would be, even, I would say it wouldn't be unprecedented, but they kind of did it in 2016. But this would be a whole other level. Yeah.

This, I'd say there are two scenarios and they could both happen, right? They strip Bernie Sanders of the nomination if he gets the plurality of delegates, if he gets the most amount of all of the other candidates, and they give it to someone else or if they give it to Bloomberg. And both of those scenarios mean the end of the Democratic Party, I think, as we know it. I don't know. Imagine, imagine. Well, first of all, we'll talk about Sanders supporters.

Imagine like all you've done, imagine donating to a candidate having it taken away. Imagine you went and you canvass. You knocked on doors, you made phone calls, you talked to your family and friends about him, and then they take it away. Imagine if you're one of his, by the end of this process, literally millions and millions of voters who are enthusiastic in support of him to have it taken away. And honestly, look, that's the most obvious example that the most supported candidate in this hypothetical and his supporters will be robbed of this.

But if you're a supporter, let's say Elizabeth Warren, let's say you supported, You donated to her, you canvass for, all of that, and in the end, they give it to Bloomberg. So look, they didn't specifically rob Elizabeth Warren, but they did imply that all of that was just fun in games, all that stuff about democracy and the primaries and the caucuses. Remember how we got so worked up about it? And in the end, it meant absolutely nothing. How much faith would you have in that party? If you were literally the supporter of anyone other than the loser they plucked from obscurity

to hand the nominee to, why would you ever trust this party? again? So I thought the Democratic Party was really concerned about chaos. Chaos. They say that. Yeah, they really wanted to be a smooth process because, you know, Vladimir Putin is creeping behind the scenes and he's opening up Nate Silver every morning to check, ooh, which candidate should I back today? Uh-huh. But of course Bernie Sanders. He decides that every day because Bernie's terrible. And, you know, that's what the general consensus is from the establishment. Do you think Putin would be gleeful if the Democratic National Committee took the nomination away from Bernie Sanders if he won the most votes? Do you think that might sow the chaos that they say they care about in preserving the American way?

I can't, like, I know that this is a hyperbolic thing and everybody says it. I can't think of anything that would make him happier, honestly, at this point, than if they stole the nomination. Not that they really care, but like, yeah, but that's what Democrats say they care about. No, I'm not saying that, I'm saying if Putin wants chaos, which Buttigieg tells me every day multiple times, if that's what he wants, what is more chaotic than a contested convention where the most popular candidate has the nomination stolen from them. By its very nature, whether you support that plan or not, you have to acknowledge that is insane chaos, historic chaos.

Bernie Sanders, next debate, please just use that point because as soon as you say Putin, everyone's gonna drop it, then it may be wrong. Yeah, and really though, like Buttigieg, he's not the only one, but he's the most obvious. He stands on the debate stage and says the chaos this, chaos this, and then he says that he does not believe that the person with the most delegates should actually win. Like if we had, I'm not saying a progressive debate monitor, but if we just had a rational person who was not like actively trying to stop Bernie Sanders from getting it, how is that not

a question that they're all facing at all the debates? How can you support a plan that is obviously going to lead to intense chaos? in your party and likely destabilize the party and hand over the win to Donald Trump, at least as a possibility. They gave plenty of hypotheticals about Chinese cyber attacks and things like that. This is designed to create that chaos. And yet, that doesn't generate any sort of controversy on the debate stage. Bernie's got to stand out for himself better.

He does, he does. Let's go to a little bit of video, because we read you some great quotes, and that's all well and good. But I think it's even more stunning this approach that they're taking when you see it coming from one of their representatives' mouths. I wanna show you video of a, I believe he's former state senator, this is Anton Gunn, talking about the possibility that a contested convention where Bernie Sanders has the most delegates could end up giving the nomination to someone else.

This is what people need to remember. The Democratic Party has a party. The party decides its nominee. The public doesn't really desire the nominee. The public gets to vote for the President of the United States, but people who are active in the party who participate in the party, they decide the nominee. So, look, I get he's being supportive of all the people in the party like him that want this to fundamentally be, not be a democratic process. But he has to acknowledge that what he just said is, we have these primaries in caucuses, but at the end of the day, they don't decide, the voters, in all of these.

You know, in the past, we've gotten the person that we want. And so we allow this facade of democracy to go on. But at the end of the day, we, the party, we get to decide, not those voters. Do you guys know the Republicans don't have super delegates? They don't have a process that's anywhere close to this. How are we allowing them to win the democracy narrative? I mean, they've certainly got their own problems in their primary process, but in this regard, the Republican Party didn't set up.

It's the perception. I mean, look, like we're losing the perception that we have the moral high ground and the Democratic high ground because it's the reality. They didn't stop Trump. They let him through. They let him be the nominee. That's who the base wanted. The base wants Bernie Sanders.

Let him be the nominee. Or you're not the Democratic Party. Big D, small D. You're just a republic party. I mean, like, honestly, we could make those puns. It should be the Republicans and the Republic. Right, right. I mean, it's disgusting, to say the least.

Let's see, maybe this is disgusting, too. Let's go to a little bit more of the video talking about what Bernie Sanders needs to understand about this process. Super Delegates are very influential in the party. Also, delegates are very influential. And just because you're a pledged delegate for Bernie Sanders or a pledged delegate for Joe Biden doesn't mean when you get to the convention floor that you'll stay a delegate for Biden or Sanders. That's a process. Bernie got to understand that process. And it's a real selective and detailed process. In 2008, the Obama campaign from the very beginning focused on the delegate process because we knew it all was going to come down to the

delegates who's committed to you? Who wants to be on your team at the end? And do you really feel like they can be elected? Okay, he is referencing the 2008 convention. Hillary Clinton was making the case, you know, she's the better candidate and she was trying to say that, oh, you know, the, they should overturn the will of the people to put me instead of President Obama now. That we said at the time that that was outrageous and ridiculous. We're saying it now. And the already actually obliged because President Obama didn't threaten them in the way that Bernie Sanders does now. But it's disgusting that you would use that as an example when Bernie would be in the position

that Obama was in 2008, even though it's not the same because Obama got the majority. But it's more like than the topsy-turvy analogy he's making there. Yeah, and it's a good thing that the superdelegates didn't listen to Hillary Clinton and flip the results. Obama won all of the presidential elections he ran in. Hillary Clinton didn't. So it looks like they went with the one that the people wanted. That was the safer choice in 2008. And look, did Barack Obama have a strategy where he was proactively going to the superdelegates to try to convince them? I'll trust him when he says that that's the case. Is that pragmatic? Is that wise? Sure. Is that the way that things should

be? No, it shouldn't be a consideration at all. They're going out there to convince the voters to support them, to donate their time and their money, their energy, their passion to their candidacy. They shouldn't then also have to go and have expensive dinners with super deliates who are super influential to convince them that if it comes down to it, hey, could you not flip on me and also at the same time flip off the voters and give it to someone else? And I will whine and die in you however is necessary to make sure that you don't do that. What part of a democracy is that?

And obviously, most people don't even understand this, they don't know about this because Because it is ridiculous, it shouldn't exist in the first place. We're gonna get into it in the next thing about the effort, the previous effort to get rid of superdelegates, but this should just, this should launch us into a second round of this, no matter what happens. If Bernie wins, if Bernie loses, the superdelegates should go. And I'm saying not contested convention, I'm saying if hypothetically he actually lost the election.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, we do have to take our first break though, but when we come back, we've got a little bit more on this with Elizabeth Warren tossing some bombs at last night's down hall. 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.

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Hello and welcome back. I'm gonna make one here and myself from yelling. I'm not gonna make it through this year, I don't think. I don't think. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about some of your members' comments. Oh, did you not know that if you're a member, you can send a member's comments and we'll read them. But again, you have to be a member, so head at t.t.com slash john or join, but John is also good. Or t-yt.com slash Emma, but whatever.

That's not a thing, it's just, it's gonna, it's got a virus. So anyway, not a cheetah, I'm not lying, says, Hello All, the Hill just reported that Bernie got Al Sharpton's endorsement. That's big ahead of South Carolina. What do you know? I saw Al Sharpton saying some nice things about Bernie over the last week. That's great. Thanks for the breaking news. Thank you. Not a cheetah, I'm not lying. So I don't know what species you are, presumably a mammal. Thank you for that breaking news. Okay, let's see. Toss a coin to your progressive candidate. That's a good reference. The thing is they literally would rather have Trump than Bernie, anything but ending the corporate donations. See, I understand that this is like the least popular position I have. I do think that they have convinced themselves that the right centrist will still win. I think they're 100% wrong, but I don't think they literally think. No, they don't. They don't. But that's, I think that that's more of a commentary on it being a subconscious.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's not actually what they think. I just don't think it's consciously what they think. Right, I agree with you. Yeah, you always should. Super Chats also came in with Per Thyron saying, TYT, be honest now, you've locked up Jank and Anna in order to make a revolution. They're in the basement, actually. I don't know if those two would be anti-revolution.

Yeah, I don't understand why they wouldn't want to be a part of it necessarily. Jank, I feel like would be like at the front lines. Yeah. Okay, so let's see. Fire Faye 83 says it's because the political elites, the pundit class, and the clowns at the head of the DNC actually hate and fear Bernie more than they're. do Trump. I like that way of putting it better, actually.

Okay. That their emotional objection to Bernie Sanders is more salient to them than to Trump. That's a good point. I will say, I think we got more TYT lives, super chats, and member comments about that story than almost anything else in literally months. That's awesome. Obviously it's something you care about, and you should, it's important, and we've got more actually.

So with that, why don't we jump into it? Warren is one of the, basically all of the candidates running for president, other than Bernie Sanders, who support a convention potentially giving the nomination to someone who did not earn it by getting the most votes and the most delegates. And so she was questioned about that at a town hall last night by a supporter of Bernie Sanders. And here's what she had to say. Can you explain why the will of the voters should not matter if no candidate reaches a majority of delegates? So you do know that was Bernie's position in 2016. Not necessarily, no.

He won 22 states, so he went to the convention. That was Bernie's position in 2016, that he should not go to the person who had a plurality. So, and remember, his last, his last play was to super delegates. So the way I see this is you write the rules before you know where everybody stands. And then you stick with those rules. So for me, Bernie had a big hand in writing these rules. I didn't write him. But Bernie did when we were putting together, they were putting together the 2016 platform

for the Democratic Convention. Those are the rules that he wanted to write and others wanted to write. Everybody got in the race thinking that was the set of rules. I don't see how come you get to change it just because he now thinks there's an advantage to him for doing that. Okay, so there are two possibilities coming out of that. Either Senator Warren is very mistaken about what actually happened between 20, 2016 and today, or the other option.

She wants you to be mistaken, so she's lying to you. She's doing what I think the most effective obfuscations do is it has kernels of truth, but it is certainly not the reality. Exactly, and look, through the course of this video, we're gonna walk through a couple of, let's just, as shorthand, we'll call them lies. A couple of the lies in that video that you just saw. So first I wanna show you a little bit of a sort of a mashup that Walker Bragman put together, it's a little bit of video from 2016 of what Bernie Sanders was actually

saying at the time. So you do know that was Bernie's position in 2016, that he should not go to the person who had a plurality. His last play was to superdelegates. A super delegate is thinking about going to you, but Hillary Clinton won their state. Presumably they should stick to Hillary. Look, there's not a rigid rule. But I think, you know, if you win, Hillary Clinton wins with 53% to the vote, she won Illinois by a point that took sure. But when a candidate, whether it's Clinton and myself, you know, she demolished us in Mississippi, you know, I think the superdelegates should support her in Mississippi. But when in states like Colorado and in many other states, Utah, et cetera, we win the overwhelming

majority of vote, I think those superdelegates should go with their state. You've made a distinction between superdelegates from states you won. So what you saw there was, look, he was existing in the side of the context of superdelegates being there, and there's more context we're going to add. But what he was saying was, if someone had an overwhelming lead in a state, they should get the super delegate support. He said specifically there, including if it's Hillary Clinton. So what he said is the super delegate should respect the will of the voters of that state.

And that has been twisted by Elizabeth Warren at the town hall, by people in the news in any number of articles into, eh, he didn't like it before, but now he likes it, to make him seem like a hypocrite when his stance that the voters should decide was exactly the same in 2016 and 2020. Yeah, so look, she's making her case. She's not going to win. And I think it's a huge mistake because she's being untruthful on her way to eventually losing. She'll probably not win one state, including her home state of Massachusetts.

And she, for a while, was the frontrunner for Bernie Sanders's vice presidential pick. Now, a lot of things can change. A lot of bad things are said in primary contest. Remember the very, very testy, Bernie, Jesus, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the primary contest in 2008, and then he made his secretary of state. So a lot of things can change leading up to the general election. But what are you doing? Why are you being the candidate that's against democracy?

and also you're misleading people to get there. The one kernel of truth is that there were hints from Bernie's team back in 2016 when they said, you know, Bernie's the best candidate against Trump. We can't afford to put forward a nominee who's polling so poorly against Donald Trump because he's a unique threat to our country. They've been proven right because she lost to Donald Trump. But they never went so far to say overturn the will of the people and make it so that Bernie Sanders is the nominee.

They were trying to make the best case that they can as Elizabeth Warren is attempting to do, but she's doing it through lying. And it's just, you can tell she gets her backup, like she gets aggressive when she's talking to that Bernie Sanders supporter because there's just something in her that it just doesn't sit, right? And she just, she's like, why, why are these Bernie Sanders supporters holding me to account? Because I was supposed trying really hard to straddle this line between progressive and welcoming in the establishment wing of the party and she's not able to do it because

there's too much of a schism there. And they don't like you either, Elizabeth Warren, you're selling out your progressive credentials for nothing, you're not gonna win, right? And again, as a senator legislatively, like talking about primaring her is like truly one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my life. If Bernie Sanders is president, she will vote everything through and get people to vote for him. She has so much power. And again, legislatively, top five, it's really hard to get a progressive, a true progressive in the Senate. It's not the House, that's easier.

But again, it's, I'm just saying that she's losing a lot of goodwill. Yeah, in terms of the vice president thing, I don't know, but I do know that if you subscribe to YouTube.com slash the damage report, M and I have video coming out this weekend, our top ten suggestions for who we should pick. Shameless plug. I will say there's at least one pick for me that's sure to anger you. So look forward to that. There's probably one pick from me. Might be my number one.

Yeah. That will anger people. Maybe. But watch the video before getting angry, maybe? Maybe we explain our reasoning. John is bombed. He's getting ratioed. Yeah, it's happened before it'll happen again.

So look, we talked about what Bernie was actually saying. And by the way, to people who, like we'll say, Bernie, so X person had Y position then, and now they have Z position now. You've changed. Why don't you have a standard? Like those people say that he's flipped, but they don't acknowledge that they're flipping in the opposite direction. So Elizabeth Warren is saying there that he wanted to be switched before, and now he doesn't.

Look at that. That's opportunistic. Okay, so what do you stand for? What do you think should happen? Because the thing is, Warren is actually available on video saying back then, that the will of the voters shouldn't be overthrown by the superdelegates. So it looks like if Bernie was shifting, we'd already shown you that he hasn't, then he's not the only one because she's shifting too.

Like why can't people just have a standard? I have a standard, the person with the most votes should win. That's a good reason to get rid of super delegates, the electoral college, a whole bunch of things that are fundamentally undemocratic. Now, in addition to the misinformation she was spreading about what Bernie was actually saying in 2016, I've also seen a lot of dissection of the process, where, whereby we got these rules, and she spread some misinformation there as well. So here is a bit from Jonathan Allen in NBC News.

Ultimately, the rules changes before this election were compromise, not exactly what Sanders wanted, but he's the only 2020 Democratic candidate who had a real hand in the process. His top advisors, including 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, 2020 campaign co-chair, Nina Turner, and former communications workers of America President Larry Cohen were members of the commission. So what she keeps saying, and many people keep saying, is that at the 2016 platform committee, they changed the rules on superdelegates and Bernie got what he wanted. But now he's got sour grapes and he doesn't want it anymore. That's wrong in multiple ways.

First of all, the rules weren't changed at the platform committee meeting and they weren't changed in 2016. They were changed more than a year later at the Unity and Reform Commission meeting, which we have both been at. That's what it was changed. By the way, both of those committees were overwhelmingly, I don't know, overwhelmingly. is the right word, but the majority were Hillary Clinton picked people. So again, in the end, Bernie wasn't the one who was dictating the process, and most importantly,

they didn't want superdelegates to exist at all. They tried to eliminate them, they were overruled, we ended up with a compromise to stop them from overthrowing the will of the voters, at least on the first vote. But if the Bernie supporters had gotten their way, they wouldn't exist now, and we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in. So if you're going to dredge up history, at least get one element of it right. And the chair of the committee was a Hillary Clinton person. The vice chair was a Bernie Sanders person.

I think that kind of says enough. He did not have a majority of people on that unity reform commission. Again, we were there and the elimination of superdelegates was one of the number one priorities of the Bernie Sanders people there. And they did not get what they wanted. So when you're trying to say Bernie was pro superdelegates in the process of 2016, that's rewriting history and rewriting it to your advantage, It blows my mind that she's going down, swinging like this, swinging wildly, swinging aggressively, and seemingly just burning up things, De Nara style in her wake up. Let's not go there, we're already angry enough.

Okay, yeah, but it's whatever, you know how I feel about it, it's just a terrible, terrible mistake and she's doing it purposefully, and you can tell when she's interacting with that Bernie Sanders voter, that it's just something that angers her inside of her because she knows she does not have the moral high ground. Yeah, yeah, and I just, again, how is this not coming up to debates, that Warren and all the rest are like, oh yeah, yeah, will of the voters, who cares about that? Let's overturn it. Every one of those same candidates, furious that after a popular vote that went to Hillary by

millions of votes, the electoral college overturned it. Remember how angry you were, how fundamentally undemocratic that was, the righteous fury you had, let's do that in the Democratic Party now. That's a good idea. That really buttresses your moral position going into another election where, hypothetically, the Republicans could win while getting less votes. Okay, with that, we're going to take a short break. You know why? So we have a surprise after this. That surprise is named Jerry. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay

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Hello and welcome back. What festive music to mark the arrival of J.R. Jackson. Is that the reason why? I mean, I would hope that that would actually be it. Yeah. He says that's why. So before we get back into it, and we're glad to have you here now, I did want to let you know of a few things.

One is, we have an affiliate program. Did you know about that? It's a way you can both spread the message of TYT, get more people involved in the revolution, and also make a little bit of money on an ongoing basis. We've currently got 751 TYT affiliates. You can go to TYT.com slash win-win to sign up. It's totally free to do. Some affiliates are making stickers to pass out, talking to people online at the gas station,

all kinds of great opportunities to get paid to do what you do anyway. Basically, you encourage people to sign up for TYT membership, and you get a cut of their membership dues, not once, but every single month that they're members. Seems like a pretty good win-win there. With that, let's talk a little bit about what you've been talking about. I saw a super chat from Kidaboot Forever who says, hey, John, please rest on Sunday. You've been working so much this week. I appreciate that.

Everybody has all over the building. But I'm not going to get much rest Sunday. You know why? Why? Edwin knows why. At the L.A. Convention Center. Bernie Sanders. Right, right, right.

But not just Bernie Sanders, public enemy, and Dick Van Dyke and Sarah Silverman, and I don't know, just stuff plucked right out of my dreams, like Harry Potter is going to be there, it's going to be awesome. Are you going to go as press or as an audience member? Oh, no, I'm just going to go. Oh, okay. I like a lot of people, and it's going to be a lot of fun. We're thinking about possibly getting drunk.

How much should it take us? It's free. It's Bernie Sanders. It's not Pete Buttigieg. You just go if you want to go. He wants you to go. I'm sure to be a lovely event. I'm gonna be trying to rest, but I can't because I'll be on the plane and then going immediately on another plane for Tuesday

I'm hoping for a surprise endorsement from someone, maybe appearance from, you know, like an awesome progressive Congresswoman, I mean person, we'll see, you never know, figures crossed there. But anyway, with that, we probably should jump back into the news. I want to give Jare a chance to catch up to M&I in losing their mind. I'm there. There you go. Okay, let's talk a little bit about this. Going to Super Tuesday, a lot of the candidates' teams have been all over the place for weeks, for months, laying the ground work for what's going to happen on Tuesday.

But not all of them have been doing that. Joe Biden apparently has been slacking off when it comes to the organizing. And so interviews with party leaders in half a dozen Super Tuesday states suggest that some of the same vulnerabilities that plagued Mr. Biden beginning in Iowa, so like subpar organization, limited outreach to local Democrats, and the late start to campaigning are holding him back now in states that next week will dole out a third of the total delegates in the Democratic primary. So look, he didn't intend to do particularly well in Iowa or in New Hampshire. He wanted to do well in Nevada, and in particular in South Carolina.

So I sort of get that they didn't put a lot of their resources into Iowa. But Super Tuesday is the thing. And apparently, there are a lot of people. This is not like the other candidate staff that's saying this. This is party leaders, some of whom probably support Joe Biden, but they're saying that he's not really showing up. Aside from fundraising, he hasn't campaigned in a Super Tuesday state in over a month, though he is planning to visit North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Texas, and California between

Saturday and Tuesday. So there will be some campaigning, but that's literally in the last four or five days. And he's like hoping that the momentum from South Carolina is going to be what carries him into Super Tuesday with some sort of success, South Carolina is like three days before Super Tuesday. It's not a ton of time for that success to trickle into actual votes in the many, many states they're going to be voting on Super Tuesday. And I wonder, so I've predicted that that, like you said, that you could get momentum, certainly, but that like how much time do you have to raise money, let alone to actually spend

it? But I think the wild card potentially is that South Carolina. is one of the first four states, more diverse than the others, certainly. So it is important. But I think there's a very real chance that the media is going to greet a Bejo Biden win. They're going to lose their minds. And so to the extent that the media can contribute to momentum, I think that they are 100% going to do that in a way that they have not so far.

Very rarely do they even acknowledge that Bernie Sanders won the first three, let alone that he's a front runner. I mean, Chuck Todd just like a week ago was saying he's not one of the first. the frontrunners. But if Biden wins in South Carolina, I don't think Chuck Todd is gonna be like, well, let's put that in the context of the troubles he's had so far. Historic, epic victory in South Carolina. It will be historic in that it'll be his first primary win ever.

That's why I don't have a ton of faith that's gonna happen. I mean, I just wonder though, if how much, okay, if you're living in California, Texas, I mean, we're going through all the Super Tuesday states, if you live in any of these states and suddenly Biden pulls off one in South Carolina, what the hell does that have to do with you? I just never understand this momentum talk. I get momentum in the fact that if he does something well and everyone, it's caught on with people, something that originates with him, not something that happens in another state. There's such a division of states that people in certain states take pride in not following

the lead of another state. No, we don't do that in California. Oh man, down here in Texas, how we do. There's no, oh man, I'm a Texan. Look what happened to South Carolina, Joe Biden won. I guess I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna follow South Carolina. It just doesn't really happen that way. And as you said, I think the biggest booze is potentially them saying, hey, Joe Biden just landed in South Carolina.

So then therefore, he must be landing everywhere else. But people have to see it. And I know we got some of the details the way people are a bit, I wouldn't even say disappointed. Just a little bit surprised. They're like, I haven't seen Joe Biden. I guess he doesn't really think, either he thinks that he's got this wrapped up in my particular state or he doesn't care to get it in my particular state. Yeah, I think it's just more of a subtle psychological phenomenon where people don't even realize. it, but the people who are an anchor to one candidate will respond because of the perception

of that candidate being a winner. So that's why the whole, that's why Bernie Sanders winning the first three contests was so important, even though the media won't repeat that he's a winner, but Joe Biden winning one state potentially, and then being talked about as a winner would be a huge get for him. But again, it's just not that much time before the next primary. I mean, an independent voter that switches over because of momentum like this. in one state, this type person that'll get into a line of a 45-minute line in the freeway instead of cutting around.

I'm just sorry, the people who do that, it's a lot of them, by the way, so maybe it actually will mean something. I never understand people who look at something and see how bad it could be and go, what everyone else is doing it, I guess I'll do it too. That seems like a five-year-old's mentality. I knew you were cutting me off, but anyway, let's give some more details. So Mr. Biden's on-the-ground operations are apparently easily dwarfed by both Senator Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, some party chairman and other party leaders said they hadn't heard from

Mr. Burden, he holds a burden, several of them, but Mr. Biden personally, a contrast with Mr. Bloomberg, and Mary Mancini, the chairwoman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, said on Monday that she hadn't heard from Mr. Biden's senior staff either. She said Mr. Biden had a natural constituency in the state, but added, quote, Biden might be taking those voters for granted. So just hypothetical, this is purely hypothetical. Totally hypothetical. What if we ended up with a nominee who took voters in certain states for granted?

What effect could that have? A little bit more, though. Examples, in California, Mr. Bloomberg has 24 offices and more than 300 staff members. Sanders has 23 offices and just over 100 staff members, according to their campaigns. The Biden office in East L.A. is the only one in the state, and his campaign declined to say how many staff members it had on the ground. So I'm assuming 1,000. They had one office. This is what happens when the campaign doesn't put its resources towards organizing.

It's California. Yeah, but they already know it's gone. It's Warren or Bernie, but it's definitely Bernie. Those are the two polling leaders here, right? And so that, but they care about, there was a report that Biden was spending a crazy amount on private jets from the money that he'd been raising. And so this is a campaign that doesn't value organizing. And it goes to show, and it's why he's tanking and failing miserably.

Well, it was going off the name, of course, hopefully the name recognition will be there. And I'm sorry, I'm still surprised that we're talking about this difference in money. He's got less than half of what Sanders got. Of course, everyone's got less of my Bloomberg's got. But that surprised me. This is the guy who's taking corporate money, of course. He's unapologetic, it's fine, whatever. We know that's what it is.

And we'll work in those realms as the establishment guy. So where's the money? I'm confused. They max out. They max out. The big donors max out when they can't give anymore. And so then Biden has to go try to find new rich people to donate him. But when you have someone who can raise money $10, $15 at the time, they're not maxing

out on their contributions. So that's why Biden's money is drying up. Can I give an example of how that manifests really fast? Biden's campaign announced on Wednesday that it's going to run television, radio, and digital ads. Some Super Tuesday states, it's a six-figure effort on the most important day of the election. By comparison, Mr. Bloomberg has spent $184 million just. on Super Tuesday ads, Tom Steyer has spent 37 million, Mr. Sanders has spent 14 million.

Sanders is being outspent by Mike Bloomberg by, what is that, like 13, 14, 15 times as much spending. Yeah, don't ask me to do math, but yeah. It's outrageous. This iPad has a Bloomberg ad on it right now. I'm kidding, that's not actually happening, but you can imagine. Well, that's, it's crazy. So again, this guy was a frontrunner, former vice president, has all this name recognition.

I still don't get, it's like, you have to travel, when you go to the grocery store, you know when we're talking about Totoino's pizza rolls. You can't, Biden at this point can't get the pizza rolls. He's got to get, like, the Kroger brand, like, pizza nuggets. I thought he can't. I thought the analogy was that, like, Totinos can coast on their name recognition, but an upstart pizza roll has to put in the work. He's got to buy the off brand, you know.

He's got to get the charms of luck rather than the lucky charms. And Bernie is the healthier option, the Annie's. pizza rolls. That's the ones I like. Organic. Pepperoni explosion. Okay. Let's go to one other story, though, also involving Biden.

Lawyers representing former President Barack Obama have been calling for a right-wing group to take down an ad running against Joe Biden that they say is using some quotes from Barack Obama in an incredibly dishonest way. We're to show you the ad and then tell you. what's really going on. Joe Biden promised to help our community. It was a lie. Here's President Obama. Plantation politics, black people in the worst jobs, the worst housing, police brutality rampant. But when the so-called black commitment came around election time, we'd all line up and vote the straight Democratic ticket. Sell our souls for a Christmas turkey. Enough. Joe Biden won't

represent us, defend us or help us. Don't believe Biden's empty promises. Okay, so here. There's the thing, look, full disclosure, I have endorsed the candidate. The candidate is not Joe Biden, it's Bernie Sanders. I don't support Joe Biden, but I do support the truth historically. And so what you just saw there was not Barack Obama talking about Joe Biden. It wasn't even technically Barack Obama talking. He was quoting someone from his 1995 memoir, Dreams of My Father. It was a conversation he had with a barber in Chicago about the brutal and cruel treatment.

that the black community had endured. He wasn't talking about Joe Biden in that ad. And so now a letter from his law firm says the ad's unauthorized use of Obama's name, image, likeness, voice, and book passage is clearly intended to mislead the target audience of the ad into believing that the passage from the audiobook is a statement that was made by President Obama during his presidency, when in fact a statement made, it was a statement made by a barber in a completely different context more than 20 years ago. I mean, that's just about as dishonest use of a code as I can imagine.

I'm so, so glad we have these campaign finance laws that will crack down on that kind of advertising. Truly, I mean, the Biden campaign should be outraged, and rightly so. And it's just gross that we have these lax laws that allow for unlimited dark money spending and ads like that, that can mislead people purposefully over and over and over again. And to have those kinds of ads on the airwaves in South Carolina, it just, It just does a disservice to Joe Biden in there, and I just think it's disgusting. I wonder how much is gonna work. I mean, money is, as we just talked about with Joe Biden, having problems with money and

actually having this ground game formed, money's precious in the election. Of course, yeah, this isn't one of the campaigns that made this ad, it's one that supports Trump. So, one of the effectiveness, the formation of this ad was not to convince anyone that's not supporting Trump or that would be opposed to Biden, to suddenly think, oh, I saw that ad where they used Obama's voice, and now I was totally on Biden's side. No, I'm not. I don't think it's very effective.

It's only affecting to this is galvanizing the hatred and stupidity of their own voters already that no matter what they do. They can skip that ad and the people who look at it and lop it up, we're gonna be on your side anyway because they're not critical thinkers. Older voters, though, may, in the primary, if that's airing now, older voters that see that? Like, you know, I just keep thinking Ben Dixon, I was talking to him on the majority report, and his mom was convinced Bloomberg was endorsed by Obama because she saw it in an ad.

And she's 70 plus. Like that really, they think if it's on TV, sometimes older people, they don't, you know, it can infect their minds. It looks like this to grong game that needs to happen. It's to specifically speak to older folks to make sure that whatever they're seeing, be like, so by the way, let's run through the ads you've been seeing. And let's make sure we don't believe all the craziness that comes out of them. Yeah, from the, by the way, the ad was run by the committee to defend the president.

Note that they don't say which president, but it sounds like it's the president. to defend Barack Obama when clearly, I mean, the fact that they might be sued by Barack Obama implies they don't have his back, actually. But yeah, and look, I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter, but the reason that I do get fired up about this is because his quotes are going to be taken out of context, and millions and millions of dollars will flow into ads to deceive people into thinking that the eventual nominee, which could be Bernie Sanders, said things that he didn't, or people talking about someone else could be talking about Bernie Sanders, and you can put as much money as you want, you can put

a nice sounding name on the group, and there's effectively no accountability. And that's, like, this is radio and TV ads. Like hypothetically, Barack Obama might be successful in getting it taken down. If this is running on Facebook, no chance, no chance. They're gonna run it over and over and over again. It's gonna reach tens of millions of people, and some of them will be fooled by it. Well, it'll definitely be online, obviously it's online, so there's not much. In Facebook, of course, the hotbed for stuff like that, that's why they would target it.

I know that's going to work out. Also, begin that ad said, along the lines, I'm going to paraphrase, he says he's helped our community. Does anyone believe the voiceover for that ad has anything to do with people that they're saying the community that's saying help? It just doesn't sound like the type of support as it maybe went for Obama. You can, there's that snarky tone to the voice where it has that anger and that the, what was the ad?

The Lincoln Project ads. They would say, Mike. Oh, no, Donald Trump does. It just doesn't have the tone of a community that's trying to get help for something that's been overlooked in all these throughout history, honestly. Yeah, yeah, that ad needed violin riffs. That would really class it up. Anyway, we're going to take a short break.

When we come back, we get a whole other hour news for you. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple. dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon