The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - February 6th, 2020

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

Bernie has won Iowa! Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola, 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. It's the Young Turks. That's what you're watching. You know it, though. You know it. How would you accidentally follow it?

upon this programming. Now one person's like, I wanted the great British bake off. Well, sorry, you're gonna get even better programming. You're gonna get news, you're gonna get laughs, you're gonna get memes, you're gonna get everything. We get informed through this show. Anna Casparian, John Ida Rolla with you. I'm super excited. Okay, I'm starting to get excited too.

You should be, you should be. I'm just really excited about today's show from beginning to end. In the post game, we will dunk on Dave Rubin. I haven't seen this video yet. That's one of the best videos. No, we're celebrating the wonderful content that he has provided the world. That's really what this is about. Why doesn't he have the Medal of Freedom yet?

I don't know, one day. The bar is a dropping. Well, we'll see, we'll see. But we have an update on the situation in Iowa. We have Donald Trump taking his victory lap, but also simultaneously showing how salty he is toward Nancy Pelosi. So there's a little bit of a cat fight going on there. And then later in the hour, we'll also discuss.

us mom jeans and how it relates to Mitt Romney. I know that sounds like it's a story that lacks substance and guess what, you're right. But it's gonna be fun. We need to lighten things up a little bit because there's a lot of serious news as well. Without further ado, let's get started. There are some strange updates when it comes to the Iowa caucuses. It's been several days now since the caucuses took place and after technical issues involving a new app that the Democrats decided to start using for the caucuses, and after releasing partial

results, little by little, now we have Tom Perez, the head of the DNC, calling for a recanvassing. So what does that mean? Well, on Twitter this morning, he wrote, quote, enough is enough, in light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan, and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass. Now, as soon as he tweeted that, people were wondering, well, what does that mean? Are they going to redo the caucuses?

Are they gonna do a recount? I guess there were so many people asking so many questions that Perez subsequently tweeted, a recanvass is a review of the worksheets from each caucus site to ensure accuracy. The Iowa Democratic Party will continue to report results. So it's different from a recount. A recanvass is a review of the reporting sheets, and there were inconsistencies that we talked about in detail on yesterday's show. Now Iowa Chairman Troy Price suggested that he is open to recanvassing, however the DNC doesn't

have the authority to order that. Price said that he would do it if there were any candidates or campaigns that demanded it. And sure enough, Pete Buttigieg demanded it. Probably because- Price the manager? Did he finally get through to them? He wanted to speak to the manager, he did do that. And I can understand why Buttigieg would want to do that, because as of this morning, with 97%

of the precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders had a slight lead over Buttigieg. Although like, it's right there. It's right there. It's a tie. So before we continue, let me just say, what matters, what counts is pledge delegates. And it appears that Bernie Sanders. Pete Buttigieg will end up with the exact same number of pledged delegates, 11 each. Now, who knows, maybe through this recanvassing situation, things could change, I will see.

But when it comes to the popular vote, meaning the number of people who voted for Pete Buttigieg versus Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders wins by 6,000 votes. I want to make sure that you all know that, that's what needs to be clarified. I care more about the SDEs, honestly. The SDAs don't matter at all, and the amount of time wasted pontificating about that, and I'm glad that Bernie Sanders called that out, is ridiculous, because it doesn't count at all. It means nothing. Yeah, so a few things.

So, like, Bernie won the thing where it matters to win. Even there, it's close. No one supports Bernie Sanders more than me, but I don't need to be like, no, he got it. Like, in the end, it's going to be basically a tie. Yes, he won, and by the way, his path going forward is a million. times better than Pete Buttigieg, which is why I don't care if Pete Buttigieg gets second. He's not gonna be the nominee anyway. But in the end, they're gonna get basically the same number of pledged delegates.

And even if it changes, it's gonna go up by one for Bernie and down one for him. It's nothing, it's like 3% of the delegates you need at the end of the day. I am so sick of Iowa. But in terms of that update from Perez, important things for people to understand, one, not just for this, but it's important that you understand going forward. The DNC does not control the internal workings of these primaries and caucuses. They do not, no. The individual state parties do.

And so I give that information to you, and you did earlier, so that when you see people spreading conspiracy theories in the future, understand that if there is corruption, it's in the parties in the states. It's not the DNC, they don't control everything. But second of all, when he's like, you know, considering the ongoing problems, I think we should have a recanvass. I don't know about you, but my reaction was, what have you been doing this whole time, if not recanvassing?

Exactly. It's to check the veracity, the authenticity. What were you doing? If not doing that, you've had the results for two days. So there have been so many different problems. And I'm gonna list those problems for you in just a moment. But first, a video that I particularly enjoyed today, it features Bernie Sanders asking a question from, you know, a salty sounding reporter, I'm gonna keep it real.

The reporter asked, you know, well, look, Buttigieg is saying he won. Why should we believe you when you say that you won? And here's what Bernie Sanders had to say. Mayor Pete's been declaring a win for days now. Why should people believe your victory speech over his? Because I got 6,000 more votes. And from where I come, when you get 6,000 more votes, that's generally regarded to be the winner. Did he wink?

No, okay. Bernie Sanders has never winked in his life. We're going to have to watch that again, guys. Sorry, but like that wink, what he said, the substance of what he's saying is great. I had originally only heard the audio version of it, but the video is better because look at the swagger. Look at that. Look at him. He's like, yeah, I'm wearing this snazzy blue sweater.

I'm looking good. I'm feeling good. You know what? Six thousand more votes. How about that? How about that? Who taught Bernie to wink? Who's even hanging out with?

Is this a Cardi B thing? No, you've, I don't know where you. Did Garty teach him to wink? I don't know where you've been, but Bernie's been cool, A.F. I know he's been cool, but he doesn't generally like, I got $6,000. Yeah, that's good. That was a great reaction. Now let's get into all the different issues that have come up from the Iowa caucuses,

because there are many. So I'm going to fast forward in the graphics. The trouble began with an app, we've talked about this extensively, that the Iowa Democratic Party used to tabulate the results of the contest, the app was rolled out shortly before caucusing began and did not go through rigorous testing. The problems were compounded when phone lines for reporting the outcomes became jammed with many callers placed on hold for hours in order to report outcomes. Party officials said the backlog was exacerbated by calls from people around the country, I'm sorry, the county who accessed the number and appeared intent on disrupting

the process. So people were purposely jamming the phone lines. You were right the first time, it's country. It was all around the country. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, but that must have been just a terrible mistake. Was it like they thought it was Domino's and they were calling in? Like, how did they, why would they act? Why would they try to do that? Well, the people want chaos. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also, like, it's posted on 4chan. And Fox has all, day been defending like this campaign by 4chan trolls to destroy it. So like they do 36 to 48 hours of look at these Democrats. They can't manage the system. It was chaos. Oh, right wingers did it on purpose? Ah, they're okay. These Democrats can't man. And the Democrats did definitely mess up

in a million different ways, but it was compounded by an organized effort of right wing trolls to try to make it impossible for people to get through on the night. Look, Fox News is going to do what Fox News is going to do. Yeah, right? That is, no, I'm glad you're pointing out. That is, no, I'm I'm glad you're pointing it out, sure, but it's not gonna shame them into behaving differently. What if I make a meme? Fox News and the Republican Party, for them, politics is one giant jello wrestling contest, okay? And so like Democrats will come in and they'll be like, I would like to now have a very classy debate about what's happening in the country.

And they're like, no, no, I'm wearing a white shirt, okay, I'm ready to get in to this giant kitty pool of jello and get dirty. That's what Republicans do. I'm sorry for the imagery, but I'm trying to say they're trashy, they're trashy. They're gonna do what they're gonna do, which is why it's so important for Democrats to stop with this incompetence and be on their A game. Don't roll out a stupid app that hasn't been tested weeks before the Iowa caucuses. And don't post the number publicly where people can access it.

I mean, clowns, clowns. But by the way, it didn't stop there, there was more. In several precincts, the vote or the total vote reported in the five, round of the popular vote exceeded the total vote in the first round, even though no one knew should have been allowed into the room between the two rounds. And in some cases, a viable candidate lost support from the first round to the final round, even though supporters of viable candidates in the first round were supposed to be locked into their first choice. So this is the kind of stuff that's been going on. Okay, incompetence, all sorts of weird

inconsistencies being reported. And so, look, you're right, they should have been doing the recanvassing immediately once they realize that there were issues and that there were problems. And just clearly to double down on that, I would love for them to do a press conference where they just describe what they have been doing. Right. What has filled the past few days? I want to know a lot of things.

I want to know, first of all, who made the decision to give the contract to this shady organization with shady funders, you know, the people behind the app essentially, how was that decision made, how many bids were included, and how did they even advertise the need for this app, right? How did this come about? I want to know that. I want to know the root of that problem. Who is losing their job as a result of it? Who's losing their job? I mean, I suspect no one. Well, I wouldn't be surprised, to be honest with you. Because people who fail our democracy over and over again seem to get promoted over and over again. And this is, in order to prevent something like this from happening in the future, you need

to find out exactly what went wrong and how it went wrong. But more importantly, you need to write this wrong in order to restore faith in our democratic process. Because what this does is it discourages people, it demoralizes people, and it also creates a situation where they hand Republicans all sorts of. content to attack Democrats on. And to try to drive them out of the process. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's demoralizing. So, one piece of good news, though, is that the Bernie campaign has reported a new giant hall from their fundraising. So let's give you the details on that. Senator Sanders raised $25 million in January. That's a lot of money for one month. That's a lot of money.

Just crazy. So he plans to use the windfall to avoid. to immediately buy $5.5 million in television and digital ads across 10 states at a time when some of his rivals are shifting or cutting their existing ad reservations. Now Joe Biden famously is bad at fundraising, which is incredible because he fundraises from big donors. But he doesn't have the type of support that Bernie Sanders does. Bernie Sanders does not take money from big donors or from super PACs. He only takes money from small dollar donors.

And that means, hey, he's got a lot more support. And as a result, he's able to raise a lot more money, even rejecting big dollar donors. The $25 million hall is more money than any other candidate raised in any full quarter during 2019. Yeah, that's why he's winking. Yeah, it's Greece with money. So that is an incredible amount of money, it is record breaking. The only thing bigger than it is Michael Bloomberg, as we discovered this morning, is spending 40% more than that every week on ads than his like Q3 or Q4 numbers, every week he just

throws it into ice cream ads and dog snout grabbing and stuff like that. That's right, and he hasn't really been challenged on his record because he hasn't had to answer for anything yet. We've got some a little bit later on. But we will focus on Mike Bloomberg quite a bit in today's show. And on the fundraising, so that was January, that was before the caucus. I am going to predict that this week will be the single largest week for donations to Bernie Sanders. I know that he had a lot in his first week.

He had a lot after he had the heart attack. But this, I think the frustration that drove, it's one of the reasons why I know everyone's freaking out about how this might have hurt Bernie. I'm not worried about that at all. The media has been 100% focused on Iowa for more days than it would have been under normal circumstances. And he's the winner, which means that people are seeing that. I just saw polls showing that the majority of voters are more likely to vote for Bernie after the Iowa caucus. So it hasn't hurt his chances. Everyone's interested in him.

He leads in that metric in terms of who has had an increased number of people who want to vote for them. And he is going to raise more money than Mike Bloomberg can spend in a day or two. Yeah, look, the big takeaway is that if you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, you cannot allow what's happening at this very moment to discourage you or make you feel demoralized. You've got to keep going out there, get active, do some canvassing yourself, make some phone calls. phone banking, because regardless of what happened in Iowa, first of all, he did pretty well in Iowa. Biden did terribly in Iowa. And more importantly, things are looking good for him moving

forward, especially in New Hampshire. So focus on the positive, keep fighting, don't get complacent. But just know that if we fight hard enough, we'll win. And I do have a poll question to ask you guys if you're interested in participating. It does have to do with Pete Buttigieg claiming victory prematurely. And so the poll question is, if it turns out Pete Buttigieg didn't win Iowa, will the media ever hold him accountable for falsely calling himself victorious? You can take this poll by going to tyt.com slash Iowa. TYT.com slash Iowa. You have two options there, yes or no. All right, let's move on to the rest of the news. So we have more news on Pete Buttigieg today that I can't wait.

to share with you. Pete Buttigieg has decided to completely move away from his so-called progressive labeling. And that makes a lot of sense because clearly he's not a progressive. And he does have a lot of affection for the financial industry, especially Goldman Sachs. One piece of evidence for that is that he just hired a former Goldman Sachs executive as his national policy director. Now this got pretty good coverage at CNBC, but I'm not seeing it reported anywhere. else, to be honest.

But it's important. CNBC highly critical, I assume? Actually, to be fair, CNBC did a good job with this story. Okay, good. They fact-checked the Buttigieg campaign, and so credit where credit is due. In terms of what that person is actually done in their past. Exactly. Yes, okay, that's true.

So let's get to those details. So who is this person who's going to be in charge of advising his campaign on national policy? Well, her name is Senal Shah, and she worked at Goldman Sachs from 2004 to 2007, those years are pretty relevant as a vice president, that's according to her LinkedIn page. Now, she then worked for Google as its head of global development initiatives from 2007 to 2009. So she's had some pretty big roles in many of the corporations that have had problematic histories in some cases. So she developed and managed Goldman Sachs's environmental strategy, according to Chris Meager, who's Buttigieg's campaign press secretary. She trained bankers to ask environmental questions, managed the grants to non-profits, and worked with

their real estate team on how to build more green buildings. That sounds good. That sounds pretty good, right? I mean, we like environmental stuff, right? Yeah, and green infrastructure, that sounds good. Well, CNBC did a little bit of fact checking. In contribution records filed with the Federal Election Commission from the period, Shaw listed her occupation at varying times as investment banker.

economist and vice president. Investment banker is a little bit different from, you know, some environmental activist within a corporation, just putting that out there. Now, in early 2017, Shaw also cheered President Trump's decision to hire a former Goldman Sachs executive by the name of Dina Powell. And so she is, you know, well, let's look at the tweet first. Great choice. Dina Powell will be great.

Trump hires another executive from Goldman Sachs. Okay, so she was hired as Deputy National Security Advisor. So Buttigieg's campaign also claimed that Shah worked at the Obama White House after the financial crisis. She doesn't advocate for companies. She cares about having the greatest social impact for people and finding new solutions to tough challenges that require the public, private, and social sectors to work together to find them.

That's why she's teaching at Georgetown after leaving the White House. So wow, that's big. You walk away from the White House, it's a pretty incredible job, you know, lots of prestige there. And you decide, I just want to be a professor, really want to connect with the students. But at Georgetown, Shaw was a professor and the founder of the Beek Center for Social Impact and Innovation. The center was founded with a $10 million donation from investor, Alberto Beek. A former Lehman Brothers investment banker who is now focused on mining, hotels, wealth management, telecom, and tech sectors.

Which one's the green one? Lots of philanthropic work going on there. Yeah, yeah, look, and I'm sure if you go back through a pass, there's some good stuff or whatever. But it seems like they're presenting an image of her past that isn't necessarily supported by a lot of evidence. And even if it was, like, I think that this hire, it shows what they're worried about and what they're not worried about at the Buttigieg campaign. Because for Buttigieg to have a path going forward, he could either try to maybe reassert his former, like he'd made some comments that were very supportive of Medicare for all like a billion years ago. It was two, but he's changed a lot since then. Yes.

He could do that, but you don't do that if you're hiring Goldman Sachs people. You understand full well what message that's going to send to people. And so if you're doing that, it gives us a pretty clear signal about which path he is going to try to go for. And it is very much the one that Biden is receding from right now. You can and indeed should hire people from Goldman Sachs if your fundraising strategy is going to be incredibly reliant on rich donors and from Wall Street specifically. If you're doing that, then you're not worried at all about the appearance that you're hiring people who theoretically might have been around that whole thing right before the economy collapsed. Right. I think that's a great point. It's what a former Goldman Sachs VP represents at a time when wealth and income inequality is at an incredible, like, you know, you see this disparity between the rich and the poor in America. And that gap continues to widen. People are very much concerned about the inequality and how you can redistribute the wealth in the richest country in the world. And Pete Buttigieg is like, like, yeah, you know, like the progressive thing, I, it didn't come across as authentic

because no one's buying it. So this Biden guy, not doing so well, maybe I can go ahead and appeal to some of his voters. So he's made a political calculation here, but it's important to keep in mind that on one hand, you have a candidate who has been consistent in fighting for the same issues, the working class, his entire political career. And then on the other hand, you have Pete Buttigieg, a 37-year-old who's inexperienced, who was a failure as mayor of South Bend, the racial tensions in that county became much worse

under his leadership or lack of leadership. And to see him just kind of have this like fluid political identity, depending on what's convenient for him in that moment, speaks a lot of who he is and what he represents. So we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we have more news for you, including some of those Mike Bloomberg's stories that we promised you, and there are some issues when it comes to conflicts of interest within the

DNC. We'll share those details and more when we return. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich

and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode, of of 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 not learn 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. Welcome back to the Young Turks, Anna and John with you. So a few announcements, programming announcements. As we all know, the primaries are all, we're already in. Iowa, the caucuses happened or didn't happen. I don't know.

It's been a mess. Something happened. The New Hampshire primary will take place next week, and as always, you can expect to UIT to provide special coverage of that. So tune in, I will not be in town, so I shouldn't be on that graphic, but it's okay. The panel is going to be great. We're going to have Jank, John, Nando, oh, this is about the debate, I'm sorry. So the primary coverage is happening next week, but this is actually a plug for the debate

that's happening tomorrow night. Okay. You're here for that, right? I am here for that. Are you sure? I am. Okay. I've been like a weird, giddy, happy mood. I don't know why. I know. Okay, so Friday, February 7th, that's tomorrow. Coverage starts at 8 p.m. Pacific time, 11 p.m. Eastern. And on the panel, you can expect me, John, Jank, and Nando. So make sure you check that out. It'll be lots of fun. I'm really looking forward to it. It is. You know what makes sense? Three hour debate on Friday night. That makes sense. Thanks, D.N.C. Yeah. But, you know, would make it fun? We all hang out together. I'm looking forward to it.

You guys. We're going to drink beer. We are? I don't know. Okay, let's start now. And then one other programming note for all of you. Next week, TYT will be celebrating its birthday. So February 14th is our birthday.

That's when TYT started back in 2002. And so we'll be celebrating. You can tune in live at 6 p.m. Eastern Time 3 p.m. Pacific at TYT.com slash live. on February 14th. Okay, that is a great photo. I love it. Can you put it up again? That photo shoot that I believe it was Cassie, it was at the Sweet 16.

It's one of my favorite photo shoots. What is Jake's expression in the photo? Like I love our expressions, they go together. I'm not sure what he's thinking. You look good in that picture. We all do, we all do, but thank you. Except for Jake, I guess, yeah. No, he still looks good.

No, he does, he does. He's just not sure if he looks good. I don't know. So a few member comments and then we'll move on. and then we'll move on. Sheik Yer Buttigieg writes in and says, DNC, we'll keep recounting until someone other than Bernie is the winner. Crunch those numbers again, crunch them.

Yeah, Roger Stone's missing forehead says Bernie winking must be an instant meme. Totally agree. Oh, we gotta clip that out. I know, it's so good. I bathe in a very stable geniuses tears says jello wrestling, no, this is straight mud wrestling. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, best case scenario, it's mud. Yeah, and Callista says, oh, for the love of no more government sacks, I totally agree with you.

Look, even if she was an employee at Goldman Sachs that didn't do anything wrong ever, just the optics of it is a bad idea. And the fact that he doesn't care what it communicates to the electorate says something about him. Yeah, look, and I think it's great that assuming this is who she actually is, that you You wanna get someone who has been working and green tech and all that stuff, that's great. I would argue there are probably people like that that didn't work on Wall Street. Like you can't, like campaign staff, their staffs in different ways.

You don't have to go as like a first recourse, it's gonna be Wall Street, we'll hopefully find some good people at Wall Street, but it's gonna be Wall Street one way or the other. There are people, academics and activists and all that stuff that have on the ground experience in these issues. Exactly. And that we don't have to worry about their connections to big money and all. all that stuff. Exactly, yeah. And the connections really do matter. Because even if she's no longer working there, and even if she never did anything wrong in her, you know, tenure at

Goldman Sachs, the fact of the matter is she likely still has a lot of friends and connections at Goldman Sachs. And if she's advising Buttigieg on national policy, well, is she going to advise him on things that are incredibly friendly toward Goldman Sachs in the financial industry? Of course. All right, well, let's move on to a billionaire who is trying to buy his way to the nomination, Mike Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire Democratic candidate who's buying his way up the polls, has apparently deep ties to the DNC. And this is a problem that for some reason, no one seems to care about, no one seems to cover.

It did get some coverage over at Sludge, a great publication that I highly recommend. And Sledge is reporting that his surrogates, his current surrogates, have seats on on the DNC Rules Committee. So let's get into the details on who these people are and how bad this conflict of interest really is. As the National or as the Democratic National Committee establishes procedures for the Democratic Presidential nominating process, two members of DNC Rules Committees simultaneously work on the campaign of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Michael Nutter, the former mayor of Philadelphia who is a member of the Standing Rules and Bylaws Committee, was selected. by Bloomberg in December of 2019 to serve as his campaign's national political chair. Nutter was nominated by former DNC Chair Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz in 2013. Oh, good. I know, and he has served on the Rules Committee since 2017. How is that not a conflict of interest, especially when you consider that the DNC just changed the rules in order to accommodate Mike Bloomberg in the debates?

Coincidence. Yeah, so look, you can go too far with this. Obviously, if someone is involved in the DNC, they're going to have some connections to some politicians. I totally get that. They shouldn't. Any connections at all? No, no, no.

They work in politics. They're going to. I'm saying they can't be surrogates for a candidate that's running right now. Right. They can't have like- connections, though. Like- I can mean anything. I'm saying, obviously, there's going to be something.

They've worked in different areas. But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, her connection, at the time in 2016, her prior connections to Hillary Clinton were way too strong. It implied that there would probably be some coordination. Obviously there was. That clearly goes beyond it. You can't be a surrogate for one of these candidates because that's not just like you were affiliated, you served in a board together. You're an active booster for their candidacy while you're setting the bounds that their candidacy will exist in. That's clearly not acceptable.

You know how we talk about the revolving door of politics all the time, right? So you'll have, let's say, a senator who passes all sorts of, let's say, Goldman Sachs friendly legislation. And then when he decides to retire from being a senator, he'll go ahead and work as an executive at Goldman Sachs, and then he gets paid handsomely for that, right? Now imagine a U.S. Senator doing both at the same time. I mean, it's a little different, but not really, not by much. It's a conflict of interest when it happens in this revolving door of politics. It's even worse though when it's happening in the context of what's supposed to be a fair democratic process. And two things are happening simultaneously.

You have people who are working on Mike Bloomberg's campaign and at the same time serving on DNC committees that make up the rules for how to proceed in this primary process. Well, how about as a compromise? Okay, we won't freak out about those connections so long as no big rules have been changed that benefit Bloomberg. Wait, damn, we missed it. Yeah, rules have already been changed. But look, we're not even done.

Nutter is only one person who's serving in the DNC and Michael Bloomberg's campaign simultaneously. Alexandria, Alexandra Rooker, a Rules Committee member and Super Delegate from California, was hired as a senior advisor to the Bloomberg campaign last month. Rooker, who was previously a lobbyist for the Communications Workers of America, is a vice chair of the California Democratic Party. Now, DNC Chairman Tom Perez nominated Rooker to serve as vice chair of the 2020 Democratic National Convention Rules Committee.

at a DNC executive committee meeting last weekend. How is this okay? How is this okay? It's multi-layered. It's the involvement on the inside of what the rules are gonna be like, then working with the campaign to understand and potentially exploit those rules and then crafting the rules to potentially benefit that person, and then at the end of the day, potentially voting to literally make that person present as a super delegate.

That's amazing. They call that synergy in the business world. This, I think this should be brought up in the upcoming Democratic debate. It's not going to be brought up by the moderators, they don't care. I would be shocked if the moderators even know. But this is a great opportunity for a candidate, I'm hoping Bernie Sanders, to say, look at how deep this corruption runs. We have, you know, I don't know if he's gonna be on the stage tomorrow night.

No, I don't, but I believe he's gonna be on the next one. On the next one. Or hypothetically would qualify and almost certainly well. Well, I would still bring it up. And I would say, you know, we have a problem with corruption in this country and it doesn't end with legalized bribery. Here's an example of the corruption that takes place even in our own democratic process. And bring it up because the American people deserve to know about how this giant conflict

of interest is taking place right now. Yeah. And it's also, it's great synergy with the Iowa caucus say, you know, this Iowa caucus has shown to a lot of people that the faith that they might have had in the process isn't necessarily justified and we do have to be worried about who is actually running this thing on the national level and at the state level. And if there's obvious conflict of interest anywhere there, we have all the more reason to be worried about it. And what do you know, it's there? Now, he's not on the stage right now, but thanks to a last minute rules change,

he'll be around soon. We're going to talk more in the future, but I just want to point out the connections between the DNC. Mr. Sanders, your time is up? Your time is up, Mr. Sanders? No, I don't know. Yeah. But you know how it is. As soon as you start saying something that makes sense, they'll cut you off. Exactly, but people are primed, I think, to understand how delicate this process is. Delicate from the point of view of you actually want to get to mean something and be run in an equitable fashion. And so I think bringing up these sorts of things would be incredibly timely.

Definitely. One other issue that I feel is important to bring up is that there was quite a bit of money donated to the DNC right before Bloomberg decided to run. And Bloomberg, according to Sludge, donated $320,000. to the DNC on November 19th, 2019, in three donations of $106,500 as well as $800,000, that same day to a joint fundraising pack between the DNC and state Democratic parties. It was actually Bloomberg's first donation to the DNC since 1998. Gee, I wonder why he decided to donate so much money to the DNC right before he decided

to start running. And we now go to Jason Johnson on how he's still not an oligarch. Oh, no, we don't have them. It's insane. It's insane. The many layers of connections, the, like, even if he had nothing with the DNC, no contributions, no people serving, his ability to spend, you know, $7 million a week or more, that would be enough to be worried.

But his obvious influence over the party infrastructure, it could, like, Russian oligarchs could learn something from Michael Bloomberg and might be in real time. Well, look, if you're feeling discouraged, stop because that's the last thing you should feel. You should feel empowered and you should feel strong and you should fight because we got the people on our side. We got the issues on our side. And this is a good example of it. So I want to move on to this next story that has to do with Mike Bloomberg's ideology, what he actually represents what he stands for.

In a 2016 interview that was discovered by journalist Walker Bragman, Michael Bloomberg, insulted the intelligence of various groups of people, including young voters who are supportive of Bernie Sanders. Take a look. The solution to our problem is to improve education, not to try to penalize people because they are successful. If you don't have successful people, you're never going to have the wherewithal to help those who are not. We've tried socialism. It doesn't work. And I'll leave you with a thought. There was a guy, Bernie Sanders, who would have beaten Donald Trump, the poll show he would have walked away with it. But Hillary Clinton got the nomination for a variety of reasons.

What did Donald Trump stand for? He stood for something he called it democratic socialism. And the young people, I don't mean to knock young people, I wish I was one again, but young people listened to Donald Trump, to Bernie Sanders, and they said, yeah, democratic. That's good. Socialism. Yeah, that's that social media stuff. Because our kids no longer learn civics in school, they no longer study Western history, they no longer read Western literature. We are trying to change and dumb down the system. And if you don't know what happened in the past, you're going to have to relive it. That was one of the dumbest statements I've heard someone make. He dumbed down the system.

And what's ironic is he's attempting to call young voters dumb. And what he fails to understand is that it's not about learning civics in our public schools. In fact, history classes and civics classes are purposely narrow in what they teach students. But I think with the internet, people are able to, especially young people, are able to really look at other countries, other systems. and see what works, what doesn't, do a true analysis and comparison between what we're doing, what other countries are doing, and what we can do to improve. And so to insult the intelligence of young voters and make it appear as though they don't know what socialism is and they confuse it with social media is ridiculous.

But more importantly, he didn't get challenged on this, but he said, we've tried socialism, it didn't work. Really? What are you referring to when you say that we tried socialism and it didn't work? because Social Security is a socialist program, and it's tremendously popular, so popular that every time politicians try to cut funding for it, they get met with a great opposition because Americans want you to keep your grubby little hands off of Social Security. Same with Medicare.

Those are socialist programs. But, I mean, it doesn't stop there. There are many socialist programs in this country. Twitter, TikTok, MySpace, great socialism media platforms. It's just so, I mean, he's so dumb and yet he ironically tries to make young people out to be the dumb ones. No, imagine like, so since the 2016 election, the DSA's membership has, I don't quadrupled more. They have a billion more, like, imagine someone like, it's like, hmm, the DSA, oh, it's something about social media and they sit and meeting after meeting and six months later, they're like, when are you going to talk about Instagram? Like, you think that's like the surge of new activists and the candidates all over the country

and the people canvassing and working on local issues and all of that is that they've been bamboozled? I mean, look, the only time a discussion about social media and socialism takes place is when there's a discussion about possibly turning it into a public utility. Yeah. So I assure you young people know what they're talking about when they mention socialism. Who is more aware and tapped in than activists like people who would have in the past couple of years entered the DSA? First of all, also, if we're talking about who knows the history and about different systems and stuff, these are people who, for fun, read political philosophy books and political history books. It's exactly the opposite of what he's describing.

And then one other point I wanted to make about that clip, you know, in the beginning, he talks about how Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump. So he concedes that. Remember, this video is from 2016. And so he starts off by admitting something that's been proven in polling, that's been proven in polling that takes place right now, right, in this election. And then he realizes, oh man, I'm messing up. I'm giving this self-professed, you know, democratic socialist too much credit. Let me go ahead and make his supporters out to be dumb.

But it's not gonna work, right? So if that's the strategy he's going to try to use, have at it. I don't know if it's going to work out well for you if you're going to insult voters. But by the way, he also insulted Midwesterners, which you're about to see in this next clip. I don't know how many you're familiar with the bathroom issue in the United States. Anybody know what I'm talking about? If you want to know is somebody a good salesman, give him the job of going to the Midwest and picking a town and selling to that town. the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in the locker room with their daughter.

If you can sell that, you can sell anything. I mean, they just look at you and they say, what on earth are you talking about? And you say, well, this person identifies his or her gender as different than what's on their birth certificate. And they say, what do you mean? You either born this or you're born that. And, you know, I will say in our prison system in New York City, we have to have the policy policy. When you walk in, you know, drop your trousers. You go this way, you go that way. That's it, because you can't sit there and you can't mix things in a jail. That's a practical case of where you have to make a decision. But it's so many things that we are nuanced

and the issue, the social issues that we're very proud of of achieving aren't believing, aren't believed by the vast bulk of the people. So first and foremost, he is incredibly insulting to the trans community. There's no question about that. And then, I mean, he managed to insult everyone in that statement because he goes after the trans community and refers to a trans woman as a man with a dress on, which is disgusting right wing language. But you can expect that from a right winger.

That's what Bloomberg is, he was a Republican until like yesterday. But more importantly, his tactic in insulting voters, potential voters, is a disaster, which I'm actually very giddy about, because if you wanna do that, have at it, I don't want him to win the nomination. This is what Biden does in a way, like he decides to antagonize potential voters. And this is what he did with, this is what Bloomberg's now doing with Midwestern voters. Like, you know, we're nuanced and we understand things, but you know, these people in the Midwest, You're dumb, they don't understand anything.

That's like a good marvelous Ms. Maislain pressure right there. We are nuanced, I didn't get much nuance off of him. I didn't get any understanding. I don't think that Midwesterners are the only problem in this issue. I think that he comes at it from a really bad direction. And also I think, like if you want to get an idea of what a person's movement would be like, if they had a movement, we know Bernie Sanders' movement, he is, he has. lifted up and defended both the rights of and the future economic and social interests

of any number of different groups, that's his movement. Bloomberg is screaming to you, I am not going to try to push anything new on anyone who I don't think already agrees with me. I'm going to run the softest milk toast easily accessible campaign ever. I'm not going to try to change anything in society. Like Obama sort of had to be moved on same-sex marriage, for instance. Okay, if that had been Bloomberg, he's telling you, well, you can't. You can't do that because then you're gonna lose Midwest or anything.

You don't wanna rock the boat or anything. And so if people are already doing well, if you have an individual, they're already doing well, then maybe he's your man in terms of like the stock market or something like that. But if you have been victimized, if you have been attacked and targeted by past administrations, he's not gonna care about you because you're a political liability hypothetically. Definitely, definitely. And I think that he's a target rich environment, if he were to, God forbid, when the Democratic nomination.

Yeah. Because, I mean, look, his big gay ice cream ad is, that's all you really need, right? But Trump, remember, he can go ahead and point to corruption and legalize bribery, even though he's exploited that system himself, even though he's a corrupt politician, even though he's broken the law while in office, it doesn't matter, nothing sticks to him, right? But when it comes to Bloomberg and when it comes to Democrats, somehow Trump is able to, to demonize his political opponents for the very behavior that he engages in. Yeah. And so I just see Bloomberg as a target rich environment. I don't think that he has

the ability to win the Democratic nomination, but he does have a lot of money. Yeah. And he's been pumping out ads all over the country. And he's been able to experience this rise in the polls from doing absolutely nothing in campaigning. Yep. All he's done is raise money. You know he hasn't raised money. He's self-funded because he's a billionaire. But he's going out there and he's just putting money into ads. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, I believe for historical perspective, although many people might even remember, the Spectre in the 90s, there was Ross Pro, who was like this rich guy who self-funded, he ran twice. He spent, I believe, check me, I believe he spent $70 million. Wow. That's like eight days of Bloomberg. And that was a national story for

years was his self-funded campaigns. It was nothing. Tom Steyer has already blown him away in terms of the funding. But lastly on this topic, like I just imagine, like if you're a trans American and you're looking at this and you're thinking, God help us if he ends up being the candidate, that I have Trump who's like actively trying to earn votes off of attacking me, taking away my rights, demonizing me and all of that, supported by right wing media that is more and more hyper-focused and obsessed on trans people on a daily basis. And then who is the person who I'm supposed to look to as an alternative?

It's someone who sees me as something that should be hidden. Like, maybe you have the right thoughts, but don't ever vocalize them. Don't talk about these people, don't advocate for them, because you might turn off someone that you've never even met. And that's not what a leader would do, right? Yeah. Well, we got to take a quick break. Use the hashtag TiT Live to tweet to us during the break.

We'll read some of them when we return. And when we return, we'll also share some stories about Donald Trump losing his temper with Nancy Pelosi. That's always fun. And the attacks against Senator Mitt Romney for voting to convict Trump on one of the articles of impeachment, it's just, they're so vicious toward him and it's insane. So we'll share that with you and more when we... At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Come back. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this. free segment. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. Super Chat comment from Andrew says Bloomberg had his taxes cut with, taxes cut with education

or education cut. So I'm guessing he cut funding to education to get tax cuts. So he has zero rights to criticize a problem he's the cause of. Yeah, it's true. I mean, like, I love when candidates or just people in general, like start criticizing young people and making them out to be ignorant because they aren't getting the proper education. Like, they're not getting the proper civics lessons. They're not allowing prayer in school.

Like, I see stuff like that online all the time. And I'm just like, prayer in school is not going to teach people anything, okay? If you actually care about educating people, first of all, not everyone is in the same religion. But we're hoping someday. Yeah, anyway. Well, how about this? How about, you know, I'm worried that these kids just aren't learning anything. That's why I'm announcing free four year public education is one of the signature proposals

of my candidacy. No? Now you must want to keep it the same? No, they don't care about educating people. They want to reserve education for a certain group of people, especially if they get to cut their taxes while doing so. Kate Nix says, we've tried socialism and it doesn't work unless you're rich, that's true. I mean, we have all sorts of socialist programs for rich people, including federal funding for research and development for companies and corporations.

Because oftentimes, and people don't know this, venture capitalists don't have any interest in being risky with their money. I mean, in some cases they do, and they'll put a ton of money in companies that they shouldn't put a ton of money into, like we work for instance. But oftentimes when it comes to, let's say, research and development for new pharmaceutical drugs or new technology, the government is willing to take risks that venture capitalists aren't willing to take. And no one ever has any problem with tax dollars being spent on those types of things, right?

You know, to help the wealthy. And then Don Guy in the member's comment says, you guys look like the cover of a struggling garage band's first album in that photo. Jank is definitely the drummer. I think you're referring to, oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, that would be a great band. Come on. You're holding a microphone, I think? No, it's champagne.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not a struggling garage band, but sometimes a financially struggling digital network. That's true. I wouldn't listen to that band, but not because of the band, but because it would be music. Yeah, that's true. You don't like music. And then let me tell you guys about our affiliate program.

So as you know, we are signing up some affiliates to help us sell membership. And if you are interested in helping this show, keeping us independent and sustainable, this is a great way to do it. So far, we have 646 TYT affiliates. And you can learn more about how to become one by going to tYT.com slash win-win. This will help to keep progressive media live and well during an incredibly important impeachment year. So please check it out. go to tyt.com slash win-win.

Let's talk about Trump and Romney. So there is some updates on what happened after this impeachment vote, which of course has acquitted Donald Trump. So Donald Trump is going after Senator Mitt Romney pretty aggressively because as we know, Mitt Romney is the only Republican senator who voted to convict Donald Trump on one of the articles of impeachment, the abuse of power charged. Now, keep in mind that Romney gave a detailed speech on the Senate floor explaining why he made his decision. He did talk about his religious beliefs and the importance of maintaining our constitution

and protecting the separations of power. And Donald Trump's not interested in any of that. In fact, he goes into the national prayer breakfast holding a newspaper. and get a load of what it read. Two different newspapers, one from Washington Post, the other from USA Today, both have a giant headline indicating that Trump was acquitted in the Senate. Now, this is what we all expected. We knew that the Republican senators were going to cover up for Donald Trump's crimes.

And it's important to hold them accountable for that. And Mitt Romney had a little bit of a backbone. He realized that, hey, you know what, it's not good enough to say that what Donald Trump did was wrong, but I'm not gonna do anything about it, which is what every, every other senator did, every other Republican senator did. He decided to convict him, vote to convict him when it came to abuse of power. And so Trump is not happy about that. So he decided to go after both Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during his speech

at the National Prayer Breakfast. And I just want to remind you, the National Prayer Breakfast itself is an incredibly shady operation that has little to nothing to do with religion. But it does have a lot to do with, you know, lobbying. with foreign governments. Just check out Jonathan Larson's reporting on that. Without further ado though, here's Trump's speech at this shady event. I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.

Nor do I like people who say, I pray for you when they know that that's not so. So many people have been hurt. And we can't let that go on. I would argue that the people who have been hurt the most are the individuals who felt that it was their duty to speak out against his criminality. They testified in the House impeachment investigation, and they were retaliated against as a result. There were members of Donald Trump's own administration who spoke out against him, testified against him.

Those people have been hurt. Our constitution has been hurt. The whole notion of law and order has been hurt. Donald Trump talks about people getting hurt and the only person he's really thinking about is himself. But he's still in power because he has succeeded in getting almost every Republican lawmaker to help cover up his crimes in office. And it's disgusting.

Yeah. What a weird, like for a prayer breakfast to stand up and like he attacks Romney, he attacks Pelosi. It's like it's like he thought he was invited to festive dinner and it's the airing of grievances. Or like, or is it maybe just a Christian thing that I don't know where it's like the vow of revenge is how you close the speech? Like we can't let it happen. That you have to put in the context of the people who are walking around on his side during the impeachment hearings, like threatening reporters with revenge. Stephanie Grisham this morning was talking about how they're gonna be like they're gonna be going after people, he's got his enemies list.

Like he is hot for vengeance and that is it right now. That's all he knows. But this is also, we just have to mention, I know everybody knows it, but it's a national prayer breakfast. He doesn't believe in any of that stuff. He's using it as cynically as any politician ever has. He likes two Corinthians, but that's about it. When you ask him, is he an Old Testament guy, a New Testament guy, he's like,

Both? Like, he can't even fake it, that's how little he cares about Christians Christ of the Bible. Well, listen, we don't believe in just simply accusing people of things on this show. We always have receipts to back up what we're saying, and I'll show you those receipts in just a moment. Okay. But before I do, Alex from our members section writes in and says, the man who claimed to be chosen by God doesn't like people who use faith as a crutch.

And so remember, it really got under his skin when Nancy Pelosi said that she was praying for Trump. Now we all know that she's not actually praying for Trump. Trump knows it. But it was great that she said that because it got under his skin. And so that's one of the people he was referring to in that statement. And by the way, Pelosi did also respond to Trump's national prayer breakfast speech. Here's a little bit of that in the next clip.

This morning the president said when president people use faith as an excuse to do, I I don't know if he said bad things, but whatever he said. It was just so completely inappropriate, especially at a prayer breakfast. So he can say whatever he wants. He can say whatever he wants, but I do pray for him, and I do so sincerely and without anguish. You know, gently thus the way I pray for everybody else. I thought what he said about Senator Romney was particularly without class. to go into the stock market and raising up his acquittal thing and mischaracterizing other people's

motivation. He's talking about things that he knows little about, faith and prayer. So look, I only have one quick comment to make about Pelosi's speech today. There are things that she purposely does to get under his skin, and it works. And while I like it, I appreciate that, it goes back to the argument that I've been making about the aesthetics of resistance versus actual resistance. Getting under his skin is fun and it's entertaining, but if she did that in addition to fighting him legislatively, then we're having a conversation.

Arguably better. A much, much better conversation. Because she does know how to fight. We've seen her fight freshman progressives. She does it aggressively, but when it comes to voting along with Donald Trump's military budget, I mean, we've been over this, I feel so repetitive, but it's important. She helps him pass, you know, his rebranding of NAFTA, and that gives him something to campaign on.

Why would you help him with any type of legislative win? Why would you help him when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy? Why? Why would you hand over $4.6 billion, essentially a blank check for Trump's border security without securing protections for the migrants that he's caged at the border. So those are issues that you can't just forget about because Pelosi does something, you know, devious during one of her speeches. Or salty or whatever.

Or salty. And I want to celebrate those moments. But those moments, really, when push comes to shove, mean little. What matters is how you're fighting him policy-wise. And that's just not coming to fruition right now. Okay, so go ahead, John. Yeah, just super fast. Finally, on what Trump said about Romney, it was such a weird statement to say people using religion to cover for something that they know is wrong. So in his mind,

or at least what he wants you to believe, is that Mitt Romney's voting against him, even though Mitt Romney somehow knows that what he's doing is ethically and religiously, morally wrong. But all of the obvious, like, incentives are for you to go along with Trump if you're a Republican, electorally in terms of fundraising, jobs after you leave elected politics, there's almost no obvious gain in that, except if we were to assume that at least part of it is what Ronny says it is, which is his religious faith. For what other possible reason? Like you could say, oh, no, Mitt Romney has Trump derangement syndrome.

Okay, well, then in that case, he doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong. The hypothetical that he's sketched out is nonsensical in any scenario. Mitt Romney, look, I, of course, disagree with Mitt Romney politically, ideologically, on a number of different things. However, I don't believe that voting to convict Trump on the abuse of power charge was something that he did because it was self-serving or selfish. I think that it actually did take a bit of a backbone in order to vote that way. He was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump on at least one article

of impeachment. Yeah. And regardless of what you guys think about him, I give him credit for that. Because he is being attacked viciously by his own party right now. And knowing that he's safe for the moment when it comes to his political career, he had an obligation to vote the right way, and he did. So with that said, I do want to go to this video that J.R. Jackson put together. It's one of his infamous J.R. rated videos.

And it's a response to Donald Trump claiming that he hates it, hates it, when people use religious religion for their own political gain. Take a look. I don't like people who use their faith as justification. Two Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians, 317. That's the whole ball game. You know, my mother gave me this Bible, this very Bible, many years ago. Most importantly, I brought my Bible. Okay? We're the Spirit of the Lord, right?

I don't like people who use their faith. And what one or two of your most favored Bible verses are in a lot. I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal. Again, I want to thank the evangelicals. I will never let you down. I have great relationship with God. I have great relationship with the evangelicals.

In fact, nationwide, I'm up by a lot. leading everybody. I don't like people who use their faith. The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics. But I saw this and I said, I have to bring it and just show it. I like to be good. I don't like to have to ask for forgiveness. And I am good. I don't do a lot of things that are bad. I try and do nothing that's bad. Who use their faith. An Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy? Probably equal. I think it's just an incredible, the whole. What a dummy. It's when he was talking about how I don't ask for forgiveness because I do things that are good. I don't like to do things that are bad.

He was asked like, oh, so you say you're religious, so have you ever had to ask for forgiveness? And he just refused to admit that he is a lying piece of do-do. Which should have, like, it's like the core of evangelical belief. And he's like, no, no, I would never have to do that. Only saps have to do that. And you can't, like if you asked me right now, are you an Old Testament guy? New Testament, I believe that I could just start speaking and I could convince you either way because I'm not a complete moron. Anyone could. Anyone who knows, like, who's read, like seeing

a couple of cartoons about the Bible in that situation could at least pretend. And so I'm sort of curious, I guess, hashtag TYT Live, sentence of responses. If you out there are a strong religious believer, it influences your politics, I'm really curious, which do you prefer? Someone like me, who doesn't believe in any of it, but I'm honest with you that I don't believe it. I have my own belief system, it's not based on religion or anything like that, but I will be totally upfront with you. Or people like Trump who clearly lie about it.

They don't actually believe it. Some of them are a little bit more convincing, but they're not actually believers. They make a mockery out of your religion. Yeah, yeah. So I'm curious. Hashtag TYT live, which of those two do you prefer? All right, we'll read your comments when we come back from this next break. for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only

bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon