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

Episode Date: March 28, 2020

What is Trump’s plan for ventilators? Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur, 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. All right, well, the young Turks, Jane Huguer and expan with you guys on a lovely Friday afternoon, so I don't know. I haven't been outside. And probably you haven't either. So now we got a big, big show ahead for you guys. huge fight over the so-called stimulus bill, bailout bill, both from the Republican and Democratic side. But I actually wanted to update you guys on our campaign as well about how healthy is TYT. So we've been doing TYT.com slash go. Yesterday, we're trying to get to $200,000, which is very, very difficult because we were at 182. But as always, you guys are legends. So right

now we're at $212,024. Okay. Wow. I know. That's a lot. That's amazing. They are. Look, I love, look, we love you guys. So yesterday someone won the aspiration contest and Judith, our head of programming was asking me, you know, he's just going to take a while to bring her in to do dinner in LA because of social distancing. Do you guys want to talk to her on Skype? I was like, of course, of course I do. Everybody's so wonderful to participate. I wish I could talk to every single one of you. Well, not every single one of you, but almost all of you. No one keeps it real like we do.

All right. Anyway, so you guys are the best. Let's see we can hit our goal, which is crazy. 250 by the end of March. But we do have a couple days left and you guys always, you know, prove me wrong even when I doubt. when I doubt, you picked me up. Thank you guys. Love you.T.com slash go. So much news, Anna, take it away. All right. So in an effort to produce the 80,000 ventilators needed in order to save lives in the United States during this pandemic, the Trump administration was working with

GM and one other organization, one other company, to develop and produce these ventilators. And And there was a story published by the New York Times. There's a big update to it about how the Trump administration actually ended up backing away from making that deal because they were concerned about the $1 billion price tag that was attached to it. Now, as we know, both the Senate and the House just passed their stimulus legislation, and that would cost $2 trillion. So $1 billion to save lives sounds like something that you should spend money on.

But after, I guess, enough pushback, Trump has agreed to make this deal and GM will be producing the ventilator. So, Jank, I wanted you to jump in since you have the update on that story. Yeah. So Trump just invoked the Defense Production Act, and he will be forcing GM to actually make the ventilators. Now, let's talk this through because Trump, as usual, has given incorrect information several times. And it's a tweet. So with Trump, you never really know, right? But in the past, he was like,

GM's got to do some. This is ridiculous. And then he'd turn around and be like, oh, we don't need the ventilators. Cuomo's exaggerating. I don't know if we need to do this at all. I'm canceling the deal. And then now he's back to, right before he said he's definitely doing it, he put out to saying, well, we need the D or the P, right? I'm like, why not all three letters? It's not a lot of letters. Okay. I think it was a P. come to think of it, not the deep. Yeah, I was going to say. Okay, anyway, so, and it looks like based on the last tweet, he is going to force them to do it.

Now, what's the difference? They were already negotiating about doing it, why force them to do it? Because he appears to be saying he's unhappy about the price and the delay in dealing with GM. No, now let's be fair, if GM is actually trying to pride scouch, well, then he's right to be upset, right? And you can't have it both ways, guys. We always have to be honest, okay? So it's possible that it could have made a deal, and for a billion dollars, you get 20

ventilators, and then we'd all be so mad at how much we overpaid that giant corporation. And at the same time, we need those ventilators. So it's actually possible in this case that Trump did the right thing that if Jam was being a little too absent or trying to make too much profit off of it. He's like, oh yeah, the best production act. And I'm done with it. You're gonna do it now and we'll worry about the price later. So we don't know enough of those details to know for sure.

But I'm glad they're doing the ventilators. They should have done this a long, long time ago. We talk more about that in a second. Definitely. So we have some video of Trump really undermining the necessity for ventilators. We'll go to that in a minute, but I wanted to make a point about how, you know, we just like agreed to a massive multi-trillion dollar bailout for corporations that have dodged taxes throughout the years, that have shipped jobs abroad throughout the years, that have underpaid their workers throughout the years. And so it's just fascinating to see like where the priorities are because I get it. If we feel like we're being price gouged by GM, well, then maybe there can be some pressure

placed by the Trump administration in order to get them to lower the prices to produce these ventilators. But in the grand scheme of things, a billion dollars is nothing compared to what we're willing to spend in taxpayer money to bail out these corporations. And keep in mind, these ventilators would literally save lives. So the messaging here, and if you just focus on the optics, is the issue that we keep bringing up throughout this show, which is this country seems to value corporate profits more than human lives. I would much rather invest taxpayer money in creating or producing the products that we need

to keep people alive as opposed to spending that money to bail out companies that, by the way, didn't do what we're expected to do as average Americans. They didn't save up for a rainy day, right? So that's the reason why as soon as the coronavirus started, all these kinds of companies really started to feel the economic pressure. Yeah. So look, that I agree with you a billion percent on it. So we have apparently $4.25 trillion for corporations to make sure they're healthy. But we're having like this giant price negotiation over a billion dollars, which is 0.05% of the bailout money to keep actual human beings healthy.

And so I don't mind a negotiation back and forth, and I want us to get the best price, but I want that to be consistent on all of this, and it certainly hasn't been. And overall here on that point, look, the ventilators should have been one of the top priorities. Number one should have been the test kits, number two should have been mass, and number three should have been ventilators. And if you have good competent management, you would have had all all these things lined up and you would have been panicking, my God, what if we run out of ventilators? Then we're going to have to tell doctors or give guidance to the government, to the state governments on who to prioritize in saving lives and who to let die. That's

an insane, unacceptable decision. So we've got to get the ventilators right now before they run out in New York and other places. And I didn't see any of that urgency until today. I totally agree with you. And a lot of these products are manufactured in other countries and not just the ventilators, but also the face masks that nurses and doctors need in order to protect themselves while they're treating patients with COVID-19. And so there's a price to pay when you really think about it. When we ship everything, all of the manufacturing to other countries, because when you have a global pandemic like this, we can't rely on our own supply chain in order to produce the products that we need. Now, just,

GM, of course, you know, manufactures cars, but the technology and the equipment that they have is different from what's necessary to build the ventilators, which is why even with GM's help, it's going to take some time to produce the ventilators. But I'm just making a point about how we need to really rethink how we manufacture things and how we've shipped a lot of our manufacturing jobs abroad. It actually does put us at a disadvantage in many ways, including, of course, shipping jobs abroad. But with that said, I do want to go to Trump's interview with Sean Hannity. He felt the need to really minimize the need for as many ventilators as we actually do need to keep people alive. Let's take a look. New York is a bigger deal, but it's going to go also.

But I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be. I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they'll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden, they're saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators? So the doctor that Fox News actually keeps having on to share her expertise, her name is Nicole Safier, tweeted immediately after that segment and said the following, regardless of what anyone says, ventilators are low in supply, and we need as many as we can possibly get while we continue to slow the spread.

And she's absolutely right. And if you just look at the way people commented on that, they just expect her to be loyal to Trump and agree with everything he says. And I'm glad that she didn't. I'm glad that she told the truth about how much we need the ventilators. Yeah. So look, it's just, it's so painful to see how incompetent and ridiculous our president is.

And this is the time that you need someone who's really smart and competent and a good manager. And he has none of that ability. I mean, it is so unbelievably irresponsible to go on television and say, you know, a lot of hospitals have only one or two ventilators. Not remotely true. There is no major hospital with only one or two ventilators, not within a million miles of true. And to minimize it when you obviously need a lot of ventilators, you know how many cases New York

alone has now? Last I checked it was around 37,000. By today, it was supposed to pass 40,000. Well, Cuomo said they needed 40,000 ventilators. Not everybody who has COVID-19 needs a ventilator, but it's growing exponentially. Every single day, it seems to almost, no, literally every two days, the cases double. Now, they won't double forever, obviously, right? But it's going at a crazy rate, and they need those ventilators.

And Jacob Javent Center has been turned into a giant hospital. But if you don't have the ventilators, it doesn't help. So for him to go out there and go, what's a big deal? We don't need that many. And then if you think that's true, then why are you panicking over General Motors right now? He's so inconsistent. He's such a foon. And this is not about politics. And people like say, oh, you shouldn't say that stuff about Trump because you're making it political. No, we need somebody competent right now. I mean, haven't he doesn't have to step aside politically. I don't give a damn.

Just have an adult run this goddamn thing. Right. But he has so much of an ego. He would never allow that to happen. And he likes to delegate among his own family members. And that's a huge issue as well. If you can recall, like in the beginning of the pandemic, Donald Trump decided to just listen to the advice of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. And Jared Kushner thought this was nothing more than a PR stunt by the Democrats in order to hurt Trump's chances of reelection. Well, now we're learning that unfortunately Trump has decided to turn to Jared Kushner yet again when it comes to something as serious as the ventilators. The New York Times reported that at the center of the discussion about how to ramp up

the production of ventilators is Jared Kushner, who has told people that he was called in two weeks ago by Vice President Mike Pence to produce more coronavirus test kits and who has now turned his attention to ventilators. So that's definitely not a promising update. No, it's just, it's a carnival, man. It's a three-ring circus. So what difference doesn't matter or what difference does it make which particular clown is in charge?

There's not a competent person within miles of the Oval Office. So here, let me read you the Trump tweets from earlier in the day that I was referring to in the beginning. He's now invoked a DPA, but at the time he was saying, as usual with this, General Motors, and he has it in, he has a this in quotes. I don't know what that means, okay. As usual, with this General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They were going to give us 40,000 much needed ventilators.

You just said you didn't need them anyway, quote very quickly. Now they're saying it will only be 6,000 in late April and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. And then he says, invoke P. I think that there's, because it's DPA, right, Defense Production Act. He might have said invoke D. And then people were like, no, doesn't sound good. So he randomly went with the middle initial, okay, invoke Pete, okay?

And then the next tweet is, General Motors must immediately open their stupidly abandoned Lordstown plant in Ohio or some other plant and start making ventilators now. Ford, get going on ventilators fast. I read those like that because they're in all caps with a thousand exclamation points. Which child says they're stupidly abandoned Lordstown plan? this child that's in charge. The only role of government is to keep people safe, right? Like the only role that I think both parties agree on fundamentally is that it's supposed

to keep us safe. This is a huge public health issue. This is a huge problem in so many parts of the country. And by the way, we're not even at the peak of that curve yet. So more people are getting tested. We're starting to learn more and more about the severity of corruption. coronavirus is spread in the United States. It was just reported that we now lead the country or lead the world when it comes to the number

of people infected with coronavirus. And it's just terrifying that you have this incompetent fool, you know, leading us, I mean, obviously badly through this pandemic. It's terrifying because so many people are going to lose their lives due to his incompetence. And I agree with you, Jenk, this is not about politics. It's about accurately critiquing. the failures of the president, the one person who is supposed to handle this situation based on what experts are telling him. And he's not doing that. He's just this shoot from the

hip kind of guy who doesn't take anything seriously unless it impacts him specifically. Now, look, last thing on this, I just can't stand on the other hand stuff in this situation. If you're talking about some political thing that's important but not life-threatening, okay, CNN wants to say on the one hand this and on the other hand that, and that's what everybody, New York Times, NPR, PBS, they all want to say the same thing, right? And they think they're tough on Trump, but half the time they totally excuse him, right? Okay, but in a situation like this, no, there's a right and wrong. We don't have the damn mass and people are getting it nonstop. Another expert came out today said that there might be a hundred million cases

in America alone, Boris Johnson now has coronavirus, Prince Charles has coronavirus. I mean, this thing is massively contagious. And you're sending in doctors and nurses to treat people without masks. That's insane. Now we're getting to the last level where you don't have ventilators when people need ventilators in about not this minute, but it looks like based on the trends in about two weeks, we're going to be out of ventilators. And so if you go to the hospital, or your parents go to the hospital and they need a ventilator, we're going to let him die. And so don't talk to me about, well, you're being impolite and politically incorrect if you say Donald Trump is a moron who can't manage a goddamn thing. He couldn't begin to ask the right

questions, let alone execute the right strategy in a complicated important matter like this. We should have never, ever elected a stupid carnival barker like Donald Trump, because a president matters. When we come back from the break, we'll discuss the House and its passage of the Senate Economic Relief Bill. And then later, Trump gets into a little bit of a fight with some of the GOP lawmakers. So we have that and more when we come back. We need to talk about a relatively new show.

show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York

Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time.

All right, back on the Young Turks, guys. So I'm going to go on reverse order here. I'm going to start on Twitter and go up to members in terms of comments. Because on Twitter, we got a lot of folks with local stories. Jim Restor says, our local hospital in a small town of 18,000 people has at least five ventilators. New York City has, what, 10 million people, somewhere in that ballpark. So I think they've got a little bit more than one or two ventilators for hospital. Zoron Kukovic, writes in, Trump doesn't need experts around him.

He's the most expertly expert that ever experted. Good point, as usual, Zoron. Johnny Grateful, writes in, I work in the auto industry. Do you know what kind of undertaking it is to have a car company make medical equipment? It's a multi-billion dollar endeavor, not even to speak of timeliness and quality. Johnny, that's a great point. So that's why I said during that story, you know, it's really, really hard to know how much these things are going to cost.

Is it price gouging or is it perfectly reasonable? And so, again, I wish we had someone in smart and charge to be able to tell. Anyway, go to YouTube super chat. We appreciate it every time you guys do that because it helps the show use that. Steve writes in Steve Snyder, I thought Anna and Jake were setting up the most powerful dramatic pause before drop it, but it turns out it was just a lag dude. having to film from home, still the ultimate power panel. Yes. So a lot of you guys asked if, why I didn't drop it because it's a Friday. Dude, we're doing this from home and there's

two of us. Yes, I agree. It's a super powerful panel between Anna and I, but we're doing the best we can. But I love you guys that you cared enough that you missed it. Okay, we'll try to bring it back as soon as we can. Christy Aiken Smith also on YouTube Super Chat says, became a member and donated. Thanks for keeping me sane. Well, thank you for keeping us alive. TYT.com slash joined to become a member and TYT.com slash go to contribute to our fundraising efforts here to keep TYT in business. And right now it's at over 213,000. Let's see we can get to 250 by the end of the month. There's a couple of days left to do it. There's too many here. I'll read only one here from YouTube, sorry, from our members' comments. Anna's Margarita Salt says 80,000 is, I know,

I love their constant reference to super salt. 80,000 is not going to be enough, as usual, taking a victory lab for buying a Band-Aid to heal a gushing wound. That's right. Some of those experts are anywhere near right. I mean, that 100 million number is so unbelievable. If there really are anywhere near 100 million cases, you think 80,000 ventilators are going to be enough? No, no. It's, I don't even want to think about it. Remember, it's like likely the fatality rate is lower than what people are saying. I think it's probably my best guess is that it's around 1% because so many people have it and don't realize they have it and we don't have enough test kits. But even at 1%, do the math,

That is a stunning number of dead people. Yes. We got to get those ventilators and mass immediately. Well, let's talk about the stimulus bill that just passed in the House because there is a big update on that story. So the House of Representatives has officially passed the Senate version of the economic stimulus bill. This is in response to COVID-19's damage to the economy and to average Americans' finances.

Now, the bill passed using a voice vote. And that means that lawmakers would just shout yay or nay in voting, and the majority would win. And in this case, of course, the yay votes won. And that's how they passed it. Now, the bill had a number of flaws, the biggest one being the corporate bailouts, which we have complained about on this show quite a bit. But luckily, there were some lawmakers who were willing to voice their displeasure at that

portion of the stimulus bill. And I think the person who made that argument the strongest was Representative Acacio-Cortez. I represent one of the hardest-hit communities in the hardest-hit city in this country, Queens, New York, 13 dead in a night in Elmhurst Hospital alone. Our community's reality is this country's future if we don't do anything. Hospital workers do not have protective equipment. We don't have the necessary ventilators. But we have But we have to go into this vote, eyes white open. What did the Senate majority fight for? One of the largest corporate bailouts with as few strings as possible in American history.

Shameful. The greed of that fight is wrong for crumbs, for our families. And the option that we have is to either let them suffer with nothing or to allow this greed and billions of dollars, which will be leveraged into trillions of dollars to contribute to the largest income inequality gap in our future. There should be shame about what was fought for in this bill and the choices that we have to make. So it feels good to see some lawmakers voice their concern

and just how angry they are about those corporate bailouts because even though it's being presented as a $500 billion corporate bailout, which, by the way, is still ridiculous, when you consider how it can be leveraged, It'll cost trillions of dollars. And so, and yeah, it is crumbs. Americans are getting $1,200 in one check if they qualify for it.

So we're going to be means tested to see if we qualify for that stimulus check. But when it comes to the corporate bailouts, it's a completely different story. Yeah. So there's two things that AOCs really right about. One is she should be absolutely outraged about how hard. her districts hit. It's one of the districts that's hardest hit, maybe the single hardest hit district in the whole country. Now, obviously, that doesn't have anything to do with her, but what that does mean is that she's their representative, and she needs to represent their rage, and they're the

ones that need the medical assistance the most. So, which then leads the point number two. She's saying, look, at this point, it's to take it or leave it proposition, and we're going to have to take it, because what are we going to do? Turn down the help for the people who desperately needed in my district and all the other districts. So the real problem was in the negotiations. So once you've negotiated something, especially in an emergency like this, is pretty much over. And so the part she doesn't tell you is the people who got rolled as usual was Democratic leadership. So let me be clearer in how they should have prioritized. She alluded to it there and how they got it exactly in reverse. The number one priority should have been the health of the citizens, medical

supplies. How do you produce them? How do you get them to the right places, et cetera? There's money for hospitals in the bill, but in terms of producing the medical equipment that we need to save lives, not even mentioned. So exact opposite of what it should be. So number one priority should be medical, number two priority should be help for the citizens. Number three should be small businesses and number four should be big businesses. I'm not saying leave the big businesses out. And some of them really do need the help. And there's a really good question as to how to get them the help.

But instead, the priority order was the exact opposite. 4.25 trillion in loans from the Fed for big businesses, another 500 billion in loans and grants to big businesses by far the biggest amount. I mean, overwhelmingly, like 90% of the help goes to big businesses. Then it goes small business, then real people. And then medical is at that. Yeah. And the most frustrating part about it, anytime you argue with someone who's in favor of the bailouts,

they'll use this, you know, talking point about, well, these companies employ so many people, so you want to bail them out so we don't lose all these jobs. But what's incredible is some of the airline companies announced today that they're going to lay off a bunch of employees. This is immediately after the house passed the bailouts for the corporations, right? And going back to the arguments we've been making about lack of oversight and lack of strings attached, they don't have to follow through with keeping all of their employees. They can go ahead, these big corporations, they can go ahead and fire 10% of their workforce

between now and six months. And then after that six months, they're free to fire as many people as they want. So this isn't about protecting American jobs. They have that standard for small businesses. If small businesses want to have their loans forgiven, they have to keep their workers. And I'm glad that they have that rule, right? Because we want to save jobs. But the big corporations, which employ far more people, do not have that same standard when

it comes to the bailout money. And by the way, no one on earth could rationalize that. I read all the fine print last night, not just because I have to do a new show, but because I have a small business. and it's critical to keeping us alive. What's more critical is you guys, by the way, t-y-t.com slash go. It's no joke, we absolutely need it now.

But when you are looking at the loans, the grants, et cetera, that small business, big businesses are getting, there's some good things in there for small businesses and thank God, I hope, hope that that helps. But having said that, they have a requirement that you keep all your workers, which is great, which is what I asked for when we were discussing

this bill in the first place. You turn into the big businesses, no requirement. Anna just explained to you the details. So same rules don't apply. And why? The big businesses have more employees. And the small businesses need more leeway. I'm not saying that to change the rules for the small businesses, but why doesn't apply

the big businesses? Because of course, the campaign donations. So let's move on to a Republican who wasn't happy about the corporate bailouts. I'm sure as a Republican, he didn't like the amount of money spent on average American workers either. But there's some principle here. which I do respect, and anyone who's principled against Donald Trump will have to deal with Donald Trump's snotty little Twitter comments. So Donald Trump is feuding with a Republican

lawmaker over the stimulus bill. Now, as the House debated passage of the sentence version of the economic stimulus bill, there was one Republican lawmaker who was really standing out because of his threats to possibly block it. So it's the representative from Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky, I'm sorry, from Kentucky, Representative Thomas Massey, and according to the Louisville Courier Journal, he was quoted as saying, this is a two, this is two trillion dollars, divide two trillion by 350 million people, meaning how many people live in the United States, it's almost $6,000 for every man, woman, and child. I'm talking about spending. This won't go to the men, women,

and children. So if you have a family of five, this spending bill represents $30,000 of additional U.S. national debt because there is no plan to pay for it. So his biggest issue is that most of this money is going toward the bailouts. It's actually not going to men, women, children in the country. As we know, if you qualify for it, as an average American, you only get a one-time check of $1,200. And so since he was signaling that he could possibly block this legislation, all of a sudden you have lawmakers rushing back to the Capitol in order to vote on it, right? Because the initial plan was to do a unanimous consent, meaning that the lawmakers wouldn't have to be at Capitol Hill to do a roll call vote.

But in the end, they ended up doing a voice vote anyway, which means that they all shout yay or nay, and then the majority ends up winning. In this case, the yay votes won. So this really did upset Donald Trump. And on Twitter, he wrote, looks like a third-rate grandstander named Representative Thomas Massey, a congressman from Kentucky, a truly great state, Kentucky wants to vote against the new Save Our Workers Bill. By the way, it's not titled Save Our Workers Bill in Congress. He just wants the publicity. He can't. can't stop it, only delay, which is both dangerous and costly. Workers and small businesses need money now in order to survive.

Virus wasn't their fault. It is hell dealing with Democrats, had to give up some stupid things in order to get the big picture done, 90% great, win back house, but throw Massey out of the Republican Party. So, Jank, there were some Republicans who actually defended Massey, but I want you to jump in first. Yeah. It's typical thug behavior from Donald Trump. So anyone who dares disagree with him slightly, throw him out of the party. That's it. Throw him out, throw him out, okay? And it's fascist 101. It doesn't matter why he disagrees. Does he disagree at a principle? Does he disagree

with you from a left-wing perspective or a right-wing perspective? So, by the way, honestly, establishment Democrats and mainstream media do the same thing. They're like, oh, Bernie Sanders disagrees with Democratic leadership. Throw him out of the party. Throw him out of the party. Wait, hold on, hold on. He's coming at you from the left wing, not from the right wing. So what, what's your objection?

That is their objection. Well, that is their objection, exactly. But in this case, conservatives actually do care about people being right wing. That's why they backed up Massey, which was weirdly, strangely proud of them for backing up Massey. And so what's my point of view? Look, Massey has two very legitimate points. One is the constitutional issue that he brings up.

And I think it's a tough call here because you have to bring people back into Congress and it does endanger their health to do that. On the other hand, these voice votes where you don't know who voted what, it helps them escape accountability. And I can't stand that. So that's good point number one. And the second point is, look, it is $30,000 for every family of five. And like whenever we say, hey, can we get health care for everyone or can we build the energy

infrastructure in this country to save the planet, people scream, how are you going to pay for that? When you've got a, you know, he says two trillion there, but he later clarifies there's the extra $4 trillion from the Fed that we've been talking about for a couple of days now. But when you have $6 trillion that's going to the top corporations in the country, or most of it is, everybody knows what it asked, how are you going to pay for it? So I think Massey has perfectly legitimate points of view from the right wing. Right. And, you know, what we've been hearing about Republicans for a long time is that they're the so-called fiscal conservatives. And so I got to be honest, every once in a while when you actually

do find a principled Republican who is a fiscal conservative, you got to give them props because they remain principled, even knowing that someone like Donald Trump is going to engage in his thug behavior and attack him. Luckily, there were some Republican lawmakers who defended Massey, MASSI, and one of them was Paul Gossar. He said the following, Mr. Trump, Representative Massey is a good man and a solid conservative. He believes in the Constitution strongly. We won't always agree on strategy or policy, but he doesn't want this dressing down. Thomas, hang tough brother, hashtag coronavirus outbreak.

And then there's a conservative blogger with the Daily Wire named Matt Walsh. He jumped in as well and said that Massey is a- Yes, Jank. Sorry, just to jump in for a second, so Gossar said he doesn't warrant this kind of attack. And remember, Gossar's a maniac. He's the one that all of his family members said, whatever you do, don't vote for our brother. And he always says, like, insane things left and right. But here, I don't mind.

Look, I could disagree with them 98% of the time, but we're honest enough to say, hey, they have a good point. I don't even know that I would vote with them, right? I think it's a really, really tough question, but I think this is coming out of actual principle because Gosar normally is ensconced in Donald Trump's bosom. So the fact that he's left that comfortable bosom, it shows you, man, he really is acting out of his right-wing principles, which give him credit for, even a lunatic like Gosa. Oh, bosom's a good word. And then conservative blogger Matt Walsh with the Daily Wire also defended Massey tweeting, Massey's a a good congressman, this bill is garbage, and calling for a good conservative to be thrown

out of the party because he doesn't want to vote for a garbage bill is itself a garbage move. And I definitely enjoyed that tweet, but I liked his follow-up tweet to that, which was, now watch the shameless groupies take Trump's side against one of the most consistent conservatives in Congress just because he told them too. All right, look, I super respect that. I mean, to have the Kohannes to say that Trump is doing a garbage move when you're working for a right-wing outlet. And yes, we somehow had Bozeman Cohen's in the same story here. But give Matt Walsh credit, I'm sure I don't agree with any other thing he's ever said. But it's courageous to take on Trump like that and its principle.

All right. Well, when we come back from the break, we're going to have a discussion about the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden. I had done a live video on it earlier this week, but we're going to get into a more detailed discussion on a former Senate staffers allegations against him. Okay, so stick around. We'll do that story and more when we come back. 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 anonymous online and hide your data from the prying of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address,

making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cyber criminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired Magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available. Express. V-P-N. If you go to expressvPN.com slash T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. All right, back on a young turks. I just got to read these two comments. They're from our

members and they're great. Kid and activists wrote in, someone would come along after an airline failed and buy the planes and start a new airline, which is the real way that the free market works. We do not have a free market or true capitalism. I've been dying to say that for day after day. Thank you for making that point. We do the show together. Yes, it's true. It doesn't mean we won't have airlines anymore. It'll just be new companies, but it's not going to happen now because the old companies are going to get failed out. And super last thing writes in, Democratic leadership wasn't rolled jank. They were clearly willing participants in tying money for people and money for corporations together, Republicans win because they have no opposition, no opposition, because

they all work for the same masters. That is certainly true. Look, guys, in these hard times, we need your help with t.com slash go, but don't forget other great organizations like wolf dash pack.com. Okay, we got to get the money out of politics. Otherwise, none of this ever gets fixed. All right, Anna, what's next? Okay. Well, this is a story that I shared with you all in a live video, but I thought it was important to have this discussion in greater detail. So Tara Reid, a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, has come forward with detailed sexual assault allegations against him. Now, she alleges that she was assaulted by Joe Biden back in the early 90s, 1993,

to be specific, when she was, and then later she wanted to get some legal help in coming forward with these allegations and she was allegedly turned away from the times up movement. We'll get into the details on that in just a minute, but I think it's important for you to hear from Tara Reid herself. She was interviewed by Katie Halper, and that's where she detailed the sexual assault. Let's take a look at the first video. I actually did come forward in 93, but not to the press, but I went through protocol and complaint. What was your complaint about? sexual harassment um i did not uh complain formally about the other piece of what happened that i'll talk about in a few minutes but um i talked about what was witnessed um and uh the general atmosphere

of the office the way i was treated because i would see him at meetings and he would basically put his hands on me put his hands on my shoulder um run his finger on my neck he was very like handsy with a lot of people but like with it it's it's like what i had and i i have said this that's in the press before from the last time um it's it made me feel like an inanimate object i didn't feel like a person he didn't like make conversation with me or talk with me or ask me anything relevant so i wanted you all to hear that portion um we're about to play one other video that gets very graphic. And so I just wanted to warn everyone who, you know, might become triggered from the talk of sexual assault or rape. But before we get to it, I do want to also note that,

you know, in that clip, she talks about how there were people who witnessed it. She actually did report it. She went through the appropriate protocol. And Ryan Grimm wrote a piece about this in The Intercept. And he contacted Tara reads, friend and brother, both of whom say she told them about the alleged sexual assault by Biden in 1993. In fact, her brother was quoted as saying, woefully, I did not encourage her to follow up. I wasn't one of her better advocates. I said, let it go, move on, guys are idiots, right? So when Lucy Flores, a Nevada politician came forward to talk about how she felt that she was inappropriately touched by Biden, that's what encouraged read to come forward with her story about sexual harassment. But when she did that, she started

getting attacked by Democrats in the media, pro-Biden people, who wanted to smear her as nothing more than, you know, a Bernie supporter who wants to destroy Biden's campaign, right? And then there were allegations of her being a pro-Russia asset or agent. But I, go ahead, Jake. Yeah, sorry, just this topic is so important for two different reasons. One is, did it happen? And if it happened, and what exactly happened, because what you're about to hear is far more graphic. And what can we do about it? The second issue that's so important here is how the media is treating it.

So let you hear the full story, and then we'll give you the full context on both of those topics. I was wearing like a skirt and, you know, a business skirt, but I wasn't wearing stocky. it was kind of a hot day that day and I was wearing heels and I remember my legs had been hurting from the marble you know of the capital like walking and I so I remember that kind of stuff I remember like that and it was kind of an unusually warm day and I remember I was wearing a blouse and he just had me up against the wall and the wall was cold and I remember he it happened all at once the gym bag I don't know where it went I handed it to him was gone and then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes and um yeah and then he went oh he went down my skirt but then up inside it and he

uh penetrated me with his fingers whatever and um i uh he was kissing me at the same time and he was saying something to me he said several things and i can't remember everything he said I remember a couple of things. I remember him saying first, like, as he was doing it, do you want to go somewhere else? And then him saying to me, when I pulled away, he got finished doing what he was doing. And I was pulled back.

And he said, come on, man. I heard you liked me. And he allegedly also told her, you're nothing to me, which she said was somehow like more painful. Like the thing that she still like has a lot of pain about today because she had admired him so much and, you know, really felt lucky that she got the opportunity to work for him. So to hear him say that to her is something that it still pains her to this day. Okay. So let's break it down. So look, in every one of these cases, it is extraordinarily difficult topic because on the one hand, if she's telling the truth and no one believes her, that's the, disgusting, man. And I can't stomach the thought of someone going through that and then having in mass, people claim that she's a Russian agent and not believing her. Now, it's also equally

true that if someone did not do that and someone's making it up about them, that is incredibly painful. And I don't know where they go to get their reputation back, what people are going to think of their character back, et cetera. Now, when you're analyzing that, in the past, we told by mainstream media, et cetera, you're not allowed to question the women. Now on this show, we do things we're not allowed to do, and I'd like to think that we're courageous in trying to deal with the topics. So we think context matters. Do we think that women are right about this every single time?

No. It is, there are percentages, there are real life issues, and there is context. At the same time, what we point out to you guys is believe the women does not mean that it's categorical. What it means is statistically, 98% of the time women are telling the truth. So if your assumption going in, not in a court of law, in a court of law, the proof has to be presented by the prosecution and the person is innocent until proven guilty. But when you're looking to see who's telling the truth in the court of public opinion,

who report this stuff, 98% in time it's true. Now you could say, hey, listen, in politics, that number might not hold, et cetera, but we can and we must have honest conversations about this. So in this case, the real way to look at it is, well, look, I got to know what her motivations are. So if she's a diehard Bernie Sanders supporter, that might make a difference. if she really is, you know, related to the Russian government, that would make a huge difference, right? And those are relevant things to consider. But now when you look at those facts, it turns out, no, originally she supported Elizabeth Warren. And then Marianne Williamson at some point, and then Bernie Sanders. So, okay, that doesn't really hold. On the Russia stuff,

having read some of the media posts that she wrote about how great Putin was, it made me deeply uncomfortable. So that's real. On the other hand, When you read, the last story I read was from Vox, and it was probably the best story on this. And there, she explains, look, I was reading Chomsky and I had written a, or I wanted to write a romance story around Russia, and I had a romantic views of Russia from when I was younger, et cetera. But then I read about the domestic violence happening under Putin, and I no longer believe that. Well, okay, that sounds super credible.

Okay, maybe it's not. And you all have to make up your own mind and you never know, we could, anybody could be wrong about this. But when you hear the full context of the story, man, she sounds credible. So then that- Yeah, and I got to, go ahead, Jank. But I got to jump in soon, so hurry. No, no, go ahead.

No, I just, I have to say, look, all of the, like Richard Painter, right, who's worked for Obama's administration for ethics and all that stuff, like all these people who are smearing her and they're trying to brush her off as someone who's not credible, quite honestly, disgust me. Because if these were accusations against Donald Trump, we damn well know that they would take it seriously and they would demand that there's an investigation. When the allegations came out against Brett Kavanaugh, they were taken seriously. And I'm glad they were taken seriously. You can't change your view on sexual assault allegations simply based on whether or not it's convenient for you to believe them or to take them seriously, right?

So for me, if these accusations were made against politicians that I like, it doesn't matter. It's not my job to determine whether the story or the accusations are true or not. It is the job of professionals who investigate these types of accusations. And so for people who are like making a decision about whether or not she's telling the truth, on what? What evidence do you have that she's not telling the truth? You have no evidence. The only thing that people are really referring to is her support for Bernie Sanders after the election, the primary election, ended up being between Biden, who she's accusing of sexual assault and Bernie Sanders. That was the only other viable candidate at that point. It's just gross

because what I've seen over and over again is a bunch of hacks exploiting women for their political advantage for their political gain. But when push comes to shove, they don't actually care about protecting women and looking out for them. They just don't. They love to use women's issues for the little political campaigns or to push political candidates they like. Yeah, so media, you tell me what the standard is, because I don't understand it. Because when it was allegations against Republicans or anyone progressive, but largely, to be fair, it was against Republicans. You said, no, you must believe the women and you should not even look at any of the context. Now, when it's an allegation against your beloved establishment

Democratic candidate, now you turn around and say, you're illegitimate if you believe her. Oh, my God. I mean, that's insane. And they all say it with a straight face. Isaac Edward Dovere, one of the worst journalists in the country, is the one who smeared her in the first place. Oh, did you know? Russia, Russia, Russia, right? And but New York Times, where are you? CNN? Where are you? NPR, et cetera. And everyone on the planet knows if this same exact allegation was against Bernie Sanders, he would be immediately disqualified by every single writer in the country. And look, last thing, it's also the personal issue with me that I made a joke 21 years ago, and every mainstream media outlet thought it was disqualifying

that I made a joke 20 years ago. But this is not disqualifying for Biden, insanity. All right, guys. Thank you for watching. Thanks for bearing with us. We will see you next week with another week of crazy news. See you soon.

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.com. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.