The Young Turks - What Lies Will Trump Perpetuate Next And ACTUAL National Emergencies In The U.S.
Episode Date: January 9, 2019Ahead of Trump's national address on the border wall "emergency" Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders spout ridiculous lies. 5 national emergencies the U.S. ACTUALLY needs to address instead of... building a border wall. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Who cares?
Nah.
No, I'm kidding.
He'll be back soon.
He's doing important work.
But we'll be holding down the four pretty much most of the week.
Right, he'll be back on Friday.
Yes, and we're going to be doing the first hours together for most of the rest of the week.
You're going to have a series of awesome panels in the second hour.
Yes, I'm excited for the week.
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And then in the second hour panels, we're going to have a wide variety of awesome guest hosts,
including J.R. Jackson.
Adrian will be joining us.
Also, Nomi Prins will be joining us on Thursday and Friday of this week.
So it's a great week to look forward to.
Exactly.
We've got a lot to get to, I would preview it, but at this point I figure you've either clicked
away or you're still good.
So why don't we jump right into the news?
Let's do it.
I think that would be fun.
Okay.
Tonight Donald Trump is going to be giving a prime time address on the situation at the border,
and it is going to be filled with lies.
And we know this for a few reasons.
because he is a liar, he's a vicious, constant liar, but also because his administration
has been just constantly lying about the situation down there, going back to the beginning
of the administration.
But especially the past couple of weeks, it has just been every day, and it really doesn't matter
how many times you correct them or provide accurate information.
They adapt slightly, it's like fighting the Borg.
But we're gonna do what we can to get out in front of his attempt to change the narrative
later on today. But first, I want to show you some examples of the sorts of lies that are likely
to be included in his speech tonight. First, in this video, being spread by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The president talks about terrorists potentially coming across the border. And here is Secretary
of Homeland Security Nielsen. Take a luck. CBP has stopped over 3,000 what we call special
interest aliens trying to come into the country on the southern border. Those are aliens who the
intel community has identified are of concern.
But special interest aliens are just people who come from countries that have ever produced
a terrorist.
They're not terrorists themselves.
And the State Department says that there is, quote, their words, no credible evidence
of any terrorist coming across the border from Mexico.
We know that roughly nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally.
And we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border.
I know this statistic.
I didn't know if you're going to use it, but I studied up on this.
Do you know where those 4,000 people come or where they're captured?
Airports.
Not always.
But certainly a large number.
The State Department says there hasn't been any terrorists that they found coming across the southern border from Mexico.
It's by land and it's by sea.
It's all of the above.
Yeah, but it's mostly not by land.
That's what he was pointing out.
So look, Chris Wallace, I guess at the risk of losing his audience there,
corrected her.
Yeah.
And he did a good job.
He did do a good job.
We gave him credit for that because it shows that even though he's a conservative, that's fine.
If you disagree philosophically or politically, that's okay as long as you're actually honest
about the facts.
That's what matters the most.
Exactly.
And what's interesting is that I remember over the weekends, I was trying not to pay too much
attention to politics, but I saw it keep coming up that he had done a very good job of repeatedly
grilling her on that.
And you would think that if he puts Fox News in that position.
where he has already laid out that she is lying, or at the very least, woefully
misinformed, well, I guess on Fox and Friends, we gotta go with that, but no, they just
ignored it come Monday and yes, and today as well.
Now, they're gonna attempt to do some damage control.
Kelly and Conway is dispatched, I guess that's the second line of defense, and here's her
attempt to reframe that interaction that you just saw.
The White House has thrown around a number of about 4,000, but U.S. Customs Border Protection says
they encountered six immigrants with terror ties on the border half.
I personally think one terrorist is the problem.
We know what one terrorist can do when you look at what happened in Paris, a few in each plane
on 9-11.
But you know what they do?
They take that, say, oh, well, you're trying to put the scare the people.
And it's a much smaller threat than you describe.
Doesn't that hurt the credibility of the White House when we don't get the
these basic facts right, and someone's not doing their homework and the way they describe it.
This is the 3755 number does not refer to people at the southern border.
Quote, known or suspected terrorists prevented from traveling to or entering the U.S.
by DHS in FY17.
I believe that includes in some international airports where Customs of Border Patrol says...
Overwhelmingly at the airport.
But the other two statistics on here were about the southern border, so I think it got...
It got unfortunately confided by a colleague.
But the apprehensions at the border of gang members, of known criminals.
These are all, again, the media has this presentation.
They want to be honest.
Well, they're cherry picking, but this is what they do.
They do it to Supreme Court nominees if they get something off.
They do it to all of us.
Everyone, like, we all kind of make mistakes.
We're talking all day long.
That was an unfortunate misstatement, and everybody makes mistakes, all of us.
The fact is, it's corrected here.
Yeah, so it's, as you're going to see in future videos, it's,
in future videos, it was not a one time misstatement.
Bear in mind, Sarah Hockerby Sanders is a spokesperson for the White House.
She doesn't just go off and do her own research and as she flubbed one stat, she is hand delivered
probably from Stephen Miller talking points on the border and then dispatched to Fox News,
a friendly environment to deliver those facts.
That was not a misstatement, that was a strategy.
And honestly, while Laura Ingraham sort of corrects her, just them having this conversation.
on Fox News advances the idea that we have to be talking about terrorism at the border
a lot. Maybe it's six, maybe it's 3,500 or whatever, but certainly there are some terrorists
there. Yeah, let's talk about what a misstatement is, because that does happen. I know that
we've experienced it, we speak off the cuff on the show, we don't have a teleprompter, and oftentimes
when we're in the middle of a point, we can accidentally mispronounce someone's name.
Recently, I think I was say, I meant to say Bernie Sanders and I said Michael Sanders,
which is weird.
And it was a weird thing that happened that I didn't even realize at that moment because
I was trying to make a point.
Jank mentioned that I messed up and I was like, oh, I'm sorry, Bernie Sanders, obviously.
That's a misstatement, right?
When you're in the middle of making a point off the cuff and you accidentally say something
the wrong word, the wrong name, you get corrected, and then you change course immediately.
With Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her interview with Chris Wallace, it was not a misstatement.
because she kept trying to defend the point that she was making.
So that's point number one that I want to make.
Secondly, look, the question that Laura Ingram asked Kellyanne Conway in that clip was a fair question,
right?
Doesn't this hurt your credibility or the administration's credibility when you mess up the facts
like this?
But it was hilarious that she asked that question after she herself messed up the facts.
So Ingram said, you know, we only know of six terrorists who tried to come into the
country.
No, but they're not terrorists.
They're not terrorists.
They are special interest aliens.
That is very different from a known terrorist.
Special interest aliens are simply people who are traveling or trying to travel into
the United States from countries where terrorism exists.
It doesn't mean that they themselves are terrorists, it just means, hey, they're terrorists
in the country of origin, so let's just take another quick look before allowing them into
the country.
That is what a special interest alien is, right?
And so no, Laura Ingram, six known terrorists did not take.
try to come into the country.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even, look, you're giving her a little bit of credit for saying doesn't hurt their credibility.
I mean, she's obviously hoping that the response from Kellyan Conway, who is not going
to like give a thoughtful answer to that is no, of course it doesn't.
And she had already said at that point, I mean, even if there's one, one terrorist, which again,
there weren't six terrorists.
We don't even know if there was one terrorist.
Yeah.
Well, if there's one, then what?
Then we build a wall across thousands of miles of the border?
We spend $5 billion.
I mean, that's not even the cost.
The cost is going to be as high as $60 billion.
So what, if you can identify one death from a terrorist, do you get to spend $60 billion?
I mean, I can point out a lot of people who've been killed by the emissions from coal plants.
Do we get to shut all those down?
Do we build steel bollards around them?
What does she think she's saying when she says that?
The disingenuous nature of their arguments is what frustrates me the most, because it's
a lie when they claim that they care about the law.
lives of Americans.
Because if they genuinely cared about the lives of Americans, they would want to do something
about a host of issues that we have here domestically that they refuse to do anything
about, right?
You think Laura Inger wants to do anything about gun violence in the country?
No, she'll go out there and she'll demonize the children who have been victimized by gun
violence on their own campuses, but she won't do anything about, you know, gun regulation, common
sense gun regulation, and we're gonna get to all of that later.
But one other point I wanted to make, this government shutdown has led to
to a record number of TSA agents calling in sick because they have to go work somewhere
else to be able to pay their bills.
They can't be working for free.
TSA agents are not wealthy people, right?
And so if you're genuinely concerned about national security, hey, maybe we shouldn't have
a government shutdown, a partial government shutdown that actually puts national security
in jeopardy.
Yeah, yeah, this is a case of shutting down national security to own the libs, basically.
So that is what's going on.
And that's a great example, there are others, of course.
I mean, if you want to talk about a national emergency, he's potentially setting us up for some
simply by continuing this unnecessary shutdown because he can't back off of his ridiculous
desire to build this wall.
So I want to show you just to follow up on what we were saying about how Klan Kanwe is implying
that this was a one-time mistake.
Here is video of the vice president who apparently didn't get that memo.
We're now seeing 60,000 people a month attempt to come into our country illegally on the southern
border. With regard to terrorists, we've seen more than 4,000 known or suspected terrorists
attempt to come into our country through various means. But on the southern border, last year
alone, 3,000 special interest aliens were apprehended. What we do know is we've stopped,
CBP has stopped over 3,000, what we call special interest aliens trying to come into the country
on the southern border. But remember also, we apprehended 17,000 people with criminal records
at attempting to come into this country on the southern border last year alone.
Okay, so nothing that you heard there is true.
There's not thousands of terrorists, and not even thousands of suspected terrorists, he's simply
making up the numbers.
And again, if you, if your spokesperson for the White House and the vice president can't get
this right, at what point do you have to retreat from the idea that this is simply people
flubbing statistics?
It's not, this was an intentional rollout of purposefully false information because they want
to manipulate the media into covering it and they want to manipulate gullible people across
America into supporting an insane, unnecessary wall on the southern border.
So let's go through some of the actual numbers.
I will attempt not to do any misstatements here.
So 41 people in the terrorist screening database were encountered at the southern border from
October 1st, 2017 to March 31st, 2018.
But 35 of them were US citizens or illegal permanent residents, leaving only six non-U.S.
Persons.
And let's just repeat it, those six people aren't terrorists.
by the way, or certainly they have not proved to be terrorists.
On the northern border, notice they didn't talk about this, oddly enough on the northern
border, customs and border protection stopped 91 people listed in the database, including
41 who were not American citizens or residents.
So even if after all of this, you were still convinced that one's enough, let alone six.
Okay, look, if there's six at the southern border, they were 41 at the northern border.
You gotta build a whole bunch of walls between here and Vancouver then.
I also, I want conservatives in the country to just for once in their lives be consistent
when it comes to policy.
So if someone is a suspected terrorist, which by the way, even in this case, these are not
suspected terrorists, these are just special interest aliens, and believe it or not, that's
a completely different thing.
Again, people coming from a country where terrorism takes place, but it doesn't mean that
they themselves are terrorists or suspected terrorists, just means, hey, let's do a little extra
screening, right?
Okay, you are against them ever coming into the country.
You know, you consider them a huge threat.
But conservatives will also argue to the death that people on the terrorist watch list, people
on the terrorist watch list here in the United States should have the right to access firearms.
They should have the ability to buy guns.
So when it comes to carrying out, you know, whatever NRA agenda there is, who cares if there
suspected terrorists, who cares if they're on a suspected terrorist watch list?
We'll give them guns.
But when it comes to this border debate, oh, special interest alien, we're not, no, no, this
is terrible.
We need to spend $5 billion, you know, for the initial construction of this ridiculous border
wall, which will do absolutely nothing.
You guys, this is nothing more than a political symbol for Donald Trump.
He knows it's not going to do anything regarding immigration, you know, his administration knows
it, conservatives know it, the only people who have fallen for this stupid joke are those
who voted for him.
Those who buy into the propaganda and the fearmongering, those who believe that anecdotal
stories regarding immigrants committing crime represents the general immigrant population.
And it's really sad to see how pathetically gullible some Americans can be on this issue.
Yeah, and some is unfortunately like 30% of the country.
who supported him over and above other Republicans because they believe that immigrants
are coming across the border to kill you.
And nothing you can say, no facts or statistics or anything, is ever going to convince
them otherwise.
So much so that it's not like the other Republicans they chose him over are, they're happy
and fun on the border.
Like they're xenophobes, they're nativists, but they really wanted a guy who would
get on stage and constantly say, immigrants are coming across the border and they're gonna
kill you and your family.
So I wanna talk about something briefly.
that we spoke about on the damage report this morning. I got a few more facts on it.
Because there are a lot of people who are still, even with all of this, they're going to be
concerned that that border is so long, people could come across it and they could be terrorists.
So let's talk about a study, an all-encompassing study, of all of the people who crossed
the border. The Libertarian Cato Institute said that from 1975 through 2017, seven people
who entered the U.S. illegally from special interest countries, states tied at least loosely,
to terrorism. So again, briefly, they're not terrorists, they're just from countries that have
been labeled as having an affiliation with terrorism. Those seven people across multiple
decades, almost half a century, were convicted of planning attacks on U.S. soils. You might think,
oh, that's really bad then. Well, it is, but none crossed from Mexico. They came from Canada or jumped
ship in U.S. ports, and all before special interest countries were classified as such. The plots were
foiled and no one was hurt.
So for the entirety of a half a century on the southern border, seven people came across the border,
not the border with Mexico.
They tried to do plots, they were foiled, there were no deaths, there were no injuries.
And the only known terrorists who crossed illegally from Mexico in all of those decades
were three ethnic Albanians from Macedonia, who came when they were children back in 1984.
Their plot was also foiled, and they were not from a special interest country.
So I understand that if you're conservative, there's no way you got this far into the video.
But please, throw down your fears.
They are so epically misplaced on this.
There are lots of things to be worried about.
People texting while driving, that could kill you.
Carbon monoxide, there are things that could kill you.
Sugar in your diet.
Inability to afford the medication you need to stay alive.
Could kill you.
Exactly, carbon emissions, you're not going to be killed from a terrorist coming across the
southern border.
This is not a hypothetical.
We have a half century case study from which to drive all of this information from.
So unfortunately, we do have to take our first break.
We come back, I want to switch it up because it is likely that later tonight Donald Trump
is going to declare an emergency on the border.
There are a lot of things in this country that could justifiably be labeled national emergencies.
We're gonna break down some of those after this.
We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fibing the Rueh-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-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical
episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called
powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount
of vulgarity, the 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
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and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained
all at the same time.
Welcome back to Anna and John's Rockin' Western Hour.
We've got a lot more news for you.
Before we get into that, though, I do want to read some of your comments.
I saw a super chat from Yaboy 07 and I gotta read it.
If Trump is worth $10 billion, why doesn't he pay it for the wall himself and make Mexico
pay him back?
Problem solved.
And the thing is, obviously he would never do that, but he could pay $5 billion to get
it started.
Imagine the hero he would be to connect.
conservative Americans for single-handedly funding a wall between us and Mexico.
He would never do it, he would spend $100 of his own money.
But he could if he wanted to, and he would still be, from what he says, fabulously wealthy.
Okay, other comments, Kara Curley, and where is the wall chant between us and those devious
Canadians?
Yeah, I mean, lots of people cross across that border.
And if the belief is that these terrorists are not Mexican, that they're from the Middle East,
they're going through Mexico, why wouldn't they just fly to Canada?
Yeah, and one other point that I want to make is Trump's the one who keeps referring to
it as a crisis at the border.
It's a humanitarian crisis at the border.
First off, everything that's happening at the border right now is an issue that he created,
because he's the one who insists on basically imprisoning every person who seeks asylum,
and we don't have the resources to do that.
So, people are literally, kids are dying as a result of that.
And secondly, he's doing something called metering, which is forcing Mexico to hold some
of these asylum seekers in their country, and they're living in squalor.
It's flu season, so people are getting sick.
And since they're living in squalor, they're not able to overcome their illnesses.
And sometimes they end up getting into the United States.
It's a complete matter disaster.
The only reason why it's a crisis is because Trump made it that way.
And so I hate when I see mainstream media outlets regurgitate the humanitarian crisis in their
headline because it just further reinforces the talking point that Trump is trying to put
out there.
Anyway, that's just my- I share similar fears.
So on that topic, by the way, as we said later tonight, he's going to be doing that primetime
address.
And my fear is that it is going to be broadcast into the homes of millions and millions of Americans.
And there's gonna be no context added.
I don't think that they're equipped to do it.
They're preempting other material that they could be covering.
So we decided to do something slightly different.
We are gonna be sticking around after the post game for a special members only segment.
You saw the details there.
We weren't gonna be filming anything during that time anyway, so we're not preempting any
for news coverage, thankfully.
And we are going to be adding context on top of what we're doing in this first hour as well.
So we're not only going to be responding to what he says, but probably much more importantly,
Democratic leadership and Bernie Sanders who will be doing their own statements as well.
So if you as members would like to join us after the post game, you can do that and hopefully
we can make sense of the mess that this speech is likely to be.
That said, why don't we jump back in the news?
So Donald Trump might declare a national security emergency over the border.
It's not an emergency, but there are emergencies in this country.
There are things that he could declare one over, and I have five that I would like to suggest.
The first, the idea for this actually comes from David Hogg, who he was being interviewed,
and he said this, if we really want to start talking about a national emergency like the president
likes to talk about, 40,000 Americans dying annually from gun violence is a pretty damn good one
to start out with because it is an issue that is nonpartisan, at least I would hope so,
considering the fact that both Democrats and Republicans die from gun violence.
So I think David Hogg, who knows quite a bit about this topic, is quite right.
I think that that is an actual national emergency with an ever increasing death toll.
If Laura Ingraham is worried about one terrorist, well, what about 1,000 Americans over
the course of just a month or two dying from gun violence?
That seems like a national emergency to me.
It's incredible how effective propaganda is, even when the facts are presented over and over
again.
So for instance, when you look at the number of people who have died because of gun violence versus
the number of people who have died because of violence committed by undocumented immigrants.
I mean, you can't even really compare the two.
Gun violence is way up here, but the Trump administration will take one undocumented immigrant
who's done something terrible, right?
And they'll go ahead and they'll broadcast that to the world over and over again.
And that anecdotal evidence for the point that they're trying to make will somehow be more
persuasive than the volume of people who die every year from gun violence.
It's incredible to me that for some reason Americans think that this anecdotal evidence
is more powerful and more persuasive than looking at the numbers of Americans who lose their
lives every year as a result of our inability to pass common sense gun legislation.
Exactly.
At the risk of not being persuasive, let's talk about those numbers.
If you bring up this chart, you're gonna see over time the number of Americans that died
due to gun related attacks, obviously, you see in the blue suicides.
Now those are going up quite a bit, but the assaults, the homicide, that also spiked over
the past few years.
I mean, you're talking about 15,000 Americans per year dying because someone had a gun
and a grudge.
And what's interesting is if you bring up this, let's bring up overall crime trends too.
So you just saw there, now look at this, violent crimes per 100,000 people from 93 to 17,
they dropped precipitously.
So while at the same time that violent crime is half of what it was in the early 90s, gun violence
is going up, which makes it seem like it's less of an issue of Americans being increasingly
violent and more of a problem of them increasingly having access to firearms.
And committing mass shootings.
That's- That too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that obviously is a national emergency.
Thank you to David Hogg for suggesting that.
I have another one, and if I were to ask you to name a national emergency, I have a feeling
what would be the number one, that would be climate change.
Now, we could go to any number of fancy graphics of statistics of the number of people
who are gonna be displaced, cities that will be destroyed, economic output that will be damaged,
the inability to feed our people, all of those issues.
We're gonna be scoured by fires, hurricanes will be worsened, ocean levels will rise.
We're not gonna go through that because we've done it a million times, watch the damage
for war.
But this is obviously a national emergency.
We could declare that as the sort of the impetus for something like a Green New Deal.
And also, if you're genuinely more concerned about immigration or mass migration into
the United States, consider the fact that climate change will accelerate that.
It will exacerbate that.
You will have more people displaced as a result of climate change, more people fleeing their
own countries, their own lands in search for safety.
People are probably going to want to come to places like the United States.
In fact, I mean, I'm a little concerned about mass migration from South Florida to other
states in the United States, right?
Just putting that out there.
Why is South Florida particular?
Because it's Florida, even if it's South Florida.
Yeah, I get your point.
No, but look, I'm obviously joking there, but South Florida will be underwater by the end
of the century.
Yeah, I've seen the charts of Louisiana.
It is going to be a rough time.
By the way, L.A. is not going to be immune to that as well.
I know.
Depending on how much heating there is, I have seen a projection that in 2100, my house would
be underwater.
I don't live near the beach, by the way.
But you have relatively flat land and you have rising oceans.
So climate change, definitely a national emergency.
Trump could be a historic hero for the US if he were to set us on the path to actually
doing something to address this problem.
Of course, he's not going to do that.
Maybe something more practical.
He thinks climate change is a hoax by the Chinese.
What about something that he can experience just by flying, just by driving?
That would be infrastructure repair.
Now, we could go through any number of different things, I'm just gonna cite some standout
points that have led the American Society of Civil Engineers to radar infrastructure overall
a D plus year after year.
Out of the over 600,000 bridges in the US, more than 200,000 or more than 50 years old, which
I'm not a civil engineer, but that's not good.
There were some 15,500 high hazard dams in the US back in 2016.
That sounds dangerous, I could see The Rock making a movie about that at some point.
More than one million drinking water pipes have been in use for almost 100 years.
That sounds safe.
So that is one of the reasons we have things like lead poisoning, let alone any number of other
issues.
And also, by the way, I understand this isn't going to be sexy for Republicans, but a huge
amounts of water waste as well, which we can ill afford in many parts of the country.
Additionally, you saw there at the bottom.
By 2025, there's an investment gap of about $177 billion for infrastructure that
supports electricity like power plants and power lines.
which not only makes our country more at risk of things like just lines going down and
stranding people without power, but let alone some sort of foreign cyber attack against
our electricity generation systems.
So in all these areas, whether you're talking about roads or pipes or airports, dams, bridges,
electricity, the nuclear plants, all of that, we need a massive investment.
So I wanna take a quick trip back to 2016 when Trump was running his campaign.
And it is true that the border wall was at the heart of his platform.
But he also ran a populist campaign.
And he ran a populist campaign coming from the right wing, of course.
But he did talk about things that people on the left do want some focus on.
So for instance, infrastructure happened to be one of them.
So he pretended like he cared about infrastructure.
He pretended like he wanted to do something to rebuild America.
But has he actually done anything in regard to that?
No.
First order of business, let's give the rich giant tax cuts.
So you're gonna pass tax cuts that cost the country $2 trillion, nearly $2 trillion over the
next decade, and you're gonna completely abandon your plans to improve the infrastructure.
Another thing he ran on was making pharmaceutical drug prices affordable.
He said it's ridiculous that Medicare isn't able to negotiate drug prices.
What has Trump done for that?
Absolutely nothing.
He's taking credit for lowering drug prices, but a story that we didn't get to on the main
show, I covered it on no filter this week, is that pharmaceutical drug prices have gone
up this year.
In the first two days of January, all the major pharmaceutical companies announced increases
on their major drugs, okay?
So something that he'll take credit for, he'll say, no, no, no, I lower drug prices.
He did not do that, he did not invest in infrastructure.
But for some reason, he wants to focus on funding that border wall.
Yeah, and along the way he has made, thanks to all of his scandals and all those
things, he has made the concept of infrastructure week a joke.
Right.
So obviously infrastructure, that is a national emergency all over the nation, actually.
Let's turn to another one though, and you talked about drugs, some people don't have access
to them.
Some have ones that are actually killing them.
And the opioid epidemic is a massive national crisis.
In fact, during the last election, some politicians started to talk about it as if it was
one, and then they backed off.
And despite his big promises that he would address this crisis, instead he has pulled funding
from organizations intended to do something about it.
He has literally shut down ones inside of the federal government.
designed to deal with that crisis.
And he has left us in a situation where every day more than 115 people in the US die
after overdosing on opioids.
Obviously, far more die overall from drug overdoses every day.
But that's just on opioids.
If we go to this next chart, you're going to see the number of deaths involving opioids
going up steadily, one before that, actually, steadily, steadily steady.
In fact, accelerating over the past few years.
So I would argue something killing 50,000 Americans in one year.
That seems like a crisis, that seems like a national emergency to me.
But you're not gonna see any action from him while that's going on, while the death toll continues
to mount.
One other national emergency, this one might be a little bit harder of a sell, but I think many
of you who tune into this program understand why this is the actual emergency that I say it
is, and that is money in politics.
And the reason for that is, imagine that Trump was to, or an actual responsible politician,
was to go on the podium in front of the nation, and to talk about that.
the ways that out of control spending in elections, the influence of donors, special interests,
corporate packs, all of that has warped the outcomes we have in virtually every area of policy,
including all of the ones that are literally life and death.
If we're talking about our healthcare system, we're talking about the military, any of these,
what we get politically is what is bought by the donors.
People die because of these decisions, because of these donations.
And to give them an idea of how much worse it's getting, let's bring up this,
final chart. And you're going to see spending in midterm elections by year. So at the bottom
you have 1998 and you see marching up 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, more and more literally
billions of dollars. So what are we getting as a result of over $6 billion in these midterms?
Trash. We're getting trash. Yes. And people are dying. That is a national emergency.
It's not sneaking up behind you with a knife, okay? It's not creeping across the border,
But it's here.
It's not just here.
It's in the halls of Congress.
It is determining what the president does, what our senators do.
In many cases, what the Supreme Court decide as well.
That affects everyone.
And I believe that a responsible politician could actually make that case.
When you think about what makes America great or what made America great, it was this idea
of having a government that was by the people for the people.
And with money in politics, you get the exact opposite of that.
With money and politics, you are not able to run in most cases unless you are tremendously
wealthy and connected.
And even if you are someone who's not interested in running, but you want to be politically active
and elect someone who represents you, there is no guarantee.
In fact, it's highly likely that even after that person gets elected, he or she will be corrupted
by these corporate interests.
And so all the issues that we care about, all the issues that we want to see real systemic
change in are never gonna change if we don't do something about the rampant corruption and
legalized bribery that we now have in our political system.
We no longer have a democratic system in place.
We have a system that is owned and controlled by the corporate world and the corporate world
only, and we need to stop that.
I agree.
So those are five actual national emergencies.
I'm sure that you can suggest some more.
If you're watching this, actually, why don't you tweet some in and maybe we'll read
some after the next break.
But before that, why don't we turn to a little bit of positive news, actually.
As of today, well over a million Floridians who had previously been convicted of a felony
have their voting rights finally restored.
And that is due to a ballot initiative passed in last year's midterm elections.
That is Florida's Amendment 4, which restores voting rights for people in Florida, convicted
of felonies as long as they've completed their sentences.
Anyone convicted of murder or felony sex offenses is excluded.
So, how significant of a change is this? Well, the sentencing project estimated back in 2016
that nearly 1.5 million people in Florida have already completed their felony sentences but
still can't vote about 9.2% of the voting age population in Florida.
And considering how low voting rates are in America, I don't think we can really afford
democratically to write off one out of 10 of our citizens. And by the way, as I'm sure
you're aware, this is not evenly distributed across different racial demographic groups.
There is a slant here.
Back in 2016, more than 418,000 people out of a black voting age population of more than
2.3 million or 17.9% of potential black voters in Florida had finished their sentences,
had, you know, as they say, paid their debt to society, but had no sway over society after
that.
They did the crime, they did the time, and that's it democratically for them.
Thankfully, people supported this amendment in the midterm elections, and now close to 20%
of black eligible voters in Florida will once again be able to vote.
I'm curious to see how this would change voting habits or about outcomes, political outcomes
from the state of Florida.
Because first, it would be ridiculous to just automatically assume that these individuals
would vote a certain way.
We don't know how they would vote.
But it would also be wrong to just assume that they would be.
politically active in the first place.
I hope they are, I hope they vote regardless of what their political ideology is.
This is a huge group of people who could have a giant influence on the outcome of elections.
So I hope they're politically active.
But I'm really curious to see how it plays out.
I think that people are putting a little too much weight on it right now with their
predictions.
Yeah, yeah.
Look, I think it's fair to try to predict, but I don't have any particular information about
how active they are politically or what party is support.
Right, or how they would vote.
So I will assume that because they're Americans, absent any other information, half of them
still won't vote, but maybe half will.
And you know what?
That's their right.
They should be allowed to.
Especially in Florida.
Florida's got some problems.
It could use some fresh blood in terms of elections.
So look, great news for Florida, although DeSantis, who never should have become the governor,
but is doing what he can to try to interfere with this.
It looks like he will not be able to, but keep a watch just in case.
But regardless of the progress in Florida across the country, six million.
people still can't vote because of felony convictions.
So we're not done nationally in dealing with this issue.
And actually, it's interesting to what you were saying about, you know, predictions about
who this will favor.
And the Republicans being against it almost certainly as a result of them, they have an idea
of who they will support.
Right.
So one of those who had been pushing for this initially said, we are not pawns for any
partisan gamesmanship.
We're not pawns for any partisan bickering.
We are human beings, we are people over politics, and we are citizens of the state and
of this country that want to be able to participate in the democratic process without being
set up like we're just a token for a political party.
Oh, I love that quote.
That is a good quote.
That is a good quote.
I unfortunately don't have the name here, but that individual will be joining me on the damage
report a little bit later on this week, thankfully.
All right.
But anyway, good news.
That is good news.
Hey, we don't always get good news.
Yeah, we had some good news this week though.
Cintoya Brown receiving clemency in the state of Tennessee.
That was some good news.
So we try to sprinkle it in whenever we can get by it.
Yeah, them catching who they believe was the murder.
of Jasmine Barnes as well.
It's good news.
You know, all good news coming from tragedies, unfortunately.
Maybe we'll get some generic good news later on.
Anyway, we're going to take our second break when we come back.
More for you.
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Hey, everybody, welcome back to the first hour.
John and Anna, I want to read a few comments before we jump back in the news.
More good news, actually.
I had forgotten that we actually have more good news in the first hour.
Okay.
So, yeah, a little bit fun.
Let's see.
Jet 53 said in the member comments, you know what's a national emergency?
Climate change.
I live in Ohio, and today in my state, it was 53 degrees, and we had two tornadoes in January.
That is interesting, damn.
Let's see.
Dr. Chaos MD says, most terrorism in this country is committed by right-wingers who were born
and raised here, yet nobody is suggesting we wall off Kentucky.
Yeah, we'll return to that.
Let's see, Gabby Marina says, how can a national emergency declare a national emergency?
That's pretty good, I like that.
Gabby, let's see.
And Joe Oliver 44 said on the TYT Live, imagine if Trump fought this hard to get help to the people of Puerto Rico.
Yeah, that's just a devastating point.
That seemed like a national emergency.
I mean, there were people who went the better portion of a year without electricity.
I mean, thousands of people died.
He doesn't see them as Americans, that's the problem.
And the thing is, like, I understand we didn't give some of the historic context for the national emergency being declared, but there have been literally dozens of national emergencies declared over the past few decades.
Obama declared one in 2009 for swine flu, in 2001, George W. Bush declared one after 9-11.
He did the wrong things with that.
But if you could do it for swine flute, thousands of people died, totally unnecessarily
in Puerto Rico.
It's not like if we'd sent the Navy, they would have gotten there two days later and everyone
would have died.
They died afterward.
They died because we forgot them, because we ignored them, and didn't send help.
That definitely should have been a national emergency.
And that is a reminder, by the way, of how serious it is to give power to someone like Donald
Trump.
We have to now hope that there's no more hurricanes like that because he will leave us
out, you know, for the storm.
I mean, people are about to find out how insanely punitive the new tax law is.
People who live in states that have state taxes are about to literally.
The reason why I bring that up is because he picks and chooses who he'll help and who he'll,
you know, try to destroy or do pass policy against.
It is what it is.
I mean, look, imagine, yeah, I don't know which politicians I necessarily would have trusted
to have handled that situation properly.
I mean, my gut says aOC, but other than her, probably not most.
But does anyone think that there would not have been a better response if it hadn't been
Donald Trump?
Hell, if it had been Marco Ruby, if it had been Ted Cruz, if it had been even just a regular
awful Republican, there would have been some help and fewer people would have died as a result.
Anyway, let's move on to other news, some good news actually.
Good news in terms of healthcare in New York City with Mayor Bill de Blasio announcing expansion
to the city's public option program.
It's a little bit complicated, but this seems like a pretty good change, at least initially.
He tweeted, healthcare isn't just a right in theory, it must be a right in practice.
Today I'm announcing a plan to guarantee health care for all New Yorkers throughout our own,
through our own public option and a new program called NYC Care will ensure the first stop
for people isn't the emergency room.
So let's give you some details about what this new program is actually intended to accomplish.
The plan is dubbed as we said, NYC Care.
It's gonna offer public health insurance on a sliding price scale based on income.
It will begin later this year in the Bronx and will be available to all New Yorkers in
2021 and it would cost at least $100 million once it reaches full enrollment.
There's not really the detail on this that I would like at this point.
So I can't explain why it starts in the Bronx specifically, but it does and it'll take a couple of years to roll out.
It also there is described as health insurance, although Bill de Blasio and others have multiple
times said this is not health insurance, these are direct payments for health care issues.
That distinction is currently lost on me.
We're gonna talk to some experts and get that down, thankfully.
But it does come with quite a few benefits actually.
The proposed option would assign a primary care doctor to each plan participant and help
patients find specialists if needed.
Bill de Blasio said the plan would be financed out of the city's public health budget
would ultimately be cost effective by reducing hospital emergency room visits by uninsured
patients and by improving public health.
So this is significant, of course, because there's 600,000 people who hypothetically
fit into the class of people who would have access to health insurance under this plan,
which again is on a sliding pay scale.
Hypothetically, if people were making the least amount of money, they might not pay anything
at all for this.
So Johns Hopkins University just published the latest study on the cost of health care
in the United States versus every other developed country.
And they again reinforce something that we already know as people who follow the news,
follow the statistics.
The United States spends more on health care than any other country.
And part of the reason why is of course the pharmaceutical drug prices and how Americans
end up paying way more than anyone else.
We're not able to negotiate the drug prices like other countries are.
But more importantly, the first visit to a doctor for a lot of Americans is the emergency
room.
And that is incredibly expensive, incredibly costly.
And I remember when I was growing up, I did not grow up in a middle class household.
It was a working class household.
My parents were both immigrants, working really hard.
And so they couldn't afford health insurance.
My dad was doing odd jobs here and there at one point when he lost his job.
And so California had a program called Healthy Families.
And because of that program, me and my brother were able to go see a dentist every year or twice
year, we were able to get our annual checkup, and it kept us healthy, it kept us well.
And I really appreciate that kind of program, which is why for me as an American, I took advantage
of something like that.
And I feel like it is my duty, right, to make sure that other generations have the same access
to affordable health care, to free health care in this case, it's not really free because
you're paying for it through your taxes.
I love what de Blasio is doing, I wish we could see something.
like this on a national level, I also want to keep following up on this story because
I know he is looking to run in 2020, and I hope that this is a genuine effort.
Yeah, yeah, it is still absent some details.
I mean, we do know that it includes both physical and mental health, apparently it does
not include dental.
But I like, as you just did, he continually stresses trying to keep people out of using the
emergency room as their first and last option, obviously.
is while it not only costs far more and leads to people having worsening of diseases
and things like that, the stuff you just described about the healthy families and keeping yourself
healthy, the emergency room is not an option for that.
So it only is once you get to the point of an emergency that you actually end up there.
And so that ends up with not only spending more money, but also achieving worse health
care outcomes as well.
So apparently good job, although we will continue to follow up.
Let's move to our last story now.
New Congresswoman Rashida Talib is still under fire for saying a bad word while calling
for the president to be impeached.
That was days ago, but it's still an issue across the country, which is great news because
it means we don't have any other problems as a country.
But no, she is still constantly being attacked, not only by the Republicans, as you'll
see in a few minutes, by some Democrats as well.
And so she has sort of apologized, and I want to play, sort of.
No, I hate this.
Sort of.
Every part of this.
Because I want to play that.
I hate it.
So here she is on Democracy Now.
I understand that I'm a member of Congress now, but I'm also a person that is angry and upset
with the conduct of my president, of a conduct of a person that, you know, what's happening
at the borders as a person that is Muslim in America, what has been said about my faith.
There's so much there and I'm passionate and I'm upset.
But I won't apologize for being upset or angry.
What I do apologize is the use of my words for distracting us.
Okay, so you don't like that.
I don't think it's that bad.
I really wish she didn't apologize.
At all?
At all.
Because look, I love her and her heart's in the right place and policy wise and policy matters
way more than this nonsense debate over her using a curse word.
I just don't want her to concede anything to these disingenuous losers who pretend like they're
so outraged by this bad word.
No, no, you don't care.
And she mentioned this in her statement.
It's obviously far more offensive to put actions behind your words.
And what Trump has done, what the Republicans have done in their, you know, in their ridiculous,
complicit behavior is far worse, ripping children away from their parents at the border
as they're seeking asylum, putting them in cages.
I mean, you don't, you're you, Republicans have the audacity to point to someone who uses
a curse word after the president that you support talks about grabbing women by the pussy.
And I don't censor myself from saying it, okay, I don't care, I don't, people who are
like, oh, you know, he said he wants to grab women by the generals, no, no, he said grab
women by the pussy.
But that's okay, that's just locker room talk.
I hate that she apologized for her words.
She should not have apologized and do not ever concede to them.
Because they are disingenuous, they don't care about your apology, they're going to continue
attacking you, and you have to be a fighter, you have to fight.
And every time they attack you, your name is out there, and that's a good thing.
Look at how they keep talking about AOC, and it's only increased her popularity, which
is great.
Yeah, I don't know if people track this, I don't even know why I happen to notice this,
but from when the dancing video was released to now, she's gained over 300,000 Twitter
followers.
That is amazing.
She has more than almost every other Democrat.
I know, because it was endearing and awesome.
Exactly.
So look, I agree with the spirit of what you're saying.
I also think that people, well, first of all, I 100% agree that they're just ingenuous, and
that they don't care if you apologize in this case.
The one thing that I disagree on a little bit, and actually it was only just now.
When I watched the video again that I realized how she worded her apology, I had remembered
her apologizing that her language was a distraction.
But she didn't say I apologize that my language was a distraction.
She apologized for the use of her language being a distraction, which is her saying that
it's the people who made it a distraction.
No, I understand that, I understand that.
And that is why I care about this.
Rashida Talib made an offhand comment that everyone around her absolutely loved.
The media made it a big issue.
And by the way, along the way, didn't even care about the fact that, look, if you want
to talk about something being provocative, forget the curse word.
She's calling for the president to be impeached.
Oh, but they don't care about that.
Yeah, that's provocative.
Cover that.
And the thing is, honestly, last week, what did TYT do?
We talked about the word too, but we also covered the content.
We covered her op-ed in the Detroit Free Press.
We talked about all the charges she laid out for why Donald Trump should be impeached.
And then on Monday, on the damage report, John Bonifaz, who co-authored the op-ed with her,
was on my show, The Damage Report with me.
So you can do both.
You can go, like, faint from her using a naughty word, but at least talk about what underlies it,
which is a very credible case that the president needs to be impeached.
Yeah, I, look, I just think that we cannot bend to their will or waiver in any way.
We can't play into their nonsense demands, ever, ever, ever.
Like, we're done.
I just don't let them think that the words you used were a distraction.
They're only making it a distraction.
Don't ever apologize.
You used a word, yes, it's a curse word, it's not the end of the world.
They're trying to demonize you for doing something that they do on a regular basis and much worse through their actions.
That's all that matters.
The people who support you will continue supporting you because they support you based on your actions, your policy proposals, those are the things that matter.
The people who are making a big deal out of her using that word, those people, or those words, those people weren't going to support you anyway.
So even if you apologize, even if you say, you know, I wish this wasn't a distraction, it doesn't matter to them.
Again, it's disingenuous.
Do not bend to them.
They don't deserve it.
And they don't even mean anything that they say.
But Anna, what if it's bipartisan?
I would have said it again.
I would have gone on that interview and I'd be like, yeah, I called him a mother, you know.
Yeah.
Well, certainly a lot of people doing that on Twitter.
So the reason I say it was bipartisan is, and prepare to be angry, guys, if you could queue up video seven, generally it was Republicans and people in the center on the media who were like, oh my God, I've literally never heard anyone swear before, who's the president?
But it wasn't just them, it was also a Democrat and not only a Democrat, but a Democratic senator.
So take a look at this.
Senator, what did you think of that language?
Oh, it's so disgusting. It was horrible.
Neil, no one should approve of that.
And I hope she doesn't talk to her son that way either.
But, you know, what can you say?
I can't anyway condone that.
It's not how we act in West Virginia.
It's not how we talked about public leaders.
We might disagree with each other, but we try to get through it.
We try to find a pathway forward.
To act like that, just awful.
And to speak like that is even more deplorable.
I am so sorry.
I want to apologize to all Americans.
any setting Congress person, there's 535 of us there, 100 senators and 435 Congress people.
We should have better manners than that, I assure you.
Senator Joe Manchin is an embarrassment to the Democratic Party.
I would argue that it's far more disgusting to vote in favor of confirming someone like Brett Kavanaugh
as a Supreme Court justice, and if you don't believe the attempted rape allegations
against him, which I do, just his mere conduct during those hearings does not indicate that
he's fit to be a Supreme Court justice for the rest of his life.
So again, Joe Manchin is one of the Democratic senators, or I believe the only Democratic
senator, who voted in favor of confirming Brett Kavanaugh's a Supreme Court justice.
But that's not disgusting, right?
That's not disgusting.
No, because that's about actions.
Right.
It's not about curse words.
apologizing on behalf of them.
Get out of here.
He is so embarrassing.
Yeah, I wish that it was Paul Jean Sweringen, who had been asked that question if she had
defeated him in the primary and then gone on to defeat him in the general election.
Unfortunately, not this time.
But there's six years.
So look, someone watching this, you might be in West Virginia right now.
You might think the idea of you running for office and becoming a U.S. center is absolutely
insane.
It might take a couple of years for you to get around thinking that that's not insane.
But you have that time.
So please, if you have any chance of successfully primary, Joe Manchin, start thinking about it now.
Start to build a little bit of the groundwork and in a couple of years you can launch it, and I'm sure you'll find a healthy appetite for that primary challenge.
Anyway, I wish that we had more time.
We had more on Brazil and other topics, but we're gonna take-
You did it. I'm in a bad mood, thanks.
I'm sorry.
No, it's not your fault.
It's the stories, but.
So we're going to take a break and then an awesome second hour led by Anna Kisperin will follow that.
Yes.
Thank you for joining me in the first hour.
Thanks for doing hour one.
We'll be right back, guys.
Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.
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