The Young Turks - Wild Ride

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

The Biden Administration is struggling to block the rail strikes without creating new deals. The Young Turks interviews Pastor Corey Brooks. Too many affluent people have bought Airbnbs and now they are not being occupied. Yevgeny Prigozhin a Russian businessman has admitted to interfering with U.S. elections, and he doesn’t plan to stop. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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. Woo! It's up! All right, well, young Turks, Junk Huguer Annika Sparing with you guys, the oft criticized, but Unbreakable young jerks.

Okay. Too strong. Give me a... God damn right. Give me the fistpub, all right. In the form of a waterfall. No, that's the Wonder Twins. Okay.

Old school reference. John Idle will get it. All right, guys, so we got an amazing show for you yesterday. Of course. Who's gonna win the elections tomorrow? I have no idea. No idea. So are we doing a midterm election tomorrow coverage?

Of course. Are we doing it? Are we doing a midterm election? Yeah, we're doing coverage late into the night. Yes, we are. So, and it starts with a doozy. So in the first hour, so obviously we got the Young Turks tomorrow and then right afterwards we go into election coverage.

And then the first hour, it's going to be me, Anna and Nina, and Nina Turner. How cool is that? And then our guest is going to be Matt Gates. And so that's real. And apparently that has Twitter is, is on fire right now. It's like game of throw. And that gave it their own hunger games when Catnus Everdeen goes on fire. So this is our way of announcing we are now classical liberals.

Classical liberals, okay. No, yeah. By the way, he had the balls to come on the show. Yeah. We are not friendly toward him. We don't like him. So, yeah. But you know what?

And he's perfectly aware of that. Yeah, he is. So anyway, we got to get to the stories. No, but we got to get to the stories. Yeah, we do. I'm just going to say one thing. And I want it to be very clear. So I'm the EP of the show.

And I'm going to do the show I want to do. I'm going to bring on the guests I want to talk to. And no one's going to bully me or anyone else who works on the show to do what they want. If you don't like having interesting conversations and you just want to exist in an echo chamber where everyone boringly agrees with everything, great. There's a ton of shows out there that do just that. Here, we're going to do what we want to do. You can also start your own show, see what it's like. Okay, so it's my super last thing, even though we just started the show, is first of all, I would like to add to hashtag you do you, boo.

I am going to do me. So we're doing what we're doing. We're doing what we're doing? So a lot of you, you're like, what is going on? What are they talking about, right? So it's social media, anytime we do anything, people, all the haters come in left, right, middle. Oh, God, you can't do that. You have to agree with us and only us.

You have your own opinions. We are not allowed to have your own opinions. Wrong we are. So hashtag you do you, boo. And so what that means is why don't you set up a giant progressive media network or any kind of media network you like? And then you say anything you want on that network. 100%. Okay. Have that at us. It'll only take you 20 years. Okay. So anyways, we're having fun today and tomorrow until we find out the results. Then we might not be having fun. But anyways, but that's for tomorrow. So Casper. We begin with an important update on the rail strike. Let's do it. It's imperative that the companies in the

unions stay at the table and try and get in a deal so we can get that vote out there. At the end of the day, if we don't have a deal, one of these unions for some reason doesn't get to an agreement with the company, then the way that the Railroad Act works is Congress will have to take action to avert a strike in our country. I personally think the best way to do it is by doing it at the bargaining table and not having taken action by Congress. But if need be, you're saying you would ask Congress to take action? They're going to have to.

That's part of the act. That's part of their responsibility. Biden's labor secretary, Marty Walsh, essentially doing away with whatever leverage the rail workers have in regard to their negotiations with their employers. And really the sticking point about the new union contracts is over the issue of being able to take some time off to deal with a family emergency or medical emergency. The fact that that sticking point remains a sticking point is infuriating. And the fact that Marty Walsh just said that Congress would have to intervene, he would want Congress to intervene to essentially force a contract upon these rail workers, in my opinion, is a bit of an issue.

But I also understand why he would say that. If there were a rail strike, it would absolutely tank the economy. And the Biden administration is terrified about that. Now let's back up a little bit, give you a little bit of context, and then we'll discuss. So first, again, a reminder. This is mostly about the fact that these rail workers just want to be able to take. some time off if there is an emergency in their lives without being retaliated against. Pay was never the main sticking point in these negotiations. The main issue that led the rank

and file of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division and Signalman is the lack of paid sick days in the rejected tentative labor agreements. Railroad management has already rejected the union's request to add sick days to the next. tentative agreement in order to get a deal membership would ratify. I mean, it really is insane. And the union workers did reject the proposed contracts, even though their union representation wanted them to support it. I have more details.

But Jank, what do you think about what Marty Walsh said there? Well, I don't like what he said. I can't do a Boston accent, but I loved his, but okay, I hated what he said, but I loved his Boston accent. Okay, you know, well, good to tell them that's New York. I can't do it. Anyways, all right. So, Matta Walsh. So look, strong opinions. Number one, I totally disagree with the Biden administration. What Marty Walsh did, there was throw labor under a bus or under a train, if you will. I agree. Yeah. And so that's actually indisputable.

Why they did it today is an interesting question. So the strike and their decision on the strike, what happened after the election? So November 19th, and then December is another, early December is another decision point, okay? So I would understand if they were about to go on strike like two days before the election and the Biden guys are panicking, supply chain issues, inflation, and oh my God, it's going to be mayhem, it's terrible timing, right? But it's after the election. So what are you coming out here and cutting their legs out from underneath them for?

So guys, this is the most important part, okay? So if the two sides are negotiating, well, that's between them, okay? And the workers can use their leverage to say, yeah, of course, it will create supply chain issues, it will be an infrastructure mess, and that's our leverage. That's why we want sick days, et cetera. But in this particular case, the government can actually prevent them from striking. Exactly. And so since the government can prevent them, if the government state doesn't say anything,

they're still on an even footing because they don't know what the government going to do. But when as soon as the government says, no, we're going to not allow you to strike, then the workers have lost all leverage. Yes. And then at that point, that means they're already screwed. The negotiation is irrelevant, right? It's not perfectly irrelevant, but this was by kneecapping labor. That's exactly right. And what I don't understand is, look, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of rail workers who are threatening to strike in solidarity. So the thing about Congress getting involved in forcing them or blocking them from striking is fascinating because what if the workers say, no, we don't care what Congress says, we're going to strike

anyway, we're going to get what we want. Because again, if they stand in solidarity and there's hundreds of thousands of them willing to do this, are their employers going to literally fire hundreds of thousands of them? Or is the federal government going to take some sort of action against them? I mean, I doubt it. That would, I mean, that would require Biden to have any kind of strength. But the only time the corporate Democrats have strength, of course, is when they're undercutting progressives or labor or anything like that.

So it's not impossible. But guys, it's weirdly preemptive. And it's because, as always with corporate Democrats, they're in a panic. Industry must be protected. The economy and the stock market must be protected. Hold on, let him finish. And by the way, the CNN article that I happen to read on it. massively biased.

Of course. Always. Always. A corporate-owned company, a corporate-owned media, you know, entity. So, of course, it's going to be. And look, CNN, along with the corporations that sponsor CNN, don't want the rail workers to strike. They want Congress to get involved because they're worried about their profits being impacted by the strike. Think about it.

30% of freight is transported through rail. 30% that is significant. So we're talking about a potential strike of 110,000 rail workers. And that would have obviously an impact on our supply chain. It would have an impact on already soaring prices due to inflation. People who need to buy cars would have difficulty doing so. Factories would shut down due to shortages of parts that they need. So all of these corporations are keeping an eye on this potential rail strike and they're terrified because it would absolutely cut into their profits. And this is why labor power, when it's organized, is so incredibly powerful. Because it's really the only way to put the employers or get the

employers to their knees and get what you need as an employee. And in this case, what they're asking for is so reasonable guys. They're not asking for like multi-million dollar salaries. They're asking for days off so they can tend to what we all deal with in life, health issues, family emergencies. Right now workers need, workers who need only a day or two off when they're sick are expected to make up the time with other work days or lose pay altogether. And they're like, no, we don't accept this. And the fact that Congress might block them from striking is terrible.

The fact that Marty Walsh said what he said on CNN, terrible, because again, that does away with the leverage that these organized workers have. And I guess we'll see how it plays out. One other thing I'll mention, just to be absolutely fair, is if Congress blocks the strike and they basically force a contract onto these workers, there's nothing indicating that the contract has to be what the employers want, right? there is a possibility the contract could be something that the employees want. But with that said, we know how Congress works. So I wouldn't hold my breath on that. But I wanted to be fair and at least tell you the possible ways this could go in. Yeah.

So the reason I said the CNN article was so biased because they say, now if they strike you, we could have empty shelves in all of the stores. And this is okay, well, that could happen. So at that point, I'm like, okay, that's fine. They're laying out one of the possibilities. Then when they got to the offer made by the railroad company, companies to the workers, they're like, it was already a very generous offer. Hold on, how do you know that? Look, their union leadership told them to take the offer because they're panicked because they work for the Democrats, right?

They're like, yes, sir, absolutely, sir. We will sell out our workers instantly, sir. Yes, Joe Biden, sir, yes, sir. Right? No, no, no, no. They're supposed to be working for you, not the other way around. Anyways. But the rank and file voted at that because they thought it wasn't quote-to-quote generous enough. But CNN comes in and goes, no, they're wrong. It was a generous office offer. By the way, we're unbiased. We're totally objective and neutral, but goddamn workers are going to cause shortages because they wouldn't take a whole two days for sick leave.

Can you believe that? And these sons of bitches now want three sick days? To be fair to them, though, Jake. Their stock portfolios have already been suffering, and they just don't know if they can take any more. Yeah, that does seem fair. So last thing is my personal take on it. So look, guys, it would create issues, and those issues would affect all of us, including me. So do I want to have shortages and inflation?

And said, of course I don't want that, right? Now, having said that, this is a concept that is completely novel to the right wing. I care about people I don't know. Okay, so I think what they're doing is really important. And I think what they're doing is creating leverage for all workers in the country, not just themselves, and that they are beginning to show employees, employers that, hey, you've got to pay fair wages, you've got to have fair, you know, working conditions, et cetera. And if they do that, everybody, everybody on TV will yell at them. Everybody in Washington will yell at them. They'll pretend that the guys that are, you know, working class guys are the real problem.

And the poor executives at the railroad companies, how will they ever survive? By the way, the young guys make excellent points. They're like, this sick leave thing would be 1% not of your revenue of your profits. Like, so that's the thing you can't afford while you're making record profits? Yeah, that's how vicious they are. It's just unbelievable. Everything they're saying, the management is saying, is factually incorrect. And it happens every time they're like sitting on a mound of money because it's not a private company.

These are companies that are in stock market, etc. You can see how much revenue they have, you can see how much profit they have. And they go, oh my God, we can't afford it. What do you can't afford it? I just saw your profit statement, and I just saw you do billion dollars in buybacks. I know, but remember, their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders. Maximize profit. Yeah.

Okay, well, so that's why this would be an amazing example. And it might lead to more strikes and more employees saying, you know what, God damn it, enough is enough. And look, this is in my book, and I don't want to get too far into it, but the difference between wages on productivity, let's say in the year 2017, for example, if your wages had gone out with productivity, you know how much more you'd make, on average, for the median American worker, $17,000 more per year. That's how much they took from you by redistributing the wealth to the top. And now when you say, hey, can I get a sick day off? They say, no. And then who does it for them? Not Republicans, but Joe Biden, okay?

And the corporate goddamn Democrats. And in response to this video, what we will get is, can you believe they're saying this before an election when you should be kissing the ass of sellout corporate Democrats? No deal, no deal. You undermine workers, we come for you. All right, I'm going to do one more story before we go to our second segment. And we do have a great guest coming up. So stick around for that.

For now, though, let's talk about something that I'm a little too giddy about. Two years ago, I bought a house in Palm Springs and renovated it. on Airbnb. When the house was finally ready, I was so excited to see how it would do on Airbnb. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, you guys. It's, we lost money. We, it's not looking good. That's an Airbnb host by the name of Shelby Church, and her experience seems to be replicated among other Airbnb hosts who have noticed that their bookings have gone down considerably, in some cases, not a single booking for the rest of the year. Now, what's going on? Maybe the market might be oversaturated with short-term rentals.

Hopefully they're not over-leveraged, and they don't lose those homes. Okay, all right. No, I know, I'm being super giddy and, like, ridiculous about it, but I can't help it. Think about what this means, guys. The short-term vacation rental market is oversaturated. These are typically apartments or single-family homes that did mortgages or long-term rentals, but they got snatched up by white collar workers, wealthy people who are like, I just want to make some passive income in the middle of a housing crisis and a housing

shortage. Okay, great. So now we have this oversaturation of these short term rentals and the people who invested their money in it hoping for some passive income aren't getting it. They're not getting any income right now because again, the market is oversaturated. So let me give you some more details. No, no, not yet, not yet. So this all started with a viral tweet. I got to show this to you. Texas runner DFW quote tweeted it and said, the Airbnb bust is upon us. And in it, there's an Airbnb super host who says, has anyone seen a huge decrease in bookings over the last three to four months? We went from at least 50% occupancy to literally zero percent in the last two months. I'm just curious if this is something only going on with my property or if other people are seeing similar things.

I'm in Palm Springs. Where are you located? Well, no, the occupancy has actually declined quite a bit. Jim Ewing, who is the person who made that post, was reached out to by Time Magazine. And he says that his property in Desert Hot Springs, California, dropped from 80% occupancy to 0% this past month and hasn't rebounded since. Quote, we haven't had a single booking since June, he says. So some of these Airbnb hosts, and it's not just Airbnb, it's other platforms that have the short term rentals like Verbo, for instance. Now they're thinking about either selling the properties or instead of doing short term rentals, doing long term, you know, normal rentals for people

who need housing, which means it could increase the supply of rental properties on the market. And that could lower the price of rentals if things work out the way they're supposed to in an economy where things don't seem to make much sense more and more every day. But we'll see what happens. All I'm saying is, market's oversaturated, sorry. Yeah, I think the emoji you were looking for is this. Oh, yeah, the yes. The tier, okay.

So here's the situation. I love Airbnb, said it out loud. And I like going to those whole, like it's like having a whole bunch of different homes in different places. So it's great, okay. Does it have some issues lately? Absolutely. Okay, so we did a story a little while back about now the owners are attaching all sorts of conditions, right? They give you a cleaning fee. I can live with a cleaning fee. I get it, you got to clean up the place, right? Then they started jacking up the cleaning fee. And I was like, yeah, that cleaning, I mean, who are we bringing in here?

Is the wolf coming in here to clean up? Did we murder someone in the basement? Why is this cleaning fee so large? But then they have a laundry, literally a laundry list for you, right? Like do the laundry, wash the dishes, take out the trash. basically clean the entire property and pay a cleaning fee, which, but why? Why would we do that? But that's a little bit of a separate issue, but I can imagine that it's playing into the problem. Oh, okay, okay, Jake. So that's exactly what I was going to get to. And they're like, okay, and my cat's there and you got to fleece it for lice. And then, okay, make sure you spread the lice on yourself before you leave. I mean, it's like this giant list of things you have to do, right?

And I'm like, I was going on vacation. I wasn't going to be your guy. God damn butler. What the hell is this, right? So a lot of people are turned off by that. And then I kept reading to see like, all right, well, there's an oversaturation, so obviously they're gonna lower the prices. It's called capitalism, look into it, it's called free markets, look into it, right? No, but they didn't look into it.

They refused to do it. So it turns out, they haven't lowered the prices at all, and they're like, oh, my God, about this house, and I demand to have it filled at all times, and I demand that you do my laundry and dishes and at Manny Petty, of course, I'll be stopping by during your vacation, and I won't lower prices at all. No, that's not how it works. That's not how it works. But it's the entitlement mindset you would expect from someone who wants to like just sit around and collect passive income, right? And look, can I say like, side note, there is no such thing as passive income. It's all a dream, right? Unless you're invested in stocks and they pay

you dividends. Yeah, well, look, that's a little bit easier because you can go you do nothing, etc. But when you're doing an Airbnb, you got to go get the thing, you got to set it up, you got to arrange this, you got to arrange that. And then when you have to do it, then you're like, oh, they got, I don't want to do that. I just wanted to be passive income. I mean, unless, yeah, but that's the thing, unless you expect the people renting your short-term rental to do all the work for you, which is what's been going on. No, I know, but so it's called sad day, move on with your life and figure it out. Am I supposed to cry for you when you won't lower the prices? I'm not crying for them. Right? And like you won't

lower the number of ridiculous conditions that you put on the houses, you can't say like, oh, this is capitalism, and I get to charge as much as I want. But if things go south, no, I'm still charging as much as I want. No, it's cold supply and demand. Take an econ class. These numbers are also outrageous, and there should have been a regulatory effort to prevent the oversaturation that we're seeing, especially since we're dealing with the massive housing crisis and shortage.

Analyst say, many U.S. Airbnbs are sitting empty because so many wealthier people and investors listed short term rentals on the site, in the wake of a pandemic-fueled boom, the number of available short-term rental listings in the U.S. skyrocketed to $1.38 million in September. That's a 23.2% year-over-year increase according to rental analytics from Air DNA. I just, again, look, if we were swimming in houses, right, like there was just an abundance of homes, just we don't know what to do with it. There's so many homes, then okay, yeah, sure, 1.38 million short-term rentals in September would be fine, I guess.

But that's not what we're dealing with. Like, we're, I mean, we see conversations online where people are like fighting each other over, Or are you a nimbie or a yimby? Are we building enough house? Like, the housing exists. It's just that the housing has been snatched up by people looking for passive income. Like, it's insane. No, no, I don't mind any of that.

Look, if you want to do regulations to make sure there's affordable housing in your neighborhood, that makes sense to me, right? But if you, on Airbnb and you have normal regulations, great, right? My point to these folks, whether they were just rando, white collar folks who bought a million-dollar home wanted to do an Airbnb with it, or they're, by the way, institutional investors, that you don't get to 23% just on some random white collar dudes, okay? Institutional investors came in and snatched a bunch of homes. Well, guess what?

You're not guaranteed a profit. It's called capitalism. So that's why, like, you can't say I want the upsides of capitalism, but I don't want the downsides of capitalism, okay? And if the market goes down, I demand my profit be protected. That's not a thing. It's not a thing. lower the prices.

And if that winds up costing you money, you eat it. That's how it works. And there's no manny petty for you. You can't be like, yeah, free market. And they go, oh, no, free market, somebody protect me. All right. Well, we got to take a break. When we come back, we've got a wonderful interview for you.

Pastor Corey Brooks will join us to talk about what he has personally experienced in Chicago with the crime wave. And he's got some strong statements to make about people. who are, you know, pushing for certain policy changes. We've got that and more coming right up. looking forward to the left bicep also becoming a member. In fact, the majority reports in the rundown today. We're going to talk about them based on a fun thing that they did. We're going to fight. No, I'm just kidding. That's what you would expect from the progressive left,

but no, we're not. They actually did something wonderful. There are still a couple of shows left on the planet that are sane. Right. And it's wonderful to have them. Anyway, last thing is progressive cannot just gifted five young memberships on YouTube because they're awesome and we appreciate it and said with a great job you all do, I can't help but spread the love. You're the best. We appreciate it. Everybody hit that join button below on YouTube. T.R.t.com slash join.

We're still doing Blue Apron $100 giveaways. Casper go. All right. Well, we have a special guest. We have a special guest for you all today. Joining us now is Pastor Corey B. Brooks, who's the founder and senior pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago and the founder and CEO of Project Hood, which stands for, helping others obtain destiny.

He actually wrote a piece in Newsweek that caught my attention titled, Democrats are citing with criminals over their victims. They're destroying our communities. Now it's a strong statement, I have a lot of questions about it. And Pastor Brooks, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and talk to us today. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity for being on. I wanted to just start off by saying thank you for what you're doing with Project Hood,

I think, well, first of all, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about what you do with Project Hood? Because I think these are the kinds of programs that we should be investing a lot more of our resources into. Sure, so Project Hood is a non-for-profit organization. Hood stands for helping others obtain destiny. We focus on eradicating violence and poverty in our neighborhood, one neighborhood at a time. We do that by offering programs such as job training, the construction trades, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, trauma counseling. We have a violence prevention team that leads the city in violence prevention.

The violence in our neighborhood is down 52% as far as shootings and murders go. While the rest of our city is continuing to go up, we're seeing ours go down. And our goal is to create opportunities for as many people as we possibly can, especially those who have lost hope, those who have lost belief in the American dream. That's what we attempt to do every single day. every single day. Yeah, I love that. And you know, before we go on with what you wrote in your piece,

what's very clear to me is that you genuinely believe that people can, are redeemable, can be rehabilitated. But you're noticing something happening in terms of, you know, the group of people who push for certain policies without actually touching base with the communities that these policies would impact. So you write in your piece, quote, in the two years since George Floyd was murdered, we have had the Black Lives Matter movement, the defund the police movement, the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement, and the movement to remove ACT and SAT tests, stripping schools of honors classes, and wasting valuable time on white privilege instead of educating our kids upward. The latest is the Safety Act, which I'm gonna ask you about in just a moment, which would abolish the cash bail system. And then you continue to write, these movements have all been

pushed by elites in the name of helping blacks, but not one of these people, has ever visited my neighborhood to ask what we think, it's almost like we have no say, like we are some sort of a social experiment, ponds without minds of our own. I thought that was a powerful statement to make. So I wanted to bring you on to share your perspective and what you think. Yeah, thank you. First of all, you know, every since the 60s, especially in cities like Chicago, the late 60s, we've been experiencing a real blatant disrespect.

of our culture as far as liberals believing that they know what's best for us. And never considering conversations, never considering meetings, never sitting down with us. It's always these elite liberals who think they can speak on our behalf when they cannot. I work in this community, I live in this community, and I see the impact that some of these policies have every single day. And I think that sometimes, and I believe sometimes the policies are made, are done from possibly their heart, but without a lot of mind. And what I mean by that is I don't think that they're doing it, you know, satanically or they just mean something ill. I just think that they don't, they disregard the individuals who live in our community and they never give us the opportunity to speak. All right, so the last thing we heard you say was, you know, that you feel that you guys aren't given the opportunity to share your perspective or be part of these conversations, even though, you know, you suspect that a lot of these policy proposals have a lot of heart, but maybe they're not thinking about the unintended consequences of them.

Right. That is correct. I think that is where we find ourselves in the predicament that we do as it relates to Chicago and other other major cities across the country. There are a lot of policies being put on the table without the consideration of the people who live in the community. Just like the Safety Act that we're experiencing that we're talking about or we're getting ready to talk about in just a few seconds. That is a prime example of what we're dealing with. Education is another big example. We have a failing school system here in Chicago, but we keep putting these policies in place in disregard of the community. And that's the reason why it's so important that people like me, like me become more vocal in saying what we believe needs to happen.

So there's so much to get to here, but let's start with one of the policies, cash bail. So you wrote against it. Now the proponents of cash bail say, well, look, you know, it just punishes you for being poor because if you do the same crime and you're rich, you can just pay the bail and leave. And if you're poor, you can't pay the bail and then you get stuck in business, the same crime. But it's really punishing you for your. societal status income, et cetera, instead of the crime. So what do you, I'm curious what your take on that is and what you respond to that. Thank you.

First of all, you know, I believe that we needed to consider the victims. I think that we're putting too much emphasis on criminals and allowing them the opportunities on that we should not afford them. Yes, everyone is innocent and to prove and guilty. But at the same time, we need to consider how victims feel, how the community, the impact that it's making on our community. So when we let these individuals out of jail without any bail, without any consequences, number one, we're hoping and praying that they come back because it's highly likely that they're not going to come back for a lot of these offenses. And secondly,

we're hoping that they don't commit other crimes, which is highly likely that they're going to commit other crimes. And so we need to consider the victims. We need to consider community. And we need there, I believe there are other ways to get this equity that people are trying to get, which we need to consider. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm, I think the problem with the bail system is that it's being used as a way to determine whether or not someone is a threat to public safety. You know, you see what I'm saying? So like the amount determined usually has to do with whether or not the judge thinks the individual. is a threat to public safety. I think there needs to be some other mechanism not tied to bail that determines whether or not someone should get pretrial release.

But I also see the argument made by those who are against cash bail because, you know, if you're innocent until proven guilty. So if you're poor and you're accused of some sort of petty crime that didn't actually cause bodily harm to anyone, what if you're innocent? You're spending that time behind bars. You're not able to post bail. and then you're probably losing your job, your life is being destroyed. I think that's a legitimate problem.

And so I totally sympathize with what the no cash bail proponents are saying. I just think that it needs to be tweaked in a way to ensure that like if someone is caught, for instance, on camera, brutalizing others, which there have been examples of that. We've talked about it on the show. Well, that person's a threat to public safety. You know what I'm saying? And you don't want them to be released immediately to go and then later go around, you know, further brutalizing people in that community.

these proposals and some of these policies being implemented. Did you have any issues with it? Do you see areas that absolutely need reform? What are your thoughts? Well, you know, I am for prison reform. I'm a conservative, but I am for prison reform. There's no doubt about it that we need that. But there's also no doubt about it that we have criminals among us and that those criminals

need to be dealt with. One of the things that I will say back to what you were saying about the bail system is that we're not talking about petty offenses. You know, I think a lot of us could agree that for some of these petty offenses, sure, no bail, we understand. Just recently we had one of the candidates who running for governor, his life to be threatened. That individual bonded out and was able to go on house arrest. If we were under the Safety Act come January, that individual would not even had to bond out. They would not even have to be under house arrest. And that's a problem when individuals can commit these type of crimes and not have or allegedly commit these type of crimes and not have

any consequences. I mean, one of the other things that, because I voted, I voted in favor of no cash bail in California when it was a ballot initiative. And the reason why I voted in favor of it is because I do agree that certain people should not be held, you know, if they can't afford bail, especially if they need to be proven guilty before any real consequences, right? But at the same time, it was sold to voters in California as a ballot initiative that would only impact nonviolent crime. Little did I know, and little did a lot of Californians know, that there are all sorts of crimes that have been reclassified as nonviolent that I think are violent. So, for instance, in California, raping someone who's unconscious is not considered a violent crime.

Yeah, that's insane. It is insane. But there are some things that are insane that are obvious, right? Like a lot of violent crimes are considered nonviolent crimes. We should instantly fix that. That's crazy, right? So, but I want to make sure that we get to two things. We're having some tag issues.

So let me get to these. You say in Illinois, you've got the safety act coming up, and you're very much against it. Tell us why. Well, I think that it signs with criminals, and I think that in Illinois, we have a political system ran by Democrats that disregards the victims, disregards people from our community who are already having difficulties with crime. Here in Illinois, especially Chicago, we have an enormous murder rate. We have a crazy carjacking and theft rate. We're dealing with all kind of illicit behaviors and now we're going to add to that that you can do these behaviors and have no consequences. You can threaten lives, you can assault people, you can get you can trespass on people's properties and not have any consequences until you go to court.

And that's that's just not going to work, at least with the criminals that I know, maybe they know some different criminals, but the criminals that I know, those little smack on the hands are only going to help them to do more crime, encourage them to do more crime. Yeah, so Pastor Brooks, we're in a difficult situation here because some people on the left say, no, I speak for the black community or, you know, the community of all folks in cities, etc. On other hand, Republicans say, no, I speak for them. And that feels absurd, to be honest, okay.

And so you say you're a conservative, I don't know if that means you're a Republican, but obviously Trump doesn't speak for black people. That's absurd. Not it's not within a thousand miles of truth, right? But at the same time, I don't know that a rich black person in Washington or on TV that says, I speak for all black people is if that's true either. So how do we decide who gets this quote, quote, quote, speak for you all? Well, I will say this, that Trump did do a lot for the black community.

I'm not saying whether I'm a supporter of Trump or not, but the things that he did for the HBCUs, the fact that the economy was for the work was, unemployment was down at an all time low for the African American community. There are certain policies that were instituted that helped our community drastically. So I can't say that. But I will say that there are individuals who are constantly voted into office who say they speak for us and they do not. And what has to happen and what should happen is that we're going to have to take control back from those individuals to let them know, then when you don't speak on our behalf, we need to hold them accountable. So what we have in our community is accountability problem. We have people who have been in political office for years and years without having to be accountable to our community. And I don't blame anyone for that but us. We have to change that if we're going to get them to finally listen to us. And some of that has to do with allowing the Democrat, letting the Democratic Party noted just because 95% of African Americans have been voting a Democrat, that's not always the way it's going to be. And we have to make sure that people fight for our votes and be accountable for our votes. I mean, I agree with you on that. I mean,

I think that the black vote and the Latino vote has been taken for granted by the Democratic Party. I think that's been a huge problem. I mean, you have black organizers working super, super hard to get two Democrat senators elected in the runoff races in Georgia, thinking that the Democratic Party is going to pass a voting rights bill, and they didn't even try. So like I, that what you just said resonates with me because you can't be taking your voters and your base, especially, you know, a demographic that's been incredibly loyal to you for granted. I can't help, but I have one more question to ask you, because this stood out to me and

I'm wondering why you think this happened. So you wrote about your friend Carol, who was carjack, carjack. at gunpoint. And she had called the authorities five times, but no one showed up. Why do you think that is? Why didn't the cops show up? Well, I know one thing that we're experiencing here in Chicago is that we've had a large number of police who have retired and not been replaced. We are hurting for police. I believe that we're 1,400 police down from where we should be or 1,500, and that is a problem. If you go past some of the precincts,

you're gonna see cars that should be driven by police officers that are parked because they're not enough police. And so there are instances, not just by Carol, by others who have testified that they've made these calls, they haven't gotten the answers, it's taken long for the police to get there.

I can even testify to the fact that we called about a carjacking, a car that was being stolen, stolen right in front of our building, the police, unfortunately, never arrived. And so I'm pro police, first of all, and I'm for the police, and we need police in our community. I wouldn't want to live in a community without them. But I also know there is a real big shortage. All right. All right, Pastor Cory Brooks. Thank you so much for joining us, and we appreciate the good work that you're doing in Chicago. And it's a different voice and a voice

that isn't often heard. So we appreciate you coming on to share with us. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for the time. No problem. All right. And by the way, as we go to break here, I know who speaks for the community. The community does. Yeah, of course. So I, and people will take great offense at this. I don't know why they do just because I guess they're of their egos. But you know who speaks for the community? Polling. Polling indicates which way they believe. Somebody saying, no, I know better than the polling. That's just not true. It's not true. If I say it, Pastor Brooks says it. in Washington who's a Democrat says it or Rando in Washington, who's a Republican says it.

No, the polling tells you what the community believes. And by the way, if you're curious, African American community basically believes two to one that there should be more policing, not less policing. I might not agree with that, but that's not my call to make, okay? So I'm telling, in that context, I'm telling you what they believe according to reliable polling, okay, and then we can do whatever we want with that information. All right, we gotta take a break, we've got a lot more to come when we're we return.

All right. All right, back on CY-T, Chang and Anna with you guys, more news. All right. So, let's talk about election interference. I guess hashtag Jank was right, because now we have an admission that's pretty clear. So the Russians are getting pretty brazen in their election interference to the point where they're just owning up to it and saying not only did we do it in the past, we're going to do it in the future. Now this is according to Yevgeny Pregozen, who is an oligarch in Russia, and he's commonly referred to as Vladimir Putin's chef.

He also trained mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. Now, he said on a social media platform in Russia, these words, verbatim, we have interfered in the U.S. elections. We are interfering and we will continue to interfere carefully, accurately, surgically, and in our own way, as we know how to do. Fascinating, okay, so that's just a clear admission, which, by the way, I mean, whether he admits it or not, of course, Russia or any other country is going to engage in attempted election interference, like that doesn't surprise me.

But the brazenness of his statement is just, it's great. He also says something pretty weird and creepy. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once. No, I know who this guy is. It's obvious. He's Hannibal Lecter. He wants to eat your liver with fafa beef. So.

I just want to assume that it's something, it's like a something that- It's a Russian thing, yeah. Saying, yeah, it could be. Or maybe not, I don't know. Who knows? Okay, now, look, there's the part of the story that I like, of course, is him brazenly admitting it thereby ruining the propaganda of the Russian agents here in America. So the Russian agents, and you can find them in a lot of places on both ends of the spectrum, are like, no, the Russians are pure as a driven snow. They would never interfere in any elections.

Now, by the way, we're always stuck in the middle because then corporate media is like, oh, Hillary Clinton would have won if it wasn't for those dastardly Russians, right? And that's just not true. And so, but are they doing interferes? Of course, they have trolls. They have trolls everywhere. It's super obvious, right? I make a statement against Russia on air.

I've got trolls all over my Twitter account the next day. I'm sure it's a wild coincidence, et cetera. You know, every site gets hacked, nonstop. necessarily hacked, but like attacks, et cetera. Right. You know, we're like, we also have a tech team. You know where it comes from Eastern Europe and Russia, okay? And then you go talk to crazy right wingers and crazy theoretical left wingers.

And they're like, no, there is no Russia. You're imagining it. Okay, all right. But here's your Hannibal Lecter dude going like, I'm going to eat your kidneys and your livers and I'm doing it every day. And I just hacked into your account. So, and then nobody, look, this guy is super close to Putin. I mean, he's such a.

He's Putin's chef. Yeah, it's such a wonderfully creepy thing where like only Putin would have a chef who talks about ticking in people's kidneys and livers and secretly runs a mercenary group. Okay, but I just love the way he worded it to. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once, which seems like it would be a difficult pinpoint operation. Yeah. It seems like a lot of invasive stuff happening simultaneously that's hard to pinpoint. Or do accurately. Yeah, but look, if anyone could do it, it's Putin's chef, except for the fact that he doesn't exist, neither does Russian propaganda. No, no, there is the Russian propaganda. And neither does Russia at all. Russia doesn't even exist.

I just think that you are a chauvinist, okay? An anti-Russia chauvinist, and you're engaging in McCarthyite smears. Wait, no, but the great thing is, this Putin's best bud here, also doing McCarthyite smears. Because seriously, like no one on the left, the rights have hopeless cause, but no one on the left who has criticized Russia has said anything harsher than this guy, one of the top allies of Putin. Like I can see the reactions from trolls and bots and service attacks, et cetera. But I don't know for sure. And I always clarify, hey, here's what we know. Here's what we don't know.

But this is the guy saying, yes, I'm doing it. Me and Putin are doing it on behalf of Russia. We're trying to destroy your democracy. Guaranteed. Go to gray zone or whatever right now. They're like, no way. No, he's the greatest guy in the world, plus an Ukrainian Nazi, plus Jewish, plus a great chef, plus your kidney and livers are gone, but they never exist in the first place.

Okay, so our stage manager, who isn't even here right now, but happens to know everything because he's a human encyclopedia, says that the kidneys and liver are Congress. Senate and the White House? So he's like, he's using, I guess, I don't know, a metaphor for government. I suppose. But okay, bottom line is this, by the way, who are they supporting Republicans? They're supporting Republicans, right? So, and it's not a surprise that half the Republican Party right now is saying, Ukraine, do we really need it? Do we really need it? Maybe we give it to Russia, right? And this guy's saying, yeah, we're doing operations to influence you guys. And we're You know, and by the way, operations includes money, spending money, right?

And supporting people politically, right? And then curiously, half the Republican Party is raising their hands going, I love Russia, I hate Ukraine, a little help here, I don't know. See, okay, so here's the thing. I mean, we're largely talking about what both political sides, meaning voters, not people in positions of power, have to say about Russia and its influence or interference into our elections. Those people, regardless of whether we agree with them or disagree with them, are irrelevant, right?

The important thing is to understand whether our government sees that risk and takes the necessary steps to protect our elections from interference from any nefarious actor, whether it's Russia or some other country, it doesn't matter, right? The problem is when you have one party wanting to provide cover for the bad behavior of the Russian government or any government for that matter, then we're in a lot of trouble, right? And it happens to be the party that yells the most about our elections being vulnerable and stolen and this and that. No, they're not. They haven't provided a single shred of evidence. But it will be interesting to see how they respond to accusations of Russian interference

moving forward, now knowing that there's a Russian oligarch very close to Vladimir Putin, just flat out admitting it. Yeah, I'm so sick of the Republicans, and I'm sick of everyone not recognizing that they're all frauds. I mean, Anna makes a great point. They're like, oh, election, fraud. Okay, first of all, give me a bill. Say it, do a rational bill that verifies elections. Progressives would love to verify elections. They're like, no, we don't want to verify elections. We just want to scream if we lost. Okay, but that's not a thing, right? So, hey, Republican voters, you want to ask your Republican politicians, have you proposed the bill?

What is your bill? You know, they can't propose a bill that says Trump should win every election, even if he gets no votes. You have to actually say, how do you want to verify elections? How do you want to protect elections? Okay, we want to make sure black people can't vote. No, God damn it, that isn't an election protection bill, okay? And so then you tell them, look, these Russians are bragging about how they're interfering with our elections. so let's make sure that we fund a way to protect, whether it's voting mechanisms, et cetera, et cetera.

And they're like, no, we don't want to protect it. Then what are you crying about? What are you talking about? So you don't want to do anything. You just want to have the Russians help you cheat. Yes, and then you have no constructive solutions at all. Correct. Yeah, that's right.

Okay, so, I mean, Anna, especially in my lifetime, when I was growing up, Republicans were vicious to Democrats. say, okay, oh, yeah, why do you go back to Motherland, Russia? Oh, you left is a Russian lovers, right? Now the Republicans have turned around going, we love Russia. How dare you people on the left criticize our beloved homeland Russia? Well, now- It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's Alice in Wonderland. I know. Well, now Big Daddy Putin is in charge, and they love it.

And so, yeah, and so anyway, we'll see how it all plays out. Super last thing. Okay, I'm sorry, super last thing. So like you got any tyrant that's interfering in in our elections, et cetera, let's say the Muhammad bin Salman, right, the dictator in Saudi Arabia. Like nobody would say, oh, no, it's no big deal. Oh, yeah, sure. The Saudis, of course, should mess with our elections and the Saudis should pick who we're going to elect.

Nobody would say that. But all of a sudden, when it's Russia, you have all these people around on the right and the people pretending to be on the left, like Tulsi Gabbard, et cetera, go, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Russia should be allowed to interfere, plus they're not interfering. But if they were, it would be awesome. You're telling me they're not backing Russia for financial reasons? Okay, maybe they're weirdly like, it's a fetish for them, like, oh, Putin, I love Putin.

Okay, maybe, but probably it is financial interests that have gotten them to totally and utterly sell out our country. So there I said it, go cry about it. I mean, financial interests tend to be the number one reason why politicians for both parties sell out our country. So I wouldn't be surprised, yeah. Anyway, all right, we got to end the first hour. When we come back, Ben Shapiro has some thoughts about Candice Owens, who works with him, basically providing cover for anti-Semites like Kanye West. So what does Shapiro had to say about Owens?

We've got that story and more coming right up. 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 slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.