The Young Turks - Worst Human Being

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Frito-Lay workers in Kansas ratify the contract, ending the strike. The YouTubers who blew the whistle on an anti-vax plot. Cops caught in 4k planting evidence? A man confronts Tucker Carlson at a Montana store: “You are the worst human being.” Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance blames America’s woes on “the childless left.”  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. So, you know, I'm sorry. All right, love the young turks. Jay Cougar Anna Kasparan with you guys. We've got a gigantic show for you all.

And as usual, you know, taking on everybody and giving you guys real information. There are, speaking of information, there's a couple stories in today's show that are totally unrelated, but all, but both about disinformation and it is spooky. stuff. So with that fun note, let's get started. Let's get started. I want to start off with an important story involving the worker strike for Frito Lay. I got electrocuted. I was taken to the ER, but the emergency room they took me to was 45 minutes away. I had to pay for that out of pocket too. Didn't have the money to do that. So guess what? I borrowed money or used credit cards or whatever I could.

I even took money on my kids. Beep it. Imagine being a worker in the United States, one of the richest countries on the planet, working for the most profitable, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, Frito Lay, getting electrocuted on the job and being completely abandoned by the corporate executives

who want to ensure that they increase their profits even at the cost of human lives. And in this case, the health of one of their employees. Now, we've been talking about the Frito-Lay strike, and we have some positive updates on that. But first, I wanted to highlight what some of the employees at Frito-Lay have dealt with over the last several years. That video that you just watched was Brandon Ingram, who was by all means an appreciated worker at Frito-Lay. until he was electrocuted on the job and disabled as a result. The situation got so bad that his family had to essentially make adjustments in every single facet of their lives.

Take a look. Remove two of the disc in my neck because they were bulging into my spinal cord. I wasn't getting enough fluid to my brain. If I didn't have the surgery, the doctor said any small fall or accident or something like that and I would have been paralyzed from the neck down or dead. I still have to have surgery on my lower lumbar spine. From the moment that he couldn't work anymore and needed short-term disability, Frito Le, abandoned us.

I had to file for short-term disability and then long-term disability. Got approved for a long-term disability, but that was months later. So no income coming in. That's a picture of the car. They were driving. They require you to go to the

the doctors so many times, and the doctor has to say that you're in this condition over and over and over. But guess what? You don't have any insurance anymore through PepsiCo slash Frito LA because they cut you off. I have to pay for that out of pocket too.

Didn't have the money to do that. So guess what? I borrowed money or used credit cards or whatever I could. I even took money on my kids. Leave it. We had to take from our children to live. And the doctor knew what was going on.

So he was like, look, just pay half of what you owe every visit. And we'll just take her the rest of later. Now, the Ingrams have decided to file a lawsuit against Frito Lay. And I have one other video to show you in regard to how Frito-Lay responded to that lawsuit. Then I'll give you some updates on this worker's strike. But, Jank, I wanted to give you an opportunity to jump in and comment on that awful video and situation. So we're going to get in the details of the strike and why they did that. And this is just one of the cases.

But I want to comment on this case in particular first. So after watching that, I went and checked the EBITA of PepsiCo. So if you're unfamiliar with those business terms, let me explain. Frito-Lay is owned by PepsiCo. It's a much larger corporation. Original product was obviously Pepsi, but they now own a huge amount of different products, food products in America and restaurants, et cetera. So EBIT is profits, basically.

Okay? So because if you're a smaller company and you're struggling with profits and then you have a couple people go on disability or something and boy, you really need that, man, maybe you're in trouble, et cetera, right? You're on a local restaurant and you say, well, I can't pay for two people that aren't working. Okay, we hear you. So Pepsi, how are they doing? Well, in the last quarter, that's just a quarter of the year, they made $3.782 billion in profit, not in revenue, in profit, okay?

That's a 30% increase from 12 months ago, okay? But you look at the last 12 months, they made 30%. they made $13.917 billion as a 13% increase. So if you're making, I can go down the list for you guys. I checked all the years. For the last four years, they've been making over $12 billion in profit every single year. So you can't turn around and say, hey, I made $12, $13, $14 billion in profit. But that guy got electrocuted on my watch because of my mistake, and I'm going to throw them in the garbage.

Now, you got plenty of cushion to take care of your work. who get injured on the job to treat them right so they don't go on strike, et cetera. Don't come crying to us, PepsiCo and Frito-Lay, that you don't have enough money when we can see it's in your public records. You got 12 to 13 billion dollars in profits. So that's the reality of a record. I know, Jank, but here's the thing, right? I mean, you really have to weigh things. And so on one hand, you have literal human lives, right?

Human lives. human lives. On the other hand, you have shareholders and your fiduciary responsibility to do what's in the best interest of your shareholders. So human lives profit. Human lives profit. I don't know. I don't know. This is a really difficult equation. But all the incentives, as we know, are in the wrong place. The incentives are to do right by the investors as opposed to your own workers who are the very individuals who make the profit in the first place. The workers who do the work that's necessary for them to make the profit. But what's even more disgusting about all of this, okay, you have a worker who's severely injured,

disabled as a result of being electrocuted, files a lawsuit because his family is torn to shreds financially as a result. And how does Frito Lay respond to it? Take a look. Friedo Lay, Pepsi, Sedgwick, whoever has people following my family. They are stalking us. Just to find something to be like, oh, he's okay. Recording my kids playing in the yard, recording me doing yard work. They follow me in traffic on the highway, on streets. They follow me when I gave birth to my baby.

They follow me to my daughter's school. I took my daughter out of school and decided to homeschool because I don't know if we're safe. I don't know how many people they've given our address and name and information to, just to prove my husband wrong. They've done it for years. Why are you fighting so hard to say that I'm not hurt instead of just look at the paperwork, look at the medical stuff, look at everything I've been through. You would think that I'm a bad employee the way that everything gets went. I've never done anything wrong to this company or even with this company. I have numerous awards to show that I'm not a person that you just throw away.

Yeah, but are you a shareholder? You have numerous awards, but did you invest in the company? I mean, if you're not a stakeholder, who cares, right? That's what the model is. Like, we have to stop pretending, like, decisions are made based on, like, morality or the goodness in people's hearts or the evil in people's hearts. This is how the system works. This is how it's supposed to work. That's the point, right? The system's got to change. And that's why you have these workers striking.

They decided to strike for three weeks, and they've reached an agreement with Frito Lay in regard to what's referred to as suicide shifts, where they work 12-hour shifts back to back to back, right? The agreement honestly doesn't look that great. But keep in mind, these are unionized workers. The outcome of this agreement isn't great and they're unionized. workers, which shows you just how much the power imbalance works against workers in this country, even if they're unionized, even if they're unionized. Yeah, so I want to make a couple of distinctions here, and then we'll get to, again, the details of how it turned out for the strikers.

So there's a difference between public corporations and private corporations. Private corporations still run by their founders, at least has some discretion, right? But if you're a public corporation, the stock market demands 15% return every single year. And if you don't have it, you're gonna get fired, and it doesn't matter, okay? And so the luxury of saying, hey, maybe we should be decent to this human being who clearly is correct, right? Just doesn't exist, because if you show human traits, you will be fired and you'll be replaced by a robot to run this corporate machine because it's now a public corporation.

And so when you, I looked at Pepsi, I wanna go back to that example. Now they had a huge increase in the last year in their profits, but their profits declined in 2020 and in 2018. Now they declined to $12.62 billion. It's not like they're not making a profit, it's not like they lost money. They're still making a giant, giant profit, but the profit declined by 0.75, less than 1%, right? The stock market goes, I'm going to punish you. And I'm going to punish your executives, I'm going to punish everybody.

So you better make sure you fire everybody, you better make sure that if somebody gets disabled, you crush them and their souls and their families. Because this is what the greed machine demands. So Anna and I might not perfectly agree on capitalism versus public and private corporations, et cetera, and there's some distinctions to be made there, right? But understand how that part of the system works for sure. And again, if you're a small company, as somebody, is it, Is every person who says they got hurt on the job telling the truth?

No, of course now. I worked at a station that I was an employee at, had nothing to do with anything else. And Jake sometimes pretended like he was sick and couldn't go to work. The opposite problem. I'd go in while I was sick. Anyway, no, there was a camera guy who said he got hurt. And all the other camera guys said, yeah, we worked with him. Not all.

Half the guys had worked with him before. He said he gets hurt at every job, right? So does that happen? Yes. In this case, though, the guy is an exemplary record. You all you have to do is look at it, there's no question about it, right? They're giving him award after award after award. He got promoted several times because they're saying, here's why he got promoted.

Here's why he's doing an excellent job, right? He's got no blemishes on his record. The medical records are absolutely contained to take two parts of a spine out. Jesus Christ is so clear, right? Nope, doesn't matter. The greed machine demands that we crush your soul and your family. Right. And look, executive pay is, you know, when we're talking about publicly traded companies, right?

Executive pay is very intentionally tied to the performance of the stock. So, you know, the executives themselves have a personal vested interest in ensuring that they turn a profit because their pay is dependent on it, right? So you mentioned the sticks, which is you can get fired. The sticks also include you're going to get less in pay, and so are they willing to crush workers, executives, in order to ensure that they keep their jobs and earn as much as they can personally? Yes, of course. Now let's get to the agreement regarding the suicide shifts for Frito-Lay workers in Topeka, Kansas. Now, as I mentioned, for a few weeks, the workers decided to strike. They've reached this agreement. The company, by the way, has responded by saying, listen, listen. I know some of the workers are overworked, but it's not as many workers as you would think. So here's the statement. The company says that its records indicated that 19 employees worked, get this, 84 hours in a given work week this year. Only 19, Jenk.

Only 19 of their employees worked 84 hours in a given work week this year. And 16 of those allegedly volunteered for overtime. I'm sure that there's no coercion or anything with like the power dynamic in the company. Only three of the 19 had been required to work, the company said. Now, the workers were frustrated because they felt that they didn't have a choice. They felt they were forced to work overtime, right? So that's what the company was responding to. Now, the agreement, which was ratified in a vote that one union official described as close,

puts an end to what workers at the Frito Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas called suicide shifts, back-to-back 12-hour shifts with only an eight-hour break in between. The new contract guarantees one day off a week for workers, does a way with forcing workers to take the suicide shifts and increases wages. In a statement, Frito-Lay said that the new two-year contract includes a 4% wage increase for all job classifications and additional opportunities for the union to have input into staffing and overtime. Yeah. So first of all, on the 84 hours a week, the reason why 16 people might have done it voluntarily is because economic conditions are so bad, you got to work 84 hours a week

to support your family. So that's the thing that they, of course, leave out of their equation. But when I saw that step, you know, I like to think I'm fair. I look at both sides of it. And I have the perspective of being a deeply progressive and a business owner. And so I looked at it, I said, okay, wait, is this a major issue or a minor issue? Well, if it was a minor issue, why did 600 people strike out of 850, right? If it only affected 19 people and 16 of them or did it voluntarily, so only three people were affected by suicide ships, why did 600 people strike? Right. And by the way, the people who didn't strike, they said, look, I couldn't afford to miss one payment.

Otherwise, my family screwed, right? So this was obviously pervasive at this particular workplace, okay? And so, and that's what happens at giant corporations. So at the end of the day, what do they get? They had not had an increase in hourly pay of more than 20 to 40 cents in the past six to eight years. So when you have incredibly low wages, which then both the company forces you, but your own personal economic situation forces you to work.

work 60 hours, 80 hours. And that's, look, I choose to work 80 hours a week, but I, you know, but I'm, I run this company, right? It's another thing to say to someone, we're going to work 60, 80 hours a week, and I'm, and that's because you could barely live on what I'm paying you. So that's a completely different situation. That's why they were, they felt they were forced into a strike. And, and unfortunately, you know, they come out of it, did they feel like, did the workers feel like they got something great and they feel great about it? No, it seems based on their reaction, they're like, it's not great. It's not what we were hoping for, but I guess it's a tiny bit better than it used to be.

One worker who spoke to the New York Times on condition of anonymity said this. A lot of people had to vote yes because they were running out of money and didn't have insurance. So this person, of course, spoke to the New York Times on condition of anonymity because he or she is worried about retaliation by the company. But it seems as though the situation got desperate for some of the workers. which is why they had this vote, and it was a close vote based on what the union itself is saying about it. But at least there's a little bit of progress, but really this is a small fight in what I think is a larger battle. This isn't something that's just illustrative of Frito Lay and every other company is wonderful.

It's the way that the system works. It's the incentives and disincentives, and we're going to see the same story over and over again as long as the incentives are in the wrong place. Yeah, one last thing about corporate rule as it affects this story. And you see it underlying a lot of this. So insurance, once we have an insane system, only in America, every other developed country has universal health care. So if you lose your job, it's okay that you're still going to get the surgery for your back, they're still going to take care of you. If you're on strike, you still have insurance, you or your family members not going to die

while you're on strike. But here in America, we have complete corporate rule. So if you dare to go on strike, if you dare to get hurt on the job because of the company's fault, it doesn't matter. You're going to lose your assurance, and we're going to threaten your life. We're not just going to threaten your economic well-being. We're going to threaten your physical well-being. So back to that assembly line, and you'll do as you're told by your corporate overlords. So this is a sick, sick system that we have. And anyone who argues against Medicare for all supports the system where the workers must serve those corporate masters. Otherwise, their lives are on the line.

I'm going to say one final thing just because I got to get it off my chest. That video of him crying about taking money out of his sons or child's piggy bank, man, that really got to me out of everything that was in that video because I don't personally know what that feeling is because I don't have kids, but I know what it's like to feel like a failure. I can't imagine what that's like when you feel like he hasn't failed anyone, right? But he's put in a situation where he feels like a failure because he has to take from his children's future just to take care of himself. Like I can't imagine that kind of pain.

Like we live in the richest country in the world. No one should feel that kind of pain and suffering. No one, period. I just had to get that off my choice. It's been on my mind all day ever since I saw it. Thank you for saying that. I thought, of course, about the same thing, because I have kids. And I thought, oh my God, it would break my heart to do a thousand pieces.

If I take money out of their piggy bank, it's soul crushing. But one other thing that was personal on that story, if you watch a longer video of that couple, he's a veteran. So the, and the wife says, he dodged bullets and bombs in other countries for, you know, ostensibly for freedom, right? And do we have freedom here? Do we? Or do we have to serve those public corporations, all of us. Otherwise, when you actually get hurt because you got electrocuted on the job because of their fault, all of a sudden you lose your health insurance and you have to break into your kids piggy bank. Is that really freedom? No, if we want to fight for freedom, we don't need to go to Iraq or anywhere else. We need to fight for freedom here. And that's to liberate ourselves from corporate rule. By the way, if you're wondering how, you have to get the government to actually protect its citizens. The government's supposed to be able to be able to be. protect us through the military, the police, fire departments, etc. They're also supposed to protect our lives through health insurance and through holding corporations accountable, which doesn't happen, of course. And the reason we have corporate rule is because we have

money in politics. So corporations just buy all of our politicians and the mainstream media. So that's the reality of this. And what you saw there in that video is the consequence of those political decisions that were made. When we come back from the break, we'll talk about how some of the vaccine disinformation gets out there and how there are nefarious figures behind the scenes, literally paying for that disinformation to get out there. Come right back. We'll share that story and more. All right. Back on the Young Turks, Jane Canana, with you guys. So many more stories. So let's get to it. All right. There's a lot of disinformation out there regarding. coronavirus vaccines. And now we're getting an inside look into one now defunct marketing firm

that was offering money to various online influencers to spread and so disinformation regarding the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. Now, BBC and the New York Times reported on this. The details are definitely interesting, but we still don't have a lot of confirmation in regard to who the clients were behind this marketing tactic. Here's what we do know. An influencer marketing agency called Faze, offered to pay German YouTuber Merko Drotsman to promote what it said was leaked information that suggested the death rate among people who had the Pfizer vaccine

was almost three times that of the AstraZeneca jab. The information provided wasn't true. And to Mercos credit, he looked into this. He saw some red flags and he's like, you guys are trying to get me to conflate things and make it appear as though the Pfizer vaccine isn't as effective as it really is. And so he and another YouTuber decided to investigate this a little more. The other YouTuber is a YouTuber named Leo Grasse. He received a similar offer.

The agency offered him 2,000 euros if he would take part. Faye said it was acting for a client who wished to remain anonymous. So as I mentioned, the two decided to ask some more questions and figure out what's going on, who's this weird nefarious client who's trying to get us to spread disinformation about the vaccine. Face told them not to mention the video had a sponsor and instead pretend they were spontaneously giving advice out of concern for their viewers, which by the way, European countries aren't like the United States in France and Germany, that's actually illegal, you have to be up front

and honest about sponsored or paid content. And then, you know, phases brief also told these influencers to share a story in French newspaper Le Mans about a data leak from the European Medicines Agency. The story was genuine, but didn't include anything about vaccine deaths. But in this context, it would give the false impression that the death rates, that the death rates statistics had come from the leak. So basically covering a story in a way that conflates two things to basically misinformed viewers and make them think that more people had died after taking the Pfizer vaccine. Now, the data that the influencers were asked to share had actually been

cobbled together from a bunch of different sources, and it had been taken out of context. It presented the numbers of people who had died in several countries sometime after receiving different COVID vaccines. But just because someone dies after having a vaccine doesn't mean they died because they had the vaccine. Like they could have died from a car accident, right? It's like a database of people who had gotten the vaccine and then for one reason or the other, it doesn't state had died after getting the vaccine. But there's no causation, right? You could like draw, like you could say that there's a correlation, but the correlation means nothing. You have to show causation that the vaccine is what led to the death. And that is not

what the data proves. So I think the source of the disinformation campaign and the purpose of this information campaign is the more interesting part of the story. But I do want to tell you about the disinformation itself. So as Anna was referring to, the first way that they trick you is they make it seem like it's because of the vaccine, but they never actually say that. And so you have to be really, really careful. So for example, let's say that somebody, a hundred people had taken the Pfizer vaccine and four people died afterwards and and but they didn't die of the vaccine at all two died in a car crash somebody died of cancer the third one died of or the fourth one died of a heart attack and they say after taking the vaccine four people died and you're like whoa

oh my god it's so misleading that's why you have to be really really careful but there's a second layer of misleading they can say now you know in the first trials of the Pfizer vaccine for example four people died after the vaccine but after they expanded the program 40,000 people died. Well, if you give, if it's 4% and you gave it to 100 people, four people died, again, not because of the vaccine. Well, if 4% normally die, I'm just making up numbers here as a hypothetical, right? Well, if you give it to a million people, 40,000 people will die after the vaccine because of car crashes, et cetera. So it's two layers of deception there. But, and it's so easy to trick people because when they see and they read, after the first

round of the vaccine, four people died, you're already worried. But after the second round of the vaccine, 40,000 people died. I mean, you're in a panic, right? Right. Because you didn't see the important context and they kept it from you. And by the way, I will note here, this is not just some new disinformation campaign from these nefarious forces. So we'll explain that in particular here in this story. But Fox News does this on a regular basis. But I'll be honest, mainstream media does this on a regular basis too in other contexts. So sometimes they do great reporting as they do in this case. But when you go to Medicare for all, New York Times will tell you that, oh, the system costs $32 trillion. And they'll leave out that it saves $34 trillion. So the information

they leave out is just as important as the information they put in. So be careful whenever you're reading anything. Right, exactly. And framing things in a way to intentionally conflate, you know, two different stories and spread this lie that people are dying from the, from the Pfizer vaccine? I mean, that's the intention here. It's to confuse viewers or listeners and make them think that the Pfizer vaccine in particular, in this story, is somehow dangerous compared to the AstraZeneca vaccine. So the influencers, by the way, were also provided with a list of links to share, as I mentioned, dubious articles which all use the same set of figures that supposedly showed the Pfizer vaccine was dangerous. When Leo and Murko exposed the face,

campaign on Twitter, all of those articles, except the Lamont story, disappeared from the web. Gee, I wonder if they were nefarious or not, or if they were legitimate news sources. No, of course, the minute they're caught, they'll get rid of the fingerprints. Now, unfortunately, there were some YouTubers who took the bait. I mean, think about it, you're talking about young people, they're making content, someone approaches them with money, and it's easy to lure people in with that, right? So I don't want to be too hard on them because my guess is maybe they didn't dig deep. Maybe they didn't realize what was going on.

By the way, Anna, just to back up what you're saying, the two people that took debate didn't appear to be in the news business. Right. So it might have been easier to trick them. Now, there are folks who are in the news business in America who take debate anyway. Exactly. But that's a different story. Exactly. Yeah.

So the ones that we're talking about who did take debate, one of them does videos about cars and dating. the other one is a prankster, content creator, right? So they're not in the news industry, and so they're particularly vulnerable to these types of disinformation campaigns. And by the way, why did they take it? Money. They offered a lot of money to put this information into their videos. Now let's talk about who's behind it, or at least what we know regarding who's behind it.

So what's phase? Well, it turns out that phase is part of ad now, which is a digital marketing company, registered in both Russia and the UK. Am I allowed to say that? I hope that doesn't trigger anyone, okay? Oh my God, you said the word Russia, Anna, Russia Gate, Russia Gate, Russia Gate. I know, it's-

Turn off your mind, everybody. If you're all right wing or you're all left, turn off your mind, the word Russia has been spoken. So you can now ignore the rest of this, it should have offered a trigger warning. But it is in fact registered in Russia and the UK. But that's all we know so far, right? Now, remember, Russia has its own vaccine, the Sputnik vaccine, there's a possibility that maybe the disinformation campaign is an effort to hurt the Pfizer vaccine in order to increase the usage of the Sputnik vaccine.

I don't know, right? I'm just giving you potential reasons for what's going on. But here's what we do know. One of the directors for the British arm of AdNow got into contact with the BBC. His name is Evan Talladeh. And Toliday said that he had very little to do with Faze, which he said was a joint venture between his fellow director, a Russian man named Stanislav Fisenko, and another person whose identity he didn't know. Yeah. And so by the way, so they've got their headquarters in Moscow.

They open up this branch in the UK with this guy. And they say, okay, here's your one contact, this Russian guy from Moscow, and then as soon as they get in trouble, they shut everything down, okay? And, and when, I don't know if the British guy that was their partner ever asked the question, or he just won't tell the press, I don't know that part. But all the companies involved will absolutely positively refuse to disclose who the other partner in this venture is. So, and that partner is in Russia. Turn off your minds, turn off your minds. Okay. Now, as you're going to see, this story isn't about Russia. There's disinformation campaigns coming out of China, Bolivia, Israel, you name it, okay, India, Mexico.

And by the way, one unifying thread is almost all right-wing governments, okay, and money and power are at stake. And so, and by the way, if you're saying, oh, Venezuela is another one. But did the left-wing government that has the power there do it? No, it's right-wing forces that are trying to destabilize the government in Venezuela. and Bolivia originally when Bolivia was left wing, right? Now that it's right wing, they wanted to maintain the right wing power in Bolivia. It turns out being against right-wing authoritarian governments everywhere is the correct thing to do instead of just saying, hey, I don't like American imperialism.

But when other countries do right-wing authoritarian governments, yay! India is a huge culprit in this, by the way. Modi's government practices this for different issues on a massive scale. I guess a small silver lining was that the disinformation campaign by the right wingers in Bolivia didn't work. And when they held elections, the right wing got voted out. So it doesn't always work. But in the case of a global pandemic, okay, where we're already experiencing vaccine hesitancy,

we can't afford to allow this kind of disinformation to flow through the media, whether it be through independent media, through YouTube influencers, or corporate media. We need to encourage people to get vaccinated and the actual data speaks for itself. For anyone who questions the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, Johnson & Johnson vaccine, please look at the hard data. Don't just watch random. Don't even take our word for it. Be an advocate for yourselves, please get vaccinated. Keep yourselves and your family safe. These stories about people on their deathbeds regretting not getting vaccinated or heartbreaking.

I don't care what your political ideology is. Please be an advocate for yourselves and do the right thing. Get yourself vaccinated. Guys, this story in and of itself is already disastrous because it's literally leading to people's deaths. But the bigger stories about disinformation overall and a mountain of disinformation already exists and another giant wave is coming. Because now everybody realizes it's so easy, it's so easy to pay off influencers and to funnel them money somehow. And there's so many different ways to do it.

Sometimes the more sophisticated operations come from the actual governments themselves. But now they realize, oh, we could outsource it. People always want to make a buck. So we can get a front company to pay off influencers or just create social media and then push it out. And then that way we have plausible deniability. The Russian government didn't do it, or the Indian government didn't do it, or the Bolivian right wing government didn't do it.

We didn't do it. X, Y, Z Incorporated did it. Oh, XYZ Incorporated. They won't say who they got the money from. But hey, that's, hey, that's capitalism, maybe, right? And so, look, when I first saw the story, Russia, why would it be Russia? I didn't, I thought it was AstraZeneca. Because it said Pfizer's bad.

AstraZeneca is good. I was like, maybe the secret donor is AstraZeneca, right? But it looks like, no, it traces back to Moscow. AstraZeneca is a legitimate company. They're not going to want to do, route something through Moscow. That's going to get them in a lot of trouble and cost them more money than it's worse. And then when I, and then if you're wondering, why did they do that in Germany and France? But they didn't do that here, right?

Because this story does not involve America. Right. The reason is we have plenty of vaccine in America. Our knuckleheads won't even take it, right? Yeah. So whereas in Europe, Sputnik 5, I think the vaccine is called, the Russian version, is a real contender. If they get people to stop taking Pfizer, they might take Sputnik 5. And so, by the way, it doesn't mean that it's the Russian government.

It could be the creators of the particular oligarch in charge of that company that produces Sputnik 5. I mean, if you're taking Sputnik 5 vaccine, God bless your hearts. Okay, but I don't, but to be fair, I don't know the science behind Sputniks. They got to come up with new names for things, man. I know, everything in Russia is Sputnik, right? You know, it's like a little more creativity. We don't know about the efficacy of Sputnik. guess is, it's fine, right? I just love people- That's not my guess at all. Please do your own

research. Yeah, do your own research. But my point is, get vaccinated. Just get vaccinated and be skeptical of any type of content, whether it be online or on television, that discourages you from getting vaccinated. Yeah, I got to tell you two, the last couple things. First of all, we'll put the links down to the BBC and New York Times articles. Please read them because they're fascinating. Okay. And but back to China and India. They're running the same exact scams as Russia has been accused of here in America, but they're doing it obviously for their own interests and sometimes in American, but oftentimes in other countries, right?

So, but whenever China's caught, they do the same exact line, right? Oh my God, it's American imperialists that are beating up on poor China. We were just cracking the skulls with the Hong Kong protesters, and now America is discriminating against us, and they get their own, you know, the useful idiots or whoever, they are to defend China and say it's all America's fault that China is taking away the rights of people in Hong Kong. And yes, useful idiots believe things like that, right?

Do we want to bomb China? Are you nuts? Of course not, right? But does that mean China is angelic? Are you crazy? Of course not. They're all looking out for their own interests. I think the Indian one is, it's too long to get into, but it's in the New York Times story.

Please read it. It gives you a sense of like, just take any government. And when they realize how easy it is to manipulate social media, how they use it for their own benefit in a way that obviously, that honestly makes sense. Of course they're going to do it. Of course they're going to do it. It's so easy. It's so easy to hook so many people into thinking, oh, it's all America's fault or it's all my opponent's fault. It's the left wing's fault, whatever it is that they're pushing.

And finally, there was one problem with using these front companies and the social media influencers. They know at the end of one of the articles. The problem is when things go bad, those front company guys are run by super unethical people. And sometimes the influencers are enormously unethical too. And they just want money. So sometimes they hold up the governments for more money. Okay. And so it's the grift that keeps on giving.

So now some of the governments are wary of using the grifters because they're grifters. Okay, so that's no honor among thieves. No, but that was a nice little piece of sweet justice at the head. All right, we gotta take another break. When we come back, a story that went viral over the weekend involving what appeared to be a cop planting evidence, but did he? We'll take a look into that story and possibly debunk some of that misinformation when we come back. All right, back on TYT, Jankan, Anna, with you guys. Anna, take it away. All right, well, let's get to our next story.

Hey, bro, what's that? What's that? What's that what word? I got you on camera, bro. I got you on camera, we're all good. Hey, bro, you just do that in here. Yeah. What you just watched was a video that went viral over the weekend.

It appeared to show a cop throwing evidence. or planting evidence inside the car of a person he had pulled over. Now, I want to give you some more detail into what happened. This took place in Wisconsin. The cop is from the village of Caledonia police department. Okay, that exists. And it looks bad, right? I saw that.

It infuriated me because we've covered stories in the past of police planting evidence, either in people's jackets or in their cars. But I looked into it a little further. First, the police department released a statement about this saying, we've got body cameras, we're going to investigate this, and it appears that they have. Now, before we get to that, though, let's go to one more video of the incident, kind of showing the baggy in slow motion. Hey, bro, what's that?

That you just threw in here. All right, so you can definitely see him throwing something into the back of that vehicle. Now, here's what the police department initially responded with. Please keep in mind that the cell phone video is circulating, that is circulating, depicts only a small portion of the entire encounter, whereas all available video may provide more context. Read that statement, rolled my eyes, just keeping it real. They continued. All officers assigned to patrol duties are equipped with body worn cameras and preliminary information

indicates that officers on scene of this incident all had their body worn cameras activated. In addition, marked Caledonia police patrol vehicles are equipped with dashboard mounted cameras. As part of the internal investigation, we will be reviewing those videos. We will also need to gather information from all officers who were present. Later, they decided to release body cam footage. And I was skeptical of that because I'm like, all right, they say they've got body cam footage. but are we the public going to have access to it? Are we going to be able to see it?

To their credit, they did release it. We have more context. So let's take a look at that and then we'll deliberate. what's what what word i got you on camera we're all good hey bro you just threw that in here yeah because it was in his pocket and i don't want to hold onto it that's on their body cam that they took it off of them so

you just do that in here bro i got you on camera man I'm telling you where it came from, so it's an empty baggie at the moment, too, so okay, buddy. So it was, in fact, an empty baggie. I want to go to the last graphic here, which shows you a screenshot from the video that clearly shows that it's an empty baggie, okay? And so they had taken the empty baggie out of the other passenger's pocket. This cop decided to put it in the back seat. And the cops also said, or the reporting on this indicates, police removed the drive. and rear passengers before the video began, they also searched one of the rear passengers and found an empty corner tear of a plastic baggy.

The same empty corner tear from the video, Bosch, that's the police chief, says did not contain any or an illegal substance. This type of packaging is common or a common method for holding illegal drugs, but it was empty. So no one got in trouble for the empty bag, but it's easy to understand why people would think that they're trying to plant drugs in the car. Yeah, it's possible that everybody here is innocent. So let me break it down a little further. So number one, when police say, oh, no, trust us, we have body cam footage or we can't release the body cam footage, but we're right.

In my experience, that's almost never correct. And so we come in super skeptical on this. But the key piece of evidence is that they immediately release the body camp footage. Now, it's actually not definitive. I'll get to why it's not definitive in a second. But the fact that they're releasing it right away means that the cops think that they're right and innocent. Because when the cops are wrong, they don't release body cam footage for years.

They say, oh, no, no, no, trust us. He ran into a tree and we didn't beat him to death. No, no, no, no. And then they'll hide the footage for years and years and years. and you have to drag it out of them through legal proceedings, et cetera, right? Whenever they think they're innocent, they're like, here's a body cam footage right away. Okay, did you want it right away, right away? And in this case, they gave it right away, okay?

So that's not definitive, but it's a pretty good sign. Now, when you look at the whole body cam footage that they released, there is one problem here. So you see him taking it from the second officer, from another officer, and then throwing it in the car. And it is empty, but it is a corner cut. And sometimes what they do is they'll take something that's empty, but has traces. of, you know, drugs in it, and then they'll take it as evidence, they go, oh, my God, there was traces of drugs, and it's a corner cut, and that's what people normally use, etc. So it could still be planted. And what we don't have is the body cam footage of that

second officer. Now, if they release that and they show them clearly taking it off of the defendant, okay, that's a different story, right? So then that'll be more definitive. As it is, there is that missing link in the chain of evidence. Exactly, yes, you're right about that. So you're right in noting that it's not definitive. I do applaud the cops for releasing that body camera footage promptly. From the body cam footage that I have seen, you're right, I haven't seen them take that baggie from someone else. I would argue though if they're trying to plant evidence on someone, they would probably do it with a baggie full of something, right? But I do hear what you're saying. Like they do sometimes argue, well, I mean, it's an empty baggie,

but there was drug residue in it. Yeah, I suppose, I don't know how plenty of evidence goes, but from what we've covered in the news, it seems like when they'd plant evidence, it usually does have some drugs in it, and this one was clearly empty. Okay, but the last thing here is, at the same time, don't think that the guys

who released a 14th second video are bad guys either, because it might be, from the guy's perspective on the car, think about it. You're sitting in the car, they took away the driver, And a cop comes in and throws in a bag. Right. You have no idea where that bag came from. I'd have the same reaction.

I'd have the same reaction as the guy in the car, right? So, and I'm glad he taped the cop, and I'm glad he saw him throwing something in. And he might genuinely think they planted it when they didn't, right? Right. And so the jury's still out on this because we don't know where the second cop got the bag from, right? But the circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that probably the cops are innocent in this case, okay? But we'll see, right? But it doesn't mean that the other guys are guilty, okay?

Because they have a perfectly legitimate reason to think that it was questionable of the cops to throw something in the car, especially when the guy in the car didn't see them removing it from the driver at all. Right. All right, well, let's move on to our next story. This is the perfect story to wrap up our first hour. Lots of fun here. Tucker Carlson, believe it or not, there's a fun story involving Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson was confronted by an American truth teller while he was at a fly fishing store in Montana.

Now this American truth teller wanted to call him out for his vaccine disinformation. So let's take down the lower third, take a look at the video, and it is a little difficult to make out what they're saying, but there are some subtitles to help you out. I want you to be doing to this thing, to be in the United States, to everything else in this world. I don't care that you're not here. What you've done if he has families, what you have done to everybody else in this restaurant? So there you have it. Someone approaching Tucker Carlson in the flesh and confronting him about what he does on his show, nightly, which is air, all sorts of divisive. divisive commentary, disinformation, which means intentionally lying to the American people about the vaccine, which has certainly led to some vaccine hesitancy in this country, and it's been a disaster.

And what's amazing about all of this is the kind of backlash. The man in the video has gotten from right wingers, which I'll get to in just a second. But let's talk about who this guy is. His name is Dan Bailey. Again, this is in Montana. And when he posted this video on his Instagram page, he included. a caption that said the following. It's not every day you get to tell someone, they are the worst person in the world and really mean it. What an a hole, this man has killed more people

with vaccine misinformation. He has supported extreme racism. He is a fascist and does more to rip this country apart than anyone that calls themselves an American. And so he's proud of what he did. And to be quite honest with you, it is cathartic to watch someone like Tucker Carlson who has no problem directing hatred, anger, harassment toward what he perceives as his political opponents, for profit, by the way, get called out on his behavior. And the people who are crying about this are the same people who tend to be the so-called free speech warriors. People like Dinesh D'Souza who whine about protests toward right wing speakers on college campuses, but then turn around and argue, I'm not even kidding you,

that Bailey should be arrested. Let's look at his tweet. This is a shocking video, this man should be arrested for what he did to Tucker Carlson in front of his daughter. He hurt Tucker's feelings, the man's gotta be arrested. I mean, free speech for me, but not for thee, which pretty much defines the right wing. So look, this story I think has plenty of new us, but first let's note the fun parts. It's at Dan Bailey's fly shop, but not that Dan Bailey.

Yeah. It's amazing. It's a different Dan Bailey. The founder is already passed away. It's just so that's a fun, confusing part of the story. And let's keep it real, guys. Part of the reason why this story is getting so much attention is because it's man bites dog. If an African-American person or someone that seemingly left wing from a demographic associated with that,

conform to Tucker Carlson, it'd be less interesting to most people, right? But since it's a white male in Montana getting in his grill, people are like, oh, and then Dan Bailey becomes an American hero, right? Now, I was wondering why. Well, first of all, he mentioned the comment about hurting people's family. So I don't know if Dan has someone in his family that was affected by the misinformation put out by Tucker Carlson about the vaccine. Don't we all? I know, right? about the vaccine and mass and all those things.

And now there is finally some growing anger, whether it's from left-wingers' independence or even some Republicans in the red states as they see family members dying over and over again because they didn't get vaccinated. And there's story after story of them saying, can I get vaccinated at the end, right, as they're about to be intubated, right?

And no, you can't get vaccinated or after you already have it. That's not how vaccines work. And so the misinformation Tucker Carlson has been putting out there, while he very likely got vaccinated himself is really disgusting. But it seems like Dan is also progressives of some sort because he talked about the racism and the fascism, et cetera. And so now here comes the nuance.

So there's a lot of people on different sides of this. The view came out almost unanimously against Dan Bailey. Oh, come on. Okay, now you're not surprised by Megan McCain, et cetera. Joy Behar and Sunny Hosen were mixed, right? But they, but whoopee was very much against Dan Bailey. And overall, they were, why? Why were they against Dan Bailey and not in favor of Tucker Carlson, but against confronting Tucker this way?

Because they're also famous. And so they don't want to get confronted either. Okay. And so, well, what do you do with that? So now, that's where you require nuance. I've told everybody, don't go to anybody's house. That's a red line. Don't do it.

It's going to lead the disaster. I don't care who. By the way, I said that when people went to Tucker Carlson. I said, don't do it. It's a bad idea. It's going to, if it doesn't happen today, it's going to happen at some point, absolute disaster, okay? And now in this case, apparently Tucker's kids were that, that's bad. And I would try, if they're- If you don't want your kids to know you're an awful person, maybe don't be an awful person. No, no, no, no, don't do anything around kids. Try to avoid that at all costs. That's my sense of it, okay? Everybody has their own lines,

everybody has their own rules and their own feelings about it, right? But, you know, Interestingly enough, I got confronted by someone over the weekend, right? And so that gives you a sense of where the lines should be. So it was an Info Wars guy. How do I know he was wearing a giant InfoWars shirt? And it had like a gun on it, of course, a rifle on it. And so, and I'm with my family. And he sees me, he goes, ha, that's jigger!

Right? So far, it's all fun. That's nothing wrong with that. People have said many things to me in public. Trust me, right? And as guys have cursed at me in the airports very loudly. All that is fine. It's not a big deal, okay?

Because if you, if you take the point of view of the view or Dinesh, Deneh is different because Deneh says, yell at left wingers all you want, just never touch our poor beloved right wingers, right? Whereas the view is consistent at least, don't yell at left wingers or right wingers, but their view is protect, honestly, the elites, right? And so I don't want to protect the elites. I don't want to protect public figures, even though we're a public figure, right? But it's okay to voice your opinion and to say what you're going to say.

But don't get physical ever, right? And say your peace and move on. If you get, stay in the guy's grill for 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes, five minutes, right? No, no, no, you're crossing a line because then you were worried about physical danger, okay? And so the Info War guys yells at me, ah, it's Jen, nothing wrong with that at all, right? But then he said something weird, and I have to confess, I don't remember what it was, but it caused me to. they go, whoa, right? And so- Weird, Info Wars guy, the giant gun on his shirt said something really weird.

Of course. And it made it seem like he was going to go and confront me. Luckily, we were already in the car, and he saw me in the car and we were pulling out, right? But then I had to give my kids a speech, like, hey, you know, because they've seen right-wingers confront me. And I say, it's okay, guys. It's America. We're all free, et cetera, right? And I said, but guys, if you see somebody from Amber Wars or they see something different, Get out of there, get out of there. If they say anything that sounds physical, because guys walking around with guns on their shirts saying super weirdo things to you. And I'm so sorry guys that I don't remember what it was that he said, right?

But I remember thinking the first part, no big deal, second part, uh-oh, right? So in Dan Bailey's case, now when you take those rules, you always have to think about shoe on the other foot, right? That's why I tell you the story about me, right? So when you look at Tucker Carlson, well, there's two parts of that. One is, in this case, Bailey's pretty close to him, and apparently Tucker's kid is somewhere in the shop, right? But he never got physical, he didn't belabor it at all, he just told him you're the worst human being alive.

Pretty quietly, to be honest. And very quietly. To the point where we need to find a video with subtitles. Yeah, so he's not trying to disturb anyone. He's not trying to call out, hey, I'm calling out Tucker Carlson here in front of everybody look here. And as soon as Tucker realize he's being filmed, he does that fake smile and walks away, Dan and lets him walk away. He said his peace.

Yep. Just say your peace and move on. And in that case, I think that's perfectly fine to do that to senators, public figures, et cetera. Yeah, he did nothing wrong. Dan Bailey did nothing wrong. I get people who have public figure status getting super uneasy about it because they don't want to deal with it, which I got to be honest, whenever these types of stories come about, it is fascinating to see how easily they just completely ignore when that happens

to the left wing. But when it happens to someone on the right way, like a prominent figure like Tucker Carlson, oh, we can't have it. We can't have it. Okay, fine. But here's the thing. Sure, I mean, confronting someone in person can be scarier, especially for someone like Tucker Carlson who debated you and was super agreeable during that debate because he doesn't like

confrontation, right? He's a big tough guy on his little cable news show. But when it comes to face-to-face interaction, he gets real scared. Watch that Politicon debate with Jank, real agreeable, okay? All of a sudden, Tucker Carlson isn't a vicious xenophobe. He's not vicious toward immigrants. It's fascinating. But remember, Tucker Carlson also encourages people to get into other people's faces, right?

I want to remind you of a headline from not too long ago, Tucker Carlson urges viewers to accost mask-wearing strangers. Con-9-1-1 if they see kids in masks prompting new calls for his firing. And if you maybe miss that segment, we have a little snippet of it for you. take a look. If you dare to go on foot from Union Station to the Capitol, for example, in Washington without wearing a mask, angry Biden voters will snort at you in judgment. How could you, they're saying from behind the gauze? How could you? That's the question we should be asking of them in return. The rest of us should be snorting at them first. They're the aggressors. It's our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in. So the next time

you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly. Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable. We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a marble in an elevator. So what Tucker was advocating there was for random private citizens to be harassed by his viewers for deciding to wear a mask. And by the way, not too soon after that video. as I was walking my dog, two women approached me on the sidewalk as I was wearing a mask to ask me, why are you wearing a mask? And yeah, I told them to shut the eff up. Like, leave me

alone, like, don't talk to strangers if it's like somehow triggering you if they decide to wear a mask. But my point is, here's a guy who has encouraged people to be pretty vicious to one another, whose content is incredibly divisive night after night. Anyone who's crying about Dan Bailey calmly telling him the truth about who he is needs to really get their priorities straight and take a good hard look at what Tucker Carlson himself advocates for on a nightly basis. Yeah, the hypocrisy here is through the roof. So Tucker Carlson literally asked people that it cost people in the streets based on them trying to protect themselves. Now look, if you're vaccinated, you very likely don't need a mask outside, okay? But that's your own

personal decision with whatever you, how do you know who's immoral compromised or not, right? What previous health conditions they have or who at home is vaccinated or not vaccinating? You don't know any of that. So what are you going to accosting people? You make your own decision. You wear a mask or don't wear a mask. But what's worse is he's not asking you to accost public figures, like corrupt senators who are destroying our democracy, et cetera. No, it's much worse. He's asking you to accost regular private citizens as As Anna said, just go up and bother human beings until you pick a fight with them and maybe cause trouble, et cetera. That's what elitists do.

They have people fight one another, people who aren't powerful, people who have really nothing left to lose at this point. Fight, fight each other, right? That's what, that's what Tucker Carlson, people like him want us to focus on, ripping each other to shreds. Well, you know, he literally profits off of that divisive content. As usual, not only just free speech for me, but not for thee, but public fights for thee, but not for me, okay? Protect me at all, cause Tucker Carlson, Dinesh D'Souza, et cetera, say. But for you guys, go ahead and rip each other up. We love it. It makes us more money. That's Tucker Carlson 101. When we come back from the break, J.D. Vance has some pretty negative commentary for the childless left. I also have some negative commentary for him. So stick around. We'll share that story and more when we return. They want to make you drink Starbucks every day from now until forever.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.