The Young Turks - Yang Rang

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Tucker Carlson cited the Unabomber's writings to Andrew Yang. Ted Nugent made sheep sounds to mock people who are vaccinated. A man allegedly killed a pharmacist's brother to stop him from giving COVID vaccines. A group of militant anti-vaccine activists protested children walking to school in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, with one of them screaming, “they’re trying to rape our children with this poison.” AT&T apparently funded and continues to fund OAN. Hosts: Cenk Uygur and Michael Shure Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, well, the young Turks, Jake Hugo or Michael short with you guys, Michael Nona's epic politics man here at T.RT. He's also national correspondent for News Nation. That's a nation filled with just news. So Michael is perfectly at home there.

Good to see you, brother. Great to see it. All right, now joining us on the Young Turks, former presidential candidate on the Democratic side, but not anymore, and former mayoral candidate in 2021 in New York, and the author of the new book Forward Notes on the Future of our Democracy, Andrew Yang. Andrew, good to see you again.

Good to see you, Chang. You too, Michael. News Nation. I have to get there. All right, we'll have you on. All right, so Andrew, you're starting a third party, that's super fun. But of course we've got questions about it. So there's a couple of significant hurdles to clear in starting a third party.

So you're leaving Democratic Party. I don't Michael might have questions about that. I partly get it. You point out massive problems with our institutions, I totally get it. I totally get it, but I'm wondering if third party is the right answer. And so one of the hurdles is, generally speaking, experts believe you need about 10 million bucks to even get on the ballot nationwide with a third party. So how do you overcome such a giant hurdle to begin with?

Thanks, Shank. My campaign did raise $40 million last time running as a Democrat, so I'm feeling pretty enthusiastic about our ability to make the case. But the misconception is that somehow we're projecting forward to 24. We have this election coming up in 2022, and we need to be laser focused on trying to preserve our democracy in the face of really, really dire threats. And so that's where my attention is. That's why I think your attention is. We have to get ballot initiatives across the finish line and states around the country that will actually unlock our legislators from the extreme incentives that are contributing to the polarization that we can see

is tearing our country apart. So my goal is ballot initiatives in 2022 and elevating candidates that are for open primaries and ranked choice voting to help improve the alignment between our representatives and the people they're supposed to represent. Because right now they're representing the 20% of the most extreme people on either side or special interests. You know, as Andrew, as much as starting a third party is a noble thing to do because I think a lot of Americans at least when polled say that that's something they want, it's also proven very difficult for people. And the reason is, I mean, it's obvious, right? It's obvious,

whether it's John Anderson running against Ford and Carter, whether it's Ross Perot running against Bush and Clinton. Just interject, again, that's always presidential. Like continue, Michael. It is presidential, but I'm talking about the challenges. is the challenges are not just presidential Andrew, the challenge of, you know, if I'm running, if I'm voting for alderman, if I'm voting for mayor, if I'm voting for member of Congress, I feel like even though I want to vote for that third party candidate, there's somebody who isn't getting my vote who otherwise would have, and that may facilitate a victory for the other

person. How do you break that cycle? Is it possible to do something that no one, I mean, you know, Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt couldn't do it. Well, you're describing this more there, effect, Michael, we all know it well that if you vote for the third party candidate, you're going to help the bad guys win. And that is purely a function of our plurality voting process. If you swap it out for rank choice voting, which is a much more modern process that will enable people that actually vote their preferences, it helps women and it helps minority candidates, then the spoiler effect goes away. So that would be my big argument is that we need ranked choice voting in the worst way. And if the Republican Party had used

ranked choice voting in 2016, Trump probably does not win. Because he's getting, let's call it, 35, 40% of the vote, but he's not getting 51% of the vote. And it's unlikely that someone would have had Jeb Bush won Trump too, if you know what I mean. So this is the process which we need to make that's going to approve our legislators incentives. It's going to get rid of the spoiler effect. It's going to discourage negative campaigning. Why are we stuck with this archaic plurality voting system, particularly when we can see that it's driving this race to the extremes that's going to unfortunately hurt everyone. Yeah, so, well, let's talk about that.

I mean, look, I love ranked choice voting, and I appreciate that you went through a contest where they had that, you didn't win, and you still love the system. So that's actually very principled and great. Of course, you have the challenge that it doesn't exist in most places. But I want to go to a bigger challenge, which is the extremes that you talked about. I don't, Andrew, I don't think there are extremes anymore. First of all, I don't think there is a very small sliver of extreme on the left, but it's not. I just don't think it's, it's certainly not anything that people talk about in the mainstream press.

None of what they talk about it on the left is extreme. That's my opinion. I don't know if you disagree. I'm curious to hear what you think. In fact, let's start there. What do you think is extreme on the left? Sure. So what's going on on the left is a different type of distortion, which is that you have certain special interests that know that all of the Democrats,

legislators have to go through a Democratic primary. So it's not the general public, it's this 10 to 20% who are the most engaged, yes, but also the people have the highest at stake. So this could include big pharma, which we're seeing. This could include teachers unions. So there are different interest groups that take advantage of the fact that you have a relatively narrow slice of the public that's actually going to control who gets reelected. On the right, you can definitely see the extremity loud and clear where it's making it so everyone

has to be in lockstep with Donald Trump. But I want to point out the biggest counter example to this lockstep, which we should be celebrating and then rolling out around the country. And that is what happens right now with Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, the only Republican Senator to vote to impeach Trump, who is also up for reelection next year. Why did she do it? Her approval rating right now is at 6% among Alaskan Republicans. It's political suicide. So why did she do it? She did it because last year Alaska got Alaska got rid of the closed party primary, so she too can take her case to 51% of Alaskans and say, look, I'm my own person, I am my own judgment. And now she has a fighting chance.

If we change the incentives, then we can actually make it so that legislators will become more reasonable and less extreme overnight. Yeah. So the Berkowski arguments, the Berkowski argument is great. She also won as a right in candidate. So she's an unusual senator to begin with. So I guess I want to ask, I want to follow what Jenk asked there with the extremes, right? Because you're still, do you think that, and I'm asking this, do you think that by doing this, by creating a landscape like Lisa Murkowski's looking at in Alaska, that you are going to then marginalize the extremes? And then where do they, where do they fit in? Where do the people that, you know, the Democrats who are at the extreme end of the Democratic Party, where does their voice get heard at that point? One of the fascinating things that I explore in my book that Ezra Klein talked about in his book about why we're polarized is that the linkage between your political alignment and your policy stance is actually pretty low.

And I learned this when I was running for president and talking to people in Iowa where if you say to someone, hey, do you think drug prices are too high? And they'll be like, yes. Do you want to get those drug prices down? Yes. Like you want the government to be able to do it? Yes. Do you like socialize medicine? No. Like all of a sudden, it's just like if you bust out, what seems like partisan or coded language, then everyone will be like, ah. So if you have a system where you're decreasing the extremity, then you're going to arrive at things that most Americans agree with like the government negotiating lower drug prices on behalf of all of us. We all know that I champion universal basic income. I believe this is the path to universal basic income. 55% approval right now, you go to anyone and be like, hey, what do you think? Cash for people. will be like yes. So so to me the problem right now is that if you have 10 to 20% of Americans

really excited about something, that's not enough. But you know, we have to face it. So what we need to do is create a system where you have much more generalized alignment between legislators and the people and not have 83% of districts where it's just this side or the other side and then you know what happens next to nothing. Yeah. So Andrew first let me just say about your comment about the extreme on the left. Let's just be clear. The examples you gave of the unions giving money to Democratic politicians and big drug companies giving money to Democratic politicians is not an extreme on the left. It's an extreme in the Democratic Party. That's the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Even if they're taking money from unions, it's still money in politics,

and it's still corruption. I agree with you, what I'm describing, though, is that if you have a relatively narrow corridor of the electorate that you're going through, then it's easier. for a special interest to go in and be like, hey, let's get these people, you know, locked up than if you had to deal with the majority, then it's harder. Yeah, I understand. I just want, I didn't want the audience to get confused about that because the left hates money in politics, the actual left. So now, but let's go to stay on that point of the cultural divide and the extremes, because there is a massive cultural divide in this country, Andrew. So when you talk about economic issues, it's easy to get massive

agreement without the talking points. Once you put in the talking points of the Tucker Carlson's, et cetera, then you're going to get disagreement. And it's based on just honestly propaganda, et cetera. Okay, but that's the easier part. The harder part is the social issues. So how in the world are you going to get people to vote for a party when the two signs of America, it's real. We don't agree with each other. One side says, hey, we don't like We don't want gay people that have the same rights as the as straight people. We don't mind cops beating up black people and we think black lives matter is offensive, right? And the other side says, I don't want to work with these monsters.

I'm never going to vote for someone who can't make up their mind about those issues. And a thousand other things in the nonsense talk of critical race theory, etc. So how in the world do you bring us together on social issues, which I view to be a much larger challenge? Well, to take gay rights, which I think was your first example, I mean, that there's actually relatively high consensus among Americans that gay should have equal rights and that there's a relatively marginal group that right now is being elevated because of the fact that we have this duopoly that leads to the most extreme voices getting, frankly, like, you know, disproportionate attention. I mean, right now you have political incentives that reward the extremes,

then media incentives to your point, reward the extremes, and then social media pours gasoline on the whole thing. So if you have that as a dynamic, then it seems completely intractable. But if you sit someone down and say, look, no, like what can we agree on? It's much more likely that we're going to be able to arrive at consensus around even some very, very divisive social issues. And I'll use firearms as an example. You have like very extreme points of view, obviously. I've talked to Americans of every of every background on this. And what I try and focus on is like, look, the number one victims of gun violence are gun owners by suicide. You know, like that that's number one. So can we agree on that that is a problem and then try

and focus on that? Like that there are elements that will enable us at least to make some degree of progress. But you know what's never going to result in progress is imagining that if we stay in our silos that we're somehow going to overpower the other side, that by the way, is just getting more strident. Let's talk about that gun example a little bit. Because if you speak to Whether it be someone from the Brady Center, whether it be Fred Guttenberg, whether it be Senator Chris Murphy, and you talk to them, we just want a little, we want to find some common ground on one gun issue because that will be reasonable progress, incremental, it's not everything we want. And of course, they haven't been able to do it. They had a massacre in a preschool and they weren't able to do it. Every day we wake up to it.

I think it's noble. I think it's a great idea. I think hearing you talk about that and highlighting the same. suicides by gun owners being the number one cause of death among a gun deaths is great. But there's also a challenge and that's reality. And whether or not, you know, and I'm not a naysayer on this. I applaud what you're doing. But I do think that the fact that they're polarized, and I wouldn't even say polarized, the fact that the doopoly is the only way that power is able to be wielded these days and it creates a stalemate, doesn't that make that a little more

difficult than it ought to be for what you're doing? And that is exactly what we need to change. change, Michael. So for those of you who are watching are concerned about our democracy, you should be concerned. I'm deeply concerned. And if you look around the world, UK, how many parties does it have? Five, Sweden, eight, Germany, 10, Netherlands, 18. If you have a system like that, do you really think that nine parties would be against common sense gun legislation? No, you'd have much more variety of point of view and you'd be able to get more done. It would also make the system much more resilient to authoritarianism. Because right Now the founding fathers never could have imagined national parties at the scale we have them.

And then if you get a corrupt leader, guess what? Everyone's incentive is to fall in line or they lose their job. Does that seem like an intelligent, robust, resilient system to anybody? You know, if you had even five parties and then one of them succumbs to terrible leadership, that's not an existential threat. No, like that's where we should be racing as quickly as possible to make our system actually stand a test of time. Yeah, so look, when you talk about the problems in your book forward, it's hard not

to agree. I mean, we might disagree a tiny bit on some of the details, right? But overall, we have massive structural problems. The duopoly, in my opinion, sucks, and it sucks in the opinion of a lot of people. So there's a lot of folks rooting for you to be able to tackle this. But when you get into the specifics of being able to win with a third party, Andrew, it just seems that our divide is too intractable. So one of the things that people should know is that this is an inclusive movement

you can join as a registered Democrat, keep your party registration, Republican, keep it independent, sure. And a lot of the races that we're going to be helping with, it's going to be in a Democratic primary Republican primary and is someone going to run under the forward party? Probably not because it's not going to be like super helpful to them from day one. Like that's one reason my task number one is to get to open primaries and rank choice voting so you can actually get different points of view, not just forward party. But again, movement towards this robust system that we all can see is what we've been missing.

So you know, when you talk about like third party win, I mean like there are obviously massive structural impediments, but there's nothing stopping an independent popular movement. movement from supporting a Democratic primary candidate who's for open primaries and ranked choice voting, a Republican primary candidate who's for open primaries and ranked choice voting, ballot initiatives that can unlock our legislators from these extreme motivations, the way that Senator Murkowski has been unlocked. Let's unlock legislators. I mean, you know, like that there are all sorts of, and we can do that in 24 states be a ballot initiative. Yeah. Doesn't that sound like a much

intelligent, productive approach than banging our heads against the wall against this dysfunctional duopoly that is clearly broken. No, but Andrew, look, again, there's two different issues, social and economic. Now I'm gonna jump back to economic for a second, because when you say there's 18 parties in the Netherlands, and there's no way that nine of them would believe XYZ. No, I don't think that's the issue. So I actually disagree with parts of the solution. I think what you're saying about ballot measures, third rank choice voting, et cetera.

I think that's smart, I think working within Republican Democratic parties within primaries is smart. So I appreciate you saying that. But no, if Netherlands allowed legalized bribery like we do, 16 out of 18 of those parties would be for high drug prices, low taxes on the rich, endless wars, you name it. They would all get corrupted. We have the real problem in this country isn't that, oh, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has gone awry.

The real problem is that they've both gone awry because they both get bribed. So if you form a third party, by the way, as you're doing here with Forward Party, and I'm curious to ask you, and so I'll do it right here, are you going to allow corporate PAC donations? Because if you do, your party will instantly get taken over bribery as well. You're pointing out the core problem, which is right now our government is overrun by moneyed interests. The Forward Party, right now, we're just passing the hat to grassroots donors and individuals. We don't have any design on taking taking corporate pack money.

If we ever did, we would be totally transparent about it. But I'm going to suggest that, you know, people are going to give to the forward party. Just want things to get better and change, you know, like what the heck do we control nothing? Like what kind of corporate pack would be like, you know what we're going to do? Like, you know, the forward party is going to, you know, like we're the pro lowercase D democracy popular movement. Certainly again, I'm practical. We're going to need resources to get our work done.

And hopefully we can get it done, get those resources from human beings. But, you know, I think what Jenks also asking, though, is like going forward, if I may, is that when you do get to the point, obviously you're starting out now, when you do get to the point that there are candidates who are running under the emblem of the of the forward party, are you going to make that a tenet of the party to not take corporate back money during an election. Is that has that been talked about? One thing we will have as a tenant is total transparency around who's backing a campaign. And I think that's what people should expect.

Okay, Andrew, one more question. I want to ask you a little bit about let me just one thing, going forward again, like starting it up fantastic, exciting. I was talking to a Yang supporter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who after hearing you speak, and I asked, you know, I was doing a story on it. And I asked that supporter, I said, what excites you about it? He said, this person said to me the newness. He said, though, he feels like it's a great first date and he loves being on the first date, but he doesn't think it's going to go anywhere. What would you tell that Yang supporter about the forward party, that this is the first date of the forward party? You have the book out.

You've got this momentum now. But where does it go? Where is it if, you know, it's not going to make a huge splash next year probably, but it may make a little one. How does it ensure? If we get some ballot initiatives across the finish line next year, I am going to be. No, no, no, absolutely understand that. But what about I want to know about five? I would say to that person is that Andrew Yang is a happily married man, which is that I go on the first date, and then you know what I do? I call you.

And then we go on a second date, and then a third date, and then eventually, you know, I meet your family. And then, you know, I get down on one knee and put a ring on it. I'm a high commitment fellow. I wasn't talking about Evelyn. I was really talking about. Well, no, it's the same thing, which is like, look, you know, if you look up, like, do I think that the forward party is going to be everything that I wanted to be, you know, in 12 months? Like, of course not. 24 months, probably not. Like, you know, we're going to grind. Like, I'm a builder, I'm a grinder. Like, I've run organizations for years and years. This could be the greatest, most important thing I ever do. You know, and if it's what I spend decades on, then great. Like, so that's what the haphal married thing is about is like, you know, I've been with my wife now for, gosh, 15 years,

you know, I think I'll be with the forward party for an extended period of time to help it reach its potential. Because we all know the country needs something just like this. And then I'm going to take it the next level. We all know that if someone was going to do it, like it would probably be someone like Andrew. I'd say, like if you're to line up people who might do it, it'd be like, oh, new political upstart party. Like, you know, like I'd be a logical a candidate. Yeah, that makes sense. So, and I like the slogan, Andrew Yang, he'll call your parents. Michael McElhen fellow, Andrew Yang, happily married. Yeah.

Plan on staying now. All right. So Andrew, last question. Now back to the cultural divides. So in the book forward, you're putting the idea that, hey, maybe we can come together on some issues. And one of the reasons, I agree with that. I think we could certainly come together on many issues and predominantly economic ones. But we do have social issues. And so you were on Tucker Carlson's show the other day, and he asked you a question that had a curious reference to the Unabomber. I want to show the audience that, and then I want to ask you a question about that. Let's watch that video.

It is a third party, yes, though it's starting out as PAC because you don't actually become a political party on day one. You have to do a bunch of stuff. Well, sure. I mean, systems, Ted Kaczynski, I have to say, is written very convincingly on this. the Unabomber, bad person, but a smart analysis, I think, of the way systems work. And his argument is that large organizations over time morph into purely self-preservation projects. Like a big system in the end protects itself, and that's kind of all it does.

So our two-party system is certainly in that category. So Andrew, there are a lot of people who say the same exact thing. But he chose to highlight the Unabomber there. And now 28% of Republicans say that it might be time for violence. And one of the people that are predominantly driving Republican voters in that direction is Tucker Carlson. And he keeps glorifying violence. And in that case, he glorified the Unabomber, attributing a well-known idea to a guy who

bombed and murdered people. So how do you invite? people like Tucker Carlson or his audience to your party knowing these very dangerous proclivities. We have to bring the temperature of the country down as quickly as possible. The reality is we're at civil war levels of political stress by the numbers and we can all see it. We can all feel it. I agree that it's going to lead to terrible, unthinkable things and I want to be part of an effort to help people see that that's not where we have to go. But unfortunately, that's where the system is designed to lead us. That's why we have to change the design of the system as quickly as possible for the reasons you're describing. So, but you say, hey, still reach out to that 28% of Republicans who say it might be time for violence. 41% of Republicans who say that you might have to take the law into your own hands.

Because the last thing we want them to do is actually resort to violence or take the law into their own hands. You know, you got to get to them before they do it and say, you know what, like maybe that's not the great idea. Like maybe we're all still in it together. We're all still human beings. Like, you know, I mean, you can't allow numbers like that to just climb to a point where large numbers of people do act on it. And that is where we're heading. Like I joked with Anderson Cooper the other night. Like I want to be America's wet blanket. I want to like soothe like so like soothe the fever. You know, like the fever is rising and we got to freaking cool it down. And anything I can do to cool it down I'm going to do.

All right, Andrew Yang, author of Forward Notes on the Future of Our Democracy and the creator of the Forward Party. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. Thanks, great being here. Thank you all. Thanks. All right, guys, we're going to take a quick break here. When we come back, we've got a lot of news. Both Republicans and Democrats doing questionable things, as always, just like the conversation we just had. All right, we'll be right back. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Michael with you guys. Right after this show will be Power Hour with Nina Turner.

That's where Senator Turner and I discussed the story of the week, her hero the week, the villain of the week, and what would Nina do with some of the toughest political questions there are? So make sure you're checking that out. That's for members, t-y-t.com slash join to become a member, or if you're watching on YouTube, you can just hit the join button below. All right, Michael's got our next story. I hate that Jesus lost his job and what would blank do to Nina Turner. But what tends to happen in life, Jank, you know rock star Ted Turner.

I mean, Ted Nugent, not Ted Turner. I know rock star Ted Turner. Ross start Ted Nugent. He is someone who has been so far to the right, he almost fell off the cliff, so far to the right, he almost died of COVID. So obviously you would expect that he, the first thing he would do, and this is a man who tweeted while he had COVID, he said that he thought, or actually he said in a video, I thought I was dying, I literally could hardly crawl out of the bed the last few days. That was Ted Nugent. And now, so you figure, oh, well, he got COVID and he's recovered from COVID, thank goodness. He's probably a chasing band. Is that what you're thinking,

Jack? Okay, well, go on with this story and let's see how it concludes. He's learned absolutely nothing. He does not support the idea of a vaccine. These are people that you just cannot get through to. He has said, and, you know, that he does not support the idea of a vaccine. And he is now impugning the honor of people who do. Take a look at this video. Well, would you speak to the people who believe it is a worthwhile vaccine and it is saving lines? Are they just dead wrong? They've been feed a federal line from the federal government? Tim, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the people that went ahead and got the jab. I speak their language. I would speak to them thusly.

They understand that. Well, so all these millions of people that got the shots, they're just stupid? Yep. I have an issue there with Michael. But let me, as while we get them back on, let me take this. All right, so good, we're now calling each other stupid. Now, by the way, I feel likewise. I think Ted Nugent is one of the dumbest people I've ever seen in America.

public life. So now let's try to figure out who's right and who's wrong because it's easy to call each other names. 99% of the world scientists and doctors agree with me. A couple of randos and idiots and conservative media agree with Ted Nugent. Okay, no, but seriously guys, go look it up. All the doctors in all the countries say that you should take the vaccine. The rate at which unvaccinated die is incredibly high versus the vaccinated.

The hospitals are filled with unvaccinated people. Every hospital is reporting that, including in the red estates. So Nugent thinks it is stupid to believe all the world scientists and all the world's doctors and all the hospitals in this country, that they're all part of a global conspiracy. The Indian doctors, the Brazilian doctors, et cetera, talked to hospitals in Alabama. Emma and Missouri, and they all decide to engage in a conspiracy and you're sheep if you follow all the experts with actual facts and knowledge in this world. But you would be smart if you follow Ted Nugent, a dumbass musician.

Honestly, I don't understand why anybody takes these guys in terms of like old school musicians as if they're credible sources. Now, they're entertainers and musicians that I agree with. I really like them, and I like to hear from them. And you want to hear from your favorite celebrities, no problem. But does that make them experts? No. Guys who played in Pink, Florida, are basically known for being high. They're not known for their political acumen.

Ted Nugent is basically known for crapping his pants. Literally, he tried to get out of Vietnam, which he admitted by soiling himself and then walking around with crap in his pants for several days so that he would appear to be insane. Unfortunately, he did the job too well. He actually became insane. And so now he goes around and telling everybody that they shouldn't take the vaccine and if they do that they're sheep and stupid, which is deeply ironic, Michael. And so, but the larger issue here, because who cares about Ted Nugent? The larger issue is, Michael, they're doing this all across across the country, all of the so called thought leaders, God help them, on the right wing,

are trying to make it appear that you're not tough if you take the vaccine, that you're weak like sheep. But the lions, the strong ones, they don't take the vaccine and endanger their lives and often die. That is what the brave, dumbasses do. And it's worked. Culturally, you talk to Republicans, they all have this. It's not just that they're not, that a huge percentage are not taking the vaccine, is that they say the same things about how it's tough not to take the vaccine. Yeah, and I don't know how we got here. That's the curious. I'm, we're not going to solve it right now, and I'm never going to know. I'm never going to understand why you have a populace that understands that if you take a vaccine, it will help you from

getting it potentially and proven to be fatal virus. And they talk about, like you just said, toughness in not taking it. It makes absolutely no sense to me. And then, you know, and then it goes further if I can, you know, go on to the next story here, that the notion that we are now beholden to these people telling us that they think we're crazy for taking vaccines or the vaccines are somehow going to kill people in ways that COVID, which is a myth to them, is not going to. We have a story of a Maryland man, right? A Maryland man, and I'm skipping ahead, Brett, I can do this, I assume, yeah, who has now gone on a murder spree because his brother, who was a pharmacist, he felt, was giving people

the vaccine and creating death himself, like killing people with a vaccine, killing people with a shot. And that's where we are right now. Jeffrey Burnham, 46, and this is a, we can listen, we can watch in Cumberland, saying, I wanted to confront his brother with the government poisoning people with COVID vaccines. One document reads, adding he repeatedly stated, Brian, that's his brother, knows something. Burnham's mother told detectives he planned to confront his brother, 58 year old Brian Robinette. And this is what he did. He went out, he murdered his Rebecca Reynolds, stole her car. And then his mother, and this is Evelyn Burnham, called police on September 30th, concerned about her son's talk of Becky's car referring to Reynolds,

the person that we just said he killed. A friend of her since child, the police have said Burnham stole Reynolds Lincoln and drove to Ellicott City. Reynolds was found dead inside her home with a deep laceration across her throat and a pillow over her face. And that's just the beginning of what this man did. Keep in mind he's doing this to protect people because his brother was giving the COVID vaccine. As brother, a pharmacist, he thought was killing people. He then went to murder his brother and his wife. The Robinettes were found fatally shot in an upstairs bedroom in their home on Kerger Road or Kerger Road. A gun also was recovered from the home according to the charging documents. Reynolds vehicle was found parked less than a half a mile from the home and

the robinettes 2007 Red Corvette was missing and he was caught after and again with this is the sort of continuation of brilliance. He was caught after bragging about having done all this at a gas station to a gas station guy and a firefighter, an unidentified tipster called police, alerting them that Burnham returned to Cumberland driving his brother's Corvette. Burnham asked the person for gas and told him he would see him on TV. Burnham was arrested October 1st in West Virginia after flagging down a firefighter and telling him he had been forced to kill three people. He's being held without bond. And this is somebody, I mean, this is somebody who's clearly mentally ill.

This is someone who can't even get their stories right. He's trying to protect people from the death that his brother is ravishing on them by giving COVID vaccines, and he's going out and he's killing all these people. This is insane. But Michael, part of this story that is related to this guy, of course he's on balance, of course. But there's a huge part of this story that's related to how the entire right wing is on balance. because when you say it doesn't make any sense to attack people for trying to protect folks through the vaccine, the majority of the Republican voters think that. They think it makes sense that you should aggressively confront people who are trying to

save lives by giving the vaccine. They think that's government tyranny, and this doesn't come out of nowhere. So this guy's on balance, God knows what he would have done otherwise, but was he egged on to attack people that are either taking the vaccine or giving the vaccine like his brother by conspiracy theories on the right? Obviously, he didn't get it from the left. He didn't get it from moderates. He got it from right wing media. They told him vaccines terrible, vaccines killing people, vaccines if you want to protect people, you have to make sure they don't do it. Here I'm going to show you a clip. This is Tug Carlson talking to Andrew Yang and he randomly

brings up the Unabomber as a model here. Watch. Ted Kaczynski, I have to say, is written very convincingly on this, the Unabomber. So he went on to say that, oh, yeah, the Unabomber is a bad person, but he was really right about this theory that he has about institutional government and other institutions that then wind up protecting themselves. Well, that's a very common theory. You didn't have to talk about the Unabomber. He drops references like that in all the time that it's not an accident that 28% of Republicans

say that it's time for violence and 41% say it's time to take the law into their own hands. Gates is saying you second amendment remedies. Cothorne is saying it. So many other Republicans are saying it. Conservative media is saying it. So is that why he was egg down to murder his own brother and sister-in-law? Yes, of course that's why. There's no question that that's the like the precipitating rationale for killing these people. He might have killed other people. He might have done it for other reasons. We don't know if that would have ever happened. But the reason he did it here is because he got brainwashed by right wing media.

And it's the subtlety too. I mean, it's not just going out there and saying do it. But here, let me drop this, let me facilitate it. This is Donald Trump's playbook. This was Donald Trump's playbook on racism. This was Donald Trump's playbook on finding the others. It was on building the wall. Does he say I'm a racist?

No. he says is racist. And that's the same thing. You know, are they saying, you know, go lift up arms against America? Yes, some of them are. But when when you have their biggest spokesperson right now, the person getting all the ratings, Tucker Carlson, with all the people living in America today and living in the world, the one he quotes, is a man who killed people by sending bombs and had a manifesto that was off the, off the rails. It's just an amazing thing. So it's not just saying you can do it, you must do it, but it's what they're not saying to. Yeah, and look, one way of characterizing that is stochastic terrorism.

They tell you, well, somebody's got to do something about this. And maybe the Unabomber was on to something. I mean, he had an interesting theory. Always with the caveats, though, to protect himself legally. Now, I said he was a bad person. I put him up as a role model for you, but I said he was a bad person. I said he was brilliant, right? And it goes on and on.

And there's constant talk of the Second Amendment, et cetera. So the part that is also frustrating is that a huge section of our society overall and even of Democratic politicians. And I think that in this case, they might be slightly worse than mainstream media. And I know that they both recognize it. But Michael, I'm making an argument that they don't recognize the severity of it. There already were, there already was a guy who sent pipe bombs to all of Trump's enemies. There already was a guy who put pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC.

There already was a guy who went, he claimed with a van full of explosives to Washington, D.C. There is January 6th already happened. Charlottesville already happened. And so this is a story that probably isn't going to get a lot of coverage because the people he killed weren't famous or powerful. But nonetheless, you see it happen a thousand times over. And another way of describing it is they're encouraging vigilante violence. And that is super dangerous. And they're also the people that decry those Muslims who say that they kill in the name

of God. And they say, that's crazy what God would tell you to do that. They're killing in the name of a party here that is telling them what's wrong with the country. It's the same damn thing. Yeah, and it is for any mainstream media that's still doing this, it is not even. Both sides do not do it. There are not leftists showing up with a van full of explosives threatening to murder people in Washington nonstop. They're not left as going around killing their brothers because Amy Goodman told him, hey, you better murder someone trying to protect other people's lives. It's not a thing that happens on the left. It's just not. No, the right

The white wing is the reason, and guys, there's a reason for it, they're going towards violence because they believe they cannot win anymore nationally in a democracy. They think Trump turned out as many people as you could possibly turn out on the right, and they still lost. And every year it gets worse for them. People overfocus on the demographics based on race. The real demographic problem for the Republican Party is one based on age. Younger voters are much more progressive.

They would never vote for monsters like Republicans. On average, the numbers are massive Republican poster like Frank Luntz, the top poster has said it's, it's the Republican Party is in a catastrophe because of younger voters and I love it. But that is why they're driving people towards violence and it's incumbent upon the news to tell you what's actually happening and not go, oh, I can't tell who's doing it and I can't tell why they're doing it. Yes, we can.

It's very obvious. Yeah, it's obvious. And it, and just one more thing on top of what you just said about it is that when you see young voters and you see the voters that they're talking about, it's not, it's not as implicit as we're talking about. You see these legal statements that are being given by those January 6 defendants. And what are they saying? Well, they thought Trump was telling them to do this. They thought they were doing this because someone else was telling them to do that. You want to talk about sheep, she, she, Ted Nugent, those right there, those are your sheep. We'll be back with some more young turks just after this. All right, back on TYT, JHu or Michael, sure with you guys. Before we go on with the rest of the news, I want to read two comments because they seem to be representative. One from Super Chat, one from Tritch.

Ramsey Cade wrote in, Andrew Yang not outright disavowing SuperPack money is really disappointing. You should take a note from the just Democrats playbook. Well, obviously I agree. That's why not only did I co-found just Democrats, but the one rule that I insisted on was, yes, we have one litmus test. You cannot take corporate back money. And I, you know, Andrew talks about unlocking politicians. That's what unlocked them. And now they say it. You, AOC and other just Democrats go on TV and say, we don't care about the lobbyists at all. We don't take their money so we can just say whatever we want. And by the way, the implication is obvious, which is that others cannot, including Democrats. And then on Twitch, Antarctic Prime says something

very similar. The fact that Andrew Yang did not clearly state that this party will not take corporate PAC money tells me that his party definitely will disappointing. So just sharing that with you guys, obviously others liked some of what he was saying as well as we shared earlier. Michael, they say, you know, we asked him a couple of times in a couple of different ways. And he said he will, if he's not going to say it, but it will, he will promise transparency. Well, you don't need to promise transparency. If you take corporate PAC money, it's transparent through your politics where you're getting that money from. So it's, it doesn't solve yet that issue, which is an issue that I thought he would have embraced. Certainly the startup costs in getting something going and getting raising money to get this thing off the ground.

But when I asked about what it would be like in the eventuality of the forward party or the forward movement, he had a chance to say, no, no, we won't do it down then, but we've got to get this thing going. That was interesting, say it least. All right, absolutely. All right. Michael, you've got the next story. Yeah, we're going to continue on this incredible journey of anti-vax people. And it's not just something that's taking place in, you know, in the red states. In very, you know, very. very, very, very deep blue California. Beverly Hills, you know, I was going to sing the Green Acres song, but I'm not going to. In Beverly Hills, California, a mob of antivacters. A mob in Beverly Hills, you don't think of very often. A mob of anti-vaxers were harassing patients and their children en route, sorry, parents and their children on route to an elementary school in Beverly Hills, California and you can see this right here. This is Beverly Hills. You're gonna be traumatized because you put that mask on him, you don't let him breathe

you're from this. That's my choice. Yeah, well, that's my choice. You're propaganda. You're not being pulled at truth. You're making, you're staring your kid by yelling. You're staring your kid by yelling. This was yesterday in Beverly Hills. And you can see small kids, walking dogs on their way to elementary school and this woman comes out to scream at them and then others. And the woman in red, this is from Rolling Stone, the woman in red harassing the mother who walks hand in hand with her child is Shiva Bagheri, the founder of the Beverly Hills Freedom Rally, a group that builds itself as the nexus, this is quote, nexus for citizens committed to liberty and civic participation. She was also recently called on camera punching a cancer

survivor while protesting a mask mandate at a cancer clinic. And that was just one video there. And that was a benign video, right? She's walking. She's close to these people. The kids are walking. Take a look at this one. You should choose what goes on your child's face and in your child's body. This is rape. They're trying to rape our children with this poison. They're going to break their lives away. Masking children is child abuse. It is. You mask your child, you're a child abuser.

Wrong to Santas, even a minute. Look at the 1918 Spanish flu. They didn't die Spanish flu. They died of bacteria pneumonia. It's even on the NIH government website. Look it up. They want your children. It's also trying to you.

Telling the children, the truth is, they've been propaganda. Lions, the Chief. Lions, not sheep. Again with the sheep, we heard from Ted Nugent about sheep earlier. This is someone who is committed to the nexus of civic participation and freedom going after these people. In attendance there was Robert Wonderlich, who is the mayor of Beverly Hills. He proposed that the representatives from the protest group meet with him later in the day to leave the children and allow them to walk to school.

in peace and part of that is that you know part of the problem with this is that this event in Beverly Hills California was supported and you know the proponents of it also were members of the Beverly Hills fire department who are also protesting protesting a vaccine mandate and you have to know that in California now you have both a vaccine requirement is voted on by the city council Los Angeles. You have out coming from the governor and the state that everybody has to be vaccinated to go to school. But the firefighters were saying that. And here's a Tuesday protest in support of firefighters. This is a day before who have refused to get vaccinated. One speaker urged those in attendance to also protest at the national walk to school event

the following day, which is the event that we just showed you a moment ago. They think it's going to be a fun and safe photo opportunity with parents and kids, David Hacken far, a West Hollywood attorney and anti-vax activist said at the protest Tuesday, let's show up here and show them it's not. Let's show them how we really feel let's make them afraid. And we say let's make them afraid. This is a grown man at a firefighter's protest of vaccine mandates, a grown man saying let's make them afraid. And he's talking about elementary school children and their families as they walk to school with masks on. That's that's where you're That's where we are in this country.

Jenk before we go further, how do we get here? How do we get here in Beverly Hills? How do we get here in West Virginia? How does this happen? So look, there's amusing parts of this story, of course, when she says even Ron DeSantis admitted it. Right.

Okay, yeah, Ron DeSantis is on your side, the side of the lunatics. So how do we get here is obvious conservative media. they constantly egging these people on. We showed earlier in the show as Michael referenced, Ted Nugent clip where he said that anyone who takes the vaccine is sheep. The guy has the same exact talking point on the streets. That they're the lions for not taking the vaccine and endangering their lives,

their families, lives, and our lives. And we're the sheep for what? Listening to 99% of the world scientists and 99% of the world's doctors. So you'll excuse me if I call them morons, because, that's clearly what they are. They're some of the dumbest people in the country. And so it was easy for the right wing media to manipulate them and manipulate them to their own death. Now over 700,000 dead in America because of coronavirus. And at this point, over 90% of the people being hospitalized and dying are unvaccinated. So yay lions, okay.

But now let's get Michael to the most serious parts of this. So these folks are asking, for a ton of trouble and then also physically engaging in trouble themselves. I don't mean to protest. Okay, you're a lunatic and you want to say crazy things in the streets. I can't stand it, but you've got a right to do that in America, right? But when you start telling people in front of their kids that they're raping their children, you're asking for a massive amount of trouble. Now, if you're out there and listening, do not give it to them because they would look love that. They would love to pretend to be victims, et cetera, et cetera. Do not ever engage these

folks physically, okay? Don't engage them at all. It's like going to an insane asylum and trying to engage in a debate with people who are literally have lost their minds, right? So there's no point in it is no matter how frustrating it is. But somebody, even though, even if we tell them a thousand times, don't do that when they hear something that outrageous and for other kids is going to get very upset. And that's what they're egging on. They're like do it, do it. Now, but it's beyond that because as Michael read to you, this person is Shivabeghari, according to this report from Rolling Stones, she already punched a cancer survivor.

So what are we doing? Why is she not in prison? She should be in prison without bail and she should get a several year sentence here. What, is assault okay now? Is keeping dangerous people in prison only for poor people and middle class people? And those folks aren't even dangerous. Oh, you smoke pot and you're poor. pot and you're poor, we're gonna put bail on you and you're not gonna be able to get out.

Oh, you're punching cancer survivors in the face because you're a goddamn lunatic and what just you can walk around and do it again and again and again and then go around telling people that, you know, saying these outrageous things about kids. No, she needs to be in prison and that prison and that David Gilbert so-called lawyer saying let's make them afraid. No, that's threatening violence, that's also assault, that's illegal. Is anybody gonna do want anything about this? Or are they just going to continue to have more and more violence and just say no, right wingers are above the law? No, as long as you're a lunatic, as long as you're white and a right winger or in a lot of cases, you don't even have to be white.

As long as you're a right winger, you have special privileges. You don't have to follow the goddamn law, you can go around threatening violence, you can go around committing violence, you can go on trying to instigate violence, and the government will never touch you. It's disgusting and it's going to lead to gigantic problems. And you don't even get a restraining order and you got the question, right, because I was a bit of a layup for you to ask you how we got here. This is how we got here. It's a consistent theme. It is the right wing media. It's the first thing you said last night. What does Tucker Carlson say? And we're talking about this the entire show.

On his show, he said, maybe people should stay and fight and take back the schools, which belong to us. They're ours. And what do these people do? They call us sheep. They call them sheep. These are the ones who listen to the shepherd and they go out into the streets of Beverly Hills and try and get kids, you know, to try and scare the hell out of kids and their families on their way to elementary school. It's unbelievable. Yeah, and Michael, they talk about Second Amendment rights nonstop. What is your second amendment right? It's literally about weapons and what you have a right to have a weapon, but how is that relevant in this context? It's only relevant if you're telling them to use it and in fact, Cawthorne and other Republican congresspeople have said, oh, if someone

from the government shows up at your door, which by the way would likely be a police officer, use your Second Amendment rights. That means shoot the cop. That's insane. That's insane. By the way, the people who show up at your door every day from the government is the postal workers. So what are you going to do? Shoot them? This, look, Tucker just yesterday talking to Andrew Yang, I won't play it again. Look at what he says about the Unabomber. Ted Kaczynski, I have to say, has written very convincingly on this, the Unabomber. I mean, and then he went on to say, oh, yeah, he's a bad person. But remember, the Unabomber's right, and then what was he right about?

He quoted a well-known idea about how institutions wind up protecting themselves. Anybody, you could have attributed that quote to anybody. It's like saying, well, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer made the argument about a slippery slope. Why are we quoting Jeffrey Dahmer about that argument? unless you want people to do likewise. And so stay in fight, Second Amendment, Unabomber. And they're literally driving this country to civil war because they think they can't win elections anymore. That's disgusting fascists that Tucker Carlson and almost everyone in right wing media is.

And Michael, look, this is now, I'm gonna go one step further. Look, the disgusting antics you see in front of the schools is obvious. The right wing driving towards violence is obvious. But this is, in my opinion, an attempted fascist coup in slow motion in progress. So what did the Germans do, the fascists in Germany? They did vigilante violence. They encouraged their brown shirts to go and physically assault people until no one was speaking out against them because if you spoke out against them, the vigilantes would come and do violence

against you. It's happening right now in this country. When Trump got into office, the fascists went and chanted the Jews will not replace us and carried torches in Charlottesville and they killed somebody. And Trump said there's good people on both sides. And what did it do? It encourage more and more fascists, more shootings as synagogues, and more threats of violence. And here they are, they're building up a vigilante mob to use against the rest of them. us. It's exactly what's happening. And they're talking about Ted Kaczynski is making a convincing argument.

He was so crazy and so violent that his brother turned him in. But Tucker Carlson thinks he makes some good points. We'll be back on The Young Turks after this. 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. slash t yt i'm your host shank huger and i'll see you soon