TRIGGERnometry - The Dems Need a Civil War - Cenk Uygur

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Cenk Uygur is a Turkish-born American political commentator, media host, and attorney. He is the co-creator of The Young Turks. *Follow Cenk on X: https://x.com/cenkuygur | Sponsor: Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to escape the echo chamber and stay fully informed. Use our link to save 50% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan this month. *Sponsor: Munk Debates - become a member for free at https://munkdebates.com  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We need to have a democratic civil war within the Democratic Party. And not violently, not physically, politically and rhetorically. It's not the voters' fault, you morons. You ran the election. It's your fault. The term fascist is very, very loaded. No, it's accurate. Okay, why do you think he's a fascist? Since he didn't relinquish power last time. Well, ultimately he did, but...

Oh, come on, guys. A guy who said, let's terminate the Constitution, considered martial law, and had a fake electorate to steal an election. might he try to stay in power? Of course! Of course he tried to do it once. So you fear that at the end of this four-year period, he will not vacate the white house. That is one of my concerns.

Absolutely. And that alone is a deal breaker. Genk, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here. It's great to have you on, and especially at this moment.

There's a lot to talk about, obviously. First of all, let's have your diagnosis. What happened? Trump won. Democrats lost. I figured it out. This is why we brought him on, by the way, this sophisticated analysis. Okay, no, in all seriousness, I think what happened is relatively obvious, but it's not obvious to anyone on television.

It's not obvious to anyone in Democratic Party. The populist won, and the populist wins almost every time. So, in my opinion, and anybody who's online knows that I don't have kind words for Donald Trump, right? And so I think he's a fake populace. But nevertheless, he at least had the smarts, and it bothers me to say that, but it's true to at least pretend to be a populace because that is the correct strategy. Whereas the Democrats are like, we will be establishment, Democrats. People love the establishment. And in Kamala Harris got 90 corporate CEOs to sign a letter saying that they like her, which also means that she will serve them.

And she went and told everybody on cable news, the corporate CEOs are on my side. I'm like, what are you doing? Are you trying to lose the election? This is insanity. And then she went and said, oh my God, you'll never believe it. Liz and Dick Cheney are on my side. I'm like, are you trying to lose the election? Because Dick Cheney, when he left office, had an approval rating of 13%. Even if you're not anti-war, which almost the entire country is anti-war, 13% is not complicated. But they have this great, brilliant strategy, which they always do, and I'll tell you why they do, of no, we're going to get the Republican in the suburbs. We don't need any progressive voters that hate war. We don't need any populist voters that, you know, hate the corruption of the system. No, we're going to be even more corrupt. We're going to surround ourselves in elitism and then because we're going to get the Republicans in the

suburbs. I'm like, first of all, all the Republicans are in favor of Donald Trump. I don't know when you're going to get this through your thick, thick, idiotic establishment head, okay? Hillary Clinton only got 7% of the vote after they demonized Donald Trump a thousand percent. And then I think they were right to demonize Donald Trump in 2020, but Biden got less. He only got 6% of the Republican vote. I'm like, there's no Republican votes to get, you idiots. And this time around Kamala Harris, with this brilliant strategy of the Cheney's, got 5% of the Republican vote, even less. It was an utter failure.

So the thing is, guys, I don't think there's really any dispute about what happened because, look, they have their own crazy lunatic ideas about, oh, it's Latino men's fault. They're all sexist. It's the white women's fault. It's Christian's fault. It's this fault. It's not the voter's fault, you morons. You ran the election. It's your fault.

Take some personal responsibility. But the reason that I know I'm right, empirically, is when she started her campaign, she actually started out very populist, if you remember. I'm going to prevent price gouging. Now, a lot of people don't like that. They're like, what do you mean? Are you going to tell you sent prices? And Trump fell into that trap immediately.

It was a perfect trap. I don't know who came up with it, but that's the guy who should run the next campaign. And all the Republicans were like, don't. We're going to protect the companies from you. Oh, that's a disastrous thing to do for the Republicans, right? So she starts going up, and she says, I want to protect housing prices. Perfect, excellent. And I'm going to protect them.

She mentioned this a little bit, not really too much. Like private equity is actually buying up all the houses and driving up the prices. But they're the donors to both the Republicans and Democrats and to Donald Trump, right? So nobody ever talks about it. So she was, and then she picks Tim Walls, the most populous of all the Democratic candidates. It's perfect. And Biden was down by eight. She goes up by seven nationally. She's got to, I literally said on the Young Turks, we should have the election today. If we had the election today, we'd win. But I don't know what she's going to do the rest of the time she might blow it.

And that's exactly when she turns around and blows it by being corporate elitist establishment. So you, the way that you think the Democrats could have succeeded in this election is by, having who and doing what? So first of all, 14 months ago, I started a petition on the Young Turks, and the Young Turks audience should get a lot of credit because, you know, some people were like, well, I'll tell you what the petition is,

and I'll tell you the reaction. Petition was, please drop out. Mr. President, you're done. I'm sorry, we're trying to be as polite as possible, but you can't go on. This is crazy. because, and the clips online, September of 2020, because it was already patently obvious.

Why was it obvious? He would make a speech, and then he would wander off and go shake someone's hand that wasn't there. I'm like, when you're shaking an invisible man's hand, it's over. OV-A-H, as Spike Lee would say, over, okay? And so it would pile on and pile on by the end. He was talking about how his uncle was eaten by cannibals,

and mainstream media, that's literal, by the way. He literally said that. And mainstream media's like, no, he's young and dynamic. We don't see the problem at all. If Donald Trump said his uncle was eaten by cannibals, they would have torn him to pieces. And all they did was a protection racket for Joe Biden. So our audience, some of them, by the way, their reaction was,

no, you're going to help Trump win. No, we have to just please Joe Biden in the Democratic Party. And if you're nice enough to him, and if you say enough pleasant things, then you do enough propaganda, then we'll win. Oh my God, you're not doing propaganda for the Democrats? No, no, we're going to lose. So some people left.

And it hurt us. I knew it would. And we lost some paying subscribers. We lost revenue, et cetera. But the people who said were like, hell yeah. We do accountability. We pay you as your subscribers to be honest with us. Not to sugarcoat things.

Not to give us BS. Right. And you're right. We got to get a better candidate. Remember, we really want to beat Trump. So if we really, really, really, really want to beat Trump. You're not going to beat him with Joe Biden. And now they admit afterwards the, you know,

the Potsave America guys are pretending that they knew all along when they were cheerleading of Joe Biden the entire time. And by the way, all those shows said Jenk is being terrible, disgraceful. He's trying to help Trump, et cetera. We should stick with the crappiest candidate we have. Now they turn around after the election and go, oh, his staff says he would have lost.

Trump would have gotten 400 electoral college points. like they knew they were going to get slaughtered exactly what I said 14 months ago. Then I ran against them in a primary because I was so desperate. I'm like, isn't anybody going to enter this race? I mean, I hate Gavin Newsom, but at least he could put together a sentence. I'm not even looking for progressive anymore. I'm just looking for a person whose brain is not going to fall out. And then, but I couldn't get him to, I'm like, if I do well or Dean Phillips does well,

maybe it'll animate Gretchen Whitmer or Tim Walz or Shapiro to come in. It's a big believer in Shapiro. I thought Shapiro could have won. But if I had it, my druthers, so put all that aside, that's what happened, and that was the dynamic of it, we can get back into more of the details. But if you said to me, out of the people that exist now who would run it, my first choice would be John Stewart. Give me John Stewart in Democratic primary, and I will route anyone against us.

in that primary and in the general election and we'll win easily, it'll be a landslide. If I can't have someone like John Stewart and I have to go with someone politics adjacent, then I would pick either Sean Fine or Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union,

Sean O'Brien spoke at the Republican Convention. What am I picking him for for a Democratic pyramid? Because I'm a populist. And Sean O'Brien is a populist. And he gave the best speech out of all the speeches of the RNC or DNC, If you go back and watch that, and he told rich people to their face, the donors in the Republican Party, I'm coming for you. That's the guy I like, okay?

If I can't have one of those guys and you make me pick a politician, and then this is where I'm going to lose a lot of Republicans. They say, no way, man, and they have all this propaganda that they did against them. But actually, the most populous of our politicians is Tim Walz. So he paid family leave, get moms 12 weeks off because they deserve it after they have a baby, right? having them go back to the assembly lines as monstrous. These are super popular economic positions and he got them past. And he speaks like a normal human being and not a corporate robot. So you've got problems with where he was in China, blah, blah, blah.

We ran a campaign. People do this propaganda, right? But overall, I'll take Tim Walz over any of the other corporate robots. I guess the reason I'm asking you who and how is that I think the big discussion is, is it a personnel issue or is it a structural issue? Oh, it's definitely structured. And that's what I'm getting now, because I don't think we're changing the captain of the Titanic avoids two minutes before the iceberg hits is really going to change anything.

And it felt to me, if you're talking about the importance of a populist approach, the problem with the Democrat Party is it's not a party that's on the side of the ordinary person. So it's definitely a structural problem. And so that's why, look, I, Young Turks is the longest running showing in. internet history. We're the first partner for YouTube. So that makes me the original YouTuber. So that's kind of fun, right? And so I want to see how long we can keep it going, but we started basically at the beginning of online video, and here we are, right? And we got there by telling the truth and being honest and being populist and not serving the rich, but serving the average person,

right? And so when you look at the Democratic Party, we have tried so many different things throughout the years. When I say we, me and the Young Turks host an audience, okay? We did petitions, we did campaigns. Bernie Sanders came on the show in 2016, got six million views. While no one was noticing, bigger than any TV interview he ever did, and the next time he came on in the middle of Labor Day, nobody was on watching anything, et cetera, four million views. Okay, we were, then I started justice Democrats, that's AOC in the squad, et cetera. We can have an ideological conversation about whether that's the right way to go or not, and half of it is and half of it went wrong. I could tell you about that. But our audience raised $2.5 million for them, and then we pull off a couple of miracles.

So we're constantly trying things, right? Now we have a populace plank on our website, t.yt.com. I hope people go sign it. I'm saying right-wing populace, left-wing populace. Here's six super popular things, anti-war, money out of politics, et cetera. Let's go pass them together and let's demand our politicians do it no matter which side they're on. So in the midst of all this, We have tried to convince the Democrats a thousand times over. We're like, look, you lost it. You said Donald Trump was a maniacal clown. And I agree.

We can get into that debate. And then you lost to him. So what does that make you? I mean, it's just simple logic, right? And it's indisputable. So Hillary Clinton and the entire establishment of the Democratic Party said that they were geniuses. And it was going to be a cakewalk. And she had a 98% chance of winning.

I'm sitting there screaming on the young Turks. No, she doesn't. No, she doesn't. She's going to lose. And so I went on ABCs this week after the convention where Hillary Clinton had a 10-point lead at that point. They asked us to predict who's going to win. Everybody on the panel, of course,

is Hillary Clinton by a landslide. I say Donald Trump's going to win. They literally laugh out loud. And I said the same thing I'm telling you guys today. Countries in a populist mood. They're running the most establishment candidate I've ever seen. It's a massive mistake. So after she loses, they go, we're going to learn our lessons.

And their lessons were blame the voters, blame progressives. It was Bernie's fault. It was Russia's fault. It was the weather's fault. It was my dog's fault. The dog ate my vote, right? And so they learn no lesson because, guys, and this is the critical thing. They're never going to learn a lesson because they are hooked on the donor money, the entire structure.

And this is, and I don't want people get it wrong. This is not just the Democratic Party. This is the almost entirety of the Democratic and Republican parties. That's why people call it the Unip Party. They are all hooked on donor cash. They all serve the donors. It is absolutely indisputable, and they can never get off that crack. You must defeat them.

And to be fair to Trump, as Trump did, Trump defeated them. He didn't negotiate with them. He didn't appease them. He didn't debate them. He just defeated them. So as much as I have gigantic problems with Trump, I respect that. And the other thing I respect that Trump does is when he breaks people. And then so on my side, we got the civility police.

So like, oh, breaking people, oh, my God, that's so wrong. How could you? Right. I ran for Congress in 22. And again, because I was so frustrated, like, because we sent the Justice Democrats in, AOC, Rashida, Tili, et cetera, and they were supposed to, they had a mission. I guess maybe they didn't know the mission or they didn't understand the mission or they decided to jettison the mission. The mission was challenge the establishment. Don't be the establishment. Don't negotiate with the establishment. fight the establishment. And unfortunately, they barely did that, right? So that's my great frustration. So I was like, okay, I don't, then Nina Turner. And then she couldn't win. So I'm like, all right, I'll try it. I don't want to be a politician, right? But I tried it. And when I did, the LA Times has an endorsement meeting, right? So I go and we talk for, it's supposed to be 30 minutes. We went nearly an hour, okay, because we couldn't stop talking about the issues. As you could tell, I'm animated. I studied this stuff inside and out. We have a fantastic conversation. And I come out and my campaign manager says, how did it go? What do you

thinking? I said, look, I went in thinking there was a 0% chance because the mainstream media is never going to endorse a popular candidate, right? I come out thinking 12% chance. Like, because it couldn't have gone any better. And I said to them as I was leaving, the corporate Democrat in the race is Christy Smith. I said, please ask Christy the same questions. If you ask her the same questions and she has better answers than me than endorse her. Okay. So what happened instead. They talked to her for 15 minutes over the phone. She didn't answer any policy questions. She said that she was for the firefighters and the teachers. Whoa, how bold. You're for the firefighters and the teachers. What a policy position. Are you also for little puppies and kittens?

So, of course, they endorsed her. And so when they did, but here's the interesting part. When they got to me, they said, while we agree with Eugher's stance and money in politics and other issues. We find him too pugilistic and we prefer civility in guidance. That is saying we don't want you to fight for your voters. We want you to be civil. Why? Because civility protects the status quo. And if you're already at the top, you don't want any of the status quo changed. You hate the populace more than life itself. That's part of why they hate. That's not part of why they hate Bernie. It's all of why they hate Bernie, and it's half of why they hate Trump. So that's why you can't talk them into it.

On our side, we finally have to gather up the courage to say, no, the Democratic leaders that Morning Joe and the View want you to worship are morons. They're corrupt. They never win. Even Biden, only won by 43,000 votes in the swing states. Only 43,000 votes. And the whole time you're telling us that Trump is a supplitic clown. And you lost to them twice and almost three times. What does that make you? The only reason they exist is that they're propped up by mainstream media, which is nothing but a giant propaganda machine. So you give me one populace and I will rip through the Democratic Party. I will not be civil. Our side should not be civil. We've been civil to these idiot corrupt forces for way too long. Let's go beat them. And then we could have a candidate that can kick a Republican's ass.

There's an interesting point you made about the civility issue that I'd like to push back on, Jenk, because I don't think a lot of Democrats are civil. I don't think Joe Biden calling Republican voters garbage is civil. I don't think Kamala Harris calling Trump a fascist is civil. And to me, that's not even politics. It's just name calling. Those are the things that you do when you don't actually have any ideas and you've lost the argument. Yeah, I totally disagree with you. So, look, guys, both sides are in their bubble. So part of the reason people like our show and that in TYT network overall is that we try

really hard not to be in a bubble. So I've gotten into fight with leftists. In fact, there's one raging right now, okay, because that last Trump ad that they put 40 million into about the trans detainees getting gender reassignment surgery for free. I'm like, you guys know. that that hurt us. It's not the number one issue, as we just talked about, number one issues, corporate donors, elitism, et cetera. But it hurt us and they pulled through the roof for them. That's why they spent 40 million. And there are the Young Turks hosts and I love them. And we're

okay to have disagreement in conversation. They're like, no, we don't see it. No, it didn't hurt Kamala Harris. I'm like, they spent 40 million dollars on it. Their polling was unspectacular on that ad. You think it didn't cost us? I mean, that's just delusional. So everybody's in their bubbles. In the Republican bubble or in the Trump MAGA bubble, you guys think that the Democrats are vicious. I mean, in a sense they are. They are to Bernie Sanders. They are to their own base. They are to people like me who run against them. New York Times when I ran said I was anti-Muslim, I'm Muslim. Never clarified it. Okay. And based on a joke, et cetera, I mean, they were vicious. But that is, that is vicious. Because what they're saying is that you're a bigot and you're a

racist, that is a smear on your character, which is completely, it's completely baseless. That's reputation destruction, Jenk. Let's be honest about that. No, I know. I explain this on the show all the time. In the old days, the system would do literal assassinations, right? You cause too much trouble. Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, maybe the Kennedys, et cetera, and they're going to do a literal assassin. These days, they don't need to. They came up with a much better idea. Character assassination. Okay, when you assassinate someone literally, it makes them a martyr and makes their cause strong or not weaker. When you assassinate their character, it drags down their cause with them. So character assassination keeps your hands clean and does bigger damage to the cause.

So the machine turned and does character assassinations. So in that way, I agree with you, brother. It is vicious in that way. And if you read that New York Times article, they imply that bestiality is part of my legislative agenda? What? Insanity. I mean, the degree to which they lied about me was unreal to the point where there was a section when they said that I brought on David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, to,

and I agreed with him that he wasn't racist. If you watch the interview, I call him a racist, an anti-Semite, a bigot, an idiot, etc. Right? You see, I'm not shy, right? But aren't you just making Francis point for him? I am. I'm saying this is the part that I agree with. Okay.

But the part I don't agree with is when it comes to Republicans, historically, they have been puddin soft. Why? Because they secretly agree with them. Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden has made every dirty deal in this country for the last 40 years. He loves Mitch McConnell more than he loves any Democrat. Okay. So they're used to and culturally gotten used to civility, civility status quo, status goes great. Keep the powerful what it is, etc. They began to change with Trump. One, they did the character assassination. That's fair. Okay. But the problem is that Trump makes it so easy for them, right? The garbage comment is mainly him being seen. Like, so I call him out when he does dumb things, but that one was just, he's like,

B, Puerto Rico, garbage, right? Like, that's why his brains falling out. You can't, so that's that. And guys, though, now let me bring it back to you. You, the Republican side cannot possibly. Wait, wait, you can't. Sorry, sorry. Sorry.

So just to get this clear for anyone who's watching who's not familiar with our show, we are neither MAGA nor left. We are disaffected people who were on the left in the UK. In this election, given the choice available, I think we probably would have voted for Trump if we were American citizens, which we are not. But really, we're interested in people from both sides and exploring their perspective. So this isn't a Republicans arguing with the Democrat conversation. No, no, I'm totally with you.

And that's great. So when I say you in this case, I mean, let's say Trump supporters. Okay. So they say, oh, can you believe the Democrats are being on civil dose? Oh, come on, guys. Trump has said every terrible thing in the world. I mean, Trump is called Kamala Harris fascist, all Democrats fascists, and socialists and Marxists and communists and comrade and scum and poisoning the blood of our country and every terrible thing in

the world. And like I told you, I don't mind that much, right? Especially when he breaks Republicans on his own side to get things done, right? So I'm not that guy. But don't care. If you're a Trump supporter, you are not allowed to catch feelings about bad words. Like, because that hypocrisy breaks all hypocrisy records. And if you can't see that, you're in a bubble.

If you think Donald Trump's a fluffy, nice guy who deserves civility, you're not on this planet. I think, look, I think what you're saying is in part true, but I also think your criticisms of somebody have to be accurate. The term fascist is very, very loaded. No, it's accurate. And, okay, what do you think he's a fascist? What's your definition of fascist? Let's do that first. So, look, guys, all of the first.

All of these words suck, and they get loaded up with what people, their own beliefs and what they mean, right? And they've lost all meaning. So communism has a meaning. Communism is no private property, state runs everything, central planning, etc. Capitalism has a meaning, free markets, et cetera, right? Socialism and fascism have almost no meaning. Socialism ranges from the Swedish system, which is perfectly lovely, creates IKEA and Swedish meatballs and takes care of its own citizens and the people are very happy.

Two, sometimes North Korea is called socialist. Well, North Korea and Norway couldn't be more different. They can't both be socialist. So that one gets loaded up with, if you're on the right, you just say everything evil is socialist. It's nonsense, right?

So, okay, finally we get to, and by the way, the most important word is the one that almost never gets used, which is corporatist. So the great majority of the American political system is corporatist, and they serve corporate donors. And by the way, that is not capital, It destroys free markets. So now when you get to fascists, why do I call Trump that? Because

Not because oh, I don't like him and he's mean When he lost election and he most definitely lost the election He then decided I don't give it to him. I don't care about democracy. I don't care about the Constitution I care about me me me me me me so he'd been saying all along oh, I love these dictators Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un You know Vladimir Putin who's not technically a dictator, but close enough, Victor Orban, et cetera. And so, oh, I love these strong men. Oh, when they get into the room, everybody has to applaud.

Everyone has to agree. I love it. I'm like, no, yeah, everyone has to applaud it because they're dictators and they'll be murdered if they don't applaud. What part of that is unclear to you, brother? Right. So you say, okay, well, that's dangerous tendencies, but he didn't do it, right? But after he lost, he did do it.

So he did a fake elector plot. Again, this is not talked about enough. January 6th, when those guys bumrush the Capitol, I'm going to blow your mind here and say something from the left that nobody ever says. You know how on the left they say when, you know, black folks, you know, protest, but then a riot breaks out, you know, 2020, George Floyd, all that stuff. They say that's the voice of the unheard, right? And Martin Luther King said that as a powerful quote.

And there's a lot of truth of that because they're tired of getting their asses handed to them by the cops. They're tired of getting shot, et cetera. But January 6 was also a bit of the voice of the unheard because those were right. white wingers, yeah, they got riled up by Trump and they thought the democracy was stolen when it wasn't. One, I tell the left, what would you do if you thought democracy was stolen? What if Trump actually did the fake elector plot and succeeded, right, and took, what would

we do? Would we just go, oh, let's be civil? Oh, he stole the government, he stole the country, he stole democracy, he tore up the the Constitution, let's be civil, right? So for those right wingers, mainstream media and the power establishment had not been hearing them for decades. So they were so mad. And that riot was the voice of the unheard. Now, that doesn't make it right. They should be arrested for trespassing, et cetera, all the terrible things they did. And so, but notice, none of the organizers were arrested. I don't mean the proud boys and the

and the three percenters, et cetera. No, Eastman, the lawyer for Donald Trump, Navarro wrote a whole book about it, Bannon, Trump, et cetera. They're largely left alone. But the common man, immediately thrown in jail because the elites are untouchable. So you do a fake elected plot to destroy democracy because you lost an election. And then he said this is again the most under quoted, most important quote of Donald Trump. Afterwards he said we should terminate the constitution. All rules, regulations and articles in the constitution. He wrote it on true social, not out of context. You can go look it up yourself. Somebody who says terminate the constitution, I'm done with him. If that's not a fascist, I don't know what fascist means.

So just to reinforce what I said earlier about us not being party political, we were very critical of the riots that happened in 2020, both in this country and in an house. We were also very critical of what happened on January 6th, right? So nobody's here in this conversation is pro either of those things. You can argue about whether it's the voice of the unheard or the fact that in large groups, there's always going to be someone who likes rioting and likes burning things. That's also true, yeah. And I think that's a fair point.

However, even if we were to accept what you say, I don't want, I really, there's a lot to discuss that and I can't be bothered to relitigate to the 2020 election other than to say both parties refuse to accept the results of the election. I think that was a bad thing for both of them to have done. However, in this election, Francis and I went. along to the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, right, to see it as journalists coming on from the UK. We were told that it's a Nazi rally and that Donald Trump is Hitler, right?

So let's understand what that means. Adolf Hitler launched a series of genocidal wars and caused the deaths of over 50 million people, including the deliberate extermination of millions of people in concentration camps. And that the Nazi party was his vehicle for doing that. I did not see that when I went to Madison Square Garden. But that is what was said about them. So when we talk about civility, I don't really see that as civility to make that level of ridiculous allegation. Yeah.

So look, sometimes people say the distinctions that I make is splitting Harris, but I don't think so. I think words matter. So I've never called them a Nazi and I've never called him Hitler. I'm not having to go to you. No, no. I'm challenging the idea that then being civil. Yeah. So, so, but let me get to that. Okay. So, and in fact, a Democratic congressman was on our show on election night and called him Hitler and I said, don't do that. That's not right. Okay. So now, Mass Square Garden Rally, you can say, hey, that's not right to call him a Hitler and I'll say, I agree with you, okay? Yeah. On the other hand, you look at the speeches and it's horrific. So, okay, you got the comic. First of all, I wouldn't bring up a roast comic and not have him roast MAGA, by the way, and not have him roast Trump and not have him roast Trump and not have him roast. white people, but roast all the different groups that the crowd might or might not hate.

Now, as it turned out, the crowd did not like it. They groaned. Again, we pointed out on the young tourists. It's super important. If the crowd loved it, that's a different thing, because the comic's not important. The crowd's important, right? And Trump's important. But Trump's teams thought that that guy was a brilliant idea to put up, and they knew his

script ahead of time. So that's a terrible mistake. That's saying, I'm okay with it, right? It was a bad booking. Yeah, okay. But that's not all. If that was all, I say, hey, come on, guys. one comic, right? But Rudy Giuliani gets up and gives a speech about how two-year-old Palestinians

are terrorists and that we need to kill them and et cetera, et cetera. Rudy's speech was 10,000 times worse than the comics that nobody even care. I did go to the toilet halfway through, but did I don't remember saying that. You can find it. It's no problem. You could find the video. Iran is not there for us. They want to kill us. And the Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old. So he started going, oh, they start learning in. two years old. He said two years old twice. It's justifying the murder of children. Okay. And then he commanded the audience. You are pro-Israel. Well, first of all, you don't speak for them,

brother. Okay. Then he just over and over again. And I've lived this my whole life. And it gets back to Trump too. Everyone, oh, well, I don't know, you can't say that about Puerto Ricans. You can't say that about black people, Jewish, people, white, women, whatever it is. Okay. You get to Muslims. They say any goddamn thing you like, okay? And I'm tired of it. And Trump, by the way, Another reason to call him a fascist in 2016 and people will make excuses for this, but there is no excuse. He said, I want a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country. That is by definition racist or bigoted, take your word. And it is by definition fascist.

Here's a group of people that I despise. I don't want to know the content of their character. I don't want to know what their individuality is. I don't care if they were an interpreter that risked their life to save our soldiers. I don't care. They're Muslim. They're evil. I hate them. We should ban them entirely. I know the ban then was challenged in the courts and

became something else. But you cannot argue he didn't say it in 2016. He did. And Maga, they say, hey, why don't you guys come over and agree with us? Well, if you say that I should be banned, how do you expect me to agree with you? Is that a reasonable ask? Well, I don't think he was saying you should be banned. I think he was saying that immigration from certain countries should be banned. Now, there's a debate. No, he said all Muslims. Let's be honest. What, as in you who live in this country should be banned? But he's saying that now, by the way. Well, you should be banned.

He said, okay, so two things about that. Number one, let's acknowledge that he said for Muslims coming into the country, I'm going to ban them all based on their religion. Not them all. We're going to ban people coming from us. No, no, no, no, no. In the campaign. No, in the, now you're talking about what happened in the administration because of the courts and the pushback, et cetera. But during the campaign, he said, I want a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country.

Okay. So that is a bona fide, bigoted, fascist thing. say. If he had said, I want a total and complete shutdown of these goddamn Jews entering the country. We'd all agree, fascists, right? I don't know about fascist. I don't know how that's fascist. Okay, well, all right. What it take, whichever word you like. No, but this matters because fascists were actually allied with some Muslims during World War II. No, no, nonsense. It's not about Muslims, Jews, Christians, etc. Fascists pick one minority or several minorities, and they direct all the hatred and fear towards those minorities so they can accumulate more power. So it doesn't matter

if it was Jews or Muslims that they do it to. It doesn't have to be Jews. It doesn't have to be Muslims. But then, okay, so let's talk about now. He's running this campaign. And so first of all, on Palestinians, he used the word Palestinian as an insult. He's all Schumer turned into a Palestinian. It's all on tape, guys. So he's done it over and over again. Okay, so you are just, So you're obviously blatantly racist against Palestinians. Now, a lot of people might say, I don't care. I don't care. I don't care about Palestinians.

They're not Americans. Okay, but at least be honest about it. Okay? So that's just the tip of the iceberg for him. He said, Mr. Anti-War said, oh, Israel should hit their nuclear facilities, which would create a much larger war. This is all problematic. But Trump is an interesting guy because he speaks out of both sides of his mouth,

which is actually smart politics. Because when he won on election night, he said, we're for everyone. And he even mentioned Muslims and Arabs. So give him credit for that. I give him credit for everything he deserves credit for. And I give discredit for everything he has discredit for. Guys, the thing I'm most worried about, when you say about me, okay, I'm already here. I'm already an American citizen, right?

And by the way, we came to this country because we love this country. So sometimes people on the left will be like, oh, America's bad or the flag. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Don't give up the flag to them. Are you nuts? That's our flag. We love this flag. Okay.

So his potential attorney general, I think his name is Mike. Davis said that Medi Hassan should be arrested, denaturalized. For the tens of millions of naturalized citizens in America, that is the scariest word there is. Why was that? Because that says, oh, we told you you were 100% American citizen, but we were lying. No, no, sorry, Jen. I'm saying why did they say he should be denaturalized?

What did Medi say or do? First of all, his brother's hardcore MAGA. He doesn't care what Medi. My guess is he was opposed to METI for opposing Israel. But I don't know what their particular beef is. And doesn't matter. Does it matter? D-naturalize a thing that doesn't even exist and then deport.

And Trump also said, if you dare protest Israel, I will arrest and deport you. So what kind of populist is this guy? So maybe he'll prove me wrong. I'm super open-minded. I just wrote on X this morning. I said he's got a chance to be a populist hero or a fascist thief. It's not me. It's him.

Hold on a second. Look, you're very good at putting your arguments forward, which I appreciate. But we started this portion of the conversation by me asking you about the Madison Square Garden rally, Nazism and Hitler, right? And this whole branch of our discussion comes back to, you were saying the left is civil and it needs to not be civil. And France is saying to you, when you call people Hitler and when you call people Nazis, that isn't civility.

That's where this whole branch of the conversation goes. So you don't call Trump Hitler and you don't call the Republicans Nazis. But when you say the word fascist, as you say, the meaning of that word has been eroded. That's where most people's minds is going to go, right? So you guys tell me, what should I call his obvious dictatorial tendencies? Well, and his obvious over-the-top. You know what, actually, this is a really great question because what I'd love for you to do is, and this is a genuine question. I'm not trying to catch you out or anything like that.

I genuinely am interested. I have heard a lot of rhetoric from people about Donald Trump and the concerns that they have about the next four years. And, you know, people use words like fascist, dictatorial, et cetera. What do you fear over the next four years he is going to do that makes you say in the present moment that he's dictatorial, fascist? What is he going to do, do you think? Yeah. So, again, I don't know. he's going to do it because there's countervailing forces. What do you fear? And I think the countervailing forces are super interesting and we should talk about that.

And I'm really interested to see which way the right wing goes in this country under Trump. But the worst case scenario is he gets frazzled and feels challenged and he falls back on what he always does, which just protect his ego. And so he and he starts pilfering and pilfering and that's very much in his nature, grab, take, take, because now there's no accountability. What are you going to do, impeach him? We're going to arrest them. No accountability, there's no brakes in the car.

So we're all at his mercy. Sorry to interrupt, but this is important for clarity. What do you mean by pilfering? He's going to be pilfering and pilfering. Okay, so easy examples, but there's a million of these. He puts Jared Kushner in charge of the Middle East last time around and Saudi Arabia. Jared Kushner at some point goes to Saudi Arabia, talks to Muhammad bin Salman. And right afterwards, Muhammad bin Salman, arrest a whole bunch of people.

I don't want to get too much into what happened in that meeting and what the results were. But whatever it was, Muhammad bin Salomon was super pleased because right after the election, he gives Jared Kushner $2 billion to manage. But that he gets $2 and 20 on that. So if you know private equity and how that works, what that means is he's going to make hundreds of millions of dollars. So if Hunter Biden got a $2 billion deal from the Saudis after Joe Biden left office, and I did, I was like, Hunter Biden's not a Ukrainian gas expert?

That's nuts. And that was $5 million. So your fan number one. is that his family will benefit financially from his president and him will benefit financially. And his donors, most of all, his donors. What else? Okay. So, so that's, but to be fair to Trump, like the reason, part of the reason the establishment hates him is because he's systemically and personally corrupt, whereas they're just largely systemically corrupt. Look, I'm accepting all this for the sake of argument without challenging because I just want you to get to like the real

fascism that he's going to do that you worry about. So the reason I'm saying that is because, Since most of the politicians are systemically corrupt, anyway, that's not the fascism. That's my point. Yeah. So, okay. So he says, I'm going to deport all the undocumented immigrants. So some people might say, yeah, good. Rip them out of their homes, 13, 15 million people, whatever it is.

Oh, they're running a diner. They're beloved in their neighborhood. They married an American citizen. Whatever they did. I don't care. And, oh, their kids are American citizens. Rip them away from their babies and sent them the goddamn back home. Now, that's a debatable point as to whether that's fascism.

My guess is that once he starts, if he starts doing it and you start seeing people ripped out of their homes, that people are going to go, oh, I don't know, look good. I don't think he's going to do that. Yeah. Okay, we're going to find out. He might not. We're going to find out. But if he was to, let's say, you know, I think the more likely scenario, I don't know if you agree with Deng, but I think it's possible that this is the more likely scenario is he deports all the people who've committed a crime in this country, who are illegal immigrants, right? People not only came here illegally, but have committed a crime.

and people who don't have American family and don't have dependents here. Let's say he was to deport all those people. Would that be fascism in your view? I don't even know if he deported all down not him in an immigrants. It would be fascism. I'm not even stipulated to that. Let's get to the fascism, though.

Because this is what I want to get to. And by the way, people who committed a crime should obviously be deported. I don't want to disagree with that. Okay. So, okay, so then the thing that I'm concerned about is both him and the potential attorney general is saying, if you're on a campus

and you're protesting, you're protesting Trump, you're protesting Israel, you're protesting the oil companies, you're protesting something we don't like, arrest and deport you. Wait, what happened to cancel culture? I mean, arresting someone for protesting or voicing their speech is the most both cancel culture you could do. I mean, you're taking the guy's freedom away, right? Deporting people that are American citizens, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, you can't do that. But did he do any of that in his first term? So he didn't do that. Okay. Okay, but so, and that's That's why I say, guys, before, when he's running, he threatens to do total complete shutdown of Muslims.

He threatens to arrest and deport people, et cetera. But he doesn't, he didn't necessarily do it. So, for example, they said, lock her up, lock her up. And then he got into office and he said, no, I'm not locking Hillary Clinton up. So I have an open mind. I have an open mind. But what are the fascism? So when he threatens those type of things, I go, I am deeply, deeply concerned.

Now, here's other things. Okay. So they had a three-hour meeting after he lost the election where Michael Flynn and I believe Sidney Powell, don't quote me on that, I don't want to get sued. Okay, but definitely Michael Flynn said, let's use martial law. Let's roll out the tanks, okay? And we won this election, and we're going to correct the fraud, and let's go grab the actual ballot machines. Okay. And Trump was like, okay, now I'm listening. Now we're having a conversation. And that's why it lasts a three hours. At the end, hold on. No, no, hold on. You're talking about

something that already happened. I'm asking you about the future. Let's just stick with that. No, but that's totally relevant. Well, I'm sure, which is why I'm asking you the question to follow up. So do you fear that at the end of this four-year period, he's not going to relinquish power? Is that what you're saying? So since he didn't try, since he didn't relinquish power last time, yes. Well, ultimately, you did. But you fear.

Oh, come on, guys. Fine. Let's accept that for the sake of argument again. So you fear that at the end of this four-year period, when he can no longer run for election again, you fear that he will not hand over the, you fear that he will not hand over the, you fear. the presidency. A guy who said, let's terminate the Constitution, considered martial law and had a fake elector plot to steal an election, might he try to stay in power? Of course! Of course he tried to do it once! Well, that's good. So you fear that at the end of this four-year period, he will not vacate the white house. That is one of my concerns. Absolutely, and that alone is a deal

breaker. Well, it'd be a deal-breaker for anyone, left and right. No question. Except it wasn't, because he already tried to do it, and the right was like, ah, no big deal, no big deal. I don't think that's quite true. Yeah, I don't think that's quite true. But anyway, So that's your big concern. So that's number one. Number two is the reason I was telling you about martial law is because he's also said let's use the military to shoot the protesters in the legs. Let's use the National Guard to arrest citizens, et cetera.

When you're talking about arresting or shooting U.S. citizens and you're using the military to do that because you don't like their protests and you could be livid about their protests, it doesn't matter. We have a right to protest. Of course. And when he says that, and he has definitively said that and sent it on the record, If you go and do that, now that there are no breaks in the gar, and there is no General Millie, and there is no General Kelly, and they're not going to be able to stop him.

If he does that, do you guys agree that would be fascist? Of course. So your great concerns are just, so to replay it for people, and then I'll hand over to Francis are, number one, at the end of the four-year term that he currently has, he's not going to hand over the presidency, number one, and number two, he is going to be deeply un-American about the way he handles free speech and the right to protest and the right to free assembly. words, he will take protesters and strip them of citizenship. He will have the army shoot them. He will imprison people for turning up on a college campus and burning an American flag,

let's say. Those are your two main kind of like, this is the fascism that might happen. Have I got you right? That's right. And I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen. I'm saying he has said those things. That's your concern. And it makes me concern that he will do those things. Okay. Well, I'm glad we got that out. So, Jake, I think the left have got a real opportunity now. If we look at it, if we look at the Democrat Party, they've been absolutely decimated. And this is a prime moment for the left to actually put some new ideas, some new policies in place. What does the left need to do, in your opinion, to be able to challenge the right? Because what is very interesting about this MAGA party is at RFK Jr., former dem.

Tulsi Gabbard, former dem. Elon Musk, former financial donor to the Dems. What do they need to do now in order to challenge and maybe get some of the more populist elements of the Democrat Party like Tulsi back in the fold? We need to have a Democratic Civil War within the Democratic Party. And not violently, not physically, obviously.

I just told you how deeply concerned I am about that. Politically and rhetorically. And so this brings us back to what went wrong with the Justice Democrats. So I founded it, I named it, And we had one of the greatest political upsets in American history, AOC beating Joe Crowley when he's the number four Democrat.

It was a miracle, right? And we put 11 Justice Democrats in Congress when everybody expected zero, right? So we started a whole wing of the Democratic Party that was supposed to be populist and progressive. Okay, so but and half of it worked, because we set the rule, no corporate PAC money, okay? So anyone who watched this guys,

and I'll tell you, Republicans to look out for, okay? Anyone who rejects corporate PAC money instantly becomes more honest. And that includes Matt Gates and Josh Hawley. They started actually rejecting corporate PAC money, and instantly they started proposing bills with Roe Kana on AOC to end corruption and the stock market trading that the Congress people do, et cetera. I love those bills.

Hate Matt Gates love that bill, okay? So the half where they went wrong is they were supposed to challenge their colleagues. And, but when you get there, it's so hard. To be fair to them, there is this culture of, oh, my God, the most sacrosanct thing in the world is being nice to your colleagues. And if you challenge them and you call them corrupt because they're taking corporate donations, you are the meanest person on earth. And what progressives and liberals don't want to be is mean, right? So they're like, oh, no, no, I'm not mean.

I love my colleagues. I won't challenge them on corruption. Can I push back on that because I would disagree. with you there because what I think one of the problems of the left is, and it's not just a left in this country, it's a left everywhere, is they're too scared of their own. The left are far more scared about their colleagues than they are about the opposition because their colleagues have got the power to cancel them and ruin their careers and their lives. So that is entirely true. And so it's both, right? So one, they use these cultural tricks like you're going to be mean

and you're a bad person and you're a weird or radical. You don't want to be a weird or radical. Do you? I mean, by the way, if you play ball, you get to go on the cover of Vogue, and you get to go to the Met, and you get to be the bell of the ball, right? And so those things work in tandem. But if you now remember, if you don't play ball, look at what we did, the jank, right? We could all these different smears and claim to use anti-Semitic. We made it up. By the way, the New York Times had to issue a correction for how many lies that they told about me,

et cetera. But we'll ruin you. You know, that is an implicit thread that always hangs over their heads. So I get it. I get it. It's too much pressure. But sorry, guys, we've got to start that fight. If you don't start that fight, you're never going to win. You're not going to convince Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to go, oh, donors?

Oh, forget the billions we're getting from donor money. You convince me in a debate. There's no convincing. There's no debates. It's pure corruption. So the day after the election, Bernie came out with a scathing letter saying this Democratic Party has lost its soul. We have to go back to representing the average man. And I said, oh, thank God, Bernie's back. So because for four years, they put them in a cave somewhere. And the progressives, literally ahead of the progressive caucus, Pramila Jayapal, who I have huge issues with. And her strategy through the four years was trust Biden. That was literally what it was called, trust Biden. Like, that is the word. political strategy in human history because you're giving away all of your leverage, you know, besides which you're trusting your enemy. Corporate Democrats are not your allies. They are your

opponents. Corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans are on the same team. They're just doing good cop, bad cop. Fox News and MSNBC are on the same team. They're just doing good cop, bad cop. Okay. The whole idea is the establishment drive status quo, corporate donations, etc. So we have to fight. So for Democrats who have been trained by NPR, you whisper, you whisper, you don't fight, you're civil. They're training you into obedience. Don't do it. Get up and fight. Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, et cetera, are not your friends. They're not your allies or colleagues. They are your political opponents. You must defeat them in a primary in order to get to the right place. Okay, so here's a pushback. Bernie Sanders, we all know, was the right.

rightful presidential candidate in 2016. That's indisputable. He did everything right. He had the popular vote within the Democratic Party. I personally think nobody will never know, sadly, that he stood a much better chance of defeating Trump than Hillary. He did everything right, Jenk, and they didn't let him win. Oh, I know. So, look, I went through it this time around. So, How does the Democrats rig primaries? So it's a little bit different than Trump, but actually in one part in the last primary a little bit similar So they don't do it through the votes. They don't nobody's playing with the dominions There's no evidence to that effect at all there was no evidence for Trump. There's no evidence for Bernie, okay But they rig it by in 2016. They did the only six debates where the Republicans did over 20

They buried the debates on nights the world where there was football so they'd get less viewership So these are like little subtle things that they do. And then Donna Brazil fed Hillary Clinton the questions in a debate. By the way, who broke that story? Young Turks broke that story. Okay. And so when we did, the establishment called us radicals and lunatics conspiracy theory, there's no way Donna Brazil gave the questions to Hillary Clinton, but we were right. She did. Okay. By the way, CNN, did you ever come back and apologize to us for being right about that story? No. So that's another way that they rigged it. The third way they rigged it is they put money from the state parties and funneled to Hillary, Clinton, which they should have never done. That's money laundering for one of the candidates against another while they're pretending to be neutral. In the 2020 primary that barely existed, we had people in the race. We had me. We had Marianne Williamson. We had Dean Phillips. You could have had a real primary. In the beginning, we had RFK Jr. and he was actually polling really well. So you should have kept all those people in the primary. And you should have had debates. Of course, they were never going to have debates. You can't challenge the powerful in a Democratic

primary. And then they started canceling elections. The party that was in favor of democracy cancel the Florida election in the private. Like, that's not a thing. You can't cancel an election in a private. What are you? What are you guys doing? So I know all of this, brother. I know it.

I've lived it, and it's happened to me, right? But we don't have a choice. So what we have to do is when we, but there's a new dynamic that's going to help us. And I think it's critical. So when we go, when that happens again in 2028 in the primaries, and will the mainstream media smear the populist candidate, smear eight ways to Sunday when Bernie nearly he won in 2020. He won the first three states. Chris Matthews came on air and said, oh, he's going to do executions in Central Park. He's like, if people like Bernie Sanders wins, people like me will be

executed in Central Park. Chuck Todd said that his supporters were brown shirts. Bernie Sanders is Jewish. They started calling his supporters Nazis. Wherever I heard that before. So I get character assassination. And what I tell progressives and populists is brothers, expect it. Don't be surprised. Like, oh, my God, mainstream media is not on our side. Let's go fight to something. of bitches. And when they do, and when they do all those tricks, the Democrats and the mainstream media, the good news is now there's online media. Our show is larger than their show. Rogan exists, et cetera, et cetera. Now, maybe a lot of those guys are right wing. I haven't mentioned trigonomic. Come on. Come on, man. Here we are. No, but that's exactly

right, though. And Lex Friedman exists. And so many others exist. And maybe some of them are not on our side. And maybe they'll say, oh, I don't like those socialists. I don't like those guys. I'm not going to help them. But maybe those. go, wait a minute, they're right. Mainstream media is lying about them. Wait a minute, why is the Democratic Party money laundering for one of the candidates, but not the other, right? And so I think mainstream media loses power every single day. Online media gains power every day. Mainstream media is by definition corporatists run by multi-billion dollar corporations. Advertisers are all multi-billion-dollar corporations. Online media, by definition, is populist.

The way they got popular is by appealing to the people. They didn't have a choice. You have to earn those viewers online. They don't get hand it to you. Okay. So that online media can help a populace win in the Democratic or Republican Party. And in the Republican Party, it already happened. I just haven't to think it's a fake populist. But I like that they went in a populist direction because Mitch McConnell isn't ever going to help anyone. Yeah. And I guess the question that I'm going to ask is, can the Democrat Party be saved? Because what you have said to me is that it's structural. And is, is it too rotten now for? for it to ever be fit for purpose? Is it always going to be corporates? Is it always going to be funded by the elites? So there's a great model for us. It's called Trump.

That's the title of the episode, everybody. Okay. And so I don't mean to do all the negative things he does. We don't have to threaten to not listen when we lose. We don't have to threaten to terminate the constitution and other ethnicities, etc. But he took on the the powerful. You know, I called Trump winning the Republican primary in 2016 in October, four months before they started voting. Why did I do that? When everybody thought I was crazy, Trump, that clown showman, you think he's going to win? Every friend of mine thought I was the craziest person they ever met for two reasons. Number one, the polling showed it. And they're like, oh, we don't believe the people. No, mainstream media will change their minds and have them support.

They implicitly think that, right? But the second reason was more important. When he got up on that debate stages, said, all these guys are corrupt. I gave them money and they did whatever I wanted. I was like, oh, that's it, he's going to win. Okay, because that's true. Yeah. And so we just, and why didn't Bernie ultimately, why wasn't he able to overcome and win in the primaries in 2016, 2020?

Number one, all the factors we talked about, mainstream media smeared them to no end. They supported Biden. My book, Justice is coming. I explain all of it and how they, like, cheated, rigged, et cetera, in their framing, in their conversations there. So, yeah, he had that, but he still could have overcome it. At the end of the day, Bernie's number one problem

and why I wouldn't support him again. And I support him as a politician and in policies, et cetera. It's a wonderfully honest guy. But he's not, he's too civil. He doesn't have it in his DNA to fight the sons of bitches. Okay. He should have said, they asked him if Hillary Clinton changed any of her votes in the 2016 debate in Brooklyn.

that was the pivotal moment. He should have said, of course she did. She got money from the bankers, record amount of money, both in campaign contributions and direct payments through speeches, and then she changed her position on the bankruptcy bill.

Period. Period. Is she corrupt? You're goddamn right. She's corrupt. And when a populist, in a Democratic primary debate, which they must have next time, if they get up and say, these guys are all corrupt,

and here's how, I can prove it to you, here's the money they took, Here's the bills that they voted on. That guy wins in a landslide, wins easy, wins running away, but they have to have the courage to say it. Jank, there's one other thing I really want to explore with you in terms of this result that we've seen in the last few weeks. This will go out after a couple of weeks from when we're recording it, which is what people call wokeness, let's say, which is the cultural dimension of these conversations. And you alluded to the transgender ad the Republicans ran that was highly effective. I don't think you're totally right about that.

This broader sense that, you know, transgender education in schools, gender affirming care where people who are minors are allowed and sometimes even encouraged to chop healthy parts of their bodies because it aligns more with their self-perception in this moment. You know, the future is female, extra money for this racial group or that, racial group as a promise in the election. You know, these things, while they're considered kind of trivial by some people, I think they're very, they've become very unpopular with a lot of people, you know, calling, you know, Latinas latinx and all of this other stuff.

How much do you think that contributed to this outcome and how much does that need to change over the next four years if the Democrats are to have any success? So it's much smaller than the corporate issues, right? But Bernie 2016 was better than Bernie 2020 because Bernie 2020 adopted some of those policy planks He kind of got bullied into it and I thought it was a bad idea and it did prove to be a bad idea So but woke is another one of those words like fascism and socialism where people put meaning into it That's why I explained what I meant right like Obsession with trans obsession with dividing men and women obsession with identity all of that

So half of what people refer to as woke is perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, I think it's positive. Half of what they refer to as war is disastrous. Okay. So the half that's like Trump says total complete shutdown on Muslims and people go, well, we shouldn't do that. They go, oh, you're woke. No, no, no, but that's why I explained what I mean here. That's why I explained what I meant, right? I did explain what I meant. Yeah. So let's just deal with that. But even in that, I can give you plenty of examples where we disagree. Okay. But on the ones that we do agree out. So we're in such a weird spot at TYT and a Young Turks because we're, we're in, We're against the corporate wing, which is the majority wing of the Democratic Party, so we're already in the minority.

But we're also against the extreme left wing. So that gets us into a situation we're squeezed in here, and it seems like it should be a smaller audience, right? But no, two-thirds of the country agrees with us. That's why we're the largest show on the left by far, right? And so that's why I say focus on our super popular economic proposals. What is unpopular on the extreme left? And they get so mad when I say the extreme left or leftists. you give me a word and I'll use it.

I don't mind, right? I don't like the word woke. I think it's too loaded, right? So, but these guys, they say, okay, let's fight for trans rights. I say, I totally agree. They should have 100% the same rights as any other American citizen.

No question about it. Do not discriminate at work and employment, housing, et cetera. And the great majority of American people agree. And in fact, Republicans tried that. It didn't work. Then they said, okay, let's ban Trump tried to ban them from the military.

People are like, they're risking their lives for this country. We love that. We don't like, dislike. that that didn't work. They tried to ban them from bathrooms and we're like, guys, really? I mean, sexual assault in the bathrooms, then we're going to have to go after straight males. They do it the most. It just didn't work. None of these worked and they're all wrong, okay? But when they got dug and dug and finally got to an unpopular position, which is trans women in women's sports, right?

The great majority of Americans don't think it should happen. So at that point, I turned to the left and I go, guys, we're at the water's edge here. This is an unpopular position. And by the way, at the professional level, I think on the high school level, leave the kids alone. If your kid came in, your daughter came in second instead of first, you'll live. Don't take it. Hold on a second. Sorry to interrupt. And I hope you feel that we're having this respectful disagreement, right? You can't say that, especially in this country where your outcomes in college, whether you get a scholarship, whether you get to have a career in that sport, depends on your ability. There are young women who've been locked out of the opportunity to compete fairly and to succeed because somebody has come in and said, I identify as a woman.

Still got a penis, by the way, right? Still got testicles, still got testosterone, still got male bone structure, still got male everything. You're saying that doesn't matter? So what I'm saying is, so let's distinguish a couple of things. So at the professional level and the Olympic level, first I say to my leftist friends, Agreed. This is crazy. Leagues get to decide, you don't have a right to be in the WNBA.

I don't have a right to be in the NBA. They get to decide, and if you say they don't have an advantage, not only does a great majority of Americans not agree with you, I don't agree with you. It's actually an incorrect. Right. A trans woman entered a weightlifting contest in her 40s and instantly lifted 200 pounds more than the biological women. Although there's a meta study that studied seven people and it was inconclusive.

I read the studies, nonsense. Nonsense. Now, why do I have a different position at the high school level? Because it's a balancing eye. So you're balancing, hey, there's, by the way, this is the tiniest issue in America. It's called a wedge issue for a reason because they don't want you notice the great American robbery, which is the corporate robbery that's going on. So they try to drive a wedge between us. We talked about that for 40 minutes, to be fair, on this conversation. So we haven't ignored that. Yeah. So let's just deal with this. So, so here they've got, it's tiny. What is it? 13 kids, 100. 30 kids out of a country of 330 million people. So when I look at the balancing interest there, I go, I understand what you're saying. I understand that it might be unfair, right?

On the other hand, now we're going to have to check the genitalia of kids. I don't want to do that. That's too much. And you're going to tell a young trans kid, we're going to otherize you. We're going to ostracize you. You're not really a woman. You're not really a girl. But they're not.

Okay. All right. But they're not. But they're not. If you've got a penis and you've got male testosterone and bang. bone structure. You're not a woman. So when you become an adult, we can have that debate. But when you're a kid, I'm going to protect you. And I'm going to say, go ahead and run in the race. And if you beat my daughter and it costs her this much out of the 13 cases in the country,

and it costs her a little bit because she wanted to get into Yale, but she got into Dartmouth. I'll live with it because I'm not checking your genitalia and I'm not traumatizing you when you're a kid. Okay. I would rather have my daughter come in second, third, or eighth, okay, than traumatize those kids. So we can agree to disagree on that, but that's my position on it. So it's a balancing act, and that's where I come out on the balance. But it is a damaging issue, especially at the professional level. So how did the extreme left react to me? Nazi.

Okay. So, well, when you do that, guys, that's why they call you woke. That's why they say you're radical. That's why they say you're extreme. I mean, look at the microscopic difference I have with them. I mean, it's, what is that? 2% disagreement on trans rights, right? And it's not a right to play in a professional league.

It's not even, it's a we 100% agree on rights. Now you're having a, and then Latinx. So I have a thousand examples. When Latin X came out, we're the home of progressives. Everybody's like, okay, so you're going to switch to Latinx? I'm like, no, I'm not. That's not a word I've ever seen a Latino or Latino use in my entire life. You guys made that up at Oberlin.

And it's a bunch of white people that made it up and he's trying to put it on to Latinos who never asked for it in the first place. They're like, how dare you? We're going to cancel you. You're against Latinos. They did a poll, 96% of it. Latinos don't want it. Right.

Right. So facts matter. So these, they're going to extremes, the Republicans are taking advantage of it to try to paint all of the Democrats as woke when they're not at all. Well, this is what we agree. I can give you one more example. If we just pause there, I think this is kind of why I asked you the original question because it seems like, you know, the trans issue, we have very strong differences in how we view

that, but it doesn't matter. My broader question to you is, as long as these people exist, as long as they're going after people like you and people like us who are just in the center and going like, like, guys, this is crazy. Like, you can't say this. This is insane, right? I don't see how the Democrats come back. I understand your issues about corporate power.

But as long as these are the voice of the left, which I agree with you, they're not. But they have been allowed to be the mouthpiece of the left by the cowardice of the center left. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would. And that's why we don't do that cowardice on the young turks. But this is a, I'm not having a good. at you, I'm saying for the Democrats to succeed, they have to ostracize that part of the left.

Right, but they have to do it in a way that isn't BS. So let me explain how you do it. Sure. That's what I'm asking. Yeah. So first of all, so let's real quick establish who, what Democratic voters actually think. So the far left told us, no, crime is imaginary. And Democratic voters loved the idea of crime rising. It's no big deal. Right? And plus, it doesn't even exist. So we're arguing over. There is no crime, but if there is, it's good. Yeah, okay, yeah. And then we're trying to protect black and brown communities by protecting the criminals.

I'm like, do you have any idea how racist do you sound? Yeah. Okay. The real way that you protect black and brown communities and working class people is by putting criminals in jail. Okay. So they, in California, they took felonies and moved into misdemeanors and didn't even tell us. I'm like, I never voted on that. You never told me that's what we were voting on. I never signed up for pro crime. And so who was right and who was wrong between the leftist and me, right? So they said, no, no, we represent Democratic voters. Well, good news, we had a vote just now, Prop 36 in California, to increase penalties

and bring those misdemeanors back to felonies. You made crime, crime again. He made crime again. And guess what? I was right and they were wrong. Even in California, it passed with 70% of the vote, right? So they do not represent Democratic voters. Every time they pretend to represent the left, they are actively lying.

Okay. So that's now been firmly established. They could be delusional they want, but at the national level on that trans ad, there was the most successful out of the entire campaign. They were wrong. We were right. So how do you get past them? Courage, that's it, period.

So when you're on that debate stage and they say, hey, shouldn't the left deserve all the blame, et cetera? You said, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean left? Okay. The establishment Democrat like that candidate over there, Gavin Newsom, he's the one that deserves blame for the donor class, et cetera. And if there's a person who's a woke, et cetera, or whatever you guys call, and I call extreme left that's on that elector and you go, no, no, no, you don't speak for the

Democratic Party. We just had these votes. The voters agree with me and not you here, and I could prove it. Now, look, if you're clear like that, then like right now, would anybody say, oh, yeah, Jenks an extreme leftist and I'm unclear as to what his position is? They might disagree with me on some issues and say, oh, in my view of the world, you're extreme like because of the high school issue, et cetera, right? Yeah.

But they're not going to be unclear about my position. No, and that full respect to you for that. What I would say is I think the challenge to your position is the opposite, which is if you're on that debate stage and I am one of the other people, I'm going to go, or Chang's transphobic. He doesn't think trans women are real women because he doesn't want them to be in the Olympics, but they're real women. Don't you think that trans women are real women, Jen?

Oh, they're going to have a point against me. Ooh. Well, give me your answer. Oh, that's super easy. I just gave you. I'm 100% in favor of trans rights. I think they should have the same exact rights, same constitutional rights.

And if you come for trans women, you're going to have to come through me, okay? And I'm not going to let you ban them from the military. I'm not going to let you take a single right of theirs away, and I'm going to protect those young girls and boys in high school. But if you say, oh, LeBron James being in the WAMBA is necessary if he turns into a woman or whatever, and that makes you transphobic, then that's your argument.

Own it. Great, because that's going to make it easier for me to beat you. because no one agrees with you. So everyone who thinks that LeBron James should, and then they'll get so mad at this analogy. They will. They'll be furious about this analogy. You could load up LeBron James with every hormone on the planet.

He would score 200 points every night in WNBA. So if you want to say he won't, great, then let's have that debate. And then we'll vote in the primary and see what the Democratic voters actually think. I think that they'll agree with me and not you. That's why we do a primary, right? So if I have a candidate, whether it's John Stewart or Tim Walz or, or Sean O'Brien or Sean, or whoever it is,

or a guy we don't even know right now. Give me, or Nina Turner, by the way, who was an awesome, strong progressive populist. Give me that candidate and we don't need anything else. We just need basically escape velocity.

If we get to the same thing that Trump had, why did Trump have an escape velocity? Because he was a celebrity. And so they said, oh, it's a celebrity. We have to cover it. That's why John Stewart's so appealing. Okay, very popular, very sensible, like, and guys, there's a left-right spectrum

and a populist establishment spectrum. John is in the same, is exact right place in the left-right spectrum, in my opinion, center-left, not extreme-left, center-left. And on the populist establishment spectrum, perfect position, very populist, right? So whoever matches that description, okay, that goes this way on those spectrums,

and as strong in a debate, they're going to win. They're going to win their election. Then no one can say they don't represent the Democratic voters. But do you see that jettisoning of the far left, of which were both, it seems to me, critical? Do you see that happening? Because I don't see that happening at the moment as we're watching. Well, if the candidate doesn't have the courage to do it, then they're not the right candidate. Okay, you have to be able to draw a line.

If they say, hey, go out there like a schmuck and call all Latinos Latinx. If the candidate goes, oh, okay, 96% of Latinos hated. Hey, everybody, I am in favor of Latinx. Well, that's not the right guy. That brother that can't win. He doesn't have the courage to win. Okay, if they said Dief on the police, I said no. They called me a racist, right?

And I'm so mad at the cops. And in fact, I wavered at one point because, God, stop shooting them. You're driving me crazy. Stop shooting them. Okay. And by the way, it's not just black people. We showed a video of a white guy crawling on a hotel hallway. That was actually the worst of the shootings.

And they shot that poor guy when he was surrendering. How much more can he surrender? So, but if you say defund the police, wait, wait, wait, wait. We wanted to reform the police. We didn't want to take the police away. If your position is take the police away, you're nuts, and you'll get slaughtered in a Democratic primary, let alone a general election.

And by the way, all those Justice Democrats, the core ones that are already famous, are kind of untouchable. Jamal Bowman and Cory Bush lost, but they weren't famous enough. That's a longer story, bigger conversation. But the AOCs, et cetera. But Ilhan Omar almost lost. And not because she was too far left

and not because she was anti-Israel, not because of any of that. Not this time around, last time around. She almost lost because she was in favor of a defund the police bill in Minnesota. And 78% of African Americans in her district were against that bill. And it almost cost her the election. And if you'd notice, all of a sudden she's not defunded the police anymore. So that is an unpopular position in the Democratic Party with African Americans, with Latinos, et cetera, have the courage to run a campaign that the American people love.

and you will win. Let's see if they listen. Jenk, we're going to head on over to Substack where people can ask you their questions, but before we do, the question we always wrap up with is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be. Before Jenk answers the final question,

at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description. You'll see this. Someone says, what should Israel have done on October 8th? How long can the old media last when they're getting found out? Why is it that Hezbollah

somehow doesn't get coded? by progressives as right wing. So, RFK Jr. has had a lot of different policy proposals, and half of them I totally disagree with the half that he'll wind up doing. But a couple of them were fantastic than nobody's talking about. One was, on housing, he's the one who originally said ban private equity from buying residential homes. It's driving up the prices, and he's absolutely right.

They'll buy up all the homes. It makes economic sense. That's how capitalism works. The government must stop them on behalf of the American people because they've made a logical decision, hey, this is the greatest wealth creation for the middle class. Why don't we take it? So it's our wealth creation.

And then they become our renters and we own them. We turn the American people into indentured servants. So if you do, if RFK Jr. was put in charge of HUD instead of health, I would love it, right? So that's not being talked about enough. And my guess is, if I'm right, Trump is not a populist. He will do everything his donors want. They're not going to talk about that.

The private equity guys are back. Goldman Sachs guys are back in the Trump circle, et cetera. That's a proposal that should definitely be done. By the way, RFK's anti-corruption plank was also excellent. A convention where the states called a convention in the Constitution to propose an amendment, an amendment to get big money out of politics. Everybody talks about draining the swamp and anti-corruption. No one ever does anything about it.

You put together that convention, supported by the right wing and the left wing, and you actually propose an amendment to get money out of politics, that is the one amendment that can pass. Three quarters of the states have to say yes, they can and they will, especially if Trump bullies them. Trump is excellent at bullying, and it could be used for political advantage. If Trump does that, he'll be a demigod. He will walk out of office as the most popular politician we have ever had. But everyone around them, in my opinion, is corrupt. And they'll tell him, no, no, no, don't do the money in politics. Don't do an amendment.

Don't go have a convention. Don't go to the states. Don't do any of that because they're pigs of the trough. If Trump is smart enough to find one person, maybe it's RFK Jr. Where he brings him in and goes, oh my God, imagine we got money out of politics and we train the swamp. He would be a hero of heroes. So somebody get him that message.

Chink, it's been an absolute place. head on over to our substack where you get to ask your questions. The left seems to be split between those who understand why they lost and those who are doubling down. How can the left reach the deniers?