 So, I want to talk about a moment of the debate that really stood out to me. Elizabeth Warren essentially called out the Democrats who were doing these high dollar fundraisers with elites, and this led to an exchange between her and Pete Buttigieg, and he effectively made a pro-corruption argument and tried to pass off, you know, any individual who calls out these types of fundraisers as just having a purity test. It was absolutely nonsensical and frankly embarrassing. Nonetheless, I want to watch and then I'm going to try to gauge who I think was more persuasive to the average viewer who isn't necessarily following this election as closely as you or I. This is our chance. This is our only chance to defeat Donald Trump, and we shouldn't try to do it with one hand tied behind our back. The way we're going to win is to bring everybody to our side in this fight. If that means that you're a grad student digging deep to go online to PeteForAmerica.com and chip in 10 bucks, that's great. And if you can drop $1,000 without blinking, that's great too. We need everybody's help in this fight. I'm not going to turn away anyone who wants to help us defeat Donald Trump. The mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900 a bottle of wine. Think about who comes to that. He had promised that every fundraiser he would do would be open door, but this one was closed door. We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States. Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States. Mr. Mayor, your response. You know, according to Forrest Magazine, I am literally the only person on this stage who's not a millionaire or a billionaire. So if this is important, this is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass. If I pledged never to be in the company of a progressive Democratic donor, I couldn't be up here. Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine. Now supposing that you went home feeling the holiday spirit, I know this isn't likely, but stay with me, and decided to go on to PeteForAmerica.com and give the maximum allowable by law $2,800. Would that pollute my campaign because it came from a wealthy person? No, I would be glad to have that support. We need the support from everybody who is committed to helping us defeat Donald Trump. We would like to bring in everyone, but obviously, Senator Warren, like to give you a chance to respond. I do not sell access to my time. I don't do call time with millionaires and billionaires. Sorry, as of when, Senator? I don't meet behind closed doors with big dollar donors. And look, I've taken one that ought to be an easy step for everyone here. I've said to anyone who wants to donate to me, if you want to donate to me, that's fine. But don't come around later expecting to be named ambassador, because that's what goes on in these high dollar fundraisers. I said, no, and I asked everybody on this stage to join me. This ought to be an easy step. And here's the problem. If you can't stand up and take the steps that are relatively easy, can't stand up to the wealthy and well connected when it's relatively easy when you're a candidate, then how can the American people believe you're going to stand up to the wealthy and well connected when you're president and it's really hard? Judy. Senator, I've got to respond. Mr. Mayor, if you can't say no to a donor, then you have no business running for office in the first place. But also, Senator, your presidential campaign right now, as we speak, is funded in part by money you transferred having raised it at those exact same big ticket fundraisers you now denounce. Did it corrupt you, Senator? Of course not. So to denounce the same kind of fundraising guidelines that President Obama went by, that Speaker Pelosi goes by, that you yourself went by until not long ago in order to build the Democratic Party and build a campaign ready for the fight of our lives, these purity tests shrink the stakes of the most important election. Judy. We'd like to bring the other one in. So in case you missed it, Mayor Pete just claimed that being against corruption is tantamount to having a purity test. He is shameless. I mean, you've got to hand it to him, honestly, because it's really gutsy to do something like that, to be that brazen, to where you are explaining away your corruption, your buddy-buddy relationships with billionaires as having a purity test. Now, ultimately, I do believe that Elizabeth Warren got the better of that exchange, even though he did get in a really strong dig, because right after that moment happened, guess what started trending? Wine Cave. And along with that trend came pictures of Pete Buttigieg sitting underneath a crystal chandelier, and it was exactly as Elizabeth Warren described it. You know, there were elites in this closed-door fundraiser, and they were all getting buddy-buddy, and it's just, it's disgusting. This represents everything that is wrong with politics right now, and why our system is so dysfunctional, because these politicians are that cozy with elites. So walking through their arguments, Elizabeth Warren made, I think, a really powerful point. She says the mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900 a bottle of wine. Think about who comes to that. Exactly. That is a really powerful point, because we keep electing politicians, and they always promise change, but yet they get an office, and then we feel dissatisfied and disenfranchised, and we feel even more demoralized with every single election. Why is that? Well, it's the money, stupid. They keep taking the money, and the money is corrosive. It's corrupting them. That is not going to be conducive to change. Any candidate who is purporting to be any sort of change candidate, albeit, you know, in some type of generational or political way, they're not real if they're taking billionaire money and millionaire money and doing these fundraisers. Now, Mayor Pete's response to that was that, you know, well, you say that, I'm, you know, doing the bidding of these billionaires, but you're a millionaire and I'm not. Gotcha. Now, first of all, what Mayor Pete doesn't realize is that your net worth certainly matters insofar as, you know, you're going to represent your class, but in these closed door meetings, you're probably assuring all of these billionaires that you are not going to represent your class, the middle class or the upper class, but you will represent their interests. So it doesn't matter to me that you're not a millionaire. What matters to me is that you're going to represent the interests of the working class. And by doing these meetings, well, that kind of tells us everything we need to know about you. It's a gigantic red flag. Now, he basically tried to defend himself aside from saying that, you know, it's a purity test by saying I would not be here on this stage if I didn't talk to these, you know, Democratic Party donors. So in other words, you have to be a millionaire to run for president. Now, while that certainly helps, the implication was that Elizabeth Warren is a millionaire and is therefore self-financing her election like Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, but that's not the case. He kind of implied that, but didn't directly say it. But even at that virtual, if Elizabeth Warren were self-funding a portion of her election, what you said is not true because Bernie Sanders proved in 2015 and 2016 that you don't have to sell out to get elected. You can raise a lot of money by not being corrupt. Bernie Sanders has received more than a million individual contributions. He made history. And he did that by not doing what you're doing, Pete, so that argument is fucking bullshit. Now, he then moved on to try to argue that, you know, these campaign contributions don't actually pollute anyone's campaign or affect their views because if Elizabeth Warren donated to him, well, I mean, would that automatically mean that he is going to be influenced by her because she's a wealthy person who contributed? What an oversimplification of the entire issue. When people make contributions to your campaign, Pete Buttigieg, especially when they're bundling, a lot of them come from the same industry. And you can't really make this argument because you have no credibility. For example, we'll explain how money has corrupted you. So at the beginning of this campaign, I want to say February, March, you were arguing for Medicare for All. I remember this because I covered it. On the Morning Joe Show, you said that Medicare for All is actually a compromise between the Affordable Care Act and a national health system. So it's not actually radical. You were in favor of it. But after you start taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health insurance industry, I don't know if this is still true, but at one point, you raised more money than every other Democrat from the health industry and the only person who outraged you was Donald Trump. And then all of a sudden, conspicuously, you are against Medicare for All and you are using a talking point that came from the industry. You're saying, well, you know, we can't do Medicare for All because I support choice. I want you to be able to choose between a public option or private insurance. Now, Wendell Potter, who was an executive at Cigna, but he turned into a whistleblower, just spilled the beans on this. This was an industry talking point that was focus-tested and he helped craft it. So, I mean, you have no credibility. You have been corrupted by big money. So, no, one contribution from an individual like Elizabeth Warren, who doesn't necessarily have any business interests or investments as far as I know, that's not going to corrupt you. What corrupts you is the money that comes from the industry, industry insiders, executives. He knows this. He's playing dumb because he wants to mislead you and it's really, really fucking disgusting. Now, one thing that I've got to give him credit for is he defended himself by deflecting. Now, he deflected not by saying, you know, this is a purity test. I don't think that that was effective. I think that's going to hurt him, but he deflected by throwing Elizabeth Warren under a bus. She doesn't have the best credibility because as he pointed out correctly so, she did these fundraisers as well. She transferred $10 million from her 2018 Senate campaign to her 2020 presidential campaign. So, she's saying now I'm not doing these fundraisers, although all of the money from your Senate campaign, a lot of that was raised from these fundraisers. So, you have no credibility here. Now, I like that she said I don't sell access. And she added that, you know, if you can't stand up to the wealthy when you're a candidate, how can we expect you to do that when you're president? I agree with that. However, the problem is you are going to be doing these fundraisers if you're the nominee for the DNC. You did these fundraisers in the past. So, how can we be assured that Elizabeth Warren won't be influenced by, you know, the fundraisers that she had and the elites that she got buddy buddy with back in 2018? The answer is we don't know for sure. Now, of course, she's better than pretty much everyone on that stage with the exception of Bernie Sanders. But having said that, the difference between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is night and day. And ultimately, I think that this exchange, the real winner here is Bernie Sanders. And I think that even though that sounds self-serving, let me explain my position here. So Elizabeth Warren, I think she probably won that exchange between her and Mayor Pete because she got wine caves to trend. That's great. But at the same time, Mayor Pete also kind of exposed a lesser known fact about Elizabeth Warren and what he said was correct. So they both kind of took shots at each other. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is standing in the corner and nobody can attack him. But yet, his opponents are taking each other out on the issue of corruption. Meanwhile, he boasted about, you know, having one million individual contributions, right? Having the most small dollar donors in American history, not taking billionaire money. This was kind of good for Bernie Sanders. I think Elizabeth Warren probably won that exchange overall, even though Pete Buttigieg certainly tried to, you know, put her in a headlock as she took him down. So they both kind of took each other out in a way. But I think this really demonstrates that we need people with credibility who don't just talk the talk, but also walk the walk. And that's why we've got to have Bernie. Now this exchange, I think, was very interesting between Mayor Pete and Elizabeth Warren. The problem was Amy Klobuchar decided to butt in and add absolutely nothing of value to the conversation. And she did this multiple times. But here's what she said in this instance. Klobuchar had your hand up first. I did not come here to listen to this argument. I came here to make a case for progress and I have never even been to a wine cave. I've never been to the wind cave in South Dakota, which I suggest you go to. So what is making a case for progress about? That is what unites us up here instead of what divides us, which is campaign finance reform. That means passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. It means making the first bill we pass when I am president will be HR1, which is the ethics reform passed in the House, which is currently sitting on Mitch McConnell's desk along with 400 bills. And if you don't think we can get this done, well, we can, but only if we win this election big. Not by arguing with each other, but by finding what unites us and getting this done. Amy, you're missing the point. I don't care that you're telling me you want to do campaign finance reform. The problem is we can't expect that you will do campaign finance reform, because if you participate in that very system that was conducive to your electoral victory, I don't expect you to change that. So no, you can't be corrupt now and then ask for forgiveness later. That's not the way that it works. You're not going to convince anyone. So you jumped in and made that point and you did nothing to help yourself. And it was really, I think, unfair that the moderators didn't allow Elizabeth Warren to defend herself, because she took some shots at Mayor Pete and allowed him to defend himself. But Elizabeth Warren, she couldn't defend herself. And I would have liked to hear an explanation as to why she did decide to transfer that money. I mean, it's not uncommon to transfer money from your Senate campaign to your presidential election. Bernie did this as well. But what it is something that could be problematic is the fact that she's saying, I'm against these fundraisers, but I did them before and I'm against them now, but I'm still benefiting from that money. So I would have liked to hear from her, but instead we got to hear from Amy Klobuchar, who just grandstanded and she did this for the duration of this debate. I mean, again, Obama showed us that you cannot change the system and will not change the system if you benefit from the corruption of that system. Period, end of story. And I love how I forgot to mention this before going to the Amy Klobuchar clip that Mayor Pete, one of the points that he made was that, look, I'm just doing what everyone else did. I don't remember the exact example he used. He said he's following the same guidelines as Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Bad examples, Mayor Pete. Bad examples. Two of the most corrupt Democrats in modern history. Horrible examples. So, you know, Mayor Pete is insufferable. Amy Klobuchar is insufferable. But the real reason why I showed you that clip of Amy Klobuchar is so that way you can see this quick clip of Mayor Pete spilling water. I just, if you couldn't already tell, I can't stand him. I think that he is smarmy. I think he is an opportunist and he's not the real deal. So I'm glad that Elizabeth Warren called him out. I would have liked Bernie to call him out because he wouldn't have a leg to stand on if it were Bernie who called him out, theoretically. Now, another issue with Mayor Pete is, you know, he already anticipated the attacks, right? He said, Elizabeth Warren is worth 100 times my net worth. And why that's a problem is that he knew that this was an issue and it would be an issue. So he had already anticipated the attacks and had some type of scripted response. Now, what that tells me about Pete is not that, you know, he came prepared to the debate. It's not like this situation where Hillary Clinton said, are you accusing me of prepping for the debate, Donald? Like, that's not it. The issue with this is that tells us that he knew it was wrong and he still did it anyway because he had to craft the response because he knew there was a possibility he would be called out. So overall, hopefully this will lead to Mayor Pete's numbers continuing to decline. It should because this level of corruption, it's not going to help you. You're going to lose to Donald Trump because Donald Trump will do the pseudo-populous thing again in the general and you're going to get crushed, Pete. So I'm glad that Elizabeth Warren called him out. She's not necessarily the best messenger, but still nonetheless it needed to be done. Credit words do. I think Elizabeth Warren got the better of this exchange here overall until Amy Klobuchar came in and completely fucking spoiled it.