 Former Alaskan Senator Mike Ravel, at 88 years old, has officially launched his 2020 campaign. And this is a very unorthodox presidential campaign. And it's unorthodox in the sense that he doesn't actually want to be president. He simply just wants to get enough individual donations to qualify for the debates and then make sure that he pushes the Overton window to the left. This dialogue in a positive way, in a left-wing way that emphasizes anti-imperialism, anti-interventionist US foreign policy. And there's other issues that he wants to push the envelope on. And this is a really interesting candidate. And he essentially cultivated this really large online following, primarily by dunking on the other 2020 candidates. And I'm not going to lie to you guys, I'm kind of living for it. Just to give you a few examples here. This is what he says about Pete Booty, Judge. Say what you will about Booty, Judge, but at least the latest narcissistic product of the best schools to rule Macron style over a decaying country mired in poverty and addiction will speak Norwegian. It'll be cool. If you want a vision of the future under Cory Booker, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. And every once in a while, it stops for an inspirational lecture on how we should never stop dreaming. The Beto campaign will pierce new frontiers in meaninglessness. Makes sense. So he's absolutely savage. I don't think I've ever met a more ruthless 88 year old and I love it. Now the way that his campaign itself materialized is also interesting to me because as Vices Harry Cheadle explains, according to Splinter and Politico, a crew of lefty teenagers in New York state reached out to Gravel, who they had heard about thanks to the podcast Chappell Trap House to ask if they could set up an exploratory committee for a presidential bid and he said he'd be okay with it. And here we are now. He is officially launching a full-fledged 2020 presidential campaign and he recently dropped his first ad and he put out one of the most robust and progressive policy platforms I've ever seen. It's certainly the best in the field currently. But we're going to talk about all of that but first, this is his ad. So let's maybe bring up the topic of the day, which is the Green New Deal. How much will this cost that's unclear? How will we pay for it? Unknown. It's not realistic. Because there's no way to pay for it. It's immoral. The younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no. I have no empathy. I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons. I think Medicare for all is one of the possible paths. So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy. This was a little controversial in San Francisco. He did ask you yes or no. Would you support free college for all? I am not for free four-year college for all. No. Human beings are being killed as I speak to you tonight, killed as a direct result of policy decisions we as a body have made. This approach of war on drugs has not succeeded. We've spent billions of dollars on it. And we fill up our prisons to the point where we're the embarrassment of the world. We're supposed to be a democracy. We've got more people in prison, 2.3 million people in prison. We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. This whole nation should be a sanctuary for the world. I'm ashamed as an American to be building a fence on our southern border. That's not the America that I fought for. Our soldiers died in Vietnam in vain. You can now, John, go to Hanoi and get a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone. Why do they hate us so in so many places around the world? Because we kill so many people want them. Oh, Joe, I'll include you too. You have a certain arrogance. You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. And we can get off a gas plane in five years, and we can get off a carbon in 10 years. All we got to do is want to do it. Just to get out into their country, they're asking us to leave, and we insist on staying there. The military industrial complex not only controls our government, lock, stock, and barrel, but they control our culture. It's time to make some waves for change. I'm Mike Ravel, and I'm running for president. Now that, by far, is my favorite ad of the race, because it shows not just the weaknesses in the current crop of 2020 candidates, but it shows that even back in 2008, when we weren't as privy to just how bad the Democratic Party was back then too, it shows that they were still pretty bad. It shows Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton laughing at what he had to say. I love the ad. Now I want to get to his policy platform, because that to me is really his biggest strength, and it's why he's my favorite candidate so far. So when you look at his platform, there are four different planks overall. There's a foreign policy of peace, attacking poverty and inequality, justice for all, and fundamental political reform. Now when you go to policy and peace, you can see that everything he says here is incredibly progressive. So first of all, he wants to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, reverse the withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council, rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. These are all, I think, standard Democratic Party positions, but here's where he takes it a step further. He is strong about nuclear non-proliferation. He wants to sign and ratify the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Now he also wants non-aggression abroad. So I mean, there's plenty of planks here, I'll link to it down below. But he vows to not invade any sovereign country such as Venezuela. And here's what's really important, something that's lacking in even Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard's platforms, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones for military purposes, as these have consistently resulted in horrific civilian casualties and fatalities. He vows Guantanamo Bay and pay reparations to all untried detainees past and present. He wants to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War, abolish the U.S. Space Force and the militarization of space, and commit to a parody budget for a supposed Department of Peace between that and the Department of War. He wants to bring every single troop home, and he wants reparations for communities negatively impacted by U.S. bases abroad and close all military bases abroad. I mean, this is this is amazing. He wants to cut military spending by 50 percent. He wants to join the International Criminal Court, something that I've been advocating for since I was a college student and I learned about just how important the International Criminal Court is and how so many past presidents have decided to not join it because they don't want to be bound by potential war crimes and prosecution for that oppose Israeli apartheid. He wants to end military aid to Israel, not stifle BDS. He wants to recognize Palestinian statehood or call for a plural state in which Israelis and Palestinians all enjoy full and equal rights. Something that I think is fantastic, although we'll kind of get into why he may not necessarily be the best messenger because we know that this is going to be weaponized against him. So I'll explain that later. He also says he wants to end support for Saudi Arabia, make war constitutional again, a peaceful solution to the Korean Peninsula. Now, let me go back and we'll touch on some other things here. Attacking poverty and inequality. He is supporting full reparations to American descendants of slavery and Jim Crow and redlining Native Americans as well. He's proposing 30 billion per year for from government coffers. This is really important decriminalizing sex work for education reform, protect parents, protect our children. And this is with regard to education preschool, a baby box program, which gives every new parent or not necessarily every new parent, but every new child a box with the essentials, which I think is a great idea, economic support for the least advantaged. He wants a national health service system. So this is further than single payer. This is more along the lines of what Britain has with the national health system, 1.5 trillion in infrastructure, a $15 minimum wage. There's a lot here and I'm not going to get into all of this. Green New Deal, public banking for all, automatic tax filing. There is a lot. So I mean, if I had to construct my own ideal platform for what I'd want to see a presidential candidate advocating for, that's basically it. It's virtually perfect, virtually perfect. It's the strongest, most progressive platform by a mile and a half of anyone running. And yes, that includes Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard as well. So by far, he's my favorite presidential candidate. And I get that he doesn't actually want to be president. He plans to drop out and endorse Bernie Sanders after he makes it to the debates. But he doesn't want to be president. He just wants these policy issues to be talked about. Totally respected. And I love what he's doing. So the question is what everybody's thinking. He's literally perfect then. Is that what you're telling me, Mike? He's perfect. We finally found the perfect candidate, not necessarily. He's not perfect. There are some flaws, not necessarily flaws, I'd say, but pretty big red flags that make me feel a little bit uneasy. So first of all, he said this in 2016 on Kevin Barrett's radio show, quote, there's no question in my mind that 9-11 was an inside job. Yeah, not not something I want to hear a presidential candidate say. I think that this type of conspiracy mongering is it's problematic. We need to be training people in the United States and educating them more specifically to use logic and base their political positions and ideas off of evidence. So the conspiracy theory thing is a problem. And he said this on a show of someone who is essentially a lesser known Alex Jones, light type person who is a conspiracy theorist, who is pretty anti-Semitic. Now he's anti-Semitic because this is someone who is a known Holocaust denier. Additionally, Grovel has also spoken at Lyndon LaRouche sponsored events, which is known for anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories. Now that's not to say that Grovel himself paraded any of their views. Rather, he contends that he used their platform to promote his own anti-imperialist views. And his campaign has since come out and disavowed Kevin Barrett. And they also said that Mike Revelle has never been a Holocaust denier anti-Semitic. And he just felt the need to bring his anti-imperialist views to whatever platform would be willing to host him. So one, the fact that he disavowed Kevin Barrett is important to me, but we do need further clarification about his position on whether or not he thinks that 9-11 is an inside job because it's not. That's a conspiracy theory. And please do not promote misinformation. That's that's something that I find incredibly harmful right now. So with that being said, look, people have got to make their own decision about this. I still overall can overlook this, even if I find it troubling, because we're supporting him for a very narrow task. We're not saying we want him to be president. We're saying we want him to make it to the debate stage to influence the discussion in a meaningful way, in a progressive way. And I think it's important that even individuals who are progressive, like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard and Elizabeth Warren, but mostly Bernie and Tulsi, he can have a real positive influence and really expose some of their shortcomings that I think they need to correct because they both currently support drones. And if he can influence them to move away from that position and challenge them from the left, I think that there's real value in that. So if you can overlook that, then I would encourage you to give him a buck. He just needs 65 individual donations. I believe he's at just over 7000 so far. So so long as you throw him a dollar, he will qualify for the Democratic Party debates in, I believe, June and July, at least one of them. But it's going to be important to get him on the debate stage in spite of these red flags. But with that being said, you know, this is certainly an interesting candidate and you can't deny him the fact that he has the most progressive platform. I think that any Democratic socialist or social Democrat has got to acknowledge objectively speaking that he's outflanking Bernie and Tulsi and Elizabeth Warren from the left. And I think that's great. Any positive influence that, you know, can be had on these candidates that we already support, I welcome it in spite of the shortcomings. So I'll leave that there. Mike Gravel certainly has piqued my interest and I hope he does make it to the debates. Senator Gravel. At a forum earlier this year, I want to get this right. You said it doesn't matter whether you are elected president or not. So then why are you here tonight? Shouldn't debates be for candidates who are in the race to win the race? Ryan, you're right. I made that statement. But that's before I had a chance to stand with them a couple of three times. It's like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you're all excited. My God, how did I ever get here? Then about six months later, you say, how the hell did the rest of them get here? And I've got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me. They frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices. I got to tell you, I'm president of the United States. There will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy. Let's use a little moderator discretion here. Senator Gravel, that's a weighty charge. Who on this stage exactly tonight worries you so much? Well, I would say the top tier ones, the top tier ones. They made statements. Oh, Joe, I'll include you too. You have a certain arrogance. You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. I got to tell you, we should just play get out. Just play get out. It's their country. They're asking us to leave and we insist on staying there. And why not get out? What harm is it going to do? Oh, you hear the statement, well, my God, the soldiers will have died in vain. The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they're dying in vain right this very second. You know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain? Is more soldiers dying in vain? That's what's worse.