 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueroaido. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and Paypal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueroaido and this is episode 275 of the program. Today is Friday, January 29th and before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of the people who make this show possible. All of our Patreon, Paypal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up to support us for the very first time this week or increase the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes 3 to 1, Alicia Lisi, Andrew Markowski, Bakura Magic, Bonnie Ver Huntz, Chase P, David Williams, Dee DeBat, Delia Ann Wolf, Eric Puccalla, Gio Willens, Irene Del Rosso, Jason Harper, Nathaniel Callaway Jr. and Ryan Walker. So thank you so much to these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the Independent Progressive Media Revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So we've got a great show for you planned today. We will talk about the false equivalence by CNN when it comes to budget reconciliation and Madison Cawthorne, newly elected Republican member of Congress, face plants live on national television and it is absolutely cringe-worthy. Republicans in state legislatures across the country are planning an all-out assault on voting rights in response to Joe Biden's success in the 2020 election. Democrats propose an increase to the minimum wage, that is a day late and a dollar short, maybe quite literally. I'll explain why the left should absolutely not align with the far right in a response video to Jimmy Dore. I'll provide you with a review of Biden's first week in Congress, his health care proposal, and we'll talk about where the checks he promised are. Also, Marine Newman talks about getting a forevote from Medicare for All and we will find out that Marjorie Taylor-Green is even more insane than anyone could have imagined. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's program. Hopefully you will enjoy it. Let's go ahead and get right to it. Well, Joseph R. Biden has been president now for a full week and I thought it'd be helpful to take some time to kind of like go over all of the things that he's done. I mean, a lot has happened over the last eight days and I want to go over the good, the bad, and the ugly because it's a bit of a mixed bag. There's a lot of pleasant surprises, but there's a lot of things that I find downright irritating and outrageous. So first of all, when it comes to the good, there are a lot of things that I do want to give Joe Biden credit for. So first of all, he surprisingly froze munition sales to Saudi Arabia, which is something that we actually tried to accomplish under Donald Trump. It was an effort led by Ro Khanna, Bernie Sanders, and Mike Lee, and they passed a bill to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia because if we gave them weapons at that time, those weapons we knew were literally aiding and abetting a genocide that they were carrying out in Yemen. So that effort, unfortunately, was thwarted by Donald Trump, who ultimately vetoed that legislation when it reached his desk. Well, Joe Biden is now freezing the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. This is a really positive thing. Additionally, he repealed Trump's ban on transgender Americans serving openly in the military. I mean, this was brazenly bigoted and unnecessary. Like it doesn't do anything to make our military stronger. If anything, it makes us weaker. And it's just nice to see this get undone. And I absolutely applaud Joe Biden for this. Now, in a surprising turn of events, he actually signed an executive order that ends federal contracts with private prisons. Now, at face value, this sounds awesome. Unfortunately, when you dive a little bit deeper and look at the details, it's not as sweeping as I would like. And there's a lot more to be done. This is basically him reinstating an Obama-era executive order. The problem is that this doesn't apply to ICE detention facilities. It applies to DOJ contracts. So overall, this affects, I think, less than 10% of private prisons and if you're not actually tackling ICE, the problem then is that, you know, most of the abuses occur at ICE detention facilities. So if we're not actually ending private prisons with regard to ICE, then this isn't going to do as much as we'd wanted to. So, you know, he gets credit for this, but it's the bare minimum. And really, we need legislation to abolish these private detention facilities altogether, if not just nationalize them. Now, this was part of a larger initiative to advance racial equity. So he also signed additional executive orders to address discriminatory federal housing policies, recommit to respect tribal sovereign team and more. All very positive steps in the right direction. Of course, this is only a step forward. It isn't comprehensive criminal justice reform that we need. But still, it's something. Now, even more surprising is his call for Congress to pass legislation ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. And he actually signed an executive order that directs the federal government to do just that. And this comes after he unilaterally killed the Keystone XL pipeline. And at a press conference, he said something about this that almost made my head explode. Unlike previous administrations, I don't think the federal government should give handouts to Big Oil to the tune of $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. I'm sorry, what? Are my ears deceiving me? Let's hear that again. I don't think the federal government should give handouts to Big Oil to the tune of $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. That's not a deep fake. That's actually Joe Biden. Yes, Joe Biden saying that. So I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute, is Joe Biden based? And look, even though that is genuinely pleasantly surprising, hold, because in that same press conference, he also said this. And I know this always comes up. We're not going to ban fracking. He just lost the left. And there's the Joe Biden we all know and hate. Yeah. So look, he gets credit where it's due. And when he does things that I disagree with, I'm going to call him out for it. Fracking is absolutely harmful. It poisons drinking water, pollutes the environment, and literally causes earthquakes. Studies have proven this. So this is a position that I think is untenable in 2021, when we have what a decade left to act in order to mitigate extreme climate change. So, you know, I'm not trying to create an overall narrative about Joe Biden. I think that if he does something good, I will applaud him. If he does something bad, I will criticize him. And there is a lot of things that he did, you know, besides these things that I'm not happy about. Now, last week, I love the executive orders with regard to COVID-19. I like that he instituted a federal mask mandate where possible. But there are some things that I have to point out that I'm not happy with. So his secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, stated that it is, quote, unquote, vitally important to consult with Israel on the Iran nuclear deal. Actually, it's not. Israel's right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has gone out of his way to sabotage peace talks between the U.S. and Iran. So we don't have to consult with them. Israel and Iran don't like each other. Israel is overly antagonistic towards Iran. So I don't think we need to consult with them what happens between the U.S. and Iran happens between the U.S. and Iran. So I don't like that direction. The Iran nuclear agreement is effectively a peace deal. So if you forego that, if you don't get back into it, that's a bad thing. Now, thankfully, Biden has said that he intends on rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement and Iran does seem open to negotiating with him again. So hopefully, Anthony Blinken, what he's saying, doesn't represent what Biden actually wants to do. But nonetheless, this is his secretary of state. So that's a really bad sign. Now, additionally, while we're on the subject of foreign policy, not much has changed when it comes to our meddling in Latin America because Biden is likely to recognize Juan Guaido, who was not democratically elected as the president of Venezuela. Now, it's incredibly ironic to me because he's recognizing someone who is an illegitimate president just after Donald Trump was trying to Guaido the American election. I think Emma Viglin put it best, hard to slam Trump for pretending he won the election and then simultaneously uphold this fiction. Exactly. If you support democracy, then you support democracy. You can't like waiver when it's inconvenient or if it benefits us when it comes to foreign policy or if there is a democracy that has a leader that we don't necessarily like because that leader isn't allowing our American oil companies to access their oil wealth. It's just, you know, this is something that I expected. It's frustrating. But that doesn't mean that we should give him a pass because this was expected. This is bad. Like, stay out of Latin America. We have done irreparable harm to Latin America. We have overthrown countless regimes in Latin America. Mind your own fucking business, Joe Biden. So I mean, I don't like that there's continuity there. But another area where I am really irritated with Joe Biden and I think that these things going forward, you can characterize them as the ugly because we've done the good, the bad. These are things that are downright ugly. So let's talk about health care. I am not a fan of Joe Biden's health care. I think that when it comes to this issue, he is cruel. And during a pandemic, I think that that title of him being cruel gets upgraded to him just being a straight up piece of shit. If you don't support Medicare for all during a pandemic, then I think that that's borderline psychopathic behavior. But he's watering down his own health care proposal. And the reason why it's getting watered down is because it has reportedly been written by, you guessed it, lobbyists. So he's starting to signal that his administration is moving away from a public option, although that's not like 100% determined as of yet. But I mean, it's almost like we've seen this story before. In 2009, President Obama said, I support a public option. And then when it came time to do health care reform, he didn't even propose it. So once again, we're seeing Joe Biden do the same thing that was done last time. And of course, it's a betrayal. And I said in 2019, look, for Joe Biden to propose a public option, why should we believe that he supports this when him and Obama claimed to support it before? But we didn't even get that. We got the Affordable Care Act, which is right-wing health care reform. Originally thought up by the Heritage Foundation. So it's outrageous. It is outrageous. And I am not a supporter of a public option. The right answer is obvious. It's Medicare for all. But he's not even going to do that. What he's proposing is to pump extra money into the private health care system and basically subsidize COBRA. This is not going to get people the health care that they need. They might get health insurance. They might be able to buy insurance on the Obamacare markets. But guess what? That is trash insurance. People can't afford this. So if you don't actually propose something that's affordable, what you're doing is effectively meaningless because in a couple of years, we're going to have to revisit our health care system again. So if you don't take at least somewhat bold steps to reform this horrible system, then nothing's going to change. But on top of that, people are losing their employer-based health insurance during a pandemic. So if you won't even be bold during a fucking pandemic, that is morally reprehensible. It shows that Joe Biden lacks the moral character needed to meet this moment. Now finally, there is the lie about $2,000 checks. The fact that we were promised checks immediately and he did not deliver, I don't think Democrats fully understand how bad this is going to come back and bite them in the ass. And I think that this media headline says it all. A betrayal. Georgia voters enraged after Democrats promise of $2,000 checks becomes $1,400 under Biden's stimulus plan. This is unacceptable. You said $2,000 and you should stand by that. But unfortunately, since this story came out, well the plot kind of thickened even further because Joe Biden is proposing to further means test that $1,400, which means less people will get access to it. It may take longer because means testing, it slows everything down. If you just have a universal program, then that's preferable because you get it out to Americans faster. And if you really want to means test it, just like tax folks later next year down the line, just get the checks to people they're suffering. But now we're hearing from Chuck Schumer that it may take a month, month and a half before we get the checks. And it just, it keeps getting worse. This is like one of the quickest 180s we've seen in politics in quite some time. You just promised us checks. And to say that now it's going to be $1,400, now to say it's not going to be immediate, now to say, well, we're going to means test it, this is such a bad look. But again, I want to point out that there's some good, there's some bad, and there's some really ugly things about the Biden administration. I will say overall, if I step back, assessing his first week in power, it's better than I expected. He surpassed my expectations, but unfortunately for him, my expectations were like below the floor because I expected him to do not very much. But when you have so much things, so much crises that you have to address, we need bold action. And as I've said before, Joe Biden is not the individual that is able to meet this moment. But having said that though, if he does good things, he'll get credit for it. And already he's proving why he's better than Donald Trump. We're at least seeing that bare minimum level of competence that was lacking throughout the last couple of years. And what's especially needed during times like this, a pandemic, economic devastation. But I mean to say that he's better than Trump doesn't necessarily mean much because that's a really, really low bar. I think that if you put like a five-year-old in the Oval Office, they would do a better job than Donald Trump. So look, there it is, Joe Biden's first week. You've got a lot of pleasant surprises. You've got some half measures. You've got some things that are just genuinely depressing. But overall, you know, we'll continue to give him credit where it's due and hold him accountable where he fucks up. That's going to be my response going forward. I want to take some time to talk about healthcare reform because it is bound to come up within the next four years, most likely two years, if it's going to have a chance of passing in whatever form that may be. But before we get started, I do want to take some time to debunk this myth that I've even heard among leftists that Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 Democratic Party primary is somehow evidence that the Democratic Party's base rejected Medicare for All and that voters overall rejected Medicare for All because we all know that voters made a strategic calculation. They chose to support Joe Biden because they believed, rightly or wrongly, that he was more electable than Bernie Sanders. This is what was burned into their brains by the mainstream media. So it's not, you know, a repudiation of Medicare for All because Bernie Sanders lost. Let's be real about that. Having said that, though, Bernie Sanders as his campaign gained momentum, Medicare for All did as well, and the private insurance industry was absolutely shitting themselves as they saw Bernie Sanders rise. In fact, when he reintroduced his Medicare for All plan, healthcare stocks literally dropped and as a result, private insurance companies started to actually offer more benefits to the public because they knew they had a PR crisis on their hands and voters looked like they were going to opt for the candidate that was going to get rid of private insurance. Now, during this time, health insurance companies actually backed Biden because he was the one candidate that they viewed could not only beat Bernie but save their asses. Now, unfortunately, they got what they wanted. Bernie Sanders was defeated and effectively the threat of Medicare for All has been neutralized, at least for now, in their eyes. But they got more than that. Not only were they saved by Joe Biden's campaign being victorious. Basically, when it comes to private health insurance companies, they had to stop worrying the minute the Democratic party primary was over because regardless if Joe Biden won or Donald Trump was re-elected, the status quo would be preserved. Private insurance companies would not be going anywhere. The only time they were fearful was when they believed that Bernie Sanders was going to be the president. But now, it's not just that they've been saved. Their lives have been spared but they're now in the driving seat once again because according to the Daily Poster, they have basically been able to write Joe Biden's health care proposal at least when it comes to COVID relief and what he wants to do about the fact that millions of people are losing their employer-based health insurance. Now, before we talk about that and read that article, I just got to say that like any folks who ran the Democratic party and their argument about against Medicare for All, rather, is that people like their employer-based health insurance, let's just remember that all of these people look like dumbasses right now because during this pandemic how many people lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19 and as a result lost the insurance that was connected to their jobs. So that argument has imploded and now none of them are saying anything. Do you hear Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg or John Delaney trying to come up with some different solution? No. And the issue isn't that they actually believe that this is what they were paid to say. If you take financial contributions from the private insurance industry from Big Pharma then you are going to work backwards from the conclusion that private insurance is good and single-payer Medicare for All is bad. But in actuality the opposite is true because when it comes to Medicare for All studies show not only is it more affordable but it actually works better. There's a reason why once you adopt a single-payer system or a national healthcare system you don't go back from that. Like imagine if Canada or the UK converted from a private or from a public system to a private American-like system. Any politicians who propose this or advocate for this position are laughed out of the fucking room and even conservatives in Canada and the UK have to at least pretend that they support the public system of healthcare that they have. Otherwise, you know, citizens would rage over it. Americans don't know what they got so if you give it to them it's going to be a lot harder to take away from them. So look, here's the thing. I'm willing to forgive any politician who was wrong about Medicare for All but it's now actually revisiting their position during a pandemic because I think that this proved that they were wrong about Medicare for All. Private insurance is not desirable and it's volatile. We don't need more volatility when it comes to healthcare. We need stability. So what Bernie Sanders is proposing is absolutely brilliant and it's the bare minimum that we should expect from government during a pandemic. So as Jacobin reports Bernie Sanders is pushing a new proposal as part of the stimulus bill that would give everyone free healthcare during the pandemic. His plan would get us qualitatively closer to Medicare for All and we should all rally behind it. Now this makes sense because we're in a pandemic and we don't have time to be playing games and arguing with our private insurance companies if we even have health insurance at this point. But strategically this is brilliant because what Bernie Sanders is doing is he's basically playing chicken with corporate Democrats. He's saying look you all told me and the American people during the primaries that Americans love their employer-based health insurance. Well now they're losing that. So if people will actually hate Medicare for All as much as you said they would then prove it. Let's expand Medicare to everyone during the pandemic and we'll test your theory out. Let's put it in practice but they will not do that because they know that if they actually do what Bernie Sanders is proposing which is common sense during a pandemic you're not going to be able to take it away from people. Once you give them healthcare it is going to be incredibly difficult to take it away once they realize that they've been missing out this entire time. Once they realize that they're getting a raw deal compared to our neighbors north of the border in Canada in the UK in any developed reasonable country. So you know this is something that I really hope people do rally around because it's not like we're seemingly too unreasonable. We know that Joe Biden doesn't support Medicare for All so we are responding to that. We're trying to work within those you know unique parameters but we're saying okay well we know that permanently we don't we're not going to get Medicare for All under Joe Biden so let's just do it for the duration of the pandemic. Yeah we know what that's going to turn into so it's really clever on Bernie Sanders' behalf and look he may not even be thinking that far ahead he may not even be playing like 90 chess but this is what will happen like you can't give somebody something and then take it away it's incredibly unpopular it's why politicians have failed from both parties to cut social security because they love social security and whenever they try to cut social security or privatize social security there's always hell to be paid so the question is since Joe Biden is not on board with what I think is reasonable Medicare for All at least during the pandemic what is he actually proposing since people are losing their health insurance and since now the crisis has worsened well as Julia Rock and Andrew Perez of the Daily Post report President-elect Joe Biden's new COVID Relief Plan does not adopt existing Democratic legislation to expand government-sponsored medical coverage nor does it propose a promised public health insurance option instead it adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claim denials Biden's plan would shovel millions of dollars to private health insurers by providing subsidies for Americans to buy coverage through the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces which are far more expensive than government healthcare programs and have at times been plagued by high rates of claim denials the plan would also subsidize COBRA continuation coverage through September allowing workers to keep their employer health insurance plans when they're laid off those initiatives which could further boost insurers skyrocketing profits were recently recommended in a letter to lawmakers from America's health insurance plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association to insurance lobbying groups in Washington that have opposed the expansion of government-sponsored healthcare programs a few days later after the letter was sent AHIP said that health insurance providers are eager to assist the Biden health team I'm sure they are Biden's inaugural committee has received donations from at least two major health insurers Anthem and Centine which both offer plans on state marketplace exchanges Centine CEO bundled donations for Biden's presidential campaign and Biden's first major campaign fundraiser was headlined by Independence Blue Cross's CEO now the article states that the public option at least for now has basically been sidelined and there are conflicting reports and indications about whether or not Joe Biden has moved away from it altogether I wouldn't be surprised because we've been here before we've seen this story he proposed the public option and then backed away from it during the Obama era but basically think of how absurd this system is these private insurance companies are basically writing a letter to the government saying hey it'd be a really great idea if you gave us money like we already do this like we pump millions and millions of dollars into the healthcare system and into these private plans so that way they'll be cheaper and offer more benefits and it never is a long-term solution otherwise the Affordable Care Act would have ended this debate so only in a capitalist system do you get this kind of ass backwards policy proposal where you have big government funding health insurance companies when they could easily just cut out the middle man like that and save billions of dollars every single fucking year we know what the solution is like the fact that we're still having this debate is insane as Jen Perlman says that like anyone in 2020 and 2021 like in modern era American politics that doubts Medicare for all these folks are so loony that they are comparable to flat earthers it's not like a matter of disagreement we know exactly what needs to be done and what will deliver healthcare to every single American Medicare for all and we don't stop there after we get Medicare for all we then work to move towards a national health system like the UK has always expand benefits because we know the minute that we get Medicare for all it is going to be under attack by capitalist forces so it's just it's deeply infuriating and frustrating to me that even in a pandemic it's not common sense to these folks to just opt for Medicare for all at least temporarily but they know that if they did this it would be a death sentence for these private insurance companies because again try taking something away from people that they love it's just not very popular so overall I will say that Joe Biden absolutely is a disgusting human being for denying healthcare to Americans during a pandemic the fact that he didn't support Medicare for all before made him morally defective in my opinion but the fact that he still denies it during a pandemic shows that as a human being he is absolutely disgusting morally bankrupt and borderline psychopathic so I want to take some time to remind everyone what the Democratic Party promised voters before the Georgia election when it comes to $2,000 stimulus checks we will be able to pass $2,000 stimulus checks for the people next week when we win these races in Georgia and get economic relief directly into the bank accounts of the American people who are suffering right now by letting John and the Reverend you could make an immediate difference in your own lives the lives of the people all across this country because their election will put an end to the block in Washington and that $2,000 stimulus check that money that will go out the door immediately tell people who are in real trouble they were pretty clear pretty clear if you ask me we got an exact amount as well as a specific timeline John Ossoff said we'll be able to pass $2,000 stimulus checks for the people next week Joe Biden said the money will go out the door immediately is that so so I can't help but wonder where are the checks because you've been president now for more than a week and we still don't have the checks so what's going on now as many of you know they immediately moved the goalpost once they took back the senate rather than saying oh well it's going to be $2,000 checks they immediately started saying actually we meant $1,400 checks because you already got $600 so $600 plus $1,400 equals $2,000 except no that's not what you said that's not what you promised and for all the folks who are twisting themselves into fucking pretzels trying to do mental gymnastics to explain away this thing like don't pretend like we're stupid for thinking that like this mailer that Raphael Warnack's campaign sent out didn't specifically suggest we'd be getting $2,000 checks if we were supposed to get $1,400 then wouldn't this fake check say $1,400 and not $2,000 so I mean they promised $2,000 and in my opinion anyone who's trying to explain that away is lying to themselves or lying to other people like this is a betrayal and that's exactly what voters thought as well who came out to support the Democrats in Georgia because as this media I'd article reports a betrayal Georgia voters enraged after Democrats promise of $2,000 checks becomes $1,400 under Biden's stimulus plan now one voter named Oscar Zaro explains a lot of people in my district voted blue in the runoff for two main reasons one low-thorne Perdue denying us relief during COVID while profiting millions themselves and two $2,000 stimulus checks they really underestimate just how much people are hurting economically Zaro added referring to Democrats who he views as reneging on their word now another voter who actually canvassed for Warnock and Ossoff who knocked on over a thousand doors said this at the doors I was literally telling people $2,000 checks you can rely on this I'm a man of principle and morals and I feel like shit I lied to them I was lying to them the whole time I was lying to people that were relying on this at the time I didn't know it was a lie but that was not the reality and that's just the small snapshot of the outrage that this lie and yes it was a lie caused and to make matters worse they even moved the goalpost further so we started at $2,000 checks it was very quickly moved to $1,400 and now it is getting watered down even further because Reuters reports that Biden is now open to further means testing the $1,400 checks in order to accommodate right-wing idiots like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema but that's not all Chuck Schumer is now suggesting that it's going to take another month if not a month and a half to get checks out the door so we started out at $2,000 checks next week to $1,400 means tested checks by maybe March this is outrageous and if Democrats think that this isn't going to come back to bite them in the ass hard they are horribly mistaken because this is outrageous like usually when politicians lie there's some space between them saying something and then doing something else but this is like a really quick 180 like we're breaking records here so to recap as David Sorota points out in an article for The Daily Poster on January 4th Joe Biden made an unequivocal pledge telling voters that by electing Democrats the Georgia Senate seats you could make an immediate difference in your own lives the lives of people all across this country because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check that money will go out the door immediately to people who are in real trouble less than four weeks later Biden is pushing $1,400 checks rather than using his election mandate to demand new full $2,000 checks Democrats are now suggesting that it could take at least until March to even pass the legislation even as the economic crisis worsens Biden is now responding to threats of Republican obstructionism by floating the idea of reducing the number of people who would even get the checks Reuters reports that he is open to negotiating the eligibility requirements of his proposed $1,400 COVID stimulus check a nod to lawmakers who have said they should be more targeted the signals of retreat are happening even as new polling data shows that the original promise for a full $2,000 survival check is wildly popular and at risk of being overly redundant we're gonna play exactly what they said one more time we will be able to pass $2,000 stimulus checks for the people next week when we win these races in Georgia and get economic relief directly into the bank accounts of the American people who are suffering right now by letting John and Reverend you could make an immediate difference in your own lives the lives of the people all across this country because their election will put an end to the block in Washington that $2,000 stimulus check that money that will go out the door immediately tell people who are in real trouble so this is a complete failure on their part you promised something that would have immediately given people material and economic relief and you're backing away that quickly this is honestly the dumbest politics I've seen in quite some time both Democrat or Republican this is just it's insane the good news for Democrats as David Sarota points out in that article is that it's not too late you can still not look like asses you can still do the right thing you can still give folks $2,000 that was promised and you could do it immediately you don't have to wait till March you don't have to include these $2,000 survival checks with some broader economic relief plan you could just pass the checks as standalone checks that'll be easy to hold people accountable because you know there's not this question of oh well was there bad things with this bill was there things that I disagree with was there too much pork you could just simply say look we just passed a clean bill $2,000 checks and these are the folks who voted against it and in effect they voted against you it would be so easy like it's an easy way to cultivate support for you but they can't even do the bare minimum the bare minimum Democrats just like they are their own worst enemies they can't help themselves it's like they have to find a way to fuck up even when they're playing on the easiest difficulty imaginable anyone who's against $2,000 like if this is about you not being able to get support because Kirsten Sinema or Joe Manchin don't support this I mean you can easily point to them as the reasons you could point blame there's accountability here like this isn't that difficult it's wildly popular there'd be immense public backlash if anyone went against this and specifically like single-handedly prevented these checks from going out but there's just there's no fight in Democrats no fight whatsoever so at this point I don't even know that we're gonna get $1,400 like if we get it by March I'd be surprised they've moved the goalpost so much that by the time you see this video like by the time it's uploaded to YouTube I wouldn't be surprised if they change the story even more like this is just this is abuse like you promised people something and you lied to them it was a lie so it's outrageous and nobody should give them a pass for this like this is 100% a betrayal and it's quite frankly pretty fucked up that they did this but I mean they can turn it around they could still not look like total asses if they actually just do what the fuck they said they were gonna do if they took back the Senate so even though the force to vote era and effort is over you know I still believe that it's a good idea to get a floor vote on Medicare for all I know some folks disagree with that strategy and that's fine but I want to see like a concerted effort by progressive Democrats in Congress to continue pushing when it comes to Medicare for all I don't want them to just basically like accept defeat and you know accept that we're not gonna get Medicare for all during the Biden era so we might as well not even fight I want them to continue to advance the goal of fighting for Medicare for all and so what I want from them is a signal that they do actually have a plan and in an interview with the American prospect the newest members of the squad Marie Newman specifically she did assure us that she does have a plan and she was also asked about a force to vote and she said something that was really really interesting and I feel a little bit reassured based on what she says but then immediately we'll go to something that Mondair Jones says and I don't like what he says and I don't feel reassured based on what he says but first Marie Newman was asked there's this debate now about where to go strategy wise the force to vote calls come to mind in particular where do you think we go strategy wise as progressives she responded by saying I like strategies that work I know there's noise out there and I don't understand that strategy it's articulated by folks who have never spent a day in Congress I love the spirit and the passion I'm with them on spirit and passion and desire for that legislation it's not like we're sitting on our hands we do have a plan to bring a Medicare for all bill to the floor we're working on it we're not going to let our cards be seen yet but are we going to work really hard on Medicare for all 100% are we going to get it to the floor 100% we have to bring Medicare for all to the floor in a responsible and powerful way that has good strategy that's the one I'm backing I'm not backing a super risky throw the dice crapshoot model so I like most of what she's saying although I reject the implication that you know your input is invalid if you haven't been in Congress I mean she was just sworn in I think that strategic advice is important from outsiders because we don't have like that insider bias I mean we have the outsider bias but I think that our input should still be valuable so I reject that but putting that aside when it comes to a floor vote on Medicare for all she says we're 100% going to get it to the floor that's what I want to hear I don't want to hear oh well you know what it's not it's not the time it's not going to come up currently we need to continuously push to advance Medicare for all and to hear her say that to signal to us that there's a sign of life for at least some members of the squad and they're going to keep fighting for this that's really important because look I will admit that it's it's a it's a difficult time to be a progressive member of Congress because there are so many crises that our country faces I don't know where to begin like for me if I were a member of Congress and I just got elected I wouldn't know where to start there's there's too many issues to fix but what I do want to know is that Medicare for all is an issue that is at the forefront of their priorities and this assures to me at least that it is now we go to the part where Marder Jones is going to say something that kind of contradicts what Marie Newman says um I'm just going to read it to you I'll tell you why I have an issue with it so he claims that the Democratic Party has in fact shifted to the left overall which I actually disagree with but then he was asked about Medicare for all he was asked one place where that left word drift doesn't seem or seems less obvious is the healthcare question there's a block that backs Medicare for all Joe Biden has supported the public option and House leadership has focused just on expanding the ACA how do you think progressives should intervene here he responded by saying imagine debating the merits of a public option versus Medicare for all when there is a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will strike down the Affordable Care Act so I push back on the idea that that's going to be the nature of the fight so um this ain't it this is a really really bad take and I hope that more members of the squad don't agree with this I hope that they actually unequivocally reject this line of thinking because if you're waiting to fight for Medicare for all until the conditions are right so that way it's not going to be attacked well you're never ever going to find the time to get Medicare for all it's never going to be the right time because we live in a capitalist system so even if there was an 8-1 liberal majority on the Supreme Court if you got it passed guess what capitalist forces will attack that system once we actually get Medicare for all passed it is going to be a constant battle forever that will never ever end to keep the progress that we've made in every single country that has either a single payer or a national healthcare system there's always the threat of privatization that's always going to be the case we're going to constantly have to fight to expand benefits to fight you know the forces of the private health insurance industry if they're not fully abolished with whatever you know conception of Medicare for all passes if that's the case it's just this is a cop out to me and I don't like it and Mondair Jones needs to reevaluate like what you fight for because if you are waiting to pass something at the safest moment you're not going to get anything accomplished so to say oh well we can't pass Medicare for all when there's a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court well what can we get done they can basically strike down anything I mean there are things that lawmakers can do to protect their legislation from a constitutional challenge and there will be constitutional challenge challenges that pop up by conservative organizations and whatnot but I mean like this is the nature of politics you're not going to find yourself in the perfect situation where you pass something and it stands as it is we just need to get Medicare for all because once people have it it'll be more difficult to take it away from them right and you don't necessarily know for a fact that it will face a challenge I think it's very likely but this was the case even if Bernie Sanders were to become president we all anticipated Medicare for all to be held up to the highest scrutiny imaginable but you don't not fight for it willingly so yes I absolutely disagree with Mondair Jones that the nature of the fight will be Medicare for all versus a public option versus expanding the Affordable Care Act and this is not to say that Mondair Jones is a sellout and doesn't support Medicare for all I believe that he does support Medicare for all this is what he ran on and so far he hasn't given me any indication that he's backing away from that but I think that when it comes to strategy he has a lot to learn because this tells me that he either doesn't understand capitalism or has a flawed strategy of change so I hope that you know this thinking doesn't rub off on other members of the squad but I am a lot more confident in AOC in Cory Bush and Marie Newman now that she's reassured us and I just wanted to know that this issue isn't going to get put on the sidelines that they're going to continue to fight because look you've got to strike while the iron is hot during a pandemic we need health care more than ever 15 million Americans lost their employer-based health insurance in 2020 so if we don't continue to push the envelope push this issue that's a failure on us so I want to know that our allies in Congress have our backs and I want them to know that we have their backs and when push comes to shove when they need us to make phone calls when they push a floor vote on Medicare for All coordinate with us coordinate with left media we will help you we will assist you because we want the same thing you want we want Medicare for All because it is absolutely outrageous that people in this country continue to die and even during a pandemic the same folks who never supported Medicare for All aren't even considering reevaluating their positions so you know this is interesting I'll link you to the full interview they also had Cory Bush on here as well and Jamal Bowman but yeah lots of really interesting questions asked by the American prospect hopefully you will check out the full interviews with the newest members of the squad so once again I'm talking about my favorite newest member of Congress no we're not talking about Cory Bush or Jamal Bowman of course we're talking about friend of the show Marjorie Taylor-Green who of course is one of two conspiracy theorists from the QAnon movement that were elected to Congress my faith in the American people is at an all-time low nonetheless she's elected to Congress and we continue to learn more and more about her and it's like whenever we think that she can't possibly get any crazier or more unhinged new details emerge that prove no actually she can so CNN reports Representative Marjorie Taylor-Green repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress a CNN K-file review of hundreds of posts and comments from Green's Facebook page shows Green, who represents Georgia's 14th congressional district frequently posted far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories on her page including the baseless QAnon conspiracy which casts former President Donald Trump in an imagined battle against the sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abused children in one post from January of 2019 Green liked a comment that said a bullet to the head would be quicker to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in other posts Green liked comments about executing FBI agents who in her eyes were part of the deep state working against Trump in one Facebook post from April of 2019 Green wrote conspiratorily about the Iran deal one of former President Barack Obama's signature foreign policy achievements a commenter asked Green now do we get to hang them meaning H and O referring to Hillary Clinton and Obama Green replied stage is being set players are being put in place we must be patient this must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off so this is now an elected member of Congress who once discussed and liked posts on Facebook about killing individuals who are now her colleagues and that might not be the most extreme thing about her because of course you know she's violent she supports violence but she also supports the most bizarre conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton that for some reason like I'm just learning about now I knew about all of the pizza gate stuff and the conspiracy theory about Seth Rich that she supposedly killed him or Debbie Wasserman Schultz killed him whatever this conspiracy theory that she believes is next level crazy so she believes that Hillary Clinton there's a video of her where she murders, mutilates and then drinks the blood of a child in a satanic ritual Marjorie Marjorie Taylor Green supported Clinton child murder conspiracy theory before running for Congress Marjorie are we okay this is like there's there's no words to describe the level of delusion here but um that's not all she also believed that um Sandy Hook was staged and she believed unironically that Bush did 9-11 on top of that she believed that Parkland was a false flag that shooting never happened and to make matters worse in January of 2020 she literally on her own volition decided to upload this video where she harasses Parkland survivor David Hugg David why are you supporting the red flag laws if Scott Peterson the resource officer at Parkland had done his job then Nicholas Cruz wouldn't have killed anybody in your high school or at least protected them why are you supporting red flag gun laws that attack our second amendment right and why are you using kids to get as a barrier do you not know how to defend your stance you can feel carry permit I carry gun for protection for myself and you are using your lobby and the money behind it and the kids to try to take away my second amendment right you don't have any kids why do you use kids by with security guards with guns there would be no math students at schools do you know that attacking our second amendment and you have nothing to say no words still on walking he's got nothing to say he has nothing to say because there really isn't anything to say you guys he has nothing to say because he's paid to do this he has the walk away march he's got the he's got the women's march and they're funding all of this every town gun USA they're funding all this stuff okay that was David Hogue right there David we saw him inside the Senate building he had 30 30 appointments where you ran around and got to talk to senators I got to talk to none none he had media coverage all over the place I had zero guess what I'm a gun owner I'm an American citizen and I have nothing but this guy with his George Soros funding and his major liberal funding has got everything again she chose to upload this on her own accord she thought this was a good idea to put this out into the universe harassing a survivor of a mass shooting someone who has no power in this situation he's an activist who decided to take action after he almost got killed so uh rather than actually like putting pressure on politicians she literally is harassing a victim you can disagree with his politics as a gun rights extremist again gun anarchist if you will whatever the fuck she believes but like to harass him don't you think that's a little fucking weird but it gets worse because a video emerged of her attempting to confront Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and I don't necessarily know if she ever got to confront them but in this video she explains why she was so outraged at something that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib did and this has nothing to do with policy it's one of the dumbest reasons imaginable but nonetheless she thought it was a good idea to um take up this issue they signed it they swore in on the Korean oh we have the bible we're gonna talk about swearing in on the how to swear in on the bible with them and let them know what our law says that you can't swear in on the Korean so we're gonna explain to that you know we're gonna explain about how you can't swear in on the Korean and we're gonna have the bible and ask them if they would swear in on the bible that we really need them we have the oath yeah we have the oath yep so I think that's important no I'll just say that the sad thing is now we can swear in our religion which you should not be infringing on our religion yes by saying that we can't swear in on the Korean but when they swore in it wasn't a law yet right at the time they swore in I don't know I think at the time they swore in that wasn't passed because it wouldn't have been passed in a republican control yeah so it was passed after they swore in so they're not really official I don't think so let's go ask them to swear in in the bible because like you said Will it hasn't been a holy bible yeah it has to be the bible well the bottom line is Sharia law Sharia law is not compatible with America yep that's the bottom line that's the bottom line how can you say you represent women but you support Sharia law I have no idea what law she's referring to but she's wrong and I can prove that by just reading from the constitution members of congress shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this constitution but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the united states article six so it's not required that a Muslim member of congress be sworn in on the bible I think that most people should be sworn in on constitutions not bibles but at the end of the day none of this matters what I care about ultimately are the policies but this dipshit who is completely unhinged is so outraged that they swore in on the religious text that they believe in that she wanted to literally confront them about it I mean it doesn't get any more insane than that and I mean just the mere fact that she was a member of QAnon even though she's tried to like distance herself from this movement um you don't get to just like pretend as if that didn't happen you don't get to pretend as if you haven't promoted like literally every single dumb fucking conspiracy theory imaginable I mean she makes Alex Jones look sane because even Alex Jones who believes in literal fish people even he sees through QAnon and thinks that maybe that's a little bit too extreme maybe the QAnon people are a bit misguided so like she's giving Alex Jones a run for his money I like my neighbors I just I don't know what to say this is a member of Congress and it would be bad enough if she was the only QAnon supporter to get elected but we also saw Laura Laura Boebert another QAnon conspiracy theorist get elected to Congress and that's on top of the other dipshits who already exist in Congress Louis Gohmert Ted Cruz I mean these folks are absolutely stupid I can't forget about Jim Inhofe it's just these are the individuals who are writing legislation and voting on laws that affect all of our lives and I don't even know that they're capable of like taking care of themselves like to be that stupid like you have to literally be eating paint chips every single day like you must almost die pretty frequently because you just like randomly forget to breathe how many times how many times have you tied your shoelaces together and tripped and then blamed someone else for it like this it's batched fucking insane like there's nothing really to to say that like puts this in a perspective like this is truly bizarre we are living in weird times and um I don't know what else to say about this we have an absolute crazy person who's a member of Congress and um it's bad this is not good like this person should not be in Congress I would be really uncomfortable if this person had any amount of power if this person was like a night manager at some fast food restaurant that would be too much responsibility for her but the fact that she is a representative in Congress with constituents that is downright disturbing and horrifying well I've got good news and I've got bad news as well so the good news is that House and Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour this is really phenomenal news considering we haven't seen a federal increase to the minimum wage since 2009 it's been 12 years almost so this is long overdue the bad news however is that this isn't actually going to fully take effect until 2025 which is bad because we're not actually getting to a point where workers are getting a living wage now at face value I think that it's smart the way that Democrats constructed this legislation because they're making it so that way gradually the minimum wage goes up each year now they're doing this so that way they don't hurt small businesses and the economy and the way that it's going to work is if this passes it'll increase immediately to $9.50 and then $11 an hour the following year then $12.50 an hour by 2023 $14 an hour by 2024 and finally we'll arrive at $15 an hour by 2025 now it makes sense the way that they're doing this because what they're doing is they're modeling this after Seattle which is a case study that proves how effective and successful you know cities can be and how great it can be for workers if we actually do increase the federal minimum wage the issue is that modeling it after Seattle well you know it sounds good on paper they did this Seattle did this in 2012 whereas we're doing this now in 2021 which is a very different story so if Democrats actually want to solve the problem long-term then I could digest this easier if they raised it to $20 an hour for example over a longer period of time or they kept this same exact time frame and they just attached everything after 2026 to inflation so you know the minimum wage would automatically increase every single year to keep up with inflation but they're not doing that so the ask here isn't great and especially considering what workers are owed this really it doesn't seem sufficient to me now having said that though it's better than nothing right it is better than nothing even if it doesn't take effect until 2025 a 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that even if the minimum wage wasn't increased until 2025 that would lift 33 million workers' wages on the other hand though this study was conducted pre-COVID so the economic situation that workers are in currently is far different than it was back then so we don't necessarily know that it will have the same effect but overall we know that the aggregate effect that this will have will be positive the question rather is will this be enough now we'll get to some of the criticisms of raising the minimum wage that we see from conservatives and some liberals but here's why I think that Democrats need to fight for more first of all the federal living wage as of 2020 at least was $16.54 per hour for a family of four so if a family of four was not making this they are not considered to be making a living wage and if you look at productivity well if the minimum wage kept up with productivity currently the minimum wage would be $24 an hour so on one hand it is positive that they're going to raise the federal minimum wage the issue however is that it's still not good enough and assuming that we don't see another minimum wage increase for more than a decade we're always going to be in this perpetual state of trying to play catch-up always trying to gradually increase the minimum wage because you don't want to hurt the economy whereas what we should be looking to is a long-term solution where again you tie the minimum wage federally to inflation or a living wage because the goal ultimately is to get closer to a living wage and while this certainly helps with that objectively speaking gets us closer to a living wage still what we need is for people to actually have purchasing power in America and long-term what I really want leftist to think about is what do we actually want like how do we solve this problem permanently how do we actually empower workers and you know when you think about this it's really hard to still be a capitalist that's why I am not a capitalist because in this exploitative capitalist system that we live in workers only have barely enough to get by and as it is currently it looks like that's always going to be the case whereas if workers actually owned the means of production things would be a lot different so this article by Forbes from 2014 it shows that if Apple were to be converted into a worker cooperative the lowest salary that workers would have would be above $400,000 per year so in this capitalist system that we have workers produce wealth but they don't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor and what's sad is that even a minimum wage increase knowing that that's insufficient at $15 an hour by 2025 you still see folks who are against it you see these boomer memes on Facebook not all boomers believe this but you know you mostly see it from your conservative aunts and uncles where they'll share like this image of a self-ordered menu at McDonald's and they'll say oh well you want $15 an hour peasant well meet your new replacement a robot and the folks who claim to be capitalists don't know anything about capitalism because that is an inevitability if it were cheaper by tomorrow for every single fast food restaurant and multi-billion dollar company to replace their workers with robots they're going to do that immediately because they don't care about workers they care about increasing profits so they're not just gonna like out of spite replace their workers with robots because they ask for a wage increase or unions that's not the way that capitalism works it's all about profits and so the minute that robots becomes a cheaper solution to labor that's what these companies are going to opt for now the minimum wage in Seattle there was a lot of fear mongering about this because at first preliminary studies showed that there was kind of a negative effect for workers while you know the study showed that some workers benefited what businesses did in actuality was in response to the minimum wage being increased they just reduced their workers hours so overall they'd kind of like we easily get out of paying their workers more you just cut their hours so they're still making the same poverty wages but overall when you look at more studies collectively Seattle proved why the minimum wage overall is a net benefit for workers so in 2019 Matthew Zetlin of Vox explained generally those business owners who threatened to leave Seattle this is one of the main fear mongering tactics that we saw to evade the new wage haven't been following through surprise surprise the restaurant industry moans and groans about minimum wage increase but the Seattle newspaper every month has a story about 40 new restaurants opening said Jennifer Romitch a university of Washington social policy researcher according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of jobs in restaurants and bars in the Seattle area has grown from 134,000 to 158,000 since 2015 surveying employers Romitch and other researchers found the most common response to the wage increase was to raise prices or fiddle with workers hours and a very small percentage worth thinking about withdrawing or leaving the city so that's one of the complaints about the minimum wage but they continue the story for employees is much more varied the minimum wage for large employers jumped from 11 to $13 an hour from 2015 to 2016 the economists observed the impact of the hike in 2017 and found it had dramatic effects on the low wage workforce and employment not all of them were good they found that the policy reduced hours worked in low wage jobs by 6 to 7 percent while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent consequently total payroll for such jobs decreased that means the total amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in place than projected payroll if the policy hadn't gone into effect the data, researcher Mark Siolong explained suggested a tipping point between $11 and $13 an hour when it comes to less tenable to keep work in the city critics were quick to point out that this likely wasn't solely due to the minimum wage policy Seattle's labor market continued to heat up during that period reducing the number of low wage jobs compared to high wage jobs overall but a year later the team published another paper that complicated their findings they looked at the same time period and same wage increase but this time broke down the actual take-home pay of workers they found that workers who were already employed at the low end of the wage scale in Seattle enjoyed significantly more rapid hourly wage growth following wage increases in 2015 and 2016 those who were already working more hours before the wage increase saw essentially all of the earnings increases while the workers who had fewer hours saw their hours go down but wages go up enough so that their overall earnings didn't really change they theorized that a slowdown in new hiring for low wage jobs could explain their earlier findings that overall payroll had gone down ultimately workers already employed either saw their take-home pay go up or stay roughly the same while working fewer hours so overall what the data tells us is that raising the minimum wage produces a net positive either wages increase predictably or if employers respond by cutting hours well the increase in their wage makes up for the the loss of hours so overall it's a net positive raising wages of workers is good and I would argue that you know it's good for the economy overall because when poor people and working-class people have more money have more purchasing power what do they do they stimulate the economy we go buy x boxes we go to the movies when there's not a pandemic but when rich people have money they hoard that wealth in bank accounts usually offshore so it's tax-free so trickle down economics has been a colossal failure and I think that it's obvious that the answer is making sure that normal working-class people have more money that's good for everyone including these large businesses like it or not because you know these capitalists they want to exploit their workers but nobody can buy the products produced by capitalists workers if they don't actually have money in the first place so overall this is a really good thing I'm glad that Democrats are raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and they're not backing down to $12 an hour which is kind of what I thought so in a way I'm pleasantly surprised but at the same time we have to push for a permanent solution so that way workers aren't always behind and making less than a living wage and that means you've got to tie this to inflation or at least account for the likelihood that we're not going to see another federal minimum wage increase for more than a decade assuming Democrats lose control in 2022 and 2024 overall this is good but we've got to push for more always ask for more because workers need this right now we are in an unprecedented crisis in America or at least the crisis that we haven't seen since you know a hundred years so now is the time to go big or go home and I'm glad that Democrats are doing this but in my opinion it is not good enough not anywhere near good enough and we've got to push them to do better so generally speaking Democrats tend to do better in elections when turnout is higher and Republicans tend to do better in elections when turnout is lower this isn't always the case it is a generalization and it's kind of an oversimplification but nonetheless this tends to hold true and it certainly held true in the 2020 election Democrats know this and Republicans certainly know this so going forward they want to make sure that they are still electorally successful and if they see numbers like that in every single election cycle you know since they are a minority party it's going to be difficult for them to win if that many people show up so what are they doing well they are responding in state legislatures across the country with new draconian restrictions on voting they're doing voter suppression because if you can't win legitimately then of course you cheat so you enact Orwellian voter ID laws and I say that they're Orwellian because the reasoning that they use is false they claim that you know if they enact these voter ID laws then we're just securing the vote but in actuality what this does is it targets poor people who don't have voter ID usually communities of color are affected by this the most so if they get communities of color to stay home a demographic that's mostly loyal to the democratic party then of course that helps them that drives down turnout and increases the chances that they will be electorally successful so across the country what we're seeing now is a crackdown on voting rights so that way Republicans can make sure we don't see a repeat of 2020 and the things that they are doing is clever but it is absolutely evil and it is antithetical to democracy so Reed Wilson of the Hill reports Republican state legislatures are advancing a rush of new bills aimed at limiting voting access and especially access to voting by mail in the wake of President Biden's victory last year in the highest turnout election in American history in many states Republicans have used those claims to cite unspecified concerns about the integrity of their own elections despite elections officials who show proof that counts were fair and accurate Arizona state representative Kevin Payne has filed legislation to eliminate a permanent early voting list one that automatically sends absentee ballots to 3.2 million voters three quarters of the state's registered voters the permanent early voting list was created in 2007 at the behest of both Republican and Democratic county elections officials Payne has also introduced a bill to require a notary's signature on any mail-in ballot in a state in which the vast majority of voters cast their ballots by mail top Republicans in Georgia are planning legislation to further restrict absentee voting after Biden won the state's electoral votes and Senators Rafael Warnock and John Ossoff defeated two Republican incumbents Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger total legislative panel last week he supported adding a photo identification requirement to absentee ballots Pennsylvania Republicans have planned to hold more than a dozen hearings on election integrity over the next several months after Biden won the state by more than 80,000 votes state representative Jim Gregory has introduced legislation to repeal an expansion of mail-in voting in Michigan state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shurkey has said he will work on a new requirement that voters show a photo identification at the polls Biden won Michigan a state Trump narrowly carried in 2016 by more than 150,000 votes almost 3 percentage points Wisconsin state representative Gary Tochen earlier this year introduced legislation that would allocate presidential electoral votes to the winner of each congressional district rather than all 10 to the statewide winner even in states Trump carried Republican legislators are working on new measures that critics say would impede access to the polls Montana Secretary of State Kristy Jacobson said last week she would support a measure that would end the same day voter registration a Texas state representative has filed a bill to require faster processing of death certificates to remove deceased voters from the rolls in spite of a lack of evidence of fraudulent votes cast in the name of the dead so they're going to claim here look we just care about election integrity but they know exactly what they're doing this is a concerted effort by Republican parties across the country to suppress the vote they know the impact that voter ID laws have especially on communities of color poor communities they know what these things are going to accomplish specifically with regard to their electoral chances and when it comes to the legislation that was referenced in Wisconsin where they basically award electoral votes based on the district itself well if you look at Wisconsin Donald Trump won a majority of districts in Wisconsin so if they changed it so that way you kind of have like a mini electoral college in Wisconsin what would happen well that would tilt the state in favor of Republicans permanently so that way rather than just like counting the entire state where you have big cities that make up the bulk of the votes well rural areas would have a larger say and of course that would benefit Republicans by a lot this is absolutely transparent anyone who claims that this isn't an active effort to suppress the votes they are absolutely naive and so what this communicates to Democrats is they have to act they have to counter this and the way that you counter this is by expanding democracy so now that they have control of government over the next couple of years this is what Biden and the Democrats have to focus on they have to have a new voting rights act we make voting a national holiday we expand suffrage universally to every single American you make DC and Puerto Rico states you pack the Supreme Court to make sure that these new laws that you enact to save voting and protect voting don't get struck down by a conservative majority on the court you get rid of the electoral college if that's at all possible and you put undocumented immigrants on a fast track to citizenship if I had my way anyone who's here currently would get citizenship but you make them citizens because they are Americans they're part of American culture they have jobs they pay taxes they deserve citizenship and they deserve to have a say but if Democrats don't act if they if they don't advance statehood for DC at a minimum and give Puerto Rico the right to self-determination then they're screwed we need a new voting rights act if you don't expand voting rights Republicans will win and you know the response to this is well look how is all of what you're proposing different than what the Republicans are proposing they're proposing voter ID laws to suppress the votes but isn't what you're doing going to suppress Republican votes well no what I am proposing that Democrats do is strengthen democracy consolidate democracy make it so people have a say make it so it's easier to vote it's quite literally enhancing our democracy so that's not rigging the rules in the way that Republicans are rigging the rules they're trying to make it more difficult for people to vote they're literally trying to disenfranchise people that is antithetical to democracy so if we enhance democracy expand suffrage universally and Republicans can no longer find it as easy to win under those circumstances of a better democracy a more improved democracy that's on them maybe they actually have to make a pitch to voters propose something I don't know something that people like that's popular not just bank on racism and xenophobia to win elections and fear mongering about guns being taken away which never happened like this is absolutely crucial and if Democrats don't take this threat seriously Republicans will be successful and even though they're a minority party they will continue to win because even though changing demographics makes it seem as if Republicans in the future will be shut out of government just based on like how many people vote Democrat versus Republican they know what they're doing they know that long-term if they want to continue winning they have to rig the rules in their favor even more so if Democrats don't respond to this then it's going to be on them but the problem is that Democrats won't suffer the consequences of this working-class people will because if the Republican party continues to gain power then all we see is us like march towards this path of annihilation where we don't have a planet that is habitable where corporations continue to get more and more tax cuts and elites get everything while the poor and working-class suffer and starve so in order for us to even have a chance to put pressure on the Democratic Party to enact progressive legislation we have to make sure that Republicans aren't able to rig the rules in their favor and I think that this is really important if we don't see a new voting rights act and a commitment by Democrats to actually strengthen democracy and expand statehood to more territories then Republicans will be successful here it depends on Democrats if they don't use this opportunity to strengthen democracy then what we see now this effort from Republicans across the country to actually rig elections in their favor it's going to pay off for them it will pay off for them so I hope Democrats take this threat very seriously because Republicans know the only way that they can win with changing demographics is to cheat and they're going to do that they'll even try to steal elections if that means they're going to get access to power because this is what the Republican Party does they're no longer the party of gun rights and against abortion this is a party that is fully authoritarian like the transformation is almost complete so Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders appeared on CNN for an interview and the entire interview like wasn't terrible but there's a moment in there like a highlight or a low light to be specific that I want to point out that really demonstrates every single thing that is wrong with mainstream media corporate-owned media every critique that I have is like encapsulated in this one clip because it proves that when it comes to mainstream media there's just no room for nuance everything is presented as you know Democrat versus Republican this false equivalence to where both sides are equal and both sides make you know equal cases and they're both good faith actors and you can never actually like qualitatively assess situations you can't be impartial or objective you have to be neutral and present both sides equally when the reality of the situation is that both sides aren't equal Republicans have gone off the deep end this is a party that isn't just concerned about you know smaller government and gun rights this is a party that is insane and authoritarian and Democrats aren't great as well but the differences between Democrats and Republicans are pretty substantial so basically what the CNN anchor is going to ask Bernie Sanders is ridiculous because she's going to present two things she's going to say look you claim that budget reconciliation is a bad thing but you apply this argument curiously so to Republicans when they passed legislation but now all of a sudden you're saying that we can do all of these things using budget reconciliation so doesn't that kind of make you I don't know a hypocrite Bernie Sanders' response here is absolutely phenomenal because he shuts it down and what should really be pointed out here is what she's referring to and you know just look at the way that she disregards the actual substance of like when Republicans use the budget reconciliation and why Bernie Sanders wants to use it like when Republicans did it it was in service to their donors when Bernie Sanders does it well it is in service to the American people during a pandemic when they need relief immediately take a look so you've suggested that Democrats might need to use a process called reconciliation which requires only 51 votes instead of the 60 to pass the coronavirus relief plan you just heard Mitt Romney say that Republicans like him have shown that they are ready to compromise so should Democrats move to pass coronavirus relief with 51 votes if they can't get Republicans support say before the impeachment trial well I don't know what the word compromise means I know that working families are living today in more economic desperation than since the Great Depression and if Republicans are willing to work with us to address that crisis welcome let's do it but what we cannot do is wait weeks and weeks and months and months to go forward we have got to act now that is what the American people want now as you know reconciliation which is a senate rule was used by the Republicans under Trump to pass massive tax breaks for the rich and large corporations it was used as an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and what we are saying is you use it for that that's fine we're going to use reconciliation that is 50 votes in the senate plus the vice president to pass legislation desperately needed by working families in this country right now you did it we're going to do it but we're going to do it to protect ordinary people not just the rich and the powerful and what's your timeline on that as soon as we possibly can look down and you know I know these are crazy times we've got a new president in we're dealing with the horrors of this pandemic which also have got to be addressed immediately we have not done a good job in producing the amount of vaccine that we need and certainly getting it into the arms of people do you want to do it before the impeachment trial starts we got to do everything I mean this is like you don't have the time to sit around you know weeks on impeachment and not get vaccines into the arms of people you don't have time to worry about vaccines and not be able to fact their children in America are going hungry we got to break through this old approach that the Senate takes years and years to do anything we got a crisis right now we can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time the American people are hurting and they want us to act that's what our candidates ran for in this election that's what the guys in Georgia want on and we have got to reaffirm the faith of the American people in government that we can respond to their pain you mentioned that Republicans have used the so-called reconciliation process before like in 2017 to try to kill Obamacare you accused them of abusing the process back then you said quote the function of reconciliation is to adjust federal spending and revenue not to enact major changes in policy but you alluded to this you are the chairman of the budget committee are going to be you are already talking about using this tactic for things like paid family and medical leave for universal pre-k and child care for climate change tuition-free college eliminating student debt and the $15 minimum wage how is that not what you criticize Republicans for doing well the devil is in the details about what we want to do and when we want to do it and when we have to do it what we are talking about by the way are two separate reconciliation packages number one the emergency one right now right get direct checks get those checks into people's pockets right now so they can feed their families make sure that people are not evicted from their homes make sure that states have the funds they need to get vaccines into people's homes that's what we've got to do right now and then as soon as that is done we have to rebuild this economy unemployment is much much too high wages are much much too low there are structural problems that we have had we have ignored for years climate change is a reality and you're okay doing all of that through this process that you criticize Republicans for using this these are major policy changes these are major policy changes but the devil is in the details and I criticize Republicans yeah for using reconciliation to give tax breaks to billionaires to create a situation where large profitable corporations now pay zero in federal income taxes yes I did criticize them for that and if they want to criticize me for helping to feed children who are hungry or senior citizens in this country who are isolated and alone and don't have enough food they can criticize me I think it's the appropriate step forward so that was absolutely terrible terrible now I don't know if that CNN host actually believes that maybe she was just playing devil's advocate and she didn't actually believe that both of these things are equal but either way the image that this presents to the viewer is that they are equal the implication like what viewers are primed to believe is that Democrats shouldn't use budget reconciliation specifically Bernie Sanders shouldn't advocate for this position because he criticized Republicans for using budget reconciliation except the difference there is huge Republicans used budget reconciliation to pass things that serve the elites tax cuts for the rich there is a need this is an objective fact there is a need right now because we are in a pandemic an economic crisis and for Democrats to use budget reconciliation to quickly pass relief that is different than Republicans passing tax cuts at the behest of their corporate donors why are mainstream news punnets incapable of pointing out this difference it's not about quantity it's about quality and when I say quantity I mean well you know we criticized Republicans so now we have to criticize Democrats we have to be equal go straight down the middle that's not the way that this works you have to be objective these two things are not the same using budget reconciliation to pass policies that benefit people who desperately need it compared to Republicans using budget reconciliation to pass policies that benefit folks who don't need it these are very different things so of course to just take Bernie Sanders argument about budget reconciliation that he applied to Republicans as if like politics occurs in a vacuum that's just it's nonsensical but Bernie's answer was perfect he says if Republicans want to criticize me for helping to feed children who are hungry or senior citizens in this country who are isolated and alone and don't have enough food they can criticize me and that's exactly it that's exactly it because what Bernie Sanders is doing is trying to use budget reconciliation to help people who are dying who are losing healthcare when Republicans did it it was because they know they couldn't get it passed with 60 votes and they knew they had to deliver for their corporate donors if they wanted to keep that gray retrain going very very giant difference there the difference is night and day and what the media doesn't realize is that you don't have to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt you don't always have to do this in fact you don't have to give any party the benefit of the doubt but I mean these are propaganda outlets they're owned by large multi-billion dollar companies so you know they're going to serve the status quo but it's infuriating because they never give the left and progressives the benefit of the doubt like Bernie Sanders he is approached as like this sort of villain who's a hypocrite for daring to use budget reconciliation after he spoke out against it but that's just like stripping away all of the context from everything that he's saying all to do what some pathetic pseudo defense of Republicans who already think that CNN is fake news like I just don't understand the point of this it doesn't accomplish anything you're not going to win over Republican viewers because they probably don't even watch Fox News very much anymore they've all like moved on to OAN and Newsmax because Fox News isn't even as far right as the Republican party's base wants it to be but all you do by presenting this narrative is you make viewers believe that both sides are equal when they are not equal both sides are not equal at all one side does not do anything for the American people and Bernie Sanders does want to do something for the American people he's trying to push Democrats to actually get stuff done and he's using his position as budget committee chairman to do just that using reconciliation so I shouldn't have to say this like I shouldn't have to explain to people who likely went to college for journalism how this should work like you shouldn't have to learn about objectivity and impartiality from a YouTube host like we don't care about neutrality we know this right when it comes to objective facts we care about actually saying what is and isn't objectively true and there is a difference like it or not between Bernie's use of budget reconciliation and Republicans use of budget reconciliation if Bernie decided to go rogue and use budget reconciliation to like give Amazon a tax credit then that would be comparable to the way that the Republicans did it but because he doesn't want to do that because he's trying to use it for good you should explain that to your audience not present them with this false equivalence that Bernie Sanders is as bad as Republicans like that's absolutely ludicrous so I'll leave that there I think you get the point this was a very very bad segment from CNN and it really it shows why mainstream media is bad and it just makes people stupid overall freshman GOP lawmaker Madison Cawthorne is one of 17 Republicans who are signing onto a letter where they are committing to work with Joe Biden now this is kind of weird especially for someone like Madison Cawthorne who just a couple of weeks ago objected to the certification of the election results on grounds that he believed Joe Biden is an illegitimate winner he did not win fair and square he believes the lie that Donald Trump told about the election being stolen so it's weird because if you think that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president then why would you commit to working with the president who you claimed was illegitimate this is I think a question that we have to ask ourselves now thankfully he appeared on CNN and the anchor did ask him this question and went a little bit further and tried to get him to explain why he believed the election was stolen from Donald Trump and you are going to see him make a complete fool of himself this is content that is so cringe worthy I think it should go in like the hall of fame you can see him get visibly flustered he faceplants he doesn't necessarily know what to say you can kind of tell that he knows realizes that he contradicted himself and then he tries to like explain himself further it's just a really bad look I enjoyed every second of this take a look can you just share some specific examples of election fraud what are some specific examples that informed this bold decision this audacious decision even after the riots to decertify the results you must have seen some concrete evidence well Pam the things that I was not objecting to the election on behalf of was things like dominion voting machines changing ballots or these u-haul trucks pulling up filled with ballots for Joe Biden as president the thing I was objecting for is things like in like I said in the state of wins-conson particularly in the town of Madison there was a an appointed official in that town who actually went against the will of the state legislature and created ballot drop boxes which is basically ballot harvesting that was happening in the parks but this was all litigated you know that the Trump campaign litigated all of this more than 60 cases and they lost either the cases were dismissed the Trump campaign withdrew or they never brought a case because they didn't have the evidence to back it up indeed I believe specifically and this is the one that I debated on behalf of on the house floor in Wisconsin that was never heard because they dismissed it because of standing now I don't believe that that is concrete enough of a way to say okay so you have Wisconsin but you never you ended up not actually voting against Wisconsin it was just Arizona and Pennsylvania didn't have the Senate votes but three Trump appointed judge actually throughout these cases because of merit it was because of merit there were three Trump appointed judges out of all of these judges and the more than 60 cases that were tossed out and you keep talking about Wisconsin I'm still not hearing any specific examples of fraud if you would just tell us what are the specific examples you saw a fraud because when you think of fraud you think of a vote you're slipping one past the election official or a vote was stolen somehow it didn't count did you see that specifically no payment like I said that's not the reason I contested the election hold on so you wanted to throw out millions of votes without actually seeing any concrete evidence of fraud because that's what you were doing when you were contesting the election the intent there was throwing out millions of votes well I disagree with you on that point that was not my intent my intent was to hold up the Constitution and setting up ballot drop boxes which is essentially ballot harvesting in Wisconsin is unconstitutional because the state legislature said they didn't want that so you know more than the judge the Trump appointed judge who said that who actually looked at that case before the election and dismissed the Trump campaign's argument that drop boxes are unconstitutional and if you would would you point to me and where in the Constitution it says that drop boxes are unconstitutional I don't recall seeing that in the Constitution so we'll just stop it right there because it doesn't get much better for him that was awful if I'm like one of his advisors I'm trying to train him on like answering questions properly and coherently what are you saying here is so stupid to say that he makes a number of logical leaps that make him look stupid is an understatement because basically what he says is look I'm not like these other unreasonable Republicans who claim that the election was just like flat out stolen I don't think that dominion stole votes and like flipped them from Trump to Biden I'm not saying that there were trucks that brought in millions of pro-Biden ballots and like dropped them off that's not what I'm claiming I'm just saying that the election was stolen and I objected to the certification of the election results because in Wisconsin there were ballot drop off sites therefore the entire election is illegitimate let's throw out millions and millions of ballots really that's that's your argument and what's weird is that the contradiction emerges very clearly when she points out that he did not object to the certification of the results in Wisconsin he objected specifically to Pennsylvania and Arizona now it was because you need senators to sign on to that process as well but still if you're claiming Wisconsin why is that the only state you're pointing out when you also objected to the certification of the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania like what you're saying doesn't make sense it's a contradiction and on top of that like what he says about Wisconsin in particular and why it was supposedly rigged is nonsensical so first of all drop boxes were approved by the Wisconsin elections commission and they provide people a place to drop off their absentee ballots this isn't controversial at all but according to him this is illegal because it's tantamount to ballot harvesting which is illegal in Wisconsin this is his claim anyways but first of all it's not the same thing as ballot harvesting and second of all Wisconsin doesn't actually specify whether or not a third party can collect and return someone else's ballot and the only state where so-called ballot harvesting is illegal is in Alabama not Wisconsin so he makes an assumption and then makes a logical leap based off of that flawed assumption and you just don't have enough evidence to go from point A to point B but all of this is moot because you voted in favor of certifying the results in Wisconsin it was Pennsylvania and Arizona so where's the evidence specifically that it was rigged in Arizona and Pennsylvania like do you understand why there's a problem here? he can't figure out the argument that he wants to use to claim that the election was stolen and do we know why that's the case folks? it's because he has no evidence that the election was stolen because the election was not stolen there was not evidence that widespread voter fraud and election fraud led to the results changing so that's why he was sitting there scrambling trying to make up some reason as to why we should throw out millions of votes and literally invalidate an election like he can't explain it well these drop-off sites that is actually ballot harvesting I don't like them so I'm gonna call them ballot harvesting and we should hate ballot harvesting because that's what the GOP says like this dude is a moron and you are a member of congress you're a member of congress now and you still don't have your shit together and he's young he's 25 years old but this is the job that you signed up for you've got to come with the facts right? you can't just make things up now you're a lawmaker you're in a position of power so if you're gonna claim that the election is stolen put up or shut up uh well uh like I don't know the drop-off sites are like really suspicious and uh ballot harvesting which is basically just ballot collecting is a word that scares me and so I'm gonna say that the drop-off sites are ballot harvesting but then I'm gonna vote sort of by the results in Wisconsin anyway because really it's Arizona and Pennsylvania where it was stolen but I'm not gonna tell you how it was stolen like dude you look like a fucking idiot and you're on national television and this isn't going to be your last appearance so get it together maybe instead of like lying and you know using these conspiracy theories to misinform people why don't you actually just I don't know not lie try telling the truth stop being a hack and believing every single fucking thing that Donald Trump and Republican Party media says stop watching OAN stop watching Newsmax like be objective it's it's not that hard stop being stupid so this was um really really a bad look but I'm glad that folks are seeing who Madison Cothorn is you know it doesn't matter how old you are a Republican is a Republican at the end of the day they have no new ideas they just care about delivering for their corporate donors and suppressing votes and really it's all about self-aggrandizement like he didn't run for Congress because he cares about people he ran for Congress because he wants to be in a position of power like if he if I'm wrong about that he can prove me wrong put up some policies sponsor some legislation now that would actually help the American people but he's not going to do that because this dude is a fraud well before I even say anything let me just say stop for a moment scroll down just a little bit and take a look at the like to dislike ratio because I can promise you this is not going to be one of my more popular videos if this video gets more likes than dislikes I will be floored I will literally shit my pants because this is not going to be a very popular topic and I feel like it shouldn't be in theory that controversial but it is because it involves another popular youtuber jimmy door so I mean look folks today we are diving headfirst into a shit storm but I feel like I have to talk about this and I really debated with myself whether or not this was even necessary because I don't like all the leftist infighting that I see and I've acknowledged that I'm kind of a hypocrite because I've contributed to it quite a bit but at the end of the day I asked myself what is the goal of me even talking about politics what is my goal as a leftist and if that goal isn't to advance a leftist agenda then what is the point of all of this if you uh if you actually want to move forward then you've gotta you've gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette so uh that's what we're gonna do that's probably a bad analogy but jimmy door and I have been friends for a very long time and I have nothing against jimmy door personally but what he's doing here genuinely is hurting the left so with peace and love I have to respond to what he's doing because I think that some things are more important than egos than clicks maybe I lose some subscribers some unfollows on twitter so be it because ultimately at the end of the day if I'm not advancing a leftist agenda if we're moving backwards and not forwards then I failed as a political commentator and this stuff is difficult right having a large platform is really really tricky you never really fully adjust to it you never fully you know uh come to terms with the amount of power that you have with the really popular platform and I'm still learning to grapple with it as well but this is so beyond the pale in terms of what is and isn't responsible for a youtube commentator that I have to talk about it so jimmy says I interviewed a member of the boogaloo boys I was completely floored when he said he was pro lgbtq pro black lives matter anti police brutality anti racism anti ice anti war wtf and then he titles the video radicalized michigan anarchist seeks unity with the left now for whatever reason every couple of years we have to remind folks on the left that forming an alliance with fascists and the far right is not a good idea I promise you that's not going to serve our interests are we allowed to talk to these people yes if we challenge them if we try to de-radicalize them so they aren't part of terrorist organizations now just at face value I see this and I think well if you're all of these things why are you part of a far right movement that has literally committed acts of terror the boogaloo boys were part of the effort to kidnap the governor of michigan Gretchen Whitmer because she imposed COVID lockdowns which save lives economically speaking they're damaging I can admit that because the federal government hasn't assisted states and they don't have the pocket of the purse but they're necessary to save lives this is what the boogaloo boys are against so you know it's weird to me that jimmy door is someone who has advocated for a third party because the democratic party is really really difficult if not impossible to reform I think that is a fine argument but if you can't work with liberals I promise you you're not gonna be able to work with far-right extremists such as the boogaloo boys now you're gonna say well Mike I mean he says that he's pro-LGBTQ pro-black lives matter so why can't we work with these folks in fact in this video this individual says that he did security for black lives matter now I don't know about you but if you followed the black lives matter protests especially in rural areas of the country I know in Oregon there were some far-right militia members who were quote-unquote doing security at these events but they weren't protecting black lives matter protesters they were protecting property it didn't seem like you were protecting black lives matter folks as white supremacists yelled at them with bull horns these experiences were common throughout the country so they're gonna tell you one thing but in actuality their motives say something different so to take this at face value is deeply irresponsible and I think that Owen Higgins pointed this out in a really a student analogy he says I interviewed a scorpion I was completely floored when he said he is pro-frog pro not stinging me pro just getting across the river anti-drowning WTF now he's of course referring to the scorpion and the frog analogy where a frog and a scorpion team up to get across the river and the scorpion promises the frog that if he helps him across he's not gonna sting him and then he gets across the river and then the scorpion stings the frog and the frog says why would you sting me what the hell you said you weren't going to sting me well the scorpion says that's just what I do we can't take these folks at face value and if we're going to interview them then it's important that we challenge their beliefs because what you could end up doing wittingly or unwittingly is propaganda at the behest of these extremist groups and they know what they're doing these folks are savvy they know how to use social media they use memes to win people over and as Beth Lynch points out here they lie about their positions in order to garner sympathy this is from their discord I think publicly throwing our support both verbally and on the streets behind anti-ice people and sigh Black Lives Matter could produce a huge shift in public opinion at least in the younger generations so you know they are lying about their positions this group is agitating towards a civil war and either they want one or they think that one is inevitable like it or not and for everything that you need to know about the Boogaloo Boys I would recommend a phenomenal video by Thought Slime where he goes through everything that we know about the Boogaloo Boys this is a loosely ideological organization but the underpinnings of it are fascistic and far right they are extremist and they are not folks who we can work with in fact if we tried to work with them and form some sort of red-brown alliance that would hurt us because they're anti-government if you want policies like Medicare for All if we're truly leftists and we want reparations for Black Americans the government has to be there to facilitate that but what these folks effectively want is no government anarchy not in the traditional anarchist sense you know contrary to popular belief they want a failed state type of system where there is no government and that's not what the left needs and wants you have to understand the way that these groups function and acknowledge that working with them is completely unacceptable and if you want to form an alliance with them you're doing it by throwing all of your Black and Brown comrades and LGBTQ comrades under a bus and sure folks like this guy will claim to be pro-LGBTQ plus but as Thoughtsline points out this group is very strategic they push forward they're less radical members to make everyone else look better now Jimmy Dore responded to criticism that he suspected he'd received because after he interviewed this guy Jerry White called him out on it so he kind of responds to this preemptively I presume this interview that I did with this young man is going to be used to attack me now if you presumed that this interview would be used to attack you and I don't think this is an attack I think this is a constructive critique then why wouldn't you press him on things don't just let him get away with things if he says I'm pro LGBTQ plus I'm pro Black Lives Matter I don't want a civil war wouldn't you ask him well if you're all of these things why would you be in a far right group like the Boogaloo Boys don't they seem kind of antithetical to your purported goals pushback we're not trying to reach out to them of course we want to make working class folks realize that there are class interests that are common but when it comes to far right extremists the response to them if we're going to associate with these folks is to try to de-radicalize them not work with them as they are as they you know are working against us and this interview is not an endorsement of any group because I don't know it doesn't have to be an endorsement it's apologia it's propaganda so like it or not they are going to use this interview as evidence that they're not as bad because they just came on this leftist channel so they can't be as bad as everyone claims how representative this person is of an entire group maybe do some fucking research for just once so I I heard him say he was this is like jimmy seption that's making me uncomfortable he was against the corporate takeover of our government and he was against police brutality now some people are going to switch this to say jimmy door is defending Boogaloo Boy racist white nationalist or whatever I'm not doing that I don't know about the Boogaloo Boys specifically all I know is what that guy told me I'm talking about that guy and so was he so I was talking about my guest on my show who says he's in the Boogaloo Boys and he says that you have to be not a racist you have to be anti-racist to be in the Boogaloo that's what he was saying so just so you know so I know people are going to twist this and say jimmy is defending Boogaloo Boys and jimmy's always the victim jimmy's getting smeared jimmy door is being censored even though the youtube algorithm promotes him far more than anyone else in indie media and it's really frustrating because jimmy door knows better he should know better but I think that the problem as a political commentator like jimmy door that he's finding himself in is that he's kind of backed himself into a corner if you almost always defend fascists and right-wingers but are constantly attacking the left then eventually you attract a certain crowd of people like just a couple of weeks ago he was ruthlessly going after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and she is not above criticism I think that holding her and the squad accountable is something that we should do as leftists because they have power and influence and I think that we need to let them know that they are there to fight at the behest of the left-wing movement that's fine but the response that we see you know when Trump does something bad compared to AOC it's always downplayed by jimmy door well you know Trump is a symptom of the problem well are we going to talk about the actual like cause of the problems are we going to talk about capitalism and the way it corrupts both parties and all of our democratic institutions when do we direct our ire towards the right when do we actually try to build up our allies who we can work with on things such as the squad and so getting to you know the audience that you attract I want to go back to a video that I did this is a video that I did back in 2017 about pizza gate where I dismissed pizza gate I like laugh at it because it's fucking stupid and this was the first video where I received intense pushback more dislikes than likes in fact I'll add to that and this took me off guard right because I had just kind of like blown up on youtube we weren't even at 100,000 subscribers yet but we were growing there growing rapidly and so I thought wait I don't understand why are people disliking this when this is a conspiracy theory that is absolutely outrageously stupid how could people be against this and I actually had cognitive dissonance I thought well you know what it has to be that this video is getting regated but that was unlikely because I put it up and immediately there was a lot of pushback so what I ultimately came to the conclusion of was that I was attracting folks who believe this I was you know it was the election I was dunking on democrats owning the libs attacking Hillary Clinton relentlessly and as a leftist we like to own the libs this is what we do but the problem is that rather than actually speaking to a left-wing audience I was attracting a lot of right-wingers and conspiratorial folks and they found my channel and they thought that I was one of them and so they rebelled against me when I went against their narrative now at this point it was kind of a crossroads for me what do I do right you know I of course have to own the libs and attack the democratic party because they are part of the problem they are you know impediments to progress so I have to criticize them so how do I do this in a way that doesn't make me seem as if I am aligned with right-wingers how do I actually change their minds and the way that you do this is you take every single video that you do and try to embed it with you know a structural critique try to embed it with a structural critique and that's why can't I say that fucking word embed it with a structural critique and you know try to give folks a really broad picture of what's happening and so very quickly I started to pivot make sure that when I talk about democrats and I dunk on democrats it's not because there's this underlying implication that republicans are better it's because capitalism has corrupted our democratic process capitalism is the lowest common denominator it's why you know elections have been commodified it's why political parties have been corrupted it's why even if we were somehow able to get a third party that party within a matter of a decade or so would be corrupted by capitalism because capitalism is a virus I changed the way that I talked about these things because I realized that with this platform I wasn't being responsible enough I was attracting folks and I thought you know maybe it's fine that right wingers watch my channel because you know there's a lot of right wingers in the country and I'm just going to be true to myself but the problem is that I realized I wasn't actually challenging their flawed belief system I wasn't actually challenging conservatism itself when I criticized neoliberalism and so the overall point that I am saying here is that sometimes our audience can box us into a corner and had I chosen to just like pander to these folks to appease them then I would have gone down a completely different path because that's what would you know give me the likes and not the dislikes you know my audience that I had attracted my right wing audience that I had attracted had incentivized me to you know only criticize democrats never talk about capitalism never talk about republicans and I had to make a decision there do I care more about having a platform and being popular or do I genuinely care about educating folks and I hope that you guys can see that I have made an effort to deprogram right wingers not just tell them everything that they want to hear and so I um I'm talking about this because when it comes to Jimmy Dore I want him with peace and love to actually ask himself because I'm assuming he's going to see this video am I contributing to the left wing movement who am I helping more the enemies or my allies and I've had an issue with Jimmy Dore not assisting left wing allies and comrades enough for quite some time we've been friends for a while and back in the Carlos Mazza days behind the scenes him and I had very long conversations and him and I you know disagreed about what should be done with harassment of Carlos Mazza with regard to Steven Crowder Steven Crowder should not be able to monetize hate videos I think that it's justified for him to be demonetized and Jimmy Dore actually came to that same conclusion although I was the one labeled pro censorship but that's neither here nor there but what I tried to do was explain to Jimmy Dore during that time that even if you disagree with Carlos Mazza's assertion that you know Steven Crowder should be de-platformed you can disagree with that but what we need to hear as a straight ally as a gay man what I want to hear is you unequivocally denounce Steven Crowder and we had this conversation Jimmy Dore seemed to really take what I was saying and internalized it and appreciated the advice that I gave him as his gay friend and then the next Saturday on his live stream well what does he do he spends like an hour hour and a half completely bashing Carlos Mazza criticizing Carlos Mazza because in his Twitter bio it says Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist he is a white supremacist and then just completely giving Steven Crowder a pass and the excuse that I remember that really pissed me off was oh well I don't know anything about Steven Crowder this guy's an asshole but you took the time to research Carlos Mazza a truly mind-melting amount of direct harassment really is this what you're complaining it's not funny my family sees this shit oh really really what about the families of the 85,000 kids that have been killed in Yemen what about those families really really this guy what a snowflake this fucking guy is I'm being bullied Carlos Mazza so in this instance if you step back and look at the contribution that Jimmy Dormay to left discourse in the left movement he kind of gave homophobia a pass and criticized Carlos Mazza all because he couldn't get over the fact that Carlos Mazza called for de-platforming something that Jimmy you know disagreed with so there was no nuance there you can't say well I disagree with that but homophobia is wrong and harassing someone using gay slurs is wrong and so we move forward to you know de-platforming Donald Trump getting de-platformed off of Twitter now a lot of folks online will claim that they are pro-free speech but they don't really know what free speech is I think there's a really important conversation to be had about the influence that Big Tech has on our lives and we need antitrust laws to be utilized to the fullest extent we need to break up these platforms nationalize them if necessary try to regulate them as public utilities so that is a different conversation but free speech does not include one's ability to incite a riot and that's what Donald Trump did and there were consequences for that not necessarily with regard to government cracking down on him but private corporations cracking down on him and so a lot of folks went to bat for Donald Trump Jimmy Dorn included they said this was a bad move and that's fine if you are principled and you agree Kyle Kalinsky I think is the most principled person on left tube when it comes to de-platforming but Kyle Kalinsky unlike everyone else actually defends left wingers speaks out when the serfs was de-platformed the same folks who were mad that Trump got de-platformed on the basis of principle said nothing about the serfs getting a video demonetized and when I spoke out about the serfs getting demonetized folks use that as an example that oh we'll see it comes back to bite you in the ass you call for censorship it's gonna affect the left except that's correlation doesn't equal causation and these are two very very different things very different things the serfs did not incite a riot the serfs was covering a video about Paul Joseph Watson that was within YouTube's terms of service and that video was uh falsely uh I believe pegged as like being pro far right or whatever so I got taken down and it was re-instored but the response is never to defend left wingers when they're de-platformed it's just to use left wing de-platforming as an example that right wing de-platforming is bad so I asked myself and I made this point in a video that I didn't post because I don't want to like fan the flames I don't want to like stir up controversy because that's not why I made this channel I made this channel because I believe in leftist policies and I want to advance that agenda and I try to censor myself if I feel as if I'm not advancing that agenda but I made a point that I want folks to listen to in this unreleased video because I think it's something that we all need to ask ourselves and I'm asking myself this question as well I mean podcast hosts I think you all know who I'm talking to I'm very very uh specifically talking to one segment a cluster of podcast hosts and their viewers who all the time it seems as if most of the time they're always criticizing the squad AOC but on top of that they never criticize Republicans never criticize Donald Trump never criticize Fox News and OAN it's always the left they're always punching left and I've got to ask myself if all of this if we step back and look at this and look at the aggregate contribution that they are giving to the cause of leftism it seems as if their contribution is a negative contribution it seems as if they don't really want us to succeed how do we actually achieve progress do we want to even achieve progress it's a legitimate question or are we just trying to you know get people mad because that's what keeps them coming back watching us that's what keeps us you know motivated it's the glue that holds us together I'm asking earnestly I'm asking because I want to know where some people stand and so this is something that I ask people to do earnestly not to like make it seem as if I'm the most purest leftist because we're all human beings we all fuck up from time to time and I hope that Jimmy Dore does this and does some soul searching because the path that he's on is not a good path it looks like he is following in the footsteps of Dave Rubin where in like a year or two we're gonna see a video about him why I left the left I mean the problem is that you can't just like continually throw a grenade and left the circles and then expect us to see you as an ally when it comes to the force the vote thing I was on board with Jimmy Dore's plan to force the vote for Medicare for All I still think that was a good idea I'm disappointed that that uh that plan did not come to fruition but I was really taken aback when I saw Jimmy Dore use my support of force the vote to like bash AOC even human support turned against you in a viral video that we all saw no I didn't turn against her I would like her to utilize this strategy but if she disagrees with this strategy that doesn't make her a sellout it doesn't mean that she doesn't support Medicare for All but Jimmy Dore chose to burn bridges with allies and chose to perpetuate this idea that anyone who disagrees with forcing the vote they must be against Medicare for All when this is the same individual who endorsed Tulsi Gabbard and gave her a softball interview when she moved away from Medicare for All saying oh well you know what she is being really strategically savvy here because you know if we don't get rid of private insurance which is key to the success of Medicare for All because those capitalist forces are like a virus that will eat away at our single-payer system but nonetheless if he said basically if we don't get rid of private insurance then we're kind of defanging the Republican argument well you know how we completely like escape criticism from Republicans just do what they want like that's not the point of fighting for policy so like I'm not saying that Jimmy Dore isn't a fighter of Medicare for All but where was he when we needed him when I criticized Tulsi Gabbard for moving away from Medicare for All and was called a sellout because I criticized Tulsi Gabbard who has truly gone mask off and shown her true colors you know so it's really frustrating because I feel like leftist discourse right now is really fucked up and you have a split due to what may be irreconcilable differences I don't know but here's what I'm gonna say I will never align with fascists no solidarity with the far right no solidarity with fascists and if your collective contribution to the left and left discourse is to more often than not assist and defend the right more so than leftist comrades and allies then either you are wittingly or unwittingly working against the interests of the left and it's time to do some soul searching and I hope that Jimmy Dore does some soul searching and acknowledges that this ain't it this isn't it I care about these things and if saying this like makes me unpopular on the left which it won't because true leftists don't believe we should align with fascists but if saying this like makes me lose subscribers I don't give a shit I care more about the movement and the policies that I want like medicare for all ending wars black lives matter black liberation LGBTQ plus trans rights I care more about all of that than this dumb ass youtube channel I'm gonna use this platform as long as I possibly can to promote good to promote leftist ideas but every once in a while you know maybe we don't do a good job and we've got to recalibrate maybe we attract folks who think that we are meaning things that we don't mean maybe we attract right wingers if we never actually criticize the right wing and only dunk on Democrats and own the libs all I'm saying is that this is I think a turning point and leftist discourse online and we're kind of a niche little thing but still you know this this shouldn't be a thing that we have to revisit every couple of years of course we can't work with with fascists of course we can't work with far-right terrorist organizations we should be trying to help our allies not the people who are against our existence so I'll leave that there I feel like I was rambling and didn't make a lot of sense throughout the course of this my thoughts are kind of scrambled but I just felt like I needed to speak out and get myself on the record because I genuinely believe that years from now we'll look back at this moment as a turning point and either Jimmy Dorr is going to be more responsible with a gigantic platform that he has and actually try to do a good job at promote leftism and not attack the left constantly or you know he'll be doing some PragerU videos you know going on Dave Rubin's show talking about why the left is terrible so yeah that's it here now Senator Lindsey Graham who's the Senate Judiciary here now Senator here now Senator here now Senator here now Senator gotcha bitch gotcha bitch well that is all that I have today thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far as usual before we leave I want to take some time to send a shout out to all of our Patreon PayPal and YouTube members very soon I will be launching a substack and this is something that has grown increasingly popular I don't know how many people like are interested in this but it's just like another option if you want to support the show if you don't like PayPal or Patreon for whatever reason this will be another option I'll let you all know when that does launch but for now like as long as you're watching and if you can like the videos and comment if you're on YouTube then that's great that's all I could ever ask or hope for so yeah I'll see you all next week my name is Mike Figerito this has been The Humanist Report have a nice weekend everyone