 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. 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 Figueredo and this is episode 262 of The Program. Today is Friday, October 16th and before we get started I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes Alexander Perez Lopez, Eric Venuya, Lamone Snyder, Osmin Ozdemir, Per Theron, Songs of Sovereignty, and Thomas. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals if you'd also like to sign up 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. We've got another great show for you today. We will talk about the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett and also Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar call out the GOP's double standard when it comes to religious liberty. Mainstream media finally called out the anti-Trump Republican grifters over at the Lincoln Project and the California Republican Party did what Donald Trump has been accusing Democrats of doing. Also, Breonna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas challenge Noam Chomsky when it comes to whether or not the left should fall in line and vote for Joe Biden. Additionally, I'll make the case for court packing. Nancy Pelosi loses it on Wolf Blitzer. We'll talk about the rise in COVID cases by state and we'll close the show by talking to Christine Olivo who is running for Congress in Florida's 24th Congressional District. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's program. I hope you all will enjoy the show. Let's waste no time and get right to it. Well, as many of you know the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett have started and before we get into what I want to talk about in this particular segment, I just have to point out that someone who tested positive for COVID-19, Mike Lee, was there without a mask. And I just, this is unbelievable because you have the opportunity to do this remotely. Ted Cruz did not show up in person because he was exposed to COVID-19 by who? Mike Lee. But the person who exposed another individual is there while others who were exposed to him are not there. So that in and of itself makes this that much more absurd. But listen, what Republicans are doing and trying to rush this through before the election, this in my opinion is tantamount to court packing. This is what court packing looks like where you do everything in your power to make sure that the ideological tilt on that court goes in your party's favor. That's what they're doing. That's why they held the seat open for almost a year in 2016. And it's why right now they're trying to rush Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation through before the election. So in the event we get another Bush Vigor situation, Trump has the edge. Now, one thing that has been irritating me to no end about this whole situation is the idea that Amy Coney Barrett's religion is untouchable. She's part of this group known as People of Praise, which I think you can argue is culty. I'm not gonna call it a cult explicitly, but it's culty. It's a very, very hard line evangelical Christian branch that is openly homophobic. And people who are supposed to be holding her accountable, Senate Democrats, there's this thinking that if they do this, if they question her religiosity in an attempt to gauge whether or not her religious views will influence the way that she rules when it comes to issues related to women's rights or LGBTQ rights, that they're bigoted for doing this. And that's really frustrating. The same was true with Judge Kavanaugh where there were even some Democrats who were trying to stop other Democrats from criticizing Judge Kavanaugh's affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, which was an extremist Catholic organization that was openly homophobic, again. So I mean, there's this sense that if we dare to question their religion to make sure that they're going to be impartial as justices, that's a bad thing. But AOC made a phenomenal point about why we can't allow them to use their religion as a tool to be shielded from criticism. It's just not fair. She tweeted out, sick and tired of Republicans who co-opt faith as an excuse to advance bigotry and barbarism. Fact is, if today Christ himself came to the floor of Congress and repeated his teachings, many would malign him as a radical and eject him from the chamber. And that is exactly correct. Now she reiterated this point back in February and there's a video of that that she shared and she explains in this video how we can't allow them to use their religion to hold society back. Yes, we want people to be able to freely exercise religion, but you don't get to use your religion and your religious freedom to take away freedom from other people. Take a look at what she has to say. Experiencing this hearing and I'm struggling whether I respond or launch into this question as a legislator or from the perspective of a woman of faith because I cannot, it's very difficult to sit here and listen to arguments in the long history of this country of using scripture and weaponizing and abusing scripture to justify bigotry. White supremacists have done it. Those who justified slavery did it. Those who fought against integration did it and we're seeing it today. And sometimes, especially in this body, I feel as though if Christ himself walked through these doors and said what he said thousands of years ago that we should love our neighbor and our enemy, that we should welcome the stranger, fight for the least of us, that it is easier for a rich man, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into a kingdom of heaven, he would be maligned as a radical and rejected from these doors. And I know, and it is part of my faith, that all people are holy and all people are sacred unconditionally. And that is what makes faith sometimes, that's what prompts us to transform because it is unconditional. It's not about that it is up to us to love parts of people, we love all people. There is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are on the grounds of what their identity is. There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital. There's nothing holy about rejecting a child from a family. There's nothing holy about writing discrimination into the law and I am tired of communities of faith, being weaponized and being mischaracterized because the only time religious freedom is invoked is in the name of bigotry and discrimination. I'm tired of it. My faith commands me to treat Mr. Minton as holy because he is sacred, because his life is sacred, because you are not to be denied anything that I am entitled to, that we are equal in the eyes of the law and we are equal in my faith, in the eyes of the world. And so I just have to get that out ahead of time because it is deeply disturbing, not just what is happening here but what this administration is advancing is the idea that religion and faith is about exclusion. It is not up to us. It is not up to us to deny medical care. It is up to us to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor, to protect children and to love all people as ourselves. That is such a powerful point. The only time religious liberty is invoked is in the name of bigotry and discrimination and that's correct because guess what? When we hear stories about bakers denying service to gay couples, don't want to bake them a wedding cake, what's the excuse that we hear? Well, that's just religious liberty. Okay, the same thing was said to justify slavery, discrimination, segregation. So why do we keep allowing someone to weaponize religion? We shouldn't, that's the thing, but we kind of are and if we give Amy Coney Bear to pass because we don't want to offend her because she's religious, then people who are actually vulnerable and marginalized are going to suffer the consequences. And AOC said there's nothing holy about rejecting medical care. There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital. So understand why this is so important of a point. The people who claim to follow Jesus literally ignore most of his teachings, but if you truly were a follower of your own God, then you wouldn't allow people to go without healthcare in this country. You wouldn't demonize socialized medicine because Jesus was a socialist, right? And another thing, there's this double standard because on one hand, we are always concerned about Christians and making sure they have religious liberty, but Ilhan Omar brings up a phenomenal point saying, let's be clear about this. If a Muslim woman was nominated to the Supreme Court, you would see Republicans lose their mind about her religious background. Sharia law would be trending right now, miss me with the pearl clutching and all this righteous talk about religious freedom and she's exactly right. She is exactly right. Whenever we hear the words religious liberty or religious freedom in the context of talking about civil rights and civil liberties, understand what Republicans are saying. We're talking about the freedom for Christians to remain supreme in America at all times and impose our views on everyone else to make sure that people do what we want them to. So if we think that women shouldn't have abortions, well, our religion says it's wrong. So we're gonna make sure nobody can have it. If we think that gay marriage is a bad thing, because our religion says so, then we're gonna make sure that nobody can have that. Guess what? We have the separation of church and state in this country. It's the First Amendment. So we are not going to be subjected to what your religion is. There are theocracies throughout the world like Saudi Arabia that kill people for being gay, that kill people for being atheists. And I'm not saying that that's what they want, but you have to understand that when you start saying that the laws in this country should be predicated on religion, then that's a problem. And that's not necessarily what they're saying with regard to Amy Coney Barrett, but what they try to do is put her on this pedestal. So that way, since she's religious, she's untouchable. You can't dare to question whether or not her extremist religious beliefs would end up leading to her being biased against a case that comes up when it comes to LGBTQ rights or abortion. No, I think that that's complete horseshit. It is the responsibility of our government to protect marginalized communities from the tyranny of the majority. And most people in this country are Christians, right? The overwhelming majority are Christians. Their religious freedom is not threatened if we ask someone who's going to go on the highest court on the land whether or not their religious extremism is going to lead to them being incapable of being impartial on the Supreme Court. That's all that this is about. So whenever people try to invoke religion to defend the rights such as Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, then we need to remind them that they do not have a license to impose their religion on everyone else. And also point out the fact that it's a little bit convenient that they only invoke their religion as a weapon when they're trying to obtain power or they want to subject others to second-class citizenship. It's unacceptable and we can't let it happen. All right, folks, we've got to talk about the Lincoln Project because they have been getting under my skin. I think, namely, because nobody in mainstream media is doing their job, nobody is challenging them. And as a result, all of their careers have been rehabilitated. Now, for those of you who don't know, I'm sure that most of you who are watching this already know, the Lincoln Project is a super PAC that was created by ex-Bush administration officials and these are right-wing grifters. They are profiting off of the anti-Trump grift. They are much like Anna Navarro on CNN, basically. They became famous for hating Donald Trump even though they're conservatives. So we're supposed to think that they're inherently good because they don't like Donald Trump. Well, I mean, if that's the case, then the bar is much more lower than I had already thought. But the reason why they're getting so much praise is because liberal networks, like MSNBC, are praising them, giving them falling coverage for doing the bare minimum, being anti-Trump. And it's gotten so bad that normies are now starting to buy into this grift. I see people in my own social circles who are centrists and liberals praise the Lincoln Project and talk about how wonderful their ads are and that they've been a bright spot of the 2020 election and that they should know how to clap back on Donald Trump and own him. This is gonna make me lose my mind. We should not be rewarding people who are lucky to not be in jail right now because of the roles that they played in Bush's administration. I mean, I shouldn't be shocked by this because mainstream media has already rehabilitated George W. Bush. He should be in prison right now. So of course, you know, they're gonna rehabilitate the Lincoln Project, but the reason why so many people are buying into the Lincoln Project's grift is because the mainstream media has not chosen to hold them accountable. The only mainstream clip that I've seen where the Lincoln Project is criticized for their role in the Bush administration came from a cartoon. CBS All Access has a show called Tuning Out the News which is surprisingly good and they interviewed Rick Wilson and when they pressed him to explain his role in the Bush administration and how this is a grift, he was speechless. He was visibly irritated by that. Now I can't play the clip for you because if I do, CBS will copyright claim this video even if it's fair use, so I'll link it down below but the point is they haven't been held to account which is why so many people think they must be allies, right? Except finally, in an interview with 60 Minutes, grifters at the Lincoln Project were asked about their role in crafting the current Republican Party because here's the thing like, they can denounce Donald Trump all they want and hate Donald Trump, but they're part of the reason why the Republican Party is so extreme. These are the people who brought us Sarah Palin. These are the people who pushed the Republican Party to use less dog whistles and to be more explicit in embracing xenophobia and racism. So for them to claim the moral high ground and attack Donald Trump for things that they've previously done, I mean, if you've had a genuine change of heart that'd be one thing, but we know what this is about. This is a grift. They're running a super PAC because they wanna make money. They wanna profit off of anti-Trump hysteria. And I get it, Trump is bad, but that doesn't mean we rehabilitate horrible people like the grifters over at the Lincoln Project. So I can't play the clip for you because this is a CBS clip, but I do have the audio for you where she asks them about their role in the current Republican Party. And of course they divert attention away from their culpability and wrongdoing and they try to deflect. This is infuriating to watch. Nonetheless, take a look and then we'll discuss it a little bit more when we come back. And I'm gonna quote their failed strategists who are doing this for the money. The easiest way in the world for a Republican strategist to make money right now is to shut up and say nice things about Donald Trump. So clearly we're in the wrong line of work. But they've also drawn fire from some on the left for their own role in creating the Republican politics they now decry. Do you bear any responsibility, you personally, for bringing the country to where it is? When I look at the party and I see what it's become, I think that I was naive about how deeply embedded the racism issue was in the party. Do you feel at all that you're making amends? In all politics, you can look back on things with honor or regret or what have you. I think I'll look back on this. I think all of us will look back on this as something we did in the cause of the country. So that was infuriating to watch because they're lying. I mean, first of all, credit to 60 Minutes for even pressing them on this. I certainly would have pressed them a little bit harder, but they're lying. They're trying to make it seem as if this isn't a grift when this is nothing more than a grift. They would be on the Trump train if that would yield them more money. Rick Wilson said the easiest way in the world for a Republican strategist to make money right now is to shut up and say nice things about Donald Trump. So clearly we're in the wrong line of work. Oh, it's not a grift. If we were grifting, if we wanted to make money, we'd be pro-Trump strategists, except I don't think so. I don't think so at all. We all know that the way to make money currently is to be a former Republican who hates Donald Trump because that is an open invitation now for you to go on every single mainstream media program to be interviewed about why you hate Donald Trump. That generates interest in why you decided to change and have this ideological shift and then you get a book deal. Ask Omarosa about this. Ask Anthony Scaramucci about this. Ask any other Republican who all of a sudden had this change of heart and doesn't like Donald Trump. I mean, you don't even have to be a former Bush era Republican to jump on this anti-Trump grift. You can be from Trump's administration and then become anti-Trump and then make money off of it. The anti-Trump grift is very lucrative. So they know exactly what they're doing. So for him to lie and say, oh, we'd be pro-Republican if we really wanted to make money, nobody believes you. Now, Steve Schmidt said, when asked if they bear any responsibility for the current state of the Republican Party, which they do, but basically he says, no. He says, when I look at the party and see what it's become, I think I was naive about how deeply embedded the racism issue was in the party. Is that so? You were naive about how racist the Republican Party was. Is this the same party who during Hurricane Katrina Bush did fuck all to help out people, mostly black people who were drowning? Is this the same party who did push polling back in the 2000 Republican primaries to use racism against their own people? I mean, Bush literally push-pulled against McCain and asked Republican Party primary voters whether or not they would feel more or less inclined to vote for John McCain if he had an illegitimate black son. Like this party, their forte has been racist dog whistles for decades now. They've been preying on America's xenophobia and racism and all of a sudden you're gonna claim that you were naive. I mean, you don't even have to look at the former presidents that the Republican Party has produced, but look at who's risen to prominence. You're full of shit. You're full of shit. Now, they're lying and we have receipts to prove that they're lying because this Twitter account shows that at least Rick Wilson isn't some exception to the Republican Party's terrible behavior. They are as bad as the average Republican is. So here he is responding to a tweet about anti-abortion propaganda suggesting that he'd probably be even more authoritarian than Donald Trump. Here he is saying, I don't care what flavor of Islam these dicks are, the flavor they need to be is bleeding out of a hole in their temple, literally calling for Muslims to be killed. He also implied that families of victims of the new town shooting are crisis actors and there's a lot more where that came from. These people are not good people. These people are part of the reason why the modern Republican Party is so insane, why they're a death cult now. And the worst part is the fact that they helped send us to war in Iraq. And I think that David Cerrota put it best in this concise tweet. I helped start the Iraq war and turned the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp crushing millions of workers. But here's my Lincoln Project video of Trump farting with curb your enthusiasm music. So please send me 50 million and make me an MSNBC pundit on Brian Williams' show. That's exactly it. And then the media does just that, gives them a pass. And that's deeply, deeply frustrating. At the rate we're going, I would expect Donald Trump to be fully rehabilitated like within two years after he's out of office because we saw how quickly the media flipped their tune Rachel Maddow, at least, when they found out that he got COVID-19. All of a sudden, we're praying for the president. We totally are wishing you well, Mr. President. You're a fighter. I mean, look, if you actually want the Republican Party to not be this fucking insane, and I'm talking to the media pundits who definitely watch this program, stop rehabilitating Bush-era war criminals. Actually draw a line and have some fucking standards, more so than just, oh, they're anti-Trump, so they're friends. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. No, that's not how it works in actuality. The enemy of your enemy is a grifter who is allowing rubes to send them money who are liberals who are anti-Republican all because they're preying on anti-Trump hysteria. I mean, this just makes me lose faith in humanity that people fall for it, but I think that a lot of people genuinely don't know about how nefarious the Lincoln Project is, but because there's so much people who don't know about how terrible they are, it's incumbent on me and people like me with a platform to let people know these are not individuals who are to be trusted. And I could see them trying to butter up Biden in order to weasel their way into his administration to turn this grift into a long-term opportunity to do even more terrible policies, to influence Joe Biden, to do more shitty things that we don't like, to make the Democratic Party, the Republican Party of the 2000s since the modern day Republican Party is basically full on authoritarian and fascist. I mean, we can't let that happen. So we've got to sound the alarm and let people know these folks aren't to be trusted. These are grifters and they don't care about you. They don't care about the country. They're not even anti-Trump. They're just taking a particular position because it's lucrative for them to do so. This is all about self-aggrandizement. This is all about them making a lot of money and getting a lot of attention and probably getting a book deal after this, if not a job in Biden's administration. So don't trust them. And whenever you see someone praising the Lincoln Project to make sure that you let them know these people are bad people, they are the reason why we have a Donald Trump today. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been screaming about the likelihood that voter fraud will end up rigging the 2020 election. In spite of the fact that in actuality, the real voter fraud rate is 0.0025% according to a Washington Post study. So it's not that they're actually fearful of voter fraud, but they want to justify more draconian measures that would suppress the vote. It's why they institute voter ID laws. It's why they reduce the number of polling stations in communities that are disproportionately black and brown. It's why they try to make sure that as few people vote as possible because they know that if turnout is high, they're gonna lose that election. So they have to resort to attacking democracy directly and lying in order to hang onto power. But in an effort to prove, I guess, how likely voter fraud is, we have a situation where they potentially are breaking laws themselves. So as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams reports, California's top election official is investigating reports that the state's Republican Party has set up unauthorized ballot drop boxes posing as official in several major counties in illegal practice that could deceive voters into depositing their ballots at unsecure locations. Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes, especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes, is not just misleading to voters. It's a violation of state law. California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, said in a statement, responding to reports of unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange counties. As the local Orange County Register reported late Sunday in a photo posted to social media last week, a young man wearing a mask with Orange County congressional candidate, Michelle Steele's name on it, is holding a mail ballot and giving a thumbs up next to a box about the size of a file cabinet labeled official ballot drop box. The post from Jordan Teig, a regional field director for the California Republican Party, encouraged people to message him for convenient locations to drop their own ballots, the Register reported. That was just one of several instances of potentially illegal election activity by Republican officials that has been reported in recent days. On Saturday night, the Register noted, reports emerged of a metal box in front of Freedom's Way Baptist Church in Castaic that had a sign matching the one on the Orange County box. The church posted on social media that the box was approved and brought by the GOP, the Register reported. The post said church officials don't have a key to the box and that the GOP officials pick up the ballots. On its website, the Fresno County Republican Party also shared a list of secure ballot locations. None are official County drop box sites with the local GOP instead listing its own headquarters, multiple gun shops and other local businesses. Under California state law, only County election officials are authorized to set up ballot drop boxes to ensure adequate security. So this is not surprising to me. It's not surprising at all, but it's a little bit ironic that they're doing this now after screaming about the problems that ballot harvesting, otherwise known as ballot collecting, poses to our democracy. Ballot collecting basically allows someone who is sanctioned by the state to pick up the ballots of elderly and disabled voters and drop them off at secure locations. But here what they're doing is they're just saying, look, we have our own drop off sites, so feel free to drop them off even if they're not necessarily official and they may be insecure. I mean, this is a hacky point, but I'm gonna make it anyway. Imagine if Democrats did this. This would be evidence that voter fraud is a thing. The Democratic Party is cheating. They're tampering with votes. They're trying to create these insecure ballot drop-off locations so they can go through them and figure out who's the Republican and throw those ballots in the garbage. That's exactly what they would be saying, but when they do it, it's perfectly fine. Even if it's illegal, oh, they're Republicans, so we trust them. Our team would never do anything wrong. It's only the Democrats who would commit voter fraud. It's only the Democratic Party who does election fraud, which are two different things, by the way. It's never the Republican Party. This is deeply, deeply frustrating and there's a reason why we shouldn't trust them with our ballots if you're in California. Again, this is the party that constantly engages in voter suppression and that doesn't mean that Democrats don't also engage in voter suppression. They do this a lot during the primaries, but Republicans are open about the fact now that they have to suppress the vote in order to win elections. They don't say that explicitly, but their actions are very clear. I mean, look at what they just did in 2018. As Secretary of State, Brian Kemp oversaw his own race. He did not recuse himself and what happened? Well, conveniently, hundreds of thousands of voters were purged who registered to vote. And he won, narrowly, but he still won. They do anything they can to win, even if that means destroying democracy and they do all of this while accusing Democrats of being the ones that are rigging elections. Now, I mean, they certainly know how to fuck over progressives. I'm not denying that, but when it comes to the general election, then it's the Republicans who always try to do everything in their power to suppress the vote. There's a reason why they never say get out and vote or they rarely do. If they do, they speak specifically to the Republican base, but do you think they honestly want more people to get out and vote? Do you honestly think that they want to enhance democracy, bring more states into the union, make DC a state, Puerto Rico a state? Of course not. Because if we further enhance our democracy, Republicans lose more elections. So the only way they hold onto power is to make sure that the other side is demoralized, disenfranchised, and that's how they win. But when they do stuff like this, nothing to see turn away. Trump probably won't tweet about this or if he does, he'll blame Democrats for it or Democratic Party voters for it. It's just, it's ridiculous. So make sure that you double check before you drop off your ballot in the selection that you're taking it to a secure location because you can't not be extra rigorous with your vote this time because of everything that's going on because of Trump's postmaster general, Louis Joye doing a lot of shenanigans that could potentially delay your vote from getting counted or whatnot. Don't take any chances, double check. And a lot of states have online systems where once you drop off your ballot, you can check to confirm that it's been counted. My state of Oregon has this. So once I send in my ballot, I can see that my vote was counted. I think that it's really important that you take these precautions to make sure that your vote is heard because if there is a way that they can disenfranchise you, they're going to do it. And you don't really have to worry about this in really deep blue states as much. But in red states or red counties in blue states, which may be the case in California to shift local elections in their favor, they're going to do that. So you really have to be careful and be cognizant of the fact that you have to take your vote into your own hands and make sure you triple check everything. Make sure you filled it out properly. Make sure that you dropped it off at a secure location and check online at the website that your vote was in fact received and ultimately counted. So I've got a little bit of a spicy topic that I want to get into, but I think that it is really interesting. This video, this series of clips that I'm about to play for you, it struck a chord with me because I think this conversation, even though it is inherently divisive, I think it's important. I think it's worthwhile to explore because of everything that's at stake in this election. So Noam Chomsky, someone who I respect, he's to the left of Joe Biden obviously and to the left of Bernie Sanders even, he appeared on a podcast with hosts that I am a huge fan of. Brianna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas. They have a new podcast called The Bad Faith Podcast and they interviewed Noam Chomsky and they basically challenged him to explain why he believes it's so important for the left to vote for Joe Biden. Even if that may yield a short-term benefit, that's undeniable because of course we have to defeat Donald Trump. In the long term, are we actually doing more harm than good because by falling in line every single election, are we basically telling the Democrats, no matter what you do, no matter how shitty you become, you're always going to have our votes. So this is what Brianna Joy Gray asked Noam Chomsky and let's listen to his answer. What are the long-term consequences of everybody on the broad left, Democrats, liberals, everyone, saying that under any circumstances, we will vote for a Democratic candidate as long as they are incrementally better than the Republican candidate. Does that way of thinking contribute to the right word shift of the Democratic Party over years? And what mechanism will ever stop that shift if we're not willing to ever under any circumstances leverage our votes? What you're saying if you think it's through is we should help Trump win because maybe in the long run, that'll affect the Democratic Party. That's a terrible choice. Helping Trump win as you're proposing would mean four more years of destruction of the environment, getting possibly to tipping points, which would be irreversible, certainly making any effort to deal with it very difficult. It would mean stacking the judiciary with young, ultra-right lawyers top to bottom so that nothing would be possibly done for a generation and I can go on and on. I don't think that's a wise choice just on the hope that maybe sometime in the long term, the Democratic Party will pay attention to the fact that you're part of the 50% of non-voters. I take the multi-generational threat very seriously. As a black American whose family members have been living as a third tier in American society, my mother was born into an America that didn't recognize her basic human rights. In 1960, she's a relatively young woman. And so what concerns me is the way in which the vote blue, no matter who think mindset basically privileges more recent concerns that are equally grave as more longstanding concerns that are built in the status quo and says, we have to vote for X candidate to prevent X ill from happening. At the same time, those who have suffered under the status quo never seem to get an opportunity to have their issues heard. That was interesting. But before I tell you my thoughts about that segment, I wanna get to one more clip where Noam Chomsky brings up what's at stake. He says, you know, this is about survival. And then Brianna Joy Gray brings up the fact that, I mean, people already are going to die regardless of the outcome of this election. You know, I mean, people, their situation will not be improved, which is why they feel disinclined from voting. Listen to what Noam Chomsky says. Now we have a simple question. Do you want your grandchildren to survive? I think the people you're talking to say, yes, I want my grandchildren to survive. So many people's grandchildren are already not surviving. That's the issue. You want to ensure that they'll live underwater or have a chance to survive. So many people aren't thinking about living underwater because they're incarcerated or they're unhomed. Then as an activist, your goal is to make, get them to think about it. Because that is what is at stake. Okay. So there's one more clip that I'm going to get to with Virgil Texas asking Noam Chomsky about capitalism. But before we talk about that, I want to discuss the two clips that we just watched because I think that it's really important that Brianna Joy Gray pressed Noam Chomsky because he has talked about the importance of, you know, voting for Joe Biden. But here I think her pressuring him to really explain himself further made him be more clear in a way that actually resonated with me further. So basically the way that he talks about voting for Joe Biden, you can tell that he's not trying to gaslight you, right? He's discussing the uncertainty of his strategy and the left strategy who don't intend on voting for Joe Biden, which matters to me because when I hear people trying to make the case for Joe Biden, you know, they instinctively knowing that the left is very, you know, policy driven say, look, just look at Joe Biden's platform. You may think he sounds like a neoliberal and he's been a neoliberal, but his platform is super progressive. But that's not persuasive because we all know that politicians don't pay attention to their platform. In fact, I'd argue that Joe Biden probably doesn't even know what's on his platform. So that's not persuasive to me. So if you're gonna make the case for Joe Biden in a way where you're not invoking Donald Trump and you're trying to sell us on Joe Biden specifically, that to me seems inherently disingenuous and it just doesn't land. But what Noam Chomsky says here, that actually does resonate with me because he's talking about the inherent uncertainty of his strategy and our strategy, which is important because none of us are infallible. You know, we are all trying to do the best that we can. We are in good faith making a decision to vote that will ultimately lead to a better society. But neither Chomsky or Breonna Joy Gray are guaranteed that society based on how they vote. The entire situation is up in the air, right? So when it comes to voting for Joe Biden, you know, if you vote third party, Noam Chomsky says, you know, if you do that, maybe in the long run, it'll affect the Democratic Party. But he says, I don't think that's a wise choice just on the hope that sometime in the longterm, the Democratic Party will pay attention to the fact that you're part of the 50% of non-voters. Now, here's why that is appealing to me. And basically pointing to the flaws in my own strategy. Because if you look back to my videos in 2016, I was on board with voting third party. I was enthusiastically supporting Jill Stein. But by voting for Jill Stein to send a message to the Democratic Party, there's no guarantee that that is going to actually yield the results that we want. We're basically hoping that if we make a big enough stink, Democrats are going to listen to us. But within that four years between voting for Jill Stein and this election, we have learned definitively that Democrats do not give a shit about what the left wants. Joe Biden is our nominee. If the left had a big enough say, Bernie Sanders would be the nominee right now. But on top of that, you know, Noam Chomsky is also tacitly admitting that his strategy in and of itself isn't going to guarantee a victory as well, right? Because this is about survival. He goes on to say, do you want your grandchildren to have a chance to survive? And inherent in that language is not an assumption that we will guarantee ourselves a specific future if we vote for Joe Biden, just that there's a chance. There's already going to be a lot of people that die, regardless of the outcome of this election. But can we reduce harm to the extent where it's worthwhile to vote for Joe Biden? And you know, his conclusion ultimately is yes. So when you kind of accept that the future itself is grim, regardless of the outcome, I think it makes it a little bit more easier to make your decision. And it's why I ultimately have begrudgingly decided to vote for Joe Biden. Because I've kind of accepted the grim reality that one, the Democratic Party genuinely is uninterested in what the left wants. And no matter who we vote for, that's not going to influence their policies because at the end of the day, their donors will dictate what they want. That's number one. Number two, if we accept that the outcome is neoliberalism, no matter what, if Joe Biden wins, we get neoliberalism. If Donald Trump wins, we get neoliberalism. Once we accept that grim reality, then we try to determine what factors do we actually have influence over? And the real decision is do we want fascism or not? Because we're getting neoliberalism. We're getting neoliberalism regardless whether we like it or not. So do we want neoliberalism or neoliberalism plus fascism? And what Chomsky said that really resonated with me was the fact that there are so many people not voting 100 million people sitting out this election. And if 100 million non-voters aren't making a big enough or sending a big enough message to the Democratic Party to get them to change, a fraction of leftist voting third party isn't going to be enough to get them to pay attention. They just don't care. They don't care. So the reason why all of this has led to me voting for Joe Biden, not because of this video, but beforehand is because I want to try to do what I can to control the situation. If we're in free fall, if there's going to be damage done no matter what, if there's going to be deaths no matter what, I'm going to try to take actions to minimize the deaths and destruction. At least with Joe Biden, we can expect him to handle COVID-19 better than Donald Trump. Not saying that I would agree with his handling of it 100%, but I know for sure he would do a better job than Donald Trump even if his actions were no different. If he just stopped spreading misinformation that alone would save lives. So that's one reason why I think that this gives us a chance at survival, as Noam Chomsky puts it. Furthermore, even if Joe Biden is terrible, even if we replace Joe Biden with Mitt Romney, the difference between Trump and other Republicans is that Trump is very explicit in his attacks on democracy. And Republicans already got away with stealing the election from Democrats in 2000. So if Trump actually does what his lawyers are gearing up to do and try to get a Republican legislature to appoint their own electors to the electoral college to overturn the will of voters in a particular state if it's close, then democracy is functionally dead at that point because if they can get away with it in this election, they're going to do it in the future because Republicans know they can't win if people actually make their voices heard, which is why they're always suppressing the vote. But if they see that literally stealing an election is how they can win, then in the future we won't have a chance to elect someone who's progressive. It's not an option. Ignore the fact that Democrats aren't going to listen to us, but we won't even have a chance to make our voices heard and be disappointed, which is why I agree with Chomsky that it made me decide to vote for Joe Biden and listen, when I came to that realization but a month or so ago that I'm going to vote for Joe Biden, it literally caused me to be depressed. Not just how I feel down, like I genuinely felt actually clinically depressed. It's that bad because upon acknowledging that I will be doing this, voting for Joe Biden, basically betraying what I feel is my own principles, I'm accepting this grim reality that it doesn't matter who we elect, we're getting more neoliberalism, but this is basically me trying to stop fascism. Now I get people will say, but Mike, you live in a blue state, so it really doesn't matter. But after everything that's taken place with the wildfires and all of the division in Portland with Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, and anti-fascist protesters, with everyone being this polarized and more galvanized than ever, I just don't want to risk it. But also, more importantly, I can't just sit here and say, I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden in a safe blue state, but if you're in a swing state, you better vote for Joe Biden because we definitely don't want Trump to win. Like somebody pointed this out to me in my personal life, who I trust, who watches this show and said, Mike, you have to understand why that's kind of a fucked up thing to say, because you're basically saying, look, I don't ever have to vote for Joe Biden, I could be perfectly principled and feel great because I never have to vote for Joe Biden because I live in a blue state, but I have this expectation that people in swing states vote for Joe Biden so we can ultimately defeat Donald Trump. So you're expecting other people to do what they don't want to do so you can just comfortably in your safe state say, I didn't vote for Joe Biden, I didn't bring on any of this, but that is kind of a shitty thing to do, especially given how large my platform is, because back in 2016, my platform was small. Like I was an up and coming YouTuber with like 50,000 subscribers, I think, in 2016. Now we have six times the people following. So somebody who lives in a swing state might see me talk about not wanting to vote for Joe Biden, how I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden, they might think, well, fuck it, if you're not going to vote for Joe Biden, I don't want to vote for Joe Biden. So just me individually as a podcast host, I feel as if I have a responsibility and I don't want to be a useful idiot to Republicans. I don't want to enable fascists, right? Because at the end of the day, we're not going to get socialism by not voting for Joe Biden. So I have to try to figure out what I do to stop the suffering from taking place. And for now, we just put a pause in the apocalypse for about four years with Joe Biden. We're not going to save the country, but we get a little bit of time to breathe. And I know the response will be, but Mike, look at what happened during the Obama years. I mean, the Democratic Party is based on to sleep. And to that I say, that's fine. Go to sleep while the left remains activated and engaged because while they're all sleeping and thinking everything is fine and peachy keen and everything's copacetic in the country, we're going to be dominating primaries. Hopefully we'll stay engaged and be active while they are out at brunch. That's my thinking. And maybe that isn't a guaranteed thing that will happen, but we've got a chance because again, we're not working with certainties here. And that's what Chomsky said that really resonated with me. None of us know. None of us know what's going to be the catalyst that ultimately facilitates change. We don't know. We're just working with probability. Everything that we do, either voting for Biden or voting for third party gives us a probability of getting a particular outcome that we desire, but it's not a foregone conclusion. It's not guaranteed. So that's why I think that when I crunch all of the numbers in my head and I play out these scenarios, I have to make sure that I do what we can to defeat Donald Trump. Even if I absolutely loathe Joe Biden and voting for him will make me feel like shit because he's a terrible human being and I'll feel responsible for everything that he does. But I accept that responsibility and I accept that we have to push to get electoral reform because between 2016 and now, Democrats complain about spoilage and how the Green Party is the spoiler, but they don't do anything to get a brain choice voting. But also, the burden is on us who vote third party, who support the Green Party and a new people's party to get third party as well. Because I don't want to just keep voting for a third party because Democrats suck. I want to vote for a third party that can win. And we can't do that unless the left gets serious about electoral reform and pushes HR 4000, which would get ranked choice voting nationally, among other things, right? And Earl Blumenar just cosponsored that legislation on October 1st. So unless the left is serious about pushing legislation that is going to actually get ranked choice voting, then you can't skip the step and just start trying to make a third party become relevant. Like I don't want to vote for a party that will be obscure and irrelevant. I want to vote for a third party that's capable of winning. And so we have to come up with a plan and be introspective about whether or not what we did in 2016 worked. And I don't think, you know, people who voted for Jill Stein, myself included, are responsible for Trump's victory because we are lucky enough to have two spoilers, you know, one on each side with the libertarian party who gets more of a vote. So I wouldn't vote shame anyone and say you're a piece of shit if you don't vote for Joe Biden, but for me because I have a large platform and I feel a responsibility to not enable the Republican party because I feel as if, you know, I don't want to take a chance. Even if I think Oregon's going to go blue, I'm not going to risk it because Trump is a fascist and he's literally trying to consolidate his power. I feel compelled to vote for Joe Biden, even if I hate him. I feel like we can't allow our dissatisfaction with the Democratic party to enable fascism. And look, it is correct that the situation will continue to get worse. If Joe Biden doesn't actually address the factors that led to Donald Trump in the first place and actually pay attention to the material conditions in the country that leads to widespread dissatisfaction and radicalization, both on the left and the right, with the right now nurturing towards fascism, then, you know, things will get worse. But what voting for Joe Biden does, in my opinion, it doesn't give me a chance to pressure him to move left, even though, of course, we'll attempt that. But I'm not holding my breath. I don't think Joe Biden is going to listen to anything that the left says because he doesn't give a shit. I'm not under that, you know, delusion. But voting for Joe Biden in a way just basically gives us a chance, a little bit higher of a percentage of clinging to life, surviving a little bit longer because mass suffering is going to ensue no matter what. But maybe with Joe Biden, there's a little bit less mass suffering, a little bit less death and destruction. Maybe we get COVID-19 under control. Maybe the left gets hyperactive while centrists go to sleep. Maybe. It's not a foregone conclusion. It's not a guarantee. But it's a big enough maybe that makes me feel as if that's what we have to do, at least until the left comes together in some way to really push for electoral reform. Because, again, I want a third party. I don't want just a third party. I want five or six parties. But I don't want to just vote for a party that will never win. And the left talks more about wanting a new party than getting electoral reform, which is necessary for a third party. So until the left actually starts really pushing for ranked-choice voting and does to HR4000 what they did to HR676, which was the Medicare for All bill, and get everyone in Congress who's a Democrat to co-sponsor basically, then voting for a third party isn't going to be enough, especially if we're just saying, I'm voting because I want these policies reflected in law because Democrats don't care. They're not listening to us. So that's my conclusion. And ultimately people may disagree with it, but at the end of the day, that's my choice. And it's just what I think will be the best decision given the shitty set of circumstances. It's not a desirable outcome, but no outcome is desirable at this point. So I'm just voting for a chance, a chance and maybe turning things around, even if that chance may not necessarily be very likely. It's a big enough chance because any chance is worthwhile given how bad things have gotten. Okay, now moving on to the last clip, we spent a lot of time on that. Virgil Texas asks about capitalism and participating within the capitalist system, it kind of enables it in a way. Noam Chomsky had a really good answer for this and I'll tell you why I agree with him. If these institutions, if these capitalist institutions result in recurring ecological crises and existential ones as they do, then isn't the real fight against those institutions instead of a reform that maybe gets us over the hump in 30 years, if it were possible to lobby those in power through activism, some kind of brokering, those who are beholden to the profit motive, even if it destroys the environment? We have maybe a decade or two to deal with the environmental crisis. Is there the remotest chance that within a decade or two, we'll overthrow capitalism? It's not even a dream, okay? So the point that you're raising is basically irrelevant. Of course, let's work to try to overthrow capitalism. It's not gonna happen like that. There's a lot of work involved. Meanwhile, we have an imminent question. Are we going to preserve the possibility for organized human society to survive? Are we gonna preserve the possibility for us to work to overthrow capitalist institutions? Or are we gonna say, it's hopeless. Let's quit. I prefer the first. What Chomsky says here, he's being realistic and he's accepting the grim situation, the reality, right? We have like a decade or two to act on climate change and literally save the planet from us all going extinct. We're not going to have enough time to overthrow capitalism, abolish capitalism and then take on climate change. That's just not realistic. And we talked about this over the weekend if you watched my interview with Liam O'Mara. There's no single bill in Congress that is going to get rid of capitalism in one fell swoop. We just have to keep pushing towards more publicly funded policies and away from privatization, right? It's like a neoliberal cult where we see everything in society become commodified including elections, healthcare, even Supreme Court appointments now. They rule not on what the Constitution wants but based on the interests of big business because the Supreme Court, they're just a bunch of ideologues. So I mean, we're not gonna get rid of capitalism quick enough to stop climate catastrophe. So what we have to do in the meanwhile is fight to, as Chomsky puts it, preserve the possibility of organized human society and preserve the possibility to work to overthrow capitalism because we're not working with guarantees. We're operating here with a lot of uncertainty and by getting Donald Trump out and voting for Joe Biden that at least preserves the possibility that we have a chance to maybe elect someone who's better than Biden down the line or have a chance to survive. And again, that's not because I think that Joe Biden is going to be a savior. It's because Donald Trump is going to do so much harm even if Joe Biden will also do harm and grant more permits to frackers. It's going to be less harm than Donald Trump. And I get that this is the lesser of two evils argument and theoretically if you keep voting for the lesser of two evils you can expect them to get worse and worse. But I think that if you don't vote for the lesser of two evils then we learned after 2016, they'll still get more and more evil and the situation overall will just get worse and worse. But we all told ourselves that if we stop voting for the lesser of two evils then maybe the evils won't be so bad but that didn't bear out. We couldn't get the greens to 5%. Only one state has ranked choice voting and the left is deeply unorganized right now. We have a lot of people battling each other. We're at odds. We have people who are saying we can only reform the Democratic Party and other people saying we have to pursue a third party but I feel frustrated because nobody is doing what it takes to get that third party viable. And meanwhile, while we're all bickering about all of this, the fascists are getting more and more popular. So I feel like we're back into a corner and we've run out of options. So look, I'm not gonna vote or shame anyone. I think that your vote is ultimately your choice and I'm not gonna persuade you but I do feel as if because I have a large platform it is incumbent on me to be responsible in using my platform and to be open and honest. I have to be open and honest. I'm gonna vote for Joe Biden and it feels really terrible admitting this but I feel like there's not really anything else that's gonna change the situation. I want a third party. I want socialism. I want Medicare for all but letting the fascists win is not going to be conducive to getting the things that I want implemented. So all we can do right now is try to mitigate damage, put a pause on the apocalypse and authoritarianism that Trump has openly stated he wants and just attempt to buy ourselves a little bit more time in hopes that we can come up with a better plan to survive if Biden gets elected. I don't believe we're gonna be able to influence him but that extra four years where we're not fighting to survive with the pandemic and everything else that we're faced maybe the left can get a little bit more organized and come together and figure out what do we do? We've got four years to act. What do we do going forward? If we wanna go with the third party about how do we do that? How do we make sure that we get rank choice voting on the ballot in every state where they have referendums as a possibility? How do we make sure we take over the Democratic Party more so than we already have? You know, we've got our foots in the door but that's not enough. We just need a little bit more time to try to craft a strategy because right now the left is just too disorganized and there's just not enough people to vote third party to where it's gonna make a difference with regard to the Democratic Party because again, if they're gonna take any kind of a message you'd think it'd be from the 100 million people who stay home every single election cycle but the fact that they're ignoring all of those potential voters tells you that we need a better strategy than figuring out how to influence the Democratic Party. And when I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 I wasn't voting specifically because I wanted to influence the Democratic Party. It was a sincere vote for someone who I agreed with and I wanted those policies reflected in law but at the same time the circumstances have changed and my strategy there has not led to me getting any closer to getting policies that I want. If anything, we're further away now with a neoliberal nominated someone who's not more progressive than Bernie Sanders. So that's where we're at. That's where I'm at. I think that, you know, Noam Chomsky in everything that he says he really highlights the uncertainty of the situation. We don't know what's going to be the best strategy right now but what we do know for sure is that we don't have a lot of options and we certainly don't have a lot of time. So I'm not sure how many of you have been tuning in to the confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett but if you've missed any of it, don't worry. I've got you covered with some highlights in this video but before we get to that I've just got to point out that the fact that Senate Democrats are participating in this process at all is deeply irritating to me because if it were up to me they would be boycotting all of these hearings because to even participate is a tacit endorsement that the process itself is legitimate when it's not legitimate. This is an illegitimate process. This is an attempt by a Republican Party who said we don't fill Supreme Court seats during an election year to rush through this confirmation process before the election and to even allow them to go on as if this is a normal process it's just, it's so frustrating but of course Democrats participated and what we saw were some good questions but not as aggressive as I would have liked of course but I don't know what could satisfy me other than just outright rage against Amy Coney Barrett but I've got to share Diane Feinstein's opening with Amy Coney Barrett because it was very, it was very on brand you could say for Democrats. Judge, it's wonderful to see you here also with the family that I have been observing they sit still, quiet, you've done a very good job. I have eyes in the back of my head so they know I'm watching. I was wondering if you might introduce us to them. Sure, so I have my husband Jesse, my son JP, my daughter Emma, my daughter Juliet, my daughter Tess, my daughter Vivian and my son Liam and then behind them are my six siblings who are with me today. I'll start the side right behind Vivian it's my sister Vivian, my sister Eileen, my brother Michael, my sister Megan and my sister Amanda and it's Carrie in the room and my sister Carrie is sitting right over there. You don't have a magic formula for how you do it and handle all the children and your job and your work and your thought process which is obviously excellent, do you? It's improv. Yes, yes. Look, I'm not saying that Diane Feinstein or any Democrat should open their questioning if they're gonna show up at all with thank you so much for showing up Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Let me just say first of all, fuck you and fuck the Republican party. Like I'm not expecting you to do that but I mean consider the fact that Republicans didn't even give Merrick Garland a single hearing and you just go along with whatever they want now. Look, they're running out of the tools that they can use to block this. I get it. Are there things that they can do? Yes, they can make a big stink about this. They could do more than what they have been doing but I mean, if you're gonna show up, don't kiss their ass, it's just, it's nauseating. But I mean, I'll admit that's not very substantive and maybe that's me just being petty but after everything that the Republican party has done to steal a Supreme Court seat from Democrats and they still go along with them throughout this process that's completely rigged and illegitimate, it's just, I find it frustrating. Now we don't know much about Amy Coney Barrett because she doesn't have a very long judicial record. So what we are learning about her at these confirmation hearings is crucial. It's crucial. I don't think it's going to change the trajectory of this process. I think she'll likely be confirmed. I'd be surprised if she didn't get confirmed but I mean regardless, we have to learn about her. One thing that we know for sure is that she is subscribed to a very antiquated way of interpreting the Constitution that is just completely irrational and unsustainable. Justice Scalia, he was an originalist, right? Yes, he was. People say that you're a female Scalia, what would you say? I would say that Justice Scalia was obviously a mentor and as I said when I accepted the president's nomination that his philosophy is mine too. He was a very eloquent defender of originalism and that was also true of textualism which is the way that I approach statutes and their interpretation and similarly to what I just said about originalism, for textualism the judge approaches the text as it was written with the meaning it had at the time and doesn't infuse our own meaning into it. But I wanna be careful to say that if I'm confirmed you would not be getting Justice Scalia, you would be getting Justice Barrett. Oh, well, thank God I feel so much better. I mean, she basically is the female equivalent of Judge Scalia. If you are an originalist or strict constructionist, whatever you wanna call it, you're gonna be doing the same things that Scalia did and let me tell you why this judicial philosophy is completely irrational. You have to have a view of the Constitution that allows it to be a living document that adapts with changing circumstances, okay? You want the Constitution to be somewhat rigid, you want it to be bendable, but if it's not bendable, if you try to bend it, it could snap and then become illegitimate. So what you wanna do is you don't want to interpret the Constitution in a way where you have to try to figure out and psychoanalyze what the founders were thinking exactly when they wrote it. I mean, you can believe reasonably so that there are rights that emanate out of certain clauses of the Constitution and apply those rights to modern day circumstances, but to not do that, you'd be an originalist and that's what she is. So an originalist is basically code for I am going to justify my imposition of extremist far-right views on the rest of society by saying I can't do anything because the Constitution, unless the Constitution, that is, says explicitly that we should be doing this or it says explicitly that there should be a particular right. Now, let me explain to you why this is not a legitimate way to interpret the Constitution because the entire premise of judicial review is not in the Constitution. Do you wanna know what the founders said about the Supreme Court having the ability to strike down laws that are unconstitutional? Nothing. The reason why the Supreme Court has the ability to do judicial review, to exercise their ability to strike down unconstitutional laws is because of Marbury versus Madison. So is the entire ability of the Court to strike down unconstitutional laws in and of itself not something that you should be exercising as a potential Supreme Court justice since it's not explicitly laid out in the Constitution? Furthermore, the founders couldn't have possibly predicted the invention of new technologies, the internet. So when it comes to a case of internet privacy, encryption, I don't know, new technology that wasn't around back when the Constitution was ratified, how are you possibly going to look to the Constitution and what the founders intended for guidance when it's not there? You can't. Of course, you have to exercise your own discretion and use these clauses of the Constitution to determine whether or not they're fitting for modern circumstances. The fact that anyone maintains that they're an originalist, again, this is just code for I'm going to push my antiquated extremist views on the rest of society and I'm gonna use quote unquote originalism or strict constructionism as an excuse to do just that. But don't worry, it's legitimate because it's my judicial philosophy. Yeah, well, you're not fooling anyone. But putting that aside, that gives you kind of a general sense as to how she would interpret the Constitution when it comes to certain cases. But if you want any specifics, I mean, good luck because she wouldn't answer any questions. She wouldn't answer any questions. It's deeply frustrating. Now, I was, you know, poking fun at Diane Feinstein for kissing her ass, but she did ask an important question. So she asked whether or not the president has the authority to delay the election. Now, as a strict constructionist, this is an easy question. You decide the Constitution. What does the Constitution say? Well, Amy Coney Barrett couldn't answer that. Does the Constitution give the president of the United States the authority to unilaterally delay a general election under any circumstances? Does federal law? Well, Senator, if that question ever came before me, I would need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion writing process. So, you know, if I give off the cuff answers, then I would be basically a legal pundit. And I don't think we want judges to be legal pundits. I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind. Oh yes, because we totally believe that you'd be impartial as a justice and that the Federalist Society promoted you because of your refusal to act as a legal pundit. Okay, that's fine. But let me ask you this. Were you acting as a legal pundit when in 2006 in a newspaper ad, you were one of the individuals who called for an end to the quote-unquote barbaric ruling of Roe v. Wade in a newspaper ad? Back then, you were saying Roe v. Wade should be overturned because it's barbaric. But now you're saying, well, look, I can't like talk about these hypothetical situations that have not come to fruition. I have to look at each case, examine the facts, and you know, I will basically make my decision based on the facts of this particular case. I can't be a legal pundit. That is hilarious. And she basically uses the same excuse to evade other questions. So she was asked a very simple question. Whether or not voter intimidation is illegal. Very, very simple question. She's not asking about the constitutionality of voter intimidation, she's just being asked, do you think that it is illegal? Can you confirm that it's illegal? She couldn't answer this question. Last week, a contractor from outside of my state of Minnesota started recruiting poll watchers with special forces experience to protect polling locations in my state. This was clear voter intimidation. Similar efforts are going on around the country solicited by President Trump's false claims of massive voter fraud, something that by the way, many Republican leaders, including Michael Steele, the former head of the Republican Party, including Tom Ridge, including Governor Kasich, including sitting Senator Romney have made very clear is not true. So as a result of his claims, people are trying to get poll watchers, special forces people to go to the polls. Judge Barron under federal law, is it illegal to intimidate voters at the polls? Senator Klobuchar, I can't characterize the facts in a hypothetical situation and I can't apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts. I can only decide cases as they come to me litigated by parties on a full record after fully engaging precedent, talking to colleagues, writing an opinion. And so I can't answer questions like that. Okay, well, I'll make it easier. 18 USC 594 outlaws, anyone who intimidates, threatens, coerces or attempts to intimidate, threaten or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote. This is a law that has been on the books for decades. Oh, well, gee, you know, I just, I can't tell you whether or not voter intimidation is illegal because you're talking about some hypothetical situation that's not actually happening right now. So I just, I don't know how to determine whether or not this is illegal or legal. I'd have to see the facts of the case. I mean, she's being purposefully obtuse, purposefully obtuse, but she's asked an even easier question. This is the easiest question imaginable. If you're a math teacher, this is the equivalent of being asked what is one plus one. She's asked, should the president of the United States, should presidents of the United States commit unequivocally to a peaceful transferral of power? This was asked by Corey Booker. And again, she is an originalist. All she has to do is tell us what the constitution says. Of course, she refused to answer this question. Do you believe that every president should make a commitment unequivocally and resolutely to the peaceful transfer of power? Well, Senator, that seems to me to be pulling me in a little bit into this question of whether the president has said that he would not peacefully leave office. And so to the extent that this is a political controversy right now, as a judge, I want to stay out of it. And I don't want to express a view on... This is insufferable. If you can't answer questions and you don't have a lengthy judicial record, you shouldn't be on the Supreme Court because we have to get a sense as to how you would rule when it comes to certain cases, but she won't give anyone anything. Okay, well, don't comment on the situation regarding Donald Trump, but in general, what does the constitution say about presidents? Can they get a third term? Should they commit unequivocally to a peaceful transition of power? Is this really that difficult? You are an originalist, a self-proclaimed originalist. Tell us what the constitution says. Did the founders intend on presidents becoming dictators and not committing two peaceful transferals of power? Just say what the constitution says. I thought you were an originalist. No, because she's an extremist. She's an extremist. And by now you get the point. There's really no purpose in showing you more clips because she doesn't answer questions. She just refuses to answer questions about anything. She won't say whether or not racism is systemic because she says that's a policy question. She wouldn't say whether or not she'd overturn Roe v. Wade when in 2006, she did call it barbaric. She didn't give us a clear answer as to whether or not she'd overturn marriage equality saying that she doesn't think the court would accept a new case regarding marriage equality. Okay, but we're not asking you whether or not you think that the Supreme Court will grant certain petitioners a writ of certiary. We're not asking you what cases you think will come before the Supreme Court. We're asking you, based on your interpretation of the constitution, how you might hold in a specific case, how you might rule in a case, how the court overall will hold will be influenced by your vote. She can't do anything. So it's infuriating to sit here and listen to her. I'm tired of pretending that justices are apolitical. They're all impartial and they don't come into the Supreme Court with preconceived ideas about how they hold on certain cases. No, I'm sure she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in marriage equality and not only that, she's probably thought so far ahead that she knows exactly what she would say in the majority opinion. She wants to write that, I'm sure. I mean, these people are fucking political actors. Stop pretending like you're not a political actor. Stop pretending as if every single case is going to have to be evaluated individually. You have to see the specific facts. Give me a fucking break, your political actors, your Republican extremists, and we know exactly what you're gonna do. You would rule in the same way that Gorsuch rules and Kavanaugh rules, except we have reason to believe that maybe she's even shittier than Kavanaugh because there's one portion of her history, of her limited history that we're learning about that is honestly just baffling to me. One of the cases she ruled on, I don't even know what to say about this. So the AP reports Barrett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel in 2019 that upheld the dismissal of a workplace discrimination lawsuit by Terry Smith, a black Illinois transportation employee who sued after he was fired. Smith's claims included that he was called a racial slur by supervisor Lloyd Colbert. The N-word is an egregious racial epithet Barrett wrote in Smith v. Illinois Department of Transportation that said Smith can't win simply by proving that the word was uttered. He must also demonstrate that Colbert's use of this word altered the conditions of his employment and created a hostile or abusive working environment. So to her, being called the N-word alone wasn't enough to prove that this individual was dealing with a hostile work environment. I mean, what do you even say to that? Either you don't have common sense or you're a clown. You're more extremist than you're letting on. And she's so bad that even Kavanaugh has a more common sense position on this issue because AP continues, a possible call League of Barrett's took a different view on racial slurs in 2013. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, then serving as a federal appeals court judge in Washington DC, said one utterance was enough. But in my view, being called the N-word by a supervisor suffices by itself to establish a racially hostile work environment. I'm sorry, but if Brett Kavanaugh respects worker rights more than you, seemingly based on this at least, you're gonna be a disaster. At a minimum, you'll be as bad as Scalia, but you could be worse. But we don't know because you wanna answer a single fucking question. So it's absolutely insane to me that this is taking place. Democrats should be absolutely screaming at the top of their lungs about how rigged the process is. And yes, they should use the word rigged because that's what this is. This is court packing. This is court packing. You're trying to rush through a Supreme Court nominee to benefit you. In the event we see another Bush v. Gore, so that way you can repeal the Affordable Care Act with her, and this is court packing. So of course, if she is confirmed, Democrats absolutely must pack the Supreme Court because if they don't, then we're dealing with, I don't know, two to three decades of this extremists jurisprudence, this extremists influence on the court. And that's not accounting for the rest of the extremists on the Supreme Court, like Clarence Thomas and Brett Gavinon. So I mean, the situation is looking bleak because she most likely will be considered, will be confirmed, and if she is, buckle up because these fights that you had for decades or decades ago, Roe v. Wade, marriage equality, we may have to have them again. Mike Lee is a Republican senator from Utah, and as many of you know by now, he showed up to the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, not wearing a mask as he is testing positive for COVID-19 as far as we know. So that in and of itself is, I think, really interesting and could be its own segment, but we're gonna talk about something else with regard to Mike Lee, specifically what he said that irritated me because what we're seeing now is Republicans effectively trying to pack the Supreme Court. It may not be traditional court packing in the way that we envision it, but make no mistake about what they are doing by trying to rush through a Supreme Court nominee in an election year after they said, we don't confirm Supreme Court justices in an election year. I mean, let's call it what it is. This is court packing. It was court packing when they held open Justice Scalia's seat. In 2016, they stole that seat from President Obama, didn't even give Merrick Garland a single hearing. So what they're doing is court packing. So I think that Democrats are within their right to expand the court in retaliation of Republicans stealing two seats. But Mike Lee has a different philosophy. He thinks that if Democrats respond to Republican stealing Supreme Court seats from them, well then Republicans have to retaliate and then they have to stack the Supreme Court or pack the Supreme Court rather. So this is what he said. When asked about court packing, he says the GOP would retaliate by adding more seats if they got the chance and that the Supreme Court would soon look like the Senate from Star Wars. And to that I say, all right, let's go tit for tat. Democrats should add a couple more seats to the Supreme Court. And then when you take power, go ahead add more seats to the Supreme Court because guess what? That is better than the alternative. If Democrats do not pursue a court packing plan and I'm not necessarily sure that they will. In fact, I think they probably won't. Then what are we looking at here? Two to three decades of conservative rule where they are undoing everything that Americans have fought for. Worker rights, protections for labor, abortion rights, LGBTQ equality that took decades to achieve. All of this could be undone. So I'm sorry, but we don't have time to be refighting all of these battles that we already won when we're facing a climate apocalypse. We just, we have to move forward. So the way that I see it, and somebody made this point on Twitter, is that either we have two to three decades of conservative rule for that entire time or it'll go back and forth over the course of the next few decades. Sometimes we'll have a majority conservative. Sometimes we'll have a majority liberal. I mean, that's preferable than just nonstop conservative, it's not. So Democrats have every incentive to pack the Supreme Court. And what Democrats need to do is be smart about this. Don't buy into Republican framing. Don't suggest that, oh, we're being offensive here. I think in this instance, it may seem as if you're playing defense. We're the ones retaliating by adding more justices to the Supreme Court because the Constitution doesn't say that there should only be nine justices. So since the Republicans got an extra two Supreme Court seats that they took from us, it's only right that we do the same thing. But you don't just let them go tit for tat. If you can, you stop them. And you don't stop them by being authoritarian. You stop them by enhancing our democracy because Republicans, they can't win if they fight fair, right? If they are forced to actually compete for votes and not engage in voter suppression and vote purges, it's really difficult for them to win because this is a minority party. Most people don't agree with Republicans. Their policies are incredibly unpopular. So why should we all be subjected to them because our system, our democracy is deeply dysfunctional. So what does that mean? Well, if Democrats are able to take back the Senate and capture the White House, if they have all branches of government, they have a limited window to act and actually save democracy and stop Republicans from going tit for tat. So what do you do? If I'm Joe Biden, if I'm Democrats and I actually have a spine, not sure that they do, but hypothetically, if this happens, if they take back government, you add more seats to the Supreme Court. At a minimum, you put two on there because that's easy to justify. You say, look, they took two, we're taking two. We're getting those two back. If it were me, I would add six seats to the Supreme Court. Let's bring it up to 15. I think that's fine. If they want to add six, all right, that's fine, but we stopped them from doing that. How? By stopping them from getting power by actually enhancing our democracy. So the first thing that they do, and this would be difficult, that they try to abolish the electoral college or they make it so that way they tie the electoral college to the popular votes of the country, the national popular vote, because it is completely unacceptable that somebody can lose an election after getting millions more votes, like as much as I don't like Hillary Clinton, she should be the president right now because she got three million more votes than Donald Trump, I'm sorry, because small states have a bigger say than everyone else. I mean, that's completely preposterous. It's undemocratic. So get rid of the electoral college and that alone would make it more difficult for Republicans to take the presidency again because then they'd actually have to compete. If you're basing who becomes president off of a national electoral vote, they can't do all of these shenanigans in certain districts and reduce the number of polling places because then we're looking at the national popular vote. It's harder for them to regulate elections. Second of all, you expand the Senate by bringing more states into the union. You automatically give DC statehood. That's two more senators that will most likely be democratic. And you might say, well, Mike, that's cheating. No, it's not. We are giving more people a say. We're expanding democracy and in the process of expanding democracy, if Republicans are not able to appeal to the people who now have a say in our electoral process, that's on them. They've got to appeal to people in DC. They've got to win that election. On top of that, statehood for Puerto Rico. Now we can't unilaterally say you are now a state. What we have to do is allow Puerto Ricans to have self-determination. Let them vote. We welcome them in, but of course they have to have their own say. But if you allow Puerto Rico to become a state, then what happens? That's two more senators. At least one of those is gonna be Democrat. So you have to make sure that you fight fire with fire. And this is not even as if you're playing dirty because you're literally expanding democracy. You're giving more people a say in our process. You're enfranchising more people who currently don't have a say. If Republicans can't win under a more democratic circumstance, that's on them. They're the ones who have to appeal. So I think that what you have to do if you're a Democrat and if you are the Democratic Party at large is you, of course, pack the court because even if we go tit for tat, sorry, that's better than the alternative of just having nonstop conservative rulings from the Supreme Court for decades. Can't have that. But if you can, you stop them from doing that by making our democracy more democratic. You consolidate democracy. And again, they're gonna say that this is rigged and they're gonna put up a big fuss about this. But they're the ones who are literally against democracy. You have the moral high ground in this argument. Democrats would be saying, look, what we want to do is make more people eligible to vote, to have a say in our democracy. And right now, people in DC have no senators. They have no political representation in comparison with other states. So why don't we make them an official state? Why haven't we already done this? We've done this before. We made Hawaii a state. We made Alaska a state. Like we keep doing this. So why is this so weird? Because Republicans can't appeal to these states. Tough shit. And if Republicans wanna play a little bit dirty, cut up Texas and try to get more senators that way, that's fine. Then Democrats should propose cutting up California, make it into multiple states so you get additional senators. Because I'm sorry, we can't keep having it so that way people in rural areas have an oversized say on what the rest of the country wants. We have to democratize our democracy further. We are not even a democracy, you could argue, because we don't meet the criteria of Robert Dahl's polyarchy. So by expanding our democracy in the process, you make it harder for Republicans to win because they can only win if voters turn out as low and they suppress the vote. That's what you have to do. You have to fight fire with fire. And you're operating within the confines of what is constitutionally acceptable. It's not like you are becoming authoritarian. You're quite literally expanding democracy. So if they wanna argue that more democracy is bad, let them make that argument. Don't let them craft the narrative. And I am pleased to see that Democrats, including Joe Biden, are starting to say it is Republicans who are packing the court whenever they're asked about it because that's what this is. The only court packing is going on right now. It's going on with Republicans packing the court now. It's not constitutional what they're doing. We should be focused on what's happening right now. And the fact is that the only packing going on is this court is being packed now by the Republicans after the vote has already begun. I'm gonna stay focused on it so we don't take the eyes off the ball here. Now, he is wrong when he says that what Republicans are doing is unconstitutional. That's not actually true. What they're doing is constitutional. It's just dirty and hypocritical. But having said that, you use the Constitution to your advantage too. Expand the court, add DC and Puerto Rico, make them states. If you have to chop up California into multiple states, get more senators, enhance democracy, get rid of the electoral college. Make sure that we expand the court and then stop them from doing it. You have to be fierce in fighting Republicans because this party is a far-right extremist party that can only win elections when turnout is low, when democracy fails. And if you have to, make voting compulsory. Make voting compulsory. I know that people may have this visceral, like knee-jerk reaction to the idea of voting being a requirement, but it works really well to increase turnout in countries like Australia. We need people to vote because when more people vote, Republicans lose. And we're not just saying, oh, we want people to vote because we want Republicans to lose. We want them to have to compete for those votes. We don't want them to bank on people staying home because they hate everything about the country because neither party is fighting for them. Like, if more people voted, our democracy would function better, right? When a third of the country doesn't vote, that's really a bad sign for the health and safety of our democracy, at least when we're looking at the long-term. So what Democrats have to do is they have to really be serious about enhancing our democracy. And if they can enhance our democracy, they can pack the Supreme Court and save us from basically all of our rights and civil liberties being eroded with this tyranny of these right-wing extremists that Republicans are currently trying to get on the Supreme Court. So that's what you have to do. You've got to play hard. We're not going to violate the Constitution, but we are going to fight. And we're going to fight by doing what's right, by enhancing democracy, not fighting democracy, like Republicans do. So I'm not sure if we should call the current spike in COVID cases the second wave, given that we haven't ever really gotten over the first wave. But what we do know is that certain states have handled COVID-19 better than other states. And even if you really need the federal government to take action to make these states more effective at dealing with this crisis, there are simple things that states can do to make sure that citizens are more protected from the virus. Now, there is a visualization from, I believe a graphic designer, his name is Dan Goodspeed, and he took data from the New York Times and he put together how many cases there are in each state and he controlled for Republican-controlled states and Democratic-controlled states or leaning states. And what this really proves to us is that one party who doesn't trust science, who doesn't believe in science, is very incapable of dealing with this pandemic. And what we see here with this visualization is stunning. So let's take a look. So as you can see here from the beginning in June, you know, the states, they're affected relatively equally. You know, you have some very Democratic states, some very Republican states, and you know, you don't necessarily see a huge trend. Although at the top, you are starting to see, you know, red states become more affected. And as time ticks by in this graph, you see a very clear pattern. Almost all of the states with spikes in COVID cases, as of October 2nd, are red states. They lean Republican. Now, in case you're wondering, these are the states with the least amount of cases as of October 11th, and I'll link to that down below in case you wanna watch the full visualization. Now look, there's a reason why this is happening. In these states that lean Republican, more often than not, they're controlled by Republicans. And little things that they refuse to do make their citizens that much more vulnerable. For example, there is still a solid number of states that do not mandate masks statewide. And Republicans have not been very helpful in pushing this initiative forward. I mean, Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, literally sued the mayor of Atlanta, Kiesha Land's bottoms, over her mask mandate. He sued her over this. Our Republicans in Wisconsin sought to overturn their Democratic governor statewide mask mandate, but thankfully that was overturned. But just the fact that they wanted to overturn his mask mandate shows you that they're not serious people. And finally, after months of fighting it, Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is finally saying that local municipalities can require masks, but they can't enforce it, which basically makes it meaningless. So the reason why Republican leaning states are doing worse is because of things like this. Even though a lot of states are run by corporate Democrats, most blue states are run by corporate Democrats, even just believing in science, gives residents a much better chance of dealing with this virus, not being affected by it. I mean, in my state of Oregon, Kate Brown, even though I think she's better than most corporate Democrats, I think that she still falls under the category of corporate Democrat, even though she's proven me wrong in certain areas by, you know, signing that neutrality and trying to do climate change legislation, but she decided to adopt a statewide mask mandate. And I could tell you firsthand, that made a huge, huge difference. So whenever I would go out in public, I would see maybe 30, 40% people wearing masks, but almost immediately after she mandated masks statewide, that number shot up to 99%. Now this is anecdotal, this is based on what I see, but I'm telling you, just mandating masks alone makes a huge difference, and it's the bare minimum. But yet, there are Republicans in states that are literally fighting it. So when you see that visualization and you see how many red states are more affected by COVID-19, I mean, this is a policy failure. This is a failure on behalf of Republican leadership, and it starts with Donald Trump, who has constantly spread misinformation about this virus since the beginning. I mean, he admitted in the Bob Woodward tapes that he's downplaying COVID-19, because he apparently didn't wanna cause a panic. Yeah, totally believable. When you have a party that doesn't even accept the reality of manmade climate change, of course, when you're already denying science, whenever there's something like this that comes up that requires experts, scientists, epidemiologists, health experts, if you already are not going to take them seriously for whatever reason, maybe you don't wanna shut down in your state because you don't wanna hurt your economy, you're just hurting your people, because it's not like, and I've said this before, it's not like you can choose to just pretend like everything is normal and have your economies open and send kids back to school, and you're choosing to save the economy over human lives, you can't get the economy in good shape if you have so many people affected by a highly contagious, deadly virus. We have 215,000 Americans around the country that died. That shouldn't happen, that wouldn't happen. If we didn't respond to this pandemic like a failed state overall, but just individually at the state level, you see which states are doing worse. It's the ones who don't take it seriously, who won't mandate masks, and that's a generalization. It might not be applicable to every single state in every single circumstance. There have been some Republican governors, surprisingly, that have done a great job at trying to get it under control, even if I disagree with them in other areas with regard to policy, but still, you've gotta understand that overall, Republicans haven't just been unhelpful in helping us mitigate the spread and contain the spread of COVID-19, but they've made matters worse. So this visualization is very telling and I would encourage you to look at the website because he has a lot more graphs that are very, very illuminating and tells you which party is serious. And as much as I hate corporate Democrats and they irritate me and they need to be more progressive, at least when it comes to a basic function of governance that we'd expect from them, I think they'd probably get this under control. I think they'd mandate masks. So it just shows you that the GOP is basically a death cold and this party has to go away. It has to go the way of the dodo and Democrats have to be the new de facto conservative party and we need a new left-wing party. I mean, I know that that's wishful thinking, but Republicans are just so extreme that they're irredeemable. You can't salvage this party. It's a clown show. I wanna talk about the negotiations regarding the stimulus relief package, if it's even going to happen. They've been entertaining, but simultaneously incredibly infuriating because we see no action. We've seen no action for months and people received only a one-time payment of $1,200. You have people on unemployment, struggling, small businesses, going out of business. What are you going to do? And the way that we've responded to this pandemic and the subsequent economic crash is in the same way you'd expect a failed state to respond by taking almost no action. So, of course, we're gonna talk about this segment. I'm sure you've already seen it by now, but this was quite the spectacle. But before we get to that, I wanna get you caught up on basically how we got to this point. So Democrats passed the Heroes Act. This is not good enough. It, quite frankly, is laughable, but nonetheless, it's better than nothing. However, this stalled because Mitch McConnell refused to take it up. Now, last week, Trump tanked stimulus talks unilaterally. He then changed his mind when he realized that might not necessarily be a good idea if he actually wants to be re-elected. And then he called for a one-time payment of $1,200. And now he's completely reversed his stance and all of a sudden he wants to go big or go home when it comes to a stimulus. And he's now proposing $1.8 trillion, which of course is less than what the Democrats want at $2.2 trillion, I wanna say. So they're not getting everything that they want, but both bills are imperfect. Both bills don't go nearly far enough. I mean, Americans need $2,000 a month throughout the duration of this pandemic and then afterwards and then even more economic relief. But if you don't like that, Republicans won't give you anything that you want. You've got to understand that time is running out. The election is November 3rd, and if Trump loses, he will do fuck all until he leaves office. So if we don't pass something before the election, Americans aren't getting any relief until February. That can't happen. What I would be doing is pass whatever, don't let Republicans play politics, pass anything that gives Americans relief so long as it actually gives them some relief, you know, an extension of weekly unemployment benefits, another one-time stimulus payment, pass anything, and then if you take back the Senate, then you could pass more legislation that is more thorough, that is satisfactory. And then if you're Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, you explain to voters that the only reason why it took this long is because Republicans were the ones who were stalling negotiations. We passed the Heroes Act, Senate Republicans refused to take it up. And now all of a sudden, when their reelection campaigns are in jeopardy, now they want you to think that they care about you. Now they want a stimulus package. So understand, you can make this case to the American people. You can explain how they're just passing this now for optics, but they made you wait that long when we were taking action. But I mean, regardless, now it seems as if Mitch McConnell is starting to break after Donald Trump said, let's pass something. So I mean, you've got to get relief to the people. They're struggling. And I think Ro Khanna put it best. People in need can't wait until February. 1.8 trillion is significant and more than twice Obama stimulus. It will allow Biden to start with infrastructure. Obama won in 08 by doing the right thing on tarp instead of what was expedient. Make a deal and put the ball in McConnell's court. Now additionally, Andrew Yang also said Nancy Pelosi should pass the bill to at least give people some help before the holidays, which Nancy Pelosi's daughter then responded saying that what Andrew Yang said is sexist. Yeah, it's sexist to say Nancy should pass the bill because you have to refer to her as Speaker Pelosi. Okay, whatever, but here's the thing. Now you are losing ground on a narrative that wrote itself. Trump looked like the bad guy because he was the bad guy. He was unilaterally stalling stimulus talks. And now he's saying, okay, I don't want to look bad. Let's pass something. So now if you say, no, I don't want to pass something because I don't want the president to have a check go out to the American people with his name on it, then all of a sudden you look like the bad guy. You're doing Trump's job for him. You're helping him do damage control because now Republicans are going to be disciplined and they're all going to in unison say, it's Nancy Pelosi, it's Democrats now who are stalling. America, do you see what's happening? We want to pass a $1.8 trillion stimulus package and they don't want to take it out. So, I mean, look, I get that Republicans have spent months not doing anything and they do just want to do this because it's close to an election and they want to do something that will get the American people to think that they care about them. So I get this, but you have to play politics. You have to look at the optics and you have to make sure that you don't end up playing 40 chess while you're using the American people as a bargaining chip. Now, Nancy Pelosi is doing just that in my opinion and in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, this was very interesting because Wolf Blitzer basically put pressure on her to explain herself. You're playing hardball with Trump and the Republicans in general, not a bad thing in theory, but right now you're doing it at a time when people desperately need help. She got visibly irritated. This was something. Take a look. They really need the money right now. And even members of your own caucus. I understand that, but if you ask me a question. Even members of your own caucus, Madam Speaker, want to accept this deal, $1.8 trillion, Congressman Ro Khanna, for example. But let me just quote Ro Khanna. Man, you know well, I assume you admire him. He's a Democrat and he just said this. He said, people in need can't wait until February. $1.8 trillion is significant and more than twice the Obama stimulus make a deal, put the ball in McConnell court. So what do you say to Ro Khanna? What I say to you is, I don't know why you're always an apologist. And many of your colleagues, apologists for the Republican position. Ro Khanna, that's nice. That isn't what we're going to do. And nobody's waiting until February. I want this very much now because people need help now. But it's no use giving them a false thing just because the president wants to put a check with his name on it in the mail that we should not be doing all we can to help people pay the rent, put food on the table, to enhance benefits that they don't lose their jobs if they're state and local. That this, we're talking about the consequences of a pandemic, that the symptoms of a problem that the president refuses to address. But you know that I'm a speaker. And that is the coronavirus. We know that the problem out there, but there are millions of Americans who have lost their jobs. They can't pay the rent. Their kids need the food. That's right. And that's what we're trying to get done. $1.8 trillion that the president just tweeted, stimulus go big or go home. He wants even more right now. So why not work on a deal with him and don't let the perfect, as they say here in Washington, be the enemy of the good. Well, I will not let the wrong be the enemy of the right. What's wrong with $1.8 trillion? Well, you know what? Do you have any idea what the difference is between the spending that they have in their bill and that we have in our bill? Do you realize that they have come back and said all these things for child tax credits and earned income tax credits or helping people who have lost their jobs are eliminated in their bill? Do you realize they pay no respect to the fact that childcare is very important for people whose children cannot go to school because they're doing remote learning and yet they minimize the need for childcare, which is the threshold with which people, mothers and fathers, can go to work if they have that. Do you have any idea of how under- That's precisely why, Matt, I was speaking. They're concerned. That's why it's so important right now. Yesterday I spoke to Andrew Yang who says the same thing. It's not everything you want, but there's a lot there. Honestly, God, you really, I can't get over it because Andrew Yang, he's lovely. Rokana, he's lovely. They are not negotiating this situation. They have no idea of the particulars. They have no idea of what the language is here. I didn't come over here to have, so you're the apologist for the Obama, excuse me, God forbid. Madam Speaker, I'm not an apologist. I'm asking you serious questions because so many people are in desperate need right now. Let me ask you this. When was the last time you- Let me respond to you, to the next answer your own question. When was the last time you spoke with the President about this? I don't speak with the President. Why not call him and say, Mr. President, let's work out a deal. It's not going to be everything you want. Not going to be everything I want, but there are so many Americans right now who are in desperate need. Let's make a deal. What makes me amused if it weren't so sad is how you all think that you know more about the suffering of the American people than those of us who are elected by them to represent them at that table. And I ask these questions only, as you know, so many millions of Americans are suffering right now. Well, you quote two people who know nothing about the agreement. Well, there is no agreement, but what the suggestions are as if there's some authority on the subject, please. Give equal weight to 12, to all of the chairman on the committee who have written this deal. But so many of your fellow Democrats in the House, they want a deal. I don't know what to say about that. I, wow. Look, I'm no fan of Wolf Blitzer, but I think that he did a good job here. And look, I'll concede to Nancy Pelosi's point that he is buying into the right-wing framing. Yes, that's true. However, Nancy Pelosi is not doing anything to improve the optics here. She isn't helping to take away, you know, that right-wing framing. Like I think that you need to stand your ground, be firm, fight Republicans. But again, you do not do this if you're using Americans as a bargaining chip. We want you to fight Republicans. We want you to press for better, but both bills are shitty. Your bill is shitty. Republicans' bill is shitty. So pass anything before the election. That's what he's asking you. Why won't you just pass this bill now? And then later on, if you win the election, you could pass something better. But her answers are horrible. They come off as tone deaf. She says, what makes me amused if it weren't so sad is how you all think that you know more about the suffering of the American people than those of us who are elected by them to represent them. Nancy, you just were featured in a video on late night television in front of your two $12,000 refrigerators where you brag about the $12 applying ice creams that you have stocked your fridge with. You are not sensitive to the needs of Americans. Don't pretend as if you know what's best for them. And the problem here is that she kind of gave away the game. She said that it's no use giving the American people a false thing by allowing the president to put his name on another check. You just tacitly admitted that this is about politics. You just gave away the high ground, the moral high ground. After berating Donald Trump rightfully so for tanking stimulus talks, now it looks like Democrats are the ones who are being obstructionist. Now Republicans and Donald Trump could say, look it, we wanna pass the bill, but the radical Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, don't wanna take up our bill. I mean, look, if you're playing hard ball for like the next week or two, but ultimately you will pass this before the election and you get a little bit more out of this. Okay, I mean, maybe you're gambling here, but you've gotta understand the way that she's going about this makes her look so tone deaf, so out of touch. And it looks like she's trying to use the American people as a political bargaining chip. And make no mistake about it, that narrative will be the one that sticks. Now, she says, look, so when you say to me why won't you accept theirs? Why won't they accept ours? Again, that is a valid point. I think that Democrats are right to call out the Republican party's obstructionism and Mitch McConnell's obstructionism and how he is trying to rush through the Supreme Court confirmation, but he's not willing to take up serious stimulus talks. So even if you do like a narrow relief package, even if you just do a one-time $1,200 payment again, that's not enough, but it's still something. Americans still need that and you can pass it and then explain to the American people, look, all of this was left on the table. We gave Republicans all of this and they left it on the table. All they wanted to do was give you the bare minimum and they wouldn't do more than that. So understand who's really fighting for you. Like there are so many ways that you can play this in your favor, but the way that she's playing this, like she's trying to play a hardball, which again, like we want Democrats to fight Republicans and play a hardball, but you do it tactically. She's the one who said I am strategically savvy and a master legislator and politically astute. Well, you're not showing it because you're kind of looking bad in this situation. The American people are thinking, oh, okay, well first Donald Trump wanted to block stimulus talks and now Nancy Pelosi and Democrats want to block stimulus talks. Like how you get yourself out of this corner, if you can, I don't know how you do that now because you just made the situation exponentially worse. But I want to talk about one last clip here. This isn't necessarily substantive, but it was so awkward. It was so cringe-worthy that this may possibly have ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. Like this was, I don't even know how to describe it. Look at the way that this interview ended. And we'll leave it on that note. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, we'll leave it on the boat that you are not right on this, Wolf. And I hate to say that to you, but I feel confident about it and I feel confident about my colleagues and I feel confidence in my chairs. And it's not about me. It's about millions of Americans who can't put food on the table, who can't pay the rent, who are having trouble. And we represent them. And we represent them. And we represent them. And we represent them. And we represent them. And we represent them. And we represent them. We know them. And we represent them. And we know them. As we say. We know them. We represent them. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as they say here in Washington. It is nowhere near perfect. Madam Speaker. Always the case, but we're not even close to the good. All right, let's see what happens because every day is critically, critically important. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for your sensitivity to our constituents' needs. I am sensitive to them because I see them on the street begging for food, begging for money. Madam Speaker, thank you so much. Have you said them? We feed them. We feed them. We'll continue this conversation down the road for sure. We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back. Yikes. Nancy Pelosi in that clip came across as a smug, out-of-touch elitist who when challenged by the media could not explain why she's not doing something that helps the American people. Even if that is the reality or not because Democrats did pass the Heroes Act months ago, it doesn't matter because that's what the narrative is going to be. And look, she's lying. She's not sensitive to the needs of her constituents. 70,000, almost 70,000 people every single year were dying before this pandemic because they didn't have health insurance and yet she doesn't support Medicare for All. A majority of Americans want a Green New Deal and she called it the Green Dream or whatever. So don't fucking lie and pretend like you know what the American people wants. You are a multi-millionaire. You couldn't be more out-of-touch even if you tried. Don't pretend as a full flitzer. It's the one who's in the wrong here. Wolf Blitzer, of course, is concern-trolling. I don't believe that he actually cares about the American people. But he's doing his job by actually trying to hold you accountable and explain why you aren't taking action, why you unilaterally aren't doing something that would objectively benefit the American people. Now, once again, I want to be nuanced here and admit that, yes, it is the case that Republicans overall have been more obstructionist. That doesn't mean that Democrats haven't blocked relief talks at some points throughout this process. A month ago, as Jeff Stein explained in the Washington Post article we cited earlier, he explains how Democrats did, in fact, I think rightfully block one relief bill that excluded a one-time payment of $1,200. But that was last month and now time is running out. You've got three weeks until the election and if you don't get it done before November 3rd, you're not gonna get it done. We get no relief until February. And can you imagine how catastrophic that would be? So she doesn't know what to do, how to appear as if she's the good guy here. Like the way that she tries to challenge Wolf Blitzer, even though the media is biased, even though the media oftentimes does buy into right-wing framing, she's not helping in this situation. She comes off as tone deaf and out of touch and she is making it seem as if now she's the one who's trying to use the Americans as a political bargaining chip because she doesn't want to give Donald Trump anything to brag about before the election. Now, again, I will stand corrected happily so if she ends up holding out for like an extra week and they get more concessions from Republicans. But Republicans aren't going to act because you kind of already gave them the narrative that they were looking for. They wanted to deflect. They didn't want to make it seem as if Donald Trump was the one who was unilaterally stalling negotiations or Mitch McConnell. And now Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are saying, we'll do something. And now it's Nancy Pelosi who's saying, no, I want you to do my bill, which is still shitty, but it's less shitty. I mean, look, people don't have time for all of this fucking bullshit. It is absolutely infuriating to witness negotiations surrounding the stimulus and economic relief. If Americans do not get anything before the November third election, it's probably not gonna happen. It's probably not going to happen until the next session of Congress takes place and convenes in late January, in 2021. I can't even begin to describe to you how catastrophic that would be, how many more people won't be able to pay the rent and put food on the table. Congress has to act, but they're just, it's like every single roadblock that you can imagine whenever we get a little bit of a ray of hope, it just pops up and throws all of that hope into the gutter. So at first, Donald Trump unilaterally decided to tank negotiations. Okay, that's absolutely ridiculous because he's saying, well, pass on after I'm reelected, but if he's not reelected, then we don't expect him to do anything as a lame duck president. So that was disappointing. And then he started to change his tune and he says, okay, you know what? I see that that's a bad look. Let's do $1.8 trillion. Nancy Pelosi then says, well, no, we want $2.2 trillion. Now, what Trump was proposing wasn't that different than Nancy Pelosi. I mean, neither of these are perfect. They're incrementalist approaches. But I mean, honestly, at this point, anything is going to help. What we really should be giving people is $2,000 a month for the duration of this pandemic. But I mean, if you give them anything, even another one-time payment of $1,200, it's better than nothing. They need relief now. They don't have time for political games. And then Nancy Pelosi says, actually, we're not gonna do that because it's not good enough. But guess what? Now, Mitch McConnell is saying, you know what? Both of you are asking for too much. Trump's $1.8 trillion and Nancy Pelosi's $2.2 trillion, that's too much. We're not going to do that. We're gonna do half a trillion. So while all of this is taking place, you have Republicans basically trying to do the bare minimum just to make sure that they can pass and not tank before the election. You have Nancy Pelosi, I guess not trying to give Trump a victory. She made a fool of herself in that interview with Wolf Blitzer and CNN. But when I see all of this and I keep seeing roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, it really seems as if Congress is just not going to do anything before the election, which means people are going to be without help. Small businesses will close. And it's just, we have responded to this as a failed state would. And I say that over and over again, but honestly, it should be astonishing to everyone that we're the richest country in the world. And we gave our citizens a one-time stimulus payment of $1,200. That's it. That is it. So we're gonna talk about where we're at currently. First, I wanna show you Rokana's response because he was kind of put on blast in a way by Nancy Pelosi when Wolf Blitzer asked her about why she won't take his advice and accept Trump's 1.8 trillion deal. And I think his response was perfectly reasonable. I say, our government is failing you. This is a time where we need to do a lot more. And it pains me that we're not being able to deliver for them. And that's why I'm gonna come out and say that we need to get something done with as much power as I have. I acknowledge that I'm not a committee chair. I acknowledge that I don't have as much power in the institution. But you know what? I'm an equal member of Congress. I represent a constituency just like 435 other members. And all of our perspectives really do matter. And what I'm saying is coming from the hardest, coming because I've been affected by the impact in my district, which is the heart of Silicon Valley. Think about this, Wolf. If in one of the richest districts in the world, you have this much suffering, imagine how much suffering there is across this country. If you just walk around. So I think that everything that Ro Khanna is saying here, it's reasonable. How could you not agree with what he's saying here? And that point at the end is really important. Like even if he represents one of the most wealthiest districts in the country in Silicon Valley, if they need to see relief, if his constituents need to see relief, then imagine how one of the poorer districts in the country are faring. But you know, even though Nancy Pelosi made a fool of herself, thankfully lucky for her, but unfortunately for the American people, you know, Mitch McConnell kind of, he kind of saved her by being so terrible because now he's saying, you know what, I'm the one now who's unilaterally tanking all negotiations, which is astonishing to me because he's up for reelection and he'll probably still be reelected, but he doesn't care about anything except confirming Donald Trump's far-right Supreme Court nominee. But for more on this, go to the Hill where Jordan Corny explains, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday shot down the prospect of a coronavirus deal totaling 1.8 trillion and 2.2 trillion. The goalposts of the current talks between Democrats and the White House. McConnell's comments made to reporters in Kentucky underscored the divisions between President Trump and Senate Republicans on a fifth coronavirus package with the GOP leader preparing to force a vote on a $500 billion bill next week. Quote, I don't think so. That's where the administration is willing to go. My members think half the trillion dollars highly targeted is the best way to go. McConnell said, asked about the prospect of a deal between 1.8 trillion and 2.2 trillion. So do you see how this is going in circles? You know, the Democrats in the House of Representatives, they passed the HEROES Act months ago. Again, it's another bill that's not perfect, but at this point, desperation overrides everything. Get it passed, get it done. Mitch McConnell has not taken that up. So Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House are saying, let's pass this. And Trump is saying, no. But now Trump is saying, let's pass this. And then Nancy Pelosi was saying, no, pass mine. And then Mitch McConnell is saying, I'm not gonna pass either of yours. Meanwhile, people are suffering. And I know it seems like I'm concerned trolling by saying, oh, think of the American people, but I don't think that these idiots in Congress understand that shit's gonna hit the fan really fast if people can't pay their rent. Civil society cannot withstand mass evictions, mass starvation on this scale. And we're seeing activism express that the American people aren't gonna take it anymore because there was a group of people that locked the court doors so people could not be evicted. Take a look at this. That's just the beginning. Now Donald Trump's moratorium on evictions expires as of January 1st. Then millions of Americans are going to be forced to pony up months of back rent. And guess what? Most of them won't be able to do that. So we've got to pass another moratorium, extend that. And additionally, Trump is undermining his own moratorium on evictions. And people are starving. They are losing their jobs. And as a result, their healthcare, which they need now, especially during a pandemic. I mean, I just, even though our government, it's not surprising that it's dysfunctional to be this dysfunctional, to be utterly paralyzed in the face of an unprecedented crisis, truly should shock everyone. If we don't change things, it's just gonna get worse. And I don't wanna perpetuate this false equivalence and suggest that both sides are equally terrible because it has been Donald Trump and Republicans that have held up negotiations, right? Democrats passed the Heroes Act months ago. But Nancy Pelosi the other day was rightfully called out for playing politics with people's lives when it looked as if there was a ray of hope because Trump decided to break because he didn't wanna look like shit before an election. But now it doesn't matter who's gonna get blamed or who is holding up things. What matters is that people get belief and the fact that they very likely won't get that before the election is honestly just, it's shocking even to me who expects to be disappointed in our so-called government. So the president of the United States who always talks about how much he loves law and order, once again, just admitted that the United States government assassinated a US citizen. He bragged about this at a rally. We sent in the US Marshals, took 15 minutes it was over, 15 minutes it was over, we got him. They knew who he was, they didn't wanna arrest him and 15 minutes that ended. He just admitted to a crime. He just admitted that they violated the Constitution. This should outrage everyone who claims to be in favor of law and order, who claims to be in support of the US Constitution. Because as a US citizen, the US government isn't supposed to be able to just assassinate you. That's what authoritarian regimes do. Extrajudicial killings are not supposed to be a thing that happens in civilized societies. But yet the president of the United States just bragged about their decision to just assassinate someone. Now I know that if you're a conservative you're gonna respond by saying, but the person that they assassinated killed someone else. Do you understand what due process is? If the US government suspects that someone is culpable in any wrongdoing, that person is entitled to the right to defend themselves in a court of law. They can't just be assassinated by the US government if the US government suspects that they're guilty. That person has a right to use the judicial system that we have to try to defend themselves. And furthermore, even if you will agree with the assassination, which you should not. If you just accept that the United States government can be able to do this, I mean, what if they get it wrong? What if they get the wrong person? What if it's just political retaliation? Do you understand why this opens the door to so many horrible situations? And again, it goes back to basic due process, something that as citizens we are entitled to. If you don't know what due process is, no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces or in the militia when an actual service in time of war or public danger. So that's a lot of jargon, but at the end of the day it means that if the government thinks that you did something illegal, they have to try you. They have to try a case against you, present facts and evidence against you. They can't just unilaterally choose to end your life because they say that you did something wrong. They have to prove it. The person who they assassinated didn't have the chance to prove that maybe in that shootout between the anti-fascist protesters and the far right, maybe that was self-defense, we don't know. That individual was denied the ability to defend himself in a court of law because Trump decided they wanted to assassinate him. They wanted to assassinate him because he is a political enemy. Now, this isn't the first time that the United States government has extrajudicially assassinated one of its own citizens. It's not the first time, but understand what Trump is doing and how he takes us further down this path towards authoritarianism. So actually, President Obama, who everyone loves, also assassinated a United States citizen. As Glenn Greenwald for the Intercept explains, Obama killed a 16-year-old American in Yemen. Trump just killed his eight-year-old sister. Now, this article explains how Obama directed the CIA to assassinate a US citizen named Anwar Alalaki. Now, his son, Abdul Rahman, was killed two weeks later by the United States. And then when Trump decided to greenlight a raid in Yemen on dubious intelligence, that led to the murder of Abdul Rahman's sister, Nawar. So it's not a new phenomenon, right? The United States government has done this before, but understand why this is a little bit different. The US government, when they killed US citizens abroad, they can at least try to put up some facade that, look, maybe these American citizens were associated with some terror cell and we had to take them out, we couldn't risk it. They can try to hold up that facade and even if they don't explicitly say that, the American people will think, well, that person was in a different country, we're waging this war on terror, so maybe, you know, maybe it's justified, even if it was unconstitutional. But when they start doing it here at home on American territory, that sends a different message. That's the US government telling people, look what we did. We just assassinated a United States citizen. And guess what? You let us get away with it. So we can do it again. We're gonna do it again. Trump is bragging about this. So this isn't just some, you know, out of sight, out of mind thing, because, oh, this bad thing happened. Our government shouldn't have done this, but it happened abroad. Now they're doing it at home. Now if you are a conservative, just try to be objective for a moment. Consider that Biden was president and a conservative was plotting some sort of attack, like wanted to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Let's just use this hypothetical situation. And before they were able to carry out this terror attack, Biden decided to assassinate that individual. Do you think that it is legally and constitutionally justifiable for the Biden administration or any democratic administration that just assassinate a right-winger? No. This isn't about partisanship. This isn't about, oh, your team versus my team. This is about the constitution. And if you genuinely believe in the rule of law and law and order and the constitution, and you just don't care that Trump assassinated a United States citizen and is now bragging about it, which is the worst part, you have to understand. You don't support the constitution. You're against it. And you are willingly accepting authoritarianism. So there isn't much that we can do about this, right? We can try to vote Trump out, but in terms of how we can hold him accountable, we're not gonna hold him accountable. And I'm more flabbergasted and disturbed by the fact that his supporters are trying to justify this action. This is how democracies die. We're seeing it right now. We are seeing exactly what happens when a country moves further and further towards fascism. It starts out where an individual is democratically elected and just is expressing fascism. He's a proto-fascist. And then we start moving closer and closer towards authoritarianism when that individual consolidates their power and starts carrying out more fascist acts. Like, we're seeing it all happen. This is how it starts, folks. This is how it starts. It's not like Trump is Hitler. Not saying that, but he is a fascist. And people need to take everything that he's saying here very seriously because this is a threat to democracy. I get that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees is a very long, arduous, and dull process. So watching it isn't necessarily that entertaining. Having said that, though, if you watch any moment from the hearings, please take the time to watch the video that I'm about to play for you. Now, the original clip is 30 minutes long. So before you watch this shortened version of it that I'm about to play for you, I would encourage you to pause this video, go to the link in the description box and watch the full thing because it really is worth your time. I think that everyone has to see this. And for people who understand already that there's this dark money influence that's fueling the radicalization of our judiciary system, people may still be a little bit naive for lack of a better word and think, well, that doesn't necessarily mean that Roe v. Wade or Obergefell will be overturned because it's gonna be unlikely that a case related to these things will come up before the court. You would be horribly mistaken to think that. So let's watch this is a long clip, but it is worth every second. We have colleagues here who supported you, this nominee, before there was a nominee. That's a little unusual. We have the political ram job that we have already complained of, driving this process through at breakneck speed in the middle of a pandemic while the Senate is closed for safety reasons and while we're doing nothing about the COVID epidemic around us. We have some very awkward 180s from colleagues. Mr. Chairman, you figure in this. Our leader said back when it was Garland versus Gorsuch, that of course, of course, the American people should have a say in the court's direction. Of course, of course, said Mitch McConnell. That's long gone. Here's the GOP platform, the Republican platform, the platform of my colleagues on the other side of this aisle say that a Republican president will appoint judges who will reverse Roe, Obergefell, and the Obamacare cases. When we say the stakes are high on this, it's because you've said the stakes are high on this. You have said that's what you want to do. So how are people going about doing it? What is the scheme here? Let me start with this one. In all cases, there's big anonymous money behind various lanes of activity. One lane of activity is through the conduit of the Federalist Society. It was managed by a guy named Leonard Leo, and it's taken over the selection of judicial nominees. How do we know that to be the case? Because Trump has said so over and over again. His White House counsel said so. So we have an anonymously funded group controlling judicial selection run by this guy, Leonard Leo. Then in another lane, we have, again, anonymous funders running through something called the Judicial Crisis Network, which is run by Carrie Severino, and it's doing PR and campaign ads for Republican judicial nominees. It got single $17 million donation in the Garland Gorsuch Contest. It got another single $17 million donation to support Kavanaugh. Somebody, perhaps the same person, spent $35 million to influence the makeup of the United States Supreme Court. Tell me that's good. And then over here, you have a whole array of legal groups, also funded by dark money, which have a different role. They bring cases to the court. They don't wind their way to the court, Your Honor. They get shoved to the court by these legal groups, many of which asked to lose below so they can get quickly to the court to get their business done there, and then they turn up in an chorus, an orchestrated chorus of Amy Key. Now, I've had a chance to have a look at this, and I was in a case, actually, as an amicus myself, the Consumer Financial Protection Board case, and in that case, there were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 amicus briefs, filed, and every single one of them was a group funded by something called Donors Trust. Donors Trust is a gigantic identity scrubbing device for the right wing so that it says Donors Trust is the donor without whoever the real donor is. It doesn't have a business. It doesn't have a business plan. It doesn't do anything. It's just an identity scrubber. And this group here, the Bradley Foundation, funded eight out of the 11 briefs. That seems weird to me when you have amicus briefs coming in little flotillas that are funded by the same groups, but nominally separate in the court. So I actually attached this to my brief as an appendix. Center for Media and Democracy saw it, and they did better work. They went on to say which foundations funded the brief writers in that CFPB case? Here's the Bradley Foundation for 5.6 million to those groups. Here's Donors Trust, 23 million to those brief writing groups. The grand total across all the donor groups was $68 million to the groups that were filing amicus briefs pretending that they were different groups. It goes beyond just the amicus presentations. The Federalist Society, remember this group that is acting as the conduit and that Donald Trump has said is doing his judicial selection? They're getting money from the same foundations. From Donors Trust, $16.7 million. From the Bradley Foundation, $1.37 million. From the same group of foundations total, $33 million. So you can start to look at these and you can start to tie them together. The legal groups, all the same funders over and over again bringing the cases and providing this orchestrated chorus of amici. Then the same group also funds the Federalist Society over here. The Washington Post wrote a big expose about this and that made Leonard Leo a little hot, a little bit like a burned agent. So he had to jump out and he went off to go and do anonymously funded voter suppression work. Guess who jumped in to take over the selection process in this case? For Judge Barrett, Carrie Savrino made the hop. So once again, ties right in together. So Center for Media and Democracy has done a little bit more research. Here's a Bradley Foundation memo that they've published. The Bradley Foundation is reviewing a grant application asking for money for this orchestrated amicus process and what do they say in the staff recommendation? It is important to orchestrate, their word, not mine, important to orchestrate high-caliber amicus efforts before the court. They also note that Bradley has done previous philanthropic investments in the actual underlying legal actions. So Bradley is funding, what do they call it, philanthropically investing in the underlying legal action and then giving money to groups to show up in the orchestrated chorus of amici. That can't be good. And it goes on because they also found this email. This email comes from an individual at the Bradley Foundation and it asks our friend Leonard Leo who used to run the selection process. Is there a 501c3 non-profit to which Bradley could direct any support of the two Supreme Court amicus projects other than Donors Trust? I don't know why they wanted to avoid the reliable identity scrubber Donors Trust but for some reason they did. So Leonard Leo writes back on Federalist Society address. They don't tell me that it isn't Federalist Society business. On Federalist Society, on his address, he writes back, yes, send it to the judicial education project which could take and allocate the money and guess who works for the judicial education project? Harry Severino. Who also helped select this nominee running the Trump Federalist Society selection process. So the connections abound. In the Washington Post article, they point out that the Judicial Crisis Network's office is on the same hallway and the same building of the Federalist Society and when they sent their reporter to talk to somebody at the Judicial Crisis Network, somebody from the Federalist Society came down to let them up. This more and more looks like it's not three schemes but it's one scheme with the same funders selecting judges, funding campaigns for the judges and then showing up in court in these orchestrated amicus flotillas to tell the judges what to do. Here's how the Washington Post summed it up. This is a conservative activist behind the scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts and it's a $250 million dark money operation. $250 million is a lot of money to spend if you're not getting anything for it. So that raises the question, what are they getting for it? Well, I showed the slide earlier on the Affordable Care Act and on Obergefell and on Roe versus Wade, that's where they lost but with another judge that could change. That's where the contest is. That's where the Republican Party platform tells us to look at how they want judges to rule, to reverse Roe, to reverse the Obamacare cases and to reverse Obergefell and take away gay marriage. That is their stated objective and plan. Why not take them at their word? Phenomenal job here. This was really, really informative and I'm glad that he took the time to do this because why take the time to ask Amy Honeyberry any questions when you know she's not gonna answer any questions. So why waste your time? Why not take that time while everyone is watching, while this is being televised nationally to explain what is happening here. 250 million dollars being made to remake the court system in the United States, to radicalize the court system. I mean, conservatives oftentimes talk about activist judges. I mean, what we're seeing now is a takeover of the court system in a very brazen way before our eyes. I mean, we know that in 2016, Mitch McConnell wouldn't even allow Obama's nominee at the time, Merrick Garland, to have a single hearing. We know now that after saying we don't confirm new Supreme Court appointments in an election year, they're confirming Amy Coney Barrett. She'll very likely be on the Supreme Court. But if you look at the federal appointments, what Mitch McConnell did or didn't do more specifically in the last years of Obama's term was he didn't allow Obama's federal appointments. He blocked almost all of them. I was shocked that former President Obama left so many vacancies and didn't try to fill those positions. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration. And I will give you full credit for that. And by the way, take a bow. All right, that was a good life. And then guess what? After holding all of those vacancies for years, as soon as a Republican president comes to power, all of a sudden they're getting filled, one after another, after another. And sure, Democrats have been complicit. I mean, there's the infamous story from, I think it was 2018, where Chuck Schumer fast-tracked a bunch of Trump's federal judge appointments so that way Democrats can go campaign. And that's astonishing, but you've gotta understand Republicans have been so incredibly effective at remaking the court. And it's not for nothing. As Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out, they're not spending all of this money for nothing. They're expecting a return on that investment. And this is being done with a specific intent to win the cases they previously lost, the Affordable Care Act, Roe versus Wade, and Obergefell v. Hodges. They are bringing cases before the court, filing amicus briefs, doing everything in their power to make sure that this conservative Supreme Court takes up these cases. So they do rehear cases related to Roe v. Wade and marriage equality. And you've gotta understand that if you're still of the mindset that these justices are principled and they really are just guided by their own judicial philosophies, you cannot think about it that way anymore. These are political actors. These are partisan actors doing what their party and donors who paid to get them there want them to do. Again, it's in the GOP platform. Donald Trump is going to appoint judges, justices, rather who are going to overturn the ACA, abortion, and gay marriage. And if you think that can't happen, you are horribly mistaken. And the scariest part is that they don't even necessarily need Amy Coney Barrett. They already have a five, four majority. But if they get a six, three majority, I don't think you understand how much damage they could do for an extended period of time. Think of the Lochner era, but on steroids. So all of the progress that we've made, all of the arguments that were successfully won when it comes to LGBTQ rights, Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell v. Hodges, that's all for grabs. I mean, they're going to take us in a draconian direction. If you think that that's not possible, you are terribly naive, terribly naive. It's funny because Amy Coney Barrett basically made it seem as if, oh, well, I mean, the Supreme Court isn't likely going to take up a case related to gay marriage. Really? They're fast-tracking judges. I mean, all of these dark money networks, they're making sure that specific justices get nominated who are going to do what they want. So people have got to wake up and stop fooling themselves about the Supreme Court. This is not a body that is apolitical. This is a body of highly ideological political actors. And they should scare everyone because all of the battles that we fought and won, we're going to have to fucking have all of those battles again, most likely. So the only solution is to pack the Supreme Court. Now I talked about this in another video and I think I made a pretty solid case, in my opinion, for packing the Supreme Court, but I'm open to counter-arguments, but we don't have a choice. It's either 20 to 30 years of nonstop conservative rulings or we go to it for Tatworth Republicans. We add justices, they add justices. So at least like within the next couple of decades, there's some periods where there's a liberal majority. We can't afford to go backwards. We just, we can't. We have a climate catastrophe looming over our heads and we don't have time, democracies at stake. So expand that fucking court because that's what they did. Republicans, they packed the court, holding open seats. It may not be court packing in the traditional sense where you expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court, but make no mistake about it. They're packing that court. They're stacking that motherfucker so much that they're remaking the entire judiciary in the United States. Trump appointed, what is it now, over 300 federal judges? That is enough to completely change the trajectory of this country for decades. So you've gotta understand, there's too much at stake. We've gotta pack the court. It really cannot be said enough. Diane Feinstein is absolutely terrible. She is just awful. She should have retired two years ago, but she's still there and she's still showing everyone how terrible she is and she's not just terrible. She's a stupid person because we all know that Mike Lee, Republican Senator from Utah tested positive for COVID-19 and as far as we know was still contagious when he showed up in person to the Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett without a mask. He then interacted with Lindsey Graham. They were very close speaking to each other and there were times when his mask fell below his nose, thus exposing Lindsey Graham. And then after that, what does Lindsey Graham do? He goes and hugs 87-year-old Diane Feinstein. Now, why would Diane Feinstein allow someone who just exposed themselves to COVID-19 to then expose her knowing that at the age of 87, it would be very dangerous for her to get COVID-19 because she's not very bright, not very bright. I know that you might think Mike, you're just being petty, you know, you're just bitter because she was, you know, being nice to Amy Coney Barrett. But you've got to understand that Diane Feinstein doesn't have a spine and she will do anything to appease the Republican Party. But it's too far in her career to just outright switch parties. So, you know, she plays on their team and she loves the Republican Party. So if she has to expose herself to a highly contagious deadly virus just so she can give Lindsey Graham a hug when all of you can't even see your loved ones and hug your loved ones, that's what she's gonna do because she's a stupid fucking person. Now, the reason why we're talking about her is not just so I can express my hatred of Diane Feinstein because Lord knows she is fucking awful. But the reason why we're talking about her is because in the process of Democrats trying to expose how illegitimate this process is to confirm Amy Coney Barrett rushed her through before an election, she has undermined everything that Democrats were trying to do, destroyed the narrative that Democrats were trying to craft. It's all her fault and there needs to be repercussions for this. She needs to pay for what she did and there are activist groups who are calling on her resignation from the Senate Judiciary Committee. She's in a leadership position and she should no longer have that role. So as Igor Bobik of HuffPost reports, Senator Diane Feinstein showered Lindsey Graham with praise as the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett wrapped on Thursday with little drama standing in sharp contrast to the contentious and acrimonious hearings from Justice Brett Kavanaugh that nearly blew up the Senate in 2018. I just wanna thank you. This has been one of the best set of hearings I've participated in, Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee told Graham, thank you so much for your leadership. She's saying this to Lindsey Graham. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who angered Democrats by abandoning his 2016 vow not to confirm a Supreme Court justice in a presidential election year then embraced Feinstein in a hug. Notably, neither wore a mask. While Feinstein echoed other Democrats in opposing Barrett, the top Democrat on the committee took a more conciliatory tone throughout the hearing welcoming her warmly as questioning began on Tuesday. It is wonderful to see you here, Feinstein told Barrett. Democrats reacted to the 87-year-old Senator's handling of the hearing and her praise of Graham, a top Trump ally who was on the ballot in November with anger and dismay. Quote, it's very hard to watch a colleague in decline that this is occurring publicly is even harder said one Democratic Senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity. I'd like to know who said that. Brian Fallon, founder and executive director of Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group that urged Democrats to play hardball during the hearings went further by calling for Feinstein's removal from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Quote, she has undercut Democrats position at every step of this process from undermining calls for filibuster and court reform straight through to thanking Republicans for the most egregious partisan power grab in the modern history of the Supreme Court found said in a statement. And I am very, very thankful that this group is calling for her to resign because if Democrats take back the Senate, she's in a position to become the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. No, that cannot happen. Now, I wanna share a little bit more from the statement that we Demand Justice put out because it is really blunt and I love it. They say, quote, it's time for Senator Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee. If she won't, her colleagues need to intervene. Yes, so I love that, but I'll take it even further. She needs to resign. She should have resigned two years ago, but we don't need you to wait until 2024 to resign, just resign right now. Because you are in a position because you are in bed with the enemy. Step down, resign, or just switch teams, become a Republican, show everyone your cards because you're functionally already a Republican because you're helping them at a time when we really, really need Democrats to find a fucking spine, but of all Democrats, you have been the most egregious. The most egregious, and honestly, I get even more pissed off at Diane Feinstein when I think about a couple of years ago, she literally yelled at children who begged her to take action on climate change only to then show up to this sham confirmation hearings and praise Amy Coney Barrett and ask to be introduced to her children. Judge, it's wonderful to see you here, also with the family that I have been observing. They sit still, quiet, you've done a very good job. I have eyes in the back of my head so they know I'm watching. I was wondering if you might introduce us to them. Sure. You know, I think that Diane Feinstein only loves Amy Coney Barrett's children because they're being quiet, but if they were to ask her to maybe please save the planet so they have a future and maybe they can live to be as old as her, she'd probably tell them to fuck off. This is a terrible human being. And at this point, with that egregious display that we saw from her, I wouldn't be surprised if she straight up voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, she has done fuck all for Americans. She is worse than most Democrats. So would it be that surprising for her to confirm Amy Coney Barrett in spite of the fact that, I mean, we see out in the open how there's this giant, multi-million dollar dark web of money as explained beautifully by Sheldon Whitehouse being spent at the behest of this tyrannical opposition party who is hell-bent on radicalizing our entire judicial system? I mean, she is assisting them in this process. She is the enemy. So, I mean, it can't be said enough. Diane Feinstein is absolutely terrible. Fuck Diane Feinstein. Fuck her. Hello, everyone. I am back with a phenomenal candidate. You already know who she is. Her name is Donna Imam running in the 31st Congressional District of Texas. I had to think about that number because there's so many candidates that I've talked to lately. Donna, welcome back to the program. Thank you so much for having me, Mike. This is so exciting to be back with you this late in the cycle. Really appreciate it. I really appreciate you coming back. The last time we talked was before your runoff election. You won that election. And on the night of the election, I was blowing up your Twitter DMs, trying to figure out what was going on because I couldn't see the results and I couldn't figure out if you won or not. And then I saw your live stream and you had like a little bit of tears in your eyes and I'm like, wait, are these happy tears or sad tears? Like, I need to know and I'm going crazy. But you won and we're super close. And now so much has changed to where you've been endorsed now by Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Beto O'Rourke, and even though I don't like him personally, I think that he has influence in Texas, which we need. So talk to us about your campaign and everything that's happened because so much has changed. This is true. So much has changed yet so much is very similar in the way we're running our campaign. Our campaign is still one of the most grassroots campaign ever. And I wanna start off by thanking all of your viewers because when we were in the primary, one among 12 candidates, it was your viewers with their small donations, with their support that really, really pushed us over the edge and got us here. And to this day, Mike, I can count easily how many people have maxed out on our campaign. And we have thousands of donors. They are all small donors. And I'm so proud to say that we have one of the most grassroots campaign. And I owe it really a lot to folks like yourself who've gotten involved, who've taken interest in our campaign. And we are here. And remember before the runoff, I said, we are on a winning path. I feel that we're gonna flip this district. We're gonna make you guys proud. And I'm so excited to be here with you today. Well, it's just, it's so incredible because when we first talked almost a year ago now, I was so excited about your campaign because you had like this really phenomenal pitch. You're saying, look, this district is like 2.9 points away from being flipped from red to blue and nobody's paying attention to it. So I'm running, I'm trying to flip this district and it was astonishing to me that like this opportunity potentially to get a progressive in this seat wasn't being taken up by anyone. So, you know, I had to jump on that opportunity to elevate your campaign. My viewers saw it and they obviously saw something because you're a phenomenal candidate. You check all the boxes, Medicare for all, UBI. So, you know, it's nice to see that like everything that we've done, it hasn't been in vain, right? Because I think a lot of progressives felt so demoralized, myself included after the primaries when Bernie Sanders lost. But now we're to a point where we're seeing so much success at the lower levels with candidates such as yourself and Corey Bush, Jamal Bowman that it feels like what we're doing is starting to pay off and it's a really good feeling. But before we go any further, I want to show my viewers an ad that you just put out called A Brighter Future. This is an incredible ad. And I think that if you haven't seen the interviews that I've done with Donna before speaking to the viewers, here's a little taste of her. When I started out my career really early on, I watched the parking lot empty out completely. Every manufacturing worker laid off their jobs sent to Mexico. You could work 40, 50, 60 hours every week for years and one day everything disappears just like that. You don't know where you're gonna get your rent from or how you're gonna get your groceries and you have no health insurance. That makes no sense to me. Over 55 million people file for unemployment in this pandemic while billionaires got wealthier by hundreds of billions of dollars. Something doesn't add up. My name is Donna Iman. I'm a computer engineer and I'm running for US Congress. I'm just a regular person that gets up every morning to go to work and I've never thought about running for office. But every day my mom calls me and she tells me about some woman who's been brutally killed or has been exploited asking me to do something. That's why I'm running. I've helped others find better jobs. I led a nonprofit that provides free training and education to anybody who wants it. We helped thousands and what I realized is we could do much more. But this election, it's not about me or my story. It's not about Democrats or Republicans. It's about our future and how we're going to bring together everyone who's been left out into our political process because that's what makes us Americans. That's our American dream. We can get healthcare for every single American. In fact, we've already paid for it. Technology should be driving down the cost of education to nothing, not putting our kids in debt. And Americans who have worked their entire lives to build wealth for this country should be able to put a down payment on their home and retire someday. We can't wait for someone else to solve our problems. We've risen to every challenge. Neighbors helped neighbors during Harkin Harvey. Americans across every state stood beside Black Americans against police brutality. Healthcare workers put their lives on the line so we could survive this pandemic. Together, we will bring solutions to our communities, to our towns, to our city and to our country. Join me, let's build a brighter future. So Donna, tell us a little bit about the ad and what you were trying to communicate if it wasn't already obvious, but you're thinking and why you think this is the right message to the voters in district 31. Yeah, so you started off pointing out the spectrum of individuals that have gotten behind our campaign, right? All the way from Bernie Sanders to Beto O'Rourke and Andrew Yang. And it just shows that when you run a campaign that's open-minded, that's really reaching out to every single person in this district, across this country, trying to appeal to them in the way that they feel like their challenges are being addressed. And that's what we're trying to do with this small ad as well. We're trying to tell people, look, we just cannot wait for other people to come in or long-time politicians to necessarily solve our challenges. Sometimes many of these people who have been Congress a long time forget and become disconnected with challenges of the everyday person getting up, going to work for a living, trying to live a decent life. And as you know, right now we are at a crossroads in the history of America. We have a very divided country which we've been hearing over and over again over the last four years. And what I believe is that all of us at the end of the day are trying to raise our families, trying to have a decent life and trying not to have daily economic anxiety. This is the story we're telling in our ad. And what I'm saying is we have a lot of things to look forward to. We have always risen to every challenge and if we come together, we can do this. And I know that a lot of candidates and challenges, first-time candidates, for example, like myself, we are still challenged. You know, we are still an inexpensive campaign because we just don't have the hundreds of people that can get behind us with 28 hundreds. I'm a first-time candidate, as your viewers know, that has never ran for office before. But we tried to run a very strategic campaign. We were very careful and focused on how are we using our money to be the most effective. And that's how I use all of my background to do that. And I think a lot of first-time candidates often will want to take the same path as other politicians and we can't do that. So we have to find our own path to succeed and to represent our district. And I think our campaign has found that and that's what we're trying to reflect in this small video. Yeah, and I think you're doing a phenomenal job. I wanted to ask you because you're running against Republican John Carter and what I've seen now with a lot of progressives facing off against far-right Republicans is they're getting really, really viciously attacked. They're subjected to horrible, I won't repeat some of the things that they've been saying, calling them names, even slurs, lying about them. How has your opponent responded to you? Like, is he willing to debate you? Is he in that phase where he's trying to pretend like you don't exist? What have you been dealing with in terms of like going up against the Republican? So my GOP opponent is a nine-term opponent. This district has never been represented by anyone but him. They say that this district was cut out so that he could be here. And the interesting thing about this race is that they, all the Republicans in Texas, all the GOP candidates in Texas, including my opponent, they have not backed down. They are running hard campaigns. So even though I'm a first-time candidate, I have very little name recognition. You know, when I started out, you know, almost two years ago now, my opponent is campaigning extremely hard and trying to get his message across. And here are the interesting, funny things that have happened. Number one, in all the mailers that he's sending people, he has removed the word conservative. So you can tell that they're afraid of their own branding that they've embraced for years. Secondly, he's telling people that he is protecting pre-existing conditions. Even though my opponent has voted against protecting pre-existing conditions, probably about eight times, he's now advertising that he supports the protecting pre-existing conditions. He is touting the fact that CARES Act was passed. Even though the CARES Act wasn't the perfect act, but it was mainly the house that's overwhelmingly Democrat that crafted it and got it through. But he's taking that credit and trying to tell people, look, I've done things for COVID. He's taking credit for PPP loans, even though we know for a fact that people of color, minorities in my district were not able to get PPP. When they went to get PPP, they were denied it because they didn't have the connections, they didn't have the resources in place to be able to go get it in a timely fashion. So the interesting thing is that the GOP is worried about their stance. They've ran this campaign, this very right-wing stringent campaign, which is very friendly to multi-billion-dollar corporations has never been there for small businesses. But now they're trying to say, well, we did this for you because they can see that they haven't served the people of Texas. And I think that is extremely telling about what's going on in Texas right now. Yeah, that is very telling. And I'll tell you, as someone in Oregon, we are basically a blue state. I live in a very blue area. And whenever Republicans run against Democrats, they kind of do what you describe John Carter doing. They hide their power level. If I could reference Dragon Ball Z and by power level, I mean how conservative they are in actuality. Like you don't even know if they are a Republican. So the fact that you have him in this situation where he's kind of running away from his conservatism and trying to embrace, I don't wanna call it more populist, but just more reasonable elements of what people want, of policy, that's a really good sign because I oftentimes I get a little bit worried that when you're running against someone who's a hard right Republican, it's really easy for them to put you on defensive and play offense and say, oh, will you support this radical agenda? But in this situation, the way that you've campaigned is you haven't made it seem as if you're just, you know, this crazy extremist. You've been meeting people where they are talking about how they need healthcare, they need education. And these are like individual personal connections that you're making. And he can't match that. He can't like do away with that by calling you an extremist because you're not an extremist. So it's just, it's so fascinating to see the way, like the influence that you're having in this race. It's incredible. And I've seen the same thing take place with other progressives who are running in red districts. Adam Christensen is one in Florida. It's just really interesting. So we're super close to this election. We're really looking at the prospect of Congresswoman Donna Iman, which I hope you'll come back once you're elected because that would be awesome. That would be awesome. So I wanna ask you now, talking about specific legislation, there's one piece of legislation that I've been screaming about for years, trying to get it promoted. It originally was HR3057, now it's HR4000. And I feel like this is something that would probably resonate with you. It institutes nationwide ranked choice voting. It ends gerrymandering and it makes all of our districts in America multi-member districts. So we're more proportional, right? It's not majoritarian. And this only has seven co-sponsors. And I've tried to get people from Oregon, representatives from Oregon to co-sponsor it. And finally, we have Earl Blumenauer on board. Would you be willing to at least look at this legislation and consider co-sponsoring it and kind of bolstering this? Because I think this is something that really could enhance our democracy. Yeah, so I'm already on the record supporting ranked choice voting. So you have me right there. So definitely I'm open to looking at this legislation and making sure that we have the right resources behind it and we have the right folks behind it. One of the interesting things I wanna tell you about the GOP, because I know a lot of people, especially people who watch your show, are concerned that we may be settling for solutions that we didn't sign up for, right? We wanted single-payer healthcare, but we're now, we don't really have that at the top of the ticket and there may be challenged by that. But one thing I want them to know is that these candidates, even though they have softened their voice as they're communicating to voters because they realize these districts are changing, that in essence that their core values have not changed. They are not good people. I wanna remind you that even today, my opponent tweeted that he has worked tirelessly with the Trump administration to secure $3 billion for the US-Mexico wall. We have people right now in Texas that are on the verge of eviction that are gonna lose their homes because unemployment is still extremely high. Restaurants are not fully opened up. Bars are not opened up. 15% of all restaurants in Texas have permanently closed. Permanently closed. And these are mostly mom and pop shops that have some of the biggest challenges in staying afloat, playing rent and getting through the pandemic. Yet the current congressman, my opponent, is talking about making our law enforcement even more militarized. He's talking about the border wall at this time in some of his literature that he's sending, by the way, using our taxpayer funds. Congress people have the ability to use certain taxpayer funds to send letters. He's also doing that. So these people are talking out of two sides of their mouth. They are not executing on the solutions that the American people need. And I wanna urge all of your voters, please do your research, go out and vote for the people that are representing you. And even if you're not completely satisfied with your ballot, remember, the GOP has absolutely no solutions for healthcare. They are not talking about solutions for this current pandemic. And we still have millions of people across this country that are struggling with childcare. They can't go back to work. They don't have a good job. And they're afraid of going back to the job they had because of the coronavirus. And we are now on the third wave in many states right now. Hospitalizations peaked. We heard about a temporary hospital being put together up in the Midwest just this week. So this pandemic is not over and for many of us, we are struggling. So when you go out to vote, make sure you take 10 of your friends, friends with you. Make sure you text them. It is important to participate and put in better people in Congress. And I think, I hope very much that your listeners would love to see me in Congress, would love to support someone like me. And be proud of the solutions we're bringing and the way we're executing on them and the way we're educating voters about these solutions and why they should embrace them. Yeah, I know that my viewers are already sold. And let me just say, it's infuriating that during a pandemic, and when people are struggling to pay the bills, he's focused on a border wall funding for that. Like where are your priorities? Like it's honestly astonishing that they're this out of touch. And it's funny, I'm glad that you brought up like the things that he talked about that he wanted to do that are seemingly more reasonable, you know, about PPP and whatnot, because I'm sorry, but that's just, you sound like you're pandering because we know you don't care about that. Like what you're doing, it's all at the behest of your donors, the border wall. I mean, who has this at the forefront of their minds right now? This is the furthest thing from people's minds. So it's just, it's astonishing that people like this continue to get reelected. But hopefully that's going to change finally. So before we go, can you basically give us your one last pitch? Because I don't know that we'll have time to talk before the election. It's like weeks away, which is crazy to me. What can we do to get you across that finish line? Because we need you in Congress. So how do we make this a reality? Yeah, so this is what I want to leave you with. I have always said on your show that I've been reaching out to every type of voter. We have over 200,000 voters just in my district that have never voted. And our campaign has asked for their vote. We have reached out to them. And we've been able to do this because of people like you and people that are watching your show that have generously donated to our campaign over and over again, even if it's small amounts, even at this 11th hour, we need your help. If you can donate, please do. And I want to leave you with an uplifting, hopeful story. I got an email like I get many emails from voters who are doing research on who to vote for. And this person said that he had been a restaurant owner and he's a lifelong Republican, but he wanted, he had gone through my platform on my website and he found many of the solutions quite intriguing and he thought they were well thought out. But he wanted to talk to me about a few of them. And so I called him this morning and we had a conversation and I explained to him how some of our earnings, the wealth that we create as working individuals, which a lot of times we refer to as taxpayer, right? So we pay taxes, the taxes come from wealth that we create, remember that. So we talked about it. And at the end of the conversation, this is what he told me. He said, Donna, I was gonna vote for you because I really liked a lot of the solution, I'm a lifelong Republican, but I really love the fact that you are focusing on root cause, not just some sort of solution to tell people, oh, I'm gonna do this for you or I'm going to lower taxes for you. You're going to some of the causes. When I explained to him that we don't have enough primary care physicians and yes, as much as we need single-payer healthcare, we need to be able to scale the healthcare infrastructure, something that I've been talking about so many times to you. And he really got on board and this Republican said, I and my wife would like to do something to support you. What can we do to volunteer on your campaign? Now, I know there are a lot of people that are gonna vote for our campaign, but it's always amazing to hear the other side to say, I actually wanna support you because I believe in some of the things that you're doing. And this is the impact, this is why you see people from the entire political spectrum getting behind us. I want you to know that we're working hard around the clock, there's less than three weeks. We can win this if we get out the vote. I urge your listeners, if you can't donate, maybe if you can make some phone calls for us, even if it's half hour a week, an hour a week, we need you, we want you and we can do this. So donate if you can, volunteer if you can, go to votefordonna.com and there's a volunteer page right there and we'll get in touch with you. And we're grateful for everything you've done by the way, Mike, you got us over the line twice. This is the third time. No, that was all you. And I really, really appreciate you giving me this time on your show. Well, look, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I'm so glad that you shared that anecdote because to me, it kind of feels like even though it's really easy to be down and be cynical right now, it does feel like we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in this country and stories like that kind of confirm this. So let me just say this, anyone who's listening do everything in your power to get Donna elected because this is more than just about that 31st district, even though those will be your constituents, like what you do affects all of us and we know it'll be positive. And so when you win, I'm going to probably scream at the top of my lungs and I might blow up your DMs again. So just the forewarning, but we're looking forward to it. And I know that after this election, I hope you take a break. I know you'll want to take a break. I hope you take a break because you've been campaigning so hard. So just take time for self care if you can and just know that we're all so proud of you. We're all rooting for you and we're gonna be there till the end. And Mike, I promise I'm gonna be back on your show and I want to come back and tell everybody we did it. That's gonna be awesome. That's gonna be awesome. Well, thank you so much, Donna. It's always a pleasure. You are welcome back anytime. Thank you, Mike, you take care. This is district 24. This is district 24. This is district 24. Frederico Wilson has normalized all that you have seen for the past 22 years. A recent study named district 24 as one of the top 30 poorly represented districts in the entire United States. My name is Christine Alexandria Olivo and I am running for Congress because we deserve better than this. I grew up in El Portal with a big family and big dreams. My grandfather used to stuff envelopes to make extra money. My grandma would cook enough food to feed the kids in the entire neighborhood so that no one ever went without. We struggled, but we always got by. My grandma used to say, Christine, one day you will get us out of this. As a child, I did not understand what she meant. I thought it was normal to work three jobs to live. I thought it was normal for medical bill collectors to call the house. I thought it was normal to have three families living under one roof. I thought it was normal to get pulled over with my brothers in the car. I thought it was normal to bury your friends at a young age. My grandmother died in October of 2018. When I went to the cemetery to make her arrangements, I passed a picture of a young boy with a big smile. I was shocked, but the funeral director said, we get kids all the time. As a mother of two beautiful boys and a former youth educator and youth advocate, I want you to know that it should not be normal to bury your friends at a young age. It should not be normal to be racially profiled. It should not be normal to be unable to afford a home for your family. It should not be normal to not afford healthcare. It should not be normal to work 18 hours a day and never enjoy your life while our congresswoman is absent from work and still gets paid with our taxpayer dollars. My opponent hides her mediocracy behind the 5,000 role models program and yet 77% of district 24 does not have a college degree. I am running for Congress because it's time for a new normal. It's time for this district to have a representative that will show up. It's time for a representative that will listen. It's time for a representative that will fight. I will fight for common sense gun reform. I will fight for a $15 minimum wage. I will fight for Medicare for all. And on November 3rd, when you elect me, Christine Alexandria Olivo. As your next congresswoman, I will fight to make you proud every single day. My name is Christine Olivo and I approve this message. Hello everyone. I am here with a phenomenal candidate running in Florida's 24th congressional district. Her name is Christine Olivo and she's here to talk about her campaign. Christine, welcome to the program. Hi Mike, thank you so much for having me, I'm really excited to be here. I'm excited to talk to you. All of the viewers who are tuning in just saw your ad. That's one of the best ads I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of political ads and I like that you talk about the district, you show a little bit of the problems. We see some images of people sleeping on the streets, people needing things that aren't being delivered to them right now. And you propose real solutions. And I think that this is something that we see with up and comers who are going to Congress, they actually have a clear policy agenda. And I know that like that shouldn't be revolutionary if you're running for Congress, but honestly it doesn't feel like it's the norm. And I think that candidates like you are bringing it back. So tell us about your campaign and who you are and why you decided to run for Congress. Thank you and thank you for showing the video. Actually, a very interesting thing about the day that we were shooting the video, we were on our way to an abandoned apartment building when we saw the hostage situation happening. That clearly was not planned. We were driving by and we said, forget the abandoned apartment building. We need to cover this. We need to cover the cops and the streets shut down because this is what happens on a day-to-day basis. This is normal activity in district 24. And that's why I'm running. That is the very reason why I'm running. In the video I talked about the moment that I decided to run was when my grandmother had passed and I go to the cemetery and there I see Trayvon Martin's grave. And I'm thinking my grandmother lived to be just a few weeks shy for 93rd birthday. And she's buried in a grave with children. And that's when I said, enough is enough. I looked at my own two kids and I said, if not now, then when? So I decided to jump in. I tell everyone, I'm not a politician. I'm a mom with a purpose. I'm fighting for my children. I'm fighting for your children. I'm fighting for a future for all of us. I've lived in this district, born and raised. I have seen what we can be and I've seen what we have become. Unfortunately, this is not the future that was promised to us. And the incumbent has been in office for such a long time. Even in Florida state legislation, for such a long time, there is no excuse for there to be that many homeless people on the streets in this district. There is no excuse for people to not have healthcare. A quarter of the district before COVID did not have healthcare. Now that we have hundreds and thousands of unemployed constituents, imagine the percentage it is now because their healthcare was tied to their employment. So now we are facing, you think we're living in poverty now. If we don't get ahold of this right now with someone that's bold, that's ready, that's gonna actually show up to do the job, then I can't even imagine what the future holds. Yeah, it's honestly scary. I mean, the future really looks bleak and it's never seemed as if things were going well. But I think that this pandemic has really put everything into perspective and it exposed the plethora of flaws in our system. And I think that you put it so perfectly in your video where we've normalized so much and we've kind of just like subconsciously accepted things that are terrible. I mean, it's not normal to not have healthcare. It's not normal to work 18-hour days and still struggle to pay rent. These are things that we've accepted as normal and finally we're starting to wake up and really push back and say, this isn't acceptable. Now you kind of touched on this, but your opponent, her name is, I believe, Frederica Wilson. She has been in Congress for quite some time, not as long as some other individuals. Can you talk a little bit about her? Because I mean, there's a lot of lawmakers who kind of fly under the radar. And to me, she's one of them. Like nationally, she's not well-known, but why do you think she's not meeting this moment? So, Frederica Wilson is, everyone knows her as the hat lady. She wears her extravagant cowboy hats, but no one knows her by any legislation that she's passed. They don't know her by, I mean, she advocates for women. There were young girls in Africa that were kidnapped and she advocates for them. She does have a program here locally called the 5,000 Role Models Program that helps boys, black and brown boys, get through high school, go to college. It's a great program. Unfortunately, only 19% of our district has a college degree. So there's so many missed opportunities there. And the issue is because she doesn't show up. You can Google it. She has the worst attendance. She does not show up. She didn't show up to vote for the Heroes Act. She's not showing up now. She's voting by proxy. Like she is not showing up for the people. She's not using her voice. She's not using her platform. She's collecting a paycheck and she's honestly being funded by big corporations. So who do we expect her to be indebted to? The people or to Carnival Cruisans? Yeah, I mean, it's really that simple. All you have to do is follow the money and you will see where a politician's loyalty lies which it's really refreshing to see, you know, now dozens of politicians step up and actually get elected not taking any money from large multinational corporations and just like purely funding their campaigns through the people, I think this is revolutionary. And what's interesting to me is that the response that you see from the corporate Democrats who don't like this is they try to say, oh, well, you know, you don't represent this district because you're taking money from people all around, you know, the country, they're out of state donations. But I mean, if you take money from a corporation, is that corporation's headquarters in your state aren't those technically worse out of state donations? So it's just, it's hilarious to me that they find some way to do these mental gymnastics. And speaking of corporate Democrats, so if you go to Congress, you would be another member of basically the squad. You'd be part of this growing block of people in Congress who are openly progressive and unapologetically left leaning, which we absolutely need. So my question to you, you know, it's tough because you're not in Congress yet. So the dynamic is difficult to imagine what it would be like, but let's assume Joe Biden is elected and Democrats have a really short period of time, two years where they actually take back the Senate. They have the House and the White House. So there's going to be a rift. There's going to be fighting between a lot of, you know, corporate Democrats and individuals such as yourself who are pushing Medicare for all. How do you, and I don't think there's any perfect answer to this question, because I don't know myself, how do you, as someone who's advocating for Medicare for all, try to push the envelope more towards that direction instead of a more incrementalist approach? Because currently in the House, it seems as if people in the Democratic Party at least support Medicare for all. I don't know how much of that is just like to appease their base or if they have a primary challenger, but in the Senate, it's a lot more difficult. So what do you do to push the Democratic Party in that direction? Because you're going to butt heads with them. Do you have a strategy going in? Because I personally have no idea how it would proceed other than to just be loud and obnoxious. I mean, I was thinking about being loud and obnoxious. Honestly, that question has been like, in the forefront of my mind, how can I make this difference? How can I do it? I think the first step is getting more allies, right? So if we can expand the amount of people, it's gotta be one person at a time. And when you're talking about Medicare for all, you have to break down all the excuses that people can give, okay? So everything, even burning this race, everything that I do now, it's all about strategy. What is going to be our strategy? If we can explain in numbers how it would make sense and expose those numbers to the American people, anyone that can go against the proof that's in the pudding, if they can go against it, then they're going against the people. So if we can actually sit down and say, okay, let's calculate what exactly is it gonna cost? What is it going to save? And we're talking taxes, everything. We need to lay it all out there. No more hypotheticals. Put everything down and see what it can be, right? Take the corporations out. If we can show the people, not even, I'm not even talking about the senators and the representatives, show the people, expose the numbers to the people, then they would have no choice but help on board. You have to show proof. Everything that I do now, everything that I say, it's like, Christine, you've got to show proof. Talking about Medicare for All and saying, oh, it's not going to raise your taxes. Show me, let's show them. If we believe that that's what our country needs, if we believe that it's possible, let's show them. And I think that's a really important point that you raised in terms of like talking about polling numbers and what the American people want, because there's this underlying assumption. If you watch any mainstream media segment on Medicare for All or healthcare, there's this assumption that, oh, well, the people don't want this. They wouldn't want to lose their private insurance, but that's not true. Like public opinion polls showed that a majority of Americans want Medicare for All and a plurality of Republicans even wanted. And in some polls, these are outliers but a majority of Republicans wanted. So the problem is that we've been lied to and we've been taught to be afraid of what other countries take for granted and wouldn't want to live without. So I think that if you actually bring the American people into the conversation, not only could that help to shame politicians and really get them to show their cards and where their loyalties lie, that is what the American people or corporations, but it also could galvanize the public because I think that if politicians and a larger block, including yourself, say, look, polls show Americans want Medicare for All, prove it, show up to Congress, protest, help us get this passed. I think that can really make a difference because the problem is that people in Congress aren't necessarily organizers and this is one of the benefits of getting people like you elected is you all have a background of activism and advocacy and this would make a world of difference because the people that we've seen in DC, it's like these politicians who follow this like perfect career path, they go to Ivy League schools, they get elected and it's like, we don't need people who are playing a role. I want people who are on the ground and that's a really important role that I think you would serve. I do want to ask you another question because this is something that is becoming a little bit more of an issue. It's ranked choice voting and there's a specific bill in Congress, it's HR 4000 and what this bill would do is it would permanently end gerrymandering. It would make ranked choice voting nationwide and on top of that, it would make America have multi-member districts. So rather than us just electing one representative per district, there'd be maybe two or three. So that way the vote is more proportional, meaning that like, we don't have this majoritarian system where, okay, this one person got 60% of the vote but the 40% aren't represented. So it's a lot better I think and it could open the door to a multi-party system where we don't just see Democrats and Republicans. Would you be open to sponsoring this legislative or co-sponsoring this legislation? It sounds great. I think that we need to, I mean, I love the founding fathers but I think it's time for us to abolish the electoral college. There's a lot that we need to do to change the way that we vote, to change the way that we're represented and that sounds fantastic. I would definitely be interested in learning more about it. This is actually the first time that I'm hearing about the bill. Yeah, a lot of people don't know about it. When I showed up to a town hall in I think 2018 with Suzanne Bonamici, my representative and she never heard of it as well because it's one of those things that kind of flies under the radar because it's tough, right? Like how do you sell this to members of Congress when you're basically asking them, will you make your party not have as much power by supporting this bill? So, I think that people who are more principled like progressives such as yourself, it's an easier sell, which is why we have to get more people like you elected to Congress. Well, I'm running as a non-party. So, it's really, for me, I think that it's time for us to start balancing our districts. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's having a multi-party system wouldn't be the end all be all in my opinion because you still have the influences of capitalism, but I think that it would make us a lot better off, I think. So, I wanna ask you about COVID-19 and in the event you're elected, realistically speaking, what do you think Congress can do to actually mitigate the spread of the virus because we're seeing, I don't know if you wanna call it like an extension of the first wave or the second wave, but we're seeing cases spike again. What do you think we can do legislatively to actually stop the virus from spreading because I think that this really is the number one issue to a lot of Americans right now because it's affecting people when it comes to their health. It's affecting them economically. What can you do as a lawmaker? So, the first thing that we need to do is realize that this has been mishandled from the beginning. So, we're going into chaos. It's sad to say that another shutdown would have to occur because a lot of places have shut down, but they haven't reopened properly. So then you see the extension of the first wave or the second wave, whatever we wanna call it. I think we need to do a real shutdown. I think that we need to make sure that we're doing our due diligence to get everybody the healthcare that they need. A lot of people are getting sick because they didn't have preventative care for other issues. So really taking charge with healthcare would make a huge difference. And also we need to be able, so the anxiety that people get from the shutdown is how are they gonna pay their bills? How is everything gonna get done? You know, who's gonna teach their child if we had a stimulus package? And I'm not talking just $1,200 once. I'm talking about $2,000 a month until we can get through this crisis. Understanding that this was not a quick fix. And the way this was handled as if it was a quick fix. Taking the time, giving the people the money they need, the security that they need, the healthcare that they need, and then taking charge and really listening to the scientists, listening to the doctors and doing what we have to do to stop the spread. We can't stop COVID, it's already out there, but we can stop the spread. Getting a mask mandate. I mean, I can make you a list of things that we can do. Unfortunately, because we have a president that thinks this is a joke. Our country, we have lost thousands, hundreds and thousands of loved ones because it has been mishandled. So the first thing that I wanna do is take it seriously. And from there, we can go down the line and take care of the people, give them what they need to stay home, stay safe, and let's get through this. Yeah, I think it really is that simple. Just believing in science, number one is a giant step. And you can really look, I have a segment on the program where this graphic designer basically took all the data from the New York Times and he tracked the rise of COVID cases by state and all of the red states have spiked where the blue states are starting to get it under control. Now they're all going to kind of go up at the same time. It's not like they're gonna completely eliminate it, but you can see simple things that blue states have implemented that really make a difference. Mask mandates, for example, as you brought up. I mean, in my state of Oregon, we didn't have a mask mandate. And whenever I would go out, I'd see like maybe 30, 40% of people wearing masks. As soon as the mask mandate is implemented, 99% of people are wearing masks. Like something like that really can make a difference. And a mask mandate isn't the end all be all. Of course, I mean, these are really complicated things, but it helps. And the fact that Republicans won't even do the bare minimum in just listening to scientists and their own CDC, which they control because they're in charge of the White House, it's astonishing to me. So overall, I think that anyone who's watching the show and they hear about your policies, they know you support Medicare for all, UBI, living wage, worker rights, they're already gonna be sold just by definition because like you check all of the boxes basically. But the election is coming up super fast. What can we do to get you across that finish line? Because it's difficult. You are at a disadvantage because you don't take corporate money. Having said that though, a lot of candidates who don't take corporate money have won Jamal Bowman, AOC, Cory Bush. So it's not impossible anymore. So what do you need from us to make this a reality? Well, like you said, I'm funded by the people. Donations, donations, donations, volunteers would be great. I need people at the precincts. A lot of people, the way I tell everyone in Miami, if I invite you to my little kids party in about like giving you like a month or two in advance notice, you won't show up. But if I invite you about two days before the party, you will be there. Last minute people, we do things on the fly. I need people at the precincts to help me get those last minute voters in. People that haven't heard about me, haven't heard about the mission, the message, fighting for the people. I need people there. If you wanna donate, go to www.christineforcongress.org. If you wanna volunteer, go to www.christineforcongress.org. If you just wanna learn about me, go to www.christineforcongress.org. At the end of the day, the underdog can win. What I need is a vote, right? I need the votes. So most importantly, if you live in the district, please consider voting for me. I would love to fight for you in DC. Yeah, I think that's perfectly said. It's so nice to see so many candidates run for Congress. I say this all the time, but in 2016, I could count the number of progressive congressional candidates on a single hand. In 2018, there were more. I couldn't count them on one hand, but we weren't winning as much. Now I can't even keep track. There's so many. That's one thing to be optimistic about, honestly, because after, progressives lost the primary, after everything just seems to be going horribly, I mean, we see a lot of people stepping up across the country running for Congress, and that in of itself is, I think, cost or celebration. So yeah, thank you, because individuals like you who are stepping up and doing this tremendous deed of self-sacrifice to run for Congress, I mean, I would never want to do it. So the fact that you are stepping up and dedicating your time during a pandemic of all times, it's just, it's really remarkable. And I hope that my viewers will consider sending you, even if you have a buck to spare, I think that really can make a difference because if 100 people send a dollar each, that's 100 bucks, that's a lot of money. That's more mailers that can go out. If you still have time to sit down mailers, you know, who knows with how much time, but thank you so much for coming on the program. We will be rooting for you, Christine. Thank you so much. And I just want to let everyone know, it's not easy to do this. I'm a regular person fighting for everyday people, but I want you to know that you can do it too. You can do it. So if you have that desire in your heart, if you feel like you can run, you can represent your community, I dare you to put your name on that ballot. Thank you so much for having me, Mike. I hope I can come on again after I win. Absolutely. As a member of Congress, how awesome would that be to bring you on the show? Yes. Take care, Christine. Well, that is everything, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've made it this far, as usual, we're not gonna end the show without thanking all of the people who make it possible. All of our Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members who help us not just to survive, but thrive. Thank you all so much. I think that I've run out of things to say, so I'm just gonna close right there before I start rambling. I will see you all next week. Take care, everyone.