 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 293 of the program. Today is Friday, June 4th. And before we get started, as we usually do, we're gonna thank all the folks who make the show possible. All of our newest Patreon, PayPal, YouTube members and also our latest Twitch subs who signed up to support us just this last week. And that includes Leigh Peacock, Matt McClory, Michael Talbot, Omar Abu-Shaban, Rostavar Geller, Sekhmara, and for Twitch subs, we have Jeff Waldorf, who also has a YouTube show. Definitely check him out. Shout out to Jeff. We have Snack ECJ, Spirit Ross44, and Winston Shee. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive mini-revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. This week, we have surprisingly a more lighthearted episode with less bad news stories. I mean, we focus on substance, but the news that we get isn't all bad, but there is some bad news. So we'll talk about John Kasich and how he's already turned on Joe Biden just months into his presidency. Also, Michael Flynn wants a Myanmar-style military coup here in the United States, as do many of Donald Trump supporters who seem to be on the same exact page as him. Trump claims he'll be reinstated as president of the United States in August. Also, he did get canceled again, but this time it was indeed by himself. Tucker Carlson cries about what he calls medical Jim Crow. Jesse Lee Peterson goes on an anti-gay rant on OAN. So I guess he's just gonna pretend that we didn't see him like gay porn on his public Twitter account. Ken Clippenstein masterfully trolls Republicans. Nina Turner's lead in Ohio's Democratic Party primary is massive, so we'll talk about that. And also Kirsten Sinema makes word salad in an attempt to explain her support for keeping the filibuster. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Let's waste no time and get right to it. Hopefully you guys enjoy what I have in store for you. By now I'm sure that you've heard about this, but I just couldn't not talk about this because it's such phenomenal news that it's desperately needed during times like this. So Nina Turner, congressional candidate in Ohio's 11th district, competing in a Democratic Party primary currently, tweeted this out. She is in first place according to a poll just released. She says, thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and supporters all over the district, our campaign is polling in first place. We are not taking anything for granted and no, it will be a tough fight. Our work to center the everyday people of Ohio 11 is only getting started. So as you can see, she's at 50%. And in second place, we have her main opponent, Chantelle Brown, who has the backing of the Democratic Party establishment. At 4% you have Johnson, 3% Smith, 2% Barnes. So essentially this is going to come down to Nina Turner and Chantelle Brown. Now one thing to keep in mind is that 21% are currently undecided. That is a relatively large number. This is an early poll, so keep that in mind. Now here's the quick breakdown of demographics. Nina Turner is doing great with white and black voters, but white voters currently make up the largest share of undecided voters. So look, I'm making this video because I think that it's important to know that the work that we've done to elevate Nina Turner is paying off. Having said that though, I always get a little bit fearful whenever I tweet out good polls because this can tend to have a backlash effect. Now it would happen regardless if I made a video about this or not. But basically if the Democratic Party establishment sees that a particular progressive is doing really well in a primary, that's when they kind of pull out the big guns. That's when the donor class starts to acknowledge that they need to get involved in this race. Otherwise a progressive is going to end up winning. Now Nina Turner has so much momentum. She just picked up the endorsement of Katie Porter. She's already been endorsed by Bernie Sanders. I mean, she's racking up the endorsements and she very clearly is the favorite, but I don't want you to take this race for granted because even if she's doing really well with a gigantic lead of 35 points, which is incredible. Again, there's still a lot of time left and things can change. So never get cocky, don't become complacent. If you wanna win, if you want this victory, you've gotta fight for it. And even if you don't live in that district, you can still make a difference. Chipping in a buck or two really does help. Trust me, like all the candidates who I've spoken to, they acknowledge that every single dollar is significant and it matters and it is put to good use. And on top of that, if you can't spare money, then just getting involved, phone banking or text banking for Nina Turner. I'm not sure if she has text banking set up but she definitely has phone banking set up. That really does make a difference because the more people you reach out, the better her chances are. So right now, phenomenal news. I think that this is not necessarily cause for celebration yet because it's too early but it is really nice to see Nina Turner performing exceptionally well. I mean, it's not like I had my doubts but just like the more excited I am about a progressive because they're such a good candidate, the more worried I am that the establishment is going to try to do everything to defeat this progressive and they are, right? You have, you know, special interests. Trying to bankroll Nina Turner's opponents but as far as we can see right now, it's not working at all. And even if we have a situation similar to the 2020 Democratic Party primary, where all of the centrists kind of consolidate behind a particular candidate, Joe Biden then, they could do that now with Chantel Brown but it still wouldn't really amount to much unless we have like 100% of all the undecideds also unite behind Chantel Brown. So it's looking so great for Nina Turner. It seems as if she's going to become a member of Congress but we can't say that yet with certainty but it's really nice to see that she's doing great and this is just, this is good news that I wanted to share with you to make your day because this certainly made my day. It's been a rough couple of weeks and I want to talk about a more lighthearted and just a fun story that is going to make all of you feel good. So by now, if you're not familiar with Ken Klippenstein, then I don't know what you're doing with your life but this is journalist Ken Klippenstein and pictured in this photograph, you can see him doing his hobby. He's on Twitter and he is strolling Republicans just masterfully and easily and no matter how many times he trolls them, they fall for it every single time. So on Memorial Day, he decided to tweet at a couple of Republicans with a very simple request. So he tweeted to Matt Gaetz, Congressman, my grandpa is a big fan of yours and is a veteran. He would be thrilled if you could retweet this photo of him for Memorial Day. Here he is as a young private first class. Happy Memorial Day. Now, this is not a photograph of Ken Klippenstein's grandfather. This is a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald, the individual who assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Now, of course, Matt Gaetz did in fact retweet this image but more importantly, once he did, Ken Klippenstein then changed his Twitter name to Matt Gaetz is a pedo. Just brilliant. But that's not all because the American conservative union president who also is, I believe, the organizer of CPAC, he was tweeted at by Ken Klippenstein and he decided to respond as well saying, wow, Ken Klippenstein, it's my honor to retweet the photo of a veteran on a day we remember his fallen friends. God bless your grandfather and America. Oh, and he also got Dinesh D'Souza to retweet him as well. And quickly after, Lee Harvey Oswald started trending on Twitter because so many conservatives were duped. And we're not just talking about ordinary conservatives. He got high profile conservatives to retweet an image of Lee Harvey Oswald. It's just, it's beautiful. Like, I don't know how else to describe this level of trolling. Like, the skill here is top tier. Like, this is legendary. Now, once Lee Harvey Oswald was trending, when enough conservatives found out what Ken Klippenstein was doing, then came the pro clutching, of course. And this is the best part of the story, in my opinion. So, Candice Owens actually took notice and she tweeted at Ken Klippenstein saying, you are making a mockery of a day that is meant to memorialize men that died so that you and other anti-American leftists can laugh at their sacrifices by photoshopping a murderer into their uniforms. You are deranged. Now, in case you weren't aware of this, Ken Klippenstein did not photoshop Lee Harvey Oswald into a uniform. That was a real picture of him. Second of all, I think it's really cute that she thinks that our imperialist wars are fought so that way we can have freedom here in America. Like, you can just see how brainwashed she is. But Ken Klippenstein responded perfectly by saying, would not have guessed you cared so much about being politically correct to which she responded saying, it's not about political correctness to have a soul and a modicum of decency. Reminder, these men died, the majority of them on foreign soil, so that you could be free. You do not photoshop murderers into their uniforms so that you can have a laugh. So in case you're not grasping the argument that she's making here, when she's offended by something that's politically incorrect, then actually it's not about PC outrage, it's just about her genuinely being offended, which is different somehow than the usual PC police that her and conservatives denounce all the time. Okay, makes sense. And again, she said that she thinks that the picture was photoshopped. But for whatever reason, she decided to delete all of those tweets. I don't believe this at all, just so you know. Of course. I mean, look, this isn't the first time, as I mentioned earlier, that Ken Klippenstein has duped conservatives. Back in 2019 on the 4th of July, he tweeted to Steve King, an image of Jack Nicholson saying, sir, can I get a retweet for my uncle, Colonel Nathan Jessup, he's in the Marines and spending the 4th overseas keeping our nation safe. And not only did Steve King retweet this image, but he actually added a really nice little message saying, Colonel Jessup and all your Marines, God bless you all. You have our back and millions of us have yours. God bless America and all her warriors, defending our liberty. And of course, once he retweeted Ken Klippenstein, Ken Klippenstein changed his name to Steve King as a white supremacist. I mean, it was a photograph of Jack Nicholson. And Steve King fell for it. And he did this to Rick Grinnell as well. I think on Memorial Day in 2019, he got him to retweet an image of an American war criminal. It's just every single time Ken Klippenstein, he pulls this off flawlessly, and they never get it because they're too stupid and they're ignorant of history. So this is just brilliant. Ken Klippenstein is a legend. He's a king. And I'll leave you with some words from our friend Snoop Dogg about the legend Ken Klippenstein. This motherfucker don't miss. No, he's fucking good. That motherfucker don't miss, man. He's good. In the heat of battle, he don't miss. No. In the heat of controversy, he don't miss. No. I'm sure there are Republicans and independents who couldn't imagine crossing over to support a Democrat. They fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind. I don't believe that. And less than a year later, John Kasich is already saying that Joe Biden has in fact turned far left. Now, unfortunately, that's not true. I wish that it were the case that Joe Biden just embraced the far left and became a far leftist himself, but that's not actually the case at all. He's calling for a bigger military budget. He's backed away from moderate positions when it comes to healthcare, the public option. He won't even cancel $10,000 worth of student loan debt, which he ran on. So no, it's not the case that Joe Biden has gone far left. So what is John Kasich even talking about? Well, we'll humor his idiotic argument and let him make his case in an interview with Don Lemon on CNN. And as you're going to see, his belief that Joe Biden has turned far left is based on idiocy. Take a look. Let's put it, the person is in charge, the legislation that he's proposing, the things that he's doing that he's trying. Well, how is that far left? Don, what he's proposing is not what he campaigned on. I mean, he's proposing spending money and changing the nature in many ways of the way we do things in the United States. Well, look, I endorse the guy. What he's running on and what he's saying now is not what he campaigned on. He campaigned on bringing us together. Now, there's an infrastructure bill. The Republicans have a proposal now to get to about $1 trillion. John, how can he bring people together when they don't want to work with him? That's a, that's a, he's, he's, he's meeting with, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. He's bringing people to the White House. He's asking Republicans to get on board with this. He's asking if you don't like my plans, can you offer me your own proposals? I don't understand how, when you say he's not, he's trying to be, he's trying by far to sit on, and Republicans are saying, hold on, Mitch McConnell is saying, I'm not gonna do it. What we're gonna do is just basically block everything that Joe Biden wants. Don, you're filibustering me. I just told you the Republicans have a plan. I'm asking you a question. Well, I'm giving you an answer. Okay, well, let me give my question out and then I'll give you time to answer. But you can't, you can't jump in and answer while I'm still, I asked you the question. I said, how is he, he's the one, quite honestly, who's inviting Republicans to the table. Republicans are saying no to every single thing that he is asking for and not offering any proposals. How is it false? Tell me what they're, what are they doing? That's because the Republicans have offered an infrastructure plan. Now they've upped their number to about trillion dollars. It's about the same number that Biden has if they're going to put that on the table. But I guarantee you the Democrats won't accept it. Well, I mean, you just said they don't offer a plan. They have a plan and it's focused on bridges and highways, the things that are true infrastructure and they're taking money that is not, that is not even gonna be spending this year. Wait a minute, I'm finishing now, Don. And there are things that were true infrastructure in 1987. We live in a society now where you need broadband. We live in a society now where you need to be on the grid, ask Texas what happened in the winter. You know what, that's in their proposal. It's in their proposal. And by the way, I don't want the government running broadband. I want the private sector running broadband. So they have a trillion dollar proposal. Well, what's funny about that? That's what they put out there. Now what Biden could say is, yes, I'll accept that. But you know why they won't accept it? Because they don't want to give either. And they're dealing with the same problem internally. They're dealing with big problems internally about is the left gonna come after them? And he's on a tightrope. I mean, look, they're gonna tell it like I see it, Don. I don't like what they're doing on the January 6th commission. I think it's outrageous. I think it's atrocious. But John, to be quite honestly, to say that it's both sides is really disingenuous. And the proposals that the Republicans are making now has nothing to do, is not even close to what Joe Biden offered initially. It's not even close to that. And to say that, Don, and there's nothing. That's not true. That is true. There's nothing about. It's not true. I'm sorry, it's not true. Okay, okay. We'll have to disagree on that. I mean, I'm just telling you, I'm not going to put a trillion dollars on the table. A trillion dollars. That's exactly what Biden had, okay? No, it's not. And understand that John Kasich is saying that the reason why he believes Joe Biden has turned to the far left is because he refuses to take a joke of a deal, a counter-proposal on infrastructure from Republicans, specifically because if he takes this deal, which is a watered-down version of his already watered-down infrastructure proposal, then the far left will be mad at him. Therefore, since he's trying to appease the far left theoretically, which is not true, but theoretically, that therefore means that he himself is far left. I shouldn't have to explain this to a former governor, but John, this isn't how political ideology works. You know that, right? Joe Biden is not far left. He's still very much a right-wing Austerian. He is a neoliberal. He says, what Biden is proposing is not what he campaigned on. Now, funny enough, I actually agree with John Kasich here, but for different reasons. Joe Biden abandoned a lot of his promises that were even remotely progressive. I mean, they were incremental reforms, right? Again, he ran on canceling $10,000 worth of student debt. He ran on a public option. He promised to be better on immigration and he walked back those promises. So I agree that he's not proposing what he campaigned on, but it's because specifically he's not far left because he's trying to appease not just the Republicans, but the moderates in his own party, which is a bad idea. If you actually wanna be popular, he already knows what to do to be popular. The COVID relief package, where you gave everyone $1,400 checks, that was really popular. Do more of that. Stop being an Austerian. Stop trying to work with individuals who don't wanna work with you. But John Kasich says that it's actually Joe Biden who's not doing enough to work with Republicans. Can you believe that? Like as they literally try to obstruct every single thing that Biden does, John Kasich is saying, oh, well you're far left because you're not accepting their counter proposals. It's preposterous. Like John Kasich sounds like he's a stupid person. Like you're not a serious person if you're actually making this argument, but he's being serious here, right? He's being serious here. He says he campaigned on bringing people together. Yeah, and he's naively still trying to go out of his way to include Republicans in the legislative processes. He's still doing this. He shouldn't, right? All he needs to do if he actually wanted to accomplish anything, kill the filibuster, put pressure on individuals like Harrison Sinema and Joe Manchin, you can get them to budge if you're the president with a high approval rating which he has, but he's not doing that. He doesn't even need Republicans, but he's still trying to reach out to them. So you're making me defend Joe Biden when I don't wanna defend Joe Biden because he is trying to work with Republicans. And as a leftist myself, as a far leftist, that's why I have a problem with him because he shouldn't be working with a party who is authoritarian and deeply unserious. He threw in there, oh, well, Joe Biden is proposing public broadband. I don't want the government running broadband. I want the private sector to run broadband. Yeah, because we see how well that's working out. I'm sure that everyone loves Comcast. First of all, Joe Biden isn't just saying we should have a public option when it comes to broadband. What he's doing with this infrastructure bill is investing in municipal broadband so that way if a municipality wants public broadband, they have the infrastructure needed to set that up. He's not just saying let's nationalize broadband, but to John Kasich, he is a shill for large multi-billion dollar companies. And this is something that even Republicans support, not Republican lawmakers, but Republicans across the country who support net neutrality because they don't like Comcast rips them off, as does AT&T, as does Verizon. So I mean, John Kasich here is doing a phenomenal job at reading the room. I mean, can you appear more out of touch? If there's any issue that has bipartisan support, it's that we all want net neutrality and we hate these multi-billion dollar companies who basically have monopolies in each area, right? Now, what I find absolutely hysterical is that John Kasich thinks that it's unreasonable for Joe Biden to not accept the Republican Party's counter-proposal. I mean, sure, this is the way that negotiations work. You come up with a really big bill, expect it to be watered down, and then you kind of go back and forth. They propose a counter-proposal, you come back with another offer. I mean, sure, this is the way that it works. But if you think that we're at a point where what the Republicans are proposing is reasonable at all, then you're kind of disproving the idea that there are moderate Republicans at all. And I'll explain what I mean by that. So the Republicans' counter-proposal, it's not even a trillion dollars in infrastructure spending over 10 years. I mean, with all that is needed to be fixed in this country, it shouldn't just be a trillion dollars. It should be far higher than a trillion dollars over a 10-year period. But Republicans are saying, we'll give you less than a trillion. You should still accept that. But that's not even the most ridiculous part about this. Not only is it extremely low, right? They're low-balling him. But on top of that, they're trying to stipulate how he funds this. So they don't want him to increase taxes on wealthy Americans to fund infrastructure. They want him to reallocate resources for COVID relief from former bills to infrastructure. So not only are they saying, we only wanna do like a small fraction of what's being proposed, but we want you to use money for COVID relief. Now, I know that COVID is getting better in America because vaccination numbers are ticking up. Having said that the pandemic still isn't over, and people are going to need economic relief who lost their livelihoods during this pandemic for a while. So this is extremely arbitrary and stupid. You don't need to use those funds, but they're saying, no, no, you have to use those funds. So John Kasich is trying to present them as good-faith actors who are proposing something that serious when in actuality, their proposal is not serious. Now, getting back to my point about moderate Republicans, what he's proving here is that there are no moderate Republicans, which is why Democrats are wrong to ever try to take the Republican Party serious. And I know that saying this makes me sound like a partisan hack, but trust me, I don't like Democrats as well. But the Republican Party is not a normal political party. The only moderate Republicans that exist are called Democrats now. John Kasich may be more reasonable than individuals like Mike Flynn, who's calling for a Myanmar-style coup in the United States, or Donald Trump, who lies about election fraud, but he's still unreasonable. He refuses to acknowledge that they're obstructing everything. There are no moderate Republicans in the Republican Party. Again, the moderate Republicans are all within the Democratic Party now. I'm talking about Joe Manchin, Kirsten Sinema. So I love this story because it really shows the Democratic Party that this is what happens when you try to work with Republicans. Like I get that this was a strategy that Joe Biden tried to use to try to coax moderate Republicans into voting for him, but I mean, understand that the Republican Party is controlled by the extremists. So when you try to work with the remaining like moderate-ish Republicans left, you're still gonna get burned because even the moderate Republicans in comparison with the Trumpian Republicans are still insane and unreasonable. I want to know why what happened in Minamar can't happen here. No! You know, no reason. I mean, it should happen here. No reason. That's right. That was former White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn at an event organized by QAnon supporters publicly supporting the idea of a Myanmar-style military coup here in the United States. Now, if you're unaware as to what happened in Myanmar and why this is such a serious thing for any high-ranking or former high-ranking U.S. official to advocate for, here's the details, just a quick breakdown of what happened in Myanmar. As Alice Cutty of BBC explains, the military is now back in charge and has declared a year-long state of emergency. It seized control on the 1st of February following a general election, which Ms. Sue Key's NLD party won by a landslide. The armed forces had backed the opposition who were demanding a rerun of the vote claiming widespread fraud. The election commission said there was no evidence to support these claims. The coup took place as a new session of parliament was set to open. Ms. Sue Key has been held at an unknown location since the coup. She is facing various charges, including violating the military's official secrets act, possessing illegal walkie-talkies and publishing information that may cause fear or alarm. That's what happened to the individual who won their country's election. Now, Russell Goldman explains, military leaders initially restrained response to the first waves of protests, civil disobedience and general strikes has grown more forceful over time, escalating into a brutal effort to put down the movement that so far has left thousands injured and more than 600 dead. Many of those killed have been young protesters. Their lives ended with a single gunshot to the head. That's what they want to happen here. When somebody asked that question, you heard the crowd applaud, and then the recently pardoned former national security advisor said, yeah, there's no reason why that shouldn't happen here. They literally are so authoritarian that they want a military coup here in the United States, just like the one that we saw take place in Myanmar. Also, they can illegitimately install Donald Trump as the permanent president of the United States. They're not even hiding it any longer. This is what high ranking or former high ranking officials within the Republican Party are saying publicly. They're saying the quiet part out loud. And it comes at a time when Republicans across the country are still performing election audits because they want the results of the 2020 election overturned. And even in Republican controlled states where they're not overly trying to overturn the 2020 election results, they're still currently rewriting the rules so they can control the outcome of the next election. And to make matters worse, the base agrees with what elected officials are doing. You can argue that the base is driving this because 53% of Republicans say that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, is the true president according to a Reuters episode poll released last week. So I can't overstate how dangerous this is. You can argue that Michael Flynn is a disgraced public official. Nobody takes him seriously, but understand what he's doing. Not only is it seditious, but he's further normalizing this idea that the only way to save America, save America is for a military style coup d'etat. And Myanmar, I mean, they executed theirs flawlessly. They also falsely claimed that there was election fraud and they use that as grounds to seize control. That's what they wanted to happen here. It didn't happen. I mean, we saw a bunch of Trump supporters storm the Capitol on January 6th, but they're just openly saying it now. This is so incredibly dangerous to have such a large portion of one of two major parties in the United States openly advocate for authoritarianism. It truly spells doom for democracy because they may not be in power right now, but when they get power again, inevitably so, well, I mean, we already see what's happening at the state level, voter suppression laws, a crackdown on civil rights. And this is only the beginning. So unless the GOP has a sudden change of heart and moves away explicitly from their embrace of authoritarianism, democracy in America is not long for this world. And democracy has already been eroded over time, right? It's been hollowed out because democracy, like all things in capitalist societies is also a commodified venture, right? But having said that though, we still do have a democracy. We're still not an outright authoritarian regime comparable to countries like Myanmar, but the GOP wants to change that. This is honestly stunning. Even for Michael Flynn, this should horrify everyone because what they're saying here is that they want the United States to end. They no longer want any democratic control. They just want to control power authoritatively and illegitimately. Don't just chalk this up to Michael Flynn being Michael Flynn. A significant portion of the Republican Party's base wants this. You heard folks in that crowd cheer as that person asked why there hasn't been a military coup in the United States yet. A lot of people are still shocked because Michael Flynn is a former Trump administration official who very publicly endorsed the idea of a Myanmar-style coup d'etat happening here in the United States. However, if you follow the Trump movement for months, this isn't necessarily that surprising and it didn't originate with Michael Flynn, this idea of a Myanmar-style military coup that is. And this is what one CNN reporter who's been following Trump supporters around for months explains in an interview on CNN and he also has some footage to back up his claims. Take a look. No reason. A former US Army Lieutenant General and former National Security Advisor appearing to endorse a military coup here in the United States. Trump won. He won the popular vote and he won the electoral college vote. Michael Flynn spent Memorial Weekend at a conference in Dallas attended by QAnon supporters. So too did Sidney Powell, who was part of the former president's election legal team. Powell, who has represented Flynn, said Monday that the media had grossly distorted Flynn's comments. She denied Flynn had encouraged violence or a military insurrection, but she didn't explain what Flynn had meant. Powell herself spoke of removing Biden from office over the weekend. We're definitely in uncharted territory. There are cases where elections have been overturned, but there's never been one at the presidential level, which everybody will jump to point out. That doesn't mean that it can't be done. It should be that he can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set and Biden is told to move out of the White House. And President Trump should be moved back in. The heavily criticized Republican-led audit in Arizona has given followers of QAnon and the big lie hope that the election could still be overturned. And some are finding inspiration in the deadly military coup in Myanmar as a way to put Trump back in power. Flynn's comments were seen as an endorsement of a coup by some QAnon followers. They were welcomed overnight by a prominent peddler of QAnon who has more than 70,000 followers on Telegram, writing, General Flynn says the quiet part out loud. Earlier this year, Trump supporters in California also cheered on the coup. Biden is just, he's like a puppet president. The military is in charge. It's gonna be like Myanmar. What's happening in Myanmar? The military is doing their own investigation at the right time. They're gonna be restoring the Republic with Trump as president. What's going on in Myanmar right now? The government took over and they're redoing the election, correct? That could possibly happen here, possibly. Would you like to see it happen? Absolutely. I would like to see it happen. Really? Yes. You know why? Because the election was stolen from us. And Flynn yesterday coming out and saying that his words had been twisted, that he was not in fact calling for a coup and that he would never do such a thing. But look, these claims, this talk of a coup is something that has been floating around the QAnon and conspiracy theory world that Flynn and Sidney Powell have lived in for quite some time. Well, of course, you weren't endorsing a Myanmar-style military coup here in the United States, Michael, right, wink, wink? I mean, these folks, they will say something out in the open and then shamelessly deny it. It's not just Michael Flynn, like we're seeing Marjorie Taylor Greene now deny that she compared the Congressional Mask mandate to the Holocaust. And she said it on camera just last week. So these people are absolutely shameless and you'd think that they'd have some mechanism in their minds that makes them feel embarrassed when they shamelessly lie, but that's not the case. Now, in that clip, we also saw Sidney Powell, whose lawyers argued that no reasonable person would take what she said about the election series. She says that, you know, Trump could be reinstated. Now, believe it or not, that idea also did not originate with her. This has been floated by other Trump-sick-of-fans and yes, the main shed himself. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times explains that Trump has been telling close allies that he will in fact be reinstated and he's gonna be reinstated very soon as president in August is what he's been saying. Now, look, I don't know what extent Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Donald Trump believe the things that they're saying that are delusional. I think that Donald Trump probably believes it the most, but whether or not they believe it personally and they're just trying to profit off of this as some sort of a grift, I'm not sure. But what is really important is the fact that Trump supporters believe what they're saying. They can choose to not believe the delusional things that they're saying, and they're just throwing red meat to Trump loyalists, but if they believe it, that's what matters because as January 6th put us, these folks aren't playing around. They're not just saying stop the steal because it makes them feel good. They genuinely believe that the election was stolen and when high ranking former White House officials say things like this, endorse the idea of a Myanmar style military coup in the United States, this gives them more ammunition and it frustrates me to see so many people downplay the significance of QAnon because believe it or not, not only is this ruining lives of people whose family members have been lost to QAnon, but this group, a large portion of it is indeed dangerous. Not all of it are these benign idiotic ideas that they believe, like some of these people are actually dangerous. This is a potentially violent group and as David Gilbert of Vice News reports, QAnon has a disturbing takeover plot to quote eliminate public officials. He adds a known grifter and QAnon supporter who claims she can time travel, has amassed an army of thousands of loyal followers to carry out a plot to oust elected officials across the country and replace them with QAnon believers and she's using game streaming platform to which to do it. Terpshikor Maras Lindman has spent the last four months building an intricate network of groups in all 50 states, urging followers to dig up information about elected officials and cough up hundreds of dollars to take part in her scheme. Maras Lindman has promised her followers that the plot will bring about retaliation for what she believes was a stolen election last November and ultimately see the return of former President Donald Trump to the White House. All the while Maras Lindman who streams under the name Tori says has grown her subscriber base massively raking in tens of thousands of dollars since the beginning of the year. She even managed to convince her supporters to cough up over $87,400 in a crowdfunded campaign which she used to buy a new Tesla. Maras Lindman is part of a growing ecosystem of grifters and hucksters who are leveraging the widespread belief that Trump's election loss was somehow orchestrated by shadowy figures and companies tied to the Democrats. This so-called big lie has taken hold within the mainstream Republican Party and fringe figures like Maras Lindman have succeeded in carving out a niche that's proving to be highly lucrative. Now, again, I don't know if this individual in particular referenced in this article is dumb or disingenuous. I don't know if she is genuinely delusional enough to believe that she can time travel or if she's just simply grifting and she's trying to make a few easy bucks off of fooling rubes. I don't know, but it's a distinction without a difference. Whether or not she actually believes what she's doing, enough people follow her that do believe what she's doing. And most people I'm sure will watch her content and think, wow, she's a truth teller. I love this. They'll just get more further deranged and more detached from reality, but some folks will actually choose to do violence. It's not like there isn't a precedent for this. Again, we saw what happened on January 6th. And what we're seeing is a sort of feedback loop. The more that public officials and Trump-adjacent politicians who kind of want to replace Trump in 2024 if he doesn't run, the more that they lie about the election, the more that they do Trump's bidding for him and spread lies and misinformation, the more that they are loved by the base. If you go against what Trump wants, like Liz Cheney, the base will revolt against you. And for the foreseeable future, you don't have a future in the party. Anyone who wants to challenge Donald Trump, they're most likely not going to be successful. So what we're seeing here is there's this incentive now among a lot of Trump officials and Trump allies and Trump fans in general to continue to propagate this lie. And quite frankly, it is deeply, deeply dangerous. So if you thought that you've seen the last of Donald Trump, think again. He may have canceled his blog, but according to him, he will be president again very soon. He will be reinstated as president as early as August, according to him. I'm not necessarily sure what he's basing this on. Nonetheless, I am very incredibly intrigued by this story. And Maggie Haberman of the New York Times is going to explain how some close Trump associates are being told by him that he does believe that he will be the president again very soon. Take a look. New York Times, Maggie Haberman writes quote, Trump has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he'll get reinstated by August. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman joins us now. She's a Washington correspondent for The Times and a CNN political analyst. Maggie, I have to say, when you wrote that, my eyes popped. I was stunned. The former president is telling people he expects to be reinstated by August. What's going on here? So John, what he's doing is echoing things that are being said by Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer, although he distanced himself from her at certain points over the final months of the administration, but she was helping advise him on these efforts to overturn the election last year. This is being said by Michael Indale, the CEO of MyPillow, who has been pushing this for some time. He's echoing what they're saying. The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying it is one is the former president. One is a possible future party nominee. Even given all of his legal troubles, if he ran for president again, he would still have a very good shot at the nomination. And this is something that some of his supporters will hear and take seriously when he says it. There is no legal mechanism by which this can happen. There are people who are telling him things are possible that are not possible, which is exactly what we saw happen after the November 3rd election last year, which was all the lead up to January 6th, as we know, and what we saw in the attack on the Capitol. And so there is a dangerous component about this conversation that's going on. And I think one thing that is jarring about our current news environment, John, is that there is a separation between what literally, and this sort of choose your own adventure of news has gotten worse progressively over time. Democrats who support Joe Biden don't want to hear anything about Donald Trump. And because Donald Trump is not on Twitter anymore, they think therefore he doesn't really exist, except he does really exist strongly in this right wing ecosystem. It is true he's not on Twitter. It's true he's not on Facebook. He can't direct followers the same way he did. He's also going to start appearing publicly again. And so the public really needs to be aware this is something that he has been saying. Okay, so that's probably as much as we need from that interview. There's discussion online about whether or not Trump is just saying this because he wants to raise money for his super PAC and that this is all part of a grift and he's scamming his supporters. I think that Trump is saying this because he actually believes that he will be reinstated. And in the event. He's not reinstated, which is at 100 percent. He's going to then say, well, you know, I was supposed to be reinstated, but X happened and then Y happened and then that led to Z. And that's why I wasn't reinstated, but I actually was going to be reinstated. But the fake news of the Democratic Party elites, they stopped me from being reinstated. Like this is someone who is deeply unwell, who is genuinely delusional. And if you think he's that intelligent to like play 3D chess and say these things deliberately as part of a grift, I just don't buy it. I think that he's saying that he's going to be reinstated because he actually has convinced himself that he will be reinstated because he just has never come to terms with the fact that he lost the election. Now, I will say this again. I've said this before, but I think it really is worth noting again. It is extremely cruel for his family members to just let him bask in all of these delusions. Why are you not intervening? Why are you not explaining to him that he lost? He very clearly doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what happened. Why aren't you explaining this to him? Now, I'm not diagnosing Donald Trump. I'm not saying that he has dementia. But when my dad had dementia towards the last stages of his life, we would have to explain to him very clearly and slowly why the things that he believed and saw were not actually real. So he believed that me and my mom were kidnapped. And this was when he was being transported from the hospital to a long term care facility. And in the car, like during the car ride, he was screaming, he was hysterical because he thought that kidnappers took me and my mom and he was freaking out and my mom actually had to like go and calm him down and explain to him, I'm here. What you're what you're envisioning is not real. You make, you know, you made this up in your head. I know those feelings are real, but thankfully we're safe or fine. And he believed it was real. So we had to convince him that what he was seeing wasn't real. And that's that's really difficult to do for a loved one that you care about. But the fact that Trump's family hasn't intervened and at least tried to make an attempt to reign him in from all of these delusions that he's experiencing. That's just like you're cruel. You're a terrible son. You're a terrible daughter. You're a terrible wife. If you're not trying to get him to live in reality, like how could you not want to do that? Like for my dad, I try to go out of my way. But Trump's family, they just they don't give a shit. He's like as delusional as you can possibly be talking about how he's going to be reinstated and they're just like, oh, yeah, dad, I believe that. What, because they're afraid of him? They don't want to challenge their dad because he has a lot of money and power. And they're afraid that, you know, when he dies, they'll be cut out of the will. I don't know what it is, but they're really shitty people. Like I don't give a shit about Donald Trump. Let him suffer. That's my opinion. But if you're his family member, you should be trying to talk him out of this. Let him know that he's not going to be president. It's over. Sure, he can run again in twenty twenty four if he wants to, but he's not all there and he shouldn't, but they don't care. They're just letting him be completely delusional and off his fucking rocker. And it's insane to me. So that's what I'll say about this. The fact that he's saying this, I don't believe this is part of a grift. Former president Donald Trump made his much anticipated return to social media. And it's a very appropriate website for Donald Trump. It's Taylor made for Donald Trump. And also, he's the only one who can post. And I'm leaving out the best part. There's literally a trailer for his social media website. I'm not kidding about this. Take a look. Well, folks, I'm set to report that the dream is dead. Abandon all hope. Donald Trump's blog has officially been canceled by himself. Yeah, not even a single gem has emerged out of his blog. And it's already canceled. Now, as McKenna Kelly of the Verge writes, former president Donald Trump's blogging days are officially over. On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Trump's blog has shut down less than a month after its launch. The blog from the desk of Donald J. Trump launched May 4th as a substitute messaging platform for the former president after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year. But as of Wednesday, the blog had been completely removed from Trump's website. Jason Miller, senior aide to Trump, confirmed to CNBC Wednesday that the site will not be returning. The old blog posts are now archived as press releases in a separate section of the site. Much of Trump's success can be attributed to his social media following. But his blog struggled to find the audience his Twitter feed did. Last month, NBC News reported that the blog gained only two hundred twelve thousand total engagements, a much lower engagement rate than the former president's tweets. So I mean, I have to say this is how bad cancel culture has gotten in American society where people are canceling themselves. That's how serious of a threat cancel culture is to freedom of speech. And I didn't even get to make a single video about some stupid thing that Donald Trump said. In fact, I was planning on like following it just occasionally to see if he said anything interesting or entertaining. And I just kind of forgot about it. And then I'm like, I think that he didn't realize how easy it is to follow someone when you're already on a particular platform like to go to his website, which is shitty. You have to remember to do that. It has to be part of your routine and two hundred twelve thousand engagements. That's that's embarrassing. So my my theory is that he shut it down because he was embarrassed by the low numbers. You know, he always bragged about how he'd get high ratings and whatnot. And so to see this, like if anybody pointed this out, he would be embarrassed. He'd be ashamed of it. So he decided to just shut it down. It's it's funny. So I think that perhaps he'll launch something more substantial like an actual social media platform and not just the blog. Who knows? But either way, it's not going to be the same as being on Twitter and Facebook because these platforms took years to build up the amount of users that they have. And you're not just going to get that user base like this overnight because you're Donald J. Trump. Like it takes time and his tweets aren't that interesting. Like you say the same thing over and over again. Liz Cheney is a loser. The fake news is bad. I mean, do people really need to go out of their way to go to a different website just to see you say the same thing that you've been saying for years? I don't think so. So that's why it's it's gone. And Donald Trump has canceled himself. That's how bad the website was, because even Donald Trump thought, I should cancel this. And he did. This is peak cancel culture, folks. And I think that we have to be opposed to it and argue that Trump should reopen this blog, start a petition and demand that he restart the blog. That just be funny. Pretty much everybody agreed that segregation was the worst thing this country ever did. He was this close to letting the cat out of the bag entirely. And look, I don't think that that was an accident. I think that he deliberately almost misspoke because personally, he probably actually does think that segregation is based and he wants the signal to his white supremacist audience members that he's going to say that segregation is bad for purposes of this segment. But in actuality, he doesn't think it's bad. He actually thinks that it's good. And if I had to guess, he'd be using this segment, an example of liberal segregation to legitimize his own version of segregation later on in a future segment. Who knows? That's only speculation. But look at what he tries to compare to segregation. Vaccine passports, he doesn't say the word, but he's fear mongered about this in the past. Take a look at what he has to say here. This is absolutely just delusional. Pretty much everybody agreed that segregation was the worst thing this country ever did. Forcing certain categories of citizens into separate lesser accommodations, barring them from public places, treating them like lepers or untouchables. That was completely immoral and wrong. We were told that a lot and most of us strongly agreed it was wrong. So imagine our confusion today looking out across the country. The very same people, literally the very same, who just the other day told us that segregation was immoral, are now enforcing segregation. Should we be surprised? Probably not. But we still are. Just this morning, the New York Times informed us that unless you can prove you have taken the injection that the Democratic Party demands you take, you are no longer permitted in bars, comedy clubs, even some dance competitions in the state of New York. You're too dirty to appear in public. You're not welcome near normal people. Want to watch the NBA playoffs in person when you had better be vaccinated to do that? Otherwise, the New York Knicks will bar you from Madison Square Garden. You can still go see a baseball game if you want to, but be warned. You will be sitting in your own roped off section marinating in your shame with the other disobedient bad people. Medical Jim Crow has come to America. If we still had water fountains, the unvaccinated would have separate ones. So in short, be afraid, be very afraid, because we are now witnessing the birth of medical Jim Crow. Now, he says that hypothetically speaking, in the event we still had water fountains, then vaccinated people would be forced to drink at their own water fountain and unvaccinated people would have separate fountains. OK, let's assume that this actually would be the case, Tucker. Why don't you give us a little bit of a clue as to what fountain you'd be drinking out of? Why don't you tell us about your vaccination status because we know that other Fox News hosts, they did get vaccinated because despite what they say they see on their program, they know that vaccines are safe and effective. So tell us which fountain you'd be drinking out of. Are you actually afraid of the vaccines or are you just virtue signalling to your conspiratorial audience who you know would turn on you if you tried to encourage them to do what's right for their health, get vaccinated. I actually think he's vaccinated. He won't reveal if he's vaccinated. Fox News won't say whether or not he's been vaccinated because in the event he actually did say, yeah, I'm vaccinated. That obviously he'd be a fraud, right? You can't complain about how there's so many questions unanswered about the vaccine. But then take it yourself, right? That would contradict your own narrative. So that's why he's keeping the soul in the hush hush. But if I had to guess, I would say he's vaccinated. He knows it's safe. And in the event, we actually saw medical Jim Crow, as he says here. He'd be safe. He'd be part of the vaccinated crowd. But what he's saying here is so stupid. And listen, he says that it's the liberals who are enforcing segregation here via vaccine passports. But every example that he gave, isn't it interesting that it's not actually the result of a Democratic Party policy? It's actually the result of private companies. It's like the free market is sorting it out. So don't worry, Tucker, you're a capitalist, right? So I'm sure that the invisible hand will sort all of this out. I mean, this is the economic world that you've shilled for you and your ilk have argued and fought for this dystopian hellscape that we're living in currently. This is the free market. It's not the result of Democratic Party policies. In fact, Joe Biden has been explicit in saying, we're not going to institute vaccine passports at the federal level. However, if large multinational corporations of the business world want to do that, then that's their own prerogative. Now, as a capitalist, I'm sure that Tucker Carlson would understand this. But I mean, unless his political ideology has flipped, then he shouldn't be worried about what the free market does. He should trust in the free market. It's almost like a religion, right? I mean, if you don't like what the free market is doing, this is the bed that you made lie in it. Now, the most ridiculous part, I think it's pretty obvious, right? This is obviously a false equivalence. He's comparing unvaccinated people to black people who were denied their humanity as a result of racism. You see the difference, Tucker, between someone who is a moron who chooses to go against their own better judgment and refuses to take this vaccine. They can choose to stop being stupid. They can choose to inform themselves and they can choose to get vaccinated. You can't choose to be black or not, Tucker. You can't choose to wake up one day and put on a white face and just be white. That's not the way that this works. So that's why these things are not comparable in any way, shape or form. People who are vaccinated, they are choosing to be stupid. They are choosing to do this to themselves. And I haven't even seen like I haven't had a single company ask me for my vaccine status. But if this is as widespread as he says it is, which it is not, then wouldn't the solution just simply be get vaccinated? It's safe. Then you get protected from COVID-19. I just I don't understand the right wingers who downplay the severity of this highly contagious deadly virus. And they say, well, look, the survival rate is like 99.9 percent. That's what they say. And that's actually a lie. The death rate is between one and two percent, depending on other factors, comorbidities, your age. But I mean, they're basically they'll say, I'll take my chances when it comes to COVID-19. But when it comes to this vaccine, which is near 100 percent survival rate, I mean, how many people have died from the vaccine? There's that one woman who got a blood clot from the Johnson and Johnson shot. I mean, odds are you are overwhelmingly likely more at risk because of COVID-19 when compared to the COVID vaccines. So overall, I mean, this is more baseless fear mongering by Fox News, and it's pretty disingenuous because we all know Tucker Carlson is vaccinated. But again, I want to I want to basically let you know what I think he's trying to do here. He really wants you to think that this is actually comparable to segregation because eventually on his program, based on the trajectory that he's headed on, pretty soon, he'll just be outright advocating for a white ethno state. I mean, he's already talking about the conspiratorial great replacement theory. He's this close to already doing that, right? So one one day, he'll probably advocate for the white ethno state that he desperately wants, and he'll be arguing for actual segregation. And the justification will be this right here. He'll say, well, look, the liberals are calling me racist for advocating for segregation, but they supported segregation. They supported medical Jim Crow. That's exactly what he's going to do. This is what Republicans do all the time. It's disingenuous, but understand that if you're listening to Tucker Carlson and you're taking him at face value and you're not actually vaccinating yourself, ask yourself this question, why won't the Tucker Carlson tell me whether or not he's been vaccinated? Isn't that a little bit suspicious? I mean, my viewers know my vaccination status. I'm fully vaccinated. So why won't he tell his viewers what his vaccination status is? It's almost like he's trying to tell you what you want to hear. And he knows that ignorance is bliss and you don't want to inform yourself because you feel more right and you're worried about the vaccine because you're uninformed. I mean, there's nothing left to say about this. Tucker Carlson has been getting worse and worse lately. But yeah, he's now comparing vaccine passports, which are almost non-existent at this point in time. Disaggregation. Well, as folks in Arizona know, I've long been a supporter of the filibuster because it is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies. The idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before us, the United States Senate, to create comedy and to encourage senators to find bipartisanship and work together. And while there are some who don't believe that bipartisanship is possible, I think that I'm a daily example that bipartisanship is possible, not just this trip today and tomorrow that John and I are doing, but the work that John and I and I and many other of my colleagues in both parties do on a regular basis. So to those who say we must make a choice between the filibuster and X, I say this is a false choice. The reality is, is that when you have a system that's not working effectively. And I would think that most would agree that the Senate's not particularly well oiled machine, right? The way to fix that is to change your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change your behavior. So I'm going to continue to go to work every day, aggressively seeking bipartisanship in a cheerful and happy warrior way, as I always do, and showing that when we work together, we can get things done. That was Republican Senate, excuse me, Democratic Senator Kirsten Sinema, explaining why she believes the filibuster is based. Now, if you noticed out of all the crazy things that she said, the words out of that she made, whenever you can like pick out anything that was slightly coherent, the opposite was actually true. Like the filibuster is quite literally being used to obstruct her own party's agenda and she explains why it's not the filibuster. That's the issue. It's the individual behavior. That's the issue, right? Because the individual behavior is utilizing this tool. That's a relic of the Jim Crow era to obstruct everything. There's like, I don't believe that she believes the things that she's saying. I think she actually is just lying through her teeth and she supports keeping the filibuster because she sides more with Republicans than Democrats and she just doesn't want to admit that for some reason. But she doesn't want even this milk toast agenda that Joe Biden is pushing to go through. That's why. So she says here, the filibuster protects democracy and encourages senators to find bipartisanship and work together. Is that so? Because it doesn't seem to be doing that, actually. It seems like Republicans are simply just using the filibuster to obstruct any and everything that the Democratic Party wants. So is it actually encouraging bipartisanship or is it hindering it to say that the filibuster protects democracy when it's currently being used to block the for the people act, which literally is the bare minimum needed to save democracy from all of these voter suppression bills that we're seeing pop up across the country. It's just she's lying. She's lying. I don't believe that she believes this. Now, she also says, and while some don't believe that bipartisanship is possible, I think that I'm a daily example that bipartisanship is possible. That's just hilarious. You are an example that bipartisanship is possible because you join with Republicans to block the Democratic Party's agenda. If that's an example of bipartisanship, then I don't want anything to do with that. She adds, the reality is that when you have a system that's not working effectively and I think most would agree that the Senate is not a particularly well oiled machine, right? I wonder why the way to fix that is to change your behavior. OK, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change your behavior. That is insane. The Senate is an institution that has certain mechanisms, certain tools that incentivize this sort of bad behavior. Now, you can prove us wrong by not obstructing the Democratic Party's agenda. The Republicans can maybe prove your point by choosing to not obstruct everything using the filibuster, but she knows that that's not going to happen. She's just trying to grip on to any argument she has to defend her unwillingness to get rid of the filibuster. But none of this is persuasive at all. Will she stop siding with Republicans to block even the most basic things supported overwhelmingly by the base of her party, the for the people act, the pro act? I mean, of course not. So I don't even know what she's saying. But this next thing that she says here just insane. So she adds, if you seek bipartisanship in a cheerful and a happy warrior way, the way that she does it, you can actually show people that you can get things done when you work together. She actually said that with a straight face. So I think I know what she's talking about because there's an example of this. Here she is gleefully siding with Republicans to fuck over American workers and vote down a $15 an hour minimum wage increase. That's what she means by just being a cheerful and a happy warrior. That's how you accomplish things. Just like giddily. Fuck over Americans. Do a little woo-woo or a heart emoji while you do it. And that's just like that's the way you get bipartisanship, folks. This is childish, which is why I don't think she believes this bullshit. There's no way a functioning adult would come to this conclusion. Like she sounds like a stupid person. But again, she's just trying to find any and all excuses as to why she doesn't want to get rid of the filibuster. Now, what needs to happen is that Joe Biden actually needs to grow a spine and condemn individuals like her and Joe Manchin, who are not good faith actors. They're lying. The reasoning that they give as to why they want to keep the filibuster. All you have to do is take what she's saying at face value and see that it's preposterous. Oh, I want to keep the filibuster because it encourages bipartisanship, but that's not happening. It's demonstrably false. It hasn't encouraged bipartisanship. We can see it in action. Republicans are obstructing everything. So what are you talking about? Now, thankfully, Joe Biden has actually called out Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, not by name and very tepidly. I'll be it. It's a start. Jones should be a month of action on Capitol Hill. I hear all the folks on TV saying, why doesn't Biden get this done? Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the house and a tie in the Senate with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends. But we're not giving up. Then crack some schools metaphorically, of course, either, you know, offer them carrots or take the stick approach. I don't know. But if you just like continue to allow members of your party to obstruct everything that you want to get accomplished, you're going to be a very ineffective president at the end of your four year term, Joe Biden. So I mean, you got the covid relief package through. Are you going to get infrastructure through? Are you going to get the for the people act through? Because if you don't, Republicans are going to win the 2024 and 2022 elections because they've already rigged the rules in their favor. Are you going to get the pro act through? I mean, you can't get the minimum wage increase through. But the pro act will at least allow more Americans to join unions. I mean, you can't just keep letting them do what they want to do. Like the status quo within the Democratic Party and particularly in the Senate has been to just let individual senators from more purple and red states do what they want to do. Claire McCaskill talked about this all the time, how Chuck Schumer would let her, you know, not side with Democrats and even let her align with Republicans if it was to her benefit. But that needs to change. Joe Biden needs to be clear and direct in saying, I need these bills on my desk and I need you to find the votes. Chuck Schumer and if he can't get it done, then replace Chuck Schumer. And if any majority leader can't get it done, speak to them directly. You have a high approval rating. Use that to your advantage. Use your bully pulpit to name and shame them. Get it done. So I mean, this is all really frustrating because I'm so sick and tired of hearing all of these excuses, like by now, if you don't support getting rid of the filibuster, then you're just admitting that you don't want anything to be accomplished within the next couple of years. You're just admitting that because you're not going to keep this majority. Even if it's a thin majority, it still is a majority nonetheless. With Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker, you're not going to keep it if you don't get anything done. So you've got to crack some skulls and make it happen. So Joe Biden needs to be a lot more assertive, needs to grow a spine and condemn this level of foolishness because what she said there, I mean, we all saw it is absolutely absurd. It's borderline delusional. I hate to do this to you, but we are going to be watching a clip from one America News Network, OAN. And this clip is interesting because it features Pastor Jesse Lee Peterson and he's going to explain why gay pride shouldn't be celebrated because here in America, we shouldn't be celebrating perverted things. We should be celebrating good things like white people. So in lieu of gay pride month, perhaps we should have a white history month. That's the argument he's going to make. But when we finish this clip, I'm going to explain to you why there's an elephant in the room that Jesse Lee Peterson is not addressing in this clip. And he is very much a hypocrite. Let's watch. And we should have never fallen for this idea that, oh, we just want to come out of the closet, just let us out of the closet. And then they said, oh, we want to go to church, but we don't want to be talked about at church. So a lot of preachers stop mentioning that homosexuality is wrong. That something has gone wrong and they must repent and return to God. Now they have taken over the churches. There are a lot of preachers who are afraid to speak out against so-called pride month. You know, I started the white history month in July. Why this is our fourth year coming up where we are celebrating white history. And what I've noticed that in America, a country that was founded by white people and created by white people, one of the greatest country on this side of heaven. And so white people invited all these other loudest, all this other stuff to happen. But you could celebrate everything but white history. We must remember white history because it wasn't for that there would be no American. And so they got black history, women history, Mexican history, so-called gay pride. What's pride? What's happy about being perverted? There's nothing good about that living in sin, right? But we celebrate, I don't, but they celebrate that. But when it comes to white history, they afraid to even mention white history, but we got to bring that back because that's who made America great. We got to show our appreciation. And not one Christian should be celebrated gay pride. They should be praying that these people repent and overcome the father state, return to the father. God is not pleased and allowed that his children are allowing this to happen in a Christian country. It's not a secular country. It's a Christian country. So we got to bring back Christianity and love. First of all, whiteness is celebrated literally every single day in America. It's seen as the default in America, basically. So that's a really stupid recommendation. And we know that all he's doing is pandering to the white supremacists and his audience. Second of all, is he really going to pretend like we all didn't see him publicly like a gay porn tweet on the Twitter account that he uses for a show? Is he actually not going to address that at all? He's just going to pretend as if it never happened. If you think I'm kidding, I'm not joking about this. So we talked about this not too long ago. This is our statement on that. So he's produced a number of videos explaining the evils of homosexuality and how nobody is born gay and that if you want to stop being homosexual, I mean, basically, it's as easy as flipping a switch as that thumbnail implies. So let's listen to his advice on how to stop being homosexual, specifically the video titled How to Stop Being Homosexual. And here what he has to say. The spirit of homosexuality is of their father to devil. It's not them, the person, it's the spirit that made a home in them. And it came from them overreacting to some sort of a situation in life, whether it's from someone messing with them when they were kids or overreacting to an angry mother because you become like what you hate. So it's an evil spirit and they can overcome it if they don't accept it as a right, they have to see that. Yes, they're stuck into it, but it's something wrong with it. And in that they're able to overcome it. God will remove that spirit away from them. OK, so in short, you can overcome it. I think you know where I'm going with this. So on his Twitter page, as you can see, you know, he has all of his likes here and he liked a tweet from Donald Trump where Trump says, make America great again. And then if you scroll down a little bit more, you see that he liked a tweet from your daddy only fans, XXL boy, where there is a video of part two of a collaboration with Sean Boy and Anthony D. And basically this is a video of two men having gay sex and it is censored. But as you can see, there is one man eating out another man's booty hole. Gotcha, bitch. He liked this on his public account for his show. Oh, my God, this is like this is hilarious. This is hilarious. And he left that liked tweet up for hours. It was there for hours. And immediately after he realized that he liked that tweet, he set his account to private probably because he's going to scroll through and make sure that he didn't like any other gay porn tweets because he maybe thought that he was using his throwaway account, not logged into his public account. And I'm sure he's got to make sure everything is OK. So I don't know if he's even going to speak to this spoiler alert past Mike. He doesn't. He's just been pretending as if he didn't forget to log into his throwaway account when he liked that gay porn tweet. It's astonishing. Like he really is just trying to pretend as if it didn't happen. I expected at least him to blame a single staffer like I expected that. He's made videos on how to deal with your gay co-workers. Like this is one of the most homophobic individuals within the right wing movement. And he's just pretending like we all didn't see him watch gay porn on Twitter and like the tweet. So I think that whenever Jesse Lee Peterson attacks members of the LGBTQ plus community and calls them perverted or disgusting, I think it is incumbent on us to remind him that we didn't forget about his very dirty tweet that he liked. In fact, I'm going to do that right now. I'm going to ask him if he remembers liking this very, very gay tweet. And I have to say that his obsession with alpha males and beta males makes so much more sense now. He doesn't like beta males because he's attracted to alpha males. He likes bears. That's the kind of porn that he was watching. That's why he doesn't like beta males. He doesn't like twinks. He likes alpha males and hates beta males because he wants to be fucked by an alpha male. I mean, that's fine, Jesse. You can get fucked by a daddy if you want one. But then don't pretend as if you hate homosexuality and that it's perverted after you jerk off to gay porn. Don't call the people who you watch fuck each other perverts if you're jerking off to it. That should be a rule, right? But I mean, conservatives are just shameless. You know, it seems like this isn't a scandal like it would be in the 2000s. One, because Jesse Lee Peterson isn't as big of a figure as someone like Ted Haggard. But on top of that, I think that most people just don't care anymore, right? Even conservatives, you know, they'll eat up what he says about homosexuality and they'll believe that homosexuals and trans people are perverted and that they're demented. But then when they find out that one of their idols is gay, they're probably like, or they don't believe it. I think it's fake or something like that. So it's just it's entertaining. But whenever he's going to condemn this community, the LGBTQ plus community, I'm going to remind him that like it or not, he's in the closet himself and he should probably come out and stop calling his own sexuality perverted because he looks like a fucking hypocrite and an imbecile. Well, folks, that is all that I have as usual. Before we leave, I want to thank all of the folks who make this show possible, all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members. You folks don't just help the show to survive, but you help us to thrive and make the upgrades that we need to keep the show going, make it professional and just, you know, a good show all around. Now, if you want more of the Humanist Report, if you've made it this far in the episode and you're thinking, man, I've got to have some more, go to twitch.tv slash Humanist Report. And I am there every single Thursday at 7 p.m. PST, I am going to try to increase the amount of streams that I do on Twitch. It's coming down the pipeline. But for now, I am there for the most part every single Thursday and you could catch me them playing video games, talking politics and just fucking around sometime. So that is it. I will see you all next week. Big announcement coming soon. Not a big announcement, but some exciting things coming soon. We'll say that. So stay tuned. I will see you all later on. My name is Mike Figerito. This has been the Humanist Report. Take care, everyone.