 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 300 of the podcast. Today is Friday, July 30th and I'm really excited to have reached this crazy milestone that I never expected to reach. It's really cool to say that we've put out 300 hour plus long episodes of this show and the fact that so many people still enjoy watching it and so many new people continue to find this podcast. It really is heartening to see. So thank you all so much for helping us get here. And speaking of the people who's helped us get here, of course I wanna start the show by thanking all of the individuals who signed to support us recently, all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members along with our Twitch subs that we got a couple of weeks ago or throughout the course of the last week. So that includes MJNari022, Questina Tim, Sara Yeracara, Terry Burgess, Tina Krause, Tom Findlay, Tyler Poe and Yvette. Thank you all so much. If you want to help us and join these individuals, support the independent progressive media 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 and that will help us get to episode 400, 600, double. What are we going for, 1,000? I don't know. My brain might not be able to take that much politics but we'll keep the show rolling until I'm tired of it. So that got like weird and dark. I'm not quitting. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm happy to be here. Okay, shut the fuck up. Okay, here's what's on the agenda for today's episode. Jesse Jackson was arrested at Kirsten Cinema's office during a sit-in. Nina Turner's opponent gains more ground according to a new poll but she may face an ethics probe due to a misuse of funds within her county as well. Frito-Lay workers in Topeka, Kansas and their strike after the company agrees to give them one day off per week. Tucker Carlson was confronted by a Montana man and many people clutch their pearls afterwards. I'll explain why that encounter was actually based contrary to popular belief. A press conference with Marjorie Green and Matt Gaetz was crashed by protesters and also Matt Gaetz got exposed by his own family member. We'll also talk about the testimonies from Capitol Police. I'll give you an update to the criminal cover-up surrounding the Flint water crisis. Another Bush family member gets humiliated by Donald Trump. A Parkland survivor explains how his Q-non father is convinced that the mass shooting he survived is a hoax. A nurse from Arkansas describes the horrors of dealing with insane anti-vaxxers and finally I will make the case as to why all of us need to log off once in a while. Go outside and touch grass, myself included of course. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's program. Let's waste no more time because we've got quite a bit of stuff to talk about and let's get right to it before I knock my iPad off of this desk. So we finally have some good news as it relates to the Democratic Party primary taking place in the 11th Congressional District of Ohio featuring Nina Turner of course and Chantel Brown. And when I say there's good news, it's good news for Nina Turner but not so much for her opponent Chantel Brown. Now she's been getting a lot of good news lately because she's been quickly catching up to Nina Turner thanks to dark money that is flooding this race. But unfortunately for her taking legalized bribes and having lots of conflicts of interest at some point is going to catch up with you. And unfortunately for Chantel Brown it's catching up with her before an election which she could possibly win. But now I mean this news is giving voters in the 11th Congressional District of Ohio a lot more to consider. So in an article for Newsweek, Walker Bragman and Andrew Perez of the Daily Poster Report with the week to go before the special primary election for Ohio's 11th Congressional District, Democratic candidate Chantel Brown may be in hot water. In April, the Interceptor reported that Brown, a Cuyahoga County council member had voted to award millions worth of contracts to companies connected to her romantic partner and campaign donors. Emails reviewed by the Daily Poster show that the Ohio State Auditor's Office reviewed the allegations in the article and recently referred the matter to the State Ethics Commission. Wow. Under Ohio law, public officials are prohibited from knowingly authorizing or using their authority or influence to secure authorization of any public contract in which the public official, a member of the public officials family or any of the public officials business associates has an interest. Violation of the statute is a felony and penalties can include prison time. The Interceptor reported in April that Brown, who had pledged to recuse herself as necessary from contracts involving her partner, Mark Perkins, had used her position as a Cuyahoga County commissioner to help steer $17 million in contracts to Perk. Perk was founded with Perkins uncle but is now owned by the Sifani family who have long established business ties to the Perkins family and who have supported Brown's campaigns for office. The Intercept noted that in February of 2017, weeks after approval of one of those contracts for $7 million, Perk hosted a fundraiser for Brown's reelection campaign. This is very clearly paid to play. According to emails provided to the Daily Poster in April, the Intercept story was forwarded to the Ohio Attorney General's office. The following month, an official in the Attorney General's office noted in an email that she discussed the matter with an attorney in the state auditor's office. We are both of the opinion that it makes sense for the auditor's office to review and we also believe that this might end up being a case that is referred to the ethics commission, the official wrote. The Intercept's report was forwarded to the auditor's office and according to a June 2nd email from a representative of the office's special investigations unit, the matter has now been sent to the Ohio Ethics Commission, the state's official public corruption watchdog for review. The recommendation by the special audit task force was to refer this matter to the Ohio Ethics Commission for its review and consideration noted the email. The auditor of state strives to make sure all matters are referred to the agency which has jurisdiction. For this reason, the auditor of state is referring this matter to the above mentioned agency. Now, let me just put everything into perspective for you. Basically in the United States of America, we allow legalized bribes. So if you are going to be probed by any ethics watchdog or you're actually going to be fined for campaign finance violations, you have to do a lot. You have to be really brazen. And at this point, legally, she's not culpable. She's just being investigated or at least an ethics watchdog from Ohio is looking into this. But the fact that she's so brazen that even in our system with very lax corrupt corruption laws, she is now in hot water possibly. I mean, we'll have to wait and see. And of course, we're not going to learn much about this before the election. But this is pretty brazen behavior to award money from your position as a public official to companies which you have a connection to personally. And then companies then do fundraisers for you. I mean, this is so explicit. I mean, I think that's pretty obvious to everyone. Now, thankfully Nina Turner was already aware of this and she cut an ad about this very specific topic. And we're going to watch that right now. I'm Nina Turner and I approve this message. Chantel Brown. We've seen self-serving politicians like her before using office to enrich friends, family, even themselves. On council, Brown voted to give more than $32 million in taxpayer contracts to a company connected to her boyfriend and family. She even voted to give herself a $7,000 pay raise for a part-time job on council. A slap in the face to working people. Chantel Brown out for herself. That is a great ad. And honestly, Chantel Brown should be embarrassed. Like from the very beginning of this campaign, she has shown nothing but desperation in an attempt to defeat Nina Turner. And she basically is coordinating with super PACs. I cover the story. It was an article from the Intercept written by Ryan Grimm. He did a great job here. But basically, candidates try to subvert the laws that prohibit campaigns from coordinating directly with their super PACs by creating a red box on their website. And they'll basically put all of their talking points and opposition research on their opponents in this red box. And basically this red box is the signal to their super PAC letting them know, hey, this is what I want you to talk about. And she basically was begging and pleading with super PACs to support her. They then did flood this race. You have super PACs such as DMFI being bankrolled by an oil and gas air. And she takes all of this money willingly so. And it's just she's not running because she cares about the people of Ohio's 11th congressional district. That's obvious. Nina Turner actually does care. Nina Turner is running on policies like Medicare for All. Nina Turner is only taking money from the people. She's taking small grassroots donations or small dollar donations from grassroots organizers and supporters where Chantelle Brown, she'll take whatever she can get. And now she has super PACs lying about Nina Turner on her behalf. So it's just, it's embarrassing. And I'm glad that finally all of this corruption is catching up to Chantelle Brown. And I hope that it's too late. I hope that she doesn't have time to change the narrative because people are just going to learn about this. And it's devastating. Like if I see this story, this absolutely changes my opinion about a politician even if it were the case that this story were reversed. And Nina Turner was the one who did something like this. I would immediately feel grossed out and really have to rethink my support for someone like Nina Turner, even if I agreed with her politically, because if somebody is that brazen and that shameless in offering benefits to people who they know personally, who they're romantically involved with, of course they're not gonna look out for you once they get elected. So I think this is obvious. I'm glad that Nina Turner has already decided to run with this story and I'm glad that this is getting publicized because people need to know about this. Chantel Brown is a phony. She's a fake. She has conflicts of interest that have led to her now being possibly investigated or actually watchdogs are indeed looking into it. And good. But I mean, we shouldn't just look into people like Chantel Brown. All conflicts of interest should be investigated in Congress. So, you know, this issue is systemic and the issue with Chantel Brown is a microcosm of a bigger issue within the United States of America and rampant corruption. Having said that though, when it comes to this race, it is really important that voters know now so that they don't make the mistake of electing Chantel Brown over Nina Turner. So they don't make the mistake of getting duped by super PACs or trying to bankroll the opponent of Nina Turner. So they get an extra puppet in Congress. They already have hundreds of other puppets let progressives, let the people actually have this one candidate for once, but they're not. So we have to keep fighting and go to bat for Nina Turner and some other good news regarding Nina Turner's campaign. She was endorsed by the Women's March and on top of that, I referenced a get out the vote campaign in an earlier video which features Bernie Sanders, Corey Bush, Keith Ellison and now Cornell West, the legend himself will be appearing at the get out the vote campaign for Nina Turner. So look, I've been very doom and gloom lately as it relates to this campaign because I don't like to see someone who is just shamelessly corrupt and a corporatist catch up with someone who actually cares about human beings and the lives of people in the 11th Congressional District of Ohio. But now this story has kind of made me feel a little bit more optimistic albeit cautiously, but we have to keep fighting. We have to keep fighting because even though this is bad news for Chantel Brown she has a lot of money on her side and they can try to spend this, at this point in the race it's going to be difficult but still it's important that people know this. So share this story far and wide because this has to be known. People in this district need to know what they're getting with Chantel Brown and hopefully they don't make the wrong decision. So it's been years since we learned about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and it is now abundantly clear that this wasn't just some random unfortunate event that happened to inexplicably occur. This was the result of neoliberalism, corruption and also incompetence. And because of the great reporting of individuals like Jordan Taradyn and Jen Dize of Status Koo who are on the ground in Flint, Michigan and have remained there to break the details of the story or break the story and share the details we're learning that another element of the story is criminal negligence and the extent that this individual Rick Snyder went to cover up his wrongdoing and incompetence and how he is responsible for the lead poisoning and Legionnaires disease and deaths of the individuals in Flint, Michigan not only because he chose to privatize public resources to save a buck or two, but on top of that he knew about how bad the situation was but chose to not speak about it. And that is the evidence that Jordan Taradyn has continued to present us with but there's some more details about this story that truly show the extent to which he tried everything to cover up his criminal negligence and wrongdoing. And this is one of the biggest scandals in the country the fact that every single mainstream media outlet isn't talking about this even though there's so much things that are important that's going on right now but this is one of the most important stories not just because we care about the people of Flint, Michigan but because it happened in Flint and this can happen in any other city at any time in the United States of America. So these details are important and accountability in this instance is really important to make sure that public officials don't do what this killer did. So without further ado, I'm gonna read you the story it's really long, I'm gonna encourage you to actually read the story yourself but I'm gonna kind of give you the bulk of it like the main findings the main takeaway from the story here. So this is from the Intercept Jordan Chariton agendized wrote an article and it was published by the Intercept. So here's what they find in October, 2015, then Michigan governor, Rick Snyder finally announced that Flint's water was contaminated with dangerous lead levels. That public admission had come after more than a year of pleading from the city's residents to examine the situation. The city Snyder promised would immediately stop using water from the Flint River which residents had been drinking for 18 months. The public announcement raised as many questions as it answered and kick started a years long investigation into how the decision that delivered the toxic water to Flint had been made in the first place. How many people were sickened and killed as a result and when senior government officials first learned of the deadly consequences. Along the way, however, investigators who were part of a three year Flint water investigation beginning in 2016 kept drilling dry holes. Dr. Eden Wells became Michigan's chief medical executive in May of 2015. By then the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services had been aware for at least seven months of a significant increase in the deadly waterborne legionnaires disease throughout Flint. But when investigators obtained access to Wells phone they discovered something unusual. For Dr. Wells phone, the earliest message is from November 12th of 2015. Then Flint special prosecutor, Todd Flood wrote in a subpoena petition obtained by the Intercept. During the key period that investigators were probing no messages were found. In 2018, a judge ruled that Wells would have to stand trial for involuntary manslaughter along with obstruction of justice over her role in the water crisis. Those charges were dropped by current attorney general Dana Nestle in 2019. In January of 2021, Nestle's Flint water prosecutors recharged Wells with involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in office and neglect of duty. So let's just pause right there to put everything into perspective. This is very strange because if there is an outbreak of legionnaires disease in your city and citizens are complaining about lead in the water. I mean, you're gonna be scrambling. There's going to be tens of thousands of messages back and forth between public officials as they try to figure out what's going on as they communicate with one another. But the fact that there were no messages on her phone in the midst of a major health crisis, something is a little bit off there, right? But this isn't the only individual who had a phone that was seemingly wiped. So another Michigan individual named Tim Becker, this was the chief deputy director of the MDHHS. He also had no messages on his phone up until two months before he left office. That's pretty convenient. On top of that, Patricia McCain, who was an epidemiologist with MDHHS, she had very few messages on her phone and she testified that Wells had made her lie. So the plot continues to thicken on top of that. There was phone data from an ally of Rick Snyder who it was wiped before the criminal investigation began. Also the former press secretary for Rick Snyder, Sarah Werferl, she admits that their phones were actually deliberately wiped. They did this on purpose. Now ask yourself this question. Why in the middle of a public health crisis in your city, would the phones of public officials, their interactions, the back and forth be wiped, wouldn't this all be information that's really crucial in figuring out what's actually happening, who's responsible? Well, of course, that's probably why they did it. So the story continues. The lack of phone messages from top MDHHS officials was a major red flag to investigators and an obvious impediment to those investigating who knew, what and when. Despite department epidemiologists hypothesizing in October of 2014 that the source of Flint's deadly Legionnaires disease outbreak was the switch to the Flint River six months earlier, Flint residents weren't informed of the deadly outbreak until 16 months later when Snyder announced it in January of 2016. Quote, that is not standard. A former Michigan Department of Technology Management and Budget or DTMB official who worked for the state during this period and was involved with the state data preservation told the Intercept about Werferl's phone being wiped upon leaving her role as Snyder's press secretary. There are retention schedules that every agency, including the governor's office is supposed to adhere to, said the ex-official adding that for the governor's office, data is supposed to be retained for at least a year after an official leaves, but with potential litigation looming, it should have been held indefinitely, the official concluded. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation. Lonnie Scott, executive director of the Progressive Organization Progress Michigan told the Intercept, it's not entirely surprising to hear that top officials phones lacked data or were wiped completely. Scott had seen something similar happen in 2014 when his organization had submitted Freedom of Information Act or FOIA requests for state health director Jim Havens communications with Snyder's chief of staff. After Haven resigned from his job in October of 2014, Progress Michigan discovered that his emails were deleted upon his resignation from his role. Quote, we've said all along that we believe that there was a cover-up and that the governor knew more information than he was putting out publicly, Scott said. Soon after Snyder's October 2015 announcement about Flint's toxic water, the heat intensified around the governor as calls for a federal investigation into the water crisis melted along with heightened media attention. As the water crisis intensified and a criminal investigation was launched, criminal prosecutors and investigators would discover that messages were lacking from before October 2015 on phones belonging to top MDHHS officials. The question of what Snyder knew and when and what role he and his administration played in stymying investigations into the cause and cover-up of the outbreak is of increasing importance as the former governor now faces trial in connection with his handling of Flint's water crisis. Wow. I don't even know where to begin. I mean, how shameless Rick Snyder was and top public health officials in Michigan were. It's honestly, this is one of the largest scandals in modern American history and it just doesn't get the coverage that it deserves. This is honestly, it's shocking how shameless they were, the lengths that they went to cover up their criminal negligence. I don't even know what to say. This man, Rick Snyder is a criminal who should be behind bars for the rest of his life because every single individual in Flint, Michigan who was poisoned by lead who dealt with a legionnaires disease, who died. The blood is on his hands and every single person, every single criminal who was involved in his circle of cronies who led to this cover-up and withheld key information, vital information from the public, they all, they've gotta be behind bars. They have to be behind bars. That's the only way that there's gonna be justice for the residents of Flint, Michigan. But even if there is justice for them, that's still not sufficient because those lives that were lost because of this individual's choice to privatize the water supply of Flint, Michigan and on top of that, go out of his way to cover up the fact that there was lead in the water and an outbreak of legionnaires. It's just, that's not gonna be undone but the best that we can hope for is accountability. So going forward, public officials learned from this experience and they're afraid to do what he did and be as shameless as he was. So that's basically all I can say. Again, please read the entire article. We're not even really scratching the surface. Everything that Jordan and Sheridan and Jen Dyes have uncovered, they should get a Pulitzer Prize for. Like this is crucial. This is real journalism and it makes me sad that not a lot of people are actually paying attention to this. So please go over to Statusku, subscribe to them, follow their coverage of the Flint water crisis and other great stories that they do. This is honestly like this is really depressing to hear but at the same time it's really nice to see the details finally emerge because you have at least a couple of journalists still caring about this issue whereas everyone else has moved on and I get it, right? There's a lot of issues but this is one of those issues that is so important because this isn't just about Flint. I'm gonna say it again, this can happen anywhere in the United States in any city, you know? So it's not just that we care about the people of Flint and want justice for them but we wanna make sure that this never happens again and we do everything in our power to hold these crooks accountable who poisoned a city of 100,000 people, mostly people of color. These lives matter and we have to make sure that the people who wronged them and killed them get locked up. Arkansas has one of the lowest vaccine rates in the country and this is due to a very high level of vaccine hesitancy because a preponderance of people in the state of Arkansas either think that the vaccines are harmful or they reject the severity of COVID-19 or just think that the virus altogether isn't actually real. They believe that it's a hoax and as distressing as it is to see fellow Americans become more and more detached from reality, nobody is more distraught by this than the nurses on the front lines who see this firsthand. They see people die on a daily basis. They see lives ruined due to this virus and then they go home and then their loved ones tell them that it's not actually that serious and we're gonna talk about a story involving a nurse who did have this experience. Now a nurse from Arkansas, she worked on the front lines during the height of the pandemic and she saw all of this misinformation and anti-vax sentiment, COVID truthers and COVID deniers and she decided to share her experience and try to educate people on TikTok and I actually came across one of her videos on my TikTok feed. So it was nice to learn that she was actually interviewed by CNN where she shared her story and she talks about how she copes with all of the misinformation and the abuse that she puts up with from patients and part of it is she trolls and tries to have a dark sense of humor but at the end of the day, I feel really terrible for her but she does seem as if she's holding it all together considerably well given the circumstances that she's in but regardless, let's watch and then I have more to say when we come back. It was extremely difficult to watch so many people die and then have people tell you on Facebook or in Walmart that you're a liar. Sunny worked on a COVID floor of a hospital at the height of the pandemic. Being a nurse was hard but what made it surreal was living in Western Arkansas where many people even some in her own family said COVID was overblown, just the flu. Nurses were really the symbol for this whole pandemic and almost all of the hate has centralized around us. Nurses have PTSD. A lot of us are suffering from it from last year and now we're having people come in and look us in the face and be like, no, I didn't get the vaccine and now I'm sick. Arkansas has the third lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the country. Just 36% of the population is fully vaccinated. Like many places with low vaccination rates, it's now seeing a spike in cases. Are you gonna get the vaccine? I have not and I will not. I'm not a guinea pig. There's not a change. You got COVID? I did, I was really gonna get it but then after I got over the COVID I had a heart attack. So why would you not get the vaccine? I might have a bad reaction to it. I see. Oh, that's good. That's better. I believe that it's a freedom issue and I've worn a mask probably a maximum of one hour in the entire whole thing that census COVID came about. It was so communicable. Why am I still standing? We had people accuse us of giving their loved one something else so that they would die and we could report it as COVID. We heard it more than once that we were just fudging the numbers or we were killing people on purpose to make COVID look like it was worse than it was or to make it look real when it wasn't. For the first majority of the pandemic we wore the same in 95 for like one to two weeks at a time. Tell me what you think about the term healthcare heroes? Oh, I think it sucks. Why? So they dubbed us healthcare heroes? It just, it gave the public this really wrong impression that we were sacrificial lambs and willing to die for them. We wanna help people. I want to save lives. I want people to get better but not at the expense of my family's lives either. Then you have the public going, well, you signed up for this? No, I didn't. When I was 17, I enlisted in the army. I knew that I might die for my country when I was 22 and went to nursing school. That wasn't on the agenda. Like I didn't volunteer to die for everybody. And even with the vaccine now it's still a highly politicized thing for no good reason. People in my- Last year, Sunny started venting on TikTok. You're just trying to spread fear. If that's what it takes to get you to listen to me, sure. I had avoided posting about COVID for a long time because of the negative reactions I got. Like it hurts my feelings. But just a couple of weeks ago I had people in my inbox that started needing to kill me calling me a murderer saying I helped kill those people. I get called a crisis actor all the time. Is my thing now to respond to hate comments with for just $10 into my Venmo account. I'll tell you the truth about COVID-19 and crisis acting. I've made about $100, so. Wait, really? Yeah. When people like send you $10 and you're like, yeah, I'm not a crisis actor. I'm just like crisis acting is it real and COVID is real? So it looks surprised. So to tell you the truth, not the truth you wanted to hear, but no. One of my biggest fears was like this new wave of COVID. We're seeing a lot of nurses with compassion fatigue and I am really scared how that's gonna play out because a lot of the cases that we're seeing are in non-vaccinated individuals. If I had a patient come in that wasn't vaccinated with COVID, like I have like, I'm obviously still gonna treat them to the best of my ability, but I do know some nurses that had to quit because they just don't have it in them to do that. A lot of our Kansas, you know, would give you the shirt off their back to help you out for a stranger. Like, you know, I think that a lot of people being anti COVID and anti vaccine is just a product of the way that we were raised here, but they're not bad people. That was a lot. Let's unpack it piece by piece. So there was a period of time, and they kind of addressed this in the video, where we celebrated nurses and healthcare officials as heroes in the country. But it's interesting to me that she explains that that was actually not necessarily the best thing because that further, you know, solidified this idea in people's minds that this was all like this grand conspiracy. And now, rather than thanking nurses, people think that nurses are part of this conspiracy and they receive abuse and harassment because of it. And that's so sad because these folks, it's bad enough dealing with the pandemic, trying to save lives, watching your coworkers succumb to this disease to then have people demonize you. I mean, I don't know that I would be able to handle this and keep my job. I'm sure that many nurses have felt obliged to quit. I'm sure many, many will be dealing with PTSD for the rest of their lives because of this. And it's so sad to see how cruel people are because they're so far gone that they believe that this is all a conspiracy to where her family thinks that it's overblown. Imagine that, like you work an eight to 12 hour shift and you try to save lives, maybe you see a couple of patients die, maybe you learn that one of your coworkers tested positive for COVID-19, you come home and then one of your dickhead family member says this whole coronavirus thing is overblown. I couldn't imagine. Like I would lose all faith in humanity. Like just listening to her tell her story makes me lose more faith in humanity. It's just, it's so sad. People are so untethered from reality that even if there's something right in front of them that is empirically verifiable, they reject it because their feelings to them matter more. That's more comforting. I want people to live in the real world and it's just we're going in the opposite direction. Now, I love when she said that she trolled people into giving her money by saying that if you send me 10 bucks through Venmo, I'll tell you the truth about COVID then she tells them it's real. That was awesome. The fact that she made a hundred bucks fooling people who are stupid, hopefully they learned their lesson. Like you might think that that's mean spirited but I think that actually it'll teach them a lesson to not believe anything that you hear. If somebody thinks that they have the truth about something, you need to vet their claims, vet them, ask what their motivations are and I'm not calling for people to be overly suspicious of everyone and our peers. Like I don't want to cultivate this culture of suspicion which is already kind of the case in the United States but I'm just asking people to do their due diligence and now I recognize the dangers of even telling people to research things because that leads them down dangerous paths oftentimes because people don't necessarily have the capability to distinguish between what is a valid source and what is an invalid source. What is plausible, what's implausible. They don't know the difference between cause and effect and if they do know the difference between cause and effect they don't necessarily acknowledge that causation doesn't equal correlation. They don't know what causal mechanisms are. So it's like we want people to reject this anti-intellectualism that's prevalent in the United States but at the same time I don't think there's any way to do this because people fundamentally mistrust government and there's reasons to mistrust government but you have to be at least a little bit savvy. Have some level of common sense and think just a little bit deep. Be a little bit more nuanced about these things. Now she talked about compassion fatigue and this is something that it's gonna be a thing. Like nurses are basically superheroes. The ones dealing with COVID-19, they're basically superheroes the fact that they do this and don't quit, walk off the job but they're only human beings. There's only so much you can do. Of course they're gonna treat patients but yeah, at this point, most of the people, the overwhelming majority of the people who are hospitalized they're unvaccinated and it's now their own fault and that doesn't mean that their lives are meaningless and that you should just let them die but these nurses, they see this every single day and with time they're gonna become desensitized and they're gonna think, oh, here's another person who chose not to get vaccinated and thought that I was a crisis actor who's now relying on me to save their lives. It's just, you know, it's natural. I'm surprised that compassion fatigue isn't a bigger thing that's talked about. Now I've gotta talk about the barber in that video who he said that he had COVID-19, he had a heart attack but then he still said I'm not gonna get the vaccine because I might have a bad reaction to it but you know already from experience that you had a bad reaction to COVID-19 but you're gonna take your chances getting it again rather than getting vaccinated even though there's an overwhelming amount of evidence showing how safe and effective these vaccines are. It's just, I don't get the logic of people but I don't wanna be too doomer because there is some good news, right? So as a result of a surge in new cases, vaccination rates in states like Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Missouri and Arkansas are finally ticking up and that really is encouraging to see that you know with this new variant people realize the severity of it and how transmissible it is and they're trying to protect themselves but having said that though you're not gonna win everyone over no matter how bad it gets and some people are just too far gone and there's a couple of people that are definitely too far gone that Barbara being one of them but also these two individuals. Did anyone you know get COVID? My son had COVID. How old is he? Eight. Wow, so that's like pretty rare for like a young kid. What was that like? He was sick a lot. He's been sick a lot for a while and he's still sick so I wanted to go get him looked at and see if there's further damage. I don't know, I mean he got real sick. Fever every day for weeks. Are you guys gonna get the vaccine? No, no vaccine. How come? I just don't trust the government. Are you gonna get the vaccine? Absolutely not. My kids are not gonna get it, none of us. How come? I mean, I figure I'll just let the world work its natural ways. Okay. We've taken none of the vaccines ever so. Are you able to get like religious exemption at schools for your kids? Is that how? No, I mean we take the stuff that you have to. So what do you mean when you say you don't usually get vaccine? We didn't do the pig swoop flying thing or whatever that was. We didn't do any of the befores. It's something that I don't believe in. I mean, I haven't never. It seems it only comes about every presidency and it seems like it's either crowd control or whatever you wanna call it. But I want my family have nothing to do with it. We've always been healthy and this seems to work better that way. So that first lady, like hearing her speak almost made my head explode. Her son got COVID. He was very sick. He's still suffering with the health issues from COVID-19. He's eight years old and they still won't get vaccinated because I don't trust the government. Some people are just too far gone. And as the interviewer said, it's pretty rare for younger children to get COVID-19. So what she can do if she truly cares about her child is vaccinate herself, her partner and anyone who's eligible to, old enough to so that way they don't bring it back and reinfect their child or make a different kid or family member sick after seeing first hand how severe the disease is. But no, just, I don't trust government. Okay, so you trust the virus more than government? I mean, this is basically child abuse. Is it not? It's just, it is, you're not meeting the basic requirements of what is needed to raise a child healthily. Like this is gross. And the other guy, you know, he said he won't get the vaccine because vaccines come up every four years and the purposes are maybe, you know, crowd control. That's why these vaccines keep popping up, which is not true. But I mean, I just, this logic is so ass backwards to me because if anything is going to be deemed crowd control wouldn't be the virus itself. I just, I'm so confused by their thinking. Like, I don't even know that they've thought about this too much. Perhaps they haven't thought about this, hence the ignorance, but still, there has to be some basic level of common sense. And I am in no way excusing the government because the government is absolutely responsible for fundamental mistrust of, you know, that they've been cultivating due to widespread and rampant corruption. But people, they don't necessarily know why, not, you know, accepting everything that the government says is a good idea. Why questioning authorities is good. They just kind of like know that government bad and that's as far as their thinking goes. They don't extend that logic further. They don't try to explore why sometimes questioning people in power is a good thing or always is a good thing. They just think, well, a government official said it, so it's bad. But yet, you know, people who support Donald Trump, many of which or most of which possibly are anti-vax, you know, Trump got the vaccine. They'll watch Tucker Carlson, who won't admit that he's been vaccinated, spout off this, you know, misinformation and they don't change their minds. You're just, you have to accept as difficult as it may be that you're not going to reach every single person, but I absolutely think that we have a responsibility to try to reach as many people as we can because I don't want these people to get sick. I don't want them to suffer. I don't want them to die as stubborn and insufferable as they may be. I want them to protect themselves, okay? It doesn't make me a big pharma shill as some dipshits say to tell you to get vaccinated, right? It doesn't make people, you know, shills of companies that produce insulin or EpiPens to take what is medically necessary for their wellbeing and health. People just like they apply whatever buzzword or label to it, then makes them feel better and justify their bad position and work backwards to validate that position. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. Like watching these people, it makes me feel like my brain is melting, but I just hope that more people like this nurse continue to keep strong and try to push through the misinformation with her TikToks, which are brilliant, by the way. And yeah, we'll leave that there. I really, really hope that we continue to see this trend of increased vaccinations continue on because it's important. I want this pandemic to come to an end, not just for my own selfish reasons, but for other people's sakes as well, but mostly for my own selfish reasons. I don't want it to continue to spread. And then we end up getting a new variant that's, you know, resistant to the vaccines. Like I want to move on. I'd love to move on if you all would let us. But you know, the people like, you know, we saw in this video, they're holding everyone else back and it's really important that we gently guide them to the correct conclusion and stop being, you know, fuck wads, I'll leave that there. The House Select Committee, which is tasked with investigating the January 6th insurrection, held their first hearing today and we heard from four Capitol Police officers. And I wanted to talk about their testimonies because what they reveal, it's not like the details here are surprising. We're not learning that much new, but they kind of share their personal experiences and it really speaks to just how serious this situation was and further confirms what we already suspected that these individuals showed up because Donald Trump told them to. They thought that they were there to fight for democracy and Donald Trump because Donald Trump led them to believe that the election was stolen. So they were just doing what they thought was, you know, the patriotic thing that they were obligated to do. Now, I get why a lot of leftists don't really talk about this issue too much because it can be a relatively liby subject for lack of a better word. I mean, Democrats, we already know that they're going to use this to distract from the real issues, distract from the fact that they're in power and they're not doing very much to actually help people in America who are suffering. And I don't want them to use this as some sort of a distraction, even if it is important. Like I want them to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. I want them to do this, get to the bottom of what happened, hold people like Donald Trump accountable and then also pass policies that will benefit the lives of their constituents. And on top of that, you know, another fear that I worry here is that the outcome will produce something similar to the Patriot Act, right? I don't necessarily believe anything significant is going to come of this at this point in time. But after 9-11, everyone was so worried and fearful that we basically gave the government permission to do what was necessary to protect us, which is what basically led to the Patriot Act. And of course, they seized the opportunity, they capitalized on tragedy to take advantage of us, but we have to look out for civil liberties. We can't let that happen again. And till this day, we haven't been able to undo the damage caused by the last round of attacks on our civil liberties. So I don't want this to lead to more surveillance. I don't want the outcome or the conclusion of this to be that we need to further enhance our police state. I don't want any of that. But having said that, this is still a deeply important issue. That is really something that we all need to pay attention to. I am absolutely of the belief that everyone should be concerned with the fact that one party in the United States of America is basically authoritarian now. They are fighting against democracy. So we're no longer having this conversation about socialism versus capitalism. We're having a conversation about democracy and no longer having a democracy. That's the difference now between the Democratic and the Republican Party. And I don't want to have this conversation. I want to accept that we all believe in democracy collectively as a society and move on and have the debate around policies. That's what I care about, but we can't do that. We can't even talk about policy and what's possible if a party is going to fight against democracy, which keeps us from making our voices heard. I mean, we see how the GOP is using Trump's stop the steal message to crack down on voting rights in state legislatures across the country. And the insurrection is only the beginning. I mean, you have former Trump administration officials like Michael Flynn calling for a Myanmar-style military coup here in the United States. And this is not something that we can have in a functioning society or democracy in a healthy society, rather. But having said that though, without all, you know, putting all of that aside, I want to play the clips for you because what the Capitol Police officers share is truly gut-wrenching. I remember one of them distinctly lunging at me time and time again, trying to grab my gun. And I heard people in the crowd yelling, get his gun, kill him with his own gun. I believe that there were individuals in the crowd whose intentions were to kill me. They tortured me. They beat me. I was struck with a taser device at the base of my skull numerous times. I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room. But too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist or that hell actually wasn't that bad. The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful. Nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day. And in doing so, betray their oath of office. As we came close to the terrace, our line was divided and we came under attack. A man attempted to rip the baton from my hands and we wrestled for control. I retained my weapon after I pushed him back. He yelled at me, you're on the wrong team. I too was being crushed by the rioters. I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, this is how I'm going to die. He kicked me in my chest as we went to the ground. I was able to retain my baton again, but I ended up on my hands and knees and blind. The medical mask I was wearing at the time to protect myself from the coronavirus was pulled up over my eyes so I couldn't see. I braced myself against the impact of their blows and feared the worst. On January 6th, for the first time, I was more afraid to work at the Capitol than my entire deployment to Iraq. One man tried and failed to build rapport with me, shouting, are you my brother? Another takes a different tack, shouting, you will die on your knees. The rioters called me traitor, a disgrace, and shouted that I, I, an army better than a police officer should be executed. The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags, mostly variations from American flags and Trump flags. There was Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front. Another read, Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president. To my perpetual confusion, I saw the thin blue line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us. And all of them, all of them were telling us Trump sent us. Nobody else, it was nobody else, it was not Antifa, it was not Black Lives Matters, it was not the FBI, it was his supporter that he sent them over to the Capitol. This is our house. President Trump invited us here. We're here to stop the steal. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, you hear that guys? This is your voted for Joe Biden. Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people joined in screaming, boo, fuck, another black officer later told me, he had been confronted by insurrectionists in the Capitol who told him, put your gun down and we'll show you what kind of **** you really are. There was an attack carried out on January 6th and a hit man sent them. After hearing their testimonies, I don't know how anyone can still maintain that Trump didn't incite that insurrection. Even if you still refuse to believe that Trump's rhetoric wasn't bombastic enough to literally incite the insurrection, they thought that Trump wanted them there. They thought that they were fighting for Donald Trump. I think that this is, it's obvious. He incited that insurrection. They were there because they believed democracy was at stake because Donald Trump told them the election was stolen. It doesn't get any clearer than that right there. And the reason why we still have to talk about this issue after many months have passed is because if there's zero accountability and I don't expect there will be any accountability, but if there's not even any meaningful pushback against this kind of authoritarianism, it's gonna happen again. Right now, Donald Trump who's been impeached twice is still eligible to run in 2024 after the insurrection. And if he gets back in power again, which is highly likely if he runs again, I mean, who knows what's gonna happen next? When he was in office, he joked about running three terms, but we all know that in the event, his term limit was up and he remained in office, he would want more terms. So it's important to hold people in power accountable who are outright explicitly against democracy. That's incredibly important. And it's not just that people in power, Republicans are anti-democracy. Their base has followed them off this cliff and perhaps there's this feedback loop where they're afraid of their base. So they run away from democracy and attack democracy but the base, they learn from them and they wanna hear more anti-democratic rhetoric because it behooves them and their political agenda. It's just, it's scary to think about the future of this country and democracy. I mean, democracy in America is already flawed. It's fundamentally fucked to its core, but we have to continue to fight to further expand democracy, consolidate democracy, but that's almost impossible when you have almost half of the population now openly hostile towards the concept of democracy and they think that they support democracy. They think that they're the fighters of democracy, the people that are on January 6th, but in actuality, that's not the case. That is not the case. They are the enemies to democracy and we have to do everything in our power to either beat them or change their minds, deprogram them. Now, just to kind of give you a little bit of a taste of what I'm talking about, after one of the officers there shared his testimony, he got a voice message during his testimony and it sounds like what I would assume many Trump supporters probably were thinking during his speech. Yeah, this is for Michael Fanone, at your policy police officer. You're on trial right now, lying and that. You want an Emmy and Oscar? What are you trying to go for here? You're so full of shit, you little faggot fucker. You're a little pussy, man. I can slap you up the side of your head or a backhand and knock you out, you little faggot. You're a punk faggot. You're a lion fuck. How about all that scummy black fucking scum for two years, destroying our cities and burning up and stealing all that shit out of the stores and everything? How about that, assaulting cops and killing people? How about that, you fucker? That was shit on the goddamn pack. Well, I wish they would have killed all you scumbags because you people are scum. They stole the election from Trump and you know that you scumbag and you fucking too bad you didn't beat the shit out of you more. You're a piece of shit, you're a little fag. You're fucking scumbag. It was important for you. You did not want us to censor that. What do you say to that? What do you want people to know and that idiot? I mean, I remember like my first reaction immediately after listening to that phone call, which I actually received while I was testifying in the hearing today. This is what happens to people that tell the truth in Trump's America. He's right. And it's not like getting one voicemail from a single lunatic is really that newsworthy. But the question is, how many people who weren't there on January 6th who didn't storm the Capitol agree? Think, yeah, the election was stolen and these people, they deserved what they got and it should have been worse for them. I mean, poll after poll shows that this lie that the election was stolen is absolutely prevalent in the Republican Party and that is incredibly dangerous. Democracy can't survive under these sort of conditions and it's only going to get worse if there is no accountability. And just from merely sharing his experience, that opened one of the officers up to that attack, probably all of them. And not to mention, you have nefarious individuals like Tucker Carlson going on TV mocking the PTSD of the Capitol officers. It's just, we have to really acknowledge how important democracy is and we have to fight to protect and preserve democracy. And that's why I think these hearings are important even if they won't necessarily produce much. And sure, they could be used as a deflection point for Democrats to ignore or make you forget about the fact that they aren't doing much politically. But still, this does matter and I hope that people on the left pay attention to this. So some of the most insane members of Congress who wear their stupidity like a badge of honor, including Marjorie Green, Matt Gaetz, Louis Gohmert, Paul Gosar, they all teamed up for a joint press conference about political prisoners who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Now, what happened is their event, their press conference was shut down by candid protesters and it was absolutely hilarious, you love to see it. But before I show you the video, I just want to give you a little bit of context as to why they were there. So this is from the Hills Michael Schnell who reports a news conference held by a coalition of House GOP firebrands was cut short Tuesday after a group of counter protesters gathered behind the lawmakers. The Republican lawmakers had gathered Tuesday to press the Department of Justice for a status report on individuals arrested following the January 6th attack on the Capitol who they referred to as political prisoners. But they were repeatedly interrupted and eventually ended the event after the counter protesters got too close for the speakers. Now the videos from this event are just, they're incredible, that's the only word I can use to describe it. So this is the main interruption, you see them speaking and then the protests get louder and louder or a closer I should say and then an individual with a whistle was just unrelenting and would not stop blowing a whistle and she even addresses it. Just, this is gold, take a look. I cannot remember that happening previously with the Department of Justice had to be reprimanded to not speculate on the media to the media regarding a high profile case. It's unfortunate, it's unfortunate that members of Congress have received only silence for the Department of Justice regarding the treatment of these defendants based upon concerns arising from statements made under oath. Yet the Department of Justice has not speculated or has not hesitated to speculate about this investigation to their friends in the media. I thank Congressman Gohmert, a former judge no less, for his comm- Okay, when I pause it, the link pops up, But into the rule of law, look at that Trump. and seek the truth even in the face of much opposition. Thank you. That Trump mannequin, oh my God. First of all, to the guy that's blowing the whistle, we are not deterred. And so for anyone that's here, being inactive has seen yelling today. Here's the statement that I need everyone to understand. We will not back down. I just wanna stop this because if you've ever been to the birthday party of a toddler, and whenever there's these party favors, the thing that you blow in it extends, they will not stop blowing those things. It's like so grating on your nerves. So this is what it reminds me of. And it's the perfect way to heckle these types of individuals who are just completely idiotic and childish. But I love how she says, we will not be deterred, fast forward about like 30 seconds, and they will indeed be deterred because they will be leaving because the protest's got a little bit too close for comfort. This is so funny to me. I'm enjoying every second of this. We'll not stop asking questions. We are looking for the truth. And we believe the truth can be found by reaching out and answering and asking the right questions to the right people. Listen, there's another thing. The taxpayers of this country pay all of these people salaries and they owe the people of this country the answers to the questions. We need a break, we need a break. The lab is interrupting the press conference. We need to end it. Thank you for those of you that really care about this process. Thank you. The whistle gets caught. I killed the whistle. I have to go back though to Louis Gomer, just like at the end, he had to butt in with his last little statement so he gets the last word, but the intensity of the whistle. Okay, let's, here's Louis Gomer. Thank you for those of you that really care about this process. For those of you who really care about to processes the whistles in the back, getting louder and more frequent. Holy shit, holy shit. Now, lucky for you that I'm actually correct. There's a video of the whistle guy and they like confronted about the whistle and he doesn't stop. He just keeps blowing the whistle. Play, please play. Okay. The CIA is trying to shut this down, folks. The deep state doesn't want me to see the whistle guy. Let me refresh the video really quick. Or the page. I'm literally crying from the fucking whistle. Okay. Here he is. Are you trying to assault? Are you trying to move around with auditory weapons? Are you trying to assault people with auditory weapons? Responds in whistle. I cannot get enough of this. There's more videos, but there's another interaction with the whistler. I love how they like, one by one, they'll approach him and they'll try to talk some sense into him. Try to reason with him. Try to get him to stop with the whistling. His response. Whistle even more louder, faster. Let me see if this is a whistle. What happened here? Oh, no, he's at the top. So the whistler made it close to the stage. I think that's probably when they decided to shut down the event. Having this extra camera angle is like, it gives us a little bit more context. I'm literally like, I have tears of mine is from laughing so hard at that. I don't know why the whistle like was so funny to me, but just the way that he was like blowing it in their faces and totally unmoved whatsoever when they try to talk to him. It reminds me of like, again, to go back to like the toddlers at the birthday party thing. When you tell them, hey, can you like stop for a second? They like look at you with this like little shit eating grin and they blow it even louder, the little birthday thing. Holy shit, folks. Now there's some other really interesting things that we pick up from different angles. This is from Zachary Patrizzo. Excuse me. I'm like literally choking from laughing so hard. We also have a BG on the scene. I just want to make sure we give credit. The first video was seen in, but there was one video that I pre-watched most of this and you can hear them, they say they make a comment about censorship that for whatever reason, it really made me laugh. So Louis is going to come in and he's going to make his like little dumb statement to get the last word. Yeah, you're the one. Somebody take them away. You're the media. The left shut us down. Hey, hate free speech. They hate free speech. I hate to tell you this, but them protesting elected officials, that is quite literally the reason why free speech exists. Like that's the whole point. They get to make their voices heard and it looks like their free speech drowned out your free speech. You didn't have to leave, but you chose to. So they were exercising their free speech. You were exercising yours. Like you weren't censored. You could have conducted this press conference in an area where there wouldn't be counter protesters. You could have done it indoors. I don't know. You could have rented a venue, but you did it outside and you're all like the craziest members of Congress. So you're going to attract counter protesters no matter what you do and where you go. So you should have maybe thought more deeply about this before giving a presser outside where you basically are defending people who stormed the Capitol illegally. So in an attempt to stage an insurrection, I'm sorry, I have to go back to the whistle video. It's just to me, this man is an American hero. Can we get him the Medal of Honor? Is that possible? Can we, is there some sort of honor that is bestowed upon United States citizens? Because I feel like this act of courage and bravery, it needs to be recognized at the highest levels of American government. One more time, folks. I'm so sorry. I have to watch this. I'm just not over it yet. Are you trying to assault people with auditory weapons? People, why are you doing all of this? There are some, there are my problems. I'm going to go murder my problems. Okay, I think that this one is probably my favorite now. I'm losing Stephen a little bit. Just her reaction is so funny. I kind of feel bad for her because this is like just some random congressional aid, I'm assuming, who probably hates Paul Gosar, whichever ghoul she's working for. And she's like, oh God, I have to put up with this bullshit so much because these people are fruitcakes, so I work with, maybe she's a fruitcake herself. I'm not necessarily sure I don't know who this is, but her reaction here is really funny. And then the Trump statue in the background, or mannequin, whatever it is. I love how she's trying to counter with her flag. He has a whistle, lady. You're not going to counter that unless you have a whistle yourself. You're damaging their hearing. They're so melodramatic. Stop being a snowflake. Is that annoying? Absolutely, I would be pulling my hair out. But I mean, to say that he's like assaulting people, assaulting their hearing, shut the fuck up. Like these are not serious people. These ghouls, Paul Gosar, Louis Gomert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Green, these individuals, they're not serious. So this sort of heckling should be a common phenomenon when there's so much unserious people in Congress. Like people like this, they're expected to be taken seriously when they are insane. These people, like they should not have political power. They should not be taken seriously. They should be shamed until they stop behaving like absolute fucking sociopaths. But until then, the best that we can hope for is more events like this. Hopefully Whistle Guy will crash a lot more conservative press conferences and Democratic press conferences. And I would love to watch it. That's the best that we can hope for. It's the only form of accountability that these ghouls face, unfortunately, just trolling. But it's better than nothing, so I'll take it. But wow, this video made my day and I just wanted to share that with you. You're very welcome. This next story is really sad to hear because it shows you not only the dangers of conspiracy theories and how it makes people lose touch with reality, what's empirical, what's verifiable, but on top of that, it speaks to the impact that this has on the loved ones of people who be consumed, who become consumed rather by conspiracy theories. And we're gonna dive into the article, but first I just wanna read you the headline because it says a lot. So this is from Vice News and the title is I'm a Parkland shooting survivor. QAnon convinced my dad it was all a hoax. I don't know how to help someone that far gone. Wow, that is a hell of a title. And it wasn't always this way for this individual. Their father was initially very supportive. So the shooter wore a burgundy shirt. So they explained how their father would avoid wearing burgundy because he knew how triggering this was after the shooting. But all of a sudden he joined QAnon and this cult convinced him that his own son was lying to him. And it's not some like innocent, oh, well, you know, my son wasn't part of the plot. He wasn't part of the conspiracy theory. No, he literally thinks his own son was a crisis actor. This is deeply depressing. But nonetheless, let's get into the story here. So David Gilbert writes, Bill's final semester at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was already difficult enough. He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill's classmates. But Bill also had to deal with his father's daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill and all his classmates were paid ponds in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force. Bill had worked hard to get over his survivor's guilt after the shooting, but for the past five months his own father has been triggering it all over again. He'll say stuff like this straight to my face whenever he's drinking. You're a real piece of work to be able to sit here and act like nothing ever happened if it wasn't a hoax. Shame on you for being part of it and putting your family through it too, Bill said in an anonymous post on Reddit last week. Now, Bill isn't his real name. Bill is just a moniker that he's using to protect his own identity, but he did make a post in QAnon casualties. This is a sub Reddit that is really fascinating to me. And Vice did verify that this was in fact a true story. This is a Parkland survivor. So the question is like, what happened? How did his father go from being supportive to thinking that his own child who survived a mass shooting was a crisis actor? Well, he started to get radicalized during the pandemic. Bill explains that he was very anti-mask against lockdowns. So he spoke with like-minded people online, social media and that's how he was introduced to QAnon. He started to go further and further down the QAnon rabbit hole and he began to question the legitimacy of the shooting that his son was part of after he saw one video in particular. The video in question, this. David, why are you supporting the red flag laws? Scott Peterson, the resource officer at Parkland had done his job. Then Nicholas Cruz wouldn't have killed anybody in your high school or at least protected them. Why are you supporting red flag gun laws that attack our Second Amendment rights? And why are you using kids to get as a barrier? He has nothing to say because there really isn't anything to say, you guys. He has nothing to say because he's paid to do this. He has the walk away march. He's got the women's march and they're funding all of this. Every town gun USA, they're funding all this stuff, okay? That was David Hogue right there. David, we saw him inside the Senate building. He had 30 appointments where he ran around and got to talk to senators. I got to talk to none, none. He had media coverage all over the place. I had zero. Guess what? I'm a gun owner. I'm an American citizen and I have nothing but this guy with his George Soros funding and his major liberal funding has got everything. I want you to think about that. That's where we are and he's a coward. He can't say one word because he can't defend his stance because there is no defense for taking away guns. There is no defense for gun confiscation, zero. And so there he goes. He just keeps walking with his two ladies that probably work with him. Maybe his handlers. Maybe his handlers, absolutely. They're telling him, don't say anything. Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing another Parkland survivor is the reason why a different Parkland survivor's father began to think that his own son was a liar and a crisis actor. It's just deeply, deeply disturbing and sad quite frankly. Now in that video, Marjorie Greene doesn't explicitly say that the Parkland shooting was a false flag. I'm sure that she thinks that to herself but regardless the things that she says. I mean, if you're already part of QAnon and she's a fellow QAnon member and you're already prone to conspiratorial thinking the things that she says obviously are going to lead you to this false conclusion that it was all staged, right? So she accused David Hogg in that video of having a lobby, getting paid for his advocacy meaning he's an actor, right? This is an accusation lobbed against leftists all the time by right-wingers who just don't like the protest that they see. But I mean, if you think that somebody is getting paid and there's a political agenda and that this is all a ploy by David Hogg to take away people's guns as Marjorie Greene suggested then this other QAnon member who probably respected Marjorie Greene thought, oh, well, if this is just a ploy to take guns then obviously it was a false flag. And since I am now concluding it was a false flag my own son had to be in on it. I mean, the most charitable I could be in this situation is that this individual was duped into thinking it was a false flag and that his son wasn't in on it but he literally thinks that his son was in on it. Like if you're a parent you usually go out of your way to defend your children. There's cognitive dissonance in every single parent's mind if I thought that their kids ever do anything wrong. So it's absurd to me that he was that far gone that he literally instinctively thought, no, my son's definitely a crisis actor. It's not that he was part of this false flag by accident and he wasn't in on it but everyone else was. No, he literally thinks his son is a liar after he survived a mass shooting in high school. That is just so awful and unfathomably sad. Like I can't imagine what Bill is going through. So there's a little bit more details here. Ever since then, then being him watching that video Bill's father has become convinced the shooting his son survived was a so-called false flag event and that the shooter was a radical commie actor. From there it snowballed into what he is today believing that if the government is able to overthrow an election then everything else is probably a lie too, Bill added. Bill is 18 and now that he's graduated high school he's looking to get out of the toxic situation he finds himself in. I do have options that can have me out before August which as of now I'm planning to do, Bill said, I've been delaying it because I felt stuck trying to fix my dad. Bill says his relationship with his mother has also suffered. Their relationship with my mom is dependent on whether my dad is there or not because then it's pretty much all about conspiracy theories, Bill told Vice News. The relationship used to be fine but is deteriorating quickly especially after telling her that if she doesn't start putting her foot down I'm leaving with no interest in seeing my dad again. But despite the threats to leave home Bill's mother has not stood up to his dad. At this point Bill has little hope in ever seeing his father return to the person he was before he became obsessed with QAnon conspiracy theories and even if he did too much has happened to ever repair their relationship. He'll never stop on his own because there are always new theories and goalposts being moved, Bill said. I don't know how to help someone that far gone. My guess is restricted access to the internet and lots of therapy but even if there was hope he'd eventually snap out of it. It wouldn't change my mind on never wanting to see him again so it doesn't really matter anymore. I mean, I don't know what to say. The story is so incredibly tragic and I feel so bad for Bill because I mean life is already hard enough when you're going through high school, you're 18, you're graduating. There's a lot that you have to deal with. You're developing into an adult and you're readying yourself to get out into the world. It's a scary place and then a shooting happens and then your own father becomes a conspiracy theorist and denies that you experienced what you did. It's just, it's so sad. And another element of the story that I didn't get to is that he doesn't feel like he's able to speak with his fellow Parkland classmates because the thought that their experience that they all collectively dealt with was a false flag to them is too traumatic. It would trigger their PTSD and he doesn't wanna do that. So he holds it all in and doesn't tell anyone which is why he went to the QAnon Casualty Subreddit because he doesn't have anyone to talk to. His mom won't do anything. He doesn't wanna talk to his classmates because that's gonna be triggering to them and their PTSD to hear that. And so he holds it all in and just is miserable. Wow, wow. So I mean, if anyone tells you that QAnon is not serious or isn't a threat, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that ruins lives, it tears families apart. And I've talked about it on this program and I'm gonna continue to talk about it because I want people to understand that if they're able to reach one of their loved ones before they get too deep into that rabbit hole, they've gotta try, do everything in your power to stop it. Because if you don't, it might be too late and they might become too far gone. Like his father does think that he's too far gone and even though his son doesn't want anything to do with him, he believes the people online, these QColtists more than his own child. That it's not only pathetic, but just it's depressing and sad. I feel so bad for Bill. So needless to say, Matt Gaetz's political career is in a little bit of jeopardy given that he is facing some legal trouble and that's a bit of an oversimplification. But let's just say that he's such a despicable individual that one of his own family members, his fiancee sister actually decided to come out and confirm that he is indeed the creep that we all suspect that he was even before his current scandal, Gaetz Gaetz or whatever you wanna call it. So she basically took to TikTok to expose Matt Gaetz and she shared her own experience with Matt Gaetz's creepiness. And this is not necessarily going to inform us about the direction that his investigation will go, but it just gives you a little bit more insight and probably makes the claims against Matt Gaetz that much more believable. And before I even show you her videos, he's already having a terrible week because he had his press event with Marjorie Taylor Greene disrupted by a Whistler and on top of that last week, I didn't talk about this on the program, but he was ambushed by a TikTok star and troll famous for trolling Republicans. And by now I'm sure that you've seen it, but let's watch it again because it's hilarious. Oh my God, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I mean, just, oh, everyone thinks you're crazy. I don't think you're crazy. People think you're a pedophile. I don't think you're a pedophile at all. I don't think he's a pedophile at all. You're turns against him are totally false. They're totally false. Oh my God. I love Walter Masterson. He is a master troll. Love it. So that happened. And now Matt Gaetz is having to deal with one of his own future family members exposing him. There is so much more to the story and about like what I know about Matt Gaetz. And so I just wanted to like come on here and kind of clarify some things because it is definitely a serious situation. Now realize that I use the incorrect terminology. It is not pedophilia. It is epipophilia, which is being attracted to like post-pubescent teens in the age range of 15 to 19. Last summer when I was living in DC and interning there, Matt had just started dating my sister and a friend that I had met and kind of knew that was around Matt's age, like had a kid, had been divorced. And this guy kept telling me like, oh, Matt told me I should ask you out. Like that we'd be great together, yada, yada. So I decided to confront Matt about it. So come Thanksgiving when I finally had the chance to see him face to face, I was straight up with him and I was like, what is up with this? And he just immediately got so defensive, started yelling at me and my mom. He called me a narcissist, was just 1,000% gaslighting me. He went full lawyer on me, like I don't have to listen to you. I don't have to answer your questions. When everything came out about him, I honestly, unfortunately was not surprised. And it wasn't just this encounter I had with Matt when I was in DC, I heard kind of through the grapevine stuff about him. You know, everything is hearsay, but just he had a reputation for prowling after college girls when he's a grown man. And to me, that's just kind of weird if I can just bring some attention to it. So people are aware of what is going on and people can be held accountable, that's my goal. And as someone who has personally experienced ton of creepy old politician men, hitting on me when I was underage and experiencing sexual assault at that age by people of power, it's just very disheartening. And I have zero tolerance for people like him. And I think politicians need to be held accountable for their actions and I'm tired of them getting away with this type of stuff. And I think it's important that we are just aware and hold people accountable to whatever extent we can. So Roger Sollenberger of the Daily Beast reports, representative Matt Gaetz, future sister-in-law appears to have had more than enough of the Florida congressmen posting three TikTok videos in the last two days, slamming him as weird and creepy and a literal pedophile. Roxanne Lucky, the sister of Gaetz's fiance, Ginger Lucky, was sharply critical of the congressman and his treatment of young women saying she unfortunately was not surprised to have learned Gaetz was under federal investigation for alleged sex crimes. In one video Monday night, Roxanne Lucky told a story about Gaetz pressuring an older man to court her when she was 19. She called the move weird and creepy and claims Gaetz yelled at her and her mother and went full lawyer when she confronted him. After the videos were posted, Ginger Lucky hid back at her sister, telling the Daily Beast she had a history of, quote, destructive behavior. Reached for comment Monday evening, Ginger Lucky claimed she and Roxanne were estranged, a video posted by Roxanne Lucky suggests she was close with her sister and Gaetz as recently as November. Matt and I are enjoying our engagement and are deeply in love. My estranged sister is mentally unwell, Ginger Lucky said in a text message. She has been in therapy for years and our family hopes that after receiving inpatient mental health treatment, she will overcome the tendency she has repeatedly shown to engage in destructive behavior. Now there's a couple of caveats here to this story. The Daily Beast hasn't been able to contact Matt Gaetz's fiancee sister and this is obviously, he said, she said they had a falling out and to me, I find that sad. It's probably over Matt Gaetz. But as someone who is an outsider with no knowledge, but I do have a political bias against Matt Gaetz because not only do I think he is a creep but his politics are absolutely disgusting and fascistic. I think that the sister here is throwing his fiancee, is throwing her sister under a bus to protect her possible criminal fiance. It's kind of sad, like when I see her say my estranged sister is mentally unwell, that looks like gaslighting. Like she is trying to convince everyone that her sister is actually mentally unwell when we all heard her speak. Like she seems more articulate and more normal than any time I've ever heard Matt Gaetz speak. So if anyone is mentally unwell here, not that that's a pejorative, but if anyone isn't necessarily credible for whatever reason, it's gonna be Matt Gaetz. Like you could do a juxtaposition side by side of both of them and just if I knew no knowledge or had no knowledge of Matt Gaetz or his fiancee sister, I would think, yeah, that dude is probably the crazy person just based on the way that he speaks. I mean, this individual basically asked for American citizens to be extrajudicially murdered during the Black Lives Matter protests. On top of that, he claimed that Antifa was responsible for the January 6th insurrection. This individual is a fascist and probably a sociopath. So if anyone in this situation is mentally unwell, it's Matt Gaetz. Her sister seems perfectly reasonable, but to me with my limited knowledge of their internal family dynamics, it seems like she's taking her fiance side over her sister's side, then that's pretty sad. I mean, if it is true that Matt Gaetz recommended an older man ask her out when she was 19, you know, you would hope that your big sister, I'd assume, would defend you and think, yeah, that's pretty creepy. You really shouldn't do that. I mean, are you not able to question Matt Gaetz in this relationship? I just, I don't understand that, right? It's not like her sister is alleging anything illegal here. It isn't illegal for Matt Gaetz to recommend that his older colleague ask out his girlfriend's sister who's 19. It's deeply creepy, of course, but she's not accusing him of a crime. I mean, she did say that he's a literal pedophile based on the allegation. So of course, you know, she definitely, she has it out for Matt Gaetz. I think that's obvious, but it seems like maybe that's based on him kind of driving a wedge between her and her sister. But I mean, either way, if anyone here has, you know, a credibility crisis, it doesn't seem like the sister is the one who has the credibility crisis. It's Matt Gaetz. So she's not saying like he murdered a baby. She's saying he tried to hook me up with a creepy guy, or she tried to encourage a creepy guy who's much older than me to ask me out and hit on me. And I didn't like that. It made me feel uncomfortable. There's nothing wrong with her saying this. In fact, I think now, given the scandal that he's in, it's important for people to know this. It takes a lot of courage to speak out against your own family. So look, we don't know what's going on. We don't have all the details, but does it look like she's engaging in destructive behavior? I mean, sure, if you're publicly speaking out against someone who's going to be your brother-in-law, but still, if it's Matt Gaetz, I'm gonna have to be a little bit destructive as well. I wouldn't want that douchebag in my family. He's a ghoul. He's a fascist. And I'm sorry, he looks like a creep. He acts like a creep. So, yeah, I don't blame her. I feel bad for her, for the sister here in this instance, because she seems really distraught that her sister is marrying someone who is a sociopath. Believe it or not, there is another Bush family member who is very ambitious and has big plans for his political career. No, I'm not talking about Jeb Bush. I am, of course, talking about his son, George P. Bush. Now, if you've never heard of George P. Bush, he currently is an elected official in Texas and he is running for attorney general in Texas. Now, this is him next to his cuckoo father. And here is another picture of him with his war criminal uncle and his war criminal serial sexual assaulting grandfather who's now dead. And yeah, you can see, like, he looks just like Jeb. But to the chagrin of his family, he decided to go full maga after Trump humiliated his father in 2016. And the reason why he went full maga is because he really wants Donald Trump's endorsement in this race because, look, Donald Trump is the Republican Party kingmaker. He still effectively is the leader of the Republican Party. And, you know, the Bush era is over. Now it's all about Donald Trump. So if you want to win, you've got to kiss his ring. So he posted this to his Twitter page and embarrassingly he actually pinned it. So it's a picture of him and Donald Trump and it says the lefts out of control policies are eroding the fabric of our nation. It was great to see President Trump today and discuss how he must come together as a party to restore America first priorities. I appreciate his friendship and kind words as we work together to keep America great. Now this is one of the most desperate, pathetic and embarrassing things I've ever seen. I mean, you're selling out your entire family. You're betraying your entire family all so you can get Donald Trump's endorsement to maybe help you win the attorney general race that you're currently in. But before I give you the spoiler or the outcome, does anyone want to know what happened here? Whether or not Donald Trump actually did agree to endorse him after he betrayed his family and kissed up to Donald Trump? Take a guess. Poor pathetic low energy guy. Donald Trump endorsed Ken Paxton who is a bigger Trump bootlicker who is much more crazy than George P. Bush. You love to see it. You love to see it, folks. This is great. Bunch of real dummies. So he took his entire family, threw them under a bus and then he proceeded to get hit by a train with that train being the Trump train. And just to remind you how detestable Donald Trump was to George P. Bush's mother in 2015, he actually deleted a tweet that he retweeted because even Trump thought, okay, this is a little bit too far. So he tweeted this out. Jeb Bush has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife, literally attacking Jeb Bush's wife specifically because she's Mexican. Poor Jeb. That's your mother, George P. Bush. That's possibly worse than what Ted Cruz, or worse than what Trump did to Ted Cruz's wife. And you're okay with that? Like this is explicitly racist than yet you're saying Donald Trump is your friend. You're kissing his ring. How embarrassing. Have some backbone. Try to chart your own path. It's just Republicans are so shameless. And I say Republicans knowing damn well that Democrats are the same exact way. They do the same thing to Barack Obama. But to be fair, Obama doesn't like make these awful personal attacks on other Democrats. He does kill careers of progressive Democrats disproportionately. But he doesn't make these personal attacks. But Trump does. Like he makes it personal. He literally attacked George Bush's mother because she's Mexican and George P. Bush is like doing everything in his power to suck up to him. But you love to see it. Look, I will say this. I hate Donald Trump. I despise this individual. But the best thing that he ever did is kill off the Bush dynasty and all of their political careers. He may have, you know, initiated a new, perhaps worse political dynasty if Ivanka Trump and Trump Jr. run for office one day. But still, like what he did, honestly, was a public service. Love him or hate him. You've got to like the fact that Donald Trump killed off the Bush legacy. That is fantastic. It's not that Trump himself is good. It's just that, like, you know, when you see ghouls fight each other, sometimes it's really nice, comforting, therapeutic even to just sit back and watch it happen. And this is no different. George P. Bush, you deserve what you get. That, my friends, was an American patriot who, like any good citizen, did what he felt obligated to do, confront Tucker Carlson because he saw him in a fishing store in Montana and tell him correctly so that he is the biggest piece of shit in the world. That was absolutely incredible. He was polite and that was necessary. Tucker Carlson is one of the most, if not the most popular news figure in America. So when he pedals white supremacist conspiracy theories, when he pushes anti-vax misinformation, there are real world consequences. People are dying in his audience because of the things that he pushes. So this individual thought it was necessary to confront him and he took to his Instagram to explain why he did that. He says, it's not every day you get to tell someone they're the worst person in the world and really mean it. True. What an asshole. This man has killed more people with vaccine misinformation. He has supported extreme racism. He is a fascist and does more to rip this country apart than anyone that calls themselves an American. Hashtag fuck Tucker Carlson. Hashtags stay out of Montana. Yeah, that's exactly it. Listen, I'm of the belief that anyone who has the opportunity to confront Tucker Carlson to his face but doesn't do that is not just a coward but a boot leaking piece of shit who's afraid to speak truth to power. If I ever saw Tucker Carlson, I would do exactly what he did and I am not a confrontational person but this individual is so destructive. The things that he says are so damaging and deadly that I feel like it's incumbent on everyone to call it out but of course in came the pearl clutches who decided to attack the man who quote unquote ambushed Tucker Carlson. So journalist Justin Baragana reports, a Fox News spokesperson told Mediaite that Dan Bailey, ambushing Tucker in a storm was totally inexcusable and no public figure should be accosted regardless of their political persuasion or beliefs simply due to the intolerance of another point of view. Now, it's interesting to me that Fox News is condemning public accosting. In fact, I expect them to do that since it's happening to one of their employees but my question is where was the outrage from Fox News when Tucker Carlson himself encouraged people to publicly accost others who were wearing masks during a pandemic that's still going on, mind you. So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable. We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a marble on an elevator. It's repulsive. Don't do it around other people. That's the message we should send because it's true. As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal. Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. So apparently Tucker Carlson believes that a costing people is good unless of course it's happening to him. Shocker. Of course he's a hypocrite. Of course Fox News is going to remain silent about him encouraging confronting people, wearing masks as they should be doing during a pandemic. But clutch their pearls when it happens to one of their hosts who happens to be one of the most destructive hosts that they have. Now of course there were other pearl clutches. The view covered this and for the most part they tended to not support a costing Tucker Carlson in public but nobody clutched their pearls harder than you know who. The problem with any kind of rationale of this being okay is there's this Winston Churchill quote that says just because the crocodiles eating them doesn't mean it's not going to eat you next. As incendiary as many people find Tucker Carlson they find the women on this show equally incendiary for different reasons. So if it's okay and should be expected maybe there's an expectation that wherever we go it's okay for people to come up to us and scream things and say things. And maybe you guys thought that man was being polite. I thought he was being a total jackass and incredibly rude. And we're living in a time when people like Steve Scalise are being shot and wounded to the point that you don't know if they're there. He's literally going to survive and now he has to walk with a cane because there are people that just aren't in control of themselves and aren't in control of their mental health and they want to take out their aggression on public figures. It's incredibly dangerous. I thought it was incredibly dangerous when Maxine Waters said we should go up to public figures and get up in their faces. I think is a very, very slippery slope. I know how much people don't like Tucker Carlson people equally don't like Megan McCain and Joy Behar and Sonny Hostin and Whoopi and Sarah. These are, when you're putting your opinion out there you're making yourself a target. I now feel in my life, Ben and I have to talk about what restaurants we feel safe going to. I think about what kind of places I'm comfortable taking liberty to. I have to think about what kind of neighborhood I'm living in. Tucker Carlson's wife once barricaded herself in her home in their pantry and called the police because so many protesters were outside their home here in Washington, D.C. to try and accost them. These are not, this isn't normal. And I think any rationalization that this is normal or should be accepted in the United States of America is not only indecent but it's beyond the pale of what should be any expectation of any kind of decorum in a society like the United States of America and anyone that tries to rationalize it is gross and that man should apologize to Tucker Carlson. Counterpoint that man should absolutely not apologize to Tucker Carlson. And in the event he sees Tucker Carlson in Montana in public again, he should confront him yet again. We should normalize confronting Tucker Carlson. And look, I understand as a public figure where Megan McCain is coming from, right? She's been confronted, Whoopi Goldberg was confronted before she explains that. But this is a little bit different than that, right? I don't believe people should be confronting anyone who they disagree with, right? I wouldn't condone people confronting Megan McCain or even Ben Shapiro. The difference here is that Tucker Carlson is magnitudes more detrimental and destructive to American society than even Ben Shapiro or Megan McCain. Nobody is as persuasive and effective at disseminating propaganda than Tucker Carlson and he knows exactly what he's doing. The damage that he's causing to this country is irreparable. The lives that will be lost because they take his advice to not get vaccinated. That's permanent. Those deaths can't be undone. It's permanent. The damage that he's causing, the amount of individuals who he has radicalized and hoodwinked into white supremacy. How long will it take to deprogram these people when we can even begin that process? Tucker Carlson is not like other news figures. I would argue he's not even comparable to Sean Hannity who also is spreading lies and misinformation. Tucker Carlson is one of the most dangerous figures in the history of American news broadcasting. Period, hands down. And the fact that he has one of the most popular shows in America and has two shows on Fox News should worry every single person. So I will say it again. No, normally I do not condone confronting people publicly. I wouldn't support somebody trolling Ben Shapiro or Megan McCain in public. And for the most part, I usually think that public confrontation is only acceptable when it comes to politicians who have power but usually don't respond to their constituents. But when it comes to Tucker Carlson, the amount of damage he's causing, the amount of people he's getting killed, that just makes this necessary. It's not like it's going to change his mind or anything like that. But there needs to be some accountability. And if this is the smallest form of accountability that we get for all the damage he causes, great. Confronting Tucker Carlson is good. We should normalize confronting Tucker Carlson. Anyone who has the opportunity to but doesn't confront Tucker Carlson is a piece of shit. Period. So earlier this month, factory workers at the Frida LA plant in Topeka, Kansas went viral after they went on strike and explained just how terrible the working conditions are at this particular factory. And the situation, it's not necessarily super surprising. And I don't think that this is an isolated incident. I think that this is happening across the country. And we just don't know that this is the case. But what they describe here is absolutely inexcusable. And every single person in America should condemn this because this should not be happening. So as Vice News explains, many of the 850 workers at the facility say they work 84 hours a week with no days off. Workers are nominally supposed to work eight hour shifts. But because of shortages, workers are often forced to add an extra four hours before or after their shifts. Workers call these extended shifts suicides because they say the schedule kills you over time. Some workers haven't had a single day off in five months, including Saturdays and Sundays. Now, just to put this into perspective, to work 84 hours every single week, that is extremely destructive, not just to your physical well-being, but to your mental health as well. The most that I ever worked in a week was 74 hours. So 10 hours less than these workers here. And it was almost like, I felt like I was going insane. I almost had a nervous breakdown. It was incredibly destructive to my emotional well-being. It was grueling. But for them to deal with this every single week, I mean, this is, it's excruciating. Now, I wanna share some stories from the workers before I get to the reason why I'm talking about this story, not just because it's important, but because there's an update to the story that I think people should know about. The strike has concluded and they did reach an agreement. Now it's not a good agreement. The terms, I think, are still more beneficial to Frito-Lay than to the workers. But nonetheless, I just really wanna put things into perspective for you and explain how bad this situation is. So there's a 59-year-old Frito-Lay worker named Mark McCarter who worked at Frito-Lay since he was 19 years old. And he claims that even though he's worked there all this time, he is still forced to work 12-hour shifts. He's required to work 12-hour shifts seven days a week, doesn't get a day off, and he says he hasn't gotten a raise in a decade and explains, this job wears you down. It tires you. It makes you mentally exhausted. It plays with your mind. Some of these guys who work 12 hours a day every day are destroying their marriages. They're destroying their families. My wife passed away and I don't have a wife to go home to to say, hey babe, I'm only working eight hours tomorrow. But a lot of these guys come in with the understanding that they'll be there for eight hours, but then they got to call their wives and kids and say, guess what? It's not eight hours, it's 12 hours, and then I have to go back to work at 3 a.m. Now, part of the reason why these workers at the factory have to work so hard is because of the high turnover rate. They have a reputation that's bad and typical for good reason, and because of that, people don't really want to work there, and when they work there, they end up quitting. So that leaves the workers who are employed there having to deal with in excess of amount of tasks. That's just, it's too much for them. They're overburdened. And on top of that, besides that story, which I think is gonna be pretty common, there's a story from More Perfect Union, and I don't necessarily know that this is about the Topeka plant, but just to kind of show you how bad Frito Lea is to their employees, one man named Brandon actually got injured on the job, and he shares his experience, and this is honestly gut-wrenching. It was using the doctor. You press the button, and it automatically does what it's supposed to do. I got electrocuted. I was taken to the ER, but the emergency room they took me to was 45 minutes away. We passed four hospitals on the way to the hospital they wanted to take me to, and the reason it is is because they signed a contract with a certain hospital and a certain network. From the very next day after the accident, my husband was never the same. He was working really hard to even just get up onto the side of the bed. Usually he's like hops out of bed and he always puts his clothes on and he shoves food down his throat and he's out the door. You know, in 30 minutes, he was used to it. He was trained to do that in the service. When I say I was healthy as an ox, I was healthy as an ox. We just didn't have any answers. They said he should have been fine, but he wasn't. I didn't get any time off after the incident. I had to call off the next day as a sick day. I told you I was in pain. I told you it hurts when I walk, and it was like, okay, you know, are you gonna be here tomorrow? I was a site lead, and I knew what that entails. Your leadership was a whole warehouse, so if you have to fill in, you have to fill in. I asked for some type of relief period because I was still obligated to work, like picking cases and unloading trucks or rotating product on a forklift. I asked for a chair that I could sit in that would make me more comfortable while I'm doing my office work. They denied it. You're either 100% or you can't work. It just felt like they was just trying to push me out. Eventually I got an MRI by my primary doctor, and he showed that I had two herniated discs in my back, and he was like, you shouldn't be doing anything. They could only fix it with surgery. And my husband still had to work this whole entire time. They had to remove two of the discs in my neck because they were bulging into my spinal cord. I wasn't getting enough fluid to my brain. If I didn't have the surgery, the doctor said any small fall or accident or something like that and I would've been paralyzed from the neck down or dead. I still have to have surgery on my lower lumbar spine. From the moment that he couldn't work anymore and needed short-term disability, Frito-Lay abandoned us. I had to file for short-term disability and then long-term disability. Got approved for long-term disability, but that was months later. So no income coming in. That's a picture of the car. They were driving? They require you to go to the doctor so many times, and the doctor has to say that you're in this condition over and over and over. But guess what? You don't have any insurance anymore through PepsiCo slash Frito-Lay because they cut you off. I had to pay for that out of pocket too. Didn't have the money to do that. So guess what? I borrowed money or used credit cards or whatever I could. I even took money out of my kids. I had to take from our children to live. Now, I'm not gonna play the full video for you because I really want you to watch the full video from a more perfect union. So if you're watching this on YouTube, I'll link to it down below. Also, I want you to check out Brandon's GoFundMe to help him fund the surgery that he needs, which obviously is going to be very, very expensive. But just to kind of give you the TLDR version of that story, if you don't want to watch that video, he was injured on the job because of no fault of his own. And then they still pressured him after he was electrocuted to show up to work. He was then cut off, lost his insurance. They abandoned him. He decided to sue. And after that, then Frito-Lay tried to prove that he wasn't actually injured and was faking it. And they began stalking his family, taking videos of him and his children all because they're greedy. They couldn't admit that the worker that was injured at their plant, at their factory, it was their fault that they're actually liable. This is such a cruel, disgusting company. And if you can, absolutely do not purchase Frito-Lay products. Now, I say that knowing that the alternative brands are probably not much better, but there has to be some level of accountability when companies treat their workers like this. This is a human rights violation. This is abusive. And it shouldn't just be that Frito-Lay factory workers get better working conditions, but the individuals responsible for this should be persecuted legally. This is abuse. This is borderline torture. But the dispute has essentially been resolved. And I say that because the strike ended, but workers, even though they got some benefits, it's really not that great. So as Maria Kramer of the New York Times explains, hundreds of Frito-Lay employees ratified a contract on Saturday, ending a nearly three week strike over forced overtime and long hours that many workers had said pushed them past the point of exhaustion, union officials said. Paul Klam, a chief shop steward who has worked at the Tabika plant for nine years, said he has once worked three months straight without a day off. I missed a lot of time with my children when they were in high school because of the shift that I worked and the hours that I worked, he said. It's physically draining. Mr. Klam said the new contract guarantees one day off a week for workers, does away with forcing workers to take the suicide shifts and increases wages. He declined to provide precise numbers because he said he was not authorized to give that information. Karina Christensen, a spokeswoman for the International Union, declined to provide additional details of the agreement or say how the membership voted. One warehouse worker who has been at the plant for roughly two decades said there was more disappointment than happiness with the contract. The man who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearful of retaliation from the company, I wonder why, said that many workers who crossed the picket line or voted to approve the contract did so out of need. Quote, a lot of people had to vote yes because they were running out of money and didn't have insurance, he said. So there you have it. Instead of working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, they're presumably going to be working eight hours a day, six days a week. It's an improvement, but this still obviously isn't enough. We need to be changing the terms of the conversation around work in the United States. Get out of this work hours ourselves to death mentality and start focusing on ourselves, human development, how to make human beings thrive. And we should be talking about a three to four day work week, not a six day work week as a success, but when you are in a late stage capitalist society where big money and employers have so much power over their employees and they're afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation, it's just you're gonna get situations like this. Even workers at Frito-Lay who have unions, that doesn't solve everything. Unions are incredibly important and they probably wouldn't have even had this small victory had it not been for their union, but still to do this, to work themselves to death, it's borderline torture. Like I'm trying not to be hyperbolic, but this is totally inexcusable and it's all to produce chips and dip. It's disgusting. We have this news and then on top of that, Activision Blizzard is being sued for a rampant sexual discrimination, misogyny, sexual harassment and their response is basically Trumpian. I mean, companies are going to continue to behave this way unless you rein them in with legislation. This is totally unacceptable. What? Marching up the freedom land. They're gonna land nobody. Turn me around. Turn me around. Turn me around. We're gonna keep on walking. That was legendary civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, at the age of 79, marching in the scorching heat with Parkinson's, mind you, to Senator Kirsten Sinema's office demand that she stop supporting the filibuster. Now the point of this march was to march to Kirsten Sinema's office and stage a sit-in and that is exactly what Jesse Jackson did and he refused to leave once he got there and him along with 39 other people were actually arrested at Kirsten Sinema's office because of this. So that is dedication right there. Taking a stand and refusing to back down regardless of what the consequences are. And this is by far one of the most important issues right now because if the filibuster is not abolished, then Democrats will not be able to enact voting rights laws such as the For the People Act. And this is important because the Republican Party is effectively rigging future elections in their favor with these voter suppression laws and they don't have to do very much to retake the House in 2022. In fact, with gerrymandering alone by redrawing district lines in their favor, they can easily win back the House in 2022 but future elections will be perpetually rigged in their favor with these new restrictive laws and they are specifically targeting things that drove up the vote in 2020. So this is incredibly egregious. We should be further consolidating democracy, further expanding suffrage to more and more people but they're making it more difficult and people like Kirsten Sinema, they're enabling that. And she's gonna claim that she's only representing her constituents in a purple state but that's not actually the case because a new poll from Data for Progress shows that 66% of Arizona voters support a primary challenger to Kirsten Sinema specifically because she refuses to stop supporting the filibuster. And I need people to understand how serious this issue is. If voting rights are not enacted at the federal level after the Supreme Court has repeatedly gutted the actual voting rights act that we had before, if we don't get the For the People Act then everything that we want is off the table if the GOP is able to cling to power by cheating. Medicare for all, not even possible. Green New Deal not possible. Student Ed cancellation, not possible. All of this is off the table if the GOP clings to power because they're not gonna push for it. So if we even want a chance of getting anything that the left wants codified into law, we have to fight to protect democracy because the GOP is on our rampage against democracy and if you think that I'm being hyperbolic. Well, the math has been done. The numbers have been crunched and the laws that the GOP enacted will make it very easy for them to retake control of the states that they lost in 2020. So as Politico reports, after Georgia Republicans passed a restrictive voting law in March, Democrats here began doing the math. The state's new voter ID requirement for mail-in ballots could affect the more than 270,000 Georgians lacking identification. The provision cutting the number of ballot drop boxes could affect hundreds of thousands of voters who cast absentee ballots that way in 2020 and that's just in the populous Atlanta suburbs alone. It didn't take long before the implications became clear to party officials and voting rights activists. In a state that Joe Biden carried by fewer than 12,000 votes last year, the new law stood to wipe out many of the party's hard fought gains and put them at a decisive disadvantage. Democrats in other states where similarly restrictive voting laws have passed are coming to the same conclusion. Interviews with more than three dozen Democratic elected officials, party operatives and voting rights activists across the country reveal growing concern, bordering on alarm about the potential impact in 2022 of the raft of new laws passed by Republican legislatures, particularly in some of the nation's most competitive battleground states. And really the title of the article sums the situation up. It's a quote. It says, we're fucked. And we are. If the For the People Act is not passed before 2022, we are fucked. Because the GOP, an authoritarian party who has some members explicitly calling for a coup is going to easily retake control of Congress. And once they take control again, it's too late. The window of opportunity to pass the For the People Act is gone. And then they will continue to rewrite the rules in their favor. They've redrawn district lines. So for the next 10 years, they have an easy path to victory. And even if it weren't the case that they were rewriting the rules in their favor to make them more electorally successful or increase the likelihood that they're electorally successful, even if the playing field were level, there's still a lot of issues with our democracy. We need a proportional representation system. We need to abolish the electoral college that's still disproportionately advantaged as Republicans. And on top of that, even if we got rid of all of that, there's still issues. The Supreme Court has already struck down the voting rights legislation that was already on the books, right? They've gutted it numerous times so they can gut further provisions. So the debt continues to get stacked and stacked and stacked against us. And the For the People Act is the one piece of legislation that Democrats are pushing that will help keep our heads above water. But if they don't pass this because the filibuster does not get abolished because of people like Kirsten Sinema, then we're gonna be in a very bad situation for a very long time in this country. Now, the problem is that the Democrats who aren't just outright directly enabling the GOP, like Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, aren't strong enough to actually effectively wage a campaign against Republicans. To his credit, Joe Biden has, I think, accurately characterized the situation as an attack and an assault on democracy, and he's correct about that, but he's not doing enough to apply pressure to people in his own party who are blocking progress. And the issue is that it seems like privately he's already basically admitted defeat. So the New York Times explains, in private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to out-organize voter suppression according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. So that's where we're at. Joe Biden, the president who has his bully pulpit rather than doing more, privately he's basically saying, look, it's not gonna get done, so we might as well just try to out-organize the voter suppression, which is an effort that is not going to be successful. Now, the people who were advisors to Biden who were on the call that was referenced here, they claim, oh well, he's not saying that we should try to out-organize voter suppression. He just said that that's one of the many tactics, but it doesn't matter. It's a distinction without a difference if he actually doesn't get this accomplished, because if you allow people in your party, like Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, to continue to uphold the filibuster which Joe Biden himself supports, by the way, you're not gonna get the For the People Act passed and then you will be shut out of power come 2022, come 2024. So the situation is absolutely, absolutely dire. And I applaud people like Jesse Jackson, who understands the gravity of the situation. If we lose our ability to actually make power changes in the country because our system is so skewed in favor of Republicans, then any progressive legislation that we want is not going to have a chance of passing so long as they control power. It's not like it's easy to get these things passed. It's seemingly impossible with Democrats in power. Obviously, that's why we're talking about the For the People Act because they can't even agree on voting rights legislation because people in their own party are against it. But things get a lot worse. But at this moment, we still have our heads above water. So long as we can pass the For the People Act will be a little bit better off. But if that doesn't happen, if people like Kirsten Sinema win, then it's gonna be too late. Public Service Announcement. Nina Turner's election is about a week away. A little more than a week away by the time you see this video. But now is the time to get involved if you haven't because guess what? Another poll was just released and it confirms what the other polls have found, that the race between Nina Turner and Chantel Brown is indeed tightening. So as Julia Manchester of The Hill explains, Democratic candidate for Ohio's 11th Congressional District, Chantel Brown, appears to be gaining ground on front-runner Nina Turner in the race's Democratic primary according to a new poll. 41% of likely primary voters back Turner in the poll while 36% threw their support behind Brown. The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, was conducted by the Melman Group for the Democratic majority for Israel PAC. The group has endorsed Brown and has poured money into television advertising ahead of the race. The poll is the latest to show a tightening race between Turner and Brown. An internal poll from Brown's campaign showed Turner leading 43% to 36%, marking a 26-point jump for Brown since April. Meanwhile, another recent poll from the Washington Free Beacon showed Turner and Brown tied at 33%. Brown's allies have attributed her jump in the polls to increased spending and advertising on their side of the race. And when it comes to that last part, I agree. I think that Chantel Brown's allies are correct. The reason why she is jumping so quickly in the polls is because of all of this spending. And there's a lot of groups spending money against Nina Turner. A lot of it is dark money, but what we know about, where we can trace the money, it is all nefarious individuals. So for example, as Benjamin Dixon reports, Third Way, the pro-corporate right-wing democratic group has spent $250,000 fighting Nina Turner. That's a quarter of a million dollars to defeat one congressional candidate. The pro-Israeli DMFI pack has bankrolled Chantel Brown. We've known about this, I've talked about this before. But guess who's bankrolling them? Well, it's an oil and gas heir who poured over a million dollars into DMFI. And a lot of these super packs, they have money and we don't even know where it came from. So there could be a lot of other nefarious individuals behind these groups that is absolutely bankrolling Chantel Brown. In fact, I'd say there's definitely shady individuals, billionaires and oligarchs who are fighting against Nina Turner. And I just wanna put this into perspective for you. So when an internal poll from Nina Turner's campaign was released in May, showing that she had a 35 point lead, at that point, if the establishment basically threw their hands up and said, look, this is hopeless, Nina Turner's gonna get the seat, they wouldn't be wrong, right? Because to make up a 35 point deficit that requires a lot of resources and energy. But the Democratic Party establishment and the super packs decided, you know what? To defeat Nina Turner, it's worth it. It's worth spending all of this money dedicating all of this time into defeating Nina Turner, because that's how much of a threat she is. With these types of enemies that tells you exactly why Nina Turner needs to be elected to Congress. Because if all of these folks fear Nina Turner this much, if they're dedicating this much time in a district that is overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning, I mean, that goes to show you that Nina Turner is someone who we want on our side in the ring fighting for us in Congress. And Chantelle Brown is incredibly desperate because when she was behind because there's almost no grassroots enthusiasm for her in that district, she practically begged super packs to jump in and support her campaign. They did do that. She's been caught faking endorsements. I don't know if she still has this up, but if you go to her endorsement page, there's a picture of her and Barack Obama to subtly suggest that Obama jumped in to endorse her when that's not actually the case. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama did want to endorse her, but she's trying to make it seem as if she has the endorsement of Barack Obama. And this is a really sleazy tactic to do because she knows that this district is heavily Democratic Party-leading. So to have Obama's endorsement is basically a very, very big thing. So she's trying to make it seem as if Obama endorsed her and then she faked endorsements from other individuals within that district. And to make matters worse, to make up for the fact that there's almost no real enthusiasm for her, she has what appears to be fake applause sound effects being blasted through speakers to make it seem as if when you watch it online, she has a bigger crowd of support than there is an actuality, but you're gonna see here in this clip that I'm about to show you, they're gonna cut to a clip of the crowd and there's like a couple of people clapping, but you can hear this like almost thunderous applause. It's so pathetic and embarrassing. Take a look. My political brother, my spiritual brother, my baby brother, Bashir Jones, councilman Bashir Jones, give it up for him, councilman candidate for mayor, but again, that is not about life. Things are going my way. So fast forward, election day comes, the polls close and I was down by six votes, six votes down, but not out, disappointed, but not devastated. As a child of faith, I've never been shy about my faith. As a child of faith, I said, okay, guys, I trust your infinite wisdom. Maybe this isn't for me. And I was actually convinced I would never run for public office again. It's Sunday. Does anybody have a but God in their spirit? But God. So 11 days later, I learned that there were 23 provisional ballots in my race and then I had won by seven votes, seven votes, seven votes. Can anybody say seven? Okay, so that seven has been so significant to me. Five partisan support, done unanimously. Embarrassing, absolutely embarrassing. So let me just catch you up to speed. Chantel Brown has been lying about Nina Turner. She begged Superpacks to get involved. They've circulated smears about Nina Turner. Chantel Brown has faked endorsements. People who have not endorsed her have called her out for incorrectly saying that they endorsed her in Ohio. And now she's caught blasting fake applause through speakers. I mean, if that's not fake applause, then maybe they added it afterwards. It seems like it's coming through the speakers there, but obviously you see though, there's not a lot of people there because what is she running on? She's like the Ohio version of Pete Buttigieg but perhaps less substantive with less policies than Pete Buttigieg. So this race is incredibly important. And if there is anyone who is terminally online who's telling you that it's not worth getting involved to fight for Nina Turner, that person is not a serious person, especially if they claim to be on the left. Nina Turner is someone who we desperately need in Congress. And if you don't think that it's worth dedicating time, resources, and energy fighting for Nina Turner, well, apparently the Super PACs, Third Way Democrats, they all disagree with you. They think it's worth getting involved because they view Nina Turner as that big of a threat. A single congressional seat is that important to them. That says a lot. Get involved right now. Donate to Nina Turner. Phone Bank, I'll share the link that AOC tweeted. And on top of that, if you live in the 11th Congressional District of Ohio, get on the ground, knock on some doors for Nina Turner, there's gonna be a get out the vote effort. On July 31st featuring Bernie Sanders, Cory Bush, Keith Ellison, all of the progressives in Congress are coming out, including AOC to support Nina Turner right now because they see that this is now a seat that's in jeopardy. It looked as if it was going to go to Nina Turner pretty easily, but that's not the case. The dynamic of this race changed. Big Money got involved because they didn't want Nina Turner to win that much. When Big Money knew it was gonna cost millions of dollars to make up a 35 point lead and they thought that it was worthwhile to make that investment, you know that there's something really special about Nina Turner. So get involved, support Nina Turner. We have to send Nina Turner to Congress. And the last thing that I'll leave you with is this awesome video of AOC speaking at the event this last weekend for Nina Turner and they cut this into an ad. So that's what you're gonna see. First question they ask is, what do you want? And we're like, what do you mean? Like we just told you what we want. We want Medicare for all. We wanna bring you deals. We want criminal justice for the world. And the ones that I need Nina. Who is that Nina? Hey man, over there. Hello, somebody. Well, the ratio on this video is probably going to be pretty bad, but I mean, look, somebody's gotta say it, folks. Somebody has gotta say it, but before I even begin to speak about anything, let's just take a moment, collectively as the online left to just take a deep breath. Let's just try to chill. If you have time commit yourself to try to go outside and touch grass because I promise you being terminally online 100% of the time is not good for your health. It's not good for your physical health. It's also not good for your mental health. I speak from experience. No, unfortunately for me, the best that I can do is touch synthetic grass here, but even just doing this, like this makes me feel better. Every once in a while, we just have to step back, take a deep breath and try to recalibrate, understand that our emotions, even if they are justifiable, can drive us into irrational territories and being irrational for too long leads to situations like we're currently dealing with right now. And I'm not necessarily even sure how to describe the situation that I want to talk about. So my thoughts are a little bit scattered here, but I'll just say it, the online left is a complete disaster since Bernie Sanders ended his 2020 campaign. It's a mess. If you log on to Twitter right now, you will probably immediately explode in anger. You'll start doom scrolling. You'll start spiraling and it's just a mess right now. And I think that every once in a while, we have to remind ourselves, what are we doing? Why are we doing what we're doing? And how do we make ourselves more effective? And to even suggest that perhaps maybe the left collectively online anyways has gone astray, is in and of itself controversial, but understand that a lot of what's happening on Twitter right now, all of the leftist infighting, it's pretty insular. Most normal people, thankfully, most leftists even in the United States and internationally have no idea what's going on on Twitter. They have no idea about the amount of infighting and thank God, like if any of my normie liberal family members saw what's going on on Twitter, they think that we're more unhinged as leftists than they already do, right? It's already bad enough trying to convince, or hard enough I should say, trying to convince them to support more socialistic policies, socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC. But if you log on to Twitter, it's like, holy fucking shit, people are losing their minds. And I'm not gonna get too specific because if I name names that I'm literally feeding into it further and giving the people who are trying to drive instability and anger in the left exactly what they want because unfortunately there are a lot of nefarious individuals and opportunistic individuals who try to drive a wedge between people because that is exactly what gets them views and clicks. So if I were to make a video titled, fuck Kyle Kulinski, I love Kyle, but if I made a video titled, fuck Kyle Kulinski, that would probably get like 50,000, 100,000 views because people love drama. The algorithm feeds into drama. So if you can keep people in a sustained state of anger, then that gets them coming back. Eventually you cultivate this audience where they're in this, your viewers are in this parasocial relationship with you and they have to tune in to find out what to be angry about. And there sure is a lot of things to be angry about. I'm constantly in a state of perpetual anger, but oftentimes if you're just in that state of anger, nonstop, it will eat away at your brain and again, every once in a while you have to recalibrate. So we're getting to a point on the left where I think that we all have to be a little bit introspective myself included and recalibrate. So I'm trying to figure out where I wanna go with this because it's like stepping on a bunch of fucking landmines. But let me just say that the squad, AOC, Cory Bush, these individuals are not your enemies. I think that it is perfectly justifiable if you are feeling disillusioned with members of Congress and the squad even because they praise Joe Biden far too much and go along with the establishment far too much. I understand that. I tend to have that criticism and agree with these folks. Having said that though, to make them public enemy number one, does nothing for the left. It only makes us look unhinged to constantly go after somebody who is like the closest to us ideologically speaking. The squad is not our enemies. And I shouldn't have to say that. You can be disillusioned with the squad, but it's gotten so bad that people are already pre-canceling Nina Turner, who hasn't even been elected yet, who would be one of the strongest fighters. But people just like look for every little thing to be angry at, right? So there were the incredible Medicare for All marches that took place. And there were some terminally online individuals who were trying to attack Nina Turner because she wasn't there. But Nina Turner has less than a week until her election takes place. So it's really important that she's out in Ohio on the ground canvassing people to go door to door. Now, could she have tweeted about the march? Sure, sure, that's a perfectly valid criticism, but to like totally write off Nina Turner as an individual and just automatically assume that she is a sellout is kind of absurd. And you have to understand who the real enemies are. You can criticize your allies in Congress, but they shouldn't be public enemy number one. Like if you demonize AOC and the squad and you're disappointed in them, okay. But perhaps direct your ire at the individuals who are actually holding us back, even if AOC. So for example, there's a lot of people that were angry that AOC didn't tweet about the Medicare for All marches. And I think that that's reasonable, right? It would have been great if she used her platform to do that. But that doesn't mean that AOC is a sellout. And just me saying that AOC isn't a sellout is in and of itself a cancelable offense. But you have to understand people that AOC, even if she did everything that we wanted her to do. The issue is that AOC is just one member of Congress, right? AOC doesn't have some magical Medicare for All button that she can press that immediately gives us Medicare for All. That's not the way that it works, unfortunately. I wish that it were that easy, but that's not actually the world that we're living in. She can't do that. So even if AOC all of a sudden became even more radical, took the advice of the online left, the terminally online individuals. Myself included, I'm in this category, and she became a communist and went full like, fuck the Democratic Party, fuck Nancy Pelosi. Still, that would be awesome to see, but would that get us any closer to Medicare for All? No, because we have to really tend to focus on the centers of power. And this is why I say we have to recalibrate because every once in a while, our anger drives us to irrational places to where we see someone who's actually an ally to us as not just an enemy, but public enemy number one. And the reason why AOC is so hated by the online left after being loved by her is because there are some individuals with very large followings that get extra views and clicks when they shit on someone like AOC. Why? Well, because there's already a substantial portion of the online left who's disappointed in AOC, so you have all those people automatically clicking when they see a video demonizing AOC, but on top of that, you get a lot of right-wingers who have gone out of their way to demonize AOC. So you get left-wingers and right-wingers all congregating to these videos where leftists shit on AOC, and then all of a sudden it's like, wow, these views are great. That's the feedback loop, you give them what they want, they give you what you want in exchange, views and clicks, and then you start doing it again and again, and with time, eventually, you start to cultivate this perception that AOC is public enemy number one when there are people in Congress who actually have power. I'm talking about Hakeem Jeffries, I'm talking about Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, I'm talking about Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. I'm talking about the Republicans, the Koch network who's literally fighting even a Medicaid expansion or a Medicare expansion, excuse me, that Bernie Sanders is pushing for. Bernie Sanders is fighting tooth and nail to lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60 and also he's trying to expand benefits so it includes dental, hearing and vision. I almost went dental and pointed to my eyes, but you get the point, right? I'm trying to do Bernie's thing, that's what he usually does. Anyways, and the Koch network is literally funding an astroturf campaign against Bernie Sanders. So understand that there are a lot of enemies in politics and your anger is justified, but if you're not directing it at the right people, then you're not going to affect change. That's just the fact and it's frustrating because people are in no end positions. So to go back to the Medicare for All March, which was great by the way, which I talked about on my show, inside note, I got lambasted for not talking about it when I actually did talk about it. This is like what I mean of people just like looking for reasons to be mad at one another on the left when we're not each other's enemies, we're actually allies. But Cory Bush showed up to the Medicare for All March, which is phenomenal. To have a sitting member of Congress endorse these nationwide marches, that's really, really incredible, but you had some people online attacking you. One person filmed a video, and I won't name this person because this is a really small account, so I don't want to direct harassment towards them, but one person was really mad that Cory Bush showed up to the march and she said that she didn't support force to vote because it was overly divisive. Now I supported force to vote, contrary to popular belief, because I thought it was a good tactic. I wanted to see a floor vote on Medicare for All, even if that wouldn't actually lead to Medicare for All being codified into law. I think it was a useful theatrical tactic, but it didn't happen, but it's a mere disagreement of political tactics to get as close to Medicare for All. And the fact that Cory Bush dared to say, well, I don't support it because it's divisive, then that person attacked Cory Bush, basically proving her right. And then after that, subsequently, Cory Bush was attacked by other individuals saying, oh, well, she doesn't even care about Medicare for All. She didn't tweet about it and she just showed up for a photo op. It's like, okay, folks, this is why I say we have to recalibrate, we have to go outside and touch grass. They're in this no-in position. Members of the squad are in a no-in position to where nothing they do can prove that they are worthy. Nina Turner hasn't even been elected and people are already brushing her off. She's in a fight for her life. The establishment certainly thinks that Nina Turner is a threat, but yet you have some people who are terminally online, primarily on Twitter, who are already saying it doesn't matter if she's elected or not, because she's not gonna fight, so we might as well get a corporate Democrat in there who's being funded by the pro-Israel lobby. That's not what they're saying, but I mean, that's effectively what the outcome will be. And it's really frustrating to me because I don't even know what to do going forward. This is what happens when there's no leadership on the left. This is why I think that the end of Bernie Sanders' campaign has been so damaging to the left, because when there's no leadership there to kind of guide people's anger, a vacuum opens up and opportunistic actors kind of like pounce and they try to direct people in ways that get them disempowered and leave them perpetually angry and powerless. And that's a real issue here on the left. And so the People's Party, for example, they did a march outside of AOC's office and a lot of really wonderful people showed up to this, right? Susan Sarandon, Christian Smalls, Savage Joy, people who are great, well-intentioned people, but the People's Party could be using the organizational power that they have to fight someone like Nancy Pelosi or people on powerful committees blocking Medicare for All from even getting a floor vote. But instead they protest an ally and it's frustrating to see this because it makes us look unhinged. Like I'm thinking of like my normie family members who are MSNBC liberals. If they found out about this, they think, see, you're unhinged. You Bernie supporters are fucking, you're attacking your own. So it's best that we just disregard you. And the thing that worries me about this is it looks like it's a PR stunt for the People's Campaign, not to pick on them, but I kind of am. It's like they have an incentive to demonize members of the squad to push people into the People's Party. Now we already have a Green Party, but we need a People's Party according to them because the Green Party is too socialistic. I'm not necessarily sure what the rationale is. I had Nick Brana on my program a really long time ago to talk about like the draft Bernie movement and that didn't go anywhere. But the issue is that if you suggest to people, all right, the Democratic Party is incapable of reform. You might be right about that. I think we really have to have an inside-outside strategy. I think that is absolutely crucial. So the existence of third parties, even if they can't necessarily win power, I do think they are important pressure points on individuals from the inside, including AOC. That's great. So, but I mean, what I'm speaking to here is really the opportunism that I'm seeing and the unseriousness of the People's Party. Because if I'm a third party, like if I'm in control of the People's Party and this isn't just like some party to exert outside pressure on insiders and we actually wanna run candidates, field candidates and win and actually get power, here's what is going to be my number one priority. And I talked about this in the video where I covered the People's Party, electoral reform. It's extremely frustrating to me because for years, I've said to people, if you want a third party, you need electoral reform because we have a first pass-to-pose winner-take-all majoritarian system. It's Duverger's law. It always holds. And if we were going to break up the two-party duopoly by force and without getting electoral reform, it would have happened in 2016. Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump, but it still didn't happen. Jill Stein got like barely 1% of the vote. So if you want a third party to actually get power because you believe the Democratic Party is not able, a capable of change, okay, that may be a valid point, but you need electoral reform. You can't just say, fuck the squad, support the People's Party. If you have no plan whatsoever to change the electoral system. And ranked-choice voting is a very easy thing to do that. It would help. It wouldn't necessarily get us multiple parties, but you have to understand that there are actual bills. And unfortunately, Don Byers hasn't reintroduced this, but there's the Fair Representation Act. It was HR4000 in the 2019-2020 legislative session. And this would actually move us closer towards proportional representation. And the people on the left who are really adamant about going the third party route said nothing about this. And I've begged people to support electoral reform. I want us to be a multi-party system. And that's difficult when you have a presidential and not a parliamentary system like Canada has. But we can't do that just by having an extra party because there are already hundreds of third parties in the United States. But this issue has become so contentious because people are rightfully angry at the Democratic Party, feeling perhaps justifiably so that it won't be reformed or can't be reformed, that anyone who dares to run in the Democratic Party, they're not worth a damn. And hence, the reason why Nina Turner has been disregarded by many people. But the problem with that is if you just have one extra party to add to the hundreds of third parties that already exist, you're not doing much. And the way that we actually enact change is by having power. And so unfortunately, opportunistic individuals, they're leading people towards this path of perpetual anger and disempowerment. The people's party might end up putting electoral reform on their agenda. They might put pressure on Don Byers to reintroduce the Fair Representation Act. Perhaps they even pressure AOC, which would be an incredible idea to support the Fair Representation Act because she didn't co-sponsor that legislation, which I think she should support because it's good legislation. But they're not doing that right now. So at this state, if the people's party simply runs candidates just in addition to the Republican and the Democrat, well unless you're in a state like California, where you have a jungle primary system where you have the top two vote-getters, make it to the general election, you're not gonna get anyone elected. So really what we have to do as leftists is build power, not disempower ourselves. But if we are constantly attacking the only allies we have in Congress, putting them in no-win positions where regardless of what they do show up or don't show up to our marches, we still shit on them. We're in a constant state of disempowerment and we are absolutely serving the corporate Democratic Party who wants the left to be divided. We have basically divided ourselves into oblivion to where the online left is now unrecognizable. And again, thankfully, this is all very insular and a lot of people don't recognize what's happening on Twitter. But what we're doing here is we are killing ourselves by dividing ourselves and even questioning one another where every little thing we do or don't do is irredeemable. So getting back to me like getting called out for not talking about the Medicare for All March, I did talk about it. I brought on one of the organizers. It was on the first episode of dystopian times, one of the first segments that I released for dystopian times. And I talked about it and I uploaded that as a segment. It was like over 10 minutes long and we talked about the necessity of healthcare, but people who don't even watch anymore, which is fine, preferable if you're a cancerous individual because I don't want you in my audience if you're toxic, but they are already like attacking me because I didn't talk about something I already talked about. And if I do talk about it, then it's like, well, you didn't talk about it enough. We put each other in known situations. And this is not about me, but I'm speaking to my experience. Or people online will say something and it's like, oh, well, you know what, you must be a CIA plant. You must be an operative for the Republican party or the Democratic party. And we're so suspicious of people. We're so angry at our own peers who have the same goals as us that I just have to tell people, stop, take a deep breath, let's all chill. Let's all recalibrate. Let's all go outside and touch grass. And whenever we get to a point to where we are in a constant state of anger where people are, you know, attacking one another and driving more of a wedge between the online left that already exists, stop, don't participate in it. I took the week off from my show last week and I felt really good. It was good for like my mental health. And then immediately like coming back, I log on to Twitter and it's like, oh, I feel depressed and hopeless again because there's nothing but like hatred and vitriol online. And again, part of this is that like the vacuum, the leadership vacuum left to open by Bernie, you know, after his campaign, people who are nefarious or perhaps not even nefarious, just opportunistic people seized on that leadership vacuum. They tried to take up the mantle and it's literally exactly what like the right wants and the corporate Democrats want, us fighting each other and like giving Joe Manchin and Joe Biden a pass. Folks, we seem unreasonable. If you log on to Twitter, people seem unhinged. People are attacking their allies for dumb reasons, vote shaming when I thought that leftists don't like that where it's like, oh, you supported Joe Biden, so like you're literally a war criminal. I mean, imagine if somebody who wasn't terminally online saw the discourse that takes place on Twitter, they would rightfully think that we're batched fucking insane because that's the way that we seem. So I don't really care if this pisses people off. It needs to be said, chill out, stop feeding into the anger, stop infighting, stop being accusatory of anyone who dares to vocalize any disagreement with you whatsoever, calm down, recalibrate, and recognize who the real enemies are. While we fight each other, corporate Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, they get a pass, they get to block voting rights that would actually help democracy as Republicans try to kill it. Republicans get a pass as they literally spiral further into delusions and become more conspiratorial, more anti-vax, we have to calm down and stop fighting each other over every fucking thing for the love of God. Just breathe, recalibrate, recenter yourself, and remember that every once in a while, being angry, which is justifiable, it can lead us to a prolonged state of irrationality which is not healthy, which gets us away from the trajectory that we should be on. It moves us away from our goals and every once in a while, if we log off, remind ourselves why we're even talking about politics, it's because we care about these issues, then that will be better. It'll be better for all of us, better for the movement. But for me to even say this, people will assume I'm in some camp online, I'm a TYT sellout who is getting my marching orders from Cenk, I've heard that too. People, for the love of God, we have to stop doing this. We have to stop with the drama and the infighting. The people who want this to go on aren't doing it because it's actually beneficial for the left, they're doing it because it's beneficial for themselves, for their pockets. And I'm not gonna name names, I'm not gonna feed into that so I can start a new wave of drama, I'm not gonna do that. But what I am saying is that individually, you as a viewer, as a Twitter user, which I hope you're not, can make the decision unilaterally to try to do better. I've certainly tried, I've tried to log off and use Twitter less, I've tried to not engage in infighting, and when I see somebody who I disagree with, I try to engage with them in good faith and explain to them why I don't agree with their position, and sometimes it'll move them to my side other times they'll immediately shit themselves and start frothing at the mouth because they don't wanna hear anything that I'm saying. And that's fine, you can't reach everyone, but the best that we can do is police ourselves in a way and make sure that what we're contributing to political discourse isn't actually a net negative, rather it's a positive. So look, it's not like I'm above the fray, I'm guilty of infighting too, but every once in a while we have to recenter ourselves and recalibrate and breathe. Let's breathe. And again, touching grass can do wonders. That's all. I just like the video, you fucks, cause I know you're gonna do it. Well, that's all that I've got for you all today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've made it this far in the program, as usual, we're not gonna end the show without thanking the people who make the show possible. All of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members who help us not just to survive, but thrive as well and make it to the point where we put out 300 episodes. Thank you all so much. And if you want more of the Humanist Report Podcast every single Wednesday, I'm hosting the dystopian times on the YouTube channel at six p.m. PST. And every single Thursday, I am live at twitch.tv slash humanistreport at seven p.m. PST, talking more politics, talking about video games, and sometimes just hanging out with the chat. So I'll be doing some fun stuff for the 300 episode celebration thing. And by the time most of you see this, that will have already taken place, but there will be segments posted to YouTube afterwards. So I will see you all next week, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Mike Ferriero. This has been the Humanist Report. Take care, folks. I'm out.