 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueroaido. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and Paypal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueroaido. This is the 199th edition of the program. We are one away from 200. And today is Friday, June 28th. And before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, Paypal, and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the first time to support us this week or increased their monthly pledge. And that includes Ali Nakfi, Carlos Osorio, Demond Moy, Dorksighted, D. Ragland, Grant Scarborough, Amanda Slinker, Rostefer Geller, Sam Oh, C.R. High, Shanchenka, Suzanne Harris, and Trevor Thompson. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support or by checking out patreon.com forward slash humanist report or as usual, you can click join beneath or underneath any one of our YouTube videos and support us that way as well. So let's get into the episode. I don't know why anyone will want to watch this today because Super Mario Maker just came out and that looks awesome. But regardless, if you're here, let's talk politics. So this week on the Humanist Support Podcast, Bernie Sanders wants to cancel all of your student loan debt and some people aren't too happy about that. So we'll talk about the counter arguments to this plan and there's a number of progressives in Congress that also want to cancel your student loan debt. So Bernie Sanders evidently wants the media to take war with Iran more seriously. Joe Biden is oddly the number one choice for climate-minded voters. We'll talk about that. Also Trump has been incredibly accused of rape. He also wants a new deal with Iran. We'll talk about both of the Democratic Party debates, night one with Tulsi Gabbard and Elizabeth Warren as well as night two with Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the show. Let's do it. Bernie Sanders has pretty much led the charge when it comes to making public colleges and universities tuition free. And I've always commended him for that. However, with that being said, even if you make public colleges and universities tuition free, that doesn't ameliorate the crisis that already unfolded like there's currently 45 million people that have more than 1.5 trillion in total student loan debt. So you've got to do something more for those people. And previously his plan, in my view, wasn't good enough. Like it was really milk toast. He wanted to cap the repayments to 10, 12%, something along those lines. And I've always tried to encourage him to go further. But thankfully, he listened to me. He listened to all of us who have been begging him to take things to the next level. He has a plan now that is phenomenal for student loan debt. He's going to cancel all of it. Full stop. We will make a full and complete education a human right in America to which all of our people are entitled. This means making public colleges, universities, and HBCUs tuition free and debt free by tripling the work study programs, expanding Pell Grants and other financial incentives. Today we are entering a proposal which will allow every person in this country to get all of the education that they need to live out their dreams because they are Americans. Further, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, it is simply not acceptable that our younger generation, through no fault of their own, will have a lower standard of living than their parents, more debt, lower wages, and less likelihood of owning their own homes. That is why this proposal completely eliminates student debt in this country and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation, the millennial generation, to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing. And that is going out and getting a higher education. Ten years ago, the United States government bailed out Wall Street after their greed, their recklessness, and their illegal behavior drove us into the worst recession in modern history. Today, the major Wall Street banks are larger than ever. Their profits are soaring and their CEOs receive huge compensation packages. Our proposal, which costs 2.2 trillion over 10 years, will be fully paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation similar to what exists in dozens of countries around the world. The American people bailed out Wall Street. Now it is time for Wall Street to come to the aid of a middle class of this country. Okay, this is proof that Bernie Sanders strategically speaking, he knows what he's doing. Because when Elizabeth Warren announced that she'd be canceling some student loan debt, what I said in the video when I talked about that was that this was a phenomenal plan. However, since Elizabeth Warren isn't in favor of canceling all student loan debt, she left him enough room to where he can swoop in and still do better than her. And this is what I said. If I'm even considering Elizabeth Warren's plan, if I were Elizabeth Warren, I'd say we're gonna cancel 100% of student loan debt. That 1.5 trillion, we're deleting all of it. Because you won't actually get that, but when you negotiate, you'll negotiate down to something that she's actually aiming for. So I would go bolder and Elizabeth Warren just outflanked Bernie from the left, but she left him enough room to where he can still top her on this particular issue. And he did just that. So this tells me that Bernie Sanders' political instincts are absolutely on point, and I am so glad because think about this. If you had your student loan debt canceled, what would that mean for you? Like for me, this would be literally life changing. For so many people who can't buy cars, they can't buy houses, this would change their lives. So I'm 100% on board, and what I want you all to do is encourage your representative to co-sponsor this legislation in the House, because Bernie Sanders teamed up with progressives such as Ilhan Omar, who is the sponsor of this bill in the House, Pramila Jayapal, Ocasio-Cortez, and they're leading the charge. But what we need to do now as progressives is do the same thing that we did when it comes to Medicare for All. We need to get other lawmakers to get on board with this. But now what I want to do is I want to talk about the response to this, because the counter-arguments that I've seen are hilarious. Like I'm genuinely enjoying them, they're pure gold, because it's evident to me that nobody knows how the fuck to attack this plan without sounding like elitist pricks. And I'm living for it. So for example, Wall Street Defense Force, otherwise known as Third Way, which is the Wall Street-funded wing of the Democratic Party, they tweeted this out. Free college for all is regressive. Blanket debt forgiveness could actually increase inequality. Sure, Dan. Now when you look at the ratio here, you'll see that people absolutely were just shredding Third Way, because this is nonsense. They're literally trying to convince you that this is going to do the opposite of what it's supposed to do. So their argument, if we accept their logic for a moment, is that this is going to increase income and wealth inequality. Now I know what you're thinking. How can we even accept that logic because it doesn't make sense? I hear you, but just hear me out for a second. Let's say we believe their nonsensical attack on this. How on earth could this possibly lead to inequality? Well, you see it's simple. If you cancel all student loan debt, including the student loan debt of rich people, then this is another handout in the same way that Donald Trump's tax cuts for the rich was a brazen handout to the rich. So if you cancel everyone's debt, if you just blank it, forgive all student loans, including the loans of rich people, then what do you think that's going to do? That's going to really help rich people as well as poor people. And I found a tweet that I think is pretty sympathetic to this line of thinking. This is from Amy Vanderpool who says, I don't want to pay off student loan debt for rich people who can afford it. We should be selective in solving this problem. That is the only way to grow the middle class. Warren's plan has a way to do that. Bernie's does not grow. So if you accept that line of thinking, then the idea is, well, you know, maybe we should go with a more incrementalist approach here. If we're going to forgive student loan debt, maybe we should make it a means tested program. Maybe we should go with Elizabeth Warren's plan because I don't think it's right for rich people to get any more handouts. Except there's one flaw with that line of thinking. If you're rich, you don't need to take out a student loan. Why would you take out a loan if you don't need it when you know you'd have to pay interest? See, the problem is this doesn't make sense because rich people don't get student loans. As Benjamin Dixon puts it, this is almost as stupid as people being against increasing the minimum wage to $15 because it's going to increase the price of a Big Mac. Rich people don't take out loans and the price of Big Macs have gone up even when wages didn't. Exactly. It's not a handout for the rich because rich people don't need student loans. So that line of thinking is flawed. And quite frankly, it's idiotic. So that was the first counter argument that I came across. You know, this helps rich people and that's bad so we shouldn't do it. So what is counter argument number two? Well, it's basically the opposite. We shouldn't do this because it hurts the rich and that's bad. Not making this up. As this tweet from Bloomberg points out, Wall Street says Bernie Sanders student loan debt plan could bring more pain for investors through higher fees or lower returns. God damn right. So rich investors on Wall Street would subsequently get less money in the event we canceled student loan debt. Yeah. Forgive me for not really caring, but they care and they're pretty broken up about this. In fact, here at the Humanist Report we have obtained exclusive footage of the rich reacting to Bernie Sanders plan. Yeah. So I'm not going to really explore this argument too much because if it is true that canceling student loan debt is a zero sum game and you know by doing that poor Americans gained something and rich Americans lose something then good. But moving on there's one last argument that I want to touch on here and this is the what about me argument as I like to call it because if you're someone who paid off your student debt you you know you accumulated a lot of debt through student loans but you worked hard enough and you paid it off what about you? I mean we can all kind of empathize with this. I know the people who bought Fallout 76 last year probably felt buyer remorse when just weeks later on Black Friday it went on sale for 50% off and even then you know it was still too much money because it was a broken buggy piece of shit and it still is. But the question is is this unfair to people who paid off their student loans? Well let's hear from someone who actually did work really hard to pay off their student loan debt. This is an op-ed from Vox written by David Goldstein and he explains I graduated college in 1985 with $18,000 in student loans about $42,500 in 2019 dollars and then diligently paid them off over the next 10 years. As a father I saved enough for my daughter's education to assure that she could graduate college 100% debt free. I'm not rich I didn't always make the best financial choices but I worked hard played by the rules and made good on my debts. I could be the poster child for those claiming student loan forgiveness is quote-unquote unfair but you know what's really unfair? The huge advantage I enjoyed graduating into the 1985 job market. I graduated with a BA in history not the most valuable field of study when it comes to job qualifications but when I entered the job market in 1985 employers were eager to hire smart kids from good universities whatever their degree. I got the first and only job I applied for a cushy tech job I knew absolutely nothing about at a starting salary of $35,000 per year that's $82,000 in today's money. So let's just pause right there contrast that job market with today's job market if you just graduated college the odds of you landing a good paying job on your first try almost impossible it's unfathomable right and even if you did land a good job you were lucky enough to get a job because you have a degree you still wouldn't be able to pay off your student loan debt that quickly you'd still have it until the day you die because you need more student loans because the cost of tuition has skyrocketed completely different economies when this person was young that was a different era economically speaking where you could you know graduate pay off your debt relatively quickly and get a job and it's easier to pay off debt if you could find a good paying job but these days kids graduate college and they have to work for uber they get jobs at starbucks because there's just not enough jobs that are good paying to go to go around you end up in the service industry so the economy is different but he also goes through a little bit more as to why it's not unfair to cancel student loan debt of people today he states whenever an old white guy like me reminds you that I worked my way through college remind them that in the 1981 to 1982 academic year the average in-state tuition and fees at a four-year public college or university was just $909 back when the federal minimum wage was $3.35 an hour that means i could have paid for my entire freshman year tuition and fees with less than seven weeks of full-time minimum wage work at just about any shitty summer job but over the past four decades average public university tuition and fees have increased more than 11 fold to $10,230 a year while the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has barely doubled so why have public universities gotten so expensive it's not what you probably think adjusted for inflation the cost of educating students at public universities has actually increased only modestly rather it's the price that's gone through the roof thanks in large part to a massive shift in costs from taxpayers to students according to the center on budget and policy priorities student tuition as a share of total spending at our nation's public colleges and universities rose from 24 percent in 1988 to 46 percent in 2015 and in some states this shift in costs has been far worse in my adopted state of washington once home to one of the most affordable public university systems in the nation the funding split dramatically flipped from 70 state 30 tuition in 1991 to 30 state 70 tuition by 2013 boomers like me have pulled up the ladder behind us after being educated largely at taxpayer expense no wonder young people have piled up more than 1.5 trillion in student debt so yes as a late wave boomer with absolutely nothing to gain from sanders or warrants plans i enthusiastically support both student loan debt forgiveness and debt free college not just because it would be damn good for the economy but giving a whole generation settled by debt more freedom to build up savings by homes and contribute to the economy but because i believe in the golden rule give unto future generations the same opportunities and privileges my generation enjoyed so that's from someone who paid off his student debt who is rejecting this idea that it is unfair to forgive all the student loan debt of people who currently have it but let's say hypothetically speaking you're a millennial and you worked really hard and you just paid off your student loan debt last week and here you're seeing stories about how bernie sanders wants to cancel student loan debt first of all by our student loan debt being canceled that doesn't necessarily mean that we gained something at your expense all that sanders is doing here is helping us out of a ditch he's giving us a hand and even if bernie sanders helps us out of that ditch you're still going to be better off than all of us if that's really what you care about which you shouldn't care about because human empathy should be our number one concern but i mean if you were lucky enough to pay off your student loan debt you're already better off than people who currently have student loan debt it's like me saying well you know what i had to accumulate all this student loan debt so my nieces and nephews shouldn't get free college because i didn't get it that's not the way that society functions by them getting their debt canceled you don't lose anything in fact you gain something because that increases purchasing power of people who are burdened by debt that stimulates the entire economy everyone benefits from it but even if this argument isn't persuasive to you well that doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't do it even if you think it's unfair just because you think it's unfair doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it don't you think that we should be helping people i mean if you're angered at this but didn't say anything when we bailed out wall street think about your priorities so there's really no persuasive argument against student loan debt cancellation however i absolutely love watching people try to make it and then fumble faceplant you know just hilariously because this is something that would be a benefit to everyone not just those of you know the beneficiaries of student loan debt cancellation this would benefit the aggregate economy which helps all of us bernie sanders has received a tremendous amount of credit and attention for his student loan debt cancellation plan and rightfully so you know it's well deserved because this is something that doesn't just help americans like you wouldn't just fundamentally change people's lives for the better by canceling their student loan debt but you're also helping to shift the overton window to the left which is desperately needed in this day and age however i want to take some time here to spotlight the legislative allies that make this possible because bernie sanders can introduce as many bills as he wants to in the senate but if you don't have an ally in the house of representatives that will co-introduce this legislation it's gonna basically be dead on arrival and there's a lot of people who are key players here who i also want to take some time to highlight because what they're doing is absolutely phenomenal so the bill is hr 3448 it's sponsored by ilhan omar and co-sponsored by pramila jaya paul rashita talib barbara lee and alexandra ocasio-cortez and not only have these individuals co-sponsored this legislation but they also made a really powerful case as to why we should cancel student loan debt first i want to show you ilhan omar and what she had to say because what she said here honestly it gave me chills it's so powerful it's so profound that i i just i had to share it i stand before you on behalf of 45 million americans 45 million people who feel they can't purchase their first home 45 million people who feel like they can't start a family 45 million people who have dreams of opening up a business or going to public service but are held back by a mountain of debt we are told going to college opens a world of opportunity but far too many it's accompanied by a world of anxiety stress and never-ending death we are told by some politicians that did this debt is our fault that if we want to achieve the american dream we have to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps well we're here today to say the student debt is not the result of bad choices or behavior it is the result of a system that tells the students to get an education and go to college in order to have a stable life but then does not provide the resources to abort that education the scourge of student debt does not affect all americans equally the students of color face a higher risk of devoting on their loans and struggle to find jobs to pay off these loan students discriminatory hiring practices first generation and immigrant college students fought face much higher rates of default and women who already face a wage gap and workplace discrimination or two-thirds of a total student loan debt what my bill does is simple as it is revolutionary as senator sander says it cancels all of 1.6 trillion student loan debt no exceptions no questions as full cancellation americans will no longer wonder if they can buy a home or start a family or open a business or retire america does not suffer from scarcity we suffer from greed so we can ask speculators on wall street to pay small financial transaction tax which would fully fund student loan forgiveness over 10 years the american people bailed out wall street it's time for wall street to bail out the american people ilhan olmar is a national treasure i absolutely love her um that was great and what she's saying is true like this is going to change people's lives if you were spending nine hundred dollars a month on student loans guess what now you might be able to afford a mortgage now you might be able to afford a car payment i mean this really is a game changer for a lot of people it's going to pull people out of poverty in some ways and the fact that there are people who are fighting for it and being vocal about it that really is inspiring we are changing the country slowly but truly you know we're shifting the overton window so that was what ilhan olmar said i want to show you what aoc says because she also made the case and she made a very powerful case for it that alone illustrates it because what we tell 17 year olds all the time is that you are not old enough or responsible enough to drink you are not old enough or responsible enough to vote you are not old enough or responsible enough to serve in our military but you are old enough and responsible enough to take on a quarter million dollars worth of debt and that is wrong it is not right not only is that what we are telling children now minors now but that's what we have told them for decades and it has resulted in a crisis that we have seen today now people are in their 30s and and older that have taken on insurmountable amounts of debt because we have sold them an empty bill of goods and what we need to do is make it right and that is why we have to both make public colleges tuition free and forgive all student loan debt at the same time so that was absolutely great and as usual i agree with everything she had to say now i've talked about some of the counter arguments that we've seen when it comes to people saying you know we shouldn't cancel student loan debt because reasons x y and z they're all bullshit reasons but we all know what third way thinks about this they say that free college is quote unquote regressive which is hilarious and they say that blanket debt forgiveness could actually increase inequality well here's what aoc had to say about that it's wild to think that third way has gotten along with its sensible dem charade as long as it has i've met trump voters independent voters but i can't recall a single voter i've met in the united states that identifies as a third way voter just admit you're a wall street advocacy group and move on that's so true nobody identifies as third way who does this group is comprised of beneficiaries of wall street campaign contributions many of them just came from wall street straight up so third way is a joke but yet they're taken seriously they're taken to be this you know this sensible wing of the democratic party that's more moderate but they're not moderate they don't really have a core political ideology they're not left right they're pro wall street that's what they are these are the quintessential corporate democrats who progressives have been fighting against so the fact that anyone takes them seriously is absurd and quite frankly it's an abomination but the good news is that not many people take them seriously go to their twitter feed almost every single one of their tweets are ratioed if it goes viral it's because they were ratioed now that's not to say that people in mainstream media don't take them seriously but that's something that we expect because corporate media has advertisers that also happen to donate to members of third way so that's not surprising at all they're all in bed with the same people you know it's a big circle that we're all not a part of but with that being said the way that AOC and progressive democrats like Bernie Sanders keeps shitting on third way it's giving me life i'm absolutely loving it so this is what we need to do whenever this this type of legislation i think that positive reinforcement is incredibly powerful because it's really easy to be cynical and only focus on the negative and the bad whenever you know a lawmaker fucks us over or does something corrupt or stupid or duplicitous but when lawmakers do things that are good i think we also need to take the time and commend them for it because understand that if you come out in favor of something like cancelling student loan debt you're going to be a target of Wall Street third way immediately attack this if you come out in favor of something that helps the people but it's to the detriment of a special interest like medicare for all for example you make yourself a target so to the people like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Casio-Wertes and Bernie Sanders of course who make themselves targets of special interests i think we need to go out of our way to applaud them whenever they continue to fight for us in spite of the attacks because if everyone else is too afraid and only a select handful of people like Barbara Lee, Pramila Jayapal are willing to fight for us then less people in congress will be inclined to act now we shouldn't have to hold their hands and put pressure on them they should just instinctively want to do the right thing and represent their constituents but of course you know that's not the real world so we have to make sure that our lawmakers do the right thing that's incumbent on us so we've got to do two things we need to definitely have positive reinforcement to make sure that people like Ilhan Omar and AOC know that we are pleased with their performance but we also need to put pressure on those who aren't speaking out now how do we do this well it's easy you just call your lawmaker call your representative and tell him or her to cosponsor this legislation i'm going to lead by example and call my representative Suzanne Bonamici her number is 202-225-0855 and please don't call my representative call your representative because if we all just call one representative that's not going to really make a difference but if you call the person who's representing you specifically then your voice matters or at least it should matter and even if they reject what you want them to do what matters is that you get the word across you vocalize your desires as someone who is the boss of these politicians so i'm going to call the bill is HR3448 let's do for this bill what we did to HR676 back in 2017 your call can now be completed as dialed please and i just dialed the wrong number 202-225-0855 congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici representing Oregon's first congressional district our office hours are 9 a.m to 6 p.m when congress is in session and 9 a.m to 5 p.m when in recess at the please leave a detailed message including your contact information alternatively you can contact the local district office at 503-469-6010 thank you record your message after the tone when you finished you can hang up or press one for more options hello my name is Mike Figueredo i'm calling with a message for representative Bonamici i just would like her to cosponsor legislation HR3448 this is legislation sponsored by representative Ilhan Omar and it would cancel all student loan debt as someone with a tremendous amount of student loan debt myself it would really mean a lot to me if my representative who serves me in congress would put her name on this legislation because that tells me that you're looking out for me and you're definitely trying to fight to improve my life and the life the lives of other people so i would really appreciate it if she cosponsored HR3448 thank you and look it's as simple as that a lot of people tell me that they often feel intimidated you know they don't like calling people first of all nine times out of ten you're just gonna leave a message uh second of all there's no perfect way to say anything like you don't need a script for yourself you just tell them what's on your mind if you have a bill name or a bill number that's gonna make things easier but there's no perfect way to do this understand that you are the boss of your representative you pay the bills for them right your tax dollars are going into their paychecks they are your subordinate so you need to realize the power that you have and exercise it call them and let them know that you want them to cosponsor this legislation that would cancel student loan debt it's that simple you don't have to word it perfectly you can stumble over your words we're all human beings it's not scary you know just just do it and once you make one call I promise you after that future calls are less intimidating and less scary I've never really worried about making calls to congresspeople because I have a big mouth and I am not afraid to share my opinion but understand that it's not anything to be worried about so uh we need to make sure that if lawmakers keep doing things like this and proposing these types of phenomenal pieces of legislation that we let people know in power that we want to see more of this and you do that with positive reinforcement and by getting your representative to get on board with this and I'll leave that there over the weekend we almost went to war with Iran we were this close Donald Trump had his finger on the trigger but he decided not to pull it at the very last minute think about how crazy how terrifying that is now the reason reportedly why Donald Trump had a change of heart is because he was talked out of it by Tucker Carlson of Fox News of all people the world that we live in like it's stranger than fiction reality is literally stranger than fiction now Trump tweeted about this and he said we were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sites when I asked how many will die 150 people sir was the answer from a general 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it now he also explained that he didn't think you know bombing these three different sites was a proportionate response to them just killing one of our robots now he's correct about that and whatever led him to make that decision I'm glad it happened however this is a very unstable time not just in American politics but internationally if we have someone that came that close to bombing Iran war with Iran sorry you shouldn't be in that position there was you know a meme of Donald Trump giving himself a medal of honor or something like that because you know he was gonna bomb Iran but then he didn't so he's trying to make it seem like he's the hero no you're not the hero you don't get to congratulate yourself for putting out a fire that you started you don't get to do that tensions would have never been this high had you remained in the Iran nuclear deal but because you decided that you didn't like a deal because Obama is the one who negotiated it then you got us to this point gradually so we were that close to war that is incredibly difficult to fathom but nonetheless it happened and part of the problem part of the reason why we don't see more reluctance from our leaders to get involved in these types of conflicts is because mainstream media does not push back so i'm going to play an interview for you and this is a clip from face the nation with Bernie Sanders now Bernie Sanders is going to say everything right pretty much here but what i want you to really pay attention to is the framing here because the framing is what i'm concerned about this is a failure on behalf of media take a look i want to ask you about Iran was president trump's decision this week to call off that strike the right one see it's like somebody setting a fire to a basket full of paper and then putting it out he helped create the crisis and then he stopped the attacks the idea that we're looking at a president of the united states who number one thinks that a war with oran is something that might be good for this country he was just doing a limited strike or just a limited strike oh well i'm sorry i just didn't know that it's okay to simply attack another country with bombs just a limited try that's an act of warfare so two points that will set off a conflagration all over the middle east uh if you think the war as i do the war in our rock margaret was a disaster i believe from the bottom of my heart that the war of war with oran would be even worse more loss of life never ending war in that region massive instability we're talking about we have been in uh afghanistan now for 18 years this thing will never end so i will do everything i can them one to stop a war with oran and number two here's an important point you know let's remember what we learned in civics you know when we were kids it is the united states congress under our constitution that has warm-making authority not the president of the united states if he attacks iran in my view that would be unconscious so if you are commander in chief you will ask congress for permission before you engage in any kind of military action look there are some times of emergency situations okay that that i understand defensive actions yeah if you're attacked immediately you have to respond nobody believes that we are in that type of emergency situation with iran right now now the sad part is that i only found out about this clip because bernie sanders was being attacked he was the one being attacked because he was apparently uh rude to that reporter because he scoffed at the question that she asked if you don't scoff at that type of question you're just you're not a reasonable person she said oh it was just a limited strike i mean what she did there was try to justify it a limited strike that was an act that would have been an act of war can you imagine if iran did a limited strike on the united states or if north korea did a limited strike on the united states we wouldn't take that very lightly we would consider it an act of war and rightly so because that's an act of war now the thing about these cbs news reporters is that they must be trained to say things like this they are trained presumably to play devil's advocate but the problem is that if you're going to play devil's advocate for something like war you need to make it explicitly clear that that's what you're doing you're playing devil's advocate you're saying you know or you should say rather what do you say to people who say x not just oh it was just the limited strike because even if maybe that reporter was playing devil's advocate it still makes you look really stupid because it makes it seem like you're doing pro-war apologia which the mainstream media should not be doing the mainstream media's job is to educate people tell them objective facts about war if we go to war this is the cost this is the monetary cost this is the human life cost this is what would happen in terms of destabilization here's experts one two and three to tell us why this would be a disaster but they don't do that they're doing pro-war apologia this is why this book manufacturing consent is one of the best books because it explains how corporate media is almost worse than state sponsored media outlets right you you know these authoritarian regimes they have state run outlets and we all condemn that because that's authoritarianism you need you know an objective independent media but i mean we have corporate media under our capitalist system and we effectively get oppressed that is collectively more loyal to the state than some state run media outlets and authoritarian regimes it's absurd now what the reporter then goes on to do is try and go bernie sanders into saying that iran is at fault here but thankfully bernie sanders doesn't take the bait when you said it was president trump's fault that this situation evolved don't you hold iran responsible yes i do too but what what trump has said he said during this campaign trump has been extraordinarily antagonistic uh with iran whether or not he wants to bring down their government i don't know i think people like john bolton may very well uh want to do that uh trump is the person you remember who withdrew from the iran nuclear deal so he has been without any i don't think anyone disagrees and extraordinarily provocative toward iran uh and loving the dictatorship in sordia arabia that's not the role that we should be playing how would president sanders resolve this i'll tell you how we would look this is a tough issue and i'm not saying it's anyone can easily resolve but this is what i would say i would say to iran i would say to sordia arabia i would say to israel i would say to the other countries in that region you know what you have been at war in one way or another for decade after decade after decade and by the way your wars have not only impacted your own people they have impacted the united states to the tune of trillions of dollars and five thousand lost lives we will play a role in bringing you together and if you need economic aid we will provide the economic aid we will provide the resources but we're not simply going to give more and more weaponry to sordia arabia uh to israel we're going to try to bring people together for what i admit margaret i admit it will not be easy but that's what the role of i think the us should be not simply to be uh part of the uh sordi war efforts in the region so again everything that bernie sanders said there was great he talks about how it's donald trump who has been antagonistic he talks about how you know john bolton wants regime change in iran but the reason why i played that clip for you is because it really demonstrates how the media is incorrectly portraying the situation don't you hold iran responsible isn't it unfathomable to think that the united states could ever be wrong i mean we are the aggressors we violated the iran deal we pulled out and reimposed sanctions iran came to the table and they agreed to a deal that nobody thought they would have agreed to because it was so strong and then we pull out inexplicably you know once we get a new president and now we're reimposing these sanctions how do you frame that as anything but the united states being the aggressor objectively speaking you report the facts this is how the united states unilaterally got us to this point by poking and poking do they even stop to ask why were we flying so close to iran to begin with we may or may not have been in international airspace maybe we crossed into iranian airspace but regardless why are we over there if not to intimidate iran so that's a huge problem with media they're not portraying things accurately and they go out of their way to make sure that the united states is portrayed in the most charitable way possible you know we're never the bad guys if we do something it's good by default because we're the good guys our intentions are pure of course no that's not actually the case but getting to cbs they constantly do things like this and they don't realize that it is crushing their legitimacy because if you'll recall a couple of months ago on cbs this morning i critiqued a cbs reporter who said something as equally idiotic while presumably playing devil's advocate when it comes to health care take a look the president wants his party to be the party of health care unfortunately apparently what he means by that is throwing 32 million americans off of the health insurance they have but isn't that what you're planning would do too because you've been moving them into medicare for all i mean if they have insurance right now wait a minute what is second president's plan and what he has supported throws 32 million people off of health care no alternative we provide health care every man woman and child in this country i think maybe slightly different concepts we guarantee health care all he throws 32 million off of health care slightly different off the affordable care and they have no alternative that reporter also from cbs framed bernie sanders medicare for all plan which extends health care to 100 of the population as people losing health care so it's probably the case that these reporters aren't that stupid i hope right i hope that they're not that dumb but what they're probably doing is they're taking orders from higher ups they're probably trained to play devil's advocate in order to appear more neutral i don't know what the reason is but here's what i do know the media's job is to educate people give us the information that we need to make informed decisions in life at the voting booth your job is to educate and this clip is evidence that they are failing to do their job because if the media was doing its job millions of americans would be in the streets right now screaming about war with iran and what a disaster that would be but because the united states isn't being portrayed correctly because it seems as if iran is the aggressor well then of course any and everything that we do is justified because again we're the good guys this is a problem with corporate media this is a problem with corporate media and we've got to point it out because this is absolutely dangerous when it comes to war there's no room for you to play devil's advocate especially if you're not going to be explicitly clear about the fact that that's what you're doing if that's what you're doing but your job is to educate now do your job before you get us all killed we've got a problem on our hands we've got a really big problem on our hands and by the time this video is over this is going to be the look on your face because i don't really even know how to respond to this because we always hear you know about how voters are inclined to vote against their own self-interest but i think that what the story demonstrates more so than anything is that people aren't knowingly doing this they think that they are voting for what's in their best interest but in actuality they're just horribly horribly misinformed so what am i talking about well as rebecca peitsch of the hill reports former vice president joe biden is the top choice for president among likely democratic voters who are focused on the climate according to a new poll the online poll released monday as a collaboration between the sierra club and morning consult limited its results to voters who said candidate's plans for the climate are an important factor in their vote while biden would be the top choice for 37 percent of climate minded voters senators bernie sanders and elizabeth warren came in second and third with 19 and 15 percent respectively the results echo other national polls of democrats which have largely found biden far ahead of sanders and warren with the senators in a tough fight for second place so the trend with this question is that it mirrors just national polls people think oh well because i support joe biden um that must mean that he's also good when it comes to the issue of climate change because i care deeply about this issue of climate change it's people kind of imposing what they think joe biden stands for when they clearly have not done their research because joe biden factually speaking is not the best on climate change in fact he was one of the worst until recently because greenpeace gave him a d-minus rating alongside john hickenlooper and he's just above bill weld and donald trump this is how they ranked joe biden back in may however after taking quite a bit of criticism because you can't run to be the democratic party nominee and do this bad on the issue of climate change well he did decide to change his views a little bit and this did give him a bump after he released a new climate change plan so as of today after gauging candidates answers to a 29 question survey that greenpeace had uh sent out to all of the candidates this is how they now rank the candidates they put j instantly at number one kory booker in second bernie sanders and warren in third and fourth respectively jillabrand and gabard with bees and in seventh place that is where joe biden is currently and in case you were wondering where the other candidates fall here's a quick look at the rest of their rankings but i'll link to the whole thing down below if you do in fact want to read more but keep in mind that these rankings they're not foolproof right they only gauge how well these candidates responded to a 29 question survey that greenpeace sent out it doesn't actually take into account how salient the issue of climate change is to a candidate because as we all know j instantly made this the cornerstone of his campaign it hasn't taken into consideration candidates that took the initiative before to introduce legislation to get us off of fossil fuels like tulsi gabard it doesn't consider how often candidates talk about climate change like bernie sanders and also would obviously can't account for political calculations of a candidate i mean you can't tell if a candidate answered the question in a certain way because they were worried about how the reaction would be i mean joe biden he flipped when he got criticism for the height amendment so it's also possible and very likely that he flipped on climate change after getting criticism from greenpeace but one thing that's certain is that these voters who think that joe biden is the best person to take on climate change these people are horribly horribly misinformed and this is incredibly concerning because you expect democratic party voters who are more concerned about climate change just statistically speaking to at least know that someone who's a right-wing democrat like joe biden obviously isn't going to be better on this issue than someone who is further to the left and more importantly why would you think that someone who takes corporate money fracking money fossil fuel money would be better than anyone else on this particular issue why would you think that to think that joe biden is the best on climate change is so laughable so odd that i really worry about the future of the country if this is what democratic voters think because again they should know better but they're horribly misinformed not maybe as much as republican party voters but still nonetheless they're misinformed so here's what we need to do first of all we need to change their minds if you know someone who supports joe biden convince them convince them that we just tried running a centrist against donald trump and if they actually want action to be taken when it comes to climate change then we have to get donald trump out but if we know a centrist lost to donald trump before we don't want to try that again and the electability argument seems to resonate with these people to support biden so use that weapon that they often use against us against them because they tell us oh bernie isn't electable when we all know that that's bullshit but use that argument because that's what they use so you argue against their point on their own terms and that could be persuasive now what's the second thing that we have to do overwhelm them at the ballot box get out and fucking vote take your friends with you sign them up to vote because if we stay home if millennials and gen z doesn't vote by default the more conservative democrat will win and that makes our chances of beating donald trump collectively as people on the left worse so this poll it just it almost made my head explode you know i try to maintain faith and humanity in the country and voters but it gets more difficult right it gets more difficult to remain optimistic when you see things like this when they think that joe biden is the top choice i mean people for the love of god do your homework because we can't fuck this up you can't get someone in who you think is saying the right things joe biden isn't even saying the right things but we can't afford to make a mistake you have to do your homework you have to and it's frustrating that that many people are that misinformed so thankfully donald trump didn't end up bombing aran however that doesn't necessarily mean that he'll be taking his foot off the gas anytime soon with regard to escalating because he's still escalating on top of the sanctions that were already imposing on aran he announced new sanctions on top of that he warned aran that the united states would exercise limited restraint in the face of any further aranian quote unquote aggression so the situation is still terrifying and he keeps ramping up but in an interview with chuck todd on meet the press he talked a little bit about what it would take for him to finally de-escalate and be a leader ramp things down rather than continuously fan the flames and as you're going to see towards the end of this video this whole story with trump and aran it just comes full circle and you'll understand what i mean by that but basically this is his message that he wants to send to aran it's all about nuclear weapons i stop escalating as long as you promise to not build a nuke you can't have nuclear weapons and other than that we can sit down and make a deal but you cannot have no other conditions other than that cannot have nuclear weapons and they would have had them with president obama gave 150 billion dollars what is your deal i understand but what is your deal going to look like with them let me explain something number one you have to look at the sites some of the most important sites we weren't even allowed to look at our inspect okay number two the term was not long enough okay there's like a short number of years left after a very small number of years he's talking about a country after a very small number of years they have a free pass to nuclear weapons you can't do that so to him this is all about them getting nuclear weapons he wants to stop that that's what he cares about the most now it's ironic coming from the guy who unilaterally withdrew from the iran deal even when our european allies warned him to not do that he did it anyway and now he's saying well you know i really want them to not get a nuke didn't you kind of shoot yourself in the foot in that regard donald trump and he says here that under the deal negotiated with president obama the jcpoa otherwise known as the iran nuclear deal they would have been able to get a nuke but i don't know if you noticed but he directly contradicted himself in that same clip he says the term was not long enough when it comes to an issue he had with the jcpoa it's like a short number of years left after a very small number of years they have a free pass to nuclear weapons so he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth simultaneously on one hand obama's deal that he negotiated would have made it easier for iran to get a nuke however another issue that he has with the iran deal is that you know once the term is over once it expires then what then they could just get a nuclear weapon but he didn't realize that by saying that he was contradicting himself because he's tacitly admitting yes the obama nuclear deal was effective it just wasn't long enough for my liking but it's also not effective so he wants to have it both ways he claims once it expired you know they'd have a free pass to get nuclear weapons but while the deal was active they still have a free pass to get nuclear weapons well which is it which is it he doesn't know do you think that he even made it pass the first page of the iran deal all he had to do was get to page two and he would have known that it clearly states iran will not pursue the development of a nuclear weapon he doesn't read though so he didn't even get that far couldn't read past you know the first page of the jcpoa now he keeps saying or at least heavily suggesting here in this clip that you know they're not complying with the nuclear deal and that's part of the reason why he had to pull out you know the terms were so weak according to him that iran just wasn't in compliance now to his credit chaktaud actually challenges him on this and says well look isn't it kind of weird that the united states is the only country that is insisting that iran wasn't in compliance look at what he says here and how hypocritical his statement is don't you think though does it at all tell what does it tell you that the iranians haven't violated the agreement yet that they are trying hard not to violate what you see i think they have violated the agreement because i think in the areas that were not allowed to inspect they're doing things and i think they have been for years europeans don't think they're violating well i don't care about the europeans the europeans are going out and making a lot of money the europeans are fine but they're going out and making a lot of money so the reason why we can't really take the word of our european allies is because there's this conflict of interest they profit off of the sanctions being lifted on iran because then they get to do trade with iran and that's beneficial to them economically you know what he's describing here it sounds like what he's doing when it comes to saudi arabia he does the same thing he refuses to stop selling them weapons even if he knows they're using those weapons to bomb school buses even if he knows that saudi arabia is a rogue regime that literally just killed a journalist jamal kashoghi and donald trump he doesn't care about that but if our european allies are going to benefit from the sanctions being lifted on a bad faith actor according to him that's bad but when we do it it's okay take their money toad take their money that's donald trump that's what he's saying but regardless of what the united states or europe says the fact remains that the international atomic energy agency confirmed just this last year that iran was still compliant even after the united states pulled out so he's a liar tensions are high not because iran was not in compliance tensions are high because of you donald trump because you pulled out and reimposed sanctions you violated the iran deal so the question is what even is his end game here what does he want if he doesn't want iran to have nuclear weapons but at the same time he's not willing to have the iran deal what is his end game here well his end game is to have some sort of nuclear deal with iran we have great relationships with europe i don't mind europe getting in the middle europe wants to make a deal too europe would love to see a deal be made he's going to be separate deals do you want to do a separate deal with iran or do you want to get everybody involved in the same deal get the russians get the chance i don't i don't care which what kind of a deal it can be separate or it can be total one it's one-on-one talks you in the ayatollah is it one-on-one talks you in the ayatollah or is it in the present it doesn't matter to me you know here's what i want anything that gets you to the result they cannot have a nuclear weapon it's not about the straits and a lot of people covered it incorrectly they never mentioned they cannot have a nuclear weapon they'd use it so allow me to translate that for you really Todd what i care about as president is i want to stop iran from getting a nuke so what i'd like to do ideally i'd like to negotiate some sort of deal with them where you know we agree to lift the sanctions if they agree that they're not going to pursue you know a nuclear weapon sort of like the obama jcpoa that he negotiated except with his name on it crossed off and my name put on that that's basically what he's saying what a moron this is how it's come full circle he withdrew from the oran deal escalates tensions because he's worried that you know they're gonna want to pursue a nuke and he wants to get back into the same type of deal he doesn't know what he's doing the only reason why he withdrew from the oran deal is because obama did it that's what he made clear that is what he made crystal clear and he also says they can't have a nuclear weapon because they'd use it no they wouldn't they want a nuclear weapon if we accept that they want that as a deterrent to stop you from invading them which you have made very clear that you want to do that except in this next clip he's going to have a message to a ron and he's going to insist look i don't want war but if we did have war i'd fucking wipe you out that's basically what he says i'm not looking for war and if there is it'll be obliteration like you've never seen before but i'm not looking to do that but you can't have a nuclear weapon you want to talk good otherwise you can have a bad economy for three years not as far as i'm concerned no preconditions and you'll talk anyway here it is look you can't have nuclear weapons and if you want to talk about it good otherwise you can live in a shattered economy for a long time to come listen Iran i want peace with you there's nothing i want more than peace however if we do have to go to war i'm going to wipe you off the face of the fucking planet but i don't want that though do you see how everything has come full circle now i mean he pulled out of the Iran deal and he's escalating with them as a means of putting pressure on them to get them to come to the table to sign on to a nuclear deal i mean it's like this is a comedy movie that we're witnessing play out in reality where we have fucking mr bean as the president and he's just walking into doors walking into glass falling down this is like a slapstick comedy i don't know what else to say it's all come full circle he pulls out of the Iran deal but now he wants an Iran deal maybe you shouldn't have pulled out from the get-go dipshit maybe you should have like asked them if they can cross out Obama's name so you can write your name in if that's truly what you wanted so you can take credit for it dumb dumb motherfucker columnist E. Jean Carroll had an excerpt from her book published in New York magazine on June 21st and in this piece she details how Donald Trump raped her now her story is similar to the stories of the 15 other women who accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct you know he was very forceful he kissed them you know without getting their consent but what she's going to describe here goes further than anyone else's story she's going to describe how he raped her when we walked into the lingerie department there was nobody there which is strange it was in the evening so and on the counter were three really fancy boxes and a see-through bodysuit he walked right to the bodysuit and snatched it up and said go put this on now that struck me is so funny because here i am 52 i am not going to be put my idea was i said no you put it on and he said no it looks like it fits you i said no it goes with your eyes so i am spinning a comedy scene in my head of course banter back and forth i get it but you see how funny that would be to make him put that on yes and you by the way used to be a comedy writer on Saturday night live you were engaging in this banter as i think many of us would yes you didn't know what violence unfold and you could never have known that and of course although i thought i was pretty stupid well i mean i understand that afterwards in retrospect you blame yourself many women in this situation do however you go into the dressing room you think that he's going to hold it up against him yeah and then it gets violent well he is the minute he went like this i proceeded into the dressing room the minute he closed that door i was banged up against the wall he slammed you against the wall yeah i hit my head really hard boom you point out that he's a tall big person and he pinned you in some way well i'm a tall person too i was six one in my heels and i was a competitive athlete so you know when somebody shows you the thing is it shocked me it for a moment i was stunned right and then he tried to kiss me which was it was so hard but so my reaction was to laugh to knock off the erotic whatever he had going on because man when you laugh at him he's like no you know he just went at it and when you say went at it you know i mean he pulled down my tights and uh it was a fight it was this i want women to know that i did not stand there i did not freeze i was not paralyzed which is a reaction that i could have had because it's so shocking no i fought and it was over very quickly it was against my will 100% and i ran away out and he pinned you i mean just without getting overly graphic he pinned you against the wall yeah he held his shoulder against you put his shoulder against you and he is you're right he's but you made that point he's much bigger than you are i mean i'm not just tall i mean in terms of yeah he would yeah the massiveness um and so he pinned you against the wall he ripped off your tights and not all the way out just down down he pulled down his pants he no just unzipped he unzipped his pants and this is beyond sexual i mean legally he raped you i don't use the word i have difficulty with the word i i see it as a fight i just i don't you know i understand but you you see it as a fight and you don't want to be seen as a victim and i totally get that don't want to be seen as a victim because i quickly over went past it it was a very very brief episode of my life very brief i am not faced with sexual violence every single day like many women around the world and so yes i'm very careful with that word i i like you you will use it you're well here's the situation i understand that you don't want this to define you of course who would but i'm saying legally it was rape it's unambiguous what you describe in the book it was rape and that actually goes further than the 15 women who came forward um during the campaign who to say that they they describe situations very similar to what you experienced him getting them into a room him pinning them against a wall him forcing a kiss on them but yours actually goes further in terms of being legally rape that's what it was now so we're clear here allison camarota is correct legally speaking the details absolutely constitute rape and since that was on cable news they couldn't get into all of the gruesome details but in this piece it's laid out pretty clearly and it is downright disturbing i'm gonna read you a couple of paragraphs here the next moment still wearing correct business attire shirt tie suit jacket overcoat he opens the overcoat unzips his pants and forcing his fingers around my private area thrusts his penis halfway or completely i'm not certain inside me it turns into a colossal struggle the whole episode lasts no more than three minutes i do not believe he ejaculates so this is incredibly serious these allegations are explosive this is a scandal and she addresses why she didn't come out sooner and it's the same reason why someone wouldn't want to come out and accuse a very powerful person of this type of behavior it's because she was worried she would receive a death threat she was worried that she would be attacked and that's basically what donald from did now his initial response was to deny that he even knew her he claims he never even met carol but the article literally contained a photograph of them together so that's obviously on its face completely absurd but here's what he also said in response to these allegations quote i'll say it with great respect number one she's not my type number two it never happened it never happened okay it never happened just like it never happened with the 15 other women who are you gonna believe are you gonna believe them the accusers or the guy who admitted on tape that he sexually assaults women i grab him by the pussy i don't even wait he talked about how they let them do this because he's a celebrity so i mean first of all let's just address how disgusting that response is he insults her she's not my type second of all is this a credible allegation yes regardless if you believe it or not this is a serious story and it should be taken seriously but the problem is that it's not really being taken seriously in fact the media collectively yawned when this story was first announced and many are pointing out that joe biden's creepy behavior actually received more coverage than this and even though i do think that the joe biden story is an important story this is obviously much more serious much more explosive so the problem is this story demonstrates how we have become desensitized to these types of stories and trump's repulsiveness isn't really even shocking or surprising to people anymore to the point where he could be credibly accused of rape and nobody even bats an eyelash that's the state of american politics now do i think that this story has any chance of hurting donald trump whatsoever no i don't so the question is if i don't think that this is going to hurt donald trump or affect him in any way shape or form if we all know that this doesn't necessarily demonstrate the types of policies that he would implement then why am i talking about this what's the point if everybody's desensitized um republicans probably won't believe her and everybody else doesn't really seem to care that much why even talk about it it's because we have to we can't normalize this type of behavior we can't normalize these types of allegations if something like this comes out we need to react very strongly to this because this is a serious serious allegation and no it may not tell us about trump's politics but it tells us about the type of person he is he's an amoral monster who disregards the harm he causes to other people and that's not the type of person who should be anywhere near the oval office so even if this isn't policy related and you can say well you know this we should be focusing on the real issues the policy issues because this doesn't affect me it still is important because we need to know the type of person that the president is he's a monster who was accused of raping a woman she's the 16th accuser the 16th who accused someone who admitted he sexually assaults women of sexually assaulting her so i can't not talk about this i can't sweep this under the rug i can't allow widespread desensitization to contribute to the normalization of this type of behavior we have to fight this and we have to make it known that we care these allegations are serious and we need to communicate to people that we care and we want to hear these stories we want you to speak out if you have been sexually assaulted or raped because that's the type of culture that we should be fostering as an egalitarian society and it really is it's honestly heartbreaking it's heartbreaking that this was basically you know a non-story and i get that there's a lot of other things right Trump almost bombed Iran there's so much going on people are struggling but at the same time this is still important and it does deserve attention and the fact that it didn't get that attention the fact that outlets like the new york times had to come out and say you know we didn't really do a good job here in promoting the story we put this in the book section um or maybe it was new york magazine one of them put this in the book section since this was an excerpt from her book we can't let this happen we can't normalize this type of behavior when when it happens when somebody credibly accuses someone in power of rape we have to react in a way that we we would react to anyone else who isn't Donald Trump where this isn't you know unsurprising treat each and every single one of these allegations serious because they're very serious the day we have all been waiting for has finally arrived tonight is night number one of the two night democratic party presidential debates and this is a really big deal because this is the first debate this will set the stage for the rest of the primaries this will make or break candidates and i'm absolutely excited i'm ecstatic about this um i actually was having trouble sleeping last night because i was thinking about the debates so this is a big deal this is you know the playoffs this is the super bowl or maybe the election itself is more like the super bowl maybe i shouldn't have invoked a sports analogy when i know nothing about sports so disregard everything i just said doesn't matter let's talk about what we can expect tonight so here's what i think is going to happen there's probably going to be one breakout star i don't know who that's going to be but this will be based not necessarily on policy substance but it will be based on performance who can basically get their message across and do it in a really forceful and persuasive way now here's what i really want to see happen this is on my wishlist first of all i want everyone to punch left i'm rooting for Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard i want both of them to punch left i want Elizabeth Warren to hit these corporate democrats on stage like Cory Booker like John Delaney and when it comes to Tulsi Gabbard she really needs to get her name across how could she do that what in my view would make me feel satisfied if she just came out and pulled no punches and she hit Elizabeth Warren because of her wishy washyness on medicare for all so if Tulsi Gabbard said look i'm the only candidate on this stage who has been consistent when it comes to the issue of medicare for all Elizabeth Warren claims to be a progressive but she's been wishy washy on this and now she's talking about many paths to medicare for all which is it do you want someone who doesn't even have a health care plan that they're absolutely behind unequivocally or do you want someone who's been consistent if she did that that would be huge and it would force Elizabeth Warren to be introspective and actually take a stand and stop sitting on the fence i also want to see Tulsi hit everyone on foreign policy you've got some warmongers on that stage now they're not warmongers in the neoconsense but they have pushed for escalation between the united states and russia they've pushed for intervention maybe not militarily but intervention nonetheless when it comes to venezuela i want her to hit them on that i want Elizabeth Warren to call out these people who aren't taking bold policy approaches i want her to call out john delaney and ask him why he's not in favor of regulating wall street to the extent that she is if i get these really big moments that to me i think would be great for the candidate Elizabeth Warren she doesn't necessarily have to win this debate but what she does need to do in order to come out on top is just maintain right because she's the frontrunner out of this field when you look at public polling so she just needs to maintain momentum she doesn't need to do amazing or perform exceptionally well she just can't face plan because that could hurt her for a candidate like Tulsi Gabbard this has to be her moment she's got to have a breakout moment and i hope that she's aggressive and i know that that necessarily isn't her demeanor because she's more calm but she's got to be forceful and there's 10 candidates on the stage she's got to force her way you know into conversation she's got to make make sure that people know who she is when it comes to Cory Booker i'd say this also needs to be a breakout night for him same with huli and Castro they have enough policies to where they could frame themselves as progressives i don't necessarily think that would be persuasive however the general public may buy it when it comes to better awork this really is make a break if he doesn't have a breakout moment tonight i think he's done because he's already admitted that his campaign is struggling he had to do a relaunch and had a slight bump in the polls and then he's back down this has got to be a breakout for better awork um otherwise i just don't think he's gonna have enough momentum to even make it past iowa very far you know so this really is a huge moment people who i think will probably be overlooked and not have much of a presence uh tim ryan i don't even know what he stands for so he's got to make his presence known in a really substantial way and have one signature issue like we already expect tulsi gabbert to come out swinging when it comes to foreign policy and additionally we expect elizabeth warren to come out with really good domestic policy proposals i don't know what to expect from tim ryan so he's got to really put up otherwise i don't see how he can you know have the momentum to continue jay inslee here's the thing with jay inslee and this is his problem he made climate change his signature policy proposal the thing is that it's going to be very difficult for him to break out because his passion when it comes to climate change even if that's admirable i think that elizabeth warren tulsi gabbert even bill deblasio they can very persuasively make the case that they're as equally passionate about it and they all have more name recognition so i just i'm gonna find it difficult to imagine a scenario where jay inslee has a breakout moment but maybe he can set himself apart because that's going to be tough it's going to be tough you know with foreign policy tulsi gabbert has a very persuasive case to be made as to why she's the best when it comes to regulating wall street elizabeth warren has the same case when it comes to climate change you know jay inslee is not a national figure and there are other candidates who are also great on this so it's going to be tough for him i don't know if he can uh pull it off but we'll see when it comes to amy clobachar i mean i'm not sure what to expect from amy clobachar and the best that we can hope for when it comes to amy clobachar is that she overshadows john delaney who is um he's basically in the same camp as her but i think he's worse because he's actually going out of his way to attack policies like medicare for all which are extremely popular and that hurts the cause for medicare for all so even if she doesn't agree she's at least politically astute enough to know to be quiet about her criticisms with regard to medicare for all so i think that what we're gonna see is probably john delaney get canceled out by amy clobachar although he could just be a better debate performer so it's difficult to predict bill de Blasio i think he's going to try to position himself as the progressive he's going to try to outshine elizabeth warren i don't think people are going to buy it so i'm not going to keep you know talking about this too long because the debate is in a couple of hours let's all tune in uh i certainly will and you could expect my post-debate analysis about an hour or two after the debate i will be posting that tonight it may get out you know at midnight but nonetheless it will be out um here's how i'm going to be analyzing the debate i'm gonna pick who i think one based on performance overall then i'm going to tell you who i liked based on policy spoiler alert it's going to be elizabeth warren and tulsi gabbard that's probably going to hinge on who got the most time to talk and then i'm going to talk about you know who had a breakout moment that could help them and we'll talk about the losers because you know i love talking about the losers because there's quite a bit of losers on the stage so um i'm looking forward to it and i will be live tweeting the debate not going to film it uh or stream it because i think it would be difficult for me to mute my criticism and reactions because i just have a big mouth and i won't be able to shut up and i think that would ruin the experience for other people so i will post a follow-up video once it's done and we'll all go from there i'm excited though well night one of the first 2020 democratic party primary debate has officially concluded and that was absolutely fascinating um i really found it entertaining it was uh thoroughly enjoyable for me because i'm a nerd donald trump certainly didn't like it because he tweeted that it was boring but you know nobody cares about what he has to say he thinks that fox news is entertaining but i'm going to give you my breakdown of this debate in this video we're going to get to the winners the losers the good moments the bad moments but i will probably do a follow-up with a couple of clips because there were some moments that i want to explore a little bit um in greater detail so just generally speaking let me just say that even though bernie sanders did not attend this debate he still had a presence here because a lot of the issues that were talked about were popularized by bernie sanders medicare for all policies that actually help provide jobs for the working class that are aimed at tackling climate change simultaneously i mean all of these broad themes they're being discussed because of bernie sanders so he may not have been here but he still had a pretty substantial influence now getting to statistics about this particular debate when you look at the overall time that each candidate got to speak according to this poll by the washington post cori booker got to speak the most and they usually seem to call on candidates who were polling higher so elizabeth warren at least for the first half was called on pretty frequently better or work was called on and just broadly speaking the candidates with the higher polling tended to you know overall get to speak the most although there were some people like john delaney who kind of just elbowed his way in and got as much talk time as tulsi gabbard which irritated me because he just wouldn't shut up he kept butting in and i get that that's what you're supposed to do but if you're gonna butt in and not say something substantive and meaningful then you need to be quiet stay in your lane wait to jump in until you have an issue that really speaks to you but everything he said was horrible so i'm kind of spoiling who i think was one of the losers but one more graph that i want to show you is this graph about the number of times that donald trump was invoked looks like amy clobachar invoked donald trump quite a bit tulsi gabbard invoked him three times and i do think that this is important to invoke the republican opponent who you may or may not be running against because it shows that you're confident it shows that you're not afraid to take on donald trump you are not afraid to stand up to someone who may be your opponent so i think that by criticizing donald trump it demonstrates strength although for candidates like elizabeth warren she didn't mention donald trump but at the same time i can't fault her for that because i think that what she did was fantastic in terms of staying close to policy talking about corruption so let me get to the winners and the losers this debate did not turn out in the way that i expected um i think that we kind of had an upset so i'll tell you who i think one but first let me just broadly speaking give you a couple of categories so i have four categories that i've created here so we've got um good well that means the candidate did okay uh we have the mech category and then we have the losers now who do i think are the losers john delaney and beto o'rourke now i think that overall john delaney is probably the biggest loser because he didn't have a breakout moment he spoke for a relatively long you know period of time in comparison with other candidates and he didn't have a moment where he shied he criticized medicare for all when it comes to betta o'rourke he couldn't answer questions i mean i think it was erin maté who said on twitter that he just made history by not answering a question in two different languages i mean he has nothing but platitudes and booker has the same problem so i wouldn't necessarily say that betta lost because of this but he always opens an answer to a question about a personal story or an anecdote you know i talked to timmy in iowain he said this and um gene in uh new hampshire said this betto just answer the question cut to the chase answer the question so that's one of the reasons why i think he didn't perform well but another reason why he didn't perform well is because this was kind of a dog pile and betta o'rourke there were numerous moments where you had uh um julian castrow go after betto you had bill deblasio go after betto on numerous occasions so people were shitting on betto and i loved it he was backed into a corner he also didn't answer questions it just wasn't a good look and i said prior to this debate that this was make or break for betto because he's going down in the polls i believe one poll had him tied with mike revelle he had to shine here and he didn't didn't expect much from john delaney and he basically performed as well as i expected him to getting into the mech category amy klobuchar she i mean she didn't have a breakout moment she said things that were um pretty boring and milk toast but she didn't fumble she didn't face plant um too badly at any point it was just very meh tim ryan he actually seemed to have this mid-debate strategy shift and he wasn't really saying much but towards the middle half of the debate he started to kind of stand out and talk about you know we need to stand up for the middle class and we need to play offense and go after republicans and i thought that that was really strong had he not taken those stands um he probably would have been in the loser category but because he kind of came with something anything um you know that got him moved up into the meh category for me here's who i think did well they didn't lose but there was more to be desired maybe they had a couple of good moments so in this category kory booker tulsi gabard and j inslee kory booker he had some good moments but um nothing that really stood out too much he has the same problem that beto has as i mentioned he just he doesn't know how to not come off as a rehearsed politician it doesn't know how to make it seem like you know every sentence he says is contrived he can't help himself he's just a rehearsed thumb-pointing politician but i mean with that being said i think he was incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to lgbtq rights he talks intelligently about a lot of issues but um i just i don't think he was the winner he didn't do bad he did he did well he did okay not gonna hurt him not necessarily going to give him a boost because i don't think he was the standout when it comes to tulsi gabard throughout the first three quarters of the debate i was screaming at my screen begging her to jump in because i was looking at some of these uh graphs from the washington post she wasn't getting much talk time she wasn't getting called on and when it became clear that they weren't really gonna call on her that much at that point she needed to take the gloves off elbow her way into that conversation start interrupting start chiming in like john delaney was doing um but the reason why i think overall she did well is because she had the one moment she really needed to have she had a breakout moment and it was probably one of the highlights if not the highlight of the night when she just basically owned tim ryan when it comes to his um support for the u.s empire he talked about staying in afghanistan and definitely she chimed in made him look like a dunce that was such a powerful moment that that single handedly moved her up but going into the next debate she has to be more aggressive i get that her demeanor is more calm and this isn't a criticism of tulsi gabard i'm speaking more to debate performance and strategy she has to be more assertive and more aggressive because i think that a lot of these candidates when you have like 10 people on the stage you're gonna have at least two people that will try to chime in and take up all the air in the room this debate you know john delaney was kind of that guy who kept inserting himself into the conversation when nobody really wanted to hear from him so you have people like that that you're competing with you also have the front runners who are pulling higher who you're competing with so going into this next debate i really really hope that she pulls the gloves off and she just hammers more people because when she hammered tim ryan that was a bright moment and if you give her two or three more um moments like that this could really help her had she not had that moment i would have been worried i would have moved her into the mad category only because she didn't get a chance to speak but because that moment was so amazing and i just i was living for it she she stole my heart right there um because of that she's in the well category um hopefully that alone will bring people's attention to you know her foreign policy platform because she's great on foreign policy she's the best in this race on foreign policy it's just a matter of making sure you make your case and you make it well um when it comes to j insley i think he performed okay you know he didn't really have any bright moments when it comes to who's a geopolitical threat and we'll talk about the framing of that question later on but he said donald trump you're the climate change guy you've got to say climate change so i still think that he did a you know an acceptable job a passable job at focusing on his issue but in comparison with tulsi gabbert like she has foreign policy he has climate change i don't think he did as well but overall his performance throughout the debate was a little bit more consistent like with tulsi gabbert we were trailing you know just pretty pretty low and then we had this big boost for him he was kind of in the middle of the entire time so that's why i put these candidates in the uh they did well category okay so when it comes to the good category i placed elizabeth warner in this category julian castro in this category and bill de blazio in this category now keep in mind this is not me endorsing their policies this is me speaking to their debate performance who did i think won this debate i'm shocked to hear myself say this but it was bill de blazio bill de blazio won this debate and one thing i said in my pre-debate analysis was that he would try to be the progressive he tried to outflank the rest of the people on stage and try to out bernie elizabeth warren so to speak and what he said was great now do i believe anything that bill de blazio has to say um no not necessarily i think he's full of shit back in 2016 he could have endorsed a true progressive like bernie sanders but he endorsed hillary clinton during the primary when like it wasn't over at all so he isn't the real deal with that being said on debate performance he hit it out of the park now originally i thought it was very clear that elizabeth warren was dominating but she was only dominating when she was being called on once they stopped calling on her she kind of just faded away and throughout the second half of the debate she was a non-entity however in that first half she was absolutely amazing her performance was just top tier and she did what she needed to do i think she did enough to maintain her lead possibly grow it especially because of her answer on medicare for all now julian castro he was kind of the breakout here i don't think he's the winner of this debate but he was a breakout star and this is because he came off as someone who is very strong not necessarily on economic issues but he spoke very intelligently about issues related to um race and gender um he absolutely dominated the debate on immigration so he did a good job when it comes to his performance but overall i think the standout here surprisingly was bill de blazio bill de blazio how weird is that so let's get to some specific moments here um i already touched on this but we have to talk about that moment between tulsi gabard and tim ryan that moment was so thoroughly embarrassing for tim ryan not only did she challenge him on his interventionist views but she got him to stumble because he said that the taliban attack that's on 9-11 and she corrected him she looked incredibly strong right there tim ryan looked incredibly weak had it not been for that performance he would have been pretty good you know overall but she hammered him hard and i think that what she gave us there was a glimpse at how powerful she could be if she wielded her knowledge in a more effective way we know now that she's got it in her to be an attack dog now she just needs to do this and hit the other candidates that was phenomenal but we'll get to that in the segment um another highlight for me was when huli and kastro called out betta orork because he claims to be great on immigration you know he started the first question speaking in spanish which led to kory booker giving him you know pretty hilarious side eye and elizabeth born too he tries to appear to be a strong person on immigration but huli and kastro called him out because he doesn't want to repeal 1325 which it decriminalizes someone entering the country illegally it drops it from you know a federal crime to a civil offense if you don't support that then you're just not as compassionate as you say you are better now the moment for me that was probably one of the highlights was that elizabeth warren finally finally gave us what we wanted when it comes to medicare for all so the question was posed to the candidates which of you support getting rid of private health insurance companies only two candidates sadly raised their hands bill de blasio and elizabeth warren i was very disappointed that tulsi gabbard didn't also raise her hand because she's been an advocate for medicare for all and i wish she would have raised her hand now there's a question about whether or not well you know does medicare for all actually get rid of private insurance companies um pretty much that's the answer it's complicated this is nuanced but if you support medicare for all in short you should have raised your hand so let me explain to you the complicated provision in both bernie sanders bill and premilla jaya paul's bill does it outright ban supplemental private insurance no in fact it states explicitly that it doesn't intend to outlaw that however there's a big caveat it does rule out it prohibits duplicative care so if the federal government is providing you with you know these types of health care coverages we know that bernie's medicare for all plan for example covers um eye exams that cannot be sold on the private market it bans duplicative care so because bernie and jaya paul's bills ban duplicative care what's the implication the overall goal is to phase out these private insurance companies that's exactly what these bills are intended and designed specifically to do now there's a question of well what about for cosmetic surgeries like if you want to get you know a nose job for example can you still get insurance covered for that the answer technically is yes but if you talk to anyone who gets these cosmetic procedures if you get braces for example i had braces you don't get insurance for that you finance that most of the time like an insurance company isn't going to cover you for a really expensive procedure knowing that they won't be able to be able to profit off of you right so for these types of cosmetic procedures you're not really going to be able to get insurance anyway so overall the goal is to phase out private insurance companies and if you support medicare for all you want private insurance companies to be phased out and the reason for that is because if you don't phase them out then those capitalistic forces will attack our public medicare for all plan and they're going to try to get portions of it privatized so they can get a larger share of the market so if you support medicare for all you have to get on board with abolishing private insurance companies Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio surprised me here by doing that Tulsi Gabbard surprised me for by not doing that but hopefully she will get on board because if you're you're going to support medicare for all you have to be strong you have to be strong and you've got to get on board with abolishing private insurance companies you have to now Elizabeth Warren said what i needed her to say i'm with Bernie and she explicitly said she supports medicare for all this is what we've been waiting on Elizabeth Warren to do although there's a little bit of irony here because you know it was phrased in the way of so are you with Bernie or do you support many paths she walked away from that and she said i'm with Bernie she said that unequivocally however if a candidate has to say i'm with another candidate the implication is well maybe i should just vote for that candidate that they're with ie bernie sanders so um you know she she did the right thing but she needs to be consistent she's been incredibly wishy washy she's gone back and forth back and forth once and for all she needs to say i'm for or against medicare for all and she needs to be clear we got an indication that she's putting her feet in the medicare for all camp although i'm not gonna lie i can't really trust her because she keeps going back and forth but based on debate performance um she did the right thing here so let me just give you the rundown on some quick things here when it comes to warren's answer on the economy i think she had a great response to the economy who's it working for when it comes to free college amy klobuchar had the generic corporate democrat talking point that you know i don't want to pay for free college for rich kids i don't think americans should bear that burden except rich kids aren't gonna go to public universities klobuchar that's what hillary clinton said in 2016 and people made fun of her for it because you're not acknowledging or at least you're you know you're ignoring the fact that rich people are going to go to private educations regardless if we make public universities tuition free so you're not going to be paying for the education of rich people that's a cop out and a bad answer better or work refused to answer the question as to whether or not he supports a 70 marginal tax to which bill de blazio then hit him on that which i loved elizabeth warren channeled bernie sanders channeled aoc and talked about investing in green energy circling back to health care i'm glad that bill de blazio hit better for his weakness here i'm glad that elizabeth warren was incredibly strong tocy gabbert even though she disappointed me by not raising her hand when it comes to the question of abolishing private insurance she still stood out by talking about the cost savings of medicare for all on private businesses how other countries have implemented medicare for all this is a great point that needed to be brought up so between gabbert warren and de blazio they were the strongest on health care but definitely warren and de blazio because they committed to abolishing private insurance the weakest were booker and definitely inslee because they both brought up access and whenever a politician drops access in the context of health care that's code for i don't support medicare for all now when it comes to immigration julian castro dominated uh something he said that really resonated with me he said we need a marshal plan for hunduras and guatemala to fix this issue great response because nobody ever focuses when talking about immigration on the way that our policies have ruined these countries the drug war you know these trade policies they haven't worked out especially when it comes to nafta in mexico not not so much you know hunduras and guatemala but these countries have been ravaged due to our war on drugs by bringing up a marshal plan that's a great idea that i hope bernie steels great great idea from him um one thing that booker said that was really poignant he said they don't leave their human rights at the border when they come here that was a great line when it comes to iran predictably tulsi gabard she absolutely shined here um she called donald trump a chicken hawk she demonstrated why we need to stop escalating why we need to de-escalate when it comes to the issue of guns warren's answer it didn't impress me i expected more tim ryan he did kind of take a more republican oriented approach by talking about the need for mental health and i think this is important because you're kind of arguing on republicans terms you're saying look if you say mental health is the issue i'm willing to address that let's talk about it so then let's help solve this crisis by adding that so i think that was good that he brought that up because you're kind of reaching across the aisle in a way where you're not sacrificing your principles when it comes to the question of what do we do about mitch McConnell none of them satisfied me here none of them were strong enough none of them you need to come out so strong against mitch mcconnell because any sign of weakness will be exploited by mitch mcconnell it will be exploited by republicans so if you're not going to come out strong against mitch mcconnell and how to fight him if you don't have a detailed plan as to how you're going to fight him i'm just not going to be impressed by that because he's a very effective leader we may not like him we may vociferously disagree with everything he stands for but you can't deny that he is one of the most effective leaders in recent history when it comes to the issue of climate change jay inslee was predictably strong here but i don't like the right wing framing like chuck todd asked the question about climate change to better award and he framed it in the way of you know what do you say to people who are worried about big government chuck that's not the question that we should be asking when we're talking climate change we're talking about an existential threat to humanity i don't care about the size of government whatever tackles climate change big government small government it's big government spoiler alert but whatever is going to get the job done is what we should be in favor for so that's just the framing is so off and chuck todd did this on numerous occasions another question that was framed odd was on this issue of gun confiscation like he implied that a gun buyback program was confiscation but thankfully Amy klobuchar actually called him out for this or she didn't call him out but she corrected the record and she said no you know a gun buyback program is not tantamount to confiscation that's that's not correct now another thing i wanted to talk about was lgbtq rights tulsi gabbert was asked about lgbtq rights and i thought that she gave a thoughtful answer courier booker then jumped in and he kind of won up because he really demonstrated knowledge concrete knowledge of these issues that are affecting the lgbtq community he talked about lgbtq youth in schools he talked about violence against trans women of color really important and tulsi gabbert was going to respond and i was looking forward to her response they cut her off they cut her off so tim ryan got the opportunity to respond to tulsi gabbert when she challenged him later in the debate but here when courier booker didn't necessarily challenge tulsi but he tried to one-up her and outshine her she didn't get the chance to respond that frustrated me as an lgbtq american i wanted to hear what she had to say i wanted to hear what she had to say so that frustrated me that was a moment that um it showed how shitty the moderation got once less their whole at samantha guthrie left because chuck todd is just an embarrassment rachel madow was bad as well but not as bad as chuck todd when it comes to the issue of impeachment john delaney said something that really stood out to me because of how incredibly stupid it was he said that he believes let me get my notes he says i support pelosi she knows more about this subject when it comes to impeachment than all of the 2020 candidates combined john how weak are you and simultaneously as he said that his team put out a tweet that said nobody should be above the law including the president of the united states except if you don't support impeachment when the president has committed crimes then you literally do believe functionally speaking that the president is above the law because he just committed crimes so if you don't think he should be impeached then you think he's above the law that's what your position effectively ends up being so john delaney i mean this is one of many reasons as to why i think he just completely embarrassed himself here so overall i thought that this was an incredibly entertaining debate but here's what i think going forward will happen if john delaney and um beto or work don't really start to have some forward movement i just don't know how their campaigns can be sustained especially john delaney if you look at his twitter feed at least if we're gauging anything based on that or gauging how well he's doing based on that he has like zero support there's no momentum if you look at the images he's posting from meetings that he's having with people in iowa four five people attend it so i don't even know how he has the funding to keep going and this debate didn't help him at all same with beto or work i just he didn't do good here he needed to pull out a victory in some way maybe not win but certainly stand out and he didn't and you know julian castrow bill de Blasio they certainly didn't help one thing i will say about elizabeth warn even if all of her answers were very thoughtful and everything she said basically was excellent i'll give her the same advice that i'm giving to tulsi gabard i think you should go out of your way to kind of insert yourself into the conversations more frequently now certainly tulsi gabard should do this more than elizabeth warn because elizabeth warn she just has to not fail since she's currently leading out of all of those candidates with tulsi this is more important because we need her to get a boost in the polls so that's what you want to do if you want to get your name out there more and get the message across i would have liked to see that more from war and at least in the second half when she started to kind of fade into the background so long as she keeps a constant presence i think you know she's great but with that being said when it's all said and done um this was entertaining and i think the uh you know the policies that were talked about were mostly substantive i don't like the framing by chuck todd i don't like some of the questions asked you know who's the biggest geopolitical threat to the united states that implies that anyone is a threat to us when we are the biggest military in the history of humankind so those issues aside i think it went well it was entertaining and this really is exciting to watch i look forward to seeing tomorrow's debate one of my favorite moments of the first debate was this exchange between tulsi gabard and tim ryan because when it comes to the issue of foreign policy whenever that topic came up we needed to hear from tulsi gabard desperately because she is pushing the overton window to the left within the democratic party who has grown increasingly hawkish and there's a lot of people who just aren't well versed on us imperialism they don't know about us interventionism they fall for this trap like better heroic of us the unique to intervene for quote unquote humanitarian reasons which the united states always makes matters worse so we needed to desperately hear from tulsi gabard and more importantly we needed a moment that would allow her to demonstrate her knowledge on this subject particularly um or preferably rather one where she calls out someone who's a hawk and boy did she deliver because in this clip i'm about to play for you she thoroughly dismantled the argument of tim ryan who is pushing for intervention and holy shit she ripped my new asshole take a look i've been in congress 17 years and 12 of those years i sat on the arm services committee the defense appropriations committee or the arm services committee and the lesson that i've learned over the years is that you have to stay engaged in these situations nobody likes it it's long it's tedious but right now we have so i would say we must be engaged in this we must have our state department engaged we must have our military engaged to the to the extent they need to be but the reality of it is this president doesn't even have people appointed in the state department to deal with these things whether we're talking about central america whether we're talking about iran whether we're talking about afghanistan we've got to be completely engaged and here's why because these flare-ups distract us from the real problems in the country if we're if getting a drone shot down for 130 million dollars because the president is distracted that's 130 million dollars that we could be spending in places like youngstown ohio or flint michigan or re or rebuilding congresswoman galler i'm going to give you 30 seconds actually to jump off what he said he described is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in afghanistan what we just have to be engaged as a soldier i will tell you that answer is unacceptable we have to bring our troops home from afghanistan we are in a place in afghanistan where we have lost so many lives we've spent so much money money that's coming out of every one of our pockets money that should be going into communities here at home meeting the needs of the people here at home we are no better off in afghanistan today than we were when this war began this is why it's so important to have a president and commander-in-chief who knows the cost of war and who's ready to do the job on day one i am ready to do that job when i walk into the ovalon thank you very much listen i'm going to go down the line i'm going to go down the line i'm going to go down the line here well you know what you felt you felt like she was responding you get 30 seconds go fair enough i hear what you're saying i would just say i don't want to be i don't want to be engaged i wish we were spending all this money in places that i've represented that have been completely forgotten and we were rebuilding but the reality of it is that the united states isn't engaged the taliban will grow and they will have bigger bolder terrorist acts we have got to have some present there is the taliban was there long before we came in they were yeah exactly well we cannot keep us and they were deployed to afghanistan thinking that we're going to somehow squash this taliban i didn't say that every other country that's trying to squash them when we weren't in there they started flying planes into our buildings so i'm just saying right now the taliban didn't attack us on 9-11 al-qaeda did well i understand that's why i and so many other people joined the military to go after al-qaeda not the taliban the taliban was protecting those people who were plotting against us all i'm saying is if we want to go into elections and we want to say that we got to withdraw from the world that's what president trump is saying we can't i would love for us to protect al-qaeda right now i want to go down to arabia that was so embarrassing for tim ryan like he wasn't doing terribly throughout this debate uh but when he got that wrong and she called him out for it i cringed for him because that's the moment you don't want to have if you're trying to compete to be commander in chief these really simple details here you just don't want to mess them up and she knows her shit when it comes to foreign policy she's the best on this issue out of everyone and when she strikes she strikes hard so we got a glimpse of how powerful tulsi gabard could be i want to see more of this because we need all of these hawks in the democratic party who are pushing for intervention and what he was pushing for was effectively never ending war in afghanistan we need these people to be exposed as the hawks that they are so tulsi gabard here she did phenomenally well and i am so glad that this moment happened um this was undoubtedly the best moment of the night for her one of my favorite moments of the entire debate because it was that great this was probably besides all of the collective shitting on beto the you know one of the biggest moments of the night in terms of destroying someone like if you want to come up with that cliche x gets destroyed by y in epic debate this was basically that moment where somebody they legitimately got destroyed and tulsi handed him his ass it was so glorious um thank you tulsi for that i truly enjoyed every moment of it however someone who didn't enjoy tim ryan getting destroyed is tim ryan because immediately after the debate was over his team put out this statement about the exchange quote while making a point as to why america can't seed its international leadership and retreat from around the world tim was interrupted by representative tulsi gabard when he tried to answer her she contorted a factual point tim was making about the taliban being complicit in the 9 11 attacks by providing training bases and refuge for al qaeda and its leaders the characterization that tim ryan doesn't know who is responsible for the attacks of the 9 11 is simply unfair reporting further we continue to reject gabard's isolationism and her misguided beliefs on foreign policy we refuse to be lectured by someone who thinks it's okay to dine with murderous dictators like sirius bashar al-assad who used chemical weapons on his own people now on top of that he told a reporter i personally don't need to be lectured by someone who's dining with the dictator who gassed kids now he's clearly angry and he's literally going out of his way to smear tulsi gabard because she owned him and he's being an incredibly sore loser but i think that nothing will summarize the situation better than this you just got owned you nuke you just got owned motherfucker you just got you just got you just got owned you just got owned you nuke you just got owned motherfucker you just got you just got you just got owned so there were a couple of moments in the first night of the first democratic party debate of 2020 that really stood out and one moment that I want to talk about is the moment where Julian Castro butted heads with Beto O'Rourke over an immigration policy that Beto refuses to support because Beto, he speaks Spanish, he purports to be an ally. However, as you're going to see here, Julian Castro is going to call him out on his bullshit. Some of us on this stage have called to end that section, to terminate it. Some, like Congressman O'Rourke, have not. And I want to challenge all of the candidates to do that. I just think it's a mistake, Beto. I think it's a mistake. And I think that if you truly want to change the system, then we've got to repeal that section. If not, then it might as well be the same policy. Let me respond to this very briefly. Actually, as a member of Congress, I helped to introduce legislation that would ensure that we don't criminalize those who are seeking asylum and refuge in this country. If you're fleeing, if you're fleeing desperation, then I want to make sure I'm talking about everybody else with respect. I'm still talking about everybody else. But you're looking at just one small part of this. I'm talking about a comprehensive rewrite of our immigration laws. That's not true. And if we do that, I don't think it's asking too much for people to follow our laws when they come to this country. I'm talking about millions of folks. A lot of folks that are coming are not seeking asylum. A lot of them are undocumented immigrants, right? And you said recently that the reason you didn't want to repeal section 1325 was because you were concerned about human trafficking and drug trafficking. But let me tell you what, section 18, title 18 of the U.S. Code, title 21 and title 22 already cover human trafficking. Now, here's why that didn't matter. If you're better or work and you're trying to convince us that you have human empathy and you're a compassionate person and these immigrants should be treated as human beings, then the fact that you're not supporting the repeal of 1325 is unforgivable. It shows that you are full of shit. Elizabeth Warren supports it. I believe Bernie supports it as well. But here's why what Julian Castro did there was important. Let me tell you about 1325. As Darrell Lind of Vox explains, it's the section of title eight of the United States Code that makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to enter the United States without papers. Castro wants to get rid of it so that being an unauthorized immigrant in the United States would still be a civil offense but no longer a federal crime. And he's pushing the rest of the Democratic field to join him. Elizabeth Warren already has endorsed the repeal of the illegal entry provision. Even moderate Tim Ryan implied he'd be open to the repeal during Wednesday's debate. Beto O'Rourke, who has an aggressive immigration plan of his own, was the only candidate who refused in a Democratic primary that has shown the party has shifted leftward on several issues since the Obama administration. This exchange was still remarkable. In fiscal year 2016, immigration offenses, illegal entry and reentry, chief among them, made up a majority of federal criminal prosecutions in 2019. As a result of Castro's hectoring on the debate stage, the Democratic presidential field debated for several minutes whether it should be a crime at all. So this is important because even if I have a lot of disagreements with Julian Castro, I think overall he is not very left wing when it comes to economic issues or at least he hasn't proven that he genuinely supports policies like Medicare for All, even if he claims he does. I think that what he's doing here is important because he's still shifting the Overton window to the left on this issue of immigration. And we need to do that because the Overton window when it comes to immigration in this country has shifted so far to the right that people were willing to elect someone who was openly supporting fascistic policies in 2016. That's a sign that as a country, we've got to do better. We've got a course correct. And Julian Castro here, even if I don't support him overall, even if I disagree with him on a lot, he's doing a service to everyone. And by calling Beto on his bullshit, he's certainly doing something that I think a lot of people who support anyone else can get behind. So I wanted to highlight that because this was a good learning experience. My one criticism with Castro is that he should have explained this maybe a little bit more thoroughly, but when you don't have much time, so long as you get that number out there, you give people the chance to Google it and learn about 1325 and why we should repeal it. So overall, this was a great moment. And I really wanted to share this with you because I think it's important. Towards the end of the first night of the first Democratic Party debate of 2020, Chuck Todd posed a question to the candidates that I found pretty curious. He asked them who they thought was the biggest geopolitical threat to the United States. Now, I take issue with the framing of this question because it assumes that we have threats that are comparable in any way to the threat that we pose to other countries. And it assumes that maybe the United States military industrial complex is justified in occupying numerous countries at once and having 900 military bases. So the connotations of this are they're negative. I don't like it. And I don't like that Chuck Todd asked this question. However, with that being said, if you're savvy, you can retool this question in a way that is not militaristic or inherently hawkish. Some candidates did this. Other candidates, not so much. So in my view, I'm saying one of two things. If you ask me what the biggest geopolitical threat or national security threat is to the United States, I'm either saying nuclear proliferation or climate change or both. Now, since you can't choose two things, since they said pick one, I probably would have said climate change, but saying nuclear proliferation that will also suffice. Some of them, though. Wow. Horrible, horrible responses. Take a look. What is the biggest threat? Who is the geopolitical threat to the United States? Just give me one more to answer, Congressman Delaney. Can you repeat the question? Greatest geopolitical threat to the United States right now, Congressman Delaney. Well, the biggest geopolitical challenge is China. But the biggest geopolitical threat remains nuclear weapons. So those are different questions. Totally get it. Go ahead, Governor Inslee. The biggest threat to the security of the United States is Donald Trump. And there's no question. Congresswoman Gabbard. Greatest threat that we face is the fact that we are at a greater risk of nuclear war today than ever before in history. Two threats. Economic threat, China. But our major threat right now is what's going on in the Middle East with Iran, if we don't get together. Slimmer than what we've been going here. One or two words. Our existential threat is climate change. We have to confront it before it's too late. Senator Warren. Senator Booker. Nuclear proliferation and climate change. Secretary Castro. China and climate change. Congressman Ryan. China, without a question, they're wiping us around the world economically. And Mr. Mayor. Russia, because they're trying to undermine our democracy and they've been doing a pretty damn good job of it, we need to stop them. All right, well, thank you for that wide variety of answers. And I mean that. No, I mean that in a, that's what this debate is about. Okay, so I have my notes with me. First of all, I said this in the overall debate breakdown video, but if you are Jay Inslee, the answer is climate change. I expected him to say climate change. He said Donald Trump. Now you definitely can make the case that Donald Trump is the United States' biggest geopolitical threat just because he is so belligerent. But if I'm the climate change guy, I'm not saying Donald Trump. I'm saying climate change. So I expected better from him. Here's the people who got it right. Tulsi Gabbard answered nuclear war. That's correct. Beto says climate change. Correct. Elizabeth Warren says climate change. Cory Booker says climate change and nuclear proliferation. Okay, you can only pick one and you stole that from the other candidates from Tulsi and Warren, but regardless, I'll let it pass. Here's where we started getting into iffy territory. The first person who responded, John Delaney, and he said China. Really? You think China is a geopolitical threat to the United States? Tim Ryan also said China. They're going to pass us economically. And you can make the argument that, you know, whenever a country amasses wealth economically and they become an international powerhouse, sure, that means that they're also probably going to simultaneously build up their military. But to say China, it's just tone deaf. Now here's the worst answer. The person who I thought won the debate overall, Bill de Blasio, gave the worst answer. He said Russia. He said Russia. That is the worst answer by a mile and a half. And if you're going to give that answer, because we know that he doesn't believe that he's just pandering, as I think Natalie Shore said on Twitter, you're pandering the people who are completely unreasonable within the Democratic Party, like the Rachel Maddow supporters and whatnot. But look, if you're going to say that, then why haven't you proposed a plan that stops Russia from interfering in our elections? You can opt for paper ballots. You can opt for increasing cyber security. You can have an election integrity act. Tulsi Gabbard has been a leader here. Elizabeth Warren, I believe, just proposed her own plan. But if you're not coming up with that, then we know you're just pandering when you say Russia. So by and large, the question itself was troubling. But as I stated earlier, you can kind of rework this to make it fit your progressive narrative. You don't have to, you know, take the hawkish implications and build off of that. You can kind of make it your own. I think Tulsi, Beto and Warren and Booker, to be fair, they did that. The others, no, they bought into this notion that, you know, there are really large geopolitical threats to the United States when that's just not true. International US hegemony is a thing. Nobody's a threat to us. We're a threat to everyone else. If there's going to be a threat to international peace and stability, it's going to be the United States. So as president, what I want to hear is that you're going to rein that in. And some of these candidates, Tim Ryan, John Delaney, didn't give us that. And that's incredibly disappointing, because if you're running to be the Democratic Party nominee and you're not explicitly anti-war, what are you doing? What are you doing? So that's all I got to say about this. Bill de Blasio, the winner, but that was a very bad moment for him in spite of an overall very strong performance. So we've got one debate down and one more to go. So this is my pre-debate analysis for night two. And basically, I'm going to say the same thing that I think probably everyone is thinking. This is going to be a debate primarily between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. This is the Biden Bernie show. And it would behoove any other candidate to insert themselves into that conversation, into that rivalry and try to have a breakout moment. Because we all know that when you have the two front runners pitted against each other, that's basically going to pave the way for some fireworks. But if you can jump in there and either shit on one of those two front runners, you could potentially make a name for yourself. But what I'm expecting from Joe Biden, I'm very conflicted because on one hand, we know that he's a gaff machine, and he keeps speaking and pissing people off with every single word that he says. However, with that being said, I'm not going to say that he's an incompetent debater. So just based on performance, not substance, he could come out relatively okay. It's hard to predict. Bernie Sanders, I think, is going to perform well. I think he's got to hit Biden and hit Biden hard and constantly because Bernie knows this is a debate between him and Biden. He's got to make it happen. So in terms of what Bernie Sanders' method of attack should be, he's got to push electability because that's what they're pushing against him. He's got to make the case. Look, we went with the centrist last time. That's what Joe Biden is trying to position himself as. Do you really want to do that again? Do you really want to roll the dice? Or do you want to go with someone like me who energizes the base, energizes independence and young voters? If he can do that, he will win this entire debate. So that's what we have to see Bernie hitting Biden hard. And for any other candidate, any of the eight other candidates, if you can get some attention and take it away from Biden and Bernie, you can be relatively successful. When it comes to Andrew Yang, I think he's going to have the easiest time because all he has to do is stay the course. If he has at least a minute to pitch UBI, that could help him. If he doesn't get that minute, which I doubt he'll be completely excluded. But if he doesn't at least get a minute to pitch UBI, I think that's going to really hurt him. This could potentially help him. I think that for Andrew Yang, he's been slowly rising in the polls. And this could potentially be a breakout moment. He's definitely someone I'm watching. When it comes to Marianne Williamson, she's got to come with policy. Every time I hear her speak, it's platitudes. It's about love. Listen, if you don't come out swinging with policy, you're not going to go anywhere. Because even if she is someone who politically I agree with more than someone like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg even, she never talks policy ever. People don't know what she stands for. So she's got to put those platitudes aside, come out swinging when it comes to policy. When it comes to Pete Buttigieg, he had his moment in the spotlight. Now this is his chance for redemption. He's got to shine because he's been taken abeating because of the way that he handled a police shooting of a black American in South Bend, Indiana. He's got to try to redeem himself. He's got to communicate to people that he is sensitive to black issues. He's got to make a comeback if he wants any staying power. If he wants to perform well at Iowa. So I wouldn't say that this is make or break for him because I think he'll probably qualify for the next round of debates. But with that being said, what we're looking for with regard to Pete Buttigieg is potential redemption. Who else is going tomorrow? We have Gillibrand. When it comes to Gillibrand, what she needs to do and the way that she could potentially move up is if she outshines one of the other corporate Democrats, if she can outshine Pete Buttigieg, I think she's positioning herself well because she's been kind of overshadowed by these breakout stars like Pete Buttigieg and even Kamala Harris, but to a lesser extent. So if she can kind of slide in there and make herself known for something and get her word across, this could potentially help her. If she doesn't break out here, then I think it's not going to go too well for the rest of the primary. When it comes to Kamala Harris, this is a bit tricky because what she needs to do is since she is, I think, arguably one of the frontrunners, she needs to attack the person who she is positioned against. So she's trying to be a progressive. She's been very strong on Medicare for all. Not sure that I'm persuaded she'd actually fight for it. Nonetheless, you know, she's positioning herself as progressive. So what does she have to do? She needs to be an attack dog against Joe Biden, tag team with Bernie Sanders. Her and Bernie should team up for purposes of this debate to bring down Joe Biden. And once they basically eliminate Joe Biden politically, or, you know, once he goes down enough in the polls, then they can clash with each other. But I want to see a ceasefire between Bernie and Harris because they're so close that it's in both of their interests to attack their mutual enemy. And that is Joe Biden. So if Kamala Harris does that, that's how I think she can win. Although she does have to kind of stay the course in the sense that she doesn't want to be outshined by someone like Kirsten Gillibrand, who is ideologically kind of aligned with her. Although a lot of Democrats don't like Gillibrand because of the Al Franken situation. She called on him to step down. She was one of the first to do that. And I don't know, like, of all things to be frustrated with her about, you know, it's the it's the Wall Street fundraisers. It's the fundraisers at the home of a Pfizer executive, big farming executives. That's what I'm pissed about. I'm not angered that she cut out Al Franken. I actually commend her for that because going against the Democratic Party is something that they will never forgive you for. So I'm not worried about that. And maybe they may never forgive her because they're just holding a grudge. But with that being said, Kamala does need to be cognizant of the fact that Kirsten Gillibrand could outshine her. Now, here's when it comes to a more tricky area. We have Michael Bennett, Eric Swalwell, and John Hickenlooper. These people are about as interesting as wallpaper. The only one out of these three that I can entertain even standing out is Eric Swalwell because he was smart enough to realize that he's got to pick one issue as his kind of go to and he chose gun reform. So if he can really dwell on that and drive that narrative, he could break out. But it's going to be tough. John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennett, these guys don't stand for anything. Michael Bennett is someone who has been attacking Medicare for All. John Hickenlooper has also been attacking Medicare for All. And he's so pathetic that he's in a way, I guess you could say trolling Bernie Sanders by like responding to Bernie Sanders tweets with his own campaign ads as to why Bernie's wrong. It's pathetic. So here's what I would perceive to be successful for these people. If they can talk longer than like a couple minutes and maybe more than once, then I think if our standards are that low, it would be a success for them. But either way, I don't think that these debates will serve them. Well, I think that they're just, if somebody is opting for a centrist during this primary, you're going for Joe Biden. So I'm not sure what their place is. And I don't even think they know what their place is. But if they do, they've got to make that pitch tonight and they've got to make it boldly and aggressively. Otherwise, they're done. Stick a fork in them. You've got like 20 centrists running in a field of so many candidates. I'm being, you know, hyperbolic, of course, but you've got already a ton of centrists. So if you're not proposing something unique, if you're not pitching a brand of centrism that is superior, you're done. So that's what they've got to do. John Hickenlooper, honestly, I don't like to make predictions. I like to kind of draw out certain types of scenarios that I think could happen. But if I had to make a prediction, if anyone's going to phase plan, it's going to be John Hickenlooper. He just has zero charisma. And I really, really want someone to bring up the fact that he watched porn with his mom. Who I'm rooting for, you all know, it's Bernie Sanders. So long as he can pitch policies that are popular and progressive and shit on Joe Biden enough, that will be a success for Bernie Sanders. And really what this should be is the shit on Biden show. Everyone needs to attack the front runner because if you all collectively attack the front runner, that's not going to make it seem as if you are unilaterally going negative. If everyone is going negative, you have no reason not to go negative. So they all have a vested interest in attacking the front runner. Now with that being said, I'm aware of the fact that if they all bring down Joe Biden, they're going to turn their attention to Bernie Sanders because that's what you do in these primary fights. You attack the front runner. But Bernie Sanders has already been undergoing these attacks. For lack of a better word, he's battle tested. And I think that he can actually kind of stop some of their attacks. I don't know that Joe Biden will be as persuasive at doing that. I'd expect him to be called out for reminiscing about how nice and personable these segregationists that he worked with were. But that's what I'm looking for. It's got to be an all out war on Joe Biden. If I can get that, then I will come away satisfied. But I'm looking for, you know, Bernie Sanders to shine more so than anyone else. But if any other candidate can kind of break into that Biden Bernie fight, I think that will be a success for them. The second night of the first 2020 Democratic Party primary debate is officially over. And I have quite a bit of thoughts running through my head, although I think that I've collected my thoughts enough to where I can certainly distinguish between who I think are the winners and who are the losers. And I think that the outcome overall, it, I feel like I'm surprised. But at the same time, I'm not surprised. There were certain people who I knew would do well. There are other people who I thought would probably fail. But some people did, in fact, surprise me. And people surprised me for both good and bad reasons. So we're going to get to all of that. I'm going to give you my general breakdown. We'll talk about some statistics first, as we started with last night. When it comes to talk time, Joe Biden clocked in a total of 13.6. He's pulling the highest. And he got the most talk time. You have Kamala and Bernie, along with Pete Buttigieg, coming in second, third, and fourth place, respectively, with about an equal amount of talk time. And then you had the rest of the candidates. You know, not doing too well. Andrew Yang got the least amount of talk time with three minutes. Now, usually you would think that if you have the most talk time, that's certainly an advantage. However, with Joe Biden, it's a disadvantage because we all know even his own advisors know that the more he speaks, the more likely he is to turn away voters. So if I'm Joe Biden, I'm not going to butt in on that stage. I'm going to keep my mouth shut unless I'm invoked or cold on. And I think he probably tried to emulate that strategy, but when you're pulling ahead and you're the front runner, you're going to talk, you're going to have to face Americans. And boy, did that hurt him. And I'm kind of spoiling who I think one of the losers is, but not a good night for him. But before we get into the specifics, because I'm certainly ready to talk about that, let me show you this graph. It talks about how many times Donald Trump was invoked. And predictably, the front runners did in fact invoke him the most. You have Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, all invoking Donald Trump the most. And again, as I stated last night, I think that this is a strategy that's good because it shows that you're confident. It shows that you are not afraid to speak out against the opponent who you may be facing this early. So that's important. So getting into who I thought the winners and the losers were, I'm going to break this down into four different categories as I did last night. There's a category for the losers. There's a category that I will place people in that I call meh, because they weren't necessarily great, didn't do bad. And then there is the they did good category, they did okay, you know, they didn't do bad. They weren't standouts, but they performed, you know, in a passably good way. And then we have the winner category, although I do think that there is one clear winner and one clear loser. Last night, I thought that it was evident that Bill de Blasio was kind of the breakout star and the overall clear winner. But this, this debate really had one clear standout that I think is probably going to get a boost in the polls because of how well this individual performed. But we're going to do that last. First, let's talk about the losers. Biggest loser, first of all, unquestionably is Joe Biden unquestionably because if you're the front runner, you have the most to lose, you have the most to lose. So you have got to expect all of these attacks. It was evident to me that he was completely unprepared, unequipped to rebut any of these attacks. And it hurt him badly. He's already been sliding. This didn't help him at all. And one moment in the debate that was so powerful was when Kamala Harris challenged him on segregation. If he drops out, I believe that a lot of us will look to that moment as the beginning of the end of his campaign. That's how powerful I think that was and how detrimental that was to Biden's campaign. And it was so bad that as he was trying to explain himself, he just cut himself off and said, Oh, my time's up. I agree that everybody one stay in five, they should, anyway, my time's up. I'm sorry. Now, if you're a normal candidate, you're not going to ever want to stop talking. You're going to talk as long as you possibly can until they cut you off. Now, again, Joe Biden doesn't want to exercise the same strategy, but there's a caveat there. If you're in the defense, if you're backed into a corner, you don't cut yourself off. He did that. It was a bad look. But even though Joe Biden, I think was the biggest loser, I did put other candidates in this category as well. In the loser category, I placed John Hickenlooper, who I think is the second biggest loser, because he really had nothing of value to add to the conversation. He just kept trying to attack socialism because that's his thing, I guess. And it was mentioned that he was booed at a Democratic Party convention when he attacked socialism. So that didn't work well for you, but he's still choosing to utilize the same strategy. I mean, if you thought that, you know, this is going to be your moment, John, I've got bad news for you. It wasn't. Now, for the next person who I'm placing in the loser category, it kind of hurts me to do this because I didn't actually expect this person to perform this badly. And I'm going to kind of contradict what I said in my pre-debate analysis. I'm going to have to place Andrew Yang in this category. He got the least amount of talk time. And what I said in my pre-debate analysis was that all he needs to do, essentially, I think, you know, he's going to have the easiest time because all he needs is to get his point across about UBI. He needs enough time to pitch it like a minute and he'll do well. Well, seeing that play out and seeing how much of a non-entity he was, I just don't think this debate did him any favors at all. I think he needed a breakout moment. And where I went wrong was that I thought he would just automatically have that breakout moment if he got a chance to pitch UBI. But seeing it in action, it just wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. So I was wrong about that. And he's got to do more. Okay, that's my losers. I have Biden, Hickenlooper, and Yang. Moving on to the meh category. I have two people, Eric Swalwell and Michael Bennett. Now, Michael Bennett barely made it out of the loser category. But because he chose to hit Biden on tax cuts that benefited the Tea Party at the end there, he did it for himself. He got himself out of the loser category. But with that being said, he was pretty much a non-entity throughout this debate. And he was just one of those I'm Against Policies X, Y, and Z candidates like John Hickenlooper. And you just have to come with something unique. And he didn't do that. Now, Eric Swalwell, he is someone who he was originally also in the loser category. And I'll be honest with you, I hated him throughout this debate. He was incredibly smarmy and smug. And basically his entire pitch was, I'm young, vote for me. Dude, what are you bringing to the table? That was my question. And finally, he talked about what he's bringing, gun reform. That's great. But I don't know that he was knowledgeable about any other issue. Overall, again, like I said, he was just so smarmy that every time he spoke, it was a turnoff. He came across as a really rehearsed, focus group driven, thumb pointing politician. However, one moment that was great for him that I don't want to give him credit for, because it was bad for Bernie, was when he kind of went after Bernie when it comes to gun reform. Now, he went after Bernie on age. He said, pass the torch when it comes to, I forgot what the issue was, but Bernie said, no, the issue is taking on these special interests. That's the answer, not pass the torch. And Bernie was right about that. But where he actually got Bernie is where he was pushing Bernie on a gun buyback program for automatic assault weapons. And he said, listen, do you support a gun buyback program? And Bernie then said, well, if the government wants to do that, I'd support that. And where Swalwell hit him was when he said, well, you will be the government if you're president. That was not a good look for Bernie. And Bernie should have been prepared on this issue because we saw back in 2016, that's what the Democrats and media hit him on was guns. So he should have came prepared. And Eric Swalwell exploited that perceived weakness. And I don't think it worked out in Bernie's favor. Now, with that being said, Bernie isn't a bad performer here. But that moment was a low light for me and for Bernie. And unfortunately, it helped out Eric Swalwell, I think, because going after the front runner is a smart strategy. Getting to the good category. The first person is Pete Buttigieg. The second person is Marianne Williamson, even if I think she was all over the place. But I think she's settled in the good category. But first, let me talk about Pete Buttigieg. What I said going into this debate was he needed a redemption performance here. He needed to stand out. Did he do that? I don't think he did. However, he didn't do a bad job. He spoke intelligently about certain issues. And even though I disliked some of the answers that he gave, the crowd seemed into what he was talking about. And I think he said things that will play well with the Democratic Party base. So I just think he did good. I personally wasn't a fan. But putting my bias aside, just objectively speaking and basing this off of performance, I think that he performed well. Marianne Williamson, she really, she performed in the way that I honestly expected Andrew Yang to perform. Because as someone who has no name recognition, you've got to get in there. You've got to insert your name in there. And what I said in my pre-debate analysis was I need her to bring the policies and not just love. And she brought both. And we'll get into the specifics about her love agenda. But she kept jumping in. She hit some of the candidates. She brought up some really great points. Other points may be cringe and incredibly hard. The moment, let me tell you this, the moment when she very seriously looked at the camera and spoke to Donald Trump directly and said, Mr. President, I'm going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field and sir, love will win. Damn. I wanted to jump out of my fucking skin. That made me cringe so hard, but simultaneously I was laughing to the point where I almost had tears in my eyes like getting to the winners here. There's three left. So you know who the winners are in this category, Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris. Kirsten Gillibrand was in the meh category for a large portion of the debate. But towards the end, she shot up in terms of performance. She started talking, inserting herself into conversations where she had knowledge and value to add. And where she really was strong and just shined was when she talked about corruption. She brought up publicly financed elections and talked about how you need to get rid of the money in politics. And she didn't add the dark money caveat. She said, full stop, get rid of money. And then you could proceed to other issues because the money in politics is what's preventing progress. Very, very strong. She came off as someone who was knowledgeable. She came off as someone who did her homework. Parts of her answer seemed overly rehearsed. And I think that she's got to work on that. But overall, I think she performed well. And I wouldn't be surprised if she got a bump in the polls. Now, when it comes to Bernie Sanders, he started out incredibly strong. He ended incredibly strong. But here's the thing, Bernie Sanders, in my opinion, kind of had the same issue that Elizabeth Warren had where you're one of the front runners and you technically don't have to do much. All you have to do is maintain. And once the field kind of thins out, then you start to take off the gloves. So, you know, don't go out of your way to attack and come off as vindictive if you don't have to. However, there's a line between, you know, being overly vindictive and playing it too safe. I think Bernie ultimately erred on the side of playing it a little bit too safe. Like when he attacked Joe Biden for his what on the Iraq war, that was a powerful moment, but it was so short and we needed more of it. And furthermore, when you see how much of an influence Bernie Sanders has on all of these candidates to where they're influenced by his policies, where what he's been pushing and popularizing over the last couple of years is brought up constantly at these debates for him to not brag about that and brag about how he influenced it. I think he's doing a disservice to himself. Now, even if he was strong and I think he did a good, he performed well, I kind of hold him to a higher standard in terms of debate performance because I think he's just such an excellent debater. And he is an effective communicator simply because he comes across as authentic. But I think at this next debate, because there was someone who was such a breakout star, he does need to do more. I loved that him and Kamala Harris kind of tag teamed each other on Medicare for all. It's important for them to team up for now, while they take out the bigger targets. But later on him and Kamala can go head to head and butt heads. But for now, I like both of their strategies. So Bernie performed well. He was pretty solid. However, there's one clear winner in this debate. And even if I desperately desperately wanted it to be Bernie Sanders objectively, if I'm basing this on performance and not who I agree with more overall, I don't even think it was a question. Kamala Harris won this debate hands down. And not only did she win, I think this is one of the best debate performances I've seen in quite some time. She won basically both nights. That's how strong I think her performance is. Now, that's not me endorsing her policies. That's not me endorsing her as a politician. That's me saying that in terms of sheer debate performance, she absolutely did enough to where I wouldn't be surprised if she started to pass Elizabeth Warren, possibly Bernie in the polls, simply because her performance was so strong. And in this debate, she may have single-handedly taken down Joe Biden. I'm impressed. I'm absolutely impressed. And if you listen to lefty political commentators back when she announced, we were all saying, watch out for Kamala Harris. I know how Kolinsky said it. Emma Viglin said it. A lot of us said it because when you recognize that raw political talent, just in terms of being a skilled orator, in terms of being able to effectively communicate a message and demonstrate knowledge and passion, she has it. She has it. Credit where it's due. You can't deny her that. So Kamala Harris, the clear winner, better than Bill de Blasio, and she's the one to look out for. And even if I think that her and Bernie should team up currently, he may have to turn his sights to her and start going on offense sooner rather than later, because as this field thins, which probably won't substantially happen until after Iowa, but after the first couple of debates, it wouldn't be impossible to imagine some candidates dropping out. But as the field thins, she's going to stand out more and she's going to start cutting in to Bernie and Elizabeth Warren's territory. Now, the progressives in my audience, we know the difference between a real progressive and someone who just knows that they have to be and present themselves as progressives for purposes of political expediency. But the general population isn't going to be able to tell the difference. That's why Bernie, I think he's going to have to step up and not necessarily attack. You don't have to attack or be vindictive, but you need to differentiate yourself. You need to say, look, this support that we're seeing for Medicare for all, who did that? I did that. Nobody wanted to talk Medicare for all until I talked about it. Nobody started to talk about issues X, Y, and Z until I popularized these issues. He's going to have to do that because Kamala is a very strong candidate. She's no Hillary Clinton. She's no Joe Biden. She is someone who's solid. And I can see her outlasting the likes of Pete Buttigieg as well. So that is the winners, the losers and whatnot. Let me get to some specific moments. So the debate open with Kamala Harris just impressing me right off the bat. She was asked, how do we pay for all these progressive policy proposals that people like you and Bernie support? And immediately she had the right answer. She flipped it. I didn't hear the media ask Donald Trump how they're going to pay for tax cuts for the rich. That's exactly what we have been telling politicians to say. And it's part of the reason why I'm impressed with her. She also talked about the economy and how Donald Trump brags about how good the economy is, but he always references how well stock markets are doing when most people don't even have stocks. So of course, that's not a good indicator. Pete Buttigieg, he said a lot of things that made him seem smart, but in actuality, if you know your shit, you know that he's being disingenuous. So he talked about why he doesn't support free college because he believes in a prototypical neoliberal version of free college. Oh, let's make it free. But let's means tested. He also used the same line that Amy Klobuchar used last night. He said, I don't want to pay for college for rich kids. Rich kids are not going to go to publicly funded universities. They're going to go to private schools. Stop saying this because it's very clear that you're lying. He also, he said that whenever somebody says Medicare for all, whenever, whenever that word leaves a candidate's lips, they need to explain how to get to Medicare for all. Now he says this and he thinks he's saying something that's so profound, but it's not profound. Stop over complicating it. The way that you get to Medicare for all is you pass Medicare for all. That's exactly what you do. Pass it. Four years later, it gets implemented. Now I would opt for Jaya Paul's bill over Bernie's bill because that has a two year rollout as opposed to Bernie's four year rollout, but that is the quickest way. Now, since we're on the subject of healthcare, I want to continue here because we had Joe Biden and Michael Bennett say, you know, the quickest way, the way that they're pitching it is the quickest way to get to universal care, of course, is to build on the ACA. But again, that doesn't even make sense. You're building on something. So you implement it, you wait a few years, you, you know, add something else. That's not how you get to universal coverage. That's factually incorrect and it's logically inconceivable. If you want Medicare for all, if you want universal care more specifically, which is the buzzword they use, then you pass Medicare for all. It's that simple. Anyone who says that, anyone who says access, please understand they are bullshitting you. And while we're still on the subject of healthcare, the question again was posed to the candidates about whether or not they want to get rid of private health insurance. Again, to Kamala's credit, she raised her hand and not surprising, you know, to anyone, Bernie Sanders also raised his hand and they both declared boldly so that they want to get rid of private health insurance companies. Now Kamala can't get too much credit here because she did waver before at her first scene in town hall. She said, let's get rid of them. And then less than 24 hours later, she backtracked. But I mean, regardless, I'll give her credit here because it is important to commit to that if you want a really robust Medicare for all system. We interrupt this program to bring you a special report. Hello, everyone. I hope you're all enjoying my post debate analysis. I am in the process of editing the video that you're watching now. So I'm coming to you from the future. However, as I'm trying to Google the article so I can show you when Kamala Harris flip flopped when it comes to the question of eliminating private insurance, look what I found. She literally flip flopped again hours later, faster than she flip flopped before. So let me recap at her first scene in town hall. She was asked if she should get rid of if we should get rid of private health insurance companies. She said yes, get rid of them. And then she backtracked. She was asked again, raise your hand if you want to get rid of private insurance companies. And she says yes. And she flip flops again. This wishy washyness on Medicare for all is definitely a weakness that we will have to exploit as progressives. Now what's funny is I actually want to play a little bit of a clip from the last time when I was editing a video talking about Kamala Harris, because in the last time I talked about her scene in town hall, she flip flopped so fast then that I literally had to do another one of these segments where I kind of cut in while I'm editing to tell you that she flip flopped that fast where I couldn't get it into this video. I'm in the process of editing this video and I can't even finish editing the video and I find out this that Kamala Harris already backtracked. Like you can't make this shit up. So I get it. This is getting confusing because this is a video within a video within a video. This is extremely meta, but just so you know, just so we're clear, Kamala flip flopped on eliminating private health insurance for a second time. You've got to know the details of Medicare for all and where you stand. So this is a big deal. So certainly keep in mind that I gave her a lot of credit here. You've got to take some of that away. But with that being said, back to, you know, the post debate analysis. We'll talk more about this later. I'm sure. Now, moving on, just a little random thing to throw in here. There was a moment that lasted about four to five seconds, but it was such an awkward moment, perhaps the most awkward moment of the night. Besides Joe Biden basically saying I'm out of time. It was when Eric Swaldwell asked Pete Buttigieg why he hasn't fired a racist police chief. Pete Buttigieg just simply stared at him and gave him the death glare. And it was so awkward. The tension was palpable. And I just had to point this out because this really stood out to me. Michael Bennett then played offense and attacked Bernie Sanders saying, you know, he wants to ban every insurance company and he wants to ban it for everything except for, you know, cosmetic procedures like plastic surgery. Now that's so that's such a stupid argument because nobody cares about their private insurance. We care about keeping our doctor. And the reason why we ban duplicative care is because it's already covered under Medicare for all. So we don't need a two tiered system where the private companies can jump in and offer, you know, a plan that the government is already offering. So there's no need for anything. But, you know, unless you want supplemental care for something like plastic surgery, which honestly, you're just going to finance anyway. So it's a non issue that he's bringing up. It is a non issue, but he thinks he's being profound. But then Kamala Harris jumped in and she kind of took the heat off of Bernie by saying this is an issue. This is something that affects people and she brought in a personal anecdote or not a personal anecdote, but a story about how, you know, the private health insurance companies are ripping people off. That was great. And predictably Bernie Sanders was incredibly strong on the issue of healthcare. He's the best on this hands down. He's the best on it. So of course he was great on this issue. Now here is what I want to get into next immigration because we had a really bright spot here from Marianne Williamson because she did something that I rarely hear. She brought up how the reason why immigration is an issue and why people want to move here to begin with is because of US foreign policy in Latin America. We destabilized these countries. We catalyzed these crises. That was great that she brought that up. That was huge. That was a very substantive point to make. John Hickenlooper didn't have a good answer. He just immediately went to platitudes when he was asked. Kamala gave a strong answer. I believe that Bernie Sanders also brought up Latin America. I would have liked him to explore that further, but kind of touching on, you know, why we need to get countries together in Latin America and we'll solve this together. But I think that Marianne Williamson hit the target a little bit better, but still Bernie's answer was good and you have to touch on Latin America when you're talking about immigration because our policies have destabilized a lot of Latin Americans countries directly and indirectly and we have to address that. We need a president who will address that. Additionally, when it comes to the border, Buddha judge endorsed this idea and I think all the candidates endorsed the idea that we should end the criminalization of people who cross the border and he then brought up religion. He then brought up religion. Now, I think this could be persuasive because you're essentially saying, well, Republicans can't use religion if they treat immigrants this way when that's against religion. But I don't want to hear about your religion and it really seems like he's pandering to moderate voters when he does this and he talks about, oh, we want the Christian left to rise. Yeah, that just, it turns me off every time I hear him say that. Moving on to Eric Swalwell, I'm going to summarize his performance for you in one quick sentence. Pass the torch, pass the torch, pass the torch. Whenever Bernie or Biden would say something, he'd say pass the torch and it came off as agist, but then Marianne Williamson swooped in again and basically told him to eat shit and die. She said, just because you have a young body doesn't mean that you won't have old ideas. That was so good. Marianne Williamson, this is why I put her in the good category. She then, speaking of Marianne Williamson, brought up reparations when talking about the issue of criminal justice and she is the strongest on this issue. I loved the fact that on a national debate stage, a presidential candidate invoked reparations. This is awesome. This is, you know, it demonstrates the power that progressives have. We are moving the Overton window to the left. That's evidence of that. Now Joe Biden, I'm going to summarize his entire performance when he wasn't playing defense, when he was talking about his record and his accomplishments. This is about the way that he performed. Mr. Vice President, you have 30 seconds to answer the question. Go. Okay. Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama. How much time do I have left? You have 10 seconds, sir. Perfect. Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama. I'm done. My time's up. I'm sorry. It was all about Obama. Now I get it. Hillary tried to do this strategy as well, but Kamala, she actually had a pretty strong strategy where she set herself apart and she said, look, this is where I disagreed with Obama's administration was when it comes to immigration. Because even if Obama and you were not as cruel as Donald Trump, obviously, they still had a lot of draconian aspects about their immigration policy. They had the alien transfer exit program, which Kamala didn't bring up, but Obama had this. This was cruel is where you take, you know, an immigrant man, drop him off somewhere randomly in the country where he came from, which can potentially put them in danger and use this as a deterrent to dissuade people from coming. I hate that. It's cruel on the subject of Yang. He hurt himself when he brought up how Russia is our greatest geopolitical threat because they hacked or stole our democracy. I don't like this talk because they didn't hack or steal our democracy. No voting booths were affected. There's no evidence that that's the case. Releasing the DNC emails, posting memes online and influencing, you know, the election in other social media-centric ways, that's not tantamount to hacking the election. So the reason why that's bad is because you need to take responsibility as a party as to why you were wrong. And you can't just say that without proposing a solution, like increasing cybersecurity, moving the paper ballots. Again, Tulsi Gabbard was one of the first to come up with a solution here. Anybody who talks about how, you know, Russia's such a big threat like Yang and Eric Swalwell, they haven't supported Tulsi's bill. So they shouldn't speak on this topic because they're not serious here. One moment that I did like was when Bernie Sanders said he'd bring countries together and he'd talk about the common enemy that we all have in climate change. Very powerful. John Hickenlooper, conversely, talked about bringing businesses together to attack climate change. So you're gonna bring oil and gas companies together, in other words, and ask them how we can do something that will definitely cut into their profits. John Hickenlooper, I'm sorry, is a fucking gigantic dipshit. He's just so bad. A weird moment for me was when Marianne Williamson, she said the first thing she'd do as president is she would call the prime minister of New Zealand and she would say, and I will tell her girlfriend you were so long because the United States of America is going to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up. That was such a weird moment. A really weird moment. And it would have been the weirdest moment of the night for Marianne Williamson. Had she not looked the camera in the eye and said, I'm gonna harness love politically. So this is why, you know, she was all over the place. Some moments were awesome, where I loved it. Other moments had me scratching my head. By and large, Kamala Harris was definitely a winner. Joe Biden, definitely a loser. Bernie Sanders, he did what he needed to do in terms of maintaining. But next time him and Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard, the progressives need to step up a lot more because there's a lot of really great speakers in this race like Kamala Harris and to a much lesser extent, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg. And they're going to outshine some of the progressives if they don't start really getting forceful and elbowing their way, you know, into the conversation more. But great debate, really entertaining two nights, informative, much better than anything we've seen in the White House. I could tell you that. However, you know, we'll see how this plays out. It's still incredibly early. This is the first debate. And yeah, hopefully you guys enjoyed my coverage. So on night one of the first 2020 Democratic Party primary debate, we had what seemed to be a death blow. Tulsi Gabbard dismantled Tim Ryan in such a thorough and embarrassing way that that moment may have single-handedly tanked his campaign. Now I did not think that lightning would strike twice. I didn't think we'd get the same moment in night two, but we did. And this moment surprisingly came from Kamala Harris, who called out Joe Biden rightfully so for recently talking about how personable segregationists were. Now she started by sharing why she was bothered by the way he talked about segregation. I do not believe you are a racist. And I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground. But I also believe and it is personal and I was actually very, it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools. And she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly as Attorney General of California. I was very proud to put in place a requirement that all my special agents would wear body cameras and keep those cameras on. So that was really powerful. She shared her personal story. She called out Joe Biden specifically because he worked with segregationists to oppose busing, which is huge. That's a big deal. You're not teaming up with segregationists to stop a war or something. You're teaming up with them to do segregation. You're a segregationist. So she hit him on that. And that was really important. It was a powerful moment. His response, crash and burn. He denied it. And he didn't have a good response. And they butted heads. And she absolutely got the better of him here. To mischaracterize my position across the board, I did not praise racist. That is not true. Number one, number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I'm happy to do that. I was a public defender. I didn't become a prosecutor. I came out and I left a good law firm to become a public defender. When in fact my city was in flames because of the assassination of Dr. King. Number one, number two, as the US, excuse me, as the vice president of the United States, I work with a man who in fact, we worked very hard to see to it, we dealt with these issues in a major, major way. The fact is that in terms of busing, the busing I never, you would have been able to go to school the same exact way because it was a local decision made by your city council. That's fine. That's one of the things I argued for, that we should be breaking down these lines. But so the bottom line here is, look, everything I've done in my career, I ran because of civil rights. I continue to think we have to make fundamental changes in civil rights. And those civil rights, by the way, include not just only African Americans, but the LGBT community. Vice President Biden, do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America? Do you agree? I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That's what I opposed. Well, there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America. I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education. Because your city council made that decision. It was a local decision. So that's where the federal government must step in. That's why we have the voting rights act and why we need to pass the ERA because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people. That moment right there was so strong. That's going to bring Joe Biden down potentially in the polls substantially. All the other candidates should send Kamala a thank you card because she may have just single-handedly taken down a front runner. Now, you know, he was already starting to nosedive when it comes to polling and support. But that right there was just that was brilliant. You've got to give her credit where it's due. That was a political maneuver that was so strong, so powerful that I don't know how Joe Biden would have been able to respond to that. I mean, if I was instructing Joe Biden, what I would say is you have to apologize. Don't be defensive. Don't deny. Just apologize. But he's a narcissist like Donald Trump. So he's incapable of introspection and he would never admit to any wrongdoing. And he did that. And he was so flustered, so unable to defend himself. What he did was cut himself off. Not kidding. I agree that everybody one stay in five. Anyway, my time's up. I'm sorry. Thank you vice president. Yikes. Now, as I said in the full debate breakdown that I did, if you are a candidate like Joe Biden, it behooves you to not say very much, you know, because people don't like you when they hear what you have to say. So to maintain that lead, you've got to try to remain quiet most of the time. But the caveat is if you are defending yourself, you absolutely should not stop talking. You run out of the clock. He cut himself off and said, I'm out of time. Embarrassing. Completely embarrassing. Kamala Harris absolutely destroyed Joe Biden. And I suspected that somebody would call him out on this stage because of his support for segregationists and his, you know, fun memories of individuals like James Eastlin, who is just explicitly racist and just was a garbage person. I thought that it was possible somebody would call him out, but I wasn't sure that they would be able to do it in a way that was powerful and effective. Kamala did just that. And it wasn't just this moment that made her stand out. I mean, her performance overall was great. So she's one to look out for because regardless if you support her or not, she is a powerful debater and a great speaker. And she's going to use that to her advantage. And what she did here to Joe Biden was just masterful. It's something that anyone who's getting into politics should watch and study because that's how you take down a political behemoth. You call them on their bullshit and you leave them in a position where they're so damaged that they can't defend themselves. Kirsten Gillibrand towards the second half of night two of the first democratic party primary debate, she really started to shine and speak up. And she spoke about corruption in such an articulate way and impressive way that I wanted to spotlight it. The reason why the Trump tax cut had to be passed is because they had to pay back their donors. You heard it. They actually said those words. So the corruption in Washington is real. And it is something that makes every one of the plans we've heard about over the last several months impossible. And I have the most comprehensive approach to do it with clean elections, publicly fund elections. So we restore the power of our democracy into the hands of the voters, not into the Koch brothers. We were talking about issues. Imagine we're in Florida. Imagine the Parkland kids having as much power in our democracy as the Koch brothers or the NRA. Imagine their voices powering farther and wider than anyone else because their voice is needed. Senator Gillibrand, I'm trying to get everybody in here. It's the first thing I'm going to do because nothing else is possible, whether it's education or health care or ending institution So this is great. She's persuasive here. Everything she's saying is 100% on point. But here's the issue that I have with Kirsten Gillibrand. She's one of those candidates who she talks the talk, but she's not walking the walk. She talks about money and politics. And then one of her first acts as a presidential candidate was to go to a fundraiser that was thrown for her by the executive of a big pharma company, Sally Sussman of Pfizer. And her excuse, well, she's a friend and, you know, she supports me because I support LGBTQ rights. That's a poor excuse. If you know about how big of an issue money and politics is and you know how corrosive money is as a force in our democracy, why would you do that? Why would you do that? So it's odd to see her of all people talk this strongly and intelligently about the issue of money and politics. I would expect someone like Kamala Harris, who also I think is not a true progressive, however you want to interpret that. But, you know, she's a late comer when it comes to issues like Medicare for all. But I'd expect her to really use this issue to her advantage. But what Kirsten Gillibrand has done is kind of carve out her own lane here. And I think the way she's pitching this is look, corruption is, it's everywhere in the system. It's incredibly prevalent. So I propose the bill that eliminates all corruption, get money out of politics. So you don't have to worry about me doing these fundraisers, presumably, because we should worry about that. So, you know, she's saying the right things here. The problem is she just needs to talk the talk, right? And let me rephrase that. She needs to walk the walk and not just talk the talk because she is, you know, she talks a good game. Now, the problem is, I don't think that people will be as perceptive as people who are as savvy as, you know, someone who would seek out a political podcast, like this one, you're not going to know if you're just tuning in that she's not the real deal, that she attends these fundraisers with big pharma executives, you're just going to think, oh, that makes sense. I think there's too much money in politics. What she's saying makes sense to me. You won't know that she only recently stopped taking corporate PAC money, doesn't say anything about these private fundraisers, attends them herself. So, you know, this is an issue. However, I still want to commend her because positive reinforcement is important. And I am a believer in giving credit where it's due. And even if we can't necessarily believe what she's saying, at least she's talking about this in a way. That's correct. And in a way that ultimately will do what we want. We'll shift the Overton window to the left and get more people to talk about this policy in this way. And that matters. There were a lot of highlights from the second night of the first Democratic Party debate. When it comes to Bernie Sanders, I think he was the strongest on Medicare for all. He had a phenomenal closing statement and he got his message across and did enough to maintain his position in the current field. But what I was hoping he would do is kind of start to take the gloves off. And I think, you know, a couple of months down the line, he's going to really have to be more forceful. But one area that got my attention was when he started to call out Joe Biden for basically being a warmonger. Joe Biden is functionally in alignment with a lot of neoconservatives. He's not as bad as someone like John Bolton. But he's still, he voted for the Iraq War. He was part of the administration that turned Libya into a failed state. So Bernie Sanders hit him on this. He didn't hit him as hard as I would have liked, but it was still a great moment. You voted for the Iraq War. You have since said you regret that vote. But why should voters trust your judgment when it comes to making a decision about taking the country to war the next time? Because once we, once Bush abused that power, what happened was we got elected after that. I made sure the president turned to me and said, Joe, get our combat troops out of Iraq. I was responsible for getting 150,000 combat troops out of Iraq and my son was one of them. I also think we should not have combat troops in Afghanistan. It's long overdue. It should end. And thirdly, I believe that you're not going to find anybody who has pulled together more of alliances to deal with what is the real stateless threat out there. We cannot go alone in terms of dealing with terrorism. So I'd eliminate the act that allowed us to go into war and not the AUMF and make sure that it could only be used for what it's intended was, what's intense was. And that is to go after terrorists, but never do it alone. That's why we have to repair our alliances. We put together 65 countries to make sure we dealt with ISIS in Iraq and other places. That's what I would do. That's what I have done and I know how to do it. Senator Sanders, 30 seconds. One of the differences that Joe and I have in our record is Joe voted for that war. I helped lead the opposition to that war, which is a total disaster. Second of all, I helped lead the effort for the first time to utilize the War Powers Act to get the United States out of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which is the most horrific humanitarian disaster on Earth. And thirdly, let me be very clear, I will do everything I can to prevent a war with Iran, which would be far worse than disastrous war with Iraq. So that's what I want to see from Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has the credibility, unlike any other candidate, to where he absolutely can brag about his phenomenal record. He has the best record out of anyone in politics, hands down. So you have a right, you've earned the right to brag. And with bragging comes, you know, this acceptance that you can call out the candidates who aren't as good as you. And calling out Biden here was phenomenal. Now, since we're on the topic of foreign policy, Bernie Sanders did really great here in talking about foreign policy. And he boasted about his foreign policy credentials in a way that I think was really important. He needed to say this because a lot of people say that Bernie just isn't effective. And he proposes all of these policies, but they never get passed. And what he did in this debate was he said, this is what I have accomplished. This is what I just accomplished. He brought up Yemen, and he did a great job. So overall, just a bright spot, you know, for all of you brothers of the Bernard, Bernard brothers, whatever we're calling ourselves nowadays, he did a great job. His performance was very solid. And it's why I think he was one of the winners of this debate. He's going to have to turn up the heat a little bit next time. But for now, I think he did good enough. And I think that calling out Joe Biden is absolutely the correct strategy. You have to dunk on the front runner. Otherwise, that front runner will maintain that status. But if you all agree that we've got to bring down the front runner, then nobody's going to be singled out as someone who is being overly aggressive or overly hostile or vindictive. So I think that Bernie should have not played as nice. However, still the fact that he called out Biden here, it mattered. And it was really one of the highlights of the debate for me. Well, that's all that I've got for you guys today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've made it this far, as usual, I want to thank all of our Patreon PayPal and YouTube members for helping the show to not just survive but thrive as well. You guys are absolutely amazing. And you are incredible. Also shout out to all of our iTunes and SoundCloud listeners. So I will see you all next week. I'm Mike Triggerado. This is the Humanist Report. I don't think I have anything special planned for our 200th episode because I'm just not that creative. I exhaust all of my creativity on what I'm already doing. So unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be an extraordinary episode or anything like that. But nonetheless, it's still a really big milestone. Four years of the podcast and 200 episodes. That's certainly something that is, I guess, I could be proud of. So either way, I'll see you all next week. Take care. I'm Mike Triggerado. This has been the Humanist Report podcast.