 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and Paypal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 274 of the program. Today is Friday, January 22nd and before we get started I want to take some time to thank all of the people who make the show possible. All of our Patreon, Paypal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes Amanda Sol, BG, Camille De Palo, Christina Sandage, Jail Story, DGLSGRTHS, Diana Libman, Eric Idawebs, Israel Vazquez, Jeffrey Williams, Leona Rosales, Lizbeth Raphael, Matt Dejani, Patrick Fredericks, Raptor Slough, JT123, Rob Palace, Scott Johnson, Sonic Goku Jiren, Q&B and Vahide Hagigi. Thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the Independent Progressive Media Revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So this week is the end of an era and the start of a new one. The Trump era is over so of course we will celebrate the end of the Trump era and we'll talk about how he spent his remaining months in office doing absolutely nothing and how election misinformation actually decreased substantially after he was banned from social media. Additionally, Joe Biden is now the president of the United States. I'll give you my thoughts after his inauguration. We'll talk about his day one executive orders and the conflicts of interest that exist within his administration that I think you need to know about. Joe Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders has some big plans for the first 100 days of Biden's presidency and also members of the pro-Trump cult QAnon are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that Joe Biden was inaugurated and he wasn't actually arrested which is what they thought was going to happen come inauguration day. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Let's get right to it. It's kind of a later episode but nonetheless you know it's nice to have less things happening that are actually consequential rather than like chaos every single week so you know let's get right to it. With the exception of complaining about the election and inciting a violent insurrection Donald Trump hasn't really done much of anything since losing the election. He has golfed but I mean he just he's given up even trying to govern and that's that's an issue right you know I'm a little bit torn on this on one hand like I want him to go away because anytime he speaks and makes a public appearance he just fans the flames further but at the same time during a global pandemic we do need competent leadership at the federal level especially when we're rolling out a vaccine when we need federal leadership to deliver you know money to states aid to states so you know it's a mixed bag but it still is really stunning that Trump has just basically gone MIA in fact it's been six days since he's made a public appearance at the time I record this video and CNN did a segment on this that kind of puts it all into perspective about his overall schedule since the election. President Trump hasn't been seen publicly in six days and his schedule has been mostly empty since election day if you take a look from Tuesday November 3rd until today more than half of the time 46 days no public events at all have been listed on the president's schedule but Trump has spent 16 days golfing on one of his own courses CNN contributor Garrett Graff is joining us now he's the author of several books including the threat matrix inside Mueller's FBI among them so Garrett if you know little to nothing is on his schedule what the heck is he been doing since the election well what we know so far is that he has spent a lot of time grousing you know talking to aides friends his dwindling pool of allies complaining about this election complaining and trying to pressure election officials to try to overcome it and now we understand you know in the 10 days or so since the insurrection at the Capitol when he has even gotten more toxic as Caitlyn Collins was just saying he has turned his focus to trying to squeeze out a few final actions as president we are expecting in the next 48 hours at some point to see as many as a hundred pardons come down from the president and this is something that typically all presidents do in their final hours but no one has ever abused the pardon power as much as president Trump has so everyone's waiting with bated breath to see who ends up on that list first of all let me just say a side note Garrett's book looks like porn for resistance liberals and i'm so glad we're past the days where liberals are like worshiping robert moeller they were like trying to like sexualize robert moeller and it was just really creepy and weird so i hope that we can move you know past that because those days were some really dark times in american history i i couldn't resist i had to like make a note about his book but putting that aside we actually do know who trump is planning to pardon and the first individual who will benefit from a trump pardon is rapper lil wane this is according to double excel magazine uh trump's administration is currently preparing paperwork to pardon lil wane now if you're wondering why out of all of the rappers he's choosing lil wane and not like bobby schmurda or bg well it's easy it's because he's basically repaying a favor uh lil wane basically endorsed him you know indirectly it was a tacit endorsement but nonetheless you know it was a nod to donald trump and donald trump remembers that lil wane tweeted this out during the 2020 election just had a great meeting with donald trump besides what he's done so far with criminal reform the platinum plan is going to give the community real ownership he listened to what we had to say today and assured he will and can get it done so you know trump remembers that and uh trump is uh most likely i'm assuming gonna pardon his allies and people who did favors for him like he's gonna use whatever time to just like make sure that he sets himself up and his allies up for the future but like these 100 pardons and you know commuting sentences if if we're talking about like nonviolent drug offenders i would have no problem with that but if we're just talking about like this this cronyism where trump is repaying debts and favors to people i think that's pretty messed up but when it comes to the end of the trump era i really hope that folks see that this was never about america or the american people this was always about donald trump like this this is kind of a mask-off moment to have a president like disappear go m i a because he lost an election and he's butt heard about that like this should prove to folks that he never cared about you this was always about him this was a personal project like you often hear chuds talk about how well you know he was well off he was rich he didn't have to become president but he did because he cared about america that's bullshit i don't think trump ever expected to become president he was running for president as a vanity project there were numerous reports that that was the case and that that would be like the launching pad for some type of news network or tv network or something along those lines but he never cared and this shows it like now that he's not going to be in power and he won't get credit for the things that he does like if he puts in place an actual cohesive plan to competently roll out the distribution of the vaccine you know he probably thinks oh well i'm not going to get credit joe biden will get credit so why would i care like he never cared but i mean his his supporters are are in a cult so they're not going to see him golfing for 16 days during a global pandemic since losing the election as a sign that he doesn't care about anyone but himself they're not going to look at him pardoning his allies as a sign that he doesn't care about anyone but himself and those in his inner circle you know this is a very deeply narcissistic and selfish individual and his supporters just are never going to see that and you think that if they were going to see it it'd be now when he's gone m i a when you know if you truly cared you could be using these last days to make a difference you know you'd see some kind of sad posts of his supporters like he'd complain about losing the election and that it was stolen from him and then his supporter would respond with basically okay yeah the election was stolen but we really need a stimulus can you do that for us with the remaining time that you have like i'm paraphrasing of course but you'd see you'd see the screenshots of this and you know this really is a cult they'll never abandon him they won't take that as a sign that maybe he doesn't actually care maybe he's just a self-serving narcissist but you know it doesn't matter because it's all coming to an end soon and whether or not the trump era itself is over that is yet to be determined i think that trumps influence within the republican party is waning largely due to the capital insurrection but you know we'll have to wait and see i think that the republican party will adapt and kind of embrace some of trump's tactics while not like being overtly trumpian but you know it's almost over and he's he's just sulking he's not doing jack's shit and i think that this wouldn't be a story if the circumstances in the country weren't so bleak but the fact that he's not doing anything it just it speaks volumes like his silence is deafening but again i'll be honest part of me wants him to kind of like hide his face because anything that he says like what is that going to do realistically for the country he's not going to help heal wounds he's not going to bring people together he's not going to act in a competent way that puts us in a better position it's just so maybe it's a good thing i don't know but either way i think it is still very telling that he is not doing anything so joe biden is set to be sworn in on wednesday tomorrow by the time that most of you see this video and he's already planning a number of day one executive orders that i think are objectively good um now i do have a criticism of joe biden that i will be addressing but i will give him credit words do like my goal here going forward is not to be a hack if joe biden does something that i disagree with something that's damaging and harmful i'm going to call him out for it and i'm going to try to hold him accountable if he does something that i think is good then i'm going to give him credit for it like i'm not trying to create any sort of narrative uh either joe biden good or bad as a leftist i think that you all know where i stand joe biden has an extensive record that is extremely problematic and conservative so overall he doesn't get a honeymoon you know i don't give him this grace period where you know for the first couple of weeks you know something that he does i just brush it off as well he's learning no he knows what he's doing but when it comes to these executive orders that he is reportedly planning i think these are good uh you know i've got to give him credit for this and these are things that most reasonable people will be in favor of so as michael schier and peter baker of the new york times reports on his first day in office alone mr biden intends a flurry of executive orders that will be partly substantive and partly symbolic they include rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly muslim countries rejoining the paris climate change accord extending pandemic related limits on evictions and student loan issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from families after crossing the border according to a memo circulated on saturday by ron claim his incoming white house chief of staff and obtained by the new york times the blueprint of executive action comes after mr biden announced that he will push congress to pass a 1.9 trillion dollar package of economic stimulus and pandemic relief signaling a willingness to be aggressive on policy issues and confronting republicans from the start to take their lead from him he also plans to send sweeping immigration legislation on his first day in office providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people in the country illegally along with his promise to vaccinate 100 million americans for the coronavirus in his first 100 days it is an expansive set of priorities for a new president that could be a defining test of his deal-making abilities and command of the federal government now when it comes to him saying he's going to vaccinate 100 million americans within the first 100 days if he is actually able to accomplish this which currently it seems like a logistical nightmare um he really does get credit for that when it comes to you know rescinding the most horrible things that trump did even symbolic things such as the muslim man because right now you know it's very difficult to travel globally um because of coronavirus but these are all things that are really important and meaningful and i expected this like i expected him to get us back into the paris climate accord because this was one of the signature achievements of the obama era and this isn't good like just the paris climate accord alone isn't good but it's still better than nothing it's it's better than nothing it is meaningful it does make a difference um it just to have a president that actually believes in anthropogenic climate change in and of itself i think that is important it is meaningful given that we don't have much time left to act on climate change so wherever there is a victory i'm going to take it even if it might not necessarily be enough but things like you know mask mandates federally you know you can't impose a federal mask mandate but what he can do is make sure that if you're on federal property you are required to wear a mask interstate travel that's also important so these are things that i think will make a huge difference in the short term in the short term and that's important like you have to take meaningful action to make sure that long term we are in a better place but on your first day i do expect you to focus on the short term and these are easy things that he can't accomplish when it comes to student loan debt cancellation i don't know what he's going to do there is some pressure from members of congress including chuck schumer uh to cancel at least $50,000 worth of student debt we'll wait and see it seems like joe biden is reluctant to do that but these are great things and i'm in favor of it and that's not all to the chagrin of canadian prime minister justin trudeau he also will be killing off the keystone xl pipeline and as jake johnson of common dreams reports president elect joe biden is reportedly planning on the day of his inauguration to rescind a federal permit allowing construction of the keystone xl pipeline in the united states a move environmentalists said would represent an immense victory for the planet attributable to years of tireless indigenous led opposition to the dirty energy project cbc news reported sunday that the words rescind keystone xl pipeline permit appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for day one of biden's presidency which begins with his swearing in on wednesday the withdrawal of the keystone xl permit is among several environment related actions biden plans to take via executive order during his first day in office a list that includes rejoining the paris climate accord now look it's easy to give biden credit for this but you also have to give credit to the indigenous groups who never let their foot off the gas who applied continuous pressure on both the canadian and u.s governments to kill this project off so this is good like i'm going to take a victory wherever i can get a victory times are dark right now and so long as we're moving in the right direction no matter how large of a step that we take i think currently i'm looking for anything and this is all really encouraging to me having said all of that though biden gets credit if he does in fact do all of this but one area where we can't let him off the hook for is the lie that he uh peddled about stimulus checks we were told many times that if democrats retook the senate we get two thousand dollar checks all you've got to do is vote for rafael warnach and john ossoff give us the senate and in exchange for that we will give you two thousand dollar checks uh well now he's backtracking on that rather than giving us two thousand dollar checks now we're being promised fourteen hundred dollar checks because if you uh subtract the six hundred dollars that we already received uh from the two thousand then we get fourteen hundred and fourteen hundred plus six hundred equals two thousand except that's not what you said though that's not what you said this is a literal mailer that rafael warnach's campaign sent out with a fake two thousand dollar check this doesn't say fourteen hundred dollars it says two thousand dollars and as rebecca biden puts it no matter how you rationalize this it was a bait and switch using a visual device to motivate voters was effective backtracking and changing the amount on the check is a betrayal and she's absolutely right like you can't just do that and then immediately go back on that promise like of course you get credit for the other good things that you're doing but what kind of bullshit is this where you tell us two thousand dollar checks are coming we just got to give democrats the senate and then you get the senate back and now suddenly you say no no no it's going to be fourteen hundred look it should have been two thousand dollars per month so the fact that all we're asking for in this instance is a one-time check of two thousand dollars i think that's pretty reasonable look at other countries canada the uk they have given their residents more we haven't gotten the relief necessary and going forward i hope that biden actually sees to it that there is a continued relief effort and not just like this one-time check or payment every couple of months but this is not okay and i'm glad that members of the squad are actually holding his feet to the fire aoc spoke to the washington post and she also is against this 180 from the biden administration saying two thousand dollars means two thousand dollars two thousand dollars does not mean fourteen hundred dollars and she's absolutely right if you are out of the gate going back on a major promise something that will drastically improve people's lives in the short term like you're setting yourself up for failure so on one hand the things that he's doing that are good the federal mask mandate you know uh basically i also expect him to reinstate daca as well uh prioritizing immigration reform a huge one point nine trillion dollar relief package i mean the devil is in the details but these are positive things but you can't just like dangle two thousand dollars in front of people as a motivator and then immediately go back on that promise because going forward in future elections the midterm coming up in 2022 how do you expect people to believe you so look ultimately i said this once i'll say it again joe biden and democrats they've got to deliver when you control the totality of government all eyes are on you well except for the supreme court but all eyes are on you so if something goes wrong you're going to be held accountable so you know it seems as if going into this being sworn in and on day one planning a lot of things that is that is a good sign it tells me that at least for now he knows there's a lot of crises going on simultaneously that he has to address immediately but at the same time by rescinding you know this promise going back on the $2,000 check promise that tells me that you still don't fully get it you still are going to be um out of touch with the needs of people so look it's it's one thing to you know do all of these good things he gets credit for that but this is seriously like this pisses me the fuck off with the $2,000 check thing like i i think that everyone is reasonable for expecting $2,000 it's not like we're stupid and naive for thinking oh well of course by saying we get a $2,000 check he meant we get a $1,400 check because we already got $600 like nobody thought that no reasonable person thought that so you know we hold him accountable for that and then praise him when he does things that are good this is the way that i intend to react to the biden administration but overall you know if i couldn't make a prediction i think i'm largely going to be dissatisfied with joe biden's administration because he isn't as progressive as anyone needs him to be currently in fact he's not progressive at all um but having said that though will he be better than donald trump yeah i fully expect him to be better than donald trump but the bar is pretty fucking low if we're talking about donald trump um and any republican given how far to the right they've shifted but you know having said that though this is what we can expect from uh the first day of joe biden's administration and it looks good just like don't go back on promises like the $2,000 check as joe biden becomes the president of the united states the term change on the outside continuity on the inside does in fact come to mind and i'm not trying to like perpetuate this false equivalence between the republican party and the democratic party because there are meaningful differences there is differences when it comes to the rhetoric that they use that does in fact influence culture you know there are differences when it comes to voter suppression and what have you but when it comes to neoliberalism you know finding market-based solutions for issues that plague american society foreign policy these things don't necessarily change and where there is change where there is a difference it's not significant enough so while i fully expect joe biden to reduce drones you know we had obama increased the number of drones when he took office and then he scaled them back and then trump scaled them back up i do expect biden to reduce them to obama era levels you know towards the end of obama's administration but i don't expect joe biden to end drone use altogether i don't expect joe biden to reign in us imperialism like some things never change in government and that's because our institutions have been corrupted by the virus known as capitalism uh but i want to talk about some things that folks have to pay attention to within the biden administration and this is corruption like of course donald trump is one of the most overtly corrupt presidents in us history but corruption that we see when it comes to individuals getting government jobs after coming straight from the industry like regulating industries that they came from this is something that we cannot normalize and just because it's a common phenomenon doesn't mean that we should accept it so joe biden's defense secretary pick is a literal shill for the military industrial complex he came from the defense industry and he will now be joe biden's defense secretary if approved this is something that we can't accept so as rebecca keel of the hill reports president elect joe biden's choice to be defense secretary retired general loyte austin stands to make up to 1.7 million dollars when he leaves the board of defense contractor raytheon technology's corp if he's confirmed according to his financial disclosure forms the disclosure is released sunday do not give an exact value of austin stock holdings related to his position on the raytheon board of directors but placed the range from 800 000 to about 1.75 million dollars in ethics forms austin pledged to fully divest from raytheon within 90 days of being confirmed as well as to precuse himself from decisions involving the company for a year unless a pentagon ethics official determines the need for his participation outweighs the perception of a conflict of interest it's not uncommon for defense secretaries to have ties to contractors three of the people who led the pentagon in the trump administration had defense contractor connections former secretary james mattis was on the board at general dynamics former secretary mark asper was raytheon's top lobbyist and former acting secretary patrick shanahan was an executive at bowing so this is just outrageous like anyone who cares about corruption and money in politics and the swamp republican or democrat should care about this should be outraged by this now certainly i will say that legally it is important that he sever his ties with raytheon but having said that though what's going to stop him from going back to raytheon once he's out of a job in government it's just troubling because it still incentivizes bad behavior and to be clear when i say bad behavior i mean warmongering saber rattling because all of this is good for the business known as war which is of course a business in our late-stage capitalist system but it's not just austin who is a shill for the military industrial complex there are others in biden's administration who have lots of conflicts of interests and they were financially benefiting from industries that they will be overseeing janet yellen and anthony blinkin and this is pointed out in i think a brilliant article by the daily poster and none of this is surprising but it's still infuriating it's titled biden's revolving door and andrew peres walker bragman and julia rock explain how there are direct conflicts of interest with some of biden's nominees and this just isn't being talked about by folks in the mainstream media so they report when president-elect joe biden's treasury secretary nominee janet yellen disclosed that she accepted big speaking fees from major corporations and industry groups many liberal pundits quickly defended her and suggested the revelations are not newsworthy however the daily poster has found that many of those same companies and groups have been lobbying the agency yellen has been selected to run anthony blinkin biden's pick for secretary of state has been consulting for giant companies with interests before his new department many of the financial firms banks and industry groups paying yellen will have business before her treasury department investment bank city group paid yellen a combined 1.1 million for six speeches between march of 2019 and october of 2020 the company lobbied the treasury department this year on coveted relief financial form rules housing finance reform cyber security legislation and anti-money laundering legislation goldman sacks which paid yellen more than $67,000 for a speech in june reported lobbying congress and treasury this year on implementation of democrats 2010 dod frank wall street reform law and issues related to capital and resolution as for blinkin biden secretary of state designate disclosed his clients as the secretive consulting firm west exec advisors biden's nominee for director of national intelligence avril hains reported that she was paid $180,000 by controversial data mining company and u.s. intelligence contractor palantir according to a daily poster review blinkin advised seven companies that have recently lobbied the state department including aerospace manufacturer bowing and blackstone group the world's largest private equity firm social media giant facebook and pharmaceutical company gilgad bowing is one of the country's largest defense contractors relying on the u.s. government for a substantial portion of its revenue the state department helps bowing sell commercial planes overseas and it also approves foreign arms deals by companies like bowing so ask yourself this knowing that there are all of these conflicts of interest do you honestly believe that these individuals are going to be impartial when they serve in these roles within biden's administration you'd have to be naive to think so but this is such a common occurrence that it's not talked about in mainstream media and when it is you know mainstream media pundits will literally defend these individuals janet yellen was defended by the mainstream media msnbc um and on top of that like even some progressive organizations like the i think was the p triple c they were pleased and praised biden for appointing janet yellen to be treasury secretary so i mean like the bar is so low in america that out of all of the folks in dc like the least corrupted individual is worthy of praise apparently now maybe there are less corrupt people than janet yellen uh for this position in fact i'm certain that there are but we we become so accustomed to corruption and legalized bribery in america because we live in a late stage capitalist society where literally every single thing has become commodified it's become an industry politics elections have become commodified war is a money making industry and when you have this marriage between industry and government that is precisely when democracy fails that's exactly why we're seeing such a low approval rating for congress so many policies that are very popular not get passed such as medicare for all you know federal marijuana legalization it's because you know whatever the private interests want that's what we often see become law and that's not just me saying that like as a political commentator i think this is obvious but this is backed up by political science studies in fact dr gillens and page in a 2014 princeton university study found when it comes to policy outcomes special interests and elites they dictate what becomes law whereas average citizens like we have a statistically insignificant impact on policy outcomes like that tells you that we are in a late stage capitalist society which makes democracy like almost impossible to thrive here so you know if biden is going to be a successful president he's going to have to curtail the corruption that we see in dc but the question is why would he do that when he is incentivized to keep this system going this same system that we need him to you know change is what helped him get elected health insurance industry insiders donated to joe biden they held fundraisers for him so do we expect him to rein in the health insurance industry do we expect him to take on the very system that helped him get elected and the answer i think is no so you know i want folks to understand that this is not something that should be normalized just because it is a common phenomenon that doesn't necessarily mean that we should get desensitized to it we should still see this and be outraged to it this is corruption these conflicts of interest are completely unacceptable and it's why we have to completely eradicate money in politics and decommodify elections otherwise capitalism is going to kill everything about our society including democracy itself i'm mostly speaking to you know my liberal brothers and sisters here that you all understand that now is not the time to go to brunch now is the time to be motivated now is not the time to praise joe biden because things feel normal again now is the time to truly push for change because if we don't then guess what's going to happen we're going to see another demagogue emerge that may be worse than donald trump and the writing's been on the wall for quite some time so you can't like act surprised if this does happen again you've been warned so please don't go to sleep during these years actually pay attention and fight with leftists and organizers and activists who have been fighting this capitalist system that has ruthless for decades now so it's been a little more than a week since donald trump has been banned from twitter and other social media platforms and we're learning about the impact that this has had on the aggregate discourse with regard to the us election and it's honestly stunning like shocking i expected you know his ban from twitter and social media to have a positive impact with regard to vitriol and hate and white supremacy and the spread of misinformation but i didn't expect results to this extent um this is according to a study by zygno labs misinformation specifically about the us election fell by get this 73% just by donald trump alone being banned i did not expect the numbers to be this high because there are other actors and entities that spread misinformation at the behest of donald trump far right news outlets like newsmax and oan but what this tells us is that donald trump was the most significant disseminator of propaganda and misinformation at least when it comes to the election and that is honestly astonishing so according to shona gauche of business insider online misinformation about the us election fell by as much as 73% in the week after president trump was booted from twitter and other social media sites according to findings by zygno labs conversations about election fraud fell from 2.5 million mentions to 688 thousand mentions across several social media sites the research house looked at conversations that spanned fraud hacked machines tampered ballots and other conspiracies the data indicates that tech platforms's ability to restrict the spread of falsehoods is an effective approach to containing misinformation online zygno monitored social media sites for misinformation during the seven days from january 9th the us capital riots took place january 6th zygno found that hashtags relating to the capital riots fell dramatically during the week after the suspensions mentions of the hashtags fight for trump hold the line and the phrase march for trump all fell around 95% qanon specific hashtags also fell the week after trump was suspended from twitter though mentions of the conspiracy and its supposed figurehead q went up so this is absolutely fascinating we're not going to talk about the merits of trumps ban whether or not it was a good thing because i addressed that in a separate video but the fact that he was responsible for spreading that much misinformation single-handedly it really goes to show you how important it is that we have leaders in power that actually are committed to the truth and donald trump i mean whenever he would go on twitter he would complain about misinformation or he would spread misinformation and complain about the election and you know before he was banned if you look at his timeline like tweet after tweet after tweet was labeled by twitter that you know this was uh not verified or election data analysts say that this is incorrect it was astonishing like the amount of misinformation that he was spreading was shocking even for donald trump even by his standards and throughout the course of his presidency you know these last four years he has told more than 30 000 lies 30 000 lies so you know all together when you see the impact that the president has on political discourse in the united states it kind of makes you feel like you're going crazy like it feels like you're being gaslit like it feels like we're in this post factual era where anything that somebody says it can be true so long as we believe it even if it isn't grounded in empirical reality and that's really frustrating because going forward like as a country how do we how do we communicate with one another if we don't even agree on basic facts like the fact that COVID-19 is a thing it's not a hoax that it's actually a thing or the fact that the election was not stolen from donald trump there's zero evidence that that is in fact the case widespread voter fraud is not a thing so if we can't even establish like a basis of the reality you know facts about the reality that we live in i just i don't know how going forward we can be united ever but this shows you that it really makes a difference what the president says like his bully pulpit is very very important and impactful and what he says makes a substantial difference because if your ban leads to a 73 decrease in misinformation about the election that shows that you were doing a lot of damage to the country a lot of damage and for the spread of misinformation according to this one study to fall by that much i kind of feel optimistic that maybe in the post trump era assuming that he won't be influential or as influential as he is now which of course he won't be um you know i'm hoping that folks who were part of the donald trump colt will come back to reality i'm hoping that they you know won't be as easily misled and even if there's going to be disagreement with me and these maggots who are part of the trump colt or you when these maggots at a minimum like all that we can hope for and should hope for is that when it comes to reality we all agree on certain things right we can disagree on tax policy healthcare policy and i'll argue because i believe in my position but if we don't even agree that certain things are real like a global pandemic which is not controversial in other countries or that the election was stolen like if we can't agree on like these very basic things and facts aren't persuading people i just i can't see how that society survives but this tells me that maybe we have a chance with trump being out i mean certainly we've got a lot of work to do but at least when it comes to misinformation and snapping these folks who are part of that colt out of reality getting them back into the real world maybe maybe we can start the process of deprogramming them i think that most of them can be brought back to reality it'll take time but some of them are too far gone and we're going to have to reckon with that uh but you know this this is just honestly shocking to me like i was flabbergasted when i read this 73 percent trump really was harmful to you know american political discourse and that's just from like the public side like what he did when it comes to policies it perhaps was arguably even more damaged but this i mean wow this is definitely definitely interesting well it's official joe biden is now the 46th president of the united states donald trump is out of office and if i could get a live feed of donald trump right now and what he's doing i would pay any amount for that i would give an arm and a leg for that because that would be very entertaining in fact more so than the inauguration itself um because donald trump you know he's mad and the way that he left was to uh the song y mca which didn't necessarily seem fitting for the occasion like he probably should have played something more emo maybe linkin park uh because we know that he's really butt hurt right now because he wanted to win and he wanted to win so bad he literally tried to destroy democracy to remain in power but i mean that's all behind us now the trump era is officially over and joseph r biden is the president and i want to just take a moment to kind of talk about all of that because this really is important um you know for me i am not excited about joe biden i feel like if you are excited that donald trump is out of office that's great take this time to celebrate it's a pretty dark time in american history and human history so if seeing him sworn in gives you joy then genuinely don't like take that away from yourself like if you're a bernie sander supporter like me you know we all know what to expect with joe biden this is not going to usher in some new era of progressivism in american politics he's not going to be the next fdr and he's not up to the challenge quite frankly but just seeing donald trump out of office after especially last year he became even more brazenly authoritarian arresting folks in portland oregon throwing them in unmarked vehicles threatening to use the insurrection act it is nice to see someone you know um be littered out of office and i will say that kamala harris being the first female president that really is significant you know she is not someone who i like her politics don't match mine at all she is a neoliberal which means she supports free market capitalist solutions to political problems you know i don't like kamala harris but i'm not going to deny the importance of the symbolism there like the fact that we have a female vice president who is a black woman this this really is i think it is important it is important for young girls to see a woman in power right um but putting all of that aside what we need from these next couple of years are tangibles we need policy concessions we need joe biden to deliver we need the democratic party to deliver because guess what all eyes are on them now they have 100 of the blame if things don't go well in this country and trust me republicans are very disciplined in their messaging so they're going to be blamed no matter what so what democrats have to do is prove to the american people that they are delivering for them cut through the propaganda cut through the bullshit and the way that you can do this easily is to give people two thousand dollar checks make sure they have health care make sure that during this pandemic they're taken care of and what's really important i think for this next year and the way that i would measure joe biden as having a successful first year is if he is able to get coven 19 under control and that's something that's relatively difficult to do given that we're at a state where we're seeing like 4 000 deaths per day we're going to surpass 500 000 deaths probably in a month or so like it's really serious so if he can actually follow through on that promise of getting 100 million people vaccinated in the first 100 days i think that is that's huge that's really really substantial and praise worthy and i will praise him and give him credit for that if he can actually accomplish this but i am skeptical because logistically speaking that seems really difficult to do given how poor shape we're in currently but if joe biden at a minimum can get coven 19 under control and do a better job than donald trump which i suspect he will then i think uh you know already by that standard alone he'll be better than donald trump and it's not a very high bar to pass donald trump was a terrible president i don't think he's as bad as george w bush was in terms of the damage that he caused but if we were to give him another term i think we would have plausibly seen him actually strike around like see damage on the scale that george w bush caused internationally and certainly domestically you know with his incompetence joe biden or donald trump rather he has a lot of blood on his hands and he's going to have to live with that for the rest of his life but i don't think he's ever going to come to terms with that so the best that we can hope for now in this new era this biden era is that you know folks don't take this as a sign that things have returned to normal because a country that allows the rise of a demagogue that's not normal circumstances there were underlying material conditions and racism that was never eradicated and white supremacy all of which led to donald trump so if we genuinely want to stop the rise of the next donald trump whoever that may be we have to make sure that joe biden and the democratic party are held accountable for everything that they do they actually take meaningful steps to change the material conditions in this country now even if they're successful and you know it's the best case scenario and they actually really do improve the standard of living for everyone that doesn't mean that you know the possibility of the next trump coming to power is entirely eliminated because you know if you give people money and they have jobs and they're not impoverished and desperate that doesn't necessarily mean that racism and white supremacy vanishes like that that's a separate issue that we have to tackle right but i mean class and race issues they are interconnected and you know if we don't address these issues in the next four years then i do worry that the next demagogue who comes along is going to be more effective and more nefarious than donald trump you know donald trump the things that he wanted to accomplish he was unable to accomplish because he doesn't really know what he's doing as president he was in over his head but someone who actually knows how to will power appropriately they can do a lot more damage than donald trump and i fear that that's going to happen if democrats fail here so the task ahead of them is absolutely gigantic and you know my expectations for the democratic party are low because they've let me down time and again but what we should want from them like what we should get our expectations should be high even if you know we don't expect them to do a lot but we'll have to wait and see like i genuinely hope that joe biden proves me wrong right i've been very hard on joe biden i've been relentless in attacking him and part of that is because i'm just kind of a bitter bitch i wanted bernie sanders to be president i have no problem admitting that but now joe biden is president like it or not that's the reality so i hope that he actually proves me wrong and delivers but we'll have to wait and see and certainly if he doesn't i'm gonna hold him accountable but if he does something good that warren's praise then i will absolutely give him credit again i've said this once i'll say it again i don't want to establish like a narrative on this channel that either joe biden good joe biden bad i want to be objective i want to be impartial and so as a leftist if joe biden does something that i agree with i'm going to give him credit for that and that's the way that i think that political commentators should you know respond to the biden administration going forward even though i hated donald trump i did give him credit where it was due i think that his criminal justice reform the first step act was a step in the right direction albeit a small one i think that him attempting to make peace with north korea even if that was frowned upon by you know mainstream media and the elite class i think that was good anyone pursuing peace even if they don't necessarily know how to facilitate that they get credit for that even if you're donald trump even if the rest of your administration is doing harm and damage so having said that though yeah we have a new president it's joe biden and look i'll just say i am i am a little bit relieved that trump is out of power like there was a moment in time after the election where i was genuinely concerned that trump maybe would be successful at somehow stealing it i mean we saw back in 2000 the way that george w bush kind of stole that election from al gore but this time there were just too many states you know uh it was it was too difficult for him to pull this off he wasn't competent to pull this off um so yeah now we go forward and um do everything in our power to make the best of the situation that we're in and hope that we uh at least at a minimum can expect that joe biden will handle this pandemic better and more competently and i think that we can at least expect that but of course he's got to do more than just that structural changes need to happen if we want to prevent the rise of another donald trump but i'll leave that there because at this point i feel like i'm just rambling i just wanted to share my thoughts on biden being sworn in because overall like you know i feel not much i kind of feel numb not in a bad way or a good way i just kind of feel ambivalent because you know sure i'm relieved that trump is out of office but biden you know he is someone who i think even though there will be a lot of net positives with him being in office there's going to be some downsides to it as well so we'll have to deal with that on a case by case basis but for now at least trump's out of office that's uh that's a good thing that in and of itself i think is worthy of celebration even if the person who's replacing him is not my first choice or second choice or 18th choice if we're being serious so i have watched way too many hours of interviews with donald trump supporters who genuinely believed that he was going to be the next president and this is like from a week or two weeks ago you know after the electoral college made it official after congress had already certified the results you know all that's left was biden's inauguration and up until that point there were still donald trump supporters namely q and on supporters who actually believed that trump was going to be sworn in for a second term and they look for little subtle things that they believed was a nod from donald trump so trump would say you know there will be a new administration he said this in one of his videos but he didn't say biden's name so since he didn't acknowledge biden then perhaps he's referring to a new trump administration trump two if you will and you know the thought in the back of my mind as i heard them deny reality was what are they actually going to say and do once joe biden is sworn in and you can't deny it any longer uh and a lot of q and on supporters believed that on inauguration day joe biden wouldn't be sworn in rather trump would impose martial law and joe biden would be arrested i think i'm oversimplifying what they believe was going to happen but that's kind of the gist of it and according to what they're saying now their reactions are pretty interesting there's still some folks who are denying that joe biden is president or that this is all part of trump's plan now that he's sworn in but i am a little bit relieved to see some of them kind of get the reality check that they really desperately needed so i want to share some of the comments from cubanon conspiracy theorists who are really shocked right now this person says well i'm the official laughing stock of my family now awesome i mean you kind of deserve it uh this is an embarrassment here come all the excuses now this person says q also said noon i will start kicking people for their attitudes we are patriots you stand here and hold the line with us or you can leave your choice so this one is a true kool-aid drinker um and doesn't want to admit uh the reality uh this individual named sophie shared this from the q and on casualties subreddit uh a q mom was working herself into a heart attack this is shocking to me her and her cronies are in such a tizzy waiting for the national guard to come out and arrest biden as soon as he takes the stage that she's literally having chest pain holy shit i can't say that i'm even concerned at this point wow to be that committed and detached from reality is just i don't even know how to respond to that pepe time says fuck this sham uh i want to puke uh fuck praying we see some cry emojis he sold us out it's revolution time trump lied and failed as simple as that so i mean like i don't know if these folks think that donald trump was going to actually like arrest joe biden or that you know q was just wrong uh or q was right but trump got cold feet but either way they think that trump sold them out which is interesting um you see one person laughing probably a troll um and then this person says we were lied to by q and now we have to figure out how to move on this is what i want to see i want to see them realize that they were misled and they were duped uh this person says i am sick to my stomach uh we've been played so what now sad and confused sick to my stomach uh this person says where's the damn storm what happened why didn't the plan work i feel stupid very interesting uh trump fooled us worst day in american history i'm sick to my stomach i can't believe what is happening nothing to let out but disappointment um kaniela eng shared some of these titles uh not very popular but they're from the q and on casualties subreddit can the military step in now mods please explain why biden isn't arrested yet so what they do we wait for now so you know there's a lot of folks based on this i mean this is a small sample size obviously but uh they feel embarrassed and stupid some of them feels if donald trump betrayed them that's the reaction that reasonable people people who aren't too far gone would express when they realize that they've been duped when you see evidence directly contradict what you believed that's that's a good thing right but you see some folks who they are incapable of fighting past the cognitive dissonance i'm not going to put this one up on the screen but i'm going to read this or some of it at least so this person is uh trying to rationalize why biden was sworn in trump is now stepping down not in the way that you think he is allowing a smooth transition of power not to biden but to the military this is exactly what he means transition into martial law so biden isn't actually the president this is a transition into martial law and i don't think they realize what martial law is and why that would be bad for all of us uh but this person continues as predicted general flin will be taking the reins here for a while you didn't hear during potas speech anything about biden or conceding this is part of nissara and gussara as he has stepped down from the u.s corporation dead entity into the new administration 1776 constitution party i don't think i have to go much further because this is going to uh rot my brain if i read anymore and rot your brain as well but some folks are still trying to believe that cubanon was correct and trump is still fighting for them and trump still has a plan trust the plan guys this i mean if you can't leave this then this is really sad i hope that most people react to this by thinking wow i was duped it's time for me to move on and um you know the thing about this conspiracy theory is out of all the conspiracy theories that i've heard of this is the dumbest one it's not even like entertaining like at least with illuminati uh there's some intrigue there right it's interesting like there's this big cabal of celebrities and politicians that are devil worshipers but this is more batshit insane but somehow less interesting like it's fascinating from a sociological standpoint and there are questions that i want people to answer for me like about the psychology of these folks like i want to know how you get roped into a conspiracy theory this dumb but in terms of like the sheer entertainment value cubanon is dog shit like it all relies on donald trump and he of all people is going to crack down on pedophilia and the satanic ring of like baby eating politicians donald trump has been accused of rape and sexual assault how many times now and he's the hero he's your savior it's just astonishing to me so what i genuinely hope is for most of these folks because i know not all of them are savable i hope that they come to reality like the response should be yeah i feel embarrassed now i was proven wrong now it's time for me to grapple with my mistake and grow as a human being this is not like something that is abnormal we all as human beings go through this at some point maybe not to this level and at this scale but we all find out that one of our beliefs was incorrect it was wrong and we staked a lot on it like for me growing up i was indoctrinated into religion i was an evangelical and you know learning that that was all a lie and it was wrong and there's no evidence that god exists it really is an eye-opening thing and it really opens the door to you being more objective and impartial i think because you kind of question yourself once you fight past the cognitive dissonance you think well since i was wrong about this what else am i wrong about and you kind of go on this philosophical journey which i think is important for self-growth so i hope that that happens with these folks i genuinely hope that a lot of these people wake up and this is the reality check that they needed but some of them are going to try to rationalize it and that's to be expected some of them are just too far gone but if a lot of people leave the cult and they wake up i'm going to applaud that you know welcome back to reality we've missed you but hopefully going forward you know you are a little bit more rigorous in you know the sources that you uh consume in the media that you digest be a responsible consumer of what you perceive to be news like if you see it in a meme on facebook maybe before believing that just do a quick fact check if you hear it from some entity who is supposedly working for the government but that individual presents like no evidence that that's the case maybe question their motives question whether or not more evidence is necessary let's just try to be more responsible and uh have some common sense that's literally all that i could ask and hope for i want to take some time to talk about my man bernard sanders who let me just say at joe biden's inauguration looked like an absolute chad uh this is kind of the energy that i'm feeling right now he represents all of us and i am confident that this image will be memed uh for years to come which is great because it's uh it's fantastic but bernie sanders is an important individual uh not just because of the influence that he has in the platform that he has uh but because he is going to be the senate budget committee chairman which is really important because he actually cares about the american people and to care about the american people and simultaneously be in a position where you can affect change in a meaningful way we haven't seen this in quite some time and i'm really looking forward to it so in an interview with abc news he had a message for republicans or rather he had a warning for republicans that i'm really glad to see like he needs to say this somebody needed to say this but basically simply put he says to republicans look we are going to give you the opportunity to work with us but if you do not work with us then we are going to steamroll you take a look i have no problem with reaching out to republicans i would prefer to do it that way but if we hear very early on the republicans do not want to act in a way that meets the needs of working people in this country or the middle class sorry we're going to do it alone uh the truth of the matter uh is that republicans use budget reconciliation over the years to provide massive tax breaks to the rich to try to repeal the affordable care act we're going to use it to protect the working families uh and the middle class that is exactly what i want to hear chairman sanders say because republicans they used reconciliation they they did everything in their power to accomplish what they wanted you know they they approved a supreme court justice a week before the election so it's time that democrats actually play hardball now look i think it's reasonable that at first joe biden is coming in and saying we're gonna we're gonna try to pass things like you know another stimulus package with a 60 vote threshold we're not going to opt for reconciliation immediately and that's what bernie sanders is saying too because you're giving them a chance to try to work with you however if they shoot you down if they slap down the olive branch that you are extending waste no time move right on without them because then you can basically bludgeon them in the midterm elections if you're joe biden you could say look we tried to work with republicans but unfortunately they didn't want to work with us so alone we had to pass a stimulus package along party lines we're the ones who gave you uh a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars we did x y and z for you we're the ones who administered you know vaccines in a more competent manner and they didn't help us they were salty because donald trump lost the election they refused to work with us and so we had to do it alone like use this and actually play politics now i have no confidence that joe biden is going to want to play politics in that way because i think he at his core is pretty conservative but bernie sanders as budget committee chairman he actually has a lot of influence and so if he wants to pass something using reconciliation that's just you know 51 votes he can do it and his agenda is very ambitious and you'll love to see it so in an op-ed for cnn he actually wrote about this uh saying amid so much economic suffering and despair it is imperative that democrats pass a bold and aggressive economic agenda within the first 100 days of joe biden's presidency and as warn gunnell's reports that includes boost checks of two thousand dollars a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage emergency medicare for all double community health centers lower drug prices don't tax emergency unemployment benefits paid family leave universal healthcare rebuild america combat climate change tax the rich save usps and more and again this is all what bernie sanders wants to happen within the first 100 days and he's saying look as budget committee chairman we're in a position to where we can make this happen i am going to allow votes on things like this to pass all we need is a simple majority 50 plus one votes kamala would be the tiebreaker so this is absolutely brilliant when you have someone like bernie sanders in this position there's no excuse for democrats there is no excuse for democrats so if they don't capitalize on this unique opportunity that they haven't had since you know the two thousands when obama was first sworn in then you know that's on them if you fail you can't blame republicans here you cannot blame republicans all eyes are on you accountability is going to be on your shoulders so if you fail you know there's nobody to blame but yourselves so i'm glad that bernie sanders is uh is uh in this position you know i think it's smart it's smart politics to basically say look we tried to allow republicans to work with us and have some input and now i don't want them to have input realistically speaking but if they shoot you down i think that makes for a really good situation that you can use that politically to beat them in the midterm so we'll see i don't necessarily expect very savvy politics from corporate democrats like joe biden or kamala harris but i do think that bernie sanders is a little bit more strategic and i think that he can push them in a better direction and if we don't get all of this then we better get at least half of this like i think during a pandemic we should expect more we should ask and demand more from our government because if you can't you know serve the american people when we need you the most then you're really proving that you are useless and your legitimacy will go down as a direct result so you know look we'll see we'll wait and see but i do feel a little bit more optimistic because bernie sanders is in that position of course i would have preferred if he was the president but that's neither here nor there he will be the budget committee chairman and i fully expect him to you know utilize the power that he has to do as much as he possibly can to improve the lives of americans so i am really pleased to see joe biden take covet 19 seriously in fact on his first day in office you could argue that he already proved he's taking the virus more seriously than donald trump ever did and he already rolled out his national strategy to contain the spread of the virus which is really important so i'm going to go through key provisions from his national strategy i think that a lot of this is going to make a huge difference the first thing that he wants to do is make sure that he fulfills his promise of getting 50 million people vaccinated within the first 100 days of his presidency that means he's got to get out 100 million vaccines so 50 million people get dose one and dose two logistically speaking i don't know that this is realistic but the fact that he's pushing to get this done in and of itself is i think important now if you're wondering why it seemed as if we weren't making any progress with regard to the distribution of this vaccine is because donald trump wasn't doing anything like if it seemed as if he just stopped being president after he lost the election you'd be correct because as common dreams reports biden team says trump vaccine distribution plan non-existent there is nothing for us to rework said one of president biden's covet advisors we are going to have to build everything from scratch just think about this like let that sink in the last president did nothing to distribute the vaccine nothing it was non-existent because donald trump refused to act how many more thousands of people are going to die how much more behind are we going to be like i wouldn't have expected him to come up with a competent plan but something that you know they can work with would have been nice but it's just it really goes to show you he checked out that last couple of months he didn't care about anything he was just sulking he was mad that he lost the election and uh this is absolutely shameful but i'm glad now that we have an administration that's taking it seriously i mean love them or hate them i don't ideologically align with joe biden on anything basically but the fact that he's taking this seriously that does matter that allows us to more quickly get back to normal or at least normal before the pandemic if we can end this pandemic we save lives so this is priority number one to me uh so let's go through some of the key proposals here besides his plan to distribute a hundred million vaccinations cnn reports president joe biden's first full day in office on thursday focused on rolling out his national strategy to get the coronavirus pandemic under control and signing several executive actions including ramping up vaccination supplies and requiring international travelers to provide proof of a negative covid-19 test prior to traveling to the us now additionally he is utilizing the defense production act to speed up production of testing kits supplies for vaccinations and also for personal protective equipment which is really important uh on top of that he issued a federal mask mandate which is as comprehensive as he can be with the power that he has as president so this is definitely something that i think we needed a long time ago and there is a lot more like his plan is very comprehensive so i can't possibly get to all of it but i do want to at least go through all of the executive actions that he signed one by one because when you step back and look at all of this what it amounts to is i think a really solid start like out of the gate he very clearly is coming out swinging and i have to give him credit where it's due so when it comes to executive actions he signed one that accelerates manufacturing and delivery of supplies for vaccination testing and ppe that's the one that we just talked about directs fema to expand reimbursement to states to fully cover the cost for national guard personnel and emergency supplies establishes the pandemic testing board to expand us coronavirus testing capacity establishes a preclinical program to boost development of therapeutics in response to pandemic threats enhances the nation's collection production sharing and analysis of coronavirus data this is something that is crucial directs fema to create federally supported community vaccination centers directs the department of education and hhs to provide guidance for safely reopening and operating schools child care providers and institutions of higher education now we'll come back to this later because it's a lot more than just that i think that it's important that there's federal guidance but there's more on this that i want to touch on calls on the occupational safety and health administration osha to release clear guidance on covid-19 decide whether to establish emergency temporary standards and directs osha to enforce worker health and safety requirements requires mask wearing in airports and on certain modes of transportation including many trains airplanes maritime vessels and intercity buses international travelers must provide proof of a negative covid-19 test prior to coming to the u.s that's what we just talked about creates the covid-19 health equity task force to help ensure an equitable pandemic response and recovery also really important not to overlook this i'm glad he's doing this a presidential directive to restore america's leadership support the international pandemic response effort promote resilience for future threats and advance global health security and the global health security agenda also we'll talk about this in detail a little bit later launches a 100 days masking challenge asking americans to wear masks for 100 days requires masks and physical distancing in federal buildings on federal lands and by government contractors and urges states and local governments to do the same stops the us withdrawal from the world health organization with dr anthony fouchy becoming the head of the delegation to the who creates the position of covid-19 response coordinator reporting directly to biden and managing efforts to reduce and distribute vaccines and medical equipment now when it comes to us rejoining the world health organization i think this is obviously a no-brainer you don't leave the world health organization during a pandemic unless you're a complete clown but one of the concerns globally speaking was that richer countries would jump to the front of the line once a vaccine is available and what he's doing is making sure that developing countries and poor countries actually get access to the vaccine as well because look if rich countries get the vaccine first but all of these poor countries are left behind globally speaking that's not really going to do much to contain the spread of the virus because if we want to get a pandemic under control which is contagious you have to make sure that everyone is cured everyone is vaccinated so you can't just have this approach where you know the rich countries and developed countries get access to it but you know third world countries don't like that that's something that's unacceptable if we're realistic and actually want to contain the spread of it so him doing this very important you have to have a global effort to get this under control because this is a human issue not just the us issue now as for the executive order related to schools he is filling in a crucial gap of what was missing with the trump administration i mean there was just no federal guidelines on how to safely reopen schools so this was managed on a state by state city by city basis and you know when you have some states that don't take it seriously this creates an unequal reopening effort in the aggregate so by him suggesting that we have federal standards to reopen schools that is really important but what i disagree with vehemently so is his plan his push rather to reopen schools within 100 days like even in the best case scenario let's say that he is successful and he gets 50 million americans vaccinated and one sixth approximately of the population is now immune even in that instance how can you say that that's enough to safely reopen schools i mean by then we'll have to see how many cases we're having per day what the positivity rate is but you can't just arbitrarily say i want to reopen all schools by 100 days because that's not something that you can just do if you truly care about health and safety like if cases are better by then and it's safe to reopen then sure but just having this goal to reopen schools within 100 days you could be undermining your own effort to keep people safe so you have to prioritize safety and not just arbitrarily reopening schools and what he should be planning for is to potentially have schools uh you know operate remotely in the long term so provide funding for that don't just like arbitrarily say no we've got to open all schools because then you just sound like donald trump and republicans having said that though that's really the only area of criticism that i have for him you know of course the next component of this is economic relief which house democrats are saying is supposed to come soon but overall the totality of the executive orders that he signed related to covet 19 i think this is absolutely necessary this is what we've been needing to see there's been no leadership at the federal level when it comes to covet 19 which is why you see some states doing really good and some states doing really bad now currently you know we're in a third surge hopefully we're getting out of that as cases start to slightly decrease but we have to have some leadership during a time like this and it's important that he does this establish standards rather than national strategy just show us that you care and this is important so i am very pleased so far like i'd imagine when we start getting into policy discussions healthcare i'm going to be furious with joe biden but for now uh he's off to a great start at least when it comes to tackling covet 19 this is really good and i'm uh cautiously optimistic about this so last year on the program we talked about joe biden's proposal for net neutrality and municipal broadband and it was surprisingly really strong you know for joe biden someone who is overall mostly conservative and where he is progressive he usually only supports incremental progressive reforms you know for net neutrality he he has a great plan like i have to give him credit birds do however one of the responses to my video about joe biden's net neutrality proposal was skepticism and i think rightfully so because joe biden has ties to internet service providers who don't support net neutrality i mean they contribute to his campaign he actually kicked off his 2020 campaign uh with a lobbyist for comcast holding a fundraiser for him so when you see that you've got to think okay is he even actually going to follow through one special interests get in his ear but my pitch as to why i do believe joe biden as president can make a difference when it comes to net neutrality is because the president isn't necessarily involved with net neutrality this comes down to who they appoint as fcc chair now donald trump didn't even know what net neutrality was literally like he put out tweets talking about net neutrality and condemning it but the way that he described it tells me that he had never even heard of it so a jeep hi basically unilaterally implemented his own agenda so for joe biden to actually carry out his vision all he needs to do is appoint someone to be the fcc chair who actually saves net neutrality restores net neutrality and invests in municipal broadband which would be a game changer now this is what i said specifically and i made the case for a very specific individual that i wanted joe biden to promote to fcc chair look at jessica rosenwurzel as one of the options here so she's currently an fcc commissioner and all joe biden has to do is name her as a jeep pi's replacement which is something that isn't out of the realm of possibility she's certainly someone who he'd consider and she would actually do wonders now i will say this that jessica rosenwurzel who's a current fcc commissioner she wasn't always the biggest ally to net neutrality because let me remind you back in the obama years he appointed a comcast lobbyist to be the fcc chair tom wheeler and he appointed tom wheeler after tom wheeler donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to him or fund raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for brach obama so that appointment was the result of corruption and one of the first things that tom wheeler tried to do was dismantle net neutrality by introducing fast lanes which was a way of allowing internet service providers to carve out these types of packages not necessarily explicitly in the way that you know a jeep pi's rules would have allowed but just by saying hey if you pay us more we'll give you faster internet for this website when that's not okay that undermines net neutrality but what happened was tom wheeler ended up becoming one of the biggest allies to the net neutrality movement ever and he gave activists everything that they wanted because he succumbed to public pressure they were protesting in front of his house and the campaign that net neutrality activists mounted against him was highly successful so much so that not only did he declare the internet a public utility but he went even further than that and started to regulate zero rating which basically allows cell phone carriers like verizon to undermine net neutrality in a roundabout way using zero rating because they can say hey us at verizon here we have this brand new streaming service and if you use our streaming service this isn't going to count towards your data but if you use netflix that will count towards your data so i mean this is anti consumer it's anti competitive it allows these types of you know cell phone providers and internet service providers to basically rig the rules in their favor and give themselves the advantage that other competitors don't have so tom wheeler started to you know hone his craft a little bit really zero in on these types of practices and jessica rosenwurzel was a part of the obama administration she was part of that tom wheeler era where they were aggressively trying to make the internet more free and open so even if back in 2015 she kind of downplayed the importance of municipal broadband saying oh well you know this is something that i don't want to you know get people's hopes of about but it seems kind of unlikely because it's difficult to do the infrastructure and whatnot and building it would be a hassle now things have changed she wasn't an ally but now she is and if joe biden only did one thing with regard to net neutrality and made jessica rosenwurzel the fcc chair and replaced a jeep pie he could fulfill all of the promises that he's saying now and then some because he's not actually the one that's doing it it's jessica rosenwurzel who we do actually trust to do what he's saying he wants to do so that was in july of last year and i am pleased to announce that i got exactly what i wanted the individual who i hoped joe biden would appoint like the best case scenario that's what we got this is phenomenal news if you are an advocate of net neutrality and if you want public municipal broadband like this is cause for celebration now as nbc news reports president joe biden has picked jessica rosenwurzel to run the federal communications commission as its acting chair making the 49 year old lawyer and podcast host from west hartford connecticut the second woman to be appointed to that role in the commission's 96 year history the job involves such daunting tasks as helping millions of americans get reliable access to the internet rosenwurzel first came to the fcc over 20 years ago in 1999 before leaving the agency to be a congressional aid in 2007 as senior communications council for the senate committee on commerce science and transportation in 2012 she returned to the fcc where she was appointed to be a commissioner under president brock obama she was re-nominated in 2017 by president donald trump while the fcc was led by chairman agide pie during his historic undoing of the country's network neutrality protections now as the president's choice to lead the agency she's likely to pick up the network neutrality baton again which prohibited internet service providers from charging websites to reach users at faster speeds when chairman tom wheeler ran the agency under obama rosenwurzel boldly pushed him to create more aggressive network neutrality rules a stance he eventually adopted and led to the network neutrality protections that were passed in 2015 and when pie came to lead the agency with the intention to take a weed wacker to net neutrality in 2017 she didn't sit quietly either quote let's roar let's make a ruckus let's stop this plan in its tracks she tweeted in 2017 when pie released this plan to rescind the net neutrality rules over 22 million comments were submitted to the agency in response to the removal of the internet traffic rules so this is absolutely fantastic news if you are a supporter of net neutrality and most people are it doesn't matter if you are you know a socialist or a conservative or a liberal it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on this is a very very popular thing so if you are a proponent of net neutrality this is definitely caused for celebration because jessica rosenwurzel is basically one of if not the best ally that we have in this fight she's been a long time proponent of net neutrality regulations and this means she's going to be in a position to undo agit pies 2017 repeal of net neutrality now a court already basically shot down portions of it because in his repeal of net neutrality there was a clause in it that allowed states that allow the fcc to block states from implementing their own net neutrality laws and of course courts threw that portion out so we have some states mostly popular states like new york and california with net neutrality laws and other states red states primarily without net neutrality protections but she's going to restore that and what's important is that she and joe biden are in favor of building up public municipal broadband now we're going to go back and forth unless we actually pursue this path because when it comes to net neutrality it is the case that sure she can restore net neutrality again but the next republican administration can appoint an FCC chair that just undoes it again so how do we get a long term solution so we don't have to deal with this issue every couple of years well we opt for public municipal broadband because the only reason why net neutrality is an issue is because we don't have a variety of isps like in your area you probably have one or two if you're lucky so if we have our own local municipal broadband service that we control net neutrality would be an irrelevant issue because if calmcast chooses to charge you more money to get access to certain websites or to get faster speeds to websites that doesn't matter if you have your own isp if it's publicly owned municipal broadband you control it you do what you want so we don't have to worry about this issue if we get that and if joe biden funds infrastructure projects for municipal broadband this really is a game changer jessica rosenworsl being in this position is a game changer so you know a lot of leftists rightfully so were frustrated to see joe biden sworn in i'm not gonna lie i was salty as hell because i wanted bernie sanders to be the president but this is a victory for us this is a huge victory for us the fact that he has chosen jessica rosenworsl this is this is everything if you are a net neutrality proponent so look i'll take a win where i can get it and this is a really huge victory for uh advocates of freedom on the internet on day one as president expectably joe biden has already initiated the process to have the us rejoin the paris climate accord and additionally this even surprised me but he tanked the keystone xl pipeline which i was not expecting because when you have the canadian prime minister basically pushing for this pipeline i would have expected joe biden to kind of have an easy out and think well you know i'm working with our closest partner and our neighbor but he tanked it so this is all great it's a really big deal the paris climate accord is by no means like the end all be all but i think that any step forward any progress that we make even if it's small that is better than not making any progress or in the case of donald trump even going backwards undoing what little progress we've made so as alexander c kaufman of huffpost reports hours after his inauguration wednesday president joe biden signed an executive order to rejoin the paris climate agreement ending the united states brief but symbolic exit from the global pact to slash planet heating emissions that virtually every nation that has joined so basically what happens is joe biden signed the executive order which basically tells the un that we intend to rejoin the paris climate accord and then it takes 30 days and then once again we will formally be a signatory and a party to the paris climate accord it's that simple so this is really good news but of course since republicans deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change at least one of them took the time to shit on joe biden for this now i'm all about dunking on joe biden but when he does something good i think he deserves credit now if ted cruise saw that joe biden was giving tax cuts to the rich or starting a war or cutting social security i'm sure then he'd praise joe biden but when he does like the one good thing uh with relative climate change that we expect him to do of course now ted cruise has something to say but before i tell you what ted cruise said about joe biden rejoining the paris climate accord uh we're gonna take a little bit of a detour because i think it's really funny to see the internet clowning on him and dunking on him because he put out some tweets about the inauguration ceremony and folks on both sides of the political spectrum were shitting on him and it was really great to see this is the kind of unity that i want to see where we all team up to collectively denounce and shit on ted cruise the clown who incited a violent insurrection just a couple of weeks ago let's not forget that but as for the tweets that we're talking about so he tweeted out a video of lady gaga performing the national anthem and also a video of jay though performing and as you can see here by the comment to like ratio he got dog piled on and this was great so let's go through some of the comments here so this person says looks like the pizza gang is all here uh which is an implication that uh these are all pedophiles this is a reference to pizza gate uh incredibly batched and saying this person says the devil worshipers are congregating together today they are wanting their new world order to be brought in for their evil master very very uh sound and coherent this person says there's nothing beautiful about anything involving the overthrowing of our government the election was stolen rigged election exclamation point so this is one of those times where you have to go along to get along and this person is very clearly not happy about ted cruise tweeting this out so that's just like a little snapshot of the right wingers who follow ted cruise who were dunking on him but you can also see a lot of lefties and even liberals dunking on him saying that he should resign calling him a piece of shit and i just like this warms my heart to see people on the left and the right and on the center all shit on ted cruise it's just really beautiful and it it makes me feel dare i say patriotic an emotion that only ted cruise uh can get people to feel uh by our united hatred of him but let's get to his tweet about the paris climate accord because i assure you it is absolutely fucking idiotic he tweeted out by rejoining the paris climate agreement president biden indicates he's more interested in the views of the citizens of paris than in the jobs of the citizens of pittsburgh this agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of americans now he was so proud of this tweet that he actually doubled down on his personal account which is the same account where he liked porn on by the way and he tweeted out who do you stand with paris or pittsburgh if you support blue collar union workers if you stand for jobs get your free bumper sticker here and then you have to sign up for his email list where he will constantly solicit you for donations now first of all let me to say the republican party is not the party of unions ted cruise is not an individual who supports unions because let me remind you that in 2013 he co-sponsored the right to work act which is literally a national union busting bill so anyone who supports this effort the so-called right to work effort and the right to work act they are not a friend to unions you support this legislation if you intend on busting up unions second of all why is he using this pittsburgh and paris thing like you're not from pittsburgh you're from texas and this doesn't just affect the citizens of paris climate change impacts everyone it's a global issue we all live in the same planet so it's stupid but he's so proud of it because you know pittsburgh and paris both start with a p so you know it kind of just rolls off the tongue this is idiotic uh so of course folks dunked on him for this uh but my favorite response is from actor and comedian seth rogan who responded very simply by saying fuck off you fascist to which ted cruise responded saying charming civil educated response seth rogan if you're a rich angry hollywood celebrity today's democrats are the party for you if you're a blue collar if you're a union member if you work in energy or manufacturing not so much me now again he's trying to pretend as if he's pro union motherfucker you supported the right to work act you want to break up unions not support them not embolden them so shut up about that second of all if you are going to say that seth rogan is an elitist that's fine i'd agree with you he's a multimillionaire i'm sure that he lives in a mansion however if the implication is that he's an elitist but you're not that's bogus you're worth four point six million dollars that was as of 2018 so i'm sure by now he's worth well over five million and i believe his wife works for goldman sacks so if he's trying to make it seem as if somehow celebrities in hollywood are elitists but not him a rich multimillionaire u.s senator that's just that's just idiotic but seth rogan responded saying ha ha get fucked fascist go encourage a white supremacist insurrection again you fucking clown i love this he also quote tweeted ted cruise and said if you're a white supremacist fascist who doesn't find it offensive when someone calls your wife ugly ted cruise is the exact motherfucker for you also i'm in four unions so this is hilarious and this is what ted cruise deserves like is there anyone who is a bigger clown in politics besides donald trump i mean ted cruise now in terms of people who have power he's one of the biggest laughing stocks in the country you just incited a riot a couple of weeks ago there are folks calling for your expulsion from the u.s senate and now all of a sudden you're tweeting out about how beautiful the national anthem is as if you're so patriotic when you literally are a traitor to the united states and then he's trying to very clearly like position himself as this anti-establishment figure because he wants to run for president in 2024 he wants to be the next adult trump so he's trying to be pro worker and pro union meanwhile anytime there's an opportunity for him to bust up unions he's there like that he's on that like stank on shit so ted cruise is one of the biggest frauds in america but yet he tries to appear edgy like he's this outsider no motherfucker you are the ultimate elitist insider you're a bigger elitist than any hollywood celebrity because you have power and money they only have power so you know it really is beautiful to see everyone collectively team up to shit on ted cruise you love to see it this is what i think is going to bring us all together our collective hatred of this complete fucking imbecile ted cruise representative alexandria ocasio-cortez did not attend president biden's inauguration ceremony and she had a very very good reason for that before members of the media or even a republicans attack her for this she had a great reason and the reason is that she was setting an example for everyone else she was standing with striking workers so as lucy diavallo of teen veugue reports representative alexandria ocasio-cortez skipped the january 20th inauguration festivities in washington dc for a strike the congresswoman known as aoc showed up at hunts point produce market in the bronx just outside the border for congressional district to support a local teamsters union whose workers are a big reason new york city has fresh fruit on a reliable basis claudia irzaria ponte a reporter for the new york base publication the city who covers the bronx captured ocaio-cortez arriving in the picket line wednesday evening with a pack of coffee and hand warmers wearing work boots irzaria ponte also captured part of a speech aoc gave on a bullhorn at the picket ocaio-cortez invited everyone to pull up and show solidarity with the union another clip from gothamist wnyc news editor david cruise captured more video of ocaio-cortez telling the workers their efforts are a way of asking for transformational change for workers across the united states speeches from assembly member amanda septimo and new york city public advocate jumani williams were also caught on tape what we're doing here today is taking the upside down and making it right side up ocaio-cortez told the crowd what's the strike about according to irzaria ponte's reporting for the city the strike launched after negotiations broke down between the union and management over a one dollar an hour raise management offered only 32 cents an hour as a raise prompting the teamsters local 202 union to launch a strike sunday night in a january statement the union said the strike came after negotiations broke down when management refused to budge from a stingy offer for workers who kept new yorkers fed through the pandemic now here's a clip of part of aoc's speech shared by the reporter who was mentioned so this is really important because i think currently i'm not alone in saying that the left is kind of lost right now we don't really have a national leader you know joe biden is president but bernie is not the president and sure he does have power in government but you know he's not the leader that he was during the primary you know he has a job to do so the left kind of seems somewhat lost i feel somewhat lost but it's important that we get reminded what we need to do and that's why i think that aoc standing in solidarity with striking workers is important because this is what the left has to do for the next four years we have to make it our goal to build power on the ground we've you know gotten so close to the white house that you know we kind of thought maybe we can actually implement change from the top down but it never works that way it always comes from the bottom up and the way that we actually institute change is by building power at the local level and the grovelle institute put out a phenomenal tweet explaining exactly how you do this they write joe biden is not our friend we cannot beg him and the democratic party for table scraps the left needs its own infrastructure its own institutions its own basis of power organize your workplaces support local trade unions and tenants unions and join groups like democratic socialists of america support groups like sunrise movement people's policy project and progressive international that are building political coalitions for left policies and talk with other lefties where you live so this is really important you can make the biggest difference at the local level join dsa and if there's no chapter near you start your own chapter this is what you have to do like we can't continue to remain isolated in our own bubbles i mean during the pandemic we don't have much of a choice right but once this is over there's no excuses we have to organize you know find like-minded people in your area who believe in workers rights uh you know stand up for local workers and unions organize your workplace this is how we actually affect change you build coalitions in your area and in effect build up your power and then if we have a lot of organizing on the ground hopefully the aggregate effect that we see nationally will be that we start to really make a difference because currently the left has a lot of ambitious plans but we have no power and the problem is that you can't really implement change if you have no power and the way that you get power is to come together organize and this is how you do it so aoc it's important that she does this because she's leading by example and look whatever you can do to support organizations you have to do it so i joined dsa a couple of years ago and it's important that these types of organizations that like field local candidates that they have money and resources you can also join you know groups such as the sunrise movement which is a good recommendation because they push at the national level for very specific changes related to climate change we need to build our infrastructure that's one thing that's been lacking it's why we haven't been as effective and i think that as we kind of grow our collective base of power we will actually start to see more change at least somewhat quicker um so this is the way forward like we have to all recommit to organize at the local level organize with folks around us if we actually do want to see the change we're talking about so it starts by doing things like this supporting these uh sorts of efforts so last week on the program we talked about a story that was actually pretty alarming so scientists were concerned that this new variant of covid 19 would decrease the efficacy of vaccines not make them useless but just make them less effective now this wasn't confirmed we didn't know by how much if it did in fact decrease the efficacy of vaccines however according to one study we are learning that at least when it comes to the Pfizer and biontech vaccine that is not the case it does not decrease the efficacy of that vaccine so as sam meredith of cnbc reports the corona virus vaccine developed by Pfizer and biontech is likely to be just as effective against a highly transmissible mutant strain of the virus that was discovered in the uk according to a study by the two companies the variant known as b117 was estimated to have first emerged in the uk in september it has an unusually high number of mutations and is associated with more efficient and rapid transmission the characteristics of the variant had led to concerns about the effectiveness of covid vaccines against it however research published on preprint server bio r14 showed no biologically significant difference in neutralization activity between the laboratory tests on b117 and the original strain of the coronavirus the study which has not yet been peer reviewed found that all of the mutations associated with the newly discovered variant were neutralized by antibodies in the blood of 16 participants who had previously been given the vaccine so there's a couple of caveats it's a relatively small sample size and the studies you know fizer and biontech they're the ones doing a study of their own vaccine so we do need it to be peer reviewed to know for sure just so that way there's that separation there and a guarantee of impartiality but this is really really good news and we're getting it quickly like i was worried that it would take months for us to determine whether or not the vaccines would hold up against this new strain but we're learning right away that it doesn't actually make a difference this is everything this is huge because if it were the case that this new variant actually did decrease the efficacy of vaccines this means that it would take much longer to get the virus under control and it really kind of made me feel uh depressed uh you know because to think that we finally get a vaccine and now that's undermined by this mutation it just seems like when is it ever gonna end we see the light at the end of the tunnel and then all of a sudden it vanishes but now no this is uh absolutely phenomenal news so i just wanted to give you all an update because i want to give you like the overall picture of what's happening with regard to covid-19 i don't want folks to only see like the doom and gloom side i do want you to see that there is some good news i mean currently we're in a really bad place with uh deaths with um how many people are catching the virus although thankfully it's starting to decrease although we're still at really alarming levels in most states but you know we are at a place where there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it's getting brighter and it's not dimming thankfully this this uh new strain is still going to be taken care of mostly by the vaccine so i just had to share because this is absolutely phenomenal news and certainly you know i'm breathing a sigh of relief after reading this story well that's everything folks thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far as usual we're not going to end the show without thinking all of the people who make this possible all of our patreon paypal and youtube members uh so yeah that is everything um look i'm a little bit sad that now that the trump era is over all of my trump outros are now basically irrelevant but having said that though i think it is only appropriate that we have uh donald trump play us out one last time i'll see you next week folks my name is mike figurado this has been the humanist report take care mike is a total loser so don't hit the subscribe button okay and whatever you do folks do not hit the notification bell either might catch me so unfairly