 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all." I know what to say to make people cheer if they're really dumb and conservative, so I'm going to feed into that. That folks is what we call virtue signaling, and Senator Ted Cruz thought that it would prove how serious he is as a person to post that himself to his Twitter page. And the worst part about this cringe-fest is that he thought that he was being edgy by posting that. He said, this didn't used to be controversial. He's so edgy. Are you triggered? Yes. You watching this? Are you triggered? I bet you're so mad right now watching him pledge allegiance to the flag. I bet you hate America and watching that, it just makes you so upset. I mean, it's just, he's trying to make bootlicking seem like counterculture. But what he's doing here, it's not cool, it's lame, it's cultish, and you look like a stupid person, Ted Cruz. And to think that what you're doing is like edgy, that makes it exponentially more cringe than it already is. And look, at least when Donald Trump came into contact with the flag, he hugged the flag. And we're like super cold and distant, so like judging by the way that you and Trump interact with the flag, I have to deduce that Trump is more patriotic than you because you didn't even hug the flag. Four out of ten. You tried. No, but like in all seriousness, I don't know what it was about flag day, but more so than ever, Republicans tried to prove how weird they are on flag day. Newsmax had an even more bizarre segment than what Ted Cruz posted to Twitter. And they went around interviewing people on flag day and coincided with Trump's birthday, so they basically got people to say happy birthday to Donald Trump. I don't even understand how a news organization can justify posting this without being embarrassed. Nonetheless, they did. June 14th, flag day, the day when the United States adopted the red, white, and blue as our official national flag. And coincidentally, it's former President Donald Trump's 75th birthday. Where James Kluge went out to get birthday greetings, James. What's going on, everyone? James Kluge here. Today is President Donald Trump's birthday, and we're going to ask people in Huntington Beach if they have a message for him. Today is Donald Trump's birthday. Do you have a message for him? Happy, happy, happy birthday, and I hope I see him back. Do you have a message for him? Yeah, I wish him a great birthday. I hope he's doing well. I hope with all the this public hate going on, it's not getting to him and he's out there killing on the golf course. Happy birthday, Trump. And I hope he comes back in 2024. Yeah, happy birthday, Mr. Trump, and go out and shoot the low 70s today. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. We love the guy. He's awesome. Yep. Hawaii loves him. He hugs the flag. That's what I love about him. Today is Donald Trump's birthday. Do you guys have a message for him? Love you, Donald Trump. Oh, my gosh. Our favorite news show. Hey. Hey. It's Donald Trump's birthday today. Do you have a message for him? Happy birthday. Happy birthday. We miss you. Oh, my gosh. Happy birthday, Donald. Right on. Happy birthday. I hope you're doing well. I'm not going to wish you a happy birthday because I think you're a jerk, and I think you should be in jail for all the laws that you broke. What laws specifically? Of course you would ask me that. For the details? For the details? I'm sorry. I don't have any details. Sorry. Makes sense. If you could get him one gift, what would you get him? Come back. If we could get him one gift, what would it be? A new voting machine. A new voting machine? I can't afford to buy him anything. But maybe we could print out a photo of him hugging the flag. Raja. You could sign it. Oh, he'll sign the gift to me? Yeah. I'll take that. Maybe like a filet of fish from McDonald's. You know, I know he likes McDonald's and the Big Mac. I know he likes that, too. It keeps him in that perfect health, you know? A good Mickey D's delivery. Oh, yeah. Exactly. For show. Maybe a new haircut. It's iconic, though. It is. It is. Probably another golf club because I think he needs a new one. What do you get for somebody who has everything? A Twitter account? You know what? I think I would get him a Bible. He may already have one, but what better gift can you get someone than the Word of God? Congratulations. You've proven successfully how sycophantic you are to Donald Trump. I hope he sees this, bro. I hope he sees how loyal you are. This is embarrassing. And look, as someone who is very outspokenly in favor of, or was outspokenly in favor of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, like if I posted something like that, I would be embarrassed with myself because you look foolish. Like it crosses from, you know, supporting a politician to just like worshiping a politician. But what I want to say is that that lady, I'm so disappointed in the lady who said, oh, well, I'm not going to wish him a happy birthday. Like you couldn't even name one thing this lady. I'm not going to wish you a happy birthday because I think you're a jerk and I think you should be in jail for all the laws that you broke. What laws specifically? Of course you would ask me that. For the details? For the details. I don't, I'm sorry. I don't have any details. Really, you couldn't even name one thing. It was in violation of the emoluments clause for the entirety of his presidency. He violated international laws, committed war crimes, the things that he did in office. He should be in the hage for the rest of his life. He possibly committed a tax fraud and you can't even come up with one thing. Come on, God liberals. You've got to do better. But the reason why I'm showing this to you is because I want you to see here. This is what the right-wingers in America are focusing on. While they're, you know, posting videos of themselves saying pledge of allegiance to the flag while they're worshiping Donald Trump, while they're focused on, you know, the issues that really matter, like Mr. Potato Head and Cat in the Hat getting canceled by their owners and Blues Clues doing pride parade stuff, what we're doing on the left is actually serious things. We're having real conversations about medical debt and Medicare for All and our broken for-profit healthcare system. We're talking about the student debt crisis. We're talking about anthropogenic climate change and what we need to do about it in order to stop catastrophic levels of climate change from wiping out our entire species. We're talking about actually ending US imperialism, stopping our forever wars, stop the commodification of our democracy before it erodes democracy even further. That's the things that we routinely talk about on the left. Like find any left-wing YouTuber or Twitch streamer and go through their catalog and you'll see like some junk food content like us dunking on Dave Rubin for saying something stupid. But by and large, most of our content is focused on substance. But Republicans, they never focus on substance. They're always fixated on some culture war issue. And there's a very specific reason for that. It's deliberate. It's because they don't have any solutions to the problems in this country. Like it's evident that there's a bevy of issues that need fixing in this country. I don't care where you fall on the political spectrum. You can be a leftist. You can be a centrist. You can be a right-winger. You acknowledge that there are issues in this country that need to be addressed, right? I may disagree with the solutions you propose, but nonetheless you acknowledge that there are issues. Why is it that Republicans never talk about the core issues? Why don't they talk about the serious things? It's because they're not serious people. They're not serious people. You have Republican lawmakers pushing QAnon conspiracy theories claiming that the election was stolen, fear mongering about critical race theory as if this is the biggest threat freaking out about acceptance of LGBTQ plus people, blocking the Equality Act from getting passed because they claim that this will lead to discrimination against religious people. They're not serious. While most society has moved on, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, for example, have accepted marriage equality and gay rights, they're still trying to bring us backwards. It's because these are all distractions, right? Wingers don't actually care about anything. There is no coherent right-wing ideology other than to uphold the status quo. What members of Congress, who are Republicans, want, and a lot of Democrats do to an extent to be fair, most Democrats, corporate Democrats, they just want to make sure that their corporate donors get what they want, deregulation and tax cuts, and the way that they get voters to support them even if they know that economically they're going to be fucked over by this party is they focus on dumb fucking issues like this because unfortunately it kind of works. Even if a Republican, just a normal Republican, might agree with you and I that Medicare for all is something that we need, they might rank that lower on the issues that they care more about. So they might think, well, you know what, I've heard a lot about transgender issues, and it seems as if transgender people are predators because that's what Newsmax and Fox News told me. So I should probably vote Republican even if they're not going to do anything about the health crisis in America because at least they're going to take care of this, you know, this predatory issue that we have. It's always something to be afraid about. And look, I'm not saying that scare tactics aren't a political tool that's effective and useful. There are things that we need to be worried about, but we should be worried about the real issues, climate change. People dying every single year because they don't have health care. But these right-wingers, what are they doing? Virtue signaling about the flag. Members of Congress holding rallies saying, we're not going to wear masks. This is like the Holocaust. They're not serious people.