 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 the episode 228 of the program. Today is Friday, February 7th and before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which signed up for the very first time to support us this week. And that includes 3Duan, Akba Shakira, Anna Valencia, Archie Russell, Ariana, Dr. Suleyman Alqadari, Jordan Rydzinski, Justin Moffitt, okstanley.com, Pam Ferguson, Philip Evans, Robert McEun, Russell Cerencioni, Simon Stefanos, TR Farmer and Zigzok. So thank you so much to all of these kind souls, 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 humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So this week was, um, interesting, eventful, to say the least. We will talk about how Rashida Tlaib booed Hillary Clinton, we'll talk about the DNC changes to rules to benefit Mike Bloomberg and two DNC members who work for his campaign and the DNC simultaneously. Some DNC members are plotting to bring back superdelegates to stop Bernie Sanders at the convention in the event he becomes the Democratic Party's nominee. And of course we will talk about the absolute shit show that was the Iowa caucus, we'll wait for the results together, we'll talk about the aftermath, and we'll discuss how Mayor Cheat tried to guido the caucus. And we'll also discuss MSNBC clowns, scolding Nina Turner and belittling Bernie Sanders and his supporters, followed by what I thought were the stupidest moments at Trump's State of the Union, along with the shocking news that he was acquitted. Of course, I'm being facetious. And finally we closed the show by talking to 2020 Congressional candidate running in Nevada named Clint Cobley. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's program. So hopefully you will, uh, I mean, I guess enjoy the show. It's not that enjoyable. I rant, um, for a lot of it. Nonetheless, we'll all be, uh, complaining and miserable together after this just clown car of a week, um, you know, uh, the State of the Union, the Iowa caucuses, the acquittal. We're all just gonna deal with this together. So as many of you know, on Friday, Rashida Tlaib at a Bernie rally in Iowa, she led the crowd as they booed Hillary Clinton, you know, they, uh, the moderator brought up Hillary Clinton, the crowd proceeded to boo and then the moderator said, no, no, we're not going to do that. Rashida Tlaib, however, she had a different reaction. Take a look. Week when someone by the name of Hillary Clinton said that nobody, we're not going to boo, we're not going to boo. We're classy here. We're all boo boo. I, you all know I can't be quiet. No, we're going to boo. That's all right. The haters, the haters will shut up on Monday when we win. There we go. That was absolutely phenomenal. And immediately when I saw this, I just thought, man, my love for Rashida Tlaib, I didn't think it could grow anymore, but she's amazing. But the thing that happened next, predictably, was, you know, the mass pro-clutching from the establishment. And I was so outraged by this myself seeing their outrage that I wanted to make a video. But on Friday, I went to the eye doctor and had my pupils dilated. So, you know, viewing all of these lights, filming with these lights, wasn't really an option. So I decided to wait until Monday to talk about this, you know, let it kind of marinate a little bit, if you will. But, you know, one thing that irritates me is that, you know, amid all of the pro-clutching, nobody in the media who talks about this is supplying people with the context that they need. Because right before Rashida Tlaib booed Hillary Clinton, we got this article from the New York Times where she attacks Bernie Sanders and his supporters once again. So as Shane Goldmacher reports, Hillary Clinton said on Friday in a podcast interview that Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters did not do enough to unify the Democratic Party after the prolonged 2016 primary, calling the behavior of his supporters distressing and saying it affected the general election. All the way up until the end, a lot of people highly identified with this campaign were urging people to vote third party, urging people not to vote. Ms. Clinton said in an interview with Emily Tish-Sussman for her podcast, Your Primary Playlist. It had an impact. Ms. Clinton also drew a sharp distinction between her efforts in 2008 to bring the party together after her bruising primary battle with Barack Obama and the efforts by Mr. Sanders in 2016. Night and day, she said. OK, so first of all, it's not up to us or Bernie Sanders to unite the party. You were the nominee. So that was on you to unite the party. And I'm sorry that people weren't just like willingly wanting to embrace you with open arms after you just rigged the fucking primary against us. But that was on you. I mean, you could have selected Bernie Sanders as your VP. You could have selected anyone that was relatively left-leaning as your VP, but you chose Tim Kaine and assumed that the left would come out to vote for you. Now, I don't think that Bernie's supporters is what caused Hillary Clinton the election because more Bernie supporters supported Hillary in 2016 than Hillary supporters supported Obama in 2008. And we'll talk about that. But what happened was you lost because you didn't excite the base because you were offering nothing to voters. And she has the nerve to say that there is this sharp distinction between her efforts to unite the party in 2008 and Bernie's efforts to do the same in 2016. Bernie did almost 40 rallies for you. It was at 39, 40. You did half that for Obama. And on top of that, you did nothing to reign in your supporters who identified as Puma, party unity my ass. And in case you haven't seen some of these clips, the reasons why Hillary Clinton supporters didn't want to support Barack Obama and even said that they'd vote for McCain is because Hillary Clinton ran an explicitly racist campaign against Obama. Take a look at some of the things that they said. Why? Because they want to do what they want to do. And they think we won't turn and vote for McCain. Well, I got news for all of you. McCain will be the next president of the United States. We're back. Welcome to Larry King Live, Elizabeth Joyce. She's in Denver. A member of Just Say No Deal. That's a coalition, a group of staunch Hillary Clinton backers who are not supporting Barack Obama. She's co-creator of higherheels.com, which described itself as a forum of power chicks for Hillary. One shot at that. Tell me about it. Clinton's for McCain. Well, we're with the coalition called Just Say No Deal. We have about 3 million people. We have about 3 million people. We have about 3 million people. Kristi Adkins, I'm Clinton's for McCain. I'm an independent. And while some people may haven't, who went to a Madras Muslim school when he was younger, the Clinton's for McCain. He wears Republican red and says he's eager to support John McCain. I'm going to campaign for him. Why don't you get a part of it? Let's take a closer look at Rajesh, graduate capollum's teacher, and you'll see what's different about this picture. He's a Hillary Clinton supporter, now part of New York's Democrats for McCain. We have on record with his name as a Muslim on his school record. So I mean, Hillary Clinton is just downright shameless. And everything she says, it's not surprising. Whenever she speaks, all I see this is as a distraction. She just wants people to not really focus on the primary. She wants to turn the eyeballs to her because she loves attention. And she wants us to re-litigate 2016 because she's hoping that that will hurt Bernie Sanders. But understand, it's not going to hurt Bernie Sanders. It's going to help him, if anything, because overall, as much as you claim that people don't like Bernie Sanders, no, we don't like you, Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders is the most popular senator in America. You are highly disliked. So I mean, just to give you that context, I mean, she said this on Friday, and then Rashida Tlaib booed Hillary Clinton. And yet, nobody's talking about Hillary Clinton's divisive statements. But everyone is clutching their pearls because Rashida Tlaib dared to boo Queen Hillary. I mean, look at some of these examples here. You have former Clinton senior advisor, Zach Petkanis, saying the Sanders campaign needs to immediately condemn this, shameful, destructive behavior. You have Clinton spokesperson, Nick Merrill, say, I can't imagine this kind of behavior is something Iowans want to see from candidates and their surrogates. And I don't imagine the vast majority of voters in Representative Tlaib's district, which Secretary Clinton won by over 60 points in 2016, want to see this either. This is so toxic, and I almost feel like Barack Obama should speak out. I know he can't, but it's that bad. These women owe their careers to trailblazers like Hillary Clinton, who also defended them specifically against Trump's insults. I still can't believe how awful this is. You have Tom Watson saying, why is Representative Jayapal laughing at Hillary Clinton? You have Charlotte Clymer, who was a comms director for Hillary Clinton, saying, this is absolutely ridiculous and unbecoming. I don't know what the hell this is supposed to accomplish. You have journalist Soledad O'Brien saying, you guys might need some of those Hillary voters later, in the general and in your own careers as legislators. Also, could our elected officials show some of the leadership qualities they always campaign on? This means all of you. Now, as all of these Democratic Party loyalists clutch their pearls and scold Rashida Tlaib, they said absolutely nothing about Hillary Clinton as she attacked Bernie Sanders and his supporters that very day. Like, this is asymmetric warfare. They wanna be able to punch us. They wanna be able to attack us and when we respond, then we're the ones who are condemned and nobody acknowledges that Hillary Clinton is the one that's being divisive and she was attacking Bernie that day, but we can never respond. Like, do you understand the ridiculous double standard here? How is the media not calling this out? Normal people see this. Normal people see this and it's why they don't trust the media because they know that there's this agenda. There's this pro-establishment, pro-democratic party, elite bias and whenever we say something that's deemed divisive, we're always scolded. But if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama say something that's divisive, well, you know, it's great. It's amazing. As the view put it, I'm just glad that Hillary Clinton is speaking, you know, her mind. Now I thought everyone wanted her to be authentic. No, if you're serious about defeating Donald Trump and you claimed that, you know, the primary being too negative in 2016 was an issue, then shouldn't you be condemning Hillary Clinton's divisive remarks, which further divides the Democratic party base because they will need to unify behind Bernie if he's the nominee. So Hillary Clinton, after all that he did for her, even after she rigged the primary against him, this is how she repays him. Now, Rashida Tlaib decided to kind of semi-apologize here, which I wish that she wouldn't have done that because she did absolutely nothing wrong. But here's what she said, I am so incredibly in love with the movement that our campaign of Not Me Us has created. This makes me protective over it and frustrated by attempts to dismiss the strength and diversity of our movement. However, I know what is at stake if we don't unify over one candidate to be Trump and I intend to do everything possible to ensure that Trump does not win in 2020. In this instance, I allowed my disappointment with Secretary Clinton's latest comments about Senator Sanders and his supporters get the best of me. You all, my sisters in service on stage and our movement deserve better. I will continue to strive to come from a place of love and not react in the same way of those who are against what we are building in this country. This is about building a just and equitable future for my two boys and future generations. So I mean, she didn't have to do that, but people called on her to apologize and she basically kind of semi-apologized. But has Hillary Clinton apologized? Like she said here, she was responding directly to Hillary Clinton's device of remarks, but that's not allowed. And nobody's calling on Hillary Clinton to apologize. It's just, it's so unbelievable. The hypocrisy of the Democratic Party establishment, it's almost like unbelievable. And it's not that, you know, I can't believe that they're hypocrites because that's obvious, but they're just so transparent. You'd think that they wouldn't be so conspicuous. Like they try to hide their hypocrisy, but they're just wearing it on their sleeves. They're just openly, you know, deflating the fact that there's a different set of standards that apply to us that don't apply to them. They can attack, they can be divisive, they can even attack the supporters of candidates. But if we respond, we're the bad guys. Even some random on Twitter with like 15 followers. If that person responds in a negative way, that is a representation of Bernie's movement and he must immediately condemn it. In fact, he should just spend all of his time not campaigning and just condemning all of the meanness that is emanating from his campaign. No other candidate should do this, just Bernie Sanders. Why? Because they want him to lose. So I mean, look, I don't have to tell you guys this. You already know, this is nothing but hypocrisy. The pearl clutching is fake. This is fake manufactured outrage. These people just don't want Bernie Sanders to win and they know how powerful the, you know, support of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Pramila Jayapal is. That's why they're doing everything to defeat him. That's why they're calling on Barack Obama to speak out to condemn Bernie Sanders because he's popular. Maybe that would hold some weight. They want us to disarm. They want us to go away. But guess what? We're not going anywhere. We are not going anywhere. And no matter how much they clutch their pearls and cry like babies, we are going to be a thorn in the side of their ass because what they did in 2016 was unforgivable. They rigged the primary against us and ended up losing to Donald Trump. So now guess what? All of you elites who worked for Hillary Clinton can do. Step aside and allow us to clean up the mess that you made. You are the reason why Donald Trump is the president. You are the reason why the Supreme Court is on the cusp of going conservative even more for decades to come. So if you truly are serious about wanting to get Trump out of office, shut up. Do what you can to unify the party as people like Rashida Tlaib are trying to do. Call on Hillary Clinton to apologize. Stop being so fucking hypocritical. I mean, it's just, it's insufferable. You all are insufferable. Join the Republican party because guess what? Bernie Sanders is the nominee. He will transform the Democratic party. So you're going to have to make a choice. Are you actually going to, you know, support the nominee to defeat Donald Trump? Or are you going to side with Republicans? Because economically speaking, you already agree with them more so than us. So make a decision. Either you're with us or you're against us. But all of this faux outrage, it's not helping you. It's only hurting your cause and making us stronger because I think that normal people see through it. They see the bullshit. They see, you know, this phony outrage. And they're just, they're sick of it. This is why Bernie Sanders is rising. This is why he's surging. This is why he's the most popular politician in America because he just cares about substance, not respectability and civility politics. So I think that we all knew that if Bernie Sanders really started to gain a lot of momentum, this primary was going to get super ugly. And we are to that point where it's getting ugly. And I can only anticipate it getting much, much uglier because we are now in a situation where the Democratic Party establishment is so tormented over the prospect of Bernie Sanders winning the nomination that they are openly discussing a plan to just outright steal the nomination away from Bernie Sanders at the convention. So how are they trying to do this? Well, there's a couple of members from the DNC who are proposing a reversal to the rules change that was adopted by the Unity Reform Commission. So as you all know, the power of superdelegates was, it was diminished. So now they can only vote on a second round if nobody wins outright. So these individuals are really hoping that in the event there isn't a contested convention and Bernie Sanders is the clear front runner. They still have some way to stop him from winning. And the way that they want to do that is to bring back the power and influence of superdelegates. Now, for more on this, we've got a David Siders of Politico who explains a small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention and conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days about a half dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party's national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested. Quote, I do believe we should reopen the rules. I hear it from others as well. One DNC member said in a text message last week to William Owen, a DNC member from Tennessee who does not support reopening the rules. Owen, who declined it to identify the member, said the member added in a text that it would be hard though, we could force a meeting or on the floor. Even proponents of the change acknowledge it is all but certain not to gain enough support to move past these initial conversations, but the talks reveal the extent of angst that many establishment Democrats are feeling the eve of the Iowa caucuses. So this is just despicable. It's morally reprehensible. You have members of a party with democracy in their name openly flaunting, stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Pretty brazenly so. I mean, why else would you float a rules change? They're saying it, they're not even hiding it. We want to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders or at a minimum bring back superdelegates so that way the media can start counting superdelegates which with pledge delegates and that gives voters the impression that he's more behind because he will get less support from superdelegates obviously than just, you know, a pledge delegates. It'll make it seem like, you know, the lead between him and Joe Biden is insurmountable because the establishment hates him, you know? Superdelegates will side with whoever the nominee is with the exception of Bernie Sanders. Even Elizabeth Warren, they'd support her over Bernie. So I mean, you've got to understand that whatever they can do to tip the scales, that's what they're trying to do. Even if it means ruining democracy, but understand this, this would not just ruin democracy. This would destroy the Democratic Party and I don't just mean that they lose to Donald Trump because that would be a certainty but this would destroy the Democratic Party. They would collapse and a new party would have to take its place because voters would be so outraged that there would be no recovering from it. They would lose fundraising. The institution wouldn't be able to sustain itself in the event they did something this brazen and people, millions of people would take to the streets because this would not be acceptable. I would predict that even members of the party who don't support Bernie Sanders would speak out because this is so brazenly undemocratic. I mean, this is quite literally authoritarian where you undermine the will of voters because you don't like the results of the election. I mean, they talk about how Vladimir Putin influenced the 2016 election and yet here they are trying to steal the election, brazenly so. Now look, I don't want you to feel discouraged. I don't want you to take away from the story that the situation is hopeless because this is actually a really good sign for us, specifically because it indicates that he really can win. He can win if they're saying this. Now there's only about six members but I will say this, they need to show themselves. Like reveal your names, don't be a coward. They need to speak up and Tom Perez needs to fire them immediately. This would not be acceptable even if they said, look, let's steal it from Joe Biden. They should be fired because you have to allow voters to make their decision, even if you don't like that result. Look, we're doing everything in our power to win this primary for Bernie Sanders but if it's fair and voters just don't side with us, I'll be demoralized but at least I will know that voters had their voices heard but if for whatever reason, things went south and Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg emerged as the nominee and the DNC stole it, that would be so fundamentally immoral, I wouldn't be able to support it. Like if they stole it from Joe Biden which they never would do and gave it to Bernie, as a Bernie supporter, I couldn't support that. That's how immoral and undemocratic it is. Either you believe in democracy or you don't. Now, Tom Perez responded to this because as soon as his article came out, it blew up and he said, absolutely not. We put in the work to ensure power was returned to the grassroots. We will be following the rules set forth by the DNC. We will not bend on this. We will not change our rules. Now, I guess this is a good sign that he's saying this although can we trust Tom Perez? I can't say with a straight face, of course we can't. He changed the rules to accommodate Mike Bloomberg after fucking over Mike Gravel. Why? Well, I don't know but Mike Bloomberg did donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DNC. So is he willing to change the rules? Yes. Will he change the rules in this instance? He's saying no, but just understand this Tom Perez, we're watching, we're watching very, very closely because you're not gonna be able to get away with this. Like what do you expect? Just for us to get a plurality or majority of delegates and then you just say, actually we choose Joe Biden and we're just gonna be cool with that. Do you understand? There's no way that a rational-minded individual in the DNC would be okay with this, knowing the repercussions, knowing the backlash. They'd be insane. But just the fact that you have about six people, half a dozen or so, probably more, openly floating this prospect of stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders, it shows you that this institution is rotten to its core and in the event, Bernie Sanders does become the nominee, then he's got a clean house. Fire every single person at the DNC, leave no stone unturned, get them all out. Because if you have this type of culture at the DNC, that's this toxic, to where they are so brazen about their hatred of Bernie Sanders and the grassroots, that they'd outright steal the election, we can't have that. So here's the thing, when you get to a certain point, the establishment can only do so much. We saw this in 2016 and we're seeing the same thing now. The RNC was definitely trying to do whatever they could to fuck over Donald Trump. You had individuals like Mitt Romney float possible runs. We're seeing that now with John Kerry, but guess what? It may be too late for them. Bernie Sanders may very well be unstoppable. We don't know. We don't know, but just the mere fact that this conversation is taking place with members of the DNC who have power, it's downright despicable, it's morally reprehensible, and every single elected Democrat should be speaking out against this at the top of their lungs. Because if you believe in democracy and you truly want some type of alternative to the Republican Party, you've gotta condemn this. And I'm calling on every single person to speak out against this, because this is downright sick. This is gross. This is perverted. Anyone who would be willing to stoop to this, they really should not be participating in politics, and they should be fired immediately. It's unacceptable. So I don't think that they're going to be successful here, but that doesn't mean that we should be naive and trust them. And we certainly have to watch them very closely, be vigilant, and not let our guards down because we may have to protest. There may need to be a mass occupy the Democratic Convention event. There may be, you know, walkouts. If they do this, you know, they don't know what they just did. Like they are opening the door to just pure destruction of their party. So I don't think that they would be able to do this, but again, the fact that it's being floated, completely unacceptable, they've gotta be fired. You're fired, get out of here. So the DNC once again is exposing itself as the undemocratic fraud corrupt institution that it is. Because after setting debate requirement criteria prior to going into the primary, which was the correct move, what they are now doing is altering the rules, presumably at the behest of one candidate, one candidate who is currently trying to buy his way into the White House. So as Politico reports, the Democratic National Committee is drastically revising its criteria to participate in primary debates after New Hampshire, doubling the polling threshold and eliminating the individual donor requirement, which could pave the way for former New York City mayor, Mike Bloomberg, to make the stage beginning in mid-February. Candidates will need to earn at least 10% in four polls released from January 15th to February 18th or 12% in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina in order to participate in the February 19th debate in Las Vegas. Any candidate who earns at least one delegate to the National Convention in either the Iowa caucus or New Hampshire primary will also qualify for the Nevada debate. Bloomberg, the self-funding billionaire, has refused to take donations from other individuals, which has thus far precluded his participation in any of the debates since he joined the race late last year. Quote, now that the grassroots support is actually captured in real voting, the criteria will no longer require a donor threshold, said Adrian Watson, a DNC spokeswoman. So understand what they're doing here. They're tweaking the rules that they said were non-negotiable and they're doing it at the behest of a billionaire. Does this seem like an institution that actually cares about democracy? They speak out rightfully so when Republicans try to rig elections with voter purges, with voter ID laws that are meant to suppress the vote, but here they are trying to stack the deck in favor of one candidate. Why? Because Joe Biden may not necessarily have what it takes to beat Bernie Sanders. So they're trying to give Mike Bloomberg a little bit of a boost since he's self-funding his campaign like Donald Trump and they want more voters to know about him. And even though he's already spending over 100 million to flood the airwaves to get his name out there, that may not necessarily be enough. Maybe they think that he'll be more legitimized if voters see him on a debate stage holding his own against other candidates. I don't know what the reasoning is, but I do know that this is unacceptable. You set out the rules and you're changing them midway through the primary and surprise, surprise, they benefit one candidate. Now, to make matters worse, what's interesting is that there is a huge conflict of interest that nobody seems to talk about here. So as Ryan Grimm reports, just before jumping into the race, Mike Bloomberg gave $325,000 to the DNC on top of the gobs he spent on ads this month, totally normal system. So just stop and reflect on this. He gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And even though other candidates have repeatedly condemned the DNC for numerous reasons, we have Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard speaking out about the dubious polling criteria that they use to gauge who does and doesn't qualify for debates. And all of a sudden, this guy who happened to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars is the beneficiary of a rule change that benefits them. Hmm, interesting, very interesting. Now, what makes this even more disgusting is the fact that, well, they didn't even follow the rules that they set out. So remember, to get to that first debate, you had to reach 65,000 individual donors and poll at, I think it was 2% nationally. Mike Gravel met that criteria. And guess what happened? He still was not included in the debate. Now, Mike Gravel's official Twitter account tweeted, in July of 2019, the Mike Gravel campaign contacted the DNC after receiving over 65,000 unique donors on the call a senior official swore that they would never change the debate rules for any candidate. Six months later, they did exactly that. Listen to them lie to our faces. And they brought receipts because here is a video of a DNC official telling them we don't change the rules for anyone. We wanted to get everybody as many chances as we could. And I think it's a very generous set of rules. But I think the broader issue is that we can't change them later on for the benefit of any candidate. You know, that's kind of our rule number one for us here. And it doesn't matter who it is. We obviously, as Mary Beth has to do, like we didn't change them for Governor Bolick. And we can't change them for anybody. That is contrary to what I think people expect out of the DNC and what we've committed to in terms of wanting a transparent and a neutral primary. Shameless, they're utterly shameless. So it's not that they won't change the rules. They just won't change the rules if it benefits candidates that they don't like. But they're more than willing to change the rules if it benefits candidates that they do like, establishment candidates. I mean, there are 60 DNC members, half a dozen or so, according to a new political article that are considering changing the rules probably won't go through. But nevertheless, they want to change the rules to bring back a bigger influence of super delegates like we had in 2016. So they're all about changing the rules if it either helps the candidate that they like or hurts the candidate that they dislike. They're hypocrites. Now, they fucked up so badly here because this is such a bad look that even establishment candidates like Julian Castro spoke out to condemn them here. But here's what I find just grating about this and the condemnation from individuals like Michael Bennett and other people running for president. You guys said nothing back in 2016 when the DNC was openly rigging it against Bernie Sanders. I mean, before any debates took place, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former manager of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign, colluded with Hillary Clinton to set a limited debate schedule. On top of that, before she even won the primary, they signed a joint fundraising agreement that allowed her to basically take control of the DNC and the party apparatus, which you can't do until you win. So I mean, they stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders. They rigged it. That's not to say that he couldn't have won, but he was heavily disadvantaged. And you'd think that they would be less conspicuous this time. They tried to at least hide the rigging, but now they're not. And again, this isn't the first time that they have fucked over candidates in this cycle. They did it to Mike Ravel. They did do it to Tulsi Gabbard with the debates, right? She qualified. She met the polling requirements and the donor requirements, but because it wasn't, you know, the right polling from the certain poll, she wasn't led into the debate. The DNC must be cleansed from top to bottom. The only way that that can actually happen and we can have robust change is if Bernie Sanders wins, because once you become the Democratic Party nominee, you assume the role of party leader. So you are in control. So if I'm Bernie Sanders, the minute I become the nominee, I'm firing everyone at the DNC. Everyone's gotta leave, right? Because this is unacceptable. This behavior, this, you know, this hubris and duplicity that we are constantly seeing, it's hurting democracy. Again, you're a party that has democracy in your name, but yet, you know, this billionaire who's trying to buy his way into the White House donates hundreds of thousands to you. And all of a sudden you change the rules for him, but not for other candidates. The DNC is a joke and the only way they could ever possibly be redeemable is if Bernie Sanders takes over the party and he actually does purge all of them. Now, he probably wouldn't take drastic action like this until after the general election, I don't think he would be willing to, you know, fire everyone right away. I would do that, but I mean, for him, he probably wouldn't want to do that. But, you know, if he becomes the nominee and beats Donald Trump and, you know, is sworn in, I think he would reform the party because, you know, you have a culture of corruption in the DNC where they are just, they're open about their corruption. They embrace it. And this isn't everyone at the DNC. It's about half of the party, basically everyone who voted for Keith Ellison and Tom Perez where that divide kind of falls. But with that being said, I mean, if he's not gonna fire everyone, do mass interviews and reevaluate each and every single one of them because these people are actively hurting the party. They are hurting the party. They're delegitimizing the party. If you wanna even say they have any legitimacy left, but I mean, if they truly want to exist, if the DNC and the Democratic Party want to exist as institutions, they better hope that Bernie Sanders wins because he is the only way that they will be able to cultivate legitimacy going forward because if you continue with this corruption and rigging and you lose to Donald Trump for a second time, I mean, how do you ever expect to win back the trust of voters? It's just damaging to the party long term. So they should hope Bernie Sanders wins. But I mean, honestly, as we're kind of seeing here, a lot of people in the DNC, a lot of Democratic Party elites would rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie Sanders. I think that we're seeing that right now. You know, they don't want to win. They don't want to win because, you know, you can sit on your ass and fundraise off of Donald Trump's craziness and not really offer voters anything. If they actually win, then they'd have to put in work. So I mean, that's fine. If you don't want to do anything to help people, move aside, we'll help people because we actually want to win and we want to elect candidates who are hungry to improve the lives of people, to implement reforms that would drastically improve our lives for the better. Individuals running for Congress, like step aside, if you're just, if you're tired of serving the people and you're not actually doing that functionally speaking, then what are you, just resign, make it easier on all of us. Don't make us have to fight you. You clearly don't care about democracy. You don't care about voters. So just resign, you know, if you're part of the DNC and you're doing this. But I mean, they're not going to, they're going to cling to power because that's what people in DC love to do. So we're going to have to one by one replace each of these individuals in the DNC with someone who is not corrupt, who is not willing to change the rules to benefit a billionaire. Like that's just so disgusting. It's beyond the pale. It's low even for the DNC. So there's nothing left to say about this. Well, today is the day. As you all know, the Iowa caucus takes place tonight and we will find out for the first time in the 2020 Democratic Party primary who actually will be receiving some pledged delegates. Now I am incredibly nervous. It feels like there's a million butterflies in my stomach. I don't think I'll have much of an appetite. And it's not necessarily because I don't feel, you know, confident. I am confident going into this Bernie Sanders is very much the front runner. However, I am cautiously optimistic because nothing is a foregone conclusion yet. And, you know, this is the point in time where you really like, you have a lot of questions in your head. There's a lot of uncertainty. And it kind of leads to self-doubt. Like I'm thinking, did we do enough? Did I do enough? You know, will everything that we've been doing pay off? Can we actually win? What if we don't win by a big enough margin? And it's not just Bernie supporters who are feeling it. I'm sure it's everyone who's feeling it. But now is the time where everything that we did, we're gonna see if it paid off. And that is really exciting, but terrifying at the same time. Because I mean, if we win and we win big, Bernie will be public enemy number one, right? There's already stories about John Kerry wanting to jump in, talking about it openly to stop Bernie Sanders. So we'll have to work even harder. And if he doesn't win, God forbid, then we'll have to work even that much more harder. The narrative shifts. So I just want everyone to know going into this, that as you sit there and you watch the results come in and you probably refresh every five seconds, know that you're not alone and we're all doing it. So I'm not just making this video to say, hey guys, we're all nervous. I wanted to bring you some practical information. First and foremost, understand that it's not over until it's over. So if you are in Iowa, let me stress this. You have to caucus for Bernie. Not only that, bring your family, bring your friends, make this something that you commit to all evening. Don't go anywhere and make sure that you check where your location is. Because I'll post this link at the bottom of the description box. As Aaron Stigl points out on Twitter, he's a member of Sunrise Boise. Important, I just got off the phone with a Bernie volunteer who said caucus locations are being switched in Iowa and particularly in places where Bernie is polling well. Make sure to communicate with other Bernie voters in your area about location updates. Now this was confirmed by someone who lives in Iowa and is currently putting up signs at old locations. So people who haven't seen the change know where to go. And again, that link that I will provide for you in the description box will make it easy. You just put in your zip code and it will tell you the most up to date place of where you go to caucus. Now at first, this was seemingly nefarious and I'm not of the belief that the establishment is above doing dirty tricks. I don't trust them and we should all be skeptical. But the reason why they are changing the venues even up until this point when it's so close to caucus time is because they are expecting a higher turnout in those Bernie areas. So the venues that they had like schools and churches that's not gonna be enough to house all of these people. So in a way, this is like a double-edged sword. We want high turnout because that will benefit us. That's how we win. But at the same time, we have to make sure that these venues are able to accommodate and that can lead to some confusion, right? So make sure that you are coordinating with your fellow caucus goers in Iowa. If you are in Iowa and understand that you have to stay there, make sure that you come prepared and make sure you document everything. I cannot stress this enough. Don't trust that the establishment will act in good faith. I mean, we don't know what to expect from the establishment, but we have to go into this assuming that they're going to try to somehow screw us or screw Bernie Sanders. I mean, think about this last time. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won all six coin tosses. Now I'm not necessarily saying that that means that they rigged the coin toss process, but it would have been nice to document that. So if it goes to a coin toss, film it. Make sure that you come prepared and you know what to expect. This is a commitment. This is going to be something that you're going to have to do all night. And look, I just want you to know that every one of us who are not in Iowa are really counting on all of you. I mean, the movement rests squarely on your shoulders. So no pressure, but we have to win Iowa. We have to win Iowa. Best case scenario, we win and Bernie is one of the few candidates that reaches that viability threshold since there's so many people. Now, if that does happen, that would be great news, but you're going to see a really huge effort by the establishment Democratic Party elites to get Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar, or whoever to drop out so that way they consolidate that centrist vote. So I don't want you to get cocky after the results and I don't want you to be too down after the results of Iowa. If it doesn't go our way, just know that this is the beginning of a really long and just taxing mentally and physically journey that we're all starting together. We're going to get some results today. We're going to find out who's the first winner of a primary and we can get a lot of momentum, but either way, I need us to all stay grounded. I need you to understand that our eye has got to be kept on the prize. So no matter what happens, we stay focused. We keep pushing forward and immediately we switch gears to focus on New Hampshire and the Super Tuesday States. Just make sure that understand this, this isn't make or break either way. A lot of things can change. This is going to be a long, arduous process, but it will be nice to finally see what happens. But going into this, I feel good. Nervous, that's to be expected, but good. Now I will release a video immediately after we know the results. I'm going to wait until it's official. Like I would ideally like to wait until all of the precincts are reporting that might not necessarily be practical because some precincts take forever. I remember back in 2016, it was really difficult to figure out who won and ultimately it was a statistical tie. Hillary Clinton ended up getting like 0.2% higher than Bernie Sanders, but it would go back and forth between them, there were a couple of precincts that I don't think fully reported until the next day if I'm remembering correctly. So just know that I will release a video immediately after I know, but I know for sure. Like I don't want to just preemptively put out a video. Bernie won or Bernie got X amount of delegates. I'm going to wait until we know for sure the results because there's going to be a lot of information. The internet will be buzzing. So that's my game plan. So look, let's do it. I'm certainly ready. I am ready to see the results and I know you are too. And look, at this point I'm rambling because again, that nervous energy, you know, it's, this is a big deal. This is huge. It's not everything, but this can really help us in terms of momentum. So good luck to everyone caucusing and thank you to everyone who brought us to this point where we're going into Iowa, you know, as the front runner. Now, one last thing before I go, before I forget is that I want people to understand that in Iowa, you can't be complacent because let's say that, you know, Bernie Sanders really is leading but Joe Biden comes in a close second but, you know, Pete would a judge and Amy Klobuchar supporters don't reach that viability threshold of 15%. They then have to make their second choice. They can opt for Biden. So that's why I just, I can't emphasize this enough. If you are in Iowa, you cannot leave, you have to stay there. This is a commitment and it's gonna be grueling. Take a lunch. Like you've gotta understand that we are counting on you but good luck and thank you all for caucusing for Bernie Sanders. I don't know what else to say. So if I don't stop the video now, I will just ramble incoherently. This whole video is probably incoherent. Let's do it. It's happening tonight. The Iowa caucus. I have my graphic ready. Yeah, this is a big night. The results should be coming in relatively soon. And yeah, I'm just sitting here and I'm gonna wait. Two hours later. Exactly happened tonight. We still don't know, but on the phone right now, join us live here on ABC's Live as Brett Nils. He's chairman of the Link County Democratic. What the fuck? All right, so as many of you know, Iowa did not go the way that any of us expected. In fact, it was a complete and utter disaster. And I have a dumpster fire to represent the entire process itself. And I apologize for the delay in getting this video out. I just wanted to wait until I had the most updated results. They claimed that they might release information at around this time. It's 2.46 p.m. PST at the time I record this. And we just got some results. Now the Iowa State Democratic Party apparently won't say when they're going to release the rest of the results. But as it stands currently with 62% reporting, that's all we have. Apparently Pete Buttigieg is in the lead. Bernie Sanders is winning with a popular vote in the first and second alignment totals. Although Pete Buttigieg somehow has more of a state delegate equivalence. And the process itself doesn't really make sense. There's a lot of confusion. And to add to the confusion, Bernie Sanders released last night at around, I want to say 11 p.m. He released his own internal numbers, which showed with 40% of precincts reporting. He had about a five point lead over Pete Buttigieg. Elizabeth Warren was in third and Joe Biden was not viable. And then this morning he gave us the update with 60% of precincts. And he still had that same five point lead over Pete Buttigieg, almost five points give or take. Senator Sanders with 29.08. Mayor Buttigieg with 21.63. Senator Warren with 19.51. Senator Klobuchar with 12.27. And Vice President Biden at 12.04. Post-realignment, those numbers are Senator Sanders 29.4. Mayor Buttigieg 24.87. Senator Warren 20.65. Vice President Biden 12.92. And Senator Klobuchar 11.18. Again, the spread and these results have been pretty consistent all through the night. By the time we had about 15% in, these results have held across all the reporting. So we anticipate that this will hold probably. So he's obviously getting different precincts reported than what is being reported here. You know, there's different precincts we don't necessarily know, although currently based on the official tally, it seems like Pete Buttigieg has the slight edge overall. And a lot of people are trying to scramble to make sense of the situation. I'm gonna play a clip from MSNBC's Steve Kornacki who tries to digest these results. And you can tell even he doesn't necessarily know what's going on. There are three different categories. They were all just released at once. What you're seeing on your screen right now, this is the state delegate equivalent category. This is, so the numbers you see underneath 359 for Buttigieg, 334 for Sanders, 243 for Elizabeth Warren. These are state delegate equivalents. Now remember, there are about 2100 of these statewide. So Buttigieg with 359, that's accounting for 27%. You can start to do the math of what that accounts for. These are, this is a complicated formula where each precinct in the state is worth a certain number of state delegate equivalents. They work their way up. Notably, let me make sure I saw this right. This is the final product. This is the initial preference. Yes, we have a discrepancy right now. The initial preference, when people showed up, this is, remember these are not final results right now. He said 62% of precincts. We gotta see what that exactly accounts for in terms of votes here. But right now the numbers that the Iowa Democratic Party just released, the initial preference in these precincts you can see was Sanders 24, Buttigieg 21, Warren 19, Biden 15. You can see Klobuchar 13, and you can see what happens. Remember in every precinct, 15% the magic number. So let's show you what happened then. Again, for all these precincts, this is the second, this is the reallocation. So watch, remember those numbers? Now watch this. And there you go. Wow, so Sanders on the second allocation continues to lead much tighter. So how does Sanders lead in the state delegate equivalent? Excuse me, how does Buttigieg lead in the state delegate equivalent? If he's not leading on the second allocation, it gets into, and I gotta take a look here very closely, but my theory, my suspicion here, strong suspicion would be what we've been talking about. These counties are weighted differently here. The rural counties have a little bit more clout when it comes to the state delegate equivalents. And you can see here, Buttigieg in dark blue. These are rural counties. These are rural counties. Sanders purple, college county, college county, college county, watch 52% for Sanders here. These counties lose influence, lose clout in the state delegates. And so therefore, I think what you're seeing is the clout of the Buttigieg counties in the state delegate equivalent. So it seems like at the time I'm recording this, there are other larger counties that should be coming in that theoretically should help Bernie Sanders. Buttigieg is having that rural bump. But I mean, it doesn't really matter. The media is going to run away with this narrative that he is victorious. One, because he already declared victory. And two, because we knew that they would do this anyway. Like in the event, Bernie Sanders won and somebody else came in second place. I think it was obvious to all of us that that individual would be the new front runner in their view or the person who can beat Bernie Sanders. Now, a lot of people, regardless if they believe that malfeasance is happening or just incompetence, they don't believe in the process. I don't believe in the process. Like I feel so demoralized by this process and feel as if this process is so illegitimate that we need an international impartial entity to monitor our primary process. Because this is just the first of 50 primaries. We've got 49 to go. And what a debacle this has been. Now, not to mention, there's a lot of conflicts of interest at play there that make matters worse. So, first of all, the Iowa State Democratic Party lied to us. They, when the results were supposed to start coming in, told us that there was a little bit of a delay because of quality assurance. Now, nobody knows what that means. Nobody trusts the Iowa State Democratic Party or the DNC. I want a quality check on their quality assurance check. But they later came out and said actually the app that we're using to report the numbers isn't working. It is an app developed by this company called Shadow. And this is a company that Pete Buttigieg's campaign suspiciously donated more than $20,000 to two times. Iowa Democrats would not tell us in advance, but we have now determined that it was a company a company that is affiliated with a company called Acronym. And now Acronym's CEO is married to a senior advisor of Pete Buttigieg. And his brother also works on that campaign in Iowa. So no matter what some people say at this point, that there's no leakage, there's no contamination, there are gonna be those who believe that this app itself was leaning towards Mayor Pete. So there are a lot of issues yet to be explored. And their CEO was celebrating once Pete Buttigieg entered the race. Now this company is comprised of former Hillary Clinton alum, because after demonstrating that they're part of a team that is the most incompetent in democratic party history, of course they'd go on to fail up and get jobs developing an app that literally is going to influence democracy. So look, let me just say this, the bare minimum, the bare minimum that we should have expected was results, vote totals, but we couldn't get that. And you have CBS News reporters, for example, blaming Bernie Sanders for this, because during the Unity Reform Commission at the DNC, he dared to ask for more transparency. What's happening tonight, Elaine, is exactly what Bernie Sanders asked for, or whenever the results are released. In that, we're gonna have several data sets to work with tonight, or whenever the results come. First round, how much support each candidate got. The second round, raw total results, and then the delegate count, that's three data sets. The only one that matters is the delegate count ultimately, whenever we get it. Okay, well, assuming that that is true and it takes that much longer to do basic math, well, shouldn't it only take like three times longer if you're doing three different numbers? I mean, what we're asking for is the bare minimum that is required for a democracy to count the fucking votes. And we can't even get that. We can't even get a straight answer. First, they say quality control, now they say the app. Okay, well, if the app isn't working, then what do you do? You do what you did last time. You call it in, precinct captains, call in the numbers, and they were on hold for hours, couldn't even get that through. So the old process couldn't even help recover and save this disaster after the new process failed. And this is the app that is supposed to be used for the Nevada caucuses, but thankfully there are reports that they're not going to use it after this. But I mean, this is completely unacceptable. And to make matters worse, people don't even believe that there will be the most minimal amount of accountability. Like, is there going to be a lawsuit with shadow? Is the Iowa State Democratic Party chair going to resign? Is Tom Perez going to resign? Like you have this situation where this is an international embarrassment and there's probably going to be no accountability and nobody trusts the process. Regardless, if you believe that there's this sinister plot to overthrow Bernie Sanders lead, regardless if you think that that's not happening and this is just due to incompetence, it doesn't matter. Voters do not come out to support Democrats if they don't believe in the process. This is why Democrats lose. This is why Donald Trump has a very good shot of getting reelected. Because when voters stay home, Republicans win and nobody believes in the process. Nobody thinks it's legitimate. The Democratic Party has done more than enough to delegitimize the process. And we're just getting started. This is the first primary of 49. What a fucking disaster. What a disaster. I mean, of epic proportions. Again, we need the UN or some international entity to oversee our elections because nobody trusts the Democratic process. Nobody. Here's the thing about Iowa. Pledge delegates from that state, it's such a minimal amount. You know, in the broad context of the overall Democratic Party primary process. But the reason why Iowa is so important, one is because it's the first contest. And two, because usually this sets out a really important media narrative, regardless if that narrative is going to be pundits on MSNBC crying about Bernie Sanders' victory. A narrative is really what this is all about. It's why individuals like my friend, Joy Marie of Savage Joy, literally dedicated five weeks of her life knocking on doors for Bernie in Iowa and she can't even get the full results. But we got 62% and they won't say when we get the rest of it. Is it gonna be before the Friday Democratic Party debate? Will it be before Super Tuesday? I mean, do you understand how ridiculous this is? You have someone preemptively declaring victory before we've seen any numbers. You have Joe Biden calling it to question the entire process itself, saying it's illegitimate, probably because that first numbers that we saw showed him not really being viable, but now we're at a situation where we don't necessarily know if we can trust these numbers, we don't know what to expect, we don't know if there will be other precincts that come in, we don't know if they're showing us the correct information, why not just show us the precinct totals? We just don't know, it's an open question and that is why the process is so fucked. Because how do you expect voters to have faith in this process? Our institutions have been completely delegitimized and the Democratic Party is to blame. And I see individuals on Twitter who work in mainstream media, brow-beating people for raising suspicions and sounding the alarm and even being conspiratorial. But I mean, I don't blame people for being conspiratorial when the Democratic Party is so incompetent and where this whole last week we saw headlines of the Democratic Party establishment being tormented over the fact that Bernie might run away with a nomination and we see DNC insiders plotting to bring back super delegates to possibly steal the nomination away from Bernie Sanders at the convention. I mean, how do you not expect these types of conspiracies to proliferate when people have so little faith in the system that we're supposed to trust? Like we're supposed to be the model for democracy around the world. We brow-beat other countries for not being democratic enough and we can't even get a fucking vote count. Like, do you understand? And now all of these scandals emerge as we're expecting the results where Pete Buttigieg's campaign is in cahoots with the company that develops the app that reports the information to us. And look at that, he's in the lead. Do you not see why people are frustrated and demoralized with this process? Do you not understand why that's the case? Can you not empathize with voters here who are very turned off by the process because of instances like this? Do you not get it? Who doesn't get it at this point? People who are being intentionally obtuse. But let me just tell you this, Bernie supporters. This, regardless if it was intentional or due to incompetence, was meant to demoralize us. We're all feeling demoralized. We're all feeling down. But guess what I'm doing? After I finish this video, I'm going to donate to Bernie Sanders because this is not going to rattle us. I don't give a shit who wins. Pete Buttigieg, even if he is the winner of Iowa, guess what? That's not going to give him enough pledge delegates no matter what the media narrative is. Currently, he doesn't really have a path to the nomination. When you have no young supporters, when you have almost no support among black voters, we can still win this. So don't feel down. We're going to just absolutely blow out the field in New Hampshire, okay? So I don't want this to get you down because this is what they want. It's not conspiratorial to question why the state of Iowa and their Democratic Party is choosing to not even say when they're going to release the full results. Maybe they're doing this because they love this Pete Buttigieg narrative of him being victorious and they just want to sit on it. Nobody knows and I don't even care to speculate. All I know is this is not going to rattle us. In fact, it's going to make us fight 10 times harder because we knew that they would fuck up this process in some way, shape, or form. We knew that this was going to be the case and you motherfuckers thought that you could demoralize us. Not at all. We donate, we're stronger because guess what? This is a movement that we have been fighting for for four years and if we're going to beat Donald Trump, the only person who has a shot in hell is Bernie Sanders. So we have no fucking choice. We have to keep going. We have to keep fighting. We have to keep knocking on doors for Bernie Sanders and understand that if you feel like your time was wasted in Iowa, I get you. I feel really sad for the fact that you haven't gotten the bare minimum of what you deserve. It's the fucking voto. But guess what? That was to our benefit. Everything you did was a down payment on a Bernie Sanders presidency and we will fucking keep fighting. No matter what the results are, I don't care how demoralized we feel. I don't care how depressed these results or lack thereof makes me. I'm going to keep fighting because guess what? We don't have a choice. So I will be doing some additional videos with some segments that I want to talk about and this is just the results currently. Let me check really quick before I turn off the camera. It's difficult to record when we have almost no certainty that things will change. We also have an apology from Shadow Company. I'm not even going to read that. But yeah, we have nothing else. We don't know who the winner of Iowa officially is. We don't know when we're going to find out. It's just a huge open question and what I do know is that this is not a good look for the Democratic Party. When you have a whole state party apparatus unable to conduct a basic primary where you count the numbers, something a third grader can do with the assistance of a national Democratic Party, the DNC, it's just, it's not a good look. And they better hope that Bernie Sanders wins this nomination because nobody else is competent enough to take on Donald Trump because everyone who worked for Hillary Clinton is still working for the Democratic Party. They're developing apps that are used to tally the votes. Great job, great job guys. They're running campaigns. They're in Elizabeth Warren's campaign now. They never learn. So the only person who has a shot is Bernie because he doesn't have these incompetent ghouls who are just worried about their own careers running his campaign. He's our only chance. So that's why I say we're not gonna stop fighting to the chagrin of the establishment because we don't have a fucking choice. Nobody else will come close to beating Donald Trump. I don't know that anyone will beat Donald Trump, but if I know we're gonna have a shot, it'll be with Bernie Sanders and we're gonna fight like fuck to make sure that he is the one who's the nominee. So bring it on establishment because we expected this and your attempt to demoralize us regardless if it's intentional or not, is not going to work. So as I am recording this, we know that Pete Buttigieg is currently leading in Iowa with state-delegate equivalence while Bernie Sanders has the edge in the popular vote. This is with 62% reporting. However, when we were hoping to see some results come in when nobody saw any numbers whatsoever, that didn't stop Mayor Pete from declaring victory anyway. So he tweeted out, the skeptic said, not now, not this time. All this talk of belonging, of bridging divides is too naive, too risky. So tonight I say with a heart filled with gratitude, Iowa, you've proved those skeptics wrong. He also tweeted, tonight Iowa chose a new path. So I mean, in other words, he's basically implying very heavily so that he won. Again, this was before any of us saw the results. We now see 62% of the vote totals, but this was when we had less than 2% reporting. He also tweeted out this video before he once again suggests he won. Right off the stage here in Iowa, incredible night, incredible result and such phenomenal energy here. We are headed to New Hampshire, victorious and now we got to build for the next phase. So if you're able to help, I hope you'll take a moment to chip in. We are on our way toward big news in New Hampshire too and we'll be pushing every day. He is basically trying to guido the Iowa caucus. That's what he's trying to do because he is, you know, an astute politician is out of touch as he is. He knows that Iowa is mostly about momentum and the media narrative. So what he's probably thinking is that if he can get ahead of the narrative before we even see results, then maybe even if he doesn't win, he can get a little bit of bump in momentum if there's this buzz even temporarily about him winning. So I mean, people obviously were frustrated. They wanted to see the results. So what was the response to this? Well, rat emoji, rat emoji, rat emoji, rat emoji, rat emoji, rat emoji, rat emoji, guido plus rat equals peat memes. I mean, I got this rat. And on top of that hashtag mayor cheat was trending because of his connection to the app shadow which led to this debacle in the first place. So I mean, he doesn't know how to read a room and his mudness at this point in time is actually hurting him. He probably thought that it would help him to be a little bit of a confident, but it's hurting him because people see right through it and all of the candidates, supporters of other candidates are equally as frustrated as Bernie supporters are, right? So you have Andrew Yang supporters, Elizabeth Warren supporters, even Amy Klobuchar supporters, probably not really wanting to hear this nonsense about how victorious you were when we don't know the responses. Now, the morning after the Iowa caucus, he was asked by some reporters about Iowa and if it was maybe too early for him to declare victory and he had the most smug, non-response I've ever seen from a politician in my life. Mayor British, it's wonderful to be mature to declare a victory in Iowa. How do you feel about Iowa? How do you feel? You said Victoria's last night, you think that's too early? You feel like your numbers are going well. He is so incredibly insufferable and ratty. And look, he is the typical, rehearsed politician who is focus group driven and thumb points and I am all but certain he would lose to Donald Trump, possibly in a landslide. Voters aren't going to turn out to vote for someone who is offering them crumbs. And the media is now, or at least some Democratic Party pundits and loyalists, pro-Democratic Party pundits, I should say, are trying to get us to shut up and accept the crumbs that Mayor Pete will offer us in the event he does become the Democratic Party's nominee. We'll get to that in a minute. But in terms of the media narrative, I'm actually a little bit surprised that the media isn't actually going with Pete's narrative yet. Essentially the headlines are saying that it's between Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg that they both lead because you can't necessarily declare anyone a winner when we don't have the results. I mean, Bernie Sanders reported results from the morning after Iowa with 60% of precincts where it showed him with the five point lead of her Pete Buttigieg, which tells us that there are other precincts not being counted that possibly have Bernie Sanders up. So you can't really say anything, but Politico did give him credit for quote, crushing the spin game or as I'd like to call it outright lying through your teeth trying to convince people that you win, so the media also parrots what you're saying. But really I think what makes this situation 10 times worst and what makes Pete that much more unlikeable is the brow beating from the media. Like they can't help themselves. They can't not rich-splain to voters when we're all fresh-fitted. Like you have to understand if you're going to do politics, there's going to be times where you have these energy spikes and energy dips. Currently there's an energy spike and a lot of people are feeling a lot of emotions currently. So read the room, understand that we don't have patience for any of this respectability and civility nonsense. Fall in line, vote blue no matter who, support Mayor Pete. People don't want to hear that right now because we are frustrated. And yet people like Van Jones on CNN were talking about how frustrating this was not because voters haven't seen the results yet but because Mayor Pete is the one who got robbed. Why? Because he's gay. He got robbed tonight. This was history tonight. History night. It was a very big deal. Why? Because of things that went so terribly wrong? I think it's history because you have a gay man who did the impossible. If he's number one, if he's number two, that's a big deal. He talked to his husband, his husband came out with him. You've not seen that before in American history on a primary night, a caucus night. And that was a huge deal. And he deserved for the numbers to be running below him while he was given that speech. He got robbed of that. And I think it's terrible. With all due respect to Van Jones, these things do not help gay people. If anything, this turns people off to LGBTQ rights. And it's the same effect that we saw with the Democratic Party establishment trying to convince us that any and all criticisms of Hillary Clinton were sexist. You end up turning people off to legitimate claims of sexism because you use it so much. Now I'm not saying that Van Jones is doing the same thing, but I mean, like when I saw this, I thought, shut the fuck up. Like this is not what equality means to me. Like my ideal first gay president is elected and nobody gives a shit that he or she is gay. That's what I care about. Like we want equality. We don't want to be a spectacle. We don't want you to think, oh, a gay person, I mean, stop. This doesn't help anyone. And on top of that, you know, you have Democratic Party loyalists like Hillary Clinton alums at Pat Connors tweet, hey guys, an openly gay man may be on the cusp of winning the Iowa caucuses. If that doesn't move you, get some gay friends. This is historic. On top of that, you have liberal celebrity, Billy Eichner, who's known for screaming, tweet out, Pete's rise is remarkable. I know some of you don't care or don't make it count, but history will see it as a rather monumental step forward for the perception of how far an openly gay man can connect on a national level. You don't have to vote for him to acknowledge that. But here's the thing, Billy, this isn't organic. Pete Buttigieg is the creation of the media. The media likes him. They like his, you know, Ivy League education. They like his elitist credentials. He's not connecting with normal people. He's not even connecting with LGBTQ people. I don't know a single gay person who likes them. I'm gay. I don't like him. My husband doesn't like him. And in fact, when you look at polls, this one from the morning consult showed that LGBTQ people, generally speaking, don't fuck with Pete Buttigieg. They support Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly. And the reason why LGBTQ people aren't supporting him just because he's gay is because, believe it or not, people in marginalized communities don't just vote based on identity. It leads to that because they have privilege, but gay people actually have to worry about things like healthcare. We have to worry about things like paying the bills. So just the mere fact that he's gay doesn't improve our lives, right? So LGBTQ people, for example, they acknowledge that Medicare for All is an LGBTQ issue because there are healthcare disparities within the trans community, within the LGBTQ broader community. Pete Buttigieg is offering us crumbs, a public option that will inevitably collapse. So do you understand why this is so patronizing and irritating? Because we're all waiting for the results and this idiot is trying to guaito the Iowa caucus and you're basically telling us to shut the fuck up, accept him as the nominee, vote blue no matter who, and just be happy with whatever crumbs he chooses to throw to you because he's gay and history. Well, how about this? Go fuck yourself. Voters are not going to be susceptible to this type of message. I mean, who do you think you're winning over Zach Petkonas, Hillary alum, saying, get some gay friends. How about this dipshit? Why don't you get some working class gay friends and not just talk to gay people that you see at cocktail parties? I mean, these people are beyond insufferable. They don't get it. Like they tried this with Hillary Clinton. Yah, squean. And they think that just basically screaming because Pete Buttigieg is gay is going to inspire people. No, it's the policy stupid. Don't think that we're too dumb to not see through Mayor Pete just because he's gay. Nobody gives a flying fuck about that, you goddamn dipshits. We vote based on policy, and no matter how much you browbeat us, it's not going to get us to change our minds, okay? If this isn't helpful to gay people, it comes off as disingenuous because you're just trying to use the gay card because it's convenient for you politically. No, fuck off. Your support is fake. I reject it. I mean, what else do you say? The Democratic Party establishment? This is why they're so hated. This is why they lose elections because they offer candidates who are not inspiring, who offer us nothing, and then they wonder why young people stay home and don't come out to vote. What could it be? Could it be the lack of policy? I mean, they just don't get it. They are insufferable. They are beyond out of touch. They're just, they're so insufferable, and I've got horrible news for them. If Pete Buttigieg is the nominee, gay, straight, no matter what the case is, he's gonna lose. Why? It's not because he's gay or straight. It's because you have to energize people to get out and vote. Young people don't vote for Pete. Voters of color do not like Mayor Pete because his record in South Bend is horrible and borderline racist if we wanna be charitable. So if you truly want to beat Donald Trump, which I'm not convinced that the Democratic Party establishment does, then offer us something. Stop telling us to shut the fuck up when we vocalize concerns about these pro-corporate neoliberal candidates. And I've said enough. I mean, this is incredibly irritating. Just fucking stop. If you genuinely care about gay people, Zach Petkonas, Van Jones, Billy Eichner, and anyone else, stop doing things like this. So as many of you who are paying attention know that we have a billionaire currently trying to buy his way into the White House to replace the first billionaire that managed to buy his way into the White House. And this really is a disgrace. If you care about democracy, then you have to speak out against oligarchs trying to buy their way into politics. And Nina Turner did this on MSNBC. She described how bad this is for democracy. But a problem is that she correctly pointed out that Mike Bloomberg is an oligarch and MSNBC clown Jason Johnson proceeded to scold her for using that naughty word to describe him. Close viewers watching in our last segment may have heard Bernie surrogate Nina Turner call Mayor Bloomberg an oligarch to which our own Jason Johnson took exception. State Senator Turner from Ohio is still listening in Des Moines because she wanted a moment to respond. Nina? Senator? Thank you so very much. You know, it's just ironic to me that somebody would defend the wealthiest people in this country over the work in people in this country. We need real campaign financial reform to the extent that a Mayor Bloomberg can totally finance his campaign. He doesn't have to go out to the people. He doesn't have to build a movement. He doesn't have to talk to people. He can buy his way. It is the same attitude that the elites, maybe Jason likes the word elite over oligarch, but it's the same attitude that the elites had in 1930 against FDR. All of them lined up against him and he said, I welcome your hatred because he was standing up for the people. And that is the same message that Senator Bernie Sanders has to the everyday people of this nation that I welcome the hatred of the elites because I am standing up for you. So cry me a river for the wealthy people in this country. Nina, you work for a candidate who's part of the 1%. I have no problem with criticizing the system. The system that allows Mike Bloomberg to make all the money that he makes, the system that allows him to buy what he wants to buy, the system allows him to buy himself into the administration and buy himself into the debates is a problem. But to call him an oligarch, I think is a misnomer in this environment. And again, you're working for somebody who's part of the 1%. Do you call him an oligarch? No, you don't. You say he's a rich guy because just because somebody has a tremendous amount of money doesn't mean that they're not necessarily representing the people. And if you want to use the term elite, you can use whatever kind of term that you want to use. But at the end of the day, the enemy of this country, the enemy of the poor is not just everybody who happens to be rich. It is a capitalistic system that abuses people. And if you want to speak about that, that's fine. But if you want to name call people, that's not going to help Bernie if he becomes a nominee and he's going to need Mike Bloomberg's money. I'm not name calling anywhere. If he's going to need Mike Bloomberg's money down the road. This is how I'm talking about. I'm not defending rich people. I'm not defending rich people. I know this works on Twitter because that's how you guys operate. When it comes to actual campaign politics, it makes sense to actually describe people for the positions that they get. Is this about a word? Is this about a word, Mason? Is this about a word? No, it's not just about a word. It's about the implications of it. And it's about criticizing the system versus criticizing individuals. Like I said, I wouldn't call Bernie Sanders an oligarch and he happens to be part of the 1%. I would say he's somebody who's wealthy but he dedicated himself to trying to uplift people. He just got back to age of 78 years old. Okay, let me ask the endist. I just want to break this. I do like this debate because it's a debate and I like debates. Number two, do you want to change your words? No, I'm not changing. He doesn't tell me what to say and how to change my words. My words stand. Well, Brian, it's back to you. I think that's the decisive conclusion of this back and forth. Good thoughts. Can I say something about Jason? Jason does a frequent guest on my show. I think this is a really important debate and I'm really glad you didn't let it get boiled down to the use of a word. It is not about a word. Here's the other enemy and I understand different views about the system. The enemy is the guy in the Oval Office who thinks there were good people on both sides of Charlotte's bill. The enemy is a guy in the Oval Office who just got a permission slip to cheat in presidential elections. The enemy is a guy who called his generals dopes and losers who he didn't want to go into battle with. That is the enemy and I am nauseous when I see Democrats bite amongst themselves and I know that Republicans get no say. I've said I'll vote for, if y'all pick an automobile, I will vote for it. But I feel so wary when I see these really, really intense fights around someone trying to help y'all win. My thing is this, and like I said, I'm an American citizen. I have no particular loyalty to the Democratic Party or any other party like that, but what I do think is this. I do think that if you're trying to build a coalition to get Donald Trump out of office, this sort of cute red meat stuff is fine on Twitter, but it's not how you're actually supposed to be operating a campaign. You can fight Mike Bloomberg on the issues. You can talk about stopping frisk. You can talk about the fact that people who work for Bloomberg had to sign an NDA so they can't talk about things he's done. That is all fair and reasonable. But when you reduce this to name calling, instead of policy, you're doing the exact thing that Bernie supporters complain about. It's like just calling him a socialist. Can I tell you what Republicans would do? A Republican would take Mike's money and say help me kill Trump. Wow, I mean, I'm sure that Mike Bloomberg is going to be very proud of you when he sees this, Dr. Johnson. Hopefully he'll offer you a spot on his campaign in his administration. Hope he sees this, bro. I mean, way to be a billionaire bootlicker. Like that was almost unhinged the way that he melted down at a word, oligarch. Which mind you, that's the correct definition for Mike Bloomberg. I'm gonna read you the definition. A ruler in an oligarchy, or especially in Russia, a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence. If that word cannot be attributed to Mike Bloomberg, then the word has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. He has a great deal of political influence, so much so that he's trying to buy this election. And he just announced that even though he's out raising everyone, he's going to double the amounts of money that he's spending. What is he approaching like a quarter billion dollars? So if he's not an oligarch, nobody's an oligarch. That word has no meaning. So this weird like unhinged reaction, this overreaction to the units under here, was incredibly stupid. And I mean, I thought it was really, really rude of them to shut Nina Turner out of the conversation and then go on to discuss this further without Nina Turner when he's the one who's trying to berate her for using the word oligarch. I mean, MSNBC is such trash that the country would collectively gain at least 15 IQ points if the entire channel just went away. I mean, that's how bad it is. Now, the MSNBC pundit did the typical, well, would you look at the Republicans? I mean, Mike Bloomberg, he may be trying to buy democracy, but look at the Republicans. Listen, pointing to the Republicans and showing us how bad they are, that doesn't help bolster your case. The incompetence of Democrats. I mean, it's just, it's amazing to me that they refuse to try a new strategy. They refuse to try to win over voters and they're not speaking out against a serious threat to our democracy. Mike Bloomberg is literally trying to buy his way into politics. If you care about democracy, then you have to speak out. You have no choice because it's already the case that we're functionally an oligarchy, right? A 2014 Princeton University study from Dr. Gillins and Page, they both found that when you look at policy outcomes, normal Americans have a statistically insignificant impact whereas special interests and elites, they dictate what policies get passed. It's no wonder why the only major legislative accomplishment of Donald Trump is a tax cut that just so happens to disproportionately benefit the rich. It's because they dictate policy outcomes. This is oligarchy. This is a plutocracy. So for you to browbeat someone and scold someone, frankly, for calling that out, it's just, it's pathetic. It is absolutely pathetic. But remember, this moron is the same person who said that Bernie supporters aren't really supporting him based on policy. Okay, the one presidential candidate who is the most substantive, who is glued to policy, doesn't have his base of support because of the policy. So I mean, what is it? Is it because we think he's hot? Is it because he's so charismatic? I mean, what the fuck is it if it isn't the policies, Dr. Jason Johnson? Explain that to me. I mean, what an idiot, but I'm sorry. I don't mean to name call because he takes offense to name calling. He's all about civility and respectability when we have a fascist in the White House and all of this talk about strategy on MSNBC has led to him winning in the first place, but let's do all that again. And let's not call an oligarch an oligarch. Let's not call a spade a spade because that's a little bit too impolite. Don't offend the ruling class, please, because I want a job in Mike Bloomberg's administration one day or maybe at Bloomberg, the news agency that he also happens to own. He also said, Nina, you work for a candidate who's part of the 1%. So he tried to compare Bernie Sanders to Mike Bloomberg. Like imagine that, Bernie Sanders with a net worth of $2, $3 million to Mike Bloomberg who has more than $50 billion in net worth. Imagine that, imagine thinking that these two individuals are comparable in any way, shape or form, imagine that. And furthermore, the thing about Bernie Sanders is he's not self financing his own campaign. He's not winning by just flooding the airwaves with his own cash. He's winning because he's winning over the people. That's why he's raising money from small grassroots donors. The only reason why he's a millionaire is because he won over the working class. So to say that this is a false equivalence is an understatement. And it's a dumb hacky talking point that we've heard before. On top of that, he says, you can use whatever kind of term you want to use. The enemy of this country, the enemy of the poor is not just everybody that happens to be rich. It is a capitalistic system that abuses people. And if you wanna speak about that, that's fine. But if you wanna name call people, that's not gonna help Bernie and he's gonna need Mike Bloomberg's money. Oh, okay, see, we can't offend the ruling class because we really need them to finance Bernie Sanders general election fight against Donald Trump. Except back in 2016, Mike Bloomberg was saying or floating the idea of running against Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump as an independent. So do you honestly think he's gonna support Bernie Sanders? And furthermore, what makes you think we want that money? Hillary Clinton outraised Donald Trump by what, two to one? She's still lost. Money cannot be people power. A lot of times it drowns out the airwaves, but if we wanna win, we have to galvanize the electorate. And we don't do that with money, with ads. The ads are going to reach people who are disproportionately older, who are already going to vote. But if we wanna win, we bring out young people. So I'm sorry, we don't need Mike Bloomberg's money. We don't need it. And Nina says, rightfully so, it's ironic that you're defending somebody who's buying his way through democracy. Exactly it, it's indefensible. Like if you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention or you're stupid. Like to just sit back and not think that what Mike Bloomberg is doing is problematic or to even go so far as to defend him is disgusting. He claims that, oh, it's this capitalistic system. Right, why is the system the way it is? Riddle me this, why is the system so fucked? It's because there is class warfare that is being waged on us by the ruling class, by individuals like Mike Bloomberg, who buy off politicians, use their money to buy power and influence, and then what happens? All the policies that get passed are what they want to get passed. This isn't me just talking out of my ass. This is political science research. You should know this because you're a doctor. Now, he decided to get a little bit snappy at Nina. He said, I know this works on Twitter because that's how you guys operate. So in other words, he still butthurt that he got ratioed on Twitter. The last time when he talked shit about Bernie Sanders supporters and just, you know, he had this dumb argument that we don't support Bernie based on policy and he's still a little bit angry at that ratio there. So he's taking the time to own Nina Turner now, except you're not owning anyone. You look like a dumbass yelling at Nina Turner, not allowing her to speak when she is the one who has won over the hearts and minds of working class people. You're not convincing anyone by defending an oligarch who's trying to buy this election. And since they didn't give Nina Turner the last word, I'm gonna give her the last word here. So she tweeted this out afterwards. I may not have a PhD yet, but I do have the good sense of knowing what makes for oligarchy. Anyone caping for a billionaire with a media company able to buy endless ads and influence party rules halfway through is precisely a perpetrator of the corrupt system, i.e. an oligarch. And there's nothing left to say. Nina Turner is right. This petulant MSNBC clown is laughably wrong. So I'm not too sure how familiar my young audience is with an individual like James Carville. No, he's not a naked mole rat. He's actually a Democratic Party strategist who worked for Bill Clinton previously. And an issue with him is that he hasn't updated his strategy since 1992. Now a lot of us, we learned about him over the last summer or fall, actually, when he was on a panel with Kyle Kalinsky and he just basically browbeated Kyle Kalinsky and talked about how horrible the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is. And you're going to get a sense of just how out of touch he is in this clip that I'm about to show you where he concerned trolls about Bernie Sanders and tells us what he thinks the Democrats need to do in order to defeat Donald Trump this year. Now he's going to give you the same advice that Hillary Clinton accepted. Nonetheless, he thinks he's right and we're wrong. So let's hear him out. A lot of people compare him to Jeremy Corbyn. I say he might be closer to Lopez Obrador in Mexico, somebody who manages to get into power because the existing parties have so disappointed everybody. People are disgusted with Democrats. They don't trust Republicans. They go for Bernie. Do you think that is a path to victory if he makes that argument? Why do I think people are disgusted with Democrats? We had the highest turnout in 2018 since women were grand to write the vote. We had the biggest margin. We ran a smart campaign and it worked, all right? It matters who the candidate is. It matters what a party chooses to talk about. I mean, I'm 75 years old. Why am I here doing this? Because I am scared to death. That's why. And we gotta get, let's get relevant here, people for sure. That's why I don't love Lopez Obrador. Jeremy, they were all the same as people taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. And they were mistaken. They were very mistaken, yes. Yeah, I don't want to go down that path. Okay, all I've got for you, James, is Claire. Yeah, I just love you. I love you too. And your analysis, if you look at the press corps with AOC crazy, and the Iowa caucuses of liberal, it's too, whatever, to combine the left side of the party, and I don't consider myself a liberal, by the way. I'm not a modern. But they look, you know, I'm going to represent the club at y'all, and you know, Buttigieg's got a lot of votes. And we've got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party? I know where you stand on that, Senator, because you had to run in a red state. Right. So, and again, you and I noted 18% of the country elects 52 senators. And the urban core is not going to get it done. What we need is power. You understand? That's what this is about. Without power, you have nothing. You just have talking points. You know, in a Marine Corps to say, you know, wish in one hand and do something in the other, which hand is going to fill up the fastest? We better get serious here. And a lot of Democrats around the country are concerned. I know these donors are now going to give a popsicle to the DNC right now. I can promise you that. No joke, listening to him speak is like nails on a chalkboard, possibly worst, because this is the most inseparable, miserable prick I've had the displeasure of listening to in quite some time, even for MSNBC standards. I mean, that was just, that was horrible. So, I mean, the first thing that you see is them compare Bernie Sanders to, you know, Jeremy Corbyn or talk about the affinity that we have for Jeremy Corbyn. And while ideologically, you know, they may be similar, the problem with that equivalence is that Jeremy Corbyn overperformed the polls in the first election and he lost because he didn't actually have a firm strategy when it came to Brexit. And James Carville says, look, I just don't want to go down that path. Okay, well, how about this? We'll promise you, James, that in the event Bernie's the nominee and, you know, the United States votes to leave the EU will have a real exit strategy. How about that? I mean, we have no Brexit equivalent in the United States. Jeremy Corbyn lost because he didn't take a firm stance, they're ideologically speaking. I mean, people agreed with his policies, but they just seem to care more about Brexit. These are two different countries. So while we can draw equivalences between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn on the policy, I mean, to say that that's exactly what's going to happen is laughable. They always bring up these instances where a politician lost like James McGovern from like 50 years ago, but as Namiki Kantz put it, Hillary Clinton was James McGovern. She ran the exact strategy that individuals like James Carville said that, you know, the Democratic nominee should, and she lost. So why are we taking these people seriously? Why are we bringing them on MSNBC to pontificate about something that they're clearly wrong about? On top of that, he says, look, I'm 75 years old. Why am I here doing this? Because I'm scared to death. That's why. Okay, we're all scared of Donald Trump, but why do you think the same exact moderate strategy is going to pay off this time? Trump now has the economy that he can boost about. It's not necessarily true, but he's gonna do it nonetheless. Trump is now a president. He has that incumbency advantage. So if that moderate strategy, that neoliberal centrist approach didn't work the first time, then why on earth would you think it worked this time when Trump is more powerful, more formidable? It just, these people, they have worms in their brains. To quote someone who was interviewed on InfoWars once. They have worms in their brains. I don't know how else to put it. I mean, how can you be this dense? Like nobody is a sure bet against Donald Trump, but to utilize the same failed strategy is fucking insane. Like why are we listening to these people? They're losers. Democrats lost more than a thousand seats. And this was all under neoliberal rule. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi. Why are we listening to them? Why isn't MSNBC bringing on people with different ideological perspectives and strategic views? I don't get it. Oh, it's because they probably want to lose Donald Trump. Now Claire decided to insert herself in this conversation just to tell James Carville how much she loves him. And then he goes on to give Claire McCaskill credit because she knows what type of campaign you have to win because she ran in a red state. Except what happened in her race, James, remind us what happened when Claire McCaskill ran to the right in a red state. She lost. She lost. She literally embraced Trump's racist immigration policies saying that we need to stop him at the border. And now she's working for MSNBC. Maybe she's not the best person to take electoral advice and strategy advice from. Just a thought. Now on top of that, James Carville says, we've got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult and have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party? It's funny because he calls it having standards in ideological cult because we are very principled and disciplined. But to say, no, we have to be a majoritarian party, he disregards the fact that progressive policies are incredibly popular. Medicare for all, legalizing marijuana, ending the wars, a federal jobs guarantee, a green new deal, getting money out of politics. Every single one of these policies have majority support, not just within the Democratic Party, but among the general electorate. So if you truly want to be a majoritarian party, in other words, populist, then you should come to the progressive wing and talk about the policies that we're espousing, you know, the things we're talking about because that's what's popular. These people are so fucking stupid, I swear to God. Now finally, he says, what we need is power. And we don't have that because we followed your strategy. We followed your exact strategy, the ticket to get power, and Donald Trump is the president of the United States, a reality television show star. He went up against the most electable centrist Democrat. Did the exact strategy that you wanted, and Trump is the president. These people have no shame. I mean, it seems like the more wrong you are, the more merit you achieve in DC as a Democratic Party strategist. Look, whenever I see the labeled Democratic strategist when anyone is talking on TV, I just automatically assume that this is one of the dumbest people in the country because it doesn't matter how wrong they are. The mainstream media still takes them seriously. They still treat them with the respect that they don't deserve. These people are proven losers. The 1992 third-way strategy is no longer electorally viable, hence why Hillary lost. So it just makes no sense that this individual would be brought on MSNBC, the liberal network supposedly left-leaning, but no, they really are just neoliberal pro-corporate. And they just say, give us your advice. And he says, let's do what Hillary Clinton did, essentially. I don't know what to say. DC people, the pundit class, the Democratic Party, they watch MSNBC. So they really take what individuals like Jason Johnson and Claire McCaskill now apparently, and James Carville say, and they respect the advice that they give. That's why you see them using the same failed centrist strategy. But on top of that, it's also really convenient to utilize the centrist strategy because if you're a centrist, then you can easily appease your corporate donors and say that you are a pro-woman and pro-LGBTQ while not really doing anything to help them, not changing the economy in a fundamental way, not combating corruption. So I mean, the Democratic Party is just a colossal failure so out of touch. And if you're wondering why people hate liberals, it's things like this that make people hate liberals. It's things like this that make young people feel disinclined to vote. This is why people stay home. So I wasn't initially planning on watching or talking about the state of the union, but since I'm a sucker for punishment, I decided to tune in and I really, really wish I would have trusted my gut and not watched it because it's just a reminder that America is so stupid and we really are an empire in decline because Donald Trump, as much as we hate him, he is the perfect representation of American politics currently. It's chaotic, it's dysfunctional. It's an oligarchic system with a billionaire as president. It's just, it's a joke. And it really is the moralizing to see this play out. I mean, you see this basically circle jerk, if elites get in one room and they applaud everything that Donald Trump says if they're Republican, they sit down. If they're Democrat and don't applaud what he says, unless he's cheering on in a legal coup in Venezuela, then everyone's cheering. It's just, it's a goddamn shit show. And I don't know how else to describe it. So the first thing that I can't not point out is the plethora of lies that Donald Trump told. I mean, it was just lie after lie after lie. It's not surprising, but we should never become accustomed to this and not normalize it. This really is unacceptable. He claimed that, you know, he lifted people off of the food stamp program, which is a really charitable way of saying that he cut food stamps and kicked a lot of people off of the program because as you all know, that's exactly what his administration has done. On top of that, he lied about healthcare. He claims that there are now cheaper and better health insurance plans. I haven't seen them. He claims that he'd never allow a socialist takeover of our healthcare to which the GOP tweeted out, socialism would destroy American healthcare, but unless you click to expand this image, it just looks like this. So needless to say, they deleted this tweet and on the subject of healthcare, he claimed that, you know, he's going to protect people with preexisting conditions. Meanwhile, he won't address the fact that his administration is suing to dismantle protections for people with preexisting conditions. When it comes to healthcare for undocumented immigrants, he asked Democrats to join him in passing a bill that would deny them healthcare. So in other words, in the event, someone is here illegally and they happen to get in an accident and they're bleeding out, Donald Trump is perfectly fine with them dying because they're here illegally. So I mean, there's nothing we can do. And right after saying that, he then went on to say, quote, every human life is a gift from God. The irony just went right over his head. So he says that in one breath. Meanwhile, we are dropping bombs on babies or Saudi Arabia is dropping bombs on babies at least and we gave them those bombs. But every human life is a gift from God. Brilliant. I mean, does anybody buy this bullshit? Does anybody take this process seriously? The state of the union? It's just, it's hollow. It's meaningless. It is absolutely meaningless. And you see the lack of bipartisanship play out by Republicans applauding for every single thing he says and Democrats kind of just sitting there angrily. Not applauding him or reading the constitution if you're Jerry Nadler, because that'll certainly show him. But I mean, you see this facade of anger at Donald Trump all collapse when he champions Juan Guaido and brings him there and is essentially trying to legitimize this attempt to do a coup that is illegal in Venezuela. I mean, watch, Nancy Pelosi, she sat there the whole time, basically not reacting to much of what Trump was doing, but she couldn't wait to stand up and applaud Donald Trump when he mentioned Guaido. We are supporting the hopes of Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to restore democracy the United States is leading. A 59 nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro. Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people, but Maduro's grip on tyranny will be smashed and broken. Here this evening is a very brave man who carries with him the hopes, dreams and aspirations of all Venezuelans. Joining us in the gallery is the true and legitimate president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido. Mr. President, please take this message back here. Thank you, Mr. President. Great honor. Thank you very much. Please take this message back that all Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Thank you very much. But in spite of that, you had a lot of Yasqueeners online who absolutely loved when Nancy Pelosi decided to tear up his speech notes. So we got that epic moment this year, but last year, remember this? Yasqueen, listen, before you Yasqueen her, let me put this all in perspective for you. This is the same individual who just approved NAFTA 2.0 for him, who just approved his space force, which is useless, who just gave him even more money for the military. Maybe before you Yasqueen Nancy Pelosi really do a full evaluation thoroughly as to whether or not she's doing a great job at resisting him. Do yourself a favor and do that. On top of that, you know, speaking of the resistance, we had a Democrat slash Republican light, Senator Kirsten Sinema, stand up and cheer for Donald Trump when he boasted about his tax cuts for the rich. I mean, at this point, I don't know why you don't just join the Republican Party if you have such an affinity for them and their policies and what they do. Another just bizarre moment was when Donald Trump brought on Rush Limbaugh to honor him. This is someone who is a racist, who has said absolutely morally reprehensible things, but because he's sick now, we're supposed to feel sorry for him and not, you know, talk about the negative impact he's had on our country for decades now. I mean, how embarrassing and stupid and Rush Limbaugh kept doing this weird like to Donald Trump, I just, I hate everything about this. I hate every single thing about this and I really wish I didn't watch it. And then towards the end, you have Republicans basically greeting Donald Trump or seeing him out as he leaves and it's as if he's a rock star. They're literally asking him for his fucking autograph. Not kidding. Brilliant, Mr. President. Absolutely brilliant. Reagan asked, what you did was awesome. Wonderful. Mr. President. Mr. President. You've just done this for a charity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Rush Limbaugh. Amazing job, sir. Great job. Great job. Oh, Mr. President, it was so good. Oh, Mr. President, please sign this for me. Oh, it was Reagan asked. They don't care how colty it seems. These are pigs who will let Donald Trump take a dump on them if he offered willingly so. And if you weren't sick and tired of the Republican display at the State of the Union, then afterwards you could tune into the Democratic response from Gretchen Whitmer who as Alex Koch points out is a Democratic governor whose father was the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and she is going to represent the party where healthcare is one of the top issues for voters. I mean, this is why people tune out. This is why people have checked out of politics and why a third of the country just doesn't vote. We have a clown as president overseeing an absolutely insane fascistic party and then we have liberal elites who yasqueen everything that Nancy Pelosi does and they're absolutely ineffectual at combating the most disgusting and harmful policies, long lasting policies of Donald Trump, namely all of these federal appointments that he's been making, which he absolutely boasted about. They're allowing this. So I mean, our system is so rotten to the core and I just, I don't know how anyone can watch this and come away thinking, wow, I'm so proud to be an American right now. Like who thinks that when they watch this? I mean, I'm sure it's the same boomers who support Donald Trump and vote for him. But I mean, overall, if you are a demoralized voter and you don't really tend to vote, what about this process is going to make you feel encouraged? I mean, the point of this State of the Union, really, it's a tradition because it's meant to legitimize American democracy, legitimize the process. Even though we have our disagreements, we come together at the end of the day and we respect the office of the presidency and we stand up and applaud him when he says these platitudes and boasts about his agenda, but at the end of the day, it's meaningless because people's lives aren't really changing. Donald Trump boasts about how wonderful of a job he's doing and sucks his own cock for an hour, but he's not actually changing shit for normal working class Americans. And Democrats aren't helping because they're not very great at resisting, even though they are the main opposition party. I mean, this is why fascism is always able to take advantage of liberals and liberal parties is because, I mean, in a way they enable it, right? So this was a shit show. I expected it. It's why I initially wasn't going to watch, but regardless, there you have it. To the surprise of absolutely nobody in the country, President Donald Trump has been acquitted and impeachment failed. And I was contemplating maybe rushing to get this out yesterday, but I just thought to myself, what's the point? Like every single person in America knew what the end result would be. So this isn't even really breaking news. It's just, the vote was happening today. We knew what would happen. The only surprise element was would any Republican flip, you know, and Mitt Romney did this entire thing, just kind of proves what we all suspected that everything in DC is little more than political theater and presidents are basically kings. They can do what they want. And even if Democrats hadn't botched this process, even if they ran a semi-competent, you know, impeachment trial, I mean, would the end result changed if they announced article's impeachment for Trump's, you know, violations of the Emoluments Clause or war crimes? Would that have changed the end result? No, I don't think it would have because then you'd have to assume that Republicans would do the right thing. And that's, you know, implying that Democrats would do the right thing. Of course not. I mean, look, a lot of liberals like to grandstand for lack of a better word and talk about how, oh, well, you know, that impeachment of Bill Clinton in the nineties, that was really a witch hunt. But my view is, look, if I'm being consistent and principled, we're impeaching every fucking president because they're all criminals. I mean, Bill Clinton's impeachment, even if it was a political witch hunt, he committed perjury. If a normal peasant would have done that, they would have already been thrown in jail. So to me, this is about principle. This is about holding elites accountable. And, you know, at the end of the day, we all knew what the end result would be. This is no surprise. But I mean, it's just a matter of, in fact, I don't know what it's a matter of. I don't have words. Like this week in politics has been so strange, yet somehow not surprising because chaos is what we've come to expect as the norm in American politics. So I mean, the real surprise would have come if he were convicted. But I mean, this is what we all expected. So going to the New York Times, Nicholas Fandos explains a little bit more about what happened. After five months of hearings, investigations, and cascading revelations about President Trump's dealings with Ukraine, a divided United States Senate acquitted him on Wednesday of charges that he abused his power in obstructed Congress to aid his own reelection, bringing an acrimonious impeachment trial to its expected end. In a pair of nearly party line votes whose outcome was never in doubt, the Senate fell well short of the two thirds margin that would have been needed to remove Mr. Trump, formally concluding the three week long trial of the 45th president that has ruled Washington and threatened the presidency. But in a sign of the widening partisan divide testing the country and its institutions, the verdict did not promise finality. Democratic leaders immediately insisted the result was illegitimate, the product of a self-interested coverup by Republicans and promised to continue their investigations of Mr. Trump. As expected, the tally in favor of conviction fell far below the 67 vote threshold necessary for removal on each article. The first charge was abuse of power, accusing Mr. Trump of a scheme to use the levers of government to coerce Ukraine to do his political bidding, did not even garner a majority vote, failing on a vote of 48 to 52. The second article charging Mr. Trump with obstructing Congress for an across the board blockade of House subpoenas and oversight requests failed 47 to 53. So I mean about what we expected and afterwards he took the Twitter to gloat by reposting the video where it basically jokes about him staying in power indefinitely and basically becoming a dictator. He actually pinned this to the top of his Twitter profile and he's posted this before. This is just a troll, but at the same time, I mean, imagine if Obama was joking quote unquote joking about remaining in power indefinitely. He kind of, he made some comment in Nigeria, I think and he said, look, if I were to run for president for a third term, I think I would win, but we have institutions that prevent that and they freaked out. At the end of the day, what's the takeaway from impeachment? I mean that Washington DC is a cesspool. Elites can commit crimes and violate the constitution and get away with it. And you have individuals on both sides of each team in DC. I'm talking about the pundits, you know, the reporters who cheer on their team. Yas Queen when Nancy Pelosi rips up his state of the union speech and then you have sycophantic pigs who support Donald Trump no matter what he does, even if, you know, they are brazenly hypocritical and we're saying different things about impeachment back in the 90s when it applied to Bill Clinton. So I mean, this is something that overall, I think a lot of people will argue that this is going to further embolden Donald Trump. And maybe you could say that that's the case. Maybe he really feels vindicated in the sense that he can get away with anything. But at the end of the day, I mean, what do you do if he commits a crime and violates the constitution? I mean, are we just supposed to sit back and think, well, you know, it's not politically expedient to impeach him currently. You know, we don't have a competent, I was gonna say, we don't have a corrupt, but we do have a corrupt incompetent opposition party who is going to botch whatever impeachment proceedings. Does that mean that we don't do it if he's brazenly, you know, violating the constitution and breaking the law? I mean, there's a lot of difficult questions that I think we'll all have to mull over as a country. But at the end of the day, this is not anything that's surprising to anyone. I still hate Democrats and Republicans unequally. Nonetheless, I hate them both. And you know, Donald Trump will continue to ruin the country. Democrats will respond in the most feckless, ineffectual way imaginable. And at home, we will continue to get hungrier and poorer while elites get richer and richer. And that's not going to change. You know, this inequality, this corruption is now as American as apple pie. And I think that Americans see that. And that's why a lot of people have tuned out of the process, especially seeing the shit show that has taken place in Iowa over the course of last week. So I mean, I'm not sure what to say. I'm not sure what to make of this. There's really no concrete takeaway. We don't know what this is going to lead to. I just don't know. We expected this and here we are. That's that. So just this week, we already learned that Mike Bloomberg, late last year mind, you donated more than $300,000 to the DNC. And now they're changing the rules in a way that specifically benefits him and allows him to participate in the next democratic debate. And now we have another story that demonstrates this conflict of interest between him and the DNC. And all indications tell us that he is 2020's Hillary Clinton because the DNC is unquestionably in the tank for Mike Bloomberg. And if you're wondering why, it's because he is really, really rich. And if there's anything that the DNC needs at this point in time, it's money. So what's the new scandal involving Mike Bloomberg that the media will almost certainly ignore? Well, as Sludge reports, as the Democratic National Committee establishes procedures for the Democratic presidential nominating process, two members of the DNC rules committee simultaneously work on the campaign of former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Having surrogates on the Democratic National Convention's rules committee and the standing rules and bylaws committee could be a boon for Bloomberg if nominating rules are reopened for amendment ahead of the July convention. Some DNC members who are concerned about the polling support of Senator Bernie Sanders have discussed reversing rule changes limiting the power of superdelegates that were put in place after the 2016 election according to a report from Politico. Those discussions have been sharply rebuked by DNC leadership. Michael Nutter, the former mayor of Philadelphia who is a member of the standing rules and bylaws committee was selected by Bloomberg in December 2019 to serve as his campaign's national political chair. Nutter was nominated by former DNC chair representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in 2013 and he has served on the rules committee since 2017. You can't make this stuff up. Alexandra Ruecker, a rules committee member and superdelegate from California was hired as a senior advisor to Bloomberg campaign last month. Ruecker, who was previously a lobbyist for the communications workers of America is a vice chair of the California Democratic Party. Besides Nutter, just one other member of the 32 member standing rules and bylaws committee is affiliated with a presidential campaign according to a sludge review of the roster as of September 18th, 2019. Jeff Berman, a DNC member from Washington DC joined Tom stairs campaign as an advisor in January. So there are members of the DNC rules and bylaws committee that are associated with campaigns and it is both campaigns for billionaires. I think that Rashida Tlaib had the best response. She tweeted out in law school, they call this a conflict of interest. Exactly. I just, I mean, I don't know what to say about this. You would think that the DNC after 2016 embarrassed themselves being openly corrupt when their last DNC chair had to resign. You would think that they'd at least do a better job hiding the corruption. Like nobody expected the corruption and conflicts of interest to dissipate. But I was naive enough to at least expect them to do a better job at hiding it, being less conspicuous. But nothing has changed at all, nothing. They are out in the open, caping four billionaires wearing on their sleeves who they support. It is Michael Bloomberg because they want that cash and it's just, it's morally reprehensible. This is comical. Like if we saw things like this taking place in Venezuela, this type of cronyism and corruption, we would use this as justification to invade, outright invade. We would criticize other democracies for doing things like this. We would call out the oligarchs in Russia who do this and that authoritarianism. But the same people who would call that out who have been screaming about Russia working the 2016 election for years now, this is what they're up to. It's comical and honestly, as you can kind of tell by my reaction, I'm just at a loss. This isn't in any way surprising to me. It's just, I mean, what do you expect? What do you expect from them? Let's just recap what happened over the course of the last week. We have individuals in the DNC openly discussing the prospect of bringing back a sudden rules change, superdelegates, to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. You have the DNC changing the rules to benefit Mike Bloomberg. You have the Iowa caucus just, I don't even know how to describe that situation. Them spiking a poll at the behest of Pete Buttigieg from the Des Moines Register, they are just either pathetically incompetent or so corrupt that they are cartoonishly evil. But I mean, look, here's the thing. And what I want everyone to come away with is the sense of victory in spite of everything that we saw transpire over the week because they wouldn't be doing all of this. They wouldn't be going out of their way to find some alternative to Joe Biden, you know, assuming he does fail if they weren't shaken to the core at the movement that we have built over the last four years. They're worried and they should be worried. Bernie Sanders is going to win New Hampshire. And guess what? Come super Tuesday. They may be shitting themselves on national television. So, I mean, the fact that they're doing all of this out in the open tells us that they're scrambling quickly. And you know, either they're not trying to hide it, but I think the issue is that they don't really have time to hide it. They just have to defeat Bernie Sanders somehow. So they're doing whatever they possibly can using whatever institutional advantages that they have at their disposal to shut them down. But guess what? There comes a point in time where, you know, they try so hard and our movement is just too powerful for them to suppress. And I think that, you know, we've reached that tipping point, I honestly do. So, you know, this isn't surprising to anybody, the corruption at this point, it is, it's just expected from the DNC. And the only comfort that I take in thinking about the DNC is knowing that when Bernie Sanders is elected president, he's going to clean fucking house and fire every single one of those ghouls. And if you're frustrated now, just think about how pleasant that's going to be when we see the headlines. All DNC dismissed. That's gonna be great because the institution has wrought into its core. And if I'm Bernie Sanders, I might just dismantle the entire DNC and form an entirely new arm of the Democratic Party to focus on elections and whatnot because that institution, it may just need to go and maybe too far gone. So whatever the result may be, we're gonna beat their asses, they're afraid of us and they should be because we pose an existential threat to them, Bernie poses an existential threat to them. And we're coming for their asses and they better be worried. Work harder to rig it and try to hide it a little better because we're coming for you. Hello everyone, I am here with a congressional candidate running in Nevada's second congressional district. His name is Clint Cobley and this is his second time running. He shocked everyone by almost winning in that race and now he's back to win once and for all. Clint, thank you so much for coming on the program. Mike, I'm really glad you invited me. It's great to be here, thank you. Yes, you are running in a really interesting race. So from what I understand, there's three to four other opponents, all corporate Democrats, you are the only progressive. And what's interesting is that you have this really unique appeal about you because you were telling for viewers, telling me about he has this rural background and he's able to speak to voters that usually progressives wouldn't be able to win over. So tell us about yourself and why you think you came so close to winning. Like it's a message I think that you have that's really resonating. Well, part of it is my background in addition to experience, but I have a rural background. I was born into a poor farm family in North Dakota and I went to a two-room country school. My parents were first generation Americans. We either raised our food or we had to hunt for it. So I grew up in a gun culture and I understand the gun values of the people in rural Nevada and a lot of the other issues that go in rural Nevada whether it's water or it's public lands, but having that rural background makes me a safe candidate for people to talk to. Plus I worked for the Obama administration for almost eight years as a state director for the USDA. I interacted with all the tribes, all the farmers and ranchers across the state for almost eight years. So I have a lot of professional experience and so I think I'm a pretty trusting individual. Like some people said, I fit the profile really, really well because we're urban and progressive in the western part of the district and then all of the rest is rural and very conservative, but having grown up in that culture, I can kind of bridge those gaps a little bit and I'm not so much of a threat or a danger to them. I think that that's a really good way to describe it. Like you're a safe choice. Like for me, if I were running in that area, I wouldn't know how to talk to people who grew up with that gun culture. I'd come off as a progressive hippie. So I mean, you need someone who can really appeal to those types of people that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get. So that's why I think it's such an interesting campaign. And having worked for Obama, you did kind of build up that infrastructure. You have the connections and it's interesting. So I'm curious because I've covered Nevada politics and some primary races here. And one thing that I have seen is that there's a lot of corruption. It's almost uniquely corrupt in a way that few other states are in that if you wanna run, you have to kiss the ring of Harry Reid and the party apparatus will try to shut you out. So what has been your experience? Because I mean, you have the clout with the Democratic Party in the sense that you came from the Obama administration in a way, but now you're running as this grassroots funded progressive. You're running on single payer Medicare for all. So what has been the response to you? Is there this respect? Or do you feel as if there is this concerted effort to shut you down as we've seen with other candidates like Amy Valada who've tried to run in Nevada before? Well, I wouldn't say there's any concert effort to shut me down. In fact, I think the party's very grateful that I'm running. I haven't seen the level of support that I would like to see, but part of that is due to, you know, the money that I didn't raise in my first election in 2018. I think the party is a newfound respect for me as the party chair said right after the 2018 election. Clint, thank you for your leadership and thank you for showing us that this race is finally winnable. So there's more support, I think, on the grassroots level across the state, even with the party. I haven't had some, you know, strong anointments, but I've been endorsed by, you know, former Senator Richard Bryan, former Attorney General Frankie Sudele Papa and a lot of, and a host of other people that have been involved in Nevada politics for a lot of years. That's really interesting. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the Democratic Party. So assuming you're able to win this race and get elected, so you're going up against the Republican incumbent. His name is Mark Amade. I think I'm butchering his name, but that's okay because he's probably, you know, a ghoul. But nonetheless, you know, if you're able to get elected, especially now, like just having come off of the Iowa caucuses and really seeing just a lack of trust and incompetence with the Democratic Party at a minimum, how do you actually change the party from within electorally speaking? So, I mean, for example, you are kind of like this insurgent, progressive candidate. How do you convince them to support policies like Medicare for All if you're also trying to balance, you know, being marginalized in Congress? So let's say, you know, you get a little bit too vocal and challenging the party establishment speaking out against Denny Horror and Nancy Pelosi and they want to take away committee appointments. Like what is your strategy going in? Because this is something I always like to think about because I don't know, like there's no really tried and true strategy. So I kind of like to pick the brains of everyone who's running. Well, part of my message, Mike, is the fact that I feel that I'm beholden to no one other than the voters of Nevada. I am a grassroots candidate. I am kind of a dark horse. I'm not a complete outsider from the political party, but I really do want to go to Washington and, you know, get back to, you know, good representation in government. I feel that slacking in a lot of people in Nevada feel like all politicians lie or it's all partisan. It's all party politics. And who's caring about us? Who's doing anything about us? And my message has been a little bit different. I'm not, you know, flipping my finger off to the state of the national party. That's not it at all. But when I go out and talk to people in the world or even here in urban areas in the Western part of the state, I really impressed upon the fact that I need to, that a representative has to say what they mean and mean what they say. And you have to drop some of that partisan politics because who's representing the people if you're just gonna vote for the party 97% of the time, the citizens are gonna be just feel left out. And I just really hammer that message over and over again that I'm gonna mean what I say, say what I mean. I'm not beholden to anyone. For example, I don't take money from corporate packs. So I don't feel like I'm controlled by anyone. When I get to Washington, I'm gonna have to carry that message and strike a good balance of representing the people from the bad and I'm gonna fight hard to do that because I feel that that's, I have to go with the people that got me there. Yeah. And I'm curious because you are kind of campaigning in all areas in this district. And I know it's a very large district. What is the response? Like when you talk to people who aren't necessarily traditionally progressive and you pitch something like Medicare for all to them, what is the response and how do you sell it to them? Well, first of all, I tell them that, let's breathe deep and just look at the facts. And I'll talk to them how rural healthcare has been affected positively by the ACA and then negatively by attacks on the ACA and how universal healthcare or Medicare for all could really help the rural communities. It could help the rural clinics. It could help the rural hospitals that are in danger of closing. We lost the rural hospital just several years ago. So it's in their own best interest to sit down and talk. I think some of the other officials in the state have done a really good job of being able to talk sensibly to the opposition. And the opposition has a lot of respect for them. Senator Cortez Masto has set a great example of being able to talk to the other side. And for example, when I worked for the USDA, 95% of the people that I had to represent the farmers and ranchers were Republicans, but they never once felt that I held it against them, politically or partisanship-wide, I did my job. And I think I've proved a lot of trust in me that I will do my job. I will say what I mean, mean what I say, and I will listen to the voters. I'm here to hear and I'm not gonna talk down to them. I'm gonna carry my message to Washington and I'm gonna work damn hard when I get there to represent the bad and not just take orders from the party. I do have problems with pay to play, having to get to Washington and then pay thousands of dollars to get on the committee. I know which committees I wanna get on to help the people in Nevada. And I just feel that I have to make a stand on that. And really, I wanna change politics. I'm tired of politics as usual in a lot of ways, Mike. I think a lot of people feel marginalized or sick of politics, and they're looking for someone with integrity and somebody who'll be different. And I'm trying to cast that picture of me being different. Yes, I'm progressive, but I'm not gonna be taking the guns away. I'm not gonna destroy healthcare. You know, I'm not gonna just, you know, run us in the tremendous thing to death. I think I've got a good plan on pragmatic approaches and how to get to, how to solve our issues. So I think I can get a lot of trust on people on what I can, what type of job I can do when I get to Washington. Now, when you say pragmatic approach, that does have negative connotations in these days because usually when we hear Democrats say pragmatic, that necessarily doesn't mean a good thing. It means we'll work with Republicans and that's usually code for, we're gonna roll over and die. And so when you bring up Catherine Cortez-Mastel, and I kinda wanna flip that previous question that I asked in terms of reaching out to more rural voters. And I wanna ask, what do you think you as well as the party apparatus can do to reach out to the left? Because I actually covered a town hall a couple of years ago. It was actually sent to me from Amy Vilela who went on to run for Congress. She attended Catherine Cortez-Mastel town hall and asked about healthcare. And then the response was to basically use these pro-corporate talking points about protecting the ACA, really, you know, sidestepping the issue of single-payer whatsoever. So in terms of like getting those rural voters in, do you feel personally as if you have to compromise your progressive values in order to win them over? Do you think that you actually can be someone who is absolutely committed to single-payer and will challenge that party establishment to actually fight for it? I don't feel I have to compromise one damn bit and I'll tell you why. One of the things that I've really, really been hammering lately is on Martin Luther King Day, the American College of Physicians and it's 159,000 doctors voted for the single-payer healthcare system for the first time in its history. And I'm hammering that message that this is the future. This is the future of ourselves, our families, and if our doctors are behind us, then we have to see the writing on the wall. So if families and doctors want this, then we have to take that. I don't care what you wanna call it progressive or whatever, I'm not gonna run from it. I'm gonna stand by it because if I, I think as they say, your doctor knows best. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. And that really was a phenomenal endorsement for Medicare for All and we've kind of been fighting like this almost narrative battle, a constant wave of propaganda, but yet that was the ultimate legitimization. You know, I love the graphic that they put out as doctors we prescribe Medicare for All because like it's just, it's common sense I feel like you can't argue against it at this point, but yet we're still in this situation where we're so unique in that we're the only country in the world that's, you know, developed that doesn't offer single-payer healthcare. And we have a democratic party who is to the right of Tories in the UK who are openly running against single-payer. So a lot of people I think feel really demoralized currently. And they feel as if, you know, we want this, we see the public opinion polls and it says we support Medicare for All in spite of all of this, you know, propaganda that's been nonstop from even Democrats, not just corporate media. So my question to you, you know, with that in mind, how do you win back people who are demoralized with the process, especially coming out of Iowa? Because a lot of people, you know, I give the sentiment that they just wanna check out. It's hopeless because no matter what we do, we can never affect change. So I think really part of winning as progressives is to get out the vote, get people who are disaffected, non-voters, to come back to the process. What's your strategy for that? Well, first of all, so we've had a snafu, okay? We have nine months to recover and we've got a good message. And we've got the American College of Physician on our side when it comes to Medicare for All. So I think we just have to keep hammering on that message. I really think that Tide is gonna change, Mike. When we go out there and we say, look, this is what your doctors believe. This is what we believe. I think it's gonna be an easier sell. It's gonna get easier and easier as we go. I've seen the tide change slowly, you know, across the country as far as numbers. But when you throw in the ACP and how they validated Medicare for All, I just think it's gonna help turn the tide. It's just a matter of time. But I think we have to keep hammering on that. I hammer on it almost every single day. Yeah, that's great. So can we get you to commit to co-sponsoring the Medicare for All Act by Pramila Jayapal on day one if you're elected? Absolutely. That's awesome. That's what I like to hear. See, a lot of people, you know, they can kind of gauge if a politician is like being upfront with them if they use very direct words. Like if you say absolutely, that tells me, okay, sure. But you know, a typical politician who is not like grassroots, who's taking money from special interests would probably say, well, Mike, you know, we're gonna be weighing a lot of, you know, legislation. And I'm gonna be looking at a lot of different things to co-sponsor and whatnot. So it certainly will be on my plate. And I think that people really respect like this authenticity that we're seeing from this new wave of progressives running for Congress. Because it's like unique. We're in this anti-establishment era and I love to see everyone who's running who are grassroots funded. Just kind of like lean into that because I think that it's really, there's value in just being a normal person and communicating to people that I'm one of you. And you know, I'm not like these elites, this Pete Buttigieg, you know, these like elite educated people, I'm just the normal working class American. So my question to you is, what can we do to help you win? And if you can make your last pitch to my viewers and tell us what we can do to support you, feel free. Well, first of all, I wanna say that I think people know when they're being sold down the river when a politician or a wannabe politician has asked a question and they don't answer it. And then they start on with, well, I've got this and this and that. And you know, it's the procedures and things like this here, they're stonewalling. I think what you have to do to gain people's trust is first answer the damn question and then you can get into maybe explaining why you feel that way, but you've gotta do that. You know, so what can you do for me? Well, you can go to my website at www.coblyforcongress.com and that's K-O-B-L-E-F-O-R, congress.com. You can go to my Facebook at Cobly for Congress 2020 or my Twitter at Cobly, number four, Congress. And Instagram at Clint for Congress. And you can get on my website, you can read my platform, you can see how I stand. And of course, you can help a campaign in any ways. You can endorse, you can donate. You can, you know, let people know on your email list that I've read about this guy. I like this guy. He seems like the real deal. He's got integrity. He means what he says. He says what he means. This is a different type of guy. And so what if he's a progressive inter-world state? Sooner or later, those world areas are gonna need progressive issues, progressive programs to lift them up. Otherwise they're gonna continue to decline. Yeah, and look, like for a lot of people who, I mean, I just saw James Carville on TV talk about how we have to be more moderate. And, you know, Claire McCaskill knows to be more moderate because she ran in a red state and lost. Like what tells me that the tide is turning is that like in the state of West Virginia in 2016, Bernie Sanders won all 55 counties. So it's not like you're running this unwinnable campaign in, you know, rural areas. Like you almost won last time. And I think that's what's so encouraging is that like, you don't have to compromise your message. You can run unapologetically on progressive issues like Medicare for All. And that can actually resonate with people. And I think that people are beginning to realize the power that they have in, you know, fueling these types of grassroots campaigns. So thank you so much for running for Congress. We'll be watching very closely because I think you can take this. Okay. Well, Mike, I think it's important that, you know, you stand up for what you believe and you stand up for the people that are behind you. And the second you don't, they're gonna know that. So say what you mean and mean what you say and stick to your guns and stand up. Yeah, I like it. We'll flip this seat blue. Thank you so much for coming on the program, Clint. Mike, thank you very much. I look forward to talking with you again. Well, that's all that I've got for you all today. Thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far and you've listened to me rant for this long. You're truly a trooper. And as usual, I want to thank all of our Patreon people and YouTube members for helping a show, not just to survive, but thrive. You all are absolutely incredible. And I think I'm just done with politics. So I've got nothing left to say. We'll end the show right here. I'm Mike Figueredo. This is the Humanist Report. Take care, everyone.