 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueroaido. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast, my name is Mike Figueroaido, and this is episode 222 of the program. Today is Friday, December 13th, 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, or increase the monthly pledge that they were already giving us. And that includes Charles Stafford, Cheryl Rose, Donald Rolls, Eric, Framhenge Filmworks, Garrison Rucker, Jimmy Adams, and Marge Ricotta. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the Independent Progressive Media Revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support or patreon.com slash humanistreport. Or as always, you can just click join underneath any one of our YouTube videos and support the show that way. So this week on the show, we have got a jam-packed episode. We'll talk about Bernie Sanders' response to Hillary Clinton's attack on the Howard Stern Show. We also schooled Pete Buttigieg on the issue of free college, and on top of that, Bernie Sanders is proposing a bill that wouldn't just save net neutrality, but he'd make the internet more consumer-friendly than it's ever been. Pete Buttigieg was shamed into being more transparent, Donald Trump goes on a strange rant about toilets, and Donald Trump refuses to accept even the most minimal amount of reform in order to slightly lower the cost of prescription drugs. And finally, we'll close the show by talking to 2020 candidate for the U.S. Senate Kimberly Graham about how she is going to make Joni Ernst squeal. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's show, hopefully you guys will enjoy the episode. Let's go ahead and waste no time and get right to the news. So I want to talk about a story that I think encapsulates every single thing that is wrong with American politics, and this is a two-part story. So the first part is going to demonstrate why Donald Trump isn't just apathetic about issues that impact working class people. He genuinely hates Americans, and he doesn't care about anything that affects you. He only cares about elites and special interests. This story should make that crystal clear. Now the second part of the story, it really speaks to this notion that Nancy Pelosi is some sort of political mastermind and any pundit who is claiming that she's playing nine-dimensional chess against Donald Trump, they really are doing a disservice to readers and viewers because this story demonstrates how she got played by Donald Trump once again and she has no way of adequately responding to Donald Trump when he chooses to do things that hurt working class Americans. So for the first part, we're going to talk about Donald Trump's contempt for working class Americans and just Americans in general. Just last week we talked about how his administration would be cutting food stamps for almost 700,000 people. But now he is refusing to allow reform that is the most milk toast reform imaginable. Now when he ran for president, he claimed that he wanted to lower the cost of prescription drugs. He even was open to the idea that he would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. But now, fast forward to today, he is actively opposing a bill that would in fact do just that. As AP reports, the House will hold a showdown vote next week on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices expanded Thursday to provide seniors with dental, vision and hearing benefits not currently covered. Leading Democratic Committee Chairman said the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that Pelosi's bill would save the government $500 billion over 10 years, which they pledged to use for new Medicare benefits and other health care priorities such as the National Institutes of Health and the opioid crisis. While the bill is expected to pass the Democratic-controlled House, it has no chance in the Republican run Senate. Most Republicans oppose authorizing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, arguing the job is better done by private insurers who deliver the program's prescription benefit. And Donald Trump as a candidate called for giving Medicare negotiating clout, but since taking office, he has backed off. The White House now strongly opposes Pelosi's bill, arguing it will keep up to one-third of new drugs from coming to market over a decade, an estimate far higher than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has calculated. So here's what's especially damning. This is reform that is incredibly gradual. It's a step in the right direction. It wouldn't do too much. In fact, it would only allow Medicare to negotiate 25 different drugs. Now it would gradually increase over 10 years, but it would go from 25 to 35. So this really is the bare minimum. It's the bare minimum, right? It's the least amount that Trump could do to really hold up that campaign promise that he wants to lower prescription drug costs, but he won't even allow that. Not even the bare minimum. Why? Because I'm assuming this would be seen, one, as a concession to Democrats, and two, as you know, him spitting in the eyes of his donors, his big pharma donors who absolutely love Daddy Trump. So he doesn't care that this would actually help Americans in a really small way. He's against it. And Republicans are literally arguing that private insurance companies are better at negotiating drug prices than Medicare. That is a very, very bold claim to make considering they're already doing it and we pay how much for prescription drugs. There was just a video that came out last week by Politics Joe where British people reacted to the cost of various healthcare things and drug prices and whatnot like EpiPens and they were floored. They were absolutely floored because we pay more per capita than other developed countries. In fact, it's absurd. It's laughable. Politicians should be embarrassed at how much we pay, but yet we have to keep the status quo because according to Republicans, it's working out really well. This comes after Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of lowering prescription drug prices. How many of Donald Trump supporters will this impact? Do you not realize what's going on here? He doesn't want to do this because he's protecting the bottom line of big pharma CEOs who love him and he loves them back because they donate to his campaigns. How can you defend him? People may die if this bill doesn't get passed. This could save some lives, not very many, but some, albeit any life that we can save is a life worth saving, but Trump won't even allow for the bare minimum. It's going to be dead on arrival in the Senate. If you continue to support Donald Trump, then you are woefully misinformed about politics. You're voting against your own self-interest, and it's embarrassing at this point. Embarrassing. How many campaign promises does he have to go back on for you to see that he wasn't running because he gave a damn about anyone. He was running because he wanted to be more powerful. Originally, I don't even think he planned on winning. He launched his campaign so we can create a TV network or a book deal or some shit like that. But yet, you still support him even after time and again he has proven that he doesn't give a flying fuck about normal Americans. In fact, he's cruel. On top of this, he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. His administration is backing a lawsuit that would undo protections for people with pre-existing conditions. This is the party of death and destruction that you are voting for. Gleefully so. So I hope that you feel good about yourself because you're voting for a party that hates you because they punish immigrants, presumably. Oh, and also because they want to make abortion illegal again, I'm assuming. OK, great. Way to cut off your nose despite your face. Unbelievable. Now, getting to how weak this bill is, Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to make this bill super weak in order to get Donald Trump to sign on to this, right, to get Republican support. And what did they do? They spit in her face. And yet she didn't choose to play hardball. She kept the bill shitty, watered down. This is someone who was whipping votes for the Affordable Care Act. She saw firsthand how Republicans would not get on board with the Affordable Care Act, even if they were literally adopting their right wing proposal. This was cooked up by the Heritage Foundation. Still got zero Republican votes. So she will never learn that Republicans are never going to work with you. Bipartisanship is dead. It's dead, right? And the media is questioning, oh, why is there no bipartisanship? Well, that question shouldn't even be something that anyone in media ponders. And they would be embarrassed to ask it if you did your fucking job, Nancy. But she refuses to play hardball. And now this led to a dispute between her and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, because what they're saying is, look, let's improve the bill. It's a good bill, but let's make it even better. Let's make sure that we allow Medicare to not just negotiate the cost of 25 prescription drugs, let's let them negotiate the cost of all drugs. And let's also protect people who don't have insurance. Because even though this bill would expand coverage for people currently enrolled in Medicare, there are people who don't qualify for Medicare who would need coverage, right? So if we're going to craft some type of healthcare reform or pharmaceutical industry reform, let's do a little bit better. I mean, let's do more than the bare minimum. Let's try to improve it a little bit, right? And we'll negotiate later on. But don't start the process by negotiating. Never pre-negotiate to appease your opponents who are never going to do the same for you. But with that being said, Nancy Pelosi, being the political mastermind that she is, chose to shut progressives like Pramila Jayapal out of this process. And spit in their face. Why? Because she was certain that Donald Trump and Republicans might want to, you know, come to her side. But no, she spit in the faces of progressives to appease Donald Trump. And in return, he spit in her face. Now, as David Dayan and Ryan Grimm of the Intercept explain, Pelosi and her staff led by top health policy aide Wendell Primus have frozen out progressives from deliberations over the lower drug costs now act, exerting extreme control over the process. They bypassed legislation that Representative Lloyd Doggett wrote, which, thanks to progressive organizing, had the support of a majority of the caucus. Instead, Pelosi and Primus sought to find a compromise with the Trump White House, only to see Trump savage the bill on Twitter, indicating that it didn't have his support. Despite that reversal, all the provisions weakened or watered down to gain Trump's support remain in the bill, leaving open large gaps in who will benefit from the effects. The tensions over the bill are rooted in a provision that will for the first time allow direct price negotiations between the government and major drug companies, creating an exemption to a non-interference clause banning such negotiations that was instituted in 2003. As written, however, the bill sets a floor of just 25 high-cost drugs that will be negotiated per year, rising to 35 in the 10th year of the bill's enactment. The CPC and drug affordability advocates believe this floor will operate as a ceiling, and that a higher minimum of negotiations ought to be mandated. Progressive caucus leaders would also rather see the non-interference clause stricken entirely, giving more flexibility to government officials to expand the scope of negotiations. So there's your master legislator right there. Getting played by Donald Trump again. And I'm sure that this will be spun by the media as her just brilliantly owning Donald Trump. When that's never the case, Nancy Pelosi gets played by Donald Trump again, and again, and again. You watered down your bill to appease Trump and he's rejecting it now. So what do you do? You play hardball, Nancy. You come up with a stronger bill. You allow the concessions that progressives had encouraged you to vote on. You pass it, and then you gloat about this, and you tell people Donald Trump doesn't want to support this bill that would save you X amount of dollars per year on your prescription drugs. Better yet, come out in favor of Medicare for all. And then you can tell voters that Republicans are against something that would save lives, thousands of lives every single year. But Nancy Pelosi, again, her goal is to water down their own proposals in order to get Republicans to support it. And then when they slap it down and reject her, she then claims that she's a master legislator because she got them to show how horrible they are because they're not supporting her incrementalist reform. No, actually, they're clowning on you, Nancy Pelosi. And if you actually listened to progressives like Mark Pokan and Pramila Jayapal and improved the bill that would empower the grassroots to want to fight for it more, to fight harder for it, you want the grassroots on your side because real change comes from the bottom up and not the top down. So you need to craft a bill that will get the grassroots excited and galvanized and encourage them to organize on your behalf so Republicans do look like shit, but you won't do that. So this is what this story tells us. Donald Trump does not care if people will die because they can't afford their prescription drugs. And Nancy Pelosi has no idea how to deal with Republicans who are obstructionist, who refuse to work with them and reach across the aisle. In spite of fear mongering over the lack of bipartisanship in DC and the mainstream media. I mean, how is the onus not on Republicans and how is it not universally acknowledged that Republicans are the one that are leading to increased polarization and making bipartisanship not even something that is a fact or not even possible? I mean, this is going to be another bill that passes the house but dies in the Senate because of Mitch McConnell. And it could have been a stronger bill that could have gotten, you know, maybe a little bit more leeway if the grassroots were excited about it. But you and your health insider top policy aide Wendell Premis who was trying to kill Medicare for all by assuring industry insiders that, you know, that'll never pass. You decided to create a bill that really didn't do much. I mean, of course it was a step in the right direction, but it didn't do very much. And the grassroots wasn't fired up, hence they weren't willing to fight for you. This is why when Bernie Sanders talks about needing a political revolution, we need a political revolution because like normal legislative process will no longer suffice. Like if you actually want change, if you genuinely care about lowering the cost of prescription drugs, which everyone should, then you need a political revolution where we propose a bill, not one that you think will pass or get Republicans on board, but one that will actually deliver and lower the cost of prescription drugs. You propose that bill and then you excite people and get them to come out and support you and take action, call their Republican representatives, you know, go to town halls and shame them for not supporting it. That's how action is actually, should be done. And that's how you affect change in actuality. But I mean, DC doesn't run on grassroots. It runs on special interests, which is why, you know, both parties essentially benefit from stagnation and no policies being passed. You know, it's certainly demoralizing, but if we want to get anything passed ever, then we need new leadership and we need Nancy Pelosi to be out of a job. So if you truly want progressive change, part of that is defeating Nancy Pelosi. And you back Shahid Butar and you back Makayla Wilkes. We've got to get Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out. And also on top of that, we kick Donald Trump's ass to the curb in 2020. And we get someone elected like Bernie Sanders who actually cares about people and isn't just going to do the bidding of Big Pharma because they're donating to his campaign. So he's kind of just thanking them by allowing them to continue ripping us off. I mean, fuck everyone. Like this story just makes me feel really demoralized about the political process. And I'm a political commentator, so this shouldn't be a surprise to me. But imagine how like an average political consumer reacts when they see stories like this. This is why so many people check out. But if anything, this should encourage you to get more involved in the political process because the more involved we are, the less that this type of bullshit can happen. If you are a normal person, then you will never ever be able to get used to the fact that Donald Trump is the president, not just because he is a trashy reality television star, but because his brain is melting out of his ears. Like this individual is unhinged and nine times out of 10. When he talks, it is completely incoherent. He babbles on about things that make no sense, seemingly. But yet people like to frame him as this truth teller who has this finger on the pulse of America. Is that so? Well, let's see if you can make heads or tails of this. We have a situation where we're looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on in areas where there's tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea, because you could never handle it. And you don't get any water. You turn on the faucet, you don't get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. It's dripping out very quietly, dripping out. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water. So EPA is looking at that very strongly, at my suggestion. You go into a new building or a new house or new home and they have standards on where you don't get water. You can't wash your hands, practically. There's so little water comes out of the faucet. And the end result is you leave the faucet on and it takes you much longer to wash your hands. You end up using the same amount of water. So we're looking at very seriously at opening up the standard. And there may be some areas where we'll go the other route, desert areas. But for the most part, you have many states where they have so much water that it comes down. It's called rain. They don't know what to do with it. So we're going to be opening up that, I believe, and we're looking at changing the standards very soon. So the way that I took that was that Donald Trump basically just admitted to all of us inadvertently so that he takes massive shits so much so that he has to flush the toilet multiple times to get them to go down. That's what I took away from that. Maybe I'm a child, but nonetheless, that was incredibly bizarre and unhinged. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Change your diet if you can't get your shits to go down, Trump. Like, the fact that the president said that should never be lost on you. And that's just one of many weird rants. You know, he talked about Puerto Rico being surrounded by big water raking the forest floor. The man is an imbecile. Now I want to go over the transcript here because I think it's funny. We have a situation where we're looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on in areas where there's tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you can never handle it. You turn on the faucet, you don't get any water. He then adds, people are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water. Are they though? I don't think people are flushing the toilet that much. I think that you're flushing the toilet that much. Stop flushing the toilet that much, Donald Trump. Change your diet and, you know, maybe you won't be taking gigantic shits like that. Now, there's a question whenever he goes on one of these rants is, you know, did he, like, start a sentence and not really know where he was going to end it? So he, like, tried to form a coherent thought midway through that sentence and then just landed in the middle of nowhere or did that actually, you know, originate from somewhere else? Well, it turns out this actually was an issue that libertarians were concerned with because as Mother Jones writer Ali Breeland reports, Trump's weird toilet rant is actually a crappy old libertarian hobby horse. It goes back to the 1992 Energy Policy Act signed into law by George H. W. Bush. He explains, was the water review another instance of some rogue thought turning into public policy simply because Trump had started yammering in front of cameras? Yes, probably, but it turns out that libertarians have been complaining about toilet water pressure for decades, citing it as an example of statist intrusion. This goes back to 1992, as Chris Goode pointed out in The Atlantic in 2011. The low-flow 1.6 gallon limit on toilets was instituted with the 1992 Energy Policy Act signed into law by George H. W. Bush. Prior to that, toilets used anywhere from 3.5 to 5 gallons according to major toilet manufacturer American Standard. In 1999, then-representative Joe Nolenberg introduced the law to repeal the restriction along with other efficiency standards for faucets, shower heads, and urinals instituted in the 1992 bill. Nolenberg gained the support of 107 co-sponsors including Rand's father-representative Ron Paul and now-speaker John Boehner. In a 1998-2020 segment in what might be his magnum opus, libertarian icon John Stossel laid waste to the very same toilet regulations that Trump complained about on Friday. He interviewed toilet pressure enthusiasts who were so bummed out by new regulations on the amount of water that could be used for flushing that they searched junkyards and traveled to Canada to find high-powered commodes. So, long story short, this is an issue, albeit from 1992. It was a big issue back then. Trump's bringing it back in 2019. Man, he really has his finger on the pulse of America. This is certainly a kitchen table issue that Americans probably really care about. How much water it takes to flush a toilet. Yeah, if we're going to talk about water at all, why are we not talking about clean drinking water? Flint still doesn't have clean drinking water. Still in 2019. We have pipelines across the country that are very dangerously close to areas where people get their water and they're leaking all the time. Why are we not talking about that if we're going to talk about water? If we're going to talk about water, why aren't we talking about how areas of the country will be underwater if we don't take action on climate change? I mean, is this really, if you support Donald Trump and you voted for him and you're considering voting for him in 2020, not that you'd watch the show, but in the event you do, I mean, is this really who you want representing you? Somebody who's concerned about toilets and the water used to flush toilets? I'm asking earnestly. And look, the reason why he's fixated on an issue from 1992 is probably because that was the last time his brain functioned properly. So he might still think that he's living in 1992. I don't know. Whatever the reason is, this is not somebody who cares about what the American people care about. Right? He's not talking about healthcare. He's not talking about the issues that impact the overwhelming majority of Americans. He's talking about how many gallons of water we use to flush toilets. This is a total non-issue and just instinctively, you know, even though it was George H.W. Bush that signed this into law, I would probably agree that we don't need to use more water to flush toilets because water is not an infinite resource, right? So, I mean, the man's an idiot. I don't know what else to say. With each unhinged rant, you'd think that his supporters would be turned off, but there's a portion of the American electorate that will never abandon him. And that should really be something that scares us as Americans because that shows us that objectivity is not a thing. They're not willing to weigh out the options and vote accordingly based on their own self-interest. They truly believe that Donald Trump is a type of deity or demigod, and anything he says or does is to their benefit. It's sad, and I don't know what to say about this. The fact that we have so many people who are too far gone, you know, it's not good for democracy. We need people to be engaged politically and to understand the issues that affect them because voters, even though they are self-interested, they're uninformed and they make decisions that oftentimes end up hurting themselves and supporting Donald Trump unquestionably, hurt themselves. I mean, just last week we talked about how he's cutting food stamps off for approximately 700,000 Americans. This is going to hurt his own supporters, but they don't care so long as he's going to continue to, you know, implement these types of draconian anti-immigrant policies. It just, it's odd to me, but nonetheless, this is the state of American politics. We have a president, Donald Trump, complaining about toilets, and he is, quote, looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms. Okay, boomer. So I have a lot of criticisms of most of the 2020 Democratic Party primary contenders, but one area where most of them get a pass is on the issue of net neutrality because I think that most of them do support net neutrality. They've signaled support for it, usually more than one time, which I think is really, you know, it's encouraging and it makes me feel cautiously optimistic. Although when they've talked about net neutrality, it's usually been fairly vague. They talked about the prospect of appointing a pro-net neutrality chairman to the FCC and finding pro-net neutrality commissioners to appoint. Now you do have to alternate. You have to appoint a Republican and then a Democrat as president to the FCC, but you can find Republicans who are in fact pro-net neutrality. So, you know, what we see will be a drastic improvement regardless of who the Democrat is when it comes to the issue of net neutrality. However, Bernie Sanders just came out with a plan to save net neutrality that is so robust, so comprehensive, that he raised the bar so high that nobody in this field comes anywhere near him because he doesn't just want to restore net neutrality, but he wants to make the Internet more consumer-friendly than it's ever been. And he's doing this with a three-pronged approach, essentially. He's going to restore net neutrality, really reign in the power that Internet service providers have. And on top of that, he's going to embolden cities to adopt public broadband. And Carl Bode, who has been reporting on the telecom industry for decades, claims that this would be Comcast's worst nightmare. So if Carl Bode says that what Bernie Sanders is proposing is going to scare the likes of Comcast, then I am inclined to trust his judgment. So what is Bernie Sanders proposing? Well, as Carl Bode of Vice Reports AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast executives aren't going to like Bernie Sanders' new broadband plan. The wide-ranging proposal released Friday morning would all but demolish big telecom stranglehold over the broadband and media sectors on winding decades of unrelenting consolidation, imposing hard new limits on how much broadband providers can charge for service while opening the door to significantly broader availability of community broadband. The plan would restore the FCC's authority and net neutrality rules stripped away by the Ajit Pai FCC subjecting ISPs to far greater oversight. It also proposes banning ISPs from imposing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees which critics have long said are little more than punitive price hikes on captive customers. But Sanders' plan also spends a lot of time advocating for community broadband, first by proposing $150 billion in new funding to aid the growing roster of towns and cities that have begun building their own networks after years of industry neglect. Secondly, by eliminating the 19 protectionist state laws big ISP lobbyists have used to try and crush those efforts. Municipalities across the country running their own internet services have proved they can deliver high-quality service at a fraction of the price of established monopolies, the proposal states. Bernie believes it's time to stop relying on profit-focused corporations to get to universal broadband, it adds, noting his administration would provide the necessary funding for states, cities and co-ops to build out their own broadband networks and ensure all households are connected by the end of his first term. Now on top of all of that the plan would eliminate hidden fees from internet service providers and cable providers like Comcast. So you'll get this type of plan that's advertised at $79.99 per month but then when you see your bill it's higher than that because there's all these weird arbitrary fees that they didn't tell you about Bernie would eliminate that because that is effectively false advertising. Bernie's going to do away with that on top of that he's going to target these really big mega mergers. So currently there is a merger that is going on between T-Mobile and Sprint that a G-Py's FCC just greenlit. Now of course that's bad for consumers because if there is less competition and there's more monopolies then the situation will get drastically worse. So Bernie is going about this in a multitude of ways. He's kind of attacking this through various angles and making sure that he doesn't just restore net neutrality but make sure that it's a lasting change and this would be a game changer. I mean currently we see a fight for a municipal broadband across the country but whenever that happens you know the industry steps in starts fear mongering about the cost and how it's going to be difficult to establish an infrastructure but what Bernie Sanders is saying is we've got your back. If you want to do public broadband in your town well we're going to help you with the funding and in the event that we're to be encouraged a lot of towns simultaneously would do it. Now ISPs like Comcast and Verizon would fight against it in these towns unquestionably but they'd be spreading themselves more thin because this is something that is not talked about enough so not very many towns even know about this so when they do attempt it well these towns end up getting barraged by corporate lobbyists who try to kill the efforts and usually they're effective at it but towns who have implemented public broadband like Chattanooga for example they have been incredibly successful so Bernie Sanders here is basically changing the internet in a way that would not only make it more open than it was before Ajit Pai killed net neutrality but he would end this issue once and for all because I don't know about you but I'm really tired of having this fight like we had this fight this battle to save net neutrality in 2014 and then we had to do it again in 2017 we lost that battle and if we go from democrat to republican they're just going to appoint FCC commissioners and chairman and chairwomen that will change the laws and we'll go back and forth I want to end this debate once and for all seems like Bernie Sanders wants to do that and he's going further than any other candidate and let me remind you that net neutrality is a bipartisan issue a majority of both democrats and republicans supported so for all of the centrist democrats who fear monger about people needing to appeal to moderates and republicans and trump voters well this is how you do it by crafting public policy that doesn't compromise your principles but instead bolsters something that we need a utility like the internet that actually increases freedom that gives people access to information and resources now bernie sanders tweeted about this saying the internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer funded research using taxpayer funded grants in taxpayer funded labs our tax dollars built the internet it should be a public good for all not another price gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T and Verizon so obviously if Comcast and Verizon and AT&T didn't already hate Bernie Sanders they're really going to hate them now and what Bernie Sanders is doing is he is drastically raising the bar I have never seen a net neutrality proposal this good because what I propose as the solution to permanently end the net neutrality debate is for all of us to fight for public broadband in our areas right but what Bernie Sanders is doing is he's giving us a boost he's giving us the tools that we need to make that fight easier and the tool comes in the form of funding from the federal government if your town chooses to opt for public broadband this would be a game changer and we would never have to worry about monopolies or this attempt to kill net neutrality and section off portions of the internet for a higher profit and also this would make zero rating a thing of the past right so this is so important and I really hope that Bernie Sanders gets credit for this he probably won't but I mean this is an incredibly important issue the fact that 2020 candidates support net neutrality in and of itself is important and I give them credit words do they're not talking about it enough regardless you know the fact that they support is good but Bernie is going beyond just supporting net neutrality he's going beyond paying lip service to this issue knowing how important it is he's proposing a real robust solution that would save the internet permanently you've got to hand it to him he really did his research here and he genuinely cares about this issue it's nice to see for the three of you who don't know Hillary Clinton decided to once again attack Bernie Sanders this time in a recent taping of the Howard Stern show apparently that's still a thing I've never been a fan but nonetheless she attacked Bernie Sanders and it just demonstrates how little of a person she is she's still bitter over 2016 which is funny because out of all the candidates who were screwed in 2016 it was Bernie Sanders who really was screwed the most nonetheless she's a poor sport and she proceeded to attack him now the reason why I'm talking about this even though it's largely old news by now and even though I like to try to avoid Hillary Clinton as much as possible on this channel because I hate re-litigating 2016 but here we are the reason why I'm talking about this is because Bernie Sanders actually responded and it showed that he is a class act and regardless of how loathsome Hillary Clinton is regardless of her claiming that when they go low we go high it's actually Bernie Sanders who practices that philosophy but for those of you who hadn't seen it to give you some context she was talking about Russia trying to get Donald Trump elected in 2016 and of course she threw Bernie Sanders in with that red baiting and then that led to a rant about how terrible Bernie Sanders is take a look like hey let's do everything we can to elect Donald Trump I mean that's those are quotes those are words those are words that taken and else is at Bernie Sanders but you know that's another for another day do we hate Bernie Sanders what do we hate Bernie Sanders no I don't hate anybody Bernie could have endorsed you quicker he could have he hurt me there's no doubt about it he hurt me but going back to the indictments because that's what's really important have you ever spoken to Bernie about that no no you haven't talked to him I don't talk to him yeah I mean we did when he finally endorsed me and all that but you're upset with him no disappointed disappointed okay so I hope he doesn't do it again to whoever gets the nomination right once is enough we got it we have to everyone unite we have to join forces and you know people could speculate and and have some good reason to speculate about how bad it might be with Trump in the White House now we know there's no guesswork I mean I'd like to say unbelievable but really it is believable Hillary Clinton is never going to take responsibility for her failures in 2016 and she blames everyone but herself now she said Bernie Sanders could have endorsed her quicker and quote he hurt me there's no no doubt about it he hurt me he endorsed you in spite of the fact that his fans and supporters did not want him to endorse you if it were me I would have been a bitter bitch and not endorse Hillary Clinton in 2016 after the DNC's fuckery but nonetheless Bernie Sanders cared more about the country and decided to put everything aside and he tried to defeat Donald Trump and he endorsed you even if he wasn't technically mathematically eliminated which you know was actually the case with you in 2008 you were mathematically eliminated but you stayed in the race late and you didn't want to endorse Barack Obama because you thought well you know maybe if he gets assassinated then I could assume the position as Democratic Party nominee now thankfully she has you know expressed regret over that horrible remarks but really out of all people Hillary Clinton is the last person I want to hear about right about party unity because as we are you know seeing this competitive Democratic Party primary play out and she talks about you know the need for us to all come together here she is being divisive yet again and she says I hope that Bernie Sanders doesn't do it again to whoever gets the nomination this time in other words she's taking a dig at Bernie Sanders here saying he's gonna lose so make sure Bernie that when you do lose not if but when you lose you fall in line sooner you know don't do what you did in 2016 actually fall in line it doesn't matter if you still technically have a chance and you're not mathematically eliminated just fall in line Bernie so I mean when you combine the McCarthyist fear mongering the questioning of his loyalties to the party as well as the fears that he'll hurt the eventual 2020 nominee who definitely won't be him according to Hillary Clinton she is ironically doing what she claimed hurt her she's hurting the eventual nominee with all of this divisiveness by not falling in line herself and supporting Bernie Sanders because Bernie could very well be the nominee he's in second place currently so everything she's saying about Bernie here is contradicted by the fact that he could be the nominee and democratic party loyalists they loved that Hillary Clinton said this about Bernie Sanders and even if they cry party unity at every chance they get you know they celebrated this CNN's Chris Elizabeth pendant article unironically titled Hillary Clinton absolutely destroyed Bernie Sanders in her Howard Stern interview I mean it's you guys who preach unity so if you're the ones who preach unity practice what you preach unify behind Bernie Sanders who has the best chance at beating Donald Trump who's a top tier candidate who could very well win this entire thing are you guys actually going to fall in line and support Bernie Sanders in the same way that you told us to support Hillary Clinton see what I will predict is that there's going to be a lot of people who are democratic party loyalists who will rationalize voting for Donald Trump or rationalize voting third party after they condemned people in 2016 for not falling in line and supporting Hillary Clinton like we will see you know hypocrisy like we've never seen before in American politics it's going to be you know quite the site now on top of that she didn't just attack progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders she attacked progressive policies in the most elitist and condescending way imaginable Bernie Sanders and this was a perception I had you would say a policy when you were running against him for the nomination right right and then actually go yeah well free college for everyone yeah it's almost like when you run for a fifth grade class right I'll give you free everything chocolate milk chocolate milk chocolate milk and more recess yeah yeah pizza and then it makes it look like you're a stick in the I know then when you say well wait a minute it makes no sense where's the money going to come from then what a man are you against free college yeah I know I know yes because free college is just like chocolate milk and out of all the policies to attack free college is one of the cheapest it costs approximately 80 billion so all you need is a wall street financial transaction tax and you pay for college in fact as Brett Bandatelli put it where's the money going to come from right there it's going to come from elites like you and Howard Stern because between the two of them somebody pointed out that they're worth almost a billion dollars so I'm so sick of the rich explaining I'm sick of the smugness the condescension you know these democratic party establishment figures they will be the first to cry about unity if it benefits them but when it doesn't benefit them when it seems like Bernie Sanders could actually win this entire thing then all of a sudden they are as divisive as they claim we were it's unbelievable now Bernie Sanders he never takes the bait and I really give him credit because all the things that she did like if I were Bernie I would be a bitter bitch right now but Bernie Sanders is a bigger person than me and he responded with class he responded simply by saying look I did everything I could to get her elected one of the problems you have in this state a lot of Clinton voters who are unhappy with what's the leftovers of that campaign and she told Howard Stern that one of the things that hurt her in the November election was your endorsement didn't come soon enough she said he hurt me there's no doubt about it and I hope he doesn't do it again to whoever gets the nomination wants us enough what's your reaction to that I'm sorry that Hillary Clinton is rerunning 2016 and if I had it on you I could take out a letter from Hillary Clinton saying thank you Bernie for working so hard to try to make me the President of the United States let's be clear and last during my efforts to get Hillary Clinton elected and to defeat Donald Trump I ran to something like 14, 15, 16 states right here in Iowa I worked as hard as humanly possible we did dozens and dozens of rallies around this country now what I try to do after she won the primary is to sit down with her staff and we did to create a democratic platform that was as progressive as it could be and that ended up happening so you know I don't want to rerun 2016 right now our goal is to defeat Donald Trump I think I'm the strongest candidate to do that if it turns out that I am not the democratic nominee I will strongly support anybody else so I mean I give Bernie credit I give him credit because after enduring what he put up with in 2016 I would not be that big of a person like I would not have endorsed Hillary Clinton I would have sat out 2016 after I dropped out I would have been a dick because I mean for the DNC to not just put their finger on the scale but sit on the scale and rig the entire process against him create this joint fundraising agreement with her and the DNC so she had to sign off on their press releases I mean having super delegates won before anyone cast their vote I mean that process was incredibly fucked up so for him to be a big person and you know do all of that to help her win after she fucked him over I mean it just goes to show you what type of a person Bernie Sanders is he is a genuine kind-hearted person and he cares more about the country than himself and you know democratic party politics now that letter that he was referencing I actually have it and I want to read some of it from you so it says thank you so much for campaigning on my behalf I remain so deeply grateful for your commitment to the future we want to build together so do you understand Hillary Clinton is all of a sudden changing her tune because well you know I just want to blame Bernie Sanders I'm not I'm not angry at him I'm just disappointed look if anything Hillary Clinton is such a divisive figure inherently now because everything she says is negative that this isn't actually going to hurt Bernie it can only help him at this point because people don't like Hillary Clinton they view her as the establishment rightfully so and by her essentially making an anti endorsement of Bernie Sanders that actually helps him so I mean I'll leave that there I try to go out of my way to avoid talking about Hillary Clinton I don't like the speculation about her running again I just I don't like hearing about people who are largely irrelevant who have no power you know in democratic party politics but she is influential to a degree and when she says things like this it is in fact divisive it's like pouring salt in the wounds that still do very much exist so you know my message to Hillary Clinton is fuck off we don't like you you will never be president so maybe stop trying to attack the person who is a frontrunner who can actually beat Donald Trump unlike you even though Mayor Pete is in a distant fourth nationally well in Iowa and New Hampshire he is leading unfortunately with 5.7 and three points respectively now he's probably not going to get very far with almost no support from black voters but still when I lose this individual has proven to be an incredibly destructive force in democratic party politics because what we are fighting for he is actively fighting against so an example of course is Medicare for all going into this race he supported Medicare for all and he claimed that Medicare for all was actually the compromise between the Affordable Care Act and national health system but fast forward a couple of months he starts taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health industry and now he is using their attacking points against Medicare for all but that in and of itself isn't the problem the problem is that he is effective at destroying public support for Medicare for all because since he started to use their attacking points against Medicare for all support for Medicare for all has decreased while support for a public option has been on the rise now even if he were able to codify his Medicare for all who wanted into law that would still lead to people dying because what it means is healthcare would still be a commodity like video games for example so if you can't afford it you don't get healthcare and furthermore even if you can afford his version of Medicare where you can buy into it well you would be denied the subsidy if you're an immigrant as the Washington Post's Dave Weigel reports after Latino event I asked Buddha judge if non-citizens could access benefits of Medicare for all who wanted he says they could buy in but not get subsidies Medicare for all legislation covers non-citizens so that's why I say when I lose this individual is destructive because he is incredibly cruel like Democrats are denouncing Donald Trump's disgusting child separation zero tolerance immigration policy but then Mayor Pete is saying you know what under my proposal if you are not a citizen you don't get this subsidy which means that you can't get healthcare because you most likely won't be able to afford it and as a result you get to die so how can you denounce Donald Trump's cruelty if you're also inhumane yourself this policy is xenophobic even if Democrats refuse to use the X word against one of their own that's what this is so this individual is destructive he's working against the grassroots and it's not just when it comes to the issue of Medicare for all another issue is free college he's been vociferously arguing against it saying that you know Bernie's free college plan doesn't take into account people who don't want to go to college or trade schools and on top of that you know Bernie he just wants to pay for the the children of millionaires and billionaires to go to school so this is an individual who is a snake and he cares about nothing he stands for no policies all he wants is to get elected he's a careerist that's Mayor Pete in a nutshell but thankfully Bernie Sanders was asked about Mayor Pete in an interview on MSNBC with Chris Hayes and he thoroughly schooled Pete Buttigieg and this was glorious to watch because I've been waiting for Bernie Sanders to put this little dipshit in his place and finally Bernie Sanders delivered and really he clowned on Pete Buttigieg this was just fantastic what do you say to that argument that there's no reason to to pay for people who haven't paid for it well I say Buttigieg is wrong on both counts number one of course when we talk about making higher education public colleges and universities tuition free we mean not only college but we mean trade schools as well there are millions of good jobs out there in construction and all kinds of areas where people are good at working with their hands they don't want to go to college and of course we are going to make tuition tuition free for those people so what he's saying is not accurate second of all there is the issue of universality I'm very glad that Mr. Buttigieg is is worried that I have been too easy on upper income people and the millionaires and billionaires that I'm going to allow their kids to go to public colleges and universities just by the way as they do go to public schools right now Trump's kids can go to any public school elementary school high school in the country tuition free but the point is I happen to believe that when you talk about programs like social security like healthcare like higher education they should be universal the way you pay for them and the way I do it not the way Buttigieg does it is I do demand that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality that the very rich will start paying their fair share of taxes as will corporate America you pay for it by raising revenue from the very rich but then you say in a very simple way that any person who wants a higher education college trade school should be able to do it you know right now that's what we do with social security it is a popular program it is a universal program that was absolutely glorious I loved every second of that what Bernie Sanders says in making you know this point about universality it really does matter because the universality of programs means that they will have staying power you can't attack a program that is universal if you want to be elected because these programs are loved by everyone and I love that Bernie Sanders used social security as an example now the reason why means testing is something that isn't popular among the progressive left is because first of all they're less popular if you means test the program second of all it's more difficult for working class Americans to access these programs if they're means tested because they have to prove that they're poor enough to benefit from that program and also it creates resentment from you know members of the middle class against the working class it kind of pits them against each other and people in the middle class think well why did these working class people get this program but I don't get it right look the goal is everyone pays into a benefit and everyone receives that benefit that's good public policy making that's how you create policies that will last for generations to come and even if politicians will covertly chip away at it right we see the same thing happening with Tories in the UK with their NHS they're never going to directly undermine it which means it will be easier in the long term to defend if you keep this capitalist system in place now my favorite quote was Bernie Sanders said I'm glad Mr. Buttigieg is worried I've been too easy on upper income people and the millionaires and billionaires that was such a great line because nobody is harder on elites than Bernie Sanders and coming from Mayor Pete to concern troll about you know the children of millionaires and billionaires getting free college this jackass has taken more money from billionaires than any other Democrat and out of all the people all of a sudden he's going to claim that he doesn't want to implement a policy that benefits millionaires and billionaires I mean give me a break does anyone believe that Pete Buttigieg believes what he's saying and we know why Pete Buttigieg is saying this right this is pseudo adversarialism he wants to make it seem as if he is as left wing as Bernie Sanders or more left wing than Bernie Sanders in this instance so we try to find a way to leap frog Bernie on the left and attack Bernie from the left by saying no actually your policy which benefits the working class is actually bad because it also simultaneously would benefit the rich okay well first of all most rich people if you you know are a millionaire or a billionaire you're going to send your kids to private school but if you don't well you paid for that program you paid the most for that program fine I don't care like the goal is to make sure that working class people can go to college and not be burdened with debt for the rest of their lives but elitist Pete isn't in favor of that why I don't know I mean out of all the progressive policy proposals free college is one of the cheapest it's like 80 billion you can easily finance that fully and keep it solving with a financial transaction tax on Wall Street but yet he doesn't even want to do that like the bare minimum to prove that you're progressive Pete won't even do that so what Bernie Sanders said here it was great and I really wish that Bernie Sanders would go on the offense of more I mean he didn't really have a choice because he was asked the question and he simply responded but I would love to see Bernie actually point out that the reason why Mayor Pete all of a sudden is a centrist after entering this race as a progressive is because he started taking money from the industry right he supported Medicare for all and is now against it after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health industry call out this fraud and expose him for the fraud that he is so his career and politics will be over and we don't have to deal with him every four to eight years with the establishment trying to ram him down our throats like I'm so sick of him already and nobody has even cast a vote and he's leading in Iowa and New Hampshire so you know more Pete but a judge is bad for the left and it's bad for the Democratic Party because if he were to be the nominee or remain someone who is relevant in Democratic Party politics I mean they're just going to continue to lose because nobody likes this centrism that isn't actually going to benefit their lives so Pete but a judge offers nothing and Bernie Sanders here kind of exposed him for the hollow fraud that he is Mayor Pete but a judge or elitist Pete as I like to call him is one of the most if not the most shadiest 2020 Democratic Party primary contenders nobody has more billionaire donors than Pete but a judge he is doing fundraisers in the Hamptons with rich people constantly so this is someone who is not going to help you he doesn't care about you he's a careerist he's just trying to get elected because he wants power that's it you know he has demonstrated time and again that if he's elected there will be no real change he'd just be the errand boy for elites now one thing about him is he's doing all of these fundraisers and it's not just that he's doing the fundraisers that in and of itself is problematic but what's especially shady is that he is shutting out the press he doesn't want them to attend these fundraisers now if you're Mayor Pete that makes sense because they're clearly having an influence on his policies because when he entered this race he supported Medicare for all fast forward a couple of months and he's the number one recipient among 2020 Democrats from the health industry the only person who takes more money from the health industry than him is Donald Trump he even is taking more money than Joe Biden so you know it's not surprising that he changed his position on Medicare for all and it's now one of the chief opponents to Medicare for all and it's why he doesn't want you to see what's going on at these fundraisers because there's some shady shit that's going on nonetheless the media is now starting to kind of give him the front-runner treatment given that he's polling in first in Iowa and New Hampshire and he does not handle pressure very well because when he was asked recently whether or not he would open up his fundraisers to the press look at how irritated he got to actually have that conversation and give like an answer on that uh again I don't have a timeline for you as the candidate can't you just direct your fund to open this person? what's that? as the candidate can't you just direct your fund to open this person? yes and why haven't you done so? what's that? why haven't you done so yet? there are a lot of considerations and I'm thinking about it ask questions can you give us an example of those considerations? no thank you thank you wow the audacity of this guy I mean he's literally visibly irritated that reporters would dare ask what the considerations are for opening up these fundraisers to the press there's really no consideration right? it's whether or not you want to be more transparent but the fact that people have to beg him to be transparent tells you a lot about it and it tells you that if he's elected he's going to do fuck all for America right? he'd implement more centrist neoliberal policies Americans would become increasingly you know desperate and radicalized as a result and what's gonna happen once he serves four to eight years we'll get a president Tom Cotton Steve King Roy Moore someone who's an even bigger ghoul than Donald Trump so this person if he were to win first of all I don't think that he actually is capable of beating Donald Trump but if he did beat Donald Trump he'd just be another Bill Clinton but perhaps worse than Bill Clinton because he doesn't even try to appeal to voters like I don't see any policies that he's talking about all he does is shit on progressive policy proposals and this dude is running because he thinks he is owed the office of the presidency I can't stand him I mean for those of you who've been watching the show I absolutely cannot stand him now the good news about this video is that it went viral and it led to him reversing course because he has since been effectively shamed into being more transparent because as Daniel Moranz of HuffPost reports the presidential campaign of South Bend, Indiana Mayer Pete Buttigieg announced Monday that it would allow members of the news media to cover future private fundraisers and would disclose the names of super donors known as bundlers reporters will be permitted to cover Buttigieg's fundraisers starting on Tuesday and the campaign will provide the names of bundlers who solicit multiple donations from other wealthy individuals by the end of the week according to a statement from campaign manager Mike Schmool of the four Democratic candidates leading in the polls only Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden have requested donations in private high dollar fundraisers Biden has allowed reporters to cover those fundraisers and while Buttigieg began his campaign by publicly releasing the names of his bundlers he has not updated his public list of bundlers since April according to the Center for Responsive Politics no other candidate who relies on bundlers including Biden has so much has begun to publicly identify them now that's great I don't think he deserves any credit for this because he wouldn't actually have reversed course here had he not been shamed into doing it like if you're running to be the president we shouldn't have to beg you to be more transparent especially when it comes to something like big donors right because you know that money in politics is an issue in fact he talks about big money in politics very vaguely so but nonetheless he at least pays lip service to the idea that money in politics is a problem so if you're saying that we shouldn't have to beg you to be more transparent but here we are and he's going to be more transparent right nice but the issue isn't that there isn't enough transparency with regard to money and politics the issue are these fundraisers to begin with the issue is the money itself in politics that's the issue so to me the real question isn't whether or not Pete Buttigieg is going to be more transparent and he's going to tell us who's corrupting him what I would like is for him to not take the money in the first place so there is no corruption there's no potential for money influencing his political agenda because we saw first hand what that does he came into this primary process supporting Medicare for all and then he took thousands upon thousands of dollars from the health industry and now he's against Medicare for all so I don't care if you're more transparent and you disclose who's corrupting you what I care about is that you are being corrupted now somebody asked them recently would you swear off these fundraisers all together and stop taking billionaire money his response is very telling it's a hard no now for those of you listening on iTunes he was asked I wanted to ask if you think that taking big money out of politics includes not taking money from billionaires and through closed door fundraisers and he said unequivocally no it was difficult to make out the audio but there were subtitles on it that tells you everything you need to know about Pete Buttigieg when he talks about the influence of money in politics he's not serious because that's not part of his consideration okay so you're not serious about getting money out of politics thus you are lying to people when you talk about how corrosive money is and I mean you of all people really should not talk about the influence of money in politics because I mean you're just not the right messenger for the job here but time and again Pete Buttigieg has shown that he doesn't care about policy issues he doesn't care about anything but advancing his own career and the fact that he is still polling in first place in Iowa and New Hampshire should worry everyone because even if I doubt he'd win without the support of black voters I mean that still could give him enough momentum to carry him further in this primary and if he were to be the nominee he'd lose to Donald Trump and if he didn't lose if he managed to win nothing would get accomplished and we'd get someone worse than Donald Trump in four to eight years as I said earlier and even in the best case scenario if he loses this primary we're still going to have the establishment shove him down our throats every four to eight years because they love him he's young right there's a lot of longevity with regard to his political career so I'm sick of Mayor Pete already and this is really our only first introduction into him nationally I was aware of him back in 2017 when he ran to be the DNC chair but this dude is is not serious about policy he doesn't actually want to effect change he just is running because he wants power if people don't see that then we have to make them see it because I think it's pretty obvious Pete Buttigieg finally revealed the work that he did for the notoriously evil consulting firm known as McKinsey but to be fair to him he actually wasn't legally allowed to talk about it because he signed an NDA he asked to be released from set of NDA and thankfully they obliged now this is detailed in the Atlantic in an article by Edward Isaac Dovir and essentially a lot of the work that Pete Buttigieg did was downplayed it was described in a way that made it seem like it was seemingly innocuous and it wasn't actually that problematic for example his campaign also revealed to me his clients from his time at McKinsey Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Loblaws a Canadian supermarket chain Best Buy the Natural Resources Defense Council the Environmental Protection Agency the Department of Energy the Energy Foundation and Environmental Nonprofit the US Postal Service and the US Department of Defense now look admittedly some of these are less problematic like the work that he did for the EPA or the USPS doesn't necessarily concern me as much but when you do work for these multi-billion dollar companies like Best Buy who exploit the labor of their workers when you work for the Department of Defense that I think should be a red flag for anyone who is going to be participating in this Democratic Party primary and on top of that he worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan this is a for-profit company that profits off of denying people coverage and raising insurance premiums so what did he do at Blue Cross Blue Shield? Well, he said that while working with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan he remembered going along with his manager to a few meetings with people on staff but he couldn't remember any meeting he'd been able to attend on his own mostly I was with fellow consultants in a room working on a spreadsheet he said explaining that the analysis had focused on rent travel costs mail and printing but nothing having to do with policy or premium costs he insisted that none of his work could have led to people's insurance changing or being taken away Sure, Dan Right, now as we'll learn that's actually not entirely true it's it's fairly misleading because the way that he describes it is look I was just you know punching numbers into a spreadsheet my job was to math if I could use math as a verb but that's not true that is not true in actuality but I mean think about this this individual worked for a private health insurance company and all of a sudden he enters the 2020 race and becomes the number one Democratic party recipient of health industry contributions more so than anyone in this field including the former vice president the only person who outraised people to judge with regard to health industry donations is the sitting president but he raised more than everyone else and he explicitly created a health care proposal that would protect the private insurance industry it would leave them intact now let me remind you he previously supported Medicare for all ostensibly I don't think he was ever really serious about that but once he started to take their money he reversed course and opted for the policy proposal that wouldn't actually get rid of them that is not okay now the thing that I think should bother a lot of people which should turn heads is the work that he chose to do for the U.S. Department of Defense because he participated in what a lot of people call disaster capitalism where these private companies exploit countries who were ravaged by war or a natural disaster and as you're going to see this is precisely what Naomi Klein talks about in the shock doctrine now here's what he reportedly did quote when someone asked whether he'd be interested in a project working for the defense department studying economic development in Afghanistan and Iraq he said yes quote in Iraq it had to do with a lot of state-owned enterprises that were learning to function in the post-Saddam world helping them with basic stuff like business planning that just hadn't been done in the style of international business norms because it was a quasi-socialist system over there but a judge told me in Afghanistan they knew how to do business but then there was a lot of trouble scaling it so we were working more on figuring out how to help businesses grow in other words you're helping private companies become more profitable in post-Saddam Iraq this is quintessential disaster capitalism now the way that it's kind of portrayed here is you know he helped a lot of state-owned enterprises but then he kind of moves the goalpost as he explains what he did there and talks about how he helped you know businesses grow and they were having trouble with scaling because this was new and they were quasi-socialist at least in Iraq so he kind of contradicts himself and that's not even pointed out by the author of this article but what I love is that sludge writer Alex Koch he went over this in great detail and he kind of broke this down in a matter-of-fact way and really in a no-bullshit way and he told us exactly what Pete Buttigieg did in a way that just strips away that you know centrist-friendly veneer he tweeted the way the author portrays it most of the work sounds fairly innocuous but Dover is one of the last reporters I would trust to report seriously on a centrist-democratic candidate if you haven't read Naomi Klein's shock doctrine it is essential to understanding American economic opportunism in Afghanistan what government contractors and consultants were doing there was not good but a judge down places worked for Blue Cross but regardless this matters a candidate who attacks Medicare for all and the candidate who truly believes in it worked for a private health insurer makes you think see like I said Dover is about the last person you want honestly assessing a centrist and he then links to an article from the New York Times that is pretty devastating to this narrative about Pete Buttigieg doing seemingly innocuous work at McKinsey for Blue Cross it reads last week Mr. Buttigieg's campaign said his time in Michigan included analytical work as part of a team identifying savings in administration and overhead costs Blue Cross of Michigan announced in January 2009 that it would cut up to 1,000 jobs or nearly 10% of its workforce and request rate increases now the article claims his work didn't actually lead to job loss or you know rises in monthly premiums but this New York Times article makes it clear that that's a lie so in other words quote Buttigieg helped Blue Cross save money on administration and overhead costs i.e laying people off and increasing insurance premiums cool now he was asked about this in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and he tried to play dumb and made it seem like he didn't really know if his consulting with McKinsey led to that loss of jobs at Blue Cross Blue Shield but watch what he does in order to deflect he basically throws Bernie Sanders under a bus randomly when when you did that sort of cost and overhead assessment for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan a couple of years after that they laid off like a thousand people was your work part of what led to those laughs I doubt it I don't know what happened in in the time after I left that was in 2007 when they decided to shrink in 2009 now what I do know is that there are some voices in the Democratic primary right now who are calling policy that would eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country so just pause for a moment and reflect on what he just said in order to defend the consulting work that he did with McKinsey and the loss of jobs that you know his consulting facilitated he is saying that Bernie Sanders essentially wants to do the same because if you have to Medicare for all then what's going to happen well that will lead to the collapse of the entire for-profit health insurance industry and everyone in that industry will lose jobs first of all a loss of jobs is preferable to a loss of life due to a lack of health insurance second of all that assumes that Bernie Sanders isn't actually going to establish a just transition so that way people who currently work in the health industry and they're just low level secretaries and whatnot wouldn't be able to get jobs in Medicare so this is one of the most disgusting deflections I've ever seen and again this is all to defend the work that he did at McKinsey so you know in spite of Edward Isaac Dover's attempt to portray his work at McKinsey as something that wasn't really that big of a deal this was seemingly benign that's not actually true his work at McKinsey was problematic and it's because McKinsey is a disgusting disgusting company and really you know when it comes to disaster capitalism as Parker Malloy puts it he is the shock doctrine candidate and that's exactly it this really tells you a lot more about people to judge but this isn't surprising to people who already vetted Pete Buttigieg and knew what he was this is a ghoul he doesn't care about policy he cares about his own career and attaining power that's it that's all he cares about that's all his career has been about up until this point you know he's running for president as a mayor not even qualified to be president and the history that we see is that he failed as a mayor and his work at McKinsey proves that he is the ghoul we all suspected he was so if this doesn't turn voters off to Pete Buttigieg then the media has not been doing their job because if you are participating in a democratic party primary and you care about the issues you cannot support Pete Buttigieg but yet he's polling in first in Iowa and New Hampshire if that continues to be the case and he ends up winning these two states which are crucial early primary states it will be specifically because the media did not do its job at vetting him like they vetted all the other candidates but maybe you know this is the beginning of the end because we've seen candidates before rise and then fall at first it was Beto O'Rourke who had his moment in the spotlight and the media loved him didn't properly vet him but with time people saw that he was hollow and wasn't really standing for anything and he just you know fell off a cliff and dropped out the next was Kamala Harris she had her moment in the sun where she took down Biden at a debate turns out she backed away from you know progressive policy proposals like Medicare for all and then she plummeted and now she dropped out we then saw Elizabeth Warren who seemed to be the unstoppable candidate who the media loved temporarily but then she started to back away from Medicare for all lost the support of the left tried to you know appease both sides at once and all of a sudden you know Pete Buttigieg is the one who's getting the rise and Elizabeth Warren is failing maybe he'll also see you know that decrease as people like Beto O'Rourke Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren saw I'm not sure it's you know getting close to the Iowa caucus but what I do know is that if he does win it's because people are uninformed about him because anyone with that horrible of a record not just at McKinsey but in South Bend, Indiana there's no way they would win if voters knew about that candidate so the media has got to do their job and if they don't we've got to come in and educate our peers about Pete Buttigieg this is not someone who is your friend this is a ghoul who must be defeated Joe Biden never ceases to amaze me by now you all know that he was confronted by someone who attended one of his town halls and he called him fat literally Noah's campaign denies that he called him fat but he clearly called him fat and on top of that you know a lesser portion of the story that's being reported on is that after that took place one of Joe Biden's supporters harassed that individual for asking a legitimate question about you know Hunter Biden and the nepotism there So I mean Joe Biden's supporters are fairly Trumpian and Joe Biden himself has become increasingly Trumpian throughout the course of the Democratic Party primary but I think that his you know lurched towards Trumpism it reached its logical conclusion because he recently said something that is so outrageous that I actually at first dismissed it I just thought that the headlines were you know sensationalist trash and I didn't take it seriously but having read an article about his quote here he's officially in Republican territory like I honestly don't think he can defend running in a Democratic Party primary having said the statement that I'm about to read to you so as Matt Berman and Niti Prakash of BuzzFeed News report Joe Biden he recently said this about Republican Party voters after talking about working with Republican members of Congress it's not like there's going to be some great epiphany and people are going to wake up and go oh my god I'm now a Democrat and if you hear people on the rope line saying I'm a Republican I say stay a Republican vote for me but stay a Republican because we need a Republican Party he later added that he's concerned about what would happen if the Republican Party were totally clobbered quote I'm really worried that no party should have too much power he said you need a countervailing force now for some additional context tell Axelrod of the Hill adds quote there's an awful lot of really good Republicans out there Joe Biden said in August at a Massachusetts fundraiser I get in trouble for saying that with Democrats but the truth of the matter is every time we ever got in trouble with our administration remember who got sent up to Capitol Hill to fix it me because they know I respect the other team such comments in the past infuriated progressive activists who are in search of a candidate who can effectively fight against Trump and the GOP's agenda and argue that the former vice president is naive to suggest Republicans on Capitol Hill are interested in bipartisanship so let's just try try to grapple with what he's saying here it's holy shit he doesn't want Republicans to get too clobbered he doesn't want Democrats to win with too large of a margin because there needs to be some type of countervailing force Joe what the fuck are you doing the Republican Party is an existential threat to humanity this is the party of death and destruction and no matter how corrupt you know the Democratic Party is Republicans are exponentially worse and he's saying no we need them in Congress they're a great balance to Democrats is that so because all they have done for more than a decade now is obstruct anything that would help the American people when it comes to benefiting their donors and giving tax cuts to the rich they act when it comes to passing even the most moderate reforms they block that this party should not exist they should be defeated permanently the party needs to collapse and Democrats should become the de facto right-wing party and we need a new left-wing party to emerge to take the Democratic Party's place now that's a temporary solution I think the ideal situation is electoral reform where we have ranked choice voting and proportional representation so we get more than just two parties we get five to six parties right but we also need campaign finance reform but I mean for him to suggest at all that Republicans are a force of good in any way shape or form shows that he is fundamentally misreading the room the room being Democratic Party primary voters but yet I doubt this will even make a dent in his numbers because as you saw at that town hall you know his voters are loyal and to even question whether or not he has abused power himself that's beyond the pale you can't do it be loyal no matter what and fall in line I mean I'm at a loss for words here I really don't know what to say about this because even for Joe Biden this is low and that sounds like a cliche right you know even for you good sir this is this is too low but I mean this really is incredible you're running to be the Democratic Party's nominee and you're saying you don't want to win too big you want to make sure that Republicans still have you know a relative amount of influence the level of naivety to think that Republicans would work for you or work with you rather and that you know you think they're a force for good it just shows Joe Biden he's not fit for this he is not fit for this and if anything if you love Republicans so much why don't you just run in the Republican primary and challenge Donald Trump I mean you sound like a Republican when you use industry talking points against Medicare for all when you fear monger about the deficit and how much it's gonna cost you already sound like a Republican and it seems like you like them more than you like millennials in Democratic Party primary voters so just fucking run as a Republican and challenge Trump I mean what are you doing if you don't actually have a vested interest in seeing the Democratic Party defeat Republicans thoroughly then why are you running in a Democratic Party primary it just it's puzzling to me he never ceases to amaze me the man is a doofus he's not cut out to be president and this is why he has lost multiple times because Democratic Party voters know that he's not looking out for us but with that being said I shouldn't say that because he's still pulling in first place nationally and he has a pretty solid lead in states like Nevada and South Carolina so he could pull this out if he wins Dalgit rich states he could still be the nominee even if he loses early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire which would be a disaster because I don't think he would win in a fight against Donald Trump we saw how easily he was triggered by one person asking about you know whether or not it was nepotism more an abuse of power for him to get his son a job you know so they could buy access to the vice president at you know an energy company when he had no experience so all Donald Trump has to do to push your buttons is bring up Hunter Biden which he will and you become unraveled you call you know someone fat so are you gonna cuss at Donald Trump on a debate stage I mean it wouldn't surprise me so the only answer is we have to defeat ghouls like Joe Biden and we have to defeat them thoroughly so they know that their brand of centrism is no longer palatable to the American electorate in the Democratic Party especially because I mean you're not going to get Republicans to vote for you no matter how much you pander to them so saying things like this it doesn't win you more voters it just demoralizes people who you're supposed to be winning over and it doesn't get that which is why he's not cut out for this and he should not win the nomination well it's official Democrats in the House officially unveiled two articles of impeachment against president Donald Trump I will let Representative Jerry Nadler explain what those two articles of impeachment are let's watch over the last several months the investigative committees of the House have been engaged in an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's efforts to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 elections efforts that compromised our national security and threatened the integrity of our elections throughout this inquiry he has attempted to conceal the evidence from Congress and from the American people our president holds the ultimate public trust when he betrays that trust and puts himself before country he endangers the Constitution he endangers our democracy and he endangers our national security the framers of the Constitution prescribed a clear remedy for presidents who so violate their oath of office that is the power of impeachment today in service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment charging the President of the United States Donald J. Trump with committing high crimes and misdemeanors the first article is for abuse of power it is an impeachable offense for the President to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest that is exactly what President Trump did when he solicited and pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election thus damaging our national security undermining the integrity of the next election and violating his oath to the American people these actions moreover are consistent with President Trump's previous invitations of foreign interference in our 2016 presidential election and when he was caught when the House investigated and opened an impeachment inquiry President Trump engaged in unprecedented categorical and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry this gives rise to the second article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress here too we see a familiar pattern in President Trump's misconduct a President who declares himself above accountability above the American people and above Congress's power of impeachment which is meant to protect against threats to our democratic institutions as a President who sees himself as above the law we must be clear no one not even the President is above the law so abuse of power and obstruction of Congress now I'm going to give you my take on this but before I do that I kind of want to walk you through what we can expect let me remind you that the House of Representatives has the sole authority to impeach and this will most likely pass in the House meaning he will have officially been impeached once that vote takes place which will most likely happen before the end of the year but then it would go on to the Senate where they would hold a trial and vote to convict and remove President Donald Trump now you need a two-thirds majority to convict an impeached President and assuming we get every single Democrat on board which is highly unlikely we need 20 Republicans to vote to actually convict and remove Donald Trump so most likely that isn't actually going to be the case Donald Trump will probably be impeached and then unless some drastic thing happens where Republicans feel as if they can get away with impeaching Donald Trump and not protecting him and still be politically viable in 2020 he most likely will get away with this now the question is will this hurt him in 2020 or will this help him in 2020 or will there kind of just be no effect I don't necessarily know and I think that people who are speculating also don't know there's a number of ways how this can play out but what we do know is that Donald Trump will be impeached most likely and then in the Senate that is where this story will end now what's interesting is how this will take place in the Senate because you're kind of seeing this divide between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell when it comes to the way that they both want this to play out so Mitch McConnell expectedly wants this to be a really quick endeavor he just wants to hurry up, have the trial, vote on it and then move on so that way they can get back to doing nothing I guess and that will most likely take place before February in early January is what I'm assuming although Donald Trump surprisingly he actually wants this to drag on like he wants to make a spectacle of this because he believes that politically that will benefit him now with CNN reports President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are both looking ahead to the Senate impeachment trial but there is a growing divide between the two over what that trial should look like CNN has learned in conversation with the White House the Kentucky Republican has made clear he hopes to end the trial as soon as he can an effort to both get impeachment off his lap and protect his conference from potentially damaging votes should the process break out into partisan warfare that will include a continuous whip count until McConnell feels he has the votes to acquit the president and end the show he has even floated a 10-day minimum during these talks one person said but the show is exactly what Trump wants he's made clear to advisors privately that rather than end the trial as quickly as possible he's hoping for a dramatic event according to two people familiar with his thinking he wants Hunter Biden representative Adam Schiff and the whistleblower to testify he wants the witnesses to be live not clips of taped depositions and he's hoping to turn it into a spectacle which he thinks is his best chance to hurt Democrats in the election now what I think is interesting is that for how much the right accuses Democrats of pursuing impeachment specifically for purposes of political expediency here we have Donald Trump basically saying pretty explicitly I want to drag out this trial because I think this will help me politically in 2020 isn't that interesting now it kind of shows like that reaction from Donald Trump demonstrates how juvenile and idiotic he is quite frankly because why does it matter if the whistleblower testifies the whistleblower is irrelevant at this point why would we need Hunter Biden to testify in your impeachment trial to confirm what that there is nepotism and that's a problem problem in politics yeah no shit Sherlock you have your daughter serving in your fucking administration duh nepotism is an issue right but what's that supposed to prove you are the individual who's on defense this is your trial Hunter Biden isn't on trial the whistleblower isn't on trial so the fact that he thinks he can turn this around and make it about other people when he is the one on trial shows that he doesn't really understand how the process works and it also shows how cocky and arrogant he is he thinks that this is going to help him he has no doubt about that and maybe it will help him but the fact of the matter is that this is a serious issue you broke the law you violated the constitution but in his mind he did nothing wrong or maybe he thinks he did nothing wrong but according to his tweets he believes that if you are doing a good job based on his own assessment as president then why should you impeach the president because you violated the constitution and abused power now getting to my opinion on this the two articles of impeachment I think that that alone yes that is something that warrants impeachment although limiting the scope to just two articles I think is a huge huge mistake because it kind of undercuts the democratic party's argument because they say that they're pursuing impeachment Nancy Pelosi does at least because this is their duty you know they have a constitutional obligation to hold the president accountable but he also obstructed justice 10 times according to the Mueller report he was in violation of the emoluments clause on day one when he was sworn in he's doing favors for the Saudis who are buttering him up by staying at his hotels he made hush money payments to the Stormy Daniels using campaign funds so while the Ukraine call in and of itself is an abuse of power and his attempts to meddle with that process constitutes obstruction of Congress you know you undercut your own argument and saying this is our duty to pursue impeachment if you're letting him you know get a pass for all of these other issues now I get strategically you know it makes sense to narrow the scope so that way the American people can kind of know what to focus on and not get lost but duty is duty you have a constitutional obligation to hold the president accountable and you are essentially not doing what is required of you under the Constitution by giving him a pass on all of these other crimes I mean the American people need to know that he is guilty of all of these other charges of corruption and conflicts of interests and abuse of power but you're choosing to give him a pass most likely probably due to purposes of political expediency so it's incredibly frustrating and another issue with this is Nancy Pelosi is only pursuing impeachment begrudgingly so we all know that she would have never pursued impeachment had progressives not forced her to do that because it was evident that when he was sworn in as I stated he was in violation of the emoluments clause Nancy Pelosi wanted to give him a pass well then Michael Cohen brought a check that confirmed he made hush money payments to stormy Daniels well Nancy Pelosi still didn't want to pursue impeachment Robert Mueller released his report that showed he obstructed justice 10 times Nancy Pelosi still didn't want to pursue impeachment so the Ukraine call was the straw that broke the camel's back because she would look like an utter fraud and incompetent if she didn't finally pursue impeachment time after time after time and Donald Trump was essentially getting this message that he's untouchable he can do whatever he wants break the law brazenly violate the constitution and Nancy Pelosi will give him a pass so it's clear that she never really wanted to pursue impeachment and I don't think that she actually believes in it but in a CNN town hall she basically said something that undercuts the entire impeachment argument and it's incredibly frustrating she claimed that George W. Bush did not do something that rise to the level of impeachment and what is that action well he lied us into the Iraq war but she claims even though he lied us into the Iraq war that did not warrant impeachment this is what she said specifically and then when we come back I'll tell you why that's problematic so uh Speaker Pelosi uh you resisted calls for the impeachment of President Bush in 2006 and President Trump following the Mueller report earlier this year this time is different why did you impose it why did you oppose impeachment in the past and what is your obligation to protect our democracy from the actions of our president now thank you I thank you for bringing up the question about because when I became Speaker the first time it was overwhelming call for me to impeach President Bush on the strength of the war in Iraq which I vehemently opposed and again I again I I say again I said said at other places I that was my wheelhouse I was intelligence I was the ranking member on the intelligence committee even before I became part of the leadership a gang of four so I knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq it just wasn't there they had to show us they had to show the gang of four all the intelligence they had the intelligence did not show that that that was the case so I knew it was a a misrepresentation to the public but having said that it was a in my view not a grounds for impeachment that was they won the election they made a representation and to this day people think people think that that was the right thing to do the people think that Iraq had something to do with a 9-11 I mean it's appalling what they did but I did and I said if somebody wants to make a case you bring it forward but I they had impeached Bill Clinton for personal indiscretion and misrepresenting about it impeached him some of these same people are saying oh this doesn't rise to impeachment were right there impeaching Bill Clinton for for being stupid in terms of something like that I mean I love him I think it was a great president but being stupid in terms of that and what would somebody do not to embarrass their family but in any event and that's how they did Bill Clinton now they want me to do George but this I just didn't want it to be a way of life in our country as far as a Mueller report there was a good deal of the academics said and a thousand a thousand legal experts wrote a statement that said the Mueller report what's in there is an impeachable offense it wasn't so much of what's in the Mueller report will be more clear once some of the court cases are resolved but it wasn't so clear to the public the Ukraine just removed all doubt it was self-evident that the president undermined our national security jeopardized the integrity of our elections as he violated his oath of office there's just that's something that cannot be ignored she literally gave George W. Bush a pass when he lied us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people mostly civilians so now people who are skeptical of impeachment are going to point to that and say well you didn't impeach George W. Bush for doing something worse and now you're impeaching Donald Trump because of an abuse of power isn't what George W. Bush did the ultimate abuse of power now my response to that is this is why you can never let your foot off the gas and you have to have one standard that you apply universally right the fact that Democrats gave George W. Bush a pass makes the impeachment of future rogue presidents that much more difficult so by her admitting that she gave Bush a pass and I'm glad that she told the truth there that's going to delegitimize this effort now to impeach Donald Trump now should we still pursue impeachment against Donald Trump absolutely because he broke the law and if you know a normal American did what Donald Trump did they would have already been locked up in jail we lock people up for smoking weed in certain states so of course we need to hold elites accountable but this is what happens right the more that you give elites a pass the more difficult it becomes the more that you know they'll use this against you when you finally do want to hold people accountable now what I also hear that undercuts the argument against Donald Trump is you know the impeachment against Bill Clinton was bad because it helped him although when I hear about you know oh well nobody Clinton lied but nobody died that's kind of a shitty argument because Clinton committed perjury yes he wasn't impeached over the blow job he was impeached over perjury and while that probably isn't as bad as what even you know Andrew Johnson and certainly not as bad as Donald Trump or George W. Bush did or Richard Nixon did that's still perjury like if a normal American committed perjury that individual would undoubtedly be prosecuted so we need to stop giving elites a pass and we need to acknowledge that if we are going to live in a system with fair justice then we can't allow for a two-tiered justice system where elites get a pass and oh well you know it's okay I know that they broke the law but nobody died or you know it's not as big of a deal as this other president who broke the law but we didn't convict no it's time that we stop being cowards and we actually hold elites accountable and yes that means basically impeaching every single president because um most of them break the law but do you want to know why most presidents are violating the constitution and being openly corrupt and doing war crimes it's because we never fucking hold them accountable so we're finally doing that with Donald Trump and I get being skeptical about you know potentially bad ramifications this could help Donald Trump but here's the thing political considerations aside we have to do the right thing and the right thing of course is to impeach Donald Trump and going forward we impeach every single president who breaks the law or violates the constitution none of them should get a pass Republican or Democrat because again if poor people did what Bill Clinton or Donald Trump or um any president George W. Bush did they would be imprisoned so why are we giving elites a pass the answer is we shouldn't so here's what I say about the impeachment of Donald Trump I agree with these articles of impeachment I think that the Ukraine call of course demonstrated an abuse of power and that warrants his impeachment and removal probably not going to happen he's not going to be removed regardless we take it as far as we possibly can go and anyone who votes against this any Republican or Democrat who does this for purposes of political expediency let history judge them but what we do is we pressure Democrats to do the right thing and as someone who has been urging Democrats and lambasting them for not being strong enough against Republicans even if they've failed to hold presidents in the past accountable that doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold them accountable now so let's agree going forward we stop giving people in power a pass and yes I believe that the scope of this impeachment inquiry should have been broadened there should be more articles of impeachment filed against Donald Trump regardless this still warrants impeachment and we need to take this as far as we can go which will most likely be the Senate but regardless we'll at least be satisfied knowing that we did the correct thing we held these rogue tyrants who think that they can get in power and do whatever the fuck they want accountable and I'll leave that there this is about principle to me Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would substantially curtail freedom of speech potentially and this is being done under the guise of protecting people from hatred and bigotry which I know is ironic coming from Donald Trump but nonetheless here we are so what is this about this is about Israel and Palestinian human rights and individuals who choose to stand up for Palestinians on college campuses so as Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times report President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Wednesday targeting what he sees as anti-Semitism on college campuses by threatening to withhold federal money from educational institutions that fail to combat discrimination three administration officials said on Tuesday the order will effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality not just a religion to prompt a federal law penalizing colleges and universities deemed to be shirking their responsibility to foster an open climate for minority students in recent years the boycott divestment and sanctions or BDS movement against Israel has roiled some campuses leaving some Jewish students feeling unwelcome or attacked in signing the order Mr. Trump will use his executive power to take action where Congress has not essentially replicating bipartisan legislation that has stalled on Capitol Hill for several years prominent Democrats have joined Republicans in promoting such a policy change to combat anti-Semitism as well as the boycott Israel movement but critics complained that such a policy could be used to stifle free speech and legitimate opposition to Israel's policies toward Palestinians in the name of fighting anti-Semitism the definition of anti-Semitism to be used in the order matches the one used by the State Department and by dozens of other nations but it has been criticized as too open-ended and sweeping for instance it describes as anti-Semitic denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and offers as an example of such behavior claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor Yusuf Manair the executive director of the U.S. campaign for Palestinian rights said Mr. Trump was trying to silence Palestinian rights activism by equating opposition to Israeli treatment of Palestinians with anti-Semitism so this is a literal free speech issue where the federal government is penalizing individuals who choose to engage in a particular political activity that they don't like that they disapprove of and he's doing this in a very disingenuous way by trying to conflate advocacy for Palestinian human rights and criticism of Israel with all anti-Semitism but what he fails to realize or does realize but doesn't care is that criticisms of Israel are desegregated from anti-Semitism when people call for Palestinian human rights to be respected they're not criticizing Jewish people they're criticizing the government's actions in the state of Israel two very different things but since the issue itself is nuanced this allows people like Donald Trump to obfuscate and curtail freedom of speech because he has a political agenda and it's disgusting and for all the right-wingers who criticize Democrats for weaponizing identity politics this is the weaponization of identity politics but they're doing it to hurt marginalized people namely Palestinians now what Donald Trump is saying as to why he's signing this now is because he has no choice basically he's compelled to sign this executive order because Congress refuses to take action but ask yourself this is action really necessary given that 27 states have already adopted anti-BDS legislation I mean is the issue really that urgent and on top of that 14 states are considering similar legislation and the impact that this has had on free speech has already been chilling but Donald Trump wants to go even further so let me remind you if you don't already know a Texas school teacher was figured for refusing to sign a pro-Israel loyalty pledge and yes this is in America not Israel a Texas city refused to give aid to victims of Hurricane Harvey unless they pledged to not boycott Israel and multiple federal courts have already blocked these types of anti-BDS laws because they're unconstitutional pretty brazenly so but regardless they're still being adopted by other states in spite of how unconstitutional they are now even large companies are trying to silence their employees that speak out on behalf of Palestinian human rights just last year CNN fired Mark Lamont Hill for speaking out in favor of Palestinians so this is a threat to free speech so if you hear anyone talking about how much they care about free speech and they're using SJWs on college campuses as the threat but not talking about this people like Dave Rubin and Tim Pool understand that they are revealing their true colors they don't actually care about real threats to the First Amendment the government imposing what you can or can't say on you it is absolutely not just unconstitutional but it's morally repugnant because people who support BDS they're doing so for altruistic reasons because there's no other way to get Israel to stop their illegal occupation of Palestine so they're using a tactic that ended apartheid in South Africa with hopes that that will put pressure on the Israeli government not Jewish people but the Israeli government and the apartheid that's going on in Israel currently but regardless it doesn't matter what the context is regardless of nuance if you speak out against Israel you will be deemed anti-Semitic according to Donald Trump here and the State Department's definition of anti-Semitism now that's not to say that anti-Semitism isn't a threat because there has been an increase of anti-Semitism and this is something that should worry everyone right but Donald Trump is targeting the wrong people here if you're truly concerned with anti-Semitism what we need to do is target these far-right groups the fascists who are increasingly you know gaining more influence in the United States and other European countries that's where the anti-Semitism is coming from it's not coming from pro-peace activists because a lot of people who stand up for Palestinian human rights are Jewish citizens or they are in the state of Israel so it's preposterous to say that any and all criticisms of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism because if you apply that standard to any other country I mean think of the implication so if you say that any and all criticism of the Saudi government and their various human rights abuses is tantamount to Islamophobia well then we can't speak out about their human rights violations and how they literally execute LGBTQ people or if we say that any and all criticism of the Chinese government is tantamount to racism I guess we can't speak out on behalf of all the protesters in Hong Kong who are fighting for democracy and demanding democracy do you understand why this is a slippery slope in a way and I get that slippery slope is a logical fallacy but when it comes to the precedent that our government sets really a slippery slope is something that you can't argue because once we start doing this then understand that when we start questioning you know the weapons deals that we continue to sell to Saudi Arabia well if the government doesn't like that we're speaking out against that then they can say well if you criticize Saudi Arabia then you're Islamophobic and you hate Arabs like this is a dangerous dangerous way to frame political discourse like if we disagree with the actions of our government and another government abroad we should be able to vocalize our concerns without the fear that there will be repercussions for our actions that's the crux of free speech that's what the First Amendment was created for but here we see Donald Trump brazenly violating the First Amendment of the Constitution and probably not very many people will pay attention including mainstream media outlets like CNN who have fired their own employees for speaking out on behalf of Palestinian so overall I don't expect this to get much traction in mainstream media but nonetheless we still have to talk about this because this is absolutely dangerous we're already losing civil liberties and civil rights in this country you know we already have the government spying on us we're doing torture so we've already eroded the Fourth and Eighth Amendments to our Constitution let's not allow the First Amendment to also be you know taken away from us with absolutely no fight let's actually push back and fight for what's right because those who are on the side of BDS they're taking the right stand just as people who were against apartheid in South Africa were taking the right stand and had the right strategy to put pressure on a government who was oppressing its people I just hope that people speak out you know on this issue if they truly care about free speech but I suspect individuals like Dave Rubin will remain silent because you know they only talk about free speech when it benefits them they don't want to talk about it if it runs counter to their anti-SJW narrative The Washington Post just released a bombshell report which they are calling the Afghanistan papers and in a nutshell what this essentially tells us is that the Afghanistan war was doomed from the get-go because the strategy that we implemented to fight terrorism was not the correct strategy we were trying to fight a problem but we weren't actually attacking the root cause so for example we were in Afghanistan operating with this assumption that we fight terrorism by attacking terrorists directly the problem is that corruption in Afghanistan was systemic it was something that plagued society and corruption was such a big issue that led to nationwide destabilization in Afghanistan and it actually led to more terrorism but because we didn't understand Afghanistan or understand these political factors that led to terrorism well we were effectively fighting what was a losing battle and we're still there so I'm not going to go to the Washington Post article but I will go to a summary that I think is more concise from Slate and here's what they say this is from Fred Kaplan the war in Afghanistan 18 years old and still raging at a cost of nearly a trillion dollars 2,300 US troops killed and more than 20,000 injured has been a muddle from the beginning steered by vague and wavering strategies fueled by falsely rosy reports of progress from the battlefield and almost certainly doomed to failure all along this is the inescapable conclusion of a secret US government history of the war consisting of 2,000 pages based on interviews with more than 400 participants obtained and published by the Washington Post on Monday after years of battles to declassify the documents written by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction an agency created by Congress in 2008 to investigate waste and fraud the report titled Lessons Learned is the most thorough official critique of an ongoing American war since the Vietnam War Review commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara Daniel Ellsberg leaked what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers in 1971 though widely disseminated they were officially declassified only in 2011 the Afghanistan Papers as the Post dubs the report is narrower in scope than McNamara's project the latter delved into the entire history of US involvement in Vietnam and incorporated top-secret memos and other documents from throughout the national security bureaucracy still the new report resonates with the same dread and melancholy about a war built on ignorance, lies, and counterproductive policies central to the current war effort and its failure was corruption it was central because the Afghan government couldn't defeat the Taliban insurgents or win the support of its people as long as it was corrupt from top to bottom the United States failed because the billions of dollars we poured into the country only made Afghanistan's corruption worse now there's more but I just want to pause right there and reflect on what we've learned so far we've been in Afghanistan for 18 years and we can't leave because apparently we have to clean up this mess that we've made except maybe if we're the ones making the mess we're incapable of cleaning it up because we don't know what we're doing we're like a bull in a china shop and we don't know how to clean up that mess we can't necessarily take inventory of every item that we've damaged so the best thing that we can do for us and the people of Afghanistan is to just get out once and for all because we're not helping them and the tactics that we implemented to try to help them it backfired tremendously like the idea was that we can turn Afghanistan into a thriving democracy by giving them a lot of aid but corruption was rampant so what would happen we'd give them the aid and that money would be used for patron-client relationships it was fueling their corruption effectively which means that we were making the situation worse and we thought we were helping do you understand why nation building doesn't work? it's because we don't know what we're doing our elected officials don't know what they're doing and this should make that crystal clear if it wasn't already obvious to people now more on this Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq told the investigators in a 2016 interview you just cannot put those amounts of money into a very fragile state and society and not have it fuel corruption he added that the same thing happened in Iraq where corruption is pandemic and deeply rooted and where it's hard to see how a better political order can ever be established a big problem Crocker said was a perennial American urge when intervening in a foreign conflict to start fixing everything as fast as we can we pour in billions of dollars which wind up in the hands of the powerful the report estimates that 40% of USA to Afghanistan was pocketed by officials gangsters or the insurgents themselves who become more corrupt still Sarah Chies who served as an advisor to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and who lived in Afghanistan for several years told the investigators in 2015 that the problem was rooted in Washington fighting terrorism was the chief US mission and some officials understood that corruption is a cause of terrorism but Chies said the notion hasn't sunk in enough for the causal flip to happen i.e. for the officials to see that countering corruption had to be a key ingredient in countering terrorism in September of 2009 as the Obama administration was debating a new policy toward the Afghanistan war Admiral Mike Mullen chairman of the joint chiefs of staff testified at a senate hearing that the main problem is clearly the lack of legitimacy of the government in Kabul Senator Lindsey Graham pushed the issue quote we could send a million troops and that wouldn't restore legitimacy in the government he asked that is correct Mullen replied the threat of corruption he added is every bit as significant as the Taliban now in spite of Mike Mullen's testimony there in spite of knowing that corruption was the issue what did he recommend Obama do he recommended that Obama send 40,000 troops to help legitimize the Afghanistan government let me repeat that rather than trying to root out the issue of corruption itself if that was even possible he wanted to send American troops to convince the people of Afghanistan that their government was in fact legitimate and they should accept their government's authority because if anything is going to legitimize an illegitimate government who is corrupt to its core it's going to be a foreign occupier who's trying to convince you of that do you understand how ridiculous this is so Obama took Mullen's advice and it didn't work they were not convinced that the Afghan government was legitimate and most of the people within Obama's administration actually agreed with Mullen's advice but one person actually disagreed and you'll be surprised to know who that was it was actually Joe Biden who didn't think that would be a good strategy however Joe Biden himself still didn't really have a good strategy because he still wanted to send 10,000 more troops but instead of having those troops try to convince the people of Afghanistan to accept their government's legitimacy he wanted them to train the Afghanistan army to I guess either fight corruption directly or fight terrorists either way the strategy failed and we're still in Afghanistan with presumably no end in sight now eventually in 2010 General David Petraeus took over and he assembled an anti-corruption task force you'd think finally right somebody is doing the right thing now what that task force found out was that if you really want to actually help the people of Afghanistan then what you need to do is stop giving them aid because that aid is fueling corruption it's not helping the situation what was General Petraeus's response meh he assembled the task force to assist them they tell him that the aid is essentially fueling corruption and our efforts there are futile and his response is to not take their advice what a colossal failure so across three different administrations George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump we have used the same strategy that is not working we are trying to fight terrorism by fighting it directly but we're not addressing the root issue that's leading to terrorism and we're still there because we haven't rooted out the terrorists because we're not fighting it effectively and we have to be there until we fight and defeat terrorists like do you understand the situation is not going to get any better nation-building does not work because we don't understand the dynamics the internal politics of these countries in which we are trying to nation-build not every society is ready for democratization even though we want people to be free we want civil rights and civil liberties trying to force it on people when they don't have the institutions necessary to sustain a thriving democracy is just a fool's game game it's not going to work it's not going to work and you'd think that we would have learned our lesson time after time but we won't and after the afghanistan papers revealed that once again we fucked up by not implementing the right strategy do you think that we'll honestly learn our lesson no now there are indications that our drone war in various countries Yemen Pakistan Somalia is also fueling terrorism because we're trying to fight terrorists but what are we doing we are bombing innocent civilians and individuals who are affected by drones and terrorized by drones for lack of a better word are getting radicalized and they are wanting to fight the united states because of the havoc that we are causing in their country so I mean I don't know what to say US imperialism has not done the world any favors the only sector of society that this has benefited is the military industrial complex war capitalism is incredibly lucrative and that's why we're doing it period but I mean what this shows is that our leaders don't have the slightest idea about what they're doing in these countries they don't understand the countries that they are invading and they certainly don't have solutions to the problems we're making matters worse this is not surprising whatsoever nonetheless you know to see this you know play out with these documents and confirm what we suspected it really is important now will there be much attention paid to this I suspect not regardless it's still important hello everyone I am here with 2020 US Senate candidate Kimberly Graham who is taking on Joni Ernst in the state of Iowa in a very flippable state she can actually win this she's been endorsed by brand new congress and he's here to talk about her campaign and Kimberly thank you so much for coming on the program hi thank you so much for having me it's really exciting to have another senate candidate on I believe you are the second senate candidate that I've brought on the show the first one was Paula Jean Swarajan and you are a senate candidate number two so many fantastic brand new congress members that I've talked to and you're running such a dynamic campaign and I want to get to a quote from you because I think it's so fantastic so everyone knows Joni Ernst for her infamous make them squeal commercial back in 2014 or was it uh I'm not sure I think it was 2014 but this is a quote from you so Joni Ernst's campaign on a promise to make them squeal in Washington DC and get rid of corruption but the only people squealing are Iowans harmed by her votes explain that to us because I think it's such a fantastic tweet that really encapsulates what's wrong with Joni Ernst right so you know her whole campaign really started to get traction with that infamous famous make we're gonna make them squeal in Washington right so which which kind of ties in so ties into something important about this race which is which is ironically or interestingly tied to why I think we can win I think Joni Ernst got elected in large part not so much because people were interested in voting for a Republican but because Iowans were interested in getting corruption out of Washington and I think that they believed her they they believed her even you know that hey I think that's we're a firmly purple state right we got about half Republicans or a third Republicans a third Democrats and a third independence in Iowa and I what I've seen is Iowans will give somebody a chance that they trust that you know they believe and that will stand up for them and that is how Joni Ernst portrayed herself you know and when that make them squeal commercial hit of course I mean it's of course it's so catchy it gained a lot of traction and simply that slogan honestly was a huge part of when her campaign really started gaining traction and what I mean by the only people squealing are Iowans harmed by her votes is you know she's voted I think seven times now to repeal the Affordable Care Act which if she wanted to repeal it and give universal single payer health care I'd be I'd be saying great repeal it all you want right if we have something better in store but she's voted to repeal the ACA with absolutely no viable plan in place to you know protect pre-existing conditions to keep kids on their parents insurance till their 20 you know 26 years old and a few of the other things that that were great and that are great about the Affordable Care Act that we were able to achieve with that you know she she voted she's voted to confirm everyone from Betsy DeVos to the head of the EPA to Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh to hundreds I believe now over 100 federal district court judges that will be there until they pass away because those are lifetime appointments you know and as an attorney like I am you know I really understand and maybe a lot of other people do but as an attorney knowing how important court decisions are to to what then happens with various areas of the law the fact that we now have well over 100 federal district court judges confirmed many of whom are entirely unqualified regardless of their political you know political side right if you will they're just unqualified and the fact that they're sitting there now is going to be damaging to Iowans and to all Americans for years and years and years to come I think recently there was something like a 36 or 38 year old person confirmed to the federal bench who had never set but in a courtroom never but because they were recommended by the federalist society they got through and with a republican dominated senate they got through and they simply regardless of political ideology they simply were unqualified as have been cabinet you know appointments Betsy DeVos and on and on and on yeah yeah and you know one thing that I think you speak to is there is really I think a popularity and kind of this populist appeal to this idea of draining the swamp or making them squeal but you're actually offering people a real anti-corruption message first of all you are not taking corporate PAC money you are uncorrupted this is a people powered movement and you actually would make them squeal for lack of a better word because you have an anti-corruption platform like you want to publicly finance elections and get money out of politics so for people in Iowa who are actually looking for someone who will root out corruption talk about your plan for campaign finance reform right so yeah that's absolutely true and I think what's important for people to understand and I'm speaking now to people who may be considering supporting or who are supporting the DSCC backed candidate in Iowa and here's what I want those people to know so her name's Teresa Greenfield she's a very nice person you know we speak at a lot of the same events so are all of the other people running for this seat I mean and I'm not saying that just to give lip service oh they're nice people they really are nice people and I like them and I think they have good intentions but Teresa Greenfield so far has taken I think it's an approaching $40,000 it's the Washington Free Beacon I know but they did do their research the Washington Free Beacon did an article on July 23rd about Teresa Greenfield's money that she's taken from lobbyists for corporations so all of us in this race are saying I'm not taking corporate PAC money and that's great but a lot of centrist Democrats establishment Democrats are saying that I'm not taking corporate PAC money and people that don't know that there's also massive amounts of corporate lobbyist money don't know that their candidate is taking corporate lobbyist money and in my opinion that is just sort of a technicality an end run right an end run around I'm not taking corporate PAC money so Teresa Greenfield has taken I believe it's approaching $40,000 but anyone can look that up on Open Secrets on the FEC reports she's taken money from lobbyists for pharmaceutical industry from healthcare industry lobbyists and big tobacco lobbyists to name a few and if we are saying that lobbyists and corporate PAC money and corporations are the problem that they have been over represented and influencing our government and that's why the most of us are not being represented that I don't think that it's right that we are taking corporate lobbyist money so this is not like these are all individuals I want to make that clear like one this one person in particular that we researched and looked up is a partner in a lobbying firm and you know you have to give your occupation right when you give a donation like that and so we looked up the name of the lobbying firm and it's a lobbying firm for tobacco pharmaceuticals in the healthcare industry so you have to do a little research to find this stuff out it's not that difficult though and I just think you know there's a saying in the bible I'm going to paraphrase it you can't serve two masters and that's just a kind of a life saying I think right you can't you can't sort of be able to hold into some people and and then you know say you're not beholden to this it just doesn't work that way so I think when you start out and if if if somebody gets elected who's already taken thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars from representatives of particular industries I would find it really difficult to believe that the people from those industries are not going to expect you to be doing something for them once you are elected and I only want to do things for for lack of a better shorthand for the people I'm going to do the things that are going to help most of regular working people that are going to help children that are going to help elders that are going to help people living with disabilities that are going to help regular lower and middle income working people in this country those are the people when I say the people that's that's what I'm talking about I'm talking about everybody except those top 10% of wealth and income earners and corporations because they're going to be just fine I promise no matter whether their taxes go way up they're going to be absolutely okay I was talking to a Des Moines businessman a few months ago very wealthy businessman who donates a lot of money to Democrats and he said tell me a little about your you know your your your philosophy your platform your campaign and I was talking to him and I got to the part where I was going to say and I think we should appropriately tax the very wealthy because frankly they're going to be fine even if they're taxed way more than they are now and we need to have that money to invest in the rest of everybody else and for a split second before I said that I thought this is a really wealthy person maybe I shouldn't say that to him but I did it anyway like I said for a split second and then I thought oh that's ridiculous you believe what you believe say what you say you know it is what it is and I said that and when I was done talking he said I really like one thing you said and I'm thinking what I said what he said you're right I'm going to be just fine even if my taxes go up a lot more than they are now and he said enlightened business people should know that when their workers are happier and doing better and are financially stable their businesses will do better yeah yeah and that's actually someone who understands you know the contradiction of capitalism so to speak because you know you want to increase profits so what do you do you cut you know the pay of your workers you reduce benefits but at the same time if everyone does that well collectively people are going to not have as much purchasing power and we can't buy the things that capitalists want us to buy so people have to acknowledge that if you truly believe in capitalism like these business people do then working people have to have money to purchase the goods and services that are produced you know so it's nice to see some of them at least acknowledge that and one thing you know I get a sense from you that you're so much different because it's really really popular to talk the talk right now and talk about how we want to drain the swamp and Republicans and Democrats say this because this really is a non-partisan issue we know that money is a corrosive influence in American politics that's that's obvious to any political observer but everyone wants to talk about you know how they're going to get you know corruption out but they don't actually walk the walk and as you said you really have to look at the fine print right and these are all publicly available you know statistics you can look at the FAC reports if you look at Kimberly and compare you know you to anyone else who's running for the Senate it's going to be wildly different so if you truly care about corruption then you have to really do your research and look at who who's money you're taking because that's what people don't get like it's really easy and I get it because you know we have information shortages in this country we don't have the mainstream media covering these Senate races so if somebody says I'm going to drain the swamp or make them squeal we just kind of take them at the word because it sounds nice but when they get in office change doesn't happen and we still are left feeling dissatisfied still wondering why change isn't happening and it's because we are electing people who aren't living up to that promise you actually are because you're you're walking the walk right now like you're not taking corporate back money which is so important so talk about your platform as well because you have a really robust platform and you really are someone who is you know going to facilitate change because your platform is incredibly robust and progressive yeah well um yeah I think that that I think it's important too that we look at how somebody okay what somebody's done with their life up until the time they they ran for Senate right what have they what's the demonstrated history what have they been doing and you know have they have they been in some kind of public service I you know I think it's really interesting that Senator Tom Harkin who if you just say that word in the state of Iowa everybody smiles because he was he was progressive and he was he was a champion for children's rights he was a champion for protecting elderly you know our elders he was a labor champion he was the primary architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act and you know he was elected for 30 years here in the state of Iowa he retired in 2014 and that's the seat that Senator Ernst ended up you know winning um and what I've done for the past 20 years is primarily represented abused or neglected kids and parents in the juvenile court system here in Iowa so I have for the most part I've been a mediator and I've done some collaborative work but that's been the majority of my career in the last two years I've been the attorney and guardian at Lightham for all of the kids of participants in a drug court program so these are people who you know most of them are in poverty most of them don't have sufficient education most of them don't have sufficient health care especially mental health mental health help and addiction treatment available to them they don't have sufficient affordable housing they don't have sufficient pay when they do go to work you know they want to work they don't have sufficient child care they want to work but if they work since they don't make a high salary all of their money basically is going to child care if they make over about $30,000 a year which for you know for a mom with two kids or something is is very little money anyway I mean and so there's I've seen with my own you know eyes for the last 20 years what we need to do to lift people up in this country because I see what they don't I've watched for 20 years how the lack of investment in people harms them and harms all of us and we've invested really hard in the top 10% or so of people in this country for the last 40 years and it's paid off great they are doing better we've invested in them by invested I mean we've given them tax break after tax break after tax break after subsidy after subsidy after subsidy we've put our money into helping the already wealthy and it's it's gone great for them they're wealthier than ever before you know 30, 40 years ago the top 10% controlled about a third of the wealth in this country today they control about 75% of the wealth in this country and there's that's not going to slow down until we get kind of regular working people you know into Congress so that there's a critical mass of people there when this stuff's trying to be backroom-dealed and wink-wink-nudge-nudge to stand up and say no I'm not going to vote for that because that's not going to help the people right so our platform kind of has all those things I just talked about when I'm talking about the people I represent you know in court it will help not only them but all of us you know universal single-payer healthcare program you know similar to Canada's where the doctors and hospitals are still private but you have one insurance you know you go to the doctor you go to your hospital whatever one you want to go to and gets billed to that one entity done there's none of this appeal denial back and forth we're not going to pay for that medication blah blah blah you know that's that's kind of this the system and that's I think that's close to like the Sanders Medicare for all bill I would really want to make sure the reimbursement rates though are high enough and I I've looked through that bill and I don't specifically see something about reimbursement rates it may be there and I've missed it but that's my sometimes you know being a progressive you get attacked by the center but you also get attacked by other progressives huh so fun so when people say are you for Medicare for all well yes and I want to make sure those reimbursement rates are high enough because if we're not reimbursing healthcare providers high enough and I assume that that bill would do that I mean Senator Sanders is not a dummy I assume that that bill does that I just haven't seen the fine print and as a lawyer it's like I want to see the fine print is this really going to be what I believe and hope it is if it is perfect so there's that there's education you know we fund our schools on property taxes which means the schools in the wealthy areas there's a lot more property taxes so there's a lot more money going to those schools so our public schools have sadly in spite of the best efforts of our teachers are awesome public school teachers of which I'm a product of public schools and our staff in public schools in spite of all their best efforts the funding is so disparate you know from a very a neighborhood with a lot of poverty and low property values to a neighborhood with a high property values because that's where we fund our schools from so we need to do whatever it takes to equally fund our schools and in fact I would argue we need to give those schools in the more impoverished areas with lower property values even a little boost to help them because those families typically have experienced the trauma of poverty and multiple other traumas that tend to coexist with poverty and so those schools especially need school nurses school counselors you know a lot of a lot of tutors you know extra help to bring those kids up and you know we just have to got to stop funding our schools unequally because schools should be an equalizer and they're not schools have become basically you know they do the opposite they created an unequal opportunity because what school did you go to what opportunities did you have but I will say this that this also circles back to income the biggest indicator or indicator for academic success in children so sometimes when I'm giving a speech I'll have people guess like what do you think is the biggest indicator of academic success in children and people will guess all kinds of things it's household income household income so it's it's not how educated were the parents it's not your neighborhood per se it's not it's household income and so to that end you know we need bare minimum $15 an hour minimum wage federally here in the state of Iowa the minimum wage is $7 and 25 cents per hour I know some states have increased it and some municipalities have increased it but here it's still $7.25 we actually have some cities here in Iowa Iowa City in particular who raised it and the Republican governor said no you can't do that made them reverse it and then they went around and voluntarily got a lot of businesses to sign on to do it on a voluntary basis but basically our Republican leadership in this state wouldn't allow this city of Iowa City to do that but we need at least a $15 minimum wage with index for inflation you know so it continues to rise you know healthcare that includes mental health and addiction treatment so here in the state of Iowa we had Medicaid which then got privatized by our Republican governor and it would take three hours to talk about the mess that Medicaid is in Iowa right now but the shorthand is people are being denied things like treatments they need drugs they need procedures they need and there's a lot of irregularities let's say that about what's going on with these private Medicaid providers we have a great auditor here who got elected in 2018 Rob Sand he's the only Democrat in the in the you know in the hierarchy of our you know upper leadership you know governor's office a secretary of state all those positions Rob is the only Democrat and he is the auditor and so he is taking a really hard look at the privatization of Medicaid here in Iowa and doing a good job at starting to figure out where all the where all the money's going basically but I used to be able to get clients of mine the parents into drug treatment for as long as it took for them to get well and get on their feet there's a really great drug treatment place here in Iowa called Clearview Recovery that I've had many clients go to and leave successfully and go on to be successful with getting their kids back in their care and I see them years later and they're still doing well it's a really great inpatient drug treatment program that's more like a home environment it's wonderful well starting I think about a year ago the private Medicaid providers said we're only going to pay for 30 days of treatment at Clearview 30 days to kick a methamphetamine addiction is nothing nothing they might as well have said we're just not going to pay for drug treatment anymore because 30 days is so woefully insufficient and I see that I've seen personally the results of only being able to get my client 30 days worth of treatment versus four months five months six months you know whatever it used to take for them to stabilize and and be on a really good secure stable path to leave their inpatient treatment facility so it you know it just goes it just goes on and on and on yeah your your platform is huge and we'll have you know a link to your website on the screen so people can check it out but what really makes you different from other candidates is you're so focused on like the policy details and policy outcomes so I love the way you talk about healthcare and you you really describe single payer because now there's so many people who are Democrats who say well you know I support Medicare for all or the spirit of Medicare for all or something along those lines when they don't actually mean single payer which is frustrating so I like that you're like glued to the details of it and and to your point about the reimbursement rate I I read something not too long ago I don't know if it was in regards to the 2019 iteration of Medicare for all or Bernie Sanders 2017 version but I believe that once you take into account the administrative costs reduction then it would be about the same although I'm not sure but I'm glad that there are people like you who would push Bernie on this because what we want is a robust healthcare system that is great that is not going to have any issues like we want it to function and be stable because the point is not just to pass Medicare for all and check it off of our list we want it to be you know able to stand the test of time and what I like is that people like you will be in the Senate and push Bernie further because I actually I've criticized Bernie Sanders version of the bill because it actually has a four-year roll as as opposed to a two-year rollout which I don't like so we need people who are willing to push the envelope and there's really even though like we have some people who I think would vote for Medicare for all in the Senate like Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley I don't think that they would push the envelope further like push that bill further to the left so I kind of wanted you to actually talk about that dynamic because we have an increasing block of progressive Democrats within the House of Representatives but there's basically a small handful in the Senate and that's being really charitable like you can count all the progressives on one hand and I use the word progressive loosely right so how do you think you would be able to influence your colleagues because you don't have that much backup unless you and apology and get elected together in the Senate and Betsy sweet and Betsy sweet you guys like if we don't get all three of you you're either going to be like standing alone trying to influence Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley to kind of push further so I mean like how do you affect change when your block is super small in the Senate because the dynamic there is super different like in the House we have a growing vocal block as I alluded to but in the Senate like I don't know how to do that strategically so what do you think would be the best way to really push the narrative you know just in general on the Overton window rather to the left in the Senate right right so you know to state the like the obvious like you know we have to get some of us in there right right like more than just Sanders and Warren and maybe Merkley you know I think once you start to get a critical mass of you know what's a critical mass I don't know but you know more than a couple then you'll start to see that and I and here's the other thing so I've done a lot of mediation as well I do I mediate people's divorces and yes that's not easy and and I'm told anyway people have told me over the years I'm pretty good at it and I I rarely have people walk out of my mediation and not have settled their case and it might take hours and hours and hours but we almost always get there and I think there's a couple of things to that that that are applicable to influencing others in the United States Senate so the first is you have to establish some kind of relationship and connection to people even to people that maybe you normally wouldn't you know I've mediated cases for probably hundreds of people that I would never like choose to be friends with right like I wouldn't pick them out of a lineup and say oh I have so much in common with you I want to be your friend right now but I'm there to get something done and I genuinely want to help them move their family forward and so you have to create some kind of relationship number one and I I think pretty good at creating relationships with people even if we have a lot of disagreements and I think that's really important as a U.S. Senator and and and that's another one of those things that sometimes draws fire from the very progressive left is you know how would you even how would you even speak to them wow you know well you know what do you want to get something done or don't you well to be fair I will say in their defense like usually when we hear like bipartisanship or like reaching across the aisle it usually means to screw us so I get the cynicism but for someone like you you're not going to compromise so when you say it those negative connotations aren't actually attached to it because when when you say that like the way that I hear it is okay you're going to bring them to your side and not go to their side which is the key difference exactly exactly so that's exactly right so you have to develop some kind of relationship with them however you do that you know whatever you find in common it could be they have a 20 year old son I have a 20 year old son you know whatever it could be anything I have a dog I have a dog whatever you have to find those really human connections with people you know I think I don't know if the chicken or egg happened first I don't know but I know there used to be like lunches of senators not just Democrat lunch not just Republican lunch but there used to be like lunches with senators it didn't matter you know what I mean people would sit down and you know break bread together right we hear about the importance of breaking bread I don't think that happens anymore the last I heard there were literally like the GOP lunch every week and the Dem lunch every week well okay I get that I get the reason for wanting to be around just your people that's a human thing and like I said if we can't create any relationships how are we progressives ever going to bring anyone you know even start to bring anyone over to our side how I don't think I don't think that's a non-starter so you start to create relationships and you listen again it doesn't mean that you're going to do what they what they think that you know that they want to do but when you listen to people something very interesting happens they start becoming interested in listening to you but you have to first listen to them so there's that and then there's just being very persistent and giving them real reasons and you know is it going to happen in a day no a week no a month no but if you're persistent and you really are interested in creating change or getting people to see your side you create relationships you listen to them you tell stories yeah and you tell real stories like you know my friend Robin Stone who was the Delaware here in Iowa the Delaware County party Democratic chair she was diagnosed about somewhere about six weeks ago I think now with thyroid cancer and it was a very rare type of thyroid cancer not like the usual one from what I understand is reasonably easy to to cure they remove your thyroid and you know probably most of the time I think people have a very good prognosis with with most thyroid cancers this was a very rare very aggressive very deadly one she wanted to go to Mayo Clinic which is not very far from here it's in southern Minnesota it was out of her network they wanted $16,000 to even have her walk in the front door now will we ever know if she would have survived it or had a longer quality better quality of life for as long as she had lived had she gone to Mayo we'll never know because she didn't go there she went to a different hospital which is a really good hospital here in Iowa but they did not have those specific experts in that type of rare thyroid cancer that she really wanted to go see and she passed away a couple weeks ago very quickly after her diagnosis I'm sorry to hear that yeah thank you it was a huge loss for everyone for her family of course a horrible tragic loss and for all of us who knew her she was amazing and quite a force for change and brilliant and she she had a trachea last several weeks of her life which was just really horrible and hard to deal with she had it replaced several times and a couple a week or a week and a half, two weeks somewhere in that window before she passed away she was in the emergency room and she messaged me on Facebook from the she says I'm in the emergency room I want you to have my endorsement I want you to keep talking about me and don't ever stop fighting for a universal single-payer healthcare system and so Robin I'm talking about you again and so I do and those are the kinds of stories that you tell colleagues that maybe don't see it the way you see it right now you know you tell real stories about the young man in Dubuque who in 2018 lost his life from rationing insulin and now his mother is going around talking about the amorality of this in a wealthy nation and it is amoral you know and if it doesn't move those people well hopefully those kind of stories will move their voters exactly and it's not like they'll end up gone from the Senate exactly exactly and I think that building report is so important like you're not going to get them on your side for everything but this strategy I think if you're a Senator you really have no choice and there has been a degree of success like my favorite example is Bernie Sanders he got a Tea Party Senator Mike Lee to get on board with his um his plan to enact the War Powers Act to stop US complicity to Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen now it passed the House and the Senate it was vetoed by Donald Trump but I mean these are the things that you can do and when like when you hear the way that Republicans talk about Bernie Sanders they think he's a communist they think he's crazy but they still say well you know at least Bernie Sanders is honest you know they'll they'll say something like that so they kind of understand him at least from a human level and I think that when you have 99 other colleagues and that's it you don't really have much of a choice but to kind of try to humanize each other and try to get them to your side not you know to capitulate but get them to your side now when it comes to someone else like let's say there's another Senator like Ron Wyden if he wants to work with a Republican my Senator um I cringe because I wonder how much is he selling me out um but when it's someone like you or Bernie Sanders then I think okay they're trying to bring people to our side and not the other way around so that's such a key difference and it's so important and I'm glad that you kind of thought this through because like I genuinely don't know what I would do if I were a Senator and I never want to be in that position but if I were like I don't know what to do especially with the block being so small but I mean the point that you made was we have to elect more progressives in the Senate so with that being said I'm sure that everyone is enthusiastic about your campaign and at this point we're just preaching to the choir so if we want to help elect you what can we do so you can go to kimberleyforiowa.com that's our website and there's donate and volunteer buttons there we by the way if you think well I don't live in Iowa I can't volunteer oh no no so this is for those of you who followed or knew about better or worse campaign no we're not follow we're not you know we're not on better or worse platform but but his campaign though for us Senate was amazing okay he got he had supporters and volunteers all over the country and that's what it was going to take to get rid of Ted Cruz and darn it if he didn't come close that's kind of that that model of having volunteers all over the nation is what we are building out right now so if you want to if let's and especially if you live in like a solid blue state right if your senators are already Democrats that you're okay with or there's no progressive challenger and you want to find a flippable us senate seat and help that person in the primary help a real progressive we would love to have your help you can you know volunteer to do tech spanking volunteer to do lots of different things remotely so you don't have to physically be here in the state of Iowa physically knocking on doors to help so there's a volunteer button on the Kimberley for Iowa website that you can go to and sign up to volunteer and there's a field for your state so we know you know physically where you are donating of course and I would say this too I totally get that impulse to say at least for a lot of people maybe not for really true progressives but for a lot of people to kind of hang back and say I'm gonna wait until the after the primary and then I'll give some money to whoever our democratic nominee is right I get that impulse because I used I used to be that person okay I used to be that person where I would just like you know I'm a single mom I don't make a ton of money as an attorney for kids I have massive student loan debt myself I still do I'm not gonna donate until you know after the primary well if we all do that we're gonna keep getting the Congress we have now with a few exceptions of progressives that are in there meaning we're only gonna get people who are either already wealthy or very connected to wealth into positions of power at the federal you know representative level so if you're okay with keeping the Congress we have by all means don't donate to any campaigns until after your primaries but if you want to get progressives into office progressives like AOC and Ilhan Omar and Presley and you know we know them all then please please please donate now because sometimes you know I didn't used to understand either why do you need so much money to run for office just run okay my campaign manager my events coordinator and fundraising coordinator my digital outreach person because I can't be on Twitter and Facebook all day but I need somebody to be so that we can amplify the message of the campaign across the state and across the nation a finance director gas to drive all over a really really big state I was huge you know and on and on yard sites campaign materials tables like to go to certain events they charge us a couple hundred dollars to like have to be there like to be there and to connect with a few hundred voters so I mean the bare bones of this campaign as of as we sit here today is an excess of ten thousand dollars and the vast majority of that per month ten thousand dollars per month to keep my campaign going and that's mostly staff salaries and by the way I don't get a dime I'm a volunteer here but of course my campaign manager and events coordinator all those people get salaries as they should right and I want to pay them a decent salary I'm paying them market rates for those jobs I'm not you know overpaying them but they deserve those salaries and they they should be paying them but just so people know that's where all this money goes to is mostly salaries people to do all of this organizing we need to hire a field organizer ASAP we're looking for one now that's going to be another several thousand dollars per month somebody to organize the volunteers to organize the boots on the ground the door knockers canvassers you know the the text bankers all of those people that all takes people and people should be paid right you know there's volunteers but you also have to have a certain core staff that has to be paid so donate donate donate donate and also we have a new tool that we think is the first time that anyone running for office has ever used it which is peer to peer fundraising so if you go to our website hopefully there's more information on it there I've looked at the website a little while since we got it up and running but what that means is you know how like you'll see people post a fundraiser on their Facebook page like I'm raising money today for you know puppy protection or what you know like like save the puppies or whatever well we have that same thing now where people can sign up and like put do a fundraiser maybe they can't give a lot of money but maybe they can get their friends to each pitch in five bucks and then together you can send our campaign a couple hundred bucks right or five hundred bucks or whatever from your friends in your contacts that you know and so a lot of nonprofits use that we actually reached out and had the platform that does this modify their platform a little bit so that we could collect the information that we need to comply with FEC regulations so we think we're the first campaign to ever do this kind of fundraising but you got to get creative when you don't have those corporations to go to so so we have that too so we just say donate volunteer spread the word retweet share on Facebook because all of that helps just to get the word out because the biggest uphill battle here is going to be funding we've been to 49 of our 99 counties so far and we're keeping on going we actually got a great deal on a supporter renting us an RV that we're getting probably next week so we're going to have that wrapped and we're going to be driving all over Iowa like all over Iowa to talk to people and listen with people so that'll be really helpful because you can't miss it when it rolls into a town of 500 people everybody will be talking about yeah so yeah and on your website too I will say I'll give you credit because when you go to that website on your front page you have like four steps for things that you can do to help out the campaign and I love that you did the peer-to-peer fundraising thing because I'll tell you someone who like I don't ever really go on Facebook that often but when I see the pictures of sad puppies speaking of like puppy fundraisers I feel compelled to donate right it's it's so simple it's easy so that's a really I think innovative way to raise awareness about your campaign and raise money so kudos to you so look let me just say this let me make my pitch for Kimberly we need a Senate that is more progressive we're making some progress in the House of Representatives but we have not made that much progress in the Senate so this is a down payment for actual structural change if you donate to Kimberly and there's a lot of people who are great progressives running for the Senate you brought up Beto and that reminded me that I also had Sema Hernandez on the show running in Texas against John Corden who's a phenomenal progressive so we have her we have Betsy Sweet we have Paul Jean Swaringen and Kimberly Graham imagine if all four of you got elected like the amount of change that that would make and there could be other Senate candidates that I'm missing and I apologize to those people if I miss you but like this really is a national movement and we have to participate either by donating or putting in the time if we can't you know contribute monetarily we can't contribute our time that's really important and judges and judges the Senate confirms judges you all so important so important it confirms judges so if you want different judges confirm down the line you got to get more progressives into the Senate yeah this is crucial so I think that 2020 is going to be the year when progressives actually start taking on the Senate because we you know we we got our foot in the door in the house now it's time we conquer the Senate and Kimberly thank you so much for starting that movement or joining it with brand new Congress whatnot and thank you for coming on the show to talk about your campaign thank you so much Mike I appreciate your time well that's all that I've got to talk about on this episode hopefully you guys enjoy the show a special thanks to my guest Kimberly Graham fantastic guest we are wishing her luck in the state of Iowa and yeah as usual we're not going to leave the show without thanking all of our newest Patreon PayPal and YouTube members for helping us not just to survive but thrive as well you guys are absolutely crucial to our success and I can never really demonstrate or express you know how thankful I am you guys are phenomenal so yeah that's it before I start rambling I'll go ahead and end the show right here my name is Mike Ferriero this is the Humanist Report I will see you all next week for our very last episode of the year believe it or not yes that's the last episode next week and it is going to be a jam-packed episode that will most likely be more than four hours long unless I split it into two parts but that might be more of a pin in the ass and I said I was going to end the show by the way before I started rambling too late but nonetheless you know the countdown is here it's almost a new show in a new year and wow it's 2020 going to be absolutely insane for good or bad reasons possibly so look we will uh we'll play it by ear and um yeah we'll uh we'll keep cruising that's it take care everyone