 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome to The Mike Report podcast. I am the humanist Figueredo, nailed it. That was probably the best intro I've ever done. Today is Friday, December 11th, and this is episode 270. But of course, before we start talking politics, we've got to thank all of the people who make the show possible. All of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us. And that includes Kimmelay DePalo, Irene Dolan, John Benwar, Mark Cranfield, Fia W. Hayes, Thomas Woods and Valera Windsor. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our videos on YouTube. So we don't have the longest episode again, a little bit of a shorter episode, but next week we will have a gigantic episode. So this is a little bit of a more casual break week, right? Because I have a pretty stacked holiday episode planned. Next week is the last episode of the year, believe it or not. I can't believe that this month is already to that point, but nonetheless, here's what we're talking about this week. The president of the United States is still having a meltdown over the election that took place last month. We will talk about that. And of course, we're gonna discuss corruption in the Republican Party, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and David Perdue of Georgia, who earlier this year was busted in an insider trading scandal, but we have more details regarding his corruption. Also, Biden manages to surprise the left, but this time in a good way actually. So we'll talk about what he did that actually made me happy, shockingly. And we'll also discuss Donald Trump's war crimes in Afghanistan and what you are going to hear is shocking, even for Donald Trump standards. Also, stimulus negotiations are underway. We'll discuss how Bernie Sanders is pushing for direct cash payments to Americans. So that's what we'll talk about. And some more, hopefully you all will enjoy what I have in store for you. Let's waste no time, get right to it. Enjoy the program, folks. In the state of Florida alone, there are more than one million active COVID-19 cases. Yes, you heard that right. One million in one state. I actually had to double check the numbers before saying that because it's so unbelievable. But I mean, when you look at the way that the governor of Florida has handled the pandemic, it's to be expected because he has not just bungled the pandemic. It seems as if he's gone out of his way to make matters worse because he's not just refusing to do a mask mandate statewide, but any local government that chooses to enact their own mask mandate to protect their own residents, he's stopped them from doing that. Literally, he's banned mask mandates in the state of Florida. So if a local government wants to enact a mask mandate, technically they can. However, they can't legally enforce that. So he has no interest in containing the spread. You know, he wants the state of Florida to remain open, but yet he doesn't wanna do that safely with masks. It's just, it's a disaster. And honestly, I feel like what he's doing is tantamount to manslaughter. Thousands of people in Florida are dying and he sits idly by and does absolutely nothing. Just pretends as if COVID-19 isn't a thing. I believe they're gonna pass 20,000 deaths in the state of Florida alone due to COVID-19 and he doesn't care at all. But it's even worse than that because he's going out of his way to suppress information related to COVID-19 and he's doing this all the behest of Donald Trump. So as the independent reports, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a stalwart ally of Donald Trump, reportedly tried to suppress negative information about the status of the state's coronavirus pandemic between early September and the third November general election. The South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed the coverup in a recent investigation. The newspaper found that Mr. DeSantis used his influence to direct the state's Department of Health to stop issuing public statements regarding COVID-19 between the 3rd of September and the 3rd of November. The paper noted that the information suppression began in the run-up to the 2020 election. The investigation alleges that Mr. DeSantis' actions suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals and promoted the views of scientific dissenters who supported Mr. DeSantis' response to the virus. Now in an interview with Tucker Carlson, he basically brushed off this investigative report and said, we know this is just a political smear against me. No asshole, you're the one who's playing politics. You are the one who is for purposes of political expediency suppressing information at the behest of Donald Trump to help him out. So if anyone's playing politics, you're the one who's doing that and to even do what he did, suppress information, just facts and data about COVID-19, how are people in the state of Florida not calling on him to resign? Like this is a nationwide scandal. He seems to be wanting to compete for the title of worst governor in the United States. It's a tie between him and the governor of South Dakota currently, but the story actually gets worse because a COVID data scientist named Rebecca Jones stood up to Rhonda Santis and Floridian state officials and accused them of trying to suppress information related to the pandemic. And it turns out that she is correct since investigative journalists have confirmed just that. And what happened? Well, as a result, she was fired, but not only that, this also happened to her. She posted this video to Twitter. Come outside, outside. Who else is in the house, ma'am? My two children and my husband. Where's your husband at? Call him now. Call him now. Call him all down. Mr. Jones, come down the stairs. Now. Police, come down now. Stop, you're asking me. He just pointed a gun at my children. So a data scientist who was fired for not manipulating data at the behest of her state's governor, all of a sudden has police officers with guns showing up to her home. So if you're confused, she sheds light on the situation. She says at 8.30 a.m. this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech. They were serving a warrant on my computer after DOH filed a complaint. They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids. They took my phone and the computer I use every day to post the case numbers in Florida and school cases for the entire county. They took evidence of corruption at the state level. They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the Gestapo. This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. This is what happens to people who speak truth to power. I tell them my husband and my two children are upstairs and then one of them draws his gun on my children. This is DeSantis, Florida. This is an abuse of power if I've ever seen one. I just, I don't even know what to say about this. This is a governor using resources of the state to basically harass someone and shut down an individual who has evidence of corruption. What more is there to be said? The details of the story speaks for itself. Ron DeSantis is a criminal governor. There should be an investigation and a prosecution potentially, but at a minimum, there should be calls for him to resign immediately. I mean, if the corruption and him seizing the hardware that contained evidence of his corruption wasn't enough, just him turning a blind eye as thousands of people in his state die due to a virus that he doesn't seem to care about at all, that should be enough to warrant his resignation or at least calls for it. But I mean, this is happening and it seems as if it's not that controversial. I don't know what to say. I mean, this is a perfect representation of how authoritarian the modern day Republican Party has become. So like a lot of people, I've kind of forced myself to stop paying attention to Donald Trump's crazy rantings because he's not gonna change. Like it doesn't matter what evidence is or isn't released. He's just going to keep complaining about election fraud and how it was stolen from him all the way until he leaves. And then once he's out of office, he's probably still gonna complain. It's just, it's never gonna end. But I decided to break my self-imposed ban on Donald Trump and check in on him. And I mean, it's honestly shocking. He has basically been in a permanent state of delusion since the election and just within the last two days. This was filmed on Monday. This is all of the tweets he's made about the election and how it was stolen from him. He says, Republican governor of Florida refuses to do signature verification, which would give us an easy win. What's wrong with this guy? What is he hiding? Oh, he's the one who's hiding something. He quote tweeted Mark Levin saying, so true, no way we lost this election. And then he retweeted his quote tweet of Mark Levin. He then quote tweeted a conspiracy mongering video from Newsmax TV. And he says, this is a must watch. Hope the lawyers are taking notes. All facts, do not flag this Twitter. And then he again retweeted himself because of course he then retweeted three different videos from Mark Levin where he talks about supposed election fraud. And then he says, gee, what a surprise. Has anyone informed the so-called, says he has no power to do anything, governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp and his puppet lieutenant governor, Jeff Duncan, that they could easily solve this mess and win signature verification and call a special session. So easy. He then retweeted a quote from Sidney Powell where she warns states to not certify the results of their elections because they may be complicit in fraud if they do so. Ignoring the fact that they are legally obligated to certify the results. Nonetheless, the last tweet that I saw that he put out within the last two days is him saying, I won the election, big. Bigly. All of this within two days. I know that most of us are used to this and most of us are already desensitized to his shenanigans. But still, this is the president of the United States having a meltdown on Twitter. I mean, your racist uncle who you see post boomer memes on Facebook is probably less unhinged than the actual president, the man with the nuclear launch codes. This is like somewhat entertaining and funny but it's still a little bit unsettling because this dipshit, he can still do a lot of damage. Like we've seen the way that he's escalated with regard to Iran. So he's unhinged and he is just not going to accept the fact that he lost the selection. Now, I think that privately, he probably has accepted the reality that he lost, but at the same time, publicly, like this is all about his ego. He doesn't want to admit that he lost. So he's going on these weird tweets and think of the things that he's asking. So he wants the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp to do signature verification and then it's an easy win. He's basically asking for ballots to be invalidated by doing this arbitrary signature match to where if your signature doesn't match the signature on your ballot perfectly, then it gets invalidated, canceled out. He wants to win by cheating basically. And even if Georgia did this and he won the state of Georgia, that's still not enough. You have to overturn multiple states, but yet he still says, we won, big. What do you even say? Like it feels weird talking about this because this is so batched insane and my commentary isn't going to add anything to this conversation. All I can do is vocalize the disbelief that I feel, but I mean, it's just, it's shocking. And really the president alone, he can think and feel and believe whatever. But the sad part is that this actually is influencing a substantial portion of the population. Like many people believe that Trump did actually win this election and it was just stolen from him. Like that's not healthy for a democracy and based on his Twitter feed, it looks like he's just scouring the internet to find anyone who's going to confirm what he wants you to hear and retweet them and tell everyone it's a must watch. This is just strange. Like again, it's Donald Trump, but this is not normal. It's not normal. Like this is a president who hisses. I'm gonna say I love this picture of him hissing. Although he looks more normal in this picture because he's like dry in this picture. Like the president is usually unnaturally moist. Like he's always wet. But in this picture, he's actually dry, but he is hissing though. So there's that. I mean, what a cartoonishly idiotic individual who is the president? Like the fact that he won, it really speaks to the overall stupidity of America. Like we really are the stereotype that we're trade-as around the world. Like we're stupid, we're overconfident. I mean, yeah, he is the personification of American stupidity. And the fact that he still, till this day, when most people aren't even thinking about the election, can't get over it. No way we lost this election. Maybe it's the case that you bungled your response to a global pandemic. And maybe if you just tried a little bit harder, given people one more stimulus, you could have actually eaked out a victory. It wasn't that far off. I mean, you did lose a lot of states, but you didn't necessarily lose each of those states by a lot. So this wasn't going to be a foregone conclusion that he'd lose. In fact, before COVID-19, I thought that Donald Trump was a sure bet after we saw that Joe Biden won the nomination, but this was Trump's election to lose. And it seemed like he was trying to lose. Like anything that you shouldn't do, he did. So it's just the fact that he thinks it's impossible that he could have lost this election, it shows you how delusional he is. But I mean, I'm gonna enjoy it for what it is. It's entertaining, but again, like I said, it's unsettling because this dude, he still has a lot of power. He has the nuclear launch code. So he can do a lot of damage to do revenge on the country. So yeah, checking in on Donald Trump probably wasn't the best idea, but I had to do it because somebody's gotta watch him. So last week we learned that Joe Biden was reportedly considering current governor of Rhode Island, Gina Romando, to be HHS secretary. And not only that, it seemed as if, based on numerous reports, that she was actually the front runner to be his pick. Now, the reason why this is disastrous is because she is vocally against Medicare for all. She's attacked it on numerous occasions. But more importantly, this is an individual who is a shill for the health insurance industry and the private healthcare industry because she chose to unilaterally use her power as governor to shield nursing homes and long-term care facilities from legal accountability. Now, why does this matter? Well, because in her state when it comes to COVID-19, a majority of the outbreaks have come from these nursing homes and long-term care facilities. So in the event somebody wants to investigate and subsequently sue them for incompetence or malfeasance because they are contributing to a spike in cases and deaths due to COVID-19, they should in fact be held legally liable for that. But she chose after she got a phone call from lobbyists to shield them and give them legal immunity. Completely unacceptable, completely unreasonable. I mean, someone who did this literally should not even have a job in politics. She should step down as governor. She should be shamed out of politics, permanently disqualified. So the prospect of her being HHS secretary, I mean to me, basically worst case scenario in terms of a Joe Biden pick. However, thankfully for whatever reason, she announced at a press conference according to journalist Matt Holt that she was not in the running. Now, I don't know if she was never considered if the reports were false or if she withdrew or she just was no longer in consideration after Joe Biden heard criticisms. I have no idea why she's not in the running. But what I do know is that the fact that she's not going to be HHS secretary is really good news. But the question is, what ghoul did Joe Biden choose to put in her place? Actually, he kind of chose someone who's good. I'm pleasantly surprised by who Joe Biden chose. He has chosen Javier Becerra, current California attorney general to be HHS secretary. Now, the first thing that I ask of an HHS secretary is what do you believe when it comes to Medicare for all? Well, you're going to be pleasantly surprised to learn what Javier's stance is on this issue. Going forward, would you personally support something like what Senator Bernie Sanders has suggested, which would be a Medicare for all plan? Oh, absolutely. I've been a supporter of Medicare for all for the 24 years that I was in Congress this year as attorney general. I would fight for that if we had an opportunity to put that forward in the state of California. Because I think what we do is we give people that certainty that they're going to be able to access a doctor or a hospital. The worst thing we used to have with situations where young families wouldn't know if they should take their children to the hospital because it could lead to personal bankruptcy. That ended with the Affordable Care Act. We can't go back to those days. And so absolutely, when you give people access to Medicare and talk to seniors who have their Medicare who say, keep your hands off my Medicare, I think it would have the same effect for most Americans if they knew they could depend on something like Medicare for themselves as well. That's basically exactly what I want to hear from an HHS secretary when they're asked about Medicare for all. That's a perfect answer. Now look, there's always room for criticism and improvement. You can say he's talked more than he's actually taken action. He could have done more. But just in terms of like what my expectations were for a Joe Biden HHS pick, it was not someone as good as Javier Becerra. I mean, this is close to best case scenario when it comes to Joe Biden. I mean, he wouldn't be my choice, right? If I were the president, I would be appointing someone like Bernie Sanders or you know, Roseanne DeMauro, the president of National Nurses United, somebody like that who's really been a firebrand when it comes to Medicare for all. But for him to select someone who supports Medicare for all and who's been pretty consistent on this issue, I'm pleasantly surprised and I feel shocked saying that. And it's not just me because even progressives like David Sororan and Andrew Perez tend to agree. And in a report for Jackman, they explained to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Joe Biden has selected a Democrat who has touted his support for Medicare for all and previously demanded the Obama administration take tough action against the pharmaceutical industry to lower the price of prescription drugs. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Biden is nominating former congressman and current California attorney general, Javier Becerra to run HHS. The announcement comes after Rhode Island Governor, Gina Romando abruptly dropped out of consideration for the job following our report on her agreeing to healthcare lobbyist demands that she provide legal immunity to nursing home corporations during the COVID-19 pandemic. As recently as 2017, Becerra declared I've been a supporter of Medicare for all for the 24 years that I was in Congress and he said he would fight to create such a system in California where it was considered in the legislature. As HHS secretary, he would be in a position to grant States waivers to create Medicare for all systems. As HHS secretary, Becerra will also be in a position to take the action on drug prices that he previously urged the Obama administration to take, though it remains unclear whether Biden would support such a move. Back in 2016, Becerra was one of the 51 House Democratic lawmakers who signed a letter calling on Barack Obama's health and human services secretary to use so-called marching rights to effectively rescind exclusive patents for medicines whose research and development was originally funded by government agencies. This year, Becerra was one of 34 state attorneys general to sign a letter demanding the federal government use marching rights to make the early onset COVID treatment remdesivir whose research and development was sponsored by the government more widely available and affordable to all. As HHS secretary, Becerra will also be in a position to facilitate proposals to allow American pharmacists and wholesalers to import lower priced FDA approved medicines from other countries. Becerra voted for drug importation as a house lawmaker. Clinton's HHS secretary, Donna Shalala killed a drug importation plan in 2000 after a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers passed it through Congress. So this is shocking because Javier Becerra is basically to the left of Joe Biden when it comes to certain healthcare issues like Medicare for all, marching rights. And as HHS secretary, Javier Becerra can do a lot. Like we're not gonna get Medicare for all with Javier Becerra as HHS secretary. Let's be clear about that. But what he can do is take a lot of concrete measures actions that would improve our healthcare system in the country. It's still relatively incrementally, but I mean nonetheless with what we were expecting to get Gina Ramondo, this is a pretty solid choice. I wouldn't have expected someone that I like to be named HHS secretary. So it's not all bad apparently. Now it could be the case that Joe Biden is like playing 40 chess with us and he floated Gina Ramondo to make us feel relieved about Javier Becerra because if you kind of set us up to expect someone who's a disaster, well then of course we're gonna be excited to learn that someone who's less disastrous is HHS secretary either way, this is pretty solid. I'm happy with the pick. Again, I would have chosen someone else who's more firebrand in terms of supporting Medicare for all but we have someone who supports Medicare for all at least in rhetoric which is important in and of itself for at least shifting the overton window when it comes to healthcare. But the things that he can do, the improvements that he can make as HHS secretary and that he seems to want to make, this is a big deal. So I don't know how to say this but good job Joe Biden. I mean, it's just, you know, you kind of expect nothing but the worst from corporate Democrats and neoliberals and whenever they actually do something good, it's a little bit of a shocker, it's surprising, genuinely so. Now I'm not going to count my chickens before they hatch because of course, we'll see how Javier Becerra actually governs as HHS secretary, but just in terms of the pick, it's good. So of course, you know, there are two really important runoff races taking place in Georgia that will ultimately determine which party controls the US Senate. And what I find fascinating is that both of the Republicans in these races were busted just this year doing insider trading. So if you were caught doing insider trading, you'd think that that alone should disqualify you, but yet this is still going to be a close race because I guess that corruption is expected in DC. So long as our team is doing it, it's okay. But if the other team does it, not okay. But what's interesting to me about David Perdue is that he's more corrupt even than the average US politician, which is a really high bar to pass, but he passes that easily. So we're going to talk about some new developments with regard to his corruption because it is so brazen that this man should not be a United States senator. This man should be behind bars because he is a criminal. He is a crook. Now, if you've watched his debate, I want to talk about that first. The reason why this race is even close is because John Ossoff, as much as I hate him because he stands for nothing, he low key demolished David Perdue at the debate that they had before the election. Take a look. Well, perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you hadn't been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading, it's not just that you're a crook senator. It's that you're attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while, you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio, and you did vote four times to end protections for preexisting conditions. That was absolutely brutal. And again, I'm no fan of John Ossoff and I will say that to you every single time his name comes up, but that is how you dismantle a politician. Now, because of that, shockingly, David Perdue didn't want to do another debate, but yet there was still going to be another debate because if you want this seat, you need to show up and debate your opponent, but he didn't want another disaster. So when the debate took place for the runoff, this is what happened. This is the runoff debate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator David Perdue of Georgia. The candidates are in alphabetical order, Democrat John Ossoff. He is CEO of Insight TWI, a media production company that investigates corruption, organized crime and war crimes for international news organizations. Republican David Perdue has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015. Before his election, he sat on the board of five major corporations and co-founded Perdue Partners, a global trading company. Senator Perdue declined to participate in this debate and is represented by an empty podium. Embarrassing, absolutely embarrassing. And you'd think, you know, why would you not show up to a debate if your opponent is going to be debating an empty podium? Isn't that embarrassing? But if I were David Perdue, I wouldn't want to show up to this debate as well because I think that just like hiding away my face, that's the better strategy here because he's continued to make a fool of himself. And a report from the New York Times came out and showed that he is the most active trader in all of the United States Senate. And we're learning more and more about the insider trading deal he was busted with this year. Now, you know, the ethics panel from the Senate, they basically said, you know, we can't prove that he used the information that he was privy to as a U.S. Senator to do insider trading. And that to me is a joke because, you know, we can never prove a quid pro quo exists between large multinational corporations and politicians, but when they take that financial contribution from a large corporation, we know implicitly that there's an agreement that you're going to do the bidding of said large multinational corporations. So you can't prove that that's a quid pro quo, but nonetheless, it still is corruption, albeit legally, it's a legalized bribe, but it's still a bribe nonetheless and you're still peddling influence. So, you know, it's laughable to think that, oh, well, we can't prove that this is insider trading. Of course it is, but now more evidence has come out showing you might actually be able to prove this is legitimately a case of insider trading to which he should be prosecuted for. So as Roger Sollenberger of Salon reports, Senator David Perdue, one of two multimillionaire Georgia Republicans facing tight runoff elections in January, drew scrutiny this spring for stock transactions made in the weeks ahead of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States while he was receiving privileged briefings on the impending pandemic. According to news reports and Perdue's financial disclosures, the trades involved 112 transactions as much as $825,000 in sales and 1.8 million in purchases. The timing raised flags for various reasons. Perdue sold up to 165,000 in shares of a casino company that later shuttered, for instance, and made an investment in a company that manufactures personal protective equipment. On the same day Perdue attended his first classified pandemic briefing. In a series of transactions in late February, Perdue also invested up to $245,000 in the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Though the Pfizer purchase has been reported previously, the events surrounding it have not. One week after those stock purchases, the company publicly announced it would be developing a coronavirus vaccine. Although the Justice Department eventually cleared Perdue of his insider trading, this synchronicity raises new questions about what the senator knew and when. Yeah, I'll say. Now, what also is important is that his defense is falling apart because he's maintained that it's not him who's making all of these decisions unilaterally. He has this third party advisor that makes trades on his behalf. So his hands are clean here. Regardless of what information he knew, it's not him who's making these decisions. That's a lie because as Sullenberger continues, this spring Perdue pushed back against allegations of insider trading in advance of the coronavirus, claiming that outside advisors made the calls without his input, but a bombshell New York Times report last week made clear that was a lie. This September, Justice Department investigators found that Perdue had instructed one of his wealth managers to offload more than $1 million in a financial firm after the CEO tipped off the senator in a personal email. The Pfizer transactions would seem to have required even more faith in his broker who apparently felt counterintuitive confidence in the company's stock in the early stages of a market-wide crash and during a week when its shares fell in line with the Dow's overall drop of more than 6%. Perdue's broker would have been similarly undaunted by the company's February 27th warning to investors that the pandemic could adversely impact its operations, including clinical trials. Quote, the extent to which the coronavirus impacts our operations will depend on future developments which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, including the duration of the outbreak, new information which may emerge concerning the severity of the coronavirus and the actions that contain the coronavirus or treat its impact among others. In particular, the continued spread of the coronavirus globally could adversely impact our operations, including among others, our manufacturing and supply chain, sales and marketing and clinical trial operations could have an adverse impact on our business and our financial results. Perdue's broker chose to buy more Pfizer stock that day. So in other words, Gotcha, bitch! There's nothing left to say about this. He shouldn't be running for a US Senate seat. He should be in prison right now for insider trading. This is very clear. Like this isn't like the usual corruption that we see in DC. I wanna emphasize that. It's not just, you know, the implication that if I take this contribution from company X, they are going to expect me to do their bidding and deregulate them or not impose new regulations. This is different. This is him very deliberately making decisions based on information that you'd have to be a United States Senator to have. I mean, the details here speaks for itself. When no sane person would want to purchase more Pfizer stock after they released that warning to investors, he did. He took information when a CEO sent him an email and told him about what he should or shouldn't do. This is explicit corruption. He's basically flaunting it in front of everyone's faces. And if there's no prosecution in this instance, I mean, when will there ever be a case where we can logically deduce that insider trading is what's going on? Because if it's not happening here, if you conclude that maybe he's innocent, maybe it's just the coincidence, then I mean basically, senators can do whatever they want because if he gets away with it, you can get away with anything. How much more explicit and brazen do you have to be to where we actually see someone be held legally accountable who's in power? I mean, if this was someone who was not a United States Senator, just someone who had no power, no money, they would already be in prison. But the fact that there's even a question is all because of his status and his wealth. Lock him up. Like, what are we doing? Throw him in jail. He's clearly guilty. He's corrupt. And it's sad that, you know, he's a United States Senator. He's in a position to where he really could be taking meaningful action to represent his constituents. But what is he doing? He's looking out for his own financial well-being. This is disgusting. He's not just a bad person. He's corrupt in the legal sense. So I don't know what it's gonna take, but if you're this openly corrupt and you see no consequences for your actions, then I mean, this is going to open the door to more corruption, right? He shouldn't even be a contender to be a U.S. Senator. But we're beyond that. Like, we should be talking about this man being in prison. But the fact that he's probably gonna get away with this, it speaks to the fact that we have a two-tier justice system in the United States of America. If you're rich and powerful, you can do whatever you want. Be explicitly corrupt, flaunted, and nothing happens to you. You could be, you know, up for reelection in a runoff that's really close. But if you're a poor person, you smoke weed or sell drugs, you get locked away for a really long time. Like, how disgusting and egregious is that? So for years on this program, I have tried to sound the alarm about the evils of our drone program. It was created by George W. Bush and when Obama took over, he basically ramped up drones exponentially and killed so many civilians that he was forced to scale back the program. But once Donald Trump took office, he once again scaled up the program and we learned that he increased drones by more than 400% and on top of that, he loosened the rules of engagement. So there were warnings that this would lead to much more civilian casualties. And we speculated that by the time we learned about how many deaths Trump's drone program caused, it would be a disaster. The damage would be unfathomable. And now we're starting to get a sense of the destruction that Donald Trump caused from this drone program. And honestly, this is worse than any of us could have imagined. So as Brett Wilkins of Common Dreams reports, the Trump administration's 2017 decision to loosen military rules of engagement meant to protect civilians was followed by a sharp increase in civilian deaths, a report released on Monday revealed. The report by Nita C. Crawford of the Brown University Watson Institute's cost of war project, one of the premier authorities on civilian casualties in the 19 year so-called war on terror found a 330% increase in the number of Afghan civilians killed by US led airstrikes from 2016, the final year of the Obama administration to 2019. From 2007 to 2016, US led and Afghan government forces killed an average of 582 civilians each year. The report found from 2017 through 2019, those same forces killed an average of 1134 civilians each year, a nearly 95% increase. The sharp uptick in civilian deaths followed a decision by President Donald Trump in consultation with former Defense Secretary James Mattis and other military civilian officials to relax rules of engagement in the Afghan war in order to give US commanders more battlefield flexibility and to gain leverage at the bargaining table with the Taliban as both sides sought to end the devastating war whose course has spanned nearly the entire 21st century. From 2017 through 2019, civilian deaths to US and allied forces airstrikes in Afghanistan dramatically increased the report states. In 2019, airstrikes killed 700 civilians, more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war in 2001 and 2002. After the US and Taliban reached a peace agreement in late February 2020, US and other international airstrikes declined and so did the harm to civilians caused by those strikes. According to the United Nations, US led and Afghan government airstrikes killed more civilians than did Taliban militant attacks during the first half of 2019. The new report found that as US led bombings declined following the 10 US peace pact reached with the Taliban in February of 2020, Afghan government airstrikes have increased as the Kabul government negotiates its own peace agreement with the insurgents. So this report is shocking. It sent chills down the back of my neck when I read it because what it tells us is that in order for us to have more leverage, we started to kill more and more people indiscriminately so that way the Taliban would come to the table to get us to stop killing innocent civilians. Our government killed non-enemy combatants to get more leverage. Do you know what that makes us? That makes us terrorists. Do you wanna know what that makes Donald Trump for doing this? A war criminal. He and anyone else involved with this, they should be in prison for the rest of their lives but they do this because they know there's no accountability. Obama didn't prosecute George Bush for war crimes because he'd go on to commit war crimes himself. So of course Donald Trump now feels free to do whatever he wants. Even if that means murdering innocent civilians, also we have more leverage in negotiations with the Taliban. It's just, it's sickening. How are we allowed to get away with this? How do we have any legitimacy whatsoever in the world when we are using innocent human beings as bargaining chips? How does this not outrage people? How is this not a national scandal? We're killing people in order to get the Taliban to want to make us stop. Hey, if you negotiate with us, we'll stop killing innocent civilians. That's, that's monstrous. Like there are no words to describe this. This is psychopathic behavior but it's pretty normal for our empire. This is something that we do all the time. So I mean, for me, I knew that the civilian casualties would increase under Donald Trump since he not only loosened the rules of engagement but on top of that, you know, he increased drone strikes exponentially, even more so than Obama did. But for our government to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians, also that way we are better off negotiating a so-called peace deal with the Taliban. I don't even know what to say about that. I think the worst part about this story, aside from the fact that all of these lives are gone and will never come back, is that there's gonna be no accountability. Mattis isn't going to see a day in prison. Trump is going to live the rest of his life a free man when he should be in prison. The way that I see it, both Obama and Trump and Bush, they can all share a jail cell for all I care. What matters is accountability. And listen, ask yourself this. Why hasn't the United States government signed on to be a member of the International Criminal Court? Isn't that pretty obvious? It's because if we actually subjected ourselves to be accountable to international authorities, how many of our government officials would go to prison? Now, there's issues with the International Criminal Court. There is a bias towards Africa. They prosecute more African war criminals than anyone else. They don't necessarily look to the war crimes that are being committed by developed countries. And that's a problem. But I mean, there should be some international entity that can hold war criminals accountable, that should have jurisdiction over any government that does things like this, that does what our government does. So it's outrageous to me that we can do this. We can commit acts of terrorism and there's zero accountability, none whatsoever. The only accountability that Obama saw was criticism. And the consequence was he scaled back the program. But that doesn't take back the lives that you took. And now Trump didn't even bother to scale back the program. He wanted to show everyone how tough he was. And he did this so he can get the Taliban to come to the table. So then he can claim to be the president who struck a peace deal and ended wars. Meanwhile, to get there, killing hundreds of innocents. It's just, it's nauseating to hear things like this. I don't even know what to say. It's just, it's depressing. So when it comes to an economic stimulus, it is the case that Republicans and Democrats haven't actually agreed on anything yet, but we are hearing more and more about a proposal that is gaining a lot of momentum. And that is the 908 billion dollar proposal. And the reason why it's gaining momentum is because it seems like it's the first proposal in quite some time that has a shot at passing. Now, the reason why it even has a chance at passing is because it has bipartisan support. But when I say it has bipartisan support, I should be more clear, Democrats got crumbs and Republicans got the one thing that they wanted. And if Democrats pursue this particular proposal without asking for more, then it's going to be a disaster for them. And let me explain why. So Republicans had two main asks and they're pretty hefty asks. So the first thing that they wanted is to make sure that this stimulus package doesn't surpass $1 trillion and they got that. Additionally, the main thing that they're asking for is immunity for large multi-billion dollar corporations that could potentially be subject to lawsuits because they endangered their employees and exposed them to COVID-19 by either not giving them PPE, not offering hazard pay. I mean, we're talking about Tyson Foods, Amazon, thousands of their employees have gotten COVID-19. So I think that if you are reckless and you're endangering your customers and your employees, you should be legally liable. But Republicans want to shield them from any legal culpability and they want immunity for large multi-billion dollar corporations. And so Democrats, they're getting things here that are genuinely important, right? Additional funding for PPE and schools and vaccines. It's important, right? What they want is important. So you have individuals like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin not wanting to ask for more because they're afraid that if they end up asking for too much, then Republicans will reject the proposal and then they're gonna get blamed for this. But the problem is that if you give Republicans what they want, which is corporate immunity and you don't actually get what you want, they're not going to come back to the table because when they get the one thing that they want already, what incentive do they have to negotiate after the lame duck session is over? And what's interesting is that Democrats, they don't see the enormous leverage that they have. There's two runoff races taking place in Georgia. So if you make the case, you can easily back Republicans into a corner. You can say, look, our party is fighting for you. We want direct cash payments to you. And the only thing that Republicans are fighting for is immunity for their corporate donors. Isn't that insane? Give us the Senate and we're gonna make sure that we deliver you another round of direct cash payments. They can make this case and Republicans would basically be forced to come to the table but they don't wanna do that because they already got what they wanted in this proposal. So because Republicans agreed to anything, now Democrats feel like, oh my God, we have to jump on this opportunity. Otherwise we might not get another shot and they're terrified to even try to make the case. But again, I'm telling you, if you give Republicans the one thing that they want, they're not gonna come back to the table. So if you pass any stimulus package, make it count. Ask for direct cash payments. And this is basically what Bernie Sanders is doing. He's trying to pressure Democrats to do better. Ask for more. At least ask for another round of $1,200 payments. So as Politico's Bergus Everett explains, Bernie Sanders is rustling up support among his colleagues to demand any COVID relief bill include direct payments to Americans and leave out a broad liability shield for companies against coronavirus related litigation. The Vermont Independent is circulating a letter obtained by Politico from him and other progressive senators taking a hard line against a bipartisan $908 billion proposal as written. It's the latest sign of unease in both parties over a measure that currently lacks another round of stimulus checks, but which may be the best chance to clinch a lame duck deal. Sanders and five of his colleagues in the Senate Democratic Caucus say the framework being discussed does not go anywhere near far enough. The plan includes $160 billion for state and local governments, a temporary liability shield for businesses and money for transportation, vaccines, and schools. Quote, please join us in demanding that any new COVID relief proposal includes a $1,200 direct payment to adults and $500 to their children. Further, please work with us to make certain that there is no language in this bill to give a liability shield to corporations who threaten the health and safety of workers and customers. Sanders and his colleagues wrote to fellow Senate Democrats. Senator Josh Hawley, a conservative populist who has spoken to Sanders about the issue has urged President Donald Trump to veto any bill without new direct payments, but many Republicans dislike how expensive that idea is despite supporting such a provision in March as the economy shut down. So let's be clear, the only reason why Republicans agree to support the CARES Act is because it included the corporate bailout. And it seems like the only reason why they're supporting this proposal is because there is a corporate immunity clause in it. So if you give them that without getting what you want, it's gonna take a long time for them to come back to the table because unless their donors ask for something else, they have no incentive to negotiate because they genuinely don't care about the American people. Now, what's interesting that Bernie Sanders is basically trying to talk some sense into Democrats and some of them are aligning with him to do this, such as Jeff Merkley and whatnot, but Josh Hawley on the other side is trying to encourage Republicans to actually beef up this proposal. And as Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reports, it's working. White House asks Senate GOP leadership to include second round of stimulus payments, but at $600, not $1,200 in emergency relief package. It comes amid a push by Senators Josh Hawley and Sanders for checks 2.0. So Josh Hawley is trying to get the GOP to support something better and he's trying to encourage Donald Trump to veto any proposal without a direct cash payment. And Trump probably wants to leave somewhat of a better legacy. I mean, he doesn't necessarily care about the American people because he's preoccupied with his election fraud charade and he just wants to make sure that, you know, he can somehow invalidate the results of the election, but he knows that his time is coming up and if he genuinely wants to run for president in 2024, he knows he needs to do something for the American people. Send us one more check with his name on it. He wants that to be part of his legacy. He knows this and privately he's actually conceded that he would support $2,000 per month, but publicly he's only asking for $600. And when it comes to Josh Hawley, I think that his motivations are clear. He's no populist, right? The article and everyone is praising him for being a populist. If you don't support popular policies like a minimum wage increase, you're not actually a populist. So I know why he's doing this. He's doing this because he wants something to brag about when he inevitably runs for president in a couple of years. He's gonna point back to this moment and say, look, I brought both parties together at a time of, you know, polarization and we passed this package. It was a historic moment and I helped facilitate that. But here's the thing. I don't care why he's doing this. So long as what he's doing actually will help the American people. And out of all people, Josh Hawley actually made one of the strongest cases for another round of direct cash payments that I've heard from anyone. So the Washington Post reports, Hawley expressed frustration Tuesday about negotiations being pretty dug in on the idea of not including checks. He added, I see them saying things like this is an emergency relief bill. Well, I don't know what's more of an emergency than working people and families who are having to get into food lines. I don't understand that logic at all. So again, I know why he's doing this. It's for his own political career and political ambitions, but I don't care at the end of the day. Now, Jeff Merkley kind of gave us a status update as to where talks are currently in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. And here's what he had to say. We do not have a complete plan yet. We do not even have any details of any of the plan. And of course, there's always the concern that a bill will be brought to us and that we'll be asked to vote on it within a few hours, in which case it'll be all sorts of special favors stuck into it that we'll discover days later without the media or all of us having a chance to discover them. I find myself agreeing completely with Josh Hawley as Bernie Sanders, as is a number of us, that this should have the $1,200 payments, individual payments. Also that the unemployment insurance should be increased. And I must say that the idea that you're going to say negligence doesn't matter for companies that deliberately knew that they were exposing their workers or their customers to high risk is completely unacceptable. So there is a real effort to massage that and make sure that the legitimate claims have a chance to be heard. Look, I don't know how anyone could disagree with what Jeff Merkley is saying. If you do disagree, you're either cold or corrupt. To prioritize immunity for large, multi-billion dollar companies, but not another round of direct cash payments, that's just, it's not just bad politics, it's morally unacceptable. So I wish that more Democrats would be savvy like Bernie Sanders and acknowledge that they have a tremendous amount of leverage. You have Republicans basically backed into a corner and you can shame them into doing the right thing. And if they don't agree to another round of direct cash payments, don't worry about you getting blamed. Blame them, actually be disciplined in your messaging and make the case to the American people. Say, listen, all they wanted was immunity for their corporate donors. We were the ones pushing for you. And all that they'd offer you is crumbs and they offered crumbs just so we would agree with their proposal for corporate liability or corporate immunity. It's just, it's really frustrating to watch all of this play out. And again, I can't get over the fact that $1,200 alone, it still isn't enough. Like Trump is asking for a $600. What we really should be getting is a recurring monthly payment of $2,000 for the duration of this pandemic. So it shouldn't even be a question when it comes to $1,200. And thankfully, Bernie Sanders also made the same case in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN. Just in terms of the, I wanna ask you where you see stimulus negotiations heading right now. Speaker Pelosi, minority leader Schumer have said the bipartisan proposal made yesterday should be used as a basis for talks. Do you think they'll actually be able to compromise with McConnell on get something done? Well, I think in all due respect to Leader McConnell, what he brought, his proposal is literally laughable. He doesn't have a nickel for unemployment supplements we provided in the past at least $600 a week. He doesn't have a penny. All over this country, people are worried about being evicted. There is no $1,200 check for those people. So I think his proposal is literally a laughable. I think the other proposal brought forth may be a start for discussions, but we gotta go a lot further than what that proposal now entails. For example, that proposal does not have the $1,200. I would do $2,000 a month stimulus check, but it's a start, but we've gotta build on that. Yeah, so he's absolutely correct. So look, I don't know where negotiations will go. I'm a bit skeptical that anything is gonna get passed in a lame duck session. We'll see what happens. I kind of feel like in order to get anything meaningful passed, it's gonna have to happen after the election if Democrats take back the Senate. But we'll have to see. I'm telling you, like if Democrats don't get what they're asking for now, Republicans aren't going to come back to the table. Do not take Mitch McConnell's word because his word is dog shit. Mitch McConnell's basically saying, well, you know, maybe we can do something just really quick an emergency relief bill and then later we'll come back and do something better. If Democrats take Mitch McConnell at his word again, I don't even know what to say. It's just, it's a joke. Don't listen to anything Mitch McConnell says because the one thing that he wants is corporate immunity. And if he gets that, you're not gonna get another stimulus package unless you take back the Senate. And I don't think Republicans or I don't think Democrats rather are competent enough to make the case as to why we're not getting another round of direct cash payments. They can't tie Mitch McConnell to this and Republicans and their corruption to this. And look, let's be clear. I'm sure Democrats also want that shield for large multi-billion dollar companies in there because these companies contribute to them as well. But what matters is that if you don't wanna see this eviction crisis come to fruition, if you don't wanna see societal collapse because people have nothing, then take action. We've responded to this in a way that you would expect a failed state to respond to the pandemic. We're the only developed country and the richest one in the world who has done nothing for our citizens. We got a one time $1,200 payment back in May. That's laughable. So the fact that this is even up for discussion to me, it just shows how out of touch our government is with the needs of the American people. So if you are an average consumer of political news and you're finding it difficult to keep up with negotiations regarding the economic stimulus package, let me give you a little piece of advice. All you have to do is look to what Mitch McConnell says and does because he is the ultimate gauge as to whether or not something is going to live or die. Because if he says, yeah, I like this, let's pass it, let's vote on it, it's gonna pass. And if he does not do that, then it's going to go nowhere. This is what happens all the time. When Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump had agreed to a particular stimulus relief package this last time when Wolf Blitzer and her blew up and had that really heated exchange, ultimately it was Mitch McConnell who shot both Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi down. Mitch McConnell is the one who unilaterally killed that round of negotiations. So now whether or not this $908 billion package that's currently being discussed is even going to have a chance will come down to what Mitch McConnell wants. And there is a chance that this one will pass because Mitch McConnell wants a corporate liability shield. And since he wants that, well, if that is included in this proposal, then he may allow a vote on it. And Katie Porter took to Twitter to point out how corrupt Mitch McConnell is and how he's holding economic stimulus hostage unless he gets what he wants for his corporate donors. So she states, when I came to Congress, I knew I had a responsibility to pull back the curtain for the American people and expose corruption in real time. So I'm filling you in on Senator McConnell's attempts over the last eight days to tank a bipartisan COVID relief bill. You may have heard that Democrats and Republicans have agreed upon spending $900 billion to fund another round of small business loans, support hospitals and essential workers and help the 10 million people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Everyone at the negotiation table, including Senate Republicans, has agreed to a compromise, except one. Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring it to the floor unless it wipes away all COVID related lawsuits filed that allege injury or death due to corporate negligence. These lawsuits represent the worst of the worst examples of disregard for human life. Cases filed on behalf of nursing home patients and grocery store workers who died because the company in charge of keeping them safe, prioritized cutting costs over protecting them. The same McConnell who said that President Trump is 100% within his rights to pursue baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud is now refusing to pass urgently needed relief unless it strips those same rights from the most vulnerable among us. This must be exposed. So it's very simple here. What he's basically saying is that if Mitch McConnell doesn't get what he wants, which is the corporate liability shield, this is not going to pass. It all comes down to Mitch McConnell. Now she went on television to talk further about this and really explain how disgusting what Mitch McConnell is doing is an actuality and he alone is holding up relief for millions of Americans who desperately need it right now. What we're dealing with here is somebody who is trying to put the imaginary need of big corporate donors ahead of the very real need of the American people. When you hear this in Senator McConnell's own words, he says, well, there might be an epidemic of lawsuits, but let's be clear that it's not currently a problem. There's only a handful of COVID liability lawsuits in the country. In fact, tort lawsuits are down this year as compared to last year. What there is an epidemic of in this country is hunger, is homelessness, housing insecurity, and that's what we need to be focusing on right now. Let's talk about what is going to expire if a relief bill doesn't happen in the next few days. There's pandemic emergency unemployment compensation, pandemic unemployment assistant, paid leave protection, renter eviction moratorium, home foreclosure and eviction moratorium, student loan deferment, penalty free retirement withdrawal, unspent COVID relief funds, use of PPP funds, employee retention credit, employee payroll tax deferral, suspended Medicaid sequester cuts, airline and national security loans. That is a lot of things that affects a lot of Americans. When you're looking at all that is out there, that is on the line, I'm wondering where's the urgency in Congress? Why do we keep hearing talking and talking and talking and not voting? Why haven't we see a bill come to the floor yet? Well, look, Democrats have voted. The House has voted. We voted back in June or July for the heroes package and we've continued to want to negotiate and we've stayed in session and tried to reach a compromise and I want to be clear. Many Republicans are willing to compromise. Many Senate Republicans are willing to compromise. This isn't about the dollar figure of relief. We all understand that we could do a little bit less now and do the rest to come. This is about Senator McConnell holding out, trying to basically give a license to kill to big corporations that engage in reckless behavior to endanger workers and employees and Americans. So we all, Republicans and Democrats agree. There's a potential to move forward here to continue those programs if he will drop this ridiculous and I think corrupt attempt to try to put these imaginary needs of big corporations ahead of the needs of the American people which are very, very real. And as you point out, are extremely urgent. You've been in Congress a few years now so I'm wondering if you have any insight for why we are in the situation we're in. We're asking people to stay at home because we don't want the virus to spread but we're giving people no ability to stay home and to maintain their livelihoods. Don't work but we're not gonna help you even though you're not working. This is not happening in Europe. In Europe they're making sure that people do have the ability to stay home. Why are we functionally this way? Why can't we support people in the middle of a crisis? Well, for me, I think this really boils down to a question about who do representatives in government answer to. We have a campaign finance system unlike anything seen in Europe. So the idea that the interests of businesses our big corporations would come in front of the interests and needs of the American people and it is unfathomable in most countries in this world but so is our campaign finance system. That's why I don't take corporate PAC money. It's why I don't take contributions from lobbyists because I think I'm supposed to work on behalf of the American people and that means making sure that we have a strong healthy economy which means giving Americans disaster relief payments so they can put food on the table so they can keep a roof over their head during this time and be ready to go back to work when it's safe to do so. So I've gotta say that Katie Porter is quickly becoming one of my favorite members of Congress and I'm really glad that she made that point about why we're so different when compared to other developed countries. It's because we have a completely broken campaign finance system where we basically legalized bribery in this country. So because Mitch McConnell's only initiative in Congress and as Senate Majority Leader is to look out for his corporate donors, he can use his power as majority leader to shut down any negotiation that doesn't deliver enough to corporate America and it's really disgusting and I feel like he doesn't get enough backlash for everything that he does or doesn't do, like not allowing votes to come to the floor of the Senate. I mean, he really is shutting down America unilaterally, not allowing bills to pass. And it's easy to look at Nancy Pelosi and the way that she always fumbles when it comes to negotiating with Republicans and when you see Donald Trump say he supports something in Nancy Pelosi, echo the same sentiment and it doesn't get passed, you can chalk that up to incompetence but at the end of the day, nine times out of 10, Mitch McConnell is the lowest common denominator. He's the one who single-handedly kills these talks. Now, it's funny because we always have to go through this if we're talking about legislation that will help the American people but if it comes to a giveaway to corporate America or expanding the defense budget, that always passes easily. And it's because, as Katie Porter explained, our broken campaign finance system makes it so that way we're in this state of affairs where corporate America is always being represented but the American people are being left aside. It's disgusting. And you know, Bernie Sanders made the same point in an interview with MSNBC and he really does a great job at shedding light on just how broken our system is. The question now is whether or not Mitch McConnell is gonna turn his back as your report just indicated on the incredible suffering that the American people, the working people are now experiencing, unemployment, a high. We have a record level of hunger in America. Millions of people are facing evictions. This is an emergency. Congress has gotta respond aggressively to help working families. You know, Stephanie, I always get a kick. Here in Washington when we go to war, there's endless amounts of money. Tax breaks for billionaires, endless amounts of money. Corporate welfare, endless amounts of money. When children are going hungry in America today, suddenly we don't have enough money. That's crap, that's wrong. And if we have got to stay here throughout Christmas, which is the last thing in the world that I would wanna do, we are gonna stay here because we are gonna make sure that struggling working families in this country get the help they desperately need. Senator, I'm not agreeing with you fundamentally but I wanna talk to you practically. You've been the lead sponsor of 422 bills during your 30 years in Congress, but only seven of them have become law. Given that record and how dire things are as you just laid out, do you need to find another lane or take a different approach here? I don't think that's the issue, Stephanie. I mean, you can ask me how many other senators have passed significant legislation in recent years. Question is you could name post offices and so forth and so on. Some of the legislation that I've worked on, the Veterans Bill, for example, has been very significant in passing. But the issue right now is, is the United States Congress gonna stand up for working people or not? And I am doing my best to rally not only Democrats but Republicans as well. Now, as you may know, the proposal that came out of the White House just yesterday talks not about $1,200 per person, but 600, that's unacceptable. And by the way, they wanna do away with all extended unemployment benefits. And that is also unacceptable. As your report, your very excellent report indicated, all over the world, countries are responding to the pain that working families are experiencing. We have gotta do the same. This terrible, terrible pandemic is showing the American people. Is how far behind we are of the countries around the world and taking care of our children, taking care of the unemployed, taking care of the elderly, taking care of the sick with a richest country in the history of the world. 92 million people today are uninsured or underinsured. That is beyond belief. That is why in my view, we've gotta move to Medicare for all single payer to guarantee healthcare to all people. And that last point is absolutely spot on. It really took this pandemic to expose just how broken our government is. The response has been comparable to what we'd expect from a failed state. We got what, a one-time payment of $1,200 back in March. And here we are in December. And we don't even know if this latest round of negotiations for a stimulus will go anywhere. Is it even going to bear any fruit? We have no idea. It depends on what King Mitch McConnell wants. It's just, it's morally reprehensible. Like, I want people to see that if your government isn't looking out for you when we are facing an eviction crisis and societal collapse as a result of this pandemic, if they're not looking out for you now when you need it the most, do you ever expect them to look out for you when there's no pandemic? If they won't even do it now? I mean, they are failing the most basic expectations of governments. So people have gotta start paying attention and acknowledge the fact that you don't have healthcare in a pandemic. The fact that anyone is going homeless during a pandemic. This is a failure on government. It's not a failure on you. It's a failure on government. Now, I've got a point out since we watched the clip, Stephanie really just randomly decided to attack Bernie Sanders. You've sponsored 422 bills, but only seven have become law. So apparently that's supposed to speak to Bernie Sanders inability to get anything he wants codified into law. But doesn't that say more about the incompetence of Congress than anything? Like you're literally having a conversation with Bernie Sanders about how, it's really difficult to reach a compromise. And we don't know if this latest round of stimulus talks is going to pass. And if it does pass, will it actually be sufficient and include another $1,200 direct cash payment? But yet you blame Bernie Sanders who's actually pushing for the right thing. I mean, these folks are just hacks. You're bringing him on the program to discuss how broken Congress is, how broken our government is, and yet you're blaming him for things that he supports not getting passed. It's not like Bernie Sanders is uniquely incompetent. No, our fucking entire form of governance is broken. So why would you go out of your way to prepare that hacky attack on him when you know what's going on? At least I hope you know what's going on, but I'm assuming that you realize what's going on. You know, the other day, Stephanie really had a really enlightening segment where she talked about her diagnosis with COVID-19 and how basically the way that her and her husband responded was they just stayed home. Her kids were asymptomatic, but her and her husband had it and they stayed home until it passed. But she said, you know, a lot of people can't do that. They're not financially secure enough to stay home. So you know that that's a failure of government. You made this point. So why would you point to Bernie Sanders? One of the few people in Congress standing up for the American people and make it seem as if he's the one who's incompetent when you know what's happening. So I mean, I don't want to go too off track here because, you know, this ultimately is about stimulus negotiations, but that just irritated me. But I mean, look, at the end of the day, Mitch McConnell is the lowest common denominator. And whether or not we see another round of stimulus payments, direct cash payments, this will come down to whether or not Mitch McConnell gets what he wants. So as many of you know, there are two runoff races taking place in the state of Georgia that are ultimately going to determine which party controls the U.S. Senate and both Republicans in these races have been busted doing insider trading. Once they were briefed on the coronavirus pandemic and anticipated an economic collapse, they sold their stocks. Now this was something that we already knew and a Senate ethics investigation cleared them because there's not enough evidence to deduce that they actually sold stocks based on information that they received as United States senators. I mean, that is in persuasive to me because we can never really prove that a quid pro quo is taking place when politicians do the bidding of their corporate donors. But there's an implication that if you take money from a particular industry, they're going to expect you to not impose new regulations on them or worse, deregulate them furthermore. So, you know, this doesn't mean that she isn't involved in insider trading, but still, you know, it's hard to prove these things. But what's funny is that we're getting more information about the extent to which David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler were involved in insider trading. And really, this isn't so open and shut. They were pretty brazen about their actions and, you know, it's not just them, to be fair, Inhofe, Feinstein, Burr, they also were involved in insider trading and the investigation with regard to Richard Burr is still taking place. But we're learning more about David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, and I honestly, I don't know how they expect to get away with this when they're so shameless. It's like they want to be caught because Kelly Loeffler's husband, he made decisions based on the information that only someone who's a United States senator, his wife, would know. And the revelations here from the story are draw-dropping. So as Molly Redden of Hubpost reports, in mid-March with the American economy in free fall, Jeffrey Spretcher, husband to Senator Kelly Loeffler and chair of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, made an unusual change to his stock portfolio. He started buying. For weeks, the couple had done almost nothing but sell. Loeffler was one of several senators who faced public outrage for unloading millions of dollars in stock before most Americans understood the towering threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Then shortly before the CARES Act, a two trillion emergency stimulus package was introduced in the Senate. Her husband reversed course and purchased up to $1 million in new shares a Huffpost investigation has found. The terms of the CARES Act were still mostly a secret, known primarily to Republican senators while members of their party crafted the legislation. But in the days before the bill's introduction, Spretcher managed to invest in several industries, insurance and energy that were poised to take advantage of the bill's very specific provisions. Those purchases are just the latest to raise questions about whether Loeffler, the Senate's richest member, has ever used the insider knowledge she gleaned on Capitol Hill to inform her own portfolio. After the Daily Beast revealed the extent of Loeffler's pre-pandemic sell-off, investigators for the FBI contacted her for evidence related to her trades. Soon after Loeffler said she provided records to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee that showed her lack of day-to-day involvement in her and her husband's investment accounts. In May, Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department had closed investigations into Loeffler, Innerhofen, Feinstein, citing a lack of proof they had violated the law but that the inquiry into Burr remained open. So I think that it may be time to reopen these investigations as we learn more about the specifics here. This is shameless. I mean, are we really gonna pretend like we don't have enough evidence to deduce that she was using her insider knowledge to personally enrich herself and her family? Are we really gonna pretend that right now? I mean, how shameless do you have to be? It's like, unless they say explicitly, I did insider trading, then we'll never have enough proof to arrest them and prosecute them. Like, what more do you want? I think that there's probably more to be said with regard to Feinstein and Innerhofen. The way I see it is that all of them need to go to jail and they could share a jail cell for all I care. But this behavior, if you don't rein it in, if there's no accountability, then how do you expect this behavior to stop? And the answer is that you shouldn't. And Kelly Loeffler is so corrupt. By the way, this is her with the QAnon conspiracy theorist, Marjorie Taylor-Green. But she's so corrupt that on Fox News, she violated more ethics rules by soliciting donations for her campaign to which representative Katie Porter responded by saying maybe the senator would be less worried about her election if she spent her time actually helping the American people instead of breaking ethics rules and campaigning using taxpayer resources. And I love that. I love Katie Porter. Yeah, I mean, listen, the fact that the races in Georgia are even as close as they are, it really is an indictment on the media. And it's an indictment on the American people as well. Let's be clear, because it shouldn't be this close. When you have people who are basically brazenly corrupt, they shouldn't be seeking reelection. They should be disqualified. There should be so much pressure for them to resign that this election isn't even close. But yet they may very well win after we have ample evidence that proves they were involved in insider trading schemes. And there's gonna be no accountability. Joe Biden has named Marcia Fudge from Ohio to be the HUD secretary. Now, the reason why this is important news for you, for me, for the left, isn't necessarily because I have a strong opinion about Marcia Fudge either way, but because of who might be running to replace her. Reportedly, the individual considering running for Marcia Fudge's old seat is none other than Nina Turner. If this is true, I cannot tell you how big of a deal this would be for the left and progressive movement. A lot of signs and evidence point to this being true, although Nina Turner hasn't confirmed anything yet. However, there's a lot of reasons to believe that this is going to happen. So as Holly Otterbyn and Alex Thompson of Politico Report, former Ohio State Senator and top Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner is contemplating a run for representative Marcia Fudge's seat if Joe Biden brings the Ohio member of Congress into his administration, according to two people close to Turner. Reached by phone, Turner was coy. Currently, there is no vacancy in the district and if it becomes vacant, things will unfold as they should, she said. Pressed on whether she was considering a run, Turner said, well, there's been an outcry for me to at least consider it. You know, I'm a public servant through and through, but I'm just going to leave it there for now. She's not saying much, but her response tells us a lot. Now on top of that, the author of this article, one of them anyways, tweeted this out. Nina Turner has filed with the FEC for Fudge's seat in Ohio. Reached by phone, she says she has nothing to add. I'm in my 48 hours, she said, but when I reached the campaign treasurer on the FEC forum, they said they'd pass along my message, quote, to the campaign. This is happening. This is happening and I could barely contain my excitement. I feel the way I felt back in, I think it was February of 2019 when Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for president again. This genuinely gives me hope in a way that I haven't felt since that time. And this is really important. Nina Turner is someone who wouldn't just be another progressive in Congress. She is a leader of this movement and she could be the leader of this movement. Now the reason why her running is important is because she has a really strong shot at winning. First of all, she has access to a lot of Bernie Sanders staffers that would likely very willingly jump on board. On top of that, all of the infrastructure that Bernie Sanders built up around, you know, grassroots fundraising, all of the donors that Bernie Sanders had would almost certainly support Nina Turner. I know I would, the minute she announces, I'm gonna sign up to donate 27 bucks a month to her as I did with Bernie Sanders. So there's a lot that she has going for her to win this seat. I don't know what the primary is going to look like. I can imagine that the Democratic Party establishment may try to recruit individuals to run against her because they don't want Nina Turner to win. But Nina Turner is Nina Turner. If you're running against her, good luck. Good luck. And you know, Nina Turner is someone who I think that as it is now, she's qualified to run for president if she wanted it. But I think this is actually a really important step if she ever wants to seek out the presidency because one, it'll bolster the experience that she already has. I'm not necessarily worried that the establishment is going to attack her for not being experienced because, you know, as a state senator, you do have a lot of experience. And after so many people in the Democratic Party supported Pete Buttigieg, a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, I mean, you can't say that he's experienced, but Nina Turner is not. So that's not necessarily what I'm worried about. But what I like is that this gives her the opportunity to kind of pave her own path because right now she's associated with Bernie Sanders when you think of Nina Turner, you think about Bernie Sanders and it's important for her to establish her own national profile in this way, right? Because there is a lot of baggage with Bernie Sanders. For whatever reason, a lot of people don't like Bernie Sanders and part of this is propaganda because of the media and even some individuals who like AOC dislike Bernie Sanders. So if Nina Turner can kind of create a name for herself nationally that's not associated with Bernie Sanders, I think this can help her because Bernie Sanders ran for president twice and he lost both times. So that association, I don't necessarily think it would hurt her, but it would help her to kind of create a name for herself that doesn't include Bernie Sanders. Like we don't wanna think of her as a Bernie Sanders surrogate. We want to think of Nina Turner as Nina Turner. And I know that the Sanders supporters do myself, I think of her as the leader of this movement. But we need America to see her as a leader. And if they saw her in Congress, saw the things that she could accomplish, the things that she'd be able to do, that would really help her chances if she wanted to run for president. But whatever she wants to do, I'm on board with it. I support whatever she wants. She wants to run for Congress. I'm there. If she wants to run for president in 2024, I'm there too. I think that Nina Turner is someone who is so unique and so special to this movement that what she does could literally determine the future of the leftist movement, the progressive movement in America. That's how meaningful her presence is. So this honestly, this news made my day. I know it made your day too, probably when you heard this, but when I actually saw this, I thought, oh my God, this is actually a reason to be hopeful because part of the reason why I was so depressed after Bernie Sanders dropped out was because, I mean, who else is going to take his place? Bernie Sanders, he's not young. And I don't know who wants to step up. I mean, we have AOC potentially wanting to run for president maybe in the future, but would she actually want to do that? She's not going to be old enough. I don't think by 2024, we need like a lot of folks who would be interested in running. And the person who keeps coming up in my mind to continue on Bernie Sanders legacy and be the new leader of this movement is Nina Turner. Like anytime I try to put someone else in that place, it doesn't fit properly because she's the one. She's always been the one. So this news is encouraging to me because it's not just about this one seed, Marcia Fudge's old seed. This is about the long-term health and relevance, quite frankly, of the progressive left in America. And if she is able to win this, which I think she'd have a great chance at it, we'd be really, we'd be on a good path going forward. So I'm over the moon about this news. Of course, it's not official yet and I don't wanna step on her toes by like talking about this when she hasn't even announced, but there's a lot of evidence and a lot of talk around her and just the fact that there's this much noise around her possibly running. It kind of shows you that people know that this individual is a powerhouse, right? Nina Turner running for Congress. I mean, who is gonna wanna run against her? That's just, you're gonna get decimated. You know, so for someone to step up and run for Congress, if anyone needed to be there, it would be someone like Nina Turner, who we need as a fighter. But again, it's not just about her role in Congress. This is about the future and where she's going to go. And when it comes to Nina Turner, sky is the limit, honestly. So I'm thrilled. I'll reserve my excitement until she actually makes it official and announces because I feel like I don't wanna get my hopes up and this isn't real. Maybe she's making the moves, but ultimately changes her mind. But if she wants to run, she has my absolute full support. I think that that goes without saying. I think everyone would support Nina Turner, who supported Bernie Sanders. So yeah, Nina Turner might run for Congress or will very likely run for Congress. Yeah, I like that. The Electoral College will be voting on the 14th of December and they will be finalizing the results of the election. All that's left is for Congress to approve of it in January, but that hasn't stopped Donald Trump from still tweeting about the election and how he won and there was fraud. And now he is explicitly calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the election, disenfranchising literally millions of people. He tweeted out the Supreme Court has a chance to save our country from the greatest election abuse in the history of the United States. 78% of the people feel know the election was rigged. Now, I don't know what poll he's referring to there. Maybe it's some Twitter poll. It doesn't matter. He lost and he knows he lost, but he doesn't care. He thinks that he's entitled to have the Supreme Court hear his case because he appointed three Supreme Court justices. So he's thinking, look, I'm telling them that the election was rigged and that I should be the president. So they should just give me what I want. It doesn't work that way. That's not the way that our judicial system functions. It's certainly a corrupted system that needs to be reformed, but it doesn't work that way. It's not that bad, thankfully. But I mean, even though it's Donald Trump and we're all not surprised by this, this is still really important. Like this is the sitting president calling for authoritarianism. Like if he got what he wanted, this would no longer be a democracy. Democracy, as we know it, would be dead and gone. So it doesn't work like that, but he doesn't care because he only cares about himself. Now, if this were just Donald Trump who is doing this, that would be one thing, but it's not just Donald Trump. And when he's out, the Republican Party isn't suddenly going to have an epiphany and think, oh, wow, I support democracy. I mean, throughout the years, they've been chipping away at our democratic institutions. They've been doing voter suppression more and more to win elections, but now they are just jumping on board with Donald Trump's attempt to steal the election. Now, I think that this lawsuit isn't going to go anywhere likely, but the fact that they are openly endorsing the idea that democracy should be undermined in a brazen way should scare everyone because they're not going to change their minds when Trump is out of office. You're not going to put the cat back in the bag once you become authoritarian, you stay that way. Now, I'm, of course, referring to the Texas lawsuit where they are trying to get the results of other states overturned because they are alleging that mail-in ballots violated the law. Like, this is such a complex web of lies that they're trying to tell to get to the conclusion. And ultimately, I don't think that they're gonna have standing in court to say that other states are doing something unconstitutional and they're violating their own constitutions. Having said that, though, what I care about is the fact that more than a hundred Republicans have signed onto this effort, an effort to overturn the results of the election. That includes Matt Gaetz, Louis Gohmert, and basically half of the GOP, House Caucus. So as the Hill reports, more than 100 House Republicans on Thursday signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in four swing states, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that handed Democrat Joe Biden the White House. This brief presents our concern as members of Congress shared by untold millions of their constituents that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections states the brief from GOP lawmakers. So what they're doing here is admitting that they're against democracy, but this is really Orwellian because while they attack democracy, while they call for the result of a democratic election to be overturned, they're claiming that we're the ones who actually are the true proponents of democracy. We're the ones who support democracy. That's why we're calling on democracy to be overturned. And the sad thing is that the base believes this and perhaps a lot of these Republicans are signing onto this amicus brief because they're afraid of what the base thinks. And let's face it now, we are dealing with a political party and their base who is delusional. Like we are living through George Orwell's America, but for me to say that, they'd say, no, no, no, you're the one who's putting us in George Orwell's America because you're the ones who stole democracy. Like it's a situation that I don't know how this is sustainable. And a new report from the Washington Post found that only 27 Republicans acknowledged the basic reality that Joe Biden won. Two congressional Republicans actually think that Trump is the winner. 220 congressional Republicans overall, they won't even say who won. So that's 88% of congressional Republicans. I mean, how do you go forward? How do you work with folks like this who deny basic reality, basic facts, who think the opposite of what happened is the real reality? It's just, it's a really sad situation. Like I think a lot of liberals don't understand how much work there is to be done. They don't get it. Biden is not up to the task. Biden is not going to be able to repair these divides like he says by just reaching out to Republicans creating some government entity of some sort that reaches out to conservatives. That's not going to cut it. The only thing that will break the temperature here or break the fever I should say and stop this delusions is if people are no longer susceptible to said radicalization, they have to have their material conditions met. And what we're looking at here is societal collapse. We're facing an eviction crisis. And we don't even know if we're gonna see a second round of stimulus checks. We don't even know. So as people work longer hours for lower wages, get more and more desperate, this delusion will continue and the Republican Party is not going to change once Trump is out. Trump may not have been successful at stealing this election, but if Republicans are now openly embracing authoritarianism and they know they can say anything, deny reality outright and their base will still believe them, we are in for a really, really difficult couple of decades if this is the path that we're headed on because we have the Democratic Party who functionally is the moderate Republican Party now or the Republican Party of the 2000s and we have a Republican Party that is just they're in another dimension mentally. They're nowhere to be found. So how are we supposed to come together with approximately 50% of a country who denies objective reality? Like what do you do in that situation? I don't think there's a right answer to that. But what's important is that we grapple with this fact because this isn't going to go away with Donald Trump. This delusion of this authoritarianism and an embrace of anti-democratic behavior, this is gonna be with us for quite some time. And just because Trump didn't steal the election this time doesn't mean that Republicans in the future won't be successful at killing democracy. We already are seeing them just brazenly say I wanna overturn the result of our democratic elections. That's a really bad sign. I don't think people fully understand how bad of a sign this is for the long-term health of our democracy. Like we are in the end stage of our democracy unless we can somehow reverse this. But you know, we need a miracle. If you're a leftist or a socialist, I think you probably already know that Joe Biden is extremely, extremely out of touch. And he's just not the right person for this moment in time. But like it or not, he's gonna be the next president. So I know that some people were hopeful that maybe there was a glimmer of hope that maybe on some issues he'd wake up and he'd be less out of touch than he previously presented himself to be. Unfortunately, leaked audio reveals that he is as out of touch as everyone feared, unfortunately. So Ryan Grimm of the Intercept explains, Democrats in the House, Senate, and around the country have been urging president-elect Joe Biden to use the maximum amount of executive authority available to him in order to grow the economy, expand civil rights, protect the climate, and otherwise implement the agenda he ran on despite the expected obstruction from a Republican Senate. On Tuesday, a group of civil rights leaders urged him privately to take a slew of executive actions during a two-hour virtual meeting. While Biden didn't close the door to anything specific, he was far from enthusiastic about the idea of using executive action. A recording of the virtual meeting attended by Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and civil rights leaders was obtained by the Intercept. Here's what Biden told civil rights leaders. Quote, there's some things that I'm going to be able to do by executive order. I'm not going to hesitate to do it, but what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to do what used to, Vanita Gupta probably used to get angry with me during the debates, when you'd have some of the people you were supporting saying on day one, I'm gonna have an executive order to do this, not within the constitutional authority. I'm not going to violate the constitution. Executive authority that my progressive friends talk about is way beyond the bounds. And as one of you said, maybe it was you, Reverend Al Sharpton, whether it's far left or far right, there is a constitution. It's our only hope. Our only hope and the way to deal with it is where I have executive authority. I will use it to undo every single damn thing this guy has done by executive authority, but I'm not going to exercise executive authority where it's a question, where I can come along and say, I can do away with assault weapons. There's no executive authority to do away that. And no one has fought harder to get rid of assault weapons than me, but you can't do it by executive order. We do that. Next guy comes along and says, well, guess what? By executive order, I guess everybody can have machine guns again. So we gotta be careful. Biden also warned the civil rights leaders that pressure on the incoming administration around police reform could hurt the party's chances in the Georgia Senate runoffs, claiming that the Republicans' ability to define that party as in favor of defunding the police is how they beat the living hell out of us across the country. So, so much about his assumptions of what the left is expecting. It's just completely off base. And the first thing I've gotta respond to is defunding the police. And he says that, you know, civil rights leaders shouldn't pressure his administration to do police reform until after the Georgia runoffs because that could hurt their chances. I don't think he realizes that if you want a chance to win both of those seats, you're not going to do it without black voters in Georgia. You do realize that, right? So basically turning a blind eye to their demands is the worst possible thing you can do. If you win, if John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win, it's going to be because black voters turned out. So for you trying to play 40 chess and forcing them to not pressure you until after this election, I mean, first of all, you're not even going to be sworn in until after this election takes place. Second of all, you're basically just asking them to shut up. Don't talk about civil rights. Don't talk about defunding the police. Don't talk about police reform cause you could hurt their chances. When in actuality, these are the issues you have to touch on if you want to win. It's shocking. Like it's honestly shocking that he's this out of touch. Now, when it comes to executive orders, basically he is assuming that we want him to go above and beyond what the constitution allows. Nobody's asking you to violate the constitution you moron. We're asking you to take action if you are able to do so, if it is within the confines of the constitution. If you can make a case that taking some action falls within the realms of what's constitutionally permissible, that's what we want you to do. We don't want you to violate the constitution dummy. That's not what we're asking. Like, of course, if you do a lot of things via executive order, that's not ideal because the next administration can easily overturn it. But if it's possible for you to undo the damage that Trump has caused, if it's possible for you to take action if Republicans retain control of the Senate and they're still obstructing everything you want, then you should do it. We're not saying you should do everything via executive order. The fact that this is his interpretation of what progressives want, it's insane. And it's funny because one of the main asks from progressives, including people like Chuck Schumer, which it's probably because he, you know, has a primary coming up. But progressives are very vocal about wanting him to take executive action to cancel student debt. It's an easy thing that you can do to reward the people who got you elected and turn them out in two years and four years. So he is basically saying, things like that, not gonna happen. It's not constitutional, except what did Donald Trump do? He canceled some student loans of veterans, but he still used the pen to do that. So if you're not going to take whatever action you can, that is constitutionally permissible to actually change people's lives. I mean, you could look forward to getting decimated in 2022. And, you know, I can foresee a situation where Republicans, they retake control of all of government back in 2024 because Joe Biden, he just, he doesn't get it. You think that we're asking you to violate the constitution when that's not what we're asking, okay? If you can do something and the Senate and Congress is unwilling to act, we're saying you should do that. And if it's easy, if you can cancel student debt via executive order, which you can, then do it. But he's like, no, you guys just want me to like, break the law and violate the constitution. It's just, he is insufferable. Again, he is not going to be able to meet this moment. And as a result, Democrats will be decimated in upcoming elections. I hope I'm wrong. I hope that he proves to be wrong, but we've gotten every indication from him that we're going to be proven right. All right, that is all that I have. I've said everything that's on my heart and now it is time for us to go. So thank you all so much for watching if you've made it this far. As usual, we're not gonna close the show without thanking the people who make this show possible. All of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members. And if YouTube would like to join the independent progressive media revolution and get access to our videos a little bit earlier than everyone else on YouTube, you can do so by going to humanusreport.com Patreon.com slash HumanistReport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. And you will get our videos posted usually the night before they go up. Sometimes they go up days on Patreon before they they're up on YouTube. So, you know, it's a nice little perk for people who support this show. So I really appreciate all of you. But that's it. I will see you all next week. I hope you like the show. Yeah, I'm Mike Figueredo. This has been the Humanist Report. Take care, everyone.