 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 humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 289 of the program. Today is Friday May 7th and before we get started as usual I want to take some time to thank all of the folks who make this show possible. All of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members I'll let you either sign up for the very first time to support us this week or increase the monthly plans that they were already giving us and that includes the great Bella M, Bob Foster, Charlotte Villanova, Christopher Ware, George Townsend, Havik King Drago, Jenna Nix, Marcus Benai, Maxim, Michael DeMarco, Radio Ardilla, Tom Anderson, Tony, Sekmara, Shea Tealy and Vito Kraha. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you would also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. This week we've got another great episode for you. We'll name and shame politicians and public officials fighting to maintain the current vaccine apartheid that's going on around the globe. And that also includes Chris Coons, who invoked the January 6th insurrection to defend vaccine apartheid. Yeah, pretty shameless. And on the subject of COVID-19, we'll shine a spotlight on the folks hoping to prolong the pandemic even further. And while we're on the subject of stupidity, we'll talk about how Caitlin Jenner, a transgender woman, endorsed anti-trans discrimination. Newsmax's latest Biden scandal is certainly interesting. And we'll talk about that. Also, Donald Trump's social media safe space has launched and a corporate Democrats pathetic attempt to explain why he's blocking pro union legislation is absolutely idiotic. And we will talk about it as well. Additionally, activist Lauren Steiner challenges the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate on Medicare for All and CEO Dan Price advocated for a single pair on Fox Business News. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's program. Let's go ahead and get right to it. I hope you all enjoy what I have in store for you. When it comes to the intellectual property rights currently stopping other countries from manufacturing their own generic COVID-19 vaccines, there's a lot of folks who are really showing their true colors. People in powerful positions, politicians, public health officials who are effectively coming out in favor of vaccine apartheid. And that's not even mentioning the folks who are being conspicuously silent on this very important issue. So, of course, I don't think it's too surprising to know that Republicans are expectedly siding with the pharmaceutical giants here, protecting their profits. But it's also a lot of Democrats who are currently trying to twist themselves into pretzels to justify their inhumane pro-vaccine apartheid stances, for example, Democratic Senator from Delaware Chris Coons invoked the January 6th insurrection to defend pharmaceutical giants having exclusive rights to manufacture the world supply of the COVID-19 vaccines. And he said all of this with a straight face. Now, thankfully, there are a number of folks who are choosing to speak up and do the right thing. More than a hundred House Democrats have actually signed onto a letter urging Joe Biden to follow through on his campaign promise and actually waive the IP rights of these COVID vaccines. And as Daniel Moranz of HuffPost reports, representative Jan Shikowsky plans to unveil a letter to President Joe Biden on Tuesday, calling for the White House to temporarily lift trade-related intellectual property rights that prevent many developing countries from manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. A total of 110 of the 218 House Democrats, including Shikowsky, have signed the letter, ensuring it will have the support of a majority of House Democratic caucus, but none of the nine House Democrats among Congress's top 25 recipients of donations from pharmaceutical industry packs in the 2020 election cycle have signed the letter. As HuffPost reported last Wednesday, Democratic Representative Scott Peters of California and Ron Kind of Wisconsin, number seven and 19, respectively, on the top 25 list, have actually solicited support for another letter to Biden, asking him to not waive the intellectual property rules. HuffPost reached out to the remaining seven Democrats on the list to ask why they were not supporting the intellectual property waiver. The offices of House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone of New Jersey, number four, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal of Massachusetts, number six, and representatives Anna Eschew of California, number nine, Brad Schneider of Illinois, number 20, Kurt Schroeder of Oregon, number 22. And Raul Ruiz of California, number 25, did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment. And I wonder why. It's because these folks are cowards and they know what they're doing. They're protecting the profits of their donors. And they know that if they try to defend what's indefensible, if they come out and unveil that they're pro-vaccine apartheid, then they're going to look bad. It's a terrible look, because quite frankly, to take a pro-death stance, that is a bad look. But their silence is deafening and their unwillingness to support the vaccine waiver, looking at that and the campaign contributions that they took that does you all that you need to know. But it's not just politicians who are taking this stance. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the most trusted figures when it comes to public health as it relates to COVID-19, has chosen to side with Republicans and the virus on this particular issue, because Kieran Stacey of Financial Times reports, one of Joe Biden's top coronavirus advisors has warned that forcing drug companies to abandon intellectual property rights to COVID-19 vaccines risks backfiring if it leads to long legal disputes. Fauci told the Financial Times on Monday that he was agnostic about how to boost vaccine supply to developing countries, but he added, going back and forth, consuming time and lawyers and a legal argument about waivers. That is not the end game. People are dying around the world and we have to get vaccines into their arms in the fastest and most efficient way possible. The proposal to allow countries to temporarily override patent rights for COVID-19 related medical products was put forward at the WTO by India and South Africa in October. The plan was designed to help developing countries make copies of the vaccines without fear of being sued. It has been backed by almost 60 countries, more than 100 members of the US Congress and several former world leaders. If only Dr. Anthony Fauci was in a position of power where he could influence the president of the United States to waive the IP rights so that way there won't be lawsuits. That's the whole point of the waiver, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to make sure there aren't these legal battles. But he changed up his argument a little bit when he was actually pressed further about this on MSNBC. And as you're going to see, his defense of vaccine apartheid is embarrassingly pathetic. There is increasing pressure on the president, as you know, to ignore big pharma and temporarily waive patent protections on the COVID vaccine. 60 countries led by India and South Africa, 100 members of the US Congress, 100 Nobel laureates, multiple former world leaders, your friend, Dr. Tedros, the head of the World Health Organization. They all say it's the right thing to do to help developing countries in particular. You seem to disagree. According to an interview you did with the FT yesterday. Why are they all wrong, Dr. Fauci? No, no, they're not all wrong and I don't necessarily disagree. I'm really quite agnostic on that. My approach is that the end game is where I want to go. I want to see people now in the developing countries getting vaccinated. However you do that as quickly as possible is fine with me. One of the complicating issues of the so-called waiving the patents is that by the time you then get set up to get the technology transferred to other countries to be able to do it, you may be going into the end of 2022, the beginning of 2023, at which point a lot of people will have died. So I'm not against transferring technology. And I'm agnostic about the trip's waiver. The one thing I am bullish on and I really do feel how can you be to do? How can you be agnostic, though? How can you be agnostic? You're the chief medical adviser. If the president says, Dr. Fauci, what should I do? What's your advice? What are you going to tell him? I'm telling get people vaccinated as quickly as you possibly can. That means getting billions of doses from companies and getting it to the people in the lower middle income countries at a very, very low price that they can afford, do it and do it now, because if you want to start transferring technology, you're going to get it to them a year and a half from now. So I can be agnostic about it. He's making this implicit assumption that we are advocating for the IP waiver in lieu of the United States distributing these vaccines around the globe. When nobody said that, nobody's advocating for that. You made that up. You're the one who's saying that. These are not mutually exclusive things, but his response here, you know, it's not surprising considering this is the guy who came out against price controls for the covid vaccines, as journalist Lee Fung points out. So shame on Dr. Anthony Fauci. If I were him, I would resign in shame because the minute a public health official starts being more concerned about profits over public health, you're no longer welcome. You're no longer trusted by resign. Now, I want to refer to a comment made by Earl Blumenauer, a Democratic representative who isn't perfect, but he actually does support the waiver and he made a phenomenal point about this. He says, if the pharmaceutical industry had spent as much time trying to boost production as they spent trying to fight this waiver, we may not have even needed the waiver. And that is such a fantastic point. And they're so transparent. It's obvious that the reason why they want to be the exclusive manufacturers of the world's supply of vaccines is because it is very profitable. Pfizer is posting very high profits and about a third of their profits is all because of the covid vaccine. If there is a generic alternative available around the globe, do you think that's going to benefit Pfizer's bottom line? Of course not. They benefit if there's only a couple of manufacturers of the vaccines that are trying to cut out the competition so they could boost profits. It's incredibly disgusting. And honestly, anyone who's defending this or anyone in a position of power who's remaining silent, they're part of the problem. They effectively support vaccine apartheid unless they explicitly speak out against it explicitly, support this IP waiver. Now, Joe Biden, we shouldn't have to be exerting this much pressure on Joe Biden, because on the campaign trail, Adi Barkan asked him if it's the case that the United States is the first country to develop a covid-19 vaccine, will we share the recipe with the world? And Joe Biden was very clear. So Adi Barkan, in a video released with a more perfect union, he basically tries to make an appeal to Joe Biden's humanity. And, you know, this is a powerful video, but I don't necessarily know that it's going to work because I think that Joe Biden has lost all sense of humanity and decency being in power because that's what it does to people. But nonetheless, take a look at this great video from Adi Barkan. Dear President Biden, I want to remind you of a promise you made to me and to the American people. If the US discovers a vaccine first, will you commit to sharing that technology with other countries? And we'll make sure there are no patents to stand in the way of other countries and companies mass producing those life-saving vaccines. Absolutely positively. This is the only humane thing in the world to do. Mr. President, you and I are both safe from this deadly pandemic because we could get the vaccine and we will stay safe if you reverse Trump's inhumane policies and we vaccinate the entire world. That is the only way that we can prevent the development of vaccine resistant coronavirus variants. But billions of families around the world aren't as lucky as you and me. India is being engulfed by this virus and its people are utterly helpless. Mass cremations and funeral pyres now lighting. India has set a global record for daily infections. Indians being abandoned in the teeth of a deadly disease. Only around two percent of Indians are fully inoculated. If any American leader of our lifetime has understood the value of a single life and the deep pain of loss, it is you. But you also know the beauty of salvation. You know the joys that life can bring. When I asked you last year if you would change the global rules for vaccines, you did not hesitate, equivocate or mince your words. The answer is yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's not only a good thing to do, it's overwhelmingly in our interest to do it as well. May 5th will be your moment, America's moment to steer us down a more just and humane path. Governments from around the globe will gather at the World Trade Organization. They will ask America to waive the rules that are blocking them from making enough vaccines to protect their people. In this pandemic, millions of families around the world are grieving because of one stray cough, one brief mistake, one unfortunate moment. American innovation has delivered health and safety to the people of this country. But billions of people have been excluded. Their dreams are no less real than ours. Their love is no less strong. Their lives are no less worthy. But because they live somewhere else, because they have less money, because the international laws are unfair, and because the pharmaceutical companies are so greedy, millions more people may die of this disease. You know that this is wrong. You know it in the marrow of your bones. In a few days at the WDO meeting, all eyes will be on America. We will decide the answer to the world's play. What kind of leadership will we display? The answer, Mr. President, is up to you. Yeah, Joe Biden was pretty clear there. So the fact that we have to create letters and exert pressure in and of itself that shows you that Joe Biden, he doesn't have the correct instincts. He's looking out for his donors in the pharmaceutical industry. And he's not actually concerned with public health. Sure, when it comes to the United States, he's great at meeting his own goals that he sets to vaccinate Americans. In fact, he just released a new goal to have 70 percent of Americans have at least one shot by July. But the issue is you can vaccinate 100 percent of the American population. Not that that's possible, but you can do that. However, if the rest of the globe is in vaccinated and if covid is still spreading, a mutation could emerge that is resistant to the vaccines. So at the end of the day, all of this will be for nothing. If we don't make sure that the global south has vaccines as well. And the only feasible way to actually make sure this happens is to allow them to develop their own covid vaccines. And meanwhile, we distribute as many vaccines as we possibly can to them. This isn't tough. Either you support global public health and saving lives or you care more about the profits of pharmaceutical giants. Pick a side, but don't try to obfuscate. Don't try to make it seem as if, oh, well, you know, this wouldn't actually increase the supply of vaccines. Or, you know, maybe if we keep the exclusive rights here in America to manufacture the vaccines, we'll just be more united. Stop you sound foolish because what you're defending is vaccine apartheid and no amount of obfuscation or mental gymnastics that you do is going to make your argument more persuasive. There's a right and a wrong policy here. The issue is black and white, unlike a lot of political issues. Support the IP waiver if you care about human lives. Period. End of story. Well, today was a very big day. We'd be learning whether or not the Biden-Harris administration would be honoring the request of countries like India who want the intellectual property rights of the covid-19 vaccines waived so they'd be able to produce and distribute their own generic versions of the covid-19 vaccine. And we found out that Joe Biden, in fact, did the right thing, thankfully. He decided to honor his campaign promise and as a more perfect union reports, the Biden administration announced his support for a waiver that would allow less wealthy countries to manufacture covid-19 vaccines. A global movement demanded that we stand up to big pharma and save lives. And the president of the United States kept his promise. Now, in the press release at States, United States Trade Representative Catherine Tai today released a statement announcing the Biden-Harris administration's support for waiving intellectual property protections for covid-19 vaccines, quote, this is a global health crisis and the extraordinary circumstances of the covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic supports the waiver of those protections for covid-19 vaccines, we will actively participate in text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organization needed to make that happen. Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved. The administration's aim is to get as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people as fast as possible. As our vaccine supply for the American people is secured, the administration will continue to ramp up its efforts working with the private sector and all possible partners to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution. It will also work to increase the raw materials needed to produce those vaccines. So this is absolutely excellent news. The United States is saying we are not going to stand in the way. We're going to waive these intellectual property rights so that way these pharmaceutical giants aren't able to sue other countries for producing their own vaccines. So now the US is saying we're going to let them use the recipe to make their own vaccines, the same vaccines that we're using, just generic versions. Now, predictably, after this news was announced, Pfizer, Beyond Tech, Novavax and Moderna shares plunged. So sad, so incredibly sad. Let's all shed some tears for them, because now they're not going to be able to profit off of people's pain. They will no longer be able to be the sole manufacturers of the world's supply of the COVID-19 vaccines. This is honestly phenomenal news and I'm tough on Joe Biden. I'm hard on him quite a bit, but he gets credit where it's due. And he gets massive credit for this. Now, did he take too long to announce his decision? Yes, I think that the deliberative process was a little bit too long. And this was a campaign promise. So there shouldn't have ever been a question. There shouldn't have been a need for us to put this much pressure on him. Nonetheless, he did the right thing. And this is fantastic news. What we have to do, and I've said this once, I've said it twice. I'll say it again and again and again, because it's really important. We have to make sure you vaccinate every single country as fast as we possibly can. We are in a race against the variants, because if we actually want a chance at ending the pandemic, we have to make sure that the virus stops spreading. So new vaccine resistant mutations don't pop up. Now, there are already some mutations that are making the vaccines less effective. They're still effective, albeit just to a lesser extent than the other variants, the original variant and the UK variant. But we're in a race against the virus and we have to do what's needed. And if we want any chance of getting back to normal and when I say normal 2019 hell, not pandemic hell, then this is what we have to do. So this is excellent news. Things won't happen immediately, but this is a huge step in the right direction. And it's the first piece of news that actually made me feel optimistic for the future in quite some time. You know, it's not often that I get to say that the news that I'm presenting to you is positive or that Joe Biden did the right thing. But in this instance, he absolutely did the right thing. And you know, it's funny. Somebody pointed out on Twitter from the Gravel Institute that Bill Gates is having a really bad week because not only did he announce that him and his wife, Melinda Gates, are separating after decades of marriage, but now the one thing he fought against looks like he lost that battle too. So sad, so sad, feel really bad for these pharmaceutical giants and billionaires. And it's also a little bit sad that Dr. Anthony Fauci ended up showing his true colors when he didn't have to. If he just consulted with Joe Biden, he didn't have to make yourself look like a fool and defend vaccine apartheid. But that's neither here nor there now. And the goal now is to vaccinate as many people as possible. And vaccine hesitancy is another thing that we have to focus on in the United States. But one step at a time, we're making progress. And this absolutely is excellent news. And I'm genuinely happy to hear this. Democratic Senator Mark Warner is one of just a handful of Democrats currently blocking the passage of the pro act in the Senate. And he tried to explain his opposition to the pro act while not sounding too anti labor. In fact, he kind of wraps his opposition in this package. That's ostensibly pro labor. When in actuality, he's just a corporate show and he's advocating for his donor's interests. Nonetheless, let's watch what he has to say. This is embarrassing because you can see him in real time try to twist himself into a pretzel to justify his refusal to support something that would be the most pro worker policy in decades. Nonetheless, let's enjoy this because he's going to score him. And it's almost cringeworthy. You almost feel bad for him. But at the same time, you don't because he kind of deserves the scrutiny. The pro act is a combination of a dozen plus pieces of legislation. The vast majority of which I support. I support the right of workers to organize. I believe that the balance between workers and management till it's way too much to management right now. And that was exacerbated under four years of Donald Trump, where the National Labor Relations Board was totally, I think, biased against worker rights. So there's a lot to like in the pro act. And, you know, but what I what I want to get to is, you know, how can we make some of the areas where I'd like to see some corrections so that, you know, this very expansive piece of legislation could be supported on the floor and one area that I know I've sent you, Megan, all my background, I this is an area that I've been focused on literally for the last six years and that's the changing nature of work. You know, we had an economy in the 20th century where people would go to work. Oftentimes for a long time, my dad worked for the same company for 36 years. Never made a lot of money. But with that work came a whole series of benefits, health care, retirement, unemployment, disability, that notion of long term permanent work with a single firm is fundamentally changing. We think about I think about my kids who were in their 20s and early 30s. You know, they're all going to have a variety of jobs. Many of them want a variety of jobs and variety of gigs. They want the flexibility of whether it's driving Uber part-time, running out their apartment Airbnb, being a part-time IT consultant, you know, maybe working in a restaurant as well, having a series of revenue sources all at the same time. What I have promoted is a what I think is a fairly dramatic change in our social safety net that says no matter what kind of work you do, starting with that first hour of work, there ought to be benefits attached. And my fear is that parts of the pro app tries to fit all work into kind of a 20th century classic W2 employment status. I think there ought to be a way where we can provide benefits, provide flexibility. I still think there is a role for labor organizations to help manage these benefits, particularly for somebody who's got a variety of revenue sources coming in that meets workers where they're at in 2021 doesn't think we're going to return to a 1980s kind of economy. And the interesting thing, even within the labor movement, their organizations like the Freelancers Union, like the National Domestic Workers Alliance that I've been working with very closely that believe that this portable benefit approach ought to be part of the new social contract. And I look forward to working with them and members of traditional organized labor to get to a spot that will allow me to support all the other good things that are in the pro app, but also has a forward leaning view in terms of what work looks like in the 20th, the 21st century. I do not think we're going to go back to the world where everyone works in a classic 40 hour a week full time job, long term employment. I just think that the nature of the world, the nature of technology, the nature of globalization has changed things. And we need to have a social contract and a set of benefits that meets workers where they are today, not where they were in the 1980s. So notice how he states that he has some issues and some disagreements with the pro act as it stands, but he doesn't really specify which provisions in particular he doesn't like because he is more comfortable operating with these vague generalities. Well, some of these provisions, they might not necessarily be helpful to workers, they might go too far, yada, yada, yada. I'm paraphrasing obviously, but he doesn't want to speak with any specificity because if he did, he would reveal that he's not actually pro labor. He's a shill for large multinational corporations who bankroll his political campaigns. And he's being incredibly disingenuous. And I think that part of what he said is based on him just being ignorant and out of touch with American workers. But he said that, you know, basically there's this changing nature of work. And of course, he's referring to the gig economy, where people aren't just working at Walmart. They're working at Walmart and then they're doing some part time gigs for Uber. Maybe they work at, you know, a different job. And then on the weekends, they deliver for a company where they pick up the food. I'm blanking on the name. What is it? Uber Eats? Is that it? Yeah, there's a couple of them, DoorDash. So he's trying to make it seem like, you know, there's this changing American workforce, you know, these traditional jobs that were previously standard are no longer there. So, you know, we don't want to make sure that we take that away with the pro act. People love having this opportunity to do different things. They just have so many interests that they want to work a little bit at Walmart and McDonald's and then drive for Uber and lift on the weekends. Nobody wants to do all of this, dummy. That's the thing that he didn't point out. It's not like people are working at Walmart. And then on the weekend, they drive for Uber because they just love working in different fields. They're working for multiple jobs and doing different gigs because they don't have a choice, because that's the only way they can put food on the table. Because the one job that they have doesn't actually pay a living wage, so they have no choice. Imagine being that out of touch where you think that people are working multiple jobs because they want to, because they love the experience in different sectors. Who says things like this? I'll tell you who a shill isn't looking out for labor. Now, there's this implication that if the pro act were to pass, then the gig economy, which a lot of people rely on to make additional revenue, that would go away. It's another way that he tries to code his anti pro act rhetoric in this pro labor package, but that's not actually the case. And a more perfect union actually explained how this isn't going to strip away the flexibility of workers. If you actually want to work at Uber and McDonald's simultaneously, this isn't going to stop that. It's not going to force them into permanent positions, but what it will do is give them the option to unionize and a more perfect union. Fact checked his statement and said the pro act lets independent contractors join a union. It doesn't force them into any employment status. And for the more this idea that the pro act or greater unionization, it would destroy the gig economy and force people who don't want to be in permanent positions into permanent positions. This is nothing more than baseless fear mongering because a more perfect union shared an article from the Economic Policy Institute that explains that the pro act doesn't actually do that. A, the pro act is about giving workers a voice, not taking away freedom. B, the pro act is about making it harder for employers to misclassify workers as independent contractors, not ending the contractor designation. And C, the pro act does not change a workers employment status that impacts state benefits like workers compensation or unemployment. These are the facts about the pro act. So everything that he's saying, it's all based on nothing. It's baseless fear mongering at the behest of this corporate donors who desperately want to defeat the pro act because they don't want their workers to unionize period end of story. And just a little side note here, you know, they say that capitalism breeds innovation and they may be right because capitalism found a way, an innovative new way to exploit workers more so than the employer employee relationship already does. And that is the gig economy, because as badly as employees are treated by employers, employers can now treat workers somehow worse than employees. It's honestly just it really is innovative. I don't know how else to describe it, but certainly this exploitative relationship wouldn't go away with the pro act, but it would at least embolden workers to have collective bargaining rights. Now, he says that he supports collective bargaining rights, but he doesn't mention that the bill that he opposes actually addresses the things that stop employees from getting collective bargaining rights. It stops the disgusting practices that employers use to intimidate and defeat attempts to unionize. Now, I've been overly charitable to even entertain Mark Warner's vapid arguments against the pro act because let's cut to the chase. He doesn't support it because he's corrupt. He took thousands of dollars from large multinational corporations, impact money and even from Amazon, who is vehemently anti union. And that's why he's against the pro act. So if you're tired of all of his excuses, then you should let him know. His D.C. office number is two zero two two two four two zero two three. And of course, I will be giving him a call on the show with a simple message. Support the pro act. Thank you for calling the office of Senator Mark Warner. If you'd like to leave an opinion for the senator, please press one. Oh, I would like to speak with a member of the senator's staff, please. Thank you for calling with your opinion for Senator Mark Warner. Your opinion is quite important to him. Is it? Please leave a message for the senator after the tone. Thank you. Hi, I just want to call to encourage Senator Warner to stop being a coward and to support the pro act. I know that he took thousands of dollars in corporate pack money from Amazon, who's vehemently anti union. But I just want to remind him that the people elected him, not Amazon. So if he actually has a spine, do the right thing and support the pro act. I'm not sure if I am able to speak with a staff member. But I want to make sure that I can, although it's probably late in D.C. We'll try. We'll see. I think it was option number two. Thank you for calling the office of senator. We'll give it a try. OK, so, you know, I left a message you can leave a message as well. Let him know that he needs to support the pro act. We're not asking. We're demanding because it's about time that workers in America actually have the right to unionize. I mean, they already should have the right. But what the pro act does is it emboldens workers. That's one of the most pro labor pieces of legislation in decades. So at the bare minimum, this is the least that corporate shills like Mark Warner should be doing if they even want to have any credibility when they speak using this rhetoric that's seemingly pro labor. So yeah, I'll leave that there. He needs to support the pro labor pro act. And if he doesn't, then he needs to be primaried and he needs to lose his seat, period. So we're more than a year into the pandemic. And by now, I assumed that we've all collectively moved on from the mask debate. I mean, it was never debatable. Masks during a pandemic are absolutely essential. And by now, you should just be accustomed to masks. You should know that they're necessary if we want to at least resume some normal activities, right? Go to the grocery store and have at least some level of protection. And I thought by now, most of the covid idiots have moved on and they're now spreading misinformation about the vaccines. And I thought we were in the phase of the pandemic where we're desperately trying to convince dumb fuck anti-vaxxers to do what's in their best interest and take the covid-19 vaccine so we can all move on and reach herd immunity. But I had a little bit too much faith in American society. And apparently, some folks are still dwelling on masks. Conservatives snowflakes are still melting down over masks in 2021. I mean, this feels like a 2020 thing, but nonetheless, here we are. All of a sudden, a lot of folks don't like masks and they're tyrannical again. I wonder why that's the case. We'll find out. But first, I want to give you an example of the hysteria that we're seeing in 2021 that we should have moved beyond at this point. But a conservative went into a Costco and he tried to lead a rebellion against masks, and unfortunately for him, it didn't go as he quite expected it would. Is anybody tired of this tyranny? You love tyranny, you love tyranny, you get out, you get out, you get out. No more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks. We're out of here. Let's leave. No more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks, no more masks. You know the funny thing is in six months or a year from now, you're going to be looking for people like me to stand for you. That's right. Where's the men at? Where's the freaking men that will stand for your liberty? Where's the men that will stand for liberty once again? Thank you for not putting a mask. Liberty comes with a mask. Liberty comes with a mask, please. In 2013, we learned that the United States government without warrants is literally spying on its own citizens, infiltrating World of Warcraft, collecting our metadata. We have a Republican controlled legislatures across the country trying to criminalize protests in America. But this idiot thinks that masks are actually what's really tyrannical. And that's what he feels as if he needs to speak out against. And he says, is anybody tired of the tyranny? And everyone just so tired of this bullshit and Costco says, no, because masks aren't tyrannical. You absolute fucking snowflake. And he says, liberty comes with a mask. Actually, yes, during a pandemic, masks do give us liberty. They allow us to go out into public with some level of protection. That's that's good. It's not a bad thing to put a piece of cloth over your face. And again, it's just it's really frustrating that we're having this conversation again. But this man was not the only individual who melted down over masks because a Florida woman disrupted a school board meeting because she didn't like the idea that children are being asked to wear masks while at school. We don't need to the science said that we don't need to. We do not need masks for our kids. It's child abuse. What she's saying sounds eerily similar to something that I recently heard on television. In particular, a new show, I believe. Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable. Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you're looking at is abuse. It's child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it. If it's your own children being abused, then act accordingly. Oh, that's right. She's doing exactly what Tucker Carlson said she should do. Respond to children wearing masks as if it's child abuse. So this is why we're seeing this debate over masks reignited in one fell swoop with one segment. Tucker Carlson did just that. As Dave's New World points out on Twitter, this is Tucker Carlson's fault. And that is exactly right, because when you can see folks parrot his talking points almost verbatim, we have to blame Tucker Carlson. This is why I speak out against Tucker Carlson, because what he pedals is dangerous misinformation that makes us less capable of actually dealing with the pandemic. And when I say us, I mean us collectively as a society. And Penny adds, add the anti-maskers to the ball with the anti-vaxxers. And we have the two biggest reasons why we can't have nice things. That's exactly it. And my patience for these folks, it's run out. You know, it's it's very, very demoralizing to think that we can't even overcome a pandemic. Something as simple as wearing masks is still controversial in twenty twenty one. You know, in other countries, it's not an issue at all. Other countries aren't worried about the vaccine. In fact, folks in India are desperate begging for vaccines, because, as you can see, they're creating open air crematoriums because they don't have any place to store all of the bodies that are piling up due to this highly contagious, deadly disease. But we have people in America who consume so much misinformation that they begin working against their own self interest. And in turn, they pose a danger to the rest of society because they're working against society as a whole, who is trying to get this virus under control. So I mean, look, I don't find these viral videos funny any longer. I used to laugh at them and think, wow, look at these idiots. I mean, look at this jackass. He cut a hole in his mask. What a buffoon. I don't find it funny anymore. We're almost in the middle of twenty twenty one. I want to move on. I don't want there to be a pandemic any longer. I want to move on. I want things to open up again. I want to be able to go to a movie theater. I want to be able to go to a restaurant and not worry about catching COVID-19 or spreading it to someone else. I mean, doesn't everyone else just feel fatigued? Don't they want to move on? Don't they want things to get back to normal? Well, they do. It's just that they don't want to take all of the necessary steps that will enable us to live life as we did before the pandemic. So, yeah, you could thank Tucker Carlson for the sudden influx in anti mask rhetoric, and we also have him to thank for spreading anti-vax misinformation because he is working overtime to try to convince people to not take the vaccine. And that is absolutely not only dangerous, but it's deadly people are going to die if they listen to this idiot. Look, I really don't know why the rest of the lame stream media isn't talking about this very serious Joe Biden scandal. But as far as I know, there's only one journalist courageous enough to actually speak the truth about this specific topic. And I am, of course, referring to a host at Newsmax TV, who is the only one willing to call out Joe Biden for something that he did that is so beyond the pale that I think that he should resign in shame because of this. Take a look. All right, folks, I want you to take a look at this. Joe Biden today getting on Marine One and he stops and picks up. I think it's a dandelion, but it's a dandelion that hasn't even blossomed into a flower yet like that gives everybody asthma. So you blow it, it goes everywhere and everybody starts sneezing. Well, he picks up the weed and gives it to Jill as what I guess is supposed to be some kind of a sweet gesture. He's getting dandelions all over the place. I say it was a planted dandelion there. Who knows, folks? Look, I've got to hand it to Newsmax TV. Nobody else holds the powerful accountable like them. So I truly am thankful for their service. He literally is creating a conspiracy theory about a dandelion. Oh, my God. This is what brain rot looks like. We'll call it Biden brain rot because Joe Biden is just so evil in his mind that anything that Joe Biden does, even if it's something that is very obviously benign and insignificant, is is inherently bad because Biden did it. If Biden comes out in favor of ice cream, cookies and video games, you have to take the opposite stance just because Biden is so terrible. I mean, do they even want to have the veneer of respectability? This is this is laughable. He formulated a conspiracy around a dandelion. He said I say it was a planted dandelion there, but who knows? Hang on a second. You literally think that they planted a dandelion there. Oh, oh, Joe Biden can pick it up. Just thinking through the logic, you have to be a fucking moron. Now, look, do I think that it's it's kind of funny that he gave her a dandelion? Sure, because I mean, what is she going to do? Put it in her pocket. It reminds me of the meme from the office where Angela was given a rose by Andy and she was like, what am I supposed to do with this? So I'm sure that Joe Biden blew it and then like threw it away. I don't know. The fact that they even talked about this is so funny. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone, honestly, I feel delirious reporting on the story. It's that that shit insane. But here's the thing, if Joe Biden actually handled the dandelion a different way, it would have been much, much funnier. So my recommendation is that Joe Biden should have done this when he saw the dandelion. Oh, look, a dandelion. Must be the last one to season. Imagine how Newsmax would react if Joe Biden did that. He should definitely do that just to fuck with him. I want to watch it one more time. Oh, look, a dandelion. Must be the last one to season. Oh, my God. Now, for those of you who don't get the reference, she's quoting Sid from Ice Age and I give her an A plus for her impression. Look, I've got to say of all the things to be angry at Joe Biden over the dandelion, definitely not one of them, definitely gets a pass on this one. I think that we can all safely assume that no harm has been done by him picking up a dandelion. Maybe he told Jill Biden to make a wish. Doesn't matter. If she ate the dandelion, still not a scandal. The real scandals relate to his policies, what he does. Not these weird, benign gestures between him and his wife. I mean, it's a little bit weird, but it's also sweet. Who cares? It's a it's a dandelion. Jesus Christ. You know, when you're that deranged, when you have Biden brain rot that bad, you can make a conspiracy theory out of everything. If Joe Biden were to like fart during a press conference, they would try to make it seem as if there's a conspiracy theory where it was like planted there and the fart is like the ripple of the fart is Morse code. And there's some sort of a secret message that you have to decode because he's signaling something to the satanic pedophiles in America. They honestly can make a conspiracy out of anything. It's almost impressive the way that they're so deluded that they can actually get this creative. But normal people, they actually don't give a shit about this. But Newsmax is not for normal people. Newsmax is for people with worms in their head who probably eat paint chips and tie their own shoelaces together and blame someone else when they trip. I'll leave that there. Oh, my God. This is the dumbest thing I think I've ever talked about, literally on the humanist report. The CEO of a Seattle based company made headlines back in 2015 when he announced that he'd be cutting his own pay in order to boost the salaries for all of his employees and his name is Dan Price because he doesn't put a price on the worth of his employees. But he returned to Fox Business News to offer them some advice on what policies would actually help small businesses and what he recommended. It shocked the Fox News host. In fact, his head nearly exploded. You're going to see his response when Dan Price actually recommends single payer health care specifically to help small businesses. This is gold. If you want to help small businesses, one of the ways to do it is to take the burden of health care away from those small businesses, small businesses like mine could pay a lot more in wages and provide a better incentive for employees. Also, if we raise the minimum wage, we'll be able to then have that funnel upward with the economy because right now we have a third of all American wealth stuck at the very top with the billionaires. If we can have a bottom up economy that works for everybody, we can provide the right incentives for employees. So so you think by making it more expensive for a small business, it's going to help them? Well, actually, when I started my small business, health care was one of my biggest costs and it still is today. But that money actually comes out of my ability to pay employees higher wages. So instead of a $70,000 minimum wage, I could have an $85,000 minimum wage if we had a health care system that instead of being a giveaway for the insurance companies actually provided health care for people all over the place. I absolutely applaud Dan Price. What he's doing here is so important. Fox Business, they don't like to listen to people unless they're in powerful positions, unless they're business leaders. So Dan Price is the one CEO who actually goes on Fox News and challenges their narrative is the only business leader who actually bursts Fox News's bubble. Because if you tune into Fox Business, they're doing nothing but propaganda at the behest of pro corporate America. I mean, just watch five minutes of Stuart Varney and you'll see how they don't actually even try to appeal to normal viewers. This is all about appeasing the business class. And it's really transparent. It's despicable. So when you actually challenge their narrative, they don't know how to respond. And so even after Dan Price very clearly laid out how making this burden of health care go away would help small businesses. The Fox News host didn't know how to respond. So he just says, oh, so you think that by making it more expensive for small businesses is going to help them? No, he literally just said the opposite. Were you not listening? He said if these small businesses don't have to pay for health care for their employees, if this was just something that was guaranteed by the government, they would actually have more money. They could actually pay their workers more. It's like everything that Dan Price was saying, it just went in one ear and out the other. And the Fox News host just had nothing left to say. So he just reverted back to his original talking points. Oh, well, you want to hurt small businesses with Medicare for all? No, dummy, I'm literally explaining how this helps small businesses. And it's not like Dan Price is some radical socialist who's saying this whereas, you know, other businesses wouldn't necessarily have the same opinion because other small businesses have echoed the same exact sentiment. And as Dr. Erica Gonzalez wrote in an op-ed for the Hill, the impact the rising costs of health care, health expenditures reached 3.8 trillion in 2019 and are expected to rise to 6.2 trillion in seven years are having on Main Street as a serious threat to our economy and society. In fact, a national survey of more than 800 small business owners conducted by Small Business for America's Future found that desperate small business owners are being crushed by health care costs and overwhelmingly demand government action to relieve the burden. As an example of how bad the problem is, the survey found that 55 percent of small business owners say the cost of providing health insurance to their employees is the biggest challenge they face. And here's the kicker. The difficulty of ensuring workers surpassed taxes, corporate competition and even COVID-19. Half of survey respondents report providing health insurance as a benefit. Seventy six percent of the small business owners that do not provide insurance say it's because the cost of doing so is too high. An alarming 53 percent of small business owners who do offer insurance say they have considered dropping it because of the cost. Not surprising when nine in 10 survey respondents said their health insurance costs increased over the past four years with 40 percent responding that costs have risen by 10 percent or more a year. So it makes sense to suggest that a single pair of health care system would absolutely be a boost to small businesses. In fact, some of the candidates who I've spoken with who are running for Congress in red districts, they actually don't use the usual arguments that I make on this program to sell Medicare for all. They sell it as a tax cut for small businesses because it's technically literally that if you alleviate this burden from small businesses, then imagine how much more money they'd have, not just not just to pay their employees, but to actually expand their businesses grow. So I think that this is a no brainer. What's shocking to me is just the fact that a CEO said this on Fox Business News. Like, I get that this is Dan Price and he's usually pretty based. He's known for saying awesome things like this. But, you know, it's nice to have one person at least going on Fox News and pushing back against their pro corporate narrative. That's really, really awesome to see. And whenever I see this happening, I always feel the need to showcase it on this program because it gives me hope. And when we're in this time where, you know, the situation, the future looks bleak to say the least, I think that we need to really celebrate the small victories. And I think that Dan Price saying this on Fox News, you know, saying this to an audience who wouldn't necessarily be receptive to this message in and of itself, that is a victory. And I'm going to take it. Former President Donald Trump made his much anticipated return to social media. And it's a very appropriate website for Donald Trump. It's Taylor made for Donald Trump and also he's the only one who can post. And I'm leaving out the best part. There's literally a trailer for his social media website. I'm not kidding about this. Take a look. Yeah. So for more details on this, we go to Fox News with the exclusive scoop that I'm sure they were very excited about. And they explained former President Donald Trump on Tuesday launched a communications platform, which will eventually give him the ability to communicate directly with his followers after months of being banned from sites like Twitter and Facebook, the platform from the desk of Donald J. Trump appears on www.DonaldJTrump.com slash desk. The space will allow Trump to post comments, images and videos. The technology appears to be powered by campaign nucleus. The digital ecosystem made for efficiently managing political campaigns and organizations created by his former campaign manager, Brad Parscale. The space allows Trump to post and allows his followers to share the former president's post to Twitter and Facebook. However, the new platform does not have a feature to allow users to reply or engage with Trump's posts. So this is honestly a dream come true for him because this is a social media platform that only he can use. It's all about him. No other opinions are out there that he has to compete with. It's just Donald J. Trump. It almost feels like this is some sort of a safe space for lack of a better word. Now, he already has some gems up on that website. I've got to read a couple. Heartwarming to read the new pose and big shot. We're Bangladesh. Cheney of the great state of Wyoming. She's so low that her only chance would be if vast numbers of people run against her, which hopefully won't happen. They never liked her much, but I will say she'll never run in a Wyoming election again. So nice to see Ryan Amit Ramney boot up the stage at the Utah Republican State Convention. They are among the earliest to have figured this guy out. A stone cold loser exclamation. Oh, he's already putting out the bangers. I love it. I love that. The first thing that he's doing is he's shitting on other Republicans. Love it. Love it. Keep doing this Donald Trump, please. I would love nothing more than to see the Republican Party rip itself apart. That is a good thing. Please, please do that for the sake of humanity. But yeah, I don't have much else to add to this. Donald Trump has a new social media platform and he's so excited about it that he released a trailer for it. This is a beacon of freedom in the United States, folks. Yeah, he's like a cartoon character. And for whatever reason in this picture behind me, he looks incredibly wet. Like he looks drenched. Weird. Anyways, I don't know what else to say about this. I will be following this and I'll let you know if there's any. Hot takes from him, I'm sure there will be. But at least on this website, he can't really spread misinformation that much or less people at least will see the misinformation. I'm sure that it'll get some attention at first. But it's not going to be a substitute for Facebook and Twitter because people are already on Facebook and Twitter. So it's not like that many people will go out of their way unless they're diehard sick of fans to check out this website. I think that they're going to tune in for a little bit and then they'll tune him out again. That's my prediction anyways. I could be proven wrong, but unless I do find this very funny and almost like a real life parody, which is sad, but entirely predictable for American politics in twenty twenty one. Lauren Steiner is a fellow podcast host, content creator, and she's also an activist and she showed up to a town hall with a North Carolina state legislature named Jeff Jackson, and he is currently running for the US Senate. Now, the crowd as well as her, they wanted to know what his stance on Medicare for all was, and as you're going to see from the footage here, he wouldn't really give a definitive answer. He was very wishy-washy and dodgy and he kept using buzzwords like universal healthcare, but he wouldn't actually elaborate on the plan that he supports. So what is it? So as you're going to see, the crowd wasn't having it and more specifically, Lauren Steiner wasn't having it and he was very uncomfortable trying to explain his nonposition to her, but she would not relent. And she kept asking him and pressing him to further explain what he believes. And he doesn't have a satisfactory answer. Take a look. This is awkward and he should be embarrassed. Lauren Steiner from the robust opposition. And I'm here at Jeff Jackson's town hall in Buncombe County. I have been a long time Medicare for all activist and I am here to ask him if he elected would co-sponsor Bernie Sanders Medicare for all bill. In the first six months of the pandemic, 5.4 million Americans lost their insurance because it was tied to health. Yes, he was trying to do his job. In North Carolina, we have 260,000 lost their jobs and lost their insurance. Our public health is overwhelmed. How do you plan to change or restructure our health care system in this country? If there's one thing that COVID has taught us, it's that an employer based health care system breaks down during a pandemic when lots of people lose their jobs. Here's what I think is going to talk health care. OK, here's what I think is going to happen. You see the administration rolling out things in pieces. They did the first thing was COVID relief. The second thing appears to be infrastructure. I bet the third thing is going to be health care. And I think it's going to be a version of universal health care, something that would get us to be the no longer be the only developed nation that doesn't have true universal health care Medicare for all, Jeff. OK, thank you. I appreciate that. And what I think is going to happen is that that's not going to pass in part because of Joe Manchin, I think this next election where we have states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina will determine whether or not we get to universal health care by the end of Biden's first term, which is 2024, we should be focused on actually getting to universal health care by the end of this term. How there's no reason that we can't do it. How by electing three more Democrats, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, what policy, what policy, if not Medicare for all, said you would answer my question on camera. Ma'am, I did answer your question on camera. I already did. I answered your question right in the middle of my speech already. Yes, but you said you wanted a policy that would get us to universal health care in 2024. So my question is, if not Medicare for all, what policy is that? Well, I think there are different proposals in the space and I'm open to a couple of different proposals, but I'm not open to is failing. We have to get to universal health care by 2024. I don't think we can get there by 2022 because I think Joe Manchin is going to block it, but I think we have a legitimate chance of getting there by 2024. That's what I'm committed to. So which policies do you support? I'm open to different ideas in the space. I think the Biden administration is probably going to propose some form of Medicare public option. I'm open to that. Just to sign on to something as a co-sponsor doesn't mean it has to get passed. It's taken this long decade since John Conyers sponsored his bill to get 50 percent of the House Democrats on as co-sponsors. Just recently, Frank Polone signed on. That was a very important signal. It would be a signal if you co-sponsor this, whether it got passed or not, that you support it as a policy. What I'm hearing from people across the state is they expect me to get something done. That's going to be my focus. I'm going to put all of my energy on actually getting legislation passed. People are done with politicians who say I'm going to do this and then they don't. So what I'm telling people I'm going to do is what I think I can actually accomplish. What I want, what I want is the boldest possible version of something I think we have a realistic chance of getting. And I think we have a realistic chance of getting universal health care by 2024. It is painfully obvious that he is so full of shit. If you can't just state concisely and clearly what your policy position is, nobody should trust you. Nobody should believe you. This is an easy question. If you support a public option, then just say that you support a public option. If you support Medicare for all, then say that you support Medicare for all or don't. But when you use words like universal health care, that is a code word for I don't support Medicare for all. Previously, I think you can argue that universal health care meant that health care was free at the point of service, but that rhetoric has been co-opted by corporate Democrats who don't actually support Medicare for all and also Medicare for all and single payer activists have been trying to argue that health care is a right. But politicians like Joe Biden appropriated the rhetoric, but not the actual policy itself. And so now they're saying, I believe that health care is a right, but they don't support the policy that would actually literally make health care right. So it's really frustrating. And this is why Lauren Steiner, what she's doing here, is super important. And this is why I wanted to show you this because you have to go beyond the rhetoric. If a politician says that they support a particular thing that sounds good, you can't just take them at face value. You can't just take them at the word. You have to dive deeper and press them for further details. Otherwise, you're not going to get what you think you're getting out of them. They're lying to you or they're trying to dupe you into believing that they support what you support, but they don't actually want to say it because when push comes to shove, if they are held accountable later, if they're elected, then they have plausible deniability. They could say, well, look, I never firmly committed to Medicare for all. So what Lawrence, Lauren Steiner is doing here, she's forcing him to take a position and she's not allowing him to weasel his way out of that position. Now, Lauren Steiner has been doing this forever. My first introduction to Lauren Steiner was back in 2017 when she showed up to a town hall with Democrat Brad Sherman and she pressed him on why he doesn't support Medicare for all. And there was so much pressure as a result of her asking him that question that he actually did end up caving. So this is really important. Getting politicians to speak directly and clearly with you, that really is one of the most important forms of accountability and sharing your conversation with these politicians also is super important because we live in an era where we have social media and politicians don't get to lie and obfuscate about their position. People are going to show up and ask them direct questions. And one thing I got to point out that I almost forgot is so he says, we have to get universal health care. We have to get to that by 2024. I don't think we can get there by 2022 because I think Joe Manchin is going to block it. I'm sorry, but I have no respect for Democrats who use Joe Manchin as an excuse to not support policies. It's not about Joe Manchin. What do you support? And furthermore, do you support a policy enough to fight for it? You shouldn't base your support on a particular policy on what's politically possible. You should support a policy if it's good policy, if it will be conducive to good governance and have a satisfactory outcome. So, look, I think that you have to follow what Lauren Steiner did. Send this guy an email. Let him know that you want a clear answer. Do you or do you not support Medicare for all? It's a yes or no question. And when we say Medicare for all, we don't mean Medicare for all who wanted or Medicare for some. We mean, do you support a health care that is free at the point of service and universally applied to every single citizen in the United States and non-citizen? That's the question that we have to ask these politicians. And sometimes you don't get a clear answer, which is why you have to press them. So good job to Lauren Steiner. Shout out to her. I'm a fan of her work and definitely check out her YouTube channel for more videos like this one where she really holds politicians accountable and you love to see it because this actually is impactful. It actually does work. There's been growing calls for President Joe Biden to suspend the intellectual property rights that's currently preventing other countries from producing and distributing their own generic versions of the COVID-19 vaccines that we all have. And even though he promised to do this on the campaign trail, he still hasn't done it yet. There's been zero movement with regard to the waiver that he promised everyone. And this comes even as India is breaking records when it comes to daily COVID-19 cases. Hence the reason why he's facing increased pressure. Now, to his credit, Joe Biden has sent over unused AstraZeneca shots that we have and also Moderna has pledged to allocate 500 million doses of their vaccine to the World Health Organization's COVAX program. But let's be honest here, all of these things, they're woefully inadequate. They're just baby steps to alleviate the pressure that Joe Biden is experiencing because pharmaceutical giants don't want to allow other countries to develop and produce their own COVID-19 vaccines. There are 7.6 billion people on this planet, more than 7.6 billion people. So it is logistically impossible to vaccinate everyone around the globe, which is the only way we end the pandemic. If we're only going to rely on a small handful of companies as the exclusive manufacturers of the world supply of the vaccine. So this isn't even debatable to me. We need to end this pandemic. And the only way we can do that is if we vaccinate everyone around the globe. And the only way we can do that is to make sure that countries are able to produce their own vaccine supplies. Now, it's obvious that the reason why politicians like Joe Biden aren't waving these vaccine intellectual property rights is because he's protecting the bottom line of these pharmaceutical giants who want to be the exclusive manufacturers of the world supply of the COVID vaccines. But we've seen a lot of really warped and twisted and honestly, psychopathic justifications as to why we shouldn't do just that. But I think by far the most bizarre justification comes from Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who invoked the January 6th insurrection as the justification as to why we shouldn't waive the IP rights for the COVID vaccines. January 6th was a moment that was challenging, divisive, difficult for all of us here in Congress. And it was a wake up call that our country is badly divided. And the ways in which China has become a peer competitor in investing in R&D, in the number of patents issued, the number of research papers published and the ways in which they are now trying to take the lead in standard essential standard setting bodies. That recent campaign to put a Chinese national at the head of the WIPO where the PTO director Andre Yanku did Yeoman's work to make sure that someone committed to a strong intellectual property system globally instead became the head of the WIPO. All of this is a wake up call for us that we need to have another sputnik like moment of reinvestment in American innovation and competitiveness. A central part of being successful in this competition is continuing with our constitutionally created protected privacy, protected property right of a patent. Something I've long believed in and I look forward to hearing how you're contributing to working to strengthen and sustain a competitive, strong global IP system, both here in the United States. He literally invoked the January 6th insurrection. The logic is, well, look, America is really divided right now. And the only way that we can become united is if we become like a global leader when it comes to manufacturing. So let's definitely start during a pandemic with the covid vaccines. Now is the time to draw the line. Now is the time where we need to be a global leader again. In other words, I don't care if people in India and around the globe are dying so long as the United States is united. It's just it's honestly batshit insane. And the reason why it sounds insane is because he's doing mental gymnastics because the real reason why he doesn't want to waive the IP rights is because as Owen Higgins points out, he took forty six thousand one hundred twenty five dollars from Merck, which assists Johnson and Johnson with the production of their vaccine. He took forty five thousand dollars from Pfizer and he took thirty three thousand dollars from Astra Zeneca. That is the reason why he doesn't want to waive the IP rights. It's to protect the profits of his donors. It is downright morally reprehensible. It's corruption at its core and it's grotesque. And because his answer there was so outrageous, protesters literally staged a dying in front of Chris Kuhn's home in Delaware because what he's doing is he's effectively taking a pro-death stance and this is unforgivable. Any politician who says something like this, they have to be called out for it. So I applaud the folks who showed up and staged that dying. But I also think that we have to hold him accountable if we don't live in Delaware so you can call him and tell him and demand that he waive the IP rights or support this movement by letting him know at two oh two two two four five zero four two. I'm going to give him a call here on the show. And I just want to let him know that this is unacceptable. And usually I end up ranting whenever I call politicians on this program. I think that if you simplify your message, then it's better off. But sometimes it's nice to take out your frustration on them and rant. Senator Chris Kuhn, thanks for contacting my Washington, D.C. office. If you'd like to leave a brief message or a comment for me or member my staff, you can do so after the time. Thanks for calling and we look forward to hearing from you. Hi, Senator Chris Kuhn's. I heard that you don't support waving the IP rights of the covid vaccines so other countries can manufacture their own versions of this lifesaving drug. And you cited the January 6th insurrection because, you know, we're all super divided right now. So we have to be a global leader when it comes to manufacturing. But I just want to ask you if you are so concerned with the country being divided, don't you think that a higher wage would unite the country? You voted against the $15 an hour increase. Don't you think that Americans would be united if they didn't have to worry about dying if they had a medical emergency, but no health insurance? You're against Medicare for all. So it sounds really bizarre that you'd use this justification when you've done nothing to help normal Americans. So I've got to ask you, is it really because you're concerned with unity or does the forty five thousand dollar donation you took from Pfizer or the thirty three thousand dollar donation you took from AstraZeneca or the forty six thousand dollar you took from Merck, the company who's helping to produce the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Does that have anything to do with your decision? Is it just sheer corruption? Because if so, I think you should just admit that because you're making yourself look really foolish, defending the indefensible. Do you understand that if we don't actually vaccinate the entire human population, a new mutation could emerge that makes the vaccines that we've received ineffective? Do you understand that? But you're defending the indefensible all to protect the profits of your donors. How do you sleep at night? How do you live with yourself? Knowing you're such a coward, you're so morally corrupt. So I am calling for a second of recording time left. I'm calling to demand that you support waving the IP rights of the covid vaccines. Don't be a coward. I always run out the clock on these again. You don't have to say as much as I said, but I think that these politicians have to be shamed. We have to make it known that when they do things like this, when they literally take a pro-death stance, there has to be pushback. So Chris Coons apparently thinks that letting people die, hoarding vaccines, that's good for egunity in America. Yeah. Don't think so, buddy. Not going to fly. So by now, I'm sure that, you know, Kaylin Jenner is running to be the governor of California. And she's a pretty standard Republican, right? But one area where I think that people logically expected her to be a little bit better than her Republican colleagues is at least on some social issues. LGBTQ rights in particular, right? Because even if she's generally pretty clueless, even if she doesn't have the best instincts, she's literally transgender. So you'd expect that at a minimum, she'd at least be somewhat better than her Republican colleagues when it comes to transgender rights. But that's not actually the case because she just endorsed a policy that harms trans youth. And as AP reports, Kaylin Jenner, the former Olympic champion and reality TV personality now running for California governor, said she opposes transgender girls competing in girl sports at school. Jenner, a 1976 Decathlon Olympic gold medalist who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, told a TMZ reporter on Saturday that it's a question of fairness. That's why I oppose a biological boys who are trans competing in girl sports in school. It just isn't fair and we have to protect girl sports in our schools. Jenner said Saturday during a brief interview in a Malibu parking lot. So let me just reiterate that. Kaylin Jenner, a transgender woman, supports an explicitly discriminatory policy against transgender people. Yeah, and she actually took to Twitter to double down on this idiotic stance, saying I didn't expect to get asked this on my Saturday morning coffee run, but I'm clear about where I stand. It's an issue of fairness and we need to protect girl sports in our schools. This is basically a self-parody. She's a self-hating transgender woman. And for her, she grew up with a lot of wealth, a lot of privilege. She didn't transition when she was young. So she doesn't know what it's like to be a young transgender person in high school. She doesn't know that struggle. Sure, she struggled with her gender identity back when she was young, but she doesn't know the way in which these bills unnecessarily target trans students for no reason when this isn't actually an issue. And Parkham Loy on Twitter had a really great thread explaining just how stupid these types of policies are. California is one of just a few states that have laws explicitly allowing trans students to participate in K through 12 school sports. It went into effect in 2014, as you can see by the fact that girl sports have not been obliterated. It's not actually an issue. And yet this has been the law for years in California and there haven't been any legitimate complaints. It's evidence that girl sports aren't actually under threat and that the rush to pass bills banning trans students from participating are unnecessary at best. So obviously, Republicans are trying to create a solution for a problem that doesn't actually exist. But it's actually a little bit more nefarious than that, because what they're trying to do is they're trying to create this wedge issue since they can't appeal to voters with economic policies, since they only support policies that benefit the rich. What they're trying to do is pray on trans people in order to score political points with unsuspecting people who don't know any better, who don't know a trans person so they don't know how these bills are discriminatory and how this isn't actually an issue. It's truly morally reprehensible, but this is exactly what you'd expect from a party that is morally bankrupt. Now, the West Virginian governor, Jim Justice, actually just signed a bill into law that bans trans females in high school from participating in school sports. And when he was asked to provide a single example where a trans student gained some sort of unfair competitive advantage, as you're going to see, he couldn't cite one. Can you name one example of a transgender child trying to gain an unfair competitive advantage at a school there in West Virginia? Well, well, Stephanie, I don't have that experience exactly to myself right now, but I will tell you this. Your state, sir, can you give me one example of a transgender child trying to get an unfair advantage? Just one in your state. You signed a bill about it. No, I can't really tell you one, but I can tell you this, Stephanie. I'm a coach and I'm with and I coach a girl's basketball team. And I can tell you that, you know, we all know. We all know what an absolute advantage boys would have playing against girls. But, sir, you have no examples of this happening. Why would you take your time to do this? Let's talk about other things that I can give you examples of in your state. According to U.S. News and World Report, West Virginia ranks forty-fifth in education, forty-seventh in health care, forty-eighth on the economy, and fiftieth in infrastructure. If you cannot name one single example for me of a child doing this, why would you make this a priority? I just named four things that would seem to me like a much bigger priority. Well, Stephanie, I didn't make it a priority. It wasn't my bill. You signed it. I mean, it's just it's just come to me. And I have absolutely signed it because I believe from the standpoint of a coach, I believe that girls work so hard to obtain title nine. And I do not have any idea now why we are trying to disadvantage them in participating in the sport that they put so much into. I don't know why we're doing that. This is not like it's a big priority to me. In fact, I think we only have 12. No, Stephanie, listen, I think we only have 12 kids, maybe in our state that are transgender type kids. There's only like 12 kids who are trans in West Virginia, so I better make sure I go out of my way to target them even more with this unnecessary, blatantly discriminatory transphobic bill. Makes sense, right? This is exactly what Caitlyn Jenner supports. A transgender woman. So this goes without saying just because Caitlyn Jenner is transgender doesn't mean that she is a representative of the trans community or a representative for the average trans American. In the same way that Milo Yiannopoulos or Dave Rubin aren't representatives for gay men in America. And speaking of Dave Rubin, he seems pretty fond of Caitlyn Jenner. Then Caitlyn Jenner, who right now is running for governor of California. And by the way, Caitlyn's people, we've reached out to you through every proper channel. I've tweeted a couple of times. I'll give you about a two week window here to respond to us before I think that this thing is just like some sort of PR stunt. Like I'll give you a fair interview and I hope we can do it. And by the way, as it stands right now, I support you, Caitlyn Jenner, because A, anyone's better than Gavin Newsom, but you've said some things that make some sense. So if you want to have an honest conversation, completely unedited, I won't bring any notes. I'm not trying to get you. Just want to hear what you think. Please do respond. Hey, Caitlyn, you know, like me, I really admire your willingness to attack your own community at the behest of a political party, but I just can't support you if you don't respond within the next two weeks to come on my program. So that's the deadline, two weeks. And I'm just going to have to assume that you're not a serious actor and that you're just a grifter. And trust me, I know something about grifting. I can spot a grifter since I'm a grifter myself. It's just embarrassing. Who bases their support on a politician on whether or not they come on your podcast? That's delusional. Actual, like a thing of one other person who does that. But I mean, at the end of the day, the point is that Caitlyn Jenner, even if she's transgender, she is not a good representative for the trans community. And if anything, her visibility is hurting transgender Americans. Because guess what? Republicans who are pushing these sorts of bills across the country now, they're going to use Caitlyn Jenner as a defense for their discriminatory policies. They'll point to her and say, look, even a transgender woman doesn't think that our policies are harmful or even discriminatory. I mean, all Caitlyn Jenner is doing here and what folks like Dave Rubin do is they just provide cover for the Republican Party. Give them permission to discriminate against marginalized communities. You can call, now we're equal. You call me whatever you want, you know what I mean? Like, you could call me like that right now. It wouldn't mean anything to me. It's just honestly disgusting. To use your identity to weaponize more hate, to use it as a shield for people trying to hurt your community, there's a unique evil to that. I mean, to be transphobic in and of itself is unacceptable, it's unjustifiable, but to be transgender and enable this, there's not just like a certain stupidity to this, but it's also uniquely nefarious because Caitlyn Jenner should, in theory, know better. She knows what it's like to live as a trans woman in America, albeit a privileged, rich trans woman, but still a trans woman. But she doesn't care because politically, this is the position that her party has taken, so she's gonna, you know, tow the party line. It's truly disgusting and it's also really embarrassing and shameful. I don't know how Caitlyn Jenner sleeps at night throwing her own community under a bus, but nonetheless, I hope that you can live with yourself knowing that you are further hurting this community. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade had a panel featuring middle school-aged children, roughly, and he was very clearly trying to bait them into attacking Joe Biden, the Chiron Red Failing Hour children, so I think that he wanted to make folks feel guilty that schools weren't fully reopening yet, and the kids, unfortunately, for him weren't really going along with that narrative. And as a result, Brian Kilmeade snapped at one of the kids and proceeded to try to dunk on him. Literally, on national television, I repeat, a Fox News host, a grown man, tries to dunk on a sixth grader on a news show. Take a look. How close are you to getting back in the room? What do you miss most about not being in school? I miss most, obviously, seeing my friends and all the after-school activities that I've done, and I think that we're very, very close getting back to school, and I think that the way that our new president is handling things is a very good way, and we would have not have gone to this if it were still the last president. Really? That's hard to believe, because the last president was saying, I want everybody to get back in school. So, Lily, for you, what is your hope knowing the numbers are going down and the governor might be opening up? That was fantastic. Good job, Brian, good job. Libcuck destroyed, thoroughly owned, epic. You know, my only complaint with that clip is that he wasn't aggressive enough, because if I were the one interviewing those kids, I would have handled it a little bit differently. So, let's set the tone a little bit. Right, and we would not have gone to this if it were still the last president. Really, Jason? Are you stupid? Do mommy and daddy feed us paint chips for lunch? Did the DNC pay you to say that? You fucking shill? Fuck you, Jason. You're a fucking loser. You're never gonna amount to anything. And don't think that I didn't see you down there, Lily. Notting along in agreement with Jason. Shame on you, children. Fuck you, kids. Of course, I'm just kidding. Jason, if you're seeing this, you're far more intelligent than Brian Kilmeade, even at your young age. And I don't know if his name is Jason. He just kind of looks like a Jason. But I mean, this really goes to show you what happens if you go on Fox News and you don't play along with the narrative that they're trying to construct, even if you're a sixth grader. You could be 10 years old. You know, if you go on and you make some benign statement and you just very tepidly praise Joe Biden, he's gonna try to debate you and dunk on you. Although I will say, to be fair, Brian Kilmeade versus a sixth grader, that's a pretty equally matched debate when we're talking intellect here. So it wouldn't necessarily be that bad, that far off, because technically Jason is correct here. I don't necessarily agree 100% with Joe Biden's handling of COVID-19 when it comes to reopening schools. I think that he's pushing a little bit too fast to hastily reopen. Nonetheless, when it comes to handling COVID-19, he's done a far better job than Donald Trump. I think anyone with a brain can acknowledge that. So on this issue, Jason actually technically destroyed Brian Kilmeade. So good job, Jason. I just love the response. Like you can see how indignant he was. Really? That's hard to believe because the last president was saying, I want every kid back in school. Brian, he's a child. You're gonna debate a child, Brian. You're gonna really debate a 12 year old or a 10 year old on your program, really. It's almost as if they want people to not take them seriously. But I mean, according to Fox News, they literally argued in court, at least when it comes to Tucker Carlson to evade a defamation lawsuit that no reasonable person would take Tucker Carlson seriously. And I think that we can extend that to the rest of their hosts. Fox News is not meant to be news. It's meant to be entertainment. And a study from the early 2010s actually showed that if folks who consume Fox News are less informed than people who consume no news at all. Let me repeat that. You're better off. You're more informed if you just watched no news compared to watching Fox News. So now imagine the impact that they're having when we have so many boomers, 70, 80 year olds, consuming Fox News religiously, daily. It's essentially their only news source. I mean, think about why this country is so fucked up. Why so many people are anti-vax? Why so many people deny anthropogenic climate change? Why so many people support politicians who are literally fighting against their own self-interest? It's because of Fox News. Propaganda works. Like you and I might be able to see it and decode the hidden pro-capitalist messages on Fox News, but the average consumer of media, they're not gonna be able to see that. They're gonna be more susceptible to Fox News's brainwashing. So there's not much left. I think that I've milked this segment as much as I can. So yeah, that's where we'll leave it. Fox News has now resorted to dunking on children because I think that's the only folks who they feel confident that they can competently debate somewhat. Look, I'll be honest. Some of the things that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said and done lightly, it's kind of disappointing. It's left me scratching my head. I don't like that she gave money from her courage to change PAC to corporate Democrats who will in turn fight against the agenda that the left is pushing for in Congress. Having said that though, she recently said something that may signify the start of a new trend and trajectory. And if this is the case, just being a lone wolf in Congress, subscribing to this new economic theory that's starting to gain some momentum, this honestly could be a paradigm shift. Now we'll watch and then when we come back, I'll explain why what she's saying here is so important. I don't think that the deficit is the most important thing upon which we should be hinging our infrastructure and jobs plan on. I think it's not the deficit. It's things like employment. It's things like our poverty rate in the United States or rather unemployment as well. It's, we should be pegging this to the actual material circumstances that we want to measure ourselves against in improving people's lot in this country. Now, when we talk about the deficit and Republicans are playing hardball here, I didn't see them being this concerned when they passed the 2017 tax scam that not only added trillions of dollars to our deficit, but also was incomplete contrary to any sort of economic wisdom, which is that you actually deficit spend when times are tough so that we make the important investments necessary like an infrastructure, where for every, you know, some assessments have put every $1 put in infrastructure creates $6 in economic activity. You actually wanna make those investments in times that are difficult to create economic opportunity in this country. Republicans did the opposite. They added to the deficit by creating tax cuts for the wealthy when times were good for the stock market. Now, if you just watched my interview with real progressive co-founder Steve Grumbine, you'll notice that she said a lot of really interesting things, some cues that lead me to believe that she's picking up on modern monetary theory. Perhaps she's a newcomer as I am, but if you read this book, if you read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, everything that she just said there about deficit spending to improve the material conditions in the country, that is straight out of The Deficit Myth. And if it's true that she's now subscribing to this economic theory, this is a paradigm shift. This is huge, even if she's just the only member of Congress who supports this. And if you don't know why this is huge, let me just read to you this 2019 article from Vox where they explain the implications of Democrats adopting modern monetary theory. Dylan Matthews writes, the rise of MMT could allow Democrats to embrace the de facto fiscal policy of Republican presidents who tend to explode the deficit to finance pet initiatives like tax cuts and defense spending, leaving Democrats to clean up afterward. MMT could be Democrats way of saying, we don't want to be suckers anymore. That would be a big deal. Getting comfortable with new deficit financed programs would help Democrats overcome the single biggest impediment to their agenda, raising taxes to fund their programs. MMT could offer a way to justify passing big priorities like single-payer healthcare or free college without resorting to major middle-class tax hikes. So this matters because there's no more excuses. If we move away from the economic philosophy peddled by Republicans and neoliberal Democrats, I mean, all Republicans are neoliberals, but Democrats shouldn't be neoliberal. They shouldn't be trying to find market-based solutions to public problems. We shouldn't privatize things that should be for the public good. But if we move away from that mindset and we adopt modern monetary theory and at least a number of Democrats adopted, then all of these folks who refuse to support Medicare for All because they don't know how to pay for it, they no longer have an excuse. So the implications of this are absolutely monumental. Now, the problem is that most politicians, the overwhelming majority of even Democrats, if they even know what modern monetary theory is, they don't support it. Even Nancy Pelosi, who is often hailed as this like liberal radical according to Fox News, which is delusional because those of us who are actually socialists don't like Nancy Pelosi. I despise her quite frankly. But even she passes these policies like Pego, which is basically self-imposed austerity, which cripples the Democratic Party's agenda. And it's ridiculous. The de facto economic theory that Republicans have used to govern, it has been modern monetary theory. Think about this. Was there ever any discussion, any serious discussion about how Trump would pay for his tax cuts for the rich back in 2017? I mean, you had a couple of libertarians speak a little bit about it. But overall, they didn't care. They passed tax cuts for the rich, put it on the credit card, didn't even care that it raised the deficit. And this happens all the time with the Pentagon budget. So the question is, if we continuously do this and we blow up the deficit to give tax cuts to oligarchs, blow up the deficit at the behest of the military industrial complex, why aren't we doing this to improve the material conditions for working Americans? I mean, AOC, she had a great point about the hypocrisy of the Republican Party. They always get in office and then they blow up the deficit. This was true with George W. Bush. This was true with Donald Trump. And then when Democrats are in power, Bill Clinton, Obama, they always impose austerity. They try to be deficit hawks. And then as they actually are deficit hawks, you have Republicans screaming about whatever dollar they try to spend. I mean, we see it happening with Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden's infrastructure bill. So if we finally, once and for all, adopt the economic theory that Republicans use when they govern and deficit spend, but actually do it to help the American people, can you imagine what we'd be able to accomplish? There'd be no more excuses. Medicare for all, single payer. It's really, really important. So if AOC were to become the face of MMT and actually sold it to other people, that would be a game changer. And Bernie Sanders, he did have Stephanie Kelton as an advisor. In fact, she talks about being a Bernie advisor in this book and how when she brought up modern monetary theory, members of Congress kind of looked at her and they were amused and perplexed because it's such a foreign concept even though it's something that's being done when Republicans are in power. And I'm led to believe that Bernie Sanders would have actually governed with the principles of modern monetary theory. And what's interesting to me is that the article that we read from Vox that was in 2019. So there was already speculation about if Bernie Sanders would win, what would happen? How would he respond to the pay for question? And I think that Bernie Sanders most likely would have been a catalyst for this paradigm shift. He would shift to modern monetary theory or at least try to get the ball rolling there. And even if he in a perfect world became president and wasn't able to accomplish his agenda because we're in a similar predicament with Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema who are blocking everything that he wants still just to have this change, this change in mindset, change in governance as it relates to the Democratic Party when they're in power, it would be huge. So the fact that AOC is talking about this, it's really, really encouraging to see, really, really encouraging to see. She says it's not the deficit that we should be concerned with. It's things like employment. It's things like our poverty rate in the United States or rather unemployment. We should be paging this to the actual material circumstances that we want to measure ourselves against in improving people's lives in this country. So that's exactly right. She's exactly correct here. We shouldn't be worried about the deficit when there are people sleeping on the streets in America and people going hungry. That just shouldn't happen until we no longer have people dying because they can't afford healthcare and not access to healthcare, but healthcare period. We shouldn't be talking about the deficit. We need to spend, spend, spend and improve people's lives because when you have a government that is the sole issuer of its own sovereign currency, sky is the limit and there are limitations. I don't want to misrepresent modern monetary theory. There are limitations, right? Really, inflation is the one limitation that MMT theorists talk about. But look, overall, I love this. I really want to hear more from AOC about this. And this is really, it's genuinely a great thing to see. So I have a clip that I want to share with you. This is pretty old. It is a clip from 2004. But basically CNN had this show called Crosstalk and it featured one Democratic pundit and one Republican pundit. And John Stuart was a guest. And one of the individuals who hosted this program was none other than Tucker Carlson, who went on to become the most popular news host in America. And what we are going to see here is John Stuart absolutely humiliate him and call him a hack to his face. And, you know, Tucker Carlson, he tries to push back a little bit. But at the end of the day, you can tell how embarrassed he was by John Stuart because they end things abruptly and cut to commercial break because what John Stuart was saying was making them look really, really terrible. Enjoy. I think you're a good comedian. I think your lectures are boring. Let me ask you a question on the news. No, this is theater. I mean, it's obvious. How old are you? 35. And you wear a bow tie. Yeah, I do. I do. So this is... I know, I know. You're right. Let me just go now. Come on, come on. I'm not suggesting that you're not a smart guy because those are not easy to tie. But the thing is that you're doing theater when you should be doing debate, which would be great. You do. It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I'll tell you why I know it. You sign hackery on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery? Absolutely. You're... You've got to be kidding me. You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is Puppet's Making Crank Phone Call. What is wrong with you? Well, I'm just saying there's no reason for you when you have this marvelous opportunity not to be the guy's butt boy to go ahead and be his butt boy. It's not as embarrassing. I was absolutely his butt boy. I was so far... You would not believe what he ate two weeks ago. The interesting thing that I have is you have a responsibility to the public discourse and you fail miserably. You need to get a job at a job, I think. You need to go to one. The thing that I want to say is when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk... Well, I thought you were going to be funny. Come on, be funny. No, I'm not going to be your monkey. What? I watch your show every day and it kills me. I can tell you love it. Oh, it's so painful to watch. You know, because we need what you do. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy. It's someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore. I just can't. What's it like to have dinner with you? It must be excruciating. Do you like lecture people like this when you come over to their house and sit and lecture them? You know, they're not doing the right thing, that they're missing their opportunities, evading their responsibilities. If I think they are... Look, I wouldn't want to eat with you, man. That's horrible. I know and you won't. The thing I want to get to... We did promise naked pictures of Supreme Court. Yeah, we did. Let's get to those. Why can't we just talk? Why can't we just talk? Please. I beg of you guys. I think you watched too much Crossfire. We're going to take it quick. No, no, no, no. Look, please. We've got commercials. Please. Next. Please stop. In the rapid fire. Please stop. Hopefully he'll be here. We hope. We thank. And then, did US soldiers refuse an order in Iraq? They tried so hard to change the subject. He wouldn't let them, so what do they do? They end the interview immediately. Oh, we've got to go to commercial break. They're so transparent. And now Tucker Carlson hosts his own show. He doesn't have to co-host it with a liberal, so now he can just, you know, kick off guests like that whenever he wants to at his own discretion. Yep. Done. Thank you. But I mean, Jon Stewart, he had them pegged. And really he was speaking to a broader structural issue with CNN, which is their fake neutrality that both sides are equal. You know, is climate change real or is it not? To have two people on to debate it, that is horrible for discourse. It's horribly toxic because some issues, there's just, there's not two sides. They're not debatable. When it comes to the issue of climate change, I unequivocally denounced debates related to the reality of anthropogenic climate change because to even suggest that it's a debatable issue I think is inherently destructive because it's not debatable. The only folks who are trying to make it debatable are shills paid by the oil and gas industry. So I don't think that we should play their game and buy into this idea that climate change is debatable or that civil rights are debatable. There's some things that's not debatable. What the tax rate should be, that's debatable, right? That's debatable. But when it comes to actual important issues that have a significant impact on the future of the planet on our lives, that's not so debatable. And what John Stuart was doing was speaking to that here and he said, look, you're not debating your public hacks because they really did have this opportunity. If you have a liberal and a conservative talking that could potentially be constructive, you can maybe have them find common ground, but that's not going to work if you're just dealing with hacks. I think that the only way that this format would work is if you get normal Americans, normal conservative, one normal liberal, and I'm talking about working people and you get them to share their ideas and you change it every single week. But when you get these talking heads, these shills for their respective parties, what does that do? That doesn't give us any insight into what working Americans need. It's not actually a real debate. It's fake. It's all political theater. And that's what John Stuart called out there. Now, the one thing that I will say where I actually agree a little bit more with Tucker Carlson is when John Stuart implied that you shouldn't really take him seriously. Sure he has a new show, but I mean, it's on Comedy Central. He's a comedian and it comes on before Cranky Anchors, where it's a show about puppets crank calling people. I don't actually agree with that. I don't think that we shouldn't actually take John Stuart seriously. I don't think that what he was doing was less important than any other traditional news outlet. And I'll tell you why. Because John Stuart actually did do real news and like it or not, people took him seriously. So comedian or not, you don't get to use the but I'm a comedian excuse if you don't actually do a good job at what you are larping as. So you know, I do think that he should have challenged John Kerry in the interview that he did. Tucker Carlson called him out for, you know, basically giving him the softball interview. I mean, it's funny because Tucker Carlson does that all the time with politicians that he loves. Look at the Matt Gaetz interview. And I don't even know. Like I don't think I've seen the John Kerry interview with with John Stuart. But I mean, regardless, if you are providing people with a particular service and they take you seriously, I think that you have a responsibility to make sure that to the best of your ability, you make them more informed. Look, John Stuart did inform people back when he was still the host of the Daily Show. Most folks who were younger, my age, millennials, we got our news from John Stuart. And it was great because he wasn't a Democratic Party hack, unlike Trevor Noah. He would actually attack Democrats and Republicans. He was an equal opportunity offender, but he wasn't a fence sitter. There wasn't this fake neutrality that he was trying to propagate is if Democrats and Republicans were the same. He wasn't trying to make this false equivalence. And so I'm going to take turns attacking Democrats and then Republicans. He always approached things from, I think, an objective liberal to left leaning perspective, and that's really what made his show refreshing. And now I haven't seen the Daily Show, so perhaps it's improved. But if you tune in the last time I watched it, it just seemed like more Democratic Party propaganda, albeit with a comedic twist. But ultimately, what is important here, what message John Stuart was spreading is that mainstream media is doing a disservice to people. And now this clip is more important than ever, given how terrible Tucker Carlson has become. I mean, he's always been awful. He's always been someone who uses white supremacist dog whistles. But lately he's just gone full mask off doing straight up Alex Jones level conspiracy theories as it relates to the covid vaccines and masks. You know, he is citing the great replacement theory. So Tucker Carlson almost singlehandedly is making mainstream media even worse than it already was corporate media. It was always bad having news be a business. That's obviously going to create a conflict of interest. If your goal is to make money and increase profits, then, you know, you're not going to make the news your priority. You're not going to make informing people your priority. But Tucker Carlson, he took what was bad about corporate media and he made it even worse. He normalized extremist white supremacist talking points. And I've got to say, you know, back then he was a little bit rough around the edges, but now he's by far one of the most effective propagandists in America. And he's the most dangerous propagandist in America. And when I say he's the most effective propagandist, that's not me complimenting him. That's me saying that when he spreads lies, he does so in a believable way. So unless you're informed or educated, you're not going to know you're not going to be able to see through his lies and understand the way that he's nefariously and covertly trying to prime you to believe terrible things. So look, I'll leave that there. I thought that this clip was great. I might have even talked about it before in the program. I don't remember. But I thought that now would be really interesting to revisit it, given how much Tucker Carlson has made the headlines and not the headlines that he's created, but made headlines for being really, really terrible. So yeah, I'll leave that there. It would be nice to see John Stuart come back. But honestly, it might be good that he's gone because given how things have been going, if he were around in 2021, I wonder if I would be disappointed in him. I don't know. I know I used to love Colbert, and now he is not great. So who knows? But either way, you know, I thought it was fun to revisit this clip. Well, that's all that I've got for you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've made it this far in the program, as usual, I want to send a last thank you to all of the folks who make this show possible, all of our Patreon, Paypal and YouTube members. Well, that is all that I can talk about. I feel like my brain is melting because it's spring. It's starting to get warmer outside and the two lights aren't helping. So I kind of feel like my brain is melting under the heat. Nonetheless, I try to put on a great show if that's possible. So look, I'll see you all next week. I will be on Twitch if you want to watch me play Pokemon Snap. I might play a little bit of Sekiro, but we're winding down on that video game. And also, I'm pretty stoked that I will be getting my second vaccine dose. So in two weeks, I will be fully vaccinated and I could not be more excited to at least see some of my other family members who have been vaccinated. So that's all that I've got. I think if I keep talking, I'm going to just ramble. So I'll cut it off right now. I'll see you all next week. This has been the Humanist Report. My name is Mike Trigoretto. Take care, everyone.