 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 239 of the program. Today is Friday, May 1st and before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon PayPal and YouTube members, all of which signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes August Augustson, Andreas Jolkunen, Christopher Sharp, Heidi Boynton, Ijioma Onoaha, Jeffrey Songstar, Nami Asamanda, Raymond Kuzmik, Rhoda Clark, Ricardo Jimenez Jr. and V. Franco 22. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. We've got a great show for you all today. We'll talk about Trump's stupidity and how disinfected injections isn't the stupidest Trumpism as of late, believe it or not. Additionally, we'll discuss new evidence regarding the Tau Reed allegation news against Joe Biden, hypocrisy from Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand about this and we'll also talk about calls from progressives from Bernie Sanders to unsuspend his campaign and we'll cover the New York State Board of Elections decision to effectively cancel the 2020 primary in New York and how former candidates like Andrew Yang are responding to this. Bernie Sanders aides have chosen to sell out and betray the movement. We'll talk about that. And also we talked to journalist Jordan Chiren about the Flint water crisis story he just broke for Vice News and he'll also share his experience about COVID-19. Those stories along with others will be discussed on today's show. Hopefully you all will enjoy the episode. Let's go ahead and get right to it. We got a little bit of a preview of Donald Trump's general election campaign strategy and specifically how he'll be attacking Joe Biden when he retweeted an admittedly hilarious fake ad about Joe Biden, where he basically makes fun of him for being in cognitive decline. Now, I don't think it's funny that Joe Biden is in cognitive decline. I think it's sad and a little bit mean, quite frankly, to have him run for president. His family should have stepped in and told him, no, you're not fit to do this currently. But I mean, the story that Biden was telling about hairy legs, that's just that's just funny, right? So we all knew that Donald Trump would be weaponizing the story and capitalizing on this obvious disadvantage that Joe Biden has. But the problem for Donald Trump is that he also has a disadvantage. And you know, when you prime people to think about mental fitness, they're not just going to think about whether or not Joe Biden is mentally fit enough to govern, but they're going to think about you as well. And Donald Trump constantly puts his foot in his mouth and reminds us of how stupid he is as well. So he may not lose his train of thought, but he's a genuinely stupid person. And he keeps reminding us of this over and over again. And an example that we're all talking about, of course, is when he suggested that maybe, you know, injecting disinfectants into our bodies can possibly cure COVID-19. Now, I know that most of you have already seen this clip. It's been beaten to death by the media, but I haven't talked about it yet on the show and I've seen it like a bazillion times and it's still funny. Like I still find this hilarious. So we're going to play this clip one last time, just so there's no room for obfuscation, so people can't accuse me of taking him out of context that I care. But this is what Donald Trump said as possible cures for COVID-19. Take a look. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting. Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number of lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that so that you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds it sounds interesting to me. So we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That's that's think about how stupid you'd have to be to seriously say something like that. He's literally inquiring about if we like clean the insides of our bodies with disinfectant, whether or not that can cure us of COVID-19. If we have it, how stupid do you have to be to say something like that, to have that thought cross your mind? Like you have to have such a low IQ that obviously you should not be anywhere near the White House. But the fact that this dipshit is our president is honestly concerning. Now, what I love is that after we all just very clearly heard him suggest that, you know, maybe we should possibly look into injecting disinfectant into our bodies, literally right wing propagandists right on cue, rushed to defend him, suggesting, you know, maybe the left were just taking him out of context. Or they're arguing also that will he never technically suggested that people should inject themselves with bleach? Rather, he just said, you know, it's something that maybe we should look into. But anyone who tried to defend him in right wing media immediately looked more silly than they usually looked because Donald Trump came out and contradicted them, their defenses of him specifically by saying, no, I said it. It's just that, you know, I was being sarcastic. Now, you heard his tone. We just watched the video. He was not being sarcastic. Nonetheless, that's his defense after he kind of doubles down. Maybe there is something to light and the human body and helping people that are dying. OK, but just to clarify that, sir, are you are you encouraging America? You're not encouraging Americans to. No, of course, no, of course. That was interior wise. It's said, sarcastically, it was put in the form of a question to a group of extraordinarily hostile people, namely the fake news media. OK, so they need to clarify that. Well, of course, all they had to do to see it was just, you know, the way it was there. So I was looking at you, you know, I know you're looking at Dr. Burr. What's that? You're looking at Dr. Burr. I was looking at Bill. I was looking at the doctor. I was looking at some of the reporters. Please, does anyone believe that he was being sarcastic? No, he's a genuinely stupid person with a low IQ who was inquiring about whether or not it'd be effective to inject our bodies with this infectance. I mean, this is a guy who seriously asked why we can't nuke hurricanes. This is someone who talked about big water, how Puerto Rico is surrounded by big water. He's a stupid person. So for anyone to rush to defend him, it shows that they're nothing more than political hacks. They're just playing on a team. Now, you know, this story, it's funny, right? I laughed at the story. I genuinely laughed when he said this because of all the potential meme value. And it's just it's stupid. But this genuinely should scare us all. Like once the dust settled and the laughter went away, this really is unsettling. This is the person who's in charge of the country. And it's not the only stupid thing that he's said or done lately. Because, first of all, in response to the shortage of personal protective equipment, health care workers across the country desperately need, he said that that was fake news and that they're loaded up and there's no shortage. OK, that's not true. I personally know people who work in health care who have told me about how there is a shortage of PPE. So for him to just cry fake news, like he's trying to do damage control so he doesn't look incompetent, so he looks responsive and that, oh, we loaded up, but you didn't correct this issue. If you want to get credit for correcting this issue, then correct the fucking issue. Don't just say you did when we can verify that you didn't. Now, additionally, he threatened to veto relief bills that contained emergency funding for the US Postal Service as funding for it dries up. So that's great. And when it comes to his attorney general, William Barr, well, I think that this vanity fair headline says it all. Barr threatens legal action against states for keeping people under, quote, unquote, house arrest. The attorney general praised Trump's commonsensical approach to reopening the economy and issued a warning to governors who, quote, impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce by refusing to let their stay at home orders. So just stop and think about this for a moment. His attorney general is equating stay at home orders to house arrest. We are experiencing a pandemic. The way that we get through this is with social distancing and self quarantine, OK? That's what we do. It's not going to last forever. It is frustrating, admittedly. But to say something like this, what is he doing? He's throwing red meat to his base. He's essentially legitimizing the anti-quarantine protesters, one of which, by the way, who led the protests, tested positive for COVID-19 shocker. So that's what you're doing, and this is irresponsible. And you're tacitly endorsing the idea that maybe people should go back to work. We should reopen the economy and people should die for capitalism. Now, they wouldn't say this explicitly. They wouldn't say that that's their intention. But as he put it, we shouldn't let the cure be worse than the virus itself. He said that before. Before the smart people, presumably, got to him and told him that this was a terrible decision because you can't just choose between sacrificing people's lives and the economy. That's not the way that things works. Life is way more complicated than that. So you can't just save the economy by sending everyone back to work. If lots of people die, that hurts the economy. Now, we've lost more than 50,000 American citizens. That is a lot of people who died under his watch. And rather than trying to take responsibility and be a leader for a second, he's making it worse. He's trying to encourage them to violate these types of stay-at-home orders by having his attorney general say, this is like house arrest. Maybe you shouldn't listen because your civil liberties are being violated. And this comes after Donald Trump condemned Georgia for reopening some businesses like gyms and barber shops and whatnot. So, you know, either Trump directed him to do this when, you know, he's saying something else. Maybe there's just no communication within Trump's administration. But this is deeply dangerous. We need one unified message to come from Trump's administration. But as we see his response to COVID-19, this isn't even arguably the worst part about what he's doing. Because as we deal with a pandemic to remind you, you know, a lot of us urged political officials to push for the easing of sanctions on countries like Venezuela and Iran. But what did his administration do? They imposed new sanctions on Iran in late March, which is without question going to kill thousands of Iranian lives because even though you can't necessarily dictate that medical supplies be sanctioned indirectly, they're going to be affected. You're cutting the supply of medical supplies in an indirect manner. This will hurt them. This will kill people. But on top of that, what he's doing now should infuriate every single person in America. He's trying to ramp up and start a war with Iran. Here's what he tweeted out recently about Iran. Quote, I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gun boats if they harass our ships at sea. Now, as Aaron Rupar pointed out, he put out this tweet after Fox News talked about this. They claimed that at the same time, Iran bragged about its Navy's capabilities that they also sent out these gunboats to harass US warships that were stationed in the Persian Gulf. Here's the clip in question that likely encouraged the tweet that we saw from Donald Trump. Yeah, the website says it's successful this time, though. At the same time, Iran is bragging about the Navy's capabilities. Just last week, armed Iranian boats were caught on camera performing dangerous maneuvers around our warships in the Persian Gulf. You remember, let's bring in Congressman Michael Watts from now. You saw the ships like they played the video. So I guess that the dangerous maneuvers that they were committing were just piloting their boats too close to US warship. But here's another question. Why are US warships in the Persian Gulf? They're not trying to intimidate us. We're trying to intimidate them. Why are our warships in the Persian Gulf if not to intimidate them? This is cry bullying one on one where we're claiming to be the victims. They're the ones who are supposedly being aggressive when you just said that we're in the Persian Gulf. Get out. We don't have any business being there. Get out. We don't need to be patrolling the Persian Gulf. Bring those warships home. We don't need to be there. Second of all, another question that needs to be asked is, why is the president saber rattling against any country during a global pandemic? I don't care what country it is. Why are you escalating tension saber rattling when your number one priority should be getting us through this pandemic? Donald Trump is not just an idiot. That's the point of this story. Like we can laugh at how stupid he is and maybe how dangerous this is for him to suggest that people should inject their bodies with Lysol spray or Clorox or whatever, but he is a dangerous idiot. His idiocy crosses that line. It's not just something that we can laugh at and say, oh, Donald Trump said something stupid like his stupidity as the president has consequences. Very, very broad consequences like during a pandemic. He's trying to start a war with Iran. He's the president. And his stupidity is going to hurt a lot of people. I like feel a greater sense of responsibility as the host of a podcast on YouTube. Then Donald Trump feels as president of the United States, because people like take what you have to say seriously. Like if you're a leader and an influencer of any kind, they take what you say to heart. Now, for him to ask something like that, that on its face is so stupid. It shows you why he's incapable of leading this country at any time. But this time, especially, he is not capable. And if we get through COVID-19, when we get through COVID-19, it's not going to be because of what he does. It'll be in spite of what he does, because throughout the course of this process, he has been unquestionably unhelpful to say the least. Look, progressives warned Democrats about this. But this Tara Reid story, it's not going to go away any time soon. And it's only going to get worse for Joe Biden as the evidence mounts. Now, before we had the evidence that I'm about to get to, I believed Tara Reid when I heard her Me Too story. I listened to the podcast that she went on with Katie Halper. And I thought that everything she said made sense. You know, she was convincing. And what she's saying, it's not absurd. Like, we all see Joe Biden's inappropriate conduct, his touching of women and invasion of personal space. This isn't something that's super unbelievable. Numerous women have come out and explained how Joe Biden has made them feel uncomfortable. But I mean, these types of things, they at least, like, if you don't have evidence, then the information needs to be put out there. We have to investigate this as much as we can, have the authorities get involved. And at a minimum, Americans just have to know. But the problem is that the media didn't really touch the story until Bernie Sanders dropped out. We have individuals, Me Too activists, like Alyssa Milano, claiming that Bernie Sanders supporters were trying to weaponize this story against Joe Biden. And, you know, it's really disappointing that Democrats aren't being consistent because we really don't have a reason to not believe Tara Reid. Oftentimes, victims in these types of stories, they have nothing to gain and everything to lose. I mean, look at what happened with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford when she came out with her accusations against Brett Kavanaugh. Her life was ruined. She couldn't return to her home because she faced so many death threats. So Tara Reid could have remained silent. She's been silent for decades, but she chose to speak out. Maybe she wanted some closure. Maybe she just wanted the American people to know. But what matters is that these claims are taken seriously. And up until this point, they haven't been not by the media, not by the Democratic Party and not by Joe Biden himself. But that's going to change very soon because they can't not take it seriously because the story is getting very serious if it wasn't already serious for you. So Tara Reid's mom called into Larry King Live in the 1990s when he was on CNN. And, you know, she talked about this accusation. Tara Reid told her about what Joe Biden did. And even though she didn't name Joe Biden, she referred to him as a prominent senator. And Tara Reid confirms that this was in fact her mom who called in. This is a key piece of evidence because if people see this, they're going to realize that Tara Reid isn't just making this up to impact the 2020 election. This was something she was dealing with back in the 1990s. This isn't new. This is a real story. Take a look. Problems at all. The only thing she could have done was go to the press and she chose not to do it out of respect for it. Or she had a story to tell but out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn't tell it. That's true. But these are the people who do come to the lowest Ramanos, right? The staff worker who says, I want to let you know about what's going on, you know, the guy down the hall. And a lot of these people have a sense of obligation. They feel that this public official should be accountable if it's something. There was no blowers to the. This is utterly devastating for Joe Biden. Career ending. And it's sad that this wasn't taken seriously sooner. But you and I know why this wasn't taken seriously sooner. And, you know, this confirms a couple of things here. That Tara Reid did genuinely admire Joe Biden. She worked for him. She was a Democrat and she didn't want to destroy his career. They were genuinely struggling with this. And also, you know, as Tara's mom pointed out, she didn't feel like she had any recourse, like they didn't know who to talk to. The only one was the media where she would act as a whistleblower. So this is clearly referencing Tara Reid's accusations. This is huge. This is a really big deal. And there's even more evidence because Tara Reid's neighbor corroborates the fact that she told someone about this. Now, she told multiple people, her brother, her late mother, but also her neighbor. And her neighbor is saying she was told about this in the 1990s when it happened. So again, this isn't just something that she's choosing to conveniently do now. She told people about it at the time that it happened and she just never spoke out. So as HuffPost's Haley Miller explains, Linda Lacasse told Business Insider in a report published Monday that Reid confided in her about the alleged assault in 1995 or 1996, when the two women lived in the same apartment complex in Morro Bay, California. This happened. And I know it did because I remember talking about it. Lacasse told the outlet Reid was one of at least eight women last year to publicly accuse Biden of inappropriate touching. She said at the time she worked in his Senate office when she was in her mid 20s and that he would make her uncomfortable by running his fingers up her neck or putting his hand on her shoulder. So now we're seeing more details about the pattern of inappropriate behavior with which is something that lines up with what we see from Joe Biden on TV. Him inappropriately touching women so often that eight women spoke out. Now, some women has said that this didn't bother them the way that Joe Biden interacted with them, but enough women did to where eight of them spoke out. So it's not just that Joe Biden allegedly sexually assaulted her, right? And penetrated her with his fingers. He was making her feel uncomfortable by touching her inappropriately as we've seen him do ourselves with our very own eyes. So this is a very serious story. And if Democrats ever wanted to be taken seriously again, they would call on him to drop out because he has not officially clenched the nomination. He hasn't reached that magic 1991 number. Half the states haven't voted yet. Are they really going to do this? Are they really going to nominate an alleged rapist? This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. And guess what? Republicans are capitalizing on this story. You thought that Bernie Sanders supporters, Alyssa Milano, were trying to weaponize this story. This is going to be weaponized like you'd never imagine by Republicans who don't actually care about the details, who aren't principled. Because Trump Jr. is already tweeting about this. He responded to a Nancy Pelosi tweet that she made about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and, you know, he tweeted, far too few people are recognizing Tara Reid's sheer bravery in sharing her story today. And as you can see, I mean, he's basically using her words against her and pointing to her hypocrisy. But let's be clear, Trump Jr. doesn't actually care about Tara Reid's allegations. He's also a hypocrite. He has no room to talk. He accused Democrats of politicizing the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. And he even made fun of that story on Instagram. But because Democrats didn't take the story seriously, now you have people who aren't principled, who just don't care. They're going to beat Joe Biden over the head with this story until this election is over. And they did this to themselves because we had this information before the primary was over, but the media didn't want to talk about it. Democrats didn't want to speak out. I mean, we saw what was said to Al Franken. What happened? He was forced to resign for doing less than what Joe Biden is accused of doing. And they're going to do it. They're going to go through with the nomination of an accused rapist, giving Americans the option between a rapist and a rapist. Which do you prefer? Someone who rapes more or less? It's it's truly morally reprehensible. And, you know, this is just a game. It's really showing people that nobody cares about anything. Everyone in Washington, D.C. They're just motivated by politics. If their team does something bad, they're not going to say anything. But if the other team does something bad, they're going to make a huge case about it. It's really, really disgusting. And it's honestly heartbreaking to see this because this Me Too story or this Me Too movement, rather, is important, right? I think that women should feel empowered to speak out against men in power who abuse their positions of power. I mean, this story symbolizes everything that the Me Too movement has tried to be. But Democrats who purported to represent that movement are not helping women beat the system of oppression against women from men in power. They're just choosing to sit on it. In fact, conveniently, Nancy Pelosi came out with an endorsement of Joe Biden. And, you know, I don't have to remind you of the significance of this to have the highest ranking woman in power conspicuously choose to endorse Joe Biden now as the evidence piles up. And here's the thing as a Bernie Sanders supporter, let me just say this. I am not under the delusion that Democrats are going to say, all right, Joe Biden's been accused of rape. Let's bring back Bernie Sanders. That's not what they're going to do. But what they can do is they can actually endorse the idea of democracy playing out because we still have a lot of states that haven't voted yet and encourage Joe Biden to step down. I get that people made their choice for Joe Biden. More people voted for Joe Biden. He got millions more votes than Bernie Sanders and the other candidate. Right. So, yes, democracy is something that we have to factor in. But most voters didn't know about these allegations when they voted for Joe Biden, when they made their selection between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden and Bernie and other candidates. So this is deeply irresponsible. And if they did want to beat Donald Trump, they would encourage Joe Biden to step down or at least get him to commit to step down if he's elected in favor of letting his VP win, I don't know. But just to not do anything, it's it's not acceptable. It's not acceptable because now, whenever Democrats rightfully call out, you know, a Republican who's been accused of something like this, nobody's going to take them seriously. Why would they? Because now they're proving the Republicans right. So nobody stands for anything. And Democrats are just going to go through with this, you know, rather than trying to be responsible, they double down and they endorse Joe Biden. All right. But evidence is mounting and people are going to have questions about this. So at a minimum, Democrats should at least speak out either for or against Joe Biden. At least say something about this. So they tell us whether or not they stand for anything, communicate to us, you know, indirectly, that they actually do believe in all the things they said about believing women and me, too. But they're not going to do that because this party stands for nothing. And they probably don't even really care about winning. So they're going to run Joe Biden an alleged rapist and then they're going to blame the left and everyone else but themselves when they lose, if they lose. It's disgusting. I think it's fair to say that it's not a foregone conclusion that Joe Biden will lose to Donald Trump because I genuinely believe that COVID-19 has shaken up the dynamics of the 2020 race. And maybe voters will just make a decision based on Donald Trump's handling of COVID-19. Maybe this will just very narrowly be a type of referendum on Donald Trump. But as time progresses on, more and more people are losing confidence in Joe Biden. Why? Because he has a problem attracting young and Latino voters and he's doing nothing to win them over. On top of that, more and more evidence is mounting against him. Tahr reads claims are being validated. They do seem credible, not that they weren't already, but now we have more evidence, more individuals corroborating her claims. And on top of that, it's very transparent what his campaign is trying to do. They've kind of pushed him aside and they've tried to make his wife, Joe Biden, the face of his campaign. And this is obviously to hide away the fact that he is suffering from cognitive decline. That's such an issue that I don't think he should have run to begin with. Even Obama tried to influence him not to run because he didn't think that he could get the job done. So there is this sense of worry, not just with the left, but with Democrats as well. That Joe Biden isn't going to be able to get the job done. Now, the left knows that there's something that we can do. There's a stronger candidate that can beat Donald Trump. It's not a guarantee, but he's stronger, Bernie Sanders. And I tweeted out Bernie Sanders should unsuspend his campaign. And that's probably one of my most popular tweets ever. Got 18,000 likes. And on top of that, a couple days later, Bernie come back, trended on Twitter with nearly 60,000 tweets. So there is a real yearning for him to come back for practical reasons. It's not just that Joe Biden is not instilling us with confidence that he can beat Donald Trump. But on top of that, there's a pragmatic reason why Bernie Sanders should unsuspend his campaign. He was just removed from the New York ballot. He said his goal was to influence the Democratic Party's platform and rules. And in order to do that, he's got a rack of delegates. So he told you to still vote for him. I intend on doing that. But they just removed him from the ballot of a very delegate rich state. So this can be seen as an out. Well, I wasn't going to unsuspend my campaign, but now it looks like I have no choice because my voters, they need to have a say. Our agenda needs to have some type of sway over the Democratic Party platform. And if the New York State Democratic Party says that I've got to be an official candidate who has declared that he's running for office in New York, then I guess I have to unsuspend my campaign and declare my candidacy once again. Now, look, do I think Bernie Sanders would do this? No, I don't. I don't think he's going to do this because he responds to all the criticism he received. Like we knew that there would be growing pressure for him to drop out. You saw Larry David, you know, tell him to get out. You saw the view hosts like Whoopi Goldberg asking him why he hasn't dropped out. So he wouldn't do this. He wouldn't want to do that. And I think that he knows that he still probably won't win. So he doesn't want to get his supporters hopes up. But here's the thing. Joe Biden is a horrible candidate. And one thing that we know for a fact is if turnout is low, if young people don't turn out for Joe Biden, he's going to lose and he hasn't done anything that changed that yet. So while I admit that Bernie Sanders, you know, unsuspend his campaign probably won't change the trajectory of this race, it at least, if nothing else, will pressure Joe Biden to do better. This is why I wanted Bernie Sanders to stay in until the convention, because if you run a grassroots campaign where people dedicate their harder and cash and their lives, I mean, my friend, Joy, she sacrificed five weeks of her life to go to Iowa and knock on doors for Bernie Sanders. Like for him to suspend his campaign, it feels like a slap in the face to all of his supporters. And I know that that's not his intention. So I'm not trying to attack Bernie Sanders. And I know that, you know, it seems like I'm crying over spilled milk. And I know that even if Bernie Sanders did, in fact, take my advice and unsuspend his campaign, it's not like the Democratic Party would let him win. However, you want to use the word let. I mean, if Joe Biden fails, if, you know, there becomes so much pressure for him to drop out because of the tower redialogation or what have you. I'm not under this, you know, impression that Democrats will be like, all right, we've got to bring back Bernie, I guess. Dang, this sucks. They're not going to do that. They'd replace him with some other neoliberal Democrat, Andrew Cuomo, whoever, you know, throw a neoliberal name at a dart. It doesn't matter. So, you know, it's not like this is actually going to change anything. I'm fully aware of the fact that Joe Biden is probably going to be the nominee, almost certainly going to be the nominee. And Bernie Sanders is not going to be president. He's never going to be president. You know, I'm trying to swallow that pill. But with that being said, now, more than ever, we need strong leadership. Without Bernie Sanders in the race, we've already seen how poorly Joe Biden is performing. Once Bernie dropped out, Joe Biden went back into hiding. And he already was going into hiding once he started to sweep states on Super Tuesday two and three. So it's not like Bernie would have that big of an influence, but any influence would be better. If Bernie unsuspend his campaign and just held a daily press briefing when it comes to COVID-19, that could make a difference. That could, you know, influence discourse in a way. Bernie is still holding pretty frequent town halls online through Zoom with, you know, health experts and members of Congress, such as the squad. So, I mean, you can basically run a digital campaign by changing nothing, just unsuspending to put a little bit of pressure on Joe Biden. But I know Bernie's not going to do that. And just the fact that so many people are yearning for a return of Bernie Sanders, it shows you how weak of a candidate Joe Biden is. I was thinking about this and I honestly would prefer Hillary Clinton. I honestly would prefer Hillary Clinton because, look, at least she's qualified. Nobody doubts her cognitive capabilities like she would be able to govern and she'd be at least an adequate leader. She'd be better than Donald Trump and certainly more competent than Joe Biden. But I mean, out of how many candidates, like 22, 23, we got the second worst candidate. Michael Bloomberg, I think, was the worst. But we got the second worst, Joe Biden. And it was because Joe Biden was the first Democrat to win a state not named Bernie Sanders. If Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar had won South Carolina, then I think that, you know, that would have been the Democratic Party front runner currently. So it just, you know, as I see, you know, come back Bernie trend, I'm reminded of what could have been. And I want Bernie to unsuspend his campaign. And look, maybe maybe I'm lying to myself when I think that Bernie would have any sway over Joe Biden to do better. Maybe I'm still better. I think it's OK if I admit that maybe I just want to, you know, give the middle finger to Joe Biden and the establishment, right? Because they do that to us at every step of the way. And I just I think this is about just wanting any lefty in a position of power to play hardball with Democrats just a little bit. I mean, they just removed Bernie from the ballot just to give us the middle finger. So I just I want them to get a taste of their own medicine. I want the left to play hardball. And I'm just I'm so disappointed. I don't know what this would accomplish in bringing back Bernie's campaign. I know he wouldn't win. I know that they wouldn't let him win. They'd stop him. They'd use their institutional mechanisms to suppress the left like they've been doing. It's not going to change anything. So it's just I don't know what I want. I just I want him to unsuspend his campaign. And I want things to be different. So I mean, you know, you can kind of sense how conflicted I am with this election. Like we could have had Bernie Sanders and Americans turned down not one but two chances to get him. Someone who's genuinely trying to help people. And now we see polls showing that 69% of voters favor Medicare for all. And they've nominated a candidate who is openly hostile towards it, who laughs at people who ask whether or not he'd ever consider supporting Medicare for all, who literally said he'd veto Medicare for all. This is such a bad situation that we find ourselves in once again. Like you think that after 2016, Democrats, if they wanted to win, would have learned their lesson, but they chose someone worse than Hillary Clinton, which is almost unthinkable. And I can't help but think it's going to get worse. They're going to pick Michael Bloomberg in 2024 or Joe Manchin, I mean, they keep lowering the bar and there's no other conclusion that I can take away from this rationally than to think that maybe they just don't want to win or they don't care about winning, they just want to make sure that the left doesn't win. So, I mean, I want Bernie Sanders to unsuspend his campaign, but I'm not I'm not of the belief that this will actually accomplish anything meaningful. Maybe I'm just petty. Maybe I just want to give a fuck you to the establishment. But he should unsuspend his campaign. And Matt Lech on Twitter pointed out how any grassroots candidate should just opt to stay in until the convention and never deviate away from that plan. Because when you really invest your life and your money in a grassroots candidate who you believe in, it's a huge gut punch to not even get to vote. Like for me, I'm not going to even have a voice in this election. Like my state doesn't vote until May. And Bernie already dropped out and I'm not alone. Most states or at least half the states about haven't voted yet. So the situation is just frustrating. And maybe Bernie just unsuspend his campaign will be cathartic. Maybe it'll just make me feel good. But I mean, people want something to believe in. That's the takeaway from this. I mean, you see these types of trends, these hashtags on Twitter, you see the response when I say that he said he should unsuspend his campaign. I don't know. It's just that we have an opportunity to get someone who actually cares about us into power. Why not try? Even if failure is almost a certainty, why not give it a shot just to say we did everything? I think he should unsuspend his campaign. I genuinely do. And I know I'll get shit for this. Fuck it. I don't care. He should unsuspend his campaign and aggressively fight for the nomination. Joe Biden can't do it. I don't have faith in him that he could be Donald Trump. And even if he did be Donald Trump, I don't believe he would be a competent leader. So we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by Bernie just unsuspend his campaign, the media is going to hate it. Democrats are going to, you know, bark at him. Who cares? They've already showed that they have no interest in even extending an olive branch to the left. I mean, they just removed Bernie from the ballot. So if they're going to give us the middle finger, we need to just for once play hardball in return. Just just once. Probably won't work out. But at least we could say we tried. So last week, we talked about a story where in New York State Democratic Party officials were trying to get Bernie Sanders removed from the ballot. Yes, he suspended his campaign. I get that. But there's no threat here. He's not going to have some type of unprecedented come back and win. So why would you remove him from the ballot and further alienate the left who already feels disenfranchised by the Democratic Party? Well, there's not really any reason rather than, look, let's just functionally cancel the primary and not take any risks, because we all know they're a little bit worried. There's not very much enthusiasm for Joe Biden and there is this terror read story that has more and more evidence proving that what she said about Joe Biden and what he did to her in the mid nineties is probably true. So they don't want to take any chances. And they don't believe in democracy. They don't to functionally cancel a primary for no reason when Bernie poses no threat when he just wanted to rack up delegates to influence the platform. I mean, worst case scenario for them, he gets a lot more delegates and influences the platform a little bit. But does that even matter? What good is the platform going to do? The left doesn't even believe the platform will have any influence over Joe Biden. I don't anyways, I mean, I can only speak for myself. But there's nothing that they have to gain from this, but they do have a lot to lose. And further making the left more angry than they already are. But nonetheless, they went ahead with this and they have, in fact, removed Bernie Sanders from the ballot. So if you live in the state of New York and you donated to Bernie Sanders, you spent months phone banking for him, canvassing for him, knocking on doors for him. Guess what? Your voice doesn't get to be heard. You don't get to make your voice heard. How infuriating is that? They, you know, in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost because a lot of young people didn't turn out, what were we told by members of the Democratic Party? We were told that we should get involved, right? Sign up for a candidate that we believe in, run for office ourselves. And they've done nothing but spit in our faces at every single step of the way and try to resist what energy we have, try to, you know, suppress the left and young voters. And I can't think of a bigger slap in the face than doing this. So they did it. And Bernie Sanders is speaking out and his team is challenging this decision. So as Daniel Moranz of HuffPost writes, the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders submitted a letter to the New York State Board of Elections on Sunday, challenging a looming decision on whether to keep him on the ballot for the state's primary. Keep in mind, this story was published before the decision was official. Sanders formally suspended his campaign earlier this month, but said that he planned to stay on the ballot in upcoming primaries in order to maximize his influence on the Democratic Party's platform and rules. Five days later, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a budget bill with an obscure provision authorizing the state's Board of Elections to remove from the primary ballot those candidates who have withdrawn from the presidential campaign. Malcolm Seymour, an attorney representing the Sanders campaign, argued in the letter to the board that the provision should not apply to Sanders retroactively, since he might have acted differently if it had been an effect when he decided to suspend his campaign. Quote, the retroactive application of the change in election law would severely impact Senator Sanders core substantive rights Seymour wrote in the letter obtained by HuffPost because of the severity of this potential deprivation, the presumption against retroactive application must operate with maximum force. Seymour further noted that the new law merely states that the Board of Elections, quote, may rather than, quote, must decide to remove from the ballot candidates who have ended their campaigns for the nomination. So make no mistake about it. They didn't have to do this. They chose to do this. I guess to further shield Joe Biden from Tau Reed's allegations in case more people heard about it and chose to opt for Bernie Sanders, or maybe they weren't worried about that. Maybe they just didn't want Bernie Sanders to have any influence over the Democratic Party's meaningless platform and their meaningless rules that they don't even follow anyway, or maybe they don't even care about any of that. Maybe they just genuinely want to give lefties the middle finger and just make sure that there's only one option on the ballot, neoliberalism, because that's the direction that the party clearly wants to head in. And they want to let everyone know they're not changing that trajectory anytime soon, even if making your voice heard does no harm to them. They just don't care. They don't care. And thankfully, people like AOC have spoken out and denounced this move. She tweeted, it is completely wrong for the BOE to cancel New York's presidential primary. This decision is not informed by public health. The state is still holding elections for every other seat that day. And so far, the only way your ballot will 100% be counted in New York is to vote in person. So I think that people need to call this what it is. Don't beat around the bush. This is voter suppression. That's exactly what this is. This is a form of voter suppression. They don't want people to be able to make their voices heard because these party elites, they want to be in control. They don't want you to have any say whatsoever. And look, throughout the course of this primary, to be fair, we were told that our voices don't matter. Remember when Bernie Sanders was leading and it looked like he was going to get a plurality of pledge delegates? What were we told by Democratic Party officials in mainstream media that it's not us who really has a say in Democratic Party primaries? It's the elites who really get to influence who becomes the nominee. And they were all media pundits, Democratic Party officials, perfectly OK with superdelegates stealing the nomination away from Bernie Sanders. So if they were OK with that, basically burning down the party to beat Bernie, then of course they're going to be fine with just removing him from the ballot after he already suspended his campaign. So I think that there's only one conclusion from this that we can take away. Bernie has to unsuspend his campaign because if your goal to rack up pledge delegates is still in play, then this is hindering that goal. I mean, this is a very delegate rich state. New York has a lot of pledge delegates in play. And even if you won't win, if your true goal is at this point to influence the party's platform, then you have to unsuspend your campaign. You're not doing it because you believe you can win necessarily. You're doing it because functionally, this is the only way that you can fulfill that end that you set out. So you've got to unsuspend. I'm not, you know, going to say that Bernie will do this because he won't. But he's got to start playing hardball. I mean, I guess it doesn't matter anymore because he's not going to run for president again, but just generally speaking, as a rule, the left needs to realize that they will never beat the Democratic Party machine unless they are willing to play hardball, unless they are willing to put up a fight against the establishment who has a lot of institutional mechanisms that they will repeatedly use to suppress the left. So this is just it's disgusting. And I really feel bad for anyone who lives in New York, who isn't going to be allowed to make their voices heard. Like how disgusting is this? I'm already mad enough that in my state of Oregon, Bernie Sanders dropped out before I could even make my voice heard. My niece who's voting for the first time and wanted to enthusiastically support Bernie Sanders, you know, he already dropped out and she's not going to be able to vote knowing that he has a chance because he dropped out. But at least we can still make our voices heard. At least we can still check off the box for Bernie Sanders. But New Yorkers, they don't even get that luxury. Like this is morally reprehensible and they don't care. That's the point. It's to be cruel, to let you know who's in charge. It's not you. It's them. This is a power play. They just want to flex because they have power and they will remind you of that repeatedly until the left takes power and kicks these goons out. In response to the New York State Board of Elections effectively canceling the 2020 Democratic Party primary, Andrew Yang is taking what I think is really bold action that's important because this could make a difference. He's choosing to file a lawsuit against them because, you know, as Bernie Sanders supporters, it's easy to focus on the fact that Bernie was removed from the ballot. But keep in mind, this removes everyone who was supposed to be on the ballot. That includes other candidates who had previously run but dropped out. Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, the supporters of other candidates are also being disenfranchised here and Joe Biden will be the only name on the ballot at the top of the ticket. So legally speaking, Andrew Yang is trying to make a case as to why this actually disenfranchises voters and on top of that, you know, putting aside the legal argument, it's just plain wrong. So Zach Montalero of Politico reports Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate is suing the New York State Board of Elections in federal court after the State Election Commission effectively canceled the Democratic presidential primary there. Yang, along with seven New Yorkers who filed to serve as Yang delegates to the Democratic National Convention, filed suit on Monday, arguing that they should not be removed because they had otherwise met the requirements to be on the ballot. The decision to remove Yang, quote, denies voters due process and denies voters the right to vote and therefore must be invalidated removing the authority for the defendant to take the actions complained of herein. Reads the lawsuit, which was shared with Politico. The lawsuit notes that neither Yang nor the delegate candidates asked to be removed from the ballot. The New York State Board of Elections effectively canceled the presidential primary on Monday when the two Democratic commissioners voted to strip every candidate except former Vice President Joe Biden off the ballot because they were no longer actively seeking the presidency. The move infuriated supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders in particular. Sanders, like Yang, has also suspended his campaign, but publicly said he wished to remain on the ballot for the remaining primaries so he could continue to be awarded delegates to sway the National Convention. The suit, filed by Yang, also argued that axing the Democratic presidential primary would hurt down ballot candidates. The lawsuit argued that canceling the presidential primary would be suppressing voter turnout as voters will have less incentive to vote if they cannot cast a ballot for the highest office in the land and thereby negatively impact challenger candidates such as Jonathan Herzog, who is running a long shot primary bid against Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler in New York's 10th district. Herzog is also a party to the lawsuit. So I applaud Andrew Yang for doing this. This is absolutely the correct move. And I really hope that Bernie Sanders, as well as every other candidate whose name was removed from the ballot, joins this lawsuit because this isn't right, like you can't keep doing things like this, disenfranchising your own base and getting away with it. And look, let me remind you back in 2018, after AOC defeated Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary, well, he remained on the ballot under the umbrella of the Working Families Party and they didn't opt to remove him. Right. So it's not like they're procedurally driven and care about the rules. This is just a middle finger to the supporters of other candidates. They want you to fall in line and support Joe Biden because he's the presumptive nominee. So why would you vote for someone else that you previously supported? But that's wrong. I mean, think about this, especially candidates like Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders, they brought new voters into the Democratic Party. People who otherwise wouldn't have been interested in the Democratic Party. And as a welcome to all of these new voters that individuals like Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders brought in, this is how the Democratic Party welcomes them by slapping them in the face. And what's frustrating, I've got to imagine for people like Andrew Yang, is that he's played by their rules. He pledged loyalty to them. He endorsed Joe Biden and got ripped for it by a lot of his own support base. So he's done what was needed from him, what they expected him to do. And they still slap him in the face. They do the same to Bernie Sanders. He endorsed Joe Biden. He is going to be campaigning for Joe Biden, I assume, you know, if this COVID pandemic ends and they still do this. There's nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing this, because you're not winning over any new voters. You're not improving Joe Biden's chances at all. It's just plain cruel. They're disenfranchising their own base and they don't even care. So this lawsuit is incredibly important. I will be following it closely. And I commend Andrew Yang again and everyone who's joining this lawsuit. And if you are running in the state of New York, not just as a former presidential candidate, but as a down ticket Democrat, a progressive, challenging the machine, I would advise you to try to get in on this lawsuit, because this really is unacceptable. They are stripping away due process from voters. Why shouldn't people be allowed to let their voices be heard? This is still a primary, regardless of people's suspender campaigns or not. They're still on the ballot or they were on the ballot. So why not allow the supporters who were enthusiastic enough to still support him and support the Democratic Party as a result? Why not just give them their voice if it doesn't matter to you? If it doesn't affect your power? Well, because they can't help themselves. They can't help themselves. They've got to control every little aspect about democracy because they don't care about democracy. This is the undemocratic party. And whatever they complain about voter suppression that happens when the Republicans introduce these draconian voter ID laws that disproportionately target people of color, just remind Democrats, they do the same thing. They do the same exact thing, albeit to their own base. Republicans, they do it to the base of their opponents. Democrats do this to themselves. They disenfranchise their own base, suppress turnout for themselves. And then they wonder why they lose elections. This is why, because you don't respect your base. And not only do you just not respect them and not care about them, you go out of your way to spit in their faces at every step of the process when we see these elections. So kudos to Andrew Yang. I hope he wins this lawsuit. And, you know, I hope that there's some penalty for the Democratic Party state board of elections because this is just unacceptable. But, you know, if I've learned anything from the Democratic Party and our justice system, it's that justice is very rarely served. So I mean, I wouldn't expect much to come of this, but I'm still hopeful and I will be following this because I think this is the right thing to do. And I hope Bernie Sanders actually plays hardball and joins this suit. Andrew Yang shouldn't be in this alone. The other candidates have got to have his back here because it's the ethical thing to do. And it's the right thing to do for voters. A new report from the New York Times details how several aides from the Bernie Sanders campaign have chosen to officially sell out and they launched a super PAC to support Joe Biden and not just to support Joe Biden specifically to rally progressives around Joe Biden by using a super PAC. Let that kind of sink in for a moment. Now, this isn't the first time that this has happened back in 2016. Simone Sanders, who you now know as the press spokesperson for Joe Biden. After she left Bernie's campaign in 2016, she joined a super PAC Priorities USA, which was a top organization, a super PAC that worked on behalf of Hillary Clinton. So, you know, it's not like we were under this impression that everyone who was in Bernie's campaign was 100% pure. And they were in this for altruistic reasons. There are people who are career minded and opportunistic that you have to look out for. But this time, you know, how quickly they've chosen to show their true colors and the approach that they're taking to, you know, facilitate the goal that they want. It's it's a little shocking, to be honest. So Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times explains former top advisors to Senator Bernie Sanders are teaming up on a surprising new venture to try to rally progressive support for former Vice President, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.'s 2020 campaign, a super PAC Jeff Weaver, who served as Mr. Sanders' campaign manager in 2016 and as a top advisor in 2020, is leading the effort, which will focus on mobilizing the base of Sanders supporters, young people, liberals, Latinos and blue-collar progressives for Mr. Biden. Other top Sanders officials from the 2020 race who will be involved include Chuck Rocha, a senior advisor who focused on Latino outrage, Tim Tagoras, who oversaw digital strategy and fundraising, and Shelly Jackson, a California strategist for the campaign. Mark Longabaugh, who worked for Mr. Sanders in 2016, but left the 2020 campaign early on, is also part of the new group. Mr. Sanders has railed for years against the super PACs, which can accept unlimited donations, emphasizing his reliance on millions of small contributions from supporters online to fuel his two presidential bids. The senator is not supportive of super PACs. He is not supportive of this super PAC, Mr. Weaver said in an interview Tuesday, he certainly would prefer we had not done it through a super PAC. He added, each of us has to make our own decision about how to move forward. Mr. Weaver said that given the short timeframe until the general election, this was the most efficient way for the Sanders movement to lock in some of the gains progressives have made by electing Mr. Biden and ousting President Trump. Mr. Sanders declined to comment on the new group. His spokesman, Mike Koska, said that Bernie has always opposed the creation of super PACs and his position has not changed. This is an effort completely independent of him and his campaign. Now, there is so much that I have to say about this. But first, we've got to get to the name of this super PAC. It's called a future to believe in PAC. They're literally ripping off the campaign slogan from Bernie Sanders in 2016. To promote the campaign of an alleged rapist in cognitive decline. First of all, a super PAC isn't going to help rally progressives because if they're truly progressive, they will be instinctively against these types of dark money groups. Second of all, you don't get to co-opt the language of the movement that you worked for if you're not actually going to be principled and follow the ideals of the Sanders movement. Now, on top of that, I want to get to a tweet from former Sanders surrogate Jamal Green, who decided to spill some tea on Jeff Weaver. He says, Jeff Weaver ain't shit. When he wanted Bernie to spend more money in black media, he shut it down. When they shut down efforts in Mississippi, basically giving up the effort to black voters, Weaver did that. Weaver made Bernie lose twice. He makes every final decision for Bernie. So, Jeff Weaver and all these individuals, Tim Tegares, Chuck Roka, let's not mince words here. These are sellouts. They are selling out. They weren't with Bernie because they cared about progressivism or democratic socialism. This is all about their next career move. They know Bernie's not going to run again, so they have no reason to remain principled, so they can try to make it seem as if they're doing this for progressivism and they're propping up Joe Biden because that's what's good for progressives, but they're doing this for their own careers. And they know that if they want a job in DC after they worked for Bernie Sanders, they've got to kiss some serious establishment ass. And this is exactly what they're doing. It's exactly what they're doing. And the disingenuity is part of the problem here with this move because Jeff Weaver says, look, I know that Bernie Sanders wouldn't prefer that we did this through a super PAC, but this is really the only way that we can. Let me find the quote. Lock in some of the gains progressives have made by electing Joe Biden. OK, if you're going to support Joe Biden because he's the lesser of two rapists or lesser of two evils, that's fine. You can do that strategically. I can rationalize that, but don't lie to people. And make it seem as if we're going to be able to have any influence over Joe Biden whatsoever, because if you were going to be able to influence Biden administration, don't you think he'd be at least a little bit responsive to progressives now when he needs your vote to win? Who's advising him? Larry Summers. Who's still openly hostile towards the idea of Medicare for all? Joe Biden. So don't pretend as if there's going to be a benefit in electing Joe Biden other than beating Donald Trump, because that's the only good that will come of a Biden administration trumps out. But all the problems that led to Donald Trump will still remain in place in the event Joe Biden is elected. So don't pretend as if there's going to be any sort of progressive progress whatsoever if Joe Biden is elected because that's horseshit and you fucking know it, you know it. Now, part of this is something that we have to talk about with regard to Bernie Sanders. He's made some really bad decisions. And it's easy for us to blame individuals who are bad actors in his ear. His top advisors like Jeff Weaver, who he's known for decades. But the buck stops with Bernie ultimately. Bernie didn't have to accept Jeff Weaver choosing to not do more voter outreach in the South, because I think that Bernie Sanders outreach to black voters in 2016 and 2020 was weak. He just didn't do enough. And sure, you can chalk that up to Jeff Weaver as Jamal Green does. But we have to blame Bernie as well for this. Bernie doesn't have to take their advice, right? Same thing with Elizabeth Warren. She chose to hire, you know, Hillary Clinton staffers and Kamala staffers and that definitely influenced her. But she didn't have to take their advice. She didn't have to hire them in the first place. But the same is true for Bernie Sanders here. We have to be consistent. He didn't have to take the bad advice that was being given to him by Jeff Weaver. He didn't have to do that, but he did anyway. And even though this individual was clearly opportunistic, seeing now that he's starting a super PAC, Bernie should have vetted these people. I don't know about the internal dynamics that took place with 2016. But what I do know is that after Bernie launched our revolution, which was an organization committed to, you know, getting grassroots progressives elected, lots of members did not like Jeff Weaver. There was a mutiny. And at the time, I didn't know about Jeff Weaver and whether or not he was an effective leader or if he was divisive and frankly toxic, as some individuals were implying, you know, when they talked about him back then, when they were leaving our revolution, but now it seems like the red flags were there all along and Bernie just didn't take it seriously. And now look, they left this campaign to sell out and promote Joe Biden through a sewer pack. Look, if you want to campaign for Joe Biden, go campaign for Joe Biden. You don't have to do, you know, some type of super PAC to do that. And certainly if you're going to use a super PAC and try to campaign and get Biden elected by the dirtiest means possible, don't pretend as if you're doing this to rally progressives. We're not going to listen to a single word that you say and progressives. If you're watching this, do not give this super PAC a penny. Don't give them anything because these are grifters now, right? Bernie's not going to become president. So they're not looking forward to a job in his administration ever. That's that's not a possibility. So now they're going to grift on to the next political opportunity that presents itself. It's frustrating because I want to believe that anyone who worked for Bernie Sanders, like they believed in the message, they were idealistic. They were doing it for altruistic reasons. But the reality is that Washington, DC really is a swamp for lack of a better word. And there were a lot of people who were just in it for a job and a spot in his administration. And I don't necessarily know how many people were there for that. I know there are some individuals who I genuinely believe in who were doing this for principled reasons, Breonna Joy Gray, Nina Turner. They're the real deal. David Serota also they're the real deal. But individuals like Chuck Rocha, Jeff Weaver, Mark Longabaugh, these are nothing more than careerists. They don't care about policy. They don't care about anything but their own careers. Nothing proves how opportunistic they are more than this move that they just made, because again, it's not like they're just going out and endorsing Joe Biden and trying to, you know, ramp up support for him. They're starting a super pack, a dark money super pack so they can raise unlimited sums of money on behalf of Joe Biden to influence progressives of all people. No, that's not going to happen. We see right through you. This is transparent. You're doing this for a career. And if Bernie Sanders wants any sort of credibility whatsoever, he's got to distance himself from individuals like Jeff Weaver, who are toxic, who are sellouts, who are frauds, who never believed in the message that he was selling, I believe that Bernie believes in his message. I don't believe a lot of the people around him believe in that message. So I hope Bernie Sanders distances himself and runs away from these frauds as fast as he possibly can, because this is unacceptable. There's no explanation. There's no logic behind this other than they want a job in politics for the foreseeable future, and they never cared about progressive policies. So to me, the most frustrating aspect about the Tar read me to story is the fact that Democrats refuse to hold their own to the same standard that they hold other individuals and other members of the opposite party to, right? But there are some who have been admittedly more consistent than the others, like Kirsten Gillibrand, because even if she is a corporate Democrat, she's a neoliberal, she has been admirably consistent when it comes to the Me Too movement, right? Because she's one of the main individuals that catalyze the resignation of Al Franken. I mean, that was ultimately his decision and his decision alone. But it was her who ultimately paved the way for his resignation. And she stood by that, right? Not only was she the first female senator from the Democratic Party to call on him to resign, but she then stated that she had absolutely no regrets about doing so. And she later defended her decision after she received criticism. And for those of you who need a refresher, Al Franken was forced to resign for being accused of doing less than Joe Biden. But nonetheless, these allegations are still serious. These are allegations of sexual harassment. Kirsten Gillibrand started with the Me Too story of Leanne Tweedon, who claims he kissed and groped her without consent. And this catalyzed a wave of other complaints from women coming forward, saying that he sexually harassed them. He tried to forcibly kiss them and whatnot. So he was forced to resign. And Kirsten Gillibrand has been widely seen as the individual who led the charge. In fact, there's been articles penned that suggest that was actually female senators who held him accountable, primarily Kirsten Gillibrand. And when she was running for president in 2019, she was forced to answer for her call for Al Franken to resign because it was still controversial. And this was the statement that she put out. Eight credible allegations of sexual harassment, two since he was elected senator and one from a congressional staffer that is not too high a standard, regardless of how the Republican Party handles this behavior and worse. Yes, it was Senator Franken's decision alone to leave the Senate, a path he ultimately chose. But for many senators, including myself and others in this primary field, that was not too high of a bar to raise our voices and make clear we value women. And that's really important because nobody's going to believe you if you say that we value women if you only apply a certain standard to one party and not your own. So what I think was admirable to me at least for Kirsten Gillibrand is even if I disagree with her policies and her coziness, it's a big pharma in Wall Street, the fact that she's consistent on at least one issue was admirable because nobody's consistent in DC, right? So if she's going to hold her own party accountable when nobody else will, well, even if she knows she's going to be criticized for it, I find that commendable. I find it, you know, respectable. It's why so many people are disappointed with actress and activist Alyssa Milano, who was one of the biggest cheerleaders to get Brett Kavanaugh off of the Supreme Court and to stop him from being confirmed to the Supreme Court. And when it comes to Joe Biden, all of a sudden she has a different standard. She's saying that people are trying to weaponize Tau Reed's Me Too story against Joe Biden. And now she's softening the rhetoric that she uses to talk about Tau Reed's story, but nonetheless, she already proved to be a hypocrite. But Kirsten Gillibrand, she was going to be different, right? I mean, look at what you said about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford when she came out with allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. She tweeted, enough is enough, one credible sexual assault claim should have been too many to get a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and make decisions that will affect millions of women's lives for generations. Two is an embarrassment. It's time for a new nominee. Now, coming from the person who pressured her own colleague, a fellow Democrat to resign, this actually meant something, right? It meant something because she wasn't just saying that because Brett Kavanaugh is a Republican playing for the opposite team. She respects women. It was believable because of her consistency. It's why people, you know, respect Kirsten Gillibrand over individuals like Alyssa Milano, who just want to, you know, jump on bandwagons when they're popular to do so. But actually being principled and consistent means you're going to hold to your principles. You're going to stick to your guns, even if it's really inconvenient, even if it makes you feel super uncomfortable, right? So when it comes to Taha Reed's Me Too story, Kirsten Gillibrand is going to be principled. I mean, we can expect that from her, right? Because up until this point, she hasn't backed down, I think rightfully so when she called on Alfrengen to resign. And she, you know, she was saying everything that I think needed to be said during the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. But what is she saying now? Well, she's saying what everyone else in the Democratic Party is saying about Joe Biden. She's dismissing the sexual assault allegations brought forward by Taha Reed. And according to Mike Momoli of NBC News, Senator Gillibrand was asked today on a conference call about Taha Reed allegations of assault by Joe Biden. She says, quote, I stand by Vice President Biden. He's devoted his life to supporting women and he has vehemently denied this allegation. But wait, you just were saying that we have to make it clear that we value women. You just said in 2018, one credible sexual assault claim should have been too many when it came to Brett Kavanaugh. And then you said it's time for a new nominee. Why is that standard not applied to Joe Biden? Why are you not calling for a new nominee? This is why nobody takes either party seriously because they stand for nothing. They stand for nothing. What did Republicans say? Oh, well, you know, we shouldn't believe Deborah Miller and Christine Blasey Ford because Democrats are just weaponizing this to stop him from getting on the Supreme Court because they don't agree with him politically. And Democrats, activists like Alyssa Milano, senators like Kirsten Gillibrand, you know, they were right to say that's incorrect. Simone Sanders, who now works for Joe Biden, even said, you know, women have nothing to gain and everything to lose when they come out because I mean, look at what happened to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Her life was ruined because of this. But now. It's OK because it's Joe Biden. They stand for nothing. They stand for absolutely nothing. And, you know, the problem is that we don't expect Democrats to be progressive at all when it comes to economic issues, but on social issues, that's the one grab that they have. That's the one thing that they use to draw in the left to get them to vote for them because they're better than Republicans when it comes to social issues, women's issues, LGBTQ issues. But here they are. Abandoning it the first moment, it becomes convenient. Now, look, maybe it's the case that Kirsten Gillibrand listened to Tara Reid's story. Maybe she, you know, did a lot of research and she just genuinely doesn't believe Tara Reid. OK, that's fair enough. That's fine. That's fine. But you had a really, really high standard for Brett Kavanaugh. You had a really high standard for Al Franken and I think rightfully so. So forgive me if it doesn't necessarily seem like you're applying that same standard to Joe Biden when Tara Reid now has more evidence to back up her claims than Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had to back up the claims that Brett Kavanaugh raped her when they were young. And the difference is that they were both young at a party, whereas Joe Biden was in a position of power and influence when he allegedly sexually assaulted Tara Reid. So if anything, it seems like Joe Biden met that standard easily with the Lucy Flores story. Right. But now with the Tara Reid story, this should be enough theoretically to put this over the top. It should not even be debatable for someone like Kirsten Gillibrand. But again, never expect Democrats to hold true to their values or remain principled because they are going to disappoint you. Now, look, am I am I surprised? Am I going to feign outrage at the the fact that Kirsten Gillibrand isn't being consistent? No, I'm not. This is exactly what I expected from her. It's exactly what I expected from her because she arguably was damaged running for president because she called on Al Franken to resign. There were individuals who were critical of her and they thought that she was too harsh. So knowing that, you know, keeping that in the back of her mind, maybe she's scarred from that, maybe she doesn't want to go down that route and damage someone running for, you know, the highest office in the land because she does want to be president. She ran for president. I don't know what this is, but it's frustrating because at some point Democrats have to have a backbone. They have to be able to hold their own accountable. And I don't necessarily expect individuals like Kirsten Gillibrand to be consistent. But what I will say is that I am disappointed, admittedly, that more members of the left aren't speaking out against this. Why isn't Bernie talking about this more? Why isn't Ilhan Omar talking about this more? I mean, it's not like, you know, this is going to help Bernie Sanders get elected. Now there's no fears that we're trying to weaponize this story against Joe Biden. We obviously don't want Donald Trump to get elected, but we have to talk about this because we can't be hacks. We have to remain consistent if we want to be taken seriously when we say that we value women. But I mean, it's just it's frustrating because nobody seems to stand for anything. So the left stands alone and trying to be principled again. And now, if, you know, allegations come up against the Republican, nobody is going to believe Democrats. Nobody is going to believe Democrats now. Because Democrats are proving them right. Everything that, you know, the Republicans said, even though they're hypocrites as well, about, you know, Democrats just being partisan and trying to weaponize these things, you know, that's not. I don't think that that was true about Christine Blasey Ford, even though it was politically convenient for them to bring that up admittedly. But, you know, I thought that they genuinely were trying to do the right thing. But understand, these people are basically like all sociopaths. They don't believe in anything. They just are all about power and they're not going to do anything to jeopardize power and power structures, which is why we're seeing, you know, widespread silence from Democratic leadership on this issue. It's why we're seeing so many people who were, you know, leaders in the Me Too movement who led the charge back down when it comes to Joe Biden. And it's, you know, it's not surprising, but it sure is depressing. All right, folks, we need to talk about Stacey Abrams because lately she has been really getting on my nerves. I can't stand her. And this is someone who I really liked. And I think part of the issue is that, you know, she's not necessarily focused on any one particular policy. She's not ideologically driven, but the media really likes her. They're trying to make her a phenomenon as they may be. But a judge in Amy Klobuchar phenomenons or at least tried to. And it's so transparent, like this is an individual who doesn't really stand for anything. And I'll admit, I actually thought that she was one of the few, you know, figures that was aligned with the Democratic Party establishment, who was more admirable and she cultivated a lot of sympathy and goodwill over the course of the last, you know, year or two, because she was really laser focused on voting rights, which makes sense because she ran for governor in Georgia. And that election was essentially stolen from her. Like it was rigged from the very beginning due to voter suppression and, you know, purges of the voter role. So it makes sense that she's focusing on this. But now it's really clear that, you know, she doesn't actually stand for anything. She just is embarrassingly desperate for power of any kind. So much so that it's now reaching pathetic new levels. And she's made it clear in case you forgot, she really wants to be president. And if you did forget, she'll remind you, don't worry. And before, you know, anyone was the presumptive nominee. She made it very clear that she'd be the VP, no matter who the Democratic nominee was. It doesn't even matter if they were ideologically compatible. She wants power and she'll take it by any means necessary. And when Mike Bloomberg was temporarily surging, she even tried to normalize him unsuccessfully because she wanted to be his running mate. Now, maybe it's the case that she just wanted power. Maybe the millions of dollars that he donated to her organization had something to do with that, regardless, she tried to normalize him and that was a bad look. But since Mike Bloomberg has been out of the picture, she moved on to a different racist who she's now trying to normalize because she wants to be his running mate, Joe Biden. And, you know, not only did she say that she would accept the position, assuming he'd offer it to her, she's now actively lobbying for it, as if we didn't already know that she really, really wants it. Hey, Stacy, just some advice from a friend. You're really embarrassing yourself and you need to stop. Not a good life. Try not to come off as so desperate for power. Or if you do want to, you know, become the president or the vice president, like it should be based off of some type of drive. Maybe you can make that voting rights. But just to say I want it, that's not good enough. That's some I'm with her Hillary Clinton level of narcissism that ultimately, I think, will be your downfall if you don't check yourself soon. But she's not doing that. And, you know, as she tried to normalize a racist like Mike Bloomberg, she is now trying to, you know, normalize an alleged rapist, Joe Biden. And she responded to Tara Reid's allegations by stooping to an even lower level to normalize a Democrat who is egregious and unacceptable. Then she had before arguably. Now, before I show you her disingenuous defense of Joe Biden, Buzzfeed obtained the talking points that his team sent out when it comes to this issue, and we're going to read through those first. So here they are. Quote, The New York Times did weeks of extensive investigative research talking to nearly two dozen former Biden staff from the 1990s, including those who worked directly with Ms. Reid. Here is what they found, quote, No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reid's allegation. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden. Hilarious. All four of the people Ms. Reid says were notified of an official complaint told The New York Times on the record that they have absolutely no recollection of any such conversation and that they certainly would have remembered it, especially because this alleged conduct would have been so wildly out of character for Joe Biden. Yes, a man who sniffs female hair on national television. That's so out of character to think that he would sexually assault someone. Biden has been a fierce advocate for women, authoring and fighting to pass the Violence Against Women Act, which he snuck into the crime bill and launching a campaign to end sexual assault on college campuses. He has spent his life fighting to end abuses of power against women and using his voice to advocate for women across the country and around the world. Here's the bottom line. Vice President Joe Biden has spent over 40 years in public life, 36 years in the Senate, seven Senate campaigns, two previous presidential runs, two vice presidential campaigns and eight years in the White House. There has never been a complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct like this regarding him ever. You know, except for Lucy Flores's allegation and the other women who came forward in 2019, Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed. In this case, a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth. The incident did not happen. Fake news. So I read you those talking points not to make you suffer because I know that was probably torture, but because as you listen to Stacey Abrams, try to defend Joe Biden in an interview on CNN. Count how many of the talking point she uses because she's almost going to hit every single one of them. Take a look. Is this a credible allegation? I believe that women deserve to be heard and I believe that they need to be listened to, but I also believe that those allegations have to be investigated by credible sources. The New York Times did a deep investigation and they found that the accusation was not credible. I believe Joe Biden. I believe that he is a person who has demonstrated that his love of family, his love of our community has been made perfectly clear through his work as a congressional leader and as an American leader. I know Joe Biden and I think that he is telling the truth and that this did not happen. So in 2018, you tweeted it was shameful that Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination was being rushed forward and survivors of violence like Christine Blasey Ford deserve to have their voices heard. Are you applying a different standard now? Not at all. I believe then I believe now that women deserve to be heard because too often they are not and Tara Reid deserve to have her story listened to and investigated. What was happening to Christine Blasey Ford was that there was no investigation. There was a rush to move the conversation forward so that no investigation was conducted and as I said, I believe that there was those allegations needed to be investigated and I believe the New York Times and subsequent reports support what the Biden campaign has said. And I believe Joe Biden. So you said you've heard her, you've heard enough, you don't believe her, you believe Joe Biden? No, what I'm saying is that the New York Times investigation of her allegations, the New York Times investigation does not support the accusations against the vice president. I believe the Biden I know and I think that he will make women proud, that he will make America proud. Does Joe Biden personally need to address this more directly and publicly? I believe his campaign has been very clear and I believe that that is the approach that they intend to take. And I support the approach because, again, we don't want women to ever be afraid to come forward, but we also have to recognize that allegations should be investigated and that those investigations need to be borne out. So in case you weren't keeping track, she hit on four of the five talking points that Joe Biden's campaign put out. This is what they want surrogates for Joe Biden to say if the tar-read allegation comes up and like a good little puppet, she's doing exactly what she was told to do. So what this should tell you about Stacey Abrams as she continues her pursuit for power is that she stands for nothing, she stands for nothing. She didn't give you her opinion there. In the minutes that she had to express her own beliefs, all she did was recite talking points that were given to her by Biden's campaign. So what do you stand for, Stacey? You want to be the president, you want to be the vice president, but what do you stand for? Do you stand for anything? Are you just willing to accept power from anyone by any means necessary? What if Trump ditched Mike Pence and offered you a VP position? Would you accept it? I mean, this is why people like Pete Buttigieg and, you know, Stacey Abrams, they irritate me because if you're not driven by policies or any sort of ideology and you don't actually care about making the world a better place and you're just in the public eye for self-aggrandizement, go away. I don't want to hear from you. Like I get that the media loves these type of people who are charismatic and, you know, they are popular among the base of the Democratic Party, I'm assuming, but at the end of the day, if you don't stand for anything, I don't care if you want power. That means nothing to me. If you don't have policy prescriptions that will actually fix the issues that Americans are facing, then go away. I don't care if you want power. Great for you. We all want a lot of things, but you wanting power does nothing for ordinary Americans. So go away. What are you doing? Now, to that talking point about the New York Times, supposedly clearing Joe Biden's name, that's just not true. First of all, it didn't account for new revelations and account from Tara's neighbor, the Larry King clip where Tara's mother called in to talk about this. And on top of that, one of the biggest hacks in cable news, Chris Saliza, even acknowledges that Biden's campaign is twisting the truth here in an article written by Chris Saliza. If you could believe this, he says Joe Biden's campaign is twisting a New York Times story to defend against the Tara Reid allegations. Listen, when someone like Chris Saliza, who's one of the biggest hacks in cable news, is willing to condemn Joe Biden, but a supposed future leader like Stacey Abrams isn't, that says a lot about that person's character. It tells you Stacey Abrams doesn't stand for anything with Stacey Abrams. This isn't about Joe Biden. This is about herself getting power. And, you know, I'm not just picking on Stacey Abrams. Anyone else who refuses to speak out or even go so far as to defend Joe Biden by using these types of disingenuous and misleading talking points, quite frankly, they should be remembered as frauds who don't actually care about women's issues. I'm talking about Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, even individuals on the left who haven't addressed this. Yes, that includes Bernie Sanders. He needs to speak out more as well. I don't care if Joe Biden is your friend. Speak up. Do you believe in the things you said about women or do you not? This is about principle. This is about being ethical and holding people in your own party to a very high standard that you expect everyone else to be held to. But nobody believes in anything in Washington, DC. You know, it's all about the pursuit of power and they don't really care who they hurt along the way. They don't care who they throw under the bus. They don't care if what they have to say is a lie. They'll do what they're told so long as their promised power. Why do you think Pete Liddy Judge and Amy Klobuchar both dropped out to endorse Joe Biden? Why do you think Beto O'Rourke came out of hiding to endorse Joe Biden before Super Tuesday? They didn't do that out of the goodness of their heart because all of a sudden they all came to the conclusion that Joe Biden was a phenomenal candidate on the same day. No, it's because power dynamics behind the scenes are at play. They're promised something. They're getting something in return. So Stacey Abrams hopes that if she toes the line of the Joe Biden campaign, maybe she will be rewarded with that VP slot that she very, very desperately wants. And she'll tell you about it in case you forget. She wants to be VP, guys. She wants to be the president, guys. Please remember that. Stacey Abrams for VP. These figures in the Democratic Party, like anyone who's a current leader and anyone who is a prospective future leader. I mean, if you assume that these people will be the faces of the party for quite some time, the future is pretty grim. I mean, does anyone trust that Stacey Abrams will actually fight for individuals who are powerless, if it's politically inconvenient? Does anyone believe that power hungry people like Pete Buttigieg are actually going to get elected to some office, rather, you know, it's the governor of Indiana or president one day and actually fight for people and go against the donors of the party? Of course not. So it's frustrating. It's really frustrating. And it's not like Republicans are any better. That's not the implication here. But it's just that we were told that Democrats have the moral high ground. We were told that they were better and that we should expect better from them. And here they are disappointing us for the thousandth time again. Yeah, just I'm not buying it. And people like Stacey Abrams needs to realize that if she ever wants to win the trust of the American people, you're not going to do it by, you know, talking about how desperate you are to be the president and attain power. You're going to do it by winning us over with policies, not by using talking points from Joe Biden's administration or a campaign, you know, to get into his administration. So I'll leave that there. You know, I'm just sick of these people. They're all insufferable hacks and I just wish that there was someone else who had challenged the status quo in the way that Bernie Sanders did. But even he, as he suspended his campaign, is not really speaking out. So, you know, we have no allies. We are the ones who are needed to stand up and fight. Because if you rely on a politician, that's proven to be a failure for us. So the left is its own ally. The left, you know, we're our own heroes as corny and cliche as that sounds. I believe that women deserve to be heard and I believe that they need to be listened to. You know, I don't know why this is so difficult for Republicans, but they just can't help themselves. They can't not be wrong on an issue. It doesn't matter what the issue is. It doesn't matter how big of a consensus has been built around said issue. It doesn't matter how common sense the solution is. They just have to be wrong because, of course, they want to be wrong. That's what they do. So take a nonpartisan issue like COVID-19, where everyone agrees that there's a real necessity for social distancing and self quarantine because that's what's going to help to flatten the curve. All of a sudden, they're trying to make that a partisan issue. It's a pandemic. I don't necessarily think that COVID-19 will discriminate on the basis of your political affiliation. And, you know, these types of solutions, these are things that scientists and experts say we need to implement, not Democrats or Republicans. Nonetheless, they're making this into a partisan issue. And, you know, this is getting worse as we see more and more anti-quarantine protests. But look, this entire wave of anti-quarantine momentum has been catalyzed by pundits on the right because it started when you had, you know, the lieutenant governor go on Fox News and say, look, if I'm going to die to make sure that we don't tank the economy, I think that that is something that I should do. That's a noble and just cause. I'm paraphrasing, of course. Then you saw Glenn Beck say it, Candace Elman say it. And right on cue, Republicans all swarm on the wrong side of this issue because they think that everyone should sacrifice, you know, their lives to the gods of capitalism. Now, if you're going to talk about the economic suffering that people are experiencing, that's a good thing. You should be talking about this if you're a pundit. But contrast what the right wingers are saying to what's being said on the left. On the left, we're talking about the need for rent cancellation, mortgage suspension, we're talking about the need for health care, a universal basic income. Whereas Republicans like Tucker Carlson, like Glenn Beck, they're not talking about the need for these economic solutions. They're talking about the solution being let's send everyone back to work. Even if we know that doing that will endanger their lives and we're cozy in our studios as we make this recommendation, it doesn't matter. Send them back to work. So rather than actually trying to get people to acknowledge that they should be demanding their government, both parties who have failed Democrats and Republicans to do better, they're trying to get them to believe that their lives aren't worthy of being protected, that maybe they should go back to work and possibly be exposed to COVID-19 and die. It's just despicable. So you have Dennis Prager of PragerU, not a real university, by the way, saying it's time to call it what it is. The lockdown is the greatest mistake in the history of humanity. And he included a picture of himself with this quote of his big dumb face. And you could just tell he's really proud of this tweet, except I have a counterpoint. No, it's not. I think that most people who are saying would agree that the Holocaust was a bigger mistake, slavery was a bigger mistake. But what does he say is the biggest mistake in human history? Convincing people to stay home so they don't catch a deadly virus that is highly contagious. They're nuts. If these right wing pundits actually cared about you and the economic situation that you're in, why aren't they telling you to call you a representative and demand cancellation of rent, demand health care? I mean, isn't it obvious what they're doing here? These are stooges for our capitalist system. They want you to go back to work. They want to reopen the economy in whatever capacity that's possible because that's what's best for the industry. Lots of industries are suffering right now. So as they pretend to care about you, just understand they don't care about you. Now, this is going to continue to be an issue. So long as right wing pundits continue to push this anti-quarantine bullshit as they fuel, you know, the momentum of these protesters. And one of the most, I think, influential propagandists on the right is now saying the same dangerous thing. Tucker Carlson, who decided to also push the same narrative that we should just reopen the economy. This isn't that bad. It's not that serious. Let's send everyone back to work. Take a look. Here's a physician and researcher from California called Dr. Dan Erickson. Erickson and a partner just delivered a 50 minute briefing on the latest numbers from California. The video they made has been viewed millions of times in a few days online. The bottom line is after looking carefully at the data, these two researchers have concluded that California should end its shelter in place order. Watch. We've seen 1,227 deaths in the state of California with a possible incidence or prevalence of 4.7 million. That means you have a 0.03 chance of dying from COVID-19 in the state of California. 0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California. Is that, does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work? These are serious people who've done this for a living for decades. They have in their hands the largest currently available data sets on this question. And the question they're asking after analyzing all of those numbers are the lockdowns worth it? So what is the answer to that? What's so striking is it's so many politicians, the ones enforcing the lockdowns don't seem at all interested in asking it. Instead, they're bullying forward as if nothing has changed. Just today, the San Francisco Bay Area announced it'll be extending its lockdown until the end of May. That's five weeks from now. What is the scientific justification for doing that? They didn't tell us because there is none, none. You may remember what they first told us back in February and March. They said we have to take radical steps in order to, quote, flatten the curve. Well, six weeks later, we're happy to say that curve has been flattened, but it's likely not because of the lockdowns. The virus just isn't nearly as deadly as we thought it was all of us, including on this show, everybody thought it was, but it turned out not to be. Hospitals never collapsed. Outside of a tiny number of places, they never came close to collapsing, at least not from an influx of infected patients. Instead, something remarkable happened, something amazing, really without parallel in American history. The opposite happened. Thanks to the lockdowns, hospitals have become to collapse. Why? From a lack of patience. Politicians who couldn't pass ninth grade biology decided that practicing physicians should not be allowed to calculate the risk of transmitting the virus. They're just not qualified, unlike us. So these politicians banned so-called nonessential procedures, many of which are in fact essential. The results of this policy in many hospitals, entire floors have been mothballed. Doctors and nurses are being furloughed in the middle of a pandemic. This is insanity. It weakens our health care system. Its effects will last for many years. That's all from the lockdown. So how long will we have to live with these lockdowns? Earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom we are apparently required by law to respect, no matter what he says, suggested that, in fact, we may never be allowed to resume normal life. If back to normal means acting like there never was a coronavirus problem, I don't think that's going to happen until we do have a situation where you can completely protect the population. If you want to get to pre-corona virus, you know, that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there. And we should tell you that is the same, Dr. Fauci, and keep this to yourself, because as noted, it's not allowed to show any skepticism whatsoever. But that's the same Dr. Fauci, who also announced that shaking hands, the ancient custom of shaking hands should be done away with forever. And then a week later told Snapchat that actually it's fine to have sex with strangers you meet on Tinder. What he did there was very effective. That is propaganda that works because people aren't necessarily going to fact check him or question what he's saying here. They're going to take what he says because he's a trusted figure and they're going to run with it. They're going to think, well, Tucker Carlson is telling me, based on evidence that he's citing, that this isn't that serious. So maybe it's OK if I kind of get a little bit more loose with, you know, my own standards when it comes to social distancing. But what he's saying is horseshit. So he starts off that segment by citing doctors, Dan Erickson and his partner, Arten Masihi. And if you didn't know, as KQED's Barbara Ostrov points out, these are two individuals who used flawed data based off of a sample size that's too small to denote general applicability. So what they did, the way that they reached the conclusion that they came to was they set up their own private COVID test site and based off of the sample of people that they saw, they took that low rate of positive COVID tests and they extrapolated to the rest of the Californian population. Now, that's a problem because when you actually look at credible data from the CDC, the death rate in California isn't 0.03 percent. It's around 4 percent. So understand why what he's doing is so dangerous. His impressionable audience is going to run with the information that they believe is accurate because someone that they trust told this to them. They were maybe social distancing because they're immunocompromised, but now they realize that the death rate is actually pretty small. And maybe it's not as contagious as we previously thought because that's what Tucker Carlson, who I watch every day and trust, said. So maybe I can go out in public again as frequently as I used to. Maybe it's not that big of a deal after all. Maybe I was wrong to believe the hyperbolic mainstream media and individuals like Dr. Fauci. I mean, this is dangerous. This is dangerous. You are spreading misinformation that could literally kill people. The death rate is not 0.03 percent, Tucker Carlson. That's not correct. And you know it. And if you actually were confident in those numbers here, you'd cite more than a YouTube video from two quacks. You'd cite maybe CDC information, more data sets, not just what two people said. And he then suggests that there's no scientific justification for extending the lockdown, which is untrue and that we've managed to flatten the curve not because of the lockdowns, but because the virus, quote, just isn't nearly as deadly as we thought it was. Again, factually incorrect, verifiably untrue. At the beginning of this pandemic, we were told that the death rate was around two to three percent. But guess what? When we look at the observed case to fatality ratio, it's actually higher than we thought. It's over 15 percent in Belgium. It's 13.4 percent in the United Kingdom. It's 5.8 percent in the United States. And this is probably a conservative estimate, right? Because this is based off of observed cases. So maybe somebody died and they didn't get a test for COVID-19. They didn't know they had it. So it's not illogical to assume that these numbers could be even higher, but we don't know and I don't know because I'm not an expert. I'm not a doctor. We should listen to the experts. Now, you can understand why what he's saying here is persuasive. It's because if you accept that the dubious data set from the two quacks that he cited are correct and people are going to believe it's true because he said it's true, well, then it makes sense that you think, well, maybe this isn't so serious. But here's the thing, the fact that hospitals, quote, never collapsed in every state isn't evidence that it's less serious. Rather, it speaks to the effectiveness and importance of social distancing and self-quarantine because it's working. It's a good thing that most hospitals around the country didn't collapse. That means that what we're doing is helping. It's a pandemic. It's not a partisan issue. It's not like Democrats proposed this solution. Trump is the president. So shouldn't you blame him of all people? Like this is just infuriating because it's dangerous. He knows what he's doing. He's smarter than this, but he's towing the party line because he is a propagandist for the Republican Party. And every once in a while, you know, he'll stray away from the talking points that Donald Trump and the Republican Party probably want him to use, but never, ever underestimate the hackiness of Tucker Carlson. Now, he then moves on to attack the credibility of Dr. Fauci, who is someone who is not a political figure. This is an individual who is largely apolitical, right? He's from Trump's administration, but he's a doctor, right? He's been doing this for decades. So I mean, the fact that he's trusted, but he's contradicting some of what Trump is saying, that may be, you know, a little bit of a reason why Tucker Carlson is going after him. So that way it doesn't make Trump look bad, who he absolutely supports. But he says that, you know, it's outrageous that Dr. Fauci would dare to suggest that we do away with this ancient custom of handshaking. I mean, who cares? Is that really that important? We can't come up with a different custom fist bumping. I don't know. Is that really that important? I mean, I personally have always been against shaking people's hands because I have OCD. I'll admit it. I have obsessive compulsive disorder. I don't like shaking hands. I don't know where your hands have been. I don't know what you've touched. I don't know if Tucker Carlson, you know, scratches his disgusting stinky balls and I don't want to shake your fucking hand. Get over it. I mean, customs change. There are customs throughout the world that change and evolve with time evolve due to things like this. So if he is suggesting that we move on from a different custom, he's not going to authoritatively command us all to stop shaking hands. It's going to happen organically if that doesn't fact happen. And I personally hope it does. But he then tries to make it seem as if Dr. Fauci is a hypocrite because he says after he suggests that we should stop shaking hands. Well, a week later, he told Snapchat that it's actually fine to have sex with strangers you meet on Tinder. Now, if this were true, I would think, OK, maybe Dr. Fauci needs to be a little bit more consistent and responsible in what he's saying because he could be endangering people's lives if he gets a little bit loose with his words. But I actually found what Dr. Fauci said and he didn't say that. He didn't encourage people to have sex with strangers through Tinder. This is what was said. If you're swiping on a dating app like Tinder or Bumble or Grindr and you match with someone and you just kind of like, maybe it's fine if this one stranger comes over. What do you say to that person? You know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks and it depends on the level of the interaction that you want to have. You're looking for a friend sitting in a room, put a mask on and, you know, chat a bit if you want to go a little bit more intimate. Well, then that's your choice regarding a risk. It's your choice regarding risks. Nowhere in that answer to the question, did he say it's fine to have sex with strangers you meet on Tinder? He's literally saying if you do, in fact, do that, you're taking a chance. But Tucker Carlson is trying to smear him. Tucker wants to smear him because this is someone who challenges Donald Trump, who is also an idiotic reactionary buffoon. So you can't have anyone who might make Daddy Trump look bad. And as a propagandist, you've got to defend the chief chud. Right. You can speak out once in a while against what Trump is doing or the Republican Party or condemn war. But you've got to make sure that you never cross too much of a line and that at the end of the day, Trump knows that you're loyal to him. Right, Tucker? It's just it's so embarrassing. And to show you how reckless these types of segments are, one of the anti-quarantine protesters who led the protest, she actually tested positive for COVID-19. So if you're a right-winger and you're suddenly believing that you should return to work, you've been misled. Ask yourself why these pundits who supposedly care about you and don't want your life to be ruined economically. Why aren't they commanding people like Donald Trump to pass a UBI? I mean, Donald Trump literally watches Tucker Carlson's program so he can easily suggest, hey, you know what, Donald Trump, if he truly wants to help Americans, don't send them back to work. Give them health care, cancel rent, extend unemployment further, give them a universal basic income at least throughout the duration of this pandemic. But what is Tucker Carlson choosing to do instead? Encourage individuals in power like Donald Trump to send them all back to work to die for capitalism. And he does this conveniently in his cozy studio where he never has to worry about the risk of COVID-19. To him, it's not going to make a difference. So understand that people like Tucker Carlson and Prager are charlatans. They don't actually care about you. And if they were worried about this economic situation that you're in, they wouldn't be pushing for you to go back to work and possibly, you know, run the risk of contracting COVID-19. They'd be pushing the leaders that listen to them to adopt policies that would help you get through this, help you weather the storm of COVID-19. But because they are reactionary and wrong on every single issue, of course, they're going to turn COVID-19 into a partisan issue as well. Because we live in hell and our country is run by sociopaths and psychopaths. And this is, you know, what we get over the last two years. You know, Medicare for all has maintained its popularity in spite of the fact that American citizens have been bombarded with nonstop propaganda. And unfortunately, for anyone who is pushing these types of industry talking points like people to judge in Joe Biden, you know, it's going to be even more popular now during a pandemic because you can't make the case that we love our employer-sponsored health insurance if everyone is losing their jobs. And a new poll just came out by Harris X that confirms people still really want Medicare for all, perhaps more so than ever. And as Newsweek points out here, 69 percent nice of registered voters support Medicare for all. That includes 88 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans. So the implication of this is that it is really, really not just out of touch, but dangerous for Democrats like Joe Biden to be so openly hostile towards the notion of Medicare for all. As this headline from Common Dreams puts it, it's not a tenable position any longer. Like all of the talking points that were fed to Democrats throughout the course of this primary by industry insiders, you can't use them anymore because they're no longer relevant. You can't tell the benefits of your health care being attached to your employer if people are losing their jobs, as I stated at the beginning of this segment, and that was never a persuasive argument because people realize that if they lose their jobs, they lose their employer-sponsored insurance. Or just on a dime, their employer can change their insurance, which is why Bernie Sanders pushed for Medicare for all and pushed for it being free at the point of service and not being attached to your employers. But everyone condemned Bernie Sanders. He was basically the only one who stood strong when it comes to Medicare for all and it being free at the point of service and the need to abolish private insurers. And everyone shot him down, said it's, you know, unfeasible. It'll never pass. It's not politically expedient. They didn't make that argument, but, you know, we know what they were saying and that it's too expensive. Well, now we see how necessary Medicare for all is and how popular it is. But yet, Democrats still aren't embracing it. Joe Biden running a presidential campaign won't embrace something that 88 percent of the base supports and 46 percent of Republicans. And if you believe that winning over independence is important, everyone should. Well, if 68 percent of independents think Medicare for all should be codified into law, how are you not adopting adopting this policy and pledging to fight for it at every step of the way? To not adopt this policy shows one of two things or maybe both. One, you're such a gigantic sellout that you would never even for a minute signal support for a policy that your donors would hate or to you don't want to win or don't care. That's where we're at. Now, on top of Medicare for all, there are other progressive policy proposals that need to be addressed, need to be proposed, especially by the leaders like Joe Biden, if you want him to win, like you can take, you know, a more incremental approach. You can adopt a really bold policy, albeit temporarily for the duration of this pandemic. You could propose something like universal basic income as long as we have to self quarantine. You can propose rent cancellation and you have no reason not to, given the new data that we have that suggests it's very popular. As common dreams reports, 55 percent of Americans support rent cancellation and mortgage suspension. That includes 67 percent of Democrats, 48 percent of independents, 42 percent of Republicans. So imagine how popular any Democratic nominee would be if they actually took one popular policy and ran with it. Like, and it's not even these types of common sense policies. They won't even take something that is not controversial in 2020, like legalizing weed recreationally. Joe Biden doesn't support the legalization of weed recreationally at the national level. He says they should be left to the States. I mean, to be that out of touch in 2020, I mean, how do you not conclude that they are not actually serious about winning any Democrat in 2020 who is running for any position of power who doesn't full throatedly endorse Medicare for all, who isn't supporting popular policies? They're proving that they don't actually care about winning. Maybe they're not serious about getting power, or they're just so painfully stupid that they don't know what policies to embrace because they have these consultants in their ear who, you know, get paid millions of dollars to give them bad advice. I mean, this is common sense. If 69 percent of the country supports a policy like Medicare for all, it's not just good policy. It's good politics to embrace that. And the fact that Democrats won't coalesce around this, it shows you how far the party has fallen. It just may be too far gone. The entire system might just be irredeemable. This is something that I'm grappling with, and I'm trying to figure out how to proceed knowing this fact, right? So I don't know what to say. Like, as I see more and more of these types of polls that confirm the popularity of these types of policies, I no longer get excited as I used to. I get more, I guess, demoralized if you could believe it, because the fact that these are so popular, we should get them. If we live in a representative republic, why aren't we getting these policies? Why isn't anyone in the Democratic Party proposing this and running away with this? Why isn't Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer coming together and formulating some type of response? I mean, I think you and I know the answer, but it's just it's so frustrating. So it's like, as I see the popularity of these types of policies increase, I grow more disappointed because that should just bolster the case for them. But the fact that it's not going to get us closer to these policies, there's just this inherently sad fact about that, and I don't know what to say. We live in hell and everything is stupid, and that's the way it's going to continue to be for the foreseeable future. Hello, everyone. I am here with Jordan Sheridan of Status Koo. He's been reporting on the Flint water crisis now for years. He released his documentary Flushing Flint last year. We brought him on to talk about it, and he just broke a giant story for Vice, and it is not getting any attention from the mainstream media, but this is really just, it's incredible stuff what he found, and he's here to talk about it. So Jordan, thank you so much for coming on. Welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me. So I read both of the stories. You just broke two articles, basically, and the way that I read all of this was, it felt like a mafia movie. Like you see genuine organized crime. You see payoffs. This is really, it's not necessarily anything that's surprising, but the revelations, nonetheless, are still really shocking. I mean, to me, it was clear that Rick Snyder was a criminal. He was criminally negligent at a minimum, but now it's clear that this goes really deeper than that. Just to go over a couple of the facts here, and we'll link to the articles down below. So he tried to get the mayor of Flint, Michigan, Karen Weaver to quote unquote have Elijah Cummins back off, which is interesting in and of itself. He possibly lied under oath about the timeline of the Legionella outbreak. He knew about the hazard that transitioning to the Flint water supply would pose to the residents here. And in the background of all of these things are the way that he used his fixer and the people around him to cover this up. So can you talk through some of these really worst offenses because there's so much, the story is honestly overwhelming because there's so many moving parts here. Yeah, that's how I actually wanted it to be three stories, but vice wanted it to be one. So my partner, Jen and I, we go to Flint routinely. I've been going for years and we always kind of heard a lot of these rumblings, but it's a hard thing to put it together. So last year we were there and we uncovered that the governor's right hand man had allegedly made some deals with the loudest residents to basically quiet them down. It's like a protest movement, corporations or governments try and identify the leaders. So the governor's right hand man was basically going off and trying to neutralize threats to the Snyder administration, particularly threats that would threaten what really was like a PR campaign to sweep the water crisis under the rug. When we figured that out, we then figured out that Snyder himself was under criminal investigation by prosecutors that had been fired and Snyder's chief of staff had been privately subpoenaed, his treasurer had been privately subpoenaed and his right hand man by all accounts was described to us kind of as his fixer or enforcer had also been subpoenaed. So having those documents and then reading through the transcripts of the interviews with the special prosecutor, it took us in a bunch of different directions and we got enough evidence that the governor was actually warned in 2013. So this is like seven years ago, a year before the water switch that if Flint used the Flint River as a water source, there was bacterial risks to public health. There was carcinogens that could develop which are cancer causing chemicals. And then we learned that what he told Congress, he said he learned about it, the deadly water outbreak Legionella, which is a bacterial disease from water. He said he learned about in January, 2016 and held a press conference the next day, not so. He actually first became aware of it in October, 2014, which happened to be a few weeks before his reelection for governor and his administration basically squashed it from coming out, which is really important because, I mean, it was six months after the water switch, but still early enough that if the administration would have listened to another bombshell we found, a key whistleblower that was screaming, you know, Flint needs to be moved back to Detroit's water system, which it had before. If he would have listened, if they would have done so, lives definitely could have been saved. If Governor Snyder isn't prosecuted, then I don't think there's going to be any hope or legitimacy for our justice system because, you know, part of the question that I was concerned with when I had you one last time was whether or not there would be any justice in the form of him getting prosecuted. And there were investigations and whatnot, but with everything now that you've brought to light, do you honestly feel any different or encouraged about the prospect of, you know, prosecution for Snyder? Because it seems like there's no question that he committed a number of crimes. Now, this is improvable legally speaking yet, so it has to be, you know, he needs to be tried. But what do you think is going to happen with all of this? What do you hope will happen? You know, I think with Flint, and a lot of times people will see Flint in the headline on YouTube or just Flint. And it's not that they don't care, but they think it's just Flint and they don't realize that the Flint water crisis is not just about a city in Michigan and it's not just about water, it's about America because it's corruption that has led to these things. And what happened in Flint is actually happening a lot of other places. It might be the water in other places, it might be education in other places, it might be pensions, it might be, but basically the Flint water crisis was essentially a privatization scheme gone very wrong. Republicans are privatizing, Democrats are privatizing, America is one big public-private partnership, which is essentially just fancy terminology for the United Corporations of America, which is corporations buying our government. So really what I'm hoping this story accomplishes and I'm glad, you know, it's not an easy read, it's long, but I think people need to realize that if there is no accountability in Flint, and again, we've proved, I think without a shadow of a doubt to take a courtroom phrase that the Republican governor had advanced warning before he allowed that water switch to go that bad things would happen. When they learned after the fact bad things were happening, they didn't do anything. He lied to Congress, his right-hand man, I throw in allegedly, because you know, you have to as a journalist, but we found out the prosecutors were investigating and the prosecutors were investigation and we were told that they were investigating payoffs by the governor's right-hand man. So you'd have to really think, does the governor not know what his right-hand man is doing? Is this guy just freelancing? So I hope people understand that it's not, the fact that it's not surprising, you started it out with this is not surprising is the problem. The fact that it's not surprising that our government, whether it's Republican, it's not like Democrats aren't involved with coverups. The fact that these things would have been covered up, you know, it's one thing if a government makes a bad decision, it poisons people, but then as soon as you even suspect it, you take immediate action. Obviously there could be fault with the initial decisions, but at least you're taking immediate action. The coverup in this case was almost as bad as the crime because it killed people, right? So the other element here is, you know, the after part. I mean, if you think about Flint, like let's say the Russia investigation, there was a Robert Mueller in Flint, there was a special prosecutor in Flint. Well, imagine if Robert Mueller was investigating for three years and then like a new attorney general came in and fired him and dropped all the charges, if there were charges. So that's what was happening here. The previous attorney general and a special prosecutor had built up a case and our reporting indicates they were building a case against Snyder himself. And then a new Democrat attorney general came in and dropped all the charges. And it's been a year since they almost a year since they dropped all the charges. There's been no other charges and the statute of limitations just passed for not all charges, but specifically misconduct in office. Well, we obtained audio of the governor's right-hand man allegedly paying off a sick Flint couple to silence them. They've had it since September. So I'm not a lawyer, but I mean, I live and breathe this story. I heard on the audio incriminating things because I know the story. So I'm assuming the attorney general's office also has incriminating things. So I think this is a bipartisan thing. The Republican governor and his administration did this. And now it's kind of like a democratic attorney general. My reporting indicates you might get misdemeanor charges against Rick Snyder. I don't think that's gonna fly in Flint. And I also think nationally, don't mistake it. If there is no accountability, whatever that looks like, whether it's Snyder or other top officials, that just gives other public government officials nationally, nationally, locally, state level. If they can get away with it there, we won't think twice about what we're doing in your neck of the woods. Yeah, I mean, the story details basically alleged crime after alleged crime. Like you have literal bullet points explaining everything that happened. And this was kind of something that struck me is that if there's no accountability here with the conspiracy, the cover-up, then there's literally never going to be accountability if any other governor or public official does the same thing because this is so vast. This is so outrageous that if you can get away with this, then you can get away with anything. And I know that that's a cliche, but there's just, there's so much here. And the audio you refer to was of Adam Murphy. Now you've had him on your show. This is an individual who protested during a town hall in January. He was experiencing cognitive impairment and whatnot, and they basically tried to pay him off. So can you talk through that a little bit because you have the audio and explain what happened there and how they kind of tried to silence him because I think this is just fascinating. And I think this is where you kind of get into this mafia description, which it seems to me. So, Flint, Rachel Maddow shows up, people show up in five minutes in 2016 and then all the cameras leave because Trump was the big thing. So once all the cameras left, that's when the real story starts. So January, 2017, there's a town hall. I wasn't at that one, but I've covered many Flint water town halls. And a really sick guy, Adam Murphy, he was having seizures. He was driving and having to call his wife because he was forgetting his route to get home, water-related ailments. He just went off at this town hall, which was understandable, screaming at state officials. This is all talk, you're not doing anything. Other residents felt the same way. So he was removed by a police officer who told him, maybe I could get you in contact with a state official that could help your family. Fast forward a couple of weeks, the governor's right-hand man is in his living room, joined by an army colonel, a state trooper, and a representative from the health department. So if you're a sick person and your wife is sick, and by the way, their newborn was born with lead in his blood, because she was pregnant during the water crisis. Oh, Governor Snyder's advisor is here and maybe they really are helping. So unfortunately, we didn't have it when the Vice Story published, we got it after, but basically the governor's right-hand man presented it as, if you call something a pilot program, you could do anything. So said, I think we could try to get the state to pay for your medical treatment. They wanted to do something called chelation, which is a holistic treatment. It injects chemicals to extract lead out of your body. A lot of people don't realize that after 30 days, lead kind of gets stuck in your bone. So even if you get a test, all of it won't show up because it's already kind of deep deep in your system. So we're gonna pay, the state's gonna pay for it, but you can't talk about it, you can't go to the media, you can't tell people the state are paying for it. And if it works for you, this pilot program will try to make it available for other Flint residents. So my indication is neither the husband and the wife at the time, they're not married anymore. I don't really think they actively thought like, oh, we're doing something dirty here. They're just desperate, they're sick, the husband's falling apart. So they took it and he said, you're gonna be my lead poster child. So if it works, we'll make it available to other people. Both of Adam and Christina both said, he said, I'm gonna go back and tell the governor about this, I don't know if he did or he didn't, but he said he was going to. So it was, it did help. I mean, his lead levels went dramatically down, the seizures stopped, cognitive functioning got a lot better. So they're telling the state health department this, the governor's right-hand man this, and expecting like, hey, I'm your lead poster child, can we expand the pilot and make it available to other residents? No, that didn't happen. Adam and Christina split up, when that happened, the state completely cut off communication with Christina, who by the way, they had told, we're gonna make this available to you when you're done breastfeeding your newborn, didn't happen. So we found out that, I mean, we saw emails and text messages that verify the state was paying for the treatment, but governor's right-hand man is going around telling other residents, I'm a philanthropist, I'm paying for it out of my personal pocket, which wasn't true. We also found out that as part of the criminal investigation, investigators were looking into other payoffs he might have made, including potentially giving cash to certain residents. And we also have another resident on the record that she's basically, to me, like the Erin Brockovich of Flint, she's the most outspoken resident, she's lobbied Congress, she's been a real, she was a thorn in the Snyder administration side. This right-hand man to Snyder basically offered her, I'll come in, I'll, new water heater, new interior plumbing, everything but the kitchen sink basically, if you'll be quiet. So she is on the record saying, you know, I offered, I said, if you do that for everybody, absolutely. So it was essentially, and I've told other people, the main action the Snyder administration took, instead of just fixing the problem, it seems like they did a really grand scale PR campaign. And part of that was making sure that threats, because again, Adam getting removed from the town hall got media attention. That's why the governor's right-hand man is in his living room. And I think it just gets to forget legally, well, if you think about it legally, I'm not a lawyer, but there's two options, either the governor knew that his top advisor was doing this or he didn't know and then you get to gross negligence that your administration is doing these things because he wasn't going, you know, if you're making private individual deals for certain Flint residents that pose a threat and you're leaving the rest of Flint to basically fend for themselves, that's obviously kind of poisoning and then leaving people to die. Yeah, it really is hard to take in all of this information. And before when I either watched or read your reporting from Flint, to me, it was this question of, is this incompetence or malfeasance? I mean, really it doesn't matter, this is a distinction without a difference, but now this story proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, like this is malfeasance, like they knew what they were doing, they had the information and they did it anyway, it was just that Rick Snyder didn't care. Now, moving on to another element of this story, which is just really heartbreaking is that there's been silence from the mainstream media and you've been told that the reason why they're not necessarily talking about this huge story, which should be just on the minds of everyone, like people should know about this, is because of COVID-19. So what has the response been like, why do you think we haven't heard from CNN, MSNBC, any outlet who wants to expand this story and talk about it, because this could, like you said, Flint is a story about America, this can happen in any neighborhood, in any city, and people aren't going to care unless they realize that this could happen to them. So why do you think there's been silence here? I think there's a macro reason and a micro reason. I think the macro reason is, frankly, our media is predominantly made up of coastal cosmopolitan out of touch elitists. They care for about five to 10 minutes about stories that happen in communities. So Flint, Rachel Maddow does a town hall, the media's all there for a week, and then it's kind of out of sight out of mind. I don't think it's because people are bad people, I just think we all kind of live in our bubbles if you live in New York, D.C., California, whatever. I used to live in a bubble too. It's not that I didn't care if I was presented with something, but we all kind of follow the day-to-day who's up, who's down, and the progressives fear we do things a little differently. But all of us on YouTube and other places are kind of covering the same things to an extent. So I think that if Flint, if there's a Flint water update or this bombshell story, I don't know if the Brian Steltzers of the world really care. Again, not saying you're CNN's media critic. I don't think it's that he's a bad person. I just think they think the biggest thing in the world is what Trump has said or tweeted within the last couple of hours, you know? And to me, and I tweeted it earlier, it's obviously connected to coronavirus indirectly. I mean, right now, Genesee County, which Flint is part of, has a 11.4% fatality rate due to COVID-19. That is way above America's average, which last time I checked was like 5. something. Flint makes up almost 50% of the county's cases. Gee, I wonder why if a city that was devastated, if people, not just elderly people, but of all ages are severely immunocompromised, why they are making up such a large chunk of this county's cases. And it's such as Flint. Look at Native American reservations with uranium mining. Look at areas with mass fracking going on. I mean, there's a lot of communities that are uniquely at risk. Black and brown communities, where they usually dump these industrial projects on. So I said to Brian, I said to others, with all due respect, I agree coronavirus is the top story, but I kind of think the biggest environmental cover-up of the 21st century is a close second. And I think CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Flint Journal, pretty sure they have enough resources to like have a nighttime editor. They all have them, that unlucky guy or gal stuck in the night shift or the weekend shift to do like a 400 word write-up. Because really it's journalistically a crime, because I would say at this point, maybe 50% of Flint has no idea what was just uncovered. So if 50% of Flint doesn't know, how do we, what do we expect in terms of Michigan? What do we expect nationally? And on the micro level, you know, I do think that sometimes, and it goes to progressives too. I mean, I mean, whatever, I don't expect the young Turks to do much related to me, but it hasn't been covered a wide scale in the progressive independence space. And I think unfortunately part of that is even progressives and independent media sometimes get stuck on like, you know, oh, Biden's terrible or oh, DNC corruption, democratic. And I get it, that's all very relevant, but we don't realize that this stuff that's happening on the local level is basically neoliberalism. Remember, this happened under Barack Obama. Let's not give him a pass. He did not, a federal disaster was not declared. There's a difference in a federal disaster and a federal emergency. Emergency is a state level. Federal disaster would have sent the Army Corps in to just dig up those pipes. It would have been done in a year. That was not declared for some reason. Obama went there, you know, took a sip of water, which Michael Moore and others suggest wasn't even Flint water at the time. So, you know, Joe Biden, he likes to take credit for everything Obama's done. What about the failures? Should Biden answer to why this is going on still in Flint? We haven't even gotten to the point, Mike, that the water is still contaminated six years later. So to me, unfortunately, and maybe I'll write a book one day, it is really hard to gather information like this and break it, but that is not even close to as hard as getting the media to pick this up. I've had, I literally had one person from the Guardian say to me, yeah, we just think your sourcing is kind of not great here. I said, you think document, highly confidential documents from a criminal investigation is not enough sourcing for you. The former mayor of Flint on the record that Governor Snyder tried to obstruct justice, tried to get her to get Elijah Cummings when he was alive to back off isn't, like that's not enough. I said, by the way, the anonymous sourcing, like you do know for things like that, like certain individuals that might have knowledge about a criminal investigation will not go on the record because if they do, there would be problems for them. So it was just bizarre. And honestly, I don't have an answer. It's very, very disheartening because in a sane media system, if you break a massive story like this, it doesn't matter whether you're independent, whether corporate, if you break a story where you have the receipts, it should be on a front page, front pages. And when it's not, it's very difficult to get accountability. Yeah, I think this kind of speaks to a broader issue with the media model and just capitalist media generally speaking. You know, if it's not sexy, if it's not sensationalized, then they're probably not gonna cover it because it's not going to be monetarily beneficial for them. And to me, I find this completely outrageous because you spent years now covering Flint. You've broken multiple stories, if not dozens. And you're doing all of this and you don't even necessarily know whether or not there's gonna be any payoff. Like for me, like I'll put out a good video and I'll feel like, man, I want everyone to see it and I'll be so gutted when it doesn't get like the views and clicks. But that's like one day's worth of work. Like this is years worth of work and it's not just that like you're revealing these issues and there's no faces. Like to me, the biggest thing that kind of keeps me glued to this story is the fact that we've been introduced to certain residents. You've interviewed them and then you've brought them back. So we're kind of seeing the progress or lack thereof that's being made. And it's just, it's hard to deny, you know, the emergency. It's hard not to be fearful of your own water supply. So I do want to get an update before we go about the actual water crisis because, you know, there's been funding. There's been the initiation of the process to replace, you know, the contaminated pipes. Where are they at? Like when are we looking at clean drinking water for the residents of Flint? Because it seems like at this point, it's just, it's never going to get done. Yeah. And I just want to real quick about the whole sexy thing. I think a lot of media outlets don't understand that there's a massive demand for this, for this kind of investigative reporting. I think they just lazy and they see, oh, it's cheaper to just put two schmucks left side, right side and have a food fight. But I mean, status coup, for example, I mean, we're not like gangbusters. We don't have like corporate fat cats, but like we've grown to like over 2000 paid members doing this, this kind of stuff. Yeah, we do live streams and things like that on day to day, but like people will support investigative reporting because they're such a void. So I do think a lot of media outlets are wrong. You know, maybe the term isn't sexy, but this is certainly desired. You know, one thing we broke two years ago, Mike, that we kind of rolled into this story, in addition to all this, Snyder's environmental department was cooking the data. They were literally cheating, which I think I came on with you about. Yeah, I think we talked about this, yeah. Yeah. So they, the numbers that they used for Snyder to kind of declare like his mission accomplished without the fighter pilot, they were going into the environmental officials were going into Flint residence homes and just running their water right before taking tests, which common sense you're flushing the lead out. It's against the EPA regulations, which the EPA confirmed that I broke. Again, crickets, a backstory to that is Newsweek magazine killed that story we were doing with them like a day before, which is a whole nother thing. So basically I could only tell you what I see and the residents I speak to, the media has regurgitated this nonsense that the water is back and restored or whatever. If you go to Flint, you will quickly meet people that are still getting rashes from that water six years later. You will meet people that are losing hair. They're quoted in this story, not to mention the long-term effects. And anecdotally, I drank the water, just sips here and there. It's like getting punched in the face. So it is not normal. They haven't even changed the majority, all of the pipes and they didn't even touch. So there's three pipes, the mains under the street, the service lines from the curb to the house and then the interior plumbing. All they did was change the service lines, which are curved into the house. What do you think the Flint River water just skipped over the mains in the middle and didn't damage the interior plumbing? Actually, our story reveals Mayor Weaver is also on the record that the current governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who as you've seen, the media has been really, really like propping up as potential Biden VP, she basically told her when the mayor was trying to get additional funding to change people's interior plumbing. Sorry, can't help you. There's Flint fatigue, quote, Flint fatigue in the legislature. So what do you do? You got a Republican governor that did it. His officials tried to cover it up. Flint and Michigan votes for this Democratic governor. I could tell you the residents of Flint were very hopeful. She actually vowed coming in, she's gonna reopen the Flint water pods that were free water bottles stations around the city. It's been 16 months, they're not open. She told the mayor, sorry, I can't help you. There's Flint fatigue in the state legislature. Well, I don't know, you're the governor. Maybe you could fight for it. It's both morally right and like good politics. That has also been totally ignored because CNN, MSNBC, it's kind of like Trump during the campaign, Governor Whitmer is basically living in their green room virtually. She's on all the time. Now, she should be on because Michigan has been hit hard, but nobody's mentioning that like, wait a minute, this relatively newer name in politics is being anointed as like a top five potential pick for Biden. She has not kept promises to Flint, which is a major environmental calamity still. So bottom line, it is very doubtful that the water is safe. They shut down the water pod. So, Flint is 42% impoverished. A lot of people are back to drinking from the tap because they can't afford to keep going and buy cartons of water. So it's a dicey situation. And I'll say to the people watching, a lot of people, I mean, shockingly, sometimes I get grief, Jordan, cover other things. You cover Flint too much. This isn't just about Flint. Flint is America. It used to be like the beacon economically of America. General Motors was born there. You wanna know why Donald Trump won? He won because a lot of people in places like Flint have had their jobs sent to other countries. So I cover Flint continually and I'm not gonna stop covering it because again, if accountability is not come, it does not come here. If there's no truth, if it is not revealed how this poisoning happened and how the cover-up happened, who is continually not doing anything, talking about the current governor, that's the playbook for other areas. And by the way, whether it's Biden, whether it's Trump, whoever the Congresspeople that are elected are, at the end of the day, if this continues in Flint, if there is no justice, it's coming to a neighborhood near you. Yeah, and that's why I don't understand personally why there's so little interest because I fully understand that there's so many crises happening. Genocide in Yemen, just in our own country, there's so many crises, but out of self-interest, people should worry about what's happening in Flint because as you said, there's a lot of vulnerable cities right now that are going to be dealing with this, if not now in the future. So if we don't fix this in Flint, then this is kind of a precursor to what may happen in other countries, in other cities. So it's really frustrating. But yeah, is there anything that you wanna leave us with in terms of like this story that you just broke and what you want people to take away from this? Because it is a big story. It's a really long read, but it's worth it because you go through all of the details. You and Jen did a phenomenal job. But you start like at the very beginning. So you're gonna get all of the details. It's a long read, but it's worth it. Anything that you want people to take away from the story that you just broke? We're not done. I have a follow-up. I don't know when this is publishing, but we have a follow-up coming out tomorrow because we found some pretty interesting information about the current attorney general who dropped all the charges. Might be some conflict of interest in her office related to the water crisis. So that will drop tomorrow. You know what I'll say, Mike? I think that book behind you really says a lot, Manufacturing Consent, because you asked why is it that there's not broader appeal? Because manufacturing consent works multiple ways. One of the ways is to manufacture consent for things. It also works in manufacturing consent for what's important. So the media, through what it chooses to cover relentlessly, Trump, the horse race, who's up, who's down, it's a form of programming, particularly in older Americans, no offense, but that's the general cable news audience to the New York Times readership. Obviously younger, even like under 50 and under 40 we're starting to realize aren't really that demographic. But if you never see stories like Flint, like East Chicago, Indiana, that has a major lip problem, we haven't even gotten into Kifas, which is a cancer-causing chemical from the manufacturing of Teflon being found all over water bodies around the country. Guarantee a majority of people watching right now have no idea that the hedge fund Sleazebags in New York, one of their big investments the last few years, water, because they think water might be the future oil and there might be a shortage of clean water. So all of this is massively important. But why would CNN, owned by AT&T, why would NBC, owned by Comcast, why would Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos? I mean, why would any of these places find it important? They don't find these things sexy. So what viewers find sexy or not sexy is largely informed by what the media declares is quote unquote sexy. So that's why we started status coup. I don't wanna be like to bring sexy back, but we started this, we started this because I think people, honestly, how we have uncovered this is I've been there 15 times, Jen has been there seven times, but we've largely like just given the microphone back to the people. And you really learn where all the bodies are buried. When you go into these places as journalists, I don't talk to pundits, I don't talk to experts first, I talk to residents, because that's who knows who's corrupt. That's who knows. So the thing I'll leave the audience with is number one, we do have a YouTube channel status coup. You might not know that because YouTube is throttling the hell out of us. So status COUP, subscribe if you can. If you want to support this reporting, it's status coup.com says join, low as five bucks a month. And most importantly, spread the word. I mean, on my Twitter, the story is right at the top. Unfortunately, we're not gonna get action unless public officials are shamed. That's what I've realized. And the media, shame the media. Detroit Free Press only covered this because the attorney general's office came out basically threatening our source. They wanna find who the source is. Sound familiar to Trump? They wanna find sources, kind of subtly, I think threaten us to not continue reporting, which isn't gonna work. So this is super important. It's not just Flint. It is connected to coronavirus as we've spoken about. And I think Bernie said it best. Are you willing to sacrifice for someone you don't know? Yeah, exactly. And really what's important for people to know is that it's not just the simple, Flint still doesn't have clean drinking water, which we see people tweet occasionally just to kind of remind individuals of this crisis. It's a lot deeper than that. It's a lot more complicated. And the deeper you go, the more troubling the details seem to be. So just if you have time, I'll link to all of these, the articles as well as the videos down below. So definitely check them out. I wanna shift gears because recently you stated on Twitter that you tested positive for COVID-19. And I think that it would be informative for people to kind of know what you experienced, how you were able to get a test, maybe how you think you came into contact with the virus. Can you just talk through that? Honestly, to this day, I don't even know how I got a test. I randomly, my girlfriend's friend mentioned this doctor's office. Oh, one medical, excuse me. They're not paying me, which I guess has an app and does like virtual appointments too. So I was doing virtual appointments with them. And then my cough got so severe with the fever, I decided to go to the office and they had a test. So I guess maybe I lucked out. So that's how I knew I had it. They actually did say that there's a lot of false negatives too. So a lot of people are being told they're negative and the tests are not foolproof. Honestly, I think for me, it was maybe made worse because when you have something like this, the suggestion is rest. And I was like in the home stretch of finishing this vice story. So like I was working 14 hours a day. It's stressful. That's not good if you have a virus. So I think, I mean, my cough, luckily I haven't been coughing to this interview, but it kind of like, I think it's gone. And then it comes back. It hasn't been going on for like a month. But the best way to describe it is just, in my case, severe cough that was hurting my back, was hurting my ribs a little bit because you're coughing nonstop. At one point I was coughing nonstop for at least nine days. And the fever fortunately went away after three or four days, never went higher than 101. I didn't have any breathing problems. But I think people should realize like even the mild version, some of these like idiots on Twitter are like, oh, it's just a cold. I've never had a cold this bad. I mean, it was not just a cold. And frankly, I'm lucky because the people in my situation that didn't have the breathing problems, didn't have the hospitalizations, like who knows what makes it go that direction, versus another, because there's people healthier than me that have died. So there's people like super athletic, I don't really exercise that much, who died. So it really, the jury's out on how certain people respond. For me, I'm just guessing, but I think I got it from a supermarket, because I was wearing a mask. We were wearing gloves, but in New York City is very dense. You could try to stay six feet from people, but New York City, people that just were, I've always said there needs to be walking lanes because everybody's just in their own world, walking in the middle of the curb and not really bumping into you. So I'm pretty sure I probably got it that way, which tells you, you can get this even wearing a mask, gloves. I think the experts even, like first it was six feet, then they said, well, it might need to be more. Then they said, oh, well, you could get it just if you walked past someone that breathed. So I don't really know how I got it, but I got it, I'm lucky. Privileged in a way. I worked from home when I'm not traveling. There's Amazon workers that I've spoken to that think they have it, but are going in anyway, because they can't afford not to get paid. That's another scandal they don't have paid sick leave unless you test positive. Yeah, but it's not been pleasant. It's been going on. I thought I was better, but I'm starting to cough again. I would hope I'm out of the woods for anything more serious. And it's also, I mean, just to be honest with you, it's affected the business a little bit because I haven't really been going live or doing videos that often. I actually can tell you the truth got worse because the day I broke the vice story, I went live because it's like, I'm not, you know, I want my audience to know about this that we want to play this up, but I was still like deeply sick. So I just going live for an hour took a hell of a lot out of me. I mean, my girlfriend even said like, it's like you just ran like a marathon. So this thing is exhausting. And I really am very, very dismayed to see all these morons, governors, and you know, oh, we're gonna reopen the economy slow by slow, like as we pass the death toll of the Vietnam War, I know people are going crazy, cabin fever, but I don't understand, maybe you have an answer, you can't contact Trace in New York City. You can't contact Trace in these major cities. How the hell do you know who passed me on the way to the supermarket or who was in the supermarket with me? It's just asinine. So I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think the answer is reopening these gyms and hair salons and all that, because you might be willing to take the risk, but that's not fair to other people who are not willing to get infected by you. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that if we just all hunker down for a couple of months and wait until this blows over, that's the best case scenario, because I think that staying inside, getting cabin fever, that's a better outcome than getting the virus. I wanted to ask you, when you started to experience symptoms, was this like something that was gradual, like did you feel a tickle in your throat? And then did it kind of build or did you just wake up one day with like a huge, like horrible cough? Because I have a friend who just tested positive, she's in healthcare, so this isn't super surprising, but it's just, you know, the way she describes it is, this is horrible, there's no energy. You know, you don't want to get out of bed, you just sleep. So how did this happen for you? Was it sudden or was it gradual? I started coughing a little bit on Saturday, like weeks ago, Sunday the cough became severe, and then Monday I had a fever, so it was pretty quick. I mean, mild cough, next day, severe cough, then fever. I didn't have it as bad as your friend, fortunately, I could get out of bed, I wasn't like super, super exhausted, but I think the worst part, your body, you get fatigued from coughing nonstop for seven days, so I was just exhausted from the coughing and mentally I'll be honest with you, again, like just people dying, so I'm not complaining, but mentally it does take a toll on you because at least when I didn't know I had this, you know, it's said like you can go outside to take a walk if you're keeping distance, you know? So at least you get that like 20 minute, half hour break from being stationary, you know, I live in a one bedroom apartment, so when you're literally quarantined for, I was in here for two straight weeks, you get a little kooky, I mean, I was getting a little kooky because it's just tough to be confined in that area, again, like people are dying or hospitalized, so I don't have it, you know, I'm not complaining, but that was one component. And the other thing I'll just say is, I think that it's really a shame that in this situation, the media is ignore, it's kind of like with school shootings, they're doing the play by play instead of talking about the root. I don't see the media talking about it, like there's zero discussion in the media, corporate media. Why are we even paying rent right now? Why are we paying rent? Why are we paying mortgages? I mean, you look at Europe, the government's either paying for like 80 to 90% of people's companies payrolls, or in some cases just like, you know, mortgage paused, rent paused, not like paused and then you pay it all back in one lump sum, just like erased for now. And your landlords mortgages, so they don't suffer. Like the fact that corporations run our government, and I've said to my audience, like it doesn't matter if Biden or Trump wins, because I mean, I think Trump's a little worse, but the bottom line is neither of them make the decisions, it's their donors that are making decisions. But there's no like deep discussion about why is it that in the United States of America, when something like this happens, why are 20 million people now out of work and no healthcare? Like it's mentioned, but there's no, that is a disaster and it could be fixed like right now. And it's a scandal that the Democratic front-runner is not saying yes right now, Medicare for all. We'll talk about it, you know, I disagree with it permanently, but right now Medicare should just pay for all this. It's completely scandalous and the future is bleak. I'm gonna talk to Richard Wolf later this week, but it's gonna be like 2008, Mike. I mean, these companies are not hiring back all these workers when times are good, they'll do more with less. So you're gonna have, you know, talk about Andrew Yang, the jobless economy is gonna be expedited quicker. A lot of these people are not gonna get employed back, not to mention opioid epidemic getting worse because of unemployment, depression, suicides, those kind of things. And there's very little talk of it. And you know, I love Bernie, but he has not organized his army to they can't protest in physical space now, but he has not organized his army to demand these things. Now is the time. I don't agree with some that are going off the rails and Bernie's a sellout and a coward, I don't agree with that. But now is the time to just say straight up, like, no, we're not paying our rent. This is absurd, we don't have jobs. Like it's crazy. So I think there's a broader discussion than just the health pandemic. And I hope also, I mean, look, there's a reason that African-Americans are being hit disproportionately, downtrodden communities. So I hope that these parts of the discussion enter into it. But yeah, I'm fine, I'm gonna be fine. And hopefully nobody else gets this, it's not pleasant. Yeah, well, we're glad to hear that you're doing okay. I think that like hearing you say that you tested positive for a lot of people, like this makes it really real. If you don't know someone who's had this, I've known a couple of people now who has had this, but if you don't then like hearing from someone who comes out and says it, I think it really makes it real. And I think it's important because it encourages people to actually be more responsible because you hear about these stories in the news, we're overwhelmed every single day, but it doesn't seem like a real thing unless you actually put a face to it. And like having you come out and say it, I think there's a real utility in that. And just letting people know that this is serious and you need to take it serious. Thankfully, you're okay. It could have been worse for you, but it's still, it's no walk in the park. So thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that. And yeah, before we leave one last time, can you plug your website? Yeah, youtube.com slash status coup, that's C-O-U-P, status coup.com. And yeah, definitely subscribe. If you got a couple bucks, it's five bucks a month, status coup.com slash join. And super, super important right now, support independent media, whether it's us, Mike, if you can do as many as you can, obviously people are hurting themselves, but I think we've seen from this campaign, manufacturing consent is on steroids these days. And I think part of a large portion why Bernie lost, I mean, just think about it. There's Biden got a hundred million dollars in free advertising between South Carolina and Super Tuesday. That's not my opinion that was reported. That's insane. And the exit poll showed, I think 50% of people that voted for Biden decided in those final days. So it wasn't a definite that he was going to clean up on Super Tuesday. Remember, Bernie was like the declared, he was basically the front runner on 60 minutes, like right before then. So I think we need to support independent media to counter this day after day propaganda. So definitely check us out if you can on youtube status coup. All right, thank you so much, Jordan Sheridan. Once again, really appreciate it. Whenever you break news stories, we'd love to have you because I think this is important and people need to know. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate you having me on and caring about Flint. 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, as usual, we're not gonna end the show without thanking all of our PayPal, Patreon and YouTube members for helping the show not just to thrive but survive as well. Appreciated especially now, but totally understand if you can't do that since everyone is hurting because so many people are losing their jobs because of COVID-19. But regardless, take care of yourself. Stay safe. I will see you all next week. This has been The Humanist Report. I'm Mike Figueredo. Take care.