 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 247 of The Show. It is Friday, June 26th and before we get started, I wanna take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members who either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes Adam Schroeder, Adele Arlott, Bonnie Dominguez, Joe Anthony, Paul Curtis, Richard Fernandez, Rosie Tyler Paul, Steven Settles, Trey Wilk and Tyra Holk. So thank you so much to all of these kind souls. If you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, if you're able to, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath anyone of our YouTube videos. So we've got another jam-packed episode for you. This week, we will talk about Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa that was pretty much bonkers. We'll also talk about his admission that he tried to slow down tests for COVID-19 because he thought that that would make him look better in the eyes of Americans. On top of that, we'll talk about his lies when it comes to mail-in voting. And we'll talk about the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of COVID-19. On top of that, the Arctic reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We'll talk about the severity of climate change. Additionally, Breonna Taylor's sister spoke out in a recent interview with Vice News. We'll talk about that as we get news that one of the officers involved in her death were arrested, just one. And we have more segments planned for you, but we will close the show by talking to 2020 congressional candidate out of Texas, Donna Aymam, about the status of her campaign. So that's what we've got on the agenda for you this week. Hopefully you will enjoy the show. Let's waste no time. Get right to it. I don't usually cover Donald Trump's rallies because I don't like to subject myself to torture if I don't have to, but I am willing to put up with some things that are more unhinged than usual. And usually at these rallies, he kind of just drones on incoherently for an hour or so. And there's usually not much substance there, but here, it was his first rally in months. And you can tell he had a lot of pent-up energy because even though I don't think he actually enjoys being president, I think he does like doing these rallies. He likes the adoration. He likes people cheering for him. He likes that he's a narcissist. But at this rally, there is so much that transpired. I have to talk about it. And some of the things that was said at this rally was just beyond the pale, even for someone who knows that a lot of the Trump news stories are sensationalized. And the media covers things that are supposed to be controversial. When in actuality, there are other bigger controversies and scandals from Trump's administration that they should be focusing on, namely warmongering and whatnot. That being said, I want to talk about the Tulsa rally because even before it took place, there were really weird things happening. First of all, Donald Trump literally threatened protesters with violence. He tweeted out on Friday, any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters, or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma, please understand you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene. Now, I mean, we've seen the videos. Anyone who watches this show knows about the footage of the NYPD driving their cars into crowds of protesters. We've seen protesters in Seattle gassed with chemical weapons, so they haven't been treated nicely. So maybe the implication here, if we're being charitable, is that Trump wants to actually treat these protesters more nicely. Wrong. Well, I mean, of course not. This is a direct threat of violence to protesters. He lumps protesters in with agitators and anarchists. Usually he likes to make it seem as if all of the people out on the streets are the same, but he's very distinctly saying protesters too, right? So you see all the violence that's taking place in the streets currently perpetuated by police officers predominantly? Well, it's gonna be worse here. What you've been seeing in Minneapolis and Seattle and New York, well, that was a walk in the park compared to what we're going to do to you if you start any shit here. So I mean, the implication is that they will be treated worse. Now, putting that aside, this was taking place at an indoor venue, probably featuring almost nobody wearing masks, thus spreading COVID. Although this guy was wearing a mask, I'm sure that he was made fun of because half of that crowd probably thought that it wasn't even a real thing. Like I think they literally believe COVID-19 is either a hoax or the numbers are overblown. They're conspiratorial, so I mean, you know that they're going to be spreading COVID-19 if they're indoor at this stadium, not wearing masks. And on top of that, we know that some of Trump's staffers who were going to be at this rally literally tested positive for COVID-19. So I mean, it puts people who are going there at a higher risk, but regardless, the rally took place anyway. And it attracted quite a broad range of psychopaths. You have a counterfeit version of the Brady Bunch showing up singing about Donald Trump. They may be low key Satanic, I don't know. You have this particular individual cracking a whip outside of the venue, which I mean, I'm sure was trying to communicate a very specific message. But I mean, you also had people showing up with I Can't Breathe t-shirts as well. Now, maybe, you know, this is a right winger who was wearing an I Can't Breathe shirt to signify that she doesn't like to wear masks because they're uncomfortable and they make it difficult to breathe. But you know, it could be a message in support of George Floyd, which Trump has tweeted previously that he supports George Floyd. He wants to honor George Floyd's legacy. Although, you know, whip guy, I didn't see the police arrest him, but the lady with an I Can't Breathe shirt was actually arrested, even though she had a ticket and she attended this event, she was arrested. Take a look. And then the officer said, just because you have a ticket. That's what we're trying to figure out right now, Alex. They're arresting me. They're arresting me. And their place, it appears they're placing her under arrest right now, Alex. I've got nothing. I have tickets to those events. I'm trying to listen in to what she's saying. Bear with me. No, I'm not arresting you. So whip guy, you're cool. You can come on in. Lady with the I Can't Breathe t-shirt, you've got to get out. I mean, it kind of tells you about their priorities, right? Where they are allowing open racists to be associated with this event and people who are speaking out against police brutality and speaking out in favor of George Floyd, who Trump said he supports, are being escorted out. Now, Donald Trump isn't the one who ordered her to be, you know, escorted out. But still, I mean, we know who this is trying to appeal to, right? We know exactly who Donald Trump is pandering to with this rally in Tulsa. Now, the lead up to this event may have been almost as bizarre as the event itself because Donald Trump boasted online that nearly a million people requested tickets. But in actuality, the stadium, it was pretty empty. Now, you know, theoretically you'd think this is a good thing because that allows ample room for social distancing. But of course that didn't take place. But come to find out, it was Zoomers on TikTok and K-pop stands who actually trolled Donald Trump by ordering a ton of tickets, kind of inflating the interest for this event. And some of them online were talking about, they ordered, you know, 20, others say I got 11. So this led to Donald Trump being embarrassed, thinking that he was going to have this huge, large crowd when in actuality, this wasn't a full stadium. Well played Zoomers, well played, you know, K-pop stands. I am so proud of Zoomers. They are so much more cooler than millennials and I love you all so much. You really are the future and I'm so happy about that. So I think that if you're gonna troll someone, there's not a more wholesome and better way to do it than what they did. So that was fantastic. And Donald Trump was trying to explain away, you know, why the crowds were lower than he anticipated. But moving on, I wanna talk about the actual substance and I use the word substance loosely of this event because there were moments where Donald Trump just kind of rambled incoherently for minutes at a time. There were other moments where I can't help but feel disturbed. But we're gonna start out with the more lighthearted moments where he tried to redeem himself after he sipped water like a weirdo. So he took a sip of a glass of water and the crowd loved it. Good job, Mr. President. That was incredible. I wish Bernie could do that. Like the fact that they were cheering him on as he drank water, it's just weird. Like what world are we living in? We are literally living in idiocracy. And I hate to be that guy but he still didn't really drink water like a normal person. He was licking his lips like a weirdo when you only drank water, like what was this? Now aside from that moment, there were portions of it that I could pick out and really nitpick and make fun of him for because like he doesn't make sense, right? Like he, like Joe Biden is I think experiencing very rapid cognitive decline. I don't know who is declining faster but I mean there were moments where he wasn't saying anything and he gets sidetracked so easily where he'll be trying to make one point and then he'll branch off into a different point and then from that point he'll branch off into a different point when five minutes later he doesn't know about the original point that he was trying to make. Like it's easy for him to go off on tangents but there were moments where he contradicted himself in a very embarrassing, albeit still chilling way. So he called out so-called cancel culture and he was angry because not even the Confederate statues are safe nowadays because of the PC police. Take a look at what he said specifically and listen to the words that he uses. The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monument, tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. We're not conforming. That's why we're here actually. So he very directly and explicitly calls out the people who want to quote, punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform. So he says that, but he also says this at that same event. And you know, we ought to do something, Mr. Senators. We have two great senators. We ought to come up with legislation that if you burn the American flag you go to jail for one year. One year. Jim and James. Jim and James. We ought to do it. You know, they talk about freedom of speech and I'm a big believer in freedom of speech, but that's desecration. That's a terrible thing they do. We used to have things. We don't have them anymore because we want to be so open, so everything and look what happens. We should have legislation that if somebody wants to burn the American flag and stomp on it, but just burn it, they go to jail for one year. Okay? So on one hand, he doesn't like that the left wants to punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform, but at the same time, if you burn a piece of cloth he wants you to go to jail for a year because you burned a piece of material and the crowd ate it up. They loved it. Now, obviously, this is unconstitutional. Burning the flag, flag desecration is freedom of speech. Now, I love how he throws in the little caveat. I'm in support of freedom of speech, but I mean, that's desecration, so that's different. Right, desecration is a part of free speech because where does it end, right? I'm not one to necessarily make the slippery slope argument, but if we start allowing the prosecution of people who burn cloth, which is permissible under the Constitution, then are we not allowed to, I don't know, burn the Bible? Desecrate religious figures? Like, if you are going to be an authoritarian, then at least try to be consistent, right? Because the crowd cheered him on as he denounced so-called left-wing authoritarians who wanna punish people and taking down Confederate statues. That's not even cancel culture. We should want to cancel members of the Confederacy, right? That shouldn't be controversial. Cancel culture is good in that regard. But anyways, they loved when he said cancel culture is bad, but when it comes to their version of cancel culture, canceling people who choose to burn cloth or desecrate cloth, well, that's good. So basically to them, authoritarianism is good only if they're the ones that are being authoritarian. I mean, there's no consistency here ideologically. This is a cult and anything that their dear leader says, they're going to follow because I mean, that's what cults do. Now, he also went on to make a point about his supporters. You know, he says that the, or implies that the left, they're the ones who are usually violent. Although if, you know, for some reason, things got a little worse in this country and it devolved into, I don't know, maybe a civil war or, you know, left versus right violence, he knows which side he'd want to be on. The left is trying to do everything they can to stop us. Every hour of every day, including even violence and mayhem, they'll do anything they can to stop us. Look what happened tonight. Look at what happened tonight. Law enforcement said, sir, they can't have, they can't be outside, it's too dangerous. We had a bunch of maniacs come and sort of attack our city. The mayor and the governor did a great job, but they were very violent people. And our people are not nearly as violent, but if they ever were, it would be a terrible, terrible day for the other side. Because I know our people. I know our people. We do too. They are violent fascists who simultaneously believe that the left are a bunch of hyper-sensitive snowflakes, but at the same time, violent thugs who we should all be afraid of. So I mean, this is, it goes beyond him just being divisive. He's literally trying to pit Americans against each other, right? And usually if you're a president, you have a vested interest in making sure that the country is united. Because if you try to pit Americans against each other, that leads to societal unrest and chaos. And that makes you look bad and incompetent as a leader. But I mean, he doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't actually think these things through. He doesn't think about the consequences of trying to escalate tensions between the left and the right. He wants to make it very clear to his base of followers that it is the leftists who are the enemies. They're your enemy, they are not like you. And anything that they say or do is bad by definition because they are your enemy. He has dehumanized people who protest and he is tacitly endorsing violence here by suggesting that his supporters would actually be better at conducting violence in the event it came to that. So this was definitely an unhinged event, but the moments where he talked about cracking down on the First Amendment and ramping up the violent rhetoric, that is something that we can't just look away from. We can't just chalk it up to more Donald Trump derangement syndrome or anti-Trump outrage. This is serious. This is serious. He's getting desperate, right? It's an election year and he's pulling out all the stops and he doesn't care if he burns the country to the ground. He just wants to get reelected. So if he thinks he can ramp up the divide in this country, the polarization, then if that serves as political cause, that's what he's gonna do. We can't allow this to continue. We can't allow him to threaten to use violence against protesters. We can't allow him to demonize the left and call for their constitutional right to desegrate a flag to be violated. He wants to jail them for a year. I mean, this is fascism. And sure, he may not be the next Hitler, right? That's not what I'm trying to imply here, but it doesn't matter. A fascist is a fascist and that is what he is doing. He's using the tactics of fascist and what he's doing is unacceptable and we have to call it out. So we talked about Donald Trump's Tulsa rally in a separate video and it was totally normal. It definitely didn't go off the rails. It doesn't look like the movie Idiocracy come to life. Anyways, I'm being sarcastic, obviously. There's a specific portion of his rally that I didn't talk about in that video because I wanted to isolate it because I think in and of itself it requires a more at length conversation and the mainstream media to their credit in this instance has talked about this, but I think that it requires even more people to talk about this and make noise about this because I think it's so egregious what he flippantly admits here that I mean, I don't really even know what to say. The president of the United States admitted during a pandemic that he tried to slow down testing for COVID-19 because it makes him look bad. This is literally something he admitted to at his Tulsa rally. Take a look. And with testing, you know, testing is a double-edged sword. We've tested now 25 million people. It's probably 20 million people more than anybody else. Germany's done a lot. South Korea's done a lot. They call me, they say, the job you're doing, here's the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more people, you're gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please. They test and they test. We got tests of people don't know what's going on. We got tests. We got another one over here. This made me absolutely furious watching him admit that and to see the crowd of cultist followers just cheer him on. I mean, it's so frustrating. It's so frustrating. We're trying to fight a pandemic. More than 100,000 American citizens have died under his watch. And his response is to slow down testing because more positive cases makes it seem as if he doesn't have COVID-19 under control. Therefore, it makes him look bad. Although, do you wanna know what actually make you look good, Donald Trump? Is if you got COVID-19 under control, which would require more testing because if you don't test people, then you don't know what we're working with. You need more data, not less. But because he's an imbecile, he decided to instruct people around him. I don't know how he's doing this or if he actually can do this. He might just be bluffing. But either way, his response instinctively is to say, no, no, no, let's do less tests because the more positive cases of COVID-19 that we find, that's gonna make me look bad. Now, tests vary depending on the state. Some governors are doing more tests depending on how competent they are or how many cases of a COVID-19 they have. So we don't necessarily know if he's just talking out of his ass, but a Scripps reporter actually asked him about this and he didn't really give a straight answer. He couldn't say whether or not he actually did try to draw back on the amount of tests that they were doing. So take a look and we'll analyze his response afterwards. On Saturday night, you said that you told your staff to slow the testing down to improve the numbers. Does that mean someone watching this right now on their local news is not gonna get a test because you asked yourself this? We do more testing than any country in the world by far. 25 million tests, other countries do one million. Every time you do a test, as you do more tests it shows more and more cases. So we're so far advanced, both in terms of the quality and the amount. And we're doing all these tests and it shows cases if other countries aren't doing or if we did slow it down, we wouldn't show nearly as many cases. You're showing people that are asymptomatic, you're showing people that have very little problem, you're showing young people that don't have a problem, but we're doing so much testing, 25 million tests. Nobody thought that was possible. But did you ask to slow it down? If it did slow down, frankly, I think we're way ahead of ourselves if you wanna know the truth. We've done too good a job because every time we go out with 25 million tests you're gonna find more people. So then they say, oh, we have more cases in the United States. The reason we have more cases because we do more testing than any other country by far. So didn't get a straight answer there and what he said wasn't just idiotic, it was factually incorrect because even if we're not the worst country in the world when it comes to testing, we're still not the best as he wants you to believe. We're doing about 20 tests per confirmed cases in comparison with Canada, for example, who does a hundred tests per confirmed cases, but our response has been consistently worse than other countries with regard to testing. And sure, we've been slowly increasing the number of tests that we're doing since mid-April, but I mean, we're still not doing enough. And testing does vary quite a bit by state. As I mentioned earlier, it kind of depends on how prevalent COVID-19 is and who the governor is and whether or not he or she wants to do more testing or even cares about this pandemic. But I mean, here's the thing. If you actually want to defeat COVID-19 because it is still a pandemic, you have to do that by testing as many people as possible. And currently we're at the stage in the pandemic where we just kind of pretend it doesn't exist. You have lots of states opening up in Oregon, my state. I think that the governor was doing an adequate job at handling it, but since there's a lot of pressure by right-wingers to reopen, now she's reopening whatever we're seeing a surge in cases. I mean, you can't just pretend that it doesn't exist. It does exist, right? You can't just wish away this pandemic. This virus doesn't care about what your wishes are or what the political context is or how bad it makes Donald Trump or governors look. This is a virus that doesn't care about any of that. It doesn't discriminate on the basis of political affiliation, right? This is a virus that will be there until we kill it ourselves until we defeat it. So pretending it doesn't exist, ramping down on the tests that we do, I mean, that's not acceptable. Now, White House officials said that Donald Trump's statement about trying to curtail the number of tests that we're doing was just a joke, but that's not a defensible thing to say. Like, there's been more than 100,000 Americans that have died because of this and you're joking about the testing. You're joking about making it difficult to fight this thing that killed 100,000 plus Americans? Really? I mean, he wouldn't joke about 9-11, would he? That killed, what, 3,000 Americans? This killed 100,000 Americans, almost 120,000 Americans. By the time most of you see this video, it probably will be 120,000. So even if that is his defense, I mean, it wouldn't be a defense if he joked about 9-11, right? Which he takes very seriously because that gives him a justification to, you know, invade other countries. But I mean, the point is, what he said here is unacceptable and I don't necessarily know if he is trying to stop the amount of testing. I think a lot of his bungling of this response has been due to him being just incompetent and an idiot, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. His instinct was just revealed to us. He wants to make sure that he looks good by all means necessary and if that means making us less capable of dealing with the deadly pandemic, then so be it, so long as he doesn't look bad. I mean, what a despicable human being he is. You know, before COVID-19, there really was no reason to not support mail-in voting, but if you didn't support it before, then living through a literal pandemic should actually make you see why mail-in voting is so important. But Donald Trump does not support mail-in voting and he's been very vocal about why he thinks it's not just bad, but literally an existential threat to democracy. So he's being a little bit hyperbolic. But Donald Trump is a compulsive liar and the thing about compulsive liars is that they lie so frequently that oftentimes they're not even consciously aware of the fact that they are lying, but what he says about mail-in voting is so extreme, so exaggerated that it doesn't even fall into the same category as his usual lies. So he tweeted out, if people can go out and protest riot, break into stores and create all sorts of havoc, they can also go out and vote and keep our election honest with millions of mail-in ballots being sent out, who knows where they are going and to whom? Well, we do know actually. He continues, because of mail-in ballots, 2020 will be the most rigged election in our nation's history. Apparently he hasn't heard about the 2000 election when the Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. Bush. Nonetheless, he continues, unless this stupidity has ended, we voted during World War I and World War II with no problem, but now they're using COVID in order to cheat by using mail-ins. Rig 2020 election, millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others. It will be the scandal of our times. Okay, so aside from the fact that what we just read was batshit fucking insane, he's doing two things here. The first thing he's trying to do is lower expectations, right? Because if the polls hold, he will lose the selection in November. So he doesn't want it to be as shocking to his supporters. The second thing he's doing is he is preemptively coming up with an excuse in the event he loses. It's not because he did anything wrong. It's not because he failed. It's because democracy, the system itself has failed. So do you understand what he's doing? He's trying to literally throw the entire system under a bus, all to save face. I mean, there is absolutely nothing he won't do to protect his own power, to make sure that he looks good. And he was asked by a reporter, what evidence is there to suggest that mail-in voting is conducive to widespread voter fraud? And predictably, he couldn't give the reporter any evidence because there is no evidence that this is in fact a thing that leads to voter fraud. Respectfully, sir, I covered politics in Colorado for five years. This morning you tweeted about how mail-in ballots will be fraudulent. But I never did a story or heard your friend, Senator Cory Gardner, say that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. People in Colorado have been voting by mail for years, sir. Any specific evidence? Where is the specific evidence that there is? There are thousands of cases all over, thousands. I don't like the system. And I did pretty well in Colorado. I could have won Colorado. But I could have won. I almost... Do you blame mail-in ballots for? I can't tell you what it is. I thought I would have won Colorado, frankly. I love Colorado and the people like me and have a lot of the similar values. We do a lot of economic development there. A lot of things are planned. No, I don't like mail-in ballots. I don't think it's good for Colorado either. I don't know. Did they find anything in Colorado? I can tell you this. There are thousands of cases all over the... An example. An example. All over the country, you have thousands of cases. A friend of mine gets a ballot. His son, unfortunately, passed away seven years ago. He gets a ballot for his son to vote. That's one case. But there are thousands and thousands of cases. The other thing is, with mail-in ballots, people can forge them. Foreign countries can print them. They get the same paper, the same press. Why don't you order them to have Americans print the ballots? I'm not ordering anything. I'm just... We shouldn't have mail-in ballots. You should have certain things. If you can't be at a location like I'm here and I can't vote in Florida, I'm at the White House. So you do something where that's taken care of and that works out fine. But in California, they sent tens of millions of slips out, of ballots out. They put them in mailboxes. People take them. They take them from the mailman and they print them. They fraudulently print them. It's a very bad system. It's gonna lead to a tremendous fraud and we're trying to stop it. Mail-in ballots are a disaster. Listening to Donald Trump speak is so frustrating. It drives me nuts because he's asked a very specific question about mail-in voting and voter fraud and he starts talking about himself. Oh, well, you know, I don't know why I lost Colorado. You know, there's a lot of people there that agree with me. Pay attention, do-tard. We're talking about mail-in voting and I'm asking you for evidence that there's fraud. We're not talking about you. We're talking about this issue. Pay attention, dummy. But the reason why he didn't give a specific answer, the reason why he couldn't cite evidence is because there is none. You see, the Heritage Foundation is a conservative organization that has been cataloging instances of voter fraud and they have not tracked instances where a foreign government has given ballots to people illegally to vote. In fact, when you look at states with mail-in voting, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation, it's not an issue. Take Oregon, for example. We've had mail-in voting here for two decades and the Heritage Foundation found 14 cases of voter fraud since 2000, 2000. That's 20 years, not an issue. In Colorado, a state with mail-in voting since 2014 found the same number, 14 instances of voter fraud. There were 12 cases of voter fraud in Washington state since 2004 and in Hawaii, there were two cases of voter fraud although in these instances, what was found were false registrations. So in these two cases, they didn't even get to commit the act of voter fraud before they were caught. They just registered and in the state of Utah, also with mail-in voting, they found one false registration. In other words, this is not an issue. Now, The New York Times explains studies have shown that all forms of voting fraud are extremely rare in the United States. A national study in 2016 found few credible allegations of fraudulent voting, a panel that Mr. Trump charged with investigating election corruption found no real evidence of fraud before he disbanded it in 2018. Five states, including the Republican Bastion of Utah, now conduct all elections almost entirely by mail. They report very little fraud. The state is among the six states with the highest percentage of mail-in votes in the last election in 2018, all of which had Republican state election supervisors at the time, according to David J. Becker, the director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. In Colorado, which has 3.5 million registered voters, has been a vote by mail state since 2014. There's just very little evidence that there is more than a handful of fraudulent vote by mail cases across the country in a given election cycle, said Judd Chote, the new director of elections in the Colorado Department of State. Now, the article goes on to explain that in the rare instances where voter fraud does occur, yes, it is more likely to happen by absentee voting than actually at the polling place. But that doesn't mean that it's a common phenomenon. It doesn't mean that if you have mail-in voting in all 50 states, that all of a sudden our election is insecure. In fact, during a pandemic, that makes our elections more secure because people aren't going to feel secure voting during a pandemic risking their health to do so, right? So it's voter suppression if you force people to vote at polling stations publicly during a pandemic. And on top of that, one benefit of mail-in voting is that it minimizes the risk of election fraud because there is a real difference between voter fraud and election fraud. With voter fraud, that is an individual carrying out an act of fraud. But when it comes to election fraud, that takes place at the state or local level and is carried out oftentimes by political parties or public elected officials in the form of illegal voter purges or this. Kentucky slashes 95% of polling places ahead of primary election. So understand what they're doing. They're gonna go from 3,700 polling stations down to 200 for Kentucky's 4.5 million residents. And as Ari Berman points out, there will be one polling place for 616,000 registered voters in Louisville's Jefferson County where half the state's black voters live. But yet Donald Trump has the nerve to claim that mail-in voting is going to lead to election rigging. No, it's going to stop election rigging that the Republican Party tries to do because if you are able to mail in your ballot, it doesn't matter if the Republican Party is going to cut the number of polling places. It doesn't matter. Democrats do this during primaries too. But if you have mail-in voting, that makes the election more democratic. So the fact that Kentucky is brazenly doing this, I mean, that is a rigged election. So rigged that I wouldn't trust any election in the United States going forward unless we have some type of international organization or the UN oversee it because this is rigging. So if Donald Trump is concerned with rigging, this is what he needs to worry about, not mail-in voting. And the situation is worse because by disenfranchising black voters, you're hurting the candidate that is positioned to perform better against Mitch McConnell in the general election. That's rigging. That's the fraud that we have to worry about. Election fraud committed by parties and governments, not individuals. So what Donald Trump is doing here is he's allowing election rigging to continue in states like Georgia and now Kentucky, but he's crying about rigging all of safe face for his election if he loses. I mean, this is infuriating. Anyone who cares about democracy and wants a secure election to take place should want mail-in voting. The response to COVID-19 by the United States government has been largely laughable. And I think that every other country around the world, citizens in other countries, are looking at us and just laughing at us rightfully so because we are a bunch of morons, right? Currently, what's happening is you have a lot of states reopening their economies, sending everyone back to work when COVID cases are spiking. So the new strategy, apparently, is just to pretend like it's not a thing. If you pretend as if COVID-19 doesn't exist, then apparently it'll go away, except it doesn't work like that. I wish. So I mean, we failed and sure, you can fault government for that, but you also have to fault the people to a degree for one, being stupid, and two, buying into the capitalist mindset that it is worth endangering our lives to save the economy, to save capitalism. So that's where we're at. We've all laid out our priorities and the winners in this debate ultimately will be the capitalists who think that we should sacrifice ourselves, risk our own asses to reopen the economy because that's just more important than people dying and getting sick due to COVID-19, having long-term damage to their health due to COVID-19 if they catch it. But in spite of all of that, not to be a doomer because I feel like I've been a doomer a lot lately, there is some good news with regard to COVID-19. First, we may have a breakthrough when it comes to COVID-19 treatment because a drug known as dexamethasone, which is a steroid, has been successful in saving the lives of many patients with COVID-19. And the better part about the story is that it's actually a relatively cheap solution and it's widely available. And on top of that, as this pandemic continues, we are going to learn more about what works and what doesn't work. And currently, for some reason, there is a nationwide debate about the efficacy of masks, right? Which that really shouldn't be a debate. But again, I blame government for that, for not actually being clear about whether or not we should wear masks. But I mean, regardless, you see all of these viral videos popping up of Karen's refusing to wear masks because either Liberty or they have some type of underlying medical condition, regardless, here's a snippet of what's been happening across the country. I can't let you in the store with that mask. Okay, so where's the regulations that state that? The regulations? Yeah. Because you're discriminating against me now, do you know that? Put your hands down. Well, you gotta wear a mask, bro. I'll just put you on my 3,000 follower Instagram feed, mostly locals. Hi, everyone. I work for Costco and I'm asking this member to put on a mask because that is our company policy. So either wear the mask. And I'm not doing it because I woke up in a free country. Like that's all I want to do is cry because you can't see people's faces. You can't make human connection. Absolutely insane. So we don't even have a choice anymore. So they're literally calling the police on me because I am not putting this mask on. Why aren't you wearing the mask? It's unhealthy for me. I don't want to bring my own CO2. So nobody wants to wear masks, but a lot of us are because if we wear masks, then that stops us from spreading germs to other people if we have COVID, but we don't know for asymptomatic, right? So it's not to protect yourself, right? You're not wearing a mask for self-interested reasons. You're wearing a mask so that way you protect other people. So it's incredibly, you know, I think inappropriate to not want to wear a mask in public because I don't know where you've been. I don't know how careless you've been acting. So wear a mask, be polite, except that's not really what we've seen. Regardless, I've got bad news for the Karens because apparently wearing a mask actually is very effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. Who would have thought? So according to Faith Karimi of CNN, no cases of coronavirus have been linked to two Missouri hair stylists who saw 140 clients last month while symptomatic County Health official said, both stylists worked at the same great clips location in Springfield. The clients and the stylists, all wore face coverings and the salon had set up other measures such as social distancing of chairs and staggered appointments. The Springfield Green County Health Department said this week of the 140 clients and seven coworkers potentially exposed, 46 took tests that came back negative. All the others were quarantined for the duration of the coronavirus incubation period. The 14-day incubation period has now passed with no coronavirus cases linked to the salon beyond the two stylists, County Health official said. During the quarantine, those who did not get tested got a call twice a day from health officials asking whether they had symptoms related to COVID-19, said Catherine Wall, a spokeswoman for the Springfield Green County Health Department. This is exciting news about the value of masking to prevent COVID-19, said Clay Goddard, the county's director of health. We are studying more closely the details of these exposures, including what types of face coverings were worn and what other precautions were taken to lead to this encouraging result. So this tells you that wearing a mask is really important. It works. Now, here's the thing about masks. It only works if everyone wears a mask. So if you go to a storm and not 100% of the people there are wearing masks, well, it's not going to be as effective. And sure, this doesn't necessarily mean that wearing a mask will save us and stop the spread of COVID-19, definitely, because this is just one anecdote, but it tells us that, you know, if you do want to reduce the spread of COVID-19, then if we all wear masks, then we're gonna be better off. But yet you see people freaking out across the country about masks. And all of a sudden it's this debate and, you know, if you watched Joe Rogan, I think he said something a couple of weeks ago that it's not masculine to wear a mask or whatever. I mean, why are we having this conversation? I mean, it's a fucking pandemic, people. Can we just wear a mask for a couple of months? Like, I don't think people realize as frustrating as the lockdown on quarantine is that if we all just stayed the fuck home for a couple of weeks and all wore masks and followed protocols properly, we would be done with this shit. But because people are fucking idiots, because people are refusing and now there's a contingent of the population that just thinks it's a hoax, well, it's gonna persist longer. It's not gonna go away, you know, if we just wish it away or pray enough. That's not the way this fucking thing works. It's a pandemic. And a pandemic has a very specific key set of things we can take precautions we can use to make sure we minimize its spread. But because Americans are fucking stupid, we're choosing to just pretend like it's not a thing. I mean, this is incredibly frustrating to me because you have a lot of people who are doing everything in their power to social distance, to stay home, to wear masks, but it's the idiots who don't follow these guidelines. It's the idiots who won't stay home, who think that it's a hoax or something that prolonged this pandemic for everyone else, right? We're only as strong as our weakest links. But I mean, this is America. So everything is a political issue. Everything becomes a partisan issue, right? At the beginning of this pandemic, everyone was all in agreement that this is a real thing, first of all, which is important to establish. And second of all, that staying home, social distancing, not touching your face, washing your hands properly, these are all things that we have to do to stop COVID-19. And now just give us a couple of months and we absolutely take this issue and turn it into a partisan issue to where if you are wearing a mask to the grocery store, you're making some sort of political statement. When it's not a fucking political statement, it's a pandemic, a pandemic, you know, a virus. It doesn't give a shit if you are a Republican or a Democrat. It's a pandemic. So I mean, I don't know what else to say. If you don't wear a mask, you are risking everyone else. It's not like you are saying, well, I'm just gonna take chances and not wear a mask. No, it doesn't work that way. By not wearing a mask, you are potentially endangering other people. You, if you are asymptomatic and you've been exposed, could potentially kill someone if you don't wanna wear a mask. So it's not gonna be a 100% guarantee. You know, you're not going to definitely stop the spread of COVID-19 if you wear a mask, but will it reduce the spread of COVID-19? Yes. And I think that that's common sense. We shouldn't necessarily need studies like this to tell us that. Nonetheless, here we are. So we're talking about it, wear a mask, stop complaining. It's not that big of a deal. We don't like wearing masks. I don't like wearing masks, but I do it because that's what we have to do during a fucking pandemic. Jesus, people. So I wanna take some time to talk about a story that really illustrates just how dire the situation is when it comes to climate change, because collectively, as a species, we have underestimated climate change. So the UN tweeted out temperatures reached plus 38 degrees Celsius within the Arctic Circle on Saturday, 17 degrees Celsius hotter than normal for June 20th. Global heating is accelerating and some parts of the world are heating a lot faster than others. The race to zero emissions is a race for survival. That's what the UN tweeted. The race to zero emissions is a race for survival. They're not saying the race to incrementally reduce our greenhouse gas emissions is a race for survival. They're saying the race to zero is a race for survival. Whatever we were planning to do, whatever action politicians want to take, it's just not enough. We have to be at zero. We can't have these long-term goals of reducing our CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050. That's not good enough. And at a time when we need drastic action, Democrats nominated the worst possible person who's just not up to the task. I mean, he's talking about re-entering the Paris Climate Accord, Joe Biden. I mean, I don't even know if he supports a Green New Deal, but if he does, I know it's not as comprehensive or robust as Bernie Sanders' version of the Green New Deal. I mean, we have to fundamentally transform our economy if we're going to make it dense, but we're just not up to the task, it seems. And I want to read an article from Common Dreams about this story because I think they do a really good job at putting everything into context for us. So Jake Johnson writes, a small Siberian town north of the Arctic Circle reached 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday, a figure that if verified would be the highest temperature reading in the region since record keeping began in 1885. This scares me, I have to say. Environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibbin tweeted in response to news of the record-breaking reading in Virk-Hoyansk, where the average high temperature in June is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Washington Post climate reporter Andrew Friedman noted Sunday that if the reading is confirmed, it would be the northernmost 100 degree reading ever observed and the highest temperature on record in the Arctic, a region that is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe. On Sunday, the same location recorded a high temperature of 95.3 degrees or 35.2 Celsius, showing the Saturday reading was not an anomaly, the newspaper reported. While some questions remain about the accuracy of the Virk-Hoyansk temperature measurement, data from a Saturday weather balloon launch at that location supports the 100 degree reading. Temperatures in the lower atmosphere at about 5,000 feet also were unusually warm at 70 degrees or 21 Celsius, the sign of extreme heat at the surface. The World Meteorological Organization said Sunday that it's preliminarily accepting the observation as a new extreme, as it conducts a more thorough review of the Virk-Hoyansk reading. 100 degree Fahrenheit, about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle today in Siberia, that's a first in all of recorded history tweeted meteorologist Eric Hothouse. We are in a climate emergency. The reading comes as Siberia is in the midst of a prolonged heat wave that has alarmed climate scientists and activists, been watching the Siberian heat wave for months, and it's beyond terrifying, already suffering what was expected in 2100 in a worst case scenario, said climate activist and conservationist, Charlie Gardner. Now I wanna reread that last sentence because I think it really is striking. It puts it on to perspective. We're already suffering what was expected in 2100 in a worst case scenario. So in 2020, we are already experiencing what scientists predicted we'd experience in 2100 in a worst case scenario. So it's safe to say, we have severely underestimated the severity of climate change. And it just seems like we're not up to the challenge as a species. We're just not. What else to say? We're not willing to take swift and severe enough action to not just try to mitigate the threat of climate change, but actually arm ourselves with the capacity to adapt, to adapt to the climate change that's already happening. We're just, we're not up to the challenge. And we're in a political climate that couldn't be worse for this particular disaster. I mean, best case scenario is we elect the Democratic Party that is just gonna pay lip service. Maybe they'll make a couple of incremental tweaks to the system that puts us in a slightly better off position, but it's not nearly enough. And then at worst, you have a minority party that has control of portions of government. And a lot of them don't even believe that climate change is a thing or at best, they'll say, well, we believe in climate change. We just don't think that it's man-made. So we believe in climate change so long as, you know, we don't accept that it's anthropogenic because if it's not anthropogenic, then that means that we can't do anything about it because if man doesn't create it, man can't control it. So I mean, I don't know what to say. I don't mean to be a doomer, but it just seems like the human species is going to allow climate change to ravage our planet. We're already seeing an increased frequency in hurricanes that are destroying communities. Puerto Rico still has not fully recovered from Hurricane Maria. I mean, I don't think people really realize what they're doing in standing idly by and allowing this to continue, allowing our lawmakers to not do anything about climate change. They don't realize it because they kind of visualize climate change as something that's far off in the future, but it's here. That's what this story is getting across to people. It's already here. We weren't expecting this until 2100, but in 2020, we're seeing what was envisioned as a worst case scenario that would only take place in 2100. We're just not up to the challenge. I don't know what else to say about that. It's a sad fact of reality, but it is a fact of reality. We are not up to the challenge. Climate change will devour our species, devour our species. That's gonna happen because we're letting it. We're just gonna allow it to happen. And it just seems like we're not going to meet the IPCC's 12-year deadline. I mean, look at the political landscape. If we elect Joe Biden, that's four years of not taking substantial action. At best, he makes more incremental changes that reduce our carbon footprint, but not nearly enough. When we had an option to elect Bernie Sanders, who actually wanted to be a world leader, talk with other countries, and collectively come up with a strategy to get our net carbon emissions, CO2 emissions to zero. But now we have Joe Biden. And then after that, who's gonna be positioned to take his place, his VP for another four to eight years, which is almost certainly gonna be another neoliberal who's going to care more about the economy than the environment in spite of what they tell you. So that's four to 12 years in total, where we have some type of mealy-mouthed Democrat not doing enough to fight climate change and doing it where there's this party of death and destruction that is absolutely psychopathic Republicans who are trying to stop them, stop whatever incremental changes they're trying to make. We're just not up to the challenge. Humanity has failed. Climate change will win. That's what this story tells me. And again, don't wanna get you down, don't wanna be trying to depress you, but we have to accept the reality of the situation because trying to bury our heads in the sand and pretend as if everything is gonna be okay isn't going to help us in this predicament. It's not going to save lives. So we have to brace for the worst, hope for the best, but expect the worst. That's where we're at. We're not going to be able to stop the worst of what climate change has to offer. It's coming. And this story kind of illustrates that that is in fact going to be the case. And it's sad, but the truth is right in front of us. We can't ignore it any longer. We failed. So it's been three months. In fact, more than three months since three police officers in Louisville, Kentucky shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her home while she was asleep. And even though the Louisville Metro Council voted unanimously to ban No-Knock warrants, I mean, we haven't seen actual accountability until now when we learned that one of the officers involved in her death, Brett Hankison, was fired. And again, he was fired three months later. But I mean, needless to say, that's not good enough. First of all, they all need to be fired. Second of all, it's not enough to just fire them. They have to be charged in her death because losing your job is not a sufficient punishment if you take a life. And I mean, even if we get justice for Breonna Taylor, this is still a sad story, right? Because justice isn't going to bring her back. A life was lost forever. She will no longer be able to live. So I mean, at a minimum, we expect justice. At a minimum, we hope that we can change the system, stop police officers from racial profiling Black Americans. But I mean, the fact that you can't even get justice, which is the minimum expectation, shows you how broken the system is. So no, we don't just stop because one of the police officers were fired, fire all of them and arrest them. She was sleeping in her home and they killed her. That is unforgivable. Now, I wanted to share part of a documentary, a mini documentary from Vice News, because they talked with Breonna Taylor's sister as her birthday approached. And this was just heartbreaking, but I think it's important because she gives us a little bit more insight into the story. And she tells us about who Breonna Taylor was as a person because this is a hero. She's an EMT during the COVID pandemic. So who knows how many lives she saved. But I mean, this is what Breonna Taylor's sister had to say. I think this was really... She made a lot of good poignant points here. Her family is still fighting for justice for Taylor and they're still grieving. She literally was the sweetest person ever. The car rides was fun with my sister. They're like the funnest things ever. I have friends when my sister passed away, they were telling me like they admired our relationship. They wished they and their siblings were like that. So you were very close. Yeah. Tomorrow, Taylor would have turned 27. A lot of people don't realize like my life had to change in a moment. Not in days, in a moment. I had to uproot my norm to make a new norm. Being at family functions and not seeing her come in being goofy, it is so weird. It's so weird that her birthday is Friday and she is not getting on my last nerve talking about this mismatch. Does this look right? Am I going to look cute for my birthday? I got a hair appointment this day. You need to do this for me. It's so weird. She's not here. It's upsetting. Taylor was an EMT, serving on the front lines as COVID-19 began to sweep across the country. She wanted to become a nurse one day. She just wanted to be able to take her time with a person, understand this person, help this person better. Did she talk to you about the plans that she had in the future? She really was looking forward to having a kid that's really been taken from her and I don't think it's fair. She actually had a kid named picked out if her and Kenny would ever have a daughter that they had an actual name picked out for this kid. I had just found out recently that he already had an engagement ring picked out. On the night of the raid, Taylor was home with her boyfriend, Kenny Walker. Junior, who lived there too, was out of town. I remember that day. My mom called and she just kept repeating, when are you coming home? And she was like, Brianna, I was like, what? She's like, she's dead. I said, what did she crash into? Those was my first word. I honestly felt like my sister would have died from a bottle crash before she would have died from being shot mistakenly. And hearing my mom tell me also when I got home, they didn't know she was EMT. So when they were going to leave out the apartment, they grabbed her jacket, her EMT jacket. And they were like, somebody left their jacket and my mom kept telling him, no, that's my daughter's jacket. And the man kind of like was like, no, it's not. My mom said, yes, it is. Her initials was on the front of that jacket, V-Taylor. She said she would never forget that look on his face. It kind of was like, are you serious? We killed one of our own? Yeah. It was really the hardest day. I'm trying my hardest not to cry, I hate crying. It's crazy how people's life don't take a pause because mine's dead. The world continues on with or without the person. What does justice for Breonna Taylor mean for you? Those three officers being fired. Those three officers being fired would say a lot, mean a lot. Like, do you think that it is enough to punish those officers? I feel like there's a lot of rules that need to be changed. Like, they're supposed to be wearing body cams as you all found out the other day. They're still not wearing their body cams. It needs to be in force. So what she wants is for the officers who killed her sister to be fired. That's all she's asking for. She's not even saying arrest the people who killed her sister. She's just saying fire them at a minimum. And this interview was conducted a couple of weeks ago. I'll put the link down below if you wanna watch the full thing. But I mean, we still don't have that. It took three months for them to fire one of the three police officers. I mean, this is why people are in the streets. This is why people are protesting because we have to worry about getting justice when there was a pretty brazen injustice performed. I mean, if you can't see why this is absolutely unacceptable, then you're just not a reasonable person. You're too far gone. So everyone can see the injustice here. So we shouldn't have to beg for justice. It should just come. We should expect it to come timely. But it's been three months and we get one police officer fired. I mean, this is why people don't have faith in the system. And again, assuming we get justice here in this case, I mean, this life is lost forever. You don't get her back. You don't get her back. The best we can do is try to change the system so that way this doesn't happen to other people. But this life was valuable. Brianna Taylor's life mattered. It was meaningful. Not just because as a human being, she had desire. She wanted to get married and have kids. She was dreaming about the life that she wanted to live. But also because that life, the joy that she brought to others was taken. Her being an EMT, saving lives, that was removed from the world when we needed her. So it's sad. She's never coming back. That life is gone. And it was taken by police officers who are likely going to get away with this. Maybe they'll be fired. Maybe all three of them will be fired by the time you see this video. I don't know. Maybe they will go to jail for a short period of time. But they're lucky because they get to live, right? They get to live their lives when Brianna Taylor does not. So at a minimum, people are asking you to fire and hopefully prosecute the people that killed her. And the fact that we can't even get that shows how fucking broken the system is and why nobody has faith in it. Why nobody trusts the system because cops can kill black Americans with impunity. Even if there's a camera on them in the case of Derek Chauvin with George Floyd. I mean, you see in his face. He doesn't care that he's being filmed because police officers, they don't feel as if they will be held to the same standards as normal Americans, right? They think that they're above the law because effectively they are above the law. So I mean, if we don't start actually holding people accountable who murder unarmed black Americans, then it's gonna keep happening. Especially if they're in their homes sleeping. I mean, this is such a sad story because Brianna Taylor, you can just get a sense of the type of person that she is and what a joyful person, what a happy person she was. And there's this deep sense of sadness because she's gone, she's never coming back. She's younger than me. And everything that she wanted out of life, she'll never get. And it's just, it's so depressing to think about, right? So all we can hope for is justice at this point. And for closure, for Brianna Taylor's family, and I think that part of getting closure is seeing the people who killed their loved one be brought to justice or at a minimum fired. But I mean, who knows if we'll get that. And the fact that we don't know if there will be justice for her, it's just, it's so deeply sad and disturbing, quite frankly. So I don't usually get to do this. I don't usually get to bring you guys good news. Usually it's, you know, it's bad news, quite frankly. But not only do I have good news, we have earth shattering news folks. Jamal Bowman won. Jamal Bowman running in New York's 16th congressional district against incumbent, Elliot Engel backed by the establishment, the congressional black caucus, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton even, he lost, Jamal Bowman won. I cannot tell you how huge this is. This is the AOC moment of the 2020 election cycle where you have an underdog take on a political behemoth and actually win. And at this time, we don't have all of the precincts reporting, but let me tell you the results thus far and why a lot of people are calling it. So with 20% of precincts reporting at the time I record this video, Jamal Bowman is winning in a landslide with 61.6% of the vote and Elliot Engel coming in a distant second with 35.7% of the vote. So Jamal Bowman didn't just beat Elliot Engel. He absolutely beat his ass. And I love this because Elliot Engel is someone who was swimming in corporate money, APAC money. This is an individual who just weeks ago, he came to his district for the first time and he was caught on hot mic saying he wouldn't care about Black Lives Matter causes if he didn't have a primary. And on top of that, at a candidate town hall online, he literally said that the fact that AOC endorsed him is basically like a dictatorship. He said this isn't a dictatorship. So, I mean, this is such a huge victory and the fact that Hillary Clinton, they had to dust off her ass, trot her back out and he still beat Hillary's endorsed candidate. I mean, this is a really bad day for the establishment. And, you know, this isn't the only victor. We'll talk about other victories in a different video. I cannot tell you how important this is for the left. This is absolutely huge because, you know, since Bernie Sanders lost the primary, there was this notion that, oh, well, maybe it's just not, you know, time for the left. Maybe electorally, you know, they should give up. You know, this is what people want you to think in mainstream media. This is what the pundit class was implying very heavily. But with this progressive victory being a huge win and other progressive victories that were racking up across the country, I think we have more momentum now than ever. This is absolutely huge. I'm almost at a loss for words right now and it's early, but there are a number of locations who have called it. We have political polls account calling it. It's not official as of yet. So things could technically still change. Just keep that in the back of your mind, but I'm calling it. Jamal Bowman beat him. This is absolutely huge. So we have another member of Congress who will be very vocally progressive like AOC who actually cares about issues. Not just, you know, when it's convenient if he has a primary or not. This is someone who's an activist who's been fighting who had the entire establishment come out against him. And now he most likely will be elected to Congress. And this is such great news. So we don't get these types of victories very often. So celebrate, enjoy it. Cause this is so good for the progressive left. Progressives might have had the best night, electorally speaking, in decades, if not ever, we racked up so many wins that anyone who felt demoralized after Bernie Sanders' defeat who felt as if, you know, they wanted to check out of electoral politics. I'll admit that I kind of felt that way for a while as well. This proves that the left lives on. And I know that the pundits and the Democratic Party establishment, they were really hoping that we would feel as if electoral politics, you know, was a dead end and we should just stop focusing on it. But this proves that we can still win and going into that next congressional session, starting in 2021, we have a sizable block now because we have a number of progressives who won their primary campaigns and the establishment is noticing. Like it's not as if these progressive upsets here and there are anomalies. These aren't flukes. This is something that is happening now more frequently. And tonight proves that. So I think the obvious victory that we were all expecting was AOC to get another victory when it comes to her primary. You know, she was facing someone who I didn't necessarily believe was a serious primary challenger, although she did have the backing of corporate interests. So, you know, you never want to underestimate your opponent, even if it seems as if they're a joke and they don't have a platform. She took it seriously and AOC's opponent got her clock cleaned. Good. Now, the next victory, which is by far the biggest of the night came from New York's 16th congressional district where Jamal Bowman defeated Elliot Engle. Now, let me tell you about this race. Elliot Engle is an incumbent who has been in Congress for decades. This is an individual who had the backing of the congressional black caucus, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. Hillary Clinton even was trotted out to endorse Elliot Engle. And guess what? Jamal Bowman beat him and he beat him by a lot. So that's honestly one of the biggest wins that we could have hoped for in every cycle, at least once, we want to take out a really big Democrat, someone who is poised to be in leadership, you know, be the next speaker. And we couldn't get Steny Hoyer, but Elliot Engle, I mean, he's kind of higher up in the ranks within the Democratic Party. So he was a good target for justice Democrats and brand new Congress and they took him out. Awesome news. Now, we did not win every single race. You know, we followed dozens of candidates on this podcast. We did get some losses here. So let's talk about them. In New York's third congressional district, Melanie DiRigo unfortunately lost her primary, although she got an impressive 32.5% of the vote. And this could still change. Keep in mind that only 38% of precincts are reporting at the time that I record this video. But unfortunately it looks as if she did not win. And, you know, she was a phenomenal candidate, but with how impressive her showing was here, hopefully she will be back in the future. When it comes to New York's fifth congressional district, we didn't get to speak to Shawnee at Chowdhury, but he was a great candidate. Unfortunately, he did not win. So this is one loss that, you know, definitely hurts. But another one, you know, a candidate who we followed very closely on this program. I brought him on three times. Is Isaiah James. And unfortunately he was not able to win and beat Yvette Clark. You know, this is definitely disappointing. When it comes to New York's 10th congressional district, Lindsay Boylan unfortunately was not able to defeat Jerry Nadler. Now, an interesting note about this race is Lindsay Boylan actually got momentum after she was snubbed by Elizabeth Warren. I wasn't really aware of her race. You know, she was backed by Brand New Congress, so I supported her, but I didn't know much about her. But, you know, Elizabeth Warren backed Jerry Nadler over her after Elizabeth Warren, you know, was grandstanding during the Democratic primary about how important it is to elect women. Well, you have an opportunity to elect a progressive woman and you just shunned her. So a lot of people on the left kind of rallied around Lindsay Boylan, myself included, because she got shunned by Elizabeth Warren, who she kind of respected, right? Unfortunately, Lindsay didn't get it done, but at 25%, that's still impressive. Now, moving on, in New York's 12th Congressional District, Caroline Maloney is very clearly vulnerable. She's incumbent and she's hurting. So you have Lauren Ashcraft with 13.5% of the vote. You have Seraj Patel with 39.8% of the vote. Very, very close here. Now, Lauren Ashcraft was the candidate who Brand New Congress endorsed. Seraj Patel is definitely a trade-up if you were to beat Caroline Maloney, but I have my doubts about him. When it comes to policies, he claims he supports Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. So I mean, he's right on the issues. Although when you go to his website, he has a banner of him and Obama and that doesn't necessarily give me the most confidence that he is going to be a secure progressive vote for these issues. Nonetheless, I mean, Caroline Maloney is absolutely horrible. So it's not done yet. There are 82.07% of precincts reporting. Maybe Seraj can get it done. Either way, this is proof that Caroline Maloney is vulnerable and her time is coming to an end here in Congress. So if she's not out this time, she's really vulnerable in 2022. When it comes to New York's 15th congressional district, this was kind of an open race. There's no incumbent. I supported Samalee Slopez, Brand New Congress endorsed the candidate who's also great named Tomas Rojas. Unfortunately, someone named Richie Therese was elected. This is someone who, I mean, you can make the case that he's progressive. He claims he supports Medicare for All, but his record on city council shows that he's kind of weak. He doesn't hold strong. He's willing to buckle. And I don't have the utmost confidence in him. I'm willing to give him a chance. But I mean, it could be worse, right? You can get someone far worse than him. He is kind of more of a Warren Democrat than a really strong lefty. That being said, it is what it is. There were a lot of people running in this race and hopefully he'll be able to prove me wrong when it comes to New York's sixth congressional district. Unfortunately, the Brand New Congress backed candidate, Mel Gagarin, lost his primary. So I didn't follow this race, but he was a good candidate. And he was someone who I wish I would have been able to bring on the show. But enough about the losses, right? Because we had a lot of losses. There were a lot of candidates running. But now let's talk about the victories, the really huge victories that we got. We already know about AOC and Jamal Bowman. But guess what? In Virginia's first congressional district, we got a gigantic win because Qasem Rashid won his primary with 52.8% of the vote. And if you don't know who Qasem Rashid is, he is a strong, strong progressive. If you look at his policy platform, it is incredibly detailed. It's thorough. He's a strong proponent of single-payer Medicare for All. This is someone who the left wants in Congress. And guess what? Just won his primary out of nowhere. Great news. Another person who I wish I would have brought on the program didn't get a chance to talk to him, but he won and this is huge. Like this is such great news. On top of that, Mondair Jones in New York's 17th congressional district pulled off an upset. This is someone who is a very progressive candidate. You know, he supports Medicare for All. He is a solid vote for the progressive block in Congress. This is absolutely excellent news. So let's just pause for a moment and recap. In terms of progressives, AOC won. We'll talk that up as a victory even though we expected that one. Jamal Bowman won his primary in a huge political upset. Rashid won his primary in Virginia's first congressional district, another huge upset. Mondair Jones won his primary in New York's 17th congressional district. It may very well be the case that we get a progressive beating Carolyn Maloney. It may very well be the case. Numbers are still coming in that Charles Booker wins in Kentucky. That's the case. If all of this goes according to plan and the races that are kind of teetering back and forth right now and going progressive, that means we get six wins, six gigantic wins. But taking away the ones that are up in the air, we still have four solid progressives just when they're primary. This is huge. This is absolutely huge. And I don't think people realize the impact that this is going to have on electoral politics going forward because the establishment wants you to believe that there's just not a big enough block of people who are lefties who support Medicare for All or Green New Deal. It's gaslighting, right? But that's what they want you to believe. But we're proving them wrong. This was a phenomenal night and I'm exhausted but I'm absolutely just thrilled to be able to bring you good news. Four progressive victories, maybe six. I mean, this is just, this is fantastic. So the Democratic Party primary in Kentucky was definitely one to watch because I think it's one of the most important primary races in all of 2020 because this will determine who's going to face off against Mitch McConnell in November who we desperately need to defeat. And I would be making an understatement if I said that I didn't have faith that Amy McGrath could actually get the job done. This is someone who is literally running as a pro-Trump Democrat. We tried this basically back in 2014 with Alison Lenderman Grimes who ran as a conservative Democrat and she got her clock cleaned by Mitch McConnell but even she sees the writing on the wall and she endorsed the insurgent lefty this time, Charles Booker, who actually believes in policies that would help people in Kentucky. And a poll just showed last week that if you wanna beat Mitch McConnell it's still gonna be difficult but Charles Booker is the one who can get it done. So this race is so important because if we mess this up we get another six years of Mitch McConnell who is one of the most destructive politicians in American history, not just in this modern era in American history because he gets things done. He gets Donald Trump's justices approved, right? He knows how to basically take what is a toothless demagogue in Donald Trump and actually make him effective, right? Carry out his will. So we've gotta beat Mitch McConnell. And yeah, I think that you all get that if you're watching this program but people in Kentucky, they voted today and we don't have all the results we're not gonna know right away. It's probably gonna be days until we know for sure who's the winner. But with 54.41% of precincts reporting Amy McGrath is currently leading by about 5,000 votes. However, before you get too down as USA polling points out the Washington Post has votes in from Lexington, Fayette County and Booker has a 50 point lead. If that's accurate, Booker will win the Kentucky Senate still waiting for more votes to come in. So even if it looks as if Amy McGrath is the favorite currently, that's true but Booker slowly but surely is closing the lead and I'm not gonna count him out just yet, right? Until every single vote is counted. But this race, it's already an uphill battle because of the shenanigans that are taking place. So a day before people voted, we found out that Kentucky was cutting the number of polling stations from 3,700 down to 200. That is a 95% reduction which leaves places like Jefferson County in Louisville with just one polling place for hundreds of thousands of residents. So naturally, if you tell hundreds of thousands of people that they have one place where they can vote well then what's gonna happen? That's a form of voter suppression. Not everyone will get their voices heard and the people who managed to make it to the polls I mean, it's gonna be sheer chaos. Of course, there was a traffic jam because everyone is trying to show up to these polling stations that have been reduced. And a lot of people couldn't make it to the polls on a weekday before 6 p.m. because there was a traffic jam which led a lot of people at a particular expo not being able to vote. They locked the doors literally at 6 p.m. sharp and people just were shut out. They clearly wanted to vote but thankfully they opened back up. The deadline was extended by a half an hour but since the number of polling stations was reduced since more people wanted to make their voices heard Booker filed an injunction to try to extend the polling time, keep it open for at least another couple of hours. He wanted to close at 9 p.m. I think that that's reasonable because this is happening on a weekday, right? It's a Tuesday, people are getting off of work trying to rush to the polls, there's traffic because everyone is trying to go to the same polling place. It's just, it's chaotic. So if you want there to be democracy you have to give people at least more time. I mean, they should have the option to vote by mail. They should have more than just one polling station for a county with hundreds of thousands of people but if you're not going to give them that at least let them have a couple of extra hours to vote. A judge said, no to that. So as Tal Axelrod of the Hill reports a Kentucky judge denied a request from state representative Charles Booker's Senate campaign to keep polls open in Jefferson County until 9 p.m. The judge noted that the court had already ordered that individuals who were at the polling place by 6.30 p.m. be allowed to cast their votes and that concerns over a traffic jam preventing people from arriving before polls closed were based on speculation. This court has ordered that individuals who are present inside the doors of the Expo Center no later than 6.30 p.m. shall be permitted to vote to accommodate those who are present at the Expo Center. Otherwise, the request that polls remain open until 9 p.m. due to traffic congestion is based on speculation rather than any evidence that specific individual voters cannot reach the Expo Center, the judge ruled. Yeah, so this is supposed to be a democracy and it's a joke. I mean, you cut polling stations by 95% at least give them a few more hours to vote but they won't even do that. So you've got to understand that this reduction in polling stations during the primary, it helps Amy McGrath. It helps her, right? Because if you cut the number of polling stations down to one in an area where a large portion of Kentucky's black population lives, I mean, that's going to hurt the progressive. That's going to hurt Charles Booker. So this is going to help her now but during the general, if she actually does win which I hope she doesn't, this is going to hurt her. So I hope that Charles Booker wins because he is the one who could beat Mitch McConnell and it's going to be tough either way because he's up against not just a political behemoth but voter suppression, right? Shenanigans that we're going to have to deal with. So this is a race to wash, don't get down yet. Charles Booker can still win. It's not looking good at this moment in time but don't count him out. Let's wait for the votes to come in. The numbers are still coming in as I film this. So we don't necessarily know what's going to happen but it's frustrating that people are experiencing so much strife just trying to make their voice heard. It's beyond infuriating. It shouldn't be like this but in spite of everything that's happening for Charles to be performing this well it really speaks to the need for progressivism in politics. Like people in Kentucky at Deep Red State they want to elect someone like Charles Booker and there's just all these obstacles to them making their voices heard. So we will see what happens. I'm crossing my fingers and I'm rooting for Charles Booker because I want to get Mitch McConnell out and that means we have to elect the strongest person and the most electable person in this instance is not the safe choice, the pro-Trump Democrat. No, it's Charles Booker, the lefty who actually inspires people. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unceded Joseph Crowley back in 2018 you know it was really easy for the pundits and the Democratic Party establishment to try to dismiss that downplay and make it seem as if it's a fluke and it's not going to happen again but now after the night that progressives had I mean, you can't dismiss this. You can't pretend as if what happened in 2018 was an anomaly because now we have more progressives winning their races and yes, unceding incumbent Democrats and if they didn't win, they came close to unceding incumbent Democrats. This was the case with Carolyn Maloney and we had of course, Jamal Bowman beat Elliot Engel. We had Mondair Jones when his primary, Kossim Rashid when his primary in Virginia's first congressional district. You can argue that Richie Torres is a fairly progressive individual. I don't know as much about him. I don't wanna prejudge too much but you can make the case that he is a progressive if not a Bernie-type Democrat, at least a Warren Democrat. So we're winning a lot more races and we haven't even touched on although the victories that progressives have had around the country in state house races and city council races like socialists are rising and a left in general is surging and you can no longer downplay it but guess what? MSNBC is still going to try because in this clip that I'm gonna play for you they talked about these victories. They talked about the success of Charles Booker even if we don't necessarily know the results yet and watch the way that they try to explain away this as kind of not necessarily a sign of a new trend but instead, not that, take a look. For who will take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November is too close to call right now between Amy McGrath and Charles Booker. McGrath leads by about 2,000 votes at this point. They're still counting. In New York, two Democratic incumbent seats could be in jeopardy in the state's 12th congressional district primary. Democratic incumbent Carolyn Maloney who chairs the oversight committee is narrowly leading challenger Shirage Patel and in New York's 16th congressional district, Democratic primary, longtime congressman, Elliot Angle who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee trails progressive Jamal Bowman there. Casey, what are the surprises you see in these races and Democratic races across the country last night? So I think it's tempting to read this as progressives have, and that voters are looking for somebody that's more progressive, that's not part of the establishment. I think it's a little bit of a mistake to look at it that way. I think it's a rejection of the calcification of our politics of people that have been in office for decades in many cases. The Kentucky race is fascinating and we still have a lot of counting to do in that race. It really could right now go either way, but the turnout in that primary election shattered at previous records and Charles Booker was someone who caught onto this last minute. Energy really was a part of the protests that were swelling and Louisville around Black Lives Matter. And I think really showed how you can, you don't have to operate inside the systems that have been built again. And that's kind of the trend that I see here is voters looking at these candidates and saying I don't wanna be told what to do, I don't wanna be told who to vote for. And while we've talked so much about Kentucky and I still think it's incredibly unlikely that Mitch McConnell would lose this race in Kentucky, it is true he is incredibly unpopular and it is also true that this is a pretty unpredictable outcome. I mean they've been running against Amy McGrath for a year and I think that given the current environment it's gonna be tricky to figure out if Charles Booker wins this race Mitch McConnell's gonna have to figure out how to run against a young African-American man who has captured a lot of excitement and seems to be expanding his appeal beyond the traditional centers of Louisville and Lexington that a Democrat would vote for. They are looking at Appalachian and we'll see if that's actually real. But a lot of trends going on here that I think should make Republicans nervous. And Reverend Al, I'm curious, what are your takeaways from the races from North Carolina to Kentucky to New York? I think that more than a rebellion against just the candidates or the incumbents that have served for decades is that they're facing candidates that represent the spirit of the times and that symbolize the issues that are prevalent in people's minds because there are many veterans that were re-elected or re-nominated yesterday. So I think that we shouldn't confuse the two or three that seem to be offsets with that it's based on a new form of leadership with a leadership that identifies with the issues of now. Every one of these, if you look at the Engel race and the other races were people that were involved and symbolized as we see in Kentucky the actual issues that people are caring about now. And that's what the veterans missed. So, you know, credit to Al Sharpton for coming in with the most common sense and reasonable take on this. Voters want candidates who are going to represent them. The Democratic Party establishment has unequivocally failed at doing just that. Now, what she said, I believe that was Casey Hunt, she said, it's tempting to read this as voters are looking for someone that is more progressive. I think it's a mistake to think of it that way. It's a rejection of people who have been in office for decades. I mean, okay, fair, you can say that, but why are voters rejecting people who have been in office for decades? It's because they're not progressive because they are looking for people who are more left-leaning, more progressive. So, you know, they try to find ways to get around the obvious conclusion. Well, it's not necessarily that people support left-wing policies. It's because the people who are getting beat, they've just been in power since 1940 and they want some new blood. No, that's not what it is. People want left-wing policies. Left-wing policies happen to be incredibly popular. Medicare for all, a green new deal. These are all policies that a majority of Americans support and some polls show that a majority of Republicans now support Medicare for all because guess what? It's a common sense policy during a pandemic, but she goes on, she says, with regard to Booker's race, it showed how you can, you don't have to operate inside the systems that have been built. And she kind of caught herself and she said, and the trend that I kind of see here is voters looking at these candidates and saying, I don't want to be told what to do. I don't want to be told who to vote for. So basically what she's suggesting is that this isn't necessarily about policy. This is about voters rebelling, telling the establishment, don't tell me what to do. I mean, look, you're overcomplicating it. It's much more simple. People like left-wing policies. There is a reason why in every single state, exit polls show that a majority of Democratic Party primary voters supported Medicare for all. Now, yes, Bernie Sanders lost. The candidate who supported Medicare for all lost and the person who is against it, won. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're against Medicare for all. What it means is that they believe the propaganda that your network was spewing, saying that Joe Biden was the most electable. So people want left-wing policies. You don't have to overcomplicate it. But I will give her credit for kind of giving Charles Booker a little bit of credit by saying that he expanded his appeal because I mean, this network has tried to downplay the appeal of left-wing politics for years. But ask yourself, why did Booker expand his appeal? Why was he able to expand his appeal in a deep red state like Kentucky? It's because he is speaking to issues that affect normal Americans. But, you know, they can't tell you what's obvious. They can't jump to that obvious conclusion because this network doesn't wanna do anything that would jeopardize the current power structure in DC with regard to the Democratic Party. They don't want to, you know, admit even tacitly that the Democratic Party establishment is out of touch and they're deeply unpopular for a reason. They don't wanna admit that because this is a network that is supposed to do propaganda at the behest of the Democratic Party establishment. So that's why we're seeing these types of weird analyses where they bend over backwards, you know, doing mental gymnastics, trying to explain this as, you know, not a new trend, but instead some sort of fluke or alternative reason for all of these successes. No, it's because people like left-wing politics. It's that simple. It's just a matter of us trying to use the momentum and support for left-wing policies and actually grow the power that we have collectively on the left. So don't overcomplicate it. We're winning because people believe what we're saying because it's common sense. People want healthcare, people want education, people want housing. We're winning because we're speaking to those very specific issues. After Obama intervened in the 2020 Democratic Party primary to prop up Joe Biden's dying campaign and get everyone else to drop out and coalesce around Joe Biden, he decided to join a live stream with Joe Biden and he made matters even worse than he already did. He proceeded to whitewash George W. Bush's legacy all so he can attack Donald Trump, make it seem as if Donald Trump is a unique evil in the United States and not just a trend of, you know, gradually evil presidents who commit war crimes and do bad things. Take a look. I am here to say that help is on the way if we do the work because there's nobody that I trust more to be able to heal this country and get it back on track than my dear friend, Joe Biden. I don't think I have to reiterate the situation that we find ourselves in right now. Things were tough in 2008, 2009. We were going through the worst recession since the Great Depression, a massive financial crisis. We were still in the midst of two wars. You know, we I think were overcoming a decade in which the possibilities of common work and common purpose had been diminished and downgraded and government had been starved of the resources that were needed to make us a more equal and just and compassionate society. And yet I have to say that the foundation stones the institutions that we had in place were still more or less intact. My predecessor, who I disagreed with on a whole host of issues, still had a basic regard for the rule of law and the importance of our institution's democracy. On the world stage, there was still a sense that America needed to lead and that that leadership meant that, as imperfect as we might be, there were certain ideals and values that we were going to aspire to and advance and that we cared about human rights and we cared about battling against the oppression of people's in distant lands and that we tried to uphold both in our own country but around the world, certain core principles around rule of law and the universal dignity of people and the need for us to provide assistance to those who are suffering either from natural catastrophes or because of underdevelopment, a sense that our alliances were important and that we should stand up for democracy and human rights. And so as challenging as those times were and as much of a slog as it was to yank the economy out of the economic crisis that it was in and in some ways, things were tougher in terms of the financial system than they are today. But there was still a sense of a shared American idea that we could build on. And what we have seen over the last couple of years is a White House enabled by Republicans in Congress and a media structure that supports them. That has not just differed in terms of policy but has gone at the very foundations of who we are and who we should be. This is infuriating to me because you can attack Donald Trump, orange man bad, we get it, right? But you don't have to rehabilitate George Bush's legacy in order to attack Donald Trump, in order to make a point about Donald Trump. You don't have to do this. And in 10 years, 12 years down the line, when we get someone worse than Donald Trump, someone like Tom Cotton or Matt Gaetz, an actual violent fascist in the White House they're going to rehabilitate Donald Trump. Mark my words, they're going to rehabilitate him as a real president who actually respected the rule of law because this is what liberals do. They have a really short memory and they are going to say and do whatever suits the narrative that they're trying to communicate at that given time. But here's the thing, if you and Michelle like George W. Bush so much Obama, how about this? Since you're both war criminals who should be prosecuted for committing crimes against humanity, how about we be kind to you and let you share a jail cell with him? You and George W. Bush can have a separate cell away from Donald Trump. How about that? So the love fest can continue. It's just, this is so frustrating. And anytime you have someone come out of Donald Trump's administration and they turn on Donald Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, I mean Amorosa, it doesn't matter who. Automatically that person is a member of the resistance. No, they're part of the problem, stop rehabilitating bad people. And we're starting to kind of see this now with John Bolton. And I talked about John Bolton's book because if what he's saying is true about Donald Trump saying that we should execute journalists, that's a really big deal, right? But in the process, I think that mainstream media, what they end up doing inadvertently is legitimizing these people who should not be legitimized. We can do two things at once. We can acknowledge that John Bolton is giving us some information about Donald Trump that is valid perhaps, but at the same time, we have to acknowledge that John Bolton should be in prison for the rest of his life for his involvement in the Iraq war. Like we can't just give people a pass if they are terrible human beings, especially if they're war criminals. Looking at Henry Kissinger as well and Democrats trying to rehabilitate him, Madeline Albright, I mean, we have to stop looking at these people because they're not Donald Trump and therefore are good by definition. That's not the way that things work. But let's get to some specifics here. So first, Obama talks about the situation in 2008 and how we were in the midst of two wars. Guess what? We're still in the midst of those two wars because you didn't get us out of those two wars. Like Obama, he, and the 2008 election, he materialized at the moment when I was kind of having my political awakening that hinged on my aversion to the Iraq war. That was very anti-war. I was against it. And he let me down. That was my first experience with the Democratic Party and American politics. You let me down and we are still in those fucking wars that I thought you'd get us out of. So don't just casually say, oh, well, we were in the midst of two wars. We're still in the midst of two wars and you had the power to do something and you didn't. He also says my predecessor, who I disagreed with, on a whole host of issues, still had a basic regard for the rule of law and the importance of our institutions and democracy. I cannot believe he just said that. George W. Bush had a regard for the rule of law. First and foremost, he started an illegal war. The Iraq war was illegal. He also signed the Patriot Act into law. He tortured human beings. Under George W. Bush, he decimated the Fourth Amendment. He decimated the Eighth Amendment. And you have the audacity to claim that he supported the rule of law. What are you talking about? So it's not just like he's trying to rehabilitate George W. Bush and focus on the more positive elements of his administration, not that there were any, but he's literally lying to you. Obama is smart enough to know that George W. Bush had no respect for the rule of law, but he's lying about George W. Bush because this makes Donald Trump look bad. I mean, because you can't just criticize Donald Trump without making it seem as if George W. Bush was a good president. No, he was a worse president than Donald Trump. He was more destructive than Donald Trump. Now, he also said on the world stage, there was still a sense that America needed to lead and that that leadership meant that as imperfect as we might be, there were certain ideas and values we were gonna aspire to in advance and that we cared about human rights and we care about battling against the oppression of peoples in distant lands. So he's bringing up two things. First of all, when it comes to the world wanting us to lead, no, that's just not true because poll after poll after poll showed that citizens in other countries viewed the United States as one of, if not the biggest threat to world peace and international security. So that's just wrong. When it comes to our commitment to human rights, LOL, because Obama sat on his ass and waited to see how things would quote unquote play out at Standing Rock while armed mercenaries brutalized peaceful protesters at Standing Rock, okay? Obama had a super majority. He could have created a single-payer healthcare system but instead he gave us a Republican plan. Now sure, that was better than nothing but he could have crafted a single-payer system that would have saved lives. Thousands of lives every single year, he didn't do that. I thought you cared about human rights. On top of that, in 2014, when Israel had their incursion into Gaza and they were bombing hospitals, what did Obama do? Just tepidly condemn them, really kind of hope, crossed his fingers that maybe they'd stop rather than using his position of power to make them stop, to declare Palestine a state, recognize it as a state, give them some leverage. But I mean, this is what we get from the United States. We get lip service to issues such as the rule of law and human rights but they're not actually respected, right? And it's so frustrating because George W. Bush should be regarded by everyone as one of the most destructive presidents in American history. The start of the Patriot Act and mass surveillance, the start of never-ending wars, how could you in any way try to redeem the legacy of someone who started what we're still dealing with today? The problems that George W. Bush initiated, the wars he started, the crises he crafted, we're still fighting them. So I mean, for Obama to do this, it's absolutely expected but it's time that the left and the liberals call out Obama. This is someone who is not your friend, he is your enemy. He is not just bringing down the Democratic Party in a worse way than Hillary Clinton with his influence, but people still respect him. They don't realize that this is an individual who talks about human rights, who's really articulate and smooth, so he's persuasive, but did you know that he was bombing grandmothers in Pakistan? Do you know how many children in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, he gave PTSD to because his drones were illegally policing their countries, killing their friends and families? I mean, Obama is a horrible human being. He's a terrible person and I'm not going to dismiss the significance of his presidency, the symbolism in electing the first black president, that in and of itself I think is important, but putting that aside, his legacy is incredibly horrific and he's making matters worse by trying to rehabilitate George Bush's terrible legacy and the left is making matters worse by not really having a serious conversation about Obama, right? I think that there's too much Obama worship in the Democratic Party and there should be zero worship in the Democratic Party. Any Democrat should be running away from the legacy of Barack Obama. Any Democrat should be running away from Obama and not embracing him, but when you see people running for Congress with pictures of Obama, you should be embarrassed of that. This is a war criminal who should be in jail with his buddy, George W. Bush. And again, I'm nice enough to allow them to share a cell. We don't have to put Trump in the same jail cell with them, but they should be in jail. They should be prosecuted and I say that knowing that it'll never happen because we live in a system where we don't actually support human rights. We don't care about the rule of law because if we did, these two war criminals would be in prison for the rest of their lives. Hey folks, are you ready to lose faith in humanity together? Let's do it. So Palm Beach in Florida, they passed a new rule mandating everyone wear face masks because they have been proven to be highly effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. So if you choose not to wear a mask, it's not like you're just taking your chances and you're exposing yourself. No, you are potentially exposing others because the masks stop you from spreading your dreams to other people. So they passed this mandate and the Karens rebelled and they rebelled in a way that honestly I wasn't even expecting for Karens because I'm losing faith in the Karens of the world but I at least thought that they would do better than what we're about to see and this picture still cracks me up but watch what they said in response to this new rule. This was bonkers and as a species, like as a human being, I am genuinely disappointed in us. You literally cannot mandate somebody to wear a mask knowing that that mask is killing people. It literally is killing people and the people we the people are waking up and we know what citizens arrest is because citizens arrest are already happening, okay? And every single one of you that are obeying the devil's laws are going to be arrested and you, doctor, are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity. The problem with humanity today is ignorance, arrogance, and apathy. Keep taking the road of least resistance. Keep listening to the TV, brainwashing you from birth. And they want to throw God's wonderful breathing system out the door. You're all turning your backs on it. Doctor, I really have many question marks about your degrees and what you really know. I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't think that you are worthy of your credentials and I would ask suggestively that you go back to school and get educated. I'm laughing because if I don't laugh at this, if I don't like try to not take it seriously, then I'm gonna cry. Like, this is why the aliens, if they've noticed us, aren't visiting us because they realized that we're just not ready yet. The things that they said, why? What would possess you to think something like this? The first lady said, you literally cannot mandate people to wear a mask knowing that that mask is killing people. What? What evidence do you have that masks are killing people? If anything, wearing a mask is saving lives. In fact, literally they are saving lives. If everyone wore a mask in America, we would be able to be more effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. So in what world do you believe that wearing a mask is going to pose a risk to your health so severe that it will literally kill you? Like, this doesn't make sense. Where are you getting this from? And you know, this comes along with knowledge that I just found out about. And I don't know why I'm so late to the party on this, but I watched a mini documentary from Vice where they talked about people that believe that 5G towers are spreading COVID-19 because they emit radiation. And the same symptoms from radiation poisoning are what we see, you know, with people who have COVID-19. I mean, people, why are you so conspiratorial about everything? Listen, if you're gonna believe in a conspiracy theory about masks, about 5G, the underlying question that you always have to ask is why? What's the motivation? What motivation do the companies putting up 5G towers have to cause a pandemic that slows down the entire economy? This is antithetical to what the business world wants. I mean, I just, people have no logic. And once you really latch onto something, some belief, then you defend it with everything that you have. This is just, you know, what human beings do. But I mean, if you're gonna latch onto something, at least latch onto something more sensible. The same lady said, every single one of you that are obeying the devil's laws are going to be arrested. Where in the Bible does it say anything about masks and the devil? If the devil is saying we should wear masks, then the devil is correct here. But I don't think anyone is saying anything. This is not a religious issue. I mean, it's a pandemic. Just wear a fucking mask. It's not that big of a deal. I don't like wearing masks. I think they are uncomfortable. They're hot. They are, you know, they make it relatively difficult to breathe. But you wear them because you don't wanna be a dickhead. You don't wanna spread COVID-19 if you're asymptomatic. And maybe, you know, like these carrots, you think, I'm definitely not asymptomatic. I know it. Well, I'm sure that other people who are asymptomatic said the same thing. We don't know. Just wear it. I mean, it's not that big of a fucking deal. And the worst one, the worst year is, and that they want to throw God's wonderful breathing system out the door. By wearing a mask, you're not changing God's wonderful breathing system. And if you believe in God, then, I mean, wouldn't you at least expect God to be intelligent enough to give us two different holes? You know, not the same hole for breathing and eating. Doesn't that seem like a shitty design if we're thinking about intelligent design? I mean, these people are just lonely. And you know, if this was just an isolated incident of these weird unhinged Karens having these weird conspiratorial religious beliefs about masks, that would be one thing. But I watched this and I think to myself, how much of the population kind of believes this sort of thing? If not that identical belief, how much of them believe something resembling this? And I don't know if this is satire, but I even saw images online that masks are a gateway to Sharia law in the United States. Because think about it, guys, it makes sense. Because first, they're asking you to cover your faces. Next, they're gonna ask you to cover your hair and wear a hijab. And after that comes the niqab where you're covering everything but your eyes. I mean, this is what people are worried about. Masks, not the pandemic itself, not the actual virus that killed 120,000 Americans. It's the masks that they're more concerned with. Like I don't know what to say about this. I watched this and I can't help, but feel just hopeless. Feel as if human beings just aren't up to the task to solve the issues of the modern era. You know, this pandemic, climate change, de-nuclearization, we're just not up to the task because these are the things that we're worried about. This is, I think maybe an average level of intelligence that we're seeing from Americans. I mean, I hope that this is like not representative of a lot of people, but I mean, just looking at what I've seen from my own Facebook feed from people in my social circles who I thought were more intelligent, I see this level of batshit insane theories about COVID-19 and how it's a crackdown on liberty to require us to wear masks. No, every single governor should be mandating masks not because they're pleasant to wear. We don't like wearing masks, nobody does, but because they stopped the spread of this highly contagious, deadly pandemic. Now for those of you who missed the other video that we put up, I put together a little quick compilation of Karen's complaining about masks and this includes an old man literally trying to fight his way into a Walmart when they tell him he can't enter the store if he doesn't put on a mask. He tried to fight his way in, physically assaulted a Walmart employee. As a former Walmart employee myself, I mean, I'm so glad that I am no longer working at Walmart and dealing with this bullshit. Nonetheless, watch this compilation. I can't let you in the store without a mask. Okay, so where's the regulations that state that? The regulations? Yeah. Because you're discriminating against me now. Do you know that? Put your hands on me. Well, you got to wear a mask, bro. Hey, you gonna leave, bro? Hey. I'm just gonna show my 3,000 follower Instagram feed, mostly locals. Hi, everyone. I work for Costco and I'm asking this member to put on a mask because that is our company policy. So either wear the mask or- And I'm not doing it because I woke up in a free country. Like that's all I want to do is cry because you can't see people's faces. You can't make human connection. Absolutely insane. So we don't even have a choice anymore. So they're literally calling the police on me because I am not putting this mask on. Why aren't you wearing the mask? It's unhealthy for me. I don't want to breathe my own CO2. Now let's not forget about this lady. Cutting a hole in the mask because it makes it easier to breathe. Therefore defeating the entire purpose of the mask. Look, part of what makes this worse is that masks have kind of become a partisan issue to where if you are wearing it, you're almost making a sort of political statement. Like I was reading a thread on Reddit and I can't remember which subreddit this was featured on but one person who was a bartender was talking about how she, you know, her bar had reopened, her state reopened and she was wearing a mask. And one of the attendees were harassing her calling her a libtard because she was wearing a mask. And a lot of these other Karen videos that we're seeing, you know, you see them make these comments. Like there was one video that I didn't include in that compilation where a lady talks about how she can't wear a mask because she has a medical condition. And then when she leaves the store, you know, she stops talking about the medical condition and calls them libtards. You see, you know, the Trump, the MAGA chat, I can't remember his name. He's part of the walk away grift but he was kicked off a plane because he wouldn't wear a mask. Like not only are people reacting to this in unhinged ways bringing in religiosity both for, you know, in terms of like this is against God and it's an attempt to impose Sharia but they're making this a political issue. When this, this is, it's simpler than that. It's just something that we wear to stop the spread of a pandemic. Why can't it be that simple? Why does it have to be some sort of nefarious agenda? If you are, you know, predispositioned to really be captivated by or believe conspiracy theories, there's a lot more conspiracies in the world that are actually real and they don't have anything to do with this mask. This mask thing that is really important that we all wear. So I mean, I'm just, I'm tired emotionally, mentally watching all of the Karens react in this way to masks just wear the motherfucking mask. It's, it's a temporary thing. It's not permanent and you're only extending the period of this COVID-19 era by not following all of the proper precautions. Wear a mask, they work. Calm down, Karen, please. Jesus Christ. Hi everyone, I'm back with one of my favorite candidates running for Congress. Donna, I'm Emma's here, running in Texas's 31st congressional district. I think I got the number right. She advanced to the runoff and she's facing off against the Republican. She might beat them. So Donna, welcome back to the program. Thank you so much, Mike. I really, really appreciate it. Yeah. So glad to be back on your show. It's, it's nice to have you. You know, you were kind of like this underdog story that was so fascinating to watch. There were so many candidates running in your race and you're in a position now to make it to Congress. So give us the update because the last time that we talked to you was I think in early March. And a lot has changed since then. So tell us about what's been going on because it's hard to follow all of these races but yours has been so interesting. Yeah. So, you know, everybody talks about turning Texas blue. So Texas has six congressional districts that have been targeted to flip blue and Texas's 31st District is one of them. This is the Northwest Austin suburbs and then it goes north all the way up to Caleen which is home to the largest armored vehicle military base in the entire United States. So this race started with 12 people in the race, six on the ballot but only five running. And then in Texas, if you don't get 50% of the vote, the top two go into our runoff. So we are now heading into our runoff right around the corner. This runoff was supposed to be held on May 26th but then right after March 3rd, Super Tuesday after we made the runoff, the pandemic hit. And that's what has shifted this day. Now, just to jog, you know, people's memories, this district is two big counties. Williamson County which is one of the top 10 fastest growing counties in the entire country and that's my percentage. And Bell County which is in 2018, Williamson County went blue but Bell County is where we need to close this just 2.9% gap, handful of votes, 8,000 votes and we can vote out a nine-term Trump endorse GOP rep who hasn't been here for our district. So that's what this exciting race is all about. No one thought that someone like me without a huge political background, you know, an electric and computer engineer with an 18 year career would be ever able to make it to a runoff and beat out multiple people who had ran before or were, you know, elected officials. But here we are. And we are going to this very strong and the best part about this entire race is this. Remember I told you that Bell County is where the work needs to be done? Well on March 3rd, our campaign won Bell County. We led there. And the reason we did this is because we did extensive outreach into communities that had never been asked for their vote, never ever. We knocked on their doors, we had a conversation with them and we told them that you have a choice in representation. And the interesting thing about Bell County is that it is majority Black Americans, Hispanic, Latino and Asian Americans. And many of these people don't vote or don't feel like they have a voice in our political process. They're working class people. There is a huge difference between Williamson County and Bell County. Williamson County is mostly affluent. A lot of tech companies up here, Dell Technologies, Google, Amazon, Apple. But for every single person who has a six figure salary, there are three people that are struggling to make ends meet, struggling to put food on the table. And this is the reason that I am running for Congress because we need to lift up the bottom 50% of our country that is struggling and they need us. And the best part is we can get this done for everybody. So I'm excited. I'm going into this runoff. I think we're in the best position to win. We're the only labor endorsed candidate in this runoff. All the labor unions, both locally, in district and across the state, statewide, Texas AFL-CIO has endorsed our candidate, our campaign, because we are the campaign for people who work for a living, for working class people. And we believe that at the end of the day, this race is not about Democrats against Democrats. It's not about Democrats against Republicans. It's a fight for our livelihoods. This is about corporations and billionaires who have taken away our individuality, our ability to live freely, and have taken away basic rights, like being able to go see a doctor. And even in this pandemic, now we see hundreds of people getting these huge medical bills. Nothing has changed. And I know there are many people out there who are very disappointed because they didn't get their presidential nominee. But when all this is over, we still have 80 plus million people who don't have health insurance, who can't go see a doctor. We have over 100,000 families that have lost a loved one too fast because of coronavirus, because they weren't able to go to the hospital fast enough, or they didn't have a ventilator, or they had underlying conditions. We see black people dying at almost twice the rate from corona than the population that they represent. And we have to come together and we can solve these problems. That's the best part. That's why I'm running and we want to get it done. I think that what you're doing is basically creating a blueprint for future campaigns because everything that you're doing is exactly what needs to be done. You're reaching out to people who have never been contacted by a political campaign before. And on top of that, I think that COVID-19, it really has changed a lot. I know that to one extent, it threw a wrench in your plans because as a grassroots candidate, the key to your success oftentimes for a lot of these types of campaigns is knocking on doors, talking to people. So it changed it, but at the same time, in this red to blue district, there's this underlying assumption that you can't be too radical. And before this pandemic, I think that it would have been a campaign against you by conservatives in that district to say, well, she's too radical. She supports something like Medicare for All. But now in a COVID era, you're not the radical. You're actually able to position whoever you're running against as the radical if they don't support it. So talk about how COVID-19 has impacted your district and the way that you're able to sell Medicare for All now, as people see firsthand, the necessity of healthcare. You know, the interesting thing is back in 2019, when I was talking about scaling the healthcare infrastructure that when we go to single pair, we actually save money. When I talk to whether it's a Republican or an independent or a Democrat that doesn't support Medicare for All, it's primarily because they don't understand what Medicare for All is. So this is the argument that I give. And by the way, this works every single time. And if you're trying to convince anybody of Medicare for All, use this. In 2018, we paid $3.68 trillion for healthcare. But that's still left out over 80 million people from being able to actually see a doctor. It doesn't matter whether you have insurance or you don't have insurance, you could not see somebody when you were sick. However, every single study, including conservative think-tank studies, say that if we go to single pair healthcare for All, Medicare for All, it should cost somewhere between $2 and $3 trillion. Well, guess what? $2 and $3 trillion is a lot less than $3.68 trillion. And every time I give this argument, people are like, wow, that makes real sense. I think I can get on board with that. That's number one. Number two, I explained to them that Medicare for All keeps every single provider private. And it is very different from the system in the UK. And it is also different from the system in Canada, by the way. Canada does not have what Medicare for All does. It separates it into their various provinces. Medicare for All takes it and says you can go see any doctor, any nurse that you want to when you need to. And it is cheaper because it's pooled because there's only one pair and you're taking out the billions of dollars in profit that health insurance companies are making in the middle that impact nothing. It doesn't impact the quality of your care. It doesn't impact the fact of your health. It doesn't do anything. It's just sitting there as fat and we need to cut this fat out if we're gonna survive. So that's how we're still talking to people. Now, the interesting thing is, in March after the pandemic hit, every article in the Washington Post and New York Times article was talking about scaling the healthcare infrastructure because they were putting up these tents in Central Park to put, because they didn't have enough hospital beds. And in 2019, we were talking about scaling the healthcare infrastructure and people were like, Donna, what do you mean by that? And what I meant is very simple. That our country has a lack of primary care physicians and nurses at the primary care level. And if we practice preventative healthcare, the cost of healthcare will go down even more than $2 trillion because you will attack these underlying causes and people will get sick less. People will not end up in the hospital. We will not use ER as our first line of defense. And it also would mean more things like more ventilators, things like, when the first time the masks came out and there were like many of these masks have molded in it that nobody was actually looking at our supply chain of medical supplies for PPE and doing first in, first out, for example. These are, this is what I mean when I talk about scaling the healthcare infrastructure. So we try to talk about solutions in terms of, in terms that people understand. And when you take away these labels, all of a sudden people are receptive because the minute you put labels on your solution, it becomes like a sports game, right? Oh, I'm for this team and you're for that team. But when you start talking about, look, do you want the kid that is going to school with your kid getting sick and dying from COVID because their parent doesn't have health insurance coverage? Do you want your neighbor? Do you want the person who cleans your house to die from coronavirus? And people will say, no, I don't want that. And that's why we need healthcare for every single person because that is who we are as human beings and that is the American way. And I want every single person to know we can do this for a lot less money and this is great long-term whether you have great health insurance or not. And I'll tell you that in Williamson County, I remember I just told you that we have all these tech companies, these software developers and business people make six-figure salaries. And if you go talk to them, they'll tell you, I'm not happy with my private health insurance. And they have health insurance and every single person has gone through a layoff in their life these days. They understand what it's like to be in between and not be able to cover their children. So these are solutions that relate to every single person. We have to stop dividing us up into pieces and reaching out because these things impact middle-class people. They even impact some upper middle-class people as well. Remember, middle-class people, upper middle-class people, they don't get any assistance for their kids when they go to college. Zero dollars of assistance. They know how hard it is to send two kids to college. It's like two mortgages. So they are on board and when you talk to them in these terms, they're like, I wanna vote for your campaign. You make sense to me. And that's how we're winning people over in our district. And that makes sense because when you sanitize the issues that we're talking about or you kind of depolitify them in the sense that you talk about it on a real concrete human level, people are receptive to that because I think that people are primed or at least conditioned to think about political issues in partisan terms. But these aren't necessarily partisan issues. I mean, political parties make them into partisan issues but these are issues that affect everyone. And in this COVID era, like pre-COVID era, I felt like it was really easy to make the case for Medicare for All and sell it. Now COVID makes that case for us. And at a time when so many people are losing their jobs, as you noted, and they're losing their private insurance as a result, you can't make the case that well, what do we do with all these people who love their private insurance? One, that's not actually true. And true, people are losing their private insurance. So it's really important that now more than ever we push hard for Medicare for All and to make sure that everyone has healthcare because with the end of the Democratic primary, the national election, it seemed like it was a lost cause. Like I felt really defeated because if we don't have a president who would sign it to law, then is there any hope? But I think that there is hope because this is something that it can happen but it has to be from the bottom up and not the top down. I think that's one thing that's clear. I wanted to ask you about the representative currently. He's a nine-time incumbent, nine-term incumbent. John Carter, how has his response been to the district with regard to COVID-19? Because I think that now is the time more than ever for leadership to make sure that people in Congress are caring to the very specific concerns of each unique district. How would you grade him? Well, my experience has been very dismal of what he's been doing. And I'll give you specific examples. So when, first of all, corona hit and everything was struck down, as you know, Texas lost over two million jobs. So one of the first questions that people had was, how do I get my stimulus check? When the stimulus check actually came about in late March and people were talking about it, that was the first question. The second thing that a lot of people may be aware of is that there are more veterans in my district for square mile than anywhere else in the entire state of Texas. So there are a lot of veterans who actually don't file taxes. And one of the requirements was that you had to file either 2018 or 2019 taxes and people on really low income that were getting SSI or if you were a veteran, sometimes you didn't even file taxes. So one of the biggest issues people were reaching out to us was, how do I get my stimulus check? And think about it, as a representative that should have been the first thing that he should have communicated either via email or letter or some public way that every single person would know. They didn't. Our campaign got in touch with people and helped them maneuver the IRS website to figure out how to get their stimulus check. Number one, number two, simple things like if you type in your address and capital letters, you can actually find out whether you're gonna get a check or not. And then we informed them that they didn't need to file a tax, for example, if they weren't required to file taxes, they would get their stimulus checks anyway. But there are still people to this day that didn't get their stimulus checks and don't know how to get it and have no clue and we still try to work through them. And the way we did this is two ways. One, we did it digitally through various Zoom calls, town halls. And second, we did it through a 30 minute radio segment specifically targeted in areas that we know have people that are worried about their stimulus checks. So areas that their income is under $75,000 and they'd lost their jobs. We did some programs to make sure that they would know that. So that was one. Number two, I personally picked up the phone and call lots of mom and shop small businesses. And to my dismay, what I found is that most of them, almost all of them had no idea that there was any assistance available. That was the saddest part. Many of these small businesses, especially ethnic restaurants, are run by people of color. And they are both the owner of the restaurant. They also cook in the restaurant. They serve in the restaurant. And they were really struggling to pay their bills because people weren't going out to restaurants anymore. And when I picked up the phone and said, hey, do you know that you have this ability to get some assistance to pay people, to keep them on payroll, they're like, we didn't even know that was available. Where do we get it, Donna? So we tried to direct them to resources. But unfortunately, many of these small businesses, when they reached out to the banks, they were told that the money had completely dried up and it was completely gone. So I would say, based on our interaction with the community, that the representatives, the current representatives, performance has been dismal to none. It's been very disappointing because we, remember we wrote a 6,000 plus. I think it was $6,000 plus check on every man, woman and child in this country. They have taken out a loan on your children to pay this. And most of this money went to major corporation over $600, $700 billion. And even the small business amounts, they went to chain restaurants across the entire country. They went to paying, we heard of people paying up their royalty fees for McDonald's chains, for example. People who didn't need that money, but actual mom and pop shops, they lost out and they're still struggling. And today, we still have millions of people in this country with completely no way to go back to work. By the way, right now, the cases in Texas have been spiking day after day after day, both hospitalizations and the number of cases. We have no plan in place for contact tracing. And because we are one of the countries that handle testing so poorly from the very beginning, that we are not prepared for opening up in a safe way. And we talk about our Congress and our leadership, right? Yet they know these things. It's not like the United States doesn't have the smartest people in the world. We do. We have the smartest scientists in the world. We have the smartest engineers in the world, but nobody's taking the initiative to say, you people in Congress, do you understand that 120,000 families had to bury somebody over the last eight to 10 weeks in this country? Do you know how painful it is to put your grandmother away early, 10 years early, because she had an underlying condition and couldn't survive COVID? And how many families are going through this? This didn't have to happen in our country. Yeah, and as you explained the failure there, it's definitely a failure in leadership, but I also get a sense that there's just ambivalence there because I mean, if you are up for reelection, then you wanna brag to your constituents about what you helped to accomplish. So if he voted for the CARES Act, assuming he did, then you'd want to let them know that they have access to these benefits. You'd want to assist them in getting their stimulus check, but to not even do that, I mean, you're not doing the bare minimum at that point. And I wanted to ask you, because there's a lot going on in this country with regard to reopening. You see a number of states reopening and it seems as if they're very clearly reopening too soon. In my state, for example, in Oregon, we're reopening as cases spike. Now, I think that the governor, Kate Brown, has handled it adequately up until this point, but you don't reopen as cases are going up. So what do we need? I think that there's this sense that we have to reopen as quickly as possible. And I get that because economically, people are suffering. This is going to cause them real pain economically, putting aside the health risk. But if you were in Congress, what would you do? What would be the thing that you'd fight for? I know this is a very loaded question, but how do we reopen? And there's no perfect answer, but how do we reopen in a way to where we can kind of balance the economic risk, but also make sure that we're protecting people and we're not putting people at risk? What would you do as a legislator, as a lawmaker? So this is a really great question because I was asked this very early on in March, what we should do and what we should have done is we should have gone on a full three to four week shutdown. So imagine if you're taking the $6,000 on every single man, woman and child and just given them the $6,000. With $6,000, you could easily get through an entire month with a full shutdown. And if we had done a proper full shutdown, including very minimal grocery store openings, meaning that you couldn't go into a grocery store, you had to pick up your basic groceries from the front of the door and you were limited to basic items, let's say, right? And if all of us came together and we went on a true shutdown for four weeks, we could have beaten this faster. So that would have been number one that I would have fought for. Number two, there are three things that we could have done to extremely cut down coronavirus very fast. One is all wear masks all the time, everywhere. And if we did this for even a small period of time and wearing masks is uncomfortable, I get it. And I understand that this is a freedom of liberty because I believe in having freedom of liberty. But if we all did it, we could have gotten over this much faster. If we all did it together for four weeks together, guess what? This would be down to nothing. So that's number two. Number three, if we had scaled up our testing to a point that if you absolutely had to work, if you had to be in a grocery store and you had to stop the shelves, that you were tested multiple times, that you had all the PPE that you needed, that would have worked. And then the last but not the least is contact tracing. If we had put in proper contact tracing, which is what they did in South Korea and some other countries and they're doing it effectively, if we had done these four things together, given people the resources to survive for four weeks, wearing masks, if you have to absolutely interact with other people, contact tracing and extensive testing and we'd all come together and do it for four weeks, guess what? We would be able to open up safely, cases would be down and we would be back and our economy would be back much, much, much faster. So that's what I would have advocated for and I would have done a no means test way of getting these funds to every single American. And for those of you out there who bring up this argument, if you're a billionaire, you don't need $6,000, the government could have just given this money and then a year later, two years later on your taxes, if you were a billionaire, you could give back your $6,000, right? But the interesting thing is we could have done it much faster if we just gave everybody the resources they needed, come together and got it done. And this is something that we as Americans should have done. We're the most technologically advanced country in the entire world. We have some of the smartest brains in this country. I can't believe that we didn't come together and solve this faster and show how it was done when countries like New Zealand were able to do it. And people complain, oh well New Zealand only has five million people, but take the United States and let's divide it up into five million sections, we could have done this guys. And everything you say is exactly what I said in a conversation I had about COVID a couple of days ago that if we all just kind of like hunkered down for a good few weeks, maybe a month, this would be over. We wouldn't be having this conversation. And it really seemed like I'm disappointed because at first it seemed like everyone was on board. This wasn't necessarily a partisan issue, but as time goes on, as people get more desperate and frustrated, now we start to see the partisanization of COVID-19 which is what we kind of touched on earlier. We see masks becoming less of a health issue and more of a political statement for some reason. And our government is just fully incapable of dealing with this. I mean, you bring up such a great point about the means testing thing. We don't want to means test everything to death because we want people to be able to access these things fast and quickly. We don't want people to know whether or not they will get it. We want everyone to know that they'll get it. And the delivery of the stimulus has been a disaster. I actually didn't get mine until mid-May, had no idea how to get access to it. I didn't have help from my representative as well. So it's complicated and it doesn't have to be. I think where government is over complicating it and there's the combination of that along with the frustration from people. And like you said, it's not that difficult. This is a pandemic. It's something that those of us alive today haven't experienced unless you were alive during the Spanish flu, you'd be over a hundred. But it's something new, but at the same time, people epidemiologists have studied this. There have been responses that they've crafted to this. So it's not like we weren't prepared, but still we weren't prepared. I just find it difficult time coming up with excuses. So to hear you say that in such a common sense way to lay out how easy it is, it's refreshing to see, which is why we have to elect you into Congress. So moving on to a different issue, I wanted to ask you about the Black Lives Matter protest because if you're elected, you will be representing a district with a large population of people of color. So what would be your response? Because there's so many things that we have to do to dismantle institutional racism and stop police brutality. If you're in Congress, what do you fight for specifically? How do you make it so this is no longer an issue? That's a great question, Mike. And you are absolutely right. So Bell County is over 25% Black Americans. So in 2019, early 2019, I quit my job to do this. And one of the things I did is I spent a good six months researching this district going precinct to precinct, meeting with people trying to understand what their challenges are. And one of the big things that was brought to my attention was the justice system and the failures of our justice system. So we crafted what's called Equal Justice For All and it's on my website. It's a two-page white paper where we put forth ideas on how to solve the challenges in our justice system. This was way before George Floyd and Derek Chauvin and all the stuff that we saw on video before. Now, in 2019, if you went to our website, you would see facts. The first fact is that Black men, unarmed Black men, are being killed to death at twice the rate of the population they represent. You cannot ignore race as a factor. Race must be a factor in the solution. And we put forth many different solutions on how to handle this. For every single George Floyd video, there are hundreds of videos that do not exist, that have not been documented. But the numbers of deaths of Black people that are unnecessarily harassed is not just limited to law enforcement. There are hundreds of stories. One came up right after George Floyd where a 68-year-old Black woman was attacked and assaulted by police officers because of future theft. She and her son had already purchased a television. They were taking it out of Sam's Club when they were stopped, police were called in, and an altercation happened. It was all caught on video. Black people have been facing this humiliation for not just decades, but centuries. And we have to address it head-on. So our solution to this is equal justice for all. We believe that we have to absolutely look at what is going on in our law enforcement system. And I'll discuss just a couple of things here. One is police officers right now can have many, many complaints. By the way, in the case of George Floyd, multiple police officers has complaints against them but they're still serving. And the reason they're able to do that is that there's zero accountability. And even if you get fired from your police department, you can go 10, 20 miles away to the next city and get rehired. So one of the solutions that we were proposing is that police must carry liability insurance and this liability insurance would be purchased for them by the city. Because guess what? Every time a police officer screws up, guess who pays the bill when the city gets sued? We do. We pay those millions of dollars, not that guy. And he can go to the next city, the next state, he can move to Alaska and go be a cop all over again. So bottom line is that's one of the solutions that we're proposing. So if you go to the next city, now they're gonna have to buy liability insurance for you and they're not gonna be able to purchase it at an acceptable rate. They're gonna look into your background and you're not gonna be hireable. So we have to hold them accountable. Number two, this is very important. Our military has stricter rules of engagement in war zones than our policemen do in our residential neighborhoods. And that's the Scottie Stop. There is absolutely no justification for tear gas against peaceful protesters. There's no justification for rubber bullets and charging using a police vehicle to charge into peacefully protesting people. And we saw video after video after video over the last four weeks of that, that has got to stop, period. And we have to stop buying these assault style, police officering and funding this type of police officering. It doesn't make any sense at all. It's illogical, it's gotta change. I have a whole two page paper on how to change it. But we have to address the fact that this is a race based issue. Race has to be part of the solution. But we can solve this. We can solve this. And now the thing is this, protests have gone across all 50 states. It is time for action. We shouldn't wait a single second. We must take action on the way police officers treat peaceful protesters. Everyone has a right to peacefully protest. And by the way, the fact that we are able to do that is the envy of the entire world. You take this away from us. You take away the American in us. We have to be able to get out on the streets and peacefully protest. And we can get this done. Yeah, I'm glad that you said that because what you're saying is common sense. And I think that people know that it's common sense. They agree with you. I think that a lot of people just weren't aware of these things. And we're kind of seeing this type of cultural shift as people wake up to what's been going on. And I wanted to ask you about another thing because handling specific policing issues, that really is a state and local issue. But as a member of Congress, would you be able to facilitate reappropriating funds away from police departments and into social services? So for example, we've been talking on the program about how we kind of take any issue no matter what it is, and we throw police at it. Instead of addressing homelessness with housing, we police the homeless and we make being homeless a crime in essence. So how at the federal level, would you stipulate these types of changes if states are unwilling to act? Is there a legislation that could actually be conducive to change? And really, reappropriating these funds away from the police whose budgets are just bloated in cities across the country and into different services, how would you make that happen at the governmental level nationally? Absolutely. My entire campaign rebuilds this basic right of Americans, which is healthcare, education, high wage jobs. Let's be real. Every single dollar of wealth in our country is created by people who work for a living. It is not created by billionaires. Jobs are not created by billionaires. It is not created by corporations. Sure, someone might come up with an idea, but if you don't execute on that idea, you don't make wealth. That wealth is created by Americans. And the best way to do this is very simple. We have to stop making policing about, you know, going after something like a problem has already happened. It has to be proactive. Policing should be about de-escalating. It should lead with de-escalating, number one. Number two, think about it this way. If you're a kid who grew up in a single parent home and you don't have role models, you don't have food. When you come home from school, you don't have food. You can't do your homework. You don't have internet access. You can't, there's not a snack for you in the refrigerator. And your mom works three jobs because, and that's why she's not at home when you get home from school, what are you gonna do? You're going to get into trouble. You're going to not have the resources that you need to be successful. We need to make sure that people who work for a living are not working 60, 70 hours and still not being able to pay their rent. That doesn't make sense. This is why I am focused on real pay for all. That if you work full time and you're a single mom and you're working 40 hours, you should be able to live where you work, pay for all your essentials, and be able to save to put a down payment on the American dream and be able to retire someday. We have to give every American that assurance. And by the way, if anybody tells you that that is not possible, they are wrong. We create more than enough wealth for every single American in this country to live comfortably. We're not asking for 10 homes in 10 different states. We're asking for a safe place to raise our children and we can get it done. My entire campaign is focused on healthcare, debt-free education for every single person, whether it's trade school, college, whatever you want, and high wage jobs. And we can get there. I have the financial and economic solution underlying it. We can talk about it in specifics and it will not raise your taxes. I guarantee you, if there's one thing I'm good at, that's Mac as an engineer. And I'm telling you that we can afford this. We can afford this for every single American and it will not increase our taxes. And we have to take this message to Republicans. We have to take this message to the average American that is working, that is watching corporate-owned media. Because remember, corporate-owned media is owned by the billionaires and the corporations. They're always gonna want the status quo. We can't give up because we didn't get our presidential candidate. Legislation is done in Congress. And I'm still here. I'm still fighting. Our campaign is still fighting. We have scores of volunteers still fighting. Why? Because they believe in this country. They're working. They wanna put the right people in Congress and we can do this, guys. Don't give up. We're gonna get healthcare for everybody in this country. Trust me, we're gonna get debt-free education and we're gonna get highway jobs. And we're here working to get it done. So don't lose hope because we will get this done because we are Americans and we can do anything. Yeah, and that's really important that you say that because I think a lot of people have this instinct to want to check out, but then that's not necessarily an option because all of these issues don't just go away if we lose an election. It doesn't just all of a sudden not become an issue. So we have to keep fighting. It's not an option, basically. And so I like that you, with everything that you talk about, every issue that you examine, you attack the root cause. And I think that there aren't enough people in Congress that do that. Like there's not enough wonkish people, even if they like to pretend to be wonks. I mean, people tend to just simplistically look at an issue and say, crime, that just means we need more police. When in actuality, you have to examine the root causes. Look at the socioeconomic factors that lead to crime. I mean, this is, it's complicated, but at the same time, it's not new. Like we figured these things out decades ago. It's just a matter of applying the appropriate solutions. So I think that if you were in Congress, I mean, it would be a game changer. So anyone who's watching, I know my audience already is sold on you. What can we do to help you win? Yeah, so early voting here stops on June 29th and you guys probably will see this a day before. So we are a completely grassroots campaign. We've gotten this far because of generous donations from people like you. And by the way, people who watched the Humanist Report gave us small donations, hundreds of them. We're here only because of you. And if we make it to Congress, it'll be because of you and our volunteers and people who have put their effort in. And right now, because of coronavirus, we can't go door to door. That was our edge in the primary. So we need help phone banking. We have 71,000 Democrats that voted in the primary. A bunch of them voted for our campaign. We need to remind them that you gotta come out and vote. Because if you don't vote for the right Democrat, we're gonna have the same status quo. It is important that we put the people that are fighting for the things we believe in. And even if you believe you're alone in this country, you are not. There are Republicans, there are independents, there are Democrats, there are people who have no labels, Green Party, that believe in the same things we do. When you break it down to them, we are all together in this. So we need your help phone banking. We would love any donations. This is, our campaign is one of the highest ROI campaigns that is available. So most campaigns spend somewhere between $14 to $15 to reach each voter. We are able to reach each voter with $1. So if we can raise $70,000, we can reach 70,000 voters. So that's how effective we are in reaching voters. We use every dollar for direct voter contact and we maximize it because of our volunteers and the way we have adjusted to coronavirus and the way we're interacting with them. So we try to talk to them on the phone, we try to get literature to their door and then have a conversation and we would love any help you can give us. That's what we need to win. We just need to get our message to the voter. And by the way, another piece of hope I'll give you is every time we get our message to our voter, we win, we win every single time. It doesn't matter who we're up against, Democrat, Republican, when they see our message, they're like, makes total sense to Donna, I'm voting for Donna, I'm them. So trust us, we can get this done. Yeah, I'm glad that you said that because it kind of confirms that I've been right all along about this, not to toot my own horn, but like, I think that a lot of these races with so many dynamic campaigns, it just is a matter of people knowing who they are, knowing that they have this option because people default to the incumbent if they don't know that they have the option. But if they know they have the option, that progressive is going to win. And so this race is so fascinating. I don't think people realize what's coming. Like this is a really interesting race and you could just crush it and make it in the Congress. Like I don't think the establishment even knows what's happening. So Donna, I'm them, Texas 31st district, early voting starts June 29th. Let's make this happen because I'm all in and I know that the audience is too. Thanks Donna for coming on the program. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me and the website is votefordonna.com. Well, that is everything. Thank you so much to my guest, Donna Iman. As usual, we're not gonna end the show without thanking all of our Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members because this show would not be possible without your support. So I think that's pretty much everything. It's our last episode of the month. It's officially summer. So if you are able to enjoy the sunshine through quarantine or going on walks, I would advise you to do that because I mean, we're living in a really weird time. So just do what you can to stay sane. Hopefully this episode helped. Maybe it made you feel worse because, you know, I mean, these episodes aren't very, I've been a doomer lately, right? The subjects that we're covering are usually deeply depressing. So it's tough like the news cycle can get you down but don't underestimate how important, just like taking a break from the news can be. I mean, we have to stay informed, but at the same time, if you wanna just veg out playing video games or taking a walk, that really does make a difference psychologically. So do what you can to stay sane during this very weird time in American politics and world history, and, you know, we'll deal with it together. So I'll see you next week, everyone. Take care.