 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 253 of the program. Today is Friday, August 7th. And before we begin, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which signed up to become members just this last week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us on Patreon. And that includes So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show, you can join the independent progressive media revolution by going to humanistreport.com slash support patreon.com slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. We've got another great episode for you this week. We will talk about Donald Trump and how he may be trying to steal the 2020 election by sabotaging mail-in voting. Trump organization is currently being criminally investigated by New York City's Attorney General. We'll discuss whether or not that will actually lead to him facing justice. And we'll also talk about his push to reopen schools and what that means for his own son, Barron Trump. And of course we'll talk about the bonkers interview between Donald Trump and Jonathan Swan of Axios. And additionally, Republicans are dying from COVID-19. But still, some pundits and lawmakers are refusing to take the virus seriously and wear masks. But we will look at some public opinion polls that show not all hope is lost. Dr. Fauci warns that COVID-19 may never fully be eradicated. Bill Clinton decides to stir the pot at the funeral of civil rights legend John Lewis. Democrat Chris Murphy admits the obvious. The US government tried to orchestrate a coup in Venezuela. Amy McGrath isn't doing too hot in her race against Mitch McConnell. A producer at MSNBC calls it quits and pens a scathing letter critiquing the network. And finally, we closed the week by talking about Fox News' hypocrisy when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein and his connection to powerful elites and politics. We've got a lot to get to, no a guess for this week unfortunately. But hopefully you still enjoy the program, so let's get right to it. So for months now, Donald Trump has been ranting about the danger that mail-in voting poses to our democracy. Because according to him, if we allow widespread mail-in voting, that will make our election susceptible to fraud and abuse. It doesn't matter to him that the facts don't match the rhetoric that he's using. It doesn't matter to him that the fraud rate for mail-in voting is literally less than 0%. To him, he knows that with how poorly he's polling against Joe Biden, the only way he's going to be able to win is if he suppresses enough votes. And that really is true for every single election. Republicans know that they are much more likely to do well if turnout is low. And so they try to suppress as many votes as they possibly can and cross their fingers and hope that that was enough. Now with Donald Trump, he was really hoping that this pandemic would be a sort of natural vote suppressor. Because if people are logical and they don't want to come out to vote in person and risk their own lives or expose others to this really deadly contagious virus, you know, they just stay home, which is perfect for him. But during a pandemic, of course, mail-in voting is a logical solution to this problem. Now, it's not just something that we need during a pandemic. I think that mail-in voting is one way to strengthen democracy and actually increase turnout. But to him, this is all about winning. It's all about him. Now, we know that he's going to continue to fear monger about mail-in voting. We know he's going to attempt to delegitimize mail-in voting. But the lengths that he's going to sound the alarm about mail-in voting and delegitimize it are now reaching new levels. Like we are talking about really scary territory to where if he could, I have no doubt in my mind, he would be a dictator. Because he tweeted this out last week with universal mail-in voting, not absentee voting, which is good. 2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the election until people can properly, securely and safely vote. Think about what we just read. The sitting president of the United States just floated postponing an election because of some type of manufactured crisis he's trying to create. This is exactly what they do in authoritarian regimes. In fact, our country condemns other regimes with leaders who postpone elections. Just a day after Donald Trump made this tweet, his own administration condemned Hong Kong for postponing their legislative elections. So, you know, it's okay for him to float postponing an election because of some bogus reason. But when other countries do it, this would be enough for us to invade that country to bring democracy to them. Maybe the United States should invade itself because now we are very clearly entering dangerous territory here. And the good news is that Donald Trump doesn't actually have the legal authority to do that. But I mean, it's still dangerous and so much so that this may have been a line that he crossed even with right wingers because most of the conservative subreddit was even against him, not necessarily because they're worried that he would be a dictator. But because I mean, just generally speaking, electorally speaking, this is a terrible strategy. It's making him look bad. It shows that he's worried. But I mean, this really is a new low. He genuinely would be a dictator if he were able to do that. That's what he wants. Protect his own reelection campaign at all costs, even if democracy is hurt by his actions. And ironically, he's claiming that mail-in voting is going to lead to democracy being illegitimate. But no, what he's doing currently is hurting democracy. Make no mistake about it. He's not worried that mail-in voting is going to hurt democracy. He's worried that mail-in voting is going to increase the fairness of this election and bolden and strengthen our democracy. And according to him, what's funny is that the people who are trying to offer mail-in voting as an alternative during a pandemic, they're the ones who are actually attacking democracy. Ironically, he's making the case that if you are for mail-in voting, you know, if you're giving people an extra option to vote, you're the one who's trying to hurt democracy. It's insane. So the state of Nevada, their democratically elected legislature passed a law allowing their citizens to vote by mail, and his response is very telling, because he's threatening legal action against them. So RNC Chairwoman Rhonda McDaniel tweeted this out. Trump supporters are out in force today protesting Nevada Dems attempts to ram through mass mail-in voting and ballot harvesting. Dems want to use the pandemic to destroy election integrity. That is projection right there. Trump then responded to that saying, in illegal late night coup, Nevada's clubhouse governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state. Post office could never handle the traffic of mail-in votes without preparation using COVID to steal the state. See you in court. This is like a true mask-off moment for Donald Trump. First of all, he is inadvertently admitting that when more people come out to vote, Republicans lose elections. So who is it again that is worried about democracy? Now, second of all, the language that he's using here after he floated the possibility of postponing the election is illegal late night coup. So you postponing the election over a manufactured crisis, that's not a coup attempt. But expanding people's ability to vote by mail, that is tantamount to a coup to Donald Trump. Unbelievable. Now, what he said there at the end is truly telling. He says the post office could never handle the traffic of mail-in votes without preparation. Theoretically speaking, if you are genuinely worried about mail-in voting, what would you do as someone in a position of power? Ideally, you'd want to give them more resources, make sure they are capable of doing adequate delivery of mail during an election where we have a record number of people voting by mail. But instead, he's doing the opposite. Because if we're not going to buy into his lies about it leading to fraud, then the way he's going to stop mail-in voting is to just completely cripple the U.S. Postal Service. And to do just that, to carry out this agenda, he put one of his friends who donated to his campaign in charge of the U.S. Postal Service who's doing just that. So this headline from the New York Times, really, it says it all. Mail delays fuel concern Trump's undercutting postal system ahead of voting. The president's long campaign against the Postal Service is intersecting with his assault on mail-in voting amid concerns that he has politicized oversight of the agency. Now, the article goes on to explain President Trump's year-long assault on the Postal Service and his increasingly dire warnings about the dangers of voting by mail are colliding as the presidential campaign enters its final months. The result has been to generate new concerns about how he could influence an election conducted during a pandemic in which greater than ever numbers of voters will submit their ballots by mail. In recent weeks at the direction of a Trump campaign mega donor who was recently named the Postmaster General, the service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks the overtime necessary to ensure that deliveries can be completed each day. That and other changes have led to reports of letters and packages being delayed by as many as several days. Voting rights groups say it is a recipe for disaster. Quote, we have an underfunded state and local election system and a deliberate slowdown in the Postal Service said Wendy Fields, the executive director of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of voting and civil rights groups. She said the president was deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it. Kim Wyman, the Republican Secretary of State in Washington, one of five states where mail-in balloting is universal, said Wednesday on NPR's 1A program that election officials are very concerned if the post office is reducing service that we will be able to get ballots to people in time. So if he can't delegitimize mail-in voting because we won't believe his lie about it being fraudulent or leading to fraud, he's going to delegitimize mail-in voting by letting all of us know that if we are going to vote by mail or planning to vote by mail, that maybe our vote won't be counted in time or maybe our ballot won't get to us in time. This is outright sabotage of the election. If he knows that mail-in voting is going to be the main way that people are going to be casting their votes in the 2020 election, and he's going to sabotage that system, which is going to make mail-in voting effective or a possibility at all, he's basically fixing this election for himself. Because again, if he suppresses more votes, that's better for him. So let's look at how many people might want to vote by mail. In Kentucky, based on their June primary, mail-in ballots accounted for 85% of total votes. I repeat, the overwhelming majority of people in a red state like Kentucky voted by mail when it comes to the state of Vermont, requests for mail-in ballots increased by 1,000% in Michigan. There's been 1.8 million requests for mail-in ballots compared to 500,000 requests in 2016. So think about this. If as many people as we're expecting want to vote by mail and they are not able to, this election might actually be illegitimate. Because of Donald Trump, this is outright sabotage and there should be consequences for this, legal consequences for this. Donald Trump should be sued. This is unacceptable. This should terrify every single person who cares about democracy. Donald Trump is a tyrant. He would be an outright autocrat, a dictator, a literal dictator if he could. But in wherever he's able to make a difference and kill democracy, that's what he's trying to do. And he's manufacturing this crisis and he's complaining that it is the people who advocate for mail-in voting who are truly trying to hurt democracy. This should scare everyone. And you have to be prepared during this election. If you get your ballot early, cast it immediately. Don't wait. Take precautions. Make sure you're tracking your ballot. If you have that ability in your state, understand that this isn't a normal election. This is the first election that we're all living through where we're voting during a pandemic. So take precautions and understand what's at stake here. Trump is quite literally trying to rig the election before our very eyes and the sad thing is he might actually be successful and there might not be anything that we can do about it. We just have to sit back and watch in horror as this wannabe dictator tries to stack the deck in his favor because he knows he's going to lose unless he suppresses the vote. This is nauseating. So it's basically an open secret that Donald Trump is a criminal. He's a criminal. Not just a bad president. I'm saying he's literally a criminal. His entire family, they are criminals. According to a 2018 report from the New York Times, his father committed tax fraud to pass down more wealth to Donald Trump and his siblings. Donald Trump is a criminal. And we know that if you look into the Trump organization, we will find fraud because where there's smoke, there's fire. Now, I don't know what we're going to find. Money laundering, who knows? I mean, he's currently literally benefiting financially from his properties as president. Like public officials from around the world stay at Trump organizations, Trump hotels, and he makes money. Official government business leads to him making money. That is corruption. It's fraudulent. And the question is, what are we going to do about it? And I think the answer is probably nothing because we live in a two tier justice system where we lock away poor people for smoking pot and rich people can commit financial crimes and fraud and get away with it. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that just because we can expect that there will be no justice, that we shouldn't at least try to pursue justice because Donald Trump is being criminally investigated. Or I should say the Trump organization is being criminally investigated. And it goes deeper than the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, which is illegal, by the way, because that amounts to a campaign finance violation. Nonetheless, there's more there to be found. And an attorney general is currently looking into it. So do I expect much to come of this? Not necessarily, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the investigation shouldn't happen. Because we have to do everything in our power with, you know, what legal authority or ability we have to hold corrupt public officials with a lot of power accountable. So as Larry Neumeister of AP reports, a New York City prosecutor fighting to get President Donald Trump's tax returns told a judge Monday he was justified in demanding them because of public reports of extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump organization. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is seeking eight years of the Republican president's personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records other than part of the investigation related to payoffs to two women to keep quiet about alleged affairs with Trump. In a court filing Monday, attorneys for Vance said the president wasn't entitled to know the exact nature of the grand jury investigation. They noted though that at the time the subpoena for the tax filings was issued to Trump's accountants, there are public allegations of possible criminal activity at the president's company dating back over a decade. They cited several newspaper articles, including one in which the Washington Post examined allegations that Trump had a practice of sending financial statements to potential business partners and banks that inflated the worth of his projects by claiming they were bigger or more potentially lucrative than they were. Another news article described congressional testimony by Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who said the president would overstate the value of his business interests to impress people or lenders but then deflate the value of assets when trying to reduce his taxes. The attorneys also cited reports of past investigations by New York regulators into whether the conduct described by Cohen amounted to bank fraud. These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York's borders. This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct, the lawyers said. Trump's legal team has argued that the subpoena for his tax filings was issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment of the president. The Supreme Court last month rejected claims by Trump's lawyers that the president could not be criminally investigated while he was in office. So again, the hush money payments here are a factor, but this does go deeper than that. And I think that, you know, if you really do a deep dive into the Trump organization and his business dealings, you will find an abundance of corrupt deals. And look, if we lived in a just society where oligarchs and elites were held to the same standard as his peasants, Donald Trump would be leaving the White House in handcuffs. But to even say that it's it's laughable almost because we don't hold criminals accountable so long as they have money or power. I mean, if we actually did follow the law, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be rotting in prison right now. But, you know, Democrats don't want to hold Republicans accountable because they also break the law and Republicans don't want to hold Democrats accountable because they break the law. So we have both parties in bipartisan agreement that we shouldn't hold our opponents accountable, even if they're in violation of the law for, you know, financial crimes, corruption, because we also want to partake in said corruption. It's just it's deeply disturbing. But I mean, if this goes somewhere, I would be surprised. I don't necessarily believe that this will lead to Donald Trump being exposed before the election. And even if this was, you know, in some way able to convince people that Trump legally had committed crimes before the election, I mean, there's a portion of the population. It doesn't matter what you find out about Donald Trump, they will never leave him because this is a cult. You know, they believe everything that Daddy Trump says and everything that he says by by definition is good because he said it. So I'm not optimistic that this is going to amount to much, but I will always view these types of investigations positively if there is an attempt to hold someone in power accountable when it's warranted. Like we're not talking about dumb scandals like the Benghazi scandals where Republicans were trying to make something out of nothing. Like we're talking about actual crime, that there are numerous reports of Trump organization committing. So I don't think nothing, anything will come of this. But if it, you know, it doesn't, the fact that we are investigating him is important, right? Because just because there's no expectation that justice will be served doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't pursue justice. With what legal authority we have to hold rich people accountable, we absolutely have a responsibility morally to do just that. So, you know, if this leads to Donald Trump getting exposed and hopefully prosecuted, great. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but this investigation is still important and it should definitely still happen. Well, I think it's safe to say that Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro has officially reversed her stance on wearing masks because a couple of weeks ago, I actually gave her credit for posting a photo of herself wearing a mask. Now she took a lot of heat because she wore what some of her followers said was a muzzle, right? And this is a pandemic, it's a hoax, according to some conservatives who are conspiratorial and just wrong about this, who don't follow the science. But I mean, for her to do that, to go against what she knows will get her backlash, I commended her for that, right? If you can't let your audience control you, there's a fine line between allowing your audience to hold you accountable when you mess up and allowing them to just drive your content. And you know, I'm glad that she presumably at that time wasn't allowing that to happen, but she has now flipped her stance on this. She condemned Joe Biden and his wife for wearing a mask, which is the correct thing to do, namely because she doesn't like the particular message that masks sends to people. Take a look. Joe Biden is afraid of him. He'll use a pandemic. I think it's hysterical when he and his wife come out together and they're wearing their masks. You know, they've been housed together since the pandemic started and they're wearing masks together when they come out. What is the point of the mask? The point of the mask is to basically kind of dehumanize. It's to, you know, frighten people. You don't know who's behind the mask. It's to give people cover. It's exactly what the anarchists and the protesters need. You know, it strikes fear. There's something going on. There are all kinds of subliminal messages to that mask. That is incredibly, incredibly dangerous and idiotic. She claims the message that you send when you put on a mask is that you're dehumanizing people and you're frightening people and presumably it's great for anarchists who we all know just want to do crime. What an idiotic thing to say. Now, you can try to interpret this in the best faith imaginable and say, you know, maybe she's just trying to speak from the standpoint of Joe Biden and that he didn't need to wear a mask. So why would he go out of his way to wear a mask if he's just next to his wife? First of all, that's that's nonsensical. It doesn't matter if him and his wife live together and they're in quarantine together. If you're going out in public, you need to wear a mask. And more importantly, if you're a public official, you should be encouraging the use of masks by wearing one yourself. This is why we've been criticizing Donald Trump. It's why presumably you wore a mask and literally tweeted out a photograph of yourself wearing a mask. But, you know, I don't think that she is trying to make this a Joe Biden only attack. What she's saying about masks is going to resonate with these anti-mask people who we are all trying to persuade to stop being stupid. The people who are more likely to not want to wear masks according to studies show that it's because they're either narcissistic or possibly psychopathic. So these people need everyone to reinforce that wearing a mask is a good decision. But, you know, this comes like this fear mongering about masks comes after two Republicans just died last week. Because last week, Herman Cain lost his life after he attended Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, not wearing a mask. He was subsequently admitted to the hospital and he passed away last week. Now, on top of that, we had the co-founder of Turning Point USA Bill Montgomery die due to COVID-19. This was an individual who was anti-mask. His organization tweeted out anti-mask rhetoric. They shared this meme saying, imagine if everyone wearing a mask was carrying a copy of the Constitution instead. And on top of that, they tweeted out this meme. It's a picture of Nicholas Cage, which says, me not wearing a mask while a leftist screams at me from their car across the parking lot at Whole Foods. And back in March, Charlie Kirk literally wrote an op-ed for Newsweek where he tells people not to panic over coronavirus because that's what the president's enemies want. So you'd think that after two of their own, two Republicans, people who I'm assuming judge Janine Pirro respects, die because of COVID-19. They would take it more seriously, but they're not. And sometimes Republicans are so fucking stupid that even if they get COVID-19, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to take it seriously or wear masks. Who is someone who has been very vocal about his opposition to wearing masks, who made fun of the fact that people are going to pressure him to wear masks. He tested positive for COVID-19. And a day before he tested positive, he was seen walking with Attorney General William Barr not wearing a mask. He then stunned his own staffers by showing up to tell them in person that he tested positive. And repeat, he showed up in person to tell his own staffers that he tested positive for COVID-19. And this comes after he exposed dozens of people possibly to COVID-19 already. Like how many members of Congress did you expose? How many congressional staffers did you expose? And then you expose more people by showing up to tell them in person that you have COVID-19. What a moron to make matters worse. After he tested positive, he speculated that the reason why he got COVID-19 was from wearing a mask. I can't help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, that if I might have put some germs, some virus, some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in. I don't know, but I got it. We'll see what happens from here. But the reports of my demise are very... Some of that last bit, the audio cut out. But what he said was reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. Nobody is saying that you're dead dummy. What we're saying is that everyone should take this virus seriously because it is contagious. It's deadly and we want to stop the spread of it obviously so things can get back to normal. So we can fully reopen the economy as Republicans want. But what does he say? The reason why he may have contracted COVID-19 according to him is because he was wearing a mask. I don't know if he's saying that wearing a mask gave him COVID-19 because it materialized within the mask. And then he snorted it in. I don't honestly know what he's trying to say. But the best way that I can interpret that is he took off his mask and somebody had coughed on it with COVID-19 and then he put it on his face and snorted the virus in. I don't know. But what I do know is that if Republicans don't start taking it more seriously, more Republicans will die. But not just that. It's not like it's contained to just them because this is a contagious virus. So if you don't take it seriously, everyone in the country is vulnerable. It's not just something where we can allow the strongest survive. The Darwin Awards can only be awarded to the stupid people. When it comes to a contagious virus, we're vulnerable unless everyone takes it seriously. And when you have leaders like Louis Gomert and Judge Jeanine Pirro now espousing anti-mask rhetoric, when people are dying, including their own friends, I mean, I can't just say at what point will Republicans take it seriously because by now they would have taken it seriously if they were ever going to. If someone who you respect like Bill Montgomery or Herman Cain dies and you're still using anti-mask rhetoric, you're just not going to take it seriously. You just don't care. You put rhetoric above everything else. And when it comes to Louis Gomert, I think that he's dumb enough to where you can argue, okay, it's not about when will he do what he knows is the right thing. I genuinely believe he doesn't know how to do the right thing because he's just too fucking stupid. But with Judge Jeanine Pirro, I think that she's smarter. She has more common sense than Louis Gomert. So when she uses this anti-mask rhetoric, it's not necessarily because she doesn't know any better. I think she knows better. She just is choosing to be anti-mask because she's hopping on this bandwagon, right? Donald Trump finally started to do the right thing by tweeting out a picture of himself wearing a mask saying it's patriotic, whatever is going to work, right? And then he tweeted out this video of this lunatic doctor in front of the Supreme Court saying that you don't need to wear a mask. I mean, it's just other countries don't have to deal with this. Other countries have not politicized a pandemic to the extent that we have. Sure, Brazil has. You can argue Brazil, maybe a couple of other countries. But that's because Jair Bolsonaro is another fascistic moron who's trying to copy Donald Trump. But generally speaking, a pandemic is not a partisan issue in other countries. You can argue that different parties have different responses that vary in the degree to which they are effective. But over here in the United States, we wear our stupidity like it's a badge of honor. By not wearing a mask, we're apparently the rebels. No, you're not a rebel. It's a pandemic. Wearing a mask is not a political statement contrary to popular belief. Wearing a mask does not mean that you are allowing the government to muzzle you. Wearing a mask means that you acknowledge the reality of the situation that we're dealing with now. It's a pandemic. It's contagious. You could transmit it to other people even if you aren't expressing any symptoms. It could transmit asymptomatically. It's contagious. It's deadly. And yet we have people like Judge Janine Pirro and Louis Gomert still spreading misinformation as their own colleagues in the Republican Party literally dropped dead from not taking it seriously, getting the virus. It's truly insane. The Republican Party is just they're too far gone and saying that they're too far gone doesn't really like do the party justice. Like it doesn't necessarily speak to how far they've fallen. Like this party is as fringe as any mainstream political party can possibly be. And the fact that they still have power should scare everyone. Like a party this crazy, this psychopathic should never be able to win. But the fact that they are able to win constantly, even if they are suppressing the votes and, you know, winning sleazily. But I mean the fact that they have any supporters, it really speaks to our intelligence level collectively as a country. Like the fact that this represents like 50% of who governs our country, it should embarrass every single one of us. Unfortunately, we've passed some really devastating and disturbing milestones with regard to COVID-19. We are probably going to pass 160,000 deaths within the next week or so. And in terms of confirmed cases, we're approaching 6 million pretty quickly. So, you know, as this pandemic continues, it's still not feeling more normal. Like this prolonged lockdown where we self quarantine, it doesn't feel normal. And as we get more information, as we learn more about COVID-19 and the way it affects people, we're also learning more in general about the way that viruses function. And, you know, with something that's new like this, you think that you know one thing, but, you know, that information changes and we have to be able to stay informed so we can adapt with new information. So one thing early on that gave us hope that maybe we'd reach herd immunity was the fact that after people got COVID-19 and they had the antibodies, they would seemingly be immune. Now we were hopeful that that immunity would last for a while, but it's seeming more and more like that immunity is temporary. So that's really bad news, but that necessarily isn't definitive yet because we don't know if that's just with some people, maybe others, you know, their bodies produced a big enough antibody response to where they're permanently immune. We just don't know. And we're trying to stop this virus within complete information, but we are learning more and there is hope, right? I mean, there's some really promising results based on the vaccine trials. That's something that's good. Now, another question is, will they be affordable and widely available? And, you know, even if we get the vaccines, I think that as we learn more about this virus and as a lot of us who are obviously not epidemiologists are learning for the first time, the way that these viruses function, we have to adjust what we expect when it comes to getting rid of COVID-19 because even if, you know, this is no longer a pandemic, we may never fully eradicate this virus. It may literally change the way that we live as human beings forever. So I want to share what the chief of the World Health Organization is saying about this because I think it's important that we stay informed about what to expect going forward. So as Nina Golgowski of the HuffPost reports, the director of the World Health Organization warned Monday that there may never be a silver bullet for defeating COVID-19, even as pressure mounts from the White House to create a vaccine well before the end of this year. A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials, and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection. World Health Organization director general, Tadros Adhanum-Ebriesses said at a media briefing, however, there's no silver bullet at the moment, and there might never be. Tadros instead stressed the importance of exercising the basics of public health and seeded control to stop outbreaks from occurring. Testing, isolating and treating patients and tracing and quarantining their contacts do it all he urged. There are currently six coronavirus vaccine candidates in late-stage testing or close to it. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a White House Coronavirus Task Force member, said last week that he's cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021. But Fauci has also said he doesn't believe the virus will ever be eliminated. I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get. I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it's this year or next year. I'm not certain. He told the TB Alliance in an interview last month. I don't really see us eradicating it. So I think that this information is important, not because I want to be a doomer, like I don't want to be an alarmist, but it's important that we stay informed and we're realistic about what to expect with the virus because if we're not realistic, then we're not going to be equipped to deal with it. So we may not necessarily be able to fully eradicate COVID-19. It may just be a thing that human beings deal with for the rest of time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't neutralize it as a threat. That doesn't mean that we aren't able to come up with some type of treatment that makes it not a threat to human beings any longer. But right now, going forward, we have to acknowledge that for the foreseeable future, things are going to have to be a little bit different. This is going to have social and cultural implications as well. The way that we have been greeting each other, shaking hands, not practicing good hygiene when it comes to washing our hands, these things are going to be looked at differently now post-pandemic because the goal isn't just to reopen as quickly as possible and then try to pretend like everything is normal. The thing that we want is to actually get back to normality. A nightmare situation is if we think we get control of the virus and we don't and we reopen and we think that everything is copacetic, and then it spreads again and it leads to another pandemic. That would be awful. But right now, it looks as if with these vaccine candidates, we can resume a somewhat normal society, but it will never fully be the same. I think that's really what this is getting across here. We're never going to be able to fully eradicate it. There's no silver bullet, so it's not like once the vaccine becomes available, everything returns to normal immediately. That's not necessarily what we should be thinking. It's going to be, as Dr. Fauci put it, a combination of things when enough people reach herd immunity and whatnot. I think that as a cultural phenomenon, masks are going to be relevant going into the near future, even when this is eliminated. Whenever somebody is sick, they're going to have to get into the habit of wearing a mask. It can't be weird. Before the virus a couple of years ago, if you had just a common cold and you went to the store to buy cough drops, you wouldn't necessarily wear a mask because that would be weird. People would think that you're sicker than you are and want to avoid you, but now we have to normalize that. We have to normalize good hand washing, good hygiene, change the way that we interact with each other, shaking hands, maybe something that just isn't what we should be doing. Maybe normalize fist bumping, elbow bumping, I don't know. But I think that ultimately what I'm trying to get across here is that this is going to change the world for the foreseeable future. Things aren't just going to go back to normal as if the virus never existed because even in the event, things opened suddenly because we did find a silver bullet, which is unlikely, but even if we found that silver bullet and nobody had to fear the virus, psychologically there's going to be an impact. People will still be a little bit worried about going back to the movies, resuming life is as normal and not to mention all the economic suffering that has been done because of this pandemic, because our government didn't respond appropriately. That's not going to be undone with the pandemic. So for the foreseeable future, the fallout from this virus is going to be something that we have to deal with as a society. And that's the key here. I think that eventually things will get back to what many of us perceive to be normal, but it's going to take a really long time. It's going to take a really long time. So the goal here is not to scare you. It's to make sure that you're realistic and informed about this virus, because if we are not really looking at this realistically here, then we're going to be worse off. And as a society, we have to know what to expect. And part of that means that we accept the reality, the grim reality that there may be no silver bullet. It may just never be eradicated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll be in lockdown forever. It just means that if the cases of COVID-19 pop up once in a while, maybe we'll be able to deal with it. But for now, this is going to change things. In the short term, it's really going to change a lot. Long term, not necessarily as much, but I think over time we will adapt to the changes that we've made because of COVID-19. I think that new cultural practices will be normalized. I think wearing a mask should hopefully be more normalized when people realize it's not necessarily something that's bad. We have to, as a society, take precautions to reduce the risk of spreading any germs because it's not just COVID. As climate change approaches, I think that this thing could become more common. So we have to minimize the spread of germs as a society and normalize the things that we're learning through COVID-19 going forward. So that's all I'll say. Just trying to help us all stay informed. We have to make sure that we do our parts to stop this from spreading. And that's really all that you can do as an individual. Hope as much people as possible are informed and hope that we all are responsible and act like grown-ups. That means wearing a mask, social distancing, washing our hands until we basically minimize the threat of COVID-19 to the extent that we can get back to normal. So it seems as if former President Bill Clinton has some access to grind. So much so that he chose to publicly vocalize his grievances with people in politics in the most inappropriate setting imaginable at a funeral, but not just anyone's funeral, at the funeral of the civil rights icon, John Lewis. Yeah, he'd literally use the opportunity to speak about John Lewis to take shots at people in politics. Unbelievable, the audacity of this individual. Like, how narcissistic do you have to be to use someone's funeral to take political shots at people to score some cheap points, some quick jabs? I mean, you'd think that he'd be more self-aware being a former president, but no. So the first person who we took a jab at was Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Tore. I'm going to link you to a really great thread by Andre, who has some videos that he shares about Kwame. I mean, if you just watch a couple of these videos, it'll be really clear why the Democratic Party establishment doesn't like Stokely Carmichael. He says things that make liberals like Bill Clinton feel uncomfortable. But I mean, regardless if you disagree with that approach to civil rights, how dare you speak at the funeral of another civil rights leader about another one and disparage someone else who fought for civil rights and justice? Like, who do you think you are? Why do you believe you have the authority to speak about this? I mean, Bill Clinton shouldn't even be speaking at the funeral of John Lewis considering his contribution to the civil rights movement. What he has done is set civil rights movements back. I mean, when it comes to LGBTQ rights, he signed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Doma into law. When it comes to Black liberation, what did he do? He signed the 1994 crime bill into law, which exploded mass incarceration and that disproportionately impacted Black and brown people. He gutted welfare, something that is especially harmful to communities of color who are deeply impoverished. So this individual, he really shouldn't be speaking here. But the fact that he is, I mean, he should consider himself lucky, but he's speaking out of term. But he didn't just take a shot at Kwame Torre. He also chose to take a shot at Bernie Sanders out of the blue. And he thanked Jim Clyburn for syncing Bernie's 2020 campaign. This is bizarre, nonetheless. This is what he said. I thank President and Mrs. Bush, President Obama. Speaker Pelosi, thank you and Representative Horrier and Representative Clyburn, who I really thank for with the stroke of a hand, ending an intra-family fight within our party. Proving that peace is needed by everyone. Again, you're at a funeral and you're talking about your political opponents and intra-party warfare within the Democratic Party. Read the room. I mean, unbelievable. So first of all, he calls it an intra-family fight and he just says, well, it's over because of Jim Clyburn, because Bernie lost. That's the implication. Except intra-party warfare within the Democratic Party is not over. It didn't go away with the end of Bernie's campaign, right? This unholy alliance within the Democratic Party between the left and the center is one of convenience. Just because we lost doesn't mean that it's over. We will continue to fight people within the Democratic Party who are causing harm to the country and their own constituents and are allowing themselves to lose to Republicans because they're unable to influence people to get on a vote for them because they are offering them nothing. That's not over. Second of all, the extent to which Jim Clyburn sunk Bernie's campaign, I think generally speaking, that's overstated. Like, I'm not going to say that it didn't hurt that Bernie wasn't endorsed by Jim Clyburn, but it's not surprising. Like, this is something that I think Bernie's campaign should have calculated, right? Jim Clyburn was always going to endorse the establishment's favorite pick and sure, he claims that maybe Bernie could have convinced him. Bernie never courted his vote. But I mean, you don't have to court someone if you align with them ideologically, right? They should just automatically endorse you if your goals align. So, I mean, this was never something that was a surprise. What I think hurt Bernie Sanders the most is when Obama got everyone else who was currently running for president to drop out and endorse Biden. And that in combination with Elizabeth Warren's refusal to drop out and back Bernie is ultimately what led to his demise. Now, I say led to his demise because I don't think you could even say that that single-handedly sunk Bernie's campaign. I think that the reason why Bernie Sanders lost is because of Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders, you know, in spite of what the establishment did, which we all were expecting, he is the one who lost the will to fight after Obama stepped in, after Jim Clyburn didn't endorse him. He could have kept fighting, but he chose to unilaterally disarm. And that's what ultimately sunk him. He didn't want to ruffle any more feathers than he already had, and he chose to not attack Joe Biden in the way that he should have been attacked. So that ultimately is what, you know, sunk Bernie. But with regard to what Bill Clinton is saying here, it speaks to the disdain that him and other leaders within the Democratic Party have towards the left and younger voters. And also, he doesn't realize this, but he is inadvertently admitting that there was an active effort to sink Bernie Sanders. That's what that was all about. I mean, they tried everything, right? And Bernie kept winning. We saw the Iowa debacle where we didn't have the results, and they were very clearly trying to make it seem as if Pete Buttigieg was the winner. They were sporadically releasing results throughout the week, and then in New Hampshire, you know, he won, but then the media downplayed his victory and said, oh, well, if you add all of these candidates' percentages together, then they do better than Bernie Sanders. Finally, there's this blowout in Nevada, then they can't deny it, and then they just resort to everything. They get everyone to come and endorse Joe Biden. So, I mean, he's admitting here that there was an active effort. Now, this isn't surprising. I think it's very obvious to anyone with a brain that there was an active effort to destroy Bernie Sanders. But what he doesn't realize is that we know that this is more than just, you know, a Bernie versus establishment thing. This is really the establishment versus the left versus the people, because I don't just view this as, you know, them taking down Bernie Sanders. I view this as them taking down the left and being successful. Because I don't care about Bernie Sanders, the politician, right? He was just a vessel for our ideas. But those ideas don't go away with the 2020 campaign of Bernie Sanders, and the fact that he thinks that they do, it really speaks to the hubris of the Democratic Party. It speaks to how they genuinely believe that they have permanently won, right? But the problem is that these centrist voters, they're all older. Younger voters believe in the policies that Bernie Sanders was championing. So like it or not, our generation, millennials, and also zoomers, we are the future. And we do believe in Medicare for All. We are against capitalism. So like it or not, everything that they're doing now to stop momentum, it's just a temporary victory. That's not even a question. The only question is whether or not when we actually do take power, will it be too late? Will it be too late for the environment, the planet? But I mean, the fact that he's saying this, admitting this now, it shows just how scared the establishment was. And if we were able to almost carry Bernie Sanders to victory, so much so that the establishment pulled out all the tricks to stop him. Even if it might not feel like it, I think that getting electoral success is closer than we are anticipating. Because, you know, in this election cycle, we've had far more victories. We have Cara Eastman winning her primary, Paula Jean Swarajan winning her primary. We actually have a chance to get a lot more people elected. Mondair Jones, Jamal Bowman, so many people who are actually going to do a good job at fighting. And with just a handful of people who we have in power now, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, AOC, you see how they really are driving the conversation, they're driving discourse. And they may not control the levers of power yet, but they do hold a huge amount of influence. And we just need a larger block to really make a difference. But I mean, that is when you only look at electoral politics. I think that we have to really broaden our scope of political activity and really focus a lot more going forward on direct action. You know, subverting the electoral system, but not ignoring it and also trying to affect change directly. At the state, local level, we have to do everything. So, you know, it was just interesting that he brought this up. He has no shame. Like you think that he, as a former president, would know not to bring things like this up. When at a civil rights icon, icons funeral, you'd want to like bring people together ideally. But no, you know, when you're celebrating the life of someone who fought for justice, you're boasting about how you were able to, you know, sustain this injustice that's going on with corporate control of the Democratic Party. And it's, it's grotesque. It's disgusting. But I mean, this is what we're working with. This is going to be intra-party warfare for the foreseeable future. And we can't let off the gas until we win because we don't have a choice. We don't have a choice. So we keep fighting them until we win. By now, unless you're living under a rock, then I'm sure you've heard about Donald Trump's epic interview with Jonathan Swan on Axios. It's about 35 minutes long. It was posted to HBO's YouTube channel. And I've got to say, this was thoroughly entertaining. I didn't watch it like directly. I kind of had it on in the background while I was playing Ghost of Tsushima. Great game, by the way. And there were moments where I paused the game like mid-battle because I had to like go back and listen to what Trump said again because what he said was so stupid. And like the things that he said, they ranged from being hysterical, like genuinely funny to downright disturbing where I was angry. So I mean, in this interview, you're taken on a ride, right? You go through all the range of emotions at one moment, you'll be pissed. The next moment, he'll say something stupid and then you'll laugh. I've got to give credit to Jonathan Swan because he did a phenomenal job at pushing back on Donald Trump and honestly from a journalistic standpoint, this is one of the best interviews I think I've ever seen. He really did a good job at bringing statistics, at challenging Donald Trump. He didn't let Trump get by on anything, but at the same time, like he didn't come off as overly combative. Like he tried to give Trump credit where it was due, but he also called out the lies. And it really was a fantastic interview. So if you haven't seen the interview, I would encourage you to stop watching this video, watch the entire thing. It's long, I get it, but it's worth it. I mean, it's so long you could have it on in the background, but I swear to God, every time I turned around and like stop playing the game to look at what Donald Trump had said, his hands were like that, like the entire time. So you know, whenever he's doing this, he's like really struggling to collect his thoughts and he's like really concentrating. The interview was bananas. So we're going to start off, you know, on a lighter note, because I want to definitely talk through these highlights here. So contrary to popular belief, according to Donald Trump, he does in fact read. So he was asked by Jonathan Swan whether or not he reads his daily briefings. His answer here was, it was weird. Like, I'm not going to give you any more setup. Just watch. I read a lot. They like to say, don't read. I read a lot. I comprehend extraordinarily well, probably better than anybody that you've interviewed in a long time. Who says that? I comprehend extraordinary well, probably better than anybody you've ever interviewed in a long time. Who says things like that? Donald Trump is such a weird person. Like, I swear to God, if reptilians were actually a thing, Donald Trump is definitely a reptilian who's like still trying to learn the ins and outs of like humanity and how they function and the things that they say. Because I mean, like a normal, well-adjusted human being doesn't say something like that. Like, what a weird hyperbolic statement to make. Oh, no, I actually do read and I comprehended better than anyone you've ever interviewed. I mean, that's so strange. Like, we had to suck himself off. The next thing that I want to go over is what he said when he was asked about the late John Lewis civil rights icon. Because, of course, he found a way to make John Lewis's legacy about himself because why wouldn't he? John Lewis is lying in state in the US capital. How do you think history will remember John Lewis? I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know. I don't know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. I mean, that's exactly what you'd expect from him. Additionally, he had this piping hot take. I did more for the black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not. People say, oh, that's interesting. You believe he did more than Lyndon Johnson who passed the Civil Rights Act? I think I did, yeah. How? Because I got criminal justice reform done. I got prison reform. Lyndon Johnson. I've done things. Well, he passed the Civil Rights Act. How has it worked out if you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did? You think the Civil Rights Act was a mistake? That's a big yikes from me. Big yikes. God damn. He's confident. He's such a dumbass. Okay, so those were, I think, the most funny parts in the interview. I think that Jonathan Swan himself deserves credit for being funny because he was clearly animated. You can read what he was feeling on his face. Whenever I was watching him as I was going through trying to prep for the segment, I'm scrolling through and you can see Jonathan's facial reactions, and he's clearly just puzzled by things that Donald Trump said. Moving on, that was the more lighthearted, entertaining aspects of the interview, but there are some elements of the interview where it was downright disturbing that the president said this. Some of what he says he can get away with it because it's funny and he's just a stupid person. But things like this where it comes to COVID-19 and the deaths that it's caused, he inadvertently revealed his callousness and this is where the interview, it takes a turn for the disturbing and this is where I got pissed off. I've covered you for a long time. I've gone to your rallies. I've talked to your people. They love you. They listen to you. They listen to every word you say. They hang on your every word. They don't listen to me or the media or Fauci. They think we're fake news. They want to get their advice from you. And so when they hear you say everything's under control, don't worry about wearing masks. I mean, these are people. Many of them are older people, Mr. President. What's your evidence of control? Yeah, under the circumstances. It's giving them a false sense of security. I think it's under control. I'll tell you what. How? A thousand Americans are dying a day? They are dying. That's true. And it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It is what it is. That's literally what he said about people dying. Americans dying under his watch did a COVID-19. I mean, he is revealing his callousness. He genuinely doesn't care that people are dying. And you know that he doesn't care because he's trying to reopen schools. If he was actually concerned with the health and well-being and the safety of Americans, he wouldn't be urging them to reopen schools. He wouldn't be using this pandemic to privatize public education. But I mean, he is, he's ruthless. He does not care about human beings. Which is why you'd say something like that. It is what it is in response to the deaths with regard to COVID-19. Now, Jonathan Swan pressed him on the deaths a little bit more. And Trump tried to debunk the facts that Jonathan was bringing to his attention. And he was fumbling through these papers to try to show him statistics. This was bizarre. But watch what Donald Trump is trying to do. Basically, he's trying to present skewed information, select statistics that make him not look as bad. But Jonathan Swan was not having it. He was calling him out on everything with actual data. The figure I look at is death. And death is going up now. And it's a thousand a day. If you look at death. Yeah, it's going up again. That's daily death. Take a look at some of these charts. I'd love to. We're gonna look. Let's look. And if you look at death. Yeah. Started to go up again. Well, right here, the United States is lowest in numerous categories. We're lower than the world. Lower than the world. We're lower than Europe. In what? In what? Take a look. Right here. Here's case death. Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the U.S. is really bad. Well, much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera. You can't do that. You have to go by... You have to go by where... Look, here is the United States. You have to go by the cases, the cases. Why not as a proportion of population? When we have somebody... What it says is when you have somebody that has... Where there's a case. Oh, okay. The people that live from those cases. It's surely a relevant statistic to say if the U.S. has ex-population and ex-percentage of death of that population versus South Korea. No, because you have to go by the cases. Well, look at South Korea, for example. 51 million population, 300 deaths. It's like... It's crazy, depending on your book. You don't know that. I do. You don't know that. You think they're faking their statistics? South Korea? I won't get into that, because I have a very good relationship with the country. But you don't know that. And they have spikes. Look, here's one. Germany low, 9,000. Here's one right here. United States. You take the number of cases. Now look, we're last. Meaning we're first. Last... I don't know what we're first in. Take a look. Again, it's cases. Okay. And we have cases because of the testing. 1,000 Americans are dying today, but I understand on cases it's different. No, but you're not reporting it correctly, Jonathan. I think I am, but... If you take a look at this other chart... Look, this is our testing, I believe. This is the testing, yeah. Yeah, we do more tests. No, wait a minute. Well, don't we get credit for that? And because we do more tests, we have more cases. In other words, we test more. Now take a look. The top one. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. The top, Jonathan. If hospital rates were going down and deaths were going down, I'd say terrific. You deserve to be praised for testing, but they're all going up. You know, they very rarely talk. 60,000 Americans are in hospital. If you watch the news, they'll read the papers. They usually talk about new cases, new cases, new cases. I'm talking about death. Well, you look at death. It's going up. Death is way down from where it was. It's 1,000 a day. It was 2,500. It went down to 500. Now it's going up again. Death, excuse me. Where it was is much higher than where it is right now. It went down and it went up again. But now it's going down again. It's going down in Arizona. It's going down in Florida. It's going down in Texas. Take a look at this. These are the tests. It's going down in Florida? Yeah. It leveled out and it's going down. That's my report as of yesterday. Completely unhinged. Now, unsurprisingly, he once again repeated the lie that the reason why we're seeing an increase in cases is because we're doing more testing, completely disregarding the positivity rate. And on top of that, he wants you to only look at a specific metric when it comes to deaths. He wants you to look at the proportion of deaths compared to the amount of cases. So what is the fatality rate among people who have COVID-19? Now ask yourself, why does he want us to look at this specifically? Well, let's simplify it. So let's say 100 people got COVID-19 and 10 people died. What would the fatality rate be in that instance? It'd be 10%, obviously, right? So let's say that cases went up. There were 1,000 cases and 100 people died. Well, in that instance, the fatality rate would remain the same. It's at 10%. So if the fatality rate remains the same, or preferably it goes down, that makes Donald Trump look better. But specifically, looking at that metric ignores the fact that deaths overall are increasing. It ignores the fact that in that hypothetical, we went from 10 deaths to 100 deaths, even if the fatality rate among people who have COVID-19 remained the same. So that's why he told Jonathan Swan, oh, you can't look at that. You're not reporting that correctly. Because when you look at overall deaths based on population, it makes him look bad. Now, as Jonathan Swan conceded, you can look at the fatality rate. Of course, we're looking at all metrics. We're not trying to hide information and data. That's what Trump is doing. But he's selectively trying to select data that makes him look better. And it's insane. And thankfully, for the first time, he was actually called out to his face for lying. Now, moving on, he was asked about the Afghanistan War. And Jonathan Swan called him out. And basically, pressed him to explain why if you campaign as an anti-war politician back in 2016, why are we still in Afghanistan? The answer here was really telling, because Trump, he was backed into a corner and he didn't know what to say, because he clearly looked like a fraud. The U.S. troop level in Afghanistan right now is roughly the same as it was when you... No, you're wrong. Mr. President. I'm sorry. We have to... Okay, are you ready? No, no. We'll be down in a very short... It's already planned. Well, that's a different question. We'll be down in a very short period of time to 8,000. Then we're going to be down to 4,000. We're negotiating right now. We've been there for 19 years. If you just let me finish my question. We'll be getting out. I understand. Look, when you came in, it was 8,800. You boosted to 14,000, and now you're back down to 8,500. We're now... My question to you... We'll be in 4,000. I'll give you the exact... Very soon. Very soon. What will be the number? Very soon? 4,000. Very soon, yes. Like how soon? I don't want to tell you that. I don't want to tell you that. That's big news. What is that? It's going down to 4,000, isn't it? I've always said... What about election day? We will get largely out. On election day, how many American troops will be in Afghanistan? Probably anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000. That's almost as many as when you came into office. No, it's not. 8,000. We had much more. We had a lot of people over there, too. 8,800. A lot of people. And we did a good job. We wiped out ISIS. Have you thought about going down to zero? Let me just tell you what you don't say. We took out in Syria. We took out ISIS. We 100% of the caliphate. So, I mean, are you getting us out of these never-ending wars or not? You campaigned as an anti-war libertarian-esque candidate back in 2016, and we're still not out of the wars. Almost four years later, you've been president. We're still there. So, why isn't the number of troops in Afghanistan zero? Why are you still conducting illegal drone strikes in other countries? It's because Donald Trump is a fraud. Sometimes, you know, he'll use that libertarian-esque anti-war rhetoric, but then other times, he sounds like a bloodthirsty, saber-rattling warmonger, because he is. So, I mean, the inconsistency there, he has to address it. And when he tries to address it, when someone asks him about this, he's clearly clueless. He doesn't know what to say. Now, another area where he's inconsistent is mail-in voting. And Jonathan Swan asked him, why are you railing against mail-in voting when your campaign is instructing Republican party voters how to safely vote by mail? And Donald Trump here unraveled. Because, again, when you were called out and confronted in this direct manner with facts, you have no idea what to do, especially if you're Donald Trump. So, all he does usually is, when confronted, he just lies or he pivots to the great job that he's doing. Or, you know, in this instance, he actually did try to defend himself by saying, well, I have to promote mail-in voting because I have no choice, but that defeats the purpose of his arguments against mail-in voting. Nonetheless, take a look and we'll come back and discuss this. So, we have a new phenomena. It's called mail-in voting. When you send, we're a governor. It's been here since the Civil War. In terms of the kind of millions and millions of ballots. It'll be bigger this year because of the pandemic. Not bigger, massively bigger. Yeah, because of the pandemic. So, they're going to send tens of millions of ballots to California all over the place. Who's going to get them? I have a friend who lives in Westchester County. They send applications. His son passed away. He had a beautiful, wonderful son. A young man passed away seven years ago. He called me. He said, I just got a ballot for my son Robert. Probably an application. He died seven years ago. Somebody got a ballot for a dog. Somebody got a ballot for something else. You've got millions of ballots going. Nobody even knows where they're going. You look at some of the corruption having to do with universal mail-in voting. Absentee voting is okay. You have to apply. You have to go through a process. You have to apply for mail-in. Absentee voting is good. It's the same thing. Look, let's do concrete. Let's do concrete. They're sending out. Applications, millions of ballots. No, they're not. It's applications. There is no way you can go through a mail-in vote without massive cheating. I honestly don't understand this topic with you. Go ahead. The Republican Party has an extremely well-funded vote-by-mail program. Your campaign puts out emails telling people to vote by mail. Correct. Your daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, she did robo-calls in California saying it's safe and secure mail-in voting. Let me tell you. The Republican one. We have no choice. That wasn't all mail-in rates. Let me tell you. Are you ready? Yeah. We have no choice because right now we have, but we have many court cases that we're waiting. We have one filed in Western Pennsylvania. We have many court cases where we're trying to end it. Well, you see, I don't like mail-in voting personally, but since we're doing mail-in voting anyway, then I have to instruct my Republican voters to vote by mail. Let them know how they can safely vote by mail from home. Except if you're maintaining that position, doesn't that undermine your entire argument? Because if mail-in voting is so insecure, makes us so vulnerable that the entire election will be the most fraudulent election in American history. And if it's not going to matter, it's going to delegitimize the entire election. Wouldn't that mean that, according to you, using your own logic that the votes that Republicans cast by mail isn't going to matter either? I mean, if there's so much fraud, what's stopping officials from this, like throwing out all of those Republican party ballots? I mean, if you use his logic, his position is all over the place. It's all over the place. He can't keep his lies. It's all over the place. He can't keep his lies straight. And I mean, it's because he knows that there's nothing wrong with vote by mail. He doesn't want vote by mail because if more people vote by mail, that means that turnout will likely be increased. And when turnout is high, what happens? Republicans lose elections because they count on suppressing enough votes to win. But at the end of the day, you just have to watch the interview for yourself to see. It truly was, you know, a spectacle. It was bananas. Donald Trump, honestly, like, it's going to take a lot of time for us to digest what happened when he was in office, like once he's out of office, because it's such a bizarre timeline that we're currently living through that you're not going to be able to fully, like, appreciate what's going on until after we're out of this weird era in American politics. Well, like it or not, students in some states have, in fact, gone back to school, and in some counties, particularly in red states, they've resumed in-person learning in spite of the risks that that obviously poses. They're just going to pretend as if we're not in the middle of a pandemic. Obviously, that's going to cause cases to spike and it doesn't just affect people with small children who are going to school. It affects everyone, because if you live in one of those counties, then someone with COVID-19 may go to school and get it from school. That person may go to the store and, you know, get their cashier. That cashier, in turn, may infect customers. Do you understand, like, do you see the problem? I think that's obvious. Most people see it, but our public officials, Donald Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, all insist that we have to do this. We have to pretend as if the pandemic isn't actually a thing. Now, this photograph that went viral on Reddit should horrify everyone. This was taken in Georgia and, apparently, this school is within a town that is currently a hotspot for coronavirus. And I can't really see all of their faces, but I count three students wearing masks. Yeah. This is going to get so much worse, because Donald Trump is... he's not budging on this. In fact, just on Tuesday again, he tweeted out in all caps, open the schools, and he put three exclamation points there, which really tells you that he means business. Now, what's frustrating with politicians is that oftentimes they do things very clearly because they're not going to have to deal with the consequences of their own actions. So, for example, we see politicians vote to send your children to die in wars that they'd never allow their own children to serve in. And the same is true in this particular instance. Donald Trump is saying, let's reopen the schools. But do you think he's going to send Baron Trump to a school with in-person learning? Of course not. In fact, after Trump made that tweet, Baron's private school announced that they will not be reopening. In fact, no in-person learning will be taking place in fall term. And as a result, the president's son will be safely starting ninth grade with online-only classes while his dad tells everyone else that they have to go back to school and resume in-person learning in spite of the risk that that poses to their health. In other words, safety for me, but not the. Donald Trump doesn't care about you. Your life is meaningless to him. The peasants get to die and get crumbs to eat while the elites like him are safe. His son is going to be perfectly fine. Doesn't have to worry about catching COVID-19. If you still support Donald Trump, what is wrong with you? He doesn't care about you. His one major legislative accomplishment was to cut his own taxes. And now, as almost 160,000 Americans die because of a highly contagious disease, his response is, it is what it is. He just said that in an interview with Jonathan Swan on Axios. Yeah, people are going to die. It is what it is. He doesn't care about you. If you still support him after he has been explicitly revealing who he is, then you're just the fucking moron. I don't know what else to say. If you're voting for Donald Trump in 2020, you are stupid because he does not care about you. He only cares about himself and his own political power. Now, thankfully, there are people who are speaking up and there's a lot of students and teachers and families around the country and communities who are taking the fear that they're feeling and they're converting that into direct action. And they're trying to say, look, if we're going to be sent back to school, then we need equipment. We need more funding and we have to make sure that we are able to conduct in-person classes in a way that's safe. So as Rachel M. Cohen of the Intercept reports, on Monday in more than 25 states, thousands of parents, educators, students, and community members are participating in the National Day of Resistance, staging in-person and virtual actions to call for safe, well-funded and racially just school reopening plans. The actions come in response to pressure from state governments and the White House to resume in-person learning so that kids can get back to the classroom and their parents back to work but are also being tied to the ongoing pushback against school privatization from the Trump administration. In New York City, parents, students, and teachers will be marching from their union headquarters down to the Department of Education. In Los Angeles, activists are organizing a car caravan first outside the L.A. Chamber of Commerce and then around the Los Angeles Unified School District building. We're kicking it off at the L.A. Chamber because even during COVID, this is a time when a lot of corporations and Wall Street are making record-breaking profits, explained Silvana Uribe, a spokesperson for Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a progressive group participating in the protest. In Philadelphia and Baltimore, teacher unions are calling on Comcast to improve the quality of its service and make it more affordable for families. And Phoenix activists are planning to demonstrate outside their state capital building where educators can write letters to their elected officials about how they feel going back to school or if they want write their imagined obituaries. Monday is Arizona's first day back to school, so that's why we know we have to lead and organizing because people across the country will be watching us and learning what happens with reopening, said Rebecca Gorelli, a parent and a science educator participating in the Phoenix protest. In Chicago, activists are rallying outside of City Hall and Illinois state government building. Among them will be G2 Brown, the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of 30 grassroots organizations that help conceive of the day of resistance. When we look at the fact that these same communities have shuttered public schools and opened up new jails, do we really think they will prioritize the health and safety of black and brown children when it comes to reopening? Brown asked, we say no, or only if we make them do so. So I find this really encouraging and really inspiring. They're right to demand these things. Teachers, it's bad enough that they can barely survive on the salaries that they receive, but now you're asking them to risk their lives. You're asking parents to trust that their students are going to be safe, resuming in-person learning during a pandemic, exposing the people that they live with. I don't know what to say about this situation other than it feels like we're living in a nightmare and we're just not taking this seriously. Again, I want to emphasize that even if you don't have anyone you know with small children or don't have small children yourself, this is going to make all of us worse off because if people resume business as normal as we're seeing with that viral photo from Reddit, I mean, we're all going to be worse off. Cases are going to spike. It's going to continue to spread and we're just not going to get it under control. Deaths will continue to climb. It's really terrifying to think about how bad this is going to get, like how worse off we'll be by the end of the year. So it just seems like we're going to pretend like the pandemic isn't a thing. That's not to say that every single school district is going to treat this the same because really the way that schools reopen, it's going to be up to local governments because school funding, it's derived disproportionately from property taxes. So Trump can say, oh, he wants to reopen schools, reopen schools, but he can only withhold about 10% of funding. So that 10%, it is crucial still. You know, it's going to be up to local governments. They're going to be the ones ultimately who decide. And you can see that, you know, a lot of them are going to take it seriously, but others are not so much. And so that school in Georgia, where they're just reopening and they clearly don't have a plan to social distance, I just, I don't know what to say. It's just, it's heartbreaking because you know this is going to kill people. People are going to die because of this. And the worst part is they're going to be, there's going to be no accountability. Yeah. So this is America in 2020. Resuming business as usual. Schools are resuming in-person learning as cases increase every single day. As though we are seeing more and more deaths due to this highly contagious virus that is deadly. Yeah. It's sickening. So there's a lot going on currently with, you know, the news cycle as of late, obviously. But one of the most important stories is what we are learning from Gisela and Maxwell. Apparently unsealed court documents showed that Bill Clinton was in fact on Jeffrey Epstein's island and he was reportedly seen there. And when he was asked about it, I guess Jeffrey Epstein laughed it off and allegedly said, well, he owes me a favor. So there's a lot going on and a lot of wealthy people may be implicated and Fox News actually decided to talk about this. Janine Pirro and Tucker Carlson had a conversation about this and I actually don't disagree with what they're saying. Like they did a relatively good job at accurately presenting the information with regard to this case. But there's one thing missing from the reporting. We'll see if you can spot it. So the question is, did Bill Clinton visit his close friend Jeffrey Epstein's island, Peddo Island, with two young girls? New court documents suggest that in fact he did. Why isn't this front page news? Judge Janine Pirro was the host of Justice with Judge Janine. She has thoughts on that. Judge, great to see you. Good to see you too, Tucker. Well, you know what? Here's the bottom line. Did they care about Bill Clinton when he was engaging in sexual relations in the Oval Office with an intern? No. Did they apologize for him? Yes. Does the mainstream media forgive him? Yes. If it were a Republican, it would be totally different. Look, what we've heard about in this Epstein case are Democrats. We've heard about Bill Richardson. We've heard about George Mitchell. We hear about Bill Clinton. Everybody says, no, no, Bill was never on the plane, except he's on the manifest 26 times. And then we say, no, no, he wasn't on the island, except we now have testimonial evidence, identification evidence by Virginia Roberts, who says he was on the island with two young girls. And that evidence is significant, and they can call Virginia Roberts the, you know, a liar till the cows come home. But she is the woman who has a picture of herself at the age of 17 with Prince Andrew's arm around her waist in someone's home with Ghislaine Maxwell looking at her. Ghislaine Maxwell, of course, now we find out what a monster she is because she not only arranged all of this. She sought out girls who were vulnerable. She groomed them. She taught them how to take care of a massage man and take care of them sexually. But in addition to all that, in addition to scarring these young girls for life, she also engaged in these underage sex orgies. She is a monster. And for all those people who said, oh, you know, she should get bail, no, she is as bad as Epstein. And the fact that she is continuing to say, you know, that she didn't do anything is absurd because there were so many victims in this case. And I got to add one more thing, Tucker, because I know we're short on time. Now, you interviewed Alan Dershowitz on Friday. One of the things that I find stunning is that Alan Dershowitz actually says, you know what, it was really only two misdemeanors that we represented him on in Florida. Yeah, two misdemeanors with 13 victims. And then he says, you know, I didn't really know him that well, except he stayed in his house. And then Dershowitz said, well, I was never involved in that part of the plea agreement that involved a non-prosecution of unidentified individuals in the future should they ever be prosecuted for any crimes involved with me, conspirators with me, who I suspect is Ghislaine Maxwell, along with a whole host of men, powerful rich men, who as always get away without paying the dues to the justice system. Okay, not bad, pretty solid segment, except they didn't address the elephant in the room. I'm sure you know what that is. Donald Trump was photographed with Jeffrey Epstein and or Ghislaine Maxwell again and again and again. So the question is, why can't they take their accurate criticism here of Bill Clinton and apply it to Donald Trump as well? I mean, I get that he wasn't implicated in these unsealed documents per se by name, but there are videos of him with Epstein ogling women, laughing with each other. They were clearly close. So if you're going to say, well, all of these, you know, wealthy elites are connected to Epstein, how do you leave out Donald Trump? I mean, I think we all know the answer to this. It's because they are Republican Party hacks. They're willing to talk about sex trafficking insofar as they don't touch their sacred cows. They don't touch members of their own team. So if Donald Trump is also seen with Jeffrey Epstein, you know, we're not going to talk about that, but we will call out others for not talking about what we want them to talk about. So I mean, if you read that, Kyron at the bottom had said, media ignoring ties between Clinton and Epstein. Yeah, and I'll grant you that. The media isn't necessarily talking about this, but let me ask you this. When MSNBC was covering the footage of Donald Trump that was released with him joking with Jeffrey Epstein, looking at women together, why didn't you guys cover that sufficiently? And why now is MSNBC not talking about this and how Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz maybe are implicated? I mean, is it maybe the case that if you can call out somebody else for being inconsistent, being a hack, that you should be able to see how your own bias is also affecting your reporting? I mean, the inconsistency here, the level of hackiness that we see is irritating, and I'm not trying to both sides this because we're talking about Fox News. But you see, this is really one of those cases where both sides don't know how to cover this, right? Because you have wealthy elites who are Republican and Democrat tied to Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious sex trafficker of minors, right? Giselae Maxwell actually attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding. So nobody wants to touch this in mainstream media. But for me, I hate all these fuckers. They're all probably guilty. Or at a minimum, they have to be investigated, look into them. So definitely look into Bill Clinton if his name showed up. But also look into Donald Trump because if you're sitting there laughing with Jeffrey Epstein at a party, looking at women, if you're photographed with him and Giselae Maxwell multiple times, I think that warrants further concern among law enforcement officials, wouldn't you say? Isn't that reasonable? Now look, I am willing to grant them that there is nuance here. There's room for nuance in this situation, of course. Maybe it's the case that Bill Clinton's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, deeper than Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein because Epstein had connections to a lot of people. Giselae Maxwell was seen photographed with a lot of people, right? So maybe it's the case that there are degrees of guilt. But I mean, after Donald Trump literally just wished Giselae Maxwell a monster as they say, well, how could you ignore Trump here? How could you not point out the elephant in the room? Well, it's because they support Donald Trump. It's because they support Donald Trump. It's so weird that there's this blindness here. And you know, you have these bizarre conspiracy theory groups like QAnon, which is just batshit and saying, which basically suggests that Donald Trump is like in power to crack down on pedophiles and probably butchering what they think. But like they are supposedly exposing other celebrities who aren't guilty. So these conspiracy theorists have been saying that people like Chrissy Teigen and Ellen DeGeneres are also implicated with Epstein, which is untrue. But yet the one person who they worship basically, who has been seen photographed with Epstein multiple times, no questions there, no conspiracy there. It's just so weird, like there's this double standard and it's very clear that American politics is team politics. You pick a team and your team is right no matter what and the other side is wrong no matter what. That's deeply frustrating. There's no room for objectivity or impartiality. We just do what we think is going to help our team get across the finish line. And this, you know, segment from Fox News was perhaps one of the best examples I've seen of that. So this story is interesting to me. A producer at MSNBC who worked on Lawrence O'Donnell's show, her name is Ariana Picari, she just resigned and not only did she resign, she penned a scathing letter criticizing the network because she thinks that what they're doing is bad for democracy. Now I will admit, I think that her criticism of MSNBC is relatively shallow and it doesn't go deep enough but I do think that her heart is in the right place. So I do want to share some of her letter but let me just give you the quick rundown. Basically she's suggesting that overall the network itself, it focuses too much on sensationalism. There's no diversity of thought and they oftentimes elevate fringe voices because they think that that's what's going to drive ratings. They are just seeking to increase ratings constantly. Oftentimes she says that they're hyper focused on Donald Trump. I think that that's obvious. They disregard factual or scientific stories and cover the political angle of set stories. Climate change comes to mind. Look, all of these criticisms, I think they're obvious. If you watch MSNBC and you're savvy and you have a coherent critique of mainstream media, all of these things are pretty obvious to you but it doesn't go deep enough because these are issues that also plague indie media as well. I think that there is an incentive to do clickbait. I think that indie media can also be susceptible to sensationalism but the reason why corporate media is so nefarious is because of the conflict of interest, their connection to large multinational corporations and the way that that specifically influences their coverage. Now, what she's saying isn't as surprising as what we learned from other individuals who worked at MSNBC. I mean, Cenk Yuger famously was called into the office of the president of MSNBC and basically scolded him because he was ruffling too many feathers. When Crystal Ball worked at MSNBC, she criticized Hillary Clinton and then going forward, they told her that they had to run all of her former Hillary Clinton segments by production or a higher-up to make sure that they approved it. And on top of that, the late great Ed Schultz let us know that he received a call from the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and he demanded that he not cover the launch of Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. So I think that all of those revelations from people who saw firsthand how bad MSNBC was, that information is much more important. I think it's a lot more incriminating when it comes to MSNBC and their practices. A lot of what she's saying here, you know, I read this and I just think, I think this is obvious, right? Nonetheless, what she does say, you know, it confirms what we suspect, that they are hyper-focused on the one thing that all businesses are focused on, you know, money. And as a result, they try to do what they can to make sure that they have good ratings. So this is what she writes in her blog on her website. July 24th was my last day at MSNBC. I don't know what I'm going to do next exactly, but I simply couldn't stay there anymore. My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions. The problem is the job itself. It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis. You may not watch MSNBC, but just know that this problem still affects you too. All the commercial networks function the same, and no doubt that content seeps into your social media feed one way or the other. It's possible that I'm more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would rate. The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices. It's practically baked into the editorial process, and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it's taboo to discuss how the rating scheme affects content or it's simply taken for granted because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing. But behind closed doors, industry leaders will admit the damage that's being done. We are a cancer and there is no cure, a successful and insightful TV veteran said to me, but if you could find a cure, it would change the world. As it is, this cancer stokes national division even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events at the expense of others, all because it pumps up the ratings. This cancer risks human lives even in the middle of a pandemic. The primary focus quickly became what Donald Trump was doing poorly to address the crisis rather than the science itself. As new details have become available about antibodies, a vaccine or how COVID actually spreads, producers still want to focus on the politics, important facts or studies get buried. This cancer risks our democracy even in the middle of a presidential election. Any discussion about the election usually focuses on Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, a repeat offense from 2016. Trump smothers out all other coverage. Also important is to ensure citizens can vote by mail this year, but I've watched that topic get ignored or killed numerous times. Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience. Occasionally, the producers will choose to do a topic or story without regard for how they think it will rate, but that is the exception, not the rule. Due to the simple structure of the industry, the desire to charge more money for commercials as well as the ratings bonuses that top tier decision makers earn, they always relapse into their old, profitable programming habits. I understand that journalistic process is largely subjective and any group of individuals may justify a different set of priorities on any given day. Therefore, it's particularly notable to me for one that nearly every rundown at the network basically is the same, hour after hour. And two, they use the subjective nature of the views to justify economically beneficial decisions. I've even heard producers deny their role as journalists. A very capable senior producer once said, our viewers don't really consider us the news. They come to us for comfort. Again, personally, I don't think the people need to change. I think the job itself needs to change. There is a better way to do this. I'm not so cynical to think that we are absolutely doomed, though we are on that path. I know we can find a cure. If we can figure out how to send a man to the moon, if Alex Trebek can defy the odds with stage four pancreatic cancer, and if Harry Reid can actually overcome pancreatic cancer, he's now cancer-free, then we can fix this too. So she repeatedly, as you just heard, references a cure and that we need to find a cure. But the problem is that you're not going to be able to find a cure if you haven't accurately diagnosed the actual issue itself. What is that cancer? Name it. She doesn't necessarily say that. It's relatively vague, but the cancer is capitalism. It's the for-profit news model. That goal to maximize profit is at the center of why news is so terrible in the United States. And it's not just that goal to maximize profit, so they are incentivized to do sensationalism, to increase ratings. There are people in media, the pundits, that are multi-millionaires. They are out of touch. So it's not just that they're covering stories because they're trying to find a way to, you know, increase their ratings. They're covering stories to impact the country as well because, I mean, they have a stake. They have a horse in this race. The people at MSNBC were absolutely hysterical when Bernie Sanders won Nevada. One reporter from MSNBC audibly sighed when she reported that Bernie Sanders had won overwhelmingly at one particular caucus site. The multi-millionaires, the pundits at MSNBC, they didn't like Bernie Sanders probably because he wanted to increase their taxes. So it's not just that, you know, this drive to increase ratings, which is driven by the goal to maximize capital is making them report stories in a way that, you know, distorts reality. They're also reporting on stories where they're trying to actually influence the outcome of society. They're reporting the news as it comes. They're trying to dictate what happens. They're actively telling us don't support someone like Bernie Sanders. They don't explicitly say that, but I mean, it's implied. We're primed to believe that Bernie is bad if we tune into MSNBC. So, I mean, this financial incentive specifically, that's what's making news terrible. That's the cancer, ultimately. It is the goal of every, you know, person in a capitalist society to constantly maximize capital. So you have self-interested individuals driving this content, and then they also have the pressure from the network to, you know, do stories that lead to them getting better ratings. I mean, that's the issue here. It's the commodification of news. News shouldn't be about what makes you money. News should be about informing people, reporting the news as it comes, as a matter of fact. Now, you can have people editorialize. I think that there's room for commentary. Obviously, I'm a commentator. But, you know, the way that they present this information as supposedly neutral arbiters of the truth is false, right? So, I mean, everything that she's saying here, like, I get the sense that her criticism of corporate media in general, it's not shallow. Like, she wants to go deeper than surface level, but she misses the mark, ultimately. Because what she saw firsthand, I'm glad that it disturbed her. That shows that her moral compass is working. She doesn't necessarily know why these things are happening. That's really the overall thing that I'm picking up on when I read this. Like, she can't understand why the network has an incentive to just increase ratings. Why it's the case that news is even about making money. So, I mean, you have to think broader than just MSNBC as a company and their goal. Why is it that so many things in our capitalist society is about money? I mean, when it comes to healthcare, the goal isn't to cure people. The goal is to make money. Goldman Sachs literally asks if it's a sustainable business model to cure patients. And education, we're moving towards privatization. Donald Trump is trying to dismantle public education in favor of private education. Why? Because education is no longer about learning. It is about making money. This is exactly what neoliberalism has done. It's done for democracy in our country. And, of course, news is going to be vulnerable to that as well. So, I think that, you know, if you are going to criticize the media, you have to have a broad analysis and you have to fully understand the powers that they have and why it's more than just, oh, well, they want to increase ratings so they cover this in this weird skewed way. I think she's correct about that. But also, when you look at this it's far more powerful than even she believes or knows, right? They have the power to prime people to think about things without actually saying it. So, they can get you to think about a particular politician in a way without saying Bernie's bad, right? I mean, they certainly on MSMBC anyways, they criticize Bernie Sanders pretty explicitly. You had some people saying, oh, well, Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl. But oftentimes, they don't have to do that. They don't have to take it that far. They can prime you to think about Bernie in a certain way without saying what they want you to think. Like, for example, I can prime you to think about video games and Ratchet & Clank and controller and an X, a circle, triangle. You're thinking about PlayStation. Not because I said PlayStation, but because I tried to invoke an image in your mind that gets you to think of PlayStation. Or if I say red, round, bouncy, you think of a bull that didn't have to say ball to get you to think of a ball. It's called priming. On top of that, they can set the agenda, raise the salience of how you view issues. So if you think that an issue isn't very important, the media can literally elevate that issue salience and get you to think it's more important than it is in actuality. Like, the media is so powerful. It's why books like manufacturing consent, which are very thick, have been written about this very topic because they influence a lot of what happens in this country. So, you know, I really like what she's saying here. I give her credit. I commend her for speaking out because, you know, when you do something like this, when you burn that bridge, you're not going to have an easy time finding a job in this industry unless she's planning to go independent. But I mean, I hope that what she does is really research specifically what that cancer she was referring to is because I think that she's misdiagnosing this issue. I think that she has to broaden her level of analysis and really look at what's wrong with our news model in America all the way around. Like, it's not just that they're trying to get ratings, it's that we have commodified news. News shouldn't worry about ratings. News companies should not be owned by large, multi-billion-dollar companies who have interests, who lobby the government for very specific policies. So, I'll leave that there. You know, again, I don't want to shit on everything that she's saying here because I think it takes a lot of courage and I think she's brave for doing this. But, you know, what she's saying, honestly, isn't that shocking and the revelations that we've received from Jen Yuga, Crystal Ball and Ed Schultz have been a lot more telling with regard to the practices of MSNBC. This is exactly what, you know, we'd expect from them. But she's right that it's not just MSNBC. This is all corporate-owned media corporate advertisers. I mean, it's all one club and you're not part of it. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy decided to give us a rundown of what he refers to as diplomatic malpractice basically referring to Donald Trump's attempt to stage a coup in Venezuela. Now, he's not necessarily angry with Trump because Trump staged the coup in the first place. He's mad that Donald Trump was not successful at said coup. And as a result, he is revealing the details of that coup and where he thinks Donald Trump went wrong and why it should have been differently. So this is what he tweets out. Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a hearing on the Trump Administration's Venezuela policy. Short story, it's been a case study in diplomatic malpractice and I want to tell you the quick story of how Trump's bungling has empowered a brutal dictator. In early 2019, an opportunity presented itself. Maduro's re-election was a fraud and the world knew it. The charismatic opposition leader Juan Guaidó stood ready to capitalize and restore democracy to the nation, that's rich. The winning play was right in front of us. Bring together all of Latin America behind a transition or new free elections and take the time to work with or neutralize Maduro's patrons, Russia, Cuba and to a lesser extent, China. But Trump couldn't talk to Cuba because Obama, Putin, had Trump wrapped around his finger and all Trump wanted to talk to China about was the trade deal. So he made no meaningful effort to move them and all three stood solidly behind Maduro. Then, Trump and his Latin America Hawks got itchy. He recognized Guaidó as the leader of the nation, thinking that would propel Venezuelans and Maduro friendly military leaders to Guaidó's side. In fact, the opposite happened. By putting Elliott Abrams, the symbol of American imperialism in Latin America in charge of Venezuela and by acting largely alone, Trump helped Maduro rally the military and much of the country against America and cast Guaidó as a U.S. pawn. Accurate. Then it got real embarrassing. In April 2019 we tried to organize a kind of coup but it became a debacle. Everyone who told us they'd rally to Guaidó got cold feet and the plan failed publicly and spectacularly making America look foolish and weak. Since then, it's been running comedy of errors. For instance, Bolton scuttled promising transition talks led by Norway in August 2019 saying the time for negotiations is over. Then this March Pompeo unveiled a transition plan that is a carbon copy of the one we killed. Now, having wasted a year trying to work on a transition plan, Guaidó is boycotting the upcoming legislative elections. So what then? Keep recognizing Guaidó as the nation's leader even if he doesn't control the military, government, or even hold office. It's a total disaster. After a year and a half, Maduro is stronger, American influence is weaker and there is no viable path to restore democracy in Venezuela. A case study in international relations malpractice. So there is quite a bit to unpack there but first and foremost I have to point out the obvious contradiction that I'm sure you spotted as well. In response to what the world viewed as a fraudulent election, the way that they tried to right that wrong and to bring democracy to Venezuela was by installing a puppet who was not democratically elected. So you care about democracy and the way that you bring democracy to Venezuela is by staging a coup and putting someone in power who wasn't actually elected by the people. I mean the contradiction is obvious. You sound like a fool and you don't even realize it. Now in the second tweet he initially stated that his concern was for democracy but by tweet number seven he admitted that they were outright trying to stage a coup which by definition is not democratic mind you. So I mean he starts off with the assumption that you know this was all done for altruistic reasons. We care about democracy in Venezuela. We care about the people of Venezuela and we just want to bring them democracy but the solutions that you apply to that situation to right the wrongs of authoritarianism you introduce more authoritarianism. I mean it's just it's ridiculous and I'm curious because he's concerned about Maduro being a brutal dictator but why aren't you concerned about other dictatorships Saudi Arabia. They literally behead people in public for being atheists. Robert Duterte of the Philippines. He is extra judicially killing his own civilians. The Rohingya in Myanmar being systematically repressed. I mean what is happening is tantamount to genocide. The same could be true for the Uyghurs in China they're being locked in concentration camps. So I mean I'm wondering why it's the case that we seem to only be concerned with the human rights of citizens if the country that they're living in or the brutal dictator that we're talking about is overseeing a country with a lot of natural resources. In the case of Venezuela they have the number one oil reserve in the world. So I mean let's be honest here. We don't care about the people of Venezuela. We do not care about human rights. If we cared about human rights we'd recognize Palestine as a state but what we care about is having access to Venezuela's oil reserves and of course Juan Guaido would have granted the United States access to said oil because if we help him get to power of course he's gonna pay it forward and let us in some of that sweet sweet oil. Like it's disgusting in the way that he flippantly admits that the United States government was trying to stage a coup in another country. I mean there's no consequences like international organizations aren't going to look into this. What about the UN oh wait no because we have veto power and we can control the UN effectively. I mean the situation is so disgusting and like let's assume for a moment that even if altruistically speaking we genuinely wanted to liberate Venezuela even if we weren't concerned with the oil. If you let the U.S. military into another country do you honestly believe that it's competent enough to not make matters worse I mean we're not going to help them out. I can assure you that if we were to enter to bring democracy to Venezuela we're going to make matters worse and if you don't believe me ask the people of Iraq, ask the people of Afghanistan, ask the people of Syria whether or not we're helping to liberate them. I think they'd have a very different answer than you if you reside in America. He then put American imperialism in quotes as if it's not about American imperialism it's not about oil resources it's just about us wanting to save democracy and definitely not trying to steal their oil and he made it seem as if it's bad that the people of Venezuela woke up to the reality that Juan Guaido was in fact a pawn of the United States which he was. I mean this isn't the first time that the United States has installed puppet dictators around the world. We did this to Iran that's why Iran hates us now. We installed the Shah. We overthrew their democratically elected government and installed the Shah. I mean you have to understand that with America whenever we start talking about human rights we're not serious we don't care about human rights. If we cared about human rights we wouldn't be droning people in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Somalia but really when we're talking about human rights within the context of U.S. foreign policy what we're really talking about is wanting to invade war because we only cite human rights concerns if that country is some sort of interest to the United States military and the fact that a democratic senator just admitted this is despicable the correct stance here is not to be angry at Donald Trump because he bungled this coup. The correct and appropriate response from an opposition party worth a damn is to scream at him, yell at him expose him for trying this coup in the first place but Chris Murphy isn't doing that because he wanted this coup. Both parties were involved at the State of the Union this year if you'll recall when Donald Trump referenced Juan Guaido Nancy Pelosi stood up and cheered Nancy Pelosi I believe if I'm remembering correctly I think that was this year held a press conference with Juan Guaido so both parties are in complete agreement here that they want into Venezuela so this is honestly despicable this should make everyone feel disgusted with the state of American politics where both parties are in lockstep when it comes to overthrowing another country I don't care if you think that Maduro is a dictator stay out of their business stop meddling in other countries affairs because while you complain about Russian meddling we're meddling everywhere around the world we have drone strikes going on we have hundreds of military bases across the world and we're the ones concerned about meddling how about we stop meddling in other countries affairs how about we stop being imperialistic but we can't do that and to even say what I'm saying in America it's controversial like to say that our country is actually the aggressors to say that we're the ones destabilizing the world we're the biggest threat to international peace that's actually controversial mainstream media wouldn't bring anyone on to say what I'm saying right now and if they do it's rare the US empire is completely out of control what we're doing in other countries has to stop but it's not we've been at war with Iraq and Afghanistan for how long now people who were born on 9-11 are now old enough to fight in the wars that were started over 9-11 it's just our priorities are so out of whack well we have an eviction crisis facing the United States of America 100 and almost 60,000 Americans dead due to COVID-19 people dying every single year thousands of people dying because they don't have healthcare and this is what we care about invading Venezuela staging a coup in Venezuela because we want their oil just say it I mean I'm not being conspiratorial I'm not speculating by saying that we want their oil because John Bolton admitted that they want the oil on Fox News he said the quiet part out loud he said wouldn't it be nice if US oil companies were able to get in there it'd be great for US oil companies it'd be great for Venezuelan oil companies we know exactly what this is all about so you know the fact that we don't have an opposition party trying to stop this from happening really is the most disturbing part because I expect this type of warmongering from Republicans but we're supposed to expect better from Democrats but they've shifted so far to the right on foreign policy so what we're going to do is stop is blasphemy to them so we now have what I believe is the first poll out of Kentucky since their June primary between Charles Booker and Amy McGrath and it's looking pretty good for Mitch McConnell not for Amy McGrath shocker so as Alexander Bolton of the Hill reports Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is leading his Democratic opponent Amy McGrath shows the GOP leader ahead 53% to 36% 84% of Republicans pulled by morning consult said they support McConnell while 79% of Democrats said they back McGrath 12% of Democrats said they also support McConnell that's actually shocking the GOP leader has also more support among independents than McGrath with 45% backing McGrath and 33% favoring McGrath the survey of 700 likely voters in Kentucky reported on by the Louisville Career Journal was conducted online from July 24th to August 2nd and at a margin of error of 3.5% the poll shows McConnell in a much stronger position than a Democratic one published last month by Garrett Hart Yang Research Group showing McConnell ahead of McGrath by only 4 points 45% to 41% a civics poll from June showed McConnell leading McGrath 53% to 33% has been a fundraising magnet bringing in 16.9 million in 2019 and 30.2 million so far this year in a bid to deny McConnell from winning a 7th Senate term McConnell by comparison has raised 37.7 million for his reelection since winning his last race against Democrat Allison Lenderman Grimes in 2014 now I think that those last couple of paragraphs there really tell you why the Democratic Party establishment with Amy McGrath early on it's not just because they're ideologically aligned with her it's because she can raise a lot of money because I mean she has no principles she has no shame she's not afraid to beg millionaires and billionaires for money she'll do that and as a result if she can fundraise a lot that also helps other Democrats because Democrats often times fundraise for each other so they want someone who's going to bring in a lot of cash which is why they supported her and she's not afraid to do anything else now this race theoretically speaking it shouldn't be that difficult like in theory Mitch McConnell should be beatable because up until I think 2020 he was the least popular senator in the United States of America it wasn't until 2020 when Susan Collins actually surpassed him as the least popular senator in America but I mean this should be a doable thing it's not going to be easy because this is a deeply red state and Mitch McConnell is incredibly effective but it still shouldn't be seemingly impossible but here we are with a 17 point deficit to make up for Democrats now I'm rooting for Amy McGrath but I was really out of it that we have to get Charles Booker because Charles Booker there's no question about it he would have had a better shot now I'm not going to sit here and smugly say well Charles Booker definitely would have won because I don't know that none of us know that right where the nominee it would be really difficult I think that the you know the deck would be stacked against him however having said that looking at data from Kentucky you can't deny that if we were trying to be the strongest in the strongest possible position with the strongest possible candidate to take on Mitch McConnell it wasn't Amy McGrath it was Charles Booker let's go back to that civics poll that was cited so this was conducted between June 13th and June 15th and they surveyed 298 registered voters in Kentucky so in hypothetical matchups as they noted Amy McGrath was losing to Mitch McConnell by 20 points and look Charles Booker was also losing to Mitch McConnell although he was losing by 14 points Amy McGrath was losing by 20 points so it's still be difficult for Charles Booker to beat McConnell but that's less of a deficit to make up we'd still be better off than the position that we're in now now when it comes to favorability Mitch McConnell had a net favorability rating of minus 5 whereas Amy McGrath had a net favorability rating of minus 35 so she was less favorable than Mitch McConnell now Charles Booker on the other hand had a net favorability rating of plus 4 so he was viewed overall more favorably than Mitch McConnell and Amy McGrath although there is a caveat here 38% of people were unsure with Charles Booker meaning that they probably didn't really know about him so if they knew more about him then perhaps that number could have changed but what we do know is that of the people that knew Charles Booker according to that poll they liked him he had a positive favorability rating he was the only person out of those three politicians who was in the positive and not in the negative and on top of that there was a lot of grassroots support for Charles Booker that just isn't there with Amy McGrath he activated a base of Democratic Party voters that weren't previously activated he had a different strategy a strategy different than the person from 2014 Allison Lundergan Grimes who lost to Mitch McConnell so if running as a centrist Republican light candidate didn't work in 2014 why is Amy McGrath thinking that it's going to work in 2020 like it doesn't make sense now apparently Amy McGrath according to early polls out of Kentucky pulled better against against Mitch McConnell and even beat him by a point when she really emphasized term limits in the Senate so if she pushes for term limits then that can be her saving grace because in Kentucky that's something that really resonates with them so my advice to her is to actually shift to the left replicate Charles Booker's strategy because whatever he was doing was working he was more favorable and scream the loudest you possibly can about term limits you have to throw out all the stops because even if you simply convince enough voters that you're better than Mitch McConnell which Amy McGrath is better than Mitch McConnell you still have to have a really big win like you can't just eek by because there's going to be voter suppression this is a deep red state and Mitch McConnell has a lot of institutional power and support to where people in Kentucky can stack the deck in his favor so you can't just win you have to win comfortably and I just don't think that Amy McGrath is up to the task now look I mean this earnestly I wish her luck I hope she beats Mitch McConnell again he's got to be defeated he's one of the most destructive politicians ever so he's got to go but I can't help but feel frustrated that you know we had someone who was more I don't know someone who was better positioned to beat Mitch McConnell and Democrats just fucking they threw all of that away this opportunity that was unique that presented itself they said no we're going to go with the uninspiring Democrat who's a centrist because she can raise money that tells us that they don't necessarily care about winning they care about fundraising more than anything it's just it's so frustrating because they should know like any Democrat in power Chuck Schumer especially should know the immense amount of power and influence that Mitch McConnell has and if he wants to be the Senate majority leader which would be awful as well but if he wants to oust Mitch McConnell and have Democrats take back the Senate then I mean you should want the stronger candidate to win in theory but like Democrats convinced themselves that it's the you know more milk toast option the Republican candidate who is going to be best suited to take on the Republican it just look it's not going to work I'd be surprised if she won but I would also be happy if she won but it's it's just we have a bigger ditch to dig ourselves out from since we went with Amy McGrath so we'll see what happens but certainly if she doesn't turn things around she's not going to be able to make up that deficit and Mitch McConnell will be re-elected for another six years which would be a disaster especially if he remains the Senate majority leader so I hope they take this race seriously but something tells me Democrats are going to fuck this up look folks I'll be perfectly honest with you I have been a little bit more cynical than usual lately particularly because of this year and look I know what you're thinking I feel the same way but I mean it just it feels like you know humanity isn't up to the task of dealing with some of the biggest issues we face like climate change and when you consider the fact that we see every single day it seems like a new video of a Karen throwing the fit because he or she won't wear a mask or you see people still following Donald Trump even after he's bungled this pandemic and you see people on our side you know in the Democratic Party primary voting against their own self-interest for an imbecile like Joe Biden like you can't help but just feel like nothing is ever going to change you get better having said that though I do want to share with you a different perspective for this video and then we'll get back to being doomer because there's a couple of polls that are kind of helping to make me see that maybe we're not as bad off as I was thinking at least from the standpoint of you know American citizens right our public officials are trash I will maintain that they're garbage our institutions are failing us our politicians aren't doing a good job but I will say you know Americans know what the right policies are for the most part so this poll from Hill and Harris X found that 82% of Americans actually support a national mask mandate and only 18% oppose it so this is actually really encouraging to hear because I was under the impression that the numbers wouldn't be that high like if I had to guess I'd say a slim majority of Americans support a national mask mandate because if you look at like the Facebook comments underneath a particular article or YouTube comments which you should never do like it seems like much more people are anti-mask than they are in reality but really what we're seeing is a vocal minority it's presenting this type of skewed image of what people actually believe I mean just the other day I covered a video of Judge Janine Piro being anti-mask after she was previously pro-mask so we see all these viral videos and we see Republicans respond in these groups saying I'm not gonna wear a mask and this is tyranny but overall I think that people are persuading everyone else to do the right thing like the right side in this debate which shouldn't even be a debate and I hesitate to call it that but I mean it's America we politicize everything but I think that the right side ultimately is winning out and not just with regard to a national mask mandate which is absolutely the right policy but with the perception of how our government Trump in particular is handling COVID-19 a poll from NPR and Ipsos found that when it comes to the United States is handling of COVID-19 in comparison with the rest of the world two-thirds of Americans think that we're actually handling it worse than other countries with 41% saying they believe we're handling it much worse now additionally a survey monkey and NBC news poll asked people who they trust when it comes to COVID-19 and a majority of Americans at 51% do in fact trust Dr. Fauci in spite of Trump's attempts to discredit him with 29% distrusting him now when it comes to Donald Trump these results are almost mirrored with less than a third of voters at 31% trusting Trump compared to 59% who don't trust him so make no mistake about it that's still too large of a number like 31% of Americans trusting Donald Trump is way too high but understand that a majority of Americans are correct here they're you know rightfully skeptical of Donald Trump and they're trusting Dr. Fauci more they support a national mask mandate this is a good sign right the common sense isn't entirely gone in America it's still there you sometimes just kind of have to look for it right and encourage people to practice common sense more frequently so yeah this is this is encouraging but there's another poll that I want to look at here because during the Democratic Party primary support for Medicare for All was actually decreasing a little bit as you know we worked to increase public support for Medicare for All between 2016 and 2019 individuals like Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden who were constantly fear mongering over Medicare for All actually managed to be successful at driving down support for Medicare for All and while support for Medicare for All was decreasing support for a public option was rising so you know as someone who is a proponent of Medicare for All a purist that's my number one litmus test I was absolutely distraught by those results right but now during a pandemic we are being proven right and even as people casted their votes for Joe Biden during the Democratic Party primaries they still supported Medicare for All according to exit polls which tells us that they weren't necessarily voting for him because they believed in him and the policies that he's espousing they just wanted someone who they believed was the most electable better suited to take on Donald Trump and they mistakenly believed the mainstream media now I say mistakenly loosely because at the time with the information that we had it didn't seem like Joe Biden could actually beat Donald Trump but COVID-19 really did change everything but I mean people didn't necessarily determine who they were going to support based on policies they just voted based on electability because that's what MSNBC and CNN constantly talked about but now during a pandemic I'm happy to report unsurprisingly now that more people than ever in America need healthcare Medicare for All is very much still popular so as Jerry Martin of Newsweek reports Democrats overwhelmingly threw their support behind Medicare for All according to data released Tuesday from a Hill-Harris X poll increasing support for the national health insurance program may be linked to the coronavirus pandemic many businesses have closed permanently leaving their former employees with no employment based coverage Medicare for All which would create a nationwide single-payer health insurance plan for all Americans was the cornerstone of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders suspended presidential campaign Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has not embraced the Medicare for All platform although many of Biden's potential voters support the program out of 948 registered voters who participated in the poll 87% of Democrats said they were in favor of Medicare for All and dependent voters also lean towards the idea with 69% supporting the concept less than half of the Republicans surveyed agreed with the idea with only 43% supporting providing health insurance to all Americans in total Medicare for All was supported by 67% of registered voters and opposed by 33% voters between the ages of 35 to 49 showed the greatest support for Medicare for All with 80% of that demographic saying they were in favor of the program surveyed voters between 18 to 34 also thought highly of the idea with 78% of them giving Medicare for All their support the Hill-Harris X poll carried a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3.18 percentage points so I think that this is encouraging to see because what it tells us is that Americans aren't too far gone like we're not beyond redemption like we can still have nice things because most Americans have bought into the idea that they deserve nice things they support Medicare for All they are you know competent in determining who to support and trust during a pandemic they're reasonable with regard to you know trusting Fauci over Donald Trump and that's encouraging to see the task that we have ahead of us however is getting them to not vote against their own self-interest so if we get them to agree with us on the policy that's step one but I think the hardest step is getting them to actually vote for politicians who agree with them because politicians are out of step with what voters want so how do we combat the mass of propaganda that they are constantly being bombarded with I think that Bernie Sanders would have won the Democratic primary comfortably had mainstream media not been completely biased against him but because for so long they you know talked about electability this, electability that and Bernie's just not electable and Bernie didn't really actually challenge that narrative sufficiently people believed it so they voted against their own self-interest because even if they may not support Joe Biden they would rather go with someone who they don't agree with on everything than risk losing to Donald Trump that's what we saw so you know the goal here is to not just get them to agree with us on the policy but to actually get them to do what makes that policy a reality and that really is I think the struggle with you know leftism in America that's what we have to do that's the task ahead of us it's not impossible I mean people agree more with us than they do Republicans or Democrats but yet they keep winning so what do we do how do we combat that and there's a lot of approaches that we have to take but ultimately that's the goal this tells us you know what we need to do convince those people who already agree with us most Americans that they have to stop voting against their own self-interest there's no right or wrong answer to that it's tough propaganda is going to be louder than you know what we're saying it's going to be more persuasive than indie media but nonetheless we at least know what we have to do we at least know where to look in terms of like shifting you know the country it's just a matter of getting that massive Americans who agree with us mobilized and activate them politically and get them to vote for politicians that agree with them so yeah I thought that these polls that all came out this week were pretty encouraging and when we don't really have that much good news lately I'm going to take anything I can find and this is certainly good news folks I can't even begin to describe the news that I have so I'm just going to say it Corey Bush just won her primary she defeated an incumbent Lacey Clay whose family has been in office for 50 years she beat him it was a narrow victory but nonetheless she's going to be going to congress this is a blue district she will be another member of the squad and I'm honestly like I'm speechless right now this is such a huge colossal victory for the left I can't even begin to describe it this is someone who is going to be an advocate for Medicare for all an advocate for defunding the police an advocate for the people and she's actually going to represent that district adequately I'm kind of at a loss for words right now because this is such good news it almost seems like it's unfathomable in 2020 with how much bad news we've been getting but this goes to show you that the left is in fact rising Corey Bush just won I don't know what to say I don't even know what to say I'm genuinely excited about this one of the best candidates running for congress if many of you remember she actually ran for congress back in 2018 but was defeated she then kept putting in work putting in the effort and time canvassing in that district she never stopped and it paid off and I can't believe this last year after the knockdown the house documentary aired on Netflix I brought her Amy Volella and Paula Jean Spurgeon on my program and out of all of them two of them decided to run for congress again and 100% of them have won their primaries I don't I can't process this what is happening right now it seems like we're winning this is what winning feels like that's a good feeling I'm going to hang on to this because if you're a left winger you don't get to field this very often but she is almost certainly going to be a member of congress now because she's winning this district this was a deeply blue district and really the primary was everything man a grassroots candidate who ran unapologetically as a progressive she just beat a political dynasty there are no words to really describe what I'm feeling currently I have chills you know down the back of my neck this feels like a dream Cory Bush will be in congress wow wow now the good news doesn't stop there but before we get to that I'm going to get to some bad news I'm going to talk about the losses because there were other elections and I want to end on a more positive note so Washington state also held their primaries today and we got quite a bit of bad news out of Washington state but not entirely so Pramila Jayapal of course won her primary overwhelmingly it wasn't even close she's definitely someone who I want to see back in congress but there were a number of progressives who were running that unfortunately didn't make it so I was really really rooting for Jason Kahl and Rebecca Parson and unfortunately both of them lost their primaries so let's get to some specifics here according to the Seattle Times Jason Kahl lost he received 12% of the vote to Timothy Hazelows 14% Parson the incumbent has 52% although at the time I record this I will say that Jason Kahl is really close and we're going to wait on mail-in ballots to officially call this election because this is the top two elections so this isn't just where one Democrat and one Republican make it to the general it's super close he's down by a little more than 2,000 votes he could still technically pull this off and if he pulled this off would be a phenomenal person to be in congress but you know this would be a difficult a difficult race to win if he made it to the general with Brick Larson so we'll watch this race we'll kind of stick a pin in this and come back to it but for now it doesn't look great but you know hold out hope not all hope is lost just yet when it comes to the 5th congressional district of Washington I actually interviewed Chris Armitage on the program but a few weeks ago he inexplicably exited the race suspended his campaign after he reports that he was experiencing you know a lot of mental stress and you know allegations of misconduct had come up so he exited the race so unsurprisingly he lost but you know this looks like Kathy McMorris Rogers is poised to win although we'll see if Dave Wilson can pull it off I admit I'm not familiar with this politics but we'll see in district 6 of Washington Derek Kilmer and Elizabeth Kreiselmeyer have made it into the top 2 Rebecca Parson finished in 3rd and it looks like she has a lot of ground to make up if she's going to make it into the top 2 and it doesn't look like she is going to be able to pull this off unfortunately phenomenal candidate LGBTQ Democratic Socialist checks all the boxes if you're a lefty so I'm really disappointed about this one because Rebecca Parson is you know she's someone I was watching but you know she's certainly she's going to be back she is a force in politics and when it comes to district 10 the district formally held by Denny Heck he you know announced that he is not going to be running for reelection turns out he was running for a different position I believe attorney general I'm not sure and approximately 10,000 people chose to run in this district originally Joshua Collins running an EW the essential workers party I mean he got trounced a lot of voters apparently felt betrayed because he said he was running as a Democrat but then decided to run as an essential workers party basically creating his own banner and I'm not necessarily sure it seemed like there were a lot of names jumping in that were more well funded so you know the race got tough for him but I will say overall that even if the candidate who I initially supported didn't make it in I still am relatively happy with the results because Beth Doglio made it into the top two and she has been consistently shifting to the left you know she used to take corporate pack money she is no longer doing that she is now unequivocally endorsing Medicare for all on top of that she was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal so you know I'm going to be rooting for her although based on these results it seems as if she has quite a bit of room to make up in terms of beating Marilyn Strickland who I do not support she is actually someone who is not impressive at all she doesn't support Medicare for all she is one of those Democrats who say they support quote unquote access but of course she will tell you she thinks it's a right but you know maybe with everyone else out of the race and support consolidated hopefully Beth Doglio will have a chance if she were to win she is absolutely like without question an improvement over Denny Heck so you know not all is lost with this race but you know it's just a different result than we initially had hoped for or expected and you know it's not too bad I'll take Beth Doglio I think she's pretty she's pretty solid now Arizona also held their Democratic party primaries today as well and I was rooting for Eva Putzova in the first congressional district she was running against Tom O'Halloran who is the incumbent he's a corporate Democrat and we don't actually have all of the results at the time I record this with 45% of precincts reporting she is trailing him albeit by not too much but she has quite a bit of votes to make up Tom O'Halloran is in the lead with 56.6% of the vote and Eva Putzova has 43.4% so at this point in time with that much precincts reporting it's a sizable number but there's still more it's not looking great although if there is any developments if she ends up winning I will update you in the comments so if you're on our YouTube channel watching it there be sure to check because this is definitely another really phenomenal candidate she's also someone that I brought on the program was really impressed by her now I want to talk about the third congressional district of Missouri this is a seat that's interesting because we're rooting for the incumbent in this instance Rashida Tlaib so she actually had a pretty strong primary challenger I mean polls didn't necessarily show that she was in danger but her primary challenger was raising a lot of money we all know that since Rashida Tlaib ruffles a lot of feathers you know Democrats wanted to take this opportunity to kick her out in favor of someone else who would you know not rock the boat and go along with the establishment thankfully we can all breathe easier because Rashida Tlaib has won she won her primary and she's making it back to Congress so in the next congressional session we're going to see Congresswoman Cori Bush serve alongside Rashida Tlaib unbelievable and on top of that Jamal Bowman Mondair Jones will be there and we may see Kauri Eastman Pauli Jean Swearingen we have really made a lot of strides in this election cycle we lost the Democratic presidential primary but in terms of what we're doing in these house races and in local races I mean socialists and progressives are really doing a great job we're unseating incumbents left and right it's a different game now and if we're doing this good if we made that big of an improvement since 2018 imagine how good we'll do in upcoming midterms so this is such a good sign again the biggest shock we're making it in again don't count out Jason Kahl yet we'll wait and see I hope that maybe the results will change if mail-in ballots come in but he's so close that I still feel optimistic even if he loses because if he doesn't pull this off I have no doubt in my mind that he'll be back and win but really I want everyone to just take a moment to soak in this accomplishment Cori Bush is going to be a member of Congress and she is someone who I absolutely can rely on who we all can rely on this truly is it's so remarkable and what she managed to do in defeating a family that's held that seat being progressive favoring Medicare for all it's just it's astonishing congratulations to Cori Bush on this well-earned victory she worked so hard for this her staff have been working immediately since she lost in 2018 like as soon as they got the results they picked up the pens they picked up the phones they started organizing immediately after for this victory so you know Cori Bush did a great job but her team they also carried through this victory carried her to victory I just I don't even know what to say this is big in an interview with Yahoo News Joe Biden was asked about his mental fitness and whether or not he had taken a cognitive test and his answer was downright humiliating and I'm saying this right now if anyone who has connections to Joe Biden's team is watching this hide him away until November 4th because if we have more interviews like this the results like the polling is not going to remain the same take a look at how bad this interview was Mr. Vice President your opponent in this election President Trump has made your mental state a campaign topic and when asked in June if you've been tested for cognitive decline you've responded that you're constantly tested in effect because you're in situations like this on the campaign trail but please clarify specifically have you taken a cognitive no I haven't taken a test come on man that's like saying you before you got in this program you take a test where you're taking cocaine or not what do you think huh what do you say to President Trump who brags about his test and makes your mental state an issue for voters well if he can't figure out the difference between an elephant and a lion I don't know what the hell he's talking about did you watch that look come on man I know you're trying to goad me but I mean I'm so forward looking to have an opportunity to sit with the President or stand with the President in debates there are going to be plenty of time and by the way as I joke with him you know I shouldn't say it I'm going to say something I don't I probably shouldn't say anyway I am very willing to let the American public judge my physical as well as my mental fitness and you know to make a judgment about who I am I mean the attack writes itself you know this will be featured in the next attack ad from Donald Trump that was embarrassing like it genuinely was cringe worthy it made me feel embarrassed for Joe Biden and you can see that he was getting visibly irritated because he was being asked about his mental fitness first of all you shouldn't be irritated by that or be taken by surprise by that type of question because you know this is going to come up it's exactly why your staffer should have helped to coach you to have an answer for this type of question and Donald Trump has been hitting you for this and not to mention let's address the elephant in the room it really looks like you are in cognitive decline I think that what we're seeing here is probably stages of dementia I'm not going to diagnose him but there is concern there with Joe Biden's cognitive functions now having said that there is concern with Donald Trump's cognitive functions as well so if I'm Joe Biden any time this is brought up I'm going to flip it I'm going to turn it around and I'm going to say you know Donald Trump said this he is doing this here's X, Y and Z reasons why I think we should look at his cognitive functions but I mean you can tell that he was completely not prepared to deal with that question he was taken aback and he got angry he started to laugh and you know he just said come on man that was really bizarre and this is why the strategy to hide Joe Biden away they have to keep at it like every once in a while they'll let him out right and then he'll say something stupid then they lock him back up we all forget about that they bring him back out a couple of weeks later he says something stupid again they lock him back up if you do not lock Joe Biden up for the entirety of this election then we will continue to have moments like this that are completely humiliating and embarrassing and so much is at stake that we can't afford for Donald Trump to get another four years because Joe Biden is an imbecile now it's frustrating because had we gone with the person who's actually competent who's not in cognitive decline Bernie Sanders this wouldn't be something that we'd have to worry about I think that Joe Biden got lucky in the sense that the conditions surrounding this year changed the election right I mean it's an entirely different race because of COVID-19 because of the economic situation that we find ourselves in so had that situation remain the same though pre-COVID-19 I don't believe Joe Biden would win I think Donald Trump would be the favorite but because of COVID-19 he got a really large boost because when things go bad people tend to blame the president and in this instance rightfully so but he can't be allowed to squander this opportunity that he was given right Bernie Sanders I think would have been the best bet to take on Donald Trump but in the event we got a Bernie Sanders Democratic nominee and you know COVID-19 happened and people are dealing with a pandemic and a possible economic depression coming you know a looming eviction crisis Bernie Sanders would be much further ahead even than Joe Biden and he's currently overall according to aggregate polling data doing really well right in hypothetical matchups he's even polling well in Texas but if he keeps opening his big mouth that will change so this is why I am not necessarily ready to say that you know it's a foregone conclusion Trump is going to lose because Joe Biden consistently puts his foot in his mouth and at these debates like whatever Joe Biden staffers gave to him to make him perform really well in that head-to-head debate with Bernie Sanders they have to do that again but all the time like keep him drugged up and I'm not I'm not saying that he is drugged up right I don't know if he's popping pills but what I am saying is that whatever they did whatever they said to him however they coached him anything that they did if they gave him extra sugar I don't know do that again every single day when he's going to make a public appearance otherwise he's gonna face plant and Trump is gonna get another four years Trump losing is not a foregone conclusion right the future is still unwritten and things can change so if Joe Biden fucks this up then every single person in the country should be absolutely furious with him and the Democratic Party and any Democratic Party official who pushed for Joe Biden so keep him hiding don't bring him out unless you absolutely need to I mean I think that every once in a while sure once in a couple of weeks that's reasonable bring him out for an interview um but really coach him like you have to hype him up script his answers if you have to because if you have more moments like this Jesus Christ um it's gonna be a disaster come November 3rd well folks we need to have a really serious long and nuanced conversation about Shahid Butar's campaign because as some of you may have heard there have been allegations that have recently surfaced both about the campaign itself and Shahid Butar as a person and it gives me no pleasure to talk about this but I can't just pretend as if these claims haven't been made because then I'd be no better than the corporate Democrats who I lambasted for not actually addressing Tahirid's claims against Joe Biden having said that this is not you know a comparable situation to Joe Biden and Tahirid so let's just get that out of the way these allegations are not as serious nonetheless they are still serious and I think that you know I owe it to my viewers and I owe it to Shahid Butar as someone who has promoted and endorsed him to try to vet these claims and try to get to the bottom of this try to find out where the truth is now I will say that you know as someone who supports Shahid Butar um I have to disclose that I do have a pro Shahid Butar bias so in the event you think that I'm interpreting these details in a skewed manner then certainly you have to take into consideration my political preference here I support him over Nancy Pelosi and I want him to win so understand my position but even if I am a fan of Shahid Butar that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not going to try as much as I possibly can to be impartial and exercise objectivity you know this is complicated there's a lot of moving parts to this story and it's still a developing story to a degree but you know with that in mind I'm going to try to do my best to present you the facts as clearly and truthfully as I possibly can and then make a judgment on my opinion based on the facts that I presented you with so there's two separate claims here the first claim is that he sexually harassed someone who was within his social circle the second claim is that staffers are alleging that he mistreated them particularly the women so since both of these claims separately are huge we're going to kind of tackle this in two parts so we're going to first look at the claim of sexual harassment made by Elizabeth Croydon who made this allegation in a medium post now this is someone who is a self-proclaimed left-wing activist and Bernie Sanders supporter and she's also a comedian and she's known Shahid Butar for years so let's look at her story what she alleges and what Shahid Butar says in response along with people who know Shahid Butar and Elizabeth Croydon so this is what Elizabeth Croydon writes I have known Shahid Butar for nearly 20 years when I met Shahid in 2003 he lived in a communal home in DC which served as a hub for freelance opportunities in activism and the arts I'd go there to network and see other artists despite the fact that Shahid consistently made me feel uncomfortable Shahid repeatedly pursued me for sex in our earliest interactions Shahid would dance up to me at social events brush up against me in a sexual way and make comments about my body including weight gain or loss I directly and clearly rejected his advances I physically distanced myself from him at parties turned down invitations informed a friend I felt uncomfortable avoided being alone with him and eventually stopped going to the communal home until he moved out Shahid let me know he was sexually available to me for years one specific incident happened at Shahid's communal home I had gone to the kitchen to get a drink when Shahid sneaked up behind me with his body and got so close and brushed up against my breasts he blocked me in so I could not move away and gave me a weird smile that unnerved me this was during the time that he was repeatedly harassing me for sex although he didn't say anything to me this interaction was meant to intimidate me he eventually let me pass I made it very clear I was not interested nor would I tolerate further advances and I left the house another instance that is intimately embarrassing and traumatic for me to talk about happened about a decade later after a guerrilla poet insurgency meeting slash performance a small group of us sat around at a table to catch up including Shahid one of my friends asked how long it had been since people had had sex others answered I responded that I had been celibate for some years Shahid's response shocked and embarrassed me oh my god that is way too long how can you go without sex that long that's insane I couldn't do it you poor thing it must be so hard I told him that my celibacy was a voluntary decision because it helped me cope with surviving sexual assaults batteries and other misconduct I felt degraded, nauseated and revolted that he would mock me in front of our friends who looked to me as an outspoken voice for women later when the group walked back to the communal house where Shahid used to live he said I can't believe you aren't getting it Shahid turned to the woman that he was with and said can you believe Liz has been celibate that long honey oh my god what is wrong with you don't worry Liz will find someone to fuck you someone will do it someone has to fuck you Liz I'd do it but I'm taken I turned around to see Shahid smiling spitefully as he had done years ago in his kitchen as if to taunt me for rejecting him years before I repeated that celibacy was my choice and asked him to let it go once we got to the house Shahid again started telling people that I hadn't been fucked in a long time and asked other men if they wanted to have sex with me he had to recruit someone to do it I reminded him I was a survivor of several sexual assaults and batteries while ridiculing me was being framed as humorous it never had a humorous tone I did my best to hold my composure but the truth is my PTSD had been triggered the more he taunted me the more painful and vivid memories of the sexual assaults flooded my mind I remember crying all night until my eyes were swollen because of the contempt and degradation I was shown in front of other women now that is the extent of the allegations she detailed in that medium post but she does make more allegations against Shahid Butar but before we get to that I do want to get to his immediate response that he issued after this medium post was made he writes a former acquaintance recently provided a statement on twitter regarding sexual harassment these claims are false every survivor must be heard and I hope to be allowed the same opportunity to be heard as well sexual harassment is despicable sexual harassment must be exposed I am committed to putting survivors' interests first before my own these claims have been amplified by former staff who have conflated our campaign's attempts to manage concerns with their performance with gender-based discrimination this discussion has moved into local organizations which are looking into the matter I invite their examination of these claims and our campaign welcomes any scrutiny now he touches on the workplace issue that we won't get to until part 2 of this process but according to the Bay Area reporter she did make additional claims about Shahid Butar so as Matthew S. Bachko reports in a July 12 tweet Elizabeth Croydon first accused Butar of sexually harassing her more than a dozen years ago she also wrote that he was friends with a former quote-unquote gangbanger who had thrown her quote into a wall disabling me for years I think the left should find someone else to run against Pelosi now she also made other serious allegations against Shahid earlier this year on Twitter claiming he quote runs with men that assault women and accused him of lying about the circumstances of a mutual friend's death now when it comes to whether not Elizabeth Croydon has any corroborating witnesses with regard to the allegations she's making against Shahid Butar apparently she does reportedly have one a person close to Croydon who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted themselves told the Bay Area reporter that Croydon had disclosed to them her encounters with Butar about seven years ago so judging by the timeline here she seemingly told that person around the time when she accused Shahid Butar of mocking her for being celibate now we don't necessarily know what specifically she told that person did she tell that person that he mocked her for being celibate around that time and just that or did she also bring up the repeated sexual harassment that she's alleging as well we don't necessarily know the extent to what this corroborating witness knows but having said that Elizabeth Croydon did allegedly tell this person about her issues with Shahid Butar now after making this allegation against Shahid Butar you know saying that the sexual jokes he made made her feel you know ridiculed and were hurtful a video of Croydon standup routine was actually uncovered where she herself was making sexual jokes about Monica Lewinsky which were kind of in the same vein that she described the jokes that Shahid Butar was making against her which she found you know particularly hurtful because she was a sexual assault survivor but here as you're going to see she was making jokes that seem to minimize sexual assault as she brings up you know Harvey Weinstein and how there was that power imbalance between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky you know who's coming out with her own weed is Monica Lewinsky oh yeah it's 93% Sativa it blows your mind it blows your mind people don't give Monica Lewinsky or do and she deserves it she deserves it Colin Kaepernick took one knee for this country Monica Lewinsky took two she took two once again proving that women do twice as much work and get none of the credit none of the credit it's true it's true no sexism runs deep it runs really deep it goes back to the Bible it goes back to plants Harvey Weinstein he nutted in a fern he's a fernicator it's a problem now in Elizabeth Croydon's defense just because she too was making sexually explicit jokes that doesn't necessarily mean that her being hurt by Shahid Butar's jokes wasn't a possibility or that she's lying in that instance but what it does kind of tell you is that this is the sort of sense of humor that she and Shahid Butar and others within their social circle seemingly enjoyed and this isn't the only instance where she was seemingly minimizing these types of sexual acts and it could also be the case that by the time she did this standup routine her PTSD had improved so maybe it was worse when Shahid Butar was allegedly mocking her but really what we're trying to do is gauge the accuracy of her claims by trying to see what their sense of humor was now another person alleges that Elizabeth Croydon made sexually explicit gestures toward her mimicking a blow job for example and she also accuses Croydon of terrorizing black and brown communities now I haven't spoke to this person she did make a post publicly on facebook about this but I don't necessarily know that her name that she would be okay with me using her name here so I'll just leave her anonymous here but this is kind of what we need to look at we need to examine whether or not if this is true Shahid Butar at least that instance when he was allegedly ridiculing her was acting in bad faith and so you get the sense that based off of the way that they joked with each other their sense of humor that perhaps we could give Shahid Butar a pass if he didn't necessarily believe that he was doing anything wrong in that instance right and we're gonna also look to what other people are saying about Shahid Butar and Elizabeth Croydon not because we want to tear down the character of Elizabeth Croydon right because what we saw with regard to how Tara Reid was vetted was really disturbing because they were bringing up everything you know the enemies that she made talking about how she was laid on the rent like we're not trying to establish that this is a bad person here at the behest of Shahid Butar but what we want to know is how accurate are these claims what is relevant about her that we need to know and based on what other people are saying it seems as if the accusations that she's bringing up against Shahid Butar they're not the first time she's accused someone of wrongdoing now others who have known Shahid Butar for years have spoken out in his defense two women who knew Butar in the 2000s told the Bay Area reporter there was no credibility to what Croydon alleges occurred Martin Zundmanis who met Butar in 2004 while working together on civil rights issues said there was absolutely no merit to Croydon's claims I think in context of the progress victims and survivors have made as a result of the Me Too movement to have someone as ethical and with so much integrity as Shahid to be attacked with lies like this is disgusting she said. Dr. Margaret Flowers on Twitter and in a phone interview with the Bay Area reporter said Croydon had falsely accused her partner attorney Kevin Zeese of sexual assault in 2006 quote it is really sad she is given any credibility said Flowers Shahid at least a decade I have a lot of respect for him asked about Flowers tweet Croydon said she doesn't recall making such an accusation against Zeese she said she had sought a temporary restraining order against him after he left a threatening voicemail on her home phone it stemmed from a dispute she said over Zeese not providing her a tape of an hour long comedy performance she had done for free at a fundraiser during his bid as a Green Party candidate for the United States Senate seat in Maryland now the reason why we're talking about this specifically is because it's relevant to the story here we need to know whether or not any other claims had been made against other people who know Elizabeth Croydon and there seems to be a pattern here with regard to Elizabeth Croydon making really serious allegations against other people now that doesn't necessarily mean that since she's accusing a lot of people of very serious things that by definition they're false it just gives us a better sense of what type of situation we're dealing with here right so what we have to consider is that Elizabeth Croydon allegedly also made very serious allegations based on what Margaret Flowers is saying against Kevin Zeese and now she's making serious allegations against Shahid Bitar now activists who know Shahid Bitar personally have penned an open letter 17 people to be exact this includes of course Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese but it also includes Madia Benjamin of Code Pink who I think a lot of people actually trust I think she's a good judge of character and she is incredibly blunt so if she believes that Shahid Bitar is innocent then I actually do put a lot of stock into what she says now the open letter speaks to not just the accusations made against Shahid Bitar they also provide a character defense but they also mount some relatively substantial accusations against Elizabeth Croydon as well quote collectively our experiences with Shahid range from the personal in settings including our homes, workplaces and the streets in each of these places we have witnessed and interacted with the man who embodies the values he espouses deeply respects women and listens carefully to all those around him. Shahid's empathetic approach to connecting with others and his inherent kindness define who he is and how he comports himself in all parts of his life we also know him as a committed feminist who fights for women's rights and against patriarchy recent allegations have attempted to draw a different picture of Shahid than the one we know to be true we believe these allegations are false and ill-intentioned the accuser is well known in the DC social justice community unfortunately this troubled individual has a long history of fabricating attacks against innocent people a review of litigation she has filed in various jurisdictions would likely yield a revealing picture to an enterprising journalist she has engaged in late night phone harassment campaigns false allegations and physical threats against numerous individuals over the years she is not a credible witness against this promising progressive leader we are discouraged by the speed Shahid was condemned without evidence and urged further investigation into these claims which come from an individual with a widely known pattern of making false accusations so this open letter is not just you know a testing to who Shahid Bitar is as a person but on top of that they're also making some really serious claims about Elizabeth Croydon you know directly suggesting that her character is not one that should be trusted now on that note another individual who's also a left wing activist and a blogger who knows Elizabeth Croydon allegedly has come out with a six part medium series about Elizabeth Croydon where she actually does speak to some of the things that that open letter was alluding to going as far as to call Elizabeth Croydon a predator and recounting how Croydon claimed she's been accused of sexual assault by an alarming amount of men now additionally Jacqueline who wrote these posts says that Croydon spread false rumors about another individual who she says is an unnamed celebrity that they both supposedly knew and what Elizabeth Croydon allegedly suggested is that this person was HIV positive and knowingly attempting to spread it around to other people now Jacqueline also says that Croydon accused her of being a witch through sock puppet accounts which Croydon did confirm existed and the accusations that Jacqueline makes against Elizabeth Croydon are numerous and they go on and on and I will link you to that medium post if you do want to read it now I will say that I'm not able to speak to the character of Jacqueline I can't confirm that she does in fact know Elizabeth Croydon and I don't necessarily know that these claims are correct but the reason why this information is relevant is because there have been numerous people now who have said Elizabeth Croydon has made really serious claims, allegations of sorts about other individuals and that is something to consider so that doesn't necessarily mean that everything she's saying is a lie but in terms of what we have been able to gather based on the testimony of people who know Elizabeth Croydon and Shea Hidbutar personally it doesn't seem as if these claims are credible it seems as if perhaps we have to have more evidence in this instance to believe Elizabeth Croydon if she is able to introduce us to more corroborating witnesses if she is able to offer more substantial evidence or character witnesses on her behalf and again Shea Hidbutar then I think that you know this would be something to consider but as it stands now I can't say in good faith that these claims are credible I don't buy it so in this instance when it comes to the allegation of repeated sexual harassment we I think have to ask for more evidence from Elizabeth Croydon because they're relevant information that we have based on her alleged previous actions and allegations lead us to believe that perhaps she might not be as trustworthy as others like Tara Reid or Dr. Racine Blasey Ford and that's not to say that she is alleging that Shea Hidbutar had done something to her as serious you know as Tara Reid alleged with Joe Biden or Christine Blasey Ford with Brett Kavanaugh but in this instance we have to have more evidence now moving on to the second part of this analysis we are going to look at the claims of staff mistreatment now the question is why am I talking about two separate allegations that are only tangentially related in the same video well simply put it's because both of these claims both of these allegations manifested at around the same time so when it comes to staff mistreatment Akilah Lacy of the Intercept reports the campaign of Shea Hidbutar a democratic socialist challenger to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is stumbling amid allegations of sexism and mistreatment of staff in the workplace the allegations which former staffers describe to the Intercept prompted the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America to consider a draft resolution rescinding the organization's endorsement of the candidate but Tara's campaign has faced a period of personnel turmoil since the March 3rd Democratic primary with at least 10 staffers and contractors departing that includes his top three staffers campaign manager Jasper Wilde finance director Emily Jones and field director Otto Pippenger most staff on Batars current team started after the primary and he no longer has a campaign manager a change he attributed to a restructuring toward distributed leadership model his previous staff he said in an interview with the Intercept Batar denied the allegations and argued that the former employees were dressing workplace disputes in the language of harassment and discrimination the allegations that I'm ultimately being accused of with respect to the campaign are not gender related it's a staff performance issue he said what has been characterized as staff turnover is ultimately staff improvement complaints about the campaign's culture came to a head this week when 44 members of the DSA San Francisco chapter including three former Batar campaign staffers Patrick Cochran, Raya Steer and Sasha Perigo signed on to a proposed resolution to rescind their endorsement of him the resolution cited a sexual harassment accusation from a former acquaintance which was made public Tuesday on medium and which Batar has denied and a pattern of abuse including but not limited to sexual inappropriate behavior with his staff and volunteers the Intercept could not independently corroborate the accusation by the former acquaintance or the charge of sexually inappropriate behavior the proposed resolution goes on to state that Batar mismanaged his campaign by treating his campaign team specifically the women in a belittling demeaning hyper controlling and abusive matter the Shahid Batar campaign has had massive turnover for months because of Shahid's behavior with many key staff positions still not filled so this kind of gives us a broad overview of the issues here so the local San Francisco chapter of DSA they drew up this resolution to withdraw their endorsement of Shahid Batar based on Elizabeth Croydon's allegation along with the allegations of staff mistreatment particularly mistreatment of female staffers so that's kind of like the broad overview but in terms of specifically how he allegedly mistreated his staff this is what is being alleged here in interviews with the Intercept seven former staffers and contractors on Batar's campaign described a pattern of public berating and insults towards staff regardless of gender but particularly toward women on the campaign they said Batar was a tough boss but his treatment of staff crossed the line on Tuesday mission local reported that a number of former staffers said they had signed non disparagement agreements and that Batar denied the existence of the NDAs the Intercept obtained a copy of a campaign contract that included a non disparagement clause and in a Wednesday interview Batar acknowledged that some staffers including his former campaign manager Wild had signed such contracts I can vouch for the culture of misogyny that existed in the campaign said Raya Steer a DSA San Francisco member and a former full-time field organizer for Batar's campaign who joined the campaign in May and resigned in June I have experienced it personally Steer said they'd seen Batar publicly berate and humiliate multiple women staffers including Wild and Batar's former campaign finance director Emily Jones Steer who came to the U.S. from India helped start the Me Too movement there by releasing the name of academics accused of sexually harassing students at universities around the country following university investigations at least four professors were fired these are patterns of abuse that I know very closely they said Jones told the Intercept that Batar lashed out at his staff and at women staff in particular both in public and private she began consulting for the campaign on a freelance basis at the end of December on February 19th by May 15th she submitted her resignation Jones said her entire team including an email fundraiser someone who handles social media ads and the public relations team quit because Shay had insulted them at some point or another it is more diabolical when a man in hippie pants is a misogynist everybody quit she said imagine people have a $4,000 or $5,000 salary during a pandemic and they quit their job imagine that Batar's former volunteer coordinator and a member of the San Francisco DSA told the Intercept that individuals within the campaign primarily Jasper Wilde and Emily Jones were quote-unquote treated like shit and he added as a male staffer I felt like I was never treated bad by Shahid he treated Jasper and Emily terribly now on top of this William Fitzgerald who handled PR for Batar shared similar memories with a white guy he listened to me a lot more than the women members of his team said Fitzgerald a principal at the worker agency which is the PR firm that stopped working for Shahid Batar at around April I believe now at some point just after the March 3rd primary Shahid acknowledged that there was in fact a problem between him and his staff so he called a meeting to him the way that he perceived the issues that the staff had with him were that these were merely strategic disagreements he did not believe that they were concerned with his mistreatment of staffers primarily women so he chalked this up to you know hey we have strategic disagreements and he also says that's why there's such a high turnover rate within his campaign now the day after the meeting here's what happened between him and Emily Jones the next day Batar apologized directly to Jones in an email I've come to understand that my impatience and preoccupation has made you feel disrespected and I owe you an apology for that I am truly sorry and did not realize how my actions were impacting you Batar wrote going on to describing unfortunate dynamics between him and Jones and him and Wilde if you have the patience left to give me another chance I would like to do the same with you now another reason why his staffers were reportedly upset with him is because they didn't like that Shahid Batar was paying himself a $100,000 per year salary now they're not alleging that he's breaking the law they're just alleging that he's paying himself too high of a salary now in Shahid Batar's defense he says that you know this is the salary that he made in his previous job so he's simply just you know paying himself what he was making so he's not losing any income and I will say that out of all the allegations that his staffers have brought forward I don't actually find this one particularly persuasive because if it were the case that Shahid Batar was paying his staffers like next to nothing if they weren't earning a living wage if he was just giving the minimum wage then I think that that would definitely be something that is that is bad right but his staffers are saying that the pay was actually good because the comment from I believe it was Emily Jones you know she said imagine people have a $4 to $5,000 salary during a pandemic and quit that's how bad the job was according to them so if you're getting paid that much money that is a living wage so I don't necessarily see this as that big of an issue but what I do find as an issue is the fact that Shahid Batar doesn't necessarily seem to be addressing the allegations of staff mistreatment head on he is kind of explaining away the high turnover rate to other factors while not necessarily being introspective and trying to figure out whether or not he himself is at fault so rather than pointing fingers at other people what I would like to see here is for Shahid Batar to actually try to improve here because we don't necessarily know we're all human beings we may have biases that we don't think exist but we're just subconscious now again there are people who vouch for Shahid Batar with that open letter 17 activists who are prominent and trustworthy who say that you know they believe he respects women but on another hand people who have been working directly with Shahid Batar for months have left in protest because they feel as if he was mistreating them and on top of that they think that he really was treating women more unfairly so the staff mistreatment is a claim that I actually do find there to be some merit from based on what people said perhaps it's the case that the individuals who know Shahid Batar like Margaret Flowers and worked with him you know they thought that their relationship was pleasant but when you're in that workplace environment that employer-employee relationship actually does lead to an imbalance of power and so perhaps because of that different dynamic maybe it is the case that Shahid Batar you know is mistreating his staffers now this is just an allegation but what I am saying is that there is a sufficient amount of evidence to suggest that Shahid Batar needs to make some changes and needs to make some changes fast I would recommend you know implementing concrete new strategies to make sure that not only his staffers are being treated more fairly but that they have some way of bringing their concerns to someone that's high up within the campaign if not Shahid himself right they need to feel as if they are able to have some sort of accountability and have somebody to talk to if they feel like they're being mistreated there needs to be you know something more for them because I feel like these people they are explaining a lot of them that they believe he mistreated them and it seems as if there's some merit to that claim and it's difficult for me to say that I don't necessarily want to believe that but until we have other evidence from Shahid himself that kind of debunks what they're saying then we kind of have to side with the activists here who are saying you know as our boss he wasn't a great boss now again I think that there's still time for Shahid Batar to turn this around you know as human beings we are constantly improving right so he has months left to make a difference to make sure that the people in his campaign are respected and treated fairly you know it's not enough to give your employees a living wage I respect him for doing that because it seems like he's paying them adequately but you also have to make sure that you're fostering a healthy work environment right because as a boss sometimes you're not necessarily aware of the way that your actions come off to other people like for me I was a boss before I'm going to date myself but I was the manager at blockbuster and while there was no complaints about like my conduct as a boss like nobody complained that I was a bad boss there were times where I look back you know to conversations that I had with my employees and I I regret them like I feel like I was too pretentious too condescending and I think I was a prick at time so I think that as human beings we're able to change and adapt with new information and I'm calling on Shahid Batar responsibly to adapt with this new information and even if he doesn't necessarily feel like these allegations are correct work extra hard to make sure that your staffers feel appreciated because if there's anything that leftists and democratic socialists in particular should value it's work it's definitely work now I have reached out to Shahid Batar's campaign to get an on-the-record comment about you know this staff misconduct allegations and I have not heard back I did just reach out to him like before filming this but I'm planning to post his response if I get one in the comments and I'll pin that to the top of this video so that's basically where we're at now another angle of the story that I want to address is whether or not this is targeted because of who he's challenging because I think that we all know that if you're challenging someone in a position of power you know you're going to make a lot of enemies right so we're going to put on our tin foil hat for just a second and speculate about whether or not all of this is just you know a targeted hit against Shahid Batar who's challenging the most powerful Democrat in Congress now to that I say there's no evidence of that we certainly would be naive to suggest that you know Democrats wouldn't plan stories about progressives because we've seen the way that they did this to Bernie Sanders but with that being said I don't necessarily think that that's the case because we have to get some sort of indication that Nancy Pelosi is afraid of Shahid Batar and an incumbent doesn't really show their cards we don't really get the sense that they're afraid of their challenger until they agree to a debate so the first step is they ignore their opposition and then eventually they agree to a debate that's what happened with Joe Crowley this is what we see repeatedly so my argument with regard to whether or not you know this is Nancy Pelosi's doing and she has some nefarious conspiracy that she concocted to plant all these allegations I don't agree with that because Nancy Pelosi at this point in time doesn't necessarily have to do that because I think that Shahid Batar is the underdog and she can just continue to ignore Shahid Batar and still be the favorite to win in this instance now am I saying that if the race tightened Nancy Pelosi wouldn't resort to dirty tactics no I'm not saying that because we know that Democrats the Democratic Party establishment and Democratic Party leadership they do play dirty but you know something like this requires a lot more effort and what I would expect is for Nancy Pelosi to try to cut off Shahid Batar's access to NGP van right so until we really get a concrete sense that Nancy Pelosi is actually afraid of Shahid Batar I think we have to put away our tinfoil hats and accept that there's no evidence that this is a conspiracy by the establishment you know these are allegations that manifested organically and what I hope is that going forward Shahid Batar will address the concerns of his staffers and I hope that he does right the wrongs now again these are just allegations but when you have multiple people coming out and saying that their former boss treated them in a way that they deemed as unfair especially towards women I think that Shahid Batar has to do some introspection some soul searching and try to definitely take steps to right these wrongs so this was a really long and exhausting video but with that being said I think that we owe it to ourselves to be consistent and not be hacks in the way that Democratic Party operatives and Republicans are hacks we have to hold our own accountable and vet these claims as thoroughly as we possibly can now you know it's difficult to do this it's difficult to determine whether or not each of the people who are making these claims are making these claims in good faith right but at the same time all we have are allegations these aren't necessarily provable in a court of law it's just what people are saying but nonetheless we still do have to take this into account because you know this is a national campaign so having said all of that this is basically going to come down to whether or not people in that district are going to continue supporting Shahid Batar you know there are some individuals that have indicated they're going to continue to support him but others like the San Francisco DSA they're saying no we're going to not support him so what I will say to Shahid Batar is you do have time to turn this around I think that the staff mistreatment is something that concerns me so turn it around try to do better and try to take action to make sure that your staff feel appreciated because they're helping you win and we have to value people who are putting in the time to change the country so I will leave that there well that's all that I've got for you today thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far as usual we're not going to end this show without thanking all of our Patreon, Paypal and YouTube members for helping the show not just to survive as well thank you all so much you know often times the stories that we talk about are you know they're heavy right they kind of bog you down so don't hesitate to take a break from the news and just give yourself a little bit of time to like be present in the moment right self care is important and I don't think you should be ashamed to give yourself a break if you know sometimes the stories get a little bit too depressing quite frankly so that's all I've got for you I'll see you all next week I'm Mike Figueroa, this has been the Humanist Report take care everyone