 So previously on the show, I've outlined the issues that I have with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I think it's largely a Caucus in Congress that isn't very progressive. I mean, certainly all of the most progressive members of Congress are part of the CPC. The problem is that this is usually an organization that launders the reputation of corporate Democrats and a lot of corporate Democrats who aren't actually progressive will join the Congressional Progressive Caucus. So that way they get shielded from some sort of insurgent leftist primary challenger and it's an issue and what they need to do is clean house. They need to actually have more standards in the CPC to make sure that they don't bring in people who are trying to sabotage the leftist progressive agenda. Now what they did today really, I feel like it should be the last draw for people if they didn't already know how bad the CPC is. So they announced their slate of primary endorsements for 2022 and one of the individuals is Chantel Brown. Now for those of you who don't know, Chantel Brown is being primaried by a leftist candidate named Nina Turner. Might have heard about her. She's a star in the progressive movement and they endorsed Chantel Brown over Nina Turner and the press release reads, we're proud to support and endorse this group of bold, progressive leaders that are fighting for working people in their communities and across the country said CPC PAC co-chairs Mark Pocan, Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin. Each and every one of them is working every day to take on corporate special interests. What a joke. Fight for economic and social justice, universal health care, climate action and bold solutions to the urgent crises facing our country. We are thrilled to support their campaigns and look forward to continuing to build the progressive movement alongside them in Congress. Now the idea of Chantel Brown taking on corporate special interests is so absurd that it's laughable because her campaign was bankrolled by special interests and we'll get into all of that. But to give you some additional context, as Daniel Moranz of HuffPost explains, Chantel Brown joined the CPC back in January. So to a lot of people, I think it just seems logical for them to endorse one of their own members and that's what they're going to do. They're going to protect their incumbents who are part of the CPC. They want a huge list of numbers and so they're going to endorse people who are part of the caucus. The problem is that they're prioritizing numbers and just their own membership over the actual policies itself. I mean, the whole point in theory of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is to promote progressive policies. But when you are endorsing corporate Democrats over people like Nina Turner who actually supports progressive policies, then that's an issue. And as David Dole points out, the biggest issue here is that Chantel Brown was allowed to join the Progressive Caucus at all as the caucus is always going to endorse sitting members. Brown joined a month after joining the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition and a day before Nina Turner announced her run. So Chantel Brown, she gets elected to Congress after getting a surge of corporate money and she has her feet in both cookie jars. She's part of the centrist, corporate-friendly New Dem Coalition and she's also part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Now, she's part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus not because she is progressive, but because she knew that after running a contested primary against Nina Turner, there would be a likelihood, a high likelihood, that Nina Turner would run against her again. So how do you shield yourself from the left? Well, you join the Congressional Progressive Caucus and you pretend to be a progressive. You make sure that they don't endorse your future primary opponent. And that's exactly what Chantel Brown did and the CPC leadership fell for it. As David Dole pointed out, she should have never been admitted to the CPC, not only because she's part of the New Dem Coalition, which is corporate, but also because of all of the things that she did to get elected in the first place. I mean, let's just take a quick recap of the issues here. So Chantel's Brown First campaign was funded by a fossil fuel oligarch and right-wingers, including Trump allies. And she not only had a super PAC and still has a super PAC, but she walked a legal fine line by publicly begging a super PAC, specifically a pro-Israeli apartheid super PAC for campaign contributions when Nina Turner was out raising her with small-dollar grassroots donations. Now, that's not even to mention the conflicts of interest and potential quid pro-quoes with her campaign donors and how one consulting firm in particular ran by her partner helped her out after she helped them out. And all of this led to an ethics probe. And as Newsweek explained in an article from last year, in April, the Intercept reported that Brown, a Cuyahoga County council member, had voted to award millions worth of contracts to companies connected to her romantic partner and campaign donors. Emails reviewed by The Daily Poster showed that the Ohio State Auditor's Office reviewed the allegations in the article and recently referred the matter to the State Ethics Commission. Under Ohio law, public officials are prohibited from knowingly authorizing or using their authority or influence to secure authorization of any public contract in which the public official, a member of the public's official family, or any of the public official's business associates, has an interest. Violation of the statute is a felony and penalties can include prison time. So all of that happened. Chantelle Brown ended up beating Nina Turner and then the Congressional Progressive Caucus welcomed her with open arms. And look, I understand that we want to change people's minds. We want to bring them over to our side and get them to support the policies that we support. But anyone with functioning brain cells left in their head can see that Chantelle Brown didn't have a sudden change of heart. Her joining the CPC is an obvious cynical ploy to kind of placate the left and stop the CPC from endorsing her future primary opponent, Nina Turner. And unfortunately, it worked. And Pramila Jayapal, the leader where the buck stops with her, she took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Back in February, she tweeted out Medicare for All is now officially cosponsored by 118 members of the House. So glad to have representative Chantelle Brown on board as we build this movement to finally guarantee health care as a human right. Wait, she ran against Medicare for All and you're celebrating her cosponsoring Medicare for All, even though it's clear that she's doing this cynically so. So she has plausible deniability when she has a leftist challenger. I mean, even if Nina Turner wasn't challenging her, she's a centrist who would inevitably face a leftist primary challenger and you're like celebrating her. You're doing PR for her Pramila Jayapal. Now I get like Pramila Jayapal, Medicare for All is her signature piece of legislation. So of course she's going to celebrate cosponsors. But again, like you have to draw the line. You have to have some standards as to who you admit into the congressional progressive caucus. I mean, and let me just say cosponsoring Medicare for All is not evidence that they support Medicare for All. Tim Ryan cosponsored Medicare for All. And then when he ran for president, he was asked by a reporter if he'd supported it because he was running against it. But yet he cosponsored and he said, no, I would vote against it. But he cosponsored it. So doesn't that seem a little bit bizarre? Well, no, because these politicians will pretend to support policies to get the left off their backs and to placate the left when in actuality, if it came up to a vote, they wouldn't support it. And Pramila Jayapal is just letting Chantel Brown pretend to be a progressive. So she insulates herself from a leftist primary challenger or criticism from the left. And I mean, at this point with their standards, let's let's pretend that Joe Manchin decided that he doesn't want to be a senator. He's stepping down and he's running for the House of Representatives. It's Joe Manchin. So we all know him or Kirsten Sinema, any of these corporate Democrats, right? Let's assume they got elected, ran as a centrist, functionally campaigned as a Republican. But when they got elected, they chose to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus because they cosponsored Medicare for All. Would you let Joe Manchin join even though you know he definitely doesn't support Medicare for All and he's just cosponsoring this piece of legislation to placate the left and insulate himself from a leftist primary challenger? I mean, where do you draw the line? Are you just going to let anyone in? Can a Republican join the Congressional Progressive Caucus if they happen to support Medicare for All when they're clearly not a progressive? I mean, you have to have some fucking standards. And the leadership of the CPC has failed here. Now, the CPC is big and you'd think, oh, wow, that's good because there's so many progressives here in Congress. But these aren't progressives. These are people who are part of centrist caucuses and people who are trying to protect themselves from primary opponents that, you know, challenge them from the left. So draw the fucking line somewhere. So why is Pramila Jayapal allowing this to happen? Why is she letting her Congressional Progressive Caucus to become the laughing stock of the nation? But Sarota has a theory. He wrote, let's be clear, this is very likely Pramila Jayapal selling out the entire movement because of her unbridled ambitions to get a fancy but meaningless leadership title among a House Democratic Caucus that will be obliterated in the midterm elections. A total betrayal on every level. Now, maybe that's the case. I don't know. I can't speculate about her motivations, but what I can speak to is the things that she's done to show that she is not very savvy politically and when it comes to strategy. So all of last year, she started off really strong when it comes to build back better. And she was keeping the Congressional Progressive Caucus together, saying we're not going to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure proposal unless the Senate agrees to pass build back better. Get us climate change legislation universal, you know, pre-K, all of that. And then what happened? Well, after enough pressure, she buckled. And just six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the squad plus a couple of others, they held strong. They did what they promised they would do. But after Pramila Jayapal caved to pressure from Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and made a fool of herself, well, she embarrassed herself even more by pretending as if no, we were we were kept keeping our word. We held strong and we didn't buckle. And also, you know, we were the winners throughout this. We actually won and we owned Manchin. Like I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but you can go back and look at the videos where we talked about her talking about this. And it's not just her. You know, it's also Ro Khanna, who said the same thing, but she's the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. So, you know, what she does, this caucus will follow suit in theory, right? And she tried to reframe this as a win when it was a clear loss. And time has proven us right. It's proven that her strategy was a failure because does anyone remember Bill Back better getting passed by the Senate? No, it didn't because she failed to keep her caucus together. So Pramila Jayapal is a great lawmaker. She writes excellent legislation. Her Medicare for all bill is better than the one that Bernie Sanders proposed, not by like a ton, but it has a lot of provisions that are a lot better in the long run. And I would want Bernie Sanders' version to match Pramila Jayapal's version, right? So she's a good lawmaker. The problem is that she's not a leader. She's not a leader. You have to have backbone to be a leader. You can't cave at the second there was going to be pressure from Joe Manchin. You can't allow anyone into the Congressional Progressive Caucus when they're clearly not progressives. And in fact, they're pretty corrupt facing ethics probes. You can't allow this to happen. Otherwise, the ideology of the caucus gets watered down and its effectiveness gets erased in Congress and you get nothing accomplished. So under your leadership, Pramila Jayapal, when you had the opportunity with Democrats in power, what have you achieved? Nothing. You achieved nothing. So if I were Pramila Jayapal, I would no longer be in leadership after failure, after failure. I would resign if I were Pramila Jayapal in shame. Now that's not to say that we should go after Pramila Jayapal as leftists because, again, she's a good lawmaker. The problem is that she's not a leader, right? And that's fine, right? Not all people have leadership qualities, right? But you have people in Congress who are leaders. Cori Bush is always holding strong. She held strong with Build Back Better. Jamal Billman, he doesn't get everything right, but he doesn't let the corporate wing of the party run roughshod over him. There are other people, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, who are better suited for the leadership position. And I have no idea if the institutional mechanisms in Congress would just keep the status quo the same in the CPC and there'd be no reform. But if you actually want the Congressional Progressive Caucus to be more than a joke, you can't allow any person to just join flippantly because they want to be shielded from the left. This is obvious. So now what Pramila Jayapal and the CPC at large has done is piss off the entire left. The entire left is rooting for Nina Turner because she's somebody who actually does have leadership potential. She's someone who would fight vociferously for Medicare for All and not just cosponsor it because that's what's politically convenient. So this is absolutely a betrayal. The CPC has betrayed the entire left. And I really hope that members of the CPC come out defy this endorsement and endorse Nina Turner over Chantel Brown. And I hope that the CPC actually gets pressed by members of the media as to what the fuck they're doing because I don't even know. But this is embarrassing. Like you're useful idiots for the Democratic Party's corporate wing and you should be ashamed of yourself. But if you play dumb and you lose fights on purpose, oftentimes that's how you get a better job in the Democratic Party as David Sarota alluded to. But again, I'm not going to speculate. I do know this is fucked up and Pramila Jayapal absolutely needs to explain why she's proud to endorse somebody who's a corporate stooge who supports Israeli apartheid and takes money from their super PACs and is very clearly cynically supporting Medicare for All so she can shield herself from criticism from her primary opponent.