 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueroaido. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash Humanist Report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueroaido and this is episode 221 of the show. I hope you guys all had a fantastic week. This is Friday, December 6th. And before we start the show, I wanna take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which signed up for the very first time to support us this week. And that includes A.C. Slater, Ariana, Brian P. Foster, Jane Conlin, Jared Schleyer, Jenny Sulek, Judy Rieck, Katherine Robinson, Ken Nardone, Linda Edwards, Matthew Ostrander, Nathan Isaiah Burdick, Pamela Jividen and Sean Tidro. So thank you so much to all of these kind souls. If you too would like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. We've got a great show for you all today. This week on the Humanist Report podcast, we'll talk about electability and why Bernie Sanders can win in Trump country. And Michael Moore explains why young voters love Bernie Sanders and while we're on the subject of electability, we'll discuss Joe Biden's no malarkey tour along with the shenanigans that ensued on said tour. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dunked on Pete Buttigieg for being an ignorant centrist, multi-millionaire hosts on The View spent Thanksgiving lying to poor people about Medicare for All and British people learned about the cost of healthcare in the United States. Tom Steyer's ads are running so frequently in New Hampshire. He's literally starting to annoy voters there. And a CNN host decided to lick the boot of a billionaire on national television. Kamala Harris calls it quits. Donald Trump cuts food stamps and Bernie Sanders received the endorsement from the incredible Hulk. Also, the war on Christmas continues and we will kick off our first war on Christmas segment of the year. And finally, we'll close the show by talking to the founder of TYT and 2020 congressional candidate, Cenk Yuger about his campaign. Well, that's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the show. Regardless, let's go ahead and get right to it. So we're gonna do something a little bit different today. We're actually going to give CNN credit. Now, it's a little bit difficult for me to do this because I genuinely hate CNN, but nonetheless credit where it's due. They ran a segment that isn't just positive about Bernie Sanders, but incredibly constructive to boot. Now, what they talked about was how Bernie Sanders surprisingly has a lot of support in areas of the country where you wouldn't necessarily think he would have support. For example, in areas like so-called Trump country, places where Donald Trump disproportionately won in 2016. Now they did this by profiling the hosts of the Troubilly Workers Party podcast and they explained why in their state, in their area, people actually support Bernie Sanders because he has a message that resonates with them because people in their town believe that healthcare should be a right and a lot of people don't have healthcare. So they want someone who's actually going to deliver on a policy that politicians often say want to deliver but don't. I mean, the Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction, for example, but affordable healthcare is something that is really subjective. And now, especially since it's been gutted by Republicans, healthcare under the ACA isn't that affordable. So the reason why people in Trump country support Bernie Sanders is because they know that he's the real deal. And in spite of worries that he's too far left, they kind of dispel this myth by making a different type of electability argument that I think people who watch the mainstream media need to hear because oftentimes the logic is, well, you can't run someone in a state like Kentucky who's too far left because that's going to turn off moderate voters. But what Democrats have been missing is that you have to get out the vote and make sure that your own base is energized and you get young people out to vote because every single election is basically one big get out the vote campaign. If Democrats fail to get out the vote, the Republican is successful. And that's something that Bernie Sanders realizes and you can see it in the way that he's campaigned, right? So it's about bringing out people and making sure that enough people come out and vote for him. But they're going to explain why Trump country loves Bernie Sanders or at least some places in Trump country love Bernie Sanders. This was actually really great. Former city councilman just added. A trio of leftist activists have figured out how to make people listen to them. And is this really where the Democratic Party is? The Trillbilly Workers Party is Tanya Turner, Terrence Ray and Tom Sexton. Their popular leftist comedy podcast is recorded in a cabin in Whitesburg. A town of 2000 in what, in the popular imagination, is rock solid Trump country. I think some Trump supporters that I know that I would consider a stereotypical Trump voters are completely disassociated and think it's funny. All of these systems that have screwed us over time and again, yeah, they're like, you know, what else do I have but to laugh at this maniac pushing buttons somewhere. A foreshadowing of the national election. But while they ridicule President Trump, they have contempt for the Democratic Party, which they think has made too many moral compromises to help communities like theirs. Do you think the Democratic Party speaks to the issues facing your community? No, not at all. You could look at a lot of the failures of the Democratic Party, both in Kentucky, hyper-locally, but also across the country to lead you to some of the support, of course, of conservatives and bizarre politics like Trump, what Trump has brought about. And because they've really just abandoned communities that used to support them. What would you say to people in the cities from the coasts who would be surprised that there are Bernie supporting communists, socialists out here in Appalachia? We have the internet. It's not good, but we have it and we know about things. If you're a leftist in a big city, you know that there are other leftists out there in places like this. Anywhere where people have a boot to the neck, they're resisting, they're fighting back. The Democratic candidates for president of the United States. They're not impressed by the candidates for president in 2020, except for Bernie Sanders, who only lost the 2016 Kentucky Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton by half a percentage point. You know what you're getting. This man has had the same vision for 40, 50 years and has absolutely moved the dialogue about what is possible in this country. I could tell you this. My mother, who I wouldn't, you know, I love her, but I wouldn't consider necessarily a sort of an exemplar of progressive thought. Loves Bernie Sanders. She's a very overzealous Bernie person. You know, she's a Pentecostal Sunday school teacher, so. Health care is a human right. Medicare for all. The Trill Billies believes Sanders is the only candidate who truly understands the struggles in communities like theirs. And trust he would work toward the fairer future they imagine. We are in the unhealthiest congressional district in the country. There's no one here that doesn't support health care for all people. You would have to be a criminal, an absolute billionaire, class sociopath to not want the sick and dying people around you in this community and in your family to not have access to quality health care and very few people here do. That is one of the simplest notes I can give to why Bernie has support here. That was absolutely fantastic. And I think that that should be required viewing for every Democratic strategist and Democratic Party politician because this idea that every election is going to be about winning over a fixed amount of voters that kind of, you know, are in the middle or maybe the center, right? Those days are gone, right? That is a strategy that is a failure. If you appeal to moderate Republicans and you shift to the right, you lose voters on the left because you abandon them. And every single election between a Republican and a Democrat will be about whether or not that Democrat has been successful enough to, you know, get out the vote, to get new voters registered, to galvanize young people and get them excited about their campaigns. So what they're saying here is actually in Trump country, Bernie Sanders is viable. He can win and he's making the Democratic Party competitive in areas where they've kind of just seated that ground to Republicans, right? Because what we see oftentimes, and the 2014 race with Alison Lenderman Grimes versus Mitch McConnell is a great example of this. She ran a campaign as basically a Republican light candidate and she wouldn't even admit that she voted for Obama in the last election, which obviously if you're a Democrat, you voted for Obama, right? But I mean, the problem is that when you run someone who is Republican light, you demoralize your own base and Republicans who are already going to vote Republican aren't going to, you know, support you just because you're trying to pander to them. They're just going to vote for the real thing. So what we need to do is once and for all, acknowledge that anyone making an electability argument who isn't stressing the importance of energizing young voters and registering new voters doesn't know what they're talking about. And I think that this segment really makes that crystal clear. So one of them made a phenomenal point. You can look at a lot of the failures of the Democratic Party to lead you to some of the support of conservatives and bizarre politics like Trump because they've really abandoned communities that used to support them. And that's precisely it. If you shift on that ideological spectrum, if you shift to the right, you are abandoning people on the left. But if you shift to the left, then you're really throwing red meat to the base. Like Donald Trump always does, albeit on the right, but nonetheless, he makes sure that voters in the Republican Party know that they can count on him for right-wing policies and maybe policies that we don't like, but he knows that he's not going to win without his base and Republicans by and large know that. They're never worried about shifting too far to the right and part of the problem is the media never calls them on it. But there's always this fear that you're going too far to the left and you're going to lose because independents won't want to support you except Bernie Sanders is largely viewed as a far-left candidate when he's more of a center-left candidate in actuality in comparison with European politicians. But nonetheless, he actually appeals to independents because he has a message that speaks to normal people. He has demonstrated knowledge of the issues that affect them personally. And one of the hosts said that his mom who isn't really the stereotypical Bernie bro loves Bernie Sanders. It's almost like normal people know who actually cares about the issues and which politicians are just in it for their own careers. Like Pete Buttigieg who's running for president because he wants power. And another co-host said we are in the unhealthiest congressional district in the country. There's no one here that doesn't support healthcare for all people. And polls show that Bernie Sanders is the most trusted when it comes to issues like healthcare and the economy. People can see through the bullshit for the most part. There are times when I've been disappointed in the electorate. I just posted a video where I face palms the entire time at a panel of CNN voters or CNN town hall participants or whatever who thought that Amy Klobuchar just dominated that last debate, right? But by and large, I think that most people who are just casual observers can see who's fighting for them and who isn't. It's just a matter of they feel as if it's worthwhile enough for them to get out and vote. That's really the true battle here. Now, one thing about Kentucky is Matt Bevin just lost. So for a red state, a deep red state to have their Republican governor lose to a Democrat who isn't really even that progressive, what that tells us is that the writing is on the wall. We are on the cusp of a paradigm shift. And the one candidate who I think can truly foster and facilitate that paradigm shift and solidified is Bernie Sanders. I think that that's obvious. All you have to do is make the case. And Bernie Sanders does a phenomenal job at simplifying politics and making issues personable and letting people know that he understands the issues that they care about. So I wanna go back to a town hall in West Virginia where Bernie Sanders basically converted a Trump supporter in real time. This is a woman who voted for Donald Trump but he got her to agree with his political philosophy. Right, who's paying for the Medicaid? Who's paying for the Social Security? Who's paying for the Medicare? Who? We are. Thank you, we are. Now, have any of you seen down on streets that it seems as though we have become the silent minority and not the majority? What do you mean by that? How much have we been listening to, really? But who's the we when you say this? You mean- Us people. Who people? The people who need the Medicare, the people who need the Social Security. Who needs to help with the education? Okay, but down here's good point. Let's see if we can go forward on this. I'm assuming that you believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that we should not cut Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, is that correct or not? Yeah, I believe it shouldn't be cut. Okay, do you know who is now working very hard to try to do that? Republicans in Congress have a plan under the guise of saving Medicare and saving Social Security, making devastating cuts. That's what Republicans are now trying to do. The other point that you made, which is a very, I think you made it, or both of you have made it actually, is who's gonna pay for this stuff? And that is a very fair point. What all of us should know is that over the last 25 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth in this country from you to the top one-tenth of one percent. In other words, the middle class has shrunk and trillions of dollars have gone to the top one-tenth of one percent. Do you think it's inappropriate to ask those people to stop paying their fair share of taxes so we can adequately fund Medicaid and making public colleges and universities tuition free? Is that an unfair thing to ask? I don't think it's an unfair thing to ask. That's right. So it's time they put back. OK, all right. Now, look, that's anecdotal evidence. This podcast segment is anecdotal evidence. But Bernie Sanders is the truly pragmatic candidate. Like, for all this talk about pragmatism, it's not going to be a corporate centrist Democrat. That type of individual is just going to demoralize the base and guarantee that Donald Trump gets a second term. If you want to win, you have to have an excited electorate. You have to make sure that your voters are galvanized and young people come out to support you because if that does not happen, Trump will get a second term. That's just a fact of reality. So rather than worrying about whether or not, you know, Democrats are moving too far left or whatever, you just have to appeal to the base and make sure that they know that you're no longer going to abandon them. And you can actually win. It's not a foregone conclusion. But obviously, Bernie has the best chance against Donald Trump. And this segment was perfect in demonstrating that, you know, there's no area of the country that is unwinnable. Maybe, right? Maybe some areas are going to be more difficult. Bernie certainly won't win in every single state. But Bernie Sanders is more competitive than Democrats think. And part of me feels like they know this, but they're just too afraid to admit it because they don't want to move away from corporatism because it's lucrative, right? But they know deep down that progressivism is the way to go. AOC just outraised every other House Democrat, including Nancy Pelosi, all while not picking up the phone one time to call up a wealthy donor. So this really is a paradigm shift that I think we're witnessing. And the way to win is to excite the base. This segment really demonstrates that. And Bernie Sanders has proven that he has the correct strategy, which is why we say Bernie would have won. And if he's the nominee, I think he's going to win. So Michael Moore has been appearing on MSNBC quite a bit lately. And it's surprising to me that they keep bringing him back because he's making incredibly solid points. So you think that they would feel as if they need to kind of silence him and push him away, but nonetheless, he appeared again. And he made a phenomenal point about Bernie Sanders and why young people are flocking to Bernie Sanders. And everything he said here wasn't just important, but it was incredibly constructive because people who tune in to MSNBC, they usually don't hear this message. They usually don't get to hear about Bernie Sanders in a positive light. But nonetheless, Michael Moore did a phenomenal job here about educating the MSNBC viewer base who will be voting in the Democratic Party primary and Democratic strategists who I'm assuming tune in to MSNBC religiously, which is why they're so terrible at their jobs. But nonetheless, that's a different story for a different day. This is what Michael Moore had to say about Bernie Sanders. I'll tell you, the one person as you've pointed out that remains steady and consistent is Bernie Sanders. He has not gone down. He only either stays where he goes up and he's mostly either in second place or he's in first place, depending on what week it is, in which state, Nevada, et cetera, where where he has pulled number one. He's number one with 18 to 35 year olds. And he's never dropped out of first place with young adults. Number one with Latino voters. So, you know, it's really why we just put those numbers up. He is. And we saw this in 2016. Young voters does extremely well. Yeah, it falls off a cliff when you get to about 45 years old. Why is that? Yeah. A jealousy when the older the older you get, he should be sitting there and just watching TV. You know, it's like, I don't know. But it's a great question. Why do the youngest people trust the oldest candidate? I'd pay attention to that because I think my opinion is it's their future. He's fighting for them. It's not his future. He's in his future. Whatever he is doing to fight for climate change, for for better wages, Medicare for all, go down the whole list. He's doing that for them, not for him. He doesn't need free college. He doesn't. He's he is. This is what they love about him, is that here is this this this man who is in his seventies fighting for us so that we get a future so that we may have a planet that we can breathe on in a few years. They see that and they know he's the real deal. He's not busting them and and he's not going to give in to any of the corporate interests. Is there is there's that word you always hear in politics, authenticity. Does he come across as less scripted, less packaged? Is that part of what you're obviously everything? You know, he doesn't have his own personal stylist. He doesn't he doesn't have somebody telling him what to say. He has no large contributors at all, you know, saying, you know, Bernie, if you could just cool it a little bit on this or give us a little bit of that. Here's the problem. This is what I'm really worried about. And I want people to think about over the holiday here is that I know a lot of people they come on the show here and they talk about, you know, we've got to get a more moderate candidate. We've got to we won't win. Actually, this will lose if we go more to the center. We're going to lose this. Here's what the center is offering. Here's the inspiration that comes from the center. I'm not going to guarantee that health care is a human right. But what I am going to do is I'm going to get you vouchers or there's going to be these health health. Is that is that Biden and Buttigieg? Is that what you're describing? Yes. And the others, the others that are in the center, the way that even Michael Bloomberg is talking now. They're all about they think that what we need to do is to tell people, let's go backward. Let's go back to, yes, you know, you should be know that we can't have it. We can't have free college. Well, why not? Because everybody in my generation who went to college, either they went for free. The entire UC system in California was free. The SUNY system here in New York, mostly free out in Michigan. You could go to the University of Michigan for a thousand dollars a year. It's it's amazing that these kids have put up with putting themselves forty, fifty, sixty thousand or more dollars in debt. That's why anybody who says, no, we need to moderate, we need to go back to being more conservative Democrats. Those days are gone. So that first point about young people is incredibly important because when young people turn out to vote, general turnout is higher overall. And Democrats end up winning up and down the ballot. So if Bernie Sanders were the nominee and he got a lot of young people to come out and vote, Democrats across the country would turn out in higher numbers and they could retake the Senate and they would probably keep the house like turnout is incredibly important. And I can't stress this enough. Every single election is one big get out the vote campaign. It's not really about defeating the Republicans so much as it is getting out your own base and registering new voters. Because the thing about young voters is we don't really realize the amount of power that we have. We are going to decide this election. Regardless, if we stay home or come out in droves to vote, we will decide this election and we can actually take our future into our own hands if we vote, if we participate in the primary. Now, the thing about primaries is not a lot of people participate in them. More people will participate and pay attention to general elections. So we just need young people to realize that if they come out and vote during the primary, they can make a difference and perhaps make the most amount of difference. Because I think the primary for Bernie is going to be the biggest hurdle. Going up against Donald Trump will be a little bit easier for him. But in the primary, there's a lot of Democrats with 17, 18 people still running. He's going to need their votes. So if they just realize that coming out to vote will decide the selection. And they realized how much power they had that really would be a step in the right direction. Now, why they support Bernie? Michael Moore says it's their future. He's fighting for them. It's not his future. He's in his future. Whatever he is doing to fight for climate change, for better wages, Medicare for all, go down the whole list. He's doing that for them, not for him. He doesn't need free college, and that's such an important point. And I think this is obvious to a lot of people. Bernie Sanders is not running for himself. If he had, you know, ambitions to be president, don't you think that he would have decided to run back in the 90s or early 2000s? We all know that Bernie Sanders decided to begrudgingly run because back in 2016, Hillary Clinton was a very right wing conservative Democrat and Elizabeth Warren was too afraid to step up and challenge Hillary Clinton. So Bernie Sanders decided to step in and offer voters an alternative. And little did he know he catalyzed a nationwide movement. So now he has to see his vision all the way through. Now, contrast that with people like Pete Buttigieg. I mean, does anyone really believe that Pete Buttigieg is running because of a particular policy or a duty to the country? He's running because he wants to be the president. He wants to be in a position of power. He wants to be adored in the way that Barack Obama is adored. Usually people who run for president, they do it for power and influence. And I think that most of the time, like if you're running for president, you genuinely must be a sociopath because I can't see how anyone would want that job. I mean, we need someone who really doesn't want to be president. And Bernie is that perfect person. He's not running because he's worried about his career. The man is almost 80 years old. He's running because he believes he is the only person capable at this point in time who can run, who's old enough to run, who could actually affect change. And even if he's not able to get his agenda passed, he knows the importance of galvanizing a movement and just getting us on that trajectory of social democracy. That's incredibly important. So what Michael Moore said here is accurate. Now, he also made a point about centrism and how running to the right is going to be a losing strategy. Now, the fact that we have to remind people of this is absurd to me because we just tried this strategy in 2016. Trump is president. So we shouldn't have to say this. The fact that we do really speaks to how horrible American politics has become. But nonetheless, Michael Moore said, if we go more to the center, we're going to lose. They're telling people we should go backward, basically. And he's right because even though we haven't actually secured policies like Medicare for all of free college to say that, you know, we should just settle for college affordability and a public option. We've changed dialogue to where we're starting to really think about these things as human rights. But now we've gone back. We've decided, you know what? Maybe health care isn't actually human right. Maybe college shouldn't be free for everyone. Maybe it should just be something that's means tested and slightly more affordable. Maybe we pour a little bit more subsidies into college and hope that that works. So that is essentially us being regressive if we choose to settle for someone who is more centrist like Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. I mean, we've worked so hard over the past couple of years, especially people on the ground fighting for Medicare for all, canvassing for Medicare for all, educating people about Medicare for all. So to just opt for someone like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, all of the hard work that you put in would be undone. So even if we don't have those policies, we are going backwards if we nominate someone who doesn't support those policies. And he says it's amazing what these kids have put up with by putting themselves in debt. Yeah, we're just asking to have the social and economic mobility that our parents and grandparents had. That's what we're asking. But yet when we ask that our tax dollars benefit us, we get lambasted by boomers who suggest that we just want everything for free because we're lazy. No, the economy has changed. And Bernie Sanders is the only person who acknowledges the reality of the country and capitalism and the economy. And he has the right policy prescriptions that would actually benefit our lives. Nobody else has that. Nobody else is actually going to be effective at fighting for these things because nobody else has a movement behind them. So I'm just surprised that MSNBC keeps bringing on Michael Moore, even though he's making these great points, even though he's actually speaking truth to power, it's shocking to me genuinely. And I hope that they continue to invite him on because even if most people who tune into MSNBC probably won't see that segment. I mean, anytime we're able to penetrate their bubble and get a little bit of progressivism onto MSNBC, then I think that that's a good thing because a lot of people like it or not still tune into MSNBC religiously. And that's a problem. But until we can get some better alternative that we can turn the left onto, then we have to get as many people on MSNBC like Michael Moore as possible, who will actually say the right thing and not continue to give Democrats horrible advice as everyone else does on that program. Look, I know that not many people, myself included, see Joe Biden as a real threat. However, is it within the realm of possibility that he could still very well win the nomination? Yeah, it is possible. And if Donald Trump's victory taught us anything, it's that we should never underestimate our opponents because like it or not, he still does have a shot, even if, you know, his chances have drastically gone down. He's still polling in first place nationally. He's still nine points ahead in Nevada, 19 points ahead in South Carolina, two points ahead in California and almost 10 points ahead in the state of Texas. Now, of course, this could change. These polls just present us with a snapshot in time, and he could very well continue to plummet. That being said, don't count him out yet. It's still entirely possible that he could be the nominee. I think, you know, most likely he's going to lose, but he could win. Now, the fact that it's even a possibility, it really is puzzling to me because he has ran one of the worst campaigns I think I've ever seen. I thought that back in 2016, you could never run a campaign as bad as Hillary Clinton. I think he's running a worse campaign than Hillary Clinton because even though he's slightly to the left of Hillary Clinton on a number of issues, Hillary Clinton was at least competent enough to defend herself, right, and downplay credible accusations of corruption or whatnot. But Joe Biden, I mean, he's flailing and I'm not just talking about the numerous gaps, which we'll get to that. But on top of the gaps, he's making decisions not by himself. I'm assuming that are bizarre when it comes to campaign tactics and strategy. For example, he is really going all in on no malarkey and he's currently going on a no malarkey tour. And he literally put the words no malarkey on a giant bus because I guess that he thinks this is what's going to a field of voters, maybe. And in spite of the promise of no malarkey, well, there has been some malarkey at campaign stops. So, for example, at this campaign event, you can see that he was sucking on his wife's finger. Now, this was captured on video and we get a little bit more context with the video version. Take a look. And when they cut to the president of the United States. You call your kids in from the other room because you want them to hear what the president of the United States has to say. So, first of all, at least that was his wife and it wasn't some random woman or child that he was doing that to. Second of all, I don't understand why, when like his wife accidentally almost slapped him in the face, his first instinct was to literally suck her finger. Why? And, you know, for the promise of no malarkey, it's literally on the podium. That is what I would describe as malarkey. But for some reason, his supporters love that he doesn't like malarkey because at the second debate, I believe, one of his supporters told Jordan Charidan that that was basically the highlight of the debate for them as a Joe Biden supporter. What was your favorite line of Biden tonight? I'm very glad he said malarkey once again. Oh, malarkey was a big one. Yeah. So anything on policy or substance or just malarkey? Oh, just malarkey. I mean, honestly, I haven't been I haven't been that impressed. I'll be completely honest. I buy it. No, not really. So I mean, Joe Biden is offering nothing to voters with the exception of a promise of no malarkey. Now, no malarkey has essentially been a catchphrase of Joe Biden for quite some time and MSNBC put together this compilation showing how many times he has used the phrase malarkey. And I read this malarkey that comes out of your meetings. And I said, well, wait a minute. I hope everyone will drop this stereotypical malarkey. Mr. President, is this more of this Texas malarkey? I guarantee you, Barack Obama ain't taking my shotguns. So don't buy that malarkey. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. He cares about the middle class. Give me a break. That's a bunch of malarkey. More of the malarkey, man. It's more of the malarkey. So this idea is a bunch of malarkey, what we're talking about here. Not to be agist, but I have literally never heard anyone under the age of 60 use the word malarkey unironically. But I mean, if you're a Joe Biden supporter, this is a major selling point. And he knows that because he put it on a bus. Literally how he has any supporters is baffling to me. It's genuinely baffling to me. Now, we learned a little bit more about Joe Biden over the weekend because another clip from the infamous speech where we learned about corn pop emerged. And this is basically him babbling incoherently for about a minute. And what he says doesn't really make a lot of sense. But what you can extract from what he's saying, it does have really creepy implications to it. Here I saw that made me aware when I was in law school, proudly for Holloway, proudly for your dad, first African-American state senator in the state of Delaware. Everything about. And by the way, you know, I sit on the stand and it get hot. I got a lot of I got hairy legs that turn that that that that that turn blonde in the sun and the kids used to come up and reach in the pole and rub my leg down. So it was straight and then watch the hair come back up again. They look at it. So I learned about roaches. I learned about kids jumping on my lap. And I've loved kids jumping on my lap. And I tell you what, the men, they're now all men, the guys I work with down here, and they're all guys at the time. They're all good men. Most of them made an awful lot of themselves. An Earl Larkin had a rough time in some of you in New Earl. I def I came back as a public defense. I mean, quote, I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun. And the kids used to come up in the pool and rub my leg down. And then watch the hair come back up again. So I learned about roaches. I learned about kids jumping on my lap. And I've loved kids jumping on my lap. Joe, what the fuck are you talking about? I mean, look, I'm not just covering this because I want to dunk on Joe Biden, even though I enjoy doing that. The reason why I think we have to talk about this is because does anybody have any confidence in Joe Biden whatsoever to actually beat Donald Trump? Can that person who just talked about that about kids who would rub his leg down in the pool and watch the hair come back up again and roaches? Does anybody believe that that person can beat Donald Trump? No, he's a huge liability in the general election. And yet he still technically does have a shot at the nomination. If he could win, I think that Donald Trump may actually beat him worse than he beat Hillary Clinton. Like we're looking at Trump winning the popular vote and the electoral college, which would be a catastrophe, right? Because that means that Donald Trump definitely will fill another one to two Supreme Court seats and then the split will go from five, four to six, three or seven to it's a disaster, an unmitigated disaster. So I mean, in the event Joe Biden is the nominee, the only thing between Trump and the White House for another four years is that person who you just heard, who's running on no malarkey. We are so fucked if we are forced to share a party with people who think that that person is the most electable. I mean, somebody running that poor of a campaign should have been out already, like Joe Biden should have dropped out. But the fact that he's still in this, in spite of the bad fund raising, in spite of plummeting in the polls, the fact that he's still viable, even as much as he is, shows that we've got a lot of problems in this country. It's not just Republicans who are the problem. It's also Democrats. So what this tells us is when we lose, we have to really be a lot more vocal at pushing for electoral reform. We can't just have this two party duopoly any longer. We need ideological diversity because when you are forced to put centrists and, you know, people on the left together in one party, this is what we have to deal with. We have to share a party with people who think that no malarkey is going to captivate young people to get on and vote. I mean, it's just it's ridiculous. Joe Biden is a joke. And to a degree, I feel bad for him because his family should really step in and say, look, Joe. We know you don't have to do this. You know, you are losing your cognitive capacity. You can't really campaign. Let's just let's call it a day. Let's go home. Let's let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg about all this out. We don't have to do this any longer. But I mean, he's still in this. Yeah, we're doomed. If he wins, we are absolutely doomed. So I really cannot stand Pete Buttigieg and part of the reason is because he has been instrumental in driving down public support for policies that are incredibly important like Medicare for All. Now, it's still very popular. Don't get me wrong. But since he's entered the race and since he started to argue against Medicare for All, support for Medicare for All has been going down and support for a public option is actually on the rise. And I think that's largely due to Pete Buttigieg. Now, when he entered this race, he supported Medicare for All. But all of a sudden he started to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health insurance industry and big pharma and doing all of these fundraisers in the Hamptons with rich people. And now he doesn't support Medicare for All. In other words, he was never really serious about policy and he just is running because he's a careerist. That's Pete Buttigieg in a nutshell. But now that he has successfully driven down support of Medicare for All to a degree by disingenuously arguing that it takes away choice if we want to remove the profit motive out of the health care system. Well, now he's setting his sights on another popular progressive policy proposal. So this is an ad that he released that I guess his team thought was a good idea and a good point to make about free college and why we can't have it. I believe we should move to make college affordable for everybody. There are some voices saying, well, that doesn't count unless you go even further, unless it's free, even for the kids and millionaires. But I only want to make promises that we can keep. Look, what I'm proposing is plenty bold. I mean, these are big ideas. We can gather the majority to drive those big ideas through without turning off half the country before we even get into office. And that, I think, is the best governing strategy as well as what is going to take in order to win. And Lord knows we got to win. I'm Pete Buttigieg and I approve this message. You're wrong. OK, so the first red flag is he says that we should make colleges affordable for everyone. Whenever a centrist talks about affordability, I have to ask, what does that even mean? Because what we've learned from the Affordable Care Act is that affordability is incredibly subjective. What's affordable for one family is not affordable for another family. So when you say you want to make college affordable for Americans, I mean, that means nothing to me if you're not talking specific numbers. Now, all we get from Pete Buttigieg are vague platitudes, general policy prescriptions, but no real solutions that would actually fundamentally change America or change people's lives. And it's because he doesn't actually care about Americans. He just cares about being the president because he loves power and influence and probably money. Now, on top of that, he implies that people like Bernie Sanders think that he doesn't go far enough because we need to go so far that we may college free, even if it's free for the kids of millionaires. This is the exact same talking point that Hillary Clinton used in 2016 to justify her unwillingness to support free college, because she said, I don't want to support free college because I don't want Trump's kids to benefit from that program. Well, what a moronic view of the world. It shows that you're not serious about policy because universal policies should benefit everyone because everyone pays into it. By that logic, we should not allow rich people to drive on public roads or not allow them to enjoy public parks or not allow them to call a fire department when their houses are on fire. That's idiotic. It's moronic. It's overly complicated. We don't have to mean test policies just to make sure that we exclude millionaires and billionaires from participating. One, because millionaires, they're already going to send their kids to private Ivy League schools, right? Not very many of them are going to want to go to public colleges. But if they did, so what? You're saying that we should not have free college for everyone just to stop some millionaires from benefiting from it. If you truly were against millionaires benefiting from public policy, wouldn't you institute something like a wealth tax or increasing taxes on the rich? You don't support that, though. So this is nothing more than pseudo adversarialism. He wants to make it seem as if he's actually the one who is going to be harder on the millionaire class. But that's not true. There's no point in really trying to dissect his policy prescriptions because he's not serious about anything. He just cares about his own career. It doesn't matter what the American people need. He is in this for himself. Now, he also gave us a little bit of insight into his electoral strategy and suggested that people who go too far, like Bernie Sanders, they would turn off half the country. Now, what this tells us about his strategy is he would try to court moderate Republicans and pivot in the general election. And, you know, he's setting himself up now so the pivot doesn't seem too jarring. But this strategy is a proven loser. Hillary Clinton tried this and Donald Trump is president. So to him, winning this election isn't going to be about getting out young voters. It's not about registering new voters. This is about appealing to a fixed number of voters and just persuading enough moderate Republicans and independents. That's what he thinks that this is about. That's not going to be conducive to a victory. You moron. So people to judge he's dangerous. He is destructive. And the problem with people to judge is that he's young. So we're going to have to deal with him probably every four years. Right. If he's not successful in 2020, he's probably going to run for the Senate and then run for president again. And the establishment loves him because he is the errand boy of elites. So they're going to constantly shove him down our throats. And the problem with Pete Buttigieg is that he's effective at promoting neoliberalism and centrism and corporatism. So, you know, we don't need that type of influence in the Democratic Party when we are pushing for a paradigm shift, right? But I don't really have to say anything else because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to this ad and she basically did a phenomenal job at dismantling his entire view of the world. She tweeted, this is a GOP talking point used to dismantle public systems. And it's sad to see a Democratic candidate adopted. Let's talk about why Republicans are wrong on this. Just like rich kids can attend public school, they should be able to attend tuition free public college. Here's why. One, universal public systems are designed to benefit everybody. Everyone contributes and everyone enjoys. We don't ban the rich from public schools, firefighters, or libraries because they are public goods. Two, universal systems that benefit everyone are stronger because everyone's invested. Three, when you start carving people out and adding asterisks to who can benefit from goods that should be available to all, cracks in the system develop. Four, many children of the elite want to go to private IVS schools anyway, which aren't covered by tuition free public college. Five, lastly, and I can't believe we have to remind people of this, but it's good to have classrooms from pre-K through college to be socioeconomically integrated, having students from different incomes and backgrounds in the same classroom is good for society and economic mobility. That is precisely it. She basically just took his entire world view and crushed it. And the reason why Pete Buttigieg even has to make this type of argument. Oh, well, Bernie wants rich kids to go to school for free. Oh, is because he's actually not going to hold elites accountable, right? Or if he does, it'll be what a slap on the wrist. Do you honestly believe that there would be fundamental systemic change under a president, Pete Buttigieg? Of course there wouldn't be. So he has to make it seem as if, you know, Bernie isn't actually bold. Bernie isn't actually taking on elites because he wants to allow millionaire kids to go to school for free. That is nonsense. It's idiotic. And it should tell you everything you need to know about Pete Buttigieg. He does not have a core. He's not driven by a political philosophy or ideology. His philosophy is power. He wants to make sure that he moves up. He, you know, gets more power. He assumes positions that will be conducive to him getting more wealth. I wouldn't be surprised if he becomes a lobbyist or goes back to McKinsey after, you know, he runs for president. This is someone who doesn't actually care about the people. And the problem is that Pete Buttigieg isn't alone. There's too many politicians, especially a lot of them who are running in 2020, who don't actually care about policies. They're running because they want to promote themselves. They want to set themselves up for a book deal or some other career. Bernie Sanders is the only person who is begrudgingly running because nobody else is willing to do what he wants to do. So I absolutely cannot stand Pete Buttigieg. He is one of, if not the most dangerous people in the race. And any time he argues against our goals that we've been fighting so hard to elevate, we need to call him out because this is dangerous. It's disingenuous. And I'm just really sick of this talking point and this line of thinking to, you know, downplay progressive goals like fuck off. If you don't support it, then be a Republican politically. Pete Buttigieg is a moderate Republican. So if you want to appeal to them so much, just run as a Republican already. Be a log cabin Republican. We all know that that's probably what you prefer. And, you know, join the other team who you're pandering to so much. Like I'm so sick of these types of politicians. This is no longer the 1990s where you have to be a new Democrat and triangulate in order to get elected. Those days are done. If you want to win, you've got to bring out the left. You've got to bring out young voters and Pete Buttigieg isn't going to do that. If he's the nominee, Trump gets a second term. Hear me now, call me later. But I hope that we don't even have to deal with that. I hope that we don't have to witness Pete go up against Donald Trump. I don't think we will. But if we do, Trump is going to absolutely destroy him because this is someone who is a weasel and people will see right through him and the Democratic Party base, they're just going to stay home. They're not going to support this elitist who isn't going to do anything for them. So there's a lot of speculation about why Elizabeth Warren's reign as the front runner is now over, and there's a lot of reasons why I think that she's starting to plummet in the polls. But part of the reason why I think that's the case is because she is not able to not respond to every criticism from her opponents. So, for example, Trump called her Pocahontas. What does she do? She creates a video where she goes over the results of a DNA test that supposedly prove that she does, in fact, have Native American heritage. Obviously, that backfired and it was incredibly cringeworthy. On top of that, you know, her opponents in the Democratic Party primary pressed her to figure out a way to pay for Medicare for all without raising taxes in the middle class. What does she do? She appeases them by coming up with a plan that would fund it with the regressive head tax on top of that. She moved away from Medicare for all by putting it on a back burner and saying she's going to prioritize a public option. So when people see this, they realize that she's weak. She can't not respond to every criticism when her opponents they're criticizing her because she's running against them, right? You're never going to be able to appease your opponents and they're just going to keep moving the goalpost. What you need to do is create good public policy that is good public policy. Don't take into account what your opponents want, because you're running against shills who don't actually care about the American people. And they're just making bad faith arguments against Medicare for all because they are bankrolled by the health insurance industry, but because she couldn't help herself. Now people see that she's not the real deal. She's weak. She caves to pressure and as a result would probably be a liability against Donald Trump in a general election. Now, the ladies on the view decided to speculate about why Elizabeth Warren is starting to plummet. And they came to the opposite conclusion rather than logically deducing that she probably is starting to plummet because she's backing away from Medicare for all. Well, they're saying that she actually embraced Medicare for all too much. And that's what turned off voters. And the rationale that they use was just nonsensical. So this segment is probably one of the worst that I've ever seen from the view. And I've come to the conclusion that anyone who watches the view is coming away much stupider as a result because they just they're not just out of touch, but they're uninformed and do zero research. Take a look. So Senator Elizabeth Warren was gaining ground in the polls for a minute. But according to another poll, you know, I hate polls unless I'm dancing on them. I'd love to see that. What, me dancing on a pole? We'll show you the pictures. Joy and I have pictures of her. So half of her supporters seem to have bailed on her in the past month. And some folks are saying, well, did she push for Medicare for all too hard? Why are people moving away? Or is this just part of the natural thing that happens? You're hot for a second, and then you're the cooler person. And then the next one is hot. Or is this what normally should be happening? Well, she was attacked because she was the front runner for a second. And I think her the weakness is that Medicare for all, because it's just not that popular across the board. You know, I think many people feel, well, everyone should have health care. But if you have health care that you enjoy now, you don't want to give that up. So, you know, that that's a sticky point for her. And also she never, in my view, really explained how she was going to pay for it. Talks about the wealth tax a lot. Does Bernie explain it? No, he didn't explain it either. And he actually takes credit for it. Right? He says I wrote the bill. He sat at the table and said, you know, I did that. Yeah. But how do you pay for it? And it sounds like in her plan, if you actually dig deep into it, the taxids could go up for the middle class to get this Medicare for all. And I've struggled with this. Well, she says that's not true. She's talking about super sad. But I don't think anyone understands. She says it's the... No one really understands, to your point, where the money's going to come from. But it's going to have to come from somewhere, because it's a lot of money to pay for that. I think she thinks I'm well... This country, Amazon can pay for it. The Amazon can pay for it. This country was founded on choice, right? And this, I think, goes totally against what this country is and what it always has been. And you can't take choice away from the American people. And that's been her problem from the beginning. And we've talked about... You say this all the time. She's not going to be Trump because people are scared. People are scared of those types of policies. And I think rightfully so. And if you want someone that's going to be Trump, I think they're... They have Obama care. I think my feeling is the people who are saying, build on it, are doing a better job of convincing the American people and not scaring everybody. Because I have friends, Republican friends and Democrat friends who, other than me... Beside you. Who say that they will not... They hate Trump, the Republicans I know, or I wouldn't be friends with them. That's not true. Happy Thanksgiving. That's not true, for sure. But I mean, I don't expect my friends to be in love with Trump and hang out with me to tell you the truth. But they also, they say, not Elizabeth Warren. No, no, no, and I have a big argument with them in a way because they want to hang on to every dime they've got these people. They're very rich. But having said that, I don't think it's plausible that she's gonna make a dent with this plan. I think you have to be practical in this country. Isn't she shifting her position a little? It was the green new deal of healthcare. It didn't make any logical sense for how anyone's gonna pay for it. And by the way, I know you hate polls, whoopee, and you do me a solid by placating me because I love them. But a big jump, 28% to 14% since October, is hemorrhaging. She's flatwinding right now. And it's very, if you're on her campaign right now, you should be very, very, very concerned seeing the trends going down, Mayor Pete's going up, but again, oppo dumps, everyone, it makes an impact. And I think she hasn't done an efficient and concise enough job explaining just the simple question, what for people who don't want it taken away? What are they gonna do? The people who don't want their healthcare taken away. Americans do not like things being taken from them across the board. Well, not at this point, since so much has been taken away from her. You know, 99% of the folks are working to pay those damn tax. That segment made my blood boil. That was infuriating because that was nothing more than lies from elites who literally never have to worry about healthcare ever in their lives. They will never go bankrupt, never die if they don't have healthcare. And they talk about choice as if we have a choice now. Our choice is to either die or go bankrupt if we don't have insurance. That's the choice that we have. But our current health system is phenomenal because it works out for them. People who are multimillionaires, who again, never ever have to get on the phone and fight with Aetna to get them to cover a bill that they're refusing to cover that they say that, you know, their coverage expands to or some shit like that. I just, this shit legitimately had me fuming. So let's get into it. People who I generally agree with more times than not, Sonny Hauston, horrible, horrible here. She said, the weakness with Elizabeth Warren is Medicare for all because it's not just that popular. It's just not that popular across the board. Medicare for all, not that popular. This is a policy that 70 to 90% of the Democratic Party base supports. And there were a couple of polls back in the summer that show that a majority, not a plurality, a majority of Republicans supported Medicare for all. So when you say that it's just not that popular, you're a fucking liar and you're out of touch because it is popular. Now support for it has increased, or decreased, excuse me, because shills like people to judge have taken money from the industry and then been arguing against it using industry talking points. But nonetheless, even though support for it has decreased, it's still incredibly popular. Medicare for all has been a long-term goal of the Democratic Party for decades. So for you to say it's not popular, well, there's a Democratic Party primary taking place. Like who are you speaking to? Who are you speaking to? It's popular within the Democratic Party and it's even popular with some Republicans. So that's just the bold-faced lie. She also said, also Elizabeth Warren, in my view, never really explained how she's going to pay for it. Sunny, I don't support Elizabeth Warren, but she released a gigantic fucking plan that explains how she's going to pay for Medicare for all to the penny. Now I don't like the way that she funds Medicare for all because again, I am in favor of a 7.5% payroll tax to cover the bulk of that federal increase in spending. So I don't like the head tax that Elizabeth Warren is proposing. I think it's regressive. I don't think it's the best way to fund Medicare for all. That being said, for you to say she hasn't proposed the way to pay for it. Again, that's a bold-faced fucking lie. And then Joy Behar chimed in and asked, well, does Bernie explain it? Sunny Hauston responded by saying, no. Bernie has a list of options as to how we fund Medicare for all. Now, Bernie doesn't fund it to the penny. Nonetheless, the way he funds it is more progressive. And that's assuming we even have to fully fund Medicare for all and shouldn't just deficit spend because it's a crisis and it would require that. But nonetheless, again, we're not dealing with good faith actors. These are out of tech elites who don't want the system to change. One, because they don't want their taxes to go up. And two, because it's working out phenomenally well for them because they have money. They're comfortable. Abby Hudnspin then chimed in and said, it sounds like taxes on the middle class are going to go up and nobody really understands where the money is going to come from. Except it doesn't really matter if taxes on the middle class go up in actuality because if you're going to net save money because we're getting rid of these monthly insurance premiums, what difference does it make? Well, the difference that it makes is that people who make more than 400,000 per year like them, every single one of them, they will actually be paying more for healthcare. And they don't like that. So they don't care that the peasants will go bankrupt and die. They just don't want things to change for them. So they're trying to convince their viewers who trust them that being against this policy that could one day save their lives is beneficial for them. I mean, this is gaslighting one-on-one right here. Now, Sonny Huston chimed in again and said, I think that Elizabeth Warren believes she can pay for this with a wealth tax. No, again, not an advocate for Elizabeth Warren, but that's just a small portion of how she plans to fund it. Like these people did zero research. I mean, it's unbelievable that they feel confident talking about this as if they are an authority on this issue when they didn't even do a five-minute Google search. I mean, how do you not feel some type of responsibility to at least arm yourself with a little bit of knowledge before talking about this really complex issue? This is a life and death issue. And the fact that you didn't even bother to Google anything about Medicare for all or Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders plans, I mean, it just shows that you are bad people because you're apathetic about the plight of the working class. As you claim to care about the working class and taxes going up on them, like be real. You don't give a fuck about taxes on the working class. You care about your own wallet. That's what this is really about. Now, Abby Huntsman said this country was founded on choice. This I think goes totally against what this country is. You can't take choice away from the American people. Yes, because if we decommodify healthcare and remove that profit motive from our healthcare system, that's taking away choice. It's like saying if you support abortion, you are in favor of baby killing. That's the level of disingenuity that we're dealing with here. Again, we have no choice in the system. We can choose to either die or go bankrupt if we don't have insurance. And the choice that we want isn't between public insurance or private insurance. The choice is just seeing whatever doctor we want. Medicare for all expands choice, but these are liars here. These are rich people who have all the choice that they want. If there's a doctor that they wanna see in fucking France, they can fly there and not even see a dent made in their funds. They're elitist hacks. And they don't give a fuck about you, but they want you to think that they care about you. Joy Behar then says, we have Obamacare. I think that people are doing a better job of convincing the American people and not scaring anybody who are saying we should expand Obamacare. Now, the evidence that Joy Behar points to, well, her rich friends are against it and they wanna keep every penny that they have. Boo fucking who? Because rich people don't want their taxes to go up to pay for Medicare for all, then we should keep Obamacare where people still die every single year. Thousands die every single year because rich people want more money. Hey, Joy, how about this? Why don't you go fuck yourself? Tell your rich friends that. Tell them to go fuck themselves. Now, Megan McCain, who is the worst here, says Elizabeth Warren hasn't explained, quote, what for people who don't want it taken away? What are they gonna do? The people who don't want their healthcare taken away. Americans do not like things being taken from them. I mean, you can't get more disingenuous than that. Listen, you fucking moron. If you had a turd in your hand and it was the only thing you had to eat and you were gonna eat it and I stopped you when I said, hey, put the turd down, I'm gonna give you a sandwich. Would that qualify as taking something away from you if you're getting something that's better for your health? I mean, you are a stupid motherfucker if you literally believe that Medicare for all is taking away something from people. It's not taking away anything from people but it is taking away something from corporations, a profit motive. But guess what? They shouldn't be allowed to profit off of our health. We should have a healthcare system that has the goal of delivering healthcare, not profits to the shareholders of private health insurance companies. But because Megan McCain is the daughter of parents who are rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Her mother, I think inherited billions of dollars. She doesn't have to worry about it. So again, this is about rich people basically telling you in a nutshell, fuck you, I got mine. Don't be in favor of this policy that would potentially save lives, save your life one day. Definitely save lives every single year. Don't be in favor of that. We don't like it personally because our taxes would go up slightly. So we're gonna tell you it's against your interest and actually your taxes are gonna go up and we're gonna say this while concern trolling and pretending as if we care about you when in actuality we're looking out for our own asses. I mean, people need to stop watching the view. Like why do people watch shows like the view? Why do people tune into real time with Bill Maher? All of these centrist shows are making people fucking stupid. It is making our electorate less informed and you really can't have a democracy if you have an uninformed electorate. You just can't, right? Because people aren't able to sufficiently evaluate the political choices and policy proposals before them because you have people who are smear merchants who are self-interested lying to them about things. Like they're literally trying to get you to think that Medicare for all is bad because well, it's taking away choice. I mean, if you believe them, then you're just as stupid as them. I'm sorry, because like people have to fight with these health insurance companies. As Michael Moore put it recently on MSNBC, we hate our private health insurance providers. We hate them. We can lose it, right? If you lose your job, you know, if you have healthcare that's tied to your employer, then you lose your insurance too. I mean, what a disgusting, morally bankrupt, unsustainable system we have and you have these elites here who are rich and incoherently telling you that you should support this system. I mean, what a fucking joke. So bringing it back to Elizabeth Warren, she's not plummeting because she embraced Medicare for all too much. Bernie Sanders is rising and we know that he actually supports single payer Medicare for all. Elizabeth Warren is plummeting because she backed away from Medicare for all and it is a popular proposal, but these elitist assholes wouldn't know that as they look down at us peasants from their ivory towers. So as many of you know, our friends in the UK have a general election coming up and if Tories and Boris Johnson are able to hang on to their majority in parliament, Boris Johnson has already made it clear he's signaled pretty explicitly to Donald Trump that he'd be willing to use their NHS as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, meaning he would open the door to even more privatization in the United Kingdom and allow private American companies to profit off of healthcare in the UK. Now, Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of labor has sounded the alarm over this and rightfully so because even though nobody's accusing Boris Johnson of wanting to fully privatize or Americanize their NHS, well, even if you just give these for-profit vultures an inch, they're going to take a mile. So you have to make sure that you protect what you've managed to obtain and opening the door to these for-profit companies. It's just bad, all around it is bad. So there is an educational campaign going on by proponents of Britain's NHS and the way that they are trying to educate people about the dangers of privatization is by pointing to the United States and there's a video from Politics Joe and basically they just talked to random people on the streets and they asked them what they thought the price of a particular medical procedure was in the United States and what you're going to see is a genuine shock based on how expensive our healthcare system is and this should really put things in a perspective for people in America. This is how people react when they're told about our healthcare system. Ambulance call out how much thing that costs. Zero payment. Zero payment. Yeah, zero payment. No, because two and a half thousand dollars. For real? Yeah. Okay, cool. You look, you look. An inhaler. A hundred dollars. Yeah, you're pretty close to a bit more. 120. 250 to 350. For an inhaler? Mm-hmm, yes. Man, so if you're poor you're dead. I know that it's like public healthcare in the UK, in the US, fortunately I'm able to get healthcare through my parents, their jobs but like I carry an EpiPen and I know that like the cost of that has just been rising. So like there's like very few companies that even compete so it's sort of like a monopoly for the EpiPen. Even though like we have insurance it costs my parents about a couple hundred even with insurance. So two EpiPens, how much do you reckon they are? 80 dollars. 600. 40 dollars. I'm afraid not. More. More. 100 dollars. More. 150. More. 250. More. Shut the fridge. More. 300 pounds. Double it. 600 dollars. What? Why? That's a very good question. 600 dollars. Yeah. For me it's more like just hives and shortness of breath. So it wouldn't be like an immediate death situation but like so I've been fortunate I've not had to use it but it's something like keep on me like I have my backpack right now I have it on me. Cost of childbirth. Jesus. 50 grand something ridiculous now. Yes, I've blown the figures up on your head now haven't I? Because they're larger. The highest generally speaking is about 30 grand. Okay, okay. Is that reasonable? It's not reasonable at all. It's just like now we're on a benchmark. 100, 200. Dollars. Yeah. The average is about 10 grand. It can go up to 30,000. 10 grand! For a baby! Yeah, well I guess. How much is your child worth? Yeah. Is that like the same everywhere? The average is about $10,000. That's mad. Oh no thanks. Okay, no thanks in which case. The coil, RUD, contraception. How much do you think that costs? For one person to implant. Yeah, a little bit higher. Really? Yeah, $1,300. Mental. I wonder if you could tell me how expensive you think calling an ambulance out to your location is in America. I guess it depends on like where you live. It really does. Is there a price for that? Yes. Geez, $100, $200? Two and a half grand. For what, why? Why? Give birth by C-section. And you would like to hold your baby after you've given birth to it. Actually, yeah, that's what you do. You have to pay to do that. Yes. To hold my own child that I've been carrying inside of my womb. So yeah, I was. But yes, yes. Oh, geez. It's not actually that expensive. Right. Charging me, I'm going to punch you. Not you, but the doctor. Like $100. $40. $40. Full skin on skin contact. What do you think of the NHS? Literally, the gift that keeps on giving. Literally, literally, people are so dumb for taking advantage of it. And I don't want it to change. Finally, does it make you grateful for the NHS? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I didn't know how much free health care we got just off the bat. But knowing you have to pay like 30 grand for a child is outrageous. It really is ridiculous. So thank you, NHS, for your hard work. I'm genuinely speechless. Presumably, you had an idea that health care was expensive in the US. I didn't realise how expensive. Yeah, I'm just like, what? If you don't have money, you're fudged, yeah. What do you think of the people who are profiting off the sale of these medicines? Your bastards. Sorry, beep. I think, yeah, I think they should be stopped. Fuck Trump. That was incredibly fascinating to watch. When the man who was asked what he thought the cost of an ambulance, Rad would be, he said, free. Because, I mean, instinctively, you just think that's an emergency. So, of course, the government takes care of emergencies like that. I mean, you call the fire department to put out fire, so why would it be different if you need to call an ambulance? But when he was told that it was 200 and, or $2,500, he was genuinely shocked. In fact, most of these people were genuinely shocked. And I need people to understand in America that if you don't believe Medicare for All is the way to go, you are being duped because that's how people react when they're told about the American system. And our system is this horrible because it is profit-driven, right? It's privatized to its core. Our system isn't about the delivery of healthcare since it is run by private companies, mostly. Well, the goal is to increase shareholder value and increase profits. It's not about healthcare, it's about profits. And this is what you get, a shitty healthcare system where, as one person put it, if you're poor, you're dead. Exactly, except here in the United States, we've been brainwashed so much that the prospect of removing the profit motive from that healthcare system is conflated to taking away choice. I mean, literally, you can see democratic party politicians like people to judge saying that if we advocate for Medicare for All, we are in favor of taking away choice. And people believe it. People actually believe that bullshit in propaganda. I mean, it's just, it's remarkable. There's no choice. The choice, if you get sick in the United States, if you don't have health insurance, is to either die or go to the emergency room and then go bankrupt when you get the bill that you obviously will never be able to pay. It is just a broken system that's so pathetic that other countries have to use us as an example of what not to do. And we are the richest country on the planet. And it's not just the UK. Back in 2008, when there were more talks of privatization in Canada, studies pointed to the United States as what not to do. Because if you privatize a greater portion of healthcare, well, costs will go up and health outcomes will get worse. I mean, it's sad that this is the fact of reality, but I really hope that they do learn from us in the UK, because if you allow for privatization, like a virus, it will creep into your system and ruin it. You're not going to see the effects of it right away, but 10 years down the line, when you realize that you're getting less for what you pay for, you're going to realize that it was privatization that did just that. And what's remarkable about the UK is that even if Tories and Boris Johnson are trying to privatize the NHS, they're not trying to do it entirely. They're trying to take it step-by-step, chip away at it, right? Death by a thousand cuts. But they can't even do it overtly. They have to basically do it covertly and in this insidious way so people don't really know about their true agenda and they have to pay lip service to the NHS and talk about how much they love the NHS. But here in the United States, the party that's supposed to represent the working class and be left-wing Democrats, they're openly against Medicare for All, which doesn't even go as far as a national health system. So do you understand how the Overton window in the United States is so much further to the right than it is in the United Kingdom? Like if I were a benevolent dictator and I could get any policy I wanted, I would opt for a national health system over Medicare for All because I don't just want the government to be the single insurer paying private hospitals. I want those hospitals to be owned by the public because I believe there should be no profit motive in healthcare whatsoever, whatsoever. So I really hope that people in the UK don't take their system for granted and they learn from the mistakes that we've made and fight like hell to protect what they've managed to accomplish because that NHS system, you guys already have 10% of it that is made up by private insurers. Don't let any more in. That's already far too much and you see the effects of what that 10% does. These private for-profit health insurance companies will always want a larger share of the pie and they will never stop fighting to get that. Now to give you some more statistics here with regard to just how bad the American system is, we spend almost double the OECD average relative to our GDP and our per capita spending is more than other developed countries. Yet, we're not getting better health outcomes. We're just being ripped off. Life expectancy is lower than most developed countries. We have one of the worst infant mortality rates and overall, I mean, it's really obvious that even though we're paying more, we're not getting what we're paying for. And speaking of costs, we spend billions of dollars every single year on administrative costs. This is unnecessary. It's a waste, but we have to spend that money because when you have a for-profit system, that requires a really large bureaucracy for billing and insurance and whatnot. So our system, again, is so pathetically broken that other countries always have to point to us as an example of what not to do. If you are an American and you still buy into this false choice argument, you have been duped. Our system is so cruel and inhumane that there are private companies that have openly questioned if curing patients is a sustainable business model. They've literally questioned that. So how can you even defend this system? The answer is it's indefensible. If you have a healthcare system that is based on profit, you change the goal of that system. It's not about the delivery of healthcare. It's about increasing shareholder value and increasing profits. If you're in the UK or any other country with either a single payer or national health system where it's free at the point of service, don't take that for granted. Understand what you got and realize it could be way worse. Fight for it. And what's interesting is that this is really generational. A lot of people in the UK grew up not really knowing what it's like to not have healthcare. People in countries like Canada, for example, they don't ever have to worry about healthcare. David Dole talks about this all the time, who's a Canadian. In the United States, this is something that consumes us. We have to argue with our insurance providers on the phone. We have to apply and reapply every single year. It is such a hassle and it's cruel. So we're being duped in America and I really hope that if you know someone who's still reluctant or afraid of Medicare for All, show them videos from people around the world who learn about our system because that will put things into perspective for them. We are getting duped, we're being taken advantage of and it's about time we finally stand up and demand what's right, demand what other people have in other countries, what they take for granted. And if you're in the UK, I mean, if you allow Tories to win and privatize your system and you don't put up a fight, I don't know what to tell you, that's just stupid. You don't want an American healthcare system. You don't want it to be anywhere close to what we have. Trust me as an American with firsthand experience dealing with our cruel system. You don't want this fight to keep what you got. Trust me, you will regret it if you lose what you have. So I've been a cord cutter for almost 10 years. You know, I don't watch television, I own a television, but I don't have cables, what I'm trying to say. But on Thanksgiving, I was at my mom's house and she had the TV on and even though we weren't really paying attention, I did notice that within the span of a half an hour, there were only two political ads that came on. There were presidential campaign ads for Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg. The two billionaires that are running for president. And really that fact shouldn't be lost on anyone. We should never not be outraged about the fact that we have not one, but two billionaires currently trying to buy the nomination. And the way that they're trying to buy the nomination is by flooding media markets, right? Overwhelming everyone, all the other candidates spending more than them, so that way they overcome the obstacle that a lot of politicians face, name recognition. So if they just blast the airwaves with their ads again and again and again, run ads through TV and Facebook, then they believe that they can boost their name enough to end up winning. They are effectively buying the nomination, it's dangerous. This really, it's not good for democracy. It's not democracy, it's antithetical to democracy to have two billionaires trying to do this. But one thing that I am delighted to learn is that buying the nomination isn't as easy as I initially thought because what's happening is we're seeing this backfire on at least one of them. So Tom Steyer is overwhelming the media market in New Hampshire which obviously is an early primary state, very important. And it's gotten to the point where he has run so many ads that people hate him there. They're literally getting annoyed by the ads that he's running and he's making a joke of himself because it reeks of desperation, not political savviness. So in an article by Politico's Trent Spiner, he writes, Maggie and Libby knew Tom Steyer's ad by heart. I'm going to say two words that will make Washington insiders very uncomfortable. Term limits, they recently chirped in unison at the dinner table. Unfortunately for Steyer, their votes can't be bought. They're 10 and 13. It was like a comedy act. The children's father, Lauren Fox, said his ads are on constantly. Some granite staters said they're seeing Steyer's ads dozens of times a day and it's becoming more grading than ingratiating. A Politico reporter who watched YouTube music videos this week by Pentatonix, a popular acapella group endured 17 Steyer ads in just over an hour. Even some of Steyer's local staff privately acknowledged the volume of ads has gone overboard. Steyer has massively outspent other Democratic candidates on social media and an effort to gain traction in polls and ensure he makes the debate stage. But the recoiling of some New Hampshire voters suggests there are limits to the strategy, Michael Bloomberg beware. Indeed, some residents feel like they can't touch a piece of technology without seeing his face. There is a point of no return in terms of visibility said Scott Spradling, a New Hampshire media analyst. At some point you become the uninvited guest. He uniquely is becoming dangerously close. Steyer was asked directly in a recent radio interview whether he's passed the point of saturation to annoyance. Quote, if people actually hear my message, they do respond. Steyer replied, I'm someone who people don't know anything about and trying to make a very specific point and introduce myself. So I love this story because it has make it stop in the headline because that's what people in New Hampshire are saying. Like, can you imagine like political ads are annoying as it is and I'm in Oregon where one of the later states in the primary process? But political ads are annoying but if you are in one of these early primary states, how obnoxious that would be, especially during presidential campaign years, that would just be insufferable. I wouldn't be able to watch TV. So the fact that it's actually backfiring makes me feel a little bit of a glimmer of hope. We'll say that cautiously optimistic because I don't want to be too optimistic because our democracy is technically dying because we have billionaires running but the fact that people aren't warming up to these billionaires and the fact that they're having a more difficult time than I suspected initially buying the nomination, it does make me feel a little bit better about this. Now, if you actually look at the numbers, like the money he's spending, it really is insane. So far, he spent $55.6 million on advertising nationally and $6.5 million on Facebook alone in the last three months. Now overall, he even outspent Donald Trump by $700,000. Let me restate that. He outspent the incumbent president in advertising by almost a million dollars. That is insane. And what has this gotten him so far? Well, nationally, he is polling at 1.6%. In Iowa, he's polling at 2.3% and in New Hampshire, he's polling at 3.3%. So not great, but he did just qualify for the December debate. So he may not be able to buy the nomination so easily but he is buying his way onto the debate stage. And this is someone who doesn't have any ideas. His big idea is term limits. Okay, great. I support term limits, but that isn't the biggest issue. The biggest issue is corruption in politics. It's capitalism in every sector of society. Healthcare education. This is an individual who doesn't know anything because he's a billionaire, he's out of touch and he can't possibly represent the American people because he doesn't know about their struggles. He doesn't know what he stands for. He just wants power. Like if you are a billionaire and you think that the best way to help if you believe the country's in a bad state is to run for president and not fund some sort of charity or other congressional campaigns, then it just goes to show that you care more about yourself and your ego than actually fixing the problems that America faces. If he truly cared about corruption in America, if he truly was dissatisfied with the establishment, he can use his money to create organizations and programs that combats the establishment's influence but he's not doing that because he cares about himself and even if he's a billionaire already, like people need to realize that power in and of itself is alluring. It's why people like Donald Trump, who was a billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, who is a billionaire, they still want more power even though they have more money than they'll be able to spend in their lifetime. Well, they got everything with regard to money so now they wanna seek out a different type of vice. Power. So that's what this is about. But look, at the end of the day, I'm really happy that this is backfiring and that Tom Steyer is flooding the market so much that he is oversaturating it and annoying the shit out of people. This is good news because we don't want their message to resonate and we want them to have whatever money they're spending be wasted because it needs to be very clear in this country that billionaires cannot buy elections. They're already buying elections indirectly by funding puppets, by making these campaign contributions to politicians in both parties but they certainly should not be able to just buy a position of power themselves. Betsy DeVos already did that by donating to Donald Trump and it's not just Donald Trump. People who donate oftentimes get a job as ambassador. This was true for Obama as well but we have to put an end to this. If we truly believe in democracy then we have to acknowledge that things like this are antithetical to democracy. Billionaires should not be able to buy elections and we have to say that loudly and clearly so that way they get the message and stay the fuck out of politics. Billionaire bootlicker and humanoid egg Michael Smyr Konish of CNN recently did a segment where he basically just clutched his pearls because he was incredibly shocked and appalled at the response that Michael Bloomberg got when he announced that he'd be entering the Democratic Party primary in an attempt to buy the nomination. So what you're gonna see is billionaire apologia. This is incredibly pathetic and cringe worthy. Nonetheless, we will watch and then discuss when we come back. I'm Michael Smyr Konish in New York City today and wondering why all the hostility toward Michael Bloomberg. The former mayor of New York City formerly entered the presidential race this week. He was greeted with a torrent of nasty headlines. Take a look at these. No other Democratic candidate was so coldly welcomed into the race, Bloomberg got no honeymoon. Think about it, when Elizabeth Warren announced that the initial coverage speak to her quote, baggage. Did the first round of stories about Bernie Sanders address the quote, huge barriers he'd confront? Anybody ever used the word grown regarding Kamala Harris? Anyone ever say disqualify? Soon after Amy Klobuchar announced? No way. It's been a total double standard with much of the animus directed at Bloomberg's wealth. Instead of focusing on the fact that he's the son of a middle class accountant who earned his money himself and that by not accepting donations he did not prostitute himself to the political process, his self-financing is cast as a negative and his uniquely American story largely ignored. Well, I have a different perspective. I say welcome Mr. Mayor and thank you for your willingness to enter what TR described as the arena. You've been in this race just a week and already your face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. You don't need this. You could spend the rest of your years with your feet up in Bermuda. Hell, you could buy Bermuda but you choose to continue to contribute both with your donations and with your talents. Your ethics seem above reproach. You're a data-driven, non-ideologue and by most accounts, New York City benefited from your leadership of 12 years. So I say good luck. You can have my salt shaker and my sugary drink. Just make the trains run on time. I mean, you could have stopped about a minute in. At that point, Michael Bloomberg's boot was already thoroughly clean. You licked it so clean, it was spotless. In fact, it was so shiny, it was blinding, Michael. That is incredibly cringe-worthy. And I'm just realizing now that there's a lot of Michaels going on. The host is Michael Smirkanish. He's talking about Michael Bloomberg and I'm Michael talking about both of them. This is getting very meta and a little bit weird, but nonetheless, I'm not like those two Michaels who one is a bootlicker and one is an oligarch. They are pieces of human filth and watching that made me really feel as if there's no hope because people tune into CNN as a source of news and news is supposed to basically make people more informed going into the voting booth. But can anyone say that after watching that, they learned more and they're more informed in making their decision in 2020? Of course not. If anything, I feel dumber having watched that pathetic segment. But nonetheless, he says, why all the hostility toward Michael Bloomberg? Because he's a billionaire who's literally trying to buy the nomination. Do you not support democracy? Because that is bad for democracy. I mean, the fact that he has to have this explained to him shows that he needs to be fired from his job at CNN. If you don't know why a billionaire trying to buy his way to the nomination is bad for democracy, then you shouldn't be a political analyst. On top of that, he says no other Democratic candidate was so coldly welcomed into the race because he's a billionaire trying to buy the nomination. That's a bad thing if you believe in democracy, numb nuts. I mean, I just don't understand how you come to this conclusion if you get paid to do politics for a living. He has a net worth of $2 million and nowhere near Michael Bloomberg who's worth what, 50 plus billion? But I mean, if you don't understand why a billionaire in politics is problematic and if you don't grasp why people don't like that and are speaking out about that, then you shouldn't be doing politics. You need to quit your job or be fired and do something else because you're too stupid to understand basic political concepts. Billionaire buying elections is bad for democracy. It's antithetical to democracy. He says there's been a total double standard with much of the animus directed at Bloomberg's wealth because he is a fucking billionaire trying to buy the election. Quote, instead of focusing on the fact that he's the son of a middle-class accountant who earned his money himself and by not accepting donations, he did not prostitute himself to the political process. His self-financing is cast as a negative and his uniquely American story largely ignored. Yes, because there's so many stories about the American dream, how we grew up from a middle-class family and then went on to be worth more than $50 billion. It's so common. It's a uniquely American story. It probably is a uniquely American story, but that isn't a good thing for America. That's a bad thing. The fact that somebody can amass that much wealth should embarrass every single American. And he said that Mike Bloomberg earned a billion dollars. You don't earn a billion dollars. Nobody can work hard enough to earn a billion dollars even if they were able to live to be 100,000 years old. You can't earn that much money. It's impossible. It's impossible. So the way that you accumulate that much money is by exploiting the labor of your workers or taking advantage of a rigged economy, you know, skirting your tax obligations and whatnot. So this is just, I mean, I can't believe that I have to explain this to a political analyst who gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions per year. You can't earn a billion and buying elections is very bad. He also says, I say welcome, Mr. Mayor and thank you. Lick that boot, lick that boot, kiss that ass. I mean, how pathetic are you? How pathetic are you? This is why you have a job at CNN because you are willing to suck up to power. Part of the problem with this segment is it assumes that Mike Bloomberg is running for altruistic reasons out of some duty, you know, to his country or social responsibility. And he says this explicitly, look, you don't need this. You could spend the rest of your years in Bermuda. Hell, you could buy Bermuda, but you chose to contribute. Contribute what? Running for president by trying to buy your way to the nomination is not some sort of altruistic public service, you fucking idiot. And it's not like when he was a mayor, he even made a difference. This is the guy who is known for banning big gulps. He instituted the racist stop and frisk policy that obviously disproportionately targeted black and brown people. It turned New York City into a mini police state. And on top of that, he endorsed George W. Bush in 2004. He tried to criminalize homelessness, yes, by banning food donations to the homeless because quote, outlawed our food donations to homeless shelters because the city can't assess their salt, fat, and fiber content. That's the person who you're standing for. He told people in New York City, you can't feed the homeless because we don't know what's in the food that you're giving to homeless people and it could be unhealthy for them. I mean, this is not a serious person. And all of the hatred and vitriol that's being spewed at Michael Bloomberg, it's still not enough. If we quadrupled it, it still wouldn't be enough because there should be such a backlash to any billionaire running for president that they feel ashamed of themselves and they don't even wanna go out in public because they know that they will be shamed by people who realize that buying elections, using your position of immense wealth to try to buy power is grotesque and shouldn't happen in an egalitarian society. I mean, if you truly believe in democracy, Michael Smirkanish, then aren't you at all worried that a normal working class American can't run for president but someone who is a billionaire like Michael Bloomberg can run and just automatically be taken seriously by propagandists such as yourself? Like you can't care about democracy if you truly support Mike Bloomberg, you can't. So I mean, I don't really need to go on. I think that this segment speaks for itself. He has his job because he's such a bootlicker and an ass-kisser of the elite class because he probably thinks that he will be a billionaire someday or maybe he just is a sick event. I don't know, either way, this was absolutely disgusting. It was pathetic and most of all, it was dangerous. We should not be welcoming billionaires into the race. We should be shaming them and telling them to get out of politics because they have so much money that they don't need government to help them and address their concerns, right? They can do that themselves. Government is supposed to be about ordinary people making policies that affect them, not elites telling us what they think we should do. And in the case of Michael Bloomberg, it's not sugary drinks like big gulps or whatever the fuck. Like what an idiotic policy proposal, fuck off. Like this was absolutely embarrassing. And I really hope that Michael Smirkonnish feels ashamed of himself for running this segment but I take it he probably is really proud that he's saying what needed to be said or speaking truth to power, something, some way that he I guess justifies it because you have to justify it and rationalize it in order to come to that idiotic of a conclusion to sleep at night. Because if I were doing that and I knew what I was doing, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So I'm sure that he has to do some type of mental gymnastics and make it seem like he's a truth teller, but in actuality, he's a bootlicker and that's all he's ever gonna be. He, you know, I didn't really have an opinion of Michael Smirkonnish, but certainly he has forever lost whatever respect I had by doing this segment, pathetic, cringe-worthy and embarrassing. Shame on you, Michael Smirkonnish. In what I think is a genuinely shocking turn of events, Kamala Harris has announced that she is suspending her 2020 campaign. Now, I don't really believe that a lot of people thought that she had what it takes to go the distance, but for her to drop out before Iowa and New Hampshire is genuinely shocking to a lot of political observers. Now, part of the reason why I think she's dropping out is because the deadline to withdraw officially from the California Democratic Party primary was approaching and she's not pulling too well there. So to be a young politician with ambitions for higher office, to lose in your home turf, that's not a good look for, you know, the long-term prospects of your career. So of course she made the right decision and acknowledged that she can't win this and she chose to drop out and she released this video explaining why she made this choice. 11 months ago at the launch of our campaign in Oakland, I told you all that I am not perfect, but I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect, that I will lead with integrity and I will speak the truth. And so that's what I've tried to do every day of this campaign and here's the truth today. I've taken stock and I've looked at this from every angle and over the last few days, I have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life. So here's the deal guys, my campaign for president simply does not have the financial resources to continue and the financial resources we need to continue. I'm not a billionaire, I can't fund my own campaign and as the campaign has gone on, it has become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete. In good faith, I cannot tell you my supporters and volunteers that I have a path forward if I don't believe I do. So to you my supporters, my dear supporters, it is with deep regret but also with deep gratitude that I am suspending our campaign today. But I wanna be clear with you, I am still very much in this fight and I will keep fighting every day for what this campaign has been about. Justice for the people, all the people. So look, I've been critical of Kamala Harris but credit to her words do. She acknowledged that she can't win and she did the right thing. She dropped out. That is exactly what you should do if it seems as if you don't have the money needed to sustain your campaign. Now this announcement comes after a scandal with regard to one of her top campaign staffers who resigned and penned a scathing letter essentially saying that out of all of the presidential campaigns that she worked for, Kamala Harris treated her staffers the worst. And part of the problem was that Kamala Harris had a lot of staffers basically uproot their lives for Kamala's campaign. They moved to New Hampshire and then they kind of looked at the way the wind was blowing, realized that she didn't necessarily have the money to be competitive in other states. So she just focused all of her resources on Iowa. So that means people who literally moved to New Hampshire and were laid off were essentially, their lives were ruined because of this campaign. So people are angry and I think rightfully so. And that's not a great way to treat your staffers who put their lives on the line for you who dedicated the last 11 or so months to fighting for you. Now, as the New York Times explains, the decision came after weeks of upheaval among Ms. Harris' staff, including layoffs in New Hampshire and at her headquarters in Baltimore and disarray among her allies. She told supporters in an email on Tuesday that she lacked the money needed to fully finance a competitive campaign. Quote, my campaign for president simply doesn't have the financial resources we need to continue, Ms. Harris wrote. Now the latest trajectory of her campaign made it seem like this really was inevitable. I thought that she would at least make it to Iowa. Nonetheless, here we are. But when you go back to when she announced her campaign and she launched in Oakland at an event where 20,000 people showed up, it seemed as if she would be a force in this primary that she was possibly unstoppable. And mind you, after that first debate where she called out Joe Biden, she surged in the polls to a point where she literally surpassed Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, albeit temporarily, but nonetheless, that was a huge jolt to her campaign. However, at that second debate when Tulsi Garrett went after her, that was essentially the beginning of the end of Kamala Harris' campaign. And on top of that, and part of the reason why she lost is because she backed away from Medicare for all. Now, she acknowledges that there is a war that's going on within the Democratic Party. There's centrists versus progressives and she was really trying to walk a fine line and appease both warring wings when really you're not going to appease both sides. You either have to plant your feet and flag in one side and roll with it, but she didn't do that. So she initially came into this primary endorsing Medicare for all and then almost immediately she started to back away after saying we should get rid of private insurance. She then said, well, maybe we shouldn't do that. And then she completely walked away from Medicare for all by proposing her own version with private for-profit health insurers, which is not single payer, that's multi payer. And that was another reason why she started to lose. And Elizabeth Warren really should learn from Kamala Harris because what she should take away from this and what future politicians who plan to run for president should take away from this is sometimes when you try to appease everyone, you end up appeasing nobody. Because by coming up with a Medicare for all compromise, she pissed off progressives and centrists like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg who were attacking her for supporting Medicare for all still just pretended as if she supported real Medicare for all. So she appeased nobody. So if you're gonna run for president, you have to start your campaign with true policy convictions and make the case for them and not waver in an attempt to appease critics who are never going to accept what you have to offer. They're always going to move the goalpost. So Kamala Harris, I mean, she's certainly not one of the worst, but it's easy to see why she lost and didn't have the momentum to go the distance because she was trying to be malleable in an attempt to be a candidate that represents everybody. But you've got to pick a side. Like you can't choose to be the candidate for centrists and progressives. One side has to win out and the other side has to lose. And she didn't acknowledge that and that is her downfall. And Elizabeth Warren is now seeing that that same failed strategy may very well be her downfall as well. Now, since Kamala Harris isn't the worst, certainly not the best, but she's not the worst. It is sad to see her go before billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, they absolutely should be dropping out before Kamala Harris. But I will say, you know, I am satisfied that an establishment figure like Kamala Harris has dropped out before anti-establishment figures like Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. I don't support them to be clear, but it's nice to see that people who don't have the backing of the establishment can have more longevity than someone who obviously is aligned with the establishment and wants to do their bidding. So the question is, where will Kamala's support go? She was pulling at around 4% to 5% on average. So who is going to benefit from Kamala Harris's loss? It's really difficult to tell. I think that her support will be distributed relatively equally, but I think the individuals who will benefit the most, probably going to be Elizabeth Warren, maybe Pete Buttigieg. But what we're seeing is there's this portion of the elector that kind of jumps from Kamala Harris to Elizabeth Warren, to Pete Buttigieg. And they're incredibly flexible in their ideology and they just kind of see what the mainstream media is saying about particular candidates and they base their support presumably on that. So I'm not sure where that support will go, but certainly it'll be interesting to see who gains the most from this, but there you have it. Kamala Harris, after launching her campaign with a really strong showing, is now out of the race before Iowa and New Hampshire. I certainly didn't see this coming. I think a lot of people didn't see this coming. But even though I didn't necessarily believe that she would be dropping out this early, at least I could take comfort knowing that CNN was the most wrong who had Kamala Harris at number one in their candidate rankings. It just goes to show you that mainstream news analysts don't have their finger on the pulse of America and they don't really know what they're talking about. But I mean, there you have it. This race is certainly interesting and we're starting to see it wind down. There's still 16 people running, but now we're seeing people drop out and I really hope that other people follow Kamala's lead here and acknowledge that if they don't have the financial resources to maintain their campaigns and pay their staffers, rather than dragging it out and taking up time at the debate, they should just drop out and do the right thing if they know that they're not going to win. But I mean, I'll leave that there. Kamala Harris is out. So I originally wasn't going to talk about this because I generally tend to avoid engaging in or endorsing celebrity worship. However, Bernie Sanders received a really, really awesome endorsement that wasn't just from someone who is powerful and influential, but this endorsement was actually really meaningful and just well said. So the Incredible Hulk has decided to endorse Bernie Sanders. Of course, I'm talking about Mark Ruffalo and this is the video that he released. And I'm hoping that this will actually help Bernie Sanders because what he says here, the case that he makes for Bernie Sanders is just so fantastic. And people listen to what celebrities like Mark Ruffalo say, which is why I think this matters and why I'm hoping this does actually have a huge impact. Nonetheless, let's watch it and then I'll talk about it a little bit when we come back. The one person that just keeps coming up to me and popping out to me is Bernie Sanders. The key issues that most of the leaders in the field are either espousing or working around the edges or healthcare, not taking money from big corporations and PACs, fighting climate change, some sort of debt relief for college students, free education. People considered those things to be pie in the sky in 2016. Now they are the norm because Bernie stood and walked into those, into those issues that he knew were the right issues for the American working class. So I proudly and humbly throw my support to Bernie Sanders. He will make an excellent and historic president in the very moment we are ready for it and need it most. He is the original progressive. In my humble opinion, he has earned it. We need a movement leader. We need a movement organizer. We need a leader who's actually one of us. And Bernie is one of us and he's always been one of us. Of course, you know, I go way back with Bernie Sanders and I still love the guy and I love what he's doing. I grew up in a factory town what was probably one of the biggest industrial hubs in the United States at the turn of the century, which is Kenosha, Wisconsin. I'm a second generation Italian American. I grew up in those working class neighborhoods where my neighbors worked at American motors or anchor hocking or anaconda brass. I saw those companies closed down and I saw my community devastated. The thing about the working class people that I grew up with was they had a real kind of moral center to them. I think that's partially why Bernie resonates with me because he feels like those people. I believe in him and he is the people that I grew up with. He is those working class people and I know that he's got their backs because that's who he is. That's where he came from. I had $500,000 in debt. I had an acoustic neuroma, which was a benign cancerous growth that sits on the base of the brain in the ear canal, auditory canal. And I lost my hearing and I was in the hospital next to people who had much worse things than me who the nurses were coming in and making sure that they could pay for their hospital stay. I saw firsthand how devastating that is. If I wasn't lucky, I'd be doomed. Healthcare is an absolute human right, especially if we're living in the richest country in the world. Bernie's ethos is us, not me. He knows that his power is derived from us. He'll be the first to tell you that this is not about me, it's about you. And he's not gonna leave us on the White House lawn once he's in that office. He's gonna take this momentum to push through the changes that you all know that need to be made. He's the original progressive, he's OP. So listen, if you endorse someone who you know is going to raise your taxes, that says a lot about your character. Like I actually have a lot of respect for Mark Ruffalo because a lot of celebrities, they like to seem like they are woke for lack of a better word. And they're not, they're concerned about their own bottom line. They wanna increase their wealth. They love the comfortable lives that they live and they don't want anyone to eat into the wealth that they have. So for someone like Mark Ruffalo to endorse Bernie Sanders, I respect that. I really respect that. Now he makes phenomenal points. He says that all of the policies that politicians are running on now to basically prove to people that they're progressive, these were ideas that were popularized by Bernie Sanders in 2016. He's the OP, as Mark Ruffalo put it. Now on top of that, he says, if I wasn't lucky, I'd be doomed with regard to healthcare, understanding that he's in a really privileged position, but even if he's in that position where he has money and he'll never go bankrupt due to a lack of healthcare, I mean, he was able to see firsthand how people who were in the same room as him in the same hospital were asked about whether or not they would be able to pay the bill. I mean, some people just have empathy that others don't have. Mark Ruffalo is clearly someone with human empathy, but I mean, if you don't have empathy, if that lacks and it's just not something that's instinctual for you, then you do have to see this firsthand. Like you have to experience this level of suffering in order to understand why people need things and why we should put money and resources into helping people get those things, even if you never are going to benefit from that, right? And this is something that I think the left has that the right never has. When it comes to, you know, particular issues such as LGBTQ rights, they don't ever talk about, you know, expanding civil rights unless it affects them personally. Dick Cheney, he is basically one of the worst human beings on the planet, but he was in favor of LGBTQ rights because his daughter is a lesbian. And there's countless other examples, you know, conservatives, unlike liberals, don't have that empathy automatically. So unless they experience some type of adversity, they're never going to endorse a policy that isn't going to benefit them because that's against their worldview. It's about, you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making sure that you take care of yourself and don't let the government give you anything, yada, yada, yada. So if you, you know, fuck up or if life gives you a bad deck, then, you know, it doesn't matter, you're on your own, but the progressive mantra is we are in this together. Yo-yo versus wit. We're in this together versus you're on your own. And if you're going to live in a society, then why should we allow people to fall through the cracks? It's just, it shouldn't happen. That's the thing, it shouldn't happen. So in a long-winded way, I'm saying, I'm really thankful that people like, you know, Mark Ruffalo and other celebrities like Cardi B, they use their life experience, you know, as working-class Americans to acknowledge that other people are still struggling in spite of the fact that they made it. And yes, even though they made it and they're now millionaires, that doesn't necessarily mean that that is going to be the same story that, you know, will happen to everyone else. That's not realistic. The American dream is dead. And we need to acknowledge that reality and stop living in fantasy world that one day we're going to be billionaires so we shouldn't tax billionaires. You're not going to be a billionaire. You're probably never even going to be anywhere close to being a millionaire. You'd be lucky if you make $100,000 in a year in your life. So acknowledge that increasing taxes on the wealthy is good and it's not going to impact 99% of the population. So I'm glad that there are people who kind of put their own self-interest aside and they acknowledge, you know what? We need to implement social safety net programs for the greater good. That's fantastic. Now, because I feel like the tone of this show as of late has become increasingly negative, I want to take some time to kind of go over some things that will put a smile on your face, hopefully. I want to look at Mark Ruffalo and Bernie Sanders memes. So this is probably my all-time favorite. Find someone who looks at you the way Mark Ruffalo looks at Bernie Sanders. This is like my all-time favorite meme, I think. It's just, it's so wholesome and is genuinely heartwarming. Another one here. Noticing something is wrong with our political system. Being angry about our political system. Organizing for Bernie. Absolutely. You have Hulk Bernie crushing capitalism and then you have this one. Mark Ruffalo fervently endorses Bernie Sanders. So let's make sure Bernie wins because you wouldn't like Mark when he's angry. It's so wholesome and I love it. So look, if one of the people who were instrumental in defeating Thanos is saying that Bernie Sanders is the fighter that we need, you know, I think that we should listen to his judgment here. He knows what he's talking about. The Hulk endorsed Bernie Sanders and I'm gonna trust the incredible Hulk. We just celebrated Thanksgiving and overall this is supposed to be a more joyous and generous time of the year. However, the Trump administration has chosen, rather than feeding the hungry this holiday season, they're going to let people starve. Why? Because this is a punitive measure that he believes will make people more inclined to seek out employment. If you starve them, then maybe that will encourage them to get a job. It'll be a little kick in the behind to help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's the logic anyways. So as Phil McCosland of NBC News reports, the Trump administration Wednesday formalized work requirements for recipients of food stamps, a move that will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose access to the supplemental nutrition assistance program or SNAP. The USDA rule change affects people between the ages of 18 and 49 who are childless and not disabled. Under current rules, this group is required to work at least 20 hours per week for more than three months over a 36 month period to qualify for food stamps, but states have been able to create waivers for areas that face high unemployment. The new rule would limit states from wavering those standards, instead restricting their use to those areas that have a 6% unemployment rate or higher. The national unemployment rate in October was 3.6%. During the call Wednesday, the USDA said that about 688,000 people would lose access to food stamps. That's down from its earlier estimate that 750,000 people would be affected. The USDA said that this was an extension of President Donald Trump's April 2018 executive order called Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility, that is Orwellian named, that aimed to create more work programs and limit public assistance. This work requirement rule would save the government 5.5 billion over five years, the USDA said. The agency said that it found 2.9 million adults on snap rolls were able-bodied and did not have dependents. And it said 2.1 million were not working. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, said this rule would do little to help anyone find work. All the rule change does is strip people from accessing the benefits, she said. And that last line there is totally correct. This is Donald Trump trying to encourage people to find employment by using starvation as leverage against them. It's a type of deterrent, right? We apply this philosophy to our immigration policy as well. The more cruel and inhumane our immigration policy becomes, the logic is that that will be a greater deterrent against other people coming into the country. But it doesn't actually work that way. And by making sure that more people starve in this country, you're not going to make them that much more inclined to find a job. Some people can't work or they're trying to find a job or they already have a job and it's part-time and their hours got cut. I mean, there are so many reasons that they're not considering here that will just lead to people going hungry. So if you have diabetes and you need a specific type of diet, well, you may not be able to get the diet and nutrition that you need. If you're already poor and you're on food stamps and you've got to skip a meal, you may have to skip another meal and be even more malnourished. I mean, this is just cruel and inhumane all to say $5.5 billion when if we really wanted to increase revenue to the federal government, we could undo those tax returns for millionaires and billionaires like Donald Trump, which amounts to more than a trillion dollars. But see, when it's for the rich people, we can spend money if it means helping them. But for poor people, we've got to save every fucking penny, even if that means that some people will go hungry and possibly die as a result of this. This is disgusting. We're the richest country in the world. And look at the things that we prioritize. If you are a seasonal worker with an inconsistent schedule or you work in retail or fast food and it's slow, so you're let off to save money on labor. Well, for no reason whatsoever, Donald Trump is penalizing you because he thinks this is going to help you be employed full-time or whatever the case may be. It's just morally reprehensible. And I can't believe that things like this happen. And the mainstream media says nothing. Like we learned that Donald Trump will be cutting more than 600,000, almost 700,000 people from the FoodStand program. And there's not a peep from the mainstream media about this. It's disgusting. It's absolutely morally reprehensible. And the thing about the SNAP program is that the goal of SNAP is to feed the hungry. It's not an employment program, right? We can't use that to successfully get people jobs. If you want people to have jobs in this country, create a federal jobs program. I mean, there are a number of things that you can do. But this right here is just Donald Trump punishing people for being poor. That's all that this is about because when he cuts people from FoodStamps, then he's gonna brag about how, oh, well look, people on FoodStamps have gone down. That means that people are doing better. That's exactly what this is about. Now it could potentially get worse than this, believe it or not. The article continues. This is the first of three rule changes aimed to augment the SNAP program proposed by the Trump administration. The two others would reform the way 40 states automatically enroll families and to SNAP when they receive other forms of federal aid and cap deductions made for housing and utility costs, which are considered when a person applies for FoodStamps. A study by the Urban Institute released this week examined the three rules in combination for the first time and found that 3.7 million fewer people would receive SNAP in an average month. 2.2 million households would see their average monthly benefits drop by $127. More than three million others would see an average drop of $37 per month and 982,000 students would lose access to free or reduced lunches. What we found is that overall, the three proposed changes would reduce the number of households participating in SNAP by about 11% if this was implemented in 2018. Laura Wheaton, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who conducted the study, previously told NBC News, it's about a 9.4% reduction in the number of people participating and about an 8% reduction in overall benefits. So I mean, that's Donald Trump's goal. That is his ultimate goal. And if he had his way, if it wouldn't be tremendously unpopular, he probably would just end these programs. I mean, it's already like death by a thousand cuts. Politicians keep chipping away at all of our social safety net programs, even though these programs belong to us, we pay into them. And yet they wanna reduce benefits all to increase the revenue to the federal government and essentially just kick people when they're down. I mean, this is the human embodiment of Ebenezer Scrooge. It's disgusting. We're getting this announcement during the Christmas season which he claims that there's a war on or he did anyways, most conservatives do, but I mean, it's just, it's morally reprehensible. And this motherfucker likes to claim that he loves America so much. Well, you don't love America if you don't love Americans. And since he's been in power, all he's done is demonstrated that he has contempt in his heart for normal working Americans. People who are already struggling to feed themselves, he's going to make it more difficult. If you're on food stamps, it's difficult, right, to feed yourself. He's gonna make it more difficult. And this will obviously disproportionately impact marginalized communities, people of color. This is going to hurt people who need to eat. And this is probably also going to hurt Donald Trump's own supporters, but they probably will still vote for him regardless because A, they either don't know about this or B, they don't care as long as he's going to continue to punish immigrants. If you still support Donald Trump, you are on the wrong side of history. And it's not like he's any different than other conservatives with regard to this issue. They always want to gut our social safety net programs. But we're getting more desperate, right? Times are getting tougher for people. And yet they still don't care. They're restricting access to social safety net programs that the poor relies on to feed themselves. That keeps them alive. I mean, I just, I don't know what to say about this. I have family members who benefit from this program who will probably be affected by this cut. I mean, people, just because they're not employed that doesn't necessarily mean that they're lazy, right? That's what conservatives want you to believe. There's this welfare queen myth that has persisted since the Reagan era. People either are looking for work or can't work for a number of reasons. Mental health issues, some type of illness. The point is we should be helping them, not kicking them when they're fucking down. If you're poor enough to qualify for SNAP, you're not having a wonderful life, your fridge isn't fully stocked. So we need to just fundamentally reshape the way that we think about the poor in this country. These people are not a burden to the system. The individuals who are burdening the system are the elites. They're the real welfare queens. You want to gut welfare, gut the welfare that we're giving to Walmart, who pay their workers such low wages that their employees have to go on welfare. That's the welfare that you should look at. Welfare that supports large multinational corporations and their greed. But I mean, I don't know what else to say about this. It's just, it's honestly depressing and a little demoralizing, especially around the holiday season when people are trying to be in high spirits and be in good moods. They learn that some of them may go hungry even more so than they already are. And it's just really, it's heartbreaking. We're saying Merry Christmas again. The holiday season is in full swing and with it comes one of my favorite traditions. The so-called War on Christmas where the right claims that the left hates Christmas and in fact, we just want to destroy this holiday in its entirety. Now the way that they prove that a War on Christmas is actually a thing and not just a meme at this point is by pointing to usually obscure examples of people just bucking tradition, doing something different or saying happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas. But the problem with this War on Christmas narrative is that on one hand, conservatives want to jerk themselves off and boast about the strides that they've made when it comes to the culture wars, but simultaneously, they still do want to feed into the conservative persecution complex and play the victims as much as possible. So on one hand, they still want us to think that there is a War on Christmas being waged by the left. But on another hand, Donald Trump wants you to think that he's been successful at winning the War on Christmas. In fact, this child told us in a Trump ad that now we can finally say Merry Christmas again. Thank you, President. The War on Christmas is over. Or is it though? Because conservatives who support Trump want you to believe that there still is a War on Christmas. So to recap last year, when we talked about the War on Christmas, Tucker Carlson and Dave Rubin were outraged that people on Twitter poked fun at Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. And Steve Ducey, a Fox News, couldn't handle the fact that the Satanic Temple had the audacity to have one of their statues displayed next to a Christmas tree on public property. One person made gender-neutral gingerbread cookies and that sparked quite the controversy, you could imagine. And on top of that, this cat sat in an activity scene where baby Jesus is supposed to sit. So according to Fox News and conservatives everywhere, a War on Christmas is real. And yes, it still is being waged in spite of what Daddy Trump claims. But one thing that warring factions within the Republican Party can still agree on is that regardless if you think that the War on Christmas still exists or has already been won thanks to Donald Trump, they still all want to play the victim. So if you think that the War on Christmas has been won, don't worry, you can still find reasons why conservatives are and always will be the victims. If you're Donald Trump, even though you won the War on Christmas, there's actually a war being waged on a different holiday, Thanksgiving. As we gather together for Thanksgiving, you know, some people want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don't want to use the term Thanksgiving. And that was true also with Christmas, but now everybody's using Christmas again. Remember I said that? But now we're gonna have to do a little work on Thanksgiving. People have different ideas why it shouldn't be called Thanksgiving, but everybody in this room, I know loves the name Thanksgiving and we're not changing it. Look, I am basically a full blown SJW at this point. The only thing I haven't done yet is dye my hair blue. But I have never heard anyone in any left-leaning circle suggest that we should change the name of Thanksgiving. And apparently these Stooges over at Fox News had no idea what the fuck Trump was talking about too. There's an ad on my fireplace. But regardless, they still went along with this narrative that there's a war on Thanksgiving, like good little Stooges and the bootlickers that they are. And you can see that they were really grasping in order to make Trump seem less crazy. You know, over the last week or so we've been talking about how there have been many different suggestions from people on the political left on more environmentally friendly ways to celebrate tomorrow's big day Thanksgiving. Well, last night the president was talking about somebody who apparently was talking about change of the name of the holiday. Watch. As we gather together for Thanksgiving, you know, some people want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don't want to use the term Thanksgiving. I don't think there's a huge push to change the name of Thanksgiving, is there? Well, you know, I think it was in 2015 there was a rumor that Barack Obama wanted to change the name of Thanksgiving, but that was debunked. So perhaps what he's talking about is just all these stories about, you know, your carbon footprint and the amount of energy you use to travel over the river and through the woods to grandma's house, you know. Well, you could Skype her and not even show up at all. You know, just FaceTimer. Grandma wants to see you. Oh, really? She wants to go like that. Not if it's gonna hurt the environment. Growing up, you're such a big boy. Mostly Italians do that. Italians grab the cheek and twist. I think that is universal grandma. Is it? Yeah, grandma language. And that's maintaining the tradition, right? And I think the issue that a lot of people have with potentially changing that name is the fact that in that name, we're expressing gratitude and whatever historical connotations we can acknowledge. It still doesn't take away from the fact that this is a day that we are to give thanks and gratitude for our loved ones and our blessings. Right, maybe this would be the one year we have cranberry sauce that did not retain the shape of the can. See, you gotta actually make a dish. I got a cookbook. That is what propaganda looks like when you know that your job is to do propaganda for Donald Trump. And even when you know what he said is totally false and you still gotta go along with it, I mean, that's what you look like. You end up looking like a fool. But this narrative, it will never not be dumb. It's always going to be stupid, but regardless, even if there isn't necessarily widespread agreement that there is a war on Thanksgiving, well, there are still war stories from 2019 about the so-called war on Christmas. For example, Timmy Lorraine tweeted out a picture of Christmas trees at the White House from the prestigious Faith Wire. We all know about this outlet, very, very respectable. And I guess that the reason why this is supposedly going to trigger the Libs is because the trees have patriotic decorations. I can't see it based on this picture. But she says, quote, finally, a first family that loves our country. That's what the left hates most of all. Okay. That's exactly why we hate Donald Trump because he loves America. It's not because he got an office and his first major legislative accomplishment was to cut his own taxes. It's not because he's cutting food stamps. It's not because he's increasing wars. It's because he loves America. You just, you nailed it, Timmy. Good job. But that's only tangentially related to the so-called war on Christmas. But regardless, there is one example of what I think could possibly be definitive proof that there is a war on Christmas. Because I think that you can probably file the Timmy Laurent tweet under the war on Christmas has been one category. But the Daily Wire did manage to find a new way that liberals are waging a war on this precious holiday. And they came up with this. Introducing Target's gender-inclusive gingerbread Christmas sweater. This is definitive proof. So the Daily Wire's Paul Boyce reports, over at Target, the world-famous gingerbread man has been given a makeover in a newly featured gender-inclusive gingerbread Christmas sweater available now for the price of $29.99. Behold. As the image shows, the new quote, gender-inclusive gingerbread, fill in the blank, has no unique features distinguishing itself from the average gingerbread man. And yet, the Target online store literally builds it as the gender-inclusive gingerbread long sleeve sweater with absolutely no accompanying description as to what classifies it as gender-inclusive. It's as if the very utterance of gingerbread man or even gingerbread woman is in itself offensive. So what do we get? A sweatshirt with a character that looks exactly like the gingerbread man but is instead described as gender-inclusive. Target is also not the only establishment catching wind of this new trend. According to Mirror, a coffee shop called the Tannery in Auckland, New Zealand, decided to put its own brand of gender-inclusive cookie by calling it the gender-neutral person. Last Christmas, an elementary school principal out of Nebraska also argued that students should use the term gingerbread people instead of gingerbread man as well as the term snow people. I mean, how can you see evidence like this and deny that there's an all-out assault happening on Christmas? Trump claims he won the war on Christmas, but how can he say that when there are gender-inclusive gingerbread cookie sweaters? Now, if you haven't already noticed, the sweater is unisex. This sweater is unisex, meaning it can be worn by men or women. It's not the gingerbread person, if you will, who is gender-neutral. The sweater is gender-neutral. It can be worn by anyone. That's what all the fuss is about. Now, before writing that article, Paul initially tweeted about this and it didn't get much traction on Twitter, but it did get ratioed to oblivion by a bunch of lefties basically calling him a snowflake. This person says gender-inclusive equals unisex. Find actual steps to be outraged about. I mean, even if this had been, as you assumed, your outrage would be ridiculous. It's just a unisex sweater. Calm down, LOL, you baby. Demanding all your cartoon characters have visible genitalia is a bold stance. By the way, gender-inclusive refers to the sweater itself as in either a man or a woman can wear it. It's not uncommon for clothes to be labeled that way. When I was a kid, all gingerbread men had dogs. But Paul did have backup from some conservatives. This one at least chimed in and said, that's a gingerbread man on a shirt. But then the lefts fought back saying, does your sweater have a hairy dick and balls on the gingerbread man or a hairy pussy? So basically, we're seeing a war actually being fought with the left and the right going at it. And I just wanna put this all into perspective for you. The war on Christmas started off with people on the right accusing the left of wanting to destroy Christmas by being too overly PC, too hypersensitive. And now it's come to a place where the left is making fun of the right and we're saying that they're obviously being too hypersensitive and too big of snowflakes. Everything has been flipped. Making fun of snowflakes has led to snowflakery. And yes, it is because of clickbait and the war on Christmas is something that is sensational. But with that being said, the right in denouncing the snowflakery supposedly of the left turned into gigantic snowflakes themselves. And I'm sure that the irony will be lost on them. Hello everyone, I'm here with the founder of the Young Turks and Wolfpack co-founder of Justice Democrats. And now he is running to represent the 25th Congressional District of California. Cenk, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thanks Mike, I appreciate it. Look, I am really excited about your campaign. The first thing that I said on Twitter when I found out that you were running was that Cenk would be a wrecking ball in Congress. But I wanna ask you, so you have been hosting the Young Turks now forever. Why run for Congress now? Like why change up the pace? And will you be the wrecking ball that we all think you will be? Yes, so a normal politician would tell you, well, no, of course not. I'm going to work with the other side and my colleagues to do absolutely nothing. Okay, but not me. Yes, I will probably be a wrecking ball. And I hope on behalf of the voters and on behalf of progressives and righteousness and justice. So the number one reason I'm running is because I was waiting for someone else to say the word and they just wouldn't say it. It's bribery. Corporate campaign contributions are bribes. So isn't it amazing Mike that we all know it? Every single voter goes, yeah, that's obviously true. I've never asked in any audience the question of do you think ExxonMobil gives money to politicians for charity and gotten a yes? Or for their health or well-being of the voters and gotten a yes? No, everyone knows ExxonMobil gives you money to buy you. It is a bribe. So since no one was saying it, I thought, look, we've got to move the national conversation. And it turns out Congress people can do that. Exhibit A, AOC. Exhibit B, Ro Khanna. Exhibit C, Rashida Tlaib, Elad Omar, you get it. All just Democrats, all strong, all progressive and all moving the national conversation. We can do this. It just takes a little bit of courage to go out there and call it what it is. Yeah, and the thing about you is you've kind of had this outsider strategy and you've been incredibly critical of Democratic Party leadership rightfully. So you panned an op-ed. I think it was earlier this year where you said that Nancy Pelosi is not a progressive. That's obvious, I think. But I'm curious, how do you keep that level of pressure knowing that if you are in Congress, she could easily hold a committee assignment above your head and try to marginalize you within Congress? So how do you call her out without dealing with those institutional disadvantages? Yeah, ain't nobody gonna marginalize me. Or any other progressive as long as I'm in Congress. So the most powerful thing in Congress is not a committee seat. It's the mic that you hold on the floor of the house. That's where you can move the country. Because imagine if you had a congressman, a sitting congressman go out there and say, listen guys, we're about to vote on a drug bill. And here are all of the bribes that the Republican Party has taken on that drug bill. But I got bad news for you. Here are the bribes that the Democratic Party has taken on that drug bill. That's why the Democratic Party is only talking about negotiating prices for 25 drugs rather than all of the drugs. They're gonna leave thousands and thousands of drugs unaddressed because they take money from drug companies. I mean, that would immediately be a bombshell, a political bombshell that you would drop in the middle of the national conversation. So that is way more powerful than any morsel that leadership would give you off their table. It is a totally wrong and ineffective strategy to go and beg leadership for a tiny little crumb off their table and wait 20 years to take any action. The correct path politically, not because it feels good, but because it's pragmatic is to force a national conversation that they cannot win and we will definitely win. We have the entire country on our side. No one else thinks it's not a bribe. It is, and it affects every issue, healthcare, climate change, guns, you name it, it all comes back to the same problem. These guys are serving their donors and not their voters. So the question that I wanna ask you and what it sounds like you're saying, by the way, is that you can't be reined in, which I love and the Democratic establishment is going to hate. The question I wanna ask is, what do you think the response will be to you? Because we're gonna see probably one of two things. Either they're going to attack you nonstop, you'll be the new darling of Fox News, like AOC is, or they're going to just try to ignore you. What do you think that your approach will be with you? Because you will be someone who they can't really get to acquiesce. So how do you think they're gonna respond and do you think that will be effective? Yeah, good luck with them trying to ignore me. I don't think that's gonna work. So, and look, they could do that honestly when I was on the Young Turks. We've got over 12 billion views and I think we helped to move a generation and so did you, Michael. And so did all these other wonderful progressive shows online. And millennials and Gen Z are 80% progressive and we've landed our ships in the next generations and they're already totally screwed. But in today's politics, they could just say, oh, well, yeah, I mean, humanist report, that's online, please, it's not on MSNBC. So we're gonna ignore it. Okay, well, you can do that until I'm inside your house. And by the way, it's of course not your house, it's our house, it's the people's house. If I'm on the floor of the house and I'm giving speeches like this, ain't nobody ignoring it, it's just not possible. Now, what does that mean? They will fight me with everything they've got. They're already doing it. They're throwing the kitchen sink at me. Oh, did you know, he said this 19 years ago, did you know, he said this 17 years ago and on and on and on. And then they turn around and they say, did you know he criticizes Obama from the left? Hey guys, make up your mind. Am I too far right or too far left? You gotta get your tongue point straight when you are a Democratic Party hack. So a lot of the groups in California that are part of the Democratic Party machine, they all came out on the same day with the same exact talking points. Gee, I wonder how that happened. Okay, that happened, because they've got marching orders. This guy's not playing ball, take him down with deliberate speed. Well, okay, what's happening though, and what they didn't expect, is now our army is fighting back. And so, I tell people online, every time you see one of their bots or trolls, attack me online with old comments, give me a dollar at jank2020.com, until they cry mercy, okay. Believe me, all they care about is money. If they see us raising money, every time they use their trolls and bots, they're like, ah, okay, he's raising too much money for me. Okay, back peddle, back peddle, back peddle. So, they just disrespect us completely, both in the online community and progressives. They think, oh, all they have is people, they don't have any money. Well, sad day for you guys. I've now had raised a significant amount of money. I appear to be in the lead in terms of money. And I did it through 14,000 individual donations, averaging 28 bucks. My Democratic opponent, her average is $2,700. It's unbelievable. That's insanity. That's almost a max. It's because she's had like 150 organizations give to her. It looks like there's only 22 actual human beings who gave to her, 22 versus 14,000. They don't know what they're messing with. So, if I go to Congress, it's not gonna be just me. I'm gonna bring all of you guys with me. And hearing that Nancy Pelosi's steady whore, a steady whore might have to take out his kerchief from his pocket and sweat his, and take the sweat off his brow. Yeah, it's our house. It's the people's house. I wanna invite people in. I know the Democratic Party machine hates that. Sad day for them. We're gonna reclaim the Democratic Party for populism and for progressives. It's exactly where the Democratic Party belongs. And I love everything I'm hearing. It seems like there's no way that they would be able to hold you down even if they tried and they will try. But my question is, will you be able to still co-host the Young Turks or will you have to divest? Because can we use that as like a way of bolstering your agenda in Congress or will you basically separate from the Young Turks? How is that gonna work out? Yeah, so if you win, you can't have two jobs. So that means that I will not be a full-time host on the Young Turks. But that doesn't mean that I have to divest from the Young Turks. So almost all of the folks in Congress have some sort of investments. And in a sense, Young Turks would then become an investment for me after having put in 18 years on it. But most importantly, just like other progressives come on the show now, whether they're candidates or Congresspeople, I can come on anytime and be a guest host. I could be a guest, I could be a guest host. So for example, today, Ro Khanna's on the show and he's a sitting member of Congress. He's coming on as a guest. So I can do that anytime I want. And look, in terms of online media, I was born in it. Okay, so this is my home turf. I'm not going anywhere. So I'll give interviews to progressive online media outlets before I'll give it to TV. I believe it in my bones and I think that this is where the real revolution is. So yeah, they won't be able to get rid of me online. That's great. That's great. It's nice to have that platform because in the event they do go for the ignore strategy, there's no way that that can work because you do have online progressive media behind you and you have this platform that you founded that is dedicated to the cause that you are promoting. So I think that there's really, like you are the worst case scenario for the establishment. And I saw an article, I think this was from the Daily Beast. They called you the Trump of the left and the worry from Democrats, the worry was that you would lose that seat or lose that district for them because it's a purple district. Talk through the dynamics of that particular race because it's wide open currently. There's a lot of people running for it but explain why I already know the answer. I'm sure most of my viewers know the answer but for those of you who are unfamiliar about why you know, Cenk is being a firebrand in a purple district. Explain why this strategy is the winning strategy. So a couple of parts to that. So first of all, I love that they, so Daily Beast says, oh, it might endanger the district because he's Trump of the left. I don't know if they know this, Trump won. So the Democratic Party did the same exact mistake in the national election as they're doing the 25th district. They said, no, it's okay. We've been knowing to the leader. We handpicked her and she's best equipped to deal with a populist on the right. Turns out they were 100% wrong. She was almost the only person who could have lost to Donald Trump and she did because they didn't believe in the voters. They didn't trust the voters. They didn't want there to be a real primary. They rigged everything on behalf of Hillary Clinton and it turned out that that is not the right way to run a party. And then if you do it that way, you could even lose to a monster like Donald Trump. And also, by the way, an imbecile like Donald Trump. It's amazing that they lost to him. We were right, they were wrong. And here they are, they're trying to do it again. They're like, no, we've been knowing to the leader in the 25th district and she's going to be a corporate Democrat, a centrist Democrat that tries to appease Republicans. How could you possibly say that's more electable? It's never been more electable. Ask Hillary Clinton if that was more electable. Ask Claire McCaskill if that was more electable. Ask Joe Donnelly if that was more electable. All corporate centrist Democrats who got their ass handed to them in races they should not have lost that they had advantages in. So in terms of this particular district, the thesis of the corporate Democrats, which is almost the entire Democratic Party machine in California, with the brilliant exception of Roe Conn, their thesis is, no, in purple districts, people love big business. And so, and they love appeasing Republicans. And if you kiss their ass enough, they'll vote for you. It's never been backed up by evidence. It's a preposterous theory that as soon as you say it out loud, people go, well, that is pretty stupid, isn't it? They've got no love for big business in Palmdale or Lancaster or CME Valley or Santa Clarita. None of these cities. No, they want somebody who's gonna fight for them. So take a progressive fighter who's gonna say, I'm gonna get your family health care no matter what. There is not going to be any co-pays premiums or deductibles. You're not gonna go bankrupt if your kid gets sick. And we're not gonna let your kid die if you don't have insurance. No way, not on our watch. We're gonna get you higher wages by focusing on renewable energy, which is perfect for the Animal Valley. So solar energy, wind energy, higher paying jobs so you don't have to commute. These are real issues. And those real issues are the ones we win on if we have the courage to fight for our principles instead of laying down to Republicans. So if they wanna go with that strategy, God bless, have at it, Hoss. Then I will almost certainly win this election. January 2020.com. I'm curious about the situation in your district with regard to income. I don't know if you know the numbers off the top of your head, but you're running a very populist working class centric message, but it's around the Los Angeles area. Is that correct? So is it a higher income area in general? And if so, how do you kind of offset that? Do you know anything with regard to that? Because Kyle Kalinsky brought up a really good point the other day on his show about how in higher income areas it's more difficult for progressives to win. Like they still can win, but it's just a little bit more difficult. Like have you thought this through at all? Yeah. Look, I love this district. It's perfect for us. It's middle class through and through. So the Animal Valley's a little bit poorer than the suburban part with just Santa Clarita and Simi Valley. And by the way, because they're poorer, they get ignored by the Democratic machine. And I ask, that doesn't make sense. That's the more Democratic area of the district. Why is it ignored? Because they can't fundraise there because people are too poor. Oh, God, that's sickening. So I don't need to go and fundraise from fancy people. I love that it's a working class district. I love that it's middle class. So those are exactly the kind of people that we could raise wages for. Not just minimum wage. Of course it should be $15 minimum wage nationally. It's already in California. They pass the law, but we need it to be national so that they're not trying to take jobs away from us by saying, oh, you can go pay people less in Kentucky. But it's not just for the minimum wage. It's for middle class. Corporate power is also squeezing you guys. And you know it in all of your lives because every dollar they give to their employees is a dollar less they make in profits. Now, if all of your politicians take money from those corporations, they're going to help them suppress your wages. When you gotta progress a fighter on your side, my whole job is to get you a higher wages. I guarantee you that that works better in a middle class district like the 25th and in a purple district like the 25th. That's great to hear. I do want to talk a little bit more about strategy. So I'm not sure if you saw, there was a poll from Kaiser Family Foundation that found out that support for Medicare for All throughout the year had actually gone down slightly and support for a public option increased. And I think that this is largely attributed to corporate Democrats like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg just hammering away. Initially, Pete Buttigieg for those of you who don't know supported Medicare for All, but he started taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health insurance industry. And all of a sudden, those legal bribes amounted to him driving down support for Medicare for All. So if you actually have a message with regard to an issue like Medicare for All, let's say hypothetically speaking, best case scenario, Bernie Sanders is elected, you're in Congress. So there's going to be a lot of Democrats who we're gonna have to win over to get it passed. Do you think that shaming them essentially for taking these legalized bribes, which I think is the only way we should be characterizing it, do you think that will actually be effective at flipping people or are we going to have to actually crush them and get them out of Congress using, you know, justice Democrats? Yeah, so it's a three-part process. First of all, you have to get people to real facts. The reason the poll numbers I'm gonna get for all are going down in some of the polls that they are is because the entire media and all the corporate Democrats and the entire Republican Party have all joined forces against essentially two people, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And so now Bernie's got the better Medicare for All plan. That's why I endorse Bernie. But the amount of free media that they have put into bashing Medicare for All is millions upon millions of dollars. Now it might even be up to a billion dollars in essentially advertising against Medicare for All. But still in one recent poll, it pulled at 55%. It has withstood all of those thoughts. So step one is tell people what it actually is. So I was on CNN the other night and Chris Cuomo said, well, it doesn't get rid of private insurance. I was on NBC today. They asked me the same thing. It doesn't get rid of private insurance. Well, you've gotta finish the sentence, brother, okay? It gets rid of private insurance and gives you better insurance. It gives you expanded coverage. It covers more than all the private insurance out there now without any co-pays, premiums and deductibles. And it costs less because it gets rid of the middlemen, the corporate executives, the advertising, the bureaucracy. It costs less in every single country that has ever tried it. So when you get people to real facts, they go, whoa, well, then what's the downside to which I say, exactly, okay? So point one is getting the information. Point two is yes, shame people that are taking insurance company money, drug company money and put it out there. Say, hey, look, if you wanna defend taking $360,000 from drug companies and you say that doesn't affect you, have added Haas, good luck to you. But I'm gonna tell people you're taking that money and then you deal with it any way you like. And so this is called hardball and no one on the left has tried hardball for decades. So arguably obviously AOC, Roe, Bernie have begun to do that and they've done a wonderful job at it but hardball is my expertise. And then finally the third step is, yeah, I'm gonna put your name on a list. And so those corporate Democrats if they didn't already despise me, they will have significant issues with me. But listen guys, if you're not voting with us on Medicare for All Green New Deal getting money out of politics higher wages, you're not voting with us? Well then we gotta get somebody who will and that's how politics works. So if I'm in Congress, bet your bottom dollar I'm making a list and then we're gonna make sure that there are progressives that are coming for those folks. And I love that. This is why I called you a wrecking ball because we need someone in Congress who will make them afraid. Like we have people who are speaking truth to power like AOC and Roe Conna but there's nobody who is aggressive. And I think that aggression in and of itself is something that we can utilize to our advantage. Like we're no longer going to lie down and just take what the establishment says we should accept. No, those days are done and getting you in Congress would actually have someone that I think would almost for lack of a better word intimidate corporate Democrats into doing the bidding of the people which you shouldn't have to resort to that, right? Like we shouldn't have to intimidate them to do the bidding of the people but that's where we're at in American politics where everything is stupid and we're living in hell and we need someone like you to get in Congress and basically make their lives miserable if they're going to continue to be corrupt. So I know you've gotta get going to host the main show before we leave give us your main pitch and I'll kind of set you up with a softball so you can use your main catchphrase are you gonna win this thing? Of course. Okay, so look, in all seriousness, Mike, nobody's ever seen a race like this. So even Bernie, I love him to pieces but he's too polite. Yeah. And so no one has ever taken on the establishment with this kind of force. So can I accurately predict how the voters are gonna react to this kind of aggressive attitude where I say, I'm gonna fight for you no matter what and that includes fighting democratic party leadership if I have to. I hope I don't have to. Wouldn't it be great if they also represented the voters? Wouldn't that be lovely? That's the whole point. But that's who I am and I'm gonna give them who I am. I'm not gonna be a slick politician and change any stances to try to win votes. No, I'm gonna be honest with people, tell them where I stand, tell them that their instinct that they're getting screwed over by the politicians is correct. They are serving their donors and I'm not gonna do that. I don't take corporate fact money. I don't take lobbyist money. I'm gonna serve the actual voters and they're gonna run a classic corporate Democrat strategy. Almost all their energy will be focused on trying to attack me personally and trying to do character assassinations. They will avoid the issues at all costs because they're not right on a single issue. They don't have the voters on their side on a single issue. So they will run from the issues and run towards smears. Will it work? I don't know, they'll have a ton of money. That's why I ask people to give small donations. If you can, bigger one's great. I would love it. Volunteer, we're gonna do rally in the valley. Every weekend we're doing rallies. Come out and join us. We're gonna show them people power. And so it's gonna be the people versus the establishment. The fight's in the 25th. Come join us, jeng2020.com. If we win this, it'll be a cannon shot over the heads of Washington and we'll finally be able to fight corruption together. And I'll leave that there. jeng2020.com, let's change national discourse and not just shift the Overton window to the left. Let's yank it to the left aggressively and make sure that they can't take us for granted. They can't ignore us any longer. So thank you so much for coming on the program, jeng. It's been an absolute pleasure. We're rooting for you. Thank you, Mike. I really, really appreciate it. And look, I actually end on this. Guys, me winning isn't the answer. What we're going for at the end of the day is passing the bills. If you don't pass the bills, then we didn't get anything accomplished. We didn't get anything accomplished by getting progressives into office. We didn't get anything accomplished by being progressive media. No, the whole objective is pass the damn bills. You've got to get Medicare for all. You've got to get an amendment to end private financing and elections. You've got to pass the Green New Deal. So when I play hardball, whether it's in the middle of a campaign like this or in Congress, the whole point is not for ego, it's not for pride, it's not to get on TV. No, it's to move the national conversation so you could pass the bills because that's what changes your lives. If you didn't pass the bills, we didn't get anything accomplished. So please, whether it's during the campaign or if I'm lucky enough to make it into Congress with your help, in Congress, come join me so that we could put all the pressure on the world to actually get the legislation done so we change people's lives for the better. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanna hear. Thank you so much, Cenk. All right, thank you, Mike. Well, that's it. I don't have anything left to talk about. Thank you all so much for tuning in if you've made it this far. Thank you so much to all of the people who helped the show not only survive but thrive as well. That is our Patreon patrons, our YouTube members and PayPal contributors, regardless if you sent in one donation or you contribute monthly with a recurring donation. Thank you so much, truly. It means the world to me. I will see you all next week. I'm Mike Figueroa. This has been the Humanist Report Podcast. Take care, everyone.