 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and Paypal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to The Humanist Report podcast, my name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 283 of the program. Today is Friday, March 26th and before we get started, I want to thank all of the people who support the show, all of our newest Patreon, Paypal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for their very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes the great Buffy1954, Crowded Crow, Duncan Secor, 11-11, Josh, Joe Stad, Phil Foster, Susan Nimmo, Teresa Gosnell and Vincent Lombardi. So thank you so much to all of these kind souls, if you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, 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. This week on the program, we've got another great show for you of course, we'll talk about Jimmy Fallon's blatant attempt to shut down criticism of Amazon, Elon Musk's pathetic justification for him being the richest man on the planet and Kylie Jenner's tone-deaf way of showing people that she actually cares about someone other than herself and Joe Biden has taken a stand against Pot that makes him look not only unreasonable but stupid as well. We'll talk about that and also I'll tell you why the Texas governor is worried about a COVID surge after he just lifted all COVID restrictions, including the masked mandate and spoiler alert, it's not because of his own policies and we'll also talk about Fox News obsession with transgender Americans and the damage their bigotry causes. All that and more is what we have on the agenda for today's episode. Hopefully you have you like what I have in store for you. Let's get right to it. I've got to say I'm not a cannibal. I'll eat your ass. But rich people are looking tastier than ever because they're somehow flaunting their wealth in ways that are weirder than ever. So I'm sure by now you've heard about the NFT phenomenon, which is digital art that is going for millions and millions of dollars. Well, this has turned into one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. The Twitter CEO's first tweet ever sold as an NFT for millions of dollars. And one rich person decided to buy this because either they don't know how to take a screenshot or because they have so much money that they have no idea what to do with it. So it's getting out of control. Obscene wealth in America is too much. There's an entire Instagram and TikTok genre of rich people just flaunting their wealth. And Kylie Jenner definitely is one of them. She's worth an estimated nine hundred million dollars. That is more money than she will ever be able to spend in her life. If she were to live to be a thousand years old, there's no way she'd be able to get through all of that money, even as much as she splurges and flaunts her wealth. But she decided to advertise the GoFundMe of either a friend or an employee, someone who does her makeup because he had a medical bill that was really high. A multi multi-millionaire shared a GoFundMe and asked her fans to pitch in money when she could have funded it in its entirety like that. This is a real story. This is someone who's so tone deaf that she thought she would be more personable if she shared the GoFundMe of someone. Hey, look, I care about this person. Let's support them, everyone. You're missing the point. When you have that much money, you don't ask anyone for money ever under any circumstances. So as Khaledah Rahman of Newsweek explains, Kylie Jenner is facing backlash on social media after she asked fans to donate to a friend's GoFundMe campaign. The fundraising page was set up to help pay for the medical bills of makeup artist Samuel Rouda, who was injured in an accident on March 14th and has since undergone major surgery according to the page. As of early Sunday, the page has amassed almost $100,000 in donations, exceeding its initial $60,000 target. Earlier this week, 23-year-old Jenner had taken to her Instagram stories to ask her fans to donate to Rouda's GoFundMe page. May God watch over you and protect you makeup by Samuel, she wrote. Everyone take a moment to say a prayer for Sam, who got into an accident this past weekend and swipe up to visit his family's GoFundMe. The reality television star and entrepreneur appears to have donated $5,000 to the page herself. It is not known if Jenner has made any private contribution to the medical bills. This is just outrageous. Every single person who saw this should be offended that this almost billionaire would dare to ask her followers for their hard-earned cash. It shouldn't even be a question. They shouldn't have to make a GoFundMe if they know someone that wealthy. If you're that close to this individual, it shouldn't even be a question. $5,000? That's like pennies to normal people, for you, for someone with that much wealth. And furthermore, you're not even using this opportunity to draw attention to a broader issue. The fact that this individual got in an accident and as a result, this care that they need, they have to spend money. They have to find the way to fund this. This also speaks to our broken healthcare system. If you weren't so out of touch and tone deaf, you would speak to that. You would speak to the need of Medicare for all. But I'm sure that she's never even heard of Medicare for all or single payer or knows about it at all. I'm sure she's never even thought once about healthcare because no matter what happens to her, she's covered in her life. It could be of her fault or not of her fault. She will be fine. She's never going to go bankrupt. She's never going to have a medical emergency that she has to do a go fund me for to fund. This is someone who is so rich that as this tweet from Sophie Ross points out, she purchased a $3 million car and for her birthday, she decided to rent a yacht the size of a football field and she even spent $300,000 on a fucking purse. I repeat, $300,000 on a purse. And I had to look up what that was, Birkins. I didn't realize that they were selling purses that were as much as houses, multiple houses, depending on the state that you're living in. So rich people are so rich that they're inventing new things for themselves to buy, luxury purses, the cost of houses, digital art screenshots effectively for millions of dollars. This is what happens in a late stage capitalist society. When you're so rich and you have so much money, you have to invent new stupid things to spend your money on. This is why folks like Kylie Jenner should not have that much wealth. If you can afford a $3 million car or $300,000 purse, then there shouldn't be a single mouth in America that is not fed. I'm sorry, but until homelessness has been eradicated, poverty has been eliminated around the globe, nobody should be able to spend $3 million on a car or $300,000 on a purse and then have the nerve to put out a go fund me for her friend. Just find it yourself, you absolute ghoul. So this is why I say the rich are basically begging people to eat them at this point. When we say eat the rich, this is why, because they're flaunting their wealth in ways that is going to make the peasants rise up and eat them because guess what? When poor people are eating crumbs and they're so hungry that they can't eat anything else and rich people are taking everything away from them, they won't have anything left to eat but rich people. So this is outrageous and it makes my blood boil and it should make everyone's blood boil to see this rich asshole beg her own fans for money when she can easily fund it without question immediately and it's entirely just disgusting. Senator Bernie Sanders put out a tweet that offended some individuals who choose to do propaganda at the behest of American oligarchs. So Bernie wrote, we are in a moment in American history where two guys, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos own more wealth than the bottom 40% of people in this country. That level of greed and inequality is not only immoral, it is unsustainable. Now, if you're a reasonable person, I don't think you're going to find anything particularly offensive about that tweet. However, billionaire Shill and Elon Dick writer Zachary Sheahan of Clean Technica decided to vocalize his outrage over Bernie Sanders tweet in an article titled, attacks on Elon Musk for his wealth are truly ridiculous. And as you can see, he's confused as to why Bernie Sanders would refer to Elon Musk as greedy. I mean, that's a lot of question marks. So he's definitely trying to figure out how anyone could fathom that Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet could be greedy. And he argues greed is just a strange word to use in this case. I've yet to see any sign that Elon Musk is rich because he's greedy. I'm sorry, what? As a journalist, are you actually this stupid? Or are you just being purposefully obtuse because you're trying to do propaganda for Elon Musk? I don't even know how to respond to that. You haven't seen any evidence that the richest man on the planet is rich because he's greedy? How about first of all, Elon Musk didn't earn the billions of dollars that he has. His workers produced that wealth and he appropriated the value and the wealth that their labor produced. On top of that, ask yourself why Tesla factory workers are pushed to the brink? Obviously, it's because he wants them to produce more profits than they're already producing. And he's literally shut down efforts by workers to unionize for better working conditions. And he's even fired workers for organizing unions. He also pressured his employees to work in the middle of a pandemic during lockdowns, which of course resulted in hundreds of Tesla factory employees getting infected with COVID-19. Because according to Elon Musk, their lives are expendable because profits are more important to him. And on top of that, he also openly supported the US backed coup in Bolivia because the socialist government wouldn't give the United States access to their supply of lithium, which is needed for the batteries and Tesla cars. So if you haven't seen any sign that Elon Musk got that wealth, got that rich because he's greedy, maybe pull your head out of his asshole and look around and you might figure out what's actually going on. But really, this is just about him being an Elon Dick writer. He's just writing this because he wants daddy Elon to notice him and mission accomplished. Daddy Elon noticed you. So congratulations. And Elon responded to Bernie Sanders tweet saying, I am accumulating resources to help make life multi planetary and extend the light of consciousness to the stars. Oh, okay. So that's why you should be the richest man on the planet. That's the justification because you've unilaterally chosen that right now the human race should be venturing out into the solar system. All right, Bernie Sanders responded to this saying space travel is an exciting idea. But right now we need to focus on earth and create a progressive tax system so that children don't go hungry. People are not homeless and all Americans have healthcare. The level of inequality in America is obscene and a threat to our democracy. Yeah, obviously. I think that most reasonable people acknowledge that it is essential that if the human race is to survive, we have to venture out into the stars. We have to colonize other planets. The issue is, we can barely sustain life on this planet. We're killing the planet that we live on currently and you expect human beings to possibly terraform and live on other planets. How about we not kill this planet first? How about we terraform this planet back to its original state before we decided to pollute it before we try to colonize other planets? And furthermore, maybe it's not acceptable that a billionaire decides unilaterally what's the most important thing for the human race. Perhaps our species isn't advanced enough to venture out into the stars yet if we're literally still killing each other over oil, if we're still not feeding the millions of people around the globe who are literally starving to death. How about we focus on that first? No, but Elon Musk says that we have to do this first. While we're killing our planet and while a pandemic ravages the world, I'm saying that we have to focus as a species on colonizing Mars, on venturing out into the universe. That sounds really great, but I'm sorry, I'm a little bit skeptical that we're able to do that if we can't even stop global climate change, if we can't even provide Americans with healthcare. And I'm sorry, forgive me for being a little bit skeptical that this billionaire wants to paint himself as a pioneer who wants to fund these scientific advances and wants to elevate the human race to the next level when this dumb motherfucker literally won't even get the COVID vaccine. He refuses to vaccinate himself and his children and yet this is the guy that's going to propel human civilization into the stars? Maybe you just start by trusting basic science. If human beings cannot even tackle a pandemic without overcoming greed and forcing their employees to work when there's a pandemic going on, maybe we're just not advanced enough to colonize space. Maybe we should really focus on saving lives here before rich people create some lifeboat that they move on to after they've thoroughly destroyed this planet. It's just ridiculous that it's even a question that the richest man on the planet would become rich because of how greedy he is. And it's even more outrageous that Elon Musk thinks that this is an adequate justification for the grotesque amount of wealth that he possesses. Absolutely not. Here's the thing, in a late-stage capitalist society, wealth also equals power. So when you have individuals who have as much wealth as entire countries, that is a threat to democracy. That is unsustainable. So I think that this story speaks for itself. Rich people have become absolutely shameless and the shamelessness and brazen behavior of rich people is predictable. But what shouldn't be a thing that we see are so-called journalists doing propaganda and defending them. What is clean-technica? I've never even heard of this outlet. It's supposedly focusing on clean technology. But you're just doing CNBC level of propaganda. So how embarrassing. If you're a journalist, is this really what you want to do Zachary Sheahan? You want to do propaganda for billionaires who support coup d'etats so they can get access to another country's resources? Is this really what you want to be doing? I don't understand people. Yeah, human race can't even fight a pandemic without making fools of themselves. We have people screaming about wearing masks into a grocery store. But yet you think that the human race is able to colonize space that we're even to that point. Please, maybe when we stop killing each other and doing war in general, then we can talk about the human race evolving and colonizing space. In the meanwhile, let's try to work on fixing the issues we have here at home first. How about that? I'm of the belief that late night talk shows are absolutely atrocious. They're terrible. Every single one of them, all of them. They're bad. Nobody should watch them. I think everyone would be better off and more educated if they stopped watching these shows. Having said that, though, there isn't a host nearly as terrible as him. Jimmy Fallon is the worst. Maybe James Corden, but he by far is the most inseparable in my opinion, not only because his annoying laugh gets on my nerves, but also because he's the biggest hack out there. He shills for the political establishment, and he doesn't even care how pathetic he looks as he grovels at the feet of the powerful. He was helping Obama promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership and making jokes about how phenomenal the TPP would be. He was begging Chris Christie to give us any exciting details about his presidential campaign. This was back in 2015. He's just awful. And he showed everyone once again why he's the worst in a segment with John Oliver, where John Oliver dared to bring up Amazon's union-busting practices, and he shut it down like that. Now, unfortunately, I can't play the video for you because since this is on network television, it'll get copyright struck if I do that. So we're just going to listen to the audio. I think you can basically get the gist of what he's doing here. He's stopping criticism of Amazon. Speak from your heart, Alexa. Your rotten heart. This is clearly not a commercial for this. In which case, I've got another one. Alexa. Alexa, how bad are Amazon working conditions? Alexa, stop. Alexa, stop. Here we go. All right. I have to- No, Alexa. No, Alexa. Alexa, what is union-busting? No, no, Alexa. This is me time now. Alexa, stop. Stop, please. Alexa, please. Listen to me. Doing Hey, Robot. Of course. It was- I was going to say a pleasure, but it wasn't. It wasn't. I really hope, Jimmy, you didn't cut out my question about what union-busting is. Wow. I've got to say, John Oliver, after I said all of that about late-night hosts, John Oliver's probably the least offensive. He's not funny at all, but he's at least substantive. He actually does seem to care about the issues and have a grasp of issues that really affect working people. But that was just- that was embarrassing. That was embarrassing. And he probably doesn't necessarily want to be a shill for Amazon. He just wants to avoid controversy more generally speaking. But how pathetic are you, Jimmy Fallon? How pathetic do you have to be to try to desperately shut down criticism of a company that is going out of its way to screw over their workers? Are you not embarrassed? Do you have no shame whatsoever? Maybe he's just genuinely stupid and he doesn't know about Amazon. But if he doesn't know about Amazon and what they're doing to their workers and how they're currently trying to stop an effort of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama to unionize, let me explain to you just some of the reasons why people take issue with Amazon. As Vice reports, Amazon's working conditions are often described as dystopian for good reason. Come for the digital reward system straight out of Black Mirror that track worker productivity stay for the mandatory graveyard shifts called mega cycles or lose your job. The company's success is no small part owed to its inhumane productivity quotas that create unsafe working conditions, which the company then turns around and offers to fix with surveillance not to mention operations it already conducts to monitor workers personal lives in the United States and Europe. The company may flaunt its $15 minimum wage for warehouse workers, but zoom out and you'll see Amazon is exploiting its monopoly and monopsony power to suppress wages in areas where it is one of the only major employers. When it comes to union busting, Amazon is king. It has only ever had two union elections, one in Delaware in 2014 and the one currently ongoing in Bessemer, Alabama. That's because Amazon is religiously committed to busting unions whenever the threat appears, whether that means illegally firing workers and retaliation for organizing, breaking the rules of companies it owns to spread anti-union propaganda, hiring people solely to walk around warehouses wearing vote no buttons, kindly reminding warehouse workers to vote no while that watches them and creating a website for workers to visit to learn why Amazon's exploitation is preferable to collective bargaining rights. That's what you're protecting, Jimmy Fallon. That is what you were just shilling for, wittingly or unwittingly. You were stopping criticism of a company whose recklessness has led to their workers not only being exploited but in some cases killed. Status Coups Jordan Charidan broke the story about how one Amazon warehouse worker died due to COVID-19, presumably because she was testing employees for COVID, but she didn't have any of the proper PPE to conduct said tests safely. Amazon was too cheap to hire a third party of professionals who actually knew what they were doing, so they forced their employees to test others for COVID, didn't give them masks or any of the proper equipment, and one died. How many more people have to die? How many more people have to piss in bottles before it gets you to actually take it seriously, Jimmy Fallon? And look, he doesn't care because he's a multi-millionaire. He gets to talk for a living on television and interview celebrities, so he couldn't care less about any of this. But at least when valid criticism is brought up, the bare minimum that you can do if you are just not a piece of shit is not shut it down so quickly and desperately as you did. Embarrassing. Stop watching Jimmy Fallon. If you're watching Jimmy Fallon, stop watching Jimmy Fallon. For the love of God, he's trash. And James Corden too, I don't know what he stands for politically, but he is super obnoxious and all of these late night hosts are just smug assholes and they're hacks. And at what point do we just stop worshiping late night comedians? They're not funny. They provide nothing of substance or value to society. Stop watching them and maybe they'll all go away. Just when I didn't think it was possible for Joe Biden to look any more out of touch than he already is, he goes ahead and fires multiple people who work for the White House because they were transparent about the fact that they once smoked pot. It's not like they smoked pot on the job while they were working at the White House or even that day because they told the truth and they were transparent about the fact that they once smoked pot, they were fired. And the only response that the White House is able to give in terms of how they're defending themselves is that, well, you know, the media is kind of sensationalizing the story because you're saying it's dozens of people that were fired. Actually, we only fired like a handful of people, so it's not that bad. It's still bad. So as Jennifer Adams of the Daily Beast reports, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has confirmed that five White House staffers have been fired for disclosures of past marijuana use. On Thursday, the Daily Beast reported that dozens of young staffers for the new Biden administration had been suspended, asked to resign or placed in a remote work program due to prior pot use. In a tweet posted Friday morning, Psaki said the White House was working on an updated policy to ensure that past marijuana use wouldn't automatically disqualify staff from serving in the White House. She added, as a result, more people will serve who would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use. The bottom line is this, of the hundreds of people hired, only five people who had started working at the White House are no longer employed as a result of this policy. Okay, but the number of people fired for using pot should be zero. It's not a defense to say, well, we only fired five. It should be zero. And this doesn't just make Joe Biden look out of touch. It makes him look like a stupid person to be concerned with this. I mean, this is the author of the crime bill that led to mass incarceration or at least exacerbated mass incarceration to be fair. So if he's actually sorry, like he said he was, and he wasn't just saying that to help him with the election, then this should be the bare minimum, at least not be outraged at the thought that some of your staffers had once smoked pot. And he doesn't realize that he's incentivizing people to lie. So what do you want them to do? Do you want them to tell the truth? Because if they tell the truth, then you're going to penalize them for it. And second of all, this is a little bit awkward, because now if you're going to be consistent here, you have to let go of your VP, because Kamala Harris admitted that she once smoked pot, as did Joe Biden's former boss, Brock Obama, aka Rap Rock, as did Obama's wife, Michelle Obama, as did former President Bill Clinton, although he says that he didn't inhale. So I guess that that doesn't count technically. I mean, in 2021, why are we still pretending as if something that someone does in the privacy of their own home that doesn't affect anyone else should be something that they get penalized for? If somebody wants to have a drink when they get home from work to unwind or a blunt, that's none of Joe Biden's business. That doesn't make them not qualified to serve in the White House. And what's interesting is that this has been an issue for Joe Biden that he has long refused to budge on. Even during the Biden-Sanders Unity task forces, there were a couple of issues that he refused to negotiate with progressives on, and pot legalization was one of them. And the reason why he wouldn't budge was because, according to him, if he supported the legalization of pot, that would make him less popular, actually. When we all know in reality that would make him more popular, but he genuinely believed that would have hurt his electoral chances. The president's team, and I think probably Mr. Biden himself, although we did not talk to him directly, was potentially concerned about the political effects that it might have with their own constituency and maybe costing them some votes in key battleground states rather than actually winning them votes, as we believe would occur and mobilizing a hell of a lot of people around the issue. That was the exact conversation. If you want to be real, we were armed with polling data that suggested that a majority of Americans were in favor of the legalization of marijuana. But Vice President Biden at the time was really concerned about how this issue could have impacted the outcome of the election. It would not have cost him votes. It would have made him more popular. And if he was curious, he could have just done a quick Google search. I mean, it's not that difficult. If you look at public opinion polls, back in 2019, two-thirds of Americans supported public legalization. And yes, that included a majority of Republicans. And by November of 2020, according to Gallup, that support actually grew. It was only by a point, but nonetheless, it still grew. Now, either he doesn't know about these polls. He doesn't know what polling data is or knows that these polls have been conducted, or he doesn't believe them. He thinks that, no, there's no way. I know that pot is bad. So there's no way that the American people actually want it to be legalized. And like, if you really got down to it, Jen Psaki definitely smoked weed in the past. Probably still doesn't does it regularly. Joe Biden, I'm sure that when he was a young man, smoked pot. It's not a big deal. It should be legal. It's already legal in more than a dozen states and in DC. So the fact that this is even a debate shows you how out of touch politicians are because among the American population, this isn't a debatable issue. It's just not debatable. It's only controversial for politicians like Joe Biden with antiquated views and outdated ways of thinking about the world. So this is absolutely scandalous. And the fact that it happened at all should outrage everyone. You're firing people because they admitted to smoking pot. Grow the fuck up. Be an adult. This isn't something that serious people care about, Joe Biden. On March 2nd, a Texas Governor Greg Abbott preemptively declared victory over the coronavirus pandemic when he decided to lift all of his state's restrictions on COVID-19, yes, including the mask mandate. Yeah. However, now all of a sudden he's really concerned that there might be another surge in COVID-19 cases, including in his state of Texas. And no, it's not because he's concerned that the result of his policies might lead to more cases. There's a different reason why all of a sudden he's seemingly concerned with COVID-19 cases in his state. And now the Biden administration is importing COVID into the state of Texas, exposing more Texans to that. And who knows what we're going to see whether or not there will be an explosion of COVID in the locations where the Biden administration is putting these migrants. So now he's really concerned about COVID-19. He's really concerned that we might see a surge in new cases, all because now, conveniently, he can blame Brown people for the surge in cases who are coming to America because we destroyed their countries. It's not because of him lifting the mask mandate and reopening Texas 100 percent. As he puts it, Brown people are coming here and they're spreading disease. And that's why there's a surge in cases not because of my policies that I chose to implement unilaterally as governor. Hey, Greg, you're telling on yourself here. It's honestly shocking how brazen they are. The second you can scapegoat immigrants for something, even the result of your own harmful policies. You still choose to do it. And because of his policies, cases will go up in Texas. But of course, he's not going to blame himself or his own policies. He'll blame immigrants. And then he'll say, look, I told you so. I told you that as a result of immigrants, cases are going to surge in Texas. And now look, but prior to his easing of COVID-19 restrictions in his state, the CDC warned that we could see a fourth wave of cases due to new variants and because states are lifting restrictions too early, including his state. And because many states, including his state, have decided to lift all restrictions, we are now on the cusp of another surge. And guess what? It's not because of immigrants. As Andrea Germanos of Common Dreams explains, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Wielanski said Monday that the nation was at a fork in the road in determining the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and warned of another avoidable surge of COVID-19 cases as states loosen pandemic-related restrictions. The apparent leveling off of cases in hospital admissions after the consistent declines we saw in these outcomes in early January through the end of February, I considered to be very concerning, Wielanski said, at a White House press briefing. While COVID-19 deaths are in decline nationally, they remain at elevated levels, she said. Wielanski also expressed concern that regions, including the northeast and the upper Midwest, are beginning to again see a significant rise in cases. These factors should serve as a warning sign for the American people, said Wielanski, adding that some states' loosening of restrictions amid the spread of coronavirus variants and a still high level of cases is a serious threat to the progress we made as a nation. So it's outrageous. You lift COVID-19 restrictions, which will inevitably result in a new surge in cases in your state, but you're already blaming immigrants for that. Unbelievable. Well, I shouldn't say it's unbelievable because it's entirely predictable, but it's just a little bit surprising, even for someone like me who knows the way that Republicans operate for them to be so shameless and the way that they're trying to scapegoat immigrants. If we see a surge in new cases, it is directly because politicians in America have never taken this seriously. In the state of Florida, they've never taken it seriously. Ron DeSantis quite literally instituted a ban on mask mandates, so that way if a local government chose to enact their own mask mandate, they wouldn't be able to actually implement it because there'd be no way for them to enforce that. If there's another surge in cases in the state of Texas, nobody should allow Governor Greg Abbott to get away with blaming anyone but himself. A surge in new cases is not the result of immigrants. It is the result of bad policies by Republican governors who couldn't care less about their citizens because they care more about business interests than the lives of human beings. So do not let him lie and obfuscate. This won't be the result of immigrants. You don't get to scapegoat immigrants. This is the result of your failed policies. To not even have a mask mandate is so irresponsible and reckless. Wanting to reopen, that's one thing, but if you wanted to reopen safely and you actually cared, you would at least make sure that you have a mask mandate so you can at least reopen somewhat safely. But he doesn't care. He sees an opportunity to blame brown people for his state's problems, so he's going to do just that. Why? I think that's pretty obvious. I think that's pretty obvious. It's because Greg Abbott is a racist piece of shit. So Fox News as of late has been particularly obnoxious and loud in their obsession with cancel culture and Dr. Seuss and the Muppets and Mr. Potato Head. But another issue that they've been obsessed with is the issue of transgender Americans. And they've talked about this quite a bit since Joe Biden took office. Take a look. Biden has single-handedly destroyed the sports streams of a whole generation of young girls. Joe Biden found enough time to do an executive order that would allow transgender males to compete in women's sports. Basically destroys girl sports. Probably the greatest blow to women's rights we've seen in decades. Democrats are pushing a terrifying agenda that eliminates women. Force biological males into female sports competitions and be in their locker rooms. I call it the Sodom and Gomorrah Declaration. It's a crime against nature. Essentially the gay and transsexual supremacy act. Instead of killing COVID, Biden's killing women's sports instead. Blow up women's sports. Men participate in women's sports. We don't want men participating in women's sports. The road women's sports. Eliminating Title IX for women's sports. Making sure biological men could play girl sports. First things he did was eliminate women's sports. Competing sports against women. To allow men who identify as women to be on their sports teams. Biological boys now be allowed to compete against girls. We're going to destroy women's sports. Next. Make women compete against biological males. Transgender athletes. Radical transgender executive order. Transgender executive order. Transgender rights. All of this transgender stuff. We cannot indoctrinate our kids. One with these anti-Christ beliefs. We can go on this forever but sadly it's coming from America and it's infecting the world. It's usually the opposite and I'm embarrassed by it. Yeah so it's really obvious what they're trying to do. They are deliberately trying to get their viewers to perceive trans people as a threat. They're not explicitly saying this but this is what they're priming their viewers to believe. And they can raise the salience of this issue. Get their viewers to believe it's more important than it actually is simply by talking about it a lot. And according to an analysis by Media Matters they have talked about this a lot because between Joe Biden's inauguration and March 18th which is the period in which Media Matters conducted this analysis they've aired 86 anti-trans segments. And the majority of these segments focused heavily on issues related to transgender youth. The most at-risk category of trans Americans who are at high risk for self-harm and suicide attempts. So this is absolutely nefarious. This is going to have a real-world impact on the lives of transgender Americans. Particularly trans youth. And it's disgusting. And they're lying about what Joe Biden's executive order did. They're trying to make it seem as if Joe Biden's executive order literally destroyed women's sports. Now they don't necessarily explain why that's the case but what was Joe Biden's executive order? Like what did it say specifically about transgender folks? It just said that federal agencies can't discriminate against transgender Americans. The only thing that it said about trans youth and sports is quote, children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room or school sports. But if you're Fox News you twist that to make it seem as if this is an attack on women's sports. Interesting. How could a reasonable person deduce from that sentence that this is the destruction of women's sports? Well nobody would think that this is the takeaway here. But Fox News has an agenda. It is an anti-trans agenda that is driving hatred. Hatred that is so severe culturally and socially that trans youth try to kill themselves more often than their cis peers. Fox News doesn't care because they've got ratings. They've got an agenda to sell to their viewers. So it doesn't matter what the consequences are of their bigoted coverage. They're going to talk about it. Now the reason why Fox News focuses on the trans sports issue so much is because like the bathroom panic issue they're able to persuade more people here. Trans athletes contrary to popular belief are not destroying sports for cis women. That's not happening. The anecdotes that they point to and prop up, this is part of their propaganda effort. But what these bills that have been introduced around the country related to transgender athletes and sports pertain to who it would affect are families like this. My name is Brandon Boulware and chairman I'll go as quickly as I can. I'm a lifelong Missourian. I'm a business lawyer. I'm a Christian. I'm the son of a Methodist minister. I'm a husband. I'm the father of four kids, two boys, two girls, including a wonderful and beautiful transgender daughter who today happens to be her birthday and I chose to be here. She doesn't know that. She thinks I'm at work. One thing I often hear when transgender issues are discussed is I don't get it. I don't understand and I would expect some of you to have said that and feel the same way. I didn't get it either for years. I didn't get it for years. I would not let my daughter wear girl clothes. I did not let her play with girl toys. I forced my daughter to wear boy clothes and get short haircuts play on boy sports teams. Why did I do this to protect my child? I did not want my daughter or her siblings to get teased and truth be told, I did it to protect myself as well. I wanted to avoid those inevitable questions as to why my child did not look and act like a boy. My child was miserable. I cannot overstate that. She was absolutely miserable, especially at school. No confidence, no friends, no laughter. I honestly say this. I had a child who did not smile. We did that for years. We did that against the advice of teachers, therapists and other experts. I remember the day everything changed for me. I'd gotten home from work and my daughter and her brother were in the front lawn and she had my daughter had sneaked on one of her older sister's play dresses and they wanted to go across the street and play with the neighbor's kids. It was time for dinner. I said, come in. She asked, can she go across the street? I said, no. She asked me if she went inside and put on boy clothes, could she then go across the street and play? And it's then that it hit me that my daughter was equating being good with being someone else. I was teaching her to deny who she is. As a parent, the one thing we cannot do, the one thing is silence our child's spirit. And so on that day, my wife and I stopped silencing our child's spirit. The moment we allowed my daughter to be who she is, to grow her hair, to wear the clothes she wanted to wear, she was a different child and I mean it was immediate. It was a total transformation. I now have a confident, a smiling, a happy daughter. She plays on a girl's volleyball team. She has friendships. She's a kid. I came here today as a parent to share my story. I need you to understand that this language, if it becomes law, will have real effects on real people. It will affect my daughter. It will mean she cannot play on the girl's volleyball team or dance squad or tennis team. I ask you, please don't take that away from my daughter or the countless others like her who are out there. Let them have their childhoods. Let them be who they are. I ask you to vote against this legislation. How could anyone with the heart actually not see through this? See what is obviously happening. They're using the trans athlete issue to drive transphobia and even members of the left fall for it oftentimes. But in actuality, as the ACLU puts it, hysteria over trans women in sports is nothing more than a coordinated attack on trans student athletes. But some people try to justify their bigotry by feigning concern over women's sports. But if you actually cared about women's sports and allowing women a space to compete in sports, well, you're not proving that you're actually concerned because as Viviana Vigil points out in the segment for Rebel HQ, there's a lot of other issues that impact women's sports more so than trans athletes. Take a look. This is Sedona Prince, an athlete on the women's basketball team at Oregon whose video has gone viral, pointing out the gross inequality of how women and male athletes are treated during the huge March Madness competition. The men have a state-of-the-art expansive weight room and the women are given a small stack of hand weights and some sanitized yoga mats. The N.C. W.A. has made a statement acknowledging the discrepancy, apologizing, but chalking it up to a matter of limited space and resources. Well, Sedona debunked that myth pretty quick. Let me show y'all something else. Here's our practice court, right? And then here's that weight room. And then here's all this extra space. Representative Tulsi Gabbard and many GOP leaders have spoken out about the importance of women's competitive sports. Title IX is a historic provision to make sure that women and girls have equal opportunities, especially as it relates to competitive sports. So Tulsi should be pretty upset about what's going on. But no, not a peep from her about this viral video, proving that the extreme right has never really cared about women's competitive sports and have been using the issue as a facade because of the push to expand Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. Protecting women's competitive sports has been an excuse by the extreme right to promote fear mongering, transphobia, bigotry, and dehumanization of our transgender community. The biological boys are going to start playing in girls' sports. Not only will they be on her playing field that she has to compete against them, they will be in her locker room, they will be in her showers, they will be in her bathroom, they will be in her hotel room when she travels with her team. Title IX does not reference or deal with transgender individuals. As it will put trans rights above women's rights. Will it, though? And Tulsi Gabbard says that transgender people storming into women's competitive sports is a huge problem. And she has a solution. Just keep them out completely. A high school student who wrote me yesterday is concerned. So I introduced science-based legislation called the Protect Women's Sports Act that clarifies, upholds, and strengthens the original intent of Title IX. It ensures a level playing field for girls and women competing in sports. Will you cite any examples where a young woman was denied a scholarship opportunity or a title here in Arizona? I can't at this point say there are none in Georgia. We don't have hard statistics on that. It is the height of hypocrisy. I don't know of any personally in in Tennessee. It is the height of hypocrisy. How many instances have we had of trans females competing in women's sports? To my knowledge, none. Just face it. Nobody is changing their gender identity just to compete in women's sports. It is a decision that affects every single aspect of their life. And the right has simply used anecdotal examples to induce fear and anger towards the transgender community. And she's exactly right. And I'm going to link you to the full video because Viviana does a phenomenal job at explaining how hypocritical people are who focus on transgender athletes. If you genuinely cared about women's sports, why wouldn't you focus on the inequities between men and women in sports? To focus on this insignificant issue, trans athletes in sports, doesn't that seem a little bit weird like your priorities are misplaced? It's almost like you're using that as an excuse to hate on trans people, to fear monger about trans people, to drive home the narrative that trans people are dangerous to cis people. It might not be in the traditional way that conservatives fear monger about it. You know, we might have moved on from the bathroom panic thing because that's not very persuasive and there's no evidence of it. So now we're focusing on the transgender athletes in sports issues. And this time will pass. People will move on because there's not enough evidence to deduce that trans athletes are ruining sports for cis women. And there will be another issue. We'll just keep moving the goalpost because this is what we do in America. We hate people who are different and it's disgusting. You think that even members of the LGBTQ community would understand this, but there are gay public figures who are against trans people as well. It's just, it's disheartening to me. And of course I'm talking about Glenn Greenwald, who hasn't necessarily said anything about trans sports to my knowledge, but in an interview with Katie Herzog, I think is her name, they were talking about how all of a sudden, you know, people in the trans community are basically coming out because they get more social clout for coming out as trans. Is that the minute you declare yourself non-binary or trans, you kind of catapult up the ladder of oppression in a way that absolutely confers very concrete benefits and anyone who denies that is being dishonest. Absolutely. What trans people need are allies on the left in the LGBTQ community itself. But Fox News, it shows how powerful and influential they are to where their propaganda still penetrates social discourse, even on the left, even in the LGBTQ community. Isn't that insane? Isn't that something that you think wouldn't be possible since gay people know firsthand what it's like to be discriminated against specifically because they violate gender norms? It's just, it's morally reprehensible. And because of all of this hatred and fear mongering, people are gonna die. That's what this hatred fosters. Self-hate to the point where people want to take their own lives and harm themselves, especially trans youth. And that's what Fox News is doing here. And shame on anyone who engages in it. And also shame on the leftists who are supposed to be trans allies, who are silent. Any leftist who doesn't defend their trans comrades and non-binary comrades, your silence is deafening. And we see you, you're a coward. Right now, you know, it's kind of difficult to speak up because there's a lot of people who hate transgender people. So maybe leftists don't want to speak out at the behest of transgender Americans because they feel like, oh, well, you know, this is just going to drive people away. And I don't want to be seen as unpopular. I want to do what's socially acceptable. So I'm just going to remain silent because that's easier. I'm not going to engage in the bigotry, but I'm just going to at least keep my mouth shut. That's being a coward. And your silence is deafening. We're not going to forget this. So in the wake of the Atlanta spa massacre, Senator Tammy Duckworth demanded that Biden's administration include more Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. And she even threatened to withhold votes on any nominations going forward if he didn't actually increase representation for members of the AAPI community. Now she ultimately backed down on that threat almost immediately. Nonetheless, this spawned a conversation on the view where they talked about identity politics and representation in government. And Meghan McCain ended up saying things that are just outrageous. And to be polite, what she said was ironic, but it's much, much worse than that. Take a look. And then I have a lot to say about this. I believe that what makes America exceptional is the fact that we're a meritocracy, that you can be anything, that you can come from anywhere and go and have success in any capacity. And I think the question Democrats have to reconcile with right now is whether or not race and gender are more important than qualification. So if you have someone who is more qualified, who happens to be a white, straight person, who is more on paper, has more experience in whatever field that they're being nominated for than a minority with less experience, are we now in a place where this matters? And there's a lot of really interesting politics going on in the country right now. And I'm going to give just two really quick examples. One is Harvard University and Ivy Leagues are actually being sued right now for not letting Asian-American students in at the same rate that they are letting Black students in, because they are not being considered by Ivy League students in the same vein as minorities, as any other minority is. Another example is in the recent stimulus package, money was given to minority farmers, but that excluded women farmers. And so we're going to a place where even if people need money, even if people are qualified to get into Ivy Leagues, race and gender is more important than your skill qualifications, the content of your character. It is not what Martin Luther King, Jr. preached. I think this is a very, very slippery slope. I was very surprised to hear someone like Tammy Duckworth say something like this. She got a lot of blowback from a lot of people, not just on the right. And I think this is actually just the natural progression of identity politics. And I will say just to put a cap on this, the view is 25 years old next year. We've only had one Asian-American host co-host this show. So does that mean that one of us should be leaving at some point because there's not enough representation? We're talking about is identity politics more important than qualifications of a job? And I think that's a question going forward that the progressive left is going to have to reconcile. Okay. Now to that last point, I think that Abby Phillips on Twitter made a really great point. There have been more view co-hosts who are children of famous people than view co-hosts who are Asian. Does she really think that's because there aren't enough Asian people with the right qualifications? And that's precisely the case here. Now, Tammy Duckworth, I don't necessarily know if the media was misrepresenting her view or she didn't argue her point persuasively enough, but she actually submitted a list of qualified members of the AAPI community to Joe Biden before the shooting took place and he rejected all of them. So I don't think she's necessarily arguing just pick anyone who's Asian so long as they're Asian. That's the only qualification. I think she is saying that she wants qualified members of the AAPI community in his administration. Having said that though, Megan McCain kind of oversimplifies the point she was making, although they did bring this up in that segment as well. So I think that obviously qualification matters, but the point overall is that there are enough qualified Asian American and Pacific Islanders that Biden could have included. And all she's saying is, I want some more representation. And sure, there's a difference between descriptive representation that is the identity and substantive representation, meaning how someone governs, how they represent a particular community. But Megan McCain, she has absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever. And she says, I believe what makes American exceptional, what makes America exceptional is the fact that we're meritocracy. Is that so? So she likes that if you are qualified for a position, that is how you get a job and move ahead. So explain to me, Megan, precisely, what qualified you to get the job on national television that you have right now? Explain that to me. I'll wait. It couldn't possibly be because you won the lucky sperm contest and happened to be the daughter of the royal John McCain. Is that the case? We all know that her existence on that show disproves this idea that America is meritocracy. That'd be great if that were the case, but it's not the case. People get ahead in America all the time for being born, for having lots of wealth, and it doesn't even matter that they're not qualified. Donald Trump, a reality television show star became president. So how can you with a straight face in 2021 argue that we live in a meritocracy? It's laughable at this point. And she says, Democrats need to determine whether or not race and gender are more important than qualification. Now, the answer is obviously both of those things are important. Representation matters. Of course, the identity matters, but it's not everything. And for those of you who disagree, I mean, if you want to see a female president, would you accept Sarah Palin as president or Carly Fiorina? Would I be satisfied with someone like Milo Yiannopoulos representing me as a gay man, representing members of the LGBTQ community? Would trans Americans be comfortable with someone like Blair White speaking on their behalf and representing them? Of course not. So the identity is just one aspect to representation. What representation means in actuality, I would argue, is a combination of descriptive representation and substantive representation. That means we actually have members of marginalized communities represented in government and in media. But at the same time, marginalized communities don't just get people who look like them to pay lip service to those issues but not actually fight for them. We need people to actually push for policies that benefit these communities and benefit members of the working class and the poor. So, you know, this is something that Megan McCain is speaking to that a lot of people believe. They believe that policies like affirmative action just mean, well, hey, looks like you're black and you're gay, we'll get right into college, young man. You just, you just got a grant. That's not the way that it works. What it means is what affirmative action means, and what a lot of people don't understand is that if you are someone who does study really hard, work really hard, then there are other aspects of your record that they can consider. Did you, let's just take college admissions, for example, if you played in any high school sports, if you did any charity or whatever or volunteer work. And if you happen to be from a marginalized community, these are things that they can consider as benefits, as pluses, not the main reason why you get admitted. But that's kind of what people try to argue is that, well, you know, this really qualified white person was passed up for this unqualified black person when it comes to a job or college admissions. But in actuality, the overwhelming majority of the time when race or gender is considered, at least when it comes to admissions and jobs, is specifically on the basis of qualification, not solely because of race or gender, even if that is one of the factors used to, you know, determine whether or not someone should be admitted into any particular institution. No, I think that nuance is required here at the Democratic Party, like they've gone out of their way to kind of bastardize this conversation for purposes of political expediency. I mean, we all sought firsthand back in 2016 with Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders when he said rightfully so that she is an establishment politician, she said, well, how can I be establishment because I'm a woman, you'd consider a woman the establishment. And that obviously is very hacky. It's a lazy argument. You're clearly weaponizing identity politics and weaponizing your own identity. It'd be like if I were to say, what you're going to criticize me is it because you're homophobic because you're criticizing a gay man. Now, Democrats do do this, right? Democrats do this all the time, corporate Democrats, but in actuality, I don't think that average people truly believe that, you know, you can't consider the totality of somebody's identity, their actual race and ethnicity or sexual orientation and gender identity. That's one aspect and serious people aren't going to argue, oh, we'll just let someone into a position specifically if they're from a marginalized community. Of course they have to qualify, but there's more nuance that's required. Sometimes white people qualify specifically because they are from wealth or they can afford a tutor to get a higher SAT score. So these are all things that we have to take into consideration to make society more equitable. And that's the overall point. This is about equitability, but Meghan McCain of all people shouldn't make any of these arguments because she got there specifically because of identity politics. She is on the view not because she's qualified, because she very clearly doesn't have any talent whatsoever. She's a talentless hack to be as polite as I possibly can be about Meghan McCain, but she's there because she's John McCain's daughter. If she was not John McCain's daughter, nobody would give a flying fuck about who Meghan McCain is or what she does. So for all people to make this argument, Meghan McCain is the very last one who should be making this argument. Of course identity and qualification matters, but she should be lucky that in her instance, that actually wasn't the case because her identity overrode the qualifications that she lacked. They thought, hey, John McCain's daughter would be fun to have on the show because she's John McCain's daughter and maybe that'll get more ratings. So let's bring her on. So of all people, you should be a little bit more self-aware before making this argument, Meghan McCain, because you sound absolutely fucking stupid making this argument, not acknowledging why you're there in the first place. In an interview with Mehdi Hassan, a Biden administration official was asked about Medicare for all. And as you are going to see, he faced plans and completely humiliates himself. This is difficult to watch. And there are a lot of good things in legislation, but also some questionable things. And I want to talk about one of those. Today's the 11th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. As you say, the rescue plan expands subsidies for ACA plans, making premiums much cheaper for many families. That's a good thing. But it could also spend an estimated $35 billion fully covering Cobra for around 2 million unemployed people for just six months. How is that a good use of that money? $35 billion subsidizing insurance companies for six months. Wouldn't that money be better invested towards building universal health care in this country? Well, clearly, you have health insurance right now. But the question is, you ought to pose that to people who have lost their job through no fault of their own that has lost their health insurance and they need a bridge so that they stay with insurance so that they can get that checkup and detect cancer early. It's very easy for people to make judgment calls when they're not in other people's shoes. And I won't do that. I won't put a price on lives. I won't put a price on the wait. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. With respect. Okay. No, but I'm not going to put a price tag on a woman finding out that she has early stages of breast cancer so that we can beat it. I mean, look, did we rise to the moment? Yes. Did we spend $1.9 trillion? We did. You know why? Because there was $1.9 trillion worth of problems in this country that we were trying to fix. Yes. So with respect, I just need to push back a little bit. I'm in favor of you spending $1.9 trillion. I'd have gone higher. I'm very happy that you're spending lots of money. And as for the money on health care, it's not that I don't want you to spend $35 billion on health care. I'm in favor of universal health care. When you say there's no price tag on health care, the problem is the president, Joe Biden, told us there is. He says we can't afford Medicare for all. I'm saying if you can afford $35 billion to give to Cobra, which is a very inefficient, overpriced way of giving people health care, why not spend that money on a universal health care system that helps everyone, not just insurance companies? Well, remember, this is a response to a pandemic. If we didn't have COVID-19, you wouldn't see us doing that Cobra appropriation. So remember, so we're probably saying close to the same thing. But remember, this is in response to people losing their jobs through no fault of their own. And if you don't have COVID-19 out there, people are not losing their jobs. That was very embarrassing. That is the definition of cringe worthy. I know that the word cringe gets overused quite a bit, but I actually felt embarrassed for him. And when many tried to stop him so he can clarify, because he very obviously misunderstood what was being asked, he insisted that he keep going because he very obviously had a set of talking points that he wanted to get through. And he wasn't going to stop talking until he hit on all of those talking points that the Biden administration gave him, except that's not what you were asked. Oh, this is awkward. And I love that the talking points he was using, it really wasn't even substantive. Basically, what he was saying was, listen, with that $1.6 billion or however much it was for Cobra, some people are calling us heroes. Are we heroes? I mean, maybe we are certainly giving Americans more for profit insurance in a time of need. So if that makes me a hero, if that makes members of the Biden administration heroes, I guess we're gonna have to plead guilty there on that charge. That's not what you were being asked, Cedric. The question is, why are you subsidizing private insurance, particularly Cobra, which as Mehdi pointed out, is shit. He didn't say that obviously, I'm paraphrasing, but Cobra is not good. I mean, anything that you can do to expand coverage during a pandemic, of course, that's preferable to nothing. But if you're already spending all of this money on healthcare, why not just go for the most cost-effective solution? Medicare for all. Now, the real answer is that Biden has donors in the health industry that will not allow him to do this. Health industry donors helped him get elected. And of course, he's gonna pay them back by not opting for Medicare for all, by subsidizing for-profit health insurance that, consequently, lines the pockets of health industry CEOs. Now, Mehdi asks, when you say there's no price tag on healthcare, the problem is President Joe Biden told us there is. He says, we can't afford Medicare for all. So you kind of are literally putting a price tag on Medicare for all. Cedric responds by saying, well, remember, this is a response to a pandemic. If we didn't have COVID-19, you wouldn't see us doing that Cobra appropriation. Okay, so in other words, you wouldn't have tried to expand coverage if there wasn't a pandemic. Let me remind you that before the pandemic took place, thousands of Americans every single year were not just losing their coverage. They were dying due to a lack of coverage. And this was after the Affordable Care Act was passed. So a pandemic changes things because according to him, folks lose their jobs. And this is to no fault of their own during a pandemic because it impacted the economy. And since in America, we tie health insurance to employers, you have to do something to help them. So why all of a sudden doesn't make a difference during a pandemic? That's what I wish that Mehdi would have asked him. Why is it bad more so during a pandemic for people to lose their health insurance and possibly die when this was already happening? Of course, the pandemic exacerbated the issue, but it's not like the pandemic presented a new issue. Healthcare in America has always been overly expensive. And on top of that, people die every single year because they don't have healthcare. And I'm not talking about health insurance. I'm not talking about lack of access to health care. I am talking about health care, period. How many people go bankrupt because they have a medical bill that they can't pay? How many go fund meets have we seen because somebody got in an accident or they got an unexpected medical emergency that led to bills? I mean, my dad died more than a year ago now. And I want to say up until the end of last year, my mom was still getting medical bills after he had already died. Isn't this system a little bit egregious? Wasn't it egregious before the pandemic? And all of a sudden, Cedric wants you to think that the Biden administration, they're heroes because they expanded Cobra. Whoop-de-fucking-do. Yay, Cobra. Great. How about you actually fix the broken healthcare system rather than just putting band-aids on it here and there? Because it's very obviously the case that the band-aids aren't helping. The wound is too big for a band-aid. You need an actual systemic approach to healthcare reform. But of course, with corporate Democrats like Joe Biden in power, that'll never happen. So you just have to keep building support among the population and keep rallying members of Congress to actually fight harder for Medicare for All, because this is the solution to this issue of healthcare in America. It's not more subsidies for private for-profit health insurance companies. It is a single-payer Medicare for All system where everyone pays into it and nobody is denied healthcare, not health insurance, health care, period end of story. Bernie Sanders weighed in on Donald Trump's social media ban, and he also made some comments about big tech that I think are things we should all be thinking about. And his opinion here is really nuanced. And I want to read what he had to say, because I think that he makes some really solid points. So, Joseph Choi of The Hill reports, Sanders appeared on the New York Times podcast The Ezra Klein Show on Tuesday to discuss the state of the Democratic Party and was asked about criticisms from conservative figures that liberals had become too sensorious and too willing to censor others. Quote, Look, you have a former president in Trump who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn't believe in the rule of law. This is a bad news guy, Sanders said. But if you're asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the president, the then president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter? I don't feel comfortable about it. However, Sanders maintained that internet platforms should not allow for hate speech and conspiracy theories to spread out across the country or be used for authoritarian purposes and insurrection. So how do you balance that? I don't know. But it is an issue that we have got to be thinking about because of anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view with Sanders added. The Vermont Senator said he also did not like giving that much power to a handful of high tech people. So yeah, what he's saying here is only the most reasonable statement ever. However, I do disagree with Bernie Sanders and that I totally feel comfortable with Donald Trump being banned from all of social media because inciting an insurrection is not protected speech. We're going to walk down anyone you want. But I think right here we're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. That's not protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and it's not protected on Twitter. And I don't think they would allow for that because, of course, they could be legally liable if they do allow this to persist, although I'm not sure with Section 230. That's a little bit more of a gray area. But having said that, though, I think that it's really difficult, right? Most speech is protected in the United States, but there are a few exceptions that are oftentimes really difficult to prove. So yes, I say there are exceptions to the First Amendment. You can't yell fire in a crowded room. That's one of the common tropes that's used. But when it comes to Donald Trump, the case of him inciting an insurrection that led to people dying is so clear-cut that I think that it would be unjust for him to not face any penalties. And I'm not just talking about a ban from Twitter. Legal penalties should be imposed on Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection. And for those of you who think, wow, Mike, that seems like you are a little bit too sensorious. Well, this is the way that I gauge whether or not we should hold someone accountable. Donald Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection from Twitter. Now, they gave a different reason, but we all know it specifically because he incited an insurrection. So I asked myself this question. If that wasn't Donald Trump, if it was me or if it were you who incited an insurrection, would we get banned? And the answer pretty obviously is yes, but we'd also go to jail for doing something like that. So to me, Trump getting banned from Twitter is just one of those rare instances where someone with a lot of power and a lot of wealth is actually held accountable. Now, of course, that's not to say that I don't have a nuance take care because it shouldn't be these big tech Silicon Valley oligarchs who are holding public officials accountable. We should have a legal system that actually holds elected officials accountable. So it's not necessarily like there's a perfect solution here. And this is really complicated because Bernie Sanders lays out here how these big tech companies absolutely have far too much power. They have to be either nationalized or broken up. Now, a lot of folks like when I talked about how I thought it was fine that Trump was banned from Twitter, ultimately, I don't care. I was kind of laughing at it because Donald Trump is a ghoul and he finally was held accountable for once in his life. And people basically took that and reduced my position down to Mike support censorship. Mike is against a free speech. And for anyone who takes that away from what I'm saying here, you're just a simpleton. I don't know how else to put it. I can't be more polite to you than that, because this is a very nuanced issue. And to me, I am very concerned about freedom of speech. I have very high standards for what I think should be censored or deplatformed. Again, it goes back to the example of yelling fire in a crowded room. If you use your speech in a way that causes actual physical harm, then that's not protected under the First Amendment. But having said that, though, we should absolutely honor the First Amendment and extend the principle of the First Amendment to these private companies as much as possible because we have to protect unpopular speech as well. That's incredibly important. And I absolutely acknowledge that this is crucial to a democracy surviving. I mean, imagine if we didn't have freedom of speech during the late 1960s, early 1970s, after the Stonewall riots, then people who spoke out on behalf of gay and trans Americans would have been censored, because that would be too grotesque for humanity. And, you know, you can't allow them to use their speech to advocate for something that we believe is immoral. So I understand that freedom of speech is important. And yes, that means that you protect unpopular opinions as well. But I think that aside from all of the gray area that exists here, aside from the issue of big tech companies having far too much power, which Bernie speaks to, which is something that we have to grapple with as a society in the few instances where there are clear cut examples of somebody using their speech in a way that isn't protected under the First Amendment. If you incite an insurrection and you're not the president of the United States, you're going to go to jail. So the fact that Donald Trump only got banned for inciting an insurrection, he should consider himself lucky. Now, I wouldn't have advocated for Trump to be banned prior to the incitement of the interaction. Sure, he lies on Twitter. He spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories. And I don't even know how you deal with that. As Bernie Sanders points out, what do you do? And it almost seems like his position here is contradictory, because on one hand he feels uncomfortable with Trump being banned. But on another hand, these social media platforms shouldn't allow for hate speech and conspiracy theories, all of which Donald Trump spread. The point is that this is all really complicated. It's not cut and dry. But the Trump example, I would argue, is one of the more clear cut cases. And another clear cut case that must be elevated if you truly care about free speech is BDS. That is a clear cut free speech issue and a First Amendment violation that's taking place around the country. And I don't know why people focus on that less than they focus on Donald Trump getting banned or Steven Crowder being demonetized. That right there is, I think, perhaps the most quintessential free speech issue in modern American times. And nobody talks about that. So at the end of the day, I think that what Bernie Sanders says here, it's reasonable. Like this is a nuanced conversation. There's a lot of great area and a lot of open questions. And I don't think we have answers for all of these questions. You know, Big Tech, Facebook, Twitter, they have a lot of control over our lives like it or not. And they may be private companies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't implications on our lives when they do choose to censor people arbitrarily or unjustly. It happens all the time to leftists. So we have to be nuanced here. And I think that Bernie Sanders is perfectly reasonable in what he says here. Trump getting banned from Twitter is not the free speech issue of our time. I get Bernie Sanders not being comfortable here because the thought process I'm assuming is, wow, well, even if the president could get banned, then that's got to be bad, right? That's got to mean something. There's got to be broader implications that we should try to, you know, suss out and figure out what's going on here. But on the other hand, I always ask myself, if a normal person did this, who has no money, no fame, no power whatsoever, would they get away with it? So for me, I am concerned with the equitability of speech. I want all of us to have equal free speech, equal ability to speak our minds and say things that are unpopular from time to time. But you know, how we establish that as the new status quo in the era of the internet and big tech, that is a longer, it requires a longer conversation. And I'll leave that there. This conversation is very complex, but I'm sure that many folks on Twitter will take away from this. Mike supports big tech censorship. Mike is an authoritarian. And how about it? Because I think that anyone who tries to paint this as a really clear cut issue kind of proves how uninformed they are in general, free speech issues, even if you read Supreme Court cases, there's a lot of argumentation back and forth. There's a lot of nuance. It's, it's complicated and grappling with the uncertainty and really living in the gray area and try trying to figure out what does and doesn't constitute free speech and protected speech is part of making sure we remain a free and open society. And I'll leave that there. So by now I'm confident that most of you have already heard about this story and know about the details. However, even though I'm late to the party, I can't not talk about it because this is one of those stories where it's just, wow, you expect something like this, a confession like this to come out years, possibly even decades down the line. But just a couple of months after this gargantuan lie was told that did irreparable harm to American democracy. Now we're just casually getting an admission of guilt here from Sidney Powell. Unbelievable. I mean, it is believable, but it's just the details, the circumstances of this story are stunning to me. So Shauna Chan of Axios reports, Sidney Powell, the pro Trump lawyer who spread baseless claims of election fraud, moved Monday to dismiss Dominion voting systems defamation lawsuit against her. Powell argues in her motion that no reasonable person would conclude that her accusations of Dominion's election rigging scheme were truly statements of fact. She claims that Dominion conducted a well orchestrated public relations campaign to save their business and that allegations against her are sparse. Her legal team also requested that the case be moved from DC to Texas if it isn't tossed out. Dominion sued Powell for $1.3 billion in January over her conspiracy theories, one of which alleged without evidence that Dominion was part of a massive international communist plot to rig the election. Over 4,000 lawyers have signed an open letter calling authorities to investigate Powell's behavior. Okay, she is admitting that she's a liar and that anyone who believed her lies is not a reasonable person. This reminds me so much of the Alex Jones defense. Well, I'm not a deranged lunatic spreading conspiracy theories. I'm a performance artist, wink wink. I mean anyone who believed the lie that the election was rigged now should feel very stupid because you have one of the individuals who led the charge in spreading that conspiracy theory say anyone who believed my lie is unreasonable. What's funny is I agree with her. Anyone who believed her lie very clearly unreasonable, stupid borderline idiotic human being who I don't even know how they can exist in modern society being that stupid. I don't know how they don't die because they forget to breathe or trip themselves daily because they tie their shoelaces together. I mean that level of idiocy to believe it, you have to be in a cult. You have to be so far gone so detached from reality to believe something like that but yet lots of people believed her lies and the president used her lies as well as his own to actually catalyze a violent insurrection at the US Capitol. This isn't just like oh I told a lie to he please forgive me I'm sorry this is this is seditious what she did. I don't know how to describe it. Your lies actually her democracy itself. This isn't some lie that affected a single individual as disgusting as Alex Jones was in the way that he harassed the victims of Sandy Hook. Your lie had negative consequences for an entire democracy and five people are dead in part because of your lies but yet here she is because she doesn't want to get sued just casually admitting oh well yeah only stupid people would believe my lies who believes that you're not reasonable if you believe my lies just stunning. Now Donald Trump on the other hand I don't actually believe he thinks he was lying I think at first he was knowingly embellishing and outright lying about the election having said that I think that Trump is deluded enough to believe his own lies but at least her lawyers have the level of self-awareness that we weren't previously aware of but she was one of the most absurd bombastic individuals like trying to compete with Rudy Giuliani to be the most outrageous and idiotic but it all comes out now because she doesn't want to be sued she was lying and if you believed her lies you're not you're not a reasonable person well apparently we have a lot of unreasonable people in this country who did believe your lies so now what we have to live with those consequences we have to live with millions of Americans believing that the election was stolen when there is zero evidence that that's the case I hope it was worth it. Lee Carter is a socialist who sent shockwaves through the country and chills down the spines of any establishment hack when he actually ran for the house of delegates in Virginia in 2017 and managed to win and now he is running to be the governor of Virginia and he's kind of doing the same thing that he did when he ran for the house of delegates he is pulling no punches and he's being completely upfront about what he believes and the message that he's espousing is resonating with people because he's speaking specifically to their needs he's speaking to the needs of the working class and he recently made headlines and was subsequently attacked for it because he came out and endorsed something that you never see gubernatorial candidates endorse BDS so during a debate slash panel that him and his opponents were having they were asked about BDS and the answers here weren't too bad I didn't think anyone did a terrible job at answering this question however watch how Lee Carter clearly stands apart from the rest. Native orders in 32 states discourage or criminalize the boycott divestment sanctions campaigns BDS and those who participated in them BDS is a form of peaceful protest to secure Palestinian rights and pressure Israel to comply with international law attempts to criminalize BDS the BDS movement in Virginia in 2016 and 2017 failed in the general assembly if you are asked to issue a gubernatorial directive against BDS would you agree to do so why or why not we will start with Senator McClellan 60 seconds please you know as a child of parents who participated in the civil rights movement I understand that boycotts and protests are critically important to advancing civil rights and I will not do anything anything that will criminalize that behavior and that movement because we I wouldn't be where I am today but for the ability to boycott and protest and so I will be a brick wall against any efforts to criminalize that activity thank you Senator McClellan next delegate Carter please 60 seconds hard to get this into 60 seconds but no I will never do that I'm a supporter of the BDS movement I believe that the the human rights abuses that are being inflicted upon the Palestinian people are among the worst currently ongoing in the world and there is only one state in America that has an agency dedicated to increasing its trade deficit with a foreign country and that agency is the Virginia Israel advisory board I don't think that we should have an agency like that on our books for any country but specifically for a country that has a military occupation over a captive population like the Israeli government does over the Palestinian people thank you delegate Carter delegate Carol Ford 60 seconds please thank you for this question and so I have to tell you that as a practicing attorney as a former magistrate judicial officer otherwise known as a magistrate judge you know I'm an officer of the court and so I have a strict adherence to the Constitution and I have to tell you that criminalizing BDS is you know unconstitutional the courts have ruled on this issue it chills free speech and so therefore anything that will you know prohibit people being able to express their discontent or to ask for banning or sanctions or chills first amendment rights you know it's something that I cannot support thank you so much delegate Carol foie lieutenant governor Fairfax 60 seconds please thank you and I think it is governor and as constitutional officers it really is our role and responsibility to adhere to the Constitution both the Commonwealth of Virginia and of the United States of America and also to ensure that all of our citizens have the opportunity to express themselves and their opinions to exercise their free speech rights about a whole range of issues and so I think that particularly here in Virginia where we attempt to model not only our declaration rights which serve as a model for the Bill of Rights but we have got to ensure that we're allowing people to participate fully in their government and to exercise their rights and I think that's something that I would surely do as governor and would certainly do in my role as a constitutional officer so it is encouraging to see the other gubernatorial candidates not want to criminalize BDS and political speech because that actually is a common phenomenon even with Democrats and it's extremely troubling if you actually care about the first amendment and free speech but they just committed to not criminalize free speech which is the bare minimum that we should expect from anyone who's running for Congress in a democracy or running for any elected office in a democracy in this case to be the governor but notice how he just goes above and beyond and says not only will I not criminalize BDS I actually support BDS someone running for governor explicitly endorsed BDS this is huge because immediately you already know what happened the account stop anti semites quote tweeted a right-wing journalist who attacked the candidates for refusing to commit to criminalizing freedom of speech I mean that's just insane but they added anti-semitic bigot Carter for VA took it even further saying Virginia should not be a home to the Virginia Israel advisory board a small local group that fosters investments in Israel now usually when a candidate running for public office even so much as tacitly endorses the idea of BDS they get attacked for it I mean you saw how they didn't even like the other people who were in that panel they didn't even say they support BDS they that they just said they wouldn't criminalize political speech rightfully so and they were attacked they were attacked and the implication is that they're anti-semitic so to actually explicitly endorse BDS I mean you would expect Lee Carter to back down right as other former BDS supporters have in his position because it really is a political death sentence in a lot of cases but he didn't do that he doubled down and he stated say whatever you want about me I will never stop defending the human rights of the Palestinian people which are being systematically violated each and every day I'm not afraid of your smears you know who's thrilled every time someone pretends that the Israeli state is synonymous with Jewish people as a whole actual anti semites who know that the actions of the state are indefensible and gleefully tore Jewish people with them that's who this rhetoric empowers and that right there is exactly how it's done if you are on the right side of history and you know that you're correct and you are committed to human rights and the furthering of the human race you don't back down it doesn't matter what they say about you it doesn't matter how they try to smear you you remain committed because you're right even if it's unpopular to support BDS or trans rights right now you know 20 years from now 30 years from now you're going to be on the right side of history so you fight for what's real you fight to make that a reality even if right now socially it's unacceptable now there's another individual who's in this race that that I did not mention Terry McAuliffe former governor of Virginia who is a political behemoth he's allied with the Clintons he has a lot of name recognition in the state of Virginia so this isn't going to be an easy race so if you want to see Lee Carter win you have to get involved you have to help him I'll link you to his campaign that below donate if you can this is an individual who if he were able to win and become the governor this would be a monumental for the left I can't stress that enough he is running on an unapologetically progressive anti-corporate anti-elitist anti-capitalist agenda and if he were to get elected this would be a game changer for the progressive movement so we absolutely have to have his back and defend him because he is going to get smeared because he's not going to lie about his positions and he shouldn't but we have to make sure that we support him and we help him get elected in any way that we can monetarily or you knock on doors for him get him elected do what it takes because we're not going to win by sitting down you know the establishment they're going to back Terry McAuliffe I think that that's that's obvious right but we have to make sure that we fight for Lee Carter because this isn't just about Lee Carter and Virginia this is about the progressive movement more broadly speaking Senator Bernie Sanders is planning to meet with Amazon workers in Alabama who are currently fighting to form a union and the actual CEO of Amazon himself Dave Clark decided to take to Twitter to publicly denounce the upcoming meeting this actually is a thing that happened he actually thought that this would be a good idea this guy yeah so he writes I welcome Senator Sanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers but that's not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace for our constituents he went there a $15 an hour minimum wage healthcare from day one career progression and a safe and inclusive work environment so if you want to hear about $15 an hour in healthcare Senator Sanders will be speaking downtown but if you would like to make at least $15 an hour and have good healthcare Amazon is hiring oh great that sounds wonderful based on what all of your employees are telling us now he literally attacked Bernie Sanders and implied that you're not effective but we are you talk about progressive policies we actually enact them yes because we all know that Amazon is a beacon of progressivism and I love how he's bragging about the fact that they pay their workers $15 an hour while not actually acknowledging who it was that pressured them to adopt that policy Ro Khanna took to Twitter to remind them saying how ironic to now brag about paying $15 an hour when we know Amazon did that in direct response to Bernie Sanders and my stop Bezos act as Bezos himself suggested in a tweet not sure what's more incompetent your treatment of Alabama workers or your PR damn so Ro Khanna is bringing the fire and he was one of many of the thousands of folks who decided to dog pile on the Amazon CEO for being shameless enough to put out that tweet but another representative Mark Pokan also decided to weigh in saying paying workers $15 an hour doesn't make you a progressive workplace when you union bust and make workers urinate in water bottles and he is referring to the widely stated fact that Amazon workers are so overworked that they're pressured to pee in water bottles because if they don't then they're not saving time and they could be written up or possibly terminated now Amazon decided to make matters exponentially worse for themselves by responding to Mark Pokan's tweet about their employees peeing in water bottles they actually sent their PR team to address this and needless to say it did not go too well for them they wrote you don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing do you if that were true nobody would work for us the truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do and have great wages and healthcare from day one we hope you can enact policies that get other employers to offer what we already do so first of all they use the fact that they pay their workers $15 an hour to thwart off attempts to unionize they know that if their employees had unions that they would be getting paid a lot more than $15 an hour given how much value they produce for the company second of all to address a member of congress by saying oh come on man you don't believe that do you you must be stupid to believe that our employees are so overworked that they piss in bottles I mean they're about to find out real fast what the Streisand effect is because if you wanted to bury the fact that your employees piss in bottles well the opposite is now going to happen because photographs of your employees piss bottles began to quickly circulate and I've got to ask you Amazon PR and Dave Clark when did vitamin water a product that your company carries I'm assuming start offering a piss colored version of their blueberry pomegranate flavor I'm just wondering because it looks to me as if this is actual human urine from your employees and uh actually this was confirmed by vice news that uh yeah this is from an Amazon employee and they explained why they have to do things like this quote we're pressured to get these routes done before nighttime and having to find a restroom would mean driving an extra 10 minutes off path to find one an Amazon delivery driver told motherboard 10 to 15 minutes to find a bathroom can add up meaning 20 to 30 minutes there and back all together obviously we drink a lot of water throughout the day so this is happening a lot through the drive they continued I can tell you that if I drove to find a restroom that I would be bringing back packages every night and that would eventually mean I would get infractions which would lead to termination I usually do it in a bottle in the back of the van away from the packages and clean my hands with sanitizer because I understand how gross it is they continued I just park off to the side and close the front sliding door all the guys do it another Amazon driver in Florida who pees in coffee cups told motherboard the best drivers get overtime so there's incentive to cut corners the most productive drivers get rewarded the most hours wrecky I wouldn't piss in drugs I stop the truck stop pissing a little thing they call the toilet they don't have time they're trying to make money and this is such a common occurrence for Amazon delivery drivers that on the subreddit for Amazon delivery drivers this is basically a big meme where they talk about how they found piss bottles that the last person who drove the delivery truck left behind or how they had to use a Pringles container for a piss bottle this is a very widely known fact and as journalists can clip and stein points out in this intercept article they know they're well aware of the fact that their drivers pee in bottles and they even had to send out a memo after a bag of human feces was found in a truck and it was returned to a warehouse so they're aware of it so when they respond to a member of congress by saying you don't really believe that dude you must be stupid to think that our employees are so overworked that they have to pee in bottles you do not realize what you just did because now more than ever this is going to be publicized more people than ever will know about how your employees have to pee in bottles because you overwork them because you will terminate them possibly if they don't meet their quotas if they bring back too many packages at the end of the evening so again i mentioned the Streisand effect and they just unleashed a world of hurt on themselves their PR team did this so good job because now more people know about the piss bottles and you just boosted the effort to unionize inadvertently so congratulations i guess by trying to shut down the union you just managed to expose yourself and make the prospect of unionization much more likely because now people know how much a union is needed and a lot of folks knew how necessary it was beforehand because you had one of your own workers in a warehouse die because you were too cheap to hire a medical team to conduct COVID testing and screening so you had a regular worker with no medical training do that as status coup reports and this individual was not given the proper PPE and she died so because your workers are mistreated because your workers are abused and exploited that makes unionization a necessity it makes it essential so i hope that the workers in amazon uh in besamer uh actually can unionize because i want this to create a domino effect all amazon workers should be unionized because nobody's a robot no human being should be treated like this so every once in a while you'll learn about a thing that exists where you wish you didn't know that said thing exists because you were happy or knowing that it wasn't a thing this is one of those instances where i really wish i could unlearn the information that i uh recently became privy to and since i can't i'm going to make sure that you suffer as well so you're welcome so apparently trump burger is a thing a restaurant dedicated to the former president trump burger now i knew about this because it became viral in a tiktok video now i'm gonna play the video i can't play the original clip because it has copyrighted music so we're gonna play the video and i'll kind of walk you through what we're seeing in case you're listening via audio on itunes or or a spotify or whatever so here it is basically as you can see it looks like a church albeit for donald trump is a big beautiful face on it and now they are inside very happy to be there as you can see so excited nobody's wearing masks so that's a little bit worrying there's an area where you can buy trump shirts there is a cardboard cutout where i'm assuming a lot of people take photographs with the former president and the burger even has donald trump's name on it nice little touch there now i can assure you this is real in fact so many people didn't believe that this was real that snopes dedicated an article to stating yes it is a matter of fact that trump burger is a real thing that exists definitely not a cult i swear now i uh for whatever reason decided to look up the menu and i was a little bit disappointed because as much as they branded everything with donald trump there were so many missed opportunities with the menu i mean you do have the trump burger and the trump tower burger and the first lady chicken sandwich but they could have gotten a lot more creative they could have offered like i don't know a fake news fish sandwich or the your fired filet or a sloppy steve sloppy joe i don't know there's so many more opportunities here why wouldn't you do something like melania's mayonnaise or maybe maybe not melania's that sounds really disgusting i don't know trumps tendies or trumps chicken chicken tendies or something i don't even know why i'm making this video trumps chicken tendies um melania's mayonnaise i feel like that could that could work but you just have like the trump burger the trump tower burger i don't know they could have done better i'm gonna grade them a c- uh there was an attempt but if you don't have melania's mayonnaise then i'm not interested okay two hours later so i did look up some of the reviews on yelp and you can tell why they did this because it's very clearly lucrative the pro trump grift it is going to yield you a lot of support that you wouldn't otherwise have so this blew up on tick tock and as a result business exploded you had people driving hours to go and eat at the trump burger restaurant uh this reviewer says saw trump burger on tick tock video so decided to drive two hours to check this place out i was not disappointed when you first walk in you're greeted by a cutout of president trump and all around they have merchandise you can purchase for a reasonable reasonable price okay uh drove over an hour to check this place out another one here and it didn't disappoint order the trump burger and onion rings and everything was delicious burger was juicy and the bun had a slight crisp to it sounds delicious actually each burger has a trump stamped on the bun very cute uh and they put very cute in uh parentheses with an exclamation so you know they were very impressed by that bonus workers are so helpful and nice they were very welcoming and can tell they care about their customers i'm sorry i'm still not over melania's mayonnaise i'm actually crying i don't know three days later okay i'm gonna try to get to some of the not so pleasant comments here i think i've come to myself and i'm over melania's mayonnaise if you enjoy dining at a cult gathering then this is the place for you unseasoned burgers and fries overall disgusting experience just spotted the lib the decor is very outdated oh please felt like i had taken a step back into 2020 the life size trump poster is very disturbing and made my 12 year old daughter very uncomfortable i would avoid this place at all costs i was very excited to come to this restaurant after hearing the hype from tiktok and was very disappointed i got the trump burger with some fries and the bun of my burger as well as the fries were very soggy oh that's unfortunate i hate when that happens not to mention my burger wasn't even cooked all the way and i ordered medium well wow everything tasted plain like something you can make at home do not make the visit not worth it so this seemed like someone who actually was excited but um they just they weren't happy with their experience that's really unfortunate great burger is what the worst fries i have ever had come on how do you screw up fries mine were soggy and limp but i order from them again maybe that's pretty relatable uh now the question that we all have to ask ourselves is would we eat here and i made the mistake of filming filming this when i'm extremely hungry and i'm not going to lie looking at that menu no cap i bet that shit is busted it looks good and it's like i had this instinct to not want to give my money to the restaurant owners who are probably obviously racist if they support donald from that much but at the same time you know when you spend your money in a capitalist society you're not putting your dollars towards an ethical company 99 times out of 100 right there's no ethical consumption under capitalism but the burgers look good i wouldn't eat there and whether or not this is weird i always apply a test to myself because uh you know i'm a huge bernie sanders supporter so would i eat at a restaurant called bernie's burgers and the answer is no i think it would be weird i mean i'm sure that the restaurant owners are nice but it would come off to me as overly grifty and then just trying to cash in on a trend and i would feel dirty about supporting that so because i think it would be weird if i did this as a bernie supporter then i think that i could logically deduce that trump supporters who eat here are weird and the whole notion of a trump restaurant is super strange to me it's just it's too overly culty and i think that it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to express their political support for someone but in this way it's a little bit weird now if they introduce melania's mayonnaise then it seems a little bit more reasonable but there's not enough representation for the first lady so bring in melania's mayonnaise or melania's mustard and that could work um if this gets uploaded then i made a terrible decision well that's all that i've got for you today thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far the program as usual we're not going to end the show without thanking all of the people who make this show possible all of our patreon paypal and youtube members thank you all so much for helping us not just to survive but thrive as well you all are absolutely crucial to our show's existence and i cannot thank you enough so that's all that i have for you this week uh hopefully you all can take a break because sometimes politics can get a little bit depressing and just monotonous but uh check some time off and uh maybe join me on twitch.tv slash miss report and watch me play some video games and talk about politics in a more light harder than casual way i think i'll be doing a little bit more twitch streams lately because i uh really really enjoy them i didn't stream last week after i said i would so i apologize for breaking my promise this week though i definitely am going to try to make time to stream on twitch and i hope that you'll be there with me anyways i'll see you all next week my name is mike figurado this has been the humanist report take care everyone