 I want to talk about the debate section where health care came up, but specifically the question was posed to Elizabeth Warren. Do you support increasing taxes as a means of funding Medicare for all? Now, one of the most basic components of any single-payer system is you increase taxes, but in return, voters, working Americans, they're getting something great in exchange. They're getting comprehensive health care that is free at the point of service. We're eliminating co-pays, eliminating deductibles, premiums, and overall people will be better off. They'll not save money. But the way that the media treats this issue is as if any and all tax increases are bad inherently and forget about the nuance, it doesn't matter that we're going to be saving Americans money and giving them better health care that's universal and comprehensive. It doesn't matter. If you're going to raise their taxes, you're bad so you better defend yourself. So the right-wing framing, it's just incredibly frustrating. It irks me to my core. So we have to point that out. Regardless, if you are an advocate of Medicare for all, you have to be able to explain this in a way where you kind of get yourself out of the trap that the moderator tries to kind of put you in, right? So this happened to Bernie Sanders back in 2016. He was at a CNN town hall with Chris Cuomo and he was asked, will you raise taxes to pay for Medicare for all? The way that Bernie Sanders said it allowed him to be attacked. He said, we will raise taxes. Yes, we will. The media then removed the context from that quote and just had that as the headline. Bernie Sanders, we will raise taxes. So they're dishonest and they're not really demonstrating to voters or educating voters. Really, what's in their best interest? So I hate this question to begin with, but you have to be able to answer it. Elizabeth Warren was not able to answer this. And unfortunately, Pete Buttigieg was able to kind of pounce, but it wasn't just destruction. He didn't own her for lack of a better word. She was able to kind of rebut his talking points, which were right-wing talking points and kind of get the upper hand. But overall, I don't think she's being clear. It seems like she is trying to mislead people because she's being evasive. She's not saying the word tax. She's using the word cost in lieu of taxes. And she's got to figure out a better way to explain the fundamentals of Medicare for all. Yes, taxes go up. But overall, even if you have a tax increase and you're a working class American, you save money because I'm going to eliminate your monthly health insurance premium. As Calculance, you would say we're eliminating that private tax in favor of a public tax and the public tax is less than the private tax. So this is the exchange between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. I'll share my thoughts when we come back. Senator Warren, to be clear, Senator Sanders acknowledges he's going to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for all. You've endorsed his plan. Should you acknowledge it too? So the way I see this, it is about what kinds of costs middle class families are going to face. So let me be clear on this. Costs will go up for the wealthy. They will go up for big corporations and for middle class families. They will go down. I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle class families. Mayor Buttigieg, you say Senator Warren has been, quote, evasive about how she's going to pay for Medicare for all. What's your response? Well, we heard it tonight. A yes or no question that didn't get a yes or no answer. Look, this is why people here in the Midwest are so frustrated with Washington in general and Capitol Hill in particular. Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything, except this. No plan has been laid out to explain how a multi-trillion dollar hole in this Medicare for all plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in. And the thing is, we really can deliver healthcare for every American and move forward with the boldest, biggest transformation since the inception of Medicare itself. But the way to do it without a giant multi-trillion dollar hole and without having to avoid a yes or no question is Medicare for all who want it. We take a version of Medicare. We let you access it if you want to. And if you prefer to stay on your private plan, you can do that too. That is what most Americans want, Medicare for all who want it, trusting you to make the right decision for your healthcare and for your family. And it can be delivered without an increase in medical expenses. So let's be clear, whenever someone hears the term Medicare for all who want it, understand what that really means. It's Medicare for all who can afford it. And that's the problem we've got. Medicare for all is the gold standard. It is the way we get healthcare coverage for every single American, including the family whose child's been diagnosed with cancer, including the person who's just gotten an MS diagnosis. That's how we make sure that everyone gets healthcare. We can pay for this. I've laid out the basic principles. Costs are going to go up for the wealthy. They're going to go up for big corporations. They will not go up for middle-class families. And I will not sign a bill into law that raises their costs because costs are what people care about. I've been studying this, you know, for the biggest part of my life, why people go back up. Thank you, Senator. Can the mayor respond? Sure. When they say that what they want is a choice. And the choice of Medicare for all who want it, which is affordable for everyone, because we make sure that the subsidies are in place, allows you to get that healthcare. It's just better than Medicare for all whether you want it or not. And I don't understand why you believe the only way to deliver affordable coverage to everybody is to obliterate private plans, kicking 150 million Americans off of their insurance in four short years when we could achieve that same big, bold goal. And once again, we're competing to be president for the day after Trump. Our country will be horrifyingly polarized even more than now. After everything we've been through, after everything we are about to go through, this country will be even more divided. Why unnecessarily divide this country over healthcare when there's a better way to deliver coverage for all? So now for additional context before that clip, the way that the moderator tried to frame that question disingenuously so and expectedly so was in a yes or no question. Like he didn't want her to explain that even if we're raising taxes on normal Americans, they're still going to save money. So she tried to explain it and Pete Buttigieg pounced. He made it seem like she's lying. And look, I understand what she's saying, but the average American isn't really going to understand that. They don't know about single payer. They don't know really what she's talking about. So if I'm just an average viewer and I don't really know about healthcare and the way it's funded through attacks, I'm not really going to know what to think of that. Right? However, Elizabeth Warren did do a good job at kind of giving Pete Buttigieg a taste of his own medicine because she said, you know, what he's saying when he talks about Medicare for all who wants it is really it's Medicare for all who can afford it. And as you saw, he had no way to respond to that because he tried to suggest that it's actually going to be affordable in spite of what Elizabeth Warren says because we're going to subsidize it. The only problem with that, Pete, is the Affordable Care Act wasn't so affordable. We offered a subsidy, right? Obama had the individual mandate to make sure that it was cheap so that way everyone buys into it. And it's not just the system that is paid for by the six so that way healthy people are involved as well. But Pete, it's not affordable. It is not affordable. So I mean, for you to try to reassure us that your version of healthcare reform will be affordable after we just got the Affordable Care Act, which turned out to not be so affordable after all. Even if it was an improvement, you've got to understand that Republicans are going to have a field day with this view. So he's a liar and he also lied when he talked about choice. Oh, well, you want to eliminate choice. You want to blow up the private market. Spoken like a true corporate shill because this is an individual who has taken money from dozens of billionaires, I believe, at this point. He's funded by the industry. He's taking money from special interests and like a good little stooge. He's reciting all of their talking points. So I think that overall in that exchange, I don't know that there was a clear victor. I think Elizabeth Warren certainly got some great shots. And at Pete Buttigieg, however, he was able to persuasively argue that she was being evasive and she wasn't really being up front because it's clear that she doesn't really want to explain that. Yes, there will be a tax increase when it comes to Medicare for all. And I get it. It's so hard to explain this policy in a thorough way and a detailed way when you know that they're going to take you out of context the next day and smear you. I get it because it happened to Bernie Sanders, but you've got to work on that. Like this is a weakness of Elizabeth Warren and for her to still not really be able to directly answer that question in a way that is persuasive. You know, it's a missed opportunity. Now, thankfully, Bernie Sanders was brought into this conversation and he answered this perfectly, perfectly. He said it in a way where you can't really take him out of context as easily as you could have in 2016. And Elizabeth Warren will chime in again and claim Amy Klobuchar will actually give Bernie Sanders credit for being honest. Take a look. Well, as somebody who wrote the damn bill, as I said, let's be clear on the Medicare for all bill that I wrote, premiums are gone. Copayments are gone. Deductibles are gone. All out of pocket expenses are gone. We're going to do better than the Canadians do, and that is what they have managed to do at the end of the day. The overwhelming majority of people will save money on their health care bills. But I do think it is appropriate to acknowledge that taxes will go up. They're going to go up significantly for the wealthy and for virtually everybody, the tax increase they pay will be substantially less substantially less than what they were paying for premiums and out of pocket expenses. Senator Warren, will you acknowledge what the senator just said about taxes going up? So my view on this and what I have committed to is costs will go down for hardworking middle class families. I will not embrace a plan like Medicare for all who can afford it that will leave behind millions of people who cannot. And I will not embrace a plan. That says people have great insurance right up until you get the diagnosis and the insurance company says, sorry, we're not covering your expensive cancer treatments. We're not covering your expensive treatments. Thank you, Senator. Senator Klobuchar, what you need. At least Bernie's being honest here and saying how he's going to pay for this and that taxes are going to go up. And I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but you have not said that. And I think we owe it to the American people to tell them where we're going to send the invoice. I believe the best and boldest idea here is to not trash Obamacare, but to do exactly what Barack Obama wanted to do from the beginning. And that's have a public option that would bring down the cost of the premium and expand the number of people covered and take on the pharmaceutical companies. That is what we should be doing instead of kicking 149 million people off their insurance in four years. And I'm tired of hearing whenever I say these things, oh, it's Republican talking appoints. You are making Republican talking points right now in this room by coming out for a plan that's going to do that. I think there is a better way that is bold that will cover more people, and it's the one we should get behind. Senator Warren. I didn't spend most of my time in Washington. I spent most of my time studying one basic question. And that is why hardworking people go broke. And one of the principal reasons for that is the cost of health care. And back when I was studying it, two out of every three families that ended up in bankruptcy after a serious medical problem had health insurance. The problem we've got right now is the overall cost of health care. And look, you can try to spend this any way you want. I've spent my entire life on working on how America's middle class has been hollowed out and how we fight back. I put out nearly 50 plans on how we can fight back and how we can rebuild an America that works. And a part of that is we got to stop Americans from going bankrupt over health. So at that point, you know, Amy Klobuchar, she was brought back into the conversation and she just started repeating the same shit. And Elizabeth Warren kept talking about, you know, I didn't study this for so long. Liz, you have to be upfront. Look, as an advocate of Medicare for All, I'm glad that you are supporting it on a national debate stage, but you need to explain it for what it is, because if you are an advocate of Medicare for All and you're representing it nationally, then we need to be confident. We need to be strong and assure people that our policy is the best. And you can't do that if you are seemingly evasive. What Bernie Sanders said was straight to the point. It was concise. We're eliminating co-pays, premiums, deductibles, but there will be a tax. But overall, you will save money. That's the way that you deal with it. That's it. Overall, under my plan, you will have more money in your pocket and universal comprehensive coverage that is free at the point of service. No more co-pays, no more deductibles, not to mention the time I'll save you because you won't have to fill out the paperwork every single year and worry about which network you're in. That's all gone. It's easier under Medicare for All. So she's got to get better at this if she truly supports Medicare for All. Now, I have my doubts that she'd actually fight for it. But nonetheless, on a debate stage, I'm glad she's advocating for it because that is doing a lot to shift the overtune window to the left on this issue. But if you're going to fight for it, then you do need to be more confident and just explain it for what it is. If they take you out of context, at least voters will know that you're being honest, right? So Amy Klobuchar, let's talk a little bit about her. She she didn't like the fact that she was accused of using Republican talking points and she kind of tried to get ahead of herself, right? Because last time when John Delaney sparred with Elizabeth Warren, well, she ended up calling him out for the Republican talking points that he did. And that was a really effective argument against him. It kind of shut him up. So what she tried to do is get ahead of that allegation and basically say, no, you with your plan, you're creating Republican talking points. But make no mistake about it. Listen to what Amy Klobuchar says about Medicare for All and compare that to any average Republican. They sound identical because guess what? Amy Klobuchar has the same donors as Republicans. She takes money from the health industry, as does Donald Trump, as does any other Republican who's against Medicare for All. The difference is that she doesn't actually want to kick people off of coverage, whereas Republicans do. But yet, you know, I'm being too fair to her because she thinks that it's OK for her to lie about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and say they want to take people off of coverage. No, you're lying. You're literally lying now, and that's bad. That makes you a bad person because under all of these candidates' plans, if you are not opting for Medicare for All single pair, where it's free at the point of service, you need to acknowledge a fact that's really hard for these candidates, probably to digest. Probably not. They probably don't care. But their supporters at least should acknowledge it. If you don't support Medicare for All single pair, you are OK with the fact that people in this country will die or go bankrupt because they still have to be able to afford it. Because if you make health care a commodity, if you make it so you have to buy in and it's not just automatically something that is offered to all citizens and is paid for through taxes, it's not Medicare for All. Now, I don't care how you how you fund it, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be taxes. But you could do MMT and deficit spend. I don't care. But the fact is that if you don't opt for Medicare for All single pair, people will die. And that's what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren need to point out. And they're not stressing enough the corruption here that is inherent in all of these arguments. The reason why Pete Luda, Judge and Amy Klobuchar are saying the things about Medicare for All, the reason why they're brazenly lying about it is because they are bankrolled by the health insurance industry. They are liars. So call them out. Call out the corruption. Call out the talking points that come from the industry and call out the fact that under their plan, Americans will die and they're complicit if they don't do Medicare for All single pair. Because if they're going to get more aggressive and accuse you of wanting to take insurance away or eliminate choice, get equally aggressive and say, OK, well, you want people to die. You must want them to die if you're actively choosing to support the policy that wouldn't cover everyone, which means more Americans die. Is that what you want? Are you pro death? So you've got to play hardball. And Elizabeth Warren has got to sharpen her rhetoric when it comes to Medicare for All, be more concise and explain it for what it actually is and take a few cues from Bernie Sanders. A few more cues from Bernie Sanders because he's managed to nail the rhetoric for the most part when it comes to Medicare for All. These are liars and you've got to call them out. I think Elizabeth Warren did a fairly good job at holding Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg's feet to the fire, but she could have been better and more effective in explaining what Medicare for All is. And I think overall her unwillingness to just directly say, yes, I support a tax increase, but and then explain what will happen and how Americans will save money. I think that is just not a good look overall, so I'll leave that there.