 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 humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to The Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo. This is episode 249 of the program. Today is Friday, July 10th and before we get started, I want to thank the people who make this show possible, all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members who signed up just this last week to support us or increase their monthly pledge and that includes Agnar Defigueredo like that name, Bill Whitson, Chad Halsey, Jacob Tory, Kieran Lewis, Rodney Nelson, Theodore Pulver and Yolanda Cures. So thank you so much to all of these comrades if you'd like to support the show as well. Enjoying the independent progressive mini revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So we have another fantastic show for you all this week. We'll talk about Trump and how he's officially given up on trying to fight COVID-19 and some of his staffers reportedly hope that Americans will just grow numb to all of the deaths caused by the pandemic and he's also pressuring governors to adopt his strategy of pretending it's not a thing by forcing schools to reopen in full by fall. Also his supporters are taking their anti-mask hysteria to a new extreme level and while we're talking about Republican insanity, we'll examine a right-wing commentators claim that large multi-billion dollar corporations want a communist revolution, yes you heard that correctly, and we'll look at Madison Cawthorne, a Republican up-and-comer who the party hopes will draw in young voters. Also the Dakota Access Pipeline has been killed by a federal judge at least for now and we talk about that and celebrate. And Nancy Pelosi is refusing to debate her primary opponent Shea-Hit Batar. I'll tell you what you can do to force her hand there. And finally we closed the week by talking to comedian Lance from The Serves about a variety of issues that you will not want to miss. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Hopefully you will enjoy it. Let's get right to it. So contrary to what Donald Trump wants you to think, COVID-19 cases in the United States are continuing to rise. In fact on July 3rd, we broke our own record with more than 57,000 new cases in one day. Now contrast that with other countries who have been struggling to get this under control like Italy. And on that same day, they only saw 223 new cases. Spain only saw 444 new cases. So it's not like it's eliminated in these other countries. But I mean, clearly they've been much more effective at getting it under control. And we are very obviously doing worse than the rest of the world. Now, if you ask Donald Trump why that is, it's not necessarily because he bungled it because he could do no wrong. He's perfect. He's a genius, right? But in his view, the only reason why we're seeing an explosion of cases is because we're doing more testing. In his view, more testing equals more cases. He tweeted out, cases, cases, cases. If we didn't test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases. If you test 40 million people, you are going to have many cases. Now this logic is completely idiotic because you can just stop diagnosing people with cancer, for example, and claimed that you've cured cancer. But in actuality, that's not how this works. The cases would still be there. We just wouldn't know about it. And raw positive case numbers isn't the only metric that we use to determine how quickly the virus is spreading or how prevalent it is in any given area. So he's just trying to come up with some sort of justification to explain why it's so bad, because as a leader, it makes him look really incompetent because he is incompetent. But as CNBC's Will Fuer explains, to dispel claims that testing is the blame for the country's growing outbreak, epidemiologists point to a figure known as the positivity rate, which indicates the percent of tests that come back positive in a given region. The data point is important because it indicates how broadly the virus is spreading throughout the community. The World Health Organization has previously said that the positivity rate for a country should remain stable at about five percent for 14 days before a country eases restrictions. Some epidemiologists have noted that the fact that the national positivity rate has yet to drop despite increased testing of the population could indicate that the virus is spreading. That states are finding more cases relative to the amount of tests their conducting provides the strongest rebuttal to the administration's assertion that case numbers are rising because we're getting better at finding cases through increased testing. Jennifer Nuzzo, lead epidemiologist of Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 testing insights initiative, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. They tell us the opposite, that each of these states needs to do even more testing to find these infections, followed by more rigorous contact tracing and isolation. So obviously an increase in testing does not explain why we are seeing an explosion of new cases, because we're not just looking at one metric, right? It's more complex than that, in spite of what Trump wants you to believe. But again, this isn't necessarily about him trying to learn more and educate people. This is damage control. That's what this is. And look, if this weren't in election year, he wouldn't even be pretending to care about COVID-19. I mean, we're in an election year and he could barely pretend publicly that he gives a damn at all. But I mean, this is exactly why he's tanking currently. If you look at real clear politics pulling averages, Joe Biden is ahead of him by 8.7 points. And Joe Biden is winning currently at this point in time, not because Joe Biden is an exciting figure, or he's coming up with new policies that are exciting young people and making them want to come out and vote. No, it's because he's saying common sense things that we can all see about Donald Trump and how he's bungled his response to COVID-19, something that we could basically have under control had we acted sooner and actually taken it seriously. But we're still not really taking it seriously. So when you see the way that Joe Biden is attacking him, and not necessarily a political way, but just a common sense way, I mean, it's not really that surprising why Joe Biden is ahead. Take a look at what he's been saying about Donald Trump. As other leaders in other countries took the necessary steps to get the virus under control, Donald Trump failed us. In a blistering speech in Wilmington, Delaware, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee blamed Trump, saying the country is hardly better off than it was in March. How are we in this many months into this and still, still don't have what we need? You know, the steps you've taken so far haven't gotten a job done, Mr. President. Fix the shortage of PPE for our health care workers before you tee off another round of gauze. In contrast to Trump downplaying the need for testing, we didn't test, we wouldn't have cases. The former vice president called for an increase and contact tracing, and on masks. We absolutely need a clear message from the very top of our federal government that everyone needs to wear a mask in public. It's if I have an undiagnosed, I have it to protect you against me, to protect other people. Yeah, I mean, everything that Joe Biden is saying about Donald Trump here is accurate. The extent to which Donald Trump has bungled COVID-19 cannot be over-sated. He had this election, I think, on lock, right? He was cruising towards re-election and had he acted to get this under control in a serious way, I mean, we could move on. We could move past this and it would basically not hurt him politically, but because he's been such a colossal failure of a leader here, well, this paved the way to Joe Biden taking the lead, and rightfully so. And Joe Biden is putting out attack ads against Donald Trump, and, you know, even though not all of his ads are good, some of them are terrible, things like this are going to land because people want a leader who is going to actually make an attempt at getting us past this pandemic. You are gonna be so proud of your country. We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you'll say, please, please, it's too much winning. We can't take it anymore. Mr. President, it's too much. And I'll say, no, it isn't. We have to keep winning. We have to win more. We're gonna win more. Now that is an ad that shouldn't just embarrass Donald Trump. It should embarrass all Americans because when you compare how poorly we're doing with regard to COVID-19 to other developed countries, I mean, our response has been abysmal. I think Karl Kalinsky basically put it best when he said our response to this was akin to the way a failed state would handle a pandemic. It just, it's been non-existent. Not only are you not trying to get it under control, but the response economically to people who are suffering has been laughable. You gave Americans a one-time payment of $1,200. So I mean, there's so much to critique when it comes to Donald Trump and the way that he's mishandled COVID-19 up until this point, but the election is months away. So if he even was acting as a self-interested individual with any brain cells that still function, he'd at least try now to get it under control for the election. But basically, all he's doing is hoping that it goes away. That's been his response. And if you think that I'm being facetious here, no, he literally is basically just crossing his fingers and hoping that this goes away. President Trump repeated his claim that the pandemic will soon disappear. I think that at some point that's going to sort of just disappear, I hope. You still believe so. Disappear. Well, I do, I do. Yeah, sure, at some point. And I think we're gonna have a vaccine very soon too. So basically, his strategy to combat COVID-19 is thoughts and prayers. That's functionally what this looks like because he's not proposing any real solutions. He's just not. And if you think that I am interpreting what he said there by hoping that it goes away as a bad faith political actor, I mean, sure, we all hope that it goes away, but you have to take action. He is not going to take action, at least at this point in time. In fact, what he's banking on is the hope that people are just going to become numb to all of the deaths caused by COVID-19. That is literally what they're banking on. Because as Eric Lutz of Vanity Fair reports, Trump's administration is reportedly scrambling to assemble coherent messaging around the president's behavior. According to The Washington Post, Trump's advisors are seeking ways to reframe his response to the coronavirus even as the president himself largely seeks to avoid the topic because he views it as a political loser. They're sending health officials to swing states, putting doctors on TV in regional markets where the virus is surging and crafting talking points to convince Americans that as one senior official told the outlet, they can live with the virus being a threat. Staffers are also reportedly hoping that the country grows numb to the escalating death toll. A state of mind the president seems to have already achieved. So I need you to understand, we are living through a deadly pandemic, one that's so serious that it only occurs once every 100 years and he's just given up. He's just decided, I'm done with this, as the leader, as the president of the United States, where he's in a position to actually have an influence over this. And because he views this as a political loser, he's just not gonna do anything about it. I mean, that's insane. He's just giving up on the pandemic and he's hoping that we'll all go numb and not consider the fact that on his watch, 130,000 Americans died because of this. I mean, it's just, it's astonishing that this is actually happening in America and there's not universal outrage. The fact that he still has supporters in spite of this, it speaks to how bad American political discourse has become, right? But here's the thing, in spite of what he hopes will happen in spite of the fact that he's banking on people, just not caring about COVID-19 after a while, you can't do that because a virus doesn't care about whether or not there's an election coming up. A virus doesn't care about your political strategy because it already has showed up at Donald Trump's doorstep. When you have secret service agents testing positive for COVID-19, when you have former Republican presidential candidates get treated for COVID-19 after attending Trump's rally in Tulsa, where six staffers mind you tested positive for COVID-19 and when you have Donald Trump's own son's girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, testing positive for COVID-19, which reportedly, they viewed as a setback for the campaign who's trying to downplay it, you don't have a choice. You can't pretend like it's not a thing. Not wanting to touch this issue because you view it as a political loser isn't an option. And here's the thing, if you truly believe that Americans are dissatisfied with your response to this, you have months to change it, right? You have months to make an impact. To say, I did all of these things. We took these measures and we helped make this virus, you know, obsolete basically, or at least got it under control, but he's not trying. He's literally just giving up because it's an election year and he already fucked up. So he's just gonna pretend like it's not a thing. That's the new strategy. I mean, this is unbelievable. This is unreal. It's not like he, you know, doesn't want to at least do the bare minimum to stop Americans from suffering. He's not even putting up this facade that he cares anymore. He's not even pretending. But Donald Trump does care about you if you are an American statue and he's pledging to make it so anyone who vandalizes or takes down a statue gets a 10 year prison sentence, 10 years. So if you are a human being in the United States with COVID-19 or maybe you don't have it but you were affected economically and you lost your job and thus your health insurance as a result, Trump is just going to pretend as if that issue isn't really an issue. But if you're a statue in America, then Donald Trump is going to take swift action to make sure that you're protected. I mean, imagine if he cared about American human beings as much as he cared about statues. I mean, I shouldn't even have to say that because you have an interest as someone seeking reelection to at least pretend to care about us but he's not even doing the bare minimum he's just checked out. And it's unbelievable that we accept this, right? Americans should be taking to the streets right now and demanding his resignation. That's what we should be doing. That's how poorly he's handled this. That's how badly he's fucked up. The fact that we are just allowing the sitting president to pretend as if COVID-19 is no longer a thing, that is honestly embarrassing. The fact that he has any allies in Washington, the fact that he has any supporters voting for him. That is embarrassing. So I mean, I don't know what else to say. He is not going to get this under control before the election. And he's just given up trying because he doesn't believe he is able to. So he's just said, fuck it, I'm moving on to the next issues. Statues, burning the flag. It's honestly just, I don't have the words to explain this. Like we're gonna look back at this moment in history and we're going to be embarrassed that this guy actually did this and we allowed it to happen without everyone universally demanding that he stepped down immediately because 130,000 Americans have died. I mean, we invaded two countries because of 9-11, which killed 3,000 Americans. And now 130,000 Americans have died due to a deadly pandemic and the response has just been meh. And we're all okay with that. I mean, it's unbelievable. So this is why he is going to end up losing. It's because of this. So lately on the program, we've been talking a lot about the necessity of masks because I have become very concerned about the fact that this, for whatever reason, has become a political issue because of course it has. To where if you wear a mask or don't wear a mask, you're making a political statement. If you wear a mask, you're a libtard who's being duped by the deep state or if you don't wear a mask, you're a maggot shed. And I'm not doing it because I woke up in a free country. They're nuts. So we're going to talk about this anti-mask hysteria because I do find it fascinating given that we see a new viral video of a Karen rebelling against a mask requirement pop-up every day. But this really is something that should concern all of us because we are fighting a very contagious and deadly pandemic. But the first example that I want to show you of anti-mask hysteria comes from Costco Karen. I think we're on Costco Karen number eight by now where she responds in a very American way to being asked to put on a mask to shop at Costco. That is a grown-ass woman sitting on the floor of a Costco throwing a tamper tantrum like a toddler because she was asked to put on a mask. Now, I wish I could say that that's like the worst example of rebellion against masks that we've seen. But this next video of a Karen in a Target is even worse because she literally is so anti-mask that just the fact that Target had a display of masks that they were selling, well, that's a big enough political statement that she found it personally offensive to her. So she decided to take it down and destroy it quite literally. I'm gonna clean your f**k over, f**k over. I am willing to admit that there's probably a sizable portion of the American population who isn't explicitly political in their aversion to masks, right? They're probably apolitical and they just don't wanna wear masks because they think it's uncomfortable and they don't have one and they're too lazy to get one. I don't know, but most of the anti-mask vitriol is in fact coming from the MAGA Chud crowd. And I'm not just generalizing and saying, oh, well, that lady was acting that way because she was a Trump supporter. She literally admitted that she's a Trump supporter and not just any MAGA Chud, but a level 100 MAGA Chud who is deep into QAnon conspiracy theories. Dude, everything that Donald Trump was elected to do, you could read about it on Twitter, you could read about it in the news, all of the deep state politicians, all of that stuff has happened, it's done. So I was hired to be the QAnon spokesperson. Listen, I'm gonna have you spin around and just put your phone down. What? You need to put your phone down. Oh my God. So that's what we're dealing with. These are the people who are driving the anti-mask hysteria in America. And I'm not gonna try to decode her stupidity that we saw there because it's useless. Basically, they are subscribing to this vague, almost abstract idea that if they wear a mask, then they are agreeing to give up their liberty. My body, my choice, apparently. Because if the government requires that you do something, well, then that by definition is against freedom. So they're not allowed to require us to wear seat belts. They're not allowed to tell us to wear clothing in public. So if you wanna hang gong in Walmart, that's just freedom. Yeah, it's stupidity. This is a pandemic. Just put on a mask. Nobody likes wearing a mask. It's uncomfortable, it's hot. And if you have glasses, then they follow up your glasses, but it's a pandemic. If you wanna be in public, if you wanna reopen the economy, then they're essential. Otherwise, we can go back to self-quarantine again. I mean, you can't have it both ways. The people who are saying open up the economy are the same people who are saying, I don't wanna wear masks. Well, you don't get to have your cake and eat it too. It's a virus. It doesn't care about your political predispositions. It's a virus that is absolutely ravaging our country. We lost 130,000 Americans because we've just pretended like it's not a thing. So you can't just not wear a mask. And it's not just that people individually are rebelling against masks. Now the anti-mask discourse is evolving or devolving, I should say, to where it's now much more nefarious. It's not just like you're part of counterculture and you're edgy to not wanna wear a mask. Now, MAGA chuds are shaming people who choose to wear a mask. Now, someone who I thought they loved, Judge Jeanine Pirro on Fox News, America's Karen, actually got a lot of backlash because she posted a photograph of herself wearing a mask in public. Now, even though not all of the responses to this were bad, there were so many dumb fucks who chose to shame her for wearing a mask that this level of political discourse, this level of vitriol is honestly just, it's shocking even for Fox News' audience. So one person responded to her picture saying, take it off, Judge, don't be a sheep, you're better than that. Another person said, why? You look ridiculous, you're outside for fuck's sake. Another person said, I'm usually with you, but on this, no, you're being duped. The mask is political, has nothing to do with health. This one got a thousand likes, by the way. Another person said, come on, Judge, get over the scam already. I would be more impressed with no mask, hashtag fake, hashtag pandemic. This person says, take it off please, you are inhaling your own CO2 at 8,000 ppm within a few minutes, that is toxic. It creates an acidic environment in your body within which errant cell reproduction thrives equals viruses, cancer, fungal and bacterial infection. Pneumothorax is also possible. Now, this person sounds like an expert based on all of the words he was using. Very big words here, bigly. I hope that he gets this information to surgeons who have to wear masks every single day, but maybe I'm just not privy to the number of surgeons dropping dead because of masks. Another person says, another example of Fox News is simulating into the MSM. What a disgrace, yes, if they were an already mainstream media. No masks, sad you've fallen for this BS. Don't, just don't. I cannot believe you are wearing their muzzle. I guess you were all talk on your show. I am so disappointed in you. And finally, this makes me sad, Janine. Fox is dead when I see this. I'm like pre-morning the death of humanity because if we can't do something as simple as wear a mask during a pandemic, how are we going to be able to respond intelligently to bigger crises like climate change? What if there was like an asteroid that was coming to earth and we had like a year to take action? I feel like I'm reciting the plot of Deep Impact or something, but I mean, what if that were the case? Would there be anti-astroid deniers? I mean, we just, we can't make it with this level of delusion. And there's a lot more examples of that, that Travis Getty's of Raw Story cataloged, but I mean, at this point, the issue is truly devolving and it's so serious to them. I think they take this so seriously that one MAGA shut in Pennsylvania that status coups Jordan Sheridan interviewed literally equated wearing masks, the mandate to wear masks with the Holocaust. I wish I were kidding, but this is something that happened. I think it's unconstitutional to even mandate anybody wearing a mask. I'd be like me asking you to put a yellow store on if you were Jewish. It's not right. Do you think he's- I mean, that's my constitutional right. Even if it endangers other people? I mean, if you're afraid to get in it, wear a mask. I'm not afraid of getting it. Not what I'm saying. Even if like, if you were around other people, you're not wearing it. It might be your constitutional right, but even if you could jeopardize others, if you have it without knowing it. I'd be like putting a fence up and saying, well, we're trying to stop mosquitoes with a chain link fence. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it's preventing anything. I'd be like me asking you to put a yellow store on if you were Jewish. Oh my God, we're all gonna die, we're all gonna die. Look, he literally said, mandating that people wear masks is like telling you to put on a yellow store if you're Jewish. I don't have the energy. I don't have the patience for this. All I know is it needs to stop. This is not acceptable. We are in a pandemic. I mean, for fuck's sake people. Now, because most of this type of rhetoric is coming from MAGA chuds, the only thing that can actually stop them from believing this is if the chief chud himself actually comes out and says masks are okay. Not only that, I denounce people who are against masks. He has to set an example and wear masks in public. Now, previously, he refused to be filmed or photographed wearing a mask, although he did reluctantly wear one when he toured a Ford plant, but he's still not doing enough. I mean, you can actually take policy action here. You can sign an executive order that requires people in federal buildings to wear masks. They're doing this now in federal courts, I believe, but you have to actually do something, even if it's small, but you have to make a statement, a policy statement where you encourage people to wear masks and you unequivocally reject the people who are speaking out against masks because you're president, right? So the buck stops with you. These are people who basically worship you. You have to do better. Send a message to your conspiratorial supporters. Make them wear masks, but he's not doing that. And as CNN reports, as coronavirus cases surge and governors begin agitating for a national mandate on wearing masks, President Donald Trump is showing few signs he'll budge on an issue that has come to epitomize a national pandemic response rooted in denial and which now threatens his political future. Even most elected Republicans now openly advocate for wearing masks and have been pictured with their noses and mouths covered in part to set an example for the country, but Trump still refuses to wear a mask in public and most guests at his two July 4th celebrations at Mount Rushmore and on the White House South Lawn were barefaced. So there's that. And when it comes to the rhetoric that he's using, he's not necessarily like explicitly anti-mask, but what are you saying is not enough? I'm all for masks. I think masks are good. I would wear, if I were in a group of people and I was close. You would wear one? Oh, I would. Oh, I have. I mean, people have seen me wearing one. If I'm in a group of people where we're not, you know, 10 feet away and, but usually I'm not in that position and everyone's tested because I'm the president, they get tested before they see me. But if I were in a tight situation with people, I would absolutely. Do you think the public will see that at some point? I mean, I'd have no problem. Actually, I had a mask on. I said, I like the way I looked. Okay, I thought it was okay. It was a dark, black mask. And I thought it looked okay. It looked like the Lone Ranger. That's a start. We're, you know, trending in the correct direction, but that's not going far enough. You're not saying enough. You need to be unequivocal. You need to be clear and decisive. You need to say, not only should everyone wear a mask, but people who do not wear a mask are putting all of us in danger. And if you care about me getting re-elected, then we have to beat this virus before November. So let's all make sure that we wear a mask and we stop the spread of COVID-19 before we end up allowing Sleepy Joe Biden to win. Hell, if he chose to sell MAGA masks, that'd be fine. As long as you're encouraging people to wear it, even if he came up with some other alternative conspiracy theory that wearing a mask protects people from chemtrails to kind of like reverse engineer conspiracy theory against them, I don't even care at this point. Like that's how serious the situation is. You know, the ends justify the means so long as later on he says that chemtrails, that's not a real conspiracy. But I mean, like we just have to, we have to take action to make sure that these people are putting on masks because these people are not taking it seriously. And as a result, putting all of us at risk. So it's one thing to have a president that has bungled the response and is just basically pretending like it's not a thing. But it's another thing to have his supporters actually not just refuse to wear masks, but now go so far as to shame people who choose to do the logical thing in wearing a mask during a pandemic. So it has to stop. And it doesn't seem like it will soon. Hopefully it gets better. But I mean, the buck stops with Trump. He's the leader. They worship him. They would, you know, inhale his farts if he sold it in bottles. So he's got to act. He can stop this by controlling his conspiratorial, loony, MAGA-CHED supporters. But will he do that sufficiently? I don't know. I mean, he's not anti-mask based on what he's saying now. But unless he's unequivocal about it, I don't think much is gonna change honestly. All right, so I know that I'm late to the party in talking about this, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to share news that's this good with you. For all intents and purposes, the Dakota Access Pipeline will be dead in 30 days. Pending review. This is honestly such good news that it's difficult for me to process this because this is something that activists and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have been fighting against literally for years. And the fact that this is happening is honestly shocking to me. So let's get to the details here. J.C. Fortin and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times report the Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil route from North Dakota to Illinois that has inspired intense protests and legal battles must shut down pending an environmental review and be emptied of oil by August 5th, a district court ruled on Monday. The decision, which could be subject to appeal, is a victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Native American and environmental groups who have fought the project for years and a significant defeat for President Trump who has sought to keep the Dakota Access Pipeline alive. Today is a historic day for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and many people who have supported us in the fight against the pipeline, Mike Faith, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said in a statement, this pipeline should have never been built here, he added. We told them that from the beginning. The ruling by Judge James E. Bosberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is the latest twist in a long running legal battle. It essentially vacates a federal permit that had allowed the pipeline to operate while the United States Army Corps of Engineers which had granted the permits for the pipeline conducted an extensive environmental impact review. Energy Transfer, the Texas company that owns the pipeline said in a statement on Monday that it would file a motion to stay the decision and if that failed appeal to a higher court. We will be immediately pursuing all available legal and administrative processes and are confident that once the law and full record are fully considered, Dakota Access Pipeline will not be shut down and that oil will continue to flow, it said. In his opinion, Judge Bosberg wrote that the court was mindful of the disruption such a shutdown will cause but that it had to consider the potential harm each day the pipeline operates. So there's a lot to process here but I will say that this news comes just after we learned that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline which is being developed by Duke Energy and Dominion Energy have also announced that they are canceling their project as well. So I mean, it's really great news all around for the environment but I will say I'll be honest here I'm not to ran on everyone's parade I'm a little bit skeptical that this will stand this will be appealed and whether or not a court at a higher level will maintain the same stance it's yet to be seen but I'm cautiously optimistic. I will say this is an unexpected victory for us but just kind of like pump the brakes on the celebration even though it's hard not to celebrate any good news because it's very rare during these times but I mean, this is something that is near and dear to my heart we talked about the Dakota Access Pipeline so much that I actually have a playlist on this channel dedicated to talking about the Dakota Access Pipeline and the story is truly it really shows how badly affairs are in the United States, right? When we're talking about militarized police and brutalizing protesters this story has all of those components literal armed mercenaries were paid to intimidate and assault peaceful protesters they had dogs sicked on them they had cold water sprayed on them and freezing weather all to defend this pipeline that shouldn't have been built there because it violates the territorial sovereignty of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and also it poses a threat to their drinking water and drinking water of anyone in the surrounding areas at the same time that this was happening they got no support from Obama who was the lame duck president at the time and he basically just said, you know what? I'm gonna wait and not do anything we'll just see how this plays out and then he left and as soon as Trump took office he signed an executive order almost immediately expediting the construction process of the pipeline and not to mention there was never a proper environmental impact report conducted before they constructed the pipeline and you know there have already been leaks like what we see there have been multiple leaks within months of it going up so everything that the protesters said would happen has come to fruition so you know to see it come to this place where ending it permanently is seriously on the table I mean this is huge news this is great for Standing Rock Sioux as well as environmental activists like this is a win for the planet we'll just put it that way and we have two pipelines being shut down in the same week this is absolutely huge so I'm really thankful that we got this decision but I will say to everyone just be cautiously optimistic because energy transfer partners you know they have the support of the president this is a company who has a lot of money and resources and they're going to fight this tooth and nail they've had legal setbacks before but they've kind of gone on in spite of that so I mean look I'm cautiously optimistic but this is really really good news congrats to Standing Rock Sioux and any protester and water protector who put their lives on the line to stop this from happening because it paid off now so as most of you hopefully know by now Shea Hidbutar and Nancy Pelosi's primary opponent has advanced to the general election in November so California has a top two primary system to where Democrats and Republicans all basically compete in the same open primary and the top two candidates with the highest vote totals advanced to the general election Shea Hidbutar is facing off against Nancy Pelosi and I will admit this is going to be a really tough race to beat but is it impossible? No, I don't think it's impossible but still even though she has one of the most serious primary challenges she's had in decades she's not taking it seriously and this isn't necessarily something that is uncommon usually if a Democrat incumbent is facing a primary challenger who's actually really strong you know they choose to not debate them or even acknowledge their existence unless their internal polls show that they're kind of in trouble you know it's why Joe Crowley back in 2018 finally chose to acknowledge Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's existence and debate her because the numbers didn't look too good for him and it scared him and Nancy Pelosi currently is in the phase of this campaign where she just pretends like he doesn't exist but regardless if her internal poll numbers show her beating him or not it shouldn't matter like if you are facing a primary challenge you have to debate your primary opponent right AOC absolutely destroyed her primary opponent but she still debated her because that's what you have to do in a democracy right you're not entitled to your seat in Congress you have to allow your constituents to hear alternative voices I don't care if it's someone who I support or not I mean Ro Khanna, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders if you have a primary opponent you should be required to at least debate them three times but that's not what we get you have to basically twist their arms to get them to agree to a debate and the fact that we even have to do this in a democracy is infuriating but here we are now Shea Hidbutar is trying to get Nancy Pelosi to agree to a debate and he tweeted out San Francisco deserves a real representation in Congress at the very least Nancy Pelosi should show up for a debate it's been 30 years since her last one and he also links to a sprout petition that you can sign it has over 2000 signatures where you can kind of maybe put a little bit of pressure on Nancy Pelosi to debate but again, I will say that it's preposterous that we have to do this to incumbents right there needs to be some type of requirement or law to where if you're facing a primary opponent that reaches a certain threshold if they're a serious challenge to you then you have to debate them especially in these top two primary states you know there's no excuse in Washington state in California if you have a top two primary system and one of two candidates will win in a general election they should be required to debate it doesn't matter if it's two Democrats or a Democrat versus a Republican a debate should be mandatory it shouldn't be based on whether or not an incumbent will agree to it because that's absurd that's not democratic so I would encourage you to sign that petition I think that petitions can be useful but more importantly you have to tweet to Nancy Pelosi, call her office actually put real pressure on her because if she has an option to just ignore Shahid Butar then she will so the point is we have to do what we can to help Shahid Butar I mean like this is gonna be a hard race but it's worthwhile because Shahid is a phenomenal candidate like putting Nancy Pelosi aside Shahid Butar alone is someone who we desperately need in Congress because unlike a lot of the elites like Nancy Pelosi who you see in Congress he's a normal person he's a normal person who has dealt with struggle right who has actually faced adversity in life and wasn't handed everything with a silver spoon and to kind of show you that he put on an ad in March which really speaks to the world of difference that we see between him and Nancy Pelosi Nancy Pelosi is someone who has two you know $12,000 refrigerators stocked full of ice cream in her home in her mansion one of many mansions I'm assuming whereas Shahid Butar actually had to fight for every single thing that he has so take a look at this ad and we'll talk a little bit more about him when we come back If you've always had a roof over your head and you know it's going to be there it's really frankly I think impossible to relate to people who've had to be exposed to the elements just the struggled not to be exposed to the rain, the cold, the sleet, what have you that in itself is an all-consuming endeavor I thankfully haven't had to deal with that for large chunks of my life when I was 17 to 19 I had a taste of it and I know that that's yeah I wouldn't wish that experience on anybody I thought everything was fine until I was 16 and my parents informed me we were losing the home to foreclosure it felt like my world crumbling it was losing my friends because I wouldn't be around them anymore I was losing the place that I knew it was putting all of my worldly belongings in boxes and frankly losing most of them I still wonder occasionally about my high school yearbooks and whatever happened to them it also was the beginning of what for me became having to leave college the first time I smile Shah, I'm just taking pictures of your school I had all the student aid that I could get because my parents had lost their house and weren't able to really contribute anything I couldn't make the expected contribution for the fall semester the first message from the university was don't worry about it we'll figure it out but I love you I want you desperately in school by the middle of the semester it was okay this isn't going to work but by that point I'd been in the dorms for half the semester so I ended up on the hook to the University of Chicago for $10,000 on top of my student loans as I was losing that place to live I have friends that I'm very grateful for sheltering me from the most brutal aspects of being unhoused you know I only really a couple times was outside but mostly you know I had a roof over my head I had a couple friends in the dorms who had let me in I stayed on people's couches this one particularly died I couldn't get in I do remember there's snow on the ground you know I wasn't quite dressed for it I had a coat but it's not like I definitely wasn't like layered up to be out online you know and you know I spent that night basically on buses it gave me opportunities to understand what desperation is like and what people go through I see here in San Francisco people grapple with being unhoused and having inhabited very briefly that experience I know how quickly it could crack someone's psyche I lost my hope as a young person on the South Side of Chicago and frankly I think of it as a stroke of remarkable fortune that I was able to get back into a position where I could be not only secure with a roof over my head but secure job opportunities learning opportunities I think that in the past there's been this presumption the United States that if you're unhoused or if you're unsuccessful somehow it's your fault that's never been true and it's particularly untrue as wealth gets siphoned up to the point one percent more and more Americans are in a position where even if they have a roof over they had their they're not sure if it's going to stay there they're not sure how to keep it we have plenty of housing for everybody and the fact that we let apartments go empty so that they aren't available for people to live in I think that that's just a foolish choice in my mind making sure that everybody has housing isn't just serving the people who are unhoused it isn't just serving the people who are housing insecure it serves our communities because it means that our communities in our country can benefit from all of the contributions that everyone has the idea that we have made housing such a market-driven commodity instead of a human right is just a reflection of our mislead priorities as a society it's one of the things I want to help correct that is a powerful ad and Shea had but are is a phenomenal candidate now what I usually say is in these types of races I think that the insurgent lefty candidate is going to win so long as enough people hear about him or her but in this instance I think that name recognition is important but Nancy Pelosi almost has this cult of personality around her where you have these resistance liberals just so infatuated with her because they think that she's effective at you know fighting against Donald Trump's agenda when she's not at all you know clapping at Donald Trump sarcastically or tearing up his speech or whatever that is not something that actually affects meaningful change actually allowing progressive policies to be voted on challenging him in a meaningful way it's more than like this type of political theater that amounts to nothing and you have to try to break the hold and break this type of trance that centrists are in this infatuation that they have with the establishment democrat so even if people know about the option in Shea had but are I still think a lot of them would opt for Nancy Pelosi specifically because they kind of worship her and see her as the anti-lefty anti-progressive who's just you know holding the center because that's what she said she has to do so this race I think requires an extra effort to the left that's the point not to discourage you that's not why I'm bringing this up but it requires us to go beyond like the traditional primary race where we can't just you know phone bank and you know um canvas for Shea had but are even though that's crucial but we actually have to do a little bit more to change hearts and minds because anytime you're going after this type of political behemoth like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Crowley it requires a lot and having extended conversations with people in that district who will be casting a vote in November that is absolutely crucial so if you live in that district you have to get out and do everything in your power to elect Shea had but are and those of us who don't live in that district because we can still funding but we have to donate to Shea had but are and support efforts like this where we send petitions and spread the word about what he's trying to do because this is a really difficult race to to achieve and if we're going to be successful which is possible we have to fight like we've never fought before fight harder than we fought for Bernie Sanders so you know that's all say she's got to debate him and I think that the more pressure that we put on her the better off we'll be at ousting her the better and more stronger a candidate Shea had but are will be if he knows that we have his back so I'll leave that there this is an important race and we have to watch everything that is happening here and try to bolster the message that Shea is trying to get across I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with an individual named Madison Cawthorne but what he managed to accomplish recently it's genuinely impressive and even if I disagree with him politically you know I give him credit where it's due he beat a Trump endorsed establishment Republican and he is poised to become the youngest member of Congress he's going to be the first Zoomer I believe elected to Congress which really is interesting although it is a little bit depressing that it's not a lefty who is the first Zoomer but nonetheless you know what he did you know you've got to give him credit where it's due I was not able to run for Congress when I was 24 years old I was still working at Blockbuster believe it or not trying to study for the GRE to get into grad school so you know I just I wasn't there right maybe there's a little bit of class privilege but nonetheless you can't take away what he managed to accomplish and his story actually is really unique in that he was in a car crash that left him paralyzed from the waist down so he is in a wheelchair hopefully that gives him some additional insight into you know the needs of people with disabilities and he doesn't seem like an overt fascist however I want to just kind of temper everyone's expectations because I think that a lot of the media is already fawning over him because they think that maybe this is the first type of Republican that we'll see in the post Trump era if we're able to oust Trump in November and you know people are thinking oh well maybe there's a possibility that Republicans can still be normal and not complete far-right goons like Donald Trump or Louis Gohmert but that's not necessarily the case because as you learn more about Madison Cawthorne it becomes obvious that there's not really much difference here it's the same exact antiquated ways of thinking and you know it's just all of the same that we've come to expect with the Republican Party albeit in a Zoomer package and part of the reason why I think I'm a little bit salty is because the media is fawning over him when they never do this for left-wing candidates it's like how much have we heard about Jamal Bowman or Mondair Jones or Kossom Rashid but when it comes to a Republican since the media wants to try to pretend as if they're neutral and be overly fair to Republicans to correct what a lot of people view as a liberal bias you know they're trying to you know present him to Americans as you know a new type of Republican when that's not really what this is but we'll get to that I just want to show you the reaction that he got from the view which is supposed to be a liberal show which includes conservatives you know and we'll contrast the way that they responded to him with the way that they responded to AOC being sworn in in 2019 What do you think you did that made people recognize that you were the better choice? I'm just enamored by young people that get involved in the political process so kudos to you for running at this age I think that's incredible At just 25 years old the youngest person in Congress is the infamous Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and you two couldn't be more different So they seem genuinely excited to talk about him but here's how they talked about AOC You just got in there and I know you got lots of good ideas but I would encourage you to sit still for a minute and learn a job So do you understand why the media is a problem here? They haven't even brought on Jamal Bowman or Mondair Jones or custom or shit and you know they need to be lifting up all types of voices You hear no lefties in the media but the minute there's a Republican who is young who is able to string together a coherent sentence who doesn't seem too much like an extremist like Donald Trump well the media just falls over themselves to prop up this individual So you know that's that's a different story for a different day but I want to talk about this individual because as I mentioned he was in a car accident that left him paralyzed So you know something about him that you would hope is that he has more empathy and it seems as if he actually is more empathetic you know in contrast with other Republicans who are ruthless who just tell everyone basically you're on your own you know the government's not going to help you with anything So if you lose your job if you have medical bills you know rugged individualism for you you only offer socialism to the rich So here's what he had to say about what that accident you know did to him in terms of his outlook on life and how to treat people It changed my whole perspective quite a bit you know it taught me a level of grit and perseverance that would have taken probably decades to learn otherwise but also it taught me something that I think is lacking a lot on the Republican side in politics and that's empathy it's being able to feel like I can recognize when people feel disenfranchised or when they don't feel like the the system represents them and so I know what that's like and I can empathize with that Look I think that that's really admirable I don't necessarily know what that means in particular but having empathy is a good thing Does that mean that you know he supports trans rights? I don't know but when it comes to something that's relatable to him which is healthcare because when he got in his accident he had a medical bill of three million dollars So you know I would assume that based on that experience you would want to make sure that nobody else in the country would have to deal with that except when it comes to healthcare he doesn't actually take that position The accident left you with three million dollars in medical debt which is why you plan to make healthcare reform one of your signature issues and I think that's extremely admirable You are against free healthcare for all so I want to understand what is your plan especially since we are seeing 20 million people quit that will be out of work due to COVID-19 So I'm assuming your healthcare plan has nothing to do with employer related insurance No Sonia, it does not You know, I thank you very much for your question but the thing that I think is so imperative to realize is that if I was in a country that practiced socialized medicine I genuinely believe I would be dead today You know, at that point whenever you're using a single payer a free based market of healthcare that gives healthcare to all you obviously have to start rationing care and I only had about a 1% chance to live It was an absolute miracle that I was able to pull through You know, I think my doctors I think my God but you know, I know that without having a great healthcare system I would not be here today And so my answer though is that you know, for too long the Republicans have been the party of no when it comes to healthcare reform whereas I really believe that we should be leading the pathway to take lower prices so more Americans can have access to it And I think the way to do that is to decrease regulation because you know, here in North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield has a virtual monopoly on the entire state and that creates artificially high prices but I think if we could bring in some more insurance company and bring more competition and price transparency to the entire industry we could see prices go significantly lower I mean, you know there's six people trying to sell a pizza in my house right now that we'll deliver to my house and they're all trying to get a pizza to me you know, for as cheap as it can be as fast as they can and with the best taste and you know, I think it's a extremely simplified analogy but I think it's very imperative to realize that free market capitalism works and always lowers prices I love that, totally agree Shut up Megan McCain unblock me on Twitter you goddamn coward but putting that aside If free market capitalism were the answer to all of our healthcare woes we have the most free market healthcare system in the developed world so wouldn't it suffice as it is wouldn't it not need to be reformed any further and some of the things that he says here are genuinely stupid and I'm really trying here to not be a dick and shit on him too much but let's look at what he says if I was in a country that practiced socialized medicine I genuinely believe I'd be dead today What? This is your moderate normal Republican America? He thinks he'd be dead if he were in a socialized medicine country? First of all when we're talking specifically about single-payer healthcare which is what he cited we're not talking about socialized medicine we're talking about socialized insurance I wish we were having a more serious conversation about a national healthcare system like the UK has but we're not even taking it that far we're talking about socialized insurance we send the bills that your private hospital gives you to the government and they pay for it Medicare specifically but the reason why he believes he would be dead is because if everyone had healthcare which would be such a horrible thing then we'd have to ration care so the assumption is that if everyone has healthcare that would you know lead to more wait times so if he you know came into the emergency room with an accident they'd basically just say well we can't help you right now I'm so sorry you may be in critical condition but this person has a cold so they were in line first like that's not the way that things work and if it were the way that a single-payer system functions don't you think we'd be seeing a lot of cases like this in countries with single-payer like Canada for example I mean they're just north of the border we don't hear about that happening right what he also says is that the way we can improve our current system because it does need improving at least he admits that is to decrease regulation so in other words impose less rules on these greedy for-profit private companies who have a fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value and not actually cure patients I mean Goldman Sachs asked literally whether or not it was a sustainable business model to cure patients but according to him the way that we improve the healthcare industry is to just unchain them let their greed go unrestrained how would that solve the problems of our health system don't you think that it needs more regulation don't you think that it's a good thing that we impose regulations and don't allow them to discriminate against patients with pre-existing conditions how would deregulating an already rogue industry who buys politicians be the answer and he also suggests that if there's more transparency required which is a regulation by the way he says he wants to deregulate but he also wants price transparency which is a regulation then if you know these types of health insurance companies are forced to disclose their prices they're going to be so embarrassed that they're not going to want to charge you an arm and a leg except the thing with this is they're just going to rip you off and be more open about it it's not going to actually deter them from charging you thousands of dollars because they care more about profit than anything and you know if we have increased competition I mean in theory that should be conducive to better prices for the consumer right but what's going to happen is they're going to work together to covertly price fix because that's exactly what we're seeing now so I mean all of the solutions that he is proposing on one hand he says he's against regulation but he proposes regulations but on another hand the regulations that he is proposing are the most milk toast mealy mouth solutions that won't actually fix anything his thinking when it comes to you know at least the policy of health care is right in lockstep with the republican party establishment but at the same time he's definitely not positioning himself as an establishment politician who wants democrats and republicans to hold hands and sing kumbaya even if he implies that that's what he wants sometimes because he very directly is criticizing the establishment in general not just establishment democrats but establishment republicans as well and even if his criticism is relatively vague of the establishment he definitely doesn't want to be seen as someone who is establishment whether you're talking about the democratic side or the republican side I believe we have a lot of cowardly establishment hacks who really just try to toe their party line they don't want to shake anything up in any real way and you know I almost look at them kind of like how you know a lot of people see big health care you know they don't necessarily want to fix the problems because then they're going to lose a lot of their clientele or in this case lose their talking points so I want to go to Washington DC for some different reasons not to enrich myself not to empower myself but to actually be a voice for the people of the United States because I feel like we don't have that represented in Washington DC right now now believe it or not he was answering the question what would he get done when he's elected in congress if he's elected assuming he will be successful there which he probably will and he offered zero policy prescriptions and he almost made a good point like he was this close when he was talking about healthcare so he says he looks at establishment politicians the way people see big health care they don't necessarily want to fix the problem because they're going to lose a lot of their clientele or in the case of politicians they don't want to fix the problems because they'll lose their talking points oh my god you were so close you were so close you almost nailed it why don't these healthcare companies want to fix the healthcare problems well because they don't want to lose their clientele he's right but why do they want to keep their clientele what do the clientele do for these companies they make them money right so politicians don't actually want to fix problems because they are making their donors money okay politicians don't give a flying fuck about talking points if they lose their talking points they just craft new ones a week later it all comes down to money it's about capital right the reason why they don't want to fix the problems is because they're all corrupt not just Republicans not just Democrats all of them most people in Congress are corrupt they do the bidding of their donors right there's a Princeton University study that proves this that you know the interests the policy preferences with regard to policy outcomes are reflected of elites and special interests but average Americans have a statistically insignificant impact on policy outcomes so it's about capital it's about the money stupid and he was so close to making a really good point so I mean he is close to actually hitting it on the head but at the same time he's not right like he is someone who I think that people would like because again he's a normal Republican seemingly and he's articulate but he's not actually making any valid points and he's out of step with his generation so it doesn't necessarily matter that he's going to be the first Zoomer elected to Congress if he's not bringing in any new ideas right we care about young people getting elected because they bring in a fresh perspective but what he's bringing is more of the same and uh crystal ball asked him you know as a Zoomer how is he actually going to represent Zoomers when they don't agree with any of the policies that he's proposing this is what he had to say polling suggests that my generation is overwhelmingly left leaning but I believe that the problem with it has been is with the it the fault lies with the Republican Party for so long they've just had a poor messaging stance and we've chosen these social issue hills to die on which I think has really created a an alienation of who would be Republicans whereas the majority of my generation is filing undecided or unaffiliated they don't think that the Democratic Party necessarily represents them and they definitely don't think the Republican Party represents them and so you know I believe that if we come out with a limited government approach which is the true cause of conservatism one that says hey I want the government to get out of your life I want fiscal responsibility I want strong border protection and I want a strong military I think a lot of our generation can get behind that let's get the government out of these social issues and social squabbles where they don't belong and let's let state governments handle that individually but as a federal from a federal perspective let's just focus on keeping people safe and building the framework for people to be able to thrive in their work and in their private lives here's why he's wrong and this is definitely not going to attract millennials or zoomers because he's not addressing the root causes so in a late stage capitalist society what are the implications of someone saying that I want to get the big government out of our lives it means that you are adopting this alternative mode of governance you want to get big government out but you're going to shift the burden of governance to the free market which means rather than having you know the big government lord over us it's going to be large multinational corporations who control our lives and you're basically opening the door to you know even more capitalism which is the very system that has devastated millennials and zoomers so if you don't actually right the economic wrongs created by capitalism you're not going to pull them into your party it's not going to attract them at all what he's basically pitching here is libertarianism this is not innovative this is not a new ideology and another thing he said about securing our borders that is a xenophobic dog whistle on top of that he's actually hiding his social conservatism because he pitches to us let's get the government out of these social issues and social squabbles where they don't belong and let's let state governments handle that individually there it is right there there's the social conservatism that he was trying to hide because when you say let's get the federal government out of social issues and let the states deal with it what that means is that if alabama wants to discriminate against transgender people well we're not going to step in and get involved if you know certain states want to ban same-sex couples from getting married well that's up to the government and this is the same thing that libertarians have been saying forever back in 2015 Rand Paul was talking about how we need to get the federal government out of marriage entirely and that was supposedly like the woke position to take when in actuality it's not woke you're just kind of sidestepping the issue entirely because you can't get the federal government out of a lot of these social issues you can't like when it comes to marriage the federal government offers couples hundreds of benefits for example so I mean it's the federal government is inextricably linked here so by saying that you're basically sitting on the fence and pretending to be woke when in actuality you're just turning a blind eye to the bigotry that takes place in states at the state level and it is a way to mask your social conservatism this is what libertarians do this is why it's not persuasive and it won't actually appeal to zoomers and millennials so at first when you hear from Madison Cawthorne he sounds like a traditional standard establishment republican but then he starts sounding essentially like a libertarian who's fiscally conservative but socially liberal but then when you go to his website that's not necessarily the case either because you know he is supposed to be a libertarian but he says protect the unborn now that's not necessarily bad at face value it could mean that he wants the U.S. government to stop bombing babies in the Middle East and North Africa or it could mean that he simply supports healthcare for pregnant women and babies but then just to the right of that he opposes socialized medicine and he is also very proudly pro-trump so he's kind of a libertarian but not really a libertarian because he's anti-abortion but he's kind of like you know a progressive woke republican although not really because he supports our explicitly racist president Donald Trump so I mean if he were to take the political compass test this is what it would look like and the reason why his political ideology is seemingly incoherent is because he wants to be everything at once and there's really no nuance here and you know you can tell how confused he is because he rails against the establishment but yet he puts AOC and Pelosi in the same category and on his website it states our faith our freedoms and our values are under assault from leftist coastal elites like Nancy Pelosi and AOC I will work tirelessly for smaller leaner government and I will be a strong voice for faith, family and freedom yeah so if you're putting Nancy Pelosi and AOC in the same category you're not anti-establishment you know nothing about how the establishment has failed because Nancy Pelosi is very explicitly establishment and AOC is anti-establishment so I mean what we're getting here is the same exact republican mentality but in a new or younger package and you know don't take it from me don't let me convince you that he's more of the same take it from him because he very much explicitly supports old-school conservative ideas I think what we need to do is really just follow the conservative doctrine of slashing regulation getting into a lot of taxes so don't be fooled by him as the great Marianne Williamson once said at a debate just because you have a new body doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to have old ideas and that's exactly what we're seeing for Madison Cothorn it is still shocking to me that we have a president who is just pretending like the pandemic is over it's no longer an issue because to him he doesn't feel as if he can redeem himself he already bungled COVID-19 so why even try going forward it's a political loser so he's just not going to touch it in fact his staffers are reportedly literally hoping that Americans grow numb to COVID-19 deaths that's where we're at so he is living in this alternative reality because it's better for him politically but it's not just that he's living in his own reality he's forcing his delusions on all of us because he's forcing us as well to pretend as if the pandemic is over and to pretend as if it doesn't exist and it's not really a thing and the way he's doing this is by forcing governors to resume schooling as usual and not have any differences in the curriculum pretend as if the pandemic isn't actually a thing this is the hill he wants to die on so as the Hills Brett Samuels and Jesse Hellman report President Trump on Tuesday said the White House would put pressure on governors to get schools open in the fall amid rising coronavirus cases in the United States at a White House summit Trump signaled the full court press saying it would not be good politically to keep schools closed we don't want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons they think it's going to be good for them politically so they keep the schools closed no way Trump said during a White House event with government officials and school administrators we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everyone else to open the schools Trump added after again claiming that the increase in cases is a result of increased testing so he is using the same excuse the reason why it only seems like we're doing worse than other developed countries is because we're doing more testing again that is not persuasive nobody actually who's serious believes that now sometimes Donald Trump will say something really stupid or ask a really stupid question and hope you like the lone idiot in his administration and you know people around him smarter people will try to convince him to not do the completely idiotic thing for example he wanted to reopen the country by Easter he asked why we're not nuking hurricanes to stop them he asked why we can't just allow COVID-19 to wash over America apparently that is his thing now that he's doing but I mean sometimes he will receive pushback from the people who are closest to him but not this time because they have his back the education secretary as well as the HHS secretary are all on board with what he's trying to do because as Politico's Nicole Gariano explains Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday lashed out at school districts that haven't promised to fully reopen their schools this fall blasting education leaders who won't accept risk and give up and didn't try to launch summer instruction during a call with governor she slammed the Fairfax district for its distance learning disaster in the spring and offering a choice of only zero or two days of in-person instruction moving forward according to notes of a call with governors obtained by Politico earlier in the pandemic DeVos had been more open to kids learning both online and during in-person classes education leaders need to examine real data and weigh risk risk is involved in everything we do from learning to ride a bike to riding a rocket into space and everything in between she said HHS secretary Alex Azar separately backed up DeVos saying parents should expect schools to deliver a safe learning environment for their children even during a pandemic so according to Betsy DeVos learning to ride a bike going to school during a highly contagious deadly pandemic these are both equally risky I mean this is absolutely absurd and notice that they're moving the goalpost so back in summer it was okay for you to construct the curriculum of mostly online courses and then you supplement that with some in-person days but now they're not even allowing for any compromises in spite of the necessity to minimize person-to-person contact as cases soar now they're just saying no you're not going to do that it's going to be our way or the highway you're going to pretend as if everything is fine and there's no pandemic and you're going to send your kids back to school whether you like it or not and Donald Trump is trying to enforce this at the university level by punishing universities that offer only online classes in the fall in fact if a university in an attempt to combat COVID-19 offers online courses only then Trump is going to restrict the visas of international students specifically F1 and M1 visas they will not be allowed to stay in the countries if the university that they attend only offers an online course so in other words this is a huge fuck you to anyone who came to the United States to get an education and this is incredibly cruel and I know a lot of people who will be affected by this because in my PhD program most of the students were international students and the way that it usually works is if you're going to take online courses you need to take at least three credits I believe it depends probably on the university in order to maintain that visa except they had a waiver for this back in spring but now they're just withdrawing the visa and they're saying look if you do all online to social distance then you can't study at this institution so what you need to do is either take that semester off or you can try to find you know a different university and actually do in-person courses and you know put yourself at risk but this is also something that fucks with grad students because if you are a PhD student and you know you finished all of your coursework and you're just doing your dissertation research and you're teaching classes and you don't need to actually take any credits then you basically have to take credits when you don't need to put yourself at an extra risk unnecessarily all to a piece Donald Trump for his xenophobic reasons like he's trying to find an excuse to use ICE against immigrants even legal immigrants but I mean this is preposterous what is happening here is honestly just baffling to me and I don't think we're fully going to appreciate how absurd this is until it's like 10 or 20 years down the line and we look back at this moment the fact that we allow this to happen is astonishing they are not just pretending like COVID-19 isn't a thing but they're forcing everyone else to go along with it pretend like it's not a thing and if that puts you at risk so be it now putting aside the university level thing like if you are a parent you are faced with an impossible decision come fall you can either send your kid to school and risk them contracting COVID-19 and bringing it home to you or maybe someone in your family who's immunocompromised or elderly and vulnerable or you can try to homeschool them but the problem is that a lot of working class families don't even have that as an option because school is basically a form of daycare because the cost of daycare is too high for people so they usually just send their kids to school while both parents work and that's what they do like that's the school watches their children for them but if you don't want to get COVID-19 then that's not an option I mean this is really putting people in a horrible predicament and Trump on Twitter keeps talking about the need to reopen schools normally but if you want that to happen then you have to solve the problem you can't pretend as if COVID-19 isn't a thing anymore you have to actually stop the spread of it and there are things that he can do measures he can take as president to do just that so this isn't an issue so we don't have to fight him on it right require people to wear masks sign in an executive order that says you are not allowed to enter a federal building without a mask right convince your supporters to wear masks by wearing one yourself there are things you can do to make it so that way this isn't an issue but because he isn't capable of doing the right thing and already views this as a political loser since he's checked out he's just saying fuck it you're gonna pretend like this isn't a thing the pandemic's over or else I mean this is truly despicable but it really speaks to the cruelty of this administration he has no empathy for human beings he doesn't care about what he's doing he just wants to do whatever will help him politically whatever's politically expedient is exactly the course of action that he's gonna take even if he is hurting Americans in a concrete way I will admit that I genuinely enjoy dunking on Republicans who are stupid enough to think that there's no difference between politicians like Nancy Pelosi and AOC and put them in the same category or say that they're coastal elites and there's no differences between them I mean this is absurd there's no nuance and you look like a clown if you say something like this but I mean Republicans have always been hyperbolic but they're now taking their hyperbole to a new level a level that we really haven't seen since the Obama era when they were concerned trolling about maybe he's a secret Marxist which is a joke because he's not a Marxist at all he couldn't be further from being a Marxist but now what one Republican at least is saying Tom Fitton a far-right political pundit is that you know these large corporations that the left rails against they're actually not capitalist at all and in fact they are the allies of the left because they're helping us overthrow capitalism and institute a full-blown communist regime yes you heard that correct he's going to suggest here in this clip that I'm going to play for you that large multi-billion-dollar companies are not capitalist they're communist and they're helping us overthrow capitalism he believes this someone who gets paid to do political commentary said this on national television in an interview with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business now this was a discussion that they were having about Donald Trump denouncing the far-left fascists which isn't a thing but watch what you see here because this conversation was genuinely unhinged but I want to get if you will a sense from you as to the president taking on for the first time corporate America and its role in this left-wing fascism that is being bred in this country I have to give the president great credit because that took great courage well that was one of the most important speeches not only of his presidency but of any recent American presidency in terms of highlighting the left's salt on our freedoms and one of the big one of the dirty little secrets the left would have you believe that corporate America is on the side of the right or conservatives that's far from the truth on cultural constitutional issues the leftist control of corporations they're pressuring social media to censor Trump censor conservatives they are subsidizing literally the left that's trying to overthrow the country now through a communist revolution it's a troubling time period and we got to highlight that corporations are no friend of our values on these key issues but when it comes to buying politicians rigging the economy polluting the planet for profit dismantling workers' rights busting up unions then these large corporations are definitely our allies I mean what a delusional take who believes this like listening to him speak almost made my head explode that's how stupid this individual is and it's so frustrating to me that the people who shill for capitalism the most are the ones who typically understand it the least if you want to understand the motivations of these types of large multinational corporations all you have to do is follow the money the one thing that they want to do is maximize profit and that's it they are not woke because they want communism or cultural Marxism whatever delusional conspiracy theory you believe any action that they take is going to be to serve the interests of their shareholders to maximize profits and that's it that's the one thing that you use to dictate their behavior to try to predict what they're trying to do the question is will this make me money if yes then I will take that course of action so I mean if you're a capitalist then you should understand this the most I a socialist shouldn't have to explain this to capitalist but here we are now Lou Dobbs also we can't let him off the hook he said that Donald Trump was so brave to call out the role of corporate America in assisting left-wing fascism left-wing fascism is not a thing fascism is inherently right-wing right it's right-wing authoritarianism it's totalitarianism that hinges on nationalism so I mean for you to say left-wing fascism that's like saying the alt-left is a thing it's delusional it doesn't exist and you're basically just saying no you but to the left right when we say you're being increasingly fascist as a far-right party your response is to say well what about the far left fascist it doesn't work because that's not the way that ideology works because it's convenient for you so Tom Finn he says that the left is assaulting our freedom so we'll kind of take this you know sentence by sentence here and my question to that before we get to the communism thing is how exactly are the left assaulting your freedoms when the president just a month ago threatened to violently crack down on protesters using the military he did crack down on protesters who were peacefully protesting outside of the White House for a photo op the president literally just said that we should jail anyone for an entire year if they so much as desecrate the flag and we're the ones who are cracking down on freedom we're the ones who are assaulting your freedom remind me again who actually has power in government is it the left no it's the far right so for you to say something like this not only is it a hyperbolic but it's stupid he also says quote one of the dirty little secrets the left would have you believe that corporate America is on the side of the right and conservatives that's far from the truth uh well they're gonna be on the side of whichever political party is going to help them maximize profits and in our late stage capitalist system that's both parties that's both parties the difference between democrats and republicans is that democrats try to hide the way that they shill for large multinational corporations and they're at least woke when they do it so rather than just saying we need to increase profits of these companies and do what we can to encourage a free market economy we want to make sure that those corporate boards are stacked with enough women and people of color like that's really the difference but both parties serve the interests of their donors they try to promote this neoliberal cult that we're seeing so i mean for you to suggest that we're suggesting that you're you're kind of constructing a straw man argument and it's also it's not true like i don't think that the left would assert that corporate America is on the side of right wing conservatives exclusively like nobody's saying that especially socialists who you deem as the far left um now let's get to the gem here of all jams this is basically the grand finale he says the leftist control the corporations leftist control corporations because the Waltons and Jeff Bezos they're super super left they're pressuring social media to censor Trump censor conservatives they're subsidizing literally the leftists trying to overthrow the country now through a communist revolution i genuinely don't know what that means i try to you know pick up on the cues that these right-wingers use to try to fill in the blanks but here i'm honestly i'm blank how specifically are large multinational multi-billion-dollar companies trying to subsidize the communist revolution that the left supposedly wants i'm waiting the only thing i could guess here is that you know maybe he thinks that Nike supporting black lives matter and hiring Colin Kaepernick for a shoe campaign or whatever they were doing like that is their way of supporting the far left and you know if you make a couple of jumps and this means that they're also trying to support communism but even that is like it's so difficult to fill in the blanks to get to that level of a logical leap even for an idiot like this like what are you saying here doesn't make sense right it's like me just saying Donald Trump is um a fascist communist it makes no sense because Donald Trump isn't a communist he's a fascist but if i say fascist and communist and i put those two words together to make some new meaning i have to explain myself but he doesn't explain himself because he doesn't really know what he's talking about like this is an individual who is a political commentator who gets paid to do political commentary probably a lot more than i make and he thinks that large multi-billion dollar companies who are capitalist are trying to help the left overthrow capitalism which benefits them and institute a communist regime i mean i don't think i have to really dissect this it's just stupid and usually i try to avoid just saying oh well what you said is dumb because i think that it's intellectually lazy usually and i can do better than that with regard to my own political commentary but i genuinely don't know what to take away from this he thinks that large corporations like walmart want communism do you honestly think that walmart or amazon jeff bezels want communism do you think that elan musk wants communism in what world would billionaires and ceo's want communism because they are supporting left-wing social causes like black lives matter or lgbtq rights maybe that's why he thinks that these companies want communism but they're supporting these social causes at a surface level specifically because they think that that is going to get them more money because if you virtue signal if you say hey we support you because here's a rainbow flag maybe you hope that gay customers will want to come in and you know give you business maybe you think that you'll get some brownie points from people who support these social justice causes but i mean i'm reading more into this than i need to because this is just genuine stupidity and that's all that this boils down to you like he's just trying to use buzzwords like communist but if you're going to use these words you have to understand what they mean you can't just throw around communism especially within the context of large multi-billion dollar companies because i can assure you they are the furthest from communism nobody hates communism more than these companies they are capitalist and i promise you they will never assist the left in instituting a communist takeover that's never going to happen tom fitton please seek help you absolutely need it so representative ilhan omore recently gave what i think is a really powerful speech and before i even tell you what this speech was about who she was talking to where she gave the speech you already are probably assuming that there was a lot of backlash to whatever she said and if you assume that you would be correct because anytime ilhan omore says anything whatever words come out of her mouth right wingers are automatically outraged it's almost like they're looking for reasons to be triggered but with that being said take a look at what she recently tweeted out a portion of her speech and try to see if you can spot the controversy when america gets a cold black americans get pneumonia our communities are the ones that are bearing the burden of the coronavirus more than any other people of color make up this proportionate share of low wage essential workers who have had to keep working in food production plants grocery stores and other workplaces despite the risk to their lives we've also faced higher rates of joblessness to the rate to the coronavirus crisis while also suffering racialized police brutality and militarization the mortality rate for black minnesotans to covid is twice as high as it is with other races and for me this is very personal because i lost my own father to the coronavirus i see the pain and the havoc it's wrecking on black communities in minneapolis we must recognize that these systems of oppression are linked as long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting who is being shut out we will perpetuate this inequality so we cannot stop at criminal justice system we must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it i mean that was a deeply passionate and powerful speech she spoke about how covid-19 which is affecting all of us but disproportionately affects people of color just took her father's life so she is speaking from personal experience about the necessity to dismantle institutional racism i can't figure out why anyone would disagree with what she said unless they're explicitly racist but nonetheless right wingers took issue with what she said the first that i want to talk about is tucker carlson's response now i don't have to play the segment for you i think that if you just see this image the still image from his show and look at the chiron it tells you everything you need to know about his reaction we have to fight to preserve our nation and heritage so she says we have to dismantle institutional racism and the systems that oppress people of color and in response conservatives take that as oh she wants to destroy america and as a result we have to fight to preserve our nation and heritage i mean at this point tucker carlson might as well just yell white power and show up to record with the white hood because his white supremacy is so overt and explicit at this point that you know it's amazing to me that fox news allows this to happen and he's gonna you know complain every time there's backlash when he says explicitly racist things and you know denounce cancel culture but this is someone who should not be on the air who is explicitly white supremacist like this is dangerous people who are watching fox news are getting basically what the kkk wants you to hear in things like this but tucker carlson isn't alone because other republican party lawmakers were extremely offended by you know ilhan omore's perfectly reasonable speech as john nickles of the nation explains house minority leader kevin mccarthy pushed the hyperbole button and tweeted the democratic party has given up on america all they want to do is tear it down trump jr demanded to know whether presumptive democratic presidential nominee joe biden agreed with omore's argument and warned if joe biden wins in november these are the people who will be the thought leaders in the democratic party these will be the policies that the democrats push wake up america fox news host tucker carlson played omore's statement about dismantling systems of oppression labeled her a vandal and grumbled that she hates us senator marcia blackburn took things even further ilhan omore took an oath to defend and protect the constitution not shred it roared the tennessee republican omore and her marxist comrades are a threat to our democracy omore should resign so let's just pause for millen and back up in response to her sharing her personal experience about how institutional racism affected her and led to her father dying their response is to scream bloody murder call on her to resign accuse her of wanting to destroy america there are no words to really capture how disgusting this party is this is a white supremacist party and this party should not exist cancel the republican party they need to not exist we already have a different right wing party who could take their place the democrats this is just this is unacceptable and as uh john nickles put it they're telling on themselves here with their outrage to her calling for the dismantling of institutional racism they're telling on themselves they're saying they don't want to dismantle institutional racism they like that there's a racial hierarchy in america and they want to keep it that way anyone who doesn't want to keep it that way they want to destroy america because america is supposed to be white that's basically what they're saying it's morally reprehensible but these are the people who claim to have the moral high ground right they're religious if you're marshal blackburn and tucker carlson claims to care about america i mean this is just disgusting now rather than going on about the response ilhan omar she defended herself rightfully so i think that the left needs to learn from people like ilhan omar who don't run away from their original statements especially if they're correct and john nickles explains omar then turned the discussion toward those who refuse to embrace systematic change in a time when that is precisely what is needed she suggested that instead of asking why democrats will not compromise in order to achieve piecemeal progress reporters might ask members of the senate's republican majority as well as cautious democrats how come you are not negotiating with them how come you are not listening to the voices that have been marginalized for decades and centuries in this country how come you are not listening to the cries of the mothers and the fathers in our communities how come you are not listening to the people who are telling you that we don't feel like our lives matter equally in this country because when you have legislators who are living every single day in the midst of communities that are constantly feeling pain being told by legislators who have no idea not a single idea not because they've lived through it or because they represent people living through it constantly telling them what should be and what can be acceptable treatment for themselves and for the communities that they represent and i just think that is really the most emblematic part of this conversation and it's truly why we continue to have a system that isn't equal for us yeah beautifully put um it's honestly deeply depressing and soul-crashing that that speech which is completely just not controversial at all it should be common sense was um the point of outrage for a lot of senate republicans and they weren't just like behind the scenes griping about ilhan omar's speech they're very openly saying this call to dismantle institutional racism that just means you want to destroy america i mean they have no shame it's it's disturbing quite frankly so i don't know what else to say i feel really bad for people like ilhan omar who in spite of all of the vitriol directed at her still continues to fight not just for her community but everyone else i mean she is doing more and deals with more than anyone else in congress and truly i don't envy her position but i deeply respect her for everything that she's doing i mean her speech is common sense and it's sad that saying we should get rid of institutional racism is that controversial in 2020 but you have to understand that we haven't made as much progress as we wanted to believe that we've made right we made strides sure when it comes to social and racial justice but racism has the tendency to adapt to new political settings it transforms it evolves right so you know these people in congress like marsha blackburn and kevin mccarthy we have to end their careers they have to be kicked out of congress because it's not acceptable to have backlash to feel outraged at the call to end institutional racism that is the definition of white supremacy so unless you're living under a rock that i'm sure by now you've heard that kanye west will indeed be running for president and he made his announcement on july 4th so um there's a lot to say about that but i'm not going to get into that in this video because i think that that deserves its own separate segment but what i do want to talk about with regard to the kanye story is the response to kanye west's announcement namely from actress deborah messing and in fact i'm not entirely sure that she's an actress she might be a singer or both maybe either way it doesn't matter her response was um it was problematic to say the least so in response to kanye west's announcement she tweeted out he's playing jill stein he's trying to take young black voters from joe biden it's disgusting yeah that's going to be a big yikes from me what's disgusting is this tweet because what is the implication of this tweet it's insulting it's demeaning and quite frankly it's racist because the implication is that young black voters are so stupid that the minute a black rapper announces that he's going to run for president those votes that were otherwise owe to joe biden are just going to go directly to kanye west but kanye west has black fans and white fans so why is it that she's not necessarily worried about the white fans voting for kanye west well it's because she thinks that black voters are too stupid to think for themselves at least that's the subtext here so what you're saying is unacceptable right it's racist why would you also assume that just because he's a rapper young black voters would be inclined to support him even if they don't know what his policy positions are but i mean anything that i've heard from kanye west with regard to political rhetoric i mean he would probably appeal more to older white evangelicals so i hate what you're saying here because it really oversimplifies politics and it's just intellectually lazy it'd be as if pete buddha judge announced that he's running for president under some third party run and she'd be mad because all of the lgbtq plus voters will all of a sudden gravitate towards uh pete buddha judge when you know for me as someone from the lgbtq community i would find that deeply insulting because we're more complex than that we actually value substance and obviously the same is true for young black voters so for her to say this i mean it's just a bad take and obviously she was called out for it so nina turner responded saying you just can't stop dipping can you debormessing your connotation is racist one black voters are not owned by anyone our vote should be earned every election cycle two we can think for ourselves and don't need your help three sometimes it's best to stay out of family business teslan figaro tweeted debormessing assumes black voters will vote for kanye west because he is black shakes my head the level of disrespect is high with this one to which killer mic responded saying to that she thinks we are trained dogs siss and nina turner shared a quote from an author which really speaks to a bigger issue here there's this double standard because when it comes to white swing voters you see at least the last two democratic party nominees craft their entire platform around appealing to those people but they make no effort to reach out to black voters right or the left in general but when we're talking about black voters you know they don't have to meet black voters and earn their votes black voters have to follow through and be there for for the politicians which is never acceptable so this is the quote from the author kandy j shared by nina turner which reads while white swing voters are largely treated like political free agents who must be persuaded to vote for candidates they like ibram kandy discerns on the atlantic that people of color and young people are treated like political cattle who must be whipped into shape to turn out for candidates they often don't like candidates and campaigns routinely change their profile to better attract the white swing voter but people of color and young people usually find that the change has come at their expense as kandy astutely sees it young black voters are encouraged to vote while white swing voters are encouraged to vote for candidates now nina turner responded to this quote saying this right here hits the nail on the head we must project the notion that black voters or voters of color oh folks a vote our votes must be earned are we free agents or not inquiring minds want to know and that's exactly right now debormessing is the exact kind of liberal who probably has read robin d'angelo's white fragility and if she has indeed read that book like i'm assuming she has most liberals have um then what is one of the core points of that book i mean the title is white fragility it's getting white people to not instinctively overreact and be insulted when somebody points out their racism and rather than trying to you know uh be defensive and say no i'm not being racist what you should do is listen to voices from people of color and try to learn and grow from their experience and let them educate you uh but what does debormessing do in response she doubled down and she made matters exponentially worse for herself because she responded to all of the backlash saying oh please nina kanya is an avowed trump supporter trumps numbers have plummeted trump doubles down on his racist platform at mountain rushmore and 100 days before election kanya is going to announce now i thought you were smarter than that nina clearly it is an attempt to help trump biden swept the african-american vote in the south kanya has millions of young african-american fans it's not racist to say that kanya can take biden leaning voters from him it's numbers statistics if you want to use this to grab your spotlight by all means if you really care about the african-american community having their vote counted i'll have stacey abrams call you when i speak with her this week so hold on let's just reverse for a moment debormessing just said i'm going to have stacey abrams scold you and educate you on this issue are you serious are you serious oh my god the audacity of debormessing someone with an estimated net worth of 25 million dollars trying to rich splain and white splain the issue of black voters to nina turner one of the most influential black leaders in america i mean the goal on her this is what money does to you right you surround yourself with yes men and they never tell you that some of your ideas are stupid uh so you just think that everyone should listen to you and when they don't this is what we see we see your entitled attitude come out full blast so in response to that brown a joy gray tweeted debormessing says she'll have stacey abrams calling a turner to explain the african-american community to her and as dr victoria duly brilliantly put it debora thinks stacey abrams is the manager of black voters by karen that is actually a very karen thing to do um what she's saying here is honestly it's baffling the fact that she can't see why black people perceive her statement to be insulting i mean i don't know what to say you're just dense you are just dense if you can't see the issue um and to make matters worse you threatened to bring in your black friend to uh uphold your shitty point which is a bad point that you should just let go like take the l sit down uh but you know i'm gonna let nina turner handle this because i don't have to respond nina turner said everything that needs to be said about this and i don't like to use this particular word because it's not 2016 anymore but nina turner straight up destroyed debora messing she wrote debora debora debora messing so you go from bad to worse the leader of the karen coalition strikes again although it is customary for the karen's to call the manager on black folk how dare you attempt to create public conflict between two black women leaders in the public space not only is it disrespectful to stacey abrams and me it is disrespectful to our black foremothers who sacrificed so we could have a voice in the first day on place your attempt to use stacey as if black women have not been used enough over the last 400 years as the black manager friend card proves my original point which is black people are not a monolith you questioning my intellect is one of the oldest smears in the book black people have faced this stereotype since the inception of this country it is racist to continue insisting that black people seasoned or young will vote for kanye west solely because he is black in case you didn't realize it kanye has white and black fans yet you continue to insult black voters further since you are into numbers and statistics over 40 percent of young black voters prefer progressive policies over popularity my original reply to you was not about kanye and his intentions to run for president but about you minimizing black people's power at the polls lastly don't you ever fix your mouth to question my love for my people i have been a black woman all my life and finally she ends with a gif of her saying hello somebody yeah that deserves a slow clap nina turner is a national treasure and we don't deserve her and i will fight anybody who threatens nina turner i love her and as tim black put it deborah should create a new account because nina just killed this one hashtag flatline and you know that's exactly what happened she came up with a bad take she doubled down she got demolished and that's the end of the story nope we're not done because she kept digging believe it or not let me repeat that she kept digging and she tripled down she tweeted out oh nina nina nina turner your historical bitterness that bernie lost the primary by four million votes has skewed your reading comprehension i said the kanye stunt was trying to help trump whose numbers with african american voters are abysmal fact not racism by using his fame to take young african american votes away from biden whose numbers with african american southern voters were astronomical another fact sorry i know they're inconvenient i never said that black voters were a monolith that's your narrative i said kanye would pull votes because he has fans period black and white obviously but in case you don't know trump does well with white people so why would a rabid trump fan like kanye run for president against his buddy hmm let's think sorry nina i'm not going to stand by and let you write a narrative that doesn't exist i'm incensed that you would suggest that i'm trying to divide two black women you accused me of having no respect for black voters it is laughable i reference stacy who is an inspired leader whose governorship was stolen through voter suppression and is spearheading an effort to ensure african american people aren't disenfranchised would i be following slash supporting slash led by stacy if i was this racist minimizer you slanderously paint me to be the answer is obviously no it's laughable let me just pause she's literally using the i have a black friend card wow nina there are so much more important things going on that i'm going to now focus on i am not interested in supporting this bit of drama you have constructed just a reminder trump is a white supremacist who is doing nothing as we reach 130 000 deaths by covet 40 million unemployed and has done nothing to protect our soldiers from being assassinated for 100 k by putin to name a few catastrophes coming out of this administration i sure hope you have learned from 2016 and will put our country and the safety of her most marginalized first this time so you're explaining all of this to nina turner as if she doesn't know the threat that trump poses and notice how she's kind of walking back her original statement oh i never said that just the black voters would fall for kanye west and vote for him except what was that tweet again she says and i quote he's playing jill stein he's trying to take young black voters from biden we saw the tweet you don't get to do revisionist history when we can literally go back a couple of days on your timeline and see what you wrote so i mean it's ridiculous but nina turner again had a brilliant response she stated now i'm a bitter black woman who can't comprehend deborah messing you are well out of your death baby you need to read this moment but you can't even do that stop using other people to cover for your ineptness repeat after me i deborah messing am a racist and i need help i use my white privilege and stereotypes as attributes for black women i don't agree with for black women i like i use the black friend card and demand that they go check another black woman moreover i don't respect the agency of black people which is why i am very comfortable ascribing my beliefs on to black people especially if they do not act accordingly i am that white liberal that congresswoman shirley chism malcom x and reverend dr martin luther king warned about and the sad part is i don't even know it my lack of awareness is linked to my white privilege and neoliberal cloak confession is so good for the soul now don't you feel better you are like most neoliberals who believe the status quo is okay and that all the suffering in the world started in 2016 you lack the courage to deal with the fact that black people poor people working class people and other marginalized groups were catching hell well before 2016 you prefer conformity and illusion over righteous critique and substance you are dazzled by a type of politics that celebrates being better than trump without understanding how critically dangerous and low that bar is you are as frederick douglas described among those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground know this you are messing with the wrong one because i am that one in 10 000 now because she got checked once again and quite frankly embarrassed by nina turner she didn't directly respond to nina turner but instead she passive aggressively retweeted people who were shitting on nina turner for example she retweeted this from a lady named rita and it says you cannot reason with nina turner she is toxic bernie as in 16 she'd rather see trump win than anyone but bernie win she'll play the race card if you try to reason thank you though for trying you speak for many so understand that by retweeting that she's kind of telling on herself and you know since she lost this argument spectacularly all she can do is say well you know what nina you must like donald trump no the point that nina was trying to make went straight over your head because you got too defensive to see what she is trying to tell you you made an idiotic point just apologize to move on like you didn't have to double down you didn't have to make matters worse by threatening to bring your black friend to correct another black woman like you didn't have to do this but you took it there and you embarrassed yourself and rather than just like taking a seat and taking the l you chose to continue this so now you don't get to cry and play the victim you're worth 25 million dollars you're gonna be okay no matter who wins right but what you should do if you actually are the liberal that you say you are is actually try to listen to people with a different perspective than you and not shut them down not rich playing to them what politics is because politics to you a multi-millionaire is very different than the politics of someone like nina turner who actually has lived through struggle so this was just embarrassing but i really don't need to say much more because i think that nina turner uh said everything that needed to be said here that is incredibly embarrassing for uh Debra Messing and will she take the l in future uh bad tags probably not but at least you know we can make fun of her i guess so there's that um yikes i swear to god i tried to avoid talking about the Kanye west presidential run story because i don't think that he's serious i think this is a publicity stunt and i don't want to inadvertently feed into that right i think he's doing this to promote his new ep or album or whatever he's doing uh but i don't think he's serious he hasn't given us any indication that he's serious about this he hasn't felt any paperwork and on top of that he's missed the deadline in a number of states you can't run in new york you can't make it on the ballot in illinois and if you want to qualify to be on the ballot in california then he has less than 30 days to get 200 000 signatures and if you don't have a political campaign or apparatus of any kind you're not going to make that happen i don't care how famous you are so i don't think he's serious however he's now veering into the realm of politics and even if he doesn't run for president he could still have a negative impact on the broader political discourse based on what he's saying so let's start from the beginning on july 4th he announced he'd be running for president tweeting we must now realize the promise of america by trusting god no thank you unifying our vision and building our future i am running for president of the united states hashtag 2020 vision now immediately after you put out this tweet billionaire ilan musk responded saying you have my full support because of course that's what ilan musk would tweet out now my question to kanya is why would you run for president if you don't care about politics and you don't know anything about politics like do you even know the difference between democrats and republicans like do you know how many branches of government there are and i'm not saying that to be condescending i'm saying kanya west like based on what we have learned from him in a new forbes interview he is deeply naive and his views range from social progressivism when it comes to issues like criminal justice but outright theocratic totalitarianism when it comes to issues like prayer in school and it's scary so if you don't know about politics why are you getting involved so i mean the reason why i'm talking about this in spite of my reluctance is because even if he doesn't run for president it seems like he won't be able to run in 2020 if you are talking about things like this which we're about to see where you're spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories that are deeply dangerous at a time when there's this anti-science anti-mask fervor in america we have to call you out we have to so there's a couple of things that the article or the interview points out here and the first thing that is clear is that he doesn't really have any allegiance to one political party you know he says that he would run as a republican if trump weren't in the office but you know since trump is in office he doesn't want to be a republican so he's choosing to run under the banner of the birthday party literally because if he's elected then every day will be like a birthday for americans okay now additionally he claims that he's no longer a supporter of donald trump but he still very clearly has an affinity for donald trump and he also has already preemptively selected elon musk as his running mate because why wouldn't he of course and he wants to make elon musk the head of america's space program i don't think he'd be interested in that because he's interested in profit but nonetheless the first thing that i want to get to is whether or not he can run at all because he still thinks that he can run for president in 2020 because according to forbes he believes an argument could be made to get onto any ballots he's missed citing coronavirus issues i'm speaking with experts i'm going to speak with jared kushner the white house with biden says west that's not how it works that's not how any of this works why would donald trump and joe biden help you get on the ballot if you're running against them that makes no sense why would they help you i mean ask the green party or the libertarian party how welcoming democrats and republicans are to third party candidates why would you think they're going to help you because you're khanye west i mean the level of entitlement here and delusion it's just it's it's stunning to me it really is now some other things here that he uh points out he never voted in his life which i mean that's not necessarily a bad thing you know you could blame that as a failure on our institutions and politicians uh but he also says that he had COVID-19 in february this is kind of a side point and he says that if he were to ever be in control of the white house he would structure it the way that the government of wakanda is structured for those of you don't know wakanda is a fictional government in a fictional movie about superheroes with superpowers but that's what he'd model his white house after jesus christ this is gonna be a long video so buckle up so let's get to the policies because this is where things take a turn for the downright terrifying and totalitarian quite frankly when asked what his plan to deal with COVID-19 is well simply put it's prayer we pray we pray for the freedom it's all about god we need to stop doing things that make god mad your response to a pandemic is prayer using that logic then which is stupid logic why would you run for president because can't you just use your influence now to pray away COVID-19 why do you have to be president to encourage prayer aren't people already doing that i mean it doesn't make sense believe it or not it gets worse because on the subject of vaccines he says it's so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed so when they say the way we're going to fix COVID is with a vaccine i'm extremely cautious that's the mark of the beast they want to put chips inside of us they want to do all kinds of things to make it where we can't cross the gates of heaven i'm sorry when i say they the humans that have the devil inside them and the sad thing is that the saddest thing is that we all won't make it into heaven that there'll be some of us that do not make it next question let's just pause for a moment and try to take all of that in so we're dealing with a pandemic maybe the one thing that will save us since we're not accepting social distancing or the economy to be shut down for a prolonged period of time since we're refusing to wear masks i mean the one thing that could save us a vaccine he's saying no i don't like that because it's the mark of the beast yeah no no not okay um there's enough people in america who are anti-science flat earthers anti-vaxxers and conspiratorial we don't need more of that in american politics we need less of it we need more people who are not delusional who are pro-science but he just thinks that you know the answer to everything is prayer and people who are promoting vaccines they have the devil and they're not going to make it to heaven if you're president you shouldn't be worrying about people's eternal salvation you should be focusing on policy but it gets worse when it comes to foreign policy he hasn't developed one yet quote i haven't developed it yet i'm focused on protecting america first with our great military let's focus on ourselves first on the issue of abortion i am pro-life because i'm following the word of the bible okay if your response to foreign policy is i don't know don't run for president and hopefully he'll take that pro-life position that he has with regard to abortion and apply it to foreign policy that's a good starting place but i mean the things that are going on in the world are so complex that we can't have someone again like donald trump start at having zero knowledge like we need someone to come in with knowledge about the complex situations going on in the world the israel palestine situation morocco's occupation of the western sahara the conflict between india and china i mean there's so much going on that we can't afford to have another dipshit be in power but he goes on he's asked about prayer in schools and he is he's for it he says reinstate in god's state in god's country the fear and love of god in all schools and organizations and you chill the fear and love of everything so that was a plan by the devil to have our kids committing suicide at an all-time high by removing god to have murders in chicago at an all-time high because the human beings working for the devil removed god and prayer from the schools that means more drugs more murders more suicide on tax policy i haven't done enough research on that yet i will research that with the strongest experts that serve god and come back with the best solution and that will be my answer for everything that i haven't researched i have the ear plug in and i'm going to use that ear plug okay i don't know what that means but if you are explicitly looking for people who will serve god you're going to find the evangelicals and they're most likely going to encourage you to come up with a tax plan that will lead to you getting a cut in your taxes and on top of that to say that um the reason why there's all of these children committing suicide and you know all of this murder is because god has been taken out of the schools this is exactly what evangelicals say they would like go for this they would love this they'd be enthusiastic about this platform like this is theocracy he wants to make america like the christian equivalent of saudi arabia and um this is this is just disgusting now when it comes to george floyd he does seem to initially offer prayer as the main solution in lieu of criminal justice reform but he does eventually land on amending the constitution saying well god has already started the healing slash this conversation alone is healing and revealing slash we all need to start praying and kneeling another bar after that but when a rhyme comes together i'm going to complete it not inside the lines created by organizations that we know is our reality the schools the infrastructure was made for us to not truly be all we can be but to be just good enough to work for the corporations that designed the school systems that's not never mind we're tearing that up what we'll do is we're not going to tear up the constitution what we will do is amend so unless we're talking about charter schools corporations did not design the school systems i i don't know what he's trying to get out here um but what he's saying doesn't really make any sense and he's kind of just rambling and he doesn't seem he doesn't seem well um on top of that when it comes to other policy priorities he does say that he's against the death penalty because the bible says thou shall not kill so there's that um and when it comes to other priorities he wants to quote clean up the chemicals and our deodorant and our toothpaste there are chemicals that affect our ability to be of service to god i don't really know what that means maybe it means more regulations um but you know if you're appealing to republicans with this evangelical rhetoric then they're going to be a little bit peeved if you're proposing more regulation so he's kind of all over the place ideologically because he has no like coherent political ideology it's just it's a randomness it's it's bizarre it's weird um now he isn't a hundred percent sure that he's still going to run in 2020 he wants to run he's saying he's going to run but it's possible that maybe he waits until 2024 but at the end of the day it's not going to be up to states and whether or not you know he makes their deadline it's going to be up to god because he says let's see if the appointing is at 2020 or if it's 2024 because god appoints the president if i went in 2020 then it was god's appointment if i went in 2024 then that was god's appointment so in his mind he's so narcissistic that he believes that it's already a foregone conclusion god is going to appoint him to the office of the presidency it's just a matter of when maybe it won't be in 2024 uh maybe it won't be in 2020 but if not then maybe it'll be in 2024 it's just a matter of when god says hey kanye get in the white house it's your time bud um yeah so this is the guy that elon musk the science guy decided to endorse immediately after he announced that he'd be running for president uh but when someone shared an article with him detailing how kanye is a huge anti-vaxxer and anti-abortion elon responded saying we may have more differences of opinion than i anticipated you think it's almost like politics isn't a game and people's lives are at stake so i mean i i read this i see the policies that kanye west is putting out there and this is something that actually would be uh persuasive to a large contingent of the population because i mean think about this after donald from a reality television star became president do you honestly think that this wouldn't appeal to someone in america especially the conspiracy theories so i mean it's dangerous even if it's laughably incoherent it still is going to appeal to a certain crowd right conspiracy people evangelicals there is i think a demand for this type of weird politics right and maybe there'll be a cult of personality like donald trump that forms around him so if he chooses to run for president and is serious could he actually have a shot i mean it's possible i'm not gonna say yes but it is possible but i will say that like even though it's funny to like poke fun at his weird political ideas it's deeply saddening because this is a man who's not well and rather than encouraging this people who are the closest to him like his wife his loved ones they should be stepping in and saying kanye let's stop doing this he's not well he is not well he has delusions of grandeur and the people around him who are letting this continue on who know better they're at fault here i don't even necessarily blame kanye west because this is someone who mentally he needs help he needs people to help put him in check right keep him grounded in reality but we're not we're not getting that and you know until that happens we still have to call this out we can't allow him to propagate these types of conspiracy theories and spread misinformation about vaccines uh say that the solution to covet 19 is just prayer this is absolutely nuts it's unacceptable and i say this as a fan of kanye west a former fan i should say i grew up on his music like i was listening to him since the college dropout bought every single album so i mean if you're gonna get involved in politics and start you know spreading this totalitarian message of theocracy and prayer in schools and anti-vax bullshit it's unacceptable and we have to call you out because you can't be spreading this misinformation you just can't so um he's not well um you know if you're laughing at him instinctively i understand because what he's saying is nonsensical but at the end of the day you know this is problematic for a number of reasons not just that i think it's because he's unwell but because americans would actually fall for something like this after donald trump maybe this is the next you know cult of personality that republicans and evangelicals flock to so i don't know but i do know that uh i don't like what i see from kanye west with regard to what little policies we know thus far it's deeply deeply troubling to say the least so the task forces that bernie sanders and joe biden formed at the end of the democratic party primary have come to a conclusion and after months of deliberation on issues such as education criminal justice reform health care climate change um they have predictably produced nothing of value and i say that because i mean listen to joe biden's rhetoric has he moved at all on the issue of health care well here's what he said in an interview with medicare for all activists adi barken it's no secret that i support medicare for all i don't so obviously he hasn't budged at all but don't worry because he thinks that health care is a right and not a privilege wink wink i mean it's just it's embarrassing and in 2019 if you were against medicare for all you should at least be moved a little bit in the direction after a pandemic right after the supreme court held that donald trump can let employers deny health care coverage on the basis of what they don't want to be offered if they're religious i mean he still hasn't changed in spite of all of this you had no argument in 2019 and in 2020 you definitely don't have an argument but regardless he's standing strong it's no secret that i support medicare for all i don't i hate him so much i hate him so much um now if you ask people on the task forces people who bernie sanders specifically appointed like aoc they don't necessarily feel as you know um depressed about the outcome of these task forces as i do for example aoc tweeted today the six biden sanders unity task forces are unveiling final language the climate task force accomplished a great deal it was an honor to serve as co-chair with secretary john carrey among the notable gains we shaved 15 years off biden's previous target for 100 clean energy the climate task force has agreed to elevate biden's climate standards across the board and adopt a whole of government mobilization including ambitious construction mass transit and transport and ag standards plus investment creating millions of good jobs centering climate justice standards so she feels as if they accomplished something on top of that dr abdull al saeed who was appointed to the health care task force alongside you know primal agiapal and others by bernie sanders also feels as if these task forces were relatively successful saying joe biden isn't bernie he does not support medicare for all we deeply disagree on this but he does support universal coverage expanding public coverage reigning in pharma and health equity things we do agree on our task force recommendations build upon these aims now listen i truly respect and admire the effort that was made by people that bernie sanders appointed to these task forces i think that aoc and dr abdull al saeed they were trying their best to you know make progress where it's possible but i think that this is in the end it's putting progressives and the left at a disadvantage because we're already showing our cards right we're telling the establishment we're definitely willing to compromise and this is what we take so if they know that we'd be willing to water down our own policies then why would they give us the full package they're gonna give us what we've agreed to water down and probably less than that right because when you already pre negotiate well you have to assume you will be negotiated down even further and it's just it's a bad strategy and when it comes to something like medicare for all we shouldn't have to propose things to biden to consider he should be proposing things to us to get us on board right and the response shouldn't be well since you know you don't support medicare for all we'll accept you know reigning in big pharma no our response should be we're planting our feet in the ground and we're not budging it's going to be medicare for all and if you are elected president we're going to do everything in our power to fight to pass medicare for all through congress and if you don't sign that fucking bill we will stand outside of the white house with signs every single day until you do we're going to fight you until you pass our policy so you know it's just it seems like it's bad it's getting progressives to show their cards and admit that we will accept the half measures that democrats will only give us and you just you don't want to do that and i want the left to be more savvy now i'm not saying that there's like no potential for these task forces to produce good like let's say hypothetically speaking we get one win without watering down any other policies let's say we don't get medicare for all but in exchange for him not adopting medicare for all he agrees to you know sign on to legalizing cannabis nationwide that would be beneficial but we didn't get that either as politico reports amid nationwide protests against police brutality the criminal justice panel formed by biden and sanders got into heated debates in recent weeks over qualified immunity a legal doctrine that shields police from being sued for misconduct progressives pushed to end it but biden appointees agreed only to sign on to a commitment to reign in the rule another flashpoint over marijuana ended similarly sanders team argued in private meetings that they should legalize cannabis but that idea was rejected one task force member described the disagreements over qualified immunity and pot as huge battles and multiple people involved said the criminal justice panel presented some of the biggest challenges for compromise now what i don't understand is let's say hypothetically speaking that the sanders people were successful and they got the biden people to agree to adopt legalizing cannabis so they you know they printed out they put it on joe biden's desk and they say we recommend that you agree to legalize cannabis he can unilaterally just say no i don't support it so i mean like at the end of the day i just i'm failing to see the utility in this it's good for corporate democrats like joe biden because he knows we're already willing to concede and accept his half measures rather than like pulling him you know with his feet dragging to our side we're having to go the distance to meet him halfway when he should be meeting us halfway right so we're having to compromise but he's not willing to compromise that's the issue here that i'm having with this it seems weird to me that you know you have a bunch of people on these task forces come up with policies to recommend to a candidate who can unilaterally accept or reject any of them so i mean if they agreed on everything if these task forces all held hands and saying kumbaya joe biden doesn't necessarily have to agree to adopt these policies and even if he did agree to adopt these policies you know there's no guarantee that he would fight for them so these these aren't just these seem like pointless efforts here um and again i'm trying not to like shit on what people like aoc and dr abdel i said tried to do because i mean i think they were trying but it just it doesn't seem conducive to anything that will benefit the left and if anything it's going to lead to us being placated now the entire document is more than a hundred pages so i can't possibly go through all of it but it seems like a lot of the victories the key victories for the left come in the form of climate change immigration and a lot of obama era executive orders that joe biden is going to sign into law as nbc news reports the recommendations though include a significant number of actions biden could direct the executive branch to take without congressional approval much as the trump administration has systematically reversed obama era actions over his four years they include executive orders on issues that are currently on the forefront of people's minds like helping frontline workers new guidelines on policing use of force measures housing outsourcing jobs addressing health care disparities and undoing trump's executive orders on immigration so in other words the biggest victories that it seems like we got out of these task forces is that joe biden is being recommended to sign executive orders that undo the executive orders that trump signed which undid the executive orders that obama signed which i fully expected joe biden to do anyway but the people involved seem very optimistic bernie sanders tweeted while joe biden and i and our supporters have strong disagreements about some of the most important issues facing our country we also understand that we must come together in order to defeat donald trump the most dangerous president in modern american history though the end result isn't what i or my supporters would have written alone the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much needed progressive direction and substantially improve the lives of working class families throughout our country i look forward to working with vice president biden to help him win this campaign and to move this country forward toward economic racial social and environmental justice yeah i mean to me all of this frankly seems like window dressing it's not going to make joe biden more appealing if he you know agrees that these recommendations from the task forces to throw up aggressives a little bit more crumbs is going to be what he's going to do the reason anyone would vote for joe biden is because he's not Donald trump period end of story so you don't have to create this false appeal that's not there and we want to make sure that trump doesn't appoint another supreme court justice you can make the case for joe biden without forcing progressives to show our cards and admit that we're willing to water down the policies that we support rather than you know holding strong him just not being donald trump is probably enough for most people but to me when i see you know this attempt to throw crumbs to progressives i just feel insulted you know it puts us in a worse negotiating position later on when we actually do have power because we're already showing the establishment that we're more than willing to water down our own message and it's just it's all around i think harmful so this didn't produce anything i mean we'll have to wait and see right i mean maybe joe biden will say wow i really like these recommendations i'm going to adopt x y and z but at the end of the day joe biden is joe biden like these recommendations mean nothing if joe biden himself doesn't actually change and if they recommend something that he thinks is a little bit too extreme he could just unilaterally dismiss it so it's not it's not really that that uh inspiring to me like if joe biden truly wanted to reach out to the left this task force isn't necessarily the way to do that he could just offer us policy concessions that he knows we want right but i mean in terms of bernie sanders i get that he doesn't want to be blamed for donald trump getting reelected and he shouldn't and won't but this is not the way to do it it feels disingenuous it feels manipulative you don't have to try to lie to us and get us to think that joe biden is more progressive than he is in actuality joe biden is appealing to people because he's not donald trump and that's it he's not progressive we know exactly what we're getting with joe biden maybe a supreme court appointee that isn't extreme right isn't some far right goon like brett cavanaugh but what we do know is that this unity task force isn't going to move biden because if he were moved at all don't you think that a pandemic would have moved him on health care if a pandemic doesn't get him to change his mind on health care for example then i don't think that a task forces recommendation is so you know i i feel like i'm a debbie downer here i don't want people to be like i don't know overly doomish and gloomish about this but i just feel like there are better ways to affect change there are better routes that the left can take to influence people in power and i feel like this is the least productive if not harmful way at going about doing that hi everyone i have a great guest for you today it is one half of the serfs comedian lance he's a twitch streamer and a youtuber and i'm here to pick his brain about you know a variety of topics so lance thank you so much for coming on the program uh thank you very much for having me the first person to ever introduce me as a comedian so well i i think that it's definitely suitable uh your content is awesome you're always making me laugh and you are you're a comedian i think that that that's accurate um especially if someone like david rubin calls himself a comedian then i mean come on come on any i'm a comedian you know what i mean but no i i think that genuinely your content is great i think it's awesome uh okay so i feel like most of my audience has got to know by now about your channel and what you guys do but if they don't um tell them what you're all about uh okay so we do uh i guess political comedy uh which is kind of a misnomer i suppose uh we're kind of like it i would equate us to being mimes in the political arena like we're pretty low on on the totem pole but we try to do our best what we kind of did was like we would do long form documentaries on a whole bunch of different right wing ghouls so like you know your dav rubin's just have from all knows your jordan peterson's i happen to be canadian so i guess part of our ethos is we're trying to undo the damage that so many canadians have wrought upon america and again whether it's you know steven krauter loren southern uh man all of them stuff in malano uh we're not sending our best gavin mckinnis uh you know i i'm already i'm i'm i'm almost about to apologize but uh i guess we got more prominent we had about like 5 000 subscribers and our youtube channel got brigaded after we did a video on pewdiepie uh and we got false flagged for what is it malicious scams and something like that not nothing that we were doing our channel got taken down and then there was this really amazing online push to resurrect our channel from the grave and including from big names like i'd never thought would interact with me like your sam cedars or your h bomber guy like they were all coming out of the woodwork and we actually got uh i have it right here i didn't prepare this problem it's not like i always have it on hand or something so this is not a bit but um i got it framed this is an actual apology from from the youtube's because you know they they never apologize like they're pretty renowned for never do but this is the actual tweet apology they made so i'm i'm pretty i'm pretty proud of this this is uh this is a cherished item that is a frame worthy item like they never take responsibility and i will say i'm embarrassed to admit that i actually didn't find out about your guys's channel until you were taken down by youtube and then that's really fine once once i heard about it then you know i also was was upset by this and then once it came back i kind of like binged some of your guys's content and it's great but since you're here i wanted to get your take on something because we kind of have breaking news like it won't be breaking by the time that most people see this but um it is breaking as of now so we heard that friend of the show day ruben my brain is still in recovery mode from taking in so many high-level important ideas has made an endorsement he will be voting for donald trump in november now i know you're going to be shocked by this you've been following day ruben i've been following he was such a progressive before he was a classical liberal and he's voting for donald trump so any thoughts on this i for one of them i don't know floored i i did not expect this you know i mean after day everyone has put so much effort into cultivating this you know deeply refined left wing progressive technique i guess it made sense after a while i mean so many copies of his book got burnt and there's only so many book burnings you can attend before you're like there's something wrong with the radical left they've gone too far and uh yeah and i think that's i mean you know facetiousness aside uh everyone's done with the grift right like we understand what's happening now like he's he's decidedly making his money because that's where it's it's paying him the best um i i do find it kind of strange with day ruben though that he's got an enormous amount of hypocrisy right now i mean not like more than usual but he seems to be on the the side of like it's the left that's always doing the the id poll and it's the left that has to always talk about identity politics i have yet to see him in the last like maybe five or six interviews where he doesn't talk about being gay like it's always like you know and me a gay man you know and they don't they don't make me a cake and i'm fine with that i'm totally fine that you know venture bureau won't make me a cake i'm okay with that but i just i think it's it's kind of strange yeah that honestly bugs me so much because if you hate identity politics so much then stop talking about identity politics like you can actually use your show to shift to a different conversation but he every second he is reminding people that he's gay and it's i mean we know what he's trying to do he's trying to give himself like credibility as i think he during his marianne williamson interview he tried to use that as like evidence that he's a liberal i mean it's just it's laughable he's a clown and i will say that for the people who are thinking well this you know grift has reached its logical conclusion he's not going to go further i'm calling it now in like a year or two the grift will go either even further depending on like where the conservative movement goes and he may go full evangelical to where he like announces that he's no longer homosexual and we meet his new girlfriend alice like this is where it's heading she's helped me so much she cured me um he he's actually uh what was i going to say he's actually already evangelical you're you're halfway right right like he's already pronounced his atheism that's true that anymore yeah so yeah that's true it was a matter of time yeah okay i need to i need to say cut up on yeah yeah 2024 for sure i need to say caught up on my david rubin news i get most of my david rubin news from like people on twitter running randomly shitting on him but also from michael brooks and your show as well because i think you guys you really keep me in the loop um and you provide me with content where if he says something like just stupider than usual then it's like okay i gotta jump in i mean it's easy because it's like this is the low hanging fruit but it's shocking that so many people fall for the grift it's infuriating to me that someone like him has over a million subscribers but like lefties are just scraping by you know what i mean like because the algorithm buries our content so it's it's a little bit of salt to be honest but at the same time i have you noticed that a lot lately like the humanist report yeah totally so i just looked and over the last 28 days um 8 percent of overall searches have been like suggested videos which used to be like the majority and you know part of it is sure maybe it's because the election is over and people kind of like tune out of politics i don't necessarily blame them so i'm not removing my own culpability here but it's definitely a change to the algorithm because i mean if you look at new channels like kristo avalice for example a great canadian you guys send a phenomenal one there like he should be at 100 000 by now you know and four years ago had he been making the same type of content i think that he would be passed you know 100 000 people like david dole would be passed 500 000 so it's definitely it's it's frustrating to see the way that youtube is suppressing these types of news channels and and like if you aren't really sure what what i'm talking about um so i'm assuming that people who are watching this consume mostly indy media and left wing channels but if you look in your recommended tab to the left you know you're going to see msnbc fox news more often than not now and that's really you know youtube prioritizing who they deem as you know authoritative sources and once they kind of made that shift it hurt all of left-wing news channels um and you know there are some who are still able to thrive we kind of have these phases at least on my channel where we just see like 10 000 new subs in like a couple of weeks and then it goes back down to like zero on average um but you know it's it's just a lot more difficult now um it's harder for the up-and-comers and it's more difficult for people who have an audience already to grow that audience um so you know when you see people like dav rubin and right-wingers thrive the alt right in particular you know people like sarban avocad it is it irritates me like it pisses me off you know because there's there's so much going on that happens to the left that nobody talks about i think there's like there is one thing to be said about the fact that the left especially what is so called quote-unquote bread tube was really concerned with doing deeply research documentaries right like that's what we used to do as well and like i i still love it like the long-form documentary but it's a very long process right like it's it's obviously like we we want to bring the the biggest facts to the plate like i know the left gets accused of feelings over facts but like if you look at the amount of work that goes into an h bomber guy or like a philosophy tube video and these really long-form ones right like it's it's endless amounts of citations and sources and stuff like that and one month like one upload a month does not compare to someone like sarban avocad who and tim pool actually was one of the ones who really weaponized this they would film just a two-hour stream where tim pool is allowed to speak about anything and i do mean anything i don't know if you watch his live shows like they are they are and oh they are performance art of the highest level he's it's him and his partner weed lord and the two of them are there and they they can just talk about like i've never seen a more unhinged uh uncohesive line of thought come out of a human than a two-hour like tim pool podcast like the the topic could start out talking about hey donald trump is thinking about building the wall within maybe 30 seconds they'll be talking about uh chinese viruses and then 15 seconds later the moon and and like it just and it all seems like as if neither of them are like i don't know at all appalled what is happening or even taking it back like they it's a very good one-two combination but anyways my point of all this being because i'm starting to do what i'm accusing him of is that they will take this two-hour broadcast and then clip it into four uploads for the day so there'll be four tim pool uploads that day and that'll just game the algorithm like no one's business because they're going to have very inflammatory thumbnails and highlights right like uh obama is secretly a socialist confirmed right and then the next one will be uh you know alex jones proven right about alex andio casio cortez thumbnails pictures red text and that's enough for people to be like okay i guess i'll try to click on it enough people start doing that the algorithm starts to feed into it and then you know it gets to the point now where i can watch one jordan huedersen video and the entire right side of my bar is going to be nothing but like everything from nick fuentes to jared taylor to stephen mollano for well not stephen mollano anymore but yeah that was the way yeah and that kind of gets into a conversation that i wanted to have with you because i think that you are basically an expert on the field of the alt right and this pipeline because it's it's really prevalent and more so than people think um so steven mollano or stephen mollano i do have my official certificate right here the school of the school of alt redery that's great that's great um so i wasn't it i think it was last week or the week before where stephen mollano was banned from youtube he was also banned from twitter subsequently as well and i wanted to get your take on deplatforming because for me i kind of feel like my position on this has been almost a 180 like at first i was very um i wasn't against deplatforming unequivocally but i was very touchy on the subject because the way that youtube you know uses their algorithm it almost never hits the intended targets right so like the first wave of demonetization led to lgbtq plus channels be demonetized and that was really you know that scared me just because as a gay person like when i was coming out i watched so many coming out videos and to think that that type of content would be discouraged that was like genuinely harmful to me so you know it made me kind of do a double take about the intended result of deplatforming but at the same time i've evolved to the point where um just because youtube is stupid and incompetent doesn't necessarily mean that they shouldn't follow their own terms and conditions with regard to hate speech and on top of that you know the left functionally over the course of the last couple of years as we've kind of alluded to we've been deplatformed in a way like i'm not going to claim that we've been fully deplatformed but we've been suppressed by this algorithm so i i don't necessarily feel the need to defend the right on you know the basis of freeze peach when one they don't ever defend us and two we're already kind of the ones being deplatforming being deplatformed so if i'm going to go to bat for anyone i want it to be us so i wanted to get your take on this and the deplatforming of stefan malinio because if anyone deserves to be deplatformed i mean i think it'd be a white supremacist like him who's explicitly racist and richard spencer as well i think was right right second time well i mean third time he's he pops up and same with nick wentis nick wentis got taken down i think like maybe a month and a half ago and then he pops back up in these news kind of pseudo channels where you're like well that's clearly wentis again trying to pop back up on it um in my opinion honestly i think that my i my guiding star on this is kind of like i try to keep it at the levels of what we deem to be hate speech within the country so um i am completely for uh and this is i'm going to say this like unironically the marketplace of ideas right like the whole davreuben philosophy like you know we should have the free marketplace of ideas where the dial get turned up to 11 like i actually i like that well i like that idea that we should we should allow people with with opposing views to me you know to to be on the platforms i'm totally fine with that and i stop at is it going to be like direct targeted harassment so for someone like alex jones because he's kind of the classic example right alex jones is actively targeting the parents of families who died in sandy hook and he did it to the point that the parents were getting harassed to such a degree that one of the fathers committed suicide that is a to me a very clear cut and dry example if i if i own one of these tech companies cut him out right he's he's causing direct harm to individuals you know where it becomes a bit of a gray area is what if you have someone on there say like a ben chipiro for example who intentionally misgenders people because he doesn't feel that it's something that's wrong whereas you can make a very strong argument in my mind that intentionally misgendering members of the trans community can contribute to an atmosphere that is explainable and that really high rates of suicide you know that it's because of their vilification as a whole in society so if we have a person on there who's constantly saying like you're not a she or a he right and this is just the way that everyone should there there isn't a danger to that as well is it targeted though is it towards a specific individual or or doxing you know that would be another thing that i would i would say like you should have a zero tolerance policy for those kind of things i think ultimately if i'm being totally intellectually honest i don't think the left is intentionally suppressed by youtube just like i don't think the right is intentionally censored by twitter unlike what tim pool likes to say i don't think that's the case i think all these tech companies follow one guiding principle and that's money like that's that's that's ultimately what they care about the algorithm is looking to what can keep people and their eyes on content for as long as possible and the right wing just had a very big head start against the left because the left wasn't using youtube as this kind of like megaphone right they were fine with all the other forms of social media that they were dominating meanwhile the the right wingers were cultivating this really really powerful force on youtube until they became a force to be reckoned with i remember paul joseph watson was one of the first people to say like you know we're absolutely dominating this platform and he wasn't wrong and now it's to a point where again if you if you search one or two videos boom it pops up all over right you have that really thing um and you're also right about the fact that i think just news in general especially because you talk about mainstream news right like you report on mainstream stories report on joe biden stuff like that so you are getting suppressed by very safe profitable uh corporations like your ms mbc's or cnn that's just easy for them to to put up there and to to you know promote because they know they don't have to worry about it whereas you know maybe maybe mike might say something that is a little bit controversial right you might make a video montage about joe biden or you might make one about how alexandria ricasio-cortez is not a communist devil you know like she's actually like pretty reasonable things like that that might not be as safe as just ms mbc doing what they always do and at least in my opinion yeah no i think you're absolutely right and i am glad that you brought that up about you know this not being intentional this is just about money um i think that the left if they were able to draw in the money in terms of like ad revenue that the right does then maybe the algorithm would ease up but this isn't something that you know i don't believe that there's like a bunch of youtube executives like let's target the left more like it's totally just you know they make great right oh totally totally you know they make changes to the algorithm and they make these changes exclusively on the basis of what will increase their profits you know maximize revenue so it's not anything that's nefarious it's just something that we're dealing with and i'm not even going to suggest that this is a permanent thing um you know maybe it's just now they change the algorithm all the time and you can tell when they change the algorithm because you'll be like riding high um and like i'll put out videos like like 50 000 views you know every single day and then all of a sudden just falls off a cliff then i realize they change the algorithm and i think that this is the consensus that everyone um has acknowledged that these are due to really quiet changes to the algorithm they don't necessarily let us know about all of these changes we just kind of have to roll with the punches um but yeah it's a political agenda to them demonetizing lgbtq content though like there's no question about that right and that was the big reason that i left youtube to stream on twitch instead because i had interviewed a non-binary individual and i noticed that when right after i put their interview up on the the site instantly demonetized and also it was demonetized as i was broadcasting it and the thing i forget what the pop-up was but it was something along the lines of like you know the the controversial content or something and afterwards it was like it's happening again and again it's happening when i interviewed a lesbian it happened shortly thereafter when i interviewed another non-binary individual and so i was like there's a there's a pattern here and and clearly they think that these topics are controversial which is astounding because youtube takes such a big corporate stance during pride month right yeah they're really really big on like our logos or the rainbow and we care about this and we're gonna highlight all these you know various different actors and stuff like that yeah yeah you're right about that and i will say though um there is a good sign because anytime that i've put up anything with lgbtq or trans in the tags like i just expect that's going to be demonetized um and i think a lot of us have that expectation but we kind of just roll with the punches because we don't necessarily base what we're going to put out on what will or won't be demonetized but i think it was like last summer i put out a video that was very explicitly like um you know trans rights it was about transgender rights i can't remember the particular topic i think it was maybe like a trump thing that he did with regard to trans rights and it didn't get demonetized um and so i think i even tweeted about that i'll try to find the tweet to put it on screen i can't remember specifically and it was so shocking it was like oh well maybe this is a change if this is up and it's not getting demonetized maybe they're reversing that policy but then again i put up you know a video in lgbtq rights a month later and it does get hit so it's it's tough you know for me i don't necessarily care about the money aspect i think a lot of creators acknowledge that demonetization is just something that we deal that we deal with now but we have patreon to supplement that so it's not the biggest issue what really sucks is the fact that when you get limited ads that also means you get limited reach in terms of like who's going to see your video less recommendations um so it's kind of like the snowball effect where less potential people who would like your content who maybe would be a patron they don't get to see that so it does suck and i hope that it does change we're completely hopeless you know in terms of like what we can do we're just up to the whims of youtube unless there's a sizable enough competitor that comes along but hey you know we do what we can so i wanted to i want to ask you because um this is kind of a spicy topic and we'll try to sanitize the more controversial components but i think it's a discussion that's interesting and i haven't commented on this i'm not sure if you have either but nathan j robinson of current affairs he posted an article uh two articles this is spicy it is so the first article that he posted was isn't right wing populism just fascism and he kind of directly takes a shot at rising on the hill over a book that i actually have oh okay how is it and so i haven't read it yet um i i bought it because i really like crystal ball i think she's sharp but part of the reason why i bought this is because apparently there's an explanation of what the new right is now my understanding maybe this is too simplistic is that right wing populism isn't a thing like i have never um thought of populism in terms of right wing or left wing it's just whatever is popular mostly economic policy right um so i don't know what right wing populism means to me i always thought if you're right wing populist that's usually you're just the fascist so i was hoping to kind of get an explanation and i haven't read it yet so maybe sauger goes on to explain what he means by the new right and right wing populism but nathan j robins robinson's argument basically is that he doesn't really lay that out and so right wing populism is essentially just fascism because think about who we see as right wing quote unquote populists you know a jire bull scenario yeah tucker carlson um donald trump and they're all fascists so the question is you know is um right wing populism a thing and how does the left respond to that because his argument has kind of directed at crystal ball in the sense that he thinks that she's kind of enabling this type of fascism by one not challenging it and two by kind of sanitizing it right because nathan j robinson admits that he agrees with what sauger is saying 80 of the time but the thing is that you know if you allow yourself to just talk about discussions where you you know agree where if you narrow that parameters you're kind of not really getting the full sense of that person and how problematic they may be so for like an extreme example if i were to talk to david duke about just cats and food i'm sure that you know i would love to see that conversation it would be so weird it'd be a little scary uh because he scares me i i don't like black cats i'll tell you totally uh no like if we had a conversation about that you know it'd be a benign it wouldn't i wouldn't know that he's a white supremacist we'd agree seemingly on everything but if we you know widened that scope and we started talking about identity politics uh you know politics in general then it would be problematic so you know the argument not to um kind of put words in nathan j robinson's mouth but what i took away from this is that crystal ball is kind of helping to present this fake illusion of you know right wing populism when in actuality it's it's not a real thing it's just fascism and we shouldn't enable these people now i don't know what the implication is i don't know if he thinks that like we should kick sauger off of the hill i don't think that's what he's implying maybe he just wants crystal ball to challenge him more uh but i thought that it was a thought provoking piece because this is something that i've kind of grappled with like i'm not sure how many people remember this but back in is it 2018 or 2019 me and kao kalinsky kind of had a similar discussion on the progressive voice show but about joe rogan right and you know okay whether or not he is acceptable you know uh because i i take issue with his stance on trans rights and whatnot so absolutely um so you know it's probably his most problematic thing absolutely i kind of feel he's uh i'm not going to get too derailed with this but he's kind of a rorschach test for whoever is guested because i find when he has cornell west on the show uh you will have just an incredible elucidation on the history of socialism and you'll be in america and you'll be like this is a beautiful hour of my life i i'm very happy i spent this time he has been Shapiro on and he's a transphobic piece of shit and you know well that that was that was a terrible hour and a half i'll never get back right yeah it's kind of like a dave rubin but not as bad as dave rubin like he pushes back sometimes like the kandace ovans uh interview on climate change that's a great example i think i even talked about that on my program but you know it's just a matter of like how does the left respond and i think that kyle kolinsky does make a really solid point in that you know if you think that people like dave rubin uh or excuse me not dave rubin but uh joe rogan or crystal ball are in a way inadvertently offering you a type of like pipeline to the alt right then you know having them you know um offer left perspectives could potentially be a pipeline out of the alt right as well so you know it's complicated and i think this is a really nuanced and somewhat messy subject and i wanted to get your take on this because i feel like you really have a solid understanding of the alt right and you know how people kind of get trapped in that pipeline so you know what is your take on this is the left being a little bit too like cancel culturally or do you think there's actually something there with nathan j robinson's argument so um i guess if we took it what's the classical definition of fascism you you're basically combining economic populism right that's what hitler was doing so ideas that are very uh social in origin we're talking about socialized medicine things like that for example with uh right wing or far right conservatism combined the two right i mean even far past i'm not i'm not going to call the right wing is as far fascist as they were but so are we seeing that in something like tucker carlson i think even before tucker carlson you were starting to see that with people like say alex jones who was constantly talking about instead of uh i mean they would usually have a couple of dog whistles here but it would talk about the globalists right it's the globalists and the elites and it's all of them right off in the corner or something like that he's he's talking about it's all it's all coded for you know the international bankers and you know in brackets all that kind of stuff but they're constantly vilifying this idea of there is something external and i mean if you're on the left you'll understand it happens to be like there's no secret to any of this uh the the people who control the levers of power happen to be the rich right the the the quote-unquote elites we we know who they are you have to look at the who's the fortune 500 right we know who the billionaires are we know what they own we know what assets they have we know the oil companies all that kind of stuff we understand that but they will try to take that same idea because everyone experiences alienation right we're all everyone's uh having trouble finding employment even worse now with covid 40 40 million extra americans unemployed but you've got this idea where everyone is is experiencing this alienation and now we've got this section of the right that's tapping into those same kind of things and and selling them and repackaging them with right wing populism as well that's what i would well sorry i know right wing populism as a thing i agree with your statement there right but that's that's what i would say is quote-unquote right wing populism and in the case of crystal ball and uh you know during bernie sanders campaign i was a huge fan of her uh and it was just it was really nice scene uh maybe just like a mainstream sunday morning t like good morning america style show that was actually talking about points with bernie sanders right whereas now i cannot stand it like if i even if i hear that little jingle that like i actually get like you know a visceral like uh fearful like i can feel my my skin crawling because a i think it's come out now at this point i think one of the biggest producers or founders on the show happens to be deeply invested in the royal companies of the us and i've read a number of articles i think even the intercepted an article on this how the hill exists to kind of sow dissemination between the progressive movement and the liberal movement of the united states so there might be an argument to there i'm not going to go to tinfoil hat i was just making fun of alex jones two seconds ago right but but the idea then that we have we have this show in which she's starting to say and i noticed she was saying this a lot before she got called out on it that tucker carlson is right about this and it usually starts with that preface right like i just want to say this he's an awful person all right he's a white nationalist we get it he's a mouthpiece but he's not wrong about blank and there seem to be a lot of those things right and tucker was actually right about this tuckers right about this and yes he's a bad person but it's true that there is these global elites that control the levers of power and into crystal ball i'm sure she thinks that it's it's the rich i'm sure she thinks that it's you know again the elites actually are who the elites are right the like i said the the millionaires the billionaires who control most of the levers of power in the united states but you can't repackage what tucker says for the left that's where the danger comes in and that's what i would agree with this idea and maybe that is you know i've read nathan j robinson's article i haven't read the book that you have in your hands but that that's where i agree with nathan that you can't normalize tucker and his ideas you have to consistently call them out for what they are because otherwise it's very insidious yeah and one of the issues that nathan j robinson also brings up is that there's this um explicit assumption in the book that it would be beneficial for the left if we teamed up with the right if the populist left and the populist right kind of form this you know economic alliance then we can get a lot of things done and i think that that is something that i unequivocally reject because i think that you know if you want to form a coalition that makes sense we need a rainbow coalition i think that fred hampton kind of he led the way on that you know but it has to be an anti-racist coalition because you can't disaggregate you know the race issues from the class issues so you can't throw people of color and trans people under a bus and say well we're going to team up with them for these economic issues but you're going to have to wait by the side like it doesn't work that way because the these things are inextricably linked so that's one of the things that you know had i read the book i would have also been turned off by that because i absolutely don't like this notion of teaming up with you know the populist right because i don't think that there is a populist right and i i'm glad that you brought up the tucker carlson thing like he's a bad person but like that still normalizes someone who is very clearly a white supremacist and you know by trying to point out the good point that he makes and since he's so nefarious you know it's great that he made a good point you know positive reinforcement sure i believe in positive reinforcement but this is an actor who is very intelligent who knows exactly what he's doing you know he throws you a couple of crumbs with regards to economic issues but if you accept what he what he has once he gets you in then you're pulled into a very nefarious explicitly white supremacist agenda and maybe you know he doesn't convince you right away but as you listen to him more because you were hooked by his economic policy statements well then maybe you know you start opening your mind a little bit more to white supremacy so i think it's it's a dangerous path to go down and i think that there really is like i don't want to say that you know um the show the rising is awful because i also watched it a lot you know during the primaries but i think that we do have to be careful as lefties to not allow snakes like you know Tucker Carlson to be legitimized by us you know either wittingly or unwittingly and it like part of it is i i feel like it should be just on its face laughable because you have sagar and jetty who's the co-host of the hill rising he's a trump supporter and he rails against neoliberal democrats but trump is a neoliberal like he ran as a populist but he governs as a neoliberal so how do you not abandon people who aren't living up to your populist principles so to me it seems like a trojan horse to you know the the alt right and that's why i think that there is something to you know Nathan j robinson's point here but i i don't want to discount you know he's not the only one making that critique either by the way it hasn't just been coming from Nathan j robinson i've seen a lot of other figures on the left and i'm not just in relation to crystals in particular but this the idea of the left starting to embrace elements of that right wing populism totally whatever you want to say you know quote right wing populism yeah and i think we have to reject it and we have to be very vocal about it because you know if you give them an inch they take a mile because they are very very strategic and they're savvy like people nowadays you're not going to find someone to say hey guys i'm a nazi here's a swastika like they use code words like i i think that contemplation levels right exactly exactly so i mean you have to you have to not get duped by them in other words but at the same time you know i want to bring up kyle kolinsky who made a good response video to this you know to where he says you know you you have to acknowledge that the average like layperson the normies they're not going to necessarily be as keen to these things and by criticizing people like crystal ball it seems like we're being like overly cancel or whatever so it's it's tough i feel like we're walking a fine line but there's so much it's no desire to cancel it right like i don't really say i'm not a cancel culture person in general because i don't think it works i don't think there's such a thing you know if it works jk rolling wouldn't be allowed to tweet anymore tucker colson wouldn't have a show yeah exactly i don't think cancel culture is a real thing yeah when it comes actually can i just quick sidebar what was your thoughts on kolinsky's latest defense of stefan malinow because he's coming out as a bit of a free speech absolutist right now like do you do i don't know what he said i'm assuming that he said that stefan malinio shouldn't be deplatformed but i would disagree with that um it's the idea that it's a slippery slope and that you know it's only a matter of time before i think he said like you know you you think it's okay when they're coming for people in the far right what happens when they come for people on the far left and then yeah i was like i can't really think of what the far left is um i mean i think maybe his example was fair con or something and i was like i don't consider him in any way to be a leftist i think i consider him an anti-semite and i think he's a very a very isolated example and he's been deplatformed so i don't think it applies to anyone yeah yeah you know my take on that is i kind of had a conversation with kyle about this during the uh crouter maza situation where steven crotter was demonetized and i was you know all for that um but i'm not worried about them coming for the left because we're already dealing with it like they have functionally deplatformed a lot of lefties you know as we kind of talked about earlier so it's not like um it's not the biggest issue but for me like the way that i think about this is um you know you have to be you have to be how do i put this you want to make sure that you're not allowing people like stefan malin you to spread their hatred because you can defend his free speech rights if you are free speech absolutist and i think that that's that's fine if you are you know principled and you're adhering to that but you have to acknowledge uh and i'm sure kalkolinsky does that you know this is someone who would never defend your free speech rights and you know fascist if you allow them the free speech rights to you know um gain popularity and power then they will deplatform everyone else and not support free speech i think it was it richard spencer who said he doesn't support free speech absolutism or something to that effect um so you know definitely a huge fan of tucker carlson too right i think him jared taylor uh david duke they all think that tucker carlson speaks for them like oh he's our best our best voice in the mainstream media happens to be tucker carlson you know he knows he speaks the truth you know here's here's here's a good uh here's a good quote for you i don't know if you've ever heard this but uh i think it was zizek who was talking about uh how a little bit of dogmatism is actually a good thing and he's like we can determine as a society he's like you wouldn't argue with someone i should probably be you wouldn't argue with someone about the merits of rape right like you wouldn't have that debate that so there's there's nothing to be had there no it doesn't matter what their argument is uh he's like well it feels good or whatever that like that's a non-starter we know we can cut off the bar so like a little bit of dogmatism within society can actually be a defining characteristic of the level to which we've reached so i think i think that is okay to to an extent right i i don't think that every single person who says something like i i'm again i'm very very i'm further on the free speech train than i think most people on the left are and i usually stop at the limits of hate speech right if it's going to directly damage or harm people that's where i'm like okay i don't think you like your freedom of speech can also be limiting someone else's freedom of speech in just in the in the exact opposite direction you just don't think of it that way um sorry i've done i've done the tim pool thing we're so far off your topic uh but uh yeah back to back to kalinsky and and and you know uh crystal ball uh i i think i think she has i think she she she she was aware of it as well because she apologized she she issued a video or sorry i don't know if she directly apologized but it was more of a just like i know what everyone's saying i've seen the i've read the articles and everything and uh to this extent like i am not praising tucker carlson he's a horrible person he's a white nationalist let's like you know get that out you know that's it's a non-starter kind of thing yeah and i will say just for the record i i like crystal ball i i'm not assuming like malin 10 in criticizing because i i've also done horrible things on my channel you know it's it's all about growing right where human beings were imperfect like i've platformed ha goodman and i kind of like attribute my channel to his success in a way and now he's a maggot shed so that's something that i really think about like how am i vetting these people who i bring on my channel and whatnot and to kalinskin's point i think that what he says like his principal stands on gets you so canceled i'm gonna be i am i'm i've already been cancelled so i'm gonna take the biggest 180 mic god damn it why did i have lens on fucking lands now he's a trump support no no um no i so i really like how kalinsky's stands even if i disagree because he is so principled when it comes to free speech and like he sticks to it um and i wish that i were as consistent as him on this issue but my stance has changed a little bit and i kind of feel like that free speech absolutism that he champions it only works if we all have the same agreement on free speech like if people like stefan malinio and davreuben actually were the free speech champions that they say they are then i think that that stance could work but because they're not because they would take away our free speech rights that's why i think it doesn't necessarily work in practice my thoughts on that though is that like i i am someone who i'm on the same page as you i am completely fine with uh apologizing maybe it's the canadian in me right but like i'm completely fine with apologizing i'm fine with taking things down like part of being what a quote-unquote progressive is to me is that i'm constantly changing and evolving my beliefs based on my information as it's proposed to me right like if you had told me 10 years ago uh about aspects of the trans community i would have had no idea what you're talking about i would have been like what isn't that just people dressing up in drag or something like that you know like i wouldn't have and like obviously i like try like anyone else should try to read and you learn you better yourself so the idea of just being like i don't delete any tweets i have ever made i don't do anything because i want a permanent leisure and like uh to a certain extent like i wish that kyle klinsky would take down the the old tweets where he calls people the efsler for example as an insult right uh and i understand that he's of the mind where he doesn't have to change anything he does but to me that's kind of the same thing that trump does you know like trump never apologizes trump never backs down so do most strongmen you know that's it's kind of this absolutism in which like i never want to show i don't think it's i don't like i'm please don't think i'm comparing the two of them i think like i like kyle klinsky right i've interviewed we love kyle we don't like trump yeah i'm not trying to you know juxtapose the two of them back to back but what i what i am trying to say is that like i i think there's no shame or problem in either admitting when you're wrong or even trying to better yourself as a content creator right like you know take your stuff down take uh take a video down like i did it very recently i i was debating right wing uh race realist by the name of actual justice warrior and he had called out a video i did on uh fergensen and mike brown and uh before he even did a video on me and my you know take on the mike brown incident i was already getting feedback from my own community where they were saying this was a really bad take lance you know like you because i was i was kind of just downplaying the aspects because i hadn't read the department of justice report i didn't know uh like all the facts behind it and i was just saying like well mike brown was just he was walking while black and yet another case of just police brutality and all this kind of stuff and everyone was like you should actually be more informed on this right you can't it's going to look worse long term on both you and the left if you just try to have this absolutist like you know the black people are being persecuted because they are there's there's an incredibly huge problem in the united states when it comes to the black community and the way they are treated the systemic racism historical racism all this kind of stuff but to do this in this one case is bad so yes based on that feedback i took the video down and then because he made a video on me he he actually thought that he had credit for this or something and we ended up doing like a very spicy debate afterwards but again i i have no problem with that like i i i never will like you'll you'll probably find me down the road uh apologizing for things that i'm saying in this interview right now but that but there's there's no problem with that to me you know i think i i i don't see that as a sign of weakness i see it as a sign of growth yeah absolutely and that's why i like i'm not sold on this idea that cancel culture is a thing because people like i said like if cancel culture were as powerful as people going to get out to be then Tucker Carlson wouldn't have a show a lot of people would be canceled you know um but like growth is important like i think that there's this assumption with this cancel culture rhetoric to kind of shift gears into cancel culture that um the left is uncompromising and they're never willing to accept growth but that the opposite is true like i totally agree with you like we are pro growth like if you're going to grow and change i think that's really important like cult of dusty is one of the best people to talk to on this um i haven't talked to him yet but he's someone who i actually i was subscribed to him a long time ago like in the early 2010s but i actually unsubscribed because the content that he made uh he made a particular video about black lives matter that i disagreed with i thought it was a bad take so i unsubscribed and like he's back now he's streaming and he talks about all these bad takes i had they were terrible i said this i said that and i disagree with them um and so i think that that's really phenomenal that's beautiful and for me if i were to go back to like the early humanist report catalog i would probably find a lot that i disagree with because the thing is that we're constantly as human beings we're constantly growing and if you're not growing then i think that's bad like it when nobody wants to admit that they were wrong nobody wants to back down everybody wants to be able to commend themselves for holding strong on something on a particular position throughout the years but that's not realistic for everything so i think that you know encouraging growth is important um and cancel culture like we keep seeing it like there's this letter from harper the letter as it's no name i saw a video from david dole on this and he basically said everything that i wanted to so i kind of feel like okay well it's out there it's out in the universe but i mean like it's cancel culture is not really an issue um it's more of a thing that is used in a way i think to ironically to silence the left right because like if you criticize someone like jk rolling for example what is her first defense oh well this is cancel culture everyone's too pc but it's like well you're not canceled though you're you're a billionaire in your mansion so you're not being canceled and you're using cancel culture as a defense the shut down debate about your actions so what is your take on cancel culture because i'm irritated whenever i hear the words personally i i think we're we're just gonna be uh this is going to be an exercise in masturbation i guess well no i i completely agree with you like i i i don't think cancel culture is a real thing i think that like even someone like jk rolling is going to even if jk rolling was the platformed off of twitter tomorrow for you know hate speech uh towards the trans community um she would still be a billionaire she she could start her own twitter tomorrow if she wanted to right and i'm not even saying learn to code but she could actually she has the money to start her entire social media company um i i don't think it's a real thing and i don't think it bears fruit in terms of like where the results can give me examples of people who were canceled right it is a part of cancel culture um i like it seems to me like people just don't want to be held accountable or they don't want to be called out for their shitty takes on twitter uh and by virtue of the platform especially if you you're a famous person that's kind of what twitter is going to be you know like i like i don't know about you i don't know how often you actually check all the replies to a single tweet you have but there's going to be you know half the half the human population probably hates you right in any case right all the conservatives will hate you right like all the outwriters despise me they're constantly telling me terrible things and and like that that's just the virtue of the platform um that doesn't mean that i i don't want to take information from especially for someone like jk roland who is getting feedback from her peers right from from people she worked with like uh what is it daniel radcliffe right just came out and just did the most beautiful elegant little like you know you could just hear it as it is tonight for the whimsical voice you know just coming out and and made this whole post that was just so lovely to see that was just like i i'm sorry uh that she's she's doing this but at the same time if you as a child uh took anything from these please don't ever let that leave your heart uh i hope that it meant to you as much as it meant to us to create it all that kind of stuff but at the same time trans women are women trans men are men and that's all there is to it right and and that i yeah i mean i mean sorry my my long wouldn't answer short that cancel culture is not real yeah no and that's that's beautifully put because i i totally agree like what i see like the discourse with regard to cancel culture for me can be like reduced down to someone getting backlash over a tweet so they say oh well i'm canceled or like if you put up a youtube video with the bad tag and it gets like majority dislikes then you say i've been canceled but because you're still here so have you really been canceled though i mean it's just it's not really a real thing and in the instances where someone is like legitimately canceled and they lose their career it's really rare and it usually is legitimate like lucy k like i think that that was probably a justified cancel wouldn't most people say you know what i mean so it's it's overblown and i think that really it's it's i don't know it's a sloppy discourse it's intellectually lazy in my opinion so whenever i see like hysteria about cancel culture i mean you can point to instances of like a viral video leading to someone losing their job and sure you can you can debate whether or not that's something that we want in society but overall what we're really talking about with cancel culture um in terms of like the political discourses people with large platforms people who are on national mainstream news people with power and money and you're not being canceled if we criticize you they just want to put out shitty takes and not be criticized but i mean that you're canceling everyone else wants to criticize let's let's use louis as an example because louis in my opinion wasn't canceled in the same way that these people are saying they're canceled louis was accused of women of you know forcing them to watch them masturbate and locking them in rooms to perform those acts and then admitted to it and and that was it it wasn't like this long ongoing process where louis said like the the thing with all these comedians who are like you can't even do comedy anymore like i can't even say what i want to say i'll be canceled instantaneously blah blah blah sure you can do comedy you can do have you seen eric andre's new special it's got to be one of the most offensive comedy specials in a long time and yet it's it's still not as bad as most of these other comedians stuff because there's a point right like what is the punchline the same thing with like the really the the kind of shitty uh dave chappelle one of my favorite comedians probably my favorite comedian actually if i if i be totally honest um his new special is unfortunately on netflix not not that good and just because it really feels like he's punching down right he's you know he's attacking members of the trans community stuff like that and there's not really a point to the punchline at the end of the j sorry the punchline at the end of the day wasn't like something that is actually going to be transformative that actually makes me really think about a societal issue like he used to do so beautifully he was sublime at that right so in the case of louis ck uh he's even though he was quote unquote canceled by which by virtue of like he admitted to doing some pretty horrifying things he still sells no comedy clubs he still makes comedy specials he's still if you wanted to i'm sure he could have a special on a non-netflix-esque network i'm sure you can get on a whole bunch of other tv shows if you really wanted to right like he hasn't effectively been silenced you know uh how about someone like mel Gibson you know mel Gibson has to be one of the most vile racists of our generation in terms of like he believes these horrifying things and is vocal about it it's not like we have to think about whether or not mel Gibson is a piece of shit we have it on tape you know you know calling calling you know saying you're gonna get violated by a pack of n words and things like that right i'm trying to keep it as pg this is definitely not as bad as he put it uh all the way to being incredibly anti-semitic he was nominated for an academy award a couple years ago you know like persona non grata canceled mel Gibson is nominated for an academy fucking Roman Polanski won an academy award after quote and quote like should he not be canceled like he raped a 13 year old i think that's pretty canceled but i like i don't know like right and i know i will say the people who are the most like anti-cancel culture they are cancel culture though like i can't remember who and i'll put it up on the screen megan kelly was railing against cancel culture previously but all of a sudden she's tweeting at nike and disney because they just penned a deal with Colin Kaepernick i mean what is the goal of tagging them you know and trying to get him fired obviously so it's like cancel culture is a weapon that's being used disproportionately against the left and like i think that you can debate the merits of cancel culture in fact since we're talking about this i've got to plug the some more news segment on this by cody johnson it's like 40 minutes but it's it's it's perfect um but i mean cancel culture is being overblown and it's being used as a weapon against the left to demonize the left and it's just fucking bullshit like i'm sorry yeah no i totally agree um who's who's a very example i was just thinking of um and now you've got me distracted by cody shoddy i can't can't stop thinking about it shout out to cody shoddy he's he's our he's our lefty charlie kelly it's not not the one we deserve but it's the one we need yeah i don't know sorry i lost my fan thought we'll we'll just we'll just keep talking okay okay um well yeah um i will plug since we're talking about cody shoddy back in 2018 i was on the creationist cat channel with benjamin nixon and cody shoddy uh i loved it so check it out um it was one of my funnest collaborations aside from this one uh because you know i got to be like associated with like comedy and i'm not very funny like i'm kind of like this dry nerd um but they told like the video was awesome so i'll plug that and maybe i'll put a link to it if i could find the video i'm sure it's still around um and and we're plugging creationist cat at the same time so yeah creationist cat is all around yeah yeah and benjamin nixon also who has a podcast daily i think um that's phenomenal we'll we'll just like go through all the shoutouts now no um but since we're going to shoutouts um let's go ahead and uh let's plug your channel because my audience has got to subscribe to you you have two youtube channels correct i do yeah so i basically wanted to emulate the tim pool uh strategy like i told you so i i stream every day on twitch uh you can check that out obviously at twitch.tv slash the serfs tv in fact uh most of our social media is just at the serfs tv so if you go to twitter.com slash the serfs tv instagram slash the serfs tv pornhub.com slash the serfs tv you'll you'll find uh every every version of that but then our new channel sorry any only fans on uh serfs or serfs on only fans yeah that that that one will be coming up soon um but then uh the other one is uh it's called the surf time so it's just youtube.com slash the surf times and it is basically i take my streams that i've done during the course of the day and i'll edit them into little teeny parcels and you know parsecs uh you know i can i can speak there too i i love my i love my star wars um but anyways i would cut that into little pieces and then i would put that up on uh the the surf times and it's astonishing how much that works like i'm gonna be totally honest with you it the tim pool model works for reason it's it's one of the reasons vosh has grown so fast so quickly if there is one strategy i would tell the left to start emulating is that and then obviously um you know work on your craft uh polish your stuff make make your stuff as entertaining as possible uh you know cultivate your own voice and then find what works for you and all that kind of stuff but in terms of trying to aggressively attack the youtube algorithm and promote left to stuff that strategy does work like 10 minute plus videos into very catchy kind of like uh headline thumbnails stuff like that it is a really good strategy yeah that's good to know because vosh is to his credit he is blowing up on youtube which is really nice to see because like that type of content before like five years ago that's like longer for him um it wouldn't have a leg to stand on in youtube like you really were incentivized to make shorter videos and i'm kind of still in that shorter video mode uh but the longer format videos especially if people like uh posting clips of live streams it really does have like a ton of views um so that's that's really good to know i kind of need to shake up my format i haven't had a really big format change but i kind of do a little bit of both here like i'll do some shorter news videos and then i'll do like my deep dives which are like 10 plus minutes um but i kind of make videos for like assuming whether or not i would want to watch them and i i usually aim for like eight to twelve minutes i think that's the sweet spot because like you don't you don't want it to be too short like you want to finish your dinner if you're watching youtube but you don't want it to be too long because you know they're supposed to be quick but i think that really trying to grow is part of the process so we can take back this algorithm from the alt-right um and that's i'm glad that you brought that up because that is important for people to know who are kind of like these up-and-comers who are trying to get you know um their foot in the door and it's just it's really tough yeah i mean the other piece of advice then i would give if we're doing this is to uh use solidarity because that actually works quite a bit as well on on youtube like combine with other content creators uh collaborate as much as possible promote each other um that's what the right was doing without even thinking about it because i don't think they were thinking of the solidarity they were just thinking of it in terms of marketing principles right so your Dave Rubin's had Joe Rogan on your Joe Rogan's had Stefan Molano on your Stefan Molano's had Jared Taylor and then that's how the entire pipeline was created but their cross-pollinization that they were doing so very frequently does work right because at the end of the day it's about finding people and right now you and me have had this unbelievably amazingly lovely interaction and the people watching my stream uh i'd say maybe like a handful of them are going to love you as well and then a handful of them are just gonna be like yeah that was nice but like i'm okay and the same thing vice versa right some people are gonna be watching me and they're gonna be like oh i liked him he was funny other people are gonna be like who is this like you know complete moron on on the show but there is there is going to be like an overlap and a cross promotion and i think that that absolutely works i think it's i think it's a it's a good thing yeah yeah definitely i'm trying to commit to that more as well um it's tough because it's like you only have a finite amount of time and i'm trying to do more candidate interviews but i think that this cross-pollinization really is the way to go um because if we want to create that type of pipeline for lack of a better word you know into the left circles then you do have to do this exactly like you can't just have you know the same uh three people that you watch you have to be introduced to newer voices and there's so many great people who are popping up on the left who are just they have to be promoted like it's a shame that they're not getting the attention that they deserve given how much time effort and research you know they put into these videos so like i try to do my part to promote them and you know it's it's just kind of like a give and take so yeah is there anything else well i think my daily streams are i i usually get uh two or three clips lined up every single day it'll be the humanist report it'll be rational national and then some of michael brooks and the majority report are usually the main the mainstream ones that i put in there usually i might add a little jamie peck or something else in in there as well but that's usually like the four or five that i put on there um it would be amazing to see more voices get promoted as well like i would love if there was for example a woman who's as prominent as sam cedar is uh you know i would love to see members of the trans community get anywhere near those kind of numbers right it would be awesome if we had way more like uh diversity and promotion that kind of stuff like that is to i guess to put a bow on this whole thing the the in pole that dav rubin likes to pull uh is that's the wrong kind but the good kind is promoting and collaborating and working with other other creators of a variety of you know diversity is a beautiful thing it absolutely yeah it can't just be like five white dudes who you get all your left-wing news from like it has right it has to be really diverse perspectives i think that's really important like you need a balanced diet um of different lefty takes you know um so diversify who you listen to and yeah we'll try to help with that for sure how often do you stream per day um or like is it like a two-hour stream like how long do you go for usually i i'm monday to friday uh usually about four hours a day uh depending on depends on the the load uh if it's a really heavy news day how much stuff is going down and then there's a segment that i do every day where i just uh pick apart ghouls so i'll i'll just laugh at PragerU i'll laugh at Paul Joseph Watson i'll you know we'll just line up all these things we were looking at alex jones today and obviously it's it can be vaccine it can be taxing but at the same time that that to me is something that i find that i've become decent at uh in in the sense that i'm i'm okay at improv comedy when when i'm looking at the it really helps that their talking points are always the same because you know the the research isn't too extensive so there's times when i just talked about it earlier when i really messed this up and i should have done way more diligent research when it came to uh to mike brown and furgusson but for the most part they they have the same 10 talking points it's basically the attack helicopter comedy equivalent of uh you know their their right wing conservative uh points and and they'll just regurgitate them in different forms yeah i was gonna ask you about that but that doesn't make sense because like i feel like after i film like if i put a lot of research and like thought into a piece like by the time i'm towards the end of that like filming i can't speak like i go like in trump mode and it's like i'm i'm slurring over my words because it's like so much energy to like try to really focus and like get it out there in a really specific way because like you're recovering topics that are like really complex um and like if you say like just one word incorrect in a sentence that can like change the entire meaning of like a particular policy especially like when we're like really knee deep and like medicare for all you know for example um which i haven't done one of those in a while um but yeah they do make it easier especially you won't be able to it looks like yeah yeah we're never getting it so you know you gotta laugh or you're gonna cry exactly so uh if there's nothing else that you want to talk about um then we can end here and i would really just encourage everyone to please please please subscribe to the serfs everywhere both channels and on twitch uh if you're not then i will ban you and cancel you from watching the human support well that's it i've got nothing left to talk about hopefully you guys enjoy the show thanks so much to my guest lance from the serfs uh check out their channel there will be links down below on and usual we're not going to end the show without thanking all of our patreon payback on youtube members for helping the show not just to survive but thrive as well uh thank you all so much i've got nothing left to say so i'm gonna stop talking i'll see you all next week i'm mike figurado this is the humanist report take care