 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo. This is the 194th edition of the program. Today is Friday, May 24th and before we get into the show, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which signed up either this last week to support us for the very first time or increased their monthly pledge. And that includes Amala, Brian Fessler, Cynthia Shell Terrell, Ivan Avila, Jack Anderson, John Perry, Julian Lopez, Liz P, Martin Bykowski, MovieMasher, Inc and Rodney R. Munn. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or by clicking join below any one of our YouTube videos. So this week on the Humanist Report podcast, the media is adapting and their tactics to take on Bernie Sanders is evolving. We'll talk about that. Also, a New York Times writer talks about how much he hates millennials. Joe Biden's advisor faced plants in an attempt to defend him. Donald Trump can't decide if he wants to be pro war or anti war. And he's also considering a pardon for a psychopathic war criminal. Ben Carson proves just how incompetent he really is. Ajit Pai is greenlighting a giant merger that will undoubtedly harm consumers. Beto O'Rourke misses the mark on Medicare for All at his CNN Town Hall. Another presidential candidate wants all young Americans to join the US military. And Julian Assange is being indicted by Donald Trump's Justice Department. We'll talk about the implications of this. And finally, we'll close the week out by talking to the stars of the hit Netflix documentary, Knock Down the House. I'll have Amy Valela, Corey Bush, and Paula Jean Swarajan on to talk about the film. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's show. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the podcast. People in mainstream media dislike Bernie Sanders, I think for a number of reasons. First of all, he poses a threat to the status quo. And news pundits probably feel as if they need to protect the status quo because the status quo obviously has been great to them. A lot of people in news media cable news, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, they're financially well off. They make hundreds of thousands per year, if not millions per year, doing their job. So why would they want to break up a status quo that serves them really well? Additionally, another reason why news media, generally speaking, wants to protect the status quo is because the status quo also includes special interests, large multinational corporations, all of which advertise on mainstream news networks. It's essentially one giant circle jerk. So they don't like Bernie Sanders and they all have been attacking Bernie relentlessly since he re-entered the race, since he is now back and poses a threat to them electorally. You know, during 2017, 2018, they loved Bernie Sanders. They would bring him on all the time, do these, you know, town halls in West Virginia with him, with Chris Hayes, because back then Bernie Sanders didn't pose an electoral threat. They weren't necessarily sure that he would run again. So why not exploit Bernie Sanders for ratings? And now Bernie Sanders is so powerful that they feel as if they need to attack him at every chance that they have. And that's exactly what they're doing. So it almost seems as if there's this coordinated effort to take down Bernie Sanders. And the reason why I say it seems coordinated is because people in mainstream media, they say the same thing. So first they were all attacking him in unison because he didn't release his tax returns. He then released his tax returns. And then the argument was that while he's a hypocrite, because his tax returns now prove he's a millionaire and he rails against millionaires and billionaires. So he must be a hypocrite. But the problem is that none of their attacks are landing. Bernie Sanders is not losing support. He still has that core base. So now what I'm realizing is happening is that they're getting a little bit more creative in their attacks of Bernie Sanders, because if they all talk about the same thing, be it tax returns, his millionaire status or voting rights for felons using the Boston bomber. As an example, the problem is that they probably realized that that's not very effective because they'll put forward an anti Bernie argument and then we'll just swat it down. But what they're realizing now is that if they want actually any attack on Bernie to stick, they're going to have to adapt and get a lot more creative. And that is exactly what they're doing. Because I've noticed the new pattern now where instead of just posing one argument for Bernie Sanders to respond to, they are overwhelming him with a number of attacks so he can't possibly respond to all of them. So some criticisms of him go unaddressed. And the hope I'm assuming is that those unaddressed criticisms and of festering and growing so that way they ultimately consume Bernie Sanders. It's basically the mainstream media equivalent of Gish Galloping, where you just throw out so much bullshit, you overwhelm your opponent and you force him or her to avoid a lot of the things you said. That's kind of what we're seeing. And I'm not suggesting that these TV pundits like meet once a month to coordinate the way in which they're going to take on Bernie Sanders. But I think that if you live in that elite bubble, then there's going to be certain patterns and bad wagons that emerge. And you're just going to jump on board. I mean, the same thing happens in progressive media, right? We're all not meeting once per month to talk about the things we should talk about. But we often cover the same types of stories. You know, it's dictated by what's in the news. We talk about common themes within progressive circles, platforming, de-platforming and whatnot. So obviously the same will be true in mainstream media. But just what I notice is this pattern emerging where Bernie Sanders is now being overwhelmed with attacks so where it is literally impossible for him to respond to them. And I've got a couple of examples that I want to show you that I think demonstrates this new trend. So the first is this New York Times article that was published. And just by looking at the title, it's seemingly innocuous. It talks about Bernie Sanders' opposition to U.S. imperialism, which I think is good, obviously. I think that will make him more appealing. But what this piece is in actuality is a hit piece. It is an attempt to smear Bernie Sanders because even if it outlines his history of opposition to U.S. imperialism and his opposition to Reagan's foreign policy, the underlying implication is that Bernie Sanders was and possibly still is a communist sympathizer. And in actuality, what he did was foster dialogue with leaders in other countries that the United States was against, that the U.S. deemed enemies of the state. And the article talks about him going to Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, Cuba and praising certain aspects of other countries. So while he doesn't necessarily agree with the oppressive and authoritarian nature of the Soviet Union, he'll say, well, look, parts of their health care system is admirable. And maybe we should try to replicate certain aspects of these other countries and try to learn from them rather than, you know, relentlessly demonizing them. The same thing, essentially, that they tried to do to Bernie in this article is what we see the mainstream media doing to Tulsi Gabbard when she went to Syria and they're still doing it. She went to Syria. She talked to Bashar al-Assad. And this was all an attempt to foster dialogue between the United States and another country that we deemed the enemy. It was an attempt at peace. And she was smeared as an Assad apologist, a New York Times writer called her an Assad toadie, meaning that she's basically an Assad sycophant. So what they did was they took that Tulsi Gabbard argument, which I think has been very effective at smearing Tulsi Gabbard, because almost everyone in mainstream media associates her with Assad, and they're now trying to apply that to Bernie Sanders and make it seem as if he's the bad guy for being against war, for being against Reagan's foreign policy, which was atrocious. So, for example, look at this tweet from Meet the Press. So they talked to Bernie Sanders. They interviewed him. Chuck Todd asked him about this article and Bernie Sanders essentially said, look, I want to apologize for opposing these interventionist pro war efforts. And look at the way that they framed his response here. Bernie Sanders said he won't apologize for supporting anti-Vietnam war efforts and voting against the war in Iraq. Quote, I will do everything I can to see problems solved diplomatically. Instead of through war. So the implication here with this tweet is that Bernie Sanders should apologize. That's the implication. Now, at the end, they were a little bit more charitable and they actually quoted him directly. But they're just kind of putting this idea out there that will look. Bernie Sanders, he won't apologize. So if you say that someone should or won't apologize, you're essentially implying that they should apologize. Now, in the actual interview where they quote Bernie Sanders, Chuck Todd is going to ask Bernie Sanders how he's going to be able to prevent Republicans from using the attack that mainstream news outlets lobbed against him in the first place. All right, I want to move to some foreign policy. There's New York Times spent a lot of time talking about your trips to Central America. I know you got pretty worked up about those things. I think the larger question and let me just frame the question this way. The larger question is going to be if you're the nominee, whether you like it or not, the right's going to basically hammer and sickle you to death. How do you prevent it? Well, I don't mind the right wing doing it, but I I understand they will do it. I don't want the media to do it. Exactly. The Republican Party, they are just a bunch of one trick ponies. So no matter who becomes the Democratic Party nominee, they will be labeled a socialist almost certainly and possibly even a communist, because that's all that they've got. They called Obama a socialist. I'm sure that they called Bill Clinton a socialist. This is what they do. But one institution who should not be resorting to these types of smears is the media, because the media's one job is to educate people. So of all institutions in the United States, they should be the ones to be able to disaggregate anti imperialism from support for communism and support for dictatorial regimes and authoritarianism. But that's not what they're doing here. They're essentially trying to lump those things together and imply that, look, since Bernie Sanders spoke with Ortega since he went to the Soviet Union, maybe that was him tacitly endorsing their authoritarianism and in a follow up piece to the original smear, the New York Times published an interview that they did with Bernie and they made it very clear that Bernie Sanders only agreed to an interview once the article was published. So that was kind of another jab at him. But when you go through this, they were pressing him on the most benign things ever, such as whether or not he would have left a particular anti-war protest if he knew that there were people who were chanting anti-American things and whatnot. I don't care. So let's just take a moment to step back and overall look at what transpired as a result of this one New York Times article. They got so much mileage out of this one smear. So here's all of the things that Bernie Sanders was attacked with. He's a communist sympathizer. How will he prevent the right from exploiting stories like this? He only agreed to an interview once the story was published. And since he was arguably standoffish in response to this smear piece, well, one journalist on Twitter claimed that, you know, he was rude even if she agrees with the substance and agrees that Bernie was right to speak out against Reagan's interventionist foreign policy. You know, you don't have to be rude. So do you understand why I'm telling you this is an example of mainstream media gishgalloping because they're not just saying Bernie is a communist sympathizer. They're taking this one smear against Bernie and they're dividing it and they're throwing a bunch at him and hopes that he won't be able to stop all of it. Because if you just say he's a communist sympathizer, you can just, you know, combat that by saying, no, I'm not. Here's my support for democracy and my stance against authoritarianism and my disagreements with communism. But if you throw all of these things at him, he dodged an interview, he was rude. He was a communist sympathizer. He's going to have to deal with Republican attacks. That's a lot more difficult than him just responding to one smear. So they took something that was a singular argument against Bernie Sanders, arguably, if you want to interpret that article in a more nefarious way, which I do. But if you want to interpret it that way, they're taking something and they're complicating it, they're dividing it up into numerous arguments against Bernie Sanders and they're trying to get him to respond to all of it. And of course, he can't. Now, it's not just this one issue that they are essentially gish galloping because take the issue of Medicare for All. Bernie Sanders has been arguing in favor of it. And we all know that he supports Medicare for All. He's been explaining what we can expect in the event we actually adopt a Medicare for All type system. Now, rather than just saying how do you pay for it, which is one of the older attacks, watch this segment. We're going to go back to that same interview that Chuck Todd did where he was asked about this smear from The New York Times and he's going to be asked about another criticism. Watch all of the claims that were made and see how Chuck Todd frames the question and why it's impossible for Bernie to respond to all of this. Michael Bennett, another candidate for president, I believe that the lesson of 2018 was not Medicare for All, but fix Obamacare. I would like you to take a listen to what he said to me earlier this year about that. Now, what Democrats are saying is if you like your insurance, we're going to take it away from you from 180 million people that get their insurance from their employer and like it. Or 20 million Americans who are on Medicare Advantage and love it. That seems like a bad opening offer for me. And Senator, I'm well aware that you believe that, look, you were in favor of Obamacare, but it was not your first choice. And I know that. But as you know, there's a lot of voters who voted for Democrats in 2018 to fix Obamacare first, then look at see, OK, should it be something different? Are you obligated to fix Obamacare first? Well, we're obligated to make sure that Trump and the Republicans do not throw tens of millions of people off the health care that they currently are enjoying. But here's the point. The point is the current health care system is absolutely dysfunctional. You have thirty four million without any health insurance, even more who are underinsured elderly people can't afford dental care, hearing aids, eyeglasses. And for all of that, Chuck, we managed to spend twice as much money per capita on health care as do the people of any other country. And we pay the highest prices of the world for prescription drugs. Now, I know that the health care industry, the drug companies, the insurance companies will spend hundreds of millions of dollars, including ads on NBC, attacking Bernie Sanders, attacking Medicare for all. But you don't want you look at the polling. The people support Medicare very, very strongly. And all we are saying is you've got a good program in Medicare, expanded to everybody else, improve Medicare for senior citizens. And when we do that, we're going to provide comprehensive care to all people, and we're going to do it by saving substantial sums of money. I think that Bernie Sanders did a pretty good job responding there. But the thing is that there were so many claims, I think easily disputable claims made against Medicare for all that even if we have answers to all of those criticisms and objections raised by Michael Bennett, you can't possibly respond to all of them. Think of all the claims that were made just in that one clip. Bennett says, you know, if you like your insurance, we're going to take it away from you. That's what Democrats are saying. That's one claim. Another claim is that 180 million people who get their insurance from their employer will lose it. That's a second claim. He says 20 million Americans who are on Medicare Advantage and love it will lose that. That's a third claim. And then Chuck Todd goes on to say, well, you know, are you obligated to fix Medicare for all first? That's four claims that Bernie needed to respond to. But he was only asked a singular question. So all of this misinformation about Medicare for all and disingenuous arguments about Medicare for all are being lobbed at Bernie Sanders. And obviously, how can he possibly respond to all of these numerous objections? And you see, this is why I kind of see this as a strategy in mainstream media emerging. They're not just going to gish gallop to attack Bernie Sanders. They're also going to attack the policy proposals that ultimately legitimize Bernie Sanders. We love Bernie because of the policies that he's proposing. So if you can attack his strength, the policies and not allow him to respond and still give him a chance to respond, but know that he can't possibly respond to all of those points, you are effectively hurting Bernie Sanders. You're doing what their one goal is to do, which is take down Bernie Sanders, throw all of these attacks at him, see what sticks, hope that one of them will go unaddressed. Ultimately, you know, get big enough to where Bernie Sanders will be consumed by it. Now, again, these are all not very strong objections to Medicare for all. Well, if you like your insurance, we're going to take it away from you. No, people like their doctors, 180 million people get their insurance from their employer, right? But you lose that insurance on a whim. If your employer decides that they're going to switch providers, 20 million Americans who are on Medicare Advantage and love it, will lose that. What is Medicare Advantage? All Medicare Advantage is is supplemental care that fills in the gaps that exist in our current Medicare system, which is why Bernie Sanders always says, we're going to expand Medicare, but we're also going to improve Medicare because there are currently gaps in it. It's not sufficient currently. So if you tell somebody, hey, guess what? We're going to close those gaps so you no longer have to pay for Medicare Advantage each month. What idiot would say, no, I don't want you to do that because I love my Medicare Advantage plan? Who would say that? It's nonsensical, right? So, I mean, Bernie Sanders needs to be able to respond to all of these objections being raised to Medicare for all, but he can't possibly do that because it's very difficult to do that when you have a hundred different things being thrown at you at one time. And they know that Bernie Sanders does have responses to all of these questions, these disingenuous objections to Medicare for all. But again, the goal is to overwhelm him. Now, the question is, why am I just being conspiratorial? Am I being hypersensitive to any and all criticisms that the mainstream media will lob against Bernie? Well, no, because Bernie Sanders truly does pose a threat to the establishment. And mainstream news pundits, they are all included in that establishment. Anyone who benefits economically from the current economic order is obviously part of the establishment, and they have a personal invested interest in maintaining the status quo. So the reason why they want to take down Bernie Sanders is because he represents something so fundamentally different, someone who is anti-establishment in the true sense and not in the false sense that Donald Trump is. Donald Trump is someone who instinctively is anti-establishment because he always was an outsider and was never accepted into those elite circles that he desperately wanted to be in, but still he's a puppet. He's malleable enough to where the establishment can at least use him to their advantage and get tax cuts and still keep the military industrial complex happy, keep feeding that beast. But with Bernie Sanders, he's someone who actually poses a real threat. So this is more than just about getting Trump out of office to Bernie Sanders. It's about remaking America. It's about thinking not just for the next four to eight years, but the next 15 to 20 years, getting us on a new trajectory, a trajectory where large multinational corporations, including these media conglomerates, pay their fair share. They don't like that. They know that Bernie Sanders poses a real threat and not just a temporary interruption to the status quo like Donald Trump. And this is why they're trying so hard to defeat him. So it may not necessarily be that all these media people are meeting in rooms every single month to say, what's the next thing we're going to harp away at, you know, when it comes to Bernie Sanders? But what they do do is they replicate tactics that they see are effective. And this is clearly an effective tactic. If you see that you have someone that you need to defeat and he's been able to kind of swat away all the criticisms and attacks thus far from mainstream media because people just don't really care what's going to happen, you need to adapt. So what they're doing to adapt is they're throwing everything they can at Bernie Sanders. This is the mainstream media equivalent of Gish galloping. Hit them with as much as you can so we can't possibly respond to all of the idiotic criticisms because it's not like these are criticisms that are so profound, so powerful that will, you know, any one of them will unilaterally tank Bernie Sanders. But the goal is that some of these will go unaddressed and ultimately come back to bite him in the ass later. They're playing the long game. And that's what's happening here. Because again, if they just say, well, he's a hypocritical hypocritical millionaire, you know, his tax return show that he made more than a million dollars and he rails against millionaires and billionaires. Bernie Sanders can easily respond to that. Everyone in progressive media can come out like myself and respond to that and shoot it down. But if they throw all of this out there, you can't possibly respond to all of it. And that's what they're trying to do here. So it's not that they're all meeting behind closed doors to agree on the right strategy. It's just that they replicate what works. It is probably subconscious, but they know they don't like Bernie and they know that they need to take him down. So what we kind of see happen simultaneously is one effective attack that kind of grows and it's just basically its own phenomenon that works in and of itself. It's a strategy that comes up organically, right? That isn't cooked up, you know, by executives or maybe it is. I mean, sure, there was a case back in 2016 when Ed Schultz, who was on MSNBC, tried to cover Bernie Sanders and the president of MSNBC called him and said, you're not allowed to do that. You are not going to cover his presidential campaign launch. So sure, there are some more explicit things. But I think what we're seeing here is people just trying different things to see what works and if they can get Bernie Sanders to respond to some attacks while lobbing like 10 at him, they realize that what they're doing is going to be more effective just by definition because they're making him incapable of responding. So that's what they are doing. And I'm just letting you know this is the strategy. This is a pattern that I see emerging. And I think we need to look out for it because this could potentially be problematic. So I'm sure that most people in my audience will remember when Joe Biden said this. And so the younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no. I have no empathy for it. Give me a break because here's the deal, guys. We decided we were going to change the world and we did. That irritates me so much. And I still get pissed off when I hear him say that because it's like, how dare you say that about millennials that you don't have any empathy for us? You've been in power for the entirety of our lives and you've done nothing for us. You haven't done anything to improve our lives. So how dare you tell us that you have no empathy for us when we complain about how worse off we're going to be than our parents? We're inheriting a rigged economy that disproportionately benefits elites and the rich. We are also inheriting a dying planet that we have to be the ones to save if we even want to have a future at all. And when I talk about these things, when I talk about the economic woes that plague the millennial generation, I'm not just being hyperbolic because the young Invincibles, which is a DC based think tank, actually crunched the numbers and found that millennials earn approximately $10,000 less annually than baby boomers, which is a 20 percent change overall. Now, additionally, young Invincibles also found that declines in education levels have changed so drastically between now and then that, quote, young people today that have a degree with debt earn roughly the same as young workers with no degree in the late 1980s. But additionally, as cheat sheet explains, on average, millennials pay 150 percent more intuition than baby boomers. So we pay more for our degrees that are worth less. And it's not just education. The average cost of weddings went up by 24 percent. The cost to purchase a home increased by 294 percent. And the cost of food has also increased substantially, even when accounting for inflation. Also, contrary to popular belief, millennials are not lazy. We are now the largest generation in the US labor force and productivity continues to increase, even though we have a very large presence. However, wages have not kept up with productivity, meaning we're working harder for lower wages, generally speaking, and prices keep increasing. But nonetheless, one particular author in the New York Times, a conservative named Brett Stevens, got a gigantic hard on when he heard Joe Biden say that and it inspired him to write this article in the New York Times titled, Dear Millennials, the feeling is mutual. Joe Biden dares to take offense at those who specialize in being offended. So you really don't have to read the article to predict what it's about. It's going to be another one of those vacuous, pretentious, millennial bashing articles where it talks about how offended we are, how triggered we are, we're SJWs, we're always complaining, we're lazy. And also it's implied that we hate old people, but the feeling is mutual. All that millennials are saying when we whine is that, hey, maybe we have a life that is comparable to our parents economically and environmentally. But nonetheless, this jackass here is really excited about the fact that Joe Biden decided to bash us. And since Joe Biden took a shit on millennials, he's going to write this article not only praising Joe Biden, but also saying how horrible millennials are. So here's what he says, in this election cycle, no faction on the Democratic side more richly deserves rebuking than the one Biden singled out, which is not, of course, anywhere close to the entire millennial generation, roughly 80 million strong or their younger siblings in Gen Z. But it is that part of these younger generations that specializes in histrionic self-pity and moral self-righteousness usually communicated via social media with maximum snark. So in other words, he doesn't like us because he probably gets ratioed and dunked on via Twitter. So he sees how snarky we are and how clever our memes are. And, you know, he doesn't like all the dank may-mays that he sees. So, you know, fuck millennials, right, because they make fun of me. OK, but really, what is it? What bug flew up your ass that made you hate millennials so much? Like, why is it that you dislike them? Well, if you had to take a guess why he hates millennials, what would it be? SJWs, that's essentially what this is about. He cites three different examples of college students protesting speakers or professors on campuses. He cites one example of a professor being assaulted and decided to use that as evidence that our entire generation is complete and utter garbage. We're SJWs. Well, first of all, needless to say, people on college campuses who protest, who you deem SJW, that is not a sample size large enough to reflect general applicability that doesn't represent everyone. And furthermore, let's say that every single millennial was the stereotypical blue-haired SJW. Is that really worse than what a lot of Republicans and people in power now represent? Complete and utter cronyism, corrupt to the core, unwilling to take action on climate change, an issue that could literally lead to our extinction. Is that worse than people who are outraged on college campuses? I'd argue no. But nonetheless, he hates the SJWs. He's choosing to jump on the anti-SJW bandwagon about two to three years too late because I think that bus has already left. People are moving on now to something else. But nonetheless, he really just hates millennials because we're SJWs. So he adds, the signature move in each of these instances, and there are so many more, is to allege an invisible harm in order to inflict an actual one in place of an eye for an eye. We have professional destruction for emotional upset. Careers and reputations built over decades come to ruin or nearly so on account of a personal mistake or a disfavored opinion. All of these struggle sessions play to the sound of tortling 20-somethings who have figured out that in today's culture, the quickest way to acquire and exercise power is to take offense. That is easy to do because the list of sins to which one may take offense grows with each passing year from the culturally appropriated sombrero to the traditionally gendered pronoun, which brings me back to Biden. The rap against the former VP is that he's old, frequently puts his foot in his mouth and occasionally says nice things about Republicans. Another way of putting all of that is that he's mature, unstudied and not just another partisan hater. Also, he refused to beg forgiveness last month for being a tad too touchy kissy. Maybe he should keep his hands in his pockets, but at least it means he isn't prepared to capitulate to the icy codes of personal decorum written by people who don't know the difference between exuberant human warmth and unwarranted sexual advances. In other words, awesome, Joe Biden, keep it going, keep pissing off millennials, keep shitting on them, keep joking about unwanted touching and whatnot. And if you keep this up, you know, you're going to win me over as a conservative. What an idiotic article to write. Like this is in the most prestigious arguably the most prestigious newspaper in America. And they publish this garbage about him talking about how horrible millennials are. It's odd to me. It's bizarre to shit on an entire generation for no good reason doesn't make sense. It's irrational. If anything, you should actually have sympathy towards millennials because unlike you, we actually may see the end of the world with climate change because your generation didn't want to act. Now, one last line that I want to read here. He says the sensible center of America, the sensible center of America, that is the people who choose presidents in this country wants to see Donald Trump lose next year, but not if it means empowering the junior totalitarians of the left. Now is Biden's chance to make it clear he's just the man to fulfill that hope. So we are totalitarians, we get offended by everything and we just need to suck it up because we're being snowflakes. So it's only millennials that get offended by things. Well, let's look at some things that older people, particularly Republicans usually are offended by because it's not just that millennials are the ones who get offended easily. Outrage culture exists on the left and the right. It's just that oftentimes there's a right wing bias so we don't acknowledge the right wing SJWs. We only look at the left wing SJWs because they found that that's a really effective tool at recruiting people to the right. Make fun of these college campus people with blue hair who are outraged over something or they think something about some stupid fucking movie or pop culture thing is offensive. I mean, let's focus on that. Let's ignore the fact that there are people in government currently who are trying to take us back to the fucking dark ages, who are passing outright bans on abortion, who are stripping away the barrier between church and state, trying to wage wars with two different countries. Let's focus on SJWs, though, because they're the real threat. But getting back to who's really offended here, let's look at the things that right wingers are offended by. Kneeling during the national anthem, that's a really touchy subject for them. Donald Trump said that he'd be telling NFL owners to get that son of a bitch off the field in response to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. That's pretty snowflakey. They also get offended at blasphemy when you say mean things about Jesus. They they can't even fathom that. If you say mean things about their God, they're going to flip their fucking shit. That's pretty snowflakey. They get angry if we use profanity, gay people kissing, trans people existing. They get offended when people are offended. They get offended when we call out any sort of injustice whatsoever. They get offended by the type of music we like. If we like rap, then that's not real music to them. I mean, this is so petty. What an idiotic article to write. This is something that belongs on Facebook, on your personal status, not in the New York Times, which is supposed to be a news outlet. And I get that this is in the opinion section, but still, this is extremely idiotic and smarmy and pretentious, like, who are you to tell us that we're the problem in society when your generation elected the politicians that fucked over my generation? You guys are the ones that started the war in Iraq. He supported that. You guys are the ones that implemented Reaganism. You undid the New Deal, which you benefited from. And now we don't have that. And now we try to go back to the New Deal era and you call us whiny snowflakes. Like, fuck you, dude, like, I don't understand how you can actually pass this off as intellectual as something that is witty or insightful when this is nothing more than bullshit. He's basically saying, look, I know that my generation fucked over your generation royally, and you guys will probably be extra poor while you witness the apocalypse that, you know, we refuse to do anything about. But stop complaining about it, snowflakes. Grow the fuck up. Well, how about this? Go fuck yourself. So the theme of last week's show was basically that Joe Biden is a gigantic gaffe machine who keeps putting his foot in his mouth. And it's not just that he keeps saying things that are absurd and even incoherent, but he says things that are easily disprovable. Things that you can just Google, take five seconds to Google and see, oh, he's not telling the truth. And the things that he's being the most dishonest about are things regarding his own record. So as you all know, he was one of the authors of the 1994 crime bill. And if I'm one of Joe Biden's advisers, I would be telling him disavow the crime bill unequivocally, run away from it, apologize any time it's brought up. Don't brag about the crime bill, Joe, even if you want to, even if this is one of your signature accomplishments, because it was a disaster, right? That's how I would be advising Joe Biden. But the problem with Joe Biden is that he's kind of difficult to advise because this is someone who is so narcissistic that he can't fathom the thought that something he did previously backfired, that it was atrocious, it was a failure. So of course, since he's not advisable, he's going to do something that he obviously should not do and that I would speculate his advisers will tell him not to do. And that is brag about the crime bill. And yes, brag about the crime bill. So he did this last week on two separate occasions. He claimed not just that the crime bill wasn't bad, but that it actually did not lead to mass incarceration. As Sean King points out here in this tweet and who was rightfully offended by Joe Biden's obvious bullshit. So if you work for Joe Biden, how do you spin this? Like, how are you supposed to convince people that Joe Biden, who is a complete idiot, isn't an idiot after he said something that is that easily disprovable? He claims that the crime bill didn't lead to mass incarceration. It did. That's just a fact. It exacerbated mass incarceration. So maybe you can say, well, look, it was already an issue and Joe Biden was jumping on the bandwagon of a broader trend that was initially, you know, catalyzed by Nixon with the war on drugs, say something like that. But the problem is that you can't really find a way to defend Joe Biden without looking disingenuous, because clearly the crime bill is one of the worst aspects about Joe Biden. There are many things on his record that are absolutely disgusting. Anita Hill, you know, his homophobic past, his racist past. But here's what's going to happen. A senior adviser for Joe Biden, Simone Sanders, is going to be asked about his statement about the crime bill. She's going to try to defend him and, expectably, it's not going to go too well. And we heard from Senator Harris in that piece from Arlette about her refuting claim that the vice president made this week that the 1994 crime bill that he wrote did not contribute to mass incarceration. I want you to listen to former President Bill Clinton. This is President Clinton who signed that into law in 2015. As I signed a bill, it made the problem worse. And I want to admit it. In that bill, there were longer sentences. And most of these people are in prison under state law, but the federal law set a trend and that was overdone. We were wrong about that. President Clinton says that they were wrong about that. Senator Harris has said that it contributed to mass incarceration. Why isn't Vice President Biden admitting what we're hearing from the former president? Well, look, I think what we can go back to the Vice President Biden's comments at the National Action Network Breakfast in January, where he noted that the crime bill by way of this disparity between crack and powder cocaine trapped an entire generation of people. Look, I think many people will tell you across the country, Victor Black folks included that the crime bill and the reaction to what was happening in the early 90s. Now, look, I was only about three or four, but I'm a student of history. What was happening in the early 90s, the reaction was an overcorrection into a very real issue, but we are going to see some policy rollouts from our campaign very soon. Victor, I know folks have questions about what is Vice President Biden's criminal justice policy and those are going to come. But I mean, the campaign's position that the crime bill did contribute to mass incarceration, Victor, I think the vice with the vice president, his comments speak for themselves. What is very clear in his comment was that it does not contribute to mass incarceration, the former president who signed it said it did. And if we look, Victor, if we play the whole clip, what he also said was, his comment was, what he also said was that the majority of folks that are incarcerated were incarcerated at the state level. And there's a reason for that. Let me put up the truth in sentencing. And I mean, there is a reason for that. But there's a reason. Let me put it up. Let me put it up on the screen, guys, the truth in sentencing section of the 1994 crime bill. This is page 21. It incentivized, it offered billions of dollars to build new correctional facilities if states would increase the percentage of convicted violent offenders, increase the average prison time, increase the percentage of the sentence was there. Did this bill not incentivize putting more people in jail and keeping them there longer? Victor, I am not going to sit here and tell you that crime bill was perfect. There were some really great preventative things that it did. It took on the NRA, and then there was an overcorrection. What you're describing was an overcorrection. There was a reach. Some folks went too far. The bill wasn't perfect. Republican spots put a lot of things in that bill. Democrat spots get a lot of things out of the bill. But at the end of the day, Victor, at the end of the day, no one is suggesting that what has happened, what has ravaged communities over the last 27 years, does not need to be fixed. No one is suggesting that there's not a real problem or a real issue. And I'm here to tell you that Vice President Biden will roll out, you'll see a criminal justice policy soon. We are going to continue to have to have this conversation about the crime bill throughout the campaign trail. But we're also going to put forward some policies, Victor. So just wait and see. Give us a minute. Wait and see. We will look forward to those. That was bad. That was really bad. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the reasons why you shouldn't defend the indefensible because you can't. And when Victor Blackwell asked her a question and she just kind of like laughed and said, Victor, I like literally cringed. It was like a physical reaction. Victor, I think the vice would... Because you knew that she was drawing a blank. How do you defend, like, how do you respond? And I don't usually say this, but good job, CNN. Victor Blackwell is probably one of the better hosts on CNN and what he did right there was phenomenal journalism because she tried to divert the scrutiny away from Joe Biden by saying, well, the states were already doing this, but he pulled up a portion of the bill that described explicitly how the crime bill incentivized mass incarceration. You just, you can't rebound from that. You're done. At that moment, when that's brought up, you're done. You can't defend the crime bill. That's kind of where we saw her jump off the sinking ship. You can't defend that. You just cannot. But then she was pinned into a corner and was asked, well, so is the campaign's official position now, since you're saying this that the crime bill did lead to mass incarceration. I mean, wow. And I'm saying this as someone who actually has the utmost respect for Simone Sanders just as a strategist because she's someone who she actually is a talented figure. So the fact that she was easily backed into a corner by a CNN host shows you that Joe Biden is going to have a tough time in the months coming ahead. And the thing that makes me so sad about Simone Sanders is that she actually used to work for Bernie Sanders, literally. In 2016, she was Bernie's national press spokesperson. And now she's working for Joe Biden. She is talented enough, charismatic enough to where she could have done anything. And now she's choosing to work for Joe Biden. You go from the best to the worst. I don't, like I don't get it. I don't understand it. I mean, you'd think that if anyone was going to work for the establishment, it would have been back in 2016 when everyone was telling her that Hillary Clinton was going to win. But she jumped on Bernie's boat because she believed in what Bernie Sanders was talking about. And now she clearly does not believe in what Joe Biden is saying. So my question is how do you rationalize working for Biden after you worked for Bernie? How do you go from one end of the spectrum to the opposite? How do you do that? She was actually asked and she obviously and expectedly again, did not have a good answer. Obvious question. You were the 2016 national spokesperson for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Why are you now on team Biden? Well, look, I think Vice President Biden is going to show everyone today exactly why I decided to join the campaign. Look, he, we are in a fight for the soul of this nation. And I believe that this is a pivotal point, just not in American history, but in the world history. We have to make a decision about who it is that we want to be, where it is we're going to go. And I believe the Vice President Biden has the right vision to take us there. So I'm very excited to be on team Biden. I'm excited to be here in Philadelphia, Victor. Okay, we are kicking off officially our campaign today. And I really think what you're going to hear from the Vice President is a book end on these themes that you've been hearing from us since he first announced that he is running. All right. Look, good on Joe Biden for recruiting her because I do think that she's talented politically, but that was not a good answer. That was not convincing. Like I don't believe that Simone Sanders actually thinks Joe Biden is good for the country. Quote, we're going to fight for the soul of this nation. Vice President Biden has the right vision. Really, Simone? Really? What are you doing? Why? Why throw your credibility down the drain for someone like Joe Biden, who is painfully, painfully out of touch? And you can't say that, oh, well, she's just jumping on Biden's bus because she wants political power and that's the easiest bet. He's probably going to win. She could have done that in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, so I'm genuinely confused by her motives here. I don't get it. This is someone who's young and talented, who could make a difference, a real difference, and she's choosing to defend Biden here when you can't defend him. So look, I don't want to get too caught up on Simone Sanders because again, I do respect her, but in terms of her trying to defend Joe Biden, this is why you can't defend people like Joe Biden. You can't. His record speaks for itself and he'll say something and all you have to do is look it up to see that he is full of shit. So Joe Biden, I really hope that this post announcement bump fades and quickly because in the event he becomes the Democratic Party nominee, I worry so much about him losing to Donald Trump. I do. I think his chances are probably better than Hillary's because I think just strategically, he kind of knows a little bit more about what he's doing. However, with that being said, he's so out of touch that what I worry about is people being demoralized, Democratic Party's base being demoralized and not coming out to vote, which means that Republicans will win and this doesn't just hurt the Democratic Party's chances of retaking the Senate when the odds are technically in their favor just because of the makeup. I mean, you have Democrats defending 12 seats and Republicans defending 22 seats. But I mean, this can all go south really quickly if we get someone at the top of the ticket who doesn't get people who normally don't vote to come out and vote. We need young people to vote. We need non-voters to come out and vote. Joe Biden just can't do that, so I worry. I absolutely worry. And I hope that Bernie wins because if Biden is the nominee, we could be looking at another four years of Donald Trump. If anyone's gonna beat Donald Trump, it's going to be Bernie. I'm putting my money on Bernie, right? Anti-establishment versus, you know, pseudo anti-establishment. If you wanna get rid of Donald Trump, you go for the antithesis of Trumpism and pseudo populism. So we'll see what happens, but this just goes to show you that Joe Biden will have a tough time. He may be having a really great entry point into the campaign season because nobody's really able to bring him down. But if this continues, I mean, I can't see how his poll numbers remain high because these things are horrible, blemishes on his record that he's trying to run away from, but can't. You can't say that the crime bill didn't lead to mass incarceration when everyone knows that it did, especially the people who were affected by it the most, blacks and Latinos. So yeah, I'll leave that there. So there's lots of things going on in the world. The series finale of Game of Thrones, Erdogan's Sunday, the Oculus Quest was just released. Oh, and our president is threatening to nuke other countries via Twitter again. So he writes to Iran, if Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again. Now, at this point, him doing mean tweets is not surprising to anyone. However, I don't want us to take for granted the gravity of what just happened. He threatened to annihilate another country, to wipe them out, saying it will be the end of them on Twitter. This is not normal. This is incredibly insane. And it was very unsettling to see him do this when it comes to North Korea, but now he's doing it to Iran. And we know over the past couple of months, him and the neocons in his administration have been saber rattling when it comes to Venezuela, looking for any and every reason they can find to militarily invade Venezuela since economically, the pressure that they're putting on Venezuela and Maduro isn't working. But now it's clear that they've kind of shifted gears since the coup in Venezuela hasn't been successful. Now, I'm sure that they still want to invade Venezuela, but it's evident that they've turned their sights to a new target. And that target obviously is Iran. And it's absolutely terrifying. To see the president of the United States send out this belligerent tweet, it really is something that we shouldn't normalize or become accustomed to. But I get it, a lot of people see this and they just kind of shrug because we've all put up with this now for a couple of years. We've become desensitized, right? But we shouldn't allow ourselves to become desensitized to things like this, because this is incredibly serious. So the question is, does he want war with Iran? Clearly he is open to it. That's what the tweet indicated. However, in an interview with Fox News, he was talking to Steve Hilton who asked this question. And Steve basically said, look, a lot of people liked you because in 2016 you were the non-interventionist Republican candidate. You were different from the neocons in the Republican Party. So are you actually trying to start a war with Iran or not? So he's gonna go on here to answer Steve's question in the most baffling, incoherent way. He will abruptly change subjects. He'll answer a different question than the one he was asked. Like it's clear that the dude's brain is melting out of his ears, like he is losing it. He's absolutely losing it. And I don't even know what to take away from this interview, but nonetheless, let's watch it because maybe there'll be some information we can extract from this about whether or not we should prepare for war with Iran. The thing that I think a lot of people are worried about is that they heard what you said in 2016 and liked it when you said, no more stupid wars. And then they hear these stories about troops and so on. I just don't want them to have nuclear weapons. And they can't be threatening us. And you know, with all of everything that's going on, and I'm not one that believes, you know, I'm not somebody that wants to go into war because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly, by far most importantly, I think that if you look, when I went to North Korea, there were nuclear tests all the time, there were missiles going up all the time. We had a very rough time then we got along. We'll see what happens right now. Right now, I don't think I told them when I left Vietnam, where we had the summit, I said to Chairman Kim, and I think very importantly, I said, look, you're not ready for a deal because he wanted to get rid of one or two sites, but he has five sites. I said, what about the other three sites? That's no good. We're gonna make a deal, let's make a real deal. But they haven't had any tests over the last two years. It's zero. There's a chart and it shows 24 tests, 22 tests, 18 tests. Then I come and once I'm there for a little while, you know, we went through a pretty rough rhetorical period, but once I'm there for a little while, no tests, no tests, no tests. So let's see what happens. But you cannot let Iran have nuclear weapons. I wanna read you something Lindsey Graham said. Okay. Your friend Lindsey Graham. Yes. He was in a magazine profile and he reported on a conversation he had with you and he said that you said to him, the trouble with you, Lindsey, is you wanna invade everywhere except the places I wanna invade. Well. So my question is, where does he wanna invade? But more importantly, where do you wanna invade? I wanna invade if I have to economically. We've created a much stronger country economically than when I took it over. When I took it over, we were heading south. Our GDP would have been very negative. Regulations didn't allow you to do. You know, yesterday's, you probably saw, I was in Louisiana opening up a $10 billion LNG plant that would have never been approved under another type of administration, never. And now you have 10,000 people working with $10 billion invested. We have tremendous power economically. If I can solve things economically, that's the way I want it. So you can reassure people, you're not looking for some kind of conflict in Iran. Well, I'm the one that talks about these wars that are 19 years and people are just there. And don't kid yourself, you do have a military industrial complex. They do like war. You know, in Syria with the caliphate. So I wipe out 100% of the caliphate. That doesn't mean you're not gonna have these crazy people going around blowing up stores and blowing up things. These are seriously ill people. I don't want to say, oh, they're wiped out, you know, ISIS. But I wiped out 100% of the caliphate. I said, I want to bring our troops back home to a place when crazy. They want to keep, you have people here in Washington. They never want to leave. I said, you know what I'll do? I'll leave a couple of hundred soldiers behind. But if it was up to them, they'd bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday people will explain it. Well, this is an example. But you do have a group, and they call it the military industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight. No, I don't want to fight. But you do have situations like Iran. You can't let them have nuclear weapons. You just can't let that happen. So I mean, there you have it. I don't know what to take away from that. That was incredibly difficult to follow. It's clear that he is having a difficult time collecting his thoughts. He says, quote, I want to invade if I have to economically in response to a question about what countries you want to invade. Because Steve Hilted asked him the question. You know, Lindsey Graham said that him and you disagree on which country you should invade. And Steve says, well, which countries do you want to invade? Trump says, I want to invade if I have to economically. And he then shifts to talking about the economy. Oh my God. He's like a toddler or like a dog. Like you have to try to struggle to maintain his attention. You got to keep snapping at him. Hey, we're talking about foreign policy. What are you doing? We're not talking about the economy currently. We're talking about foreign policy. Stay focused. It's insufferable. It's insufferable. He also said at the beginning of the clip there, I just don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons. Oh, well, wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of agreement that stopped them from securing nuclear weapons? Yeah, it was called the Iran deal. And you ripped it up. But he goes on, or actually in the beginning of this clip, the part that I didn't show you, he lies about the Iran deal saying, oh, this actually makes it easier for them to get a nuclear weapon and we can't even inspect them. You dumb idiot. The International Atomic Energy Agency was able to inspect their nuclear facilities and determine whether or not they were compliant with the deal. They were compliant. We're the ones who weren't complying with the deal because part of the reason why they signed on to that agreement with us, which was a multilateral agreement that included other countries, but they signed on to that agreement because we agreed to stop imposing sanctions on them. Well, we backed out of the deal and we reinstituted sanctions under Trump's administration. So if anyone isn't compliant, it's us. We're the ones not complying. We're the ones who are violating that deal. Now, he then talks about how excited people got when he announced that he'd be bringing the troops home from Syria. Except the problem is you haven't followed through. You announced we're gonna bring the troops home and what happened? Are the troops home? Are we out of Syria? No. So he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. On one hand, he'll denounce the influence of the military industrial complex and all of their war mongering and on another hand, he'll talk about, well, you know, if we have to on Twitter, I'll end Iran. I mean, he can't keep his story straight. He just, he doesn't have a core driving foreign policy philosophy and it's infuriating, right? Because this is incredibly important. People are watching in terror as you tweet threats of nuclear annihilation to Iran and when you are asked, very point blank whether or not you want war with them, we can't even get you to focus for two seconds. You start talking about the economy. What is wrong with you? I mean, Jesus Christ, if anyone has not been fit to serve, it's Donald Trump. He is not fit to serve and it's not because I disagree with him politically and I'll disagree with the policies. I'm saying mentally, listen to him speak. It's incoherent. He's babbling. This is a buffoon and it's not just that I think he's unintelligent and has a low IQ. I genuinely believe that mentally he is not capable of dealing with these types of situations hence why the neocons in his administration like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton are able to take advantage of him and essentially steer the ship because he doesn't know what's going on. He's losing his mind, literally, quite literally. So I'll leave that there. There's really no nice clean conclusion to this video. I can't wrap it up nicely with a bow on it because I don't know what the takeaway is. We threatened Iran on Twitter and then when asked about his warmongering in an interview we really didn't get any clear cut response. So I don't know where we are but just be wary of the fact that we may very well be starting a war with Iran which would be horrible. So usually when I start off these videos I'll have some sort of backstory or context or I'll have a monologue but this next clip that I'm about to show you needs no introduction. HUD Secretary Ben Carson testified before the House Financial Services Committee and this happened. I'd also like you to get back to me if you don't mind to explain the disparity in REO rates. Do you know what an REO is? An Oreo. R, no, not an Oreo. An R E O, R E O. Real estate. What's the O stand for? The organization. Owned, real estate owned. That's what happens when a property goes to foreclosure. We call it an REO. And FHA loans have much higher REOs that is they go to foreclosure rather than to loss mitigation or to non foreclosure alternatives like short sales than comparable loans at the GSEs. So I'd like to know why we're having more foreclosures that end in people losing their homes with stains to their credit and disruption to their communities and their neighborhoods at FHA than we are at the GSEs. I would be extremely happy if you'd like to have you work with the people who do that. Well, Mr. Carson, respectfully, that was my day job before I came to Congress. So now it's my job to ask you to work with the people. I'm talking about the people at HUD who do that. I spent decade working with the people at HUD on this problem. So what I would like you to do is to take this back to FHA and to ask the folks at FHA because since 2007, I have been writing about the problems in FHA's servicing. I am a huge fan of FHA. I am a believer in their mission and I am a champion for them. Are you? Of course, I believe in the mission of FHA. What? Of course, I believe in the mission of FHA. What's going on here? This is one of the people and really the type of person who's leading the country. I honestly don't know what to say about that. It's just pure cringe. That's all it is. There's no additional context or commentary that you need. It tells you everything you need to know about the people in power. And it's not like Ben Carson is an imbecile, right? This is a literal brain surgeon. He's a world-renowned brain surgeon. So this should be easy. He's been HUD secretary now for quite some time. You'd think he'd have a grasp of these types of acronyms and terms, but he literally said Oreo. Why would you think she's talking about an Oreo? What? Even if you didn't hear her, just say, can you repeat that? Or if you think she said Oreo, just take a fraction of a second to let that marinate and realize, okay, she's probably not asking me if I know about Oreos. Ben! An Oreo? R, no, not an Oreo. An R-E-O, R-E-O. Real estate? What's the O stand for? The organization. Owned, real estate owned. What a fucking dumbass. Ben, why did you decide to get into politics? This is evidence that you can be really good at one thing, like you can be a genius or an expert at one thing, but in a different sphere, you're just a complete and utter moron. He's in over his head, like at this point, how do you not resign due to embarrassment? Because what you're showing the American people is that you're not educated about this issue, but more importantly, if you were appointed to this position and it was a little bit overwhelming at first, I would expect you to put in the time, put in the due diligence to learn the ins and outs, to be able to answer a question that's very basic. Something that the HUD secretary of all people should be able to answer. You don't need to be able to, you know, refer to someone else in HUD. You should be able to answer this question. You're the HUD secretary. I mean, do you know so little that you can't even bullshit something? If you really know that little, then as someone who's in a really important and powerful position, you need to resign, Ben. I'm not, you know, deluded enough to think that we'd get someone better than Ben Carson, but this is just, this is next level cringe. It's next level embarrassing. And really, if I were Trump, well, I wouldn't ask him to resign because I've said dumber things if I'm Trump. So, yeah, I guess we'll leave that there because there's no point in anything. Everything in 2019 America is so utterly idiotic that it's just, it's breaking me. It's breaking my brain. So last week on the program we talked about how Beto O'Rourke was relaunching his 2020 campaign because obviously the momentum died about a month after he announced. There was, you know, a little bit of a trickle of enthusiasm and then all of a sudden we're not hearing anything from Beto O'Rourke. So on the program last week, we talked about how he would be relaunching his campaign and some of the things he would be changing is one, there would no longer be the self-imposed blackout where he doesn't go on any news programs. And we saw that he went on the view. He had his town hall on CNN, which we're going to talk about. And one other thing that he's trying to do is talk about policy now. He's trying to put that front in center as opposed to platitudes. The problem is that you should have done that from the very beginning. I mean, the policies are what should have been the driving factor that made you want to get in the race. But it's Beto, so man, I was just born to be in it. So that's why he wanted to run and the hands if you can see. So he's a complete and utter joke. But nonetheless, I do see somewhat of an improvement at this scene in town hall. He is talking more about policy, which again, credit where it's due. You should have done this from day one, but nonetheless, he talked about ending the drug war. But where you really see that there has been no fundamental change is when we get to the issue of Medicare for All. Now, I'm gonna play a clip where somebody is going to ask him a question about healthcare who will have a very poignant story about how one treatment for her illness costs thousands of dollars for just one dose. So he's going to give you an answer and it's gonna start out really strong. He's gonna talk about all these things. He's gonna list the issues that affect her and all of us. And here's what I want you to pay attention to. So whenever a politician is asked about Medicare for All or healthcare and the word access comes out of their mouth, I need you to understand that this is a bullshit word. In spite of them using terms like universal or guaranteed or healthcare as a human right, that doesn't necessarily mean that they believe every single American should have healthcare. And the reason why we should assume that that isn't what they believe is when the word access comes out of their mouth, because access is very different than just having healthcare. Like my goal is for you and I to have healthcare. Period, full stop. But politicians like Beto will say, well, I want you to have access to healthcare. Well, having access to something and having something, these are two very different things. So it's one of those words that they use to bullshit you. So he's going to throw around this buzzword. Watch out for that. And then on top of that, he's going to be asked directly about Medicare for All. And his answer is going to be absolutely atrocious. This is basically Beto-Auroric face planting on national television because this answer was that bad. I have multiple sclerosis and this disease is treated with very expensive pharmaceutical drugs. In addition to the ever-increasing costs of my generic drugs, the cost of the primary drug I take for the multiple sclerosis now retails one dose at $21,800. I get this every six weeks, $21,800 for a little bag of white, of clear liquid that is infused in my chest. It has depleted our savings and I worry about how we can afford the ever-increasing costs of these drugs that reduce the progression of my MS. Diane, thank you for being here. And again, for having the courage of sharing your story so we all understand the consequences of the policies that we've adopted in this country. You should be able to get the care that you need to live your life to the fullest and cost should not be an object or a concern or an anxiety of yours. I want you to focus on being well and doing well for others. To add insult to injury, you and I, as taxpayers, have funded so much of the research and development for the cures and the medications and the pharmaceuticals that are sold back to us at the highest prices on the planet. We prevent you from buying from Canada or from Europe or somewhere else where you can purchase it cheaper and we refuse to use the purchasing power of Medicare, the leverage in all of the prescription medications that we buy for those beneficiaries to drive the price down. We have a plan to address this. We're gonna make sure that every single American has access to high quality universal healthcare without exception. There's a plan called Medicare for America that will ensure that everyone who does not have care today is enrolled in Medicare. Those who have insufficient care, they can't make the copay after insurance kicks in or afford the premium or bridge the deductible, they can choose Medicare as well. Those who have employer-sponsored insurance and like it because it works for them and their families are able to keep it and we use the leverage of this government, not just for Medicare, but Medicaid beneficiaries, VA beneficiaries, tri-care beneficiaries to bring the prices of these medications down so that you and other Americans can afford them. That's what we should be able to do. Thank you, Diane, for asking the question. Appreciate it. Yeah. So you mentioned your plan or the plan that you signed on to Medicare for America, why not Medicare for all? I think about Diane, I think about Joey, a young man, 27 years old that I met in Laredo, Texas. He's been to a doctor once in his life because he does not have insurance and that doctor told him that he had diabetes, that he had glaucoma and that he would be dead before the age of 40 because he's not getting any care right now in this country. Joey, Diane, others, they don't have time for us to get to the perfect solution. If we were to start from scratch, maybe we would start with a single payer, but we've got to work with the system that we have here today. The surest, quickest way to get there is Medicare for America. It guarantees every single person in this country gets the care that they need to live to their full potential and do those things that they were placed on this planet to perform in the first place. So that's why I support that plan. Thank you for that. So health emergencies can't wait for a plan like Medicare for all. That's why he's not supporting it. That sounds familiar. It's almost like somebody else who was also a political loser said something similar. Health emergencies can't wait for us to have some theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass. They don't have time for us to get to the perfect solution. That argument is so stupid. I am surprised that the audience didn't laugh at him. Like I was actually offended that they applauded him because that answer did not deserve a response. He was clearly bullshitting. And I need you to realize something. Most of the time whenever a politician starts out an answer by name dropping a particular person that they talk to. Well, listen, I know this person named Joshua who I spoke with. They're giving themselves time to think of a way to dodge the question. He's trying to talk about this personal anecdote in order to think of what he's going to say to get himself out of the corner that he was backed in. So this is why his answer is so stupid. I mean, it's idiotic. Quite frankly, it's idiotic. He says that the reason why we can't have Medicare for All is because that's just too difficult. We need a really quick solution. And if you do Medicare for All, you're starting over. Except that's literally the opposite of what Medicare for All is about. What is Medicare for All? Simply put, you take an existing policy that we already have Medicare. People love it. But you improve it. You close all of the gaps and then you expand it to 100% of the population. How is that starting over? In what world would that be considered as starting over? That makes zero sense whatsoever. And this idea that, oh, well, if we do single payer now after we already have an established for profit system, that's just too difficult. It's starting over. Do you think any other country who has some type of universal healthcare system started with single payer? No, these were things that were fought for. It was fought for in Canada. It was fought for in other countries. So this is a bullshit thing that he's saying to weasel out of the fact that his policy, Medicare for Everyone, this is a corporate friendly policy. That's all that this is about. And it's funny how he doesn't support Medicare for All, but he's coming up with a different plan named Medicare for Everyone. I mean, semantically, this isn't the same thing, is it not? But it's not. Because what he's saying is, I want you to be able to keep your insurance if you get it through your employer and you like it. Okay, well, that sounds lovely, better or work, but the problem with that is you're still leaving these for-profit health insurance companies in place. And if you do that, then what's going to happen? They will use their power and influence the chip away at our single payer system. They'll try to pressure lawmakers to privatize parts of it so they get a bigger share of the profits. And all you're doing is setting up another system like Obamacare where ultimately it will fail. And what makes this policy Medicare for Everyone, quote, unquote, especially disingenuous is that he's appropriating that word Medicare. He's taking basically Bernie Sanders policy name, Medicare for All, and he's stealing it and he's trying to convince you that it's something it's not. He wouldn't call it Medicare for Everyone if he wasn't trying to gaslight you. And this is what a lot of people are doing. We have Pete Buttigieg, who has Medicare for Everyone Who Wants It. So you see the word Medicare in a lot of healthcare proposals for these 2020 candidates. When you ask him, do you support Medicare for All in the sense that you believe healthcare should be free at the point of service? They'll say, oh, well, you know, something, something. I know this guy named Joshua who I talked to in Iowa who said this, this and that. It's all bullshit. There's one candidate who is especially strong on Medicare for All and that is Bernie Sanders. Understand that what Beto O'Rourke is saying here is completely nonsensical. To even suggest that Medicare for All is starting over is so disingenuous. I think you can actually say he's just lying because it's not starting over. You are taking an existing plan, you're expanding it and you are improving it. How is that starting over? And furthermore, to take this to the next logical step, if Medicare for All, where you take a plan that we already have and expand it and improve it, if that's starting over, then why isn't his plan, Medicare for Everyone, not also starting over? I mean, aren't you both doing certain things? You're tweaking Medicare. He wants to, I'm assuming, reduce the eligibility age to 55 and maybe offer some sort of Medicare buy-in. I don't know what he wants, but I mean, how is that not starting over? How is the ACA not starting over? Understand that these are bullshit tactics. He doesn't want to support Medicare for All. The reason why he's very careful about his words here is because he wants a pro-corporate friendly policy to make sure that he doesn't upset the health insurance industry providers. So Beto O'Rourke is a wolf in sheep's clothing and he's nothing more than a fraud. And the problem with Beto O'Rourke is that he may be a really nice talker. He may, you know, wave his arms around and get people excited and knows how to work a crowd. But at the end of the day, if he gets elected, do you honestly believe that your life will be substantially better? Absolutely not, because this is not someone who's looking out for you. He's looking out for his own career because he's just born to be in it and that's what he cares about. It's to get himself into a position where he's powerful and he's popular and it's pathetic. Beto O'Rourke is absolutely a joke and when it comes to the issue of healthcare, he is dead wrong and if he doesn't support Medicare for All, he needs to go out of his way to explain how Medicare for Everyone is not the same thing as Medicare for All and maybe don't name your policy something that sounds similar to Medicare for All because it sounds like you're trying to gaslight people. It sounds like you're trying to dupe people, Beto. So maybe you should change the name. Maybe you should try to actually be upfront about your ideal for America where, you know, we make a few tweaks around the edges but at the end of the day, you know, the status quo isn't necessarily shaken and these for-profit health insurance companies that are predatory, they can still make profits off of us by denying us the care that we need. So Ajit Pai of the FCC has been chair for a little more than two years and as you can see, he has already done so much damage. He repealed net neutrality that's currently an ongoing legal battle but he may be doing one more thing that if this goes through would cause irreparable damage potentially because what he's been doing is he's been empowering these internet service providers to basically do what they want. He is a right-winger who doesn't believe in regulation. He believes in self-regulation and that if the market is a failure then it will self-correct but the problem is that hasn't been working. So for example, this has kind of been his approach to robocalls and spam callers. He's had this more hands-off approach and John Oliver did a really phenomenal segment where he talked about essentially Ajit Pai's approach to robocallers has been completely inadequate and literally under his watch, phone service is being destroyed in America because nine times out of 10, I'm sure you will notice when you get a phone call it's from a spam caller or some type of robot. So this is happening under his watch and he has the authority to do something about it and he's using not to. Now another thing that he wants to do which would be a disaster is approve another very big merger. And if he does this, this really could be damaging for consumers because as Gigi Sohn of Wired reports earlier this week, FCC chair Ajit Pai announced that he would soon be asking his fellow commissioners to approve the merger of two of the four nationwide wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint. After a year of deliberation, including thousands of pages of legal and economic filings by proponents and opponents and three congressional hearings, Pai has now decided that a handful of promises made just days ago by the merging parties puts this $26 billion transaction in the public interest and it appears that at least two of his fellow commissioners agree with him but these promises are speculative, unsubstantiated and entirely unenforceable. For example, T-Mobile and Sprint commit to deploying a new 5G network that would cover 97% of Americans within three years of the closing of the deal and 99% of Americans within six years. They further promised that 85% of rural Americans will have access to those networks within three years and 90% will be covered within six years but nothing in T-Mobile's filings prove that they can meet these goals and much like the broken promises of other big broadband telephone and cable providers they are wildly optimistic. Given that at a minimum, 8% of all Americans and nearly 25% of rural residents don't have either fixed or mobile broadband coverage today, these numbers appear to be nothing more than an enticement for the Trump FCC to declare a fake victory in the so-called race to 5G. Pai also points favorably to the company's vow not to raise prices on its services for three years after the merger is consummated but the mere fact that T-Mobile believes it must make this promise itself is an admission that post merger there would not be enough competition in the wireless market to constrain price increases. So in short, this is what they're trying to do to get this merger approved. They're saying, hey, Ajit Pai, listen, if you approve of this merger, if you greenlight this, then not only will we do all of these wonderful things where we extend broadband but then you get to boast about how when you were the FCC chairman, we expanded 5G and we expanded rural coverage. So you get the most about it and also you do something for a large multinational corporation that will be more than willing to employ you after you leave the FCC. But as the article states, they're not gonna do any of this. This is wildly optimistic and even if they did do this, let's say, hypothetically speaking, that all of these promises are going to actually come to fruition. Well, let's say they violate another regulation. What's gonna happen? The problem is the FCC and other regulatory bodies won't really be able to do much because these companies are becoming so large, so gargantuan that they're literally amassing more power and money than regulatory bodies. So what's happening with Comcast and NBC Universal, for example, is that whenever there's a regulation that they don't like or if they violate a regulation, what do they do? They litigate again and again and again and the problem is that governments don't have the money to keep fighting these companies in court. So they lose because all of this costs money and these companies now are so big that they have more money and as a result, more power than the regulatory bodies that are overseeing them. So they're literally becoming so huge that you can't regulate them because if the FCC proposes some type of role that affects internet service providers in the future when this shill is out of office, well, then they can say, all right, well, guess what? You think that zero rating is something that we shouldn't be doing, we shouldn't be giving our streaming service preferential treatment, so was. And then we'll keep appealing, we'll keep appealing and all of this costs money. So they have the money to be in a state of perma litigation. And second of all, these companies become so huge and gobble up such gigantic portions of the market that they can impose whatever anti-consumer policies they want and you can't do anything about that because if you don't like, for example, what Comcast is doing, if you don't like that, for whatever reason they raise the cost of your monthly internet bill, what are you gonna do? You're gonna cancel, then you're left without internet or you have one other option that's inferior, maybe cheaper, but maybe it doesn't offer as much. Maybe it's not as reliable. So what Ajit Pai is doing here is he is single-handedly doing irreparable harm because he is allowing these companies to become so gigantic that one, they hurt the consumer or they can hurt the consumer by imposing anti-consumer policies and two, they will be able to govern themselves essentially and they can thwart whatever regulation possible because they are so big now that they virtually have unlimited resources for litigation until the end of time, whereas government is not the same. Like these regulatory bodies, they have limited resources at their disposal. So if a company wants to fight them on something, then I mean, they can't do that forever. These companies can. So do you understand the problem? Ajit Pai is empowering them in a way we haven't seen. Like he may be one of the most destructive FCC chairs ever. And one line in this article that really stood out to me, it demonstrates just how horrible Ajit Pai is. So in the two and a half years since Pai took over the agency, it has not made one decision contrary to the interests of the big mobile broadband carriers, even in the face of uncontroverted evidence that T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T sold specific geolocation information to data brokers who then sold it to bounty hunters without their customer's permission. This FCC has done nothing about it. Think about how crazy this is. He did not make a single decision that's contrary to the interests of these ISPs. Now the one thing that he did was he essentially stopped the Sinclair merger, but when it comes to these internet service providers, these broadband carriers, he has 100% of the time essentially sided with them. So let's talk about Ajit Pai's legacy here. He repealed that neutrality within a year of becoming the FCC chairman. He has allowed robocalls to essentially destroy phone service in America. And now he's allowing these companies to merge and become so gigantic that they're more powerful than regulatory agencies that you can't govern if they have that much power. This is madness, this is insane, but this is what he's doing. Single-handedly, this one person, this one asshole shill is doing this, ruining mobile, ruining the internet because he thinks that the market can regulate itself. Well, if you feel that way, then why do you work as the head of a regulatory body? Step down because these companies have one goal and that is to increase profits and they will step on anyone and any agency in government to do that, to get more money in their wallets. And Ajit Pai is just turning a blind eye. So we've got an update with regard to the Julian Assange case, and unfortunately what we all kind of expected would happen did in fact end up happening because Donald Trump's administration is in fact pursuing Julian Assange further. His Justice Department is indicting him and as Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman of the New York Times report, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, has been indicted on 70 new counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010 the Justice Department announced on Thursday, a novel case that raises profound first amendment issues. The new charges were part of a superseding indictment obtained by the Trump administration that significantly expanded the legal case against Mr. Assange who is already fighting extradition proceedings in London based on an earlier hacking related count brought by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia. The Justice Department's decision to pursue Espionage Act charges signals a dramatic escalation under President Trump to crack down on leaks of classified information and aims squarely at first amendment protections for journalists. Most recently, law enforcement officials charged a former intelligence analyst with giving classified documents to the Intercept, a national security news website. Legal scholars believe that prosecuting reporters over their work would violate the first amendment but the prospect has not yet been tested in court because the government had never charged a journalist under the Espionage Act. The Obama administration considered charging Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act but never did out of concerns that such a case could chill traditional journalism. And think about this, this is unprecedented. No other administration has charged a journalist under the Espionage Act. It's why Obama, even though he wanted to probably prosecute Julian Assange because Julian Assange exposed war crimes. Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks this information that showed how our government was committing war crimes and Julian Assange published this when Obama was president. So if anyone wanted to prosecute Julian Assange it probably was Barack Obama but even him, someone who was aggressively going after whistleblowers, decided to not take it here where he went after a journalist because he knew that the implications of that could be devastating. But here Trump is doing something that is unprecedented. And I know that we just talked about this last week on the program, but I wanna play the clip from Joe Rogan's podcast where Tulsi Gabbard talked about this because I think that she does a phenomenal job breaking down what's at stake here and why Trump is doing this. What happened with his arrest and all this stuff that just went down I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech. We look at what happened under the previous administration under Obama. They were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins when you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who's publishing information or saying things that the government doesn't want you to say. The government doesn't, sharing information, the government doesn't want you to share. And so the fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers. And you can look to both those in the traditional media but also those in new media and also on every one of us as American. It was kind of a warning call saying, look what happened to this guy, it could happen to you. Could happen to any one of us. Now everything that she said is absolutely crucial and really important and really I commend her for being a leader here, but what she said at the end there was especially important. So this is what Donald Trump's administration is doing. They're communicating a very specific message, quote, it was kind of a warning call saying, look what happened to this guy, it could happen to you, it could happen to any one of us. So what Donald Trump is doing here is using Julian Assange as an example. So that way if another journalist publishes some sort of leak, they worry that Donald Trump will aggressively prosecute them in the way that he's prosecuting Julian Assange. So this is, to Donald Trump, I'm assuming not just about Julian Assange, this is about sending a message to other journalists. Hey, if you're gonna publish these leaks, you may be personally culpable. You yourself. So watch out. That's the message that he's trying to send. And we all know that he's been trying to desperately stop the leaks that have been coming out of his administration. So he's very much anti-leaker, right? That's obvious. But what he's trying to do is cover his own ass and protect himself so that way no other journalist gets classified information that potentially exposes Donald Trump. So this is absolutely, one, morally reprehensible. And two, the case against him, it's incredibly dubious, but really the biggest takeaway is the implications. This poses a threat to the First Amendment and press freedom. So I don't know how this will play out, but I would encourage everyone to pay very close attention. Even if you're one of these liberals who hates Julian Assange, please understand this is not about Julian Assange. This goes beyond Julian Assange. This goes beyond his personality. This goes beyond Donald Trump. This is about protecting journalists and their ability under the First Amendment to remain protected to publish this information that was leaked to them that was classified or whatnot. So pay attention because this is incredibly important and this could have absolutely devastating implications, not just for press freedom, but democracy as a whole. Because if we're not able to publish this information that we need to publish so people are aware of what our government is doing so they can hold them accountable, then that could spell disaster for democracy or certainly put us on this trajectory where democracy will be continuously eroded. It's already being eroded, right? But if we go down this path, it's another slide into authoritarianism and it's just disturbing. So please pay attention and educate yourself about this if you haven't already learned because this is really important. So throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has continuously done things that are completely morally indefensible. And what I'm about to tell you about something that he is possibly going to do falls right in line with this trend of him doing things that are downright morally egregious. And why he's doing this is especially infuriating because basically the reason why he's about to do what we are all speculating he will do is because Fox News told him that this is what he should be doing. So what is he going to do? Well, he is contemplating pardoning war criminals. American war criminals who didn't just accidentally kill civilians because they were careless. They went out of their way to kill civilians because they're psychopaths. So for more on this, we go to Jamil Buwi of the New York Times who writes, "'Last year, a federal jury in Washington "'convicted Nicholas Slatin, "'a former security contractor of first-degree murder "'for his role in killing one of 14 Iraqi civilians "'who died in 2007 in a mass shooting "'that also injured more than a dozen others. "'Matthew Goldstein, an army green beret, "'was charged late last year with the murder "'of an unarmed Afghan man during a 2010 deployment. "'Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who served in Iraq "'was reported to authorities by his own men "'who witnessed him stabbing a defenseless teenage captive "'to death, picking off a school-aged girl "'and an old man from a sniper's roost "'and indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods "'with rockets and machine gun fire. "'There are others, all accused of war crimes "'while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. "'President Trump apparently wants to give them "'a presidential pardon timed for Memorial Day. "'Trump is not responding to a groundswell "'of public support for these men, "'nor are current and former military leaders "'calling for leniency, just the opposite. "'They have urged the White House to abandon this plan. "'Absent evidence of innocence or injustice, "'the wholesale pardon of U.S. service members "'accused of war crimes, "'signals our troops and allies "'that we don't take the law of armed conflict seriously. "'Martin Dempsey, a retired general "'and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "'said on Twitter. "'So this isn't a case where the military generals "'are saying, Trump, please pardon these war criminals. "'They're advising him to not do that "'because that makes the military look bad. "'That makes it look as if we are a bunch "'of bloodthirsty warmongers "'who just go to these other countries, "'we invade these countries, "'and then we kill civilians just for the hell of it. "'And we're talking about literal psychopaths, "'literal psychopaths. "'I'm gonna link you in the description box "'to a video that Kyle did on this "'over at Secular Talk "'because he kind of goes into great detail here, "'and the details are grotesque. "'Like the people who he is considering pardoning "'just aim rocket launchers at civilian houses "'or encourage their fellow service members to do that. "'They'll just take aim at a little girl, kill her. "'So these are psychopaths. "'Like these people are not just "'accidentally killing civilians, "'which that would be a tragedy "'and devastating in and of itself, "'but they're going out of their way to kill civilians.'" And there was also kind of an attempt at a cover-up because when people saw what was happening, they tried to report this and they were told basically to not tell anyone. So this is a disgusting story and the prospect of pardoning them, it's really flabbergasting. And again, military generals, joint chiefs of staff, they're saying, what are you doing? Why would you do this? But here's why Donald Trump is doing this. Take a look at this compilation by Media Matters. Fox News is telling him exactly what they think he should do and he's doing it. The president may be preparing pardons for servicemen accused of war crimes. Pete, this is something you've been on for. Yeah, first of all, I can't stand that headline accused of war crimes. They're not war criminals, they're warriors who have now been accused of certain things that are under review. Basically you have this war hero, American war hero, step forward and say, I'm gonna kill the bomb maker. I don't want him to kill any more of my comrades. And now the Pentagon, because he admitted that in an interview with Breitbeer. The rules, the bureaucracy, the rules of war get twisted in certain ways where now war heroes are being prosecuted like criminals. He got in some trouble, got him some legal trouble. He ends up in jail in a maximum security prison. And if this crime was committed in Chicago, maybe he would be free and at home with his family. But we allow people to create and incite race riots, but they're found night guilty. Plus, it's the battlefield. Isn't the goal to kill ISIS? And he made a mistake, what, you know, some of these federal... Kill the bad guy the wrong way. He killed a bad guy. Because of catch of release, because we're killing bad guys the right way, we're releasing these guys and then we're capturing them again, killing someone who we know killed Americans. Who's a terrorist? Who's a terrorist? I just don't know of an American who's unhappy that there's one less Taliban bomb maker trying to kill our troops on the planet. Why wasn't that bomb maker on the kill list? Because they're not killing the enemy in the right way. They're killing compassionately. Like the pocket square. And okay, yeah, and when buildings start blowing up over here and they don't really have a compassionate way to take out skyscrapers. Academic rules of rules of engagement, which have been tied in the hands of our war fighters for too long. He's charged with, he was convicted of murder and who he murdered were members of the enemy on a battlefield he was sent to fight for this country. He made a tough call, he kills the guy. This story percolates to the top because the Pentagon is deciding to prosecute this great break, which I think is a lot of us looking sideways at it, saying if he did his job and killed a bad guy, how in the world are we now prosecuting him? So you have to look at this case as just an overzealous out of control prosecution that's trying to make a career out of taking down a Navy SEAL. Yeah, the army over prosecutes. I mean, look at Clint Lorenz, the decision he made on the battlefield in Afghanistan. These lies and rumors that were cobbled together by millennial SEALs are shameless and utterly false. I heard from a lot of members of our military on this issue who were completely outraged, who were saying, you know what, you have to be able to defend these people who stand up for us and their decisions that they make there in the line of fire every single day. We've been able to raise over $80,000 in the last two weeks for this defense through the sales of these shirts. And Andrea, to paint this picture, and I know the president's aware of this, he's evaluating this, he's gotta take action. Sean, you keep fighting for Eddie, and the president doesn't usually let these things go by without commenting. So hopefully he weighs in and steps up and will do a lot of good for a lot of people. What you have endured is more than most men or women in this country will ever know. And so I want you to know, we express that gratitude to you and to your husband. Sean and Andrea, thanks so much. We have your back, and I look forward to having Eddie on the show soon. They're gonna love this. These are the good guys. These are the war fighters. And making a move like this by Memorial Day would be, I would be, wow. So what you just witnessed there were a bunch of lies. You had one woman in the midst of that compilation say, oh, well, the people who reported this, they're lying. They're millennial, I forgot the word that she used, but they're millennials in the military who are lying. You had, you know, Fox News hosts try to reiterate this point that, oh, well, you know, they didn't kill bad guys the right way. What? We're not talking about them just being overly cruel to enemy combatants. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about civilians that they murdered in cold blood. That's what we're talking about. But they're trying to say that these war criminals are heroes just simply because every single troop is an American hero, no matter what. There's no room for nuance, no room to actually look at their actions. If you are in uniform, you're a hero. I don't think anyone in the military would even agree with that because that's such a broad generalization that it doesn't even make sense. But that's what they're saying and everything they're urging Trump to do, they're doing it. At the end there, he said, how wonderful would it be if Donald Trump pardoned them on Memorial Day? That's what he's planning. So think about this. Fox News hosts are so powerful that all they have to do is float a particular policy that Donald Trump should carry out and this will actually galvanize him to take action. Imagine that, imagine the immense amount of power these pundits on TV have. You bloviate all day on Fox News, share your uninformed opinion and you have enough power to get the president of the United States to take action. And they're trying to go Trump into doing this under false pretenses by literally lying about these war criminals here. Like they were bragging about the people they killed. Like they were exchanging photographs of the slain bodies. These are literal psychopaths. A normal person would not just willingly kill another human being. These aren't people who are, you know, enemy combatants. We're talking about civilians but Donald Trump may pardon them because Donald Trump doesn't have a moral core. Donald Trump just does what he thinks will please the people at Fox News. He's literally doing it because Fox News has some uninformed opinions about this. Sorry, but I don't think that these psychopaths should be roaming the streets because if they're willing to kill civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and cold blood, what makes you think they wouldn't do that here? So this is a disturbing story and the fact that Trump is even considering this, it goes to show you that he has no moral core. He just does what he thinks will appease Fox News. Disgusting. So I don't know why this is happening but there are certain Democratic Party presidential candidates who are trying to promote their campaigns by propping up the US war machine. And they're doing this, I'm assuming, to make themselves more popular among young people. So that's weird. And an example of this came just a couple of weeks ago when Mayor Pete floated the idea of a national service program where young people all serve one year. Now I don't like that idea and I especially don't like the idea of making that mandatory. And in an interview with Rachel Maddow, he actually talked about the prospect of making that compulsory. And Maddow even brought up the draft. So we keep getting crazier and crazier and he didn't unequivocally condemn that and say, you know, no, we're not talking about the draft, of course not because that word has very negative connotations but he just kind of was like, eh, okay. So this is certainly not something that I think would appeal to young Democratic Party primary voters but nonetheless, in addition to that, Pete Buttigieg has attacked Donald Trump because he lied about being disabled in order to dodge the draft for the Vietnam War. And what I find interesting is that Pete Buttigieg isn't the only Democrat who has criticized Donald Trump for this because Tammy Duckworth is another person who has clowned on him and called him Cadet Bonespers because he apparently said he had Bonespers in order to dodge the draft. They honestly believe that that's how they should be attacking Donald Trump. They have no clue how tone-deaf they are because as Will Menaker puts it, skating on Vietnam is the only normal, relatable and even moral thing Trump has ever done in his entire life, exactly. Because this is not how you wanna hit Donald Trump because if you ask millennials, people my age, would you actually fight in a war and kill other human beings in the event you were drafted? Our answer, I'd bet nine times out of 10 would be absolutely not. It's out of the question. No way. I'm not killing other human beings because my government is telling me that the people in this other country are the enemy. Fuck outta here. It's a ridiculous proposition. And what really is irritating to me is that what I see is that these are Democrats who are preying on the economic desperation of young people because the people who I know personally, like my friends, they've only ever joined the military if they felt like they didn't have any other option. Like if they couldn't find a job, if they couldn't afford to go to college, they joined the military and I actually just reconnected with one of my buddies who got back from serving and I asked them, so what'd you think? How was it? His answer, worst fucking experience of my life. So they're really preying on people's desperation and trying to exploit that in order to prop up the US war machine. And the fact that Democrats are doing this, you'd expect Republicans who are loyal servants to the military industrial complex, you'd expect them to do that, but for Democrats to do it this often now, it just demonstrates how far the Democratic Party has shifted to the right. Now moving on from Pete Buttigieg and Tammy Duckworth, there's another person who has floated the idea of encouraging Americans to join the military. It's someone who none of us has ever heard of, Seth Moulton. He is the 157,000th presidential candidate and he's really excited about his plan. Take a look. That's why I'm calling today for the biggest call to national service since World War II. A way to take us forward and meet the challenges of this new economy and a changing world. You know, America has always risen to the challenges that face our country with a call to service. That's how we have surmounted the Great Depression. It's how we won World War II and it's how we put a man on the moon by calling everyone to get behind a common mission and having everyone do their part. And so I'm asking all 33 million young Americans to consider serving their country as well. Not to make it a requirement, but an expectation that Americans will take apart in our future, take apart in serving our country. And if America, if you invest in America, then America will invest in you. And so coupled with this call to service is a new national education guarantee modeled on the GI bill to say that if you serve your country, you will get to go to college or to vocational school. We will make that investment in you. That's the kind of forward-looking policy that I think we need to meet the challenges of a changing world, to address climate change, to bring broadband to rural communities. And to say to America, we need a common mission. We need to be united going forward as a country. Ha! Gay! Thanks, I hate it. And he's saying this with his big stupid ass grin on his face as if people are going to hear this and think, wow, what an amazing proposal. Quote, I'm calling today for the biggest call to national service since World War II. And he wants all 33 million young Americans to consider serving. Why? See, during World War II, there was actually a threat to the world, to international peace and stability. Hitler, the Nazis. But now, what's the threat? We're kind of the threat. We're invading countries and we're trying to invade more countries. So what are we fighting? What are we doing? All we're doing is we are illegally invading other countries to steal their resources. That's what this is about. Don't take my word for it. Take John Bolton's word for it, who said a couple of months ago in an interview with Fox Business that wouldn't it be nice if we got into Venezuela and allowed US oil companies to profit off of that? So this doesn't make sense, but what he's trying to do is formulate this plan to where he entices Americans to join. And he's trying to frame this as, well, we're going to have them join to fight climate change. Sure, Jan. But here's what he says. He wants to launch a large-scale national recruiting effort to reach all 33.4 million Americans aged 17 to 24 and ask them to serve their country, provide an education benefit modeled on the GI Bill concept, 60% of in-state tuition or a job training benefit up to $14,000 for a one-year commitment, 80% or a job training benefit of up to $19,000 for a two-year commitment, 100% or 24,000 in training for a three-year commitment. And he wants to create a federal green core, build a new national service organization with the mission of combating climate change and protecting our environment, make national service, a cabinet position, elevate the administrator of the newly-restructured national and community service. You know, I'm just, I'm not gonna explain anymore or read the rest because I've already lost interest. This just sounds like a really stupid plan. And he's pandering by trying to make this about climate change. But this is why his plan to recruit us to join the military, specifically to fight climate change is not thought out. Because if you truly wanted to organize this mass of people to fight climate change, what would be better? What would be more effective? Opening it up to everyone to get a job to help increase green infrastructure in the country, invest in wind, solar and hydro, or limit that eligibility pool to 17 to 24-year-olds and just have them fight climate change but join the military to do it. Like this plan doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense. And this is my question. So if he wants to entice young people to join by offering up these benefits, such as healthcare and education, well, how about this? Here's my counter offer. We're already serving our country by working and paying taxes. So how about you just give us those things anyway, give us healthcare and education anyway and not make young people have to join the military in order to get those benefits? I mean, why should we have to dedicate a year to three years of our short lives to serve the military industrial complex, to fight for US imperialism, to fight for a machine that profits off of death and destruction, why should we have to do that and jump through that hoop just to get healthcare and education? Why can't we just get healthcare and education? Why do we have to sign up to kill people who pose no threat to us in order to get healthcare and education? This is why this logic is just, it's asked backwards and it's honestly, it's offensive that he thinks we should have to do that to get healthcare. Fuck you, Seth. Give us healthcare anyway. That's what our tax dollars are supposed to be paying for. Not wars in the Middle East and North Africa, but we pay tax dollars because we're supposed to get a return on that investment. So fuck you. How dare you suggest that we need to go kill people to get an education? This infuriates me because it shows how out of touch Democrats are and this idiot is so proud of this dumb plan that if you go to his website, it's literally one of his biggest platform planks. That's how proud of it he is. And by the way, if you're curious as to how well this plan was received by people, well, he got ratioed into oblivion. Because I just, I find this predatory. I find it predatory. Like, young people are so desperate currently. They know that they can't go to college unless they expect to be burdened with student loan debt that they're gonna have until they die. So what you're trying to do is pray on them. Say, hey, you want some relief? You want healthcare? Join the military. Join the US empire effort to invade every fucking country that we want to invade. And then we'll give you those things. How about this? How about you go fuck yourself, Seth? And you work to get us those things anyway because these are things that should be guaranteed to us on the basis of citizenship, not on the basis of us signing up to kill people who pose no threat to us. The more that Democrats keep jumping on board with this pro-US empire agenda, and this national service recommendation, the more that they harp away at Donald Trump being a draft dodger, the more that they look tone deaf and out of touch. Hello, everyone. I have a treat for you. I'm here with three very special guests. You know them from the hit Netflix documentary, Knock Down the House. I'm here with Paula Jean Swerigin, Corey Bush, and Amy Vleila. So assuming that you just finished the film and you want to learn more about these very fantastic ladies, we're going to get the rundown. So thank you all so much for coming on the program. Thank you for having us over here. We covered your campaign on the Humanist Report for more than a year, but one thing that I wanted to ask you all about was this is the impression I got. Running for Congress is very difficult. And on top of that, you all have different things that make it more difficult for you. First of all, being a woman and running for Congress is more difficult. Second of all, in your positions, you were running against an incumbent, which makes it incredibly difficult. And Corey, one thing that I wanted to ask you about, you were talking to someone who said, people don't even think they just vote when you were giving him a flyer. So here's what I want to pose to you guys. How do you overcome this voter apathy? Because you guys have talked to hundreds, if not thousands of people. So we'll open that up and start with Corey. How do you overcome voter apathy? With a message, and actually going to where the people are, I think that's the mistake that we make. We continue to do the same thing. Okay, you go to the churches, you go to the community events, you go to townships, award meetings and all of that, but who, and then you go knock doors of registered voters that voted in the last three years. But what about the people that didn't? So those are the doors we need to knock. Those are the places we need to go. We need to go to the club. We need to go to the bars. We need to go to the grocery store, stand outside. We need to go to the thrift store. We need to go like places like that, go to the family reunion and crash it. That's what we need to do. And one thing that really struck me with that conversation you had with this constituent, Corey in the film was that he said, look, Clay has seniority and that counts. And you said, well, but who does it count for? And he kind of remarked that you have guts because I haven't seen a Democrat want to challenge a Clay in ages. So you guys are all running against these really big names. Paula, you were running against Joe Manchin, a US senator, which is a little bit different than running in the house, someone with a little bit more name recognition. So what was it like going up against such a gigantic political machine? Well, it was hard to run a campaign grassroots and we learned a lot of lessons. You know, we did something amazing. Everybody talks about it being a big loss, but actually it's a big win for West Virginia because we have such a, you know, it's so corrupt here, our government's so corrupt and we won 30% of the vote. We got more votes against the sitting incumbent in 75 years and I got more votes than any Republican on the ballot. So we've shown them that, you know, we're tired of the threats to our democracy in West Virginia. Can you talk about engagement? We need to see more people run for office. We can't motivate people to go to the polls and vote for people and they don't feel like they have something to vote for. And people, I think people are tired of the lesser two evils. So, you know, especially here in this state, we actually got some great candidates in our house this year. We got Daniel Walker and Sammy Brown, really great grassroots candidates and they're doing a really good stellar job. I've seen with their teacher strike here in West Virginia. I mean, people are doing big things but, you know, people are always asking why does West Virginia vote against their interest? You know, their best interest. We have more Democrats and independents registered in this state than we do Republicans. But you look at what happened in 2016 with Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders went all 55 counties. The super delegates went against the popular vote. Come general time, you know, voter's registration was down. People wasn't going to the polls because they didn't feel like their vote mattered. People actually showed up for the polls that knew about me and learned about me because they were excited about my campaign because I was a West Virginia. You know, I care about my state and we need more of that. We're not only in West Virginia, but across the country. That's, you know, when, you know, it was hard. The biggest challenge was name recognition. We could have done better. We could, you know, but we also learned really inventive ways to campaign in West Virginia, you know, because, you know, some districts, it's easier. You can walk, you know, even when you run for house, you can walk the district, be done with it. We don't have expensive broadband in West Virginia. It's hard to canvas up on these mountains and rural areas. Some people don't have access to television. They still have landlines. They don't have cell phones, you know, and it's, it comes along with the state because people still don't have adequate sewage systems. One of the most effective things that I did was putting ads in the Sunday paper, believe it or not, because people go and buy coupons and people are still buying that newspaper. You just have to be inventive. And when, if people decide to run for office, you know, there's just, there's just not one basic way that you can do it. You have to look at your area, your state and what you're doing to figure out every day when you wake up, how am I gonna reach the most voters today? Right. And that's really important, especially when, like you said, name recognition is such a huge factor. And when you're going up against these political machines who people already know and they don't really even think about, they just realize I'm voting for them. Like there was one scene that really struck me in the film where Ocasio-Cortez was, she was canvassing, she was giving out flyers and one lady said, I'm going with Crowley. Didn't even wanna hear what you said. So you have these people that are established. And one thing that was unique Amy with you was that what we didn't see in the film was you actually went up against numerous political establishments. So we kind of talked about on my program, the Harry Reid stronghold in Nevada, which we didn't see. You went up against Ruben Kiwin. You then went on to go up against numerous people who were strong in Nevada politics. You have a candidate that was endorsed by Joe Biden. So talk about what it was like going through this process, Amy, where you start off going up against one candidate, he essentially gets knocked out. And now you're going up against the range of other candidates. What was that like? And how did you adapt? Like, was it easy to adapt that quickly? Because you certainly had a bunch of random things thrown at you. So initially I thought I was going against, you know, Ruben Kiwin who was a sitting loved congressman and probably within a month or so, then he was stated that he was not gonna run for reelection. So the field was opened up at that point. And I was in the race a little bit and then we had Pat Spearman came in who was a state senator. And then we had this now congressman, Norseford come in and he was actually living in Washington DC area with his family. They lived out there the entire time he ran. He actually registered to vote the same day that he registered to run for Congress and rented a house in the district. So he was brought back specifically to run for this seat in my district. So it was hard. You know, you can see that even the transformation of my physical look, the stress was taking a complete toll on my body, my mind. We were constantly fighting against, you know, curve balls being thrown every step of the way. When it looked like we were actually making gains in the numbers, it looked really good and promising. Then we had the dump, it was like, shum. We had an ex-president, an ex-vice president, a current presidential candidate. We had, you know, different unions. All of them came in and it was just like they rallied around this candidate, the chosen candidate. And then he was supported by the DCCC. And then there was an outside expenditure of half a million dollars. So as we were fighting our way, he didn't raise substantially on his own more than I did. But when they saw he wasn't raising, you see that he actually, the money started coming in at that point. You even see Crowley was donating to him. They were more worried about my race than most others. And again, they didn't pay attention to the Bronx girl out there that was running a really good campaign and actually brought them more habits than I probably could have because of her ability to reach out to the millennials. Yeah, and that's really, one thing that stood out to me in the film was the call, Amy, that you had with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So there's this scene where you lost and you have her on speaker and she says, in order for one of us to be successful, a hundred of us have to win. And that was such a profound statement. I think they even put it in the trailer because that really, it shows how difficult it is and it shows each of your stories and how every single one of you went up against basically a machine and not just a local machine, but a national machine, this network that was basically, it seemed like to me, like the mafia, like you were fighting against this huge machine that was so difficult. So here's what I wanna ask you all. Now that you all have experience, what's the one thing you think that you've learned that's the most important? Corrie, I wanna start with you because this fight is not over for you. I mean, the fight isn't over for all of you, but you're running for Congress again in 2020, which is super exciting. So taking this knowledge that you have now, what's gonna be the biggest thing that you carry with you into 2020 in terms of knowledge of what you need to do? So one thing that I need to do is not get in a car accident, you know? So that's, that's what I'm talking about. Not get hit by a car by random people. But, and then the other thing would be we just gotta raise money. As much as we want the money out of politics, right now we're not there. And so making sure that people understand that we appreciate every single dime. We all appreciate every single dime. But if you can do $3, can you do six? If you can do 27, can you do 50? You know, and so I just, so looking at it like that, because one thing for us being women it's harder for us to raise money. And I say it all the time. I need people to know and understand how much more difficult it is for us to raise money. And then me as a black woman it's even harder to raise money. People pat me on my head with their words and you know, and then, you know, and I just, it's so anyway. So that's what I'm taking with me is making sure that I get the message out that if you love me, if you wanna see me there I need you to rock with me for, you know for this campaign and just be able to give whatever you can give to get me there. And I promise it's coming back to you when I get there. Yeah, absolutely. How about you Paula, because you ran for the Senate and at first we were all like, I thought all of you were going to win. Like there was no doubt in my mind. And when I saw that you got 30% I Paula, I was so frustrated because I'm like, how could she get 30% but then after seeing all of these primaries dozens across the country play out that really was huge, especially for the Senate. So what do you think is the most important thing that you took away from that race? Well, you know, like I said, it was monumental to get 30% of the vote. And I'm not gonna say we did make mistakes. We were grassroot candidates. It was our first time running for office. Our field game was good. It could have been a lot better. You know, we could have had, you know, more I never had a commercial. I think that hurt me. So, you know, there was a lot of organizational things that we could have done. But also if I run for office again it's gonna be a well-oiled machine because that experience, you know we gained a lot of knowledge through that experience. One thing I won't do again is because my biggest resistance was the Democratic establishment. Every time, you know, when I was out in the streets I had Republicans, you know changing their party affiliation to vote for me. The establishment knows who we are. They know from the second we run for office what we're doing. They know the threat to their chosen incumbent. I'll not spend my time at meet and greets with the Democrats and trying to rub noses with them. I'll be out on the streets. I'll be at spaghetti dinners. I'll be rich in people. Which I did that anyway. I was, you know, I went to NA meetings. I went to, you know, I went to food banks. I was all over, you know I'm gonna be a public servant. I wanna know what the problems are. I was very schooled on what was going on in the cold fields. And it was amazing to me to learn what else was going on in my state. And my advice to any candidate, you know the establishment, they're gonna fight you. They're gonna do everything they can to, you know to keep that corruption and that power within the party reach the people. The people, you know that's who's gonna get you in the office. That's who you serve. Find out what the needs are. And like I said, wake up every day and think how many voters am I gonna reach today? Because if you're really in this to, you know in this to be a public servant and, you know, that's who you serve. That's who's funding you. So you should be out there on knocking on doors, talking to the people. You shouldn't be rubbing elbows with the establishment trying to win them over because you're not. It's just how it is. That's a really powerful point. How about you, Amy? One thing that you took away and I wanna follow that up with something that Corey had brought up about fundraising because we got this actually really fascinating scene of you on the phone. And it seemed like probably for hours agonizing. And I'll tell you that scene gave me anxiety because I hate talking on the phone. So just, you really feel how difficult it is. So would you also say that fundraising is probably one of the biggest things that you learned from because we all know it's crucial. And you all three, just so people who don't know who saw the film and now are learning more, you all chose to be principled. Zero corporate pack money, zero special interest dollars. That in and of itself is such a huge thing but it's also a disadvantage. So what would you say about that Paula or excuse me, Amy in terms of what you've learned and also the fundraising aspect, how difficult was it? Like, are you worried every single week about we don't have enough money, we're running out. We have to raise money. How difficult is that from someone who's a grassroots candidate? So I knew in the beginning that fundraising was gonna be foremost, but I didn't realize how hard it's gonna be. You know, it was getting people to actually want to donate when they don't know if you can actually pull it off, right? And here's the thing. The one thing I would tell you and this really ties in with fundraising is coming from the 2016 election, being a part of the Bernie Sanders campaign, you know, everything was about ground. But I went to, you know, when we went into this we had no institutional knowledge. We went in there, we had to learn. So when you see me fundraising, I knew I had the course correct at that point and it was too late. I did an extensive round game and I had one of the largest districts in the United States. But what I was learning was it wasn't getting the impressions necessary. What I mean is you need to have an oppression on people at least three to four times for them to remember your name and get motivated out there to go and vote for you. So we did no mailers. Huge mistake. We have to give, we have to know that when we go into each and every district they're all different. In Nevada, even the ground game that AOC had in her district would not work in my district. 90% of the communities are gated in my district or our way eight hour drive, you know there's no way to hit them three or four times and have that impression. So it really has to be a mix of ground and more of the traditional ways of doing campaigning. Mailers, you know, making sure you have a TV ad. And it's not necessarily having the digital. We had a great digital campaign. We were out there hitting the ground but we made some missteps, not understanding and not really having anyone tell us how to guide us through this process. That doesn't work in every district. So I'm actually like writing a book that's gonna really put all of this together and it's, I didn't have a chapter called How to Lose. Like, you know, when you're running you need those things that you need to take into consideration and nobody, we had generalizations. I read the book on Bernie's campaign but that doesn't necessarily translate to a congressional or Senate campaign. So I think going into this, you know we had lots of losses across this country because we were learning. First thing I'd like to say about that is we know what we're doing this time and if we're not running, we're helping the other ones run. Secondly, we lost the race but we did not lose the conversation. And I think every one of us that ran across this country either as a justice Democrat or a brand new congress member or our revolution candidate, we changed the conversation when we're now seeing a different type of conversation with our presidential candidates right now. So, you know, it's a movement. We can't be afraid of losing. We still have to be fearless and go out there and raise right back up after we lose and be ready to go again because we're gonna keep on having losses but each time, hopefully we're gonna have more and more people get into office. Amy brought up a really good point, one that we don't talk about enough. The point that nobody helps you to know what you need to do as far as in people that are in those positions or that have helped people get into those positions. Like it's this clothes knit group, this tight-lipped group. Like you can't, we can't tell you the secrets. We can't tell you who you really need to talk to. We can't tell you how to get into the senior homes. We can't tell you, you know, it's this thing because we don't want you there. We want to keep it within our family or we want to keep it within the people that, you know, that we want to know what to do so that they can get those positions. And so that's another way that it pushes us to this point. Yeah. And you know, they brought up a good point because Amy was fussing at me when she came up to West Virginia the other night for a screening of the film because I was saying we don't need $2.5 million to win but I should have reiterated, we do need money to win. You have to have money to be able to campaign. You do need the basics. You need swag. You need to be able to advertise. You know, you need to be able to travel. You know, all those things take money but you definitely don't need $2.5 million for a campaign. You don't need all that packed money but you definitely need money to be able to at least compete a little bit so people can get to know who you are. So, you know, when we're talking about small donations we still need that money to be able to, you know, to have the things and the tools that we need. You know, we need staff. We want to be able to pay our staff a livable wage when they come on to our campaign. You know, there's all kinds of things. You know, $2.5 million, you know, I could have sent Therigans all over the state and mailers and had big TV ads and probably never had to work but I don't think that's what it's about either. When we're running these campaigns like this, you know, I know these three women right here never just set out, woke up and thought, I'm gonna be a politician. I surely didn't. It's because, you know, Amy went through the struggle of losing her daughter. You know, Corey's dealing with everything she's doing, you know, dealing with in Ferguson. You know, I'd been an activist fighting for clean water and clean air and one of my children's gonna get cancer every day. You just, you know, most of the candidates that you're seeing run for office all over across the country, they're not polished politicians. It's ordinary people wanting to bring change because we're not being served anymore. And so, you know, it's totally different because we wanna be, you know, if we're gonna be public service, we wanna know how to serve and we wanna get out there and talk to the people that we're supposed to serve. So I would never, ever wanna run a campaign where I just send out a mailer and have a commercial and not reach the people across the state. I wanted to know everything. If I got elected, so when I went to serve in the Senate, then I knew what to do for the people here. Yeah, and you guys are all kind of touching on a broader theme that was addressed in the movie too, that this isn't just about like each individual person. Like you all know your districts and your states very well, but there's this sort of interconnectedness that you sense throughout the film that this is about a broader movement. Like if I lose, and that's okay if somebody else goes on to win, AOC won. So we've got one. So this is about like all of us. We get a little bit of the scene from Corey talking about Ferguson. And these are all so relatable because I remember myself Ferguson when I was seeing these live streams then I thought, this doesn't look like America. This is America. Like we have these militarized police cars. And then you hear about all of these health issues and we talk about Medicare for All and Amy has that experience of her daughter, Shalyn, dying because she didn't have proof of health insurance. And then with Paula, you were talking about this health issue in West Virginia that's largely being ignored because of special interests. So these are things that I think they're important and your stories are great and they're so crucial but this is really a microcosm. Like the way that I saw the film was that this was four stories that are small pieces of a broader conversation because a lot of these stories are similar everywhere. And there's other people now running for Congress just because people like you decided, you know what I'm not a polished politician, but I can do it. So we have a new crop of candidates. We have people taking on the establishment some very bold people. Mind you challenging democratic leaders. Makayla Wilkes taking on Steny Hoyer. We have Shehid Batar taking on Nancy Pelosi. So here's what I wanna ask you guys because now you're experienced, everyone knows who you are now. People know you because you're in this film. So you are a powerhouse in and of itself. You're the people machine unlike the special interests and money machines. So what would you say to these people running for Congress now? What's your one piece of advice? We'll start with you Paula. Self-care. That's smart. Well, you know what we went into this fast. I mean, it was like a storm. All of us were running crazy. We were there to support each other, have people to support you. You know, we're here to support other candidates. You know, always reach out to us and ask for our help and our advice. But take days off. I went during my campaign. Sometimes I went two and three months and it didn't see my kids. I mean, it really took a toll on my body even. So, you know, be power focused, but also at least take one day off a week if you can. Spend time with your family. Watch it, you know, lay around watching Netflix if you have to. Self-care is very, very important because if you don't take care of yourself, you ain't gonna be effective nowhere else. Yeah. How about you, Amy? You know, Mike was off of what Paula said, you know. And I'd really like to address that when we're running and we're not typical politicians, it's usually for a personal problem. You know, personal issue that we have encountered, tragedy or that we have a friend of ours. We are running for a reason that is very personal. And you know, I didn't see it at the time when I was actually running, but afterwards looking back and really when I saw the movie and I saw the difference, even the way I looked and then I saw the scene of when I lost, I remember that moment. You know, a lot of people asked me, Amy, what were you thinking? You know, I've been holding Shalynne's urn all day and when I saw the number coming in, the first thing that came out of my mouth was no, now more people are going to die and I couldn't save them. Like I couldn't save Shalynne. And so when we're running in campaigns like this, know that it's gonna be much more personal and you're gonna feel the weight of the community on your shoulders and that responsibility. But you have to remember that a loss is okay because even through losses in a campaign, we are still making movement forward. We are still chipping away at that old guard, at that old way of thinking and educating our communities and it's okay, don't be afraid of a loss and go into it knowing that, you know what? I'm in it to win it, but if I don't win it, that way of the community, it's still there but you don't have to shoulder that alone. The community is with you and you have made progress and you just pick yourself up and get going again. Yeah, how about you, Cori? For me, it's knowing yourself. Go in, like do that self-reflection, know who you are walking in the door to this because the good and the bad is gonna come out of you because you're gonna be tested in all of it. So whether it's a character weakness or character strength, that thing is gonna come out and the issue is it comes out in public. It comes out maybe nationally. So knowing you and then just being your authentic self, once you know who you are, I tell this to people, if you need therapy, get therapy. If you need medicine, get medicine. If you need ice cream, get ice cream. Whatever your thing is, that's me, I do ice cream and therapy. But get those things and be your authentic self. That's why people want you there is because you are who you are. You're not trying to assimilate or be like someone else. You're not trying to be this polished somebody that they can't believe in. Just the other day, I was speaking at an event and I had on ripped up jeans and I say, you know what, because I'm running as I am. And because once I get to Congress, you're gonna see me in ripped up jeans. So you might as well know now that I were ripped up jeans and big earrings. Well, I have on now. But so what I'm saying is, if you can be your authentic self and know your mission, know the reason why you're running and he says it all the time. And he says, know your why. I say, know your mission. Know the reason why you're doing it. Because in those days when you have hard, when it's hard and the trolls are at you and money isn't there. And all of these things are happening. You haven't seen your kids and just so much going on and you worked a job, when all of that's happening, you have to know why you're still doing this. And so that will help pull you through. Yeah, these are all really good points because I don't think that people really think about this aspect of like self care because you just kind of get in it and you don't realize that you've been working kind of like Paula said, I've been doing this for like three months and I didn't even take a day off. That really takes a toll on you. If the film demonstrated anything, you are normal people. And even if politicians generally seem robotic and they're rehearsed, what I like so much about you guys and what the film does so well is it demonstrates, these are normal human beings. Like the most powerful part in the film was when it showed each of you getting the results. And I'm so glad, like I knew that in the film Corey's election came after AOCs. I'm glad they showed AOCs last because that was such a gut punch to see all of your reactions. Because I mean, we all kind of reacted individually and we kind of coped with it after following you for so long. But seeing that toll after like a year and a half of just pouring your heart and soul into it, that was so rough. So one thing that I wanted to follow up on was with Paula Jean, you were talking to Joe Manchin, he planned a meeting with you. Did he follow through? Did you get that meeting that he promised you? And how did that go if so? Well, I did. And I can honestly say that Joe Manchin is a personable person. He's done a lot of bad things in West Virginia but he's very friendly. We sat down, well he is. So everybody calls him Uncle Joe. And I mean, he's a really nice guy and he treated me really well which I was really surprised after the years of being ignored that he sat down and actually talked to me like I was a human being and had a one-on-one conversation. I guess that's how I should put it. But he asked me how to get my votes and I told him he'd have to earn on like with blood, sweat and tears like I did. And I told him he could go out with a legacy like Robert Burr did and Rockefeller did and he could serve the people of West Virginia or he could move forward like down the same path that he has. And I didn't concede, I didn't endorse him but I told him if he did good things that I would sing his praises that the people of West Virginia deserve better no matter what. And so the first step was he went down into a community called Menden, West Virginia. I spoke a lot about it in my campaign. It's a community that's been begging to be on the Superfund list for about 40 years. There was a company called Schaefer that's buried PCBs and put PCBs into an abandoned coal mine there. And so people are dying in alarming rates. And so he did put out a letter to the EPA and asked the EPA to put him on the Superfund site and he sit down in his campaign manager Mora to tour the community. And she acted like she really cared but she was talking about getting on new roofs and new carpet and fixing their houses and myself and the community told him that's not what they wanted. They wanted relocated because they're dying. And he took in water, he got him a truckload of water but one thing that he did promise that he didn't follow through with was he promised a mobile health clinic for one of the universities. And they came back and said that they could go to the sliding scale clinic in Oak Hill and adjoining community, which is still detrimental for them, that's always been available but they can't afford $600 for x-rays. And within the week too, he was campaigning in the general trying to get the Republican vote. So he went full mag and said that he would endorse Donald Trump if he ran for office again so I pretty much, to be blunt, I pretty much said Patrick Morsy and Joe Manchic could kiss my ass. Yeah, yeah, I don't blame you. One question. Let us follow. Yeah, I love the fire, I love the passion. One thing that I wanted to ask you Amy was there was this really, I think, incredible moment between you and your campaign manager where you guys were both kind of in tears. This was I think before the results were learned and you were saying, look, win or lose you've been one of the best campaign managers. That reminded me of a battle scene or a pre-battle scene in Game of Thrones where it's like, okay, we may not come out. Can you talk about this? Because what I learned is that these are all basically mini proxies for you. They know that jumping on board with the grassroots candidate who isn't taking corporate money, that's gonna be difficult but they're still pouring all this time into it. So first of all, my question is, do you still keep in touch with them and how do you keep people motivated or does it just happen organically? And they're always motivated. I definitely do keep in touch with them. I love them like family. And when you go through this together, that battle together, as you saw, they did whatever was necessary. I mean, spray painting signs, I mean, out of the 113 degree weather knocking doors. I mean, we were doing garage sales to try to raise money. We were doing like so much and all of it came from a love of community. When you love your community and you're fighting for the same things, when you're fighting for social and healthcare and racial and economic justice and LGBTQ justice, every one of them represented a different facet and we were all intersectional as far as the way that our issues, we're intersectional with each other. That love was immense. And there were parts of the movie that didn't get in there but people, we were bawling. I mean, I wasn't the only one crying. We were all really upset because we knew that the alternative was gonna be that we were gonna have someone who was just gonna be interested in keeping status quo and that's what's happened. And so it was crushing more because we had been out in the community, Mike, and had solved not only our own issues, but the people that were even in the communities, the more that you're out there and you're seeing all the pain and the despair and the suffering, knowing you have the answers, knowing that you have the drive and the fight, but you just can't make it over that last hurdle. It was tough, but it's been motivating for all of them. I'm happy to report they're all still involved in politics. Good. A lot of our organizations are through Nevada. We're all through Nevada. Good. We're not done. We're not done. It's been, we haven't kept it in touch as much as we want, Mike, but I've been traveling around helping a lot of different states as well. I've been doing some work in Texas. I've been traveling around to different states talking about healthcare. So I really have been able to use that time knowing that Nevada's in good hands and use it to also help other people in other states to get motivated and start fighting for these issues. Yeah, that was really something that I was curious about because it's not just that you're learning about these four women, but these people who are also kind of helping with the message and you kind of develop the sense of like, well, what are they doing now? Where are they at? You know, you really get invested in these people and it's especially powerful because this is not like a movie. This is a documentary with real people. And going to Corey, the scene at the end where it kind of like ended with you, your story in the film ends with you crying after the loss, that was so difficult. But the good news, the good news is that that's not the end because you're running for Congress again. So what we saw was basically an hour and a half of you guys telling us how difficult it is to run for Congress. And my thought was, oh my God, I would never be up to this. I would not have the willpower. But you're in the race again, Corey. So tell me, what made you wanna run again? Cause it was hard enough the first time, but what made you wanna keep going? So let me start with one thing that you brought up with Amy. So when we lost, so my team was, when Amy was talking about balling, my team was, it was a mess. And, but they were balling and then they went over into a corner in the room at the watch party and they started organizing the next race, literally at the party. And so they carried that on. They started having meetings and I'm still like, what the heck? You know, I'm still crying every day. I lost my job. I couldn't walk out. Like I was still in pain for my accident news, but they had, they stayed together and they kept it going. It was just amazing. So they said, okay, you're gonna run again. So just let us know when you're ready. So that was, so, you know, it was kind of like, and then people that didn't believe in me before running came to me during that, during those few weeks saying, hey, if you run again, we understand now we'll support you. And so, but I got back in the race personally though, one because of the support and the love and then the terrible feeling that I felt when I felt like I let everybody down, that people gave their time, their talent and their treasure in the hopes that I would make it in. And I didn't. And so that crushing feeling like you just let everybody across the dog on country down as well as even more importantly, the district. But also we still have the same dang issues we had the day when I decided to run the first time. We still have those same problems. We still have somebody that's never present in our district that, you know, they didn't grow here. You know, somebody that does not, that whose blood, sweat and tears isn't in this community and people are hurting and suffering and the only way to change that is for somebody to run against them. And this is the thing I did better than anybody else has ever run against him before for Congress. I ran, I did better than him. A congressman ran against him when redistricting. I did better than that person and I did better than a sitting state senator. So those people had name recognition. Those people had money. I'm the one saying I'm not taking corporate pack money even though 250,000 was offered to me, you know? And so, but we still did better. And I did and we did better. And for the last three months I was off my feet. My team did everything. So if because of that, that meant that it's time. So I can't sit down just like the sexual assault that I suffered. I knew that with that and then all the things that I deal with, one thing I just need to say, Mike, you know, what people don't realize is I'm still, I still, I'm still heavily surveilled from Ferguson through my activism. I still get death threats. I still get tastes. I'm stopped. I get so much still happens to me, you know? And I live a very dangerous, very dangerous life here. And so if I sit down and I say enough is enough, then they win. They can continue to do those things. And so I'm staying in the forefront. I'm staying in their faces and I'm not gonna back down because they can't win. This is why we love you. And this is why I recommended that my mom watch the film and she calls me like immediately, she's like, these women are so amazing. I feel like I can do anything because it's like, you watch these films with like these superheroes and whatnot, like Wonder Woman and whatnot, but you don't get role models like this, like where you have normal people who you can actually identify with. Like normal people just like me, just like you, who are doing something that is entirely possible that theoretically can be done by anyone. Now it's tough. That's really what the film showcased, but it's possible. So I want to end by kind of asking what happens next because you guys all have a lot of political capital. Now you have the name recognition and you're kind of superstars now. So now if you run for Congress, it's gonna be a different story. So what is the future happen store for the stars have knocked down the house? Well, before we get into that, I wanted to echo what Corey said. I think that was one of the biggest hardest thing for me when I came home after my campaign was feeling like the disappointment of not, feeling like I probably disappointed people. During my campaign, I lost three of my family members and seven of my friends. It was cancer, drug addiction and suicide. So people were still dying. During my campaign, I had my neighbor's baby daughter, he was sitting over there dying with lack of cancer and her coming to the fence every time I come on from the campaign, we need you, Paul, Jane, we need you. You know, my aunt passed away during my campaign of cancer. My uncle was diagnosed with cancer and he has black one. And the hardest thing to come home, even though we have community organizers, you know, still working across the state, I've been organized and even with everybody ever since the campaign and I continue to do that no matter what. It was hard to come home, knowing that Joe mentioned was still gonna, still played a part in that. And, you know, Shelley Moore Capito, Democrat or Republican, you know, we have people in Congress that still play part of that. We still have people in the Capitol that still play a part in the death and destruction of West Virginia. And I thought about my brother, sister, candidates. I thought about being out of Ferguson with Corey when I was and seeing what she's going through and thought about Amy and her daughter. It was really, really hard to come home and know that, you know, that was their biggest losses because we're still gonna keep going and we're still gonna be community organizers, but these people are still in power too. So that's why it's so vitally important. And I've said it before and I'll say it again over and over again, as if you can run for office from a local level to a federal level, do it as past time, not only West Virginia, but everybody's invested in themselves because these problems are not gonna go away. No matter how many times you've got some women that's getting some popularity on knockdown the house or you hear somebody give good speeches, I humbly ask everybody in this country to vet your candidates because Amy was talking about changing the conversation, but now everybody's progressive and everybody has a grassroots campaign when they're taking corporate and corporate pack dollars and there's, you see, whatever needs to be said. And that's, that has inspired me to be on in that there's so many progresses now. Patrick Morsi said he was running a grassroots campaign in the deep of my life. We have to vet our candidates. I know it's hard to understand campaign financing. I fully didn't even understand campaign financing until I run for office. I know it's hard to look at voting records. It's hard to look at past speeches and previous speeches. I mean, everybody, you know, my grandmother always said everything that shines is not always gold. You know, they can paint a pretty picture, but are they really going to serve the people? I've heard incredible speeches from some of the sorry ass people that I know that are corrupt. We have to vet our candidates. We have to. Or we're going to be in the same position. You know, they may sound glorious, but our lives are not going to be glorious. And as far as next steps, I am exploring my option. Apologizing is not done. There'll be some announcements really soon, but I'm not ready to make those announcements. Okay, sounds good. How about you, Amy? Oh, I would love to run again, but I think I'm going to be sitting out this election because I really want to help a certain presidential candidate win. Are you allowed to say which presidential candidate that is? Oh. Is it Beto? Yes, look at that. I love it. I have to ask. I can't tell you how many times that people ask me, who are you supporting for president? I don't know. Maybe the Revolution sticker or the Bernie book on the background. Or am I going to let you know? I would really like to be a part of making sure and helping in any way I can with Bernie's campaign. I'm also going to be helping, you know, candidates that are needing to run. I, and then, you know, definitely going to be helping out too that I know that are on board right now on this interview. And then I will run again. I will run again. And I will go in there probably in 2022 and hopefully make it into Congress this time. Yeah, because I'm going to do fundraisers and everything and you get to come to my office. You know, I'm going to have it all laid out. You know, I'll get you real out. Of course, me. I know where they live. Well, since you brought up Bernie, Amy, let me ask everyone else. Is it Bernie again for you guys? I fully endorse Bernie Sanders. Right on. I'm not saying yet. I'm rolling mine out when I'm ready. All right. All right. I can respect that. Let me ask you guys this, though, because you all want to run for Congress. And here's one thing that really struck me. I mean, it's not surprising, but it still is during Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is target enemy number one, not just for the Democratic Party establishment, but for Republicans. And we see this with Ilhan Omar, other grassroots candidates, or people that came into office. So are you ready? Like, how do you think you'd be able to cope with that? Because I'm just thinking psychologically how difficult this must be to be the number one target when you're one of the only people in Congress representing the people. Like, can you just respond to the response that AOC got after she won and how you think you would be able to cope with that if, you know, it remained the same, which I'm assuming it would. How about you, Corey, because you're running again right now. Yeah, so I guess the last five years of my life has been nothing but the first three years anyway, which is a lot of scrutiny, a lot of people saying some really terrible things about me not knowing who I am, you know, and then I became a black identity extremist and then all of those things. So I think for every bullet that's been shot into my car, for everything that I've gone through, every time I was ran off of a road, I think that I pretty much, I think I'm ready to be able to, if I can handle that, if I can stand up in front of tanks, if I could be, you know, if I can be assaulted by the police, I can handle that. Like, I think I'm ready for that. And I know that, but when I see Alex, every time, and she can still say this, every time I see her, I say, how are you doing? How are you handling this? How are you sleeping at night? You know, because no matter what you say, people are there recording and putting out articles, you know, even when you don't want to, do you even get to go to the bathroom? But I think that that comes with it. That's part of it. So I think that in the same way, we grew to be to this point, because we're different people than we were when we first decided to run. You know, we've, our skin has thickened and so many other things. And so in the same way, I think that we'll all be ready. Yeah, yeah. How about you, Amy? I agree. I think that we've all been brought to this level by the amount of persecution that we face, even just with announcing. And I have to say that, you know, Alex is a human being. I mean, she is dealing with an immense amount of pressure. And you know, all of us, we offer words of encouragement when we see each other. But you know, at the end of the day, I think all of us know that what we're up against is the fight of our lives for this country. And even the ones that didn't make it, we're still feeling repercussions from us standing up publicly for us having a voice in our communities, in our abilities to have jobs, and our people, you know, the way that they treat us. We're, every one of us across the board has had to pay prices. Many of us can't get jobs in our career fields anymore. Many of us because of running for office and being not outspoken. But that's what it takes to go and have a movement. That's what it takes to stand up against a machine and against power. We have to be willing to sacrifice and say, come what may, bring it on. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How about you, Paula? Well, I was already facing a lot of scrutiny before I run for office. I mean, especially during the Massey era here, we, it was, if you bet, if you were begging for water and you were fighting against industry, you were labeled as a tree hugger and people threaten your life. And so, you know, I've been through a lot of that already. It was, it was amplified probably 10 times after running for office. You know, there was a lot more scrutiny. I had my life threatened, I had people follow me. But the struggle, the struggle here at home is no greater than any struggle that we can face. You know, like Ferguson, like losing their children and people dying because they don't have healthcare or people dying of drug addiction in this state and dying of cancer. People think they think it's extreme, but I've said it, you know, what they've asked me, why aren't you afraid for your life? Because if things don't change, I'm gonna die anyway. You know, people die here of alarming rate. And that's real, that's real. So, you know, I think that, you know, you just develop this thick skin because, you know, my biggest fear is about, my kids will get, you know, or if my kids will get cancer every day. And I would whole lot rather fight than lay down and take it. And so, you know, when and if I run for office again, it's no bigger than the battle than probably have a home. Yeah. Well put. So before we end, I just wanna give you guys each the opportunity to kind of plug whatever you're doing, your Twitter, because obviously we're not gonna hear, you know, this isn't gonna be the last that we hear from you. So if you guys can just direct us to what you need, Corey, I know you're running for Congress and you need money. So plug all of that and we'll go through each of you. If we've learned anything from the documentary is that money is key, unfortunately, but that's the way that it is. Yes, yeah. So yeah, please, if you have anything that you could give, that you can donate, we need every single dollar that somebody is willing to give. You can look us up on Act Blue. My name is Corey, C-O-R-I-B-U-S-H. I'm the good bush. And, or you can just go to my website at CoreyBush.org, O-R-G, and go there, donate. We would love for you to do a recurring donation because that way we know how much money we have every month and we can kind of plan. So if you're able to do it, even if it's just $10, if that's all you have, we appreciate it. So go in there and make a donation. Tell your friends, you gotta tell other people, thank you for your donation, I'm so pleased to other people to donate. And my Twitter is at CoreyBush. Facebook and everything else is at CoreyBush. Reach out to me. We need help, we need volunteers remotely and locally and just help us amplify this message. All right, Amy? Yeah, so right now, definitely keep an eye out on my social media. I will be, you know, again, releasing a book for those who are planning to run for office or who are just interested in the story of what it was like to be running and how you actually, I really want to be a transformative book that is gonna help give people, you know, that power within to, you know, how do you transform from a place of grief and feeling less than to using that as power to go forward and fight for the people? So keep a look at it, Amy. The number four, thepeople.com. Also, you can follow me on Twitter, Amy, the number four, thepeople.com. And as far as what I'm doing, you know, go to ourrevolution.com and berniestanders.com. Definitely can use people, you know, volunteering your time, donating, you know, of all of us are running, we definitely need to have somebody who's going to be able to, you know, implement any of these issues and policies that we're fighting for. So it is so important as much as you scrutinize someone who's in the house or the Senate, you need to do the same for someone who's gonna be the president. And as far as I can see, the only person I know that's gonna be putting the fight necessary to win on the issues that we were fighting for is gonna be Bernie Sanders. So sorry, I have to do that shameless plug. No, hey, this is where you get to plug whatever you want. So... So berniestanders.com. Love it, love it. How about you Paula? Real quick, let me plug, baby, let me plug, before Paula goes, let me plug, I need Twitter to verify me. This is, this is getting... I need that again too. Me too. Okay, yeah. Are you verified, Amy? I am. You are, oh, wow. I was verified. Now they won't verify you if you're a candidate. And so... Oh, really? Because I'm a lifetime candidate, I think. Huh. I was verified at Paula Jean 2018. I think I just got on. Yeah, it changed in January, 2018. Yeah. Yeah, they're very stingy with the verifications nowadays, I hear. I was verified at Paula Jean 2018, but when I went Paula Jean 2020, I wasn't verified anymore. It went away. Do you want to plug anything, Paula? Well, you can follow me on Twitter, Paula Jean 2020. You can find me on Facebook, Paula Jean Swearingen. But I am plugging for my brothers and sisters as they're still running for office. Donate to Cory Bush, donate to Anthony Clark. Look at this slate of Brandon Congress candidates that are about to be recruited and help donate and volunteer for Brandon Congress. So we can, and also look at your local candidates. Local candidates do not get a lot of support. We had a lot of support as congressional candidates, but local races, it's really, really hard. If you can knock on doors and donate and phone bank for local candidates, they'll have the available resources that we do. Take a, you know, try to pick a congressional candidate and a local candidate to support because it's really important, not just, you know, not just Congress. And start looking at the Senate. And we need to vet more people to run for Senate right now because no matter what's going through the house, it's getting knocked down in the Senate. So we need some more people to run for Senate. So if anybody has the guts to do it, we need more people in those seats. And I think that's it for me. Yeah, just donate and keep watching. All right, well, thank you all so much for coming on. It's been an absolute privilege to talk to you again and to see the documentary. It was just such a great work. It has 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, by the way. So obviously it's good. And I'm just so excited to see what you guys are doing next and you know, what the movement has in store. I know that we're gonna hear more from you. So thank you all so much for coming on. One more plug. I wanna thank you and other people like you as we have, we've been running for office because if it wasn't for you, we would have not got the name recognition that we did. Thank you for amplifying our voices and supporting us. Thank you. That means a lot. That means a lot. You're a big part of Amy for the people. So. Yeah, it's hard because I don't, it's difficult because every time that I bring on a candidate, I try to have this theme of, they need money. They're not taking corporate money, but that means you have to come in. So I don't know how successful that is. I hope that you guys got boosts whenever you came on like an indie show like this. But certainly I'll be doing whatever I can as loud as I possibly can scream, use my platform to help you guys. Because like the documentary kind of illustrated, this isn't just about people, like individual one person. This is about a movement, which I feel like I'm part of that movement. And I know people watching feel like they're part of that movement. So, you know, anything to help our brothers and sisters? Yes, because like yesterday, we brought in $18. Oh my gosh. That's the realization of this. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's a tough struggle. Yes, we will try whatever we can. So thank you all so much. Thank you for running again. Thank you for dedicating yourselves to the cause and just tremendous sacrifice. It truly is so meaningful to people. And let me just say one more thing. The people who watch, like I think they would have tuned out of politics had it not been for people like you because it's so difficult to stay like motivated when constantly we're beat down. We see everything unfolding, you know, in DC. And there's all of these local issues on top of that. So if there were people that just gave up, if there was nobody like you guys willing to run, then it would be very difficult to stay motivated. So just understand that what that means to us is huge. Your contribution is tremendous. So thank you all so much. It really is meaningful. Thank you. Well, that's all that I've got for you guys today. Thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far. As usual, I'm gonna thank all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members for helping the show to survive and thrive. And also a shout out to all of our iTunes and SoundCloud listeners for listening loyally every single week. Thank you all so much. This has been The Humanist Report. My name is Mike Figueredo. I'll talk to you all next week. Take care.