 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and Paypal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to The Humanist Report podcast, my name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 203 of the podcast. Today is Friday, July 26th and before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, Paypal and YouTube members, all of which signed up for the first time to support us this week or increase their monthly pledge. And that includes Adam Zayas, Alderman Gomez, Amala, Andrea Trust, Crypto Mojito, Edwina Gazae, Erasmu Acosta, Ernesto, Gary Mays Jr., Jean Headley, Jeffrey High, Jim Brazil, Joe White, Jonas Agriskov-Hoff, Joshua Kostrown, Joy Habihab Houston, Justin Diaz, Katherine Chappelle, Leonel Garza, Luigi Cissan, Neil Verma, Noah Hope, Rosta Fergheller and William Tomlinson. So thank you so much to all of these kind souls, if you'd also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support or by checking out patreon.com forward slash humanistreport. So this week on The Humanist Report podcast, an MSNBC guest expressed hatred for Bernie Sanders in a vicious way, but for no good reason whatsoever. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans took to the streets to call on their corrupt governor to resign. Mike Grovel finally qualifies for the second Democratic debate, but will still be excluded regardless. A clueless CNN host concerned trolled about Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill, will look at an MSNBC compilation that demonstrates the hatred they have for Bernie Sanders and, speaking of hatred, we'll talk about Donald Trump's hatred of the poor and discuss his plan to kick 3 million people off of food stamps. We'll talk about a House vote on an anti-BDS resolution, Rashida Tlaib's call for a $20 an hour minimum wage, and Ilhan Omar educates someone who asked her an incredibly biased question because of her identity. And finally, we closed the week by talking to 2020 Senate candidate Stephen Cox, who is competing in a Democratic primary to take on Mitch McConnell. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today. I hope you guys enjoy the program. Let's go ahead and get to it. So the mainstream media supposedly has a liberal bias and MSNBC is essentially supposed to be the left wing equivalent to Fox News. They're supposed to represent the ideals and philosophy of the left, but they obviously don't do that. In fact, most of the time they just downright shit on candidates who are actually progressive. They openly pretty much have contempt for Bernie Sanders and the late Ed Schultz exposed all of this before he passed away. When he tried to cover Bernie Sanders in 2016, the president of MSNBC called him and told him not to cover Bernie Sanders campaign launch. It's five minutes to air and I get a phone call from Phil Griffin. You're not covering this. I said, Phil, Bernie Sanders is announcing he's running for president. He's going to be a president. I don't care. You're not covering this. They just want to defeat Bernie Sanders at any and all costs, even if that means smearing him, bringing on guests who will lie about him because their goal as a corporation whose motive is to increase profits is to defeat Bernie so that way their corporate advertisers feel more comfortable. So what I'm going to show you is a guest who's going to come on MSNBC and just straight up lie about Bernie Sanders and she's going to admit that her analysis is based on her feelings and you're going to see no pushback. She's not going to get cut off and corrected. She's going to continue to espouse misinformation uninterrupted. Take a look. I think, you know, having Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren next to each other will really highlight because for me, as you know, again, I'm not the political analyst here, but just as a woman, probably considered a somewhat moderate Democrat, I Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl and I can't even identify for you what exactly it is, but I see him as sort of a not pro woman candidate. And so having the two of them there, like I don't understand young women who support him and I'm hoping that having him next to her will help highlight that because those are the people that I, if I were her, I would want to say, well, why are you supporting him and not me if you're going to choose between the two of us? They're not even trying to hide it. They don't even care how outwardly biased they're being. They just want people to bash Bernie Sanders. That's their agenda. All of the MSNBC hosts dislike Bernie Sanders. And so, of course, they're going to bring on guests who also dislike Bernie Sanders. Like if you can pull them and get their take on who they're supporting and who they don't like, I guarantee that most MSNBC hosts would say, I dislike Bernie Sanders the most. And it's because they know that they have to toe the line for their I mean, Zerlina Maxwell was right there. I know that she doesn't support Bernie Sanders, but if you want to be taken seriously as a political analyst, wouldn't you at least in good faith say, look, maybe this isn't the right way to go about criticizing Bernie because I have defended candidates who I don't even support. When Pete Buttigieg was attacked by the far right because they fabricated this claim that he sexually assaulted someone, I defended Pete Buttigieg. I literally posted a video denouncing that. Like if you're going to criticize a candidate, you should base it on policy. So you think that someone would call her out, they say, I don't like Bernie, but here's the policy reasons why I dislike him X, Y and Z, but nothing. So let's get to her argument here. She says, quote, Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl. I can't even identify for you what exactly it is. But I see him as sort of a not pro woman candidate. OK, so since you are choosing to not talk about the facts and we're just talking about feelings, allow me to interject with my feelings. Maybe the reason why Bernie Sanders makes your skin crawl is because you're anti-semitic. Maybe you're the one who's actually a bigot and you're just hiding behind your bigotry by claiming Bernie Sanders must be misogynistic because that's the way that I feel. Now, of course, again, this is all just hyperbole. I'm obviously being facetious here. But this is what happens when you get down to the level of just smearing someone based on your feelings and you have zero facts to add to the argument that you're making. I mean, this is what you open the door to. I'm just playing by the rules that you established by criticizing Bernie Sanders in your fact free rant. Now, the way that she basically set this up is she said, well, you know, if you see Bernie and Elizabeth Warren side by side on the stage, then maybe this will demonstrate to be why they should support Warren. And if I were Warren, I would ask, why are you supporting him over me? So in her view, it's the responsibility of voters to prove to the candidate why they do or don't support them. See, this is one thing that I don't get with moderates. Like they don't believe politicians have to earn your vote. No, I'm not saying that Elizabeth Warren is bad. I think she's a fantastic politician, but is she as good as Bernie Sanders? No, and it's not even close. There are things that Elizabeth Warren can do to show that she's a leader and not a follower. She can easily one up Bernie and be more progressive than him in a number of ways. She could come out and unequivocally say I am anti-war. And also I think Netanyahu is a racist. Bernie Sanders called him a racist because guess what? He's a racist. He's overseeing an ethno state and he is taking away Palestinian land and they're treated as third class citizens. So she could come out and denounce that she hasn't done that. She can prove to us that she actually does support Medicare for All by withdrawing support for the bills that she sponsored and co-sponsored that aren't actually Medicare for All, because a lot of people don't know that when Bernie Sanders released the latest iteration of Medicare for All, she co-sponsored that. But simultaneously, she introduced her own health care bill that would only reform the health insurance industry. So why would you propose something that's not Medicare for All that works within the confines of our existing system if you support Medicare for All? It's because she's saying, look, I support everything. Now, at the debate, she basically came out and said, look, I support Medicare for All, I'm with Bernie Sanders, great. Now, take it a step further, withdraw support for the bills that you supported and sponsored that are not Medicare for All. Prove it to us, be a leader here, but she's not doing that. She also, to her credit, proposed cancellation of student loan debt. Bernie Sanders then one-upped her as you do in a primary and said, well, I'm going to propose full cancellation. She can now one-up Bernie and say, all right, I'll match Bernie and I'll cancel all student loan debt, but I'll also cancel medical debt. She can do that as well to set herself apart and be better than Bernie Sanders with regard to a couple of issues. But she's not doing that. Like all of the articles that are coming out with Third Way and Wall Street saying, you know what? If we had to choose anyone that's progressive, we would rather settle for Warren than have someone like Bernie Sanders. What she could do is unequivocally denounce everything that they said about her. That's nice and say, no, Wall Street and Third Way, they should be afraid of me, too. In fact, they should be more afraid of me than Bernie Sanders. She could easily do this, but she hasn't done that. And again, I'm not saying she's a bad candidate. I think she's run a really policy-driven, substantive campaign. But if I'm choosing the most progressive candidate in the race, I'm going to choose the person who's a leader and not a follower. I'm not going to choose someone who you have to drag along. I want someone to set the debate, not follow along with someone else who said this is how progressive we should be. But I mean to her and a lot of centrist Democrats, to be fair, they don't really realize why if you have two progressives in the race that are this close and polling, you'd opt for the male as opposed to the female. And I get it. I want to see a female president. But policy, that's more important to me. And just objectively speaking, if you are progressive, Bernie Sanders is the most progressive candidate in the race besides Mike Ravel. Mike Ravel is probably the most progressive, but he's not actually running to win. So I support Bernie Sanders. Now, if Elizabeth Warren were more progressive than Bernie and if I could trust that she'd actually fight for everything that she's saying she wants to implement, I would gladly support her over Bernie just so we can get a female president. But that's not the reality of the situation. We're supporting Bernie because one, he's more progressive and two, he has demonstrated to us that he's actually willing to fight and stand up to the establishment and Elizabeth Warren's actions have dictated that she's not willing to stand up to the establishment. She kowtows to them. Now, for the third time, I'm not saying that I dislike Elizabeth Warren. She's led me down shore. But I mean, she's better than most people in the field. So I'm not saying that she's a bad candidate. I think she's a good candidate. But if we're comparing Bernie to Elizabeth Warren here, which is what this analyst did on CNN, that I'm going for Bernie Sanders because the policies are what I care about the most and Bernie is just better. Now, I've told you my response, but I want to share the response from other people because I think that Nina Turner and Corey Bush in particular did a fantastic job at shooting down this misinformation. So David Sarota tweeted apparently expressing generalized, completely nonspecific and substance free personal hatred of Bernie Sanders is now considered serious and legit political analysis on MSNBC. Nina Turner then responded saying, who is this person? David Sarota, what the hell MSNBC? Do you only invite guests that have disdain for Bernie Sanders? Makes her skin crawl, not pro woman. Are you kidding me? And then questioning why other women support him? Please, let's do that dance. I'm your dance partner. And I love that because she's basically saying, look, so you really want to play this game and have us show you all the times that Bernie Sanders has been unapologetically pro women, we can play that game. Now, my favorite is a Twitter thread from Corey Bush. She's running for Congress. You absolutely should support her because she's a justice Democrat. She endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and again in 2020. She was on my show. She's just fantastic. Here's what she said, because I think she breaks up this myth in the most straightforward way possible. She says, I'm a young woman that supports Bernie Sanders. Him standing next to Warren won't change that. You don't believe he's pro woman. He gave me a nurse and Ferguson activist, the platform to tell thousands about the struggles of being a black woman in America. I spoke about the racism and misogyny. I was experiencing as a black woman running for federal office. Yep, that's me there at the podium. Senator Sanders makes your skin crawl. People of color work hard every day to dismantle systems that have created a society where people have physical reaction simply by seeing or thinking of black and brown people. It was an ugly thing to say. Circling back, you said that you don't believe he's pro woman. Three years later, he's still supportive of this regular every day woman. Make it makes sense. Exactly. It doesn't make sense. And the only explanation as to why Bernie Sanders makes her skin crawl is that she just is probably wealthy and she would benefit by the status quo remaining intact. I mean, she admitted she's a moderate Democrat. That's probably what she's about. If you're rich, obviously you don't want Bernie Sanders getting in and raising your taxes, Occam's razor, that's probably what it's about. But I don't know. But even if that was her intentions, that doesn't mean that you are justified in just having a fact free statement about someone when you're on national television, you're spreading misinformation. This is propaganda, but she doesn't even care because Bernie Sanders makes her skin crawl because why would you support Elizabeth Warren when there's Bernie Sanders? Well, maybe it's because since people like you view Elizabeth Warren as more palatable, as a self-proclaimed moderate, maybe that's a reason why we support Bernie over Warren. It's because we want someone who Wall Street and moderates can't live with, who actually will change the system and break up the status quo. And that's Bernie Sanders. He's the only candidate in this race who's willing to do that. And that's why we support him over Warren. So shame on you for lying about Bernie Sanders and basing it off of literally nothing but your personal disdain and contempt for him. Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rusell was already losing support gradually because quite frankly, he's a horrible governor. But basically something happened that was the straw that broke the camel's back. So there was almost 900 pages of leaked group chat messages between him and his top aides and what these messages revealed were two very important things about the governor. First of all, he's just a horrible human being. And second of all, he is deeply, deeply corrupt. Now, as Francis Robles, Alejandra Rosa and Patricia Maze of the New York Times reports, protests against Mr. Roseo began more than a week ago after the publication of eight hundred eighty nine pages of a leaked group chat between the governor and his closest aides. Besides being offensive, the messages revealed a cozy relationship between the governor and former staff members who now represent special interests. The crude messages were the final straw for Puerto Ricans who have suffered for years because of economic austerity measures and the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Now, when they say that the messages were lewd, they weren't playing around because there was a lot of homophobia in here. There was misogyny. He made disgusting comments about mayor of San Juan, Yulin Cruz, who also is a national co-chair for Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, for those of you who don't know. And on top of that, he literally mocked the victims of Hurricane Maria. People who died, he mocked them. So this is a disgusting human being. And this was so damaging to his reputation that he announced that he will not be seeking re-election. That's how big this was. Now, people weren't happy with that. In fact, they said, no, actually want you to resign now because there's no reason for you to stay when you clearly don't care about Puerto Ricans. If you're literally mocking people who died, sorry, but you've got to go now. But he was defiant and said, no, I will finish serving out the remainder of my term to which the people of Puerto Rico responded resoundingly by taking to the streets and calling on him to resign. And what you're seeing on the screen now is an estimated 400,000 people marching on the Espresso Las Americas Highway in San Juan, where they call on him to step down, not when his term is over, but now. And again, the message is alone. I just want to stress here. We're not the only reason why they're protesting against him because he also imposed austerity on Puerto Ricans and he's allowing Wall Street to profit off of Puerto Rico's pain by exploiting the island. So these protests were bound to happen sooner or later, but the message is just pretty much proved to be a breaking point and they're being very clear here. They're done with the corruption and he needs to step down. This is about accountability. If you're not going to represent us, if you're going to be that close to special interests and just be corrupt, then you have to leave. We're not going to wait on you to serve out your term. If you're not representing us, if you don't care, then get the fuck out of the office. That's basically the message here. And look, Puerto Ricans are showing us how it's done. If you want change, this is exactly what you need to be doing. You take to the streets and you demand that lawmakers who don't care about you and who aren't representing you step down. So I want to play a couple of clips here because, first of all, I stand in solidarity with everyone marching in Puerto Rico, but too, I think that this is just so inspirational for everyone to get out and make their voices heard. This matters. This is very meaningful and I want to help spread the message that they're conveying to the governor of Puerto Rico. Take a look. That was amazing. I mean, you saw it was raining and they weren't going anywhere. I think AOC put it best, the people have spoken. The people have spoken. That's how it's done. So one thing that I also found fascinating is that this wasn't necessarily an organized protest. Like there are reports from people on Twitter who are in San Juan currently that are saying this kind of just happened organically. Like it started with a few people marching and it just grew, it spread. And it's just it's so inspiring to see this much people stand up for what they believe in and finally take a stand and say no more corruption, no more of you not representing anyone but yourself. You're not in power because you care about the people of Puerto Rico. You're in power because of yourself. You care about special interests or corrupt and clearly you don't care about us. You're making one of the victims of Hurricane Maria. Sorry, you've got to go. You can't represent us because you don't like us. You've made that very clear. So he absolutely should resign and I'll be following this story pretty closely because I think it's fascinating. I hope that they stand their ground and stay out there and keep protesting because this is one way to make your voice heard when there's a lot of protests that take place around the world. You know, oftentimes you don't see any news coverage of it. But when there's this many people, there's no way you can ignore it like they make it impossible for you to turn away. And this is exactly what you have to do if you actually want to accomplish any sort of change whatsoever or hold people in power accountable. So I absolutely love what they're doing. And I applaud every single person who is marching in San Juan. This is inspirational and I love it. Keep it up. So I'm a little bit late to the party here in talking about this particular story because the news actually broke after I had finished filming last week's episode, but I still want to talk about this because I find it incredibly important and people need to know. So as many of you probably already know, the lineup for the second Democratic Party debate has been announced. It'll be airing next week, Tuesday night and Wednesday night. Of course, I'll be covering it. And let's look at the lineup here. So on the very first night, we're going to have Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, O'Rourke, Bullock, Ryan, Hickenlooper, Delaney and Williamson all facing off on night one and on night two. We have Biden, Harris, Booker, Castro, Yang, Bennett, the Blasio, Gabbard, Gillibrand and Inslee all facing off. Now, conspicuously absent from both of these nights, Mike Gravel. Now, this is huge because he just met the threshold to qualify when it comes to individual donors. He passed 65,000 unique donors. This blows certain candidates completely out of the park. Steve Bullock, John Delaney, Bill de Blasio, John Hickenlooper, nowhere near that level of small individual donations. Mike Gravel surpassed all of them. But yet he's not going to be at any of these debates. And grassroots activists worked their asses off to get him on the debate stage. There was a huge last push to get him on and get him to qualify. And doesn't matter. He will not be included, regardless. Why? Well, because he didn't meet the other criteria with which you have to qualify. So he wasn't polling high enough. Now, the problem with that is he was excluded from polls. So it's not his fault that he was excluded from polls. But yet he doesn't get included even if he blew people out of the park when it comes to individual donations. So this is a slap in the face. We were complaining in 2016 that there were not enough debates. And now there's certainly enough debates. But the qualifications, they're changing the rules as they go. And they did this with Lawrence Lissig. If you recall, Lawrence Lissig was running in 2016, but he dropped out after he couldn't qualify for the debates because they basically changed the rules as they were going along. And they're essentially doing the same thing now to Mike Gravel. And that sucks, because even if he's not running to win, he has an agenda that needs to make it to the national stage. And that's exactly why they didn't want him there, because they don't want him to get on the stage and call out the other candidates for their corporatism. They don't want him to say, you know what, these candidates need to speak out against Israel's ethno state and war crimes against the Palestinian people. We need to end the use of drones. They don't want him condemning capitalism and making them all look horrible. So, of course, they're going to exclude his voice, because if you're not running to win, you have nothing to lose. So you can be especially relentless and really change the dynamic of this debate by dramatically shifting the Overton window to the left. So my favorite part, though, about this story is in direct retaliation. In order to make room for Mike Gravel, somebody else has to drop out. So they have launched a dropout Delaney campaign that they actually got trending on Twitter for a number of hours. And John Delaney obviously was not too happy about that. He made some stupid statements where you got ratioed and condemned people moving too far to the left. And really, it shows the grassroots support that Mike Gravel has. Again, it doesn't matter if he's not running to win. You set out the criteria and he met the criteria as best as he could when he was, you know, included in polls. He was polling fairly well, considering he's not actually running to win. And he definitely met the donor threshold. But yet people who didn't meet the donor threshold, like Bill de Blasio, they're included, whereas he's not. So it's just it's a bunch of bullshit. It's arbitrary. And, you know, if the DNC wants to actually earn people's trust back, then they should be saying Tom Perez should come out and say, well, of course, this is unfair, we laid out the rules and we said this is the criteria. Mike Gravel absolutely surpassed that criteria, so he should be included. But of course, they won't do that because, again, they don't want to allow someone like Mike Gravel onto the debate stage because they saw what he did in 2008. He called out Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and that was glorious. So do you think they want a repeat of that? Of course they don't. So when he started to get close to, you know, the donor threshold, that's when they probably stopped including him on polls. Now, it's not the DNC to be clear that does these polls. But, you know, these companies that do conduct these polls, CNN, Morning Consult, they need to include people who are running for president. And regardless if they are in it to win it or not, if you're running for president, if you're a declared candidate, you know, that's not up to you to determine who is or is not included. You don't get to act unilaterally as gatekeepers. You just include who's running on polls. They should honor the people who donated, who want to see someone on the stage who they support, but they didn't do that. You know, and it's not surprising. But certainly, whenever this happens, we should speak out about it. Because, I mean, who even knows who Steve Bullock is? Nobody knows who he is. Tim Ryan, he got destroyed by Tulsi Gabbard. Why is he still running? John Delaney, his own staffers reportedly want him to drop out. So why is he still running? Michael Bennett, zero support for him, zero support. So, I mean, you're letting these people on who have no chance at all. But yet you're excluding Mike Gravel. It's just it's arbitrary and it's bullshit. Plain and simple, it's complete bullshit. So Bernie Sanders appeared on CNN. And I think you already know how this segment is going to go. The subject of Medicare for all came up. The CNN host concern trolled and fear mongered about some aspects of Medicare for all. Bernie even had to respond. And, you know, this is why I get so frustrated with these types of segments. If you are a news host, your one job is to educate people, you're not, you know, pontificating about what you think will happen under Medicare for all, your job is to do the research, put in the time to learn about it, and then educate your viewers, not fear monger based off of a misunderstanding of Medicare for all. But that's not the real world here. So, you know, we instead get a segment like this Medicare for all. There's a new poll out that I'm sure you've seen just yesterday. An NPR Marist poll. It just asked Americans a simple question. Do you think Medicare for all is a good or bad idea? Forty one percent. Only forty one percent said it's a good idea. Fifty four percent said it's a bad idea. Thirty nine percent of independents only like it. And even three in ten self-identified Democrats are skeptical. Why? No, I don't think. Why is it the best plan? Hold it, hold it, hold it. When a majority, hold on, I ask the questions here. When a majority of Americans aren't behind it. Well, obviously, you saw the poll that came out from the New York Times two days ago in which seventy eight percent of Democrats thought that Medicare for all was a good idea. And sixty nine percent of independents thought it was a good idea. Medicare for all, depending on the wording of the of the poll, does very, very well. And the answer why it does well is the American people are sick and tired of a dysfunctional health care system in which over 80 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. And we are spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other country. The American people are sick and tired of seeing insurance companies become rich while they can't afford the health care that they need. So let's let's talk about this a little bit more and what it would mean for the for the average American. You were on Fox News Sunday back in June with Chris Wallace. It was a fascinating interview. This is part of it that really struck me about whether Americans could keep their doctors, their hospitals exactly as they have them now under a Medicare for all plan. Here you were. What we are talking about, despite a lot of misinformation coming from the insurance companies and the drug companies is allowing all of the American people to continue to go to the doctor that you want to go to, go to the hospital that you want to go to. I really like my doctor and I'd like to keep going to her. But what if she decides, Senator, that a Medicare for all plan doesn't pay her out enough and she's going to just take private patients that I would have to pay out of pocket to go to her? And that's OK for me because I can afford to. But it's not OK for most Americans. Could they still keep their doctor if their doctor decided these rates aren't enough for me? That is not the way the system is going to work. The system is going to work similar to what exists in Canada. And what we are going to see is an expansion of Medicare. We're almost all doctors are now in Medicare to cover every man, woman and child in this country. What we are talking about is a four year transition period. Right now, as you know, eligibility for Medicare is 65. We take it down at the end of the first year to 55, next year, 45, next year, 35. And then we cover every man, woman and child. And by the way, what we also do is expand Medicare coverage for seniors to include dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses, which are not currently covered by Medicare. That matters. But I'm just asking you the fact of the matter is that not all doctors take that because they don't all like the rates that they're paid. So can you 100 percent guarantee to all Americans that their existing doctor would see them under this plan and they would not have to pay out of pocket a private rate? But as you well know, right now, all Americans cannot go to the doctor that they want. And I hear you with their own insurance program broken. And it needs to be fixed some way. But you said earlier this summer that people could essentially keep their doctors in their hospitals. And I'm just wondering, is that 100 percent true for every American? Well, on the Medicare for all, as I said on that show, every American will be able to go to the doctor they want because doctors will be in the Medicare for all single payer program as they are right now in the Medicare program. Look, the time is overdue, it seems to me, to end a dysfunctional system which enriches the drug companies and the insurance companies and do what every other major country on earth does, guarantee health care to all people, freedom of choice with regard to the doctor and the hospital. And at the end of the day, we will save the average American considerable sums of money on the amount of he or she has to spend on health care. So of course, she starts the segment by citing one poll that shows Medicare for all isn't as popular as as progressives are saying it is. Interesting. So rather than looking at aggregate polling data, which shows that Medicare for all is in fact popular, you cherry pick one poll that proves your point. Seriously, I wonder why she did that. It's almost like corporate media has a pro corporate bias or something like that. So this is what I really wanted to talk about with regard to this segment. The host is just completely misinformed about Medicare for all. And I get it, like this is relatively complex. When you start really digging in, some of these details are a little bit confusing. So I would expect John from Ohio to not really know about the fundamentals of Medicare for all and what it would look like in practice. But I do expect a CNN host to know about this. And the question she asked demonstrated that she has no idea. So let me let me read back to you what she said. I really like my doctor and I'd like to keep going to her. But what if she decides, Senator, that a Medicare for all plan just doesn't pay her out enough and she's going to just take private patients? I would have to pay out of pocket to go to her. And that's OK for me because I can afford to, but it's not OK for most Americans. Now, what I don't like is that she kind of cloaked this question in what is ostensibly a concern for the average person who can't afford to pay out of pocket. That's bullshit. Because if you truly care about average Americans, then you should be backing Medicare for all vociferously and passionately and not spreading misinformation about it based on your uninformed opinion. So Bernie Sanders said that is not the way the system is going to work. And he's correct. Like your doctor cannot say, well, you know what? Medicare for all isn't paying out enough. So I'm just going to practice privately. I mean, sure, your doctor can technically do that. However, the thing about Medicare for all is that it bans duplicative coverage, meaning a private insurance company cannot offer what is covered under Medicare for all. And Medicare for all covers pretty much everything. So if your doctor wanted to hypothetically practice privately, she would basically go out of business if she says, I am not going to accept Medicare. I will only accept private insurance because under a Medicare for all system where everything is covered and duplicative care is banned, well, then there won't be private insurance. Basically, people would have to go to her only if they were willing to subvert Medicare and pay out of pocket for literally everything, which wouldn't make sense because who would want to do that? So she has no choice. She'd have to accept Medicare. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to be a doctor and it is absolutely essential that we do get rid of private insurance so we don't set up a two tiered health care system like the one that the CNN host is kind of alluding to. So I mean, your doctor isn't going to want to do this unless she wants to go out of business. Do you understand? Like if you're a doctor, like you're going to have no choice. You will have to accept Medicare for all. Otherwise, good luck finding people who's just going to pay like a thousand dollars for a particular procedure that they need. Because again, that's not covered under private insurance. So the question was bad. Bernie Sanders was right to say, I don't think you understand how it works. Or he said that's not the way the system is going to work. With that being said, Bernie Sanders did not do a good job at explaining this. And I think it was because the question was so bad that he just thought, oh, well, I have to explain the transition period. No, Bernie, she she really needs to be educated about what it would look like under Medicare for all, and he did not do a good job at laying this out. And that's disappointing because Bernie Sanders usually he knows his shit about Medicare for all and he's usually great. But he wasn't on his game here. I've got to admit he wasn't on his game. And that pains me to say because I love Bernie Sanders, obviously. But, you know, I think that you've got to start looking at this particular smear with regard to Medicare for all because it's come up before. Michael Bennett, for example, who's another presidential candidate who's against Medicare for all, he's also been fear mongering about this aspect of Medicare for all. He says, look, if you pass Medicare for all, hospitals are going to go out of business because, you know, Medicare just doesn't pay out enough in comparison with private health insurance companies, which is why we need a multi payer system as opposed to a single payer system. Now, is there going to be a shortage of hospitals under a Medicare for all system? I don't know. Why don't you talk to a Canadian and see if they have a problem getting into hospitals? Talk to a Canadian. They're going to say, no, you guys are still buying this propaganda that is being peddled by insurance companies, really. And one thing that these people who are making this argument leave out is that moving to a single payer system is going to drastically simplify our healthcare system. It's going to reduce administrative costs overall, which will then allow some of these hospitals to absorb lower payouts because they're not going to need a bunch of lawyers and clerks for all this paperwork. And furthermore, there's no longer going to be unpaid medical bills because if the government is going to pick up the check, then it's always going to be paid. Like, for example, if you have a surgery that costs fifty thousand dollars and your insurance is only paying for half of that, then the hospital is going to be owed twenty five thousand dollars. Now, under our current system, I mean, that hospital is going to struggle to get that money. Maybe you're going to have to get on a payment plan under Medicare for all. It's paid for. So the issue isn't really going to be as big of a problem as people are making it. But a lot of people are basing this off of that Mercatus Center study where Charles Blahaus found, unfortunately for him, that Medicare for all would actually save the American people two trillion dollars. Now, in addition to that finding, which he kind of tried to bury, he also claimed that if we do Medicare for all, that would result in hospitals being paid 40 percent less than they're currently being paid under our system, where private health insurance companies are paying out presumably 100 percent. But the problem is that that study is biased. It was funded by the Koch brothers. And it was useful to, you know, to show how even your own libertarian funded study doesn't prove that Medicare for all is as bad as you think it is. But it's still biased. So he says 40 percent cut. But what is it going to be an actuality? Well, according to the People's Policy Project, the cuts will be 11 percent. And according to the Urban Institute, which is a centrist think tank, no fan of Medicare for all, that predicts that there will only be a 13 percent cut in payouts to hospitals. In other words, nowhere near the 40 percent cut that Charles Blauhaus was trying to fearmonger about. So do you think that these hospitals will be able to absorb 11 to 13 percent cut in payouts after saving money on administrative costs and getting all the medical bills paid for by the government? Yeah, I think so. But let's go to the specifics, because Jeff Stein of the Washington Post did a great job at explaining what this will look like in practice. He reports, Matt Brunig of the People's Policy Project notes, one key selling point of a single payer system is it spares physicians. The reams of paperwork they have to do under the current system for private insurance companies, if America's physicians could reduce their administrative costs to Canadian levels, he said, healthcare spending would fall by well over 11 percent. Canada has a single payer health system. The overhead costs here are substantially low because you don't have to hire administrative clerks and billing experts to chase after money, said Daniel Martin, a Toronto Women's College Hospital physician who supports Sanders legislation. What matters to people is their net income, not their reimbursement rates. Then there are the doctors and physicians whose reimbursements would go up under single payer. Richard Bruno, a doctor in East Baltimore who primarily sees low income Medicaid patients, said low reimbursement rates make it difficult for his clinic to purchase the equipment he needs like replacement microscopes. We could do so much with higher levels of Medicaid reimbursements, said Bruno, 38, we'd be able to explore much better models for providing care. But to other experts, even an 11 percent cut in provider rates could present serious challenges for private hospitals and physician practices operating on tight margins. A number of prestigious hospitals such as New York University, the Stanford University Medical Center and the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center are especially reliant on patients with private health care and would likely see average cuts bigger than 11 percent, according to Larry Leavitt, a health care expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. So there's a lot there just within those couple of paragraphs. But to put it simply, if we pay out less, if we pay out 11 percent less, OK, 11 percent less than we are paying out now to all hospitals under Medicare for all, well, still there will be a savings under Medicare for all greater than 11 percent, meaning they'll actually get more money in most instances, but not all instances to be fair. As this article stated, there are certain hospitals who currently rely disproportionately on private patients who would, unfortunately, have to tighten their belts. But let's just for a minute, catastrophize and think of the worst case scenario. Let's say that that CNN host goes to the Stanford University Medical Center and her doctor works there. Now, let's say that it becomes so bad that the payouts become such an issue that they're forced to close shop and then that CNN hosts doctor goes on to work at a different facility than what? Well, under a Medicare for all system, there are no networks and your coverage is universal, meaning you would be able to still see your doctor at whatever facility or hospital she lands at. So even under the worst case scenario, it's still much, much better than what we currently have. And it's not even debatable at all. And if you still think, well, look, I just don't think that there should be any cuts to hospitals, period. OK, that's fine, but you just need to admit and be upfront about the fact that you care more about the profits of hospitals than you do about people actually receiving the care that they need. Just admit it because there's not going to be this disaster scenario where there's this shortage of hospitals as people like Michael Bennett and the CNN hosts probably want you to believe because single payer systems, they exist in other countries and that hasn't happened. There's a reason why once you go single payer or some type of nationalized universal health care system, you don't go back. No country has ever reverted back to a private system after going to a public system. And really, if these hospitals want to complain, then if I were Bernie, I would say, OK, well, if you don't like that, you're going to be paying out paid out less under Medicare for all. How about this? We'll just nationalize you because currently it's the case that these facilities will be able to operate privately under Medicare for all because the government is not nationalizing hospitals and taking over hospitals. You know, it's just being the single payer and paying the medical bills of everyone. But if you want to fuck around and start complaining, we can talk about nationalization. We can talk about a national health system, which is what Great Britain has, where most hospitals are just publicly owned and operated. We can start having that conversation if certain greedy hospitals want to start buying off politicians like Joe Biden and Michael Bennett, which they have. But I mean, this is this is a very simple question. Do you believe that people who don't have insurance or health care should die if they don't have insurance or health care? If the answer is no, then you support Medicare for all. It's very simple. You can draw a straight line from Medicare for all to the total elimination of medical bankruptcies and deaths due to a lack of health care. So if you support ending deaths due to a lack of health insurance, then you have to support Medicare for all, otherwise you're full of shit. Now, you can come up with some alternative Medicare for America, Medicare for all who wanted, but know that you're full of shit. We know that you're trying to utilize the popularity of Medicare for all by using the word Medicare in your shitty program, which is just a multi payer system. But that's not going to solve the problem. If you want health care to be about health care exclusively, you eliminate that profit motive, period. So I shouldn't have to be explaining this. A CNN host should automatically know about the details because if you're going to plan on pushing back against Bernie Sanders and challenging him on this, which you should, I mean, no candidate is above criticism, then you at least have to know the details. And I get that this is very complex and you're dealing with a bunch of different issues, but you've got to know this stuff, otherwise you don't get to challenge him on this. You don't get to say, well, Bernie, your plan will do this when it won't do that in actuality. You could have read the Washington Post study that I cited. You could have taken five minutes out of your day to educate yourself before interviewing Bernie Sanders here, but you didn't do that. And I'm not going to pick on just this one host because everyone in mainstream media is doing that. It's not because they're genuinely concerned about Medicare for All. They're not fear mongering out of a general fear or a genuine fear. More specifically, they're doing what CNN's health industry corporate advertisers want, pushing propaganda and spreading misinformation at the behest of the industry that benefits from defeating Medicare for All. It's really that simple. Occam's razor. So it's no secret that MSNBC absolutely loathes Bernie Sanders and any time there's an MSNBC host or a guest that makes disparaging comments about Bernie Sanders, Jeff Miami on Twitter will clip out that segment and he will post it. Now, there's been enough video clips to where Winkle, the Bernie bro, who also is on Twitter and YouTube, took all of these clips that were shared by Jeff Miami and he created one entire compilation. And these are all mind you. Recent clips of MSNBC hosts basically just shitting on Bernie Sanders. And again, we know that they hate Bernie, but really you get some much needed perspective at how big this problem is when you see all of these clips back to back and it's just wow. So the quality isn't the best, both audio and visual, but I think that it's still good enough to where this is really important and I want to showcase this. So again, this is a compilation not created by me, but created by Winkle, the Bernie bro, who used clips uploaded by Jeff Miami. Definitely follow those guys on Twitter. So let's watch and then I will discuss my thoughts when we return. Can I bring up the donkey in the room? Bernie. No. Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl. Sanders fading is a bigger story than people who give it a credit for. The previous set of numbers about Kamala Harris seems to suggest that Bernie roads are actually a real thing. He's just waving his arms around talking about revolution and all of where we are going, where we don't need roads. I mean, I am one of the things I always hear from folks who aren't necessarily on the burning bus, so to speak, is that he's not really a Democrat. I saw Bernie Sanders trying to raise money off of it. Yeah, like my timeline is going to be on fire, but I thought it was horrible. Then do you see any crossover, at least in those who are at his events, who kind of look and sound like Trump supporters? When you say he attracts those who feel like they're struggling, they're struggling to be heard and get their bills paid and their voices heard. That sounds like a Trump voter. I see him as sort of a not pro woman candidate. And some people say that you've heard Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Bernie Sanders has done nothing between 2016 and today to expand his base, to expand his policies. He seemed like a socialist from the 1950s and yelling at people in the same screechy voice without smiling, without any kind of personal connection. Bernie Sanders has been talking about these same policies, essentially, since he's been in public service for the past 25, 30 years. But he actually hasn't done anything to pass them, right? He's talked a lot about them, but we have not seen any of these policies signed into law. What happened with Hillary and what's his name? Exactly. You would take the risk. I am excited. Are you asking out of every candidate? I'm also saying the same thing until 2016. This time around, I think that's not working. That's exactly the point I was going to make. I think he kind of got lost in the shuffle. Other people have kind of taken those issues away from him. And he looked like the angry man in the center of the stage and get off my lawn. I think he comes off as mean. I think he's disparaging. A socialist candidate is more dangerous to this country as far as the strength and well-being of our country than Donald Trump. I would vote for Donald Trump, a despicable human being. No, you won't. And let me tell you something. Stop yourself. Look. So, I mean, some of the things that they said here are so wrong, so indefensible that if you removed the MSNBC logo and replaced it with a Fox News logo, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Because if you're going to criticize a candidate, you think that the supposedly intellectual left wing, which is a joke, you know, cable news outlet, would base that criticism off of policy disagreements, but they're not even trying to create bullshit policy arguments against Bernie Sanders, and they do oftentimes, right? Chuck Todd will lie or, you know, he'll skew statistics and facts about Medicare for all, but what you saw here for the most part was just straight up ad hominem attacks lobbed against Bernie Sanders. Let's look at some of these here. Sanders makes my skin crawl. That's a really recent one. Sanders' fading is a bigger story than people give it credit for. He's in second place. How is he fading? Bernie supporters look and sound like Trump supporters. Cute. Bernie Sanders has the nothing between 2016 and today to expand his base bullshit. He seemed like a socialist from the 1950s that's screeching at people. I think he comes off as mean. A socialist is more dangerous to this company. I mean, country nice Freudian slip there from Donnie Deutsch than Donald Trump. So these are all nothing more than ad hominem attacks. Now, you would think or hope at least that since these these attacks lack substance, they wouldn't actually land, right? Because if you truly want to convince someone who is theoretically more intelligent if they're tuning into MSNBC as opposed to like Fox News, which I think is measurably worse, then you think, OK, well, these aren't that big of a deal because they're not based in substance. They're just ad hominem criticisms of Bernie Sanders. But that would be wrong because the media acts as gatekeepers. And what they're doing here is slowly but surely priming their viewers to think about Bernie Sanders negatively. So people may not necessarily have a cogent reason as to why they oppose Bernie Sanders specifically, but they just know based on the cable news outlet that they watch regularly that there's enough people that just have this visceral response to Bernie Sanders and dislike Bernie Sanders. So they're in effect being primed to believe that Bernie Sanders is just bad. So I mean, this is the way that the media operates. They act as gatekeepers. The media can kill off a political campaign simply by not covering a candidate. And they almost did this in 2016. There was a blackout of Bernie Sanders, but he was so popular. There was so much grassroots support that he somehow managed to overcome the blackout and still almost beat Hillary Clinton. But this is why the media it's incredibly important. And I know that a lot of you watching your response is going to be, well, this is why I don't get my news from, you know, MSNBC or CNN or Fox News anymore. I tune into independent news outlets and that's great. But the problem is that most people don't do that. Like most people, if you go on the street and you ask them, hey, do you watch MSNBC or the Young Turks? They're going to say, what is the Young Turks? Most people don't know about these indie news outlets. Nobody knows who Mike from The Humanist Report is. Nobody knows who David Dole from the Rational National is or Kyle from Secular Talk is. Like we represent such a small percentage of political viewers and even though it's a fairly large audience, I'm not trying to downplay what we've accomplished. But Cable News has a monopoly on political information, news and discourse in this country. And sure, we're starting to make some progress by pushing back. But by and large, if this is going to be the view that's reflected by a lot of people on MSNBC, then this is going to be carried on to a lot of the electorate, which is extremely problematic. I mean, even CNN hasn't been as bad as MSNBC lately. They've been bringing on people who are progressive. I'm kind of going to walk back that statement because they did actually platform a Nazi, Richard Spencer. But I mean, what I'm saying is they've brought on Annika Sparion. They've brought on Jank Juger, whereas MSNBC rarely, if ever, brings on progressives. I mean, they have Sam Cedar, who is maybe the only progressive contributor that I know who supports Bernie Sanders. But how often do they invite Sam Cedar on? I mean, we just we don't get the analysis from real progressives. We get people who self identify oftentimes as progressive. But I mean, that label has been watered down. What I'm talking about is real left wing voices who are supportive of someone like Bernie Sanders, who support Democratic Socialism. We don't ever get that on MSNBC. We just don't get it. Why? Because this isn't a news outlet. I mean, sure, it it purports to be a news outlet, but this is a business. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, these are businesses. They're not news outlets. They have a goal to increase profits and their profits are derived largely from advertisers. So these advertisers are corporate entities that do not like Bernie Sanders because he wants to increase their taxes and post stricter regulation on them and, you know, labor laws on them and they don't like that. So MSNBC, CNN, they know that if they start covering Bernie Sanders fairly, that isn't necessarily advertiser friendly for lack of a better word. See, on Indian media, we have a certain level of restrictions, right? We have to make sure that we're advertiser friendly if we want to be monetized. So I know that if I put Syria in the title of my video, that's just automatic demonetization. If I talk about racism or white supremacy automatically demonetized every single time, 10 times out of 10. But nonetheless, the difference is that there's been so many indie media outlets that have outsourced the funding for their show, so we rely on Patreon, whereas there's no alternative source of funding for MSNBC. It's advertisers and pretty much advertisers only. And so they know that if they want to keep the gravy train rolling, they've got to not piss off their advertisers. It's why, you know, Bill O'Reilly wasn't fired from Fox News after years of horrific propaganda and inciting violence against abortion doctors. Remember Tiller Tiller, the baby killer? He was only fired once enough. Advertisers fled. It's why Laura Ingram, for example, she apologized to the victim of the Parkland shooting after she attacked him when he called on advertisers to flee her show. It's the one thing that gets YouTube to change their policies if enough advertisers flee. You know, so advertisers, they they have a monopoly on funding. This is where all the money comes from. So that's why we're seeing this, but it's harmful. This, you know, this really degrades political discourse because we're not hearing from a substantial portion of the American electorate here. Now, in totality, like cable news isn't the only source of political information. But for some people, yeah, it is. I mean, you can talk to a lot of progressives and I've talked to progressives to say, look, my mom literally just watches MSNBC. That's where all of her news comes from. And if that's your only source, then you're not going to realize that Bernie Sanders Medicare for All plan is actually better for you. You're going to think, oh, this must be bad because the media outlet that I trust, which is ostensibly left wing tells me it is. So this is a problem and it's really difficult to suggest the way to push back against it because we're living in a capitalist system. We operate within the confines of capitalism and profit is always going to be the main motivator at the end of the day. And that's what these cable news outlets are motivated by, you know, that profit money. So the best that we can do is speak out against it, try to educate people. So that way they educate themselves and not just take whatever some cable news pundit says about Bernie Sanders at face value. And that's not to say that you should just listen to Mike from The Humanist Report and take whatever I say as gospel. No, the goal is to get people to think for themselves and to use us as a resource, one of many resources, preferably where they use the information that we're providing and the insight that we're providing to where they can kind of build their own political identity and think for themselves and reason in a way that they believe is best for them and not based on the analysis of someone else who may or may not have an agenda that doesn't align with their own self interest. So I'll leave that there. It's frustrating. It's depressing to see these types of compilations with cable news just shitting on Bernie Sanders. But, you know, he may have enough grassroots support to where he can just overcome all of this, but it doesn't make it any easier for us to help him win. It sucks. It's hard, you know? But, you know, we just have to keep going. We have no choice. Our oligarch president has demonstrated numerous times that he doesn't just not care about the poor, but he actually has contempt for the poor. And the reason why I say that is because if you follow his actions, his actions dictate that he absolutely hates poor people. He believes in this old conservative notion that if you're poor, then simply just stop being poor. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, peasant. I'm not poor. Bigly. And the story that I got for you, I think, further demonstrates his hatred of the poor because as Mike Dorening of Bloomberg reports, the Trump administration is moving to end food stamp benefits for three million people with proposed new regulations curtailing the leeway of states to automatically enroll residents who receive welfare benefits. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said state governments have misused this flexibility. We are changing the rules, preventing abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food assistance the most are the only ones who receive it, he added. The Trump administration rule would reign in states ability to enroll recipients earning more than 130 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. In most cases, capping eligibility to an annual income of $32,640 for a family of four, 40 states and the District of Columbia currently use alternative eligibility criteria that allow participants in some federally funded welfare programs to automatically receive food stamps as long as their income is less than double the poverty level. Brandon Lips, an acting deputy undersecretary in the Agriculture Department, told reporters in a conference call previewing the regulatory changes that in some cases states enroll residents for food stamps, even though they are receiving federal welfare benefits of minimal value, including brochures. The proposed regulations to be released Tuesday would only allow automatic enrollment of people who receive welfare benefits worth at least $50 a month on an ongoing basis for at least six months. Other than cash, the only welfare benefits that would qualify are subsidized employment, work support such as transportation and childcare, Lips said. The proposed restrictions would eliminate food stamps for 3 million people at an average annual savings of 2.5 billion, Lips said. A final regulation will be issued after a 60 day public comment period. Now, that last paragraph there really said everything that you need to know about this. They would be saving two point five billion dollars. That's it. But in exchange for that saving, three million people. Would go hungry. Or if they don't go hungry, they would at least struggle to put food on the table more so than they already probably do. It would give them more food insecurity and it's 2.5 billion. That's a lot of money. Like it's an unfathomable amount to you and I. But when the majority of our discretionary budget goes towards the military, this is this is nothing. So to me, when I hear this and I see, you know, the same justification, oh, well, you know, something, something budget, something, something, waste, fraud and abuse. They are choosing what they're prioritizing. They are saying, look, because there's some instances of waste, fraud and abuse and because, you know, we need to save every nickel we can possibly find three million people should go hungry. And think about this. If you make more than thirty two thousand dollars per year or no more than thirty two thousand six hundred forty per year and you're a family of four, you're making too much money to qualify. Thirty two thousand six hundred forty dollars for a family of four. Sorry, you're making too much. No food stamps for you. Your money that you're paying out of every check, the tax dollars that you're giving us, that's better used to kill people in the Middle East and North Africa. Sorry. I mean, if you are single, living off of thirty two thousand dollars per year isn't going to make your life super easy, but a family of four to suggest that that's too much to receive food stamps is utterly absurd to me. Now, I want to get to some numbers here because when you look at the total cost of the SNAP program, it's just it's such a minuscule portion of our budget that if I'm looking to cut anything in government, this would be the last place that I look. And furthermore, if they're saying that, you know, there's too much waste, fraud and abuse, then let's look at the actual numbers. And when I say fraud with regard to food stamps, what they essentially mean is if you are taking your food stamps and you're selling it for cash or you are reporting that you're making less than you are in actuality, so you continue to qualify. So let's look at some of the numbers here and see if it's actually reasonable to cut three million people off of this program. The total cost of the SNAP benefits dispersed in 2016 was sixty six point five billion down from seventy four point six billion in 2012, those are significant figures because America is a big country. When compared with those total figures, the fraud identified in 2016 amounted to a mere zero point nine percent of the total that was up from zero point five percent in 2012. In other words, less than one percent of all SNAP recipients are committing fraud. And furthermore, the entire cost of the SNAP program yearly is less than the increase in military spending. We just gave them eighty billion dollars more. That's more than the yearly SNAP budget. See, we have to cut this program that feeds people in order to funnel more money towards our defense budget because we need to be killing people. That's what we prioritize. We'd rather kill people abroad than feed our own citizens. That's why when I say that Donald Trump hates poor people, I don't think that's hyperbole. His actions dictate that he doesn't give a flying fuck about people who are less fortunate because why would he? He has never once in his life experienced austerity. He's never experienced the struggle of paying rent, living paycheck to paycheck, putting food on the table. Fuck, he's never experienced working. Being president is basically the only job that he's had. So why would he care about people who are alien to him? He doesn't know what it's like to be poor. And sure, you know, there was that faux populist rhetoric where he campaigned as someone who was going to make sure that he's looking out for the forgotten in this country doesn't look like he's doing that. So I get it if you were duped like I don't really get it, but I can I can rationalize your justification if you were duped the first time. But if you are still duped and you vote for him a second time, I don't know what to say. You're just too far gone. There's no hope for you. You've drunk in the Kool-Aid. How can you justify this and support Donald Trump? Especially if you identify as an evangelical. How can you support this? I mean, people who vote Republican oftentimes are evangelical. How can you support a president and a party whose actions are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ? This isn't my God. This is your God. You're not following your own rules if you support this. So I mean, this is disgusting. Three million people will go hungry because of Donald Trump or at least struggle to put food on the table. But in their view, oh, you know, they can go to food banks or charities can look out for them. It's not our problem. The tax dollars that they're giving us should be used to kill people, not feed people. That's more important. Because America. In a 398 to 17 vote, the House just passed an anti-Palestinian, anti-BDS resolution. And these types of resolutions and anti-BDS bills, they keep coming up. They won't go away. You defeat one, another one pops up. And this is just the latest attempt to silence people who speak out against the numerous human rights abuses of Israel. So this is just a constant battle and it will continue to be a constant battle for the foreseeable future. And let me remind you that this resolution comes at a time when members of Congress should be standing up for freedom of speech, because 27 states have already enacted anti-BDS legislation and about a dozen other states are currently considering anti-BDS legislation. So let's go ahead and call this what it is. This is a crackdown on the First Amendment because the government does not get to tell me what types of protests and political speech I am or am not allowed to engage in. But what are these types of BDS laws look like in practice? Well, one teacher from Texas was fired because she refused to sign a pro-Israel anti-BDS loyalty pledge. I love my job online. I've always wanted to be in a job that was in a service field because I know I'm making a difference. This year I got a new contract with new compliances and I came across one that shocked me. The point of boycotting any products that supports Israel is to put pressure on the Israeli government to change is treatment, the inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people. Having grown up as a Palestinian, I know firsthand the oppression and the struggle the Palestinians face on a daily basis. You know, I have to set an example for my kids. We've got to stand up for what's the justice and for right and equal opportunity for everybody and humane conditions. And so for me, it was an easy decision in that aspect. You know, so I could not sign it. I was forced to depart from my job because I will not sign it. And I cannot return back if I don't sign it. I have been here in the States for over 30 years. I'm American citizen. I follow the law and so I have a luxury of having these rights, which many people in other countries do not have. It infringed on all my principles. And on top of that, my right to speech and also right to protest. It's a baffling that they can throw this down our throats, you know, and decide to protect another country's economy versus protect our constitutional rights. I knew that I had to do something because I know it's going to affect more than just me. It may affect also my kids. So I knew that something had to be done and I couldn't just let it pass by. This is happening in America. She lost her job because she refused to sign a pledge committing to not engage in any BDS related political activity. I mean, this is one of the biggest attacks on free speech in recent history. Where's all the free speech warriors? And this passed overwhelmingly again, which is the worst aspect about this. So we need people in Congress to speak out against these types of efforts to silence criticism of Israel, but we have basically no one. Now, we're going to get to who did and did not vote for this, because there were 17 people that voted against this. But some people who voted for this might actually surprise you. Now, this is such a brazen attack on free speech that three federal courts thus far have ruled that these types of laws do in fact violate the First Amendment. But Congress, they have the chance to lead on this issue and protect free speech after one state, after another, after another, have continued to strip away First Amendment protections, but they failed miserably to do that today. Now, the reason why BDS is so crucial is because how else are we going to put pressure on Israel? This is a peaceful form of protest. It's nonviolent. And clearly it's effective because Israel doesn't want any other country to engage in BDS. It's a reason why APEC is trying to scramble to get all lawmakers on board to shut down this movement because obviously it's effective. Boycotting actually works because if you put economic pressure on a country who is in a position of power, who basically controls whether or not there will or won't be peace, that actually can affect change. But unfortunately, not very many people in Congress are willing to actually stand up for what's right and speak out and be on the right side of history. And what's interesting is that right before the House passed this resolution, Israel just demolished 70 Palestinian apartments in East Jerusalem, which was condemned by the UN in France. But rather than standing up and affirming that American citizens have the right to join Palestinians and peacefully resist the illegal Israeli occupation and modern day apartheid, our government chose to do the opposite. They chose to say, no, actually, if you want to participate in BDS, which is basically the only thing that will be conducive to peace since everything else has failed, we are going to move to punish you. Now, this is just a resolution. It's not a bill, but still everything matters. You are now on the record if you voted for this as being against free speech and taking the stand of the oppressor and abandoning the oppressed. Now, for more details on this, we go to Katie Ogoba and Addie Barrett of BuzzFeed News, who write the measure House Resolution 246 opposes efforts to delegitimize the state of Israel and the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel. According to the bill's text, BDS, a movement which began in 2005, calls for groups to apply economic pressure to Israel to achieve Palestinian independence in the Middle East. The Senate passed a similar bill amid concerns that the legislation violates the First Amendment. The bill passed the House Tuesday, 398 to 17, with five members voting present to abstain from the vote. Sixteen Democrats opposed the bill, including Omar and Tlaib, just one Republican voted against the measure, Representative Thomas Massey. Two weeks ago, Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman in Congress, took to Twitter to denounce the resolution, saying it silences the opposition to Israel's blatantly racist policies that demonizes both Palestinians and Ethiopians. Omar agrees. The first year Congresswoman unsuccessfully tried to quell the resolution before the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which she is a member last week and then introduced her own resolution to defend the pro-Palestinian movement. While her resolution doesn't mention BDS, Israel, or Palestine explicitly, it states that the House affirms that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Omar's office said in a statement in a statement on Twitter Tuesday, the Palestinian BDS National Committee called the bill a McCarthyite anti-Palestinian measure that is based on lies and aims to demonize peaceful resistance to Israel's military occupation and apartheid. Representative Grihalva, one of the Democrats who opposed the bill Tuesday night, said he voted against it because of my constant and very strong belief in free will expression. You know, this is not the first time I've taken that vote. Now, on the House floor, Rashida Tlaib, who has the article mentions, is a Palestinian American, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, spoke out and I wanted to share what she had to say because she makes some very poignant and important points here. Stand before you as the granddaughter of Palestinian grandmother, my city, who yearns to experience equality, human dignity and freedom. I stand before you, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, parents who experience being stripped of their human rights, the right to freedom of travel, equal treatment. So I can't stand by and watch this attack on our freedom of speech and the right to boycott the racist policies of the government in the state of Israel. I love our country's freedom of speech, Madam Speaker. Descent is how we nurture democracy and grow to be better and more humane and just, and this is why I oppose Resolution 243. All Americans have a right, a constitutional right guaranteed by the First Amendment to freedom of speech to petition their government and to participate in boycotts. Speech in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad is protected by our First Amendment. That is one reason why our First Amendment is so powerful. With a few exceptions, the government is simply not allowed to discriminate against speech based on its viewpoint or its speaker. The right to boycott is deeply rooted in the fabric of our country. What was the Boston Tea Party but a boycott? Where would we be now without the boycott led by civil rights activists in the 1950s and 60s like the Montgomery bus boycott and the United Farm Workers Grape boycott? Some of this country's most important advances in racial equality and equity and workers' rights has been achieved through collective action protected by our Constitution. Americans of conscience have long and proud history of participating in boycotts specifically to advocate for human rights abroad. Americans boycotted Nazi Germany in response to dehumanization, imprisonment and genocide of Jewish people. In the 1980s, many of us in this very body boycotted South African goods in the fight against apartheid. Our free our right to free speech is being threatened with this resolution. It sets a dangerous precedent because it attempts to de-diligimize a certain people's political speech and to send a message that our government can and will take action against speech it doesn't like. Madam Speaker, the Supreme Court has time and time again recognized that expressive conduct is protected by the Constitution from burning a flag to baking a cake, efforts to restrict and target that protected speech, run the risk of eroding the civil rights that form the foundation of our democracy. All Americans have the right to participate in boycotts, and I oppose all legislative efforts that target speech. I urge Congress, state governments and civil rights leaders from all communities to preserve our Constitution, preserve our bill of rights, and preserve the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech by opposing H-Rez 246 and the boycott, anti-boycott efforts wherever they rise. So everything that she said there is common sense. If you're progressive, this is a no brainer. This is one of the easiest issues. Of course, you stand up for freedom of speech and the First Amendment. And you stand up for Palestinians and their allies who want to peacefully assemble in order to fight oppression. So let's get to the vote now. Who voted correctly? Who voted against this anti-BDS resolution? Well, predictably, many progressives did, in fact, do the right thing. That includes Raul Grijalva, Pramila Jayapal, Barbara Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Mark Pokan. So those are the progressives that voted correctly. But as I stated earlier, not everyone voted the right way. Now, again, I want to emphasize that this shouldn't be difficult. It's not difficult. This is easy. This is one of the easiest votes of your career, theoretically speaking. If you are for free speech and against modern day apartheid, then you vote no on this resolution. But there were several progressives who got this wrong. And that includes Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley, and Tulsi Gabbard. Now, it also includes Katie Porter, but I don't personally know enough about her to deduce, you know, whether or not she's progressive or not. But she still messed up, so it's disgusting. But I mean, I don't understand how if you are Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley and Tulsi Gabbard, you can get this wrong. Tulsi Gabbard is running for president as the peace candidate. Do you honestly believe that peace is even possible without a peaceful movement like BDS? How are you going to achieve peace when Israel has said, No, I am not going to go back to the 1967 borders. In fact, we're going to take more land from Palestinians illegally. Even if the UN condemns us, well, the United States says that we can do it and they have the biggest military. So what are you going to do about it? How is peace achievable, Tulsi, if you don't support BDS? Do you have a solution because you haven't come up with one yet? Ro Khanna, he has been leading the charge to stop us from giving weapons to Saudi Arabia, which means that we have been complicit in the genocide that they're carrying out in Yemen. So he seems to care about human rights, but yet he decided to vote in a way that was basically a slap in the face to everyone who's speaking out in favor of Palestinians and speaking out against Israel's genocide. And Ayanna Pressley, she's new in Congress, but, you know, being a member of the squad, she should side with people from her squad. AOC to leave and Omar made the right decision. But Ayanna Pressley, from the beginning, she was someone who I kept that distance, right? She's progressive. It seems like she had a change of heart. But back in 2016, she was arguing that Hillary Clinton was progressive. I am an unapologetic progressive. I know what a progressive looks like and I know what they do. And you cannot do in three days or 30 days with Secretary Clinton has been doing for 30 years, she is a progressive. So that was a big red flag. And now she kind of proved here, maybe I'm not the real deal, maybe I'm not as progressive as my fellow squad members. Unbelievable. For people who have been consistently progressive. To vote this way. Is just it's bizarre, right? How could you do something like this and betray the people who you purport to represent in such a brazen way? So let me go to their responses and then I'll kind of pontificate a little bit more, because I called them out on Twitter and I asked why these progressives chose to side with centrist Democrats and Republicans. Rokana actually responded, saying, I respect what people want to do. Nothing in the resolution infringes on anyone's first amendment rights. I do not believe BDS, given the economic ties with Israel is practical or would lead to peace. That's a joke. I will continue to speak out against new settlements and for Palestinian human rights. And then I on a pressly responded to someone else's criticism, saying there are a lot of anti BDS bills out there that infringe on first amendment rights at the state and federal level. In my view, House Resolution 246 wasn't one of them. What I heard resounding in my community was that voting yes on this resolution affirmed to my constituents raised in the Jewish faith. Israel's right to exist. A view I share as a supporter of a two state solution. Now, I don't get that line about, you know, Israel's right to exist. They exist. They're a state. They're recognized. So what more do you want? This is just these are not good explanations. Now, at the time I'm recording this, Tulsi Gabbard hasn't said anything about this. Rokana has actually reached out to me and agreed to come on the program. So hopefully that will happen soon next week. I'm hoping that he doesn't pull Tulsi Gabbard and read shout and say, hey, Mike, I'd love to come on the program. And then six months later, they're nowhere to be found. And look, maybe I'm just being too harsh. Maybe I held them to a higher standard than I should have. But I don't view this response from Rokana and Ion or Presley persuasive at all. They're indefensible. You made an indefensible vote and now we can see you're struggling to defend it. But you can't because, again, you can't defend what's indefensible. It's very difficult to do. It's an untenable position. But I want to read the response from one of Ion's constituents, who I think put it best. She says, I'm one of your Jewish constituents and we are not a monolith. Many of us support BDS or just support free speech and protest. This is an APAC bill and is actively harmful to a two state solution. What's with the raised in Jewish faith phrasing also? It's lip service to two state. The bill doesn't even separate BDS of Israel versus BDS of settlements. This is IPAC, BB and Trump's goal to blur the line between Israel and greater Israel, opening up the door to full annexation. Don't claim that your vote is what your Jewish constituents want. It's what APAC wants. And that's exactly it. If you voted in favor of this, you sided with APAC. Congratulations. I hope you feel good about yourself. So this is not defensible. What Ro Khanna and Ayanna Presley are saying, it's not winning me back. You know, it's not like they're canceled. But I think that if we are going to hold you to a higher standard because you identify as progressive, then you should expect this type of criticism. If you do something that is against the progressive movement, then expect us to call you out for it because this is indefensible. I mean, how can you claim to support free speech and be in favor of human rights? But then make a vote like this. It's just indefensible. Shame on Ro Khanna, shame on you, Ayanna Presley and shame on you. Tulsi Gabbard, you're running to be president. Did you not think we would notice? I mean, if you're running to be president, everything that you do currently is going to be scrutinized. So what are you doing? I mean, Tulsi Gabbard, in the last couple of weeks, I don't understand what she's doing. First of all, she came out against impeachment of Donald Trump. So in other words, you don't believe we should hold people in power accountable to the same standards of everyone else. Really? She then defended Joe Biden. Not once, but twice. OK, that's interesting. And now she is voting in favor of an anti-BDS bill. What are you doing? What are you doing? I mean, I mean, if you are going to be the peace candidate, then you should be a leader here. We shouldn't have to be calling you and criticizing you and begging you to stand up for what's easy if you're progressive. What are you doing? I don't I'm genuinely puzzled at the votes here by these progressives. Because again, this is easy. You're playing on the easiest difficulty imaginable. It's as simple as what is one plus one? The answer is two. So why is it that when this battle has been waged across the country and there are so little allies, the people who we would expect to stand up for us the most are choosing to abandon us in the post-Obama era? See, we take red flags very, very seriously. We can excuse one or two red flags, but after some time, those red flags begin to add up and we begin to question whether or not you actually are the real deal. Whether or not you're actually the person who you say you were. Now, this doesn't erase all of the wonderful things that each of these three progressives has done, absolutely not. But what it does communicate to me is that maybe they're not as progressive as they have been leading us to believe that they were, at least with regard to this issue and to be fair to them. Not many people are, but you think if anyone is going to be right on this issue, it would be self-proclaimed progressives. Every single person is so afraid in Congress to stand up to APAC to speak out against the status quo here, and it's just it's bizarre. If anyone's going to go against the grain, it's Ro Khanna, Tulsi Gabbard and Ayanna Presley. We're supporting you because you claim to be progressive. So we hold you by definition to a higher standard because you are progressive. So absolutely, if you do something wrong, I am going to call you out because I hold you to a higher standard. And if you are a supporter of Ro Khanna or Tulsi Gabbard, then you shouldn't self-censor. You shouldn't say, well, you know, I still support them overall. So I guess I'm just going to have to live with this position. No, they represent you. So move them, get them to move to the position that you want, because politicians are representing us. These are individuals in the House of Representatives, meaning they represent the people. So if you're not satisfied with the position that they're taking, then you can get them to change that because they're supposed to be representing you, especially if you are in their district, if you're one of their constituents. So don't tell me, oh, well, you know what, I can't criticize Tulsi here because I support her for president. No, you should be speaking out the loudest because your concerns are coming from a good place. She's going to take what you have to say seriously, more seriously than anyone else, or at least she should. So, you know, it's just this is disappointing. It's one of those instances where you just feel heartbroken. The last time, you know, ironically, it was Ro Khanna and Tulsi Gabbard who made the correct vote when we needed them. They voted against Pego, but here they let us down. And look, no politician is perfect, right? This doesn't mean that we throw Ro Khanna, Tulsi Gabbard and Ayanna Presley in the garbage and say, well, we're done with them. But it's just a matter of when they mess up and they mess up this badly. We have to hold them accountable. We can't censor ourselves. We have to vocalize our concerns and criticisms, because if we don't, how are they going to know to course correct? How are they going to know that they're not doing what we want them to do? Now, again, we shouldn't really have to hold their hands for an issue as black and white as this, but that's not the real world. People are going to mess up and that's the way that politics is. So the point is we have to come together as a community of progressives and demand that anyone who is elected as a progressive and who identifies as progressive do better because they're all we got. We don't have, you know, a hundred progressives in Congress. It's a small handful. So we really count on this handful of progressives to do the right thing, to come through for us, especially in times like this, when we need them. When we've been fighting these BDS bills, these anti BDS bills. So for them to disappoint us like this, it's just heartbreaking. And every single person should be outraged. This is not acceptable. It's indefensible. So shame on you, Ro Khanna. Shame on you, Ayanna Presley. And once again, shame on you, Tulsi Gabbard. We believed in you and you let us down. Do better. So as many of you know, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, they are the only Muslim Congresswomen that we have. They're the only Muslim Congresswomen that have ever been elected. So when you come from a historically disenfranchised, underrepresented community, there's this assumption by the broader population that whenever there's a bad actor from your community, whenever there's a bad actor from someone who shares the same identity as you, you have an obligation and a responsibility to call them out and condemn it. Otherwise, you know, it's assumed that you must condone it if you don't speak out. You're supposed to be a model citizen and show everyone else how to behave. But that's actually not acceptable. Because no community is monolithic. So to assume that someone should condemn actions taken by others in the community just because they share the same identity, that's a relatively bigoted thing to think and say, because I mean, whenever there's a mass shooting, it's not like all white people are forced to come out and condemn it and say, as a white person, I condemn this individual who committed this atrocity. No, so you kind of end up holding minorities to a higher standard than everyone else. And that's not acceptable because all people are equal and no one group is monolithic, we're all individuals. So somebody actually kind of did this to Ilhan Omar. She was asked the question, will you condemn female general mutilation? And she said, you know, will you and Rashida Tlaib do this? Because it would be powerful if you condemn this act. That is an issue in some Muslim majority countries. And Ilhan Omar took this opportunity, thankfully, to educate this individual. And I want to share that with you because I think that this was a really powerful moment. Will you be able to make a statement against FGM? Because that's an issue in Detroit. It would be really powerful if the two Muslim Congresswoman, yourself and Rashida, would make a statement on this issue. Thanks. Your second question is an appalling question because I always feel like there are bills that we vote on, bills we sponsor. Many statements we put out. And then we're in in a panel like this and the question is posed. Could you and Rashida do this? And it's like, how often should I make a schedule? Does this need to be on repeat every five minutes? Should I be like, so today I forgot to condemn al-Qaeda. So here's the al-Qaeda one. Today I forgot to condemn FGM. So here it goes. Today I forgot to condemn Hama. So here it goes. Today I forgot. I mean, it is a very frustrating question. It comes up. You can look at my record. I voted for bills doing exactly what you're asking me to do. I have put out statements upon statements. There's a bill in Congress. There's a resolution that I am the co-author of that I voted out of the Foreign Affairs Committee. And so I think quite disgusted really to be honest that as Muslim legislators, we are constantly being asked to waste our time speaking to issues that other people are not asked to speak to because the assumption exists is that we somehow support and are for. Right? No, there is an assumption. So I want to make sure that the next time someone is in an audience and is looking at me and Rashida and Abdul and Sam, that they ask us the proper questions that they will probably ask any member of Congress or any legislative or any politician and would not come with an accusation that we might support something that is so abhorrent, so offensive, so evil, so vile. What we look for and what this whole conversation is about is that not only do we not have internalized fears about what we might believe and how that gets implemented, but that we also don't have. Right? Assumptions about what our value basis might be because of where we might come from and who we pray to. And so I would like not just for you, but for everyone to know that if you want us to speak as politicians, American politicians, then you treat us as such. So that was great because she was firm, but she was also fair. Like she had the intent to educate this person and say, look, if you looked at my actions, you would know that I am against female genital mutilation, but because I'm a Muslim, you assume that, you know, my default position must have been, oh, I support it. So until I say otherwise, then you have to assume that I support it. But that's not really the way the world works. And that's not the way that you should think because each individual person has intellectual ideological differences than other people in their community. Like I'm not expected to condemn any gay person who is a bad actor. For example, I'm not expected to say, no, I condemn my logonopolis whenever he says something horrible. So why should we hold Muslims to that same standard? Why should we hold women to that same standard? You know, it's just this has always been an issue and people don't necessarily even realize that it's an ignorant thing to say. Like I don't know that the person in the audience knew that that was something that was ignorant, but that's why these types of educational opportunities are important because they are opportunities. You get to tell people, look, you shouldn't make assumptions about somebody based on their identity and their community. So the takeaway is that, look, people are people. At the end of the day, we're just a collective of individuals and we all have our own views and beliefs. And you shouldn't just assume that because Ilhan Omar is a Muslim woman of color, that she automatically has to condemn female genital mutilation. For example, otherwise she must support it. That's absurd. You shouldn't think that way. It's extremely regressive and going forward, you know, it's incumbent on us as allies to educate people who think this way as well, because maybe that person didn't intend to come off as ignorant by asking that question, but it certainly was ignorant. And that's why we have to educate people so they don't make these types of ignorant statements and assumptions and expect, you know, that we hold people from marginalized communities to a higher standard than everyone else because it's not OK. The House recently passed the Raise the Wage Act, which raises the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. So Democrats actually did the right thing, credit where it's due. They hold the majority in the House of Representatives. And most Democrats voted for this. Now, is this going to be codified into law? No, because Republicans are in control of the Senate. And Donald Trump obviously occupies the executive branch, meaning this will die in the Senate. And even if it passed the Senate, Donald Trump would veto it. But, you know, this is still important because it shows the American people that Democrats, at least in this area, when it comes to a livable wage, they are with the American people. Now, it's sad that it took this long, that it took us basically almost eight years, actually, of fighting for a $15 minimum wage that they've all collectively gotten on board with it. But nonetheless, credit where it's due. This is a good move. Now, Rashida Tlaib was talking about this and she kind of gave everyone a reality check because even if we should be celebrating this because this is a victory, even if it is a symbolic victory, we've been fighting for $15 for so long now that the cost of living, it hasn't gotten any cheaper. So really, we should start getting the ball rolling about an 18 to $20 an hour minimum wage. Here's what she had to say. $2.13 as a tip to place $2.13 per hour. Federally, some states, of course, here in Michigan, it's over $2.50 or so. But think about that for one minute. And people cannot live on those kinds of wages. And we can't allow people to be living off of tips, relying on tips, wages, it's just not, or whatever they call it, income, because it's just not enough to support our families. But I also want to always tell a story because big fights like this one, $15, by the way, when we started it, it should have been $15. Now, I think it should be $20. Make sure you're aware of what I'm saying here. It should be $20 an hour, $18 to $20 an hour. Everything else costs and so if they say all this is going to raise the cost. I can tell you, milk has gone up, eggs has gone up, everything has gone up. The cost of food has gone up, the cost of a lot of things that we eat has gone up. Now, you won't be surprised to know that she was attacked. Viciously for saying this. But what she's saying is factually correct. We've been fighting for a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour for nearly eight years now. As each year passes, the cost of living increases, the price of bread and milk goes up. So, you know, if we are fighting for a $15 minimum wage and we don't actually get it codified into law until 15 years or so after we started that fight, guess what, $15 an hour is no longer sufficient. Now, back in either 2016 or 2015, when I first started the humanist report, I actually did a video where I looked at the cost of living around the country and I said, look, if we're being real and we're truly advocating for a living wage, then $15 an hour isn't going to be enough in some areas. New York City, for example, you need a $30 minimum wage if you expect people to survive, because not every area is the same. So what you really need, ideally, is you start out with a base minimum wage of 18 to $20 per hour, I would say 20, because you'll be negotiated down to 18. And then you chain that to inflation and the cost of living. So it just gradually increases every single year automatically. So we don't have to have this discussion, because the last time that Congress raised the minimum wage was in 2009. They raised it to 725. That was 10 years ago. So, of course, we can't keep doing this because if we don't continuously raise the wage, then people won't be able to survive because, you know, the economy is not something that's static, right? It's a dynamic thing. So you have to make sure that people's wages reflect the changes of the economy. So when she talks about 18 to $20 an hour, she's being incredibly forward thinking here because you have to continuously push the envelope. We finally get Democrats to agree to 15. Great. Now we talk about 20. Because look, here's the thing. You always have to make sure that when you're conducting negotiations, you aim higher than where you know is actually feasible, right? So if you ideally want a $20 minimum wage or an $18 minimum wage, you're shooting yourself in the foot if you don't start at 20 or $25 an hour. Because all you're going to do is get negotiated down away from your ideal position. So you start at the most extreme position and then you make concessions gradually. That's how you make sure you get good legislation passed. It's what Obama didn't realize when he was trying to fight for the Affordable Care Act, because initially he said he supports a public option, didn't even propose it. And he still got zero Republicans to vote for the ACA. So you have to be smart. You have to be strategically savvy. And you need to know that you are working with Republicans who are going to do whatever they can to chip away at the progress that you want to make. So what do you do? You aim higher in hopes of landing at your ideal position. This is common sense. So Rashida Tlaib, she is she's thinking forward here. This is the exact right move. Like I said, whatever Democrats finally come around to your position, you push them to go even further, because that's the only way you actually get what you want codified into a lot. You continuously hold their feet to the fire. You act like that asshole boss who's never satisfied no matter what. You're always complaining because guess what? You are the boss of every single member of Congress because you write their checks. Your tax dollars pay their mortgage. So without you, they wouldn't exist. Keep that in mind. You're their boss. They are your subordinate. So great move here by Rashida Tlaib. Again, this is not something like she's not codifying or not codifying, but she's not sponsoring legislation for a $20 minimum wage. She's just floating this idea. But this was basically a gigantic scandal to Republicans. Fox News ran many segments about it. They fear mongered about this, but I'm sorry. If you are not starting to think about this with how long the fight for 15 has been going on, then you don't actually care about a living wage. And we know that Fox News would get rid of the minimum wage if they could. But I mean, if you're a liberal and you're against this, if you're a left wing and you're against this, just because you're worried about attacks from Republicans, well, stop worrying about that because guess what? You're going to be attacked no matter what. So all you do is fight for the people in the best way possible and the most vocal way possible. And you do it with bold ideas like this. Hello, everyone, I am here with Senate candidate for 2020, Steven Cox. He's running in Kentucky against someone who you may or may not have heard of. His name is Mitch McConnell, and he is one of the worst politicians, if not the worst in the country, doing just irreparable damage. And he is here to tell you why he's the best to go up against Mitch McConnell. Thank you so much for coming on the program, Steven. And thank you for having me. Yeah, so I wanted to talk about this primary because there's a number of people currently running. I know there are still some candidates that are jumping in the race, but a lot of people thus far, they're more familiar, I think, with Amy McGrath, who is someone who I believe was recommended by Chuck Schumer to run. And we got a little bit of a snippet of, you know, what she's going to do to defeat Mitch McConnell. And I'm going to play that clip for everyone very briefly so they can get a taste as to why she has a very horrible strategy. You know, Kentucky voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. And you can say Kentucky is a very red state, but it's a very pro Trump state. And if you if you think about why Kentuckians voted for Trump, they wanted to drain the swamp. And Trump said that he was going to do that. Trump promised to bring back jobs. He promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians. And that is very important. And you know what? Who stops them along the way? Who stops the president from doing these things? Well, Mitch McConnell. And I think that that's really important. And that's going to be, you know, my message that the things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done. He's not able to get it done because of Senator McConnell. Essentially, what she's saying is I'm going to run a pro Trump campaign. I'm going to be a pro Trump Democrat. The problem with this strategy is, first of all, if you run as Republican light, nine times out of 10 voters are going to opt for the real deal. And second of all, all that it would take for this type of campaign to implode is Donald Trump to say four words, I endorse Mitch McConnell. So, Stephen, what are you going to do to defeat Mitch McConnell? Because I don't think anybody is under the illusion that this is going to be an easy process. But what is your strategy? Because I think it's clear that nobody has faith that Amy McGrath is going to be able to pull this off. Well, I mean, honestly, my strategy is one, I'm a working class person. I know a lot of people around the state and a lot of people around the state know me just as a, you know, a regular person. And I'm being very unapologetic, very genuine in everything that I do. If my stances aren't popular, I'm still rolling with them. I've made some people mad. But, you know, there's a reason I take the stances I do. It's because I believe in them. And, you know, you know, with Amy, especially, you know, you'll see her flip flop on some things just given public opinion. But that is that's part of the strategy I'm going to take to Mitch McConnell. He's not real well liked by anybody, by any means. But what happens time and time again is the people that run against him try the Republican light way and, you know, voters don't turn out for that. I mean, there are actual progressive people everywhere in Kentucky. Kentucky used to be heavily, you know, a blue state. But over the last, you know, 30 years, it slowly went more red and red and red because, you know, their first reaction is, oh, the Republican one. That means I should be more like the Republican. No, it means you need to get out there, be honest, genuine, inspire people, you know, and stick to your guns. You are running on a very progressive platform. You support Medicare for all free college. You essentially check all of the progressive boxes, so to speak. But what it seems like you're kind of implementing is a a Stacey Abrams type of strategy, which she did in Georgia, where rather than trying to run to the right, you just have a massive get out the vote campaign. Like you get people in Kentucky who are non-voters and you get them to come out and vote. Is that the type of strategy that you're trying to carry out here? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you saw it in the 2016 elections, you know, with the presidential election. You know, Hillary, you know, she won the popular vote, but still that wasn't enough to, you know, clinch it because like Toriel College and it's because people weren't inspired to vote for her. Um, I mean, I voted for her just because I felt like I'm definitely not voting for Donald Trump. But I mean, it's it's awful that, you know, we have to make that sort of decision. Like I don't really like this candidate, but it's the best chance we have of not having that candidate. You know, we should really have good candidates with actual ideas that will help people. Yeah. And part of the problem is that you have so many people who I think are misguided who run for office and they try to replicate the strategy that Republicans have been utilizing. Like, you know, the same problem back in 2014 with Allison Lundrigan Grimes, you know, she was criticizing Mitch McConnell for not being right wing enough. You know, she was saying, Mitch, that's not how you hold a gun. And I have, you know, used her ads as an example of how you don't run a campaign because here's the thing, if you give voters an option between someone who is a Republican and someone who is saying, no, I'm the real Republican, they're not going to believe that. Like they're not going to buy that you're more conservative when you have a D next to your name. Like for these voters, I don't think you can win them over. Like I and you can kind of give me your thoughts on this. Like this strategy, this idea that we need to win over Trump voters. I don't think that is a strategy that will be conducive to win. I mean, sure, you can maybe get back some of the voters that were previously pro Obama, but then flipped and went to Trump. But I mean, I think that the problem with the Democratic Party and where they've gone wrong is that they listen to strategists. They listen to these people who say, no, this is a red state, so you have to be a moderate. You have to be relatively conservative. But what do you say to those people who say, Stephen, you know, you're running against Mitch McConnell, this is going to be a bloodbath. If you are going to go to the far left, which we know that they will call you in the event you win the primary. I mean, how do you respond to that? Because I think this type of criticism is absolutely inevitable, but you have the right strategy. And this strategy has led to progressive victories in Democrat victory. So how do you respond to that? If they bring you on for an interview, you just win the primary and they say, okay, so Mitch McConnell is going to win. I mean, what would you tell them? Because I think that even though we have the right argument that is backed by empirical evidence, people don't believe it because it seems counterintuitive. And I think that I can get that just instinctively. But how would you explain this to people? Well, I mean, honestly, if I were to, I mean, they're going to call me far left. They're going to call me a socialist. I mean, that's kind of his key word right now is, you know, fight socialism. But, you know, if I ran to the right and tried to appeal to those people, they're still going to call me a socialist. And it's just going to, you know, alienate my actual audience of people that believe in me and, you know, want to move forward with these ideas. Or I can, you know, stick to those ideas, stick to my base and just grow it. And, you know, the truth is, even if they don't like my ideas, I guarantee they'll like somebody being honest with them for a change. And if that gets some of those voters over, that's great. But that's not who I'm trying to get out to vote. I can't guarantee, I mean, I can't, I can't, you know, expect them to win this for me. I've got to get the people that are tired of everything we've got. And think that if they vote for Amy, it's just going to be like voting for McConnell anyway. We need to get rid of those sort of doubts, get people out to vote, organize them, say, hey, you know, Stephen Cox, May 19th, 2020, get out there, we need you, you know. So talk about Mitch McConnell, because you said that he's not very popular in Kentucky. And you know more than anyone else. And part of, like there's, there is this issue where politicians are not very popular, but they keep winning. But name recognition is such a powerful thing. So can you explain what people's grievances are with Mitch McConnell? Because I could name like a thousand. But what are people in Kentucky saying about Mitch McConnell? Why are they dissatisfied with him? Well, you know, that's the interesting thing. Some people don't really know exactly why they're dissatisfied. They just know that he's a bad person. And then you talk to actual people around the state and they have interesting things that aren't always to do with policy. I, you know, I worked for a retail drug chain and I was talking to some of my peers in Paducah and they said, oh yeah, you know, he came into my store one time and he was just absolutely rude. He was a sniveling little, you know, did-de-de. And they're like, okay, so it's not just policy. It's the way he acts. People dislike him. They can see through a lot of the facade of how he panders. Not everybody does because some people they, you know, eat up the pandering. But I mean, he hasn't done anything. He votes to cut Medicare. He votes to cut healthcare in general. I mean, the whole reason that we have a need for campaign finance reform is because he engineered our current system of campaign finance so that superbacks can just, you know, throw everything out. So talk a little bit about that because I wanted to ask you, I feel like one thing that is incredibly popular is when you talk about corruption and Mitch McConnell is the corruption king. So I feel like that's one way that you can absolutely hit him if you're running against him. Not this, oh, well, he's not helping Trump carry out his agenda nonsense. Mitch McConnell is as corrupt as they come. So talk a little bit about that. Have you heard anyone in Kentucky express concerns with corruption with his wife in Trump's administration being overtly corrupt with the conflicts of interest? Well, I mean, not just that, but you look at his net worth, it basically jumped from 2 million to 28 million in a matter of like 60 years. So, you know, what's that about? Obviously it's not because of his pay because his pay is $175,000 a year and it doesn't add up. Also, you know, his family or well, you know, his wife, Elaine Chao, her family, they own a large shipping business three times in the past six years, three times. You can, you can Google it. They keep getting busted because their boats are being used to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. I mean, that's where you hear the whole, you know, cocaine, Mitch thing. It's like, why does anybody, you know, put up with him being there as that? You know, scarier things that are happening. He's bringing in, you know, an aluminum factory to Kentucky. So that'll bring jobs, but it's heavily funded by a Russian oligarch. So it's kind of a deal with the devil. Not to mention, you know, he's not pushing forward with any of the voter protection laws that they're pushing into Congress because he owns the best interest in the companies that create the voting machines, which is kind of a scary thing, you know, even for me looking forward like, okay, is he just gonna, you know, hack the vote if it doesn't go his way? I don't know. But I mean, he might have that ability because he owns part of the machines. Well, it's just a matter of why wouldn't you want election security because you can't have a democracy function properly if people don't have faith in democracy. And they're like, what you're speaking to really is a microcosm of, you know, broader issues. There's a conflict of interest everywhere when it comes to Mitch McConnell. He's so corrupt that it's just brazen and shameless. So I don't know why the people of Kentucky continue to tolerate this. And it seems like there hasn't really been someone who wants to run against Mitch that calls it like it is until now with you. So you're gonna, you know, if you win the primary, you will be going up against Mitch. And that's when you can hammer him for the corruption for everything that he's doing. But you're in a primary currently. So you've got to win the primary in order to take on Mitch McConnell. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamics of this primary? I know that you have at least two other primary opponents, but talk about the people who you're running against and how you're different from them. Well, there is Mike. I can't really think of his last name. You know, he's got the no labels ad going around right now. I'm different from him because I'm actually from Kentucky. People don't realize, but he uses the label. He talks about no labels, but he uses the label of Kentucky farmer. He's a journalist from Wisconsin. He moved here in 2006. I'm glad he likes this place and, you know, he wanted to move here. But, you know, when you call yourself a Kentucky farmer, that makes it sound like, you know, you've got roots here. And he's not a Kentucky farmer. He's a guy who farms in Kentucky. As far as, you know, Amy McGrath, she's the, you know, best known person. I know I'd like to think that her heart's in the right place, but she's either pandering to try to get votes with her strategy. And, you know, that just means that she's lying or she actually does want to support Trump, which is, you know, scarier. Anyway, because how can you be a Democrat that wants to support the leader of the Republican Party? You might as well be a Republican. Yeah. And when I saw that, I thought, man, if I were in Kentucky to hear a Democrat basically promote themselves as pro-Trump, it's nauseating. You know, it's just unacceptable. And I agree with you. I don't think that like she's a bad person. I think her heart is in the right place. I think she is doing what she thinks will make her electorally, you know, successful. But it's a it's a disaster. Like it's we're watching a train wreck in real time. And of course, if she defeated Mitch McConnell in the event she won the primary, I would be thrilled. I would vote for, you know, a ham sandwich over Mitch McConnell. Anyone is better than Mitch McConnell, you know. So I would be excited with anyone defeating him, but we have to get someone who knows what to do. A get out the vote campaign where you energize the left in Kentucky. And nobody has said that they want to do that except for you. So let me give you one last pitch. The website is Cox for US.com. If you want to make this happen, if you want to try to take on a political behemoth, then you have to support someone who knows how to do that. And I think it's Steven Cox. So make your last pitch and just share anything that you think my viewers should know. Well, they should know that I am pro-choice. There was a little bit of a debacle with that just because originally I'd taken a stance of saying that I was pro-life, but I believed in the Constitution which gave people the choice. But really, you know, I talked to several women about that and they let me know, well, it's okay to not be for abortion, but as long as you believe that it's people's choice, then that means you're pro-choice. So yeah, absolutely, 100% pro-choice. That's a good clarification. Not taking any donations from corporations, special interest groups, nothing like that. It's 100% by the people, for the people. Um, I'm not going to be bought and sold because the only thing I want is progress. That's excellent. Now let me ask you because you touched on the pro-choice thing. Let's say I'm a Republican voter in Kentucky and I say Steven, life is absolutely precious. How can you say that you're personally pro-life but support somebody's right to end what they deem life? Like how would you respond to that? I mean, I honestly, I do believe that all life is precious and with that, I believe that free will is something equally as precious. Um, you know, people, a lot of times when you say you're pro-choice, they want to act like that you're not going to be a religious person. I am a Christian. I believe that, you know, God gave us free will and with that, free will was supported by the Constitution. It is no one's place to choose a person's path but their own. And people really need to grab onto that. They need to stop using God as a crutch to try to shove their ideas in people's space because that's, that is not God. But then there's the rebuttal. We ban murder. It's not legal to murder someone. So the way that I think, you know, There's a thing about that. A lot of people when they say, you know, when they talk about the Bible and I, I know this is the humanist report, but I'll give you a little bit of, you know, a little bit of God has hit me. Old Testament knowledge. If you look into Old Testament knowledge and you look into what the punishments were for what it was an eye for an eye. I mean, if you murdered somebody, you would be murdered. If you caused a loss of life, you would lose your life. If you caused a loss of property, you would have to lose part of your property or make amends. In the case of miscarriages or abortions, that was counted as property loss. Religiously, I mean, I don't believe that life starts at the first breath because, you know, I know how brains develop. I understand science, but religiously that was the law, you know. And this is such a wedge issue. It's going to come up. Like I have a feeling that this will be something, especially in Kentucky, where this will come up. Look, this is my advice to you. This is what I would say if I were in your position. I am unapologetically pro-life in every sense of the word, but that means I support choice. And the reason why is because regardless, if we have abortion abortions that are legal or illegal, abortions will continue to happen. It's just a matter of if we make it illegal, then this will lead to, you know, unsafe abortions. And that means that women are going to die. So I'm pro-life, but that means I protect women's lives. And also I'm pro-life in the sense that I don't support wars like Mitch McConnell. He supports every single war and he doesn't care that there are women and children being bombed in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and they're using our bombs. So I think that when you really, if you broaden what it means to be pro-life and explain why that leads to you being pro-choice, I felt like you're not going to convince 100% of people. But I think that it's a really, it's logically soundproof, I think, and people can't question it. But what I think your best hope is to get them to understand. Yeah, if you honestly support life and you believe that life is precious, you're going to arrive at pro-choice. It's just a natural outcome. Because what they consider pro-life has nothing to do with actually caring about life at all. I mean, it's pro-birth, but I mean, once a person's born, you want to say that, you know, taking care of them as entitlements and, you know, unnecessary benefits. Or hey, you know, you want to support what ICE is doing at the border, is that pro-life? No, they're treating those people like animals. Exactly. And honestly, I guarantee that a lot of these people have animals as pets that they treat better than we're treating the people at the border. Yeah, which is sad, which is super sad. And bodily autonomy is a human right. So look, you know, the campaign just started, so you have a lot of time to kind of like listen to feedback and what types of questions will come up. And it seems like the abortion one has come up. So, you know, I'm glad that you still have a lot of time and it looks like, you know, you have the right approach in terms of getting out the vote. And that's really what I wanted to hear. Like I never want to hear someone who's, you know, a progressive running in a red state say, look, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna shift to the right in order to win votes from Republicans because it's not a strategy that will ever, I mean, it's gonna work sometimes, right? I mean, Joe Manchin did it, but I mean, most of the time, if you want to win- Does anybody like Joe Manchin? Everybody hates Joe Manchin. Nobody likes him. So you activate your base. So thank you for understanding that. So it's cox4us.com. If you want to support him, tell us what we can do. Well, yeah, definitely cox4us.com. Go there. You can sign up to be a volunteer. It's got a link, a donation link that is a secure link to Act Blue. And you can follow me at Steven Cox USA on Twitter. You can also go to facebook.com slash cox4ky, that's C-O-X-F-O-R-K-Y. Connect with me there. If you want to actually help and, you know, do things, I have all my contact information completely public. If I get elected to the Senate, it'll still be public. I'll be here for the people. And, you know, if you want to help me, just reach out to me. I'll talk to you, just like we're talking right now. And when's the primary? Primary May 19th, 2020. So you've got plenty of time to take action if you're in Kentucky. And certainly, if you don't live in Kentucky, I'm sure that you will have phone banking established for people outside of the state, correct? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's actually been a lot of support come in to say, hey, you know, we'll gladly make phone calls for you. Okay, well, we're going to get this set up. That's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the program, Steven. We'll be following your campaign. And, you know, we wish you luck because so far, it seems like nobody else has the right strategy. And I think that you have the right ideas. And let's just hope that we can take down Mitch McConnell because that would be pretty great for the country, to say the least, especially great for Kentucky. One way or another, he's done. He's done. Yeah. Yeah. Bad person, horrible politics. Let's get him out. Steven Cox, thank you so much for coming on the program. 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 in the show. As usual, I want to thank all of our Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members for helping the show to not just survive, but thrive as well. You all are absolutely amazing. I am done talking, so I am going to bounce. I'll see you all next week. I'm Mike Figueredo. This has been the Humanist Report. You can expect me to cover the Democratic debates in pretty in-depth next week, as I did the last time. So I will see you all then. Take care.