The Dems Need a Civil War - Cenk Uygur
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 14 minutes
Words per minute
200.03827
Harmful content
Misogyny
31
sentences flagged
Toxicity
176
sentences flagged
Hate speech
54
sentences flagged
Summary
On today's episode of Trigonometry, we have a special guest on the show, Cenk Aukerman. He's a brilliant political analyst, writer, and all-around brilliant human being. In this episode, we discuss the Democratic Party's failure to elect a president in 2016, why it's time for a Democratic Civil War, and why the party should go all in on 2020.
Transcript
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We need to have a democratic civil war within the Democratic Party and not violently, not physically, politically and rhetorically.
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It's not the voters' fault, you morons. You ran the election. It's your fault.
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A guy who said, let's terminate the Constitution, consider martial law, and had a fake elector plot to steal an election.
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So you fear that at the end of this four-year period, he will not vacate the White House?
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That is one of my concerns, absolutely, and that alone is a deal-breaker.
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No, thanks for being here. It's great to have you on, and especially at this moment.
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First of all, let's have your diagnosis. What happened?
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This is why we brought him on, by the way, this sophisticated analysis.
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Okay, no, in all seriousness, I think what happened is relatively obvious, but it's not obvious to anyone on television.
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It's not obvious to anyone in the Democratic Party.
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The populists won, and the populists wins almost every time.
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So, in my opinion, and anybody who's online knows that I don't have kind words for Donald Trump, right?
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But nevertheless, he at least had the smarts, and it bothers me to say that, but it's true, to at least pretend to be a populist,
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Whereas the Democrats are like, we will be establishment Democrats.
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People love the establishment, and Kamala Harris got 90 corporate CEOs to sign a letter saying that they like her,
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And she went and told everybody on cable news, the corporate CEOs are on my side.
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And then she went and said, oh, my God, you'll never believe it.
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Because Dick Cheney, when he left office, had an approval rating of 13%.
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Even if you're not anti-war, which almost the entire country is anti-war, 13% is not complicated.
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But they have this great, brilliant strategy, which they always do, and I'll tell you why they do,
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of, no, we're going to get the Republicans in the suburbs.
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We don't need any progressive voters that hate war.
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We don't need any populist voters that hate the corruption of the system.
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We're going to surround ourselves in elitism, and then because we're going to get the Republicans
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I'm like, first of all, all the Republicans are in favor of Donald Trump.
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I don't know when you're going to get this through your thick, thick, idiotic establishment
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Hillary Clinton only got 7% of the vote after they demonized Donald Trump 1,000%.
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And then I think they were right to demonize Donald Trump in 2020, but Biden got less.
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I'm like, there's no Republican votes to get, you idiots.
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And this time around, Kamala Harris, with this brilliant strategy of the Cheney's, got 5%
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So the thing is, guys, I don't think there's really any dispute about what happened because,
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look, they have their own crazy, lunatic ideas about, oh, it's Latino men's fault.
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But the reason that I know I'm right, empirically, is when she started her campaign, she actually
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I don't know who came up with it, but that's the guy who should run the next campaign.
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Oh, that's a disastrous thing to do for the Republicans, right?
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And she says, I want to protect housing prices.
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She mentioned this a little bit, not really too much.
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Like, private equity is actually buying up all the houses and driving up the prices.
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But they're the donors to both the Republicans and Democrats and to Donald Trump, right?
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So she was, and then she picks Tim Walz, the most populous of all the Democratic candidates.
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She's got to, I literally said on the Young Turks, we should have the election today.
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But I don't know what she's going to do the rest of the time.
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And that's exactly when she turns around and blows it by being corporate elitist establishment.
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So the way that you think the Democrats could have succeeded in this election is by having who and doing what?
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So first of all, 14 months ago, I started a petition on the Young Turks.
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And the Young Turks audience should get a lot of credit because, you know, some people were like, well, I'll tell you what the petition is and I'll tell you the reaction.
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We're trying to be as polite as possible, but you can't go on.
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Because, and the clips online, September of 2023, because it was already patently obvious.
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He would make a speech and then he would wander off and go shake someone's hand that wasn't there.
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I'm like, when you're shaking an invisible man's hand, it's over.
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By the end, he was talking about how his uncle was eaten by cannibals.
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And mainstream media, that's literal, by the way.
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And mainstream media is like, no, he's young and dynamic.
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If Donald Trump said his uncle was eaten by cannibals, they would have torn him to pieces.
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And all they did was a protection racket for Joe Biden.
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And so our audience, some of them, by the way, their reaction was, no, you're going to help Trump win.
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No, we have to just please Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
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And if you're nice enough to him and if you say enough pleasant things, then you do enough propaganda, then we'll win.
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Oh, my God, you're not doing propaganda for the Democrats.
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But the people who said we're like, hell, yeah, we do accountability.
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We pay you as our as your subscribers to be honest with us, not to sugarcoat things, not to give us BS.
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So if we really, really, really want to beat Trump, you're not going to beat him with Joe Biden.
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And now they admit afterwards the, you know, the Pod Save America guys are pretending that they knew all along when they were cheerleading Joe Biden the entire time.
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And by the way, all those shows said Cenk is being terrible, disgraceful.
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We should stick with this crappiest candidate we have.
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Now they turn around after the election and go, oh, his staff says he would have lost.
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Trump would have gotten 400 electoral college points like they knew they were going to get slaughtered.
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Then I ran against him in a primary because I was so desperate.
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I'm like, isn't anybody going to enter this race?
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I mean, I hate Gavin Newsom, but at least he could put together a sentence.
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I'm just looking for a person whose brain is not going to fall out.
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And then, but I couldn't get him to, I'm like, if I do well or Dean Phillips does well, maybe it'll animate Gretchen Whitmer or Tim Walz or Shapiro to come in.
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I thought Shapiro could have won, but if I had my druthers, so put all that aside.
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That's what happened, and that was the dynamic of it.
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But if you said to me, out of the people that exist now who would run it, my first choice would be Jon Stewart.
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Give me Jon Stewart in a Democratic primary, and I will rout anyone against us in that primary and in the general election, and we'll win easily.
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If I can't have someone like Jon Stewart, and I have to go with someone, a politics adjacent, then I would pick either Sean Fine or Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union.
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Sean O'Brien spoke at the Republican Convention.
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What am I picking him for, for a Democratic primary?
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Because I'm a populist, and Sean O'Brien is a populist.
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And he gave the best speech out of all the speeches of the RNC or DNC, if you go back and watch that, and he told rich people to their face, the donors in the Republican Party, I'm coming for you.
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If I can't have one of those guys, and you make me pick a politician, and then this is where I'm going to lose a lot of Republicans.
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And they have all this propaganda that they did against them.
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But actually, the most populist of our politicians is Tim Walz.
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So he paid family leave, get moms 12 weeks off, because they deserve it after they have a baby, right?
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Having them go back to the assembly lines is monstrous.
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These are super popular economic positions, and he got them passed.
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And he speaks like a normal human being and not a corporate robot.
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So you've got problems with where he was in China, blah, blah, blah.
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But overall, I'll take Tim Walz over any of the other corporate robots.
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I guess the reason I'm asking you who and how is that I think the big discussion is, is it a personnel issue or is it a structural issue?
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And that's what I'm getting at, because I don't think we're changing the captain of the Titanic avoids if two minutes before the iceberg hits is really going to change anything.
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And it felt to me, if you're talking about the importance of a populist approach, the problem with the Democrat Party is it's not a party that's on the side of the ordinary person.
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And so that's why, look, Young Turks is the longest running show in Internet history.
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And so I want to see how long we can keep it going.
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But we started basically at the beginning of online video.
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And we got there by telling the truth and being honest and being populist and not serving the rich but serving the average person, right?
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And so when you look at the Democratic Party, we have tried so many different things throughout the years.
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When I say we, me and the Young Turks host an audience, okay?
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Bernie Sanders came on the show in 2016, got 6 million views.
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And the next time he came on in the middle of Labor Day, nobody was watching anything, et cetera, 4 million views.
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We can have an ideological conversation about whether that's the right way to go or not.
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Now we have a populist plank on our website, tyt.com.
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I'm saying right-wing populists, left-wing populists.
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Let's go pass them together and let's demand our politicians do it no matter which side they're on.
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So in the midst of all this, we have tried to convince the Democrats a thousand times over.
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You said Donald Trump was a maniacal clown.
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So Hillary Clinton and the entire establishment of the Democratic Party said that they were geniuses and it was going to be a cakewalk.
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I'm sitting there screaming on the Young Turks, no, she doesn't.
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And so I went on ABCs this week after the convention where Hillary Clinton had a 10-point lead at that point.
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Everybody on the panel, of course, says Hillary Clinton by a landslide.
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And I said the same thing I'm telling you guys today.
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They're running the most establishment candidate I've ever seen.
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So after she loses, they go, oh, we're going to learn our lessons.
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And their lessons were blame the voters, blame progressives.
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And so they learned no lesson because, guys, and this is the critical thing.
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They're never going to learn a lesson because they are hooked on the donor money.
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The entire structure, and this is, and I don't want people to get it wrong.
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This is almost the entirety of the Democratic and Republican parties.
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And to be fair to Trump, as Trump did, Trump defeated them.
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So as much as I have gigantic problems with Trump, I respect that.
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And the other thing I respect that Trump does is when he breaks people.
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And then so on my side, we got the civility police.
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I ran for Congress in 22, and again, because I was so frustrated.
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Like, because we sent the Justice Democrats in, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, et cetera, and they
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I guess maybe they didn't know the mission, or they didn't understand the mission, or they
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And unfortunately, they barely did that, right?
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And when I did, the LA Times has an endorsement meeting, right?
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So I go, and we talk for, it's supposed to be 30 minutes.
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Because we couldn't stop talking about the issues.
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And I come out, and my campaign manager says, how'd it go?
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I said, look, I went in thinking there was a 0% chance, because the mainstream media is
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never going to endorse a populist candidate, right?
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I come out thinking, 12% chance, because it couldn't have gotten any better.
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And I said to them as I was leaving, the corporate Democrat in the race is Christy Smith.
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If you ask her the same questions, and she has better answers than me, then endorse her,
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They talked to her for 15 minutes over the phone.
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She said that she was for the firefighters and the teachers.
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And so when they did, but here's the interesting part.
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When they got to me, they said, while we agree with Uyghur's stance on money and politics and other
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issues, we find him too pugilistic, and we prefer civility and guidance.
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That is saying, we don't want you to fight for your voters.
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And if you're already at the top, you don't want any of the status quo changed.
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It's all of why they hate Bernie, and it's half of why they hate Trump.
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On our side, we finally have to gather up the courage to say, no, the Democratic leaders that
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Morning Joe and The View want you to worship are morons.
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Even Biden only won by 43,000 votes in the swing states.
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And the whole time you're telling us that Trump is a civility clown, and you lost to him twice
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The only reason they exist is that they're propped up by mainstream media, which is nothing
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So you give me one populace, and I will rip through the Democratic Party.
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We've been civil to these idiot, corrupt forces for way too long.
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And then we could have a candidate that can kick a Republican's ass.
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There's an interesting point you made about the civility issue that I'd like to push back
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on, Cenk, because I don't think a lot of Democrats are civil.
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I don't think Joe Biden calling Republican voters garbage is civil.
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I don't think Kamala Harris calling Trump a fascist is civil.
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Those are the things that you do when you don't actually have any ideas, and you've lost
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So part of the reason people like our show and in TYT Network overall is that we try really
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And in fact, there's one raging right now, OK, because that last Trump ad that they put
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40 million into about the trans detainees getting gender reassignment surgery for free.
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It's not the number one issue, as we just talked about.
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The number one issue is corporate donors, elitism, et cetera.
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And there are other Young Terse hosts, and I love them.
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And it's OK to have disagreement in conversation.
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In the Republican bubble, or in the Trump MAGA bubble, you guys think that the Democrats
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They are to people like me who run against them.
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New York Times, when I ran, said I was anti-Muslim.
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Because what they're saying is that you're a bigot.
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And you're a racist, that is a smear on your character, which is completely baseless.
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In the old days, the system would do literal assassinations, right?
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Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, maybe the Kennedys, et cetera.
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And they're going to do a literal assassination.
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When you assassinate someone literally, it makes them a martyr.
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When you assassinate their character, it drags down their cause with them.
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So character assassination keeps your hands clean and does bigger damage to the cause.
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So the machine turned and does character assassinations.
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And if you read that New York Times article, they imply that bestiality is part of my legislative agenda.
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I mean, the degree to which they lied about me was unreal to the point where there was a section
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when they said that I brought on David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, and I agreed with him that he wasn't racist.
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If you watch the interview, I call him a racist, an anti-Semite, a bigot, an idiot, et cetera, right?
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But aren't you just making Francis' point for him?
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But the part I don't agree with is when it comes to Republicans, historically, they have
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Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden has made every dirty deal in this country for the last 40 years.
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He loves Mitch McConnell more than he loves any Democrat.
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So they're used to and culturally gotten used to civility, civility, status quo, status quo
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But the problem is that Trump makes it so easy for them, right?
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The garbage comment is mainly him being senile.
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Like, so I call him out when he does dumb things.
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But that one was just, he's like, Puerto Rico, garbage, right?
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You can't, so that's not, and guys though, now let me bring it back to you.
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So just to get this clear for anyone who's watching who's not familiar with our show,
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We are disaffected people who were on the left in the UK.
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In this election, given the choice available, I think we probably would have voted for Trump
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if we were American citizens, which we are not, right?
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But really, we're interested in people from both sides and exploring their perspectives.
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So this isn't a Republican's arguing with a Democrat conversation.
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So when I say you in this case, I mean, let's say Trump supporters.
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So they say, oh, can you believe the Democrats are being on civil those?
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Trump has said every terrible thing in the world.
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I mean, Trump has called Kamala Harris fascist, all Democrats fascist, and socialist, and Marxist,
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and communist, and comrade, and scum, and poisoning the blood of our country, and every terrible thing in the world.
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And like I told you, I don't mind that much, right?
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Especially when he breaks Republicans on his own side to get things done, right?
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But don't, if you're a Trump supporter, you are not allowed to catch feelings about bad words.
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Like, because that hypocrisy breaks all hypocrisy records.
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If you think Donald Trump's a fluffy, nice guy who deserves civility, you're not on this planet.
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I think, look, I think what you're saying is in part true, but I also think your criticisms of somebody have to be accurate.
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So, look, guys, all of these words suck, and they get loaded up with what people, their own beliefs and what they mean, right?
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Communism is no private property, state runs everything, central planning, et cetera.
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Capitalism has a meaning, free markets, et cetera, right?
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Socialism ranges from the Swedish system, which is perfectly lovely, creates IKEA and Swedish meatballs and takes care of its own citizens, and the people are very happy.
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Two, sometimes North Korea is called socialist.
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Well, North Korea and Norway couldn't be more different.
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So that one gets loaded up with if you're on the right, you're just saying everything evil is socialist.
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So, okay, finally we get to, and by the way, the most important word is the one that almost never gets used, which is corporates, corporatists.
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So the great majority of the American political system is corporatists, and they serve corporate donors.
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So now, when you get to fascists, why do I call Trump that?
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Because, not because, oh, I don't like him and he's mean.
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When he lost the election, and he most definitely lost the election, he then decided, I don't give a damn.
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So he'd been saying all along, oh, I love these dictators, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, you know, Vladimir Putin's not technically a dictator, but close enough, Viktor Orban, et cetera.
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And so, oh, I love these strong men, oh, when they get into the room, everybody has to applaud, everyone has to agree, oh, I love it.
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I'm like, no, yeah, everyone has to applaud, because they're dictators, and they'll be murdered if they don't applaud.
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What part of that is unclear to you, brother, right?
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So you say, okay, well, that's dangerous tendencies, but he didn't do it, right?
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January 6th, when those guys bum-rushed the Capitol, I'm going to blow your mind here and say something from the left that nobody ever says.
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You know how on the left they say when, you know, black folks, you know, protest, but then a riot breaks out, you know, 2020, George Floyd, all that stuff.
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They say that's the voice of the unheard, right?
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And there's a lot of truth to that, because they're tired of getting their asses handed to them by the cops.
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But January 6th was also a bit of the voice of the unheard, because those were right-wingers.
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Yeah, they got riled up by Trump, and they thought that democracy was stolen when it wasn't.
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One, I tell the left, what would you do if you thought democracy was stolen?
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What if Trump actually did the fake elector plot and succeeded, right?
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So for those right-wingers, mainstream media and the power establishment had not been hearing them for decades.
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They should be arrested for trespassing, et cetera, all the terrible things they did.
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And so, but notice, none of the organizers were arrested.
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I don't mean the Proud Boys and the three percenters, et cetera.
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No, Eastman, the lawyer for Donald Trump, Navarro wrote a whole book about it, Bannon, Trump, et cetera.
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They're largely left alone, but the common man immediately thrown in jail because the elites are untouchable.
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So you do a fake elector plot to destroy democracy because you lost an election.
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And then he said, this is, again, the most under-quoted, most important quote of Donald Trump.
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Afterwards, he said, we should terminate the Constitution.
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All rules, regulations, and articles in the Constitution, he wrote it on True Social, not out of context.
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Somebody who says terminate the Constitution, I'm done with them.
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If that's not a fascist, I don't know what fascist means.
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So just to reinforce what I said earlier about us not being party political,
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we were very critical of the riots that happened in 2020, both in this country and in our house.
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We were also very critical of what happened on January the 6th, right?
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So nobody's here in this conversation is pro either of those things.
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You can argue about whether it's the voice of the unheard or the fact that in large groups,
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there's always going to be someone who likes rioting and likes burning things.
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However, even if we were to accept what you say, there's a lot to discuss there,
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and I can't be bothered to relitigate to the 2020 election other than to say both parties refused to accept the results of the election.
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I think that was a bad thing for both of them to have done.
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However, in this election, Francis and I went along to the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden to see it as journalists coming over from the UK.
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We were told that it's a Nazi rally and that Donald Trump is Hitler, right?
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Adolf Hitler launched a series of genocidal wars and caused the deaths of over 50 million people,
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including the deliberate extermination of millions of people in concentration camps.
00:28:04.600
And that, the Nazi party, was his vehicle for doing that.
0.88
00:28:10.520
I did not see that when I went to Madison Square Garden, but that is what was said about him.
0.83
00:28:16.360
So when we talk about civility, I don't really see that as civility, to make that level of ridiculous allegation.
00:28:23.520
Yeah, so look, sometimes people say the distinctions that I make is splitting hairs,
00:28:29.640
So I've never called him a Nazi and I've never called him Hitler.
00:28:32.860
I'm challenging the idea that then being civil.
00:28:38.520
So, and in fact, a Democratic congressman was on our show on election night and called him Hitler.
00:28:50.420
You could say, hey, that's not right to call him a Hitler Nazi.
00:28:53.880
On the other hand, you look at the speeches and it's horrific.
00:28:59.540
First of all, I wouldn't bring up a roast comic and not have him roast MAGA, by the way,
00:29:03.600
and not have him roast Trump and not have him roast white people,
00:29:06.040
but roast all the different groups that the crowd might or might not hate.
00:29:10.380
Now, as it turned out, the crowd did not like it.
00:29:13.480
Again, we pointed out on the Young Turks is super important.
00:29:16.080
If the crowd loved it, that's a different thing because the comic's not important.
00:29:22.260
But Trump's teams thought that that guy was a brilliant idea to put up and they knew his
00:29:36.320
But Rudy Giuliani gets up and gives a speech about how two-year-old Palestinians are terrorists
1.00
00:29:40.700
and that we need to kill them and et cetera, et cetera.
0.99
00:29:44.280
Rudy's speech was 10,000 times worse than the comics and nobody even cared.
0.99
00:29:57.300
And the Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old.
0.99
00:30:03.000
So he started going, oh, they start learning in two years old.
0.93
00:30:10.720
And then he commanded the audience, you are pro-Israel.
00:30:13.960
Well, first of all, you don't speak for them, brother.
00:30:15.460
Then he just over and over again, and I've lived this my whole life, and it gets back
00:30:25.580
You can't say that about black people, Jewish people, white women, whatever it is.
0.68
00:30:29.760
You get to Muslims, you say any goddamn thing you like.
1.00
00:30:33.560
And Trump, by the way, another reason to call him a fascist in 2016, and people will
00:30:37.760
make excuses for this, but there is no excuse.
0.61
00:30:39.720
He said, I want a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country.
0.99
00:30:44.700
That is by definition racist, or bigoted, take your word, and it is by definition fascist.
1.00
00:30:52.740
I don't want to know the content of their character.
00:30:54.800
I don't want to know what their individuality is.
00:30:57.620
I don't care if they were an interpreter that risked their life to save our soldiers.
00:31:06.620
I know the ban then was challenged in the courts and became something else, but you
00:31:14.200
And MAGA, they say, hey, why don't you guys come over and agree with us?
00:31:17.700
Well, if you say that I should be banned, how do you expect me to agree with you?
00:31:24.160
Well, I don't think he was saying you should be banned.
00:31:25.920
I think he was saying that immigration from certain countries should be banned.
00:31:32.280
As in you who live in this country should be banned?
00:31:38.820
Number one, let's acknowledge that he said for Muslims coming into the country, I'm going
1.00
00:31:49.660
Now, you're talking about what happened in the administration because of the courts
00:31:54.000
But during the campaign, he said, I want a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering
0.94
00:32:01.100
So that is a bona fide, bigoted, fascist thing to say.
1.00
00:32:04.640
If he had said, I want a total and complete shutdown of these goddamn Jews entering the
1.00
00:32:10.780
I don't know about fasc- I don't- I don't know how that's fascist.
00:32:16.380
No, no, no, no, but this matters because fascists were actually allied with some Muslims during
00:32:23.240
In fact, it's not about Muslims, Jews, Christians, et cetera.
0.95
00:32:25.680
Fascists pick one minority or several minorities and they direct all the hatred and fear towards
00:32:31.740
those minorities so they can accumulate more power.
0.97
00:32:34.500
So it doesn't matter if it was Jews or Muslims that they do it to.
0.98
00:32:43.180
And so, first of all, on Palestinians, he calls- he used the word Palestinian as an insult.
00:32:52.800
He said, oh, Schumer turned into a Palestinian.
00:32:58.400
Okay, so you are just- so you're obviously blatantly racist against Palestinians.
00:33:12.880
He said- Mr. Anti-war said, oh, Israel should hit their nuclear facilities, which would create a much larger war.
00:33:21.640
But Trump is an interesting guy because he speaks out of both sides of his mouth, which is actually smart politics.
00:33:26.240
Because when he won on election night, he said, we're for everyone.
00:33:32.480
I give him credit for everything he deserves credit for, and I give discredit for everything he has discredit for.
00:33:38.000
Guys, the thing I'm most worried about, when you say about me, okay, I'm already here.
00:33:42.880
And by the way, we came to this country because we love this country.
00:33:46.320
So sometimes people on the left will be like, oh, America's bad or the flag.
00:33:55.160
So his potential attorney general, I think his name is Mike Davis, said that Mehdi Hassan should be arrested, denaturalized for the tens of millions of naturalized citizens in America.
00:34:15.880
Because that says, oh, we told you you were 100% American citizen, but we were lying.
00:34:20.940
I'm saying why did they say he should be denaturalized?
00:34:28.840
My guess is he was opposed to Mehdi for opposing Israel.
00:34:32.100
But I don't know what their particular beef is.
00:34:36.580
Denaturalize a thing that doesn't even exist and then deport.
0.94
00:34:39.460
And Trump also said, if you dare protest Israel, I will arrest and deport you.
00:34:49.860
I just wrote on X this morning, I said, he's got a chance to be a populist hero or a fascist
0.95
00:34:58.660
Look, you're very good at putting your arguments forward, which I appreciate.
00:35:01.960
But we started this portion of the conversation by me asking you about the Madison Square Garden
00:35:11.260
And this whole branch of our discussion comes back to you were saying the left is civil and
00:35:18.100
it needs to not be civil and France is saying to you, when you call people Hitler and when
00:35:25.220
That's where this whole branch of the conversation goes.
00:35:27.280
So you don't call Trump Hitler and you don't call the Republicans Nazis.
00:35:32.980
But when you say the word fascist, as you say, the meaning of that word has been eroded.
00:35:37.800
That's where most people's minds is going to go, right?
00:35:40.340
So what do you, so you guys tell me, what should I call his obvious dictatorial tendencies?
00:35:45.500
Well, actually, this is a really great question because what I'd love for you to do is, and
00:35:53.260
I'm not trying to catch you out or anything like that.
00:35:56.420
I have heard a lot of rhetoric from people about Donald Trump and the concerns that they
00:36:06.100
And, you know, people use words like fascist, dictatorial, et cetera.
00:36:10.980
What do you fear over the next four years he is going to do that makes you say in the present
00:36:22.360
Yeah, so again, I don't know that he's going to do it because there's countervailing forces.
00:36:28.640
And I think the countervailing forces are super interesting and we should talk about that.
00:36:32.100
And I'm really interested to see which way the right wing goes in this country under
00:36:36.960
But the worst case scenario is he gets frazzled and feels challenged and he falls back on
00:36:46.700
And so he, and he starts pilfering and pilfering and that's very much in his nature.
00:36:50.880
Grab, take, take, because now there's no accountability.
00:36:59.500
Sorry to interrupt, but this is important for clarity.
00:37:04.420
Okay, so easy examples, but there's a million of these.
00:37:08.260
He puts Jared Kushner in charge of the Middle East last time around and Saudi Arabia.
00:37:13.820
Jared Kushner at some point goes to Saudi Arabia, talks to Mohammed bin Salman.
00:37:16.740
And right afterwards, Mohammed bin Salman arrests a whole bunch of people.
00:37:20.720
I don't want to get into too much into what happened in that meeting and what the results
00:37:24.220
were, but whatever it was, Mohammed bin Salman was super pleased because right after the election,
00:37:28.700
he gives Jared Kushner $2 billion to manage, but that gets two and 20 on that.
00:37:35.260
So if you know private equity and, and how that works, what that means is he's going to
00:37:41.040
So if Hunter Biden got a $2 billion deal from the Saudis after Joe Biden left office, I,
00:37:47.760
and I did, I was like, Hunter Biden's not a Ukrainian gas expert.
00:37:53.300
So your fear number one is that his family will benefit financially from his president
00:38:04.480
So, so that's, but to be fair to Trump, like the reason, part of the reason the establishment
00:38:08.580
hates him is because he's systemically and personally corrupt, whereas they're just largely
00:38:15.680
Look, I'm accepting all this for the sake of argument without challenging, because I just
00:38:19.200
want you to get to like the real fascism that he's going to do that you worry about.
00:38:22.940
So the reason I'm saying that is because since most of the politicians are systemically corrupt
00:38:26.600
anyway, that's not the fascism I'm referring to.
00:38:30.480
So he says, I'm going to deport all the undocumented immigrants.
0.85
00:38:47.320
Rip them away from their babies and send them the goddamn back home.
1.00
00:38:50.840
Now, that's a debatable point as to whether that's fascism.
0.99
00:38:53.720
My guess is that once he starts, if he starts doing it and you start seeing people ripped
00:38:59.000
out of their homes, that people are going to go, oh, that don't look good.
00:39:06.920
But if he was to, let's say, you know, I think the more likely scenario, I don't know
00:39:10.720
if you agree with Jeng, but I think it's possible that this is the more likely scenario is he
00:39:15.400
deports all the people who've committed a crime in this country who are illegal immigrants,
0.99
00:39:20.320
People not only came here legally, but have committed a crime, and people who don't have
1.00
00:39:25.280
American family and don't have dependents here.
00:39:31.600
I don't even know if he deported all the undocumented immigrants, it would be fascism.
0.92
00:39:36.800
Let's get to the fascism, though, because this is what I want to get to.
0.94
00:39:39.620
And by the way, people who committed crimes should obviously be deported.
00:39:42.460
So then the thing that I'm concerned about is both him and the potential attorney general
00:39:49.940
saying, if you're on a campus and you're protesting, you're protesting Trump, you're protesting
00:39:54.340
Israel, you're protesting the oil companies, you're protesting something we don't like.
0.79
00:40:00.760
I mean, arresting someone for protesting or voicing their speech is the most both cancel
00:40:08.800
I mean, you're taking the guy's freedom away, right?
00:40:11.120
But deporting people that are American citizens, what the hell are you talking about?
00:40:21.260
But so and that's why I say, guys, before when he's running, he threatens to do total,
00:40:28.100
He threatens to arrest and deport people, et cetera.
0.96
00:40:32.960
So, for example, they said, lock her up, lock her up.
0.86
00:40:35.520
And then he got into office and he said, no, I'm not locking Hillary Clinton up.
00:40:41.940
So when he threatens those type of things, I go, I am deeply, deeply concerned.
00:40:47.300
So they had a three hour meeting after he lost the election where Michael Flynn and I
00:40:55.320
But definitely Michael Flynn said, let's use martial law.
00:41:00.340
And we won this election and we're going to correct the fraud and let's go grab the actual
00:41:16.940
You're talking about something that already happened.
00:41:21.840
Well, I'm sure, which is why I'm asking you the question to follow up.
00:41:25.000
So do you fear that at the end of this four year period, he's not going to relinquish power?
00:41:32.220
So since he didn't try, since he didn't relinquish power last time, yes.
00:41:40.460
Let's accept that for the sake of argument again.
00:41:43.020
So you fear that at the end of this four year period, when he can no longer run for election
00:41:47.800
again, you fear that he will not hand over the presidency.
00:41:51.020
A guy who said, let's terminate the constitution, consider martial law, and I had a fake elector
00:42:00.980
So you fear that at the end of this four year period, he will not vacate the White House.
00:42:09.840
Well, it'd be a deal breaker for anyone, left and right.
00:42:13.360
Except it wasn't, because he already tried to do it.
00:42:24.420
Number two is, the reason I was telling you about martial law is because he's also said,
0.99
00:42:29.000
let's use the military to shoot the protesters in the legs.
00:42:31.280
Let's use the National Guard to arrest citizens, et cetera.
0.99
00:42:34.640
When you're talking about arresting or shooting U.S. citizens and you're using the military
00:42:39.060
to do that because you don't like their protests, and you could be livid about their protests.
00:42:46.920
And when he says that, and he has definitively said that and set it on the record, if you go
00:42:50.960
and do that now that there are no breaks in the guard and there is no General Milley and
00:42:54.140
there is no General Kelly and they're not going to be able to stop him.
00:42:56.760
If he does that, do you guys agree that would be fascist?
00:43:02.520
So to replay it for people and then I'll hand over to Francis are, number one, at the
00:43:07.040
end of the four-year term that he currently has, he's not going to hand over the presidency,
00:43:12.060
And number two, he is going to be deeply un-American about the way he handles free speech and the
00:43:18.260
right to protest and the right to free assembly.
00:43:20.140
In other words, he will take protesters and strip them of citizenship.
0.98
00:43:26.340
He will imprison people for turning up on a college campus and burning an American flag,
0.92
00:43:31.300
Those are your two main kind of like, this is the fascism that might happen.
00:43:36.660
And I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen.
00:43:39.080
He has said those things and it makes me concerned that he will do those things.
00:43:45.520
So, Cenk, I think the left have got a real opportunity now.
00:43:49.480
If we look at it, if you look at the Democrat Party, they've been absolutely decimated.
00:43:55.440
And this is a prime moment for the left to actually put some new ideas, some new policies
00:44:03.220
What does the left need to do, in your opinion, to be able to challenge the right?
00:44:07.940
Because what is very interesting about this MAGA party is that RFK Jr., former Dem, Tulsi
00:44:16.980
Gabbard, former Dem, Elon Musk, former financial donor to the Dems.
00:44:23.960
What do they need to do now in order to challenge and maybe get some of the more populist elements
00:44:29.560
of the Democrat Party like Tulsi back in the fold?
00:44:32.340
We need to have a democratic civil war within the Democratic Party.
00:44:38.200
I just told you how deeply concerned I am about that.
00:44:42.340
And so this brings us back to what went wrong with the Justice Democrats.
00:44:45.560
So I founded it, I named it, and we had one of the greatest political upsets in American
00:44:54.320
history, AOC beating Joe Crowley when he was the number four Democrat.
00:44:59.080
And we put 11 Justice Democrats in Congress when everybody expected zero, right?
00:45:05.080
So we started a whole wing of the Democratic Party that was supposed to be populist and
00:45:09.420
Okay, so, but, and half of it worked because we set the rule, no corporate PAC money, okay?
00:45:15.880
So anyone who, watch this, guys, and I'll tell you, Republicans to look out for, okay?
00:45:20.560
Anyone who rejects corporate PAC money instantly becomes more honest.
00:45:27.180
They started actually rejecting corporate PAC money and instantly they started proposing bills
00:45:31.560
with Ro Khanna on AOC to end corruption, end the stock market trading that the Congress
00:45:42.140
So the half where they went wrong is they were supposed to challenge their colleagues.
00:45:50.340
To be fair to them, there is this culture of, oh my God, the most sacrosanct thing in the
00:45:58.480
And if you challenge them and you call them corrupt because they're taking corporate donations,
00:46:06.040
And what progressives and liberals don't want to be is mean, right?
00:46:15.940
Because I would disagree with you there because what I think one of the problems of the left
00:46:20.520
is, and it's not just the left in this country, it's the left everywhere, is they're too scared
00:46:25.980
The left are far more scared about their colleagues than they are about the opposition because
00:46:30.440
their colleagues have got the power to cancel them and ruin their careers and their lives.
00:46:40.000
So one, they use these cultural tricks like you're going to be mean and you're a bad person
0.97
00:46:45.660
You don't want to be a weirdo radical, do you?
0.85
00:46:47.700
I mean, by the way, if you play ball, you get to go on the cover of Vogue and you get
00:46:51.140
to go to the Met and you get to be the belle of the ball, right?
00:46:57.300
But now remember, if you don't play ball, look at what we did at Jank, right?
00:47:02.120
We could, all these different smears and claim to use anti-Semitic.
00:47:07.020
By the way, the New York Times had to issue a correction for how many lies that they told
00:47:12.960
You know, that is an implicit thread that always hangs over their heads.
00:47:20.020
But sorry, guys, we've got to start that fight.
00:47:23.700
If you don't start that fight, you're never going to win.
00:47:27.260
You're not going to convince Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to
00:47:33.520
Oh, forget the billions we're getting from donor money.
00:47:42.840
So the day after the election, Bernie came out with a scathing letter saying, this Democratic
00:47:50.500
We have to go back there representing the average man.
00:47:55.760
So because for four years, they put him in a cave somewhere.
00:47:59.560
And the progressives, literally the head of the progressive caucus, Pramila Jayapal,
00:48:04.000
who I have huge issues with, and her strategy through the four years was trust Biden.
00:48:09.180
That was literally what it was called, trust Biden.
00:48:11.120
Like, that is the worst political strategy in human history because you're giving away
00:48:25.040
Corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans are on the same team.
00:48:35.300
The whole idea is the establishment drives status quo, corporate donations, etc.
00:48:42.380
So for Democrats who have been trained by NPR, you whisper, you whisper, you don't fight,
00:48:54.000
Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, etc. are not your friends.
00:49:01.640
You must defeat them in a primary in order to get to the right place.
00:49:07.020
Bernie Sanders, we all know, was the rightful presidential candidate in 2016.
00:49:15.580
He had the popular vote within the Democratic Party.
00:49:20.320
I personally think nobody will never know, sadly, that he stood a much better chance of
00:49:29.920
He did everything right, Cenk, and they didn't let him win.
00:49:42.800
So it's a little bit different than Trump, but actually in one part in the last primary,
00:49:57.240
But they rigged it by, in 2016, they did only six debates where the Republicans did over 20.
00:50:03.000
They buried the debates on nights where there was football, so they'd get less viewership.
00:50:07.780
So these are like little subtle things that they do.
00:50:10.100
And then Donald Brazil fed Hillary Clinton the questions in a debate.
00:50:17.120
And so when we did, the establishment called us radicals and lunatics, conspiracy theory.
00:50:22.020
There's no way Donna Brazil gave the questions to Hillary Clinton, but we were right.
00:50:26.500
By the way, CNN, did you ever come back and apologize to us for being right about that story?
00:50:32.860
The third way they rigged it is they put money from the state parties and funneled to Hillary Clinton,
00:50:39.400
That's money laundering from one of the candidates against another while they're pretending to be neutral.
00:50:43.160
In the 2020 primary that barely existed, we had people in the race.
00:50:52.640
In the beginning, we had RFK Jr., and he was actually polling really well.
00:50:55.360
So you should have kept all those people in the primary, and you should have had debates.
00:50:59.600
Of course, they were never going to have debates.
00:51:01.060
You can't challenge the powerful in a Democratic primary.
00:51:06.220
The party that was in favor of democracy canceled the Florida election in the primary.
00:51:22.060
So what we have to do is when we, but there's a new dynamic that's going to help us, and
00:51:28.160
So when we go, when that happens again in 2028 in the primaries, and will the mainstream
00:51:32.660
media smear the populist candidates, smear them eight ways to Sunday, when Bernie nearly
00:51:37.500
won in 2020, he won the first three states, Chris Matthews came on air and said, oh, he's
00:51:43.940
He's like, if people like Bernie Sanders wins, people like me will be executed in Central
0.95
00:51:48.780
Chuck Todd said that his supporters were brown shirts.
00:51:58.960
And what I tell progressives and populists is, brothers, expect it.
0.99
00:52:04.140
Like, oh my God, mainstream media is not on our side.
1.00
00:52:08.280
And when they do, and when they do all those tricks, the Democrats and the mainstream media,
1.00
00:52:32.560
And maybe they'll say, oh, I don't like those socialists.
00:52:41.500
Why is the Democratic Party money laundering for one of the candidates but not the other, right?
00:52:46.120
And so I think mainstream media loses power every single day.
00:52:51.380
Mainstream media is, by definition, corporatists run by multibillion-dollar corporations.
00:52:55.580
Advertisers are all multibillion-dollar corporations.
00:52:59.880
The way they got popular is by appealing to the people.
00:53:08.560
So that online media can help a populist win in the Democratic or Republican Party.
00:53:14.420
And in the Republican Party, it already happened.
00:53:17.740
But I like that they went in a populist direction because Mitch McConnell isn't ever going to help anyone.
00:53:22.040
Yeah, and I guess the question that I'm going to ask is, can the Democrat Party be saved?
00:53:29.220
Because what you have said to me is that it's structural.
00:53:33.260
And is it too rotten now for it to ever be fit for purpose?
00:53:47.400
Now, that's the title of the episode, everybody.
00:53:51.780
And so I don't mean to do all the negative things he does.
00:53:56.340
We don't have to threaten to not listen when we lose.
00:54:00.080
We don't have to threaten to terminate the Constitution and other ethnicities, etc.
00:54:08.120
You know, I called Trump winning the Republican primary in 2016 in October, four months before they started voting.
00:54:16.660
When everybody thought I was crazy, Trump, that clown showman, you think he's going to win?
0.99
00:54:22.320
Every friend of mine thought I was the craziest person they ever met for two reasons.
0.99
00:54:27.260
And they're like, oh, we don't believe the people.
00:54:29.200
Mainstream media will change their minds and have them support.
00:54:35.680
When he got up on that debate stage and said, all these guys are corrupt.
00:54:39.500
I gave them money and they did whatever I wanted.
00:54:45.880
And so we just, and why didn't Bernie ultimately, why wasn't he able to overcome and win in the primaries in 2016, 2020?
00:54:55.420
Number one, all the factors we talked about, mainstream media smeared them to no end.
00:55:02.480
I explain all of it and how they cheated, rigged, etc.
00:55:06.720
In their framing, in their conversations there.
00:55:09.080
So, yeah, he had that, but he still could have overcome it.
00:55:12.180
At the end of the day, Bernie's number one problem and why I wouldn't support him again.
00:55:15.580
And I support him as a politician and in policies, etc.
00:55:25.740
He doesn't have it in his DNA to fight the sons of bitches.
1.00
00:55:29.840
He should have said, they asked him if Hillary Clinton changed any of her votes in the 2016 debate in Brooklyn.
00:55:40.200
She got money from the bankers, record amount of money, both in campaign contributions and direct payments through speeches.
00:55:45.980
And then she changed her position on the bankruptcy bill.
1.00
00:55:53.240
And when a politician, when a populist in a primary, in a Democratic primary debate, which they must have next time.
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00:55:59.740
If they get up and say, these guys are all corrupt and here's how I can prove it to you.
00:56:07.380
That guy wins in a landslide, wins easy, wins running away.
00:56:15.320
Cenk, there's one other thing I really want to explore with you in terms of this result that we've seen in the last few weeks.
00:56:21.100
This will go out after a couple of weeks from when we're recording it.
00:56:25.320
Which is the, what people call wokeness, let's say.
00:56:30.440
Which is the cultural dimension of these conversations.
00:56:33.960
And you alluded to the transgender ad the Republicans ran that was highly effective.
00:56:41.260
This broader sense that, you know, transgender education in schools, gender affirming care where people who are minors are allowed and sometimes even encouraged to chop healthy parts of their bodies.
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Because it aligns more with their self-perception in this moment.
00:57:01.480
Extra money for this racial group or that racial group as a promise in the election.
00:57:06.860
You know, these things, while they're considered kind of trivial by some people, I think they're very, they've become very unpopular with a lot of people, you know, calling, you know, Latinos latinx and all of this other stuff.
00:57:20.300
How much do you think that contributed to this outcome?
00:57:24.180
And how much does that need to change over the next four years if the Democrats are to have any success?
00:57:29.060
So, it's much smaller than the corporate issues, right?
00:57:37.020
Because Bernie 2020 adopted some of those policy planks.
00:57:42.280
And I thought it was a bad idea and it did prove to be a bad idea.
00:57:45.760
So, but woke is another one of those words like fascism and socialism where people put meaning into it.
00:57:53.040
Like obsession with trans, obsession with dividing men and women, obsession with identity, all of that.
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So, half of what people refer to as woke is perfectly fine.
00:58:04.900
Half of what they refer to as woke is disastrous, okay?
00:58:08.360
So, the half that's like Trump says total complete shutdown of Muslims and people go, well, we shouldn't do that.
00:58:22.320
But even in that, I can give you plenty of examples where we disagree.
00:58:27.740
So, we're in such a weird spot at TYT and at Young Turks because we're against the corporate wing, which is the majority wing of the Democratic Party.
00:58:39.620
So, that gets us into a situation where we're squeezed in here and it seems like it should be a smaller audience, right?
00:58:48.060
But no, two-thirds of the country agrees with us.
00:58:50.460
That's why we're the largest show on the left by far, right?
00:58:53.920
And so, that's why I say focus on our super popular economic proposals.
00:59:00.480
And they get so mad when I say the extreme left or leftist.
00:59:09.540
So, but these guys, they say, okay, let's fight for trans rights.
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They should have 100% of the same rights as any other American citizen.
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Do not discriminate at work and employment, housing, et cetera.
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And the great majority of American people agree.
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People are like, they're risking their lives for this country.
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Then we're going to have to go after straight males.
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But when they got dug and dug and finally got to an unpopular position, which is trans
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The great majority of Americans don't think it should happen.
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So at that point, I turned to the left and I go, guys, we're at the water's edge here.
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And by the way, at the professional level, I think on the high school level, leave the
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If your daughter came in second instead of first, you'll live.
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And I hope you feel that we're having this respectful disagreement, right?
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You can't say that, especially in this country where your outcomes in college, whether
01:00:23.760
you get a scholarship, whether you get to have a career in that sport, depends on your ability.
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There are young women who've been locked out of the opportunity to compete fairly and to
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succeed because somebody has come in and said, I identify as a woman, still got a penis, by
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Still got testicles, still got testosterone, still got male bone structure, still got male
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01:00:50.340
So what I'm saying is, so let's distinguish a couple of things.
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So at the professional level and the Olympic level, first I say to my leftist friends,
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And if you say they don't have an advantage, not only does a great majority of Americans
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A trans woman entered a weightlifting contest in her 40s and instantly lifted 200 pounds
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Although there's a meta study that studied seven people and it was inconclusive.
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Now, why do I have a different position at the high school level?
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So you're balancing, hey, there's, by the way, this is the tiniest issue in America.
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It's called a wedge issue for a reason, because they don't want you to notice the great American
01:01:42.220
robbery, which is the corporate robbery that's going on.
01:01:46.920
We talked about that for 40 minutes, to be fair.
01:01:56.860
13 kids, 130 kids out of a country of 330 million people.
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So when I look at the balancing interest there, I go, I understand what you're saying.
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On the other hand, now we're going to have to check the genitalia of kids.
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And you're going to tell a young trans kid, we're going to otherize you.
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So if you've got a penis and you've got male testosterone and male bone structure, you're
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So when you become an adult, we can have that debate.
01:02:33.040
But when you're a kid, I'm going to protect you.
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And I'm going to say, go ahead and run in the race.
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And if you beat my daughter and it costs her this much out of the 13 cases in the country,
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and it costs her a little bit because she wanted to get into Yale, but she got into Dartmouth,
01:02:45.920
Because I'm not checking your genitalia and I'm not traumatizing you when you're a kid.
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I would rather have my daughter come in second, third, or eighth, okay, than traumatize those
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So we can agree to disagree on that, but that's my position on it.
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So it's a balancing act and that's where I come out on the balance.
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But it is a damaging issue, especially at the professional level.
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So, well, when you do that, guys, that's why they call you woke.
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I mean, look at the microscopic difference I have with them.
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And it's not a right to play in a professional league.
01:03:32.120
When Latinx came out, we're the home of progressives.
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Everybody's like, okay, so you're going to switch to Latinx?
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That's not a word I've ever seen a Latino or Latino use in my entire life.
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You guys made that up at Oberlin and it's a bunch of white people that made it up and
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it's trying to put it onto Latinos who never asked for it in the first place.
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The Republicans are taking advantage of it to try to paint all of the Democrats as woke
01:04:08.540
If we just pause there, I think this is kind of why I asked you the original question because
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it seems like, you know, the transition, we have very strong differences in how we view
01:04:17.860
My broader question to you is, as long as these people exist, as long as they're going
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after people like you and people like us who are just in the center and going like,
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I understand your issues about corporate power, but as long as these are the voice of
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I agree with you they're not, but they have been allowed to be the mouthpiece of the left
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And that's why we don't do that cowardice on the young tourists.
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I'm saying for the Democrats to succeed, they have to ostracize that part of the left.
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Right, but they have to do it in a way that isn't BS.
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So first of all, so let's real quick establish who, what Democratic voters actually think.
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So the far left told us, no, crime is imaginary and Democratic voters love the idea of crime
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So we're arguing over nothing because it's a moron.
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There is no crime, but if there is, it's good.
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And then we're trying to protect brown and black and brown communities by protecting the
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I'm like, do you have any idea how racist you sound?
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The real way that you protect black and brown communities and working class people is by
01:05:38.120
So they, in California, they took felonies and moved into misdemeanors and didn't even
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You never told me that's what we were voting on.
01:05:49.800
And so who was right and who was wrong between the leftist and me?
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So they said, no, no, we represent democratic voters.
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We had a vote just now, Prop 36 in California, to increase penalties and bring those misdemeanors
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Even in California, it passed with 70% of the vote.
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Every time they pretend to represent the left, they are actively lying.
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They want, but at the national level on that trans ad, it was the most successful out of
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So when you're on that debate stage and they say, hey, shouldn't the left deserve all the
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blame, et cetera, you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean left?
01:06:41.520
The establishment Democrat, like that candidate over there, Gavin Newsom, he's the one that
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And if there's a person who's a woke, et cetera, or whatever you guys call woke and I call extreme
01:07:03.620
Now, look, if you're clear like that, then like right now, would anybody say, oh, yeah,
01:07:09.720
Jenk's an extreme leftist and I'm unclear as to what his position is.
01:07:13.900
They might disagree with me on some issues and say, oh, in my view of the world, you're
01:07:17.420
extreme left because of the high school issue, et cetera, right?
01:07:19.860
But they're not going to be unclear about my position.
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What I would say is I think the challenge to your position is the opposite, which is if
01:07:30.300
you're on that debate stage and I am one of the other people, I'm going to go, oh,
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He doesn't think trans women are real women because they're allowed.
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He doesn't want them to be in the Olympics, but they're real women.
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Don't you think the trans women are real women, Jenk?
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I think they should have the same exact rights, same constitutional rights.
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And if you come for trans women, you're going to have to come through me, okay?
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And I'm not going to let you ban them from the military.
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I'm not going to let you take a single right of theirs away.
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And I'm going to protect those young girls and boys in high school.
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But if you say, oh, LeBron James being in the WNBA is necessary if he turns into a woman
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or whatever, and that makes you transphobic, then that's your argument.
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Because that's going to make it easier for me to beat you because no one agrees with
01:08:23.300
So everyone who thinks that LeBron James should, and then they'll get so mad at this analogy.
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You could load up LeBron James with every hormone on the planet.
01:08:32.680
He would score 200 points every night in the WNBA.
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So if you want to say he won't, great, then let's have that debate.
01:08:38.860
And then we'll vote in the primary and see what the Democratic voters actually think.
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I think that they'll agree with me and not you.
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So if I have a candidate, whether it's Jon Stewart or Tim Walz or Sean O'Brien or Sean
01:08:52.980
Fenton, whoever it is, or a guy we don't even know right now, or Nina Turner,
01:08:56.880
by the way, who was an awesome, strong, progressive populist, give me that candidate and we don't
01:09:08.100
If we get to the same thing that Trump had, why did Trump have escape velocity?
01:09:20.060
Like, and guys, there's a left-right spectrum and a populist establishment spectrum.
01:09:25.800
Jon is in the same, is exact right place in the left-right spectrum, in my opinion, center-left.
01:09:32.740
And on the populist establishment spectrum, perfect position, very populist, right?
01:09:37.380
So whoever matches that description, okay, that goes this way on those spectrums, and
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they're strong in a debate, they're going to win.
01:09:46.900
Then no one can say they don't represent the Democratic voters.
01:09:49.640
But do you see that jettisoning of the far left, of which we're both, it seems to me,
01:09:55.660
Because I don't see that happening at the moment, as we're watching.
01:09:59.060
Well, if the candidate doesn't have the courage to do it, then they're not the right candidate.
01:10:04.840
If they say, hey, go out there like a schmuck and call all Latinos Latinx.
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If the candidate goes, oh, okay, 96% of Latinos hate it.
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Okay, if they said defund the police, I said no.
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And by the way, it's not just black people.
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We showed a video of a white guy crawling on a hotel hallway.
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And they shot that poor guy when he was surrendering.
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But if you say defund the police, wait, wait, wait, wait.
01:10:50.120
If your position is take the police away, you're nuts.
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And you'll get slaundered in a Democratic primary, let alone a general election.
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And by the way, all those Justice Democrats, the core ones that are already famous, are kind of untouchable.
01:11:05.460
Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush lost, but they weren't famous enough.
01:11:11.500
But Ilhan Omar almost lost, and not because she was too far left, and not because she was anti-Israel, not because of any of that.
01:11:20.280
She almost lost because she was in favor of a defund the police bill in Minnesota.
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And 78% of African Americans in her district were against that bill.
01:11:32.440
And if you notice, all of a sudden, she's not defund the police anymore.
01:11:35.320
So that is an unpopular position in the Democratic Party with African Americans, with Latinos, et cetera.
01:11:42.380
Have the courage to run a campaign that the American people love, and you will win.
01:11:48.220
Cenk, we're going to head on over to Substack, where people can ask you their questions.
01:11:51.620
But before we do, the question we always wrap up with is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
01:11:56.980
Before Cenk answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our Substack.
01:12:06.260
Someone says, what should Israel have done on October 8th?
01:12:09.220
How long can the old media last when they're getting found out?
01:12:12.820
Why is it that Hezbollah somehow doesn't get coded by progressives as right-wing?
01:12:18.340
So, RFK Jr. has had a lot of different policy proposals, and half of them I totally disagree with, the half that he'll wind up doing.
01:12:27.800
But a couple of them were fantastic that nobody's talking about.
01:12:31.500
One was, on housing, he's the one who originally said, ban private equity from buying residential homes.
01:12:38.180
It's driving up the prices, and he's absolutely right.
01:12:46.300
The government must stop them on behalf of the American people, because they've made a logical decision.
01:12:51.020
Hey, this is the greatest wealth creation for the middle class.
01:12:56.960
And then they become our renters, and we own them.
01:12:59.520
We turn the American people into indentured servants.
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01:13:01.420
So if you do, if RFK Jr. was put in charge of HUD instead of health, I would love it, right?
01:13:10.560
And my guess is, if I'm right, Trump is not a populist.
01:13:19.680
Goldman Sachs guys are back in the Trump circle, et cetera.
01:13:23.080
That's a proposal that should definitely be done.
01:13:25.120
By the way, RFK's anti-corruption plank was also excellent.
01:13:29.500
A convention where the states called a convention in the Constitution to propose an amendment,
01:13:35.200
an amendment to get big money out of politics.
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Everybody talks about draining the swamp and anti-corruption, and no one ever does anything about it.
01:13:43.420
You put together that convention, supported by the right wing and the left wing,
01:13:47.660
and you actually propose an amendment to get money out of politics, that is the one amendment that can pass.
01:13:52.900
Three-quarters of the states have to say yes, they can and they will, especially if Trump bullies them.
01:13:57.960
Trump is excellent at bullying, and it could be used for political advantage.
01:14:05.520
He will walk out of office as the most popular politician we have ever had.
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01:14:11.120
But everyone around him, in my opinion, is corrupt.
01:14:14.140
And they'll tell him, no, no, no, don't do the money in politics.
01:14:20.080
Don't do any of that because they're pigs of the trough.
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01:14:22.520
If Trump is smart enough to find one person, maybe it's RFK Jr., where he brings him in and goes,
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oh, my God, imagine we got money out of politics and we train the swamp.
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01:14:41.440
Head on over to our substack where you get to ask your questions.