This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueroaido. 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 Figueroaido and this is episode 266 of the program. Today is Friday, November 13th and before we get started, I want to take some time to thank all of the people who make this show possible. Our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes Alexandra M, Alice Rose, Alvin Harden, Brandon Perry, Kerry Ryuko, Corey Dee, Daniel Rota, Steric Montero, Frank Trujillo, Jenna Nix, Joe Cross, Joseph Lloyd, Josh High, Laura Estrada, Laura Dee, Lucas Dykes, Michael McLean, Rodney Nelson, Samuel Schimmel and Tom Anderson. 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 patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. This week, we've got a great show for you. Orange Man is mad. That's right, Donald Trump is still in denial about the result of the election. We'll talk about his refusal to concede and how he's planning to cause a lot of chaos before exiting the White House. Also, we'll take a look at a protest featuring Trump supporters where they are stumped when they're actually fact checked about this election. Also, when it comes to the result of the election, centrist Democrats underperformed, so we're going to talk about the fallout and the resignation from the D triple C head. But of course, centrists are trying to blame progressives. So we'll also discuss the response from progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Gortez, as well as Jamal Bowman. And we'll talk about how the Democratic Party almost drove AOC out of it. That's all hostile. They are towards progressives, but it's not just centrist Democrats who are attacking so-called far leftists. It's also Republicans like John Kasich, who want the Democratic Party to be molded in his image. Also, we'll talk about what to expect from the first 100 days of Joe Biden's presidency and what Chuck Schumer wants him to do. And finally, we will close with some good news about COVID-19, specifically a vaccine that is showing some promising results. But there is a catch and we'll talk about that. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Hopefully you will enjoy what I have in store for you. Let's get right to it. It's now been a week since Tuesday's election and days since the election has been called for Joe Biden. But yet unsurprisingly, Donald Trump is refusing to concede. And if you look at his Twitter timeline, all you see is pure delusion where tweet after tweet has been flagged because he is actively spreading misinformation. He's made countless unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and dead people voting and legal versus illegal votes. But none of this is true. And it's over. Regardless if he chooses to accept that it's over or not, it's over. And this is getting really embarrassing because what we're seeing basically is a toddler who is refusing to accept that something didn't go his way.  But still, that doesn't necessarily matter because a lot of people around him, his closest aides, they are in fact buying into his delusions. And he is refusing to personally acknowledge that he lost and according to people in his inner circle right now, conceding isn't even on the table. And at this point, it just sounds like he may never concede. And I think that Vanity Fair put it best. It really sounds like Trump is maybe going to barricade himself in the Oval Office and choose to never concede, even though that would be highly entertaining, even if that is dangerous for democracy. I think that the more likely scenario is that he's never going to concede in any formal capacity as we expect an incumbent president to concede after he lost. But what I do think is that begrudgingly he's going to leave, probably not go to Joe Biden's inauguration. And that's that he will go out with a whimper because he doesn't have a choice. You don't just get to choose to unilaterally invalidate the results of a general election. If you're going to try to do that, you need evidence, anything, like even a shred of evidence. But you know, here's the thing that's sad. He knows deep down that it's over. He knows that it's over. There's been reports that apparently he's binge eating fast food. You know, that's what I do when I feel down. But he knows it's over deep down. I think that he knows that this is over for him. The sad part is that he's making it impossible for his own supporters to move on. Now, these are grownups, right? They they had the option to either choose to live in reality with the rest of us or choose to put their feelings over facts. The main thing that's keeping hope alive is that people have deluded themselves into thinking that Donald Trump's lawsuits are going to somehow lead to all of the mail-in ballots being invalidated or some states being called in favor of Donald Trump that have already been called for Joe Biden. I don't necessarily know what the end goal is, but it's not going to result in Donald Trump winning the selection because his campaign has already filed multiple lawsuits in numerous states. And many of them have already been dismissed. And the few legal victories that he's had have been small, inconsequential, procedural wins where he asks for more oversight, more like campaign officials to observe the ballot counting process. And that's granted to them. But in terms of like invalidating ballots as he tried to do in Georgia, I think he his campaign found a lawsuit to invalidate, I believe, 53 ballots. That's the number.  What do you expect to happen? It's over. It is absolutely over. And I remember back in 2016, when liberals were really upset that Hillary Clinton lost, they hung on to everything hopes that the recounts in Pennsylvania would flip it in Hillary's favor, hopes that, you know, there would be some rogue electors that since she won the popular vote, maybe they just choose to vote against what their state did, it never happened. And it's not going to happen for Donald Trump. And the faster that his supporters accept it, the faster that you can all move on with your lives. But the problem is that you have individuals who support Donald Trump with large platforms who are reinforcing this narrative that Donald Trump somehow did win and this victory was stolen. Individuals like Tamila Ren, for example, who tweeted out, never underestimate the lengths the left will go to take control. But that being said, never underestimate Donald Trump. It's not over, except it is over. It is over. What are you expecting? Like, let's say best case scenario for Donald Trump after having this recount in Georgia, he ends up winning Georgia. OK, then what? Because Joe Biden still won Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. There is no path to victory. Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States like it or not.  Listen, I'm not going to say that there's never been rat fuckery in American elections, because, of course, that is a thing. But election fraud is a more common phenomenon than voter fraud. The voter fraud rate is literally 0.0025 percent. It is statistically insignificant. It doesn't happen enough to change the results of an election to the extent that it does occur. And it's been proven that somebody has committed voter fraud. And then you see Donald Trump making this distinction between legal votes and illegal votes. The votes that are being counted are legal votes. They're trying to contend that lots and lots of dead people are voting. Dead people remaining on the rolls after they die is not evidence of voter fraud. People die all the time who are registered to vote and they don't vote. My father passed away this year. He was a registered voter. He could not vote. It's not nefarious that he may still be on the voter rolls. At some point, he will be purged once it has learned that he's been deceased. OK, that's the way that it works. And also he didn't even receive a ballot. So there's nothing nefarious going on here. This is delusions that we're talking about here. And the problem is that Donald Trump wants everyone else to buy into his delusions, because in the event he can convince enough people that really this election was stolen from him, then maybe that can make a difference, but it's not going to make a difference. Screaming about it at the top of your lungs is not going to change the results of this election. It is over, O-V-E-R.   Sometimes elections go your way. Other times they don't. And this is one of those elections where Donald Trump doesn't have a goddamn leg to stand on.  And this is something that we talked about before this election. The problem is that the states that Joe Biden won, they're controlled by Democrats in the key swing states that he did, in fact, win. So when you have Democrats in control of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, they're not going to go for that. They're not going to say, oh, well, you say fraud, let's just go ahead and send in some electors that are favorable to Trump and overturn the will of the people.  They actually lost ground in the House. We don't even know if they'll take back the Senate. Why wouldn't they at least rig the election between Amy McGrath and Mitch McConnell? Like, it doesn't make sense. You just have to think about this logically for a couple of minutes. If Democrats were able to pull something like this off, why would they allow Republicans to retain control of the Senate? Again, this is delusional. This is delusional. Donald Trump and his supporters can try to craft some reality that they want to live in, individuals like Tommy Loren. She can try to say, you know what, I believe in Donald Trump and what he's saying here. And maybe there is some fraud. Republicans can try to back him up by kind of tap dancing around whether or not he did, in fact, lose this election, which he did. But they're lying to you.   I was rooting for him, but he lost. They're going to lash out at her because these people live in their own alternate reality. And when you try to penetrate that bubble that they've built for themselves, they'll lash out at you. So you'll see grifters like Tommy Loren, Republicans like Mitch McConnell say, Oh, well, of course, Donald Trump legally can challenge the results because technically that's true. But everyone is afraid to say what's the truth, to say what is factual. And that's really sad. Like what a sad state of affairs. I mean, sure, it's damaging that Trump is, you know, trying to delegitimize the results of this election. And once they unilaterally get it invalidated, which he can't do. And that's bad for democracy, even if it may be a little bit entertaining. But the saddest part about all of this is that every Republican who's close to Donald Trump is lying to you. If you're a Trump supporter, what do you gain from not believing reality? What do you gain from pretending as if he still has a shot? It is over. So the faster that you accept the results, the faster you can move on with your own life. And I think that most people who support Donald Trump, they probably acknowledge that the writing is on the wall. It's just, you know, the diehard. So we're going to cling to this hope, even if it's fading, that he's going to be the president. But this is just sad and pathetic. You know, it's something that is going to be increasingly common in a post-factual era, but it's incumbent on all of us to try to make sure that facts matter. As Ben Shapiro would say, facts don't care about your feelings. And that's the truth. I wish that he actually followed that philosophy more closely. But I mean, it doesn't matter what you want to be true. The fact is that Donald Trump lost this election. Now, you can let him go down crying and screaming and embarrass himself, or you can choose to be a grown up and not believe his delusions. It's up to you. Regardless of Donald Trump publicly admits this or not, he knows that come January 20th, he's going to be out. Joe Biden will be sworn in and Donald Trump will no longer be the president. So he is going to use this time. However, regardless if he admits this or not to try to make Joe Biden's life a living hell, publicly, he wants you to think that he's not preparing to leave because he's going to be there. He's going to be the next president. He won. But that's false. He knows what's going on. And what he's going to try to do is make it so that way what Joe Biden wants to accomplish immediately is going to be more difficult. So one of the things that Trump is trying to do is try to prevent Joe Biden from reentering the Iran nuclear agreement. Now, this is something that we all expect Joe Biden to want to pursue, because this is one of the best achievements, I think, of the Obama era. So of course, after Trump undid Obama's legacy with regard to foreign policy and Iran, Joe Biden is going to want to try to reenter the Iran nuclear agreement. The question really was, would Iran be willing to come to the table and negotiate with Americans again after we just tore up that deal? I mean, you'd expect them to be really reluctant to even want to speak to us again. After what we did, we violated the terms of this negotiation, this agreement, which is functionally a peace deal, which stops both countries from escalating tensions. And what did Donald Trump do? He ripped up that deal and started to escalate tensions, assassinated one of their top generals. So the question is, would Iran even want to come to the table after we've proven that our word is good for nothing? And surprisingly, the answer is yes. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani actually called on Joe Biden to reenter the agreement and reportedly said this to an Iranian news agency, quote, now an opportunity has come up for the next US administration to compensate for past mistakes and return to the path of complying with international agreements through respect of international norms. So let's just pause for a moment and reflect on this. This is astounding. The Iranians are more mature than the Americans, right? Because Republicans, they didn't like the Iran nuclear deal because Obama did it and because a lot of Republicans are neoconservatives and they want to invade Iran. I mean, Donald Trump had John Bolton in his administration who wanted to invade Iran and celebrate in Tehran by 2017. So these people are psychopaths. So the Iran deal was an impediment to their goals in Iran, largely regime change at worst. And it's shocking that they even want to negotiate with us again, but they do. So what is Trump going to do to try to hinder Biden from entering this deal again after Iran actually does want to come to the table when they have no good reason to? They're trying to impose lots of new sanctions on Iran and Trump's administration isn't doing this unilaterally. He's working with allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia to tank future peace discussions between Joe Biden and Iran. An Axios reporter, Barak Ravid, explains Trump administration plans flood of sanctions on Iran by January 20th. And he explains the Trump administration in coordination with Israel and several Gulf states is pushing a plan to slap a long string of new sanctions on Iran in the 10 weeks left until Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20th. And this is what two Israeli sources told him, driving the news that Trump's administration's envoy for Iran, Elliot Abrams, arrived in Israel on Sunday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Advisor Mir Ben Shabbat to discuss the sanctions plan. Abrams will meet on Monday with Minister of Defense Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi to brief them on the plan. Abrams didn't respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration believes such a flood of sanctions will increase pressure from the Iranians and make it harder for Biden's administration to revive the 2015 nuclear deal the Israeli sources told me. So this confirms two things.  He's actually trying to make it more difficult for Joe Biden to get back into the Iran nuclear agreement. Now, that doesn't necessarily matter because whatever Donald Trump's administration does, Joe Biden can just undo that immediately. But what Biden is or what Trump rather is trying to do is make Iran angry, make it so that way they don't want to come to the table. And we already thought that that would be the likely scenario after Trump tore up the Iran nuclear agreement. But now that he sees willingness to come back to the table from Iran when they have, again, no good reason to work with us, he's trying to make it so that way they're pissed off and they don't want to work with us. And to be fair, this isn't just Donald Trump. This is Israel, other Gulf states, Saudi Arabia. They all want to make sure that their geopolitical foe, Iran, isn't able to thrive because if the United States is constantly, you know, having their knee on the neck of Iran, that's better for them. That's better for Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are enemies to Iran.  And look, let me remind you that Donald Trump is still going to be the president for two months. He can do a lot of damage in the next two months. And this is just like the beginning of it, right? I mean, when it comes to COVID-19, we're going to see cases spike. We're seeing that right now. Trump is going to do nothing. All he wants to do is whine and complain because he lost this election. This man still has the nuclear launch codes. He can do a lot of damage. I'm not saying he's going to nuke, but he has power still. That's that's the point that I'm trying to make. He has power and he's going to make it as difficult as possible for Biden and make everyone's lives a living hell as a punishment because he lost the selection. Now, he may publicly say, I didn't, you know, lose this election. I won this election. It's just the Democrats who cheated, but he knows what's true.  He's going to punish everyone for not voting to reelect him. And as a result, he is causing chaos internationally because he's mad that he lost the selection. He's literally, you know, a threat to world peace and international security because he lost the selection. The Iran nuclear deal is good for everyone. It's good for the world because so long as that's in place, the United States cannot escalate tensions with Iran. So, you know, we'll have to wait and see. It's going to be a really tense two months until Donald Trump is out of office, but best believe this is one of many things he's going to try to do to make it more difficult for everyone to progress forward after he's gone. His legacy will remain intact because, again, you know, once Donald Trump is out of office, we still have a lot of Trump federal judges that he appointed. So it's going to be a long road ahead to try to undo some of the damage that he caused.  So by now, I'm sure that you've seen at least one viral video featuring a Donald Trump supporter melting down and claiming that the results of the election are illegitimate, because, of course, since Donald Trump is saying it by definition, it has to be true because everything he says is gospel if you are a Donald Trump supporter. Now, listen, I think that most people who support Donald Trump, they probably have already reckoned with the fact that it's over for him, but there's a portion of the population who support Donald Trump who are diehards. They're part of this MAGA colt and anything that he says, they think it basically is as good as gospel. And I don't mean that to be hyperbolic. I mean that because they hang on every single word that he says. So if the president says this election was fraudulent, even if there is zero evidence, they're going to regurgitate exactly what he says. So we've seen the videos, but we haven't really seen anyone speak to these people and ask them why they think this election is fraudulent. And this video from CNN features a reporter who actually went to one of these so-called stop the steel protests and talk to them. And I want to see what they have to say because I think this is important. These are folks who actually believe the election was stolen. So when they're asked for evidence, what are they going to say? So let's see. Oh, and I didn't have, there we go. Call stop the steel protests. CNN's Donio Sullivan asked some demonstrators in Pennsylvania why they think incorrectly the election was stolen. It's still your president. It's legal for them to count votes in Pennsylvania two days after the election on November 3rd. Yes. Yes. You're wrong. Go, I don't even want to talk to you. She doesn't even want to hear facts. Okay, if it takes them a while to count the votes, are you honestly proposing, lady, that we throw those votes out?  What do you propose we do with them?  It's not unusual to take time counting the votes. Sometimes it takes a while. It's going to take longer because there's a lot of mail-in ballots. We're pretty quick at counting them in Oregon because we've been doing it here for years. But, I mean, no state certifies the results of the election right away. It takes a while.  I'm sorry, that sounds crass, but she drank the Kool-Aid, she's too far gone. There's no turning back. She's literally angry that the votes are being counted. That's democracy. That's democracy. I don't know what you expect, lady.  And to even tell her otherwise is absurd. Like, she brushes you aside. She doesn't even want to hear it. You can't get through to people like this. You just can't. I believe that Donald Trump won the election. I believe that they- Facts don't care about your feeling, Snowflake. I just steal the election. Evidence, evidence, anything. Sight something.  Stop the steal. A movement of Trump supporters that gained hundreds of thousands of followers online in the hours after the election has inspired protests across the country. It's funny, I wonder, do these people think that Republicans stole the House and the Senate? Or is it only a stolen election because it's one that didn't go their way? Like, did Democrats just rig it enough to steal the President's election but didn't bother to steal the House? I mean, they lost ground in the House. We don't know if Democrats are gonna take control of the Senate. Democrats lost in a key state against Mitch McConnell. I guess they forgot to rig that one. Is it only a rigged election if it doesn't go your way? Like, I'm just curious because there's zero evidence, zero evidence that it's been stolen. They're just citing what Donald Trump said as evidence. And that's not evidence because Donald Trump can't even articulate why he believes the election has been stolen. All of a sudden now we're hearing about all of these illegal votes that have been cast. What is an illegal vote? What does that mean?  No, that's not happening. The voter fraud rate is 0.0025%. It is statistically insignificant. So to the extent that voter fraud exists, it is not anywhere near enough to actually tilt the election. And the reason why voter fraud isn't a common phenomenon is because there's very little payoff. It's a felony.  Who's gonna wanna do that? I mean, it happens once in a while, but it's not like it only benefits Democrats. Sometimes Republicans commit voter fraud, but I don't even worry about that because, again, the number is so small that it is statistically insignificant. So this is not an issue. Voter fraud is something that Republicans talk about because they want to use it as a justification to do voter suppression. Limit the number of polling stations, purge people from the voting rules illegally. That's what this is about. And these suckers eat it up because they don't know any better. He says that he saw ballots. Okay, did you take a picture? I'm assuming you have a smartphone with a camera. You didn't take a picture of this? You could be showing the supporter. No, you saw the ballots though. Okay, I saw a unicorn yesterday. Just believe me. I didn't take a picture, but believe me. That's not evidence. These people are so frustrating. Fer, where are you hearing that from? I mean, the videos are going viral everywhere. I've seen them on TikTok. I've seen them on Facebook. I've seen them on Fox News. I've seen them on the local news. What are in these videos? Describe them. Now, I know that he's going to refer to the bag of ballots that were being burned. Trump Jr., or maybe it was Eric Trump, shared that video. These are not real ballots. These are sample ballots or fake ballots. They're not real ballots. And even if these were real ballots, would that be an issue? Of course it would be. But if you see one video of like 30 ballots being burned, is that really enough to say the entire election is fraudulent? Could they even make a case as to why that would be applicable to the rest of the country? Could they articulate why some ballots being burned means the entire election in every single state that we lost is fraudulent? Of course not. And they don't even bother to look into this and figure out why these videos are factual. It's just feelings over facts. Around my area. I've seen too much pieces of different evidence so far that showed. Site one, name it. That at this point I would be okay with a revote. A revote because she's seen the evidence. Okay, well, what's the evidence? Do you have it with you're at a protest? Stop the steal. You know, I'm sure you had to anticipate someone from media showing up. So why wouldn't you supply the media who will report on this with the evidence that you have?  Yeah, absolutely. When you have video footage of people taking bags of ballots and showing that they are for Donald Trump and lighting them on fire. I helped write. I bet that it was a Trump supporter who actually did this as well. Fact check on CNN on that particular video. The election officials said that video has been going around for a few days. They are printout ballots. They're not real ballots. You say you use the information of the election officials. Somebody like me comes along. What else do you use? Tries to fact check it. And then I fact check it. You'll come back and say, well, the election officials would say that. But wouldn't they though? That's the thing though. Question everything, right? Question everything, right? But don't question what Donald Trump says. Like when you say question everything, you don't really mean question everything. You mean question the narratives that I don't like. Question the facts that I don't like. Question the data that I don't like. Question the networks that I don't like. But if Fox News says something, I don't need to question that. If OAN says something, Donald Trump, I don't have to question that. So you don't really mean question everything. You're lying. The video actually showed sample ballots, not real ballots. The video's assertion is false. But even the president's son tweeted it to his millions of followers. Election officials in Virginia, where the sample ballots were from, told CNN they had spent days trying to correct the online misinformation. We went to bed on election night when they told us they stopped counting. We woke up and there was a vertical spike right for Biden. 130,000 votes approximately. That's when I knew there was a problem. Okay, so I'm guessing that he's talking about mail-in ballots. But Donald Trump for months has been saying that mail-in ballots are insecure. They're sending them out unsolicited. So it's not safe to vote by mail. So is it really surprising that in these states where they count the mail-in ballots after the in-person votes that most of those mail-in ballots are from Democrats because Donald Trump has conditioned Republicans to not want to vote by mail? I just don't understand the controversy why this is so shocking. It's like Donald Trump says don't vote by mail and then when his supporters don't vote by mail then he's like, well, why are none of these mail-in ballots coming in that support me? And when he says, oh, well, what about the military ballots that are by mail? Like mail-in ballots are still ticking up for him. It's just that Joe Biden has more of them. So I just don't understand where this is coming from. And I think that really what this is about is their emotions. They don't want to believe the results. This is cognitive dissonance.  Donald Trump can tell me that the sky is green and I believe them because Donald Trump would never lie to us. He's only lied about like a million other things. But Donald Trump wouldn't lie to us. As my buddy Steve Bannon says, if you're going to lie, be believable about it. As your buddy Steve Bannon says that, don't you think that Donald Trump would be trying to do a little bit more believable lies? I mean, again, what evidence has he put forward that this election has been stolen? He has presented us with no evidence. The lawsuits that he is filing have been thrown out across the country. He's had some victories on inconsequential procedural grounds that aren't going to change the result.   Because you do not have 138,000 votes. Come in and 135,000 of them. Come in for Biden. This is what I think you guys might have been talking about on election night, Michigan, 138,000. This was from a website called Decision Desk HQ. But they came out and they said, we messed up. There was an error in how votes came back and reported. And that's why there was this spike in the map. But the election officials in Michigan, then all confirmed to say, yes, there was this error. They are not real ballots. Those ballots never existed. President Trump. If you saw, I don't know, they were holding up an info wars. Yeah, a little info wars sticker right there. So these people get their news from a website who thinks that chemicals in the water is turning the frogs gay, who literally believes in reptilians that they're living among us and they're wearing the skin of human beings and there are politicians. Info wars host Alex Jones brought someone on the program who detailed a really extensive pedophile ring that's happening on Mars. Like children are taken to Mars to be assaulted. Like this is this is the source that we're citing info wars. Again, like these people don't, you can't fact check them. Because when you're trying to present them with facts and evidence or just clarify things, they already made up their minds. Like this is all about their feelings and they don't want to accept that Donald Trump lost. Now again, I don't think that most Trump supporters are like this. I think this is probably a very vocal minority. But still, you know, to have this much people think that the election was stolen all because the Trump the president tweeted this is a little bit alarming. It never existed. President Trump himself even shared a post about the Michigan error. Twitter labeled his post as misinformation. Are you concerned that just as how people on the left can fall for misinformation that maybe sometimes you know, I mean, I'm very thorough with the information I look at. I have my opinions, obviously, but I'm not just going to go around retweeting blatantly false information or things that I believe that are just, it's just, I look at things that are suspicious. Some people at the protest told us the delays in news outlets projecting a winner contributed to their belief that Biden stole the election. Put America first or else it's going to be a miracle loss. You don't think there's any way to. I just want to point out that this reporter is the only one basically wearing a mask. Thanks. Really? Yes. How do you go from almost losing 200,000 in five hours? You're down to 30,000 votes away from winning. A lot of Democrats voted in the mail. They voted absentee. They voted before election day. And then a lot of states, those election day votes got counted first. That's why Trump had that early lead. And then once those other votes started getting counted, that is how Biden caught up. So where are all the Trump ballots that were mailed in? Why are we finding them laying around in different places? But where are you finding them? Everybody not to mail it in, right? That's why there's so much more mail-in democratic votes. No. It doesn't matter what you say to them. When you ask them for evidence, they can't say anything. When you present them with a reason why things are happening the way that they're happening and explain that it's not nefarious or suspicious, they still reject it.   Dead people are not voting, Jackass. Just because Donald Trump said it doesn't make it a reality.  The evidence for that is basically, oh, well, there's dead people on the voter rolls. Right. The voter rolls get purged on a regular basis. When people die, they get taken out the rolls. They don't vote.   Claims alleging voter fraud spread on social media. Facebook and Twitter labeled some as misinformation. I think that's wrong. I think that's not their place. We're like one big science experiment for social media. If I'm seeking a certain viewpoint and I seem to, and they seem to see that I favor that viewpoint more, that's the viewpoint that they're going to feed me. And then the other side's going to get a different viewpoint.  I mean, it concerns me, yes, because of the fact that, unfortunately, people fail to think for themselves. They feed into everything that they're seeing without question. The irony. Oh, the irony. The irony just went right over her head. It's completely lost on her. Look, this is what I expected. I'm honestly shocked that they even were willing to speak to someone with the camera, a reporter, because oftentimes they are hostile towards the media. But I think that because he didn't have like any CNN or logo on him, at least that I saw, that kind of gave him plausible deniability. But these people, they don't care. Like they've come to the conclusion based on their emotions, not on facts. So presenting them with that evidence, like it's not going to do anything because this isn't a group of people who are operating, you know, using logic or they're not persuadable. It doesn't matter what you show them. It doesn't matter. They've arrived at that conclusion. And the only thing that can change their mind is if Donald Trump were to say, I was wrong. It wasn't stolen, guys. I was lying because I wanted to save face in case I lost because it would be embarrassing. I don't want to be a one-term president. But he's not going to do that.  And yeah, that's that. There's nothing left to say about this. It is super depressing that we have so many Americans in this country who literally could not care less literally could not care less about facts or data and evidence. But if you if you asked them about that, they'd say, oh, well, no, no, you don't care about facts. The fact is that this election was stolen. So we're like living in George Orwell's 1984. And if I say that, they would cite Orwell and that I'm the reason why we're in George Orwell's 1984. Like words don't mean anything. We're in a post-factual era. The best that we can do is hope that people come to their senses and try to not be so gullible and duped by politicians who don't care about them. They just care about their own asses. And until that happens, we're going to get situations like this where we have the dumbest people rise to power and they still have this huge base of support that's incredibly enthusiastic and will never abandon them no matter what.  But it's a fact of reality. So yeah, we are now seeing upwards of 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day.  Contrary to what Donald Trump and the Republicans said, it's not going to go away after the election.  Like whoever thought that this worldwide pandemic would suddenly go away after the election. Like it's a worldwide conspiracy all to make Joe Biden look better and Donald Trump look worse. Like this type of thinking is idiotic. But nonetheless, it's getting worse. Contrary to, I hope, not popular belief but contrary to what some imbeciles were saying. However, finally, we got a little bit of good news. A little bit of a glimmer of hope that maybe we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel because vaccine trials are showing very promising results. So as Sam Meredith of CNBC reports, Pfizer and BioNTech announced Monday their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 among those without evidence of prior infection, hailing the development as a great day for science and humanity. I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Pfizer chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Borla told CNBC's Meg Tyrell on Squawk Box. I believe this is likely the most significant medical advance in the last 100 years. If you count the impact this will have in public health, global economy. The announcement comes as drug makers and research centers scramble to deliver a safe and effective vaccine to help bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed over 1.2 million lives worldwide. Scientists are hoping for a coronavirus vaccine that is at least 75% effective while White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has said one that is 50 or 60% effective would be acceptable. Pfizer's results were based on the first interim efficacy analysis conducted by an external and independent data monitoring committee from the phase three clinical study. The independent group of experts oversees U.S. clinical trials to ensure the safety of participants. The analysis evaluated 94 confirmed COVID-19 infections among the trial's 43,538 participants. Pfizer and the United States pharmaceutical giants German biotech partners said the case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received a placebo indicated a vaccine efficacy rate of above 90% at seven days after the second dose. It means that protection from COVID-19 is achieved 28 days after the initial vaccination which consists of a two-dose schedule. The final vaccine efficacy percentage may vary, however, as safety and additional data continue to be collected. So this is incredible news, obviously, really, really good news. And it comes at a time when we are seeing spikes in cases, more deaths, 1,000 people dying per day, 1,000 plus people dying per day, and we need some hope at this moment. The question, however, remains, how long will this immunity last? That is yet to be determined because we don't know. We don't have a long-term analysis of this vaccine. Another question is, how long will it take until it's widely available and will it be affordable? These are all questions that are important because this will determine whether or not this virus or this vaccine, rather, is going to be able to effectively wipe out this virus. Now, in terms of the latter question, it does seem as if it will be affordable, at least for Americans, because as CNN's Caitlin Collins reports, Pfizer CEO Albert Borla tells Dr. Sanjaya Gupta, the vaccine will be available for free to all American citizens. Now, this is phenomenal news because the United States is the only developed country that does not have some sort of universal healthcare plan. However, when he says it's going to be free to all Americans, that worries me a little bit because I want a little bit more specificity. Is it going to just be free to all Americans? Or will it be free to everyone throughout the world? Because if it's only free to Americans, then we're not wiping out the virus because we're only as strong as our weakest link. So if you leave out a particular country, it's still going to be an issue. So there's a lot that we don't have answers to yet. All we know is that the preliminary results are everything that we'd hoped for, better than what we'd hoped for, actually. Now, in terms of when this is going to become widely available, well, President-elect Joe Biden isn't as optimistic as I would have hoped at a COVID press briefing. He talked about this and claims that it's not actually going to be widely available until quite some time. It's clear that this vaccine, even if approved, will not be widely available for many months yet to come. The challenge before us right now is still immense and growing. And although we are not in office yet, I'm just laying out what we expect to do and hope can be done, some of it, between now and the time we were sworn in. But so the purpose of this is to let you know what we're going to do once sworn in. And so there's a need for bold action to fight this pandemic. We're still facing a very dark winter. There are now nearly 10 million COVID cases in the United States. Last week, we topped 120,000 new cases on multiple successive days. Infection rates are going up, hospitalizations are going up, deaths are going up. This crisis claimed nearly 1,000 American lives a day and nearly 240,000 deaths so far. Protecting the projections still indicate we could lose 200,000 more lives in the coming months before a vaccine can be made widely available. So we can't forego the important work that needs to be done between now and then to get our country through the worst wave yet in this pandemic. So he's correct that this isn't going to be widely available right away. First, it's going to be administered to people who are the most vulnerable. Individuals who are elderly with some sort of pre-existing condition that is going to make the virus more deadly for them. Healthcare workers, first responders, they are all going to be the ones who get this vaccine first if this is in fact the candidate that we all go with throughout the world. But in terms of like when the average person can go out and get this vaccine, it's going to be a while. It's going to be months. And I'm not banking on anything before mid-2021. And I think that's kind of a more optimistic prediction. And I don't know. I'm not an expert. I'm just saying that it's going to take some time. And we have to be cognizant of that fact. But still, it is important that we see a really promising vaccine that could be available. That's great news. And I think that we allow ourselves the opportunity to celebrate. Be a little bit optimistic. Don't inject too much hope into your veins just yet, but acknowledge that this is some good news. The pandemic isn't going to be with us forever. And we're starting to see that there is a little bit of hope. A little bit of hope. Now, in that same press briefing, Joe Biden, I think, made the most important point when he said that right now the best tool that we have to combat the spread of this virus is masks. And I hope that once he becomes president, more people are going to want to wear masks. If we have someone who is in power, the most powerful person, who's trying to reinforce the importance of masks, but who knows? We don't necessarily know about that. We already see Donald Trump basically make it seem as if the announcement of this vaccine trials results is political because it happened after the election. I mean, this is all to be expected. One thing that's interesting is Mike Pence basically broke his public silence after losing this election and tried to claim credit for this vaccine. Honestly, even though neither administration gets credit for this, because this isn't anything that they've done personally, part of me wants to let Mike Pence take credit for this as word as that may sound because what we're dealing with now is the situation where Trump supporters and Republicans may not feel inclined to take a vaccine that they think comes from Joe Biden, even if it does get FDA approval. So the way to get them to take this vaccine possibly is to get them to think that this is something that Trump delivered to them. If we can get them to think that, then maybe they'll be more inclined to take the vaccine. I don't know, but whatever is going to get them to take the vaccine, that's really important because we've talked through, you know, when is this going to be widely available? Additionally, how much will it cost? And these are all important questions, but another factor is the political factor, the social factor that we haven't even begun to contemplate. How many people are going to want to take this vaccine? That, again, is going to be key because if we have this vaccine that's highly effective available, even if it's cheap and widely available, if people don't take it, it's not going to do anything. So there's still a lot that we have to consider. There's a long road ahead of us and lots of destruction and deaths until we get to this point where we get this under control. But still, it's a tiny, tiny little glimmer of hope for now that we desperately need. And it's nice to feel a little bit of hope again, even if I am cautiously optimistic. So I think that by now it's safe to say that the 2020 election is a repudiation of the centrist Democrats' strategy. Running to the center, pandering to Republicans, is not an effective strategy. In fact, it's a horrible strategy because House Democrats underperformed. They will retain control of the House, luckily, but they still lost ground. And when it comes to Senate Democrats, we still don't even know if they're going to control the Senate. This is going to come down to two runoff races in Georgia, but still in states where Democrats were expected to excel in Maine with Susan Collins, they lost. So they underperformed. Now I know what you're thinking, but Joe Biden still won the presidency. And sure, I'll grant you that, but keep in mind, Joe Biden underperformed. And even if he didn't underperform, this election wasn't necessarily about Joe Biden. This election, the presidential election anyways, was a referendum on incumbent presidents handling of a global pandemic and a subsequent economic crash. So it's not about Joe Biden. I think he could have performed better had he run a more progressive campaign, but still he won because people rejected Donald Trump. So the question is, what exactly led to Democrats losing? And it's obviously the left. That's what they're saying. No, I mean, obviously, centrist Democrats, the strategy that they have been using for more than two decades now, it was a colossal failure. But of course, they're going to blame the left as they usually do. And look, it doesn't matter if every single centrist lost their reelection campaign and every single progressive won their reelection campaign. The narrative was already predetermined. They'd still say, well, this is just proof. It validates our claim that you have to be more centrist than you can't be too progressive. You can't support policies that are very popular, like Medicare for All. So they're going to say that whatever happens reinforces their worldview, but when you look at the numbers, that's not correct. And I don't know if they're dumb or disingenuous, but either way, what we're hearing from Democrats is wrong. And the people that were elected that kept their seats are centrist. There's no question in my mind about that.  Now, we're also getting electoral advice from Claire McCaskill, who lost her reelection campaign in 2018. And regardless of what strategy you think is better, why don't we all just collectively agree to not take advice from people who lost their elections? Stop letting people who did not successfully run their campaigns tell us how to successfully run campaigns. I mean, isn't that common sense?  But I don't want to beat up too much on Donna Shaleda here because she lost. There are other Democrats who agree with the sentiment that it's really not centrists who did anything wrong. It's the left that hurt us. Even though we ran terrible campaigns, the left, they're the ones that actually hurt us.  But she's not alone because house majority whip Jim Clyburn reportedly said, if we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialize medicine, we're not going to win. Now let's just pause for a moment and think about how idiotic what they are saying is. Jim Clyburn is saying, if you run on Medicare for All, you're not going to win. Has he seen a single poll? Medicare for All is overwhelmingly popular. There are some polls that show a majority of Republicans support Medicare for All, but in almost every single poll, a plurality of Republicans support it because, surprise, surprise, people want health care. They want good things for themselves. People do not like their employer-based health insurance, especially during a pandemic when they're losing their jobs and as a result, they're losing the health insurance that's tied to their employer. So the argument that they're saying here is, look, if you adopt these really popular policies that 55% to 70% of the electorate supports, that's a losing strategy. Do they even hear themselves? Now you can agree with him or not, but the data doesn't validate this point of view. In fact, the DSA actually filled in the blanks for us and as you can see here, it is demonstrably false to say that Medicare for All is a losing issue because guess what? House Democrats that supported Medicare for All, they won even in red districts, whereas Democrats who did not support Medicare for All in blue districts like Donna Shalala, Debbie Mercasel Powell, Abby Finkenauer, they lost. Voters rejected them even though they did exactly what Abigail Spanberger and Jim Clyburn said they should do. They ran as centrists and they still lost, but yet they're saying, no, it's the left. They're the ones that are responsible for us losing, even though the leftist incumbents got reelected. I mean, does this make sense? Of course it doesn't make sense. Now, of course, this is a small sample size, but understand that when you look at the numbers, the more conservative the Democrat was, the more they lost by.  Now, overall, Max Kennerley shows why this is the case. So he says, here's the dem vote margin for the 24 vulnerable House Democratic candidates compared to their GovTrack ideology score. There's of course a million caveats here, but in the aggregate, the more conservative their record in Congress, the worse they fared at the polls. So he provides you with the list. These were the 24 most vulnerable Democrats and many of the ones that lost were the most conservative. And as you can see here with this spreadsheet, the more conservative the Democrat, the more likely they lost. I mean, it's again, this isn't rocket science. If you are against a really popular policy, well, of course you're going to do worse, especially if you are running in a party that their base really wants that policy. I mean, look at this, some of the most conservative Democrats, Colin Peterson, Max Rose, Anthony Brindisi, they voted more often than not with Republicans and they lost by the largest margins. Now, as Max Kennerley goes on to explain, six sponsors of Medicare for all one reelection in swing districts, South Dakota, Montana and Mississippi legalized marijuana. Florida raised its minimum wage. There are no majority centrist districts. The districts are polarized and the independence aren't centrists. Fact is there are very few districts in which it makes electoral sense to please newspaper columnists and cable news hosts. Stand for something, fight for the people and furthermore, many centrist Democrats ran terrible campaigns. In 2018, Dems flipped 41 house seats. 13 of those new members leaned so hard to the right they won awards from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Six of them just lost. One's too close to coal. Another is Spanberger. She blames the left and Black Lives Matter for her tough race. And when you dive deeper here and you look at the types of Democrats who lost and the ones who won, you start to see a pattern emerge. Centrist Democrats had a lot of issues getting re-elected whereas all of the incumbent progressives won their re-election, every single one of them. Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, AOC, they all won. Now it is the case that outsider Democrats who were not elected, who were not incumbents, a lot of them were progressives that lost. But when it comes to incumbent Democrats, they simply did not turn out the vote.  Nobody's a centrist, nobody's in the middle. Nobody is in the middle directly of the Republican and Democratic Party's ideologies. Everyone is either on one side or the other and each election is going to come down to whether or not the Democrat in that particular district was able to excite their base. And it's not just about policy and ideology, there's more involved as well because AOC actually looked into this and a lot of centrist Democrats, they just ran terrible campaigns. Not only was the messaging off where the ads not substantive, but they didn't even bother to really organize and get out the vote. She explains here, there are folks running around on TV blaming progressivism for Democratic Party under performance. I was curious, so I decided to open the hood on struggling campaigns of candidates who are blaming progressives for their problems. Almost all had awful execution on digital during a pandemic. This is insane. Under investment across the board, some campaign spent $0 on digital the week before the election. Others who spent did so in very poor ways. If I spent only $12,000 on TV the week before an election and then blamed others after, you'd ask questions. That's how it looks seeing this. Ideology plus messaging are the spicy conversations a lot of people jump to, but sometimes it's about execution and technical capacity. Digital execution was not good. Polls were off. Ironically, the DCCC banned the firms who are the best in the country at Facebook because they work with progressives. Also, the decision to stop knocking doors is one people need to grapple with and analyze. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib never stopped and may very well have helped deliver Biden the presidency because of it. There are swing seat Democratic incumbents who co-sponsor the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, et cetera. And if I'm not mistaken, every single one, one reelection. So the whole progressivism is bad argument just doesn't have any compelling evidence that I've seen. When it comes to defund and socialism attacks, people need to realize these are racial resentment attacks. You're not going to make them go away. You can make it less effective. How do you make it less effective? Invest in year-round deep canvassing. Data shows that this kind of work helps blunt the force of racial resentment at the polls. If you're always running away from conversations about race, then the only people owning it is the GOP. You'll lose. And on this hand wringing about slide POC increases for GOP in some areas, this is also an area with answers. But honestly, when it comes to Latinos, the parties just never seriously made an effort. Mexicans, Central Americans, Caribbean, Chicanos, Cubans are not the only important communities. By the way, if white communities are getting more comfortable with overt racism or cultural resentment, if that's what they're rebranding it now, it's only going to get harder for POC turnout to save everyone. Real organizing and strategy is needed that disarms bigotry, not avoids it. You can't just tell the Black, Brown and youth organizers writing in to save us every election to be quiet or not have their representatives champion them when they need us, or wonder why they don't show up for midterms when they're scolded for existing, especially when they're delivering victories. And by the way, I'm happy to seed ground on things that aren't working in some areas, but finger pointing is not going to help. There's real workable and productive paths here if the party is open to us. After all, I got here by beating a Democrat who outspent me 10 to 1 who I knew had bad polling. And there you have it, centrists ran terrible campaigns and they ran against policies that are incredibly popular. Even the Green New Deal, even if it's been demonized relentlessly by Fox News and Republicans and even some centrist Democrats, it's still very popular. There's a reason why people voted against Joe Biden in Florida, but yet still voted simultaneously to increase the minimum wage. Policies matter. Joe Biden supports a $15 an hour minimum wage. If he actually ran ads in Florida saying I stand with people who want to raise the minimum wage, he could have won that state. So you have to put policies front and center. You can't pretend to be a Republican because that's going to suppress your own base. They don't want to come out and vote for a Republican light. They're just going to stay home if they see no discernible difference between you and the Republican. So this isn't that difficult. Again, it's frustrating because we're telling them what seems like it's common sense. But the issue is that they're paid not to take our advice. They're paid to lose because they're paid by their donors to support specific policies. They're not supporting policies based on their popularity or just being good policy like Medicare for All. Individuals like Abigail Spanberger, she takes money from large multinational corporations, health insurance companies, and those companies would stop giving her money if she actually did support Medicare for All. So it's convenient for her to say that being a citrus is a winning strategy even if that strategy is a demonstrable failure. It's convenient for her to say that because then she could be corrupt, take money from large multinational corporations, not change a thing, and then blame everyone else for her own party's failures. Well, we're going to push back against this because what you're saying is laughably stupid. Again, if you run away from popular policies, you're hurting yourself. You can't blame the left for being energized.  And I'll leave that there. Individuals like Jim Clyburn, Abigail Spanburger, Donna Shalala, they're clowns. And the quicker the aggregate Democratic Party stops listening to people like that, who consume nothing but mainstream media, the faster they'll actually be able to win elections. I mean, isn't this what you want?  You know, I find it really interesting that we keep hearing so much about the far left in this country and how dangerous they are. Meanwhile, we have a far right in this country who is literally plotting terror attacks on vote counting facilities because they believe Donald Trump when he says that this election was fraudulent. But please, mainstream media and politicians, let's keep talking about how dangerous the far left is. I mean, it's absurd to me and to even compare the far left and the far right, this is a false equivalence. The far left wants to give everyone health care and education and stop climate change. Whereas the far right, wants a white ethno state and wants an authoritarian regime with Donald Trump as the dictator. So why is it that we keep fear mongering about the far left when we have a far right in this country that is completely out of control? We have a Republican Party that is shifting further and further to the right to where some sitting members of the Republican Party in Congress openly endorse undemocratic means of quelling protests, endorse authoritarianism? Like, why are we talking about the far left at all when we have a far right who is so extreme? Now, regardless of me trying to explain that there is no equivalence between the far left and the far right, this narrative continues to exist and individuals like John Kasich have gone on television complaining about how Joe Biden, now that he's elected, thanks to me, should reject the far left. So let's talk about John Kasich's theory here and I have a lot to say about it. The best thing that's happened to Joe Biden is the fact that the United States Senate is either going to be Republican or very close and it will allow Joe Biden to do what he does best. It allows him to govern as a moderate. It allows him to do the things that I've always hoped he can do and the far left can push him as hard as they want. And frankly, the Democrats have to make it clear to the far left that they almost cost him this election that people in this country are basically center, center, right, center, left. They're not far left and they're also not far right. And we got to hope that the far right will act responsibly now that this election is over. It's really interesting that he says all of this with a straight face. He's concerned with the base of the Democratic Party and Democratic Party politicians becoming too extreme whereas he just ran in a Republican primary and his party soundly rejected him in favor of the far right demagogue who is a proto-fascist. So you're concerned with extremism in the Democratic Party when extremists in your own party literally ran you out of the party? I mean, that doesn't make sense to me. Aren't you more concerned with the far right? I mean, he cites the far right and he makes it seem as if the far left and the far right are comparable but that's a false equivalence. The far left, again, wants to give people healthcare whereas the far right wants a white ethno state. So, you know, it's funny that he lambasts the far left in the Democratic Party while saying not much about the far right but really what this is about is he realizes that his party is too far gone. At his core, he's a Republican and he doesn't want to leave the Republican Party but he knows that the moderates are gone. They're being pushed out so the Republican Party, like it or not, is the party of the far right and Donald Trump. Donald Trump may have lost the selection but there are a lot of Trump-esque politicians who will take his place in 2024. Tom Cotton, Matt Gaetz, who knows. So, you know, for him to say this, what I hear is, look, there's no home for me in the Republican Party. So please, have the Democratic Party shift to the right even further to accommodate someone like me who signed one of the most draconian anti-abortion bills who ruined the environments in Ohio with fracking. I mean, that's what he's saying. Abandon your base Democrats so I have a home, so I have a place to go to. I mean, the gall on him and he literally said the far left almost cost Joe Biden the selection. The whole point of John Kasich endorsing Joe Biden and speaking at the Democratic National Convention was to help deliver Ohio to Joe Biden. Guess what happened, John Kasich? You did not deliver Ohio to Joe Biden. It was the far left, as you'd call them, who helped deliver this victory to Joe Biden because had it not been the grassroots organizing efforts of individuals like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in Michigan and Minnesota, Joe Biden may not have won.  No, I don't necessarily believe that Stacey Abrams is a progressive. I think that she doesn't really stand for much, but at least she knows that the correct strategy is to get out the vote. But what did you do?  I mean, we are in a polarized time in American politics where you have everyone either in this camp firmly of the Democratic Party or firmly in the Republican Party's camp. How many people are in the middle? I'll tell you what, not enough to win an election. There were fewer Republicans that voted for Joe Biden this time than there were who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Donald Trump has a high approval rating within the Republican Party. So all of these never Trump Republicans, all of these so-called moderate Republicans, the reason why Democrats take them seriously is because they have an outsized amount of influence. They're on cable news all the time. When in actuality, they don't represent most Americans. Now he says here, people in this country are center right and center left. They're not far left. Now, if you actually look at polls and see how people self-identify, he's correct that people oftentimes identify as more moderate and centrist. However, there's a caveat to that because if you look at specific policies, people side with who he'd called the far left. Raising the minimum wage? Americans want that. Green New Deal? Americans really want that. Legalizing pot? Americans want that. Medicare for all? Americans want that, and that includes a lot of Republicans as well. America is progressive, at least when it comes to the policy. Now if you ask someone how they identified, they might say, you know, I'm a little bit more moderate or conservative, but the label that they ascribe to themselves doesn't necessarily line up with the policies, but I don't care what label they use. The fact remains that what the far left is pushing is more in line with what Americans want. Not with what John Kasich wants. Americans want Roe v. Wade to remain president in this country, whereas he signed a draconian abortion bill into law to restrict women's reproductive rights. So, I mean, everything he's saying here, nobody should be taking John Kasich seriously, and especially after he failed to deliver Ohio to Joe Biden, he should be dismissed because you're not useful. The anti-Trump Republicans who were working with Biden have failed. The Latino outreach coordinator for Joe Biden was Anna Navarro. And guess what happened? Joe Biden did not perform particularly well with the Latino community. So all of these never Trump Republicans, it wasn't you who got Joe Biden elected. It was one, anti-Trump fervor, and two, the left who actually organized and canvassed to get out the vote. That's what did it, okay? And not just the left. Other people who organized for Joe Biden did phone banking for him and stuff like that. That's what you can attribute his success to in swing states. But this grassroots activism that we saw in key swing states with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, without that, who knows if Joe Biden would have won the Rust Belt Act. So it's the left. It's Bernie Sanders' activism. Bernie Sanders' stomping for Joe Biden did more than John Kasich could have ever done.  I mean, it's just, it's a joke. It's ridiculous. By now, I am sure that you've heard of the nonsensical criticism that we've seen from centrist Democrats, third-away Democrats like Abigail Spanberger who claim that the reason why Democrats underperformed polls is because the left, supporting policies like Medicare for All and if on the police, that hurt other Democrats. Now it's interesting to me because Democrats who support Medicare for All even in red districts who were incumbents, they won their races. It's only the more centrist Democrats in these swing districts who had a more difficult time winning reelection. So what she's saying is absurd and it's demonstrably untrue and thankfully someone who is going to be going to Congress very soon, Jamal Bowman, was asked to respond to her comments and he shot them down and what he said was phenomenal. I want you to listen here. One of your new colleagues will be Abigail Spanberger. She's a moderate and a centrist from a district that President Trump had carried before. She won reelection but a couple of her centrist friends lost and she's not happy and she blames progressives. Listen. Not only did we not win the Senate but we lost house seats that we shouldn't have lost in my opinion. Great members who were focused on the issues that matter to people and had voted on issues that matter to people and what I expressed to my colleagues is this is a place where we need to do an after action report about how we thought what would happen was so different from in fact what did happen. She says one of the problems is Democrats who push for defunding police. One of the problems is Democrats who identify as Democratic socialists. Do you agree? I disagree. You have to run your race in your district in response to the needs of the people in your district and if you're responding to their needs and if you're building relationships and making connections and doing everything you have to do then you should be able to win your race. This is about deep authentic relationships. This is about transformational politics and I disagree that someone running on a different platform hundreds of miles away is going to impact what happens in a particular race. So I disagree. I agree with the need to do a thorough analysis into why certain candidates won in particular districts and why others did not win. I think that's very important for us to become a data driven Democratic party but I disagree with the notion that it's the fault of progressives especially when you look at how much progressives organized across the country to help Joe Biden win and to organize to make sure we win the two Democratic Senate seats in Georgia. And so those two Democratic seats the two seats in Georgia will decide which party controls the Senate. So we're a little TBD on that one but in any event it'll be narrowly divided. You've lost a little bit on the House majority. You will be a new member and again congratulations but Nancy Pelosi if she's a reelected a speaker which we assume will have a smaller majority. So when Joe Biden meets with you all in January and says look thank you number one we share goals but we have to trim our sales a little bit. We can't sell Medicare for all. He wasn't for it anyway. We're going to try to do a modest build on Obamacare. We can't do as much as you would like to do as fast as you would like to do it on climate change. We have to trim our sales there. Are you going to say I get the math or are you going to say no Mr. President you won push it be bolder. Well we've already been pushing throughout the Biden campaign. I mean there was a Biden Sanders coalition that made climate change a central focus of the Biden campaign. There was a Biden Sanders coalition that made racial equity a focus and President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris focused on universal child care and early childhood education. So we have already begun to work in collaboration with the White House to make sure our progressive policies are on the agenda and we will continue to work in collaboration with the White House and our colleagues in Congress. We have to. That is our mandate from the American people. The American people support Medicare for all in overwhelming numbers. The American people support a reallocation of resources from how we look at public safety now which is additional police to how we should look at public safety which is food security housing security job programs and fully funding education. So we're going to continue to have these conversations around the Thanksgiving table as you mentioned because we have to be responsive to the American people and the American people who came out for Joe Biden and pushed him over the top in Detroit in Philadelphia in Milwaukee and Atlanta these are majority urban centers of color. They came out and helped Joe Biden win his election so we have to be responsive to them. That's great and I'm really excited to see what he does in Congress. I don't agree with him on everything. I think when it comes to Israel Palestine I mean we're going to have to push him on that issue but most issues economic issues when it comes to health care he's a progressive and I think that he is going to be impressive there. It's just a matter of whether or not he'll challenge party leadership but he basically rejects this premise that left us are to blame because to accept that notion to accept what Abigail Spanberger is saying you know what someone does in one district has to have an impact on another district and for her to accept that she has to accept previous attacks on centrist Democrats that Republicans have used like Nancy Pelosi not even you know former attacks attacks this cycle Republicans attacked Nancy Pelosi for being an out of touch coastal elite with two $12,000 refrigerators why is it that that attack didn't help sink centrists but the left and them pushing for very popular policies like Medicare for all did sink centrists like the logic doesn't make sense it's like she's cherry picking what hurt Democrats in a way that helps to validate her third way centrist narrative and Jamal Bowman did not fall for it which is great he also says you know he's going to work with the Biden administration I expect him to do that you have to but the goal is you don't sacrifice your principles in working with Joe Biden under the guise of compromise because you can't roll over and die and he basically made it clear he's not going to back down when it comes to Medicare for all and defund the police because guess what these issues they're not just health care issues and criminal justice issues Medicare for all is a racial justice issue it's an LGBTQ plus issue defund the police is an economic issue these are all interrelated issues and you can't just abandon the people who helped you get elected people of color because you think that these policies are like too bold or too out there no that's not the way that it works like if you want to lose elections then sure go ahead and move further away from these policies but I don't think that Republican should be emboldened as far right as they are so you can't just run away from these policies it was people of color native communities in Arizona who helped get Joe Biden across the finish line so the Democratic Party can't just say oh well you know what for these races that were in swing districts it was the left at loss so we can we have to abandon them what victories you had were secured because of people of color so you don't just abandon them after the election now unfortunately that's what the Democratic Party has been doing so you can't do that and people like Jamal Bowman are saying the right thing that no you have to deliver for these communities deliver for these communities otherwise you're going to keep losing so I mean it's nice to have another voice in Congress saying common sense things like this and I hope that most people don't take what Abigail Spanberger says seriously because this is a corporate backed third-way Democrat who would rather probably be an opposition candidate because you know she doesn't want to deliver if Democrats had control of all branches of government individuals like Jim Clyburn and Abigail Spanberger they would actually have to deliver and they know that their policies aren't popular and they know that they actually want to appease the base they would have to pass policies like Medicare for all but then that's going to conflict with what their corporate donors want their health industry donors don't want progressive policies like Medicare for all their private prison industry donors don't want them to end private prisons and defund the police so they pretend as if their strategy is actually the more electorally viable strategy and they pass it off as them just being more savvy than us in the mainstream media when in actuality if you look at how well progressives fared in this race every incumbent progressive won their election so I think that you know what they're saying it's demonstrably untrue and the quicker we get more voices like Jamal Bowman in Congress the better off we will all be in an interview with the New York Times Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave us some inside insight into the intro party warfare that we are currently seeing within the Democratic Party and what she says even though it's not super surprising it's still a little bit shocking because not only has the Democratic Party collectively speaking not taking her up on her offer of advice in order to make the party more popular and appealing to young people but they have made her so miserable have been so hostile towards her that she actually contemplated quitting politics so she explains the last two years have been pretty hostile externally we've been winning externally there's been a lot of support but internally it's been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive is the party ready to like sit down and work together and figure out how we're going to use assets from everyone at the party or are they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach and that's going to inform what I do now the interviewer asks is there a universe in which they're hostile enough that we're talking about a Senate run in a couple of years and she responded saying I genuinely don't know I don't even know if I want to be in politics you know for real in the first six months of my term I didn't even know if I was going to run for re-election this year the interviewer responds saying really why and she says it's the incoming it's the stress it's the violence it's the lack of support from your own party it's your own party thinking you're the enemy when your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you're bad because you actually append your name to your opinion I chose to run for a re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real that this moment was real that I wasn't a fluke that people really want guaranteed healthcare and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them but I'm serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me of just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere they're probably the same wow this is horribly sad I mean when you see this bright young energetic voice enter the Democratic Party you would expect them to want to embrace her at least in theory if they wanted to win but all that she has been met with is hostility not only that the help that she offers to Democrats they reject it any party that wants to win would not do that they'd at least try to pretend to be somewhat like her because she's popular why? not because there's this cult of personality surrounding her but because she supports progressive policies so the fact that the Democratic Party is so hostile towards the left and progressivism that one of their rising stars considered quitting and it still may be considering quitting that shows you how poor shape the party's in this is really bad people like AOC should be welcomed into the party with open arms but they're shitting on her and talking trash about her anonymously so I've covered the stories about how Democrats anonymously say that you know oh she's just she's hurting all of us and she's terrible and they won't go on the record but because she actually is blunt and she doesn't hide behind these you know anonymous things that she says that everyone else does she gets attacked it's sad now in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN he followed up and asked her about this and she gave us a little bit more insight you told the New York Times that you almost didn't even run for re-election you said it's the incoming it's the stress it's the violence it's the lack of support from your own party it's your own party thinking you're the enemy do you really think other Democrats see you as the enemy do you think Joe Biden sees you that way I don't believe Joe Biden I don't believe President Biden sees me that way and I believe that that's actually one of the reasons why he won election there's a market difference in 2020 and 2016 in how the Democratic Party was able to unify to Joe Biden's credit before the election and get everyone on the same page to make sure that we vote Donald Trump out of office that being said there are at least in the House caucus very deep divisions within the party and I believe that we need to really come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart as you mentioned we have a slimmer Democratic majority it's going to be more important than ever for us to work together and not fight each other and so when we kind of come out swinging not 48 hours after Tuesday when we don't even have solid data yet pointing fingers and telling each other what to do it deepens the division in the party and it's irresponsible it's irresponsible to pour gasoline on these already very delicate tensions in the party so we can help saying that every member has to campaign as a progressive in a traditional progressive way but it's to say that we have assets to offer the party that the party has not yet fully leaned into or exploited and I believe that we can take some of these seats I think Katie Porter is an amazing example Michael Levin there are swing seats every single swing seat member that cosponsored Medicare for all and so the conversation is a little bit deeper than that than just saying anything progressive is toxic and a losing message so I mean basically what she is expressing is frustration she's trying to help the party make the party more popular and at every step of the way they spin in her eye and this is the frustration that I feel as well but it's why we need to keep fighting because when the establishment breaks you down so much that you actually seriously contemplate getting out of politics that's them winning that's a victory for them so it sucks because unlike AOC I don't have to put my name out there my neck on the line she's the one who's actually in congress fighting so for her it's difficult she gets death threats all the time she gets demonized by Fox News she puts up with more than any of us have to deal with so it's exhausting and this is what the Democratic Party wants now she did say things that I disagree with she says I believe that we need to come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart but that is where I disagree because at face value it might seem like ostensibly Democrats who blame the left for their losses are doing so because of the Republican Party's attacks but this has nothing to do with what the Republicans will say the Republican Party is going to attack Democrats and call them Socialists regardless or neoliberals it doesn't matter Republicans are going to Republican because that's what they do what matters is how you fight for the people but the reason why we need to not come together and we need to fight them is because they're not actually serious like individuals like Abigail Spanberger and Jim Clyburn these aren't good faith actors who just disagree with you on the strategy this isn't a good faith debate that we're having this is one side who has been corrupted by the large multinational corporations and the contributions that they've taken and another side who actually wants to save the planet and the country stop people from dying who don't have healthcare so to even suggest that you know both sides are equal is wrong this isn't about coming together this is about us winning out over a corrupt corporatist party who doesn't actually want change and she does say that party unity is important and that is one thing that I unequivocally disagree with we don't need to be unified in fact I think that we need to fight we have to fight because you can't unify with the party who doesn't stand for anything you stand for and not only that everything that they stand for is antithetical to what the left wants we want single payer Medicare for all they want a free market solution to that we want a Green New Deal well any Democrat who claims they support the Green New Deal supports some watered down version of it when that's not going to suffice when we are facing climate catastrophe so we can't just unify and unite we have to have these battles that's really important because otherwise if we don't they're gonna steamroll us and we're starting to gain some traction but it's tough and it's tiring and they try to make sure that you feel so discouraged and demoralized that you check out of the process when the entire Democratic Party establishment collectively came together to crush Bernie's campaign back in March but you just keep fighting never let them get you down because the minute they sense that you know you're ready to check out and quit that's when they realize that their strategy is working but we have to show them we're not backing down no matter what we are going to be a thorn on their side and we're gonna take over because they're not fighting for us but I mean look just the mere fact that AOC was considering quitting because of the Democratic Party that is so sad again they should be embracing voices like her but they're trying to drive them out of the party and that's just it's disgusting you know it shows you how much work we have to do you know typically if you are the leader of a political party and under your watch your party loses an election or loses ground I mean if you actually cared about that party the right thing to do would be to resign allow someone more capable of leading the party to victory to take over because it didn't happen under your watch this is exactly what Jeremy Corbyn did after labor lost in 2019 now that may be a parliamentary system and I may think that Jeremy Corbyn overall is a good leader and his own party was trying to sabotage him but still you know the principle stands that if you lead your party to a defeat you have to resign you have to do something better but we didn't see that from Democrats after the House lost ground House Democrats lost ground we immediately heard that Nancy Pelosi is already trying to be the speaker of the House again under your watch under your leadership Democrats lost ground so what are you thinking you want to be the speaker again after your party lost ground that's astonishing so I mean really after 2016 when Democrats lost to Donald Trump that should have been the moment where we saw mass resignations from the party but we didn't get that people who worked with Hillary Clinton still were employed by the party Robby Mook her campaign manager Hillary's campaign manager went on to manage House Democrats super PAC after he ran a losing campaign so part of the reason why aren't doing any better since 2016 at least with regard to these electoral races in the House and Senate is because there hasn't been a change in leadership there hasn't been a change in the consultants who are giving them the same bad advice that they gave them in 2016 like that hasn't changed why haven't we seen mass resignations why haven't we seen people get fired again like you can say that Democrats didn't do too poorly because maybe they'll still take back the Senate Joe Biden at least won the presidency but again this isn't a mandate for Joe Biden this was a referendum on an incumbent president who botched the pandemic handling pandemic response the subsequent economic crash this was about Donald Trump not about Joe Biden so if Democrats actually want to win if we see people in leadership that led the Democratic party astray if they don't resign then nothing's gonna change now thankfully one member of Democratic party's leadership is actually resigning Sherry Bustos the head of the DCCC who I think was a disaster is actually stepping down she will not be seeking to lead the DCCC again because under her watch the party lost ground so as Scott Wong and Mike Lillis of the Hill reports Illinois representative Sherry Bustos will not run for a second term as Democrats campaign armed following a disappointing election where her party saw at least seven vulnerable incumbents go down to defeat in a statement Monday Bustos confirmed that she would not run for chairman of the Democratic congressional campaign committee for the 2022 cycle saying that the party would be in good hands next year with the House majority and Joe Biden in the White House Bustos announcement came following a disastrous cycle for Democrats heading into last week's elections party leaders had predicted they would pick up seats in the lower chamber patting their majority in anticipation of a tough cycle in 2022 when the party of the incumbent president historically suffers big losses in Congress explaining their bullishness they cited a sharp fundraising advantage over the Republicans a liberal base energized by President Trump at the top of the ticket and polls showing Democrats running competitive races even deep into Trump country instead Democrats saw at least seven of their incumbents picked off by GOP challengers and of the 38 Republican held districts they targeted most aggressively they called red to blue districts they've picked up only one seat left vacant by retiring representative Rob Woodall as of Monday afternoon not a single Republican running for re-election had been defeated although almost two dozen races remain outstanding with expectation so high Democrats began the finger pointing almost immediately and Bustos became an early target now I dislike Sherry Bustos because she has been a disaster she has chosen as head of the DCC to blacklist any vendors that work with a campaign that's primary a corporate Democrat like that's insanity that is insane you're basically trying to cut off any primary challenges to incumbent Democrats don't you want to win shouldn't a Democrat who is vulnerable enough to lose a primary election lose so that way the party has a better shot at winning so it's been a disaster but she is doing the right thing here resigning is the right thing to do if under your leadership the party lost ground this is exactly what Nancy Pelosi should be doing she should not be seeking another term as Speaker of the House Chuck Schumer should not be seeking another term as Senate minority leader or majority leader if Democrats somehow retake the Senate but here's the thing I don't necessarily know that I'm going to give Sherry Bustos credit yet because it could be the case that this isn't necessarily some principled ploy that she's making but she is reportedly in consideration to be appointed to some cabinet position by Joe Biden so maybe this is just her stepping down and she's saying well I'm doing it because you know we lost and I'm being responsible this could just be that okay I'm getting a better job but still resigning after your party lost ground under your leadership is the right thing to do if roles were reversed if Barbara Lee were Speaker of the House and if Democrats lost ground don't you think that there would be mass calls not just from the party itself but mainstream media aligned with Democrats to get her to resign not be Speaker again of course that'd be the case so this is what you expect and the problem is that with the Democratic Party there's been no real accountability since 2016 that's why they're still underperforming as a party and if we ever want a shot at stopping Republicans and their disgusting agenda the Democratic Party has to wake the fuck up because what they're doing isn't working and the conclusions that they are drawing from this election are ass backwards Santrists who did not support Medicare for All incumbent Democrats lost whereas individuals who supported Medicare for All won and the Santrists Jim Clyburn and Abigail Spandberger are still blaming the left saying oh well this talk of socialism and Medicare for All is what made us lose if that were the case the individuals who support Medicare for All and defund the police and socialism would have lost so do you understand why your strategy doesn't make any sense why what you're saying is insane so we have to see some accountability from the Democratic Party and you know I don't know if she's just in a position in Biden's administration but either way the fact that she is not going to be the head of the DCCC is good news but I'm not optimistic that there's going to be someone who's actually competent or cares about the party who will be the chair because I'm sure the establishment is going to move heaven and earth to make sure someone as equally incompetent will take her place so yeah it's just a never ending battle against an incompetent out of touch Democratic Party who just they maybe are more comfortable just being an opposition party forever because it's easier to just be an opposition party and complain about how bad Republicans are easier to fundraise that way easier to not have to prove that you represent the people because a lot of them don't and they don't want to prove that President-elect Joe Biden isn't going to take office until January 20th of next year but already we're kind of getting a little bit of a sense as to what he's going to do within the first 100 days of his presidency and what his administration is going to look like so I want to talk through all of these things that we know as of now the good the bad and then I will tell you my thoughts so in terms of what he plans to do in the first three months he is reportedly planning a bunch of executive orders primarily to undo Trump's undoing of Obama's legacy so for example Quartz reports that he's planning on a number of day one executive orders that include a federal mask mandate rejoining the Paris climate accord reinstating protections for transgender students that Trump reversed he'll make DACA permanent and also put an end to Donald Trump's Muslim ban now if he were to follow through on all of these executive orders this is great and I expect him to do all of these things because of course he's going to want to make sure that Obama's legacy is at least somewhat intact but Trump undid to the extent that he can he's going to want to restore that legacy the only thing that I doubt is whether or not he'll do all of this on day one but if he does that would be fantastic I mean these are all things that I expected him to do soon but if he did all of this on day one that would be phenomenal now there's this question of what is going to be on his agenda if you ask anyone who is trying to get others to support Joe Biden who were reluctant at doing so the pitch was hey I know you don't like Joe Biden but he has the most progressive platform that we've ever seen now my response to that is okay Joe Biden's record dictates that he's basically a Republican like maybe I'm being a little bit too unkind but he governed as a right wing Democrat so why should I expect him to be any different now why should I expect him to follow through on these progressive policies and not just immediately betray progressives who came through for him the minute when the election is over and apparently his campaign is saying that they're going to make good on these promises so John Bowden of The Hill reports president-elect Joe Biden's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said Sunday that the former vice president would follow through on his promises to implement what she characterized as a progressive policy agenda during an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Bedingfield responded to comments from representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who told The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview that many activist communities who support Democratic candidates often feel left behind when politicians don't come through and fulfill their promises I think Vice President Biden campaigned on an incredibly progressive and aggressive agenda Bedingfield said on Sunday before pointing to the campaign's plan to tackle climate change developed with advice from supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders presidential bid including the New York Congresswoman he's going to make good on those commitments she continued I mean we you know he spent time during this campaign bringing people together around this climate plan he was able to get the endorsement of groups like the sunrise movement and the endorsement of labor for this plan it's a big aggressive plan Bedingfield continued it's a perfect example of the kind of you know big effort that he is going to make to meet this moment and to meet these crises that we're in now to that I say great but don't tell me show me I'm not going to inject any hopium into these veins until I see it because here's the thing I don't think I'm being unfair to be incredibly cynical about Joe Biden because he has had a history that has been consistently conservative so I mean to believe that Joe Biden is going to govern in even a slightly progressive way means he's going to have to undo a lot of his past policies now that'd be great if I'm proven wrong I would love to come out on camera and say I stand corrected here Joe Biden was right about this this is a good policy I will give him credit words do but here's the thing I worry about people taking him at his word here and taking the campaign at their word here because if you say look the elections over and we're still saying we're going to deliver so please trust us because when you tell voters that they should you know give you faith and have faith in you often times what that leads to is demobilization and that's what we saw after Barack Obama was elected everyone had faith that he would follow through with his progressive agenda and that didn't happen he did not deliver he was a colossal failure and to the extent that he was successful it was these executive orders that Joe Biden is probably going to introduce so I'm not just going to say oh well that's fine let's give Joe Biden a break because they're saying you know the elections over and we're still not betraying you no don't tell me fucking show me okay because I am not going to let my foot off the gas at all we are not going to get off of Joe Biden's back we're going to hound him non-stop and to the extent that we will be able to push him left which I don't think is possible we're going to apply non-stop pressure on him because we know that the minute Joe Biden is influenced by individuals who do not have our best interest there's a very high likelihood that he's going to flip now what we're seeing from individuals who might be part of his cabinet indicate that this is going to be the case now Politico detailed people who he is currently considering for cabinet positions and I'm not impressed to say the least so this includes individuals like Susan Rice for secretary of state who's terrible Chris Murphy a corporate Democrat who supported a coup in Venezuela they also include Elizabeth Warren as a contender for a treasury secretary but they're considering Doug Jones for attorney general for whatever reason or DNC head and human clown Tom Perez for attorney general for transportation he is reportedly considering human garbage can Rom Emanuel for commerce corporate Democrat Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe is being considered who knows why for agriculture right wing Democrat Heidi Heidkamp who lost her senate race in 2018 is being considered and Bernie is apparently being considered for labor secretary I don't think this is actually true and I don't want Bernie to be labor secretary so we'll see about that and you know we have ghouls like people to judge who are being considered for veterans affairs so let me just say but a judge is never going to go away the thought of him running for election every four years is nauseating but I'm not going to think about that right now but in terms of like these cabinet picks I mean the progressives that he has listed even if you want to call Elizabeth Warren a progressive which maybe she's a spineless progressive but I don't really consider her an ally at this point but I mean regardless the progressives that he put on here I'm pretty sure he's doing this just to placate us we'll see I mean this is all speculation I will reserve judgment for the final cabinet list but ask yourself this when all these people are in Joe Biden's year individuals like Rahm Emanuel do you honestly expect him to follow through on a progressive agenda? No so when we hear stories about how Biden's campaign team is going to follow through on their progressive policies like I want you to understand this is mostly meant to demobilize you and I know that it might sound like I'm being too cynical but with how much is on the line with how much is at stake we can't afford to not be cynical we can't afford to give Joe Biden a pass and trust him when he's let us down countless times if we trust him demobilize remove the pressure on him he's going to betray us so don't don't just accept that they're going to follow through because you're going to be disappointed you have to apply constant pressure on Joe Biden again we can celebrate that Donald Trump was defeated but Joe Biden is not our ally he may be better than Donald Trump but he is someone who we will have to fight and he is going to do good things and I intend on giving him full credit for anything good that he does but I need you to understand there are going to be things that he does that are going to be bad because the people around him are going to instruct him to do bad things so it's a good sign certainly that he's signaling that he will follow through on certain progressive policy proposals at least when it comes to climate change but we need more than a promise and a reaffirmation that you're going to follow through we need you to follow through and actually do it not just tell us you're going to do it so you know what we're seeing here from Joe Biden at first you know it seems if he follows through these executive orders immediately that's great it will improve you know millions of lives immediately if he does all this but again don't take all of this as him you know turning a new leaf and being progressive like he he doesn't get a pass he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt he's Joe Biden he's done so much harm and damage that we can't afford to trust him and I hope that people don't take that away from you know these articles where you know his staffers are saying oh trust us we're going to be progressive don't trust them you can't afford to trust them you have to gear up to fight him because he's not going to follow through on anything unless we fight him and we have to fight him hard and to the extent that we can pressure him we have to try because he is a ghoul and you know he's he's going to do damaging things so we have to stop that and make sure that he actually does follow through and some of these campaign promises don't take his word for it force him to actually follow through alright folks so I've got good news and bad news the good news is that someone high up within the Democratic Party establishment is suddenly saying things that they should have been saying a very long time ago trying to convince other Democrats to embrace progressive policies bad news is that the individual who is saying said things is Chuck Schumer whose word is not worth a damn which is the shame Chuck Schumer is probably the most feckless, least ineffectual leader in the Democratic Party worse than Nancy Pelosi but what he's saying now I've got to give him credit it's good the problem is that I don't necessarily know if he's saying this because he believes it or because he's looking out for his own behind nonetheless I'm interested and I want to hear more so in an interview with Anand Giridharadas Chuck Schumer was asked about his expectations for the first 100 days of Joe Biden's presidency and what he said is shocking he says it ought to look like FDR's presidency one area is climate with a big strong aggressive climate agenda that takes into account working people takes into account racial injustice the second is wealth and income inequality obviously raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour changing the tax code so it's fairer for labor rather than capital strengthening labor unions one of the reasons working class incomes have declined is the weakening of the labor movement we have to strengthen that we need a big broad structure bill and could create millions of jobs a lot of those jobs should go to poor people people who have had prison records and these are good paying jobs getting rid of student debt I have a proposal with Elizabeth warned that the first $50,000 of debt be vanquished and we believe that Joe Biden can do that with the pen as opposed to legislation then there are issues that don't seem related to income inequality but are immigration reform and criminal justice reform is another economic issue if you have a small conviction for a minor crime you can never get a good job I like the idea of paying care workers more the third area is democracy we've got to change the structure of society making it easier to vote we can change America structurally that way so it's a big bold agenda my job is to get as much of that past and the votes for it which is obviously not something I can snap my fingers and do I want the boldest agenda what's to pass? Chuck Schumer just said all of this what? has he been cloned and is the real Chuck Schumer like locked in a basement somewhere? but there's more because he took to Twitter to endorse legalizing recreational marijuana saying voters in four more states just voted to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana it's past time to end the federal prohibition on marijuana and work to undo the harms done by the war on drugs particularly in black and brown communities so let's just stop and try to digest everything that he just said because this doesn't sound like Chuck Schumer so first and foremost let me just say that after elections Chuck Schumer usually sounds like a very different person like in 2016 or 2017 more specifically after Democrats just lost to Donald Trump he talked a pretty big game he was saying basically I'm going to hold Donald Trump accountable I'm actually excited about this opportunity to hold him accountable and we saw how that turned out he fast-tracked dozens of Donald Trump's federal judicial appointments we just saw with Amy Coney Barrett he did fuck all to try to stop that process so when it's Chuck Schumer I've learned that anything he says we have to take it with a grain of salt having said that though is what he's saying good? yeah objectively so for Joe Biden to say or excuse me for Chuck Schumer to say that Joe Biden should cancel student debt and not only that that he can do it via executive order that is amazing good job Chuck Schumer I can't believe those words just came out of my mouth good job Chuck Schumer wow now I will believe it when I see it because whenever a Democrat commits to a bold agenda who previously did not support said bold agenda I take that as a cue that they want us to demobilize let the pressure a little bit off of them not gonna happen at all I'll believe it when I see it and until I see it we will put pressure on you and exert as much pressure as possible to get you to buckle and break but there's a reason why he's probably saying this in fact why he's definitely saying this Chuck Schumer has a very big election coming up in 2022 and in 2021 he could very well be primary by someone who if this individual chose to primary him had a very good shot at winning Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Chuck Schumer knows damn well that if he were to see a primary challenge by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez he might get Joe Crowley he does not want that but what do we think is more likely we're not naive we know what this is about Chuck Schumer is scared shitless that AOC is gonna primary him there's been talks of this for years now he doesn't want that to happen and as a result we get this look I honestly don't care what his motivations are so long as he's saying this but more importantly I want him to follow through on these things he's saying Joe Biden should be progressive and I will help facilitate said progressive agenda that's good and I'm gonna take yes for an answer and count this as a victory for the left but again I wanna caution the left that when we hear Democrats say things like this you don't just take them at their word I mean Biden's campaign is saying we're going to actually follow through on this progressive agenda and I say great but show me don't tell me because the minute we let our feet off of that gas pedal they're gonna betray us if we do not supervise them constantly 24-7 they're going to get out of line so we have to be loud we have to bark orders at the Democratic Party establishment constantly otherwise they're not going to do what we want them to so meanwhile I would like to see what else Chuck Schumer is going to endorse if we can get him to tweet out support for defund the police or decriminalizing all drugs you know he's really afraid of you know a primary challenge but either way I mean this is really entertaining to watch to see Chuck Schumer suddenly embrace progressivism it just shows you how powerful and important primary challenges are so of course we all know that Donald Trump is refusing to concede and probably will not concede ever in any formal capacity but his refusal to concede is morphing into something a lot more different and much more delusional to the extent that his administration currently is taking steps to plan as if he will still be in government come February come 2021 so first of all the White House is currently blocking the formal transition process from taking place this is very petty but nonetheless you know I guess that this goes kind of in line with his facade that they're trying to still win by invalidating these illegal votes and yada yada also his administration is suing in Pennsylvania to stop them from certifying the election results which would solidify Biden's victory so of course this move prolongs this grift that they're trying to do and finally the Washington Post is reporting that Trump's White House is instructing federal agencies to prep Trump's budget proposal for 2021 now usually these budget proposals they aren't released until February of each new year so why are we preparing a fiscal budget proposal for Donald Trump when he's not going to be president come 2021 he will be the president until noon of January 20th but after that it's over so what are we doing here now I understand exactly what Trump and the Republican Party is trying to do this is basically a grift they are trying to raise funds from their supporters to pay down their campaign debt this is all about money Trump formed a brand new super pack and he's trying to make sure that he has some sort of control at least monetarily over the Republican Party when he leaves so we know that what they're doing this whole facade that oh well we can still win this is just a ploy to dupe his supporters into giving their campaign more money however there's a difference between refusing to concede and pretending as if you're not going to go anywhere because then we move away from oh well you're just bitter to okay are we talking about a coup is that what you're trying to propose because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the election results and what he said is I don't know if he's being serious but nonetheless incredibly shocking is the State Department currently preparing to engage with the Biden transition team and if not at what point does a delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk to national security there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration all right we're ready the world is watching what's taking place here we're going to count all the votes when the process is complete there'll be electors selected there's a process the Constitution lays it out pretty clearly the world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the State Department is functional today successful today and successful with the President who's in office on January 20th a minute afternoon will also be successful I went through a transition on the front and I've been on the other side of this I'm very confident that we will do all the things that are necessary to make sure that the government, the United States government will continue to perform its national security function so you believe there's widespread voter fraud that the reports that we're getting from Pennsylvania from Michigan showing vote totals and massive leads or significant leads with 99% reporting are going to be overturned and that the United States failed to conduct a fraudulent free election Rich I'm the Secretary of State I'm getting calls from all across the world these people are watching our election they understand that we have a legal process they understand that this takes time right took us 37 plus days 37 plus days in an election back in 2000 conducted a successful transition then I'm very confident that we will count and we must count every legal vote we must make sure that any vote that wasn't lawful ought not be counted that dilutes your vote if it's done improperly we've got to get that right when we get it right we'll get it right we're in good shape should foreign leaders not be calling President-elect Biden? What are you doing? he just casually said we're not going to go anywhere that's basically what he said there will be a peaceful transition into a second Trump administration are we talking 2025 assuming he's able to successfully run again because when it comes to January 21st of 2021 Trump's out so what are you talking about? and you see there's a difference between refusing to concede trying to stage a coup because if it were as simple as oh well you know Mike Pompeo he's just trying to play along with what Trump and other Republicans are doing they all know that the writing is on the wall so they're trying to pretend as if Joe Biden isn't actually the President-elect and they're trying to continue this grift but he would have said something else if that were the case we'll see that there is a peaceful transfer of power if Joe Biden wins but currently there's a legal battle to make sure that all legal votes are counted he would have said something like that but what he just said was that oh well we're trying to do a coup that's what he said now I don't know if he was being serious but he casually just stated we're not going anywhere they lost the election and they're saying no there's going to be a second Trump administration but you lost so the only way that that's going to be the case is if you cling to power forcefully have to start talking about whether or not this is a soft coup because you are using the language that you would use in the event you are actually trying to start a coup now Gina Haspel met with Mitch McConnell she's the CIA director and they had a closed door 20 minute meeting so are you guys like trying to figure out what to do if Trump doesn't concede like how you're going to move away from Donald Trump distance yourself from him or are you trying to do what you can to actually have Trump hang on to power like what exactly are we talking about here Mike Pompeo knows that it's over for Donald Trump everything that he says publicly is very different than what he's probably saying secretly so he knows that it's over but what he just said as secretary of state was that we're not going anywhere even though Joe Biden won this party does not care about democracy at all if you truly you know consider yourself a patriotic American Trump supporter and you're one of those weirdos who wears like American flag track suits how can you see what's happening and consider this American you have a president who is not only refusing to concede but now they are taking active steps to continue their own administration coming up with a fiscal budget proposal saying we're going to stay in power there's going to be a second Trump administration after he lost so I mean you can only prolong the results and delay using these lawsuits as much as you want become January 21st of 2021 Trump will no longer be president so if Mike Pompeo is seriously saying that we're not going anywhere even though we lost this election that is very serious he's basically admitting that this is a soft cue we invade other countries we overthrow regimes for doing less so is this just you know him playing into Donald Trump's temper tantrums or is he actually saying we're not going to go anywhere I mean this is very serious like it's hard to take these clowns seriously because I think it's pretty apparent that this is a grift to raise money for Donald Trump's campaign debt but still I mean regardless if they're taking this seriously or not even if Mike Pompeo is half serious there it's still extremely dangerous you're saying that you're going to remain in power even though you lost this election so we're just going to convert to a straight dictatorship what are we doing alright folks that's all that I've got for you guys this week on the program I'm done talking my brain is officially melting out of my ears and I have nothing left to say but of course before we go I want to thank all of the people who make this show possible all of our patreon, paypal and youtube members who helped the show not just to survive but thrive as well you all are just you're incredible like I tell you every single week how incredible you are and how you make the show what it is but I truly mean that you all are just you're so phenomenal and we've seen much more support this week and I don't know why that is but thank you all so much it's it's really great thank you I really appreciate it so that's it I will see you all next week take care everyone I'm Mike this has been The Humanist Report have a great week