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 Humanist Report 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 256 of the program. Today is Friday, August 28th. And before we get started, I wanna take some time as we usually do to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members, all of which signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increase the monthly pledge that they were already giving us. And that includes Bargav Patel, Edmund D. Cohen, Jason Kennedy, Jonathan, Julian Adams, Kim Bajkowski, Minari022, Paolo Sousa, Sean St. Hart, and Terrigood001. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. 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 humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So this week on the program, we have another pretty jam-packed episode. We'll of course discuss the insanity that took place at the RNC convention and I'll highlight the most unhinged moments from Trump's speech and also what else stood out to me the most. There's kind of a lot. But we'll also talk about how Donald Trump may actually be right about one thing with regard to Biden's lack of enthusiasm. Also, Donald Trump calls for Biden to be drug tested before their September debate. On the subject of Joe Biden, he is currently polling worse than Hillary Clinton at the same point in time in 2016 in key swing states that he desperately needs to win. So we will discuss the implications of this and also AOC calls on Nancy Pelosi's hypocrisy and Nancy Pelosi had basically nothing to say in response. The Daily Coast founder wants Democrats to be the party of family values and faith. Joe Kennedy trots out the old Bernie Bros smear in his race against Ed Markey in Massachusetts. And while we're on the subject of Ed Markey, we'll look at some polls in the state of Massachusetts and we'll talk about the race between him as well as Alex Morris challenging Richie Neal.  And finally, we closed the week by talking about how the government of Tennessee is attempting to penalize protesters by revoking the right to vote. Yeah, so that's what we've got on the agenda for today's program. Let's waste no time and get straight to it. I hope you all enjoy what we've got in store for you. I don't know about you guys, but I still haven't recovered from the DNC convention last week. Like I feel the residual depression that I usually feel after being demoralized, you know, watching one of these ghouls officially become the nominee and accept the nomination of their party. But like it or not, the RNC convention is now here and I don't know how to even cover this because the unhinged insanity that I'm expecting, like they're almost outperforming my expectations in the sense that, you know, I expect a couple of really funny things to talk about and cringe worthy moments to talk about per night, but we're already at day one and there's like dozens of moments that I have to address. So I just want to isolate one moment in particular, a 52 minute speech by Donald Trump. Apparently this isn't like his official acceptance with the nomination, but it's still him giving a speech for whatever reason. Like if you look up the key speakers here, out of the 12 key speakers, six of them are members of the Trump family, six of them, half of them. Like even if it were someone who I supported, like it was Bernie Sanders, like if Bernie had his wife and then his son and then his grandchild and then his uncle and then his brother talk, like that would irritate me, right? It seemed a little bit narcissistic, but I guess that Republicans are okay with this, but let's get to some moments that stood out with Donald Trump's speech. Because, I mean, to say that this was unhinged is an understatement because you always expect unhinged with Donald Trump, but he went above and beyond my expectations here. So his supporters were chanting four more years, of course, and he then corrected them and said, no, I want you to chant 12 more years because that's what triggers the libs. Take a look. Four years! If you want to really drive them crazy, you say 12 more years. We caught them doing some really bad things in 2016. Let's see what happens. We caught them doing some really bad things. We have to be very careful because they're trying it again with this whole 80 million mail-in ballots that they're working on, sending them out to people that didn't ask for them. They didn't ask, they just get them. And it's not fair and it's not right and it's not gonna be possible to tabulate, in my opinion, it's just my opinion, we have to be very, very careful and you have to watch every one of you, you have to watch because bad things happened last time with the spying on our campaign and that goes to Biden and that goes to Obama and we have to be very, very careful, have to be very, very careful and this time they're trying to do it with the whole post office scam. They'll blame it on the post office. You could see them setting it up. Be very careful and watch it very carefully because we have to win. This is the most important election in the history of our country. Such a funny joke. He keeps using this joke about him running for a third term or seeking more years in office. It's super funny. But since this is at the actual official RNC convention, then this tells us that the official Republican Party condones authoritarianism. Trump subverting the constitution in order to seek out additional years. Now I get it, I'm too much of a pearl clutching prude here to denounce this authoritarianism but imagine for a moment that Obama did this or Bernie Sanders did this if he were president, they would lose it. They would freak out and lose their mind. So the fact that Trump is just doing this and brazenly joking about this, again, as I said in my video last week, it's not that I'm worried that Trump is gonna be a dictator, it's that he is warming Republicans up to the prospect of authoritarianism. So down the line, when a more competent demagogue comes along, they're already primed to believe that maybe a dictatorship is okay if it's someone on their team. But that's not the only thing that he said in this little clip that was unhinged. He also accused Democrats, literally of trying to steal the election and his evidence is a mail-in ballots.  This is going to be one of the greatest scams and it's common sense. This has nothing to do with politics. It's common sense. Anybody, you don't have to know politics. They're gonna mail out 80 million ballots. It's impossible, they have no idea. Who's mailing them? Mostly Democrat states and Democrat governors. Well, supposing they don't mail them to Republican neighborhoods. That means they're not gonna get them.  In the meantime, you might lose the election. This is the greatest scam in the history of politics, I think, and I'm talking about beyond our nation. He is utterly shameless.  He knows what he's doing here. He is brazenly lying, making things up, fabricating claims that there are no evidence for. He says Democrats just won't mail ballots to Republican neighborhoods. Okay, citation needed because that's not the way that things work. I think it's Utah, which is a red state that has mail-in voting and Republicans are doing just fine in Utah. But he just makes things up. He doesn't even care, he just doesn't like mail-in voting and he's trying to fear monger about mail-in voting and he doesn't like that his own postmaster general was forced in a way to cave to pressure and not brazenly destroy the US Postal Service ahead of an election where we're expected to see a record number of people vote by mail. So he's back to square one where he has to fear monger and lie about mail-in voting, shameless. And this is dangerous for a president to do. As you try to rig this election by sabotaging and lying about mail-in voting, you're accusing the other team, Democrats of doing what you're doing. Now he went on to criticize Democratic governors for shutting down their states because they're not shutting down their states according to him because of the pandemic and that's the responsible thing to do to protect people. They're shutting down their state's economies to hurt Donald Trump. This is all a scheme to hurt Donald Trump, a worldwide pandemic all about Donald Trump. You have a governor who's in a total shutdown mood. I guarantee on November 4th it'll all open up. It'll be far like most other states. On November 4th, you know, these Democrat governors, they love shutdown until after the elections over because they want to make our numbers look as bad as possible for the economy, but our numbers are looking so good. And frankly, I used to say a V and people would say, well, maybe not. I don't think so. Some would say no way. We have a super V, you're right. He literally believes that the world revolves around him. Everything is about him. Because he's saying here that these Democratic governors, they shut down their economies because if they shut down their economy at the state level, then maybe they'll hurt the national economy and in turn hurt Donald Trump because he knows the incumbent president is usually blamed if the economy hurts before an election. But the problem is wouldn't that be self sabotage because if you're a Democratic governor, you may also be up for reelection in 2020. So wouldn't it hurt you if you hurt the economy of your own state?  But no, this is Donald Trump. So everything is about him, everything. Now he was really sending me some mixed messages here about the shutdown because he then promoted his decision to shut down the economy saying that doing so led to him saving millions and millions of lives in spite of the fact that we're approaching 200,000 Americans that have died. But then he goes back to complaining about shutdowns because the governor of North Carolina wouldn't allow more than 10 people at their convention when the stadium that they rented actually had a capacity of 19,000 people and he didn't appreciate the fact that the governor was too rigid here. And he said, you say 10 people but it allows for 19,000 people. So maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle. So he likes shutdowns, he doesn't like shutdowns, he thinks they're necessary but then they're unnecessary and some governors are a little bit too rigid in their stance. I mean, either way it's all about him and anything that governors do is all to hurt or help him. Republican governors are trying to help him, Democratic governors are trying to hurt him. Let's pretend that COVID-19 is something that only affects the United States. It's all about Donald Trump. That's like what he's trying to present you with here. And a lot of people like, they do kind of live in this bubble where they don't realize that there are actually other countries that exist outside of the United States in the world. Like believe it or not, other countries have single payer, Medicare for all. Other countries have done things that we want to do, that we're saying we should do that you say will lead to the apocalypse.  But I mean, Republicans are very locked up in their echo chamber. I mean, I shouldn't talk, I'm in one too but they want to think that everything is about Donald Trump and anything that Democrats do that's bad of course is because they're trying to hurt Donald Trump.  I took over a country whose military was depleted and whose cupboard on this front were bare. The cupboards were bare. We didn't have anything. We didn't have a thing. We had very, very little. The cupboards were bare, he says, about the United States military, the largest military in the world. It was depleted. Really? Is that so? Okay, well, let's look at military spending throughout the years. And we have this great graph provided to us by the brilliant Andrea Whitty of ConnectTheDotsUSA.org. And as you can see here, military spending under Obama was not down. Our military budget was not gone. Our military was not depleted. Obama increased military spending. And then when Trump got in, he ramped up spending with Democrats. They are the ones who approved of an increase in military spending. So for him to say that the military was depleted under Obama, like that's not just factually incorrect. For him to say that, that is laughably absurd. Laughably absurd. We spend more than the next, what is it, six or seven countries combined, most of which are our allies? And we depleted the military under Obama who increased the drone war after he took office? Like, what are you talking about? Who believes this? You can support Donald Trump and think that we should have a large military, but if you believe this, you're just the root, you're stupid. Who believes this? Nobody believes this. Nobody believes this. Democrats and Republicans consistently have voted to increase the military budget, even Elizabeth Warren one time, voted to increase the military budget. So what are you talking about? Like to actually believe this, you're living in an alternate reality. So he's pretending like there's a problem. And then he says, I fixed that problem that I created that I want you to believe was actually a thing. Case in point, he claims that Democrats removed under God from the pledge and that he's gonna restore under God from the pledge. I can promise you a few things. Number one, we will not be taking the word God out of the pledge of allegiance. Like they did a number of times at their caucuses, so they took the word God out. I heard it. I was listening. I said, that's strange. You know, it's sort of weird. You've heard it all your life, right? Under God, under God. They all said those two words are missing. Meanwhile, thousands of Americans are dying because they don't have healthcare. Our planet is literally becoming uninhabitable. A pandemic is ravaging our country, but Donald Trump wants you to know he's gonna protect the words under God in the pledge. I don't care. I mean, this is not a serious person. This is not a serious president. This is a clown. This is a clown. And a constant theme with regard to his speech here that you're gonna see is that he just makes things up. Now, this is an uncommon for Donald Trump, but he basically claimed Republicans are going to protect patients with pre-existing conditions. He said this, but then when we come back, I'll tell you why he's lying if you don't already know. So we protected your pre-existing conditions, very strongly protected pre-existing. And you don't hear that, but we very strongly protected your pre-existing conditions. So we got rid of the horrible individual mandate, which cost everybody a fortune, and we strongly protected. Every Republican is sworn to protecting your pre-existing conditions. It's very important. You won't hear that. You won't hear that from the fake news. The reason why you're not hearing about this from the fake news is because it's not true. His Justice Department filed a lawsuit to prove that the ACA is unconstitutional, which means that if they can prove in a court of law that Obamacare is unconstitutional, that means the law would be dead. And with the death of Obamacare comes the demise of protections for patients with pre-existing conditions. But while his own administration is trying to undermine the ACA and kill it entirely, he's saying, no, we wanna protect people with pre-existing conditions and all Republicans wanna do that as well. I mean, I don't even know why he prepares. Like, you could just make things up. Like, if you're already making up this much bullshit, why not like go a step further and say, I am going to give everyone healthcare in this country. I'm gonna make sure that people in this country will be able to take a pill that gives them superpowers. They can have superhuman strength or flight. Like if you're lying this much, like what's stopping you from just taking it to the next level?  Like you can just see you're lying because what you're saying is laughably absurd.  Like go full vermin supreme at this point. You have nothing to lose because you're already at that territory. Like you're approaching straight up delusional territory with the amount of lies that you're spewing. And I mean, you can already argue that Trump is delusional. So I just, I don't understand. Like just take it a step further already. You're already lying. Like words don't mean anything. So just lie. Like straight up say, you know, everyone in this country gets a million dollars if I'm reelected. Like why not? What is stopping you in actuality? Nothing he says anymore is founded in reality. He's living in his own alternate reality where Joe Biden is supposedly controlled by the far left and he handled COVID-19 like a grownup and he keeps reminding you about the phenomenal job that he did as thousands and thousands of Americans die. Like he's just living in his own alternate reality and his only hope is that you believe him and live in that alternate reality with him. But at some point, you know, that bubble is gonna burst and people are gonna realize that having a reality television show star as president isn't going to benefit them. It's just a matter of when do they realize that it's hurting them and not helping them. Will it be after the selection or before it? Let's all hope it's before it. But I mean, either way, like I'm ready to end this television show already, this reality show that we're all living in. I'm done with it. I'm sick of it. Donald Trump is insufferable and just listening to him speak is, it's so annoying. Like I'm sick of it.  I'm sick of everything.  Like I'm so done with Donald Trump. I straight up have full on Trump derangement syndrome at this point and I'm willing to admit that. Like he is grating on my nerves. I can't take it anymore. So yeah, this is day one. We've got four more days to go, five more days possibly. I don't know.   So I'm just gonna start this video by saying that I, Mike Figueredo of the Humanist Report and suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. Yes, I do in fact believe that orange man is bad and I can't stand him. Like listening to his voice is like nails on a chalkboard for me. However, having said that, we have to admit inconvenient facts.  So what I mean by that is Trump knows what it's going to take for him to defeat Joe Biden. He knows that he just has to make sure that the Democratic base doesn't turn out. It's demoralized and if enough Democratic Party voters stay home, Trump gets a second term. Joe Biden, however, he doesn't necessarily know what it's going to take to make him electorally successful, right? He knows, unlike Hillary Clinton that you do need to play for really key swing states. You do actually need to make an effort to appeal to people in the rust belt. But what he's missing like Hillary Clinton is that he thinks that he can win by just convincing enough moderate Republicans to support him. Now I don't necessarily know if this is the strategy that his team is actually executing but just watching the DNC convention, it really seemed as if like they brushed aside the left and they were embracing moderate Republicans like John Kasich and Colin Powell. I guess he's a moderate Republican even though he should be in jail right now for war crimes. But what they're trying to do is go after those suburban voters. I mean, I think that Chuck Schumer laid out this strategy clearly back in 2016. He said, for every leftist that we lose we'll make it up by getting an extra suburban voter or something like that. Like I'm paraphrasing, but he doesn't understand that his key to success is to energize the base. And he may be a very unlikeable figure not as much as Hillary Clinton admittedly but he's got to do that with policy. Just pick any policy, one policy. It's got to be a bold policy and campaign on that non-stop and you can accomplish what you need to. You can get the base excited to come out and vote for you. Now it may be the case that there's enough anti-Trump voters that they just come out regardless and turn out as high because they want to vote against Donald Trump. But still the fact that Donald Trump knows the correct strategy and I'm not sure that Joe Biden knows the right strategy to win, it's worrying to me. So at the RNC speech that Trump gave on night one he actually explained how he knows that he has more enthusiasm among his base than Joe Biden has among his base. And he admits that Bernie Sanders had more enthusiasm and probably would have been a more formidable opponent. So take a look at what he says here because I think that Democrats should take this seriously. It's not wrong just because Trump is saying it. I mean, I get that Trump lies every two seconds but what are you saying here? There's some truth to it. Bernie Sanders got taken advantage of, is that okay? By Hillary Clinton, but worse by the Democrats this time because the Pocahontas, Elizabeth Warren got out of the campaign one day prior to the Super Tuesday vote. Bernie Sanders would have won every single state because Biden won by a little bit and she didn't do well but she took thousands and thousands of votes away in each state. If you add just a percentage of those votes back that means that Bernie would have won easily the nomination and I'm glad he didn't because he had much more enthusiasm and he would have had a base, a much smaller base than ours but equally, I have to say this, equally as enthusiastic. This base doesn't like Joe Biden. They don't like Joe Biden. I think we're gonna get a lot of votes. We did last time, people were surprised. Primarily because of trade because I know how other countries take advantage of us and I understand that and that's something that Bernie Sanders people really feel because I understand trade.   It's that Democrats only win when turnout is high. Now he says, Trump claims that Bernie lost because Elizabeth Warren was the key factor here, right? She stayed in the race, which led to progressive splitting votes. Obama got everyone else to drop out and that ultimately is what facilitated the demise of Bernie 2020. I don't necessarily blame Elizabeth Warren or Obama for Bernie's loss. I think that it wasn't too late after Super Tuesday. I think Bernie could have turned it around. So I mostly chalk up Bernie's loss to not being able to adapt to changing circumstances, which is what you have to do. But I do blame Obama to an extent and Elizabeth Warren to a lesser extent, but the establishment coming out against Bernie Sanders is something that he should have anticipated. So I don't necessarily blame Elizabeth Warren so much. But what Trump is doing is he's trying to play the left in a sense and get them angry at corporate Democrats again and weaponize that anger to get them to not turn out for Joe Biden. That's what he's trying to do. It's transparent and we shouldn't fall for that. Like if you're in a swing state, you should vote for Joe Biden, obviously so we can defeat Donald Trump because I don't think another four years of Trump is going to be good for the left. Having said that though, the fact that Trump knows all he has to do is demoralize the Democratic Party base, that's dangerous because it's a lot more easier to demoralize a base than it is to get them excited, especially when you're not working with much anyway. Ask yourself, what is Joe Biden running on? What is he running on? I think that we know he will handle this pandemic like a grownup, right? Whereas Trump will probably leave us dealing with it until there's a vaccine. So who knows how long it's gonna last if Trump is reelected. So I think at a minimum, Joe Biden is going to handle this like an adult. He may handle the economic crisis better than Donald Trump, give less corporate bailouts. But I mean, when you look at Joe Biden's campaign, he's not really running on any key policy. I mean, all the excitement in the 2020 Democratic Party primary was around candidates that had something that they put front and center. Like Bernie, it was Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Andrew Yang, it was UBI, Elizabeth Warren. It was her wealth tax with Tulsi Gabbard. It was ending wars with Mary Ann Williams and it was reparations. Like every candidate who had like these little mini cold followings, it was because they had one policy front and center. All Joe Biden has to do to excite the base is put up something. I don't know what it is. Like it's gonna have to be bold, right? Marijuana legalization, Medicare for All. Like he can literally even lie to us. But if you don't have some policy going forward and you're just running on not being Trump, I mean, this was a provable failure of a strategy. Hillary proved that. So why are you doing this again? If Hillary couldn't do it, what makes you think you're gonna be able to do it? Like I get the circumstances are different, but you have to adapt. Like you have to offer voters something. And that's why there isn't very much enthusiasm for Joe Biden. And I don't think Democrats realize how big of an issue that is. Like they are just banking on people being anti-Trump enough to turn out and vote. But usually voters don't vote against someone. They vote for someone and for something. Now Trump also says here, had Warren dropped out, Bernie would have won the nomination and quote, I'm glad he didn't, because he had much more enthusiasm and this base doesn't like Joe Biden. And that's the thing, if you ask someone who is voting for Joe Biden, why they're voting for Joe Biden, their answer nine times out of 10, I'm assuming, is he's not Donald Trump. Okay, I worry that we're not learning the lessons that 2016 taught us. You have to offer voters something, anything. Because simply not being Donald Trump is not good enough. It's just not good enough.  Well, yeah, I wonder that now, because as journalist Walker Bragman points out, at this point in the race in 2016, Hillary was actually outperforming Joe Biden in all of these states with the exception of Florida, but in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, I mean, he's doing worse than Hillary Clinton. And this is not a good sign. And we have to assume that Donald Trump will get a post convention bump. So I bring all of this up like I'm talking about this because I don't think that Democrats are taking this seriously enough. Like it's clear Joe Biden thinks the left is gonna turn out. Like the base is excited to vote for him.  I don't think it is that easy. Like I don't think it's that simple. And I think that they're making the same mistake again, they're walking into a disaster, not even realizing it, being cocky once again. And that's terrifying. But the good news is that it's not too late to turn it around. Like November is a couple of months away. So they can actually still fight to turn out the base, make an active effort to encourage people to vote by exciting them with something. Like Joe Biden's climate change policy, it's not as bad as it was in the primary. He adopted a lot of elements from Bernie's platform. Like of course it's not as good as Bernie or even Elizabeth Warren, but it is better than it was. He should be putting that front and center so every single young person knows his climate change policy is good. It's an improvement over during the primary, but he's not doing that. And that's really worrying to me. I mean, at the DNC convention, there was this underlying implication that the responsibility wasn't necessarily on Joe Biden to get out of the vote, but it was on voters to get out the vote. Like non-voters, you know, they're bad people.  Now is not the time. The selection is too serious. But I mean, if Joe Biden continues to run on nothing, you can't blame people for that. You have to blame Joe Biden. He's the one where he's running this campaign and it's on you to defeat Donald Trump. You're the only individual who stands between Donald Trump and another four years in this White House.  So do something. You have time, turn it around.  Come out swinging in favor of weed legalization. Hell, he doesn't even have to theoretically like introduce some new policy change. He is running on restoring net neutrality. At least that's what he pointed to. Like he would, you know, appoint an FCC chair who supports net neutrality, who would undo the damage that a GPI caused. Just doing that would actually win you over a lot of new votes, but you can't just run on nothing. Like you can't put nothing into the ether and expect to be rewarded for it. You have to run on something, anything, and he's not. He's not doing that. Attacking Donald Trump can only get you so far. Now, maybe it is going to be the case that he beats Donald Trump. Like this election is already a weird election. Like the circumstances in this country are unprecedented. So maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, right? But what I can guarantee is that his chances going up against Donald Trump would be better if he actually had a policy that would get young people and non-voters excited enough to come out to vote. At least try, do something, run on to fund the police, anything to excite people. But if you don't and you lose, then that's on you. That's not on the voters, the non-voters of the third party voters. That's on you for not doing enough to earn their votes and win them over. So back in 2019, it seemed like Donald Trump was going to cruise to reelection. Even if Bernie were the nominee, I don't think it would have been a foregone conclusion that Bernie Sanders would have defeated Donald Trump. I do think Bernie would have been the strongest candidate against Donald Trump, but the media would have gone along with this narrative that the economy is doing great, even if the working class is being left out. And ultimately, I think that he would brag and a Democrat wouldn't be able to respond to that. And they'd get caught in that same trap that Hillary Clinton was stuck in in 2016 where they had to respond to every single criticism and he would just win. However, having said that COVID-19 and the subsequent economic crash has changed the trajectory of the selection, it put Donald Trump's reelection campaign in danger. He now could lose because of the changes that we all saw took place this year. So I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to logically deduce that it's probably gonna be Biden who pulls off this victory because whenever there's an economic crash or disaster, it's usually the incumbent president who gets blamed. And 538 has already projected that Biden is currently the favorite to win as he defeated Donald Trump 73 out of 100 times in their simulation. Now, if you are curious how Hillary Clinton fared, well, according to 538's projection in 2016, they also projected her to be the winner, saying she had about a 71% chance of beating Donald Trump. And we all know how that turned out. Now, currently at this point in time, Joe Biden is outperforming Hillary Clinton in one really important area, national polling averages. He's currently two points ahead of her nationally at this same point in time in the 2016 election. So she had a 5.4% lead over Donald Trump in August 24th, 2016, but Biden has a 7.6% lead over Donald Trump which is important because you wanna make sure that you have a really large cushion so that way if there's any sort of October surprise or whatever, if you will, you can absorb that blow and still be relatively comfortable going up against him on election day. Now, that is just the national lead and that gives us an indication that Joe Biden is probably the favorite to win the popular vote. But what we really care about is the electoral vote because we wanna make sure that Joe Biden reaches that magical number of 270 because that is the only way you're going to be able to unseat Donald Trump. So you can win the popular vote as Hillary did and still lose the election ultimately. So in crucial swing states that Hillary Clinton lost, well, how is Biden doing in comparison with Hillary Clinton at the same point in time in 2016? Unfortunately, he's doing way worse than Hillary Clinton in some instances in most states. So in Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton had an 11.5% lead as of August 24th, 2016, but Joe Biden has a 6.5% lead. Now, let me remind you that Hillary Clinton ended up losing Wisconsin by a single percentage point. In Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton had a 9.2% lead while Joe Biden now has a 5.7% lead. Hillary Clinton went on to lose that state by 1.2%. In North Carolina, Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump by 1.7%, while Biden now leads him by 0.6%. Hillary Clinton went on to lose that state as well by 3.8 percentage points. In Florida, Hillary Clinton had a 3.6% lead, but in this state, Biden is actually doing better than Hillary Clinton with a 5% lead, but let me remind you that Hillary Clinton ended up losing Florida by 1.3%, so hopefully Joe can actually pull out a win here since he does have a larger cushion. In the state of Michigan, Hillary had an 8.0 lead. Biden now has a 6.7 point lead. Hillary ended up losing the state by 0.3%. In Ohio, Clinton nearly had a 5.0 lead. Biden only has a 2.3% lead. Trump won this state by almost nine points. Now, in case you forgot, this is what the electoral map looked like in 2016. Trump got 306 electoral votes to Hillary's 232. I mean, if Biden's gonna win, he has to win back the states that Hillary Clinton narrowly lost. Otherwise, this map is gonna look the same in 2020. Now, since Hillary Clinton only lost these states narrowly, I think that there is an area for opportunity here for Joe Biden. And I don't wanna get you too stressed out because a lot can change between now and November 3rd, but seeing these numbers, like it gives me a sick feeling to my stomach because it looks like we are gonna see a repeat of 2016 if nothing changes. And when I see the strategy coming out of the DNC and from Joe Biden, like they're doing what Hillary Clinton did, they're trying to win over moderate Republican voters when that is a very fringe element of the electorate. They're not swing voters. You should be trying to win over independence, namely left-leaning independence.  That's how Obama won, right? He had the Obama coalition and that contained lots and lots of young voters, non-voters, first-time voters. I mean, that is what you have to do to win.  So I don't know what to say about this. I think that, you know, it's reasonable to expect Donald Trump to lose after everything that we've seen, but this is 2020. 2020 has prepared all of us to accept that we are in the worst timeline and the stupidest possible conclusion will most likely be the one that comes to fruition. So if it's a possibility that Trump can still win, he might win. And at this point, I don't know who's the favorite. Like, I think that it's impossible to predict who's going to win because the selection is so volatile. I think that we're going to see a dip in the polls for Joe Biden after the RNC convention. But I mean, we have no idea. Like the debates could be a game changer. They might not change anything and maybe just, you know, Joe Biden gradually declines. Maybe Joe Biden shoots back up again, you know, expands his lead over Donald Trump. Who knows? But all I know is that you have to do something more when you see these troubling signs, when you see these red flags, when you see the iceberg ahead. Now is the time to steer the ship in a different direction. Now is the time to make sure that you change it up so you win. And maybe this just means that Joe Biden has to hide away, you know, stay in his basement more. Maybe he's talking too much, doing too many gaffes and that's a problem. Maybe it means he should try to excite the base with the policy. I mean, there's a lot of things he can do better that he's not doing currently.  If Joe Biden is underperforming Hillary Clinton in 2016 who lost, that's a really bad sign. So we have time to change it now. So let's change it. Let's take these signs seriously, not bury our heads in the sand and pretend like everything is copacetic and Joe Biden's gonna win.  It led to Hillary getting defeated. Don't let that happen again, especially when we know what we need to do to make this election go in Joe Biden's favor. I think we all know you've gotta introduce some sort of policy. But if you don't change it up then using the same strategy again, it could work for you because this election is so different because of COVID-19 and the economic situation that we're currently in, but it might not. And I don't wanna risk it. I don't know about you, but I think we should do more, right? So if Democrats see this, they need to take this more seriously because this is a really bad sign. Again, it may not spell complete disaster. Maybe it's not over and Joe Biden will win comfortably. We don't know that. But because we're operating with uncertainty, we should take it very seriously. Understand that this election could still go in Trump's favor. I'm not sure about you guys, but I am old enough to remember the time when the DCCC told us that primary campaigns are bad. We shouldn't primary incumbent Democrats because they're just better politicians. They have more experience than at a time when we are going up against a ruthless Republican party, we want the people who are most capable of getting the job done. So primaries are bad, right? Not so much because according to the Boston Globe, Nancy Pelosi has decided to endorse the primary challenger of an incumbent Democrat. She endorsed Joe Kennedy over Ed Marquis in the Senate challenge taking place in Massachusetts. So in other words, primary campaigns are good for me, but not the. It's not okay if a progressive wants the primary, a corporate Democrat, but if a corporate Democrat wants the primary, a progressive incumbent, that's okay. I can support it. So you're telling me that it is actually about ideology? Interesting. Who would have thought that that was the case? Now of course, since this is a double standard AOC who actually rose to prominence by ousting an incumbent Democrat tweeted about this, pointing out this double standard saying, no one gets to complain about primary challenges again. So the DCCC, when can we expect you to reverse your blacklist policy against primary organizations? Because between this and lack of care around Ilhan Omar's challenger, it seems like less a policy and more a cherry picking activity. She then added, Ilhan's multi-million dollar challenge was bankrolled by DC lobbyists and dark money groups. He blatantly admitted to using shell corporations to get around the DCCC blacklist, which all but means his vendors work with the Democratic Party, yet the DCCC hasn't enforced policy. I wonder why. Now obviously, you know her comment there is rhetorical. We know exactly why, you know, primary campaigns are okay if you're trying to get out a progressive. It's about ideology. More specifically, it's about corporate influence. If somebody is going to get in and take lots of money from large multinational corporations and in turn raise money for the party, of course, that's what they're going to want because the DCCC is the electoral arm of house Democrats. So if they see someone who could be a potential cash cow, that's who they're gonna choose to support. It's not about ideology overall, even though, you know, conveniently the ideology of corporate Democrats aligns with the aggregate party.  That's what this is all about. Now I am irritated because that DCCC story that AOC referenced there, I was really proud of Democrats at first for standing up to Sherry Bustos, who's the head of the DCCC, but they already backed away as early as January of this year. They collectively agreed to withhold dues from the DCCC because of this policy and until this policy was overturned, they were not going to pay the DCCC, but a lot of them have already backtracked. Ro Khanna, Mark Pokan, Pamela Jaipal all reversed and they are now going to be giving their money to the DCCC in spite of what they previously said. The only exception is AOC.  Now the reason why progressives caved on this is because they didn't want it to seem like the Democratic Party was divided going into the 2020 election, except the Democratic Party is divided. Holding hands and singing kumbaya isn't going to heal the wounds. It's not gonna close the divide. There is a battle going on in the party for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.  So I mean, progressives in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, they were really adamant about not paying their dues to the DCCC so long as this policy was in place, but they caved and what did they get for caving? Nothing because this policy is still in place. So it's frustrating and I really wish that the left would get more savvy and learn how to play politics, be a little bit more ruthless, right? But unfortunately, that's not the case. So I have to commend AOC here for standing strong. I just wish that she wouldn't have called Pelosi Mama Bear because that kind of admits that you have this sort of admiration for Nancy Pelosi when this is a corporate Democrat who doesn't deserve our respect or admiration because she hasn't earned it. She is an obstacle to progress. So we shouldn't look at her as some sort of leader because she is the speaker of the house. I don't care who you are. If you are doing things to hurt people or not furthering policies that we need like Medicare for All, you are our enemy and I don't respect you.    Progressives are now accusing you of hypocrisy. They say the Democratic leadership has opposed primary challenges to house incumbents but now you're backing a primary challenge to a Senate incumbent. AOC tweeted, quote, no one gets to complain about primary challenges again. How do you respond to the charges as a double standard? Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify that because that isn't the fact. People can support whoever they want and our members do. But I support my members and I have consistently, proudly, supported my members in their re-elections and that's been consistent against any other people who are running against them. They can run against them and members can support them but I support my members and I am so proud of Joe Kennedy. Thank you for asking me about it. He really was instrumental in helping us win the House in 2018 which has made a significant difference in how we point out what the administration is doing. So he's been a valet member. He's brilliant, he's gentle, he's kind, he gives credit to other people. He has courage. He has courage and I'm so proud to support him so I thank you for asking me about that. So it isn't about members can support whoever they want and I support my members when they run for re-election and when they run for other office. Nancy Pelosi is insufferable. I mean, she clearly was tap dancing around the issue because she didn't have a good answer, shameful. She also said something that stood out to me. She said that Joe Kennedy helped Democrats win the House. How? Because you're saying that as one of the reasons why you're endorsing him over Ed Marquis. How did he help Democrats win the House? Be specific, what did he do? I mean, I'm assuming he raised a lot of money. So in her mind, that's what helps other Democrats but like what did he do? Did he campaign for Democrats? What did he do? He doesn't have much national name recognition so what did he do specifically to help Democrats take back the House? She has nothing. That's why she's saying this. Now she says people can support whoever they want.  Except the problem is that the official party disincentivizes that type of behavior. They don't just disincentivize endorsements, they disincentivize primary challenges altogether because if you're working with a campaign that the DCCC blacklists, then it's gonna be really difficult for you to get a job in politics. If that's all you do, if you run campaigns or work on campaigns. I mean, if the electoral arm of House Democrats blacklists a firm that is working with a campaign, that is a serious thing. Like she's making it seem like, oh well you can just endorse a primary challenger if you want to but it's not that simple. Like we're talking about institutional mechanisms that discourage this type of endorsement.   So because Joe Kennedy in theory was a member of House Democrats, I'm supporting his endeavors into the Senate. Now you can make the case that sure she is consistent here because she just endorsed Rashida Tlaib. She just endorsed Ilhan Omar. So I mean, look, she supports even people who she doesn't like. Having said that though, ask yourself this, why did she take so long to endorse Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar? Is that standard practice to like endorse the incumbent a few days before their primary election? I don't know. I mean, maybe she's right here. Maybe she does just endorse all incumbent Democrats because she even endorsed Dan Lipinski against Marie Newman back in 2018. Maybe she just automatically endorses all of the incumbents. Sure, maybe that's the case. But let's be real here. In the event poll showed that, you know, Ilhan Omar's primary challenger was poised to defeat her. Do you think she'd make an endorsement? Maybe at a minimum, I think she would at least sit out that race because she doesn't like Ilhan Omar. Because again, this is about them raising money for House Democrats. This is about ideology and being able to fulfill the promises that you made to corporate donors. So look, at the end of the day, I don't really care about what Nancy Pelosi says or does because I have no respect for her because I think she's a fraud and a clown. But if you're going to endorse the primary campaigns of insurgent candidates, then you have to at least stop disincentivizing these campaigns in the first place, right? If it's not okay for us, it shouldn't be okay for you. So tell the DCCC as Speaker of the House to undo this policy, but she won't do that because Nancy Pelosi is a self-interested politician who just wants people to get elected who's going to help her raise money for the party. The Democratic Party primary in Massachusetts is coming up very soon. And there's a lot of racists to watch in this state, but one of them that I am watching very closely is the primary race for the U.S. Senate between incumbent Ed Marquis and Joe Kennedy III. Now, usually I support the insurgent candidates over the incumbent Democrats, but in this instance, I actually am backing Ed Marquis because he is the more progressive candidate. He supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, pot legalization, criminal justice reform, and Joe Kennedy, even though now he's claiming to support all of these wonderful policies, he is a Johnny Come Lately to all of these policies. And Ed Marquis has been hitting him nonstop throughout the course of the primary for only supporting them recently since he's choosing to primary Ed Marquis. So usually I support the insurgent candidates, not in this instance. I'm backing the incumbent in this instance. Now, having said that, I'm not like the biggest fan of Ed Marquis in the world, and I think that leftists need to pump the brakes on praising Ed Marquis, because he may be like better than Joe Kennedy, but he's not, let's not fool ourselves. He's not like a wonderful progressive candidate. He's no Bernie Sanders. He's not even a Jeff Merkley, because my question is, okay, you support Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, that's phenomenal. But why didn't you endorse the one candidate who wanted to bring this vision to a national stage, Bernie Sanders? I mean, Ed Marquis did not endorse during the 2020 Democratic Party primary. He sat this one out. Now you can defend him and say, well look, he had Elizabeth Warren from his own state run against Bernie, so maybe he didn't want to ruffle any feathers.  And I think that honestly, a true leftist should know the difference between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But look, I'll give him a pass because someone from his state was running for president. Even Iana Presley endorsed Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders because she's from the state of Massachusetts. And I don't necessarily dislike Iana Presley. I think she's one of the better members of the House of Representatives, even if I disagree with her on some issues. But then my question is, okay, well, if you didn't support Bernie in 2020, why didn't you support him in 2015? Now you'll ask Mike, but didn't he support him in 2015? No, he actually endorsed Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, right when Bernie Sanders was starting to pick up steam. He endorsed Hillary Clinton over Bernie in August, or excuse me, in October of 2015. Yeah. So look, Edmar Key, I think that he is, he's kind of stretching it a little bit and rewriting history to an extent when he boasts about his progressive bona fides. Having said that, I do think that between him and Joe Kennedy, Joe Kennedy is far worse. He is a corporate Democrat who doesn't even support the legalization of pot as far as I know, unless he flipped on that as well. But most of the Democratic Party establishment, they seem to have backed Joe Kennedy over Edmar Key and that's frustrating because they told us that primary challenges are bad, but here they are backing someone who's primarying a Democrat. And I'm also frustrated because you have some prominent progressives who are in charge of the Congressional Progressive Caucus like Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pokan endorsing Joe Kennedy over Edmar Key. You have Pramila Jayapal doing Medicare for all town halls with Joe Kennedy. And that is fine. Like I think that as many Medicare for all town halls as you can do, you should do them, but let's also not kid ourselves and acknowledge when someone is trying to dupe us. Acknowledge when someone is just supporting a policy because they want to win an election. Like we have to be more savvy as progressives. You had Mark Pokan blocking people on Twitter who expressed disappointment over his endorsement of Joe Kennedy over Edmar Key. So look, truly there's not very many heroes in this story, but I am rooting for Edmar Key over Joe Kennedy. Now what irritates me and makes me like Edmar Key even more is the type of campaign that Joe Kennedy and his team are running. I mean, there's no policies except for his fake supportive Medicare for all. There's platitudes, you know, it's nonsense. Like Joe Kennedy is basically the heterosexual version of Pete Buttigieg, but maybe less substantive than Pete Buttigieg if you could believe it. But he is now using something out of the 2020 playbook which I kind of expected. Joe Kennedy's team is basically accusing people who support Edmar Key of harassing him and his supporters online and bullying people. Sound familiar? Well, it should because they are trying out the exact attack that we all knew as the Bernie Bro attack. So Politico reporter Stephanie Murray explains, Joe Kennedy's campaign manager, Nick Clements sent a letter to Edmar Key campaign manager, John Walsh requesting a personal and public statement from Mark Key instructing his followers to immediately end the attacks on Joe's supporters and the threats to Joe and his family's life. She added the email included pages of screenshots of tweets. Last sentence reads, please note members of the media have been copied on this letter to encourage accountability. Now we're gonna read the letter. It's relatively long, so bear with me, but this is going to be the most inseparable thing you've ever heard. Like this is what we basically saw when Elizabeth Warren was attacking Bernie Sanders supporters, like it's this elevation of, well, there's just one random comment that said this one thing, so that's going to be conflated to your entire campaign acting the same way. It's a culture of this toxic behavior. Like this is the same shit we saw from the 2020 Democratic Party primary and it's giving me flashbacks and it may be even less substantive than the Bernie Bro attack because really all they point to are not even a dozen examples of people being mean to Joe Kennedy and his family online. So the letter reads the following, Dear John, in recent weeks, the tone and tenor of the Marquis for Senate campaign and people associated with it have reached dangerous levels. Despite repeated public requests for Senator Marquis and his campaign to disavow and condemn the vitriol if his supporters, particularly online, your campaign has responded with silence, ridicule and thinly veiled efforts to actually incite further attacks on Joe Kennedy, his family, his staff, and his supporters. This tacit endorsement of such negativity has given your supporters license to not only target student fellows, destroy campaign materials and vandalize campaign property, but to launch death threats against Joe himself and revisit the assassinations of his grandfather and great uncle. We understand it is not anyone paid by the Marquis campaign making these threats, but it is the direct result of the toxic online ecosystem your campaign has allowed at best and encouraged at worst. It has now reached the point where our campaign has to report death threats to Capitol Police on a near daily basis. The negativity of the quote Marquis verse that is cringe-worthy as hell is not random one-off or half-azard. It is a pattern of behavior, sound familiar? One that has grown more vitriolic and unwieldy by the day. It began before Joe entered this race when one of the Senator's top political advisors launched a personal attack on Joe's family online and despite initial condemnation, the campaign chose to reward him afterwards. It continues with direct interventions from top Marquis campaign aides sharing offensive content and disparaging Kennedy volunteers doing nothing but supporting their chosen candidate. The death threats and assassination references are beyond the pale, but it is petty and personal attacks on our supporters that we find the most disheartening. Reasonable minds can disagree about who to support in this race between two progressive candidates who undoubtedly share deep political values, but no matter what side you fall on, we should be able to agree that those who volunteer their time, talent, energy and passion to help drive the democratic process should be commended and celebrated, not disparaged, ridiculed or attacked. In the age of Donald Trump, sound familiar? And the existential threat he poses to our democracy, honesty and authentic political participation is more sacred than ever. When this came up in our last debate, the Senator claimed no knowledge of it. For all of your reference, I have included a sample of what Joe and our team have faced online for months. First, the death threats and allusions to murdered family members. And then they show a screenshot of a tweet where Alex Thompson shows off a button from the Kennedy campaign, saying he's going full Kennedy in the final month with these vintage buttons. And they then point out a comment where somebody responds saying he went full Kennedy, rip thoughts and prayers his young widow. That is ruthless, but it's hilarious.  There's another tweet of President Kennedy getting shot. Somebody then tagged Lee Harvey Oswald saying, we could really use you right about now. Another person says, I think we should help him out if he wants to go full Kennedy. Heading to the dealer Plaza right now. In reference to an ad released by Ed Marquis, someone said, Ed Marquis murdered the entire Kennedy dynasty with just one line of this ad pun intended, your move, Lee Harvey Oswald. Another person said, might as well call Ed Marquis, Lee Harvey Oswald, because he just killed a Kennedy. Damn. The letter then continues, second the nasty, of course, and personal attacks on Joe and our team, done by supporters often directly connected to your campaign, your fellows, volunteers and organizers.  They then show off a tweet of someone criticizing his staff, saying how can you be a Kennedy and still manage to make some of the worst staff hires of any campaign in this cycle?  I second that.  Finally, they conclude by saying, you and I are both campaign veterans. We know that supporters get passionate. We know that in the heat of an election, things get sharp, but we also know that at the end of the day, the buck stops with the candidate and his or her campaign. We both have the opportunity and the responsibility to set the tone for our supporters to follow. Unfortunately, your campaign is chosen to do the opposite. I am hoping cooler heads prevail here and we can agree that this has gone too far. As you celebrate and promote your social media following and Ed Marquis for Senate campaign materials, you must acknowledge the influence you can have on those who follow you. We are requesting a personal and public statement from Senator Marquis himself instructing his followers to immediately end the attacks on Joe's supporters, the threats that Joe and his family's life and the destruction of Kennedy from Massachusetts campaign materials and property. Please note members of the media have been copied on this letter to encourage accountability. Sincerely, Nick Clemens. Now the fact that they see-see the media in this message, it tells you everything that you need to know about this.  It's a manufactured outrage campaign, sharing some people joking about him getting assassinated. That is not tantamount to Ed Marquis promoting this. It's not tantamount to a death threat. It's just memes in poor taste, right? But you're going to find this about any campaign, right? You could point out weirdos or randos and say, look at what your supporters are doing. But that doesn't mean that the candidate is responsible for that. Like this is the same exact thing we saw with the Bernie Bromit. They were pointing to snake emojis that Bernie Sanders supporters were sending to Elizabeth Warren as evidence of quote unquote, harassment and Elizabeth Warren even admitted that the snake emojis in part were the reason why she refused to endorse Bernie Sanders.  I mean, give it up, give it up. But my favorite part about this story, my favorite part about all of this fellow outrage is the response to one of these criticisms, or excuse me, one of the harassment that we've seen by Joe Kennedy's wife. So in response to the particular comment where someone said, he went full Kennedy, rip thoughts and prayers to his young widow, she actually responded to that, and her comment honestly made me laugh. This young widow would be me. And this is what Ed Markey's campaign condones.   Listen, I already said, like I am not like Rah Rah, I'll gung ho, you know, for Ed Markey. Like I don't really care. Like I think that Joe Kennedy deserves to lose because he's a shitty candidate, but that doesn't mean that like I'm super pro Ed Markey.  You have no policies. All you do is you talk about how mean the other side is to you. And when you're done with the primaries, then you point to how mean the Republicans. How about rather than pointing out how mean everyone is to you, rather than pretending to be the victim when you actually have power and wealth? Why don't you offer to do something for the people who you want to represent? Actually promote policies that you support. Now to Joe Kennedy's credit, he actually has been making a bit of a pivot to the left in supporting Medicare for all. But the difference here is that Ed Markey is saying, you're only supporting these because you're primarying me. And I supported these before you. Now again, you can argue the extent to which Ed Markey actually supports these policies, but he supports them a hell of a lot more than Joe Kennedy does. And being the sponsor of the Green New Deal, at least Ed Markey is more serious about climate change than someone like Joe Kennedy. But I mean, this is all that Democrats have. When they are running primary campaigns, they cannot beat the leftists on policy. So they have to basically cry and say, you're mean to me. My feelings are hurt. Like you are basically that meme, like the snowflake SJW meme that right-wingers use. Like you're making that a self-fulfilling prophecy.   That's why Elizabeth Warren was criticizing Bernie Bros, right? Now, what I do appreciate is that Ed Markey's campaign manager actually publicly responded to this. And he was kind of defiant. Like he didn't back down and take the bait. Although he did a little bit, but not as bad as Bernie Sanders did with regard to the whole Bernie bro kerfuffle and smear. So we responded online saying, Nick, thanks for the email. Since you sent it with reporters BCC'd, I guess I'll just respond here for the accountability you're looking for, of course. I'm disappointed that as someone I have known for years, you are choosing to end this campaign with crocodile tears.  The Markey campaign has put up with nonstop Kennedy campaign supported harassment, including a pickup truck spewing negative attacks literally every day at our campaign events attended by families and young people. We don't whine or complain about your ridiculous campaign supported stunts because we are focused on our campaign's positive message and supporters. If reporters would like photographic proof of Kennedy campaign attacks and harassment, they can get in touch with me. Instead of more disingenuous political stunts, the Kennedy campaign should join ours in closing out the race, discussing solutions to the real injustices people face. Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, racial and economic justice, as Senator Markey has done since day one. And oh yeah, almost forgot. He then tagged the campaign manager for Joe Kennedy. So I think that's a pretty good response. I mean, he made fun of them for their crocodile tears.  And I think that that's what you have to do. Like he did say, of course we condemn these violent attacks, but rather than saying that, you're kind of like tacitly admitting guilt. Just say, why don't you condemn the violent attacks that your supporters have been lobbing against us first and then we'll follow your lead, be a leader in this instance. Like do something like that because what they want you to do is admit guilt when you have to deny that narrative, like reject the narrative altogether because it is just that. It's a narrative, it's fake, it's bogus. Like you're always going to find someone online who is critical of you.  That doesn't mean that this is harassment or anything like people online are vocal and you're going to always find someone who's a critic. If you're a public figure, you know this. So stop trying to weaponize it for purposes of political expediency.  You know, as this person said, they have no substance. Now I do have to criticize this person who is the campaign manager of Edmar Key for boasting about the fact that he's a fan of Bane Capital's Deval Patrick in his Twitter profile. How could you support a progressive like Edmar Key and be a fan of Deval Patrick in the same breath? Like, Democrats are just very weird. This is what happens when you have a big 10 party, right? But look, this story is laughable. Like the fact that Joe Kennedy's campaign actually published this and thought that they would get support from people or sympathy, like it's embarrassing. Like you should feel ashamed of yourself. Like this campaign manager for Joe Kennedy shouldn't be able to get a job in politics again because you did this. And before we end this, I do want to add one more criticism of Joe Kennedy that they can use. You have my permission to use this in your email, your next campaign to add whatever you want because I'm really butthurt that I was not used in the Bernie Bros. Meers because I sent a lot of snake emojis and rat emojis to Pete with a judge and Elizabeth Warren. So hopefully they will use this one. So allow me to make my pitch to them and harass Joe Kennedy.  That's it. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, a man named Jacob Blake was riding through his neighborhood on a Sunday when he saw two of his neighbors reportedly fighting. Now, according to numerous witnesses, he got out of his car and he tried to de-escalate the situation. He tried to break up the fight and when Kenosha police arrived, well, this happened to Jacob Blake. They shot him in the back at close range seven times. Seven times. Clearly, he was not dangerous. He was not armed. No evidence that he posed a threat to police officers. And they shot him at close range seven different times. Very clearly trying to murder him. This was an attempted murder by agents of the state, Kenosha police. They're supposed to be protecting citizens and an individual who was trying to pursue peace, trying to de-escalate when he saw his neighbors fighting ends up getting shot in the back seven times by police officers. Now, I would say this is shocking and unbelievable, but in America, it's not shocking, it's not unbelievable. We've had ongoing Black Lives Matter protests since George Floyd was murdered because this keeps happening, disproportionately to people of color, black Americans. Now, one of the most disturbing elements of that story besides the shooting itself was the fact that Jacob Blake, he's a father of six and three of his children were in the car when police officers shot him in the back seven times. They witnessed their father get shot by the police. So as trial lawyer Ben Crump tweets out, confirmed Jacob Blake's three sons were in the car he was getting into when Kenosha police shot him tonight. They saw cops shoot their father. They will be traumatized forever. We cannot let officers violate their duty to protect us. Our kids deserve better, yeah. And that is an understatement.  Can you imagine being a young child and seeing that? Your father's trying to do something good, reportedly break up a fight and when police get there, you know, you should in theory be relieved because they can handle it and your dad can get back in the car. No, they shoot him seven times in the back as he's walking away. Now miraculously, Jacob Blake survived this shooting. I don't know how after getting shot in the back seven times that close, but he survived and his cousin tweeted out, Jacob is out of surgery and in the ICU. We will continue to pray as he fights. We will not excuse the actions of Kenosha police department, but his mother asks everyone to please remain peaceful. Now his cousin also linked to a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of. Medical bills because we know there's gonna be a lot and also with the cost of legal fees that will be needed for their family to take action. So I'm gonna link you to that down below. They've already raised over $200,000 at the time I'm recording this video. So this is something that can help support the family and I think it's absolutely crucial. Now as for the officers, I mean, we saw the videotape. It's very clear that they tried to murder him. They have not been fired yet. They've been placed on administrative leave. Now, according to USA Today in a statement early Monday, Wisconsin DOJ said the officers involved in the shooting had been placed on administrative leave. The state's division of criminal investigation is heading up an investigation into the shooting and will seek to provide a report of the incident to the prosecutor within 30 days according to the statement. Now I don't think it's gonna take 30 days for them to conduct an investigation when it's really obvious what happened. State agents who are supposed to protect citizens shot a man in the back seven times. Pretty obvious, don't need 30 days nonetheless. I guess an investigation is certainly needed still to get more details because I think more information is better. But I mean, this is pretty cut and dry. He wasn't posing a threat to police officers and they shot him seven times in the back. Very, very obvious, who's in the wrong here? Now the State Department of Justice has announced that they will be investigating as well and they put out a statement but the statement provided by the police state's DOJ does not identify the officers. It also doesn't indicate why officers confronted Blake at the scene. DCI is leading this investigation and is assisted by Wisconsin State Patrol and Kenosha County Sheriff's Office DOJ said in its statement, all involved law enforcement are fully cooperating with DCI during this investigation. So we really don't have much details. This just happened on Sunday and I'm recording this on a Monday so we're gonna have to wait to see. However, according to NBC News and PBS NewsHour reporter Yamichi Ausador, Governor Tony Evers and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes today announced they're calling the Wisconsin State Legislature into a special session on policing, accountability and transparency convening at noon on August 31st. The announcement comes after Jacob Blake, a black man was shot repeatedly. So there's a lot of things happening currently. There's numerous investigations taking place. Details of that are still unclear to us. There's also a state action. The legislature is going to be doing something. They're convening a special session. Hopefully something fruitful will come out of that. But immediately what we need to see is the police officers arrested, not placed on administrative leave, right? They should be held for attempted murder. And because that hasn't been the case, well, the community has been responding by overwhelmingly demanding action. Now the day of the attempted murder, hundreds of protesters gathered outside of the Kenosha Police Department to demand action and accountability. And police officers in riot gear then showed up armed with tear gas and the city then tried to stop more people from gathering to protest.  But then protesters set the dump truck on fire. And there were also protests in front of Kenosha County Courthouse and the National Guard was then deployed by the state of Wisconsin. And some of the protests did in fact turn into riots. Now once again, photographs of property damage are spreading. There is one video online of a protestor throwing a brick at a police officer. And look, here's the thing. There's going to be a swift attempt to demonize the protesters because of the looting, right? There's going to be pearl clutching among the right because of property damage. But this is pretty cut and dry to me. If you are more concerned with property damage, the damage of inanimate objects, then you are about this attempted murder that we all saw on camera, then there's something wrong with you. Like your outrage meter detector in your body is broken. Because I don't care about property damage. I care about actual human life, which again was threatened by the very state entity that's supposed to protect civilians. That's what I care more about. Now of course predictably, whenever there's a victim of police brutality, conservatives try to demonize that individual. And Fox News of course acted quickly to try to vilify Jacob Blake. So if you've watched Fox News as Media Matter points out, they're already pointing to his previous criminal record and possible arrest warrant that Kenosha police issued to arrest him. So they're trying to find some sort of justification for this action. But the thing is that there is no justification for this action. Even if conservatives could somehow prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jacob Blake was a horrible human being, what we saw on camera is not justified. Police officers are not supposed to be the judge, jury and executioners, right? They're supposed to protect citizens. So it doesn't matter if Jacob Blake had a previous criminal record. It doesn't matter if Jacob Blake had an arrest warrant. The details in this case in that video speak for themselves. He was walking away from police officers and they shot him in the back seven times. This is very easy to understand. I don't get what's not to understand with conservatives. This was pretty cut and dry, but of course, you know, they try to do propaganda and apologia at the behest of police departments across the country because they are bootlickers. But what we saw was an attempted murder on camera. We all saw it. You saw the video.  This is very, very clear. It's very clear. If you don't see it, then you're blinded by your own dais. A man was shot in the back seven times in front of his children by the very police department that's supposed to be protecting him and he was trying to break up a fight. So we don't have to talk about, you know, the looting and the rioting. This wouldn't happen. The looting, the rioting would not happen if police violence against the black Americans wasn't happening. Actions have consequences. Communities respond when their people are under assault. I think that is a normal human reaction at the result of violence. You know, the sight of violence against their own people, against this feeling of being insecure in their own neighborhoods by the very people who are supposed to protect them. So, you know, regardless of all of the noise that you're going to hear in the partisanization already that's taking place with regard to this case, you know, this is not a partisan issue. It's not partisan regardless if people wanna make it that way. It's very obvious what happened. An unarmed black man was shot seven times by police. Now, thankfully, he is going to survive. He survived this shooting, which is honestly a miracle in and of itself. It's shocking that he survived that, what we all saw, but he did survive. But that doesn't mean that it's any less egregious that police officers shouldn't be held accountable.  So, of course, they should be arrested. Anyone involved should be prosecuted. And this shouldn't be anything that's controversial. We should all be concerned with the safety of a citizen, Jacob Blake, who is trying to actually be a good citizen, try to stop a fight.  No, he's a father. He's a father. I don't care about any other details than what we saw in that video. He was shot in the back seven times. And that's that. It's morally reprehensible. And we should all be outraged at the sight of what we saw and demand justice. So, as many of you know, protests have been taking place in Kenosha, Wisconsin and around the country because we need them.  And we still are seeing videos of police officers assaulting and attempting to murder unarmed black Americans. As many of you know, Jacob Blake was shot in the back by a police officer in Kenosha seven times. Thankfully, he survived, but he's going to be paralyzed from the waist down, possibly for the rest of his life. It'll be a miracle if he walks again. So, I mean, that shows you why we need these protests. I don't know how you can watch that video and not be outraged. Like this should speak to everyone's core human instinct, right? How can you not see why this anger exists? So the protests have been taking place. And of course, as we've seen across the country, vigilantes are getting involved. People with guns who are going there to defend the police or according to them, defend businesses. And it got a little out of hand to say the least because a 17 year old named Kyle Rittenhouse drove from Illinois to Wisconsin to protect property with an illegal gun, something that he obtained illegally, he's 17. And he ended up performing an act of terrorism. He murdered two people and injured a third. Now, there were reports on the Kenosha Guard Facebook page that this group was inciting violence against these protesters, but Facebook did nothing. Facebook did not alert the authorities.  Now that alone is outrageous, right? But the story gets worse when we learn the extent to which the Kenosha Police Department was actually coordinating with these vigilantes. So as the Daily Beast reports, Kyle Rittenhouse, a rifle-toting teenage Blue Lives Matter fan suspected of fatally shooting at least two people and injuring another during protests in Kenosha, over the shooting of Jacob Blake has been charged with murder. Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested in Illinois and faces charges of first degree intentional homicide according to Lake County, Illinois Clerk of Court's Public Records. So far, he is labeled a fugitive from justice in the complaint, which states that the teenager fled the state of Wisconsin with intent to avoid prosecution for that offense. He's been assigned a public defender and was scheduled to appear at an extradition hearing on August 28th, according to Court Records. Kenosha Police Chief, Daniel Miss Guinness, said that the two victims were a 26 year old Silver Lake resident and a 36 year old from Kenosha. The injured person was a 26 year old from West Alice. A gunman shot one person in the head and another in the chest around 11 45 p.m. Tuesday amid another night of violent unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Videos circulating on social media showed an armed man tripping over then firing at people who seemed to be making an attempt to disarm him. In one video, a young man fires several shots at protesters before getting up and walking toward police vehicles. With his rifle still on display, the suspected gunman appears to have his hands over his head as he approaches police in an apparent surrender. In another video, a man with similar clothing can be seen running and holding his rifle. He's heard apparently uttering into his phone, I just killed somebody as he continues to run. He had his hands up and they told him to get out of there. Even though everyone was yelling that he was the shooter. Brent Ford, a 24 year old photographer who witnessed the shooting told Vice News, the police didn't seem to hear or care what the crowd was saying. Now before this right wing terrorist murder two people, he was interviewed by the daily caller and he said that he was there to protect businesses. So he was prepared to do violence. That's what that means, because if you bring a gun with you to protect businesses, then you are prepared to take a life if you feel as if that business is threatened. And he did exactly what he intended to do. You don't go there with a gun unless you are intending or prepared to do violence. And he did it just that, murdered people. Now there is a video of what may be an officer asking the vigilantes to stop pointing guns at protesters. We don't know if this is an officer who's telling them that, but there's another video of this terrorist walking side by side with a police officer. They're giving him water and telling the vigilantes how much they appreciate what they're doing. That's what started most of it. Now we're all the way back by the gas station again. Hey, thank you guys. You need water? Seriously, that's why I'm right here, you need water? We need water. We'll throw you one. Thank you. All right, cool guys, let's get out of here. Damn. You're all right. We'll give you a couple, a great couple. Thank you. We're right here. We're right here. We're right here. We're right here. We're right here. We're close to them. You're trespassing. We'll give you a couple, but we'll give you a couple. Appreciate you guys, we really do. We lost our friend. I need water. I need a step. I'm sure they have a lot of bottles of water. I know, we can do that. Nice truck. Thank you. Nice truck. You're going to have to get out of there. You're just left flight. You're just lost. This is the last warning. You will disperse. So these people who are not police officers, they don't have the training to deal with protests on this scale or riots. The police are like, oh, sure. We appreciate the fact that you're helping us.  Definitely not going to be a disaster because you don't know what you're doing.  But you know, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Here's some water. Need anything else from us? Insane. Now after he murdered two people, he was walking towards police and it seemed as if he wanted to surrender, but he ended up not surrendering and they caught him in Illinois. But he had some sort of hand signal that he issued to the cops. We don't know what this was about necessarily, but take a look. Now the video to me is disturbing not necessarily because of the hand signal because I'm not going to try to decipher what that meant. He was clearly signaling something to the cops, but what's astonishing to me about that video is that he just murdered two people, almost killed a third person, injured someone, and he's just walking casually with a gun on his chest. Imagine if one of the protesters armed themselves to protect protesters and not buildings. Do you think that they'd be able to just walk away flippantly like that? Especially after they just murdered people? I mean, the story is insane, but it gets worse because apparently police officers in Kenosha drove protesters out of a park that they were in and pushed them towards the vigilantes. Now there are multiple reports that this is what happened and one of the vigilantes actually confirms that police told them that they would be pushing them towards the vigilantes so they can deal with them. This is, you know what the cops told us today? They were like, we're gonna push them down by you because you can deal with them and then we're gonna leave. See?   So let's just take a moment and try to digest what this presumed vigilante just told us. The cops told him that they would be driving the protesters out of one area and into the arms of vigilantes. So the vigilantes could be the ones to deal with the protesters and after the police officers pushed protesters into that area, one of the vigilantes ended up murdering two people. Do you understand why there are calls to defund and abolish the police? Because the police is supposed to be protecting people from vigilantes, gunmen, but they pushed them towards these violent thugs who were there and people got murdered. Now the police chief put out a statement and what he says here is infuriating. Like I was trembling with anger after I heard him speak. The persons were shot. Everybody involved was out after the curfew. I'm not gonna make a great deal of that but the point is the curfew is in place to protect. That person's not been involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened. So the last night, this 17 year old individual from Antioch Illinois was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place. The result of it was two people are dead. So first of all, let's just point out the fact that he didn't describe what happened as a murder or even a killing. He just said that people were involved in a shooting and the most outrageous part to me was the fact that he says, well, these people, if they weren't violating this curfew in the first place, they'd probably still be alive. But the 17 year old terrorist, he wasn't violating the curfew. According to the police chief of Kenosha, he was there to resolve whatever conflict was in place. So understand what he's saying here. He's tacitly admitting that the curfew that they imposed didn't apply to the armed vigilantes. It only applied to the protesters. Now, this curfew is unconstitutional in the first place. You don't get to just unilaterally criminalize protests that you don't like. You don't get to override the First Amendment by declaring these curfews. But if you are going to issue these curfews, which I think are unconstitutional, then why do they not apply to the vigilantes? Why wasn't the 17 year old terrorist subject to the same curfew?  What is wrong with you? Do you understand why people of color don't trust the police?  You are coordinating with vigilantes. What do you think is gonna happen? Of course people are gonna get killed, of course. So the blood is on your hands. The blood is on the hands of the police officers who allow these people to do what they believe is a vigilante justice. The cops are okay with that. They're not the bad guys, the vigilantes with guns. They're not the problems, it's the protesters. Maybe if you cared half as much about property damage as you did about human life, you'd see it from a logical perspective.  These vigilantes get to be the judge, the jury, and the executioner in this case. If they see someone doing property damage, spray painting a building, looting, they get to unilaterally decide whether or not that individual lives or dies. That's justice in America. That's justice according to the Kenosha Police Department. Unfucking real. This entire police department needs to be disbanded immediately. Fire everyone, get the police chief to step down. How can you allow this to happen? Your police officers are working with vigilantes as young as 17, maybe younger. And then you're shocked when they're murdered. Actually, it doesn't really seem that shocked. I won't say that, but this story is absolutely insane, and this is why people are in the streets protesting, why they haven't left the streets since George Floyd was murdered because this continues to happen, and it will continue to happen unless action is taken, unless we defund the police. So I don't understand how you can even make a defense of Kyle Rittenhouse. Some people online are trying to make that defense for him. You know, he didn't mean to do it, he's so young.   This story is infuriating. This is why these Black Lives Matter protests are so important, and if you can't see it by now, then you need to do some soul searching because something is wrong with you. Your sense of outrage is broken. This is disturbing, to say the least. So since the start of the Black Lives Matter protests this year after the murder of George Floyd, we have seen a plethora of different responses to the protesters. You know, in some cities, they're voting to disband their police departments. We're seeing some cities vote to defund police departments and then, you know, in some Republican-run cities, they just are not responding at all. They think that these protests are inconvenient and makes them look bad, they don't like it, so they're just ignoring them entirely. But then you have the worst of the worst and you have some cities trying to outright criminalize all of these protests because they don't like them. And what we saw from Tennessee governor, Bill Lee, is probably the worst that I've seen with regard to how someone in power is handling these protests because he's trying to, you know, rather than speaking with the protesters and addressing their concerns, make it illegal for them to protest by scaring them because what he's trying to do is make it so that way effectively, if you protest, you could end up losing your right to vote, yeah. So this is brazenly unconstitutional, but he's trying to find a way to subvert the constitution by criminalizing protests in a really sneaky and nefarious way. So as Kelly Menna of CNN reports, Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed legislation on Thursday that will increase penalties for individuals caught camping on state property. Bill HB 8005 increases the punishment for camping on state property from a misdemeanor to a class E felony that is punishable by up to six years in prison. Signing of the bill comes as protesters have been camping outside the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville demanding a meeting with the Republican governor to discuss racial inequality and police brutality since June, according to the Washington Post. Protesters are also asking for the removal of a Nathan Bedford Forrest bust at the state Capitol. Forrest was a slave trader and an early Ku Klux Klan leader. Campers would first be given a warning and those who refused to leave would then be charged with a felony. Notably convicted felons in Tennessee lose their right to vote, which could be a major blow to protesters amid a high stake selection year. The bill was part of a larger package of legislation signed by Lee that increases penalties for certain crimes like vandalism, disorderly conduct, inciting a riot and offenses to first responders. The new bill took effect immediately according to the Tennessean. So there's a lot to unpack here, but first of all, just understand like if this governor really wanted these protests to go away, they're asking for something really simple here. Meet with them, try to address their concerns legislatively, but he wants them to go away and rather than meeting with them, he's just saying, you know what, let's try to disincentivize protests in general and criminalize these protests. Now I know what you're thinking, well, this doesn't directly lead to them losing the right to vote, but understand the way that they're trying to create this sort of loophole so that way they can penalize protesters by stripping them of the right to vote. If you criminalize elements of the protests and say, well, this act in particular that we don't like is now a felony and that leads to you losing your right to vote, well, effectively what are they doing? They're threatening the protesters by saying, if you don't go away, if you don't stop occupying these premises, you're not going to be able to vote because you're not gonna affect change by trying to reach out to us, but you're really not gonna be able to affect change if you lose your right to vote. So if you want that to happen, then keep doing what you're doing, keep protesting, keep staying here and occupying these buildings and you're gonna lose the right to vote. Like this is extremely, extremely disgusting. Now this is why it was really wrong for liberals to clutch their pearls when Bernie Sanders on the left was talking about the need to re-enfranchise felons and people who are currently incarcerated because this is what happens. If you make it so that way felons can't vote, then it's really easy to disenfranchise them because then you could just change the law.  Like there's the carrot and the stick approach and this is the stick approach to say the least. It's disgusting, it's morally reprehensible. This governor thinks that the way to get these protests to go away, the way to deal with the problem is by pouring gasoline on the fire and I mean, we all know that this law is going to be abused, right? Maybe even if someone isn't occupying or camping out at a state building or the state capitol, they may just be like loitering or protesting, police officers will just grab them and say, well, they're camping, so they get a felony, now they can't vote. Like, do you understand? Like, we know this is what's going to happen. We know this is going to lead to abuse. Even if they follow this draconian law, they're still going to be even more abuse. That's the product of this law because this type of law is inherently abusive. So for them, anyone who disobeys their draconian laws, they're gonna say, all right, well, you don't get to vote anymore. So think about this though, like if you disagree with the Black Lives Matter protests, apply this to other situations. Like, I don't think personally, we're going to be able to get Medicare for All unless we occupy the US Capitol, right? Unless we actually sit in the offices of politicians. But as a punishment, imagine if they said, all right, if you stay here, if you camp here, that's a felony. And in your state, you lose the right to vote. Like imagine what a slippery slope it would be if we start saying particular protest acts are felonies and people start losing the rights to vote because of it. Like, this is dangerous. Like I think people who speak about free speech, if they're not talking about these types of brazen abuses to the First Amendment, then they're not serious. Like the First Amendment is something that we are losing. Like we're losing the right to protest. More and more, we're seeing cities and states implement curfews. We're seeing a crackdown on the First Amendment. And this is going to continue to happen unless we put a stop to it, right? So this is just another brick in the path towards us losing the right to protest, the right to peacefully assemble, which is sacred. And I think that everyone should be outraged. But the fact that we didn't hear much about this law in mainstream media shows that, you know, states are able to do things like this. Governors can sign bills like this into law and get away with it because nobody's paying attention. Nobody really cares. They might believe that, oh, well, this isn't them just losing the right to vote if they protest. I mean, they have to do a particular thing to get charged with a felony and because they're felons, then they lose the right to vote, except do you not understand what they're doing? Do you not see the way that they're trying to subvert the Constitution and effectively make it so if you do something that they deem inappropriate, if you protest in a way that they don't like, they can take away your right to vote with some bullshit nonsense excuse like this that we know will be abused. It's just, it's dangerous. And it's a bad sign of what's to come if this continues. So I'm not sure how many of you are tuning in to the RNC convention. I mean, it's a combination of insanity and also just very dry, very boring. It's like the same thing over and over again. Like all of these speeches have the same exact theme. Be very afraid of MS-13. Be afraid of Antifa. Be afraid of Black Lives Matter protesters. Be afraid of socialism. Be afraid of Marxism. Be afraid of Cory Bush. But if you vote for us, we'll protect you so you don't have to be afraid of all of these big, bad, scary boogeymen in the world. It's just the same thing. I mean, this is like watching the movie Idiocracy except the difference is that the people in the movie Idiocracy who were all idiots, mind you, they may actually be more intelligent than the crowd that the GOP is trying to appeal to with this event because I mean, it's, there's no substance. Like there's almost no policy at all. And the reason why there's not much substance is because the Republican Party this year doesn't even have a policy platform. And I'm not being sarcastic. They literally do not have a platform. Basically what they are running on is we support Donald Trump and whatever he wants to do, which he doesn't know what he wants to do. He just wants people to love him and things that he's doing a great job. But in terms of what he's doing for the American people, not offering healthcare, they have no plan with regard to healthcare. I don't know if they have a strategy to safely reopen the economy, given what we're dealing with when it comes to COVID-19. It's just, there's nothingness and some insanity and boredom sprinkled in. And I don't know what to make of it. I mean, a wet fart is more substantive than some of the speeches that we've seen. And I know that you think I'm just being a hater, but take a look at this speech from Kimberly Guilford. Does this sound like someone who's a serious person that should be speaking at the convention of a national party? You can be that shiny example to the world. Manifest and be the change in this country that you dream, that you hope, that you believe in. Stand for an American president who is fearless, who believes in you and who loves this country and will fight for her. President Trump is the leader who will rebuild the promise of America and ensure that every citizen can realize their American dream. Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream, the best is yet to come.  No, that wasn't a scene from a dystopian science fiction movie that was real life. She actually thought that giving a speech where she yelled to a crowd of zero people would get the Republican Party base excited. It's just weird. Like this is very weird to me, weirder than usual. And I'm never not amazed by what I see coming from the Republican Party. On top of that, for some reason, they invited Ken and Karen, those gun-toting individuals who were trying to protect their mansion. What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country. And that's what we want to speak to you about tonight. That's exactly right. Whether it's the defunding of police, ending cash bail so criminals can be released back out on the streets the same day to riot again or encouraging anarchy and chaos on our streets. It seems as if the Democrats no longer view the government's job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens. Not a single person in the out-of-control mob you saw at our house was charged with a crime. But you know who was? We were. They've actually charged us with felonies for daring to defend our home. On top of that, consider this. The Marxist liberal activist, leading the mob to our neighborhood, stood outside our home with a bull horn screaming, you can't stop the revolution. Just weeks later, that same Marxist activist won the Democrat nomination to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the city of St. Louis, that's the same as winning the general election, that Marxist revolutionary is now going to be the Congresswoman from the first district of Missouri. Now I love how after they were photographed pointing guns at peaceful protesters, they claimed that they're the victims. No, we were defending our mansion from these people, but they weren't doing anything. They weren't marching to your mansion. So what were you defending yourself from? Like, I don't understand. So you're not the victim.   So you're not the victims. They're the victims. But in case you missed the very subtle message that they're trying to get across, be afraid of Cory Bush and also Marxism. Marxist liberal activist, Marxist activist, Marxist these radicals. No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats America. The mob. Are you scared yet? No? Well, if you're not afraid after watching that, then maybe this is going to change your mind. Joe Biden is hiding in the dark, waiting to take the lives of our unborn babies. And he's also going to cook them, preferably at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes after marinating them for about two to three days in barbecue sauce. And then once he cooks up these babies, he's going to chop them up and feed them to the other politicians at their Satanic Illuminati meeting. Like these people are out of their minds and the way that he says it, the way that he said that was like my favorite part. But aside from all of the insanity, this Freudian slip here is probably now my favorite moment from the entire event. Poland is home of the Underground Railroad and two of our greatest segregate, abolitionists. Frederick? Nope, no take backs. You said it. You said it so you can't take it back now when we know what you meant. I swear to God, this is like a parody, but this is real life. This is literally real life. This party is just, they are a spectacle. Now I saw this headline from Vice News. It says an RNC speaker said cops would be smart to racially profile her own son. Now I thought to myself, okay, this is something that a Republican would say, but there's got to be like some sort of clickbait going on here. Like they have to be misrepresenting her because why would they invite some wackadoo who says something like this, saying that cops should racially profile her son. Like there has to be something more going on, right? They've got to be disingenuous here. Nope, I found the video and she literally said cops would be smart to racially profile her own brown son but not racially profile her white sons. Like she literally said it. Listen to her. Statistically, I look at our prison population and I see that there is a disproportionately high number of African-American males in our prison population for crimes, particularly for violent crimes.   That makes that police officer smart because of statistics.   Because that's just smart because of statistics. This lady literally spoke at the RNC convention.  Why would you invite someone like this? She literally just said that the police should racially profile her own son, because statistically, because facts don't care about your feelings, he's more likely to commit a crime. She is insane, and they invited her to speak. You're not considering like socioeconomic factors, the fact that communities of color are overpoliced. No, it's just that there's something unique about communities of color that leads them to do more crime. Why don't you just say the quiet part out loud?   Like that's what you're thinking, right? Statistically, nothing else to look at.  Like you have to be insane to think that, but this is who they invite to the RNC convention to speak on their behalf, to promote their party, to get people excited, to vote Republicans in November. I mean, there are no words to fully capture what's happening here. Like when we look back to this moment in history, like people aren't going to believe some of the things that are coming out of this convention, except, you know, now we have the internet, so this is all being documented. So I mean, this period of time, we are going to be laughing at this forever once we're out of this era in American politics, that is if we ever get out of this era of American politics. Now, I want to talk about Melania's speech because, you know, there wasn't anything special about it. It was incredibly long, like way too long. It was insufferably boring, but it was at least more normal. I mean, it was disingenuous, she lied, but I mean, she said what she had to as the first lady to support the president. But one thing that stood out to me is the fact that they had over 70 people in attendance there, not wearing masks, not social distancing, and according to CNN, none of them were tested for COVID-19. I mean, you'd think that for their own wellbeing, they would've want to take this seriously. They just don't care. They just don't care. Now, I haven't even gotten to everything because like most of this content is from days one and two of the event, but there's going to be more and you can't possibly capture all of the insanity of the RNC convention in a quick YouTube video, but just know that what we've seen from this event, like this isn't normal. Even though we expect insanity from Republicans, this is not normal. We shouldn't accept this as the norm. We should understand that what we are seeing is insanity. We are seeing a dying party who has shifted so far to the right that they are off the political spectrum and they are borrowing on sheer insanity. And this is why we see them becoming more fascistic and conspiratorial because when you shift so far to the right, you can only go so far until you hit a brick wall and you reach fascism and straight up loony territory. So this is what we're seeing. But meanwhile, the media and Republicans are still going to cry about the far left when we see this level of delusion from Republicans. Like how are we not all collectively worried about the far right in this country? I mean, after seeing the RNC invention for anyone to bring up the far left ever again shows you how unserious they are, right? The Overton window has shifted so far to the right that this is acceptable. This is what's normal in America. The RNC convention where they're screaming at you and talking about how Joe Biden wants to murder unborn babies. Like, this is not normal. This is weird. I wanna take some time to revisit the races that are taking place in Massachusetts. We have two really important Democratic Party primaries coming up. We have the race between Ed Markey and Joe Kennedy for the US Senate. And then we also have the house race between Richie Neal and Alex Morse. And I think that these gentlemen are running really, really good campaigns. And if they are both successful, then I think they are creating a sort of blueprint that the left should follow going forward to defeat the more entrenched establishment favorite candidate. The first person that I'm gonna talk about here is Ed Markey because he was one of the most outspoken advocates for net neutrality. And he just proposed something that I think is necessary and long overdue in something that I was hoping any politician would adopt. So he tweeted this out. The internet is not a luxury. It is an essential service. I am fighting to guarantee internet for all and to keep students and educators safe. He then released this video. A return to in-person instruction is the ultimate goal. But educators and students' safety isn't an acceptable cost. We need to be smart about how we return to school. We need to base this decision not on a date, but on the data. Even once school is back in session, students will rely on the internet for homework, socialization, and exploration. Except many students don't have access to the high-speed internet that they are going to need. Up to 16 million children in the United States struggle to complete school assignments because they lack home internet access. Let's be clear, the internet is not a luxury. It is an essential service students need for their academic development, social well-being, and future success. That's what my e-rate is all about. It's all about guaranteeing that every child, every child gets what they need, that every family gets what they need. So I obviously think this is a phenomenal idea. If we are already agreeing that the internet should be classified as a public utility, then I think that it makes sense to understand it as an essential service. Because if you think through this, that's common sense, right? I mean, if you wanna participate in the economy and society, if you wanna look for a job, you really need to have a stable internet connection. Like it's part of daily life in 2020. So if it's something that's essential for human beings to thrive in the United States, then I think that it should be something that's guaranteed. Like you shouldn't not have the internet because you don't have the money to afford the internet. Or you live in a rural area where you can't get good internet. Like I think that this is something that very quickly is becoming essential. So I like that he actually is being really forward thinking here. And he's saying we need to guarantee internet to everyone. I love this idea. Now he's running a really good substantive campaign talking about policy. Like I have my issues with Ed Markey. But what he's doing here is masterful. And it's paying off because at the start of this race when Joe Kennedy announced that he'd be challenging Ed Markey, I mean, it looked like he was gonna get defeated by Joe Kennedy the third. But now look at this poll. A mass end poll found that Markey has a seven to eight point lead over Joe Kennedy depending on whether or not you include leaners. Now to overcome what he did in this race when Joe Kennedy was just automatically presumed to be the favorite because he had more money. He was the establishment's favorite candidate. Even if he wasn't the incumbent. I mean, you gotta hand it to Ed Markey. He ran a phenomenal campaign. And if he does win, then we really have to study what he's doing here because I want the left to be successful. So whenever we see a progressive who ran a campaign that was effective, like Apologene's Orange and Corey Bush, we have to really look at what they did specifically. And utilize their strategy, their tactics in future progressive campaigns. Like I want us to learn and grow because however many victories we already had in the cycle, I want there to be even more victories. Now looking at Alex Morse, like it seemed like his campaign was dead because of this fake scandal that was manufactured by the College of Democrats of Massachusetts. But he has completely turned it around. He's had a phenomenal week. He's had a great fundraising week on top of that. He got endorsed by Carmen Eulen Cruz who is the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico. He got endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is correct to change PAC, which I mean for her to endorse him over one of her colleagues. Again, that shows you why AOC is such a valuable person to have on our side. And what's a really good sign is the fact that, now that Alex Morse is in striking distance, you know that Richie Neal's internal polling data is matching what we see from other polls because now they're spending a lot. Like dark money groups are spending a lot of money all of a sudden to try to stop Alex Morse from beating Richie Neal. And what's interesting to me, like what I kind of get the sense of and I'm not sure about this, like it's hard to confirm this, is that the smear attempt actually backfired and ended up hurting Richie Neal because it looks really suspicious, right? Like he knew the student who helped orchestrate the smear on Alex Morse, Timothy Ennis. That guy wanted an internship with Richie Neal. And then we learned that the State Democratic Party, which obviously favors Richie Neal, was trying to help them follow through with this smear, try to help them cover it up. So it looks really suspicious. It looks like Richie Neal was part of this homophobic smear campaign against Alex Morse. And now it elevated Alex Morse to a national platform. Like I knew of Alex Morse, but I really started to follow the campaign once this smear came out because it looked disgusting. Like it made me want to rally behind Alex Morse and supporters campaign. So at this point, like what we're seeing, it just might be too late for Richie Neal to stop Alex Morse's momentum. Like once you get the ball rolling, it's like a snowball effect. That momentum just builds. And he released a closing ad, which was honestly just stunning. My oldest brother Doug was born when my mom was just 17 years old. Holyoke was struggling as factories moved overseas, but my family never gave up. My dad worked at Corondo Meatpacking Plant. My mom started to daycare in my childhood home. I won a scholarship and became the first in my family to earn a college degree. Back in Holyoke, jobs kept leaving and drug overdoses went up. Growing opioid epidemic here in Western Massachusetts. My entire life, the same politicians were in office and life just kept getting harder. So I ran for mayor when I was just 22. We're gonna change the way that Holyoke does business. We're gonna change Holyoke politics. People told me to wait my turn, that we couldn't be an incumbent who had been involved in politics for 30 years. In Western Massachusetts last week, a 22-year-old landed his first job. I became the youngest openly gay mayor in the country. Together, we brought Holyoke back. When a local coal plant closed, we created jobs with the new solar farm. After drug companies poured dangerously addictive drugs into our town, we sued Big Pharma until they paid for the opioid crisis. But we can't do more without leadership in Congress. Our representative in Congress, Reggie Neal, is Wall Street's favorite Democrat. He's accepted $700,000 from Big Pharma over his career. He killed a law to stop surprise medical billing after health insurance lobbyists donated $54,000 to his campaign. And when the economic crisis hit, Neal opposed funding paychecks for working Americans but supported Trump's flush fund for corporations. In Holyoke, we're doing everything we can to save lives and save jobs during this crisis. We deserve a representative who does the same, who goes to Congress to represent us, not Wall Street, not Big Pharma. We deserve a representative who will fight for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and economic and racial justice. After 32 years, Richard Neal knows how Washington works. But I wanna change how Washington works. I'm Alex Morse, and that's why I'm running for Congress. That was great. That was a phenomenal ad. And these ads that we've been seeing from progressives, like the fact that they're all substantive, not only do they talk about the policies that they want, but how their corporate Democrat is being bankrolled by certain industries. This is the blueprint. This is what you have to do to win. And now that we're talking about Massachusetts, I would be remiss to not talk about Issaan Lecky, who is running for Joe Kennedy, the third's old seat. Like she actually has a lot of momentum. I brought her on the program, I interviewed her, and was thoroughly impressed. And she could also end up winning the Democratic Party primary and taking over Joe Kennedy's old seat. So imagine the scenario where Joe Kennedy loses, gives up his seat, and then a true progressive takes his seat, Ed Markey holds his seat, and then Alex Morse ends up defeating Richard Neal, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. That would be incredible. That would be incredible. And we know Democrats are horrified because how many primary campaigns of incumbent Democrats have been successful? We had Marie Newman defeat Dan Lipinski, Jamal Bowman beat Elliot Engel, Cory Bush unseat Lacey Clay. And that's not even naming all of the other progressive victories we've had with Paula Jean Swaraj and when her primary, Kaua Eastman when her primary in Nebraska, Kossum Rashid, Adam Christensen. There's so much victories that it's even difficult to keep track of them, which is a problem that I love having. So if we can add these wins, I mean, we're looking really good. Like we're really able to flex our muscles as a movement. So I'm watching this race very closely and I'm rooting for Isan Lecky, Ed Markey, and also Alex Morse. This is shaping up to be a really interesting race. If we win, I'm gonna lose it. All right, folks. I know I'm super late to the party on this, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about this because I feel like this right here that we're gonna address, it really just encapsulates everything that's wrong with liberals who worship the Democratic Party, who are sick of fans to the Democratic Party and think that they can do no wrong ever, regardless of how wrong they are, assuming you actually do believe the things you purport to believe. So Marcos Melitzas, who is the founder of the Daily Coast who once delivered thousands of roses to Nancy Pelosi, something that he should be made fun of for the rest of his life form, he was commenting on the DNC convention and he said something that should worry anyone who actually cares about consistency. He tweeted this out, "'I'm all about rubbing it in GOP's face "'that our nominee actually goes to church. "'Hours is now objectively the party of faith, "'family values and national defense.'" Let's read that last part again. Our nominee is objectively the party of faith, family values and national defense. Who do you think this is going to appeal to? How many evangelical Christian Republicans do you think are going to come over to our side, our side because of this? Because Joe Biden is more religious than Donald Trump? Who cares? Why do you care about this? First and foremost, understand that there's bigotry that's inherent with this tweet because you're basically taking this position that it is inherently good to be religious. Therefore, people who don't have a religion, people who are atheist or anti-theist or agnostic, they're worse. They're not as good as people who are religious. So understand that that's a right-wing position to take. The second of all, he is happy about the prospect of our side embracing of what the Republican Party had embraced. National defense, okay, that should be a given for any party, but we know the implications of what he's saying here. We're the party who's going to more responsibly steer the U.S. empire in the direction that we wanted to go. Family values, I don't know if he realizes this, but family values has very sexist and homophobic implications. When we're saying family values, we mean the nuclear family. We mean a family where there is a man and a woman, not two men. So when Republicans said, oh, we're the party of family values, they are excluding gay families out, right? They're even excluding the prospect of women subverting their traditional gender roles and getting jobs outside of the family. Like this is a traditional thing that Republicans promoted, but now you're saying, no, we're the party of family values. So I mean, I just don't understand what you want here. What are you trying to get out of a tweet like this? Like, do you want Democrats to just straight up become evangelicals and start openly courting evangelicals to own Donald Trump because orange man bad? Like, what do you want out of this? We get it.  We all know that he's never read the Bible, but guess what? Evangelicals still love Donald Trump. They still love Donald Trump because he delivers what they want the most, policy, abortion. So you know what? It doesn't matter that he's had 15 affairs on his three wives, you know, spitballing here, but I mean, they don't care about the hypocrisy because whenever a religious person sees something that they view as immoral, they just chalk it up to, well, nobody's perfect and God forgives. So they explain it away very easily. So I don't understand from a strategic standpoint what he expects to get out of this. Like, if you truly want to take all of the Republican Party's base, like you can do that by just like openly embracing conservatism. Like, what's next? Would you be laughing if Joe Biden came out against abortion because we're owning Republicans and we are, you know, we're eating into that evangelical base? Like, what do you want out of this? This is why people hate Democrats. You understand that, right, Marcos? This is why people don't respect the party because you stand for nothing. You're able to adjust where you are on that political spectrum depending on whether or not it's politically expedient. There's no like adherence to core principles or values in spite of how much we hear the word values. Like there's nothing. We're a big 10 party, according to you and Democrats, and that's a good thing. It should be celebrated, except sometimes when that tent is so big, then you lose coherency. You stand for nothing if you stand for everything. So for you to say how wonderful it is that we could just rub it in their faces that our party is now objectively the party of faith, family, values and national defense.  So if we nominated Mitt Romney going against Donald Trump, you'd still be proud of Democrats for that because Mitt Romney is objectively better on policy than Donald Trump. You would say, well, you know, this is our guy, so I have to defend him no matter what and everything that he does is good by definition because he's on my team and my team is good. The other team is bad. Like how far could we go down this rabbit hole? Like if the Democratic Party just reversed their stance on marriage equality and they said, you know what, we're gonna fight against marriage equality. Like would you be in favor of that because, you know, all of a sudden now they're the party of family values? Like you have to understand that if you stand for nothing, then voters are going to see that, right? That's why Democrats are struggling to get their base and foods about Joe Biden because everything that he does stand for is what's wrong with society. This is the architect of the crime bill. He voted for the Iraq war. I just don't understand what the end game is here, right? Every single presidential election cycle, we see nothing but, you know, blasting people who don't vote, non-voters are apparently privileged and evil.  Like why doesn't Marcos scold Joe Biden and Democrats for not doing enough to appeal to those third party voters they like to berate? Why is it always the responsibility of, you know, the voters and not the politicians?  Like the voters are supposed to be the ones who should be there for politicians who, you know, can't let down politicians. It's not the other way around. It's not that if Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden fails possibly, that he's the one to blame because he's quoting Republicans and ignoring the left wing base and not trying to excite young people.  They were the ones who failed Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton.  Because of course, we don't support Republicans because they're insane, but, you know, the way to appeal to young people who are, you know, disillusioned with the Democratic Party is not to be more like Republicans. I shouldn't have to say this, that, you know, Democrats becoming the Republican Party of the late 90s and 2000s is a bad thing, but apparently here we are. Trump is bad. So because he's so bad, every other Republican is good so long as they anti-Trump. Anything that Trump might be against will by definition, that's something we have to embrace. So if Donald Trump says, I support trans rights because he said it, it's bad all of a sudden because we stand for nothing, we're just anti-Trump. And if the party wants to take us in that direction, I have to follow because I am loyal to the party until the end. I mean, Jesus Christ, like loyalty is a virtue that we all appreciate, but there has to be a line. You have to have some standards and this dude has no standards. Otherwise you wouldn't have sent thousands of roses to Nancy Pelosi.  The first debate is coming up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  Like you have two demented, perverted old men going up against each other, probably insulting each other. And even if there's not gonna be much policy substance, at least it's probably gonna be super entertaining. So I am really, really looking forward to these debates. The first one in September is interesting already because Donald Trump is suggesting that him and Joe Biden both undergo drug tests before they debate each other. Now, the reason why Donald Trump is suggesting this is because he observed what a lot of people observed during Joe Biden's one-on-one debate with Bernie Sanders. So as Tel Axelrod of the Hill explains, President Trump is calling for drug tests to be administered before the presidential debate between him and Democratic nominee Joe Biden next month. Trump made the demand in an oval office interview with the Washington Examiner Wednesday, saying he noted a sudden improvement in Biden's primary debate performance against Senator Bernie Sanders in March. He offered no evidence to support his suggestion that the improvement could have been the result of a drug. Biden participated in 11 primary debates, most of which were against the crowded field of other contenders, but the last of which was on March 15th against just Sanders. Nobody thought that he was even going to win, Trump said, because his debate performances were so bad. Frankly, his best performance was against Bernie. We're going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie. He always repeats himself. It wasn't that he was Winston Churchill, but because he wasn't, but it was a normal, boring debate.  I don't know how he could be so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be okay against Bernie, he added one press to clarify. My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad, he wasn't even coherent and against Bernie, he was and were calling for a drug test. The president said he was going solely based off of his own observations and not any inside knowledge into Biden's campaign. All I can tell you is that I'm pretty good at this stuff, he said. Now that last line there was really hilarious to me because we know why he thinks he's good at this stuff. It's Mexico. I don't know why I'm so captivated by the story, but look, the article is written in kind of a smug way where, you know, there's this undertone that is really dismissive of what Donald Trump is saying and I get it, Trump is a buffoon, like I dismiss most of what he says, but is what Donald Trump's saying completely preposterous? Would I be surprised if we found out ever that Joe Biden took maybe some cocaine or Adderall, maybe just a little bit? No, I wouldn't. In fact, that was the same observation that I made because Trump is right about this. Joe Biden was face planting in all of these debates.   So his debate performances were atrocious, but all of a sudden in a one-on-one debate setting against Bernie Sanders, he has energy and focus. Like to me, when I see that, I think something's up. Now I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing. Like if he theoretically started a line of coke before a debate, I'm not judging him. I don't care. If we found out, assuming Trump were able to get this approved, which I don't think he will, but if they both were drug tested and Biden came up positive for cocaine, this would just make him look cooler. Like he would be more relatable to other everyday people because I mean, this isn't something that many people care about. And here's the thing, what are you gonna do? Let's say you get your drug test and Joe Biden tests positive for Adderall or cocaine or whatever. Let's say that that happens. Then what? Like, does that really hurt him? Is that gonna be controversial? Do you think he's gonna be arrested? Because it's not illegal to be high. It's illegal to possess cocaine, but assuming he like snorted something, took some drugs and then didn't have it on his person any longer, but it was in his system. It's not illegal to be high.  Like what do you want? Like I think that what Donald Trump is hoping for here is like to dissuade Biden's team from giving him anything if that were the case, which I'm not saying it's certainly what happened, but it's possible. But like maybe he wants to get them to not give him drugs. So he does face plan because I think that the debates could be a deciding factor in the election. If Joe Biden does in fact perform poorly, who knows? But part of it is that, it could have been the case that Joe Biden also just wasn't paying attention during those other debates when there were a lot of people because the attention wasn't on him. And so since he was pulling ahead in most of the primary election, he didn't feel the need to like interject. So maybe just like on that one-on-one setting he like felt the need to participate more and pay attention. I don't know, but like even if Joe Biden tested positive who cares? Like we all know that Donald Trump himself partakes. He's an expert. He knows about this stuff. That's what he said. Like this isn't gonna lead to anyone changing their minds. It's not going to even lead to people really thinking that Joe Biden is worse. Like I think most people who are decided, they're already decided. Like finding out that the candidate they support, you know, did cocaine. I mean, does anyone really care? Like the only thing that would irritate me is that this is a schedule to drug and we need to decriminalize all drugs at a minimum. Like I am a proponent of legalization of all drugs because that's the way you undercut the black markets. But I mean, that's a different story for a different day. But that'd be like the only thing that would irritate me, right? Is that the architect of the crime bill who is the one who got lots of people locked up for drugs is doing it himself, like that type of critical. But the hypocrisy is what would outrage me, but it wouldn't change my opinion of Joe Biden. Like I think a lot of people in DC probably do drugs, right? We