This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now, enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 248 of the program. Today is July 3rd and before we get started, as usual, I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members, all of which either sign 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 A.B. Jason Kennedy, John Ford III, John Perry, Johnny Spiropolis, Raphael Nadel, and Steve Allen. 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 humanist report or by clicking join underneath any video you see on YouTube. So we've got another great show for you this week. We will talk about Donald Trump's town hall on Fox News and how he bombed. We'll talk about his decision to retweet one of his supporters yelling white power and how his handling of COVID-19 somehow actually is getting worse. And while we're on the subject of COVID-19, American based biopharmaceutical company Gilead is charging Americans with health insurance thousands of dollars for their treatment for COVID-19. We'll talk about Bernie's response to their greed and also Jamal Bowman, school's CNN on the message of defund the police. Nebraska's Cara Eastman brilliantly trolls her Republican opponent. Sasha Baron Cohen crashes a far right rally and friends of the show, Joy Marie and Patrick Coatman stop by to talk about their brand new book, which is the satire of centrists and doughnut Twitter. And finally we closed the show by talking to 2020 congressional candidate from Washington state Chris Armitage. And that's what we've got on the agenda for today's show. I hope you will enjoy it. Let's go ahead and waste no time and get right to it. So I don't know how many of you got to tune into Fox News's town hall with Donald Trump. And initially I wasn't going to bother with it because I mean this is Donald Trump's home turf. They can try to make him look better than he sounds in actuality. But I started to see a couple of clips and then I saw more clips and then I realized this was a complete disaster and I watched about 80% of this. And this was a bad look for Donald Trump because he kept face planting time and again. And you know what's interesting to me is that this was hosted by Donald Trump's literal close friend, Sean Hannity, who he speaks to every single night. The conflict of interest there. But I mean, even Sean Hannity couldn't really do a good job at making Trump look good. I mean, there were there were areas where he tried to kind of smooth out some of the really bad looking pieces. So for example, we're going to get to a clip where Donald Trump is asked a very basic question, but then he starts answering and then goes off on some weird tangent. So rather than like trying to rein in Trump and get him to answer the question directly, Sean Hannity kind of just like follows him into that new conversation. It's a really weird transition. But I mean, you could see what they try to do to polish this turd to make Donald Trump look better, but it doesn't work. And this was a really bad town hall. Now, for whatever reason, Fox News is not very good at doing town halls or at least communicating a particular narrative during these town halls because during Bernie Sanders Town Hall and Fox News, they were hostile. They tried to make him look bad. But like the Chad that he is, Bernie Sanders, did not face plant in the way that Donald Trump did Donald, you're probably watching. How are you? All right, that's how you do it.  This is about you specifically. So you take control. But at the end of the day, this was not substantive at all. Donald Trump repeated himself multiple times and it was a really bad look for him. And he keeps digging like he sees the poll numbers. He sees the writing that's on the wall and if things don't change, he's going to lose. And right now he's kind of flailing. He doesn't know what to do to save his campaign. And you kind of see that desperation here through this town hall just shines through. So the first clip I want to show you is of Sean Hannity asking Donald Trump very clearly. I mean, this is like a really easy softball. What are you going to do if you are reelected? What's your agenda? Trump was incapable of giving any answers. And what is what are your top priority items for a second term? Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I've always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It's in a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think 17 times, all of a sudden, I'm president of the United States. You know the story of writing down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, this is great. But I didn't know very many people in Washington wasn't my thing. I was from Manhattan from New York. Now I know everybody. And I have great people in the administration.  You don't have to drop bombs on everybody.  If John Bolton, in fact, released classified material, should he be prosecuted? Yeah, absolutely. Well, he did release classified. Actually, he had a judge said. Notice how based Sean Hannity swooped in to kind of guide Trump into the discussion about John Bolton, because he saw that Trump clearly can't answer this basic question. He wants to talk about John Bolton. So I can't make Donald Trump look bad and try to rein him in and ask him, Mr. President, we're talking about your agenda in your second term. So he just kind of followed him, which I think is what you would do if you're trying to make someone look good. But I mean, let's go over what Donald Trump said. So he started to talk about experience. But since he doesn't really have political experience, and if you're going to compare experience with a career politician like Joe Biden, who's been in office since what, I don't know, 19-2, like you're going to not really be able to make a solid case, right? So what he said was he started off by saying, well, one of the things that will be really great, you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I'm trying to do the Trump hand motions, if you haven't noticed. I've always said that, but the word experience is a very important word. It has important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I think it was Washington, I think I was in Washington 17 times. And all of a sudden I'm president of the United States. And you know the story, I'm riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with the First Lady and I say, this is great. None of that makes sense. That was what he said in a responsible question about your agenda for your second term. I mean, if you're Donald Trump, this should be easy, right? We're going to finish the wall. We're going to stop COVID-19. We're going to get the economy on track. He literally starts talking about experience. Okay. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!  So I mean, take it as a win if you're a Trump supporter. He then moved on to criticizing Joe Biden because Joe Biden is unable to articulate himself. He can't answer a single question without going on nine different tangents. And he's going to criticize someone else for not being very eloquent. And on top of that, as he ironically criticizes Joe Biden, he then goes on to inadvertently admit that he thinks Joe Biden is going to beat him in November. He's a guy who doesn't talk. Nobody hears him. Whenever he does talk, he can't put two sentences together. I don't want to be nice or un-nice, okay? I mean, the man can't speak. And he's going to be your president because some people don't love me, maybe.  Don't forget, before the China plague came in and it's a China plague, before that came in, we had the best job numbers we've ever had. We had the best economy we've ever had. He's going to be your president. Is it obvious that Joe Biden is in cognitive decline? Yes. I see it. We all see it. It's obvious. However, if you are also very obviously in cognitive decline, if you can't even spit out a coherent sentence to criticize someone who is in cognitive decline, then you yourself shouldn't be speaking on this because in criticizing Joe Biden for this, you initiate this conversation about mental stability. And we don't want to talk about that for Donald Trump because you are very clearly not mentally fit to be president. You are very clearly struggling to articulate yourself as well. So I mean, if I'm Donald Trump, I'm veering far away from this talk of cognitive decline because I mean, look at Donald Trump. He can't talk himself. I mean, he says words, but nothing he says makes sense. But that wasn't the only ironic piece of this town hall because Donald Trump then proceeded to lambast the media's bias. And he does this on the most biased network in the country, Fox News. But of course, they're not who he's talking about because they're good since they do propaganda for him. The level of dishonesty in the media is, I think they're the most dishonest people I've ever dealt with.  The media is just so dishonest. They're not trustworthy.  I mean, if you're going to talk about media bias, then Fox News has to be part of that conversation. They just have to be. All corporate media is biased. They have a pro-corporate establishment slant, but Fox News is one of the worst offenders. Since a Republican is in the White House, they have functionally become state media. So to talk about media bias, but make an exception for Fox News, when you're Donald Trump, I mean, it shows that you're disingenuous. You just want the media to not be adversarial against you. That's what this is about. Now he moved on and he was talking about the protesters. Once one of the attendees asked him what he's going to do to stop the scary protesters. And Donald Trump then proceeded to go on a rant against the PC police, but he included Republicans in this rant and claimed that they're the ones who were actually to PC. So I'll play the clip for you, then we'll talk about the implications, what he means by this. The Republicans have to get tougher. And I'm telling them all the time, because they're sitting back, they want to be politically correct. They think, oh, it's terrible to say something bad. No, no, no, I told them, you'll see, if anyone attacks, I stopped it the other night. I stopped it a number of times, but you'll see what's happening. And we told them every night we're going to get tougher and tougher. And at some point there's going to be retribution because there has to be. These people are vandals, but they're agitators, but they're really, they're terrorists in a sense. Okay, so let's think through the implications of this. This far right extremist psychopathic party of death and destruction isn't apparently tough enough for Donald Trump and they're being too PC. So in what world could he even imagine Republicans being tougher than they already are, being anti-PC as they already are? Well, what he wants is for Republicans to be more like Tom Cotton and that Gates, where they literally explicitly suggest that we should hunt down Americans and extra judicially murder them. That's what he's implying here because he talked about retribution. So if you're not talking about being more like Matt Gates, where he says we should treat Antifa like the terrorists in the Middle East, then what else are you talking about? I mean, there's no other conclusion that you could take away from that, right? So I mean, what he's saying here to suggest that Republican should be tougher is quite literally just them being insane. Like they can't be any tougher or any anti-PC than they already are without becoming full blown fascistic, right? But he moves on. So he starts talking about the radical left and the threat that they pose to the country. And he ends up backing himself into this weird argument where he's defending Elliot Angle. Yes, that Elliot Angle. And he begins critiquing the radical left in a way that's very familiar once he loses his train of thought. So he just resorts to an easy argument. Venezuela. Elliot Angle was a pretty mainline guy. He lost by like 37 points or so. He just got killed in the election we just had yesterday. He was supposed to be a shoe in. And he got hit by a strong far left candidate. You have a couple of other congressmen and women that probably are gonna lose or are going to lose very close, too close to call. Look at what's happened to the Democrats. And these are real lefties. These are people that take a look at Venezuela. They're bad. Venezuela. I don't know what else to say, Venezuela. You know, fill in the rest.  Nobody takes this argument seriously. It is literally a meme to say Venezuela because Republicans say it's so much. It is not an argument. It is the absence of an argument. But I mean, he has nothing else. And Donald Trump can't help himself. He gets sidetracked. He's like a cat with a laser pointer, right? You see them that their attention is on something and then you shine a laser pointer and they're immediately distracted. That's what Donald Trump is, except with like thoughts in his head, right? They just fly by in his mind and he tries to grab onto one and then he likes that. And then that one leads to a different branch and he grabs that one. It's just, it's nonstop. I mean, take for example, this moment where he literally brought up impeachment, the fact that he was impeached, which you don't wanna do if you're a sitting president seeking reelection, he could barely make it through a sentence complaining about impeachment without getting sidetracked and he even threw in one of his greatest hits. He had a perfect phone call. They took, think of it, they impeached a duly elected president of the United States on a perfect conversation. Actually, there were two conversations. The first one was, hello, goodbye. They don't even talk about that. The second one was about the same thing. They impeached a president of the United States. Now, no fairness, the Republican party was great because they got 196 to nothing Republican votes in the House and 52 and a half to a half, Romney, Romney, too bad. But half of, I call it 52 and a half to a half because he had two votes, one was yes. Yeah, perfect phone call. Saying that doesn't even make sense. There's no such thing as a perfect phone call but he said this now multiple times. Apparently he likes it that much. He thinks it's that brilliant. Now, moving on, he proceeded to also lie about mail-in ballots throughout the course of this town hall. So now we have a mail-in thing. Did you see California? He's sending out millions and millions of ballots. Where are they going? Where aren't they going? Is the postman gonna hand them out? Are they gonna take them out of the mailboxes? The other thing, Mark, it's very important. You get it foreign countries, you know, they keep talking old Russia and China. Especially China, not Russia, especially China. Are they gonna print millions of ballots using the exact same paper, using the exact same machines? And are they gonna print ballots and then hand them in? And all of a sudden, it's the biggest risk we have. Yes, it is not voter suppression or voter ID laws, which he also said that he liked throughout the course of this town hall. It's actually mail-in voting, which is going to lead to fraud. Because, I mean, these ballots, they could come from China, guys. And if they come from China, people get their ballots. I mean, when you put them in the mail, where are they gonna go? It's not like they're gonna go to the addresses that are marked on the envelopes. I mean, they could go to, I don't know, foreign citizens in Canada, and they could be voting. I don't like his argument against mail-in voting. It ranges from borderline incoherent to just outright lies. There's no fear that we are getting ballots from China. This isn't a thing. You can look at the Heritage Foundation's website where they track individual cases of voter fraud. And it's not an issue. In states where there is basically mail-in voting almost universally, it's not an issue. But he can't help himself. He knows that the only way he's going to win is if people don't vote. If more people vote, then that means Joe Biden's gonna win. So he wants to stop that at all costs. So that's why he's lying.  But that doesn't stop him. Now moving on, if you've been paying attention, the cases when it comes to COVID-19 have been skyrocketing, but he assures us once again that the only reason why it looks like we're worse off than other countries is because we're doing more tests, which that's not the way that this works, but nonetheless, he said it anyway. So we have more cases because we do the greatest testing. If we didn't do testing, we'd have no cases. Other countries, they don't test millions. So up to almost 30 million tests. So when you do 30 million, you're gonna have a kid with the sniffles and they'll say it's coronavirus, whatever you wanna call it. I said the other night, there are so many names to this, I could name 19 names like Corona 19, but I could name 19 names. But the fact is that there's never been a thing like this. We've done 30 million, almost we'll be there probably today or tomorrow, 30 million tests. That's not the way that this works. If we didn't do testing, we would have cases, we just wouldn't know about them. So for you to say that, that's not a valid argument. You're mishandling COVID-19, you're not taking it seriously. So you can claim that the only reason why it looks as if we're worse off than other countries is because we're doing more testing, but in actuality, that's a poor excuse and anyone with a brain is not gonna buy that. So for him to say this over and over again, you would think that he'd have some other lie that's more compelling, but he keeps sticking with this. On top of that, he implied that people with COVID-19 or people who don't have COVID-19 who have the sniffles are getting misdiagnosed. But what does that even mean? You're the president. So do you have evidence that people are being misdiagnosed? That they have a common cold, but they're being characterized as having COVID-19? I mean, what are you even talking about? We shouldn't have to ask for this much clarification from the president. But the fact that we do is embarrassing. Now, moving on, I have one last clip that I wanna show you. We all know Donald Trump has mastered the art of auto fallatio. Nobody is better at padding themselves on the back than Donald Trump. But when he was asked a very simple question about what his biggest accomplishments as president has been in his opinion, you can tell he wasn't prepared to answer even this question. What do you think is your greatest accomplishment in your eyes? So a lot of people think it's the fact that we will have, I think before I'm finished this term, we'll have close to 300 judges, federal judges. A lot of people think, because that's a record, that's a number that nobody can even believe. And part of it was that President Obama was unable to get judges approved in a large number, about 142 judges. So I took it off, got them approved, and then got a lot of approved beyond. So we'll be close to 302 Supreme Court judges, great ones. And so I think a lot of people would say that, I think one of them is our military. We have Space Force, which we've added after 76 years. We've added a new branch of the military. It's a big deal. A very important deal because space is going to be very important. It already is. I would say the rebuilding of the military and the taking care of our vets. We had a 91% shown approval rating the other day, the VA. The VA was a disaster. All of my life, I've seen these horror stories. I don't want to really jinx it because they'll go around and find somebody that's unhappy. But you don't see that anymore. And our administrator, our secretary, has done a fantastic job. And we're at 91% approval rating with the VA. And we got veterans choice approved and veterans accountability. That's where you can fire people that do a bad job. You couldn't do it before. Very hard to get. They tried to get it for 50 years because of civil service, unions, et cetera. You couldn't get it. I got it. And the other thing is veterans choice where if they can't see a doctor, we have great doctors in the VA, but if you can't see a doctor, you go out and you get a private doctor. We pay the bill. And you have no idea how great it's been. And it's actually, you save money, believe it or not. But you have no idea, we save lives. Tremendous number of lives. And I would say that's an achievement. But we've done a lot with the largest tax cuts ever, the largest regular. If you look at our regulation cuts shown, more than any other administration in history, whether it's eight years or in one case more than that, we cut regulations. And we still have a lot more we're going to be cutting over the next month and a half, two months. So we've done a lot and we're very proud of it. And we had the best until this artificial problem, because I called it an artificial problem. We had to turn off our country to save millions of lives. And now we've turned it back on. And it's coming back much faster than anybody thought possible. So we've done a lot of things. You know, it could be judges, could be the military. Donald Trump is his own biggest fan. And he still hadn't thought about what he'd be bragging about during a reelection at a town hall. I mean, is there anyone dumber than Donald Trump in the world?  His accomplishments, according to him, federal judges, rebuilding the military and privatizing portions of the VA, tax cuts for the rich. And we had a great economy pre-COVID. That's because of him. It's not like all the other countries in the world were recovering also after the Great Recession 2008. It's because of him that the economy was good. Look, people don't care about judges. Americans don't know about the importance of the federal judiciary generally speaking. So if I'm Donald Trump, I think this is an easy question. You see protesters marching down the streets. You say, look, we did criminal justice reform. I signed the first step act into law. I did that. I also gave you all $1,200. Did you see those checks that we sent out with my name on it? I gave you that. These are the things that I did for you, reelect me. But what does he do? He talks about tax cuts for the rich. People can get their checks and see that they're not bigger because of Donald Trump. People are hurting now more than ever. So he doesn't know how to read the room. And this is evident when you look at his actual campaign slogan, it's keep America great. I thought that he'd go with make America great again. He's literally going with keep America great during a pandemic, during nationwide civil unrest.  So I mean, like if he loses, then I think that what he did in 2016, it wasn't necessarily a fluke per se. But what it showed is that he was able to, as an outsider, see these underlying material conditions that are causing people to be unhappy with the status quo and establishment and react to that accordingly in a way that was persuasive to enough people. But now as an insider, he has no idea. He's not aware of what he's done at all. He doesn't necessarily know what people want because he's in that bubble. I mean, he's just, he's going down in flames and it's kind of beautiful to watch because he deserves this, right? Even at a Fox News Town Hall, if you can't pull this off, then how are you going to win a reelection?  It's a foregone conclusion. Yes, the polls look awful for Donald Trump, which I think is leading to him kind of bubble because he's panicking. But, you know, things can change between now and November, but still Trump's performance has been so abysmal. This town hall was such a disaster, so laughably bad that, you know, if I'm on team Trump, I am bailing. This is not what you'd expect from anyone who's even mildly competent. And I thought that Donald Trump was at least a little bit more strategically savvy than this, but to see him just face plant time and again, I mean, it's embarrassing. Like, I almost feel like cringe for him. It's that bad. Over the weekend, Donald Trump used his bully pulpit to encourage vigilante violence against protesters because they were tearing down confederate statues, which are racist because maybe they were committing property damage. Donald Trump put them on blast, which obviously endangers their lives. You have the president of the United States tweeting out pictures of these people to his millions upon millions of far-right-depraved lunatic followers. Yeah. Now, on top of that, he retweeted a video of one of his supporters yelling a slogan that you think he wouldn't want to be associated with. Nonetheless, this is the video that he retweeted. The president of the United States retweeted a video of one of his supporters yelling white power. He is shameless. He doesn't want to use dog whistles. He wants to be unrestrained. He wants to just say what he thinks. Now, the White House, I think hilariously, so tried to downplay this and suggest that Donald Trump didn't hear what his supporter said. He didn't hear the person very clearly yell white power.  He heard it. There's no way he didn't hear it. We all heard it. I mean, he was clear. He didn't stutter. He didn't mince words. He said white power, twice. Trump heard it.  They're comfortable with the racism that Donald Trump condones and endorses, right? And look, there's always, this irritates me because there's been this conversation surrounding Donald Trump on the media about whether or not he's racist, as if it's debatable. Of course, it's not debatable. Yes, Donald Trump is very explicitly racist. And what he's doing here is trying to test the waters. He's trying to see where the border actually is, right? Because before, he tried to normalize nationalism. All of a sudden, that's not necessarily a term that we associate with the far right and fascists. So that's okay. So maybe, just maybe there's a chance that he can normalize white power. So what he's trying to do is kind of get his feet a little bit wet, right? Try to figure out how far people will allow him to go. I think he knows that by retweeting one of his supporters yelling white power that this is going to cause controversy, but how controversial will it be? And the fact that other Republicans, like Tim Scott, for example, called him out, that kind of goes to show you that, all right, he knows that there are some limits to what he is allowed to get away with. And retweeting, which is basically an endorsement of one of his own supporters yelling white power, is something that is a little bit too far, even for America. Now, I think this is a very easy thing to see. The conclusion is obvious.  Ben Shapiro proceeded to make excuses for Donald Trump probably because he has cognitive dissonance and doesn't just want to admit that Trump is pretty explicitly racist. Nonetheless, watch Ben Shapiro proceed to make a fool out of himself as he tries to explain away Donald Trump literally retweeting again one of his supporters with the Trump flag and America first on their golf cart yell white power.  And this made national news because again, it is reflective of a narrative that the left would like to push, which is the President Trump is a white supremacist. Now, I think what actually happened here is the same thing that happens to a lot of people on Twitter. When you are bored, you just start retweeting things. And when you retweet things, you don't always watch the video all the way to the end. And President Trump, as we know, has the attention span of a nap. The President of the United States is, I mean, he literally will not read presidential briefings that are put on his desk. They have to put them in bullet point form. And then he doesn't even read those. He'll ask for those to be shortened. Okay, the man is not famous for sitting there and reading tomes of Winston Churchill. So when it comes to watching videos online, my guess is he saw a person driving past with a Trump sign and then he just retweeted it. Right, that is the most likely explanation.  Yes, the answer is yes. I mean, look, think about it this way. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that Ben Shapiro is correct. And like all of us sometimes, he just retweeted a video without watching it. He's the President of the United States, Ben. It doesn't matter if you do this sometimes or it matters less at least. It doesn't matter if I do this from time to time. He is the President of the United States. Maybe we shouldn't just accept that all the President just made a mistake in retweeting this. He's the President. Millions of people are going to see it. If you don't want to spread the message of white power, maybe be more responsible with your tweeting.  Stop rage tweeting. I don't know. You're the President. We shouldn't just accept this. Oh, he's like all of us. He just likes things without reading them or he shares things without fully reading the article, shares videos without watching. No, we should expect better from the President. Now, let's say that Ben is correct. Let's assume that Ben has Trump paid here. He's correct in saying Trump probably didn't watch the video. Okay, well if Donald Trump actually doesn't want to spread the message of white power, if he doesn't want to make it seem as if he was endorsing that message, shouldn't we at least expect him to be a little bit apologetic? Shouldn't we expect him to come out and say, look, I totally apologize. And I denounce that supporter of mine that was uncalled for, that was unacceptable. And the Trump administration is not wanting to be associated with anyone who is a white nationalist or a white supremacist. We unequivocally condemn them. I mean, if that were true, shouldn't he say that? Shouldn't that be his response in Trump's own words? It was terrible, tremendous. We don't like them. We don't want their support. No, that wasn't Trump's response. So I mean, for you to do these mental gymnastics, Ben, to try to figure out what Trump was thinking, he wasn't thinking, right? This was the absence of thought. He saw one of his supporters yelling white power and it didn't even register with him probably. He just retweeted it. Why? Because I think the conclusion is pretty obvious. He's racist. He's explicitly racist. And I think he would love to be able to just be explicitly racist publicly and not have to resort to so many dog whistles. He doesn't want to call these protesters thugs. He doesn't want to use words like when the looting starts, the shooting starts, which you can argue that that's explicitly racist, but he doesn't want there to be this veneer of respectability. He wants to pull away the code words and just use the words that he really wants to say that's at the tip of his tongue. And that's what we're seeing. He's testing the waters. It's not that complicated. Trump is racist. That's why he retweeted this video. So believe it or not, there was a time when the United States managed to flatten the curve. However, fast forward to today and not so much. We are now hitting record highs when it comes to daily COVID-19 cases with states like Arizona, Texas and South Carolina being the newest hotspots as the Verde reports here. Now, when you compare us to other developed countries, they've been able to get COVID-19 under control, but we have not been able to do that. And it is just genuinely embarrassing, especially now since the EU is literally considering banning travel from the United States since we're not taking it seriously. And when I say we are not taking it seriously, let me be more specific. I mean, governments, multi-billion dollar companies, but also the people. Usually I exempt the people from my criticism of society's failures. But if you are one of the people who are refusing to wear a mask because you think it infringes on your liberty, you're part of the problem. You're part of the problem. You don't complain that the government requires you to wear clothing in public. You don't complain that the government requires you to wear seatbelts. So if you think a mask is too much to expect during a pandemic, you're part of the problem. But it is also the case that we do have institutions that are part of the problem as well. For example, you have large companies not taking this seriously. For example, any large retail chains like Walmart should be requiring every single customer to wear a mask. Otherwise they don't get to enter the store. And on top of that, you have some companies taking it so far as to just pretend like COVID-19 is no longer a thing. American Airlines, for example, they started booking at full capacity again. Let me repeat that. People are going to be at full capacity in a tight space during a pandemic.  Now on top of that, people were already not necessarily comfortable with the prolonged lockdown, I think rightfully so, because they had no economic support. I mean, if you're losing your job, if you can't go to work, what are you supposed to do? The government gave us one payment of $1,200 per person. I didn't get mine till mid-nay. So a lot of people maybe are expecting that one-time payment, still haven't gotten it. There's not really any serious conversations about whether or not we're going to give them more money. It's just been a bungled response. And Donald Trump definitely fumbled from the very beginning of this pandemic, but he's not improving. He's not trying to do better. He's literally now making matters worse as his administration is now stopping funding for over a dozen COVID-19 testing sites at a time when we should be increasing testing. And he's now setting his sights on what's left of the Affordable Care Act and he's trying to give it the final death blow. And as he tries to do away with Obamacare and its entirety, he has nothing to replace it with. Now I've said time and again, I'm not a fan of the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't go nearly as far as it should go. I believe in a national health system, but my compromise is single payer Medicare for All, where instead of having socialized healthcare, we have socialized insurance. But I mean, the best we got out of a democratic administration was a right wing policy. So because Democrats adopted the right wing policy hoping to get Republicans on board, now they have nothing. Like their only answer is to do no reform, just repeal the Affordable Care Act and let the people who rely on it just suffer, not have any insurance whatsoever. I mean, he's doing this during a pandemic, very clearly for political purposes, but I think he believes this is going to help him get reelected if he can brag to his people that he got rid of Obamacare. So as CNN reports, in the midst of a global pandemic with a presidential election just months away, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the landmark healthcare law that enabled millions of Americans to get insurance coverage and that remains in effect despite the pending legal challenge. In a late night filing, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said that once the law's individual coverage mandate and two key provisions are invalidated, the remainder of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect. The justices will hear arguments in the case sometime next term, although it is unclear if they will occur before the November election. So when he could be saying, look, we're going to do single payer, but specifically in a limited scope for COVID-19 patients. What he's saying is, you know what? That shitty healthcare that you have that you already aren't too happy with, we're going to get rid of that. Even though it's better than nothing, we're going to get rid of that too during a pandemic. And guess what? If people lose their healthcare, if people are afraid to go see a doctor thinking that they might have COVID-19 and not want to pay for all the medical bills that come out of that, it's going to be even longer that we have to deal with this pandemic. So I mean, we should be embarrassed.  It's unacceptable. If we just did everything correct from the get go, we would be like other countries where we start to reopen and not have to worry about resurging so soon. But I mean, we're not even in a second wave. Other countries have to worry about a second wave as well. But we're not even in a second wave. We're still in our first wave. We flattened the curve and we collectively agreed as a society that we should take this seriously. And now we're just like, mm, I'm done with this. Let's just pretend like it doesn't exist. Okay, it doesn't work that way. COVID-19 will be a thing regardless if we want to admit that it is or not. But the response has been awful. And you'd think that during an election year, Trump would want to get this handled under control so he can brag to people about the great job that he's done. But I mean, he's jumping to step B, right? He's not trying to tackle this. He's just already bragging about the phenomenal job that he's done. It's honestly just astonishing what's happening. This is laughable. This is absolutely laughable. I mean, our government is completely incapable of dealing with a pandemic. And even if this is complicated and new to all of us who are alive today, I mean, there are procedures, there are steps you take to minimize the effect of this. But we just, we threw all that out the window. And now people are rebelling against masks because Donald Trump won't equivocally, unequivocally tell his supporters that it's not some type of deep state conspiracy. The government isn't acting. Democrats aren't doing enough. Most Democrats aren't doing enough. I shouldn't say all of them. And we're just at this point where we're gonna just reopen the economy as if it's not a thing and say to hell with it. It's really deeply sad. And I don't blame the other countries for banning travel from the US. I mean, if we can't get it under control, you can't like put everyone else in jeopardy as well. It's that simple. So this is sad, but that's where we're at. It just seems like, you know, we're gonna be dealing with this until we have a vaccine. And we better hope that the vaccine is available soon. Otherwise, I mean, we're just, we're not gonna get it under control. We've decided collectively as a society, we're just done with this. So it's depressing, but that's the state of things in America. So I wanna talk about a story that is going to infuriate you. There's a company called Gilead. This is an American based biopharmaceutical company. And they are working on a treatment for COVID-19. Now, expectedly, because healthcare in America is a commodity, they are going to be gouging people in the United States. And even if you have health insurance, they're going to charge you thousands of dollars if you have COVID-19. This is absolutely insane.  And they're, you know, pricing it at this rate for altruistic reasons as if it isn't an outrageous price. So as William Feuer of CNBC reports, Gilead Sciences announced Monday the much anticipated pricing for its coronavirus treatment, Remdesivir, saying it will cost hospitals $3,120 for a typical US patient with commercial insurance. The company announced its pricing plans in preparation for it to begin charging for the antiviral drug in July. The company has been donating doses to the US government for distribution since it received emergency use authorization in May. The drugmaker said it will sell Remdesivir for $390 per vial to governments of developed countries around the world. And the price for US private insurance companies will stand at $520 per vial. In the US, that means Gilead will charge a lower price for government programs and a higher price for private insurers. Whether you're covered by a private insurer, whether you're covered by a government insurer, whether you're uninsured with COVID-19, there will not be an issue for access with Remdesivir. Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day said in an interview Monday with CNBC's Meg Tyrrell on SquawkBox after the announcement, uninsured individuals will be covered under provisions of the CARES Act, a senior official and the Department of Health and Human Services said on a conference call with reporters Monday, for privately insured people out of pocket costs will be determined by individual insurance plans the official added. While there are still no COVID-19 treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration, scientists have found some success in shorting the recovery time of severely ill patients by using Remdesivir. Given the potential to reduce costs for hospitals and to save lives, Gilead said its price of $390 per vial is quote unquote, well below the drug's value. Oh well, are they not merciful? They could be charging you a lot more for this potentially life-saving drug, but they're only charging you $390 per vial which will amount to thousands of dollars even if you have insurance. At a time when 63% of Americans can't afford a $500 emergency, they are very merciful and altruistic by charging you thousands of dollars for this. I mean, unbelievable. This is greed, this is price gouging and they're trying to mask their greed, even though this is a multi-billion-dollar company with this rhetoric about how accessible Remdesivir will be. I mean, it's outrageous.  We know you're trying to price gouge us. Don't make it worse by being smug and sufferable pricks. Now, Bernie Sanders spoke out about this. He tweeted, as a company, Gilead is now worth over $15 billion more than before the pandemic, in part because it expects to make enormous profits by charging over $3,000 for a drug they had already developed years ago. Their greed must be stopped. And I applaud him for speaking out about this because I haven't seen many politicians address this, but yeah, they already developed this drug. They put it out, charged people thousands of dollars even if you have insurance so you shouldn't have to worry theoretically. And they're trying to make it seem as if they're the good guys. Oh, well, we're just, we're so kind. Here's this potentially life-saving treatment for COVID-19. That'll be a couple of thousand dollars, please. Aren't we really generous? I mean, this is exactly what you expect when you commodify healthcare in this country. Americans should not have to worry about things like this because understand how this makes us less equipped to deal with this pandemic. If people see articles like this, they realize that if they get COVID-19 or maybe they suspect that they have COVID-19 already, this will make them feel disinclined about going to see a doctor because they can't afford the treatment. So maybe they don't know for sure if they have it. They suspect they do. They go out in public, spread it to more people since this does spread asymptomatically. And then we're back to square one, right? We're not fighting the curve. We're not worrying about fighting it. And it's because of things like this. It's just, there's so many issues that stem from this, right? People can't afford this. Maybe they get the treatment and they receive medical bills. This may dissuade people from seeing a doctor. It's just all around bad. And we shouldn't allow for this. We shouldn't allow for the commodification of sectors of society where people's lives depend on it, right? Like we don't commodify the fire department. It's just a public service that has provided to tax-paying citizens. But we allow for this to happen. And look, if government actually cared and wanted to stop this, then this is an American-based company. They're out of California. So I'm threatening to nationalize them. And you know what? If government actually nationalized more big pharma companies like this, maybe they wouldn't be as greedy. Maybe they'd realize that the government is going to crack down on them. But I mean, Gilead is smart. They know that all they gotta do is donate to politicians and then they're good. Pay a pharmaceutical lobbying firm to lobby on their behalf. And they're good. They don't have to worry about anything. I mean, they're never gonna worry about nationalization. They don't even have to really worry about regulation, right? We keep talking about how we need to lower prescription drug prices, but do we really see that happening substantially? So I mean, this is going to continue to happen if we don't actually change the policies that allow for this to happen. This doesn't have to happen. It shouldn't happen especially during a pandemic, but nobody should ever have to worry about whether or not they'll have access to life-saving treatment because of the cost. An immoral society allows that to happen.  So I mean, Gilead should be punished for this. They should be punished for this. They should be nationalized. Now that's wishful thinking. It'll never happen. But I mean, for them to just do this willy-nilly and then pat their own backs as if they're doing a great service to society. It's just, it's insufferable. And you know, reading the story, it is infuriating, but this is the United States. So anyone who hears this, they're not going to be shocked. This is just what happens in our late-stage capitalist country where we have commodified everything. I love this story. So there is a group based out of Washington called the Washington 3%ers, which basically consists of armed thugs, white supremacists, and over the weekend they held a rally called March for Our Rights, which is supposed to be the right-wing response to the Parkland students' March for Our Lives. Apparently this rally that they held didn't go as planned because a local member of city council out of the area wrote this on Facebook. Sasha Baron Cohen pulled a bullshit stunt at the March for Our Rights 3 event disguised as a pack of Southern California paid for the stage setup and musical entertainment.  His security blocked event organizers from getting him off the stage or pulling power from the generator. After the crowd realized what he was saying and turned on him, his security then rushed the stage and evacuated them to awaiting private ambulance that was contracted to be their escape transport. It was a setup and a smack in the face of the great people who put on this event. And if you're wondering, yes, we have the video footage. Now he claims that the crowd turns on Sasha Baron Cohen at one point, but watch how far he takes it with this song and they're still on board. I ain't lying, they're no jokes. Corona is a wembroke hoax. Corona is a wimp. About change. Wednesday is the best. We don't think I'm a taker. Actually, shall we lock them up? The wind blew. This red fake news, they controlled by the you-know-whose. Gonna do, shout out loud, like the South East do. Generally, Chinese people, what we gotta do? You come up like you're old, what we gotta do? You can say, you come up like in World War II. Chinese people, what we gotta do? So my question is, at what point did he lose the crowd? Because they seemed like they were on board with everything that he was saying, no matter how ridiculous that seemed. Now it was kind of hard to understand everything, but basically he called Coronavirus a liberal hoax. They agreed. And then there were a couple of different responses that he tried to get the crowd to yell. Give them the Wuhan flu, or chop them up like the Saudis do. So he said, what are we gonna do with Dr. Fauci? They yelled, chop him up like the Saudis do. So they're advocating for violence against the public official. He said, CNN is fake news controlled by the you-know-who, which is obviously referencing an anti-Semitic trope about Jewish people controlling the media. I mean, did you hear any booze from the crowd? I didn't hear any booze. Seems like he didn't lose them at that point. He says, journalists, what are we gonna do? The crowd chanted, chop him up like the Saudis do. Wow.  What's absurd is the fact that they're agreeing to this. They're agreeing to say what he is telling them to say. To them, it's not too absurd, or maybe they're not thinking, they're just dumb, but either way, I mean, this is pretty incriminating. The last thing, Chinese people, what are we gonna do? Nuke them up like in World War II. So all of this, and it was the Japanese who were nuked, but I'm sure that nobody in the crowd was confused, but nobody was lost here. Like nobody protested this. Nobody like ran up to the stage and tried to get him to come down. If it was that controversial to this crowd, don't you think that when he started talking about chopping up people like the Saudis, he would have lost them? But that public official claims that he lost the crowd at some point, at what point? Now, maybe he does lose the crowd, because we don't have the full video. That was just the Facebook live stream that somebody posted to YouTube. I don't know if this is part of Sasha Barron's second season of his show on Showtime. Who knows, but all I'm saying is the fact that he got the crowd to go along with this extremist, quite literal, fascistic rhetoric. It really speaks to how deranged the far right is. And it's not surprising because the far right is deranged. Otherwise they wouldn't be far right, but these are the people who support Donald Trump. These are the people who they have big signs there that say defend against tyranny as they literally call for tyranny, chop up journalists, bomb other countries, nuke other countries, nuke public officials like they do in Saudi Arabia.   So you can argue that the radical left is a scary boogeyman that we should all be afraid of, but what are they doing that's so bad? They're tearing down racist statues of Confederate soldiers who shouldn't be there in the first place. Time and again, we see property damage. What they're advocating here is for murder and genocide. And apparently they were offended, but he got through a lot of that song. Maybe he went more extreme at the end and they started to realize, put two into together, maybe he's trolling us, but either way, I mean, this is not a good look for right-wingers. It shows you how extreme they've become and yet the media talks about the far left all the time. We have an entire political party that is far right. Some elected members of Congress who are Republican are quite literally fascist now. We're not talking about proto-fascists. We're talking about outright fascism here, advocating for United States citizens to be extra-judicially murdered. Matt Gaetz just tweeted out a couple of weeks ago that we should hunt down Antifa like we do the terrorists in the Middle East. This party is so extreme that a party like this, this far right of a party, would usually be relegated to the fringes in Europe, not necessarily now, but they wouldn't be mainstream, right? Like UKIP is about as extreme as Republicans and they don't really have a chance of ever putting together a governing coalition. I shouldn't say that because they are moving to the right, but you get the point. Like the Republican Party in comparison with other right-wing parties around the world is so further to the right, so much more extreme, and it's not just their rhetoric any longer. Now they're actually advocating, let's move towards violence, not just against foreign enemies, but let's maybe advocate for violence against American journalists, American public officials like Dr. Fauci. I mean, this should make all of them stop and think and be introspective. If you're a conservative in America, this should scare you, that your side is advocating this, and if it doesn't scare you, if you have nothing to say, then I guess you agree with it. So we've talked about Cara Eastman before in the program. She recently won her primary in Nebraska's second congressional district. I brought her on the program. She's a phenomenal candidate, but ever since she won her primary, her Republican opponent has been trying to frame her as this kooky, like radical socialist, and he's making a fool of himself. He literally retweeted someone who shared an image of Cara Eastman, which basically proclaims her to be far left, and in that same image includes Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Nancy Pelosi. Because Nancy Pelosi is definitely associated with the far left. So I mean, there's no nuance. There is really no curiosity here to try to figure out what the far left is. I mean, this is just, it's shallow, hacky attacks, and he doesn't really care, right? Don Bacon, her opponent knows that his supporters will eat it up, but it's become a meme at this point.  You have no substantive arguments that you can make against your opponent because she's better than you on every single policy issue. So all you can do is fear monger about the far left. And he does it so much that her team decided to respond in, I think, a perfect way. So she tweeted this out, friends, we have a very important announcement today. We are launching a collaborative internet game that all of us can play together. This game is called Bacon Bingo. Here's some backstory and the rules of the game. In my run for Congress, I'm running against a huge Trump fan named Don J. Bacon. Predictably, he and the local Republican Party called me a socialist and a radical extremist, and just about any combination of 1950s Joseph McCarthy, word salad fear mongering you can think of. This has never bothered us, but because they do it in literally every tweet, we created a fun game so we can all play along. Here's how we play. If the accounts Don J. Bacon, DCRP online, or N-E-G-O-P, use any of the following words and phrases, cross them off on your Bacon Bingo card. When we get a Bacon Bingo, we will have a massive online party. Okay, I think we're all set, game on. Okay, so let's take a look at Bacon Bingo, the generic smear edition. Okay, so the first thing I love is that in the middle, instead of just, they're just being like a free space, she includes free stuff. So that's a brilliant move. But I mean, all of these things are what Republicans have called far leftists. So we have Comrade Kara, bankrupt the government, George Soros, big government, socialist, socialism, leftist, handouts, radical, communist, antifa, extreme, rioters, squad, government takeover, extremist, un-American, anarchist, socialized healthcare, AOC of Nebraska, that's a good one. Agenda, Venezuela, infanticide, and coastal elite. Okay, to Kara and her team, you get the slow clap. You get the slow clap for that. That is A-plus trolling.  It's so hollow that you can't really respond to that unless you're making fun of it, right? So the way that you kind of defang their arguments and you let them know that you couldn't care less is by meaning them, make fun of what they're saying. Because this really is the playbook of Republicans when it comes to progressives. They don't necessarily know how to respond to progressives because progressives are glued to the policy substance.  These are all things that Americans want to hear about because these are issues that affect them directly.  You don't know what socialist means. You don't know what communist means.  But when she makes fun of him like this, that is such a powerful way to kind of show what a parody the GOP is, what a joke they've become. They have nothing. You have Donald Trump all the time denouncing the quote, unquote, radical left as this party lurches closer and closer towards fascism. You had Matt Gaetz literally suggest that we should hunt down Antifa like we do the terrorists in the Middle East. So they're advocating for the extrajudicial murder of Americans. Meanwhile, they're denouncing the radical left. No, you're the radicals. And what's interesting is that as they cry louder and louder about the radical left, left-wing ideas become more popular, not just among left-wing people or the American people, but even Republicans. I mean, polls are starting to show that if not an outright majority of Republicans, a plurality of Republicans support Medicare for All. Because guess what? It's a common sense solution to a healthcare crisis that we've been dealing with, that people are dealing with, even Republicans. Like everyone wants healthcare. It's not just a left-wing thing to want. Republicans need healthcare too. Republicans need education. They really do. Republicans need food. Republicans need housing.  No, she's actually speaking to the specific needs of people in Nebraska. She's talking to people. This is a grassroots candidate who won her primary because she is addressing the specific concerns of the people of Nebraska. So for you to make a fool out of yourself, there's nothing that Kara can do, but meme him. So I mean, this really is a plus trolling here. This is what progressive campaigns have to do to respond to Republicans because they're such a joke. You can't take them seriously. You can't try to like articulate some kind of response that's meaningful or substantive to someone who yells Venezuela at you.  And that's how you respond to stupidity. You troll them. You make memes out of it. You make fun of them. Believe it or not, CNN still has not called the race between Elliot Engle and Jamal Bowman. Now, if you watched my program last week, we announced that Jamal Bowman not just defeated Elliot Engle.  So I think it's pretty obvious that Jamal Bowman will emerge victorious even if we don't have all of the precincts reporting yet. You can kind of project who's going to win based on what we see currently, but CNN still hasn't made the call yet. Now you can argue that, you know, they're data people. They're just a little bit more conservative than you and I. I'm going to argue that it's because they're haters. And the reason why I say this is because CNN is obviously biased against progressives and the left and they love the Democratic Party establishment and the establishment more broadly speaking, but you see their contempt for the left in their interviews. So Jamal Bowman was interviewed by Aaron Burnett, a CNN anchor who has very vocally been against the left. She called Bernie Sanders a hypocrite before and, you know, you can kind of see in her tone in the way that she like talks about the policies that Jamal Bowman is in favor of that she disapproves. She doesn't like them. So take a look because what he does here is just brilliantly dismantle the CNN propaganda that we always see. So she's going to try to stop him from promoting, you know, defund the police or propagandize it by using Jim Clyburn's argument against it.  So you came in here and you fought hard and you know, if you're the winner here, this is not the way a lot of people thought it was going to go to state the obvious. Governor Cuomo endorsed Congressman Engel, Senate Major Leader Schumer endorsed him, the House Speaker Pelosi endorsed him, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the current chair of the House Democratic Caucus, senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus. What do you say to them tonight? Well, you know, again, the people have spoken. You know, we worked really hard from the very beginning of the campaign to build deep authentic relationships with people across the district, across race, across class, across religion, across age. Again, from Co-op City, the Eden Wall to Ryan New York. So we did that work very urgently in the very beginning. We had hundreds of volunteers working with our campaign, knocking doors, leafletting, making phone calls. So those relationships matter. And we've always felt confident that those relationships would translate into votes. Even when the pandemic hit, we were able to pivot pretty efficiently to a virtual campaign. And it led us to the point where we're up now by many, many points. So when it comes to calls for racial justice and the protests, which also have defined so much of this race, you have joined those calling to defund the police. So I wanted to play for you, part of a conversation I had with the Democratic congressman and House Majority Leader, Jim Clyburn. He wants police reform, but here's what he told me about how we've used the defund movement. Here he is. History is instructive. I was there along with John Lewis back in the 60s and the early 70s. We saw how our movement got hijacked. We did a lot back then that led to where we are today. We would have done even more if we had not got overtaken by a slogan there. Burn, baby, burn. Took off in this country. Be careful that we don't get hijacked this time like we got the last time. What do you think when you hear his thoughts? Well, defunding the police is about a reallocation of resources. It's about a demilitarization of the police and investing in public health, investing in housing, investing in jobs, investing in education and healthcare and environmental justice, investing in mental health supports. 50% of those killed by the police suffer from some mental or physical disability. What that means is we need to take a different approach, not a lethal approach. Defunding the police also means the end of sending military equipment to local police forces that they then use on people within the community. So it's not defunding as a rallying cry, but what it means is it's a reallocation of resources toward public health in other areas that we've neglected for quite some time. So it sounds like what you're saying is you understand his point. Sometimes words can come to mean something to people that may not actually be what you're saying. I mean, you're saying reallocate. You're not saying you don't want police. I'm presuming, right? You're not saying you don't want police providing safety. You want them to be trained differently and behave differently, right? As opposed to going away? Well, there's a role for police, but I pushed back on the notion that police and safety have to go hand in hand. When we talk about safety, the number one thing that makes me safe and secure is making sure that I have food security, housing security. So Jamal Bowman is a very smart person and I think that he knows what she's trying to do. He just lets this bias roll off of his shoulders and that's really what you've got to do, right? She basically asked him at first how he thinks he won in spite of the entire establishment coming out against him.  But I mean, he just, you know, he very clearly said because the people have spoken and he's correct there. But what we really get into the bias is when she tries to use the credibility of Jim Clyburn to try to, you know, push back against this notion that we should defund the police. Now, I shouldn't have to say this, but as a news anchor, your job is to inform your viewers. So you shouldn't be confused about what defund the police means. If you are, do your research, do a better job because you get paid millions of dollars, right? But she tries to make it seem as if defund the police isn't what it means. What it seems like, maybe it's more nefarious. Maybe it means get rid of the police entirely so that way if someone's breaking into your home, you have no one to call. So I mean, she's trying to be alarmist here, but Jamal Bowman just, he brilliantly had an answer to that. So he said, defunding the police is about a reallocation of resources. It's about a demilitarization of the police and investing in public health, investing in housing, investing in jobs, investing in education, healthcare and environmental justice, investing in mental health supports. 50% of those killed by the police suffer from some mental or physical disability. What that means is we need to take a different approach, not a lethal approach. Defunding the police means an end to sending military equipment to local police forces that they then use for people within the community. So defunding is a rallying cry, but what it means is a reallocation of resources. So I mean, by now you should know this. If you're confused by what it means and you're a CNN anchor getting paid millions of dollars per year, you should know what defund the police means by now. You can't put all of what he said on a bumper sticker. So defund the police is easy. It implies reallocating resources, right? It's easier to just say defund the police, but she tried to make it seem as if, well, you know, defund the police, maybe this means get rid of the police entirely. And sure, it is the case that abolitionists do want to defund the police, but she's over complicating this because she's trying to obscure what this means, right? But it's not that difficult. And Jamal Bowman broke it down beautifully. We have been overpolicing cities in America now for too long, right? When we see this issue of homelessness, what is the response from cities? Oh, let's just throw more police at the scene. Let's overpolice the homeless away, but that doesn't work. You respond to issues that cities have appropriately, not with the one-size-fits-all solution, rather than responding to homeless people and the crisis of homelessness with more policing rather than criminalizing homelessness, you respond with housing.  So what he's saying is we have to rethink the way that we address all of humanity's issues, right? Up until now, it's just been police. Let's police this issue. If we police drugs, if we police crime, all of this is going to lead to a better outcome, but that has been a proven failure. So when people say to defend the police, they're saying rather than giving all of the money that the city has to police, we have to actually do a better job at tackling the root causes of these issues. People aren't going to be more secure if we have more police in the streets. When it comes to people of color, they actually feel less secure, more vulnerable because of the way that they are racially profiled by police officers. And he also explained how police and safety don't go hand in hand. And that makes sense because think about this. You're not more secure if you don't have food security or if you have housing insecurity. So what he's trying to do is disaggregate this notion of security and police, right? We need housing security, healthcare security. We need to stop thinking as policing as the appropriate response to everything in society and actually do better, right? Improve conditions in cities, right? And I mean, it's not necessarily something that should be confusing for a CNN host. Like I get, like you get a pass if you're an average person and you don't necessarily know what people mean by defund the police, but if you are in the world of politics, if you've done any coverage of this as a news anchor, don't pretend as if, you know, you don't know what it means.  But I mean, what it seems like if I'm watching this and I'm an average viewer is that, wow, if this smart CNN anchor can't get it, then this must be too confusing. Maybe these protesters are wrong.  That's the takeaway.  I think they had a very clear message. But what did the media do? Oh, well, I don't know what they're calling for. I don't know what these protesters want. They don't really seem to have a cohesive message. I mean, the message was clear. Resources need to be redistributed in this country. The 99% have nothing and the 1% have everything. Now, I think that defund the police is much more concise and politically palatable because it's one specific policy. I mean, there's multiple policies linked to that. But I mean, you could really tie it to one thing, whereas with redistributing resources is more complex. But I mean, you saw what they did. They lied about what Occupy was fighting for. So, I mean, when it comes to these types of protests, you know, the media can try to co-op the narratives. And usually they're successful at that. But I feel a little bit encouraged knowing that they haven't really been able to do that at this point. We see, you know, people who don't necessarily agree with the overall message of protests like D. Ray McKesson and this eight can't wait, you know, who was attempting to reduce police brutality by 72% or whatever, but what about the other 28%? No police brutality is what we're aiming for. So they, you know, they're still on message to fund the police and they haven't wavered from this message. And I think that's so encouraging. And it's nice to see people like Jamal Bowman actually get elected so he can bolster their message, bring that message to Congress and explain it very eloquently as he did on CNN to people in Congress who either don't get it or don't want to get it.   So after waiting a week for the results from the Democratic Party primary taking place in Kentucky, we finally know who won. Mitch McConnell has won. And you might think, Mike, aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself here because the general election takes place in November? No, Mitch McConnell basically just secured his reelection because Amy McGrath ended up eking out a victory. And this is after she raised $40 million. In fact, it was more than 40 million. Charles Booker didn't even raise a million and yet he almost beat her.  He inspired people. Amy McGrath is running as a pro-Trump Democrat who doesn't have any policy ideas. She admitted that she would have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh had she been in the Senate at the time. And I don't know how she thinks she's going to win because her entire strategy, it hinges on peeling away Republicans from Mitch McConnell, whereas Charles Booker had the right strategy. You activate non-voters. You bring out people and excite them, get them actually interested in politics, get them to vote for you. He did this by having a real message. He believed in Medicare for All, a Green New Deal. And this wasn't him trying to just pretend as if he's the next Bernie Sanders. He tied this specifically to the issues that people in Kentucky were dealing with. They need healthcare. They need jobs. So I mean, this is really disappointing because this looks like it's almost a sure bet that Mitch McConnell is going to get reelected because Amy McGrath is the nominee. Now I will say that in spite of this news, if I were Charles Booker, I would not concede. I would ask for a recount before conceding because there was a lot of shenanigans. There was voter suppression that did end up benefiting Amy McGrath. They reduced the number of polling places in areas of Kentucky with black residents. Cutting down the number of polling places is going to lead to the more conservative candidate most likely being able to pull off a victory because I mean, if older people are the ones who oftentimes opt for the more conservative candidate, then they're not the ones who have to worry about working.  So, you know, for Amy McGrath, the voter suppression helped her in the primary, but it's going to hurt her deeply in the general. And that would be true if Charles Booker were the candidate as well. But I mean, we'd still have a better chance overall because of what he's able to accomplish. Now let's get to some numbers here. So overall, Amy McGrath won with 45.4% of the vote to Charles Booker's 42.6%. And this was extremely close. As recently as this morning, Charles Booker was ahead by like six points and then it kept jumping back and forth. And it seemed like he was going to pull this off. Now, once political polls announced that she had won, I mean, we found out that the Senate rating is that Kentucky will likely stay Republican. Shocker. Now the thing about Amy McGrath is when you look at a poll from June, this took place between the 13th and 15th, she has 20 points behind Mitch McConnell. So she's going to need a miracle to win. And a recent poll from Data for Progress showed that she was 20 points behind, but Charles Booker was poised to do better than her. You know, he still had his work cut out for him. It wasn't going to be an easy victory in the event he were the nominee, but he would have had to make up 14 points. Whereas Amy McGrath will have to make up a 20 point deficit. Now, apparently there's some hope because a poll from mid-May showed that Amy McGrath was actually ahead of McConnell by one point. And this is according to RMG research and apparently talking about term limits is what was kind of driving her support. So she doesn't really have any specific policies, but she found success not necessarily by positioning herself as a pro Trump Republican, but by saying I support term limits. That was apparently really popular. So we'll see what happens. I genuinely hope that she beats Mitch McConnell, even if I can't stand her because she stands for nothing. She is a shallow Democrat. You know, the establishment wanted her over Charles Booker and you know, they got what they wanted, but it's really frustrating because you'd think that voters would know better. And you know, people are starting to wake up, but I read, you know, some comments on Reddit and Facebook from people who were supporting Amy McGrath saying that they intended on voting for her. And there were zero policy reasons listed there. It was just, I'm voting for Amy McGrath because she's the one who could beat Mitch McConnell. Now, what were they basing it off of? I'm not necessarily that one poll. They were basing it off of, she's just the stronger Democrat. And to them, it's like they keep doing things that are against their own self-interest. It's not just in Kentucky. I mean, look at how many people in the primaries, according to exit polls, supported Medicare for All but voted against the candidate who supports Medicare for All. So voters, you know, Democratic Party primary voters in particular, they have this tendency to not vote for what they want when it comes to policy, but instead try to pretend as if they're political pundits, right? Try to gauge who's gonna be the best person to take on the Republican. And this strategy is a failure. I mean, even Alison Lundegin Grimes who got steamrolled by Mitch McConnell in 2014 came out and endorsed Charles Booker. This is someone who ran as another Republican-like Democrat. Not as bad as, you know, Amy McGrath, but she was still very conservative. She wouldn't even admit that she voted for Barack Obama, the sitting president at the time. But even she sees the writing on the wall, realizes that that strategy of trying to pretend to be a Republican, try to out Republican, the Republican isn't going to work. So, you know, she endorsed Charles Booker and I commend her for that. But now we have Amy McGrath who if she's going to have a chance in hell, she has to really emphasize term limits, but I mean, I don't know if that's gonna be enough. I don't think it's gonna be enough. I think that basically her victory secures Mitch McConnell another six years in the Senate, which is awful because he is one of the most destructive politicians in American history.  So much is writing on this and you don't have a message, you don't have an agenda. What policies do you stand for?  I mean, it's embarrassing, right? Democratic party primary voters have got to do better, stop pretending as if they're pundits and just vote for which policies they prefer. And I mean, the establishment has got to stop wading into these primary races. Chuck Schumer endorsed Amy McGrath.  Chuck Schumer is a clown. He is in power and he has no idea how to challenge Republicans. Oftentimes he just lets Mitch McConnell run rough shot over him. He allows Mitch McConnell to confirm Trump's federal appointments because that allows for an earlier recess, which lets Democrats campaign. But I mean, it kind of undermines the whole purpose of electing Democrats in the first place. It's just, it's really frustrating, right? It's frustrating because we had an opportunity. Like I'm not trying to imply that if Charles Booker were the nominee he would definitely win, but would our chances be better? Yes, that's not me saying that. That's what the numbers indicate here. Much better than Amy McGrath. 20 points is a lot further off than 14 points. And yes, you'd have to make it up, but could it be possible? It is possible. Would he have to battle with voter suppression? Yes, but could he still win? Yes, because if you have a message that resonates with people, that is extremely powerful. So I mean, I'm really disappointed because I see this as a missed opportunity. I see this as a missed opportunity to get out one of the most destructive politicians. And Democrats opted for one of the biggest clowns imaginable. I mean, Hillary Clinton is probably less conservative than Amy McGrath. So I mean, we'll see if it works. I mean, honestly, I wish her luck. I want her to beat Mitch McConnell. He's that bad, but is she going to? Probably not. And you know, Democrats have nobody to thank but themselves. They chose another clown of a candidate. And you know, we'll see how this strategy plays out for them. I'm assuming it's gonna be like, you know, the other times when they choose conservatives. We'll see. This is really disappointing because we could have had someone who is a phenomenal candidate who would have been a great senator. And now it's over. So does anyone remember Joe Biden? I think that's his name, Joe Biden. He was the Democratic Party's nominee in 2020. He was the centrist clown that Obama pushed through. Got everyone to drop out and back him when he won one state. Yeah, apparently he's still around. I'll tell you that the strategy of hiding him away is definitely effective.  He probably didn't even make this tweet in particular, but he put out a tweet that got under my skin and it's unacceptable. So let me read to you what he said on Twitter. He wrote, healthcare is a right for all and not a privilege for the few. Now you might think, Mike, doesn't that sound like a victory? Doesn't that sound like a win? Doesn't that sound as if he's adopting the policy that you want? Well, no, it's not a victory. It's not me not taking yes for an answer. What he's doing is he's stealing the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and in particular Medicare for all proponents, but he's not stealing the policy. You see, I'm okay if you want to steal the policy. If you want to adopt Medicare for all, great. I wouldn't necessarily believe you, but I think that's a step in the right direction. Just adopting it, I think would shift the Overton window to the left. But he's not adopting Medicare for all. This is the individual who said if Congress were able to, in some historic feat, pass Medicare for all and send it to his desk, he would veto Medicare for all. This is the individual who prior to the Democratic primary, the health industry was betting on to save their asses. This is the individual who literally used his dead son to make it seem as if Medicare for all would be an insult to his legacy. So Joe Biden does not support Medicare for all, but yet he's co-opted the language that activists of Medicare for all use. And that's a problem. That's disingenuous. You see, believing that Medicare for all is the right policy and believing that healthcare is a right. These are ideas that are inextricably linked. You can't disaggregate them.  Now Joe Biden isn't the first Democrat who has used the healthcare as a right language, but here's why they're wrong. If you don't believe that 100% of the population should have healthcare, not access to healthcare, not access to affordable healthcare, but just healthcare period, if you don't believe that 100% of the population is guaranteed that, then functionally speaking, you don't believe it's a right. Do we believe that we should all have access to affordable free speech rights? Do we all believe that we should have access to affordable Second Amendment rights? Like these things don't make sense, right? Because when we're talking about things that Americans perceive to be rights, we don't put a price tag on them. That means that if you put a price tag on this right, you're automatically excluding people. Because if you believe that you have to purchase something, even if it's a public option, well, that is going to exclude people. That means you have to have money. That means that affordability is going to be something that the government dictates. So that's going to leave some people out. So you don't get to say healthcare is a right if you don't support Medicare for all. Now, if you come around to Medicare for all, then you can say healthcare is a right, but you're not allowed to say that you believe healthcare is a right and not a privilege. If your policy makes it a privilege, it doesn't work that way. So when I see this, it's frustrating because you're just trying to placate us.  You don't support healthcare being a right if you don't support single payer, Medicare for all. Because something that's a right is guaranteed to us. You can't exclude people on the basis of their income level or their health insurance provider. So, you know, this has got to stop. And I see other Democrats saying the same thing. They have completely stolen the language that we use to talk about Medicare for all. And they've stolen everything with regard to the way that we speak about this policy with the exception of the policy itself. You can't use the language if you don't adopt the policy. Now, you are absolutely within your rights to adopt the policy. I encourage you all, if you're a Democrat, to adopt the policy, but you can't do that if you don't actually believe in the policy that makes healthcare a right. So when I see this, it pisses me off.  You stand for nothing and it's deeply insulting.  It's a slap in the face to Medicare for all activists who quite literally want to make healthcare a right. But you say, no, I agree with you. I want to make healthcare a right. But the response isn't to actually make it a right. Functionally, you just want to make it a privilege, make it cheaper and affordable, which is subjective. And look, the Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction, of course. I think that everyone who is a proponent of Medicare for all will admit this. But the problem with the Affordable Care Act is that what is affordable is highly, highly subjective. And even if it is technically affordable, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be robust healthcare. So when we talk about healthcare being a right as Medicare for all proponents, what we're saying is every single American should have access to healthcare, not health insurance, they should have healthcare and they are entitled to all types of healthcare, mental healthcare, eye care, dental care. We're not going to limit what they are able to get. We're not going to place restrictions on whether or not they can get into this doctor based on their network. No, it's a right, a right is a right. That means you can't deny it to people on the basis of income. So for him to say this, I find it highly insulting. You don't get to say this unless you actually support Medicare for all. Now, if you're going to endorse Medicare for all, I wouldn't necessarily believe you as I alluded to earlier, but then you are allowed to say that you believe healthcare is a right.  Like, you don't get to say healthcare is a right. No, that's nonsense. It's insulting and just stop. How are we going to pay for it? Hello, everyone. I'm here with Joy Marine Mann and Patrick Cote. They are the authors of the upcoming book titled The Yoss Queen Chronicles, coverage of the first annual resistance forum and pre-orders are now available. They're here to talk about this amazing new book. Thank you both for coming on the program. Thank you so much for having me back and for having Pat. Yeah, yeah, I'm very excited about this book. I think that if you have a Twitter account and you are in lefty circles, there's about a 95% chance based on my research that you have argued with one of the people that they are satirizing in this book. So tell us about the book because we know about Pat's last book. I have it with me. It's called An Inconvenient Douche. Absolutely hilarious book. It was a parody of Peter Dow who has since had a change of heart. So we know that the book's coming out soon. Pre-order start today, as I mentioned. What can we expect with this book, Patrick? So we wanted this one to be a little more, I guess, fun and cathartic in a way than the last one. So the concept is that there's a panel of pundits, media personalities, people we know, Joanne Reed is Joanne Reed, Nancy Pegosi is Nancy Pelosi, obviously. And they're just having a resistance forum somewhat and discussing politics. So that was a good setup to bring in all the issues we wanted to talk about. Now, Joy, tell us a little bit more about some of these characters because Patrick kind of touched on some of these names and I already like what I'm seeing. Like, who are we going to see in this book? I'm guessing it's going to be an all-star cast, but tell us a little bit about maybe your favorite character and some others that you think people will find hilarious. Well, I mean, we have, you know, we have some special appearances that we're not going to give away, but my favorite, and it seems like my husband's favorite character is Alyssa Shilano. He is very accurately a total mess. So she's extremely entertaining. We have Nira Tantrum. We have James Scarville. Tom Pires. Jennifer Puben.  Absolutely. Now I have to ask, I don't know if you guys are able to reveal all this yet, but Pat, you're managing the Nate's liver account. Do we hear from Nate's liver at all? Nate is not in this one, but we did have a, I don't want to give too much away, but Peter Douche does make an appearance. Okay, okay, that's interesting. Cause I was wondering how you handle that character because, you know, the parody came out and it was very representative at that time, but he's no, like he's on our side now. And I think that all of us, even though we were skeptical at first, have kind of embraced Peter Douche. So I'm curious about that. So does his character evolve in this book? Absolutely, yeah.  And I remember we actually talked about that at one point and I was, you know, you and I agree on almost everything politically. You're one of the few people, but I had a hard time seeing his conversion as authentic and I'll give him credit. He's stuck to it. So anyway, back to 2016 and Peter Dow, I just didn't feel like it was right to keep it up, keep the parody going for a guy who's now at least saying the right things for our side. So that's why I abandoned it. So he does have a come to Jesus moment to sort of appear in this book as a good guy. That's awesome. That's awesome. So Peter follows Nate's liver and May. So I think he's kind of like opening up to the sense of humor of everything. You know, and one thing about Peter Dow that I love is that he made a comment that made me laugh out loud. He said something about like 2016, Peter Dow would have blocked 2020 Peter Dow. So it's nice to kind of look back and grow. And I love that, you know, his evolution is reflected because the first book was absolutely hilarious. So just in terms of like satire, I kind of have a sense of like what I'm getting, but I have yet to read the book. So, you know, the general setup is that they're all at this forum, they're talking. So overall, are there any more details that you can discuss? I know that one of you were going to share a passage from the book as well. So what should we expect from the book? I mean, if you are not like on Twitter, like we are, is there still something for you? Because I would argue yes, but like from the author's standpoint, what is your sense of like what to expect if we're going into this and we haven't read the previous work from you, Patrick? Right. Well, we definitely wrote this not in, you know, we didn't want you to have to come from Twitter land to understand this. So, you know, even if near a tantrum is near a tandem in real life, hypothetically, you don't need to know that. You don't need to know her Twitter habits. You know, basically we're covering electoral politics, the orange man in the White House, trickle down resistance is covered. We've got lots of little themes of different segments. That's how we broke the book up, where they discuss, you know, just what's happening in politics essentially, where the Democratic Party is going. Okay, okay, that's interesting. One thing that I wanted to ask you guys because you wrote a book that's a satire. And you know, one thing that I heard is that satire during the Trump era is dead because life itself is so strange that it's basically like we're living through a parody. So, Joy, how do you write a satire during a time that is basically literally satirical? Like how do you make it more absurd than it is or do the characters kind of just write themselves? Like what's your take on this? There is definitely a lot of quotes that maybe we don't use quotation marks for. It's very, it's very, the shit-lives are helping us inadvertently write it themselves.  It's one of the things that we kind of have toed the line with is that Pat and I both find like literally nothing offensive. So it's been difficult to be like, okay, is this too far though?  And I think it's been so therapeutic for us and there is not a single burner who will not absolutely identify and crack up. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about Bernie Sanders actually. I mean, we're all clearly Bernie Sanders supporters. People who read this book from the perspective of a Bernie Sanders supporter, they're going to get it. Like all the criticisms that we've been railing against for years now, you see that in this book. But Pat, what are the qualifications of the average shit-lib in your book? Like if you can summarize basically what are the ingredients that make them hate Bernie Sanders? Like what is it specifically from a character standpoint?  Right, well, if you're talking about the average citizen, I would say they're so susceptible to mainstream media programming. They're almost not at fault at some level, except that if at this point you don't see that the media isn't telling you the full story on these things, you've got some ownership on that. Where I don't think in 2016, it kind of hit a lot of people by shock, by a storm shock, I don't know what the right word is, but a lot of people trusted MSNBC in 2016. And every year, us on the left, push people, the shit-libs or whatever you want to call them, part of what we try to do is break down that programming that they've been taught that Democrats good, Republicans bad.  They still don't see the problems with the Democratic Party. And if they do, they think it's more important to just win regardless of what those problems are. They don't want to discuss those problems. They think discussing those problems hurts our chances. Yeah, and I wanted you to touch on something that I was thinking about in terms of some of the characters in this, Nira Tantrum, Alyssa Shilano. I don't know who you guys are basing these characters off of, I have no idea. But let's say they're reading this book. Is this intended to just be therapeutic for Bernie Sanders supporters, or do you actually think there is the capacity to kind of get these types of people, not necessarily the tantrums of the world, but the followers of the tantrums of the world to maybe think a little bit more deeply, be more introspective and think maybe my thinking is a little flawed.  Like, is there that potential to change hearts and minds? Do you think for the average reader, like the non-person who's like in a position of power, but like the MSNBC viewer, for example. Right, I mean, I would say this book on its own has no chance of doing that. But collectively, it adds to the narrative out there. You know, when you read this book and then you see the protest in the streets and the police violence against protesters, but then you turn on MSNBC and you don't get any of that information. So I think all it adds up and has a chance. I think in a way, satire and parody sort of smack people in the face sometimes. They're cognitive dissonance and their group think a way of thinking and all their confirmation bias when they hear things about progressives. You have a shot when you mock people to get them out of that. Because they might laugh at the joke and then that gets them thinking, why was that funny? What was it about that? So there's a chance.  Yeah, I feel like we've made some strides after 2016. I kind of feel like the left coalition is broadening because I think that everything that we've been saying has kind of been proven correct during the COVID-19 era, all of the Black Lives Matter protests. So it's almost like we keep getting vindicated. It's just the matter of people realizing that what we were saying was right all along. Like it's about Bernie, but it's not all about Bernie. Like he was kind of the spark that ignited this movement. But I mean, I think the underpinnings were already there. You know, the material conditions that led to his rise were already there. But I wanna ask you, so this is kind of, I don't know if you guys can answer this.  What do you think your character would be like, Joy? And is there a name that maybe they'd come up with? I'm kind of putting you on the spot. But I've been thinking about this myself, like reading your book and Joy, you said something that kind of got me to think about this.  And I was thinking like, what would my Bernie bro character be? So I'm curious, what is your ultimate Bernie bro character that you would think if they wrote this, that they would name you if they wrote this hypothetical book? Well, I think they would definitely call me a fan because I make jokes about like seeing Bernie 17 times and meeting him like a dozen times and crying when I watch his speeches and things like that. So I'm sure they would say, I make him a deity and I probably have some kind of like crush on him or something like that. But I don't care, I mean bring it, I don't care. I'm all good with myself. You can take it or leave it. I have no qualms talking about Bernie and criticizing him. And I think our last show together was one of the best shows I've ever done. It was so great to like delve deep and really talk about our pain and the way we're hurting right now that she dropped out and things like that. So if they really wanna come at me and make me seem like a fan girl, I'll just show them receipts that I'm not. Yeah, we were very critical of Bernie Sanders and I've been critical of Bernie Sanders and I think that's kind of proving that this isn't like a cult of personality because we have the capacity to be critical. It's more than Bernie Sanders as I stated. The movement was already on the cusp of I think emerging. It just needed someone to kind of like help push it in that right direction. But same question for you Pat, I'm curious.  I mean, what I would go for would be that we're never happy. We're purity bros and if we had a list of 10 demands and they gave us nine, we would still be in the streets asking for their heads. And there's some truth to that but mostly it's hyperbole because it doesn't really apply. It's like we really get one out of the 10 of the demands and they claim in that sense that we're still asking for too much. It's unreasonable, but really we're not even asking for all 10, we're asking for them to fight for all 10 because at the end of the day, we're still gonna have to negotiate with Republicans but most of the time we're coming to the table with nothing hard left to barter with. We're not negotiating from a position of strength. So they would mock us for that for sure. Yeah, I wanted to ask you guys logistically because you guys, the audience might not know this haven't actually met each other in person to my knowledge, right? And so you live on different sides of the country and you wrote a book together, how did that work out? Like in terms of like coordination are you guys in constant contact? Do you kind of just like write a chapter and then you like compare notes? How does that work? Because I like can barely write a book myself. Like I'm one just too lazy, but like writing with a second person that kind of adds another factor in the complexity of writing a book. So how do you do this with two people across the country? It's been, it's had its challenges but it's kind of crazy because I asked Pat to do the book because I was just so disgusted with all the tar read treatment and stuff like that. And I just hit him up and I said, look, I know we live like I'm in Pennsylvania, he's in California and I know you're working on another book but let's do something together. And he's like, okay, let's talk this weekend. And it just kind of works out. So the internet has been amazing. Email, conference calls, things like that. And we've gotten our stride. For a while we were like, all right, chapter one and you write chapter two. But then we just got to the point where we were kind of finishing each other's sentences and kind of combining our statements into paragraphs and things like that. And it's almost like we got in each other's head of which is kind of creepy having never met. But yeah, it's worked out really, really well. I think like we've written equal amounts in the book and it's just kind of flowed. If we have questions or any kind of qualms with anything, we just highlight it. And then when we talk on the phone and say, hey, I'm not sure about this. Why don't we say it like so and so. So, yay for conference calls and email. Yeah, I'll add that because of the structure of the book being a panel forum and not primarily plot driven, we didn't have to coordinate so much of that stuff that you normally would if you were writing a book. So if we had a chapter, for example, on trickle down resistance, we would plug in there the concepts we wanted to hit and then we would just start filling in the narrative with the dialogue with who says what to who. And so, Joy might chime in, Alyssa Schlano says, oh, something about her poodle and her purse in one section, for example. So that part, it was easy and then the editing part we would just go through together line by line and tweak and change and it's really been easy and with the lockdown we're both stuck at home. So it's been a great use of our time really. Yeah, I was curious about that because I've seen your guys' streams together and it seems like in terms of sense of humor, you guys are definitely compatible. So I know that the humor will be consistent, like you won't be yanked back and forth in terms of narrative, depending on the chapter. But it still is a lot of work, like it's a tremendous amount of work that you guys did in a couple of months, which I think is just insane and I give you guys so much credit for that. But here's the thing, I haven't read the book yet. So I am going into this relatively blind, I know it's a panel, possibly a play one day, who knows, but can we get a passage from the book? I know you guys said it's possible. So can we get a little bit of a demo, if you will, of the book? Yes, and don't be coy if we sent you the first chapter and you gave us a quote for the back of our book. And it is on our website. So yeah, shout out to like Ron Placone, Graham Ellwood, Mike and all the amazing people who we sent a chapter to who gave us a quote. It was incredible. But yeah, so here's just, you know, it's kind of, it was difficult to pick just one, you know, a little passage out, but Nancy Pegosi, before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the movement in the streets and the challenging years so many Democrats have endured. Please join me for 2016 seconds of silence as we take a knee together in a show of solidarity. James Garville, is this a bad joke, Nance? Are we really doing the Black Lives Matter thing straight out of the gate?  This is an exercise to mourn Hillary's stolen 2016 presidency. It was her turn again. We were still with her in 2016 and now we're still withering. Alyssa Shilano, oh my God, I brought the perfect hat for this. All colors matter.  Nina Burner, put that down.   No one's perfect. Let's begin. Nancy begins to lean over wobbles and then stops abruptly. Soledad a lion. Everything okay, Nancy? Nancy Pegosi. Actually, Soledad, I think in the spirit of independent women and partially in the spirit of the wonderful martini I had backstage, we should probably have people perform the moment of silence when they get home.  So perfect. Joy and greed. Excellent. Let's get this party started with a quick look back at happier times. That's good stuff, good stuff. Okay, okay. And I will say that just based on my preliminary reading of the first chapter, I was so far rated at 10 out of 10. So we'll see, we'll see. Okay, so tell us what we can do. You mentioned pre-orders, we'll have links down in the description box. When does the book come out, Pat? So we put up pre-orders starting on the 30th and then the book should be shipping in August. Exact date, we're not sure, because we have to get it back from our book provider. But if you go to savageandpat.com, that's where you can get the book. I did wanna make sure and do a shout out for the guy that did our cover. He's a fantastic illustrationist. He does comics and political cartoons, Danny Hellman. He's on Twitter at just Danny Hellman, hellman. And he was great to work with on it, fantastic guy. He did some illustrations for the inside of the book as well. That's exciting, I look forward to that. So once again, the title of the book is the Yoss Queen Chronicles, coverage of the first annual resistance forum by Joy Marie Mann and Patrick Cote. Pre-order it today, thank you all so much. I'm definitely looking forward to it. If there's anything that's going to be cathartic after what we dealt with throughout this year, I think it's gonna be this book. So everyone check that out and tell them that I sent you when you pre-order it. Hi everyone, I am back with Chris Armatage who is running in Washington state's fifth congressional district. He is facing off against Kathy McMorris. She is a pretty far right evangelical Republican and Chris has been on the program before, but he's back to give us an update on his progress. Chris, welcome back to the program, buddy. Appreciate the opportunity to come back and this time we're not completely matching, so I don't mean to coordinate better, I guess. Yeah, definitely, definitely. If people can tell the difference between the two of us, that's important. I did see an image floating online of an interview that you did with TYT's John Iderola where it looks like you two were twins. I thought that was awesome. So yeah, he's just a foot taller than me. That's what people don't realize when they see us sitting next to each other. That's the big difference. Right on, right on. So give us an update about your campaign because the primary is coming up really soon or the election has come up really soon. How's everything going? I know that COVID-19 kind of shook up the race. You're a grassroots funded candidate, so knocking on doors isn't necessarily something that you can do as you did before unless you figured out some way to do it in a pandemic. But explain to us what's going on. Absolutely, despite COVID, it put everybody in a similar starting position where normally my opponent who is a lifelong career, long-term incumbent politician, they would just hire 12 or 15 people to Canvas for a year before the election. That's a pretty common practice out here with conservatives and then some other campaigns do, but they just pay people to do that. But we have the same starting position. So our campaign is already set up really well to be able to do digital canvassing and digital outreach. And that's something else too, people who are watching. We could use more text bankers and phone bankers. It's something you do on your phone and it makes a difference. It's a way to communicate with people and let them know that we have an option here. We actually have a choice and we can win this race. And we've also coalesced our forces in a really good way. We've got endorsements from IBEW, Teamsters, AFL-CIO, AFSCME WFSE, which is the largest union in the state, it's the Washington Federation of State Employees. And so it's been a great opportunity to do the behind the scenes work of building a campaign that can really effectively actually build the big umbrella, the big 10 that people talk about. So we're turning the obstacle into the way. Yeah, and what's interesting is that, there are different factions within the Republican Party. There is the evangelical faction, which I think that Kathy McMorris would be characterized there. There's also Libertarians. There is the more nationalistic Trumpian Republicans, but you have managed to kind of appeal to Libertarians while not actually sacrificing or watering down your core message at all.  How are you reaching these people otherwise would theoretically be turned off by your type of campaign? And I think that's what it really means to build a coalition is to find where your Venn diagrams overlap. Because decriminalized sex work and the war on drugs, those are policies that have broad support in the Libertarian community. And you're not gonna get that from an establishment politician. And that is where we're linked up, is rooting out corruption in the system. That's something 99% of voters are gonna agree on, but they're not getting from the people who've been representing them for decades and who created this corrupt system that we currently face the consequences of. Yeah, and I think that's important. Like a lot of people, mostly liberals in DC currently, they have this instinct to try to appeal to the other side. And what that usually means for us is that working people are gonna get screwed over in some way, you know, whether they give tax cuts to the rich or they agree with deregulation to get crumbs for the people. I mean, the Coronavirus Care Act, I think is a great example of that, where we all got a $1,200 stimulus, but large multinational corporations got trillions of dollars. So it's nice to see you have this strategy where you can appeal to the other side, but you're meeting them where they are, but you're not compromising on your ideals. I think that's so key and not a lot of people know how to navigate that because it's tricky, it's nuanced, it requires you to be savvy and I think you're doing a great job of that. So kudos to you. I wanna, on this talk of freedom and you kind of promoting that as a way to appeal, you're running against someone who quite literally is anti-freedom because this is an evangelical and you are an openly LGBTQ candidate. Now, there is a difference between descriptive representation and, you know, substantive representation. I don't just want to elect gay and trans people to Congress just to say that we have them there. Like we want them to substantively represent us and that's what I think is a really key factor here, but you, I think you getting elected really says something, beating an evangelical would make a huge statement. So do you wanna talk to your experience as an LGBTQ politician running against someone who is an evangelical who doesn't support your rights? Yeah, and that's, you know, my opponent, our long-term incumbent has spent decades. Since I was actually two years old and they were first elected to the state house, that entire career has been just a consistent record of voting against marriage equality, voting against LGBT discrimination protections. They have a 0% rating from the human rights campaign, 0%. And so you can't, you can't have a worse record than that. I don't think they've given anybody a negative rating below 0% yet. And so when we swapped that person out in a district that was on the red to blue list last cycle, that's how close we were last time. This isn't a long shot. We can say, you know, we're gonna have someone here in me that protects your individual rights, protect your individual liberties, protects your constitutional rights to the extent that they should be in an evolving and growing and developing nation.  It's that straightforward. And if someone doesn't get it, then they're not really pro-freedom, they're not pro-constitution, they're not pro-human rights. Yeah, it's as simple as that. And to have someone who hasn't evolved at all, I mean, like if Kathy were to evolve on this issue, even a little bit, I mean, that's great. I think there's room for people to grow as we, you know, change as a society, as culture shifts. But she has not moved at all. Like this is a really antiquated mindset that she's still in and she's still representing that district, which I think has changed. It's outgrew her. So it's absurd that she would still be the representative, which I mean, explains why this could be a political district. I wanna ask you though, moving to the Democratic Party Establishment and the state apparatus, what's the response been to you? Because they always talk about, you know, the need for diversity, bringing in invoices that are marginalized, being more inclusive and your LGBT. So I think that they would want to include you. But at the same time, your policies aren't endorsed by the National Democratic Party. Like you would be considered too radical for them. What has been the response from the Washington State Democratic Party to your campaign? I'll say that, I mean, pretty non-existent. That's just, they don't always give the most attention to the side of the state. It's been treated like a lost cause for a long time. My opponent, so they've been elected eight times. And the last six times, their lead shrunk by one to four points, every single election. They've never done better than their reelection campaign. To the point where they were re-elected with a 66% margin. And they only got 53, 54% of the vote in 2018. And we didn't have the massively increased voter turnout that a lot of the country had. We're trending in the right direction. And so, nobody owes us their support. If the state party doesn't feel that this is the best use of their resources, that's up to them. But I'll say my feelings about the parties is also the makeup of the parties. There's Democrat voters, Republican voters, independent voters, Libertarian, Green, you name it. And those are the people we really try to focus on. Because one of the big mantras of this campaign since day one is nobody's gonna swoop in and win it for us. Not gonna happen, it happens here on the ground. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I think you have to put in the effort and you guys are clearly doing that. In terms of the National Democratic Party, I'm curious what your take on this is because Bernie Sanders lost the nomination, unfortunately, as we all know. And I think that he would have been a really great motivator for younger people to turn out. And I think that him not being at the top of the ticket is going to affect turnout for lower races such as yours. How are you able to make sure that turnout in your district is high if you have someone at the top of the ticket who doesn't necessarily motivate young people? Joe Biden, so how are you kind of offsetting that? Because I think that it would have been easier for candidates to win had we had Bernie as the nominee. But now since Joe Biden is nominee, I feel like maybe enough anti-Trump voters will come out and choose to support down ballot Democrats, but it's tough to say. So what are you guys looking at in terms of upping turnout in your district? You know, I think, I mean, fortunately, Washington state already has automatic voter registration that started this year and we already do mail-in ballots as well. So that's something that helps give us more increased voter turnout than most places. But it's the same thing where, like I said, we can't expect anyone to come in and win it for us. A president Sanders wouldn't have been able to get everything he wanted done without a supportive Congress. And that would have been probably his main battle even with largely public support for his policies. And the same goes for President Trump. If he does things that people don't like, it's not gonna be able to break rules without a complicit Congress. And so really, I think it's about rethinking the whole model that we approach our electoral system in. We should be focused on having members of Congress, congressional representatives, senators, city council members who we're proud of.  We're paying attention to that. And so we're gonna increase voter turnout just like we are now when the people who are watching this decide to step up and be the leaders that we've been waiting for. Because we are the leaders. You, me and the people watching this, we're the leaders we're waiting for. Not Bernie, not Biden, not Trump. Nobody comes in. It's up to us to decide that we're gonna take a personal role in the outcome of how things go. And when someone who's a text banker or a phone banker or one day, again, a canvasser knocks on a door and is clearly passionate about a candidate or that candidate does it themselves, that has an impact. That beats MSNBC, that beats Fox. When you get that face to face with someone who can have a real conversation with you break down the straw man and actually talk about a candidate and who their representative is. Yeah, I think that's key because people are realizing now that this overreliance on electoral politics, it can be a dead end.  And I think that direct action is something that people are realizing is really useful. I mean, throughout the country, there's nationwide protests that erupted after George Floyd was murdered. You actually showed up to this event in your estate. There's been a lot of activism in Washington and in Seattle. City Councilwoman Shama Sawant was actually tear gassed and then City Council banned tear gas. I'm curious, what is your take? Because you made a tweet saying that you feel relatively hopeful that maybe we're starting to see a shift in culture. So just in terms of your take on this, you feel hopeful, can you explain why, based on what you saw at these rallies? Well, and I'll open by saying about, I think don't give up on electoral politics, but a lesson my mom told me when I was very young was they're not gonna start paying attention until you're costing them money. Right. And by them, I mean, whether it's politicians or corporations, they are always running algorithms on PR and any decision they make. And when they know it's gonna cost them money, that's gonna affect their decisions. Now, I managed to go to demonstrations in a few different towns within our district, some smaller towns like Kettle Falls and Shewila and our second largest city in the state, Spokane, which are all within our district. I was tear gassed as well on an evening right near curfew. I saw a homeless man I've known for years. He's not some Antifa warrior. He's just a guy who lives downtown, has always been nice to me. And he got hit by three rubber bullets, had some giant welds on him. He was just walking across the street. And then there were armed folks who were in paramilitary gear who weren't law enforcement, who were with some groups who've been troublesome around here before, like the proud boys and the three percenters and they were allowed to walk around unharassed by the police. And so that was a pretty disruptive thing. It was clear that there was people being treated differently. Now, what makes me hopeful is I was, we had 4,000 people show up in Spokane for this march. That's twice the largest march I've ever seen there before. We had a climate strike last year that had maybe half that many people, 4,000 people in a pretty small city. And it was a very diverse crowd. There were a lot of people there who were saying this problem might never personally affect me as someone who's white, but I'm here in solidarity. I'm here to amplify. And then we went to Chawila and Kettle Falls and it was the same thing. It was a ton of people out there. And not only that, but there were people driving by, honking their horns and supporting. And these are small rural towns where they're saying, police brutality is something we're against. There were people handing out some veteran friends of mine where we're in vets against police brutality shirts. People were really happy to see that. It just felt like a culture shift. Yeah, that's great. I kind of feel like people are actually doing a little bit of soul searching. White people are trying to figure out how to be better allies, how to go further than just saying, well, I'm not racist, so I've done my part. Actually putting in time to make sure that we stop this once and for all. There's been times throughout history where it feels like we're on the cusp of change and then things just kind of go back to normal because racism is able to adapt. So I think that if we really shift culture, then that can be a way to get institutional changes. I wanted to ask you because you're a veteran and a couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump threatened to use the military on peaceful protesters and protesters just in general. And this is something that really struck me because this is very explicitly against the First Amendment. He had Attorney General William Bargas, peaceful protesters, so he can have a path cleared for him to take a photo in front of a church that everyone has seen by now. How do you respond to that as a veteran? If you got the call to basically shut down a protest, which I'm assuming would happen violently if we're using the military, how do you respond to that as a veteran? Do you object to what they're saying? Speak to this because I feel like this is something that people need to hear from, especially if you are a veteran. Like your voice in this conversation is really important. I think probably the best thing you could do in that circumstance would be disassemble your weapon, throw it on the ground and join the demonstrators and just openly say, I'm not gonna follow it unlawful order because that's what it is. And there will be consequences to that because it might say in the uniform code of military justice that you don't have to follow it unlawful order, but that's not gonna be figured out until you're court-martialed. And so it's right and wrong. There might be tough consequences, but right and wrong, what the right decision is. And that's part of how earning conservative votes, I think really starts, is let's talk about the constitution. First amendment doesn't have a bedtime. Second amendment, I wish we fought for every other one as hard as people fight for that second amendment because you know what, when you put someone to death by knee to the neck, when they haven't had due process, they haven't a day in court, they haven't had a jury by their peers, and you've given them cruel and unusual punishment as their death, something no court in the land would sense in someone to. So no court in the land would say, we're gonna execute you by knee to the neck. But that happens on the streets in America every day. You bring it to those terms, that's bad news for the people who stand for existing structures. And I fully encourage my friends and brothers and sisters in arms who are still serving, don't follow unlawful orders, don't do it. You wanna be on the right side of history. Based on your social circles within the military, do you think that most would comply or do you think that they would actually not follow through with an unlawful order? Because I feel like there would be consequences for them if they didn't listen, they would be reprimanded. So you're balancing what's right with self-interest and not wanting to be punished. So just based on your experience, I know that you wouldn't follow an unlawful order, but do you think that a majority of people in the military would follow that unlawful order? Because this really set up a conversation about what is the role of the military? And I think that most people who are reasonable agree that it's not to be used against its own people. That's not what the military is for. So what do you think would happen in the event he actually did order the military to come through and shut down a protest? How would that play out in your view? Would there be a mutiny? What would happen if we're allowed to kind of speculate here? Yeah, and that's a tough question to answer because it really digs to the core of our nation's military leaders' hearts and souls and morals and values. But I think most of the military do the right thing. I do. I don't think that our soldiers would open fire. And then now you asked me the same question about police. Absolutely, they act like they're an occupying force in our own country, but our military folk, I think there's an understanding. I think that there's more of an understanding that the people, the military is supposed to be protecting are here in this country, even the people we don't like, even the people we disagree with. When I enlisted, I didn't enlist to just protect Democrats or just protect Republicans. When you're fighting, you're fighting for the people you despise. When I was deployed on my two non-combat deployments, I was there are clansmen in the United States and all sorts of people who I detest, but they're also being protected by our military. So I have faith that our military would do the right thing and not harm our own citizens. Yeah, thanks for speaking to that. I know it's difficult because we're kind of trying to psychoanalyze a lot of people, but this has really got a lot of people thinking, like what would happen in this instance? Because this would be unprecedented. I mean, the military has been used to quell protests before or at least attempted to quell protests, but the president hasn't unilaterally did something to this effect. So it is interesting to think about and what would happen in that scenario. So I appreciate you speaking to that because I know that is kind of difficult. You're gonna have your feet in both camps as a veteran and as an activist. So it's difficult to try to put yourself in both camps at the same time. Well, I was also a military law enforcement as well. Yeah, it's not something I talk about as much because I love getting into the meat and potatoes of healthcare crisis that we're facing and ending forever war. And military law enforcement's a little bit different than civilian law enforcement, but it's a thing I've experienced quite a few different fields that are involved right now. And I think, I mean, as our district's next congressman as another representative in the federal government, I know that there are so many amazing leaders stepping up around this country right now, whether it's creating content that can help get information out there or volunteering for people or contributing what they can. We're just posting about it on social media, showing up, taking to the streets. That leadership gives me hope, it gives me faith. I don't think that we're facing an unprecedented time of challenge and strife in US history and an unprecedented amount of leadership to push back. Yeah, I agree with that. So with that being said, I know that my audience is familiar with your campaign. I know we're rooting for you and you're gonna kick ass, but tell us what we can do to push you across that finish line. You know, if we live in that district, what can we do? If we don't, if we live in a different state, how can we help you get elected? Here's what we need. We need people to contribute because if you watch this, the tens of thousands of people that are gonna end up watching this, $5 each, $10, 25. If everybody did what they can, we would outfund raise someone who gets 5 million a cycle from the fossil fuel industry Wall Street Bank's big pharma. We could out raise them with small-dollar donations if everyone who watched this could lead in their own way, but there are other things too. In addition to that, our digital volunteering, our website, armitageforcongress.com, A-R-M-I-T-A-G-E-F-O-R, congress.com. You can sign up to be a digital volunteer there. You can have conversations with people where you say, look, we need to lead this country towards a greater future that we've ever had. Because we're not gonna find progress in the past. We're only moving in one direction. And longer we spend looking behind us, the further behind we're gonna continue to fall. We used to have the best schools in the world. We used to have the most reliable healthcare for citizens in the world when it was nonprofit. We used to have affordable housing. We used to be a country where you could raise a family on a single income. And we can build that together. You can be the one having those conversations. You can sway votes. This isn't what the establishment tells us that it's just voting blocks are always gonna go one way or the other. There are Trump bumper stickers with my bumper sticker next to him. And it's not because of Medicare for All. It's because we had conversations. And I listened and I addressed what they were worried about. And you have that power too. That is a power that we wield. And that's what happens when you volunteer for a campaign. And then also, if you're in our district, we need your vote. If you know someone who lives in this district, we need their vote. And so that's it. All right. And when is the primary taking place? Ballots drop in four weeks. We are getting down to the wire here. We need to send out a lot of social media, direct mail, we have billboards, we have all different sorts of ads on top of just other voter outreach methods that might not be needed by the general, but are absolutely needed in the primary. We do a top two primary. So our primary involves me actually running against our Republican incumbent. It's important. It matters. And we need your help. All right. Well, there we have it. Chris Armitage running in Washington state's fifth congressional district. Go to his website to contribute. There will be links down below. Yeah. I'm looking for him. Well, that's everything. Thank you so much to my guests. Joy Marie, Savage Joy, Patrick Coatman and Chris Armitage, three guests. That's a lot of guests, but thank you all so much. It was a great show because of you. Well, as usual, I'm not gonna end the show without thanking all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members for helping us not just to survive, but thrive as well. Tomorrow is the fourth of July. I hope that you all will celebrate safely, preferably from homes. And if you do go out, wear a mask, make sure that you don't spread your germs to other people. Let's be safe. But I mean, people watching this, you know, so I don't have to tell you. It's the people who don't watch shows like this who are the ones who aren't necessarily, you know, practicing all of the things that will help us be more effective at combating COVID-19.  I don't know, but either way, I want you all to just treat yourself to s