Black Democratic Rep Endorses Donald Trump And Then RESIGNS Saying The Democratic Party Left Him
Black Democratic Rep Endorses Donald Trump And Then RESIGNS Saying The Democratic Party Left Him. Over the past year or so we have seen many Democrat defectors quitting the party.The #walkaway movement erupted in popularity as people "walked away" from the Democratic partyRecently a black Democrat from Georgia named vernon Jones endorsed Donald Trump saying the Democratic Party had left him. This is something we have heard a lot of recently.Republicans are cheering as more and more people defect from the Democrats but more importantly for Trump is the growing support from Black voters who could get him the win in november.
Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A black Democratic representative from Georgia endorsed Donald Trump, said the Democratic Party had left him.
He did not leave.
And now, after a major backlash, he has resigned.
There are a few big questions about what's going to happen come November.
And one of the biggest has to do with black support for Donald Trump.
We have seen numerous polls throughout this, earlier this year, showing that Donald Trump's approval rating was nearly 30%, with three different polls saying that, very credible polls.
Now we have another poll from earlier this month, saying that Donald Trump's approval among black voters is around 20%.
The reason this is so significant is that there's this saying, whether it's true or not, I don't know, but they say, if at any point a Republican can get 20% support from the black community, a Democrat will never win again.
Now the again thing's funny, I don't know if that means permanently, But now we have another... I mean, it's not really a walk away, because a lot of people who used to be lifelong Democrats feel like the left left them.
So this man, Vernon Jones, came out and endorsed Donald Trump, saying the president has done more for the black community than Democrats have, and that the black community is waking up to this.
He received a major backlash.
He was called a traitor.
He was called some pretty disgusting names.
But if that's how he feels, it's being reflected by many other people.
I mean, look, We know Kanye West.
We know Candace Owens.
We have seen a lot of support for Donald Trump.
But it's even happening outside of the black community.
I have done numerous stories talking about people who have switched parties.
And once again, we have another story about Democrats switching parties.
This one's from March 25th.
Lena Mitchell for the Daily Journal.
More Mississippi party switchers move from Democrat to Republican.
It's not just about Vernon Jones.
It's not just about black voters.
But it is hitting everyone.
And the reason I'm highlighting the black support question is because of the statements made by Vernon Jones.
I don't know how he feels and how other people in the black community feel.
I am not a part of that community.
But I think his opinions matter, especially when you see Kanye recently coming out saying, obviously, he's going to vote for the president, and we all knew he would.
Maybe there's something really to this, and I must admit, I'm more of an outsider looking in.
But I'm going to listen to what this man's opinion is, and I'm going to look at these other stories showing Democrats are polling poorly Democrats are polling poorly among African-American voters, and Trump is doing everything he can to win them over.
Dare I say, I think Donald Trump might actually be gaining tons of ground.
I said it before, and here we go.
Months ago, when I said, look at what's going on with Kanye, look at these polls, Trump is trying to reach out to the black community, and it's effective.
Now we have Vernon Jones.
People have said some nasty things.
I gotta be careful about what I show you, because this is YouTube, by the way.
But I gotta say, some of the responses to his tweets are disgusting.
Whether you like the guy's opinions or you don't, calling someone a racist name because of their opinions is disgusting.
I don't care if you're on the left or the right, I detest it 100%.
You got an argument?
Argue the idea.
Argue against the idea, the policy.
Not the person's skin color.
That's disgusting.
But let's read this story.
Before we do, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's several ways you can give.
The best thing you can do is just share this video.
YouTube is giving a major advantage to mainstream media companies.
They're on the front page right now getting propped up while channels like mine are being pushed aside.
But YouTube's algorithm is nowhere near as powerful as you sharing.
So if you really do like my content, you think I do a good job, sharing this in any way is extremely powerful and really does help.
Otherwise, just subscribe, hit the like button, hit the notification bell, and hopefully YouTube will still share my videos with you.
Or I guess if you're listening on the podcast, thanks for hanging out.
Now, before I get into his resignation, I want to give you the context.
I want to also make it clear, Vernon Jones said he's not leaving the Democratic Party.
He did, however, say the Democratic Party has left him, but he wants to stay to hold them accountable.
We'll get to his resignation, but first, the important context.
State Democrats quickly disown Vernon Jones.
This is from the Atlanta Journal-Courier, I believe it is?
AJC, we'll call it that.
They say, State Rep.
Vernon Jones bucked his party Tuesday and endorsed President Donald Trump, making him the first state elected Democratic official in Georgia to back the Republicans' bid for a second term.
The lawmaker drew a backlash from Democrats who accused him of betrayal at a time when state and national figures were rallying around former Vice President Joe Biden.
Top House Democrats responded by endorsing Jones's primary challenger, while others cast him as a narcissist.
Argue the ideas, man.
Calling names.
I'm not all about that.
Long a polarizing figure in Georgia politics, Jones told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he views Trump as a transformative president whose policies have helped African American voters, military veterans, and farmers.
Quote, It's very simple to me.
President Trump's handling of the economy, his support for historically black colleges, and his criminal justice initiatives drew me to endorse his campaign.
said Jones, who added that he had no immediate plans to switch parties.
There are a lot of African Americans who clearly see and appreciate he's doing something that's never been done before.
Jones added, when you look at the unemployment rates among black Americans before the pandemic,
they were at historic lows. That's just a fact. State Democratic officials tried Tuesday to disown
Jones, a former chief executive of DeKalb County, Georgia's biggest Democratic stronghold.
State Senator Nakama Williams, the chairwoman of the state party, called him an embarrassment who doesn't reflect Georgia values.
Never has that been clearer.
At this moment, when he chose to stand with the racist president who has made an all-out assault on black Americans, who has tried to rip away American health care, And who has failed our country in its greatest time of need, she said.
I'm sorry, did you hear what Vernon had to say?
He disagrees.
Now look, I gotta stand from the outside.
I personally do not believe Donald Trump is a racist.
Or at least the way they've portrayed him to be.
I believe everyone has their prejudices.
But clearly, you've got two people, one saying he's done tremendous things.
And I've heard that from many.
Not from the majority.
No way.
If Republicans are still only getting around 20%, that means most, 80%, the overwhelming majority, still don't support him.
This is significant for the election, though.
This is a number that really does show the Republicans might swing something... I mean, this could be historic.
This party switch.
Not from Vernon, but from many others.
It's serious.
I mean, Kanye West, Candace Owens, high-profile personalities.
In a conference call with the AJC, the Georgia House's three top Democratic leaders backed Rhonda Taylor, a community activist who was challenging Jones in the June primary.
House Minority Leader Bob Trammell said he is sending her a check immediately.
We're not sure what was on Vernon's mind.
He told you what was on his mind.
Criminal justice reform.
Historically black colleges.
Unemployment.
Come on.
Pay attention, man.
Be honest about what this guy is saying.
He says we're not sure what's on his mind.
It's antithetical to what we believe in.
You don't believe in low unemployment rates, colleges, and criminal justice reform?
He says we can't support an ideology that's diametrically opposed to who we are and what we value.
State Republicans were overjoyed at the development, which offers Trump's campaign an African-American surrogate who has won the top office in one of Georgia's most populous and left-leaning counties.
Trump captured just 16% of the vote in DeKalb in 2016.
That's still really good for a Republican.
The Gwinnett County GOP promoted the endorsement on social media and asked supporters to chip in a few dollars to keep our state red.
Brandon Phillips, a Republican operative who was chairman of Trump's campaign in Georgia in 2016, said Jones had been chewing over the decision for years.
Vernon has been a Trump fan for a while, Phillips said, glad to see him putting Georgia first over a party.
Jones launched his political career in the early 1990s in the Georgia House before winning the first two terms as DeKalb County's top executive in 2000.
His stint was marked by controversy.
Now, I'm not going to get into the bulk of his career, because I want to show you the latest news.
I understand many people might want me to get into the full context of who he is and all that stuff.
I'm going to talk about the breaking news stuff, so, you know, look into his stuff.
They say he's controversial.
They say everybody's controversial.
But he has resigned now, amid a massive backlash.
Take a look at this story from Fox News.
Democratic Georgia Rep, who endorsed Trump, resigns after backlash.
They say, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jones told the Rashad Ritchie Morning Show, a talk show in Atlanta, that despite his resignation, he would not be leaving the Democratic Party because somebody's got to be in there to hold them accountable.
Hold them accountable to how they're treating black people and root out the bigotry.
I completely agree with that sentiment.
He said, turn the lights off.
I have left the plantation, Jones said, in a separate statement officially announcing his resignation, according to the Journal-Constitution.
Someone else can occupy that suite.
Therefore, I intend not to complete my term effective April 22, 2020.
That's huge.
And here's a tweet from Verney.
He says, I've seen more Democrats attack me for my decision to endorse Donald Trump than ask me why.
They've used and abused folks in my community for far too long, taking our votes for granted.
Black Americans are waking up.
An uprising is near.
They say, State Senator Nekima Williams, Chairwoman of the State Democratic Party, issued a statement.
We read this, so we know she called him an embarrassment.
Vernon Jones seemed to foreshadow this Tuesday's resignation in a Monday night tweet.
He said, so that yeah, his response to Rashad was, I don't care what the Democrat party does to me.
What are they going to do? Spank me? That's what he said.
And sure enough, then he resigned.
After announcing his resignation, Jones fired off a handful of combative tweets touting Trump
and attacking Democrats. He continued more African Americans prior to this pandemic were working
more than any other time in.
I mean, it really does sound like similar rhetoric to Candace Owens and Kanye West.
I mean, mostly what Candace Owens has been saying.
And they're not the only ones.
You know, forgive me for leaving, you know, many of the other supporters of Trump out.
Trump has done a lot to court support from the black community.
But let's take a look at some other data here.
Take a look at this.
First, in a New York Intelligencer article, Ed Kilgore writes, He basically argues how the Trump supporters love this, the Trump media and right-wing media is touting it, and it's not really going to be all that effective.
It's not going to move votes.
He says, in reality, as is often the case with turncoat polls, Vernon Jones is a marginal
character in Georgia Democratic circles who is facing a tough primary challenge in June
and possibly a court decision ejecting him from the state legislative seat on grounds
that he lives outside the district.
Republicans will tout his two terms back in the day as chief executive officer of DeKalb County, a large majority black inner suburb of Atlanta, but he left that office under various ethical clouds and subsequently lost bids for the U.S.
Senate.
The US House and DeKalb Sheriff before winning a state legislator seat in 2016.
Aside from a record on gun legislation that made him an NRA favorite, Jones has been crossing the partisan barricades a lot in both ideology and rhetoric, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein reported.
Well, it sounds like he's kind of a moderate, I guess.
He's conservative on some issues, a Democrat on many others.
It also sounds like he's a 1990s Democrat, and the party has left him.
Now, of course, there's a lot of controversy around this guy.
He may not be the perfect spokesperson.
Nobody is.
Kanye's controversial, and so is Candace Owens.
But how many people are scared to speak up because they don't see leaders telling them it's possible?
You know, one of the things I've learned in all my years is that leaders, they really are important to show you or to pave the path themselves.
Many people like to follow that beaten path, but somebody's got to beat it out first.
They've got to carve that road so that people can make their way and follow behind.
So maybe Maybe a lot of people don't agree with him.
Maybe he is controversial.
But I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of people who will see him, see what he's doing, and agree with him.
And there's not... There's a lot of bad news.
Check this out.
From Politico.
Democrats are underperforming with black voters.
I have more data.
Now, I'm not saying this is all-encompassing data.
One thing I always want to make sure you guys follow or know is that I grab stuff that I see, things that I know about, and there's probably a lot of stuff that I miss.
But take a look at this Politico story.
The date on this is February 24th.
Democrats are underperforming with black voters.
More than one-third of those surveyed expressed a desire for someone else to run for the president.
Politico says, The survey, conducted by the Political Action Committee, Black PAC, found that while black voters are largely supportive of the Democratic Party and align most of its values, more than half, feel that the party is not paying close enough attention to
the black community.
Democrats, they argue, grew too distracted by impeachment to focus on the issues that matter
to black voters, putting them out of touch with the key bloc whose support they relied on for decades.
If more than half feel this way, don't you think it makes sense that many are going to walk away,
That they're going to say, I'm not getting what I need from this party.
That's exactly what Vernon was saying.
He said that he didn't leave the party, the party left him in a tweet.
He said, I'm a Georgia state representative and lifelong Democrat, but in this election, I'll be casting my vote for Donald Trump.
I didn't leave the Democratic Party.
The party left me.
So yes, even though many people might align with that party, they're looking for something different.
As Donald Trump said, what do you got to lose, right?
You haven't gotten what you've needed for all this time.
And now we have this story from April 10th.
Trump approval among black voters near 20%.
Now that's really low.
And that means the Republicans probably don't do a really great job.
There's messaging challenges here.
But this says a lot.
President Trump earned a 19% job approval rating from black voters in the latest Fox News poll.
And the Fox News polls are not forgiving to Donald Trump.
And he's complained about it.
They say, as the Trump re-election campaign works to double the 8% support he received from this cohort four years ago.
Trump's team is spending tens of millions of dollars to woo black voters in the November election, deploying a massive field and data program to target a voting bloc that for decades has overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party.
Until all campaigns were forced online by the coronavirus pandemic, that investment
included opening social campaign field offices in urban neighborhoods in key battleground
states designed to cater to black voters.
In the Fox News survey, which was conducted April 4th to the 7th, 13% of registered black
voters said they somewhat approve of Trump's job performance, with 6% saying they strongly
approve.
They mention, nevertheless, in a head-to-head matchup with presumptive Democratic nominee
Joe Biden, Trump fell short of his goal of doubling his performance with black voters,
trailing the former vice president 66% to 10%.
The other 24% were undecided, backing another candidate or not voting.
That still shows that Donald Trump is making good ground.
They say in exit polls from 2016, 89% of black voters said they voted for Hillary Clinton.
Still, turnout in black strongholds in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin was not sufficient for a Clinton victory.
So Biden will have to generate more enthusiasm for his candidacy than Clinton did.
The poll is a margin of error of plus or minus three points.
Let me tell you something.
Maybe Donald Trump doesn't win 20% he needs, but Joe Biden is losing support among this community relative to where Hillary Clinton was.
I'll tell you what, man.
Donald Trump's probably going to be happy with undecided voters bowing out because it just means Biden is losing on a major voting block.
Hey, man, I get it.
I don't see why people like Joe Biden.
I really, really don't.
I definitely understand why people don't like Trump for sure.
But you gotta see, as high-profile people, celebrities, start backing Trump, you're gonna see a lot of people getting behind him.
Now there's still more here, of course.
Trump video mocking Obama's Biden endorsement outpaces viewership of Obama address within hours.
You may have seen the video, which has now been removed for a copyright claim.
Innit?
There are several black men sitting around watching a sporting event, and one of the guys says, there's my man, and it shows Donald Trump.
Then it cuts to a commercial with Joe Biden, and they all groan.
Joe Biden then says some very, very creepy things.
The three men then turn to Obama, whose head is superimposed, after Joe Biden says some very creepy things about kids, and the Obama guy goes, what?
And then it starts playing hip-hop, and it shows the Trump logo.
You've probably seen the video, if not, you should check it out.
When I saw this, Youthful exuberance.
That's the best way I can explain it.
It's silly, it's funny, it makes a point, and it ends with hip-hop music.
It shows black men sitting watching the game, seeing Joe Biden be creepy.
This ad, to me, in my opinion, was heavily trying to target the black community.
That's just my opinion.
I could be wrong.
But I think they're trying to speak to people with...
I just like not stodgy, stuck-up, suit-wearing dudes.
It's like people hanging out watching a game.
It's Obama sitting with some of his friends, and they happen to be black men.
I'm not saying that necessarily we'll only speak to black men.
No.
But what I see when I look at these political ads is that they often try and show the people they want to vote, right?
That's how they view it.
Perhaps that's racist.
That's just my assumption.
Although I definitely see this ad speaking to everybody.
In fact, it probably performed really, really well with just Meme-loving peoples in general.
But the point I'm trying to make is, I see this as Donald Trump continuing his outreach to the black community.
He's trying to be... Like, let me be honest.
Like, playing hip-hop and making a joke is not... I don't see Donald Trump in that.
You know, I get it.
Trump's a funny guy.
And actually, maybe I take that back.
Maybe that is Trump.
Come on, suit-wearing billionaire real estate guy?
He's not a funny, fun comedian, technically.
I mean, he's actually a funny guy, you gotta accept it, but I think they're trying to target, and we've seen it in the stories already, that they've been trying to put a lot of money into wooing this community.
I think it is working.
But check this out.
It's not just about the black community.
It's about people leaving the Democratic Party in its entirety.
So this is something we've seen, and I want to now kind of get away from this idea that it's just about black Democrats.
It's actually about everybody.
In Pennsylvania, in a small town, we saw many people switch.
Now we have this story.
Check it out from the Daily Journal.
They say, last week, another group of Mississippi officials announced their switch from Democrat to Republican.
Those Prentiss County officials announced their change in party affiliation in a joint press release stating in part, not only does this change in party affiliation more closely reflect our conservative values and beliefs, as well as the conservative values and beliefs of a great majority of our country, it also allows us to promote Prentiss County on an even greater level.
If Prentice County is so overwhelmingly conservative, how did they get elected as recently as November as Democrats?
The eight officials who made the change include Sheriff Randy Tolar.
Second, I'm not going to read everybody.
Certainly everyone has a right to choose the party that best reflects their personal ideology.
The problem I have with party switchers is those who wait until after an election to announce that their values and beliefs no longer align with their previous party.
I'm not sure if this is one of the stories I've covered before, because it sounds very similar.
People getting elected as Democrats and then switching.
But I'll tell you what, man.
When you look at the press on TV, when you look at what the Democrats are pushing for, advocating for, it's no surprise to me that lifelong Democrats are saying, this doesn't represent me anymore.
AOC coming out and saying that people shouldn't go back to work.
Green New Deal.
Racial intersectionality stuff that doesn't resonate with minorities.
We saw a poll recently that many people don't like the fact that Joe Biden is an old white male in his 70s.
Maybe his age has something to do with it.
But the biggest disapproval came from white people.
Hispanics in the black community cared much less about his skin color, his gender, and his age.
It was white people.
So you end up with, I mean, you end up with a lot of people who used to be Democrats saying, I don't understand why you're becoming so increasingly obsessed with things I don't think matter.
Now, of course, we got problems with racism and sexism in this country.
As I pointed out, in response to Vernon Jones, a bunch of people sent racist things from Democrats.
It's disgusting.
But you know what?
They get away with it.
Are we going to see Vox, BuzzFeed, and other leftist media come out and call them out?
No, they're not going to do it.
They're going to just let these people say these things, and they're going to act like it's only the Republicans who are the bigots.
That's the game they play.
It's a double standard.
I know.
But I'll tell you what.
When I see that stuff, when I see disgusting individuals spout that racist trash because some dude had a different opinion, that sickens me.
You think I want to be involved in that?
You think I'm going to vote for your guy after you just said those things to that man?
You better damn well believe I will not do that.
You want me to walk away?
I will walk away faster than you can say walk away when you start spouting racism at these people.
You know what I would say to this man, Vernon?
Disagree with him?
I'd say, hey man, let's grab a coffee.
Let's talk this one out and see where we can come together.
What's on your mind?
Why do you feel this way?
Is there anything I can do to change your mind?
That's the right way to go about it.
No.
These people do what they accuse everyone else of doing.
Do you got racists on the right?
Oh, you better believe it.
100% you do.
Not every single person.
I don't mean 100% of people on the right.
I'm saying you got a lot of people on the right.
You also got a lot of people on the left.
You know what my problem is?
The Democrats act like they're fighting against racism.
They're making it worse.
Not just on Twitter, but in many of their policies.
They make it worse.
And this is coming from somebody who has to deal with these issues coming from a mixed family.
So I know full well.
So for me, I said recently, you're not going to get me to vote for these Democrats anymore.
I'm out.
I'm not saying I'm voting for Republicans.
I'm not saying I like Trump.
None of that.
I'm saying, when you see what happened with these Democrats, they got elected as moderates and said, we're going to fight for these kitchen table issues.
They turned around and went scandal after scandal and wasted our time.
I didn't vote for them.
I didn't vote.
I'm not, I'm too much of a milquetoast fencer.
You know me.
But I'm not.
You know, I was very much on board with Yang and Tulsi.
Now I'm out.
I'm out completely.
You're not going to win me over at this point.
I'm sorry.
I'm over it.
Because we see things like this.
I can't show you the tweets.
I can't.
They're disgusting.
And it makes me feel bad for these people who finally said, you know what?
I'm going to stand up against the mob.
These people who said, I'm going to stand up against every feeling I've had.
Kanye West, for instance, right?
Kanye West has been... He first, you know, said, I like Trump.
I like how this is going.
But then he backtracks saying it was a mistake because people came after him.
And then finally said, you know what?
I don't care anymore.
Bravo!
Kanye's got things to be criticized for.
Of course, man.
More than most.
But he's entitled to his opinion.
And I'm glad that he and others are standing up for what they believe in.
And I might disagree with them on some things.
We'll have a conversation about it.
A conversation I probably wouldn't win out on because they've seen too much.
These people on the left just pushing this racist trash.
I don't want to be aligned with that.
You want to come out and call that dude something racist?
I'm not with you.
That's disgusting.
But there is some still bad news for Republicans in all this.
Rasmussen just published a poll showing that Democrats are still favored to hold their House majority.
I don't know, man.
I really, really don't know.
I was bullish on a Republican majority in 2018, and I was wrong about that.
They might still win out, especially with how things are going with the pandemic.
So I guess we'll see.
But for now, the rule, as I mentioned earlier, if Trump can muster 20% support, he's guaranteed the win.
20% support of the black community.
We'll see if he can pull it off.
We'll see if he reaches out to these people, gets them what they need.
At least some people think he's doing it, and his approval is increasing.
That's something Democrats are very scared of.
That's why they keep calling him a racist and a bigot.
He's not.
He's got his prejudices the same as a lot of people, and especially for a 70-year-old man.
But come on.
That's just absurd.
You know what the worst thing about Trump is?
He only cares about efficiency, getting that net return.
I'm not saying... I'm being hyperbolic, right?
I think he cares about America.
I think he wants to do good.
But I think he, as a businessman, would take a look at a group of people and he would say, who's going to make the most money?
Who's going to get the job done?
He didn't come up and look at someone's skin color and say, I want you because of your skin color.
No, Trump was all about getting the effective worker to make him some cash.
You want to criticize the man.
Criticize him for being a greedy billionaire.
But to say he's racist is absurd.
Because to people like him, the only color that matters is green.
And everybody knows it.
It's been one of the biggest criticisms of people like him for a long time.
All of a sudden now, he's got to be racist.
Because they know he might actually win over their support.
And then he'll beat them.
I guess we'll see how it plays out.
Thanks for hanging out.
Next segment will be coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews.
And I will see you there.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in an interview with Vice News, has said that people should refuse to work after the economy reopens.
The Democratic Socialist says, only in America does liberation mean going back to work.
Well, let's break this down, because what does it mean to go back to work?
Well, in the interview, AOC basically says, we're working 70 hours a week to struggle to put food on the table.
Let me stop you right there, okay?
I'm doing work right now.
I enjoy the work that I do.
I don't want to stop doing my job.
In fact, there are a lot of people in this country who enjoy the work they do because it's their fulfillment.
They like building.
They like speaking.
They like accomplishing goals.
But see, what AOC's really saying is that life in cities doesn't work.
And I have to agree.
If we get to the root of her argument, let's break down what living in a big city is like.
How about New York, where she lives?
Or where she's supposed to be living, whatever.
You are in a giant concrete block surrounded by a bunch of metal and concrete.
You can't grow food and you're living on top of other people for exorbitant prices and the whole place smells like sour milk.
Let's be real.
I lived there for several years.
I grew up in Chicago.
I grew up in New York.
Don't like it.
It stinks.
It really does smell like sour milk.
You'll be walking down Manhattan and you'll see sour milk in the street.
I'm not exaggerating.
It's there.
It's all the time.
Not literally everywhere, but for real, I'm not kidding.
So I'd have to imagine, if you live in this giant rock, literally on top of other people, your cost of living is some of the highest in the country, and you gotta work 70 hours a week to be able to afford that, how about you leave the giant concrete block that smells like sour milk and let people work if they want to?
But you know what?
Let's think about the kind of work that goes down in New York City, and other big cities like San Francisco, that we can probably do without.
Now, obviously, there's a bunch of jobs that exist in these areas, in New York, for instance, that we do need.
Okay, I can respect that.
But how about the BuzzFeeds of the world?
You can just, you know, shuffle that off to the... You know what?
Hey, this actually makes sense.
Because the people who would listen to AOC are not gonna come back to work, and that's a lot of stuff we don't need.
Because if you think about what we do need, that's not an issue of whether someone can or can't go back to work, we have essential workers.
But if you have the ability to not go back to work, I'm sorry, I don't think you're all that essential.
Now, one of the big problems I'm seeing with people like AOC and what's going on with all these protests is that the conversations I'm having with leftists, you know, okay, hold on, let me stop.
You ever see that protest sign of the guy, it says, like, get a brain, morons?
It's from 2003, I looked it up.
It's a very famous protest sign where people are mocking the protester for being ignorant.
It's like a proud-to-be-ignorant meme.
Now I'm seeing stuff where it's like, it really has flipped.
You look, you got a bunch of dumb conservatives holding up signs saying like, I need a haircut or whatever.
Maybe they're fake, I don't know.
Maybe the moron thing was fake, I don't know.
But you got some people saying like, I want to go golfing, and it's like, it's a facepalm.
But the left has a whole bunch of really stupid signs, too.
And I'll tell you what, man.
You know why I think it's worse today for the left?
It's one thing if you are dumb and you can't spell a word.
That doesn't mean anything.
You're a bad speller.
I don't care.
He said morans.
Maybe it was a joke.
I don't know.
He spelled the word wrong.
Does that really mean anything?
It means nothing to me!
You can spell the word wrong.
I get it.
You're stupid.
You think other people are stupid.
Welcome to the world.
People like AOC don't understand at all how the economy functions and what it means to go back to work.
You want to tell farmers, don't go back to work.
Don't put food on the table.
Okay.
Well, nobody has food.
You can't just say, no, like don't, don't work.
This is how they view the world, alright?
Let me show you this story.
So a bunch of protesters are out in the streets countering the Open Up The Economy protesters.
It's really funny that AOC now finds herself kind of in this weird, unique position where You've got people saying, look, we want to open up the economy, we can't because of the pandemic.
You got conservatives saying we need to reopen up the economy, and then out of left field, you get AOC being like, even if we open up the economy, don't work, which no one asked for.
Fine.
I bring you now to this protest sign.
It is a portly young fellow, apparently wearing scrubs, with a sign that says, no economy is worth more than a life.
And this makes me facepalm.
This sign is 100 times worse than morans.
You know why?
Like I said.
You want to spell the word wrong?
Let me help you out, buddy.
You spelled the word wrong.
If you have a fundamental belief as stupid and backwards as no economy is worth more than a life, not realizing that we don't live without an economy, it means household management, thank you very much, and everybody dies.
Most people do.
If the economy ceased to exist right now, it means no trade.
So I hope you got a farm to grow your food.
Oh, what's that?
You live in New York City?
You can't grow food in New York City?
And you rely on everyone else for that food to come in?
No economy.
Alright, I'll tell you what.
Don't work, and then see who wants to ship all of that food into your city so you can eat.
And I'll tell you what, for the rest of us that understand how the economy works, you want to shut it all down.
Erase it off the map.
I hope you're prepared to scavenge or grow your own foods.
I'll tell you what, I got my MREs.
I got my beans in the cooler.
Yeah, okay, sure.
They really don't get it.
So, you end up with these people who think they're being smart when they say things like, no, economy is worth more than a life.
You end up with people like AOC, who have this myopic view of what the world is, and it's mind-numbing to me.
I think one of the big functions, the big, like, things, I don't know how to describe it, but one of the aspects of my job, and my personality, and what I do, that helps me better understand this, is that I'm willing to talk to these people to see their view.
I'm willing to talk to conservatives.
Now, I myself am not much of a... I'm not conservative.
I would say not much of a conservative because there are some things I agree with.
I'm a moderate, you know what I mean?
I'm a liberal.
I'm not much of a liberal.
You know, right there in the middle.
But I understand that when it comes to how the economy functions within the economy, which again comes from the Greek word oikonomia, I believe, which means household management.
The economy includes healthcare, okay?
Doctors need money.
Why would a doctor spend all of their time in a hospital to save someone's life?
Let's say, he says, no economy is worth more than a life.
It's like, it's just circular backwards ignorance, okay?
Doctors get paid salaries.
They have to pay back debt for medical school.
Many of the people who are in the medical profession probably wanted to be there for passionate reasons, but they still need to eat and pay their rent.
That is the economy.
So you get these people saying things like, the government should pay for it.
The government should provide health care.
The government doesn't provide health care, the doctor does, and the doctor wants something in exchange.
Who's going to manage that exchange?
The government or free trade?
Take your pick, because no one just magically snaps their finger and cures your ailments.
No economy is worth more than a life, I swear.
It's the new Moran sign.
Let me show you what's gonna happen.
And I think what AOC has accidentally done is proven that people like her and people in New York City aren't...
Well, they're not necessary.
They're not essential.
What do they make in New York City, in the city, that we're going to need?
Now, I know there's intellectual labor, development, research, universities, but is that a necessity?
Technically, I would say yes, but literally, I would say no.
A necessity would be shelter, someone who can build a house.
It would be the lumber, would be the stone for those houses, the concrete, the rebar, whatever you need.
It would be the food you grow, first and foremost, and access to water.
Does New York produce these things?
The answer is no.
New York is a managerial hub.
You have a bunch of companies that are run from New York by rich people who like living in New York, but everything is brought to them Not brought from them.
Now, of course, I'm sure in New York City, some people are making some things.
But no, factories are outside of big cities.
Now take a look at this story, which I did cover the other day, but I need to present to you in the context of the Moran's sign.
No economy is worth a life.
UN warns coronavirus could cause global famines of biblical proportions.
The WFP warned the United Nations Security Council Tuesday of a possible hunger pandemic.
I struggle with this because it really does seem like, look, whether you have a liberal disposition or a conservative disposition, one fact remains, that we got a bunch of really, really dumb people trying to enact policy.
And it is, you know, on the left and the right, but right now, it goes back and forth, the left is dominated by blind, naive, ignorant children.
I'm sorry, it's just true.
Take a look at this quote.
While dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic, David Beasley told the Council.
There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself.
There's no famines yet, but I must warn you that if we don't prepare and act now to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls, and disruptions to trade, we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.
The United Nations said this.
You see how I'm doing the Twitter clap thing?
The.
United.
Nations.
Maybe that will allow the left to understand, right?
You need to do the clap thing?
You gotta clap in between each word?
Maybe that's the only way they understand it.
The United Nations is saying millions of people, 135 million people are already at crisis levels.
They're saying it could go up by another 130 million people who could die from this.
And then it brings me back to the morons.
No economy is worth more than a life.
Ah, sweetheart.
You just don't understand how anything works.
And here you are blocking a guy who's saying open St.
Louis.
Now, don't get me wrong, man.
The protesters coming out saying the economy should be reopened aren't the smartest bunch either.
Some of them are dumber than a box of rocks.
But guess what?
Unfortunately, if you got two dumb people and one person's on the right side of things, then, you know, you gotta give it to them, I guess, a little bit.
If somebody wants to come out and says, I need a haircut or something, and you're like, it's like, I facepalm.
I'm like, dude, please don't do that.
You can get your haircut.
We got bigger problems.
However, the economy does need to be reopened.
Now, interestingly, I got a couple more things for you.
Donald Trump.
Now, I know, again, the context of this is all AOC just saying, don't go back to work.
And I do want to come back to that.
But I wanted to bring this up because I see a lot of conservatives actually dragging the president for this, because he said, liberate these states, that these activists are complaining about it.
And then Donald Trump is telling George Kemp to, it's too soon.
The states Donald Trump said to liberate were about specific things, like Virginia was the second amendment, Michigan was the most draconian lockdown we saw in the country, and this story, to be fair, I think you can throw some criticism at Trump because liberate is very broad and you just told people to basically liberate the states and now you're like, no, no, Georgia, don't do it.
But he's talking about the phases.
He's saying that basically Georgia has skipped over the phases that he's, you know, he... Trump and his administration said phase 1, phase 2, phase 3.
Georgia is apparently opening facilities that are out of sync with that plan, so Trump is criticizing him.
You know what, man?
Look...
Trump, if you don't want him to reopen things, you've got to tone down the rhetoric, and that's just a fact.
If you go out there telling people to go and liberate states, what do you think's going to happen?
People are going to be like, okay, we're going to reopen things, and now it's out of sync?
Well, you know what?
Trump deserves some criticism for this.
But more to the point.
We've got an economic problem, and it's getting worse than the COVID problem.
So I want to... I'm going to avoid... I was planning on showing you a tweet.
I'm going to avoid doing it, but because I know this person, they basically said that, you know, the government should not be tweeting to liberate people.
The government should be providing health care and waiving rent.
And this is literally what many people on the left believe.
First of all, the government can't waive rent.
That's someone else's property that they pay for, that they maintain, that you live in, and they've got staff they have to pay.
Groundskeepers, you know, assistants, managers, they got to pay taxes.
And when you don't pay, you're basically shutting down the economy in waves.
And I've talked about this many, many times.
They don't get it.
They think the government can snap their fingers and then cure your disease.
No.
The government can take your money and give it to someone else, that's about it.
But if there's no doctor, if there's no people working in factories, there's no raw materials.
If there's no raw materials to go to other factories, there's no medicines.
If there's no medicines and no equipment and no manufacturing, there's no healthcare.
Unless, of course, you want a doctor to fix your broken leg, he can take a piece of wood and then strap it around your leg.
But if you want x-rays, MRIs, medication, ventilators, somebody's gotta build all that stuff, dude!
That's the economy!
So when you say we shouldn't reopen the economy, you've got some guy who works in a processing plant for some, like, you know, for some ridiculous, like, some mineral material you don't know or care about.
Let's go to a base element.
Let's say there's a guy, he works in a foundry or something, and they're making copper wire or something.
And this guy says, I want my job back!
I want my job back!
These leftists are like, dude, you're making copper wire, okay?
We get it.
You work for a company.
We need to get healthcare on track.
And you're like, bro, you realize all of your electronics use this component.
Everything is tied together.
When you've got... There was one thing I was watching about these workers.
Who slept in a factory for like 28 days because they were refining a raw material, I don't even know what it was, that was used in N95 masks.
But I assure you, if you go to one of these activists and I'm like, no economy is worth a life, and you ask them, should a rock quarry be opened up, they're gonna be like, no, that's stupid.
You know, I don't know why I need that.
Well, it's like maybe because they're getting, like, rocks and other minerals and materials from these mines and quarries that are then used later down the supply chain in manufacturing to make your ventilator.
These people believe that you snap your fingers and bling!
A magical ventilator appears and the government walks up to you and floats and says, I am the grand government!
They blow on you and then you have healthcare.
It just doesn't work that way.
Now I want to show you a contentious video having to do with these protests.
I say contentious in that, look, so we have this video where this woman tweeted, the fake news media strikes again in Virginia.
A protester, Jessalyn Black, catches a staged nurse, cameraman, and car that just so happens to be at a stoplight with an American flag Trump-splashed across it.
They are lying to you.
So you can see this person in scrubs, stands in front of the car, two photographers start snapping photos, and then they immediately walk off.
Listen, everybody is in this information war.
It's propaganda.
Is this someone on the left trying to stage a nurse photoshoot?
Possibly.
Is it someone on the right trying to expose a staged nurse photoshoot to discredit the other nurse protests?
Possibly.
I don't care about this.
You know why I don't care about this?
Because the initial story that I was showing you, there are nurses protesting.
Maybe this was sparked by that, you know, those two medical workers, assumed medical workers in Colorado, but now you have actual nurses who are coming out and protesting.
And, you know what, man?
My respect to the healthcare workers who are fighting, but this is, to me, you know, you know, it's always been frustrating to me my whole life.
People who do no research, who know nothing, who then assert they do know, and make demands of us and our government based on things they have no idea what they're talking about.
And I'm sure you've experienced this, because everybody does.
And right now, these nurses are sitting there saying, like, we're smarter than you, to the protestors.
And the protestors are saying, you don't understand, we're smarter than you, to the nurses.
I know they're both not literally saying they're smarter.
But the nurses think they're right.
These people are going to get everybody sick, and everyone's going to die.
And the protestors are saying, I have a fundamental right, you cannot stop me.
While others are saying, this is going to wipe out millions of people.
You know what?
The protesters are on the right side.
It doesn't mean they know why they're on the right side.
It doesn't mean their signs are correct.
It doesn't mean their ideology is correct.
But we do need to reopen the economy.
The UN has warned us.
So when I see these nurses looking with their arms crossed like, you know, and we see these photo shoots, I'm nothing but annoyed by this.
First, let me say they're absolutely in their right to protest and my respect to them for doing so.
They're standing up for what they believe in.
But again, it comes down to, like, if a child came up to you, and, you know, when I see all these people and all these protesters, and I have my friends tweeting, you know, saying things to me like, the government should just give them health care.
It's like a little kid being like, the government's so dumb, like, why don't they just...
Give people money, because then people can have food.
And you're like, oh yeah, because you can eat money, right?
No, you can't eat money.
Not only that, most people's money is digital now anyway.
What are you going to do?
Lick the phone?
You can't eat money, man.
It's just a trade medium.
Someone's got to make the food.
Alright?
You shut down the economy, people don't make the food.
And I know it's an essential job, so you still have farmers farming.
But now they've got to send food and supplies to processing plants.
The processing plants can't sell the food because of the shutdown, because stores and restaurants and other places are being shut down or shuttered, so they stop processing, so they stop ordering from the farms.
The farms now have raw materials, raw foods, you can't just eat in many circumstances.
Now I understand.
You know, they're, like, maybe they'll grow carrots, right?
And a lot of people say, just eat the carrots!
Listen.
My friends.
Child.
You have to, like, disinfect, there's a cleaning process, there's a lot that goes into the carrots to go from the farm to your table.
Now, I know there's some places they do the farm-to-table stuff, whatever, but for the most part, there's an in-between process.
Some of these things gotta be cut and cleaned, and the farmers don't necessarily do that.
And if the processing plants can't sell anything, bro, the farms don't give anybody food.
So you can stand up there all day and night like, I'm not gonna let you get someone sick, and then it's like, dude, You are a child who doesn't understand how the government works, how the economy works, how the markets work.
It's all tied together, and it is so frustrating to have... Could you imagine?
This is what I explain to people.
Now, I don't think I'm the smartest person in the world.
If I saw a doctor, and the doctor was talking about performing some kind of open-heart surgery, I'd be like, you the boss, man.
You tell me.
I'm not gonna argue with you.
And the same thing for me goes with climate change.
You get a bunch of scientists coming out and be like, bro, planet's getting hot.
I'll be like, I will take your word for it.
I am not an expert.
I'll tell you what I am an expert in, though.
Maybe not the foremost, but I tend to know quite a bit about the workings of politics, governments, conflicts, civil unrest, because I've been doing this for a decade, alright?
So when I read nothing but news all day, every day, Alright, my opinion has some weight to it.
I'm very often wrong.
My opinions sometimes are trash.
I know this!
Because I know how the system works.
I try to read as much as I can.
I try to get a balanced view of things.
But I get things wrong.
But I will tell you this.
If you are a nurse who spends your days in a hospital, I defer to you when it comes to nursing.
I will never challenge your authority on this.
I don't expect you to come out and tell me you know more than I do when it comes to politics and economics.
And for that matter, when it comes to an economist, you can walk right over me and go talk to him because I will defer to the economist.
I don't know better either.
But at least there's some kind of knowledge hierarchy that we should be paying attention to, right?
Like, I do this all the time.
How are you, as, say, like, a media personality who doesn't work in news, you're an entertainer, gonna tell me this is what the system should be doing?
Look, man, I don't even purport to know exactly what the system should be doing.
That's why I'm a milquetoast fence-sitter.
But I see this stuff all day every day, and I'll tell you one thing, this nurse has no idea what she's talking about.
And she's going to come out and protest people who are like, we need to reopen the economy.
And she's like, but I'm a nurse.
Yeah, that's great.
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx know wonderful things about how this disease will spread and how many lives will be lost.
And I respect them for it.
And I hear what they have to say, but they are not economists.
And the fact of the matter is that if the UN is coming out and saying millions will die, perhaps we have to say, Dr. Fauci, I respect your medical expertise, but your lack of economic expertise is a hole in your perspective.
Now we need to look at other people because our goal is to protect life.
So anyway, the main point of this was supposed to be about AOC and work.
So I'll wrap it up by saying, when you get someone like AOC saying that we shouldn't work anyway, all she's really exposing is the fact that her and many others like her are not essential to our way of life.
If you don't have to work, if you can choose not to, Then you didn't need to anyway.
I mean, look, if you want to live in a concrete box that smells like sour milk, live on top of somebody, and have garbage wages and an extremely high cost of living, you can do so with my blessing.
But if you're tired of that way of life, find a passion, do something that you enjoy, and get out of the sour milk concrete block, man!
You know what?
I'll wrap it up there.
Otherwise, I'll rant on this forever, but I got a couple more.
I got more segments coming up later today.
Next segment will be at 1 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews.
That is this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all then.
There's a major political battle a couple weeks ago to get the coronavirus stimulus package pushed through.
Democrats had blocked it several times and everybody was angry.
After Democrats and Republicans finally agreed on what the bill was going to be, a bunch
of Republicans stepped up and said, no, we can't do this, but were forced to give in
and comply.
As it turns out, these Republicans were correct.
See, the reason they didn't want to, to, uh, to sign on to this bill to vote yes, was that
part of the package was people would get four months of unemployment at 100% of their income,
no lost income, plus $600.
That got tacked on and all of a sudden there was fear that this loophole would result in people purposefully losing their jobs because they will make more money.
Well, now we have it.
From CNBC.
She got a forgivable loan.
Her employees hate her for it.
Yes, I kid you not.
A woman who did everything right, said, I'm going to save my business, I'm going to get this loan money, and she thought her employees would be happy.
They weren't.
They were furious.
They were now going to lose money because they were going to get $600 a week on top for four months.
That's fat cash.
Now, right now, There's a viral video by this comedian where he's screaming.
And he's a funny guy, and it's a bit.
He's screaming about how stupid Congress is, that they're furloughing rent and mortgage payments, but then so what?
These people who are out of work, four months later, they get evicted, they get foreclosure anyway.
Because if they have no money, how are they supposed to pay the three months just because they can't get evicted now?
What the dude missed, and what a lot of people missed, is that there was a plan in place.
Whether the plan works is separate.
The idea was everybody gets four months of guaranteed wages plus 600 bucks per week.
So you can pay your rent, you can pay your mortgage.
And they can't evict you.
It was a bonus.
They could have just said, we're not going to furlough any of this stuff.
You're getting the money.
Go pay for it.
And then we still saw people calling for rent strikes.
Now, it's true.
Not everybody has gotten their money.
I think most people actually have not gotten unemployment checks.
And New York City's unemployment system is collapsing.
So we got a ton of problems, man.
But we're not being helped by, I guess, emotional rage bait.
Look, let me own this one.
I was 100% on board saying, okay, maybe not 100%, I'm too much of a milquetoast fence-sitter, but I was pretty much on board like, we gotta get this stimulus through, I know there's gonna be problems, and we're gonna pay the price.
And now we are.
Now, the Republicans who tried blocking this, they were right.
But what's the alternative?
We don't do anything for anybody?
I'll be the first to admit it.
Since the Trump bucks dropped, my ad revenue has slowly been returning because business is starting to pick up a little bit in some areas.
It's been really, really good for me, so of course I'm happy.
But that just kind of proves the point I was making.
My business is starting to recover because of the recovery plan.
Now here's where it gets bad.
She got a forgivable loan and her employees hate her for it.
Let's read the story and we'll talk about the economy.
They say, Jamie Black Lewis felt like she won the lottery after getting two forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program.
Black Lewis saw the $177,000 and $43,800 loans, one for each of the spas she owns in Washington State.
As a lifeline, she could use for payroll and other business expenses.
She'd halted pay for the 35 employees, including herself, at Oasis Med Spa and Salon in Woodinville.
When Black-Lewis convened a virtual employee meeting to explain her good fortune, she expected jubilation and relief that paychecks would resume in full even though the staff, primarily hourly employees, couldn't work.
She got a different reaction.
It was a firestorm of hatred about the situation, Black-Lewis said.
The animosity is an unintended consequence of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package enacted last month.
So, we actually, I will mention now, they mentioned 22 million unemployment claims.
We do have an update, it's 4.4 added to it, so we're looking at just around 26.4 or more.
The story says, the law, the CARES Act, offered $349 billion in loans for small businesses struggling as a result of COVID-19.
Banks, backstopped by the federal government, can fully forgive the loans under certain conditions.
Among them, the bulk of funds must go toward payroll, salaries must remain intact, and employee headcount must not decrease.
Businesses have until June 30th to rehire, laid off, or furloughed workers.
Black-Lewis was trying to meet these rules, especially after her bank reiterated she must continue to pay workers for loan forgiveness.
The anger came from employees who determined they'd make more money by collecting unemployment benefits than their normal paychecks.
Mic drop.
Boom.
There it is.
They wanted to exploit the system.
You know, this proves Republicans right on several other things.
When given the opportunity, people will exploit the system for free stuff.
It doesn't work.
You can't just have the government give people stuff.
This is what you get, man.
It's a windfall they see coming.
Black Lewis out of unemployment.
In their mind, I took it away.
I couldn't believe it.
On what planet am I competing with unemployment?
Black Lewis is surely not the only entrepreneur to struggle with such dynamics.
Roughly 22 million Americans filed for unemployment in the four weeks ended April 11th.
Lawmakers are poised to infuse an additional $310 billion into the Paycheck Protection Program, which exhausted its initial funding this week.
I'm gonna stop right now, because I'm getting really mad all about this.
You know what?
I'm seeing these people...
Protesting.
Holding up signs saying, get the economy back going.
And you know what?
They're right.
The economy isn't some nebulous system where you just add points to your account so you can buy a yacht.
The economy is the system in which we manage our existence, our civilization.
These people don't understand this.
So you've got people demanding the government print more money, give more money, make businesses actually compete with unemployment, which they can't do, because they're getting $600+.
They're going to want to be unemployed.
They want to exploit the system.
And I'll tell you what.
Only when every farm has stopped producing food, and every food processing plant stopped processing food, and every building gone into complete disrepair and people are struggling because of economic collapse, will these people realize you cannot eat money.
I love that saying, right?
It's that only after every tree is destroyed, every, you know, river tainted, every mountaintop removed, will people realize you can't eat money.
Because that view, these people think that the only things we ever do are so that we can have money, so we can get an infinity pool.
The overwhelming majority of money spent is for things we need.
People are paying other people.
It's something they don't realize.
Well, I will point out there's a lot of money spent on ridiculous things.
Don't get me wrong.
Military and stuff.
But you could argue that's essential for a variety of reasons.
But these people think that... I guess it's people who live in cities.
They've never had a business.
They have no idea how much money goes into labor.
Labor is the overwhelming majority of your expenses in a business.
For most businesses.
And that means the money you're giving to that other human being for doing work is spent on food and clothing and insurance to keep us alive and after that we have what's called disposable income to buy TVs, Playstations, whatever.
That's what these people in cities think because they are pampered, spoiled children.
And we end up with this broken system.
Now listen, I'm not going to complain about the problem, about this necessarily.
It's not fair for me to do that because I advocated for this.
I will accept all criticism because I said we are going to get problems.
Now I see the problems we face.
We got to fix it.
100%.
We cannot have businesses struggling because unemployment will pay more.
The system is broken.
I also understand, as someone who runs a business, things were getting scary for a while and they're starting to improve.
So I think the cure in this temporary situation was not worse than the problem, than the disease itself.
The disease we had was the economy was collapsing.
Now we've got, you know, we've plugged one hole and another hole has popped up.
This is what I expected to happen.
Something bad happened.
We saw it with big companies getting access to funds they probably shouldn't have.
It's not that big of a deal.
We staved off the greater flood and now we got smaller problems.
We'll have to fix this.
But listen, When they say people will exploit the system for free money, they will do it.
We are seeing it right here.
Let's read a little bit more.
Unemployment benefits.
The coronavirus relief law increased weekly jobless benefits for recipients, boosted the duration of benefits, and extended pay to previously ineligible groups of workers, like the self-employed.
Specifically, the new law adds a flat $600 a week to the typical weekly benefits paid by one state.
Those traditional benefits, which vary widely between states, replaced about 40% of one's prior wages, according to a national average cited by the House Ways and Means Committee.
The measures improved $600 a week payments, which run through July, aim to boost that wage replacement rate to 100% for the average worker.
But some, especially lower-wage workers, can come out ahead.
Lawmakers were aware of the dynamic, yet felt the formula's simplicity would get money out to people faster.
I agree with that.
It was the right move to do, and now we can point the finger at those who would exploit our goodwill.
That's what they always do.
They take advantage of us because we wanted to do the right thing and help them.
And it's really annoying to me.
You get these people out protesting against the economy reopening.
Meanwhile, it's these people, these exploiters and deceivers, standing behind those nurses, the protests, extracting our goodwill for hard cash that you cannot eat.
They don't get it.
They think money is food.
It's absolutely insane.
In Mississippi, a less generous state when it comes to unemployment benefits, full-time workers making less than $21 an hour would make more money on unemployment than from their job, according to an EconoFact analysis authored by economists Patricia Anderson and Philip Levine.
In California, a medium benefit state, the break even is around $26 an hour.
And in Washington, a generous state, it's $30 an hour.
Pay among Black Louis' employees, massage therapists, hairstylists, and estheticians ranges from minimum wage, $13.50 an hour in Washington, up to about $60 an hour.
Many work between 20, 24, and 32 hours a week.
It's not even about whether you come out ahead.
It's about the fact that people have a choice.
Do I go to work?
Something I don't like doing because they're not working fulfilling jobs?
That's a philosophical problem.
Or do I sit at home and play video games?
Read Harry Potter novels?
Because you know Millennials love doing that.
Watch Game of Thrones, Ozark, and Westworld.
What's the choice, man?
This is the problem I will tell you with universal basic income.
People won't work if they don't have to.
If you have to compete with free money from the government, you will lose 100%.
And so these UBI people and the Yang people, they don't like to hear it.
Listen, I'm a big fan of Yang.
He was my first choice.
Not because of the UBI stuff.
I think he had some interesting ideas on how we could make something like that work.
But then he had a big list of comprehensive policies that I saw coming from no one else.
Much respect to Yang.
He had a lot going for him.
I actually was speaking to some people involved saying like, I think the UBI thing is kind of... It's the wrong route because he's not even talking about UBI necessarily.
He's talking about dividends from major corporations.
It is a complicated system, mind you.
But now we can see exactly why UBI won't work.
Because if somebody has a job and they're told, listen, you will make 60% of what you'd make working here.
For free.
Now they say it'll be on top, right?
Okay, hold on, hold on.
Let me explain.
Somebody has the option to go into a spa and run a register on a computer and take emails, and they get an extra what?
I'd rather just not do work and I'll live frugally.
I'd rather just get the free money and sit around and do what I want to do.
The problem with many of these people is that they don't want to do work.
They want to do things like lay in the park, lay about, play video games.
Now, you can turn those things into work, for sure.
You can see it in the way AOC speaks, saying, we shouldn't go back to work after this.
What are you talking?
I love my work.
I love complaining into the camera.
You know why?
This is therapy for me.
I sit around all day reading this stuff.
You have any idea what that does to my brain?
And then I get to just let it all out.
It's therapeutic.
My job works for me.
Some people don't like what I do.
Welcome to politics.
I can't help that.
You want to rag on me?
Go ahead.
Do it all day.
I don't care.
Some people like painting pictures, and other people want those pictures.
Some people like growing crops, growing food, farming.
Some people are really impressed that they had a bountiful crop.
They're proud of their work.
They did something.
They accomplished something.
But you get these people living in gigantic concrete boxes that smell like sour milk, as I like to say, and they're complaining about these squalid, these horrifying conditions.
Get out!
This is the problem.
You've got people who like work.
You've got people who don't like work.
Now you can make work of everything so long as someone wants to trade you for it.
But what you're seeing right here now is a perfect example of the failures of UBI.
We guaranteed wages to people and they're saying, I would rather not work even if it means I get less money.
They're mad they can't get unemployment.
Exploitation of our goodwill.
How do you solve for that?
I don't know.
We've tried.
It's probably why unemployment benefits typically only pay around 60-67% depending on what state you live in.
I believe in Illinois it's like 2 thirds.
And one of the reasons they do this is because they don't want unemployment to compete with business because people will make the obvious choice.
I get to do whatever I want and I get money anyway.
Why bother producing anything?
We gotta build a culture of people who enjoy accomplishing goals, who enjoy creating things.
This ain't it.
I get it, man.
There's some tedious jobs.
There are people who don't want to work a cash register.
And that's, you know, everybody wants to be a rock star.
Everybody wants to be the astronaut.
It's like Fight Club, you know?
We're not all going to be that.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
Some people are going to do tedious jobs.
But if we have a culture where people don't take pride in the work they do, you get this.
You get people say, I don't want to do it or anything.
But somebody's got to do these jobs.
We need the people to do them.
Now, businesses will pay competitive wages because people sometimes don't want to do things.
Now they're competing against free money from the government, which is actually just our money being shoved into the pockets of the government and then distributed out.
But not only that, they're just printing money, which means we're borrowing from ourselves in the future.
The value of the dollar, the purchasing power, is going to collapse.
These people don't understand how this works.
You can't eat money.
Money isn't healthcare.
Money isn't food.
Money is just a trade medium for exchanging things of value.
They're not going to get it.
And instead, we'll end up with people who just say, it is easier to do nothing.
And I'll tell you what happens with UBI.
Because again, I got a bunch of yang people coming at me because I tweeted about this.
When you have the base, low skill job, Competing with the government.
And people would choose to get... Like, let's put it this way.
Let's say the government said, we'll pay you $5 an hour to do nothing.
And the business says, we're gonna pay you $10 an hour to do something.
People are gonna choose $5 an hour to do nothing.
You will live... I know, because I know the people who live this way.
So many skateboarders say, I will choose to do the bare minimum to get my time.
My time is more valuable.
Which means these businesses have to dramatically increase what they pay.
This reduces the buying power of the dollar and creates inflation.
I don't know how you stabilize this.
Stabilizes over time.
One argument I've heard, people are tweeting at me like this, like, no, UBI would counteract deflation.
Have you seen deflation around yet?
It's historical inflation, period.
Now, yes, we're seeing some deflation because of the economic collapse.
But what's the point of pumping out money?
It's going to reduce the buying power of the dollar.
We're flooding the markets.
This is a perfect example of why it doesn't work.
They say, Black-Lewis's workers may not have a choice.
However, since she has already made an offer to pay workers, the state may deem them ineligible to collect unemployment benefits, according to labor economists.
Plus, Black-Lewis feels she needs to use the money according to the terms of the loan forgiveness to avoid going into more personal debt for her business.
They may not have the choice, ultimately.
But I don't come out as the nice guy, Black Lewis said.
Bad will has been cemented into the business because I took it away from them.
There's a bad taste from it, she added.
We'll recover, but it's just a bummer.
Well, you know what?
Your employees are leeches.
They are parasites on the system.
I understand people want to work better jobs, people have aspirations.
I worked fast food.
I worked lifting bags and loading planes.
I did the grunt work for a long time.
And I saved my money.
I saved it all so that I was afforded the ability to expand and grow a business.
When you start out in this life, you are a negative drag on society.
That's not an insult, but you are.
You're a child.
Taxes are being paid to support you.
Schools are being run to support you.
Eventually, you start generating a net positive.
It is then on you to be responsible with your money to figure things out.
Now, some people say it's not fair.
I can't afford healthcare.
I can't get these things.
I hear you, bro.
I hear you.
We can't guarantee everything to everyone.
You gotta understand that the poverty level changes over time.
It's relative.
A poor person in the United States is wealthier than a poor person in Brazil.
So yes, over time, there will be people who are poor.
You can never get rid of poverty.
It's relative.
To think that someone in poverty today has a refrigerator and air conditioning.
And we're lamenting that fact, saying we must do better.
It's astounding!
It is an award.
The privilege, the right to complain about such things.
We should be eternally grateful to those whose shoulders we have been standing on.
Because you go back a hundred years, and poor was sitting in the gutter with an infection, getting your leg chopped off, and you were lucky to eat anything.
Poor in America today is rich for the rest of the world, for the most part.
I'm not saying life is easy.
You want to maintain a standard of living?
I get it.
And we do want to reduce poverty and bring everyone to a better standard of living, always.
But no matter what happens, as long as things get better, there will be poor people.
We can't get rid of that.
You can't just give money.
Money isn't a resource.
Money isn't the value.
The value is the labor and the product of that labor.
And now you can see it.
This stuff... I'm gonna wrap this one up.
Exploitation.
Pure and simple.
They will exploit the system.
They will squeeze it dry.
And while you, an essential worker, are getting paid less.
Think about this.
An essential worker getting paid $10 an hour, making $400 a week, working full-time, making less than those who are non-essential and who took unemployment.
How does that make sense?
Now I'll own that one.
That's on me.
I advocated for this thing, saying we needed it.
And that's right.
We gotta own up to that problem.
But think about the people who are essential workers, who right now are like, I know I have no choice but to work because people need food, people need healthcare.
Meanwhile, other people are like, I wanted free money and I didn't want to work!
That's who you're going to have to go talk to, alright?
Go talk to them.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 4pm, youtube.com slash timcast.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you all then.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has betrayed the left, the progressives who said they would never support Biden after what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders.
But over the past several months, this has been very obvious.
First, AOC has said that they need to unite behind the Democratic nominee.
She was also pulling away from the Bernie Sanders campaign for some time, and they were at odds with each other.
Now, the weird thing is, AOC's politics almost make no sense.
She was in disagreement with Bernie, but now catering to the mainstream.
She's endorsing Democrats and working with Nancy Pelosi and getting slammed by progressives for it.
Now she's coming out and saying she will vote for Joe Biden.
That is sad.
I would hate to be so committed to a losing team that you'd have to support a guy who can't remember a name.
I'm not kidding.
He appeared on the Late Late Show.
He couldn't remember the name Julia Louise Dreyfuss.
How do you pronounce her name?
He couldn't remember it.
He has to look down every two seconds because he doesn't even know what's going on around him.
The dude is gone.
He is lost.
So to come out and try to endorse him is absolutely ridiculous.
Now, OK, I'll stop short of saying she's full on endorsed Joe Biden, but come on.
She said she's going to vote for him, that everybody's come behind him.
And you know what?
The mainstream resistance types are loving it!
They love it.
You know, the progressives are being sold out once again, and this time by AOC.
She could stand under principles.
She doesn't want to.
She doesn't want to fight Nancy Pelosi on the bills that are being put forward.
She just rolls with it.
Let's read the story and see what's going on.
The Hill reports AOC says she will vote for Biden in November.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Wednesday that she will vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the coming November election.
The moment came during the Congresswoman's livestream discussion with rapper Fat Joe on Instagram on Wednesday night.
At the start of the roughly hour-long discussion on Wednesday, the rapper told her, It's three things you can do.
You can vote for Trump.
You can vote for Biden.
Or you can not vote at all.
Who are you gonna vote for?
Let me stop you right there.
What's your name?
Fat Joe?
Fat Joe!
I'mma vote for nobody.
I'm not gonna vote for anybody.
But however, people have asked me about voting for Trump.
There are some things.
There absolutely are.
Depends on how things go in the coronavirus.
I'm never gonna commit 100% to anybody.
And there's very strong reasons why I don't wanna vote for anybody.
And there are good reasons not to vote for Trump.
Now, here's the thing.
If Biden wins, and this guy can't talk straight, that's scary.
I mean, Joe Rogan said it.
He'd rather vote for Trump than Biden.
He'd rather vote for Whoopi Goldberg or Mike Tyson.
Because Joe Biden is not there anymore.
That's so scary to me is that they're so devoted to their tribe that they would sell everything out just to get Biden a win.
Now, I know what's funny is they say Trump supporters do the same thing, and there are many that do.
But we're not talking about the smaller subset of diehard Trump supporters.
There are many, many moderate voters who are like, I guess I'll vote Trump.
Now you've got mainstream Democrats saying, woohoo, go Biden!
Are you kidding?
You're gonna watch it all burn to the ground?
This guy can't even... I'm not... That's... It's... You know what, man?
Let's keep reading.
In November, I'm going to be voting for Joe Biden, she responded.
But that's what I'm going to be doing.
So is this the first time you've said you'd be voting for Biden, Fat Joe asked?
I mean, I've been saying the whole time that we got to support the Democratic nominee, she said.
But she added, this is the time where I'm saying it declaratively like this.
Ocasio-Cortez had previously been a surrogate for Bernie Sanders before he ended his presidential campaign late last month and announced he would be endorsing his former rival last week.
We need you in the White House.
I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe, Sanders said at the time.
Quote, today I'm asking all Americans, every Democrat, every independent, and I'm asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, Sanders added.
Nah.
Bernie.
Nah, I'm not playing these games.
They say days after his endorsement, Ocasio-Cortez, who said she would like to see the former vice president take a more progressive stance on certain issues, was reluctant to say in an interview whether she planned to back him.
We'll see, AOC said when pressed about it.
Yeah, it's because she was getting a ton of pressure from progressives saying, don't do this.
But you know what?
She caves.
Why?
No spine.
No spine, right?
It's missing.
Let me show you something.
I got you this here tweet.
It's from me.
I said, this dude is gone.
Biden can't even remember a name anymore.
He needs to check notes for literally everything.
And in this tweet from the Late Late Show, let me try, I don't want to play it too loud.
James Corden, I think his name is, asks Joe Biden who is going to be his vice presidential pick.
He says Julia Louise Dreyfus, because she was the VP in Veep, right?
You can just see on the screen, because I'm not going to play the audio, Biden is constantly looking down.
He doesn't know what he's supposed to say.
He doesn't know when to say it.
He doesn't even remember a simple name.
Biden, Joe, just say Julia Louise Dreyfus.
He's like, what?
What?
Look, man, you're propping up a dude who clearly can't be president.
You want to argue about Trump?
At least Trump can form a sentence.
He's got some pretty weird ones, and he said some pretty wacky things, and it's really... You know what?
You can criticize... I think Trump is worthy of being criticized when he, like, tweets about ratings and stuff.
It's like, dude, is this what you care about?
But listen, man, if you disagree with Trump because he's obsessed with ratings, there's a big difference between Trump coherently saying, I got good ratings.
Bravo, Trump!
We're glad you got the ratings.
I'm glad you're happy.
Now, can we run the country?
Alright, things have been going pretty okay, but the pandemic has gotten pretty bad, so how about we chill a little bit?
But at least he can express that idea.
Joe Biden!
Look, man, I'm trying to avoid being mean, because this is getting sad at this point.
They keep putting him up!
Do you guys see what happened on CNN?
When he blanked out for like 20 seconds, and just, it was word salad.
And when you, Google search this.
I've Google searched this.
Word salad is like an early sign of dementia.
Where he just says words that don't come together.
Oh, what the thing, you know, when we got, it's, you know, by the time and, you know, from when I saw, you know, the thing.
It's like words are coming out.
They ain't strung together.
Now, of course, this would not be a complete segment talking about the left if I didn't rag on Reddit.
Here you can see before you is the r slash politics subreddit.
Supposed to be a place for civil discourse.
I find it really funny because this is basically anti-Donald, right?
If you're familiar with The Donald, it's now TheDonald.win, it's a website dedicated, it's like the biggest community of Donald Trump supporters.
It's actually where the biggest proliferator of memes, this is for real, it's like an MIT review.
You're not going to find any criticism of him there.
You go to other conservative sites, you might see some, you know, criticism.
But I get it.
It's for Trump supporters.
Now, when you go to r slash politics, what are you supposed to get?
You're supposed to get a conversation about politics.
What do you really get?
You get the complete inversion of the Donald, where it's like activist websites and just the framing of Republicans are all evil.
Let me show you some of the comments here to make my point.
The top comment says, Well, she certainly isn't voting for Trump, and she isn't going to not vote, so I guess this would come as no surprise.
Hey, I like that as a top comment.
It's saying, you know, we get it.
But look at the follow up.
Exactly.
No decent person will choose to abstain with Trump actively killing people.
What?!
People are insane!
They really live in this world where they think Trump is actively killing people.
That's right.
President Orange Man is going around killing people on purpose.
That's how insane this conversation is.
Let me show you something else.
This is the correct moral decision.
Noam Chomsky agrees.
Okay, you know what?
You don't get an actual political conversation on this site.
And it's a shame.
But it's this kind of...
I don't know.
AstroTurfing, I guess?
Look.
One could argue that most people don't like Trump, therefore most of the upvotes on Reddit are anti-Trump.
The reality is this is poor moderation, okay?
If we're supposed to have a conversation about politics, you'd think you wouldn't have insane loaded statements like Trump is actively killing people, but you don't get it.
What ends up happening then is people like AOC just bend the knee to what they think is reality.
This is not reality.
Go walk, go to Middle America, look around at all the signs.
You know, by me, in South Jersey, someone boated out to the middle of this lake, just by the highway, and planted a Trump-Pence flag.
I kid you not.
We drove past, I was like, who did this?
It's a commercial property, and somebody paddled out there, planted this flag.
People really like the President.
I'm not saying he's going to win.
The polls aren't necessarily in his favor.
We will see.
I don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen.
But when it comes to online discourse, the media and these big social media companies prop up this kind of fringe, leftist, blind view of what's really happening.
Maybe it's part of the strategy.
You know, it's really easy to manipulate Reddit and social media.
The interesting thing about Twitter, though, is the progressives have come out against Joe Biden.
So why AOC is now bending the knee for this?
You know, we can only speculate.
I think she knows she's not long for this world unless she plays ball.
I think she's more concerned about having her job, making that paycheck, and being in Congress because it feels good.
The last thing she wants is to be a has-been, a fluke, a one-off.
She needs that re-election.
So she's now trying to pander to mainstream Democrats, which she's never supported.
She outed the mainstream Democrat because she knows they're going to remove her.
But if she falls in line, she can be an effective tool for the machine.
What AOC is becoming is a puppet for the establishment.
She now acts as a bridge for progressives to the mainstream.
She will do what Nancy wants, but wearing this mask of progressivism can convince progressives to fall in line behind her.
Not all of them.
Many of them will disavow.
But a lot of people are going to be like, I guess AOC is right.
She's a progressive.
She was with Bernie.
She is exactly what the establishment needed.
She is going to be their weapon to whip the far left in line and try and poach as many as possible to the establishment corporate Democrats.
And that's what she's doing.
I'm not surprised.
She's always been this.
Anyone who thinks she's this great hero of morality, you are wrong.
Just go take a look at what Jimmy Dore has to say.
I know a lot of conservatives aren't big fans of his.
I think he's a good dude.
I think, you know, there's some stuff he does.
Maybe he's made mistakes in the past.
Fine.
But look at what he says about her.
He's a progressive guy.
He wanted Bernie.
And he calls her out.
Because she is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
Is that the saying?
She's trying to get you on the left to vote for Joe Biden.
Don't look at me, man.
I'm not voting for Biden.
We'll see what ends up happening, though.
I gotta say, though, and I've mentioned this several times, it is becoming easier to consider Donald Trump for a vote than ever before.
For all of his faults, and for all the things you can criticize him for, at least you understand him as a person.
At least you know what he's saying, whether you like it or not.
And when you break through the fake news, you can see just how bad things really are.
Joe Biden is out of there, man.
I'm sorry.
I got a couple more segments coming up for you in a few minutes.
Stick around.
I will see you all shortly.
We could be seeing a crack in the foundation of celebrity personality political BS.
In a story from the Daily Beast, they say, replacing her own crew with non-union workers during the pandemic underscores how the talk show host's cheery TV persona is miles away from who she is behind closed doors.
And of course, they say, in the title, people are finally starting to see the real Ellen DeGeneres, and it isn't pretty.
The mask!
It is coming off!
You know, we have this obsession with supporting celebrity personalities who pretend to care about you.
They do not.
You see people like Ellen.
She made a bunch of jokes, and people are dragging her for this.
I do think people are often looking for things to be angry at.
So this is not a question of principle.
It's not a question of Hollywood celebrity leftism.
It is a question of whether or not the left actually cares about celebrities.
And a little bit of principle, I would say.
It's whether or not they actually believe what they say.
The answer is, they do not.
As their main goal is to be angry, they will take whatever they can get.
And right now, Ellen, you have walked into the crosshairs.
Perhaps the claims against you are unfair.
Perhaps, I don't know.
I will tell you.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
You reap what you sow.
Sayings should be familiar to everybody.
Because when you try and court these people, they will come for you at a moment's notice.
Not because you're an ally, or because you've done something wrong, because it's fresh meat.
You've been thrown into the pit of piranhas and they are going nuts!
Let's read the story.
They say, as America's preeminent lesbian daytime talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres has attained a somewhat unlikely arena of ubiquity in mainstream entertainment culture.
But in the past year, there is evidence emerging that the tinge of mean-spiritedness that comes through in Ellen DeGeneres' interviews and segments on The Ellen DeGeneres Show are consistent with a rumored behind-the-scenes demeanor.
And now it's not just a Give Zero Fs Dakota Johnson, who is coming through with Tales of the Daytime Media Queen.
It's The Workers.
DeGeneres' comedy and sitcom career famously came to a halt when, in 1997, she used an episode of her show Ellen to come out.
Even Laura Dern, who played her love interest in the episode, reportedly couldn't get a job for years afterwards.
Of course, both women have since seen comebacks that have catapulted them to stardom and riches.
But Ellen has more recently received a kind of counter-cultural check.
Outside of her daytime audience and the celebrities she cavorts with, it appears that a good number of regular people, including several of the people who have worked for her and served her in other ways, reportedly find her reliably cruel.
Now, I must be fair.
Perhaps we are seeing people actually hold up their own principles.
How long has it been going on that Ellen is a nasty person, and no one said anything?
Because she's famous, and she's rich, and she holds the key to the castle that if you give in to her whims, she may open the door for you.
So nobody would speak up about her, and the same thing is true for many other really, really awful people.
Now, some of these really awful people get to go to prison.
Ellen DeGeneres certainly hasn't done things that awful, but she may just very well be an awful person.
This could be the first time many people on the left are actually standing up against their own people and holding them accountable.
Ellen doesn't care about you.
The celebrities don't care about you.
They pretend.
They're marketing tools for big business.
That's the job.
You know what my job is?
I complain on the internet.
Not completely, not always.
It's a combination of information, you know, my main channel's a little bit better, but I do often complain a lot.
Let's be real, I deserve the criticism, for sure.
But what we do in media is we attract eyeballs.
You might like my content because I call out the establishment, I call out the elites.
You might like it because I make political points that you agree with or hadn't thought of before.
But at the end of the day, I make money because advertisers put ads on my content.
Okay, so for me, I mostly don't do sponsor spots.
YouTube automates the whole system.
I kind of like it.
There's a lot of problems involved with demonetization, but there's also a benefit that I don't got to stop and then pitch some product.
I do that very rarely.
Now for Ellen, she's trying to do more than that.
These celebrities want to do more than that.
They want to be a persona.
Okay?
I don't care if you like me or don't like me.
I'm going to say what I think, and if people come to my content, it's a great thing.
It allows me to make money.
There are some people that pretend and fake it, and they make more money than me.
They make a lot of money.
Celebrities are some of these people.
They will be like, what's popular right now?
Ooh, I know.
I'll support this cause so that people just say, oh, I'm so nice.
They don't actually care about it.
Do you think Ellen really cares about the people around her?
Apparently she doesn't.
Check us out.
They say.
There have been rumor mills in the comedy and TV world about DeGeneres' meanness for years.
Late last month, a Twitter thread by comedian and podcast host Kevin T. Porter brought many out with first, second, and third-hand stories about DeGeneres' various transgressions, from refusing to make eye contact with interns, to getting a waitress fired for having a chipped nail, and more.
Almost none of these stories have been shared or confirmed by anyone still in the industry, but in 2014, Former Ellen head writer Karen Kilgariff did share with Marc Maron that she was fired from the show after refusing to cross the picket line during the 2008 writer's strike.
DeGeneres has allegedly never spoke to Kilgariff since.
Some of these people are just some of the worst people you could possibly imagine.
Look, man, what I don't understand is, like, you looked like someone like a Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks.
People at his company want to unionize.
What does he do?
He punishes them.
He screams at them.
He fired a guy.
Well, I don't understand this.
I guess I must truly be a person of principle.
I would never do that.
There's no amount of money that's worth.
If people are striking, I'm, hey, alright, I guess.
You know, whatever.
Maybe it's because of the way I run my show.
Maybe it's because of the way I work.
But why would you toss people into the gutter like that?
That, to me, is mind-boggling.
It must be truly awful to work for these people.
But you know what?
It reminds me of something George Carlin said.
That too many Americans just elect these millionaires, a-holes, who don't care about you.
They don't care about you.
That's what he said.
And it says a lot to me.
He's right.
Ellen doesn't care about you.
She smiles on TV because she's there to sell you a product.
You go on her show and she sells you a product.
Smiles and handshakes and love.
And behind the scenes, she fires people who will violate their principles.
She hires non-union crews.
She doesn't care about anybody.
And that's most of these people.
They're just marketing tools.
Let's read a little bit.
They say, Earlier this year, DeGeneres came under fire for more public-facing actions.
After photos came out of her laughing it up at a Dallas Cowboys game with George W. Bush, fans and critics expressed anger that the host would get chummy with the head cheerleader of the Iraq War.
Except many conservatives were like, dude, what are you gonna do?
We don't like Bush.
I get it.
But she's sitting at a ballgame.
Chill out.
DeGeneres dismissed the criticism by saying that liberals and conservatives should be able to reach across the aisle to be friends.
Granted, it's a little bit different than that.
Mr. DeGeneres.
Bush.
War.
Dead people.
Okay, it's not just about being a conservative.
Not at all.
But more recently, it's become clear that DeGeneres doesn't quite extend that self-styled grace toward those who cannot escape by virtue of being the head of it, the incarcerated.
Performing a monologue from her multi-million dollar Beverly Hills home during the ongoing California lockdown, DeGeneres cracked that being self-isolated is like being in jail.
It's mostly because I've been wearing the same clothes for 10 days and everyone here is gay.
Once again, viewers were incensed.
Okay, listen.
They just want to be angry.
She made a joke.
I get the joke.
I don't think it's a good joke, but I get the joke, okay?
I think someone wrote it for her, and she is now reaping what she has sown.
You want to be a part of this woke outrage?
You want to foment this for years?
You were the one stirring the pot the whole time, making things crazier and making things worse, and now they've come for you.
You know what?
They can come for me all day and night, but I don't surround myself by these people, and I don't become dependent upon them.
That's why I love all you guys who watch, because I know that I can make an offensive joke, and I have, on the IRL podcast, notably.
And people are going to be like, I get it.
It's either a good joke, a bad joke, or, you know, whatever.
I'm going to keep watching.
I got no beef against Ellen for making this joke.
But now we can see the left is finally starting to turn things around.
Of course, perhaps I'm wrong about this, because as Obama called it, it's a circular firing squad.
I think they don't have principles.
I think they just want to be angry.
They turn the sword on anybody at a moment's notice, and when things don't even necessarily make sense.
It's like, was that offensive?
I don't know.
So should Ellen DeGeneres have hired non-union crews and fired her staff?
She should not have.
I wouldn't do that.
That's messed up.
She's super rich.
But the joke stuff says to me they're just looking for a reason to be angry.
So you know what?
Maybe none of this matters.
Maybe the only thing that really matters is that they're going to eat each other until the end of the world.
Do you know what an Ouroboros is?
The snake eating its own tail or whatever?
I give you this.
She wanted to be a part of it, she gets to be a part of it, and she gets to be devoured and destroyed by it.
Ultimately, I don't think it matters.
They say she earns 70 million dollars a year.
Okay.
So, whatever.
Let me read this.
DeGeneres, who has a reported net worth of $333 million, makes much of performing acts of charitable giving on her show, and recently announced that she and her wife Portia de Rossi would be donating $1 million to COVID-related charities.
But in contrast to her football hangout with Bush, it's always much more informative to understand how powerful people treat the non-powerful people they depend on, the ones who make their isolation possible.
That's a big question about relationships.
And they often say that you can judge a person's character by how they treat a server at a restaurant or how they treat, you know, a housekeeper or a cleaner.
When people like her throw them to the gutter and say they don't care about them, you know they don't actually care about making anything better.
Their intention is just to extract resources from you.
Now, I think there's a lot of people who reject this stuff.
Probably most of the people who watch me would look at this with disdain.
They'd look at people like Ellen and say, I'm not buying it.
I'm not buying what you're selling.
But a lot of people eat it up.
And this is where things get scary because it exists in politics too.
You end up with politicians who do the exact same thing for the exact same reasons.
And what do you end up with?
Policies that make no sense.
Our manufacturing base being sold off to China over the past several years and now pending war because of it.
And whose fault is it?
These people sell us out.
They treat us like crops to be harvested, not people to respect and individuals to listen to.
And I know a lot of people who are in the second tier to that, the blind, following these awful people, these sociopaths, who then say the government should do these things and, oh, all the conservatives are bad, and it's like, have you ever stopped to ask anyone how they feel and what they need?
They don't do it.
So I don't know where that leaves us, but this could just be another blip.
Not anything significant.
Or it could be woke celebrities might finally start waking up to the fact you can't court these people.
They'll eat you alive.
I don't know, man.
They're gonna say whatever they have to say.
She'll come out and apologize and say, it was wrong of me and I hope you forgive me.
Please give me money.
And she'll get it.
I got one more segment for you coming up in a few minutes and I will see you all shortly.
If you thought things were bad, you were right.
If you thought things were getting better, you might actually be wrong.
And I kind of felt like things were getting better, too, because we're hearing some states are opening up.
Donald Trump recently said, Georgia, you're opening up too fast.
Slow it down a little bit.
Making a mistake.
But now we're hearing once again that China is putting another lockdown in place, this time a very large one.
A city of 10 million is being put on lockdown to curb a new coronavirus outbreak.
I am of the opinion that we do need to reopen the economy because we're facing starvation.
That's what the UN has said.
Biblical proportions.
We gotta do something.
But I think the pandemic is gonna just dramatically escalate.
See, China is an authoritarian dictatorship.
They locked everybody down by force.
Now, what happens with the United States?
We start reopening.
People are going to get sick.
Maybe there's nothing we can do about it.
The good news is several studies have shown this more widespread than we realize, meaning the mortality rate is substantially lower, but everyone will get it.
The mortality rate of the flu being around 0.12% or about 0.1% means that the people who get it, there's a very low chance that you'll actually die.
For the novel coronavirus, Everyone is capable of getting it, though many people experience mild symptoms.
If you end up getting coronavirus...
You could die at the same rate as the flu, but more people will get it.
Now, it's also possible these studies are wrong.
They've been heavily criticized for bad methodologies.
Look, man, we got three.
I don't know what to tell you, okay?
Three different studies saying the same thing.
But it is fair to say that the reason we're seeing a spike in deaths is because people are getting this like crazy.
You may have already gotten it.
You don't know.
Now, here's what's happening.
China's locking things down again because it's coming back.
If this happens to us, I don't know how long we're going to be locked down for.
Some people have said two years.
Don't be surprised, man.
You know, you might not want to believe it.
Maybe it's your optimism bias, but look at this.
Let me read you the story.
They say a major Chinese city has adopted draconian quarantine measures against the novel coronavirus after a new outbreak was detected there.
More than 70 people have been infected and over 4,000 are being tested in Harbin after the virus was believed to be imported into the city by a student who had returned from New York, according to media reports.
Officials have banned gatherings and ordered communities to closely monitor non-local visitor and vehicles in the city of around 10 million.
Checkpoints have been installed at the airport and train stations to screen those coming from elsewhere.
10 million people!
That's like New York City, dude!
Imagine if New York slowly started reopening.
I say, we beat it!
Everything's getting better!
And they open up and it gets worse again.
They lock down again.
You know, I think Republicans got a real problem.
Because mail-in voting definitely helps Democrats, for reasons I've explained before.
I don't like the idea of changing the rules simply because, you know, you want a way to win.
But what do you do?
If this virus hits, I mean, a lot of people believe in this conspiracy that, you know, was created to hurt Trump, but it's like, I just don't believe it, man.
It's ridiculous.
These things are bound to happen.
And it makes China look really, really bad.
It hurts a lot of people.
Maybe you want to believe they hate Trump that much, but I'll tell you what.
Mail-in voting is being pressed for, and if we get a second wave and another lockdown, that's what we're gonna have.
And with mail-in voting, I'm willing to bet Donald Trump loses.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
And the reason for it is, a lot of people aren't bothered to vote.
A lot of people don't know anything about voting, and they don't care.
These people are easily manipulated by their emotions.
You go to somebody and say, hey, I'll give you a thousand bucks, you vote for me.
They're gonna be like, sure.
So what do you do?
You offer them some kind of package.
You offer them student debt forgiveness.
Young people don't go vote.
How do you get them to vote?
You mail the package to their house and the mom or the dad goes, fill it out and send it back in.
And then they do it.
Now the left argues, so you're saying that if everyone got to vote, Republicans would lose?
Yes.
That's what I'm saying.
I don't got any skin in the game.
I don't care if Republicans win or lose, for the most part.
I think the left is getting freakier and freakier every day.
But I think it's a reality.
A lot of uninitiated people who normally don't care to vote, if they do, the left will win.
You offer people pie in the sky, candy canes, and rainbows, yeah, they're going to vote for you.
Republicans don't have that message.
They talk about responsibility.
So what they need is to have the rules rigid so they know exactly who will vote, how to vote, and how to get people to vote.
But you gotta think about it, man.
If you're a Republican, and you think you're right, then you have to understand that you have to be educated to become right.
What do you think happens if someone has no idea what's going on and who they're going to vote for?
That's right, they're going to vote for Democrats.
So the left views this as the Republicans using voter suppression.
That is an exaggeration.
I think the Republicans use the rules as they're written and try to get as many people, Republicans, to vote Republican.
The Democrats keep trying to change the rules because they see their own weaknesses.
If people don't want to vote, changing the rules to trick them into voting, I do not agree with.
It makes no sense.
That's almost cheating.
If somebody doesn't care to get up and vote because they don't know, don't shove a ballot in their face and say just vote anyway.
Some countries have compulsory voting, fine.
I don't know.
Look, I think everyone should be able to vote.
I think we should encourage more people to vote, but first and foremost, people should be encouraged to know what they're voting for.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are misled by lies.
Anyway, I want to go on a tangent about this.
I want to talk about what's going on with China, but the point I'm bringing up is, if this wave is hitting China again, and they're locking down a 10 million person city.
This is what we saw at the beginning of this lockdown when it came to Wuhan.
Now it's happening in another city.
It could be nothing.
This could be nothing, all right?
It could be a lot worse.
This is Harbin, up in Northeastern China.
They say the provincial capital of Heilongjiang in Northeastern China has been grappling with what is now the country's biggest coronavirus outbreak.
The government yesterday released a directive to instruct further restrictions on its residents, visitors, and inbound traffic.
Before entering any public facilities and residential complexes, people must use a government-approved health app to prove they don't have the virus, have their temperature taken, and wear a face mask, the notice says.
Residents must follow social distancing measures, fighting off a sneeze.
Excuse me.
Weddings, funerals, public performances, and conferences are banned.
Allergies, not coronavirus.
I have allergies.
I'm in the middle of nowhere.
So this is happening in a different city from where the outbreak started.
There's another potential we should be paying attention to.
New York may get over this.
They may shut things down.
They may win out.
We got other cities.
We got Chicago.
We got L.A.
We got people in these cities who defy the shutdown orders.
And we got people who want to see the economy reopened.
I happen to be on the side of wanting the economy reopened, but you understand, Trump really is between a rock and a hard place.
There's a lot of reasons to believe that he might win.
One of the reasons being that he's got tremendous black support, more so than he did before, and because people don't blame him for this.
But, There's going to be a potential that with the disaster, a lot of people want change.
I don't think so.
I think when it comes to disaster, people want to see the captain stay in charge and finish the job.
You know, get it done.
Changing things could destabilize, so people tend to, you know, they'll support the incumbent in a crisis.
It's also possible, though, As Nancy Pelosi, I believe Nancy Pelosi said, she wants mail-in voting in the next stimulus package.
That's gonna change everything.
It's gonna be very, very different.
Now, there is a potential for fraud.
But I think you gotta be honest, man.
While I do think fraud is a real possibility, the bigger possibility is people vote for other people.
And that's a form of fraud.
It's basically what I'm saying.
If there's a kid who's like, I don't wanna vote, I don't know, who should I vote for?
Just check this, check this, check this.
The older people will start telling the younger people who don't care who to vote for.
I'm not a fan of that, man.
I think, when it comes to voting, you gotta want to do it.
You gotta know who you want and you want.
You hate Trump?
You hate that man?
Good!
Get up, go vote.
Prove to everybody you do.
You like Trump?
Get up, go, and prove to everybody you do.
But if we get a bunch of lazy people who don't care and aren't paying attention, who are ahead of these ballots, I think that's going to be a bad thing.
This is the risk of the lockdown as it stands.
Now, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'll tell you this.
Beyond that, we are looking at a serious problem.
If we don't reopen the economy, we're looking at a major famine.
If we have to keep locking things down, we're in serious trouble.
China's in serious trouble.
The US.
Europe.
And it looks like that's the route we're headed.
I can't predict the future.
I got some things right.
I got a lot of things wrong.
I don't know, you know, what to expect.
I think this may be not nearly as bad as we thought it was in the beginning.
And I go back and forth on this, so I apologize.
A lot of people say you go back and forth.
Yes, because information changes.
We now know through several studies that this is more widespread than previously realized.
That means the mortality rate is really low.
It means you probably got it and didn't even notice.
But it does mean as a novel virus, a lot of people are going to get it and they're going to die.
And that means when we reopen the economy, that's going to look bad for the president.
If Trump says it's time to reopen, and we start seeing a major increase in deaths, Trump's gonna have to own that one.
I don't know how he gets past that.
It's gonna be tough.
He's the one saying, liberate.
The protesters are coming out, they're being smeared and slammed.
It's true though.
We need the economy back.
People will starve.
It's like I said, I took that Native American quote and I said, only after the economy is completely destroyed and the farms are shut down, will people realize they cannot eat government stimulus money.
So maybe Trump is making the hard choice.
Maybe he's saying, you know what?
Just go for it.
Because eventually the cure becomes worse.
Now, Governor Cuomo disagrees.
He said, no, economic hardship is not worse.
He's wrong.
He doesn't understand.
We're talking about poverty, crime, and death.
Yes, the virus will kill people.
The projections could be upwards of a million if we don't have social distancing.
Now, we wanted to flatten the curve, not prevent every death.
We didn't think we could.
And we've done that.
Maybe we need to make sure we're still doing it.
But you've got to understand, the world relies on the movement of the economy, of trade.
And if we have it shut down and it remains shut down, or if we're forced to keep it shut down because the virus won't subside, we are in for a serious trauma.
I'll put it that way.
Maybe we can't open.
Maybe we try and it gets worse again.
China did.
They reopened and now they've got to lock down again.
We'll see how bad it gets.
We've got to look to these other countries to see what we can expect for us.
They had it first.
Now we have it.
We'll see how things play out.
The other problem, China's been lying the whole time.
