Why Corporate Power is the New Bipartisan Enemy | Cenk Uygur DSH #1092

Are you a fan of the Doge movement getting rid of government jobs?

Doge is too big in terms of an umbrella word.

If you say, Am I in favor of Doge cutting Medicare?

My answer is hell no.

But if you say Doge cutting Pentagon, yeah, let's have a conversation.

I don't want to spend my money on foreign governments.

I don't want to spend it on corporate subsidies.

I don't want to spend it on Pentagon BS.

That's a fair take.

Take it agency by agency, not an overall umbrella.

All right, guys, he is back.

We're at AmFest.

How's it going, man?

Post-election.

Good, brother.

How you been?

Yeah.

I remember we filmed right before the election and Trump was not favored to win and he pulled it off.

Yeah, yeah, he did.

Has your world changed a lot?

It has actually in a lot of ways.

And so

obviously, I didn't want Trump to win,

but

something really positive has come out of the win.

I mean, we'll see if a lot of negative things come out, right?

But

there's definitely policy things I'm super worried about but uh the good news is like establishment media feels defeated and um

and i think that they know it and i feel their panic and i love it and i drink it up yeah well you see uh hot ones just got acquired by soros so he's shifting his efforts to alternative media and podcasts yeah everybody's shifting because So look, the right wing is more of a mixed bag.

You guys, a lot of the funders, donors, investors, et cetera, understood the power of online media earlier than the Democrats did.

The Democrats, they believed in mainstream media so much.

The Uniparty has controlled mainstream media so thoroughly for so long that they got cocky and they didn't believe in online media.

And so anytime that you'd even have a conversation about online media, the power brokers would think, oh, first of all, that's a little thing.

Like it scraps off our table.

It's not important.

But most importantly, you're going to say what we want you to say, right?

And I'm like, no, A, we're never going to do that.

And B, you missed the whole goddamn point.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the power of online media comes in authenticity.

So if you don't want authenticity, this is not the place for you.

And so they all went away because they don't want authenticity.

They just wanted propaganda, right?

And what you got to give Trump credit for and Maier credit for is that they embraced the chaos.

They knew that they're, hey, some people are going to disagree.

Some people are going to say bad things about you.

You can't fully control the message, right?

Yeah.

But they rode that wave, right?

And strategically, not policy, but strategically, that was the correct decision.

The Democrats keep making the wrong decision and doubling down on the establishment.

And that's why they're getting their asses handed to them.

So after the election, the fact that people realize, oh, we're not going to be able to propaganda our way out of this and mainstream media is on its way down.

That's great news.

Yeah.

Have your political views changed?

No, none.

They're still the same?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

Let's respect that.

You're still standing on it, though.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

So, but look, the great news on the policy front is not that my opinions have changed or anybody else's.

It's that we're finally beginning to realize: hey, wait a minute, on some things, we actually do agree.

Right.

No, and if I'm being,

you know, more direct, I would say to you

that the right wing's

ethos

drive

like

culture and their way of thinking about things has changed.

So the left wing became, unfortunately, big portions of, not all of it, not the Bernie crowd, but a lot of it became authoritarian.

You must believe this.

There is no other way to do it.

And

if you veer from that, it's heresy and it's unacceptable, right?

The right wing used to be more authoritarian and then started to open up, open up and say, okay, you know what?

You're allowed to disagree.

Okay, yeah, this, that, and other thing, right?

Yeah.

And so within that disagreement, all of a sudden people started saying, hey, I don't know that corporate power is such a great thing.

And I'm like, there you go.

Okay, that's populist.

Yeah.

Right.

That's what we've been saying all along.

So what I'm telling my left-wing friends is, brother, when they get to a yes, take it.

Take the yes, right?

And they're so burned and they're so reluctant because of the past that they have trouble believing it.

But I've been on enough shows.

I've talked to enough MAGA hosts and real people to know that it's real.

Okay.

Are you a fan of the Doge movement getting rid of government jobs?

So

Doge is too big in terms of an umbrella word, right?

And an idea.

So if you say, am I in favor of Doge cutting Medicare?

My answer is hell no.

okay or social security no way right but if you say doge cutting pentagon yeah let's have a conversation you shout out to today's sponsor prolon if starting the year with a fast feels a little daunting you're not alone there's an entire community of individuals wanting to make a meaningful decision in their health just like you this is what makes group fasting so powerful and why i'm joining in on prolon's january longevity challenge which is a coach-led program to set you up for fasting success prolon's fasting mimicking diet is a revolutionary plant-based nutrition program that nourishes the body while making cells believe they're fasting.

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We're talking about cutting corporate subsidies.

Why are oil companies getting $30 billion a year in subsidies?

I don't get it, right?

Like they should be paying us.

They're causing climate change.

And now people can't afford their homes because the insurance companies are pulling out and all of a sudden the value of their houses are plummeting in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, all red states, also California, right?

Yeah.

So let's unite on the things that we agree on.

So why?

I don't want to spend my money on foreign governments.

I don't want to spend it on corporate subsidies.

I don't want to to spend it on Pentagon BS, right?

Yeah.

That's a fair take.

Take it agency by agency, not an overall umbrella.

Yeah.

And look, that's what I'm trying to explain to the left because I think the right's actually pretty good at this, which is, guys,

so what if we disagree?

Okay, then let's fight over it, right?

There's nothing wrong with that.

But when we do agree,

why don't we unite and just get the policies we want?

Right.

What about the Department of Education?

Are you in favor of removing that?

No.

Why?

So, look, education is obviously an enormous equalizer.

It's about equality of opportunity.

So a lot of times the right way thinks that the left wants equality of results and some few people on the left do, but most of the left, especially the voters,

just want equality of opportunity.

And for me, my dad was a very poor farmer in southeastern Turkey.

And the way he got out of that was they allowed for a free education in Turkey back in the 1960s.

If you qualified, if you scored in the top 15, 20%, and he did, he wound up going to the top engineering school, and it changed our lives forever.

So I'm an enormous believer in education.

I know that you can say, hey, you know what?

Department of Education maybe doesn't help that as much as it should.

And then you'd have to really get into the nitty-gritty of what are the programs.

Do they help?

Do they not help?

Yeah, I am in favor of education, but don't you think it's gotten a little too expensive?

Oh, education is ridiculously expensive, but that's not on the Department of Education.

That's on the colleges.

And they're basically building up these giant trust funds, these,

I'm forgetting what they call it, but they've got like 10 billion here, 40 billion there, and Yale and Harvard have this giant fight.

Well, what are you going to do with it?

What are you going to do with your 10 or 20 or 40 billion dollars?

Why are you charging people an arm on a leg?

And you know what happens when they charge that much?

You become an indentured servant of the corporate

class, right?

Because then you spend the rest of your life paying that debt back, and then they got you.

The college debt, along with health care being attached to your employer, is what puts shackles on you so you can't fight corporate power.

Right.

And now when private equity buys all up all the residential homes, they're just turning us into indentured servants that are going to serve them the rest of our lives.

Absolutely.

That's why the right-wing revolt is

actually positive.

When on the things I don't agree with, no problem, man.

We'll fight you on that completely.

But you guys are doing some portions of it.

And we'll have to see if it's real, though.

Can I, let me do this back at you, right?

Because I see the energy here.

And I've now talked to hundreds and hundreds of guys who are MAGA, and they really do mean it, right?

And let alone dozens of hosts.

Yeah.

But what,

but what I ask back is that you guys hold your leaders accountable.

Because if they don't do any of that, right, they don't

get rid of the Department of Education, but education still costs just as much, right?

And

if they don't actually uh fight private equity buying up our homes if they don't do any of that you've got to hold them accountable i'm all about accountability i mean look what's happening to mike johnson right now yeah you know he's being held accountable he canceled his whole speech here yeah so and yeah look so again we might agree and disagree on some of the cuts but mike johnson was doing uniparty stuff right yeah and what they were thinking is oh this election is fun and games but at the end of the day we're just going to go back to more corporate tax cuts and more giveaways etc and you guys block that

for worse in some ways, but for better in some ways.

So at least that's a revolt, right?

And as Charlie and I talked about on stage, you revolted against Mitch McCall, you revolted against Dick Cheney.

Those are huge wins.

Absolutely.

So I asked Charlie if he, if he believes college debt should be forgiven, student debt, he said no.

What would your take on that be?

Look, yes is the answer, but it has to be coupled with Bernie's proposal of free college education.

That doesn't mean you get to go to Harvard.

All it means is if you're going to a state school, right, just like the state schools in Turkey in the 1960s, back when it was really poor, could still afford it, gives you an opportunity to go to a great school like University of Wisconsin or University of Texas, University of North Carolina, these amazing state schools, right?

Get you a chance to get that for free because...

And they say, oh, well, some of that will go to the rich.

Guys, they're going to the Ives, right?

They don't don't need, you know, University of Georgia to let them in and to get a free education.

That's for the rest of us.

That's for the middle class.

So if you do those two things together, you say education is not going to cost this much anymore.

You pay it if you want to.

If you want to go to Harvard and pay them a gazillion dollars, that's your business, right?

That's freedom, right?

But you're going to have an opportunity for your kids to have the same shot.

as rich people's kids.

I love that.

I love it.

What's next for you and the young Turks?

So look, first of all, everybody come watch live 6 o'clock Eastern every single day, Monday through Friday, right?

Come find out for yourselves what's our policies, what do we believe, et cetera.

Hold us accountable, right?

So Young Turks on YouTube is a great

place to watch 6 o'clock every day.

Okay, so we put together a populist plank on TYT.com.

Six things I think we all agree on.

And so one of the things, and come sign it.

We don't want just left-wingers signing it.

We want left-wing, right-wing, independents.

We want everybody.

By the way, we pulled our audience.

18 of our audience are not democrats they're independent oh wow that's a big number 18 right yeah people are beginning to realize well these guys fight for us right we we agree and disagree on some issues but on the core issues that we agree on there is no better fighter than the young turks on those things so what are the six real quick

higher wages for the average guy not for the corporate ceos right and there's ways to get there uh pay family leave so when you have a kid you get to a mom gets to take 12 weeks off raise her kid for just a little while, right?

Yeah.

And so that's just basic decency, anti-war, anti-corruption.

One of them is private equity cannot buy residential homes.

And then the last one is we negotiate all drug prices.

What is this?

One drug or 10 drugs or no drugs?

No, in a capitalist system, in a free market, you can negotiate any price.

It's an absolute outrage.

I think we all agree to all six of those.

If we get that to be a couple of million people that sign it, and then we take it to the politicians and go, we're demanding that you do this on behalf of all of the American people.

That would be a great way to go.

I'll do it.

We'll link that below.

Thanks for coming on again, man.

All right, thank you, brother.

Appreciate it.