My concern, Charlie, is unless we reconcile ourselves with what the truth of
the matter was that led to January 6,
that's really just gonna be a friendly preview of what's to come in this country.
>> Speaker 2: Hm, some dark and foreshadowing statements from longshot
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
That was a statement that he gave while appearing on The Charlie Kirk Show,
and to a degree, he is correct.
Now pause, before I get to that.
I do wanna note that the Capitol riot was partially an explosion of some
long simmering conservative grievances.
I'll give you examples of those grievances in just a moment.
But Ramaswamy does get something wrong, and I wanna talk about that as well.
Before we do, though, here's more from his comments.
>> Speaker 1: I think January 6 was the culmination of what you see when a culture
censors people from speaking.
When a government repeatedly tells people, and
I'm talking about the administrative state here, not the elected government,
tells people to shut up, sit down, and do as they're told.
You were told that you had to take a vaccine when normally and, by the way,
I've been in biotech, you have to take ten years to develop a medicine for
the public to believe that it's safe and effective.
You can't even choose to take one that hasn't been through that.
And yet here, something that went through the process in less than one year,
you couldn't choose not to take it.
On the eve of that election, the most damning story about one of the two
candidates, Biden, his son, and being compromised financially by our enemies.
From China, in the case of an enemy, to Ukraine, in the case of a corrupt actor,
it had to be suppressed.
You couldn't even send that on your social media accounts to individual people
without being silenced.
>> Speaker 2: So, Cenk, he goes after the administrative state.
He talks about COVID vaccine mandates, which really, for the most part,
impacted some small businesses for a short period of time.
Not small businesses, larger corporations for a small period of time,
not smaller businesses.
And some public employees also had to get vaccinated.
So he's pointing to those issues as the main grievances that
conservative voters are dealing with here.
And that if you don't deal with those grievances,
if you don't deal with those problems, then we're gonna see another January 6.
That January 6 was just a little preview of what's to come.
What are your thoughts on that?
>> Speaker 3: He's doing two things wrong and one thing right.
So when he says January 6 happened because of Hunter Biden's laptop, cuckoo, cuckoo.
Are you serious?
Why are you saying such silly things, right?
So, on the other hand, when he says they have massive grievances and
that's why they couldn't take it anymore and it exploded into this, basically,
he's not saying it's a riot, but it was definitely a riot.
And obviously they broke in, that part is correct.
Now are their grievances justified?
Well, that breaks into two different categories.
In my estimation, I think there were some people who thought, no,
we're the white right-wingers, we always rule.
And that's not your America, it's my America and I'm gonna take it back.
For them the idea that someone that isn't on their side won is inconceivable.
But there's also a giant group of them that have legitimate grievances.
Is it like the Republican Trump grievances?
No, it's just this system sucks.
It's crushed our wages, it's crushed our jobs, it's crushed our dignity.
And it is because of the rampant corruption in government where
corporations are just flat out allowed to buy almost every politician there is.
And that has led to their wages and their jobs and
their healthcare being crushed, and they're super mad, right?
And so the system, including mainstream media, the Democrats and
corporate Republicans, try to bottle that up.
No, no, no, you're not angry.
The system is great, you're not angry.
And January 6 was partly them going, no, we're not gonna stay bottled up.
We are angry and we're gonna go do this.
Now the left-wing doesn't do it because we have no sense of entitlement, but
the right-wing has a sense of entitlement.
This is my country, what do you mean, right?
And when you add a grievance on top of that entitlement, January 6 happens.
Now the second part he's wrong about is he seems to be kind of mildly encouraging it.
And so, whoa, slow your role there.
It's not a positive thing that January 6 happened.
I understand the reasons behind it.
Some of them bad, some of them understandable,
some of them horrible, right?
But it's not a good thing.
There's a much better way to address those grievances, which is to end
the corruption in the first place, but he's not offering that solution.
Trump's not offering that solution,
and the Democrats aren't offering that solution.
The solution is end private financing of elections so there are no more bribes, but
they all like the bribes, including him.
>> Speaker 2: And it is kind of interesting how the Republican voters
are never listened to by the prominent figures in their own party, right?
Because he lists off all these things, he's against the administrative state,
the Hunter Biden's laptop, all of these little fringe issues.
And it seems like he's making a concerted effort to avoid actually listening
to what the voters are saying.
So why don't we go to the quotes of a specific January 6 rioter who
is facing six years in prison because of her part in those riots.
So I'm gonna skip ahead to Audrey Southard-Rumsey.
She's one of the Capitol rioters.
She's gonna be in prison for
six years because not only was she one of the rioters,
she was caught on camera assaulting a Capitol police officer with a flagpole.
Now, she gave a 15-minute rant in court.
And what I thought was interesting about her rant and look,
let me be clear for people who can't really take me taking someone I
disagree with politically seriously, okay?
It's gonna be okay.
I don't agree with this person, but I think what she's saying here is very
interesting and we should maybe consider her concerns.
All right, so here's what she says in court.
I have grievances since they don't listen to us at the polling place.
They don't listen to us little people in the regular world.
So Southard-Ramsey criticized gas and grocery prices and said,
quote, I'm terrified about what's happening in our country.
Departing court, she declined requests for comment.
Turning to reporters, she said, you are all effing liars.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
You're why we're in this mess.
I just think it's interesting that the economic concerns that you hear from these
rioters, from Trump supporters over and over and over again.
Just gets brushed to the side by Republican figures like Ramaswamy,
as if these statements don't exist, these concerns don't exist.
And the only thing they're really concerned about is social media censorship
and whatever fringe issue they want to put front and center in the political space.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm gonna say something controversial here that some on
the left are gonna flip out over, but hold here as I get to it.
So first of all, this woman, she's both incredibly right and incredibly wrong.
She's right about all the things that Ana just said.
Then you read more into it and she beat one of the cops with a flagpole,
she pushed someone else down, and she leaves a full Trump MAGA lunacy, right?
>> Speaker 2: I don't agree with any of that, and she should be serving time for
what she did.
I wanna be clear.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, and she broke the law and she participated in an assault,
let alone everything else.
Okay, that's all true.
Both things are true, okay?
Now, I'm gonna go to the MLK quote, so buckle up.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
This was a riot.
So now does that mean that the riot was justified?
No, does that mean people who broke the law shouldn't go to jail?
No, they should go to jail.
And I love that they're actually finally going after the conspirators of the entire
scheme in the first place.
People like Donald Trump who came up with a fake elector scheme, okay?
>> Speaker 2: And the fake electors themselves.
>> Speaker 3: And that's why Vivek is totally wrong about,
it's Hunter Biden's laugh.
People don't riot over a little thing that just happened.
So when riots happened after George Floyd was killed,
it was the language of the unheard because it wasn't just about George Floyd.
It was hundreds of years of police abusing Black people in this country.
And that's why that frustration mounts, mounts, mounts until it explodes,
cuz no one will hear them.
So what is the core of the Republican voters' anger that is not being heard?
It is not conspiracies about the deep state and QAnon and all that stuff.
Yeah, there's a whole heap of that within the right-wing, no question about it.
That's why I'm not in the right-wing.
And I would never be in the right-wing as long as they have those ridiculous
conspiracy theories, etc.
But the core was, what did Trump win on in 2016?
Drain the swamp.
The Republican voters hate corruption, and that is a credit to them.
But every time they talk about draining the swamp, mainstream media goes,
there is no corruption.
Every bill they're voting on,
they're having a legitimate debate between honorable gentlemen.
The money that they're receiving in bribes, I mean,
campaign contributions doesn't affect them at all.
And then it gets angrier and angrier and the pressure mounts and
mounts until you have a riot like this.
That is the language of the unheard.
Because the people in Washington, corporate Democrats,
corporate Republicans, and corporate media are all collectively gaslighting you and
going, there is no problem, the system is great.
>> The status quo is fantastic.
>> The status quo is wonderful, and campaign contributions are not bribes.
Well, it was bound to explode.
It exploded in a very unproductive way, in a disastrous way.
But there's a fundamental underlying reason, and
we're ignoring it at our peril.