Before we do anything else today,
I wanted to take a minute out to talk to you guys about what kind of show and
network we are because apparently that some people are questioning it.
And so I have clear answers and
then people can make their decisions based on that.
Okay, so we've been doing this for 21 years and
the entire time we've been progressive and fighting very hard for
progressive issues and done a lot of things.
I'm not gonna get into our resume of all the great things that mainly are audience
has done because without them we don't have any power.
And those folks have done amazing things in the world, like launch just Democrats,
et cetera.
So we're not going to pop out of a cake in a couple of days and
go, tadah right wing pivot.
We laid a 21 year bear trap for you guys, so
that the end we could do a right wing pivot and then lose our entire audience.
The people are like, are you guys a grifters?
You are denying your audience what they want.
Wait, how would that be a grift?
You guys wanna go from an incredibly successful progressive show that gets
hundreds of millions of views every month to being right wingers to get no views?
If that was true, why would that be a grift?
That's not a grift, that's just a disastrous decision.
No, we're doing something radical on this network and so
I want you to understand it.
We're allowing for discussion and debate and disagreements.
Now, a lot of people don't want that.
Like tons of right wingers go, no, I don't want any of that.
I just want Fox News or News Max or Tug Cross or whoever it is.
I just want him to say the things that I wanna hear.
And in fact, Fox News got in trouble in the dominion lawsuit
because you see the internal emails.
Let's not tell people things that are true.
Let's just tell the audience what they wanna hear.
Now, I was proud that the left wing didn't do that for a long, long time.
We are open minded, we're reasonable, we have conversations.
But unfortunately, at this point, there are some forces that say no,
there should be no discussion, there is a correct opinion and
everyone should be forced to have that correct opinion.
Or there should be canceled or fired or no one should watch them or
all these other consequences that flow from that.
Well, God bless.
There's really good news because there's tons of leftist shows
now that never disagree with a preset so called leftist ideology.
They agree with 100% of the issues 100% of the time, and they almost all do it right.
You sure they're honest with you that they agree with whatever is the trend
of the day 100% of the time?
By the way, they could prove me wrong.
They say, yeah, I don't agree with the left on this, this, this, and this.
And see, nobody cancel me.
Everybody's fine.
Now they're gonna do try benign things like, yeah?
Well, I like orange more than I like yellow.
No, give me real disagreements.
You're not gonna do it, are you?
Because you're worried.
Well, we are gonna do it on this network, so we do things like, hey,
I do something that is almost unheard of in media.
I hire people who disagree with me.
And so some have disagreed on the right, some have disagreed on the left, and
then they have come out and not only disagree with me massively on our air,
and I'm totally okay with it, totally okay with it.
And then they will sometimes go over the edge and say vicious and crazy things,
[LAUGH] and we're still okay with it.
And you guys know, recently, someone who we'd liked and really supported,
et cetera, decided to call me an evil person, a racist, a transport,
pathetic, embarrassing, all these terrible, terrible, terrible things.
And then they quit.
And after they quit, they say,
I quit because this guy who runs the company won't agree with me.
But, sister, I platformed you.
I said, here's a platform go for it.
Not only can you say anything you want, you could say something that totally and
utterly disagrees with me.
Not good enough.
Is that a standard that everyone has to agree with just one of the hosts?
Well, if that's the standard and two hosts disagree, what am I gonna do?
Apparently, the new standard is everyone must agree.
So who do I fire?
Which of the two hosts that disagree do I fire?
Do I go to Twitter and ask the left wing activists or
the ones pretending to be activists for our side?
Okay, guys, since apparently no one voted, but
apparently you guys are the arbiters of what's on the left, despite the fact
that the polling shows that you are not, you are often very, very wrong.
I'll give it the classic example Latinx.
I was told 100 times, you are being against that?
You're going against the Latino community?
I don't think so.
I've never seen a Latino person call themselves Latinx.
I think you made that up.
They're like, how dare you, right?
And it turns out we did a poll or we didn't do it somebody did.
96% of Latinos don't wanna be called Latinx.
Did anyone learn from that that maybe Randos online don't actually know what
they're talking about and that they don't actually speak for that community?
But even if they did, or we were wrong, et cetera, the most important thing is,
will we have disagreement, and will that be allowed?
And the answer definitively on the Young Turks is yes.
And if you don't like that, like I said, there's a billion options right wing,
left wing, and they'll tell you whatever you wanna hear.
But if you wanna have a real conversation,
an honest conversation there's one place in media.
And by the way, it doesn't matter if people yell at me.
I've been through it a hundred times.
Everyone here [LAUGH] knows we've been through it a hundred times, right?
And every time, Jimmy Dore is right.
Sam Harris is right.
And then later, oops, yeah, they're totally wrong.
Tulsi Gabbards oops.
Oops, Young Turks were right again.
Oops but do they learn anything from that?
No. And
do I change how we conduct things because of the pressure?
No, I do not give in to the pressure, but I also do not go in the other direction.
You hurt my feelings.
So from now on, I'm going to be against gay rights or trans rights.
No, we will not do that under any circumstance.
No, I'm still gonna support trans community.
I'm still gonna support gay rights 100%.
I'm gonna support both those communities 100% and as you'll see,
likely be the toughest and strongest fighter for them.
I don't care if some trans people or
anyone in any leftist community yells at me.
You think I'm gonna betray Latinos because somebody's telling me that I'm against
Latinos because I said, I don't believe that Latinx is the proper term?
I'm never gonna do that.
No, I'm gonna fight for Latinos.
I'm going to fight for African Americans.
I'm gonna fight for all of these communities.
And you might have seen online, here's a tweet there.
Here's a video, like a five second clip or a twelve second clip over there, okay?
My God, I hear they're right wingers now.
Okay, and then you know what happens when people come watch the show?
They're like, wait, I don't get it.
They don't look anything like what I heard.
They sound really progressive.
My God, they seem like they're really fighting for us.
You know why?
Because we've been doing it for 21 years, okay?
And that's exactly what we are, and we're not gonna change it.
So, look, the last things I'll say is that we have
given a number of folks from all the different
communities a platform here when no one else did.
And so we hired a number of trans hosts.
I don't see a lot of other left wing shows hiring tons of trans hosts.
So okay, good God bless.
And then we have a disagreement.
And then did I kick them out?
No I said, okay, keep continued out of disagreement.
And they said, no, because not everyone at the company agrees with me.
You guys are transphobes racist, et cetera.
And how dare you disagree?
That's it, we're out.
And look, if you're in that camp and you say, hey, 5% disagreement too much,
I can't handle it.
I need something else.
Again, all the power in the world to you, but I'm telling you right now,
I'm not saying to you guys, please stay.
And I'm not saying go I don't care.
Are there people with good intent in our audience who believe in these issues and
disagree with me fervently out of good intent?
Absolutely.
And brothers, I'm not telling you to go or stay if you're comfortable with
disagreement, but we wanna get to the same place, great stay.
If you say no, I want something else, that's okay.
I'm just being clear with you guys as to what we think.
Last thing I'll add is some people are convinced that they're political
geniuses and they like to lean into fighting on the wrong grounds, right?
And they say, politics doesn't matter.
Well, here's how it matters.
When you lose elections, they pass 70 laws against the LGBTQ community.
You want to win elections so they don't pass bills against you.
Instead, we pass bills that give you 100% the same rights, not more rights,
not less rights, the same exact rights as every US citizen.
And by the way, we get paid family leave, higher minimum wage, fight climate change,
and all the wonderful things we want in the world.
So if you say politics doesn't matter, then you're in the wrong business, okay?
You're not understanding it.
If you say, hey, the maximalist position.
So let's not use words like radical extremists that are,
let's just say the maximalist.
I don't think everybody would agree that people that are in the activist community
are going for the maximalist position.
If you say the maximalist position, whether it's right wing or left wing,
always gets you victories.
Sorry, you don't know politics.
That's just not true.
It's not remotely true.
And so all the American people agree with us anyway on, let's say, for example,
one of the disagreements that I have on the issue of trans people in sports.
I think that, by the way, the American people don't agree with me either.
70% say that trans people should not participate in any
sports that is not in the sex that they were born, right?
Well, I think they should participate in high school.
And I think we could win that argument.
And I think that the way you win that argument is to say, look Republicans,
which of you perverts is going to go do the genital check on these kids?
And you know what that happens then?
The average American goes, whoa, yeah, that's not right.
I don't want them doing that to the kids.
Hey, let the kids play the sports, okay?
But if you go into the teeth of the only ground that the LGBTQ community loses on,
we win on everything else, right?
We win on trans rights, gay rights, gay marriage equality, and
housing discrimination, et cetera.
They tried the trans bathroom thing, it didn't work.
They tried the trying to kick transgender people out of the military.
It didn't work. We won on all these grounds.
And the Republicans dug in and dug in and dug in, and they found one thing that
seven out of ten Americans agree with them and not us, and that's transports.
So my opinion is let them play in high school, but
when it comes to a professional league, let the league decide.
If you think that is 100% disagreement and that's transuration,
et cetera, okay, we disagree.
That means, in my opinion, you're saying, I won't tolerate 1% disagreement, 2%,
5%, whatever number you want to put on, I won't tolerate it.
I want people I wanna show that agrees with me all the time on everything.
Okay, there's nothing I could do again.
But if you say, hey, you know what?
I wanna win and I wanna frame things in the right way.
So we protect our community, and
I'm gonna try to protect that community whether the activists agree or not.
And this is not about trans issues in specifics about all of those communities.
So, look, I think the police in this country need massive, colossal reform.
But if you go with the slogan of defund the police,
you get killed in the elections, you do well,
I don't like that we lose in the well, I don't like it either.
So we should have better framing.
I don't wanna do better framing.
I wanna be maximalist.
Okay, but you're not gonna win that way.
And if you say, hey, I don't like it, I don't like that you are saying things that
are nearly indisputably correct on the politics of it.
And I don't like that the country doesn't agree with us.
And I don't like the idea of trying to convince them.
I just wanna call them transphobes racists.
I wanna call them names.
And I think that's a brilliant political strategy because that's gonna win
them over.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
It doesn't win them over.
Being able to empathize and say, you don't wanna do that to kids.
You don't wanna do that to other human beings that are just like you
telling them, hey, guys, do you have anybody who's trans in your life?
And even if you don't, imagine that, you feel you were born a different way and
then you have the courage to come out and you have the courage to change and
transition, and that is so incredibly hard.
Can you not have empathy for that person?
Can you not say, my God, that's another human being and
maybe I should root for them instead of rooting against them?
That's how you reach out to people and win them over.
So we win on all those issues, we win on all those policies, and we win on
the elections, and we get bills that help your life instead of hurting your life.
But if you disagree for the billionth time, that's okay.
This is a network where there is discussion and disagreement,
and that is super clear and it is never going to change.