>> Recently, the Sunrise Movement, the organization that is fighting climate change, held an event
at Howard University.
This was the culmination of a 30-day road trip in an effort to raise awareness about
the severity of climate change.
And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up to the event.
And she had some pretty strong words for Joe Biden, take a look.
>> I will be damned if the same politicians who refused to act then are gonna try to come
back today and say we need a middle of the road approach to save our lives.
That is too much for me.
>> So what she was referencing was a statement by one of Joe Biden's advisers.
In fact, this is his adviser for climate change, which is hilarious because this is what the
advice is.
I respect where they, activist groups, are coming from.
What we learned from the Obama administration is unless we find middle ground on these issues,
we risk not having any policies.
So if you're going to refer back to the failures of the Obama administration in an effort to
advise Biden who's running for president, Biden's not a good option for President.
It's just not a good idea.
>> Yeah, look, Biden's whole strategy's hide behind Obama.
Obama was popular so I'll just say, Obama did it too.
But understand what you're advocating for.
So if you said Obama did the Paris climate accords, I'd say, great, that's wonderful,
okay, and Biden wanna go back to that.
Okay, but we're going back to status quo but all right, there's good positive movement,
right?
If you say, hey, Obama did the middle ground approach with the Republicans and we got good
results out of that, no, he didn't.
>> My god.
I just got word that Heather Zichal, who is the climate change advisor for Biden, works
for a natural gas company, worked, worked.
>> Yeah, so of course, no, but you don't understand, all of the people that work for the establishment
Democrats were lobbyists or consultants.
They're all part of the Washington swamp.
So I'm not at all surprised by that.
And Biden, by the way, takes tons of money from energy companies.
And once, Biden said in his speech, well, look, if somebody gives me $250,000, and afterwards
they wanna come and talk to me after the election and I become president, he said, of course,
I'm gonna say yes.
Now, he was trying to be honest that the money does influence you a little bit.
Okay, good, I'll take the honesty but it's also true.
They will all go talk to him and they say, middle ground approach.
And did Obama ever get the Republicans to meet him on the middle ground?
>> No.
>> No, never, never.
So that's the part of Obama you're learning from, the miserable failure in reaching out
to Republicans who never reached back?
I have no interest in that.
So it was never a smart strategy, and I said it from day one.
Go back and look at the videos from 2008, okay, and 2009, I said reaching out to Republicans
will get you nothing.
You misunderstand politics.
It isn't about being nice to them.
They take money, they take donor money, and they do as they are told.
I was right, Obama was wrong.
That's a fact, okay?
Now Biden says, I'm gonna double down on being wrong and I'm gonna go meet Mitch McConnell
and Dick Cheney on the middle ground.
Yeah, I'm with Ocasio-Cortez.
Hell no to that, hell no.
>> So I think it's important to also discuss what the call to action is for the Sunrise
Movement and Ryan Grim details what they're demanding in this next video.
Take a look.
>> Six months ago, the Sunrise Movement burst onto the scene by occupying the office of
incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
She wasn't even elected that position yet, along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
A lot has changed in that six months.
And they marked the occasion here at the end of their month long road tour by calling for
the next big action that the Climate Movement and Sunrise Movement are going to take.
And they're going to Detroit for the second democratic debate and they're calling for
a mass mobilization.
They're calling for people to get into the streets and demand the Democrats support a
climate change debate that all Democrats running for President refuse fossil fuel money.
The third demand is that the green new deal become a day one priority for all 2020 candidates.
Meaning that forget who controls the house or the senate.
The second that you come into the White House, you're gonna start rolling out policy at a
regulatory level and administrative level that starts moving us to a green new deal.
>> Okay, so that's Ryan Grim of The Intercept and the Young Turks.
If you wanna catch more of Ryan's videos and any of these movements, go to Rebel HQ facebook.com/rebelhq,
or youtube.com/rebelhq.
That's our channel that covers the entire progressive movement.
That's why Ryan's there.
He's done great work for both outlets.
Sunrise Movement, I love the idea.
You have no idea how much I like the idea.
You'll see a little bit later this month how much I like the idea.
And so this is Ocasio-Cortez, the Sunrise Movement, young people, progressives, all
getting up and saying, look, the TV pundits can say whatever the hell they like, okay,
but no deal.
Now if you're gonna tell me that it's an existential threat, and Biden, in order to mitigate the
damage, went out never to, hey, I call climate crisis and existential threat, right?
>> Well, you can't call it a threat and then say middle ground approach.
>> And in existential means whether you exist or you don't exist, it's a life or death threat.
So we talked about this on Friday's show.
So if your house was on fire, which is an existential threat, would you go, let's go
middle ground approach, guys.
Maybe put out half the fire and put out some of the rooms but leave the other rooms.
Of course, you wouldn't say that.
You say, put out the whole fire.
In fact, if somebody comes and says, look, my house on fire.
My kids are inside.
And somebody suggests them, well, let's go middle ground approach on that.
You lose it.
>> Let's try to save one of your children.
>> Yes.
>> It's ridiculous, exactly.
So he can claim that he takes it seriously as much as he wants.
But what we're seeing with the electorate today and this is incredbly important, I'm
glad we're seeing it, is that people want actions that go along with those words.
And if you are hiring people who used to work in the natural gas industry and you're listening
to their advice, well then, you're not gonna put your words into action.
You're just gonna talk and we're kind of tired of hearing people talk.
We want action.
We want policy.
We need to do something now.
>> By the way, another one of his advisors wrote an op-ed on the same issue with a Republican.
And their middle ground approach is, well, let's mainly keep all the current energy that
we have and then start to inch towards renewable energies.
Wow, bold.
>> It is incredible, because the political strategy from the Biden camp isn't to appeal
to progressives or those on the left.
The strategy is to try to appeal to people who voted for Trump.
That's what he's doing.
>> Yeah, but to be fair, so did Hillary Clinton.
She wanted to get those Republicans in the suburbs.
Oops, so I don't see any difference here.
In fact, Biden I think is to the right of Hillary Clinton.
The only people who liked those policies are people who are anchors on television.
Okay, now the rest of the country all they got to do is they got to hear the message.
One last thing, you might hear what Ocasio-Cortez said there and think, damn straight or yeah
that makes sense, I totally get it.
And let me clue you into what Washington hears, they are scandalized by that.
They're like, this freshman congresswoman saying disrespectful things about the vice
president who served under Obama.
How dare she?
I guarantee you that her so-called colleagues in Washington were furious about that speech
when she said, I'd be damned if the same politicians who refused to act are gonna try to come back
today and say we need a middle of the road approach to save our lives.
To you and I, that's logical, to Washington, that's heresy.
>> Awesome, awesome, let them get mad.
>> Absolutely, that's why she's the people's champion.