You wanna cut down on corruption.
It's good for people to be independently wealthy before they are in office.
It's not a bad thing.
>> There you have Ben Shapiro,
one of the few individuals really who is willing to defend Dr. Oz even as he
puts out some pretty cringeworthy campaign ads and campaign videos.
Crudite was one of the more notorious ones in recent days.
And it's interesting the argument that he's making, especially at a time when
populism seems to be rising in both parties to be sure with that said though,
let's take a quick look at what else Shapiro had to say.
>> But the real campaign issue in Pennsylvania,
according to everybody is Dr. Oz is an elitist elitist.
And what we know, if you earn money in the United States,
that makes you unqualified for office.
So, sure the original founders of the country tended to be overwhelmingly
wealthy men because again, the idea here is that if you don't want people in
politics or demagogues, then it's good for them to have an outside source of income.
You wanna cut down on corruption.
It's good for people to be independently wealthy before they are in office.
It's not a bad thing.
It gives you the ability to say things that are actually on your mind because
you have less to lose.
This is why Biblically speaking, most of the profits were actually kind of wealthy.
Because if you're wealthy, you don't have much to lose.
In any case, Dr. Oz has now come under severe fire.
Not a biblical prophet, but a candidate for Pennsylvania.
Why? Well, because he was asked about
the number of houses that he owns and he was off.
>> He was off by only about eight houses.
And that is where the issue lies.
The fact that he is attempting this Mitt Romney strategy, which by the way,
also failed with Mitt Romney of really connecting with ordinary voters,
even though he's a man who is worth over $100 million.
He keeps trying to pretend like he understands their economic pain by
going to a grocery store accidentally, calling it a name that doesn't
even exist because he doesn't actually live in Pennsylvania or
ever shop at a grocery store or shop for groceries himself.
Then he proceeds to talk about inflation while
referring to a vegetable plate as a crude,
which ordinary people who you're trying to connect with don't really relate to.
So that's why it's a problem, right?
So, at a time when economic anxiety among Americans on both sides of
the aisle are at an all time high, it's understandable when people get
turned off by a politician who just feel super disconnected from them and
what they're experiencing, that's the issue.
>> So, [COUGH] as always they do a caricature of what the left says,
that's what his starting point, he says,
anyone who's independently wealthy, they say is disqualified from office.
Really, who said that FDR was independently wealthy and
he was a terrific president, nobody said that.
What we're talking about is when people use their wealth
to then pay off politicians or become politicians themselves and
then fix the rules to their own benefit.
So there isn't a problem with being rich.
There's a problem with being rich and then rigging the system for lower tax cuts for
the rich, deregulation of their companies and on and on and on.
And he always ignores that go ahead.
>> And I disagree with you.
I do think there's a sizable portion of the leg, that openly and
very candidly shares their disdain for wealthy people,
regardless of who they are, what they do and what they advocate for.
Doesn't matter. I mean,
prime example is the reaction to your nephew, Hassan buying a house.
I mean, the freak out over that was insane.
So, yeah, that does exist.
I would say it's wrong to characterize everyone on the left as being a believer
and just hating someone automatically if they're wealthy, but
it is a sizable portion of the left as far as I've seen.
Yeah, so no, that's a fair point.
There are some folks on the left who feel that way, but obviously they're
irrational and by the way, think about how silly their point of view is.
Hey, if there's ever anyone on the left with a lot of power,
make sure you give it away.
So you have no power left.
With today, David Soda's Lever broke a story that a Republican gave $1.6 billion,
a Republican donor gave that to the right wing.
Well, what do you want us to do?
You want to take every person that has even a dollar on the left and
bankrupt them so they can't fight back.
So I'm not interested in a splinter group on the left who decide to be purposely
unintelligent, not remotely interested, okay?
So, now when go to Shapiro's main argument, he says, well,
if you're wealthy, that's better because you don't have much to lose.
Does the right wing even listen to the words that come out of his mouth?
No, if you're wealthy, you have more loose.
That's why they always had.
Unfortunately, way too often they're advocating for
themselves because they have a lot to lose.
What kind of rationale is that?
He's not even trying to make sense.
And then he says, the profits were all rich, were they?
Were they?
Because that's not how I remember, I'm pretty sure that we were taught that
Jesus was incredibly poor was a carpenter and gave away all of his worldly goods and
encouraged everyone else to give away their worldly goods.
It's incredible the ease with which right wing hosts lie on not
just the regular basis on almost every sentence.
>> Now, I do wanna just kind of go back to discussing who Dr.
Oz is and why he turns off voters.
By the way, not just on the left obviously is gonna turn off voters on the left.
But voters on the right remember the reaction that Republicans had both in
the right wing press and also among right wing voters, when Donald Trump,
decided to endorse Dr. Oz, they thought it was a terrible move.
They begged him not to do it, he did it anyway.
And it was just clear,
that Republican voters weren't really supportive of him from the jump.
Now, I wanna get into his wealth a little bit because the fact of the other
issue here is the fact that, even Republican voters understand that
we're living under corporate rule, where you have corporate donors
who essentially get to decide what policies get passed in this country.
And so, Mehmet Oz, a celebrity physician turned politician,
reported raising almost $5.9 million US Senate in Pennsylvania.
But most of it came from money he loaned to his campaign.
His initial campaign finance report filed with the FEC of activity through
December 31 showed 5.2 million in loans to the campaign and
almost $670,000 in contributions.
That is pretty amazing.
So most of his money did come from his own wealth.
Most of his campaign funding.
Oz valued his assets at between $104 million and
$422 million Philadelphia Inquirer,
a wide range that is the result of the Senate's request that
each asset be valued within a certain dollar bracket.
Thus, shielding them from really having to disclose how much money they really have,
how much wealth they really have.
And here's another example of a rich guy trying to buy an election.
This is from the 2020 presidential race.
Michael Bloomberg put more than $200 million of his personal fortune
into his presidential campaign by the end of December of 2019,
with the overwhelming bulk of that sum going to a mammoth advertising
campaign on television and online.
And he does have an estimated worth wealth of $50 billion.
And it looked like he did have a couple $100 million to lose.
He did lose it, at the end of the day.
>> Yeah, and so, this is the politicians that were used to.
Yes, in the old days, before the corruption became infinite and entrenched.
You had people like FDR and JFK who were very wealthy but did the right thing and
looked out for those who had less.
But now we don't have that anymore.
Whether it's a corporate Democrat like Michael Bloomberg or corporate Republican,
like Dr. Oz, all they care about is they spend money to make more money.
If Michael Bloomberg won,
he could've given himself a tax cut that make that $200 million look like a joke.
He could save about 100 times that amount with a tax cut he'd give himself and
he certainly would because Bloomberg,
it's just as corrupt on economic issues as Dr. Oz is.
And we've been playing this game a long time.
But look, I know the Republicans know nothing including they probably don't know
a single line from the Bible.
So I'm gonna read you one last one in case you believe that bench
bureau is right that all the profits were rich and wanted you to be rich.
Matthew 19, 24, this is Jesus, quote again, I tell you,
it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for
someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
So Jesus was way tougher, 100 times tougher than we are on the rich.
He didn't care if you were FDR or Bloomberg or anything.
He said you're not getting into heaven.
Only the poor and the non-rich or getting into heaven.
So, did you ever hear that on Ben Shapiro show?
Did you ever hear that in a single right wing show?
No, because they love to lie about the Bible endlessly.
>> It's funny, because that reminds me, over the weekend I went to,
I took my niece to the Santa Monica pier.
She had never been.
And there was a group of fundamentalists screaming and bullhorn about.
You're a bad person for being here and having a good time with your family.
God will punish you and you will die like that kind of stuff.
And as I was passing by them I just shouted calmly,
Jesus was a socialist and they lost it.
It was hilarious. It was
one of the funniest things I've experienced in a long time.
They didn't like that.
[LAUGH] >> Yeah, and
to be fair you were not entirely accurate, read the Bible.
He is as hardcore communist as you will ever find in any book anywhere.
He'd make Karl Marx blush.
He said, give away all of your worldly possessions.
Don't have any.
>> Any inconvenient truths, that's what we have here at TYT inconvenient for
the right wing, of course.