Let's talk a little bit about why Republican lawmakers are willing
to sell out the country to defend Donald Trump even when there is quite
a bit of evidence indicating that he lied to federal officials about
his possession of classified documents.
The fact that he did have incredibly sensitive classified documents,
some of which pertained to nuclear weapons.
It's because campaign fundraising brain supreme,
that is the most important thing for them.
And we're now learning more about their fundraising efforts following the FBI's
raid of Trump's Mar-A-Lago residents, let's give you those details.
Trump's political action committee has been furiously fundraising off
the FBI search sending out at least 17 text messages to donors since Tuesday.
The Dems broke into the home of president Trump one read, this is political
targeting another alleged, they're coming after you, a third source, a third said.
And by the way, true, I mean who among us hasn't taken home
incredibly sensitive classified documents from the White House?
So they're coming for us, we better watch out.
Nonetheless, there were more campaign fundraising emails,
including Donald Trump Jr, who wrote another fundraising email on Sunday.
The witch hunt continues the FBI raid of Mar-A-Lago was a disgrace,
in fact, it's unfathomable.
And then the other Trump stepped in to protect his daddy Eric Trump tweeted
this week that his father's website is shattering all fundraising records.
And I'm told has raised more money in the past 24 hours than ever before in
recent history, the American people are upset pissed.
Okay, so this is par for the course for Trump, and
when I say campaign fundraising, I'm being a little generous to Trump because
he hasn't even launched his campaign.
He hasn't even formally announced that he's running for president 2024.
But nonetheless,
Trump is just one example of what we're seeing from the Republican Party overall.
And I've been wondering like, what does it take for
Republican lawmakers to finally have a principled stance against Trump,
especially when he's doing something that's clearly wrong?
And as long as we have all the incentives in the wrong place, as long as legalized
bribery, political corruption, and the way we run our elections continues,
they're gonna put their own interests above their own country, and
that is what we're seeing.
So let's talk about the other Republicans who are not doing the right thing,
they're doing the wrong thing because it's helping them fundraise.
PACs affiliated with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for instance.
And Whip Steve Scalise, also sent out fundraising text with McCarthy's team
declaring quote, this is the type of BS you see in a third world country.
This is the same Kevin McCarthy, by the way, who called Trump on January 6th as
the capital riots were taking place and begged him to stop the madness.
And Trump Didn't wanna step in, he didn't wanna stop the rioters,
he put Kevin McCarthy's life in danger, but Kevin McCarthy is so self interested.
Kevin McCarthy wants to raise money for his campaign so badly,
that he will not only sell out the American people and the country.
He'll even create this monster that ends up putting his own life in
jeopardy in the future.
I mean, it's already happened once, why wouldn't it happen again?
But there's more, the Republican National Committee and
the National Republican Congressional Committee both pitched donors with similar
frantic appeals to fundraise.
Senator Roger Marshall's campaign decried Joe Biden's witch hunt and
what's being done to America's system of justice in an email asking for donations.
You have Senator Ron Johnson calling it just one more example of our
two-tiered justice system.
And mind you, we do live in a that has a two tiered justice system
that is incredibly harsh to people with no resources from
disadvantaged communities with a low socioeconomic status.
These are people who deal with, again,
the harshest consequences of a two tiered justice system.
This is one of the few times a powerful person is being held accountable for
doing something potentially criminal,
potentially dangerous for the country's national security.
And you can't even get Republican lawmakers to
take a principled stance against it because why would they?
They can fundraise off of it, but there's more,
I just wanna give you a few more examples.
Of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene,
whom the National Republican Congressional committee is featuring and
fundraising appeals has begun selling merchandise that says defund the FBI.
And then there are some lesser known individuals who are taking part in
this as well.
So Jake if the incentives are all in the wrong place,
you're gonna have a bunch of self interested, narcissistic, power hungry
lawmakers who are gonna look out for themselves rather than the country.
>> So there's only one rule of politics, follow the money.
So in the old days, which is still today,
we're at the latter stages of this, we have complete corporate rule.
And so you have politicians like Nancy Pelosi and
Mitch McConnell who raise billions from corporations.
And actually, I think Pelosi and McConnell are close to a trillion now,
it's an unreal number that they've raised over their careers.
And so no, my bad, I think that they're close to a billion,
[LAUGH] Because I suppose she was at 720 million,
and then she got to the billion mark, so let me correct that.
So it's still a massive number for one person and
McConnell's right there with her.
So when they raised that money from incredibly rich people and
from corporate executives, who do they serve?
Incredibly rich people and corporate executives, and if you'll notice and
it's not just Pelosi and McConnell, it's all the Republican leadership,
all the democratic leadership.
So under Joe Biden, a number of things have passed, there is one unifying theme.
They're almost all corporate subsidies, and they said, well,
it's also gonna help people a little bit.
I mean, we'll have semiconductors here in America kind of,
you'll get a little bit of extension of Medicare.
I mean, you got to go through not Medicare, but Obamacare,
but you've got to go through the private health insurance companies,
so the money is gonna go directly to them.
The energy companies, both sides, fossil fuel, green energy, they're all getting so
corporate issues, corporations, they're in charge, follow the money, right?
Now, in the case of populist left wing, we raise grassroots money, and we raise it so
you can get $15 minimum wage, Medicare for all green new deal, et cetera.
So our politicians are supposed to work towards those goals,
it's not, hey, I want something personally.
It's trying to help the country to help the world because we're progressives.
For the far right now, they've got done the first step, which is great, but
they ran into a giant problem in the second step.
One is some of them got weaned off, and
this was partly mainly by accident from corporate pork.
So Donald Trump because he was such a lunatic that the establishment stopped
giving money to him, so he started raising money from the grassroots.
The grassroots love them to be fair, Marjorie Taylor Greene and so many others
that you saw on this list, they're now raising money from the grassroots.
The problem with the right-wing grassroots is that they're the criminally insane.
And so now, the right-wing politicians have to appeal to the criminally insane.
So they don't care about facts, they don't care about truth, they don't care about
logic, they just wanna hate the other side owning the libs the only thing.
before they pretend to have a lot of policies,
what's your stance on the export import bank, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Then the Republican voters don't have any stance on any of that,
the only stance they have is I don't want you teaching about racism, okay?
I don't want those gay people in the trans people in my bathrooms and
in our high schools, okay?
Who else do you wanna hate?
I wanna ban the Muslims, wanna ban the Latinos, okay?
That's the Republican ed, so now,
they're politicians are responding to the money, so that's where the money is.
So they're like, you want vile, disgusting, racist, toxic crap,
we'll give you vile, disgusting, racist, toxic crap.
And they raised more money off of it, and that's how this game is played.
>> Yeah, you're right about that.
And so the incentives work in nefarious ways, but
different ways on both sides of the aisle.
Democrats bask in their inability to get a damn thing done,
because as Republicans and a right-wing Supreme Court strips us of our rights.
They can then turn around and say, my God, we need to protect you, please donate to
us and we'll do it, but of course, they're taking the corporate cash as well.
On the Republican side, as recently as January of this year,
they were having a lot of difficulty fundraising.
And this FBI raid has unfortunately galvanized Republican voters and
they're now contributing small dollar donations to the Republican
lawmakers who are providing cover for Donald Trump.
But to your point Jake, about how Republican voters are just
obsessed with the culture war narratives that cause fear and
hatred towards various disenfranchised groups of people,
that's a monster that was created by the Republican Party.
Let's not forget that, selling fear based politics
pertaining to powerless people is the GOP's bread and butter.
And so you're absolutely right about that, but
I wanna be clear that this issue is by design.
And also to your point,
if you take a look at how Republican voters have changed their political
preferences when it comes to candidates after this FBI raid happened.
I think this poll from morning consult tells us quite a bit,
a new poll from politico slash morning consult conducted following the FBI
raid showed it had given Trump a bump with Republican primary voters last month.
53% of Republican voters and Republican leaning independents said that they
would vote for Trump in the 2024 primary if it was held that day.
Now, following the raid, it found that that number for
Trump had actually climbed to 57% while support for
Ron DeSantis had dropped from 23% down to 17%.
So Trump was able to expand his lead on Ron DeSantis by
ten points following the raid, so
it absolutely did galvanize his supporters.
But I'm not saying that as a commentary on the FBI needing to scale down or
scale back on this investigation.
I think the investigation needs to be ongoing regardless of what it does to
Trump's base.
But I think that this is what happens when so
many different issues in our politics comes together, right?
The inability for lawmakers, whether they be moderate, Democrats or
progressives to really get anything done to really offer anything to voters when it
comes to some of the bread and butter issues that they might be concerned about.
And then you have a whole corporate media infrastructure that provides cover for
Trump.
You have Republican lawmakers with the incentives in all the wrong places
providing cover for Trump.
Not only to support Trump, but more importantly, to support themselves and
fundraise off of this issue.
There's so much broken in our politics and
nothing is gonna get better unless we do something to change and
reform the system that these politicians are functioning under.
Otherwise, if we're just talking about focusing on one politician or another,
that really doesn't solve anything.
>> Yeah, so his polling went up by ten points, I guess Republicans
looked at that and said, he's more criminal than I thought.
Me likely, okay, taking nuclear secrets home dumb under any
circumstance to sell them as a memento, I mean, just criminally dumb, right?
Like, he's dumber than I thought up ten points, okay?
So Republicans proved me wrong, look, I get the overall phenomenon, so
it happens on the left too.
When mainstream media unfairly attacks you a lot of times you'll get a bump up
in fundraising and in polling, but the critical part there guys is unfairly.
So when Nina Turner is attacked, I'm attacked, Bernie is attacked,
we call out to our supporters.
Here's why it was terribly unfair, New York Times called me anti-Muslim, and
didn't note that my family's Muslim.
Okay, see that's unfair, and that's an obvious smear.
Why are they saying something that doesn't make sense?
You guys you don't need a smear, you don't need unfair,
they're like Donald Trump is being fairly attacked everyone to the barricades.
But he's being fairly attacked, because he took nuclear secrets home and
he has no legal right to do that.
And God knows what he was gonna do with them,
aren't you guys worried about what he's gonna do with him?
Nope, we have found out that our leader is a bigger criminal than we thought, and
he's being completely fairly attacked, and
the rule of law is being applied to him attack.
Okay, what am I gonna do?