A number of different topics were raised during the Republican debate, but I noticed a few that didn't come up. They're minor issues, but some people are really into them, and apologies if they were briefly mentioned. But little things like mass shootings and gun violence, [00:00:15] climate change, other than Vivek Ramaswamy using his literal closing remarks to ensure that we all know that he does not believe that it exists. Wages, infrastructure, including train derailments. Ukraine, other than constant discussion about the names of Eastern provinces, [00:00:34] which Mr.Ramaswami, they're not provinces, they're oblasts. Islamophobic hate crimes. There was a lot of talk about anti Semitism, but not about Islamophobia. There was talk about Gaza, but no discussion of civilian deaths in Gaza. No discussion of the opioid epidemic outside of fentanyl contamination. [00:00:52] And as a new parent, I thought maybe talking about paid family leave, considering how wildly popular it is, including amongst Republicans who support it at rates above 70%, would have made sense to me. So I wanna turn to you, Cenk, first. [00:01:07] Any of these topics or anything else that wasn't raised, what do you think was worthy of discussion. >> Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is exactly why we should have Democratic debates. Because if the average American watched just the Republican debate tonight, they would probably think, my God, I guess the country hates gay people and [00:01:26] trans people and wants to invade China and Mexico and Gaza, and they would have never heard the Democratic side. So here, the points that we have made are so diametrically opposed to the points that the Republicans have made. And by having this forum, we're at least getting that message out, [00:01:44] which is exactly what we need to do. We invite Joe Biden to do it with us. So now, in terms of those issues, look, paid family leave, you're a little wrong, John. It's not above 70%. Well, it is above 70%, but it's not in that ballpark. It's at 84%. 84%, so Estonia has 82 weeks off for [00:02:03] moms who have babies. We have zero days off. Zero, by law. We're the only nation, not only developed nation, almost only nation on earth, that doesn't have any paid family leave. And do you ever see the Republicans talking about that? [00:02:20] No, because they serve corporate donors. And so do you know that 74% of Republican voters want paid family leave? Why? Yeah, they want moms to be able to have a baby and then to take 12 weeks off, or dads, if the situation is appropriate. But we never discuss any of those issues. [00:02:35] Instead, we talk about the maniacal issues that the Republicans bring up, cuz they're the only ones having debates and they're the only ones that are bringing up issues. We should be bringing up paid family leave. And then I've got to ask Joe Biden, my God, man, if you can't get a bill passed that said 84% popularity, what can you get passed? [00:02:54] Why don't you introduce it as a single issue bill in the Senate and embarrass and force the Republicans to vote against three quarters of their own voters? But we get none of that. Always Democratic apathy and Republican aggression. It's time that we fought back. [00:03:11] So I don't have time to go through the whole list that John said. I wanna give the others time, but let's take the issue of climate change. Guys we're running out of time. And these lunatics are talking about we're not giving the oil companies enough. [00:03:27] Vivek Ramaswamy, on the one hand, says, I'm against corruption. On the other hand he says, no, we should let the oil companies take even more oil out and profit from it. And then when they have the cost of climate change, we should pay it. The taxpayers should pay it. Why don't they pay it? [00:03:42] That's an externality of their business. That is a cost of their business. They should pay for it. Every time there's this extreme hurricane or tornado or whatever it might be caused by climate change, we should send the bill to ExxonMobil. And why are we giving $20 billion in subsidies to these companies? [00:04:01] And one last thing here that is so, so important when it comes to climate change and oil prices. They have to stop lying about this in the Republican debates and sometimes in mainstream media. Our drilling, extra drilling does not affect global gas prices. [00:04:16] It is an international market. What we do is a drop in the bucket. And when we drill, it doesn't make us any more energy independent. We, the American citizens, don't get that oil. The corporations get the oil, and they could sell it anywhere in the world, and [00:04:34] they do. It doesn't stay in America. It's one mythology after another. And finally, guys, I want you to think about this the last month of the election, what if gas prices go up? Who's gonna be blamed? The incumbent in charge is going to be blamed. [00:04:51] Who is the one country that actually can affect oil prices worldwide? Saudi Arabia, cuz they control OPEC. And OPEC is large enough to move global oil prices. Who does Saudi Arabia love in America more than any other politician? [00:05:07] Donald J.Trump. What if the Saudis increased gas prices right before the election, we're toast. We're toast. If the candidate is the incumbent president, sitting at 37% favorability, and they move gas prices up right before the election, [00:05:25] that guarantees Donald Trump a win. We cannot risk that. We cannot have this incumbent run this race. We're allowing ourselves to lose on purpose. I've never seen anything like it in my life. >> Speaker 1: Marianne, I wanna go to you next. [00:05:41] Which issue absence stood out the most to you? >> Speaker 3: Well, I wanna say something about what Cenk, Dean were just saying. I think we're all in agreement that we must not have Donald Trump back in the White House. But I don't think the biggest electoral risk for us as Democrats is Donald Trump. [00:05:57] People who are gonna vote for Donald Trump, they love Donald Trump. You could indict him 91 more times, and they'll still vote for him. They vote for him in prison. I don't think that our risk is so much Donald Trump as it is the risk of people staying home, millions of people staying home. And if we don't offer them anything more, then they just might, [00:06:13] particularly when it comes to young people and the environment. This president, President Biden, okayed the Willow Project, the $8 billion Conoco Phillips Oil Extraction Program project on the north slopes of Alaska, and he gave more oil drilling permits even than Trump did. [00:06:31] So until we start offering policies, you were talking about paid family leave, and I certainly have that as part of my Economic Bill of Rights. But the issue of paid family leave is not only just for the parents, it's for the child. One of the things I want to do is establish the Department of Children [00:06:49] and Youth. If we want the country that we could be in 20 years, we must start paying more attention to children ten years and younger now. We know things about early childhood. That's when it all happens. 90% of a child's brain is developed in the first five years. [00:07:06] So that's a large part of paid family leave. We have children who are traumatized in this country before preschool. We have elementary school students on suicide watch. In schools all over this country, we have trauma rooms. Why should childhood be such a trauma for millions of people, [00:07:24] children in this country? We have millions of children in this country who go to schools where they don't even have the adequate school supplies to teach a child to read. And if a child cannot learn to read by the age of ten, the chances of high school graduation are drastically reduced and [00:07:40] the chances of incarceration are drastically increased. This is how we're going to win in 2024. Allow people to imagine a much better country, not just not them, but what we could create, what we could create for our children, what we could create for [00:07:55] our families, what we could create for our communities, what we create for our health. Like Dean was saying, this is not just a matter of treating health. We must create proactively a more healthy society. For that, we must take on the food companies. We must take on the chemical companies. [00:08:12] We must take on the environmental issues. 46% of all urban wells in the United States are filled with PFAS. So as long as we have the carcinogens in our food, as long as we have the toxins in our air, as long as we have the forever chemicals in our water, that's what I want to do. [00:08:28] I want to picture for the American people that it could all be so much better. We're going to have to repudiate corporate dominance, and we're going to have to start again. And that's what the Democrats should stand for. And if we do, we will win in 2024, because, of course, [00:08:43] people just want a better life. >> Speaker 1: Representative Phillips? >> Speaker 4: Well, there's so much childcare, early childhood education. My goodness. The fact that they didn't spend more time or any time talking about the need for a legitimate mental and emotional health care system in the United States, [00:09:01] that would address so many of the challenge from cradle to grave. The fact that they didn't talk about Social Security, which is literally gonna start trimming benefits by 25% within ten years if we don't address it, by the way, we should raise the cap to $250,000. [00:09:16] I'd like to see a pool created so that those who have been successful can return their Social Security benefits to a pool that would be redistributed to the lowest, perhaps 10% of recipients. Many of whom literally are having to make sandwiches at night and eat cereal because [00:09:33] they just don't have enough money at the end of the month, it's just abhorrent. There's so much that needed to be talked about tonight that wasn't. Gun violence, of course, we talked about. Everything that young people are coming to, all of us, to talk about gun violence, climate change. [00:09:48] No mention, I don't think, of the AI revolution that is forthcoming, a country that is so woefully ill prepared for both the blessings and the curses. And I'll tell you what I think needs to be talked about more than anything else, because no matter what policies we stand for, what we wanna achieve, [00:10:05] if we don't start focusing on national repair, literally repair. We have a dysfunctional Congress. We have a disaster brewing around this country, and no peace around the world. And if we don't bring peace to the world and to our country and don't unify behind that. [00:10:20] And frankly, make invitations, not confrontations, but invitations to Donald Trump supporters, as both of you have mentioned tonight, have the same challenges, the same needs, the same anger that many of us have about a system that is absolutely destroying many of the facets of the country that are so dear to us. [00:10:39] So we've got a lot of work to do. The fact is, I love what you said, Cenk, about the fact that absent the president of the United States consenting to at least a couple of debates, we are literally giving free airtime to the very party that is going to seize back the White House and completely destroy democracy. [00:10:57] So you know what? I was asked yesterday if I thought President Biden was a risk to democracy, and I said, yes, he is, because he's running in a race in which he's going to lose to the most dangerous man in history. He's not consenting to debates, handing the literally every screen in America to millions of people watching every day. [00:11:14] He is allowing the Florida Democratic Party and the North Carolina Democratic Party to literally make a decision for probably 10 million Americans that they don't need to vote. We'll make the decision for you and simply hand his delegates to him and not even allow our voters to go to the polls. [00:11:31] And then, of course, in New Hampshire, I mean, it's appalling. He took the first in the nation primary away, told them their votes won't matter, and now is trying desperately to do a write in campaign and along with a super PAC up here to do it. The dirty truth is we've got a massive disaster in both parties right now. [00:11:48] I was part of it, I enabled it. I had no idea until I joined both of you in this endeavor. And I think that's the most important part of this so far, is to speak truth, to power, to say the quiet part out loud. And, my goodness, watching that GOP debate tonight was horrifying. [00:12:05] And to watch the only person in the room who tried to play the role of an adult, that was Chris Christie. He was the guy that was doing debate prep, for God's sakes, with Donald Trump just a couple years ago. So give me a damn break. You know what I mean? Give me a break. And Nikki Haley, who's now the number two closest, her hand went up right [00:12:24] away when they asked him last time on the debate stage if you'd still vote for Donald Trump even if he's convicted? Even if he's convicted. My goodness, folks, I'm glad to be on this with all of you because we still have some principle left in politics. [00:12:39] And now we need the platform to ensure the country sees it. And right now, the president is working against it. >> Speaker 1: Well, thank you for that. I think I can speak for the network that this has been a great forum. We would be interested perhaps in future follow up forums or debates. If anybody watching is interested in that, feel free to use your voice.