Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a Republican, of course, has made it pretty clear by now that she will do the bidding of whatever billionaire or corporate corporations want as long as they're donating to her campaign. We'll show you evidence of that in just a moment. [00:00:16] On the other hand, you have Donald Trump, who likes to at least pay lip service to the American people, claiming that he prioritizes their interests over the interests of the Republican establishment or corporate America. [00:00:31] But how different are these politicians, really? Well, let's take a look at the substantive issues and more importantly, the donors that have actually given to both Republican presidential candidates. So, for example, Donald Trump has basically differentiated himself from [00:00:48] his opponents, his Republican opponents, by vowing to protect Social Security. It's something that we've actually given him some credit on because, politically speaking, he's been taking jabs at Ron DeSantis when. Ron DeSantis wanted to privatize Social Security or raise the retirement age. [00:01:07] Nikki Haley, meanwhile, promised to reform Social Security and Medicare during a recent CNBC appearance. Take a look. Are you on board with cutting entitlements in a big and meaningful way? Social security goes bankrupt in ten years. Medicare goes bankrupt in eight. Anyone that says they're not going to take on entitlement reform means [00:01:25] they're going to go in and be president and leave the country bankrupt. You can't do that. Yes, we have to do entitlement reform, but that doesn't mean you touch anyone that's in the system. We should keep our promises. America should always keep our promises. But for everybody coming into the system, like my kids in their 20s, you change it. [00:01:41] You say, we're going to raise the retirement age to reflect life expectancy. We're no longer going to do cost of living increases. We're going to do increases based on inflation. We're going to limit the benefits on the wealthy, and we're going to expand Medicare Advantage plans so that we have more competition. So there you have a traditional conservative Republican who talks about [00:02:00] the need to cut entitlement spending. You'll hear this incessantly by various Republicans. This has been going on for many, many decades. Donald Trump, however, you know, talks about wanting to protect Social Security and Medicare. Except he has these moments where he slips and talks about dismantling [00:02:20] the only improvement we experienced in our health care system during the Obama administration. So he posted this recently on Truth Social. The cost of Obamacare is out of control. Plus, it's not good health care. I'm seriously looking at alternatives. We had a couple of Republican senators who campaigned for six years against it, [00:02:38] and then raised their hand not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up. Now, keep in mind that Trump pushed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act with no replacement in mind. There was no legislation that was really going to replace the Affordable Care Act [00:02:57] with a better system that ensured that the 20 million Americans who still lack health insurance would get the coverage that they need. And by the way, this is just the latest installment of Trump's years long crusade against Medicare and Social Security. [00:03:13] So I want to give you some more examples. By the way, the Tea Party member who felt that we weren't talking about Trump enough on the show. Congratulations. So in a 1999 interview with NBC News's Tim Russert, Trump said he didn't want to privatize Social Security, but was open to it in a 2020 interview. [00:03:34] He later walked back. Trump said cuts to entitlements would eventually be on the table. In another interview in 2020, which he again walked back, Trump said he'd be cutting entitlements. And when a Fox News host noted that trimming the national debt would [00:03:50] require cutting entitlement programs, Trump responded that it would be happening along with economic growth. Oh, will be cutting, but we're also going to have growth like you've never seen before, Trump said. So clearly, I mean, on a very surface level, Trump does appear to be a very [00:04:08] different politician from the traditional conservatism that Nikki Haley represents. But when push comes to shove and when it comes to the actual substance, there's a lot of similarities here. And I'm curious what you think about that was. The idea that Trump is populist. [00:04:25] I don't think it's completely ridiculous and off base. Right? Whether we like it or not, within the conservative right wing base of the country, stuff like closing the border is a populist sentiment. It's nativist as hell, and oftentimes it's racist, [00:04:41] but that's populist in a right wing form. The stuff about trade where, you know, obviously sending all those damn jobs overseas so that we could get cheap goods from places like China and Vietnam and promising people, oh, we're going to teach you how to code. [00:04:58] That's how you pay your rent instead of these amazing jobs that we've taken away. That's very populist to be anti trade deals. Of course, Social Security and Medicare are very popular programs. It's just that these these these programs are anti to [00:05:17] what the establishment wants right. Why does the establishment not mind foreign labor coming into America. They like cheap labor. They like, you know, underpaying the hell out of people who are here illegally. You know, they really, really love that. And that goes against what the base wants. [00:05:37] Of course, shipping jobs overseas for that very same reason is what the party establishment wants. Right. And so that's what you try. That's what you see with Trump when he's trying to walk that tightrope. There's what he knows is popular with the base of voters, but all the people that are around him is like, bro, you can't say that. [00:05:55] You can't. You can't say that you want to strengthen Social Security. No, these are things we want to cut. You can't say that you want to strengthen Medicare. No. These are things you want to cut. And so that's what you see with the teeter totter with Trump. It's what he knows instinctually is popular amongst his base of supporters. [00:06:13] And you know what? The actual party apparatus and the people who own the party care about know. Was you make such an important distinction because yes, there is a difference between what Trump is willing to say publicly because he understands. To his credit, I'm going to give him credit for this, okay? [00:06:28] People can get mad if they want to, but he is smart in understanding how to win voters over what kind of statements, what kind of tactics will go over well with the American people. And so he's great at marketing. [00:06:43] But then you look at his budget proposals, and I remember when he was in the white House, one of those budget proposals was looking to cut entitlement spending. And so you're absolutely right to draw that distinction. You're also right to focus on, you know, where I do think he's genuine [00:06:59] in wanting to prevent immigration here to the United States. He's actually put action behind those words. It's not something that he just simply engaged in rhetorically for campaigning purposes. Whereas, you know, you have Nikki Haley [00:07:17] who talks the talk and if given the power, will walk the walk. And so I guess that's where the difference is and why there seems to be this treatment of Trump as a real populist who's looking out for ordinary Americans. Now, both Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, though, are not so friendly to labor. [00:07:36] Okay, there was this stunning moment where Nikki Haley kind of bragged about, well, not being a fan or a supporter of labor unions. And here's more of what she had to say. When you have the most pro-union president and he touts that he is emboldening [00:07:52] the unions, this is what you get. And I'll tell you who pays for it is the taxpayers in South Carolina as governor. I mean, we were building planes with Boeing. We were building more BMW than any place in the world. I recruited Mercedes Benz, I recruited Volvo, we had five international tire companies, but I was a union buster. [00:08:08] I didn't want to bring in companies that were unionized simply because I didn't want to have that change the environment in our state. She's a union buster. She's proud of it. And while Donald Trump talks about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States, as he basically postures as a pro-labor individual, [00:08:30] he's actually had an entire lifetime of working against labor. Here's some evidence on that. In a new USA today expose that found hundreds of former employees and contractors have accused Donald Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. [00:08:46] In 2008, during the Great Recession. He blamed UAW members. He blamed our contracts for everything that was wrong with these companies. That's that's that's a complete lie. In 2015, when he was running for president, he talked about doing a rotation, taking all these good paying jobs in the Midwest [00:09:03] and moving them somewhere in the South. He appointed Eugene Scalia, one of the nation's top anti-union lawyers, to be his secretary of Labor. Under Trump's administration, the National Labor Relations Board implemented sweeping new rules that make it made it harder for workers to [00:09:20] form unions Trump packed the courts with. With anti-labor judges, people like Thomas Farr. President Trump made it harder for workers to earn overtime, and he gutted the federal agency in charge of workplace safety. And look, if Trump's supporters are totally okay with that, then that's fine. [00:09:37] I just take issue with him being presented as someone who's actually looking out for the best interests of ordinary working people in the United States of America. His actions have kind of gone against that narrative, and I think that was a good example of what I'm talking about here. [00:09:53] Was any final words? Yeah. It's all of the the so called populism is just is rhetorical. He cannot the how I try to explain it to people about these systems, whether it be our political system, whether it be, you know, the corporate systems, Donald Trump [00:10:12] or any other Republican president can't really go in there under the Republican Party apparatus and start not acting like what that machine is there to do. So he might say, look, guys, we're not going to come in on my watch and steal Social Security and Medicare for my voters. [00:10:31] No, but you know what? Let's let's let's pass a record breaking tax cut and move on with our lives. That's deeply unpopular, too. But we're not going to just completely cook my popularity that way. But of course, he's not going to do the opposite, which is stuff that strengthens [00:10:47] those programs that he claims to love so much in his speeches. Like the party apparatus is not set up to buttress sources like their donors, and their owners don't want that. They can't do that. That would be impossible for him to do. [00:11:02] So yeah, he's going to do all the rhetorical tricks and flares and all of that stuff as much as he wants to, but yeah, and to get to Nikki Haley. Yeah, she is just telling you what the truth is. Yeah. I think her mistake is that she thinks that these talking points actually work. [00:11:18] This is not 1988. You are not Ronald Reagan. People understand that what's good for some company and their bottom line is not necessarily good for one consumers. And to the people who actually work for those companies, I think people are making those distinctions. [00:11:33] - And Nikki Haley is making a mistake. - Hey, thanks for watching the video. We really appreciate it, guys, and we appreciate it if you become members, because that allows us to be independent, honest, progressive, all the things that you don't get from corporate media and all of that is because of you guys. Hit the join button below and become one of us. [00:11:48] Become a young Turk.