Cenk Uygur

If you deny me when I'm sick, what the fuck's the point of insurance, right? And the anger had gotten to a nuclear level. So release valve, get rid of preexisting conditions. Let's go back to just milking them regularly. And oh, by the way, put in a mandate so that they have to buy it from us, right? Do you know who originally came up with Obamacare? The Heritage Foundation. It was their proposal.

Romney did it in Massachusetts. It was called Romneycare. So I think this is a super important election, but I've earned the credibility to be able to say that because in 2012, I said, this is a largely unimportant election. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama's policies on economic issues are near identical. Obamacare was literally Romneycare.

Right now, the left says, oh, the Heritage Foundation, it's so dangerous, Project 2025. Well, brother, they're the ones who wrote Obamacare. And you say that's the greatest change in the world, right? So that's why the Democrats, yeah, I'll take the 10% change overall. I think Biden did about 15%. Obama did 5%.

But they'll also march you backwards by deregulating like Clinton did and Obama did, the bank bailouts like Obama did. But 10% is better than 0%, but it's not to help you. It's the release valve so the system keeps going.

I could steel man almost anything. I could steel man Trump. I could steel man conservatives easily, right? Corporate politicians is a hard one. So first, it's not all politicians. We can start out nice and easy. Tom Massey, now Hawley and Gates not taking corporate PAC money. Bernie, the squad, they don't take corporate PAC money. You could disagree on either end of those lines.

uh folks on social issues but generally they are a thousand times less corrupt they're more honest uh and part of the reason you might hate the squad is because they're so honest they tell you their real opinion on social issues that you really disagree with a lot of the corporate politicians won't do that because they're trying to get as many votes as possible so they can

their donors when they get into office and do all their favors for them. Okay, but you see I'm already falling apart on the steel manning of corporate politicians.

So Lex, everything is a spectrum. Humanity is a spectrum. So can you find outliers who could take corporate PAC money and still be principled enough to resist this lure? Yeah, and I would hope that I would be a person like that, but I wouldn't take over bank money. But if you force me to, I think I would still stay principled and do it. Could you find 10, 20 other people in the country?

Yeah, but on average, that is not what will happen. What will happen is they will take the money and do exactly as they are told.

Yeah. So look, you're right that over time it gets way worse. And as we talked about earlier, Biden's a great example of that. Comes in anti-corruption, winds up being totally pro-corruption by the end. But he was also here for almost all of it as we started in a world that was not run by money in politics and is now completely run by money in politics. So does it get worse over time?

Cinema, Kristen Cinema in Arizona is a great example of that. Comes in as a progressive. Doesn't want to take PAC money, cares about the average person, et cetera. Over time, she becomes the biggest corporatist in the Senate and a total disaster. But if you say that the majority of politicians have been, I don't know if this is what you're saying. majority of politicians have integrity?

Yeah, I get it. But all right, so let's break it down. So first, human beings, then we'll get to politicians. Do human beings have integrity? Well, it's a spectrum. So some people have enormous integrity. Some people have no integrity. So there is not one thing. Type or character, right? So some people have a ton of empathy for other human beings and they literally feel it.

Like I feel the pain of someone else and I'm not alone. Most people feel the pain of someone else. If you see it on video, a baby being hurt, An overwhelming majority of human beings will go, no, right? You have empathy. That's a natural feeling that you have. Some people have no empathy because they're on the extreme end of the spectrum. Serial killers and Donald Trump. Okay.

And so I'm partly joking, but not really. He has never demonstrated any empathy that I have ever seen for any other human being. I'm going to trigger some right wingers because they think every terrible thing he said is out of context or joking or not real or fake news. But his chief of staff didn't make it up. He called people who went into the military suckers and losers. Why?

Why did he say that? Just hang with me for a second. Don't have your head explode, okay? I'm not saying to Lex, I'm saying to the right-wingers out there, right? So the reason is because if you're like Trump and you literally don't feel the empathy, you think, why the hell would I go in the military, get killed for someone else? What a sucker. No, I'm going to stay out of the military.

I'm going to stay alive. I'm going to make a ton of money, and I'm going to look out for myself. And he assumes, because everybody does this, you assume that everyone thinks like you do, but they don't. So Trump assumes everybody's as much of a dirtbag as he is, and because he doesn't feel it. He doesn't feel the empathy. And so...

He's like, yeah, you'd be an idiot, a sucker and a loser to go into the military and have sacrifice for other people. So you see the spectrum, even if you think Trump's not on that end and you think I'm wrong about that, you get that there are people on that end, right? So you have a spectrum of integrity, empathy, et cetera. That's what I would call your hardware.

You layer on top of that your software, okay? And the software is cultural influences. Your parents, media, your friends, all these are cultural influences. So now when you're in certain industries, they value more integrity. So- religious leaders, if you're doing it right, which is also very rare, right?

But if you're doing it right, you're supposed to have empathy for the poor, the needy, the whole flock, right? So that profession is incentivizing you towards empathy and integrity, okay? And even then, a giant amount of people abuse it, right? But okay, good. In politics, it creates incentives for the opposite, right? No integrity.

And that software, to your point, over time gets stronger and stronger and stronger until it takes over. Now, you might have someone with a lot of integrity like Tom Massey, right? A Republican from Kentucky. And whether I agree with him or disagree with him on policy, I get that the brother is actually doing it based on principles.