Who Should Be President? | Middle Ground: Election 2020

i stand before you to officially launch my campaign for a second term i accept this nomination for president of the united states of america more than 1900 people in the u.s have died historic mega fires more than 38 million people have now lost their jobs i don't want to put my mouse that mask is killing people socialism is nothing but communism nationwide outrage we are as close to a cultural civil war as we have been since uh the 1860s success is going to bring us together we are on the road to success we are in the battle of the soul of this nation hello my name is ak i'm a business owner i'm also a father and i am currently a registered independent but leaning democrat hey my name is mike i am a member of the walk away movement which is people who have walked away from the left in the democratic party so i consider myself kind of part of the new right my name is shai i am an educator and i am a liberal who leans more so in the middle my name is maggie i'm a data analyst i'm 100 independent but a lot of my issues do line up with the conservative point of view my name is joe i work in democratic politics i actually just recently worked for elizabeth warren's presidential campaign and ironically i grew up in a very conservative family my name is amy i am a veteran and a mom of three boys i'm a registered independent but i tend to lean conservative if you disagree with the statement please turn your camera off the united states is the greatest country on earth when i think about america being the greatest country one of those benefits that i do think is so great is we have the freedom of choice there's many countries where women their voices are suppressed um even typing our thoughts on the internet that's suppressed i really truly fully believe that america is really the last standing pillar of democracy as a whole in the entire world right now when it comes to the people having the choice on what direction this country goes right now especially in 2020 i feel like we're personally the only country left where we have that opportunity and that door open for us the united states is actually the only country that has freedom of speech in its constitution and i think most people would agree like without freedom of speech like you can't do much like that is really pretty key having like freedom of thought and like people being able to like make to criticize the government and make changes for the better if you look at other western countries that we think of as being free countries they're really not anymore i mean in the uk you have comedians being put on trial for jokes and given prison sentences in canada there have been people put on trial for criticizing different politics so for me i would say that depending on what statistics you want to use in america there's more people in prison there's more people have guns in this country than anywhere around around the world i think there's other places that also have democracy there's other places that also have opportunity and it's not just the united states by turning my camera off i did not want to come off as saying i don't think america is a good place or it's not it could ever be the greatest place i just think in this moment it's not the greatest place this country is the worst country when it comes to covet response it's not just because we have so many people it's because we're doing almost nothing outside of a few democratic states to combat it i had kovit back in march um during the you know a huge outbreak in new york city where we literally had refrigerated trucks sitting in hospitals because the morgues were full we don't know the long-term effects of this disease and we've unfortunately made the debate about deaths versus not but the reality is it's a disease and it's wrecking havoc on people's bodies and we should just be really careful about not letting millions of people get it but i just want to push back on this idea that uh a lot of people say president trump hasn't done anything he's neglected it kamala harris just the other day released a statement saying that president trump found out on january 28th about covet and he did nothing he found out on the 28th and then on january 29th he established the task force uh the u.s coronavire task force on january 30th he closed the border to china against what every democrat wanted they called it xenophobic they called him a racist they said he was hysterical and through all of february every leading democrat was saying go out to parades go to chinatown it's nothing to worry about i'm in new york our governor cuomo put covid patients in nursing homes which is basically a death sentence when we know that that's the most vulnerable population one thing that i was kind of glad to see with trump was i would say he took a fairly libertarian approach to how he handled coronavirus even though he wanted states to open back up he did not force them to do so even though he wasn't a fan of mask mandates he didn't bar states from from doing mass mandates and if you look at the coverage of coronavirus it's often talking about like new york did it this way florida did it this way texas did it this way it's often talking about it at a state level so i do see that as a win in terms of like trump left the decision up to the states this is not a one person takes all the blame situation you know there was a lot of slow moving parts by the mayor and the governor of new york state that made everything worse there's no question about that but at the end of the day when the governor can't manufacture or acquire personal protective equipment for an outbreak they can't get enough ventilators they can't roll out a contact tracing program so they don't have the money for it you know at some point the federal government has to take blame for that for what is happening here in america new zealand went over 100 days without a single case and that's not because they have a low population they just did really basic stuff they said wear a mask if you get infected let's find out who you met with let's find out what friends and family you're with and let's tell them to isolate for a few days it doesn't take a ton of money it just takes leadership to say let's do this in every single state i think we should take this virus seriously however i am also worried about protecting our rights in the meantime because this is reminding me a lot of 911 in that 9 11 was obviously something that was very real and affect everybody but because everybody was so afraid at that time the government was able to come in and impede on all of our rights and anyone who tried to speak up for our constitutional rights was called anti-american and you're with the terrorists and i feel like that's kind of what happened what is happening now if anyone wants to consider what the other damage that is being done in fighting the coronavirus you're told you just want to kill grandmothers and you're not taking it seriously so i think that needs to be a balance in how we approach this i'll agree with mikey in terms of the economic response business has been shutting down and people are trying to find ways to support themselves and their families in addition we can also talk about donald trump just two days before he got kobut was on stage making fun of joe biden about wearing a mask right this is the leader of the country so we can't also say that he took it seriously and then at the same time was mocking somebody for taking it seriously mikey you touched on you know civil liberties especially after 9 11. look i wholeheartedly agree the patriot act and a lot that came from that was a mistake to me asking someone to wear a mask and potentially having an app on their phone that does non-gps-based contact tracing that's not really privacy invasive or taking away my rights that's just like basic respect and humanity to like protect others we're not taking guns away we're not reading your sms messages like i think i think you're kind of stretching the truth there those are absolutely things that are happening that government is reading messages buying us listen to anything that edward snowden has to say so right that's what they did then but that's not what's happening now of course it's still happening we're still 20 years later trying to i'm talking about undo all the power that the government took in 2001. as uh their measures keep getting more draconian it's not going to they aren't going to then relinquish this power but what power they get by asking me to wear a mask like it's a very simple thing in california where they're saying where the governor said that they'll shut off people's power if they have more than six people over their apartment i don't think that's the place of the government i'm just saying a basic statement like wear a mask when you're going grocery shopping to protect everyone around you like i think we can all agree that that's a good idea and that's not intruding on my rights and the president should encourage people to do so as a the leader of the country talking about you know a government impeding on somebody's rights we have the speed limits we have laws that we have to obey every single day we're not in this place where it's complete anarchy where we can do whatever we want to so every single day the government is enforcing rules and regulations that we decide to follow but if now a mask is something that's so big i think it's just a little bit of a stretch the other side circulates more fake news when we talk about fake news especially when we're or in my case when i'm thinking of the other side fox news is like the first one that comes to mind a lot of the things that they say to me tries to instill fear it's the rhetoric that they use to try to get people angry or anxious about the opposite side's views me being an independent i listen to everybody so i'll listen to fox but i you know here and there i will listen to cnn okay what's cnn saying what's that msnbc saying and stuff the negativity like i don't know how anybody could watch those on a day-to-day basis and feel hopeful i find this question a little bit challenging because i think both sides have i guess the word fake news that's going out there but the reason i find it difficult is because fake news never started until this administration the biggest fake news that i would say is them saying that the economy is now saved under trump what are those facts though because for me personally when i look at the trade deals that he did with the united states canada mexico agreement and everything there are trade deals that he trump has implemented in his administration that have been very very effective if you really look at the jobs that are being created right now in this country under a pandemic no that's pretty i'm a nancy pelosi clapped that one that's pretty damn impressive to me talking about the economy improving it was already improving before he got into office you look at 2010 in october the unemployment rate nationally was a 10 and by january 2017 when a trump got into office it was at 4.7 the weekly earnings rate was already improving the stock market was already the highest it was ever been in 2013. i would give this a trump he is an amazing marketer obama wasn't putting on twitter every single day that the stock market was the highest it's ever been in 2013 and off you said uh that fake news didn't really exist before this administration is crazy to me i mean even think back to the iraq war who sold the iraq war to the american people it was the new york times the hysteria about trump i think is totally unjustified there was a study from harvard showing that 94 of media coverage of trump is negative there was a time that trump was asked about ms-13 a gang which beheads people and murders children and he called them animals the new york times the media the entire mainstream media cnn they all reported that trump called all immigrants animals they said he called neo-nazis in charlottesville good people but they clip out the middle of his sentence where he said i'm not talking about the neo-nazis and white supremacists who should be condemned totally so you know i think at this point everybody knows what they're getting when they watch fox news it's a conservative channel and i feel like they don't really pretend to be anything but that the problem is that every other channel is fox news but for the left i agree with you the new york times sold the iraq war and like the mainstream media was complicit in selling those lies that's 100 true but there's a huge monumental difference between what fox and certain right-wing pundits do with media the new york times if they get a story wrong if they publish misinformation on accident like they issue retractions journalists get fired editors get fired i know this because i know people who work at these media companies and in terms of expertise we also need to touch on this fox news does not bring experts on its show they don't bring climate scientists on their show to talk about climate change the new york times actually employs people with deep understandings of all these subject areas i don't think the new york times these organizations are perfect at covering politics at the end of the day they do care about truth the people there do care about you i totally disagree with that i mean there have been so many studies showing that the vast vast vast majority of people employed in mainstream media are all democrats i mean show me well show me where they've retracted saying that trump called immigrants animals show me where they've retracted saying that he called nazis very fine people show me where they retracted that he didn't con that he hasn't condoned white supremacy i just saw somebody put together uh a tweet from cnn that said from 2017 that says trump condones white suprema or uh condemns white supremacy and says racism is evil and then a tweet from last week saying trump has never condemned white supremacy so they're not retracting any of this i don't remember the past four years in great detail because it's been a long time it's felt like 10 years let's be real oh please we all need to drink after this decade so let's go with the most recent example in memory which is the debate he's asked very plainly as a presidential candidate regardless of party can you condemn the extremist people in this country who literally hate and want to kill and harm other people that should be the easiest toss for any political candidate to do and he answered the affirmative yeah he said he said he did not stand back and stand by no he said sure sure and then after that he then said well look at antifa and all those other people he actually switched the blame this was not something that we saw after the fact we saw this live happening he didn't say white supremacy is a good thing he didn't avoid trying to condemn white supremacy as soon as he was asked like will you condemn wipes white supremacy he answered in the affirmative like he said show her he said sure multiple times chris wallace said like will you ask them to stand down i think and so trump used the word stand by which most people like take to mean kind of like be on the ready and i'm sure you guys all watched the debate um but i would say that if you go back and watch the entire clip leading up to that i would say it's pretty hard to deny that trump was saying like yes i will disavow white supremacy but as a leader we should know that we do need to be careful in those moments when seven million or how many ever millions of people are watching this on that platform that we use those words correctly it makes me afraid to leave my home it makes me think well they are being supported by him and they want to push whatever he wants them to do so even just thinking about those terms um and even kind of bringing it more so towards like my local city when we think about media and what they want to put on tv and what they want to put in the headlines i was a part of almost too many peaceful protests that not one camera was around uh but as soon as you saw people getting a little angry and they were breaking into stores and they were looting the cameras was there so i do definitely say media has an impact on how we hear and receive things but also as a leader the leaders need to know that the media is going to use your words against you you do need to say certain things more direct or more assertive to make sure everybody understands on that first day not two days later or 12 hours later whatever the case might be i completely agree even as a trump supporter look when i voted for trump me personally i voted for trump in 2016. and i knew back then he's not a politician he's gonna say some things that the media who already hates his guts is going to take some things and and twist it so i agree and when i was watching that debate and joe biden was all like proud boys you know what i mean why doesn't he just say hey i literally just made the kkk a terrorist organization that right there you're disavowing white supremacy i wish he would have said that instead of saying the stand back and stand by things responsible for talking about what you were saying shy is i feel terrible that you would watch that and get that impression i think that that's a total failure of the trump campaign you know just between us i was watching the debate and screaming at my tv why aren't you talking about the things that you've done it was so infuriating to me i hated trump in 2016. i didn't vote for him i thought every horrible thing about him and one of the things that really changed my mind is when i saw the things that he was actually doing to help the black community when you see what he has done for the black community when it's the opportunity zones whether it's the previous reform whether it's fighting for school choice was girl that helps those black single mothers that are out there in the community who live in these impoverished zones and everything their children aren't sentenced into really schools and everything excuse my friendship to me him doing things like that is so that we can bring it up oh but he did do this for the black community oh he did do this so that's what it feels like and as far as like a school choice um as an educator that literally almost can demolish the public school system why not fix the public schools that are currently crumbling why not provide extra funding to those schools why is it that those students have to rely on schools just for food you know i'm teaching out of a textbook from 2008 so it literally does not even have obama in that textbook president trump is not in that textbook so yes he has plans that have helped the black community but i think it is a cop to say yes i've helped the black community in this way but i'm still not going to tell them proud boys to leave you all alone i am worried about a civil war in this country i don't think it'll be a civil war the way we think of it on battlefields but i think in many ways it's already happening i think no matter who wins the election no one's going to accept it there's going to be rioting there's going to be everything regardless of what happens it should be a real priority for a lot of people calming things down we are going to most definitely i believe have some bloodshed after the election i do not think it's going to be like you said mikey um on a battlefield but i feel like it will happen in in communities there's hundreds of militias around the country and i think we're only focusing on one ignoring that there are these chapters that are in every single state around the country the boogaloo movement for example has had dozens of people arrested this year alone by the fbi because they've shot police officers they've shot at protesters they've planted or tried to plan bombings and just the other week we learned they tried to kidnap a governor of a state there are people out there who are genuinely trying to do more than just punch someone or whatever in the street they are going for full-on like biggest possible show of violence you can go for and i'm far more worried about at-level extremism than i am about the prout boys and my problems with biden but after trump got coveted he didn't bash the first lady or trump he said this is not a right issue or a left issue this is an american issue i have never seen that coming from donald trump and that is what i worry about the most is that i don't feel like donald trump will be able to calm the nation if something does happen i definitely agree with you ak um just the once again like i said a little bit earlier just the rhetoric that he uses is gonna cause some people to get angry he hasn't to my knowledge actually said if he's going to accept on the results of the election which also of course would make some liberals a little upset if you know the numbers are adding up and the electoral college votes and we've got 270 and he still refuses to accept that it makes people feel like they might have to result uh to violence in order to remove him from office you know we talked earlier about how he's kind of a showman he wasn't a politician he doesn't know the words this is a moment probably more than ever in my lifetime and all of our lifetimes where words are going to really really matter they're convincing their supporters the whole thing will be raped so no matter what happens they shouldn't accept it it's not going to be long before the tiki tur torches turn to guns and people shooting at each other like we saw in kenosha wisconsin that was unfortunately two people's lives lost what happens when it's 30 when it's 50. how much violence you're gonna be able to tolerate in this country some people say what carbon house did was murder the other side is looking at him as a hero and that is what the scary part to me is i'm not saying he's a hero but what are you supposed to do when you have people attacking you charging you with guns and are about to shoot you i don't think he should have been there he came across state lines with an ar-15 to a protest like you asked for problems just being there you shouldn't have been there i go very back and forth on how i feel about this with trump because i certainly wish he would be more unifying and i don't love everything he has to say but on the other side right now every institution in this country is on the side of democrats and on the side of the left and he's pushing back against that and without that i don't think that anyone else would i wish that he would be clearer about the results of the election but i do think mail and ballots are the most susceptible to fraud we shouldn't we should just keep things how they've been colorado has been a state that's voted almost entirely by mail now for years they have no fraud right like doing vote by mail fraud is extremely hard because those ballots are unique and if there's any allegations of fraud they still compare signatures just like you would with in-person ballots democrats i believe was in california wanted to get rid of signature verification it was racist to have your id at a voting poll all of a sudden if we're being honest how many of us really know what extent of integrity there are in the elections there were a lot of shady things happening in the midterms in 2018 in broward county in florida there was a woman who had been convicted of destroying ballots and she's still now in charge of handling the ballots so i think there's a lot of blame on both sides as ak said but my question to you mike is if trump wins the election do you think he's still going to be pushing for fraud no i mean i think we see what happens i think it depends on the fact that there is any he's only going to push for fraud if a liberal candidate wins but if he wins everything we can trust it is great that is an issue i was thinking civil war in the traditional sense and so for me it's very hard to imagine people physically getting organized and battling over the territory of the country i do think that the country is divided i don't necessarily think that that's anything super new you know elections have always been pretty 50 50. so i think that's a really great reason why it makes a lot of sense to move decisions away from the federal and national level and move decisions to the state level because i think that's one of the best ways to be an option for people who disagree to still live in the same country i did have kind of a story to give regarding mail-in voting and whether or not it is corruptable i have two roommates and i know that they're not voting the same way i am and i received both of their mail-in ballots i have integrity like i just gave it to each of them but the thought did occur to me like somebody who could justify that to themselves could either a throw away their ballots or they could be fill them out for their candidate of choice and mail them back if we're talking about not accepting the results of an election i feel like democrats still have barely accepted the results of the last one they've said for so long he's not a legitimate president russia put him there i feel like democrats like to talk about a lot about democracy but they're the ones who have shown a pattern of not accepting it they're the ones who rigged their primary against bernie sanders in the 2016 primary they threw voters off the rolls they destroyed two hundred thousand or abouts they took took 200 000 voters off the rolls in bernie sanders own hometown so i think there's a lot of blame on both sides in this and that everyone only likes the outcome of an election when it suits them i 100 agreed to maggie's point and also mike's i actually do feel the mail-in voting is actually hurting more liberals and democrats because if everybody would just to go to the polls then there won't be this hard transition of of transfer of power in addition we are very divided and this didn't just come in this particular not accepting the president i think it was in 2010 or mitch mcconnell went on the floor and said i'm going to make sure that obama is a one-term president at that moment when he stood there and said this i'm not going to make him the one-term president it no longer was for the good of the country it then became the good of the party i totally agree with you i think republicans were disgusting under obama and i feel the same way about democrats now i can understand why someone would vote for the other candidate as far as like the trying to understand why someone would vote for trump people trust him as far as like being a businessman um and trying to restructure our economy in that way so that i do understand but then my rebuttal for that is we don't necessarily need a business man for america we need a leader i can definitely see why someone would vote for joe biden in particular or a democrat in general it's not necessarily like that people like him it's that they more identify as a democrat i also want to say like all the people that i've met that are voting for biden like are all good people they're doing the best they can with what they've got like i think that goes for all of us i could understand what people would vote for trump i think the bigger question is are you surprised about who would be voting for trump there's certain populations that make sense if you're in business if you do feel like you've been forgotten by the democratic party i could understand it's not actually just voting for trump it'd be voting for trump be voting for his cabinet the same thing with biden or his cabinet i think it's more than just voting for the people but about the constituents that they bring along with their team i'm looking at it from a national security standpoint the ccp is a very very large threat to me um and my family and everything and the joe biden when you have your son that has received 1.5 billion dollars and and unfortunately it's not conspiracy anymore i can't expect you to protect us as american people i can't understand why you would vote for somebody who won't have our best interest who is flip-flopping constantly on whether it's fracking whether it's uh your support for long order whether it's your support for things that are the foundation not the racist foundation not that not the past you know but you know the the actual constitutional bill of rights foundation if it were anyone else i would really truly say i totally get it i totally understand why somebody would vote for hillary for bernie sanders for elizabeth warren i don't get it with joe biden we'll talk about the system as racist joe biden is the system he created he was an architect of so many of these things mass incarceration the war on drugs the 94 crime bill he wrote laws where he literally said on the senate floor the only thing we do not do in this bill is hang people for jaywalking i said this earlier when we were chatting informally i worked on warren's campaign obviously i wanted her to win right biden wasn't my guy and he still says things that disappointment you know you brought up fracking i wish he was against fracking but he hasn't flipped on it what disappoints me a lot more than biden's maybe not perfect progressive stances is what trump is doing right now he wants to kick me off of health care the republican party right now has a lawsuit and it wants to completely invalidate the aca which means someone like me under 26 that's a freelancer doesn't get to use their parents health care plan it means people that are on the health care exchanges right now because of medicaid expansion all across this country instantly off of health care and the difference between trump and joe biden is joe biden has a plan to continue the aca make a public option to continue to make health care more affordable he has a plan for climate change he has a plan for a criminal justice you might think both of those things are inadequate or they might not address whatever the problems but the point is he has a plan and he's willing to listen to people to make that plan better i want joe biden to be more progressive and i'll fight him after november if he wins to make him more progressive if there's anyone in the year of 2020 that could be a leader in this moment where we are all experiencing so much national trauma both locally when we can't even go to funerals for our loved ones but also just seeing so many beloved people die this year if there's anyone that understands or has any empathy for what we're all going through it's joe biden and donald trump has put no empathy on display this guy got out of the hospital immediately took off his mask and said don't worry about it it's fine that's not what we need right now the aca was a very double-edged sword it's not about whether you have health care or don't have health care trump has always said that he is in favor of uh outlawing the pre-existing condition law and the thing is the aca didn't work so well the aca didn't hasn't worked so well for all of us my parents are both cancer survivors their insurance got so much more expensive they lost their insurance because of it my mom is a survivor of brain cancer who lost the doctor that put her in remission because of the aca so i understand that there are good things about it and believe me i totally want republicans to be much better on health care because you're right i agree with you that they i don't know what they are for half the time and for me i know this is going to be a very unpopular thing to say and this isn't going to be any popularity points but honestly i don't care about empathy right now i will care about action i don't care about feelings and words i care about actions who has done it and joe biden has just been so much talk with no action to back it up when you're in office for half a century you should be about more than words you should have a record to run on i can understand somebody saying that joe biden sucks i can understand that but to then say that the republican party is the solution is where i'm just flabbergasted by because they're doing nothing other than throw money on top and then bury you from the bottom just like saying diversity training is un-american you mean just shy say that it was critical race theory okay so i don't consider that the republican party is doing anything better to court voters only during election time i totally agree and i would say for me there is a huge difference between the republican party party and trump when i first heard that donald trump was running for running for president i laughed but one of the things that made me start to give it a second look was the fact that both parties were seeking to tear him down so much so you're saying that you're more you're more in support of trump than the republican party at this point yeah and like one thing that comes to mind that i guess really shocked me and disappointed me was joe biden's comment several months ago essentially saying that if you were a black person that you had to vote for joe biden and if anybody said like because you're a white person you have to vote for trump or because you're a woman you have to vote for joe biden i would be extremely offended and i think that's incredibly divisive that's one of the issues that i do see with the democratic party because they are stereotypically the party of the minorities they do think they just automatically have you know minority votes just as upset i was when you know trump makes his comments i was also upset when you know joe biden said that as well we can't just automatically assume we have those voices because yeah black people stereotypically are democrat or more liberal and so on that was a joke he made and he apologized for doing it because i thought it was inappropriate and like he immediately apologizes it was inappropriate i should have made that joke right and i think it's a big difference between trump and biden jokes are usually a reflection of the truth and you know they love to use this term a gaff but i think a gaffe is really when a politician accidentally says what they really think and he didn't even say if you don't vote for him he said if a black person asks questions about voting for him then they ain't black you know the reason why i have an issue with donald trump for a myriad of different reasons the thing that he lacks is diplomacy and i think within the right they think that the only way to get stuff done is to be brash and disrespectful you don't have to be there's a point about actual civility you can actually not talk trash anybody and still get jobs done and then people wonder why we're so divided but i think we should also remember the economy has actually done better under democratic rule does anybody remember what happened in 2008 it's like we almost forget that we're in a recession it's almost like we forgot that the unemployment rate did drop under obama we also remember about climate change um wall street reform daca right so you're trying to pretend that he hasn't done anything this was just on the prior presidency where he was a vice president that people are pretending didn't happen i think if we're going to talk about the recession let's look at what joe biden has done because he's the one who is actually on the ballot he when he was in the senate he removed protections that had been in place since fdr on the big banks there was the bankruptcy bill which allowed the banks to become too big to fail and cost middle-class people to lose their home and we all remember that hillary clinton was caught saying about a public position in a private position well we have 47 years of seeing what joe biden's private positions are if you look at his actual actions and i totally agree with you that i very much wish trump would be more unifying and would be less bombastic but i think his he gets results but at what cost how many times has trump put more fire more gas in the fire when the nfl protests were happening he could have just said hey i'm gonna step out of it but he had to go out there and say these sobs right how many times has he actually not been unified i would actually say the biggest problem that we're facing today is we can't listen to each other if you can't listen to each other i don't care who you're going to have in office it's going to be continually fighting back and forth and what i've seen from the republican base literally letting anything go yeah biden isn't the best he gasps he's not my most exciting choice but we're not also saying that he's also anointed from god in the best presence we've ever seen that is the difference we understand that he has problems but we also understand that trump has problems as well and we want to say we're not going in the right direction where things are going me personally i feel like trump's problems are in a weird ironic way a blessing at the same time so one of the things he's not a politician therefore he's not going to be politically correct i know i completely understand that it's not going to be necessarily the best or the most popular thing to say but it's something that needs to still be said um i'm just saying this like all these things are politically correct there's difference between just outright making fun of every single candidate he's a business man he's been on tv it's not like he's a toddler when it comes to this establishment that has been running especially if you want to look at the black community specifically the things that they have had in place the things that they've been regurgitating and been feeding us as a black community as a whole i feel like those things need to be broken where's joe biden whether it's obama whether it's hillary clinton or there's a whole little family you know that has been saying what we want to hear to get them voted into office to run policies that do absolutely nothing for the black community as a whole but that's just not true i mean when we talk about if we're going to continue to put black people and say they're a monolith lgbt climate change these are all i understand that i'm not i'm not defending joe biden i'm just saying it's not like trump is the savior of black people one thing is i find it also very insulting when people think the only black issues are crime bills right that is like insulting to think that the black is just related to crime when you think about black america we are not a monolith right lgb2 climate change daca all these other things that happened under obama right that build out the auto industry black unemployment rate was at what 17 in 2010 and got down to 7.6 and i just want people to always think that black problems are only crime issues because that is insulting as as a population i think there's so much more than we are than just prison systems um i mean just real quick on education stuff we were talking about earlier um i think it's a national problem and we really needed a national solution what i've seen from betsy devos is someone that really tries to play this divisive line that really has no interest in growing public public education and making sure that every child has the best possible education and i think again joe biden is not perfect but i know he'll appoint a great secretary of education i know he's going to take public schools seriously and that benefits all of us when the generation behind us has a great education when i think of the state that i live in and i look at the school systems that we have it is specifically republican legislation that has led to the decline and the defunding of our public schools when we look at joe biden's plan they're saying look on day one we plan on giving title 1 schools x amount of money so especially when i think of public education and we've talked about school choice before but we have to fix what is available to all of our students at this point in time i don't really have faith in republicans to truly support public education and to support the needs of people if we think of our public schools they get money based off of like the tax dollars from the neighborhoods that you live in poor neighborhoods are going to get little funding rich neighborhoods are going to get more funding republicans have done nothing to stop this but say you know what that's okay let's still give these corporations a tax cut and not let them pay an extra penny so that maybe that money could go to our public schools i do think that public school is not the same as education um and i think that if we're thinking about the good of students in general choice and competition is extremely important in any system when you introduce competition almost always quality goes up and cost goes down and so i think we're doing a disservice to our kids if we're not giving them choices and if we're not allowing competition in education sometimes what happens with this competition is there's still only a small subgroup of students that are actually able to choose when we think of school choice and we say yeah we're going to open it up they're still going to be stuck in public schools who have now been left behind because we've given them a choice to go somewhere else and we've created this competition sure i think that even if it just benefits a small segment of children i think that's still valuable i mean i think the public school system is obviously it's something that's been a challenge for a very long time and think of people are trying to find solutions but like i said i think both parties have done things but i think our decisions that while we're making these voting decisions are multifaceted right i think both sides have done more for the black community my personal feeling is the way that the republican party represents the black community isn't always the best this is going to sound very counterintuitive because i know his words can be a little insane but i genuinely truly believe that trump has totally changed the republican party i hated the old republican party like and all of those old republicans that are still around they got to go we've had so many years of the republican party ignoring the black community worse than ignoring the gay community and i think trump has totally changed that he's brought lgbt groups into the white house he has done so many things the role that many of us in the party now need to have is to keep that ball rolling and keep changing a party that has sucked for so many years i am open to the other party's ideas i think i would do a huge disservice if i did not listen to the other side especially in my role i don't want to ever go into the classroom with just this one opinion and not being able to listen to my other students or parents or administrators and leaders who have different viewpoints too i'm part of the walk away movement of people who used to be democrats and have left one of the things i always say to them is do not become what you walked away from so i think the worst thing we could do is buy into tribalism and group thing i've been a democrat i've been an independent now i'm a republican so for me personally the moment that the republican party no longer represents what i think is best for my country and my values i'm out i think we can all agree that we're in a very very divisive time i think social media is a big factor to that me and my girlfriend literally sitting in the same room both on facebook and our feeds be completely different and what actually is happening because of it is we're only seeing these echo chambers where things are becoming much more divisive so i think what we need to start realizing is we have to actively start searching the other side just to even get that perspective because otherwise we're just going to get things that already align with our world views correct me on this if i'm wrong but it's my understanding that republicans definitely like helped create and were very like pro a lot of the like tax loopholes that especially like businesses exploit that's definitely something that i that i don't think is a good thing i don't feel like the left is as intolerant as they should be i think that they could be able to say have conversations not just shut up and listen as i have to say my point would actually do more justice because what you're seeing is if you don't let me talk i'm just going to show you in the voting booth it's kind of a tricky situation for me because when i look here present day 2020 there is a very massive push for socialism specifically it sounds beautiful on paper it sounds great in fact if i if i didn't know much about socialism i'd say hey free healthcare free school free housing free free free free why not i would love for anybody especially on the joe biden side to just name me a country where socialism has actually worked and being being a mom of three boys and being a veteran and everything like i feel like this is the most important election that we have um and i feel like trump even though he's not perfect he is keeping a lot of things in place when it comes to our constitution and our bill of rights i want everyone to have access to quality health care i want everyone to have access to quality education i think everyone deserves a home or somewhere to live in i think everyone deserves to have food on the table at night i think when you retire you should have access to medicare i think these are very basic level of play playing field for everybody i listen to republicans all the time and i don't hear them saying they want to do any of the things i just described i keep hearing a lot of kind of talk about socialist marxism blah blah blah i don't really care what label you come up with right i'm just saying people deserve basic dignity in this country but right here in new york city there's one in five kids who are homeless like what are we doing there's gotta be a balance between people who have so much money just hoarding billions and billions of dollars and people suffering because our governments at the state and local level don't have the money to help them and we have people at the federal level most of the republican party that don't want to spend any money to help them right we got to change something here because everyone does deserve access to health care education you know earlier kind of a climate donald trump is 70 something years old he doesn't have to deal with climate but me being on staten island sitting on the edge of the atlantic i do this affects our home prices this is going to affect our generation for decades and the longer we wait to do anything about it the worse it gets and so i'm i just keep looking at the republican party waiting for one of them to say we treat these problems seriously we see the crisis for what it is and here's our big bold ideas to solve them and i'm not hearing that i definitely just want to commend your like passion for the welfare of others like that is so evident that you just care about people like you said having quality education having quality health care having food on their table um i think that shows like tremendous compassion compassion and i like i definitely respect that whatever system we're talking about that puts more power in the hands of the government and and has the government control the means of production or whatever it is i would say empirically like when you look at when that has been tried that has led to like worse education it's led to worse health care it's led to increased poverty i'm not advocating we end capitalism tomorrow like i don't think any entrepreneur who wants to start a business like should suddenly change their plans because of a socialist movement all i'm saying is there's a lot of basic guarantees we should be giving people from the government education healthcare etc addressing big picture problems like climate change that require big investment and regulation in order to address we need those things and there's only one party right now that is even offering some of what we need remember i'm a progressive i don't think the democratic party is going far enough i don't think joe biden's platform goes far enough but i know i can at least pressure him as an activist i don't think i can do that with the republican party they bring snowballs to the senate floor to prove there isn't climate change how am i supposed to convince them we need to invest in more green jobs in this country if they don't even think the problem is real i can't speak to like environmental concerns as much but definitely in terms of education and definitely in terms of health care i think the free market has a ton to do with it health insurance or health coverage is not the same as health care and i would also say that free education is not the same thing as good education so i think a really good example is canada healthcare is free but the quality is super duper low and if you go to public health care in canada if it's an emergency sometimes they'll even refer you to a private health care right but the difference in those things is cost if you want to have a private health care plan in canada go for it i don't care but the thing is everyone in canada has that basic right if they need it they have it and i'm just saying in america that should be the same thing you want to pay for that extravagant school or healthcare plan knock your socks off i don't care like these are just basic rights we can guarantee people it doesn't have to replace all these other systems you're comfortable with let's just give people certain rights and then have that conversation about how well it is or isn't going but the brain you deal right now that's what they want to do especially let's talk about degree new deal right like millions of dollars with no actual plan the plan is simple we need to rebuild the infrastructure in this country to be more climate resilient because places like right here in staten island get destroyed every time there is a tropical storm let alone another hurricane sandy so what if we just guaranteed everyone who wanted training and a job whether it's here or in appalachia where they only do coal mines a job in making glee green products it's literally the most capitalistic thing the democratic party could possibly come up with to boost our economy and fight climate change it's like a win-win for everyone trump just signed a deal where we're going to be planting a trillion trees trees have a very big importance on our country on our planet as a whole so why you want to take away all of these industries that are taking from the planet but we're going to be giving back to the planet it doesn't work when we're doing these things so i just want to be honest scientifically right like the the reality is he can plant two million trees but the amazon in brazil is burning at a rate we've never experienced in global history and it doesn't matter how many trees we plant in america if the planet's screwed right at the end of the day we have to stop putting carbon in the air and california is a great example of a state trees absorb carbon but we need to stop putting it in the air to begin with that's the problem we can't just rely on absorption i'm very much for the fact that republicans need to be better on the environment actually but you said joe earlier that you're progressive who thinks democrats don't go far enough i don't think republicans go far enough but i do think that there are some strides that are being made he signed the save our seas act cleaning plastic out of the ocean the us is currently leading the world and reducing uh carbon emissions and in terms of the green new deal i feel like this is a concern that a lot of people on the right have that this it always starts with something that sounds very lovely save the planet cost was tens of trillions of dollars so i do agree with you that i think we should be investing in jobs and promoting that with the free market but i don't think the green new deal is the way i don't think joe biden's plan is actually the green new deal so we might need to actually revisit that subject the issue that i have too is the republicans don't really trust science so at least we do look at democrats of trying to listen to scientists and think about what they're saying about what could save the climate and economy i honestly don't know what joe biden's position is on the green new deal anymore because on his website it promotes the green new deal it says that it's a great plant so i don't know at this point if he's for it if he's against it he's he's sort of spoken out of the sides of his mouth on that as a progressive i wish he was for the green new deal that's my honest answer i wish he was he has though moved on spending more in his overall climate package it's now a 2 trillion climate package i know it doesn't mean a lot to the people watching this but all i'm saying is he is listening he just isn't going all the way that sometimes right-wing media portrays him as one of the things i want to say is when we look at media we look at media as a mainstream media but we don't see social media as media and the reason why i say that it's we can't only blame media but at the same time we're just retweeting articles without doing any type of fact checking as well we are also part of the same problem that the mainstream media is doing every single time we re-retweet or share or don't actually do content i think that's so true aka a lot of people will complain about the people in power and a lot of people will complain about the government but i think like we as everyday citizens also also have to hold ourselves to account um because like we did elect the people that are in power um and we are like making like exactly like you said we are sharing things on twitter and facebook and so i do think that the everyday citizen needs to have a little bit more critical thinking uh when they read something they have to ask themselves like is this true does this make sense can i ask you like where does everybody get their news sources from i don't really watch much cable tv because i think it's kind of cable tv is like i think people confuse cable tv for journalism cable tv is predominantly personality speaking i just assume that everybody's has their own personal agenda and i just i use it as a top layer and then i gotta go in deeper to find the actual facts so when people talk about the stock market i'll actually go to dow jones if they're talking about unemployment rate i'll actually go to you know bureau of all you guys i labor statistics was a great conversation this was so refreshing to me but i know that we all grew up in completely different environments we have different perspectives and everything and i hope that as we as americans we can just completely accept hey this person might think differently than me but it doesn't mean that they're a horrible person we've all had some type of experience that can dictate why we might be liberal or what i mean why we might be conservative but at the end of the day we're still american and we're still valuing and listening to each other my encouragement though is to fellow gen zers please please please please vote um you know us young people get written off as not caring and not paying attention we don't vote blah blah blah the best way to make everyone in politics and in dc care about us is to vote so i would just say to anyone watching think for yourself do your own research vote for whoever the hell you want to vote for don't let anybody tell you how to think who to be how to vote i would say to everybody on here like keep doing what you're doing the bible says he who seeks will find and so i think those who are like truly seeking truth will like absolutely one day like come across it right now we are communicating a lot through zoom but hopefully we can actually step away and not just communicate virtually but actually have conversations that think differently than us in our neighborhoods in our streets in our communities because i think we now realize through this conversation it doesn't really help to demonize any side even if we're yelling and fighting but just say hey i can hear you i may not agree with you it might get hectic sometimes but we're in this together you

Channel: Jubilee

Views: 2,280,684

Rating: 4.9140921 out of 5

Keywords: jubilee, jubilee media, jubilee project, middle ground, spectrum, odd man out, versus 1, embrace empathy, live deeper, love language, blind devotion, election, president, presidential, trump, biden, trump vs biden, who should be president?, who, should, be, middle ground election, politics, election day, candidates, U.S. government, america, vote, voters, fake news, civil war, republican, republicans, democrat, democrats, political party

Id: Iv_RIjfO0PE

Length: 51min 44sec (3104 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020