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Oct 16, 2025

The RevolYOUtion: October 16, 2025

Rep. Marie Newman gives the revolution some tips. Cenk Uygur discusses on The Young Turks.
  • 38 minutes
All right. Welcome to the revolution. Such as it is. I'm gonna clarify as many times as I can. Peaceful nonviolent revolution. Democratic revolution. Okay, so what are we revolting against? The obvious corruption of the politicians right there. [00:00:17] Take PAC money. They serve the donors. There's no question about it. The only ignoramuses that are still denying it are mainstream media or older reporters that can't. Where is money? Oh, did billions of dollars affect these lovely politicians, I cannot tell. [00:00:34] Okay, so we're going to get to some parts of that in a second. But guys first I got to tell you super interesting. We're trying to affect Congress. We're trying to push them from the outside to do the right thing. Former member of Congress is going to join us tonight and she's going to tell us how to do it. [00:00:50] So Marie Newman was a U.S. Representative from Illinois, and she's going to join us in about ten minutes and tell us, hey, if you want to affect your local representative, your congressman, this is how you do it. That's awesome. So we're going to find out together. Okay. [00:01:07] So before we get to that, I got to tell you a whole bunch of things. Okay, so we asked you guys to come up with a way to reach Tim Burchett, because one of the things that we're pushing is a bill for lower drug prices. It's Donald Trump's executive order verbatim. [00:01:23] And so there's no reason why very right wing Tim Burchett should not sign on to that bill. It's already got three Republican co-sponsors. And so, and I didn't want to do the social media post. I wanted you guys to do it so that we could all push together and empower you [00:01:38] guys to to do all this in social media. So eclectic. Miscellanea. Who's a part of the Operational Working Group, kind of a legendary, tight viewer and member. Asked Tim Burchett to do it. So do we have that? [00:01:55] Can we put that up? Okay. So we'll see if we have that as a graphic. I should have probably coordinated that better. But anyways, his handle is, on X at eclectic. That's EC. Oh, my God, we should have definitely, done this as a graphic anyway. [00:02:16] And then miscellaneous just m I SC God, that's a hard one. Eclectic, Missy. Okay, and I liked it. If you can find it on X and then and repost it here, I'll, do a quote on it, [00:02:32] and you can find it through mine, too. We're asking, members of Congress to. Do this while I'm doing it, too. If you don't mind, I'm going to give you updates in a second, but we we've got [00:02:50] to get these folks to to begin to respond. I have updates on some members of Congress that have gotten back to us. We're asking members of Congress to lower drug prices. Okay, so that's Burkett's information. [00:03:05] And so you could take this and turn it into a social media post as well. You could do it on Instagram. You see his handle on Insta on X, etc.. And so I'm saying this should be a layup for Representative Burkett. [00:03:26] And I'm literally going to look on their Tim Burkett on X. So thank you for putting that graphic up. Because this is Trump's executive order. [00:03:43] Word by word. Okay. So. We're asking members of Congress to lower drug prices. This should be a layup for Tim Burchett because this is Trump's executive order. Word by word. Okay. Send. Okay. [00:03:59] So, there it is. So I saw this. More of you liked it as, we've been doing this segment, so he's got others, too. He also asked AOC to do it. Look, I'm not going to go through that whole process again. I'll do it off air. But, he also wrote AOC. [00:04:17] Should. Oh. I'm sorry, this is Michael Napier. It's someone else. Should, support H.R. 3093 for transparency in drug pricing. I love that. I'm going to heart that as well. Michael's normal spelling, and Nathan is k a p e n. [00:04:33] But you know what, guys? I'll retweet both of these. I already did eclectics. I'll do Michael's after the show and, and go and like theirs, share theirs. First of all, as we explain, everything here is optional. Do whatever you're comfortable with. For example, this bill lowers drug prices. [00:04:52] If you say no, the poor pharmaceutical companies, they're just not making enough trillions of dollars. So no, no, I want to pay more. Okay, then then or you say, you know what? I love the policy. I agree with the policy. We should pay the same as the other developed nations on average. [00:05:08] But since Trump proposes it, then I don't want to do it. Okay, that's up to you. All right. Everything is optional. But, my God, imagine if we got lower drug prices through this. Okay, so, got, word back from, further word back from representative Mark Pocan, that they are seriously considering supporting this. [00:05:29] I can't speak for them, and I don't know where they're going to come out, but that's good news. And so pecans on the left, brackets on the right. Trump's executive order basically Democratic policy. No reason for anyone to object. By the way, even though this is such an obvious layup, such a good example. [00:05:45] Because if you pull the voters on this, it come in at over 90%. It has five co-sponsors so far, just five. Okay, but if we get it up to 100, then it's going to start to become undeniable one thing at a time. Let's try to get one and then another, and then another. [00:06:02] And let's begin to use the muscles of crowdsourcing. Right. So now a lot of people by the way also posted on X, blue Sky, Insta and Facebook. Okay. And then somebody said that they love the idea of the paper trail [00:06:19] for the members of Congress. How much money did they take from the donors and did they vote with them? How did they vote? So does it match? Like our guess is it'll match about 98%. You might get a random 1 or 2, right? [00:06:36] But overall, the the politicians, you will see if we do that effectively vote with their donors nearly 100% of the time. So the rest of politics is a joke. It's a it's a BS movie that mainstream media is playing for you. [00:06:53] It's not real. What's real is the money. So along those lines, people liked it. And on the discussion board there was discussion around it and they started calling it Project Paper Trail. Ooh, I like that. So, so here it is. [00:07:11] Project for progress started it, saying hi everyone. I usually share this idea and ideas, but I wanted to post it here too so we can get a broader conversation going. Robert from TYT reached out to me. Turns out he's a computer science teacher and he's going to start working on this project. I believe Jake may have even mentioned it on tonight's show, [00:07:26] which I'll catch up on tomorrow. The core idea is to build a public tracker slash database that correlates voting records with campaign contributions for each member of Congress, every governor, and modern day Presidents Clinton through Trump. The goal is to make it simple to navigate. You'll be able to sort by lobby and instantly see what percentage [00:07:43] of each politician's funding comes from each one of those lobbies. It'll be similar to Open Secrets, except you won't have to dig through the data yourself. The money will be shown right next to the voting record. While writing this, I thought of an even more powerful extension combining with the Children of Gaza project. Okay, we'll get to that later. [00:07:59] So now, So I love this. Okay. Now, can we do this in a way that is effective? So I don't know, can you text me and tell me if we got the URL [00:08:15] so we can ask them about it? And then, so guys, again, if you told me, hey, Jenk, find a bunch of web developers and use AI to make this much more efficient system and then be able to fact check it all by yourself [00:08:33] or all by ourselves here at target. It's too hard, right? But if we all do it together, I'm hoping that it gets easier. Right? And so I love the fact that you guys are already working on it. I love that we've got some coders on it. Look at this ham. Right. Thank you for joining. Appreciate it. [00:08:51] Okay, we got it. Okay. So, Kara, can you then send me the options and we'll put it up in the live chat and on twitter.com. So what we did was to make this project happen, we bought a bunch of URLs, just like we did with, kids of Gaza. [00:09:07] Com, and, and others. Oh, polls already up on the home page. Okay, but I need it. I could just go to the home page. So go to Titcomb and you'll see the poll there. But actually, you don't even need to go there because the live chat will have it. [00:09:24] So what we're going to ask you to do, guys, is to vote on the name of the URL. So we want this to be as inclusive as we can. So here are your options. Get to voting both on twitter.com and on the live chat bot Bills.com to show you [00:09:40] how the bills were bought by the donors. Corruption. Watch us. Track donors. Track corruption us. So those are your choices. Honestly I'm indifferent. I want you guys to pick, so we'll take a look at it. [00:09:58] We'll see if the voting matches will weigh the outcome a little bit heavier, because that's where operation Hope started and that's where the working group is from, etc. But, but hopefully it'll be pretty obvious and we'll pick one of those [00:10:14] based on what you suggest. And then voila, we got the URL. And then if you want to coordinate on building any of these sites, email hope at wkyt.com. Okay. So that one we got to coordinate because we got to somehow get you the URL [00:10:31] and get or allow you to be able to edit within that URL. So make sure you're coordinating at Hope at twitter.com. Now if you have ideas or you like these ideas and you want to talk them through, then you go to titcombe. [00:10:47] That's where the discussion board is. Okay. But guys like mainly as you see things happening. Oh, Zane said that he could just told me Zane, who is one of our moderators, said he could do the site, so fingers crossed. [00:11:05] I mean, I would love it. And by the way, this is not revolutionary in the sense that, oh my God, nobody's ever done this before. Maybe they've never done anything like this entire project, but in terms of me asking for a website and then, somebody from operation Hope creating it, the original working group, [00:11:21] there's another guy named Michael there. He does that all the time. So he's done it a bunch of times. So let's see what we come up with. And let's see if it as who can fact check it too. By the way, we're going to need that. Who can do the research for it, building the AI, etc.. [00:11:39] If this stuff starts to work and people are using it, it's going to be a beautiful day in America. And guys, so how nonpartizan is this? I don't care what you find about Democrats or Republicans, right? So if it turns out, oh my God, we found out that the Democrats [00:11:56] are following their donors. 95% Republicans are only following them 80%. Okay, well, then that's what we found out. Okay, so but my guess is they're both following their donors about 98%. But that's the beauty of this. I'm not going to prejudge it. [00:12:12] The facts matter 10 billion times more than what I thought was going to happen. Okay. Not us. Us. Oh, I see. [00:12:28] I saw cars, our community community director, and she's communicating with me over text, and she wrote, yo, Gen Xer. It's not us. Not us. And at first I'm like, who's gen-xer? Like gen-xer. Sounds like some sort of pharmaceutical drug [00:12:44] that we would try to lower the price of. Okay. I'm like, oh, Gen Xer, that's me. Okay, Marina. All right, here comes Representative Marie Newman to tell us how to do this. All right. Former representative from Illinois. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. [00:12:59] - Well, so good to be here. - Yeah, I like that. We've got a former US congressperson as part of the revolution. Okay, so, Marie, we want to influence, the folks in Congress from the outside. This has been done before. [00:13:15] Jon Stewart did it, with the first responders. Bill, bill. He raised enough pressure, etc.. But when we go to contact members of Congress, for example, let's do the drug bill, right. So Ro Khanna took Donald Trump's executive order on lowering drug prices to the [00:13:33] same price that developed nations pay for word for word and turn it into a bill. And so it should have everyone co-sponsored. It's a Trump executive order and it's Democratic policy. But it only has five co-sponsors. So we're all reaching out. And already hundreds of our viewers have reached out [00:13:50] to different congressional people. But how should we reach out? What should we do? Yeah. You know, it's a little bit like, human interaction of all sorts, right? Is that in person? Always works best, right? So go to their office if you can. Set up an appointment if you can, and tell them what's on your mind. [00:14:07] And, folks, you do not have to be steeped in knowledge of either the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare industry or on policy. You can tell it like it is. I would like my drugs to be cheaper. This is it's as simple as that. So in person is always the most powerful. [00:14:24] However you can do that. If you can and then in terms of the hierarchy actually just showing up sometimes and letting the chief of Staff? No. The district director? No. Hey, I'm really worried about this. I really would like our representative to sponsor this bill. [00:14:40] Will you please get this note to him? They do have to. By house rules. They do have to take your name down and then actually enter that information into a database and keep track of it. Each member of the house keeps track of how many folks have spoken up on various issues. [00:14:56] So, all types of in person contact showing up at their office, setting up an appointment, however you might do it is really good. And then sometimes, you know, like hanging out in their office. If they won't see you, just say no, I'll wait. And if you hang out, that's very powerful. [00:15:13] But then obviously in the overall hierarchy things, a call is always better than an email. Email is better than social media, actually. Where you get great traction with social media is to get others to do the calling and to showing up. [00:15:28] So those are are some of the things that actually work. Petitions are okay. I'm not a big fan. Just because they didn't impact me when I was in the house. So I wouldn't spend as much time on that, but, do contact them. [00:15:46] It is. It's easy, and it does make a difference. Okay, that's actually really encouraging and I'm a little bit surprised by it. So first I want to review and then I want to ask you about the in person part. So you're saying in person then calling, then email, then social media [00:16:04] for in order of effectiveness. Right. Okay. So now the in person part, does it matter if it's their office in D.C. Or their office in their district? It doesn't really matter. Honestly. [00:16:19] Like, now I will say, if you have a Republican member of Congress, it's a problem, right? Because they're not even going to they're they're they're so afraid of seeing constituents at this point, they're really in their district offices. District office is easier and better, and they have to spend as much time there [00:16:36] when they're in district. So, going to the district office is equal to going to DC. Don't spend the money or the time or the energy to go to DC, go to their district office, okay. And then if you get their chief of staff, is that almost as good as getting the congressperson? [00:16:53] And will the congressperson actually see you like? Because that's the part I'm surprised by. Well, let me tell you from personal experience. So when I was part of Moms Demand Action, one of the things we would do is show up at members offices and sit there for 5 or 6 hours, and sometimes you get lucky. [00:17:11] You really did. And, I used to do this with school boards and with all kinds of, elected officials show up and say, well, I'm not going anywhere. And you know what? Sometimes you get lucky. It's probably only 30% of the time. But to answer your question about chief of staff is that they usually do. [00:17:29] Like remember, they're public servants as well, and they're there to help you. And they're also generally I mean, I would say regardless of political stripe, they do want to help people. They really do. That's why they're doing that job. So do give them all the information. And again, you don't have to be completely articulate in any one topic. [00:17:45] Just tell them, hey, this thing is bothering me and I'd like my rep to sponsor this bill. So, you're giving me ideas, which is, of course, always dangerous. So, so could people just keep swinging by and being like, hey, guys, we want to remind you of H.R. 3004 93. Let's lower drug prices. [00:18:03] - See you tomorrow. - You can be a frequent flier. I always used to tell people that were trying to lobby me. I love that you're a pleasant nuisance because I've been a pleasant nuisance my whole life. [00:18:18] So, of course, don't get any, like, don't be mad. Don't be. Be respectful. Of course. Be respectful, calm, kind. All of those things. But also be firm. Let them know like, well, I'm just going to sit here then with a smile. Yeah. And so now you gave me another idea, which is maybe people should go [00:18:36] and have lunch at their district office of their Congress. People like that. You could make it a thing. Hey, let's go to see our congressperson for lunch. We'll hang out. He's probably not there. But if he is, great. If he's not, that's okay. We'll eat our lunch together and we'll just say, hey, we came to say [00:18:52] lower drug prices again because it's really important to us. And so and if it's a Republican, you say, can someone get us an explanation of why he's opposed to Trump's executive order? Right. Because that's going to be a tough explanation, right. And then if they're a Democrat, can you get us an explanation as to why a [00:19:11] Democrat wouldn't want lower drug prices? Yeah. Right. - And so I would love to see there. - And I know that answer. Okay. Go ahead. - What's the answer? - Well, you know what the answer is. I know, but I want you to say The. The Democrats that are refusing to sign off on cheaper drugs are the folks that [00:19:30] are getting PAC money from healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, I can guarantee. And it's easy to find. Go to fcc.gov. If they've received money from either those entities or both, which is often the case, they're likely not going to love that particular bill. [00:19:46] You know, I in an ideal scenario, we get a lot more Republicans first 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever the number is. And I'll tell you why. Because if the Republicans are fighting like hell to lower drug prices, that's going to embarrass the Democrats, right? [00:20:02] Because I agree with Marie. I think they're faking it. I don't think that they actually want lower drug prices. But you got to call their bluff, right? You said lower drug prices a billion times if you're a Democrat, right? This is this would definitively lower it. [00:20:18] And by the way, the reason why Rhokana turned it into a bill is because if it's an executive order, it could just get knocked down by the courts. But if it's a bill, it can't get knocked out. So that's why it only has five co-sponsors. Because Congressman kind of called his bluff, too. [00:20:35] It's like so Trump knows that he can't do anything. But it sounds tough and like he's trying to get something done. And then he can say, oh, well, the courts wouldn't allow me to do it because, you know, they, they don't believe in me. And, you know, it's just a problem. But I want you to have cheaper drugs when in reality, he knew [00:20:53] before he ever put pen to paper that there was nothing he can do because it's not binding and it's not a law. So okay, now back to the priority order here. I hear you. If like 3 or 4 people go to inside the office and polite, etc., insistent great [00:21:10] versus 3 or 4 people in social media, the people in person definitely better. But what if it's 3 to 4 people in in person? But wait a minute, you got a thousand Tweets about this or you know. - It does. - Affect them. I don't want to underplay it so much, but in the overall, [00:21:29] what they really keep track of, like a staffer is not going to track the number of tweets, but they will track the number of calls and emails that they receive. So when you were in Congress, so I which was not that long ago, but it's everything is speeding. [00:21:45] Yeah. Just two years ago. But it's everything's speeding up so much. So, were people like. It seems like the Congress people now are maniacally on social media. Right. Right or wrong? Good or bad? Right. So was it the same way before? And do you know, do they mainly check X? [00:22:02] Do they mainly check like, do they themselves check anything or is it just the staffers. Staffs are looking for. So on social media, it's not such a science, right. They're saying, you know, well, gosh, it feels like a lot more are on this side of this issue versus this side of the issue, right? [00:22:19] They'll report that back to their, to their principal, the member of Congress, members of Congress tend. There's some that are on. I don't even know how they get a job done because they're on so much. It's wild. And it kind of depends on the topic. So when it comes to calling them out on a specific bill, where you can say, [00:22:39] you know, House Bill 94, 47, is something we want you to vote for. And it's simple, then it's probably is a way to do that, whether it's Republican or Democrat. If it is a longer issue and you need a little more time to talk about it, you might want to choose a different platform. [00:22:57] Increasingly I'm seeing a few things happen is that, more and more people are getting off X. So that's, you know, it's not as popular to have those discussions, but there's still lots of fighting, that goes on there. Threads is probably, like the, the one that's growing the fastest [00:23:16] in terms of overall aggregate and then a blue sky and Substack. Right. But I will tell you, blue Sky and Substack, I think, are going to blow right by threads when they get a little bit more traction. So, Facebook is really for like organizing when you're, when you are a, [00:23:34] you know, an indivisible group or a 50, 51 group or a MoveOn group, and you're trying to get an event together or have a member of Congress show up and talk and answer questions, town halls, that kind of thing. I think that's more powerful. But, it it's not that social media is not good. [00:23:49] It's just not alone. It's not as powerful. It has to live with, the in person, the calls and the emails together. It's much more powerful. Yeah. So I love this tutorial you're giving us. So one more question for now. So okay, we do all this stuff, but okay, as we talked about earlier, [00:24:08] we know what the real issue is, which is that they're taking an enormous amount of money from the drug companies, and they're not going to want to give that up. Right. So that means we just 1 or 2 ain't going to get the job done, right? And in fact, you know, a couple of dozen people might not get the job done even if they go in person and they do everything right. [00:24:26] Although you might be surprised. But okay, what I wanted to ask you is, what do you think is a tipping point? Like, when does it get to a point where the member of Congress goes, whoa, okay, we got to pay attention to this. [00:24:41] Yeah. - Right. - I think that when there is a bill, that so when bills get traction, and they're popular with members of Congress, you know, right away because 75 sponsors will jump on right away. [00:24:58] So if it's something that's benign and non-controversial, usually they jump right on that thing, right? But if there's any amount of controversy around it, there's a bunch of different tools at your disposal. I always like to go visit with members and kind of pitch my idea to them [00:25:15] before I ever put the bill together, then send it to what is called Ledge Council. And those are the, folks, the lawyers inside the US House of Representatives that actually draft it like it's a draft, the law. So it's, you know, the legislative bill is the law language. [00:25:31] Right. And so when when it does get jumped on, it's usually a more benign bill when it takes a lot of convincing, you know, in person meetings, pressure from outside. You have a bunch of tools you can get your activists, [00:25:47] relationships engaged and start to influence various members of Congress. You can have friends of yours in Congress that are other members that are friendly with members to pressure them to do it. You can have leadership pressure them. You can have other outside groups pressure them. [00:26:02] So the tipping point usually comes when all of those groups and entities are really pushing hard. And as an example right now, I would say that, that while the Democrats probably really can't get anything through right now, [00:26:18] I do see pressure on Democrats to stop taking AIPAC and Democratic majority for Israel and three one for science, money, because it's basically all AIPAC money. I think more and more are signing on to the pledge [00:26:33] to not take any of that bully PAC money. So that's an example where all those groups really pressured. And I've seen a tipping point just in the last 4 or 5 months. Yeah. No, to your point. And by the way, Representative Neumann was a leader in that category. She voted against, one of the funding bills for Israel and, and AIPAC [00:26:53] and the Israeli lobby attacked her. And part of the reason she lost, but she knew that those were the risks. And she took it. She was courageous enough and patriotic patriotic enough to do that. And the fruits of your labor have begun, to to be evident now because Seth Moulton [00:27:10] today said that he will no longer take AIPAC money and that he is going to return the AIPAC money he took earlier. And that is shocking, because Seth Moulton is one of the more conservative establishment Democrats in the country. Sure. Lovely guy, by the way, but he has always been conservative and really did [00:27:28] what he was told by AIPAC, right? - So yeah. - See, that's compelling to me. I mean, I, I've seen, a lot of folks in the new Dem caucus, which is kind of the middle of the road caucus. There's the Progressive Caucus, New Dems, and then the Bulldogs. Right. [00:27:45] I have seen more and more, of the new Dem saying, I'm not taking that money anymore and I'm not supporting, giving Israel more bombs like I'm many have signed on to, Congresswoman, Delia Ramirez. [00:28:01] Stop the bombs, bill. That has been heartening. So, and we'll see how this quote unquote cease fire goes. Right. Let's see. Yeah. Look, man. Man. - Ma'am. - Look, ma'am, I've been called worse. [00:28:18] We're making progress in ways that are actually a little bit shocking that I wouldn't I wouldn't have guessed this in a long time. On the other hand, the genocide has been so horrific that it's really it's jarred even, a lot of the callous politicians in the right direction. [00:28:34] All right. You know, we're kind of out of time, but I got to ask you just last thing here because you mentioned it. First of all, thank you for pointing out the organizations. I'd kind of forgotten about that. So if we can, that's another good way to go. - We can get. - Absolutely. [00:28:49] Right if we get Democratic or left leaning organizations or right wing leaning or Republican organizations to push, that will also help. So that's another avenue we have to create pressure. So the last, substantive question I wanted to ask was about the media, [00:29:05] because I forgot to ask that. How much of an effect does that have? If all of a sudden either CNN is talking about it or Joe Rogan is talking about it, etc.? Oh, I think the sphere, the podcasters have a lot of impact on everyday folks. But just remember, it's it's the kind of the circuitous route to the rep. [00:29:25] So every time one of those big podcasters, the call your daddy lady and the I've had it ladies and Joe Rogan and, Theo Von and all of these characters, they're impacting and motivating, their listeners. Right. And then those listeners motivate the rep. [00:29:43] So it's just another route to getting, constituents to activate. Okay. All right. So media organizations, more roots. And lastly, Murray, look, if you everything here is optional and you are so wonderful to join us to begin with. [00:29:58] So I hate to give you a homework assignment. Okay. But if you got one of your former colleagues, don't name anyone because we don't want to put them on the spot, right? To say yes to H.R. 3493 and co-sponsor it. [00:30:14] Explain to them that there would be fireworks here, like we would endanger the fire code and like. And they would be heroes and celebrated. Right. And it's and it's easy. It's lowering drug prices. So if you help us get one on the board, you'll be an even bigger American hero. [00:30:32] Because you really are one already. - And I'm not. - Joking. And I'm I it's funny, I have had conversations about that, and, they never bring up the corporate PAC money or the money associated with the associations that provide PAC money, but it is that I can just tell you folks out there, it's the PAC money. [00:30:52] Yeah. There you go. She was in Congress. She knows it. It's definitive. It's empirical. It's true. Marie Newman, you're amazing. Thank you for joining us. - We really appreciate it. - Have a great night, guys. All right. You too. All right so last things guys. So, number one, I'm going to read more of these tomorrow because we're almost out [00:31:13] of time, but, but we got a bunch of folks that came up with good ideas. One of them, reached out to a state rep on the populist plank and got a long letter back. Reaching out works. It works. [00:31:29] And by the way, Wolfpack did this for a long, long time, very successfully, especially at the state rep level. So you know what, guys? You know, I'm going to do a bonus episode for the members. I'll tell you a story of reaching out to politicians being a spectacular success. [00:31:47] And it was my dad who did it. So you'll see and you'll go, wow, really? That was when democracy worked a little bit better. But that's I'll save that for the members because they're awesome. And lastly, here on, The battle is joined. You know, we had Maureen Newman as a former congresswoman from Illinois. [00:32:04] Join us today on Monday. Keith Knight is going to join us. Well, who's Keith Knight? He's the managing editor at the Libertarian Institute. Here comes the libertarians. The battle is joined. All right, I love this. And we're making some progress here. [00:32:22] And, and then I'm looking forward to that on Monday. I'm looking forward to telling you guys more about the progress we made internally and externally. And reaching reps tomorrow. Same time, of course, 8:00 eastern, right after the show, 6 to 8 p.m. [00:32:37] Eastern, of course, is the Young Turks. Okay. Go straight to the bonus episode. Right. So for those of you who are members, stay right here. We're going straight to the bonus episode. Even without a break. And here we are. Okay, so you got to be quick on this one. [00:32:53] You got to be on the member stream or switch over quickly. So for the. Since this is our first day doing it without a break, I'll give it a pause here a slight second. Okay, now I'll start. Okay, so my dad used to write letters all the time. [00:33:09] And that's how people communicate back then. No email, no social media, etc.. So back in Turkey, he would write letters to CEOs of companies. I think this is what you should do, right? You write letters to the Prime Minister. And back then there was like 13 people writing letters to politicians and people. [00:33:27] So they'd be like, whoa, look, I got a letter here, Some rando farmer from southeastern Turkey wrote this, and then they would write back. And so my dad, like, believed. Well, that's the right answer, right? I mean, he had such amazing success with it. CEOs of major companies would write in to this poor kid [00:33:45] like he wasn't a kid at that point. At that point, he'd already, you know, gone through, school and become a mechanical engineer. But he was tiny, like, they had no business responding to him. Right? But they would, because they were so like genuinely moved by his letter and he had good ideas, etc.. [00:34:01] So anyways, he comes to America and he starts writing letters again. So I'm like, dad, it's not really like the 1950s and 60s in Turkey. Now a lot of people are writing and now this is the 1990s. We're still not in social media era, right? [00:34:18] But I'm like, it's not as likely to work, right? And then later when I became a, a talk show host, he's like, why you don't write letter to Ahmet Erdogan? Have him help you. Who's Ahmet Ertegun? He's like a legendary music producer. [00:34:36] And he worked with some of the biggest acts in American history at the beginning of Rock, etc.. How is he going to get me a radio talk show? But my dad thought. Just write a letter. He will do it. Okay, so in the 1990s, he writes a letter to the governor of New Jersey, [00:34:55] where we live, Governor Florio. And he says, and some of you again, have heard this story, but a lot of you haven't. We used to live in East Brunswick, and his office was in Eatontown. And there's a big stretch of route 18 in new Jersey between East Brunswick and [00:35:11] Eatontown, and it in the East Brunswick version portion of that road. It's nothing but strip malls, right? But once you get outside of East Brunswick, it turns into a long stretch of road that's just trees on both sides, a little grass divider in the middle. [00:35:27] So I mean, it's beautiful in the fall, but overall boring, right? There isn't anything there at all. And so my dad writes a letter. Dear Governor Florio, I am bored by this road. Okay? I have been driving 40 minutes a day for the last 1020 years I have idea. [00:35:46] Okay, so what was his idea? He's like, look, he's a practical guy, he runs a business, etc. He's an engineer. He's like, nothing too fancy. Okay. Just wildflowers. He said, why don't you put wildflowers on the divider, the grass divider [00:36:02] between the two sides of the road? Right. It's like kind of perfect because it's big enough as a space that you could put the flowers there, but not so big that it's impractical. Right. So I'm like, all right, dad. Good luck. See how it goes. [00:36:20] Then I'll be damned if one day we're not driving down route 18, and there are wildflowers like you wouldn't believe for miles and miles and miles. Gorgeous wildflowers. They did it. He got Governor Florio wrote back. [00:36:38] Great idea. We're going to do it. Or we did it. And yeah, we saw it. I saw it with my own eyes. You know what? Maybe it's my dad who's just the greatest person you've ever met like that. I did an interview with him a long, long time ago. My, I still remember a lot of the comments. [00:36:55] Like, sure, progressives love them, etc. But conservatives writing had a no good son bitch like you come out of a wonderful man like that. Okay. And no one believes in the American dream more than my dad does. And when I. So maybe I got the idea that maybe you could make a difference [00:37:12] in the world from my dad. Right. And in terms of politics, I saw it with my own eyes. So, wildflowers all over D.C.. Honest politicians would be our wildflowers. [00:37:27] It's very, very improbable. More impressive, more spectacular. But that's what we're going to try to do. All right. And thank you, dad, for keeping hope alive. So sometimes the letters do work. So let's keep going, guys. All right. Much love. [00:37:42] We'll see you tomorrow. - You heard it with your own eyes. - The guy.