Better Late Than Never?

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Francesca Furentini, Anna Kasparian, The Young Turks, Project 2025
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Project 2025, The Young Turks, Ken Clippenstein
3. 10:00 – 15:00: J. B. Pritzker
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Venezuela
5. 25:00 – 30:00: Project 2025, Gigi Gorgeous, Tim Moore
6. 30:00 – 35:00: ICE

Notable quotes from "Better Late Than Never?"

• To be a fascist, all of that. So, let's just play a little bit of Franchesca's video because got to shout out my girl over there on the Bituation Room.

  about Francesca Furentini · at 0:53

• Comes up at a later point, but she points out that Trump has disavowed different parts of Project 2025. She was saying this in the leadup to the election that Trump is not on…

  about Project 2025 · at 4:26

• Shooting protesters in the face. The anti-democratic nature of it, the reporting that Ken Clippenstein has done, how they're targeting leftists, they're targeting people with…

  about Ken Clippenstein · at 5:38

• I have Francesca back on cuz I do think like look if I I don't have a rivalous relationship with TYT. I would love it if they were like Jen seems to think we're trying to steal…

  about The Young Turks · at 8:33

• Flood, we spoke about that management before and they're doing this on anti-discrimination grounds. Good for JB Pritsker, good for Illinois. Every state should be doing this…

  about J. B. Pritzker · at 13:36

• Venezuela like have some object permanence. Why are people coming into this country from Venezuela? It's not because Venezuelans all of a sudden heard about all the opportunity in America. It's because we destroyed their main industry.

  about Venezuela · at 17:32

• House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in rally that North Carolina would not be bullied into meeting the US Justice Department's Monday deadline to change the law. So, the federal government.

  about Tim Moore · at 27:21

• The erosion of everyone's rights, the working-class rights, the, getting you to agree that the government should be able to reach their hand down your pants, to break into your…

  about ICE · at 34:54

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Francesca Furentini — Person · Referenced creator/commentator (praised; clip played) · 3 mentions · first at 0:00
  Presented as a commentator who criticized TYT/Anna earlier, was allegedly fired, and is now highlighted for a long-form video analyzing Kasparian and Trump/fascism; promoted via her show/channel.
• Anna Kasparian — Person · Referenced political commentator (subject of critique) · 3 mentions · first at 0:06
  Central figure discussed as a TYT commentator who allegedly downplayed Trump/fascism and later apologized; her comments on trans issues are used as examples of harmful rhetoric.
  I was so wrong. I'm sorry. I feel guilt every single day that I didn't see this coming. Political commentator Anna Kasparian of the progressive network The Young Turks, who…
• Ken Clippenstein — Person · Referenced journalist (supporting evidence) · 1 mention · first at 5:43
  Cited as a reporter whose work allegedly documents targeting of leftists and other groups, used to support claims about authoritarian/fascistic behavior.
• J. B. Pritzker — Person · Referenced public official (praised) · 1 mention · first at 13:40
  Mentioned approvingly in connection with Illinois investigating alleged landlord-driven immigration raid/housing discrimination; used as an example of state-level pushback.
• Tim Moore — Person · Referenced politician (archival clip subject) · 1 mention · first at 27:21
  Appears in an older clip about North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law; used to illustrate prior TYT coverage of anti-trans policy fights.
• Gigi Gorgeous — Person · Referenced public figure (example in trans bathroom discussion) · 1 mention · first at 29:42
  Used in an older TYT clip as an illustrative example in the debate over trans bathroom laws, emphasizing perceived absurdity of forcing trans women into men’s bathrooms.
  Creator summit for the top 100 YouTube creators. Not a big deal. and one of them is Gigi Gorgeous, and she's trans, right?

Companies & orgs

• The Young Turks — Company · Business focus · 4 mentions · first at 0:33
  Progressive network discussed in the context of political commentary and its role in the media landscape.
• ICE — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 33:38
  Discussed in the context of immigration enforcement and its role in the current administration's policies.

Concepts & topics

• Project 2025 — Concept · Core topic · 4 mentions · first at 4:29
  Discussed as a right-wing project with significant implementation under the current administration, highlighting its fascist characteristics.

Places & events

• Venezuela — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at 17:32
  Mentioned in the context of immigration and the impact of U.S. foreign policy on displacement.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Just want to shout out my good buddy Francesca Furentini. Um who did a long form video about Anna Kasparian apologizing for being wrong. Oh. Um you know she only just like misread I guess the fundamental issue of the last election which wasn't like a prediction about who would win which obviously I thought Kla Harris would win. That seems very silly in hindsight but um you know she was in involved in saying that Trump is not necessarily a fascist, that kind of deal. Um, Francesca Fentini was retaliatory uh fired from TYT for saying that the Trump administration was going to engage in uh throwing people into concentration camps, that he was going to be a fascist, all of that. So, let's just play a little bit of Franchesca's video because uh got to shout out my girl over there on the Bituation Room.

1:02 By the way, guys, um I was so wrong. I'm sorry. I feel guilt every single day that I didn't see this coming. Political commentator Anna Kasparian of the progressive network The Young Turks, who famously a few years ago declared herself politically unaligned and spent the run-up to the 2024 election and most of 2025 gracing right-wing shows not to challenge but to find common ground with them. The ground right over the bodies of trans people.

1:29 Is it bad that I don't want to see a dick in the women's locker room? Uh, is that bad?

1:34 No. Anna is now having a bit of a come to Jesus moment and apologizing for not seeing all of the fascism coming and not rightfully calling Trump a fascist.

1:45 By the way, guys, um I was so wrong. I knew Trump was going to be bad. I didn't like just because, you know, when I hear the word fascist, I think of fascism is a specific ideology. So, when Jake and I got into that debate about whether or not Trump is fascist leading up to the election,

2:06 notion of a fascist, because look, if we're just going to use fascist toward anyone we dislike, all right, then the word doesn't actually mean anything.

2:15 Okay. What do you want me to say, Anna? You want me to say wannabe dictator? Uh,

2:19 sure. You can say wannabe dictator, but I don't even think he wants to be a dictator.

2:22 Of course HE DOES. THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WHEN you lose an election and you go, "Oh, I got fake electors and I'd like to terminate the Constitution and bring out the tanks and use martial law against American citizens and shoot protesters." I mean, if that's not fascist, then I guess the word just shouldn't exist.

2:36 All right, Jay. But was he able to do those things? Okay, I just pause it. I just love the idea that you can't for fascism is apparently uh a distinct ideology which uh you can see the differences between Mussolini and Hitler and show that no it's not necessarily that it's about high levels of militarism nationalism uh the merging of corporate power with the state

3:03 political violence to maintain hierarchy political right to and and and uh it usually involves hearkening back to this imagine and mythical past that you have to return to to justify a state crackdown on leftists, on workers, on gay people, on uh on minority groups, etc., on women, by the way. And uh that is how fascism is characterized. It is not a specific ideology in the way that she's describing it there. Um

3:33 it's also just to that point too, it's also important to understand that fascists today understand fascism of yesterday. So a lot of people forget that like there are fascists who today who are very literate in like the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler and all of the fascism that predates them and also understand that a lot of people maybe suffer from the same issue that uh Anna suffers from where they're hyper specific in their understanding of fascism to be about like swastikas goostepping hugo boss outfits through the streets of Germany between you know 19 what like 20some and 1945 right so they get stuck in this idea of a very specific iteration of fascism and missed that. Like, yeah, even fascists know to avoid that stuff sometimes when they're like, you know, advocating for more fascism.

4:19 Well, that's the characteristic of the Trump administration that she entirely disregards. Um, she also would, this comes comes up at a later point, but she points out that Trump has disavowed different parts of Project 2025. She was saying this in the leadup to the election that uh Trump is not on board with Project 2025 because he says he's not. I don't know. I mean, there's been a few instances I could think of in Trump's political life in which he has lied to achieve certain ends. But

4:52 Trump a liar? Yeah, I know. That's crazy. Well, well, I just to I want you to weigh in in a second, Bender, but just want to zoom out for a second. the argu how how idiotic the argument was there that because Trump was not able to successfully overturn the election that he is not a fascist. I thought the bar was him having a fascist ideology. Jenk lays out rightly some of the authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration and now the bar has become well has he been successful at it? Well, now we know.

5:23 Now we know because over 60% of project 2025 has been implemented. We now see the fascist characteristics of this administration being played out on the streets of Minneapolis. Um, we see them kidnapping children. We see them shooting protesters in the face. The anti-democratic nature of it, the uh reporting that Ken Clippenstein has done, how they're targeting leftists, they're targeting people with non-traditional family values, they are targeting uh anybody that may disagree with them on issues of capitalism, for example. uh they are uh rounding up immigrants. They are there was a a report in popular information that they have not paid for the medical care of tens of thousands of detainees that ISIS rounded up in their concentration camps with which Franchesca was mocked for accurately saying was going to happen by Jenk and Anna um and then retaliatory fired over her accurate assessment of

6:22 that. They have stopped paying for the medical care of over 70,000 people that they have rounded up in these camps without any due process. And now there are reports every like every other day that someone's dying in nice detention. It could be that they're denying them medical care because these are concentration camps. And there was that the Cuban guy, the 55-year-old man who was strangled reportedly in an El Paso concentration camp. It's being ruled a homicide. So, like what is going on here is textbook fascism. Now, okay, we can be generous. If this was somebody, a Trump voter, I don't know who she voted for. If this was a random Trump voter or something like that and said like, "Man, I I'm so sorry. I was wrong about this."

7:07 You have to give people the grace to change. That's obvious. That is different than being a political commentator who has been in this space for many, many, many, many years and was presented with information about Project 2025. It was actually laid out in the plan. It was pretty easy to read it and was dismissive of that very notion because it's not just about how you act when you go to the voting booth. You have a responsibility as a commentator and as somebody who puts things out on the internet and who talks about politics and is attempting at least to influence people. I mean at least that's my goal is to try to make hope to educate myself and educate other people in the process. You have a responsibility to relay that information accurately and she chose a different path. And there's no excuse for being wrong about this stuff because every anyone should have known that the hyperfocus on things like I mean I

8:01 remember the time that I it broke me and when I took the gloves off was when Jenk responded to that video of um the immigrants and the altercation with the cops when they like pushed him into the corner. And Jenk went on and said like why are we allowing immigrants to punch cops? As if that's a real thing that happened anywhere and you're a news organization meant to represent the left. That wasn't happening. So all this stuff that down to the trend Iraq will focus on immigration. Like not only did you get it wrong, you helped lay the groundwork while you were wrong.

8:31 This requires a lot of more apology. And I have Francesca back on cuz I do I do think like look if I I I I don't have a rivalous relationship with TYT. I would love it if they were uh like Jen seems to think we're trying to steal their audience. I would love it if their audience wasn't deserting them. If they had if they could get a hundred people to watch them on Twitch. I'd love it if there was because I don't want to be the only battleship in the ocean when this fascist takeover.

8:56 We don't have the capacity. We need more progressive networks. I believed in that network. That's why I worked there. I want people to succeed. I wanted them to. The fact that they were well financed and still doing progressive commentary at the time was a good thing.

9:07 Yeah. And it would be nice if this was a sign because the problem is like what Anna admits there is that she was so focused on how other people were their tone about this. And that's not your job is to please everyone else's tone and make sure that everyone else is getting it right for like what how Jillian Michaels might accept it. Like who cares?

9:28 Yeah. One I I recall one of the one of the experiences she said she had that made her like re rethink things was like she had a kind MAGA neighbor or something. Do you recall this? And it's like it's it's like first of all that's not that's not people people are nice in their everyday all the time. Their political leanings have no bearing on that sometimes. Uh I know uh people who are friendly and neighborly conservatives too. That doesn't mean that you the political commentator with decades of experience doing this get influenced by them being nice to you. If anything you should have been the other way around. That should have been you influencing that MAGA neighbor of, "Oh, wow. This person has these political leanings and this is what they're saying. They're smart and know things. Maybe I should reconsider."

10:17 But instead, you let someone uh ask for to borrow some sugar uh change your mind about things, which is insane.

10:25 It's hilarious. I mean, we it like it is a false premise because uh I'm very evocally on the left. I still have friends from growing up that are freaking Republicans, believe it or not. And it's like like the idea that I would allow that to influence my politics is crazy. Uh just because I love those people and they're in my life doesn't necessarily mean I share those values and that shouldn't be hold any bearing on how you conduct yourself professionally in your news analysis. Just to Matt's point about trend Ara and all this stuff, you know, there was a great piece about a year ago at this point by Mor Morin Tachic of the American Prospect talking about the Aurora, Colorado instance. There was this woman from Aurora, Colorado who testified in front of Congress, which was controlled by Republicans at the time. Um, so I mean this was at the tail end of Biden's uh term about Trend Ara gang activity at her complex. She's

11:21 the woman that you their ring camera footage was used in local news coverage to jin up this crime panic. Trump ended up appeal appearing with her at a campaign rally in Aurora, Colorado in 2024. And you find out basically that the landlord was working with her in conjunction with a uh a communications firm, a very very wellunded communications firm. You wonder how that was bankrolled. um to talk about how Trenda Aragua had taken over this apartment complex and that they it it just was out of control. You find out it's a slum lord.

11:56 You find out it's a slum lord that's been neglecting the the the the uh the building there because they want these lowincome tenants out because they want to sell off the property. It's actually much more profitable for them to do that. Repairs don't necessarily increase property value for the most part for landlords. as part of the horrible incentive structure that is embedded in the uh the the privatization of housing in this country. Um it's much more profitable for them to neglect a property, especially if it's very low-income people and they're not making great returns on it and then sell it off. That was what they were trying to do in Aurora Colorado. Now Illinois headline this today. Illinois is probing whether landlord prompted immigration raid at Southshore apartment building.

12:43 Remember that immigration raid where children were taken from their beds, some of them naked and zip tied in the street, separated from their parents. They were reportedly separating them based on race, and then they trashed that apartment complex and broke windows and destroyed people's apartments with no recourse. Yeah, it was the slum lord that called in uh immigration. Apparently, they're investigating this. I mean, look, like I'm going to make an editorial assessment of this, which we said at the time because we have media literacy that this was likely the landlord that was doing this. But here it is. Illinois is investigating claims that the landlord of a Southshore uh building at the center of a widely publicized immigration raid last year tipped off federal agents in an attempt to intimidate the residents out of the building. The Illinois Department of Human Rights announced Wednesday that

13:29 they filed a formal housing discrimination charge and opened an investigation into the owners and managers of the building. Uh, Trinity Flood, we spoke about that management before and they're doing this on anti-discrimination grounds. Good for JB Pritsker, good for Illinois. Every state should be doing this for every slum lord that calls in and tries to harass their low-income tenants and use the boot of the state to kick them out. Because the reality of immigration policy in this country, as people like Anna get fooled by fake populists like Josh Holly or whatever or Tucker Carlson flattering her, is is that immigration policy is used to enforce uh uh to to benefit capital and to benefit owners and bosses who want to uh either sell off a property like this or say they have some employees that are getting a little bit too rowdy and wanting worker protections and wage increases.

14:24 Well, if half of your employee base is maybe undocumented, what do you know? I might just call ICE. You want to complain? You're a 15year-old boy working at a meat packing plant. You're a little worried that your fingers may get caught in in in in the machinery or you might die as has happened. Well, too bad. You can't call. There's no one coming for you. And in fact, if you complain, we will ruin your life and deport you. And there's like no recognition of what immigration enforcement and how that actually operates in this country. How policing frankly has operated too. Like this is a part of a systemic critique of the police system in this country which benefits bosses and capital. That's the asymmetry that the left has been talking about. And the idea that you can be in this political commentary space on the supposedly progressive network and not have that fundamental understanding about the role of policing means you

15:14 don't just you like just don't read. You may read the news on a daily basis, but you're not reading books.

15:19 Too much reading like charlatans that guest host on Tim Pool's show, whatever that guy.

15:27 I just have I have no patience. I have no patience for the people that were not clear about what we just what what this administration was going to be. It was abundantly clear. And then like to be like, Trump said it. Trump said he wasn't going to do this.

15:42 Said he was anti-war. what happened for the six previous years of analyzing him politically and the lies that he told all the way through. I don't know if there's any characteristic of Trump that is more obvious to everybody in the world besides his orange face and his spray tan than his ability to lie all the time.

16:02 Yeah. Yeah. Whoopsie. Great. Great points, Emma. Thank you. And it's so sick. And people are across they know when they see that situation. You see it from people who are like nominally describe themselves as progressive all the time. You know, oh, it's the immigrants who are driving down the cost of labor. It's the immigrants who are driving up the cost of rent by being in the country. You know, their first instinct is to attack the undocumented worker. Their first instinct is to segregate the working class and not to go after the people hiring those workers, go after the landlords who are, you know, operating this black market for rentals. Because the only way to solve this issue, if you really believe that is a problem, if you really believe that the influx of undocumented labor into the country is a problem and you want to solve it, the only solution is to document them.

16:47 The only solution is to, you know, integrate them better into like the system because you can't stop people from coming into your country, at least not in a way that doesn't erode the civil rights of everyone else in the the the country itself. So, in that way, like, you know, the undocumented immigrants have won. there's just no way to do what you're trying to do without ethnic cleansing, without eroding the civil rights of uh, you know, a democratic country. There's just no way to do it. And so, if you really care about like the goal, like cuz sometimes people will say they care about the goal of bringing, you know, of not like having laborers value devalued by undocumented labor, but they don't seem to care as much about that goal as hurting brown people, hurting undocumented immigrants because the solution to that is just, you know, it's just to document them. It's to integrate them into like the working force and to

17:30 organize. Yeah. And the broader question like Venezuela like have some object permanence. Why are people coming into this country from Venezuela? It's not because Venezuelans all of a sudden heard about all the opportunity in America. It's because we destroyed their main industry.

17:44 Like we should stop having these these foreign policy that displaces people broadly. And then like this idea that because like you said Brandon, that border has never been secure. Never in our history. There's a reason Reagan did mass amnesty is because it's impractical not to do anything otherwise. And ever since the '9s, okay, we're going to do military buildup in the Gulf of Mexico. So that shifts things over to the Rio. So now we're the Rio Grand. So now we're going to build a wall. It's just boondoggle after boondoggle for security contractors.

18:12 Well, a lot of people are, you know, they have a very punitive understanding of how crime crime is solved. And even though we understand that like being an undocumented immigrant is not that kind of crime. And so they just think that like well if we document them we're rewarding them for crime which is a stupid position. It's like it's a dumb person's position because like we're rewarding them for the crime of coming into the country to trying to work. That doesn't make any sense, right? But people think it makes sense because they're very punitive about what it means to like you know have a moral and just society. It has to be punishment.

18:41 Someone gets someone does a crime even if it's like a civil crime then they have to be punished in a way that I think it suits suits the offense. But, you know, it doesn't make any sense when you actually talk about the consequences in the goals. Although, I will say with the Venezuela thing,

18:56 I've heard people make this exact same excuse that you're referencing um when it comes to Trump not being a fascist where if he's not effective at it, it doesn't count. People said the same thing about him, you know, like the coup, right? the January 6 thing like well because it didn't work because January 6 wouldn't have actually overturned the election then all the stuff he did with the electors in different states and trying to get that overturned and find the votes that doesn't count because it wasn't effective. People have said that it wasn't a regime change operation in Venezuela because it didn't work now like that's like the retreat position like oh it couldn't have been a regime change because the regime is still in charge. So like it's not imperialism.

19:31 It sounds like uh it can't be genocide because there are still Gaza people in Gaza who are alive. I mean it's I mean in and uh yeah I mean that's what it sounds like. How how do you define genocide is a very specific term. It's a very specific

19:46 Webster Webster dictionary specific. Let's get really granular about fascism and about genocide. Like that's the other thing. I mean, but but but when Right. I mean, when you're that this is a deliberate deliberate motivated desire to see not see the forest through the trees to just stare at the trunk because the the trees printed money for you. I mean, let's be real about it.

20:08 Or it's kind of scary. Like I think that I think you're definitely right about that. But like, you know, Glenn Beck and all that other stuff, like you know, the pivot was really embarrassing and seemed cynical to me. Um, I think there is an element with both Ezra and Anna that they were in denial about what's coming.

20:23 Whatever. I don't really care what the reasoning is. I mean, I guess but I mean the

20:29 not meaning or being so traumatized by the idea of maybe seeing a dick in the locker room as an adult woman, you know, that's enough. Um, like

20:38 underestimating the right. We have a nasty sick disgusting right-wing in this party that was literally like 30 years ago saying gay people can't be teachers like and and the Lost Cause clearly never went away. We've never uh addressed all the like the closet clansmen here and now they've taken over like a new branch of the executive of government.

21:00 Go ahead. No, also I'm in men's locker rooms every day. You know, I go to the gym every day and like you just don't you don't have to look at the dick. You can just like look at their face. You don't have to look at them at all. Like you sis, stop looking. Don't

21:12 staring at people's genitalia. I'm avoiding eye contact in the locker room every time.

21:17 I'm trying to change and get and go go go about my day. Yeah. And uh we we I live in New York. I'm I'm pretty sure I've been in a locker room with a trans woman. What is going to happen to me?

21:29 I get called a birthing person. I mean hopefully they I might we should subsidize the fainting couch for her. Does the poly market money pay for her fainting couch? [snorts]

21:44 Go back on those shows and tell Tucker. And I thought I was going to be gracious in this segment, but man, I mean, man,

21:51 you're loading. You're loading, man. No, because it's malicious. Cuz I know she's not that dumb.

21:58 Is it still called the uh the Poly Market Studios, by the way, as No, they were embarrassed into changing it. Hilarious.

22:05 They were. Okay. because uh you know I mean they didn't really have to wait for the uh the the blowback from the audience. Just look at how these prediction markets uh are what they became just literally like a month or two after they had uh given the studio that name. I mean it's ridiculous.

22:25 They they have done genuine harm. They have done genuine harm um by laundering this administration

22:32 and you know reinforcing the narratives about you know not just immigrants but again trans people things that hobby horses that this fascist administration rode into power on.

22:40 Yeah they have done genuine genuine harm and yeah I guess they overestimated how much cultural cache Trump and a bunch of AI crypto billionaires were going to have in the wake of his victory. Whoopsie. Sorry. It's not that lucrative. How much is her take pulling in right now? Made the wrong bet. Um,

23:06 I I feel like they uh they're they're hit or miss when it came to uh the various people they gave a huge platform to like uh Jimmy Door and uh what's his face? Who's that guy?

23:16 Rebel HQ they did. Used to be my old channel. What a dumb name that that Jank forced upon it.

23:23 I was taking a shot. like the number of uh former TYT people who became uh right-wingers.

23:29 Uh not not a good track record. How many people left the majority port over the years and became right-wingers? I can say uh none. Uh pretty weird. Yeah,

23:37 I don't know what's what's Brendan Finn. I'm making my plans. I think like you know left to right black conservative is Yeah, that's like that's printing money. That's printing money in the Trump in the Trump economy. I check out Franchesca's channel. Subscribe to the Bituation Room.

23:58 I'd love to see Franchesca back on TYT affiliate. You know what? Like that's where I just that's what gets me heated. I love Franchesca. I really I really, you know, and there's so many there's such few women in this space. Like the idea that they they tore her down in that way just gets me furious. But there's some great great female creators. Crystal Ball of course. Um, you know, the Francesca, we could list them, but you get what I'm saying here. Uh, check out the bituation room and, uh, they did her really dirty.

24:29 It's really Instead, she plays the role of hall monitor. She polices what one can say, what they should believe, who they can talk to, and what they can talk about.

24:40 That was about me, right? Yeah. Okay. Known hall monitor. That was only like two months ago.

24:47 I don't even remember. God, so much Figlin. So, Yep. Where's my badge? We had more hall monitors saying, "Hey, uh, don't do the uh supporting fascism thing."

25:00 Fascism is a very specific ideology. Um, it's so specific that forget it. Um, a molotov burrito. Even if you're in a locker room, you don't have the right to be looking at people's genitalia. I mean, yeah, accidentally sometimes you you see people naked, but it's like you don't focus on it. I don't understand.

25:27 Not a deep show. Are people just revealing that they're perverts secretly? It's so

25:32 You see genitals in a secretly all the time. Yeah. Right. This is why I never go into locker rooms. I don't need all these people looking at my uh my crotch. So, uh,

25:42 right. That's don't want to. It can't even work out anymore because people may see you naked in the locker room. Um, Fidians for Emma says, "The defense of conservatives from folks at TYT is crazy to me because even the most conservative people I know from growing up in a fundamentalist Catholic house homeschool group have reached their uh breaking point with this administration months ago and have said that they would never vote for Trump or his lackey again and highly doubt they'd vote for another Republican based on the state of the party. There is room to bring people into the fold and deprogram them rather than concede to the crazies.

26:18 Visanev in the full franchises clip she does point out Anna seems to be mostly in sense that specifically citizens are being terrorized by ICE. I' also I'd love to hear if she stands by that really ugly quip about seeing a dick in the locker room. The the point is not necessarily where she's at right now. I don't particularly care. The point is that um when it was most critical to oppose this administration, they were laundering the reputation of Trump and the right-wing project. Fabukat 58. I'm extremely old enough to remember when Anakasparing claimed that project 2025 was harmless.

26:54 I'm ashamed that her anti-trans rants didn't push me over the edge, but Anna's poo pooing of project made me abruptly quit TYT.

27:00 Do you want to take a trip down memory lane? Uh go a little bit longer today. Oh my god. Um, this is a clip from 9 years ago. Uh, where, uh, it to your point, Emma, about them knowing better is they've literally done better on camera, so they don't have an excuse.

27:18 Ask it. House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in rally that North Carolina would not be bullied into meeting the US Justice Department's Monday deadline to change the law. So, the federal government looked into North Carolina's anti-LGBT uh law, which of course specifically focuses transgender individuals and makes them use the bathroom that they do not identify with. And the federal government decided, hey, you know what? You guys are actually breaking some federal laws, civil rights laws. Now, the Republicans are saying, we don't care. The RNC told us we can do whatever the hell we want. So, uh the Republican National Committee urged state legislators in January to resist. People remember the story. I just want to skip a little bit ahead to some of the other contributions here.

27:59 He's the one that Oh my. Can you Oh, LOOK WHO'S THERE. I KNOW. This is amazing.

28:04 Look at the hair dye. Trump is the one who's embarrassing them. He's the one that Oh my. Can you believe this guy? Where's the queer? I want to punch him. Where? What's wrong? That Trump is so embarrassing. What's with these? It's so It's That's the whole thing. It's like, what are you Who are you pretending to not like? This is who they are. This is it. This is unbelievable. This is 2016.

28:26 So, Oxford, Alabama was a city that decided to take these anti-trans laws and go overboard. Okay? So, they were going to if they caught anyone, they would give them a $500 fine and up to six months behind bars. And then they decided, oh, you know what? Actually, uh, we are going to reverse this law that the city council passed because it breaks federal laws and they're going to come after us and it's a bad idea. So, at least they were smart enough to realize, hey, you know, we're bigoted but we don't want to pay any consequences for it. So, we're going to reverse this law. In the case of North Carolina, the Republicans don't care that they're bigoted and they might face some severe consequences for it.

29:07 All right, we're going to go just to the end there. I know this is only a five minute for a clip. I recommend the entire thing. That's shocking.

29:13 Well, I mean, I'm like I'm looking at her. I'm like, I like her. Who's that? That's my old buddy.

29:18 My tea we miss. Yeah, it's a great show. to this day. No, I don't care what you think you are. I don't care what freedom. No, no, no. You don't get to have freedom. I get to have the freedom to discriminate against you. So, if you're trans, you're not going to go into the bathrooms you want, etc. Now, I know we've done discussed this in the past, but I was just at a a YouTube creator summit for the top 100 uh YouTube creators. Not a big deal. Um, and and one of them is Gigi Gorgeous, and she's trans, right? [snorts] And to her, she matches up her to her name. She's gorgeous. According to North Carolina, this uh blonde woman uh that would have to go into the men's bathroom.

29:59 Okay. And if she did, all the men would BE LIKE, "WHAT'S SHE DOING IN HERE?" OKAY. I DON'T KNOW if react that way.

30:06 Probably they'd react in a different way. Those same North Carolina Republicans would be like, "Yes." Right.

30:10 They'd be like, "Hey, I got a wide stance over here." Right. Um but it makes no sense. She She's a woman. She she looks like a woman. She's a woman in every way. And you want her to go into the men's bathroom. And then women the people who were born women who actually identify as males and you cannot separate from males now. You know, we've shown pictures in the past.

30:34 They'd have to walk into the women's bathroom. Then you'd have a federal emergency on your hands. They like, "OH MY, THERE'S A GUY. THERE'S A GUY IN THE WOMEN'S BATHROOM. WE KNEW IT. The liberals the perverts." No, you put put him in there. You see WHAT I'M SAYING?

30:49 I KNOW. IT is kind of incredible though because in an effort to keep men out of the women's bathroom, they're allowing men into the women's bathroom. They're such idiots.

31:02 All right. Well, there you go. I mean, were they wrong? Are they saying But that's what I'm saying. Like, do in their mind, are they saying they're embarrassed of that clip now? Because I think it was good coverage of the issue. I mean, maybe a little bit clumsy, but you know what? In the right direction.

31:16 Yep. I mean, for 2016. Um, this is crazy. This is 2016, man. Yeah, I know. That's so crazy. Um dang.

31:27 Never trust a guy in a blazer and t-shirt or two guys in a blazer. Uh, Clay Adonis, I'm sure trans women who have to live in constant fear of violence love to go into locker rooms and expose themselves. Exactly. Right. They're just like, "Take a look, everybody." Yeah, it's just horrible. Uh, Senate Twink, even in this clip, Jen is viewing trans rides through the mail gaze. She's a woman. I wanted to her.

32:02 Yeah, she's Yeah. I mean, in my view, like focusing on who passes and who doesn't is is is not the right way to be like crude. people like to point out like Buck Angel that that trans guy who's super buff like you want to go but there's a lot of people I mean this is the this is the problem with not guaranteeing trans healthcare and acting as like it's different than other kinds of healthcare um because it actually endangers people if they have gender affirming care every trans man can be Buck Angel if they want to be or they can present their gender when however they want to um but that's why it needs to be guaranteed as healthcare because it is

32:42 that's how they should that's how they sell it too. Every every every trans male could be Buck Angel if they want to.

32:48 And and that's the response. Like there's this idea from people like TYT that the left is pushing all these ideas. No, we responded to all this about Republicans saying, "Okay, we need to pass laws saying trans women need to go in men's bathrooms." And then it's like when that they got pushed back from that because everyone had had their right idea, including TYT, they moved on to well, we need to pass laws. Now the politics. We need to get this entire apparatus of state and federal governments involved in girls high school volleyball.

33:17 Yeah, it's it should have been dismissed by anyone with a brain as a distraction, but it wasn't. They were played into it.

33:25 But also, I mean, the idea that you can separate trans rights even from gay rights from other the we are all interconnected. This is just like a fundamental belief in left-wing ideology. We are the rights of all of us are interconnected. Renee Good shot in the face by that ICE agent. It was it was because she's a woman. He said He was triggered by it and he was triggered by her queerness. It was obvious in the video that they released that she had a lesbian partner. They're not stopping a trans people. Yeah.

33:59 Also, I mean, you know, they're relying on people's own internal bigotry and preference towards themselves to imagine that there are obvious visible boundaries between them and whatever problematized group we're taking the rights away from this week. That there's some easy way to distinguish between an immigrant and a non-immigrant in the United States of America. That there's some sort of easy way to distinguish between a trans person and a non-trans person. But there isn't. Right? For bigots, it's easy for them to convince themselves that there is. For people who are egocentric, it's easy for them to convince themselves that when everyone who they don't know sees them, they see every good thing about them and nothing that they, you know, might be uncomfortable with. But that's not how the world works. But it is how a lot of people who again are conditioned to think hyperindividualistically about

34:46 their themselves think the world works. And so, you know, when it comes to like the erosion of trans rights, when it comes to the erosion of immigrants rights, they're all just the same thing. the erosion of everyone's rights, the working-class rights, the, you know, getting you to agree that the government should be able to reach their hand down your pants, to break into your home and check if you belong in the country, that, like Christine Gnome said, ICE needs to be able to stop everybody because how could you possibly tell who's a citizen and not a citizen? And if you had said that before they actually implemented this policy, people would have told you that was crazy because of course there's a way. You just tell who's Latino, but a lot of Latinos are American. They're it's no reason they're Puerto Rican, right? And so it's impossible to tell, but people were very easily convinced that it was

35:27 until it was too late. And the trans thing is another issue where like it's impossible to tell if you're being honest. And trans folks reveal that they can't tell all the time, but they still imagine that when the police state comes and marches and checks who's a woman and who's not, that of course you'll be able to tell.

35:42 Yeah. Yeah. And and um I oddly I kind of I watched this no one saw this movie, but The Testament of Anne Lee. It's like a musical with I I just I try to I try to watch some of these uh because I had heard good things. I like Amanda Ciphid and there's a scene where she um sorry spoiler alert but I don't think it's that big of a spoiler like as a religious prophet because she's like preaching abstinence and it's a way for women to kind of leave their abusive marriages and not be a part of uh like the their marriages anymore for the most part that she's like beaten up by a bunch of men and they rip off her underwear and they basically they say she's not a woman.

36:21 she's not a woman. And they're trying to um they inspect her genitals to to to prove that she's not really a woman because how could she not be a woman? How could she be a woman and be preaching abstinence and be rejecting uh the the the covenant of marriage and sex with men and stuff like that. And so my point is is just like policing what femininity is and what a woman is for the most part is a tale as old as time. And it's a it's about patriarchy and it's about religious fundamentalism and it predates the founding of our country.

36:56 I'm not sure how accurate that scene is, of course, but like I would not be shocked if if like you know if that that was true.

37:02 She she was on Bill Maher talking about seeing penises in locker rooms uh as the right to for women to be empowered over their healthcare choices with regards to uh giving birth was eroded entirely.

37:15 Yeah. Like what were you doing? Yeah. And that's the same thing as trans people. Women should be empowered over their healthare and anyone who can give birth, which is not a distinction I have an issue making uh and people shouldn't have in this business. Um and trans people should be empowered. It's people in general should be empowered over their healthcare decisions.

37:38 All right, five more and we will get out of here. Uh sickles up economy. This is why I don't go anywhere unless I know there's a unisex bathroom in case I should encounter some of someone with these nonsensical fears. Also, no one bats nigh about trans men. It's always about dicks. Yep.

37:53 Hey folks, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and check out our daily show. We do it every day at 12:00 p.m. Eastern for about 2 and a half hours. We even take phone calls. You should check that out.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Better Late Than Never?"?

In order: 0:00 Francesca Furentini, Anna Kasparian, The Young Turks, Project 2025; 5:00 Project 2025, The Young Turks, Ken Clippenstein; 10:00 J. B. Pritzker; 15:00 Venezuela; 25:00 Project 2025, Gigi Gorgeous, Tim Moore; 30:00 ICE.

What is mentioned in this The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder episode?

10 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Francesca Furentini, Project 2025, Anna Kasparian, The Young Turks, ICE, Venezuela. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Better Late Than Never?"?

The episode runs 38 min; the transcript is about 7,280 words in 103 timestamped sections.

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