>> I guess that he thinks that a suppressed
vote, a low voter turnout, will work for him,
and that it will help him win the election.
So this is a deliberate effort to defund and
destroy the US Postal Service so that people
cannot engage in mail in ballots.
That's not Bernie Sanders talking.
That's what Donald Trump is telling the American
people and it is an outrage, Trump.
>> Well, that was Bernie Sanders calling out
the Trump administration and the Trump campaign's
efforts to essentially suppress the vote by
dismantling the post office.
Luckily, Democrats finally woke up and realize
maybe now is not a great time to vacation,
go on recess.
So now they are watching the emergency effort
to prevent Trump from rigging the election
through dismantling the post office.
So Pelosi, for instance, is calling for the
house to return to Capitol Hill.
That's likely to happen this coming weekend.
And the Senate, some members of the Senate
are also considering reconvening to figure
out what to do about the fact that Trump is
trying to essentially rig this election.
So Democrats in the House Oversight Committee
have also demanded that the new Postmaster
General Louis DeJoy testify on August 24 to
answer charges that has been controversial
new policy changes are intended to deliberately
slow voting by mail.
As we've mentioned before, DeJoy is a Trump
loyalist and has donated millions of dollars
to Donald Trump.
In a letter to DeJoy, oversight committee
chair representative Carolyn Maloney said,
quote, over the past several weeks, there
have been startling new revelations about
the scope and gravity of operational changes
you are implementing at hundreds of postal
facilities without consulting adequately with
Congress, the Postal Regulatory Commission
or the Board of Governors.
Your testimony is particularly urgent given
the troubling influx of reports of widespread
delays at postal facilities across the country,
as well as President Trump's explicit admission
last week that he has been blocking critical
coronavirus funding for the Postal Service
Service in order to impair mail-in voting
efforts for the upcoming elections in November.
I also want to note that he has agreed to
testify before the House Oversight Committee.
So there's some agreement there luckily, but
there are some members of Congress, particularly
representatives Ted Lou and Hakeem Jeffries,
who are saying that the FBI needs to investigate
what's happening with the postal service.
In their letter they write, multiple media
investigations show that Postmaster DeJoy
and the Board of Governors have retarded the
passage of mail.
If their intent in doing so was to affect
mail-in balloting or was motivated by personal
financial reasons, then they likely committed
crimes.
And Cenk, just to remind the audience, some
of the things that have already been done,
as was mentioned earlier, slowed delivery
times.
They have removed high speed mail sorters
in some facilities.
Those sorters are obviously gonna be needed
in order needed in order to process an influx
of mail-in ballots.
And they've also issued a warning that mail-in
ballots will no longer be treated as priority
mail, which is insane.
>> And of course they also started taking
away the actual boxes in your neighborhood,
the post office boxes.
And so they now say because of the intense
pressure that are being put on, okay, fine,
we won't take away any more of those drop
boxes until after the election, and we will
not disassemble any more of the sorting machines
until after the election.
And that's what Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
said.
But that's only because they put tremendous
pressure on.
Now, I want to give credit to the people who
did that.
Number one is, as you saw in the beginning
here, Bernie Sanders, he immediately went
on the warpath.
And and that's partly because he's been trying
to protect the post office for decades now.
And so he is seen them attack it over and
over again.
So to him this was not a surprise or something
new.
It was just the worst form of that assault
cuz it's also an assault on our democracy,
as he clarified.
So I love that he was on all the Sunday talk
shows fighting for the post office and for
our democracy.
Secondly, Al Gore came out today and as a
helpful reminder of what happens when people
steal elections, and was super forceful in
saying under no circumstances should the post
office be trifled with in the middle of an
election.
So I love to see that.
But I want to give credit to Ted Lewin and
Hakeem Jeffries probably the most.
And if you follow Young Turks really, really
closely you'll know that I'm not a giant fan
of Hakeem Jeffies out of the four of those
guys Love three of them.
Representative Jeffries has his issues.
Now, but all we do on this show is we're honest
with you guys and we're fair, okay?
So credit where credit is due, I love that
representative Jeffries is working with Ted
Lewin on this one, and they're exactly right.
There are two provisions that they talk about
here.
One is 18 USC 1701, that makes it a crime
to, quote, knowingly and willfully obstruct
mail delivery.
So if you're slowing down the mail on purpose
because remember, look, just the fact that
they're slowing it down right in front of
our own eyes, that we can clearly see.
And there's overwhelming evidence for might
not be enough to convict, believe it or not,
because you got to go beyond a reasonable
doubt.
But if they wrote anything down, or if any
witness says, yeah, we slow down the mail
on purpose, gone.
That's a federal crime and they should go
to prison.
Number two is 18 USC 595, which criminalizes
using the power of any federal agency to influence
an election.
If they have a witness or any memo or email
written to that effect, gone, prison sentence,
the door should be locked away.
Now, only if he did it, only if he did it.
We're not like the Trump people and just lock
up our political opponents.
No, if he's breaking the law in these super
important ways, he should understand that
there's going to be severe consequences.
Now look, I love that they're fighting this
way before the election so that we can make
sure that everybody's mail-in ballots are
protected, including the Republican ones.
We wanna a fair election and the election
that actually tells us who won, right?
But do I have any faith that Democrats will
hold Republicans accountable even if they
cheated after an election?
No, I have no faith at all, none.
But for now, good, great and I'm super happy
to give them credit.
>> Yeah, I mean, look, I'm definitely happy
that they're gonna go back to Capitol Hill.
I mean, the fact that they literally took
recess was ridiculous to me.
But some of the messaging coming from the
Trump administration is changing.
I don't want anyone to think under any circumstance
that I trust Mark Meadows, for instance.
But here's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, speaking
over the weekend, about changing course, the
post office changing course when it came to
some of the decisions that they've recently
made.
Let's take a look.
>> Concerns about whether or not it's gonna
work, then it would seem that more funding
would help as opposed to taking sorting machines
off line so that it will be more difficult
to do mail.
>> Well, there's no sorting machines that
are going offline between now and the election.
That's something that my Democrat friends
are trying to do to stoke fear out there.
That's not happening,
>> Are you saying that, sorting machines have
not been taken offline and removed?
Are you asserting that did not happen?
>> I'm saying that sorting machines between
now and the election will not be taken offline.
Listen, I had postal undermined the ones that
had.
So, when you're looking at this, these postal
machines in the draw down, that was a 2006
bill that has been implemented that I don't
necessarily agree with.
But that's not this Postmaster General that
did that.
That was the previous Postmaster General under
Obama.
>> That's just a lie.
By the way, Obama wasn't president in 2006.
What are you talking about?
So he cites the year two.
They're like this was a plan that they had
in place since 2006.
When Obama was president, what?
No, they started decommissioning these mail
sorting machines recently.
And at the same time, let every single state
know that the post office wouldn't have the
capacity to process all of these ballots.
And by the way, I mean, get a load of Mark
Meadows, trying to cover up for the fact that
there is absolutely no evidence that mail-in
voting or absentee voting has led to a prevalence
of voter fraud.
Take a look at his messaging here.
>> Do you realize how inaccurate the voter
rolls are with just people just moving around,
not let alone the people that die off but
sending ballots out just based on a voter
roll registration.
Anytime you move you'll change your driver's
license, but they don't call up and say-
>> It's a widespread voter fraud though.
There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
>> There's no there's no evidence that there's
not either.
That's the definition of fraud, Jake.
>> No.
>> No.
>> That's that's also a lie.
I mean, go ahead, Cenk.
Take it away.
>> Okay, that's not the definition of fraud.
The definition of fraud is when you commit
fraud, not I couldn't find any evidence of
fraud.
And that's the definition of fraud.
That's the exact opposite of the definition.
So okay, let's use Mark Meadows' logic.
I don't agree with this, but this is Mark
Meadows' logic.
Yeah, there's no evidence that Mark Meadows
is a serial killer.
But there's also no evidence that he isn't.
I don't know.
I mean, I think we should investigate whether
Mark Meadows is a serial killer.
We got Ted Cruz as Zodiac Killer.
I don't know, maybe previously Meadows was
a killer clown, ala John Wayne Gacy.
I don't know, there isn't any evidence of
it.
But there's also no evidence that he didn't
do it.
That he didn't massacre many people.
Come on, under any other context he would
be insane to say things like this, and it's
insane in this context.
Now, again, we're a fair show, so let me be
bipartisan in my critique.
Just a couple months ago, and as usual, wrote
about this.
The Senate unanimously, that means all the
Democrats as well.
Approved Mike Duncan to be the head of the
Board of Governors of USPS or the postal service.
And Mike Duncan is among the people who now
gets to decide whether DeJoy stays or not
as the Postmaster General.
Mike Duncan is the head of the Senate leadership
PAC.
The Senate leadership fund that raises $100
million for Republican Senators.
Democrats, right well, it just there's no
end to how stupid they are.
Why would you put that guy as the chair of
the board of the governors of the post office,
when you know the Republicans are trying to
destroy the post office?
And that guy raised $100 million for Senate
Republicans.
How stupid or complicit are you?
So now finally when it reaches their own power,
wait, they might read the election using the
post office so I don't have power anymore.
Wait now all of a sudden Democrats are concerned.
Again, minus the exceptions of Bernie Sanders
who's been concerned and been on the warpath
for decades on this.
And by the way, let me just if you're wondering
why did the Democrats like Mike Duncan be
head of Board of Governors.
Why is DeJoy who's clearly has a giant conflict
of interest in the head of the post office,
why the Democrats allow any of this?
If you haven't heard that our previous videos
about it as quickly as I can, DeJoy gave $2
million to Trump and the Republican Party.
That's just a bribe.
Why did he bribe them?
Because he wanted to be the head of the Post
Office, why?
Cuz he has 30 to $75 million invested in competitors
and contractors of the Post Office.
The criminality is through the roof.
So he might have just been trying to destroy
the post office for his own financial gain.
And then he's like no, it's in the middle
of an election.
I got caught for no reason because of Trump's
clownishness.
I'm just trying to make tens of millions of
dollars through obvious bribery and corruption.
And that's your answer for why the Democrats
never held him accountable before, cuz they
participate in that bribery and corruption.
So that's why they never called it out when
DeJoy did it or Mike Duncan did it.
They happily gave them those positions, which
they now regret.
>> And I wanted to also just respond to the
ridiculous statement Meadows made about voter
fraud but giving you some actual evidence
of how rare voter fraud really is.
So, Cenk, this is a tweet by public citizen
and it says the mail-voter fraud rate is .00006%
over the last 20 years.
So there has been research into this.
And voter fraud is not a problem in this country.
What Donald Trump is clearly trying to do
and it's so transparent is disenfranchise
voters and steal this election.
>> So guys, I want to give you guys sometimes
Trump says.
Well, what's the harm?
Let's stop mail-in voting just in case, 0.06,
do it, right?
Well, the harm is you block a lot of people
from being able to, in fact millions of people
from being able to vote and participate in
our democracy to chase after a non existent
problem.
So it maybe I can put it in terms of Republicans
to understand if 0.0006% of white males do
mass shootings in this country.
That's actually the result of that is horrific,
right?
But if we set all right so since that happens
at that rate, which it probably does at around
that rate.
Let's make sure no white males can ever leave
their house again.
You said wait a minute, that doesn't make
any sense at all.
99.99994% of white males do not do mass shootings,
and it makes no sense to not let them out
of their house.
So just giving you an example of why their
thing of like, hey, it happened once in our
lifetime is not a good reason to deny millions
of people the right to vote.
Especially during coronavirus where the voting
bloc that is most heavily representative,
senior citizens, and they're also the most
vulnerable.
