The Socialist Hunter - August 14, 2026

**Cenk Uygur** (0:00)
You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome, thank you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
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**Will Cain** (5:38)
There are some problems here.

**SPEAKER_8** (5:39)
Sorry, big time.

**SPEAKER_3** (5:40)
I'm so upset. Oh my god. Begah!

**Cenk Uygur** (6:17)
Welcome to The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, David Sirota with you guys tonight. David is, of course, the founder of Lever, which you should be reading every day. They do terrific stories exposing the corruption of the establishment. He's also a former Bernie Sanders speechwriter, and I would argue, one of the leading progressive thinkers in the country. So David, thank you for co-hosting today. Thank you.

**David Sirota** (6:38)
Thanks for having me.

**Cenk Uygur** (6:39)
Yeah, no problem. We're gonna do a couple of Lever stories too.

**SPEAKER_2** (6:43)
A little bit coincidentally.

**Cenk Uygur** (6:44)
Yep. All right, so we got a lot of stories today. We've got stories about how the establishment is killing the free markets and who the real socialists are.
How they're attacking Abdul El-Sayed in a completely disingenuous way. And then later in the second hour, how they're destroying the military, Hegseth, Trump, etc.,

**SPEAKER_9** (7:05)
while pretending to stand for it.

**Cenk Uygur** (7:06)
So let's start with the first story.

**Will Cain** (7:10)
There is obviously, and I think it's beyond comedically, a movement in the United States to embrace socialism. We've seen, for example, a joke of a candidate in Wisconsin still get 300,000 votes, people voting for Democratic socialism. But I think the real question, and I think it's a question for you, it's a question for Republicans at large is this. When a young person looks at their life and they say, I did what America asked me to do, I went to college, I got a job, and I don't think I can afford the life that my parents could afford. Now, whether or not that's statistically accurate, it is a real feeling and a growing feeling. So what is your answer to that young person?

**Cenk Uygur** (7:54)
Now, that's Will Cain on Fox News. And normally, we'd stop here and we'd have David and I rip apart that idea of socialism and communism and whatever garbage they're throwing out there. But wait, JD Vance is going to partially do it for us. Let's show you that clip and then react to that. Watch.

**JD Vance** (8:11)
Our response to socialism, which is a dangerous and destructive ideology, it's been tried in the past and failed. Our response to that can't be just to ignore the economic concerns that I think are feeding this rising interest in socialism. And I guess I would say to that young person that you as an American citizen deserve to have a good life in this country and you deserve to have a government that is making it easier for you to start a family, for you to afford to get a good education, for you to have a good job, for you to afford a home. And my warning to my fellow Republicans will would be, if we don't get this right, don't blame young people for being sympathetic to socialism, we've got to blame ourselves.

**SPEAKER_9** (8:53)
Wow, David, look at that.

**Cenk Uygur** (8:54)