The Young Turks - Baltimore Bridge Collapse

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Nancy Mace blames Biden's infrastructure law after a ship strike collapses Baltimore bridge. Searches at Sean ""Diddy"" Combs homes related to an ongoing sex trafficking investigation, law enforcement source says. Trump press secretary claims campaign will have ""soldiers"" watching polling stations on Election Day. Jessica Tarlov is indignant after Jesse Watters gets personal. " HOST: David Shuster (@DavidShuster), Wosny Lambre (@BigWos) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Woo! It's up! And what a news day, this one has been. Hello everybody, I'm David Chuster in Connecticut, joined by the almighty Wasney Lombray. He is a writer for The Ringer and host of the woke bros podcast.

Was, how are you doing? I'm doing great. My cat keeps moving the moment. Mike, but I'm chilling. You see a dog on this end. You'll know that we've got both species covered. Wow, this was kind of a crazy how everybody sort of, first of all, did you spend much time in Baltimore,

Washington area over the past, you know, a couple of years? I am not. I've only just driven through very briefly. I've never spent a lot of time in Baltimore, even as an East Coast native. Yeah, well, I worked in D.C. for 15 years. And so I actually went on that bridge that collapsed today. lots of times in visiting Baltimore, so kind of startling to see the news. So a lot of news about

that. We'll also talk about what the latest with Sean P. Diddy Combs. Also some interesting stuff coming up with President Biden going on the attack against Donald Trump with some things that should be a Biden vulnerability, but he seems to be turning around. So with that, let's get started with story number one. Recovery efforts continue in Maryland's Patapsco River after one of Baltimore's most heavily traveled bridges, the key bridge collapsed. It happened shortly after 1.30 a.m. Tuesday morning, emergency responders began receiving calls that a large cargo ship that had just left Baltimore's port was out of control. Here's security camera video. The footage has been married to emergency dispatch audio the moment the ship slammed into a bridge support column

triggering the collapse. Watch. possibly in the water. There was a very team person, construction crew operating on the bridge, possibly in the water at this time. Six to communications. Are you advising the 13 people in the water? Passively 13 people in the water. The construction crew.

As you heard, officials feared that there were 13. There was a construction crew that was working on the bridge at the time repairing potholes. And so the immediate safety concern was for all of them that might have been dumped into the water. All of these details. Again, this happened just before 2 a.m. All these details were about including attempted water rescues were widely available to the media by the time most of the media went on the air at 6 a.m. And this includes conservative media. And yet, conservative media repeatedly claimed that this mass casualty event was the fault of President Biden on Newsmax guest Nancy Mace of South Carolina Republican attacked the Biden administration for not putting more money into bridge maintenance.

You look at the spending bill we did on Friday, all the waste that's in there. Things that we should, the government should not be paying for when it could be going to things that are the government's purpose, like just like this. Just like this. Well again, this particular bridge came down not because of bridge maintenance issues or construction problems, it came down because it was slammed by a giant cargo ship. And yet there was Nancy Mace. For people who actually are concerned about transportation maintenance, irrespective of what caused this

particular accident, here's something to keep in mind. The infrastructure bill, the Biden administration passed with very little help from Republicans in 2023, provided $40 billion for roads and bridges. Want to know who voted against this infrastructure bill? Oh yeah, Nancy Mays, Republican from South Carolina. Now, not to be outdone on Fox News, Maria Bartramo, a host on Fox, then the this morning linked the bridge collapse to border security. Border security, even though Barteramo, in the same breath seconds earlier, acknowledged there was no indication that this is anything but an accident. There's no indication of the nefarious intent in the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The ship involved in the collapse of the bridge is 948 feet long called the Dolly, a Singaporean flagged container. But of course, you've been talking a lot about the potential for wrongdoing or potential for foul play given the wide open border. That is why you have been so adamant. Why has the Republicans had such a hard time securing this border? The president says he's not going to take his executive action. This is what we call in the broadcast media a hard turn. Nobody does it more strangely and with less intelligence than Maria Bartaromo on Fox. Now, back to the bridge collapse. Authorities say that six workers now remain unaccounted for and presumed to have died. President Biden says the federal government will pay to

rebuild the key bridge and reopen the port of Baltimore, which is one of the biggest in the United States. And in the meantime, investigators are now looking at maintenance and inspection records for the cargo ship that lost power. The cargo ship apparently had just departed from the harbor was en route out of there when it lost power. It flickered back on and off. And that's when the ship was apparently going about 15 miles per hour, slammed into the essentially a key holding part of the of the key bridge causing it to collapse immediately. Was, there's a lot to digest here, but first, the idea that conservatives on anywhere, at the same time bodies are in the water, and you know that, and you're trying to somehow blame this on President Biden, what gives?

It's just a lazy, it's just a lazy strategy. It's part of their playbook. Anything that goes wrong is obviously Joe Biden's fault. And obviously, Joe Biden has never done anything right in the history of his presidency. That's the tack that they're going to take over and over. But I don't think we should, we should expect anything better from the likes of newsmax. Fox News, you might expect a little bit better than newsbacks, but not really by much, right? At least Maria didn't go out and say Joe Biden was steering that ship. She just pivoted to a completely different subject matter altogether. But of course, our thoughts go out to the families who are affected, the people, the folks who died.

In a lot of ways, man, this bridge collapsing feels like a metaphor for the American state. just, you know, it's hard to come up with anything that the state is involved in in, you know, buttressing or maintaining that is in, you know, a sharp incline. Everything seems to be in decline right now. And it's obviously a truly sad, sad situation up there. Right. It's passing the buck for everything that goes wrong and then taking credit for everything that goes right. And so with Nancy Mays, for example, from South Carolina, even though she voted against this particular massive infrastructure bill. She touted in her own district things that she says was she, because of her, somehow got put into the bill to help her district. So on the one hand,

if she's blaming President Biden for not spending enough money to protect bridges, perhaps like this one in Baltimore, which got hit by the cargo ship, well, then Nancy Mace, by her own logic, maybe she should take responsibility for the bridge collapse because clearly she took money away and diverted it to South Carolina that could have been used to somehow prevent this tragedy. That's how absurd all this is. But what is it about Republicans who feel like they absolutely have to try to pull the wool over their own voters by taking credit for things that they opposed? Because they know that ultimately the Republican Party's actual agenda is extremely unpopular, deregulating the hell out of everything, giving the unlimited tax cuts to the very

richest people in our nation. That's not popular with even Republican voters. So they can't come out and stump for the things that Republicans, the establishment anyway, actually want to do. So they go this other route and they try to do a sort of cloak and dagger approach to what their policies actually are. And it's beautiful. It's typified most, you know, ridiculously by Mitch McConnell who fought the freaking infrastructure bill tooth and nail. This thing finally, finally passes and he goes to his home, he's in his home state of Kentucky, and he starts bragging about the stuff that Kentucky's going to get in said infrastructure bill. This is their approach. This is their strategy. It's ridiculous. And somehow didn't they rarely

ever paid a price for it. Yeah. And by the way, I want to be clear to everybody, when you're, and I've been in the position of having to anchor breaking news where you're literally just sitting on a shot of whether it's a train derailment or a crash. And you don't know anything. And you've got hours and hours to fill and sometimes it's very easy to go into sort of the speculation. You put on all the engineers and the experts you can, but maybe you want to take the opportunity of, okay, while we're waiting for more information, let's go ahead and have a debate or discussion about policy. And I can sort of understand, I suppose the input is to say, okay, while we're waiting for information, let's talk about infrastructure in general,

even though it seems clear that this was caused by a cargo ship. What is the likelihood of bridges being more vulnerable because of lack of repair because of not getting enough money. There's an artful and a sophisticated way to sort of pivot in that direction, but to sort of make the hard turn, leave your viewers with the impression that, oh, this is President Biden's fault because there should have been more money in the bill or because Maria Bartrama wants to talk about border security along the southwest border having something to do with a cargo ship slamming into a bridge in Baltimore in the port of Baltimore. I mean, that doesn't even make any sense. And I guess I'm constantly surprised was that you think that even whether it's

Newsmax or Fox News. I mean, these are broadcast organizations with sophisticated budgets. You'd think they would have broadcasters who would show a little bit more panache, a little bit more skill in saying, okay, we're going to move away from this particular topic as we keep this live picture up for our number five. And let's talk a little bit about some policy that may be a little bit unrelated, at least do something in terms of a transition that makes some sense as opposed to being so herky, jerky and amateurish about it. Well, David, that's why we got outlets like TYT. That's why we're the good guys, you feel

me? Like, you can't, I don't know, they've been running this playbook of just outright cynicism, just the idea that their entire audience has been so right wing-pilled that they can't see or understand any of their deceptions or, you know, straight up out-and-out lies. I think they just go with that automatically on principle. And I'm not surprised by that.

And, you know, not even just the newsmax is and the Fox News is and whoever you want to get. I would say even in the mainstream, 20 years ago, David, this story would be leading the news for damn near two weeks. This is a calamity, a tragedy. We'd be figuring out how not to ever let this thing happen again. We'd be getting this thing right. Nowadays, I wonder if this will lead the news for more than a day and a half. And that goes for everybody, the big dogs who, you know, people claim that they're liberal to these sickos over on the right. Well, the audience certainly in the attention spans have gotten shorter.

And I wonder if all of this is sort of related to something you were talking about a minute ago. And that is there was a lack of trust now in institutions, a lack of confidence in the people who bring in the news. And that was evident even this morning where on X or Twitter or whatever we're calling Elon Musk's social media. platform, there was so much stuff that was spewing out from people who claim that this was a government conspiracy, that this was an effort to somehow take attention away from some issue that Joe Biden had. In other words, to immediately, when people are literally having their lives are being lost, they're drowning, cars are in the river, the port is closed. It's a horrible contest, as you point out, and people without knowing anything are out there sort of feeding

this conspiracy narrative that, oh, this must have been the CIA. This must have been the the government that did this, the Biden administration is trying to hide something. And yeah, I mean, this sort of stuff, I suppose it existed 20 years ago. People would come up with these conspiracy theories, but they were laughed out of existence by the mainstream media. They'd say, no, we're going to cover this and we're going to do in a deep dive investigation into this cargo ship, and we're going to figure out exactly what happened. But it's so hard now to ignore the noise and the craziness that is out there from people who don't want to believe their own eyes or don't want to believe fire and EMS reports

from the scene, but immediately want to somehow feed some kind of fan the flames of nuttiness by claiming this is all big government conspiracy. Here's what I'll say about the peanut gallery on Twitter, David. You don't make an anonymous profile with Elmo as your avatar in order to engage in measured, civil, nuanced discussion, debate, etc. You do that so you can let fly the craziest most vitriolic nonsense that you can pull out of your butt. And so I'm not surprised by that in the least bit, David. Well, interesting stuff.

And again, as Wise was pointing out, condolences to everybody who was involved in all the families that were affected. And one can only hope that the divers are successful, he's bringing some recovery efforts there, and that people can get some answers as to why this cargo ship lost power and what happened. And of course, we'll probably find out sooner what the what went wrong with the cargo ship then we'll find out what has gone wrong and we'll be able to figure out what has gone wrong with so much in conservative media

which wants to try to score political points and freakishly blame everything that goes wrong on the bide administration Let's go to our next store right now. Overnight, heavily armed federal authorities staging coordinated coast-to-coast raids at properties belonging to music mogul Sean Diddy Combs. Homeland Security Investigations team seemed descending on his multi-million dollar home in Los Angeles, going room to room and hauling away boxes. Across the country, more investigators swarmed the rapper's property in a wealthy section of Miami.

appearing to carry out a laptop. So yesterday, agents with Homeland Security raided two homes belonging to rapper, music mogul, Sean Diddy Combs in connection to an ongoing sex trafficking investigation. We don't know for certain that Combs himself was the specific target of the raids, but here's what we do know from CNN responding to reports of raids at homes belonging to Combs, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, New York confirmed it had executed law enforcement actions as part of an ongoing investigation. HSI is the lead investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible

for investigating transnational crime and threats, including human trafficking. And other than confirming that the raids happened, while the agency has been tight-lifted about the details of their investigation. But an anonymous law enforcement official confirmed the searches are part of a sex trafficking probe. Here's from NBC News. Homeland Security officials sees phones from Combs in Miami that he was scheduled to depart for a trip to the Bahamas, according to three law enforcement.

enforcement sources familiar with the warrant. Combs was in the Miami area when authorities executed the searches, sources said. Three women and a man have been interviewed by federal officials in Manhattan in relation to allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms, the source said, while it's not confirmed that Combs was a target, he has recently faced a wave of accusations of sexual abuse and harassment, all of which he has strongly denied. In November 2023, according to CNN, Combs, settled a suit brought by his former girlfriend singer Cassandra Cassie Ventura, who alleged

that she was raped and subjected to years of repeated physical and other abuses by Combs. Since then, since then, three other women have come forward with lawsuits in the Southern District of New York, alleging that they were sexually assaulted by Combs. So the women said they were teenagers at the time of the alleged assaults. Combs was also accused of sexual assault and harassment in another civil lawsuit filed by a former male employee last month. Rodney Lil Rod Jones, a former producer and videographer for Combs, claims that Colmes did not compensate him for his music producing work, forced him to procure and interact with sex workers, threatened him and served alcoholic

beverages laced with drugs to gas at parties at his homes. Jones alleges that some of the women that Diddy drugged were minors. In December, Diddy responded to the charges against him saying for the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear. I can, I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family, and for the truth. So far, Ditting, his representatives have not commented on the raids and his whereabouts are currently unknown. But on Monday evening was reported that his private jet had arrived in the

Caribbean island of Antigua, although it's unclear whether Holmes was on board. at the time. What do you make of all this? I will say this first to the viewers that for by all indications, people that I know that I've worked in DC have contacts in the feds. Generally speaking, they've been looking at you for at least six months, oftentimes up to two years and even more than that before they raid your crib and bring forth charges. We always hear the statistic bandied about that they have a 95% conviction rate when they do bring charges to people who don't automatically fold and take a plea bargain to haul themselves to jail.

And so just to get that out the way, that seems to be how the feds operate. However, I would just like to see what the evidence is in the case before rendering a judgment myself. If all that's found to be true is that this guy facilitated the travel of willing sex workers to come to America and do what they do for their job, I don't know that this should rise to the level of homeland security. However, if women were forced here and underage women were forced here against their will and maybe had been drugged, so on and so. forth, then absolutely him and his associates should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But I would encourage everybody to sort of wait to see what the feds have in store. Because a lot of times, I'm not going to lie, the feds be bored. Well, I wonder if the, I'm wondering if the open question about whether this was just simply

trafficking, bringing in, you know, prostitutes across state lines international borders or something more significant, such as, you know, trafficking, minors, maybe that's just an open question. And so as a result, the fads and the FBI decided, okay, we don't know the answer to this. Maybe they've asked for some cooperation from Combs so far and either haven't been satisfied with the answers or feel like the best way to preserve some of the evidence is to go ahead and get a warrant and go ahead and rate his property. So again, as you point out, I mean, sometimes investigators don't know at the time they conduct

a raid, they may have certain suspicions about what they're going to find. Part of the reason they do array is to try to preserve evidence. Yeah, absolutely. Perhaps this is a fact-finding mission on their part. And I guess we'll see where this goes, but we have to be serious here. The feds are fame whores. We know this. They love to go after prominent people. If it could get their names in the press and you know what they call quote-unquote career cases. This is how they've operated in the past. I've always had a bit of a skeptical eye of, you know, what law enforcement, especially on the federal level, are doing with our dollars, particularly what they did in the war, quote, unquote, war against terror, were they invented terrorists out of whole cloth, people who probably wouldn't have committed any crimes, had they not been, you know, sort of coerced by undercover agents to engage in those crimes?

And then quite recently, I don't know if you follow college basketball at all, David, but when they did this little fake scandal with these assistant coaches in college who were doing what? Getting kids lap dances on their recruiting trips and giving them, you know, two grand here and there to be college basketball players. These are the kinds of things the Fed sometimes do, especially when they can get their names in the freaking papers. And so I, for one, am highly skeptical, but, you know, I don't put anything past a guy like Pluff Daddy that he might, you know, engage in nefarious, even criminal behavior. Given the tensions that have existed for years between a rap community and federal agents, federal police, FBI, is it possible that there's an element of that as well that, aha, here's a famous black rapper. And we can send a message to him and to the rap music industry that there's certain behaviors that we're not happy to see. Oh, by the way, there's a political upside for the FBI because a lot of people, a lot of Republicans and people who control our purse strings in Washington. who like to see some sort of bust like this.

Yeah, it's interesting. I find it hard to go quite there, specifically with Sean Combs, because he's been so damn filthy rich and well connected for so damn long. He's not some new up-and-coming guy who's like shooting people in all of his music and flashing guns and drugs and stuff like that on his Instagram live and things that. and things in that nature. This guy's been a bit of an establishment figure in entertainment for decades. He got his start in about 1988. So he's been at this for over 35 years. He's been a bit of a mogul for three decades now. So I would be, I would, I don't know that

this investigation will quite take that tenor. People can look up this guy, Casanova, the rapper from Brooklyn. The feds just put him away for like 10, 15 years on a Rico charge, which I thought was kind of dubious at best. But, you know, that guy was a street artist, right? He was an up-and-coming guy. He was not as wealthy, as well-connected as a puff daddy, and he got caught up in a Rico case, and he's gone now, right? I doubt they would come after Sean Combs in that manner because he is so well-funded. He is so well-connected. This has to be something a little bit different in tenor from from that. Yeah, I also wonder if maybe because I don't know, the political pressure that was on the FBI over Matt Gates, who engaged in

alleged perhaps criminal activity that wasn't charged for it in terms of allegedly trafficking women across state lines, although apparently the woman, and it's unclear whether she was a minor or not, but because that was such a high profile case for Congress, you sometimes got to wonder if maybe internal politics at the FBI, I thought, okay, well, since we've pursued sex trafficking at a very sort of high level before, given the high level nature, at least the allegations that Sean Combs was involved in this, we have to do something here, even if it's just a raid, even if it doesn't go anywhere to criminal charges. Yeah, you can't discount the idea that they're playing politics with this.

I don't think you should ever do that when it comes to the federal authorities. Again, these guys are not opposed to chasing headlines. They have not been historically. So that's definitely something to think about. But I would keep my eye on this and see what actual evidence comes out of this stuff. Well, we appreciate all of you who are keeping an eye on us. I'm David Chuster with Wazni Lombray. Our show continues right after this.

All right, let's talk some politics back with our one, David Schuster and Woz-Lambre. Donald Trump's campaign, 2024 campaign press secretary, Caroline Levitt, you've ever heard of her name? Well, she's starting to make a name for herself for all the wrong reasons. She went on Kimberly Gilfiles show, you know, Kimberly Gilfell, she's the one who was perhaps engaged to Don Jr. Anyway, she went on Gilfile's show to discuss their next steps in fighting against election interference. Watch. And we're going to play offense this time around. We're not going to play defense like we unfortunately did in 2020. We're going to have soldiers, poll watchers on the ground who are making sure

that there are no irregularities and fraud like we saw in the last election cycle. I love it. I cannot wait. It's going to be fantastic. And we do have to, you know, restore election integrity. Soldiers? They're going to have soldiers on the ground, what, like parachuting from military helicopters, or maybe she was referring to something else. Well, we know based on Donald Trump's previous statements, he's all for having some sort of armed guards, at least, or maybe his own sort of military at political events and at, of course, polling places. At his very first presidential debate back in 2020, President Trump encouraged his supporters to monitor election day polling places,

for instances of fraud. Donald Trump, quote, I'm encouraging my supporters to go through the polls and watch very carefully because that was what has to happen. I'm urging them to do it. There was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They're called poll watchers, very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch.

You know why? Because bad things happened in Philadelphia, bad things. Trump also went a step further than poll watchers and said he wanted to see the police at polling places. This was during an interview with Sean Hannity, watch. Are you going to have poll watchers? Are you going to have an ability to monitor to avoid fraud and cross check whether or not these are registered voters, whether or not there's bad identification to know that it's a real vote from a real American? We're going to have everything. We're going to have sheriffs and we're going to have law enforcement and we're going to have hopefully U.S. attorneys and we're going to have everybody and attorney generals. but it's very hard. I mean, you have some of these states sending them out like Nevada where they don't even have to check the signatures so anybody can sign it.

We're going to have everybody at these polling locations. Well, everything that Donald Trump just said and what Levitt was his press secretary said, well, some of that could actually be illegal. CBS News reports poll watchers are observers who are typically paid workers of a government organization such as state parties, the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, who observe polling places for potential. potential issues. Every state has different parameters, but watchers usually must be registered to vote in whatever state or county in which they are operating. Now, poll watchers themselves are legal, but they need to be certified and approved to be at their state and local precincts. Again, from CBS News, watchers are not official election personnel who are in any way part of administering an election. They're acting in the capacity of helping to safeguard voting, making sure.

that everything runs smoothly. A poll watcher, for example, can notify election officials of issues such as long lines or a lack of poll officials at a site. Each state also has different rules and regulations for the number of poll watchers who are allowed into a particular precinct and also what they are allowed to do. However, the so-called poll watchers, referenced by Donald Trump at the first presidential debate, were not approved. In fact, no poll watchers from the Trump campaign, the Republican Party, or other Republican Republican campaigns were certified to monitor the city of Philadelphia in 2020. It's also illegal, illegal in all 50 states for civilians to loiter around polling places and intimidate voters.

And that intimidation can include having firearms. Now, in terms of armed police and guards, according to the voter protection program, private armed guards can be considered voter intimidation. When you CBS News, federal law prohibits any civil or military federal officer to order troops or armed men to polling places unless they are needed to repel armed enemies of the United States. And there's our answer. They're going to repel democracy. Isn't that what Donald Trump's really trying to do here? Isn't that what his press secretary is suggesting that if we actually have a free and fair vote, that's a threat to Donald Trump? And therefore, he needs to have his armed guards, his own armed militia there to somehow enforce whatever Donald Trump. Trump, whatever outcome Donald Trump wants, well, state and local law enforcement can sometimes be at polling places, but never under orders from the president of the United States or an ex-president,

and they must always be subject to several restrictions. And again, also according to the United Democracy Center, states can constitutionally restrict weapons around polling places. Thirteen states and territories expressly ban weapons at polling places. And those laws have faced no serious constitutional challenge. The Second Amendment allowing restricting of guns, the Second Amendment allows the restriction of guns in sensitive places. So even though Second Amendment supporters like Donald Trump now want to have soldiers, armed soldiers, armed soldiers, armed soldiers, armed militia show up at polling places, they have no case law supporting that effort. And in fact, in many places, it would

be illegal. While it seems like to me, this is not about somehow keeping pulling places safe or secure, keeping them from being robbed by that lunatic on the street who shows up. This is about voter intimidation, pure and simple. Yeah, I think you just laid it out quite beautifully, David, that this is illegal. I don't think these guys and gals in the Trump campaign brain trust, if we could even call it that, think that they're going to be able to do this effectively and quote unquote, secure the polls in November. We know that's absurd. And if these folks do show up, police will be called on them and they'll probably be dealt with that way. I think the reason that they're

going out and saying this is to just get the idea out there that somehow a result might be compromised. They just want that concept to permeate within, you know, the sort of thinking of right wingers and MAGA supporters. So I don't think these guys actually think they can execute this nonsense of guarding voting stations and polls. But, you know, they do want to get the message out there that this is somehow needed. This is somehow necessary because somehow the result might somehow be compromised by the dirty, nasty, cheating libs because they can't do anything fair and square. They're just gross and anti-American. And so, Our protectors have to protect us. And, you know, I think that's what they're doing right there.

It does seem like this. I mean, there's sort of a twofold effect. I think as you've identified first, there is the, you know, get the message out in advance that we can't trust the outcome of the election because our soldiers will not be allowed to be there. Therefore, the Democrats are going to steal it and there's nothing we can do. That seems to sort of be the first sort of effort to make up excuses for a result that's coming that Donald Trump may not like. The second part, though, is this sort of chilling impact that it actually has on Americans who may be in, you know, cities or people who don't want to actually have to show up and walk past, you know, some guy who's wearing a Trump sticker and has an AK-47 strapped to his belt or is holding it. That is intimidating. And they don't want to have to deal with that when they're exercising the right. So maybe they don't really care so much about Joe Biden. And it's really not worth the trouble, the heartache. of having to sort of deal with this experience, so they're just not going to vote at all. And that seems to be perhaps part of the Trump strategy, depressed turnout, particularly in Democratic precincts, and try to get people afraid of voting, whether this is fair or not.

And it sort of gets back to the efforts we've seen in previous elections or, you know, the mysterious phone calls made to people telling them the wrong polling places or telling the wrong date to go and vote, all in effort to try to suppress the turnout and the support of the Democrats. You know, I actually think these voter depression efforts that the right has undertaken basically since 2012. After Obama whooped Mitt Romney's butt in his second campaign, they felt like, all right, we're not going to beat the Dems Fair and Square. They're going to cook us. We got to find a way to somehow artificially depress the vote. But I think those efforts, you know, these voter suppression efforts in the South and other places have backfired and have actually galvanized voters to come out even stronger, right?

You know, churches and other places organize voter buses so that people can get together and go vote together as a community, right? And I think the more that they even talk like this, the more they're going to round people up to want to come out even more. and support each other and stand up in the face of what is obviously feeble intimidation tactics from a group of people who don't actually believe that they could win on the merits. And what does it say? I mean, we started this particular story about Caroline Levitt, who was Donald Trump's campaign press secretary for 2024. What does it say that she would go on Kimberly Gilfoyle show? And the both of them would talk about soldiers and use is a sort of, look, there's, I suppose there's an argument one could make about saying we want

everybody to be safe going into a very difficult environment politically. So we're going to make efforts to make sure that everybody has a safe way to get in and out and that there's no hanky-panky and that everybody can make this a good experience. That's fine to say, but that's very different from saying, we're going to have soldiers, we're going to show up at the precincts. Yeah, what a great idea. Let's have militia. I mean, that is so imprecise and so buffoonish. And as you pointed out, as we've noted, it's against the law. How come a press secretary for Donald Trump and a possible daughter law, the woman who's engaged to Donald Trump Jr., how come they don't know this? Or do they know it?

Well, to me, David, I think what you got to understand is these folks kind of understand their audience, which is a lot of people who masturbate to their gun collection. And so they do think of themselves as quote unquote soldiers in some war of tyranny against the government. So I think it's a matter of them actually knowing their audience more so than them actually having, you know, an organized regimented group of people who are going to, you know, stand up and protect democracy. Remarkable stuff and we will see where this goes. What could possibly go wrong with having soldiers with having armed men and women show up

at a voting place, Yauza. Okay, let's let's take a little transition here. The average real estate investor isn't inflating the worth of their real estate You don't know anything about real estate, Jessica, you rent. Look at that building right there. Trump owns that building. Take a look at the entire Manhattan skyline. Did you actually just say that?

Trump owns all of these beautiful properties. He's built these things. Oh, he actually said that. What do you know about it? You rent. It was a discussion about Donald Trump's legal woes on Monday's edition of the five, Jesse Waters, as usual, ran cover for Donald Trump,

but this time he insulted co-host Jessica Tarlov along the way, alleging that because she's a a renter, she couldn't possibly know enough about real estate to comment on Donald Trump's financial troubles and financial fraud for which he was found liable. We'll get to the Fox segment again, but just in case any of you have forgotten what is it sort of at issue here. The AP reports a judge can order the former president fork over $355 million of his fortune plus interest, finding he lied for years about his wealth and financial statements he used to secure loans and made deals as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to fame and the presidency.

The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience, Judge Arthur Ingeron wrote in a 92 page decision that spares Trump's company from closure, but forces it into years of court supervision among other sanctions. Donald Trump now, so of course, Donald Trump gets the $355 million penalty. Initially, it adds up with interest to a bond that he would have to pay pay at $450 million in order to appeal. That bond just got reduced and there's a discussion about that in $175 million. But at the moment, the penalty itself, $450 million still stands possibly at the end of this unless it gets reversed. So that's the New York civil fraud case. In addition, in New York,

Donald Trump has also been charged with 34 criminal felony charges of falsifying records in the Stormy Daniels case. That is the criminal case. Waters brushed all of that under the rug into the five, calling the prosecutions against Trump a savage attack on a man because these people are mentally ill. Huh? Well, check out who's mentally ill here. Jessica Tarla fought back in his remark about her renting her apartment. Watch. They're just trying to attack him any which way they can. Donald Trump has great, I mean, he thinks it's great representation. He is being given due process. He has gotten almost all of his requirements. from the Supreme Court down to the state courts. Okay. And what you just said beyond the incredibly rude way that you began about the fact that I rent my apartment.

Yes, Jessica. Is basically giving him carte blanche to do everything from storing classified documents and flattering subpoenas and not returning them to fomenting an insurrection after he lost an election by millions of those. Not charged with that, is he? Well, but that's what the cases are. Jessica, what I'm saying is there's no victims in any of these cases. just flat wrong. And by the way, anybody who would sort of stick their hand in the neighbor's face on

a set has got some serious problems. And that's a whole other issue. But aside for being entirely wrong in the facts, as Jesse Waters often is, and being wrong about Donald Trump and his crimes, Jesse Waters' elitist comment and is clear to stain for near Americans should in theory also anger a lot of the Fox News or audience, right? 30% of Americans rent, I'm sorry, 32% of Americans rent. That's over 100 million people who rent and a big chunk of them are Republicans.

And they also care about high housing costs as well. According to a morning console poll, 88% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans said it was important that the federal government address high housing costs that are contributing to inflation. So for all the Fox viewers who are out there who think that Jesse Waters is some kind of populist who cares about the economic challenges of average Americans, you should know that he is absolutely not. He is unhinged. He's clearly a sexist. He's very immature. And I don't know, I'm just, I'm still surprised was that the show does as well as it does. I mean, maybe this is a deliberate effort by Jesse Waters to sort of play the role of the clown, knowing that, you know, the audience kind of like seeing him get socked by Jessica Tarlov and kind of finds it sort of, humorous that he acts so immature? I believe people watch the show out of ritual.

I don't know that people are getting out of that show. You know, their marching orders for how they should feel about the country's politics. It's kind of a morning zoo crew type of atmosphere up there. We often see some of the crazy soundbikes that come out of that crew. But Jesse Waters, you know, he let his fangs show. He let it slip and show how he feels about actual normal people who have to rent, who don't own vacation homes, who don't have, you know, second and third properties where they're extracting rents and exploiting people. He showed a contempt for people who weren't part of that club and that class of Americans. So we shouldn't be surprised by the emptiest suit at Fox News, a walking, breathing haircut, that he was.

would have these things to say about everyday normal working people, you know, who have to pay rent every month, myself included. I can't afford a crib in Los Angeles, David. Well, speaking of empty suits, I will admit that it goes both ways, as I was telling her colleagues earlier. I actually own the house that I'm in now, but that doesn't make me any more informed or any more of an expert on real estate and real estate drawn. That's more. I still am lost on this stuff. And even though you have monthly mortgage. But I mean, so the point is just absurd. And I wonder if it just sort of gets to occasionally, I could sort of see there's a sort of towel snapping kind of vibe that comes across on the five, particularly in terms of the conservatives, Jesse Walters and

Greg Gutfeld and how they interact with Jessica Tarloff, who's clearly smarter than both of them combined, smarter than everybody combined in that show. So they kind of razzer a little bit with this sort of immature kind of thing because that's all they can do because they can't win on the actual arguments. Yeah, I don't think Jesse Waters is up there to present like some, you know, some nice, well-crafted opinion or argument. He's up there to be a smiling face for, and, you know, he obviously understands there's always a role to play when it comes to groveling and being a Trump sycophant,

particularly on Trump's favorite news station. And so he's playing the game. And that guy's never had an original thought in his life. Well, and to that point, I mean, Jesse Waters has already proclaimed that he is for Donald Trump, believes Donald Trump should be elected, wants to campaign for Donald Trump, even though I suppose that it goes against Fox policy of where their anchors and hosts should be. But in any case, the other part about it is you mentioned that he's not a very bright man. And the irony is that the person he worked for at Fox who held that slot before him, Bill O'Reilly,

for all of Bill O'Reilly's crazy conservative stuff, Bill O'Reilly is actually very smart. guy and was a very sort of logical thinker and you might disagree with his arguments, but at least he had a compelling argument that he would put forward. Jesse Waters can't put forward any sort of compelling rational logical argument behind his thoughts. It's all these sort of little sort of side jokes and putting his hand up and oh yeah, whatever, and just sort of dismissiveness, which I find very off-putting. But maybe that's the way our culture has gone particularly among conservative media, that it's really no longer about actually having conservative intellectual ideas and arguments.

Now it's just about being a jerk. It's just about following Donald Trump and insulting people, even people who are sitting right next to you. Yeah, I mean, the mainstream conservative politics these days, it's no longer like Milton Friedman and his economic arguments about the hour and the sanctity and purity of free markets and all of that crap that they were espousing when the conservative movement first, you know, sort of started. going. Like, that's not the argument they're making anymore. It's just, it's just an argument of cruelty and anger and fear mongering. There's no basis. Like, they're not going to get up there and be like, oh, let's talk about how every single Republican wants to strip your granny of Social Security and Medicare tomorrow if they could. They're not going to do segments on that because nobody wants to hear that. That's their actual policy beliefs. But nobody actually

wants to listen to them talk about that and try to give logic to that argument. And so they go up there and do stuff like this. Yeah, I hear you. We're going to take another break and come back with a pretty interesting story coming up about Joe Biden trying to use what should be perhaps a vulnerability and actually putting it on Donald Trump. We'll do that after this break. And welcome back to the show, I'm David Schuster with Zeke Schuster behind me and Waz-Lambre. So was the strategy in politics in which people like to suggest you should take a vulnerability of yours and somehow put it on your opponent. And if you can do that, you have a better chance of winning. Well, President Biden's reelection campaign seems to be

following that model now. They now appear to be ratcheting up the verbal attacks on Donald Trump. And in one of the latest broadsides, the Biden Harris team labeled Donald Trump as feeble, confused, and tired. This came on Monday. An appeals court reduced Donald Trump's bond in the civil fraud trial to $175 million. The original fine of $450 million still stands, at least for now, but they reduced the amount in order for Trump to file his appeal with the bond money to $175. And in addition to what's going on in the New York civil fraud trial, There's the criminal trial with Stormy Daniels in the hush money case and the 34 felony counts against Trump for that. Well, Donald Trump is blaming all of this. I'm Joe Biden.

This is all about election interference. This is all Biden run things, meaning Biden and his thugs, because I don't know if he knows he's alive. And it's a shame. It's a shame what's happening to our country. This is election interference. Election interference, says Donald Trump. Well, while he was in court on the same day, Donald Trump posted on true social a message that he had received. It says, received this morning, beautiful, thank you. It's ironic that Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you. But have you seen this? Psalm 109, verses 3 through 8. They have also surrounded me with words of hatred and fought against me without a cause and returned for my love. They are my

accusers, but I give myself to prayer. As Donald Trump by posting this is comparing him himself to Jesus. Jesus Christ indeed. The Biden campaign amidst all of this, Donald Trump, and by the way, at the news conference that Donald Trump had, he also seemed to lose his mind a couple of times. He said something like, well, we can't have an election in the middle of the campaign season. He got confused. He made a couple verbal stumbles. The Biden campaign then issued this public statement. Donald Trump is weak and desperate, both as a man and as a candidate for president. He spent the weekend golfing this morning comparing himself to Jesus in the afternoon lying about having money. He definitely doesn't have. His campaign can't raise money. He is

uninterested in campaigning outside his country club. And every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away from his dangerous agenda. America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump. Feeble, confused, tired. And by the way, during that news conference, Donald Trump at one point seemed to confuse the upcoming hush money trial of Stormy Daniels with the fraud judgment that he's already been hit with in the civil case. So he's just having difficulty keeping it all straight. Loss, is it too much from Democrats too soon? I don't think so. I think one, Donald Trump isn't actually some incredible like spry young man. He just seems so in comparison to Joe Biden. So I think it actually is a pretty effective tactic to

You like, be like, all right, yes, I am old as hell, but so is he, right? Like, it makes sense to actually point out the actual truth of how Donald Donald Trump is. But what I will say about Trump's Jesus comparison, maybe Stormy Daniels is actually Mary Magdalene in the Donald Trump Jesus story art, guys. This is not as crazy as it sounds, Schuster. You should really look into this. He's had a few disciples, apostles, if you will, Rudy Giuliani, and the like, you know, man of 40s. He saved a lot of their skins, too. So he's, it's not as crazy.

He's got a flock in the Maga crew. The Jesus comparisons, I'm starting to see the signs here, David. I'm not sure I'm going to believe it, though, and here's why. Well, for all sorts of reasons, but first of all, there's the standard argument in politics. When you get good news, you never want to bury your own good news. You never want to step on positive news. Donald Trump got some positive news on Monday when he had this appellate bond reduced from $450 million to 175. And rather than sort of focusing on that, he goes on this again, unhinged tirade about election interference and makes mistakes and verbal miscues and compares

himself to Jesus Christ. And so the argument is, well, people are not focused then on, oh, Donald Trump got a break from the court in terms of his appeal. They're saying Donald Trump is crazy. He's alluding to you and sees reposting a claim that he's somehow like Jesus Christ. That is crazy. It's crazy, but it's what it even rank in the top 100 craziest things Donald Trump has produced from his social media alone, you know, not like not even from like his life as a person as an entity or as a one time president, which still sounds absurd to say. Just from his social media alone, I don't know this would rank in the top 100, honestly. Yeah. And by the way, Polster Frank Lund's Republican poster who, you know, I'm friendly with Frank and respect some of what he's

done through the years and disagree with other stuff. He was out there in the wake of the Biden campaign statement calling Donald Trump old and feeble and confused and everything else, saying that, oh, This is from the party that wants to, when they go low, we go high. And yes, there was a time in a different Republican administration, a different Republican presidential candidate when maybe, yeah, maybe it wasn't necessary to sort of get in the gutter. But it just seems to me like Donald Trump is so far beyond the norm that you can't fight something like Donald Trump with the ordinary integrity that you white expect. that you have to throw back at Donald Trump, the kind of nonsense, the kind of language that

he is sort of throwing at you. And so in my view, I think it's wise for the Biden campaign, as much as they may put off some people who find it a little bit unseemly for Joe Biden to get engaged in calling Donald Trump nicknames or making fun of Donald Trump being feeble. To me, that's what it takes. And that kind of effort has to be done every day to make sure Donald Trump does not win. Yeah, I reject the idea that this is them going low, especially in comparison to Donald Trump, that's absurd. They were wanted to go low. This is a variety of things. Say he has a small pecker, call him a fat boy, terrible spray on tan. I mean, like they could go low if they really wanted to. They haven't even done that. They're just pointing out an obvious truth about the guy. So I reject Lunds' even characterization of this is the Trump. I mean, excuse me, the Biden campaign somehow getting in the mud and going low with Trump. This is standard stuff that they're doing. They need to get lower, actually.

Yeah, I agree. And one of the groups that's helping them get lower, and I think is doing an effective job as the Lincoln project. They just put up an ad in which the entire theme of their ad was, you really want this man, Donald Trump's face, his voice, his drama on your screens all the time for the next four years. And they ran, you know, super clip of some of the crazy things Trump said and Trump's sweating and looking terrible and looking, you know, with his crazy smirk. And as much as it may seem a little bit icky for people to think, oh, I'm I shouldn't really base my vote on something aesthetically shallow as has somebody looks. The fact is people do that. And if that's something that will help Democrats by saying,

by reminding voters, you like this guy and this circus does that end, and this is in your face all the time for four years, if that's what causes people to say, okay, okay, heart palpitations, panic attack, I don't want that. I can stomach Joe Biden. I may not like him, but I don't want the chaos and the freakishness of Donald Trump for four years. So because of that, okay, I'm going to pull the lever for Joe Biden. That's a strategy. And I think that's a strategy that may pick up a couple of votes here, a couple of votes there. And in an election where you're talking about 50 or 60,000 votes across six states making the difference, that's huge. Yeah, I mean, that's the name of the game. David, I guess we would like it for every single

American to be sitting down and reading policy papers all day. But the fact of the matter is, people want to vote for somebody that they're attracted to. And, you know, Donald Trump, he's not that attracted. He's just not. Well, something that I know we can all say in trouble as Woz, we are all attracted to you. Tell us where folks can find you and find your writing and your podcast. Big Waz on every single social media platform on planet. earth so you can check me out wherever you decide to do your socials at. Check us out at the ringer.com. And yeah, listen to the woke bros wherever you get your

pods. Well, as thanks for doing this first hour with me. I appreciate it. Much love to you guys. You can always find my stuff on Rebel HQ. That's on Facebook or YouTube. Such search Rebel HQ, you'll find a lot of videos there. And every now and then when I'm lucky, I get to sit in on one of these shows on the main show on TYT. So that'll do it for the first hour, the second hour with Jenk Ugar and Jordan Ewell is coming up right after this. Thanks for watching, everybody. Have a good night.