The Young Turks - Bye Bye TikTok

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Supreme Court Backs Law Requiring TikTok to Be Sold or Banned. Kevin O’Leary Reveals That He’s Offering Chinese Company $20 Billion in Cash for TikTok. Biden ADMITS Netanyahu Wanted To CARPET BOMB Gaza. Trump's Billionaire Treasury Pick Stresses Importance of Tax Cuts for Billionaires. CNN Panders To Trump By EXILING Top Anchor’s Show. JD Vance And Trump Get DUNKED ON For Their Presidential Portraits. Hosts: John Iadarola, Yasmin Khan, David Shuster SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com 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. I'm so upset. Oh my God. Would you explain what a jagoff is? Begah! Live from the Polymarket Studio in L.A. It's the Young Turks.

Be watching. Be watching. Be watching. Be watching. Be watching. Drop it like the Chances. Drop it like the chances TikTok is still available by Monday. Welcome back one and all to the power panel here at the Young Turks.

I am John Ida Rola. Jank is out, it's becoming a bit of a suspicious pattern, but another pattern that I actually embrace is, is I feel like Yaz, David, didn't we do the last? last power panel together? Wasn't it us three? I was on with was, but you know what? With someone else too, but I like the feeling, you know, the feeling. Yeah. Okay, yeah, when I saw that it was going to be, Yasur Khan, obviously, of both Rebel HQ and Modern Context, you have the king of Rebel

HQ here in David Chester. I saw it on the run and I was like, oh, it felt very comfortable, very familiar. And so that's going to be awesome. Thank you both for being here. Sure, I just regret I didn't put of time. Sorry about that. It's really good. You look very dapper, John, as always. Thank you. Well, I'm back in the studio, you know, I'm gonna use the wardrobe. You're making us look bad, John. Thanks a lot. That's the only thing I was hoping for. But anyway, glad to have you both here, glad to have the audience, glad to have some interesting news to discuss as well, including, as I alluded to, in the ceremonial dropping, a bit of an

update when it comes to TikTok. So why don't we start with that, starting with this. Your reaction to the TikTok is what like to do? Disappointment. I do believe that banning a social media app like TikTok is a violation of the First Amendment. The best way for TikTok to continue to exist is for it to be sold, which the law explicitly allows for. While you ban it is, it is controlled by Beijing. So if it were sold or firewalled, that would be fine. The TikTok ban is fully and fairly constitutional.

TikTok should not be banned. It should be sold. China should not own it, but it should continue to exist in this country. So there you have some senators responding to the decision made public by the Supreme Court earlier today that they would be upholding the law that would ban TikTok in the United States on Sunday if the company that controls it doesn't divest, sell it to an American company, that sort of thing. And obviously a number of those senators were not happy with it. Bear in mind this is coming about as the result of all. law that was actually passed, but they don't agree with some of the decision making of the Supreme Court. I also don't agree with it. I don't think that the proper way to kill a social media site is to ban it in this way. I think the proper way to kill a social media site is

to have Elon Musk buy it and then gradually ruin it. I think that's the proper way and we should continue that grand tradition. But anyway, the court was pretty clear. It was a unanimous decision. It seemed like they would go in this direction, but we were curious to see if there there would be any dissenting opinions. So they put out a 20 page decision. They said that the banner sale law does not violate the free speech rights of millions of TikTok users in the US. That law was passed in April with bipartisan support signed by President Joe Biden.

And the argument was that they needed to do this because of concerns about China, the Chinese government's potential use of the algorithm to manipulate American users or that they would get access to the private information of American users. And specifically in their opinion, the court's Court said, there is no doubt that for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok's data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. And so that's what they decided, and it was unanimous. I know a lot of people probably had concerns about, for a topic like this, which is so focused on, you know, an app, the obviously much older Supreme Court, how much are they going to know?

And I know some people probably had even more concerns about their ability to understand technology when earlier this week, Samuel Alito asked if people go to Pornhub for the essays. And so, yeah, there's concern about the older justices. But as it stands right now, it is on track to be shut down within about 48 hours, although there are a lot of avenues to potentially stop that or reverse it, were it to happen. And here is a statement from Press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre about Biden and his administration's influence in this. She said President Biden's position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming bipartisan fashion to the president's desk. TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other

ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law. However, given the timing, the implementation is now going to be effectively carried out by the next administration when Donald Trump is sworn in on Monday. Now, interestingly, over the past couple of days, there's been some sources for inside of the Biden administration implying that they might do something to get it to stick around, which struck a lot of people's considering that Biden had been an advocate for the banning of TikTok, although we should bear in mind that Donald Trump is also implying that he might do something. And we'll be discussing that when he had been one of the chief advocates for banning it, even before legislation was

really being considered. And so we'll turn to Trump in a little bit. But as I want to start with you, I don't know if maybe you were surprised by the Supreme Court ruling in this way. Maybe you can give us a feel for how likely you think it is that on Sunday the app could potentially go dark? Well, what they're saying as far as the app going dark on Sunday, they're saying that most likely if you don't have it downloaded to your phone already, you're not going to be able to. If you do have it downloaded to your phone already, it's just going to devolve to the point that it's unusable. It's just going to get the service is just going to get worse and worse, the video quality, that kind of thing. So eventually it will become defunct. But, you know,

TikTokers are already hopping over to another Chinese-owned app. So we might have a repeat of this whole saga in another year or two, John, the zoomers are learning Mandarin. That's how serious this is. But yeah, like there's a few different angles to this, right? There's the freedom of speech that's a concern. There's the fact that in today's modern world, so many people earn their livings off of these social media apps. And then, of course, there's a national security concerns. So the U.S. just wants to control all of the data that China apparently has access to with this app. But as much as I don't like social media or TikTok, I don't think Banning it is much of a solution to anything. And to be fair, they are trying to find the

American buyer. That said, I'm not super thrilled about any of these interested buyers. Kevin O'Leary is interested in buying the app. And apparently he has access to $20 billion in cash, which is problematic in and of itself. Mr. Beast, I don't trust that guy. And of course, Elon Musk is interested in purchasing the app. So I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not surprised by the Supreme Court decision because everything seemed to be trending in that direction. We did see a lot of bipartisan support for finding an American buyer for the app. And they're always citing this national security issue. You know, the thing is, though, as consumers, we still have to be wary of where our data is going.

Because if it's not going to China, it's going to the U.S. government, it's better, but it's still something to be wary of, right? But the reality is in today's modern era, information is king, and they all want it. David, did you buy the government's argument in this? And where do you see this going? Well, a couple of things. First of all, I'm going to defend Mr. Beast. I actually love his videos and his philanthropic work. So let's put Mr. Beast out of this. But I was actually not surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court did what they did. I thought that the argument from TikTok on free speech grounds was kind of flimsy to begin with.

And putting that aside, I mean, this was a bipartisan huge decision in which there was no disagreement when Congress passed this early in the spring. And so I think the Supreme Court was wise to say, look, you pass the law. President Biden signed it. You guys have to sort of live with the outcome here. And so now the question is, okay, is there some mechanism where Joe Biden can say, okay, we're actually not going to enforce this or we're going to allow app stores to can you do to have this? Or is there some way that maybe there is this sort of last minute sale in which the algorithm and all that data is given to an American ownership? I do think there are some legitimate national security concerns here. I think Congress was right to begin with, 170 million people with all their data essentially being sucked up by a Chinese ownership that is handing that over to the Chinese government.

And by the way, they're manipulating what's trending and what's not. They're setting the algorithms to benefit Chinese interests into earth the United States. So I think Congress was right in the beginning. I think the Supreme Court is right now. And if it's really that important, then sure, sell it off to one of these billionaires and let people keep using TikTok. Which could well happen. I'm more on the side of Yaz, of no one that I've seen named, am I super comfortable with them taking over this? I said earlier this week, I found myself in a position of being more comfortable with the Chinese government determining the algorithm than like if Elon Musk or Mark Mark Zuckerberg somehow got in charge of it because the Chinese government's ability to manipulate us is sort of hypothetical and abstract at this point. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg's anything

but we're dealing with that every day. But anyway, there are a lot of potential ways that it could be maintained. You brought up the possibility of not enforcing it. That is still a possibility. Joe Biden, they can make clear on Sunday that they're not enforcing it. And we'll get to Trump too. Everyone should bear in mind though that it's not quite as simple as just not enforcing it. The Apple, Google would still technically be in violation of the law. And Donald Trump is only going to be president for four years theoretically. And so are they going to want to break the law for four years rack up countless theoretical fines that then could be pursued by the next administration?

Maybe, maybe, maybe not. And also TikTok might not allow that continue. They might say, you know, the law is in effect. We're gonna try to play hardball by shutting down the service. There's a lot of these hypotheticals, but I wanna turn now to one of the most likely. Could Donald Trump as one of his first acts as president actually save TikTok? Well, it looks like he might want to do that. He might be trying to do that.

So the CEO of TikTok is apparently going to be at Trump's inauguration. Trump is reportedly considering signing an executive order to circumvent the ban. He talked, I mean, he's going to be on the dais, I believe, like sitting with like his closest guests. Obviously the inauguration plan is changing a little bit. It's going to be indoor. There are going to be fewer people there. I have a feeling like the CEO is probably still going to be around. And Trump has been laying the groundwork to potentially do something. So he posted on true social. He bleated. I just spoke to the chairman of Xi Jinping of China. The call was a very good one for both China and the USA. It is my expectation that we will solve

many problems together and starting immediately. We discussed balancing capital T trade, capital F fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects. President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the capital W world more peaceful and safe. Okay, so that sounds, he's not being very specific there and it almost sounds a little bit presidential, if childish. But he goes on to say, the Supreme Court decision was expected and everyone must respect it, which is interesting. We don't often get Donald Trump saying that the separation of powers is something he has respect for. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, he continues though, but I must have time to review the situation, stay tuned. So that's a little bit confusing.

What do you mean your decision on TikTok? Well, he made clear what he meant later today, earlier today I should say, but after that on an interview with CNN. So he said, it ultimately goes up to me. So you're gonna see what I'm going to do. Congress has given me the decision, so I'll be making the decision. And I wanna be very clear, no, they didn't, what are you talking about? Like we're speculating here and we have been on the panel about the possibility that Donald Trump might tell the DOJ just don't actually enforce the ban. And if Pam Bondi is the head of the DOJ, she's gonna do literally whatever he wants.

So in effect, he would be sort of making a decision that saves TikTok. The law that was passed, overwhelmingly, with almost every Republican, in the house voting for it, that was then signed by Donald Trump, that was challenged in court, made its way all the way to the Supreme Court, and then was unanimously upheld, has no component of, well, and now the ball's in your court, Donald. We played at the legislature and the judiciary, but honestly, that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you think about it. Now, he can, in effect, sort of make that decision. But it is worrisome to me that his immediate approach to something like this is, no, at the end of the day, I'm the only one

that matters, I'm the only one that will make the call. You guys can play at power or legislature or whatever, or legislation, but it's only me that matters. I find that to be a little bit worrying, even if like on the substance, I guess I would prefer that he keep the service available. David, I'll start with you. What do you think about what he's communicated about his possible actions? Well, look, I share your concerns about Donald Trump not having any basic understanding about how laws work and how legislation works. I mean, the answer here is if Donald Trump wants to give a speech and rally the nation around a new law that protects TikTok and rolling back the previous one, he can do that and Congress can pass a law that reinstates TikTok and

allows Chinese ownership or anybody else to own it, that's fine. But as it stands right now, Donald Trump tries to go through some executive order to do that, I guarantee there's going to be somebody out there. It might be a parent who hates TikTok or somebody's going to say, I don't like TikTok. I don't like the fact that the Chinese on it. I'm going to bring a lawsuit that this law's not being forced. And that lawsuit is going to be successful until TikTok is owned by an American company. So there's a dead end for Donald Trump and the TikTok supporters here unless he wants to follow the usual requirement of changing things through legislation, which will require Congress, the House, and the Senate to pass something.

Yes. Yeah. And I just want to I just want to remind people, Trump started all of this, right? He's the one who said that he wanted to ban TikTok in the first place. And it is very uncomfortable that this thing got pushed through. Congress signed off on it. Biden signed off on it. And the Supreme Court signed off on it. So that's three separate branches of government, all three branches of government.

And now Trump is saying, well, I'll decide what I want to do on day one. I also want to say, well, just overall, this just feels like more of the uncertainty and instability that we're all used to living with these days. And to be clear, just because we're used to it, doesn't mean that we should be comfortable with it. People are struggling to earn livings and to adapt to a world where technology is constantly changing the working landscape. And we're doing it, right? Like we're doing our best. We're burned out, but we're doing it. Millennials have become pros at pivoting in our careers because of the general instability that we learn to live with.

And a big part of the reason why we're having to do this is because we're often employed at the whims of these giant corporations, tech or otherwise. So whether or not you pursued that traditional path and got a nine to five at some big corporation, you were still subject to layoffs. Then those people who said, you know what, I'm going to try this other thing. I'm going to work for myself and, you know, try to make a living on YouTube or on TikTok or any other social media platform. They were the entrepreneurs. They were the ones who were doing something really brave. It's a lot of work to become an influencer or to earn a living on these platforms. And they were doing it.

They spent years building up their platforms. And that's not for nothing. So it does feel, it does have kind of the same feel as, you know, just getting the rugs swept out from underneath you for a lot of those creators. So I do sympathize with what they're going through. I hope things work out for them. We'll see where we end up on January 20th. Yeah, I mean, look, the only, I guess, real precedent that we have is that there have been other platforms that have not in the same way, but eventually faded away or been killed. Vine was obviously killed.

And there have been, there's always some creators or people who are sort of native to one platform. that are able to jump over to others, but certainly it's not going to be all of them. And so yeah, I feel terrible for people who've been possibly doing great work across a variety of different topic areas. And now you're just looking to see like, will I have my life, you know, in 72 hours? And to be so unsure about that has got to be incredibly stressful. And we'll see, he's giving, I think, all the signals that he intends to do something about it.

I agree with you, David, he should just push Congress to pass another law. That's the way this is supposed to work. They could do it. They could do it as their first priority or whatever if they wanted to. And they're all effectively his dogs anyway, he can whip them into doing whatever he wants. The fact that they'll have to contradict something that they just voted for last year, I'm sure for most of them is going to be totally acceptable. Because if they don't do it, then Elon Musk is just going to primary them out of existence next cycle anyway. And so he could probably do it.

But I do wonder, there's like one X factor in this, which would be Mark Zuckerberg, who he's not talking about. buying TikTok, he doesn't need to. He just needs it to die. And then he assumes that, you know, if Red Note and all that stuff doesn't end up happening, then a lot of people are gonna switch over to using Instagram and to using Reels, which I can understand why a lot of people would assume that that would happen. And the fact that he's cozying so up to Donald Trump, and he's throwing money at Donald Trump, it could be that he's hoping to tip the scales and get Donald Trump to not intervene on this. I will just say, and you know, I speak only for myself. If TikTok does die, it's obviously difficult. There's a lot of potential options

of where people can go from there. I'm sure some people, by the way, will just dial back their social media use, which considering all that's going on in the last few years is probably not the worst idea. Many people will consider switching over to reels. And to me, that would have seemed very reasonable like six months ago. I will say the idea of Mark Zuckerberg, like getting what he wants after the last couple weeks of what he's been doing, is incredibly distasteful to me. So I would hope that if there's any other option for you creators or even people are just going to view this stuff, just do it somewhere other than Reels. Like I, if nothing else, if all of us have to lose in all of this, I hope that Mark Zuckerberg

loses too. Just as like a strong message from the country that the stuff he's done over the past couple weeks is in no way acceptable. In any event. I will say the word on the street with the zoomers and a lot of the TikTok users is that they would really rather learn Chinese, learn Mandarin, then go over to reel. So hopefully they stick with that. Fingers crossed. Okay, well, we're gonna be watching the scene. I guess we'll know by our next show on Tuesday, obviously the studio is dark on Monday. So we'll see what we've got when we next see you. But we are gonna take a short break. Much more news to come on the other side of this. Okay, I want to apologize to everyone. That little audio clip that Bart put in,

maybe laugh harder than I've laughed in literally weeks. And now unfortunately, we have to transition into only the darkest story on the entire rundown. So with that said, brace yourself for a tonal shift starting with this. Now I'll just say, when I went to Israel immediately after their attack by Hamas, eight days later, whatever it was, and I told him we were going to help. I said, but BB, I said, you can't be carpet bomb in these communities. And he said to me, well, you did it. So I don't know if Joe Biden intended to reveal what he

revealed in that interview, if he was telling an anecdote and sort of just fell into it. But he appeared to indicate pretty clearly there that in a private conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the attacks on October 7th, Netanyahu was advocating for carpet bombing Gaza, or at least pointing out some of the, I guess, lack of moral high ground that our country has in that area. And so, look, there's been a lot of criticism, I think, rightly so, of the military strategy. Biden is indicating there that he was advocating in private the way that he has in public for them to dial back the violence and all that. And there has not been literal carpet bombing,

certainly not on the scale that Netanyahu was referred to the US committing in World War II. But I would say that like, if you just spread it out over a long period of time, is it fundamentally different? Like doing it all at once has the term carpet bombing. If you do it over the course of months, and destroy as many buildings and kill as many people. I don't know, the difference seems a little bit more academic than substantive at that point for me. But that said, we have a little bit more of Joe Biden and a little bit of what he was doing in regards to Benjamin Netanyahu. I said, but BB, I said, you can't be carpet bomb in these communities. And he said to me, well, you did it. You carpet bomb, not his exact words,

But you carbon bomb, Berlin, you drafted nuclear weapons. You killed thousands of innocent people because you had to in order to win a war. But that's why we came up with the UN. New mess, new deals by which how, what would we do relative to civilians and military? So he was comparing 21st century war tactics, battle tactics, with World War II. Well, what he was really doing was, he was going after media. for saying you can't indiscriminately bond civilian areas. Even if the bad guys are there, even as the bad guys there, you can't take out 2, 10, 12, 1,500 people, innocent people in order

to get the one bad guy. And by the way, I don't want to blow Benjamin Nanyahu's mind or anything. But a lot of people no longer believe that much of that was necessary to draw those wars to a close. He should do some reading. It's interesting stuff. But anyway, the issue is that in the end, a lot of people were killed. And so the Palestinian health authorities, they say that more than 46,600 people have been killed over half of the identified victims being women, children, or older people, not the sort of combatants that they might be labeled. A recent study actually put that toll closer to 70,000. And so I don't know, I feel like it should be bigger news that Joe Biden indicated that in this conversation,

relatively early on following October 7th, Netanyahu is saying, no, we're going to do whatever we think we need to do. And we're going to do it from the same sort of approach to warfare that the US used during World War II decades and decades and decades ago. And Biden would say he was trying to advocate against them doing that. And yet the death toll became what it was. And that's one thing. But then after having had that conversation and seeing the results, seeing the strategy and the death toll from it, the sheer devastation from it, Biden continued giving weapons and aid and support up until literally this last week. It was one of the last things he okayed as president. And so I don't know, I don't know what he took away from that

conversation. I don't know, you would think he's been paying a lot of attention to the situation in Gaza ever since then. And yet the actions he's taken since then seem utterly inconsistent with the sort of moral high ground that he wanted us to have that he would imply that he was standing in when he had that conversation. So the entire thing is frustrating. We're gonna turn to Antony Blinken, some of the last things he said in regards of this conflict, you know, as we close out the days of Joe Biden's presidency. But yeah, Zah, I want to turn to you. What do you make about this? Are you surprised at all about that conversation? I just don't know what his intention was in revealing that conversation. What does he want to

Thank you. Thank you so, so much President Biden for your immense efforts in curbing the genocidal tendencies of your good friend Benjamin Netanyahu. He's really just doing the absolute least. He stated something incredibly obvious to a genocidal maniac. He conceded immediately to opposition or to his objections. And then he just continued to, as you said, fund and arm Israel. And why did an argument like that even work on Biden? He's not the one who who bombed anyone during World War II. And I think you mentioned this as well. Those bombs have been controversial from the beginning.

From before they were dropped, they were incredibly controversial. They still are incredibly controversial. And the idea that one country indiscriminately bombing civilians in a nation justifies another country indiscriminately bombing civilians in a nation is absurd. It's also very jarring the way that he's talking about thousands of people dying. These world leaders, they really just sit in their offices and they make decisions that impact thousands and thousands of lives around the world, not just in these very specific areas. People have family members who have died over there. People have entire families who have died over there.

It's really upsetting the way he's talking about it. And I really don't know why he's talking about it now, as if he did something good because he really didn't. Even if he felt some type of way about it, he didn't do anything to stop what was going on. David? Well, look, it seems like Joe Biden was trying to communicate somehow that at the beginning of Israel's war against Hamas, a week after the October 7th massacre, that he was trying to urge Israel to be more precise, use more precise munitions. Don't just take out entire buildings where there may be dozens of terrorists because, and yes,

even though Hamas hides underneath schools and mosques and civilian areas, that's not an excuse to then sort of wipe out that building. And I think that's the point that Biden was making. But I'm not sure what he could have said that would have changed anything, because the fact of the matter is, if you look at, for example, the peace deal that was just signed the ceasefire, the representative from Qatar from Hamas in Qatar said in signing this that there'll be another October 7th, that they will support another October 7th, that their aim is to wipe Israel off the map. That's who Israel's enemy is. So I think Israel was in a tough spot when 1,200 people got massacred.

A war is a terrible thing. It was a terrible thing in World War II. There was no justifiable military target in the United States dropping bombs in Nagasaki Hiroshima. I don't think Israel engaged in indiscriminate bombing. Israel, he says that it was trying to target Hamas. And unfortunately, thousands of innocent people who were living there got killed. But war is a terrible thing.

And I think, you know, Joe Biden trying to sort of wash his hands of it doesn't really make any sense to me. Yeah, look, I agree with you and you brought up the question like what could he have said, maybe nothing. Maybe there's literally nothing that he could have said. There's theoretically things he could have done. Like I'm glad that in the immediate, the beginning days of that he was advocating for restraint. But if restraint isn't pursued, then maybe you can't talk to him.

Maybe you can't force him to follow the military strategy that you'd prefer. But then you don't have to supply the bombs that are going to be used. in an indiscriminate fashion. Like, if you don't like the way the bombs are being used, stop giving them bombs to use, would be my advice. And to Netanyahu, again, I don't think I'll be any more persuasive towards him than Joe Biden was capable of. But when he talks about, like, you know, it's an existential threat.

We do whatever we want. You know, we carpet bomb, we glass all of Gaza, whatever, it doesn't matter. We have to win the war. Yeah, that's what the other side says, too. Like, I hear sometimes, like Pete Higgseth was talking about, like, why, why do we we comply with these international treaties and all that? Some of our enemies don't, we don't just comply with this stuff out of kindness towards our enemies. We do it out of an aspirational hope, which I think is often returned that our troops will be treated with the same

respect, that those we fight will comply with these rules. And I do think that, with some exceptions, that has generally been the rule of the last few decades. When you act in this fashion towards them, you teach them that is the, that's the way we do this. We're willing to kill your civilians to take out your military because it's existential. Well, then why would they not be willing to continue doing that to you as well? And then what moral high ground do you have to say it's unacceptable to target civilians when we already have the reporting from a couple weeks ago that you literally laid out, oh no, you can't just kill five civilians to take out one expected Hamas member. Let's make it a hundred. You've given the dark calculus that they now can also

follow. And I know what he might say. They're going to do it anyway. They're a terrorist group. Sure, but now they're on the same moral playing field as you. And so again, like- But John, to Netanyahu's point though, I don't think the United States or even Joe Biden has a leg to stand on. I mean, Joe Biden supported the war in Iraq. If you look at some of the urban warfare battles of Fallujah, there were plenty of Iraqi civilians. When US troops went into Baghdad, they were estimated 20,000 civilians that were killed in this

first sort of run into Baghdad in the second Gulf War. Was that fair? Was that? I mean, was that something United States should have engaged in? And I think that's the point when you're talking about urban warfare, a war, a lot of people, a lot of citizens and people get killed and the United States is just as guilty of that as anybody. And I think that was Netanyahu's point. Fine, you don't like the fact that we're gonna kill a lot of innocent people to try to destroy Hamas. Well, maybe a lot of Iraqis

didn't like the fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died in the US effort to try to get at the Iraqi troops. War is a terrible thing. Yeah, no, you're 100% right to bring up the massive civilian death toll in Iraq. I've I've seen estimates of 400,000 or more, which is obviously utterly unacceptable. I wasn't on the air to respond to that sort of stuff at that point, but TYT obviously from before the war even began, spoke out against it. I will say also though, we haven't got hope that we don't have a 20 year continuation of this conflict in Gaza, but we should also point out that estimates have shown that the pace

of civilian casualties has no equal in any of these conflicts. Now obviously if you stretch it over that many years, maybe the US invasion of Iraq would end up being worse. But yeah, it's wrong in both of those cases. The war is ending after a year. I mean, the US war in Iraq went on for what, 12 years? So yeah, I mean, you could say, you know, 70,000 civilians killed in a year, that's terrible, it's awful. But again, Israel has ended the war. I mean, they've got a peace deal.

And would the war have gone on a lot longer if Israel had tried to be more precise? Probably, and maybe they could have eventually defeated Hamas by just using bullets and going on the ground and having ground invasion. But I think a lot of civilians, I think Gaza would be even worse now. I don't know. And obviously to even do this speculation, we require more time than we have for the topic. I will say, I hope that you're right. I hope that this deal is the end of it that I think very much remains to be seen. The history of the region implies that it might not be as clean as that, but I hope for everyone's sake, especially the civilians on both sides, that that ends up being the case. That said, I think we're getting on in the hour.

Why don't we take our second break? We come back. We're going to turn back to the United States and talk a little bit about Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary. Welcome back everyone as you close at the first hour of the show. We've got a couple more topics to get to, so why don't we jump right into it. Will you work with those of us who want to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage to take millions of Americans out of poverty? Senator, I believe that the minimum wage is more of a statewide and regional issue. So you don't think we should change the federal minimum wage?

wage of $7.25 an hour? No, sir. That is Scott Besant, Trump's pick to be Treasury Secretary, and Trump chose him, and he's a billionaire. And so when Bernie asked him, do you think we should raise the minimum wage, I was on the edge of my seat. Oh, what's he going to say? And I was as shocked as everyone to find out that he doesn't actually think it's a priority. So anyway, I just want to remind to everyone, if you work a full time job, you're doing what the right says you're supposed to do. Republicans constantly attack people, like, you need to get out there, you need to work. Okay, so you're working 40 hours a week all year. If you're making this minimum wage,

that amounts to $15,080. And perhaps there's some remote corner of the country where you can live on that. If there is, I don't know what it is or where it is. But anyway, he's doing Well, he, I checked into it, he doesn't make the federal minimum wage. He makes a little bit more actually, he's an investor and a hedge fund manager. He recently disclosed assets worth at least $521 million, but as I'm sure you've seen in these disclosures, the disclosures are always massive ranges. So it is clear that he has potentially $5, 6, 8 billion dollars to his name. And so if he becomes Treasury Secretary, he's not going to waste his time raising the minimum

wage or anything, that's just for the poor's, that's just for the peasants, so what What does he actually want to do? Well, here he is talking about his true passion. This is the single most important economic issue of the day. This is pass fail. That if we do not fix these tax cuts, if we do not renew and extend, then we will be facing an economic calamity. And as always, with financial instability, that falls on the middle and working class people.

We will see a gigantic middle class tax increase. We will see the child tax credit halved. We will see the deductions halved. So it will be what we call in economics, it has the potential for a sudden stop. And as I said, traditionally with these sudden stops, it falls on working Americans. Okay, so his true passion is continuing the Trump tax cuts, perhaps making them just permanent. On for the next thousand years, they'll be getting those tax cuts. And it's very important.

And he's being very careful about the way he says it. I love the way he was like so slow. And he's like, we need to fix these tax cuts. He doesn't want to say we need to make sure that rich A-holes like me continue to get massive of pay days year after year, that we transfer wealth up to those with the most and put more of the tax burden on them. He's being very careful in that way, he's also lying quite a bit because he's saying there that if these don't continue, the burden will fall on the poor.

See, he's not thinking about his own financial interest, he's thinking about you, because the poor did actually get a tax cut under this. And so if we jump to Graphic 3, you'll see on average, they've gotten about a $70 tax cut a year and think about how ruined they will be economically if they don't have it. Oh wait, there's a reference in that graphic a little bit earlier that those in the top point 1% got 250 grand a year off of it. Well, I imagine that billionaires who are an even smaller percentile are probably doing even better than a half million dollars that they get. So who actually would suffer to the extent that someone who's making millions of dollars

a year can potentially financially suffer, I think it would actually be the wealthy there. So look, this is fear mongering. This is what they do. This is the point of electing Republicans into the presidency of them taking over is to transfer trillions of dollars to the wealthy. The economy inevitably falls apart. And then to recover, we elect a Democrat who comes in, makes difficult decisions that prove to be unpopular so that they get tossed out just in time to bring another Republican in to renew the tax cuts. That's the point of all of this, of Maga and the right wing media and the trans panic and the migrant stuff, the caravans, they're eating your pets. Scott Besant is there to manage the one thing that

truly matters, which is the trillions upon trillions of dollars at stake for the wealthiest people in the country. So we'll have more, and I like that Bernie Sanders was mixing it up with him. But David, I want to start with you. What do you make about this? It's one of the nomination hearings that I think is drawing the least attention so far this week. Well, John, I think you're actually spot on. And the fact is if Scott percent was really concerned about middle class and working class finances, then he should be against the Donald Trump tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, because that's gonna impugn the buying ability of more Americans than any of these taxes ever could. So he should come out against the tax cuts. He should come out against the tariffs.

If he's also concerned about, say, inflation, which he expressed some concern about, then he should also be against the government spending $85 billion, as Tom Holman, the Bordersaur wants to spend in order to round up migrant workers, $85 billion. By the way, that's more money than the government spends each year for the entire Department of Justice budget or the State Department budget. It goes on and on. And every time that the government adds a new program and puts money on the credit card, we are that much closer to not only inflation, but to having the economy collapsed. So Mr. Bassett, maybe he really is concerned about protecting the economy. He wants to avoid inflation. He wants to avoid a crash. But the way to do it is not to say, well, we've got to

fix these. We've got to make sure that these tax cuts continue. No, he should be saying, oh, the terrorists, that's just bluster. And we're not going to deport anybody. We're not going to have the shocks to the economy the most economists think. I would have loved to have heard that. Yeah. Yeah. The right has effectively and successfully rebranded trickle down economics because trickle down economics. That's not really a sexy term anymore. But they're giving blatant benefits to the wealthiest people in the country unapologetically. And they're not hiding it much, John. Like he's picking his words a little bit, but not a whole lot. And I would love to hear more. I would love to hear him elaborate on how he thinks that tax cuts on the rich

would prevent an economic catastrophe, whatever he called it, catastrophe or something like that, he said. He didn't go into a whole lot of details apart from the idea that it would be too abrupt of a change from what we're already doing. So it would be too destabilizing. But the diminishing of the middle class is one of the biggest indicators of pending financial and economic disruption in a country. And it will be very difficult to recover from. The middle class is barely hanging on as it is. And up to that point, the fact that he would be unwilling as the Treasury Secretary to even consider increasing the national minimum wage really shows how much he actually cares about those lower and middle class people. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I would have loved

to have heard someone of the hearings just ask him, hey, so you're apparently an expert in, you know, the economy and all that. So who pays for tariffs? Like when the foreign government has to pay more money, what do they do? They just, they absorb that? I want you to say that you think they absorb that. Say a really stupid thing directly into the camera so that we can quote you someday. Unfortunately, nobody asked him that exact question. But yeah, look, this is, As I said, this is the priority. When they pass those tax cuts, and like David said, do these tariffs that are going to utterly decimate those at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, like they got $70 in a tax cut. The estimates are that they're gonna end up paying at least

$2,500 more from the effect of the tariffs on inflation. Any objective observer knows that that's politically going to be wildly damaging to the administration that does all that. I feel very confident saying that if we have elections as we've been accustomed to in this country in four years, how can you possibly win reelection after doing to the economy what they're planning to do? It's going to do terrible damage. It's going to do terrible political damage to them, which is a reminder of how important this is to them, how much money we're talking about them getting, that they would be willing to set fire to their chances of winning the next presidential election just to get this one bill.

And that's my read. We'll see, maybe it won't work out that way. We're living in crazy times, but that's the way it feels right now. And with that said, why don't we move to to something maybe a little bit lighter, starting with this. Trump's official White House portrait was released today, certainly not your traditional portrait. It is not your traditional White House portrait. And if you're taking a look at it, you could see why. You might notice something very familiar, the president elect, making sort of the same face he made when his mugshot was taken.

Of course, many people drawing attention to this, we have no, it's unclear why the president elected wanted to make this space, but I will tell you, Lindsay, look, I covered President like Donald Trump's campaign. Defiance was a major theme from the campaign, now to the White House. So the portrait is out. I know everybody has been waiting for it, and you can now see it. This was, the Trump transition team released these. We'll give you another look right there, and you can see, J.D. Vance, don't you worry, we'll get to you and whatever it is that you're doing there. But you have, Trump, I think, is drawing a lot of the attention because he's clearly glowering. I think that the reporter that you saw there is right. He's trying to do the prison

thing. Look, I'm not a big fan of Trump, and so I read it a little bit differently. If we can put that up again, I'm getting, you know, it's harsh lighting, obviously. It's supposed to be a little bit ominous. So weird lighting, you've got something kind of like hair on his head. I don't know how to read that. And Edwin said he looks like he's maybe having a stroke. There's obviously a big difference in how open his eyes are. One is really open. One isn't. I don't know. Nervynne neurologically what that means. And he looks like he might be pooping into his presidential diapers. But anyway, there's just a lot here that doesn't really read as presidential or normal or attractive to me. But I don't want to be overly shallow. I'll turn to you,

Yaz. What do you make of this? I'm already really tired of seeing these pictures everywhere. Every time I open my phone, there are these pictures just staring at me, glowering at me. The thing is, if they're going to use so much Photoshop on these photos, couldn't they make him less orange, like make him a more normal color instead of whatever that bronzy orange is that they're always going for? The shading is crazy. The lighting is crazy. The image is crazy. Like just the way that he chose to present himself as the 47th president, especially when you compare it to the 45th presidency shot, it's very different. And he really thinks that he's he's commanding some kind of presence. I don't get that. But, you know, people will see. it what they want to see. And yeah, I know you mentioned J.D. Vance's picture, but it looks like a glamour shot, man. Like it looks like a face tune glamour shot. And then he was like, yeah, I just take this. Like a picture that his wife took on her phone, went into face tune, and then sent it in. They're like, do that one. I like that one. I like how I look in this one.

Oh my God. David, you're looking presidential. There's a dial here. I think he may be onto something. I mean, we can all put up lights against our face and maybe that's how we do it. You know, the thing that bothers me, and normally I wouldn't care about you know Donald Trump and his lighting and all that kind of stuff. But the fact is if you go into Washington DC and you go to any government building, any federal government agency or building, there's a picture of the sitting president and there's a picture of the sitting vice president. And are we to believe that this crazy overlit glamour photo that Donald Trump puts up that that's now going to be in every

government building in Washington DC and every federal agency because I guarantee people who walk in there are going to be like, oh my, this is a joke, right? This isn't serious. And is that what we're to believe now about all these government agencies and this is all just a joke? And so it just, it strikes me as this isn't serious. You know, just just take the regular photo with the flag over you and put up that picture. You want to have a glamour shot at the entrance to the White House or on your webpage. That's fine. But if this is the official portrait that goes everywhere, man, oh man, there are going to be a lot of laughing people laughing not with Donald Trump, but laughing at our government.

Yeah, every time you go get your passport, that's what you got to look at. And that's what I think of. Oh, God. Well, um, the right appears to love it. The transition team definitely did. If we could jump to graphic three. They said they describe as the portrait says they go hard. I don't, I don't know what in this context that's supposed to mean. Oh, I can explain that. That's actually a reference to J.D. Vance, you can't see the couch in his photo that's below him. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone now. No, you should not have. No, I have no idea what they're talking about. Hard as in like Donald Trump is hard. He's tough. Yeah. Come on. Yeah, what did he like mentally did he

bust into another one of the contestants, the 14 year old contestants on one of his beauty pageants again? I don't know. But yeah, the Wright loves this. They see those two photos and they think, these are manly tough men to reasonable, rational people who are not knee-deep in the cult that makes no sense whatsoever. But to those in the thick of it, they love this stuff. I'll remind you of what Jesse Waters said about Donald Trump's very similar mugshot. I am now going to book the Fulton County photographer for my Christmas card. Because, Judge, and I say this with a unblemished record of heterosexuality, he looks good. And he looks hard.

It's a handsome mugshot. My wife says he looks fierce. He looks hard. I wish they would stop. It is strange for a guy. I would stop saying he looks hard. Please stop. They need to stop saying that he looks hard.

Like I know that like you're thinking about your own nether regions. and that's infecting your vocabulary, but please stop saying it, Jesse Waters. Anyway, for a guy who goes through his day, critiquing every possible choice, should I use a straw, should I eat soup, no, that'll make me look gay, that'll make me look gay, my secret will be revealed.

To then just go on TV with a camera in your face and say how hard and hot and fiercely is, is such a weird choice. And I will remind everyone it was alluded to earlier, if we go to the final photo, This was Trump's photo from the previous term, much more normal. It's kind of what presidential portraits, I guess, look like. Again, weird hair-like substance on his head.

That was a strange choice, but I will say, and I want to close with this, it's strange, and as David pointed out, we're gonna have to see that everywhere we go. But I also think it's kind of appropriate for the period of America that we've entered into. It is going to be a dark, painful, violent place. He promised us blood. It's going to be a bloody process to get all these damn migrants out. And Elon Musk is promising that there's going to be very painful, hard economic times with tariffs and Doge and all that.

Like, I think the face he's making properly, like, communicates the way he sees America. It's stern and it's glowering and it's judging. It's not inviting. It's not warm or welcoming or proud or happy in any way. If he were to smile, I think that would be weirdly incongruent with the way he will be president. But anyway, I think we have a couple of minutes. Do you want to do one more topic with the time we have? I guess that sounded rhetorical. I'm actually, I thought you were talking to Kate.

Yeah, I'll do one more. Okay, let's do it. We'll keep it short. Let's do it. Okay. CNN is apparently shaking things up and one of the casualties of the shakeup could well be one of its highest rated stars. You're seeing him there.

It is Jim Acosta. Here is what is now being reported. So CNN chief Mark Thompson apparently called Jim Acosta on Wednesday to propose that his show, CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta, be moved just a little bit from its current 10 a.m. Eastern time slot to midnight, according to the newsletter status news. So that's a major shift. Media reporter Oliver Darcy said the move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news. One media executive said they want to get rid of Acosta to throw a bone to to Trump, midnight is not a serious offer when his ratings are among the best on the network.

Now this is something that Jim Acosta probably is not gonna be a fan of, but you can imagine why Trump might be a fan of this. And if you don't remember why, here's a reminder. Donald Trump is returning to the CPAC stage tomorrow. Hide the flags. So disturbing. Trump is still bullying with racist tropes, just like he did when he called Mexico. immigrant's rapists and just like when he tried to ban Muslims coming into this country. It's twisted and it's evil. A couple of weeks ago, I compared Trump's comeback tour to the circus full of sideshow acts and clowns. I later got an email from an expert on the circus industry. This person pointed

out that comparison actually was not fair because unlike the chaos of Trump world, a circus is carefully composed and organized. Comparing Trump to a clown is most definitely an insult to clowns. There is no mechanism for Trump to get reinstated. That is delusional. If Trump really believes he will be back in the White House this August, he should get help. You are not well, sir. Honestly, I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN. And if you did it well, your ratings are much better. If I may ask one of the questions, please take your fake White House seal and go play president somewhere else. Yeah, and you saw a bit of their direct interactions.

Trump repeatedly yelled at him, your fake news, you're an embarrassment, he attacked CNN. He called Acosta and CNN the enemy of the people, obviously inspiring a lot of hatred of and potentially acts of violence against members of the media. And so there's a lot of people in the media that Donald Trump doesn't like, but Jim Acosta is probably in the S tier there. And so CNN could very well be doing this to cozy up to Trump to get him to go a little easy on them. And if that is the case, and that's the best explanation I've seen because his ratings are good compared to other CNN people, this seems to be another case of anticipatory surrender, just complying with the strong man before he even asks you to. And if you watch CNN, if you're a fan of CNN, I think this should really worry you for the signal it sends about the way CNN is going to approach Trump's second term. But David, I want to start with you. You have more experience than I do with these sorts of newsrooms. and these sorts of decisions. What do you make about the theorizing you're seeing the rumors?

Well, I can I can confirm that the 10 a.m. slot, which I had for a year or so on MSNBC, and actually did pretty well, nobody cares about the 10 a.m. slot. It's also might as well be Siberia. It's probably just as bad as midnight. So the fact is, you know, maybe for some people in the morning, yeah, they can watch Jim Acosta. But so what I wish CNN would do, and I suppose we don't have to worry about many CNN viewers because there aren't that many left right now is if they had any courage, if they had journalistic integrity, and I'm not, you know, Jim Acosta is not my cup of tea. But given that he's doing well, given that the audience likes him, CNN should move him into early prime time, move him at 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock,

or at least put him in the middle of the late afternoon. That's what you do with successful shows in the morning is you put them in a time slot that actually gets even more eyeballs. The idea that CNN would capitulate to Donald Trump, even before Donald Trump is president, and move Jim to midnight is crazy. And again, I say this, not as a Jim Acosta fan. I think he's somebody who draws far too much attention to himself. When my family a couple years ago, when Jim Acosta was covering the White House, we used to say, you know, may you find somebody to marry who loves you as much as Jim Acosta loves himself? That's the problem I have with Jim Acosta, but he's doing well and at least he's willing to stick it to Donald Trump. So CNN should

show some courage. Yeah, and this is just more of that cowtowing to Trump that we we've been seeing from the supposed left-leaning legacy media outlets. We've already seen capitulation from MSNBC, specifically from Joe and Mika, and now we're seeing this from CNN. And to be, you know, this isn't the first time CNN has dabbled in Trump appeasement. They've already made some very questionable efforts to be more balanced, whatever that meant to them. And those efforts didn't go over very, very well with their audience. It's not comforting to see Trump's impact on these outlets. He's been working on this for about a decade now, though. He started disparaging journalists and the media in a very

real way in a way that was like arguably unconstitutional, pointing the term fake news, I believe back in 2015. So yeah, 10 years ago. Wow. And to Dave's point, yeah, CNN's viewership has been dwindling. And it kind of reminds me of why the Democrats lost the 2024 election, right? Because they decided to play the centrist angle. They tried to appease way too many people. And if they had been a little bit more bold, gone maybe the Bernie route, they would have, I believe they would have gotten a lot better buy-in from the American people. And, you know, maybe CNN could take a hint from that. Yeah, I agree. I think that would have helped the Democrats politically. I think it would help the media in their ratings as well. This is a very strange strategy. CNN, but it's

the Democrats do the same thing, always running to the center generally. And CNN thinks, oh no, we'll do this and then Maga will like us, they'll watch us. No, they're never going to love you. We've hated you, as yes, just pointed out, for a decade, they've considered you to be the literal enemy of the people, and I know you're hurting, your ratings are way down, it makes sense. People are sick of politics, and they're probably sick of some of what people see on your network. At some point, they'll be willing to come back. And the question will be, what will be on CNN for them to come back to? Just playing nice with Trump, ignoring his excesses, normalizing his behavior. Why the hell would they tune into that? If they wanted that, they could

just watch Fox News and way more of them actually do. I don't know if there's any path forward for CNN to like really regain its audience share. But if there is, it is indisputably bringing in someone who will be a critic and a check, a number of people, on Donald Trump. And there are certainly people in the media that are available to do that. You can bring them on from other shows. Hell, I'll do an hour. I still want to do TDR. I'm gonna do TDR in the morning. I'll come in and do an hour. And if people like Jim Acosta insulting Donald Trump and from the ratings they appear to. I can teach Jim Acosta some lessons in that. You think he's biting sarcastic and kind of mean? I've been doing it for years. Anyway, we'll see what CNN does.

But again, it's just everybody's bowing down. Everywhere you look, they're just sucking up to Donald Trump, but it's sickening. That is unfortunately all the time we have for the first hour of the show. Yaz, pleasure to have you here. Thank you. David, as always, a pleasure as well. Thank you to both of you. There's another hour, hour and a half actually with the bonus episode coming up. So don't go anywhere, everyone. We'll be right back after this.