The Young Turks - Cancel Culture

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

On Thursday night, Twitter banned a number of prominent journalists who had reported on Elon Musk and in some cases criticized him. Retiring anti-Trump Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois used the occasion of his farewell address from Congress to slam his fellow Republicans for sheltering “the ignorant, the racist.” On Thursday, when Trump announced that he was launching a series of $99 digital trading cards with some truly disastrous graphic design, even QAnon supporters turned on the former president. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the 28,000-member union of railroad workers ousted their president who supported the Biden labor deal. Host: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Nina Turner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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! Three-a-Tee, Three-a-D-R-G-R-D, Three-a-T, Three-a-T, Three-a-T, Three-a-T, Trim-a-D. Drop it like it's money, Sam Bankman Free dropped on Chantel Brown's campaign. All right, power, power panel.

Look at this. John Ida Rolla, host of Damage Report. Nina Turner, host of Vaughn Boss. Jank Uighur, host of the Young Turks. bit of a t-y-t all-star power panel i'm not saying i would say so i'm at jr yeah she's small rhod we got room let alone Anna but she's be she's gonna be here actually

in the second hour yep or a little unprecedented for Friday so power everywhere yes all right great to have you in studio Nina so glad to be in studio we shot unbossed in studio sitting in John thank you for sharing space with me it was amazing I'm spoiled Now, I don't know how I can go back to the studio now. All right, okay, awesome. All right, well, we got an amazing news for you guys,

and we're going to spoil you later today, as you all know. $100 gift card for 100 members tonight on Food for Thaw trivia. It's the last one we're doing. So make sure you become a member now so you can get a part of that as we go along here. All right, John, you got news. Okay, I've got news. It's possible some of the audience have heard of this topic, but we'll see what they think of our take on it.

Yesterday, free speech warrior Elon Musk banned a whole bunch of journalists who had been critical of him on Twitter. It all started with Elon Jet, this account that tracked which city his jet was in. Well, it didn't start there. It started, I think, when Grimes dumped his ass. His reputation as genius evaporated. He lost a whole bunch of money. One of his kids said that they didn't want anything to do with him. And he decided that this is the form that his midlife crisis should take.

But this week, it started with Elon Jet. So this account he had originally said he wasn't going to do anything about when he took over Twitter. He tweeted, my commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though it is a direct personal safety risk, which it wasn't at that time. It's publicly available information. And the idea that someone is going to see a tweet from Elon Jet, go by a stinger missile launcher, and shoot down a private jet seems a little bit far fetch. There are probably easier ways to take out someone if that's what you wanted.

But anyway, he did then go and ban that account. A 180 degree turn from his previously stated position, and not a single one of his fans seems to have any problem with that whatsoever. But beyond that, he then goes to his personal account, and he launches this PR offensive over the idea of him being doxed. He said in a tweet, any account doxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended as it is a physical safety violation, but that posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis will be allowed.

Bear that in mind as we go forward. Also remember that the plane tracking information lets you know what city, maybe what airport a person is at. It doesn't tell you specifically what coordinate they're at or anything like that. He goes on to call that information assassination coordinates and people buy this stuff. Anyway, then he goes on to claim that a crazy stalker in L.A. had blocked a car carrying his child, X, and jumped on the hood. He posted a video of an unknown man and asked his 121 million followers if anyone

recognized the car or the person driving. And they did have a little bit of information to go on because in the shot that he posted, you can see the man's license plate number, which arguably is doxing him. I don't know, maybe the context matters there. But in any event, things have developed fast. And last night, many prominent journalists on Twitter began to have their accounts seemingly permanently suspended. So you had from Mashable, you have Matt Binder, you have CNN's Donio Sullivan. They had shared the update from the LAPD on Musk's claim about this

man attacking the car, saying that no crime report had been filed. Others merely tweeted about Musk's ban of Mastodon, one of the competitors to Twitter, their Twitter account is now gone too. Ryan Mack of the New York Times was also banned. And then Keith Oberman was banned, and Drew Harwell of the Washington Post and Aaron Rupar, who shares videos that are critical of right-wing politicians and pundits from time to time. There were other people too, and we're going to jump into a lot about this, but the crux of this conversation is that his cover story for the bannings of a number of reporters, including just a little bit ago, I believe a Daily Beast reporter was banned as well, who has for years been critical of Elon Musk, is that this is about doxing. Again, the plain stuff is not doxing. Sharing information about what happened apparently with the LAPD, I don't understand how that could be conceived of his in any way of having been about doxing.

Nobody is at any of the places that any of the information was about. But that is the only excuse he has given. On the right, virtually everyone has accepted this as a perfect cover story for him to begin to ban any critical accounts of him. What do you all think about this? Okay, so I've got a little bit of a nuanced reaction to it. So first of all, if the kid is using public information to track the jet, he should not be banned. And there's a reason why it's public information, okay?

If he's using private information, non-public information, well, I think then it's an open question. Okay, so that's point one. Point two is, I have to be honest with you, I hate it. I hate the tracking of his plane. No, John, you're right. Of course, nobody's going to get a sting missile or a stingray or whatever the hell of the missile is called. You're not going to hire an Apache helicopter to go chase it. It's not a movie, right?

But at the same time, okay, here's where he's landing. Here's where he's taking off. Why do we need to know that? Like, what value does that give us? What I'm worried about, and we've seen it a lot from the right wing, is lunatics who go, oh, you're telling me this information for a reason. in. Now, in this case, it wouldn't be necessarily from the right wing, because obviously Elon's a right wing, although you never know, because the right wing is so mentally on balance.

But I don't want anybody, why are we tracking him? I don't get it. I just don't get it. I don't find any value in it, okay? So that's my- Some people make the case that there's theoretically business and investment value to knowing what cities is visiting. Okay, afterwards, sure. That's why for a very long time, people have tracked the movements of like prominent football coaches and things like that, especially in college football. Okay, fair. And by the way, if you find out half an hour later, okay. Oh, so that coach went to University of Mississippi. I didn't know that. That's kind of interesting. You know, Elon wound up going to Shanghai. I wonder why he's in Shanghai. Okay, kind of interesting, right?

But he landed just now in Shanghai. Or Shanghai wouldn't be relevant, but in Fresno, if anyone is in Fresno. Like, why? Why? I don't, I hate it. Okay. So we can talk more about where I think the line should be there for both the left and the right. But the banning of the press for even writing about it. So are we going to get banned for doing a video about it? And by the way, are Tim Poole and other weirdo right weir is going to get banned for doing videos about it or writing articles about it? No, of course not, right?

No, it's selectively banning reporters he doesn't like. That's the most obvious thing in the world. Okay. Secondly, Anne Rupar didn't even write about it or do a video about it. Hashtag free Aaron Rupar. Okay, so like, that was just like, plus I don't like these guys' videos. videos. Like for no reason. And Air Report doesn't even do videos like us. He's not in the videos. He just shows videos of right wingers. That's it. So apparently Elon Musk, he's so sensitive

about the feelings of the right wing now while pretending. My favorite thing is I'm not on the right wing. By the way, left wingers are banned. Journalists are banned. Nazis are allowed in, but I'm not on the right wing, Elon Musk says. So I've got way more on this. But Also, the bottom line here is Elon Musk is just like Donald Trump, thin-skinned, deeply insecure. Oh, my God, what a man child. And not at all a genius, as it turns out. I mean, if you ban left-wing and the journalist from Twitter, you know what you have? True social.

Okay. And you're about to go from 44 billion. Do you know what true social is worth? Barely anything. So this is a Harvard case study, business case study, on how to burn. $44 billion. I mean, you bring up some really good points, think about why do we need to know this information?

Most importantly, he claims that he is a free speech absolutist. He cares about everybody having free speech, putting this stuff out. The fact that he's deciding what Doxon is and is not, he's defining it, he owns the platform. And this is a grown, a man having a temper tantrum worse than a toddler. I don't want to compare him to toddlers because I don't want to insult toddlers. Who toddlers deserve respects. Respect.

Toddler's lives matter too. Okay? So, but it's just what he is doing in the journalistic realm that should be problematic. We know that absolute power corrupts absolutely and he is using his power in a very corrupt way. But the argument that you're making about why do we need to know this information? Why is this important? Does it trigger people who are easily triggered? It's something that we should deal with.

Sure. Look, I don't need to know the information. I also, I don't care. I don't think that it's doing any harm. And I don't think it really matters for the purposes. Again, he did ban initially the Elon Jet person. And then he went way beyond it. It wasn't fundamentally about the jet. And bear in mind, we've talked about the link between banned accounts and some of these pretexts that Elon Musk has used. But I want to be very clear, not everybody who was banned had even mentioned either of those two things, the Jets or whatever with the LAPD. That is not the case. The Washington Post looked into the recent activity, it is simply not true. That is what he is saying, it's a cover story. And I understand that in like the New York Times, they just take as a given that you might disagree with his methods, but it's clear that he's interested in free speech. They just accept every motivation he states.

They say that is actually what he means. He couldn't possibly deceive us or anything. I believe he's just actively lying about. I think he has had a list of people that he's wanted to have banned. I think that some of the right wingers he follows have a list of people that they want banned from the service, we already know from some of the discovery in the court case about the purchase of Twitter. There were those text messages going back and forth. They were openly talking about one of the steps of him taking over would be the exiling of the blue checks, getting

rid of this long list of people, ideally with a Blake Masters type in charge of the effort. So we already know that that has been planned. This is one step of it. There have been banning's since last night, by the way. That stuff is developing throughout the day. And I expect to see much more of it, especially if there isn't sustained horror at what he's doing. And again, I'm not going to go in depth. I did it on the damage report. I don't believe that he can't do this. I don't believe it's a violation of the First Amendment or anything like that. It is simply a violation of everything he pretends to believe in and that the followers of him pretend to believe in. They can do it. It's a private company. However,

he can't do it and not make a mockery of his supposed values. And he also can't do it and make Twitter a place that people want to actually be or that advertisers want to actually spend money advertising on. He doesn't care about being a pretender. You know, but he should be man enough to say, hey, I'm doing this just because I can. That I can accept, even if, you know, I don't like what he's doing, and stop making excuses about why he's doing what he's doing. Yeah, look, there's two reasons why I've lost all respect for Elon Musk, whatever little respect I might have had. And by the way, back in the day, I did. And we would have had a poll about him years ago. I took the side of, no, he's, you know, he's not a monster.

And that was yet, it was either three years ago or however long ago it was. And you could fault me for not seeing the future as well, some of the other hosts did, okay? But you were giving them the benefit of the doubt. I was. And now that benefit of doubt is gone because now he's acted and now we can see. So he's a massive right winger. Him pretending he's not right wing is hilarious. It's absurd, right?

I mean, what is it? He's like he's a poor man's Tim Poole pretending to be a moderate, right? And pretending to be in the middle. It's hilarious. Him pretending to have principles. Elon, we could all see you, man. Like you say that you're doing it for doxying, but reporters didn't do any doxying at all. They just did the most normal news story of all time.

It's super obvious you're banning them because they, you felt insulted by them. It's embarrassing. We can all see it. I don't know if you think it's a dream or something. Like, none of your justifications make any sense at all. You'd be way better going off with the Nina strategy of, yeah, so what? I can do it. What are you going to do about it now is infinitely better than what you're doing now?

Because what you're doing now is humiliating, okay, to you. And like, oh, yeah, I have principles. Okay, except I don't like those people there, my Feepees. Like, you're crying in front of the whole nation. And by the way, when did all this thing start? It started after you got booed in front of Dave Chappelle's audience, right? So that's where the feelings got caught. And then they were buried inside there.

And he's like, oh, yeah, all the people booing me and all my critic. You're a bit, you're a bank. Oh, it looks terrible. Jesus, man. And then let alone the fact that everybody thought you were like a business, genius, richest man in the world. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that Twitter was not worth a penny over 20 billion. I don't think it was worth a penny over $9 billion, but that's a debatable issue.

Over 20, no, 44, and now you're just going to turn it into Gitter? That's the worst business strategy I've ever seen. Look, by the way, one day we're going to start a platform. And when we do, I'm thrilled that he's burning Twitter and completely destroying its value. If you say, hey, no right, no left-winger's allowed, no press allowed, no nothing. And anyone who upsets the king is not allowed, the mad king. You're going to have the world's worst platform. It's just going to turn into the daily stormer.

So go ahead. Burn it, Elon. Burn it. What do we care? We believe in freedom. You want to burn it? Go ahead and burn it. Yeah, actually, speed it up, please.

And if you wouldn't mind banning me, that would be great. Oh, totally. I'm jealous. I'm not on the list. Jesus. What does a brother have to do to get on a list? Yeah. Anyway, that'll come.

One of the crazier things that happened last night during the Thursday Night Massacre is there was a Twitter space is going on. So this is a place where a bunch of people can join and they can talk things out. And interestingly, because Elon Musk has no idea of what he's doing at Twitter, people who had been banned that night were still able to go onto the spaces. Because the code is just madness right now. So they're banned, they can't post, but they can go on the spaces. So anyway, he decides to go into the spaces and fields questions. It's technically plural, a couple of questions before he stormed out in a huff. Take a look at this.

You're suggesting that we're sharing your address, which is not true. And you're suggesting that we're posting we never I never posted your address you posted a link to the address we posted a link we in the course of reporting about Elon Jet we posted links to Elon Jet which are now not online and now banned on on Twitter and Twitter also of course marks even the Instagram and Macedon accounts of Elon Jet as as harmful using you know we have to admit acknowledge using the same exact link blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden, New York post story in 2020. So what is different here and there? No more acceptable for me, it's no more acceptable for me, for you that it is for me.

Same thing. So anyway. So it's unacceptable what you're doing? No, what you do you get suspended and the story. That's it. I think I think Elon has has left. And he had. And again, they pointed out how it wasn't doxing. You cannot say where he specifically is based on either of his two different excuses he's come up with. And so he just left. He just left. And then the spaces left. That space and all spaces had some big mysterious bug last night that shut them down. They eventually came back on, I guess. The whole thing, again, super suspicious, not convincing. Look, he tried one of his other tactics. So he tried to win people over in the spaces. He couldn't defend what he was doing. And so he fled. So he decided to do what he normally does, which is do a Twitter poll,

which as we all know is the most reputable sort of poll. So he posted unsuspend accounts who doxed my exact location in real time, which is again, effectively a push poll. They didn't do that. But unfortunately, unsuspend them now won. Okay, so he did what you'd expect, accepted the results. No, wait, sorry, no. He posted, sorry, too many options.

We'll redo poll. There were too many options, so I guess they sort of did a runoff, I suppose, and then he again lost in the two-person poll. But you'll notice he didn't follow it. Now I'm not saying there's not a hypothetical world where he wouldn't have followed it, you know, i.e., in any other result having won, he would have followed it and said that that was the people speaking. Well, the people spoke, or the bot spoke, or whatever happens on its Twitter poll, and

he didn't accept it, obviously, he's a laughing stock. To your point about him and Trump, they're alike in a lot of different ways. But one of the big ones, I think that is their downfall is they have no ability to tell what information they're providing to people. When they act, when they speak, they can't tell how much they're transparently projecting about their wants, their desires, their fears, their insecurities. We as thinking people can see all of it. Everybody understands Elon Musk's psychology.

But him like Trump, they just, they don't know. Yeah, because people can't see outside their own perspective. So, I mean, again, that spaces conversation was embarrassing because the guy says, should you and I have the same standard? And Elon Musk says yes. And he's like, well, then you should be banned. Right? He's got to go.

Okay. And then he burns the whole spaces thing up. And he's like, okay, we're not doing spaces anymore. Like, we can all see you, Elon. It's not super clear what happened with the spaces, but they did go down. Yeah. I don't know for sure that he's, by the way, Finn, it might not be that it's, that he got embarrassed. Him running from the building is clear, right?

That part is Elon has left the building and taken his sanity along with it, right? In terms of whether spaces being not working afterwards is related or not, we're not sure about that. One, we're the fairest show in America. Two, also because there's tons of glitches on Twitter now. Yeah. Glitches that I've never seen before. Like I went to go retweet something and the retweet option wasn't there. I've never seen that before.

And you know what I think is happening? Remember, he fired like two thirds of the staff. Eventually things stopped working when there aren't any workers. That's kind of what happened. So genius businessman can't do the basics of running a business. So look, to him running is incredibly cowardly and it was hilarious to see. But the polls. So we all knew the polls are fake from day. Well, first of all, they make no sense. He said, one, they're on Twitter. They're not scientific polls. Two, they're on his account.

When I do a poll on my account, I'm asking my audience and all of my haters. Okay, that's the subset of people who follow me, right? So the subset of people who follow Elon Musk are tons and tons of Nazi fans. Okay, so yeah, I know there's regular people in there too. Of course, it's a giant following, but generally his audience is massively right wing, right? And here I'm going to come back around again, Ferris Show in America and say, hey, the right wing, and I've actually seen a mixed reaction. I think he partly lost that poll because a lot of the right wing were like, we're banning people now based on the fact that we don't like them. I'm going to vote no, right?

So because all of his polls are like 98% right wing. So it makes the poll more absurd. But even so, we knew that if he ever lost a poll, he would never do it. They were always fake, okay? And he proved it spectacularly in this case. But by the way, the other part of the right wing is doing what John said early in the show. They're like, yeah, it's not that we don't have principles. It's just you guys did it first.

So we're not to ban anyone we like because we don't like them, okay? Free speech is inconvenient and we hate it because you guys violated it first. First, whatever gets you through the night, brother. I know you are, but what am I kind of situations? I mean, the man is, he's fragile, he really is. Poor little Elon, must. Yeah, it's not, it's not a principle if you did it first is all that it takes for you to dispense with it. It was convenient, I guess, it was like a shawl that you put on.

It wasn't a principal at that point. By the way, I want to run the one, no one did it first like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it wasn't Jack Dorsey, who was running Twitter before, the other random CEO in the middle, were like, you know what, some right ringers hurt our feelings, so we're going to ban them. No, they had general principles, terms of service, and you might not agree with those. You might say, oh, I want to be able to despise and bully people who are trans. And they didn't let me do that. And the Nazis who were banned earlier, oh, I despise Jews and they think they should be killed.

Oh, Twitter didn't let me do that. But there was a policy, and they implemented the policy. There wasn't one person going, he hurt my feelings, phantom. I mean, right now, you know who's running Twitter? Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey Barathe. Yeah, really fast, just because it's fairly directly tied to this. One right winger, who is attempting to differentiate themselves from the others. And by the way, it might be that the poll shows that a lot of right wingers did not agree with him.

Based on the replies that I've gotten, they all accept, they were going to murder his kid in five minutes he had to do it. That is a very common sentiment. But one of the two journalists reporting on the Twitter files, Barry Weiss tweeted, the old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases. And it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem. I oppose it in both cases. And I think those journalists who are reporting on a story of public importance should be reinstated.

So she is saying that they should be reinstated. So that's good, that's better than the vast majority of right wingers. But she is also doing what many of them is doing, which is pretend. ending that what Elon Musk did is what happened under Twitter before Elon Musk, which is laughable. It should be below anyone who tries to brand themselves as an intellectual. And the idea that you would differentiate yourself from the other Elon Musk acolytes, and then still both sides of the thing is despicable. But I guess it's better than some.

Definitely that Trump is good people on both sides. That's what it feels like. I mean, that's what they're doing. Yeah. And just, right before we got on air, I think there was a story about how Elon Musk is now lashing out at Barry Weiss. Oh, really? I didn't see that in time.

And that's because he can't even take a half agreement. That hurts his feelings way too much. By the way, Ben Shapiro, the guy who claims that facts don't care about your feelings, now defending Elon Musk's feelings. And then weirdly getting credit for it, because he did the same thing as Barry Weiss, where he was like, now this is a serious national security issue. God damn it, you guys did it first. I mean, but maybe we shouldn't have banned everybody.

Okay, no, no, mealy mouth, BS, no cookies for you, okay? Grow some principles and then we'll have a conversation. Yeah. Do you want to take your first break? Yeah, let's do it. We got to take the break. All right, when we come back, hey, we found a decent Republican. We'll tell you about it when we come back.

I'm back on TYT, Jank, Nina, John, with you guys, but also Christina Massalone, Beef, What's for Dinner? That's, I like that old school reference that Wendy's commercial, and Derek Irwin and Kristen Eckert. You guys are all amazing. Thank you for joining today. They hit the join button below on YouTube. You guys can do it on t-y-t.com slash join as well. And you help get out the message that we have here and it makes a giant difference. John. It does.

Okay. So we've got a bit of a changing of the guard going on in Congress. So why don't we turn to one of the farewell speeches? I ran for Congress and I won. Well, at the time I didn't have a family. I promised to myself to leave them a better country than the one that I inherited. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I cannot. good conscious, say that I have done that.

That is Congressman Adam Kinsinger, who was, of course, transitioning out of Congress as a result of him turning against Donald Trump and thereby effectively being booted from the party. He was criticizing himself in that clip, but as he goes into, he has quite a bit of criticism for the Republican Party's direction as well. Watch this. Where Republicans once believe that limited government meant lower taxes and more autonomy, today, limited government means inciting violence against government officials.

Following the tragic Oklahoma City bombing, former President George H.W. Bush publicly refuted those who used fear to gain support. In stark contrast, our leaders today belittle and in some cases justify a tax on the U.S. Capitol as, quote, legitimate political discourse. The once great party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan has turned its back on the ideals of liberty and self-governance. Instead, it has embraced lies and deceit. The Republican Party used to believe in a big tent, which welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses

yearning to breathe free. Now, we shelter the ignorant, the racist, who only stoke anger and hatred to those. those who are different than us. That was pretty brutal. He's going to have more to say about Donald Trump in just a second. But what did you make of that? Yeah, I loved it.

And I want to give him credit. So look, you don't have to agree with everything a guy does. And I don't agree with Adam Kinsinger's policies. And don't lose track of that because he'll be an MSNBC host soon. Okay, remember he wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and loves tax cuts for the rich, etc. Now, having said that, he knew that there was an excellent chance that he was going to lose in a primary. That's why he resigned. And he's basically ending his political career to stand up for democracy and against Donald Trump.

And you have to give him a world of credit for that. When you see the courage, it doesn't matter where it comes from, you should reward it and you should applaud it. So it, and it was courageous of him to say the things that he said earlier, and it is courageous of him to say what he said now. Now, there is one thing wrong that he said. He talks about the party of Lincoln and et cetera, and it's deeply misleading. Yeah. Because Trump didn't start all this hatred within the Republican Party and the racism, et cetera, that Adam Kisinger is talking about. So when he says, oh, there's gambling in this establishment, you know, there's, it's a little.

little fake concern, because in reality, the party switched in the 1960s. The Democrats used to have the Dixiecrats who were racist in the South, who did not like that the Republican Party freed the slaves in their opinion, right? But after Lyndon Johnson had Democrat got the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed, Richard Nixon, a Republican, decided to do the Southern strategy. And that was a strategy to get very specifically and very literally. racist voters in the south to switch over and vote for Republicans. And they did, and mission accomplished, and that led to a lot of victories, right?

But to pretend that this has been the party of Lincoln since the 1960s is total BS. That's not remotely true. Republicans have been the racist party since the 60s. That is indisputable. It is Trump did not start that. He just added fuel to a bonfire. That's right. We didn't start the fire when we pour a whole bunch of gasoline on it.

No, and walking people back down that memory laying junk is very important because in that point that he was making, he did what neoliberals do, which is to blame all of the wrongs in this country on Donald J. Trump. He just brought the stuff back up to the surface that was already beneath, you know, hovering beneath. And then the point that he made about, you know, being the party of the races and the people who wanted to just overthrow government. I mean, we just, Marjorie Teller Green, the Congresswoman,

just did a speech for young Republicans, you know, a few days ago or a couple of weeks ago, saying to them that if her and Steve Bannon were in charge of January 6th, they would have been locked and loaded and they wouldn't have lost. So the point that he was making there about this, this turn within the party, albeit blaming it all on Trump is not right, but this, this deep-seated turn that they are party and hearty about this turn, a lot of them was definitely spot on. And you're right, I give him a lot of credit for giving the type of speech that he gave because it could have just left quietly.

But he put it all out there on the line and he might not do anything like this ever again. Yeah, that's true. But he did it. Yeah, and there, guys, extra level of courage is he didn't just say that Trump was racist. He said the party. Yeah, he did. He did. And let me add another.

I mean, he's right about the Republican Party, but let me not let the Democrats off the hook. And I'm glad, you know, I have a brother that's conservative. He reminds me all the time of the Dixie character. I get it. But even right now in this moment, you know, some, the Republican Party does it more overtly and a Democratic party does it in a more covert way. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when, when Mr. Biden was a candidate and he said the Charlemagne to God that if you don't vote for me, you ain't black.

Like, if Trump had a directly said something like that, people would be running in the street. you know, tearing their clothes off and saying, you know, this is outrageous. But because Biden did it, it was okay. Biden is the same president who when he was in the Congress did not want black children to go to school with white children. He said he wants to send his kids to a jungle. So let's not get it twisted. In very modern history, we see both covert and overt displays of racism of

anti-blackness or xenophobia, I mean, you name it. So it's not just that one side is necessarily better than the others, just that one side puts it all out there in the open. It's the difference between the fox and the wolf. Yeah. Yeah. And so let me just double down on that because look, Biden's on a lot of outrageous things, including, you know, saying. The grand bargain. Yeah, the grand bargain he wanted where he was going to, they were going to cut Social Security, et cetera that was under Obama and Biden. But specifically when it comes to these types of issues, first of all, they pretended they have gotten arrested with Nelson Mandela. Oh, my God. That was just a horrific lie.

Yes, the crime bill, sorry for jumping in on you, Jake. I mean, we can lay. Yeah, and remember, to your point, Nina, though, like, the Dixiecrats were still around in the 1970s when Biden was rising up. And in the 80s. Remember, Robert Byrd was in the clan, and he was a Democrat from West Virginia. And so the parties were transitioning at that point. Biden came into power as a senator, as a young guy, just as they were. were transitioning. So some of his stuff was, policies are left over from the old Democrats

against busing, et cetera, right? And some were from the new Democrats. Now Biden also did plenty of positive things in his career about it related to African Americans and other things. But as we stand here today, also didn't lift a finger to get voting rights act passed. That's right. I mean, we have a new voting rights issue. Just like we did in the civil rights era where people voices are being shut down through gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. And remember, Biden was like, oh, filibuster, there's nothing I could do, right? But when the stock market was in danger, all of a sudden they froze the filibuster, got rid of it temporarily to say that they could raise the debt ceiling. So there was definitely something they could do. They just chose not to do it

when he came to voting rights for African Americans and others. Or the George Floyd Policing Act. Mm-hmm. I mean, come on, all I'm saying is that, yes, neo-fascism, I mean, we talk about this all the time. Neo-fascism kills quick. Neoliberalism gives us a little more time to try to beat it back. Yeah. So we got to push back against neo-fascism, but let's not be under any illusion in this country

that the power of green dominates. And you have people, whether it's Trump or Biden, other powerful people who have over the course of their lives and their careers. He didn't have to side with those people, Jank, as a younger man. He could have been on the freedom fighting side, but he was not. And so that is in his nature as well. And what I'm saying to our neoliberal sisters and brothers and family and friends, yes, it is right to call out wrong on the Republican side, but you need to call out wrong on the Democratic side and vice versa. By the way, also to our brothers and sisters in the news business, you're not supposed to be just on one side or the other side. You're supposed to truthfully, honestly, report the news.

That's right. So, for example, on the neo-fascist killing us quicker, you should also take that into account. So you could hear Biden's terrible record. Doesn't mean you vote against Biden. It depends on what the situation is. Well, who's he running against? If he's running against Bernie Sanders, that's one thing. If he's running against Donald Trump, that's another thing.

Right? And so then, and I'm, I, like, if you gave me a choice between a neoliberal and neo-fascists, I'm going to vote for a neoliberal, okay? And why am I going to do that? Because I'm going to have more time to catch the neoliberal, okay? Right. And younger voters are very, very progressive. So we're going to cancel sons of bitches, okay? But the neo-fascist ends democracy and we're done, right? So that those distinctions are very important. And also, I think, look, you're talking about the media's role in this. I think the media is more ready to criticize someone, like Trump, but I think that they're more comfortable doing that because they know that if they take out Trump, they might get a DeSantis.

But that's a reason, don't John, that's a recent. They can't- I know, but what I'm saying is that they are not going to take down Biden because if they take down Biden, they might get a Bernie. I'm saying they're playing their role in trimming a little bit of the rhetorical excess from the neo-fascist, knowing that they're going to get a different Republican who's going to pass the same exact sort of economic policies. Point will take him. Yeah, and I'll say one last thing.

Look, Kizinger gave it unvarnished speech, so I give him credit. It was a raw, powerful speech telling truth about the current state of the Republican Party. But for others, and funny enough, most of mainstream media, they're actually to the right of Adam Kinsinger in this case. Why? Because look, as we're just explaining it with a southern strategy, the Republicans had taken the hood from the Democrats and started wearing it, okay? So they had become the racist party. What Trump did was, he's like, you know what, I don't think we need the hood. And he took the hood off, okay? blue soup. Yeah, so that was a difference between the Republican Party since Civil Rights

Act and the Republican Party since Donald Trump. One hid their racism, the other one didn't bother hiding their racism. And what the mainstream press is doing in basically giving DeSantis a free ride, who has the same exact policies of this Trump, is saying, we prefer it with the hoods on. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Well, I think we got to take our next break, there's a lot more to get to after that. 100%. So don't go anywhere. We've got amazing stories. We'll be right back.

So also Michael Gonzalez, Beth Goldman, Marion at Leisure, and Angelique Holden, they all just became members. So you guys are amazing. Thank you. Thank you for getting the truth and real news out there. And we're going to fight for positive change together. So love it. T.R.T.com slash join. John. Yes. Well, we've got two awesome topics to get to and we're going to get to both. Let's jump right into this. And that's what it comes down to. More than just fatherlessness, we have started teaching. children that there's no absolute right and wrong. What feels good is probably okay. We've got schools that are grooming children to be what our current laws say is sexual assault

of a child. And it's going on publicly. I acknowledge that there's no way you could tell from that clip. But that was part of a congressional meeting designed to find bipartisan solutions to stopping violence like at Yuvaldi. And of course, an idiot like Louis Gomer turns it into a thing about the metaphysics of evil as well as teachers being pedophiles or something. It was pathetic in other ways too. Take a look at a bit of what Andy Biggs had to say. Despite the title of the hearing today, there hasn't been an honest engagement in search

for bipartisan solutions to gun violence, mostly because there's only one solution for my friends across the aisle, that is to emasculate the Second Amendment and remove guns from from legal, lawful, and law-abiding citizens. That is Andy Biggs telling you that if he was ever stripped of his guns, he would be, by his own definition, emasculated. He would have no other dangerous weapons to threaten anyone with. It's absolutely pathetic, it makes a mockery of what happened at Yuvaldi and the need to stop the next incident like that. Well, I have a feeling that we're all going to to be fired up about this, but I want to get it teed off with Representative Madeline Dean,

who wasn't having any of that nonsense. In the face of such loss, in the face of something that is man-made and therefore could be man-solved, you are hearing that the root cause of massacres across this country, like no other industrialized country suffers, is evil. It's mental illness. We need more paddles and prayers. There's too many single moms raising children. Really? Do we have greater evil here?

We have greater mental illness here. We hear testimony of a headless child. We're going to talk about paddles and prayers might solve this problem. No. Where have we lost our humanity? Early on in this testimony, you heard from the ranking member, his focus, his worry is that we are trying to emasculate the Second Amendment. My oh my, to deprive a man of his male role or identity. May not

anyone's masculinity be connected to slaughter of children in our country. No, that's right. Yes, I mean, yes. Great work there, yeah. Yeah, so I, I don't understand. There's so many great things I want to talk about here, including evil. So emasculating the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is not a person. It's not a man. It can't be emasculated. So I'm not quite sure what he's getting at. It seems like he means without the Second Amendment, I would be emasculated. And Andy Biggs, if that's your definition of a man, ironically, you're not much of a man. Okay, you guys are always talking about, what's a man, what's a woman? Oh, I know, I know. And he's like, with that,

I'm not a man at all. Okay, well, that's at least accurate. So, look, there are two sides in this Uvaldi shooting hearings. The Democrats were concerned, hey, AR-15s are just ripping through the kids. One of them couldn't be identified because his head was literally blown off. That's how powerful one of those bullets are, right? And talking to my kids bleeding to death from all these guns. And the Republicans come in and they go, no, don't believe you're lying on eyes.

This has nothing to do with guns. How could it have nothing to do with guns when the weapons are the ones that murdered the kids? It's like we're having a meeting about like there was a massacre done with a sword, right? And the Republicans are coming on, no, it's not swords. Swords are not the problem, okay? But that's the thing that killed everyone, okay? So hold on, though. This is amazing because Louis Gomer is an idiot and we're going to,

get back to his groomer comments, which are just hilarious and ridiculous and absurd and dangerous. But Andy Biggs, I watched his whole thing, okay? And he went on and about two things. And Madeline Dean mentioned those two within her speech. But his primary focus was evil and single mothers. And he himself gave us that about how gun violence in America is 25 times worse than anywhere else, okay? So are we 25 times more evil? Think about it, guys. Really? We're the most evil

nation on earth and Republicans think that? Huh, well, why don't you just say it? Why don't you say it then? America's so goddamn evil. Apparently that's what Republicans think. We have 25 times the number of single mothers is anybody else? No, of course that's not true. But you know what we do have 25 times more, guns. So thank you for making our case for us. But if you really think that it was evil and Dumbledore and Loki and Thanos, okay, point, counterpoint. I mean, just the heartless nature. This was supposed to be about what happened to those children and Yvaldi and the teachers. And they turn this into some religious fest. What would God do? none of the stuff that they're talking about, you know, God would. I mean, at least the God

that I serve would care that these children were massacred in this way. And I'm really sick and tired of Republicans using God as an excuse because that's what they're doing. They need to stop riding the back of God because they are indeed the problem. And then my last point on this is that they always treat the Second Amendment as if it is absolute. But they leave out all the other amendments, you know, all the other things that government is supposed to do, the common good, the welfare of all, you know, all of that kind of stuff. They lead that out. They worship the Second Amendment.

They don't worship God. And I thought, especially if you're a Christian, the idols were a no-no. And guns are your damn idols. Yeah. The amazing thing, my final point in this, the amazing thing about the Republican attempt to distract from regulating guns by coming up with an ever-increasing list of different things that are responsible for it. That's so amazing about it, isn't just that it's an obvious deflection to protect gun manufacturers

and gun owners. But that if you come out and say, we are uniquely evil and our kids don't have dads, so they're listless and direction list, and they're angry, and they're getting radicalized, and they're all insane, and it's not treated. So then my question to you would be, so then shouldn't they not be able to buy these guns, like when they're 18 years old? And you say, no, they still should be able to. That's madness.

You believe that we have a uniquely toxic upbringing of kids that turns them into the perfect murderer and they should be legally allowed to buy weapons of war and then head on over to their school. That's madness. It makes perfect sense to me. And look, think about what John is saying. You guys are 100% right. If America is actually 25 times more evil than any other country, why are we letting everyone buy guts? There it is. That would seem to be very counterintuitive. Yeah. And so, and of course, I just real quick to touch back on Louie Gohmert, you see what he's doing there. He's basically blaming gay people. Yep. He's saying, oh, yeah, these teachers are you know, especially LGBTQ guys are groomers.

Those are code words, code words, it's actually not much of a code, but they blame teachers and people in the LGBTQ community for being groomers of kids, and then that's what's creating these evil schools. Were any of the shooters gay? No. Hello. None. Wait a minute.

All the shooters were straight. Does that mean straight people are more evil? I'm using their logic, okay? Whatever little there is of it. Okay, do I think straight people are more evil? Of course not. That's absurd, right? Case we're made.

Yeah, but this son of a bitch, because he gets paid by gun manufacturers and is a crook, every Republican takes money from the NRA, takes money from gun manufacturers, and they're all crooks. It's not that they love their, for the politicians, it might be true for some voters, but for the politicians, it's not that they love their guns so much. It's that they love their money so much. Yeah, they're owner donors. Yes, they're getting the money. from the owner donors, which in this case are gun manufacturers.

So they're going out there and blaming gay people instead of the guns that are actually killing people. That's the kind of crooks and despicable and ironically evil people that those Republican politicians are. Yeah, and one final bit of evil. Like I understand obviously the vast majority of the people who died in Evaldi were children. That's generally how it is when America is hit by another needless school shooting. But remember that in that shooting and other shootings, teachers died.

Teachers died literally shielding the bodies of kids, taking the bullets so the kids wouldn't have to. That's right. And Louis Gohmert comes in and says, the teachers are groomers. They're trying to have sex with these kids. They're literally dying to protect these kids. And Louis Gohmert won't even stand up to gun manufacturers to protect the kids. Not at all. Okay, that's a dark story.

You want to end on something light? Yeah, please. Let's see if I can make this tone shift. Trump's big announcement of his digital trading cards was met with mockery from leftists and people in the center, but would you believe that even those on the radical right wing fringe were not buying this particular move from Trump? You have people like the YouTuber Baked Alaska, a white nationalist MAGA streamer who actually was participating in the January 6th insurrection, tweeted, I can't believe I'm going to jail for an NFT salesman. Yeah, that is rough.

Tell us how you really feel. I love the emoji choice for that too. It's actually the funniest thing a right winner has ever tweeted. So he responded that way. Steve Bannon, live on his show, was watching the ad for it and said, I can't watch it again. Please make it stop. He said it was ridiculous. Michael Flynn on his show said, whoever advised him on that, I'd fire them.

Well, I'm going to blow your mind, Michael Flynn. Donald Trump enthusiastically spread this thing because he legitimately thought it was both a good idea and made him look cool. So deal with that. But it's not just him. Other Q&Oners on message boards and all that had to respond to this because they were expecting something big. Remember, big announcement. Anyway, one said, this is Shady S, one member said with another responding, an effing NFT, he needs to do PR team. Yeah, or a new brain. Have you considered that? One said it was a dog S play, another called it cringe and tacky. One said it was

tone deaf to a vast majority of Trump's base. That Q&ONR believes, of course, that QAnon is the vast majority of Trump's base. And the way Trump is driving people away from him, that might actually be true at this point. Now, others have tried to make sense of this, saying, well, it's obviously impossible that Trump could have turned on us. So no, this actually is a big announcement. And they found a way. Some accounts pointed out that a Q drop way back in 2019 mentioned a Trump card, while others pointed out that it had been 1,700 days since that Q drop was posted and because Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet, then it obviously means something very important. Obviously. Or not. Okay, and then there's a lot of other nonsense, but I like that

some are willing to just admit this is stupid. Oh dear God, have we been following a grifting con man this whole time? But there are still the true believers that are trying to Pepe Sylvia their way into making this all make sense. Yeah. So I think that I think the tide is turning. I'm genuinely excited that we might be at the end of the Trump era. Because, guys, Donald Trump didn't become a grifter the other day when he released his trading cards. He's been not. Donald Trump's been a grifter extraordinaire the entire time. It's not like they didn't know that. He paid a $25 million fine for setting up a fake university. He had to shut down his fake charity. He directed all sorts of money from the federal government and his campaigns into his private properties.

He's been $99 trading cards, or he can be directed millions of dollars into his own properties. And the right wing celebrated. They loved it. They thought it was like genius business to rob them blind. I mean, he did the fundraising off of the legal defense he was going to do for the 2020 election, never spent any of it on the legal defense, and then started directing that into his property. And they loved it. They didn't care.

They're like, please rob me. Please Donald Trump. And he did the cheesy laser eye things and all the other things that he did in that trading card ad before. And they loved it. So now all of a sudden that right wing media has been saying Trump is no good and Ron DeSantis is the new God, all of a sudden, the right is turning and beginning to see Donald Trump for who he really is.

So that gives you a couple of conclusions. one, this is not a difference in what Trump is doing. It's a difference in the right wing voters' reaction to them. And that is monumentally important. And number two, it turns out right wing media decides all of the elections, basically. And by the way, media does. I should be clear, right wing media decides Republican primaries. And corporate media decides Democratic primaries, if we're bearing honest.

Oh, yeah. And everything that you just played out, Jenkins, just makes. me think the NFTs were a bridge too far. After all of the stuff this man has done, it is a bridge too far to NFTs. Yeah, I mean, that's such a great point. How could it be a bridge too far? Like the racism wasn't. Right, right. But this is it. This is it. We're done. Look, Ron, the sanctimonious, and I just got to tell you, I love that brand. And the Trump gave this man, I cannot shake it. I do believe, I don't know. I mean, Trump has had more than nine lives as we can see. He is a brawler. He's a street fighter. I hope that you are right,

that this is the end of the Trump era, but we better watch it. No, I said this up the show. He is a, he uses his unique ability in a very evil and hateful way, but make no mistake. The man is a brawler. And I don't think DeSantis is the same kind of brawler as Trump. I wouldn't count him out. I agree. Yeah, and don't, I want to be clear, if you asked me a week ago, I had him at least 50-50

to win, right? Sure. And so don't, you know, let your guard down. And, I mean, we're lucky that the primaries are still so far away. That's right. If the primaries were tomorrow, he would probably still win, okay? But DeSantis is just hanging back. He hasn't done a thing, right?

He's like, Murdoch, take care of him for me, won't you? So Rupert Murdoch and the other right wing media are ripping Trump to shreds. And so I'm not sure he's going to make it to January. So, but if he does, don't count him out, because that right wing base, they love his hatred, racism, greed, viciousness, they love that stuff. So right now they just think, hey, maybe DeSantis gives us a better opportunity to execute that in government. And DeSantis is just as dangerous, though, let us, I know our viewers understand that.

He's even worse because he can cover up a little more. Again, the difference between the Fox and the Wolf. You know exactly what the wolf is coming from. We know where Trump is coming from. DeSantis is the Fox in this case. And therefore, them elevating him is genius on the right winger's part because he's going to be able to get away with a lot more. Probably.

Fox recognizes Fox. There it is. All right, we've got to go. Second hour is going to be bananas. Republicans now realizing we might not ever win elections again. I've got a new unique way of trying to destroy democracy. Okay, so you have that to look forward to, plus Anna Kasparian and Ray Bona. Everybody check out on Boss and Damage Report, and we'll be right back.

to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.