The Young Turks - Candy Graham for Bibi

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Echoing QAnon forums, Michael Flynn appears to suggest a Myanmar-style coup should happen in the United States. Lindsey Graham went to Israel to attach himself to Netanyahu's ass in the wake of violence since he thinks it will help him politically. Texas Gov. Abbott says he'll target legislator pay after Democrats block strict voting bill. Joe Manchin continues to be "surprised" by the blockade Republicans continue to put up, but still refuses to try another route around their blind and hypocritical opposition.  Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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. Longbendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going. I don't know. What's up, everyone. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm Anna Casparian. And joining us today is Ryan Grimm, the D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept and also the host of Deconstructed. And also a great friend of our show. So Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today.

That's great to be here. Good to see you. Good to see you. Jank Yuger will be out this week, but he will be back next week. You can look forward to a fantastic show, including the episode that we have prepared for you guys today. Later in the show, we will have a little bit of fun and give you some updates on Ken Klippenstein's latest trolling efforts on Twitter and how he got some conservatives to embarrass themselves with his. his Memorial Day tweets. We're also going to discuss how the Israeli government is now looking for an additional $1 billion in military aid from the United States.

Senator Lindsey Graham is on a mission to secure that funding for Israel. And then also we'll discuss the state legislature in Texas and how Democrats were able to block a voter suppression bill in that state. What is Governor Greg Abbott going to do to punish them? He apparently has some sort of game plan. We'll get into those details as well. But before we do all that, I think it's important to discuss the latest story involving former national security advisor to Donald Trump, Michael Flynn.

I'm a simple Marine. I want to know why what happened in Minamar can't happen here. You know, no reason. I mean, it should have a year. No reason, that's right. That was Donald Trump's short-lived national security advisor, Michael Flynn, answering a question by a Q&N conspiracy theorist at a Q&N conspiracy gathering. Regarding a Myanmar-style military coup in the United States to install Donald Trump or reinstate Donald Trump. Trump as the President of the United States.

His comments again were made during this Q&ON conference in Dallas, Texas, and the conference was titled, For God and Country, Patriot Roundup. Now, Ryan, I want you to jump in right away because this is very clearly calling for a pretty horrific coup in order to undo our Democratic election and install Donald Trump, their preferred president in the White House. And of course, now Michael Flynn is walking back his statements, but before we get to that, I wanted to get your thoughts. Right. I mean, the Q&on kind of philosophy or whatever you want to call, but calls to be straight up executed in a violent uprising. You know, they are considered the worst kinds of traders on the planet and the best way to deal with them

is to slaughter them. Flynn talking about a violent coup in Myanmar as appropriate to bring here is almost a tame version of what QAnon actually calls for. Flynn has been dabbling in and kind of immersed in the more bonkers elements of the Trumpist wing of the party for a very long time. And this kind of shows how far he has gone. You see coups take place all over the, all over the world. And usually you find that the United States is somehow involved with those coups.

And you wonder sometimes, how is it that so many people in these countries can support, you know, can support undermining their own government like this? And hearing the crowd cheer Michael Flynn like that, it shows you that it absolutely could happen here. And it would have support if it did happen here now. This is a marginal group. I don't think that they're anywhere remotely close to operationalizing anything like this. But at one point, he was national security advisor. And at some point, it's quite likely that, you know, Republicans will be back in the White House and that wing of the party is is going to remain part of it. You know, with every presidential election cycle, the Republican Party tends to get more and more extreme in what they're willing to do in regard to voter suppression, how far

they're willing to go in order to ensure they maintain power. During the same event, Flynn also falsely claimed that, quote, Trump won. He won the popular vote, which of course he did not. and he won the electoral college vote. So he's helping to perpetuate this lie, the big lie, about the 2020 election. And so, you know, I really enjoyed the podcast episode you did on Deconstructed, where you talked to Lauren Windsor. And she made a really great point about how all of these lies regarding the 2020 election isn't really about reversing the results of the 2020 general election.

It's more about getting the Republican ducks in a row for 2020. 2022 and 24. And I think that she's right about that. But there's also the fact that democracy is incredibly fragile. Our democracy is incredibly fragile. And I think that this past election made it abundantly clear to me that there is a pretty significant portion of the country that's willing to throw out our democratic process in order to ensure that their preferred candidate maintains power. And I'm really worried about what that means for the future. Because for anyone who might have missed the awful coup that took place in Myanmar, it happened in February. We did cover it on this show, so please check out that video to get more details on it.

But the coup d'etat disposed, deposed, I should say, deposed, the democratically elected government and installed a military leader as ruler. A violent crackdown followed that has reportedly killed more than 600 people and wounded thousands. As I mentioned, Flynn did get a considerable amount of backlash as a result of his comments. So now he's trying to pretend as if he was taken out of context. He didn't really say what he clearly said in the video that we showed you. He said, quote, let me be very clear. There is no reason whatsoever for any coup in America. And I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort. But, you know, as we know, he responded to a person who said, why can't we have a Myanmar type

coup here in the United States? And he's like, there's no reason we can't. There's There's no other way to take that out of context or twist his words. Right. And you're right that Lauren's made an interesting point because it, it shows how the party is kind of moving on two tracks at the same time. Like on the one hand, they're squarely playing the electoral politics game. They're going to, you know, they're going to do a lot of gerrymandering. They're working on rewriting vote, you know, voter laws to advantage themselves and they have figured out when, when at night, when on the weekends and when during the process, Democrats were more likely to vote and they kind of strip those times away,

just to try to tilt closer this big lie, because the huge variable that is will the voters who came out for Donald Trump in 2020, who didn't even come out for Trump in 2016, will they They show up in 2022 in a midterm. And what about the voters who showed up for Trump in 2016 but hadn't shown up for Democrats before? Republicans don't know. Democrats don't know. Nobody knows if those people are going to show up.

And so what they're what they're doing is is kind of stoking as much paranoia as they can to show that they are firmly behind their man Trump. And if you like Trump, then you should come out and support these Republicans in this midterm election. So it's not clear if that's going to work, but that that's their elect. political politics game, at the same time, like she said, they're also, you know, sowing the seeds for a full-blown overturning of a legitimate election in the future. Because if you can convince your voters that 2020 was, in fact, stolen, then even if it seems

gray to people in 2024, whether or not it was actually stolen or not, people will feel aggrieved by 2020 and say, you know what? Payback is fair. So we're gonna we're gonna pay them back for stealing it in 2020. In fact, Republicans believed for decades that 1960 was stolen by Kennedy evidence that I think it was. Like they probably did, you know, illegally flip enough votes in 1960 to flip that. And in 2000, when Republicans stole that one, you had, you had, Plenty of Republicans who had living memory of 1960 and were like, this is payback. You earn this. Now we're in a much more compressed time period.

And it's not the old school style of stealing an election like Lyndon Johnson, you know, stuffing some ballot boxes in Texas or the Democratic machine in Chicago, you know, coming up for some extra boxes. You know, they're talking about just wholesale invalidating entire electoral college results. It's, I mean, it's absolute madness. And I mean, for his part, Michael Flynn has also suggested all sorts of insane things, including, you know, calling for martial law in order to ensure that Donald Trump maintains power. Last summer, Flynn posted a video featuring Q and on slogans. In a recent interview, Flynn attempted to distinguish between the QAnon movement, which is known for outlandish conspiracy theories and its followers saying what I tell people to do is look at the people that are involved, look at the values that

they espouse, and let's move along. But the values they espouse is supporting a military coup in order to ensure that their preferred candidate remains in power. And what I'm worried about Ryan isn't just the lunacy coming from the right wing, but more importantly, the reaction and response from the Democratic Party, because we don't have a Democratic machine that's reminiscent of, you know, the Chicago Democrats or any, I mean, there's no, I don't see any strength in pushing back against what we're seeing in regard to the Republican Party and what they're spreading in terms of disinformation about the 2020 election. Just today, Joe Biden, while out with Kamala Harris,

claim that he's going to fight like hell to ensure that these voter suppression laws in various states are mitigated. But there's really no game plan. I haven't seen any type of game plan. And in the Senate, as you know, we have conservative Democratic senators like Joe Manchin who are unwilling to do away with the filibuster, which is obviously necessary in order to pass election reform. So what are Democrats going to do? I mean, everything depends on really the month of June for Democrats. But you're right. The asymmetry is just wild. You know, you have one party that's doing,

that's the one party that's not ostensibly in federal power that is using what power it does have to tilt all the rules in its favor. And then you have the other party that is ostensibly in power who was doing nothing about it. Like you said, they passed HR1 in the House. They've passed it through committee in the Senate. That bill would ban gerrymandering. It would overturn a bunch of these voter suppression laws that have already been passed. It would make, and it would effectively make it impossible for them to pass them in these other states where they're pushing them, it can't it can't get through right now because of the filibuster. And so June, June is as far as a lot of kind of the deadline to get this done in time so that it can be implemented in time

for the 2022 midterms. And so Democrats are setting up a ton of showdowns over the filibuster. They're going to vote on next week. I think the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Democrats all like, and Republicans are going to filibuster. They're dragging it. out these infrastructure talks to show that Republicans aren't serious about negotiating around infrastructure. Fortunately for Democrats, Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia is the one who's taking the lead on these infrastructure negotiations. So if and when that blows up, they will have cut the knees out from under Joe Manchin's friend back in West Virginia. And so each time that Republicans filibuster something, the intent there

is to get Joe Manchin a little bit closer to agreeing to reform the filibuster. And Schumer has said he's going to have a vote on S-1, H.R.1, at the end of June. Now, this is all long-shot stuff. You're relying on Joe Manchin to do the right thing. But the pieces are lined up. And, you know, if they go down, and, you know, 10 years from now, you would look back and you would, you know, reasonably say that, you know, June 2021 was the moment that they had a shot to stay in the ballgame and blew it. Or if they get it done, you say June 2021 is the moment that Democrats actually found their spine. Well, we'll see what happens in June. I have my own predictions, but I'll hold. This smart money is never on Democrats finding a spot. Right, right, sure.

Exactly. Well, anything's possible. Anything's possible, yes. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we have some updates on Israel. Senator Lindsey Graham took a trip to Jerusalem. And Israel has a pretty big ask. We'll give you those details and more when we return.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casperi. and Ryan Grimm with you. Let's get right to our next story. And no one has done more for Israel than you, Lindsey, Senator Lindsey Graham. He is a stalwart champion of our alliance, and we have no better friends. So I want to thank you for everything you've been doing over the years on our defenses, our security, on Iran. That is Senator Lindsey Graham in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There were some questions surrounding that visit and what it was really about. And now we're learning that the government of Israel is planning on asking the U.S. government for additional military aid to the tune of $1 billion. Now in 2016, the Obama administration had already approved $3.8 billion in military aid to the Israeli government. And now we're learning more about what Israel is expecting from the United States moving forward. Before we get to that, though, even though, as you saw in that video, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had glowing words for Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham, of course, returned the favor, which you're about to see in this next clip. The eyes and ears of America is Israel.

You talk about the five eyes? They're important allies. But nobody does more to protect America from radical Islam than our friends in Israel. And I just want you to know, this sign says all you need to know about my eyes. trip. To every American, what happens with Iran matters to not only to America, but to the world. The worst possible outcome for the world is allowed the Iranian regime to acquire a nuclear capability because our Arab friends will not tolerate that. They feel far more threatened by Iran than they do Israel. So my hope is to find an alternative to the JCPOA that will allow for

nuclear power but not create a nuclear arms race through enrichment. And that's the existential threat to the state of Israel and the world writ large. Now we'll get back to the fact that Israel is asking for additional military aid, again, to the tune of $1 billion. But before we get to that, I have to address what Senator Graham said in that video, because there's quite a bit of fearmongering, of course, regarding Iran and the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons through the enrichment of uranium. And so if Senator Lindsey Graham is at all sincere about what he was claiming in that clip, well, then he would have been enraged when Donald Trump decided to pull out of the JCPOA. That's the Iran nuclear deal, which ensured that Iran was not enriching uranium and not developing nuclear weapons.

That was the agreement, by the way, that was reached by China, France, Russia, UK, and the United States. part of these negotiations. It was reached in 2015 again under the Obama administration and there was quite a bit of monitoring taking place to ensure that Iran was keeping up with its part of the deal in regard to the Iran nuclear deal. In fact the IAEA director general gave a comprehensive statement regarding what those safeguards look like, what it was like to ensure that Iran was keeping up with its part of the deal. He said back in 2018 that, as I've said many times, I believe the JCPOA represents a significant

gain for verification. The IAEA now has the world's most robust verification regime in place in Iran. We have had access to all the locations that we needed to visit. IAEA inspectors now spent, by the way, this is before the Iran nuclear deal was ripped up by the Trump administration. IAEA inspectors now spend 3,000 calendar days per year on the ground in Iran. We have installed some 2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment. We have carried out more than 60 complementary accesses and visited more than 190 buildings since the JCPOA implementation day. And then finally just one more excerpt from the statement here.

We collect and analyze hundreds of thousands of images captured daily by our sophisticated surveillance cameras in Iran, about half of the total number of such images that we collect throughout the world. So I give you that statement because the Iran nuclear deal was the best deal reached between these countries to ensure that Iran was not enriching uranium and not developing nuclear weapons. The Trump administration pulled out of that deal, re-implemented sanctions against Iran, and now they're claiming, people like Senator Lindsey Graham are claiming, oh, well, Iran is such a threat. They're enriching their uranium. We need to do something about it. Don't buy that talking point because Lindsay Graham aided and abetted in what Trump did in

ripping up that Iran nuclear deal. And if they're genuinely concerned about the development of nuclear weapons, they have a funny way of showing it. But Ryan, I want to bring you in. I apologize for filibustering a little bit here. It's just that statement by Lindsey Graham was really infuriating and I hate that they keep perpetuating that lie. Right, because they want conflict between with Iran. So it was a threat to their diplomatic strategy to see the United States negotiating with Iran. And it goes back exactly to what Lindsay Graham said. And we're in an era now where people are saying the quiet parts out loud and making subtext text a lot more frequently.

Lindsay Graham did it alongside Netanyahu there when he said five eyes are great, which is referring to like these five countries that share intelligence. But our real weapon is real in the least. Everyone has always known that Israel functions as as the U.S. ally to help it control the region of the Middle East. that that's kind of a main part of its geopolitical function. It's rarely ever stated, you know, that plainly. So thank you, Lindsay Graham, for, you know, putting it as clearly as you did. In order for that relationship, that special relationship, as they call it, to continue, Israel has to be hostile particularly with Iran. You know, if the U.S. is no longer in a hostile situation with Iran, then why does it need this special partner in the Middle East to help it go to war and get into these conflicts with these other countries?

And so that's precisely why they would do something that seems counterintuitive. and machine nuclear weapons. Well, great, guess what? I have wonderful news for you. We struck a bargain. They're not going to do it anymore. They're going to allow inspectors in. And here are all the kind of economic entangements that are going on. They insist upon actually following this. And that's how it makes sense that that they object to that because their actual goal is not necessarily a peaceful coexistence that includes diplomatic recognition because then that lowers the temperature. and that makes the U.S. less interested in sending a billion dollars over, you know, for weapons on a win. Okay, so let's talk about that because, you know, when the story first broke this morning,

I was curious if it was just a branding exercise for Senator Lindsey Graham or if there was actually something that was supposed to come from this meeting. And so the Israeli government is expected to request $1 billion in military aid from the United States. And again, this is, is after a $3.8 billion agreement in military aid under the Obama administration back in 2016. So this is additional funding, additional money. And Senator Lindsay Graham is very much in favor of approving that kind of funding, additional military aid to Israel. And of course, this follows the violence that we recently saw in Gaza as a result of Israeli aggression. And so the timing is relevant as well. Here's what Lindsay Graham has to say about the request on Fox News.

What does Israel need? Okay, there are going to be a request made tomorrow, I think, or Thursday by the Israelis to the Pentagon for a billion dollars in aid to replenish the Iron Dome batteries that were used to protect Israel. So this is what I'm going to do when it comes to Israel. As Hamas tries to destroy Israel, as Iran threats the existence of the Jewish state, I'm going to keep coming back here and saying more for Israel. I want to thank the Biden administration for being receptive to more aid for Israel. I think the requests will be coming from the Pentagon soon.

And I will do my part to lead the effort in the Senate to make sure Israel gets the money. And just for comparison, the Biden administration agreed to appropriating about $110 million, not billion, $110 million to rebuild Gaza after the destruction. that it has faced from the Israeli governments and the Israeli forces aggression toward Palestinians there. Ryan, I wanted to get your thoughts on this because we're also dealing with the American people getting nickel and dined in the COVID relief bill, certainly what we're seeing in the negotiations for Biden's infrastructure bill. I mean, but you have the Israeli government asking for $1 billion, and Lindsey Graham is like,

Yes, yes, I am, I'm expecting it to be requested by the Pentagon, and I'm totally in favor. Let's, you know, no worries about a filibuster there, no worries about any type of nickel and diming there. Anytime we talk about military funding, especially to the Israeli government, it seems to be an open and shut case. Right, at the same time, the money that is, you know, sloshing around in Washington nowadays is, it probably makes it so that that seems like a small number. to a lot of lawmakers, you know, that's half of what the House approved just for the Capitol Police and the National Guard in the wake of January 6th. And that was, you know, that was nothing like a full-scale war. But you're right to point to Gaza, because not only did they need money to rebuild in Gaza, but before the bombing and the strafing started, you were looking

at a situation where there was power maybe four hours a day, this is a region of two million people living in just kind of practically prehistoric conditions before the bombing started. And so for them to come in and ask for 10 times the amount that Gaza has been appropriated for it for its own rebuilding is a is a nice kind of window into the disparity there. Right, definitely. And it seems really, it seems likely that the request will be fulfilled. You know, there's already some indication that Biden is, is okay with that funding. And look, it's just interesting because we have Democrats in Congress who wanted to block over $700 million in weapon sales to Israel. As the violence was still ongoing, Democrats failed in blocking that.

Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that he was going to attempt to block it in the Senate. He didn't even end up doing that at all, mostly because the weapon sale was already agreed to by the Biden administration. And so is there anything that Democrats can do in Congress moving forward, now that we know that this request is coming, to maybe question or block the $1 billion in military aid? Well, they certainly could. Any Democratic senator, well, that's an interesting question because I was about to say that any Democratic senator and just a handful of Democrats in the House could block it. But of course, you go back to the situation where Israel has an extraordinary number of allies

in the Republican Party. And so if it would be up to Schumer or Pelosi probably to try to stop this, and neither of them, I can imagine, have any desire among Israel's staunchest defenders. And so, you know, they could move it through with almost unanimous Republican votes tacked on with a handful of Democratic votes. Most things stop with just one or two of them objecting to it because Republicans won't go along with anything Democrats want to do. Again, in American politics, there's always the Israel exception. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that stopped Senator Sanders from pushing for that resolution to block the weapon sale was the fact that he didn't have the votes on the Democratic side in order to pass that resolution. So that's a relevant part of the story.

I mean, in terms of military aid to Israel, in terms of weapon sales to Israel, there seems to be more or less a consensus on both sides of the aisle. And I should, you know, there's very little debate. The thing that really stood out to me in the latest violence that broke out was that the willingness of journalists to call into question the aggression by the Israeli government was unique. It was different. It was rare for U.S. media. But that was really the only, I guess, silver lining in what we saw in that horrific violence. But when it comes to the U.S. government and its actions, it seems like we're going to get more of this status quo approach of, you know, just unequivocally supporting the Israeli government, regardless of how right wing it might be, regardless of how much aggression it is using against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And it's really unfortunate, especially when, again, you take a look at the disproportionate amount of aid that's being given to the Israeli government versus Palestinians in Gaza.

And let's also just quickly note, because I think it's a relevant part of this story, you know, that money that gets appropriated in the form of military aid is a transfer of wealth. Because what does that military aid get used for? Oftentimes to buy U.S. made weaponry. So it's a transfer of money from U.S. taxpayers to eventually weapons manufacturers in the United States. Right. Yeah. Most of that money will never leave northern Virginia. That's very true. It's a subsidy for the military and industrial complex. These companies are built on this system where the federal government loans are giving. gives money to other countries and then those countries turn around and give the money back to us for for weapons. It's, you know, it's the bizarre structure that they've set up that and which

then allows these CEOs to pretend that there's some sort of, you know, champions of the free market. Exactly. All right. Well, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll discuss the voter suppression legislation in the state of Texas and what Democrats in the state legislature did to block And later in the show, we'll discuss a little more foreign policy, including the Biden administration's policy toward Cuba. Come right back. So, I don't know. Welcome back to TYT. I'm going to read a few comments from our member section, beginning with Mickey C, the silver-haired dragon, who writes it and says, Nanyahu publicly stated that Biden should not enter into a new nuclear deal with Iran.

That's right. We showed you guys that video. Of course, he still wants a war with them, but he wants us to fight it for him. I have to wonder if Biden will be a good boy or end obey. Well, unfortunately, Biden's foreign policy thus far has been tragic and awful. Just his willingness to go along with the same awful foreign policy that we saw in the Trump administration. It's just on all fronts when it comes to Venezuela, the Biden administration keeps referring

to Juan Guaido was the leader of Venezuela when he's not elected and he's not the leader. I mean, he's the person that the United States and, you know, other Western countries have wanted to install as the leader of Venezuela, but that's not the case. And then in Cuba, I mean, you have Obama loosening restrictions to Cuba, loosening the U.S. embargo in Cuba, and then, of course, Trump re-implemented it. And Biden is going along with what Trump did. I mean, it's just, it's so incredibly frustrating. and, you know, it's more of the same. So do I think he's going to be a so-called good boy and obey? Likely. Sexy Speed Racer says, I think the GOP can never claim plausible deniability again

because they obviously have no idea what the word plausible means. Moving over to our super chat section, we have Kaylee O'Hara, happy pride to all. Remember that rainbow capitalism is exploitative, but go ahead and buy the, the Lego Pride set because it takes or makes Tucker Carlson cry. By the way, we are going to be having a pride special today, and it has nothing to do with capitalism. We just want to amplify voices in that community and, you know, continue fighting for the rights that the LGBTQ community still does not have.

So it's an important special to do. Also, we have the Nephlin who says Ann and Ryan for the win. Thank you. Detroit Microsound just has one comment on Lindsay Graham and Netanyahu, Monsters. Hoppy the Frog, Lindsay, the good old days of segregation Graham, and Vinnie Holiday. Conservatives were not right about the lab leak hypothesis. You can be right for the wrong reasons. They don't deserve to do any gloating.

We will update you guys on that story. I've been holding off on it because I just, everyone is trying to spread, you know, their own ideas or version of what that lab leak story is. I want to make sure that we get it right when we do cover it. So I promise you we will cover that in depth very, very soon. For now, though, we got to get back to the show. See you in a minute. Hey, everyone back to TYT, Anna Kasparean, and in Grimm with you. Everyone check out Ryan's work over at the Intercept where he serves as the

DC Bureau Chief and also deconstructed his podcast, which I find to be fantastic. You just had Ryan, I'm sorry, Lauren Windsor on Ryan and she was fantastic, such a good episode. And we're going to talk a little bit about the filibuster in the Senate later in the show, which I'm sure you have a lot to say about. But anything else you want to plug? No, although in that last segment, did you think that Netanyahu kind of forgot Lindsay Graham's name for a second? He was like, he's like, Israel doesn't have a better friend than you. And then he says, and then he says, Lindsay, and he says, Senator Lindsey Graham. Like, it was slowly, like, coming, coming back to him.

So I enjoyed that at least. I know. I noticed that. But I don't know if it's because he genuinely, like, just forgot the name or had, like, You have those moments sometimes, like when you're having a spontaneous conversation or you want to cite someone, you just like forget the name for half a second. So maybe that's what happened. But it was what I actually really enjoyed was how sad Lindsey Graham is. Like he's just, he's so fake and clearly has no guiding principles other than what can I do to protect my own position of power.

What can I do to, you know, continue perpetuating lies regarding foreign policy? Like, Lindsay Graham is the type of guy who has never seen a war that he did not support. Like, he loves war mongering. And so it's just, it's his statements about Iran are so frustrating, considering what he and Donald Trump and other Republicans have done since the signing of the Iran nuclear deal has made the world less safe. And then they parade around pretending as if they want to protect national security. It's just so ridiculous. Yeah, we talk about like politicians being vessels for, you know, whatever energy is, is, is waning or waxing at the moment. But there really is not a better example than Lindsey Graham.

You know, this is a guy who was doing Kerry Graham, a climate change bill, you know, just a couple of years ago. He was the guy that was constantly negotiating with Democrats and talking about being a reasonable moderate. it. And now he's ready to burn the whole thing down. Well, by the way, it reminded me as on plugs, the TYT store has my book in stock again. It's we've got people. So you can get it over it over at ShopT. The last time I was on, you guys took it off the shelves. The viewers took it off the shelves really quickly. I love it. That was, that felt great. But now there are a bunch more on those shop TYT shelves. Go go

buy them guys. Okay, let's make sure that book, yeah, clear them out. I love that. It's such a great book. All right, well, let's get to Texas because Governor Greg Abbott is now threatening the state legislature for blocking a voter suppression law. So I want to give you those details.

Democratic legislators in the great state of Texas did something that's honestly a little unexpected of democratic lawmakers. They blocked success. blocked a voter suppression bill in the state. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have defeated the legislation. We don't have anything to worry about because Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, is calling for another special session in order to pass the bill, and he is threatening

state lawmakers for what they have done. So the Texas bill, which you should know, it's known as Senate Bill 7, passed the Senate along party lines early Sunday after an all-night debate. The bill came up in the house for a final approval Sunday evening. And this is where things start to get good. Now, hours, after hours of this debate and delaying tactics, the chamber adjourned after Democratic lawmakers left in protest, breaking a quorum and ending debate. At least 100 legislators must be present to conduct business. So this effectively blocked the passage of the legislation.

And that's really important, especially when you read the details about what the proposed legislation would do. As NBC News reports, the sweeping bill would limit voting hours, make it more difficult to vote by mail and empower partisan poll watchers. The final version would also preserve the elimination of 24-hour polling stations and drive-through voting centers, both of which Harris County, the state's largest Democratic stronghold introduced last year in an election that had record. turnout. And remember, the last thing GOP lawmakers want to do, both on a state and national level, is make it easier for people to vote. They don't want to expand voting rights. They want to ensure that it's more of an obstacle to decrease the number of people voting. The bill would also prohibit Sunday voting before 1 p.m., which critics said was an attack on what is commonly known as Souls to the Polls, a get-out-the-vote campaign used by black church congregations

nationwide. Gee, I wonder why. Now before I get to the threats by Governor Greg Abbott, I do want to bring you in, Ryan, because this is clearly a tactic used in many red states or in states that flipped from, you know, Republican to Democrat effectively voting for Biden over Trump. And so Republican lawmakers are freaking out about that and they're trying to restrict voting. Right. And what Republicans are doing is super complicated in the text of the legislation, but underneath it all, it's quite simple. They try to figure out where Democrats vote, when they vote, and what method they use to vote, and then they restrict all three of those. And so they've realized that they, you know, they use mail more

than Republicans do because Trump told them not to use the mail, so they're restricting the mail. They use early voting and early voting drop-off locations. And so they're, so they're restricting those. And they note because Democrats are, are have more working class voters, they have to vote outside of the kind of nine to five that you can get to the polls at. They, they saw that Democrats are voting, you know, before and after that and on weekends. And so they're restricting that as well. And so that's how they can, you know, try to claim that that what they're doing is,

is legal. And it's worth remembering that if they try to. tried to do this before 2013, when John Roberts eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, it would have been tossed out. A state like Texas was not allowed to change its election laws without the approval of the Department of Justice since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed precisely for this reason, because they target minority voters. So Abbott is now calling for another special sessions in order to ensure the passage of this legislation. Republicans stop at nothing to ensure they get what they want.

So I'm predicting that in the end, it's likely that Texas will pass this legislation. And in regard to the Democratic lawmakers who effectively blocked it, at least for the time being, Abbott has issued a threat saying I will veto Article 10 of the budget pass. by the legislature. Article 10 funds the legislative branch. No pay for those who abandoned their responsibilities. Stay tuned. What are your thoughts on that, Ryan? What's the likelihood of Abbott actually employing this tactic to ensure the passage of that legislation? Well, it also feels like a huge separation of powers issue to start trying to attack the legislature in that way. But, you know, Republicans have gone outside of the norms of, you know,

traditional, you know, democratic discourse and for, you know, for years now. So I would, I certainly wouldn't put it past him. The way that Democrats did this is the same way that legislators in Oregon, Republican legislators at Oregon, you know, did it to Democrats there. You know, fleeing so that there's no quorum is, you know, one of the oldest tricks in the book. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing unusual about it. And Texas has this. This system where if you don't pass the legislation by midnight at the end of a particular session, then it's dead. If you remember, I think it was like 2010 or so, the reason that Wendy Davis became famous. You know, she grabbed the, yeah, she grabbed the floor in her little pink

sneakers. And there was something like six hours left until midnight. And they shouldn't have let her her get the floor, but somehow she maneuvered parliamentarily to grab it. And then she just stood there talking all the way up until midnight. And there's this dramatic moment where they basically break all of the rules right at midnight and kind of gavel her down and say that she's lost the floor and then say that they've, and then they quickly pass the legislation. But by the time they pass it on video, you can see that it's now like midnight and 30 seconds or something like that. And so the clock had expired. And so it died. And if you remember, they called a special session not long after that and passed it. So it was, it was a, it was,

you know, an adrenaline rush for Democrats. And it was, it was a huge win to see them actually fight for something. But in the same way that Abbott is likely to get this through, you know, they still managed to get those abortion restrictions through. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. And, and I love that you mentioned Wendy Davis, because that's the situation that I had in the back of my mind as I was reading about what the Democrats in the state legislature did with this voter suppression law. At the end, GOP lawmakers got exactly what they wanted with that restrictive abortion legislation at the time that Davis did that filibuster.

And so, you know, when Republicans want something, they will do anything and everything to get it. And so I have no doubt that they will have that special session. and it is likely that they'll pass it, which of course brings you to the, I think, ultimate question in regard to not just Texas, but all the other states that are passing these restrictive voting laws, what is the Democratic Party going to do to succeed in pushing back against it? Because we don't have the, you know, the Supreme Court, as you mentioned, Ryan, has gutted the Voting Rights Act. So unfortunately, we don't have the same oversight by the Supreme Court that we did previously in regard to the types of bills. And then on the other hand, you have a problem in terms of reforming our elections overall. You have the Democratic Party attempting on a federal level to pass what's known as HR1 or For the People Act, which would, in my opinion, in the most comprehensive way, reform our elections by getting money out of politics, ensuring that we have publicly funded elections, ensuring that we mitigate some of these voter suppression laws that are passing

in various states. But in order to do that, you would need 60 senators to sign on to it in the Senate. And we're not going to get that because the Senate is split 50-50, and Republicans are not in favor of doing away with voter suppression. They love voter suppression. And Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, is unwilling to do away with the Senate filibuster. So we're backed up into a corner, partly because we have some Democratic lawmakers in the Senate aiding and abetting the bad behavior of Republican lawmakers. Right. You know, there's only as far as I can tell three different options.

One, you, you swarm the ballot box, so you win by, you know, if you win by 10%, then maybe you win by, you know, half a percent. You challenge these laws in district court and circuit court. You're not going to win it to Supreme Court quite obviously. And you're not going to win in a lot of district and circuit courts, but they, Democrats did quite well, you know, against Donald Trump's stop the steal effort. You know, they won pretty much every case, and they won it with, in a lot of cases, with Trump judges sitting on the bench. So, you know, if Republicans have been sloppy enough,

they can win some challenges here and there, but that's just nibbling at the edges. Like you said, the only actual serious response is HR1 that just straight up bans this stuff. And in order to do that, they're going to have to persuade Manchin to get behind reforming the filibuster. And this is one of those situations that's interesting. If you talk to Republicans, Republicans don't have any faith in Joe Manchin in protecting the filibuster. Like they, they, to them, he's already gone. Like to them, he's just playing games here. He's teasing Republicans with with all of his talk about bipartisanship and that, and he's eventually going to side with Democrats and blow up the filibuster. Like, that's what the majority of Republicans in Washington

are convinced of. If you talk to Democrats, you know, they think that Manchin's, you know, an unmovable supporter of the filibuster. And there's just no way that he's, that he's going to get around to that. If you talk, if you talk to Democrats inside Congress, a lot of them are like, look, Mansion said that he would never do a partisan COVID relief bill up until the moment that he said, well, Republicans won't work with us. So I'm going to do a partisan COVID relief bill through reconciliation. It's going to be $1.9 trillion. And I'm going to trim $100 a week off of the unemployment benefits. And that's what I'm going to call my victory. So there's two different views of mansion. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I hope that Democrats are right. I'm certainly far more

pessimistic than they are because he has been asked almost on a daily basis about the filibuster and he remains firm in not wanting to even reform it. But who knows? Maybe he'll have his moment of awakening and he'll realize that the Republican Party has no interest in making bipartisan deals. And obviously, I mean, you noted it, but I want to emphasize the fact that Mansion succeeded in getting the Democratic Party to agree to all sorts of disgusting unnecessary concessions on behalf of the Republican Party and not a single Republican lawmaker voted in favor of the coronavirus relief bill. So, you know, I'm sorry. What he did in trimming the unemployment benefits, implementing additional and unnecessary means testing as part of the

relief package, I don't think it deserves any credit. And so in the end, yes, you know, voted in favor of it, but he needs to acknowledge the fact that after making all these concessions to Republicans, not a single one of them voted with Democrats, not a single one of them had interest in working with the Democratic Party. And the fact that he's still delusional enough, or at least pretends to be delusional enough, to believe that Republicans could work with him moving forward is just, it's, it's infuriating. And you know what? Maybe we need to talk about that now in more detail because, you know, Manchin pretended to be shocked about how the GOP behaved on the issue of the January 6th commission. And I think that this kind of informs

how he's going to act moving forward. So let's get to that story. Conservative Democratic lawmaker and Senator Joe Manchin is pretending, at least, to be shocked that Republican lawmakers have effectively blocked an effort to form a commission to investigate the riots that took place in the nation's capital on January 6th. So only six GOP senators voted in favor of that commission on Friday, short of the 10 needed to pass the proposal. Just a quick side note, Democratic Senator Kirsten Sinema didn't even show up to vote, so she certainly doesn't deserve any positive commentary in this story either. But according to the Daily Beast, ahead of Friday's vote as Republican opposition to the insurrection commission solidified,

Manchin issued a call imploring his colleagues to consider passing the legislation. He said he couldn't imagine why Senator Mitch McConnell's conference would block a partisan effort, bipartisan effort to get to the bottom of the attack on the Capitol. In fact, he was quoted as saying, there is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything they asked for. But guess what? They did block the commission, even though they allegedly got everything that they asked for. And even with this whole incident, even with the fact that not a single Republican lawmaker voted in favor of Joe Biden's

coronavirus relief package after Mansion had provided the concessions they wanted, he is still unwilling to do away with or reform the Senate filibuster. In fact, he was asked about it again. He said, quote, I'm not separating our country, okay. I don't know what you all don't understand about this. You ask the same question every day. It's wrong. So Ryan, you had mentioned earlier that Republicans don't feel that they can rely on Mansion, you know, sticking to this principle of maintaining the filibuster. Some Democrats think that at the end of the day, Mansion will go ahead and do what they need them to need them to do in at least reforming the filibuster. I mean, what do you predict is really going to happen here?

Oh, God, prediction game. So I can I can help people frame how how they can read those mansion comments as as less unequivocal than they sound. Because I understand for people who don't cover Congress and who, you know, aren't, you know, who only, you know, see kind of mansion through the prism of Twitter that when he says, look, I've told you a million times, it's wrong, I'm not going to get rid of it. It sounds like, well, that's what he means. Politicians, you know, you just cannot believe words that come out of their mouth. That, you know, it's all positioning. And so why would this be beneficial positioning to mansion ahead of his decision to reform?

The filibuster, and I say reform because that's what he'll call it. He'll never say that he's eliminating it because whatever replaces it, there will still be some type of filibuster. It just won't give the minority and ability to block and require 60 votes for the majority to get things through. So why would he do this? And so one explanation would be that he always wants to be shown to have been dragged into a partisan position, kicking and screaming. You know, that he wants to show people back in West Virginia, that he has done everything that he possibly could to work with Republicans, that his heart is with the Republicans, that his heart is with bipartisanship, and that it absolutely kills him to be doing what he's doing now, voting to move forward with the filibuster reform. But he just couldn't find enough good patriotic Republicans to go along with him on the needs of West Virginia, on the January 6th Commission, the Paycheck Fairness Act, you know, voting rights reform, things that he is proud to say that he supports, but he's not proud of being a Democrat. Like he, it is a liability to be a Democrat in in West Virginia at this point.

And so that, that is an explanation for why he would be, you know, so firm in his, in his position. If you remember about, you know, six weeks ago or so, he went on Fox News and said that he was, there ought to be a talking filibuster. So clearly, you know, and he walked that back under. under pressure. But, you know, clearly he's, he doesn't have some abiding moral affinity for a 60 vote cloture and the silent filibuster like that they're, that's absurd. And he has, and he showed that that, that he doesn't have that affinity six weeks ago when he, when he floated the possibility of getting rid of it. This is all, this is all politics to mention.

And so I, so I would say, you know, if I, if I had to put my own money on it, I put my own money on Democrats failing. I mean, that that's always going to be the smarter bet. But I would be nervous and I would try to put as little money as possible down because there is a real recognition within the Senate Democratic caucus that this is a do that this is a do or die moment. I want to go to this next clip because this is how Manchin responded to a reporter asking about doing away with the filibuster recently. And of course, it was in response to how Republicans block the January 6th commission. Let's take a quick look at that.

The Democrats have basically given everything they've asked for, any impediment that would have been there, and there's no reason not to now unless you just don't want to hear the truth. Does it make you reconsider your stance on the filibuster? Does it make you reconsider your stance on the filibuster? No, before the guy could even finish this question. So I'm with you, Ryan, in regard to, if I had to bet money on it, I would bet that Republicans are going to end up winning out in the end.

And Mansion is unlikely to agree to even reforming the filibuster. But I also want to just quickly note, it's not only about Mansion. There are other Democratic lawmakers who aren't as vociferous in wanting to maintain the filibuster. Now, Kirsten Cinema seems to be in favor of also maintaining the filibuster. It's just that Joe Manchin really, I feel like he enjoys the attention that he. he's getting. And you're right. I mean, it is unpopular to be a Democrat out of a state like West Virginia. But when it comes to the actual policies that the filibuster is standing in the way of, for instance, like the coronavirus relief bill, the upcoming infrastructure bill,

the American Families Plan, we're talking about incredibly popular proposals that West Virginians are supportive of. And I've always wondered why it is that the Biden administration is willing to use carrots but not sticks in regard to Democratic lawmakers like Joe Manchin. And is it because Democrats are genuinely under this impression that Manchin at the end of the day will play ball and will help them get rid of the filibuster? Is that what it is? And aren't they putting a lot on the line by making their own prediction here? Partly it's that, but also partly, it's what can you do? You know, mansion is his own political entity in West Virginia. His ultimate goal is, you know, to go back to the governor's mansion.

Like that he's always made that very clear to people that he doesn't really like being the Senate, that he'd rather go back to being governor again, where he can be an executive. and Democrats trashing Joe, National Democrats trashing Joe Manchin actually only helps him get closer to that goal. And so, you know, so you're right, they've gone with the carrots. They stuck his wife on a commission. Sometimes I forget what job she got, but, you know, they literally gave his wife a job. No, no, I love it. I actually have the details on that because I think it's important. The Biden administration absolutely has used carrots and it's apparently not good enough, at least for the time being.

Gail Connolly Mansion was the former president of the state board of education in West Virginia. In April, she was nominated by Biden to co-chair the Appalachian Regional Commission, an influential federal board that directs federal economic programs in 13 states, including West Virginia. The Senate actually confirmed her back in May. Or actually, not back in May. May was just yesterday. Yesterday. Yeah. Right, yeah. I'm sure she's as qualified as anybody else to distribute federal money to those states. But the fact that her last name is mansion, I'm sure, didn't hurt her get that job.

So Biden has more carrots than he does have sticks. I mean, so he could threaten to withhold money from West Virginia. But then, you know, whoever has more leverage is the one that wins those staring companies. And so, you know, what is Joe, you have to always ask then, well, what does Joe Manchin do in response to that, to that kind of a threat? And like, okay, then I guess you don't need to pass anything else through the Senate, because that's the problem with negotiating with these centrists is that and conservatives, that they're actually okay politically and personally with nothing happening. So, and Biden is not okay with nothing happening. If Biden's agenda completely stalls, then his presidency is over. Yeah, yeah.

Well, we'll see how this all plays out. For now, though, we need to take a break. And when we come back, another major U.S. corporation is dealing with a cyber attack. We'll tell you which one and what the consequences are. And later in the show, Ken Clippenstein successfully trolls some of the worst. conservatives on Twitter. We'll give you those details and more when we return. Thanks for listening 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.