The Young Turks - Cop Out

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

A Virginia police officer is fired after accusations of assaulting an Army officer, a Minnesota cop kills a 20-year-old Black man during a traffic stop, and the horrible reactions from right-wing media members like Newsmax’s Greg Kelly.  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. All right, welcome to the Young Turks. Jake, you, Granite and Casparian, with you guys on a lovely Monday evening. Now, we're in good moods. The problem is, of course, the news is disastrous. The news is disastrous on a lot of fronts.

I'm keeping it real with you guys. We have cultural issues. we have police brutality issues, we have progressives caving in Congress issues, we have Republican issues, and we're gonna cover them all. That's what we do, because our job is to cover news. I will give you a fair but optimistic view on all these things, and where optimism is not warranted, we'll tell you. So tons and tons of news to get to, I'm sure Casper had a good weekend, I'm sure I did, I'm sure you did, so we're gonna move forward and do the news. All right, I just want to note for myself, I am not in a good mood. And it is because of the

rundown, it is because of the stories that we're talking about today. And I'm glad that you still find optimism even after we talk about two different cases of police using brutality and excessive force. Let's start off with Virginia. One of two Virginia cops who pulled guns on and assaulted an army officer has been fired. The situation stems from a traffic stop involving an army officer by the name of Karen Nazario, who is both Latino and black. Nazario was driving on a dark road in rural Virginia when the police tried to pull him over for allegedly a missing license plate. The car actually had a temporary license plate since it was a new car. Anyway, at that point, Windsor, Virginia police officer Joe Gutierrez tried to pull him

over and unfortunately the situation became very violent from that moment on. So I want to show you the video of what occurred and then I'll give you more details about the aftermath. I'm honestly afraid to get out. Can I? Yeah, you should be. Get out now. I have not committed any crimes. You're being stopped by tribal violence or you're not cooperating at this point right now. You're under arrest. You're being detained. You're being detained. For a traffic violation, I do not have to get out the vehicle. You haven't even told me why I'm being stopped. About two to three minutes in, Officer Crocker tried to open the driver's door. In his report, he wrote, quote, when I attempted to unlock and open the driver's door,

the driver assaulted myself by striking my hand away and pulled away from Officer Gutierrez's grip. But in his own body camera footage, Nasario is not seen striking anyone. Crocker's report also says that at this point, Gutierrez, quote, gave several more commands to comply with orders or he would be sprayed with his OC spray, but no such warnings could be heard. Gutierrez just sprayed Nazario, still without either officer having told Nasario what exactly he was pulled over for. That's f***ed up. That's f***ed the car now.

I don't even want to reach for my seatbelt, can you? Take your seatbelt off and get out of the car. You made this way more difficult than it had to be. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Can you please talk to me about what's going on? Why am I being treated like this?

Why? You're not cooperating, get on the ground. So already from that video, you can see where the police report differs significantly from what actually happened and what was caught on that footage that we showed you. I should also note that since the army officer here, Nazario was driving on a dark rural road, what he did when the cops tried to pull him over was put his blinker on indicating that he intends to pull over, but he drove to a lit area for the officer's safety and for his own safety. And so that is going to be discussed in this next clip, which also touches on what I'm sure many people are thinking about front and center. And that's the racial component to this story. Let's take a look. Nazario explained why he didn't immediately pull over.

I was pulling over to a well-lit area for my safety and yours. I have respect for law and But Gutierrez said that wasn't the problem. The climate over hand, with the media spewing, with the race relations between the minorities, the law enforcement, I get it, okay? So like I told you, as far as you're not stopping and you're comfortable and you want to the well-lit spot, we tell that that happens with all the time. It happens to be a lot. And it gets me. I would say 80% of time, not always 80% of time, it's a minority.

And while the officers couldn't understand why Nasario didn't get out of the car as instructed, I went to the plot. Nasario said he didn't know why he was being stopped. I've never looked out the window and saw a gun blazing immediately. Gutierrez eventually told Nasario that he had a conversation with the chief of police and was giving him the option to let this all go. There's no need getting this on your record. I don't want to your record.

However, it's entirely up to you. If you want to fight it and argue, I mean, I don't mean I have disrespectfully, okay? I mean, you have that right as a citizen. If that's what you want, we'll charge you. It doesn't change my life one way or the way. After reviewing that footage, Windsor, Virginia police have decided to fire police officer Joe Gutierrez and obviously for good reason. Everything that, you know, the Army officer alleged has been proven by that video, including the very clear threat regarding, you know, Nazario's military reputation. in future. So there have already been some consequences. The other cop that was there seemed

pretty terrified and didn't know what he was doing. I'm not saying that he's, you know, not gonna face any consequences or shouldn't, but that's where we're at with the story right now. Jank, what do you think? So one of the worst parts of it was right in the beginning when they pull up to him. And for about a minute, they keep yelling two contradictory commands. And it, you know, watching the video, I had read the headline, I knew he hadn't been killed, but I was so worried that something worse was going to happen to him because they kept saying put your hands out the window and get out of the car. Well, if your seatbelt is buckled, you can't have your hands outside the window and get out of the car, you just can't. And you

saw that play out later in the video and you guys saw some of that in the portions that we played, Right? And so when, and I remember a story we covered where in that case was a white guy in a hotel room and the cops had him crawling around on the floor. And they kept giving him contradictory orders. And when he followed one but not the other, because he couldn't do both at the same time, they shot him dead. Right. So that's why I was so worried for this guy at the beginning of the video. Luckily in this case, they didn't shoot him. I mean, this is the lowest bar we have, right? And this is the, We're always like, oh my God, he didn't get murdered for no reason. Thank God. All right, now let's talk about the rest of the story, right? And then when you talk about that, so getting pulled over, he didn't have tags. It turns out he did have tags. It was temporary tags, it's super clear. So guys, think about it. Okay, just in every one of these stories, all I ask you to do is put yourself in each person's shoes, right? So if you're the driver of a car, it doesn't matter what race you are, right? If the cops pull up on you

when you have an excellent sense that you didn't do anything wrong, and they pulled guns immediately. I mean, I've been pulled over a lot of times. I never got a gun pulled on me. I'd be like, oh my God, what is going on? Why are they pulling guns on me? What's happening? And they're like, get out of the car and have your hands out. And it looks like, like, do they have me mistaken with someone else that's like a mortal danger to everyone in this neighborhood? I mean, what kind of an incredible murderer do they think I am to get this kind of treatment? And that was over because he had perfectly legitimate temporary tags and that you either saw or didn't see. And you wanted to pull him over because he was a black man in a nice looking

car. Let's keep it real. Let's keep it real. And you saw the officer talk about minorities later, right? So you know if it happened to a white right winger, they would be enraged. They would be enraged. How dare you treat me like this? I have my rights. When a white right winger says that, they feel perfectly emboldened to say it, when an African-American person says it, no matter where they're from, in this case, a lieutenant in the army, they think, how dare you not get on the ground with your face on the pavement, with a gun to your head, for no reason at all, comply. You must comply. If you don't comply, even within an inch, we have every right to execute you. Now, we're supposed to accept this. And guys, I'm tired of the bad apple nonsense. Totally. I'm exor. Exhausted. How many videos are like this? We've literally shown you hundreds of videos like this. It's not bad apples. We train cops to be vicious. We train cops to enforce their authority. And that that is their number one priority. It doesn't matter what the crime is. It matters to some degree who the person is and what race they are. Okay, but most importantly, if they do not comply with your orders contradictory, logical, legal, or not legal, it doesn't matter. Then you crush that citizen and you show them who's boss by either shooting them, tasering them, pounding their face in the paper. Why are they arresting the guy in the first place? Didn't even ask him a single question? He's in the car, he's got his hands

out, he's not a threat. Why don't you go ask him a question? Hey, how about your tags? Oh, right, there's your tags. Hey, are you a criminal for no reason I'm asking you because you're black? Ask him the question. I don't know, ask him what you're going to ask him. Now, it's, and they're never going to do anything. Now the governor in Minnesota in a different story is talking about, oh, we have to do something. Oh, shut up. They all constantly with the politicians. Oh, we should do something, but not defund the police, not this, not this, not this. Police union, give me the money, give me the money, police union. Okay, I love you guys, etc. I almost said it. Anyway, so they're not going to do anything, they're going to pull over more black people, they're going to kill more of them,

they're going to threaten more of them. But if you actually go to fix the problem, which is police training and you say, hey, maybe the cops shouldn't go to maximum force every single time. They're saying, you're endangering police lives. You're endangering police lives. Nothing but total BS. I'm sick of it. So it isn't bad apples. It is the whole culture of policing because we train them to be brutal and vicious and especially to poor people and especially to minorities. I mean, I think it's a combination of so many different things. Yes, there's an issue with training.

In this particular case, you know, you have the police department saying that they're firing Gutierrez because he didn't follow protocol. For instance, he refused to tell Nazario what he was being pulled over for, what he was being arrested for, that was never answered. So that's point number one. Point number two is we've been dealing with story after story of unarmed individuals getting shot and killed by cops over and over and over again. And what tends to happen when there isn't a legitimate reform or response to that? Well, it emboldens cops, right? I mean, if you feel

that you're invincible, if you feel that, you know, you have anger issues and you can carry them out on anyone you come across and you don't have to deal with any consequences for literally shooting and killing an unarmed individual, well, then why would you fear, you know, carrying out an act of violence like that or excessive force once a situation arises. The other thing is let's keep it real. We have a security state, a militarized police state that is a byproduct of our foreign policy as well. I mean, part of the reason why we see this militaristic activity or behavior by cops is because the giant inventory of weaponry that we have for our military continues to get made, we have a surplus, and it gets shifted over to police departments.

I mean, all of that creates this culture of violence that seems to be green lit by, yes, the police union that protects the cops regardless of what they do, but also by right wing media, by right wing politicians, and the cycle goes on and on and on. And on the other side, do we have lawmakers who are willing to do something that's actually substantive in response to police violence. And the answer is no. Look, I'm gonna keep it real. People are gonna hate what I'm about to say. The mass protests that happened last summer were incredibly important, okay? I mean, largest protests in U.S. history. But what did the protesters get in return from democratic lawmakers on a local level? Oh, we're gonna do a Black Lives Matter

mural mural in front of Trump Tower. So what? So what? What does that do to fundamental changed policing in this country. And, you know, the mass protests are important, but they need to be coupled with like some sort of mechanism to continue applying pressure to lawmakers, organized individuals who continue applying pressure. And we just have not seen that. And so what we get in response is more mass shootings, more mass shootings. I think it's too simplistic to say, oh, it's just the training. Oh yeah, one one other massive thing I forgot to mention, white supremacist, infiltrating local police departments across the country, that's a huge problem as well. I mean, there's so many different factors to look at. And really, there haven't been any

substantive responses or reforms after we see all these examples. No, look, let's be honest. Democrats have done nothing. What did Joe Biden do today? In the second story of police abuse in Minnesota, he went and yelled at the protesters. And because, oh, no, no, you don't want to seem like you're soft on protesters. And so I get it. There was looters in Minnesota. And they shouldn't do that. Yeah.

Well, since those protests, like Anna said, what have you done for them? Nothing. Nothing. So then you say, oh, well, you shouldn't get frustrated. Well, okay, then why don't you do something? No, I'm not going to. Well, okay, then screw you. So we just covered a story last week in L.A.

Same thing. There's a police response. Turns out there's somebody did domestic violence. It turns out as a white guy. They didn't hear, they didn't get conveyed to them as a white guy. They just pull over the first black guy. And same thing, they don't even ask him any questions. They handcuff him immediately. They rough him up immediately. He says, this is my house. Why are you doing this to me? They're like, how dare you? I'm a cop. I'll do whatever the hell I want. I have ultimate authority. And that's why I talk about the training. I don't mean training like, oh, you put on the handcuffs wrong. No, I mean like they're in, The entire culture is wrong.

They trained them to abuse the citizens. They train them to use as much force as possible and to never take a risk with even getting a fingernail, you know, hurt. And they train them that if anyone looks suspicious, black people, Latinos, etc., to go rough them up and handcuffed them and arrest them and ask questions later. Now at the end, Gutierrez realizes that it was a false arrest, and what does he do? He says, now I could continue to arrest you. And that'll ruin your life, or you could not make any trouble here.

Oh, okay, so you know what you did is wrong. And now you're threatening to ruin his life anyway after you already screwed him over. And let's be honest about accountability. There's no accountability. Gutierrez got fired today. You know why? Because the video got released. Before the video got, this happened back in December.

Before the video got released, he wasn't fired. They would have kept him. They would have probably promoted them because cops are allowed. to get away with anything. That's what I mean by culture and training. Any politician, and they're all mealy mouth, they never do anything, and they're not gonna do anything. Biden's not gonna pass a goddamn thing other than things that are performative, okay? They will all claim, oh yeah, we're working so hard out of Black Lives Matter. Instead of, but the culture, how dare you? We have to protect the police. I mean, they had to murder the people. Bad apples, let's fire

that guy, let's fire that guy. Did you ever fire any of their trainers? Did you ever fire any of their bosses. Did you ever go in there and say stop killing people because you thought, hey, it's a black person and I'm in danger, I'll just shoot him and be done with it. Or in this case, I'll pound them into the pavement just in case. No, they're never gonna change it. That's why people are sick of white supremacy and these overlords constantly bullying us and then forcing people that are protesting to apologize. Stop with the apologies. Demand some goddamn change, including from Democrats who never do anything. Let's take a break. When we come back, we have one conservative responding to this by

blaming the army officer, Nazario. Come right back. All right, back on a young Turks. If you find a good cop, show me. Looking for one. Okay, and by the way, it's not that I don't agree with the people who say All bad people, like cops are inherently bad people. That's insane. They're human beings, okay? No, we did get in there and we teach them to be terrible people, terrible, terrible people, and then they do what they're trained to do. Anyway, all right, let me read from you guys. Captain Lieutenant writes in on YouTube super chat, one bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch, only happens in a Jackson 5 lyric. In reality, one bad apple spoils the barrel.

First of all, that's true. Second of all, it ain't one bad apple. They're all trained to be bad apples. No cop looks at any of these videos and thinks that any of them were any, had done a single thing wrong. Every cop looks at every video and goes, nailed it, I don't know what the problem is, we're the victims, okay? TYT, Wolfpack, Justice Demp says, police departments across the country purposely hire officers who score low on empathy. I read this on cop, watchers similar before they were all taken down. It would make for a great story on TYT. I haven't read that, I'll look into it, but that's not surprising. If you have empathy for people, you might not to smash their head into the ground for no goddamn reason or murder them.

British 32 writes in, hi TYT, enjoy your show every day of the week from the UK. One of the law is going to change regarding cops because they're not superheroes, which is proved in the video of the driving wall black, which equals death sentence or abuse in USA nowadays. And that's disgusting. So you're right. And I'm glad you, first of all, thank you for the support from the UK. But guys, think about it. If cops are naturally bad people, how come they're not bad people in the UK or Sweden? or Netherlands or many other countries where they have proper training. Nobody like generally speaking, people don't hate the cops there.

The cops don't abuse people there. They're not all horrifically evil people there. No, because they got trained to be decent human beings. We train our cops to be monsters and then they're surprised every single time that they're monsters. Okay, or they act like monsters. Peter Hamby says cops aren't a black, cops arrest a black army veteran for a very small infraction, but they let white hillbillies with automatic weapons from storm the capital, racism at its finest. And unfortunately, that is true. Let's go to our members section. Before I do that, the Ryan Jackson, Monica Cruz, and Kimberly all just joined by hitting the join button below. When you join the Young Turks, you could do it through YouTube with the joint button,

you could do it through Amazon Prime on Twitch is free that way. You can do it anyway on Twitch, by the way, even if you don't have Amazon Prime, of course you can become a member, and that's super important to us, right? You can do it through t.t.com slash join. Now, if you don't want our voice to get out there more and you don't want us to fight for you, then don't join. If you do want us to be louder and stronger on your behalf, that's an excellent reason to join on top of getting more programming. Okay, I'm gonna go to Keldo Head in the member section. No, I'm out of time. All right, guys, I'll read more from the member section next time around. Thank you for your support. I've got more rage for you when we return.

All right, back on the Young Church, Jenkin, Anna, with you guys. I started the show by saying that this, I'm gonna try to have some optimism. That immediately went out the window in the first segment. Those police stories, they drive me nuts and they get me in a rage. So it is what it is, but there's one more element to that story that we shared with you guys. And then there's another police shooting, but let's take it one by one. Go ahead. So Newsmax host, Greg Kelly, has a very different take on the brazen excessive force

and racism displayed by Windsor, Virginia cops during a traffic stop involving an army officer by the name of Karen Nazario. Now Kelly, who I should also note is the son of Ray Kelly, the former New York Police Department commissioner, tweeted this, support the troops. Keep in mind, we're talking about an army officer who was assaulted here, support the troops, thanks soldiers by one, allowing them to keep driving during a traffic stop, two, compliance unnecessary to lawful police orders, three, don't bother with license plates, plus this soldier is special, he's black and Latino, the cop is only Latino, I mean, who cares?

Now obviously there's a lot to unpack and debunk here, but to be absolutely clear, we're talking about an army officer who was pulled over because he allegedly was missing license plates. Turns out he wasn't missing license plates. He was driving a new car and it had temporary license plates. I should also note that he didn't reject the officer's orders. He was complying. And the idea that he did anything unlawful during that traffic stop that led to the assault is absolutely ridiculous. But I think it's important to remind you guys of what happened. Maybe you haven't seen what happened. But this video does a good job in detailing what the officers alleged and what the video actually showed of that violent traffic stop.

Take a look. I'm honestly afraid to get out. Can I actually get out now? I have not committed any crimes. You're being stopped right, I'm trying a violation. You're not cooperating at this point right now. You're under arrest. You're being detained. You're being detained. Okay. You're being detained. For a traffic violation, I do not have to get out the vehicle. You haven't even told me why I'm being stopped. About two to three minutes in, Officer Crocker tried to open the driver's door. In his report, he wrote, quote, when I attempted to unlock and open the driver's door, the driver assaulted myself by striking my hand away and pulled away from Officer Gutierrez's grip. But in his own body camera footage, Nazario is. not seen striking anyone. Crocker's report also says that at this point, Gutierrez, quote, gave several more commands to comply with orders or he would be sprayed with his OC spray.

But no such warnings could be heard. Gutierrez just sprayed Nazario, still without either officer having told Nasario what exactly he was pulled over for. That's f***ed up. That's f***ed the car now. I don't even want to reach my seatbelt, can you? Take your seatbelt off and get out of the car. You made this way more difficult to have to be.

Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Can you please talk to me about what's going on? Why am I being treated like this? Why? You're not cooperating. Get on the ground.

Officer Gutierrez never told Nasario what he was being arrested for. In fact, he was never charged with anything. But that doesn't matter to Greg Kelly, who also says that Nasario, quote, wanted a confrontation, this bad lieutenant, bad lieutenant did everything he could to make this situation as bad as possible. Regarding the gun, most military bases have strict policies on storing weapons. What base was he coming from? Had he been in compliance or noncompliance? So the post assault defamation has already begun with right wing talk show hosts like Greg

Kelly and Jank, I don't think we should be surprised. This is a standard operating procedure for the right wing media. It doesn't matter if we're talking about someone who's currently in the military who did nothing wrong and there's video proving that he did nothing wrong. The right wing will march on with their talking points as long as the person who has complaints against excessive force happens to be a person of color. Okay, so let me be very clear. Greg Kelly is obviously racist. So he looks at that video and the video shows that Lieutenant Azario, In fact, did absolutely nothing wrong. He had the tax. He put on his blinkers. By the way, one of our viewers wrote this in, and drivers said, they teach you if you're in a

on a dark road like that, you're supposed to put on your blinkers and go to the first well-lit place to stop for the police. He did exactly as you're supposed to. Then he followed orders. They said, put your hands out the window. He did. Then they said, get out of the car. He couldn't because he had his seatbelt up. He did. And then at the end, you see the cop telling him, Basically, we know this is a false arrest. So you better drop it. Otherwise, we're going to continue the arrest, okay, and ruin your life and your career. So make sure you don't cause any trouble. Now, Greg Kelly sees all of that. And he sees the cops, threaten the guy's life, assault him with pepper spray, and then hit him in the legs with their knees, knock him to the

ground. And he says, yeah, of course, this is what you should do. Because what he means is, I saw black person, I was scared for my life because even though my dad and everybody else, the NYPD and all these other cops, and including these cops, are vicious to black people all the time. We call them violent. We call them violent. You know why? Because people like Greg Kelly are racist. And so when they see something like this, they think, well, that's how a black person should be treated. You and I look at that video and go, I didn't do anything wrong. Why the hell are you attacking him? And why won't you just say something simple like, hey, here, here's what? why we pulled you over, your tags. Oh, look, you are, you do have the tags are bad, right?

Why don't you do something? Greg Kelly looks at that video and goes, yeah, show that black guy. No, it doesn't matter that you serve, you think that makes a difference? No, it reminds me of Jesse Jackson's story. He said this, I heard the story a long time ago, and it really shook me. I was a Republican back then, and I was like, man, I had never thought of it like that. Now, the remaining Republicans would never have an open mind to seeing anything from anybody else's perspective. Anyway, just Jackson said his grandfather fought in, I'm sorry, his father fought in World War II, okay? And they beat the Nazis, they captured a bunch of Nazis, and then on the train back to the camp, the black soldiers, black US soldiers had to sit

behind the Nazis. Okay, so Greg Kelly would look at that and go, oh, of course, what do you What do you mean? I don't say anything wrong. The black, black people, of course, they're inferior. They should be beat up and it doesn't matter if they did anything wrong. They're black. Well, what I have to keep saying something they did wrong? Yeah, the color of their skin is wrong. So I'm done appeasing or babying, vicious, racist, like Greg Kelly. And Ray Kelly, his dad was awful at the NYPD. Everybody kisses his ass 24-7. He did stop and frisk, he did every brutal policy

you could possibly imagine they're vicious and vicious people. So I'm not surprised. But look, the last thing is, the only question is, is Greg Kelly just can't help himself? Oh, he's the black guy's innocent. Who cares? He's guilty. I hate him. He's black. I hate him. Or he thinks, look, I can see that he's innocent. But all my viewers are Republicans. So they're racist and they're vicious and they hate black people. So I'll smear this guy and they'll love it. And I'll become the number one host on newsbags. The answer's probably both. Yeah, I mean, I would be curious to get Greg Kelly's thoughts on Kyle Rittenhouse and the fact that he had possession of an illegal firearm, which he traveled with across state lines, and then proceeded to shoot and kill

two individuals in Kenosha, Wisconsin during the Black Lives Matter protest last year. I wonder what his thoughts are, because he seems to all of a sudden be very concerned about gun, gun safety in the context of an army lieutenant who was driving, doing nothing wrong, got pulled over even though he had temporary license plates. You know, you hear all sorts of right wing excuses for what Kyle Rittenhouse did. In this case, we're dealing with someone who's serving in the military, someone who the right wing typically would claim they care so deeply about especially, especially when it comes to NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. I mean, you wouldn't want to insult our troops. You wouldn't want to insult our veterans. I mean, how dare you?

But you know, when it comes to a traffic stop like this, where a black and Latino army lieutenant is abused with excessive force by the police, all of a sudden the bad guy is the member of the military, not worth the respect. In fact, he should be discharged from the military as a result of being victimized by the cops in Windsor, Virginia. Anna, if it was a white right wing lieutenant who was carrying a legal weapon and he's in the service, any chance Greg Kelly goes, oh, I can't believe that Republican white guy had a gun on it. No, he'd be like Second Amendment rights. How dare the cops stop him? Don't they know that white people are above them? They should just bow down.

He's a lieutenant in the army and he's white and he's a Republican. Or he has the rights to every kind of weapon you could imagine, okay? That's what Greg Kelly would say. So why the difference? Because Greg Kelly is super obviously, deeply, deeply racist, okay? So then I'm clear on that. Let's talk about Republicans in general, because we have a poll on this. Because I'm, look, I used to say, no, I mean, again, I've told you, I used to be a Republican.

I knew family members, I knew friends who were Republicans, et cetera. If you told me back then most Republicans are racist, I would have said, no, that's not true. Some definitely are, but not most. Now all those folks have left anyway. There's no such thing as liberal or moderate Republicans left. The remaining Republican Party is a toxic stew of racism, in my opinion. So, but maybe you guys are more generous than me. So we have a poll. T.y.com slash polls. Is a majority of our majority of Republicans racist, just yes or no, okay? Now, let me back up before you vote, hear this fact. They had a new poll out on their Chauvin and George Floyd trial. And guess what? More Republicans think that Derek Chauvin

is not guilty than Republicans who think he is guilty. They saw him murdered George Floyd in front of their own eyes for over nine minutes. I don't know how much of the testimony. They've seen the testimony is super clear. They say he did not die from drugs. He did not die from a heart condition. He died because you put pressure on his neck. And Republicans see that and go, yeah, Yeah, but he's black, so what do I care? Not guilty. Let me give you, let me give you the actual details of this poll. So it was done by The Economist and YouGov released this week. Respondents were asked, quote, Do you believe Derek Chauvin should be found guilty of murder?

Among Republicans, only 31% said Chauvin should be found guilty and 36% said he should not, which is twice as many as the overall respondents who said that Chauvin should not be found guilty. So this is, look, when you see Greg Kelly or other right wing talk show hosts spout these very obviously racist talking points in response to police brutality or any other incident that's making headlines that day, understand like we make a mistake by thinking that calling them racist or saying, hey, there's evidence here indicating that they wear that as a badge of honor. They want that. That is what their audience is looking for. That is what their audience enjoys. And I'm not going to allow anyone to gaslight me into believing that, you know, they're not

watching this kind of content on Newsmax or OANN because they find, they find it appealing. They do find it appealing. They 100% find it appealing. And Greg Kelly, he'll watch a video like this and he'll wear it as a badge of honor. So the question of whether or not we have a problem with racism in right wing media, racism in the conservatives, racism with policing. It's not even up for debate anymore. The real question is, what are Americans going to do strategically to apply enough pressure to get these low life, useless politicians to actually do something about it other than paint murals, you know, just to provide a little bit of release to protesters? It's not good enough, okay? I don't care about your stupid murals. I want actual.

action and we're not seeing that on a governmental level, both locally or on a federal level. So they say 36% are Republicans and that's double the national average. So that means 18% of all Americans saw Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd in front of their own eyes and thought, I'm here for it. I liked that he did that, not guilty. And remember, that is not people who who said they're not sure. That is people who say they know what happened and they think Chauvin did the right thing by murdering George Floyd. Okay, so now you know 18% of the country is deeply racist. By the way, how are we not supposed to watch out? If you're a minority in this country, knowing that one out of five people hates you, I mean, I'm talking about deeply

racist. I'm not talking about normal racism, light racism, back of your mind racism. I'm talking about one out of five people in this country hate blacks, Latinos and other minorities and think it's totally acceptable to murder them. Okay, so that's where we are as a country. I don't know how we're supposed to get back together. Things are looking bleak. I'll leave it there. But for now, we do have to take our break. When we come back, we have an entirely different story involving police brutality to get to this time in Minnesota. Come right back back, I'll give you the details. All right, back during the break, let me read some of our comments from the member

section, t.y.t.com slash join. Someone who likes Bernie Sanders wrote, and I guess every time they said support the troops that came on an asterisk unless he's black, that's what it looks like. The math and magician writes, in New York City, we have a saying for those of you shocked by the black cops behavior. Black cops are blue first, black second. So look, that's him saying it, that's not me saying it. I don't know what goes through people's heads. I know we brainwashed cops to be vicious.

They didn't walk in that way, they walk out that way. All right, Keldo Head says, I used to think their body cams will solve a lot of brutality. Nope, cops continue to abuse their powers and brutalize minorities because they are never held accountable. Corrupt police unions and racism that permeates every facet of law enforcement. And look, it's partly the racism, as we've talked a lot about, and it's part, but it's hugely about power. Story we might do tomorrow on the show, Boston Police Union had, by the way, been sexually abusing young kids since 1995. Internal affairs said, yeah, he did it. He molest little children. The union and the cops and the entire government protected it. They kept them on the force

and they let them abuse kids for decades. Why? Because you're not allowed to question cops. They have ultimate authority. That's not our system of government. Hell no, we have got to wreck this mentality that police cannot be held accountable. We have to absolutely positively destroy that toxic mentality. Yes, they can and they should be held accountable. And every time the very top should be held accountable. Whoever allowed that kind of law breaking should immediately be fired, and by the way, imprisoned. Ecclectic, Ms. Chalania writes in, hi, all, listening to TYT in the car on the trip back home after being out of town. A few days, my wife who doesn't usually watch the show was the one who remembered it was TYT time and asked if we could put it on.

Could this mean that Mrs. Ecclactic has finally been won over to TYT? I guess. So Mr. and Mrs. Ecclectic, wonderful to have you with us, and thank you for remembered. Salam Khadishim writes in, if Lieutenant Jesus had gone through the same horrible incident, Newsmax would have unequivocally stated he had a gun under his robes. Yeah, of course, if Jesus of Nazareth was as brown as he would normally be coming from that region, and the cops treated him this way, the Newsmax and Greg Kelly would say, of course he had it coming. He should have hit him another cheek, and then they should have put him on a cross, as long as he's brown or black. I unequivocally say that. I'm positive, Greg Kelly would say that, being the deep racist

that he is. All right, Stephen McCollum and Barside just joined by hitting the join button below on YouTube. Thank you, we appreciate it. Detroit Microsound makes a great point on using YouTube super chat said, cops are there to protect property and serve those that hold the power. Guys, let's keep it real. That's just what it is. Okay, they're not like yeah, peripherally, they're supposed to protect you for harm. But really their main job is to protect property and power. And they do that pretty well, unfortunately. Exoteric dragons says, for God's sake, Biden, speak up. And so far he's only spoke up against the protesters. We'll be back. All right, I'm back on TYT, Jen and Anna with you guys. Anna, take it away.

National Guard troops were called to respond to protesters following the police shooting and death of a 20-year-old man by the name of Dante Wright. He was unarmed at the time. Right was also shot by a Brooklyn Center cop in Minnesota. During a traffic stop, the cop alleged that Wright had an outstanding warrant, which he discovered after he had pulled Wright over. Now, Wright's mother was, on the phone with him as he was being pulled over as the incident was unfolding. And we should hear what she has to say about it. Let's take a listen. My son was 20 years old. He got pulled over for having air fresheners in the car that I just gave him. Two weeks ago. All he did was we had air fresheners in the car and he told him to get out of the car.

He got out of the car and his girlfriend said they shot him. Back in the car and he drove away and crashed. And now he's dead on the ground since 1.47, nobody will tell us anything. Nobody will talk to us. Y'all got to talk to her now. The BCA just says that they are investigating it. I have to please take my son off the ground. He's been there since 147. They left my son on the ground for eight hours in their house. At what time in the now? They're not going to keep you no information. So a lawyer on Twitter, I'm not certain if this is an attorney representing the family

here, but nonetheless it was confirmed that earlier today, Dante was shot to death during a traffic stop reportedly about an air freshener obstructing a mirror. And so that was later confirmed during a press conference by the police department. And I do want to actually get to that video because while there's still many unanswered questions about what happened during that traffic stop. The cops, the chief specifically, Tim Gannon, has confirmed that the shooting appears to have been a mistake. Listen to what he has to say with his own words.

As you can hear, the officer while struggling with Mr. Wright shows, taser, taser, several times. That is part of the officer's training prior to deploying a taser, which is a less lethal device. That is done to make her partners aware, as well as a subject, that a taser deployment will be imminent. During this encounter, however, the officer drew their handgun instead of their taser. For informational purposes, we train with our handguns on our dominant side and our taser on our weak side. So if you're right-handed, you carry your firearm on your right side and you carry your taser on the left. This is done purposefully and it's trained.

As I watch the video and listen to the officer's commands, it is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy their taser, but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet. This appears to me from what I viewed in the officer's reaction in distress immediately after that this was an accidental discharge. Accidental discharge. Let me just note that this officer has been described as an experienced veteran of the department. Also, I would just say that a gun feels a little different from a taser. But it is important to show you what the body cam footage captured of that incident. So let's look at that final video and then, Jank, we'll go to you.

How easy? How easy? How did you do that? Tanger, taser, terror. And to die him. And luckily, you know, the person in the other vehicle, vehicle did not get hurt. But in this case, of course, we have a 20 year old unarmed man who was shot and killed by a cop who had mistaken, allegedly mistaken her gun for a taser jank.

All right. So this case is a little bit more complicated than most of the cases that we cover. So look, there could be more evidence and almost certainly will be more evidence that comes out. But for now, looking at that video, he ran, he shouldn't have done that. Should they have shot him for running, no. Did she mean to shoot him or tase him? If all I had was that evidence, I would conclude she meant to tase him. She said taser, taser, taser, a number of times. Then she, after she shoots him, she yells out an expletive, seems genuinely surprised. And this is some, she says, I shot him. And so another piece of evidence is when they finally catch up with him after he's crashed and he's bleeding out or already dead. They actually did CPR. That's not what cops normally

do. And so when he starts running and he's already shot, he's got to get to a hospital. Because nine out of ten times in the stories that we've covered, if the police get to you first, they will handcuff you and let you bleed out and die. And so there was some degree of panic here that they had accidentally shot him. It looks like you guys can make your own judgment. and you saw the video yourself, that's my takeaway from it. Now, I don't want you to think like, oh, okay, well then that's okay. No, it's not okay, it's called manslaughter. And if you negligently shoot someone like, oh, I meant to taste them, but instead I shot him,

that's still a crime. It's just not, if all that is true, it's just not first degree murder, but it's still a very, very significant crime. You can't just say, oh, I didn't mean to shoot my neighbor, but I shot him and killed him. Okay, then you're going to jail. And so it depends on the circumstances, and that's the situation at hand here. And one of the things that needs to be sorted out is, why did they pull them over? You know, the family's saying air freshener, the cops are saying he had a warrant for his arrest. So it appears that he did have a warrant out for his arrest, but I don't know whether the cops knew that or they're just pulling over a black guy because that's what they do, right?

So, but he did have a warrant in Iran and he shouldn't have done that because it's a terrible idea to begin with given how many guys, do you watch the news at all? If you run from the cops, the chance of them shooting you is incredibly high. Are they supposed to? No, they're not supposed to. Do they do it all the time? Yes, they do it almost every time. So that's why I say it's a complicated story.

But if they pull them over for the air freshener, that's where the problem may be. begins in the first place. And last thing I'll say about that, guys, every traffic stop doesn't have to turn nuclear. And every person who runs doesn't have to be shot. So you're only supposed to shoot someone if you think that they are a mortal danger to yourself or to nearby people, an imminent danger at any moment they could kill someone else. That guy was running, but he didn't appear to be an imminent danger. If she really thought she was teasing him, that might, given that he was still there, depends on the police protocol there, that might have been a logical thing to do, I don't know. But shooting him was nowhere near logical. And just, yeah, it's clear that we've

seen far too many cases where they think, oh, he's running away, instead of trying to apprehend him later, let's just be done with it. And that's not acceptable. All right, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about something completely different. And that has to do with anyone who wishes to serve as a whistleblower to call out the US government and its wrongdoing and what they're likely to be met with by the government in the form of the espionage act. Former intelligence officer Daniel Dale is currently being prosecuted for allegedly violating the espionage act. He was the one who blew the whistle, the whistle on the U.S. government's illegal drone program. In fact, there's much that we know

about the drone program that we wouldn't know if it weren't for Daniel Dale, you know, basically spreading the actual truth about what was going on with the military and this program to journalists like Jeremy Scahill. Now, I want to give you some details about where that prosecution stands right now, because Hale conceded to giving documents about the U.S. drone program to an investigative journalist, unnamed in court documents, but clearly they're talking about Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept, and anonymously authoring a chapter in the assassination complex inside the government's secret drone warfare program. Now, he has actually just pleaded guilty. And the way that the espionage act works essentially does away with many of the

rights that the whistleblower would have in this case. And I'll get to that in just a second. But in this role, As a signals analyst, Hale was involved in the identifying of targets for the US drone program. Hale would tell the filmmakers of the 2016 documentary National Bird that he was disturbed by the uncertainty if anyone I was involved in killing or capturing was a civilian or not. There's no way of knowing. So oftentimes these drone strikes were carried out with faulty intelligence. And clearly he had moral and ethical issues with that, which he shared with reporters. Now, during the filming of National Bird in 2014, Hale's home was rated by the FBI in connection to an espionage act investigation. Hale explained that he thought he was being targeted in part for being a former

intelligence analyst now involved in political activism. And I would argue that he is correct in believing that. Now again, in late March, he pled guilty to one count of violating the espionage act. He has been charged with four counts. But before I give you some more details about what the government is doing to essentially target him and other whistleblowers, Jank, take it away. Yeah, so there's two components of this story that are maddening. Number one is the fact that he's facing prosecution at all. And two is how they've basically disallowed him from doing his own defense. They won't let him defend himself in any way, shape or form. It's unbelievable. This espionage act is trash. All it does is it targets whistleblowers.

Do people leak inside the government this kind of information other than folks like hell? Yeah, all the time daily. They link it to reporters. But it's to show how great they are and how awesome the government is and how wonderful they are at killing people. And so that never gets prosecuted. There's no espionage act used on those folks at all. This is selective prosecution of people who are showing government wrongdoing. It's disgusting. And by the way, the person who really put it on overdrive, as a lot of you know, is Barack Obama. There's no excuse for it. I don't care what kind of Washington ass kisser you are Barack Obama. But what he did with the espionage act was unconscionable. I want to give you more details of the drone program in a second.

But Anna, you were going to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to elaborate on a really good point that you were making about the double standard in regard to leaks. Because there's a very clear difference, right? People like Daniel Hale, other whistleblowers that we've talked about, Edward Snowden, the difference between them and other leaks that happen in the press is that oftentimes when intelligence officials do these leaks, they do it in order to work. garner support for U.S. militarism abroad or they do it in order to garner support for U.S.-led coup in a different country where a democratically elected leader is the new target to be overthrown by the U.S. government. In those cases, what it does is it helps to further what the U.S. government, specifically what the Pentagon wants to do. In this case, we're dealing

with whistleblowers who actually have a moral and ethical issue with how the U.S. government carries out its militarism abroad or surveillance on Americans here domestically. And so if you're going to try to hold the government accountable, well, under the Espionage Act, you could be a target of the U.S. government. And that's certainly what's happening with Hale. So let's talk about how barbaric this drone program was. And Daniel Hale is one of the reasons that we know about how barbaric it was. They created something called a kill chain. So that sounds great. where people would be summarily executed. They would have baseball cards and they would show the president.

Okay, here's the guy's picture. Here's why we think he might be a terrorist. And he might be holding this cell phone, which we've been tracking. It might be somebody else who's holding the cell phone. But can we press the button and murder? And the president would sign off on that murder. And it is, that's all it is, guys. You can pretty it up.

And I know everybody on MSNBC will be crying tears of how dare you say that about the sainted Barack Obama. but he signed off on murder warrants, including of U.S. citizens without any trial, without any judicial process at all. It's one of the worst abuses of power I've ever seen. Fox News has never criticized them for it because they love summary execution of U.S. citizens. So they didn't mind that at all, at all. That's a thing they could have gone after him for, and they didn't. So U.S. citizens like Ammar al-Lawki were killed. Just Gayhill and others at the intercept also report on that.

But not only that, his 16 year old son also US citizen was killed. Later, his daughter, I think she was about eight years old. She was also killed. The government told us those were all wild quizzes. By the way, three different bombings. Three different bombings. And they were all accidents or etc. But they don't even, and because of hell we know, they don't even classify them as accidents.

They called them enemies killed in action. And Hale explained one more thing. He said, these so-called targeted killings, during one five-month period, more than 90% of those killed by the US airstrikes were not the intended targets. This is a brutal execution program. And by the way, did Trump continue to run Obama's program? Of course they did. And he amped it up. But Obama started executing U.S. citizens first. That's a very uncomfortable fact. But it is a fact. Now let's turn to, or I'll let Anna tell the rest of the story, but I can't wait to tell you how our government cheats and make sure you never find out that this person actually is innocent. Right. And look, it's it's amazing how much the government targets

these whistleblowers, because let's keep it real, they're under the assumption that if this kind of leak gets out, if this kind of story gets published, then there's going to be an overwhelming backlash against the Pentagon, against the U.S. government, and it's a legal drone program. And to be sure, I mean, for people paying attention, yes, there's some backlash, there's some criticism. But to be clear, like the majority of Americans don't really seem to even care about this, right? We're killing innocent civilians abroad. And most Americans aren't paying attention. Most Americans don't care. But still, you'll have the government go after whistleblowers like hail very aggressively. I just wanted to also fill in a few more details about

what was reported as a result of Hale's whistleblowing, because as you mentioned, Jank, these targets are called from a secret terror watch list, which include U.S. citizens. Information about potential targets is transformed into baseball cards and given to the president who then has the option to sign what is essentially a death warrant. If the president signs off, the military has 60 days to carry out a lethal strike against a target. And again, yes, he brings up the fact that oftentimes the intelligence necessary to figure out where the target is is incredibly faulty. So moving on, a whistleblower indicted under the Espionage Act virtually has zero chance at a fair defense. That's really what the issue here is.

And the Espionage Act has been around for a while, but Obama was the one who essentially decided to use it, right? Previous administrations just kind of allowed the espionage act to remain dormant, even though there were whistleblowers in decades prior to the instances that we're talking about now. Now, the law allows for no public interest defense. Whistleblowers are gagged from explaining their actions. Defense attorneys are barred from uttering the words whistleblower or get this, first amendment within earshot of the jury. And so since all of that matters for sustaining a conviction is a defendant, I'm sorry, let me start that again, since all that matters for sustaining a conviction is that a defendant gave classified information to someone not entitled to receive it, that's all the jury is allowed to hear. So some of you might be wondering, okay, well, why did he plead guilties of that one count of violating the espionage act? He really has no choice. He has no ability to really defend himself as a result. of how that act was written and implemented. Okay, so let me go through these as quickly as I can. Anna mentioned some of them, but you can't argue that you did it for the public interest,

but that's what he did it for. So you say to him, you're not allowed to tell the truth about why you did it. This is America? This is America where you're not allowed to defend yourself because of the magical espionage act. Before Obama, you know what the espionage act was used for almost exclusively? exclusively against socialist leaders and labor leaders. It's always been trash, and the fact that Obama revived it is grotesque. You're like Anna said, you're not allowed to say the word whistleblower, but that's your main defense,

that you're a whistleblower. Now, if you're a corporation, you can say, I have my First Amendment right to bribe every politician in America. But if you actually want to use the First Amendment to do some, to report what the government is doing, they're like, no, a human being can't use the First Amendment, corporations can. But we're gonna put you in prison. If you, even mentioned the First Amendment in your defense of this nonsense charge to begin with. You can't challenge whether the documents were misclassified. So what if the guy, the document was, hey, I had a burger for lunch and the guy told a reporter that you had a burger for lunch, doesn't matter, it was accidentally classified

as top secret, you're going away for the rest of your life. You're not allowed to make that defense. This is America, this is America. It gets worse. Okay, the government, I'm quoting here, Jacobin, the government, even sought to bar the defense from arguing that an alternative perpetrator committed the charge crimes. So you can't say I didn't do it, somebody else did. Well, then what the hell can you say? And the answer is nothing. We've already decided you're guilty because you dared to reveal the terrible things that the US government was doing. Hence, we've stripped you of any potential defense you have. So then the cherry on top is, he goes, well, okay, I literally can't put on any defense,

So I'm forced to do a plea deal. Otherwise you're going to put me away for decades. They're going to like my life is over, right? So he says, okay, fine, I agree to the deal on this four charge, this one charge. The government then says, we were lying, we're not going to dismiss the other four charges. Well, what happened to the plea? It doesn't matter, you don't have a defense. And now you made the mistake of agreeing with us. Didn't we just tell you we were barbaric?

We should have never agreed with us. So now we're going to wait for the judge. judge to sentence you. And if he doesn't sentence you harshly enough, which was the whole point of taking the plea deal was that you don't get sentenced that harshly. But we want it anyway, despite the fact that we got the plea deal. And if we don't get it, we're gonna bring the other four charges. Okay, and whose government is doing this right now? Is it Trump's? No, it is Joe Biden's administration that's doing it. Don't let anybody on MSNBC and CNN and New York Times lie to you, okay? Because, oh Joe Biden, he's such a sane. Obama's a saint. Only the Republicans are the bad guys, when the Democrats crush the average guy and do terrible

things with the government and execute U.S. citizens in an extraditional way, by the way, totally illegal under international law. Their law breaking and their use of the Espionage Act is saintly because they're Democrats. No, it's nothing but a lie. Let Daniel Hale go right now. They won't because they're barbaric, but they should. If we had any justice and if we meant any of the marketing, that America purports to represent itself as we would let people like Daniel Hale go. But instead we'll probably treat him brutally for telling you the truth. Oh, in case you're wondering, is there any precedent for this? We told you about other times that Obama used the espionage act. One of them was against the CIA officer who revealed that the CIA

was torturing detainees. It's illegal under international and US law. He's the only one that went to prison for torture. The guy who lets you know we were torturing people. None of the people who actually did the torture went to prison. That's the injustice that is the U.S. government under both Republican and Democratic administrations. That does it for our first hour. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, conservatives are having a difficult time finding something to complain about with Biden's administration. And I love watching Fox and Friends fail.

So we got that and more coming up in the next hour. Stick around. We'll be back in just a few. 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.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.