The Young Turks - Cope & Change

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Joe Scarborough cries over “garbage” NYT poll that “warps reality”: Editors have to ""know what they’re doing."" Biden & Trump agree to two debates and trade punches. Correcting the record on Keffals, who’s accused of misusing donations. " HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. That's what I do. The gas screen. Live from the Polymarket Studio in L.A. It's the Young Turks. What's up, everyone, welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and we have so much news to get to today.

Another resignation within the Biden administration over the handling of the war in Gaza. So we'll get to that at the top of the show. Some big updates in regard to the presidential election. We'll spend some time on that. You have some of the MSNBC pundits losing their minds over the latest New York Times Sienna College poll. We'll talk about that. And unfortunately, I have to spend a significant amount of time humiliating myself in the first hour by offering a lengthy correction over a story that we covered a few years ago in regard to a

Twitch streamer who goes by Keffels. Turns out she's a massive con artist and I definitely regret taking anything she ever had to say at face value. But we'll get into those details in this hour as well. In the second hour, John Iderola will be joining me to talk about the rest of the news. And we have a whole host of stories to get into. There was a story we didn't have time to talk about yesterday in regard to the auto workers for Mercedes in Alabama. They're trying to unionize and they have been met with some serious union busting tactics. So we'll talk about that in the show as well. And as always, just want to encourage you all to smash that like button.

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Or you can hit that join button if you're watching us on YouTube. And of course, members get members only exclusive content every day after the main show. That's our bonus episode. And they get other special members only content that ties into specials that we do. So without further ado, let's get to a pleasant update in regard to members of the Trump administration, really taking a stand against the way he has handled the ongoing war in Gaza. Yet another member of the Trump administration, oh, sorry, yet another member of the Biden administration has resigned over the Biden administration's unwavering support and weapons shipments over to Israel. Now, the special assistant to the chief of staff in the interior department officially became the first Jewish Biden appointee to,

step down in protest of the war in Gaza. Her name is Lily Greenberg Call. She had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Interestingly, she was a longtime activist and an advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government. So this is not an individual who is, you know, well known for her ferocious critique of Israel. She's actually someone who has a background in being an activist on behalf of Israel. Now, Call wrote in her resignation letter, I joined the Biden administration because I believe in fighting for a better America, for a future where Americans can thrive, one with economic prosperity, a healthy planet, and equal rights for all people. I have dedicated my career to candidates who I believed would further this vision. However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration

amidst President Biden's disastrous continued support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. She used the word genocide, which I think is an incredible thing to do as a Jewish American, as someone who has a background, you know, doing activism work on behalf of Israel in Washington. And so, again, I can't imagine the kind of backlash she's dealing with. I know what kind of backlash we've dealt with for covering the story, the way that we have for using the word genocide and describing what's happening in Gaza. It's incredibly brave of her to resign. I mean, we're talking about her livelihood and career, but also to do so in a way that is,

you know, demonstrated in this resignation letter. People in my community lost loved ones during Hamas's attack on October 7th, beloved's killed, beloveds killed, displaced and taken as hostages. I am terrified by rising anti-Semitism around the world, and yet I am certain that the answer to this is not to collectively punish millions of innocent Palestinians through displacement, famine, and ethnic cleansing. She also told the Washington, I'm sorry, she told the Associated Press that she took issue with how the Biden administration has spoken about Jewish Americans, essentially lumping them all together. By the way, I want to be clear, I have a problem with anyone in any group lumping Jewish people as the same or lumping any ethnic group or race as the same. And I've seen a lot of that go on.

Please don't fall for that kind of disgusting mentality. Okay, please judge people as individuals and never lump people together and assume that they're all the same based on their identity or race or nationality. It's a huge mistake to do that. Now, here's what she had to say about the Biden administration, in her words, basically speaking about Jewish Americans in a way that she did not appreciate. Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where Biden said, were there no Israel, there wouldn't be a Jew in the world who was safe.

And at an event at Washington's Holocaust Memorial last week, in which he said the October 7th Hamas led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people. So in regard to that, she says, he is making Jews the face of the American war machine, and that is so deeply wrong, she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by state-sponsored violence. And you know, I haven't weighed in on Biden's statements, the statements that she took issue with, mostly because the war in Gaza has had so many different details that we wanted to report that some of the statements from Biden, I think we've allowed to kind of fall by the wayside. But I want to make a statement about what he had to say about how Israel is necessary because Jewish people aren't safe anywhere else in the world.

I mean, do you think America isn't a safe place for Jewish Americans to be? What a ludicrous thing to say. But anyway, she says the following, she said that the U.S. support for the war overall is an issue. I think the president has to know that there are people in his administration who think this is disastrous, not just for Palestinians, for Israelis, for Jews, for Americans, for his election prospects. And I think Lily is right about that. I mean, when you look at how Biden has continued to lose more and more support among key voters in the Democratic base, you know, we're talking about Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, many of whom reside in a swing state like Michigan,

When you're looking at young voters who are now split 50-50 based on the polling between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I mean, this is not good news for Biden. And he has shown an unwillingness to really hear out Democratic voters who are demanding a ceasefire. And while he had claimed that they were a halting weapon shipments to Israel, as we had reported to yesterday in a breaking news story by the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration has just approved another billion dollars in weapons transfers to Israel. So I don't know if the timing is a coincidence. That news story broke yesterday and Lily decided to resign and put out this open letter today. But regardless of what the final straw that broke the camel's back was,

I do want to show her love and solidarity for doing something that takes a tremendous amount of courage, but also really does end up sacrificing her own career and livelihood. I mean, so much respect for her speaking out the way that she has. And I hope she's okay. And I hope she knows that we here at TYT back her 100%. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants.

Fresh excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. All right. With that said, let's move on to some other news because there's a lot to get to today. Believe it or not, some pretty big updates in regard to the general election. Where are the polls talking us directionally about the race? I understand. There's a difference, though, with the New York Times Sienna poll, and you know this. It's given disproportionate impact. This year, this cycle, it is skewed wildly in Donald Trump's direction. Hold on. And the New York Times feasts on it with clickbait stories like a dozen at a time. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who once identified as a Republican, is big mad over the fact that his preferred presidential

candidate, Joe Biden, appears to be a loser in the election polling. Now, we've been talking about election polling endlessly on this show because the polling does not look good for Biden. And when you look at swing states in particular, which essentially decide the election, in poll after poll, Biden has been struggling. Now, the latest poll is the New York Times Sienna College poll that was released earlier this week. That's the one that has really upset Joe Scarborough. And so instead of considering the possibility that Biden is, in fact, a weak and vulnerable candidate, even against someone as divisive as Donald Trump, he'd rather be in denial and

attack the New York Times instead. Let's watch. New York Times right now is actively shaping the election cycles where this poll comes out on a Sunday and on Monday people go, oh, and I heard it. And I'm sitting there going, oh, don't be so stupid. That's why we're doing this. So we're out. No, hold on a second. Hold on, no, no, no, no, no, hold on. What I hear is after these Sienna polls come out, every time New Times poll is, oh, well, everything that Joe Biden's done since the, since the state of the union address, all of these, all this money that he's put out, all of the campaigning is for not. No, it's not. No, it's not. There's one poll.

It's wildly skewed every time. And it does shape, if it's a New York Times poll versus a morning concert poll, and the New York Times in amplifies it 15, 16, 17 times, it warps reality. So the reason why Joe Scarborough is so upset about all of this is because the New York Times Santa College poll does tend to have the worst results for Joe Biden. It's not the only poll that has the worst results for Joe Biden. But it does tend to be an outlier in that the results, especially in the swing states, tend to show that Trump has a far bigger lead over Biden than other polls do.

Other polls also show that Trump has a wide lead over Biden. It's just not as wide as the New York Times-Cyenne College poll. Now I'm gonna show you the average of polling in just a moment, so you can see that Joe Scarborough is 100% in denial. Now, let's take a look at what the, you know, the results are, right? So this is the New York Times, Sienna College poll that was released earlier this week. And when you look at how Biden is performing against Donald Trump in the swing states, he ain't doing so well. So the poll shows Trump beating Biden in every battleground state except for Wisconsin,

where Biden leads 47 to 45, but the result is within the margin of error. The biggest gap is in Nevada where Trump leads 50 to 38. That is a massive lead. And it goes beyond the margin of error, obviously. Trump leads Arizona 49 to Biden's 42. Trump also leads in Michigan, 49 to 42. And then you have Georgia where Trump leads again by 10 points, 49 to 39. Now, the swing states, as we all know, matter.

They matter the most. The swing states end up deciding the election, and the swing states are more important, or the polling of the swing states, in my opinion, are more important than what the national polls say. Because remember, the election is decided by the electoral college. It's not decided by popular vote. And so the national polls, sure, it's a good metric to look at to see how your preferred candidate is doing.

But if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, you want to look at how your preferred candidate is performing specifically in these swing states. But that doesn't stop Scarborough from using national polling to make it seem like Biden is absolutely killing it. At the same, put at this New York Times Ipsos poll. Put it back. Run at the same time by the New York Times. Biden's ahead by four points nationally. Four points nationally. Not even an article about it. Yeah, hey genius, there's no article about it. Or maybe there isn't as much attention paid to that national poll because again,

the swing states matter more, right? You want to look at who is likely to win the electoral votes necessary to claim victory. Now look, I want to also be fair to Joe Scarborough because there has been quite a bit of criticism in regard to the methodology used in the New York Times Siena college poll. I want to be absolutely clear. I am not a polling expert, so I feel super uncomfortable weighing in on whether or not the methodology is sound. But here is what the Times shared about how they conducted the poll, just in full transparency. I want to disclose that to you all. Our polls are conducted by telephone using live interviewers in both English

and Spanish, nearly 95% of respondents were contacted on a cell phone for this poll. So they're reaching out to people on cell phones, not on landlines. Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters for each party, race, and region. They also say that each state poll, and this is important because it has to do with the margin of error. Each state poll has a margin of error ranging from plus or minus 3.6 points in Pennsylvania to plus or minus 4.6 points in Georgia. In theory, this means that the result should reflect the views of the overall population most

of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. And I check to see whether, you know, Trump is within the margin of error in these swing states where he is leading Biden, and he is not within the margin of error. So it's, again, not really looking good for Biden if you're just focusing on this polling. But I think it would be a mistake to just focus on one or two polls. I think the right thing to do to get a better read on how your preferred candidate is performing is to take a look at the average of polls. And that is what I would like to do right now. In fact, I'll do that in a minute. I do want to also just go to one more clip from this exchange on MSNBC where a gentleman named John Heelman was luckily on the set to gently

push back on Joe Scarborough because he got a little bit conspiratorial in regard to the New York Times-Syana College poll. It seems like he was trying to accuse them of putting their thumb on the scale and essentially swaying hearts and minds through this outlier polling. So here's what Heelman had to say about that. I'm not going to carry water for the New York Times or for the methodology of this poll. I'll keep going back to a thing that I try to say every time we talk about these things, which is that I'm really interested, and I know you know this. It's like, where are the polls talking us directionally about the race?

I understand. There's a difference, though, with the New York Times Siena poll, and you know this. All I'd say about this is that I agree with you that the problem to me, unless you want to suggest, unless you want to suggest, you think there's a conspiracy at the Times about this, Which you're, I'm, their methodology is bizarre. But you're talking about that. Larry Sabato said this, Walston said this. Joe, you're saying something more than that, though.

You're saying the New York Times is systematically putting these polls out in a way to try to amplify them to drive the news cycle. Yes. And I'm not, I'm saying I'd like to know, I'm curious as someone who I understand your level of specification about reading the media, why you think that's true. What I'm trying to say is, I agree with you, the best bulwark against, any polls, outliers or anything else for people who are actually consumers in this information is to not let these any given news outlet or any given poll shape your perception of the race unduly. But John, that's not realistic. Okay, all right. God, I have so many things to say about that clip we just watched.

So look, I love how Joe Scarborough was like, the methodology is bizarre, according to other Biden supporters in the media. Okay, can you explain to us why you feel that the methodology is bizarre? Like at least spend a little bit of time getting into the details as to why the methodology is not sound. Also, people do not change their voting behavior based on polls. I mean, there might be a handful of people who do that, but overall people vote based on incentives and disincentives, right? And so I'm not going to vote for a different candidate because I see a New York Times Sienna College poll saying that Biden is going to lose. I vote based on taking a look at my life, taking a look at the two candidates, and asking myself which of these two candidates would be

best for improving my life and the lives of others in this country. Okay, I would think about what issues matter the most to me. This is how Americans operate, okay? The idea, that they're going to be swayed by the New York Times putting their thumb on the scale through a method, you know, a study that doesn't have sound methodology is ridiculous to me. But we've had four years of Biden. We have had four straight years of President Joe Biden. You know, it's amazing to me because even when it comes to the national polling that Joe Scarborough was trying to emphasize and amplify, you have Biden leading by

three points when he's running against a man who's facing four separate indictments, a man who's considered a threat to democracy, a man that Democrats have been fear mongering about from day one, you're having a tough time beating that guy. Maybe take a minute to ask yourself, why? Why is that? Could it be that there are flaws in the campaign? Could it be that Biden is not a candidate favored by some usual Democratic voters, because he made all sorts of promises he didn't keep in the four years that he has served as president. Departments within his administration have done some good work. We've covered those stories, okay?

One of the more recent ones that we covered had to do with the transportation department ensuring that Americans get automatic refunds when their flights are severely delayed or when their bags are lost by the airline companies. That is a good thing. But those are small things in the grand scheme of things, okay? When you take a look at how Americans are feeling about their economic situation. when they maybe reflect on some of the things that Biden promised when he was running the first time around. Like a voting rights act. Did he accomplish that? Did he even fight for that? No.

Paid family leave? No. Public option? He ran on that during his first campaign. No. Consequences for Mohammed bin Salman after he ordered the assassination, the execution and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident. He said he was going to do something about that. Did he? No. I mean, it's just, it goes on and on. Endless military funding for foreign wars? Yes. So when it comes to the resources necessary to deliver on policies that Biden promised, oh, we don't have those resources. How are we going to pay for it? We got a nickel and dime Americans. When it comes to funding foreign wars abroad, Biden will literally circumvent Congress in order to get that funding and that weaponry

to other countries. You don't think that that upsets Americans? You don't think Americans are paying attention to that, wondering, hey, why am I dealing with the high cost of living, endless inflation, all of these economic frustrations, high interest rates, our government's telling us there's nothing they can do about it, and then at the same time, it seems like there's endless resources for wars abroad. These things are going to hurt him politically. The chickens eventually do come home to roost. And the fact that, you know, Democratic voters.

and more importantly, members of the liberal media space, like they just refuse to accept it and instead look for excuses or other people to blame. In this case, you have Joe Scarborough blaming the New York Times for the flaws of the Biden administration and the Biden campaign. That's really what's going on here. Okay, now let's take a look at the average of polling. Because the averages matter more than a single poll. If you're looking at a single poll, you will maybe be led astray, okay, because there could be issues with the methodology of a single poll. But why don't we take a look at the swing states and what the average of polling says? Let's take a look at Wisconsin, where of the swing states, Biden is doing the best, and he's still

losing by 0.6 points to Donald Trump. Again, this is not based on one poll. This is based on an average of all polls done in the state of Wisconsin. Let's go to the next one. All right, this is Arizona, where based on an average of polls, Trump is leading Biden by 5.2 points. Not good, let's go to the next one, Nevada. This again, based on the average of polls out of the state of Nevada, where Trump is leading 6.2. All right, let's look at the rest. If you look at the average of polls for Georgia, Trump is leading Biden by 4.6 points. You have Michigan, where Trump is leading by 0.8 points, which is actually surprising,

because Michigan is the state where you have all those uncommitted voters who are really unhappy with what's happening in Gaza. Pennsylvania, Trump is leading by 2.0 points. In North Carolina, Trump is leading by 5.4 points. Again, average of polls. I didn't do the polls. I'm not running for president. I'm not advising Biden on anything. I am just sharing this information with you. That is it. And the polls are supposed to communicate to the candidates that they need to recalibrate, that they need to reconsider how they're running their campaign. Biden is unwilling to do that.

Biden wants to play games with his support with Israel, where he claims that he's going to withhold weapons, and then literally a day later, he approves another billion dollars in military aid to Israel. And he thinks that Democratic voters aren't paying attention to that. They're paying attention to that. He is too old. And look, it's not even about his numerical age. Who cares about that?

Because you look at someone like Bernie Sanders and he's up there in age too. But there's a difference, guys, and we all know it. You could lie to yourself and you can be in denial all you want. There is a difference between how Biden appears when he's out there campaigning. He does appear frail. And Americans see that and it scares them because it is an important job to be the president, the leader of the United States of America. And yeah, Trump's up there in age as well, but you have to be honest about the fact that

he does not look frail. And so Biden promised he was gonna run for a second term, but he's so concerned about his legacy, he doesn't want to be a one-term president, that he reneged on that and is, he was insisting to run for a second term. And he also said that he believes he's the only one who, he's the only one who, he's the one who, he's who can beat Donald Trump. All the other Democrats in the country, all those other Democratic politicians, chop liver. They can't beat Trump. Only Biden can beat Trump. All right. Well, I guess we're gonna have to wait and see what happens. By the way, the real clear politics average of

the national polling shows that Trump is actually ahead by 1.1 points. So finally, I take you to Biden's favorite news broadcaster, and that's Faree Zakaria, who had a segment on how Biden's doing. He favors Biden. He's hoping and praying that Biden wins, but he's concerned. Let's watch. I have to admit, none of this is playing out as I thought it would. Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states, but behind those numbers lie even more troubling details. As someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term, I think it's best to be honest about reality. I understand that polls are not always accurate, but in general, they have tended to underestimate Donald Trump's support, not overestimated. I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the

country. Reality is reality. You can choose to live in denial, but those who take that option are usually in for rude awakening. I think it's better to live in reality and see if there's any way to save a sinking ship. But it doesn't seem like Biden's interested in that, and it certainly doesn't help that you have the liberal media providing cover for Biden and allowing him to live in absolute delusion about where both candidates stand in this general election. Well, they're going to have two debates. And when we come back from the break, I'll talk about the Biden video that's making waves today, where he challenged Trump to a debate. Did Trump accept? Well, you're going to have to come back and see.

Read the polls, Jack. Welcome back to the show, everyone, Anna Casparian here with you. And thank you to Little Mac McGee for the comment. This was during the social break and I got some encouragement over a correction I'm going to do later in the hour. So thank you for that. Okay, I wanted to stay on the topic of election related news. And this one is probably one of the biggest news stories of the day.

It was totally unexpected, let's watch. Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. The sense that he hadn't shown up for debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. So let's pick the dates, Donald. I hear you're free on Wednesdays.

This morning, President Joe Biden finally accepted Trump's challenge to debate after months of hesitation. Now, the way it's being framed in the media today is that Biden challenged Trump to a debate. But if you just rewind a little bit, it really did start with Trump demanding a debate with Biden. And we'll tell you how it all played out in just a moment. Now, in a matter of hours, the details have all been arranged, setting the stage for what will probably be an underwhelming showdown, who knows, between the two geriatric men. So Trump accepted Biden's challenge and posted this on truth social, of course. Crooked Joe Biden is the worst debater I have ever faced. He can't put two sentences together, it's time for a debate so that he can explain to the American people his highly destructive open border policy, new and ridiculous EV mandates, the allowance of crushing inflation, high taxes, and his really weak foreign policy, which is allowing the world to catch on fire. I am ready, he writes, and willing to debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September.

I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowd. Is he, is he afraid of crowds? I don't think that's true. But anyway, that's only because he doesn't get them. Okay, so he's afraid of crowds because he never has to deal with big crowds. That doesn't make any sense, but anyway, just tell me when I'll be there. So he accepted the challenge, he wants to do the debate, and he ends his post with, let's get ready to rumble, okay? So shortly after Biden sent out that video that we just showed you, he also posted this.

I've received and accepted an invitation from CNN for a debate on June 27th. Over to you, Donald, as you said, anywhere, anytime, any place. CNN announced that Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate that debate. And not long after, he responded to CNN. I'm sorry, not long after Biden, they responded to Biden. Biden posted again, I've also received and accepted an invitation to a debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday, September 10th. Trump says he'll arrange his own transportation. I'll bring my plane to.

I plan on keeping it for another four years. So Trump accepted both debates, they're gonna have two debates. That's a good thing, they should have debates. It's the general election. I thought it was ridiculous when it seemed like everyone had accepted that there might not be a debate at all. So we'll see if there's gonna be more debates. He then went rogue and simultaneously proposed and accepted a third debate. Donald Trump did, let's take a look at that.

Please let this truth serve to represent that I hereby accept debating crooked Joe Biden on Fox News. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The host will be Brett Bear and Martha McCallum. Thank you. And then he signs off with DJT. Now, the Biden camp doesn't like this. They did not agree to a debate on Fox News. And here's what they said in their response. Donald Trump has a long history of playing games with debates, complaining about the rules, breaking those rules, pulling out at the last minute or not showing up at all, which he's done repeatedly in all three cycles he's run for president. He said he would debate President Biden anytime, anywhere, any place.

In fact, he said and posted it dozens of times with varying degrees of comprehension and basic grammar, President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates and Donald Trump accepted those terms. No more games, no more chaos, no more debate about debates, we'll see Donald Trump on June 27th in Atlanta if he shows up. So we'll see if that's going to develop any further, but for now at least, it appears that there will only be two debates. Now, let's talk about debate reluctance and also some strict rules that are being set in

regard to how these debates will go down. So it's funny to see the candidates get so excited about the idea of a debate. I mean, again, this should just be a given that the default, you know, standard operating procedures when you're dealing with a general election. Now, Trump had refused to debate any of his Republican primary opponents. And to be clear, I think that worked out well for him. He was so ahead of all the other Republican candidates that he just decided to skip the debates. And it didn't hurt him at all.

But as soon as he won the primary, he started challenging Biden to debates. Biden spent a long time refusing to give a straight answer on whether he would be willing to debate Trump. for this election. And let's take a look at this clip from February. What does that even mean? You should say yes, yes, this is a presidential election. Yes, I'm going to debate my opponent on the other side of the aisle. And it was only last month on the Howard Stern show that Biden stated that he would in fact be willing to debate. Now Biden's campaign has set some rules and conditions on the upcoming debates with Trump.

So there will be no live audience, just Biden, Trump, and the moderators. Third party and independent candidates will only be in. will only be included if they can be on enough state ballots to potentially win 270 electoral votes. Let's keep it real. These rules are meant to keep RFK Jr. out of the debate stage. Okay, that's what these rules are really about. They would also need to win 15% of the vote in at least four national polls. That's all, again, obviously meant to keep RFK Jr. out of the debates. Now, Chuck Todd took a different line than the Biden campaign and he argued that, you know, including RFK Jr. might actually help Biden. Let's watch.

I think if you've ever spent a lot of time watching Robert Kennedy Jr. speak, I think if you're Joe Biden, you're going to want him on the debate stage. I think there will be a point in the fall that they will actually see that as an asset. I'm sort of in the minority in this. Well, let's just face it. But I think that he has a vocal issue. It's an ailment. And I think it will weirdly help Biden look less, you know, any of his. issues come across less because I think the, I don't think a lot of people realize this about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And I think it'll be interesting, but if he's on, I'm not ruling out the possibility, he makes it to the second debate. Oh my God. Oh my God. That video, okay,

just understand what Chuck Todd is saying here. RFK Jr. has, you know, a vocal issue. If you've ever heard him talk, you know what I'm talking about. And it sounds. so bad that maybe it can help look Biden and how frail he appears, like not be so bad, not look so bad for, for viewers of the debate. I don't know if that's a good, I don't know, I don't know if I would have said that out loud, but Chuck Todd did. So there it is. I mean, in that is the implication that physically Biden's not looking good. So let's get someone on the debate stage. that sounds really bad because of a, you know, a vocal issue that could help Biden look a little better.

Now, the Biden campaign requested some other things. So here's one of the other conditions. The debaters' microphones will immediately cut off when their time is up. I actually think that's the right way to do this because you don't want to hear them speaking over each other and fighting. Like you want to hear their answers clearly without interruption. And believe it or not, Sean Hannity agrees. Let's watch. He proposed a format that I think is extraordinarily favorable for the president, which is if you're not talking, your mic's not on.

I think one of the difficulties in 2020 is probably Donald Trump in that first debate was too aggressive. This will then kind of put, you know, rails in place so that one person talks at a time. And the more Joe talks, I think the worse he does. So Hannity in favor of shutting down their mics because he's concerned about some of the, I don't want to say, I don't know if weaknesses is the right word, but some of the flaws that Donald Trump brings to the table during these debates. He's worried about Trump being a little too aggressive and turning voters off in that regard. So there you have it. The debates are going to happen. There will be two of them at least. And I think overall, that's a good thing.

I think the American people deserve, even though they've already seen them debate previously during the last election cycle, I think it's worth it to hear what they have to say about some of the issues impacting Americans today. What are their solutions for inflation? What about the migrant crisis? The war in Gaza. How do they differ from one another? I want to know, how would they differ from one another in responding to this war in Gaza? What would Trump do differently? I want to hear that answer because he's been able to kind of like skirt these issues because of the fact that they haven't been on a debate stage. No one's really asked him, hey, what would you do differently from Joe Biden? You keep saying that you do a better job, but how? And so I think that the debates will be interesting to say the least. I hope they ask good questions and I hope the moderators do a decent job.

But overall, obviously, I think there should always be debates between the two sides in a presidential election. And, you know, saying that we don't need to see that is a ridiculous thing to claim. But luckily, we're going to get two of them. So we'll be doing special coverage of the debates. We're currently working hard to plan that as we speak. So you guys can obviously tune into TYT as we cover those debates. For now, though, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, a big correction on a streamer that we did coverage of two years ago named Keffels.

Friendly Shark writes in in two super chats. Thank you so much and I want to read the comment before we kind of move to different topics and kind of forget about the general election. Scarborough is upset because he knows the truth that legacy media propaganda, even though it doesn't work on the young, can affect the way some people think. The polls may not affect them, but if they keep hearing Biden will lose, there's a small percentage of low info voters that could make a difference that will lean toward who they think will win. He wants the times to be propagandizing that even if he is behind he who, he, he, oh, but,

Even if he is behind, he could still win. Yeah, that is the point he was trying to make. I just don't buy it, especially when you consider the fact that people who are likely to vote for Biden would never turn around and vote for Trump. I mean, they might stay home if they think Biden doesn't have a chance. So he might have a point there. But I don't think that, you know, a single poll is going to have that much of an impact on voting behavior.

And if anything, if the polling indicates that Trump has a lead, that might even galvanize Democratic voters and motivate them to show up to the polls and vote for Biden so Trump doesn't win. But overall, guys, the fact that this is a close race is insane, isn't it? I mean, shouldn't it be insane? We're talking about a presidential candidate on the Republican side who has four separate indictments. And we don't have a Democratic candidate who could easily beat him. That's an issue. And that's all I'm trying to get at. And stop living in denial for the, you know, liberal media pundits who want to live in denial. And more importantly, lie to their audiences about what's really going on. I think they're doing their audience a disservice.

Speaking of doing their audience of disservice, I myself have done the audience of disservice that I want to do a correction on right now and also offer an apology. because I, like others, was conned and duped by a streamer who goes by Keffels. And so let's get into it. Back in 2022, TYT covered a story involving a transgender streamer named Clara Sorrenti, who goes by Keffels. Now, at the time, she had alleged that she had been violently swatted by anti-trans harassers on a platform called Kiwi Farms.

Many elements to the story ended up being false, and we unwittingly helped her promote her fraudulent crowdfunding effort. Now, a streamer by the name of Mudahar investigated Keffels and provided the receipts indicating that she is in fact a fraud. It is a lengthy video and he gets into other issues with Keffels that I'm not going to get into because we didn't talk about those other issues. But if you want to watch that video, and I highly recommend you do, you can watch it on his YouTube channel, some ordinary gamers, we will also link to it in the description box. Now let's actually get into the nitty gritty. Now after she had been swatted, and by the way, she was swatted. That's the one thing that is true. But after she had been swatted, she launched a GoFundMe on August 9th of 2022 to raise money after the incident. And it's important to

outline exactly what she claimed she was doing with the money, why she was raising the money and how she was going to use the money. Let's watch. The video is posted alongside a GoFundMe with the stated intent of helping Clara recoup her losses, move immediately, and build a legal fund to protect her rights. It received widespread media attention bringing in over $100,000 in donations. So just to review, the money she raised, according to the GoFundMe page, was meant to help her move immediately for her own safety after she had been swatted, recoup her losses of electronic devices that she said the cops had seized, that they'd taken from her, and also sue the

London Police Service in Ontario, Canada, where the swatting happened, and to protect her rights, which she reiterated in a later stream. To my lawyer today, and it's looking like January is the month where I'm going to be filing against the London Police Service. But she lied about the nature of the swanning itself, and we don't know what she did with the money. Okay, well, we have an idea of what she did with the money based on some of her own admissions,

and we're going to get into that in just a moment. And based on her own admission, she did not use the money that she crowdfunded for the intended purposes. Now, going back to the swatting, she had complained or she had claimed that she woke up with the Canadian police pointing a gun to her head. She said that's how the swatting incident went down. She later changed that story and said that the police were banging on her door and she had to put clothes on to answer the door as they were banging on it. Let's take a look. On August 5th, I was woken up by London police services pointing an assault rifle in my face at my home.

When I was woken up by police officers and saw the assault rifle pointed at me, I thought I was going to die. I feel traumatized. Her story then changed to an encounter in the hallway. The exact phrasing is that she went into the hallway and then saw the weapon. The email, Sorrenti says, had given out her real address and resulted in police with guns at her doorstep and her being arrested. When I went into the hallway and then saw that assault rifle,

I screamed and I thought I was going to die. A month later, she admitted that they didn't enter her apartment until after she was in custody. They did not go into my apartment until after I was in custody. So she went from saying that she woke up with the police pointing a gun to her head to changing the story and then changing it back. She changed the story to, no, no, no, I met the police outside in the hallway. And they didn't enter my apartment until later. And then she went back to, you know, claiming that she was afraid for her life.

I mean, and remember, Keffels had gone so far as to claim that she was a victim of police. least brutality and even had the audacity to compare herself to Elijah McLean, who was killed after an interaction with cops. You know, that was the story where emergency workers then showed up and injected him with ketamine and it was just awful, awful story. She compared herself to him, okay? She wrote on Twitter back on September 25th of 2022, every time I see another story involving an innocent black man being killed by the police.

I think back to last month when I had an assault rifle pointed at me by the police and how easily that situation could have escalated if I wasn't white. I hope Elijah McClain finds justice. She also alleged that the police confiscated her computer and other electronic devices that she relied on for her livelihood, for her streaming income. But her devices were actually returned shortly after the swatting incident happened. And she discusses that in the clip you're about to watch. I started to go fund me to move immediately, recoup my losses, and build a legal fund to protect my rights.

But there were no losses to recoup. The devices were returned after three days. I eventually got my stuff back in like three days and got an apology from the chief of police. So if you didn't need the money to pay for new devices for your streaming, what did you do you? for your streaming. What did you use the money for? We're gonna get to that in a bit. So she said that she fled Canada for the UK for her own safety, so Kiwi Farms wouldn't be able to find her, which was weird because why the hell would you broadcast to the world where you fled to if you fear for your own safety? Well, she actually changed that story as well,

claiming that she actually fled the country for a different reason, which by the way, her donors were not informed about. Her donors had donated money to her so she could pay for her moving expenses because she was afraid for her safety due to kiwi farms. But that actually wasn't the case. So what was the case? Let's watch. The truth is, I left the country because of my ex. and because I was scared of my ex, because my ex was abusive and abused me emotionally and yelled at me and consistently coerced me into sex. That's why. That's why I left. But I couldn't tell anyone. No one should believe anything she's saying. No one should take what she says at face value. She's a con artist. She is a liar. And I have no idea what her ex was like or how her ex treated her.

I'm just saying that because you should be very suspicious of any claim coming out of this woman's mouth. She is a brazen liar, and we've got more proof of that. So now we know that she, that the money that she raised to move for her own safety following the swatting due to transphobes was actually used for a different purpose. She at some point she alleged that she succeeded in getting Kiwi Farms taken down from the internet. And while that may have been true for a very, very short period of time, that wasn't actually the case. Kiwi Farms is up and running stronger than ever and she refused to accept that and acknowledge that. That's a smaller thing. For me, the biggest issue here is the fact that she took advantage of kind-hearted people who donated their heart

earned money to help her out. And they ended up donating money to her when she lied about a whole host of things and did not end up using the money over $100,000 on the intended purposes. So let's talk about where the money was actually spent. So when it comes to her new place, it turns out that she did pay rent for a new place. I mean, she didn't move for the reasons that she originally stated to raise the money, which was that she was afraid of Kiwi farms. She moved because she was allegedly emotionally abused by her ex, which again, don't take anything she says at face value. And so she did pay for rent though. And she admitted that in the clip you're about to watch. I'm using the GoFundMe money to pay an entire year in

advance. Now, which is not something she ever said she was going to do, and a huge departure from just moving. Clara moves into a luxury apartment and with a low approximation amounting to $28,000. She moves into a luxury apartment and pays a full year of rent up front using that GoFundMe money, which she admitted in the clip that we showed you. Okay, great. She also admitted to using money to buy new streaming equipment for her new place with professional studio lights and everything. She also talked about using the money for her personal security. I consulted with a security company and they made all of my devices hackproof and they gave me tips on not getting doxed again. They also helped me with a whole bunch of other stuff that

I can't talk about because I signed an NDA, like a non-disclosure agreement. I already hired a lawyer and all of the information between me and my lawyer is privileged and confidential and I can't talk about it. So the money towards a legal fund is being utilized. But until the point where I can actually talk about what I'm doing, I can't say anything. That's very convenient that you can't really talk about the details of how you're using that money for a legal fund. Okay. And she possibly, possibly use some of that money on drugs and definitely on rehab. Eight days into a cocaine bender, I found out that the coke that I was doing was cut with meth. So for eight days straight, I was doing coke and meth.

started doing coke and meth and benzos, and I was planning on ordering him from the dark net. After the backlash, Clara went into rehab on February 22nd. In the next few days, I will be admitted to rehab. The doctor said that because of the drugs I'm addicted to without medical supervision, detoxing will kill me. Now, I'm inclined to believe her on this, given that she didn't return until about a month later. Clara later admitted that she spent more money going to rehab than she ever had on actual drugs. I was in rehab for 34 days before I discharged. I went to the addiction rehabilitation Toronto facility, and it was one of the best decisions I think I've ever made. While addiction rehab Toronto doesn't have prices listed on their sites, aggregators like recovery.com,

price a 30-day stay at the facility at $20,000 Canadian dollars. And that is a fourth of the entire dollar amount. It's hard to believe that expense on top of buying enough drugs to end up there in the first place had no bearing on how that GoFundMe money was used. One of her mods admitted the habit went a bit into the fund money at the end. However much a bit is, we might never know. Amazing. And finally, I think one of the most damning parts of this lengthy video that Mutahar put together

had to do with a damning leak from a private group chat that Keffels was part of. She talks about the money that was crowdfunded, what it was used for, and how quickly it was depleted. This is what I was shown. The first is from a screenshot from a private group chat dated November 30 at 2022. Feels really bad watching the GoFund me deplete. The rest will cover a year's rent and my psych fees if I talk to a psychologist once a week for the next 11 months. Ellen tried to comfort me by reminding me that it was an emergency fund. I kept trying to think of how it depleted so fast and it's just so many little things. Travel and replacing furniture and helping my friends out buying new streaming gear and clothes.

If legitimate, this is an admission that the GoFundMe had greatly depleted after just two months. Did the donors know that Keffels was going to spend the money on psych fees, on streaming equipment, on all these things that were not listed on her GoFundMe page. Of course they didn't know that. Did they know that the group that Keffels was actually harassed by was not Kiwi Farms based on the research that Muta Hart did, that it was a different platform that she, for whatever reason, did not want to go after because she didn't want to draw attention to them because of what they had been posting on their platform. Listen, I feel sick to my stomach knowing that I amplified a con artist on the show. Obviously, I did not know she was a con artist.

I did not do that on purpose. But at the end of the day, I'm the host and I am responsible for what I say on this program. I'm sure some of our viewers unfortunately donated money to her out of the kindness of their hearts because they thought they were helping her. And so these are the kinds of stories that keep me up at night because, as I've said before on this show, I feel that I have a responsibility to the audience. And if I ever make a mistake, as I did with this story, I am going to take the time to correct it and take full responsibility for it.

We have made changes in how we decide to cover certain stories now. For instance, we will not be promoting any crowdfunding unless we can. vouch for the crowdfunding ourselves unless we know the individual personally who is trying to raise money. But I would also say that for all the other mainstream media outlets who fell for this con artist, that includes The Guardian, CNN, NBC News, NPR. Can we get a correction from you guys too? Because they seem to never want to revisit the work they've done. and the misreporting they've engaged in, the fact that they were conned by a con artist like Heffels. And there's so many people in this country, myself included previously,

who trusted these sources. And now I don't trust any of them. Because not only did they also get the story wrong, they never correct the record. And I'd like to see that correction because a bunch of people around the world were totally conned into donating to this woman's crowd fund. So she could spend the money on all sorts of stuff like a year worth of rent, psych fees, streaming equipment, rehab. If people want to donate money to her for those purposes, that's great, but she should be upfront about it and she wasn't. She lied to people. She kept changing her story. Streamers stream all day long.

So it's really hard to catch those moments when the stories are changing. Because if you're an adult with a full-time job, you don't have time to sit around and watch a stream all day. But at the end of the day, CNN has the resources to dig a little deeper, and they didn't. And so I'm sorry to you guys. I think everyone who donated to that crowd fund need answers from from Keffels and they should be issued a refund immediately. She immediately responded to this news and the take down video, very deeply researched video that you guys should watch for yourselves. You know how she responded to it?

She said it's transphobic because she didn't like the thumbnail art that was used to depict her. It's the same type of art that's used in other thumbnails to depict other people. The weaponizing, the transphobe thing, not gonna work here. The only bad person in this story is Keffels who literally lied to people and stole money from them. Those people deserve answers. I don't wanna hear anything else from her mouth unless she's addressing when and how she's gonna refund the people that she defrauded.

And again, I apologize to our audience, I take full responsibility and I'm gonna be a lot more careful and a lot more skeptical of people moving forward. We got to take a break. John Iderolo will join me for the second hour.