The Young Turks - Coup Soup

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol released a graphic video timeline of the assault during Thursday night’s prime-time hearing. Former President Donald Trump took a shot at his own daughter Ivanka Trump over video testimony that aired during Thursday night’s House Select Committee hearing on the January 6th attack. After seven days of Twitter drama, the Washington Post fired reporter Felicia Sonmez on Thursday. InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could soon sue his own lawyers, as Jones and his company scramble to blame someone else for their legal failures in lawsuits over their lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting. According to a new legal complaint, investment banker J.D. Vance knowingly received unlawful support from a super PAC funded by his friend and billionaire backer, Peter Thiel. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur, David Shuster  *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://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 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 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. Drop my team, 3x3,000, Drop it. Power Power panel, Jake Ugar, Anna Kasparian, David Schuster. Why am I talking like this? No one knows we're just having fun.

Okay. Agreed. David Schuster, King of Rebel headquarters, Anna Kasparian, Queen of the Young Turks. So a hell of a power panel for you guys. And boy, do we have a dozy of a show. In the second hour, we got a lot of fun stories. Lauren Bopert might be in a lot of trouble. Snoop Dog has hired someone to roll his blunts. Everybody's having fun.

In the first hour, January 6th hearings, a little less fun. Talk of hangings and riots, et cetera, but really important. So Anna's got that news. Casper, take it away. All right. The House Select Committee has been investigating what transpired in our nation's capital on January 6th, and they held their first hearing, public hearing on the matter, where they showed some of the evidence that they've compiled through their investigation. Now, while I certainly have my criticisms for Liz Cheney, she did a pretty good job in making concise arguments and presenting pretty compelling evidence,

beginning with what she describes as a meeting that was held in the White House between Michael Flynn, Powell, and Giuliani, where they addressed having the military seized voting machines and using other maneuvers to essentially steal the 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump. Let's watch. On December 18th, 2020, a group including General Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others visited the White House. They stayed late into the evening. We know that the group discussed a number of dramatic steps, including having the military seized voting machines and potentially rerun elections. You will also hear that President Trump met with that group alone for a period of time

before White House lawyers and other staff discovered the group was there and rushed to intervene. A little more than an hour after Ms. Powell, Mr. Giuliani, General Flynn and the others finally left the White House. President Trump sent the tweet on the screen now, telling people to come to Washington on January 6th. Be there, he instructed them. Will be wild. So the select committee did a good job in building the entire narrative. What transpired prior to January 6th, what kind of meetings were held in the White House. And there's a lot more to get to including, you know, how much of an impact Donald Trump had on the rioters on

that very day. Before we get to all of that, though, I want to open it up to the panel and get your thoughts. Yeah, I'll start by saying this. I'll double down on the list, Cheney comment. I can't stand the Cheney's. I hate that we need them to be effective here. But I mean, the Democrats on their own, I, oh boy, right? So I'm glad she's here to at least shepherd this process. I'll vote against her in every other way for the rest of time. But it was a really strong presentation. The video that they showed of the rioters, including the times involved, were really strong.

And one of the points I wanted to make there is Donald Trump knows the capital has been breached. He knows that Mike Pence, life was in danger. He talked to Tommy Tuberville about it at around 2.15 that day. And then he goes on to wait for two more hours before he puts out the video telling everybody to go home. And in the videos that they showed of the rioters, they read his tweets to the crowd. So there is no question that they're, and over and over again in the crowd, they say, we're here for Trump. We're here for Trump. We did it for Trump.

So any talk of them being Antifa is now, I mean, it was always ridiculous. But you'd have to deny every fact in the world to say that. The fact that they were doing it for him is undeniable. The fact that he did not put out that order for them to go home for or that request for them to go home for two hours, at least is undeniable. They breached the Capitol grounds actually three hours earlier. And he certainly did not have a concern about Mike Pence being hanged. We could talk about that more a little bit later. But it was devastating all around.

And the idea that they were tourists. Remember Republican Congress people said, well, they were just tourists stopping by. As you see them viciously beat and tear apart cops, all of that is put to rest. In the real world, there's no question about any of that. anymore. So let me jump in. Sorry about that, David, because Jank had referenced the Hang Mike Pence portion and I actually want to get to that video because they put together a video with like the time of the day to show how everything progressed or devolved, really. And so the Hang Mike Pence part of it was really compelling. Let's take a look at

this never before before shown video which they used in their presentation. to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the world's one or inaccurate ones, which they were asked to previously certify. The U.S. demands the truth. Bring out. Bring out peace.

Bring out. Bring out. Bring out. Bring out. So you hear them chanting hang Mike Pence. That video begins with a tweet that one of the rioters is reading out loud to a group of rioters by Donald Trump. Right. So it's essentially them taking orders from Donald Trump in real time, showing the kind of impact and influence he had over them as the riot was taking place. And I think that's an important part of this, right? Because so far, in terms of our justice system and in terms of anyone who's faced any consequences for their criminality here, it's been ordinary people who yes, broke the law and should suffer the consequences. But when you look at the influence and the incitement that was carried

out by people at the very top, members of the Trump administration, people like Rudy Giuliani who on that day used the words called for a trial by combat. No, I mean, it's time for them to suffer the consequences for what they did. And it seems like that's the case that they're building here. I mean, there's obviously oodles of evidence to prove it. But David, what do you think the likelihood is that this will even get anywhere? Well, a couple of things. First of all, I think it could get somewhere in terms of public opinion, because part of this is not just defending the Constitution.

And there was a certain seamlessness last night, a certain sort of solemnness to this hearing. It felt big. It didn't feel like the normal congressional hearing, which is derailed because of partisan sniping. This felt big. So that's the first part defending that this isn't about partisan politics. This is about defending the Constitution. It also felt like it was about defending reality. And mixed in with that was the point you just made in that there was also news in all this, because we've all heard the video clips of hang my Pence, but to actually see for the first time somebody on that megaphone reading Donald Trump's tweet, and then the response being hang Mike Pence, it makes a connection that I think to a lot of people might have been lost

until this point that people could say, well, Donald Trump didn't really inspire people. They weren't really responding to Donald Trump with Hang Mike Pence. No, now you see it. It's right there on the video and it's presented in a way that's hard to deny. Yeah, absolutely. And Jay, you had brought to our attention another element of this, another facet of this, which was what Donald Trump had to say about Mike Pence's life behind the scenes. He didn't really seem to have much concern for it.

Yeah, so guys, the timing here is also critical. So at 215, actually even before 215, he says about a half a dozen tweets from the night before to that afternoon, blaming Mike Pence saying it's all on Mike Pence. Mike Pence has to do the right thing. He mentions Mike Pence repeatedly in his speech. Then at 1 o'clock, they breached the Capitol grounds. At around 2 o'clock, they breached the building. Tommy Tuberville gets on the phone with Donald Trump.

Trump accidentally called Mike Lee, Mike Lee, hands the phone with Tommy Tuberville, and Senator from Alabama now, and Tuberville tells him Mike Pence had to be escorted out of the building because they were basically they were worried about his life and Secret Service got him out of here. So at that point, Trump definitively knows that Mike Pence's life is in danger. And he still sends out that tweet at 224, nine minutes later. And then they start chanting, hang Mark Pence even more. And apparently they, once they breached the building at around that juncture, they barely missed Mike Pence.

It took Pence a while to get out of the building, and they barely missed him by a couple of minutes. As you watch the entire video that they showed yesterday in the hearings, not only about Pence, but about Nancy Pelosi, as they are going throughout the whole building chanting Nancy, Nancy, and then they get to her office, if they found her or if they found Pence. It would be shocking if they didn't murder them. They were chanting about murdering them. They went in with that intent. They had nooses. And so it is just, how do you watch that? And then go, this is no big deal. No, it was a giant deal where they went to go kill our legislators, including their own vice president. And then again, guys, Trump doesn't even deny it. So they claim in the

hearings and for now they just said it. They haven't shown the evidence yet. But Cheney explained that the president said, quote, maybe our supporters have the right idea when asked about attacking Pence and that, quote, he deserves it. Okay, so let's see if they got the goods on that later in the hearings. But we already know that when Trump talked to Jackson, talked to Jonathan Carl. Carl asked him, they were saying hang Mike Pence. And Trump's response, was, quote, because it's common sense, John, it's common sense that you're supposed to protect. How can you, if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? How can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that? He was asked, they were chanting hanging Mike Pence,

and that was his response, that it was common sense to do, to say that, and that it was Pence's fault. He was going to get his own vice president murdered. If you still support him, I mean, now at least you know why we call you fascist. Yeah, and the real big lie here is the complete cover-up of what really transpired by the right wing. Fox News has failed to cover it. In fact, they would cut away as soon as there was any footage that that was very clearly violent. And in the video that was put together by the select committee, there was a moment where the video shows. the video shows the violence of the crowd with Donald Trump referring to them as anything

but. So let's take a quick look at that. They were a peaceful. These were great people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love. The love in the air. I've never seen anything like it. And you know, some might argue like how the hell can you see that and deem what happened that day to be peaceful or deem those people to be peaceful people. And you know, we talk about this all the time. But these filter bubbles, these news bubbles absolutely do exist. And you have a huge portion of this country that gets all of, you know, all of their news from either Fox or Newsmax OAN. And let's Let's go to graphic three here because I think the way that the hearing was covered on Fox News is telling. This is a tweet from Ben Collins who says Fox News isn't showing the video of actual violence, it's too damning. They're showing panned out shots of Congress people watching it. So instead of showing the actual video, they showed video of Congress people watching the video. They don't, they really don't think their viewership can handle the truth

of what happened on January 6th. And to further that point, let's go to paragraph two here where Matthew Gertz tweets that Tucker Carlson went the whole hour without a break. Fox is desperate to keep its viewers from switching to another channel and seeing the hearing in real time. And David, I know where Jank stands on this issue, but I'm curious what you think, right? So do you think the portion of the country, the portion of the Republican party, which is most of them, who think the election was stolen from Donald Trump, do you think that they genuinely believe it? Or do you think that they're just lying in and acting in bad faith because they don't really care about democracy and they want to just keep the

country under the power of someone they like like Donald Trump. Well, we've had the fortune to go to a couple of Trump rallies and ask people, and they genuinely believe that the election was stolen, that the evidence was there, that this was not Joe Biden's victory that Donald Trump won in a landslide. Now, when you ask him, where do you get that? They said, well, I got it from Donald Trump, but it's obvious, how could Joe Biden have won? So at least the supporters of Donald Trump, this is something they really believe. But I loved how in the hearing, the violence was made more effective in terms of that video because of how the hearing started by starting with Bill Barr, who by the way, was somebody

that I couldn't stand as Attorney General for literally every point until right before his resignation. And we come to find out that in December of 2020, he's telling Donald Trump that it is BS to Donald Trump, this election fraud is nonsense to start the hearing that way and say somebody like Bill Barr, who was such a darling of so many conservatives, the Republicans, that even he said, He said it was nonsense, lays the groundwork to make the point that this was all built on lies. There was no evidence here. And that's what makes the violence then even more reprehensible and frustrating to see. And I wanna just want to say one quick thing about the bubble that the right wing lives in.

They only watch right wing media. So all the things where we pull our hair out and go, can you believe that they think this? Well, they never actually saw most of the facts. So to me, the most telling part was that Fox wouldn't even go to commercial breaks. Because they're worried that their audience is going to accidentally see some of the truth. They need them trapped in that bubble of propaganda they have. As long as they're in the confines of that bubble, they can feed them any lie. It doesn't matter.

They can shield them from the truth. And as long as their eyes never see it, they'll think that the people that were there were tourists and Antifa and American patriots. etc. So is there a lack of logic in some of that? Of course. Do some of them subconsciously? No, of course we didn't win. And does it really bother them that white people aren't going to be in power anymore? Well, obviously, look at the polling, 58 to 70% of Republicans now saying that the white replacement theory is real and they're going to replace white people. They're obviously not going to take them out of the country. They're saying they're going to replace our power. We don't want that. We don't want minorities to have power. So both things can

be true at the same time. But the right wing media is obsessed with making sure that their voters do not see reality. And I would say that actually Fox News did the country of favor by not broadcasting the hearing because now there's no hiding who Fox News really is. There's a significant portion of this country, mostly in the middle, but a little bit to the right who think Fox News is just a center right news organization. That all they have their opinion folks like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, but they've got straight news folks like Brett Bear. Now, anybody who had any principle at all, a Brett Bear, anybody else was on the news side who saw the Fox News was not covering this hearing. If they had any shame, they would quit. They have not because the money, I guess,

is so good at Fox News. These are not journalists. This is not a news organization. It's not a center right news organization. It is part of the fascist apparatus that you guys have been talking about. I hope you're right. I mean, I think people who are paying attention and people who already knew that Fox News was just propaganda have only had their beliefs reinforced by this. But what really stood out to me this morning, and actually this has been trending throughout the day on Twitter, was this, let's take a look. This was trending in the politics section, vote Republican. Like, how do you, like the day after the first day, night of the hearing where you're seeing all of this video, all of, I mean, again, they probably didn't see it depending on which news organization they're watching as the hearing was taking place. But yeah, fairly recently, we grabbed that screen grab, 50,000 tweets under the trending topic of vote Republican. So look, I think that Democrats are, the way they're handling this in terms of the investigation, I think the hearing went really well. And I think that they're

handling it correctly, and I agree with Jenk, they're doing it under the leadership of Liz Cheney of all people. But when you take a step back, there are other issues at play that have a huge impact on Americans' everyday lives. Inflation is a problem. Crime is a problem. Yes, progressives, please acknowledge it. It is in fact a problem across the country. And so when you talk about these very real bread and butter issues, that is always going to to take priority over what happened or what transpired last year, unfortunately. So if Democrats are putting all of their eggs in this January 6th select committee basket, and they think that's gonna be enough to fend off Republican challengers and elections,

I think they're sadly mistaken. And we all suffer as a result of that. Yeah, I do- You got the politics exactly right. I think your policy, the analysis of the politics is spot on. But what was so refreshing, I think from the hearing was that this felt like it was above politics that if the Democrats were smart and they really cared about 2022 instead of perhaps focusing so much in January 6th, maybe there's an effort to somehow rehabilitate Joe Biden or talk about some of these bread and butter issues because there is a perception in certain parts of our society. The more you talk about January 6th, you're somehow not focused on dealing with inflation or gas prices and on and on. But again, for history's sake, and that's where

I think 20, 30, 40 years from now, people will look back and say these hearings were important. Because even if Democrats get killed in the 2022 midterms or it's a problem in 2024 because Democrats seem to be perceived as focusing on something that Americans, most Americans don't really care about anymore, history will record whether or not the United States recorded and whether or not the Constitution was protected at a time when it was under fire. Yeah, so look, both sides always accuse each other of distraction. Most of the time it's nonsense. Claire McCaskill and MSNB is saying that inflation, Mitch McConnell talking about inflation is a distraction from the hearings.

The Republicans say the hearings are a distraction from inflation. Nonsense. They're both very real. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play?

Get up to $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Issues. There are real distractions, you know, critical race theory, trans, you know, high school sports, et cetera. The Republicans love those distractions. But inflation is not one of them.

And certainly these hearings are not one of them. These are massive issues. And I want to show the last video here of, uh, off. officer Edwards talking about what she saw there and then make a last comment. Let's watch. What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground, you know, they were bleeding. They were throwing up. They were, you know, they had, I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood.

And as you watch the whole video, there's no question that it looked like a war scene. So, you know, and guys, I mean, this is a bad note to end on, but I was a little worried by the end that if the Republican voters did actually get to see the video, that some of them might be energized by it, that they might have liked that violence and thought, like. like, oh, next time I'd like to be there too. You know, of course, all the hypocrisies about Blue Lives Matter and they're beating the living crap out of and the cops and some of them died. And, and there's no question, it's a riot. In fact, you see the cops yelling in, we got a riot situation. We're declaring a riot and they're asking for backup.

They're asking for backup. And because Trump liked what was going on, they never received that backup. And a lot of them were incredibly brave. but as our country now stands on the brink of potential violence, you know, I don't know what's going to happen next, but we are in very dangerous, very scary times. Well, I was just going to say, I would say it reminded me of something sort of medieval, but when you, I'll never forget talking to a Trump supporter a couple months ago, I said, well, it really wasn't that violent because the protesters, they didn't fire their, they didn't

fire guns and the Capitol police aside from actually about, but they didn't fire guns to protect the Capitol. So how bad could it have been? And to me that gets to see, well, look, if these were, I don't know, 10,000 Black Lives Matter protesters were trying to storm the Capitol, the cops would have opened fire as much as I love the Capitol police. They would have mowed everybody down. He would have had hundreds of people killed. Why they did not start shooting at these people, I think because they're white, because they were Trump supporters. I think they gave him a little bit of slack, but that doesn't negate the fact that this was a threat to our democracy. This was an effort for a coup, even if it was not a coup that did not involve

guns by the people who were storming the Capitol, even though they had them on them. Well, we're not done talking about the hearing. We're going to take a brief break and get to the moments from the hearing that really triggered Donald Trump and it involved his golden child, Ivanka. Don't miss that. We've got that story and more coming right up. All right, back on the young Turks, Jenk, Anna, David, Frederick S. Parker, Gene, Ann, Cuckaroo, and E&C Dragon Factory. They all just joined by hitting the join button below. Are they American heroes? Yeah, damn right, they are.

They help us bring truth to the country. we do this together. And later in the show, we even have a story for the members on a chocolate factory, gone awry. You'll be amused by that. All right, Casper. I had three discussions with the president that I can recall. One was on November 23rd. One was on December 1st and one was on December 14th. And I've been through sort of the give and take of those discussions and in that context I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff which I told the president was bull and uh you know I didn't want to be a part of it and that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did

I observed uh I think it was on December 1st that you know how can we you can't live in a world where where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view unsupported by specific evidence that the election, that there was fraud in the election. Trump's former attorney general Bill Barr, who essentially served as a lapdog for Donald Trump during his administration, apparently felt like lying about the election being stolen from Trump was just a little too far for him. So he testified during the investigation done by the House select committee on what transpired on January 6th and made it abundantly clear that he had pushed back against Trump's lies in regard to the election allegedly being stolen. Now, it turns out

that someone within Trump's family agreed with Bill Barr and even testified as much. Let's take a look. How did that affect your perspective about the election when Attorney General Barr made that statement? It affected my perspective. I respect to Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying. She accepted what he was saying. And look, to be frank, she said the bare minimum there. But the bare minimum was enough to trigger her daddy, Donald Trump, because after all, Ivanka is his favorite.

And all of a sudden, in his view, I'm sure she's throwing him under the bus. So on truth social, he tweets, Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at or studying election results. She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as attorney general. And then in parentheses, in typical Trump fashion, he sucked. And by the way, I too enjoy being referred to with first and last name when my father is talking about me, you know. Yeah, no, no, that's Anna, I think that might actually be important. He didn't call her Ivanka Kushner. He didn't call her Ivanka. He called her by her maiden name, Ivanka Trump. I think that was his way of emphasizing. Remember which family you're a part of Ivanka. Of course, at the same time, Hey, Knuckle has she already testified a long time ago. That was on tape. It's not like you can intimidate your own daughter by emphasizing the last name now. And so, but the fact that he's at the very, very, very

core, right? So he throws everyone under the bus. And, you know, most of all his own voters. I mean, he treats them as suckers and losers. And but then when you get into his inner circle, he's fired almost everybody in his circle. He, when he brings them in, he goes, they're right out of central casting, brilliant, awesome. They realize he's a lunatic. They say, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't do the illegal things you want me to do. They leave it. He's a loser, idiot. He sucked. Okay. But the, we said, look, and in fact, even with his two sons, well, he's got another son too, but he's not a grown up, with Eric and Don Jr., he has said in private before reported by others that they're idiots, right?

So he doesn't mind saying that either. By the way, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But Ivanka was the golden child. Now he's even throwing her under the bus. I mean, he didn't pay Rudy Giuliani's bills. Rudy's pissed after Rudy did everything. for him. Bill Barr got him through the first impeachment. He lied about the Mueller report about him. Bill Barr did everything that was asked of him. And at the end, Trump's like, okay, why don't you lie,

destroy our democracy, and just make me king. And Barr's like, man, I really, really wanted a strong executive, but that's a bridge to Barr even for me. Okay. We see what you did there. And, and of course, he's on the, the bus, now Ivanka's under the bus. The only people who haven't wisened up to what a maniac Donald Trump is, are his voters. I mean, look, just yesterday, we covered out Betsy DeVos, Mike Pence, and others in the cabinet discussed declaring him a lunatic and using the 25th Amendment to take away his powers as president because he was too dangerously, mentally unstable. It also seemed like he was, in my view, that he was lying about Ivanka because his argument is, I know, she wasn't really paying attention.

She wasn't involved in tracking the evidence. And from what I've heard, Jared Kushner and Ivanka were very involved, at least in the first couple of days after the election and trying to determine, was there really fraud? I mean, they were getting it. And Ivanka was getting it from her brothers and all sorts of people who were talking about, hey, maybe something was awry here. But they were convinced pretty quickly, no, dad really lost. And the idea that they would sort of come to this conclusion and then have it reinforced by Bill Barr, that's too much for Donald Trump, his own daughter clearly couldn't have been paying any attention because otherwise, now, she was paying attention.

She and Jared Kushner came to a clear conclusion that was the right conclusion. It just wasn't what Donald Trump wanted to hear. Yeah, you're exactly right about that. And what I was curious about was, okay, considering the Bill Barr really did carry out, like did do Trump's bidding throughout. his tenure within the Trump administration, how is Trump going to explain away Bill Barr's decision to give that testimony? And this is what he said. Again, in another unhinged rant on truth social, he writes, Bill Barr was a weak and frightened attorney general who was always being played in quotation marks and threatened by the Democrats and was scared stiff of being

impeached. How do you not get impeached? Do nothing or say nothing, especially about the obviously rigged and stolen election, or to put it another way, the crime of the century. So his argument is, well, Bill Barr wanted to protect his position of power within my administration by speaking out against me. By the way, he also stepped out on his own. Like I just, it makes no sense. But the thing is, it doesn't need to make sense, right? Trump is actually. pretty masterful in communicating in a way that is easy to understand and has the exact kind of insults that provide everything that his supporters need to justify the illogical argument that Trump is making. And it's it's really devastating, right? And this is the reason

why I don't understand anyone who thinks they're savvy enough to thread that needle, to suck up to Trump to a point where they can accumulate power for themselves. And think that they can somehow escape the inevitable fate of Trump turning on them once that person decides to tweak something Trump has said or maybe push back a little bit, just gently on something Trump has done. Yeah, I mean, I think historians, psychologists, sociologists, even anthropologists will study this phenomenon that Trump just bulldozes with lies. He doesn't care about any of the facts, he doesn't care if it's his own daughter, if it's

his biggest protector, he just, he will lie about everyone and everything. And he'll lie in such an over the top way. And it totally works. You know, he had what, 73 million Americans vote for him. And now to this day, the overwhelming majority of Republicans that's, you know, in the hundreds of millions of people say, yeah, I believe only Donald Trump. The one guy who's the most obvious liar, almost literally in American history. I say almost, but I shouldn't.

I can't think of anyone who has lied at the scale of Donald Trump, not even close. And politicians are all liars. And he put them all the shame combined. And the fact that people believe it is just a testament to a bad part of our nature that will believe anything if we want to believe it. But guys, one more thing that's really important here. hearings are showing you important things like Bill Barr's testimony, even Ivanka saying, yeah, I think he lost election. I believe Bill Barr. But at the end of the day, they don't have accountability for the people who actually organize this coup. And I'm not talking about

proud boys and oathkeepers. They were never going to hold that building. What they did was terrible. It was definitely a crime. It was over the top violent. They should all be prosecuted for it. But they were not going to hold that building. The real coup was the fake electors. And so they, they last line in the hearings laid out the seven things that they are going to prove and they are going to talk about the fake electors. Jake Tapper reported on that today in terms of the specifics of the seven part plan. If they had gotten Pence to kick the certification back to the states, they had fake electors ready at the states. If they do not arrest the people who came up with that plan, and by their own admission, it appears to be Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. And guys, look, this is not about personal bias.

Like, for example, I loathe Stephen Miller. He's one of the worst people ever. He was in the Trump administration. He did the immigration policies. He did the most racist and bigoted policies. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that connects him to this plot. So would I want him randomly arrested because I don't agree with him politically? Absolutely not.

That would destroy the rule of law. We should never do that. But if Navarro and Bannon are going around and saying, oh, yeah, I did it. I'm the one who came up with the Green Bay Swim for the fake elector plan. For God's sake, if you don't arrest them. And if they have evidence connecting them to Trump, yes, they should definitely arrest Trump. Under that circumstance, let's see what they have in the rest of the hearings. But if you don't do it, then you're saying green light, next time you're in charge, break any law you want.

Do not ever leave the White House. Use force, use violence, break the law, and destroy our democracy. At the end of the day, if the hearings send that message because they take no action, it'll have been counterproductive. And that's where I think the next group to watch, the next institution to watch is the Department of Justice, because it does seem to your point, whether it's Steve Bannon or whether it's Stephen Miller or whether it's Peter Navarro or whether it is Donald Trump, the hearing is whatever analogy you want to use, Alleyoop, putting it on a silver platter, the evidence is there.

They are putting Donald Trump at the heart of a criminal conspiracy. And if the Department of Justice doesn't take this evidence and at least present it to a grand jury, then you're absolutely right. The Department of Justice is essentially giving a green light to this happening again. Well, time's flying today. So we got to take another brief break. But when we come back, we have an update on the fate of Felicia Sanmes over at the Washington Post, the saga that seemed to never end. It has come to an end. We'll tell you how when we come back. All right back on TY Chink, Anna and David with you guys, Anna, take it away. Well, guys, it looks like we have a little bit of breaking news, which reinforces the fact

that Alex Jones is having a tough go at things, which I particularly enjoy. Let's get right to that. A bankruptcy judge has just declared that Alex Jones will not be able to file for bankruptcy. On Friday, June 10th in Texas, according to the Associated Press, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, great name, dismissed a bankruptcy protection case involving three companies that Jones controls, Info Wars LLC, Prison Planet TV, and IW Health. The judge's actions allow the parents' defamation, lawsuits against Jones to continue in Texas and Connecticut, where trials are pending on how much he should pay families after judges in both of those states found that his companies

were liable for damages. And again, this has to do with the defamation case that was brought forth by the victims of the Sandy Hook mass shooting. He had defame those family members by declaring that that mass shooting, which killed their children, was nothing more than a false flag operation meant to take guns away from Americans. Now at the same time, Jones is obviously losing one legal battle after the next, and he doesn't want to take any responsibility for it. So instead, he has decided to eat his own and go after his own legal team, which I'll give you the details of in just a moment. But I'm very curious what you all have to say about this. Jank, thoughts on the rejection of the bankruptcy claim. Critical. If the courts allowed him to hide

his money, then all this would have been for naught. And this is the court saying, no, we already have evidence of your money. For example, we've said this a couple of times because it's so startling. He apparently made $165 million from his shop where he basically sells snake oil over the course of just three years, let alone all the other money from all the other years from the shop, let alone any other kind of money that he makes from his audience. So he's got hundreds of millions of dollars. It would have been a total force if they let him hide it. And so it's great news that the judge said, no, we're not going to fall for those silly tricks. I agree 100% with Jenk. And I'll speak as somebody who lives 20 minutes from

Newtown, 20 minutes from Sandy Hook Elementary School. In this part of Connecticut, words cannot describe how painful what Alex Jones did to these families, to the relatives, to the friends, of the teachers. I mean, it's, it's, you know, the horrifying truth is that there's nothing like what a parent goes through when your kid get shut up and is unrecognizable, whether it's Sandihook, whether it's Uvaldi, whatever it is. But then to add insult to that, to have somebody who's got such a big platform make up stuff about your kids, about what happened. It is, again, there are no words that can describe how horrified and sickened people here in Connecticut have been by Alex Jones. And so anything that makes Alex Jones, not

have to pay more money, but be miserable is good news. Oh, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I time to time the Posner family comes to mind. And this is the family who lost their little boy as a result of this shooting. And then after that had to deal with the harassment of Alex Jones's audience. They had to deal with credible threats. In fact, a woman was arrested as a result of that. They had to move seven times because of the harassment and the threats they were dealing with. You know, this is, I wish there was as much like passionate attention toward this case as there was with the defamation case brought forth for Amber Hurd's claims against Johnny Depp, right?

Like that story got a lot of attention, a lot of people were fired up. But this particular story is just one of such extreme injustice and it might finally lead to justice for these family members. Alex Jones knows it, he's flailing. He's struggling to come up with a scapegoat. So the latest group of people who are dealing with his ire, dealing with the blame, his lawyers, okay? So one of his current lawyers, Brittany Paz, says the following in regard to the previous legal team. And it has been a rotating legal team.

I did have concerns on behalf of the company regarding the company's prior representation. Yes, she said, in a deposition that was obtained by the Daily Beast. Paz doesn't say in her deposition, which of their former attorney's Info Wars might sue. So they are planning on pursuing legal action. But she singled out three lawyers, Mark Rendaza, Brad Reeves, and Robert Barnes for special criticism. Paz also says that some of Info Wars' lawyers were botching the case, that they screwed up the discovery process, that they were just completely incompetent. Now, Mark Rendaza and Robert Barnes have both become celebrity lawyers for all sorts of right wing grifters, so I've gotten a love for them to be clear. As for Rendaza, though, he does have a pretty shady past. And I want to give you guys the details on that. For instance, the Daily Beast reports that Rendaza once pleaded guilty to ethical violations in a Nevada bar investigation into whether he had cut a side deal with another client's legal foes. So just imagine that, cutting deals with like the other side.

So you know, there could be some legitimate accusations here by Jones. But nonetheless, he's blaming his other colleagues at Info Wars to save his own ass. And I'm talking about the lawyer here, Rendaza. The revolving cast of lawyers at Info Wars has included some outstanding lawyers who are confident in their own abilities. It has also included some utterly terrible lawyers, remember, he's not talking about himself here, he's talking about others, utterly terrible lawyers who made some of the dumbest moves I've ever seen. Those in the latter camp seem to be interested in deflecting attention from their incompetence

onto the competent lawyers who compete with them. Remember, this is the guy who got investigated by the Nevada bar. And he's like, no, it was the other lawyers. They're bad. Yeah. So there's two elements here, guys. One is the circular firing squad. and that's awesome. And so, like, look, unfortunately, Democrats are terrible at fighting Republicans as the right wing, et cetera.

So our only hope is the right wing is so crazy that they all just turn on each other. And it happens all the time. Lynn Wood just turned on Mike Lindell, the pillow guy. So like two of the craziest guys now they're fighting. Like it, because once you're crazy, there's no off switch on crazy. So then you're crazy towards your lawyers. You hire crazy lawyers. They're crazy towards you and towards the other.

their lawyers. And so is it true that some of his lawyers were utterly terrible, I think, as they put it? Yeah, of course it's true. One of the lawyers accidentally sent child pornography to the plaintiff lawyers. Now look, there was good credible information that it wasn't Alex Jones's child porn. But do you think Alex Jones would have been honest about that if someone on the left had had sent child porn someone accidentally? No, they'd call up. him a pedophile for the rest of his life, right? And so one of the lawyers did that from Jones's computer, right? They lost the cases badly. And then now here comes a really interesting second part. You know, in the midst of all this, Alex Jones sued us for defamation in the

middle of all these trials. Now, not only are the families of the kids suing him for defamation because he called them crisis actors and said they didn't really have kids, et cetera. And not only that, He also picked a random guy and said he was a real killer. And of course, that guy's suing him. So when he went to sue us for defamation, it was a monumental error. Not only because, of course, we didn't defame him, we just stated facts that were true. But the plaintiff's lawyers that were representing the family said, if Alex Jones sued against the young Turks and Jenk are true, then we definitely win our case. What he did was not the same, it was way worse than what he is alleging the young Turks did to him.

They withdrew the suit within a week because they're serial bunglers, they're morons and lunatics. So of course the lunatics have turned on each other and this is going to be a wonderful mess. Yeah, I didn't know about that story, Jank. I didn't know that he had pursued a lawsuit against us. Breaking news for me and I love it. It's amazing. And he shut himself in the foot instantly. He's like, oh, go ahead.

I've long maintained that Alex Jones is not one of the best and the brightest, that maybe the reason he's gotten as far as he has. Maybe it's because of his voice or there's something bombastic about his personality that attracts people in a broadcast medium. But he's not a smart guy. He really is not very smart. And too many people say, oh, Alex Jones, he's brilliant. He's not brilliant.

He's an idiot. But he has something about him, about his personality that somehow, transcends broadcasting and that's that's the only thing that he has gone for him. Yeah. And look, he's on camera. He's, I mean, there's like one broadcast after another after another where he's very clearly defaming. I mean, like with the Johnny Depp Amber Hurd trial, they're like secretly recording each other and doing all sorts of stuff on the down low. With Alex Jones, he's like, yeah, I'm gonna do the defamation out there. Oh yeah, I'm just gonna say it out loud. I'm gonna do it on my show. In fact, we have a compilation for you.

Let's take a quick look at that. It's all a fraud, ladies and gentlemen. This is just the anti-gun lobby and anti-free speech lobby, attaching themselves to some parents who basically now have attached themselves to me. So anytime my name's brought up, their children and what happened to them gets back in the news. The Newtown kids, they take them, put them in our face, tell us their names, who they were. Sandy Hook, it's got inside job written all over it. Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured.

I couldn't believe it at first. People just instinctively know that there's a lot of fraud going on. But it took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake. This is nothing but a bunch of propaganda. America sees through it. And this is really a symptom of how sick our nation has become. And the fact that he was so brazen with the defamatory statements, to me, demonstrates that he knows the right wing more often than not gets away with everything. Because no one fights back. But in this case, the victims of Sandy Hook, the victims of Alex Jones's lies fought back.

And they did so in a courageous way. It's not easy to do it. The right wing is vicious. And they protect their own at all costs. But I'm really proud of these families and I hope that they get rewarded the damages that they deserve. And I love, I love watching people like Alex Jones suffer. He absolutely deserves it. To blame it on his lawyers who might or might not be incompetent, I don't know, I don't care. Is ridiculous considering, again, how openly he used those defamatory statements on his show. Yeah, it's startling how similar he is to Donald Trump. Just brazenly lie over the top lies.

just be loud, just repeat it a thousand times, hire completely incompetent people and then blame them for incompetence. Well, dude, aren't you the guy who hired him? I mean, that's to David's point. The media is constantly talking about Trump strategy and Alex Jones strategy. There ain't no strategy. They're mentally unbalanced. It's just the reason for their success is because, unfortunately, a very large percentage of this country wants to be lied to. They want to believe that, oh, no, guns are going to keep you safer and that white people should always be in charge and that real democracy is when you don't have equality. And that's why we should take away rights from gay people and trans people, etc. They want to hear these lies. And Alex Jones

and Donald Trump are just serving that need. They don't have any grant strategy at all. And these court cases are certainly proving that. And I'll just add that the families here, they'll make it clear that they don't care about the money. This isn't about money to them. do want Alex Jones to be wiped out. They want them to be financially destroyed. They want to make sure that Alex Jones can never do his gig again. And if cleaning out his money is the way to do it, then the families are fine. But you know, I guarantee the families, you know, every time that they make out of this defamation, I would guarantee is not going to go in their own pockets. It's going to go to try to fight the gun lobby, the NRA to try to pass common sense gun reforms.

Well, I think I'm going to get in a little bit of trouble, but I don't care. We're going to do one more story. No, we gotta do it. Yeah. Yeah, I've been looking forward to talking about it. So let's get right to it. Alicia Sanmes has been fired from the Washington Post. That's why I say she's a former reporter with them.

She was a national political reporter who had caused a kerfuffle recently after she made a big deal out of a joke that was retweeted by one of her male colleagues, Dave Weichel. Now this saga felt like it was endless, but it has come to an end. But before I get to the email that she was given, letting her know that she was being fired, I do want to get to the content. So for any of you who might have missed it, I'll get you back up to speed. So it all started when Dave Weigel had retweeted this, honestly, lame joke. Okay, every girl is by, you just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual. Now Weigel tweeted it and immediately after that, Sonmez made it clear she didn't like the tweet. She wrote fantastic to work with the news outlet or at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.

And what Weigel did immediately after that was the right thing. He did away with the retweet. He apologized both internally and publicly. And it wasn't enough for Sonmez because she kept complaining about it and complaining about the environment over at the Washington Post. And eventually it was reported that Weigel would be suspended for a month with no pay. I thought that was ridiculous. We talked about it on the show. But even after that happened, the attacks toward other Washington Post reporters continued in a very public fashion happened on Twitter. For instance, anyone who had defended

Dave Weigel would have to deal with the criticisms of Felicia Sanmes. For instance, here is one example where she has screenshots of the tweets that she disagrees with and says, these tweets falsely accusing me of clout chasing, bullying, cruelty, and directing an eager mob, meager mob to carry out a barrage of online abuse are still up, even after I repeatedly raised them to management and noted that I've been receiving threats and abuse. And Jose Del Real is one of her colleagues. They were going at it on Twitter. But something that really caught my attention and bothered me a lot was this tweet. And by the way, let me just note that she blocked me. I've never communicated with her directly, but she didn't like our coverage on this. So

sorry to hurt your feelings, but this is how I feel. You know, she wrote, I don't know who the colleagues anonymously disparaging me in the media reports are, but I do know that the reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week, downplaying the post workplace issues have a few things in common with each other. Now let's get to the next tweet and this is what caught my attention and bothered me, okay? They are all white. All right, let's just pause right here. Okay, so if your colleagues have a point of view that differs from your own, their points don't matter, their perception doesn't matter, their lived experience doesn't matter because

they're white. And what she was specifically referring to are the female reporters at the Washington Post who just openly said, I've had a great experience at the Washington Post, basically countering Sanmes's claims, right? But they shouldn't have done that because they're white women and white women apparently don't matter. Their perception of the workplace doesn't matter at all, not even a little bit. I'm curious what Sanmez's reaction would be if those reporters weren't white. By the way, Felicia Sanmes, I don't know what her background is. One of the most white passing women I've ever seen in my life. So what are you talking about? Yeah, okay. So look, Look, I'm certainly more brown than Felicia Sowness in color, in hue, right?

I don't, ethnically, I don't know if we're a tie. I don't know what it is, but this conversation is absurd. But I do run a media network, so I'm curious what her standard is. Am I allowed to ignore all white people at work? And it's, oh, you had a thought about how it is to work here, but you're white. Felicia Sondez tells me I should ignore what you think. It's not important at all. That's absurd.

How could you not see that that's absurd? No, this is like the, I don't know that this is anywhere on the political spectrum. But whatever it is, we're against it. And so they fired her. We'll get talked more about that in a second. And guys, look, we don't know all the details. She's in the middle of a lawsuit. I'm sure she'll quadruple down on that lawsuit now, right?

And everybody's going to lawyer. She hasn't said anything on Twitter since. because now before they fired her, she's constantly attacking her colleagues, right? And it's their fault and it's partly because they're because of their race. It's partly because of they make too much money, et cetera, et cetera, right? The management keeps telling you her stop doing that publicly. We're not saying that you can't talk about it and we can't resolve it internally, but please stop attacking everyone that you work with publicly, right?

She says, no, I'm above the law, she keeps doing it. It's almost like she's goading them to fire her. They do, all of a sudden she stopped tweeting because now she's talking to lawyers, right? And lawyers like, okay, good, good, good, we got them where we want them, don't tweet anymore. It could incriminate you, and then they're going to do a giant lawsuit. Maybe in that lawsuit we'll find out she was right. I don't know. I don't know the internal dealings of the Washington Post, but right now it doesn't look good.

I got to jump in because I was curious about the lawsuit. I'm like, okay, well, I want to make sure I'm informed on, on, on what? what I'm saying here and if she had allegations that could be credible, I want to make sure that we share those allegations on the show. Her allegation was that the Washington Post was discriminating against her because she specifically wanted to do coverage on accusations of like sexual misconduct. And so since she didn't get the assignment that she wanted, she claimed that it was discrimination. And the judge threw that case out because she failed to provide evidence demonstrating that the Washington Post had, in fact, you know, discriminated

against her by not assigning her to the, you know, topic that she wanted to report on. She's gonna appeal it. So when Jenks says she's in the middle of the lawsuit, she's not giving up. She's appealing that decision. And so we'll see where that goes. But what I've noticed, and some might feel uncomfortable with me saying this, but I'm gonna say it because it's what I genuinely think and it's what I have seen and to some extent even experienced. Using gender or using race and weaponizing it for career aspirations is disgusting and it's not okay. Okay, so you didn't get the assignment you wanted claiming that you didn't get it because of discrimination is ridiculous and apparently the judge who throughout her case

also found that to be ridiculous. Anna, that's a great point and I think you're I think you're spot on. And clearly, to me, Felicia Sanmez was more concerned about herself than the Washington Post as an institution and felt that she was better than them or above them or that the Washington Post had been so terrible in her eyes that she wanted to protect her own, I don't know, reputation. It comes across as insubordination and she gets fired. But I think the irony is, and look, this is coming from somebody who I've worked in organizations where I felt like my principles were at stake and I needed to separate myself from that organization. So I get it. But there's a, but we're talking about the Washington. Post. You're not talking about Fox News or Breitbart. This is the Washington Post. And to not be able to follow the managing editors instructions, stop attacking your colleagues publicly. It's simple. And she keeps doing it. It almost like it makes the Dave Weigel joke. And it was a terrible joke. But here's an example of somebody who actually does seem now to have mental health issues, which is the terrible joke that Dave Weigel was saying to begin with.

Yeah, no. Go ahead, Jane. Yeah, I don't know about any of that. And let the appeal go forward. She'll make her case and we'll, you know, and let the courts decide it. But I, there's two things that bother me. One is what you guys are talking about originally about everything has to be involved with gender or race. No, like, so when I left MSNBC, I could have been like, oh, they did it because

I'm Muslim. But that's not what happened, right? So not everything has to be racial. not everything has to be about your background. And so it's, and oftentimes it is, by the way. But sometimes it isn't. And by the way, that's why they have courts, et cetera. But right now we're in the court of public opinion.

And look, I've told this story before in relation to Sonmes. When I was at MSNBC, the Phil Griffin, the head of the station, said Joe Scarborough had complained that I was criticizing him and for me to not do it anymore. Well, I worked for them. I had a contract with them, so I listened to that. I don't like Joe Scarborough. I criticized them before. I criticize them after, I'm a little bit during, not on MSNBCs there, but on Young Turks a little bit.

But overall, I listened to it because I had a contract with them. I worked for them, right? So it's not too much to ask for when your boss says, hey, don't do that, that you follow that. And asking you to follow normal instructions by your manager is not racism. It's just called having a job. And that leads me to my second point. Look, there's different kinds of employees everywhere, right? And so, and the employees that are sometimes the loudest voices and that leave in spectacular fashion, right, say, oh, this is a terrible employee, et cetera, et cetera.

And by the way, oftentimes they're right. And sometimes they're totally wrong. And when they are, a lot of times, other people that work at that company go, well, you know, that isn't my experience at all. So he doesn't represent me or she doesn't represent me. The part that bothered me the most was when Sonmas came back and said, no, none of your opinions count. I don't care what kind of experience you had at Washington Post. I don't care if you're a woman. I don't care what you are. None of your experiences count. Only my experience counts. Well, no, absurd.

All right, well, we're massively out of time. But thank you for indulging me with that story. This was a fun power panel. I enjoyed it. It felt good to be back on a Friday. And great to be on with both of you, whether it's a power panel or any other show. Thanks for it. Thanks for including me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, no problem. We did it even though you're white. All right, we love you guys. Check out David on Rebel headquarters. Obviously, Anna's on the Young Turks. We're going to take a quick break here. When we come back, we have an amazing second hour for you guys, including a new presenter.

Interesting. And Lauren Bobert might actually be in legal trouble. Let's talk about that when we come by. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.