The Young Turks - Damaged Donald Trump

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

You’re vital to our work. Support as a member: https://go.tyt.com/signup. Top UN court says Israel must take "all measures" to prevent genocide in Gaza, but the court stops short of calling for ceasefire. Matt Gaetz privately told colleagues his real motivation for the Kevin McCarthy ouster was an ethics probe. Trump ordered to pay $86 million in damages in E Jean Carroll defamation trial. Meghan McCain is upset Jon Stewart went "woke." HOSTS: John Iadarola (@johniadarola), Maz Jobrani (@MazJobrani) and Yasmin Khan (@YazzieK) 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. 3x2, 3x3, 3x3, 3x, 3x3, 3x3, 3x3, Drop it like Donald Trump's net worth. A little tease for a story coming up later for you. Hey everybody, it's the Young Turks. I'm John Adler, very lucky to have to be joined on the program by once again, Rebel HQ committer, a contributor, I'm too excited about the Trump story, I apologize, Rebel HQ contributor

and comedian Maz Jarani, Maz, welcome back to the show. Thank you, you could also say drop it like Elon Musknet, worth but either way it works. Is that in relation to breaking news or just in general he's ruining things? Well, no, the Tesla stock took a nose dive yesterday. So that's another thing. Okay, I'm gonna have to do my research. And joining us as well, host of the Modern Context podcast, Yasmin Leah Khan, welcome back as well. Thanks for having me. Glad to be back. Very glad to have you here. We lined it up so that there would be major international news for you. Yeah, so you're gonna be excited about that. Get something up your alley.

Yeah, it's very exciting stuff. Thank you. It is, exactly. Well, in any event, we're gonna be talking about a lot through the course of this hour. Not only the aforementioned breaking domestic political news having to do with Donald Trump and E. Gene Carroll, that will definitely be coming. Interesting updates on Matt Gates and the ethics investigation that he's currently facing. And many people excited, or at least, you know, tantalized by the idea that John Stewart might be returning to the daily show. But one person is not having it. And we're going to hear her out at the close of the show.

But lots to get to before that. So hit the like button, share the stream. And we're going to dive right into the biggest international story of the week. The court considers that with regard to the present situation, Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the genocide convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article 2 of the convention, in particular, A, killing groups, members of the group, B, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

C, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in the whole room part, and D, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Today we finally got at least an interim judgment from the UN's International Court of Justice, wherein they ordered, as you saw the beginning of there, and we'll dive into the details, Israel to take all measures to prevent death destruction and any acts of genocide from happening inside of Gaza, while at the same time ordering Hamas to release any remaining hostages. That's what they did. What they did not do was specifically call for a ceasefire,

Nor did they dismiss the case going forward. This is, after all, the interim report. A full analysis of what has happened inside of Gaza could take months, at the very least, if not years. Israel had asked for that to be dismissed. The ICJ has refused to do that. So what we have is just this interim report that basically lays out areas where Israel is expected to refrain from doing certain sorts of things,

while also coming back at a month's time with a report on how they have complied. with that. So we want to give you a little bit more of the specific judgments. And so we're going to turn to more from the president of the court, Joan Donahue. And we're going to have some of the specific rulings. Take a look at this. The court further considers that Israel must ensure with immediate effect that its military forces do not commit any of the aforementioned acts. The court is also of a view that Israel must take measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to the members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip. The court further considers that Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed

basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel must also take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article 2 and Article 3 of the Genocide Convention against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip. So you saw there a listing of some of these provisional measures. They were approved by a wide majority of judges, if not unanimously, with two of them being. 16 to 1 and four of them being 15 to 2. And so some things being ordered for Israel to comply with and come back in a month and report on other steps of the ICJ theoretically could have taken. They did not go so far as to take.

So I wanna start off, Yas, I'm gonna go to you first. What do you make of this? Is this in line with what you might have expected the ICJ would do? Unfortunately, yes. And I feel like I say that a lot that this is not surprising. I really wish sometimes that I would be surprised that something good would come from things like this. I think this in particular, people were really holding out hope that the UN would come through and do the right thing and say the right thing. And they really didn't. And you mentioned

when you were talking earlier, you said that this actual investigation could take months or years. We don't have that kind of time. We've seen what has already happened in the weeks, in the months since October 7th. We've already seen how many thousands and thousands of Palestinians have been killed indiscriminately and how many thousands and thousands of children specifically have been killed. And now we're seeing images of Israeli protesters blocking aid trucks from getting to people in Gaza. So it's really, really disheartening. It kind of is difficult to wrap your head around the idea of what that area could look like in a few months from now because we've already seen how much destruction has happened in just a few months.

Yeah, I'll back up, you know, get on that as well. So first of all, as we all know, is such a volatile subject. I have, as a stand-up comedian, I have fans that are Jewish. I have fans that are Palestinian. I have friends that are Jewish, friends that are Palestinian. And I always say, I go, of course, they always say, do you condemn the actions of Hamas on October 7th? Of course, that was an atrocious act. But then that doesn't mean I cannot then continue to also say what's been happening in Gaza is also atrocious what we're seeing

because yes, we are supporting the right of Israel to defend itself, but at the same time when we see the destruction and the humanitarian situation that's going on in Gaza right now, as a human being, you go, well, let's call for a ceasefire. Let's step back. Because by the way, there's different opinions on how you help get the hostages back.

Maybe by calling for a ceasefire, you'll get a chance to get the hostages back. Some of the hostages that came back happened during a ceasefire. And I was talking to this person who happened to be a general, American general at some event I was at, and he made a good point.

He goes, you know, war is political, but once it becomes personal, once you kill my brother or my relative, then it's no longer political. It's harder to get out of it. So I understand when you see, when you see some of my Jewish friends, Like, when I've said ceasefire, they'll say, you're, you're anti-Semitic.

I go, I'm not anti-Semitic. I'm just saying ceasefire because there's people dying on the other side. And we're dehumanizing. Both sides will try to dehumanize the other side so that the killing of the other side is okay. And that's not okay. And so, you know, as Yasmin was saying, I would hope that we could all come and call for a ceasefire and stop this continuous destruction that's happening. Yeah, you know, both of you sort of have alluded to theoretically what the ICJ could have done.

They could have specifically called for a ceasefire, which they have not done in the same way that they did not declare this to be a genocide or not. Basically, what we're left with is a lot of the things they're saying that you can draw implications from. I mean, they did not call for a ceasefire, but they have called for certain behaviors to not happen. They're not to be widespread death and those sorts of things. In theory, it would be difficult to accomplish all of what the ICJ has laid out without something significantly approaching a ceasefire. But it really will come down to, to what extent does anyone feel like they must be bound by even these provisional judgments?

So in theory, most states do have to comply with what the ICGA says. In this particular case, both South Africa and Israel, they have to follow the court's orders because they are party to the 1948 genocide convention. But we also know that it is the court of the UN. So in theory, if there wasn't compliance, it could eventually come down to a vote in the Security Council, in which case the US has been very free with the veto power in the past. And it's not even like that would be the first time that a state hasn't complied with what the ICJ has called for. In the relatively early stages of the invasion of Ukraine, there were also calls for from the ICJ for Russia to

pull back from what they were doing. And they just haven't done that. So, and the And the issue is the UN isn't going to invade Russia. So we really have to see how much is it worth that there is this, that there are these provisional judgments. Will they be complied with in a month when the report comes due? How much compliance will there be or will they just be stymied in their attempt to get that? We will have to wait and see. For now, I do want to give you some of the reactions to this.

So the national security minister of Israel was the first Israeli official to react to the judgment. tweeting haig Schmeag and honestly I'm going to put that one on the tab of Donald Trump because I feel like he's really done a lot to normalize juvenile social media responses to judicial decisions that don't go your way so maybe we shouldn't be that surprise that that's how government officials are starting to respond to stuff like this but taking it a little bit more seriously you have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who reacted to what you saw with this like every country Israel has an inherent right to defend itself.

The vile attempt to deny Israel this fundamental right is blatant discrimination against the Jewish state, and it was justly rejected. The charge of genocide leveled against Israel is not only false, it's outrageous, and decent people everywhere should reject it. So the issue is that while much of what he said could be interpreted is true, when he says that the ICJ rejected the charge of genocide, that is just not true. They also didn't confirm it. They did not decide on that.

As we said, we could be waiting years to find out about that. So to come out and put out a video claiming that that has been a rebutted is simply, that's just not what the ICGA actually did. Finally, defense minister for Israel who had previously called for a total siege of Gaza as part of a battle against what he called human animals, which by the way, that was cited in this case, said that the ICJ had granted quote South Africa's anti-Semitic request. So again, I mean, the ICJ did not agree with South Africa that it is genocide.

All they have said is here are a list of things that you cannot do. There can't be widespread death, you have to provision aid, you can't, you have to prosecute incitement to genocide, those sorts of things, which I think most serious actors would say every conflict should be adjudicated in that fashion. But again, this is a guy who previously called Palestinians human animals, so I don't know what expectations we would have of him. In any event, Maz, I want to start with you. Any reaction to what you've seen? Yeah, you know, the question becomes at what point does Israel consider victory? Because they're saying they need to completely destroy Hamas.

And the fact is, in that process, a lot of innocent Palestinians have died. And also, you're not winning hearts and minds. It's getting worse and worse. I actually fear for a lot of my Jewish friends because I go, I see the rise of anti-Semitism because of the actions of the state over there. And so the question becomes, how do we come out of this with a solution? Because the fact is, there's several million Palestinians there. There's several million Jews there, and neither one is going anywhere. So as a world, we need to come together with a political solution and give the people of Palestine their own autonomy, give the people of Israel, their own security and I hope and imagine a world where they could live side by side and they could

prosper in their own worlds. And I think that we are not currently on the road to that with this current bombardment and continuation of killing of innocent people there in Gaza. So I don't know where we're headed, but I would hope at some point that the other powers, the world powers would get together and say we need to come up with a political solution and a military solution, never solves this problem. Yes? Yeah. Unfortunately, I think what we're seeing now play out,

it kind of was a long time coming. And it's hard to imagine a world where we didn't end up in this place, right? You look at things, whenever you look at these complex similar to this one, right? Throughout history, things that were basically created by foreign powers, you know, the UK, the U.S., whoever, they put these things in place. And then decades later, after things fester, they always blow up this way. And it never works out well for the people involved, the people who are actually living in those spaces. And so after the flare up, since October 7th, let's say, right?

Even though we know that this has been going on for decades before that, what always bothers me about these types of things, you know, especially with what we saw from the ICJ earlier today, what always bothers me is that we're here in the west, right? I'm sitting in this room, in this house, I'm very safe, I'm very comfortable, and we're over here in the West in the so-called civilized world, and we're spending months debating everything from history to the Bible to political strategy and economic theory. And while we're over here arguing semantics, trying to decide if the deliberate and indiscriminate killing of thousands of Palestinians and thousands of children technically meets the definition of genocide, people in the East are dying. You know, children are dying. And it's so very frustrating. And you can't

people for being impatient is every day. We're all seeing the same things. We're all seeing how bad the destruction is over there. All anybody wants is for the violence to stop and they want for the children to stop dying. And this, I think a lot of people had a lot of hope that there would be a ceasefire called and it isn't here and we are getting impatient. And it's very hard to witness. Yeah. And patience is long patience in this case. If you're if you're really invested in what they're eventually going to rule after years, I mean, that is going to matter at the time, but that is worlds away at this point. And they potentially could have gone stronger. They did not.

I did see earlier today that Joe Biden had apparently told the Israeli government that he wasn't in it for a one year conflict, I think is the quote that they said, okay, that's something. In the meantime, the conflict is now four months old, More than 26,000 Palestinians have died. That is more than 1% of the population of Gaza, which I'm not a mathematician. But if I do some quick mental horror math is like in four months, more than three times bigger of an effect on their population than COVID was on the U.S. over the course of four years. So absolutely devastating situation.

Still in its infancy, we could be in this for a year or two. And God only knows how much violence, how much suffering there will be through the course of that. But of course we will be following it as the vast majority of people around the globe, I think should and will. Sometimes that hard out will get you in the social break. But Maz had asked a question of whether Yaz has other rooms that are also all painted one color. Is that the case or is it just the one black accent room? Yeah, so my bedroom is like an emerald green. So it feels like a forest.

And you have to paint the ceiling too. So it feels like you know, you're under a canopy. It's also very cozy. And then I painted the ceiling in my dining room. It's like hot pink, but it's really cool. I like it. And my fiance is okay with it. I bet he loves it. No, we have to see the ceiling of that dining room. I've never seen a

I'll post it later. I'll post it on my Instagram. I love the yeah, you have to paint the ceiling green so it's like a canopy. You're right, you have to do that. Yeah, yeah, you have to. Yeah, I feel I feel like it's such a, such a failure here. It's all white. White is great. White is also a lot of fun. Yeah, you have a cool window there though, Maas. Yeah, look at that. I got one there too. Look at that. Yeah. That is pretty. I don't have much. This place used to be, used to be a church. Used to be a church.

Is that really? Wait, is that real? No, no, no, no, no. Okay, well, I'm kidding. And I'm gullible. Anyway, speaking of gullible, let's turn to the Maga movement, because we've got some fun news here. Breaking news in the Donald Trump e. Gene Carroll trial.

Earlier today, he stormed out during the closing arguments, and that somehow didn't save him. The verdict still was very much not what he was. what he was hoping for. The jury has awarded E. Jean Carroll more than $83 million. That one's gonna sting. Even if you're a real billionaire, that would sting. Whatever it is that he is, he's gonna feel that one.

So here's the breakdown. The jury found Trump should pay Carol compensatory damages of $18.3 million, 11 million to fund a reputation repair campaign, and $7.3 million for the emotional harm caused by Trump's 2019 public statements. I think, well, then that's the money, why the 83? Well, Trump also has to pay $65 million in punitive damages for acting maliciously in making the statements about Carol. And look, the jury does not always get it right, particularly in the United States. But I think putting so much into the fact that he was acting maliciously makes all the sense in the world. The only issue I have, and this is outside of the bounds of the jury to do anything about, is that yes, he was malicious in those

comments back in June that they were adjudicating here, but what about the maliciousness that we've seen every single day since then? What about the tweet storms that he goes on about E. Jean Carroll literally every day this week. The videos he puts up, which perhaps we'll be able to show a little bit of that. I mean, like if he owed that much money for a couple days worth of defamatory comments, he's been doing it ever since. So maybe we'll see more to come. to speculate, Maas. I want to start with you. What do you think about $83 million? Well, I think that his base should be expecting some incoming emails for fundraisers. That's what I think. The old, they're coming after me because they're coming after you.

No, they're not going after any of your base because they did not commit sexual assault. None of your base tried to overthrow democracy. None of your base committed any of the crimes that you have committed and yet he's convinced them that by going after him they're going after them which is the biggest this guy is the biggest scam artist ever he's the biggest grifter ever he's been grifting since he got all that he grifted his dad to get the money and then he and then he lost the money and he continues the grift grifter is going to grift and so i'm interested to see how he spins this of course his base is going to be energized and say oh they're coming after him, that whole martyr complex. But hopefully some people that were voting for him that were

kind of, you know, wavering a little bit might start seeing the writing on the wall and go, wow, if he's going to be starting to get found guilty in these cases, perhaps he's going to be, I mean, he was already guilty, but I'm saying if he's losing in these cases, perhaps more losses are coming down the line. And maybe Nikki Haley has somewhere she can go. I mean, maybe there's a, you know, this is a long shot, but she should be hitting hard right now. She should be like this guy, I mean, this guy is a sexual predator. He's a sexual predator who's been convicted and now owes this money. And I don't know how the case plays out.

I don't know if you can, can he can, can they appeal this and how far can it go? As far as I know, it can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. I don't know that they would have any reason to pick this up. But it is, it is certainly going to be appealed. And we'll get into a little bit of the Trump team, but I expect that that will come. Yeah. Yeah, yes? Yeah, so I covered this story this morning for Rebel HQ and since I did that story this morning, all this has come out. So it's interesting because Carol's team actually used Trump's own

words against him to demand more money from him. And they used his deposition from a different case entirely from his bank fraud case in New York. Right? So in his deposition there, he said that he was worth, quote, billions and billions and billions of dollars. That's what he said, billions three times. So they took what he said there and they said, well, if he's worth billions and billions and billions of dollars, then he needs to pay us a significant chunk of money before he even feels the pain of losing that money. So they wanted to hurt him financially because maybe then,

maybe then he will finally stop defaming E. Jean Carroll. He hasn't stopped yet, But maybe $83 million will be enough to put a stop to it. Yeah, I'm definitely internally speculating about that. I have only one piece of evidence to that that I will present in just a second. But it's a lot of money. And we also have to bear in mind, it's a lot of money in addition to last May, Carol was awarded $5 million in damages and $3 million of that being for defamation in a separate defamation case. So she's already shown and judges and juries have shown that they're willing to run this back.

If you want to just keep, if you want this to be the rest of your life is defaming her over this and talking about how she has a cat named Vagina, feel free. You can do that. You can bleed about that. And then you can pay out heavily for it if that's your kink for some reason. But yeah, it's a lot of money. And it's bad news for Donald Trump. Maz, as you pointed out, it's bad news for retirees who are going to put the bill for this. Bad news for Alina Haba, you probably weren't going to get paid anyway, and now he has way less money to not pay you from.

So you're probably ruined here. But to be fair, we've given our responses to this. It's only fair that we allow Donald Trump to respond. When I saw that Donald Trump owed $83 million, I thought this is great. And the only way it could be better is if he whines about it. And I typed in truth social, and it went to his thing. And literally seconds after I did that, he gave me what I wanted and he put out this statement. Absolutely ridiculous. I fully disagree with both verdicts and will be appealing this whole

Biden directed witch hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. Our legal system is out of control and being used as a political weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment rights. This is not America. No, it is still America. He seems confused again. He's been getting really confused about stuff lately. Fact check. This case began in 2019 before Biden was president, let alone in a position to pressure E. Jean Carroll to go through with this. I don't even know what the theory is supposed to be. You still have your First Amendment rights. The First Amendment gives you certain rights, and you can't defame people. That's been true for a long time. That's not new to Donald Trump. He just seems to think

that he should be able to defame people. And by the way, for a guy who has sued people for defamation as often as Donald Trump has, you would think he would understand how that interplay works in the law. But anyway, what you'll notice about this, okay, it's whining, sure, it's making false claims, all of that is true. But do you notice what's not in that bleat from Donald Trump? He did not continue to defame E. Gene Carroll. And he has done a lot of that on truth social lately. All of a sudden, he's not saying that she lied about it.

And he's never met her and posting her tweets and cat named vagina. He didn't have room for that all of a sudden. Yeah, as I find that to be interesting. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the difference between $3 million penalties and $83 million dollar penalties. So maybe Eje and Carroll's legal team, they were onto something that said, look, we got to hit him where it hurts.

And we have seen time and time again from Trump himself that the only thing that matters to him is his net worth or his purported net worth or the illusion that he is this billionaire businessman. That's his brand. He will tell you himself that that's his brand. And all of this is branding. And that's why even though he's being sued in New York for bank fraud for basically inflating the value of his properties, he's still out here saying that places like Mar-a-law, he said that Mar-a-ago was worth $1.5 billion when really it's estimated to be valued at like 18 to 28 million dollars. So he's still doing the stuff because he can't afford not to because then he will lose

his base. He will lose the respective of his base. So it is, it is promising though that, you know, he hasn't he hasn't be famed her yet. Yeah, all he had to do when he lost the previous one was just shut up. I mean, if you really were smart, just shut up, move on, you know, he just, but the problem The problem is nobody can convince him, no, he doesn't listen to anybody. He is, you know, he's the smartest guy in the room. He's the wealthiest guy in the room.

He's all, he's the est of everything. He reminds me of the Joker. Like he can't stop, you know, thrown out, you know what I'm saying, statements that are going to be used against himself. And so here we are with all these, you know, statements of, like you said, his wealth and what he's got and the guy used against him. And it's hilarious that that's happened. Now the question, as you said, is will he continue to do it?

And then will there be more penalties levied upon him? I'm not sure. I don't know. Does he shut up at some point? And how do we get him to shut up? Really, the fact that we're here in the first place, the fact that he's not in jail in like an orange jumpsuit just blows my mind. The fact that he's the leading candidate, it just blows my mind.

That there's anybody defending this guy, it blows my mind. And to them, he has convinced them that he has never done anything wrong. He can never do anything wrong. No human being in the history of the world has ever been correct 100% of the time. And yet this guy is in the eyes of his base. And if they're stupid enough to keep giving them money, then, you know, there you go. Then there goes your retirement money, like you said, John. Sorry.

Yeah, they will unfortunately be paying. And actually, you know, I'm glad, yes, you gave us that estimate of Mar-a-Lago's value, because now I guess I can rephrase the breaking news as a jury has awarded E. Jean Carroll four Mar-a-Lago's worth of Donald Trump's money. Maybe he could just throw in Mar-a-Lago and save a bit of his cash. But anyway, yeah, you're right. By the way, I immediately went to Fox News to take a look at what people were saying about this, and every single one of them doesn't believe.

They either believe that it's political or fundamentally, they think you're gonna be shocked. We shouldn't necessarily trust this woman when she says what happened to her, which is the least the president of- John, sorry, you said, John, sorry, you said they don't believe. They clearly know what's going on. They pretend not to believe. Yeah. Well, I mean, fundamentally, they don't care. I mean, if you think that accusations of sexual assault are completely irrelevant or whatever, The chance that you're supporting Donald Trump is already very high at that point. And so if any of these cases are going to break through, it's almost certainly not going to be this one, because they have been so well trained by Fox News and right wing media to assume that any woman

who unveils or talks about the trauma that she's experienced is obviously lying, only wants it for money. She's only trying to get famous because this is the best sort of fame, obviously. And now there's an extra layer on top of Joe Biden made her do it. So I don't expect that this is going to get through to a lot of them. But before we close out our discussion of this topic, I did just want to add one little more fun piece to this. And that is, if we could jump to our last graphic, the sketch artist quickly sketched Trump as he fled the courtroom. And I don't know if anyone has captured his true essence better than that sketch artist. Are you a pedophile? Are you a pedophile? Are you a pedophile?

Are you a pedophile? Weirdly enough, he did not respond to those queries. But that is Matt Gates, obviously being hounded as he has at times been hounded for a couple of years now, ever since the accusation. began against him of a variety of different crimes with child sex trafficking being perhaps the most dramatic. Well earlier this week of course it was revealed that the House Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged crimes is heating up once again and it is in fact focusing on the child sex trafficking. But now on top of that we also have new reports that seem to indicate what had already been rumored that when not too many months ago Matt Gates was one of those

was going hardest against Kevin McCarthy, apparently it was this probe into the sex trafficking that was the big motivator, which people have speculated about, but now there's more evidence of that. So if you weren't following the earlier news this week, sources said that the ethics committee has reached out to the DOJ requesting materials from its investigation, which included allegations of lobbying violations, sex trafficking, and possible obstruction of justice. The increased activity under Republican leadership is particularly notable given that the committee probe was started by House Democrats in 2021. And one might expect that like most probes begun under the Democrats, once the Republicans took over, this one would be swept

away, but this one survived. And that probably bothered Representative Gates quite a bit. CNN reports that Gates apparently has privately blamed Kevin McCarthy for the committee carrying on this probe under his watch. McCarthy has repeatedly denounced those accusations that has said that Gates has worked to oust him because of it. So look, who is to say exactly what was the cause of the Republicans taking these accusations seriously when they take so few seriously? We do know that Matt Gates is not a particularly popular figure in Washington, even amongst other Republicans. So if you are Gates and you believe that they're only

doing this because they don't like you, there's reason to believe that. But that also doesn't mean that the allegations aren't true. So in any event, I want to give you just one more quote, a bit of evidence to this. This was back in December, Kevin McCarthy told reporters, we all know it's the ethics complaint on Gates. He's doing everything to make sure it doesn't come out and he doesn't care about anything else. People study that type of crazy mind, right? Mainly the FBI, which seems like a needless hit against him when he's already tried to get you kicked out of your job. But anyway, this is where we're at.

We are waiting to find out what's going to happen with. with this ethics committee investigation, which apparently is ramping up, but that doesn't mean that we'll know in the next few weeks or even months exactly what happened. And of course, Kevin McCarthy is he's already transitioned out of this story. Maas, I want to start with you. What do you think about this feud? Well, first of all, I know that the DOJ also investigated and did not continue the investigation. So I'm just wondering what happened there. But I will point out that this guy, you know, seems smarmy enough to have done what he's what he's he's been accused of doing.

What's interesting is when Republicans get accused of this kind of stuff, they really, they kind of seem to get away with it. Now in this case, we're saying that Kevin McCarthy might have been behind the probe and was trying to get rid of Matt Gates. But I'll remind you of Katie Hill, who was a Democratic congresswoman who was accused of having some sort of sexual conduct and smoking weed in the sword. And she was, you know, she left Congress or Al Franken. There was pictures of Al Franken with doing stuff that seemed inappropriate.

A lot of Democrats were behind him leaving. The closest we've got right now in the Democratic Party is Bob Menendez, who is actually caught on certain things that seem like, again, he's guilty. But there are Democrats who say this guy is guilty. And so with Gates, the fact that this guy's gotten away so long, he looks smarmy, he is smarmy, he clearly has done stuff. But to the base, to the Republicans, this is fine because you're starting with the guy at the top who says he grabbed them by the blah, blah, and then now just got, you know, fined for sexual assault. So it feels like in the Republican Party, it's fine.

Like their supporters don't seem to care. So whatever the feud was between McCarthy and Gates, I'm just hoping that it all comes out and that Gates ends up leaving just like George Santos. I mean, it's just like how hard, what do you have to do to get kicked out of Congress? It's like, if anybody was working at Starbucks doing this stuff, they'd have been fired. And yet in Congress, they're like, nah, you can stay on, don't worry about it. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

You know, it absolutely tracks that someone like Matt Gates would throw the entire country into a tailspin just to protect himself, right? He's proven to be incredibly narcissistic. He was gaslighting an entire nation. He said, I'm not targeting Kevin McCarthy and everyone's like, yes, you are. We all know that you are, we can see it. And he said, no, I'm not. And now it comes out that yes, we were all right the whole time.

And what is more disturbing about this, the most disturbing, I would say, is that it tracks that he wouldn't even care about the people of this country or the country itself. Because if you remember last year, I know it was a long time ago, all of this was happening at a time when we were trying to avoid a government shutdown, right? I think Congress had like a month in which they were trying to negotiate the budget. Ukraine was waiting for aid and October 7th had just happened. So we needed a function in government. And that was when Matt Gates decided to do this revenge, you know, ousting, if you want to call it that.

So none of that matters to any of these Congress people. And they're the ones who are in charge of running the nation and looking out for our well-being. You know, they ran for public office because they wanted to become public servants. and this is what they do instead. Yeah, everyone, of course, bear in mind, as of right now, these are just allegations against the congressman. It hasn't been proven. And as Maz pointed out, the DOJ declined to move forward on charging him,

which that does not fundamentally speak to whether the allegations are true or not. It could simply be concerns over how difficult it might be to prove. It could be that witnesses declined to participate. It could be all sorts of different things. So bear that in mind. It doesn't mean that he's guilty or innocent. And I'll close with my final thought is, like my initial reaction would be, if you're Gates, why are you freaking out over this?

I mean, if you're innocent, then what does it matter that this probe is going on in the background? Why act guilty? But if I'm being overly fair to a guy who hasn't given me much reason to be fair to him, if it is being continued just to hound you and maybe draw in a primary challenger or something. And if let's say it's actually not true, then if you were Gates, you would probably be furious about that. So you would want to strike out out of Kevin McCarthy. So but maybe it is true. So maybe Kevin McCarthy, it's just like with George Santos. We can't have a guy like this

in our caucus. So basically I'm left with in this story, there's there's understandable actions. There's really no bad guy, except for all of the guys who are bad in a meta sense, fundamentally bad, but not necessarily inside of the pragmatic moves they're making side of this story. In any event, the DOJ declined to move forward. It is entirely possible that the Ethics Committee will do that as well, bearing in mind, of course, that like with George Santos, the Ethics Committee does not need to investigate charge and convict Matt Gates. They could put out a report, like with George Santos, that lays out really suspicious behavior. And that could potentially harm Matt Gates. So that seems more likely at this point, but you know, stay tuned either way.

With that said, we do need to take our second break of the hour. When we come back, Lauren Bobert struggling in her first debate in the new district she wants to represent. We'll have that for you after this. Welcome back to the first hour of the power panel, everyone. We've got more news for you. I do want to read just one more super chat, mainly because once I read it, they'll take it out of the document and it won't be around for Jank to read. Paula says Jank is hot. So bye, bye, super chat.

Jank will never know. But anyway, with that said, we've got more news. Let's jump into it. Have you ever been arrested? Say yes now. That's a hell of a hell of a party they've got over there. So that is the Republican primary debate for the Colorado's 4th congressional district. A whole bunch of candidates there. You might have noticed Lauren Bobert, who's deciding to run for Congress there. And by run, I mean run from her

actual district to this one. And you saw of the nine candidates, six of them had to raise their hand when asked if they've ever been arrested. And lest you interpret that as a show of honesty, you can still lie, as Lauren Bobert did. She said in that segment that she had been arrested only once for failing to appear in court for careless driving, what she called in the debate, quote, a simple traffic violation that was unpaid. But the local news media have reported at least two additional arrests. In one incident in 2015, Bobert told police officers who arresting her that she had, quote, friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news. Now, that is an allegation. We can't say for sure that she would say something like

that to the cops, except I have seen her, I get her vibe. She would totally say that to the cops. any event, this isn't just about Bober. The Republicans of that district are going to have their choice of any number of former arrestees. And so the interesting thing was that the follow-up question wasn't like for each of you, why were you arrested? They went a different direction. Take a look. Given the hands that have come up here, should voters, how should voters consider in a way a candidate's criminal history. I think we got to ask that here because you know what the lane stream media is going to do with all this stuff. How do we talk to voters about our criminal history and how do they value it? And we need to be up front. We're all

sinners. We all fall short with glory and God. We all ask for forgiveness and move on from there. for Republicans. Joe Biden doesn't get to just be a sinner and we move on from there, whatever. Did you notice that? For some reason, if you're a Republican, it's totally cool. So that guy, the guy who asked the question, sees a whole crowd of Republicans and almost all of them have to raise their hands. And his concern isn't wire a bunch of criminals running for office, or maybe some of

them were arrested for something good, arrested at a protest or something like that. I don't know. Maybe like you're the Ohio pastor was being, you know, like charged because you were sheltering the unhoused during his storm. I don't know, but he doesn't care. His only concern is that the lamestream media might do something with that. And so like she, I don't, according to a straw poll, Lauren Bovert isn't even particularly doing well, but whoever she gets beat by has a very good chance of also like her having been arrested at least once. Yeah, so I want to start with you. What do you think about this clown car of Republicans? Yeah, well, it's like you said, you know, sometimes good people get arrested. Sometimes the charges against them are

bunk. Sometimes they learn from the experience and we turn their lives around and then they go on to, you know, work in public service and improve the system from the inside. These aren't those people, right? The people sitting at that table are not using their experiences to make life easier or better for people like them. Even Lauren Bobert, she said it was just a simple traffic violation. And we know from records that it was much more than that. She was arrested for reckless driving. And then she was arrested in another time for disorderly conduct.

And then she missed her court date. She didn't pay the fines. So it was a few things. And she kind of glossed over a lot of that there. But Lauren Bobert is running for Congress, not because she wants to be a public servant, just like what we were talking about with Matt Gates. She's doing it because she likes the money. She likes the attention.

And she likes the influence, right? She's done remarkably little for the people in her district so much so that they know it. And she was facing such bad reelection odds that she just abandoned them and hopped over to another district. So, and even here in this new district four that she's running in, her odds aren't great. Yeah, listen, Martin Luther King was arrested. I think Gandhi was arrested. These people are not Martin Luther King or Gandhi. These people are atrocious.

Again, I don't know they're individual cases and I'm just going out on a limb here. Given the fact that they're the Boebert types and my guess is that they were probably arrested on, I would love to find out why they were arrested. My guess is that some of them were arrested on like drunken behavior or thinking that they have white privilege or they can speak to the cops so that way they want to. like Lauren Borbert said. I have friends at Fox. So again, being arrested doesn't mean you can't go on and become a good leader. But the problem is that these people are not that. And the idea that they always turn to God and go, well, God says that I'm okay now. But then they don't go on and do many godly or Jesus-like things. They seem to go, they become more cruel. You know, Well, that's your Lauren Bobert.

It's not like she was arrested and then had a wake up call and said, oh, my, you know, I've now made, made my peace with God and I'm not going to go feed people who are underprivileged. No, she now goes into Congress and just yaps her big mouth about everything that is totally nonsensical. She's basically a TikToker or like a influencer or whatever. I mean, if she were a, she's like Marjorie Taylor Green. If they were like physical fitness gurus online and just posted their opinions, you'd be like, oh, look at this person is kind of dumb. They got voted into Congress, which makes you think they're not dumb. The people who voted for them are dumb.

Like at what point do these people that vote for these types don't, at what point do they go, is this person doing anything for me and for my district and making my life better? They don't do that. And vice versa, when somebody like, Joe Biden shows up and goes, yo, I passed the infrastructure bill, which actually is making your life better. They don't seem to grasp that and go with it. It's a, it blows my mind. Yeah, for me, the reaction from the crowd was the weirdest part, like why they thought that that was awesome. I would have higher expectations in a crowd of candidates like that,

that big. But, and again, I don't know why all of them were arrested. We know some of the arrests of Lauren Boeber. One of the individuals there had been speeding while drunk and possessing a gun that they weren't supposed to have so you know great people all around but I want to leave you on a more positive note because we have been critical of the people in that room but to be fair they're not necessarily that dumb because according to a straw poll Bover is in fifth so it could be worse they could still prefer her and they're not going in that direction so that's good anyway we'll see what ends up happening the desperation plea like ploy of

leaving your district and going there makes it looks really bad for Lauren Bover but doing that and then not even coming in like the top three is going to look way, way worse. into this final video. Now, I'm the first person to say when I was a teenager in my formative years, I loved the daily show. I thought it was so funny. I loved John Stewart. I remember when I actually got to go to the show in college because my dad was on and it was like amazing and I thought it was so good. And then I grew up and I became an adult and I had kids and I watched his Apple show and I was horrified at the sort of like creature he has morphed into. I found him to be like

the most woke, like, I didn't recognize the John that I used to, that I grew up loving. Now he's coming back to the Daily Show. My question for you is, A, why can't they pick a f***ing host permanently? Number one. And number two, which version of John Stewart am I going to get? We can say fuck on this next. Oh yeah, you can say whatever you want. This is a podcast.

It is a podcast because the nation learned today that Megan McCain has a podcast. And in it, she uses her platform to talk about how John Stewart is unrecognizable from back in the day. Now look, obviously the passage of time ravishes us all. He looks different. But is he that different in terms of his values, his policies, what he's what he's been doing? She said in that podcast that she watched the Apple show that he did. And now he's woke. I watched the Daily Show back in the day.

what does she think he was advocating for back then? So I would like to throw a hypothesis out there. Is it possible that maybe he's not the one that has changed? Maybe Megan McCain has changed in the intervening years. Maas, what do you think? Well, the term woke wasn't even around back then. They've created this woke term as a derogatory term. I mean, obviously, you know, came from wherever it came from.

But the fact that they said, woke is now a bad thing. Oh, wanting health insurance for people is a bad thing. If wanting to help people who are unhoused is a bad thing, if wanting to have peace in the world is a bad thing, well, then I'm woke. And John Stewart, by the way, has done a lot. He went to Congress and helped pass that bill that helped the Iraq war veterans,

and that's neither left nor right. But I guess in Megan McCain's mind, that's woke. It's like, if anyone should be defending John Stewart right now, it should be Megan McCain, because they have gone after her father in such a aggressive way. And her father was probably the last of the Republicans who was respected for, you know, being somewhat of a statesman. And so it's, it's a shame that she doesn't see how, you know, how kind of blind her comments are. I'm a comedian. I'm excited to see John Stewart back, you know. I'm excited now is the time to have him back because he's very,

very incisive and very good at breaking through these things and presenting it in a funny way. I watch Colbert's monologue every night just to get the news. And so I'm looking forward to him being back. I'm excited. And this whole thing of woke, again, I have comedian friends who go, oh, cancer culture, no, dude. You either have to evolve with the times or you're going to die like a dinosaur. So if you want to use old terms that were okay 10, 20 years ago, go for it. And watch how much further your career will last.

I mean, we've seen it with Roseanne Barr, who's lost her mind. You know, if you don't want to evolve with the current times and realize that there's certain things that have changed and we're living in a world that you can't, you know, get away with the crap you used to get away with back in the day, then you are going to be irrelevant. So, you know, that's my take on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, same. So that was my first impression as well. You know, Megan McCain must be the least self-reflective person in the world if she can't see that she is the one who has changed, not John Stewart.

I have also been watching him since I was young. She's not that much older than I am. You know, he has been incredibly constant in his views and in the way he expresses himself publicly over the course of decades, right? Maybe when he had a show, what was that on Apple TV plus, maybe he wasn't as filtered as he might have been on Comedy Central. But I don't know if anyone else who has clocked any kind of notable transformation in him the way that she did. And it's also interesting that this is coming from her, because if I remember correctly, whenever Obama was elected president, he beat John McCain for that presidency. And on the Daily Show that night, he had a whole segment. And he based, it was like based on the Lion King. And, you know, they're like holding up Obama like Simba on Pride Rock. I remember, I remember that episode. I don't remember that.

So it's just funny, all of this coming from John McCain's daughter. 100% yeah. Look, we're gonna see he's older than he was, maybe he has change in some ways. I would guess that the way you change as you get older isn't that you become more woke generally. We'll see, I doubt that I'm gonna agree with him on everything, but he's been a very influential figure. I think with good reason, he did a lot of work back in the day, back when the sort of Critical commentary of both the Republican and Democratic parties as well as right wing media was not nearly as common back then as it is today. And so especially in election year, I think it's a really interesting perspective and a lot of people are probably going to tune in.

I would venture to guess that that's what the frustration from the right is more centered on. They don't want the daily show to succeed. In any event, that's all the time we have for this hour of the show. Starting with you, Maz, where can people follow your work? You can follow me. I'm at Masjobrani on all social media platforms and you can go to Mazjobrani.com to see my upcoming show dates. I'm going to be in Austin, New York, Boston, Phoenix, San Diego, you name it. I'm coming. Come laugh as the world is going down. Yes. Yeah, so you can find me on Rebel HQ. I also have a very fun podcast called Modern Context. So you can

check that out. And you can follow me on Instagram at Yaz K-Y-A-Z-Z Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-K. I don't know if I did that right, but there's five Zs in there. And if you follow me, I will post a picture of my dining room with the pink ceiling. Awesome. That's as good of a reason as I can imagine. I have to see what that's like. But anyway, thank you all for joining us. That was just the first hour though. We still got the second hour, the bonus episode. Jank is going to be here. Ben Glebe, Sharon Reed. You're not going to want to miss it, so don't go anywhere.