The Young Turks - Does A Mar-A-Lago Membership Qualify You To Run The VA?; Stephen Miller Making His Racist Dreams Come True

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from August 8, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian. Republican Rep. Chris Collins charged with insider trading. Trump���s Mar-A-Lago friends secretly running the VA. GOP targeting legal immigrants. Trump finally enforcing Russia sanctions. 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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the realities is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join.

All right, welcome to the Young Turks. Thank you, Granite, I'm comparing with you guys. I feel like we just got off the air a minute ago, or at least I did it, eight and a half hours or so yesterday. So if you're a young church member and you missed last night, don't worry, you've got eight hours to catch up on. It's like binge watching, like we say we're progressive Netflix. Well, you got a lot of TYD to catch up on from last night. Or you can just fast forward to the parts of rage. Later in the night, I had many moments of rage, partly about the elections.

But then once I got into the mood about random things, like Article 5 Conventions and Robert Reich and Bill Maher. A little roller coaster action happening. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So TYT.com slash join and get all that. John was an American hero last night. He gets up early in the mornings to do damage report, and he was here a long, long time. So we do have a couple of stories about that a little bit later in the program.

But there's a curb ball coming, guys. So my rage will continue. That is not a curve ball. The Democratic person who won in Kansas' third district against Brent Welder, Shrease Davids, not a fan of verse. Whoa. And now that she's won, I'm still not a fan of hers. And I'm not going to soft pedal that, okay?

Having said that, there, some of my views on that race, I'd be surprised if it didn't surprise you. Okay, so definite curb balls coming a little bit later in the program. And last night we talked about one of you guys suggested, and, you know, you are part of the program to send a reporter to Kansas. We are sending a reporter to Kansas to see what happened in Johnson County and the computer failure in Johnson County, Kansas. But anyway, all that fun surprises a little bit later in the program for you guys. But speaking of fun, we're gonna start with fun, right, Anna? Yeah, this is a heavy rundown.

And I just felt like we all needed a moment to laugh before we got to the heavy stuff. Agreed. So we begin with a story that I was unaware of until today actually, and I'm very upset at the producers at TYT of not informing me of this gem of a video that I'm about to share with you all. So last week, Donald Trump was in Pennsylvania at a rally doing what Donald Trump does, making a fool out of himself. And the video that we're about to show you is Donald Trump not understanding geography. I have great respect for the UK, United Kingdom. Great respect. People call it Britain.

They call it Great Britain. They used to call it England, different parts. So the thing about Donald Trump, okay, so let's say he wasn't wrong, right? Like let's say in a perfect scenario, he actually understands the geography and he manages to communicate the geography accurately. Even in that best case scenario, it makes him look dumb. And the reason why it makes him look dumb is because why, why, why are we having a conversation about this?

It makes it abundantly clear that you literally just learned about it, right? Yeah. The UK, United Kingdom. No one knew it was called the United Kingdom until I mentioned it right now. Who would have known? Just stop talking, stop talking. All right, so two points about that. First of all, I don't know why you would say that, what I know for a fact.

You know, I'm like a smart person. Okay. Okay, so the reason he's saying these things to give a literal answer to Anna's question is because he made a fool of himself when he was over at the United Kingdom, which nobody knew it was United Kingdom until he figured it out. And he actually had said something worse that I flipped out over and did a YouTube live video on a weekend over it. And he had said a number of rambling things that were all wrong about the UK.

Every part of it was wrong. But my favorite part was that he thought Ireland was part of the U.S. Ireland's a totally different country. Totally different, okay? That's like thinking Canada's part of America, okay? And so, or perhaps, America! Okay, so that was way worse. I think this is him trying to make up for it by going, you know, UK, it's also Great Britain.

See, I got that figured out, or Britain, and then, or it used to be called England. No, England is a part of the United Kingdom. But it's different parts. That's him trying to brag. I know that England's actually a part of the United Kingdom. I know you don't know that. Nobody knows that. But, you know, one of my advisors just told me after I made an ass out of myself earlier.

But I can't wait to tell you that. You know, there are parts. There are parts. That's my point. That's my point. Just stop talking. Just stop talking. Okay.

So that wasn't all that happened. Okay. So that was during the rally. Apparently earlier, while speaking to Pierce Morgan on Air Force One, he said the following. Now, this quote was cited as something that Trump had said to Theresa May, but that is actually inaccurate. This is a real quote from Donald Trump, but he actually said this to Pierce Morgan. I quote, we would make a great deal with the United Kingdom because they have product that we like. I mean, they have a lot of great product.

They make phenomenal things, you know, and you know, have different names. You can say England, you can say UK, you can say United Kingdom. So many different names, Great Britain. I also say, which one do you prefer, Great Britain? You understand what I'm saying? Right, yeah. You know, I know. But a lot of people don't know that, but you have a lot of different names.

The fact is made, I'm sorry, the fact is you made great product, you make great things. Even your farm product is so fantastic. I mean, he literally sounds mentally challenged. You make product. You make good product. Me like product. He sounds like an old SNL skit. The caveman lawyer, right?

What was he trying to say there? What was that statement about? Like, the American people deserve to know, what was that statement about and what product are you talking about? You make great product, even farm product. It's a really good product. What is the product that the United Kingdom makes? Anyway, so look, guys, if you're a little confused about the difference between the United Kingdom and Great Britain,

that's okay. Totally fine, totally fine. It's complicated, it's confusing. For average people, it's fine to make mistakes, right? He is the president of the United States of America, right? You should know just geography, the geography of our allied countries. So, and so there's two parts of that. One is, what Anna's pointing at, I mean, he's not a plumber, he's the president.

If you're going to go to the United Kingdom and you don't know it, like maybe, I know a little Google while no one's looking, you're a little embarrassed to ask your assistance, right? But you have a Twitter machine, I know you use it all the time. You know that smartphone, it actually has Google on it too, and you could just type it in, hey, what is United Kingdom? so you don't humiliate yourself, but he won't do 15 seconds of homework, even though that's his job as president. And we're not talking about Sri Lanka.

I mean, if you don't know the different districts of Sri Lanka, even if you're a president, I would, if I'm going to Sri Lanka, I'd study up on it, right? But it's the UK or Great Britain or Britain or parts are England or Ireland, right? Look up if it's Ireland as part of the UK. Okay, so that's point. Point to is, Anna's first point, hush up, like if you're giving a speech for whatever reason, right, I don't know what your job is, but you're giving a speech somewhere and it goes to your head, you know, I don't really know the difference between UK and Graper,

and I've always kind of wondered that. You know what you do? You just say one of them and move on, right? You say, oh, well, it's, I had a great trip to the United Kingdom, and move on, move on, don't get into, and England, and there are parts, and you used to call it Grapeer, because you don't know, you don't know, so you, as a smart person, as somewhat halfway rational person, you would think, let me not get myself in trouble here, right? And if I do, I got to get out right away.

And you don't go back. Now, he's trying to clarify. So he goes back to it in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania. But he still didn't Google it. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, it's amazing. It's so amazing. Anyway. Okay, just in case you're wondering, United Kingdom is the overall country, okay?

Great Britain is the island. That, okay, Ireland is another island, it's also a country. Northern Ireland is in the island of Ireland, but Northern Ireland is part of the country of the United Kingdom. Now, it is confusing because Northern Ireland is also called a country. Wales, Scotland, and England are called countries, but they are part of the nation of the United Kingdom, okay? And Great Britain is not a word that is, it refers to the island, it is actually not

a political term. It is not the nation of Great Britain. It's the United Kingdom. Okay, and look, the fact that Scotland, Wales, England, Northern Ireland are called countries, but they're part of the country of the United Kingdom. Definitely confusing if you're not from that neck of the woods. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-Ing the Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations

are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated

by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows.

But don't just take my word for it, the New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime.

So search for UNFDR in your podcast, today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. Google it. It takes 15 seconds. If you're a plumber, you never have to Google it. If you're the president, for God's sake, do some presidenting. Yes, yes. All right, now we move on to other news, some breaking stories from today. A Republican New York congressman has been charged with insider trading. This is a huge story. Representative Christopher Collins is the representative and the accusations against him are rather

serious. Chris Collins was charged with insider trading. He was accused of tipping off his son and others to sell stock in an Australian pharmaceutical company before the results of one of its failed drug tests became public. And that's according to federal prosecutors. Now, he was deeply involved with this pharmaceutical company. It's known as innate immunotherapics. And he knew about the results of a failed clinical trial before the public did.

So he hit up his son and he's like, yo, you need to sell this stock immediately. You're about to lose a ton of money. And that is exactly what happened. So he was attending the congressional picnic at the White House in June of 2017 when he received a private email from the company's CEO that indicated that a test for a potentially lucrative experimental drug had failed. Fifteen minutes later, the congressman called his son Cameron, who sold his shares in the company avoiding losses of more than $570,000, more than half a million dollars there.

So to give you more detail into this email, innate immunotherapics, chief executive Simon Wilkinson sent the email to the company's board of directors, including Collins, at 6.55 p.m. on June 22nd of 2017, explaining that the test for the drug, known in its trial stage as MIS 416, had failed. So at that point, Collins immediately tries calling his son, right? Tried calling his son, missed him six times before they finally had a brief conversation. Prosecutors contend that it was during that conversation that Collins told his son about the failed drug test. The following morning, his son placed an online order with his brokerage firm selling more than 16,500 shares of innate immunotherapeutic stock.

He sold more stock, you know, pretty soon after that. But, I mean, it's as clear as day, and it's kind of hilarious how poorly he did in trying to hide all of this. Okay, so first time I have a little bit of fun, then I'm going to give you the important relevant numbers in this story. That gives you an exact view into what's wrong with this situation, but I like the idea of the guy calling him and saying, yeah, the trial didn't work, we're going to tank. The whole company is going to tank. They lost 90% of their value, okay, after it became public.

And so at that point, the congressman thinks, oops. He owns 16% of the company, he's going to lose a lot of money, okay? And apparently he was irated the CEO. He's like, how could this have happened? How could it have failed? Yeah, sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it fails. Kind of a risky venture, but apparently you didn't know that. That doesn't give me a lot of confidence in your thing.

You know, the CEO might have also told him. Show me the baton. So good. So, okay, so the numbers. He gets the call from the CEO. He calls his son within 15 minutes. Come on. And we're done with this.

Come on. I mean, we're already opening shut. If you're on the jury, okay, tells him. But then the second number is what you mentioned, he called him six times. Come on. Okay. Come on. He was at a picnic.

He was enjoying his time. That's right. He gets this email and all of a sudden he calls his son, misses him six times. I mean, he was persistent. I mean, what else could he want to communicate with his son? Yeah. He's having a fantastic time at this picnic. Yeah, no, here's what he wanted to communicate to his son.

We're under attack! We gotta go, man, we gotta go. Show me the buttock. Okay, so he finally gets his son on the phone. And look, if somebody calls me, he missed him six times, got him on the seventh time, actually. Somebody calls me seven times, I think somebody died. Like, this is, like, nobody calls seven times unless there's an emergency. And by the way, why not just leave a message?

Because he doesn't want it recorded that, hey, sell the stock, because I got insider information that it's going to tank. That's why he calls him seven times. He's so guilty. He's so incredibly guilty. But here's what I find to be an even more interesting number. Now look, to be fair to them, so then his son goes and tells his fiance, tells his fiance's.

Father. Father who all have money in this company, okay, they were all in it together. they avoided, they all sell, they all do instead of trading. The fiancé's father is also charged, okay, with insider trading. Together they would have lost, but instead saved $768,000. Look, that's a ton of money. But the important and relevant number is Collins is already worth $66 million. Boom.

So then I immediately think, look, what you're doing is brazen. I mean, this is the most obvious insider trading I've ever seen. any prosecutor that gets at her hands on that information and you're toast, if you already have $66 million, why not bite the bullet and lose the half a million, three quarters of a million, you still have 65 left? You're going to be all right instead of going to prison and getting humiliated and run out of Congress and run out of office. And then it occurred to me, how do you think he got the $66 million?

By doing shady deals like this, probably a thousand times. And this is the time that he got caught. Why did he do this? If it was by itself, it makes no sense. That risk, even though it's a lot of money, it's not worth the risk, not remotely worth the risk. But unfortunately, a lot of times these folks, the way they got the money in the first place is by being shameless.

And by doing these deals nonstop, and by the way, never getting caught. So that's why you think, who cares, I'm not going to wait a day. So it seems like I could at least have a plausible argument if I waited two days. Because the stock actually didn't, it wasn't made public. until a couple of days later. He actually could have done it in a way that it wasn't panicked, it was less obvious, right? No, he calls right away. He calls seven times.

The whole thing is super obvious because he's probably done it in a super obvious way so many times before and never gotten caught. Yeah. So that's why they act the way that they do. You know, legendary musical artists once said dirty deeds done dirt sheep. And this is an example of that. But you know what? Yeah.

Sometimes there comes a cost. And right now his life is basically a jeopardy, his career, everything he's worked for or hasn't worked for. It's all in jeopardy. I mean, come on, how greedy do you have to be? You're right. Just bite the bullet, take the loss, don't risk everything to save $500,000 for your son, $700,000, $76,000 with your son's father-in-law involved as well. It's the greed that risks the $66 million in his career. But it's the greed that built the $66 million in the first place, likely, right?

To be fair to him, I don't know how he got the other 66, right? But his actions indicate a carelessness and ease with breaking the law that shows you he doesn't really have a second thought to it. He's not even concerned about breaking the law. Because, again, if you're not familiar with this portion of the law, this is insider trading 101. So it is totally illegal, obviously illegal. If you have info, he's on the board of this company, the CEO of the company is calling him telling him public information before, I'm sorry, private information before it becomes public and it can be traded upon. The stock drops 90%. It's not subtle.

It didn't drop 3%. Hey, it could have gone either way. They just had a bad day at the market. No, it dropped 90%. There is no clearer case of insider trading based on the publicly available evidence here than this. But he does it anyway without a second's hesitation. So there may be other lawmakers implicated in this because it appears that he also, no one else is charged, let me be clear about that in terms of other lawmakers.

But there is some indication that he was urging others, either elected officials or officials to buy this stock. And so who knows what could come of those cases. But just to give you a few examples, skip ahead to graphic tax. 10, there was Tom Price, who served as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was accused of taking advantage of a special deal of innate stock, only available to a select number of lawmakers at a discount offered by Collins. They're also shady.

Remember, Tom Price, the guy who resigned in, because of other corruption problems from the Trump administration. He also had enormous conflict of interest problems when he was in the house. And he would trade on information that he got. as a congressman and I got him into trouble earlier and now he's taking discounts from other congressmen etc. So Tom Price, it's completely unsurprising that he's on this list. I would have been surprised if he wasn't on the list. I mean, if you're going to do, you're going to talk about insider trading. Tom Price is like, me, me, who's in? I'm in. Who's doing insider trading?

I'd like to be in. The price is right. No, okay. Okay. So I'm about to show you something that is incredible. So this is an interview between Wolf Blitzer and Representative Collins. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN.

ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN.

And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-Y-T. Check it out today. In January of 2017. So at this point, there is absolutely no discussion about insider trading. But there are some concerns about Tom Price and, you know, the fact that he had bought stock in this pharmaceutical company, you know, did Collins urge him to do it? That's what the whole context of this conversation is about.

So just pay careful attention. to how Representative Collins handles the question. During the confirmation hearings, Congressman Tom Price, a friend of yours colleague, facing some serious questions, ethics questions, after acting on a stock tip from you, did you encourage him to buy stock

in this company called innate immunotherapics? No, absolutely not. There was nothing done that was insider trading or unethical. It's probably what I am most proud of. I talk about it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, like I do my kids and my wife. That's so good. No one said anything about insider trading.

You're so dumb. Hey, did you tell Tom Price? Telling Tom Price is not a crime. You can tell Tom Price all day long, right? He's like, there's no insider trading. I'm telling you right now, there's no insider trading. Okay, all right. Interesting.

And I did not have sex with that guy. I didn't. I didn't know why you said. I didn't say that. Why are you saying? So, by the way, so price is shady for other reasons that I explained. He got the discount, that's a little shady. I want to be fair, Mike Conaway is one of the six that bought this stock.

He does not sit on any committee that is relevant, and he did not get a discount. So I don't say anything wrong there. And there's no indication that he did insider trading and dumped the stock. Turns out Collins called everybody but him. Anyway, so if you got a guy like that, there's nothing wrong there, as far as I can see so far. On the other hand, Lamborn, Doug Lamborn, who's a Republican of Colorado and Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma, they sit on a relevant committee that affects that stock.

Well, that's the swamp. You can't be voting on things that might affect stock that you own. That's totally unacceptable for conflicts of interest in regards to your job as a congressman. So, that's a separate problem. The one that's clearest is obviously Collins' problem because he did insider trading 101, and now they caught him, and he's in a world of trouble. And I also want to just end on one other important note. So there are clearly conflicts, there's a conflict of interest.

As he's a lawmaker, he's also serving on the board of this pharmaceutical company, and so does that at all impact the job he's doing in Congress? Of course it does. So let's go to Graphic 12. After entering office in 2013, Collins worked on passing a provision that would speed up the drug approval process. Oh, come on. So let's just keep it real, okay?

Obviously, their financial interests, their financial incentives play a huge role in the types of laws that they push through Congress, that they aggressively try to pass through Congress. And that's certainly the case with what he wanted to do with drug approvals on a federal level. These guys are so corrupt. It's unreal. The corruption is taken over the entire body politic. I mean, and once you open the door and you say, oh, we're going to get into office by taking legalized bribes, then is it really that much of a stretch for those same unprincipled, unscrupulous people who got in office by taking what we now, bribes have become legal? You just, oh, I take it from a pharmaceutical company.

I take it from a defense contractor company. And what do I do? I start wars, and the defense contractor gets rich. I say, you cannot negotiate drug prices for Medicare. My donors get rich. Well, why don't I get rich, too? Okay, I'm going to pass a law that not only helps my donors, but it helps me. I'm going to say, okay, you know what?

We're going to speed up that drug approval process because I have a company that needs a drug approval. And then they wonder why nobody trusts Congress. This is why nobody trusts Congress, because they are crooks. And this system invites crooks in. So if you're a principal person, you're going to have a little bit of trouble taking money from a oil company and then letting them pollute, right? And knowingly deregulating so they can pollute streams that maybe kids swim in.

You're going to have trouble doing that. But crooks have no problem doing that. They're like, oh, great, you're going to give me that bribe. I'm going to do you a solid and that guy's going to get sick. Who cares? then we shouldn't be surprised that Congress is filled with people like Collins who are total and utter criminals. Yep.

All right, let's take a break. When we come back, the VA, it's being controlled by cronies at Mar-a-Lago, and people had no idea until now. All right, back on a young turk, lots of comments to read. Let's go to Twitter first. Mellie Bitch writes in, don't worry, Jank. We love the rage. Can we just call you Hulk from now on, zero to piss in two seconds flat? That happened in the last story.

I was having fun with a con story. And Anna read the last story, quote about corruption. And I was like, God damn it, you don't want to make me angry. You wouldn't like me angry. Anyway, eclectic miscellaneous says, thanks T.I.T for sending a reporter to Kansas to find out what the hell went on in Johnson County. How much do you want to bet that TYT will be the only ones shouldn't MSM and local media be investigating this latest proof of how fragile.

and opaque our voting systems are. So, well, thank you guys. So that's still two years later out of the budget that I think we've been fairly judicious with from the investigative reporting team. By the way, they're coming up with great stories. I hope you're reading that at TYT Investigates. So please, it's on the app. It's on the website.

Go to TYT Investigates and read the great, great stories they're coming out with. And we're trying to share it as much as we can with you guys. and we'll let you know what happens in Kansas. Dr. Pepper O'Doom says nobody knew the UK could be so complicated. Believe me. Dave Fire writes in still on Twitter. Sergeant General Colonel Aaron Morad says, show me the product. All right.

Now YouTube super chat, Mark Kieser says, just tuning in, please tell me that Brent has not conceded, has demanded a full recount of the paper ballots. Look, I think that Brent is probably going to go talk to the Johnson County officials at some point, but, you know, I can't speak for him and I don't know what he's up to in that regard. But, no, I do know. I know that he's going to speak to those officials. But, you know, there's no other statements in that regard as far as I know. Okay. Little Mac says, long night with you last night, Jenk, rough ending but fun.

Yeah, it was a roller custer, right, as Anna pointed out. And thank you for being with us. And all the members, thank you for making it happen. TYT.com slash join to become a member. Nonine consequence, one day you're going to have to tell me how to pronounce that. He says, if you have Celtic pride or Celtic pride, like Trump brags as he does coming from Scotland, why don't you know about Ireland's fight with England? Tell me again how Trump represents white folks and not just the Nazis.

Damn. Dropped one on him there. And G. Love says, Jank, you and Anna are straight up gangster. Yes, thank you. Thank you. We do appreciate it. He does have G love. Indeed. Love for the G's.

No, we got it. No, we got it. No one could have known that it would be so complicated. To decipher the gangsters talk. All right, so by the way, Android app, it's out. Just letting you guys know, the app is fantastic. It's got all of our shows. And of course, a lot of it is free, as you guys know.

and then some of it is for members only, but it's all in one convenient place. You can watch the free stuff. You can get the members only if you're a member. So go to t-y-t.com slash app or just go to the Google Play Store and type in TYT or TYT Plus and you'll get the app. So thank you for using that and it's super convenient. All right, what's next, Anna? All right.

In a piece of excellent reporting, ProPublica has uncovered the real forces behind the VA. and the real decision makers who are influencing policy changes at the VA. So the VA, of course, has been an issue that has been exploited by politicians, namely politicians like Donald Trump, who claimed that he wanted to fix the VA, he wanted to take care of our veterans, but he has done the exact opposite of that. In fact, the only thing that he has attempted to do is privatize the VA, which could be a complete and utter disaster. But what we didn't know until now is that he has used his cronies at Mar-a-Lago to be the real

decision-makers at the VA. And those cronies include Ike-Purlmutter, Mark Sherman, who's a lawyer, and also Bruce Moskowitz, who is a Palm Beach doctor. These are all members at Mar-a-Lago, and essentially Trump got together with them and was like, yo, what should I do with the VA? And so he, I know, it's insane. These are people who have absolutely, none of them are veterans. None of them have served in our military.

Well, no, no, let's be fair. Perlmutter is a veteran. He's a veteran of the Israeli army. Not the U.S. Army. Let's just be clear about that. Okay. I mean, if he was advising the Israeli VA, okay, fair. Do you, boo?

Right, but God bless, no problem with that. What does he do? What are they doing? Look, I'll tell you, look, you were getting into details, and it's amazing how much, how thoroughly they were running the VA. But it's like you became president and you're like, hey, Bob, Steve, you know, your boys, right? You guys want to run Veterans Affairs? What?

Why are they running Veterans Affairs? That's crazy. They have no experience at all. And of course, they botch it and they don't understand it. They don't understand it. And they attempted on several instances to use it for their own financial benefits. fit, right? And so I'll give you examples of that in just a second, but it's the same kind of mentality that we see from Donald Trump. He uses the office of the president as a way to

financially enrich himself. He holds meetings, official meetings at Mar-a-Lago, official meetings at Trump Tower. That's all taxpayer money in order to hold these meetings that ends up going into the pockets of the Trump family, period. That's the way it works. And so that's what you see time and time again with these specific individuals who are outlined in this incredible piece by ProPublica. So with that said, let me give you some of those details. Now, ProPublica has referred to this group as an informal council that is exerting sweeping influence on the VA from Marlago President Donald Trump's private club in Palm Beach, Florida. So as I had mentioned, none of them has ever served in the U.S. military or even the U.S. government. VA insiders have come to call them

the Mar-a-Lago crowd. So, look, Donald Trump, as soon as he became president, raised the price of admission at Mar-a-Lago from $100,000 to $200,000, and then immediately started calling it the Winter White House. I mean, that's just enriching yourself at the expense of everyone else. And just brazen, brazen. Now, to be fair to him, it turns out maybe it's worth it, right? You join up at Mar-a-Lago, and he's like, which department would you like to run?

Hey, Ike, you want to run veteran affairs? Have that it, Haas. Okay, now everybody at Veteran Affairs. You either report to Ike or you're fired. Yes. Yes. So that's what happened. So one thing that was abundantly clear was that this group did not get along with David Shulkin.

Because David Shulkin, you know, I mean, he had his own scandals, his own issues. We get that. But at least he understood how the process works, how government works, how you are able to get things done in the VA. Whereas these three individuals have no idea. And so they would demand things and then get extremely angry that there was a process for it, that they wanted to completely, you know, circumvent. So let's go to Graphic 17. Former administration officials say the VA leaders who are at odds with the Mar-a-Lago

crowd were pushed out or passed over, included were the secretary, deputy secretary, chief of staff, acting under-secretary for health, deputy under-secretary for health. chief information officer and the director of electronic health records modernization. So these are all people that were at odds with the Mar-a-Lago crowd, and many of them just lost their jobs as a result of that. When asked about this by reporters, the Mar-a-Lago crowd guys said, I mean, I don't know why anybody thought we were running the place. I mean, we didn't tell them that.

If they had that impression, I guess that was the wrong impression. Well, they might have that impression if they disagree with you and then they're fired the next stay. That would give you an impression that you were running the place. Right. And let me be clear about something else. So there are avenues in which people who are not official advisors or official government employees can help give advice to a government agency, right? But there's a process in which you do that because there needs to be transparency, there needs to be oversight. And in this case, there was no transparency and absolutely no oversight.

It's the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. It does provide a mechanism for agencies to consult panels of outside advisors. This, you know, Mar-Lago crowd does not fall under that category. There was no oversight, no transparency. Yeah, so if I were president and I knew a number of people who knew the tech world really well and we needed to upgrade something in the thing, I would put them on an advisory board and then you would have cost controls, you would know what they were doing, there was transparency. It's nothing wrong with bringing outside experts.

But this is like, hey, I like Ike, he gave me $200,000 to be in Mar-a-Lago, and he's actually really rich, so Trump looks up to him. So why don't you run a random department, but don't tell anyone? And then fire anyone you like. Wow. And they had to fly down officials, at taxpayer expense, by the way, to go and report in to these three who are unofficially running the department. At Mar-a-Lago, yeah.

That's insane. And now they're using taxpayer money for that instance. where they got a flight of Mar-a-Lago to get their orders. Right. So Perlmutter, Moskowitz, and Sherman acted like board members, pounding a CEO to turn around a struggling company, a former administration official said in an email or in email after email, officials sought approval from the trio. So they'll argue, no, I mean, come on, we were just giving people some advice, you know what

I'm saying? But no, they weren't. Actual administration officials had to report back to them. and asked for permission a lot of times. For a research effort on suicide prevention and for a plan to recruit experts from academic medical centers, everything needs to be run by them, the first former official said, recalling the process, they view themselves as making the decisions. But they did make the decisions.

That's why if you didn't agree with them, you got fired. Okay, the Mar-a-Lago Crowda, here's another quote from the great report from ProPublica, spoke with the veteran administration officials daily. They talk to them every day, documents show, and reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions. Look, if you're reviewing all the policy and the personnel, you're running it, period. End of story, okay? They proud of the Veterans Affairs to start new programs. Officials traveled to Mar-a-Lago at taxpayer expense to hear their views, and here's my favorite part.

A former administration official said, quote, everyone has to go down and kiss the ring. And now, Republicans, you were worried about a deep state, people who are unaccountable and unelected who are actually secretly running the government. Congratulations, you have one. It's down at Mar-a-Lago. Yeah. So I want to give you at least one example of how they use this, you know, how they use the VA for their own financial benefit.

Now, they'll say, no, no, no, there was no financial benefit whatsoever. However, starting in February of 2017, Perlmutter, who by the way is the chairman of Marvel, Marvel Comics, he convened a series of conference calls with executives at Johnson & Johnson, leading to the development of a public awareness campaign about veteran suicide. So far so good, no problems there. However, they plan to promote the campaign by ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange around the time of Veterans Day. The event turned into a promotional opportunity for Pearl Mudders Company, executives for Marvel, and its parent company, Disney, joined Johnson & Johnson as sponsors of the Veterans Day event at the Stock Exchange. David Shulkin rang the closing bell standing near a preening and flexing Captain America

with Spider-Man waving from the trading pit and Marvel's swag distributed to some of the attendees. So this suicide awareness effort turned into a massive promotional event for Marvel. That's what that turned into. Yeah, look, guys, for me instinctively, I look at that and I think, well, maybe it helps the veterans things to get Captain American Spider-Man might draw attention. Pearl Mont is already really rich. I don't think he needs that extra promotion. But for people working in government, this is a really big deal.

You can't, and they had to have meetings about should we have to have the secretary in this case so close to what appears to be promoting a product. And they do have to be careful about stuff like them. But to me that even the worst one was Muscoitz with Apple. So he goes down to Apple and says, all right, we should develop an app to get veterans to find nearby medical services. Okay, it's a reasonable idea. I mean, I don't know why you're involved in this. You're not officially part of the government.

But okay, fine, decent idea. You know who he brought along to the meeting? His son, Aaron, who is an app developer. And he's like, well, Aaron can do it. I mean, what are we doing here? Now we're pressuring Apple to pay your son to develop an app. You're not even in the government. What the hell's going on here?

Of course, they deny everything. They don't deny that Aaron was there. They don't deny that they wanted the app. He doesn't deny that Aaron is an app developer and that's why he was there. But we weren't going to profit off of it. We weren't going to profit off of it. Now, that all didn't end up working out. And part of the reason why it didn't work out is because there was pushback from Shulkin.

And so Shulkin- And guess what happened to Shulkin? Bye-bye. Bye-bye. He was fired. So just know what's really going on. I mean, the swamp is swampier than ever. And people who have no experience, no business running something like the VA are doing just that. This is Trump's idea of taking care of our veterans. So look, if this was a left-wing administration and you got these guys secretly running a government organization, the right-wing would go nuts with their conspiracy theories and they would say the Illuminati and all that stuff, right?

But guys, that's why the conspiracies are a lot simpler. They're not, you think that there's like people who are brilliant who are running things and dun-d-d-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. No, it's a bunch of guys who were at a country club. They just happen to be rich, and they're like, hey, I don't know. won the president. I don't know how that happened. Hey, Donnie, can I run something? I'd like transportation. No, somebody else took transportation. And Betsy took education. And Betsy is literally one of their donors and friends, Betsy DeVos, et cetera. So what do you got left? I got veterans affairs. Okay, okay, then you go run that, Ike. And that's your famous Illuminati.

It's a bunch of, you know, old men who are having fun running things that they shouldn't be running, okay? And so it's not that complicated, it's, it's, I don't even think it's that, you know, nefarious. I just think like, I don't think, like I said, Perlmoder doesn't need any extra money, right? I think he just thought like, this is cool, I get to run Veterans Affairs for no reason. He would call people and say, why aren't you doing it quicker? Like, as if he was literally the boss, like- I can't. They're just having fun, like, oh, I'm going to go play tennis and I'm going to run

Veterans Affairs. But that's not how the government's supposed to work and we're supposed to know who's actually running Veterans Affairs. It's supposed to be a democracy and not have your goofball friends running parts of the government. No, but it's, okay, I think you're being incredibly generous when you say that there's nothing nefarious or it's not meant to be nefarious. But think about, just think about the context of, you know, the discourse in the country

involving veterans, soldiers. I mean, Donald Trump will call NFL members sons of bitches for practicing their First Amendment right and protesting, you know, the ridiculous killings, the shootings of unarmed people, black men throughout the country. But, and he says that that is disrespectful to our troops. You know what's really disrespectful to our troops and our veterans? Having your unexperienced or inexperienced buddies run the VA. when the VA should be doing a better job taking care of our veterans.

You don't care about our veterans. It's all talk. It's all talk. Yeah, I mean, as kind of like a gag, you give one of your or three of your buddies, the Veterans Affairs Committee or administration to run. How much do you really care about veterans? It's a great point. And imagine if it was a Democrat who did it.

They'd be like, you were so careless with veterans and you put these schmucks in charge that didn't know what they were doing and they were firing people with no accountability, you'd have 87 hearings. It would be the top scandal of the Obama administration by a mile. We'd still be, like, you would never stop talking about it. This is probably the very last time you'll hear about it because Donald Trump has so many scandals that you just literally can't keep up. I want to take a break because it sounds like we're in a rainforest right now.

There's weird sounds happening on the set. So let's figure that out and then we'll come right back. Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through. So hold, hold, stay right here. Just want to remind you if you want to get all five segments of the Young Turks commercial free. These are just two of them. Every day we do it.

So go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join and you'll get the whole five segments, two hours. Add free. Do it now. All right. Back on a Young Turks, Jenkins, Anna, with you guys. Top Nickel One writes in, I'm from the UK slash England slash Great Britain slash Ireland, Dealer's Choice, and have lots of product, big, beautiful product, farm product. P.S. Trump has a golf course in Scotland.

Okay, he knows nothing. He knows nothing. When he was asked about the UK, that was part of his answer. He's like, my mom was from Scotland. And they're like, yes, but we were asking about Brexit. And he's like, yes, but I have a golf course in Scotland. They're like, yes, but what are your views on hard Brexit? You know, the UK and Britain and England. Okay, so here's what I want to know for our international viewers, and I know we have a lot of them, and I'm always curious about this.

What is your perspective on Americans in general? Like, I really do worry that the international perspective is that Americans in general are stupid, right? Right in. Like, let us know what you think, what your friends think. I am curious. I'm scared to know what you're going to say, but let's just find out. Okay. Timothy Jones writes in, Trump is the ultimate postmodernist.

No means yes. Wood means wouldn't and drain means fill And referring to the swamp there And then one more YouTube super chat here And we appreciate you guys doing that because it helps the show Jank and Anna so proud of TYT keep up the great work Love the new soundboard hits What about using this sound clip of Michael Cohen saying

Says Who? What do you mean? Says who? Oh, says Gary Says who? Gary Gary love that. Whenever I have a story in it with an owl, and the owl keeps repeating, who? And they go, Gary, who? Gary, they're like, they think it's the funniest thing in the world.

Okay, more cutesy kid stories than the post games. TYT.com slash join. All right, we got a lot more stories for a kid. Oh, yeah, no, let's go forward. All right. The White House is working on a draft proposal, and this proposal would be a unilateral change in rule. for legal immigrants here in the United States, and essentially it would make it even more difficult for legal immigrants to gain citizenship in the U.S. These are people who are currently in the U.S. with visas or with green cards. They're individuals who are working, paying taxes. And so the Trump administration, specifically Stephen Miller, wants to make it impossible for them to ever gain citizenship. And so this is the way that they plan on doing it.

The crux of this proposal, which has not been released yet, would penalize legal immigrants if they or their family members have used government benefits defined very broadly, widely in previous drafts of the policy. So they need to work out the kinks of this policy in order to make it public. They have had one disaster after the other because they don't think these things through. So in this case, they're working with the CBO. They're trying to figure out whether or not they can legally or ethically do some of these things. Now the draft rule in its recent forms would include programs as expensive or expansive as

health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, as well as some forms of Medicaid, the children's health insurance program, food stamps, and the earned income tax credit. I want to be clear for the second time, these are people who are in the country legally. They have green cards, they are working, they are paying taxes. And so NBC, which broke this story, highlighted a couple of the immigrants who would be impacted by this. And one of them is a Haitian man who has an adult daughter who is disabled. He is working to become a nurse.

And he needs government benefits to help take care of his adult daughter with disabilities. He is here legally with a green card. But Stephen Miller does not want, you know, to have any, you know, I mean, who cares about empathy? Of course, he has no empathy. But he just sees them as the others. Who cares if you came here legally or illegally? He wants you out. Okay.

This could block more than 20 million immigrants from becoming citizens. So I'm going to tell you about the TYT army and what you could do about it in a second. But let's understand the point of this. Now, this policy is racist in its effect. Now, you could question whether it's racist in its purpose. So here's what I mean by that. So immigrants are from other countries, obviously. And in the old days, immigrants were largely from Europe.

And by the way, back then there were bigoted laws against the Irish, the Italians, etc., by the people who are largely English and German that were here. And so this has been going on unfortunately in American history for a long time. Now the predominant immigrant groups are Latinos, Asians, et cetera. So when you discriminate against them, it is having a massively disproportionate effect on certain races. Now you could say no, Stephen Miller doesn't mean that. He doesn't care what race they are. He just doesn't want them becoming citizens because they are more likely to vote for Democrats.

So that doesn't change the effect, the racist effect of the policy, just says, no, he's against democracy and he thinks that, you know, they can't really win elections if you actually listen to the Constitution and think that everybody's equal. And like actually trying to appeal to immigrants when they become citizens, like, hey, you know, we'll also look out for you. That's another way of getting their votes. And they're like, no, we're not going to do that. There's no way we're ever going to look out for those people.

There's no way we're ever going to deliver for them. And we don't want their, and we're not going to get their vote. We're not even going to try for their vote. So what we're going to do instead is we're going to block them from becoming citizens. And I'm positive that there's some Republicans that watch this now going like, yeah, that's good. I like that. Make sure we ruin their lives. They were on a pathway.

They were doing everything right. They were doing everything right legally. The thing that you told them to do your whole life. Well, we're not against legal immigrants. We're just against illegal immigrants. This isn't about race. No, no. We just want you to do it the legal way.

So here's 20 million people who are doing it the legal way, and now all of a sudden you pulled the rug out and go, just kidding, I never liked you. And so if we can prevent you from becoming citizens and ruin your lives to have a slight, in a best case scenario, a slight political advantage, then we'll do it in a second. Now, maybe other Republicans might be upset about that, but I doubt it. I really, really doubt it. And if they are upset about it, they got a funny way of showing it. So we're going to steal from these people, because that's essentially what that is. I mean, they are people who are here paying taxes. So we are going to penalize them for paying taxes, doing things legally.

And then if they need assistance, we're going to deny that to them or just penalize them and refuse to give them citizenship because they need that help. I don't, that's stealing. We're essentially stealing from these people. And the reason why Anna is calling the stealing is because you pay taxes. So if you at some point are in hard times and your kids are hungry and you need food stamps, Well, we shouldn't penalize you for that. That's part of why you pay taxes.

So these people also pay taxes. They've followed the law in every way imaginable. And then when you say, okay, well, now they need something back from the government because that's the whole point. You pay taxes and the government provides cops, roads. And sometimes, yes, a little help is to make sure your kids get lunch, right? We turn around to them and go, no, you're not allowed to get that. Even though you've paid into the system, we're just going to take it from you and not let

you get it. Or if you do take it, that's it, you're done, you're banned. It is a fundamental changing of the rules. And these people are bad guys. They don't care. And so, TYT Army, what is it? What's the point of it? So I started this.

And not that, look, we're just, we're experimenting here. We're trying to grow with you guys. Because what do I tell you all the time? We're not the Young Turks. You're the Young Turks. Okay. So we ask for people to join us at TYT.com slash Army to stop the line. that the right wing spreads online and in the media, and most importantly, stop the media from

going along with it, okay? Because neutrality is the enemy of reality. So in a story like this, this proves without a shadow of a doubt that the Republican Party is against all immigrants. They're not against illegal immigrants. That's a lie. They just showed you. They're against all immigrants, period, period, period. Okay, so they're not, so when the media does the right wings bidding for them by saying, oh, the right wing says they are against illegal immigrants, but they're for legal immigrants, I want the TYT army to shove this up their ass, okay? Perverbially, politically, okay, don't actually do anything physical, okay?

But to say, no, you're wrong, in a polite way, say you're wrong, it's just not true. Please stop printing things that are not true. The Republican Party is against legal immigrants. That is a fact. It's not a he said she said, okay? So, and so what do we do? We just ask you to email people, to send it on Twitter. Always be super polite.

We're not like the lunatics in the right. All we're trying to, we're not trying to defeat the press. We're not trying to destroy the press. We're trying to make the press better. Don't give me this, hey, the Republicans are for legal immigrants when it is not a fact. Your job as a reporter is to report facts. So, tyt.com slash army. And, you know, we asked the Army once, hey, can you find this research of the bias that we've been

talking about? You guys sent in too many things. Okay. So it was like 50 examples. So the next thing that we're trying to do now with the Army is then we need you guys help in curating, too, because there's people that are great at creating memes that are great at research, that are great at curating the research. So let's all work on this together, a joint project, and all kidding aside, seriously, if we don't do it, who's going to do it, right?

So, and our job, look, I want the press to be great, okay? And I think that the right wing has gotten them to a place where they are neutral and not objective, where they are unfortunately unwittingly misleading the American people. And they did it by creating pressure. Their pressure was filled with lies. We can create pressure with truth. So come join us at tyt.com slash army and then email us in and army at tyt network.com to tell us, hey, you know what? I would love to help with research or I would love to help with looking through the research

and figuring out, hey, what is the story that is most biased? So that's the one we should go reach out to the reporters and politely tell them, hey, you know, you got this one wrong and here's our evidence. Oh, I love that. Oh, I love that. That's such a good idea. Okay, so we're going to have some fun, all right? So look, guys, we're home of progressives, and part of that is working together.

So join us at the Army, join us, become a member, be part of the Young Turks. Let's do this together. And if you want to be a member and get all of our shows, t.t.com slash join. Okay, let's go actually fix what they get wrong. All right. Let's do some foreign policy news. The Trump administration has finally decided to impose new sanctions on Russia following a March chemical attack on ex-spies.

Now, this chemical attack took place in the UK, and so there was widespread rage over this. The European Union was angry about this and urged the United States to impose sanctions on Russia as a result. And it took a lot of pushing by the U.S. Congress to get the Trump administration to do something. And today it was announced that they will do something. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on a determination that Russia violated international law by poisoning the former spy, Sergei Scripple, and his daughter in March. Luckily, they did survive that chemical attack.

The Trump administration had never issued the formal determination that Trump. triggers automatic sanctions under a decades old U.S. law on chemical weapons. So just to be clear, I want to say it again, Trump had to be nudged by Congress into unleashing the penalties after blowing more than a month past a statutory deadline. So he did not want to do it. It's pretty clear. This attack happened in March. Trump didn't address it publicly, didn't want to actually impose these sanctions because of a lot of pushing, finally the sanctions happened. So I'm going to get into the details of what the sanctions mean in just a minute, but Jake, jump in.

Yeah, and there was actually a specific guy who made him do it. And it was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce. He's also a Republican. Give him credit for that. And Royce said you have by Wednesday to comply with the law and actually enforce these sanctions. Otherwise, there's going to be consequences. Now, I don't know what the consequences would have been, but under that pressure in Trump administration, not Trump himself, but Pompeo came out and said, yeah, okay, sure, yeah, I mean, I guess we're going to probably do it. So, okay, fine, we'll do it. So look, guys, if you say, hey, at the end of the day, he did apply these sanctions, and at the end of the day, he did apply the earlier sanctions to the oligarchs that was passed overwhelmingly by Congress, you are right. And so that is fair and that should be considered, okay? In the context of,

you know, does Trump have a deal with the Russians, et cetera. But I don't want either side ignoring facts. The other facts are when he signed the sanctions into law, the earlier ones, he said, I don't like this, I don't want to sign it, but it was veto proof. If he was savvy, he wouldn't have said that. Right. Because you're signing it anyway, Schmuck. Don't blow it by saying I don't want to sign it.

And then he took as long as he could possibly take before enforcing the sanctions, again, pressure at that point, are you ever going to enforce the sanctions you sign into law? And begrudgingly, he did. So take both of those into account. Eventually all the sanctions did go into effect, including today. But in each case, it was super clear that he only did it at the very last possible moment. In fact, passed the last possible moment under intense pressure from his own party. Now, what do these sanctions mean?

How will this impact Russia? So the sanctions are structured in two tranches laid out in a 1991 law, the Chemical and Biological Weapons and Warfare Elimination Act. So an initial immediate round limits exports and financing, but may have limited impact because it largely overlaps with other restrictions already in place, such as on selling arms to Russia. So that's, you know, going to have a little bit of an impact, not really though. The second part has more of an impact. The biggest impact from the initial sanctions is expected to come from a ban on granting

licenses to export sensitive national security goods to Russia, which in the past have included items like electronic devices and components, along with test and calibration equipment for avionics. Then the second, more painful round kicks in three months later, unless Russia provides reliable assurances that it won't use chemical weapons in the future and agrees to on-site inspections by the UN, and we all know that that's highly unlikely. I don't think that Russia is going to agree to that, but who knows, they might surprise us.

No, they won't. Yeah, I know. Inconceivable, I know. I'm just, you know, trying to be fair. Needlessly fair. Although Trump is largely allowing the sanctions to move forward, his administration is using waivers to exempt a few specific activities that. would otherwise be banned.

That includes space flight, where the U.S. and Russia cooperate closely, and American astronauts could run into problems absent of a waiver. Yeah, so I think that exemption is totally fine. I would give that exemption as well. So I don't think that there's, you know, proof of anything at all. I think three months from now, we might get closer to answers, because those sanctions three months from now are significant. They are not overlapping.

They would not only downgrade diplomatic relations to spend state airline airflow's ability to fly into the U.S., but they would cut off nearly all exports and imports. So that is the mother load of sanctions. So will Trump actually do that? And because that would definitely piss off Vladimir. So we might have our answer in three months as to whether, you know, look, there's nothing is ever definitive, but if Trump does actually on time, without any external pressure, does those significant sanctions, well, it is some data that he is not colluding with the Russians

actively, right? Like, okay, it is what it is, right? And if he never does them, because they're really significant, that's also data. So we'll find out in three months. Yep. Let's take a break. When we come back, China and how it refuses to listen to the United States. in its dealings with Iran, drums.

Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks. Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do, because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and come watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. Come become a member. Thanks for watching either way.

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 dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon