The Young Turks - Doom & Groom

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Episode summary: Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander admits to inappropriate messages with teen boys. Big Republican donor and "a bunch of friends" back off DeSantis over culture war politics: "Very big problem." "What happened to Donald Trump?" DeSantis supporting super PAC launches attack ad against former president. GOP Congresswoman Nancy Mace calls out her party’s "heads in the sand" response to gun violence: "Republicans can no longer be silent." Trump on school shootings at the NRA forum: "This is not a gun problem ... this is a spiritual problem." HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, well, I'm the young church, thank you, Grant, experimenting with you guys. For those of you watching live, sorry about the delay, we had a technical issue. Hopefully we'll be back in the studio tomorrow. All right, having gotten that out of the way, gigantic news and a lot of fronts,

including a very dramatic and disturbing story that we start with, Anna. Right, well, the Stop the Steel organizer, known as Ali Alexander, has now admitted to asking teenage boys for naked pictures and also sending inappropriate text messages to these teenage boys. Now he posted a statement about his behavior and how he has been battling with same sex attraction, which same sex attraction is not a problem.

Being a 32 year old male who sends inappropriate sexual messages to teenage boys is a problem. Now Alexander has identified as bisexual in the past, but before we get to his admission and his official statement, we should get to the specific allegations. Now, rumors about Alexander's alleged sexual behavior, according to the Daily Beast toward younger men have circulated in conservative online circles since at least 2015. But they reached a new level late last month after Milo Yanopoulos turned on Alexander after Alexander and Nick Fuentes pushed him out of a potentially lucrative position in Kanye West's nascent presidential campaign. So it's really important to keep in mind that the source,

of this comes from Milo Unopolis, someone who I do not trust. However, the formerly teenage boys in question have come forward, and we're gonna give you the details of what they have to say. Now Milo started releasing video interviews and other evidence meant to prove that Alexander sexually propositioned both adult men, again, not a problem in their 20s, and at least two teenagers, which absolutely is a problem and against the law. Now, he claims He claims he has even more damaging videos to release about Ali Alexander and Nick Fuentes in the coming days and weeks. Yiannopoulos claims that he's releasing the videos because Ali Alexander and Fuentes again

dropped his name in order to entice young men, in this case teenage boys. So in 2017, here's one example. Aidan Duncan, a 15 year old boy in Colorado, interested in right wing politics, sent Alexander nude photos after the MAGA activist asked him for them. According to an account Duncan gave in a March 2023 podcast appearance, Alexander responded with the face with heart eyes emoji and also asked the teen which app Alexander should use to send him money. At that time, Duncan was a high school sophomore just starting out in politics while Alexander was a 32 year old. He said that he would share his connections with Duncan as long as the teenager met certain preconditions, including secrecy in a September 4th, 2017 exchange, for instance, about an upcoming trip Alexander was planning. Alexander purportedly told Duncan, he would introduce the teenager to Yanopolis and speculated about whether the boy would be Alexander's arm candy and suggested the boy would have to be entertaining.

I've got more details, Jank. What are your thoughts so far? Yeah, there's two significant silver linings in this otherwise horrific story. So number one, the clout wars have begun on the right wing. So Milo says that he's outing them because they use his name. Total nonsense. Milo's outing them because he wants clout and he wants recognition and he wants to be back in the good graces of mainstream media and he's leaking this to mainstream media. this to mainstream media and he's trying to get above those two within right wing circles.

And we see this on the left all the time. You just flame your own side for clout. So flame away, Milo, you're pretty good at it. So I love that he's attacking Republicans. I hope they just shred each other to bits. Second of all, of course, the biggest silver lining in this story is we told you, guys who are on the right wing claiming that everybody else's groomers doing projection, the overwhelming majority of the time. So look, everybody made their own call on it. But when I see a right wing screaming groomer or pedophile, in my mind, I think to myself, that guy's got a 90% chance of being into kids. 90%. And that's not a scientific fact, but obviously. I'm telling you, That goes through my mind and here we are with the billionth confirmation in a row.

I mean, especially if the groomer narrative is really the branding that the individual has decided to take on. If that's mostly what they talk about, they're obsessively focusing on that issue, I start to wonder what the real driver is, right? Now, there's more details on Ali Alexander's communications with Duncan, again at the time. he was a sophomore in high school. So one of the preconditions was secrecy for obvious reasons, but there were other preconditions as well. So an updated series of screenshots show Alexander laying out rules, many of them stressing secrecy. And again, the sort of quid pro quo relationship that you would expect from abusive people. So Alexander had grown frustrated in May of 2019, claiming that the still underage Duncan wouldn't send him good masturbation material,

according to the screenshots, he used different wording. You don't even send me videos anymore, Alexander wrote. Now, Duncan is just 21 years old today and has since become a pretty high profile member of Nick Fuentes' pretty racist America First Movement. But remember, Milo claims that he has some damning evidence against Nick Fuentes as well, he just hasn't released it yet. Duncan says he believes that Fuentes knew about the rumors about Alexander's alleged solicitation of nude photos, but it wasn't just Duncan. There's another 17 year old involved in this story. So he started 17, he started messaging a 17 year

old named Lance Johnston as well in the summer of 2019. And Johnston is the person who came forward with this. The teen was a rising star on conservative TikTok. Now, in July of 2019, According to the reports, a 34 year old Alexander used the eggplant emoji, which is oftentimes used as a substitute for male genitalia, to ask the teenager for a picture of his penis. So the screenshot said this, show me your eggplant emoji, Alexander wrote according to the messages. And the teen responded, what's that? And then Alexander wrote back, oh my God. And then he basically made it clear. I'm asking for a photo of your penis. Johnson says at that point, he refused, but quickly blocked Alexander. Now, over the weekend, Nick Fuentes said he disavowed Alexander's actions and called him gross, but somehow also made it about him. Fuentes added, the real victim in this entire saga is me in a self-pitying post. He referred to himself as an in-cell.

Sounds like everybody involved got what they wanted, Fuentes wrote, except me, who is now somehow being blamed for things I had nothing to do with. So I'm about to get to the statement that Alexander has issued in response to the story before I do so, Cenk. Thoughts on the second tweet teenager. Yeah. So look, I'm going to read one of our YouTube members' comments because it's relevant to what I was going to say. Gary Cooper wrote in what kind of a political organization asked you for nude pictures. I've dealt with some pretty sketchy groups, but none of them did that. That's right. On the left, that would never, ever, ever be tolerated. They would be out at it. in a second and they'd be fired and never hired again. Now, on the right, it apparently is so common that they think, well, I guess this is standard operating procedure and this is how you get ahead in the world. One of the 15 year olds was like, you know, to be fair, by the way, of course he's 15, he doesn't really know anything yet. So he's even more impressionable, naive, et cetera. But he thought it was normal.

But if you're thinking, why did he think that it was normal other than the grooming that Ali Alexander apparently did? But remember, Matt Schlapp also would ask for sexual favors. We've now covered Dennis Hastert, the former Speaker of the House for the Republicans, a pedophile, convicted, et cetera. Like, we've now covered dozens of stories of Republicans who asked young boys for sexual favors. So there's some chance that if you're a Republican, you think that's pretty normal. And that's part of why they do the projection.

Look, it's not that all the Republican followers or even the most extreme Republican followers or even Q&M. I've said this before. Some of the adherence of Qaeda actually suffered from sexual harassment or sexual assault. So that's why they think it's unfortunately too normal and that everybody's doing it because they went through it, right? But then there's people who actually do it themselves. There are the groomers, the pedophiles, et cetera. And they do it to so many people. And if you're in that kind of culture, it becomes like sickeningly normalized.

And to us that are not in that right wing culture, it seems shocking. To them, they're accusing everyone a projection nonsense, of accusing everybody of grooming and pedophiles and sleeping with kids nonstop. Because in their world, apparently that kind of stuff happens. all the time. So, I mean, you show me a right wing leader and I'll show you someone who's, you know, they're talking about social issues like this and accusing others with no evidence. I guarantee you I can show you someone that has those thoughts running through their head 24-7. That's why they think it's so normal. Now Alexander has released a statement about this, as I mentioned multiple times, I want to get into that statement now, starting with this.

He wrote, this is too gay. I apologize for any inappropriate messages sent over the years, forgive me, while having repent repented before God and confessed at church, I want my supporters and those involved to hear my apology today. Look, I mean, when we're talking about soliciting pornography from minors, it isn't about sinning, it's about breaking the law. This isn't a problem having to do with being too gay. There's nothing wrong with being gay. There's everything wrong with being, again, a 32 year old man who is soliciting nude images from underage boys, and that is what happened here, allegedly. It seems like he's admitting to it to some extent, but he claims that no laws were broken. Now, he continues to write this, when I've flirted or others have flirted with me,

I've flexed my credentials or dropped corny pickup lines. Other times, I've been careless and should have qualified those coming up to me, to my identities during flirtatious banter at the start. And then he says, nothing unlawful has occurred. Although again, if he is soliciting those nude images from teenagers, something unlawful absolutely did occur. Seeing false claims alongside real messages is a deceptive technique. All of this is designed by a literal predator to take advantage of admitted sins and hurt my allies. One recent individual attacked me before recanting parts to hide their own sexual identity struggles. Others have been fake accusers or literal honeypots eager to frame me. And somehow he follows this follows up all those excuses with this final

statement. There are no excuses. I'm going to use my resources and counsel to help causes I support or sue some people, but my faith is in the future and new people leading our movements, I won't be a distraction or ruin my years of personal progress. So, Jank, did you find that statement convincing? No, not at all, except for one part. So his admissions tell you all the story, all that you need to know, right? So the one part that he's right about it is the guy targeting him is also a predator, Milo. In fact, he got in trouble for defending pedophilia. And now all of a sudden, he's pretending to be concerned about it.

I'm telling you, this is a way of him trying to get back into the good graces of the right wing, mainstream media, et cetera. Milo is trying to get back in the game by outing people that largely agree with him, that pedophilia is no big deal. So, and did Milo use deceptive practices? I would be shocked if he didn't. He has every single time. That's why I don't believe every detail of the story.

Whenever Milo's leaking, I mean, you should question every part of the story. Do not believe that it's 100% true. And Daily Beast doesn't have the best track record of fact checking. I'm just gonna sit lay that out there. I mean, you attack someone that's against the establishment and the Daily Beast is not going to overly fact check your story, okay? So, but like I said, even if all this, if every part of the story isn't true, Allie Alexander's basically admitted to the devastating parts anyway, so it makes it moot.

Remember, Milo was driven from the right wing because on Rogues podcast, he admitted that he didn't think that pedophilia was that big a deal. So look, I'll say one last thing about this. Part of the reason why the Alexander's and the Milo's, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all flock to the right wing is it's seems kind of ironic, right? These are the guys who are saying, oh my God, we hate gay people, we hate pedophiles, we hate groomers, et cetera. And yet these people rush over to the right wing. Why? Because when you do something terrible, the only people in the country that will protect you are the right wing. All you have to say is, I hate the lips. I mean, this is L.A. Alexander's maybe the main organizer of January 6th. And so all you have to do, I mean, he's, I don't know

what race he is, et cetera, doesn't matter. He's like, I hate the same people you hate. And the right wing's like, oh, we love your brother. It doesn't, oh, you're sending nude pictures and getting new pictures. Monterey people, nobody even cared until Milo wanted to start a clout war, right? I mean, look at what they say. They say, oh, yeah, the right wing leaders all knew this. Of course, did they know about match that? Probably. Did they know about all of their pedophiles? Probably Jim Jordan protected a pedophile when he was a coach on the wrestling team in In college, I mean, they're used to protecting pedophiles, and they are used to protecting monsters on their side. So if you've done something wrong, you'll run to the right wing.

So it's not at all surprising that that's where L.A. Alexander wound up. Oh, sorry, one more thing. This whole thing, like, oh, I was battling bisexuality. I was battling my demons. The real problem is being gay. No, you idiot, you absolute moron monster. No, the problem is you're suppressing who you really are. And once you suppress it, it comes out in super ugly ways. Because you think, well, what difference does it make? I'm underground anyway. I might as well do these terrible things. And what difference does it make?

All my right wing monster friends will support me no matter what I do and we'll pretend the other side is doing it. So, you know, I hope those kids are okay. And the fact that Ali Alexander got caught and then all the right wing monsters are fighting each other overall is terrific news. We're going to take a brief break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit about a billionaire donor to the Republican Party. Now pulling his support from Ron DeSantis. We'll explain why when we come back.

All right, back on TYT, Jay Canana with you guys. Oh, and Chris Birch gifted a whole bunch of memberships on YouTube as usual, five of them, and Croker 47 just became a member by hitting a join button below the video. Thank you guys, we really appreciate it to make the show possible. Casper. Well, there's an interesting development when it comes to a billionaire Republican donor who previously supported Ron DeSantis, but things have changed. Let's talk a little bit about that.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been abandoned by a top Republican billionaire donor who thinks that the Florida governor has just gotten a little too extreme in the state of Florida with things like book bans and restrictions on abortion. Now, the governor has just signed a fetal heartbeat bill in Florida, which would essentially ban abortions past six weeks, meaning all abortions would be banned. because most women don't know they're pregnant at that point. Now, the donor who has turned his back on DeSantis is Thomas Peter Fee, and he said that he and a bunch of his friends are putting paws on supporting DeSantis over these extremist policies. He told the Financial Times, quote, I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book burning, myself and a bunch of friends are holding our powder dry, which I got to be honest is pretty surprising, Jank, because. Because when I think of Republican donors, they tend to support the types of policies that DeSantis has championed. They also tend to, of course, love corporate tax cuts, tax cuts for the rich in general. They also love deregulation of companies. You would also think that maybe what's really motivating Peter Fee here is the attacks on Disney, since it is a corporation. And Ron DeSantis has been pretty vicious against Disney because Disney had the audacity to speak out against the

don't say gay bill. But the fact of the matter is Peter Fee is against what Disney had to say and believes that corporations should basically shut their mouths when it comes to these controversial political issues. So before I get to more details, what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I'm kind of amazed by this story too. There's a couple of different takes here. But first, so he didn't know that the Republican nominee is going to be extreme on social issues. That's the amazing part. And I genuinely believe he didn't know. And the reason for that is that people in the establishment say stuff like that all the time. Like I think the people that live in D.C., I'm not joking, are the most coolest people about politics in the whole country. So, like, just this is a rando one, but Kara Swisher, who's like a really well-known digital journalist, and it's a good journalist, asked Jen Saki, hey, how come you haven't had any Republicans on your MSNBC show yet?

Like, why? Would it have Jen Saki having conversation with Republicans help the country? Would it edify anything? Everybody in the establishment still thinks that Republicans are sane. Republican politicians aren't sane. They all believe the most extreme social issues except a couple of exceptions. That's why those exceptions like Nancy Mace, etc. Are constantly in the news like, oh, a Republican that doesn't hate gay people and that doesn't want to take away all rights from women. That's like a giant news event, right? Right.

The establishment doesn't get that at all. It's apparently huge news to this enormous Republican donor. Right. So let me just clarify a few things. So this Republican donor is based out of Florida, not Washington. I don't know why he's so in the dark about the extreme position, social positions that Republicans like Ron DeSantis have taken. And maybe it's because of the fact that if you happen to be a billionaire, some of these social issues really have no impact on your life. You have the resources to kind of find loopholes to these types of restrictive policies. But the other thing is, if you've had your head down and you're not really focusing on, what I believe both parties have been up to in recent years, you might not be privy to the fact that both parties, because of the corruption that, of course, Peter Fee is part of, have kind of moved away from economic issues and have focused heavily on culture war related issues. And if that is what you're campaigning on, you're going to become more and more extreme each election cycle because that's all you're going to lean into.

And that's certainly what I see happening with Republicans like Ron DeSantis. And I think it's starting to get to a point where not only do ordinary Americans find these policies appalling and against our constitutional rights, like book fans are ridiculous, right? But they're starting to question whether, you know, whether the Republican Party really needs to focus on becoming a little more moderate when it comes to these issues. It's become more of a liability in election cycles. For instance, the midterm elections, the abortion policies didn't play so well for Republicans. Yeah. So look, at least two more things about that. I think the

reason why a lot of these powerful people, whether they live specifically in the city of Washington, D.C. or elsewhere, haven't gotten the memo, is because they probably watch mainstream media. And does, we'll tell you Trump is awful and terrible, et cetera, but we'll treat other Republicans with incredible credility. Like, yes, oh, they are, they're legitimate people having honest conversations. And there's just such good, good people. These Democrats in power and the Republicans in power are such decent, wonderful people. And that's why like when you find out, oh, no, no, they hate gay people. They want to strip women of all their rights. Like to us, That's the least surprising news we've ever heard in our entire lives.

But to people who watch mainstream media, they're probably a little, I know it seems unbelievable, but at this late date, they're probably surprised by that. This guy's ready to give a bushel of money to Desantis. He's like, he doesn't like gay people. That's like news to him. Come on. Come on, mainstream media. Please stop lying to protect Republicans.

Jesus Christ. Okay, and look at this. every oligarch is a new story. Oh, one of the oligarchs has decided not to support DeSantis. And by the way, it should be a new story because the oligarchs decide elections. But the new stories never say, oh, by the way, the oligarchs decide elections. And he's one of like about 200 voter, actual voters in the country. And the rest of you are irrelevant. But I'm glad at least they're covering it. And but most importantly, Anna, the deal is fraying. The core deal for the GOP. So the deal was, look, we bring tons of people into the Republican Party by with social

issues. Oh, Southern strategy, black people shouldn't have the same rights, ballot measures against gay marriage, et cetera. And you come in and we don't actually do any of that stuff. We just pass tax cuts for the rich. Come for the racism, come for the sexism, stay for the tax cuts. But now that they actually did end abortion, a lot of those donors just care about the tax cuts. They're not that extreme on social issues. And they're like, oh, that's discomforting. It might affect my daughters and my sons and my wife. Now all of a sudden I'm uncomfortable with this deal.

Well, I mean, that's definitely your fault because that's the deal you launched to get your tax cuts. And there might be other motivating factors for this billionaire donor, because if you're willing to shell out tens of millions of dollars in each election cycle, you probably don't want to back the candidate who is less likely to win the Republican nomination. And so he told the financial times that he has lost more and more faith that Ron DeSantis could beat Donald Trump in the primaries. So Peter Fee said he no longer believed that DeSantis had the same odds to unseat Trump in the Republican primary than he did at the start of the year. DeSantis seems to have lost some momentum. So that could be one of the main reasons,

but he's not emphasizing that as much as his alleged concerns about the more extreme social policy, that DeSantis has passed in Florida. And as recently as January, Peter Feet did tell the financial times that he was, in fact, backing DeSantis and was looking forward to supporting his presidential bid. But now things have changed. He also tells the financial times, quote, I am more reluctant to back him, meaning DeSantis. We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general, and then put all of our firepower behind him.

And the firepower that he's referring to is literally millions of dollars. So for instance, back in the 2022 midterm election cycle, Peter Fee gave $7.7 million to individual Republicans campaigns and to conservative political action committees up from 7.2 million in 2020, according to open secrets. Republican donors also have a lot of money to burn. So just to give you a sense of how wealthy Peter Fee is, he was actually the the richest man in Florida with an estimated net worth of $26 billion, according to Forbes. The title, though, now belongs to Citadel founder Ken Griffin worth $35 billion, who relocated from Chicago to Florida last year for tax reasons in 2020, for tax reasons, because of course,

I mean, God forbid his $35 million billion is impacted at all by having to pay a little bit in taxes. But anyway, he relocated from Chicago to Florida. And in 2022, Griffin donated, I can't even believe this figure, $73 million to conservative campaigns, the most of any contributor. So when it comes to the right wing, the one benefit that they do have is these billionaire donors. I mean, there is, I think one billionaire donor I can think of that tends to donate to Democratic politicians and that happens to be George Soros. But fact of the matter is, there's just this handful of incredibly wealthy Republican donors who can really make or break elections. And when Peter Fee and other billionaire donors like him speak, the establishment, the Republican establishment definitely

listens. And by the way, one final thing I'll mention during the 2015 Republican primaries, he was supportive of Ted Cruz. He said that Ted Cruz was probably the smartest person, running in the Republican primary and that even though personally, I do not believe that abortion is something that should be prohibited. And I do not believe we should not care about the environment. Nevertheless, I think Ted has the qualities. He definitely has a shot. Oops. Yeah. So look, that's actually what I was going to end on, Anna. Like, don't get it twisted. This guy is not a good guy. And he's not right on any of the social issues. And even if he is right on abortion and gay rights or whatever, he doesn't act that way.

He gives $70 million to the party or that might, sorry that was Griffin, but he gives tens of millions of dollars to the party that has passed over 600 laws against LGBTQ individuals across the country in the last five years. So if you give money to Republicans who pass hate legislation, don't tell me you're for gay rights because you're not. And so if you, if you're So if you just woke up to one of them being against gay rights, congrats, you figured out the tip of the iceberg. All of them are against it. All of them. They didn't pass 600 some odd bills by accident. The Democrats passed zero of those hate bills. The Republicans passed hundreds of them. So please stop pretending everybody just, and I'm mainly saying to mainstream media, stop pretending that the Republican politicians,

aren't the party of hate. They don't pass these bills because they are, oh, oh Godly Jean, did we pick another group to hate on? What a coincidence, 50 years running. Oh, did we build a whole strategy around it called this other strategy? And then we create a thing called wedge issues and said, come on guys, come on. They're the hateful party. If you don't know that, you're honestly, you're an idiot. Or like this guy, you're trying super hard not to know. You gave most of your money to of your money to Ted Cruz because you care about what social issues on the left? No, you care about tax cuts 10 billion times more than you care about any social issues. So okay, Mr. Olegarch grew a tiny

bit of a conscious when he now thinks Ronda Santis is going to lose. I give him no cookies at all. And press, figure out that these guys are running the country and start doing all of your news stories about them because the politicians are irrelevant servants. It's the donors that actually rule us. When we come back from the break, Ron DeSantis, or at least Super PAC supporting him, has started taking some pretty serious jabs at Donald Trump in the form of campaign ads. We'll show you some of those ads when we return. Don't miss it. All right, back on T.O.T. Jank, Anna, Dixon, Rand, Jimmy Coggs, and Aiden Weiss, and Sharon Reddy is an American hero for upgrading to premium.

You could upgrade through the join button below the video on YouTube as well. It also upgrade through t.yt.com slash join. We appreciate it, guys. Casper. Let's get to the next story. Trump promised NRA members he'd have their back. When Second Amendment rights came under attack, Trump abandoned us and stood with liberal Democrats. You guys half of you are so afraid of the NRA. We have to fight them every once in a while. That's okay.

Some of you people are petrified of the NRA. You can't be petrified. They have great power over you people. They have less power over me. You just watched a portion of an anti-Trump ad that was released by a pro-Rond de Santa's super PAC called Never Backdown. And it's accusing Donald Trump of apparently being a gun grabber, even though there was nothing done to strengthen gun laws under his watch. In fact, we're starting to see DeSantis and his allies basically take some pretty massive jabs at Trump. I think the pro-NRA pro-gun ad is the strongest one I've seen yet.

So why don't we watch a little more of it? And I'll explain what the reality is. That is why I have called for red flag laws. Or might take the firearms first and then go to court. I like taking the guns early. Take the guns first, go through due process. He and I introduced another assault weapons bill. Diane, you have some very good ideas.

Diane, if you could add what you have also, and I think you can, into the bill. Yeah, are you ready? Can you do that? Joe, can you do that, Pat? Can you add? You help. Well, no, I'll help, but can you add what Amy and what Diane have? Can we add them in? We're talking about rules and regulations for purchasing.

Talking about changing an age from 18 to 21. I mean, I say that it should all be a 21. We do strong background checks. We're getting rid of the bump stocks. Trump cut and run like a coward. Trump, the gun grabber, doesn't deserve a second chance. Okay, so I'm definitely amused by that ad. I think that, It's probably the harshest one or the harshest attack I've seen from DeSantis' camp toward Trump. But I'm wondering if it's really going to land because just this past weekend, Donald Trump was one of the keynote speakers at the NRA conference where he just parroted all sorts of typical right wing pro gun talking points in response to the insane amount of gun violence we've been experiencing in the country recently. So whether it's a harsh out or not doesn't really matter. What really matters is whether it is going to land with the Republican base of voters.

And I'm curious what you think about that, Jank. Yeah, well, I'm kind of split on it, Anna, because in the beginning, they kind of screwed it up because they're having Trump said like, oh, you guys all work for the NRA, but I don't. I'll challenge them. Right. Even if you're a right winger, that sounds strong. I mean, it's total nonsense. We're going to show to you in a second that Trump was completely lying about that. I know that comes as a giant surprise, right?

But he did not challenge Dan NRA and the way that he backed down is hilarious. So we'll get to that in a minute. But the part where they call me a coward at the end, that was good. And I don't know if anybody remembers this, but I would remember saying, why don't the Democrats use the video of Donald Trump getting spooked when he thought there was a guy who was going to rush the podium and he looked so scared. And they, boom, DeSantis first ad out of the out of the gate, has that at the end, where he goes, look, what do you think somebody's

going? Look that Trump has. Yeah, that's called politics. But Democrats are going, I don't know if we could use that. Just hit him already. Look, I'll give me the credit for this. They're coming out swinging harder than I would have expected. I mean, calling him a gun grabber, that's not bad, right? He grabs him by the gun. You know, If you're a celebrity, they let you get away with it. Oh my God, that's that's pretty hilarious. So let's get to the reality though, because while Trump did in fact make those pro-gun reform statements, he was immediately reminded of who signed some of his checks.

And that's the NRA and the gun lobby. So back in 2019, after the terrible mass shooting that took place at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Trump started started coming out with some pretty sensible proposals in regard to gun reform. So he changed his mind pretty quickly after Wayne LaPierre, who's the head of the NRA, gave him a little phone call. They had a 30 minute phone call. At the time, the New York Times reported on it, writing that Trump spent at least 30 minutes on the phone with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the NRA, the latest conversation in an aggressive campaign by gun rights advocates to influence the White House in the week since the back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. Now, this is where it gets good because it's

always about the money and it's important for you guys to remember that. The call ended the way LaPierre had hoped it would, with Trump espousing NRA talking points in the Oval Office and warning of the radical steps, he said Democrats wanted to take in violation of the Second Amendment. Now, mind you, he was on tape saying that he wanted to work with Diane Feinstein and with other Democrats in passing things like an assault weapons ban, strengthening background checks, possibly some red flag laws. But the president's remarks also demonstrated how the NRA, which spent $30 million on Trump's campaign in 2016 and stuck with him when other Republicans wavered in their support, still wields great influence over the White House. And at the time,

Wayne LaPierre also tweeted about that. And immediately Donald Trump was like, oh, that's right, that's my daddy. That's right. I have to listen to him. So it was actually pretty pathetic. And I remember covering that story. And I remember saying there's no way Trump's going to do that. He's going to get a call from Wayne LaPierre. And he's going to buckle the next day. And that's exactly what happened. And the good news about it is that Trump has such a verbal diarrhea that we knew that he would say the reason why he buckled, okay? And he did. So I found the quote from that time. So he says, oh, Joe, I'm gonna challenge you, man, I'm not owned like you guys. And then LaPierre calls him and he's like, okay, okay, I'll do anything you want. I'll do anything you want. He's actually

a bitch. So DeSantis should attack him on being like owned by these donors, but of course he won't because he's also owned by the donors. Exactly. And the Democrats won't either because they're also owned by the donors. It's so frustrating. Anyway, here's what Trump said after the call with the NRA. A lot of the people that put me where I am are strong believers in the Second Amendment. And I am also. Okay, so all of a sudden, he talks to him and goes, hey, remember how we gave you $30 million last time? You orange-headed buffoon.

And Trump goes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And then he comes back in. And he's like, I remember there's struggling backers of mine? Like, you didn't remember that last time, Schmuck? He did this twice. He did it after Parkland early on in his term. And then he did it in that particular case that we've been telling you about.

And every time the buffoon forgets what his policy position is, he accidentally says, like, I guess we should protect kids. We don't want him murdered, right? Hey, good instinct, good instinct. Then he goes and talks to his donors. And he's like, right, right. I forgot our official position is kids getting murdered. No big deal.

as long as I give 30 million bucks. Hey, DeSantis, why don't you be honest about that? Oh, right, you take bribes from the NRA too. Exactly, exactly. Now, the final thing I want to mention in regard to this ongoing feud between Trump and DeSantis is that while DeSantis has, or at least a pro DeSantis pack has rolled out the first pretty harsh, pretty good attack ad. I'm questioning whether DeSantis is willing to get mired in the muck if he's willing to hit below the belt the way that Trump is. Because Trump is pretty vicious himself, far more vicious. At least he's proven himself to be far more vicious in the past.

And he put out his own ad attacking DeSantis and it targets DeSantis over something that I find hilarious. Let's watch. Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong. And we're not just talking about pudding. DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements. Like cutting Medicare, slashing social security, even raising our retirement age. Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money. Oh, and get this man a spoon.

No, come on, come on, come on, Cenk, that was perfect. It was, it was so perfect. this like gross imagery that like causes this like visceral dislike just this disgust. And it hits DeSantis on something substantive, which is those incredibly popular social spending programs. So if I had to vote on which ad I think is more vicious, I'd go with the pudding one. 100%. It's exactly what I said on the air when we covered it. That is a killer ad. It triggers the number one thing for conservative mind. Number two is fear. Number one is disgust. It looks disgusting. It calls them putting fingers. And like, and then on top of that, bringing up Social Security and

Medicare. And again, I'll draw your attention to the fact that Democrats lost the Ronda Sanders by 20 points. They couldn't make one ad like this. Not one ad like this when he was running for governor in Florida just a little while ago. The Democrats are the worst political party of my lifetime that I've ever seen anywhere in the world. But yes, Trump in his first ad does an ad against DeSantis that is 10,000 times more devastating than any Democratic ad against them. And so far in these ad wars, Trump is definitely winning on that ad alone. But I am surprised that DeSantis is hitting him a little bit harder than I would have expected. So let's see what DeSantis has in store in the future. But for now, man, that that putting ad is

incredible. We're going to take our break a little early. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk about how Nancy Mace is really positioning herself as a moderate Republican, especially when it comes to issues pertaining to gun reform and abortion restrictions. Later on in the show, we will also lighten things up and talk about a woman who has opted to live in a cave. And even though she's in Spain, she is a true American hero for people like me. That and more coming up. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.