The Young Turks - Down Goes Scott Pruitt

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from July 5, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join.  Jayar Jackson, John Iadarola. Scott Pruitt is finally out. Protestor climbs Statue of Liberty. Donald Trump rants about due process on Twitter. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan to call cops on former wrestler for late night email. Sessions withdraws immigration resource guides. Trump presses aides on why U.S. cant invade Venezuela. 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. Thank you for watching or listening to this free podcast of the Young Turks. We want to make sure that you get some portion of the show every day. But if you want the full show, which is actually five segments, come become a member and support independent media as well. TYT network.com slash join. Meanwhile, enjoy the free podcast. Welcome back everyone in another episode of The Young Turks.

I have just recently been informed. It's Thursday. We obviously had the day off yesterday. That has never happened before and will probably never happen again. But we're back with two more days of the news for you. But it is, again, let's make sure we keep it real at all times. This is not TDR. This is not.

On a Wednesday. On a Wednesday when we usually do this. Yes. And also it falls right within your platform of the middle of the work of the work week off. And no one knows this. I'm going to promote this at all times. Thank you. Yeah, as many of you might know, I for many years was pushing for the American worker to get a long deserved and worked for a third day of the weekend. I have recently reformed that into maintaining the two-day weekend and gaining a midweek Wednesday day off.

I think that we like 70 or 80 years ago earned the two-day weekend. Our productivity has quintupled since then, if not more. I think we deserve an extra day, America. And I think it should be Wednesday. That said, when you have one day off and then you have to immediately come back to work, it's a little bit disorienting, but we'll get through it, we'll get through it. Jaris here, by the way. I don't know if I said that. Also, I'm John. You didn't, but I started talking.

I think people figured it out. Okay, they figured it out. We've got a lot of news for you, obviously. Breaking news, staff shake up at the White House. Jim Jordan, facing new allegations of his lack of action having to do with sexual assault at his time at Ohio State University. Two competing approaches to Independence Day in what America means, coming from Donald Trump and from an activist, it'll be very exciting.

And also, Trump wants to invade another country, and nobody's talking about it. We'll break down why a little bit later on the show. Before we get to that, though, there has been a tragedy today in the media. Last week, there were five journalists who their lives were taken. Today, we have another, I think it's fair to say, Titanic figure inside of media who has passed away that is Ed Schultz, passed away at 64 years old, unknown reasons. But you might know him from his time as the host of the Ed Show on MSNBC, back on MSNBC. More recently, he hosted the news with Ed Schultz on RT America.

And if you watched him at any point on either of those shows or back in his days on the radio, You know that he gave a gigantic percentage of his time as a figure in the media to issues of the working class. There was no one that he wouldn't take on. He was fearless and incredibly hardworking. And obviously it's a terrible loss for media to have lost him. In addition, just in terms of TYT as a part of our history, he was one of the first figures in the mainstream media to give Jank an opportunity back in his MSNBC days. allowing him to guest host for him. That obviously led to Jank doing more and more hosting on MSC back in the day.

And Jank has actually recorded a video earlier today that's now available on the channel, on the Young Turks YouTube channel, talking about his experience with Ed Schultz and his thoughts about his past. Yeah, and as a bit of indicator what type of broadcast, at least, I think points of view that Ed Schultz made was, in the 90s, he was a conservative firebrand, as they call it, you know, and talk radio. And then as you see things shift and see what happens around your world, you may change it based off of what that is. And so maybe people who didn't know of that history would see him as just this MSNBC character who would speak only on liberal issues and go this way just because that's who he was working

for. But you know what, that's the way things work sometimes when you see the way things are and you have a certain level of a character to the things you want to talk about. Yeah. And he focused on issues that were not talked about very commonly at that time, not even all that commonly now. I mean, there are some figures that do more of it than I think people who don't actually watch the channels give them credit for. But he did it for year after year after year back when it was incredibly unpopular. He received pushback any number

of times because of his focus. But that's also why people look back on him now, I guess, in such a positive light because of his work, especially on behalf of the working class. So a sad day for media. But with that, we do transition back to the news. It looks like we got him or he got himself. Either way, Scott Pruitt's out. Good riddance, but don't celebrate just yet. The guy is replacing it might be no better. We will turn to that at some point, but we were talking about Scott Pruitt. He has been the target of the hashtag boot Pruitt campaign for some time. There are about 2,000 reasons why he never should have held that position in the first place and certainly shouldn't have held it as long as he did, but he is now out. And the

major staffing change, the EPA had transitioning out, was announced in the same way that all major White House staffing changes are announced on Twitter. So we have a tweet from Donald Trump saying, I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the administrator of the EPA. Within the agency, Scott has done an outstanding job of shredding regulations and doing us all to a post-apocalyptic future. Sorry, he didn't leave. He didn't put that in, but there weren't enough characters. Sorry, he actually did tweet more, though. I will always be thankful to him for this. confirmed deputy at EPA Andrew Wheeler on Monday to assume the duties as acting administrative of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda.

We've made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright, insofar as the future of an organization that is now a dark, tiny shell of what it once was can be bright. It's a little ironic because there's so many, I guess, officials that have been put in position with the Trump administration that have been put in their positions, and we're going to talk about, hopefully talk about Ben Carson Leonard at HUD. And the point is to dismantle that organization and make sure that whatever it is the previous person in that position did is undone. And it's actually the opposite of what the head of that organization has to do.

Everything that Scott Pruitt was doing as far as his official work and not the unofficial scandals that he was involved in had to do with dismantling what was previously done, having nothing to do with actual environmental protection. That wasn't the idea. The idea was to do away with everything that they did with the environment so that you could usher in the innovation of more dirty air, dirty water, and rampant corporations to do whatever they wanted without any, with no police watching, honestly. Look, we long ago back during the initial hearings when all these people were getting

their jobs, we warned you that these people were being put in specifically to undermine and dismantle the organizations that they were put in charge of. Actually, later on the show, we're going to have an example of that once again with Ben Carson, but I don't know if there is anyone who is a better example of that than Scott Pruitt. A few weeks ago, I tweeted a list of dozens of environmental regulation changes that have been made in just the first year. The list is endless. Can I draw a few of them? There's 33 that have been overturned. This is the beginning of this calendar year. 33 have been overturned. 24 rollbacks were in process and 10 were in limbo. I'm just going to name a few of

those 33. A proposed ban on a potential harmful pesticide, you know, because that's a bad thing. These are ruled back. They were put into place previous to him coming in. Methane reporting requirement. Why should you have to report any methane issue? 86 times worse for the atmosphere than carbon. But that just dilute it out there. Of course, the Kisonextel pipeline, anti-dumping rule for coal companies.

You know, why, who cares? The Dakota Access Pipeline situation. Third-party settlement funds, offshore drilling ban in the Atlantic and in the Arctic. I could keep going. I mean, I'm scrolled down three times now and it's still going. Every one of those disastrous. Yeah. And not, I mean, obviously, look, based on my background and my work, I focus mostly on climate change.

He's been an absolute disaster, potentially irreparable damage done to our ability to fight climate change. But even if you're not interested in climate change, the pollution regulations that he's pushed back, people's lives are in danger because of the changes to regulations that Scott Pruitt made, obviously, with Donald Trump. Scott Pruitt is one of the greatest, we explained back during the last election why the literal worst possible. outcome is Donald Trump becoming president. It's because people like Scott Pruitt will gain power. Power to both stop. I mean, it's four years where we don't get any new environmental regulations, nothing being

done about carbon, nothing being done about pollution, except that as you point out, rolling back all of the hard fought victories that we've had during Obama and previous to Obama on any number of these different issues, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords, all of that. Which also, again, shows a military finish, Doug, which also shows if you're riddled with all the scanners, which I assume you're going to get into a little bit of, that he went through, as long as you're doing the bidding of what they want to do to tear down everything with the EPA, you're safe. You can openly do these things. And again, if you go into them, it's fine. But if you openly do these things, you can get away with it in front of everyone as people approaching

restaurants, as we saw just happened last week or earlier this week with a woman and her child. And it just doesn't matter because you're safe as long as you're doing the bidding president, which will take down anything that the agency wants to do. Yeah, they don't care about the hand lotion. They don't care about that. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why he was pushed out. It's possible he'll end up as the AG tomorrow. He could be on the Supreme Court by this time next week for all we know.

But I do want to mention some of the scandals. So here's a few. Transgressions, which have caused varying amounts of media interest over the past few months, spanned from his deal with the wife of a top energy lobbyist for deeply discounted housing. Huge raises he gave friends against the instructions of the White House, flying first class, using his office to try to secure his wife a Chick-fil-A franchise. enlisting aides to get her lucrative work elsewhere. He specifically said that he wanted her to get a job with a salary of at least $200,000.

He had a $43,000 phone booth. He wanted to secure a used mattress from a Trump hotel. That's literally news, I'm not making that up, although it sounds ridiculous. By the way, Scott Pruitt, we're going to need you to give back the tactical pants in the hand lotion. No big deal. No questions asked, wash them first, please, but we're going to need that stuff back. No, this guy, he obviously had these huge scandals, but here is my frustration. We mentioned them because it's important, but I think that people are going to focus

on that part. The scandals are bad, but they are nothing compared to the environmental damage. Nothing compared to the damage done to our ability to control, out of control, at present climate change. And I don't, like, we have to focus on the scandals to some extent. We can't have these ethical violations. We can't have literally crimes being committed in office. But the environmental damage that he did is obviously far more. And the thing is that can be connected. Focus on the ones like, again, I actually missed this one. He and his son went to a university of a Kentucky basketball game and they were sent thereby billionaire coal executive.

So it's the kinds of connections they had. And again, the $50 room condo near the capital or wherever it was in D.C. An upclass section. Yeah. But the thing is, that condo was connected. Again, people forget this part. Man, he's paying 50 bucks a night. No, no.

That condo was connected to a corporation that had any interest in continuing to do whatever they wanted and get outside of any regulatory standards that they needed to do. That's the part of it. So, yeah, we can talk about how crazy it is, but it's connected as well. So it's swampy and it's also irresponsible with money and funds the way he did, and also self-important. Yeah, now look, it's possible that he is a little bit worried about some of these scandals. One of the 16 investigations going on right now has been finalized, and he was found to have committed crimes in that. There are 15 others.

Here's the thing. He might think, hey, I'm out the door. You don't have to worry about me anymore. Screw that. It's great to get you out of office. It would be better to get you into prison. You obviously broke the law in any number of different areas, and those investigations need to continue, not least of which, because he might well pop up in some other position.

We know that Donald Trump loved Scott Pruitt. He was potentially his favorite aide in one fashion or another, and so the chance that he could pop up in another position is significant, and that is why these investigations need to continue. However, while Scott Pruitt has moved on, they do need an acting administrator of the EPA, and they've got one in Andrew Wheeler, as Donald Trump. announced. We now have Andrew Wheeler. That is a name that you've heard far less than Scott Pruitt for understandable reasons. And you might think, well, Scott Pruitt's a disaster.

So, uh-zah, we've got Andrew Wheeler. No, Andrew Wheeler is a disaster. And so I want to give you at least a top-level list of reasons why. His most recent job before moving to the EPA was as an energy lobbyist. His biggest clients included Murray Energy Corporation, the largest coal mining company in America. Robert Murray presented a vice, well, when he was working under Robert Murray, he presented Vice President Mike Pence with a pro-coal action planned that called for doing away with the clean power plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating federal tax credits for renewable energy, and halving the EPA's workforce. Half of those employees, we don't need them, we don't want them. Now, a lot of that you got

under Scott Pruitt, but if you'd had Andrew Wheeler instead, you would have had a lot of the same results, maybe not as many scandals. He serves to this day as the vice president of the Washington Coal Club, a powerful yet little known federation of more than 300 coal producers, lawmakers, business leaders, and policy experts. He worked as a legislative aide to Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhoff, a man who regularly refers to the science of climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people, and he told one radio interviewer that educating schoolchildren on the basics of climate science was tantamount to brainwashing. He's also the snowball guy. Look that up. That was a nice little bit of recent Senate history. And when Wheeler's

nomination was announced last year, Inhoff effusively praised the decision saying that, quote, there is no one more qualified than Andrew to help Scott Pruitt restore EPA to its proper size and scope, which you could see on a microscope if you were capable of using one, which neither Pruitt nor Wheeler were. So that's who you've got now. Yeah, no one, there's, no one can do it alone. Scott Perrault wasn't there by himself. And in fact, everyone that either, I mean, not even against his policies, people that pointed out the scandals he did were ousted or who's talking about me now. And people he had done wrong end up being out. He, and there's an explicit term for this. But he screwed over their chances in their next jobs, you know. So he sent out

the notifications, hey, this person left. And now that they squealed on me and the horrible things I've been doing scandal-wise is the head of EPA, don't hire them anywhere else. And any kind of business associated with what I can influence. He's a bad guy. He's just a bad guy from the beginning. So if Wheeler's working under him as deputy of the EPA, why would he be the guy who's working under him going, oh, this is horrible.

Now that I'm in power, I'm going to change things. It's just not the way it's going to work. I mean, I hope no one assumed that that's the way it was going to work. Yeah, we've tried very hard over the past year, especially so far this calendar year, to document as many of these environmental regulation rollbacks as possible. understanding, by the way, that it's not a sexy topic. A lot of people tune out for it.

Those videos inevitably get far fewer views than other sexier inside the Beltway topics and stuff like that. But they are in a very real sense the most important policies being decided in D.C. We'll continue to do that and we will need to because Wheeler is going to be an absolute disaster if he eventually becomes the actual head of the APA and while he's serving as its acting head as well. Well, good news, there is a new position open at the D.C. Coal Club. That's true, he might still, he might still hold that one. Anyway, okay, look, we do have to take our first break. When we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about the 4th of July.

What happened? What should we have been focusing on after that? Welcome back to the Young Turks, everybody, John. I'd roll at Jared Jackson joining me today. Revelations are being discovered right now during the commercial break. Revelations. It has been a while since we've done the show together. Yeah.

It's fun. But we forget. Tell Jake to take more, Jenk to take more vacations. Okay, so let's see. We've got some tweets. Jeremy Kohler tweeting about Scott Pruitt in a slightly around the way fashion. Given the apparent state of Trump's restaurants, I wouldn't be surprised if the beds at Trump's hotels come pre-urinated on. That's old school.

I think, old tweet? That's old. Oh, because, I mean, Scott Pruitt got one of those used mattresses. Yeah, it's still fit. Yeah, I hope. It's everlasting. Someone should check in on Scott Pruitt tonight because I'm worried that he's just late tonight. He's going to be thinking about the state of his life eating a chick filet laying on a dirt.

dirty mattress. That's sad. Nobody deserves that. If it's not getting an update, I got a whole bunch of love for me. I've got some. I've got some other tweets. I wasn't sure what this section was. But so you've been tweeting at hashtag TYT Live. Ishkibble says Scott Pruitt is the lowest of the lows. Glad he's out, but I hope the next guy doesn't say hold my beer. I am worried he is going to say hold my beer. Alex Seymour says, yeah. I'm glad Scott Pruitt is out as the head of the EPA. However, he will be back with his run to be a representative from Oklahoma. Homa, our watch continues. Is that announced? Is he doing that already? He is?

Already. Yeah. He had a lot of political aspirations. I was reading about that as well. You know, one of them even so high as to potentially become president. Yeah. Here's what we need then. Representative Scott Pruitt of the Republican minority. The only minority he would ever be. Beth Haven says at J.R. Jackson, I think someone ran out of room on his car for bumper stickers. I think referring to your laptop, I assume. I assume that's probably numbers things are not for cars

it ruins it. Yeah. Just saying. Okay, so I do want to let you guys know just in case you don't that TYT now has a full audio network. That's not entirely true. The damage report isn't on it yet,

but I'm going to continue fighting day by day. Until then, in addition to all of our awesome existing shows, this launch of our full audio network includes a series of new podcasts, including a weekly show hosted by none other than activists and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner on TYT.

Her show is called We the People and explores justice and equality through the eyes of those most affected by politics and policy. For more on We The People and the entire TYT Audio network, head over to t-yT.com slash audio. I believe it's also on the app as well. So go check that out. If you don't have the app, you should get it. And as soon as it's available on Android, you should get it there too. Okay, let's talk about the 4th of July. Yesterday, as millions of Americans were celebrating the rights we have as Americans,

One woman decided to exercise those rights by scaling part of the Statue of Liberty in protest over the family separation scandal going on at the border. That scandal, by the way, is still going on. I don't care if some of the media has started to move on and is it is interested. It is in no way resolved. Don't let the lack of interest of the media make you believe that it is. There are still literally thousands of kids who have not been reunited with their families. That is a fact, and it should still be the same level of national tragedy that it was a week or two ago.

That said, she is out there. She's been identified as Teresa Okumu, a 44-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was reportedly protesting the zero-tolerance policy on immigration and specifically the family separation policy, as I said. As of today, she has now been charged with crimes, though. She was formally charged in a Manhattan court on Thursday with trespassing, interference with government agency functions, and disorderly conduct, each of which could result in a maximum of six months in prison. The idea that that woman would spend a year and a half in prison for her protest seems insane on its face, but that is possible as of today.

Yeah, as those kinds of charges go, it's for deterrent reasons. But also, again, exactly, we hope, which is what I can get to as far as depending on who the judge is, depending on what kind of how hard they want to come down upon it, if someone disagreed vehemently with what she was doing, or if they maybe agreed with what, what she was doing, but like, but this is going to bring the idea of it down. It's all, it's all based on whether or not that particular person wants to follow through to whatever degree they want to. Which, again, is a little bit of a part of the, I guess, uneven judicial system we have.

You know, those judges that we get out of barbershops and just put on immigration courts. No, so it's one of those things that's, that's, you want to see the message behind it. And then, as you can see, they eventually arrested her. And she looks like she came down pretty easily. Yeah, they talked to her for a while. Look, they were worried that she would either be hurt or one of the officers would be hurt. That's what they're saying. They said that people were panicked by seeing her there.

And luckily, that didn't happen because you know how it works. Whenever someone gets hurt, especially law enforcement or rescue off of something that you chose to do yourself, then that's when they'll start coming down even harder because now it's your fault. That person got hurt. And, I mean, but it's the reason for it. This is, let's get this whole main point. We're talking about it, which we should be. What did she go up there for because of the continuing policy we have going on?

And which I think we'll get to in the next hour about more of the fallout from the separation of families at the border and what we've done. And obviously it's symbolic because she was at the Statue of Liberty. Exactly. And, you know, the whole meaning behind that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of people in America, especially in the White House these days, that would like you to not think about the Statue of Liberty, especially not what it represents historically. So causing us to, at least for a few moments, think about the message of the Statue of Liberty what it is represented throughout American history, or at least since we've had it, I think it's

extremely valuable. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Berman disagreed, said, well, we must and do respect the rights of the people to peaceable protests. That right does not extend to breaking the law in ways that put others at risk. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-Bing 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 and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it.

You must have learned 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 app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Okay.

Okay. To some extent, I would, say, I guess, putting people at risk in your determination, not objectively putting people at risk, but I understand they're worried about the police officers. It's protest. Yeah, they evacuated the entire Liberty Park, I think is what it's called. Yeah. So it's to make sure other pedestrians, visitors, tourists, whatever, didn't get hurt. Maybe she'd take a slip.

Also, I mean, I guess not really a substantive point, but man, they needed ladders and grappling hooks, and she's up there chilling. Yeah. Wherever the footage is of her climbing, scaling the side, there's, I was looking for some points of usefulness to get up there. If you want to get an idea, you can watch on Spider-Man Homecoming. That's how difficult it is to get up there, but she managed to. By the way, in relation to that, she said this.

It was a statement that came out today. This is from the protester. Michelle Obama, our beloved first lady that I care so much about, said, when they go low, we go high and I went as high as I could. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Um, hopefully she doesn't get a year now. Yeah, I was just, I was literally just going to say that. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to something related, I would say. Yesterday obviously was Independence Day and the morning after it, Donald Trump decided, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to attack the Constitution. He's not a big fan and he tweeted this. Congress must pass smart, fast, and reasonable immigration laws now.

Law enforcement at the border is doing a great job, but the laws they're forced to work with are insane, he'd know. When people with or without children enter our country, they must be told to leave without our country being forced to endure a long and costly trial. Tell the people out and they must leave just as they would if they were standing on your front lawn, as so many asylum seekers do. Hiring thousands of judges does not work and is not acceptable, only country in the world that does this. Almost nothing there is true. It's not thousands of judges. There are 400 judges who work on immigration related matters. You could hire more to speed up the process, particularly if you're going to institute a new policy where we prosecute literally

everyone that we take, which we did not do before you became president, Donald Trump. Also, no other countries do this? No, a lot of other countries have due process in one form or another. Notably, the United States has it, at least for now, because Donald Trump has made clear in this tweet, as he has, in a number of others over the past few weeks, that he has no interest whatsoever in the continuation of due process in America. Now, really quickly, I want to remind people where this stuff I'm talking about comes from. If we could skip ahead to Graphic 26. You might have heard of this, it's the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that says that people cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Just in case that wasn't enough, if you skip ahead to the 14th Amendment, it says, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protections of the laws. And just in case you've believed some ridiculous conservative meme, they're not talking about citizens there, they're talking about persons. At any number of different points in the Constitution, they use the word citizens when they intend to use the word citizens. In other places, as in both of these, they use the word persons because they want due process

to be given to literally every human being on you. U.S. soil. That is the way it has worked up until now, for the most part. Our criminal justice system sucks, but that's the way it's supposed to work, at least. And here you have the president saying, we are done with that. Well, two things. You know, it's a well-known fact that the founding fathers in writing these documents, there was always this autocorrect problem. So sometimes when they wanted to say persons, it meant citizens, and then they're like, oh, it keeps changing on me before I press send. Every time it keeps happening to me, a scratch net, I meant citizens, not persons. Number one.

That's why I've always said you don't write a constitution via text. You just don't. It just screws the whole thing up. And next to you know, dictatorial administrations just don't know what to do with it. And then, and secondly, again, on the person's thing, again, it's, it's, if you're speaking to people, supporters of this type of stuff and this president, that don't see these folks as people. So when they say persons, they're like, we don't care about them.

They're not people because we're the only people we care about. They're kind of just subhuman. It's a historical thing that people you can do wrong the most to, you don't see them as even a level of humanity that you are at because then you have to actually care. Again, protesters at that one rally that after the separations of families went crazy and people cared, they said, why you keep putting in my face these whole sad pictures and images and sounds of these children?

I don't want to cry about this. I don't want to hear about the humanity. I want to stick with my ignorance and keep seeing them as animals, which, of course, our president also called him. So then you can do it that way is how you can continue on with this. And he's sticking with the plan. It's working. At the very least, when they say that, it makes me believe that perhaps there is something deep down that still has a bit of compassion and they don't want to feel the itching on that part of themselves. Can we go back to the one shot of JR for just a second? I find it a little bit odd and distracting that Melania is doing the Pledge of

Allegiance. She's got her hand on her heart, but I don't think she really cares about it. But anyway, is obviously not just for the potential destruction of due process when it comes to those seeking asylum or for whatever other reason crossing our border. That should be enough that every single American should be up in arms about it. But do you really believe that that is where it'll end? I think there's a lot of people perhaps watching this video, maybe some conservatives who say, yeah, whatever, the Constitution might have said persons, but I don't care, they're immigrants, it's not the same thing. When you give a power, like the ability to forget about due process, to a president, how likely do you think they are to give it back to you, particularly someone

with the personality traits and personal history of a Donald Trump? Is that actually a road you want to walk down? It could be immigrants today. God only knows who it could be tomorrow. And we should care today, by the way. With that, why don't we jump? Just not to be lost in it. Also, he said, get off my lawn literally. Yeah, I actually forgot about that. It's not the substantive part, but get off my lawn. I don't know, man, he has to know what's happening in the way he words things. It's similar to someone getting on your lawn. Again, it's the same thought process.

Someone steps on your lawn, you have to shoot them. Just straight up. That's how we operate now. Yeah, it is exactly like someone getting on your lawn after they have made the 1600 plus mile trek escaping political violence or domestic abuse, potentially being abused, robbed, raped, maybe potentially almost murdered along the way, risking their life and limb to get here for the hope of a better life, either for themselves or for their children because they know that that is not possible in their home country and thereby pursuing exactly the dream that America was set up for, or at least we've told

ourselves along the way, and then once they finish that trek, they're on your lawn. It's exactly like that. Okay, we do have to take our second break. When we come back, lots of more news to get to prominent Republican representative in some trouble. We're going to break that down and we come back from this. You're right in the middle of this podcast. We've got another great segment coming up for you.

If you'd like the full show, which is actually five segments, go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. You become a member, you support the show, you support independent media, and you get the whole two-hour show ad-free every day. Let's go do it now. Welcome back, everyone, the Young Church, China, Rola, J.R. Jackson, and let me read a couple of tweets for you. You've been tweeting it at hashtag TYT Live. Dango said, wait, what? Is this the young report? No, the damaged Turks?

What is happening? That's a good one. The damage Turks is definitely. The damage turks. We're not that damage. We're doing okay. By the way, if you haven't been watching the damage report, sign up for the free trial of YouTube TV and give it a try.

We've been having a lot of fun. We cover obviously a lot of news. We also have great guests. Just tomorrow, we're going to have two awesome guests on. We're having Ken Clippenstein of TiT Investigates. is going to talk about the militarization of ice. And we also have Maria Svart, who's the national director of the DSA. Both are going to be on on tomorrow's episode.

That's 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Eastern. In relation to the militarization of ice, Danger. Carlos Danger tweeted, Trump's prepping ice to kill people as we speak, assault rifles, chemical weapons, et cetera. Guess he really wants his own SS. I guess time will tell. I'll talk to Ken about it tomorrow. Also, by the way, after this show, we're going to have an episode.

of Rebel headquarters, as we always do. I'm going to be hosting that. We've got two interviews for you, one of which, by the way, is Zephyr Teachout. He's running for Attorney General of New York, awesome, progressive and activist, and I'll be talking to her about a number of different issues. I also wanted to mention to you, we've been talking about YouTube TV. We've got some new shows that have been added to it. That includes Reasonably Sure, the Jimmy Door show, Rebel HQ, and Smart Mouth. Smart Mouth is a new show. It features the podcasting duo Katie Anthony and Renee Feinglass. They leave it all on the floor as they serve up

mouthy truth bombs, fearless analysis, and hilariously real insights into the minds of news watching women in America today. You can learn about those shows and others at t.com slash YouTube TV. With that said, let's jump back into the news. Republican Representative Jim Jordan

is facing allegations that he knowingly did nothing while a string of sexual assaults happened during his time as the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State back in the late 80s and early 90s. Earlier this year, a number of former students of his who were wrestlers came forward. They've recently spoken with NBC News about what happened, and they've said that they told Jim Jordan multiple times about the team doctor molesting them.

He is believed to have done this for literally decades, a significant chunk of which was under Jim Jordan as the assistant wrestling coach. Again, just allegations at this point, and Jim Jordan is certainly not buying it himself. We have a couple of videos of him talking about this. Turns out he not only disputes that he knew anything, now he wants to go after one of the wrestlers who's come forward. Let's watch. I mean, it's just not true. That then to get an email like 4 and them 4.30 in the morning just seems like we should make the, I think our office is going to make the Capitol Hill police aware of it.

So there he's talking about getting emails from one of the wrestlers who had tried to reach out to him earlier saying, I'm going to come forward, I'm going to reveal what I know, I'm just giving you a warning, asking that potentially he reveal what he knew at that point. And now he is apparently going to be contacting Capitol Hill police because he believes that those 4.30 a.m. emails that he got amount to bullying. Michael D. Sabato, who is the wrestler in question who did the bullying email, says, Jim Jordan is a world caliber athlete who is very aggressive in his actions. He's a bulldog, let's be honest.

So for him to say he was being bullied is somewhat laughable. I think Jim is in a position where he doesn't know what to say now. I wonder how many bullying emails sitting congressmen and women get on a daily basis when they're not involved in something where, I don't know, where, you know, it seemingly looks like, allegedly, sexual abuse occurred and they released in the area. Even if he didn't know about it, you were there. So maybe people want to ask you questions about it. Maybe one of the guys who was a victim of it reaches out and wants to talk to you about it.

Maybe he sends you a whole bunch of emails. Yeah. You know what I'm the emails I got today? And my name is not Jim Jordan. I got about 75 emails today. And they were all pretty nice. A lot of people saying, hey, have this person on the show. Hey, this representation, hey, this PR company.

I got a lot of those emails. I didn't get a lot of emails like that. You know what? I'm really annoyed by those emails. He's getting a lot of agents reaching out to him. I don't like those emails. But I haven't called the police on them yet. But, no, for the Capitol police, he has to get involved in this because this guy's getting

a little bit too close. No, this isn't going to be any graphic form, but there's also an investigative team that's looking into those allegations, just in general. And, of course, when someone says there was a former assistant coach that could have information on, you might reach out to them because that's what investigators do. So they look into the allegations of the abuse on Tuesday, and they reached Dr. Jordan by email. And by phone asking for interviews, he has yet to reach out to them yet. but he has not called the Capitol Police.

So I'm just saying there's certain people that you look to intimidate by reaching out to Capitol Police to get them to be quiet and stop bothering me because you're low enough on the totem pole. But investigators, you just ignore them and act like that's a normal thing that'll happen. Yeah. So it's been interesting. We've been talking about this story now for two days on the damage report. And his initial defense was, I didn't know anything.

And isn't it odd that they're coming forward now, which is a defense. that you can put forward at literally any point ever. And now he's saying it's actually bullying as well. Again, there are allegations. We don't know for sure yet what happened. There is an investigation ongoing. But we do know that multiple wrestlers have come forward. They're on the record by name.

These are not anonymous submissions that are being made. So look, Jim Jordan is going to defend himself. And so far, I've seen other Republicans defend him. I haven't seen a single one who says that this is a serious issue that needs to be properly investigated. But just to give you a little bit more information, this is what that wrestler said. He's obviously a former wrestler at OSU, told CNN earlier this week that there's no question in his mind that Jordan knew it all in relation to that abuse. He says, we trained every day together. His Jim Jordan's locker was located next to the team Dr. Strauss. That is the one

alleged to have done the molestation. It was a common, uncomfortable joke that Doc was a serial groper. Doc likes to hold your penis. Everyone knew it. I never saw Doc Strauss over a nine-year time frame where he didn't ask me to, where I went to see him for medicine or whatever, finger injury, shoulder, knee, where he did not want to examine my testicles, he groped every time. And additionally, there's been allegations that Jim Jordan, who had a locker next to the doctor, himself said that if he tries anything, he's going to kill the doctor. And so multiple people saying that he would have obviously known what was going on at that point, but he's a powerful Republican representative. He's part of the Freedom Caucus. He's a big up-and-comer.

Maybe he'll be the next speaker. Are they going to take these sorts of allegations seriously? Come on. So, John, is this the timing weird? Because, you know, what is it to just happen now that makes this timing so odd for Jim Jordan? You just get elected? You just get into Congress? As I said this morning, so you're saying right now we can't discuss this because you're talking

about possibly becoming speaker. Well, Paul Ryan announced he was resigning months ago. So that's a nice months-long period where you couldn't have been accused of anything. And you know what, there was a tax bill being discussed before that, and there was the ACA repeal being discussed before that. Then it was just in the wake of the election, the inauguration, you know, Y2K, release of the second Shrek. There's been a lot of stuff going on for years.

What period was there where every politician in D.C. was just like, maybe we should get lunch. That doesn't happen, okay? Obviously, stuff is going on. These are ambitious politicians. They always want some sort of better position. They're always running again for re-election. We have elections every two years at the Congress. professional level. It is always going to be an inconvenient time for you to be accused of

some sort of wrongdoing. But what's inconvenient for you is that apparently there's multiple people who say they know exactly what you knew and when you knew it. Well, to be fair, also Nancy Pelosi was also an assistant coach on that wrestling team. He didn't choose to go after her. He only went after Jim Jordan. He only chose Jim Jordan randomly. He did it randomly. He did it randomly. I have no doubt that she could have. Randomly went after that guy. There's many other sitting Congress members who actually were on that wrestling team. Jesus. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives,

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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-V-P-N.com slash T-Y-T. Check it out today. I can't attest to that part of the story. Only the earlier stuff. I was joking. Okay, with that said, let's move on to some other news.

Two nights ago, Jeff Sessions made a big move that he perhaps understandably believed the media would not pay attention to because it was on 4th of July Eve. That's when you dump news that the media is not going to pay attention to. And people aren't going to be watching it even if they did. They're getting ready for the holiday. They're off. They're drinking. They're blowing fireworks over my house every 30 minutes for some reason.

Light out. You can't even see them. I don't understand why you're doing it, but they do. However, it is now past the 4th of July. We here at TYT have not forgotten, so we are now going to talk about what Jeff's Sessions actually did. And what he did was rescind 24 different guidance documents. If you're not familiar with them, then you are similar to me, because I wasn't before

this story. But they're important. What they do is they provide basic legal and political understanding to a variety of different minority groups, giving them information about different aspects of the law, what their rights are, what should and can happen. And so he rescinded 24 of them saying that they were unnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper, or at the very least inconvenient. And he blamed previous administrations for trying to impose new rules on the American people

without any public notice. Now, he's saying it's like we're putting new regulations on people. I want to read what some of these were because it's clear that these are not putting new rules on people. These are providing protections and guidance and information for people. That is what is so inconvenient. So as I said, there were 24. We're not going to break down all of them. But revocations 1 through 7 deal with the way children are treated when they are suspected or accused of breaking the law.

They generally require juveniles to not be housed with adult inmates. When juveniles are housed with adults under one of those limited exceptions, they must be separated from the sights and sounds of adult incarceration. They seek to provide alternatives to jail for youths who commit acts which due to their age are crimes, things like drinking, truancy, running away, and smoking. So that's the first seven. Does that sound to you like new rules on the American people? No, it sounds like protections for people who are going to be potentially like they drank or they run away. And so now you want to house them with rapists and murderers? Once you have them in custody, they no longer have the guidance or reference points to find out how to actually protect themselves within the law. These things aren't gone.

They're just not accessible to these folks more. That's a very big part of this. So it's making it sound like, oh, he's pulling back all these overreaching laws. No, no, he's just not giving them an opportunity to participate in the judicial system. He doesn't want you to know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about some more of them.

Number nine deals with research into weather schools disproportionately dole out punishments on the basis of race, national origin, native language, sex, or disability. It also deals with research into the role of school resource officers. Those guys, so many Republicans, are desperate to see pack and heat these days? So are schools punishing people maybe because they're non-white? I mean, we know that that happens. They were going to look into it. Are they going to now?

I don't know. These guidance documents are gone. Are school resources officers actually good? Are they worth the money? Do they actually stop acts of violence and things like that? Well, they're going to do research. are they going to now? I don't know. The guidance documents are gone. Numbers 10 through 11 involve people seeking a mortgage. Number 11 involves warning against so-called predatory home equity

loans. It warns people, especially those with poor credit and the elderly, to carefully review the terms of home improvement loans. So that's one of those burdensome rules that Obama and previous administrations wanted to put on people. Is there a reason potentially that we would advise people to look into the terms of their mortgages, do you remember what happened a decade ago and what might well happen in the next few years? And what became marginally more likely to happen now that we've gotten rid of that guidance document? Okay, number 12, take same at a George W. Bush era document prepared to alert all Americans about the unconstitutional nature of being discriminated against on the basis of their national origin. That is simply

advice to people that this is not an area you can be discriminated on. And it's now gone. Okay? And that's targeting directly people who could be discriminated against based off of their national origin. I wonder why they would want that gone now. That's weird. Numbers 13 and 14 deal with workers' rights for various classes of immigrants.

18 through 24 are aimed at various recipients of affirmative action policies. Of course we also know as of a few days ago, they're getting rid of the push that was instituted under Obama for race and national origin, things like that to be included in considerations for getting into schools. And so, by the way, the Department of Justice has already removed most of those items completely from its website. There is no historical record available on most of those anymore. Thankfully, some people, journalists already had copies of them.

That's the only reason we even know what they were. Jeff Sessions, the biggest, I guess, attorney, lawyer, or whatever in the country, law enforcement official, that's the term we use. Again, the job when you head up an agency in this administration is to take away the effectiveness of people's rights within that agency. So again, the only one that when I first read this, just the overall reach of it, the one thing that they, I'm not sure if it was allowed out or certain only news outlets that I read about it, only thing they point out was the refugees and assailies have the right to work aspect of it. They're like, okay, so the red meat to our people is, hey, so you know these people that keep coming across the border that we've deemed subhuman, they're trying to work and take your jobs. This is why they're coming.

MS-13 has your job at McDonald's. So then the thought is, okay, he's eliminating this aspect of them trying to come and assimilate into our country and take over and, I guess, infiltrate and kill us, whatever it is that they're saying. That's the one that got out. Not all the rest of these that actually affect everyone. Yeah. Well, not certain people. But generally affect everyone. Another one that point out to me, and I'm going to go real fast.

Target's people who don't understand English particularly well, but who may nevertheless occasionally find themselves in need of accessing the U.S. court system. Yep. So if there's a way that you can see what else is going on or maybe read your legal rights and maybe you speak another language better or another language altogether, period, you don't have that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, and by the way, so this is. is one night, one randy evening in the life of Jeff Sessions. And here's the thing. Like

thankfully, somebody saw that these documents had been removed and they had copies of them already. How do we know that this hasn't happened with a number of other documents? I mean, God, only, we've already talked about how they've stripped the government servers of information having to do with climate change. There was that, there was a database, just to give you an idea of how petty they can be. There's a database of puppy mills and the abuses that they had committed. that was used to help regulate these puppy mills in a number of different states. They wiped all of that information off the internet as well. The amount, there is no level that they will not stoop to to shred your rights, any sort of

protection that was coming your way from the government. I mean, obviously, as we talk about any number of times on a daily basis, for all too often under both Democratic and Republican presidents, they have been there to serve the wealthy corporations. But every once in a while, something good is done. And then you get a president like Donald Trump in that reverses all of that. Wipes out the environment regulations, wipes out any reforms in the criminal justice system. Whatever progress you got, you have been set at least back to the beginning, if not further.

Okay, with that, let's move to one more story. This is last but certainly not least. For some reason that I cannot understand, it is not massive news today that Donald Trump has pushed multiple times for an invasion of Venezuela. Now, that sounds crazy, but it has been confirmed, not just by U.S. government officials, but also by officials of other countries as well. He's done this. He's done this multiple times. He has done this despite the fact that many people around him, people who I disagree with

on foreign policy as well, have cautioned him that this is a horrific idea. But he is continuing to do it. Let's talk about how this began. It started at a meeting last fall where he was talking with AIDS about sanctions on Venezuela. And near the end of that meeting, he said this. Why do sanctions, why not just invade them? Now, at the time, H.R. McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire. But Trump pushed back.

Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, who was on the record on this, like the invasions of Panama and Granada in the 1980s. So referencing a couple of the many interventions that the U.S. has historically done in Latin and South America. America, we look back on those as horrific overreaches of American power that destabilize these countries. In many cases, they are the reason that we are experiencing the asylum crisis that we are today. Not Donald Trump, he sees that as a pattern for future diplomacy, which I call an invasion because that's what he was interested in. And by the way, so he had that one meeting and then they pushed back against him. The next day, August 11th, Trump alarmed

friends and foes alike with talk of a military option to remove the president of Venezuela from power. Shortly afterward, he raised the issue again with Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos. Two high-ranking Colombian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump confirmed that report in September. Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length than a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies who included the president of Colombia again. The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn't play well. But the first thing the president said at the dinner was, my staff told me not to say this. Trump then went around asking each leader whether they were sure they

didn't want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms that they were sure they did not want to invade Venezuela. The White House has been reached about these multiple times they've pushed for this invasion. They have not provided any sort of response or comment on this. But a national security council spokesman reiterated that the U.S. will consider all options at its disposal. And literally as of Last week, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told reporters, the U.S. will not stand idly by while Venezuela collapses. I saw one article on Fox News about this.

The AP wrote up an article, which is awesome. That has been spread on some sites. And other than that, the sound of silence, that the President of the United States has multiple times repeatedly pushed for an invasion of Venezuela. Silence. Now, why? What is it happening in Venezuela? I mean, again, they're talking about going down the path of a dictatorship under Maduro, right?

So what's the answer? That's what Trump and Pence are saying, that we're not going to allow them to have a dictatorship. So invasion does what for that? It completely upends everything. Of course, we're the United States. It's not like we're going to go into Venezuela and we're going to be beaten, right? Yeah. So the point is to then do what afterwards?

I mean, we already see the pattern for the knee-jerk policy. and agenda that mainly headed by Trump now does. And by the way, his people that a lot of times have bad policies and approaches to agendas have to tell him, hey, this one isn't going to make much sense, their guy. This one isn't really going to work out for you. And again, Rex Tillis was one of the guys who was trying to warn him against it. When he was in a secretary of state, it's probably the time when he called him an effing moron, if you don't remember that part, which, of course, he was angry about that and I think it was

part of the fallout. Anyway, it goes, there's no thought process as to how this would continue down after than invading. He goes, you got sure you don't want to invade? I'm going to talk to all these Latin American leaders and be like, hey, you want to invade? I know you want to invade, don't you know. If we invade, though, then you guys can just kind of say you're a part of it and then we'll invade and you'll be happy, right? And the people say, well, how does that work? What happens next? This is never the thought. The first thought is strong arming, approving your will and stomping on someone. And then afterwards, be like, oh, the dictatorship is over. Just like he's meeting on June 12th with Kim,

Kim Jong-un. Hey, it's all over. Hey, you guys, I tweeted about it. It's all over because I sat down and kiss this guy's... Yeah. Yeah, and look, there have been a number of times that Maduro and Trump have launched, you know, bombs each other, social media and speeches and all that. Ironically, in terms of their personal relationship, the only way I can see going forward that they will get along is if Maduro did somehow become a dictator, then Trump would love him, because that's the sort of person that

he likes to do with. That's not obviously the situation. It frustrates me to no end that no one is talking about this. They're still pushing for this. Mike Pence is going around trying to rally support for this. They might have been scared away by the lack of interest of our other Latin American allies, but this is very much on Donald Trump's mind. He was thinking about this, then he got on pardons for a little bit,

maybe he's thinking about some elections. I know how his mind works. He's going to circle back around to this. And for some reason, I don't know if it's because we have such a low bar for him or we don't put any stock in what he says, even though very often it ends up that he pursues these sorts of things, that no one is paying attention to this is absurd, and we could well be on the road to war with Venezuela, and no one is doing anything to ward it off. It is incredibly frustrating,

incredibly scary, and people in the media should know better and should do better. You can't else publicly push back on it. Who knows, Mike Pence might think this is insane, but Mike Pence, his whole, I think his whole agenda right now is to sit back and let Trump do whatever he wants in kiss his butt and do it that way. so it can continue to have some kind of rain of power. Yeah. It's all there is to it. Perhaps.

So no one's going to stop it because who cares? Why not? We're in America. It'll all work out in the end with no plan. It's what happened with the separation of families. This is why it's a simple-minded approach to everything that they do. It's okay. Just be real mean.

He said it before. He goes, the dilemma is either being really nice, which isn't the case. Be really nice to just getting walked all over or to be really mean and strong. And then get considered a bad. bad guy. No, there's another option. But he thinks that's his approach to everything and everything will just fall into place because we're America. We have over 900 days left of his presidency at this point. And that's assuming that things work out well the next time around. Complaint about the Iraq war and how much of a mess that is. But he thinks that another war, as long as he's the one who's

saying that isn't going to be a mess. I know that people wanted to live this fantasy that he was going to be a non-interventionist. I said multiple times, I quoted him before the election. He He said, I am the most militaristic person in the world. I know that's a juvenile thing to say. It's ridiculous. He said it, okay? Anyway, hopefully we won't invade Venezuela. That would be nice.

Maybe we can cruise through to the midterms without a war. Of course, if you want to raise your numbers, we know how the American public responds to military conflict. Is it impossible? Well, if we do, he'll get some points for it, for sure, from a lot of folks. But, hey, you know, at least he didn't go into that war with Venezuela. He's fighting socialists. I can see it now. I'm sure Tucker Carlson really rank him over the coals for starting an unnecessary conflict.

Anyway, unfortunately, that's all the time we have for the first hour. Thank you, J.R., for joining me. We are going to take a short break when we come back. Jules and Brooke are going to be joining us. We've got another hour for you. It's going to be awesome. You're not going to want to miss it. We'll see you then.

Thanks for watching. We're listening to this free version of the Young Turks podcast. You know that the full show is at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. If you become a member, you get the full show ad-free. We love you for watching or listening either way. There's going to be a new free podcast tomorrow. You can keep on doing that. But if you want to get to full show ad-free,

t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.