The Young Turks - Dunking on DeSantis

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Episode summary: Atlanta prosecutor sets timetable for charging decisions in Trump's investigation: Any indictments would be announced between July 11 and Sept 1. President warns of "MAGA extremist" attacks in reelection campaign launch video. Donald Trump’s brutal new ad reminds Ron DeSantis "how he got to where he is." Sacklers gave millions to institution that advises on opioid policy. The cop who killed Breonna Taylor is now a sheriff’s deputy. 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. Woo! It's some! Welcome to the New Yorker's Juky on the United States, Ukraine, with you guys, on a lovely Tuesday afternoon slash evening, we have lovely news for you guys. Do we? Do we? Some, some lovely news? Some. Some interesting. We have news. We definitely have news and it's

definitely interesting. So having said that, let us get to the aforementioned interesting news. Well, we've got some updates on one of Trump's multiple criminal investigations. So let's do it. Former President Donald Trump could be facing additional criminal indictments this summer. That's news coming from the Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, who has sent a letter to a top law enforcement official in the state of Georgia to essentially set a timeline in regard to when they can expect criminal charges if she files criminal charges against Trump. Now, this particular investigation has to do with Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. In her letter, Willis, again, the district attorney

in Fulton County, Georgia said that any charges would come during the court term that runs between July 1st and September, I'm sorry, July 11th and September 1st of this year. Her office has spent more than two years investigating whether Trump and his cronies illegally meddled in Georgia's 2020 election, Trump did lose that state to Biden. And after he did, he hit up the election officials in the state to basically demand that they find ballots that would overturn the results of the election from Biden to Trump. In fact, there's some evidence to that point. And here it is. I just want to find 11,000. 780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state, the people of Georgia

are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated. CBS News has confirmed that this was one of at least 18 attempted calls from the White House to Secretary Raffensberger. Now, Willis has a tough case ahead of her because there's just really a little. a lack of evidence here, you know? What is she going to do? How would she bring these charges considering the lack of evidence, Jank? Yeah. So this has a ton of political implications, obviously, right? And I think that there, this, there might be a tipping point issue in terms

of this beginning to finally hurt Donald Trump. We'll get to that in a second. In terms of the substance of it, look, I'm not of the same mind as a lot of other pundits. So I think that the Stormy Daniel case is actually the most open and shut. He definitely did it. His co-conspirator went to prison for three years. People say, oh, we just got him on, you know, hush money to a porn star. I don't care what it's about. Did he break the law?

Didn't he? And how much evidence do you have? On that case, we have overwhelming evidence. In this case, in Georgia, it should be a lot tougher to prove because you have to prove that he didn't just ask for votes to be found that were legitimately his, but votes to be found that we're not legitimately his and to rig the election, right? So it's super easy to get away with this crime by just being a little vague, right? The problem for Trump is he's an idiot and he can't be a little vague. He is. He is vague. Actually, the specificity in the number

of ballots he wanted Raffensberger to find is pretty incredible. No, guys, the only way then you could get convicted for this crime is to do exactly what Trump just did. It's amazing. He's like, I need 11,780 votes. No, you're supposed to say, hey, are you sure the recount is right, right? Now first of all, you're not supposed to do any of that. You're supposed to accept the Democratic elections as they actually are, not as you wish them to be, right? But by the way, asking Georgia election officials or any state officials, are you sure?

I have a legal right to recount, a hand recount, no problem. There's no, nothing wrong with that. Zero, right? And in fact, Georgia did several of those recounts, including a hand recount. So Trump asking for those is not remotely illegal, right? But when after all that is done, he calls and says, give me 11,780 votes, one more than I need to win, and then he says, why don't you recalculate? Instead of saying, hey, are you sure that you got the count right? Are you sure that you don't have any missing ballots?

He's being as brazenly illegal as he could possibly be. You know how he likes to say, I had a perfect call. You know, and this first impeachment, I had a perfect call with the leader of Ukraine. I mean, this kind of was a perfect call in the opposite direction. Yeah, it's a perfect call for the prosecution. Exactly. Right. So obviously I was being sarcastic when I noted that there was a lack of evidence.

There's clearly some pretty significant evidence. you just heard it. Now, let's rewind a little bit to kind of give you the background on this investigation and this case. Because prior to the possibility of criminal indictments being brought forth to a jury, a grand jury, there was a special jury involved, right? So what happened with this special jury? Special jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its four women strongly hinted in an interview with the New York Times in February that Trump was among them. So I actually went back to read that piece from back in February by the New York Times to see what the actual statement

was. The four women that they're referring to as Emily Coors asked whether the jurors had recommended indicting Trump. Coors would not answer directly, but said, you're not going to be shocked, it's not rocket science. It's not going to be some giant plot twist. You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I'm trying very hard to say that delicately. So that was the provocative statement that she gave to the Times back in February. Real quick before I go to you, Jank, but keep in mind that ultimately it is up to Fannie Willis, the prosecutor, to make the decision as to who gets charged, what the charges might be. And she will bring those charges to a grand jury to move forward with this case if she chooses to.

But it does seem as though she intends to move forward with this case. So Anna's giving you the facts. I give you the analysis. Two things. Number one, yeah, they're definitely indicting Trump. Number two, meaning that he's among the 12. And number two, they're definitely going to go forward with it. And so why do I say that? Especially given that there's been a lot of talk about Trump indictments and it's taken forever and ever and ever.

And most of the time it's just a lot of baloney. just Democrats trying to get grab headlines. In this case, in her letter, she talks over and over again about the need for security. Yes. They don't need security for 11 other bozos, okay? So it's like, oh my God, they have indicted Jim Jablowski who was helping Trump at the local level. That guy's under a bus already, right? He's under a tank, Trump's not gonna give him a dime, no one cares, his voters don't care.

No, the only reason you need that kind of massive security is because Trump is among the names and you're definitely going to end up. item. Okay. Right. And her letter, just to give you even more context, was sent to Sheriff Patrick Labat. I actually want to read excerpts from the letter to kind of buttress what Jank is saying here in regard to the calls for additional security when these indictments are announced. She writes, quote, in the near future, I will announce charging decisions resulting from the investigation of my office has been conducting into possible criminal interference in the administration of Georgia's 2020 general election. I am provided. This letter to bring to your attention the need for heightened security and preparedness

in coming months due to this pending announcement. Yes, they're definitely entitled to. By the way, she has some members of her staff where bulletproof vests. I know, yeah. Which is crazy. It is, but on the other hand, right wingers are violent. And so- No, no, I'm not saying it's crazy that she's having them wear the vest.

It's crazy that we live in this era where political violence has become normalized. Yeah, it's so normal that we have to prepare for it ahead of time, et cetera. All right, so let's get to the beef, which is how does this affect the election in politics and stuff? So look, I always believe that first when everybody said after the midterms Trump is done, you saw us here say that's not remotely true. Trump not only still has a great chance, but he waivers from a 50-50 election to being the overwhelming favorite. He was never, ever the underdog. So there was too much hype about the demise of Donald Trump that was never true now they're in reverse and they say oh my god he got indicted that only helps him in the polling it's over Trump's definitely going to be the candidate that's also not true and so one indictments one thing but three or four of them it starts to pile up and people get tired right even like hardcore MAGA never gets tired but but the rest of the Republican electorate as much as you can make a distinction between hardcore MAGA and 93% of Republicans that voted for Trump last time. So when this one comes in, as it looks like it's definitely going to come in, and probably at least a third one comes in, I think that Republican voters are going to start to get really worried, right?

And by the way, a huge point in my favor in that kind of prediction or whatever you want to call it is that after he got the initial bump from the first indictment, in the last couple of weeks, he's lost 10 points. So it went up and then now it's coming back down. So the problem that, the thing is, he needs someone who's really good at this to knock his ass out in the midst of all of these legal troubles, et cetera. Not necessarily now, but as the indictments pile up. Well, I don't know that we got that guys. You'll see him later in the show, DeSantis is weak. So, and Trump is pummeling him. Trump is pummeling him and has now put out one of the most vicious.

and I would argue effective ads against DeSantis. I can't wait to show that to you guys and talk about that in more detail. But I think, I don't know, my prediction on this is a little different, Jenk. I think that Trump is inevitably going to win the Republican nomination. And when it really comes down to it, the election will be decided by independent voters. So is this going to turn independent voters off? are they willing to overlook some of Biden's flaws and vote for him considering all the chaos that comes along with Trump? That's the real question. And we'll see how it plays out.

Yeah. Look, this election could be the most boring and worst election of our lifetimes as it's a Biden and Trump rematch. Oh, nobody in the, literally nobody in the country wants that except hardcore MAGA and hardcore establishment knuckleheads Democrats in D.C. But those are like 14 guys. Right, the rest of the Democratic Party doesn't want it either. But yeah, it certainly could be that, or you got wild cards galore. I mean, this guy, if he's indicted three, four times, really he's gonna run in the midst of all those court cases. Remember, Trump might make a deal and to get out of the race, but to get rescued from

all these indictments. So who knows, right? And then on the Democratic side, Biden's gonna make it all the way to the election? I don't know. Well, now would be a great time to talk about that because Biden decided to launch his reelection campaign today. I said we're in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are. The question we're facing is whether in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.

I know what I want the answer to be, and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent. That's why I'm running for re-election. President Joe Biden has officially announced his re-election bid, and he did so by putting out a three-minute-long announcement video that urges Americans to get together and finish the job. The video was meant to be inspiring, but also took some jabs at Republicans and what they've done to roll back some of the freedoms that Americans were able to enjoy previously. So let's go to that, and then we'll discuss. Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans.

There's nothing more important, nothing more sacred. That's been the work of my first turn, to fight for our democracy. This shouldn't be a red of fruition. To protect our rights, to make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally and that everyone is given a fair shot at making it. But you know, around the country, Maggiore extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock. Rock freedoms, cutting social security that you paid for your entire life while cutting taxes from the very wealthy, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books

and telling people who they can love. And that was about as harsh as Biden was in his announcement video. I think that it was right for him to point to all these different issues that are unpopular among GOP politicians. Certainly the rollback of reproductive rights helped the Democratic Party during the 2022 midterms. But I have to also be honest, I watched that announcement video immediately after watching Trump's latest attack ad against Ron DeSantis. And I wish I hadn't done that because it left me wanting more from Biden. Yeah, no, that's funny because I did it in a reverse order.

I'm going to be much more harsh. That ad sucked. It was three minutes and I nearly dozed off in the middle. Like it felt like three hours. It was just platitude after platitude of I'm for freedom and America is great. There was a lot about individual freedom, which it's so interesting to hear the Democratic Party take on the jargon, the rhetoric that we typically would have heard from the Republican Party back in the day. Like this emphasis on individual freedom. No, I know why. Because that Biden's whole career has been copying Republicans. That's all he ever does. He just copies Republicans and say, but I'm less vicious, okay?

It's not a red issue, it's not a blue issue. What's their talking points? I mean, by the end, he's gonna be like, make America spectacular again. Okay, come on dude, come on, come up with something original. Like in that ad, he did everything but puppies are cute. It was so boring. That 15 seconds you saw of him attacking MAGA extremists, that That's it. That's the only part that was interesting in the ad. The other two minutes

of 45 seconds are nothing, is cotton balls. And that's Joe Biden. He's, he's a terrible candidate, terrible. So after he made his announcement, the Republican National Committee put out their response video. It's getting a lot of attention because it's allegedly generated 100% by AI, which is really scary because it doesn't seem like. it's generated by AI, it's actually pretty well done. And as you can imagine, I mean, it's coming from the Republican National Committee. It's pretty vicious. Let's watch. We can now call the 2024 presidential race for Joe Biden. Not fellow America. This morning and in boldly China invades Taiwan. Financial markets are in freefall

as 500 regional banks have shuttered their doors. Border agents were overrun by a surge of 80,000 legal yesterday evening. Officials closed the city of San Francisco this morning, citing the escalating crime and fentanyl crisis. Who's in charge here? It feels like the train is coming off the track. Now notice how that response video to Biden's reelection announcement talks about the future if Biden gets elected and didn't really attack Biden on the four years, or not the four years,

but the amount of time he's been in office already, like what he has done in office already. I would venture to say that if they had things to attack him on, then they would have used that. Instead, they just made things up that could happen in the future if he gets reelected. No, that ad sucked. Trump's ads against DeSantis are a thousand times better. Okay, so the reason why that ad sucked is, there's a great number of reasons. Number one, this is exactly the ads they ran against Biden last time, and they lost on those ads. Second of all, they said all this stuff was already going to happen in this first term, but it didn't. So it really falls flat. So for the extreme anger crowd, they're going to love this, right? They're

like, oh my God, it's imminent collapse of society. They love that. They got their can tuna ready. They got all their ammunition ready. They got, they bought gold. They're ready, right? But it hasn't happened. It's not going to happen. Maybe they're still looking for the FEMA camps that Obama set up. I mean, look, right? So, but outside of that crowd, this is going to feel stupid and a retread and things that didn't happen and looks ridiculous. And in the beginning, they're like, imagine if Biden is reelected. Wait, so you agree? that he was elected. That's right.

And if it's Trump, are we really going to run a whole campaign where Trump pretends that he won last time? That's crazy, right? So I mean, we all know that like the only reason why Biden has any chance of winning is because Trump might be the nominee on the other side. And he's literally the only politician in the country less popular than Joe Biden. Biden's at 38%. Trump's at 34%.

Which is why the Democratic Party is elated. things seem to be shaping up as a rematch between Biden and Trump. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that, because look, my concern is when Democrats get a little too cocky. And it does appear to be the case here, similar to how they were in 2016. Don't take this situation for granted. Don't underestimate your opponent. And I see a little bit of that happening now, according to reporting from Politico. So Politico spoke to a number of Democrats. And some, to be fair, are skeptical at the cockiness. But I'll start with the Democrats who think this is great. This is a win for Biden. Democrats aren't blind to his stubbornly low

approval ratings. But they also know Trump's polarizing profile, including an indictment, his fixation on the 2020 election, and polarizing profile both within his own party and among independence could be their best matchup in 2024. So that's the general gist of how the establishment Democratic Party is feeling about this situation. Let's go to Debbie Stabenow, who of course is a Democratic senator. She's retiring, but Stabenow thinks this is the best possible outcome, meaning a matchup between Trump and Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Trump's obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country, but I'm I'm confident that President Biden would beat him politically for us, it's helpful if Trump

is front and center. Broadly, she says, the public rejects him. So look, I agree that this is ultimately gonna come down to the independent voters and Trump does rub people the wrong way. But he is anti-establishment, which independent voters love. Also, Trump has shown that he is planning to go back to what made him so popular in 2016, which is this hyper focus on faux populism, foe economic populism. Yeah.

He didn't do much of that in 2020. That's right. And he's talking nonstop about corruption. Now, it's self-serving, and he's claiming that his arrest are corruption, but American people hate corruption and no other politicians allowed to talk about it because the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and most importantly, corporate media will rip their face off if they mention the thing that we all know exists, which is massive corruption in Washington, right?

The reporters will not let you report on that if their life's depended on it. There's no way. The first person who talks about corruption, they smear job after smear job after. But Trump doesn't care. He's been smeared 2,000 times. He's just going to keep saying the word corrupt, and that's going to resonate. Resonate. So look, do you want to talk about playing with fire and being overconfident?

You know what Trump's approval rating was on election day in 2016, the day that he won? It was 36%. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, I went back and checked because I was writing it in my book, and I went back and found the sources, 36%. Well, you went back and looked at that. I actually wanted to go back to find the numbers in regard to the key battleground states where Biden beat Trump, because it was really down to three key battleground states.

But it's important to understand that and know that, because when it comes to the electoral college, Biden barely won, barely. Okay, so let me give you the actual details on that. Let's go to the last graphic here. The tight races in the trio of states, and the trio includes Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin had a big electoral impact, as NPR's Domenico Montanaro has put it. Just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, separate Biden and Trump from a tie in the electoral college, okay? So I give you that because those numbers

are razor thin in these key battleground states in 2020. And Trump had the stink of the coronavirus pandemic on him. He did not campaign on the economic populism that he tapped into in 2016. He seems far more aware and willing to tap back into that for 2023. I'm just saying that I hope Democrats didn't learn all the wrong lessons from the midterm elections. I think that they've become a little overconfident after that. 100%. I'll go way further. So when in political they say, oh, now the Democrats are not blind to Joe Biden's problems.

No, they are. They're definitely blind to it. When you tell him that people that he polls a 38%, they're like, no, but he got a lot accomplished. First of all, that's not true. But even if it were true, it doesn't matter. What matters is do people like him or don't they like him? because we're about to go into a popularity contest called an election.

So you know that, so Biden won by that razor thin margin because of younger voters. They showed up 11% more than they did in 2016 and made all of the difference. It's the only reason Biden won. You know what Biden's popularity is among younger voters now? Now remember, younger voters are very progressive. And Joe Biden is apparently the second coming of FDR according to Democrats, right? He's pulling a 25% among young voters. He's got to be at like 75% among young voters.

He's at 25%. It's not like that they like Trump, but they really have no interest in Joe Biden. Another thing to keep in mind, though, is remember, the DNC is intentionally suppressing primary challengers by refusing to hold any primary debates. And when you look at how young people on TikTok feel toward Marianne Williamson, I think the DNC is actually hurting Biden by making it clear that they're trying to suppress primary challengers like Marianne Williamson, who seems to be popular with young voters. By the way, so we're equal opportunity truth tellers.

Trump pulled a bitch move today and he's like, I look at a debate, okay? Which is so stupid. That's so dumb. Are you kidding me? Trump, you'd rip to Santas's face off in a debate. But okay, good, don't debate, whatever, okay? I don't want Trump to and I hate Trump. So I'm honest about our opinions, but I'm telling, and number one reason I'm worried about Biden is

because I think he's gonna lose, right? But whenever you say it on TV or in the press at all, the swarm of locus of DNC consultants attack. And they're like, it's my only one who could win. You guys, you're playing with fire, you're playing with all of our lives, you're playing with democracy. He won a 36% last time around. He could easily be a 36% and win this time around.

You guys almost blew it the last time. You definitely blew it the time before. It's the same clowns. And now we're going to have two guys that are above 76 years old. They're both going to be hiding in their basements, right? Neither one is going to debate. This is the worst election ever. No one wants either one of the candidates are democracies and shambles.

And they force the two, literally, the two most unpopular politicians in the country as are only two choices. It's disgusting. Pretty devastating. And I agree with that analysis, 100%. We got to take a break. When we come back, I gotta be honest, probably one of the most vicious Trump ads, this time attacking DeSantis, of course, you don't want to miss it. We've got that and more coming up. All right, back on TYT. I just read a whole bunch of names during the social media break of people who just joined.

We appreciate it, guys. You can do likewise at t.com slash join. But I want to read from one of our YouTube members, Anthony McLendon wrote, and good evening, guys. I've been a long supporter of hashtag Anna was Right due to our amazing abilities through people and their BS here, here. Thank you. Now that Tucker departed Fox in exactly the way he predicted, hashtag Jenk was right.

Yep. No, we, we, I guess we're in the prediction business because we predict all the time and it turns out that we make pretty good predictions. Yeah, look man, like with the psychics, if we could just turn that a little bit towards the stock market, we might finally have some money for the left wing. Okay, the problem is all of our predictions are in politics. So then becoming right is actually depressing because we always predict things that are not going to go well and they never go well and we're right, right? True. Although, although Tucker leaving, that went well. Well, you did make one giant, terrible prediction that never came to me about Trump.

Yeah. Hold on, I'm going to fix that one. Okay, but you already lost it. I know, I know. But let's see, I always have plans. All right, okay. All right, let's go forward. All right, you guys, buckle up.

Brace for Impact. This is my personal favorite story of the day because of how much fun it is. Let's do it. Brondis Santos was struggling big time in his primary race for governor of Florida. Polls revealed DeSantis was failing so bad. He was losing by a staggering 17 points. Then DeSantis was saved by the endorsement of President Trump. The PAC for Donald Trump has put out one of the most vicious political ads I have ever encountered.

Of course, it's against Ron DeSantis. That has been Trump's focus for months now. And wait till you hear how much money. Trump's pack is spending on hidden DeSantis where it hurts. But before we do that, let's watch a little more of that viciousness. Trump's support was so powerful. Just two days after the endorsement, DeSantis took a commanding lead, and it propelled him to being elected governor.

I'd like to thank our president for standing by me when it wasn't necessarily the smart thing to do. You're welcome, Ron. Unfortunately, instead of being grateful, DeSantis. is now attacking the very man who saved his career. Isn't it time DeSantis remembers how he got to where he is? Make America great again. Big League. So good. Build the wall. Then Mr. Trump said, you're fired. I love that part. Truth is, there's only one person who can make America great again. Murder. Yeah. 1-8-7. That's what that was.

Yeah, 187 on a Florida governor. So this is what Trump's good at. And so this is PAC, and it's not Trump directing it. But the fish in this case does the right things politically from the head down. Because Trump gives them a green light. Because these super PACs are all liars, right? They say, oh, we don't coordinate. DeSantis isn't in the race yet, so he hasn't unleashed this pack.

And they haven't spent any money attacking Donald Trump. That's because DeSantis told him not to, because he's not even sure he's going to get in the race. He hasn't even announced yet. I know. He hasn't even announced yet, and Trump's like, no, I'm going to murder you anyway. Yeah, no, no, that's right. Yeah. And Trump gave the green line to his pack, obviously, to go behead Ron DeSantis.

Yeah. He said, I want that meatball on a platter, okay, and they are. Muhammad bin Salman's jealous. Well, wow, okay, so we say it's a metaphor, it's a matter for, yeah. Okay, but guys, all these ads are devastating. These ads are amazing and look, it leads me to think two things. One, Biden's not going to run ads like this. Biden, we just showed you earlier in the show, Biden's three-minute ad,

we nearly fell asleep in the middle of it. Biden's going to run ads about my Republican friends. I love them so much. I want them to be wonderful and strong and terrific. Oh, you're voting for them? Damn it, right? So Trump's going to rip Biden's head off this time around. So that's one issue, right?

I don't know if DeSantis is going to get in this race, man. I mean, this is brutal. And the ad, the other part of it is that it's true. That is true. Okay, DeSantis was dead in the water. Trump did rescue him. And Trump, see, he has no, there are no rules. He has no constraints.

So he looks like a mob boss in that ad. I guarantee you Democratic consultants would be like, oh, no, that looks really bad. You look like you're intimidating him and you're leering over me. It looks like you're a mob bus. And Trump would say, God damn right, I do. And his voters love that. I love that you're thinking about this in the context of Trump versus Biden, which I think is the right way to think of it, because that's what we're thinking about moving forward.

But as I watch this Trump out against DeSantis, I can't help but feel a gigantic sense of envy. because I wish we had progressive candidates that were willing to use this type of political attacks and ads against corporate Democrats that they run against. Or even Republicans. Or Republicans. Yeah, 100%. No, I know, look, man, Rebellion Pack just doesn't have enough money. Go to RebellionPact.com because we'll run ads like this all day long. But we need more resource to make that happen.

But look, to Anna's point, so the deed. see people look at this and go, oh my God, you guys are helping Donald Trump by saying his ads are good. And if you just shut up and we all pretend Biden's ads are good, he'll win. Yeah, except we're not. That's not how it works. We're not in the puppet business. Yeah, so there's two massive problems with that. It's not even true. That's what all of media did for Hillary Clinton and she didn't win. So this whole idea of, oh, we're just going to brainwash everybody into thinking that these corporate Democrats are really for the American people, okay? It just doesn't work. I thought she didn't win because of Susan Sarandon.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. But the second more important reason is, no, our job is to be honest with you guys, okay? And it doesn't help to be dishonest. So, no, those are killer ads. They are, they are. And DeSantis is almost like, he's lost 20 points, almost 30 points in some polls before we even put his shoes on. And Trump, when it comes to politics, is a killer. Now Trump is also willing to spend to spend a considerable amount of money on these attack ads. where all that fundraising went to, right? The fundraising where he claimed to be trying to raise the resources necessary to fight

the results of the 2020 election, he didn't actually spend that money on what he claimed he was going to spend it on. Looks like he's spending it on this, because since April, the Super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc. has been launching a $1.5 million ad campaign every week, every week, every week, And Ron DeSantis hasn't even announced yet. Yeah, so I mean, it's such a classic Trump thing too, a stop to steal, I'm really worried about it. Oh my God, those Patriots on January 6th, we need to protect them. Doesn't send them a dime.

He hoards all the money for himself. Of course, of course he does. And now he's spending it fighting another Republican. It's insane. Okay, okay, but DeSantis also keeps stepping in it. So recently he was in Japan and he was asked about Donald Trump and the election. And his response was so awkward. I don't know what is going on with this guy. I mean, I guess the higher they rise, the harder they fall. And I think we're watching him,

witnessing him fall as we speak. Here's an example of that. Governor, I'll show you falling behind a Trump. Any thoughts on that? I'm not a candidate. So we'll see if and when that changes. But what happened with that face? though. Yeah, what happened with that head? In case you missed it, there it is. It's going to be all right. Act normal. Yeah, I know. He's so nervous. The race hasn't even... On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only did he's July 18th. Started and he's like nervous. Forget these. Forget these pictures. Those are

Those pictures are funny, but the head movement was my favorite part. I rewatch it like three times. I'm like, is this real or does somebody AI this thing? Because he's like, ha ha, I'm not a candidate yet. Look at him. He's so uncomfortable. He's so uncomfortable. Oh, Jesus.

Now he had to sit down interview with Sean Hannity as well, and he was asked about Trump's attacks. Let's take a look at his answer. The last time I interviewed President Trump, I was there in 2018, and I always always, saw the two of you as friends. And I said to him, a very simple question I asked him. I said, what happened? And I think it's only fair to ask you the same question. What do you think happened? You know, I enjoyed supporting him when he was president. We worked really hard for his reelection in Florida. And I always had a good relationship with him. And then once the midterm election happened, he started taking shots at me. I didn't really do anything to do it

except do a good job, but that's fine. I mean, Sean, you know, when you're making things happen, you take incoming from a variety of targets. So that's just the nature of the business. All right, so obviously he was not doing a sit-down interview. He was still in Tokyo as Hannity was interviewing him. I don't know why DeSantis's team put him directly in front of the sun for the interview, but that was awkward. I missed what he said, though. I think we need to watch it one more time with some special effects to enhance the experience. What do you think happened? You know, I enjoyed supporting him when he was president. We worked really hard for his reelection in Florida. And I always had a good relationship with

them. And then once the midterm election happened, he started taking shots at me. I didn't really do anything to do it except do a good job. Poor Ronnie. Yeah. Look, politicians, this is why Trump wins. Politicians don't know how to be real people. Such an easy answer. Why don't you say, here's what happened. It looks like we're going to run against each other in the upcoming Republican primary, so he started attacking me. And by the way, so DeSantis one doesn't want to say he's running yet. So it's still super easy to do it. Apparently Trump thinks I'm going to run against him and he's worried about it. So he started attacking me and no one else. I guess that's because I'm, he thinks I'm the leading candidate.

I haven't even made up my mind yet. Hey, Donnie, bring it down, okay? So, and look, if you're scared, maybe you should, you know, run ads against Democrats. Oh, you're more scared of me than you are of Democrats because you think I could beat you. But okay, hey, whatever. Just be light, man. Just answer real way instead of like doing the, I don't know what happened. I didn't do anything to him.

I swear I didn't do anything to him. The final thing that I want to say about all of this is considering how much stronger Trump appears in comparison to Ron DeSantis, considering how scared Ron DeSantis appears to be, it is puzzling to me that Trump does not want to debate in the Republican primaries. So that's a new story. He says he doesn't want to do the debates. Does he not realize that as much as I hate to admit this, that's where he tends to perform pretty well. Especially in Republican primaries.

So when he got to the general election with Biden, he clowned himself because he's trying, he doesn't, he can't, he has no brakes in the car. So he was like swerving out of control and it turned off independent voters and it turned off a lot of voters and drove him to Biden. But when he's in a Republican primary and he has no brakes in the car, the Republican voters love it. when he's smashing into everyone telling him his penis size and calling them like little Marco and, you know, low energy jab. Lion Ted. Lying Ted, his wife is ugly, his dad's a killer, okay, the Republicans eat that stuff up. Yeah.

Yeah, but he's, I'd be surprised if he didn't debate, because I think what he's listening to now is consultants telling him, no, you have like a 20 to 30 point lead, people would that big elite, don't debate. They try to run away from debates. And that's what Biden's trying to do. He's like, oh, no, I'm above it. I'm the present. You're worried about being able to put two sentences together in a debate. Let's keep it real as to why the DNC is trying to end debates. But great, we have two guys who are right now by far leading in the race to become the Republican Democratic nominees. And they both don't want to debate. They both have no interest in the democratic process. They both want to run their campaigns from a basement. But one guy is surrounded

by pillows and the other one's got some serious weapons. And you just saw him unleash one of those, right? So Trump is launching nukes from his basement and Biden's launching pillows. But not my pillows. Yeah, no, definitely not those. And Ron, so far, Ron DeSantis is launching nothing. So meatball, get in the game. All right. When we come Back from the break, an explosive story that I wish got a lot more attention, how the Sackler family basically corrupted an incredibly important non-governmental organization that provides advisement on incredibly important policies that have to do with pharmaceutical drugs. And later in the show, you always talk about a cat fight. Forget DeSantis and Trump. Wait

until you see Stephen Crowder and Candace Owens. Man, that's some base ripping. So, all right, we got that in a little bit. Stay right here. Back on TYIT, Jay, Anna. And look at this chef rock star gift to 10 Young Dirk's memberships on YouTube. Thank you. We're really appreciated.

Caster's got more news. All right. Well, this story is quite a doozy. The Sackler family, meaning the family behind the largest opioid scandal, has funneled tens of millions of dollars to a non-governmental organization that actually advises both the White House and Congress on drug-related policy. And the institution has failed to disclose. this very clear conflict of interest. Now, the piece reported by the New York Times is an

explosive one, an incredibly important one that shows how these governmental and non-governmental organizations take money from certain special interests that then leads to the publication of studies that misinforms the policymakers at hand. And that is exactly what happened here with what the Sacklers did, according to the reporting from the New York Times. So I'm going to read some of the relevant excerpts, but it's really important that you guys actually read the piece for yourselves. There are so many tidbits in there that we just don't have time to get into. But here is the gist of the story.

According to Christina Jewett at the Times, the National Academies have kept quiet about their decision to accept roughly $19 million in donations from members of the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the drug OxyContin, and it's notorious for fueling the opioid epidemic. So $19 million is no joke. And the donations to the National Academies began in the year 2000. By the time we hit 2017, they had already donated millions of So a $14 million donation was actually made in 2008 by Dr. Raymond Sackler and his wife, Beverly Sackler. They did this through their foundation. And the National Academies continues to advise the government on drug policy, including painkillers.

So unlike the World Health Organization, the Times writes, which was accused of being manipulated by Purdue and later retracted to opioid. policy reports, the National Academies has not conducted a public review to determine if the Sackler donations influenced its policymaking, despite issuing two major reports that influenced national opioid policy. And by the way, we're going to get into one of these reports, which was just rife with misinformation, unfortunately misinformed policymakers and led to additional prescriptions of these painkillers. One of those reports released in 2011 and now largely discredited claimed that 100 million Americans suffered from chronic pain, an estimate that proved to be highly inflated. I'm gonna get to the details on that report in just a moment, but understand

how this works. Sackler family provides massive donations to the national academies. The national Academies then puts out reports indicating that far more Americans are struggling with pain related issues, chronic pain than is actually happening in reality. And that report leads policymakers to agree to increasing or allowing for the increase of opioid related prescriptions. And as we know, opioid deaths in this country skyrocketed, addiction to opioids and And then later heroin skyrocketed. I mean, we're still grappling with this epidemic as we speak. And the details are just so incredibly damning.

Before we get to it, Jank, what are your thoughts so far? Yeah, so the bottom line is actually really easy to understand. They give tens of millions of dollars to this organization. And then this organization puts out a paper saying that 100 million, 42% of the countries in chronic pain. That's an absurd number, no doctor believes that number that's preposterous. They should have laughed them out of the room instantly in question, hey, where's your funding coming from? Because that number makes no sense at all.

And it turns out it's not just Purdue, one of the guys who wrote the report, had his own company that was in the pain medication business. It's like the most biased report you could imagine. And the real number, by the way, according to doctors, is 7 to 21%. So I believe 7% makes sense in that ballpark. I'll trust the real doctors, right? But guys, this is how they buy off every part of our government, even the non-governmental organizations that then inform government decisions. And so they buy everything because as long as the government allows them to sell heroin,

they're going to make so much money. By the other, government websites literally say that OxyContin and heroin are in the same category of drugs. And that's, of course, why people got hooked on it. And then they went to heroin afterwards because, It was cheaper, et cetera. And it was after the government realized that there was an opioid epidemic. So they started to restrict the prescription of the drug. But at that point, so many Americans were hooked that they ended up turning to the black

market for heroin, which yes, was also cheaper and easier to obtain. Now, I wanted to give you those specific details. So Jank mentioned panelists within the National Academies who had their own organization. So Dr. Richard Payne is a perfect example. He's with the American Pain Society Physicians Group. That group took $900,000 from the Sackler family. Another example, another panelist with the National Academies was Myra Christopher. And Myra Christopher was actually swapping emails back in 2007 with Purdue staff without talking

points to respond to news broadcasts that were critical of opioids. So at the time of that 2011 report that overestimated, significantly overestimated how many Americans were dealing with chronic pain, Christopher was the president of the Center for Practical Bioethics, which was a nonprofit based in Kansas City, Missouri. Purdue gave that organization $934,770. Okay. So let's get to the 2011 report and how that came to fruition. Because Purdue Pharma, or a representative, I should say, for the National Academy's claims, this money that we took from the Sackler family had nothing to do with our decisions, okay? So Megan Lowry is her name, a spokeswoman for the National Academy said in a statement that the Sackler donations were

never used to support any advisory activities on the use of opioids or on efforts to counter the opioid crisis. However, take a look at this timeline of events and you can decide for yourselves. By the way, I think that these types of donation should be completely outlawed. The National Academies receive 70% of its funding from the federal government. They should not be allowed to take additional funding from, you know, families that own pharmaceutical companies and have, you know, a financial interest in being drug pushers. But nonetheless, the pain care forum, which is a group co-founded by Bert Rosen, the Purdue lobbyist, pushed for legislation introduced in 2007 and 2009 that included

calling for a National Academy's report to increase the recognition of pain as a significant public health problem. Now soon after the measure passed in 2010, Rosen convened the pain care forum at a 10 p.m., meaning 10 o'clock at night gathering, to focus on meetings with the Institute of Medicine, the former name for the National Academy of Medicine and for membership on IOM committee, meaning the Institute of Medicine committee. At the same time, the National Academies was forming the committee that would produce its 2011 opioids report, which included the estimate that about 100 million or 42% of American adults were in pain, a figure that researchers later found to be significantly inflated.

And I should note in reference to what Jank mentioned earlier, later the CDC did its own study into this. And they're like, no, not 41%. The number is actually closer to 7 to 21%. Yeah, so look, this is so absurd because that Dr. Payne that Anna mentioned is a perfect example. First of all, let's note how funny it is that his name is Dr. Payne. Yeah, I know. Okay, it's P-A-Y-N-E, but it is pronounced pain. And he does work at the pain center, but that's P-A-I-N, as in the actual pain. Okay, so he's getting money, his organizations are getting money from both sides, right?

You've got the organization we're talking about here. then you've got his pain institute, et cetera, and they're shoveling money towards the sky. And lo and behold, he says, wow, pain is a giant problem in America that could probably be fixed by this exact drug. Okay, and, and you know, is it addicting? Well, I wouldn't worry about that. In another study that they pay, that the SACLIS paid for, they concluded that people weren't really getting addicted to Oxy. It was, quote, a pseudo addiction. Right.

Okay, okay. So, but unfortunately, because mainstream media in this country has said that corporations giving money to politicians and government officials is perfectly normal and acceptable and that we shouldn't be concerned about it, everybody does it in such brazen ways. So now after all those people died, now hundreds of thousands of people over all those years, now the New York Times are it's a good story about, hey, maybe they should have. had taken the money a decade ago and maybe we should have been more vigilant, et cetera. I appreciate the story and it's a good piece of journalism. It is. It's an excellent piece. Yeah, and from time to time, we tell you all the time, New York Times and other mainstream media, especially print outlets, do really good investigative pieces, right? But they'll forget about it. And tomorrow they'll be telling you that when Ted Cruz or Nancy Pelosi takes tens of millions

of dollars from another drug company that, no, it doesn't affect them at all. Well, it's interesting because they seem to report stories like this as if it's in a vacuum when this type of corruption has really been indicative of our political system. It's now ingrained, baked into our political system. Every facet of our political system, whether we're talking about Congress, whether we're talking about the FDA, whether we're talking about, in this case, non-governmental organizations that advise on drug policy. And so the other point, the final point that I want to make about this is, you know, oftentimes you will hear from Democratic politicians, repeat that we believe in science. Science, science, science, we believe in science. But we also know that with the corruption that is allowed into these scientific studies, I mean, you have the Koch brothers who funded all sorts of nonsense junk science that minimize the impact of the climate emergency.

They would fund entire science departments on university campuses to essentially sway the research that those campuses were doing on climate change. I give you that example, in addition to this example, to say that the science can be manipulated when corruption is introduced into the process. And that is what we're seeing here. And it's a scary world to live in when you don't know what to trust. 100%. And look, guys, there's good people that work at that organization. There's good doctors, scientists, et cetera. And in fact, when a couple of the preeminent scientists on the governing council organization found out that they had taken money from the sectors before writing that report, they had no idea, even though they were on the governing council.

And that's part of how you, like, media and political figures, et cetera, they all are so hush, hush about the corruption and normalizes so much that even some people in their own organizations don't realize they're doing it. And when they found out, they were super pissed. So then they ask, hey, is there any way that we can pull that report back, right? And one of the people that are leading the organization says the classic Obama line, we don't look backwards, we look forwards. It's so pathetic. Yeah, well, that's if you committed crimes in the past, that's why you don't look backwards. Obama did that on behalf of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

And in this case, they're doing it on their own behalf. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's a perfectly, had been a perfectly good organization for a long time. can be, but Anna's right. The minute you start taking that corporate money, it's good night, Irene. And by the way, I would argue the same thing happened to NPR. The minute they started taking new corporate money, all of a sudden, all the progressives are bad, corporate status quo is awesome, et cetera. And then now corruption has become so standard that it's no longer the exception. It's the rule. Yeah. So that's why it's like when we criticize reporters,

they feel like the fish that is being asked, how's the water? They're like, what water? Because they swim in corruption so much. They don't even see it anymore. I mean, look, these guys selling in essence heroin in suits is basically like the Mexican drug cartels coming in and going, hey, National Academy of Medicine, et cetera, why don't I give you guys $19 million? And then you write a report about how great the drug cartels are.

Yeah, listen, the Sackler family should be in prison. They should be in prison. How many Americans died because of their drug pushing? And there's no conversation about that. Obviously, they're going bankrupt, they're paying fines. I think drug traffickers should be in prison. These are drug traffickers. Finally, the same spokesperson from the National Academies, Megan Lowry, was asked like,

all right, well, now that this is an issue, right? Conflict of interest, what are you guys going to do about it? Lowry added that the organization had been prevented from returning the Sackler money because of legal restrictions and donor unwillingness to accept returned funds. That's such a BS excuse. It totally is. Of course, look, you could do what other organizations like Tufts University have done, which is redirect the money to prevention and treatment of people who are addicted to these awful

drugs that you had a huge hand in pushing forward. But the number one thing to take away from the stories is as always, when the media tells you that the corporate money doesn't corrupt the politicians, the government officials, and the non-government organizations that they give money to, it is absurd. The whole point of that money is to corrupt, and it works almost every time. Well, we come back for the second hour of the show. We're going to talk about the injustice around the Brianna Taylor story. But if you thought that that was a story of injustice, wait till you hear the updates involving the officer who shot the bullet that killed her. We've got an update on that and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. 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 slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.