The Young Turks - "Economic Terrorists"

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

Trump workers moved Mar-a-Lago boxes a day before the FBI came for documents. House Democrat frustrated with Biden’s debt talks: "Why are we negotiating with the economic terrorists?" Biden could give back some of his signature IRS boost for a debt limit deal. Ron DeSantis says he will consider pardon for Trump if he's elected. Right-wing US Supreme Court delivers "catastrophic loss for water protections." HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), John Iadarola (@johniadarola) & Farron Cousins (@farronbalanced) 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. Stop with the questions. Celebrate. Woo! We're going to be able to be. Drop it like it's Joe Biden's agenda. All right, power panel.

Thank you, John Ireland, Cousins. Faron, of course, is from Ring of Fire, and John, of course, the host of the damage report. I was wearing a Dragon Squad shirt earlier today. All right, and Faron, good to see you, brother. Good to be back. All right. So, guys, I come into the shows. I was telling John off air in a angry mood.

I'm going to try to remain calm. I will likely fail. But it's the gaslighting that drives me crazy. So whenever we talk about Biden, there's tons and tons and tons and tons of gaslighting. I hear he is a legendary president who has gotten everything done. Everything, what else are we complaining about? And people say that with a straight face, and they don't know that they are just as brainwashed as the Fox News audience.

Anyway, so we'll get to that in a second. So where I got that, I got a lot more anger where that came from, Lauren Bobert, Candice Owens. Apparently, by the way, now surrogacy is now demonic. Why? I don't know. I don't know. If you sell any LGBT related paraphernalia, you're a monster, a terrible, also demonic. But the people protesting that are not against LGBTQ. Okay, I mean, there's just no facts left in the world. None. Anyways, without further ado, let's get to the frustrating.

Well, I've already worried about how the first hour is going to go because I checked our B and C block, both demonic, unfortunately. And I don't think there's any time to cleanse them. So we're just going to have to proceed with what we've got. This is Rhonda Santis's launch week for the presidency, and I'm not entirely sure what his strategy is over the last 48 hours. He's come out with a few attacks against Donald Trump, but in some ways, he seems to be continuing to try to appeal to not only Trump fans, but Trump himself. Take a look at what he said he might do for Trump if he becomes president. Abandon. A big part of being president is pardon powers. Do you think the January 6th defendants deserve to have their cases examined by a Republican president?

And if Trump, let's say, gets charged with federal offenses and you are the president of the United States, would you look at potentially pardoning Trump himself based on the evidence that might emerge of those charges? The DOJ and FBI have been weaponized. We see that. We see it in a variety of context. Some of what you mentioned, some of it is the FBI going after parents. going to school board meeting. Some of it's how they treat a pro-life demonstrator, how they don't go after people that are attacking pro-lifers. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do on day

one. I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting. And we will be aggressive at issuing pardon. Okay, so that was a jumble of partisan nonsense. It's not based on anything. But it also didn't really respond to their question. They were actually somewhat specific. So let's see him clarify. And I will do that at the front end. You know, a lot of people wait until the end of the administration to issue pardons. We're going to find examples where government's been weaponized against disfavored groups. And we will apply relief as appropriate. But it will be done on a case by case basis because I think you've got to make sure that there's a whole bunch of cases that don't

necessarily get headlines. But if people are being treated just because they don't get on TV or something, they're being treated disfavorably. They need to have a fair hearing as well. And that could be from a grandma who got arrested and prosecuted too much all the way up to potentially Trump himself. Is that fair to say when you analyze what the charges might have been brought on a federal level? I would say any example of disfavored treatment. based on politics or weaponization would would be included in that review. Okay, so sort of closer to an actual answer, but like, this guy just can't be direct. So would he pardoned? He'd pardon, I guess, the January 6 people. He kind of has to.

I'm sure that like they are in Texas, he'd go around finding people who've killed protesters, and he'd pardon them too. Would he pardon Trump? It seems like maybe, but it's not entirely clear. So I definitely want to hear what you guys think about that. I also want to hear what you think about him saying that what he's against is the weaponization of government against disfavored groups. Ron DeSantis hates when government attacks disfavored groups. Yeah, hilarious. All right, so number one, credit where credit is due, those are good questions.

That was on a conservative show. I know that they're, you know, which direction they're leaning, but I don't care about their opinion. I'm glad someone asked Ron DeSantis about that. So now we know he's very, very, very likely to pardon Donald Trump and tons of the January 6th protesters. I don't know that it's all of them, but obviously he's going to pardon a lot of them. So this whole idea that they are disfavored groups, that the big leftist FBI and leftist law enforcement is targeting conservatives is full-blown mental. I'm not going to debate it. It's totally counterfactual.

Yeah, I know, 40% of this country believes things that aren't remotely true, not 1% true. And so I can't dissuade them, I'm just going to drop it. For the rest of you guys, no, law enforcement in this country has not been predominantly left wing. They have like almost never targeted conservative groups. In fact, conservative groups were oftentimes above the law. And the fact that they are now also subject to the law sometimes is exactly what triggers the victimhood of the right wing. They think they're special victims

now that they have to follow the laws. They're like, does everybody have to follow the laws? Yes, yes, everybody has to follow the laws. Welcome to America. It's nice to have you here. I can't believe they're enforcing the laws now on right wingers. We have been disfavored.

Get that. Learn something. Just read anything, anything at all. Pick up any book, a pamphlet, anything, just start reading, okay? And you'll eventually get to some facts. Okay, and then, but now when you look at the political analysis here, again, because we're the fairest show in America, it's a smart populist way to go on the Republican side. So everyone except Trump and DeSantis is running a super, and to be fair, Chris Christie is kind of in his own category, right? But all other candidates on the Republican side, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, et cetera, whoever the hell else is in, they're running a very standard establishment.

candidacy as if it's like the 1990s. They're like, I'll tell you what, the real problem is we've got to start more wars in the Middle East, okay? War is the answer, that's what I'll tell you that right now. And you know, it's, and they're not doing anything populist, and they're saying January 6 was, a lot of them are saying January 6 was unacceptable. Well, that's true, that's, and I should, I appreciate that they're in this reality-based world, but that is not going to win in a Republican primary.

If you say January 6 is real in a Republican primary, why are you running? There's no way Republican voters will agree with you. Remember, 52% of Republican voters think Joe Biden did the riot against himself. Not just that Trump didn't do it and that the Republicans are not accountable and it's not their fault. It's that Biden did the riot against himself. They genuinely believe. That's a majority of Republicans. So at least-

But those rioters should still be pardoned because they're conservatives. Of course. Biden did it for himself. Even though Biden did it, they should have done it, and they should be pardoned for doing it. Okay, it doesn't matter, because they're not in the fact-based world. But as a matter of political strategy, I think DeSantis is correct here. I've got a doozy of an idea about pardons that I'm going to share with you in a second. But first, Farron. Yeah, I do want to point out something about what DeSantis is saying with the pardons and the other Republican candidates. If you go back and you look at a lot of the rulings,

that the judges issued in a lot of these cases, the judges themselves said that the prosecutors were going too light against these people. They were cutting too many deals. The judges themselves were unhappy that these people were basically getting off scot-free. I mean, most of the cases we hear about now are the ones who actually get sentenced to prison, but that is a tiny sliver of the total number of people there. You could have charged every single person with not just obstructing a congressional proceeding, but literally their presence in the building was a criminal act. And the judges got to the point where they were so mad about this. They started putting those kinds of things in their rulings about how prosecutors were

letting too many of these people go with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. So that's point number one. Point number two, obviously, is that we have a Republican Party, DeSantis himself did it recently, telling us that the left is somehow soft on crime, that we're, we're the liberals, the leftists, those George Soros funded prosecutors, they're the ones who are not taking crime seriously in the country. And then Republicans turn around and say, oh yeah, this guy murdered a bunch of people, I'm gonna pardon him, we're okay with murderers. Oh, these people ransacked the Capitol, stole things. Yeah, we're totally cool with that. So the Democrats, If they were good at messaging, and they're not, I mean, historically bad at messaging,

how are they not able to capitalize on that stupidity? I mean, that is what we're seeing right now. It's not just hypocrisy. This is full-blown stupidity. And the Democrats are just sitting there like, well, I guess, I guess we think it's gonna be okay. Let's just watch them attack each other and we don't have to play ball. No, get out there and start putting this crap in ads today instead of waiting for them to just tear each other apart on the right. That's what the Democrats should be doing,

because all of this is messaging that would resonate with the average, you know, moderate, independent voter out there. And it's not getting out there. Instead, we're getting the things that DeSantis is out there saying. Yeah, and it definitely seems like they're primed to hear that message. I mean, we saw how much they rejected a lot of these extreme candidates back during the midterms. Like, if it's clear how crazy these people are, people do reject them. But it's on the Democrats outside of the context of an election to make sure that people know. So I certainly agree with you. to become the nominee. That's obvious. So what is his actual argument as to why Republicans should reject Donald Trump and go with him? Well, he likes to make the case that in a general

election, he's more electable. Take a look at this. So I think you want to have somebody who can draw people in who may not have traditionally been Republicans and are willing to give us a shot. I think a lot of people realize that Biden is a failure, but I think they're looking for a vehicle that they'll be comfortable getting behind it. I think I could coalesce a pretty good number of people to be able to do that. I do believe that there's a limit to the number of voters that would consider the former president at this point. Look, I think it makes sense for Ronda Santas to point out that Donald Trump obviously has a ceiling. The ceiling is, I think, way too high for any reasonable person

to be comfortable with the state of our country, that that many people believe this crazy stuff. But he did worse in 2020 than he did in 2016. It doesn't seem like he's going to be able to expand his reach much beyond that. So it makes sense for a candidate who aims to take down Trump to really focus on that. The issue is whether Rhonda Santis is the guy that can make that case. This is a guy who is doing everything he can to go more crazy on the culture war stuff. He's talking about bringing in people who've never traditionally considered themselves to be Republicans. So he thinks that I guess who he's going to get is people who have no thoughts whatsoever about politics,

no ideology, but have been convinced by Fox News, which they don't watch because they don't watch politics, to despise trans people. Or maybe they just hate Disney? I don't know exactly how he expects that he's the guy who's going to bring them in when he has totally rejected his prior pitch of himself as a more moderate Democrat, a Republican, and has now gone full bore crazy on culture stuff. Yeah, but he's got a thread of needle. So, John, I still think he's actually doing the right strategy, but I think there's a giant problem with the strategy. So the strategy is go populace, that's why he's saying that he might pardon Trump and some of the January 6 guys and he hates woke, et cetera. There's no way to win a Republican primary

if you do not do that. Okay. So, but at the same time, he's got to make an argument for why it should be him rather than Trump, because they're the two main people on the populace late in the primary. And so he's got to make the argument that he's more electable. which is true, by the way. And why is it true? Well, there's two reasons. One is a substance. Trump is a lunatic who didn't want to leave office after he lost. To me, that's worse than anything related to DeSantis or any other person who has ever run for office in American history. I mean, that ends our democracy. That's not an open question. He's the worst, period, full stop. Okay? So there is a difference. But secondarily, he's, um,

And I lost my train of thought. I'll get back to secondarily. Farron, go. I think DeSantis needs to understand that, yeah, you know, he's got the populace thing. You're absolutely right about that. But he'd better hope that none of these other Republicans he's running against, Trump included, bring up the fact that, yes, he's been the leader of the culture wars. Yes, he's done horrid things to our state here in Florida. But it's kind of like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Because every horrible thing Ron DeSantis does, does end up somehow backfiring on him.

And I'm not just talking about the Disney thing. I know we all know how he is really just put himself in a corner with that. But I'm talking about the book bans that are taking place in Florida. Okay, well, what's happening now? Now he's getting sued. Most of his policies have gotten him sued. We are experiencing a massive influx in litigation. against our governor here. He just passed a six week abortion ban in the state of Florida.

We know from the midterms, we know from red state ballot initiatives that even Republican voters, when it's put on that ballot, they don't like that. They're not happy with it. And women, obviously, especially, are not going to reward him with their votes for this. So yes, DeSantis does have a long list of accomplishments, but they're not real accomplishments. accomplishments. They're not things that he can go out there in town because any one of his opponents can bring up, wait a minute, that's just the first part of the story. Why don't you tell everybody what happened next? A smart opponent, whether it's in the Republican primary or in the full blown presidential race, can absolutely put him through the ringer by reminding the public what happened next. Because that's the part of the story, especially down here in Florida. Most of these folks don't pay attention. until, well, they only pay attention to when it happens. They don't pay attention to the aftermath, and that's where DeSantis' record completely falls apart.

Okay, I remembered. And secondarily, guys, the way that the media treats DeSantis is very different than the way the media treats Trump. So when Trump does something bad, the media does something rare with politicians, they actually pointed out. normally they cover for politicians and give them tremendous positive press for no reason other than the suck up to power. But Trump is outside of that rule now.

So when DeSantis goes into the general election, we all know the facts. So we will know that he's actually very similar to Trump when it comes to the populist rhetoric and policies outside of destroying democracy, right? But that's not how the media will portray it. The media will portray him as far more moderate than Trump. And he has all the donors in the world and media is obsessed with donors. So they will give him kid gloves treatment. They will not call him a liar.

They will not, I mean, that's only reserved for Donald Trump and any other outsider. They don't call Bernie Sanders a liar. They just call him every other name in the world, right? So the outsiders get horrible press treatment. But DeSantis is within the tense enough of the establishment that he will get light treatment by the press. So, so that's why he doesn't have a choice in the primaries. He's got to go populist and he's got to say he's more electable. That's the only route to win a Republican primary and to defeat Donald Trump.

And in the general election, he has to hope that the mainstream media is as corrupt as they have always been. So that they'll call him a moderate or moderate enough, right? And they won't emphasize all the things that he did that were, in our opinion, barbaric in Florida, right? But they won't, the press won't want to say that because they won't want to offend Republican voters. So they'll, you know, they'll treat him much more pleasantly than he's got a chance of winning the general election as well. So as much as I dislike DeSantis, I think he has the correct political strategy. The only problem with DeSantis' strategy is DeSantis. Like he as a candidate seems to suck, right?

Do you see what I'm saying? The strategy is correct, but they put in the wrong widget. And the widget, like, is not very charismatic and everybody knows it. And in fact, there was a giant political piece recently about how there were, there was a bunch of pieces, one about how his wife actually runs everything. And part of the reason they have her running things, especially in public, is because she's considered likable and he's considered unlikable. We saw the other leak where his advisors told him if you're going into a debate, remember

to write likable on your piece of paper because people don't like you. you so you have to try to appear to be likable. So don't again, the only problem with Ron DeSantis' strategy is Ron DeSantis. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the big part. I think there's a lot of other big parts. It's an incredibly risky strategy.

I don't think he's the person to make good on it. I think it's like whatever his best strategy is, I still think has almost no chance of actually succeeding. What he has to do to attack, to get through Trump poisons him every time he does it, with the Trump base. I just, I think the path is just too narrow and he's not adept enough a politician to manage it. It is so much easier to fake own the libs in a way that doesn't even own the libs. It's just harmful than it is to take down a politician like Donald Trump. I don't think he has it in a final point. Yeah, and I want to build off what Jenks said because he's absolutely right here. You know, four or five months ago, DeSantis in some polls was beating Donald

Trump. He was beating him in Iowa polls. He was beating him in a couple New Hampshire polls. So what happened in the last five months? It's not because Trump just started attacking him. It's because DeSantis went out there and had to interact with human beings. DeSantis did his little world tour. And what we get from that? We got a bunch of memes. We got a bunch of goofy videos. We had videos from last week where he's wiping his nose and then rubbing it on a supporter's shirt. This man cannot interact with human beings and that is going to take on July 18th get excited for the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs only day is July 18th. Hank him in those early primary in caucus states and we've already seen what it's done to

his poll numbers the guy should have you know done the strike while the iron was hot but he didn't he waited till his poll numbers were, you know, kind of going down approaching Nikki Haley numbers. Yeah. And the whole reason for that is the book tour, the trips to Iowa, people finally got to meet him and they were like, oh, yeah, I'm not good with whatever this is. And that's his big problem. Okay, before we take the break, I got to give you what I promise about the partons. Okay.

So here's a fun little thought. But I think Francesca Furentini has said it in our production meeting this morning, but I don't, in case you don't like it, I don't want to give her the discredit, only the credit if you like it. Are you sure that Joe Biden won't pardon Donald Trump? Like we're worried about, oh, Ron DeSantis might pardon Trump. If Joe Biden wins a second term and Donald Trump is convicted of something and he's about to go to prison, I'd make a bet right now that Joe Biden would pardon him.

So, I mean, and if you think there's no chance he would, then you don't know Joe Biden at all. What kind of bet? Okay, and you'd have to give me odds because that would be the dumbest political move in American history. I'm not saying there's no chance he does it, but I don't know that the chances is even 50-50. Yeah, we'll talk. Okay. Make the bet right now. Loser has to subscribe to Twitter Blue.

No. $10,000, please, not the Twitter Blue. All right, fun for everybody. Okay, we're taking a break when we come back. Wait to get a load of me on Biden. Okay, I'll try to remain calm, like I said earlier, I probably won't. We'll be back. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John, and Faron with you guys.

And also John's coiffed Hair Dragon just gifted five Young Tourist memberships. That is a real YouTube handle, and they have actually gifted five Young Doris memberships on YouTube, which I love. Thank you for that part. I love every part of it. Okay, you can now also become a member, hit the join button below, you guys know that, TYT.com slash join, you know that, John. Yeah, if Jenks about to get mad, you know that.

that. Let's watch. I'm very frustrated. I called on the president to invoke the 14th amendment and mint a coin and do not negotiate with hostage takers. I mean, we don't negotiate with terrorists globally. Why are we going to negotiate with the economic terrorists here that are the Republican Party? Jamal Bowman not holding back there in terms of the terminology is willing to apply to the Republicans. To be fair, Matt Gates said that they were holding hostages. So it's sort of a bipartisan thing pitching them as the cartoonish villains in this case. They've taken our economic future, wrapped it and rope and thrown it on the train tracks. And now they're just cackling wickedly as they twirl their mustache. But while

Bowman, I think, is the strongest in terms of how he's willing to identify what we're facing right now, he's not the only Democrat that is angry at the fact that not only the Republicans threatening economic collapse, but Biden is needlessly dragging this out. And it looks like he's willing to give away the farm. Take a look at some of the other criticism. I think the greatest regret that we should have was the failure to raise the deadly ceiling limit back in December when the Democrats were controlled of both chambers of Congress. So that is a miscalculation that we will live to regret. You know, Speaker has decided to make this really a public relations effort and really turning it

into a political process. And so their frustration is kind of understandable. Biden did say that he was not going to negotiate and that he expected Congress to pass a debt ceiling increase with no strings attached. And he backed up that stance by saying, I don't need to give you anything else because I can just raise it myself. If he did ever believe that, well, that's unfortunate because then he just decided to wait and wait and wait and now his argument is conveniently, Oh, I still think I can do it.

But there just isn't time. Somebody wasted that time I have. And now we're looking at possibly quite a bit being given away. Yeah, so first of all, go Jamal Bowman, go. Love it, hear for it. That's exactly what we sent progress to Congress for. By the way, another positive sign. In the old days, if Jamal Bowman had said that, old days is in like, let's say 10 years ago,

just to be safe, the world would have collapsed in on him. That's true. All of the Democrats would have gone on TV and denounced them. And they would have said, we love our Republican colleagues so much more than we like Jamal Bowman. He's evil and I can't believe it. We all have to protect the Republicans. That's what Democrats would have said.

That's what they've said my whole life. But in this case, they didn't. Okay, we're making progress. There you go, progressives. Take the fight to them. And it's a different era. So, and by the way, there, if you didn't notice, I'm actually giving credit to the centrist Democrats, too, for not attacking Jamal Bowman for saying things.

that are true, okay? So I know it's damning with faint praise, but I'll take it. Okay, and now Richie Torres, I really like what he said, and he, I have to confess that he reminded me, oh, right, they could have done this in December, right? Even if they didn't want to do it before their elections, they could have done them in the lame deck session. The only part I disagree with Richie Torres on is he said it was a miscalculation. I don't think so. I think Joe Biden wanted to cut the spending. And now, as you're going to see a little bit later in the show, they're going to cut the IRS funding. that he had put in because they want to help the rich avoid taxes.

And Joe Biden has always been conservative on economic issues. He has always agreed with Republicans on those issues. And the media pretends that his entire career doesn't exist. Oh, oh, Biden has to do this. The thing that he's always wanted to do his entire career. Oh, golly gee. Oh, my, what a miscalculation. Oh, shucks.

He did it again. Fair. You know, Biden's gonna give all these concessions, Republicans are gonna take their victory lap. And it's gonna be funny because Biden's also gonna take a victory lap. You know, no matter what happens, he's gonna say, well, look, we prevented the worst case scenario. How great is this? What a great day for America. That's gonna be the eventual speech, even if we do hit that catastrophic shutdown point. Eventually he's gonna say, we've fixed it, we came together, and by the way, yeah, we're

over millions of people. Don't worry about them. They're going to be okay. But the biggest thing that Biden should be out there saying right now, this is the message and he needs to repeat it every day at that podium in front of the nation and say, listen, you want to talk about how unsurious these people on the other side are? Two weeks after that drop dead date on the debt ceiling deadline, two weeks they are planning to launch a new series of tax cuts for the wealthy elite. They're going to change the way you can depreciate, they're going to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent. They're going to do this big giveaway to the wealthy elite while whining right now about people receiving $6 a day from the SNAP

program. $2 per meal is what these people are getting on average. And they want to cut that so they can continue to cut taxes for the wealthy elite. The fact that that is not the message from every single Democrat right now just shows what a pathetically weak messaging system they have. Because that is what Republicans are working on right now. They've got that legislation ready to go. And yet none of them are out there talking. A couple of them have, I will say on Twitter, a couple of them have. But beyond that, why is that not the biggest talking point that Democrats are using to shift the public opinion of the debt ceiling hostage situation we've got.

I'm just going to add one quick tiny thing to that. By the way, Farrin's referring to Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders, and a couple other progresses that tweeted about that. But look, guys, if you're a normie Democrat and you think Joe Biden's like a God's gift to humanity and politics, which, believe it or not, yes, they exist. In fact, they might even be the majority of Democratic voters because they watch mainstream media. So those, can you, I'm asking you guys in that category, why isn't Biden saying you're going to put a $3.5 trillion hole in the deficit with those tax cuts that you're planning

to introduce in two weeks? Why should I negotiate with you on reducing deficit if you'd like to add $3.5 trillion to the deficit? That's an inarguable point. But he's never once made it. Doesn't it give you a little bit of pause that maybe he's not fighting the Republicans? All right. I mean, I honestly don't have any idea what he's done to fight Republicans on this issue, on the debt ceiling. Like, and by the way, are we getting anything back? Or there's tons of concessions to the Republicans.

There's not one concession back. Not one back. How is he fighting the Republicans? I don't like, like, I get it. The normie Democrats are just as much brainwashed as the guys who watch Fox News. So it's hard to blame them. Like they don't like, they watch a media that think, and they think it's actual news. They don't understand that it's corporate propaganda.

So they're like, oh, I don't know. Joe Reid told me on MSNBC that there's nothing Joe Biden can do that he has to lie down like a freaking mat for the Republicans and have them walk all over him, spin on him, and then love it. And then, and that's the only thing he can do. And they genuinely believe that. I think they think that if he drags it out as he has for a while, a month, six weeks, and if he keeps coming out and saying, I'll just do it myself, even if he in the end gives in and does it, do it himself, they've been primed to think he was being strong along the way. And so I think baked into their evaluation is I think he did the right thing because he didn't give in immediately. It doesn't help the people who as Farron points out desperately need that food aid.

It doesn't help the people who can't work. They're going to be burdened by this new paperwork explicitly designed to knock people out of the system. It doesn't help any of these people, but if they've been being told by people they trust in the media all along the way, that whatever it is the Biden is doing, I swear to God, its strength, then I think some of them will come out of it thinking, well, I guess it could have been worse. He could have been weak all along. Yeah, I hate it. All right, here, by the way, there's one other thing that Biden could do. He could go on TV and read the 14th Amendment to people, okay? And then I would add something super obnoxious, which only I would do. But here, I'll read the 14th Amendment for you guys.

Quote, the validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law shall not be questioned. Where is the complicated part? I mean, there's literally a very specific amendment that tells you that our debt shall not be questioned. That it must be paid. Yeah. Like, so the part that I would do, like, I mean, Biden has even said that. Do a press conference, put a giant board up with the quote from the 14th Amendment, read it, and then and ask them, do you have trouble with the English language?

I'm using the 14th Amendment. This is exactly what it was for. So sad day for you, we're moving on. Oh, by the way, Republicans, and now here's the jank part. Here, I brought a cup so you could fill it with tears that we have the 14th Amendment. I know you hate it, but we do have it. And by the way, I'm introducing a law to help Republicans read the English language. Because apparently they're not very good at it.

And I would do a real bill and I would introduce it. Okay, problem solved. That's how you fight, but we've never, we have not had a Democrat fight for Democratic voters in this country for so long that we have forgotten things we should not have forgotten, which is that our side is allowed to fight back. But if you watch mainstream media, that is considered heresy, heresy. How dare you raise your voice to Republicans, bow your head, they say, no, all right, my answer is no, I will not bow my head. I like fighting Republicans. I'm not like Joe Biden who likes giving them things for no goddamn reason. Why'd you plant me? No. You know, it's it's been so long as you point out since the Democrats had a fighter, since they had somebody willing to get angry, that now when they see that, they act shocked. Like, well, this person's just out of line. They're too crazy. Like, we can't listen to this person. Listen, how rude they are. I mean, those are the things we heard about Bernie Sanders. And he's a fighter. We've heard it about members of the squad, like, well, they're just being obnoxious.

They're being too loud because that's what they have to be. That's what they're supposed to be. That's their job. That is the job we have sent them to Washington to do. I don't want to listen to the people who say, guys, you need to tone it down. Like I hear that all that people say, you get too angry sometimes. Well, yeah, because I read the news, because I see what's happening. And I'm wondering what the heck is going on why nobody else sees the

this and is getting his angry. And it's just this thing that's infected the Democratic Party where the majority of them, I feel like they've just either forgotten how to fight. It's evolved out of the party at this point. But they gotta find it again or else they're gonna continue to get trampled by the other party that is just genuinely hated and policy issues by a majority of people in this country. That's what's crazy about it. So that's where we're at, But I don't know if we can wake them up to do anything about it. Yeah. We have to take a break.

When we come back, lots more get to. Don't go anywhere. Back on TYT, Jank, John and Faron with you guys, and also Julie Corriere, who just joined by hitting the join button below on YouTube and Swedein Dragon and Chris Birch, both gifted five Young Turks memberships. You guys are American heroes. We're really appreciated. All right, John. Nice. Okay, let's do it. All along the way during the negotiations between the Republicans and Joe Biden about the raising of the debt ceiling, the Republicans have been asking for a lot of stuff. Some of it is just wild policy goals that has nothing to do whatsoever with the economy. economy, they've completely discounted the possibility of things like raising taxes.

Obviously, their approach is protecting the rich. They want to go even beyond just raising revenue off the rich though. They want to protect them for the financial crimes that they commit. And it looks like Joe Biden might actually be willing to play ball on some of that. Specifically, they have been seeking to roll back some of the additional funding that the IRS is slated to receive, and it looks like Biden is going to agree with them. As it stands right now, according to the New York Times, they're going to take $10 billion of the $80 billion Congress already approved last year for an IRS crackdown on high earners and corporations that evade taxes, though that provision was still under discussion. So they're going to cut it effectively by $10 billion, according to the last deal.

I'm sure that number won't go up between now and when they finally finalize it. Democrats have previously championed the initiative. Nonpartisan scorekeepers have said the funding would reduce the budget deficit by helping the government collect. more of the tax revenue it's owed, but Republicans have denounced it claiming falsely that the money would be used to fund an army of auditors to go after working people. And when they say fund an army of auditors, they mean that quite literally. They have spread the myth that they are going to be giving thousands of guns to auditors who are going to kick down the door of people who make $20,000 a year because that's how they're going to raise a bunch of money. But this is like the

perfect encapsulation of this entire negotiation process. They say that they want to lower the deficit and lower the debt, but they won't do any of the things that would actually do that. So they're not going to raise taxes. They're not going to raise money. They've carved out entire areas, including the military, that can never be cut. And then in fact, we'll get additional spending, as we'll show you, even though everything else needs to be cut. And they're going to cut $10 billion there, even though they know that is going to result in more tax evasion by the wealthy, specifically because it's going to lead to more tax evasion by the wealthy, and they were elected to protect those wealthy people. Those tax evaders are the same people

that are at the cocktail parties that they go to. They are their donors. This is explicitly allowing for more criminality, and it really ties into the point you were making earlier, Jenk, about how are the Democrats not pointing out how obviously weak on crime the Republicans are. That is the only excuse for this, is allowing for more elite crime. One would think that Republicans who say they're tough on crime and say that they're against the elites would maybe be willing to listen to that sort of message. Okay. So this is not about deficit reduction. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Because for, there's different estimates by different organizations, all nonpartisan. I wrote about this in my book. The book is called Justice is Coming, where for every dollar that you cut from the IRS, you actually cost the U.S. government at a minimum 6.

dollars, some estimates have it as high as $24. So if you cut $10 billion from the IRS budget, you're actually going to put $60 to $240 billion hole in the deficit. You're going to make the deficit worse because their job is to go get tax revenue from tax cheats, people who are doing tax fraud. They go, you give the agents. And by the way, this doesn't apply to anyone making under $400,000 a year, okay? So this is literally only targeting the rich. So this is just turned into deficit addition, not deficit reduction. Because the deficit reduction was never the point.

As Farron mentioned earlier in the show, the Republicans in two weeks are going to introduce a bill to create another $3.5 trillion hole in the deficit through a tax cut for the rich, of course. All of this has been about wealth redistribution. So now look, before I rip into Biden in this, I want you to understand the context that this is one of the things that he did in the inflation reduction act where they added IRS agents to go after people, the rich, so that we can collect more revenues and to stop their cheating, right? And I gave him credit for that. So let's watch. There's a rare situation where you have to give the entire Democratic Party credit doesn't happen often.

but they passed a good bill to audit more people who are wealthy. And in the bill, they clarified that it only applies to people making above $400,000 a year. Rare credit to the Democrats, they did pass this bill that does audit the rich. That's kind of unprecedented in Washington. So there are two different times there. I'm like, hey, way to go, Democrats. They're like, hold on, Jank. Don't do it.

We're going to screw you later. It's all a trick, right? So now here's Biden. The one thing he got right for sure is like, nah, just give it back to the Republicans. What, why wouldn't you fight them? Why wouldn't you do a press conference saying, this idiot said this was a deficit reduction?

They come in here as to add $240 billion to the deficit. No, I'm not going to help your rich friends, Republicans. Nope, nope. Why? Because Biden wants to do these things. I should have never given him or the Democratic Party any credit. It's a mistake. It's a rookie mistake, naive of me.

Because they passed the bill and I was like, that is a good provision. I should have known, of course they're going to give it back to the Republicans. Because you would never, ever want to touch the rich. The rich must be protected at all costs. So of course, Joe Biden now helping the Republicans to do that. You know, I think a lot of this also, you know, kind of what both y'all are hitting on, it always comes back to the messaging issue. I mean, we've got these hangers on from the Clinton era who think there's some, you know, political wizards because they got Bill Clinton elected in 1992, Leo, let's ignore that Ross Perot siphoned off a lot of votes. But they think they know better than everybody. And they've been in D.C. calling the shots as advisors, calling the shots as, you know, the messengers, the strategists. And they're terrible. They're really just that God awful that they don't know how to.

to go out there and fight anymore. I mean, John brought up a great point. Republicans have literally said you're going to have armed IRS agents knocking down your door, busting in and saying, show me your taxes right now. That's what some Republicans genuinely believe. That's what we're dealing with just complete fantasy and fabrication on the right. And the Democrats are like, well, I guess we'll take 10 billion away. I mean, that's that's good enough for you. Right. Do you want 20? We'll take away 20. You're right, the number's going to change. And it's not going to go back to the original. More money is going to come off of that because Democrats allowed the Republicans to capture a narrative, a completely fake one. They crafted it out of nothing. And that's what's taken hold to the point where you've got people who say, well, yeah, I don't want the IRS banging on my door. I don't want to increase my risk of audit. And obviously, this isn't going to help the country. If we had been, not we, we're pretty dang good at it, I think, but if the party itself had done a better job of communicating all of this to begin with, if Biden would do that press conference you're talking about, we wouldn't be in this mess whatsoever, but we are because again, you're talking about the same holdovers for 30 years now, calling the shots with the Democratic Party, and it's time to push those dinosaurs out because they are not good at this anymore. Yeah, on economic issues, Joe Biden is a Republican.

The only thing that it stops you from understanding that is mainstream media gaslighting. The 14th Amendment is super clear. We don't have to negotiate the public debt. It's crystal clear. He is choosing voluntarily to cut from the average person, as Farron pointed out earlier in the show, they're going to cut from $2 a meal that people get, $2 a meal. Yeah, but they're going to give to the rich by making sure they're not audited. Biden always wanted to do that.

Everything else is a sham. You know, I'm not, I'll close on this. I obviously am not a constitutional scholar or whatever. There's been this like debate going back and forth, like can you read into the 14th amendment that it would apply to the debt ceiling and like people have the debate or whatever? What the way I approach it is, what else would it apply to? What other situation in American politics?

Would it have anything to do with other than the debt ceiling in it being raised? I don't know. Casual conversation? What else would it apply to? What does questioning it mean other than whether you pay it or not? Anyway, it should be automatic. Biden could have used this opportunity. He didn't even need to, as we said. They could have dealt with it back in December. But anyway, this is where we're at. And at the very least, Jank, you need to take back one-eighth of your praise for Joe Biden. If he could, he'd get rid of the whole thing. And they might.

So I'll read the 14th Amendment that John is referring to, just so you're clear on it. The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law shall not be questioned. John's absolutely right. What else would it apply to? I'm actually asking that to like political scientists. Like, where does that apply? There's no, there's no lack of clarity. I mean, conservatives hilariously say, plain reading of the Constitution.

You can't get more plain reading than that. The only reason we're having this theater, this fake, fake fight is so that they can give more to the rich, more to their donors, period. Yeah. And with a little bit of fun, it is an update on a legal process, but it is actually fun. So just bear with me as we jump into this. New reporting from the Washington Post shows that two of Donald Trump's employees moved boxes full of papers out of his residence and into a storage area the day before DOJ officials came to retrieve classified documents.

The timing is suspect to say the least, but it actually gets worse, the more that you find out about this. And as we get closer to the possibility of, you know, Jack Smith, if that's what his name really is, filing some sort of real charges against Trump for the classified documents, I have a feeling some of this is definitely going to come up again. So apparently Trump and his aides carried out a dress rehearsal for moving documents out of his office. After, or this is before he received a subpoena in May of 2022. So they were already getting ready for if we have to move this stuff out, how do we do it? And I know it's complex.

It's picking up boxes and it's moving them to a different room. It's a good thing that they ran through trial runs. Anyway, he said to his aides apparently that he wants to make sure that if they come for his documents, that he can protect them from them. So again, frame of mind, the motivation is all incredibly clear. Anyway, on the evening of June 2nd, the same day the two employees moved the boxes, a lawyer for Trump contacted the DOJ and said that officials there were welcome to visit Mar-a-Lago and pick up classified documents. Brat and the FBI agents arrived the following day. So they took the

documents out, called the DOJ and said, come on down and take a look at the place that we just cleaned up. I don't know how you get more explicit about what exactly you're trying to do and how you're trying to obstruct justice. But anyway, John Irving, a lawyer representing one of those two employees said that the worker didn't know what was in them. It was just trying to help Walp Nauta, the Trump valet that's come up several times in this investigation. So they shouldn't be held liable. And it looks like they are providing information. So it looks maybe they'll be able to avoid any consequences. Trump's lawyers ended up giving the officials who showed up a sealed envelope containing 38 classified documents and said,

a diligent search had been conducted for the other documents sought that all relevant documents have been turned over. And while Brat and the other agents were allowed to visit at the storage room, they weren't allowed to open up any boxes. So I don't know what the point of going there was, unless they had wallpapered the room in classified documents, you weren't going to see anything. But anyway, of course, the raid ended up happening and they found 100 more documents because all of this was artifice. They moved the documents out, they told the DOJ to search it, knowing they wouldn't find it because the documents had been moved out.

I don't know how you get a stronger case for obstruction of justice. and knowing violation of the law, not just, hey, you're a full grown man and you've been president for four years. You should know by now that you can't steal documents. They were explicitly trying to avoid the DOJ finding them. What do you think? Yeah, so look, guys, obstruction is open and shut case if he was a regular citizen, right? So, and I mean by that, like, a normal government official that isn't at the upper echelots, right? Because you can't have access to these kind of top secret documents if you were Joe Blow walking down the street, right? But if you were like a regular FBI, CIA agent, you're a bureaucrat working in one of these administrations,

Homeland Security, et cetera. And you took these top secret documents home, including, by the way, in other countries, nuclear capabilities, Iran's missile system, and China's defenses. Okay, if you took those home and then the government asked for them back, and then you hid them, and knowing that the government is coming to look for them, you're a goner. You're going to spend, I don't know, probably a minimum a decade in prison, okay? There's no question about it. Every legal expert agrees, okay? Now he's Trump, so he's got two privileges, one he was president, and the elites must be protected. They're always protected, and that one is irrespective of party. In fact, oftentimes the other party helps the leadership, except it only goes one way.

The Democrats always help the Republicans. And so that's point one. And point two is he's a Republican and he's a conservative, so they get special privileges. In order to apply to law to them, you have to ask permission, there has to be riots, and you have to get past the riots and all these different things, right? So having said that, I'm going to do a weird defense of Trump here. Okay, so you don't have to, you know. Yeah, I know. So stay with me. So, and it's not anything that they say, like, oh,

I laser eyed them and, and they became declassified by just me laser eyeing them, right? That's not a thing. Nothing that they say is a thing. Everything's a lie, okay? But I was positive that he took these documents home because he loves money and he has no boundaries. He's a lifelong criminal. So I thought he's probably going to try to sell them, right? These are, I mean, these are super valuable documents, right? But in this story, they explained that he had him up in his office, and sometimes people will walk by and he just show them. Like, they're like, hey, you want to see Iran's nuclear secrets or whatever?

I don't know whichever one even show we don't know, right? But, and I said, oh my God, I might have underestimated how dumb Trump is. Like maybe he wasn't going to sell them, maybe he was just going to show them off to his Golfing buddies. Is he that dumb? Yeah. Yeah. So like all of a sudden it's not impossible, right?

So now that you would still be guilty of obstruction, right? You would still, there is no lasering eye. It's that none of that. So a normal person would go to jail, but I don't know that a former president of the United States goes to jail if he just wanted to show it off to his golfing buddies. Okay, he should, but I don't know that he does. So I, to me, like, didn't, if you will. What does it matter what he was going to do with the thing that he stole and then hid his stealing? Because, John, look, it's not, this is not my opinion.

I'm just telling you that in, in the real world, the former president has to like nearly kill someone on Fifth Avenue to actually go to prison, right? And even that's now debatable. So, but if they had a smoking gun where he offered someone, these documents like nuclear secrets, et cetera, in return for money, that might even affect two to three Republican voters. Like, that is so awful that it might. But I don't know that they're going to get that smoking gum. I don't, and at this point, I'm not even sure that that smoking gun exists or that he was going to try to do it. So I'm just being as fair as I could

possibly be. Fair. You know, I do want to, because as soon as we're talking about dress rehearsal. I get this image in my head, like an 80s movie, you know, sports movie training montage. And you've got employees like lifted boxes over their heads and punch them like they're in the meat freezer. Trump's sitting there with his stopwatch. Go, go, go. But you've got intent. You've got espionage act violations. And I think we've got to give all the credit in the world to the fact that the person who is now letting all this be known to the special prosecutor. This is a maintenance worker. You know, a month or two ago when it was revealed, the Jack Smith started subpoenaing the average just workers at Mara Lago, the maintenance workers,

the housekeepers, the serving staff. I mentioned then, these are the people that are going to do him in. These are the people who are basically the eyes and the ears of Mara Lago, but Trump thinks so little of them, he doesn't actually interact with them, but they still see everything. They're still right there. And sure enough, that's what this is. Yeah. You've got these staffers all over Mar-a-Lago that have seen things that they never really thought they'd have to tell people. But now they're telling these stories to Jack Smith. So full credit to these, you know, just regular everyday punch-in, punch-out staffers. Because those are the people, the ones Trump never thinks twice about, those are the ones that are going to end up taking him down. Okay, I got to say one last thing.

If anyone in the Saudi government has seen any of these documents at all, Trump should get life in prison. Because, wait, but where's the quid pro quo? Immediately after the election, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's sudden law, got $2 billion from the Saudi government. So that's not his to keep, but it's his to invest where he will make at a minimum tens of millions of dollars just from the commission, even if he makes no money for them. And he will likely make hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family from the money that the Saudis gave him right after the election. Any Saudi national saw any of those documents. And if you're a right winger and you still defend Trump, you're a total traitor. That's just the reality.

Agreed. Okay, we got to go. So, Farron Cousins from Ring of Fire. Everybody check out Ring of Fire. Excellent show. We appreciate you coming on. Obviously, everybody, check out damage report that leads our programming at 1 p.m. Eastern. So check that out.

And guys, we're going to come back with another great power panel and new conservative position is surrogacy is demonic. Why? I don't know. I don't know. Now everything is demonic and every part of our lives have to be controlled by conservatives. All right, we'll come back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t.

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