The Young Turks - False Claims

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

MAGA Sympathizer Exposes Trump's Plan To Overturn State Elections | Joe Rogan Guest Blames Uvalde Cops’ Cowardice On “Defund The Police” Movement | Religious Right-Wingers Get HUGE Win With Recent Supreme Court Ruling | Somehow Mike Pence Is STILL Licking Donald Trump’s Boots | MAGA Lunatic Encourages His Voters To Go Hunting For 'RINOs' Hosts: Ana Kasparian And David Shuster *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey ▶ https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Watchlist with Jayar Jackson ▶ https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews 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. Welcome to TYTY, I'm your host, Anna Casparian. And joining us today is our very own David Schuster. You can catch his work over at Rebel HQ. David, it's so good to have you on. I get to host with you all to myself. We did a panel just not too long ago, but now it's just the two of us. Anna, the honor is mine. I'm thrilled to be with you today, especially with so much going on and so much with the hearings, these are very weighty times. And it's an honor to be able to

talk about it with you. Well, why don't we get started right off the bat? Because today marked yet another day of January 6th hearings, the select committee investigating the riots on January 6th, along with Donald Trump's election related lies, had some compelling testimony today that I want to get into. So let's do it. Anything that would say to me, you have a doubt, deny your oath. I will not do that. And on more than on more than one occasion, throughout all this, that has been brought up, and it is a tenet of my faith, that the Constitution is divinely inspired of my most basic foundational beliefs.

The man you just heard from, Rusty Bowers, the Arizona State House Speaker, is a Trump voter. He voted for Trump in 2020. He also testified. in that video during the select committee hearings that he was encouraged, in fact, pressured by Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to essentially single-handedly overturn the results of the presidential election. And he was not interested in doing that despite his support for Donald Trump. Now, the January 6 hearings have been compelling. We have heard quite a bit of testimony from all sorts of people, whether it's other Democrats, you know, individuals who were privy to the conversations that were taking place behind the scenes. Trump administration officials,

Trump campaign officials. But apparently hearing from this one Republican legislator in the state of Arizona was pretty convincing and compelling for right wing members of the media, which we'll get to in just a moment. But I actually want to get to some more context in regard to what he was talking about. He was specifically addressing questions in regard to Rudy Giuliani, pressuring him to use an alternate slate of electors who would essentially certify the election on behalf of Donald Trump, as opposed to Joe Biden, who won the state of Arizona. Let's watch. He said, well, we have heard by an official high up in the Republican a legislature, that there is a legal theory or a legal ability in Arizona, that you can remove

the electors of President Biden and replace them. And I said, look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it. And I also swore to to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona. And this is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me. And I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys. And I said I've got some good attorneys and I'm going to give you their names. But you're asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath.

In this day and age, it's pretty difficult to believe that there are still Republican lawmakers in the country who are unwilling to do Donald Trump's bidding, but really there are a few, and these are the individuals who prevented Trump from essentially stealing the election that he did not win in 2020. David, I want to bring you in because I'm seeing headlines now, one from the hill that just broke, saying former President Trump's campaign to press officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election, broke the law, state Republicans testify. Now, this is something we've been screaming from the rooftops from the very beginning. It's nice to hear that Republicans are testifying about the criminality of what Trump had carried out. But what do you make of what happened today? A couple of things. I think in Georgia where there's a live criminal investigation, certainly there was more evidence than just that phone call, the early January phone call to Brad Raffinsberger, the Secretary of State in which Donald Trump asked for 11,000 votes.

There were a series of conversations between Trump and Georgia officials repeated conversations. And then in Arizona, and this is the one that sort of blew me away. Because again, here you have a conservative Anna who you and I would disagree with on 95% of his politics, his policies, and he said to Rudy Giuliani, look, you have evidence of fraud. Give me the names. Give me the names of the voters who are dead who voted. Give me the names of the immigrants who were not allowed to vote. And Rudy Giuliani said, I'll give them to you. And then, I mean, Russell Bauer said that Giuliani never delivered. He asked again, give me the evidence. He asked Jenna Ellis, give me the evidence. They never delivered the evidence. But Giuliani said, well, we don't have the evidence, but we have lot of theories. And at that point, you could see Bowers was just like, how can you be doing this? He's a religious man. And I disagree with him on his, you know, religious stuff as well. But he said this is like an article of faith. He believes the Constitution is divinely inspired. And he almost got the sense that he felt the Trump campaign was asking him to cross out his own faith in order to help Donald Trump get this alternate slate of electors. And look, what he did in

rejecting the demands to do what Trump wanted him to do is, is I hesitate to say brave and courageous, but I understand why people say that it's brave and courageous with today's political climate and the kind of violence that we see from the far right, certainly far right supporters of Donald Trump. But he did what he needed to do. He took an oath of office. He carried out what he was supposed to carry out as someone who took an oath. And so in reality, he did what he was supposed to do. And I've, I've just been feeling increasingly uncomfortable, to be quite honest with you with the, I mean, the bar is so low for the Republican Party right now that they just do what they're supposed to do. They do their jobs. They hold the oath and

they get, you know, celebrated as American heroes. But this is what they're supposed to do. And I really want the audience to understand that, right? No amount of MSNBC whitewashing of these very conservative Republicans is gonna change the fact that these people didn't do something brave, they just carried out their jobs the way that they're supposed to carry out their jobs. But I do think that it's also valuable to have right wing politicians specifically call out the possible criminality involved in what Trump and his campaign was attempting to do. And unsurprisingly, well, I shouldn't say unsurprisingly, surprisingly, Surprisingly, on Fox News, when they were covering the testimony given by Bowers, they specifically

pointed out how compelling it was and the possible criminality that Trump could be charged with in the future. So let's take a quick look at this video. You're gonna hear first from Fox legal analyst Jonathan Turley, followed by Andy McCarthy, who is a reporter over at the National Review. Let's watch. Just having questioning from the other side of the aisle, would have added greater credibility. And I don't think it would have undermined this powerful testimony. These are respected Republicans like the Speaker of the Arizona House. And some of this was extraordinarily compelling.

I thought the most compelling testimony was when the speaker was talking about what it was like to be in that house with these people outside. That was really authentic and it was really compelling. If you had a different perspective being presented here, I don't think that would be very helpful to President Trump per se, because the evidence pretty clearly shows his unfitness. It even suggests that he may be guilty of a crime. Maybe, maybe not. There's arguments on both sides. There's arguments on both sides. Maybe, maybe not. But still, he did point to how compelling the testimony has been, how unfit Donald Trump was for office, which I think is an important point to make.

And so I know we've talked about this a little bit before, David, but do you think that this, what do you think the outcome of all of this will be other than the very important action of, you know, essentially declaring a historic record of what really occurred? I think there are three things to watch. First of all, as far as the 25% of the American people, half of Republicans who think that this committee is not legitimate. I think this broke through. I think they have somebody this conservative, this powerful, this compelling, say, I was a Trump supporter. I wanted him to win. And this is what they were asking me to do with no evidence. I think that breaks through

and causes a significant chunk of Republicans to rethink whether the committee is not legitimate or whether these hearings are bogus. Secondly, we got a glimpse a little bit about what's going on in Georgia with a criminal investigation and saw that this isn't just the phone call that Trump had with the Secretary of State January 2nd, that there were series of phone calls with election workers. There were 18 different messages. There was a clear effort despite Trump being told repeatedly. There's no evidence here. He was told that by his own Department of Justice. He was told that by campaign officials. He was told that by officials in Georgia. They knew from the beginning what the full video showed of this alleged suitcase. And yet they still went out

and lied to the American people. So I think there's a stronger criminal case than we thought as far as the Georgia investigation. And then speaking of criminal investigations, I just can't see how the Attorney General Merrick Garland could possibly now ignore all of this and just say, okay, well, the hearing did, you know, they did their thing and that's it. We're not moving forward. I think I think the pressure on him now is almost a slam dunk that he has to at least take this to a federal criminal grand jury. I don't know whether there'll be indictments, but there's got to be some Justice Department action out of this. Well, David, to be fair to Attorney General Merrick Garland, I mean, we want to be fair to him.

He's a very busy man, okay, and he has decided to take a trip to Ukraine instead. to declare that the United States government will be pursuing war crime charges against Russia. You know, priorities, priorities. Our democracy might be dismantled if we just allow for these people to continue chipping away at it. But do we really care about what's happening domestically when we can engage in a symbolic measure of going after Russia with war crime allegations? I mean, I mean, if Merrick Garland can't walk and chew gum at the same time, then he shouldn't be in the job. to begin with. And so I guess in hindsight, you know, a year from now, I'll look back and say, okay, was Ukraine worth it? Sure. If he was able to go to Ukraine and stand up for democracy,

and oh, by the way, a few months after the hearings concluded, and he was given all of this information, he had handled a grand jury and delivered indictments, fine, it doesn't matter to me at all what he's been doing over the past year. What I want him to do is a few months from now, when the hearings are over and the committee says, this is our report, here's what we found. They are teeing it up for him. They could not make it any easier for a federal prosecutor than what this committee is doing. And in my view, there's no excuse for Merrick Garland not acting on this. I totally agree with you on that. All right, well, let's stay on the topic of law enforcement and give you an update on Yuvaldi. Let's go.

what we're experiencing right now is a byproduct of what society is forced police to become they're demonizing military training for law enforcement and then obviously we just experienced defund the police and you know nearly every large city has seen a crazy rise in crime and the ones that these large cities that defunded their police to include austin you know we've never seen homicides like this we still need men and women that will run towards the sound of gunfire and know what to do. Yeah. And we don't right now. We have we have been weakening them and we have been making them ill-equipped to respond to that. And then I think Uvalde is a great example.

Uvalde is a great example. That was a former U.S. Army sniper Tim Kennedy on the Joe Rogan podcast, the Joe Rogan experience. And he decided to to blame the failures of Uvaldi police officials and the Uvaldi Police Department on the defund the police movement, even though there is absolutely no evidence, no indication whatsoever that funding for this particular police department was cut in any way, shape or form. In fact, we should show you the receipts and then get to the details about the insane cowardice that was practiced by police as a mass shooting was underway at Rob Elementary School in Yuvaldi, Texas. That was the mass shooting that ended up slaughtering 19 children and two

teachers. Police were on the scene from the very beginning and they waited a very long time to do a damn thing about it. But before we get to that, let's talk about the funding because I think it's important to push back against the misinformation that was spread in that conversation. So for Yuvaldi, which has roughly 16,000 residents, the $4 million police budget is the biggest expense in the city budget this year funded at a proportion that's higher than some peers, but far from abnormal. So this is a Bloomberg piece that looked at the numbers and they did a comparative analysis looking at other cities across the country. And big cities, it's interesting, actually spend a little less percentage wise of their budget.

on policing, but overall, I mean, we're talking about similar ballpark numbers, right? Somewhere between 30 to 40 percent, 30 to 45 percent of the municipal budget will go toward policing. Now we should take a look at the trend because 4 million sounds like a lot for a town of 16,000 people, but who knows, right? Maybe maybe they did cut the budget a little bit in recent years, except that is not what the evidence shows. So as you can see in the graph, And it looks at numbers dating back to 2015, you see that upward trend, which represents an increase of funding toward police in Uvaldi. Now, besides city funding, you should also keep in mind that another half a million dollars for Uvaldi police came from a federal government

grant meant to bolster equipment purchases and cover overtime costs related to border patrolling. The Uvaldi Police Department also has its own part-time SWAT team. And I should note, Even though this Bloomberg piece doesn't go into details, what they're specifically referring to here is the program that essentially funnels military grade weaponry, surplus military weaponry from our military to local police departments, thus militarizing the police departments. And we have been told over and over again, particularly by the right wing, that we need that. We need the police to essentially serve as a domestic military because that's what keeps us safe. Except, as I'm sure you all know at this point, the police in Uvaldi did not, in fact, keep the community safe.

They failed to save the lives of 19 children and two teachers during a mass shooting, a mass shooting that they were on the scene of from the very beginning, by the way. Now, there was a recent, there was recent testimony from the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety. He's the director named Steve McCraugh, and his testimony before the state Senate committee investigating the police response was fascinating because it just gives you an idea of how much the cops dropped the ball and it had nothing to do with a lack of funding. Let's watch. But the law enforcement response to the attack at Rob Elementary was an abject failure and

antithetical to everything we've learned over the last two decades since the call of mine massacre. Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract, and neutralize the subject. The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from in room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children. Okay, you don't wait for a SWAT team, right? No time for a SWAT team. If you got one officer, that's enough, right? So you don't have to wait for 11 or 12 or 50 or 30. You got one's enough. If you got to, you're there in the scene, you got an obligation to go and immediately engage the shooter and stop the shooting and really stop, you know, which is really stop the killing because there could be other wings of ways to kill it and then stop the dying.

That's that's preached, practiced, and required the state of Texas. It just wasn't implemented. Now McCraugh was specifically referring to Pete Aradondo, who's the Uvalde School District Police Chief and the person on site, the person who failed. to carry out the actions that were expected of the police force there. And I don't know, I mean, David, maybe I'm just a hater of Rogan's podcast and I don't know what I'm talking about. But I don't know, I kind of want to like scratch the surface and look at the data before I open my mouth and declare, make declarative statements about a police department and why they failed. Now I'm with you in terms of the hatred of Joe Rogan's podcast. I mean, to me, this is them saying it's all George Floyd's fault because of George Floyd.

then the left decided to put pressure on police to respect the constitution to not people up. And somehow cops got afraid. Well, you know what? The fact of the matter is, and I'm so glad you pointed out, every police department in the United States over the past 20 years has more equipment, more training, better pay. So this argument that somehow, oh no, defund the police is causing these police to be afraid. No, they are afraid because we are also flooding this country with AR-15 assault rifles. And most cops, 99% will never have to shoot anybody in their career. They will never have to actually fire their weapon. And I think there are a lot of cops out there who say, you know what? I don't want to be in that 1%. I don't want to have to be in

any some sort of arm stand off or actually use my service revolver or weapon because I don't know how I'll do. But they love the power. They love having the gun. In the moment that there is somebody with an assault rifle, oh no, we need the SWAT team. We need the tactical team. And that's what happened with this commander. It's a crying shame. Absolutely. And I do want to go through this list of what the Texas head of public safety had to say during his testimony, because he lists all of the failures that he has seen from the police department, from police officials. And notably funding or resources are missing from the list. But he did mention that Pete Aradondo did not have a radio with him, which made communication a little difficult to say the least. Police and

sheriff's radios did not work within the school. Only the radios of border, patrol agents on the scene worked inside the school. And even they did not work perfectly, which I don't, how much money do you need to have radios that work effectively? I don't get it. I mean, they have the cops themselves had some serious weaponry with them that cost a lot of money. Like spend a little bit of that money on communications, you know, making sure that you guys are able to communicate, especially when there's a crisis like this. And some diagrams, this is interesting, some diagrams of the school that police were using to coordinate their response were wrong. So there were communication issues, there were cowardice issues,

you know, an unwillingness to take responsibility, which we're seeing from Pete Aradondo today, he is essentially claiming that he didn't think he was the one in charge with that situation, because there were other police agencies there. No, you are the head. You are the police chief for the Yuvalde school district police. This is a school shooting within that school district. So I don't I don't believe that he actually believed that. I just think that there was a great deal of cowardice. And again, I don't see this as a failure in lack of resources or whatever.

I see this as who are we hiring to protect and serve, really? What kind of vetting is taking place? Are we ensuring that these are people who understand the job, that they are, you know, signing up for? Are they committed to protect and serve? Because it isn't just this story, right? This is a story where it's so obvious that they engaged in cowardice and it got people killed. You also see the instances of people running away, unarmed people running away from cops.

And they literally shoot and kill that suspect in the back as he's running away. Who are we hiring to protect and serve? I think that the vetting process really needs to be reconsidered. I think there needs to be massive reforms in policing. And that's not to say, oh, we just cut resources and call it a day. I don't think that's the solution either. But what I am seeing right now is just this unwillingness to accept the fact that the kind of policing that has been supported by the right wing in America has not been protecting

Americans. And they need to, you know, they need to take that into account because we're paying for it. You're absolutely right. And the fact of the matter is I think it's it's a combination of people who are to police that you don't need to have a college degree, just a high school or GED requirement. There are a lot of people who like to go on power trips. And oh, by the way, that power is reinforced with so much of their training. So much of their training is you must dominate every situation. If somebody gives you any lip, if somebody's got a traffic violation,

they're acting suspiciously, you get them out of the car, you dominate them. They're not trained on de-escalation. They're not trained on, well, let's try to have a conversation. Let's see if we can calm things down. And so when it's drilled into their head, you must dominate. When you're suddenly faced a situation where you can't dominate because you're outgunned or there's somebody with an assault rifle. Then the only training they have is whatever training that was related to Columbine where they've been told, you go in there. You go into as fast as you can, even if all you have is a pocket knife, you go in there and you try to take out the rifle men or the man who's carrying out this assault. Well, at that point, it sort of goes against sort of

the training and I think the instincts that have been drilled into a lot of these guys. And so you take somebody who likes to be tough and has a great time with this power trip when he can dominate somebody, but suddenly when you can't dominate somebody, as we've seen with a lot of bullies, they then run and hide. Absolutely. All right, well, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we have some updates in regard to the Supreme Court and its latest rulings. Obviously, it's not good, but it's worth getting into it and, you know, diving into some historical context to understand the moment. Later on, we'll also talk about what an incredible, pathetic coward Mike Pence really is, because he had an interview with Fox News and you, you won't believe what he had to say about Trump.

Or maybe you will. Who knows? Come right back. We'll see you in a few. I know Jenks not here today. He will be back on Monday. He will be back on Monday. vacation break, which he definitely deserves. But I'm glad that I'm taking the mantle of messing up timing of the show because I keep getting cut off during the social breaks because I'm not paying attention to the time. But anyway, David, why don't we get to our next story? People are far more lenient, far more forgiving at the Turks. Maybe it's because of the community of whatever screw up that might have been than they are at a lot of other places. I can attest to that. So all good. Yes. Well, let's talk about what the Supreme Court is up to.

too, because they passed down a ruling today that I think is a huge win for the religious right. And I think in order to understand that, we need to look at the historical context of the religious right and what galvanize them to essentially build this broad coalition that unfortunately has gotten their agenda items accomplished. So let's do it. The Supreme Court has unfortunately just ruled that religious schools cannot be excluded from government programs that offer tuition aid for private education. Now, this is a fascinating case, particularly because it would mean that taxpayer money would be funneled to religious institutions, regardless of the practices within those religious institutions. Even if these religious

private schools are discriminating against various members of the community, it doesn't matter. according to the Supreme Court ruling and the conservative justices within the Supreme Court, we have to fund them and they cannot be excluded from these tuition aid programs. So the 6-3 outcome could fuel a renewed push for school choice programs in some of the 18 states that have so far not directed taxpayer money to private religious education. The most immediate effect of the court's ruling beyond Maine, and Maine is where the case originated from, probably will be felt next door in Vermont, which has a similar program. So it's important to understand what the program is, right?

Why is money being funneled to private schools anyway? I mean, that practice should be banned. But what happens in certain states, particularly in places like Maine, rural parts of that state will not have any public schools available. And to kind of fill that gap, private schools pop up. And obviously private schools charge a tuition. And so the state government will implement some sort of program to help students in that area pay for the private education in that area. Now I would argue we should build more public schools, but that is not what's happening.

And one exclusion in the main law was religious institutions because we're supposed to have a separation of church and state. taxpayer money should not be supporting and should not be funneled to any particular religious organization. But that is not what the Supreme Court decided. Chief Justice John Roberts is the one who wrote the majority opinion here. And he says, well, excluding these religious institutions is religious discrimination. That's essentially what he's saying. Maine's non-sectarian requirements for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their

religious exercise. I would argue that these are not otherwise eligible schools because these are religious institutions that are not supposed to receive taxpayer money, right? Whenever we do a story about a private school that's engaging in some sort of weird practice, whether it's discriminating against students who might have engaged in premarital sex or discriminating against LGBTQ educators, the argument is, well, it's a private institution, they're not receiving public funds. So unfortunately, they're able to carry out these practices. But now, according to the Supreme Court, they're able to carry out the discriminatory practices, and we still have to fund them. And I think that's outrageous. So David, I wanted to get your thoughts on this because this is

This is something that the right wing has been fighting for for, I mean, it's not a new debate, it's not a new issue. This has been an ongoing battle for 50 plus years. Yeah, and to me the danger is not just that the wall separating church and state has come tumbling down, but the implications are go well beyond religion. And I'll give an example here in Connecticut, not far from where I live, there is a golfing academy, yes golf. Students can live year round in these dormitories and they can train on golf. Golf is their religion. So now I think this particular golfing Academy, if they want to try to help attract more students, they're going to be able to say, hey, based on the Supreme Court ruling, golf is our religion. So hey, Connecticut, you need to give us

some money, just like you're going to have to give money to these religious private schools. We're a private school and we just happen to really like golf. That's where this is heading. And that's why it's so insane. Once you obliterate the line between public and private, it doesn't really matter whether it's religion or not. There's all kinds of things that come into play. And I just think that the taxpayers in Maine are getting screwed, just like they're going get in Vermont because why should you be paying taxes to help somebody who chooses to live in a particular area? You want to live in a particular area, that's fine. You go to the public school there. If there's no public school, okay, maybe there's great that there's somebody else

that stepping in, but again, these are choices that as a taxpayer, I just I just find it reprehensible that this is how main legislators are going to try to start doling out money now. This is the culmination of a decades long battle that the right wing has, engaged in. And it's really important to understand that we didn't get here like spontaneously, magically. There was a lot of right wing grassroots activism that's been really growing over the last 50 plus years. And this particular case reminded me of what ended up galvanizing the evangelical right in this country back in the mid-1970s, okay? Because it wasn't, that evangelicals were just hardcore against reproductive rights for women.

In fact, there were many outspoken prominent evangelicals at the time who were completely against regulating women's bodies. They saw a woman's right to make decisions about her body medical freedom for women, right? I mean, there were of course some members of the religious right who disagreed with that take, but it was mostly split. And so how do we get to a point where the religious right kind of like coalesced around this message, as anti-reproductive rights message? Well, and by the way, how did religious leaders start working together? Well, it started happening in the era of integration in public schools when some members of the evangelical right hated the idea of sending their children to schools with black

students. And they decided to do something about it. And I think this video does a good job explaining the roots of what we're experiencing today. So let's watch. There were segregation academies, church sponsored, that were applying for tax exempt status. Then in 1969, a group of African American parents in Holmes County sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new segregation academies from getting that tax exempt status. And they won. ruled that any organization that engages in racial segregation or racial discrimination is not, by definition, a charitable institution. The following year, President Richard Nixon ordered the IRS to enact new policy denying

exemptions to all segregated schools. In 1971, the Green v. Connolly District Court case ruling upheld the new IRS policy, and evangelical leaders didn't like it, which is where Paul Wyrick was. reenters our story. Paul Wyrick finally found the issue that would get the attention of people like Jerry Falwell, who had his own segregation academy in Lynchburg, Virginia, Bob Jones Jr., Bob Jones University, and a broader array of evangelical leaders. So, like, what Paul Wyrick did was go to all of these evangelical leaders and say, yo, that tax exempt status is about to be ripped away from your segregated private institution, we need to work together to represent what he referred to and what they

built called the silent minority, right? Or silent majority, the silent majority. And so that galvanized the religious leaders. And then they used abortion to galvanize right wing voters. And in the end, again, decades later, they really got what they wanted, right? They crafted a Supreme Court that's full of conservative justices that's now totally okay and has ruled in favor of funneling taxpayer money to religious institutions. And this is part of, yeah, and this is part of the war against public schools because why this war against public schools will think about it. And a lot of religious, you know, right wing evangelicals, they like to teach that there's no such thing as LGBTQ. There should be no equality between men and women. Men are superior,

women should be subservient. It's the opposite in public schools where we welcome, integration. We welcome the idea that women can achieve as much as men. We try to teach basic facts and science. All these things are an anathema to the religious right wing, particularly a lot of the more evangelical groups. So what do they do? Well, they say we're going to declare war on the public schools and we're going to get money away from the public schools and funnel it back to our schools where we can teach whatever the heck we want to do. And unfortunately, as you pointed out, there's now a majority in the Supreme Court that is essentially rubber stamping each of these battles they want to fight.

Yeah, and I mean, we could feel helpless about it, which, you know, obviously that's tempting. But I think we could also learn from what the right wing did to organize and accomplish what they accomplished. And it'll take decades. It'll take a long time to just reverse the damage that's being done by the religious right in this country. But I mean, what other choice do we have at this point? Just give up. We can't do that. But it's important to learn from what they've done. Yeah, to learn from what they've done and try to figure out, okay, if you're a local community, you care about public education, there are a lot of communities now where parent

groups are getting together and saying, okay, what can we do? Forget about the state dollars because the state is cutting money to public education and maybe maybe they'll start giving money to private education now. Well, there are a lot of parent groups that I think are trying to take back some power. They're at school boards or whatnot saying we as parents have to do better in terms of fundraising and trying to make sure that kids who may not be able to afford to come to our school that now that they can that make sure that we're integrating, make sure that the curriculum is teaching the good and the bad of American history. And perhaps if there's more parental involvement, which I think there is in a lot of communities,

maybe that's the first step towards trying to reverse some of this. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, we see conservative parents getting real active with the school boards. I think that those on the left would be best suited to engage as well. Well, we got to take another break. So let's do that. And when we come back, we'll talk about former Vice President Mike Pence, unbelievably still kissing Donald Trump's even though Trump's lies almost got him killed. We'll be right back. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian and David Schuster with you.

David, I want to give you an opportunity to tell people where they can find more of your work? Rebel HQ, which is one of the great channels on the Young Turks. So you can find Rebel HQ by going and onto YouTube and during a search. It just says Rebel HQ or TYT Rebel HQ. We're also on Facebook, we're also on Twitter. But we put videos each day, some of the same topics that are on the shows, but a little more sort of produced in a little different sort of speed. We've got a great video out, for example, right now about some of the Trump voters that I have the fortune or surely I say misfortune of having to talk to over the weekend and what makes

them tick. So that kind of stuff, Rebel HQ on Facebook or YouTube. All right. Well, let's get to vice president, former vice president, Mike Pence. There has never been a time in my life where a president was more disconnected from the American people than we see today. That was former vice president Mike Pence not talking about former president Donald Trump, who nearly got him killed on January 6th when rioters were chanting hang Mike Pence because he just refused to unilaterally hand over the election to Donald Trump. Now, he's not talking about Trump, he's talking about Biden because of inflation. And he argues, well, you know, Biden is super

disconnected from the American people. Again, forgetting the fact that Trump wanted to essentially throw out the votes of more than 75 million Americans. But I want to get to the other reality, which is Trump's false or misleading claims total 30,573 over four years. That is a headline from the Washington Post. They were fact checking Donald Trump throughout his presidency, and that's the number that they landed on. But I mean, aside from January 6th, the side from the election lies. I mean, Trump said that you can use UV light to cure yourself of COVID. He said that you can inject your lungs with disinfectant as a treatment.

The guy was absolutely insane. But Pence says, according to this headline from Fox News, he won't let Dems use January 6th to distract from their failed agenda. And he even goes so far as to praise Donald Trump on his record. And I have some quotes to get to in just a moment, but I want to bring you in right away, David, because it just blows my mind how Pence gets referred to as an American hero because he certified the election the correct way. Again, just doing the bare minimum, that is his job. But in reality, it's not an act of courage to speak to Larry Cudlow. Larry Cudlow was on your White House team of economic advisors. He's giving you softballs on this interview.

Larry Kudlow says, oh, it seems to me like Joe Biden has offered more mistruths than anybody. And at that point, Bank Pence changes it to say, oh, yeah, he's disconnected. Well, he could have said, no, actually, we shouldn't get into talking about fact or truth. Let's just talk about the re. I mean, there's so many different ways that Mike Pence could have pivoted away from that and protected himself and not paste all these charges of hypocrisy, but he's not that strong of a politician. And so there's Pence just, it is, it is so predictable for Mike Pence to just heap scorn on Joe Biden to use buzzwords that are clear buzzwords to the right that don't mean anything to anybody who's got half a brain. That's what Mike Pence is all about. No, I mean,

you're exactly right about that. And the quotes in his Fox News interview are even worse than what you saw with Larry Cudlow. Look, we can get into a lengthy discussion about inflation. Obviously, the right wing loves to lie about it. I'm not a huge fan of the leadership that we've seen from Joe Biden, but to blame inflation squarely on Joe Biden is in and of itself a massive lie. I mean, Donald Trump repeated over and over again that the Federal Reserve needed to keep interest rates artificially low. And what did that do? You guys think inflation is new? No, there has been inflation related to asset prices for some time now. And we're actually experiencing a correction in the economy as a result of that. The Federal Reserve printed money

also gave easy access to money. And what did banks and private equity firms do? And corporations, for that matter, they artificially inflated the shares for their companies by doing corporate stock buybacks. Private equity firms bought up the available housing, which was limited inventory to begin with, and that inflated housing prices. Inflation has been a disaster for quite some time. But when it's assets that are being inflated, the rich love it, because the rich are overwhelmed invested in those assets. Now inflation is starting to impact things like food, obviously gas because of Russia and the invasion of Ukraine. But again, blame that squarely on Joe Biden is ridiculous. I said I wasn't going to get into a long explanation. I did it anyway. Well, did you

want to comment on that, David? No, I was just going to say, look, I mean, if you want to talk about disconnected, the Republican Party has been disconnected from the concerns of most Americans for a long time. It's rich of Vice President Pence to now say, Joe Biden's disconnected because working class people may be hurting because of inflation that was essentially caused by Donald Trump and by corporate America. But okay, it's a cheap political shot. That's what Mike Pence is all about. Exactly. Well, I want to get to some of the other comments or quotes from Pence during this Fox News interview. He said January 6th was a tragic day. He admits it, it was a tragic day. And I know we did our duty, but I will always be proud of our record. And I am not going to allow the Democrats to

use that tragic day to distract attention from their failed agenda or to demean the intentions of 74 million Americans who rallied behind our cause. As for his relationship with Trump during the administration, Pence told Fox News, quote, we were very close friends. We parted very amicably on January 20th, not buying it. I don't know if the president and I will ever see eye to eye on my duties on January 6th, but in the aftermath of that tragic day, we sat down. down and we talked through it, and then we rolled up our sleeves and finished the final weeks of our administration working together. And he even praised the former president. Pence said he will always be proud to have served alongside him. Okay, so. And he was also asked

like, hey, are you, would you vote for Donald Trump? And he wouldn't say no. He just refused to say no, David. I think this is that Pence knows that he's in a pickle in terms of the Republican primary because the Trump voters hate him because Donald Trump made it clear that they should hate him because he wouldn't help Donald Trump steal the election. He's not as charismatic as, say, Governor DeSantis in Florida, some of the other Republicans that are considering a run. So Mike Pence is sort of a no man's lane. He doesn't really have a natural base that is there for him. So somebody who I asked to try to kiss up to Donald Trump, but at the same time acknowledge that what he was being asked to do was perhaps against the law, but certainly unconstitutional. And that's not, you know, Mike Pence is just sort of spinning and doing cartwheels and verbal gymnastics to somehow figure out, can I do to get an audience to get some voters in the 2024 primaries. And the answer is

there's probably nothing he can do. He's toast. Yeah, exactly. Well, let's, and look, one final thing I'll say. And you guys, make sure you include this in the video. Look, when we covered the January 6th hearings that specifically focused on Mike Pence, and like you have Democrats talking about what a hero Mike Pence was, you know, I something that kept me up. at night and I'm glad I finally have an opportunity to say it was even on our show he was referred to as a hero and it made me feel sick to my stomach. He is not a hero. I think this like this interview is evidence to how much of a coward he is, how his own political aspirations take priority over the American people. And yeah, on that day he did the right thing,

but he also did what was expected of him. That was his job. How many of us do what's expected of us at work or toward our friends and family and then get applauded for doing the bare minimum. No, you don't get applauded for doing the bare minimum. He is not a hero. Again, he did the right thing. And I honestly like I get disgusted every time anyone refers to him as a hero. He's not. He enabled Trump during the administration and he continues to enable Trump today. I agree that he's not a hero. Also heroes don't have to call former vice president Dan Quayle to get permission to uphold their duties and uphold the constitution. The fact that I mean, we now know based in a couple of books that there was Vice President Pence

pushing back against Dan Quelson, but you don't know the position that I'm in. No, he should have just said, what do I do about this crazy president that I worked for? I can't do instead. It was like, well, is there anything I can do? Is there anything I can do? And Quillis, haven't explained. No, you can't. Well, that's not exactly a hero. That's not somebody's got much courage. Exactly. All right, one final story in our first hour that I think is worth talking about, which is, you know, we're dealing with political violence in this country. And unfortunately, we have Republican candidates who are promoting that violence. candidate, and I can't believe he's running for public office again, Eric Gritens is facing

some well-earned backlash after he released a new ad, essentially urging his supporters to go rhino hunting, rhino meaning Republicans in name only. And he breaks into a house with a rifle in the ad. It's incredibly violent and it's incredibly irresponsible considering the political climate we're dealing with. Nonetheless, I want to show you the video so we can discuss it. I'm Eric Greighton's Navy SEAL, and today we're going rhino hunting. The rhino feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice. Join the maggot crew, get a rhino hunting permit. There's no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn't expire until we save our country.

I mean, it's, I mean, comical in a way for how outrageous and over the top it is. But it's just so incredibly irresponsible. They don't care. They don't care. David, I mean, what do we do with this? Hey, look, I think to your point, I mean, A, there are people in military who shouldn't be part of filming that commercial. I almost wonder if Gritens was not somebody who had been alleged of abuse to this wife, used his children, tied up a woman and forced her to perform oral sex.

I mean, all this stuff, he is a creep and he's got, you know, severe reasons, legitimate reasons why he didn't last in office very long. So part of me thinks, no, he really is this crazy. If he was, if he didn't have this background, I would think, okay, he's putting this ad, he's making it so over the top. So he's trying to break through the noise and get a lot of attention to have people talking about him because I suppose in his world it's better to be talked about than not talked about at all. But again, because he's got this background, I think that this is somebody who just doesn't

have any judgment whatsoever. He is certifiable. He is crazy. I mean, this is a guy who is violent. Like his political career was hurt because, I mean, he was forced to resign because of what he had done in, you know, allegedly tying a woman up and, you know, holding her hostage. I just, I can't believe he's running for public, but he probably saw what Donald Trump has gotten away with. And he's like, I don't know, I mean, let me, let me try again. Why not? Why not? to those low information voters who don't realize that half of what he showed in that video is against the law. So he's appealing to that base to people like, oh yeah, guns. And being strong and let's go after those rhinos. And people I think are starting to hear in the Republican Party. There is a huge civil war going on between sort of the establishment of Republicans, the les Janies of the world, and the people who call them Republicans in name only.

This is a huge battle. And there have been a couple of key battles where the Trump MAGA crowd has won. They've defeated. the rhino candidates as they described them. So I think a number of Republicans who are clearly on that fringe are looking at this saying, oh, okay, well, this is a clear talking point. If I'm going to win a Republican primary, which is what Greitens is looking at right now, he has to outflank everybody in the Republican field and go even more extreme than the rest of us think is responsible or even sane, but that's his strategy, that's his playbook. And look, it's reckless, it's irresponsible.

And I think it's a sign that this guy's a lunatic. Well, that does it for our first hour today. Thank you so much for hosting with me today, David. Everyone check out David Schuster's work over at Rebel HQ, follow him on social media. He is absolutely killing it. Again, David, it's been an absolute pleasure. Anna, the honor is mine. Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.

Anytime. All right, guys, we're gonna take a brief break. We'll be right 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.