The Young Turks - FBI Invasion

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Iraq War apologism is alive and well. The FBI used an undercover cop with pink hair to spy on activists and manufacture crimes. DeSantis to expand "Don’t Say Gay" law to all grades. Idaho hospital ends all labor and delivery care, citing abortion ban. Trump's fans sent him $1.5 million in 3 days after he falsely predicted that he'd be arrested Tuesday. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! All right. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jane Hugo, Anna Kasparan with you guys.

full and exciting show as we have every day. We're going to give you the truth and the news as honestly and independently as we can and take out Republicans and Democrats. So it's a very normal day in America filled with the ridiculous lives of Americans and politics. So bear with us as we tell you the absurdities of the news. All right, Anna. Well, we begin with an important anniversary that people, People are trying to now do some revisionist history on, and that's the Iraq war.

Let's talk about it. Had we known at the time that Iraq had actually gotten rid all of its weapons of mass destruction and discontinued its nuclear program, I don't think the president could have gone to war, even if he'd wanted to. I don't think you would have had the support from the Congress of the United States to go to war, and in which case, the war would not have happened. Stephen Hadley was the national security advisor under the George W. Bush administration, and during a recent interview on CNN, he repeated the lie that the United States government

was genuinely under the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which justified its preemptive illegal war. However, there's a lot of evidence indicating otherwise. And the reason why we're talking about this now is because of the fact that it is the 20 year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. And there are a number of people attempting to do revisionist history on that war, and it's important to know the facts. Now going back to what Hadley said there, keep in mind he's making excuses for that disastrous decision to do the preemptive war. And when Colin Powell during the Bush administration testified before the United Nations to argue that there absolutely were weapons of mass destruction,

He knew that that wasn't necessarily true. His team ignored the objections coming from the State Department's own intelligence gathering division to some of the material contained in his speech. This is BS. He reportedly erupted just three days before giving the speech as he looked over the evidence prepared for him. It had been less than two years since Powell had said that Hussein hadn't developed any significant capacity or capability, I should say, with respect to weapons of mass destruction. and even less since he told the Senate that he hadn't been terribly successful in pursuing a program of WMDs. Yeah, so another context here is, of course, the war with Ukraine. And the comment that most angered me, as usual, comes from a so-called journalist, Jonathan Carp from ABC. We'll get to that in a little bit.

But look, guys, the Ukraine war was started by Russia, okay? There's no question about it. They did aggression. I think we should help Ukraine degree to which we should spend money helping Ukraine is a very open question. Okay, and right now we spent a ton of money and these defense contractors get rich off of it. And that's why we're so animated by helping our brothers in Ukraine. So keep it real on that. This Iraq war was an absolute disaster.

They're now doing complete revisionist history. The people who started that war was us, unmistakably us. Don't lie about it. If you're in the news business, you're supposed to tell the truth and be honest with your audience. Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9-11. They did not have weapons of mass destruction, and we knew both of those facts. Colin Powell lied about it, Dick Cheney lied about it. Rumsfeld-Bush, they all lied about it.

But the news business is in the business of protecting the powerful. So they all pretend, oh, golly gee, nobody knew that they didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And you all knew he didn't attack us on 9-11. Why are we randomly attacking another country? We were the aggressors, we were an empire, and we did not do it so that the American people could gain from it. We did it so corporations that contribute to all these crooks, all these corrupt politicians could benefit from it. That's exactly right. And it's so important to talk about the costs, not just the financial costs of that war.

In fact, even though it was nearly $3 trillion, that pales in comparison to the human cost of that. that war. Remember, the support for the war was entirely manufactured through a false premise, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and now it's abundantly clear that he did not, okay, that we were lied to. But the goalposts have moved to, well, we got rid of an evil dictator. You know, that's all that matters, we got rid of an evil dictator. Real quick, I want to go back to some of the comments from the Bush administration at the time,

starting with Dick Cheney, who was quoted in August 26th of 2002 saying, simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. By the way, the United Nations weapons inspectors also failed to find any hard evidence indicating that there were weapons of mass destruction. But nonetheless, the preemptive war happened. And the Bush administration, hold on real quick, also you're gonna love this because I remember one of the things that attracted me to TYT was that Jank ranted about this so aggressively at the time. The Bush administration also manufactured consent for that war by making it seem as though Iraq was behind 9-11. Bush himself raised the specter of nuclear annihilation and falsely insinuated that Iraq was connected to the 9-11 attacks by discussing the supposed links between Hussein's government and al-Qaeda.

Iraq played no role in the 9-11 attack. Go ahead, Jake. Yeah, so look, this is what drives me crazy by the mainstream media. And by the way, partly the right wing, it drives them crazy as well. Dick Cheney is a giant liar. So yeah, he's right winger, and at the time all the right wingers loved him. They loved that he was Darth Vader, they loved how evil he was and how he brought back torture, etc. They didn't love the warrantless wiretapping, okay?

So I'm being honest that nobody liked that, the right didn't like it, the left. didn't like it, but they like the torture, they like bombing Muslims, etc. Okay, but Dick Cheney is just as big a liar as Donald Trump, and his lives were more consequential, okay? You will never hear that in mainstream media, because Dick Cheney is an establishment politician. He believes in the robbery that it goes on. They give all the money to corporations, and the media loves it. That's why they love liars like Dick Cheney. And by the way, the UN weapons inspectors, let's be clear about that because that is also misleading every time. Saddam did not kick out the UN weapons inspectors. We did.

Right. We did because we were afraid that they might find that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Right, exactly. And I love that you brought up the consequences of people like Dick Cheney because I feel that during the Trump administration, because of how vicious his rhetoric is, that led to the laundering of the reputation. of Bush administration officials, people like Dick Cheney, people like Bush, it is wrong to launder what they did. They committed war crimes, thousands of American soldiers died. We're going to get into the numbers of Iraqis who died as well. And the human toll in general, right? So

David Frum, by the way, the man who coined the phrase Axis of Evil and was Bush's speech writer recently wrote a piece in the Atlantic trying to do his own revisionism in regard to the war in Iraq. And this is what he wrote. He starts off with some information about the human toll. More than 4,000 U.S. and coalition troops were killed. Thousands more were gravely wounded. Thousands, I'm sorry, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, violent deaths. The war cost American taxpayers at least a trillion dollars. Trillion dollars is on the low end of the spectrum. Some reports indicate that it was as much as three treachery. And perhaps double that once the long term costs of care for wounded veterans are all factored in.

But then he immediately pivots to, as we make our appraisals at the 20 year mark, we need to consider another assessment because he's decided to move the goalposts. Where would the United States, Iraq, and the region be today if the US had left Saddam in place in 2003? If I recall correctly, Saddam was armed by the United States at one point. 100%. In fact, there's a picture of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld, as Donald Rumsfeld sold him weapons. Amazingly, Saddam used some of those weapons against Iran and then got rid of them when we put in sanctions, et cetera. We all knew that. Rumsfeld knew it, Cheney knew it.

Look, guys, they use a lot of BS excuses. Oh, he was an evil dictator. Well, you can argue Xi Jinping is a dictator in China and has concentration camps that are filled with Uyghur Muslims, right? And so that is a terrible, terrible thing. Should we invade China because they have a dictator in charge? Saudi Arabia. Or Saudi Arabia, our beloved ally, right?

Of course not. That doesn't justify an invasion. It's an absurdity, but it's never challenged in the mainstream media. Or by the way, right wing media. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, almost every host on Fox News, almost every host in right wing media, loved that Iraq war. Now there are a bunch of liars pretending that they were against it. 100%. I remember that era so well. Now let's talk about, let's actually hear from people

who, you know, were part of that illegal invasion, including private contractors like Blackwater. Ten years ago, TYT covered a story about what Blackwater was up to in Iraq. The video that we're about to show you is difficult to watch because it shows a complete disregard for the lives of civilians. But it's important to remember what that war really looked like and what Blackwater was up to as they were in Iraq. Let's watch. What are you looking at, Paul? You got a problem? Yeah, they're looking at you rolling through their town like a madman.

The whole idea is we're the big bad Americans. The laws don't apply to us. Get out of our way. And then, gee, I wonder why the Iraqis hated us. You're not convinced yet? Wait to you to see the second video. Right in the beginning, one of these guys is going to run over a civilian. And then everybody's just going to roll on by like nothing happened. And they just keep on And they just keep on rolling. So that was going on. Let's also not forget what happened in Abu Ghraib.

which was where Iraqi prisoners were being held by U.S. soldiers. They were tortured. They were beaten. They were humiliated. They were made to be completely naked and pose and incredibly degrading photos. There's more. There's also the human toll on the American side, the soldiers who had multiple deployments to Iraq, and we should hear from them. Let's watch. Corporal Heisel finished one more deployment, leaving two weeks after his wife gave birth their first child. I always had a certain amount of guilt while I was over there for being there at all,

for leaving my ride or die lady back here with the kid, you know, and going and doing this. Though he still plays his guitar, the tune is different. I was staring. Once you start to question why you're there, you can't stop doing it. Every mission, everything we did, kicking doors in, disrupting people's lives, bagging people's heads, a dude's head dragging him out of a house while those kids are standing and screaming. For what? What are we doing? About 13% of the U.S. homeless population consists of veterans. Permanent PTSD is just high, like it's overrepresented among the veteran

community because of these multiple deployments. I mean, again, to argue, no, you know, the Iraq war, Not so bad, actually, is one of the most insane revisionist points anyone can make. And I just want to give you Eli Lake's piece as well in commentary, where he decided to reflect back on the Iraq war. And he says, the Iraq war 20 years later, it wasn't a disaster everyone now says it was. Oh, yeah, of course, so the band marches on. So look, guys, we showed you the video of them running over the guy. That's, of course, the least of it, hundreds of thousands dead.

Okay, and when those, the propaganda done by usually American media is like, oh, there's combatants and then some few collateral damage we didn't intend. No, we killed tons and hundreds of thousands of civilians, okay, babies, grandmothers, aunts, uncles. Oh, they say, oh, we didn't intend to hit them with our cruise with something. We hit them over and over and over and over again. We murdered all those people, but we didn't intend it, really? Well, then Chelsea Manning released the Apache helicopter video, and that's where our guys take out a bunch of journalists. Okay, they thought, well, I can't tell if it's a camera or a weapon.

They're not anywhere near American troops, but who cares? Let's kill them. And they killed them. But then the worst yet, first responders come to take them to the hospital, and they killed them. Okay, and what happened? Chelsea Manning goes to jail. But the guys who did the killings or who ordered the killings, none of them had a single consequence. because this like machine, this corporate machine that has been set up doesn't care about Iraqi

civilians, they don't care that, oh, now they're in a great democracy. Get that hell out of here, okay? Or the American people, over 50,000 killed and maimed in that war that were Americans. Yes, their legs blown off, head injuries, et cetera, et cetera. And guess how much we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan? About $5 trillion. That's $5 trillion that could have gotten to building schools, giving us universal health care, taking care of your family, paid family leave. You know how much we spend in Afghanistan alone? 300 million a day for nearly 20 years. 300 million a day. And where did it go to private contractors, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, all of these giant defense contractors, including Dick Cheney's former company,

Halliburton. But that is a grave offense to mention in mainstream media, because now Liz Cheney is a sweetheart of MSNBC, of MSNBC. And by the way, so is Nicole Wallace, spokesperson for George W. Bush. Yep. And all the people who started the war are all over Fox News and CNN and MSNBC. Hillary Clinton voted for the war. Joe Biden voted for the war. John Kerry voted for the war. Why is it only the Democrats who voted for the war, are the presidential candidates. Because if a person who didn't vote for the war goes into a Democratic primary,

the mainstream press rips their head off politically. And says, oh, that's a radical outsider. That's terrible. You have to have people who are moderate, like the American people, and wanted out war. Except nobody wanted that war. And now the American people despise that war. But we still have David Frum.

Who's David from that Anna quoted earlier? David Frum is a Neo-Con that was one of the principal architects of the Iraq war. and now beloved by mainstream media, because he said one or two critiques of Donald Trump. He popularized the phrase axis of evil, which included Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. And the argument was that these three countries were aligned with each other to essentially destroy the West, to destroy America, which obviously didn't play out that way. But it was meant to sow fear in the minds of Americans in order to manufacture consent for the illegal war that we engaged in in Iraq.

Yeah, so I don't, do we have the Jonathan Carl clip or should I summarize? You can summarize it. Yeah, so she's on with Marianne Williamson. He's one of the main reporters for ABC and he says, well, Iraq is very different because it was not a war of conquest. Oh, please, no, Jonathan Carl, you obviously don't know anything about politics, you should retire, but let me explain why, okay, because Jonathan, it was the American government does not serve the American people, they serve their donors.

It was not a conquest for us. No, America didn't get the oil, America didn't get the country, America didn't get anything. We lost treasure, we didn't gain treasure. But it was a conquest for the companies that got that five trillion dollars. It was the world's biggest conquest. And what do you do every day? Either you're totally ignorant of it.

It's like, oh, the hundreds of millions of dollars, they funneled to the politicians, affects their votes, really? No, their honorable gentlemen having honest debates, right? And then the people that gave them the money, they then funneled trillions of dollars to. No, that's got to be a coincidence. No, that's the conquest. And unfortunately, the conquered are not the Iraqis, it's us. We got to take a break.

When we come back, another pretty stunning story from the Intercept in regard to the FBI installing spies among activist groups, but the spy got caught and we have all the details of that story and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. Also, Lewis Darby and a number of, it's a little bit different way of listing it there. Sorry, that's why I got tripped up on the names for a second. But thank you for joining Lewis. We appreciate it. You could do likewise by hitting the join button below the video on YouTube.

Casper. Well, let's talk about, you know, FBI spies, spying it on activists. In the summer of 2020, a woman who referred to herself as a sex worker, she had pink hair, herself Chelsea joined the Chinook Center, which is a group of left-wing activists in Colorado Springs. Now, over that year, the activists learned that her name actually wasn't Chelsea, and she wasn't actually a sex worker. Hmm, strange. In fact, Chelsea's real name was April Rogers, and she was an undercover cop enlisted by the FBI to spy on the Chinook Center. Now, here's a picture of Rogers at a housing rights marched with other activists.

And what I find so hilarious is how the FBI just buys into stereotypes about left-wing activists. So it's like, oh, we need to find a spy. So let's find a woman with pink hair and have her claim that she's a sex worker because, you know, that's that's what left-wing activists are. You know, it was not really emphasizing the article at all, but I had the same exact reaction. It's hilarious what they think the left-wing is. 100%. Like all left-wing protesters have to have their hair dyed and are probably hookers. That's probably the conversation they had at police headquarters. And that's probably the language they use in regard to sex workers as well, you know. So exactly. Now, Roger's goal was to gather information for the FBI and essentially

try to convince the, entrap the activist. Like, let's just be clear. That is what that is. Entrap the activist. That means persuade the activist to engage. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews

and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. In a legal activity, okay? And should they take that bait, well, they would be arrested. Now here's how her strategy works, okay? Rogers volunteered with administrative tasks, which gave her access to information of all the organizations that used that particular center as an office. She sent that information to the FBI, like any good spy would.

Rogers also invited at least two young male activists to her apartment and implied to them that there was a possibility of, you know, a sexual encounter among them, okay? Now, here's what one activist found when they showed up to her apartment. One of the activists lured to a meeting with Rogers described walking into the apartment. And there's two guys sitting there with her, he said. Rogers asked if he could, if he could find her an illegal gun to buy. The activist recalled, I'm not going to sell one to you illegally. The activist, a firearms enthusiast told Rogers and her two companions, he then left. Now, another activist admitted to enjoying the honeypot scheme, but luckily the scheme didn't work.

Rogers invited over a second man, Gabriel Palkik. Like the first activist, Palkik entered the apartment to find two men with Rogers. They said their names were Mike and Omar. Mike was missing his left leg from the knee down. Omar was kind of a Middle Eastern looking guy with a big beard, he said. Both had tattoos, both were very buff. Now, according to Palkik, Mike and Omar told him that they could get him illegal weapons. like TNT and grenades if he wanted it.

But luckily he didn't fall for it. He continued to hang around with Mike and Omar because they were generous, buying him meals, drinks, and cigars when they met. But Palkik eventually told the two men that he didn't want any weapons and stopped returning their calls and text messages. So again, the effort to try to entrap some of these activists failed, which I'm really happy about. But eventually Rogers got caught as an informant for the FBI.

I'll tell you how in just a moment, but Jenks, so far, what are your thoughts? So look, I, this is an ironic result of this investigation, but I began to have a little bit of sympathy for the right wingers. And so, because the FBI and the cops do the same trick every time, they come in and they go, hey, you guys want some weapons, and hey, you guys want to kill people. It's classic entrapment that they do it mostly to the left wing, not to the right wing. Okay, in fact, they let a Nazi go while they were busy doing this. And he wound up murdering a lot of people.

We'll get back to that story in a second. But now with some of the right wingers, when they say, hey, you guys want some weapons? The right wingers always say yes, right? Not always, you see some cases where they go, no, I don't want it or they probably already have some, et cetera, and a bunch of cases where they said, no, I don't want to do the violence, right? But for right wingers who've been trained to believe that your gun is to protect you against tyranny of government. Someone comes by and goes, hey, shouldn't you kill that government official? That becomes alluring. And so I don't have sympathy for the guys who get allured

by that. Right. But guys, whether you're right wing or left wing, watch out, okay? The FBI does entrapment all the time. Doesn't mean everything the FBI does is wrong. Stop thinking in binary ways. FBI is purely evil, deep state, or FBI is all angels, right? And by the way, the right wing has believed both of those things at different times, right? So here they are doing a classic sting operation on the left. One of the reasons that one of the things that they targeted was a protest against the rents that were too high. It's insane.

No, it's insane. It really is. And look, understand that this is happening with the backdrop of endless politically motivated mass shootings that the FBI does not foil. You get what I'm saying? Like you have message boards with these extremists talking about how they're going to going to shoot up grocery stores and like writing their manifestos about white replacement theory or whatever, none of that gets foiled, but they've got time to spy in on a housing protest.

Yeah, and to be fair to the FBI, some of them do get foiled, we do talk about it on the show, and some are legitimate investigations, but tons and tons of them go unaddressed. Because there's a mindset in American law enforcement that the left protesting companies or wage issues or capital is so much more dangerous than the right that is actually planning violence, right? And in fact, they said the cops in those reports are like on the rent protests, they're like there was a couple of people with the red flags. We think that means communism. So we went to go kick their ass and arrest them. I mean, this country. What does that have to do with breaking the law?

But let's just, let's just keep it 100. Like the critique from the left in regard to the FBI really has a lot to do with that. The FBI's long history of, you know, deploying violence and spying in on left wingers or anyone that they suspected of being communist. Like that's, that's the FBI's history. So I understand where that binary thinking comes from from the left because of that history. But nuance is important and that's what we're trying to do here. So how exactly did Rogers plot get foiled, right? How was she discovered by the activists?

That's my favorite part of the story for obvious reasons. So an activist by the name of Jacqueline was accused of assaulting a police officer with her bike at the housing rally with other Chinook Center activists. Okay. Now she maintains that she threw her bike down to the ground out of alarm when the officer dressed in riot gear charged at her. The bike never touched the officer. As part of the evidence in her case, Jacqueline was given access to the officer's body cam footage. And that is where things started to unravel for Rogers. So in the footage, the officer mentioned there were two undercover cops among the activists. April with her April with her giant boobs the officer said referring to one of the cops.

So the person who's undercover for the cops, the one with the pink hair, is the one that cops behind the scenes are going, remember, don't arrest her, she's the one with the giant boobs. Unbelievable. So classy. Now after watching that video, the activists

were eventually able to figure out that Chelsea was not actually Chelsea. Chelsea was in fact April Rogers and was an FBI spy. Now, has April ever confessed to her role in being an FBI spy? When called as a witness in a state court hearing, she testified that the Justice Department instructed her not to answer questions about the FBI investigation. Quote, I've been told to respond, I respectfully declined to answer, end quote.

Roger said under oath, the Colorado Springs Police Department declined to make her available for an interview. All she told the state court was that she participated in a housing march with activists under the authority of the FBI. Rogers has left the center for obvious reasons, but the scars of her infiltration leaves an impact, right? Because once that happens, it's so, even if the FBI plot to spy in on these left-wing activists didn't work, it still leads to a climate where people don't know whether they can trust each other, right? So it still accomplishes something on behalf of the FBI, which really, really sucks. Yeah, that's very true. I mean, it has a

chilling effect on all these protesters. Right. And they do very often infiltrate, which leads to last couple of things here. Number one, don't ever, ever fall for any of these traps. If someone is telling you, let's go commit violence, there's two excellent reasons why you shouldn't do. One, they're very likely undercover officers, okay? And you're going to go to jail for a long time. Number two, you should never do violence anyway. What are you doing? I mean, look, but again, these are, this is the second story out of many that Trevor Aronson at the Intercept has covered.

And in none of the cases that the left wing actually fall for it, none of them did the violence. Could it be that the left wing isn't actually violent at all? Could it be? Yeah, I mean, the ironic thing of all these thing operations is it, the overwhelming evidence is that the left wing will not do violence, no matter how much you egg them on, no matter how easy you make it for them and encourage them to do it, they won't do it, right? So now that's exactly right.

We're progressives. We battle people politically and with our ideas, because our ideas are better than theirs. If you resort to violence, that is a form of surrender, saying I'm not as, my opinions are not as good as yours. I'm not as, you know, I can't win this argument. So I'm going to resort to something physical. Don't ever do that. It's immoral. Okay, by the way, we're going to have the link to Trevor's.

article in the description box below which you should always check out. Brilliant reporting on his part. Look at that independent outlets like the intercept doing great reporting as opposed to mainstream media. And last thing, Anna, one other thing I figured out from this story. The right wing is so enraged by there being cops within the crowd or whatever they theorize about January 6th and then all the militia groups or the right wing groups that have been infiltrated right before they did the violence and said like, hey, you believe it, right? I figured realize why. Because they've never had to deal with it before.

They're not used to it. The left wing is used to it because it's been done to them for timing memorial, right? But for the right wing, it's like a totally new thing. There are cops, they can investigate me too? Oh my God, it's never occurred to them. The cops let them walk into the Capitol and they're like, can you believe these deep state monsters? These Gestapo that didn't open the door for us as we were breaking things down and threatening to kill people. I mean, some of them did.

Yeah, but right wingers not used to ever having their, you know, actions being checked by the authorities, because the authorities are almost always right wing. So now right wingers, welcome to our world, where the government is not on your side, they're on the side of the powerful, okay? Not just the government, but the corporate interests. And they work in tandem here. And so that's why they're busting out protests of oil pipelines. And rent that's too high.

Yeah, protests about, yeah, rent that's too high. It's insane. All right, we should probably take a break. When we come back, if you suspected that Ron DeSantis was lying about who the don't say gay bill would be applied to, you'd be correct. I'll give you the details on what he's up to now when we come back. All right, back on TYT, Jankana with you guys. We have an update on what Ron DeSantis is now up to in the state of Florida, especially when it comes to his discriminatory practices against the LGBTQ community.

Let's watch. The Porendal Rights and Education Act, which critics call the don't say gay bill, currently applies to grades K through third. DeSantis now wants to apply it through high school. That's right. We all heard repeatedly over and over and over again from all these conservatives who said there's nothing wrong with the don't say gay bill. It only impacts students from kindergarten to third grade. But those of us who suspected that it would go further than that were correct. Because now Ron DeSantis is like, oh, let me just go back to my greatest hits.

You know, Trump is doing well in the polling. I really need to increase my national standing with the Republican voting base. So let me just go right back to the issue that put me on the national map to begin with. Now, here's some more detail into how he's expanding the so-called don't-say gay bill. In a surprise announcement, his administration proposing that for grades 4 through 12, instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards or is part of a reproductive health course, which parents can opt out of. A DeSantis spokesperson telling ABC News, there is no reason

for instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to be part of K-12 public education. Full stop. Really, there's no reason for students in middle school. in high school to learn about gender identity and sexual orientation. I knew what my sexual orientation was when I was in elementary school. I just knew. I had crushes on boys. So if you are someone who is attracted to the same sex and you don't understand what's going on with you, right? Where would you get that education? Especially if you're living in a right wing or red state and maybe you come from a conservative family that doesn't want to have those conversations with you. I mean, this is, I mean, I knew this was

to happen. I knew it. I mean, I knew it once they started banning incredibly innocuous and like innocent books like Tango Makes Three, a book about penguins adopting an orphaned penguin. I mean, come on. Yeah. All right. So first of all, whenever you hear right when you're talking about the children, they almost never mean it. And I'm talking about Republican leaders and politicians, okay? They use them as shields as they go to drive fear and hatred. So they say, Oh, this is about the tiny children. And DeSantis said it over and over. It's a tiny.

I mean, he's not past third grade. I mean, you don't want him hearing anything about gender roles and sex and stuff. Like, sex? I mean, we don't talk about. Who was talking about sex? Nobody was talking about sex. Jen, whether someone is gay or straight doesn't have anything to do with sex. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what.

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Are we really pretending like teenagers? I mean, I would rather have teenagers learn about, about sex, about gender, about all of this stuff in the context of an educational setting as opposed to the internet, which they have access to. where they have access to far more explicit content that they're purporting to be so concerned about. Yeah, and you should have sex education in high school and probably junior high. Eighth grade, I think, is around where it normally starts. That makes sense. Kids have already entered puberty. You have to teach them things so that they don't stumble into stuff, et cetera, right?

But now, but this is none of that, this is about the children, none of it is about sex. It's about hating gay people. So look, I ran to a Dan in Florida. He's gay. He's raising two kids. They're in the system, right, in Miami. And he told me the teachers made his kids take down pictures with the rainbow flag in the background of their house. It's an innocuous picture.

It just happened to me in the house, right? And they, you know why? Because the teachers are scared to death that they're going to be sued and they're going to lose whatever little money they have. They're going to lose their house, et cetera. So any mention of their parents, because they're gay, is now eliminated because you're not allowed to talk about gay people. You're not allowed to talk about trans people, drag, whatever, all that stuff, right? Guys, what are you, pretending they don't exist? And don't tell me you don't hate them if you say they're so bad we shouldn't let kids even know that they exist.

No, you guys are, the Republican Party is 100% driven by that hatred. That's why DeSantis is doing it now so he can say, oh yeah, I hate people more than Donald Trump does. I hate gay people more than Nikki Haley does. I'm the biggest hater. But finish the thought, right? Finish the thought, because why is he doing it, right? Why is he putting his hand in the cookie jar again? It's because he sees this as politically advantageous.

And that's what makes our politics so sick that it's not about representing the best interests of people. It's not about making people's lives better. It's all about I'm Ron DeSantis and I want more kudos on a national level by going back to the greatest right wing hits. And this is what he does. It's all about his political future. That is why he's doing this. It doesn't matter who he hurts.

It doesn't matter how many kids are harmed by it. Does it matter the kind of discriminatory practices that come from it? He's going to do it because it's politically advantageous. And remember what they told us over and over again when the first iteration of the don't say gay bill was released. Let's take a look. Let's remember. Some of the lawmakers behind this bill, their argument is kids have their whole lives to sort out their sexual orientation or gender identity. So they don't need to have those conversations now. Opponents worry that it could have a chilling effect on discussion of those topics

in any grade. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis left no questions as to whether he will be signing the bill into law. I think it's inappropriate to be injecting. those matters like a transgenderism into a kindergarten classroom. We're going to make sure that parents are able to send their kid to kindergarten without having some of this stuff injected into their school curriculum. The law that was passed is to be common sense that in those grades, those lower grades, you shouldn't be teaching sexual orientation and those matters that should not be covered at that age.

Or any age now, apparently. So it was alive from the very beginning. It was. Okay, this was meant to eventually impact all students in public schools in Florida. And now it's happening. Okay, Republican voters, instead of accusing you, let me ask you, if you don't like this, then don't vote for the people that are pushing it. So if, if Ron DeSantis thought this was going to hurt him in a Republican primary, he certainly

would not have done it when Nikki Haley said he didn't go far enough and that he should go to higher grades. When Donald Trump attacks him for not being hateful enough, he would think, no, Republican voters are wonderful human beings who are just worried about the children, but they love gay people and trans people and they're open to everybody, equality and justice. Then he would go in the opposite direction. But he thinks Republican voters want the fear and hatred. So Republicans, it's up to you. Do you want it or don't you want it. If you keep telling your politicians you want it, they're going to give it to all of us and drive that hatred all the way through. Yeah, and it's just, it's more divide and conquer

garbage as well, because while I don't know, you might get your rocks off by discriminating against people, has it improved your life? Has your life gotten better? Now just a few more details about what this new effort means, how it's going to be accomplished. So apparently the proposal doesn't even require legislative approval, although it doesn't It doesn't matter. Republicans have a super majority in the state legislature in Florida. It's scheduled for a vote next month before the state board of education and has been put forward by the state education department, both of which are being led by the governor's appointees. So his handpick right wing appointees.

And again, the initial law that DeSantis championed last spring bans lessons in kindergarten through third grade. The change was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel. The proposed rule change this year also signals that the governor's willingness to bypass even the compliant state legislature and instead leverage state boards in order to accomplish his high profile political goals. Late last year at DeSantis' urging, state medical boards voted to ban children from receiving hormones or undergoing surgeries to treat gender dysphoria. All right, I love our members. Vicki reminded me a point I wanted to make. She wrote, and don't say gay bill done. Now what about food insecurity and homelessness among those same children?

Yeah, so these Republican politicians that pretend to care about the children, as AR-15s are ripping through the bodies of our children, they say, no big deal. No, we shouldn't change the law at all, at all, because the weapons manufacturers need to make more money and funnel more bribes to me. Plus, some of my voters like the hobby. So it kills your kids. I don't care, right? Oh, they're hungry feeding them. I don't care. They shouldn't have free lunches. They shouldn't have this. They shouldn't have that. You shouldn't have paid family leave so that you could take care of your newborn baby. They don't give a damn about the children. They always use it as an excuse and a prop so they could drive hatred towards whichever community that they are targeting. Well, speaking of communities that they target, let's go to women and what they're going to be dealing with in Idaho, increasingly as certain centers and medical services shut down. A hospital in Idaho has announced that it will stop delivering babies, partly due to the current political climate. That's the argument here.

Now in a press release from the hospital, Bonner General Health officials cited a shortage of pediatricians and decreasing number of deliveries. The release also pointed to the legal and political climate in a state where trigger laws banned nearly all. all abortions after the fall of the constitutional right to an abortion. So I'm gonna read an excerpt from their statement on why they're shutting down these services at the hospital. Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.

And so these anti-abortion laws really do have an effect on physicians' jobs. And they're terrified of being sued. They're terrified of being targeted for performing care that women need. And so many of them are no longer working in some of these red states. They're deciding to move to other states where they can practice without the fear of getting sued by private citizens. Now, they say they will try to perform deliveries of babies up until May 19th. The hospital has delivered 265 babies in 2022, which is actually a 37.5% decrease from 2008. I wanted to mention that because the lowering, like the decrease in birth rates is also part of

this. So I don't want to leave that part out as well. But that in addition to the climate for physicians has led to this issue. Yeah. So a couple of things stood out to me here. One was a doctor telling us, the reporter telling a story of doctors letting women get sicker and sicker with their pregnancies that they knew were not going to reach a healthy conclusion, but they were afraid if they acted earlier to help the mother, that Republicans would say, No, it wasn't clear enough yet, so you're going to jail. It's a felony, okay? And so you could, five years at a minimum, I mean, there's a lot of different laws here that apply, but that's one of them, okay?

So they're letting the women get so badly in danger so that it's clear enough that they could operate. Right, close to death. That is a terrible, terrible thing to do, okay? So that's already on that alone, that's insane and we should not do that. So number two, doctors are rightfully saying, wait, I can go practice in a state where I'm not going to be in danger of being put in jail or being fined out of existence. I thought, by the way, Republicans wanted tort reform, but apparently not, okay? So or I'm going to lose everything I have because I actually did the right thing and I treated a person who needed the treatment. Well, I don't want to risk that.

Well, I don't blame them. Who wants to live in a Taliban state? You make the right move, and somebody characterizes it as wrong, and now next thing you know, the Taliban throws you in jail. So this is where we are. If you don't think it's Hamman's tale, you're kidding yourself. It's exactly what's happening in Idaho. I mean, look, rural areas already have difficulty in getting the health care they need.

So these anti-abortion laws happen to make the situation even worse. I can get into those numbers in just a moment. But first, let's actually talk about the anti-abortion laws in the state of Idaho. What do they look like? Well, a trigger law passed in 2020 criminalizes the procedure in almost all cases with possible defenses if a doctor determines it necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman or if the pregnant woman has reported rape or incest to law enforcement, which by the way, that puts the woman in a terrible position because then she has to go through that awful process of our justice system. A medical provider who violates the law can face felony charges punishable by two to five years in prison along with suspension or revocation of their medical license. So you can understand why it would be difficult to recruit doctors in states like Idaho.

And the Idaho Republican Party, incredibly vicious on this issue. They don't even hide it. They want to go further. The Idaho Republican Party platform declares that abortion is murder. from the moment of fertilization and calls for its prevention regardless of the circumstances of conception, including persons conceived in rape and incest. The platform says the party supports criminalizing all abortions within the state. So that's where they're coming from, right? And it's not about saving lives. You look at the states that have these insanely strict

bans on women's reproductive rights. And they tend to have incredibly high maternal mortality rates, incredibly high rates of childhood poverty. I mean, if you generally care about saving children's lives, wouldn't you focus on ensuring that they're living in safe, healthy environments that they have all the resources they need to thrive? No, who cares about that, right? We'd much rather punish women for whatever reason. And then finally, access to obstetric services has been on the decline for years in rural areas with at least 89 obstetrics units in rural U.S. hospitals closing their doors between 2015 and 2019, according to the American Hospital Association. More than half of rural counties, home to 2.2 million women of child

bearing age, are now maternity care deserts. It's insane. Yeah, look, I'm sure that there are people who considers themselves quote unquote pro life that really got convinced that life begins at conception when, you know, the zygotes are the same exact thing as fully grown independent human beings. I'm sure some of them genuinely believe that, okay? But the Republican leadership and the evangelical leadership are complete liars. And so Anna told me about this. I've got a small part of it in my book for five years after Roe v. Wade, evangelical leaders and Republican politicians were 50-50 on it. They did not have an objection to it. But then Paul Wyrick ran a campaign where four Republicans won running on the issue of abortion. And all

of a sudden the Republican Party and Christian leaders in the country were outraged at the idea of abortion. Remember, I've told you a million times, you can go look it up in numbers. The Bible is actually pro-abortion. That's why evangelical leaders, were probably like, I don't know. I mean, the Bible says abortion is good if you think your wife cheated on you. They're like, oh, we could win elections with it. Oh, perfect. And why did it work? For two reasons. One is, they're both super depressing. One is some folks like the idea of the people that were in charge, staying in charge. And who was in who were in charge? Men. And they didn't like the equality of women. This is a way of controlling their bodies from the same people who said,

oh, liberals and progressives, they're going to control our lives. No, they want to. to control our lives and they're doing projection. It doesn't get any more controlling your life then. You're not allowed to do what you think is right for your family, with your own body. And the government should seize your body and tell you what to do with it. Okay, that is textbook controlling your life. And then the, but the main reason was they got to do the propaganda that works so brilliantly for them all the way up until now.

The Democrats are killing children, aren't you going to stop the Democrats are murdering poor innocent babies, that's why they're doing it's a giant lie. They don't even believe it. No, they don't. It's a way to accumulate political power. And what's incredible is even after the 2022 midterm elections where the reversal of Roe ended up being a political liability for the Republican Party, they're still running with it. They're still going with it. And so I mean, I don't know if it's going to change, if it's going to end up actually working. working out well for them in the future, but one thing that I do know is that ordinary people don't like government making decisions on their behalf when it comes to the most intimate

parts of their lives, period. People actually do want freedom. And when we talk about big government, we want it when it comes to corporations that are so deregulated, so monopolized in some cases, that they screw us over. But that's the only area where the right wing actually want small government. When it comes to our personal lives, when it comes to the most intimate parts of our lives, they love big government. They can't get enough of it. By the way, Republicans, a lot of you don't even believe these restrictions, right? You don't want doctors to leave, you're pro-choice, etc. How do I know that? Because look at Kansas. They voted overwhelmingly for pro-choice. Montana voted overwhelmingly pro-choice.

Almost every state in the nation is pro-choice. But yet your Republican politicians keep passing these draconian laws. So why don't you rise up and say, no, I like doctors. I don't want to imprison doctors. We won't have any, you morons, right? Doctors save our lives. They save my daughter's life, my uncle's life. What are you doing, you monsters? And yes, I like women, and I believe that they should be able to control their own bodies. It should be equal to us. Rise up. Otherwise, they do represent you, and you're okay with it. We got to take a break. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk about just how much money Donald Trump raised off of telling his fans and his supporters that he's

going to be arrested at any moment. So we'll get to that. And later in the show, we'll also talk about, honestly, an American hero, a woman who's 100 years old who went to a city council meeting to speak out against book bans. I love her. She's a real queen. You should watch what she says, come 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 at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.

Thank you.