The Young Turks - FBI Parkland Shooter, National Enquirer, and Parkland Victim’s Mom

Episode Date: February 17, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from February 16, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1:  The Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged on Friday that some “protocols were not followed” after it obtained a tip in January that Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the Florida school attack, had the potential of “conducting a school shooting.” “We are still investigating the facts,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.” Fox & Friends blames prescription drugs, virtual reality, and the "human condition" for the Florida school shooting. Mitt Romney running for Senate. Segment 2  Cenk, Ana, & Richard Fowler. How many other stories has the National Enquirer covered up to help President Trump? Ronan Farrow's new reporting in The New Yorker forces the question to be asked. But it's a very difficult one to answer because the tabloid is secretive about its practices. Farrow's report highlights a tactic called "catch and kill" -- where a publication buys the rights to a story and then buries the story as a favor to someone. The Enquirer allegedly did this to conceal an extramarital affair by Trump, according to Farrow's report. President Trump, please do something! Do something. Action! We need it now! These kids need safety now!" With tears rolling down her face, Lori Alhadeff screamed into a microphone, glared into a camera, and begged the President to address the nation's deadly gun epidemic. Alhadeff's 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was one of 17 people killed during Wednesday's school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Alhadeff's grief was coupled with anger and a demand for answers. Russian-linked bots flooded Twitter with political propaganda in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Florida on Wednesday, according to data from a website tracking Russian activity on the social media site. The website, created by the think tank the German Marshall Fund, tracks the activities of 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russia. And in the days after 17 people were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the website recorded Russian-linked twitter bots tweeting about Parkland, gun control, Florida and Nikolas Cruz, the alleged shooter. 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. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join.

Thanks for watching. All right, back on the young turks. Let me read a couple of comments sent in. First on YouTube super chat. First, we got Patrick McGinnis. Not reporting to the FBI is enough to be collusion. So the point there is Don Jr., for example, and then Kushner and Manafort and all the guys who were in that meeting, knew that they were talking to people connect.

to the Russian government, and they never reported it. So there's a good case. Look, if they weren't all connected to the president, they were regular citizens, there's plenty good enough case to go forward. But since they're connected to the president and we could have civil war, right, they're going to need better than that, probably, okay? Ismark writes in on YouTube super chat as well. So 2020 Bernie wins, won't Trump declare fake vote, try to nullify the election?

And just like he was going to do with HRC, he always expected to lose. Yes, but if he had done that and if Hillary Clinton had won, he at least would not have been in power. Now that he is in power, God help us all. Oh, my God. I have not actually yet thought about that. Yes, if he makes it all the way to 2020 and he loses, batting down the hatches. I really hope he's sick of it there by then. No, I don't know.

Peacefully. Melania might just, to your point, Richard, might just be like, look, if you don't go, I'm just telling everybody everything. I think she's just going to give him a bunch of wine and send him out on a boar hunt. Because she can't wait to get out of there, partly just to get divorced, especially with the Stormy Daniels stuff that's now out there. And it's not, the Stormy Daniels stuff is not even officially out there yet, because now Stormy gets to tell her story. Yeah. It's going to be salacious. Indeed, including dresses and all, apparently.

magazine butt slapping. Yeah, I miss the butt slapping thing. I'll have to go back and read that part. You didn't miss much. You didn't miss much, but it's bizarre. And Shark Week. All in wrapping there. Yeah, that was weird too.

All right. Anyway, one last one. And this one's from Twitter. Hashtack TYT Live to talk to us during the show. I'm seriously sick of all the Bernie smearing. This is Jay Thomas Gordia. And this just proves how scared the DNC, NGOP are of integrity. Hear you on that, brother.

Member shoutouts to the day are William Soto and Alexandria Ali, and we had our Sweet 16 birthday party last night. And so you guys and everybody else can check that out. You have a postgame today from the staff, but you also have that two and a half hour extravaganza we did last night. That's fun. Yep. TYT Network.com slash join to check that out,

including my spazzy cutting of the cake of the sword, which I couldn't quite pull off. I'm still recovering from the cut on my thumb. All right, John, what's next? You have to do it like Jar with the bat. You don't just slash. You also poke a little bit. Anyway, okay, mixing it up.

Less than a couple of days after the tragic, most recent school shooting in Florida, the FBI finds itself being targeted after it revealed today that it failed to follow up on calls warning the agency of the Parkland shooter. They said that they had, the agency said proper protocols were not followed in investigating him, who authorities say has confessed now to stalking the high school's hallways, gunning down students and teachers. And we have a statement from the FBI director going in greater detail saying, I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our

processes for responding to information that we receive from the public. It's up to all Americans to be vigilant. And when members of the public contact us with the concerns, we must act. properly and quickly. And so let's talk about what actually happened. Law enforcement officials said calls to the tip line are handled at the FBI's call center in West Virginia. They get about 2,100 per day. And a caller did call in about this particular individual, saying that Cruz had recently purchased firearms and had threatened a family member. They added that the caller knew Cruz's address and said he had been posting disturbing

messages on social media accounts and that he had a desire to kill, which is a whole lot of information. When you combine it together, that's really scary. Now, under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken, but they did not do that. And there will be consequences, although we can hold off for a second if you want to respond to this initial information. So look, there's going to be a political angle here in a second, But in terms of what the FBI did wrong, I'm going to have a minority opinion here.

So it's very easy to say, oh, my God, why didn't they act? Why didn't they do something? But it was a YouTube comment. Look down below. If you're watching on YouTube, tell me if you don't find a death threat in there. Or someone saying they're going to kick someone's ass or kill them or come for them, et cetera. And if you don't find it on this video, which will be nearly miraculous, go find any other video that we do, anyone does. If we reported every person who sounded dangerous, equal way, same exact way.

I'm going to be a shooter. I'm going to come get you guys with guns, yada, yada. If we report each one to the FBI, the FBI would do nothing else but track the people that are in our YouTube comment section. So it's a little Monday morning quarterback here. I sometimes when the threats are incredibly specific and repeated I feel like the FBI still feels overwhelmed and does not give a proper response that's my take on it but this was one guy in a YouTube comment section I if the FBI chased every one of those down I'm like I said I don't think they'd do anything but that so I I agree with you and this to me maybe it just me but I

this reads as one of these, the Republicans are getting ready to set up a straw man so they could avoid the real conversation. And I think it's disheartening. And I think it's, excuse my language, but this is the internet. It's bullshit. Because I grew up literally, Jenk, about 20 miles from the school. I debated at this school. And as I watched on Wednesday night, as they showed the aerial views, I could remember myself being a sophomore in high school sitting in that courtyard. And to watch these Republicans, Bob and Weave, and Bob and Weave and try to find all these different reasons as to what went wrong here, when the real thing that went wrong in this case, and everybody knows it, you talk to people in Parkland, you see the interviews from these students,

you see the interviews from these parents. Here's what went wrong. It's pretty simple, America. He was 18 years old. He couldn't buy a beer. He couldn't buy a pint of vodka. He couldn't buy whiskey, but he was able to buy a military grade weapon, an AR-15, in multiple magazines and he was able to camouflage himself as a student, walk into that school, pull the fire alarm, and then kill 17 innocent people. The problem is not the FBI. The problem is not, oh, we didn't get it soon enough. The tips were bad. The problem was, is this man was armed with a military grade weapon and Republicans will continue to conjure up different Bible scriptures and they will talk about thoughts and prayers. But thoughts and prayers does not bring back a 14-year-old

little girl who had the world ahead of her and the world in front of her to accomplish and to a conquer. And I think that is what's so upsetting. And that's why these parents, if you look at these interviews, these parents are, like, this is ridiculous. And I got to say this, I think it's really time that every American wake up. And there was a video done where now this went to, and they started talking to those terms of Congress. What do you have to say? What are you going to do? And they're like, oh, well, I don't want to talk. I don't want to talk. Because the NRA has a stranglehold on our elected leaders in the state houses and in Congress, and everybody is so afraid of Wayne LaPierre and that building in Fairfax County that they're

unwilling to protect our children. And so now they're going to blame this on Christopher Ray and the FBI, and they're going to find some way to connect it back to Russia and connect it back to Comey. So Trump could go back to his old narrative. And once again, we're missing the argument. The argument is this. We are, what, 20-some, 30-some, 60-some out days into the New and we've had 18 school shootings. Our kids are not safe. Schools should be safe and welcoming places for children, and this is not true. Why it's not true?

Because too many people have guns, and it's too easy to get. You can get an AR-15 in Florida in about 38 minutes. Yeah. Period. So I'm going to go to graphic 30 here in a second. But now let's talk about the political part of this, because then Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, and Marco Rubio, both come out. They say they're shocked and chagrin at the FBI.

If you want, we have. Yeah, so here I'll read you one of Rick Scott's quotes. The FBI's failure, this is Graphic 33A, the FBI's failure to take action against the killer is unacceptable. 17 innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isn't going to cut it. We constantly promote, see something, say something, and a courageous person did that, just that to the FBI. And the FBI failed to act. See something, say something is an incredibly important tool and people must have confidence in the follow-through from their law enforcement. The FBI director needs to resign.

So now let me explain the trifecta there for Republicans. And it might be even more of that. So number one, great, I get to deflect from guns. It's not guns. It's if you had just found that one YouTube comment and done something about it, this all would have been taken care of. Number two, I wanted the FBI director fired because he's allowing an investigation of Donald Trump. Perfect.

Yes. Now, what a gift to me. I get to avoid talking about the real problem, and I get to get rid of what someone I perceive to be a political enemy so I could help the president obstruct justice. And then number three is the constant reference to see something, say something. Why? Look for people who are different than you, right? And that is mainly used.

It is incredibly ineffective. So they have that program in the tri-state area up in New York, New Jersey, et cetera. the overwhelming majority of the calls are totally useless. It was a tremendous amount of police time to chase after. That guy looked Arab. That guy looked dark. That guy looked suspicious. That student had a backpack.

It's a total waste of time, right? But it allows the Republicans to deflect and get you to start questioning one another. Oh, and it allows for demagoguing. Now, by the way, the guy, it appears, is a white. white nationalist. And he was wearing a MAGA hat in one of the pictures and bragged about being a right winger. So every time I see someone in a MAGA hat, should I say something? Every time I see a right winger, should I report it to the FBI? A right winger with a gun. Okay, let's be more specific, right? That's all that. Okay, great. Can I report 120 million

people? Right? How useless is see something, say something? So they hit a trifecta with it. And the mistake that Christopher Ray did in this case, and Christopher Ray is a Republican. Yeah, they're all Republicans. For God's sake. And I'm sure that if Christopher Ray and I discuss policy, we would disagree on what, 80, 90% of things, right? So I'm not a fan of Christopher Ray. I wouldn't have appointed Christopher Ray. But Christopher Ray here did what an FBI director should do.

Took accountability. And I think he took too much accountability, but that's okay. Good. I like that he, he's my, they represent us. He's our FBI director. I'm glad that he took accountability. But in politics, major mistake. The Trump team and the Republicans never take accountability. And they go, well, we denied it. We strongly denied it. Yeah. And the other side and decent, honest people take accountability. And they go, yeah, you see, you admitted it. That's it. We got to fire you. And that's what's happening here. Yeah. Yeah. When, when we saw that,

the FBI had not followed the protocol this morning at the production meeting. We were like, I felt like, okay, I'm putting a tough position because obviously I want to talk about this because they theoretically could have stopped the guy. Now, I think when you're getting literally thousands of tips every single day, it is very difficult. I mean, sometimes there's other evidence, like the fact that he's recently purchased firearms, something like that, that can make it a little bit easier, but it's still tough. But I also knew that this would be used for the two-pronged distraction tactics that we've

been talking about. they want you to be focused solely on protecting the last possible shield against a mass shooting. Let's not actually talk about any of the root causes, the structure that makes it possible. Let's talk about, did they get their medication on that particular day? Did someone pursue a phone call? Let's not talk about the fact that they can literally reach out and grab a firearm because they're all around us. And so it's distraction. And then, of course, we were talking about the meeting. They're going to use this to try to discredit the FBI. I didn't know how specific and target it would be, that they would literally call on him to step down that day.

But we knew it was coming and they wasted no time. So just one more thing that I promise you, Graphic 30, if you could put guys could put that up. To Richard's earlier point, it's the guns, it's the A.R. 15s, et cetera. When you look at a scale of mass shootings in the world compared to the number of guns, we stand alone. So we're in the upper right corner, all by ourselves. We have 270 million guns in the country, and we have 90 mass shooters from 1966 to 2012. Now, that is a very, very conservative count.

The reality is it is now, especially since 2012, way higher. Okay? Now, if you look at the other countries, they have a low amount of guns, and they have a low amount of mass shooters. And it's not close. They're all huddled in the lower left corner. We're in the upper right corner. It's the gun, stupid. I think you're absolutely right. And I think what makes this even more sad is that this is part, this is all part of this sort of, they love to play.

I think my word of the day is straw man. Because you would hear them, when they go on about MS-13 and all these illegals are killing everybody. Oh, Kate Steinley. And then you look at it, majority of the mass shootings in this country are white, supremacist, right? White supremacist, white nationalist, Trump supporters who go in and create absolute mass havoc. And that's exactly what they did to Parkland. And it's like, for me, it just hit way too close to home. Because you never, like, you know, when it happened in Sandy Hook and I'm like, this is awful, this is really sad, but you never think is going

to happen in your community. And to know that this happened, my mom called me, she was like, I'm so happy that you, neither you or your brother are in public school anymore. And I could vision my mother being one of those parents. And then you ask yourself the question. question, what is it going to take for these members of Congress and for these elected leaders to say, hold on, we've got to get these guns out of these people's hands. I mean, and it's not, I'm one of those people, my brother's a gun owner and my father's a gun owner. I don't have a problem with guns.

I just have a problem with military grade weapons in the United States of America when we're not at war. Yeah, actually, let's, real quick, real quick, let's just go to the next story on that, because that's exactly what that's the story. related to. Okay. Fox News desperately wants no action whatsoever on gun control in the wake of this most recent school shooting, but at the same time, they also want to look like they're at least

sort of taking seriously this constant ritualized mass murder of our children. And so they need to find something to talk about and something to blame. And they've decided to go back to, I believe the 90s, maybe the early 2000s, for something else to put the blame on. And you're going to see that in this clip. How about video games, Ethan? Would you support regulating video games? You know, there are video games out there that are very realistic and you can shoot to death, you know, every video character on the screen and leave them lying in a pool of blood?

Well, I think that's a much more challenging issue because that gets into parenting and greater social issues. Because how do you regulate video games, whereas a handgun, you can control the flow of them. Germany did it very successfully after a series of school shootings in Germany. They have a psychological background check before you get your permit. Ethan, how many guns were already in society in Germany? They don't have kind of the tradition that America has. They actually have a very high, they have a very high gun ownership rate. Finland is another one that put in the same system.

Switzerland is a very high gun ownership rate, again, where the society has chosen to allow the government to be more intrusive if you're going to have a deadly weapon in your hands. The key is, is to make it more difficult to rapidly kill a lot of. large number of people in a very short period of time. I call for banning bump stocks immediately. Let's remove high capacity magazines immediately. At least make it easy. Look, I've fired AR-15s. I have a DD-214 from the Army Reserve. I've fired, I've gone skeet shooting. I've gone hunting. I know what it's like to use firearms. There is a rational basis to limit what is available. So that's a radio host, Ethan Bierman, and he's a former Army reservist, and he's served, and et cetera.

So you can't say he doesn't know anything about weapons. And what he's asking for is not that much. He's like bump stocks allow you to shoot, turn those weapons into automatic weapons. Why? High capacity magazines, if you're a hunter or you need to protect your house, why? Is there a marauding army of huns who are going to come into your house and you really need to fire at that kind of pace? Is there an Afghani warlord coming to your suburbs? to do harm to you and your family?

No, there's no reason to have those other than to the killings. Now, to the incredibly misinformed idea that John Scott, the Fox News host there, put out about video games. I want to quote the New York Times from a story from yesterday that looked at different studies of what causes gun-related deaths of mass shootings. They say, whether a population, this is graphic 32, whether a population plays more or fewer video games also appears to have no impact. Americans are no more likely to play video games than people in any other developed country. So, for example, in Japan, they play a lot of video games.

Let me show you the stats on Japan, Graphic 31. Gun related deaths, Japan versus US in the year 2013. We had 21,175 suicides from guns, 11,208 homicides from guns, and just 505 people died from accidents from guns, accidental discharge. In Japan, there were 13 gun-related deaths. But they don't play video games there, right? Yeah, and let's be fair, we're three times as large as Japan, so let's call that 39. Just on accidents alone, we overwhelm them.

You know why? You can't accidentally kill yourself with a gun if you don't have one. I mean, I think that's the point. And I know John Scott, and I think he's a great journalist, but he's just wrong on this particular point. because you could play video games so you're blue in the face. If you can't get access to an AR-15, then it doesn't matter. And I think I'm going to bring up the previous point that I made earlier on this segment was the Huffington Post right after the Pulse nightclub shooting, which wasn't that long ago, right,

went into Orlando and they had one of their journalists tried to purchase an AR-15. It took him 38 minutes to walk out of a gun shop with an AR-15, a military-grade weapon. These are not weapons that you see. It's not like, basically, it was as much time it would take you to go buy a rotisserie chicken at your local Whole Foods. You can go buy an AR-15 in the state of Florida. They really should rename the place. Instead of the Sunshine State, the gun-shine state, because it's so easy to get a gun, and the rules are so lax. And there's no stop measures.

There's no stop gaps. In Florida, medical professionals can't even ask you if you own a gun if you're mentally deranged. Like, they can't ask because they could lose their license for asking you or infringe upon your Second Amendment right. And it goes back to the fact that the NRA, and it infuriates me how much power this one random building in Fairfax has over the entire country. They literally have America by the throat. And it's not even really America. Let me be very clear.

They have Republican politicians by the throat. And so they are so afraid of getting scored by the NRA or by like the 33% of NRA and what they're willing to do that they will not stand up for the safety of our children. And so what that says to me, we are, what, a couple months away from an election? If you have a kid in public schools, you need to vote for your kid's safety, whether you are Democrat, whether you are Republican, whether you are independent. Vote for your children and vote these bozos out of office because they are afraid of a building in Fairfax, and their fear is causing our kids to die, period.

Yeah, the only part I disagree with, of course, is that it's not random. They bribe these politicians. Yes, they pay them. Yes, and Donald Trump got $30 million from the NRA in the last race. And Marco Rubio has gotten $3.3 million over the course of his career from the NRA. So when he says all he has his thoughts and prayers. It's all he's got for real. Yeah, that's because he got paid to say that.

I mean, that's what they mean, though, Jake. When they say thoughts and prayers, that's all they have because they can't do anything else because literally handcuffed. And they're like, oh, no, we got his thoughts and prayers. Because God forbid we crossed the NRA, that could cost us our election. that could cost our political career, and that could cost the Republican Party majorities in the House, the Senate, and in state led such as all across the country. Yeah. All right, we got to go.

Thank you, John. Appreciate it. Everybody come right back. We got a lot more stories to get to, guys. And on this shooting, if you haven't seen the mother of one of the kids killed, man, that is super powerful. All right, we'll be right back. Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through.

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All right, back on the Young Turks. Drop it. Okay, that was the hip-hop version of the power panel. Okay, Adam writes, by the way, Anna Kasparian joins us. Hi. Adam writes in, the fact that you have to say this most recent school shooting is both depressing and infuriating at the same time, hashtag gun control now. The mad lips says, so what is the point of mass surveillance and wholesale domestic spying if our government can't even flag a kid in Florida who basically declared he's about to commit a mass murder? So as I explained in that story, I think it is actually very hard to flag all the people who threaten violence online.

On the other hand, okay, it is a great point. Then why are we doing mass surveillance? What are we looking for? We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew

about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned and that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation

you've been fed over the course of your lifetime so search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time good question and then Chris Alan with the best tweet, because he has the best words, says, great speech from Richard Fowler on the problem America has with guns.

Thank you, Chris. Okay. One note for you guys here. If you guys sometimes see us wearing shirts, John had the Bernie So Punk shirt on. I've got a very stable genius on because that's the kind of guy I am. Shop, t.wit.com, and there's a new sale. On Monday, which is President's Day, and we care about the President, we're giving 20% off on select merchandise at shopt,uartcom.

But you've got to use the code Cheeto in Chief. Nice. Okay. All right. Anyway, so go check that out. Okay, what's thanks, Dana? All right. Ronan Farrow has just reported a story on the New York.

indicating that Donald Trump had yet another extramarital affair, although the point of the story is not the salacious tidbits that are detailed in the story, but rather how a certain publication bought the rights to the story in order to kill it in order to also help Trump win the election. Now, the story has to do with an affair that he allegedly had with a former Playboy playmate between June 2006 and April of 2007. Her name is Karen McDougall, and she had described her relationship to a friend. She actually had a handwritten document that she provided to her friend, and then her friend provided it to Ronan Farrow.

John Crawford is the name of the friend who provided that document to Ronan Farrow, and I'll give you more details on that in just a second. But to give you some more details about the relationship, according to the reporting, she described their affair as entirely consensual, but her account provides a detailed look at how Trump and his allies used clandestine hotel room meetings, payoffs, and complex legal agreements to keep affairs, sometimes multiple affairs he carried out simultaneously, out of the press. Okay. So the organization that purchased the rights to this story was AMI, otherwise known as, what was it? American, sorry, American Media, Inc. American Media Inc. purchased the rights to the story. So what is American Media Inc.? Well, National Inquirer falls under the umbrella of this media corporation. And so AMI, CEO, David Pecker, has been a Trump supporter. He was very much interested in purchasing the rights to the story, exclusive rights to it. And they never published anything about it. On November 4th, 2016, four days before the election, the Wall Street Journal reported that

America Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Inquirer, had paid $150,000 for exclusive rights for this story, which never ran. Okay. So National Enquirer has been helping Donald Trump all along for a long, long time now. They have a unique relationship. If you remember, the National Enquirer is the one that broke the story of Ted Cruz having five different mistresses during the campaign primaries when Ted Cruz was running. Yes, Donald Trump. What a coincidence. Now, that is, National Enquirers run stories about aliens landing and, you know, all sorts of crazy things.

But that was pre-Alex Jones days. Like now, like, that's the stuff that actually inquired does sounds bland compared to what's online. Sounds almost reputable, which is devastating. Which, by the way, another story that they published and it destroyed a political career was the affair that Democrat John Edwards had while his wife was suffering from cancer. But that at least was true. That was true.

But I'm mentioning that mostly because there's a clear political agenda here. That was not a story that they decided to kill. That was a story that they ran, and it led to serious ramifications and consequences for John Edwards. Right. But the idea that five different women would want to sleep with Ted Cruz is even more unbelievable than any aliens landing. So that's what National Enquirer does.

It lies mainly on behalf of Donald Trump. But this one is really revelatory. It's because they're in the business of breaking stories. why on God's Green Earth would they pay $150,000 and then not run the story? If you're not going to run the story, then don't buy it, right? And by the way, this is not a practice that is exclusive to Donald Trump or just the National Enquirer. Harvey Weinstein would also do this. He would get allies in the press to buy stories from his victims and then kill them and never run them.

So the practice is known as catch and kill. They buy the exclusive rights to the story, and then they never publish it. It's all an attempt to bury that story. And look, this is important to bring up for a number of different reasons. First of all, as we know, there are some media organizations that you shouldn't trust. You shouldn't have trusted National Inquirer anyway, even prior to this story coming out. But more importantly, we have a president who can easily be blackmailed. Who knows how many affairs he's had?

Who knows what kind of trouble he's gotten himself into in the past? Who knows what kind of dirt people have? And so to know that a CEO of a shady media organization has this kind of dirt on someone like Donald Trump, I mean, he's Donald Trump's friend now, but who knows what he would want in the future? Especially if that friend happened to be the president of the United States of America and had an enormous amount of power. And you've been doing his dirt for all these years. One, you're owed a lot of favors. Two, you have his dirt.

So that's not a good situation to be. And I mean, we're having conversations about whether Rob Porter should have gotten security clearest or not. He did domestic abuse. Well, Donald Trump did domestic abuse. And there's this. And there's other stuff. I mean, the president, by any normal standard, couldn't get security clearance if he

wasn't the president, not even close. So, all right, you know, we'll see if this winds up amounting to anything. And by the way, that's not improbable because what does America care more about than anything else? sex. It drives me crazy. It's probably the least relevant thing, but it's treated as the most relevant thing. I think whether Donald Trump did money laundering for the Russians as an example is way more important. How many civilians we bombed and killed in Yemen and Syria is way more important. But Stormy Daniels claims she's got a dress Monica Lewinsky type of dress. And now they say that since Trump's lawyer broke the NDA, Stormy Daniels can say anything

she likes, that means here we go, you know. I don't think that the sex scandals hurt Trump with his base at all. I don't think they care. I think that they are these, you know, supposedly self-righteous individuals who love to preach about morality when it comes to others. But when it comes to their own lives and their own president, for some reason, he's untouchable when it comes to sex scandals. I think that's the argument, Anna, that I think a lot of people are missing.

And somebody who is a believer, right, who I don't go to church so much as I should, America. My mom might crucify me for that. But, I mean, I think that that's the larger issue. You hear people like, you know, Francis Perkins and you hear people like Franklin Graham's, like, oh, he gets a mulligan. Everybody makes mistakes. It's okay. And so my thought is like, so you guys are enraged by the fact that a woman cannot control,

you will not give a woman control of her uterus. You want to plant an American flag inside of every woman's uterus and say, we control this. You have no control over it. But by golly, Donald Trump could do whatever he would like. He can sleep with women. He can cheat on his wife. He can have, what, I think we're 15 accusers. I've accused him of some sort of assault or harassment.

And it's like, oh, he's just a baby evangelical. And I'm like, what is a baby evangelical? And I think it's very important for believers who don't buy this malarkey to stand up and be like, I'm a believer. I go to church every Sunday. I believe in Jesus Christ too. He's my savior. And this guy over here, he's not a believer.

I will not accept you guys saying he's a believer, calling him a baby evangelical. And by that matter, why are you calling yourself an evangelical? Why are you calling yourself a Christian? Because a sin is a sin is a sin. And Donald Trump has a laundry list of them. So can I jump in on that? Because I want to provide an example of how someone like Donald Trump treats women. Based on the account that was detailed in the story, when McDougall met Donald Trump,

She was working at an event as a playmate, and he starts hitting on her. Sure enough, they start talking over the phone, and then they meet for a date. After they have their first sexual encounter, he tried to give her money. And she was like, no, I met with you because I like you, which is kind of amazing. But whatever, that's what she claims. He looks at these women as prostitutes. Everyone's a prostitute in his eyes, you know, someone that he can pay off. Let me give you some money. Shut up. You know, it's, it's not very Christian-like, right? Based on what the religion is supposed to be against or be supportive of. And in this case, it's just you read all of these different accounts from so many different women. And I don't understand how anyone can argue that they're moral and that they value their morality and then they turn around and support someone like this. And, I mean, I think that what makes it even more disheartening is, like, they criticize Barack Obama.

Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now. I get a free Tilly Dog. Not included. The Naked God.

Tickets on sale now. August 1st. The same Christian ride for everything he did, and he didn't do anything that was his bad. And I mean, don't get me wrong. The Bible is very clear. A sin is a sin is a sin. and you should be forgiven of your sins, and we're supposed to move on. But to some extent, the Christian right, who's supposed to be sort of the preservers of the Christian faith,

should stand up and say, this is not okay. And there's a couple reasons, because we have daughters, we have nieces, we have auntie, we have mothers, and it shouldn't happen to them. And the fact of letting this guy get away with this type of behavior says to me that they're saying it's okay for all women to be treated this way. And for the Christian faith to say that, that's absolutely unacceptable because that's not who Jesus was. I mean, talk about the story of Mary Magdalene. And it's the complete opposite. And I think that is the part that hurt to me the most.

And I think it's so important that we as Christians who don't believe and don't inscribe these beliefs reclaim our faith from these maniacs who like Paula White who's like, oh no, he's just a baby evangelical. I don't know there was such a thing as a baby evangelical. What does that even mean? I don't know. I try to look it up in the Bible and it's not there. It means baby, sad.

All right. Last thing on this slightly encouraging note, at least for me, is we had our 16th birthday party anniversary last night. If you remember, by the way, you can watch it. We had a lot of fun reminiscing and doing some political speeches as well. TYT network.com slash join.

Anyway, one of the guys came up to us, one of our fans, and said that he was Republican and evangelical Christian all the way up to Trump. And then in the primaries, he was like, what's going on? This guy is everything we stand against. Why are you guys supporting him? And he just kept trying to understand it is a really

earnest guy trying to figure it out. And then he realized, oh, there's nothing to figure out. They're hypocrites. And so he not only left the Republican Party, but eventually realizing the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, he left the church. He's like, oh, it turns out they never meant it. They never meant it. It was just all about politics. And yes, that's exactly what's going on here. Okay. All right. Let's see the next story.

The media, the media has been speaking to multiple victims and their parents following the mass shooting that took place in Parkland, Florida. And some of those interviews, some of those appearances are incredibly difficult to watch. But it's important to hear their stories and their perspectives. For the first time, I feel as though people who have experienced the people who have experienced this type of carnage are angry at the fact that the only thing that they've been offered by people like Donald Trump is prayer or condolences. They really want more.

And one of the interviews that I saw that really, that I found compelling was that of Lori Alderdef. And she tragically lost her daughter in this shooting, 14-year-old Elisa. And she went on CNN to essentially demand that Trump do something. something about this. Let's take a look. President Trump, you say, what can you do? You can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands. Put metal detectors at every entrance to the schools.

What can you do? You can do a lot. This is not fair to our families. Then our children go to school and have to get killed. I just spent the last. last two hours, putting the burial arrangements from my daughter's funeral. Who's 14? President Trump, please do something.

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Check it out today. I feel her anger. I mean, not to the same extent as she did, I didn't lose a daughter. But I respect the fact that she is aggressively calling for action because that's what we desperately need. Well, so a couple of things here. And we'll have the full link to the full video below. CNN do a good job of getting that interview. And their anchor there was broken up about it too.

And I think rightfully so I got kids. It's hard not to tear up as you watch her. She talks about how she saw her daughter shot through the heart, the head and the hand. I think that that little explosion there on air is what the whole country is feeling now. Are you telling us there's nothing we can do? We just have to sit there and take it and watch our 14-year-old kids be murdered in front of us. And you tell me there's nothing I could do. And she was desperate to find any solution.

I don't know. Is it metal detectors to schools? What is it? It's something, right? And the reality is we know what that. The answer is, and we know that the politicians will not act. And so it's a certainty. I mean, we had the worst mass shooting in recent history in Las Vegas, 58 killed hundreds

upon hundreds wounded. We had school children massacred in Newtown. We didn't do anything. We had a congresswoman Gavin Giffords shot in the head. We didn't do anything. We had a Republican get shot. We didn't do anything. A Republican politician.

I mean, we had a Republican politician get shot, and then he himself said he doesn't want gun control. I mean, that NRA money is powerful. It really is. So this is what corruption looks like, and that is, and that's the rage that it, that it leads to. And so as a country, I feel like we're getting to a point, are you telling me we can't solve any of our problems, no matter how much we all agree? on the dreamers, over 80% of Americans agree that they should stay and have a pathway to citizenship. Nope, you can't get it. On guns, 93% of Americans want a federal background check, including overwhelming majority of NRA members.

Nope, we can't get it because the NRA represents gun manufacturers and they make more money when your kids die. Because right now, everybody in a panic is buying more guns. So that woman right there, that mom right there represents us all. you're telling us there's nothing we can do about any of these things. I mean, I can name you a dozen proposals that have over 80% approval on the country, and none of them can get passed because the politicians get bribed to do the opposite. It's maddening. That's what happens when we don't run our own country.

We've lost our democracy, and all we have left is rage. I think that's absolutely right. That was so hard to watch from me because, like I said, in the last hour, I grew up 20 minutes from Parkland. Parkland is such a peaceful place, just like the town I grew up in, and to know that this town will never be the same. Stoneman Douglas High School will never be the same. The trauma of those kids in that school building, those kids will never be the same.

And there's people who are going to watch this video, and they're going to say that we're getting political. And the answer to the question is, you're right, we're getting political, because our politicians have a solemn obligation. to protect us. They are supposed to, public safety is one of the number one jobs of government. And what we have here is a case of willful negligence on behalf of Republicans in Congress and Republicans state legislatures.

And it is time for this negligence to end. And we've got her something. No mother should have to bury her 14-year-old child because we could have fixed this problem. We could have banned AR-15s a long time ago. We could have banned them after Sandy Hook. We could have banned him after Las Vegas. We could abandon him after Columbine. But over and over again, as you said, Anna, the NRA's money and their ability to score votes is so powerful that Republicans quiver.

And the one moment that from this whole thing that caught my eye was the press conference that night that the governor gave when he was asked the question about the AR-15s. And he just looked like a deer in headlights. Like, can I cross the NRA? Can I not cross the NRA? Until the sheriff got up and said, listen, this sheriff here who runs the, county, it's pretty clear to me. If you are mentally ill, you're getting treated from mental illness, you shouldn't be near guns, you should be able to purchase a gun. Those two things don't mix. That's what Sheriff Israel said, and he couldn't be more right. And the fact that

common sense cannot prevail because a political lobby has so much power, it's beyond me. It's absolutely beyond me. I actually want to make one more point about this, that I'm not seeing anywhere and it's driving me crazy. During the campaign, during Trump's campaign, one thing that he said that did cause quite a stir, even among conservatives, that he thought women who get abortion should be punished because he believed that these women are killing babies, right? Those women should be punished. But he doesn't have the same type of rhetoric when it comes to individuals and their guns, right? So women who carry out abortion should be punished, but we shouldn't do anything about the gun laws

that allow for 19-year-olds, like the shooter in this case, to purchase something like an AR-15. I mean, it's insane. It's insane. So that double standard should anger everyone. I don't care what your political ideology is. We know what the numbers are when it comes to, you know, approval for certain types of gun legislation. And they don't represent us. These politicians don't represent us. They represent the NRA.

They represent the gun manufacturers. We have such a deeply corrupt system, and it's pathetic. And I mean, the question I ask for is where are these, where's the pro-life agenda now? Where are they talking about we care about life? We care about the life of these high schoolers. We care about the life of those kindergartners and Sandy Hook. They are eerily silent. Yes.

But when it comes to the life of an unborn baby, they're like, oh, no, we've got to protect it. When it comes to women's uterus, oh, no, we've got to protect it. But when it comes to being pro-life for high school students who want nothing more than to learn geography, I think there's a story about the beat Mr. Beagle, like the geography. teacher who opened his classroom door to save children, and in the process of opening his classroom door, lost his life. Like, where's his pro-life? Where are you guys from defending his life?

I don't say any pro-lifers protesting in front of the NRA building. You're there to hound women in the most difficult situation of their lives. But the people who actually pay our politicians to allow these murders to happen nonstop, yet somehow you can't figure out how to protest that. I'm going to show that, let's go to the mother one more time here, video seven. Barron goes to school. Let's protect Barron. And let's also protect all these other kids here in Parkland, in Florida, and everywhere else in the United States of America.

Because we earned it just like how you earn the right to protect Barron. You need to help us now. That's the problem. The elites are fine. Barron's fine. Thank God. He's got a lot of protection. And so they think it's not going to happen to us. And so Rick Scott in that moment that Richard described cares more about the NRA than he does about your kids. He cares more about his political career than all those 14-year-olds murdered in his state. So the elites think it's not my problem. It's your problem. and I still keep getting the checks. That's the sorry, sorry state we're in. So, well, we share that mother's rage. We got to take a break. Yeah.

When we come back, Laura Ingram goes after LeBron James. Dwayne Wade strikes back. But it is about super important issues. And her mindset there is very revealing. Don't miss that story. We'll be right back. Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks. Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do because that's free.

We want to have you support independent media and come watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. Come become a member. Thanks for watching either way. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work.

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