The Young Turks - Former Politician Enrages LGBTQ Activists And Trump Rebels Against Republican Party

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Republicans are huge hypocrites. Trump vetoes Yemen War Powers Resolution. Ana Kasparian, Ben Mankiewicz, and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five star rating. Thank you.

at TYT, I'm Anna Casparian, John Ida Rola and Ben Mankowitz are here with me, and I'm super excited for this panel. Ben, I always say, especially when like you come in after a while, that you need to come in more often, but you've been busy. I have been, but it's good to be here, it's good to be, it's good to be back. I think it's been other than old school, which doesn't count. It's been like a, like, it feels like a couple of months. Old school counts, especially for me.

I never miss an episode when you and Jank are hosting. Actually, I never miss old school, period, but the real old school. school crew is what draws me in. Apparently there was an episode with like Michael and Brett and Mark Thompson that people loved. That upset me. Yeah, I think it was last week actually. I didn't listen to that episode.

But I will, I will. I watch it every time things falling apart fast. Don't bother. Literally the last episode. All right, we have a great hour for you. In hour two, Maytha al-Hasson will join me, and we're going to talk about Notre Dame. In fact, we're gonna talk about Ben Shapiro's comments on Notre Dame. He brought up Judeo-Christian values in reference to Notre Dame, and there's a little bit of history

there that he should be aware of, so we'll do a deep dive into that. I honestly, I don't know what graphics you have. Are you gonna do the Media Matters thing about that? Oh, no. Okay, it's not super important, I'll tell you about it in a break, but- Okay, sounds good. But we're gonna try doing something a little different with the show. We're gonna begin, when we can, every hour with a lighter story, just so the entire, like, three hour show isn't doom and gloom, right?

Just to kind of set us up with maybe laughs, maybe something lighter, whatever. So is this the Notre Dame story? No, no, we're not gonna start with Notre Dame. We're doing that an hour too. But I do want to start off with a story of hypocrisy that involves Coachella. Former Congressman Aaron Schock was at Coachella. Now, he was a congressman from Illinois. He had to resign back in 2015, and he served as a congressman from 2009 to 2015.

He was known as one of these hardcore conservatives who went after any type of legislation that provided rights or equality for the gay community. Well, he was just recently photographed at Coachella kissing another man. He was also with a group of men at Coachella that appeared to be gay, which, look, in any other situation or any other case, who cares? That's awesome. Enjoy. Have fun.

But I want to give you some more information about who he is and what he did when he was a congressman. He voted against adding sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability, I don't even disability to the federal hate crime protection groups against the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage between a man and a woman. In fact, back in 2013, he was interviewed about his views on marriage equality, and here's what he had to say. And why don't you support that issue, by the way? Well, I just haven't.

I mean, is there a reason? You know, I mean, it seems to be a few states have passed it. Obviously, the needle is moving in a lot of polls, and I'm just wondering what the reason is. I think everybody has a set of beliefs on issues, social issues in particular, that they, that are a reflection of how they were raised in their set of beliefs. And so, first, I would say it's probably more of my upbringing and my faith values. But I also think that, and it's, you know, so that's number one. Number two, I think we're all a reflection of who we represent. And then third, I think why you're seeing some of these changes in laws is because people's views in society have changed.

So, but I just haven't given it. So gay activists are upset at the fact that he's out there having a good time, enjoying his freedom and enjoying the rights that others had fought for while he was working against them so aggressive. And so I didn't know this, but he was actually outed back in 2014, but these pictures just immersed because Coachella just happened. Yeah. I actually hadn't remember that either. So Heron Chalk has been funny throughout his time in Congress, except for the virulent hatred which weakens us as a people and as a country and a society and for which he is enormously

culpable. But, I mean, this was, everything about this reeks of obviousness, right? And I am not to believe, I think most anti-gay people are anti-gay, not because they harbor a secret desire to be gay, but because they're bad people, or raised by bad people, or a combination. And, I mean, there's no excuse in this day and age for harboring one iota of anti-gay legislative beliefs, anything, right? But this guy, like, he burst onto the national scene because he was, like, on the cover of men's health without a shirt while in Congress. Right, he was shirtless in that photo. I know. I get it. I got it.

Just keep it in 100. But, I mean, he looked great. And he's always, he's working out. And then he spent all this money to redecorate his whole office to look like Downton Abbey. I mean, I don't want to make. People really do like down there. You know, right. I've only watched it a little bit, I liked it.

Yeah. I'm just saying. And then so, and so, I mean, it's great. And what would only thing that would make this great now that he's seen in Coachella kissing another guy after his, just, again, after this sort of virulent hatred that he inspires for which he should have to answer to, is if he just said, yeah, I'm sorry, I was so closeted, like this so hard, and I was an ass, and I apologize. I think that's really the issue here because, yeah, the hypocrisy exists.

And there's still, look, there's still a side of me that doesn't want to be too harsh or too judgmental because I haven't gone through that. I don't know what it's like to grow up in a situation where you're afraid to tell people who you are because you might be met with acts of violence or you might be met with your parents disowning you. I know that that must be incredibly difficult. But right now is a great time for him to come forward. and say, you know what, I messed up.

And the reason why I did this or the reason why I felt I needed to do this was because I was a product of my environment, whatever his reasoning is. I don't care what his reasoning is, as long as he just takes ownership. The truth is probably good enough here, right? You know, grew up this way, you know, sort of thought I had to be this way and I'm ashamed of it, ashamed of my behavior as an anti-gay activist, essentially not ashamed of being gay. and then move on, man. Yeah, I think his reasoning is probably he wanted to be a Republican congressman. Yeah, right. And there was no way then, there's probably no way now that he could do that and be openly gay.

He had to resign. A couple of places you could pull it off. Maybe, maybe. But, I mean, even like just today, Buttigieg had heckler's yelling anti-gay stuff at him. Right. It was Randall Terry, right, I think. You might right, yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's actually a good point to bring up, John, because While it is true that overall, I think America and society has progressed in being more tolerant and accepting of the gay community, the reality is there are still multiple states that do not offer protections against discrimination for the LGBT community. There's still a ton of people who spew their hatred for the LGBT community. And we talk about the LGBT community as if it's like monolithic. No.

I mean, each letter is treated differently, right? So transgender people in America right now have no rights, period. I mean, we can't even allow them to use the bathroom that they identify with. That's right, yeah. So. You know, and after the Buttigieg story yesterday, I mean, I was, there was a piece that Politico or the Hill ran about how Pete Buttigieg's version of Christianity is BS. And he's, you know, and it was under the sort of.

it was cloaked in the idea of, and so is the rights. But it wasn't. It was a defense of Christianity from the right and an attack on it from the left. And, you know, Brit Hume, former Fox Newsos, former ABC anchor, you know, he was like, oh, great point. There's nothing great about that point. It was, and then I read the comments from Brits post. And, you know, the number of comments that went in the, well, he's going to hell and he chose this evil lifestyle. You know, so yes, to your point, it is very much still out there.

And by the way, it's just worth mentioning that he didn't get in trouble for designing his office to look like Downton Abbey, that's kind of cool, right? He got in trouble for spending like $100,000 to taxpayer money. Yes. Yeah. Okay, yeah, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, and I still, I guess he was outed earlier, this still makes me uncomfortable. As bad as a guy as he is, I still don't like this.

No, I get what you're saying. And every time we consider doing a story like this, I ask myself, Is this okay? Because outing someone is very serious, and if it's a private person who's done nothing wrong and has been a supporter of gay rights, there's no reason to do it. But when it's someone in a position of power who has a negative impact on the community, I think it is important to bring it up. Yeah, well, I would say, one, he's not in that position of power anymore, and second

of all, I don't think it's up to me to decide when it's okay or not. I'd largely agree with John. I just, this story got out, so it's, it's, and also to some extent. I mean, he's in a public place. He's at Coachella, there's 100,000 people there literally. No, it's almost like he's, and I hope this is true, that he's like, look, I'm not going to make an announcement, I'm just going to, wait until I get caught, essentially, you know, living my life.

But it all depends on how he handles it. Now he can handle it now, and to some extent, there's, you know, a hero is a little too strong, but he could certainly turn himself into that. He's a young guy and has done a lot of bad things in his life, he could turn it around if he chooses to and be very happy. Well, unfortunately, we live in the kind of situation where that's the light story of the day. Now we're going to get to the difficult stories, Yemen.

There was a bipartisan effort in Congress, a resolution that both Democrats and Republicans supported that would essentially... get rid of U.S. involvement in the issue, in the conflict in Yemen. Now, currently, the Saudi-led coalition has allied with the United States in that conflict, and it's led to a disastrous outcome, famine. As many as 100 civilians are dying every single day in Yemen, people are going hungry. Little children. Little children, yes.

And so both Democrats and Republicans in Congress realized, no, we should. We should not be involved in this, and so they did pass a resolution. Now the update to this story is that Donald Trump has vetoed that resolution. The veto strikes down a resolution that invoked the War Powers Act to distance the United States from a four-year conflict that has thousands or that has killed thousands of civilians and resulted in a widespread famine. As many as 10 million people are on the brink of famine and as many as 100 civilian casualties there are as many as 100 civilian casualties each week.

Yeah. So Trump says, no, no, we're gonna continue being involved. The reasoning he gives is ridiculous. He says, quote, the resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, as if he cares about the Constitution, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future. So the part of that that I'm focusing on in regard to how ridiculous it is, is the second part, especially, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members.

How? Well, I mean, if those people are brought back to the U.S., God only knows what might happen to them. There's a terrible American diet. It could start to take its toll. Yeah, it's funny. I have my bigger issues with the first part, because he manages to turn a humanitarian crisis in Yemen with the millions on the brink of starvation, on the brink of a famine,

and he's like, my powers. And he means powers. You weaken my power, right? My constitutional authority is not about you, right? And you didn't even start this, right? This is left over from the Obama administration. I did an interview before the movie the last year. I hope I have the final year.

The Obama, the foreign policy team, which was Ben Rose, Samantha Power, John Kerry, mostly Samantha Power and Ben Rose. And Greg Barker directed it, and it's good because he had great access, including a couple interviews with Obama, but mostly a look at the sort of foreign policy during the final year when they know they're leaving office. And this Q&A I did with them afterwards,

and I said, look, obviously a lot of the talk was about the election. They all thought Hillary was going to win, and they would be sort of, there would be a through line in foreign policy when they handed things off to Hillary. And then, so what was the biggest foreign policy mistake you guys made, biggest regret? And Samantha Power was like Yemen. Like we goofed it. We left this mess for incompetent people to handle, but it was ours, and we didn't solve it.

Yeah. Yeah, and Donald Trump is a warmonger. He said during the campaign, he's the most militaristic person in the world, and that has been borne out. Of course, he doesn't care of more people died in cholera. He's the most militaristic person you've ever met. So that's how he would put it, actually. But actually, yeah, we're gonna- I mean, he had, he had, as always, conflicting messages, because on one hand, he, and this certainly resonated with his base, even resonated with Democratic

voters, where he would argue that we shouldn't be involved in all these wars, right? There was no reason for us to invade Iraq. There's no reason for us to still be in Afghanistan. He presented himself as an anti-war president or an anti-war candidate, I should say. Many times. Yeah, but it's like, obviously we know that's a lie. I know, but I'm saying like he would say something super vague. Like we shouldn't be involved there.

Then he would say we should go and bomb their families. So like you can't take the overarching vague message. If he's specifically saying I would loosen the rules of engagement, I would do this, I would do that. Well, then take him at his word. I was not surprised when like very soon after his inauguration, he dropped the mother of all bombs, I believe in Afghanistan, like to send a message. No, that was in Syria, wasn't it?

He dropped it in Syria, I think, the leather of all bond. No. I'm not sure, we'll check in any event. Any of it, he dropped it. And no, I haven't been surprised. Of course he's not. Like, he, first of all, he loves Saudi Arabia, so he's going to want to support them in this. And also, just as a precedent, he doesn't like that for the first time in 40 plus years,

the War Powers Act is actually being invoked. He doesn't want to be invoked in other conflicts in the future, so he can't abide by the use of it in this case. Look, yes, you're right. He did give indications that he was going to sort of scale back America's far-reaching involvement militaristically around the globe. But out of the other mouth, he would give plenty of indications. He knew more than the generals and he's going to wait. I mean, I don't know.

I know we all recognized it, but he's a con man, right? That's what he's always been. He's a fraud. So, you know, you don't take what they say. Seriously, any leftist who fell for, oh, this guy. guy's going to scale back, you're not, you don't know, you didn't, you never understood what you were looking at with Donald Trump. So for those who might wonder how we're involved in Yemen, right now the U.S.

government is providing, the U.S. military, I should say, is providing logistical support for the Saudi-led coalition. Previously, we were assisting the Saudis with fuel. We are no longer doing that, but we are still very much involved with the logistical support. And so, again, there was a bipartisan effort to scale that. back and no longer be involved in the conflict. And logistical support means helping them come up with targets, I think. Yeah, so.

By the way, Ann and I were right, it was Afghanistan, John was mistaken, it was not Syria. That's not how I remember. I know he's joking. Oh, okay. He's being Ben. And also, more, I would say more fundamentally, we're allowing them to have a functioning military, especially a functioning Air Force. I had a reporter from The Intercept, Alex Emmons on my show today to talk about a new report

that came out of France about the war effort, and they broke down exactly, like they made clear the lie. You should watch the interview. Back a couple of months ago after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by the Saudi regime, Trump was saying, no, we can't stop selling them weapons, and it doesn't matter anyway, they'll just get them from someone else. But the thing is, they use our weapon systems, they use our vehicles. Those parts are not interchangeable. The weapons are interchangeable. You can't just throw a Russian missile into an F-16, or let alone the other planes that we've sent to them. leverage over them because their military, especially their Air Force, is dependent on us to continue to function, not only for day-to-day targeting, but also for training and for spare parts

when the vehicles get damaged. And we chose not to use that. We chose to continue along with this. And although it seems extremely unlikely that this will, that the veto will be overridden in the House or in the Senate especially, because I think there were 16 Republicans in the House, seven Republicans in the Senate, it's not enough. I still think that Bernie Sanders and I believe it was Chris Murphy, Rokana, and a few others get tons of credit for not just talking the talk on being anti-war, but actually working week after week and month after month to try to end our involvement in one of these conflicts. And I think no one, I think all those people deserve a tremendous amount of credit,

but nobody more than Rokana. I agree. I agree. Rokano was attempting to meet with Trump to try to persuade him, you know, to avoid vetoing the resolution. It's unclear whether or not he got that meeting. I'm gonna guess no. But I do wanna just quickly read some of the statements coming from these members of Congress,

first with Senator Bernie Sanders. This is Graphic 10, he says via Twitter, the people of Yemen desperately need humanitarian help, not more bombs, I'm disappointed but not surprised that Trump has rejected the bipartisan resolution to end U.S. involvement in the horrific war in Yemen. And as Ben mentioned, Rokano was a very important part of this resolution. He says, quote, this is a very sad and a miss, this is very sad and a missed opportunity by the president to stand up for the Constitution. He ignored the views of his allies like Rand Paul, Mark Meadows, and Matt Gates, all of whom voted against endless war and these interventions. He also continues to say, the most urgent task now is for the United States to call on the Saudis to lift the blockade in Yemen so 14 million civilians don't face famine.

Yeah. So, and this is the second time that Trump has used his veto power. The first time, of course, was when he vetoed attempts to stop, you know, he used the veto so he could declare the national emergency at the border. At the border. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't need to remind you that we're still in a national emergency.

It's a national emergency, so you feel it every day, right? It's amazing. So we're gonna take a break. a hashtag Ti-T-Live to tweet to us, and we will read some of your comments when we read. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-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. Turn. Welcome back to TYT and John and Ben with you.

I just want to read a quick TYT live and then get to other announcements and stories. Mike Rose, L.A. writes in and says, you guys covered the Aaron's shock story. Politicians who fought against LGBT rights and then benefit from those rights without an apology or explanation deserve to be exposed. And abs don't give him a pass. But again, what if it's an eight-path? What if they're a really good ad? They weren't just regular abs.

How can you possibly be a working congressman and have abs like that? How can you possibly be a working person, period, and have abs like that? Like you'd be a professional athlete where you have a trainer. But you know, but you know what, Ben, what you don't understand is that abs are made in the kitchen. By the way, every time someone says that to me, I want to choke them. Even though it's 100% right. I don't even know what that means. It means don't eat.

It means your workout doesn't matter. No, it doesn't mean don't eat. It means you have to eat certain like belly flattening foods, which sound terrible. No, no, no, not belly flattening foods. It's saying that your diet controls your body fat much more than you. You can easily out eat any amount of exercise, that's what they're saying. I apologize for being involved in this conversation at all. But I am demonstrating the concept in my own life.

I exercise all the time, but I can out eat it. Yeah, still talking. Okay, we have a few more announcements. I didn't have any bench. Can I get advantage roll please? Yeah, please. That would be great. So next Monday we're having an extravaganza here in TYT.

We're having two different specials and they're going to happen simultaneously. So first there is the Earth Day special that will be hosted by John Idarola and Jank Ugar. And you've already pre-taped a few interviews for the special. Yeah, yeah, we've talked to some environmental activists, Bill McKibben, the head of 350.org. We talked with a climate scientist, an author, and professor earlier today, and we're going to have a lot of people live skyping into the show, too. That's awesome. Now, at the same time, CNN has decided to do like 28 town halls, and that special coverage

will also be happening, and I'll be part of that coverage. I also want to just quickly remind you guys that Game of Thrones is back, just in case you hadn't heard, and TYT is doing, TY do, TY do, TYT is doing reviews. So last week you had Brooke, Brett, John, who else joined you last week? Adrian. And Adrian, you know, doing the post-show analysis and review. And I think each week we're gonna have a different panel. So super exciting, make sure you check that all out.

If you're a member, it's all available to you. If you're not a member, though, you just go to t-y-t.com slash join and you get all this content. We started this like four years ago, right? I think it was season two. Season two, is that right? I think season two. And it's always been good. Yeah, we've always had fun.

I think Jen's going to go crazy because he didn't get to talk about the first episodes, so now he doesn't want to talk about both. Yeah, you guys are going to be here real late on Sunday night. Yeah, that's fun, it's fun. I'm so glad I said I wouldn't do any of them. No, I'll do one. No, I love it, I love it, but I, like, I got to have a life outside of TYT. This is what life exists outside of TYT.

Anyway, all right, let's move on to some more news. Attorney General William Barr has gone against a ruling, a magistrate judge's, an immigration judge's ruling, in regard to whether or not asylum seekers can post or ask for bond. Now, of course, William Barr likes to go along with what Trump wants, and Trump wants to detain these individuals without giving them the opportunity to ask for bond. So Barr struck down a decision that had allowed some asylum. asylum seekers to ask for bond in front of an immigration judge in a ruling that expands indefinite detention for some migrants who must wait months or years for their cases to be heard.

Now, there are two parts to this, or at least two explanations. Even that photo suggests, can we go back to the one photo before? Because even the great thing about that photo, all right, we can't. But even that photo was like, yeah, I'm not really going to do this job. You know, I hear you, this is BS. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there are two parts of this story, or at least two explanations for what the Trump administration is doing, right?

So one explanation is Trump is a hardliner when it comes to immigration. He likes to be needlessly cruel, especially when it comes to asylum seekers. But I would argue that the underreported part of this story is the profit motive behind indefinite detention for these might. For these asylum seekers, right? These aren't people who got caught in Arizona somewhere and they've been living there for like five to ten years and they were found to not have documentation. These are people who entered the country and told authorities that they're seeking asylum out of fear for violence in their own countries or whatever reason that they're here for.

So now the decision's full impact is not clear because it will in large part depend on the Department of Homeland Security's ability to expand detention. And that's really the heart of this, right? Right now, we do not have the facilities to simply detain all of these asylum seekers indefinitely. However, the private prison industry certainly sees the ability to cash in on this. And I'll get to those statistics and numbers in just a minute. Yeah, the difficult thing in the short term, of course, is that you can't set up one

of those private prisons really fast. But they do have a solution for that, too. We know that Stephen Miller wants to set up tent cities. At the border, effectively concentration camps. By the way, I bet they can, I mean, you put your mind to it, I bet they could build one of those prisons incredibly quickly. And, you know, it's funny, this would be, if these were government facilities, at least that would be some infrastructure spending like they'd have to hire people. But it won't be, of course, this will be private prisons. I don't think that's the main reason I'm very interested in the profit motive, and it's certainly a worthy story.

I mean, this is, Donald Trump is running for reelection. He's running for re-election on one point, which is going to be immigration, which is really there coming for you. in your way of life, dark colored people are coming for you in your way of life. Be scared, be motivated, tell your friends to be scared and be motivated, and that's how we're going to beat, you know, crazy Bernie. Yeah. Well, there's the fear-mongering part of it, but there's also, they're going to take your jobs.

Oh, yeah. All of it. We're going to spend too much money on them. And so, you know, especially when it comes to the argument regarding asylum seekers, right. Just real quick, Adjess, well, but you're right, they're going to take your jobs. Remember his initial introduction to us. Right, that's true. jobs and they're going to rape your daughters, right? That's the, that's the fear that he wants

in people's head. And it resonates. Fear mongering, as we've seen historically in the United States, works. And he's done it with migrants. And it's working at devastating level. So you're seeing these arguments regurgitated, not just on the right. I'm seeing people on the left, you know, some of the more centrist Democrats. And I'm not talking about politicians. I'm specifically talking about voters who say, yeah, I mean, we don't have enough resources. What are we going to do? We can't, we can't keep them here. But here's the problem.

We are keeping them here. And based on what William Barr has just done, we're going to keep them here indefinitely. And that costs a lot of money. So if for you, the compassion arguments do nothing for you and all you care about is the numbers, and all you care about is the resources and taxpayer money, well, let's talk about that. So Bloomberg government did a great analysis looking into how much money we have seen. spent on immigration following Trump's presidency. So let's take a quick look at graphic 16.

So you have the amount of money that we're spending on Customs and Border Patrol skyrocketing, right? You have immigration and customs enforcement, again, skyrocketing. Citizenship and immigration services, that's completely leveled off. That is not skyrocketing. Justice Department spending has gone up. Department of Health and Human Services, that is leveled off. And so what I just really want to focus on here is customs and border protection, which we spend

a ton of money on annually, right? So that's up to $3 billion. Let's go into some more numbers. In 2018, federal spending on immigration detention and processing reached $7.4 billion, compared with total expenditures of $5.3 billion four years earlier. Also, core civic and geo group, those are the two largest private prisons, which provide detention services, migrant transportation, and other services received boosts of $85 million and $121 million, respectively between fiscal years 2015 and 2018.

Look, I bring this up because if you can recall, as soon as Donald Trump got elected, the stock value for these private prisons shot up at record numbers. And there's a reason for that, because they saw an opportunity to cash in. There is, why would we indefinitely detain people? The, just one of the, you know, you start letting horrible people in, and then they resurface and they reinforce the actions of future horrible people behind them. John Yu, former assistant attorney general under the Bush administration who wrote the torture memo, right, which is sort of allowed, and then so the Bush administration, we got a memo

from the lawyer. What do you want us to do, right? So he's very big, he's been all over Fox News that he says that I think the Attorney General's critics are overblowing what this is. This is not part of some grand scheme against immigrants coming into the United States. It's a very narrow thing the attorney general has done. He has the power to overrule immigration judges. Immigration judges have been making mistakes, they've been allowing bail to be granted to people

seeking asylum who are caught past the border. Oh, okay, so if we're gonna base the decision off of immigration judges allegedly making mistakes. How many mistakes is the president made? How many mistakes have we seen in the executive branch? How many mistakes were made when it came to separating children from their parents at the border and then failing to reunite them because the parents were deported without keeping track of where they were going or which children belong to those parents?

This is just, this is how you can change people's minds. This is how you, this is how propaganda works. They get, they get a lawyer, and then all of a sudden it's a debatable issue, torture. I don't know, you say, no, I got to say, yeah, it's a kind of lawyer here who says it. And that same lawyer resurfaces to go, this is nothing about immigrants. This is a very technical thing about some judges who have been misreading the law and we're straightening it out. And then we're having a reasonable conversation about holding people in indefinite detention

in the United States of America. And it works. That's why it keeps happening again. That's the usefulness of Fox News and the usefulness of guys like John Yoo, who, again, of undermined the country from the moment they stepped into publicly. And honestly, I think from the point of view of, as you said, the electoral strategy of focusing on immigration, all of this is good for them. No matter how, if they spend more, that's not inefficiency, it demonstrates how bad the

problem is that we have to spend $7 billion now. If we indefinitely detain and we end up with tons and tons more people being held, then they can tout those numbers to say, look, this is how big the problem is that we have all these people. There's really, like even just them putting this out there, he could just make that decision hoping it'll be controversial and people will talk about it because Trump's supporters will see, oh, this is back in the news, someone is fighting for us. He's willing to make controversial moves.

And you're right, you're right. That is the way that a lot of people think and it's unfortunate because while we're going to spend increased funding on indefinite detentions of asylum seekers, at the same time, You have crumbling infrastructure in the middle of the country where, you know, Trump claimed he was going to focus taxpayer money on, right? Well, he didn't say taxpayer money. I mean, there was some worry that he was going to privatize those efforts. But still, I mean, that's just one of the issues.

I mean, there are parts of the United States that do not have access to clean drinking water. Flint, Michigan still doesn't have access to safe, clean drinking water. But we're okay with spending more and more money on detaining undocumented immigrants, detaining asylum seekers, detaining people when they're desperate at the border? And the other effect that this strategy has goes to something you said about some on the left. Like, yeah, like, because they take such a hard line crazy position and they take it so aggressively and they're buttress by a propaganda network backing it up, it makes it very hard. Nobody thinks we ought to just let everybody in, right?

You know, I don't think, right? I mean, we want to. Some people would make that argument. I got it, but most responsible politicians want a wide-ranging, comprehensive, immigration policy. Like Bernie Sanders. Right. Everybody does.

But it becomes to the point where you're either on this lunatic side, right, of this, and it sort of has demonized people who look differently to the theory that they're going to take our jobs and they're going to take everything we love and they're going to come invade our houses. Or you're somebody who thinks that America should be a giant sanctuary city, right? And everybody gets to come and that's fine and that's the end of that. And that has the effect of drowning out any thought for he has had the effect of drowning out all the things that kind of even happened during the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, which was actual conversations about immigration reform. It was the one issue that George Bush seemed to have his heart in the right place on, not one, but, you know, one of few.

And all that's gone, because when he eats up all this space with this talk, there is really no other room except. to be opposed to him. And then he characterizes that opposition as crazy. And by the way, I didn't randomly bring up Bernie Sanders. The reason why I brought him up is because I believe it was last week. He got a lot of heat because someone asked him a question and they framed it as if he was a supporter of open borders or an activist for open borders, which he is not. And so he shot that down and said, no, your information is wrong, I don't support open borders.

And of course, he got criticized for saying that, which is ridiculous. I, open borders, I mean, it depends on how you define that. But the way that I think of it, and I think the way Bernie thinks of it when you think of open borders is we don't have a border. Anyone can come in, anyone can leave. And I don't think that that's really a realistic way of dealing with the situation. We need to have compassion, we need to have comprehensive immigration reform. But I think both ends that are insanely extreme aren't the right way to go.

Yeah, and aren't equally represented. It is a false dichon. That's right. Certainly, there's no, nobody's making that argument and nobody's carrying that argument, and that's not, there's no chance of that happening in the current political climate. Oh, yeah, that's for sure. We got to take a break. When we come back, we have more news for you, including United Health, what the CEO of

United Health is saying about Medicare for all. And if you're wondering where all of these attacks are coming from, it seems like these talking points might be originating from this industry. So I'll give you the details on that and more when we're going to do. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech.

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available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EXPRE S-SVPN.com. TYT. Check it out today. We return. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at tyt.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to TYT. A few member comments for you. If you're a member, we're more likely to read your comments. So go to TYT.com slash join to be a member. We do read TYT Lives, of course. They did so in the last segment, but we want to give our members a little something extra. And so Hercules says private, yeah, is it Hercules? It's kind of spelled differently, isn't it?

Oh, it says Hercules. Hercules, yeah. Just wanted to make sure. Okay. So Hercules writes it and says, private prisons should be called what they are, slave labor camps. Totally agree with you, But, I mean, they need to take private out of it completely because they're not even funded privately. They're funded through us. They have a board of directors. They have people who are seeking profit through it, but they're funded through taxpayer money. So there's really nothing private about it.

You don't get to make money on everything. Yeah. You don't, and not everything gets to be, you know, and that would be one of them. Yeah, you shouldn't have a profit motive in putting people behind bars. That's right. Wimsy says, another problem is that the farmers are having a hard. harder time finding field workers, so our produce prices will be going up. That's absolutely true. And by the way, there were a number of red states throughout the years that decided to

penalize farmers who decided to hire undocumented workers. And guess what? Those farmers were struggling to find workers. In fact, in some cases, they increased the pay to over $15 an hour. I remember reading about a winery or something in Napa Valley, and they increased the pay to over $20 an hour and offered health benefits and retirement benefits, they still couldn't find workers. Just something to keep in mind. It's not like, oh, well, Americans won't take those jobs because they're not being offered decent pay. That's actually not true. Then we have Ruth, the dog-faced girl. Same thing we do with our citizens.

We spend tons of money to put them in jail or detention, but won't spend a dime to help them live out of jail. That's a great point, and that was one of the things I wanted to bring up with Nipsey Hustle. We talked about Nipsey Hustle yesterday. When you get out of prison, you've done your time, you've paid your debt to society, but you're a convicted felon. And so a lot of places will refuse to hire you or employ you, and Nipsey Hustle really made

point to empower and hire people in his businesses, so they would get a second chance at life. And beyond that, you're never going to get a loan? Yeah. You're never going to. I mean, the list of disadvantages that you're now saddled with for years, if not the rest of your life, is immeasurable. Yes.

All right. And if you'd like to change that by passing a law or a ballot initiative, they're going to make it as hard as possible for you to vote. Yeah, that's right. They will completely ignore the will of the people. Anyway, let's move on to healthcare. Medicare for all seems to be catching more and more steam, more and more momentum, more and more Americans seem to be in favor of it.

There have been a number of polls that show that the majority of Americans support Medicare for all, which is a single payer healthcare system. In fact, during a recent town hall featuring Bernie Sanders, the audience seemed to really appreciate the idea of Medicare for All. Take a look. This audience has a lot of Democrats in it. It has Republicans, independents, Democratic Socialists, Conservatives. I want to ask the audience a question.

If you could raise your hand here, a show of hands of how many people get their insurance from work, private insurance, right now. How many get it from private insurance? Okay, now of those, how many are willing to transition to what the senator says, a government run system? There's 180 million people on private insurance. So, yeah, so later, it was pretty clear the audience, every time Medicare for All was brought up, they were really excited about it.

And so there are people working in the healthcare industry that are very much worried about it. And one of those people is David Wickman, who is the CEO of United Health Group. And so he had a call with investors recently, and he apparently rarely discusses politics, according to CNBC, but he told investors on a post-earnings conference call that Medicare for all would, quote, surely jeopardize the relationship people have with their doctors, destabilize the nation's health care system, and limit the ability of clinicians to practice medicine at their best. Okay, so I want to stop for a second. One of the arguments that we keep seeing coming up over and over again when it comes to getting rid of private insurers is, oh my God, well,

I'm gonna lose my private insurance, I like my private insurance. And I think people keep confusing that with their doctor, right? So people might really like their doctors. I've never really heard anyone say, you know what, I really, I love my private insurance company. They've done a really great job at denying coverage every time I needed them to authorize something. I like my insurance ID card.

I just don't want to get a new one, you know, I'm used to it. Like people about their doctors, there's no question about that. And so if you have Medicare for all, you're not gonna lose access to your doctor. They're not gonna be, like, you're still gonna be able to see your doctor. It's just that you're gonna have a healthcare system that's not gonna deny you coverage. It's a single payer system. You're not gonna have to deal with the co-pays and the deductibles and, you know, all of that stuff. Some of them have been- Had been lied to about what that kind of care is like in other countries that have these sorts of systems.

They fundamentally don't believe that if they were to be switched to a national healthcare system, even if they accept that there are examples, they think that the examples are bad, that people are unhappy in Canada. People have to wait forever to see a doctor. Exactly. They believe a lot of things that aren't necessarily true, and they think, well, you know, my system sucks, but I can go to a doctor, I guess. But I, you know, I would be bluntly honest, were I campaigning on this. Like, it will be a change. And some doctors will probably delve totally into the private healthcare industry, whatever

that is, right, which could still exist, right, separate from that. Some people will be so wealthy that they will think I am not going to worry about that. I'm not going to go. I'm going to give $20,000 a month to a doctor who will see me and my family whenever we want. And that's how we're going to go through life. That already happens now, which I find super weird, but it does happen now. But we don't know because we don't know if under Medicare for all what the rate the government is going to charge doctors and hospitals and how much care is going to cost. And so, you know, you might pay less, you might pay more, you might lose your doctor, right?

You'll get another doctor. It's entirely- I mean, it really depends. I mean, if you happen to go to a doctor who refuses to get compensated by, you know, government funds, then, yeah, you'll lose access to your doctor. But my guess is most doctors are not willing to do that. I mean, how many insanely wealthy people are there who would just pay for everything in the company? I just, yeah, I just mean, we don't, because we don't. you know, all the estimates about, we don't know the estimates on cost because we don't know how many doctors are going to be a vet, more people will go to the doctor.

And then it's a reasonable thing to say, do we have enough doctors for this? So maybe we're going to have to train more doctors, in which case, let's go. Great. We can solve that in America. All I mean to say is that it won't be the easiest thing in the world during that transition. No, and I don't think. It is a major, major, major change in the way we would administer health care. in America, which is overdue.

I don't think anyone is arguing that it's going to be an easy transition. In fact, Bernie himself, for anyone who's actually interested in reading his policy, doesn't believe that the transition is going to be easy, which is why, let's say, in a perfect world where we have President Bernie Sanders or a progressive president who believes in Medicare for All, and we have a Congress that's actually interested in passing legislation, and we pass Medicare for All. It would take four years for that transition to go through. So it's not like, all right, we pass Medicare for all on January 1st, that's it, it goes into

effect. No, that transition period is going to take four years. At least. At least. And he's clear about that in the policy, in the legislation. And it may be that to get the votes, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that those votes will exist under President Sanders or any other president. I would love to be mistaken.

But I mean, literally those are the kind of things you negotiate, all right? four years, seven years, you know, that's what's going to get happened, that's what's going to happen if grownups are allowed to debate how we go forward. And also, I think the sorts of concerns you were expressing is why this is not let's set up a brand new single-payer health care system from the ground up. It's let's expand something that's been functioning for a long time. It's very popular, exactly, we just open it up to more people. It doesn't mean that there wouldn't be any consequences, but it is a little bit easier

to predict exactly how things are going to go when you're expanding an existing service and an existing bureaucracy. Exactly. And I think the analysis that we've seen in regard to how much it would cost doesn't factor in some of the things that I think would actually end up saving more money. So for instance, preventative care. Preventative care is much more affordable than treating someone who has an advanced illness. And so if more people are willing to go to the doctor for their annual checkup and they're

not afraid of some surprise bill, then I think that we'd be able to catch illnesses quicker. People wouldn't wait until they're in the emergency room, and it's incredibly expensive to treat whatever ails them there. Those things aren't factored into the analysis. I think, well, some of them are, and the fact is there are a number of things which would drive cost down, and then other things which would drive cost up. And you hope that you come out at the down part, because we already spend a tremendous amount of money on health care.

And Bernie is of the opinion. And reasonable people are disagreeing with it about that he thinks we'd spend even less. And some people would pay more in tax. Many people would pay less, but nobody would pay a deductible and nobody would pay for health insurance. Yeah. So let me give you some more arguments. And by the way, one of the reasons why I'm bringing this up is because it's important

to know where the talking points and the line of attack come from. So another argument made by David Wickman, again, the CEO of United Health Group, was quote, and the inherent cost burden would surely have a severe impact on the economy and jobs, all without fundamentally increasing access to care. So whenever I hear access to care, all of us, we all have access to care. All of us can go to the doctor, but the question is, can we afford it? So that line always makes me a little skeptical. Yeah, I mean, it's a lie.

I mean, of course it's not. I mean, yes, you're right, he can say we all have access to care, go to drive into emergency room, you have access to care. But that's not what we're talking about. But I do agree with him on some level regarding how this would have an impact. First of all, on the economy, I think that it might even have a positive impact, because think of how many people might be willing to leave their place of employment to start a small business, because they're not fearful about losing their health benefits. By a car. Right. Right. By, you know, again, thousands of ways that people can invest in the economy, because here's what's never going to happen.

Nobody's ever going to go bankrupt because of health problems. And it's not just bankruptcy. You know, what's the stat? It's the staggering number of the percentage of Americans that are a $2,000 bill away from. Or even less. Or maybe it's less. Or a $500 bill, something like that. And it's a staggeringly high number.

That goes away. Yeah. That goes away. So then you're like, great, let's go to dinner. Let's take the kids to Florida to stay somewhere cheap for a few days. We can spend the money because you've eliminated the fear that if something goes wrong, we're done. Yeah.

But one thing I do kind of agree with him on, and he doesn't elaborate, is what this would do to jobs. He just says jobs. It will affect some jobs, right? So the private health care industry, if you're employed in the private health care industry, yeah, you hate this. This is going to affect your job. Although we should bear in mind that some people like Bernie Sanders are talking about transitioning to Medicare for All and eliminating private health insurance, others, including those running

for president, would maintain private health insurance as an alternative. Yeah. So looking carefully, don't just assume everybody means the same thing when they say Medicare for all. The only other thing I wanted to say was you provided an article on this from CNBC, and the headline is United Health warns Medicare for All would destabilize health care. I just feel like, like the writer does say at the bottom, you know, say, you know, say that single pair of healthcare, despite all of this is becoming more popular, tries to be a little

balance, but what a boring headline. What a boring article to write? Well, I don't even think it's meant to be boring. I would write, hold on, I would write, would destabilize healthcare because of course he does, it's his job to say that. It's his job to not have his job and his company be eliminated. It's effectively a meaningless talking point. What is he gonna?

Here's a good article, United Health warns Medicare for All, actually sounds good. No, they're not gonna write that, that's never gonna get written. So this is just a boring, obvious thing. You could have dispatches from every CEO in the country. You could just make up your CNBC front page every single day. Yeah. Right. Like, you know, like national pork lobbyist warns vegetarianism bad for bacon.

Yeah, it is, but there's still a case to be made. Bank of America warns elimination of banking fees would sink economy. Right. Oh my God. Did you read the front page of CNBC? That $375 I pay every time I take out a couple hundred dollars, that's saving America. Thank goodness, yeah. I read where, yeah.

It's such obvious stuff. Okay, but I do want to actually read the poll that was mentioned in this CNBC article. So according to a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, last month, 56% of respondents supported a national health plan in which all Americans would get insurance from a single government plan versus 39% who said they oppose it. So there still is, you know, the majority of voters who support this type of system. We'll see where this all goes. I mean, look, we're so early, I don't even know if we're even considered in the election

cycle yet, are we? Yeah, we are. Okay, fine. We shouldn't be, but we are. It's April, there's a debate in June. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.

But the point that I wanted to make was it's still super early. So I'm excited about where things are right now. Bernie Sanders is polling really well. You see a number of candidates who are really taking on the progressive label, even if they're maybe not so progressive, because the Democratic Party has in some ways moved to the left. But what's promising to me is the support that we're seeing for changing the health care system that we have now. And I just want to briefly mention, I'm not attacking the writer when I attack the article

or the headline. They don't even write our headlines. No, no, you're a corporate hack. You love the writer. That's what, this is what CNBC is. It's there to provide a glossy version of whatever it is the CEOs want you to believe. All righty. We got to take a break.

When we come back, I believe we're going to begin our two. Yes, we are. We're going to begin hour two. Thank you so much, guys, for hosting with me. And we'll see you soon. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work.

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