The Young Turks - Fox Challenges Trump

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

The REAL Reason Why Trump Is Attacking Ukraine's President Zelensky | Maine's Governor Stands Up To Trump, "See You In Court" | Steve Bannon Steals Elon Musk's Favorite Salute | Elon Musk Gifted A Golden Chainsaw at CPAC by Argentina's President Hosts: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Brian Unger SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com 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. Condoms for Hamas. Preparation overload. Begha! 3x3. 3x3.

All right. Let's drop it like it like it's like it's. calculations. Power power panel on the young turns. Jake Uger, John Ida Roll, host and star of the damage report. Brian Unger, the star of everything else. So always sunny in Philadelphia, Yellowstone.

the Yellowstone, the state's got their shape. Yeah, they said, blah, blah, blah, blah, what was the Lindsay Lohan one? You mentioned it last time and then I hadn't watched it. Then I watched it with my kids. Oh, there he is, there he is. Jank, I do these things and then I forget them. I don't, I don't. The cute little Christmas movie with someone called Lindsay Lohan, I have no idea.

All right, check out the cute little Christmas movie with Lindsay Lohan and you'll see Brian. Okay, all right, Dragon Daddy and the Onesie. That is a powerful combo. Okay, so now we got a lot for you guys. We've got Bannon and Musk aligning in a minute, but in the worst possible way. And then Musk versus Trump? Is it real? That's in the second hour, so a lot in today's show.

All right, John, take it away. Okay, let's start with something spicy. You have a band who's led a country. that had the most beautiful cities that they're demolished had the most beautiful domes. Those domes are the most beautiful in the world. But that's Russia's fault though

Mr. President. Russia did the... They're all demolished, a thousand-year-old domes and everything's demolished. All those people are killed. Never to come back again. But Mr. President, that's all... That's Vladimir Putin's fault, don't you agree? I get tired of listening to it. I'll tell you what.

I've seen it enough. Yeah, I get pretty tight. of listening to it too sometimes. I feel like Brian Kilmeetover Fox might be tired of listening to a little bit of that because he is doing his level best as a Fox News conservative to get through to the world's dumbest toddler Donald Trump who's going on about buildings that have been destroyed and people who have been killed, not only killed, but never to return again on top of the death. And he's just trying again to understand that that's not Zelensky's fault. That's Vladimir Putin's fault.

But as you probably know from watching the news start this week, Donald Trump has been on a tear against Zelensky. And so we're going to talk about that. And the conservatives that are pushing back. But to start off, Jank, what do you think Donald Trump is trying to prove with all this? Yeah, that's what I want to get to after you see all the back and forth. Because we found it. We found why Trump is doing this nonsensical pressure campaign on Ukraine when he's supposed to be doing a pressure campaign on the people we're negotiating against Russia. We want to get a peace deal. U.S. and Ukraine together want to get a peace deal with the opposing party, Russia. So why are we pressuring our own partner? It turns out there's an excellent answer. So we'll get to that in a little bit.

Okay, but first we will go over a little bit more of the conservatives trying to get through to him. We have a bit more of Kilmead first. Take a look at this. Look what's happened to his country. It's been demolished. But no, no, I hear you. Mr. President, but you know who's a blame for that. If it's why there's peace, Brian.

But don't you think it's Vladimir Putin that did the invasion unwarranted, that tried to take back land he had no right to? And don't you think fundamentally that's that? And if you could just, and now both sides want to talk, it seems, so we should just get to that point? They only want to talk because of me. If I wasn't involved, they wouldn't be talking to each other. And Russia would continue to, you know, go through Ukraine,

because they are going through, Brian. They've taken a lot of land. And Russia would continue the march through Ukraine. If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't be talking at all. I'm the only reason they're talking. Okay, yeah, no, unfortunately he is talking and he sounds, I'm gonna say sick. I'm gonna say hopefully sick right there. But anyway, for now, he's not wrong, they're only talking because of Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, they doesn't include Ukraine. He has no interest in them being a party to all of this. And it's hardly a surprise if Vladimir Putin would be excited to talk with Donald Trump about this. The peace plan is going to be handing Ukraine over to Russia. That's not an achievement. That's not difficult. It's not hard to call someone up and be like, hey, I'm giving up all my leverage to you. You want to do business? Yeah, he probably will. And still though, I want to give credit to Brian Kilmead, because he's actually pushing back more than, I don't know, 95% of the Republicans in the House, more than 90% of the Republicans in the Senate. He's actually standing up for

something approaching reality or the truth, which is nice. We have one more clip we want to show, though, where Trump gets about as close as he probably ever will from now on to actually acknowledging that the country that invaded Ukraine is sort of to blame for some of this. When you say Russia was the attacker, yes, Russia was attacked, Russia attacked, but there was no reason for them to attack. You could have talked about, there was no reason that he should of attack. That whole thing was going on for years. There was no reason he was going in. It should have never happened. Biden said the wrong things. Zelisky said the wrong things. They got attacked by somebody that's much bigger and much stronger, which is a bad thing to do.

And you don't do that. But Russia could have been talked out of that so easily. That should never have been a war. Joe Biden is a very dumb man. You know that and I know it. Joe Biden is a very dumb man who was dumber than ever before because, you know, things have happened to him. He had no idea what he was doing. And everything he said was wrong. And I said, you know what? I think this guy's going to cause a war. I think he's going to cause a war. And that's what happened. And I will tell you, Putin could have been talked out of that so easy. Yeah, all you would have had to do is just hand over your country without an invasion. And then he wouldn't invade it so that later we could give it to him.

It would have been so simple, so easy. Anyway, no, Kill Me knows exactly what's going on there. What remaining shreds of respect he has for Donald Trump, I'm sure, evaporating in real time. And we're gonna go through and we're gonna talk about all the politics of this. I'm just gonna first reiterate, I absolutely despise Donald Trump. He is one of the most genuinely horrible people that we've ever had thrust upon upon us as a country, in terms of our government, our society. The fact that he gets to drive conversation, let alone government policy, is an indictment

of this entire species. But, Jank, what do you think? An indictment of the entire species. Okay, that's pretty strong, I like the strength of it. Okay, so we did this clip a long time ago where we called it Epic Mountain Man, and he thought he saw a Sasquatch, and he said, yeah, beautiful hair, six fingers. And they said to them, I think he might have been CNN, what'd you do? He said, I rough talk him and run him off.

Okay, so I love that guy. So Donald Trump rough talks people and good libs in D.C. And in all the good educated circles hate it. I don't. I don't care at all. I don't mind it. And I get the value of it from a political point of view. So when he's like, Joe Biden, such a dumb guy.

You know, he's just the worst, the worst. The normal politics to me. In fact, I think the Democrats should do it a billion times more. I've said that for over 20 years on this show, right? I do mind the same thing John minds, which is he never makes any sense. Like, he's just, he's just rambling. Is it, you know, okay, it finally gets a concession. Kill me does from Trump that, yeah, it was Russia who attacked Ukraine and not the other way around.

First of all, the fact that you've got to correct the president of the United States that it was Russia who attacked Ukraine and not Ukraine who attacked Russia already. disaster. I mean, what kind of, like even if you're trying to accomplish the thing that Trump is trying to accomplish, which I'll get to in a minute, okay, that's not how I would go about it. I could, you know, find different, like, reasonable, halfway believable ways to attack Zelensky, who's our ally, but I wouldn't say, okay, he started the war, he's a dictator, he's at 4%. They keep saying he's at 4%. He's at 60% in a combination of the polls. The 4% number is just, imaginary. He just makes up all sorts of crazy crap all the time. But there is a silver

lining here, which is the right wing is much more fractured than people believe. I know our side thinks, no way, they're all cult, they're blah, blah, blah, et cetera. But here's Brian Kilmeade on Fox News, definitely pushing back. His own ambassador to Ukraine is we're going to show you in a second pushback. There's lots of host, a right wing host that are pushing back in different directions. Mark Levins against this, but then the other guy, are against Mark Levin, it's a beautiful mess over there. And so, and that's a good thing, it should be good debate. There shouldn't be a cult, there shouldn't be just talking points.

But again, we haven't really gotten to the main reason why. I'm going to in a minute, I promise, but Brian, what do you think so far? Well, there, there is a very strange dynamic here where a journalist, and use that term loosely, but an on-air TV personality at Fox News is trying to keep a car on the road, it's getting these guardrails and it's traveling at a slow rate of speed, but it probably has a drunk driver in it and they're trying to keep it on the road. I'm not implying that Trump, Trump is drunk, but he sounds drunk. He sounds like they're trying to sort of salvage his logic when they know that he isn't making any intellectual sense or informed, um,

he's not heightening the dialogue as a head of state. I mean, just listen to how pathetic it is where he's trying to correct him. Remember, isn't this the way it happened? Dad, like Dad is having a moment and you're trying to help him. And furthermore, it sounds like, I mean, it sounds like a whack packer is calling into the Howard Stern show from bed. it's that's what it sounds like to me is the zones is the domes they have the beautiful domes over there i i i'm not sure the domes are resonating with anyone here in cherokee county in georgia where i live i don't know what the hell he's talking about and we're all whether you are a tv journalist or

whether you're a senator or a congressman, you are responsible if you're on his team to keep them on the road and keep them from from veering off and going through the guardrail. And that is a really sad place to be, to have to pretend, because we're very early into this term. Yeah, I mean, there's every reason to believe that Donald Trump's brain is going to go and it's probably going to accelerate the falling apart. I know that there was obviously a lot of, I think, justifiable concern about Joe Biden and all of his failings, but Donald Trump was losing his mind on stage regularly. And just because he's not like the most degraded politician in the campaign doesn't mean it's not a concern. and it's a particular concern now that he's going to be in charge. Or at the very least, he's going to be president as someone is in charge and doing a lot of stuff.

But that said, oh sorry. Just briefly too, there seems to be this epiphany that Trump has from time to time that the result of war is destruction. That when when one part of a geography is bombed, there is nothing left. That's kind of the definition of it. He seems, very surprised that the domes are gone or that there's rubble or that there needs to be reflific oh there's nothing there oh my god and and it's like i don't know if he thinks that the result or consequence of war or maybe homes are made of rubber or plato and they should bring up or survive but i mean there's a lot of real sickness here you guys that we're listening to this is some

really weird, weird, debilitating mental faculties here that we're watching. Yeah, it makes one wonder, what if his father had not been able to call in favors and he'd actually served in Vietnam as so many others had? And he'd experienced that firsthand, how different he might be, his view of these things. How much better he could be as a member, you know, an American citizen, as a politician potentially. But unfortunately, he didn't have to serve. So that said, Jink. Do you want to move on to Yeah, possibly the explanation by all this. Yeah, absolutely.

So look, we'll skip all the parts of General Kellogg, who's the Ukrainian ambassador to Ukraine for us, is like, yeah, the drum's not really right. Okay, but so guys, why are we pressuring Ukraine instead of Russia? That, that to me was the main mystery. And if you watched the young tourist regularly, you saw me ask that question and not have the answer. Usually we dig in, dig in and find what the real reason is. And now we did it. We dug in and found it. So Wall Street Journal, I'll go to Graphic 9 here.

9 here. Ukraine says it has Europe's largest reserve of titanium, which is used to make alloys for aircraft and naval vessels, and drum roll please, and lithium, a key material in batteries. So apparently our Treasury Secretary, I'll read you these two, because this is an amazing story. Graphic, back up to graphic four. Trump administration is stepping up, the Wall Street Journal explains. It's pushed for Ukrainian president Volta Zelensky to hand in middle rights worth of hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S.

Let me be clear. We have sent about $100 billion to Ukraine so far in military and financial. This is that's a lot of money. What we're asking for in return is $500 billion in mental rights. Okay, well, the further U.S. This is a little bit of a wrong deal, but okay, what are they getting in return? As it turns out nothing, let me go further. Besson's our Treasury Secretary and he's talking to Zelensky, already that's interesting.

Should be the Secretary talking to Zelensky. Why is the Treasury Secretary talking to him? Okay, Bessent pushed the paper across the table. That was a document that they handed Zelensky on the spot, demanding that Zelensky sign it. The Ukrainian president told the lawmaker, Zelensky took a quick look and said he would discuss it with his team. Bess than them pushed the paper closer to Zelensky. So the rest of the story explains like, they're like sign it, signing out, signing out. He's like, it says 50% of all the mineral rights.

And I don't even know who it's going to. Like where does the 50% go? Does it go to the United States Treasury? Does it go to straight to Tesla? Where does it go? What? And it's totally unclear what rights we're talking about here. They're like, sign it. He's like, no, I've got to go back.

This is a $500 billion deal. I got to go back and talk to people about it. people about it. Like, turn it now. No. So this is, so it turns out we're trying to get their mineral rights. So that's why Trump and his entire team, well, not his entire team, because the ambassador's not on board, but, but most of his team have now turned around and are pressuring our own ally and helping Russia, not because of Russia, Russia, Russia, but because they're like, oh, the mineral rights, the lithium. Elon needs the lithium. That is hundreds of billions of dollars in lithium. And by the way, guys, this is super important. If you're MAGA, you might

be thinking, well, look, I don't care how he talks. And I don't care if it makes sense to Brian Kilmeet or you guys. The 500 billion sounds pretty good. It's not going to you. It's not going to any of us. This is what, like when we did the coup against Iran back in the 1950s originally, well, okay, well, at least we got a deal for their oil. No, we didn't get a deal for their oil. BP and Exxon and mobile got a deal for their oil. And they made, untold billions of billions of dollars of profit off of the Iranian people's resources because of that coup. But the US taxpayers never saw a dime of it. In fact, what we saw was endless wars in the Middle East on behalf of those oil companies, and sometimes Israel,

but whoever was the donors to our politicians, but we never saw a dime of it. Instead, we said, now in the Middle East at large, we sent thousands of American kids to go die there. We spent trillions on that war. Again, now the defense contractors get paid. You see how all the different donor class they're getting paid? Now, in this case, it's the number one donor to Trump, nearly $300 million in campaign contributions from Elon Musk to Donald Trump. So, yeah, this reminds me of the big Lebowski, where it turns out that they don't have

the hostage after all, the bad guys, the comical bad guys, right? And they go, we don't care, we want some money anyway, Lebowski. So this is Eli saying to Trump, I want some money. I don't care that Ukraine's our ally and Russia's against us. Let's go beat up Ukraine until they give me the goddamn lithium and titanium. So that's what's going on here. And now that you know that, it makes perfect sense why they're pressuring Ukraine instead of Russia. On behalf of Donald Trump's donor, unbelievable.

Yeah, I would only add, I mean, it's hardly surprising. Trump spent how many years saying we should just take the oil, Iraq, whatever, just go in there, just take the oil, it's ours now. And so sure, the minerals, so the oil there, the minerals in Ukraine, all of the land of Gaza, I suppose, it's just ours to take. We just take it. And the most important part of that is not acknowledging that he thinks that America should go around and take a bunch of things. that's hardly surprising. I think people also need to understand that this is implicitly providing a wink and a nod to Russia to do the same in the rest of the world, that we take the resources there, you conquer the rest of Ukraine a little bit later, you take Finland or whatever,

and then we'll take Greenland, and we get Panama, and then you take parts of Africa, like that the world is being split up this way. But even that I don't think it's the most important part. It is what you said, Jank. It's that any Maga person who thinks that this in any way will benefit them, that you are utterly out of your mind. None of that. this is going to you. This is, all of these benefits are going to the wealthiest people in the world. That's always the way it was going to be. You're not getting those resources. And you've already seen domestic versions of this. When they drill baby drill, do they send you oil? No, they don't subsidize the cost of your oil. They go sell it abroad. You pay more for cats than you

ever have. We've been drill baby drilling forever. We export more oil than we ever have as a country before. None of these things they do and ever end up helping regular people. But most of these wars do, do require the death of regular people in the form of our soldiers. And so like this, for some of them, this will strike them as like a weird dark form of patriotism. That like, sure, we've become sort of an imperial fascist state, but whatever, we've conquered a lot of stuff in America's strong. But no, really, we're mercenaries. The US military has become mercenaries where we fight a war. We get paid hundreds of billions of dollars in return. It doesn't even go to the soldiers, it goes to the generals. The entire thing is so twisted and so far from

anything that's being sold to Maga. Right. Yeah, I would jank, John, I refuse to believe that Donald Trump thought of this transaction himself. So there's someone, I think he just wants the win. I think he wants to be the hero. I think he wants to be the guy who saved the day and basically settled this dispute, this war where the domes are getting demolished. And that's that. Because he says, but I, do you think that there's someone, who in the the administration decided that this would be an interesting thing to put down in paper and slide across the table at this negotiation. Oh, so Brian, I think that part's easy.

Elon Musk. And so, and what they do is they tell, like Trump, of course, not sophisticated, but it's easy to explain to him, hey, there's $500 billion worth of natural resources there and we should get you, Donald Trump should get it. In fact, once we take the lithium out of the ground. will engrave it with Trump. What do me like, me get 500? No, no, no, Donald, it's not going to you.

It's going to go to Elon, right? Or whichever company, right? But me like, me take. Now, guys, this is not an exaggeration. This is not hyperbole. Now, it turns out the Russians, this is from the Wall Street Journal, are making us an offer. Hey, a lot of the lithium and the minerals are now in the occupied territories

that Russia occupies, cut a deal with us, we'll sell you some of the minerals, and that way you throw Ukraine all the way under the bus. And we're contemplating that. I want you to remember, we promised, the United States of America promised the Ukrainians, if you give away your nukes after the Soviet Union fell apart, we will give you a security guarantee forever. Unless you've got some minerals and then Russia occupied that territory and Elon Musk wants it, and he's the number one donor, in which case, sign and I are on good luck to you. This is not about how much money should we spend.

That's a good, interesting debate. That's a real debate. How long should this continue? How hard should we drive towards peace? Those are good, good, interesting debates and ones we should have, right? And we should all drive towards peace. This is separate. This is about a robbery.

And so it's totally unacceptable. Last thing is I can't answer John's question. There was one time, one time that I know of in American history, where we actually, the taxpayers got something from natural resources. And that was the most ironic thing in the world and see fair is shown America. It was actually Sarah Palin when she was governor of Alaska made a deal with the oil companies. If you guys are going to keep drilling in Alaska, you're going to have to pay some of the proceeds to the citizens of Alaska, which actually makes perfect sense.

And when they got the checks from the oil companies, Palin got up to an 80% approval rating in Alaska. That was part of the reason that they picked her to be VP. 80% unheard of, unheard of. Because it was the only time that anyone has ever given American natural resources back to the American people in any way, shape, or form, and not had giant multinational corporations steal it, rape their land, take their resources and just put it in their goddamn pockets. So then, of course, ironically, they brought Palin into the national ticket and said, now change all of your positions on that issue, right? So you. You no longer want to take the oil resources and give it to the American people or the people

of Alaska. Now you'll take it and give it right back to ExxonMobil because they're a top donor of ours. And you'll start saying stupid crap like drill baby drill because that's what the oil companies want and especially out of you. So you better go out there and tell everybody to drill and never tell people where the money's actually going. And that's exactly what she did. So there you go, fun little history lesson.

But this thing is now totally screwed. We're not going to help Ukraine at all. From here on out, all Donald Trump and Elon Musk are going to do are trying to get those mental rights. So the Ukrainians are totally screwed. Yep. Well, when you take a break, lots more to comment to this. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John and Brian with you guys and Unknit Channel 87 has joined us. It's great because we needed a bunch of things unknit, unknitted. So anyways, love you guys, hit the join button below, become part of the WIT.

By the way, you could also hit the subscribe button, perfectly free. Ring the bell, it's the freest thing in America. All right, John, I roll. Okay, we're gonna have a little bit of fun and then a little bit later on the show, we might debate something, we might actually disagree, we'll see. Well, let's jump into this. Donald Trump has now quoted Napoleon, declared himself on social media to be a king, and in the clip that you're about to watch, he has a little bit of a judge dread moment.

Take a look. The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way, that's good. But I understand Maine. Is it Maine here, the governor of Maine? Are you not going to comply with it? I'm complying with state federal law. Well, we are the federal law. Well, you better do it.

You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't. And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports. So you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding. Every state, good, I'll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics.

Okay, so some pretty clear threats there against Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills. He's doing the threatening just on TV at a governor's dinner now. This is not behind closed doors. Evidently, she doesn't have any like pending bribery lawsuits against her that he can use as a weapon to cow her into submission. So he's threatening her in public. And I have thoughts about this and I'll provide them, but Jank, this definitely seems like an escalation for him. What do you think? Yeah, no, this is the stuff I don't mind. So if, you know, if I was ever in a position to make a difference, I would bully the living crap out of other politicians to get policy pass for the American people.

Now, of course, for Donald Trump, he cares less about that and a lot more about, you know, providing for his donors, providing for himself, etc. But I also like the governor, Janet Mills fought back. God damn right, I'll see you in court. Like, there's no need to be a coward here. If he's punching, you punch back, period. The part that I hate is threatening the people of Maine or any other state, blue, red, or otherwise. Oh, if your governor doesn't kiss my ass or do what I want, then I'm going to take money away from you, honest, you know, citizens of Maine who didn't do anything wrong. And so, so I like the underlying stuff and what he's driving at, I don't agree with.

But stylistically, I know it bothers a lot of people, but that's what you need to do to get stuff done. I just wish that he would get positive stuff done instead of negative stuff. Yeah, super fast. For me, the fact that he's in general threatening or is not the thing that particularly bothers me. I mean, I would certainly hold my public threatening of a governor for something that actually affects a lot of people's lives, something about the economy or something like that. The issue for me is she's saying we're going to follow state and federal law because there are challenges to this. It's going to go up probably to the Supreme Court. And so she's saying, you know, we're going to follow what the judges say.

And his response is we're the federal law. And we already know he's now openly defying what judges have told. Like that's the part of this story that particularly bothers me. Mostly the authoritarian bent of it. And then a little bit of the prioritization because I just want to remind everyone in terms of the stakes of all this. According to NCAA president Charlie Baker, out of over 500,000 student athletes attending NCAA schools, Fewer than 10 are transgender, which means that if you wanted to, in any article about trans NCAA players, you could just list all of them. You could profile everyone who's affected by this in each article about it. Just to remind everyone what the president is threatening a governor over. To pull all of the funding out of a state, it's to stop these 10 players from participating in sports. Obviously, this takes sure as high as they can be, Brian. I love this. I love this. This is let the states decide until I say you can't decide on something, whether it's abortion, whether it's, you know, him intervening in New York and the congestion pricing. He wants to, this is all headed to, this is all a state's right thing. They want states rights. And now they're getting, they're getting pushed back from governors. They're going to get it from other states too. We have a long four years.

in front of us. This is just the beginning of the tests of federalism that are all going to wind up in the Supreme Court where they have to decide how much power this guy has inside of states to essentially determine their own their own their lives. And I love that this Maynor is pushing back. I know people in Maine, they're tough. It's not a they're just common sense tough people. They don't like to be bullied, even though a lot of the guys have women's names. Um, I think that they, they, I mean, there's a lot of, I, they do. It's just a fact. Guy says Shirley and it was Shirley there.

It's a guy and I know a Leslie and it's a main thing. I don't know what, what's happening, but don't mess with the Mainers. Um, but this is, I mean, I want to see I, I think we're past this point anymore where, um, yeah, jank, stylistically, it's uncomfortable, but this is where we're at now. We're states and the governors and leadership are going to help. to test him every time he decides I am the law. I am the king. I say what goes. That's where we're at. And it's all going to the courts. Yeah, look, let me agree with John and Brian 100% on that. So first, the most important issue here, John is absolutely right is when he says,

I am the federal law. No, there is no one in this country that is the law. That's not how our system is built. Our Constitution says there are three co-equal branches of government and they work together to create the law. Congress passes the law, first of all. So in the beginning, the president doesn't even have anything to do with it. He does have to sign the law into effect. And he has to execute the law. That is his role. And it's a really important role and the largest role. But it is not the sole role. So when the courts say you cannot do something, if you say I will, then we don't have the co-equal branches of government. We don't have our system. We literally don't have the constitution anymore.

He would make it null and void if he says the executive doesn't have to listen to the courts. Because if you don't have to listen to the courts, you can do literally anything you want. And you say, oh, well, you kill that guy, I'm going to bring you to court. Good news, I'm not listening to the courts. So I can, I'm totally and utterly lawless. And Trump has wanted that all along. I mean, we've now documented dozens of times where he's like, John, Korea, everybody stands up for Kim Jong-un, it's beautiful.

It's like, great. And everybody always applauds everything he says, yes, because he would murder. them if they didn't. That's the part you're leading out, right? So totally unacceptable, totally on American. And guys, the underlying issues, if you're a conservative, this is not the way to do it. This is totally, you're going from really popular to really unpopular. Let me explain real quick. So first of all congestion pricing, I didn't like it. I think that a lot of people in New York didn't like it. If all Trump did was canceled congestion pricing, it probably would have been a fairly popular move, whether people on the left liked it or not, whether the

Democratic governor or mayor liked it, it would have been popular. But he didn't leave it at that, he added, long live the king. Why are you talking about being the king and this thing? And Brian's right, what happened is states rights? Conservatives the whole time like, no, states rights, state's rights, George has the right to peach cobbler and to own black people. Okay, but really it's about the peach cobbler, is it? Is it? Okay, so that's what states rights was about.

Now all of a sudden when states rights are inconvenient, nobody in Maine has any rights, nobody in New York has any rights, Nobody anywhere has any rights, any rights, because Donald Trump is the law, right? That's, this is not America. Okay, and John makes it to a point about the 10 people out of 500,000 college athletes, right? But there's 330 million people in the country. So I'm up, piss off the right and the left, okay? Those 10 people, sorry guys, it's not that important.

For us to have a national conversation to threaten Maine, to threaten the constitutional order, over 10 freaking people in the country and why? So why do I bring that up? Not to insult those 10 people, not to insult the people who are passionate about it on either side. But because it's an obvious distraction, they got rid of all the regulators at the SEC, the IRS, the every other agency, the FTC, the CFPB. I'm listing all of these different agencies as my earpiece falls out. Why? Because those are the people who were the cops on Wall Street.

They just defunded the police on Wall Street. The bankers, crypto guys, etc. Are right now making plans to just move all of the money out while you're worried about 10 trans people in college sports. And the whole country's fighting over it. No, focus, focus on what's important. Yeah. Yeah, obviously, I'm sure, you know, we have our disagree. agreements about this. I agree that it's a distraction, but I don't want people to ever think

that labeling it that means that it's not important. Something could be important, but it's still being used as a distraction. I personally think, you know, just protect the people. But I would also point out, Donald Trump has more billionaires in his cabinet than there are trans athletes in the NCAA. Wow, that's a stat. I mean, that's just something to think about. He has 30% more billionaires in his cabinet, then there are trans athletes in the NCAA. So again, just something to consider. Okay, we want to, we, we're going to break or one more. Okay, okay.

Well, maybe on the other side of this break, we'll see if we have a little bit of disagreement, more fun hand gestures at public events. Enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for $5 bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John, and Brian with you guys.

John, what's next? Okay, let's have. a little bit of what passes for fun in the current era. Steve Bannon has not been a big fan of Elon Musk recently, but they do have one thing in common. See if you can spot it in this clip. The only way that they win is we retreat, and we're not going to retreat, we're not going to surrender, we're not going to quit. Fight, fight, fight. Amen. Okay, so we're doing this again. Jank, what do you think? Was that a Roman salute?

That's what we're calling it now? Yeah, okay. So we got that on the poll question. If you're watching the show line, which you should 6 o'clock Eastern every day. We're asking you guys, Look, apparently Elon Musk and Steve Bannon do agree on one thing, which is that salute. That is deeply disturbing. And what he said, half of the things that Steve Bannon says now are interesting and kind of right. The other half are disaster. It's not like, oh, he's kind of right about that. So he's, but he's a little wrong on this.

No, he's not a little wrong on stuff like this. He's a billion percent wrong. But a lot more on that in a sec. Back to John. Yeah, look, it's so I know all of the very reputable newspapers are going to be like, you know, there are concerns raised about the gesture and it sparks comparisons to, look, is it as clear a Nazi salute as Elon Musk's? I think Elon Musk put a lot more into it, the touching it to his chest, the sharp knife

hand, a cross-body thing, he was definitely selling it more and he did it multiple times. That said with Bannon, like, we know who he is. He's a white nationalist. He's a troll. He's a general a whole. I mean, all reasons to not necessarily want to extend him a lot of credit when it comes to this. But that said, I can't know for sure. I can just show you the video. And well, I guess I can give you the opinion of a few other people who might know something about this. One is Nick Fuentes, who's one of these people, he said Bannon gets up there. This was some sick S.

I think Trump's going to run in 28. He goes, we want Trump. And then he throws us up a straight up Roman salute. It's getting a little uncomfortable, even for me. Even I'm starting to feel like that guy in the picture that would hail Hitler. He made Nick Fuentes uncomfortable. The guy who said on a live stream that there's nothing gayer than having sex with a woman is uncomfortable over this. That's how bad things have become in America. And so the reference there to Trump running in 28, that's one of the things that Bannon says constantly. It's one of the many ways they want to shred the constitution. He says, the future of America's MAGA, okay? And the future of MAGA is Donald J. Trump. We want Trump in 28. That's what they can't stand. A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in a country's history, right? I'm praying. They want to say he's a lame duck. Trump's this, Trump's that, Trump's not running in 28. Trump is here. He's the leader of this movement. So, you know, the white supremacist thinks it was a Nazi salute, so I guess that's something. Brian, what do you make of this?

Well, as an expert in human behavior and body language, I, and there are some things that I just never do by accident. One is a Roman salute or raise my hand, even just to demonstrate it. I wouldn't do it. I almost feel as Darwinian that I've evolved in a way since, as the post post-World War II generation, that I wouldn't even do it at a podium accidentally. I just wouldn't straighten my arm and my hand motion. I just, it's just something that we don't do, and I think reflexively we don't do, unless you're doing it intentionally. it's not because that wasn't please please be quiet either that's this okay okay that so i i i just i don't know you know i'm again i am an expert in body language don't they have one of those

guys on fox when if they have one of those guys come on and analyze it um yeah no this is just just constant performative BS for the for the in crowd and it's it's painful to watch i mean It really is. Yeah. So look, the parts where we unfortunately align with Bannon are when he says, watch out for the tech oligarchs like Elon Musk. They're looking to rob the place blind. That's true. And or we're worried that that's true. And he says we shouldn't be lowering corporate taxes. We should be increasing corporate taxes. That is definitely true. And that is the populist position that we agree on. So, but then he takes the craziest turn in the world. And so this is the difference, I suppose, between the right wing populace and the left wing. There's many differences, but

on social issues, but also on constitutional issues. You know, historically, the right wing has marketed themselves as more pro-American, pro-constitution, pro-freedom, etc. But they've taken this super weird turn. And in a sense, they've seated the ground to the left. No, you guys are more pro-American. You guys are more pro-constitution. Because we say dumb crap like Trump should run for a third term, even though that is the most obviously unconstitutional thing that anyone can say, we're lighting the constitution on fire in front of your eyes and say, we don't respect this document. We think this document is useless. We think Trump being an authoritarian leader for the rest of his life is more important than the U.S. Constitution. There is no other excuse for

Trump should run a third time. If you think Trump should run a third time, even though the Constitution clearly says he cannot, you're just saying, I don't like this country. I don't like the Constitution. Boy, I'd love to live under a king. And I trust Donald Trump. He wouldn't care about his own interests. He wouldn't care about his own money. He wouldn't care about his own donors. So I'm just going to rip up the country and hand it over to Donald Trump, and I'm a populist. Are you? Are you? And if that's your definition of populism, In a sense, it's your disaster, and that's exactly what we were worried about. In another sense, I mean, if we can make it past these four years, thank you for letting the left-wing populace take all of the popular positions and none of the grossly unpopular ones.

What a dumb thing to do. If I was the right-wing populace that actually cared about the policies and cutting government, et cetera, I'd be furious with Steve Bannon. Why are you, like, talking about a third term, and why are you throwing up the Roman salute? Look, okay, so I know the right wings reflexive reaction is trolling, no big deal, he didn't do it, right? After Elon did his salute, you think that it was just, oh, golly gee, he happened to be raising his hand, Steve Bannon, and he happened to do it in a very similar way to Elon Musk. He's not trying to get attention. He was just raising his head. You sound like the most naive establishment clown on cable news.

I think Joe Biden might be young. No, I think it might be a coincidence that Elon Musk and Steve Bannon both just did something that looks amazingly like a Nazi salute back to back. And look, okay now, even if you think it was an accident, to Brian's point, I've been so tempted to show you the difference between just raising your hand and doing what they did. And yet I have restrained myself time and time again. Why? I would never want to be misunderstood as a Nazi.

Like that, apparently that's a complicated question for some leaders in the right. Like should we be confused for a Nazi? Hmm, well, let's take a stab at it and see how it goes. Why? Why? Why are you purposely opening up a question of whether you're a Nazi? What an incredibly strange thing to do, unless you you're a Nazi, okay, and you're warming the crowd up or look, I get it guys, I get it if you're right wing. He's less likely. On the other hand, he's saying that we should rip up the Constitution and Trump should run for a third term, making it a lot more likely. But even if you

think, no, no, no, he's just trolling. We get the concept of trolling. You don't have to say it online 2,000 times, okay? Is that what you, is that what a decent person would do? Oh, let me scare the crap out of everybody and and make them think that Hitler is coming and that they're all going to be rounded up into camps and then murdered. That's such fun trolling. That's such a fun trolling thing to do. Hey guys, let's all pretend to be Hitler. We'll get more attention. We'll get more. You get more attention for potentially being in us. And then I know what, but guys, last thing, if you're on the left and you don't understand why? Why would anybody, or you're an independent? Why would anyone do something so stupid for no reason, especially for Steve Bannon,

happens policies are actually popular. The reason they do it is because they think attention is everything. Give me all of the attention and I don't give a goddamn what you do with it. And I know for a fact that every right week, not every right winger, but a lot of the right wingers, a great percentage of right wingers will go online and defend me. They'll all say Nazi salusers, no big deal. They're not, it's not a Nazi salute. If you did, if you came out A little mustache, and by the way, that's next. Somebody's going to come up with the Hitler mustache. They're going to go on air.

They're going to have an armband, but it's not going to be, it's going to be the Hindu swastika swastika, not the German swastika, and then they're going to throw up the same saloon go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you guys are so hysterical. You're being hysterical. And so if you think the left wing got carried away with the Nazi stuff, calling everybody a Nazi, I hear you. What doesn't help is your biggest leaders after the election confirming that people should have been concerned by constantly doing the Roman salute. And it certainly doesn't help that they're doing it to crowds that don't seem that disturbed by what they're seeing.

We can we can talk about what his motivation was. Why weren't people booing when they saw that, particularly for Elon Musk where he did it multiple times. and it was far more aggressive. Yeah, anyway, the entire thing is frustrating. But we do have to get to one more story, so I'll have to restrain my thoughts for the next time one of these people does a salute. You don't think Stephen Miller is like desperate to give a speech just so he can do that a couple of times. President Malay has a gift for me. Aviar Malay from Argentina, you guys know what that is, right? Why don't we bring him out?

Yeah. Thank you. Cool, anyway. I literally, I saw the New York Times op-ed that's like, conservatives are the cool kids again. I'm gonna have to take your word for that. But anyway, that was actually the president of Argentina coming out to give Elon Musk a golden chainsaw. And I think it's a great symbol for our time. Not the symbol they mean it to be. It's supposed to be like he's gonna shred bureaucracy. But no, I think, one of the world's extractive elites, handing another extractive elite, a golden tool is actually a great symbol of how the economy works these days. But anyway, we've talked a lot about Elon Musk and all of the damage he's doing. But let's talk about Javier Malay as well, because he decided to get in a little bit of the action that Donald Trump and his family have been doing recently. And there I am talking about crypto. But before we get into the whole crypto scam,

Cenk, I think the last thing we needed these days was the president of Argentina getting involved with Elon Musk. What do you make of this alliance? One of these days, they're gonna pull a Hengseth. Remember how Hankseth threw the axe in the middle of New York City and missed and hit like somebody in the band? Okay, they're gonna be like golden chains them, oh no, there goes to the president of Argentina, Jesus Christ. And then you know what's gonna happen? The crowd's gonna cheer. Okay, but there's something super important in this story. So the crypto scam that they ran in Argentina is headed in our direction times a thousand. So John explained that. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And that beheading was just trolling.

It wasn't serious. But, and then also Musk, you should, you should play with that chainsaw. And I know what you're thinking. You're on like 30 different drugs. Give it a try. Just to have a little fun. But anyway, let's talk about that scam. So Malay posted on Twitter about another one of these meme coins. This one is Libra. And he said it was designed to to spur quote economic growth by funding small businesses and startups. The world wants to invest in Argentina. Now you can't see that tweet anymore. It's been deleted. You're probably wondering, well, why was it deleted? Because what happened to this meme coin is something that happens to basically every single one of them. The value spiked and then it collapsed. Some people

made a whole lot of money. A lot of people lost everything and that's what happened. According to the Wall Street Journal, $4 billion worth of value was wiped off of the coin. We have an example of how this worked for one individual, a man named Hayden Davis. He claims that he advises the president on crypto related projects. He also claims that he was an advisor on the Libra meme coin project itself. And he used a practice called sniping on this particular meme coin. That's when you use bots to scan blockchain transactions so that you can conduct really fast buying and selling to make big profits. And that's controversial because oftentimes

insiders who have prior knowledge of when these coins are going to be launched, they can snipe ahead of the token officially launched when the price is much lower. And then as the plebs, the peasants get in and they start buying it, you know, because either Donald Trump tells them they should or the president of Argentina puts out a tweet and they're like, oh, I like these people, I trust them. I'll put the future of my family's finances in their hands. They then buy it up. The initial snipers who've already made a ton of money at that point, they sell it. The value plummets because there's no demand anymore. And the money has been transferred successfully from regular people to the elites once again. Now, Malay says he shouldn't be held

responsible for anybody who lost money there. He says he has no ties to Libra. And that Davis, the guy we talked about, has no ties to him. He claims that he deleted the post after learning more about the project. Good that he did a little bit of research. after promoting it. And by the way, he said, I didn't promote it. What I did was I shared it, it's not the same. So he didn't promote it. He just shared it and said that it would spur economic growth by funding small businesses and startups, which is both that's promoting it and endorsing it. But anyway, the money's gone. You're not getting that back. And so this obviously, I think strikes a lot of people as similar to what happened with Donald Trump's coin.

Now, so far as we know, Malay doesn't have, you know, a massive ownership stake in this or whatever, as was the case with Donald Trump. Donald Trump made most of the money that was taken from his followers there. But still, seeing like two presidents inside of one month doing what looked like a pump and dump is hardly great, Jank. What do you make of this? Yeah, there's a lot of terms. You're like pulling the rug, and that's what they did in this case.

So everybody comes in and then the insiders. And even with the Trump meme coin, it's mainly insiders that are reaping all the money. And I'm going to explain that to you in a second because it's devastating, devastating. So but I, as I saw that golden chainsaw and them pussing around with it, I thought, if I'm Mike judge, I wake up every day going, Nailed it. I made that movie idiocracy and just almost word for word. So Mike, tip of the hat to your brother. Okay, so they're gonna one day, they're gonna pull that chainsaw and they somebody's

gonna get hurt. And then I don't know. Anyways, now to the important stuff. Donald Trump's meme coin peaked at around $15 billion in value. Now, if you know crypto and I've talked to experts on it, they, They laugh. The meme coins are joke. It's nothing but a scam. It's nothing but a scam. There is no other thing. Okay, so the only question is who's getting scamped? It has no value and it's not like it's Bitcoin. A Bitcoin's a different animal. I don't want to get into the

huge discussion. The meme coins are trash, right? So the people who get in in the beginning, they get in at very low and then they hype it up to their audiences. Oh my God, you got to get into this meme coin. Oh, everybody's getting into the meme coin. You can get all. the way up to the goddamn president. And in fact, this is our president's meme coin. So it went, Trump's went all the way up to 15 billion. You know what it is now? It's still hanging in there at 3.3 billion. So that means about $12 billion evaporated. But wait, is that real money or fake? No, no, it's real money. It's Trump fans who bought high and then had the rug pulled out from underneath them. And then it crashes. So that $12 billion went straight

into Donald Trump and his insiders pockets? And where did it come from? It didn't come from almost anyone on the left. So we're looking at it and laughing. But since we're libs, we're not even laughing. We're like, guys, don't, don't. It's a robbery. Don't walk in there on purpose. Who do you think they're robbing? They're not robbing us. They're robbing you. So 12 billion dollars in MAGA from regular people. Most of the people who invested in that meme coin bought $100 or less because they don't have a lot of money. And all of it is gone now in the pockets of Trump insiders. By the way, Melania's total BS garbage trash coin peaked at 2 billion. For what? For what? Come on guys. And now it's a 666 million. It's actual worth my opinion. All of this is

my opinion. Zero dollars. It's worth zero, zero. So another one point. $1.4 billion from MAGA, not from the left, from MAGA, evaporated, went from the poor and middle class to some of the richest people in the country, Brian? First of all, I got to ask you guys, did you catch a name on the golden chainsaw that a Husk Barna, a craftsman? Because I didn't know they were out there and I'm going to get my hands on one of those things because they're only going to appreciate. Make a meme coin out of it. My mom, she was watching. I was watching TV when I was a little kid and the Franklin Mint commercial came on and my mom bought a plate, I think, with Gerald Ford's face on it. And she's like, it was 6495 and this thing is going to be worth something and it's going to appreciate and value. And I have this plate and she hook line and sinker with the frank.

This is the cryptocurrency. This is like these memes are the modern day version of the Franklin Mint. My mom's plate was sold at a garage sale for, I think she gave it away. It wasn't even worth a nickel. So this is the Franklin Mint. This is someone coming in and saying, get your hands on it while it's hot. You're going to have something really valuable for your Hummel display case. But I promise you, it's going to be worth something.

And then they're worth nothing. It's garbage. It is a grift. It is unbelievable that people are falling for this crap while others are just enriching themselves. Good Lord. And check out the president of Argentina desperately needs a haircut. If you're going to do that bit, I come out there with that. Good Lord.

I mean, these are dummies we're watching. It's not a partisan thing to say. This is such a dumb bit. This is tools for tools. This is just so, this is watching so, so many dummies at one time. Here's a dumb chainsaw for you. And look at, look at how uncool Elon Musk looks. He's such a, he's wearing sunglasses.

And this is the guy who is in the treasury going through your financial. records and documents and firing people, firing heads of households in cities around the country. That guy treats it like a joke because it is a joke to him. In Atlanta, the CDC took the biggest hit yesterday and those folks are out on the streets and they have homes to go to and kids to support and put in school. This isn't a, this is dummies. This is, this isn't just one bowl in the China shop. This is a herd of bulls in a China shop.

And, and, and it's just, it's just absurdly stupid to watch. God. Agreed. Yeah, I, uh, I, uh, co-sign on Brian's frustration. Good Lord. Yeah. And you got you know what last thing on that, that's the president of Argentina. And he, you know, the $4 billion of money, largely from Argentinians, but also from across the world, gone, gone, totally gone, into the hands of super rich people robbing. It's a reverse robin hood, right? And he's like, so what? It's like you walked into a casino and you got robbed.

It's like they're saying, hey, here's a bank, come into the rank. But they say, when you walk into the bank, we're going to rob you. is inside the bank and MAGA just keeps walking in like oh okay there's a bank robbery going on let's go get robbed you're not the robber you're the robbie okay the word I just made up okay but at least I know I made it up okay so president of Argentina president of America the first lady all like two bit con men what are we doing and by the way super last thing That's why, like, that's how much the American people and now across the world, the world population hates the establishment. That's how much they hate the status quo.

They're like, oh, two bit con man who just like comically robs his own supporters. Yeah, I'll take him over the current system. And yet the establishment folks on TV, they still haven't figured it out. Still haven't figured out. They're like, I don't know why it happened. That's why it happened. So now we got the chainsaw instead. Good luck to all of us.

All right. Okay, so check out Brian Unger on every show and movie there is. And I can be more specific, but I like, I like that you're sort of covering all things. Yeah. Yeah, don't think that I missed your specific main knowledge because of how states got their shape. I see you, I see you. Good point. No, I did.

And I once spent a night with Connie Chung in a hotel. hotel in Bangor, Maine. And I, no joke, as a producer. And I'll tell you guys about that another time. Well, I'll have to check that out on Old School. That's a beautiful members only show. Hit the join button. Check that story out. In fact, Connie Chung, my first interview ever on television. So we'll exchange Connie Chung stories on Old School one night, okay? And of course, everybody check out damage report every Monday through Friday at 1 o'clock Eastern. Absolutely great show. don't miss it. All right, when we come back, there's a story out that Trump has soured on Elon Musk. Is it true? I don't know. We'll find out when we return.