The Young Turks - Gina Haspel, Airbnbing While Black, and Boy Scouts

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from May 9, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join.  Hour 1:John Iadarola, Jayar Jackson, and Brooke Thompson. Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing updates.   Hour 2: Brett Erlich, Kim Horcher, and Maytha Alhasssen. Neighbor accuses Airbnb guests were stealing from the property. Mormon church cuts ties with boy scouts.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thanks for watching. Welcome everyone to another episode of The Young Turks. We don't remember that commercial. We do remember this show. I'm kidding. We were talking behind the scenes right before we started. Jenk is out today. But I am here, John Adirola, joined by Brooke Thomas, once again at the main desk.

And J.R. Jackson, stuck in here. Somebody should have stopped in. Buddy's here today. I'm so excited. I didn't even tell you guys this time. I advertise myself and, you know, be very unbearable. Uh-huh. Not this time.

I'm going to sneak in and see where the real fans are at. He's going to save the unbearable for the show. On today's show, we are going to talk about Gina Haspell's confirmation hearing in the Senate for the CIA head position. We've got updates out of North Korea on the Michael Cohen investigation and some information about coal. I know that you're all very excited for that. But it is important. And so we're going to cover that at some point once we get past some of the breaking news. But with that, why don't we jump right into it? Gina Haspel went before the Senate for her confirmation hearing today and considering her

past work at the CIA over a couple of decades involving both torture and covering up torture. They had some hard questions for her. Now, first of all, one of the most important questions is will she as head of the CIA bring us back to the point where we are conducting torture? Sure. Let's listen. In light of my counterterrorism experience, I am, today, in light of my counterterrorism experience, I understand that what many people want to know about are my views on CIA's former detention and interrogation program. I have views on this issue, and I want to be clear. Having served in that tumultuous time, I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly.

and without reservation, that under my leadership, on my watch, CIA will not restart a detention and interrogation program. So that sounds clear, but we're going to play some more videos in a little bit. And because of the way that people who are in favor of torture have tortured language over the past couple of decades, I can't necessarily say what she is saying she won't do as the head of the CIA there. It sounds like she's not going to allow torturing people, but there's all sorts of activities that they've pretended haven't been torture, even though they are on their face, obviously torture.

It sounds like she doesn't believe it. I always get so stressed out whenever they have them. These statements, which are basically them telling you their deepest feelings. Like, you're going to start off with this, but just memorize it. Yeah, when you have to turn the page in the middle. It's so stressful to watch. I was wondering that, because I thought maybe I'm being a little too harsh and saying, Hey, how about you know what you're going to say?

I mean, I'm not saying you have to memorize 30 minutes straight word for it or what you wanted to say. Have prepared marks. Cool, I hear you. But when your page flip is, and I determined that I will not have anything to do with you. You didn't know I was the next word? That's how much you didn't write this or maybe don't believe in what you were saying. We mentioned it earlier this morning also when I was on TDR. Yeah.

It's a show in my head. where we can I'm going to get in trouble for that, but okay, but go on. Where, um, see, now we Gina Haspell, she's apparently against torture. Confirmation hearings, the whole idea of a confirmation hearing in the first place, it's ridiculous, because then the first thing we're expecting this person to do

is lie to us. Because either they're going to tell us, they're not going to do something which we know about their past, and then when they do it, we'll say, oh, well, it happened, or we expect them to switch it up and then say something different. So now we're left with the conflict. Why did you do it in the first place?

If you say you're not going to do it now. So do we really believe what she's saying no matter what it is? And number two, once she's in office or whenever she has a position, she's heading whatever department, whoever is getting confirmed, then what's the recourse once they break these promises? Right. Like, are you really held to this now? No. It's like, what are we doing this for?

Well, look, I think there have been people who have gone through these confirmation processes and not gotten the position. I think one of the reasons is that if you can grill them. So partially all of these people, especially the ones are going to be running for president, they want to appear to be hard, which is good. I'm glad that they're asking the questions. But if they can drag it out and make the person look bad, sometimes they pull themselves or sometimes they're pulled from the process.

It's unfortunately rare. It's one of the reasons it matters who's the president because they have a lot of leeway to pretty much put whoever they want in these positions. But there have been times when they've been blocked. and usually as a result of hard questioning. It's not nearly common enough, but it does happen sometimes. And we're talking about exactly the sort of thing that should disqualify someone for a position like this. Now, I don't know for sure.

Scott Pruitt before he was head of the EPA, he went into his confirmation hearings, and he said, you know what, I'm going to completely dismantle the EPA. I'm going to tear down anything has any do with environmental protections. And actually, the opposite. I'm going to do the bidding of corporations, people who have paid me off, and actually the connections I have to my previous job heading these companies. Good thing he said all that stuff. That's true.

Like, what are you going to do about it? He didn't say any of that stuff, right? You've convinced me. Don't elect people like Trump. Then you don't have people like Scott Pruitt necessarily. Okay, let's move on to some related topics. So obviously they're going to talk more about torture. So more on that topic during the confirmation hearing.

Today, the U.S. government has a clear legal and policy framework. that governs detentions and interrogations. Specifically, the law provides that no individual in U.S. custody may be subjected to any interrogation, technique, or approach that is not authorized by enlisted in the Army-filled manual. I fully support the detainee treatment required by law, and just as importantly, I will keep CIA focused on our collection and analysis mission. that can best leverage the expertise we have at the agency.

Okay, so now we have a legal framework and we're not going to do anything that's against the Army field menu, but we already knew what was torture. We knew it long before they were waterboarding people. And I don't think a lot of people, like, there was a lot of mock drownings that in the middle of they were like, wonder if this will eventually be adjudicated to be torture. I think everyone in that room knew exactly what they were doing. She knew exactly what they were doing when she was running black sites that were conducting this sort of torture. I mean, pretending that it just required an academic and philosophical discussion.

And then eventually we landed on something. And so we'll continue with that. She's acting as if every person who, well, most people are not going to watch this is a C-SPAN. But if they were, we all know exactly what they're doing. We know that it's immoral. We know that it's illegal. And it should be. If we were honest about it, they would just say, you know what, at the time.

Because basically what she said was we now have new guidelines that are in place to make sure we don't do these things anymore. I'm not sure if she still won't call it torture. It was called that way by the people questioned. But then it's still enhanced interrogations. So in saying now we have a framework that keeps up from doing this, just admit it. This is what we did. We do as much as we can. This is what we do as a country and as an interrogation service, an intelligence agency.

We'll find people who want to get some kind of revenge on, perceived. after we get them, we'll do things up to a point that we say is allowed or not allowed because we set those rules anyway. Just say it. We go to as far as we can. If it's torture, we did it, but we could do it. Now we can't, so I'll stop.

That's all she was saying the whole time. I'll do torture until you tell me to stop. No, I won't do it in the future. Because the conversation was, this worked, this worked, this worked, look at everything that we got from this. And now the conversation is that there's a law against us and that's okay. And I'm like, wait, what?

Because honestly, I don't care. I don't need to hear that you're going to follow the law. I want to hear if you're okay with it. Yeah. Yeah. And look, actually related to that, and we're going to get to that specifically in a second. But in terms of, like, her, she apparently wants to make sure that you know that theoretically she will follow the law, but she has no moral core whatsoever. Nothing will drive her except maybe not breaking the law.

So in another exchange with Dianne Feinstein, Feinstein asked her, were you an adjutant? for destroying the tapes. These are tapes of torture that she was implicated in the destruction of. She says, Senator, I absolutely was an advocate. If we could within and conforming to U.S. law, and if we could get policy concurrence to eliminate the security risk posed to our officers by those tapes and Feinstein cut in, you're aware of what those tapes contained, which is torture. Haswell says, no, I never watched the tapes, but I understood that our officers' faces were on them. And that was very dangerous at a time when they were unauthorized disclosures that were exposing the program. So she didn't watch them. She desperately knew that they had to be

destroyed, but wasn't even interested in watching them, which I think is kind of a farcical on its face. But again, covering up torture inside of CIA sites, if it's within the law to destroy it, you still understand that it's wrong. 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-B-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 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. But not her. She doesn't have any of that. We do. We have a system of morals. We have ethics that we abide by. She has, at best, departmental guidelines. Again, the most honest answer you could have is I was taking my marching orders. Yeah, I was ahead of some black sites that did horrible things to people, but that's what they told me to do. And as a blind, mindless soldier, I just did it. If I had more control, which maybe I will now, I'll stop doing that because I actually didn't believe in it. But when they told me to do it, what am I supposed to do not do it? That's who I am. Our policy,

which is more damning on our whole policy at the time was our policy was to do this, I had no right to say no. It's all that happened. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's turn to something you were talking about before. One question that should be, I believe, very easy to answer is, is torturing people immoral. And so Senator Kamala Harris tried to get Gina Haspel to go on the record on that topic

and found Haspel to be a slippery target indeed. One question I've not heard you answer is, do you believe that the previous interrogation techniques were immoral? Senator, I believe that CIA officers to whom you referred... It's a yes or no answer. Do you believe the previous interrogation techniques were immoral? I'm not asking, do you believe they were legal? I'm asking, do you believe they were immoral? Senator, I believe that CIA did extraordinary work to prevent another attack on this country, given the legal tools that we were authorized to use. Please answer yes or no. Do you believe in hindsight that those techniques were immoral?

Senator, what I believe sitting here today is that I support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to. Can you please answer the question? Senator, I think I've answered the question. No, you've not. Do you believe the previous techniques now armed with hindsight? Do you believe they were immoral? Yes or no? Senator, I believe that we should hold ourselves to the moral standard outlined in the Army-filled manual.

Okay, so I understand that you're, you've not answered the question, but I'm going to move on. The president has asserted that torture works. Do you agree with that statement? Senator, I don't believe. that torture works, I believe that in the CIA's program, and I'm not attributing this to enhanced interrogation techniques, I believe as many people, directors who have sat in this chair before me, that valuable information was obtained from senior al-Qaeda operatives that allowed us to defend this country and prevent another attack. Is that a yes? No, it's not a yes. We got

valuable information from debriefing of al-Qaeda detainees. And I don't think it's knowable whether interrogation techniques played a role in that. So I love that, the combination of those two things. So she won't say that torture's immoral and she doesn't think that it works, but thank God we did it. Right. If you can answer it all at the same time, that's how you'd do it. And it doesn't, look, we played it.

It was a minute 15 of her, of Kamala Harris trying to get her to just say yes or no, is waterboarding people immoral. I don't think it's complicated, J.R. Is torturing people immoral? Absolutely. Brooke, is torturing people immoral? So I think. First of all, you're supposed to start every answer with Senator. No, you have to start it with that look of confusion. It reminds me of that Betsy DeVos, the same yes or no, not the same questions, but yes or no questions in this, like, what? Yeah, I'm still not giving a yes or no answer. She refuses. Yes, yes, it's immoral. You can't torture people. Well, we know why she can't. can't do it, though, because then the next headlines for all of the news the next day

or the same day will be, oh, okay, so the potential new head of the CIA goes up against the president and completely disagrees and says everything we did and what the United States did was immoral against what we believe in and un-American. Now she's going to head the CIA. Now she has to deal with all of the conservative and Republican-leaning outlets, then saying, how could she do this? What type of person is this that President Trump just put in? What's she going to be?

soft on terror now, and it's not to deal with that. But she has to stay close to where she's fed. But I mean, lucky for her, Trump is the president, which means that those headlines would last all of 10 minutes. Yeah, that's why. Because we have other stuff to deal with. That's true. We don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow. So my fear coming out of this is that a lot of people, a lot of people are going to hear her opening statement. I will not, under any circumstances, reinstate detainment and torture. And if you just listen to that, you might think, oh, well, this isn't an absolute disaster. Maybe she won't be that bad. But then if you listen to all the rest of it, there's every reason to believe that she doesn't think there's any

moral reason why we shouldn't torture people. She definitely thinks that it works in practice. Because despite her saying it doesn't, she then kept saying that it actually had helped to fight al-Qaeda and to stop future acts of terrorism. And her qualms against conducting torture are entirely rooted in bureaucratic mumble-jumble. So that means that if the law were to change under Trump and the Republicans, I know that seems crazy the idea that they might legalize torture, that what would her opposition be? It's not moral, it's not legal, it's entirely rooted in whether the people above her say that it's okay. So that is a person who will torture, inevitably, perhaps not immediately, but inevitably. And that's my concern. There's an easy

answer to this whole thing. All of those people from that time have no place in government power, whether they were running a CIA black site under George W. Bush or John Bolton, who's desperate to start a war in Iran, clear out all of them. None of them should have been under Obama. None of them should currently be serving under Donald Trump. They had their time. It was an absolute disaster, a historic disaster for America. We can't afford to let them hold the reins of power again. So to understand, again, you talked about how, in only certain circumstances, would they do it? There was one part of that. I'm glad you brought up, because there was another point when she was speaking to Susan Collins.

And she says he's not going to sit with the benefit of hindsight and judge the very good people who made hard decisions, of course, the torture back in the day, who were running their agency with external circumstances at the time. They said, we are not fearing another attack right now. So that leads it to the open that once we're fearing another attack, we can be afraid of wherever it is that we're afraid of and implement these policies again. It's the way it's always worked out. But as long as we're afraid of certain people, and then we can put it off and set it to the side and say,

hey, but we're stopping terrorism by torturing people, we can re-implement it, and so we can get past all of the things that she's been saying today. That sounded like they were decent. Also, I hate the whole, like, weird brotherhood. Like, I'm not going to judge these people who made extraordinary decisions. Why not? Well. You don't want to hurt feelings? I don't, I mean. Because theoretically, if we agreed that those people should go to jail, she might end up there and a lot of people that she's worked with.

Yeah. And what are the, I hesitate to even bring this up. But this is something that I've thought about probably on a weekly basis since Donald Trump became president, he has definitely attempted in a variety of ways to scare the American people, generally about immigrants and things like that, sometimes about inner city crime or whatever. Mexicans, perhaps. But it is shocking to me, and I cannot explain why, especially when he's starting to surround himself with the people who were there under George W. Bush, why he has not yet attempted to terrify the American people about some sort of terror attack, whether it's something that

that's trumped up or whatever. And honestly, they haven't really done it yet. And we have been monumentally lucky that we have not had a gigantic terror attack. We've been certainly terrorized in a number of different ways, especially because we've released millions of guns throughout the country. But they haven't yet turned to that. And it's been over a year. We have been so lucky in that.

But at any time, perhaps in advance of an election, Donald Trump could find a convenient event to Trump up and imagine what they will attempt to do in the wake of that. He'll, he does that when terror attacks happen wherever in another country, right? He brings up all the time and says, this is why what we're doing here and we're out banning Muslims and all of his policies. He doesn't stick with it, though. Like, there'll be a shooting at an airport in Europe, and he'll talk about it and he'll say, who's scary Muslims. And he largely moves on, I think. He won't say it previous to it.

The second part of what I was thinking, he won't say it previous to it because that'll make him look weak. He's worried about himself. I was just, I was thinking that as soon as you were saying this, like he doesn't want to look weak. it's like there's no way there's no threat here because nobody's going to dare mess with me i don't know George w bush was able to do it for a long time i mean he presided over the worst terror attack in american history and everyone thought that he was the biggest alpha male gorilla in the universe i don't know how they can do it but they do it i mean all of them who you know fled from vietnam they couldn't be found when they were needed for military service they're still seen as

strong there is there is a fundamental weakness among conservatives that is masquerading as strength and they are all operating under that collective illusion. Anyway, with that, why don't we go to our first break? When we come back a little bit of good news, doesn't happen all that often, but it's coming out of North Korea, and we'll have that for you after this break. Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through. So hold, hold, stay right here.

Just want to remind you if you want to get all five segments of the Young Turks commercial free. These are just two of them. Every day we do it. So go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join, and you get the whole five segments. two hours, ad free. Do it now. Welcome back to the Young Turks, everybody. It's the second hour. There are no holds barred at this point. We can do whatever we want. There are literally no rules. I was just told by someone. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking

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T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N-V-N-P-N-T-N-T. Check it out today. Let's just go off the rails. I am joined by Kim Horcher of Nerd Alert. What's up?

Here on the Young Turks. And Mait the Al-Hassan. Hasson? Al-Hasson. Al-Hasson. Damn, I even wrote it phonetically. We'll get to know each other as well as she and I know each other, and then I'll never get your name wrong again. Brett and I know each other well.

You're a senior fellow at the Pop Culture Collaborative, a historian. Yes, yes. I am not an octogenarian, and I'm still a historian. Yes, definitely. You don't need to own a large pipe. No our tweet suit. No hound's tooth, even? Hound's tooth? I mean, if somebody wanted to give me a hound's tooth, double-breasted suit, I would not reject it. It's amazing. Well, we're very happy to have both of you here. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for joining us. We're going to do some tweets that I have no idea with the referencing because I was prepping for this hour. However, hashtag TYT Live, Isaiah similarly says morality and politics is almost non-existent.

Fair. I do know what you mean, yeah. I'm a derpy panda. Always love to see those tweets. I'm a derpy panda. We don't want to look weak, so we rather look stupid. How many times this macho man mentality nearly destroyed our country or our species, for that matter. That's a good point. Also, historic Larry speaking, says, bottom line, Donald Trump is not capable of a two-part argument over any period of time longer than a few hours. His ineptitude is a double-edged sword. Those all made sense out of context. Absolutely. Every single one. I know. I was like two-part. How about one-part argument? What else? Member shout-outs are Michael LeFrance and Sherry Taylor. Thank you so much.

It is viewers like you who make this kind of stuff possible. We have a lot of show to get to. We've got Matt Lauer. There's a hot new report out about his sexual misconduct scandal. We have even more Boy Scouts, Can't Catch a Break, and more. We have a new challenge. Hopefully we'll have time to get to that is on the Internet that might be even dumber than the challenges that have stormed the Internet before.

We'll let you know what it is. It smells delightful. but it is quite stupid. First, though, we're going to talk some Airbnb stuff and relate it to the godfather of reggae. All right, so Bob Marley's granddaughter got an Airbnb in Rialto, California when she went to go see a music festival out there. It is a Southern California town and her name's Denisea Pendergrast. And when she checked out, as soon as they started bringing their bags out of the Airbnb to the car, to leave, to go back home, the police showed up. And one of her companions, whose name is Kells, Fife Marshall, posted a video. Here's some photos of the incident.

We do have a video of the incident as it went down. Let's take a look. Oh, God. Look at they're so, we're leaving right now, or Airbnb. Can't leave. Pulled out of the car. I don't do Instagram live, but the police are mad. There's like three black people stealing stuff. Stealing stuff? Yeah.

Like breaking into the house and taking people? No, we're taking our suitcases out of the house. Right. They said like luggage and stuff. Because there's three black people in the neighborhood. Of course. It's possible, but like I said, you never know. It's not possible.

That's what's happening. Right now. Listen, I understand. I get it. You guys are all trained investigators. We're doing it. We're doing it. It doesn't happen.

And as fast as you guys come up with the ideas, though, okay? That's what we're trying to say. And that's why I'm so annoyed because this one, it's about to be cleared up and you guys are going to feel so sorry. There were more photos of the incident, which we have. But here's a little bit of what was posted on the Facebook of one of the people who was there. She said, a neighbor across the street saw three black people packing luggage into their car and assume we were stealing from the house. She then called the police. At first, we joked about the misunderstanding and took photos and videos along the way.

About 20 minutes into this misunderstanding, it escalated almost instantly. They said there was a helicopter. They locked down the neighborhood. What do you guys think? Seven police cars and a helicopter. There is no way that standard operating procedure. I don't buy it. I mean, there were these different statements coming out later about, oh, we were just doing our jobs.

We don't know what Airbnb is. this is like the way we normally handle things. There's no way this is the normal way to handle things. Yeah. Yeah. I think this incident is illustrative. I wrote down the word and I still misspoke it of two things. One is the excessive response from law enforcement because I've seen that, but also married to a widespread culture of anti-blackness that not only seeps through law enforcement, but also to the neighbor. Who was the one who called the police? I don't know, are we getting into that?

Yeah, absolutely. We can. Okay. The neighbor did call, it was the one who called the police. Right, right. And there have been episodes on television about this, like, this is us, about the black character taking his father to each neighbor so people knew that he wasn't somebody that was strange in the neighborhood.

And so this is why black folks have to do this. And I've heard also from people who, who. use like next door app that they've seen crazy things posted about a black man walking around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I live in the South Bay of Los Angeles, which is, I mean, it is super white. It's like, it's like really athletic, beautiful white people all around. And I wonder why my wife wanted to move there. It's just because everyone's so goddamn gorgeous. Anyways, but I'm on the next door app, which freaks me out in general because you're just telling everyone where you live and what's going on in the neighborhood. But it is, you're just,

so much like there is a man walking around in a hood he looks suspicious and then you walk you like look out the door and you see oh they're just saying that there is a black person in the neighborhood and I will say that in neighborhood I've lived in all kinds of neighborhoods but like the ones

that are spectacularly insanely white that have so little going on the response is always disproportionate when it's a person of color and there's just so many cops that have nothing to do that they rally. Now, I think these cops here, the clips I have of them talking, they seem more frustrated with the process that they have to go to than through anything else.

Did they have to call the helicopter, though? I don't know. And that's the thing, is, in these situations, it seems like everyone always hides behind this procedure when it seems like there are intuitive things everyone can do when they look around and go, oh, you guys, the cop who was in charge of the situation essentially said, I don't know what Airbnb is and then made them pull up their receipts, their confirmations. And even when that happened, the person was so unfamiliar with Airbnb that he just saw these. It was like, I need to bring the neighbor over to make sure this is what the owner looks like and is named on the confirmation. I don't know if you're going to get to the owner. So go ahead. Do you have anything

for the owner? Okay. So the owner of the house is Marie Hernandez. And she has said some things that I don't think really gel either. She kind of supports her neighbor who was across the street and called the police on them. She said later that if the kids had simply smiled at my neighbor and waved back and acknowledged her

and said, we're just Airbnb guests checking out. None of this would have happened, but instead they were rude, unkind, not polite. Okay, listen, they don't owe anyone a smile or a wave or some kind of token to show that, hey, I'm acceptable. I deserve to be here.

Right. And if that's what it takes, that's a stupid barrier. I could, anyone can smile. Right. And I don't think that, I don't believe that. I don't believe that they wanted just to smile in a way. Right, right. I mean, literally what corroborates this is that the police has heard on tape saying three black people stealing stuff. So they already identity tagged the situation. And then on top of that, they made a really ridiculous, egregious assumption. that they're stealing because they're bringing out their luggage after they're done using their Airbnb spot. I've never robbed anyone, but I sure as hell wouldn't use luggage. Right. Well, so I think, I think.

When I got robbed, someone did take my backpack and put all of my stuff in it and left with it. I'm just, I'm, okay. Yeah, but like a luggage is much more conspicuous. But like, you know, if somebody is driving something. I mean, yes, yes. I think that is a little bit past the original things that are, right, right, right. that are like very obvious of what's going on. I just want to also mention, first of all, I heard you say this in the hallway.

This is America. I wish we had a clip of Childish Gambino's video because we could just play it in and seamlessly looks like a very similar situation. But also the response from Rodriguez, which was the host, was that this is a very diverse neighborhood. It's not all white people. So I don't know why she's leaning on this race card situation. So you don't, this is the thing. This is what people have to understand. You don't have to be in a white dominant neighborhood for anti-blackness to exist. And for law enforcement to have more of a predatory presence in that neighborhood either. Right. I mean, just to say like, oh, there were lots of non-white people. How could we possibly have any prejudice against black people? It doesn't make sense. But there's a step in the middle. I don't, it does, that doesn't make any sense. How many times? Do we have to see black people just living their lives being normal and everyone else around them freaking out and accusing them of things that they were never doing and calling the police? I mean, we have this coming after the Starbucks incident and a man just standing in his own backyard or sitting in a car at Walmart.

It's insane. This is America. Waffle houses as well. Waffle houses. Getting rustled up in really aggressive. Over a plastic spoon. Right. And I just want to throw a historian's tip.

There's a really great book on this called Condemnation of Blackness by Halil Gibran Muhammad, and it goes over like a centuries-long history of how black people got to be criminalized for just driving, walking, or existing in America. Yeah. Yeah, Airbnb is just such a specific instance of something much larger that's happening. I very much agree with that. And Airbnb made statements about it. They said Airbnb suggests considering whether you should notify your neighbors about your plans to host, along with your plan for how to make sure your guests are not disruptive. They did say what happens to our guests is unconscionable and a reminder of how far we still have to go as a

society. I think there are two things that are happening here. One is the obvious racist overtones and the things that we report on this show all the time from like severe egregious, obvious life and death instances of racial profiling and discrimination to things like I was just carrying my bags out of my Airbnb and I now have been caught up by the police for 20 minutes an hour. And this is a really terrifying situation that is all the same problem. And can also end up in a fatal situation. Yeah, who knows? I mean, the police, they did release eventually. There was discussion of whether they were going to ever release the body cam video. They did do that. We watched it. It seems similar in tone and tenor to what we did see from directed by Kel's Instagram or Facebook video.

And it's just a really, just like a little slice of American life that is very frustrating and at the same time so historically egregious in nature. I don't know, man. Airbnb ruins neighborhoods anyways. It does. Just, I mean, even just the American housing problem implications of Airbnb and what it does to rents, making it difficult. Saturated rental market. And I have an Airbnb in my neighborhood and it's terrible. I don't care what race you are. I hate it. I hate having people come in and go and come and go all the time. And in the meantime, it raises everybody's rent because you can make more off an Airbnb than you can by just renting it out to people coming into the neighborhood. Especially beachfront housing. It's literally all Airbnb.

Yep. Tell me about it. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we've got a new report about this investigation into sexual misconduct by Matt Lauer and a whole lot more. We'll see you after this. Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of the Young Turks. Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do, because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and can watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. That's at TYT Network. dot com slash join come become a member thanks for watching either way thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content

and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you