The Young Turks - Gitmo Ron

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

Episode summary: Fed slams its own oversight of Silicon Valley Bank in post-mortem. Draft GOP midterm post-mortem says it’s time to shut up about election fraud. Donald Trump mocks Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of his earliest 2024 endorsers, as a “progressive” as the crowd boos. DeSantis loses his cool with a reporter after being challenged over claims he witnessed torture while working at Guantanamo Bay. HOSTS: John Iadarola (@johniadarola) , Wosny Lambre & David Doel (@daviddoel) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Stop with the questions. Celebrate. Yeah, my team, Three-My-T, Three-My-T, Three-My-T,

Three-My-T, Three-My-T, Three-O-T, Three-O-T, Yeah, fine, you can drop it. Welcome one and all to the Young Turks. I'm John Arola. And as you can see, Jake is all of the hell of the way out of here.

I'm very lucky to be joined on the first hour of the show by two people who you're probably quite familiar with, the Rational National himself. David Dole, welcome to the program. Hey, good to be here, John. Glad to have you here. And of the ringer as well as basically everywhere else, Wazi Lombre, welcome back to the program. So happy to be on the power panel, just crushed a protein bar, so I'm ready. He's filled with protein, he's filled with energy, and he's ready to go. I'm on my final fumes for the week, but I'm going to spend them all on this hour, everyone. So buckle up, because we got a lot to talk about through the course of this hour.

And then I believe Francesca Fierintini is going to be taking the reins for the second hour, so that should be a lot of fun as well. That said, we do have a lot to get to, so why don't we jump right into it? I hear we're up in New Hampshire, which is great. Last time that one got taken away from us with people that just came in with buses all over the place. They had buses coming up from Massachusetts. You have the rhino governor. You know the rhino governor of Massachusetts?

It's right. Baker, he's a rhino. But I guess he does whatever he can to get elected. The Democrat Party is now run by socialists and Marxists who want to destroy our laws, our values, and want to destroy your way of life. So that's a fairly typical appearance by Donald Trump recently, casual assertions that the Democrats have stolen elections. He's also throwing in there that one of the Republicans he doesn't like, steals elections too. It's hard to know exactly how he does simultaneously both of those things in the same elections. Democrats where they're needed, Republicans where they're needed. But in any event, he is obviously sticking to this victimhood narrative.

Now the interesting thing is according to a new RNC draft report, they're to move on from this stuff, even if Donald Trump is not. So they've looked into what exactly happened in the midterm, some of the things that might have led to their candidates underperforming expectations. And they say, we're going to go through quite a bit of this, the Republican candidates in 2022 who delivered results and had a vision for the future did much, much better than those stuck in the past and rehashing old grievances. Now, you are going to be shocked to find out that they don't mention Trump specifically in this, although they're obviously talking about Donald Trump on the one hand and the candidates that he brought into the race on the

other, many of whom did cling preemptively and after the fact two versions of the big lie. They go on to say America has always been a nation focused on the future. The American people want to move forward and rarely, if ever, are concerned about what happened in the past. The balance of survey data makes it clear that voters are done with the 2020 and 2020 elections. They have no patience for endless conversations, relitigating previous elections from Democrats and Republicans. Those who don't heed that lesson from 2022 will be more likely to lose in 2024 and successive cycles. And by the way, it's not like they're totally running from all of this. They still want to win, even if that involves rigging the vote in a variety

of different ways, suppressing the vote, I should say. In their report, they talk about how they need election integrity. And if you've been paying attention to American politics for a while, you know exactly what that means and what it doesn't. But they want the legislature and Congress potentially to sort of focus on that, not the candidates themselves when it comes to rhetoric. So there's definitely a divide here, at least in terms of strategy. I want to start with you, Waz. What do you think about this? Who do you think is going to win in terms of whether they abandon the big lie or not? Trump is going to win because he's still the center of gravity within the party.

And so whatever messages he feels like espousing, that's what's going to go over. It doesn't kind of matter what the greater party apparatus or establishment, if you will, wants. Trump's going to do what Trump wants. And it's part of his sort of branding at this point, right? Like the big lie is like, I'm Trump, I never lose. We're going to win so big. You're going to get tired of of winning, that like, with that, you know, sort of motif, you can't admit to having gotten your butt kicked by Joe Biden. So he has to run with the big lie. And even when he says stuff like rhino, you can tell this, these aren't words that he uses in everyday conversation. He's like, rhino governor, he's a big rhino. It's like, you know, it's just part of what he says

now. It's not part of any like overarching theme. It's just what he's so used to regurgitating. so he still does it, but the party establishment can't tell this dude what to do. Yeah, David, what do you think? Yeah, I'm with, I'm with WOS here. I'm like this idea that Republicans are are going to, I don't know, vote for somebody. The message for a general and a primary for the Republican Party is so completely different that it almost doesn't matter whatever suggestions come down in terms of a general election because it's not going to win the candidate a primary. Now you could have someone who pretends to be

on the Republican side pretends to be someone who you know speaks to the base and then I guess you know makes that shift and then for the general but as long as Trump is around that's not going to happen right so this is like all of these recommendations all of these suggestions for what they should be running on it doesn't ultimately matter as long as Trump is in the race and Trump's going to do what Trump's going to do and that's who the base is going to be with it regardless of whatever external factors are at play. Yeah, really, I'm glad that you mentioned the disparity between theoretically strategy that would work at the primary strategy that's going to work in the general election because

it definitely feels like this report, like I don't know any of the individuals involved in the writing of this, but it definitely feels like the sort of people that probably really wish that they could move on, not just from the big lie, but from Trump and the MAGA movement and all that and just go back to Paul Ryan and those sorts of types. They don't seem to either understand or at the very least like what has become of the Republican base because I think it probably makes a ton of sense to say, you know, don't be spreading these insane conspiracy theories. Don't be asserting that democracy either is dead or should die. Don't do all of that stuff. You're going to hurt yourself in the general.

But who's going to follow that strategy if you don't make it to the general when you follow that strategy? So like the incentives going into the race, I think are all messed up. that you have to say to stand out amongst a pack of rabid lunatics is very different than the stuff that's going to help you going up against the centrist Democrat or whatever. But then also the incentives coming out of the race are different. Like generally, I think in the past, except for in the presidency, you would run for office because you want to win that race. But for a lot of these people, that would be cool, I guess, if it happens. But you just say crazy stuff. And whether you go on to win or lose by 20 points, you'll probably get brought

on to Fox News and Newsmax and O-A-N, and even if you lose terribly because of the choices you made, you can just parlay that into a victimhood complex that'll keep you in the media. Carrie Lake is a great example of that. If she had been less, like, I almost swore, I'll say bananas, then she probably would be occupying office right now. She didn't win that, but do we think that she really cares? Like, she's still in the big picture to potentially join Trump as VP. She's still constantly being brought onto right wing media.

I'm sure any time she tries to raise money off of her former base, they're probably more than happy to give it to her. So there's all these competing incentives that I think in theory, the people who drafted this report would be happy to change. But the party isn't up to them. Like they can give them this report, but they're not the ones actually pulling the strings at the end of the day. Yeah, I feel like this is a playbook you've run so long as Trump is still relevant.

The second that he's no longer relevant and viable, they'll move on to some other thing. They'll move on to trans hypnosis or some other craziness that the party wants to get involved with. But like as so long as Trump is at the center of gravity within the party, they're going to go with this voter fraud nonsense, whether it works or not for them. Yeah. And as you mentioned, John, at the beginning, like, Republicans are the ones that are ricking the elections with things. like gerrymandering. And you could argue Democrats don't talk enough about that. So to have this like other side that are saying don't talk about a rigged election that by the way, didn't even happen. But like it's just such a bizarre world to be living in when Democrats should take

the recommendations to talk about this. Where's the where's the benefits of all of this election rigging? I don't see it. Like they rigged these elections allegedly and they did what What they do with it? To lose the house. Exactly. Exactly. It's absurd. It's stupid.

Yeah. Well, look, when you zoom out, it's absurd like on a macro level, but it's also absurd in individual cases. If people have been pointing out for a long time, the election that put Marjorie Green into office was an election that supposedly the Democrats rigged and just, ah, we forgot to take out Green, the one who constantly talks about our deep state of Kabul or cable or however she says it. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.

And that's really the thing, it's not, I'm not saying that like no election is literally rigged the real way that that word is supposed to operate. But what Democrats do is they, or sorry, Republicans do is they make it so that you don't have to rig the vote. You make it so that the vote is kind of what it needs to be or is largely irrelevant. Like you set up systems and some of this goes back literally hundreds of years where it doesn't matter if you have way more voters in an area. Like they're going to limit the number of congressional seats that you get off of it or they're going to magnify. the conservative rural advantage in the Senate. Even if you overwhelm both of those, then they were able to get a majority in the Supreme Court. Like there are all these defense measures that make it so that you don't need mules.

You don't need to change like an individual vote. You win kind of no matter what. But that's not the sort of rigging that they have a problem with. To be clear, too, while they're going to continue to try to change the law, federally if they can in the states if they can't, for now though, they are, and I think quite intelligently saying that Republican campaigns must push our supporters to vote early in person or by mail, Republicans cannot continue to give Democrats a head start. I have no doubt, by the way, that they're going to continue to go out and demonize those

practices, implying, even though they know it's fate, it's false, that that contributes to uncertainty about the results of the election. But it's definitely a good idea to get people to do it anyway. I think a case could be made that Trump could be president right now if he had put as much passion into trying to get his voters to vote early and by mail in 2020, rather than demonizing the practice and telling them that their vote won't count. if they do that. Some of the states where he won, the margin was so narrow that I feel like that could have easily

been swapped by a different strategy on that sort of vote. So I think it's probably safe to say that they'll change in terms of their recommendations. What do you guys think? I think in terms of what you just said about the not focusing so much on, sorry, I just, the last point you just made about it completely is a- So you talk about demonizing the early vote, the mail vote? Yeah, early voting, yeah. So that's a lesson they learned immediately after, I think it was both 2020 and the midterms. Because on Fox News, like the next day, you had Laura Ingram of all people being like, hey, maybe we should stop demonizing early voting because like this is how do you win elections if you act like the early, like this is a very rigged process the entire time unless you vote on voting day.

I don't like I understand from Trump's point of view he wants to in case he loses he wants to hey this this vote you can't trust his vote but if you want to win you need people as many people to vote in whatever way they can so to demonize that process clearly doesn't help them but again as you say I have no doubt that at least you know Trump's going to be the one the one demonizing this stuff again because of the fear that he may lose again yeah and the reason why it's counterproductive is that he's that he's telling his supporters that there's no point in going out and voting because the Democrats have rigged it. Like he's setting up a scenario where he loses. It's, it's self-repetuating at this point. But again,

the alternative would be to admit defeat and failure, which we know somebody with, you know, the ego and self-esteem issues of a Donald Trump. He can't bring himself to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, he, he, He did it in his own race, and I guess I'll give him some credit for not just sabotaging other people's races, but sabotaging his own reelection, but he definitely did it in Georgia. You might have Senators Leffler and Purdue right now if he hadn't like, you know, wind his way into encouraging people not to vote. And like to the extent that he doesn't do that more now, we know that he at least in the back of his mind thinks that he might get elected again. But once that hope is gone, and I don't even know if it'll be gone after this race,

maybe he thinks that he's going to run in 2028 or something, like when he decides that he's no longer needs the Republican Party, he's not going to need services anymore. Can you imagine how corrosive his effect is going to be on their chances, the stuff he's going to say about their, their politicians, their media, their leaders, it's going to be absolutely glorious. By the way, also, once super fast note, the demonizing of the early vote, making sure that as many votes come in as possible, has always so obviously run afoul of the insane standard they have for how quickly we should know the results of elections as well. Like they don't want any of that to be tabulated beforehand.

They want it all to be done on the day and also within 30 minutes. It's not pizza, it's a national election dude. Like, calm down. In any event, you know, if they're hoping that maybe without putting pressure on Trump, he'll change his ways. It's probably not going to happen. Take a look. So these debates, you know, Nixon and Reagan and Bush, Bush, Bush number one, others. No, they didn't debate in the primers. They didn't debate.

I mean, seriously, you look at the boards and you see these things, 1%, 1%, 2%, 1%, 1%, 3%. And you're looking at these numbers, and I'm, and we're at 60% and 70%. Why would you do that? You want intelligent people, don't you, to be running your country? But I do look forward to the debate with Joe. No, it's the rough. Rolling it out. Okay, Waz, you seem to enjoy that.

What do you think about his approach to the debate this time around? I just love that he will take any opportunity to crap all over his competitors. He's like, look at the polls, 1%, 2%, we're at 60, 70, come on. Why would we debate these people? You want smart. It's just perfect. He just, he cannot, he every opportunity to be little to insult, whatever, his competitors, he will take it. And it's hilarious. Just the idea that he's calling Joe Biden corrupt. Like, you know, he's just, he got lazy with Joe Biden. That's the thing about Joe Biden, man. Like, they just don't really hate him enough. He can't even muster the hate to come up with, you know, his own nickname for Joe. He has to transfer the. Hillary joint to him, but you know, I'm amused by it. I'm gonna be amused by the Republican primary process, appointment television. If the debate actually happens, David, what do you think? Yeah, this is a like the whole idea that Republicans cared all about anything else except

for voting for the alpha in the room is just insane. Like this, all Trump has to do is scream and yell and belittle everybody else and he's got it. No, it. It, The person that wins the Republican primary is the one that throws the most crap. And Trump's got that down. No one's even touching him. And even if they like you've seen people like like Nikki Haley, you know, attempt to like there's like a leaked memo of her criticizing Trump behind the scenes. Like she can't even do it to a camera like these people are so afraid of actually putting any punches on on Trump. They're done. I mean, he's completely right. They have no shot. And if there's if there are debates,

Trump's gonna win them anyways. Like there's no, there's no competition here because Trump has the charisma. He has the ability to grab people. He is a right wing comedian. So no one else can come close to what he's able to do, at least in terms of who's in the race right now. You know, maybe if a Tucker jumps in, see what happens. But in terms of who's in this race, I just, Trump, Trump has this. Yeah, see, the interesting thing about that is I'm definitely inclined to agree with you that were they to have the debates and I'm assuming they're going to want to

to have them just to draw some sort of interest into the primaries? Because remember, Trump may not need to draw a lot of interest during the primaries to raise money. He can do that independently. But the Republican Party has a lot of other candidates that they would love for people to pay attention to along the way. So I think they're gonna put a lot of pressure on him to do at least one debate. But like, he probably would like wipe the floor, thinking alien, Scott and all of that. And yet when you get to the general election, it's not like he rocked everyone in those debates. I think in general, like people can go look and look back at polls afterward, but he generally didn't

do that well against Hillary Clinton or against Joe Biden, despite his willingness to, you know, insult and all that. And in terms of the alpha thing, I totally agree. And also the critique I'm about to make will be totally irrelevant to every conservative. They'll never buy what to me seems like an indisputable case in my layout. What he just said seems like the alpha thing to do. to me, it is the cowardly thing to do. If you are so much stronger and so much better and more charismatic and at better points and you can just rock them, then rock them. Why don't you do that?

You'd love to. You clearly like insulting them from a distance when they're not in the room with you. But if you're so good at it, why not do it when they're standing at a podium a few feet away from you? Instead, he's saying, why would I risk being in the room with them when I'm already winning? I might lose if I were to debate them. It is a move of cowardice and complete lack of confidence in his debating skills.

And yet I'm sure that this is pointless. No conservative is going to read it that way. What do you guys think? I think, sorry, go ahead. I don't think you have to be worried about him not showing up because they're going to put these debates on. And if a bunch of people get on TV, draw a mass audience, and use the opportunity to crap all over Trump, he's, I bet you he will be at the next one. Like, he's not gonna allow for these guys to steal all the oxygen and attention and use it as an opportunity to, you know, basically denigrate his presidency and, you know, the legitimacy of his candidacy. Like, he's not gonna let people go on TV with mass audiences and just kill him without him having any way to defend himself or be better. I, like, Donald Trump wants to be on TV and he wants to be on TV crapping all over these people. He's gonna be at those debates. I promise you.

And if I'm remembering correctly, wasn't there a debate that he that he skipped back in 2016? I think with Megan Kelly. And I mean, he was fine. It didn't really, as far. I mean, he won. So it clearly couldn't have impacted him too much. So even if he's not in these debates, I don't think it really matters. That said, though, there's no reason not to be in them if they're happening. He won the previous debates, at least in terms of Republicans. But as you said, John, like, when it comes to a general, he's actually forced at that time to answer real questions. Like, so when he's long-bendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going.

Keep the fun going. issues as opposed to whatever garbage they're talking about on the right, then that's why he's not able to perform as well, even though he's, you know, he's fine. He was fine. He wasn't, you know, a complete mess. But he's not able to do as well in those real debates in the general because he has to actually talk about real issues. But when it comes to a Republican primary, again, I don't think it matters if he's in them or not. He's going to win regardless, but it won't hurt him, I think, to be to be in them. Maybe. We'll see. In terms of his ability to answer the substantive questions, everyone should definitely Google his response to a question about the nuclear triad. It's one of my favorite debate answers ever. He had no idea what he was talking about. But in any event, we'll have to see, will we have Republican debates? We won't apparently have Democratic primary debates. Maybe those two guys will meet up once or twice for general elections. So what could be potentially a series of opportunities for Americans to see potential leaders grappling with the biggest

crises, biggest issues facing America. Instead, they're probably all going to run for the hills. And that certainly doesn't benefit regular people. With that said, we're going to take our first break. When we come back, lots more to get to, don't go anywhere. Welcome back to the first hour of the Young Turks, everybody. I'm John Arrilla, joined by David and Woz. Guys, thanks for being here. Thank you. Why don't we jump into some more news, starting with this?

Lindsay Graham, the progressive from South Carolina. No, he's a progressive, but he's got some good things too, okay? But Lindsey Graham, I said to him, Lindsay, you got to go along with this. We were all set to get it done. You got to go along with this. He says, so let me get this straight. If they charge us, we charge them the same thing. He said it's not his strength.

Other things are his strength. He said, so they charge us, we charge them the same thing, right? Yeah, you got my vote. There have been many people over the years that have attempted to the best of their ability to kiss Donald Trump's butt, but few people in history have gotten less for their effort. Lindsay Grimm has spent years, humiliating years, embarrassing himself by going on TV, and defending Donald Trump and sucking up to Donald Trump, tearing up for Donald Trump. And this is what he gets for his efforts.

Donald Trump going before Republican audiences and calling him a progressive. It's not the first time he's done it, by the way. Back in March 2022 at a fundraising dinner, he said there are a couple of senators, and we have our progressive senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham. He's a progressive, but he's our progressive. So for more than a year, behind his back at rallies, in front of him at fundraising. He's just been dragging Lindsey Graham through the mud. And look, Lindsey Graham's a terrible guy.

I'm not going to spare a lot of my own tears on him. But I will also say that there's a lot of things about America that aren't the way that I would like. The fact that words mean absolutely nothing, though, that bothers me because I feel like we have a very rich, diverse language. There's so many words in English, why do we have to sap all of the meaning from words? Whether it's progressive or you can insert your own, you've probably seen it happen. Anyway, that's what's happening in Lindsay Graham, starting with you, David, what do you think? Okay, so in this world where Joe Biden is a socialist, I guess it makes sense that Lindsey Graham's a progressive. Like this is, if they're going to move the entire spectrum, I guess that's how it goes.

If I'm, okay, correct me if I'm wrong here. I'm pretty sure back in 2016, Trump gave out Lindsey Graham's cell phone number. Is that right? Because I remember that happening. Okay, and then and then and then for the next, you know, whatever, six, whatever years, Lindsey Graham just kissed Trump's butt again and again and again and again. And like there's there's nothing that Lindsay Graham can possibly do for Trump not to at least somehow throw Lindsey Graham under the bus in some way, whether it's calling him a progressive,

whether it's doing something else. Like this is going to be an ongoing thing because again, part of Trump's whole shit is that he has to be above everyone else. He has to put everyone else down, regardless of how much they love him in the public's eye. He has to be the one that appears to be the leader. And the leader's got to put their people in line sometimes. And that's essentially what Trump is doing here. He's asserting his dominance over the party.

Maybe my like New York City, you know, hater, jokester brain is working here. But it feels like he's using progressive as some sort of innuendo for the types of rumors that you hear about Lindsey Graham. Because no other explanation makes any type of sense whatsoever. John's saying that like progress like words have to meet. He's not calling him like an actual like progressive or liberal. He's calling him something else. And like, it's hard for me to like separate that from Donald Trump's, you know, belittling nature.

You know what I mean? So to me, it sounds like he's, you know, he's basically like, yeah, Lindsey Graham's, he's progressive. Yeah. You know, like I don't, it's hard for me to read that any other way. You know, I had not thought of that. I mean, are we supposed to believe in a policy? Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, by the way, okay? This is one of the most conservative states in the country, period.

The idea that that dude is progressive in any way outside of, you know, maybe his own personal life, allegedly. I don't understand how he can be doing this. Yeah, unless it's what David was saying, that it's Trump's massive shifting of the rhetorical Overton window and everything else has to be dragged with it. If it's not that, well, it definitely isn't substantively policy. But I think what makes your case even better is that if anyone were to, from a policy position, try to make the case that Lindsay Graham, it wouldn't be Trump. Trump doesn't care about any of this policy stuff. He doesn't spare a thought for it.

So whatever it is that's leading him to call him that, it definitely ain't policy. Also, Trump is the only Republican who has said publicly within the last eight years. that like, yo, nah, you shouldn't touch Medicare. Nah, social, don't touch it. The people actually really like it. Like, he's like the only, the only Republican who has said that publicly is Trump. The real progressive. There you go.

Yeah. Of that party. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And Donald Trump, you know, he has previously said that he was going to be the most pro-LGB president ever. He said he was going to stop our wars. Now, all of these were lies.

Every bit of it. But he did claim that he held these positions. That is true. Okay, he got into some other topics. I'd actually like to jump ahead. So if we could move to the third video, I think we can mention something that actually came up in the last one. This could be maybe the most important part of what I'm going to say,

because this is going to be a major announcement. Are you ready? Is everybody ready? I will be retiring the name Crooked from Hillary Clinton and Hermanica. And I'm going to give her a new name, I don't know, like maybe lovely Hillary or beautiful Hillary. But I'm going to retire the name crooked so that we can use the name for Joe Biden because he'll be known from now on as Crooked Joe Biden. You would think that Hillary would be very happy today. I think she'll be, she's out there someplace celebrating.

Because there's never been anyone in the history of American politics so crooked or dishonest. this is Joe Biden. Okay, so it could have been a major announcement. I don't think it was. They seemed a little bit disappointed, to be fair. Now, to his credit, he did give them a little bit to chew on. They liked the lovely Hillary, the beautiful Hillary, a little bit of casual insulting Hillary Clinton's appearance,

just to reassure all of them that she is not as attractive as the wife that he barely has a relationship with, or the dozens of women he's alleged to have sexually assaulted. She's not as attractive as any of those women in his past. But he has apparently given up on trying to come up with a better original nickname for Joe Biden. He also is moving on from Sleepy Joe. I guess that just didn't get it done. I mean objectively, he's not living in the White House, so clearly it didn't work.

He's just going to go with crooked. I could make the case for Joe Biden potentially being crooked. We could talk about policy going back a few decades. I don't think that's what he's going to do with it, but was, what do you think about him rolling out the crooked label again? I mean, to piggyback off of what you said, if he used this opportunity to sort of jab Joe Biden's extremely unhealthily cozy relationship with the banks, the senator from Delaware, which as you guys know, it's basically the financial capital of the United States, right? A lot of these companies, these financial institutions are based in Delaware because of their lax laws concerning these institutions. The bankruptcy law that Joe Biden got pushed through, like it's nasty, how crooked all of that stuff was and how cozy he was. He went in that room full of Wall Street people and told them nothing will fundamentally change.

Like all of that stuff is messed up and pretty crooked, but we know that's not what Trump's going to do. Yeah. He may insert that at some point, but I think the thought process here is as simple as, hey, crooked Hillary worked, sleepy Joe didn't. How about crooked Joe? That's, I think that's as far as the thought process is here. And so he's going to try to claim that, you know, once again, Trump is the outsider somehow for a president. Trump is the outsider. Joe Biden is is the only crooked one in the race. And that's what's going to take him down. It's not. I mean, if this is what he's running on, it's not going to work considering Trump's already been president. People have been there. They seen it. Not that happy with it. I think the only

the only risk Democrats have here at all is turnout. Can they get young people out to vote? Because ultimately, if they can do just enough of that, then this, whoever's in in the race, and I assume it's going to be Trump and Biden, I don't think it's even, I don't think it's there's really any question here. In my mind, what the results are going to be because of what we already see. There's no longer this aura around Trump and, oh, maybe he can be different than a previous president because he's now already been president and people know who he is. Yeah. Yeah, you know, let's stick in that just a little bit because there's a variety of different ways obviously that you can run for president. It becomes a little bit more complicated

when you've already held the office. Pitching yourself as a total outsider as you sort of, you like laughed at a little bit. It seems a little bit weird. You were the president already. But you could run on it like a sort of affirmative platform of all the things that you're going to get done. And I'm sure he's going to say we're going to do the wall. Today he was saying we're going to do a travel ban again. So, you know, everything's being rebooted these days. But you also can run against the other side. Democrats do that all the time, pointing out how terrible they are, how bad it would be if they got into office.

They're definitely, whether it's Trump and his rhetoric, right wing media, Jim Jordan and all of them, they're trying to like gin up all this. stuff about Joe Biden that maybe could play into the label of him being crooked or whatever. But do you think that that's really going to be a big part of this race, like really trying to focus on either the scandals or the supposed crimes of Joe Biden, the terrible state of the country, or is it just going to kind of be, well, that's not really going to hit. So I guess we're going to go with the culture war stuff. I mean, they got to go with inflation, economy, gas prices, you know, like, if they were smart, that's what they hit the guy on. That's what, that's where I think he's vulnerable, this sense

that people have that things aren't going necessarily well. If you're a normal working person, I would hope that's what we would be discussing, right? How do we make these things better for people. But knowing, knowing Trump, I could see him going the Hunter Biden route and, you know, sort of trying to get in the mud with it. It's Trump, it's the Republicans. You shouldn't expect anything less. Yeah, it's gonna be tough because Trump, I mean, he was able to win before. And that was sort of a mixture of actually thinking back, I'm not, I forget how much culture stuff was really in that. But a lot of it was about, hey, Hillary is crooked. And do you really want someone, like just a typical politician once again, or do you want someone who's an outsider?

It was kind of his play, not maybe in those words, but that's kind of what he was trying to push. That same play doesn't work this time because he's not an outsider, even though he can try to pretend to be an outsider. So he may try, I mean, clearly he's going to try to call Biden crooked and put him in the same sort of lane as Hillary, which you can argue they are in in similar lanes. But it's not going to be as effective unless he ties it in with what was said in terms of how people are actually feeling in terms of whether it's, you know, the cost of housing, gas prices, things that are actual kitchen table issues. I think that's what's going to be a winning message for them. But it's, you know, again, Trump, he was president for four

years. Did that stuff get better? Like it's it's, what message does he really have to latch on here to considering he's already been president and none of that stuff improved? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I don't remember too much of the culture war stuff from that cycle. It's definitely she's crooked. Also, did you know she's a woman? They did a lot of that sort of stuff. Generalized, deep state, like change without any promise of policy change. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body,

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next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Like the vaguest kind of overall change, at that point, of course, the Republicans hadn't decided that the greatest threat to the republic was drag queens or trans swimmers or something. A lot of the right-wing punits at that point were still routinely doing drag. drag themselves or playing gay roles in media like Michael Knowles. They hadn't yet figured out that that was a thing that was deeply passionately, one of their biggest concerns of their life.

But we'll see this next time around. In any event, the hour is quickly running by. So why don't we jump into the D block with this? No, no, none. All that's BS. No, totally, totally BS. Yep, yep, yeah. Who said that?

Detainees and told us. How would they know me? Okay, think about that. Do you honestly believe that's credible? So this is 20, 2006, I'm a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not. So that is the impassioned response of Governor Ron DeSantis.

A journalist who was confronting him about his time earlier in his career at Guantanamo Bay, where now prisoners who had been at Guantanamo Bay at that point are saying that DeSantis stood by and laughed as they were tortured. Forced feedings and those sorts of things. So we actually know a little bit about this. There's been some prior reporting. And once you learn the details, maybe you'll understand why he was so freaked out about the questions that were coming his way. So he did serve as a lawyer at Guantanamo Bay back in 2006.

He arrived to Guantanamo in the midst of mass hunger strikes among detainees protesting their treatment at the prison. He arrived as part of a team of military lawyers to help solve the situation. He has talked about this before as well, five years ago saying, for these detainees, the jihad was still ongoing and they would wage jihad any way they can. Some of the things they would do, they would do hunger strikes. So everything at that time was legally. nature one way or another. So the commander wants to know, well, how do I combat this? Just briefly stop for, there's nothing I love more than seeing someone trained as a lawyer who's now an executive saying like stuff was legal one way or another. Definitely an ethical approach to

life. He says, so one of the jobs of the legal advisor would be like, hey, you actually can force feed? Here's what you can do. Here's kind of the rules of that. Again, very worried about the law. you can do it kind of, I guess. Look, that's what they were sent to do. They wanted some sort of like plausible deniability, some sort of cover an excuse to be able to do what they wanted to do, which was force feed these people, torture them in a variety of different ways. And that's what he did. Now, he never explicitly states that he told anyone to force feed any particular prisoner. So he didn't say you can force feed that prisoner, but he is openly admitting years later that he was part of the justification to do that sort of thing. And he actually

has said a bit more about his experience there saying, you also had a lot of detainees claiming abuse because this was in the wake of Abu Ghraib, and that was used offensively against our guards. What I learned from that, and I took to Iraq when I was working with SEAL Team 1 is they are using things like detainee abuse offensively against us. It was a tactic, technique, and procedure. Yeah, that was really the most egregious thing about Abu Ghraib was that it was bad for us. That was really what I learned from that as well. So look, we know who Ronda Santis is.

We know what he saw his role there. Now, we can get into the specific claims that are made about different prisoners. There's, you know, there's five prisoners who have talked about seeing him at these sorts of things. Some have said specifically that he was there for their force feedings. As of right now, look, we're never going to be able to say definitively, video is not going to come out. But this is something that has dogged him for some time. The question I want to ask you guys, and I want to start with you, David, is does he even need to worry about this?

Like if video did come out or photos, and he's literally like Abu Ghraib, like pointing at the detainees being force fed, it's a Republican primary. Do we think that they would care? Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, if this was Trump, he would own it. He'd be like, yeah, that's right. I stopped the terrorists. I was there myself. I saved America.

Well, Ron DeSantis runs away from it. So, you know, it's possible Ron DeSantis is thinking more about, you know, mass appeal as opposed to a Republican primary. But we know that if this was Trump, he would absolutely own this. And what I find interesting about DeSantis's response here is that he, he says, you know, how would they remember me as if you wouldn't remember the person that helped to torture you? Like, how would that not be seared into your brain? Like, of course they would remember you. And with multiple people saying this, look, obviously we don't know for sure, right? But it's it's kind of hard to deny when he himself is on the record saying, yeah, I was, you know, he was a part of this. So it's not a stretch to say he was also in the room at the time. Yeah. I mean, as I said with JR, I think it's cool just the fact that he's being held to account in a public space at all for this. And my opinion is that now let's do Alberto, Gonzalez. Let's do George Bush. Let's do Cheney. Let's do Rumsfeld. Let's do all of these guys that presided over the torture regime. Because, I mean, you know, the Iraq war obviously

has forever sullied America's reputation abroad. Not that it was very sterling to begin with, thank you, CIA. But this torture stuff, this idea that Americans, the foreign policy regime of America, the foreign policy bureaucracy, because it's not even a regime, these people don't lose their freaking jobs, that they've seated that moral high ground a long time ago. And part of it is this torture stuff. And so if Ronda Sanchez is the first guy to ever, ever get a public flogging for their role in the torture at Guantanamo and black sites all over the world, then hey man, I'm with it. Even if nothing comes of it, I'm glad he has. He has to wear this around his neck with public shame and ridicule.

Yeah, also at the same time, it's weird. Like, I don't even think necessarily, again, that if there was proof, it would particularly matter. But like, but the ideas that maybe it could in this case, like, maybe he was in a room when someone was being tortured. Like, meanwhile, think about what we give a pass to. Like, Donald Trump massively increased the number of bombings and drone strikes while he was present, thousands of people died. Plenty of them more bad, sure, lots of more civilians.

They're dead, not just tortured, dead, wiped out, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. Who would even, like if you went in the media and raised that as a concern, they would look at you like you were a swamp creature, like you were a madman. But with the torture, maybe, I guess, because he was a lawyer, we don't want to start questioning presidents. And if DeSantis becomes president, by the way, the questions will be over. You will not be asked them anymore. But when he was a lawyer than maybe we can get him on something. It's just so weird the areas where they could be criticized and the the massive areas of great power where they cannot. In any event, we do have to take our second break. We got a lot more to get to when we come

back so don't go anywhere. Welcome back, everyone. We got a couple more stories for you. But just in case, though, just in case we go over, I want to make sure that we get a chance to let people know where they can follow both of you. Starting with you, David. Where can people see more of your work? Go to the rational national.com and that's the YouTube page and on Twitter and on Blue Sky. I am David Dole, D-O-E-L. There you go. Blue Sky, let's go. Big Wads on Instagram. And of course, Theringer.com, all things, MBA. Check out my podcast, Fernando Vila, wokebrose. That comes out every single Friday. Nice. Fresh episode today.

Awesome. And don't message us about invites. We don't have any yet. I wish that we did. I would love to give them away. But I checked. I don't even have one yet. I feel silenced, actually, in that way.

Anyway, we got through all the serious news, everyone. Now let's get to the fun, the impending crash of our banking system. Today, the Federal Reserve announced that it was faulting itself at least in relatively large part for failing to take forceful enough action to avert the failure of, for instance, Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed back in March. There are a lot of concerns about the short and long term impacts of that on the global banking industry, and this report that has just come out is intended to diagnose the problem, what led to the collapse and come up with a few ideas of what could be done to stop the same. sort of thing for happening in the future and hopefully along the way instill a little bit of confidence in the banking system going forward. So they lay blame on themselves, obviously, also on the bank, clearly. They say Fed's supervisors charge with overseeing it as well as the rollback of regulations previously. And I'm glad that they at least acknowledge that.

We'll be giving you the details on that too. So here's an excerpt from it from Michael Barr, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, who led this review of the reaction. saying SVB's failure demonstrates that there are weaknesses in regulation and supervision that must be addressed. So for instance, in terms of the supervision, did you know that they rated the bank's management as satisfactory from 2017 through 2021, despite having notably higher risk-taking behavior than other banks? Like that seems like an oversight. By the way, it's a very similar sort of lack of oversight in the lead up to the housing crash. Risk-taking behavior being rated as perfectly fine, which gives people a false level of confidence in the security

of that this bank as a place to deposit their money or invest in. And then you get the ripple effects once it finally falls. So clearly there weren't those lessons from the last failure. We'll see if perhaps they stick this time around. They say underpinning those failures as well are 2019 changes that loosened regulations and requirements for financial institutions similarly sized to Silicon Valley Bank, they said that the Fed plans to reevaluate those rule changes which applied to banks with 100 billion or more in assets. If you're not familiar with these, here's basically what they're talking about. Back in 2010, there was a law that was signed by President Obama of the Dodd-Frank bill, creating stricter regulations for banks

at least $50 billion in assets. Those banks were required to undergo an annual stress test, maintain certain levels of capital and liquidity to be able to absorb losses and quickly meet cash obligations, among other things. In 2018, they got rid of the $50 billion threshold and made the enhanced regulation standard only for banks with at least $250 billion in assets. SVB was below that. So it would have run afoul of the previous thresholds, but not of the new ones. And what do you know, it fell apart. And so all of this might seem really complicated, but basically there was risk-taking behavior that caused a massive collapse of financial institutions that then led to regulations to stop that from happening.

A few years went back, went by, and then they decided, you know, we could probably make a lot more money if we got rid of those, so they did, and then what do you know, the failures happened again. So all of this seems pretty easy to follow, at least to me a non-expert, but sorry with you, Oz, what do you think about this? To me, the San Francisco Fed, a lot of people don't know this, but they have an office that's headquartered in San Francisco. Therefore, Silicon Valley Bank is literally in their backyard. These folks have relationships with the people at that bank, and so heads should roll over there. This was a major screw up. It's not as if,

what they were doing was not in plain sight for everybody to see. Everybody understood that putting all their eggs in the securities basket was ridiculous. It's one of like pretty much every single person in America has heard the term diversify your portfolio. This is the exact opposite of that. Like everybody knows this is bad financial planning. Like everybody knows this. So the fact that the people at the San Francisco Fed let this happen, yeah, those jokers got

to be held to account. I'm sorry, this wasn't some like sophisticated mechanism by which they just pull the wool over people's eyes. Like this was just obviously bad financial behavior. Yeah, that's hilarious because it is like it's the the most obvious elementary advice. And they responded to the call to diversify their assets the way that Tucker Carlson might saying when has diversity ever been our strength? Anyway, David, what do you think?

What I find interesting is how media reports on these sorts of topics. So I read a few pieces on this and there is absolutely no connection to what people like Bernie Sanders at the time were saying in 2016 about, hey, if we weaken these regulations, this is going to happen. I think it's important for media to introduce these individuals that at the time were warning about this because the way they're treating this is, oh, no one could have seen this coming, but now we, there's this analysis. Oh, this is what happened. Oh, now we, now we learned our lesson. No, at the time, we knew there was a problem. People in prominent position said, hey,

this is going to happen and it happened. So it's important for media, I think, to, to include that part of the analysis in the equation, because then you can inform people, hey, this is not out of the blue. This was not completely unexpected. We knew this is going to to happen based on both the regulatory framework as well as what Muaz was was saying as well. So none of this is surprise. Yeah, you know, I'm glad that you pointed to that out because it's one of the weird things about politics, even the most consequential areas of politics that for the most part, being really, really, really wrong doesn't matter. Being like prophetically right, doesn't

matter. Like it doesn't matter whether you're in the media or you're one of the politicians that makes these sorts of changes. It almost never seems to have any effect. I guess it's all PR at the end of the day. Yeah, people did see it coming. Jim Kramer still has a TV show, man. He's still yelling at people about what stocks to buy after the financial crash. That joker still doles out freaking investment in vice. Like that's insane. Yeah. That's crazy. Look, at the very least, an apology, an acknowledgement, a continued commitment to having learned from the experience, and I know just being people like Jim Kramer, I'm obviously not going to get any financial advice from him or whatever, but politicians, like, so what they suggest

that they do, they have some ideas. So Barr says tougher rules related to capital liquidity requirements as well as the format of periodic stress tests. Oh, so going back to the way that it was before you rolled it back, okay, good, maybe that is enough to actually stop it. And, And maybe they'll actually do it because this is the sort of thing that threatens elite interest. So that's when you could potentially get some sort of change. But let's say they do. Let's say they actually follow these guidelines and they put them into effect.

Would you like to bet how many years into the future before they roll them back again? Because it's definitely going to happen. And why wouldn't it? They want to make more money and they can potentially make more money by taking risks. And even if they take the risks and it doesn't work out, they're often going to be saved by the government. All of the incentives are set up for them to do the wrong thing. Why would we expect that they would not do the wrong thing? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe we won't have to worry about it because maybe they won't even raise their requirements.

Maybe they've been watching what's happened in the wake of SVPs collapse and maybe the initial predictions that there would be these massive aftershocks. Maybe it hasn't been strong enough so maybe they think they can sustain this current level of risk. I don't know. David, But going forward, what do you expect to happen? I mean, there's going to be honestly nothing. There's this discussion now, but there's no, there's no urgency within, you know, Congress to do anything about this because these are individuals that are largely owned by Wall Street.

Why are they going to further regulate this industry when there's no desire for them to do so? So there's going to be discussions about it, hey, we should do this, we should do this, we should do this and you know, maybe something will will be, you know, put forward and it's not going to pass and then we'll all forget about this. And it's just, this is the same thing that happens every time. So until there's a real shift in terms of how politicians are put into office, I have a very hard time believing that this is not going to happen again. Was you disagree? I mean, there's nothing more to say. The proof is in the pudding.

Just look at the history. Dodd-Frank, which by the way, was a very like sort of milk toast regulation. Like it didn't go nearly as far as it needed to. And immediately, these jokers who tanked the global economy, like, do people understand? They tanked the global economy and went right back to work, right back to it, right back to the same risky behaviors that caused the economy to tank. And, you know, and a lot of it too that people need to understand is that Democrats, liberals specifically, they always believe that, well, if people were would just stop being greedy, the system could work. No, the system is greed. Once the system stays the way that it is, we are always going to perpetually have these crashes and these panics because it's built in. Like that's that's the system, right? And so there

isn't going to be any regulation that comes in that saves it. Because again, inevitably the money will make it so that it gets rolled back and every, because everybody's looking the other way at that point. We will end on that optimistic note. Thank you to both of you. Wazi Lombray, David Dole, everyone. Happy Friday y'all. Happy Friday, everyone. Definitely go check him out. YouTube websites, Blue Sky. If you have an invite, go check them out. Thank you guys. Appreciate you being on here. Thank you. There's still another hour and a half to go, everyone. So don't go anywhere. Francesca and a rowdy friends will be back after this. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.

Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.