The Young Turks - Going NuclearDNP

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

A Russian State TV host threatened nuclear war and asked, “Why do we need the world if Russia won’t be in it?” An embattled Ukraine moved to solidify its bond with the West on Monday by applying to join the European Union, while the first round of Ukraine-Russia talks aimed at ending the fighting concluded with no deal but an agreement to keep talking. The U.S. Treasury Department announced further sanctions against Russia’s central bank, which would immobilize any of its assets in the U.S. or held by Americans. The mass exodus of refugees from Ukraine to the eastern edge of the European Union showed no signs of stopping Monday, with the U.N. estimating that more than 500,000 people have already escaped Russia’s burgeoning war against Ukraine. The garrison of troops on Snake Island, once feared dead after defying commands coming from a Russian warship, are still alive, but captured, Ukraine’s navy said. Former Attorney General William Barr writes in a new book that former President Donald Trump has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” and that it is time for Republicans to focus on rising new leaders in the party. Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian 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. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too.

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Not a great place to be. And back here at home, we have our own share of lunatics, including Marjorie Taylor Green, attending a white supremacist event. They're pretending to not know that she attended, White supremacist defense. Because of course, right, of course. And she wasn't the only Republican congressman there. Okay, so all that to get to, take it away.

All right, Russian soldiers have breached or had breached Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv on Sunday. However, the Ukrainian military successfully repelled them. Now they're expecting a second attack which could be much more aggressive. However, today, the first round of potential peace talks took place between Ukraine and Russia in Belarus. Unfortunately, the first round of peace talks ended with no peace deal. However, there is some optimism that the talks will continue. Now, Russian and Ukrainian officials held their meeting on day five of the war under the

shadow of Putin's nuclear threats, and we'll give you more details about those threats in just a moment, and with Moscow's invasion of Ukraine running into unexpected. fierce resistance and Western sanctions beginning to wreak havoc on the economy at home. Atop Zelensky advisor said the talks held near the Ukraine, Belarus border, were focused on a possible ceasefire, and that a second round could take place in the near future. So that was the statement coming from the Ukrainian side. Russians had a similar message, although there is a caveat, a top Putin aid, for instance, and head of the Russian delegation said that the discussions lasted nearly five hours

and that the envoys found certain points on which common positions could be foreseen. He said they agreed to continue the talks in the coming days. But here's the big caveat that I was referring to. While Ukraine did in fact send its defense minister and top officials, the Russian delegation was led by Putin's advisor on culture, an unlikely envoy for ending the war and perhaps a sign of how seriously Moscow views the talks. But nonetheless, the small sliver of good news when it comes to this conflict is that they plan on continuing these talks.

And it's a little surprising, Jank, because initially the thought was that Russia, which of course has much more military capability than Ukraine, would come in, do this invasion and essentially get the job done immediately. But the resistance from the Ukrainian side has been so feared. Even considering how they're not as well resourced as the Russians are, that now all of a sudden you see them engaging in these peace talks, and that's good, that's what we want. We want a ceasefire. We want the peace talks to continue. Yes, so we're now in the middle of something very interesting. We're going to find out if in the modern world, a military physical conflict is more powerful or a financial conflict is more powerful, because basically the world has waged.

financial war on Russia and they're already economically devastated. So one of the barometers will be if Russia all of a sudden sending their culture and folklore minister or a dancing troop sends in a real delegation to these talks because that'll mean, uh-oh, this is not going as we had planned. And they could not have planned this because right now their economy is devastated, the Russian economy. And the Ukrainians have put up a tremendous fight, and every day there's more stories. Gold medalist boxer Alexander Usk today came out and said that he is also joining the fight

and he's getting weapons and joining the army, et cetera, and they're going to be in the streets. And so, and already Klitsko, of course, the current mayor of Kiev also heavyweight boxing champion and his brother also a heavyweight boxing champion. And you're hearing all these stories and the wonderful stories of the woman who had the sunflower seeds and said, gave it to a Russian soldier and said, please put it in your pocket. So the beautiful sunflower seeds will grow once you all die here. Okay, so I love those stories and you shouldn't, you shouldn't have any war at all, but I don't agree with the Trump people we're going to show you later in the show who say the Ukraine should surrender already. No, they're doing an amazing job and they might yet win this. Right, and just to buttress your point about the economic destruction of Russia, there really is this united front in implementing sanctions against Russia.

Switzerland, which is, of course, notoriously neutral on any type of world conflict, has decided to freeze the assets of Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin. This is something that's actually pretty unprecedented for Switzerland. Usually money gets stored over in Switzerland to prevent any type of sanctions from actually hurting those in positions of power or those who have quite a bit of money. In this case, we're talking about the oligarchs and Putin. So you have that situation. Turkey has also come in. They've condemned the invasion. However, they're kind of trying to straddle this situation because of their economic interests with Russia.

not implemented sanctions against Russia. However, they are restricting passage of Russian warships through their straits. So that's some bit of action, which is good news. We want the war to end, and we want peace talks to continue. And to be sure, you're seeing more and more belligerent behavior and rhetoric from Vladimir Putin. In fact, let's get to the details about his nuclear threats here. Putin declared on Sunday, for instance, that he was putting his nuclear their forces into special combat readiness, a heightened alert status reminiscent of some

of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. Now Biden was asked about this, what should be done, what is the US response? There are equally belligerent idiots on the US side who are calling for NATO to do military strikes against Russians in Ukraine. And I get the urge to want to do something like that, except that could spark a disastrous situation because we're talking about a nuclear power here. So I actually want to give Biden a lot of credit for having a measured response to this. He says that Americans should not be concerned about Putin launching some sort of nuclear attack. And the U.S. again, has responded in a measured

way. Let's go to Graphics 6 here. Biden chose to de-escalate, which is good. The American ambassador to the United Nations reminded the Security Council on Sunday afternoon that Russia was under no threat. for another escalatory and unnecessary step that threatens us all. The White House made it clear that America's own alert status had not changed. So there was no tit for tat here. The United States didn't respond to Putin's threats with its own nuclear threats, and that's good news. And by the way, Russian State TV is also putting out some pretty terrifying content.

Here's an example, this was treated by Max Seddon, who is a financial times reporter. Russian state TV says, our submarines alone can launch more than 500 nuclear warheads, which guarantees the destruction of the US and NATO for good measure. The principle is, why do we need the world if Russia won't be in it? Yeah, obviously that's very scary talk. And in Russia, the media is largely propaganda for Putin, the larger outlets. And so there's, by the way, the world's bravest journalists are in Russia as well. And those are the ones that get amazing information about the wrongdoings of Putin's government,

and honest reporting overall. So, but when a propaganda outlet for the Russian government tells you that the nukes are ready and why do we need the world, they're obviously trying to send a message. And so they were going to threaten the nukes at some point, presumably, and man, they got to it quick. So that's because the ruble's gone. It's down to a penny it's worth. And though all the markets are closed down in Russia, they'll be closed. down tomorrow. And by the way, it's not just Switzerland. Monaco also joined the sanctions.

And that is where a lot of the Russian oligarchs apparently stashed their money. So I don't know what Putin's plan was and what his endgame was. But again, I can't imagine that his plan was for the war to go like this. Because right now there's a run on the banks. There's the ATMs are out of money in Russia. And so there's, I mean, when we talk about devastation, It is coming to Russia financially. They're cut off from the rest of the world. And look, there's a silver lining here. If the financial sanctions work, it could be a deterrent to not just Russia,

but to all countries. You go to war or invade another sovereign country, and we will all do a financial blockade of you and you'll suffer the faith that Russia did. Well, that's a very heavy deterrence and probably why the Chinese are still on the fence. So, because if they wanna take Taiwan and they see how Russia is being devastated, that's gotta scare them a little bit. Now back to Turkey, they have limited Russian warships from going through the Bosphorus. Other Russian ships because of commerce closes that they have can still pass through.

So is that real? It's hard to tell without great reporting on the ground. But if it is real, well, that's got a huge upside and a huge downside. He definitely switched from calling the conflict to a war and that's what allowed them to block the Bosphorus for the warships. Well, that's a great news because Turkey was also wavering a little bit before hostilities began. They're no longer wavering. They're clearly coming out on the side against the Russians.

And so that's, that hurt if the Russians cannot get out of the Black Sea, that hurts them a lot. But the downside to that is Turkey's a NATO country, if the Russians say, No, you will remove your ships and we will pass through the Bosphorus and they fire on Turkish ships. That means they have fired on America. Turkey is the second largest military in NATO and that's what the whole point of the NATO alliance is. Well, then we're at a completely different level. So while things appear to be going very poorly for the Russians, remember if Putin wins, that's bad news for the whole world because then his aggressive military actions are rewarded. and he might do more and that destabilizes the whole world.

But if he loses or he's on the verge of losing, that's not great news either, because it puts a guy who is very aggressive in a corner and he might want to fight his way out of that corner. And as he escalates that fight, things can get awful. So we don't know which way he's gonna go yet. Right, exactly. I mean, it's really hard to predict with Putin, as you guys can probably notice from the coverage that we've done, on this war. But I want to go back to the impact of the sanctions for just one moment, because the pain

that's being felt by innocent Russian citizens should be, you know, we should definitely pay attention to that. Because the sanctions not only harm the oligarchs and Putin, which I have absolutely no problem with, when you have, you know, countries agreeing to ban Russia from Swift, which is the global financial system, that causes a lot of heartache, a lot of pain for ordinary Russian citizens. And we don't want that. In fact, I mean, the way that Putin and his government has responded to protesting Russians in the country has been pretty brutal. Literally thousands of Russians who have taken to the streets to protest Putin's actions have already been jailed,

as many as 6,000, according to recent reports. And I did want to also share this quick image of Putin meeting with officials to discuss the economic turmoil. Jank, you'll love this image. So there's Vladimir Putin meeting with officials in Russia to kind of figure out what to do about the economic turmoil as a result of these sanctions. Seems like a man of the people. Seems like someone who's really interested in feeling out how this is going. No, how does he not realize how absurd that is?

How does everyone in the room not realize how insane that looks? So, and it's so symbolic. So Putin's on one end and has all the other, has all the power, even within his own government, he has everyone on the other end of the room doesn't care, like symbolically doesn't care to hear from them, they're not relevant, they get together there for what, I don't know, right? I mean, if they want to pass a message to Putin, they're going to have to walk down the table to tell them. I mean, or otherwise they're shouting like, hey, hey, Blod, we think you should send them the, the knitting. A minister, okay? Like, I mean, this is, I mean, but that's the problem, guys. We can't project our rationality onto Putin. He doesn't think like us.

He's obviously over the top aggressive, thinks he has something to prove. That's a really dangerous man in a dangerous situation. And so if he, if he's out of options and the The oligarchs then turn on Putin and say, hey, what are you doing here? How are you gonna get us out of this? I don't know how that ends. No one in the world knows how that ends. I'm not sure Putin knows how it ends.

And remember, I'm gonna say a really weird analogy here. But I remember Mike Bloomberg going into the presidential debates in 2020 and getting humiliated. And everybody's like, wait, I don't get it. He's a multi-billionaire, one of the richest men in the world, was the mayor's the mayor's the mayor of New York, how could he have not been prepared for these debates? He's been thinking about running for president all this time. They had, I mean, he had so much time, he had all the money in the world, how could he not be prepared?

He got humiliated at the debates, he wasn't ready at all for any of the points, right? Because when you get that rich and powerful, you get surrounded by yes men. And they're all telling you how great you are, and you get incredibly arrogant, and you don't prepare. And so Putin might be in a situation where he didn't expect things to go wrong at all. And all of a sudden, he's like, whoa, what just happened? All of Russia's money now is worthless. Think about that guys. They cannot use the money outside.

And he's blocked people from taking their money and sending it abroad. But that also means they can't pay interest on the debt that they owe, not just the Russian government. The Russian citizens, the Russian oligarchs, and then they're all gonna be in default. I mean, this thing could go very quickly. Like right now, they're completely cut off from the world and their money's worthless. I don't know what they're gonna do. So I can't believe five days into this, we're talking about how Russia is more devastated than Ukraine.

By the way, by the way, and let me just be clear because I don't want anybody to misunderstand me. The lives lost in Ukraine are far worse, right? I'm just shocked at the instant economic devastation of Russia. Right, and I also want everyone to understand that this isn't the first country that the United States, for instance, has implemented crippling sanctions on. In this case, we're talking about war crimes, an invasion of a sovereign country, but when it comes to Iran, I mean, Iran was cut off from the global economy as a result of the United

States, and that was after our own government decided to pull out of the Iran. nuclear deal, a deal that was agreed upon not just between the United States and Iran, but between several different countries. And then we decided to implement these sanctions against Iran, even though they were following through with their side of the deal and were the ones who pulled out. So I give you that because it's important to understand context and balance, right? You know, obviously the way the United States has handled foreign policy in various different examples has not been great. But in the case of Russia invading a sovereign country like Ukraine, we should not be calling for NATO to do military strikes against Russia and Ukraine. That

military action could escalate the situation severely into something that could lead to a nuclear war. I think that economic sanctions make sense, but there is a price or a real cost to innocent human lives in Russia as well. So this is not an easy situation. And it's, it's It's important to not treat it as a black and white issue. All right, we do have to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit about a story that went viral in regard to this war. The garrison of troops on Snake Island and Ukraine, who were very defiant when they were confronted by Russian soldiers. We've got an update on what happened to them after they basically told these people to F off.

Come right back. All right, back on TYT, Chank and Anna with you guys, let's go forward. All right, well, we have an update on a story that TYT covered last week, so let's get to it. The garrison of troops on Snake Island who defied a Russian warship and told them to go F themselves are reported to still be alive. However, the reports indicate that they are now prisoners of war since they've been captured by the Russian troops. Now, before we give you the details on this story and the update, let me show you the video that we're referencing here. Let's watch.

No second. All right, so they remain defiant. And the thought was that these Ukrainian troops died. I mean, I think that's, we didn't know for sure, but that's what it was being reported as. But here's the update. Ukraine's Navy wrote on Facebook that the border guards on Snake Island, which is about 30 miles off the coast of Ukraine and a strategic post in the Black Sea may have been rescued as part

of a civilian humanitarian mission. The ship that rescued them, however, was illegally captured by the Russians, the Navy contents. Now, again, officials had assumed that the 13 soldiers had died after they had lost contact with the garrison, which was destroyed by the Russian military in an artillery attack. But this is somewhat of a positive update. It's good to know that they're still alive, but unfortunately they're prisoners or made prisoners by the Russian troops. Now, what's kind of amazing about this is stories get updated.

And as they get updated, you report the updates. You share them with your audience. That's what we're doing right now. But Russia apologists like Aaron Mate, Tim Poole, people like that, felt like this was a big gotcha for people who had reported on the original story. Not a gotcha if the story gets updated and then you do the update as we're doing right now. In fact, one of those people is Aaron Mate, I want to just share this quick exchange that he had with Jank. Jank writes, my new motto in life is Russian worship, go F yourself, making a reference to the original video that we talked about. And Mante says his favorite word, of course, which, you know, it's a little funny in this context.

McCarthyite dupe, go fact check yourself. That's hilarious. So a couple of things about that. Number one, he's asking me to fact check whether my new motto is Russian warship, go after yourself. I did fact check that. It turns out, it's still my new motto. So fact check completed. Award winning journalist, Jay. Okay, yes. Award winning journalist. What a weird thing to ask someone to fact check. I mean, you're not asking me to fact check whether they died or not, you're asking me to fact check. whether that's my motto. Why did you respond to that tweet?

Because he wants to get at me. And he's trying to find a tweet where he's like, okay, now I could pretend he got it wrong here. You're just a West, you're a Western chauvinist, jank. Of course. A Western show, a McCarthyite Western chauvinist. I mean, does anyone take this guy seriously? Well, not anymore.

How can you got, like, all you can do is laugh at this guy at this point. Yeah, although the people who did take him seriously should send an apologies. Yeah. But no, to us, to their, to their audience. No, but okay, fine, sure. To us, dearly Dana, but but to your audience, to your readers, to anyone who follows you on Twitter, you should send an apology saying, I'm so sorry I misled you by taking these guys seriously.

Now look back to the- Yeah, it's gonna get much worse. Hold on. But I want to finish the fact check, okay? Everyone thought they were dead, the Ukrainian government said they were dead. said they were dead, and by the way, the buildings were bombed. So I don't know how they got off the island, and by the way, I also don't necessarily believe the Ukrainian government's version of the story.

That a civilian ship pulled up, took him out off the island, and then that ship got captured. It's possible that the Russians landed, and then they surrender. We don't know, we don't know, okay? I'm not taking any government's word for it. But in the beginning, they say that, it appears, the government says they're all dead, And it appears that the island has been bombed. So okay, if you can't report that, you literally can't report anything in the middle of a war. No, but like what was the point of that really?

What was the point of that? Was the point to show, oh, look at how compassionate the Russian troops are. They didn't actually murder these people. Yeah, they only kidnapped. They only kidnapped. They're now only made prisoners of war. You know, it's not a big, Putin is such a great compassionate guy, right, Aaron Matte? I mean, he can't help himself.

That's the amazing thing. The dude who spends all day on Twitter searching phrases like, or words like Putin and Russia, so he can go after anyone who dare say anything that offends his daddy, his lovely little daddy who's so compassionate and so awesome. I love the fact that now they're twisting themselves into pretzels trying to figure out what their talking points are going to be when they've been shilling for Russia and Putin for literally years. What's your talking point now?

I can't wait for the headlines that are about to emerge from Gray Zone and all these other authoritarian apologists, right? Ukraine invaded itself. I mean, they'll say anything, they'll say anything. Right. So, but one more thing before we get to how much worse is going to get. Guys, my first reaction when I found out that they had not been killed was, oh, thank God, they're alive. Right.

Right? Because we thought they were all dead after such a, like, brave thing to say Russian wars. go after yourself and it looks like they got hit with a bomb and I remember thinking and saying and I said later in the show that day imagine if you're their dad of the guy who said it right or the son or we don't know we don't know their family situation but that's got to be heartbreaking so when I heard they were alive I was like yes that was my first reaction Aaron Monte's first reaction was yes now we will pretend that everything is a lie about Russia And that Russia's innocent, innocent of everything.

I can't wait to go tweeting against all the people who criticized my beloved daddy, my imperialist, warmonger daddy, Vladimir Putin. Hey, guys, everybody in Crayzone and Glenn Greenwald, who is humiliating himself now, and everyone else in that faction, can you just say something really simple like Putin obviously started the war? No matter what you think of NATO and what we should have done, et cetera. And we've criticized what we should have done in the lead up to what happened, right? Because we're honest, unlike you dirtbag propagandists, can you say, hey, that was a war of regression? Hey, no, no, Glenn will come back to. I'm not gonna say anything. You can't force

me to say anything, okay? So the only thing they ever say is how great Russia is and how terrible anyone who opposes Russia is. They're just the most embarrassing people on earth. Can you for a second celebrate that those guys are still alive? No, instead of rushing to Putin's defense, you're pathetic. No, here's more though. We said it was about to get worse, and it is. So it's one thing to use this updated story to put out pro-Putin propaganda and go after people who are reporting the story as accurately as they can. It's another thing to just completely lie about what Putin is doing when he's specifically targeting civilians.

So let's go to this tweet from Mote, Russia has not used anywhere near its full military power. It's avoided civilian areas and focused on NATO-tied military targets. Let's just pause right there. That's the relevant sentence there. I'm going to repeat it. This is from Aaron Mante. This is his tweet. It's a screenshot from his tweet.

He's going to try to weasel his way out of this. But here's what he wrote verbatim. Putin avoided civilian areas and focused on national. NATO tied military targets. Oh, that's fascinating because there's quite a bit of footage and quite a bit of evidence that that is not the case. He claims that CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they're struggling, man, they're struggling to find the actual footage.

Maybe you're struggling to process what you're viewing because there's quite a bit of evidence. We'll show you right now. Why don't we go to the next video? Now, Russia's claimed its attacks are aimed only at military targets, but you've seen the pictures and you see them in front of you now. Now, we've seen damage to neighborhoods, to schools. We've seen damage to neighborhoods, to schools. In the cell, we've got to stop us, we've been in the kukes,

it's, it's a problem in the park. Zal. With her, with the first, slowning, and the small, and, Mlarsher, we've got to, I will, and I'll just raise up. I'm going to. For those of you who aren't watching but listening to the audio version of the show,

the video included an apartment building, a residential apartment building that was attacked by Russians, and then you at the very end also see a hospital that was being attacked by Russians. But I mean, what could Aaron Monte do? Award winning journalist who suddenly can't do any research or find any evidence of civilians being targeted by Russian troops. Because you know, that's how award winning journalists conduct business. That's how they do their jobs. What a freaking clown.

So when we invaded Iraq, young Turks told you about all the things that the US government was doing wrong, the US military was doing wrong, and all the damage that was done to civilians in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. When Israel bombs places, we tell you it's bombed a school or a hospital, etc. And when Russia bombs schools, hospitals, and other places, we tell you about it. Isn't it weird that the guys who claim to be anti-imperialists say, okay, yeah, US did that, Israel did that, everybody else did something else. When it comes to Russia, they're like, no, they haven't bombed civilians, I don't know what you're talking about. Why would you rush out in the middle of a war,

where Russia's brought in 190,000 troops and there's a convoy of tanks rolling towards Kiev now. And you see these pictures and you go, no way, did he hit civilians? Did it up to beloved Russia? Beloved Putin didn't hit any civilians. Why humiliate yourself like that? Now they're total and utter joke. Yeah, social media video from Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, showed residential areas being shelled with apartment building shaken by repeated powerful blasts. Authorities in Kharkiv said at least seven people

had been killed and dozens injured. Did they bomb themselves, Aaron? Just like the civilians in Syria, you know, used chlorine gas against themselves, as you and your clowns over at the Kray zone love to allege. I mean, these people are disgusting. That's why I have the kind of reaction I do every time I hear that person's name, right? When I flip the bird and I show him my middle finger, it's because he deserves it and I'll never apologize for it because I come from people who had been massacred in a genocide and people like Aaron Matte helped build a narrative for genocide denialists. That's the kind of person Aaron Matte is. I don't have any love for him or Max Blumenthal, a guy who gallivants around town

pretending as if he's this amazing reporter whose anti-establishment when in his own father is a longtime Hillary Clinton confidant. Please don't try to feel me any of that garbage, I see right through it, and I'm hoping and praying that more and more people who have fallen for their nonsense coverage see exactly who they are today. Yeah, and guys, this isn't just about them. It's watch out for propaganda from all quarters, right? What real reporters, journalists do, and people in the press do is when they have facts, they report the facts that they believe they have.

And then, and they question the government, they question all governments, they don't pick can choose and say, no, no, one government's always innocent. And if they see that a fact gets updated, they just tell you about it. And they don't do propaganda. These guys, look, I'm going to show you the last headline here. Because if you weren't sure yet, I don't know what's wrong with you, but okay, fine. Can we put up the picture? Yeah, there it is. This is the headline on Grazo. Yeah, I went to their website thinking, who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. maybe there's some balanced coverage. This is a headline, to be fair, February 15th, but I haven't seen a single headline

on the Gray Zone website condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine. All you see is stuff like this, okay? Russia, UN ambassador on NATO Ukraine escalation, and then they go on to say that, you know, it's really the United States and NATO escalating the situation. No updates, no updates in regard to the Russian invasion of a sovereign country, nothing like that. They take the Russian ambassadors quote, and they print it as the headline. No, absolutely.

I mean, it's like literally what I yelled at the top of my lungs about during the Iraq war, when the American media would do it regarding the American government. Bush says America's safer because of Iraq war. I'm like, you can't put that in the headline, it's not true. That's this propaganda that you're repeating. Grayzone's like, oh, Russian propaganda, of course, terrible NATO. NATO, terrible Ukraine escalation, it is their fault, obviously. Did you correct it?

Did you now put up a headline about how it was Russian aggression? By the way, we on this program said we were concerned about needlessly antagonizing Russia by assisting that we put NATO and Ukraine. And that's a complicated question because Ukraine has their own opinion on it, et cetera, right? And then when Russia invaded, we came out and said, well, it looked like they, based on the evidence, that they were gonna invade no matter what, because you could see that they had already prepared it and that they went forward, not just into the breakaway republics, but into the all of Ukraine. So it became clear that, oh, no, Russia had planned this invasion and aggression from day one,

no matter what we did, including the things that we did wrong, right, as America and NATO. But that's because we care about facts, whereas propagandists, whether it's gray zone or anyone else, they don't. And you can, the way you can tell guys is if they only argue one side of an issue. And unfortunately, it just applies to so much of the media in America. America's always right. No, America's always wrong. No. How could that possibly be true, right? Whereas we try to do something that I thought when I said the Young Turks, I thought wasn't revolutionary at all. I thought it was just normal. I thought that's what everybody did. You know why? Because I partly bought into the mythology 20 years ago, right? I thought that's what everybody in news does. They just

report the facts. I came to realize no. No, unfortunately, giant chunks of the media only represent one side. Well, that ain't news. That's just propaganda for whichever side that you picked. And in the case of gray zone, the answer is overwhelming. And you could you could always get any of these guys by just asking them to state simple facts about the other side. Like when we asked Aaron Mata, you said that Bashar Assad, Bashar al-Assad won a Democratic election. He got 95% of the vote in the middle of a civil war. That's obviously absurd. Can you say that that's obviously not a legitimate election?

There is no legitimate election where anyone gets 95%. Landslides are like 58%, right? Let alone a dictator in the middle of a civil war. Right. No, no, I can't. Can't do it. I can't do it. Can't do it.

Why can't you admit simple facts? Yeah. That's because you're a propagandist and you're disgusting. So Russian propagandists, go F yourself. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we've got more news, including a recent poll indicating the majority of Americans think that Putin would not have attacked Ukraine if Trump were in charge. We've got that story and more when we come back. You make this show possible.

We love you. Let's do the show together. Anna, what's next? All right, let's get to our next story. The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he's smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. That was former president Donald Trump speaking at the annual CPAC conference. And, of course, doubling down to praise Vladimir Putin yet again following Putin's

invasion into Ukraine. Now, what's fascinating is Donald Trump has a long history of praising Vladimir Putin, but the majority of Americans, according to a new poll, believe that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were in charge. So let me give you the details of that poll, and then I'll explain exactly why that outcome is insane. So the poll by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies found that 62 percent, of those surveyed believe that Putin would not have sent troops into Ukraine with Trump in the White House. In partisan terms, the survey found that 85% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats held that view.

And while 38% of Democrats is not the majority of Democrats, it's still a pretty sizable portion of Democratic voters who feel this way. Now, 59% said that Putin only ordered the invasion because he saw weakness in Joe Biden. 41% said that the US president was not a factor in Putin's decision. Now, Trump, as we all know, well, at least I would hope we would all know, would absolutely take Putin's side. Why do I know that? Well, let me remind you of the long history that we can refer to where Donald Trump constantly took Putin's side over the American people. Let's watch.

Putin's a killer. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers while you think our country's so innocent. Just before Trump's inauguration, the president said he was open to lifting Russian sanctions. He goes a step further proposing a cyber unit with Russia, the country that had just attacked the US. And I quote, an impenetrable cyber security unit so that election hacking and many other negative things will be guarded. I was in Russia, I was in Moscow recently, and I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin, who could not have been nicer. After Putin kicked out U.S. diplomats to retaliate against sanctions, the president thanked him.

I want to thank him because we're trying to cut down on payroll. I'm very thankful that he let go of a large number of people. We'll save a lot of money. Putin of Russia, 100%. Joe has lost it. In his best day, he wasn't a smart man. Everybody knows that. Would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce

what happened in 2016, and would you warn him to never do it again? My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I mean, Putin told him, so he's just going to take what Putin says at face value. He doesn't know why Putin would want a medal in U.S. elections. By the way, let's go to Graphic 5 here because this is something that apparently many people have forgotten.

It was Donald Trump who withheld military aid to Ukraine. Trump's July 25th, 2019 call with Ukraine's president is at the center of the House impeachment investigation. This was the first reason he was impeached, which is looking into Trump's pressure on Ukraine to investigate his political rival, the former Vice President Joe Biden as he held back nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. Now, that wording is from a CNN article just as Donald Trump was facing these impeachment investigations. And so to think that Trump would somehow be the person, he would be the cop who stops it, stops an invasion of Ukraine, is laughable. Who are we joking here? Now, you might make the argument that Joe Biden is not a great president, you think he's weak,

whatever, that's one thing. But to say that Trump would somehow be a better leader on issues pertaining to international relations is laughable, especially when we're talking about Putin. He's, it got asked at CPAC, do you have a message for Vladimir Putin? That's when you at least pretend that you're upset about this invasion, and you say, look, know, if it was on my watch, it would never happen. And I'm telling Putin right now, if I get back in charge, there's going to be consequences, etc. He's like, no, not particularly. That's what it is.

Not, no, no message at all. Because he's afraid if he looks into the camera and says something to Putin, Putin might not buy any more apartments in Trump Tower. Remember the oligarchs, they're not Putin himself, although who knows where the money's coming from. But Russian oligarchs bought huge portions of Trump properties. Okay, especially when he was down and out and it helped him a lot. So he's still thinking about his own money. So one of our members wrote in like, wait, how if the Russian ruble is not worth anything anymore,

which currently that's the state of affairs. How's Trump gonna get paid on some of those properties? So Trump is probably worried about his own finances. You think that guy's strong? He's pathetically weak, and he's at his weakest when talking about Russia and Putin. That's where he betrays himself, and you know he's not an alpha. The minute he's scared, you know, whether it was the podium, when somebody, he thought somebody was going to rush the stage, and he's like that reaction, you know, and the eagle

in his office. Or protesters outside of the White House. Oh, and he goes and hides in a bunker. Right, bunker boy? And when it comes to Putin, he, oh, like this, right? No, but he's a strong man, everyone. Everyone knows this. Come on guys, I mean, but the thing is that this is where I get so frustrated at the

Democrats, because they don't fight back effectively. So a lot of Democrats and independents still think that Trump is strong. What have you done? You've had six years to prove, and you have all the evidence in the world that the man is a weakling, an insecure, thin skin weakling. And they're still talking about, oh, but he's a bad guy, but they already know he's a bad guy. That's what they like about him. You have to undercut his strength.

What is wrong with you guys? And now to the point, look, Biden, how about Biden? Is he weak or strong? Well, we've shown you a lot of different ways that he's been weak here in America. Okay, oh, the Republican says something, I surrender, right? And he loves surrendering to Republicans. That's his favorite political tactics throughout his entire career. But credit where credit is due.

On this, we were worried that he wasn't, initially the sanctions weren't tough enough. And then they acted. And the swift cut the Russians off from the rest of the world. That's a banking system, okay? And then they put sanctions on Putin, which Biden had not done in the beginning. And then he got, you know, worked with allies against Switzerland and Monaco where a lot of the Russian cash is hidden to also act. And so far in the first five days, it looks like all of a sudden, Biden's pretty strong.

I mean, what else would you want Biden to do? Yeah, exactly. I don't want him doing anything more than this, exactly right? We're dealing with a nuclear power, okay? Like we have, again, idiots in the United States who are calling for NATO to do some sort of military strike against Russia or Russian troops in Ukraine. That could spark a nuclear war. That is an incredibly belligerent and irresponsible thing to call for. So what do you want Biden to do?

You want Biden to carry out some sort of attack like that that really does put a lot more people at risk, right? It really would escalate the situation. No, but think about how Trump handled Kim Jong-un in the beginning before they fell in love and started sending love letters to each other, literally. They were going back and forth about whose nuclear button was bigger. That was irresponsible, belligerent, and dangerous behavior. And luckily, it didn't escalate to something more than, you know, what we ended up with. Whatever, like, it's laughable that Trump fell in love with Kim Jong-un and vice versa, but I'll

I'll take that over a new possible like, you know, escalation of war with North Korea. But remember, Trump is this kind of guy who just kind of like flies by the seat of his pants. Is that what they say? Yeah, that's unfortunate saying, but yes. Yeah. Okay, so guys, one more thing about Trump and Biden. So North Korea is a great example. So remember when Trump wants to sound tough, he can sound tough.

Before the love letters, he said, my nuclear button is larger than you. Is that mean? So why isn't he saying that to Putin? North Korea also has nukes, also very, very dangerous. And he didn't mind threatening nuclear war with them at all, because he had no interest in North Korea. He has personal interest in Russia. So when it comes to Russia, he's like, oh, well, I mean, Putin is a very lovely guy.

I mean, if he says something, I instantly believe it. That's a weird starting point, especially for a guy as normally belligerent as Trump. So how did North Korea get him to fall in love? It's very easy, there's only two things that Trump cares about, his money and his ego. So once Kim Jong-un said, oh, you are a great leader. Trump was like, oh, am I? And he, that's why we're calling him a love letter because that's what Trump called him. And he said that they fell in love.

All you have to do is just, and so to be fair to Trump in a hilarious way, maybe Putin didn't even pay him, maybe he just told him, hey, your hair looks nice today. And Trump's like, oh my God, I'm in love, I will say nothing but nice things about you. Look at how pathetically weak that guy is. That's how insecure he is. So you know there's no question that Trump is holding back from Russia because when he doesn't hold back against political opponents, it is exceedingly obvious. And finally on Biden, this is the right balance. We got no love for the guy.

We've criticized them probably more than any other show, certainly any show on the left by an order of magnitude. Right, if he was, when he, we thought he was doing it wrong, we criticize them on this issue. But right now, they're devastating him with financial sanctions, and they are not going towards military action, which is super dangerous. And also remember Biden pulled out of Afghanistan. So so far on domestic policy, I'm deeply disgruntled with how he has handled things, to say the least. But on foreign policy, he's been pretty damn strong. So Democrats, you might want to tell people a reality so that even 38% of your own voters don't think that Trump, the weakling, would have handled Putin any stronger.

One final bit of evidence indicating how Trump would have responded to Putin. I give you the advisor to Trump's acting secretary of defense. He went on Fox News and get a load of what he thinks Ukraine should do. I think we need to stay out of it. The American people think we should stay out of it. The Europeans think we should stay out of it. And we should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor. So when you say say out of it, you mean no sanctions, no military aid, just let Russia take the portion of Ukraine they want to take.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. That was a top aide that Trump himself picked. Yep. And he wants to surrender to the Russians. So, oh, what would Trump have done? Well, that's one of his top advisors. Apparently, he would have advised him to surrender. Trump has never been anything but ingratiating to Vladimir Putin. So very likely, he would have done way less than Biden. Or by the way, in a worst case scenario, since he's an idiot, maybe Putin would have insulted him and he would have been like, oh, that's it.

Let's go to war. No, Schmuck, no. You have to use your judgment and not be such a moron. So one of the first thing I thought when Russia actually crossed the border was, oh, thank God Trump's not president. Because in either direction, it's a nightmare. It's a tough balance to get right. And Biden's gotten it right so far.

He deserves a lot of credit if he keeps going in this direction. So please be honest. All right, one final story before we wrap up our first hour and definitely stay tuned for the second hour. We've got a lot of great stories to get to. Now, tell evangelist Pat Robertson had retired in October of 2021, but he came out of retirement to give his hot take on what is transpiring with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Hang on tight because this is one of the craziest hot takes I've heard in a long time. Let's watch. I think he can say, well, Putin's out of his mind.

Yes, maybe so. But at the same time, he's being compelled by God. He went into the Ukraine, but that wasn't his goal. His goal was to move against Israel ultimately. What Putin is doing, by moving as he is, to set up Ukraine as a staging ground for one of the armies. And then across is Erdogan, a Turkey, and you've got between them, that little Dardanelles area, and it's going to happen. So I just say, that is what's coming up. Is Putin crazy?

Is he mad? Well, perhaps. But God says, I'm going to put hooks in your jaws, and I'm going to draw you into this battle, whether you like it or not. And he's being compelled after the move into the Ukraine, he's being compelled to move again to get a land bridge and then across the Dardanelles with Turkey and watch what's going to happen next. You read your Bible because it's coming to pass. So, Jank, according to Pat Robertson, this all makes sense because Putin, he's not really insane, okay? He's being compelled by God because this is what's going to spark the end times, which Christian fundamentalists apparently salivate over the idea. And you know more about the like the end times narrative with the extreme, you know, fundamentalist Christians.

And go ahead and share those details right now. Okay, so there's two huge parts of this. Number one, we told you about what end times is you can, anybody can Google it. You can search it, you could read the books. It's super easy. And I need everybody to understand, this is not all Christians by a landslide. It's Christian fundamentalists. So right-wing evangelicals in this country.

And not even all of them. But unfortunately, a huge percentage of them and certainly they're leaders. And they basically wanted Israel to occupy the territories that they think the Bible says that Israel should have. They wanted to take down Alaksa mosque, which is part of their prophecies. So that's a large Muslim mosque in that area, and that what they thought could trigger a larger war. And now what they never tell you about is the second step. The second step is then Israel gets invaded and obliterated. And almost all the Jews die.

In fact, almost everyone on the planet dies, except you're going to be shocked to find out the right-wing evangelicals in America, the Christian fundamentalists. They get hoovered up into the sky by Jesus. Okay? And by the way, is this in the Bible? No, it's not in the Bible at all. Some nut job in America wrote a book about end times in the 1970s and instantly everybody believed it as if it was in the Bible, okay? And so Christian fundamentalists like that are more dangerous than fundamentalists in other religions. Now why? Are Muslim fundamentalists not dangerous? No, they're very dangerous. And you've seen the suicide bombings, you've seen all of things that Muslim fundamentalists have done wrong. In fact, 9-11. I mean, it was horrific,

right? So how in the world could Christian fundamentalists be more dangerous? They are literally rooting for the end of the world, for almost everyone, 7 billion people to die. That's their end times. So we told you that and people say, oh, come on, but they don't really believe that. No, guys, that's the thing you misunderstand about fundamentalists. They do really believe that. So, I mean, the Q&N conspiracies, people are like, no, they don't really believe that there's a ring of child molesters who are drinking the blood of children because Satan commanded them. No, they do believe it. That's the amazing part.

So, but now, if they've just in a nut house and they believe that on, you know, in their own basement, who, okay, they're nuts. what am I going to do, right? But these guys have tremendous political power in America. And they are constantly pushing towards war. So that makes them a danger to the entire planet. So Pat Robertson sees this disastrous war in Ukraine. He comes out of retirement to celebrate it. Because he's thinking, yes, the world might end and all of you might die. I would be so happy if that happened. He's excited. He's saying, remember he's saying, he doesn't even know if Putin's doing it. God might be doing it. He's not upset about what God is doing. He's excited about what God is doing. Now the second part is also important. They pretended to be friends of Israel all along. Right.

We told you for years here. In fact, for decades on the young Turks, they're not friends of Israel. Just read any of their end times theology. The second step is where everyone in Israel gets killed, and they love it. Their friendship of Israel and Jewish-American Jews across the world was always fake. It was an ambush so that in their crazy minds, oh, good, Israel, collect more power so the world, other forces in the world can attack you and murder you all. That's what they think of Israel. They're disgusting. They're barbaric and no political person should ever do anything that these Christian fundamentalists ask of them. So if you're out there and you're one, you're somebody in this camp and you're rooting for all of the rest of us to die, you're a sick person.

You should get therapy and counseling. It's probably too late for Pat Robertson. But the rest of you, go look into counseling and stop rooting for the deaths of all the Jews and all the rest of us. All right, that does it for our first hour. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including innocent Russians being attacked in the United States, which is, of course, something we're 100% against, and some vodka boycotts that might not be going as planned. We've got that story and more when we come back. 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 Podcast. at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon. Hey, can you hear me that 11-16th? Here you go. Thanks. So, you're still loving your new garage? Yep.

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