The Young Turks - Habeas Corpus, Who? - May 8, 2025

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month Shopify trial and start selling today at ⁠shopify.com/tyt Trump, in a major concession, says the tariff on China should be 80%. Trump tells Congress to raise taxes on the rich in budget bill, and then backtracks. Judge orders the release of Turkish graduate student detained by ICE. U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Musk’s Starlink. Hosts: John Iadarola & Mark Thompson SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Drop that. Welcome one and all to, not technically a pal. panel, I'm gonna keep it real, but powerful in its own right, because it's just us too. Me, Johnny Rolla, Mark Thompson, legendary friend of the show, host as well, which we'll talk about. We're here, we're at the table together. Yeah, which is really cool. Normally it's kind

of a virtual interaction. Yeah, is that more powerful than three people remotely talk. I think so. I think that you're right to point it out, Johnny. I think the table duo is is very, very powerful indeed. It's just strange to be able to look and see you, but But you're joining us here today. We did want to talk about your show. Yeah, you don't have to talk about it, but it's good that you mention it because when you're in this world of the YouTube podcast universe, you're always challenged and trying to get the word out.

So I appreciate, we've got a lot of the TYT family that does come over to my show. My show is called the Mark Thompson show. It makes sense. We didn't spend a long time on the title, I'll give you that. We came from radio and that's what the show was called on radio. And then when the radio station up in the Bay Area went away, we just brought the show to YouTube, but we just kept the same name. So a lot of our same radio listeners are there.

A lot of YouTube folks who come to TYT are with us. And I'd love for you to join us. We're a live show, 2 to 4 in the East, 11 to 1 in the West every day. And we do a lot of what TYT does with, you know, analysis. And I think it's a, you know, as you seek independent media for analysis and different takes and some clarity on issues, I'd love for you to check it out. So it's called the Mark Thompson Show. Please subscribe, check it out, and support.

Awesome. Awesome, available on YouTube, and well, we're gonna, if you're not familiar with Mark, which would be weird, you should be, he's been joining us for a while, we're gonna give you a little taste of his commentary as we address a lot of important and pressing topics across the economy and foreign policy, your rights, which I've always felt like it's hard as an American to memorize all my rights because there used to be a lot of them, but it's getting more achievable recently as they're stripped away, so that's a good thing. We've got immigration and a whole lot more.

So buckle up, get ready for it. We're gonna jump at our first topic starting with this. There are 18 very important trading relationships. We are currently negotiating with 17 of those trading partners. China, we have not engaged in negotiations with as of yet. So that is Scott Besant detailing that there are negotiations ongoing with some of American his main trading partners, but not one of them, the most important one, that being China. And obviously there, he's uncomfortable revealing that, partly because I've literally

never seen him feel, look comfortable. Like not once ever has he looked like he's comfortable in his own skin. But in particular, when he's revealing that, no, Donald Trump's been lying, we're not actually actively negotiating with China, they haven't bowed down to the massive terrorists that we've put on them, that might not be received well by Donald Trump, and so maybe he's uncomfortable about that too. But now we have a development, okay? Maybe there's movement towards not a normalization of relationships, but at least like going in that direction. Trump posted this on true social, 80% tariff on China seems right up to Scott B. In other words, not my problem.

What am I? The president or something? It's up to him. So if it works, fine, I'll take credit. If it doesn't, it's on him. If our economy or consumers suffer terrible financial damage, hey, it's always been Scotty B, this entire time. And so, look, maybe Scott Bassett will be able to work something out. He's going to be meeting with an economic representative of China in Geneva sometime this weekend. And so that means that maybe talks will begin. But Besant is also kind of, I think, trying to moderate people's expectations going into it. He said, My sense is that this will be about de-escalation, not about the big trade deal, but we've got to de-escalate before we move forward.

You know, 145% tariffs, 125% is the equivalent of an embargo. We don't want to decouple, what we want is fair trade. And I just, because he seems a bit confused about how we got here, I want to remind him, Trump is the one that put those tariffs in, and trying to match them, true, which we said they would, you guys said, don't worry, we're gonna hurt them so bad that they'll back off, clearly than not doing that. There is some indication that China is worried about the economic damage that would be done if this trade war continues for a long time. And they should be, trade wars are damaging in that way. But it's clear that Americans are also worried. He's been

slipping in the polls when it comes to the economy. And so I think maybe this signifies that Trump realizes that this has gotten out of hand. He's not in control of it. And so maybe they will dial back these tariffs a little bit because they're pretty bad. Oh yeah. This reminds me of the meeting that he had with Zelensky when he was criticizing Zelensky about the power of his hand. You're overplaying your hand. Trump overplayed a hand that didn't need to be played at all when it came to tariffs. So you're exactly right, John, when you suggest clearly there's a thawing here, a realization on Trump's part, oh my God, these guys aren't coming to the table. And he was representing that China was calling the entire time that there are sort of these backroom negotiations

or backline negotiations when they weren't going on. I mean, the Chinese culturally don't respond to this kind of smack-talking in-your-face, ridiculous terror imposition. So now you're seeing the U.S. in the form of Bessent beginning to back it down and try to get them to the table, and maybe they'll make some kind of moderate deal in Geneva. The problem is you have to make a big deal, I mean, from 146 to where, to get us into any kind of reasonable trading situation. I know you're going to touch on the percentages because they're shocking.

I mean, it really is an embargo right now. And you'll have to get to a much, much, much lower number for this even to be playable. Yeah. Yeah. And while Trump in that first true social post that we showed you is like, hey, maybe it is reasonable, but again, it's not really me. 80% is, that's still insane. That's utterly, like imagine whatever, whatever you bought recently from China,

which is probably most of the things you've bought, 80% over and above what you would have paid three months ago, purely because Donald Trump doesn't understand no tariffs work, that sucks. And also, it's effectively the same as 145. Like at a certain point, this is nonsense. It doesn't mean anything, it's too much. It's simply too much you wouldn't buy those products anymore. But also, more importantly, you wouldn't even necessarily have the opportunity to buy the products because they're not going to be available. Companies, stores are not going to be stocking these things, whether they're 80% or 145%.

There is, let's see, well, on both sides of that, we'll get to where we need to get that number down for at least companies start to stock them. But even if tariffs went to zero percent this weekend, according to CNN, the U.S. would still likely face in the short term, both price hikes and shortages, because for some time, ships have not been coming into port, they haven't been delivering these products. I think Caitlin Collins talked to one of the port managers and said they didn't have a single ship and you don't fix that overnight. That's just not how it works. It feels like we're in the depths of the pandemic again. But even so, let's say we get to the 80%. So they say even

if tariffs fall to 80%, it's not clear that that would actually convince U.S. businesses to import Chinese goods. Economists have said 50% is the make or break threshold for the return of somewhat normal businesses between the two countries. That means that we would actually have access to the products. But I want to remind everyone, they'd still cost 50% more than they should otherwise. And all of this again is still just due to Donald Trump. He decided to put us in this mess. He doesn't want to take responsibility for it. Of course he's not. He's ever taken any responsibility for anything in his life. But people don't like it. That's why his poll numbers have been dropping. I actually saw that he's now underwater in both Florida

and Texas, which is not great. He should still be in the honeymoon period as a Republican president. And those two red bastions don't like him. And in terms of the tariffs in particular, new polling shows that while Trump has been successful in the short term in stopping companies from listing the added costs due to the tariffs, a lot of people do want to see that stuff. Something like 61% of all Americans want businesses to label the tariff fees. 80% of Democrats, 61% of independents, even 42% of Republicans want that information. Yeah, and that these are strong-armed tactics on their part of the administration to sweat Amazon and other providers to the point that they don't want to post what the tariffs

are actually costing. And if you're a small business, to John's point, I mean, the reason that there are barren shelves is because you can't order these items from China and pay these huge tariffs. It's the, you know, it's the businesses that are paying the tariffs initially, and then they have the option of passing that onto the consumer. But they can't even, as you've described John, with 146 or 80 percent, pay these excruciating tariff rates. So a lot of businesses may even fold in the face of all of this.

Yeah, and there's word that Chinese businesses are word. about that in the short term before they can pivot away from the U.S. market to other markets that they could suffer some damage. That's one of the calculations I think that Trump is making is that maybe their economy will be destroyed before ours will, but there is no guarantee of that. And also, someday, if he decides to just snap his fingers and tariffs go back down to 30% or 10% to 0% or whatever, maybe he feels like he's gotten some sort of win. He'll post on true social about it. But our businesses that have closed down, they don't just get to reopen and thanks to that. People have lost their jobs. They don't necessarily get those jobs back,

certainly not in the short term. And so he's playing games, but I feel like we, including many of his voters, are the pieces in that game. Yeah, and just to your point, and the snap of the fingers is actually a really good way to describe it, because these are impulsive decisions that he's making on when to raise the tariff, when to lower the tariff. And then to your other point about his notion that somehow you're going to outpace the Chinese economy because you have the greatest leverage, already the Chinese economy is beginning to build relationships around the United States so that they no longer have to count on the United States. Obviously, we're their biggest customer, but they can begin to develop other parts of the

world. And they will, their economy is far more durable in many ways than it is ours. Yeah, and if they form those new partnerships, then maybe he snaps his fingers and maybe our economy doesn't recover. Sure. Because they don't necessarily need us. They don't focus on us anymore. So again, he is, he's making a lot of risky bets. This is the, this guy inherited the best economy in the developed world, and that he could just tank it in the first 100 days. It's extraordinary. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Tariffs are a touchy subject for Donald Trump. He could see the poll numbers, he can see the stock market, it's not going well, and MSNBC did a little segment where they criticized the chaos over these tariffs, and he was not at all happy about it. We'll give you his response, but first here's what MSNBC said. With Donald Trump, I still believe it's all showbiz, it's all symbolism, it's all getting to where he wants to get. I just don't think the details right now matter, especially if you look back six months from

Now, this is the start of a symbolic process. 145%, as we've discussed, is prohibitive. By the way, 80% is prohibitive ultimately. So all they're trying to do is create a thaw, if you will, in what these negotiations even look like. There may be a soft landing here with tariffs. And I suspect because the alternative is so politically bad and economically bad, I suspect we will end up there.

Joe, I mostly agree with you. Donald Trump is backed into a corner. His grand plans of tariffs, tariffs, tariffs aren't working. Unless he turns this around three weeks from now, you walk into a store and we're going to have a COVID-like supply chain crisis. So that was a little panel that they put together and they talked about their predictions of how this would go. And I don't think anything they said there sounded all that wild. I mean, a lot of people are very concerned about barren shelves and that sort of thing. But Donald Trump was obviously watching because he posted on true social bleeding this. MSNBC, the worst there is on television misrepresentation is so far knowingly off in their

statements about me and capital T tariffs that it should be considered a major campaign violation. Which campaign? I don't know, he's not running for anything, but everything is a campaign to him. They are nothing less than an arm of the Democrat National Committee and their untruths are incredible. losers. Their ratings are down the tubes, but that pressure on them doesn't give them the right to lie and cheat. What are they cheating at? They're just talking. They're just, that's what a talk show is. I know that you watch them. That's where you got your cabinet from. But he goes on to say, I just watched an exhausted, highly neurotic Stephanie Rule, spew lies about tariffs. She's exhausted and highly neurotic because she's a woman criticizing

him. Let's just be very clear about that. And as do many others, in order not to give me the victory they all see coming. Few people, few people know Stephanie rule, but I do, and she doesn't have what it takes. No one, like these, these commentators, managers and agents are not as invested in their careers and what might come in the future than Donald Trump is of every single one of them simultaneously. Anyway, blah, blah, blah, our deal with the U.S. was amazing for both countries. We literally don't even know what the deal is going to be. So maybe it was, maybe not. We're going to make a fortune with tariffs. Only smart people understand that. But no, I mean, like he won't admit who pays the tariffs. So no, I don't think that he's tapped

into some sort of like genius exclusive band of data about tariffs. Blah, blah, blah, Stephanie was never known as a high IQ person. I know, I know women and people of color never can be. MSDNC has become the voice of the Democratic Party. They should be treated as a political advocate, which he capitalized. I don't know if that's a specific thing. With all of the taxes and penalties therefrom, did Chad GPT give you that or was it Grock? I don't know. He's a very weird little man. Here's a thing. It's not like they gave people specific advice on investments or something that he could be mad about. It's not like they lied about the details of a deal. They just said it doesn't seem like this is going well for him. And he is as always implying that

the network should be shut down or find out of existence. Like that is his go-to now. When anyone criticizes him, the U.S. government should crush you under its thumb. Well, he has sadly the right constellation of people around him, Pam Bondi and Patel and others, to fire up any kind of investigation that he wants. So even, you know, this would sort of be an empty kind of threat under any other presidency. But this time, I kind of think to myself, well, he'll leverage the government and approvals of various things that these broadcast empires of Comcast and Paramount et cetera want and Disney. And he can have a chilling effect on what they can say and what they will say. So, I mean, it seems like it's just the mad king in the middle of the night flexing.

But the reality is he does, you know, when he posts this stuff, he does have a sort of scary aspect to those things that he's demanding. So we look at it and go, what do you mean? a campaign violation. It's absurd. The whole thing's just utterly absurd, but he's pursued these absurdities before in ways that have, you know, cost people jobs and have actually forced the settlement, for example, of the CBS case initially, or the ABC case is an even better example because they tapped out so quickly on that Stepanopoulos interview. So sometimes these absurdities come home to roost. It's scary. Yeah, I mean, we're going to talk later about the calls for habeas corpus to be taken away.

like they are taking drastic steps in a fascistic direction, I would be worried at least a little bit if I was MSNBC. And just to any like MAGA people who might be watching this, like we showed you the clip. They're criticizing him, okay? And I know you don't like that, no more than Donald Trump does like that. But like, you know that that's what the media does sometimes. Maybe you like Fox or maybe not Fox, maybe you like Newsmax or OAN or whatever. Like when Biden was president, did they ever tiptoe around criticizing him?

And if they did, was that a major campaign violation? Should Biden have sued them out of existence? Or maybe we're just in wild new times and we're setting new precedents. In which case, if President AOC at some point were to do something and Fox were to criticize her, should Attorney General Jasmine Crockett sue them out of existence? Like I want to know, this is not not rhetorical question, I don't ask those anymore. I really want to understand going forward if you are in power, does the media not get to criticize? you anymore? Or if they do, do you snatch their broadcast license? Do you imprison their

anchors? This is a serious question, because I know that you're cheering Trump doing that when MSNBC is the target. I just want to know how much I can advocate for when AOC finally takes office. Every president has hated the press. Every president hates this adversarial relationship that they have with the press. Look at Obama. Obama wildly popular and still, the lib press went after him, you know, on drone strikes, on any number of issues that affected of the Obama administration, but you can go administration to administration. Biden was rotissaried by the press, not just the right-wing media, but also the left-wing media.

And so I think this understanding that most presidents have that they're going to be taking on the press, in Trump's case, leads to a more dangerous kind of pushback because it does involve, you know, again, the call for investigations and for the legal system, which he has control of, to take hold. Yeah, you're totally right. It's their job to critique and to criticize. What is different now is that we've never had a president whine about it more and be more willing to shred the Constitution to shut down the free speech that bothers him so much, that triggers him so much. And he does it knowing that even though he's basically bawling his heart out on social media, his fans who profess to think of him as some sort of alpha silverback gorilla, they don't see it as the whiny baby boy spectacle that it is.

They think it is tough to complain that Stephanie Ruhl was so mean to me. She said I was backed into a corner. She should be locked up for that, maybe El Salvador. Every true man can see that as blithering, whining, crying, nonsense. But for some reason, Maga isn't capable of it. In any event, we should probably take her first break. There's a lot more to get to, so stick around. Welcome back everyone.

He's Mark Thompson. I'm John Adrola and I refuse to be nice. So with that said, let's move back into the news starting with this. The latest news, yes, is that Trump's ramping up pressure on Congress, he had a call with Speaker Mike Johnson asking him to raise taxes on the highest earners in that upcoming tax package. We have the details of the White House proposal. They're asking for a 39.6% tax rate on individuals making $2.5 million or more. Of course, current rate 37%.

The proposal from the White House would also include a carve-out for small business owners who count the income from their business on their personal taxes. So that right there is the sort of news that's going around that I have to imagine Donald Trump of the Republican Party paid for this idea based on basically nothing. but hearsay that, oh my God, Donald Trump is going to raise taxes on the wealthy. Maybe he is a populist. Maybe he is a man of the people. And I am, if you couldn't tell, he's being sarcastic there, I am begging the media. Do not just run with this story when it runs directly counter to everything about Donald Trump and indeed the Republican Party that we've

ever known for literally decades, the idea that they're going to do this. Or at least, if you're going to talk about it, talk about how utterly. weak sauce it is. First of all, they're not going to do this. But even if they did, it's a couple percentage points more for people who make more than $2.5 million. So the literal richest people in the country will pay this much more, except they're not going to. It's not going to happen. They're not actually going to do it. They're just doing this to get a good news cycle. And if I were them, I would want a good news cycle as I prepare to hand $4.5 trillion to the wealthiest people that have ever lived, that ever walked the face of the earth. But no, all it takes is,

let's see, according to reports, Trump met with Mike Johnson, and he instructed congressional Republicans to raise taxes on the wealthiest earners as part of his big, beautiful bill. Oh, well, I mean, if there's reports, then maybe he'll really do it. Maybe we should go easy on him. Bear in mind, they're working right now to extend his massive tax cuts, not only for wealthy individuals, but for corporations. The drastic slashing of taxes on those with the most that we've been suffering under in terms of our government's ability to fund itself for literally years at this point. And if you take a look at this, let's put up our next graphic.

The effect of what Trump has done to taxes, the effect on the national debt, a thing that Republicans occasionally claim to care about, generally when Democrats are in charge. Right now, we are looking at something like five to 12 trillion dollars added to the national debt so that Trump can pay off those who bought him in the last election. That is the story on taxes, okay? Now I know there's people who are reporting on his supposedly wanting to raise taxes on the wealthy, and they have much bigger studios than us, they have much bigger staffs than us, they probably wore nicer suits than us.

But this is the story that he is taking your money, he's taking that money, trillions of it, And he's handing it to millionaires and billionaires. He is lying to, he is conning you, as he always does with this fig leaf of populism, that even if it were going to go into effect would be a drop in the bucket of the money that he has showered the wealthy with. But you're not gonna get that drop. And it bothers me so much that responsible journalists like we saw in that video are pretending that this is something real.

I mean, it is clickbait, it is a big headline, but it is straight up propaganda. It's exactly what John is saying. It is just to get the populist notion back out there because the Bernie AOC tour, the clear way in which there is favoritism toward the wealthy, the oligarchy message is getting out there and now there might be economic hardship associated with the tariffs. I mean, it's easy to lose the plot that he wants his crowd to remember, and that is that he's a populist president working for them. And so he gets this propaganda out there, and as John says, and to be fair, it's clickbait.

It's a big headline that he would be sweating Mike Johnson and leaning on him to try to get a tax increase on the wealthiest individuals. Wow, that's good copy. It's also total BS. So again, this is all just a piece of propaganda. And sadly, they do it so well. I mean, Trump is a great propagandist. What he's running into now is the headwinds of reality that are getting in the way of that

propaganda. But this is nothing more than that. Yeah, no, the whole thing is ridiculous. And it's about to get even more insulting. But that's it, I can sometimes be a little bit too hard on the media. So you can report on him wanting to raise taxes if you occasionally like sarcastically wink while doing it or if you like polish an imaginary test tube or something while you're describing his plan to raise taxes on the wealth.

You could do that, okay, but don't do it with a straight face. That's insulting to your audience. But anyway, Donald Trump has made it even harder for people to buy that this is a thing he's actually going to do because he decided to post this untrue social, okay, because he knows, They're not gonna do the tax, okay? But why are they not gonna do the tax? It's not that he doesn't actually want the wealthy to be taxed, even this marginal increase.

It's actually us. We're the reason, Mark, and you possibly watching this. He said this, the problem with even a tiny tax increase for the rich, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the radical left Democrat lunatics would go around screaming, read my lips, the fabled capital, you quote by George Bush, the elder, that is said to have cost in the election. No, Ross Perot cost in the election. In any event, Republicans should probably not do it. But I'm

okay if they do. Okay, so first of all, he's telling the Republicans to not do it. But when they don't, it's us because we'll attack him, which, yes, I will, but the idea that of all of the things at any given day that I could criticize Trump for, I would criticize him for a marginal increase to the top tax bracket? Has he watched the show? I don't know if he has. I know Marjorie Green has. Marjorie, you know the answer to that question. That's not the reason, okay? It's not us. It's the donors, damn it. I thought that he was going to say because the Democrats and the Libs would take credit for it,

that for having pressured me into it. And that's the reason I don't want to do it. It was interesting. He took the right turn there about the election and no new taxes, promise, etc. This all, the key that you take from that is that was the out loud wink about raising taxes at all, right? He was basically saying, hey guys, I was, you know, that was just a piece of, you know, of copy. Don't worry about it. Yeah, that's what I took from that. But the rest of it is just Trumpian absurdity. Yeah, 100%. Especially when he has been talking against it, both in true social posts like that, but also in video as well. Take a look. I think it would be very disruptive because a lot of the millionaires would leave the country.

You know, the old days they left states, they go from one state to the other. Now with transportation so quick and so easy, they leave countries, you'll lose a lot of money if you do that. That would, and other countries that have done it have lost a lot of people. They lose their wealthy people, that would be bad because the wealthy people paid the tax, okay? He's saying don't do a millionaire tax because they're such, they're so focused on their money with no connection or attachment to America, that's how he's pitching them, that if you raise their taxes even a bit, they will flee the country. That's what he said.

And the media is like, I think he might do it. I think he, I think, you know, forget all that stuff you've ever known about him for the last 150 years he's been alive. No, now, at this late date, he wants to raise tax on the wealthy. God damn, the media is so irresponsible about stuff like this. Yeah, you cannot take this seriously. No, you can't. And again, it's 2.5%. It's 2.5%. And also, if you're making 2.5 million, or it's like 2.6% of it. If you're making $2.5 million a year, income tax is not the way to hit

your actual wealth. You're not paying that tax rate on your investments. Like rich people are not taking it all in paychecks. That's how they get it anyway. So again, even if they did this tax, it is utterly dishonest to its core and it's not actually going to happen. Yeah, that's, by the way, that's really key what John just said, the corporate tax and income tax, these are important distinctions because income tax really not paid at all by the Uber wealthy. I mean, corporate taxes, you can watch those numbers carefully, but again, this is just to seize the moment and to try to maintain his populist image. Yeah, let alone capital gains taxes, which is what the vast majority of their wealth is actually, it's way lower than that anyway,

and they're not talking about raising this. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now and get a free chili dog. Tilly dog, not included. The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. A federal judge thankfully ruled earlier today that the Trump administration would have to release Ramesa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who was snatched up off the street and effectively disappeared for a day before anyone knew where she'd been taken and she has been held for many weeks since then. She will have to be released. It's actually possible that she's being released right now as we're discussing this. We're keeping tabs on that. But thankfully it's going to happen. That's good news. But also the judge is very clear in the rule. ruling how terrible this act actually was saying the speech of the, that doing the detention could chill the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.

This is Judge William Sessions who says, I suggested to the government that they produce any additional information which would suggest that she posed a substantial risk. And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. She wrote an op-ed as a grad student. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here. The court finds that Ms. Ozturk has raised a substantial claim of a constitutional violation.

And I want to remind everyone that while it would be great for her to be released and hopefully that'll happen today, she'll be able to be returned to her home, to her school, be able to resume her doctorate, talk to her family. She has been in detention since March 25th. That six weeks, seven weeks, I'm not great at math necessarily or time. But that is what? worse than anything that's ever happened to many of us? Sure, deeply traumatic.

Like you don't just bounce back from that, being held in iced attention for a month and a half for nothing because you wrote an op-ed, because you committed a thought crime. I mean, look, we throw terms around like cancel culture and censorship and everything and it doesn't really get much darker than this. Thanks to Trump, it sometimes gets a little bit darker than this. She could have been sent to Al Salvador and that could still happen. But this is about as dark a cancel culture, a crusade against free speech, as one can imagine. I'll remind everyone, she was snatched up off the street and her fit, no one knew where she was for a day.

She could be dead, she could be out of the country. I mean, so many people have been. That is horrifying, not only for her, but for everyone that knows her. And Tufts University put out a statement saying, we look forward to welcoming her back to campus to resume her doctoral studies. I hope that she's able to do that, I understand if she's not able to immediately integrate back into her life after what she experienced, but I also want to give a statement from one of her lawyers who said, when did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for? And again, that's all that they're saying

she did is she wrote an op-ed that was critical of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. But this kind of thing will have a chilling effect, won't it, John? It's intended to. Exactly. I mean, you only have to do this a few times. It's the reason the cruelty is very much a part of the strategy with this administration. And this is part of just one more facet in a plan and a strategy that we've seen across the board. Everything from sweeping up these Venezuelans and sending them to El Salvador, many of whom may or may not have any ties, we just don't know, because there wasn't a new process, to the sweeping up of the Russian scientist who was detained and then jailed, imprisoned

because of those frog embryos that weren't declared on the, on the, on the, declaration form. She was asked to bring them in by the researcher with whom she was working. So these are all these are all flavors of a kind and this administration and this cruelty will have a chilling effect on free speech. It's already happening. Yeah. Yeah. And as you said, obviously that that is the intent. And I think back to like the years that we've done this program and oh man has the right love to talk about free speech and the first amendment. Oh, you're right. It's all they love you're right. I mean, mainly just the second one, but sometimes they pretend the first two. And all they write books about it. Oh, Dave Rubin was a book about censorship and everything. And all of them are like you're, you're just constantly, you're the word police, you're cracking down on us. We're free speech radicals, crusaders.

If you didn't give a damn about this, about an op-ed, by the way, I read the op-ed, okay? It reads like an op-ed written by a grad student. It's not some inflamed, passionate, rhetorical crusades. It's just, it's an op-ed by grad students. That's all it is, and that's all it took to lock her up. And if you're one of these right-wingers that you didn't give a damn about this, probably because her name's Ramesa Azturk, and you've seen a picture of her, you know that she's a Muslim, so you don't care. If the government can just disappear her for an op-ed, because those words are so inherently threatening,

okay, let's start keeping tabs on forums. Let's keep tabs on social media. Let's keep tabs on the Facebook groups and the telegram and signal, groups of militias and things like that. Because every day they're flooding the digital domains with far more threatening stuff, we can start disappearing them maybe. If that's the direction we want to go in as a country, I don't think that's the direction they want to go in. So maybe they could start to live their values. That freedom of expression is America. The minute you take that away, I mean, it's just one more way in which I think sort of the underpinnings of this

nation are being lost. So we still get the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. But we're But we get none of the stuff that really made America great. The stuff that makes America great is the freedom of expression. This is a huge, huge deal. And as you say, it can be wielded against anyone. They don't need to go to a forum or in any other way find evidence. Look, even the judge said they didn't really have any evidence here too, and sufficient cause. So they don't need cause always.

If they decide that you're an enemy of the state, they can disappear you. I mean, this is the new world we live in. Yeah, and as we'll get into more on the other side of the next spring, I mean, racing towards fascism, obviously we knew that that was coming, but also, and I talked about this earlier with Donald Trump and the buck stopping somewhere over there or whatever, deeply unmanly that like, she posted an op-ed. I mean, I could like, I guess, try to counter what she said with an argument of my own, but that's just, that's difficult and really, really scary, so no, I'm gonna lock her up.

So disappear, put her in a cell somewhere, like for people, oh my God, the movement, not only the free speech stuff, But the debate me, bro, I'll debate you, I'll go on a podcast and we'll debate over it. You guys, you, you fell apart, you set fire to the Constitution, your values are gone because of an op-ed, because the words were very, very scary. I don't know, the adjectives, the adverbs, what was it, a conjugation? I don't know, what scared you so much in that? Again, the right could desperately use some role model that can remind them of what a man is supposed to be like, because there's none of it in the way they've treated so many

of these different students. In any event, we should take another break, because as I alluded to, they're coming for more of your rights. We'll detail that on the other side of this. Donald Trump's a style icon. That's what I do. Welcome back, one and all, and no, Donald Trump is not an artistic person. He might be the least artistic person, actually. I guess he appreciates Ave Marie. But other than that, I don't think he's got much of an art bone in his body. He made that comment when they were, he was talking about taking over the Kennedy Center, I think, right? I don't remember.

I don't remember what I feel like that's right. Probably as he was like killing NPR and PBS or whatever. That was actually from yesterday. I can't remember what speech it was, but it was directly taken yesterday. Awesome, okay, well, again, regardless of the subject, and no, he is not. Also, by the way, Brad David sent in a super chat asking if we're going to discuss India, Pakistan. Pakistan. We're not in this first hour, mainly because I just, I need to know more. Like I need to be able to add enough to a story to feel like I've added value to make it

worth your time. And I'm just not enough of an expert on that topic. So I'm sure that the channel the network will be covering it and I in the future will be. But I just, I want to know more before I dive into it. Okay, with that said, let's jump into this. President Trump has talked about potentially suspending this to take care of the illegal When could we see that happen? Well, the Constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion. So I would say that's an option we're actively looking at.

Yeah, so there it is. I mean, look, they're doing it already. By the way, I love that he says we're going to look into it. They have not been respecting habeas corpus this entire time in the same way that they haven't been respecting the decision. decisions of judges, the Supreme Court, any of that. When you take people who have been court ordered to not be able to be deported to a particular country and then you send them there, you do not get to pretend that you gave them due process, thereby, like there's no habeas corpus.

But whatever, he's at least admitting that they're gonna do it more broadly, that they're looking into it. And he understands that as a Republican, you're supposed to pretend to care about the Constitution, and obviously they don't, but he'd love the fig leaf still, so he says there, the Constitution very clear in case of an invasion, you can suspend habeas corpus. So we'll jump into what the Constitution actually says. First of all, it as I'm sure you know, comes initially from codification in the Magna Carta and said, no man shall be arrested or imprisoned excepted by the lawful judgment of his peers

and by the law of the land. But our version of it in the Constitution says the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, The public safety may require it, and I'm just realizing now, is that why Donald Trump capitalizes random words because of the Constitution does it? Does he think it makes it seem constitutional? But in any event, the only word that really matters there for the purposes of Stephen Miller is, it says invasion. So he, like the small-brained person that he is, says, oh, well, I just claim this is an invasion, I can do whatever I want. And that's what they're doing right now. They're implying that because some people,

Some people have been victims of crime, and there are some people whose paperwork is not in order, we've been invaded. I think I could hear the gunfire and the shells landing off in the distance. You know, I don't need to tell people watching everywhere, I'm watching this in every corner of America. You look out your window and there's tanks rolling down the street, right? You've been invaded? Do you feel invaded?

I know Stephen Miller is terrified of brown people every day of his life, so he probably does actually feel like we've been invaded. The rest of us are just kind of living our lives. But to put in perspective, how ridiculous is invocation of invasion in this case is, let's take a look at prior times when habeas corpus has been suspended in the United States. It's happened four times since the Constitution was ratified. So throughout the entire country during the Civil War, that was a rough time, admittedly. In 11 South Carolina counties overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during reconstruction, I don't

think Stephen Miller wants to talk about that one, in two provinces of the Philippines, during a 1905 insurrection and in Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. So the thing about each of those four invasions is that they're all invasions. Like there was a military threat and weakened debate and historians have whether it was necessary or how it might have been abused in those cases and certainly it has been. But at least there was a war going on. Them talking about people's cats and dogs being eaten does not a war make in my mind. What do you think?

The concocted invasion thing is so absurd. It's offensive, but it's really the hook on which they're hanging all of these blatantly illegal moves that they're making. So they have no choice. And it reminds me of the, when he talked about the caravan and Trump won, Trump season one, when he was sending the military at Christmas time to the Mexican border, remember? those caravan people are coming, there's an invasion. I think he called him the car, wasn't it the caravan, something like that. Yeah.

And so this is the lie that is floated because otherwise you have to play by the rules. And clearly they're gonna play outside the line. So this is, again, it's the only thing that can concoct to perhaps allow them to at least pursue this until I think the courts, all of the courts, push back hard on them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is a really pathetic. Even if you accept that they're not doing this on purpose because they utterly despise the constitution,

the constitutional rights that you have, they fundamentally down to their bone marrow, hate it and want to kill it, which is definitely true of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, many of the people around him. But let's say that you don't believe that. And they actually are this petrified about the invasion. I want you to just think briefly of all of the things we've gotten through as a country without needing to suspend habeas cor. I mean, we got through world war The Cold War, international terrorism, terror cells pop, we got through all of that. But there's some Guatemalans, that dude's from El Salvador. Oh well, you don't have any rights anymore.

I mean, that is, like if you accept their cover story, that is deeply pathetic. And so I kind of buy it, that might actually be why Stephen Miller is doing it. But on the other hand, it could just be that fascists are gonna fascist. And I just wanna say, like, you know, there was the debate during the election about, is it fair? to call them that or whatever. And people can debate definitions of fascism. There are different constructs for how you label it or whatever. But like, I don't know, I don't feel like I was being hyperbolic.

I feel less like that every day, more that they are the movement we said they were. That these people are the goons that we said they were. I just, I feel vindicated. Well, they see- It's small comfort, by the way. Right, right, right. But they see the Constitution as an impediment to their agenda. And so that's why they're-

grabbing these things like that really reflect the authoritarian rise that this crew has, right? They want to do this. And it's fascistic, it's authoritarian, however you want to call it, it's a flex. And they don't want anything to get in the way of that flex. They want to get rid of these people. And if we need to grab this excuse about an invasion, well, then that's the way we'll get around this thing, which is an obstacle to our agenda. And that thing is the Constitution. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't want to do the knee-jerk thing of automatically slippery slope in this or whatever. What they're doing right now is by far bad enough. That's why we talk about it so much on this show on the network. But like the idea that Stephen Miller will

be satisfied to just end due process for migrants or whatever, for undocumented migrants. Like, come on, who thinks that? You don't think they'll expand that to other migrants? I mean, they are literally already taking permanent residents and shipping them out. Why am I talking hypothetically about things that exist in the past tense. Or for student protesters. I mean, oh, they've said such terrible things. Their signs are very, very scary to me. And there's so many of them. What are we going to have a trial for every one of them? For people who commit a variety of different types of thought cry. Just think carefully. You want to like protest against police brutality or genocide or that sort of thing. You think they're going to be suddenly cool

with that again? They're going to like rediscover their love for the First Amendment. Like when When they strip away rights, they get very comfortable. Historically, regimes get very comfortable with you not having those rights anymore. So as bad as things are right now, and they are and they're bad enough for everyone to be as freaked out as they should be, if not more, or as they are, if not more, it can still get a lot darker, I think. In any event, why don't we move on to another topic. We'll turn away from the criminality and more into the area of corruption with this.

But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president I know has directed you to look into. Yeah. Are you policing yourself in that? And you can see am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally obvious. I fully expect to be scrutinized and get a daily proctology exam, basically. My sort of just camp out there. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. Okay, well, he's not gonna get away with it. I mean, he might get the money, but we're gonna

that scrutinizing that proclological exam a little bit because yeah, no, he's trying to get money. They're giving him more money. In this case, it's not even like directly the US government. I mean, sure, they've showered Elon Musk recently and throughout the years with billions and billions of dollars. Many of his businesses might not have made it if not for it. But no, now they're trying to strong arm other countries into giving Elon Musk money. So let's talk about this. This is reporting from the Washington Post. And we've got the country of Lesotho that had been hit on liberation day by 50% reciprocal tariffs. So some countries can like withstand this for the short term, the long term, for smaller countries with smaller economies, it's significantly

harder and it makes them a little bit desperate. And we have that in this case. And so here's an internal State Department memo obtained by the Washington Post says, as the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses. If you just wanted a sign that they're gonna purchase more stuff from America, then it could be whatever, right? It could be phones, it could be Nikes, it could be, I don't know where those things are made, probably not in America, actually. We don't produce a lot, but it could be something.

Only Starlink, that's the only thing we'll do. This country needs to send money to Elon Musk as a proof that they're willing to play ball. I mean, this is direct mob behavior, but the mob boss that's benefiting in this case is Elon Musk. Okay, and we see it. Yeah, no, it's transparent, transparently corrupt. And so they actually did, by the way, do this in the end. Lesotho gave Starlink a internet service license that will last 10 years, and they're not the only one, by the way, that's doing that. The company reached distribution deals with two providers in India in March, and has won at least partial combinations.

with Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam. Although this is probably not a comprehensive count, because weirdly, he's not being that transparent about all of this. And so there is just money coming in so many different forms and flooding Elon Musk's coffers, not only money, but also deregulation. They killed those research projects into atmospheric pollution that theoretically could have produced regulations that would have hurt Elon Musk and other billionaires like Jeff Bezos. So the regulations are being manipulated, the law is being flouted, and money is being directed to Elon Musk, which is a great return on the investment he made

in buying Donald Trump in the last election. The Musk thing is corruption on parade. I almost don't know where to start. So I'll just start with kind of the last thing that you mentioned. Obviously, he closed down and dismantled federal agencies that were doing what John's talking about, finding and investigating space. and his companies that were running afoul of a lot of regulations, particularly environmental regulations.

That's just one thing. Then the second thing, he's moneying himself in all of these different ways. Before you even get to this example, they are imposing Starlink on many communities that we're going to get broadband in other ways. In fact, in the Biden infrastructure package, there's all this money to get a lot of rural communities that are really dark.

They're unable to get any broadband to get them broadband. service. But now, as a result of Doge, seeing that those programs were wasteful, they are pulling back on those funds. And lo and behold, Starlink will be the way that many of these rural communities in America get broadband access. And then finally to this story, you see the shakedown that's going on. I mean, it is a shakedown. The tariffs force these countries to come to Trump and beg for mercy. What can we give you? So we'll, we'll How about this? Give Elon Musk all of this business in our country as an act of goodwill to show you that we are happy to have U.S. businesses here. It's patronage. It's pay to play.

He set up a system of patronage. So country by country, village by village, tariff by tariff, they will come to him on bended knee and have to make a deal. And in this case, they can enrich themselves massively through doing it. Yeah, 100%. And again, like, to the right wing is watching, like imagine if George Soros had this. Right. Like, can you imagine? But this is, this is what you get when your god emperor is owned by the richest man in the world.

It's not actually a good thing when this much corruption is happening. To give you an idea, by the way, of how significant some of this is, because you might think, well, some of these are very small countries, how much money could this possibly be? Capturing, this is graphic five, capturing just one percent of India's, consumer broadband market could generate nearly $1 billion annually with comparable upside in Latin America and Africa. And obviously the goal is not to capture 1%, so we could be talking about billions upon billions of dollars going to Starlink, not because these countries genuinely want it, but because of economic pressure being provided by the guy who he's the donor of.

And so that's amazing. By the way, and you rightly pointed out that they killed that section of the the infrastructure plan providing the rural broadband. Trump called it racist. I don't even know what the argument is. I know that like his knee-jerk thing is to just scream DEI. I don't think like white people in Appalachia getting rural broadband is racist, but regardless. So here's the thing, maybe this is crazy, maybe I'm a radical or whatever. But so Starlink is apparently now just intimately involved in our government.

When we need to solve problems with the rural broadband, we use. Starlink. I guess we have to. We can't do the normal way. And it's a part of our like tariffs and all that. So if it's going to be a part of our government, then why don't we just make it a part of our government? Why doesn't the government nationalize Starlink? I mean for national security reasons, if nothing else, I mean look at all the stuff that's happened with Ukraine about them giving access and then taking it away and hurting the war effort when American policy is to assist the Ukrainian defense. Elon Musk having that sort of control over the ability of one of our allies to defend themselves.

This is obviously unacceptable, not to mention concerns over the possibility that can be hacked. And with the close ties that it has to the government in all these different areas, we should take it. We'll give them a little bit of money. I mean, we already have. We've already done a down payment on this if we wanted to nationalize it at this point. It's a totally cogent argument that you're making. And you could even say, I'll tell you what, it is a negotiation. We as the U.S. government will not take total control of your company.

We'll just take partial control. It'll just take the leverage away from you so you don't have the bad look of a private citizen being able to turn on and off the lights over an entire part of the world. Yeah. So, yeah, we don't nationalize it completely. It's sort of partially nationalized. It's sort of a shared profit system. But I mean, or shared control system. I actually think there's a really good argument.

Obviously it's not going to happen in the same way that partially nationalizing oil companies and all of these other things that sort of reap all the benefits of exploiting American resources. They never have to pay back in any way and we as the people never get ownership in any of this stuff. But I love that plan that John's just come up with. I mean, I think I think we should look into it. And I know that like the normal way that you do that, like if a Democratic president came in is that you'd have like, you'd have hearings and you'd have this big process and judges would weigh in. But the issue is that I actually saw a dude from Columbia. So I feel like we've been invaded. So I don't think the due process is really a thing anymore.

So I think we might have to expedite the nationalizing. Starling. Anyway, see how this is not how you're supposed to run a government? Unterly corrupt, illegal, unconstitutional acts every single day. You're driving me crazy, but the sickness isn't fundamentally in me. It's in our country, it's in our society. Any final thoughts to close to the hour? I love the passion, John. I love it. It's great seeing you. I agree. I think this is a, you know, it's a five alarm fire. You can only handle so many things. It is a bit overwhelming, but it's good that we take it, you know, fire by fire. I mean, there is a quality of it all being overwhelming, but I do think that you can chip away at it.

And I think the more our voice is heard, I do think it matters. I even think it matters to Trump when, as you suggested, his polling numbers begin to sag. At some point, he begins to rethink, as he's doing with the tariffs, policies and strategies moving forward. Hopefully. Yeah, again, I don't know if he's watching, but some Congress people apparently are. But anyway, what if people wanted to hear you breaking it down fire by fire? Where would they be able to do that? I have a show, the Mark Thompson show. It's on YouTube, it's live, 2 to 4 every day.

And what is that, 11 to 1 on the West Coast, 2 to 4 on the East Coast. And we're on Spotify, we're on Apple if you just want to hear the show and not watch it. But the YouTube is kind of a great way to interact with the show and a great way. You know, that's just a dynamic that we have here at TYT. that this is really, I grew up on TYT, and so I've kind of brought a little piece of that over to the Mark Thompson show. It's on YouTube. Please subscribe, check it out, and hope to see you there. Awesome, thanks, Johnny. Thank you so much, always a pleasure, especially in person. Everybody, there is more to come in this next hour. Sharon Reed, Wazdi Lombre, should be a lot of fun.

Don't go anywhere.