The Young Turks - Henry The Killer

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Left-wing Twitter users have a dunkfest after Kissinger’s death: "Straight to hell." Israel and Hamas agree to extend their cease-fire by another day. MSNBC cancels Mehdi Hasan’s show and debuts a new politics-focused "ensemble program" in a major weekend overhaul. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! All right. All right, back on TYT, or at least I'm back on TYT.

Jake Uyra, Anna Kasparin with you guys. Another day of madness, that's all the news is. is, let's be honest about it. We do have fun at some points in the show. So stay tuned for that. Including at the very top. Yes. A lot of fun at the very top, ladies and gentlemen. And madness in the middle. It's a madness sandwich. Yeah. So why don't we start with the fun? All right, let's do it. Sorry, this is for all the TYT fans. One second before we do this story. Henry Kissinger's death.

Henry Kissinger's death. Uh, Henry Kitt. Henry Kisinger, America's most notorious war criminal, has died at the age of 100 in his home in Connecticut. Now Kissinger is known for shaping pretty disastrous foreign policy in Vietnam, the Middle East, China. We could literally spend the entirety of the show today talking about Henry Kissinger's legacy. We're going to focus on two issues. His role in carpet bombing Cambodia. We'll also talk about his role in orchestrating a coup in Chile, which did away with democratically elected Iende and replaced him with Pinochet in a military coup, Akuta. But before we get to all

of that. Jank, very curious what you think right off the bat. Yeah, so I think that one of the most interesting parts of the story is the difference between how the establishment treats Henry Kissinger and the rest of us. So he is despised by the world. He's despised by every normal American that knows anything about him. But the establishment, totally oblivious to it. Or like, they hug and kiss Kissinger. They pay him $50,000 for showing up to any event. It's insane. And like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, all these people are like thawning over Kissinger. Oh, what a great job you did in killing millions of people in Cambodia and other places.

Their lives didn't matter at all. Way to go, Henry. Way to destroy democracy in Latin America. You are so beloved. And it's more telling of the establishment than it is of Henry Kissinger. The fact that they love that guy is one of the worst marks against the powerful people in this country than you can imagine. I mean, that's like, that tells you, they don't mind killing other people and destroying other democracies at all. In fact, they celebrate it.

They do. And they're going to go to his funeral, and they're all going to cry and weep and hug and all that stuff. And you're going to see who those sick bastards are. Well, for those of you who are not as familiar with Henry Kissinger, why don't we talk about his legacy and what he managed to do during his time in power. He served both in the Nixon administration and the Ford administrations. Kissinger served as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, positions that allowed him to direct the Vietnam War and the broader Cold War with the Soviet Union and to implement a stridently realist approach that prioritized U.S. interests and domestic political success

over any potential atrocity that might occur. And he certainly had no problem with the United States committing atrocities in other countries, including countries we weren't even at war with. That includes Cambodia. Now Kissinger served as Secretary of State between 1973 and 1977. And I now want to talk about Cambodia and the Vietnam War. Now, in December of 1968, Nixon gets elected and he decides to appoint Kissinger as his national security advisor.

And at this time, you got to keep in mind what the mood in the country was. At that point, the anti-war movement was already growing in the United States, and for good reason. So by 1968, the United States had been at war with Vietnam for four years. Half a million troops were already in Vietnam, boots on the ground, more than a million Vietnamese died at this point after four years of that war. 31,000 Americans had been killed. Now Kissinger became the head of the National Security Council in 1969 and decides to oversee the carpet bombing of Cambodia. And you're going to understand why he decided to do this to a country that we were not at war with, a neutral country we were not at war with

in this next video. Take a look. Kissinger asked the Pentagon to outline possible bombing strategies in Indochina, the former French colony that encompassed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Soon it was decided that Cambodia was the best target for America's fleet of B-52 bombers. This is because it was host to large tracks of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which the Viet Cong used to move fighters and equipment into South Vietnam. The ensuing campaign, dubbed Operation Menu, was conducted in total secrecy, for Kissinger knew that Congress would oppose the bombing of a neutral country. Kissinger was reportedly hands on with the operation and was reportedly very excited by the strategy. According to a Pentagon report, Henry A. Kissinger approved

each of the 3,875 Cambodia bombing raids in 1969 and 1970, as well as the methods for keeping them out of the newspapers. The United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs. on Cambodia between 1969 and 1973. The bombing campaign ultimately killed between 150,000 and a half million Cambodian civilians. Various estimates suggest it also helped unleash a civil war inside Cambodia that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, a dictator whose regime killed as many as 2 million Cambodians, according to modern appraisals. And by the way, I think it's important to note that Kissinger never showed a shred of remorse over the, you know, foreign policy that he implemented and tortured, killed, maimed, all of these innocent people. Again, in a country that we weren't even at war with, Cambodia. So two really important things about this too.

Sometimes the American planes wanted to lighten their load so that they can go on a longer bombing tour and still get back to base. But in order to do that, they had to save on fuel. So the U.S. government, led by Henry Kissinger, told them, well, just drop the bomb on Cambodians so that'll lighten your load. That wasn't even a bomb to Ho Chi Minh Trail. That was just so they could do a deeper campaign inside Vietnam. So they would just drop bombs and kill the poor civilians underneath them for no reason. Yep. A giant percentage of the time.

This man was a monster of monsters. So you'll probably see his funeral on TV and notice all the people who were kissing and hugging and went there to celebrate this devil, this satanic piece of crap, okay? And you might say, Jake, he served Republicans and just explained that. Nixon Ford, why did you mention the Democrats? Because this is the uniparty, because the Democrats celebrate him as much as the Republicans do. They love Henry Kissinger. It's disgusting what he did. And of course he showed no remorse, but guys, the second important fact, it was never effective.

They make it seem like, well, it's a necessary evil, what we had to do, what we had to do to win in Vietnam. Wait a minute, did we win in Vietnam? No, we didn't win. Did we win in Cambodia? We weren't even at war in Cambodia. Two and a half million people dead. and it didn't work at all. Henry Kissinger killed people and got nothing for it.

Pure monster. And they never even talk about what a failure he was. Total, complete failure. What happened, Henry? Did we win in Vietnam? Did we win anywhere? No. All those poor people in Chile, Cambodia, and all across the world because of your monstrosity.

And yet no one in the mainstream media establishment says, this guy was a piece of crap. who never succeeded at anything. All he did was murder people. Oh, the beloved establishment in America. In 2001, Anthony Bourdain wrote a memoir, and he actually mentions Henry Kissinger in that memoir. And I want to read a few excerpts from it for you. He wrote, once you've been to Cambodia,

you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia, the fruits of his genius for statesmanship. And you will never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at the Hague next to Milosevic. And Bordane was, by the way, referencing the former Yugoslavian and Serbian leader who was on trial for his own war crimes. He ended up dying in prison in 2006.

And then in 2018, he actually retweeted that passage and said this. Frequently, I've come to regret things I've said. This from 2001 is not one of those times. Yes. What a hero. Yeah, and we appreciate Bourdain for that and for being a rare truth speaker. Yes. Yeah. And guys, one other thing that's so important here, Henry Kissinger was good at one thing and one thing only, which was using and manipulating American media. So he would get the media to do propaganda on his behalf, cover up all of his war crimes, and then put positive pieces in the story. And you wonder why I get frustrated at mainstream media. They've been doing that kind of crap for all this time. You know, you read about the Dulles brothers, you know, and how.

they ran, one of them ran the CIA, the other one was Secretary of State, and they were just working on behalf of American corporations, some of which that they owned, right, and worked for. And the murderers that our CIA did, but the key to getting away with it was they had partners at Time and New York Times and all these publications, and they would tell them, write the exact opposite, say that we're doing this for freedom and democracy, and they would. So unfortunately, American media has been lying to you for a long, long time. 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. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off.

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Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Now let's move on to Chile, but before we do, I want to give you like a broader picture because it's not just about what happened in Cambodia. It's not just about what happened in Chile. For instance, during his time in charge of the American foreign policy machine, Kissinger also directed illegal arms sales to Pakistan as it carried out a brutal crackdown on its Bengali population in 1971. He supported the 1973 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected socialist government in Chile, gave the go-ahead to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor and backed Argentina's

repressive military dictatorship as it launched its dirty war against dissenters and leftists in 1976. His policies during the Ford administration also fueled civil wars in Africa, most notably Angola. Even the most generous calculations suggest that the murderish regimes Kissinger supported and the conflicts they waged were responsible for millions of deaths and millions of other human rights abuses during and after the eight years he served in the American government. In just eight years, he caused that much pain, death, destruction. So let's talk about Chile. So U.S. officials were especially concerned about Salvador Allende, a self-proclaimed

Marxist and a member of Chile Socialist Party who ran for president multiple times and was a leading contender in the 1964 election. He had pledged to nationalize the mostly U.S. owned copper companies, a large industry in Chile. And when it comes to the U.S. orchestrating military coups or these regime change wars within these countries, it was always in regard to U.S. business interests and the fear that these newly elected socialist leaders would nationalize certain sectors of their economy and go against the American business community. And that was certainly the case in Chile. So the U.S. actually spent a ton of money. in propaganda to basically support Iyende's opposition in 1964. That influence at the time proved to be effective because he lost that election. However, he ran again in 1970 and he actually ended up winning, despite the U.S. engaging in the same type of propaganda operation and all the funding that they provided

for that. Nixon instructed the top U.S. officials to do whatever they could to prevent Iynde from taking office, Kissinger was especially concerned about the example it would set for Western European countries to have a socialist freely elected, okay? While we pretend to be the purveyors of democracy. So at that point, they get the CIA involved. And so if you're wondering why there's so much distrust toward the CIA, especially among the left, this is part of the reason why.

The CIA met with the Chilean army in a direct effort to foment a coup to stop a Nainte presidency, a top general who opposed a coup was killed in a kidnapping plot. Now, Iyende ended up taking office anyway, but that's when the US got really aggressive. The US spent $8 million, and at that time, that was a lot of money on covert actions between 1970 and the 1973 coup, according to a 1975 Senate report. US officials also backed economic measures to squeeze Iende's government, El Mercurio, a large Santiago daily newspaper, opposed to Iende, even received money from the CIA to the tune of $1.5 million. And unfortunately and tragically, on the morning of September 11th,

1973, the military launched a coup and took control of the country. Military jets bombed the presidential palace. Iende killed himself after giving a final defiant address to the country. And guess who came into power after that? Well, it was General Augusto. Pinochet, the army chief once thought to be loyal to Chile's constitution, soon emerged as a country's new leader. The military junta began a ruthless campaign against communist and socialists. People were tortured, they were killed, they were held in detention centers across Chile. It was a complete, an utter disaster for the Chilean people, and it was all because the United States didn't like the fact that a Marxist got elected to power democratically

in that country. Yeah, so it's a great book. called the devil's chess board about the CIA, not about Kissinger. And it covers Alan Dulles that I mentioned earlier. The reason I'm bringing it up here is because the CIA didn't work for us, guys. They worked for American companies. So if Dole had banana plants in a Latin American country and they nationalized the bananas, because it's literally their bananas, they would go get the CIA to either murder the guy or drive him out in a coup. And they would put in a puppet who would torture their own people, but sell bananas at a cheaper

price to us. And that's why they're called banana republics. And in Chile, they had the misfortune of having copper. And did you and I get the copper? Did they steal that copper on our behalf? No, no. American companies got the copper. They sold it at the same price to you guys. You didn't get one cent of a break. But they took the extra profits and put it in their pockets. And then they shared it with war criminals like Alan Dulles and Henry Kissinger. And how did they share it with Kissinger? Well, as soon as he was out of office, he got every speech, every endowment, every board position. You can imagine they funneled millions and millions and millions of dollars to Henry Kissinger

for murders well done on behalf of American corporations. So now that's the ugly truth, but it's definitely the truth. But if you turn on television and you turn and you look at the establishment in America, Republican or Democrat, nothing but love for this war criminal. So I want to go to some of the headlines that got a little bit of backlash on social media from people who want to provide cover for Kissinger. But overall, I would say the left has been celebrating these headlines because they're honest. Let's start with Rolling Stone, where Spencer Ackerman's piece is titled Henry Kissinger,

war criminal beloved by America's ruling class finally dies. The infamy of Nixon's foreign policy architect sits eternally beside that of history's worst mass murderers. A deeper shame attaches to the country that celebrates him. And then you have Huff Post, which has a similarly brutal headline in regard to Henry Kissinger's passing. Henry Kissinger, America's most notorious war criminal, dies at 100. A Titan of American Foreign Policy was complicit in millions of deaths and never showed remorse for his decisions. And I think it's important to also take a look at what the corporate media has published about him. So let's go to the next graphic 18 here because Max Kennerly is responding to a Washington Post piece about Kissinger that's titled Henry Kissinger dies at 100.

the diplomat exercised an unparalleled control over U.S. international affairs and policymaking. He was also the target of relentless critics who deemed him unprincipled and amoral. Well, Kenner Lee is correct in saying, seeing a lot of unkind words about Henry Kissinger, but not nearly enough. Don't be shy. History demands he be remembered for the monster he was. And I totally agree with him on that. Other celebrated Kissinger's passing, including Jacobin. I didn't know about what Jacobin had done, but I want to read this next graphic to you. Jacobin hated Henry Kissinger so much that they wrote a book length obituary years ago and commissioned 50,000 copies and just let them sit until he died, he finally died.

Unbeatable levels of hater, I am inspired. Yeah, that is pretty amazing. But look, so that's the tiny silver lining in this story. You see the new independent media putting pressure on corporate media. Yes. And be, hey, let's be honest about this guy. And so when now all of a sudden, the Washington Post has to put the caveat of, like, critics say he might have been amoral. And notice they frame it as relentless critics, like.

I know. Yeah, it makes them seem like they're bothering the poor guy. They're hysterical, okay? They're acting crazy. Okay, but you want to see another headline that the Washington Post published today? Get a load of this. The surprising dating life of Henry Kissinger, a West Wing Playboy. You're proud of that, you proud of that piece, Timothy Bella?

Like amazing, absolutely amazing. Yeah, oh well, I didn't know that he got late so much. Wow. Silver lining, okay, well now I see why you celebrate him so much. Okay, but the reason they do guys is because then they'd have to, if they don't, if they say he's a war criminal, then they'd have to admit, oh yeah, there's tons of people who are break the law among the powerful and American government and they never get held accountable. And that is something they never, ever, ever want to admit. We got to take a break. When we come back, we'll give you an update on the hostage exchange between Israelis and Hamas.

We'll also talk a little bit about what's transpiring in the West Bank. Lots of updates to get to, don't miss. 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. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news.

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77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Hi back on TYT, Jankana and Nassir Hajawi with you guys. Nassir, thanks for joining. We appreciate you. You guys can do likewise by hitting the join button below.

Louis Spelmont show Walkthroughs gifted a membership. Adi Vive gifted 10. Benjamin Gilbert Lyft gifted 50. Thank you guys. You're wonderfully generous. Happy holidays. We appreciate you. Anna. Well, we've got some updates on the ongoing war in Gaza. Let's get to it.

First thing I want to talk about is what's going on in the Middle East and this extension of a deal now for a seventh full day. The humanitarian pause now over the first six days has seen more than 100 hostages released and returned to their families. And a significant surge in humanitarian assistance into Gaza, several hundred trucks over the last week, which is important. As National Security Council Administrator coordinator, I should say, John Kirby announced earlier today, Israel and Hamas managed to reach a last-minute deal that extended the pause in fighting for one more day to allow for the release of more hostages and prisoners. Now, we'll get back to that hostage and prisoner exchanged part of this story in just a moment. But sadly, shortly after Israel and Hamas reached that deal to pause fighting for another.

Another day, gunmen carried out a deadly attack in Jerusalem, killing at least three. Here are more details on that. This morning, that ceasefire between Israel and Hamas extended for a seventh day. And just minutes later, this shooting attack in Jerusalem, in the surveillance video circulating online, you can see this car pull up to a bus stop. Two Palestinian men from Jerusalem that Israel says were affiliated with Hamas, begin firing. In another video circulating online, you can hear the dozens of rounds fired. People at the bus stop fleeing for safety.

Within seconds, off-duty soldiers returning fire, killing the assailants. Three Israelis were killed, 16 wounded. So I want to just say that in this particular story, there's been a lot of inconsistency in reporting. So different outlets are reporting different numbers of injured individuals. CNN, for instance, says seven. Reuters said at least eight. So when it comes to the exact number of people who were injured, obviously take the reporting with a grain of salt because we don't know for sure yet.

However, Hamas said the attackers were its members. So they have taken responsibility for this. And its armed wing claimed responsibility for the attack in response to the occupation's crimes of killing children and women in Gaza. And so I'm sure that, you know, gunning down people will persuade the Israelis to reconsider their approach in this war. So why don't we hear from Itamir Ben-Gavir, who's Israel's national security minister, what did he have to say in response to this? This event proves again how we must not show weakness that we must speak to Hamas

only through rifle scopes, only through war. So more people are going to die. We already know it's coming, we already know what to expect. There have been, even with the ceasefire, there have been some violent exchanges between the Israelis and Hamas militants. And before we pivot back to the hostage situation, who's been released recently, I wanted to get your thoughts on the part of the story we just talked about, Jank, Hamas opening fire and gunning down people. So, I mean, I can't imagine a bigger set of idiots. Palestinians people are being brutalized in Gaza having these 2,000 bombs dropped on their heads. You finally get a pause in the fighting, and what do you do?

During that pause, you go and kill people. Exactly. God damn idiots, right? Just the dumbest people alive, let alone the immorality of it. And then how do you complain? Like, we get to complain about civilians killed on both sides. And we get to be harsh about Hamas and Israel, because we're objective. and we're covering what's actually happening.

But what right does Hamas have to complain about anything? Like you ask for a pause, you get a pause, and then you morons go and shoot people in the middle of the pause, thereby losing any high grade. They never, Hamas never had any moral high ground, but losing moral high ground on behalf of Palestinians, which you don't speak for, and these actions are so dumb anymore.

I just can't stand how irrational and stupid they are. So terrible actions in Jerusalem, and I feel terrible for the civilians hurt there. Now luckily more and more of the hostages are getting released, and that is the reason why the so-called humanitarian pause, which I have trouble saying that, the pause in fighting continues, and this again is the seventh full day of that pause. Now Hamas on Wednesday night released 16 people held hostage in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli authority said, pushing the number of freed captives past 100, and in return, Israel a few hours later set free 30 more Palestinian prisoners. So I wanna go to this next video and explain what we're seeing in it. So in this video that you're watching, 21 year old French Israeli Mia Shem, who we've talked about on

the show before, she was in one of those hostage videos, was released today and reunited with her family. She was taken while at that music festival and held hostage by Hamas. for 65 days. Here are some other hostages who have been freed so far. Let's take a look. A second American freed overnight, 49-year-old American dual citizen and mother of three, Liot Bainan photographed in her first conversation with family.

She was among 16 hostages reunited with families overnight. Liyadh kidnapped from Kibbutzniu's 55 days ago with her husband Aviv, who's still believed to be held in Gaza. Only two of the 102 hostages released so far were American, including four-year-old Abigail Moore-Idan, released over the weekend. Now, the Israeli military said that more than 140 hostages remained in Gaza. You know, I'm curious how they collect their intel on that because, you know, some of the hostages that they believed were alive turned out to have been killed. Obviously, Hamas is saying one thing, the IDF is saying something completely different. in the fog of war, I'm not going to repeat what either side has said in regard to what led to

the death of these hostages. But you should keep in mind that, you know, the aerial bombardment in the Gaza Strip has been brutal. And Hamas, in the various videos that we saw on October 7th, really has no problem with carrying out brutal acts. So I don't know how those individuals died, and I'm not going to repeat what each side is claiming. But with that said, according to the Israeli prison service, since the deal took effect Friday, Israel has released 210 Palestinians held in prisons in exchange for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The Palestinian Prisoners Society said Israel has arrested more than 240 Palestinians during the same time, which is exactly what you had predicted, Jank, as these negotiations for the pause in fighting were taking place, right?

When they made their initial deal, I remember you predicting that as Israel releases these prisoners, they're just going to go ahead and detain more Palestinians. And look, it's one thing if Palestinians are carrying out acts of violence or if they're, you know, harming other individuals. But I think it's really, really important to understand that a giant portion of those prisoners haven't even been charged with anything and remain detained indefinitely, very simple. to what the United States did and continues to do in Gitmo. There's still prisoners there who haven't been charged of anything.

There's still prisoners in Gitmo who should be released and freed. That story is just brutal. But the same thing is happening right now as we speak with these Palestinians, in the West Bank especially. So with that said, I want to just go to one more video jank and then get your thoughts because you don't have to believe me, I'm not on the ground, but you should believe the reporters who are on the ground. Let's take a look. Israel says Falkma attempted murder, and yet she was only detained, not charged. She didn't go to trial, she wasn't given any opportunity to defend herself.

And this is a story we keep hearing again and again from release prisoners, that they aren't given due process, and yet this crime exists alongside their names. The Israeli Prison Service responded to these allegations, saying, National security prisoners who were released from the Israeli prison during the past two days were serving time for serious crimes such as attempted murder, assault and throwing explosives. All prisoners in IPS custody are held according to the law. That's not true. CNN broke down the numbers in a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners identified by Israel as eligible for release.

80% are listed as just detained, which means They have not been formally sentenced. They have not been formally sentenced and they're held in prison indefinitely. Palestinian Prisoners Society spokeswoman Amani Saranae said that as of Thursday morning, more than 3,360 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been arrested since October 7th with at least 40 arrested between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. And look, I mean, if they committed these crimes, you would want them to undergo a trial. You would charge them, number one, and then they would go through a trial, and you would either

convict them or find them innocent. And by the way, they're not even given a typical trial. They have to, if they're lucky enough to get a trial at all, it's through a military court. And 90% of the time, they're found guilty. Go ahead, Jank. Yeah, actually, I want to give you the actual stat. It's 99%. Jesus. So if they try them, if they bother to charge them and try them, the military courts are rubber stamp.

They're not even paying attention. 99% conviction rate, hilarious, right? So it's a joke, it's a total kangaroo court. It's just arresting random people, taking them hostage over and over again. But 80% of them were not even charged. They didn't even go to the kangaroo court. Like they're like, oh my God, we got nothing on them, nothing. Pure hostages. right? So we're not even going to bring him to the court where we convicted 99% of them. So, and that's why I said what I said earlier that I was referring to it, Israel takes hostages 24-7, thousands and thousands of hostages, right? But the world doesn't care. America doesn't care. America applauds. Oh, yeah, dirty Palestinians, they must be guilty, they must be terrorists.

They're all the same anyway, right? Well, who cares about charging them? Who cares about having fair court system. No, Israel is 100% oppressing the Palestinians, thinking anything else, it's just absurd, you're just kidding yourself, you're just buying into propaganda, it's not even close. So speaking of terrorists, you know who's a terrorist? The Israeli national security minister. And I'm not saying that rhetorically, he's literally a convicted terrorist. Ben Gavir that Anna quoted earlier, who said, oh, the only thing that the Palestinians understand is violence. That's because Ben Gavir is a monster, and he only understands violence. He was convicted when he was younger of supporting a terror organization, Mayor

Kahana's group. And so do you think that that terrorist minds violence? He looks forward of violence. And the mindset is what's so horrible, which is they're not human on the other side. They're monsters and all day, and we should kill them all, and we should take their land. And whether Hamas thinks that or the national security minister of Israel thinks that, it is a same exact ideology. The only difference is that Israel has infinitely more power so they can kill and take hostages at their leisure. Right. And no one's going to do anything about it. And so, and since their state, they get to say, we are an important state. So when we do something and we murder civilians at unprecedented rates, it is not terrorism. It is us defending ourselves.

I just got to break down the numbers a little more for you because 128 of the 180 released prisoners at the time of this report were detained and had not been charged put on trial or given an opportunity to defend themselves so so the bottom line is this prisoner exchange that they're doing I mean the Hamas should have never taken the hostage in the first place again not only immoral but dumb when you take babies as hostages and grandmothers as hostages, you lose sympathy for your own people, you idiots, right? They take the soldiers as hostages, that's a different situation.

There's a war going on, I hate that too, but at least you're not going after civilians, right? So Hamas has no morality or high ground to speak of at all. Now you turn to Israel, they're like, oh yeah, we'll do it at 10 times rate, 100 times the rate, and we'll do a prisoner exchange. What difference doesn't matter anyway? I'm just going to take more hostages than the very next day or the same day. And I'm going to take even more than the ones I gave you. So they're not, the Palestinians are getting nothing in return.

Because more innocent people are going to be kidnapped the next day by Israel. I mean, they're getting a temporary pause in fighting, but that's it. Yeah, to be fair, sorry. I meant in the prisoner exchange. Yeah. Right? Yes, they are getting a pause and I'm happy about the pause. And we'll take any wins that we can get.

We got to take a break when we come back. MSNBC has canceled Mehdi Hassan's show. We're going to talk about why we think that is when we return. All right back on TYT, Jank Anna and Lafayette Herring. Thank you for joining Lafayette. We appreciate you. TYT.com slash join. Benjamin Memorial, thank you for gifting a member. And N Bronco, thank you for gifting five. Guys are all American heroes. We do the show with you guys.

Thank you. Anna. Big news over at MSNBC, which is rare. So let's do it. We are nearly six weeks into this bombing campaign and ground invasion. The Gaza Health Ministry says Israel has killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza, including a record number of children. Let me finish my question.

Let me finish my question. No, but you have to, you can't say that. No, but you have to say the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza, please. I have to say what you asked me to say. The man you just heard from, the host of that show is Medi Hassan. And just this morning, it was announced by MSNBC that his show will be canceled. The Medi Hassan show will no longer air over the weekends. Now, the network is announcing a major weekend overhaul for the network.

So let's get into those details. Now, MSNBC says that they will be debuting a new ensemble program that will air weekend mornings. The changes will take effect on January 13th, and this will alter almost every hour of their weekend programming, where MSNBC has in fact struggled to draw the ratings that they need to draw for years. Now, the new show, the weekend, is billed as a politics and Washington-focused program. It will be hosted from Washington, D.C. by MSNBC anchors Alicia Menendez, Simone Sanders, Townsendez, Simone Sanders, Townsend, Michael Steele, who used to be the head of the Republican National Committee, by the way, on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 to 10 a.m. Eastern time. Now, both Sanders Townsend and Menendez

will be leaving their weekend programs. Like, whatever they're hosting right now, that's gonna end so they can do this new show with the ensemble crew. Now, other shifts include Jonathan Capehart's show to 6 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday and Sunday. Who cares? Honestly, I don't care. I don't even know who these hosts are. No one watches these people. The heart of this story is, why did they do away with Medi Hassan? Is it because he is aggressive in the way that he balances the ongoing war in Gaza?

And when I say balances, I mean, for the most part, in American corporate media, it's pretty one-sided on behalf of the Israeli government, but Medi Hassan is much more balanced and actually provides the perspective of Palestinians, especially in this war, dealing with the bombardments, dealing with the, you know, block and humanitarian aid and fuel getting into the Gaza Strip. And so there are a lot of people out there speculating that he was let go for those reasons. But I actually in this particular case disagree with them, and I'll explain why in just a moment, Jenk? Yeah, I think there are three different issues.

One is the fact that he was aggressively defending Palestinians, and we'll get into that, and it might be the most minor of the three. It might be, we'll talk about it. The second is that he was a progressive, and he was pretty much the only progressive on cable news at all, and so I thought, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. But the third reason I think is the most, the one that I think is the most relevant. And the reason that they made the decision, which is he aggressively challenged the guests. And on cable news, they hate that because they're worried about losing access to guests.

And in fact, now, some of you might remember, I had a similar situation at MSNBC. And when, now in my case, I did not take the job. Many agreed to continue as a contributor. or when they offered me a weekend job, I said, no, thank you. And then the head of MSNBC at the time, Phil Griffin, when talking to the New York Times, I don't know why he admitted this, but he admitted Jank was causing us trouble in getting guests for the network because he was so tough on the guests that he was interviewing. I mean, people really do like mediocre, lukewarm interviews where there's really no genuine exchange of ideas.

So I think they were right to do so, Jank. I think they were right to do so. But it's important that you understand that, both so that you understand the full picture of why Medi Hassan was, at least his show was canceled. Because it isn't so much about Medi Hassan as it is about cable news overall and television overall. It's that's a window into how they make decisions.

And that's why if you've ever wondered, why is everybody on TV so vanilla? Like Ryan's like going non-news, non-political, like Ryan Seacrest, most vanilla guy you've ever seen in your life. Like you go down the list, they're all vanilla, Anderson Cooper, et cetera, wolf blitzer, robots, fake plastic. This is exactly the, like, and sometimes they have good moments. And then you'll be like, hey, Anderson Cooper cried during Hurricane Katrina. He was human for a second. And then people were like, wow, oh my God, humanity, right? But the reason they don't want the humanity and they want fake plastic robots is because if you show emotion or you actually aggressively

challenge the powerful, that is going to cause a lot of problems. You know, later in the show today, we're going to talk about the whole Elon Musk, X, advertiser debacle that just keeps playing out over and over again. But I think that the two stories are actually connected, right? Because it is definitely true that advertisers want advertisement friendly programming. And that typically means super boring, nothing controversial, no passion. And let's also keep it real, media companies are owned by massive corporate conglomerates. And so when the corporations own the media, you're not going to get hard hitting muckraking journalists or journalism.

And so look, let's be completely open, honest, and balanced with the story because the fact of the matter is, you know, you look at Metti Hassan's ratings over the weekends when his show would air, not great ratings, right? But let's also be honest and fair in that none of the shows did well, ratings wise. Yep. The other thing to keep in mind is, I know that there are a lot of people speculating that they let him go because of his views on this ongoing war in Gaza, that they want to silence Muslim hosts on this network. But that's not true. Two people familiar with the move, which MSNBC privately announced to staff Thursday morning, told Seema 4 that Hassan will become an on-camera analyst and fill-in host. The network plans to expand host, Iman Moyaldeen, his weekend programming to two hours to replace Hassan show.

So his show is going to go from one hour to two hours over the weekend, and that will take place during the time that Medi Hassan show would usually air. If you're unfamiliar with this host, as to be quite frank, I was unfamiliar with him. He is an Egyptian-born political commentator who is also critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians. So he will now have a total broadcast time of four hours over the course of the weekend rather than just two hours. I think the anti-Muslim things mixed. So on the one hand, when the war broke out between Israel and Gaza, it's not really a war. I mean, it's just Hamas did a terrible terrorist attack, and then Israel obliterated Gaza. Gaza has no ability to conduct a war.

Anyways, when that happened, all of a sudden, the three Muslim hosts on MSNBC, including Ali Valshi, Medellin, were nowhere to be found. And so people were like, oh, that's kind of curious. Now, on the other hand, you have to give MSNBC credit for having three Muslim hosts. So that's a hell of the thing. I was on there before. So, and I don't know that they even knew that I was Muslim, but still you give credit where credit is, dude.

When you look at the ratings of Medi Hassan, like people say, oh, he had bad ratings. Now wait a minute, the entire weekend is a disaster zone at MSNBC. Yeah, weekend programming. Like who sits around and watches cable news programming over the weekend? 70 year olds, I'm sorry, but that's just, I'm just. It's a literal fact, okay? So- You gotta go birdwatching, do something fun. Yeah, and 70-year-olds also do that.

Okay, but anyways, so when I looked at his overall ratings, they're like, oh, he's lower than Rachel Maddo and Chris Hayes. Of course they have prime time shows on the weakest, and you get a sense of if they're trying to bury a guy based on how they leak his ratings. So I'll give you my example. By the time that MSNBC and I had the conflict, it was June of that year, and I had the highest ratings they had ever gotten in that time period. But when they started leaking for the press, they're like, Jenks, numbers in January were bad. January? We're in June. Okay, they had to

go back six months to find bad numbers because it isn't about the numbers, right? And so both for me and Medea San, it's a complicated issue. In my case, me being Muslim, I had nothing to do with it, right? It was more about access to the guess. It was about being progressive and challenging Democrats, et cetera. Medea Hassan, a lot of similar issues, progressive, challenges, guests. So that's the thing that they care more about. And there's two things. One is the advertisers that Anna already mentioned.

The second is, remember guys, they're giant multibillion-dollar corporations that oftentimes need permission from the government to do certain things, like mergers. Comcast couldn't have bought MSNBC if they didn't get government permission. So a lot of times they have to kiss the government's ass because it serves their businesses. interests. Before Comcast, GE owned MSNBC. And at the time, MSNBC cheer led for the Iraq war even more than Fox News did, why GE was a giant defense contractor. So there are these business interests that they never, ever talk about on air, because that reveals the game a little bit. And you'll find out about the game when they do things like this.

And look, there's a difference between the kind of viewership Mehdi Hassan's weekend show on MSNBC would get versus how widely viewed the clips that were posted online from his show. Like it was, they would go viral oftentimes, right? So there's a difference between the two audiences. And so online audiences want raw, authentic, real analysis, real commentary, they want honesty. Whereas, you know, look, I just think that cable television is a dying form of media. I think it's pretty clear at this point. If anything, The benefit of cable news is they do have these interviews time to time that happen to be useful for our purposes because we're able to hear what some of these various individuals in various positions of power have to say about big news stories of the day. But aside from that, I mean, you don't go to CNN, MSNBC, and I don't think anyone should go to Fox News either, like for analysis, but I know a lot of people do trust Fox News and what the hosts say there, which is unfortunate.

When it comes to CNN and MSNBC, they've been trying to catch up to Fox News forever. And it's not going to happen. I just don't think it is. See, that's the other difference between Medi Hassan and, for example, the two other Muslim hosts, which I got no problems with. They're good folks. And they do interesting reporting and oftentimes helpful, right? But Medi Hassan is, he's, for lack of a better word, more passionate, right?

And his passion comes just through his questions, right? It's different than what we do. We do a lot of commentary, but the reason that they go viral is because he asks good, tough questions, which the general population loves, but executives don't like for all the reasons that we've stated here. So every time you see, and whereas Veschi, and again, no disrespect to the other two, they don't go viral that often. And that's because they're, they just have a different style. Like Ali Velschie's been on cable news forever, and he's got a more calm, a little bit more vanilla style, let's be honest, right? So that's the fact that he's Muslim doesn't bother them at all because he does the style that they are okay with. But again, those two guys are good guys and they do present the Palestinian or Muslim perspective from time to time.

And we appreciate that. So no disrespect of them. But when Medi Hassan does it in a way that grabs a lot of attention, it becomes a bigger problem. And then here he, and we showed you that clip in the beginning where he's super aggressively challenging and Israeli official. Well, then Israeli officials probably went back to MSNBC, and this is really important. And NBC, which they're connected, and NBC is bigger, and said, hey, I don't know if we can work with you guys, because that is what happens behind the scenes. And it's not just about Israel guys, don't take it the wrong way.

American government officials do that more than anyone else. And so that's what creates a pressure that then leads them to doing this kind of action. All right, we're gonna take a break. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we've got a verbal scuffle that unfolded between two Republicans in the House. So we'll get to that story and more when we return. Don't miss it. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more

by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.