The Young Turks - Hot Air

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Chinese balloons apparently flew over the U.S. 3 times during Donald Trump’s presidency. The Young Turks interview Mark Banston. Koch network is doing its best to move on from Donald Trump. A Florida congressman wants to cut the snap program. A Turkish earthquake kills over 2,000 citizens. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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, well, the young terms, Thank you, Granite and Chris Mary with you guys.

A hell of a day, weird day. A lot of interesting stories in the news today. Luckily, we're going to cover them all here for you guys, including an interview with the lawyer who successfully sued Alex Jones. He's back, and we got a fun, interesting interview with him in just a couple minutes. All right, Casper, let's start the festivities. We begin with balloons. And the message they were trying to send is what they believe internally, and that is that the United States is a once great superpower that's hollowed out, that's in decline. And the message they're trying to send the world is, look, these guys can't even do anything about a balloon.

Oh, you mean the balloon that just got destroyed by a missile strike that was ordered by Joe Biden, Marco? That balloon, the balloon we see right next to you? Flying over U.S. airspace, how can you possibly count on them if something were to happen in the Indo-Pacific region? But the balloon was shot out of the sky. What do you mean? I mean, the balloon was taken down. Yeah, and I think they understood that ultimately that would probably be what could happen. And then they would make this other statement about, oh, the U.S. is overreacting. It's just a weather. balloon, look how silly they got. The Pentagon did in fact shoot down the Chinese surveillance balloon over the weekend as it

traveled off the coast of South Carolina. And we're also learning that there were three similar Chinese surveillance balloons that traversed in the United States during the Trump administration. But of course, that didn't stop the Republican Party from politicizing the situation with the most recent Chinese surveillance balloon, all while pretending like none of this happened during the Trump administration. Now, an official revealed during a briefing on Saturday this past weekend that the U.S. was aware of three other instances during the prior administration, meaning during Trump's administration, and one instance earlier in the Biden administration.

Now, PRC, this is from the briefing itself, People's Republic of China, government surveillance balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time, meaning the latest surveillance balloon was hovering above the United States, mainland United States for the longest period of time. We spoke directly with Chinese officials through multiple channels, but rather than address their intrusion into our airspace, the PRC put out an explanation that lacked any credibility. Now, again, this not only did nothing to deter Republicans from going after Biden specifically,

but it also set Trump off. Wait before we get to Trump's statement or response to all of this. But, Jank, I wanted to give you a chance to jump in on this balloon situation. Yeah, so there's all these flights of hand and hard to sometimes see things that are in plain sight. So if you've ever seen the video of the gorilla crossing the basketball court and you don't see him because you're looking at the dribbler, this is exactly like that. Marco Rubio is, well, similar to that, Marco Rubio is sitting there with the balloon getting shot down right next to him on video. And he's like, they can't even shoot down a balloon. Okay, if you said that before time, which I had concerns about, I'll get back to you in a second. Okay, that's one thing.

But after they've shot it down, nope, still go with the talking point. Yep. Doesn't matter what reality is, because we're they're Republicans. So the second illusion that you miss, even though now when you look back at it, you'll go, oh my God, you're right, is the size of Marco Rubio's ears. I had never noticed them before. I don't think. They just keep on growing. No, it is, it is stunning how large those ears are. Okay. Okay, that, that shot's okay. But in the, in the video, you'll see. You can rewind this video. Anyway, he looks very young, but he's up there in age. And I don't know if this is true, but I've read that as you age, your ears keep growing,

even though your body stops growing. Really? Well, my God, Marco Rubio must be 110. Okay, those things are gigantic. All right, back to reality, back to the things that matter. So number one, guys, I love the Republican statements on, that definitely didn't happen under Trump, okay? and then Marco Rubio was like, it happened, but for a shorter period of time.

So, well, okay, first, let's sort out. Did it happen and it was short or did it not happen at all? Because Pompeo and Trump were swearing up and down, oh, you're never heard of that. You'll get the statement and say. But it's not just Trump, it's Pompeo who's the secretary of state, et cetera. Meanwhile, other Republicans are like short, really short periods of time. They don't know. It's two different excuses and they didn't bother coordinating.

They're hilarious. That second rule only applies to food, and even in that case, it's not real, okay? Okay, as the substance of it, look, I partly took this for me, I don't mean to throw you under the bus, but $800 billion in defense spending every year and we can't shoot down a balloon over the mainland. No, that was a great point. You're not throwing me under the bus by repeating my great point, which I told you off air, but you should give me credit for making that great point initially. I was trying. That's what I was trying to do. Anyway, so, but it turns out, and now to me, when I heard that they shot it out of the air, I thought, okay, what's critical is where did they shoot it out, okay? Because if it was still overland, then their original excuse of, well,

it's overland and it's the size of three buses and we don't want it to fall and hurt anyone, turns out was BS and Biden panicked. And it's like, oh, Fox News talking about it too much. Just shoot it down over Ohio for the best, right? But no, it turns out, no, they were consistent throughout, they waited till it was over the Atlantic Ocean and then shot it down so it didn't hurt anyone. So you know what? Turns out, like, it's amazing the sorry state of the Republican Party because the Pentagon lies less than they do. No, look, everybody lies. Everybody's full of it, right? And regardless of what the Biden administration and the Pentagon under the leadership of the Biden administration did, the Republican Party was going to politicize this.

Billion because they want to do anything other than govern the country. Okay, anything other than actually working toward policies that would benefit the very constituents who elected them into office in the first place. Look, I don't know what the answer is. Okay, China has an interest in spying on us. The United States has an interest in spying on China. I'm sure we do it to China. I'm sure we do it to all sorts of countries all throughout the world, okay? I don't know what what the solution is. to begin with. Well, I have a slightly different question because it's possible that we're not monitoring every square inch of the Pacific Ocean. Maybe we should. And then it crosses over

into the mainland. But at that point, my question becomes, all right, what's our standard going forward? Is it the minute it gets over a little bit of land? Well, that's it. We just got to let it go across the entire country, right? Is that our only option? And maybe because this is a relatively new phenomenon, that is our only option. But they should come up with the plan B. Okay, but let me say one other thing, not to minimize the seriousness of a foreign country spying on us, but I'm going to minimize the seriousness of the foreign country spying on us in this context, because really, this is the best surveillance technique the Chinese can come up with. I didn't mean to dehumanize Chinese people by calling them the Chinese. I'm sorry to

the associated press and to everyone else who's offended by the use of the in this context. No, But seriously, the size of three buses, it's bright white, just hovering above the United States. Like, really, that's, that's their best surveillance. And they put that old Andy Rooney looking dude inside. And that I thought was like weird, needless. It's a reference to up the movie. Oh. Okay. So first of all, look, I thought a very similar thing. I thought, this thing is so gigantic. It's slightly smaller than Marco Rubio's ears.

Okay, and so you can roll the entire B roll over me if you want the video. So you can see Rubio's ears again. Okay, so, but no, I'm like, wait, the Chinese don't have satellites that can spy on us, way more effective. No, no, no, no, take the entirety. I want the ears to be larger. Roll it over me, not even to the side of me, okay? Okay, so they don't want anything better than sending a freaking balloon.

Why don't you send a kite along with it? And then I'm always amused by our full outrage. Like, there's gambling in this establishment. There's spying in this establishment between these two countries as if we don't spy on China. Of course we spy on China. In fact, I hope we're spying on China. Are we like, oh, no, no, that wouldn't be cool, guys. And then we send like outrage letters to them like, we caught your balloon, okay?

And you've been a naughty, naughty government spying in on us. And we're pure as a driven snow. And so, of course, we wouldn't do that. By the way, before we get to the ultimate nonsense of Donald Trump, the penultimate thing is, guys, you know what the conclusion is? We both do it to each other. They got caught in this case. I don't know if we shot it down too early or too late.

But all of this is a distraction because at the end of the day, none of your wages went up and you still don't have help. That's, thank you. That's the only point, really. Okay? Look, I don't, I would like to be spying on a little more covertly. Okay, like if you're gonna spy on us, at least have the decency to do so in a more secretive way. Because I don't like seeing that you're spying on us, right?

That really offends me. Now, I would prefer there was no spying happening at all, but of course the spying happens. The other thing I wanted to just go back to, circle back to, if you will, is Donald Trump's reaction to this news from the Pentagon that there were three instances during his administration where there was a similar surveillance balloon by the Chinese. He says, now they are putting out that a balloon, not a three, three, balloon was put up by China during the Trump administration in order to take the heat off the slow moving Biden fools. China had too much respect for Trump, in quotation marks, weirdly, for this to have happened and it never did just fake disinformation. If it's fake disinformation, does it mean that it's accurate information? I never thought of that. That's another good point.

Score one more for Casper. All right, my point here is like, one of my favorite nonsense things that people take seriously is, they would have too much respect for Donald Trump. Yeah, that's how countries work. No, seriously, Xi Jinping is like, you know, we really wanted to spy on the United States for our own self-interest, but Trump was in charge and we're like, respectable guy, we decided against it. Yeah, they're like, oh, we were going to compete with America viciously. in every economic way and take most of your jobs from you and a lot of your industries.

But we had too much respect for Donald J. Trump. But people like, they're like, oh, did he? Does China respect Biden? And it has nothing to do with respect. It has everything to do with them executing their policies that they would have done no matter what. Please stop being laughable. Finally, just a few other Republican lawmakers that are worthy of being dunked on beginning with Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who went on Fox News to blame the Trump-era balloons on Democrats.

Of course. What about this contention that these balloons have gone over the U.S. or some portion of the U.S. under previous administrations, and they didn't shoot it down that we know of? So I've spoken to a lot of former Trump administration officials. They say they're not aware of anything like this happening during their administration. It's possible maybe that it happened first during the Obama administration, and the military was told at the time that this is no big deal, and they shouldn't raise the alarm bells on it. We need to get answers to that as well, though. I think some may be conflating what Lucas just reported, you know, balloons floating within the 12-mile exclusionary zones of places like Hawaii or Guam, and a spy balloon going all across the middle of the country. Those are two very different circumstances. Maybe what's even more worrisome is, one, that our senior military know about these balloons in the past and not inform their civilian superiors.

He just floated a theory that has absolutely no evidence behind it. I mean, maybe there were spy balloons during Obama's administration. Maybe. I mean, no one said that there weren't. Look, I'm nearly positive as started under Eisenhower. And so, as in how you guys might remember, is a Republican. And so, ah, got you. Look, guys, again, like, when I get through Republican statements, I either read them just

for laughs, like, oh, there's going to be good. Or just, like, a lot of times I just will skip over them. Why? These days, they have almost no chance of being true or sensible, where you go, oh, interesting counterpoint. I used to say that back in the day. I haven't said that about a Republican point in at least a decade, right? So of course they're saying, oh, it was under Trump, you're going to wear three times as many?

Yeah, how about the ones that they're better? Oh, good counterpoint, the ones that didn't exist. Okay. Why does everything immediately need to devolve into a bipartisan issue, right? Yeah, or a partisan issue. I'm sorry, a partisan issue, exactly. It's just, it doesn't matter, the balloon is gone, we need to have a plan. moving forward to deal with similar balloon situations, okay?

Here, I'll start a conspiracy theory. Let's see if the internet actually picks it up and the right wing believes it. I heard that the Chinese balloon had let's go Brandon on it in big markers, crayons and markers, okay, said, let's go branded. You know why? Not enough respect for Joey Biden. That was the problem. Okay, so let's see if it takes off on the right wing.

We'll see, we'll see. All right, well, we're going to take a brief break. When we come back, Mark Bankston, the attorney representing the Sandy Hook families who were defamed by Alex Jones joins us to shed some light on how it is that we were able to read some text message exchanges between Alex Jones and some of his associates. Come right back. All right, back on TYT, Jen and Anna with you guys.

Also, Maureen Cunningham. Maureen just joined. You're awesome. You could do likewise by hitting the join button below the video on YouTube or going to tyt.com slash join. Very logical. Casper. All right.

Well, for those of you who tuned in, last week we shared some details about the text messages that Alex Jones had exchanged with various associates and even members of. of his own family, like his wife. In those messages, we learned that Jones is a rather sad, lonely, and paranoid man who even employed spies to keep tabs on his wife, who he suspected of cheating on him, even though he himself was having an affair. But how did we get a hold of these text messages to begin with?

Joining us now to explain just that is Mark Bankston, who served as the attorney for several families who lost their children in the Sandy Hook shooting and were later defamed by Alex Jones as crisis actors. He helped those families win a pretty sizable, sizable amount in damages. And he's been on the show before. Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to come speak with us again. Absolutely. It's good to be back. So I wanted to start off by just having you walk us through how these text messages ultimately became public in the first place. Sure, sure. You know, you and Sikwulf know that I'm not a big fan of doing media, doing interviews, getting on the cable shows, all that. But I wanted to come talk to you all, mainly

so that I could make sure that the record is clear over exactly how this happened, right? How these messages became public, because it is not something that we expected. It's a really, it's an astonishing story to me. As many of your viewers know, at the time of trial shortly before, these messages were were accidentally and you know unintentionally produced to us and at that time we even brought it to the attention of defense counsel we think that these have been you know inadvertently produced and he was so you know could have at that point taken action to protect them and did not and that of course is how they ended up being used at trial but at the conclusion of the trial the judge in that case gave the defense the opportunity to do mark all of those text messages

confidential or anyone that they thought would be private and needed to be sealed and then And then at some point in the later, that could be ruled on by the court. They didn't do that. And so when we had a motion just last week that was on the subject of these text messages, we filed a copy, an entire archive of those text messages. Now, with redaction, certain things were taken out, things about his children, explicit images, things of his health care providers, things like that. But we filed that.

And we didn't have any obligation to protect any of that when we did it. But nonetheless, I approached Mr. Jones's lawyers, and I did this on three separate occasions, both over the phone and in writing, to tell them that these are being filed and that if they needed to, they could go get an order from the court to seal, to have them temporarily sealed until the court could sometime later ruled on what should or shouldn't be public. And we told them we didn't oppose this. We brought it to their attention three times. They rebuked us all three times. And so for whatever reason, Mr. Jones's attorneys chose not to seek a ceiling order, not to have all of this looked at by the court, and it just allowed it to enter the public domain.

Now, we had already shared those text messages or a good portion of them anyway with the Southern Poverty Law Center to help consult with us, to help understand what the message is contained, and so they could use them for their own research internal purposes. But that was all not for publication. But when Jones's lawyers failed to take any steps to protect those, documents yet again, there was nothing that could be done. The Southern Poverty Law Center is totally free to report on those at the moment they became public record. This should have happened where it was brought before the court. And that's the way I would have liked to see it happen. But unfortunately, again, there's no accounting for the steps that Jones's lawyers take. There's no explaining what they do. And in this case, they allowed them to enter the public record,

even though we warned them several times that if they don't take action, these will enter the media. And apparently they were fine with them. Yeah. Mark, I think we might have just done something on precedent in American legal history where you wish your opposing counsel was more competent. Okay. But I mean, there's been a running theme in this case, Inc, that's for sure. Yeah.

And so with Alex Jones picking incompetent lawyers, a shocking twist. This has all been revealed now. and we see, as Alex Jones put it, the black hole that he's in. But there's a different kind of black hole that I'm interested in, which is the one where he's likely to bury the money. So what I think a lot of us are intensely curious about is, can he effectively hide the money or not? Because, you know, you watch TV and they always hide the money.

You know, and sometimes you see stories about international bankers, et cetera, and they always hide the money. On the other hand, Alex Jones is deeply incompetent. So maybe they'll accidentally send that to you as well. But how do you track down the money and make sure that you get what is owed to families? Well, the good thing in this case is we don't have to do it alone. Jones was forced to make the decision to put himself into personal bankruptcy. As a result, there's now a bankruptcy court overseeing everything.

And I'm sure your viewers know there have been plenty of stories over the past few years where pretty bad defendants. have gotten into bankruptcy court and walk away Scott free. You know, we've all been following this stuff with Purdue Pharma, with Johnson and Johnson and the baby powder. And they think that they can just skip out on their bills that way. And some of them have been very effective. But as you note, Alex Jones is a very different, maybe less sophisticated defendant.

And now we have the help of the United States trustee and a bankruptcy court to really do a thorough examination of what his real assets are. And, you know, if he plays around like he's, did in the trial court, it's not going to go well for him. Bankruptcy court is a very dangerous place to be for somebody who's not honest about all their assets. So we're very confident in the bankruptcy process and how that works. It's difficult to know right now exactly how all this is going to end. But I do know that if he makes steps to hide significant assets, he's going to have a bad time in the bankruptcy court. So that process is going to be going on over the next three to four

months and, you know, the public can follow along and see all the filings. And we'll see what he does. We'll see if he's finally honest about what is actually there in the Info Wars coffers. I'm curious. Are there going to be any potential consequences for his lawyers and the insane incompetence they've demonstrated in this case? I mean, especially in terms of representing their client and, you know, protecting his best interests. Not that I'm personally concerned about his best interest, but I mean, he hired counsel and they they're clearly so incompetent that they have all this, they allowed all this private information about him to go out into the public. Well, you know, and I want to be careful that I don't just go

ahead and call them incompetent for doing that because maybe they had their reasons, right? They certainly knew it was an opportunity they could take. I brought it to their attention multiple times. And so maybe they had their reason. So I don't know. But I do know that over the entire course of this case, there has been just flagrant abuse of the judicial process. And so far, that has only meant consequences for Jones. So far that has only meant that he has to pay the plaintiff's attorney's fees. And as you might know, I've already collected over a million dollars in attorney's fees from Jones for the things that him and his lawyers have done in this case.

But recently, you're right that that has turned to the attorneys. We had filed two different motions for sanctions against two different of his attorneys. And Dino Renal, who represented him at trial, and Eric Taub, one of his corporate attorneys. Right now, the court has already granted sanctions against, against Andino Raynaul and awarded us all of our fees for the bankruptcy court that we were forced to go to in April. Then later this month on February 22nd, your viewers can tune in live if they could go to the YouTube page for the 459th district court. And they'll be able to see a hearing on Jones's corporate lawyers where we are alleging that they dishonestly misled the court about Jones's corporate organization. And we're going to seek fees from them as well. So at this point, you know, so many lawyers have bounced in and out.

He's had over a dozen different lawyers in the Texas litigation. And each one of them is learning. It was a bad idea to tie yourself to somebody like Alex Jones for money. And some of these attorneys finally might pay some consequences for these actions. So we already have one award against one of his attorneys. We're hoping to make that another award against another one of his attorneys to hopefully send a message to the attorneys who aided this. Because not all of this was Mr. Jones's fault. This lawsuit has been unprecedented in terms of the shenan.

that have gone on in. And not all of that, you can lay at Mr. Jones's doorsteps. Some of that goes to his lawyers. And hopefully we'll be able to do something about that. And I just want to fill the audience in on one of his other lawyers, Norman Patis, who represents him in Connecticut, I believe. He was suspended earlier this year for sharing sensitive records about the Sandy Hook families, you know, with other lawyers who are not at all associated with the case.

That included some confidential medical records of the family members of the Sandy Hook victims. And so his license has been suspended by a judge for six months as a result of that. So this isn't a question about one attorney or another attorney. I mean, it seems like this is a trend in terms of the council representing Alex Jones in these suits. Jake, did you want to jump in? Yeah, so I wanted to ask back to bankruptcy court because you said it's a dangerous place to lie. Look, the reason we're seeing the lawyers and Alex Jones in trouble is because it's one lie after another after another and lawyers are not allowed to lie. I know it sounds funny, but to the layman, but in court, you're definitely not supposed to lie and that could have some consequences for your career, et cetera, with the bar.

And so that's why it's dangerous to take on a client like Alex Jones or Donald Trump who insist that their counsel lie on their behalf. And Donald Trump's lawyers are having the same issues. But back to bankruptcy court, why is it dangerous? Because if you're trying to hide your money, Mark, I would imagine that you would, especially guys like that who don't seem to have any moral bounds, would just keep lying and lying and hiding and hiding and hiding until they could find every crumb from it, right? Is there any criminal consequences or what happens if they catch you in these lies since your whole point is to hide as much as you can anyway?

Right, right. And I mean, the real answer there is the game has changed, is that when When we were down in the state court litigation and the underlying lawsuit, Jones did disobey the court's orders as far as turning over his information about assets. He has already obstructed that way. And there he had to pay a civil penalty. He had to pay attorney's fees for all the time he wasted. But now that we've gone to bankruptcy court, if you fail to disclose assets, if in your filings to the bankruptcy court, you have made false statements or mislead the court about

what your assets is, that is a criminal offense. criminal consequences can get involved in a bankruptcy court. It is not a place to play around with. The other problem that Jones obviously faces is when you have 12 lawyers in the underlying litigation and more lawyers in the bankruptcy litigation, if you do want to hide things, if you do want to make misleading statements, it gets hard to keep the story straight between everybody. It's very easy for one person like Jones to lie.

It's very difficult for 15 people to do. And so that's a dangerous thing for them to do. I actually now in this process, we have seen new lawyers come aboard who are long-time bankruptcy professionals who are in front of that court a lot. And I tend to think most of those new lawyers who have been brought into this are not going to risk their reputation in careers in front of that bankruptcy judge. Again, though, everything in this case has been unpredictable. If there really is some malfeasance going on, if there is some hiding of assets, we are going to be aggressive about it. We are going to track that down. And we will make people pay consequences for that.

I can tell you that not just myself, but the attorneys for the other families up in Connecticut, we are a united front on this and we are definitely going to make sure that we are not going to allow Mr. Jones to just slip out of this without consequence. This bankruptcy court is a new game for him. Mark, thank you so much for the work you do and thank you for being so generous with your time. I hope you come back soon to fill us in with any updates that you might learn about the bankruptcy proceedings and all of that. But again, thank you for coming on.

Absolutely. I hope to be returning with some really good and positive news soon. Us too. Yep, great. And now that I know bankruptcy court can lead to criminal consequences, that's already pretty good news. The chance of Alex O's not lying during those proceedings is near zero. Agreed. All right.

Well, let's move on to some other news of the day, including what billionaire Coke donors have to say about Donald Trump. battle her former boss with a Republican nomination. She'll be the first, but definitely not the last to mount a challenge. And Trump, of course, is not a fan of anyone who dares to run against him in the Republican primary. Get a load of what he had to say about Nikki Haley in a recent interview. You can, of course, expect him to be the misogynist that he is. Let's watch. To Trump, let's just say he isn't too happy about it. You know, she said numerous times, I put it up, actually, that I would never run about president runs.

He was a great president, et cetera, et cetera. She said that numerous times, but she's a very ambitious person. She just couldn't stay in the seat. I said, you know what, Nick, if you want to run, you go ahead and run. Nikki suffers from something that's a very tough thing to suffer from. She's overly ambitious. Ah, those women, they should just stay in. their seats, they're so overly ambitious. Now of course, Donald Trump doesn't like that anyone

would challenge him in the Republican primaries, which is why he lashes out at everyone, including Nikki Haley, including Ron DeSantis, who, you know, hasn't announced that he's going to run. There are rumors that he's thinking about running. But Trump is also probably concerned about the fact that the billionaire donors who had supported him previously are no longer interested in supporting him and are planning on putting their funding behind a Republican Challenger. And we know that for sure, thanks to a memo that was leaked by the Coke Donor Network. And what did that memo say? Well, Emily Seidel, who serves as the chief executive for Americans for Prosperity, authored the memo, and here's what it said. The Republican Party

is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core American principles. And the American people are rejecting them. The Democrats are responding with policies that also go against our core American principles. One of the lessons learned from primary campaigns in the 2022 midterm election cycle, the memo says, in boldface, is that the loudest voice in each political party sets the tone for the entire election, which of course implies that they're referring to Trump here. In a presidential year, that's the presidential candidate. And to write a new chapter for our country, we need to turn the page on the past So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.

The American people have shown that they're ready to move on. And so Americans for Prosperity will help them do that. Now, I just want to note that the Coke donor network lost interest in Trump earlier because of the fact that he engaged in a trade war. Right wingers love free trade because they want to allow businesses to exploit cheap labor and other countries without any type of consequence. So there, there has been a beef going on with these donors and Donald Trump for some time now. But it does show you that the money is definitely leaving Trump and it's headed toward the direction of whichever Republican candidate they prefer. So I don't know if it's going to work, but at least it is a significant sign of the massive

civil war about to unfold in the Republican Party. We think. But remember, they need a candidate and they need a credible candidate. But I want to give you guys a sense of scale here. I want to go to Graphics 4 and 5. Before we do that, though, I like that last sentence they had. They say, the American people have shown that they're ready to move on. So they're going to help them do that. Okay.

In other words, no, no, it's not us. We're doing it for the American people. No, yeah, that's why we're going to give these hundreds of millions of dollars to help the American people come to the conclusion that we're, we should get everything. Okay. Now, there are no good guys in the story. Correct. The Koch brothers are disaster and Trump's a disaster. We'll sort it out at the end, but let me give you the numbers first. Americans for Prosperity Super PACs spent nearly $80 million during the 22 midterm elections, but that is likely just a fraction of the network's overall

spending, much of which was undertaken by nonprofit groups that will not be required to reveal their finances until this fall. And remember, a lot of that is dark money. So, They don't have to reveal where they got it from. Now, obviously, some of it is from Charles Coke, obviously, right? But they actually have a giant collection of the richest people in the country. And, well, the second number will indicate the size of it for you guys, if 80 million during the midterms that we can see with our own eyes, let alone the rest of the iceberg isn't enough.

And then I'll get to who's in the group. The network spent nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone. So guys, that's just the money we know about. And that's a half a billion dollars. And the way they get that is they go to, again, some of the richest people that are all right-wingers. They get them together in Palm Springs, which they just did. And that's why you're hearing about this story.

And in some other fancy places. And they get together and they decide in a, you know, in a council of some sort, okay, I'm going to get to that too in a second. And they go, okay, who shall be the next president? And then they decide. It's pretty gross. And then they put in 500 million or whatever they need. And they overwhelm everyone else. Now with Trump, it's a little different.

Now I say counsel, because I'm taking a jab at the idiots who believe in things like the Council of Zion. And they think, oh, it's Jews. The Koch brothers are not at all Jewish, neither is the great majority of the incredibly wealthy donors here. Guys, it isn't about religion or race. It's about money. Yes, the kingmakers are the ones with the billions. Right. And look, I'm just going to make one quick point about this because I can't help myself.

It is amazing to me, this is a report from the New York Times. It is amazing to me that reporters like Maggie Haberman can note the impact that hundreds of millions of dollars, make on elections in this context, while simultaneously pretending to not understand the corrupting factor of money in politics in our political system in general, right? In this context, she gets it. In any other context, it seems like they're totally blind to it. But there is one thing that unites them. Even this story seem to almost like they don't say, you know, with the New York Times,

they don't ever say like, yay, it's a good thing somebody's fighting Trump, right? They're not going to be unsophisticated like that. But you can see the message in between the lines, they seem to be kind of celebrating that the Koch brothers are going to spend this money against Trump. It's like a big news event, just giant money going against Trump, right? But that does tie them to the rest of their coverage, which is celebrating anyone who has more money. They always call the person with more money the leader in the race. Well, what does that do? That says the person who took the most bribes, the one that is likely the most corrupt, is declared to be the,

leading candidate that you should all consider first and the New York Times and every other outlet right wing and mainstream media do the same exact thing. So that is an implicit endorsement of the one taking the most bribes. Now so which leads us to this great irony here. You've got the guys who actually are like people always try to find the cabal who's secretly running things. Dude, it's not a secret. They meet twice a year at a really fancy hotel, they go to a conference room and decide who our leaders are going to be. And by the way, they brag about being in 200 different races. This isn't just about president. They're picking their, your senators, your congresspeople, your state legislators. Republicans in Kansas start

warning other Republican state legislators saying, when the Koch brothers come for you, they wipe out everyone who doesn't agree with them. Okay, so they're going to wipe out Republicans that are not corrupt as well. So the bottom line is. whoever the Republican nominee is going to be is definitely going to be corrupt. That's what they've always been. The question is, are they going to be personally corrupt like Donald Trump or systemically corrupt like the people, whoever the Coke Industries Network picks, right? And one is going to be corrupt on behalf of the donors, another one is going to be corrupt

on behalf of himself. And that doesn't have to be the case. But with Trump, he's shown a thousand times over. That's exactly what he does, right? So I'm, I hate Trump mainly because he tried to overthrow democracy. That's kind of a big deal, okay, let alone all the other horrible things that he's done. So I would love for him to get eliminated, okay? And then I'll deal with the next monster.

And I don't believe that's stupid saying about, oh, you know, you got to stick with the devil, you know. No. No, I know that guy's the devil. I got to try someone else. And there's not going to be any good Republicans. But as long as they don't try to end democracy, well, we'll fight them. We'll fight them in a general election.

We'll fight him next time, et cetera. So it is strange bedfellows in this case. But what I'm worried about is the mainstream media like they did with Liz Cheney and then eventually Dick Cheney and George W. Bush now saying like, oh, the Cokes and the richest people in the world that buy off all our politicians are fighting Trump, that means they're good guys. And they'll get it show on MSNBC next. No, no, no, no, no, no, they're not good guys. This is organized bribery, and every reporter should be telling you that, and almost none of them do.

When we come back from the break, we'll introduce you to the austerity bros. Come right back. I'm back on TYT, Jankana, with you guys. Tricia Briggs gifted a membership on YouTube for the Young Turks because she's lovely and awesome. We appreciate you. Casper. Let's do the next story.

I was a part of it when George W. Bush proposed Social Security reform in 2005. The time has come for us to have the kind of leadership that says to everyone that's got the same color as me. Nothing's going to change for you. Yeah, but what about people with beautifully chemically altered hair like mine? What happens to me considering I pay into Social Security and should be entitled to those benefits later? He doesn't address that shockingly. But let's hear more from Mike Pence who wants to privatize Social Security. To give younger Americans better choices that would also be better for the country. I think is an idea whose time has come. There's a way back. There are modest reforms

in entitlements that can be done without disadvantaging anybody at the point of the need. And actually, I think the day could come when we could, we can replace the new deal with a better deal. The better deal is privatizing social security and having your retirement savings 100% tied to risk, meaning the stock market, because Social Security is really the only retirement program that guarantees income for people who have retired. And of course, big businesses, the wealthy, want to gut it. They want to privatize it because they don't want to pay taxes in order to keep it funded and well-functioning.

Now, go ahead, Jenk, I just, this is what the Republican Party is. I just hope you guys understand that as they lie to you in your face and pretend like they're not looking to cut social security or privatize social security. They absolutely have been looking at doing so. They will continue persistently fighting to do so. This is who they are. Go ahead, Jim. Yeah. The other thing that you get if you privatize social security is giant, giant Wall Street fees.

Trillions of dollars in fees that will go to the bankers in this country who donate generously to Mike Pence and other politicians. So that's not a little thing. That's the mother load. They've been looking to privatize it so they can get those fees for decades now. And so that's why George W. Bush tried it. And now here they come again. Now, guys, when you hear words like better choices, slight reform, make social security stronger, a better deal. Those are all code words for we're going to cut it. We're going to slash it. Okay. So any, remember, we've talked about this before. for whatever you would have gotten if you got to retire at 65 or these days for most of you 67 right yeah and you're gonna get social security that year whatever the number is for you you will not get it if the number retirement age is 68 if it's 70 you won't get three years worth of payments that you put into and of course they're hoping that a lot of you don't get it that you pass away before then and that way hey we never had to pay you guys even though you paid into it your whole lives, okay?

I mean, this is as offensive a robbery as you could possibly imagine, brought to you by the most fake populace you have ever seen in your life. This Republican Party pretending to be populace is insane. It's hilarious, right? What a joke. And by the way, I mean, let's just note, he was speaking before the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors, okay, so big business. And remember, when it comes to funding Social Security, it's funded through pay.

payroll taxes, which a lot of employers don't want to have to pay. So that's part of the equation as well. And what does Pence want to do for a better model, right? Something better than Social Security. Well, he wants to implement private savings accounts instead of Social Security, which again, Social Security provides guaranteed income that's not tied to risk for our senior citizens. It was a program developed under FDR, and it was a response to the Great Depression. which obviously devastated Americans.

Now, the popular argument that Social Security privatization would provide higher returns for all current and future workers is misleading because it ignores transition costs and differences across programs in the allocation of aggregate and household risk, according to Olivia Mitchell, John Gina Coppilos, and Stephen Zeldis, economists who are actually sympathetic to the idea of privatization. They wrote a paper back in 2000 where they're like, yeah, you know, like the private savings account idea turns out not such a great idea. Yeah, so it increases transition costs. It increases transaction, like not transition, but transaction costs.

And that's the fees that I was telling to you about, to you guys about going to the bankers. Now, the other thing that it does is, as Anna keeps talking about risk, they're saying, oh, don't worry, you're going to get so much more. There's no free lunch. You know the stock market. Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down. And when it goes down, they're going to tell you, oh, now, well, you know, you got a 2% more the other year. But now you're getting 40% less this year because it went down.

Sorry. Yeah. And they're going to say nobody could have seen it coming when in reality, literally every expert sees that coming. Exactly. They're all. So it's frustrating because they're all liars and they're looking to cut all of these programs because they got to create more money to give to the rich.

So there's more. Now, the GOP is also eyeing cuts to Medicare. In fact, it's clear in a new piece of legislation proposed by Republicans in the House, it would roll back some of the provisions in Biden's Inflation Reduction Act that actually lower the costs for Medicare recipients. It was unveiled by freshman Republican, again, Andy Ogles is his name, yeah, from Tennessee. The bill has 20 original co-sponsors and is in. endorsed by several right wing groups, including the Coke funded organization, Americans for

Prosperity, and what is it that they're eyeing specifically from the Inflation Reduction Act? Get a load of this. Initially, Biden had a provision in that bill, in the build back better agenda that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices of all pharmaceutical drugs, okay? With the help of corporate Democrats, Republicans were able to defeat that provision and instead have a more watered down version of it, which allows Medicare to negotiate like a handful of some of the most highly priced pharmaceutical drugs. Well, Republicans can't have that. So that is what they're looking to reverse in their legislation.

The Inflation Reduction Act authorized a $35 per month, $35 per month cap on insulin co-payments for Medicare recipients, as well as an annual $2,000 total limit, on out of pocket drug costs, that would save money for Medicare. And the Republican Party's like, no, we want to reverse that because we want to do right by our pharmaceutical company donors. That's what this is about. Okay, on that one, it's outrageous what they're proposing because the so-called reform that Biden did was pathetic.

And they got nonstop marketing from mainstream media calling it historic. When in reality, it regulates about 10 drugs out of thousands and thousands of drugs. And it doesn't even do that till 2026. It's absurd. It was a fig leave to make it seem like Democrats did something for you and they didn't do anything for you. So now Republicans go in their infinite greed. No, not good enough. We want that 0.01% of drugs that were regulated.

We don't want them regulated. And we want you paying higher prices for it. You know why they do that? Because that is such a politically dumb move to do for a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. tiny percentage of the drug market, right? You had a perfectly good robbery that Joe Biden had set up for you. Exactly. Okay?

But they can't help themselves because there's no refs, no media outlet goes, can you believe that the Republicans are doing this robbery, right? Instead, they make it seem 50-50. Maybe they're looking to improve Medicare by making sure that you pay more. I don't know, I'm going to write it so that you can't tell who's right and who's wrong. So they think, well, there's nobody in charge. There's nobody telling people what outrageous things we're doing. So let's just ask for everything.

And we'll probably get it because Biden loves giving stuff to Republicans. And wall to wall coverage of the Chinese surveillance balloon, of course. But very little coverage on the fact that Republicans in the House proposed legislation that would force elderly people on Medicare in this country to pay far more for pharmaceutical drugs that they need to survive. Now finally, we go to Matt Gates, who says, look, maybe we can't touch social social social. security in Medicare because they're super popular programs, but maybe we should cut funding to other programs, like, you know, programs that children living in poverty desperately need. Let's watch. If you impose work requirements on all means tested entitlement programs for working age people,

not for the disabled, not for seniors, but for working age people, it's a trillion dollars in savings during the 10-year budget window. This is in Medicaid and other. This is in Medicaid and in food stamps. In food stamps. It's discretionary spending. Yeah, those are the biggest. The biggest chunks are from the Obamacare Medicaid expansion to able-bodied adults.

Yes, I keep on that. And to. So, Social Security and Medicare are off the table. But you're saying you're taking Medicaid and other aspects of discretionary spending. If it was Mac Gates, I think that we do need reforms to Social Security and Medicare. I understand politically enough people that's on the table. That's not going to happen now. Medicaid, you don't need to have it.

By the way, Medicaid should not be a sacred cow. Big time. And so it hasn't been. You notice people don't talk about Medicaid. No, it's always when they're talking about Social Security. Wow, what an economic populist wanting to cut funding to things like SNAP, which, by the way, nearly half of the Americans who rely on SNAP benefits or food stamps are children. So you want work requirements for children? I don't like, this is who the Republican Party is.

It's really important for people to understand that. So when you hear their critiques on corporate America, it's never about corporate America fleecing you. It's always about like, we didn't like this positive message corporate America put out about black people. They're so woke, we're so against that. That's not an economic populist. That's called same old, same old in the Republican Party. Let's just keep it real. Yeah, so one of the interesting things of that interaction was how nervous Bannon was.

He kept interrupting Matt Gates and kept saying, I remember, it's not Social Security or Medicare. But if you notice, he said, we're going to do that later. Right. Well, you just tipped your hand anyway. But Ben is a little nervous because he knows that a lot of people watching him are old. That's the great majority of Republican voters. And so they're nervous about Social Security and Medicare.

So he's like, no, no, no, no, Matt, Matt, Matt, don't tell them our plan. That's later, Matt. That's later. When we got them and then we take all the money and we give it to ourselves and to our corporate donors, Matt, later, later. Meanwhile, let's go hit the poor, the middle class, whoever else has got issues. Oh, you know, your family, you couldn't afford insurance, you were on Medicaid, your kid got cancer. Tough luck.

Rob them first, Matt, rob them first. You notice what Matt Gates said? There's a trillion dollars, he said, in savings. That's a trillion dollars that would have gone to people who need it that are poor or yes, sometimes middle. class because I mean Jesus look at minimum wage look at what people get actually get paid you can't live on that right a lot of people that work at Walmart and these other stores get Medicaid and snap right so they're saying a trillion dollars of wealth redistribution but taking it from the people who needed the most

and giving it to the people who need it the least they're gonna take that and they already gave two trillion dollars in tax cuts to the rich under Trump they're planning more tax cuts and where are they gonna get the money they're gonna get from you. And so first they're going to hit these economic ladders. Yep. Then they're going to hit the elderly. These are the most disgusting people on earth. And guys, again, there's all sorts of disinformation all over media. So how do you know? How do you know? Two plus two still equals four. You can look up the plans. And Matt Gates just told you it's going to take a trillion dollars from people who desperately need food stamps, Medicaid. Medicaid's to save their lives. They're

kids lives, right? He's going to take a trillion from them and they're going to give it to the rich. It's in the numbers. It's in the proposals. These people are terrible, terrible human beings. That does it for the first hour of the show. When we come back for the second hour, we'll give you updates on the disastrous earthquake that is impacting the people of Turkey and Syria. Later in the show, we will talk about the fallout from the Grammy Awards, a lot of controversy, a lot of upset people both on the right and the left. We'll talk about why and more when we come back. subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host,

Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.