The Young Turks - How Trump Hid His School Transcripts And PROOF Trump Favored Family In White House

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

Trump really doesn't want anyone to see his school grades. Ivanka Trump was given a security clearance after pressure from her father. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS 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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you.

the young church, shake, you, and her, because Mary Wada, so not only do we have an excellent young tourst for you guys today, but we have an excellent slate of programming on TYT network today. So first, I got a great told you on Trump coming up as a first story, you're gonna love it. Okay, later, Trump's hiding, he's hiding, we're gonna find him. What do you mean he's hiding? He's hiding.

I wish he was hiding. No, you'll see, you'll see, okay? And then the Ilhan Omar controversy, it has erupted now. Presidential candidates are weighing in, Republican and hypocrisy will be exposed. But I have a unique, interesting angle. Oh, I'm not in the mood for your interesting angles today. Oh, I got a lot of them, so sorry, sorry, buckle up for interesting angles. Okay, third hour of the young Turks.

Near Tandon, head of Center for American Paragraph. Okay, so we're gonna have a very interesting Medicare policy discussion there. Should it be Medicare for all or Medicare extra for all? That's their plan. What does that mean? What does that mean? We're gonna find out later on the Young Turks. Don't miss any part of this show, okay?

Then post came where Anna gets redemption and I have extra- Yes. Okay, and I have extra-trip- trippy comments about housing. Okay, relevant, and then wait until you get to the trippy comments. Okay, all right, so that's in the- We're waiting for this all week. Okay, that's the last half hour of the young Turks, that's for members only.

TYT.com slash join to become a member. And then later tonight, a special old school with me, Ida Rodriguez, and Anna Kasparian. Damn, and that just happened. Or it's about to happen. Okay, get all of our shows. We're like a progressive Netflix at t.y.t.com slash join. Fine, you know, try it out for free for a week, t.yt.com slash trial, okay? So we gotta, oh, and on top of all that also in the third hour, the second guess I have is

here come on Jeddah to talk about the madness going on in West Virginia, also regarding Ilhan Omar. All right. Casper, go. All right. During Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight Committee, he made a number of allegations against Donald Trump, including some allegations about how Trump was trying to hide his pretty terrible grades. Take a look. When I say con man, I'm talking about a man who declares himself brilliant, but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the college board to never release his grades or SAT scores.

As I mentioned, I'm giving the committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump's direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump's grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission. The irony wasn't lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades. As you can see in Exhibit 7, Mr. Trump declared, let him show his records after calling President Obama a terrible student. Okay, so we're about to get to some fun Trump videos in just a minute, but following

those allegations and following the disclosure of that letter, a number of the schools that Trump went to have come forward and have confirmed or corroborated what Michael Cohen had to say. So I'm gonna give you an example of some of the former administrators who worked at the New York Military Academy. That was the military academy that Trump was sent to by his father after his father realized that his son is an idiot. So let me give you a statement from Evan Jones, who was the headmaster of this school.

He says, quote, the superintendent of the New York Military Academy came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent wealthy alumni of the school who were Trump's friends and who wanted to keep his record secret. Jeffrey Culverdale said, you need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them. Again, this is Evan Jones, who was a headmaster at the school. All right, let me begin to rip into Donald Trump in the most fun ways imaginable. Now, I told you, I've been saying they released the transcripts from day one, and by day one,

I mean in the primaries, in the Republican primaries back in 2015, 2016, because this guy's a dummy. Now look, that alone is okay, interesting, we shouldn't have an incredibly unintelligent president, but more importantly, he's a spoiled little child. He never earned anything, and he's a pathological liar. And to me, the part that sent me off, and in fact, this goes back years, I said this when I was on MSNBC. When he asked for Obama's transcripts, he didn't believe that he could have been that good a student at Columbia or Harvard.

Well, and there was no reason to believe that when he was the head of the Harvard Law Review. That means he was a fantastic student. But Trump didn't believe it, why? I'll fill in the blanks for you, it's not complicated, because Obama's black. Can I jump in for a second? So I remember Trump making those arguments about Obama, both about his birth certificate and also about his grades. And I dug up one of the videos where he gave him.

gave Obama the option of revealing what his grades were in return for some money. And I got great details on what a baby Trump is in trying to hide his record, so don't miss any of this. All right, let's watch. President Obama is the least transparent president in the history of this country. There's never been anything like it. We know very little about our president. I'm very honored to have gotten him to release his long form versus.

certificate, or whatever it may be. Now, many, many people have questions and very serious questions. I have a deal for the president, a deal that I don't believe he can refuse, and I hope he doesn't. If Barack Obama opens up and gives his college records and applications, and if he gives his passport applications and records, I will give to a charity of his choice, inner city children in Chicago, American Cancer Society, AIDS research, anything he wants, a check immediately for $5 million. Okay, so there's Trump trying to get Obama to release his grades. And remember, he did graduate top of his class.

He was part of the Harvard Law Review. I mean, it's all the evidence that you need. But anyway, go ahead. Okay, I've got a similar challenge for Donald Trump. So let me get to that and then we'll document more of his crying. So a million dollar challenge for Donald Trump, not kidding. So my grades versus your grades at Penn, we both went to Wharton undergrad. So it's a good apples to apples, okay?

And if you release all of your records, your high school grades, which are sure, laughably pathetic, which will show that you never should have even gotten into Fordham. Then release your Fordham grades, which will show you clearly couldn't have transferred into Penn. And then release your Penn grades, which shows that you probably barely graduated with the great help of your dad and all of his millionaire friends. And you release your SAT scores, and you say, okay, you accept my challenge. If you have better grades than me, I'll give you a million dollars.

If you had, if I had better grades at you, you give me a million dollars. If you release all those things and agree to this deal, we'd definitely have a bet. Now, would a million dollars, do I have a million dollars? No, you'll bankrupt me and take everything I have, okay? What are you doing right now? He, okay, I did go for it. Donald Trump, you know how ecstatic maga would be if you bankrupted me ahead of the young Turks, okay? So go for it, let's see if you got better grades than me at Penn, okay?

So you don't, you won't, he has to voluntarily release the transcripts. Not if they get leaked, he has to say, yes, I accept that challenge, release the transcripts, and hey, you're supposed to be really high IQ. One of the things you're known for is being mentally stable, and my grades were good. What are you doing? They weren't great, no, I'm ready. You're crazy. Anna, the chance of Donald Trump, having better grades than anyone, let alone me, is some

Hubbers between 0% and negative 20%. No, no, no. Like, I believe that. I believe that 100%. I'm not worried about comparing grades here. I'm worried about your proposition. Yeah, no, no, that's why I'm making it alluring. I mean, you know how ecstatic maga would be if you just took everything I had?

Oh my God, okay, go for it, go for it, go for it, okay? But he's not going to voluntarily release any of the transcripts because he's an idiot. He got terrible grades because his daddy got him in. He's a spoiled little baby who never earned a thing in his life. So you know what he said, this moron of morons? He said, you know, I heard I was first in my class at Penn. So- What do you mean you heard that? You either are or you're not.

Okay. I want to go to that video. It's video four, we're skipping ahead, but here he is. Before we get to the video though, let me give you some context. He was introducing Mike Pompeo. and talking about Mike Pompeo's credentials and what a great guy he is. And in the middle of that, he felt the need to brag about himself. He entered at 18 and he ended up graduating first in his class.

You know, I heard that rumor a long time ago. I thought it was a rumor about, I don't know, you know, I hear first of it. And I've heard it so many times. I've also heard I was first in my class at the Wharton School of Finance. You heard that, you heard that. I'm pretty sure if you were first, they would have told you. It wouldn't be a rumor. Yeah.

There was a rumor that you graduated from Penn, which is already a grave injustice. And Penn should be mortified for the rest of time that the obvious corruption to let this buffoon graduate from Penn. Yeah, so the Washington Post actually looked into that and they found that Trump's name does not appear on the school's dean's list or on the list of students who received academic honors in the class of 1968. Now, if you never received any academic honors, I'm pretty sure you would have to be. be first in your class. Okay, he's such an obvious liar about the military academy. He said, I did very well under the military system, this is a quote. I became one of the top guys at the whole school.

Well, great, then you could prove it by releasing the transcripts and we'll all be awed and be like, oh my, I didn't know, he was that high IQ. So why did you then, first of all, when Washington Bosnia asked in 2016, so then will you release the transcripts, he said, I'm not letting you look at anything. That's a direct quote. I'm not letting you look at anything, okay? What happened? Why are you panicked?

He says Cohen in like a thug, et cetera, trying to intimidate all these guys. I got a great quote from what Cohen told him later on a related issue. So they said, these grab the record, as Anna told you. They went on to say that it was quote, a paramount interest in securing those records. Well, if you did so well, why is there such a paramount interest in securing the records? And you know what the board wanted, the wealthy board of the military academy? They said, we need you to hand over the transcripts because they're going to burn them. Because if it ever gets out how stupid Donald Trump is, it'll be deeply embarrassing to all of us.

So Jeffrey Koverdale, who was the superintendent at the time, was the individual who hid the records. And he was quoted as saying this. I was given directives, part of which I could follow, but part of which I could not, because he didn't want to hand the records to the individuals demanding it. And that was handing them over to the trustees. I moved them elsewhere on campus where they could not be released. It's the only time I ever moved an alumnus' records. So he says he did that in 2013, and he has no idea where those records are today.

So, this is interesting. They did go to chapter 11 eventually, and I'll tell you how they first asked Trump. That's an awesome story I'll get to one second. But it didn't work, so in 2015 they closed down, but somebody bought it, a Chinese investor. Interesting. Vincent Moe bought it at a bankruptcy auction, and he said he paid off to school's $60 million debt. So presumably, Mo has the record somewhere, he's just got to go find them. He has no religious of Donald Trump.

In fact, that leads us to the last part of this story. So they're in a world of hurt. Part of the reason they're responding to everything that the millionaires and the board wants in such an unusual way. And everyone that was at the school at the time that's quoted in the Washington Post story says this was highly unusual. Normally alumni don't panic and go, oh my God, you gotta get rid of my records because they're so embarrassing.

That's unheard of, unheard of. No one who's got good grades wants to get rid of their transcript. So let's just acknowledge that. Even Magga guys, you know that, you know what a dummy he is. Right now, there's comments going, yeah, well, it's okay, you don't have to be smart to be president, okay? I mean, I was a dummy too, so what? I know. Okay, so dummy, baby, all right, last thing.

So they go to Trump and they're like, and so they're putting pressure on the school, the reason that these guys cooperate, they don't turn over the, for it to, for it to, be burned, right? Or buried or whatever they were going to do with it. But they do put it away, they sequester it from the rest of the records to basically give their assent to this. Why? Because they're about to go bankrupt, right?

And then so they then later turn around and go to Donald Trump and go, hey, we're trying to raise $30 million to save the school, you love the school, okay, can you give us $7 million of the 30, right? Because you're a billionaire and you went to the school and you went to this, blah, right? And he's like, Joe, what's in it for me? They're like, what do you mean? You saved the school, it's a school you went to and you love. He's like, no, what do I get?

What do I get? They're like, oh, I don't, okay, why don't we name a building after you? And then he gave him a bunch of proposals and he's like, this is not a good business deal, okay? And he got mad at them because one of them spilled Diet Coke on his carpet. Okay. I mean, I wouldn't like that either. Okay, but here's my favorite part. So he says no, because I'm not getting enough out of this, okay?

It's supposed to be charity. I know you've never heard of it in your life. But this is the insane, gratuitous thing that he says he does afterwards. He said, has Cohen send him a letter. This is after the transcript thing, this is years after it. Where they come and ask him for the money, he says no. Already he was rude and saying no, like I don't mean he could say no all day long. The way he said it was pretty rude, but who cares, all right?

He has Cohen sent him a letter. Here's what Pizzulo, who was at the school at the time, said. Cohen told us he would love to have enough money to buy the school so he could bulldoze it. Who gets asked for charity and responds like that? Wow, what a monster. What a pathetic little boy who never earned a thing in his life. That's who Donald Trump is. So, we're gonna go to break, and I'm going to quickly create a Patreon account, and

I'd like you guys to donate for my individual media business that I'm gonna start since I might not have a job in, I don't know, a couple days. He personally bankrupts me, okay? Not the Young Turks. Okay. Okay, it's about me. Anyway, Patreon account. All right, I don't think he's gonna release it.

I think that it's so embarrassing for him that he's gone to extreme lengths to bury his records. And it's not just releasing it, I ain't got a billion dollars to give to me. He's got to release it and have better grades than me. Inconceivable. Oh, I totally. No, no, you don't understand. I was wondering why you're panicking. No, God.

There's like a 0% chance he has better grades than me. No, as soon as you offered the million dollars, like I blacked out. I got into Columbia law after going to Penn. No, of course. And I didn't have any daddy to get me in. Oh, okay, okay. The chance of him having better grades than me is less than zero. Great, okay, then great bet or a great deal, I like it.

Art of the deal, art of the deal, listen to the second half of it. Okay, that's right. Man, I was wondering, man, like she does not have much confidence in my grades. No, no, no. It's just that as soon as you mentioned the million dollars, I was like, oh my, my God, and everything else, like I blacked out, couldn't hear anything else. Black it out, gone. Everything slowed down. Fun for everybody.

for everybody. All right, uh, t-y-t.com slash join as well as our Patreon account. Our home of Progresses, baby, we'll be right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-N-F-TR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows.

But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today.

and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. All right, back on a young church, Jenkins Anna with you guys, post-heart attack. So I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, NordVPN. So they keep telling me these scary things as part of, like, honestly promoting them, right? But if they're true, so it's, look, I already have NordVPN, so I'm good, but anyway, they explain that Facebook tracks locations of users who considers, quote, unquote, credible threats. Now that's good for their employees, so if they know your location and if they think you're

a threat, et cetera, they're tracking you. But who else is tracking people based on who they think is a thread? It's madness, don't let them track you at all, okay? NordvPN.com slash TYT protects all of your URLs and they don't know what computer you're using because it looks like you're using a different computer. That's because they shouldn't be spying in on us, okay? By the way, just for a little while longer, TYT fans are getting 75% off and they do change these all the time.

And so check it out at NordvPN.com slash TYT. I also want to let you know that we're going to be covering the Bernie rallies. He's doing a whole bunch of them. Look, if Higginsnooser had giant rallies, we'd cover them too. I just hadn't happened yet, okay? So I, it's not that it's preferential treatment, we're just telling you he has these monster rallies, gonna have one in Council Bluff, Iowa for example. For all these rallies, go to facebook.com slash rebel HQ.

So if you wanna check out last weekend's rallies, they have videos of Bernie speech, Nina Turner, Sean King, Rocana, et cetera. But you could watch live and you could watch the speeches afterwards too. All at Facebook.com slash RebelHQ. That's where we gather up all the progressives. Okay, you guys had a bunch of nice things to say. I just have time for only one. YouTube super chat, P wrote in.

Hey, Jank, Anna, I've loved the show for a while now. I love the work you all do at TYT. Been helping me through some bad times. Stay strong, left is best. Thank you. Really appreciate it. I wanted to read it because it's YouTube super chat, but also because you stay strong too, brother.

We're going to do this together. And November of 2020. It could be, we never know, and it could be disastrous, it could be braced for impact, but it could also be potentially the greatest day of our lives. It could. Let us whisper of a dream, okay? All right, Anna, what's next? Following the New York Times explosive report indicating that Donald Trump pressured his staff

to grant security clearance to Jared Kushner, we now learned that he did the exact same thing for his daughter, Ivanka. So Trump pressured his then chief of staff, John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn, to grant Ivanka security clearance against their recommendations. So of course, the FBI has to do a background check in order to decide whether or not someone should be cleared for security clearance. And so they did a background check and some issues came up. We don't know what those issues are.

However, after concerns were raised by the personnel office following this FBI background check, Trump pushed Kelly and McGahn to make the decision on his daughter and son-in-law's clearances, so it did not appear as if he was tainting the process to favor his family, but then both of them refused. And after that, Trump granted them their security clearances. He's like, I want to make it seem like I'm not granting a favor, but sir, you would be because we're against it. Fine, I'm granting them a favor.

Okay, now we already know about Jared Kushner and stories that were released last week. Now, it turns out it's also Ivanka Trump. They apparently were both such national security dangers that the officials who normally go through that process thought they should not be given clearance. They are not to be trusted with national security information. Wow. And so Trump's like, I don't like that. I want them to get the information whether they're trustworthy or not. And one, it's his family, okay, my God, if-

It would be a huge scandal under any other administration, as it should be, as it should be. So if Obama had daughters who were old enough during his administration to work as his aides, and he pushed through their security clearances, we would be outraged, we would be angry, right? No, I'll give you an even better one. If Hillary Clinton had won, and they flagged Chelsea Clinton as a national, security threat, not a national security threat, that's not fair. As someone who is not trustworthy enough to get clearance. So first of all, there would have been congressional hearings over it. They're like, what is Chelsea, what's Chelsea Clinton doing that she can't even have access

to the lowest level of information, right? There's secret, there's top secret, there's need to know. She can't clear any of the bars, Jesus, does she have a deal with a foreign entity? What's going on here? Did she commit a crime we're not aware of? And if Hillary Clinton was like, I'm overruling Democrats that I personally picked to put into these positions and national security officials are saying, no, despite the fact that they say Chelsea should definitely not get one, she's going to get one anyway.

Boom. I mean, it would have exploded as the biggest issue in her tenure by an order of magnitude. I know that Trump's criminality has overwhelmed us. He does so many maniacal things, so many illegal things that it's hard to keep up. But just willy-nilly giving national securities top secrets to what all of your intelligence folks are saying, do not give it to them. That is extraordinary. What he manages to do so well is remain unapologetic regardless of what potential crimes

he's being accused of, regardless of his own rhetoric, which further divides people based on race or based on socioeconomic status, all of these things he does in plain sight. And if he gets criticism for it, and I say if, because at this point, I think people have become desensitized by him, right? But if he does get criticism, he never apologizes, he'll double down. And it's amazing because I think right now, everything in our country, everything about our political system is being tested. I think that our democratic system is being tested.

And it really shows you how fragile it is, because if we don't have a way of holding him accountable for doing the types of things he's doing right now, well, then what does it say about us? Does it, we don't have a democracy, if that's the case. So look, Ivanka's got a whole number of potential conflicts of interest why she might have been turned down, business deals with foreign interests, and would that sway her, whether she's gonna get millions, hundreds of millions of dollars from another country? And so can she have access to secrets that affect that country? Those are interesting questions, and one, the House is asking, and that the president

should answer. Of course, he won't because all he ever does is cover up. He's led a whole life of cover-ups for all of his different crimes. But to me, the more interesting question is Jared Kushner. So he lied about meeting with the Russian ambassador and with a head of a Russian bank during the transition. After Trump won and before they got into office, why did Jared Kushner go meet with a Russian bank and then cover that up and not tell people?

There was a legitimate business interest that had nothing to do with the Trump White House. You wouldn't need to lie about it. So there's one other part that I want to get to. So I'm sorry, Anna, just to finish the thought. So he might have given Kushner clearance, not just because he's a family member and he's offended that they didn't get the clearance. Kushner might be his mule. And so Trump can't go meet with the head of a Russian bank that he probably owes money to.

they can't give directives, hey, if you don't want us to collect that money or whatever the deal might be, you better do X. He needs a go-between. It appears that there's a few people that he trusts to be a go-between. One is Eric Prince, the brother of Betsy DeVos and former owner of Blackwater. He goes and has a secret meeting with the Russians in Seashells Island. Another is Jared Kushner, who meets with the Russian ambassador and the Russian bank. So Trump, by giving him security clearance, might be protecting his asset that allows him to communicate with the Russians? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely possible.

And I think it goes even beyond the Russians, because Jared Kushner has a very tight, cozy relationship with the Saudi Royals. And so maybe there's a, you know, there's some benefit in giving him security clearance when it comes to issues like that. I don't know. All I know is the way that the security clearance was obtained both for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump is not, it's not typical. It's more than just screaming nepotism.

I mean, there were red flags raised when it came to this FBI background check and he didn't care. He pushed for it anyway. So if you're a right winger who believes that national security is of the utmost importance, and that's what we've been hearing over and over again from the right wing since 9-11, well, then what's going on now? Are you okay with this? Are you okay with people who have been flagged being given security clearance simply because they're Trump's family members?

Now, with that said, though, I do want to go to an interview that Ivanka Trump had about three weeks ago on ABC News. And she was asked about Jared Kushner's security clearance, and she had an interesting answer. Take a look. There were some issues early on, and there are a lot of people that question whether you were given special treatment by the president, overriding other officials. Can you speak to that? There were anonymous leaks about there being issues, but the president had.

No involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance. Zero. What were the problems early on? There weren't any. Ding, ding, ding, we have a clear and obvious lie. The apple does not fall from the far from the tree. So she's like, oh, there were no problems. She knows full.

At a bare minimum, she knows exactly that there were problems. There's no question about that. She could later claim, hey, it wasn't me. I didn't know daddy cleared her for me, like he's cleared everything for me in my life. You know, I'm a self-made band. That is what her spokesperson is claimed. Yes. Yeah.

So, God, what would be phenomenal is if you got Jared Kushner cornered, you think you won't flip on Trump? Is there anything that that Weasley guy wouldn't do? So, okay, anyway, so that's a little bit of speculation, we'll see how that plays out. But we do know this, if you care about national security, you would want to know why they were flagged and whether it was improper for Trump to clear them and why he cleared them. So those are perfectly legitimate questions that any sensible Congress would ask any president of any party.

Now you wanna cover up for Trump, that's on you, but these are perfectly reasonable requests. So let's move on to what the House is doing when it comes to all of these allegations and potential crimes. The House Judiciary Committee has sent out document request to 81 individuals who have ties to Donald Trump. This could be family members of Trump's, some of his aid, some of the individuals who worked on his campaign. And the whole purpose of this is to investigate not just Russia, but more importantly, all

of the other potential criminal acts that were raised by Michael Cohen's testimony. So that includes, you know, inflating his finances or his wealth when it came to business dealings and then lying about how much his assets were worth in order to commit tax fraud, alleged tax fraud. So these are all issues that the House Judiciary Committee wants to look into. And it's become abundantly clear that Trump and his goons have absolutely no interest in cooperating. In fact, here is a statement from Trump on this.

I guess we got 81 letters. There was no collusion, that was a hoax, there was no anything. And they want to do that instead of getting legislation passed. 81 people or organizations got letters. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace to our country. So one individual tied to the Trump administration, White House cancel, Pat Cipleone, rejected House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings request for documents related to security clearances for White House

personnel. Now that specifically refers to the security clearances that were pushed through for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Donald Trump did that after an FBI background check indicated that, you know, there were some red flags and they should not be given that clearance. Trump pushed those clearances through anyway. Cummings demanded documents related to how the White House was processing security clearances after report from the New York Times revealed that Trump overruled their concerns

of the CIA to give Kushner security clearance. Also, Sipleone claimed that Cummings had failed to establish a legitimate legislative purpose for the request, which included the investigative files of numerous individuals whom the president has chosen as his senior advisors. There were also some allegations that, you know, well, the Obama administration didn't cooperate with investigations into things like Benghazi, except they did, okay? Go to Graphic 10, the Obama administration released thousands of pages of documents, including a trove of Hillary Clinton's personal emails during House Republicans' investigation of the

2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. So I love Trump's quote about that. He said, they didn't give one letter, they didn't do anything, they didn't give one letter of the requests, except for the fact that they gave thousands, including personal emails. Does he bother to fact check anything? No, of course not. And as soon as Trump says something, there's like a 94% chance it's a lie, okay? You should assume, it's a rebuttable presumption, but you should assume he's lying, because

he does it almost every single time. And I love the excuse he used in that press conference where he went on a little longer and said, you know, they're doing this instead of working on healthcare. Oh yeah, because you're so concerned about healthcare. You've done so much to do, you know, to help Americans out with, let's say prescription drug prices which went up at the beginning of this year. Well, you said you were gonna negotiate drug price for the government. You didn't because you're a sellout to the drug companies and your donors.

The only thing you worked on in healthcare is taking healthcare away from people. So did you think the Democrats in the House were gonna help you destroy Obamacare? Not likely. If you want them to work on Medicare for all, yeah, we can do that, okay, you want us to do that? No, you don't give a damn about any of those things. All you're saying is, please don't investigate me, because it's totally true. And last part is, after going off on the investigator, is saying Nadler, who's on the oversight

committee and had asked for these requests, et cetera, said he, the chairman had, quote, gone stone called crazy, he was harassing innocent people, but added, I cooperate all the time with everybody. But wait, you're saying you won't cooperate on anything at all. with anybody. I know. That's why I cooperate with everyone all the time. Well, I mean, that goes to how he will switch talking points from one moment to the next.

So just yesterday he made that statement, right? He was asked whether he plans on cooperating and he said that he would, and then he started taking a more angry tone today. Yeah. So he will, you know, he goes through these extreme mood swings. Because he's not mentally stable, 25th Amendment. By the way, Nadler is the head of the Judiciary Committee, not the Oversight Committee. And Trump will fight this tooth and nail.

And as to how it'll get resolved, that's a good question, because it'll take it a while to go through the courts. And this is a matter of politics, I get it. The Trump team's guilty, and they're gonna want a stonewall, and they might be able to run the clock out, because they have less than two years. It takes so long to get through the courts. The courts are reluctant to weigh in on political issues. So if he just, this is a rare case where he might actually.

build a wall, okay? And that wall might actually work, so we'll have to see how the policies of it goes. But in terms of policy, the Democrats are completely right to ask for these legitimate requests of things that are deeply concerning, and the Republicans certainly would have done likewise and 10 times more. Yeah, I mean, they did that with the Benghazi investigations, and I hope that Democrats remain strong on this issue and that they don't just, you know, take this investigation dodging as a sign that they should give up.

Which is a usual sign that they have, but lately, because of nudging from certain folks, they've been better. They have been, they happen, that's good. And good work here by Nadler and others. We gotta take a break. When we come back, we are going to do a deep dive into this so-called anti-Semitism controversy involving Representative Ilhan Omar. Two big twists in that, okay?

Did the Democrats ask her to be in favor of Israel? That's an interesting question. And then the Republican hypocrisy is stunning. We've given you some of the quotes before, but not all of them. Whoa, we got the mother load. So don't miss any of it. And if you miss any part of today's show, t.t.com slash join members get all the show anytime they want.

All right. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cyber criminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices.

But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks, if you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment.

All right, back on our Young Turks, guys. A couple of fun things. Third hour of the Young Turks today, we got Richard Ojetta and Neera Tandon. Neer Tandon is the head of Center for American Progress. She was one of Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters in 2016, but we're gonna talk about Medicare for All. They have a different plan, and she's coming on to talk about it, promote it, defend it, et cetera.

It should be a very interesting conversation, don't miss it, t.t.com slash live right here. So that'll come up in about an hour and 15 minutes. And then Anna is going to the United Nations. She's going to speak at the United Nations Commission on the status of women on March 14th. in New York, which is kind of awesome slash badass. Yeah, I didn't realize how much of a big deal this was until recently. Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. No, no, it's a huge deal.

I'll be the Joe Biden here to your Obama. This is a big effing. So just to give you guys some more information, I'm going to be speaking on behalf of Reporters Without Borders, which is a great name. I love that it rhymes. But it's about, you know, female journalists and, you know, the dangerous world that we live in right now when it comes to, you know, international reporting and when it comes to some of the digital stuff that's going on right now. So it'll be a good, it'll be a good panel. Yes. And by the way, you guys can attend. So this is not just for people at the United Nations.

We're giving the option to attend first to activist members. So this is one of the perks of being an activist. So that's the $10 as opposed to the $4.99. month, so we appreciate all of you guys, but activists are going to get to go first in situations like this with tickets. So t.com slash join to become a member. Okay, a couple of comments for you guys. Joy writes in in the member section, Ivanka couldn't get patents in China until after the election. That's true. If Trump hadn't won, you think he really gets those patents? Was there a deal there? I don't know. Do the intelligence officials know something we don't

know, it's possible. Droid 98 says, this really brings ambiguity to the locker up chant. Oh, lock her up, which one, right? Mellybitch on Twitter says, Jake, I'm pretty sure you were looking for the word risk. Kushner was declared a national security risk, yes, as opposed to a threat, risk is more accurate, thank you. JPV loss is to be fair, Donald Trump wouldn't get security clearance either. Totally true, but unfortunately we elected him, so that is that.

And there's not much you could do about that one. And last one is YouTube super chat. Elliot says, Jake, you should probably clarify his scores overall, not just on one course. Yes, Trump's grades in GPA would have to be higher than mine overall for him to win the bet. Okay? Not I got a really strong score in physical education. Okay, my daddy wrote a really strong letter to the teacher and I got a good grade in that one. Are you able to even access your high school grades?

Yeah, sure you can, yeah, of course. That's why I had mine buried. Oh, right, only Donald Trump has done that. I want to see your grades. Not from, I don't care about high school, but I want to see your Wharton grades and your Columbia grades. Oh, okay. Oh, I went to Columbia. You know what?

We'll talk about it in one of the post games. It'll be fun. In fact, they'll tell you a hilarious story of someone who did ask for my transcript. Oh, okay. I once had to release the transcripts. T.y.com slash join to become member. Find out about that and t-y-t.com slash trial to try it out for a week. Okay, Anna, what's next?

Representative Ilhan Omar has been critical of the Israeli government, and as a result, she has been accused of being anti-Semitic. Now, some of the Democrats have considered censuring her. However, there are some pretty big-name Democratic presidential candidates who are now coming out in her defense, and I want to share their defense with you. First off, we have Senator Bernie Sanders. He was the first to release his defense of Ilhan Omar, and he says the following. And by the way, Bernie Sanders is also Jewish.

He says, anti-Semitism is a hateful and dangerous ideology which must be vigorously opposed in the United States and around the world. We must not, however, equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing Netanyahu government in Israel. Rather, we must develop an even-handed Middle East politics. which brings Israelis and Palestinians together for lasting peace. That was, in my opinion, a great statement, and I wholeheartedly agree with him. Because while of course anti-Semitism is horrible and is never to be defended, I think that

it's ridiculous to be labeled as an anti-Semite simply for legitimate criticism of Netanyahu's government. That's not a statement about Jewish people. That's a statement about a government that's doing something that you deem to be immoral. And by the way, Ilhan Omar did not direct her comments to Jewish people at all. Right. That also needs important clarification. She said, I don't want to have allegiance to two countries, in essence I'm paraphrasing here.

And so, and she was worried that they were asking for that in order to be on the Foreign Affairs Committee. So she's not like, she didn't pick like a Jewish representative accused them of having dual That's crazy. She did not do that at all. So the real issue is here, the heart of the issue is she doesn't agree with the right-wing government of Israel. And it's such an incredible pleasure to finally have a politician come out and say, just because

we don't agree with the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu does not mean that we don't like Israel or that anyone is anti-Semitic for saying that. I mean, it has been a long time coming, and as usual, Bernie Sanders leads the way. But other candidates also weighing in also very important. So Senator Kamala Harris also came out with the statement in support of Representative Omar. She says the following, we all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry, especially as we see a spike in hate crimes in America.

But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk. We should be having a sound, respectful discussion about policy. You can both support Israel and be loyal to our country. I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders and anti-Semitism. At the end of the day, we need a two-state solution and a commitment to peace, human rights, and democracy by all leaders in the region, and a commitment by our country to help a

achieve that? So it's a great statement by Kamala Harris, and sometimes she's accused of being a cop. So that's a popular meme online, but not only that, one of our members handle is Kamala Harris is a cop. You're the worst for bringing that up right now. No, no, no, no. There's a reason why I'm bringing it up. Because in this case, she said, I am going to be the cop that stops it.

So nice job, nice job. And so look, I think pressure, they're actually being a left wing for the first time since I've been covering politics for nearly quarter of a century in America is amazing. Previously the left wing was Bernie Sanders. Okay, for all these years, he was pretty much it, right? But now the battle has been joined. And we asked him about it when he was on the program, about the Justice Democrats being the cavalry in a sense, and he said, yes, keep it coming.

So, and Ilhan Omar is a just Democrat, AOC is, Rokanez, et cetera. And so now they are being forceful, hey, you know what, we're not going to just bow our heads and say every government of Israel, including a right-wing government, is awesome, because we don't think it is. And we're on the left, we believe in peace, we believe in a two-state solution. Sorry, we don't agree with that in Yahoo. And it's causing a ruckus. And in the old days, they would just shout at people like Ilhan Omar, and, and, and, and

censure them, do whatever it is, and basically get rid of any debate, okay? When I say they, I mean leadership in both the Republican and House side, and let's, it's important to note, almost none of those leaders are Jewish, like Nancy Pelosi or Kevin McCarthy, et cetera, but they are enormous protectors of the Israeli right wing, yes, including Democratic leadership. So, but that same old trick didn't work this time. Now, all of a sudden, Bernie Sanders fights back, the rest of the, first of all, inside the House, there was a huge pushback from just Democrats, including AOC, and that caused

the ruckus and it made people go, whoa, okay. And then Bernie Sanders comes in, and then Kamala Harris comes to Kamala Harris. Yeah. You know, the Democratic establishment, I'm not saying she's establishing, I'm just saying the democratic establishment deeply respects her. Right, yeah. So when she weighs in, it makes a big difference, and she, I don't know if she naturally would have done that, or she's seeing that pressure and wants to outflank people, but either

way, wonderful, wonderful, and give her all the credit in the world. And so now all of a sudden, Democrats backpedaling a little bit. They are backpedaling, and I want to get to that next. So initially, the Democratic Party wanted to censure Representative Ilhan Omar over statements that she had made in regard to the right-wing government of Israel. Now again, her statements were specifically about Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies, which she finds to be problematic. And I'll give you an example of the latest statement that she made that has gotten her

in trouble. Take a look. Talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country. So that started a firestorm within the Democratic Party, a number of Democrats, including staffers for Nancy Pelosi, were drafting a censure for Representative. Yeah, no, let me clarify, it would, censure is an extra layer here. It was a resolution to condemn first her, then they got pushback, so they're like, okay,

just anti-Semitism in general, and now it is morphed and we'll give you more details and how it morphed. But there's a twist also in Steve King should have been censured for his comments on how he doesn't see anything wrong with white supremacy, which is a whole different level. That's a nuclear level, right? And you know, it turns out the Democrats stopped the censure. Clyburn said they had enough votes, they chose not to censure Steve King because they think that's extreme.

I don't think that's extreme at all in his context. In this context, though, the first thing they were going to do was just a resolution. Okay, so what is the update to this resolution? Well, it turns out that the resolution would be updated to include a nod to anti-Muslim bias. So this isn't only about anti-Semitism, and they are not planning, and this is, of course, based on a draft of the resolution. They are not planning on including Representative Omar's name in the resolution. It's just a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias. House Majority Whip, James Clyburn told reporters that the resolution should emphasize an anti-hate message.

I, okay, so what, like, what does this mean, right? What does this mean? Like, what are we doing? Are we playing games right now? Yeah, they're definitely playing games. This is ridiculous. Okay, so you're going to waste resources, time and resources to put out a resolution and, like, vote on it. Are they going to vote on a resolution?

Yeah, they're going to vote. Yeah, condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Why do we need a resolution for that? If you're not trying to intimidate Ilhan Omar, why are you doing a random resolution against anti-Semitism? Yeah, we all agree, of course, who would not agree with being against anti-Semitism or Islamophobia? I know Republicans wouldn't, but all Democrats would, even the most conservative Democrats would, the most progressive Democrats would, everybody agrees. So what are you doing here?

What you're doing is trying to intimidate Omar, okay? Exactly. But here's what happened behind the scenes, which is interesting. This is based on the reporting, I don't know anything more than the reporting does. Other people that are like-minded, pushed back within the caucus meeting. And apparently there was so much shouting that Pelosi was frustrated and walked out. And including AOC, et cetera, said, no, this is crazy. I can't believe that you guys are going to target her.

And then my understanding is the Congressional Black Caucus then was like, oh, right, Elhan Omar is in the Congressional Black Caucus. And this seems like you're picking her out when, by the way, there's six different Republicans who have at a minimum, who said way, way worse on the issue of anti-Semitism. And now we're voting against Omar when we didn't even condemn those guys. Yeah. So I want to get to that in just to say, right now actually. So, Democrats were leading this effort to pass this resolution initially against Representative

Omar, and then they decided, okay, we're getting a lot of pushback, so maybe we take her name out. We also include anti-Muslim bias because she's Muslim. And a lot of this criticism against the attacks on Omar claim, hey, this seems like an Islamophobic attack because she's Muslim, you know, people are piling on her when it comes to this issue. And so they're like, okay, fine, we'll include the anti-Muslim bias part in the resolution as well. But if you go back and you see the way that Democrats handled Steve King and his statements

about white nationalism, it'll infuriate you because House Democratic leaders blocked an effort to censure Representative Steve King for racial comments referring the measure to the House Ethics Committee for further review because concerned, because they had concerns that it might set a dangerous precedent for policing member's speech. Well, they were concerned, hey, if we do this to Representative King, then maybe Republicans will do this to us, right? But you don't have to worry about that, Democrats, because you'll do it to yourselves. Yeah, it's unreal, it's unreal.

And there were people who were upset about that, who were Democrats like Bobby Rush, and he's like what, he said he doesn't understand what's wrong with white supremacy and white nationalism. What else do we need to censure someone? And Clyburn's like, yes, but many years. Now, and it's not just Clyburn, it's the Democratic leadership overall. Many years from now, if the Republicans ever regain the House, they may also censure us. I mean, how, so what is there, can Steve King say anything he wants?

Can the Republicans do anything they want and get away with it? And the Democrats have to just keep punching themselves in the face, it's so irrational, it's mind-boggling. So I want to go to Representative Clyburn. This is a video after Steve King made his comments and it gives you a sense of where Clyburn was coming from when he wanted to block the censure of King. Take a look. I would not advocate putting that kind of vote on the floor just yet.

What? Why is that? Okay. Well, the problem I've got is he was not on the House floor when he made these comments. He was not acting on behalf of the House of Representatives. He was talking to reporters at the New York Times. And so I don't want us to be very careful about whether or not we're stepping across the line in trying to censor, or I would say, constrained speech.

So in essence, House Majority Whip Clyburn, who introduced the disapproval resolution, noted that King made his statements to the news media not during a house, not during House proceedings. Same exact thing for Ilhan Omar. So he's concerned about Republicans' freedom of speech, but not so much about Democrats. So that's, look, in the old days, they'd have done this, almost no one on TV would have covered it, they'd have steamrolled their opponents have moved on. These are not the old days.

So now they moved it, okay, Omar's name is definitely out. They added Islamophobia, okay, I guess we should care about that, ugh, okay. And we were trying to, you know, help people out, but look, do lot, and here on the substance of it, do lobbyists matter on drug companies, oil companies, banks? Yes. NRA, yes. On the issue of Israel, do the people lobbying for Israel, their PACs, including APAC, does that matter?

Of course! Why would it magically not matter? Oh, former lobbyists matter, but APAC lobbies don't matter? That doesn't make any sense. Of course they matter. So, and they're incredibly powerful. We had Ari Berman on the show a long time ago. He did a wonderful piece about how the NRA and A Pact have very similar tactics.

So a long time ago. And he explained that they use very similar ways of corralling politicians do what they want, because they're lobbyists, that's what they're a pact, that's what they're supposed to do. Oh, so Ari Berman's anti-Semitic, is that what you're saying? I'm sure, of course, right? So it goes on and on, right? So in this case, if you're questioning that stuff, they would normally steamroll you.

But now that you can't get steamrolled. And so now we got people fighting back. And so they took the name out, they added Islamophobia. Now they moved the vote to Thursday. They might move it again. It's not entirely clear because they got caught. They got caught trying to intimidate people. Which leads me to a very important question.

Did they ask her to, in any way, not, I mean, I would imagine they're not stupid enough to ask her to quote unquote pledge allegiance to Israel in order to be on the Foreign Affairs Committee, but did they ask for a de facto pledge? Did they imply, heavily imply that she need, that they have concerns about her stance on Israel in order to get onto the Foreign Affairs Committee. If they did, then her complaint is literal. I don't want to do a dual pledge, I'm pledged to the United States of America. And that would be a much bigger problem, and that'd be on Democratic leadership, and not

on Ilhan Omar. So that's a good question, and people should ask that. We're gonna take a break, but when we come back, we're staying on this story because there's an important angle to cover, and that has to do with Republican hypocrisy on this very issue. thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon