The Young Turks - Hunter Blatherers

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro convicted on contempt of Congress. Mar-a-Lago IT worker Yuscil Taveras has flipped against Trump and is cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith. David Weiss will seek a grand jury indictment against Hunter Biden related to gun charges. Tommy Tuberville says the US wouldn’t be able to take on China because of "wokeness": "We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers." HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! All right. Welcome to the Young Turks, Jank Eugger and Experian with you guys. Look, I'm animated about a lot of the cases in the news today though.

Weird, it's usually not the case. Yeah, strong opinions with Jank Jueger, nobody saw it coming. So about the Trump cases, the Hunter Biden case, the Navarro case. So lots of strong opinions headed in your direction, like a freight train. But I'm maybe most mad today, at least, about what the left has done with the Portland school system. Same. Okay, like no, no, hard pass. So we'll talk about it later in the program, but lots of news to get to, so let's do it.

Well, why don't we begin with some of the late breaking news today having to do with Peter Navarro? Consequences today for someone who is so blatant in his effort to stonewall Congress and their efforts to investigate the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. Former Trump aide Peter Navarro has been found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. That's right, Trump's former trade advisor has been found guilty. I had mentioned earlier this week that the trial was expected to be a speedy one, and I realized it was going to be this speedy. But he was in fact found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of contempt.

This followed his decision to essentially ignore a subpoena from the special House committee investigating January 6th and the Trump campaign's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Now, Peter Navarro had bragged about the plot in his own memoir. And about a few months prior to his subpoena, he had told Rolling Stone, in a little bit of an interview that no, I don't think Congress has any interest in subpoenaing me or having a conversation with me because what I have to say contradicts their narrative. About a month later, they decided to subpoena him and he ignored that subpoena and claimed that he was protected

under executive privilege because Trump had urged him to ignore the subpoena. Now, there was no evidence of that. Trump never said that publicly. There was no document indicating that there was executive privilege involved. And so as a result, the case was not dropped and he did stand trial. So now that he's been found guilty on two misdemeanor counts, it's important to know that it is likely that if he fails to appeal this case, jank, he will serve a one month sentence because there is a minimum mandatory one month sentence for both counts, although they can be served together, so it has to be at least one month. But he does plan to appeal. And we already know a sentence that someone else got for this, because Steve Bannon was

convicted of the same thing, and he got four months. Now, he's appealing, so he hasn't got to prison yet. But there's a pretty good chance that Bannon and Navarro actually go to prison. Now, you could say, hey, one month, four months in prison, whatever it winds up being, is not that big a deal. Or you could say, hey, it's a pretty big deal to go to prison for four months and have that on your record. So I leave that interpretation up to you. And it's a contempt of Congress. I think this is about the right sentence for that. But my number one thing that I love about the story is, hey, it turns out the Republicans are not magically above the rule of law. It is amazing. Yeah, they have this smug, ridiculous attitude that like, well, of course

they could break any law I like. And then if you charge me, I'll say, oh, it's all political. No, you don't get to break the law just because you're a right winger or a left winger or anything. No, you're accountable to the goddamn law. So the fact that they convicted him today, it's a relief. It makes me feel a tiny bit more, you know, as it makes me feel a little bit like I have more faith in the American justice system. And by the way, so right wingers, of course, immediately jump in with, you know, oh yeah, what about, right? what about isms. Okay, fine, who cares? They're like Eric Holder did the same thing. How come they didn't go after him? They should have. And I've never defended Eric Holder.

Eric Holder violated many parts of the Constitution. What's next? Who cares? Like, we don't care about this partisan stupid stuff. What we care about is you don't get to break the law over and over again and go, well, I'm one of the elites. And they didn't charge one of the other elites. They shouldn't charge me. And by the way, it's not really a like, yeah, it's a Republican thing because they're now doing it in dozens of times. Right? But it's more of an elite thing. Yeah. Because the January 6 rioters didn't get to say it, right? They're all going to prison. They're going to prison 18 years, 22 years, et cetera. It's only the elites in Washington were like, how dare you try to apply to the law of me. And I'm going to just talk real quick about his absurd defense that I love that it didn't work. His number one, so he's talking about executive privilege, right? But the judge is like, okay, yeah, but we're in a court of law. So where's the executive privilege? Show me the evidence of the executive privilege. Show me where it is. Yeah, did Trump order it? Show me the document that that says it, right? Oh, we don't have it. Well, then you're guilty. Okay, so that's point one. Point two is they're like,

the prosecution never showed that this was willful on his part not to show up. They never even showed you where he was on that day. And I love what the prosecution did. They got up and they're like, who cares where he was? What matters is where he wasn't. He was ordered to go to Congress and testify. And he didn't go to Congress and testify. But there's two elements of deception there. One is what the jury got passed, which is, yeah, why are you distracting me with whether he was fishing or he was at Walmart, right? I don't care. He got an order to show up and he didn't. If I did that, I'd be going to prison. So I'm gonna send this guy to prison, right? But the second part of it that's amusing is, look at the liar, Peter Navarro. All that tough guy talk of like,

They don't want a subpoena me. They don't want to hear what I have to say. Then they spin him, as Anna told you. And all of a sudden, he's like, I don't subpoena me, right? And then now he goes to the court and he says, well, I didn't necessarily not show up because it was willful. I mean, maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I overlooked it. But dude, you're on camera bragging about how you won't show up and how you're such a tough guy.

You don't have to follow the law. So which one is it? Were you lying in public or were you lying in the courtroom? And of course, his lawyer lies on his behalf. But beautiful day in America, none of those lies worked. Anytime a Trump acolyte goes into court, their BS gets so exposed, you can smell it from three states away. Because on TV, blah, blah, blah, blah, crackers, mules, they go into court. They're like, every judge, including Trump appointed judges.

They're like, cool, cool, cool, where's the evidence? And they're like, oh, I don't know, we were just making it up. Well, you go to prison if you were making it up, so there you go. Yeah, and I look, I think you've said everything that needs to be said about this. But I will just go back to what I believe is the most important point in your commentary, which is to say, the rule of law is important. And it is important to hold members of both parties accountable when they are shown to engage in wrongdoing or potential criminality. Obviously, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but the idea that, you know,

members of one party should be prosecuted, but members of our party or our preferred politicians shouldn't be prosecuted is ridiculous. Even my absolute favorite politicians, if they engage favorite politicians, that's really difficult to determine these days. But let's say even someone like Bernie Sanders, laughable to consider it, but let's say he did commit some sort of crime or is accused of committing some sort of crime. I don't care how much I like him as a person or a politician. how much I like his policies. What I care about is ensuring that we have a system in place that people are held accountable by and that there isn't a double standard depending on whether you know, you're part of a certain

political party or if you're a member of the elite. So I am happy to see this day. I'm happy to see that our institutions still work to some extent. And I agree with you about Eric Holder as well. There shouldn't be a double standard based on political ideology or political party. Yeah, and last thing on it, guys, two things here. Two things can be true at the same time. It could be that their establishment is hypocritical, and I think they are.

Like Eric Holder, blatant violation of the Constitution when he said that you don't need judicial review to do extrajudicial killings by the executive branch. If Trump had done that, mainstream media would have ripped his face off, and they would have prosecuted him. They would have done everything. But the beloved Eric Holder and the beloved Barack Obama did it. So not a peep, not a peep. So the people on MSNBC, liars, okay, they would never bring that stuff up. And they would defend Eric Holder. They're like, oh yeah, of course the president should be able to murder people without going to the courts.

Right? You liars, you hypocrites. Okay, at the same time, Republicans, I thought you were for law and order. So is your idea? No, our elites should not be able, should be able to break the law anytime they like to. Well, that ain't populist, man, and that ain't conservative. That's just you saying, I want to cheat. So I'm not having it from either side. All right, well, let's move on to a different trial, a different investigation.

Let's talk a little bit about individuals who have definitely flipped on Donald Trump. One of the key players has just flipped against former President Trump and is now cooperating with the special counsel, Jack Smith's office. That according to the former defense attorney for Mar-a-Lago IT workers. Yusel Tavares, who says Tavares has agreed to testify in the case and in exchange, he will not repeat, not be prosecuted. A little while ago, we reported that that individual that was just referred to Usel Tavares had essentially changed his testimony in the classified documents investigation and case. Well, now we are learning that not only has he changed his testimony, he has also, of course, flipped

on Donald Trump and is cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith in this investigation. And we also now know that he has been granted immunity as a result of his cooperation. He struck a deal with prosecutors after he was threatened with possible charges. According to his now former lawyer, Stanley Woodward, who notably was the defense attorney for Peter Navarro, who was just convicted on two misdemeanor counts for contempt of Congress. Now with that said, here are the updates, Tavares's July testimony in front of a grand jury, which wasn't public, was the source of new allegations against Trump that were included in a superseding indictment filed later that month, CNN previously reported.

Those allegations include efforts by Trump, de Oliveira, and Nata to delete incriminating security footage from the club. Luckily, they failed to do that. But apparently there were attempts to essentially tamper with that security footage. So the filing by Stanley Woodward, again, the now former attorney for Tavares, is the first public acknowledgement that Smith has secured the cooperation of key witnesses. Now Smith is prosecuting Donald Trump in that case for his handling of classified documents. He's also prosecuting his longtime valet, Walt Nata, and also Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos to Olivera.

Although they are accused of trying to delete incriminating security footage, there is some concern by their, you know, their current defense attorney, Woodward, that Jack Smith might try to get them to flip on Donald Trump as well. We'll see if that happens. I got a few more details to share with you. But Jake, what do you think so far? I actually want to share one important detail to, which is the Garcia hearing. So what Garcia hearings are is if there's several defendants with the same lawyer and one person is paying for it, sometimes. the judge will pull them in and go, look, guys, you might have a conflict of interest here because you might want to plead differently than one another, but that guy is paying for your lawyer, so that's going to be hard for you. Now, if you want to keep the arrangement, no problem. But the point of this hearing is to say, just be careful and make sure that you're aware of that conflict of interest. And if you want out, just let us know, okay? And so this happens all the time. There's nothing extraordinary about it at all. So they want to do Garcia hearings for

the rest of them from NADA and the others because and it doesn't mean that they have to switch lawyers at all. There's nothing compulsory. It's their decision on which lawyer they want to keep. But hey, in a neutral place, the judge asks you, you cool bro? Okay, so with Tavares, he was like, I'm not cool. Yeah, get this lawyer out of here. I want a new lawyer. And the new lawyer makes this plea deal, which was as we know, when he switched lawyers, we told you it's that plea deal is coming and he came today. Woodward's defense, the lawyer that Trump was paying for is hilarious. He's a disaster. Yeah. He's an absolute disaster. So he actually lashed out at the Justice Department for offering immunity only once it, the IT worker consulted with a court appointed public defender.

I want to give you his exact statement. He says, it is telling that the non-prosecution agreement, it ultimately offered Trump employee for, and that's Tavares, was not offered before the district court had agreed to appoint conflict counsel, Woodward wrote, using the identifier DOJ assigned Tavares. Again, that's employee for. Woodward, whose services have been paid for by Trump, is battling an effort by the Justice Department to hold a similar Garcia hearing with Nata and Carlos de Oliveira, the third co-defendant in the Mar-Lago case. salty about the possibility of no longer essentially providing defense or providing counsel to these two individuals. Am I correct? He is, but his argument for it is over the top. So he says that Tavares should not be allowed to testify. Why? Oh, that's right. Yes. Yeah. So ridiculous. Okay, so why shouldn't he be allowed? Because I was his lawyer. Well, that's a new one. Okay. He says, Well, I was his lawyer and I'm also the lawyer for Trump and the other guys. And you guys didn't offer this plea deal to him while I was his lawyer because why?

Because they're worried that you're just going to tell Trump about it because Trump's the one paying your bills. And so they wanted to see if Tavares wanted a different counsel. And it turns out he did. And they offered the plea deal to the different counsel. And Woodward's like, that's not fair. and since you offered it to a different lawyer instead of me, he shouldn't be allowed to testify. Why?

Based on what legal rule? What are you talking about? Look, man, I studied law for what it's worth and I've covered it for decades now. I've never heard of that. Like, that's absurd. I am curious where the Trump team found Woodward, right? Like, was it in the back of a nail salon in a strip mall in New Mexico? Is he working for Saul Goodman? What's going on here?

Yeah, but look, to be, look, I was going to say to be fair to Woodward, but Trump has gone through so many lawyers that we're at the, we're beyond the bottom of the barrel, right? So, and now he has to pay them ahead of time oftentimes because he's also ripped off so many lawyers. The lawyers don't want to represent him. He's constantly telling them to lie. They're constantly saying, I can't, I'll lose my license, right? And so he is the worst kind of client to have. So he gets these clowns who come in and who, you know, and some of them have represented mobsters and stuff like that.

So they have some experience with thugs like Donald Trump. But they come in and make these absurd cases like, hey, one of your top witnesses shouldn't be a lot to testify because I used to be his lawyer. Okay. The prosecution has flipped thousands, millions of people over the course of American history and has had thousands of them change lawyers, and they all testify. There is no such rule. So yes, Tavares is going to testify, which puts tremendous pressure, not on Trump,

but the guy above Tavares, Olivera, okay? Then that puts tremendous pressure on Nauta. And as you're seeing with the January 6th defendants, now you just saw Navar get convicted today of contempt of Congress. You saw Steve Bannon get convicted of it. It turns out that if your name isn't Donald Trump and you weren't president, and you're, you're going to F around and then you're going to find out, okay? Some of those January 6th guys got 22 years.

You weren't the former president, Oliver and Nata. If you guys, hey, man, go for it. Everybody's got a right in America, do anything they like to have, any council they like. You go on with a clown, Bozo the Clown Woodward as your defense attorney. When he's not even representing you, he's representing Trump. Trump's paying him. That's right. He doesn't care at all.

if you go away for 20, 30 years, as long as he can save his actual client, the one that signs the checks, Donald J. Trump. So have that it, Haas. Take, throw yourself under the bus for Donald Trump and see how it works out for you. Just ask hundreds of others that have done it and now deeply regret it. All right, we're going to take a break. Unfortunately, we're not done with investigations. We're going to move over to the Hunter Biden investigation. And, well, it seems like an impending indictment for him. That and more coming up, don't miss it. F around and find out. All right, back on T. Janky, Granica Sparian.

Fine, football starts today. All right, Casimir. Oh, Jesus. All right, that's great. You ready? Yeah, I'm very. Let's get to the news. The president's son will likely be indicted by the end of the month on a felony gun charge.

Special counsel David Weiss's blunt warning came in a new court filing involving Hunter Biden's alleged illegal purchase of a gun in Delaware when he was addicted to drugs. The Justice Department has announced that special counsel David Weiss does in fact plan to seek an indictment against President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, on gun-related charges. He's planning on doing so by the end of the month. Now, this follows news of Hunter Biden's plea deal involving the felony gun charges, essentially falling apart. Now, Hunter Biden's gun-related legal troubles relate to a firearm that he purchased back in October of 2018. Look, these details are pretty important. I didn't even realize until literally today because it wasn't widely reported that the statute of limitations on that gun-related charge is set to expire, like in October of this year, meaning next month.

But Republicans are dead set on essentially really aggressively pursuing this prosecution. There's been a lot of political pressure for David Weiss to pursue prosecution of Hunter Biden and essentially refuse a plea deal, even though he initially agreed to the plea deal. Nonetheless, this will essentially be a decision by the end of the month, depending on what the grand jury decides. The Speedy Trial Act requires that the government obtain the return of an indictment by a grand jury by Friday, September 29th, 2023 at the earliest, the government intends to seek the return of an indictment

in this case before that date, the special counsel's office said in a court filing. Prosecutors have not said how many charges would be brought. However, they say, quote, we expect a fair resolution of the sprawling five-year investigation. I'm sorry, this is the attorney for Hunter Biden, Abe Lowell. We expect a fair resolution of the sprawling five-year investigation into Mr. Biden. that was based on the evidence and the law, not outside political pressure. Unfortunately, it does appear as though the outside political pressure is working for David Weiss or working against David Weiss.

Weiss is still weighing whether to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes. He said in a court filing last month that a trial is now in order on the tax offenses and that he may bring tax charges possibly in California or Washington, D.C. This has to do with the fact that Hunter Biden failed to pay. his taxes on time. He later had to pay $2 million to the federal government to settle his debts along with penalties and interest. So, Jank, you're about to go off. I'm gonna let you have it. Go for it. Yeah, okay. So let me be clear. First of all, if you have evidence that he did illegal foreign lobbying or any type of corruption, charge him. Charge him with it and give him 20 years.

No problem at all. And if you got him and it's true, I'm happy to have him get put away. I've had enough of corruption in Washington. But you're not charging him with that. You're charging him with horse crap. These charges are the most microscopic charges I have ever seen in my life. There's no way he gets charged with these if he's not the son of the president and the Republicans aren't screaming like banshees. So let me jump in because look, when the plea deal fell apart, I understood where Republicans were coming from because it was going to essentially give Hunter Biden blanket immunity on anything, any other potential crime he might have committed up until this point, right? So if there was some illegal business

dealings with foreign agents, if there was some illegal lobbying taking place, right? He would have essentially had immunity from that, and I even had a problem with that. However, however, it's important to keep in mind that special counsel David Weiss has investigated whether there was any shady dealings taking place between Hunter Biden and foreign agents. He looked into obviously the felony tax evasion, which he is dealing with as we speak. Illegal foreign lobbying didn't find anything. Money laundering and other matters largely tied to Hunter Biden's overseas business deals.

Investigated that has failed to come up with any evidence showing any wrongdoing in that regard. So now I totally agree with you. These are, look, we live in America, all sorts of people who shouldn't be buying guns, buy guns all the time. When they get caught, I'd be shocked if they even get prosecuted for this. This is definitely a politically motivated prosecution. 100% political. And the Republicans who are always like, don't make things political in the courts. You guys asked for this to be political. And now it's, I've never seen a prosecution. This political in my entire life. So let me just be clear about what those charges are.

So he lied on his gun application about whether he was currently doing drugs or addicted to drugs. How many people have lied on their gun application that they didn't smoke weed or were on any other kind of drugs ever at all when they're buying the guns? I've got it in the millions. Millions of Americans have done that. Well, did we prosecute all of them? No, we prosecute almost none of them. Now, the ones we prosecute are because they have, they then take the gun and they do another

major crime with it. And then you could prosecute for the underlying crime. Okay, okay, you did a bank robbery with the gun. Oh, by the way, it turns out he was also high and lied on his form. We'll also add those charges, right? That happens. This charge by itself is nearly unprecedented. And by the way, Republicans, be careful what you wish for. You want this? You want this? Anything you filled out wrong on a gun form and we're gonna put all of you in jail? Go ahead, I dare you. I dare you. Let an ally of mine become president, go ahead and lie on a form and let me see what I do to you. Yeah, it really does set a dangerous precedent that could backfire on the Republican Party in ways that I don't think they're thinking

about right now. Of course not, because their eyes are like glazed over like hatred, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, I hate them so much. Idiot's, look at what he's charging. It would affect you 10 times more, 100 times more than if it would affect the left. You guys have a lot more guns. But nope, nope, blinded by rage, blinded. And the tax charge.

He didn't pay his taxes and they said, hey, you didn't pay your taxes because you were high on crack. Give me the goddamn money. He's like, oh, okay, he pays the taxes at that point immediately and pays the fines. Do you know how many Americans didn't pay their taxes on time? Millions. Millions, we're gonna charge them all?

We never charge that. Yeah, but no, nope, nope, no. The Republicans have to have their pound of flesh and this David Weiss idiot is going out there and doing a political prosecution. Hey, by the way, incompetent loser, if you have corruption on Hunter Biden, we're all ears, we're all open to it,

I hate corruption. But apparently you don't have it. So instead you're going to do this for your own slimy career. to impeach Joe Biden because they're trying to connect Joe Biden to Hunter Biden, right? The big allegation here is that Joe Biden sold his influence to foreign businessmen in in return for cash. Allegedly he's taking millions of dollars and that Hunter Biden is really like the middle guy who's making these business deals happen. They have failed to provide a shred of evidence on that. And that is what they are planning on attempting to impeach

Joe Biden on. So that is part of the reason why they are so aggressive in pressuring special counsel David Weiss to go after Hunter Biden with the prosecution over the tax charges and the gun charges. But what they failed to understand is if there have now been multiple investigations, by by the way, the two House committees investigating Hunter Biden and potential criminality by Hunter Biden, they failed to find a shred of evidence on that. And then Then you have David Weiss, special counsel investigating Hunter Biden specifically on those issues as well, failing to find a shred of evidence on that. If they're going to keep pushing for this, and if they're held bent on literally pursuing impeachment,

they're going forward with that, Jank. I don't think they realize how much they are harming themselves politically. Well, yes and no. So I think you're right that independents are getting totally sick of this Republican extremism. Absolutely. And it's showing up in the polls. and it showed up in the 22 midterms, and the Republicans are still effing around and trying to find out.

Okay, so that's true. I think they're going to find out. Yeah, well, they might. But on the other hand, the poll came out just a day or two ago. 61% of Americans think that Joe Biden might be connected to Hunter Biden's cheesy foreign deals. So you're right about that. And that's a disaster. It is a disaster for Joe Biden because it's just.

People are wrong. I mean, Joe Biden has gone to pretty extreme lengths to avoid any meddling in this investigation into his son, right? Yeah. That's why there's a special counsel involved, right? A special counsel that Republicans at first absolutely loved and preferred, right? And now all of a sudden they've soured on him because David Weiss isn't a magician. He can't pull tricks out of a hat and say, there's no evidence of Hunter Biden engaging in illegal business deals and having his father be involved in those illegal deals. But this is what you guys want, so I'm just going to make it up. He can't do that, right?

But nonetheless, like I just think that part of the reason why those poll results are what they are is because Joe Biden is just not good at making a case for himself. He's not good at it. None of the Democrats are good at it. Exactly. Look, Hunter Biden is a block of cheese. Everything he does is cheesy. I got no love for him.

The reason you'll ever hear that on MSNBC and CNN and New York Times, et cetera, is because Joe Biden hates it when people criticize his son. So mainstream media in all of Washington, like, it's not that they don't write about and they write about him plenty, but they're like they're gentle around Hunter Biden, right? I'm not gentle around Hunter Biden. He doesn't know anything about Ukrainian gas. He doesn't know anything about art. He's not an artist.

He says total, yeah, he is an artist, a scam artist. Okay, so he's a block of cheese, I can't stand the guy, he's got massive problems, right? But show me a piece of evidence that connects him to Joe Biden. Not only have you not done that, you've done the opposite. They're like the laptop, you notice that they're not talking too much about the laptop anymore. Because in the laptop, it says we can't promise anything because we can't get my dad to do anything for us. Right. And by the way, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, DNC, the entire Democratic Party.

Like, we're the only ones that are talking about that. Why don't you say that to the American people? Why are you so incompetent? I think they're operating under the assumption that if they, if they address it, it's adding more attention to it. And so they're hoping that by ignoring it, it'll, I guess, just go away or things will work themselves out. But in terms that, look, there's the actual judicial system and our courts, and then there's

the court of public opinion. And it seems as though they're completely oblivious to the impact that the terrible, you know, the terrible perception in the court of public opinion will lead to, right? Like the terrible results in the election, all that. It seems like they're totally oblivious to that. But look, honestly, one of the other areas where Joe Biden made some pretty terrible mistakes is, how about you don't, look, we know that Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma because of who his father is.

If I were, if I were Joe Biden, I'd be like, no, no, this is not going to look good. I don't think you should do this, right? But okay, fine, that's done. The whole art thing now. The art thing's outrageous. If I were Joe Biden, I would take Hunter Biden aside and I'd be like, listen, bro, doesn't look good. Doesn't look good. Let's not do this art thing, okay?

It doesn't look good because you have wealthy people buying this trash art that doesn't mean anything. the perception that it's meant to influence Joe Biden is there. And I think that that is a legitimate perception. Yeah, I guess he can't control Hunter Biden. But yeah, it looks like there's nothing illegal, but it looks terrible. And so I hate it. I don't, I, and look, there are two different people. Hunter Biden is not in government.

And so here, by the way, as I've said, a thousand times, finally Jamie Raskin has begun to make this point on television. But Jared Kushner did $2 billion in corruption, and he ran our foreign policy. That's right. Our own Secretary of State said, I'm not even the Secretary of State, Jared Kushner is. That's right. Okay, so Donald Trump did massive, massive family corruption. Yet the Democrats are like, uh, drool, uh, no, you're so right about that.

So you want to prosecute these guys and you've got the evidence, we're here for it. But they don't have it on Hunter in terms of connecting to Joe Biden or connecting him to actual specific acts of illegal corruption or foreign lobbying, et cetera. Last thing I'll say is sometimes people say, oh, yeah, Jake, I thought you got to work for gun control and all of a sudden you want to let him skate on this. No, I would do a thousand things on gun control. I would do, I would ban the assault weapons, I would do the universal background checks, et cetera. But would I actually prosecute conservatives on this or the IRS, the tax charge here? Hell no, hell no, because I actually want to do gun control. I don't care if you put the wrong license plate on your form when you were buying a gun.

I don't, that's, we have so much bigger fish to fry. I would never prosecute that because unlike everyone else in politics, we're fair. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, Tommy Tuberville is essentially. holding confirmations for the military hostage over his perception that the military is too woke. I'll give you the details on that when we come back from the break. Don't miss it. TYT, Jank, Anna, Sharon Chen, and Death Match Maniac. Burgundy will read anyone, anyone's handle if they join through the join button on YouTube.

I appreciate you guys. Thank you for being members, and today members get a special book reading tonight. I hope you guys enjoy that. And t.com slash join and join through our website, get an extra couple of perks here. All right, Casper. Well, I just want to give you guys a little taste of what national security looks like, according to one particular Republican senator. Right now, we are so woke in the military.

We're losing recruits right and left. We've got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane of the direction that we're headed in our military, and we're headed downhill, not uphill. Could we confidently take on China? Oh, no. Oh, no. All right, let's get into it. So for over six months now, Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican senator, has held the promotions of literally hundreds of military officials hostage over his claims that the military is just too woke, ladies and gentlemen, just too woke.

Now, his real beef isn't about poems on aircrafts or anything like that. His actual beef has to do with a new Department of Defense policy on reproductive rights, which he claims is in violation of federal law, but isn't actually against federal law and makes it abundantly clear that as a United States senator, he isn't aware of what federal law entails. Should be a little concerning to American voters. Now, here's what you need to know about Tuberville's latest tantrum. Back in February, the Pentagon announced that it would give service members and their

families both leave and reimbursement if they should need to essentially travel out of state in order to access abortions or reproductive health care. Now, this is relevant for members of the military who are stationed in certain states that have effectively banned abortion. Alabama happens to be one of them. Alabama also happens to be a state that holds six military bases. Now, Tupperville claims that the DOD's policy is illegal because of the Hyde Amendment, which states that federal funds cannot be used to end pregnancies. However, the Justice Department argues that, no, this doesn't go against the Hyde Amendment because the government would be paying for the travel of these individuals, not for the abortion itself. Now, regardless of the DOJ's recommendation, Tuberville went ahead and blocked all military promotions anyway. How is he able to do that as just one member of the Senate? Well, so far

Tuberville has stalled the nominations for 300 generals and flag officers. A total of 650 more military leaders require Senate confirmation by the end of the year. Now here's how Tuberville is able to essentially block the confirmations of these individuals in order to engage in his his little culture war stunt. The president's nominations to military leadership are submitted in batches for group consideration and approval. The batching procedure itself requires unanimous consent, allowing even one senator to stand in the way.

Now, we're talking about 300 people here. Doing confirmation hearings for each individual person would literally take three years. So as a result of that, they do this process where they do the confirmations in batches, but they need unanimous support by the senators. And so that is the reason why Tuberville is able to essentially stand in the way of these confirmations. Now, in one op-ed published in the Washington Post, the secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy explained how Tuberville's stunt is actually hurting the military.

So three of our five military branches, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, have no Senate-confirmed service chief in place. Across the services, many generals and admirals are being forced to perform two roles simultaneously. The strain of this double duty places a real and unfair burden on these officers, the organizations they lead and their families. We know officers who have incurred significant unforeseen expenses and are facing genuine financial stress because they have had to relocate their families or unexpectedly maintain two residences. So, Jank, here you have a Republican lawmaker essentially screwing around with the military, screwing around with these necessary and important confirmations because he wants to give Americans the of governance by essentially doing nothing to benefit them or improve their lives, but positioned himself as a culture warrior against the woke military. Yeah, so I have some opinions on this that might surprise some of you guys.

But the first one is not about poems. So he's like, they're doing poems on aircraft carriers, can you believe it? I mean, why don't you just declare that you're not interested in being intelligent? Who cares if anyone reads a poem or doesn't read a poem or writes a poem or not? on. So okay, fine, I looked it up. So I can only remember three poets, my fault on my education apparently. Anyway, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and E.E. Cummings. So I looked up those three. It turns out, yeah, E.E. Cummings served in World War I. Hey, we won World War I. We were okay. Can my poets serve? Of course they can serve. That's the tiniest little thing, but it bothered

me because it's him saying like, people who are smart or intellectual, they can't fight. They're no good. They're not real Americans. Us dumb Americans are the real Americans that serve and we don't do any stinking poems or stinking physics. Look, for people like Tupperville, it's not about intelligence, right? It's about, oh, poems are weak. Of course, of course.

We don't want any softness. We don't want any poetry in the military. That's where he's coming. It just bothers me how dumb Tupperville is. Anyway, so now here's the surprising parts. I don't care that he's holding these guys up. And I don't think that it's a national security concern. And then they say, well, you know, look, these guys are now being called interim, and that's a big problem.

No, it's not. Donald Trump made everybody interim. No one cared. And whenever Democrats held anything up, he's like, who cares? Just I'm going to put that guy in charge. We're going to say his name, his title says interim, but he's going to do the job. Who cares? Why can't they just do that now with the individuals that they appointed, right?

Yeah, but Democrats love to cry. Okay, just so they're interim and they're like, well, they don't know if they're going to stay because it's called interim. And so now the soldiers are confused and they don't know who to listen to. No, that's a problem in the military, if that's true. You listen to your commanding officer. Where's the question? Okay. So I don't think it's that big a deal.

And I wish the Democrats would do this on stuff that they cared about. And the one thing I'll give Tuberville credit for is because I care about this. So I'm going to use every tool I have in my toolbox to make sure that I punish women. Does he, does he care about it? Okay, so well, I mean, he cares enough to do this stunt, right? So I'll come back to the central issue that he's fighting about, because of course he's wrong about that. And then the last thing is, I found this greatly amusing. So normally they do a voice vote, as Anna explained, and everybody goes, no objections, and they go through.

There's hundreds of them, right? So, but you could do a roll call vote, and you could do it one by one, especially the one for the head of the Marines, the Army, etc, right, the really important positions. But the Democrats say they don't want to do that because it'll hold up the important business of the Senate. What important business? You're doing business. That was my question.

Blocking legislation that the vast majority of Americans want, like paid family leave, minimum wage hikes, stuff like that? Yeah, guys. Child care? Yeah, you. Oh, Senate. Oh, so important. You guys do such important work blocking the will of the American people.

F off, please. Why did you have to tell me about that? That's because I'm telling you, it's absurd. You guys can name the post offices later. Democrats, please don't pretend you're doing anything. Please. And Republicans, please don't pretend that you care about passing any bills other than taxes for the rich in corporations.

All you want to do is these hearings on Hunter Biden, et cetera. You're all useless. You're all doing nothing anyway. Just go and do a bunch of roll call votes. What do I care? And you know what'll happen? Those elitist pricks in the Senate, they'll get so exhausted. They're like, oh, we have to do our job.

I've got to go make donor calls. Good. I want your ass in there doing roll call votes 24-7, okay? And you know what'll happen? Then there are other Republicans will start yelling at Tuberville. And they'll be like, Tuberville, we're all trying to raise money here. And I haven't kissed enough rich ass today, okay? And eventually Tupper will give in.

But Schumer wouldn't know how to fight back if, you know, if his life depended on it. But finally, to the main issue here, he's holding it out why, because he's saying, now the new rule in the Pentagon, in the Biden administration, which I give them credit for, is if you're based in, for example, Alabama, but you're from, you know, some other state, a blue state, or wherever you are, where abortion is legal. We made you, as a member of the armed forces, go to Alabama to go to that base, to train. You got pregnant.

You don't want to be pregnant. You have every right in the world if you live in Massachusetts to get an abortion. but now the military forced you to be in Alabama. So if you want to travel back to Massachusetts or any other state to get an abortion, of course we should pay for it. We should pay for you to come to the base. We should pay for you to have these normal expenses. But Tuberville's like, no, that uses my money to give women freedom.

And I don't like that. I want to strip women of all their freedoms. Make sure they go to war and die for me. By the way, I'm pro-life. But if they actually want to do anything for themselves, I hate their freedom because I'm a Republican. Okay, so that's the reality of the whole thing. You know, that's good reasoning.

Am I wrong for feeling that that's more of a cover story for, hey, we don't want a bunch of female soldiers getting pregnant when they don't want to. We like need them. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, you need them for fodder for the war machine. Pretty much, yeah. I mean, maybe I'm too cynical. So maybe I need to like take down the sodium content a little bit.

I don't know. No, no, it's your, I think your cynicism is warranted, but I think maybe it's all in a direction, in my opinion. So look, I think the reason Tuberville is really doing it is because he wants to raise money. And so he wants to go back home. Yeah, he wants to go back home to Alabama and say, I put as more restrictions on women than anyone else did.

And I was willing to mess around with national security and attack the Pentagon and all that things that we pretended to revere as Republicans. I remember when all you guys put support the troops on your on your cars, right, all those bumper stickers. Now all of a sudden when it comes to supporting the troops, they're like, no, take away their money, take away their rights, take away their freedoms, okay? This is Alabama. We don't believe in freedom. And so that's what he wants to brag about and raise money by doing that, both from Republican donors and the grassroots. So that's why he's doing this publicity stunt. I agree with you on that. I'm just referring to the Department of Defense and their, you know, latest policy on providing. I see, I see, I see my bad. No, no, no. I think that's Biden going, well, I don't want to pass a law that makes abortion legal. That would be hard. There was nothing we could do. So, oh, I got it. I'll do my usual 5%. And in this case, I'll do a microscopic rule depending on a good one, a good one. But it's a really tiny rule saying, I will pay you the 150 bucks. It takes you to drive to the next state to get an abortion, right? And by the way, and it worked because then the mainstream media gives them tons.

of credit and they're like, wow, amazing law by Joe Biden, amazing to protect women's rights. So that was his marketing, mission accomplished. So Biden's got his reason for doing it, which is to avoid the bigger issue, right? And by the way, why does he want to avoid the bigger issue? Because he wants to hold it over the Republicans' heads for the next election, right? He wants to say, oh, if you elect the Republicans, they might ban abortion, which is true, right? So he doesn't want to fix it. He just wants to play around the edges.

So that's politics, but you never see that anywhere in on TV. They don't tell you this the cheesy maneuvers of either side because they have to have access to these politicians. Yeah, hit everybody. So look, we're going to take our break a little bit early because our next story is going to be a monster story. We're going to talk a little bit about, well, the latest terrifying poll involving, Joe Biden and basically the various GOP candidates who would beat him in the general election. Don't miss it. It's really important to get into that story and more when we come back.

Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash TYT. My host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.