The Young Turks - Immune From B.S.

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

You’re vital to our work. Support as a member: https://go.tyt.com/signup. Nikki Haley defends "racist country" comment: "The intent was everybody was going to be created equally." Trump, who is awaiting ruling, says presidents must have "complete and total" immunity. Livid grandparent of the Uvalde victim calls out law enforcement officials "getting paid to do nothing." Here's why a growing number of American men say they are in a "friendship recession." HOSTS: John Iadarola (@johniadarola), Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) and John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) 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 ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA 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! Thank you, Friday! Bexie! Bexie! Bexie!

Bexie! Bexie! Okay, go ahead and drop it. And suddenly it feels like 2018 up in here. What are three people doing at the same desk? Anyway, I'm John Aderola and you know Jordan Yule, he's been around. TYT, the insurgents, great to have you here, Jordan. But someone you might not have seen at our desk in quite some time.

John Fugel said back. Nice to be back here. It is good to have you here. since the pandemic. Thank you guys for lowering your standards and letting me back in the building. I mean, they were slowly dropping. I appreciate that. And I think we, we lined up. You caught up to us. So that's great. But no, it's great to have you here. I think that we've got a fun rundown of stories that both of you are going to enjoy. We are obviously starting a little bit late apologies for the tech problems related to that. But we do have a lot to talk about.

So why don't we try to catch up a little bit by jumping into our first topic. Do you really think as a historical matter, America has never been a racist country? When you look at, you know, the Declaration of Independence, it was that, you know, men are created equal with unalienable rights, right? That was what we all knew. But what I look at it as is I was a brown girl that grew up in a small rural town. We had plenty of racism that we had to deal with. But my parents never said we lived in a racist country. We're in like day four of Nikki Haley's America has never been a racist country tour,

and it's going about as well as it was on day one. She, by the way, as all of this is going on, insisting against all evidence that America has no racist past is being attacked in an explicitly racist fashion by Donald Trump. And we will get to that. But we want to focus on what she said there in the town hall that she did with Jake Tapper. She said, you know, in the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal. And then I didn't like look it up, but I assume everything went well after that, right? Yeah, just fine.

It's a good thing she didn't read the merciless savages parts about the Indians, because that might have altered her perception about never any history of racism. But this is, this is Nikki Haley. I'm going to miss this like I miss Michelle Bachman's campaign. When you think about it, sexism is alive and well when Nikki Haley's gender is the only thing keeping her from taken seriously as an empty suit politician with nothing to say. The new racism in the Republican Party is the denial that racism exists. And Nikki Haley has to appeal to people who think the Civil War was just fine.

It had nothing to do with slavery. She knows exactly what she's doing. One time, okay, maybe you screwed up. You didn't think the Civil War had anything to do with slavery. This is quite deliberate. And this is for a party that is more outraged by protests of racism than actual racism, the party that is more upset about Colin Kaepernick's knee than Derek Chauvance. So later in that segment, she also talks about, oh, well, you know, their intent was never to be, it was never to be a racist country. And sure, they had to fix some things along the way. Those are two totally different groups of people she's talking about. She's conflating the framers who wrote the three-fifths compromise, which said black Americans are, or black people at the time, are three-fifths of a whole person. And then the 14th Amendment, which came almost a hundred years later. Those aren't the same people. So the intent explicitly was there. And it's an

forced error that she's now defining her campaign going into New Hampshire, where maybe she's got a little bit of a chance to chip way at Trump. There are people who don't like him. I don't know if she's going to pull it off. I doubt it. But her whole campaign is now responding to this controversy. She brought this upon herself. She continues to double down. It's just truly staggering, just mismanagement, poor political instincts throughout her whole campaign. Oh, I disagree. I think it's an excellent audition to be Donald Trump's running mate. She's doing everything she has to do and jumping through every group perfectly. Yeah, yeah, look, I think we're rightly critiquing her performance.

The voters she's trying to reach do not care about her racist statements. They don't mind it one bit. She's trying to appeal to them and forgive it. They want to be reassured that America is not and has never been racist. And that's largely what she's doing there. Nothing racist about the Confederacy. No, feel good about that. Well, and by the way, Jake Tapper, like he knew she was going to say that. He's after all asking a follow up to something. She said, a few days ago. She obviously is going to change her position. So you know what she's going to say.

So he has note cards. Maybe he could have like a few instances of racism in American history, you know, internments and the like. But I'm assuming they would consider that to be too opinionated, too partisan, to mention Jim Crow slavery, the internment, like all redlining, like can we Barack Obama's birthplace? 100%, yeah. Or perhaps the comments from Donald Trump about her. And we will get to those. But there was another question and it had to do with comments made by Joy Reed about how she did in Iowa. So let's jump to that. She's still a brown lady that's got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant

and which accepts the notion that you can say immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. She's getting, you know, birthered by Donald Trump. And I don't care how much the don't have a lot, which will ramp up a lot. the better she does in New Hampshire. So it's still a challenge. I don't see how she becomes the nominee of that party with Donald Trump still around. Joy Reid lives in a different America than I do. I mean, yes, I'm a brown girl that grew up in a small rural town in South Carolina,

who became the first female minority governor in history, who became a UN ambassador, and who is now running for president. If that's not the American dream, I don't know what is. You can sit there and give me all the reasons why you think I can't do this. I will continue to defy everybody on why we can do this and we will get it done. Are you a racist party? Are you involved in a racist party? No, we're not a racist country, Brian.

We've never been a racist country. Ask a human, are you a racist party? Are you okay, Brian Kilmead? What is going on with you? But anyway, yeah, like, yes, it is great that she was able to get elected. And no, not every single Republican is a racist or is a racist on the same level. That is definitely true, but racism is not and cannot be disproven by exceptions, by individual experiences. That's not how it works.

And the fact that she is so clearly running scared from racist in her own base, that puts the lie to everything she's saying. You would not act the way she is acting unless you knew full well what the Republican base was like. And she's making clear that she understands it. Yeah, I think she's doing quite well. I don't consider any of this to be a mistake on her part. I think this is her auditioning for a man she despises and who disposes. Bises her back to work with him very closely for the next six years. And it's just a gift to fans of comedy everywhere.

Throughout her comments on this issue, she's talked about her personal experience. And she talks about how her parents never told her it was a racist country, despite experiencing racism in South Carolina as a person of color. And it's foolish to think that, sure, my personal anecdote informs the entire, you know, experience for black or Indian or whatever ethnic minority in this country that they too could succeed or excel in life if they just refuse to accept that this is a racist country. Well, you're experiencing it.

She acknowledged she experienced it. And that's to deny the same experience that any other successful or striving person of color in this country has. It's just you can't, you can't apply your anecdote to a national experience, especially on an issue with such a terrible legacy in this country, like race. But doesn't it depend on the room she's playing to? For sure. Because she'll say whatever she needs to say to get applause in the room she's in.

So you're exactly right. Successful black people in this country know what it means to succeed in a society that still has the vestiges of apartheid. I mean, we've only been apartheid free for 60 years. And she knows it. But she's not going to get elected being moral. She's going to get elected feeding the grievance complexes of people who don't care about racism and don't want to be bothered with this.

This is the people who are more upset that we have a Black Lives Matter movement than they are upset that we need a Black Lives Matter movement. 100%. Yeah, yeah, and she is clearly, like, it would be easy to write off like the earlier comments about the Civil War to ignorance or whatever, but no, she's, she's an intelligent woman, both intelligent enough to know that what she's saying is untrue. And also clearly she has the savvy necessary to know who the party is. And she is trying, and it's difficult to thread the needle of, you know, running against Donald Trump, raising your profile enough. that he would want to bring you on, but not offending him or hurting his fee fees enough that he would deny you the spot. And she's trying to get that done. And she did this the same day her fellow South Carolinian, the great Senator Tim Scott, endorsed Donald Trump. After he came out there on January 6th, when they had a Confederate flag in our capital,

when they were trying to throw out the votes of black voters in Arizona and Pennsylvania in service of a man who began his political career by spreading a lie for years, the first black president, one of us, and it happened in a building built by slaves. And Tim Scott, in his audition, said, America's not a racist country. They're the exact same person having the exact same audition. She's not running against Ron DeSantis. She's running against Tim Scott. And I think we all agree she really doesn't have a chance. But she's trying to do this kind of like racism light.

And you see this in campaigns all over, on all sides of the spectrum. You'll see Democrats who try to be more moderate, try to appeal to right-wing voters. And it never works. They pick up, like right-wing, explicitly right-wing policy positions, thinking that they'll pull voters. What she's trying to do is she, up until this point, tried to run a pretty distinct campaign from Trump, because she knew if she had a chance, that would be her only avenue. She's got way more traditional foreign policy. She's way more just basic standard, what we understood over the past couple decades as a conservative.

She models that old guard. Now she's trying to do the, well, you know what? Maybe racism isn't real, maybe these things aren't that big of a deal because it's not working. What she had been doing until this point is not working. So she's throwing a Hail Mary thinking, hey, maybe if I just dabble in racism light, I might get some more votes. Yeah, or that I might demonstrate to Trump, I can be your shield against accusations of both racism and misogyny. Maybe I can distract a little bit from the fact that you've already been found guilty of sexual abuse and all that. Like, that would be a useful skill, I suppose.

She hasn't heard about that, by the way. She doesn't know anything about that. I know. It's all hypothetical. Everything's in the future, even the ones that are in the past. You know, news travels slow to South Carolina, and the fact that Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of Americans hasn't quite made it to Nikki's headquarters. From months ago. In any event, we want to talk about where some of this racism is theoretically hitting home, but she's also not seeing that. While Nikki Haley is traveling around the country, downplaying the history of racism,

Donald Trump is ramping it up in his attacks on her. So something that you're probably already fully aware of if you're on Twitter or you follow his true social is that Nikki Haley's birth name is not Nikki Haley, it's Nimirata, Nikki Runhawa. That is just a name, that's all that is. Sorry to me, some people find it to be far more compelling than just a name. In fact, they think that's checkmate, that's a slam dunk, Nikki Haley's done. And so every right winger on Twitter who found

this out suddenly it was their favorite shiny new toy and they could not stop tweeting about did you know her name wasn't Nikki and Donald Trump eventually picked up on that too and so he transitioned to calling her by her birth name that started to bore him and so he moved on to more fun versions of it including anyone listening to Nicky Nimrada Haley's whacked out speech last night would think that she won the Iowa primary that is notably not her name that's That's just a word you made up, it's not the name, but it's closer to the name. Not a primary either. No, no, not a primary. It was a caucus, interestingly.

He won it, but he doesn't know what it was. That name was too close to her actual name. He's grieving. He's grieving from the funeral, John. Please give the guy in the brain. Oh yeah, no, he's devastated. On Melania's behalf, he's overwhelming with compassion. So yesterday, he tweeted this, Governor Kristinau, the now failing governor of New Hampshire. where I'm beating his endorsed candidate, Nimbra by big numbers. I'm not gonna continue, I think we can stop there. Oh, he uses it again later on, it wasn't a weird auto-proof thing. That's not her name, it's not even close to her name, but it is very close to being about

as racist as he thinks he can be in this primary, I think. He's focusing on a version of her birth name to say that she's suspicious in some way. She's a foreigner and outsider, forget the fact that she's lived her whole life, she's served in elected office, she literally was in his administration. And also, she is not deserving of the minimal respect to actually say her name. I'm not even saying Nikki. If you want to say Nimrodite, you could do that. He's not even doing that. She, in the same way that Harris hasn't deserved Tucker Carlson ever learning how to pronounce her name, he has moved on to a mocking version of it because she is not deserving of the same sort of compassion the white people

are. Well, it's not like the Trump family ever changed their name, John. Get out the guy a break, will you? Yeah. But none of this is a surprise. I mean, this harkens back to Elizabeth Warren and Pocahontas. Donald Trump is now, I think, the only president to equally offend American Indians and Indian Americans. We should give him credit for that. It's not easy to pull off. I just wonder what people like her or Vivek Ramoswamy think they're going to accomplish by trying to run in this party.

The reactions from caucus goers in Iowa who explicitly said they don't trust. It felt reminiscent of birtherism. Oh, I don't think he was. born here. He's not, you know, he's explicitly talking about his race or his, his ethnicity. And, you know, it just also the reaction after he dropped out, the Babylon B, which is a pretty staunch defender of all things conservative, posted a story saying he could be the head of the White House 7-Eleven. That's right. Which is just like explicitly, and a racist trope. Yep. And when you have people, both of them have tried to say, like, this isn't a racist party, we're not a racist

country, we don't have systemic racism here. Look at your own base. Look at the party you're trying to operate within. What are you doing? I'll never understand it. I know. They know. It's the presidential loser industrial complex. You run for president to get a job. They both know exactly what they're doing. And like Tim Scott, they've got to spend their entire life playing dumb about the elephants in the room. Racism for this party in this century is the denial of racism. And that's how you get ahead. I mean, when is Tim Scott ever confronted racism? And the only The only time Nikki Haley's ever done it was when she took down heroically the flag of an enemy white supremacist nation from the South Carolina Capitol.

But she only did that to change the narrative so we wouldn't talk about AR-15s, we talked about a flag instead. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And look, I would say if I'm trying to, like devil's advocate, they're conservatives. Well, she is at least. Ramoswami apparently was a liberal like two years ago or whatever, but it's way easier to grift right wingers, I think everybody knows that by now. She's a conservative.

Dave Rubin told me that once. Go on, please. Yeah, apparently, and he's been very successful with it. They, maybe they think, look, I hate that it's a racist party. I hate the racist comments that I have to deal with. But maybe by running, I can shift it a little bit. Maybe. I mean, she got 20% of Iowa.

She's gonna do better in New Hampshire. Maybe. You think Nikki Haley did something out of altruism for minorities in her life? I'm trying to be fairer than they will ever be to us. I understand that. Listen, I think we can just go by her positions on the issues. And, you know, there is a chance that she could be the nominee of the party. I mean, there's a very good chance with 91 criminal indictments that this guy drops out. So in a way, she's really running to be vice president because that's going to be the job either way, wait for Trump to fall.

I mean, do either of you think, though, that he would pick her? He seems to be, you know, ratcheting up his attacks on her. He doesn't seem to trust her. I think they had a falling out after, maybe, after her tenure and ouster from his administration after that wrapped up. She's been a little bit more critical of him lately. Do you think that he would pick her to be vice president? Because I just, I don't see it happening.

I find it hard to believe. I think it would probably be wise on his part. So no. But no, I think that it would help to reassure some of the establishment Republicans that, you know, hey, maybe if he dies a normal, reasonable, relatively reasonable person gets into office and and it would dissuade a little bit of the attacks against him for his rampant misogyny and racism. I think it would be a better choice than a green or a Stefanic or a Kerry Lake or something like that. But I don't know that she's the sort of person he wants. But remember, he did pick

Mike Pence. He didn't choose like a fire breathing, you know, radical the first time. He went for the most revoltingly false Christian he could find. And he did quite well. And he doesn't need that anymore because now the fake Christians have their Messiah. That's true. You know, but it's interesting, all the media were the bad guys to me on the Iowa caucus results. If Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis were one person, and honestly, we're not that far from that, it would have been a 5149 caucus result, right? I mean, this was not a landslide by any means. 86% of Iowa Republicans stayed at home, about 7% for Trump, 7% for the other ones. So 93% of registered Iowa Republicans did not vote for the president of their party for their incumbent president.

Nikki Haley is a bit of an outlier here, but she's another symbol of the fact that this guy's got problems in his own party. He's literally their president, and he could only get 51% of the vote in a state as white as Iowa. Yeah, that's true. Something to bear in mind. And I will leave you with one other thing to bear in mind, not you, the audience, but Nikki Haley, he is making fun of your name. That is true. He also said that you probably are not constitutionally able to be president. I would just bear that in mind. As you're defending him against the claims that Democrats are disenfranchising Republicans

by blocking him for the ballot, he is spreading a conspiracy theory that you shouldn't be able to run at all. But with that, we're gonna take a short break. We come back, a lot more to get to. Welcome to the social break, everyone gonna respond to some of your comments. First of all, Bart Kyle, Bart says, okay, place your bets. Johnny Pie sometime during the show is gonna mention the Loki Tom Hittleston look for John saying, I got five bucks, easy money, everyone.

That's actually the look I was going for. If Beethoven had sex with Loki, what would their child look like? And with the glasses, with, I still have my pandemic hair, I apologize. But with the glasses, it's like, oh, wait, I didn't know Fran Leibowitz and Nick Cave had become one person. So I apologize still for my pandemic hair. I'm Catholic. We hang on to pain for a long time. I love it.

Anyway, I'm not that. I've taken a bit of a break from Marvel, by the way, buddy. Back off. No, you have it. You never will, John. I don't even have Disney Plus. Marvel made you take a break. Marvel made you take a break.

I stuck in there for a while. I hung in there. I have an 11 year old. I hung in there. Yeah. Okay, let's see. Gabby says, Republicans, we're not a racist country. Also Republicans, law enforcement should be allowed to racially profile certain communities.

100%. Yeah, it just, there are a lot of pointless arguments in politics and trying to get them to admit that, which they already know and are enthusiastic about is one of the most annoying. Just ask you, ask your Republican loved one. Your right wing cousins, that guy on Facebook that can't spell your, your uncle racist, your aunt dead inside. Just ask them, where was Barack Obama born? And you will find out very quickly who values Donald Trump's racism and lies over objective truth.

They're terrified of the question. Yeah, it's, you know what, it's one of the weirdest political coincidences in history that Donald Trump has had to go up against, let's see, a Barack Obama who wasn't born in America, Ted Cruz, who's not eligible to run, Nikki Haley, who's not eligible to run. It's so weird that all of the non-white candidates he's gone up against. white candidates he's gone up against are not allowed to run and he gets to automatically win. It's so weird how that all lined up. You'd think they'd be more gratefully lets them live here.

That's true. Let's see, Undead Pixels gifted a sub over on Twitch. Thank you for that much appreciated. Seaman Assassin gifted one as well. Thank you. Very nice of you to do that. By the way, I'm not seeing the, oh yeah, verbose dragon says before anyone gets on a text case about a late start, we all need to remember that this is a live show.

Stuff goes wrong all the time. I can guarantee that there are often tech issues that we never see because of the TYT team are professionals and good at their jobs. I can attest to that, actually. I had a description of one of the tech problems that was avoided before TDR yesterday, and I didn't understand any of the words that were used. I would not have been able to fix it because I didn't know what it was. But it was fixed and TDR went off without a hitch.

So thank you for acknowledging that. Okay, finally, let's jump on to Box, became a member. Thank you, Box. Good to have you here. Marie Sleece Cahill has been a member for two full years and says, yay, it's the power panel. It is and thank you for watching. Benjamin Moral gifted a membership, thank you. Dami Mami Matrix, member for six months says, I'm here for the hair, but I stay for the show.

Shout out to TYT, Dragon Daddy, how's the baby dragon? The baby dragon is a delight and it's late enough in the day and I got here very early that I am incredibly antsy to get home and see her. But I'm hanging in there. And also Domi Mommy Matrix gifted five memberships, so that's very nice of you, thank you for doing that. Snarky, gifted one as well. Danielle Grafalo is a member, thank you. And a dog known as cat says, as a young black man, I want to thank Nikki Haley for single-handedly ending racism in America. Definitely not sarcasm.

We'll end on that. Welcome back to the power panel, everyone, with John and John and Jordan. Thank you for being here, guys. We got more news. Let's jump into it. The president of the United States, and I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about any president, has to have immunity. Because if you take immunity away from the president, so important. You will have, you will have a president that's not going to be able to do anything. Because when he leaves office, the opposing party, president, if it's the opposing party, will indict the president for doing something that should have been good. If they don't have

immunity, no president is going to act. You're going to have guys that just sit in office and are afraid to do anything. So Donald Trump is, of course, still pushing for full immunity for the president against all of the charges he's facing 91 indictments at present. And we are waiting to find out exactly what's going to happen with that. But he isn't just doing it in video form. He's waking up in the dead middle of the night to post untruth social about it. And in these posts, I think there was actually something interesting. So see if you can spot it in this first message.

He says, in all caps, mind you, a president of the United States must have full immunity without which it would be impossible for him or her to properly function. Any mistake, even if well intended, would be met with almost certain indictment by the opposing party at term end, even events that cross the line must fall under total immunity, or it'll be years of trauma, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is that the first acknowledgement from Donald Trump of illegal acts having been committed? He says even events that cross the line. He's never admitted that he did anything wrong previously.

He's saying that this is all made up its election interference. I think that's an indication and admission that they did go too far. It shouldn't matter, there should be no consequences, but that illegal acts were committed. We're implying it was accidental. He tripped and fell and inadvertently caused a terrorist attack on our capital. That's, you know, but at least he looks healthy, John. He looks terrific and we got to give him that. But I'm glad he's taking this issue on because anyone who studies history knows that

our founders really believed in this and thought that a president should have full immunity from any crimes they commit because our founders really missed having a king. And liberals don't want you to know this, but this is what it was all about. If you deprive presidents of full immunity, that's going to keep a lot of criminals from ever seeking high office. And I don't really, I mean, you'd think the deep state would figure that out. That's what they're depriving us of. And I think that's really unfortunate.

So thank you for pointing that out. I just, how does he say that with a straight face? Like the cross the line thing I think is more about, I'm with you. It's, oh, well, sure, it wasn't as graceful as we wanted. We thought we were just going to go in and just peacefully remove the ballots and replace them with better ballots. And I don't think it's an admission of guilt, certainly at a time where he's facing all of these, you know, various criminal cases, everything is being hyper scrutinized, even down to his language. I think, I think this is just, well, it wasn't as polished as it could have been.

Mistakes were made, maybe they shouldn't have broken the windows. I think if you want to read into that, like, they could go in there, but just you don't destroy the property. I mean, he's in court right now arguing both that Joe Biden has the right to assassinate him anytime he wants, and that Kamala Harris has the right to seat false electors in 2025 if Biden loses. He's fighting for Democrats to do that right now. This is the Republican Party 50 years after Nixon. We have gone from I am not a crook to a crook is not a crook. I thank you for reminding me of that.

Every once in a while, I'll get caught up like in the fact that Joe Biden isn't polling so well. And I have to remind myself, Harris can just give him the election anyway, and I feel a lot better. Also remember, these polls are polls of people who answer their landline phones or answer their cell phone when they don't know who the caller is, not necessarily the most accurate cross-section of America. That is entirely possible. It just, like you brought up two of the, I think the largest hypocrisies on the right. Like Donald Trump should be immune from any prosecution. Should Biden? Of course not. Especially his vice president.

I don't know if you know this, but you can impeach a president for stuff he might have done his vice president. But not for stuff he actually did his president. Exactly. Understand? That's a weak spot in Biden's legal fortunes. But yeah, it's just like, they don't mean it, they don't. And I, it's one of the most frustrating things about discussing politics, because politics is obviously an incredibly consequential topic, you know, it determines the life and death

of so many people. And we are raised to believe that, you know, there's like, there's people on the left, there's people on the right, there's people who are pro life, there's people who are pro abortion or whatever. Like, yeah, and there are some people who mean what they say and others who don't give a damn about what they say. It's all just what am I accomplishing right now as I'm saying it. I am not stating a principle. It might seem like I am. It might look like the things people do when they're expressing an actual value or principle. But they're not, they don't think that Biden

should be immune from prosecution. They don't think that Harris can overturn the results of an election. They don't mean any of this. They don't mean anything they say. They're not against abortion. Okay, if they were against abortion, they would be for sex ed and access to birth control. They're not against illegal immigration. If they gave a damn about illegal immigration, they would start locking up the white people who hand out all the jobs and put up the gigantic help wanted sign at our border that no wall can ever hide. If Republicans want an undocumented immigration to end tomorrow, they could do it. They don't care. They need the issue.

They don't mean anything they claim to fight for. There's no sincerity whatsoever. The entire agenda, all conservativeism means at this point is owning the libs and blind obedience to a reality. show landlord. That's conservatism. Yeah, absolutely. Cult of unmanly obedience. Yeah, and think back to the early Obama years, the freak outs about just conversations around the Affordable Care Act, which we now see is still, it has still protected the private healthcare industry. Amen. The signs that we saw likening Obama to a dictator that you would basically just- Prayer against care. Yeah,

increase the coverage age to 26. That is like a bridge too far. he's a dictator, the signs that we saw, especially during the Tea Party movement, the conversations around him, even just down to him picking people for specific issues and giving them like the car czar. Do you remember the freakouts over just the words czar? He used the word czar, yes, because they didn't know that Reagan and Bush had Zars the entire time. And then the Biden crime family, we see the same sort of arguments against him and their his alleged illegality. They don't have any consistency, Not that that surprises anybody.

He's a feeble-minded dementia patient who doesn't know where he is and a criminal mastermind so shrewd he's never left a bit of evidence. It's a fascinating character, gentlemen. I think you're selling them short. Very skilled. Yeah, and again, you know, all the anxiety we had under the Obama years when we were hearing about fast and furious and everything, look, he's immune. He could do literally whatever he wants.

You cannot break the law. When Alex Jones was talking about Jade Helmut and everything, Obama can invade Texas. He can do literally whatever he wants. Why did Bill Clinton say he didn't technically lie under oath? What was he thinking? Bill Clinton could have just lied under oath and had his opponents killed. And it would have been fine. Donald Trump says so.

We learned things. Yeah, man, how the right has moved, by the way. I was just randomly thinking recently about Jade Helm. Trump and his inner circle of who's going to be in the White House in the second term are talking about deploying hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the border and building a network of internment camps. And Alex Jones used to get freaked out because there was like an FBI officer in Texas. There's been a lot of movement since then. Socialist internment camps. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, I guess they're not worried about getting locked up.

Helping you out, Dems, there's your argument. Yeah. Okay, we're going to move on to a very different topic, far more serious. But whenever we're ready, we can jump into it. I'm in classroom 1012. Please, let me. There's a lot of dead bodies. Please. This morning, growing fallout from the new Justice Department report that outlines, quote, cascading failures by police who responded to the Uvaldi School Master.

in 2022. 19 children and two teachers were killed. Had the law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation, lives would have been saved and people would have survived. Yesterday morning, the U.S. Department of Justice released the findings of their analysis of the failed response to the shooting that took place at Rob Elementary School in Texas back in May of 2022. And it's damning, not particularly surprising. I think that we all remember just the lack of response immediately. The horrific attempts to cover it up and put the blame on other people in the immediate aftermath of it. One of the most shameful instances in American political history. And we want to just summarize

some of what they found. They interviewed hundreds of people. They analyzed thousands of documents. And as you saw there with Merrick Garland, they focused on the failure. to recognize an active shooter situation, failure to take courageous action, failure to secure the crime scene, failure to establish standard operating procedures, and failure to communicate with the families. There were failures of all sorts, failures to go in despite literally hundreds of police officers armed for battle, all the way down to telling families that their kids were still alive when they weren't, which is just as I have a five month old daughter now. I don't know what I would do if you had given me that false hope when

you knew otherwise. I don't know what I would do if you waited for hours while someone massacred kids inside of a school. It wouldn't be good for any of the people nearby. But in any event, like I said, very little of this is surprising because the failures were so obvious in the moment and the lack of action afterward, equally obvious. What has been done to stop this from happening? What has been done to stop our police officers from being manned by either the officers or at least the leadership that are perfectly content to just set a perimeter while kids are gunned down? I don't know. I don't know. What are your thoughts? I have very mixed feelings on this report actually. I respect the hard work that went into it.

It's important, it should be read. But and I think it's great that it conclusively proves the lie of the Republican trope that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with gun when you have 276 good guys with guns who can't stop one 18 year old with a machine designed to kill lots of people really fast. But what gets me down about the report is it follows this tradition we have with gun violence in this country. To me, the problem isn't 276 cops afraid of an 18 year old who easily purchased an AR-15. The real problem is an 18-year-old who illegally purchased an AR-15. I don't care that the cops were too. terrified. The cops had good reason to be terrified because civilians should not own machines

designed to kill lots of people really fast. We don't let civilians own tactical nukes. We don't let civilians own white phosphorus. We do accept some limitations on our Second Amendment rights. But this is how we do it with mass murders here. I mentioned earlier, Nicky Haley, when we saw the horrific church shooting in South Carolina, suddenly it became all about a flag. Las Vegas, the worst mass shooting of white people in history. They called the, the worst mass murder in history, but it was only Caucasians. That whole thing became about bump stocks, not about AR-15s. And it seems consistently when these horrific atrocious crimes happen, the culture finds a way

to make the narrative about lazy cops, not about that emotionally unstable, 21-year-olds should not have easy access to machines designed to kill lots of humans really fast. And I'm deeply frustrated with the report because I find it's the same pattern happening again. fun to beat up on coward cops. This is about a bigger problem than that. Totally agree. Just that clip at the beginning just kind of like knock the wind out of me. No 12 year old should ever have to experience that. No child should ever have to feel that way. And it, of course, is we're the only country where this happens this often at this scale. And also the same country that throws up their hands and says, well, it's just the way it is.

We can't do anything about it. And it's the power of the NRA. It's the power of the gun lobby and the manufacturers. politicians who will turn a blind eye to this stuff or just let people die because they want to continue receiving those campaign contribution checks. It's not a divisive issue. You look at not just families in Yuvalde. You look at families all over the country who unfortunately have had their loved ones fall victim to gun violence. And they say the same thing again and again and again. Sandy Hook parents tried. They shouldn't have had to be in that situation, but they tried for reform and Republicans killed it. And I don't know what the avenue forward is when you have a system that is so corrupt and so prone to corporate malfeasance that this is

this is the result. A 12 year old crying in a closet hoping that she sees the end of the day. And that day everyone should subscribe to NRA mailings because that day they sent out the mailing that Joe Biden's going to come take your guns. People believe it and they go out and buy more guns and the NRA which is not a gun rights organization, which is not a gun safety organization. They are the lobbying wing for the gun manufacturers made a massive profit. They make a killing on every mass killing. It works. It's a great business model for them. But there isn't something that can happen. You know, if executions were televised, we'd ban executions. If slaughterhouses had glass doors, we'd all be vegetarian. If they released

the video of Yuvalde with the audio of the children screams, they only released it with the gunshots, and they edited out the sounds of the children screaming. Why? Is it acceptable to us? What are we trying to protect people from? I want to see parents in these mass murders because there will be more, because a lot of money is spent to guarantee there will be more, because the mass murders generate profit. But I want to see one of these parents go Emmett Till's mom and release the photos.

When Americans understand visually what an AR-15 round does to a child's body, then, and I'm afraid only then, we'll see movement on this, but not until there's images. Yeah, it's, we can't sanitize the reality. We do. I know, but I'm with you, we shouldn't. And the one thing I do want to say, though, about the cops is these parents, they're calling for two things. They're calling for reform to our gun laws, which I think we're all in agreement with.

And they want the cops who are getting either pay raises or even despite having been put on suspension or administrative leave, they're still making six figures a year. in a town of 20 some thousand people who are, with a median income of around $45,000. These people are getting paid if they are on administrative leave to not work. But if they are still working, there are reports out that they're harassing these parents who are calling for accountability. So like I hear you, we shouldn't just frame it on lazy cops. It's also they're operating as a gang.

And because they have like a union infrastructure to block any outside scrutiny, they fought this report. Exactly. They're harassing these parents who are calling for accountability. Could you imagine that? You lose a child or your daughter or son loses a classmate, and then the cops that stood by in the parking lot, then they harass you, pull you over repeatedly and tell you to leave town.

This is demented. Yeah. Yeah, you both, you bring up great points. It's a combination of all of these things. It's the cops in this instance. It's the both cowardly and horrifically cruel politicians, 99% of whom self-identify as committed Christians who don't give a damn if kids are massacred. They just don't, like, you know, the sorts of things that theoretically would inspire change in a country that wasn't a failed state can't hear.

Like, Sandy Hook doesn't matter. Marjorie Stom and Douglas doesn't matter. If you were to try to hypothesize, what is horrific enough that it can get through the impasse? You might come up with things like this, but it's not enough. Yeah, no, Mandalay Bay is not enough. And that was an Oaks isn't enough. Tansuit and a black president. Tansuven a black president.

Yeah, yeah, they're more frustrated by that. Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. I think it's a failure at every level. We are a broken culture, a broken society. And you pointed out, you know, that a lot of people don't support. This is totally true. Unfortunately, one part of us being a failed state is that it doesn't matter what the people think. It has no effect whatsoever on anything.

anything. But the fact that we we can't get any laws changed and it doesn't matter. People in Texas aren't turning against the GOP because the GOP is perfectly happy to sacrifice their kids on an altar of blood at the foot of Donald Trump. They don't care. Ted Cruz isn't in danger because they're perfectly happy to see your kids die any more than Ted Cruz would be in danger because they're perfectly happy to see your grandma freeze to death in a Texas winter. They can kill you and nobody cares. The hundreds of thousands of needless dead in COVID, nobody seems to be persuaded by the fact that they're perfectly happy to see you and your family die.

And we say this over and over and over again on podcasts and on shows and nothing changes. It is so utterly frustrating. I don't have a solution. We're just, we're going to go to break right now. Stew in that as I will. Welcome back one and all to what remains of the first hour of the Young Turks Power Panel. We're gonna mix it up a little bit, talk about the state of men, starting with this. American men are stuck in what's been dubbed a friendship recession, with 20% of single men now saying they don't have any close friends.

And more than half of all men report feeling unsatisfied with the size of their friend groups. That's just a little bit of what was discussed in a recent PBS report on this epidemic. of male loneliness, which I think we've all heard at least something about before the pandemic, but exacerbated by the pandemic. It is an issue of social isolation that nobody, no group is necessarily immune from. But men in particular seem to be very hard hit by it. And there are a few new developments in technology in the digital age that might help a little bit. And we're gonna discuss them, but let's go to just a little bit more about the issue.

Sometimes as men, we struggle to say, I need you. Richard Reeves is the author of, of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It? What is driving male loneliness? Why do men have such a hard time forming friendships and keeping them as they progress through life? You can't neglect a friendship and expect it to just grow. You have to work at it. You have to find the time. And my observation is that many women are just better at doing that and building it into their lives.

So look, we don't want to paint too dark of a picture. There are some things that people are doing to try to deal with this. Support groups, friendship groups, hobby related groups are being set up and some men are finding a lot of success with that. But we've also seen online discussion about a couple of other ways that men are dealing with loneliness in this era. One is through the use of only fans, which you probably think of as being a source for videos and photography and stuff like that, which it is. But it's also a place for some men to message with and involve in a long term sense in some cases, a kind of relationship with personalities online. And Business Insider has a great report on the topic that you should definitely look into. It is very big money for certain creators communicating for months or years at a time with some of these men.

But some men are finding companionship through that. And I would also like to just let you know about something that I noticed in the news in the last day. It is that chat GPT run by OpenAI now has a place for people to upload their own customized chat bots. And what do you know, a lot of them are AI girlfriends. There is a lot of attempts by Open AI to shut those down, to block them, but they keep popping up.

And I would speculate that they keep popping up because there is a demand for them, that it might be easier for some men to develop a sort of relationship, a lower stakes, less risky relationship with one of these AI bots than getting out there into a world that might seem very difficult. So we've thrown out a lot of stuff against the wall. What do you all make of this? Go for it. It's an open forum for men to speak. I know, I just need it more.

I don't feel awkward being around men talking. I haven't done this in a long time and I'm used to being at home with my computer and my right-wing chat group. so I'm a little nervous IRL. You know, it's very sad. We don't raise men in this country. We raise boys, guys, homies, players, and dudes. And empathy is viewed as a weakness. And we are in a time when a lot of guys are finding dignity

in right-wing chat rooms, when a lot of guys are finding the illusion of connection in fake women or women they pay to find them interesting, as opposed to the old-fashioned way of going to strip clubs and paying them to find you interesting. So, you know, I think the very fact that we're talking about it as a culture is the healthiest thing we can do because it is the sort of thing that no leader, no organization can fix. It comes down to the individual who gets tired of living like this and wants to get out of his house, take a damn dance class, take an improv class, be out in the world, challenge yourself, be scared for five minutes, meet new people, grow, grow a little bit, and see what kind of world is waiting for you. think ridiculing these guys is the way we're ever going to have any healing, fun though that

might be. But I also get more down than the friendship deficit when I read how many young men aren't having sex. And that's what scares me. Because when men stop trying to impress women, men stop trying to be better men to impress women. I mean, we will never know how many awful men have become decent, righteous, empathetic, evolved people because of the love of a good woman or a good guy. And I fear that we've confused happiness with pleasure. Dopamine with serotonin. The brief little squirt of pleasure that you get in your brain from porn, a lot of people think that's real happiness. But it's a very brief transient thing. And this is going to be a phase of human evolution where we're going to have to learn that trying to connect with each other this

way, it might work a little, but it's not going to replace being around actual people. And it's going to make guys meaner. Yeah, I definitely hear you. There's a temptation to laugh at people who are feeling atomized, who are feeling alone. And I think that phenomenon certainly isn't new. I mean, Robert Putnam is bowling alone. It's like one of the best books of the past couple decades. We used to be a nation of joiners.

Yeah. And we just, we don't have that. Everyone's isolated. Everyone's atomized. I think that got worse for the past decade, decade and a half, especially when you add social media, which gives you the feeling of connection. Yeah. just tied to porn or or only fans or anything like that like that I think is a different

type of need they think is being fulfilled but I found myself often in quarantine thinking I had a healthy social relationship because it's like friends and I would play video games every night and hang out on discord and in voice chats and it's like it's kind of the same thing but over time after a few months it's like oh my god I haven't talked to anybody at all in months And I think that is deeply troubling and concerning when you have potentially millions of young men who are coming to a certain age in their life or they're reaching adulthood. Their views are just being shaped. And you have, unfortunately, a lot of people on the left ridiculing them and a lot of people on the right just waiting to exploit them. And they just pull them over.

Oh yeah, all your problems, it's women. All your problems? It's immigrants. It's people of color. It's that it's not look at this system that you're living within that atomizes you deliberately. I have an author on my show who wrote a book about flat earth believers and the thing about it is the white supremacist groups zero in on conspiracy theories like this that might attract lonely people looking for community somewhere because they know that's where the pickings are to get new people to join the master race. So that's what really scares me, the illusion of dignity, because you have a sudden group of friends. I just want a lot of these young men to be. in a situation where they can have hugs because physical touch is what angry mean men need. Yeah. And honestly, I don't know when we stopped trying to impress girls and trying to get

out of the house and be more well-rounded and more charming and more evolved. But now in the era of it's quicker and cheaper than a date to just watch a five-minute porn film, this is what we're fixing. There's less anxiety and stress of the prospect of it as well. It has always been difficult to try to find a person, both for a friendship and for a romantic relationship, those are difficult and now there are easily available, less scary alternatives to it. Yeah. And you know, everything is going to, you know, flow in the direction of the least resistance, and that's kind of what it is. And the issue, like there's so much structurally, I think, that is causing this. But then on top of it, and it deserves more conversation,

there are a lot of theoretically sources for male improvement, people who are trying to fix, you know, trying to deal with this, trying to diagnose it. You talk about authors that you have in your show. The most high profile ones are men generally in right wing media, men in like seduction and stuff, who have no interest whatsoever in any of these men ever improving. Correct. Because if they improved, they wouldn't have to watch your content all day long. They draw you in to break you because a broken man will watch their content and buy their classes and all of that. And that cannot be said enough. They are being preyed on by really weak men who want their viewers to be even weaker and it needs to end.

But that's beauty magazines. Men are finally catching up with beauty magazine culture because Cosmo has to make you feel inadequate and fat and uncoordinated because if you start feeling good about yourself, you're not going to read Cosmo. Yeah. And it's the same thing with guys. We're witnessing it now. I mean, at the very least, Cosmo never said we should be gunning people down at the border.

Correct. Unfortunately, that's where this is often turns on the right wing version. Absolutely. But you know, I mean, porn is to actual sex, what pro wrestling is to actual sports. And if you're going to be too scared to go out there and risk failure, if you're going to be that much of a coward in the face of life, you're going to stay home and play it safe with pixels on a screen, well, I want you to have a happy life. I don't want you to be a right wing in cell resenting people and blaming women for not acting like the women in porn, you know, how women are supposed to act. And I deal with these guys all the time and they are being warped and they still need love. They still need to grow and yeah, you know, it's tempting to make fun of them because some of them are so damn mean.

But I still live and hope that these guys can get off of their screens, come out of their parents' basements, live in their community and discover a little bit of empathy and maybe learn how to spell you or correctly, just maybe. You dare to dream. Well, that is unfortunately all the time we have for this hour, but I want to make sure that everyone knows where they can follow you in the meantime. In the meantime, Sirius XM, Progress 127 every evening, or the John Fuglesang podcast on all the apps where you get your podcast. And Stephanie Miller's Sexy Liberal Tour is up and running. We're playing in San Francisco this weekend. Where can people get more details about the locations? Go to sexyliberal.com.

There's going to be a lot of big dates this year. Glenn Kirshner is playing with us. We just did a big show here in L.A. Right before the break. And we get lots of wonderful people to join us on stage. Awesome. Yeah. At Jordan Yul on Twitter.

I can't promise it'll be anywhere as sexy as that. And the insurgents? Yeah, of course. You gotta plug better, buddy. Okay? No, I can't follow that. Okay, well, we lack sexiness. Can we go out guys and talk about that article some more?

I'd love to. Can we hang outside of here? I would like to do that. My daughter calls because part of being a man. It's okay, John, I'll stay home. A good, caring dad. I don't want to go out anyway. Don't let them make you feel bad.

I'm good. I'm good. About being a dad. Anyway, okay, but we'll talk. And we'll continue to talk all in the show in the second hour after this. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I don't know. Buhn't know. And... ...andahs...

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