The Young Turks - ISIS Leader Killed In US Strike

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

The U.S. military has killed ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Young Turks, Jake U Gran, experimenting with you guys. So we've got a lot of news for you guys, of course, tons of things happening throughout the weekend and today. So we have stories on the campaigns coming up. Joe Biden being incredibly condescending, we will return the favor. And we're going to talk about his true record because frustratingly no one else is. No one in the opposing campaigns is, no one in the media is. So I guess it's on us and we will deliver and obviously we're gonna talk about the death of Baghdadi in a second and Trump's weird lies About that as well and then Anna versus Tommy Laran

I was look I got to watch it from a secure location filled with wires and it was like watching a movie It was and she was crying and whimpering like a baby Just kidding, she wasn't She wasn't it was fun. Yeah, so we've got highlights from that including Maybe my favorite poll ever is a bit strong, but the one that goes to disproving Tommy, it's a, it's a doozy, it's a great poll. All right, anyway, you'll see. Because the reason I like it is it shows with the younger generations we have won and they have lost.

And how different that cultural divide is. I've talked about it in the past between the young and the old, it's the biggest cultural divide we have in the country among many, but our worldviews are massively different. Anyway, that's all later on the program. Let's get to it. All right, let's do it. Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi is dead. He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere

in the world. Now, if you can get past Donald Trump's strange way of announcing this big news, it is big news. The leader of ISIS was announced dead over the weekend. There was a special military operation that not only discovered where he was in Syria, but also successfully killed him in the military operation. Now this was a big deal, but also keep in mind that in the past, we've killed other leaders of terrorist organizations, Osama bin Laden being one of them, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you do away with terrorism abroad.

However, the U.S. has been searching for Baghdadi for a very long time and being able to find him and effectively kill him is a victory. Now, with that said, Donald Trump's press conference announcing this went in all sorts of strange directions, and I want to start off with who he gave credit to in this special military operation. Take a look. I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. And I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain support they were able to give us.

This was a very, very dangerous mission. So he mentions the Kurds last, but I think it's important to mention that the Kurds really did help in the intel necessary to find Baghdadi. So Syrian general, Muslim, he is a Syrian Kurd, said, quote, for five months, there has been joint intel cooperation on the ground and accurate monitoring until we achieved a joint operation to kill Abdu. Abu Bakk, okay, Baghdadi to kill McDi. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Yes, and so he continues to say thanks to everybody who participate in this great mission. And it is true. The Kurds have assisted us in fighting ISIS, in detaining and monitoring ISIS, and now more

importantly in finding the leader of ISIS and helping us to kill him. Now there are some reports indicating that Donald Trump's actions in northern Syria, where he abandoned our Kurdish allies actually complicated this military operation. We'll get to that in just a second, but before we do, Jenk, do you want to jump in? Yeah, so I want to make a couple points here. First of all, we've killed al-Baghdadi six times so far. So this is the sixth. Strange, right?

Well, that's at least according to news reports and claims by the Pentagon and different American administrations. So this one appears to be more real because, well, the others definitely weren't, because then he would pop up in video and audio recordings afterwards and go, just kidding, totally not dead. And before, in those other ones, I was very skeptical as you heard on the show, because when you kill a guy like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, you make a big deal out of it. Now you're just showing off, Jank.

Okay, on the pronunciation. Yeah, well, you took my ability away to make fun of how Trump was pronouncing it. Abu Bakah, okay, anyway, I did it anyway. So it's okay, you're not supposed to know how to pronounce that name. And so this one they did make a big deal out of. So presumably they actually got them this time. Now ISIS will take credit for almost any death across the world. But when it comes to their own, they take a lot longer to acknowledge if it really is true.

and eventually, apparently they do in the long run. They have not yet in this case, Trump said that they immediately positively identified the remains of Baghdadi. He had blown himself up with a suicide vest. Apparently the quickest you could possibly confirm something like that is in 90 minutes. And now, while the time Trump announced it, it had been past 90 minutes. So usually they don't make this much of a spectacle out of it if they think there's a chance that'll get embarrassed.

Because if he comes out in a tape that drops next week, then Trump's gonna look like an idiot. And more importantly, the Pentagon is gonna look like an idiot. Trump looking like an idiot is Tuesday. But the Pentagon is more careful about this stuff. Everyone's up, they're like, we got them, but kind of. In this case, they're like, they're throwing a tigger tape parade. So I just wanted to give you guys that context. In terms of al-Baghdadi, he is, before we get back to Trump,

A monumentally bad guy, burned people alive, chopped off hands, arms, heads, and taped it and showed it to the whole world. Serial rapist, not only did he allow his troops to rape thousands of women, and that was kind of partly their reward for some of the other terrorism they had done in the territories they had captured, but he himself raped several of the captives, including an American captive and a 15 year old girl, those are confirmed, let alone all the other ones, okay? So it's a wonderful thing to be rid of this guy. And I talked a lot on the program in the past about how he in particular would be great

to get because a lot of the terrorist groups are dispersed and it appears ISIS as well. But no, actually ISIS was led mainly by al-Baghdadi, and if you cut the head off this particular a snake, it has a lot lower chance of survival than some of the things in the past. Al Qaeda was a much broader organization. ISIS was ruled with an iron fist by al-Baghdadi. I want to come back later to how al-Baghdadi rose in the first place and why we had to deal with this monster. Also the second in line in ISIS, the second most powerful individual in this terrorist

organization was also reported as dead. a day following news of Baghdadi's death. Now- Can I just say about that? That one is a little bit less certain on two fronts. It's Abu Hussein al-Mohadjah, one is they say he was the likely successor of Baghdadi. I'm pretty sure they didn't have an election yet. So we don't know that he was gonna succeed him, but he was an important figure in ISIS. Did they really get him?

They said, we think we got him in an air strike, we think it was an American airstrike. Already, the Kurds, by the way, are saying, we think it was an American air strike. And so, and they're saying, well, it's harder to confirm because no one knows his real identity or where he came from. So then I'm really not sure we got him. And there's no ticket tape parade around him, there's no press conferences. So take that one with a little bit of grain of salt. We got somebody the next day, basically.

So I want to go back to how Donald Trump actually complicated this military operation because while he's taking a victory lap, the reality is, again, abandoning Kurdish allies who were helping us, assisting us in the fight against ISIS in northern Syria did complicate the matter. So according to the New York Times, Baghdadi's death in the raid, military officials said, occurred largely in spite of and not because of Trump's actions. It is unclear how much Trump considered the intelligence on Mr. al-Baghdadi's location when he made the surprise decision to withdraw the American troops during a telephone conversation

with President Erdogan of Turkey. What is clear, military officials said, is that it put commanders on the ground under even more pressure to carry out the complicated operation. The Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, what official said, provided more intelligence for the raid than any single country. So I tell you that because just going back to the video I showed you, you know, the Kurds were mentioned at the very end of Donald Trump's statement and the way that he worded it made it appear as though there were nothing more than an afterthought.

Perhaps it's because he feels maybe some guilt or remorse because of the fact that he left them to fend for themselves after U.S. troops pulled out of northern Syria and then of course were then directed into other parts of Syria. But nonetheless, the Kurds did help and we couldn't have done this alone. And that's not based on what I'm saying, that's not based on what journalists are saying, this is based on what military officials are saying. Yeah, that's so important. I want to just go back to it for a second.

I want to read the quote from Graphic 3 again. Like daddy's death in the raid, military officials said, occurred largely in spite of and not because of Trump's actions. So I read that to you for two reasons. One is the obvious, Trump's taking a victory lap. Meanwhile, the military is like, we barely got him if it was up to him, we might not have gotten him, okay? That's very important.

But the second part is, why are military officials going to the New York Times and saying it definitely wasn't Trump? That means that he's got a lot of bad blood in the military. Even if that was true, but they liked the president, they would not have told the New York Times that. But obviously the military is super pissed at Trump. So as he takes a stupid victory lap, and I say stupid, not because you shouldn't take a victory lap after getting El Baghdadi, but because of the manner in which he did it as usual,

which we'll get to later. But the military, it's burning them up. They're like, you guys, you almost cost us. Now you're taking credit for it, and that's what's bothering them. Yeah, I was speaking to a journalist who was actually on the ground in Syria. She's writing a book about Syria. And she told me that, you know, one thing that she keeps seeing is how much it's underestimated that, you know, U.S. troops had a great deal of affection for Kurdish troops in northern

Syria, because they did work together as brothers and sisters in order to combat ISIS. And so for Trump to, without telling the Pentagon, without talking to Congress, to just pull out like that abruptly was not only, you know, abandoning the Kurds, which I'm sure they're not happy about, but the members of the military who worked with them are also not happy about that. This is for all the kids at home. This is why you have to do your homework, because if Trump had done any homework at all, before saying to Ardo, ah, sure, yeah, I'll pull out you ethnically cleansed northern Syria,

he would have checked with the Pentagon. And the Pentagon would have told him, no, no, no, no, not now. We're about to do a raid that's going to get the leader of ISIS. We've been working on it for a long, long time, two different times that they were going to go after him were aborted because of last minute problems. We almost have him, but we need more time to put up. But he didn't do any of that homework. He didn't check with anybody.

He said, I know what I'm doing. I got this. I knew what I'm doing? And he almost blew it. So what other part of the story was Donald Trump didn't follow protocol when it came to informing the right people. He did inform Russia, but he didn't speak to the gang of eight. congressional leaders that he is supposed to talk to as this raid is about to go down.

He explains the reasoning for that in his press conference. Here it is. We spoke to the Russians. What did you tell them? We told them we're coming in. And they said, thank you for telling us. They were very good. But did you tell them why?

No. No, they did not know why. We did tell them, we think you're going to be very happy. Because, you know, again, they hate ISIS as much as we do. You know what ISIS has done to Russia? So, no, we did not tell – they did not know the mission, but they knew we were going over an area that they had – they had a lot of firepower. And have you notified the congressional leaders about this, Pelosi?

We've notified some. Others are being notified now, as I speak. We were going to notify him last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I've never seen before. There's nothing, there's no country in the world that leaks like we do. And Washington is a leaking machine. And I told my people, we will not notify them until our great people are out. So Adam Schiff actually responded immediately after this press conference and said, yeah,

I found out about this for the first time on television. Well, that's the funny part that I'm gonna actually pardon him on that. The funny party say, some are finding out as I am speaking. Yeah, because you're on international television, we're all finding out, that's not really informing them. Okay. Now having said that, I think this little mini controversy in this story is much to do about nothing. So yeah, you're supposed to tell the gang of eight, those are the security people in charge

of the security committees inside the House and the Senate, but Washington does leak. And I'll tell you, Devin Nunes is one of the members of the gang of eight. If there's a Warren or Sanders presidency and they were to ask me and say, don't tell Nunes, they'll try to blow the mission. The Republicans have no boundaries, try to blow the mission so you don't get credit for it. You think they wouldn't do that? They would do that. So I don't care that Trump didn't tell.

It's just- Wait, Nunes would leak? Is it Nunes? No, no, I'm saying if you have a progressive president. And they're about to get a terrorist leader. I wouldn't trust any Republicans that they're not gonna leak that so the Democratic president doesn't get credit for it. You know, we live in such sad times where things are so poor. polarize that you can't, you just can't trust your fellow lawmakers because of the political

party. Not remotely. Who the hell would trust Devin Nunes or his cow? But at the same time, Jank, like let's keep it real. I mean, the biggest leakers come from Donald Trump's own administration. 100%. I get that. But look, it's a nice thing to have to inform Congress, but it's not necessary for the

mission at all. The president's not necessary for the mission at all. And then informing the Russians are like, oh my God, they told the Russians before they told Pelosi. Yeah, you have to tell the Russians first. Otherwise, you're gonna shoot your helicopters down. You're flying over airspace controlled by the Russians. Totally not guilty on that count. All right, now let's move on to Donald Trump's obsession with Obama.

Because look, he wants to take a victory lap, people are gonna buy into the victory lap, it's fine. But for some reason, Donald Trump is obsessed with Obama. Remember, Osama bin Laden was captured and killed during the Obama administration. And Donald Trump minimized that, belittle that, didn't want to give Obama any credit, and he actually revisited that issue during his press conference. Take a look. Bin Laden was a big thing, but this is the biggest there is, this is the worst ever. Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center.

This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country, a caliphate, and was trying to do it again. How is that statement not insanely controversial? Like it got no play in the media. Okay, look, capturing Baghdadi, killing Baghdadi, yes, that's a big deal. But Osama bin Laden was the architect behind 9-11. How are you gonna say like, yeah, people made a big deal about that, but who cares? Yeah, so just say you killed Baghdadi and then stop and go home and you'll get credit.

He'll get undue credit, credit you don't deserve, which we're gonna discuss in a second. But he can't help himself because he has verbal diarrhea. This is bigger than bin Laden. Bin Laden's the guy who attacked the Sun 9-11, how could it be bigger than bin Laden? That doesn't make any sense. And why are we even having a conversation about the relative weight of the two guys? It'd be like if, whoever was president during Jeffrey Dahmer, we got Jeffrey Dahmer, local police in Milwaukee got him, it's bigger than getting Hitler.

What? Why are we talking about Hitler? Like I'm glad we caught Dahmer, that's great, right? Why are you comparing yourself to Roosevelt and Truman who got Hitler? What are you doing? Because Trump in everything he does is driven by his insecurity. 100%. He's comparing these two terrible people because he's constantly comparing himself to Obama, right?

Everything he does, even pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, I mean, he did that specifically to give a middle finger to Obama. Everything Obama has done, he wants to undo just to give him the middle finger. That's what Trump's all about. Yeah, so look, we have a dozen quotes and tweets of him saying Obama shouldn't get any credit for Bin Laden. Now, again, the second surprising twist here, I largely agree with that. And I said that at the time, and I said it many, many times after that, there's a famous

picture of them in the situation room and they're like, look at how brave the president is. He wasn't part of the raid. They're like, he gave the go order, what was he supposed to do, give the stop order? Okay, Jank, I disagree with you on that. Because if that operation goes wrong and members of our military die as a result, who do you think is gonna get the blame? Yeah, I 100% understand that it's not like it hasn't happened before, it happened a Carter when he tried to rescue the hostages in Iran and the helicopter crashed and everybody

blamed Carter. That wasn't Carter's fault. And so in this case, what kind of a coward would you have to be to say, no, it might cost me politically. Let's not get bin Laden? Okay, so by the way, there is such a coward. His name is Donald Rumsfeld. I don't know if it was a coward or it's even worse.

He betrayed the country because this is a fact. We had bin Laden cornered actually before the Iraq war in Torabora, Afghanistan, New York Times reporter, James Ryzen, great reporter on that story. And Rumsfeld said, don't go. I do, and basically didn't want him captured. So yes, there are monsters that go bump in the night like Rumsfeld who says no, right? But any rational president would say, yes, go get bin Laden, yes, go get al-Baghdadi. So I don't think that, and like Biden now tries to take credit for it.

Okay, and Hillary Clinton was in the picture. She tried to take credit for it. The real person that Trump, again, accidentally was right, gave credit for the raid back then is Admiral McRaven, who was in charge of that portion of the military that got bin Laden. Admiral McRaven despises Donald Trump and wrote an op. against Donald Trump the other day saying he's a total buffoon in ruining the idea of America. So oops, right? And in this case, really, I mean, even Trump can't bungle it so badly that he's like,

I don't think we should get a big daddy. Why would he say that unless he was going to get paid? That's not the situation here. So I don't think either one of them deserve that much credit at all. I'm consistent on it. Yeah, I again disagree with you on that. But nonetheless, mixed bag when it comes to giving Donald Trump credit on this, while it's great that Baghdaddy's gone, again, he had to bungle it by all these weird messages throughout

his press conference. Now, speaking of his press conference, when we come back from the break, we're gonna get into all the weird, ridiculous lies he told about what he saw, what he heard, what really went down. We're gonna debunk his lies and give you more when we- We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the history.

historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time.

to return. All right, back on a young Turks, lots of funny comments from the members. Let's go over them as quickly as we can. Chica progericistista, sorry, it was almost as bad as Anna's Alba Barker. All right, Jank. Getting on my last nerve today. Jesus. Well, you'll like this, what Chica said.

She said, Anna, you're amazing this weekend and beautiful as always. I hope to one day meet you in person, but I left Politica on this weekend, feeling proud of our progressive brothers and sisters, and then quoting you, quote, I'm willing to fight for someone I don't know. That's quoting you, quoting Bernie. Yes, yes, thank you. Jane Locke says, Jank, bring back the soundboard so you can hit that lock him up chant throughout the show. I think it'll be as satisfying as you're tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. That's common. That's common.

That's common. Unstable Semi-Genius writes in, Anna brought the salt on Saturday. I yelled, we love you, Anna. When she blew that kiss at me, I almost died. Oh, I remember blowing a kiss at you. Hey. Well, the one you did blew the kiss out was that unstable semi-genius. And then finally, Gabby Marita said, quote, in spite of Donald Trump, will almost definitely

be the title of someone's tell-all book in the years after this administration leaves. Down, possibly written by Melania. Nicely done as usual, Gabby. Look, guys, we're gonna involve you guys so much more in the show as we go forward and so much more in the company, oh, that's interesting, as we go forward. So I actually wanna tell you guys, start personalizing your pages. I know I'm skipping ahead, guys, but t.yt.com slash sign up. So later there'll be even more personalization so we can all find out more about one another.

But for now, at least I can see your avatar, and that makes a big difference. And you guys can begin to get to know one another on TYT.com. We're gonna do a lot more of that as we go forward. So please begin to do that now. TYT.com slash sign up to go through that on our website. Change is coming. Also, since we're on the topic of involving our viewers more in our show, we are gonna do an Ask Me Everything, super chat discussion for our post game.

So our post game will be public and open for everyone to watch. However, individuals who are participating on YouTube super chat or the only ones who get to ask us the questions. So just go to YouTube.com slash TYT in the last 30 minutes of the show and we will answer your questions. And by the way, if you go to TY.t.com and personalize either through sign up or you click like a star to follow a topic, it also asks you what you'd like to follow so that you can customize it for you.

So if you love Anna and you wanna follow all of her shows, you click on Anna and you'll get updates on those or the different shows or the different hosts or the different topics. So anyway, we'd love it if you did that. All right, now let me tell you about one more thing about Abu Bakr. So we found out obviously that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid by Delta forces. Donald Trump came out and of course the credit for it. But that's for a different time to discuss. What I wanted to discuss here was why al-Baghdadi rose in the first place.

Who was he and why did he become this monster that we knew? He actually was a completely inconsequential person growing up in Iraq. He was not from Syria, he was from Iraq. And his dad was a shepherd, very simple, very poor shepherd in the middle of Iraq. And he went and got training to become a religious scholar. He actually went to Saddam University. Back then, that existed obviously. And he even got a master's and a doctorate in that.

And he was a weird guy back then. He was a loner. He did not do well in math. These are funny little things. He was actually his best grade was in art. Got 95 out of 100 in art, okay. And he actually coached the local soccer team for young kids. And they said he had because he would do the call to prayer.

when you do the call to prayer, it almost sounds like a song as you're calling people to the mosque, and they said he had a quote, sweet voice. Now, he did not have sweet thoughts even back then because some of the kids were freaked out by him proselytizing about fundamentalist Islam even during the soccer games. And so, but remember back then, Iraq was controlled by Saddam Hussein, which meant that it was quite secular. It was not fundamentalist Muslim. Saddam Hussein was opposed to al-Qaeda and opposed to fundamentalist Islam because it presented a challenge to his reign.

He was a general and he was secular and did not like extremist Muslims and often imprisoned them, tortured them and killed them. So at the time, if Saddam remained in charge, there would have been many, many atrocities, but a guy like al-Baghdani would not have risen at all. He would have remained a weirdo soccer coach and part-time Imam in a small little town in Iraq and would have been incredibly inconsequential. If he decided to organize anything at all, he would have had no avenue to organize it under Saddam Hussein's reign. And if he was well known in circles as organizing militant Islam, Saddam likely would have imprisoned or executed him.

So now, again, that doesn't make Saddam a good guy. He was terrible for other reasons. But when we invaded Iraq, we created chaos. And this is exactly the chaos we were warning about on the Young Turks because we've been around forever. So Ben and I back in the day before the Iraq war said, don't go in, it's a terrible idea. And at the time I remember saying, look guys, when you have mayhem, what's going to happen? You're going to have people start to fight.

You're going to have the Sunnis and the Shia fight because they are fundamentally different sects of Islam. And when you have a chaotic fight like that, the most violent and the most fundamentalists will win. As the war started, I thought I was right because of the Bada Brigade and another fundamentalist Shia that was starting to take control. He actually began to receive, but now he's actually has the most amount of votes in the Iraqi government.

So he hasn't gone anywhere either, so that's a different fundamentalist, but he's in the Shia A sec. Whereas Al-Baghdadi rose up. How did he rise up? Because it looks, we arrested him about a year after the war began, because he was doing something terrible? No. Actually, the going theory now, there's a couple of theories, but the going theory is we accidentally

arrested him when we did a raid of his brother-in-law's house that he happened to be in at the time. He goes into a prison that we're running, and you know, those were not ideal situations, say the least. They were tortured that prison. We have no idea that he was tortured or mistreated in any way. But prisoners started organizing themselves, and he became an emir of his cell block. And then he started discriminating against the Shia.

He started doing violence against the Shia, because now he got mayhem. So he says, okay, great, well, in this situation, I'm gonna tell you that the Sunnis are right and the Shias are wrong, and let's start to punish them violently. So he kicks all the Shia out of his block. Then he goes on to start to tell people what you can and can't do. what the size of your beard should be, what kind of music you should listen to, whether you could have tobacco. And then we let him out because it looks like we likely arrested him when we shouldn't

of. So now he's even more radicalized from being in prison and is now empowered and becomes part of the insurgency. So at the time, he then gets a new nickname Abu Dua. Later he becomes Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi when he proclaims himself the head of the caliphate, the head of all Muslims theoretically. And at his height, he captured territory the size of Great Britain. He captured Mosul, that's a city that's gigantic, has 1.4 million people in it.

He had people from hundreds of countries join his fight, tens of thousands of fighters. Part of the reason he did the grotesque violence that he did, apparently was because he partly enjoyed it. He's a sadist and a terrible guy. But the other reason was basically marketing, drawing people in saying, hey, if you come here, we're going to show you spectacular victories over forces that you couldn't imagine us beating, and his way of doing that was these outrageous executions and maimings that he would put out on video.

So obviously the area that they controlled became massive, the world united against them, and eventually he did him in. But in the meanwhile, endless number of people were killed, maimed, and mayhem was created. So would al-Baghdadi have become the terrorist leader that he was if we had not invaded Iraq? There is a definitive answer to that. Hell no, there's no way that would have happened. Al-Qaeda existed before we invaded Iraq.

In fact, al-Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq. Al-Qaeda wound up coming into Iraq because of the chaos we created, but was not in there before because Saddam was fundamentally opposed to them. But ISIS was purely 100% because of the Iraq invasion. So today's a great day because al-Baghdadi is gone and he won't get to terrorize anybody anymore. But understand that if you're looking to find out who's the culprit in the rise of al-Baghdadi, obviously al-Baghdadi himself and all the insurgents. But anyone who couldn't foresee that you would have that chaos, you would have a civil war

between Sunnis and Shia, and that it would devolve into violence like this. namely George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. So anyone who tells you otherwise is doing political correctness and in revisionist history. The reality is those monsters wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the decisions Bush and Cheney made. All right, let's move on to the next story. The president talked about Baghdadi whimpering and crying and screaming. How do we know that? Well, I don't have those details.

The president probably had the opportunity to talk to the commanders on the ground. That's Mark Esper. He is the defense secretary, and he was asked about some of the statements that Donald Trump made during his press conference when he talked about the death of al-Baghdadi. Now, he made a number of fascinating statements that aren't actually grounded in any truth, and I want to give you a little taste of that. Take a look. It was something really amazing to see.

I got to watch it along with General Millie, Vice President Pence, others in the situation room. And we watched it so clearly. How did you watch? Well, I don't want to say how, but we had absolutely perfect as though you were watching a movie. It was, that in the technology there alone is really great. So he doesn't want to say how because he wasn't watching it clearly, because it was impossible to watch it clearly from the situation room. Let me give you the details according to the New York Times.

Surveillance feeds could not show what was happening in a an underground tunnel, much less detect if Mr. Al-Baghdadi was whimpering or crying. That was another statement that Donald Trump said repeatedly throughout the press conference, and I'm gonna give you some clips of that in just a minute. But, Jenk, how about a quick statement, and then we can go to that video. Yeah, so look, the whimpering and crying, he 100% made out of whole cloths. If I was a Trump advisor and he listened to any advisor, I would have said to him, get in and get out.

You'll get all the credit in the world, you don't need to embellish, you don't need to to say anything, because if you say in any extra, you know Trump, he's gonna embellish, he's gonna lie, and then people are gonna start criticizing you for your lies when it's a day you should be taking credit. But he can't help himself. He doesn't have any smart advisors, they're all yes, man. So he goes out there and starts making things up, pulling it out of God knows where, that no one can back up, and then it forces the defense secretary to go out there and go, yeah,

I can't confirm that. Exactly. And by the way, the lies are brought. broken into two categories, normally the lies come from the Pentagon. And so now the TV doesn't tell you that, because that's their beloved Pentagon and they kiss their ass for access. So in this case, the life that's coming from the Pentagon is maybe even more pernicious. They say, oh, Baghdadi took three kids with him into the tunnel.

The tunnel that Trump couldn't see, nobody could see from the observation other than perhaps the Delta Forces that went in there, but only a dog might have gotten in there. So that's a whole other part of the story. But anyway, and the Pentagon said, he might have taken the three kids to use his human shields. They always do this. Look, Al-Baghdaddy's a monster of monsters. You don't need to embellish. And they did the same exact thing with Bin Laden.

I called BS on that, and of course I was right. They're like, oh, he hid behind his wife. Two weeks later, they're like, no, he didn't. We made that part up. Why are you doing that? Why, you don't need to do that at all? The guy was, he butchered people. He raped people.

You don't need to embellish with, oh, you surround himself with three kids as human shields. So that's the Pentagon's lie. That is also not at all confirmed. Trump's lie is he was whimpering and crying and I saw it like a movie. So let's hear him mention that several times throughout his press conference. He died after running into a dead end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way. He reached the end of the tunnel as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children.

His body was mutilated by the blast. The tunnel had caved in on it in addition. But test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification. It was him. The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him. Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way as a coward running and crying. And that's why he died like a dog. He died like a coward. He was

whimpering, screaming, and crying. And frankly, I think it's something that should be brought out. So again, I just want to mention, according to the New York Times, at the Pentagon on Sunday, official steered clear of any description of al-Baghdadi whimpering or crying. Also, Trump would not have received any real-time dialogue from the scene, the official said, because the last thing American military planners want is to invite critique, second-guessing, or even new orders from the situation room in the middle of an active military raid. So everything that he says he saw he didn't actually see, everything he says he heard, he didn't actually hear.

So look, what did he see? There is footage they take from the sky and it shows basically heat sensors and they did as good a job as they could in pointing out who the good guys were and the bad guys were. He didn't see anything in the tunnel because there's no cameras in the tunnel. The soldiers in this case have body cameras on them, but they are not live. The Pentagon reviews those later, almost never releases them, but they do have them, but no one's even viewed them yet, okay? So he couldn't have seen those, and there was absolutely no audio on anything.

So him describing how he whimpered and cried is literally impossible. The only thing is the Pentagon in trying to cover his ass were like, maybe he spoke to commanders on the scene later, but even though it looks like the defense secretary didn't even do that at the time of that quote. And so he didn't speak to no commanders, okay, he made it up, of course he did. And the part about the coward, look, the guy lit people on fire and taped it. You don't need to embellish, he may be the worst guy on the planet, so why are you needlessly doing this, they love to do this. He died as a coward running. How would he die not as a coward?

Is he supposed to sit there? If he sat there, you'd say he died like a coward. If he fights back, he died like a monster, like a coward. No matter what they do, you're going to say they died like a coward. It's needless propaganda. So wait. You know, it's gratuitous. You don't need it. The guy's already a monster. Sorry, Anna, go ahead. So I get what you're saying. But do you think that there's some utility in that type of messaging? Because remember, Baghdadi did inspire a lot of young men to carry out these acts of violence, he recruited a lot of young men into ISIS. And so if you portray him as a coward, maybe that helps to dissuade some individuals from ISIS

from continuing on with this ideology. I'm just not in favor of lying when it's not needed, right? So did he run? Of course he ran. Who would sit there and go, oh yeah, please put a bullet in my head? And so if he actually used the kids and said, don't kill me because I have kids around me, okay, then I would say he's a coward. But remember, the Pentagon says he had a suicide vest, blew himself up.

So why would he need the kids as human shields if he's going to blow himself up? And presumably, they're kids that he was living with. So none of that story makes any sense at all. And it gets people questioning for no reason. Why do you want people to question the story? So that's why it's stupid and you don't need it at all. So one other clip that I wanted to show you because Trump never fails to find strange things to brag about in the middle of press conferences like this one.

I kept saying, where's al-Baghdadi? And a couple of weeks ago, they were able to scope him out. You know, these people are very smart. They're not into the use of cell phones anymore. They're not. They're very technically brilliant. You know, they use the Internet better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump. But why?

But why are you comparing yourself to ISIS? He's such a weirdo. He can't help himself. Isis, they were very good with the Internet. internet, but I am better. I was number one, ISIS was number two in use of the internet. We were neck and neck for a while, but I pulled ahead at the end, ha ha, ISIS, but I give you credit.

Why are we having this conversation? Okay, and look, on a lighter note, when he's like, I kept asking, where's Albegdadi? I thought two things. Was that his where's Mandela moment? Exactly. I thought the same thing. I thought of Bush going, where's Mandela? Saddam killed all the Mandela's.

And then Mandela had to put out a statement saying, I'm not dead. Okay. Anyway, but the second thing I thought of is probably a refrain that Trump had a lot, especially when he was going through financial crises. Where's daddy? Where's daddy? So in this case he added bag daddy. Oh, interesting, yeah.

So he might have asked that after all in a sense. So I can't help myself. There is one other part of the story that I wanted to share with you. And it's a tweet from Nate Silver, okay? So Nate Silver is very transparent in his disdain for progressives, especially Bernie Sanders, never wants to give Bernie Sanders credit for anything. So with that context, just keep this in mind as I read you his tweet in regard to al-Baghdadi and his thoughts on how liberals have handled this story.

He says, quote, it's really amazing how many libs can't even permit Trump to have one good day. Nobody will remember this stuff by Tuesday after U.S. forces kill perhaps the world's most wanted terrorist. So let me, let me, let me ask you something. So when polling indicates that Bernie Sanders is rising and is doing well, and you don't want to give him credit for that, does that count as, you know, the same thing that you're accusing libs of in the case of al-Begdadi?

You get what I'm saying? Yeah, of course. Like he's, no. Is he, is he, I don't even know if he's on the left at this point, like what kind of statement is that. Like, he's making it seem like people are treating Trump unfairly. You think Trump's being treated unfairly? Yeah, so as quickly as I can.

Number one, it, when Bernie has a good fundraising number, good poll number, whatever it is, every time he says, it's just one poll, it's just one poll, it doesn't mean anything. Well, you can't let him have one good day? Okay, that's Anna's point. Number two, when I say, every once in a while, I kiddingly refer to the libs, but that's That's obviously ironic because we're liberal slash progressives. The way he referred to it doesn't seem ironic. So are you really calling people the libs?

Is that a thing? What happened to Mr. I just care about the facts and the numbers, okay? But these goddamn libs won't even let Trump have one good day. Look, I don't know, maybe he's kidding, I hope it's a wink and a nod. Does Nate Silver ever read? That's what I want to know. Does he, no, I know, that sounds like a huge insult. I mean, I really do mean it to be an insult because like, do you not, do you not know what Trump

did in northern Syria in abandoning the Kurds who are assisting us with ISIS, who are assisting us with the intel necessary to capture and kill al-Baghdadi? Are you unaware of all that? So again, I want to reiterate what we talked about in a previous story. Al-Baghdadi was killed not because of Trump, but despite Trump. And that is a statement from military officials who spoke to the press. So, okay, you wanna give Trump credit, have at it. But it's really strange to me that he's willing to give Trump credit.

But whenever someone else, a progressive actually deserves credit, he refuses to give it to them. And but the other two things are, look, as I've been saying for about 45 minutes straight on the show right now, is if Trump had just said al-Baghdadi is dead, our brave soldiers were instrumental in that, obviously were wonderful, and but I want to also thank our allies that helped us and walks off the stage, that's a big win. And he could have just left it at that. But he did a cell phone, as he always does.

And we didn't ruin his good moment. He did. He's like, oh yeah, I'm better at the internet than ISIS. And I heard him whimpering, crying when there was no audio. I mean, we can go on and on. So we didn't do that. Trump did that. But Nate's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Please back off of him. And then finally, the hypocrisy. Trump dozens of times said Obama deserves no credit for bin Laden. Obama deserves no credit for bin Laden. And so now when he says, oh, I deserve all the credit for Baghdaddy, oh, I deserve it. Nate Silver comes in and goes, yes, he's right. No, no, no, after you've been an incredible hypocrite like Donald Trump, you don't get to then turn around and go, hey, can you lay off me for one day?

I don't remember you laying off of Obama for one day. So Nate, thanks, but no thanks on your advice to be pleasant. to Donald Trump today. And lastly, I want to show the picture, the goofy picture they put out, because again, Trump is jealous of Obama. Obama had this great picture in the situation room when they were getting bin Laden during that raid. They obviously realized this belatedly, so they decided to take a picture afterwards.

First of all, you're not supposed to look at the camera, you're supposed to be looking at the action, right? That's what happens when you take it in the middle of the raid instead of after the raid. When you smile into the camera, then as half of them are doing, then we realize it's a staged picture. Second of all, presumably, as a lot of people on the internet have pointed out, those orange cables were at some point connected to something. Now they're not, okay, world's worst staged photo.

These are all unnecessary self-inflicted wounds. You didn't need to do any of that, all you had to do was say, I'll beg that he's dead on my watch, and everyone, including Nate Silver, and all the Main Street media, would give you all the credit in the world. But when Trump continues to punch himself in the face, it's our job to point it out. All right, we gotta take a break when we come back. A very important update on the impeachment investigation, and later on in the show, we will talk about some of the highlights from the Tommy Lerrin debate over the weekend.

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In the meantime, enjoy this free second. Hey, back on the Young Turks. So let's go to the member section first. Thomas Short says, just joined. Let's get after it. I like it, Thomas. Welcome. So, of course, read members. member comments first, tyt.com slash join to become a member. By the way, we're going to do YouTube super chat post game today. So it's freely available to everyone, normally the last half hours just for our members. But if you're a YouTube member, there's a couple of different layers to it. But at the 499 level, you also get the postgames.

So if you're a young tourist member on YouTube, you just click the little join button, blue join button underneath the videos. And anyway, but for today, YouTube.com slash tYT, that YouTube super chat is freely available to everyone. You can ask us anything you want, and we can talk about it. And then speaking of which, let me go to YouTube super chat comments. The Supreme King says, thank you for that debate, Anna. The Journey Bunch says, I've been a fan of your show since Obama's first election.

Thank you for all the hard work you do. You all do so much. Thank you, thank you. That's very nice of you. And thank you for using YouTube super chat. Last one, the stone apostate says, let's do this. Hashtag TYT, hashtag Wolfpack, hashtag lock them up. Okay, well, that's coming up.

Yes, also tomorrow on the conversation, Representative Rokana will be talking to Jank. Yes, so Rowe is going to be on. He's always got a little bit of fire and passion. When he comes on, he's going to tell some inside stories about what's happening in Congress. And then of course, the members only post him tomorrow, today available to everyone. Okay, what's next? All right, so EU ambassador Gordon Sondland testified before Congress in a closed hearing just a few weeks ago on October 17th to be exact.

And now we're learning through reporting at the Wall Street Journal that he did in fact confirm that there was quid pro quo, that Donald Trump's conversation with Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, did involve quid pro quo. So let me give you the details from the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Sunland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union told House committees that he believed Ukraine agreeing to open investigations into Burisma Group and into alleged 2016 election interference was a condition for a White House meeting between Mr. Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. So let's pause right there.

Remember, William Taylor, who is also a U.S. ambassador, did confirm that he believed that Donald Trump was engaging in quid pro quo. Now, there was some indication based on text messages between Taylor and Sondland that Sondland disagreed, that Sondland did not see it as quid pro quo. However, based on what he said during his testimony before congressional lawmakers, he did believe that there was quid pro quo. So asked by a lawmaker whether that arrangement was a quid pro quo, Mr. Sondland cautioned that he wasn't a lawyer but said he believed the answer was yes.

All right, that's not gonna help Donald Trump at all. Three reasons why it totally gets rid of the text where he says, hey, now remember, the president has been clear that it's not a quid pro quo. He testified this we knew earlier. He testified that, yeah, the president made me right that. Now we're finding out, yeah, I actually thought it was a quid pro quo. Okay, second reason why it's damaging is it's a corroborating witness to Ambassador Taylor. So that is two people that were involved in this whole affair going, yeah, yeah, we were holding

a military aid so that Donald Trump could gain politically, not so that we could help the country. That is devastating. It is devastating. And the third part of it is that he's a Donald Trump supporter. He gave over a million dollars to Donald Trump's, I believe, inauguration. And so, and he runs hotels, he's a rich Republican businessman and a Trump ally. A clear Trump ally, turning on him and saying it was quid pro quo, not turning on him in the sense of like betraying him or anything, just saying, well, that's what he said.

So I'm under oath, I'm gonna tell you what he said. And it was that we were supposed to hold up the aid so that Donald Trump could get dirt on his political opponents. So Donald Trump is definitely feeling the squeeze. The walls are closing in on him. And nothing made that clearer than his recent episode of chopper talk. And here he is talking to reporters with a loud helicopter in the background. The conversation was perfect.

They don't ever talk about the conversation. It started with a whistleblower. Now they don't want the whistleblower. Then they had a second whistleblower. Now they don't want the second whistleblower. The reason is that when the whistleblower, when they saw what the whistleblower wrote, and then when I released the conversation, which bore no relationship to what the whistleblower saw, they said their case was out the window.

We tried to take that conversation and make it into a big scandal. The problem was we had it transcribed. It was an exact transcription of the conversation. Nobody talks about the conversation, except everyone's talking about the conversation. That's the whole point. He's so obsessed with the whistleblowers. The whistleblower, I mean, look, that's what initiated all of this. But who cares about the whistleblower at this point?

You release the conversation. He still thinks that conversation was a good one. No, the conversation is a disaster and they keep latching on to this ridiculous talking point. Oh, this is all hearsay, it's just hearsay, hearsay, hearsay, hearsay, here say, hearsay. No, it's not hearsay at this point, right? Because it's not about the whistleblower anymore. It's about the conversation or the notes of the conversation that you yourself released,

which is incredibly incriminating. And then it's also about members of your own administration testifying against you, testifying against you, okay? the EU ambassador and the US ambassador, Bill Taylor. I mean, it's amazing to me. This guy is out of control. So he looked more like Biff in that little exchange than he normally does. But the character out of back to the future that was actually based on him, literally based

on him. And he's like, it was a perfect conversation. Okay, so he says, you know, it was the exact transcript. No, it wasn't. The exact transcript is buried in a secret server at the White House. If you'd like to release the exact transcript, we would love that. Jake, the exact transcript, it's worse. Like that's what's amazing.

Like what he released is bad enough. But apparently what's being kept in that secret server is way worse. That's right. And so that's why he, in his stupid mind, he thinks, one, you need quid pro quo for crime. You don't. All you have to do is solicit help from a foreign country in your political campaign. And the transcript version that you released admits that 100%. So I'm gonna, and then probably in the person that they hid, you have the quid pro quote part.

But that's why he keeps calling it perfect because he thinks he hid the bad part. He's like, it was a perfect conversation where I only admitted one crime and not too perfect. Perfect. Why is he so dumb? He is, he's unbelievable. But the other part that I love is this whole talk of hearsay. Are you surprised that Donald Trump doesn't really know what that means? I know.

Right? But it's all the Republicans are using this stupid talking point. They're like, you know, this ambassador tail in and the Sunling guy, they heard it and then they said it. So it's hearsay? Oh my God. No, that's not hearsay. When a witness says, I heard him admit the crime, that is excellent evidence that you committed

the crime. So he's like, well, you know, they heard it from someone else. No, they heard it from you. They heard it from you and they didn't get it relayed by someone. The whistleblower heard it from someone else. But as Anna pointed out, you don't need the whistleblower anymore because now we have half a dozen witnesses who heard it with their own human ears from Donald Trump. And I've already testified to that.

That's the second crime, the quid pro quo. But once that's revealed by the way, and even if they put out the full transcript and all these guys have already testified, yes, but it was a perfect quid pro quo. He just doesn't get it. No. It doesn't matter what he does, and last thing, when I say, why does he keep saying perfect? What a weird thing to say about any conversation? I'm not sure I've ever had a perfect conversation, have you?

What makes it perfect? I've probably had a few perfect conversations. Maybe the one against Tommy Lauren. Okay, anyway, no, he's saying it because he's thinking, I hid, I asked him for the favor, but I hid it perfectly, because he thinks he's so clever. That's why he keeps calling it perfect. Wrong. It was perfect, I didn't technically say the word quid pro quo, I just said we'll hold up

the aid and you do me a favor by going after my opponent Joe Biden. It was perfectly concealed. That's not true at all either, but that's why he's using the word perfect. When we come back from the break, we are going to discuss a fun story where Donald Trump went to a ball game and got booed. Yes, lock him up. 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.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.