The Young Turks - John Fetterman exposé - May 2, 2025

Episode Date: May 3, 2025

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month Shopify trial and start selling today at shopify.com/tyt Trump plans record $1.01 trillion national security budget. John Fetterman’s struggle. Trump company strikes Qatari golf resort deal in a sign it's not holding back from foreign business. Hosts: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur & Yasmin Khan SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com 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. Drop it like his Trump's poll numbers. All right, pow-pow power panel. Here's here, Jake Hugar, John Iderola, Yasmin, Aaliyah Kahn. So every time it's a great name. It is a very good name.

Yeah, and every time Ida Rola is a tough name. Not great. All right, so of course, John's the host, damage report. Check that out every day at 1 o'clock Eastern. And Yasmin is on Rebel HQ. Check that out every day on YouTube and host of the Modern Context podcast as well. All right, guys, we've got a big show ahead for you guys. In the second hour, actually, we're gonna do a story about Trump's

declining poll numbers and and then how his the economy is in trouble and he's trying to blame it on Biden it's hilarious but sweet the question we're asking today on t.com in a poll that we open up for non-members as well everybody over there I can vote on it is is Trump going to get caught okay and by caught I don't mean by the left obviously we already caught him for whatever it's worth right but I mean by some of his voters a significant block of his voters, are they going to realize, oh, maybe this guy's a knucklehead, okay? Now, there's a lot of stories in the show that relate to that, but especially the one

about the economy. So go vote on that at t-y-t.com. All right, meanwhile, we've got huge news on the defense budget. We'll get to in a second. Fetterman. Oh, it's a super tough story about Fetterman and so much more on the show. And so let's just get to it because I know we're going to run out of time as usual. So John, dig it a hundred percent. And that one is going to make me very uncomfortable, even just to read the graphics. But we'll get to bettermen soon. Let's start with this first. Donald Trump came to Washington to cut, right? Cut that budget, get rid of the waste and the fraud. Well, when it comes to defense, not so much. He's jacking that up, perhaps not surprisingly, requesting $1.1 trillion for defense. And I made a point like this on

TDR, but I want to be clear, it's not like the U.S. doesn't have a military, and he's like, let's get a military, we're a country, we should have one. I want $1.1 trillion for a military. It's just for one year, like maintenance, like paying your insurance on your car. It's not like we pay the $1.1 trillion, and then we're safe forever. No, he's gonna request even more the year after that and the year after that. And there's a lot of ways to It's like size this up for how ridiculous it is, how over the top it is. I will say that last year, our defense spending, which was already comically high, nearly a trillion dollars even then, equated to about 37% of all global military expenditures.

So one third of all, of what everyone has spent on the military, and I looked it up, and there are definitely more than three countries in the world, so we are doing too much, I think. Here's a chart that puts it in perspective, that's last year. So every other country on earth is about a half in this measuring of it. And to put in perspective, what we're adding to what we already did last year, it's like if you took the entire military budget of India and the UK and then put it on top of what we already led the world in as of just last year. It's an insane amount of spending no matter how you measure it, Jank. And it certainly seems to blow a hole in the idea that he's for

fiscal discipline. Yeah, so, A couple things here. You know, you went with India and UK. Russia, we are adding more just this year to the Pentagon than the entire military budget of Russia, which is in a massive war with Ukraine, let alone everything else that Russia has. So that's amazing. Now, what's also amazing is, as you, a lot of you know, I had this moment on X where I asked them to cut the Pentagon budget. I talked to Elon Musk. But I say I talked to a lot of us. It was just the ex post, right? And so Elon Musk was like, great, give me some suggestions. And then Don Jr. jumped in and everybody was excited. Then Hegsus said they were going to cut. And

Fox News said they were going to cut. And Tim Pool and Patrick Bet David. And everyone said, we're going to cut. We're going to cut. We're going to cut. Did you? Did you? So look, did I think, oh, I bet Elon and Donald Trump, they're not going to worry about, corruption, they're just going to do the right thing. No, I voted against Trump. Of course, he's not going to do that. He didn't do that in his first term. He didn't, it's not going to do it this time. And what did Elon want? He wanted a lot of money from the government. And by the way, that's also buried in this document, which we're going to get to in a second, okay? And we're going to get to how much they're taking from the rest of the budget so they could add pork

to the Pentagon. So, but this is the moment when we ask our right wing friends, what happened? Okay, are you going to hold them accountable or are you just now going to go, well, we said cut. We all collectively, clearly said cut, right? On all of those shows and in all of social media, we all said cut. And the Pentagon is can't pass an audit, et cetera. But now we're going to say what cut really meant ad. And it meant add a lot. It meant take away from the average American and all the other things we're about to tell you about and give it to the military contractors.

who said, I don't know where the money is, who cares? And they stuff it into their mouths in their pockets and get away with this kind of corruption. So look, the left wing's clear on this. I think the independence will be fairly clear on this. This one is on right wingers. Do you want this nonsense? You said you didn't. So I don't know if you're ever going to hold Trump accountable.

And I don't know how you would do that at this point. But just at least I'm asking for a little bit of honesty that this is the exact opposite of what you claimed you wanted. All right. Yeah, yeah, I'll give you just a few more stats, and then we'll throw Tiaz for commentary, but this is, I mean, look, by any measure, this is insane. Like, I know a lot of it needs to go to, like,

the border or whatever, but like, are you building the border wall out of stacks of cash, like tightly bundled? Like, is that literally what you're building it out of? Imagine thinking that America is so uniquely unsafe that we'll all die. Our country will be gone unless we add $150 billion this year. You know, like Fox News, how much they've whined about the money that was spent to keep

Ukraine as a sovereign nation. This is way more than that. Not like for a specific conflict, like an emergency, an act of God, just we just, we want to do more of this and more of that, more of everything, literally. But complain more about Ukraine. And so absolutely insane spending. A bunch is going to go to the Golden Dome, obviously Donald Trump's idea to give, I don't know, billions of dollars to Elon Musk to stop satellites or to stop missiles.

or something. Nuclear modernization, shipbuilding, border security. They say there's going to be a military pay raise. That at least feels defensible considering all of this. But, and as you pointed out for seven straight years now, the Pentagon has failed to pass an audit. My favorite part, perhaps, of this, is that they're going to put like over $500 million into the next Pentagon audit. And the Pentagon is saying they're on track to not fail an audit by 2028. So we're going to spend half a billion dollars to order them this year and they're saying, oh, not even close. There's no way we're going to pass that thing. Then why even spend the money? It's absolutely insane. But we're gonna talk about the things that are cut to make way for this. And sure,

150 billion more dollars, 1.1 trillion is a lot, but we're not going to be spending $20,000 on a Chilean trans opera or whatever. We won't spend 30 grand on a gay comic book. We'll just spend $150 billion on this and we'll consider ourselves. to be very fiscally disciplined as a net result of all of that. But yeah, as we've thrown a lot of numbers out there, what do you think? Well, first of all, I just want to say the golden dome is so funny to me because Trump is so obsessed with gold, it's weird, like all the gilding of the White House and everything. Also, I'm warm toned, I get it, I wear a lot of gold jewelry, but like he's orange,

and the gold is just going to make him look even more orange. So just like, maybe no one's told him that before. So I'm just going to say it so that it has been said. Anyway, as far as the military goes, am I missing something? Like, are we at war? Are we about to be? I guess we're always like on the brink of some version of war. I know that we like to pretend, like do pretend versions of war where we just run military campaigns

in other countries, even though Congress never actually declares war. And I know we're obviously doing all the stuff that Israel is doing. We are the funding behind all of that. But like, what is happening? You know, what's happening is that we keep talking about defense contractors here. But what are defense contractors? Those are war profiteers, right? This is nothing more than Trump in this administration enriching all of these military contractors at the expense of everyday Americans. You know, and to be clear, I'm not against military upgrades. I know that they need maintenance and upgrades. That's totally normal. That's why we have annual budgets. And I'm certainly not against giving our service people raises. But the Pentagon, they can't even pass an audit. The money and the spending is unaccounted for here. And for an administration that claims to be so transparent, where is the transparency? And is it ever going to come? Because they keep not, you know, not passing their audits.

And then nothing happens. So until there's some kind of accountability, I don't think anything's going to change. And for some reason, a lot of Republicans are supporting all of this, even though like the numbers are astronomically, they're comical, right? It's ridiculous. What is it? 30 something percent of spending. So I, where's the money going? Yeah, just a couple of quick things on what Yaz is saying. Really great points. First, Golden Dome, super important. That is a boondoggle project that has no chance of working.

It will be a giant waste of money. And as we reported on here earlier on the Young Turks, guess who's likely to get the contract for Golden Dome? Oh, SpaceX. Huh. Interesting. An Elon company. So what happened, Elon? As Zoro Kana said the other day in the congressional hearings,

where's Elon? You said there's going to be cuts? Where's Elon? Okay, now all of a sudden we're not cutting, but we're adding to your company. Massive, massive contracts potentially to Elon Musk's company. So well, look, if you think about it, you could say he's a good smart businessman. He bribes, I mean, gives campaign contributions to Donald Trump to the tune of about $300 million. That is a lot of money.

Are you sure he's a good businessman? They might get back 300 billion dollars. So that would be an amazing return on investment. Corruption works in this country. By the way, why is most of the pork at the Pentagon? And why is the Pentagon the one department they can't pass an audit? Because it's the convenient place where you go, oh, you can't look there. It endangers us all.

If you cut the Pentagon, we're all going to die. So that's why we have to add pork and pork and pork, and you can't see where it is. If you question it, you're all going to die. That's why they put it in there. If you put it in the Department of Education, people would be like, well, how much education do we need, right? But if you put it in the Pentagon, they can do the fear money. Okay. And one more thing that he has brought up.

She said, you know, like, are we about to go into a massive war? Actually, we might be. And that might be another reason they're adding to the Pentagon. Because in a story later in the show, and by the way, watch the show live 6 to 8 p.m. Eastern, get all the news. Trump's organization has done a $5.5 billion deal with the Saudis and Qatar. Wait, what does that have to do with war? What is the one thing Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar agree on? The U.S. should attack Iran.

So now Trump just got bribed, I mean made a business deal with those two countries. So maybe they're gearing up for the war that Qatar, Saudi Arabian, Israel purchased. through Trump. So there's no good news coming out of this at all. Oh, and by the way, you know, I challenge the right wing. I will give two people a tiny bit of credit here. Okay, my left wing friends get ready, get to get triggered, okay? Marjorie Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson, both going on huge tirades. Do not go to war with Iran. We said anti-war. We meant anti-war. the base hates this, okay? So whether they base, I know the base also, at least they claim to hate the addition

to the Pentagon, whether they actually do, we'll find out whether Marjorie Taylor Green hates the addition to the Pentagon and Tom Massey and others do, we'll find out, right? So, but I am worried that part of the reason they're loading up here is so that they can do what the donors want, which is for us to die in other countries' wars. Yeah, and even if we don't end up dying in other countries' wars, those donors, including the contractors, they get the money. Let's just a couple more numbers before we go to the cutting part of this. $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

$14 trillion. You know how they say like Green New Deal, unrealistic, how could we ever spend like $2 trillion to stop our civilization from being destroyed or whatever? $14 trillion to like start and kind of lose a few wars. That's great, great use of money. And a large portion of it goes to just a few corporations, one quarter to one third in recent years of all Pentagon contracts have gone to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, or North of Grumman. So they're making huge money, whether we go to war or not. They get the money.

It's a, it's 1.1 trillion this year. What is it going to be next year? Is it going to be 1.2, the year after that, 1.3, 1.4, we can have a 1.5 trillion dollar budget within a few years. And the amazing things about this is, as we're about to show you, if you want to come in, And you wanna cut the CDC by 50% or education by 30%, whatever, you can do it. You literally just have to say DEI and it's gone, perhaps never to return. But when you add money the defense budget, do you know how utterly difficult it is gonna be to ever cut that? Like never mind the fact that the defense budget was 800 billion just a couple of years ago. Now that it's 1.1 trillion, if AOC comes in and says, I'm gonna cut it back down to 800 billion,

Every single anchor will be like, you are going to kill America. We will be instantly invaded by Guatemala or whatever, and then that'll be it. Because they just lock it in, and that's why it always goes up, never to go down again. Utterly demoralizing, but let's talk about the cuts that they can make. So at the exact same time that Donald Trump is pitching by far the biggest military budget the world has ever seen, he also wants to slash the portion of government spending that theoretically could benefit, benefit you or your family or your town or your small business. He wants to cut discretionary federal spending by about 25%. So biggest ever defense budget, biggest ever cuts to domestic spending

in the exact same year. And at the same time, perhaps biggest tax payoff to the wealthiest Americans of the world, huge tax cuts for them, huge corporate tax cuts. This is sort of shaping out exactly how we said and let's talk a little bit about how they got to some of this cuts. Now as I have alluded to on the show, the argument is always going to be we can cut we can cut any program we want because of DEI and that's what they're saying in this case. It's DEI and race theory programs. That's what they're going to be cutting, which means steep cuts to USAID, the EPA, the NIH, the CDC, the Department of Education. In some cases, 30 plus percent of these entire government departments disappearing. And you might be thinking at this point, wait, 30 percent of the

CDC was DEI? No, of course not, but that's the excuse that they're using to cut all this. NIH. It was obviously 40% woke. Department of Education, 30 to 40% woke, got to get rid of the entire thing. And so that's what they're doing. And also NOAA, our ability to track hurricanes, FEMA, massive cuts, our ability to respond to hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, all of that. All of these, I mean, list a program, it has been drastically cut. And at the same time that they will tell you, we are now finally safe militarily, thanks to our $1.1 trillion defense budget, you were obviously far more likely to suffer from a natural disaster, a measles outbreak, and the list goes on and on.

And we're now in no way prepared to deal with those far more likely domestic public health and other crises. Okay, so more context. For non-defense entities, so Department of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, et cetera, when you take just non-defense into account, it's actually a 35% cut. So it's as if he's trying to prove Dwight Eisenhower, right. Eisenhower, in his farewell speech, warned about the military industrial complex. And he said, for every gun that we buy, that is bread and butter off of our table.

I'm paraphrasing, obviously. And it is food that our families can have, that our children can have. It's education. It's all those things will be sacrificed at the altar of the military industrial complex. And Trump's like, oh, that's a really good idea. Let's do that. Why don't you guys, you know, instead of having 30 Barbies, have two or something, and all the prices will go up and all you'll have, and your kids won't get educated,

and we'll just steal from the average man, and then we'll just give it to the military industrial complex. And my donors who bribed me, I mean, gave me campaign contributions. And bribe me, I mean, gave money into my Trump organization and Trump media and Trump meme coin, et cetera. No, it was a warning, you schmuck. It wasn't a how to manual. So now, you know how much they're cutting from all those essential programs? Overall, $163 billion. And how much are they adding to defense?

$150 billion. So for all of those, oh, doge, we're making cuts, mad cuts. And you know what? You don't need no stinking education. Your kids are going to go straight into the coal mines and assembly lines anyway. And in Florida, we just passed a bill saying that children can work overnight on school days. Okay, great. Yes, America, you're screwed. That was populism. This is populism. Come on, guys. Come on, this is nowhere near populism. So he's robbing from the average American

to give it all to defense and potentially to Golden Dome so that Elon could have a slightly larger lead on Jeff Bezos on the richest man competition. Wow. What a populist. I told you, utter fraud. He at least had enough sense to pretend to be a populist, but he's been a fake populist all along. The only thing he did last time was add to defense, more tax cuts, giant gifts to corporations. Same exact thing now, just on bigger steroids, been to fraud his entire life. Yes. Yeah, yeah, the saddest part about all of this is that, you know, first of all, maybe I'm just

personally too fiscally conservative. But if I'm watching the economy and I'm seeing other nations drop our treasury bonds, like the strength of the dollar, it's all a little tenuous right now. If these were my personal finances, I would be clutching my purse a little bit instead of like inflating these budgets the way they are. But what do I know? But also it genuinely just makes me sad to think about how better this money could be spent, not to be like, you know, all bleeding heart lefty over here.

But it really, it breaks my heart to see all the programs that are going to see mass. budget cuts, some of which will be so massive that the programs won't be able to function properly, they're going to be utterly defunct. And then as John pointed out, it's going to be very, very difficult in the future to reinstate these programs and to get all of these people back, people who have been in these positions for years. They have expertise. They have tenure there. They're going to be very, very difficult to replace. All of it is are things that don't even need to happen. So just that alone feels very, very wasteful. Just the time. and the effort that is going to be going to waste for that. And then all the people who are going to suffer without these programs in the meantime. And that's not anything to be dismissive of, right? Right now in the country, most Americans can't go get by for very long without, you know, if they miss one or two paychecks, losing money from certain programs that a lot of Americans depend on, we're talking like SNAP and Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, those kind of

types of things, people are going to suffer. People are going to lose their homes and things like that. And, you know, whenever the left has been talking about Trump's rhetoric, all along, like since he came out and we were saying that these words that he's saying are dangerous. And dangerous words can often lead to dangerous actions. People said that we were overreacting. And I feel like the only reason that they were saying that is because they just couldn't see the writing on the wall yet. But here we are today. You know, Republicans have spent the last 10 years demonizing public education at the grade school level and also at the university

level. They've called social security and Medicaid entitlements. They've talked about rampant gang violence and terrorism. And all of these talking points were seeds that they were planting in order to garner support for all of the things that they're now enacting and implementing on the American people. And, you know, that's why they can get away with things, like even teasing martial law on the American people and saying, you know, yeah, maybe we will turn the military against the American citizens. And that's how they can say, look, we need this inflated military budget because who knows what's gonna happen. And really, who knows what's going to happen at this point? It could be anything. Yeah, 100%. Well, but good news, guys,

we're also going to spend about $100 million on a military parade on Trump's birthday. So, but Doge just couldn't find a way to cut that. They're like, no, it's really necessary. It happens to be a lucky break that it's the Army's 250th anniversary. And Trump's going to use that as an excuse to celebrate himself. And one of our members wrote a night. I totally agree. Why don't his donors who love to kiss his ass pay for his military parade instead of us? So Maga should be asking the same thing, okay? Hey, you wanna celebrate yourself with big toys?

Oh yeah, you know what, your kids can't get 30 toys anymore, they can only get two. But Trump's gonna get all the toys, right? 50 helicopters. Yeah, and by the way, why don't you take the money that you're making from Saudi Arabia, the however many billions of dollars you're getting from that corrupt deal and use it for your birthday military parade. No, constantly stealing from the American people. It's disgusting. I can't stand it. And so he's going to get caught. So at some point, people are going to realize, oh, right, he didn't cut anything. Oh, right, they're going to do a

$5 trillion tax cut. Oh, right. He added to the deficit again. They never, ever, ever bounce the budget. They never actually do real cuts. All they ever do is more pork barrel spending, for their stupid donors. So look, we need a real populist revolt in this country. I'm sick of all this. Yeah, even as they have their doggy, they're gonna add massively the deficit and the national debt, proving that it was never

about waste, physical discipline, it's just more culture war, wedge issue, BS, I almost swore, I apologize. The entire thing's frustrating. We're gonna take a short break. Lots more to get to after this. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going?

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Thank you for supporting the show. It makes a huge difference. It really does. And I love your handle, obviously. All right, Chuck. I bet Edwin doesn't mind it either. Well, let's jump back into some more news. We've been teasing this story.

It's time to talk about it. This week it was revealed that even as he holds the White House, Donald Trump apparently secured a deal to build a massive golf course as part of a $5.5 billion development in Cutter. And that's a big project, it's gonna be a ton of money. And his organization, the Trump organization, is going to be making that money. Now, in Donald Trump's defense, he didn't even do the thing he did in his first term where he like pretended he wouldn't do foreign deals or whatever, he knows that there's

no reason to live in himself in that way now. And so he's gonna make potentially hundreds of millions, maybe even more on this as the first of what could be multiple projects across the region. And this is just like the most high profile and new bit of petty little personal corruption that he's been doing. We have a lot of others that I want to remind you of. But first, Jank, I know you've mentioned this particular golf course project. Yeah, so the Saudis have been funneling the Trump family money for a long time. Jared Kushner got the $2 billion. You got the, And look, I felt alone in the golf course thing. I'm like, is no one seeing that this whole live golf thing is about making sure that they play on Trump's golf courses and funneling a huge amount of money to Trump?

Is everybody missing that? Well, if you were missing that, you're not going to miss the $5.5 billion that are getting funneled to him here. And then I want to talk a little bit later about why might they be doing this? What is it that they really, really want out of Trump? That's very important. But first, let's talk about the record-breaking corruption. I think they just appreciate his style. He knows how to set up a golf course, amazing, immaculate landscaping.

They're also big bands of golded palaces. Gold, yeah, no, billions of dollars. Remember when the right was like, I think Hunter Biden got $5 million and they couldn't prove it, but they said that that would be raised enough to get Biden. This is billions of dollars. Comer, you're going to comment on it? Not so much. But anyway, that's the most recent one. Bear in mind, maybe the single most corrupt enterprise that has ever existed in America before would be Trump's crypto venture because of the ability to funnel domestically or internationally, literally untraceable

billions of dollars to Donald Trump for him to profit from. Well, he has already raised more than $550 million by selling tokens to buyers around the world, which is great because he hands over a token, which is nothing, it's meaning unless he gets over a half a billion dollars from that, it's amazing, he doesn't even have to build a building or anything. There was an investigation by the New York Times that found that World Liberty Financial, that's his crypto platform, solicited secret multi-million dollar payments from other crypto startups as well, offering cross-promotion and perceived proximity to Donald Trump. So they hand handed over millions of dollars to influence the president.

Now, one would typically think of that as being the sort of thing you do under the American structure of legalized bribery of donations to his campaign. This is just directly money to him. And I don't understand how any of that's legal. Like I keep saying that, I keep bringing this up, and it's legal. You can just give Donald Trump millions and millions and millions of dollars, and it's nothing. I don't understand what campaign finance restrictions are for. Like if AOC wants to do a corruption, why would you cut her campaign a check and possibly end up in jail?

Just have her release a meme coin and then give her $100 million. Yeah, it's- Like it sounds like I'm asking a rhetorical question. I literally have never gotten an answer as to how any of this is legal. Look, that's why I think he's gonna get caught. That's our poll on t.yt.com for the whole show on every topic, is Trump gonna get caught? Because so look, if the economy is booming and people are generally happy, he's not going to get caught. They didn't get caught last time because the economy was relatively okay. Why do I think they kind of, why did I think he didn't screw it up in the first three years of his administration?

He screwed up a thousand things, but not the economy, to be fair, right? And so it's because he had the establishment as a brakes in the car. So they would just say, okay, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. That's really you're an idiot. No, we're not doing that, right? In this time, there is no establishment. And I don't like the establishment, but cars need brakes, right? So since there's no brakes in the car, he's gonna screw up the economy as he's doing now.

He's gonna screw up foreign policy as he's doing now. And then people are gonna get super frustrated. And they didn't vote for this kind of madness, right? And then they're gonna come back and go, wait, he took five and a half billion dollars from the Saudis. Like when people were taking money from Israel, we had a whole bunch of excuse. Oh, they're a special ally, the most moral army, whatever, I mean, they're nonsense. But mainstream media has been doing that propaganda for so long that a lot of people believe it. But when you go, no, no, no, the Saudis are actually good guys.

America's going to go, brough. Like, really? You're going to sell me on how the Saudi dictator who chopped up the Washington Post reporter is goldenhearted. And that's why he just wanted to give Trump billions of dollars for nothing. And how about the guy who was being investigated by the SEC and put $75 million into Trump's media company? A totally, utterly worthless media company. To give you a sense of how ridiculous their valuations and all that stuff is, this isn't even the meme coin. The meme coin is like, this is nothing.

This is a piece of paper. Now give me billion dollars. People are like, yeah, sure, here you go, here you go, right? But the media company puts $75 million in. If that media company is worth what it's worth, then the hunter is worth close to a trillion dollars. Like vis-a-vis the view count, the revenue, all those things. Come on guys, this is insanity. It's just out and out corruption.

Just so when, like, left wing can get quite mad, we sometimes we have a tiny amount of power. But watch out when the right wing gets mad. Right? And I know now I'm going crazy. Right wing's going to get mad at Trump. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but a year and a half and two and a half, three and a half, and somebody's going to turn back around and go, wait a minute, how much did the Saudis give you? And what did they give it to you for? Oh, for, this brother's going to get caught in a terrible way because he thinks there's no rules left. They tried to prosecute him. They couldn't prosecute him. He's been above the law his whole life.

So he's thinking, so what? You know what, I'll hang a goddamn sign saying, I'm, this is an auction. Give me money, I will give you US foreign policy. And he thinks he can get away with it. And for now he would get away with it. Two and a half years from now, let's find out. All right, what do you think yes? Yeah, it will be interesting.

And I know that none of us can wait for that day. Whenever it finally comes, we've been waiting for a long time. a long time, even before he was president, right? But I mean, they don't call him Teflon done for nothing because there's always a loophole, there's always a scapegoat or there is just no recourse, right? And people who live lives without any kind of recourse, they are different people. They think differently than the rest of us. They operate, they make decisions differently than the rest of us, right? There's no one to hold him accountable right now. The Supreme Court gave him merely kinglike protections. And then they wondered why he doesn't honor their rulings. Like, it makes no

sense and you know, I hate to generalize, but as far as why his base still stands behind and why he still has support, the thing is, again, I don't want to generalize, but the thing with his base is that like the most MAGA of them, they really just don't have the morals and the values that they pretend to have. And like, I know they don't because those things are felt on principle and principles are largely, if not completely static, right? It's not a principle. If you care about it when someone you don't like does it, but you don't mind it. if it's your guy. So they don't actually care about government officials enriching themselves in ways like this unless it's Trump. So that's not a principle. Trump is a con man. And these

are the same people who have celebrated his genius, right? In running cons, oftentimes on them. They're the ones that he's conning, right? But when capital is king in this country, which it is, corruption becomes justified. Not only that, but it's probably celebrated, right? All they see is that Trump is winning at capitalism and they're here to support that because I don't know, they want to get on his good side or something. Yeah. Yeah, the entire thing is just wild. And it makes it even funnier than Dinesh D'Souza went to prison for violent. Like you could have just handed him a billion dollars in full public view. And you found like the one way that could get you locked up. What a dink. But anyway, just really fast to remind you of some

of the other corruption, we don't have time to break into all this. But his own personal meme coins, we talked about his platform. That was meme coin. Surge Moore, than 60% last week after he advertised that the top coin holders would get an intimate private dinner, which he hasn't even had with Melania for years, as well as a White House tour. So now he is pimping out the whole, like his house, the president's house as a reward for you buying his meme coin. His son, of course, they launched this exclusive DC club that's going to make them millions and millions of dollars just because they're advertising it is, hey, you can hang out with Trump officials. So again,

utterly corrupt personal profit off of this. Domini Holdings is a small public financial services company that Don Jr. and Eric Trump joined the advisory board of. They got stake worth millions of dollars, and the stock price went up 1,200% in six weeks, I guess because they're really good at investments, I suppose. And he's also, Don Jr. is also on the board of a a digital firearms retailer called grab a gun that's due to go public this summer. Again, cashing in on his name, his proximity to Donald Trump. There's 19 foreign Trump branded projects in development over the next four years. The golf course thing is just one.

I again, maybe I'm hyperbolic, maybe I've Trump derangement syndrome. If you added up all of the corruption in the history of American politics, all of it, I don't think it matches what Donald Trump and his family are doing this term alone. No, I don't think that's hyperbolic at all. Last two quick things for me. Well, look, I understand what you're saying as about MAGA and principles and stuff. I have said it 100 times, I hear you. On the other hand, I don't love blaming the voters because they're all getting misled by the media that they're watching.

And does our side do it too? Well, I remember our moderate friends on the Democratic side who told us that Biden and Kamala Harris's Israel policy was perfectly fine because it wasn't Trump. No, these principles matter. They were wrong, Trump is even more wrong on Israel, but you've got to be able to call out your own side. So we've also had issues with that, but, and I'm curious to see, we'll, you know, what percentage of Trump voters will say, yeah, I turn, you know, I said drain the swamp, and this is filling the swamp with Saudi and Qatari money, and I'm not interested in it.

We don't know yet, we'll see it, and we should hold all of them accountable. We should hold every politician accountable and leaders accountable. And then I promise you guys, why is Saudi Arabia and Qatar putting so much money into Trump? That's what I'm most worried about. Guys, there's one thing that his three major foreign government donors agree with, right? And want, most of all from America. The three major donors are Israel, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. And they all have the common enemy, Iran.

They all want us to attack Iran and fight that. war on behalf of them. So buckle up, brace for impact. And that's why guys, the right wing said they were anti-war. We need to put them to the test, but not in a ha-ha taunting way. But in like Marjorie Taylor Green just did it today and then I replied to her, she replied to me on X, right? Saying yes, let's work together to make sure we do not go to war with Iran. Now she's not going to agree that Donald Trump is corrupt and I'm not going to agree to any of her other policies.

But we all have to get together and say, no, I don't care how much Qatar wants us to go die in Iran on their behalf. I'm not Qatari royalty. I don't, I'm not a Saudi prince. I'm not a terrorist like Benjamin Netanyahu. I don't care about how you want us to die for you and to spend trillions of dollars fighting your wars because you bribed our president. No thank you to all three of those countries. So no war with Iran, the most important thing is, look, is he ever going to be held accountable? We don't know.

And he hasn't been held accountable, his whole life, as we just discussed. But even more important than that is the bribe can't work. If it works and Trump makes us go fight their war, that is the biggest disaster of all. And that is where we all need to unite as a country. All right, we got to take a quick break here. We'll be right back. All right on the TYT power panel, Jank Yaz and John, with you guys, John's got the next story. That music was so, I don't know, it was almost like Mr. Rogers, considering how serious this stuff is, but I like it.

Maybe he's trying to get everyone to cool out a little bit. Yeah, good, and I'm glad we had that chill moment. And let's talk now about John Federman and ruin it. But anyway, let's jump over to this. New York Magazine has released a long expose and sort of dive into the history of the last few years of John Federman. And what they found was disturbing. The reporting is disturbing for me personally, reading this is disturbing, and it will likely be disturbing for you to hear, both in terms of his health, as well as some of the things he's said about notable topics in foreign policy, particularly what he wants to happen to Palestinians.

And so it's very in-depth and very long. You should go read the entire thing on New York Magazine. But some of the highlights include a look back from the beginning of when he had his stroke months before being elected to the Senate in 2022. There were a lot of claims made about his health coming out of that, but not a lot of good reporting. It turns out that now those who are around him say that it affected him more strongly than people perhaps knew publicly. And in fact, that eventually led to his chief of staff leaving. And in May of 2024, that former chief of staff Adam Jentelson wrote a letter to the doctor who had overseen Federman's care at Walter Reed saying, I think John is on a bad trajectory

and I'm really worried about him. If things didn't change, he said, he was concerned Federman, quote, won't be with us for much longer, which is obviously very serious. And he listed a number of reasons why he believed that. He said, we do not know if he's taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not. We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed. Conspiratorial thinking, megalomania, for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around, but his sources are just what he reads in the news. He declines most briefings and never reads memos. That all reads sort of like uncomfortably close to Donald Trump actually. Long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered

monologues, also Trumpian, lying in ways that are painfully awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room. Maybe Trump had a really bad stroke. I don't know. But anyway, he apparently at one point drove his car so recklessly, according to Gentleson, that staff refused to ride with him. He had also bought a gun. At one point, he was walking and seemed incapable of seeing that a crowd of people were in front of him, so he just barreled through them. He at one point walked into traffic and was nearly hit by a car. And there are a lot of examples like that provided in the expose from people around him. By the way, in February 2023, he was readmitted to Walter Reed, and during the first few days in the hospital, he apparently was experiencing delusions. He thought that if he took a bed at the hospital, he would be arrested. He told doctors that he believed members of his family were wearing wires to secretly record him. And he also grew convinced that a political rally was being held in the hospital's lobby, and then he needed a break out of his room to attend it. He ended up staying there for six weeks, which is significant. And coming out of it, he was put on a psychiatric treatment plan, which seemed to help him.

improve significantly, although eventually concerns started to arise amongst his staffers that he was not staying on track with that, not taking it seriously. The big issue seemed to be October 7th, seemed to be some sort of trigger, perhaps in terms of social media. There's a through line in this expose about his propensity for massive periods of doom scrolling and just being on Twitter basically all day long, getting his news from there, responding to it and spiraling into very dark depths of what are referred to to in the article as depression. But we have more on that. I've already thrown out a lot. It is concerning. Yeah. I have kind of an ironic take on this story. But first, just to clarify

a couple of things. So he bought a gun that's not that unusual. The reason why it's mentioned in this story is because his doctor told his staffers, let us know if he buys a gun, right? Because they're concerned about his mental health. So when he did buy the gun, they let the doctors know. Now, and the doom scrolling, guys, that's not just Federman. Please stop doom scrolling. Yeah, please, please, please. Like, you ruin your mental health doesn't hurt Trump. It helps Trump.

So what's the point, right? Let's do something productive, whether it's a rebellion pack or any other thing that you think is right, right? That way you feel better because you're actually doing something to take power away from Trump. But just getting down, I mean, it doesn't help anyone. Okay, now back to Fetterman, it's a super important story. Look, my ironic take is that now I feel I'm going to beat up on Fetterman less, okay? Like he's just the worst on the Israel-Gaza issue. It's unbearable, right?

But this brother's not well. Like you read the whole piece, I don't think there's any question at all. I mean, he thinks there's a press conference in the hallway in the hospital. There's no press conference that is, you know, like all of that. No, no, no. He is not mentally well. So that leads to two conclusions. One is, okay, now I feel like, number one, I understand what happened a little bit better, right? Because it was such a dramatic change. Yeah. Right. And number two, so this is now a mental health issue rather than a we disagree politically issue, right? And so, but then that opens, by the way, quick side note, not get to the most important part. The side note is, this might also, explain Dick Cheney, like people had that theory about Dick Cheney that he had the stroke and that he became a lot more conspiratorial and paranoid. And he used to carry around a hazmat suit in his trunk in the car. I didn't know any of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had the

1% doctrine, which is if there's a 1% chance, any Muslim's going to attack us, we should destroy their country, right? And here's Fetterman, right? So, and that makes me super worried about strokes. Don't go hunting with him. Yeah, oh, that's, don't go hunting with Fetterman now. So, okay, now the most important point, he's got to go. Like, yeah, yeah. We already had Diane Feinstein and we already had Joe Biden. No, this isn't right. This isn't right. He's not in a right state of mind. And I know how devastating that is. Don't I, because it's Pennsylvania. And we're going to have to, if he really goes, we're going to have to have an election. And that's a toss up. That's a purple state, right? And I know how bad

that is for Democrats. But as he has said earlier, we have to have principles. If there was a Republican president who was clearly not mentally well, we would ask for an election, right? I am. Yeah. That would describe a lot of them. Okay, but seriously, in this case, this is not acceptable and he's got to get actual help. Yes, what do you think? Yeah, and as far as this country is concerned, which is really why we're talking about this is because this is one of our sitting senators. You know, as far as this is relevant to all of us, I wonder what betterment's plan or strategy is going forward. If he is even going to attempt to run again for his seat and whenever that time comes, or, you know, is he planning on switching parties? Is he planning

to leave politics altogether, perhaps for his health? Whether, I mean, at this point, I don't think he should be, I don't want to say you shouldn't be allowed to run, but somebody should step in and be like you shouldn't run, you know, like somebody close to him. And the people close to him seem to be worried about his physical and mental health. Either way, I can't believe that the people who voted for him initially are going to vote for him again. And I feel like I could have said that before this story came out. You know, this has been months now of this type of behavior, but now we're getting more insights into just how bad it actually is. And, you know, to John, to your earlier point,

this does feel very Trumpian. A lot of what he was saying felt very Trumpian. He's using a lot of the same rhetoric, the same conspiratorial, paranoid thinking. That is exactly what stood out to me as you were presenting the story. And I'm not trying to make any diagnoses for either of them, but regardless of what is causing this kind of behavior in our leaders, this is dangerous and unhinged behavior. And people suffering from these type of issues should not be in charge of anything or anyone, especially in such high levels of government.

And you know, I already have my feelings about social media and about the doom scrolling. I don't do it anymore. I quit. I'm very much off of social media as much as I can be, you know, still doing a job like this. But it does, you know, kind of skew your sense of reality. It sucks up a lot of your time. And frankly, I'm not comfortable knowing that our nation's leaders are spending a lot of their days like this on social media. And this isn't a recent take for me. I have always found it concerning since, you know, for years now that Trump was on social media as much as he is and was. And I do think it's weird, even that Elon Musk tweets as much as he does,

even though it is his own platform. So I do think that it is a problem, not only that American voters seem a little bit detached from reality, I say a little bit to be generous, but also that our elected leaders are not doing much better in that way. So a lot of issues going on, but really, like we have to work harder to get better people in these government positions, people who are just a little bit more mentally. acute than maybe the rest of us. And then when I had my daughter, those two things just meant that I kind of couldn't use it for like a year.

And thank God, haven't missed anything. Literally haven't missed anything. I mean, I'm glad that I have communities. I can talk to TDR fans and TYT fans and everything, but it is better. So I'll make that three for three on the panel. And yeah, is it any surprise that like we're ruled by these people that spend every waking second typing out insane conspiratorial screeds online. And all of them have such obvious psychological and emotional failings.

And they're the ones that have power over our lives, over our economic destinies. Something should be done. But unfortunately, they're also conspiracists. So, you know, if you go to Federman and you're like, hey, maybe you should back off and focus on your health. He will probably think you're part of the machine trying to take him down rather than somebody exercising empathy. Yeah. So one of our members on t.yot.com made a good point. And Wong John said, I wonder if this is why Federman was so defensive when people wanted Biden to drop out.

because of his mental decline, I think that might have been personal. I think that's an excellent point, and I think that's very likely to be true. And look, guys, so first of all, if Federman doesn't want to go, well, he's not mentally well. That's why he doesn't want to go, right? And to John's point, he'll think it's conspiracy, et cetera. I mean, there's process for these things. I mean, if you've got to impeach, you have to impeach. He walked into traffic, had no idea that he'd gone into traffic.

He nearly picked a fight with a random group of people because he just bumped into them because he doesn't know where he's going. He's not well, we cannot have a senator that is not in the right state of mind. So it's not close, he's got to go. And then finally, if you want the opposite of doom scrolling, look, I sensed doom and gloom in the country. So, and we started this a long time ago, we do things called Operation Hope and Operation Joy on the Young Turks. I know it's weird for a news show to do it, but it's because we've got to have

a little bit of lightness in this world as we fight back and as we're productive and try to do positive change in the world, right? So check out t.com slash hope to see how you can get involved in positive change and check out t.t.com slash joy just for stories of joy and happiness. That's all that it's there for. You don't have to be a member. Just put in your own story. You know what, instead of doom scrolling, do joy scrolling, because those are all positive stories and every time I read through them at t.t.com slash joy, I literally feel happier every time. So check that out. All right, I know we're super short on time. Can we squeeze in the next story? Do you think? There are a lot of videos. A lot of videos. Four videos. Okay, we can't

We could talk about the things he said about Palestinians. Ooh, interesting. Just as one last little tasty tidbit of awfulness. So you will not be surprised to find out that on the topic of Palestinians and Gaza, Fetterman's just the worst, he's really, really bad. That's in public, in private, maybe even worse, because he apparently back in early February, he met with the leader of the progressive Jewish organization, J Street, and he told Jeremy Benamee, You can't reform a carton of sour milk referring to the Palestinians, and generally referring

to a group of people, particularly one as oppressed as the Palestinians, as food isn't good. But particularly when you're describing as rotten food that you would throw away, he apparently said he didn't believe in a two-state solution, again, nobody's surprised to see that, claimed he had never met an Arab person who would condemn Hamas. Notes from the meeting said correction, only a single Arab he has met with that staff was present for wouldn't outright condemn Hamas. But he took it as one person he met wouldn't do so. And in his mind, it became there's not a single one who will condemn them. That's not good. He apparently in opposing a ceasefire said, quote, let's get back to killing. A person

who heard the conversation told the journalist, he said, kill them all sounding similar to the allegations made against Pete Hegesith, saying at one point at a party supposedly that he wants to kill all Muslims. Now he denied that account, saying he was referring only to Hamas, but we'll also say, and this is one of the most uncomfortable parts of this entire story, and bear in mind she disputes parts of this. But according to multiple sources, his support for Israel, his opposition to the Palestinians apparently upset not only his staffers, But his wife, Giselle, as well, apparently in early November, 2023, she arrived at his Senate office and they got into a heated argument. Staff were recalled her saying with tears in

her eyes, they are bombing refugee camps, how can you support this? And he said that's all propaganda when it has happened many, many times and is very much not propaganda. One former staffer recalled overhearing her on speakerphone that December saying to Federman, who did I marry? Where is the man I married? And bear in mind, as we said, She disputes some of this saying that Gentleson, the former chief of staff who left and has been revealing a lot of this is part of a conspiracy to damage her husband's reputation, which fine, again, he's not the only source for this reporting. And look, talking about anyone's marriage is really uncomfortable, but that is what the staffers say they were there to witness. You know, what's also disturbing is that this person who's not mentally well has the same position as the Prime Minister of Israel. And the great majority of Congress votes the same exact way on that issue as a person who's literally mentally ill.

Yeah. What does that make the rest of Congress? Yeah, his last word. Yeah, well, I was going to say, whenever you read about these very unhinged rulers through history and all these terrible things that they enacted and the reasons behind why they enacted these things, it really shows you just how fickle all of our lives are, right? you can get one person who ascends to a certain position of power in a country or wherever, and then they get unwell or they start to become a little bit paranoid for whatever reason again. But then all of those, you know, their their psychosis, let's say, for lack of a better word, is felt by the people, right? Because then they start implementing all these ideas.

And I mean, even like there have been coups in entire countries just to bring it into more recent history where, you know, somebody was paranoid that there was communists down there. So the CIA did a coup, right? But these are things that we know about that happen. So it is just like a thing that is a reality of this life and this world that we live in is that if you have an unhinged ruler, which a lot of times you will, because these are the people who sought those high positions of power. And those are people who wanted to have that much authority and control over people.

And a lot of times there are some good leaders too. But just generally speaking, you're going to get some of that. That's why it's so important, like in this country, to have actual checks and balances to make sure that nobody gets too oversteppy in the things that they're trying to implement and execute upon an entire populace and sometimes upon the entire globe. Right now, our checks and balances are a little off balance. So hopefully we can get that back on track somehow eventually, but it is going to take a while. And in the meantime, we're all going to have to endure some some weirdness. Yep, all right, guys. Check out YAS on Rebel HQ. Check out John on damage. report, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Trump, I mean, is stunning.

You're going to see the video if you haven't already. He literally doesn't know what the Declaration of Independence is. It is unreal. Don't miss it. We'll be right back.