The Young Turks - Maine Mass Shooting

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Lewiston, Maine shootings: Manhunt underway for suspect after at least 16 people were killed. Trump acknowledges the Maine shooting and immediately goes on an unrelated posting binge: "I Did NOTHING WRONG!" An increase in harassment against Jewish and Muslim Americans has been reported since Hamas attacks. X, formerly known as Twitter, usage plummets in Musk's first year as owner. HOSTS: Ben Gleib (@bengleib) and Rayyvana (@RayyvanaTTV) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card.

And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterC. and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. Woo! It's up! Welcome back to the young Turks on a Thursday, many people are calling it Thursday.

Many people, many people are saying it. I'm Rayvana, Rebally. Rebel HQ contributor, joined by my fellow Rebel HQ contributor and comedian and my matching shirt buddy today, Ben Glee. Yep, I feel like dual anchors of a news show need to dress together on Thursdays we wear black. On Thursdays we wear black. Our producers also wearing black, we're all matching. It's wonderful. We all got the memo today. With that, starting off, Chiri, but we have to talk about something extremely serious.

That's the news coming out of Maine. Josh, can I just have you pause for one moment? I want you to finish this thought, but I want people to know what they're watching right now. And this is video that we have just obtained. You can see people running. They are running from the bowling alley that we believe is the site of one of these shootings here in Maine that we are covering at this moment, this breaking news coming in. There's this video of people sprinting from the bowling alley. You can see several people here.

I mean, what does that tell you about how potentially crowded? I mean, it's a bowling alley on a Wednesday night. This is the scene of an active shooting, Josh. At least 18 people have been killed and at least 13 people injured as a result of yet another mass shooting. This time taking place at a bowling alley in a restaurant in Lewiston, Maine. Now we have to note that there has been contested information regarding the death toll, the injury toll, and the shooting locations. As this is a developing situation and an ongoing manhunt, it's difficult to get. exact information coming out of Lewiston, but however, we are going to stick to sources

aligning with the information being given by the main police. Now here are those details from AP News. Lewiston police said they were dealing with an active shooter incident Wednesday evening at Schmengi's Bar and Grill and at Spare Time Recreation, a bowling alley about four miles away. A number of parents and children were at spare time as part of a children's bowling league. Now here is 10 year old Zoe Leveske, who was present at the bowling alley and was also grazed by a bullet. She recounted that moment with her mom on CNN, and she is in surprisingly and fortunately good spirits. She was grazed by a bullet while we were running. I never thought I'd grow up and get a bullet in my leg.

And it's just like, like, why? Like, why do people do this? And she's asking a good question. And of course, as I mentioned, she's in good spirits in that video. But there's no way to know how this is going to impact her living through this traumatic incident moving forward and for the rest of her life. After the shooting, Lewiston police shared images of a man walking into what appears to be the bowling alley holding a high powered assault style rifle.

There he is. Usually we would not show images of mass shooters because oftentimes mass shooters want to shroud themselves in glory for the incident. But because he has not yet been caught, we think it's important to show his image. He hasn't been identified, but police are calling a man by the name of Robert Seekard as the person of interest in this case. Take a look. The investigation into the person responsible of us identified a vehicle located at the particular Jeff Scott boat landing in Lisbon. That person through the registration of that vehicle is

identified that's been stated earlier as a robic card. Currently, there is an arrest warrant for eight counts of murder for Mr. Card. And the reason it's eight counts because 10 people have not yet been identified. As those people are identified, the counts will probably go to the total of 18. Card has yet to be apprehended, but is considered armed and dangerous from CNN. Card is a certified firearms instructor and a member of the U.S. Army Reserves, law enforcement officials in Maine told CNN. He had recently threatened to carry out a shooting at a National Guard facility in Sacco,

Maine, and reported mental health issues, including hearing voices, the officials said. I want you to keep that in mind as I reiterate that he was not only. allowed to have access to a gun. He was allowed to carry out firearm trainings after this incident, after reporting that he had inclinations to carry out a mass shooting. Just keep that in mind as we continue on. A U.S. official also told the Associated Press he had been taken by police for an evaluation after military officials became concerned that he was acting erratically back in mid-July. Multiple businesses, schools and public buildings were closed in Lewiston and surrounding cities today out of caution as the search continues for CARD.

Maine's governor, Janet Mills, also spoke at a press conference to give her condolences. I'm so deeply sad, as is everyone the one of the one point of three other people of this beautiful. This city did not deserve this terrible assault on its citizens, on its peace of mind, on its sense of security. No city does, no state, no people. No words can truly or fully measure the grief of many people today. Our small state of just 1.3 million people has long been known as one of the safest states in the nation. This attack strikes at the very heart of who we are

and the values we hold dear for this precious place we call home. Now, if you were wondering about gun regulations in Maine, they are very lax. From AP News, Maine doesn't require permits to carry guns and the state has a longstanding culture of gun ownership that is tied to its traditions of hunting and sport shooting. And Ben, we're gonna get into the Republican reactions to this mass shooting, among other mass shootings and a little bit later in the show. But first, I, I, I, I just want to say that I think the claim that it's too soon to talk about the politics side of things is always a ridiculous claim to make. Because political problems require political solutions, in my opinion.

And the ease with which this man was allowed to gain access to a weapon is concerning. And the fact that he had all of these red flags that would should have alerted gun sellers and state officials that this man was armed and dangerous and possibly going to carry. out of mass shooting, you know, the fact that none of those flags were noticed or paid attention to or no action was taken to prevent this from happening, it's disturbing. And it's a story we, you know, as reporters have to cover time and time again. Yeah, it is really, really incredible that despite the enormous amount of tragic loss of life over and over again in this country, we keep taking no significant action. There was, you know, marginal, marginal gun restrictions passed in the last Congress, but nothing that is going to significantly change in instance like this. And as you said, Maine has very lax gun laws. And yet Republicans are

saying we need more lax gun laws. They're already saying it. You're going to be covering that in a moment. And it's just completely insane that even in the face of the facts that fly right in the face of their own arguments, they keep making the same arguments like they're robots. Like they might be AI or something that's programmed to kill us because they do not seem to have any interest in anything that can reduce gun violence. They want, they think the answer to gun violence is more gun violence. It's disgusting and I don't know what the answer is, but it's not what they're doing. And we've seen, you know, very recently gun violence become the number one cause of death of children in this country.

And this is the same group of people who always says that they're just trying to protect the children when it comes to legislating anti-LGBQ laws, making it almost impossible for school children to access books that have queer characters. And those cases, they're just trying to protect the children. But when we're actually needing to address the leading cause of death of children in this country, it's, we don't need to protect the kids anymore. We need to protect the NRA. We need to insulate gun owners. We need to insulate gun manufacturers from any sort of liability for the weapons that they market. We can't address gun culture. We need to celebrate it. Well, Ray, I don't know if you know this, but 98% of children who are the victims of gun violence,

it happened because right before they read a book with a gay character. And so you do have to blame the books. I mean, it's just the most insane. These people are just ridiculous. Their ability to focus on what affects no lives in any significant way and to ignore the most egregious things it's a crime against humanity really it's a crime against their own people our own people and i don't know there's there's obviously no talking sense into them voting them out of power is the only option yeah absolutely and just a little bit more about the senseless gun violence that americans experience now this mass shooting with a death toll currently of 18 again that number could rise as more information comes out it's still

chaotic in the state of Maine in the city of Lewiston as they continue to try to get accurate information. But the current death toll of 18, this rampage appears to be the deadliest mass shooting of 2023 in the United States. It's also the deadliest mass shooting since a gunman in May 22 killed 19 students and two teachers at a school in Yuvalde, Texas from AP News. The shooting in the state's second largest city is the 36th mass killing in the United States this year. 36 just this year, according to a database maintained by the Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. The database includes every mass killing since 2006 from all weapons in which four more people excluded in the offender were killed within a 24 hour time frame. And as I said, obviously the story is still developing and more information will be coming out over the next few days. But reading that, that it's the largest mass shooting since Yuvalde, it just hit me pretty

difficulty because there was a moment after Yuvalde where everyone believed things were going to change this time. There's no way they could turn a blind eye to this horrific tragedy. 19 children brutally murdered. The police stood outside for over an hour before they went in to neutralize the perpetrator. There were people on scene at the time. police officers who could have used their weapons, the supposed good guys with the guns, who didn't, who didn't go in, who waited almost or waited over an hour before they finally entered the scene, who didn't use their guns. The supposed good guys with the guns did not use their guns to protect these children. And what happened? The state of Texas passed

to mandate the requires an armed police officer stationed at every elementary school, an unfunded mandate to do that. We got some small gun control at the federal level that every expert says would not have prevented that type of shooting. And here we are, little over a year later, deadliest shooting since then. And really, really nothing has changed. And it's frustrating because you see these parents who have to become activists, right? These parents who lose their children. And then they dedicate their lives in the pursuit of preventing other parents from losing their children in these senseless shootings from people, we're trying to prevent people from losing their loved ones and these senseless acts of violence.

And their pleas fall on deaf ears because the voices and more importantly, the money of the NRA, the gun lobby, speak so much more loudly to our elected officials, which is why. And it's a topic we talk about a lot here on TYT, money and politics. But it does come back to money in politics, the ability of these lobbies to capture our politicians, Because there's no person in this country who shouldn't feel moved, who shouldn't feel an emotional reaction when they hear the news of these shootings. And yet, instead of a meaningful response from our elected officials who have the power, who have the authority to do something about this, all we get are thoughts and prayers and some of the ridiculous stuff we're about to cover in the next story. But it just, it makes me feel sick. I said that, but I'll reiterate it. It makes me feel sick. Yeah, I mean, Yuvaldi is maybe the best example because Texas basically is a gun.

It's a giant gun. And the fact that the gun state can't do anything to stop gun violence within its own borders just proves the absurdity of the argument of people that are against gun regulations. You know, I've debated Republicans on this many times, I debated, you know, went back and forth with Tommy Laron on this and she, in the wake of another mass shooting, said, but the Second Amendment doesn't say you have to register. And I'm like, yeah, it's one sentence written hundreds of years ago. You can still use your brain and use common sense to evolve your opinion, to add common sense things to keep people safe. You do it all the time. You adjust

things and opinions all the time on all issues that you are interested in changing that aren't explicitly mentioned the Constitution. It's an absurd excuse to keep a cowboy culture, shoot them up, woohoo, let children's lives be damned, let people's lives be damned at a bowling alley, having a family night out. It's disgusting and they have blood on their hands. They have blood on their hands if you fight against common sense regulations. Because especially, to remind everybody yet again, nobody's advocating for taking away your right to bear arms.

Nobody's going against the core of the Second Amendment. We are just saying a common sense regulation that can keep people safe. People with mental illness take it away. Red flag laws, be able to remove guns, people who are currently undergoing mental illness episodes so that people are coming off as violent, that they can be kept safe. That people around them can be kept safe from potentially horrible episodes. People with horrible records that you shouldn't be able to get guns. These are common sense, easy things.

And if you still stick by your Second Amendment, it's just insane, even though it's only one sentence, to only care about half of that sentence, to only focus on the right to bear arms, can't be infringed, and ignore the of a well-regulated militia part. You ain't in a militia. So just shut your mouth and open your heart a little. Right. And I mean, in law school studying the interpretations of the Constitution, I always found originalism to be one of the most absurd. The idea that we need to now, in this year of our law at 2023, think about what someone who had wooden teeth might have thought about AR-15s is an

absurdity. But our Supreme Court is so far right, so fascistic that they're not even trying to base their new gun interpretations, their new Second Amendment interpretations off of that. Now they're saying it has to be based in history. They said you can't have a gun regulation that isn't based in a piece of American history pre-Civil War. Justice Clarence Thomas people, that's our Supreme Court, which just goes to show how little they care about protecting people. How many pieces of legislation does everybody think there were to protect women against gun violence pre-Civil War, very few, if any at all. So now in order to make an argument to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, you have to find a piece of similar legislation from the early 1800s to prove that it is based in history. This is a legal theory completely concocted out of nowhere, mind you. And it's going to massively impact our ability to regulate public safety in this country. It's already gone into effect. in that way. States in the NRA are already lobbying to repeal laws that protect women

against gun violence from domestic abusers that attempt to take guns away from people who have been found to have been some by a preponderance of evidence when it comes to restraining orders guilty of domestic violence against a woman. And the response is always ridiculous from right wingers is that we just need to arm the women then. That's how we protect the women, despite the fact that women are significantly more likely to die by their domestic abusers if that person has a gun. It's the number one indicator that someone will die from, will be murdered by their domestic abuser. But now we have to, we have to look back through history and find an example pre-1800s. I mean, it's just, it's fiction. It's a fictional legal

theory and it's something that they're going to now continue to use to prevent any legislation that's going to come in the wake of this mass shooting to try to protect children. children and innocent people just trying to enjoy their Wednesday afternoon from mass violence. And the Republicans will say we don't talk about politics in the wake of a mass shooting, but just pay attention. They don't talk about liberal politics, but they are 100% signaling to the NRA and their conservative base that we're gonna fight to ensure that you don't have your guns taken away. I'll let you get the last word in on this.

Yeah, and of Clarence Thomas's, his lack of self-awareness is mind boggling. If his standard is you need pre-Civil War laws, I'm not sure if he's aware of the fact that he wouldn't be on the Supreme Court if this was pre-Civil War America, he would likely be a slave. And so, I mean, open your eyes, man. You're now living in a country that's so free, you get to be on the highest court in the land and be super corrupt in that position. You have that right now. Wake up. It's absolutely ridiculous. And we're going to continue on the theme of absolute ridiculousness when we can.

come back from this break. to this mass shooting in Maine. So ladies and gentlemen, Sean Hannity. What bothers me in this, I could literally probably count the seconds before an incident like this becomes politicized. And that part of it I never like, because that's not going to bring back lives. And then I always ask the question, when something like this happens, what is your plan? What do you do? I have a personal security plan.

I train in mixed martial arts. I've been a big believer in the Second Amendment for a long time with the prayer that I never would ever to use it. I am truly and utterly dumbfounded. I listen to this clip now five times probably, and every time it still catches me off guard, the sheer stupidity of Sean Hannity. So before we get it to anything else, Ben, this man thinks that he'll be able to use martial arts to defend himself from a, And the salt style weapon, if crap hits the fan, the hubris of this guy is just off the charts. And it's so many, so many conservative, you know, media figures and politicians have this

weird fantasy of defending themselves either with a gun or from a gun, both. And they believe themselves to be an expert. I'm sorry, Sean Hannity, if someone's coming at you with a gun, You're going to get shot and die. You're either going to get severely injured or die. You're not going to do some like jujitsu flip, kick the gun out of the guy's hand. It's an absurd notion. Get your head out of your ass. I have to strongly disagree.

He's not going to flip and get the guns. He's going to karate chop the bullets. We all know that. He's going to karate chop all the bullets like a good Sean Hannity would. I mean, listen, if he cares about America so much and doesn't want to pass Rick to stop gun violence because that would politicize it, I guess we have no choice left but to send Sean Hannity into active shooter situations and just let him ninja his way out of there. Let him ninja the group to safety. Let him do what he's got to do to just protect all of us with his superior martial arts skills. The man is idiotic. It harkens back to when Ben Carson when he was running for president in his incredible, the sleepiest man to to ever live, whose eyes were closed, two thirds of the time he would speak, literally said, if I was in a mass shooting, what I would do is run towards the shooter and incapacitate him.

Literally before he said, if I was, he'd be dead. He'd have 30 bullets inside of him. But he believes all of a sudden he would be super speed. Maybe if he was, I don't know, on some sort of drug, maybe an amphetamine that would speed up his system, he'd still be dead. people live in fantasy land and unfortunately that's not where shooting happens shootings happen in reality land and i was going to pause there for a second just to talk about the absurd nature of his comments and we're going to get into some more absolutely absurd comments from one newt gingrich

in a minute but first let's just go over a little bit about the already extremely lax gun laws that apparently Sean Hannity thought were too oppressive in the state of Maine from AP and NBC. Maine where more than a dozen people were killed Wednesday night in a mass shooting does not require background checks on all gun sales and does not have red flag laws according to every town for gun safety. Now Maine does not ban high capacity magazines nor does it require a permit to carry concealed guns something that conservatives have been fighting to prevent in many states, my state, of Illinois included. This Maine already didn't have that. So here's this from NBC News. Proposals to require background checks for private gun sales and created 72 hour waiting

period for gun purchases failed earlier this year. Proposals that focused on school security and banning bump stocks failed in 2019. Continues on, residents have also voted down some attempts to tighten gun laws in Maine. A proposal to require background checks for gun sales failed in a 2016 public vote. But obviously that's not enough for some Republicans, like former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who says, despite this, citizens need to take on more responsibility for protecting themselves. Take a look. Well, I mean, first of all, it's horrible. And I think that we're going to have to really think through a better method of protecting people. Frankly, in kind states that have

concealed carry and other permits, constitutional carry permits, you have a much more rapid response to these kind of people who are crazy. And we have no idea what this person's motivation was, but I think we have to assume as we move forward, the people, and by the way, this also applies to what happened in Israel when Hamas attacked. We have to have a greater ability for our citizens to protect themselves, because it's clear the law and enforcement comes in after the massacre. But all enforcement is almost never there to stop the massacre. This has been true in Europe. It's been true here. It's been true in Israel. So I think we have to think about a whole new strategy because these kind of people are extraordinarily dangerous,

are willing to kill others, have no sense of decency. And frankly, you have to stop them as early as possible to minimize the loss of individual lives. Incidentally, Newt Gingrich doesn't support red flag laws, which are proven to prevent the people who would carry out these types of shootings, these types of atrocities from getting guns in the first place. No, instead what he's proposing is minority report style policing. We need cops who are going to look into the future and determine whether or not you're going to commit a crime and neutralize you then. He said that the police weren't there to stop these mass shootings. No, why would they be? Why would they be? And how would they? How would they know? Are they just going to point a gun at every single person who enters a building and determine whether or not do a visual check to determine whether or not they're a threat? That's absurd. It's an absurd notion. And it's not feasible. It's physically impossible. And what he's suggesting is honestly downright illegal. It violates our constitution. So shut the hell up, Newt Gingrich. I thought we were done with you. I never would have to see you again. I was astounded to hear Newt Gingrich say that because I could have sworn he was dead. I did not know his dog was still alive. That's wild.

And he's there on camera 80 years after he was in power saying, we've got to think of a whole new strategy. Yeah, you know what have been a good time to do that was 80, 90 years ago when you were one of the leaders of our government. I left that only now are you kind of kicking to brainstorm around. Now that I've been out of power for hundreds of years, maybe we should try to figure out a way to stop gun violence. He says it could have happened to Israel, could have helped in Israel too. Yes, yes, terrorist attacks would also be stopped by people with guns, just regular people stopping trained militias that are coming there to cause mass harm. It's a brilliant point made by the ghoulish, long-deceased Newt Gingrich, may the Lord rest his soul. And Donald Trump did the same thing, right? He did the same thing as Newt Gingrich. We need to try something new.

He said this, a terrible situation going on in Maine, at least 22 dead. Again, those are not the numbers that we are officially reporting. It just seems to never end for the United States. You were the president. You were the president of the United States of America. And what did you do to limit mass atrocities, to limit gun violence, to try to prevent gun violence? Absolutely nothing. You weren't president during a time where there was a ton of school shootings, a ton of mass shootings, violent, bigoted mass shootings, and you did nothing to make it better. Another person. Well, Ray, at least he's taking a very seriously.

I'm sure he just posted that and then took the rest of the day to be somber, right? Well, you would think, because Donald Trump is a very serious man who cares very deeply about these types of tragedies, but three minutes after he made that post, he posted again about the tragedy. No, just to praise Mike Johnson, who was elected speaker earlier in the day. Okay, but that at least was like political and then he probably was somber the rest of the day, right? Right, you would think. But 12 minutes later, he posted a video of him entering an arena to watch a UFC. fight with the words, what a difference a president makes. Oh, wow. I mean, at least he was around the people. He was there together. I'm sure after that, he probably didn't post anything else and he probably took time to reflect on gun violence. Right. Well, he might have been reflecting at the time that he posted a video of him teeing off

juxtaposed with footage of President Biden falling on the stairs. Oh, so he's focusing on the issues on what matters. The important issues that matter. Another person who we, no one could ever accuse of not focusing on the issues was one Lauren Bobert, who tweeted out sending prayers to Lewistown, or Lewiston, excuse me, she spelled the name of the town wrong by the way. She wrote Louis Town, it's Lewiston, Maine tonight, know that the entire country is praying for you. I mean, this is a woman who posted a Christmas photo of her with all of her sons holding guns, some of them with very poor trigger discipline, all of them holding, like assault-style weapons next to the Christmas tree.

Is that someone who gives a crap about gun violence? She ran a bar where all of the workers had to carry pistols on their hip. The idea that this woman, I mean, she's from a town called Rifle, Colorado. I'm sorry, could she be any more pro-gun? It's absurd. It's ridiculous. Her bar was called shooters. It's now closed, but when it was open, was it called active shooters? I wouldn't be too on the nose for her. She also probably gave a offered a hand job to anybody who's a hand to anybody who's suffering. You know, she really takes it very, very seriously trying to help people in this nation. She's always about thoughts and prayers, always about thoughts and prayers.

Most of these Republican lawmakers are, if they're so into prayers, why didn't they become preachers? Why are they going to making laws? If their focus is pray and go pray, have a congregation somewhere and have a congregation somewhere and have no effect on the outcome. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to do. You've taken up a position where you actually can affect change. And instead of doing that, you're sending vibes. We're sending vibes.

That's what we're doing. Yep. All right, we've been talking about violence in America. So let's move on to this next story that is also about an increase in bigoted violence in America. Because the Anti-Defamation League and the Council on American Islamic Relations have both reported an increase in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic harassment, respectively, in the wake of the horrific Hamas attack on Israel and the ongoing violence of Israel against Palestinians. So let's start with the increase in Islamophobia and the hate crimes against Muslims. And then we'll discuss the ADL's reports on the increase in anti-Semitism as well. So this from AP, a spokesperson for the Council on American Islamic Relations said Wednesday that the organization's chapters in national office had received 770 reports of bias-related acts between October 7th and October 24th.

The national headquarters had 110 direct reports during that period compared to 63 for all of August. I'm sorry, 63 versus 110 direct reports versus 774 reports of bias. That is a massive increase. Now of course, I don't think anyone has or could forget the brutal murder of a six-year-old Palestinian boy here in Illinois. But I'll just remind anybody who either hasn't heard of this or needs reminding. The reported act since October 7th include an Illinois landlord fatally stabbing a six-year-old Muslim boy and wounding the boy's mother. Please say as well as the arrest of a Michigan man after please say he asked people in a social media post to join him in hunting Palestinians. Now that unfortunately wasn't the only Islamophobic hate crime here in the United States.

In fact, it wasn't the only one here in the Chicago area. Fox 32 reported that a 33-year-old man is accused of spraying pepper spray during a protested Skokie over the weekend. Zevlin Ebert is now facing aggravated battery and hate crime charges. Now, Corey Saylor, who's the research and advocacy director of the Council on American Islamic Relations made this statement. It says public officials should do everything in their power to keep the wave of hates sweeping the nation right now from spiraling out. of control. And of course, that wave of hate sweeping the nation also includes a massive increase in anti-Semitic hate and anti-Semitic harassment as well, as the Anti-Defamation League reported, and as AP News wrote. The ADL Center on Extremism reported in a statement Wednesday that

the organization recorded at least 312 reports of anti-Semitic acts between October 7th and October 23rd, compared to 64 recorded, excuse me, during the same time. period in 2022. Those reports included graffiti slurs or non-nest posting, as well as physical violence, such as a woman being punched in the face in New York by an attacker who the league says, said, you are Jewish. And from a different report, there was a man dressed in traditionally Orthodox Jewish clothes in London who was assaulted by a man who targeted him based on his clothing. That man was arrested and also found to have a connection to a different hate crime where he assaulted a interracial couple on the basis of their being interracially

married together in public. The report continues on. The 312 reports included 109 anti-Israel sentiments spoken or proclaimed at rallies. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism found to be explicit or strong implicit support for Hamas and or violence against Jews in Israel, according to the statement. Lastly, protesters at several of the The rallies use the slogan from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, which the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups have criticized as a call to dismantle the state of Israel. Many Palestinian activists say they are not calling for the destruction of Israel, but for freedom of movement and equal rights and protections for Palestinians throughout the land.

And I'll say I have had a criticism of the ADL for a long time that statements in support of Palestinian liberation are often categorized by the ADL as anti-Semitism, which I disagree with. I agree with the statements from the Palestinian activist that they're not calling for the destruction of Israel, but freedom of movement. On that note though, it's easy for, you know, everyone should be easy. It should be easy for everybody to condemn instances of anti-Semitism, instances of Islamophobia that we have seen beyond a shadow of a doubt an increase of here in the United States. We've seen the brutal murder of a child. We've seen the assaults of Jewish people in New York. That's not disputed whatsoever. And so,

Still, there are people who are unwilling to call out this increase in hate, and that is disturbing. There are elected officials who aren't willing to listen to the concerns of these communities. I live in a majority Muslim community, and people here are really scared. People here are really scared. My neighbors who are hijabi are afraid to go outside. I have a lot of friends who live in the majority Jewish community in Rogers Park. They're also scared, and they're feeling left behind by the government. They're feeling completely ignored by the city of Chicago, especially when we've seen so many instances of hate crimes here in the Chicago area and the surrounding regions.

People are terrified. And there's been very little response by local state and the federal government. We can't let what happened post 9-11 happen again. We can't let it happen to Jewish communities. We can't let it happen to Muslim communities. And we're already seeing this rise in hate. people need to be vigilant and call it out wherever they see it. Yeah, I certainly agree with that. As to your statement about the Anti-Defamation League, you know, counting pro-Palestinian statements as acts of aggression towards the Jewish community, I would say if the phrase is historically one, the slogan is historically one,

that calls for and means, because words do have meaning still, the annihilation of the state of Israel and the full removal of Jews from that area, maybe find a new slogan. Nazis can also rally and say Jews will not replace us. And we mean just in our Christian club or Nazis can rally and say, oh, it's about white power. And then just say, oh, no, we just mean power amongst ourselves. You could also just choose a different slogan and not use the one that stirs up anti-Semitism and hatred towards the Jewish community if you don't want it to be.

be misinterpreted because again words have have power and phrases and slogans have history that I think needs to be respected if you don't want to amp up and light a fire under an already incredibly tinderbox situation. That's also why I think it's so essential to be incredibly careful in the way we cover these stories and the way that we present these issues because when there's a rush to judgment and nobody's excusing and over and overreaching. horribly aggressive response that kills too many civilians, innocent people in the Palestinian territories, of course. But when this is presented as an issue of us versus them, of Jews versus Palestinians, that alone amps up so much hatred and brings up so much more anti-Semitism and

Islamophobia because it creates this divide in our society instead of what should be a very obvious non-controversial stance of all people across the world, Palestinians and Jews and all who aren't part of those groups standing up against a terror organization that's been designated so by the U.S., by the European Union, by the U.K., which is Hamas, who unfortunately is in charge in Gaza because they've been holding the Ghazan people hostage ever since they took over in 2007 after Israel ended its formal occupation in 2005 and is withdrawn from those lands. And it's an incredibly complex issue. And people boil it down to divisive slogans. It creates more hate, as you reported, almost 200% increase in hate incidents against the

Muslim community, 388% rise against the Jewish community. And that's just here in the states. Of course, there was the murder of the president of a synagogue here in the states just last week. week and and huge increases of anti-Semitic sentiments and feelings and crimes all over the United Kingdom and France and Europe and Latin America and North Africa. London has reports of 1,300 percent increase against the Jewish community from the same time period last year, just the two and a half weeks since the terrorist attack that occurred. And so we really need to be careful we can we can speak against individual horrible incidents we can speak to protect innocent people we can speak to protect innocent lives but what we should

not do is rush to judgment calling a country defending itself after a terrorist attack worse than 59 11's genocide when they're responding let's be more responsible and more focused and talk specifically about let's minimize the loss of innocent life while a country also of course as any nation does, has the right to defend itself. We must, if we're going to be responsible citizens, be much more responsible, much more measured in the way that we respond to incidents like this. Because this is the social media war. I've never seen a conflict that seems to be so decided by social media. The way the parties are even acting on the ground seems affected by the sentiment

around the world. And we need to all be humans together and care about common humanity together and try to protect innocent Palestinian life as much as we respect and care for and grieve for the loss of Jewish and Israeli life at the exact same time and make sure our words do not conflate those issues and don't make it us versus them when it should be the world against a terrorist organization. Now I think that you and I have a fundamental disagreement on several points that you made and I wish I had the time right now to go through and I wish that we had a longer form format that we can have. Well, hit me on a couple of them, hit me on a couple.

All right, well, you said that we can't, it shouldn't be referred to as a genocide. I, however, you know, I'm listening to and believe the statements of Ros Seagal, who is a Israeli historian and a Holocaust expert who wrote an article in Jewish currents, who said that this is a textbook genocide, this is the displacement of a group of people, the forcible displacement of a group of people under threat of a, bombing campaign under the threat of a ground invasion saying that they need to go in and root out Hamas, but they all need to remove them. They all need to be transferred to the south of Gaza, where by the way, they are still continuing to be bombed in the south of Gaza, the place they

were told to evacuate to. He did classify that as a textbook case of genocide. And again, this is not a radical agent of Hamas. This is an Israeli historian. This is an expert on the Holocaust, who said this in Jewish current. That's one thing. I mean, I already explained, I disagree with the characterization of the statement from the river to the sea. Palestine will be free. Again, it's not necessarily the best format for us to go back and forth. We do have to go to a break, right? Right now. Yeah, but I'll let you respond, of course. I'll let you respond to that quickly. There's also the son of the founder of Hamas who says that Hamas is a terrible terrorist organization that needs to be taken out and is speaking forcefully in support of what

Israel is doing. And again, it doesn't with all respect matter what your opinion is of a phrase that has been historically used to stand for the eradication of the Jewish homeland. That's what it stands for. You can't repurpose hate slogans and say, well, the words themselves don't mean that. Yeah, maybe parsed separately, but you can write a different rhyme if you want to just support the Palestinian people. It doesn't need to be one that gins up hate and the calling for the annihilation of an entire group of people from the homeland, the one homeland, they're supposed to have safe in this world like any other nationality gets to have in this planet. And instead of being a safe haven, it's one where terrorist attacks have happened

over and over and over again. So this one person, this one Jewish person that declares it to be a genocide. Also there was a speech at the House of Lords yesterday where one of the lords in the UK government specifically made a very perfect case about how this is well within Israel's rights. And again, I'm no advocate for the horrible loss of innocent life, but proportionality does not need to mean you, you only are allowed to harm the same number of citizens, it's about the proportionality with the goal of the military objective, which is stated in which the whole world generally is behind is the eradication of Hamas, as far as the governments of the world, at least the Western world, ones that share our values,

is to not prop up a terrorist organization that is trying to literally eradicate people. And so we all want peace, but peace can't be found if you don't have a partner for peace, and they are instead using terror tactics to kill people. And again, for the a million time, I am not in support of the horrible loss of innocent life, but it's an incredibly difficult predicament because Israel either tells them to stay and then Hamas uses them as human shields and puts all of their munitions and their soldiers in heavily populated areas and more people die, or they warn them and say, please not forever, not displacing them forever, please leave to the south while we have an incursion to try to get rid of

of the group that's also holding them hostage. And then that's a problem too. I have not seen reports of continued bombing in the South. I don't believe that to be true. I'm sure there've been errant missiles that have that have landed incorrectly. There is not a heavy bombardment of bombs hitting the South where people are being told to evacuate to. And so there needs to be some way that we don't continually pit this as us versus them, but instead just can unite against a terror organization. I'm sure, Ray, you don't argue that Hamas is not a terror organization and is certainly not a partner for peace against or with the Israeli people, do you? No, obviously I wouldn't say that. Hamas is a terrorist organization, but I think that to put

it into the context of, you know, the far right Israeli government, which has continued to support Hamas with the explicit goal of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, it's important to put it in that context. A hundred percent, agree on that, 100 percent. And I- And that's what happened. I disagree with it because Netanyahu did that to stop a two state solution, which is disgusting. And he needs to go and he should not be the leader of Israel, which is also a big part of why Israeli people have been protesting against him.

But at the exact same time, when you try to work with the leadership of Hamas, this is what happens when even working with them. So it's quite clear they're not a partner for peace when you prop them up, give them money, and try to make them more legitimized and they go and slaughter your people in a horrific terrorist attack. That's not, you know, obviously there needs to be a response. And we all wish that response could be better, but there still has to be change. And I don't know a better way to do it. And if you can suggest one, I would love to hear it. But if not, it's we're just stuck between a rock and a hard place and the oldest conflict, the most complex conflict, maybe in human history.

I wish I could have time to go through everything you said. And I will, on my own independent channel off TYT. And there's going to be more discussion of the conflict on the second hour. But with that, we super have to go to a break. And you know on my Rebel HQ video today on this exact topic as well. So please check it out. I also have a Rebel HQ video on the topic. You can check mine out as well. But with that, we got to go to a break. We're going to come back and we're going to talk about how Elon Musk is being a cry baby. Welcome back to the Young Turks, Rayvana Ben Glebe, and one very, very sad Elon Musk.

Let's talk about him. Since Elon Musk took the reins at Twitter or X or whatever the hell you want to call it, about a year ago, the company has hemorrhaged users and advertisers according to new data. Talk a little bit about why that is. But first, let's dig into the numbers. First app downloads have plummeted from around 16 million in January 2022 to 10 million in the fall of 2023. Yes, 6 million. It has decreased. And I'll say this graph is a little misleading because it makes it look like it goes down to zero. But that bottom number is 10 million. Still a significant and sharp decrease. But the important things to note is obviously super sharp decline. in the past year and a half. So it's going to assume reporting from Axios. App downloads fell roughly 38% globally between October 22 and September 2023, according to censor tower estimates.

In the United States, mobile app downloads fell 57% in the same time period. Data from data.a.i, another tracking firm shows similar trends. The report continues on. Usage has also decreased with monthly active users falling 14.8% globally. and 17.8% in the US year over year for the month of September per similar web. User churn or users who stop using the app increase more than 30% year over year as of September 2023 per sensor tower. Web traffic was down 7% globally and 11.6% in the US for the first nine months of 2023 compared to the same time period in 2022 per similar web. Now, hilariously,

Axio cites this statistic, as a bright spot for X. Traffic to Elon Musk's personal profile and posts were up 96% year over year in September. And for a man with an ego as big as Elon Musk, that might be the only statistic that matters. Does he really care if the app is being used more or less? As long as more people are going to his Twitter profile, see all of the tweets where he says, interesting or concerning or looking into it, one of his personal favorites. Now, despite Elon's personal account doing great, a decrease in overall engagement along

with concerns around brand safety has pushed advertisers away from X. While most tech firms have experienced slower ad growth over the past year, X's advertising business has nosedived. Musk himself admitted in September that the company's U.S. ad business was down 60%. Ebequity, ebiquity, whatever you say that, which works with 70 of the top 100 top spending advertisers said that just two of its clients had purchased ads on X last month. It was down from 31 brands in September last year prior to Musk's takeover of Twitter that October. And because of that dive, insider intelligence estimates that X's ad business

will bring in $2.9 billion this year down from roughly 4.14 billion in 2022. Part of the reason users and advertisers are fleeing is the increase in hate speech and disinformation. And if you don't believe me, don't just take my word for it. Here's Yol Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, laying out this issue last month. Let's look at the evidence. We have seen just this week a study out from researchers in Europe talking about the prevalence and spread of disinformation across all of the major platforms.

I will give you one guess which platform has the highest, degree of spread. It's Twitter. We have also seen research that suggests that the prevalence of hate speech and abuse on the platform is higher. We've seen independent research that suggests that ISIS has staged a 70% return on Twitter. This isn't like free speech, this is ISIS, right? Like we're not talking about the gray areas of content moderation. By any measure, it's worse. Well, if your measurement of how good a site is by how many members, members of ISIS are active users on it, I would say everything's looking pretty good. They're coming back, ISIS is back, folks. Things are going very well. And Yol Roth in that

interview with Kara Swisher also showed some specific instances of homophobia directed at him by Elon Musk, who pretty much called him a pedophile with his own account, in his own words, massive instances of anti-Semitic attacks against him, an insane death threats that he had received that I've been allowed to just stay up on the platform. Mind you, when Elon Musk took over, he said if you're looking for good information on trust and safety on Twitter, Yol Roth is the person to go to. And just a few weeks later, when Yol Roth realized that he was in over his head with the must takeover and that things were not going to be copacetic with new Twitter, he left. And then Elon Musk called him a pedophile.

I'm not joking, you can all look it up that that happened. So he's an expert in the field, someone who's experienced bigoted hate on the platform. And Ben, I've seen, I've noticed a large increase in anti-LGBQ and misogynistic rhetoric being espoused against me. This morning, I reported an account that was just N-word hater. And I got an email from Twitter saying that that was fine, that they couldn't find any violations in their terms of service with an account literally just named N-word hater. I've thought about getting off this platform so many times, and I am certain that if Elon must has to charge me a dollar, like he's floated the idea around of, I will no longer be using the site. Yeah, I mean, it's working as he intended when he bought this thing. He bought it specifically so that he could allow the reamplification of hateful voices. He likes to

to be in the mix in a horrible way, he likes to create torment really among the population. He's not doing this to try to improve the town square that Twitter once was. He's trying, he's doing it to really throw bombs in the middle of it and try to see what fires he can start because he enjoys being in the middle of this. Like you said, his own engagement is up and that's probably all he cares about. The man's business instincts are so suspect. He buys this for an insane, overvalued amount of money. He knew was overvalued, tried to get out of it, was forced to buy it.

And then just throws away all brand value and re-names the thing X, a letter that literally is used when you lose something. When you get the guess wrong on family feud, big X in the middle of the screen. When you don't like an act on America's got talent, they get exed. It's just always, if you break up with someone, you were once in love with, they're now your ex. And this is what he wanted to call the platform. It is certainly not speaking amazingly to his business savvy, or maybe he's too distracted. Maybe you shouldn't already be the

CEO of a major car company and of a major space company and then take over one of the biggest social media platforms on planet Earth. I'm surprised he hasn't yet launched his own after shave line, which of course would have to be called Elon Musk. A car company, the head of a car company, mind you, that has been in the throes of litigation regarding racial discrimination and bigotry in their factories. So I guess this is a man who wherever he goes, he just loves to bring in inclusivity for bigots. We want to make a warm, comfortable environment for people to espouse their views of hating people on the basis of their race, their gender, their sexuality.

He's inclusive for all straight whites, though. Mm-hmm. So keep that in mind. Right. Now, as a result of Musk's failures right now, investors who backed his takeover of Twitter are not in a good spot from the Wall Street Journal. Seven banks, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays lent Musk around 13 billion to buy Twitter a year ago this coming Friday. Under normal circumstances, they would have unloaded the debt to Wall Street investment firms. soon thereafter. But investor appetite for Twitter has cooled since the billionaire took over,

forcing the banks to hold the debt on their own balance sheets at a discounted value. Very, very, very, very discounted value. It continues on. The banks currently expect to take a hit of at least 15% or roughly $2 billion when they sell the debt. People familiar with the matter said, that would mean hundreds of millions in losses for those holding the largest pieces, which include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, and MUFG. And I think this should get everyone a little bit of an insight into how investment banking works. They're all idiots and they throw money at the loudest, most popular idiot in the moment. And that idiot burns all of their money in a big pile and has a bonfire over it.

I mean, just look at things like we work as a prime example of that. They were not investing in Twitter, which has always operated at a loss. They were investing in Elon Musk, who is an idiot. It was a poor man's idea of a rich man, who is a dumb man's idea of a smart man and who had no concrete plans for how to make this platform better. He had an idea of a platform that was silencing conservative voices and, you know, allowing extreme left wing voices to say whatever they wanted with impunity. And then he bought the platform, looked at it, and realized that wasn't how this platform was operating at all. But now I have to follow through on all those ridiculous promises I made to the MAGA people. So we're going to bring back the N-word on the app.

And that's what these people invested money into. And Ben, it's so ridiculous. It's so goofy. And the financial investment banking specifically is the biggest joke. Yeah, I'm surprised he didn't rename the company N. instead of X. It would have been more directly to the point, at least, for what he's trying to accomplish. It's just the guy does not have an interest in fairness or in giving voice to the voiceless. He has an interest in giving voice to the hateful, to the bigoted. And it's

pretty gross. And that's why I use Twitter now, and I will always call it Twitter and won't call it X. I use it in a way that I would recommend for you, Ray, post and don't look at the comments. Stay out of the fray. Just get your thoughts out. out there, post your links, and then stay away. Once in a while, I skim and I ignore all the hateful, horrible stuff. And that's about all I try to do. But it's so true that you make the most noise and you get the most attention. I would be so much further along in my life if I were only louder and more stupid.

I'm considering it. An interesting plan, something to lean into in the future maybe. Thank you. That's all the time we have for the first hour though. So thank you for joining me, Ben. Remind the people where they can follow you. You can follow me at Ben Glebe on Instagram and Twitter, I guess, and TikTok. I'm posting three stand-up comedy clips per week and political videos and all kinds of things like that.

And you can watch my special, The Mad King, on YouTube. And you can come to my virtual show this Sunday Halloween, my fourth annual Halloween virtual show, Glebe off the top, Halloween, spectacular boulart tickets at benglibe.com. Awesome. And everybody can, of course, always check out both of our videos on Rebel HQ. That's all the time we have for the first hour. Stick around because Francesca and Waz are about to come on and give you a whole lot more news the next hour and a half.

So we'll see you on the other side. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad free. Access members only. bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.