The Young Turks - Mayhem Ensues

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Israeli forces are accused of a 'barbaric premeditated attack' on Palestinian worshipers. The Russian Black Sea Fleet's flagship 'Moskva' sunk after Ukrainian Attack. What the Meadows texts reveal about how two Trump congressional allies lobbied the White House to overturn the election. A candidate mocks progressives on TikTok. Why Starbucks may exclude unionized employees from new benefits. Hosts: John Iadarola, Francesca Fiorentini, Farron Cousins ***  The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews https://youtu.be/L9hUqCPa3mE https://youtu.be/sUa6wOSVGc0 https://youtu.be/lnM-puRdAQM https://youtu.be/_xO2PWRes1Q https://youtu.be/E-DwxWtpDh8 https://youtu.be/T_aRX96oofU https://youtu.be/4S_xpFTTU8I https://youtu.be/9ye365nQDFw https://youtu.be/0rCfFJf-z6Y https://youtu.be/hp70VezEijI https://youtu.be/hp70VezEijI https://youtu.be/li-bJ2eAins Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What do you want? I want it to be different than Jenks. Anyway, I'm John Ida Rola. This is the Young Turks Power Panel, and I am very lucky to be joined by two of my favorite people, Francesca Fiorentini, who dwells in the habituation room. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Glad to have you here. And Farron Cousins, who dwells in a ring of fire. Farron, welcome to the show as well. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. A pleasure to have both of you here. And boy, do we have a lot to talk about. Chaos in the Middle East, perhaps even more chaos in Eastern Europe. Democratic candidates I had once

thought were just total jokes, becoming jokes of a different sort, perhaps. And Starbucks, too, There is so much going on. And so thank you, everyone, for joining us on this fine day. You can, of course, share the stream so the people know we're live. And we've got the doc here if you want to send us any comments or questions and things like that. With all that said, are both of you ready to jump into our first story? Let's do it. Okay, well, unfortunately, we're going to be starting off with something rough.

So everyone brace yourself as we watch this. What you're witnessing there is absolute chaos, although not unprecedented chaos in the Al-Aksa mosque with police officers from Israel storming the mosque and injuring dozens upon dozens of worshippers. They fired tear gas, stun grenades, sound grenades as well. Those sound fun, and used rubber-coated steel bullets as a small group of Palestinians hurled rocks, reportedly injuring three Israeli officers. So the Palestinian Red Crescent Emergency Service said that they'd treated 152 injured. So the three cops and 152 individuals, just for the record. Many of them have been wounded by rubber-coated bullets or stun grenades or beaten with batons.

One of the guards of the site apparently was shot in the eye with rubber bullet. Now, all of those sorts of weapons, whether they're used in Israel or here in the United States, are always described as either non-lethal or less lethal. But I want to clear the record on that because I did some looking into specifically rubber-coated bullets, which are bullets. Many people forget that. A study by BMJ found that 3% of those shot with rubber bullets in one study were killed by those bullets. 15% were permanently injured. So when you make the choice to storm a holy site during this incredibly rare confluence of,

you've got Easter, Passover, and Ramadan. It's happening right now, it hasn't happened since 1991. You can injure a lot of people, and we're going to have more details for you, but that is what we're seeing. Francesca, I want to start with you. We've seen security forces storm, even just this particular mosque before. But what do you make of the most recent events?

I just wanted to name that because as I saw this footage, I immediately was like, wait, this is old. We've seen the, oh, the Israeli occupation just does this over and over and over again. And I think it's really easy to get numb to these kinds of images. But let's remember how important the Al-Aksa Mosque is to the Muslim faith, how important this entire site is to people of so many different religions, obviously Judaism, obviously Islam, and to desecrate it in this way during

Passover and during Ramadan and on the precipice of Easter, again, not all Palestinians are Muslim, there's a lot of Christian Palestinians as well. And it just, it breaks your heart. And also, I hate the way that this is always framed by mainstream news, which is always clashes. Clashes this, clashes that, and it desensitizes us and makes us, you know, think that this is just forever how it's gonna be, and it's all about religion. It's not about religion, it's all, it's about land and occupation. This is as sweeps and raids in the West Bank continue and at the same time that obviously East Jerusalem and cities, towns like Sheikh Jara are under increasing military occupation by, by Israeli soldiers,

soldiers whereas like you're saying 152 civilians now of course that anyone who's in this area or anyone who throws a rock is immediately labeled by Israel as a as a combatant right as a terrorist and so again we that gets so warped so I would just urge us all to not be desensitized and to understand just how just how devastating this is and always is yeah you know I think for Frances get on a really great point there with the the word clash because that's what you saw And headlines all throughout the day, you know, clash, clash, class. And as she pointed out, they were throwing a couple of rocks. And in return, they get hit with these rubber bullets.

They get hit with the tear gas, the stun grenades, the sound grenades, and all of this. This is not some kind of, you know, equal sides here that have engaged in this fighting. These individuals were attacked at this holy site. This was not a clash, it was an attack and it is sickening. to see the media frame it that way. And what's even worse is that had this been probably anywhere else in the world where this happening, the entirety of the US political elite would be out there condemning these attacks. They would be talking about we need to work, we need to get this peace going, just almost

crickets throughout the day as far as what I've seen. And that is truly disturbing as well because we send weapons, we send money, we send all of this aid. And this is what it is used for. And that is truly disturbing. And that's another part of it that we don't get to hammer on enough. And you didn't see it mentioned as far as I saw on any of the stories that I was reading throughout the day about this. So all of the back part here, the backstory just gets totally erased just to say, oh, well, no, this was just a clash at a holy site, 152 people. You know, things are bad. And let's move along to the next story of the day. Yeah, things are bad, but who's to say in what way they're bad or who individually is bad?

Who's to say, let's clash. Clash. It reminds me of about a week ago, I think it was NYPD, we're chasing someone, and they ran down and killed an unhoused individual. But the tweet said that the van did it. And I thought, who raised that van that it went so astray. Weird, it's almost as if someone's hands must have been on the steering wheel. And you're right, there's always that, it's so weird that in journalism, like, it's sites like this, there's always going to be journalists on the ground, incredibly brave. Some journalists, actually, too, were injured.

Muhammad Samarine and Rami al-Katib were among the injured at that particular event. So some journalists at the event, they are, but the farther from the vent they are, the more cowardly they are. I mean, we're not going to be there. We're not even going to assert what happened or who might be at fault. And I've often noted, whenever there is a clash that goes. on for a few weeks, let's say hypothetically that like Hamas fires a bunch of like rockets at Israel and then Israel does strikes. You're always going to get two statistics. The number of

Palestinians who were killed and the number of like the pieces of ammunition that were fired at Israel. Because there's no balance otherwise. If you were to talk about the casualties, I mean, it looks really unequal. So you have to talk about the attempts, obviously. It's the way that the scales are biased there. Sorry, Francesco, it sounds like you want to jump in. No, no, I was I agree with you just like yes, we hear the rockets have been fired, but yeah, how many people did they actually killed? What kind of rockets are these? You know, again, in this instance, it seems like there was a mass convergence to defend the Alaksa Mosque and there was a premeditated attack by the Israeli military on those demonstrators who may have had rocks. But again, these are

rocks going up against stun grenades, going up against tear gas, going up against a machinery of occupation that once again, I think for us in the United States, we got to keep focusing on that three to four billion dollars a year. If you're out there and you don't like the defund the police slogan, okay, but let's defund the Israeli military. How about that? Why don't we bring some of that money home and we can decide what to do with it. Hey, we don't have enough money to like, you know, I don't know, past climate change legislation. Hey, why don't we get some of that money back from Israel because you know what doesn't seem like they're doing much good with it and you know like just the other day I mean these are moments where like you know you see an older an elderly

woman in the West Bank being killed in the streets by the Israeli military who have the gall to call themselves the defense fund because they everyone is supposedly everyone's Hamas and an elderly woman in the streets that is your terrorist right there now if this were Ukraine you're going to to have Jake Tapper on the scene, crying them big tears, talking about how much we need to do to like save the Ukrainian people. And yes, we absolutely should be in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Where is that solidarity with the Palestinian people? And it begins with bringing our money back from the Israeli military. Yeah, 100%. And at the very least, over the past few weeks of the clash, 15 Palestinians have been killed. The number could well be higher by now. Many detained,

arrested, including literally hundreds in the aftermath of the video that we've already shown you. The director of the mosque, by the way, had this to say, what happened today is an attack on all peaceful worshippers. This was a barbaric premeditated attack on worshippers. And it was a barbaric premeditated attack that as we said earlier, we have seen before. This is the sort of thing that like it's not lost on then that this is an incredibly critical time in terms of some of the the most major religions in the world, and they're doing it this particular time. Really fast, just to butcher some of the earlier points we were making. Let's jump to this tweet from the Associated Press.

This is how the media presents this sort of thing. Breaking clashes, clashes, between Israeli police and Palestinians at the Alaksa Mosque, a major holy site in Israel have wounded at least 20 Palestinians. Of course, much higher than that now. It was not immediately clear what sparked the violence. I love that, and we can't make any guesses either. We can't make anything based on the immediate history, the medium or long term history there.

Every one of these incredibly repetitive instances is a totally unique flower and we have no idea what led to any of it. And Jerusalem now comes, thankfully, after Israeli-Palestinian clashes. Yes, it was a clash there. It's like, I mean, like a demolition ball going through a wall technically is a clash. It gets dusty as it goes through. It's just this bizarre feigned objectivity. I find it so annoying. Farron, what do you think?

Well, you know, it's like framing January 6th as, oh, these mega rioters clashed with capital windows. They clashed with doors that had been barricaded. That, you know, the media is always so quick to try to not seem like they're taking sides that they end up coming across as plain stupid. And that is what most of the media today has become just straight up stupid. And I think we just need to call it what it is because they are not giving us the full story. They're so desperate for this balance that they can't even tell a story anymore. And that's what's happened

for far too long, especially in that area of the world where most people have no idea. As Joel pointed out earlier, talking about, oh, well, the rockets were fired, but then what happened? You know, something happens after a rocket's fired. And if it was, you know, total widespread devastation, don't you think you'd include that in their story? Yeah. Well, you don't because we all know, well, we don't all know. And that's the problem. We don't all know the end of that story.

People just see the first half of it, think, oh my God, you've got these terrorists out there, terrifying these, these poor Israelis that are the clearly the victims based on these headlines that I skimmed over and didn't bother to click on anything. But even if I had, they weren't going to tell me the story anyway, because the media is just straight up stupid. Yeah. And look like I always give the caveats when we talk about Ukraine and Russia, which we're going to in a little bit. I don't want the rockets to be fired, let alone to ever hit anyone as they rarely but sometimes do. I don't I don't want the Israeli security forces to get injured. I think a great way to not get injured is to not be there attacking yet another mosque. I don't want anybody on either side. And same as in Ukraine

and Russia. But right now, at least, all we can do is comment on this. All our government can do is pretty much what Joe Biden is doing on pretty much everything. Now, I understand that in terms of foreign policy, his eyes are on Ukraine and Russia. I get that that's going to be a big focus in everything. But what has the approach been from the administration when it comes to this situation? Because we had the experience of Obama who came in sort of implying slash promising that there would be changes to the relationship. That didn't happen. It was tested by the Israeli side and Barack Obama largely just went along with whatever it was that they wanted to do. And then, of course, Trump came in and just moved the embassy, gave them whatever they

wanted. He wasn't going to challenge it. And now we have Biden who, has he said, Has he, I have no idea what he makes of, of this violence about the last time that it happened. I have no idea what he thinks or if he thinks anything at all. I certainly haven't heard anything from him. Yeah, and it shows the hypocrisy of which governments we do support in which governments we don't, Israel's always seen as a United States ally, no matter who's in government, no matter how far right wing, no matter Neftali Bennett's insanely retrograde views, some of them even worse than his predecessor, Bibi Netanyahu's views about the Palestinian people. Doesn't matter the ethnic cleansing. They are allies. Same goes with Saudi Arabia, right?

These are countries that are authoritarian. They are participating occupation. And again, this is not to say what aboutism. It's just to say let's have principles when we apply them to our allies or our foes abroad, right? You're going to condemn Putin. You're going to condemn Bashar al-Assad. I would agree with that. You're going to also need to turn that spotlight against people like bin Salman and and Nafthali Bennett here in Israel. And if all else, Fern? No, I think Francesca just nailed it absolutely on the head right there. We look the other way when these atrocities are committed by our so-called allies.

And of course, the reason for that is as big money over there, right? They're going to buy our weapons. We're going to sell them millions and millions or even billions of dollars worth of stuff that they then use, of course, to go kill people. And in some cases, it's used to kill Americans, but we don't care because we get lots of money from them. So we overlook all of the atrocities they commit. We overlook the fact that they are committing these horrendous crimes against innocent people, you know, bombing school buses. we're cool with that because you're going to buy a lot of our weapons and that's going to make us a lot of money. Exactly. Yeah, it's a nice racket. Well, that's going to be the end of our first block. We got way more plan though. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we will be talking

about the sinking of warships and the revelation of text messages, all that and more after this. Welcome back to the power panel, everyone, with me, with Francesca and with Farron. You know, I try not to forget that anytime we go live, there's a possibility that some people might be tuning in for the first time. So I want to give you each of a chance. Just briefly, what is like the core concept of the show of the work that you do? I'll start with you, Farron. Tell us a little bit about your work. Well, Ring of Fire.

We've actually been around for 18 years now in various different aspects. But we like to focus on kind of the story behind the headline, you know, telling things in a quick, short way and adding in a little bit of humor when I'm capable of doing that. But it really is like, you know, our format is just kind of these digestible little clips to give people just the nuts and bolts of what's happening as well as what's not in that story. You know, we do a ton of research to back everything up. I do and so we give you more of the story than what you're going to get, you know, through all this corporate media BS that we see out there every day. And Francesca? Elia.

The bituation room is a podcast and also live at Frannie Fio on YouTube and Twitch. And I have comedians on. I have activists and experts. And we talk a lot about like left organizing strategies as well as, you know, big old geopolitical questions like China. So yeah, get that wherever you get your podcasts or watch on those platforms. Nice, that's awesome. Well, we've got a lot of news to cover, including some of the biggest foreign policy and domestic policy stories to come out this week. So with that, why don't we jump into this?

I think I can summarize the state of the war effort in Russia, invading Ukraine, in the fate of one ship. And it really fits in both strategy as well as theme. Because if you go back 50 days, right around to the beginning of this thing, you might recall Snake Island. And the soldiers there that received an ultimatum from a Russian warship and apparently told them to go F themselves. The details are disputed, but we know that the incident did happen. Well, that ship has now been sunk. And so, look, that is an interesting closing of that particular event, that they went up against these soldiers who decided we're not going to submit. We're going to defy you, despite your overwhelming firepower, the money that's going into this, we're going to defy you.

And that has been kind of what we've seen out of Ukraine in the 50 days since. And it ended, of course, with the Russian warship, Moscow being sunk. And in fact, not that long before we went live, the U.S. confirmed that it actually had been struck and sunk by a pair of Ukrainian missiles, these so-called Neptune missiles. that had been disputed up until that point. The ship had sophisticated air defense as well as offensive missile capabilities. It was actually capable of holding and launching more than a dozen long-range cruise missiles. So that is now gone for the Russians, at least for now, since they don't have many ships of that class. This was the flagship of their Black Sea fleet.

And in the wake of that ship, which had been being towed away after there was a fire, they believed they could get it to a port to be saved, A number of other vessels of the Russian war effort have now moved away from the coast because they no longer have the protective cover that was provided by some of the systems on the Moscow. Now, we know that it was critically damaged back on Thursday. It's a 12,000-ton warship, more than 600 feet long, and it's thought to have had a crew of nearly 500. Now, there is every reason to believe that although some of those crew might have died in

the initial strikes from the missiles, it had been being serviced. as large ships like this always are, by a number of support craft, it is hard to imagine that they did not evacuate the crew. So if you're worried about the fate of the sailors, it is likely that they were saved. Of course, Russia is not forthcoming with much information in that area. But if you want to get an idea of how significant the sinking of the Moscow is, I want to show you this little bit of video. This is from, in just the last day, state hosts and pundits on Russian state TV discussing what they thought about. being sunk.

I didn't talk about Kreser of Moscow, even to be different, but you said,

Kreser Moscow is an absolute for the point of a lot of our flagman our. Think about

about unobnichotion of delusels there, there, there, they all

go, I mean, I mean, leaders, but leaders have never need to

give, they're going to come back, then they will be what you need,

what's what this doesn't be never. That So we should we see on the screen. There's one way to answer.

So if you're just listening and not watching, the one gentleman was saying, this is now a cause for war, which I guess hadn't been being waged in the last 50 days. And the female presenter there was saying, we should bomb Kyiv, we should scare away world leaders. There has to be retribution for this. And we'll get to the retribution that's already come. But Farron, I want to start with you. What do you make of this most recent wrinkle in the war? You know, actually just watching that clip though, I'm reminded of Sam Rockwell and Iron Man too when he shouts.

I don't speak Russian, so it was a little confusing there for a moment. But no, for real though, it makes me wonder what exactly is Putin's end game at this point? I mean, we have seen this remarkable show of resistance from Ukraine. They have also suffered tremendous casualties. That's absolutely true as has Russia at this point, you know, with tremendous troop loss. So I'm left to wonder when we see these, you know, very big victories for Ukraine, which this is, what exactly is Putin's goal here at this point? And we know he cannot turn around and just say, okay, everybody get out and come home.

This is the kind of guy that wants to project this image that I am the biggest, baddest, toughest man, that has ever controlled this country. So to withdraw is admitting defeat, he's not going to do that. But how much longer can they sustain suffering these losses from Ukraine? And that to me is the big question mark. We don't have an answer to that. I don't think we fully know what Putin is really even playing at anymore, just suffering loss after loss and continuing to do it again. So it's a very troubling situation. I would think for the Russians, I know they're angry. They say, oh, this is a

declaration of war. You've been at war. You're not doing very well. And eventually this is going to have to come to an end. But I don't know how we get there. I will say, however, I'm pleased that the United States has not sent troops on the ground, you know, a little bit shocked almost that we haven't. Very happy we haven't. But I thought for sure by now, if it was still happening, the US would have said, all right, screw it, let's send them. And they didn't. So I do applaud the administration for not getting involved on the ground there. That's still a very good thing and I hope it holds up. I mean, personally, I just like when any battleship is sunk as someone who doesn't believe

in battleships. So I'm pro putting every battleship to the bottom of the sea. That being said, obviously not pro the expendability of human lives. It is important to note that these are sailors, these are, you know, Russian military. This is not the indiscriminate killing that we've seen in cities all over Ukraine. But that being said, I think Farron's absolutely right. Putin, Putin doesn't care about his own soldiers and he cares even less, obviously, about Ukrainians and Ukrainian lives. But he treats everyone like cannon fodder. And so it is very striking to see the things that are being beamed into the households of Russians every single day as their children are being sent off to war, which is they need to just buck up and fight harder.

What are they doing? Go there, swim to Kiev and go bomb them immediately, like leave the ship, you know what I mean? Or like just like that kind of like, again, we've seen it so much in this country. Like if anyone knows what it's like to sort of rally around a pig-headed war, it's Americans. So like I see that. I'm like, ooh, I've like, I know exactly who did this. Like we've all seen the people. They're still on television, the people who ratcheted up the war causes. Yeah, they're making tons of money far more than us. Unfortunately, well, look, we don't know how Putin is going to respond in the medium term. I'm going to get to the consequences in just a second. And I also want to give the Ukrainians a chance to respond. Again, I just want to add a little bit more perspective on, this is, this, I don't think that Putin cares at all about one Russian soldier dying 100, 1,000, 10,000.

God only knows, that's not new in the Russian context, not caring about the, you know, quote unquote, cannon fodder that you've sent to war dying. But in terms of ships like this being sunk, from everything that I read, the last time a Russian ship of this size and importance was sunk was World War II. And the last time in the world a ship like this was sunk was, I believe, during the Falklands. Like it has been decades. This does not generally happen. So very significant there. And that was noted by a number of Ukrainians, including a member of parliament, who said Moscow battleship went down with missiles and ammo used to target Ukrainian cities and towns.

Now it's part of the submarine fleet, which is fun, if dark. Obviously, I personally, I agree with you, Francesca. I like when generally I would want to sink every one of these ships, but I would prefer to tow it to somewhere where it could perhaps serve as like the sourdough starter for a new reef maybe. That would be, I think, better. But in any way, in any event, President Zelensky thanked those who have shown that Russian ships can go to the bottom only. And the minister of defense said that now they have a new diving spot in the Black Sea. And a Russian warship is a worthy diving site. Well, look, already the consequences are coming. Russia attacked a military factory near Kiev. It's a factory that makes the specific type of missiles that were used to sink the Moscow. So it seems like a very targeted incident there. And just some added wrinkles here. I did see Ukraine is now using something called Clearview AI's facial recognition technology inside of its borders for a number of reasons, including trying to identify Russian soldiers that might have died already. Russian spies that might

be embedded and to fight misinformation. They've already used this for thousands of facial recognition searches. Apparently they're identifying Russians and then contacting their families, which we can get into that if you want. But then I also have some fears. I mean, any kind of AI like this is going to get some things wrong. What happens when you have a false positive on a Russian spy and it's a civilian? So I'm a little bit worried about how this might be used in practice and how you might have some civilians getting detained or perhaps killed if there are false positives with this technology. I know we're just learning about this now, but what do you think about this? Well, you know, anytime you have these kind of mass surveillance systems,

there's going to be problems. There's going to be flaws. There's going to be innocent civilians that get swept up in it. I mean, we've we've been living with that here in the United States for several decades now, and we know that it's never foolproof, it's never, oh, we just getting the bad guys. No, innocent people get swept up. Lives can be completely destroyed by this. And so it is troubling to see them doing this, you know, just because as you said, one wrong identification. Oh, your facial features are a little too similar to this guy. Yeah. And we could end up with innocent people being killed in the streets because they think they're a spy. That that's terrifying to think about that.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think Ilhan Omar, Representative Omar said this early on in this war, which was about cautioning us around the amount of weapons that are being sent to Ukraine. And I think that obviously in this moment, a lot of us are feeling helpless and feeling like, Like hey, maybe that's good and at least it's not boots on the ground. But kind of looking at other places, Libya is a great example of the amount of, or really anything, where the United States funds and puts like allows tons of technology, tons of weaponry, sort of green lights helps all kinds of new weaponry get sort of like piloted in these wartime scenarios. And then those things are never decommissioned, right?

Those things often can be turned against one's own population. You know, obviously we don't want them to be used against innocent folks who aren't spies either, but just like it is, it just gets incredibly hairy. And again, these weapons of war, no matter what, just like in the United States, when you see him in Iraq and Afghanistan, huh, funny, you see them on the streets of Ferguson. You see the same kinds of tanks. You see the same kinds of, you know, methods of subduing a crowd that the police are now inheriting from you know soldiers who were once abroad. So I'm generally cautious about

this kind of stuff as much as I want this war to end. Yeah, and super fast. So the final point, because we're, Farron, you were right to point out what we've been saying from the beginning is like, we're just like, we're just like watching Biden. We're like, don't make a move towards sending soldiers in there. We want to support Ukraine. This war shouldn't have happened. War crimes are being committed literally every single hour. We do not want war with Russia, though. And so far they haven't done that, not only not sending in soldiers, but also not making some very specific moves that have been carved out as unacceptable, whereas, so you can't send jets, that would be too far. Sending things that shoot down jets is apparently fine. It's weird how

this works. But in this most recent package of weapons, this is some serious military technology, long range artillery systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, helicopters as well. And if you can send the helicopters, why not the jets? We get into some weird philosophical differences, but Russia is now warning the U.S. about the ratcheting up of the sorts of weapons we're sending. So we are going to have to watch that. We'll see what Putin is going to allow. So far, he hasn't done anything crazy in regards to the United States, at least, but we'll be watching for that. In any event, we should turn to very different news. Man, this hour just slips by, no matter what you try to do to slow it. So we're going to jump back to the United States and

talk about something much closer to home. CNN has revealed another cache of text messages that were sent to Mark Meadows in this case by a number of high profile Republicans. In this case, Senator Mike Lee as well as representative Chip Roy, and it has to do with the effort to overturn the results of the election. Now, spoiler alert, in the end, neither of those two individuals, and I had not expected this, neither participated in the attempt to decertify the election. But they certainly were involved in the plotting up until near the end. So there's a couple different areas that these texts get into, and I think one of the spiciest ones is in revealing the private, communications of those who were claiming publicly that this is proved. The election was stolen, there was massive voter fraud, you heard it every single day. Well, when they were talking to

each other, it is amazing how clear they were about how little evidence there actually was. Chip Roy texted Mark Meadows on November 5th. This is just days after the election, saying GOP lawmakers had, quote, no tools, data or information to go out and fight the election fraud. Two days later, he said, dude, we need ammo. We need fraud. We need fraud. examples. We need it this weekend. Dude, find something, bro. You're leaving us with nothing. Just a couple of weeks later, he said, hey brother, we need substance or people are going to break. Six days later, where do we stand, brother? Is he Hulk Hogan? Calm down with the brothers. Anyway, do we have anything to put out that can make the case? Weeks are going by,

and they're like, we still got literally nothing, bro. Come on, give me something, brother. And I just think like Francesca, start with you. Every conservative thought, this is a lock night of the election, let alone every day after. And meanwhile, Mark Meadows is like, I got nothing as the weeks go by. Yeah, but this is like, we were all waiting on this. I was waiting. I was like, all right, well, someone's going to find something in their dumpster somewhere. We're going to see a lot like a bunch of people, you know, like someone is going to manufacture fake balance. And even if they're written with crayon and like a raccoon did it. Like they'll just like, you know, they'll find a way.

And what's ironic about the lack of evidence of any kind of voter fraud or some, right, any any kind of conspiracy is that the GOP didn't need one in the end. The January 6th was still a riot and an insurrection even without the evidence. It turns out that none of their base, none of the audience Fox News cultivates, they actually didn't need the evidence to storm the effing capital and to think that the entire election was stolen. But again, just like, you know, like Roy here, which by the way, once again, all these insurrectionists abettors and aiders are currently in the Senate and in Congress. Yeah. And these are just two more names for the smorgasbord of collusion that was happening

before January 6th, but like, like, anyway, it's funny because even I was like, well, they're going to find something, they're going to manifest, like something's going to happen. Weren't you guys just like waiting for some dumb Hunter Biden laptop level? Even Trump was like, all I need is, what was it, 1,725, what, however many votes he needed in Georgia. Well, and you know, speaking of Georgia too, that is the one place where they did try to manufacture that when they had on video, you know, the woman had taken the box and put it onto the table. They said, aha, she just, no, she, they had put them away the day before. And then they showed up to work.

I'm like, all right, let's count. And they made it seem like she had somehow created this box at home and brought it in there. That is literally the hardest evidence they have been able to show us of this so called voter fraud that we know doesn't exist. But here's the real problem that Donald Trump has, assuming Merrick Garland ever decides to do his job. Legally speaking, if Donald Trump were to be hit with criminal charges with regard to any kind of, you know, coup attempt to overthrow the election results, his entire defense would hinge upon him being able to claim, I genuinely legitimately thought the election had been stolen, that would actually, in the eyes of the law, make most of this okay. Now, I know that's a weird thing to digest, but the way the law would work, if he legitimately thought he was doing the right thing in this particular instance,

it'd be very difficult to pin it on him. These text messages, where you have those people closest to him, saying, we have nothing, you know, there's nothing I can give you right now. Yeah. That is going to blow such a massive hole in a Donald Trump defense, but again, all of that hinges on whether or not Merrick Garland's going to do anything about it or just continue to sit there and act like, ah, this is all work itself out. I'm not going to get involved. He, I mean, such a useless lump of an attorney general, it's infuriating. Yeah, he is a Democrat. I have a feeling how he's going to come out on this and it's going to be looking forward, not back. Sorry, real quick, Francesca.

Real quick, I just didn't want to conflate and I think we do need to separate out because there is what happened on January 6th and the people who supported that actual physical violence. But then there's this. There's the sort of parliamentary coup. There's the fabrication. There's the alternate slate of electors. There's what Ted Cruz did. And here are two other senators who previously, I didn't know where is intimate. involved in this. And this is separate. So you're absolutely right, Farron, that Merrick Garland needs to be not only going after that, but going after these instances of straight up texting the chief of staff saying, where is the fake evidence pretty much anything? We need to go on to overturn this election. These are two sitting senators, guys. Article 14 of the Constitution, section three, no sitting person in office should aid or abet insurrectionists. We had a civil war over

this people and we forget. Yeah. Yeah, one is actually in the House of Representatives, but again, sitting elected official. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, and look, there's a lot of text here. We're only going to go through a couple more. But where are they? Where are these guys? Because by the way, as we get closer to January 6th, they're saying things like, I'm going to jump ahead, apologies to the director. But Mike Lee says, I don't think the president is grasping the distinction between what we can do and what he would like us to do. Nor, or I think he's grasping the distinction between what certain members are saying that sound like they could help him, but would really hurt him. He's got a very real opportunity for a win in

2024. That opportunity could be harmed in multiple ways, this effort. He says he's not going to help drive a stake in the heart of the federal republic by overturning the electoral college. These guys signed on super early. They sent this letter to Mark Meadows, then chief of staff, saying we are behind any effort. Give us ammunition. Give us stuff so we can do this. Months go by, And they're like, you've given us nothing. Like, we're not going to overturn the election based on nothing. So they know what the goal was. They know there was no evidence.

One's a senator. One's in the house. Where the hell are they? They know exactly what Trump was trying to do. And by the way, already, as Fair and rightly points out, this is going to aid if there ever is a legal challenge. I mean, this is the former chief of staff who was implicated in these. But they know exactly what was done.

And they have been so quiet ever since. since then as Trump gets ready to try it again the next time. Any final last thoughts? We're running low on time, but I want to give you chance. I just, I love the fact that they totally, it's such a fun story to go through the text messages, right? Like, oh, we're totally gonna do this brother and then like bro, bro, where's the evidence, bro? Bro, we got nothing, bro.

And it's such a sad story for these individuals. You could just watch, you know, as their heart slowly breaks over the span of a month and a half. Yeah. And that's what needs to be exposed as well. And I really genuinely wish, and I've been saying this since November, that the DOJ would appoint a special prosecutor to take this over. The committee has done decent work, but they cannot do all the things legally that they need to be doing to go after each one of these individuals. A special prosecutor could do that without having to wait for, you know, Merrick Garland to go enforce the, you know, contempt charge against Mark. Meadows, which is still sitting there since December 12th or 13th, I think. No, no movement on that. A special prosecutor wouldn't have to wait. They could do it themselves. And that's the only way we're going to really get to the bottom of any of this. I agree. Okay, well, we're running a long time. So we're going to get to our second break. We come back. A candidate previously best known for his ad that featured poop raining down in Lauren Bobert has turned on progresses.

We'll give you the details after this. Welcome out of the show, everyone. Only a few minutes remaining with me and Farron and Francesca. Thank you for joining us. Of course, after this, we do have the second hour, which is going to be a lot of fun. What's not fun, though, is the breaking news. So let's jump into this. Got it. Wow, they're already ready with the B roll. Look at the pros in the control room. We just found out about this breaking news. The Biden administration announced that it would resume selling leases for new oil and gas drilling on public lands. So you might have believed that after that massive IPCC report came out, that nothing would change.

You just weren't specific enough about what direction it would be changing in. So we know that we have a very limited amount of time to confront the climate crisis. To take it seriously, to exercise some leadership in this area, and as rapidly as possible, convert our energy production, generation, and consumption over to renewable clean energy. There are ways to do that. We have all of the technology we need, like they say and don't look up, we really had everything. We knew it all, that sort of thing. This is not how you do that.

By making sure that we drill as much as possible, we get every ounce of oil. natural gas and coal out of the ground, we burn everything that we can. That is not how you demonstrate responsibility, either inside of the United States or for our allies when it comes to this topic. And we only have a few years. The issue, though, is that many of these politicians who've been bought by the fossil fuel industry, they only have a few years. And they're not worried about an apocalypse that is going to come decades after they've begun rotting in the ground. And so they've left us to our own devices, and we are rapidly running out of time. I wanted to give both you a chance. What are your thoughts about this resumption of

drilling? I just want to jump in and say it was completely unnecessary. This is Biden caving to the fossil fuel industry. This is Biden allowing oil and gas to call the shots as if we don't already subsidize their industries. This is Biden after his own press secretary was saying, look, there are a lot of already leased lands that oil companies are currently not expropriating or they're not using, they're not drilling on, we don't need to release any more federal land for their use. This is after Jen Saki saying that, and then we just cave because we're getting scared about the so-called pain at the pump. We're getting scared about inflation. And instead of looking at who's actually doing the inflation, which is corporations. No, no, no, the American

people and the future of the planet, the planet can take the hit. Corporations, you keep making your money. And oh, do you have to lower gas prices? I mean, maybe you might, I don't know, but I guess no one can blame me when it comes time for reelection. Yeah. You know, it reminds me a lot of, oh, we can't have Bernie Sanders being the nominee, because then they're going to attack us all as socialist. So if we don't have that, they're not going to call us socialists. It's the same manner of thinking right here. Because right now, Republicans are saying, Biden's not doing anything to lower gas prices. He's killing the fossil fuel industry. So the thinking up there in DC is, well, if we do this, they're not going to be able to say that, right?

They're totally not going to attack us because look, we've now opened up even more for leasing. No, They're still going to say that you didn't. They're still going to say that you're not doing this. And of course, this is not going to have any kind of immediate impact whatsoever on gasoline prices for Americans. What it does is it continues to backpedal the United States on our climate goals. It continues to sit the world backwards. That climate change report that came out in 2018 saying, hey, we got 12 years till the worst effects become permanent. That was four years ago. That was four years ago that that massive report that actually did get a lot of attention.

But we've had four years of not just no action, but backwards momentum on this issue of climate change. And here we are faced with the golden opportunity to convince the country gas sucks. Let's do something where we're not even affected by these prices to where if they raised it to 20 bucks a gallon, it's not going to impact. you, let's rebuild this infrastructure. Let's do things like, and these are just some radical ideas I proposed, you know what? You buy an all electric vehicle? I think full price should be a tax right off, right there. 100% of it, you get to write it off in your taxes. The government needs to take the money we're sending to the oil industry each year in subsidies, roughly 14 billion. Send it to the auto manufacturers to lower the prices of electric vehicles. Two things top of

my head that we could do right now to stop this pain at the pump, not just temporarily, but forever. You know what? I'll even add on to your idea. We'll say, here, conservatives, they can't be angry about this. The cars have to be manufactured domestically. And hey, we're going to actually require that they're produced in plants that are unionized. How about that? Doesn't that benefit everyone? That means it's never going to happen. I agree and disagree with a couple points you made, though, super fast farrant. So I agree with you. It's not going to lower the price of gas. nobody thinks it's going to. If they start the drilling now, years from now, they'll extract some oil and sell it on the world market. It's not like they package it up and send it to your

house or anything. They just sell it internationally. But I do disagree with you about the credit because our team has very quickly put together little video clips of right wingers giving credit to Biden. I want to go now to Tucker Carlson. Oh, do we not have that? Let's go to Ben Shapiro. Do we have Fox and Friends? Crowder. Do we have Kirk? Candice Owens. Do we have anyone?

Is anyone even going to acknowledge this? No, you, Biden is such a dingus sometimes. To think that this is not going to result in a single bit of good news from the right. They hate your guts and they want you to fail. They don't care if you drill more oil, you doink. Anyway, with that said. Going heavy with the D words. Exactly.

Well, you guys are the, what, What was your name? F bombs. Well, I'm gonna be part of D troop. Anyway, great job, Biden. That's gonna get a lot of Democrats fired up to vote for you in the midterms. Okay, with that, we have only a few more minutes, but I want to at least touch on this topic. So let's jump into this. Not long ago, that gentleman right there, Alex Walker, made a lot of news running as he was in Congress against Lauren Bobert. Now, this is a person, Lauren Bobert, that a lot of people find very objectionable. Some of them found his first ad objectionable, though. If funny, it was a video of someone that looked like Lauren Bobert having poop raid down on them,

pointing out that she speaks a lot of BS, I suppose. Well, that generated a lot of attention, although many watching the ad might have thought that it wasn't a serious run for Congress. Apparently it is, but although he identifies as a Democrat, there's a few issues that progressives might have with all of this. I want to show you a little bit of him talking about progressives here. I love when people are like, you have a moderate policy, you lost my vote. Oh, what thought was that? Was that the vote you were going to give to some Bernie wannabe who's overkill policies are unpopular with 75% of voters, just so you can. could feel good about yourself until they lose the general election, at which point you'll point

your finger and blame someone else? That vote? Oh, honey, your vote got lost a long time ago. Democrats need to wake up. Jesus, in order to legislate, we have to win. Go to Walkerfor colorado.com and stop complaining. Woo! Yeah, I'm kind of new to TikTok personally, but I don't think that's it. I'm pretty sure that's not it. Anyway, look, he wants to take out Lauren Bover, and the way he wants to do that is get get everyone fired up to elect someone who would be slightly less right on some of these issues. We don't have time to jump into all of it, but if we could jump ahead, he says, my economic

policy leans right. So that's fun. Again, he's running as a Democrat, but he describes his own economic policy as leaning right. He talks about his health care policy leaning right as well. He says that people don't want universal health care. They want healthy market competition. That's what people want. You know, you've probably known people in your own life who didn't have access to health insurance or maybe suffered medical bankruptcy, couldn't get the care they needed. And it was at least some solace to them that there was competition out there. Whether they were able to get care, that's neither here nor there.

They just want to make sure that there's a vigorous clashing of different big pharma companies. Anyway, this guy has chosen a very interesting way to campaign. Francesca, what do you think about it? I just love the like, I lost my hand. how's the invisible hand of the market. It's like it's still there. I just love the idea. Phantom limb syndrome, but for the markets.

I just have to react to the like just the sniveling arrogance and paternalism that sadly so many Democrats, centrist Democrats, they just ooze onto progressives for having the gall to want any kind of systemic change. to sort of like try to you know try to correct course yes try not to die because we don't have enough money to live those small little things and so it's like I'm I'm all in favor of like having hilarious campaign ads where like you know Lauren Bober gets dumped on by a bunch of manure or poop or any kind of honestly like any kind of scat I'm like down with you know but like but I am not down with this just again it feels like Hillary's supposed

telling Bernie supporters to shut up. And also it's not based in reality. Things like Medicare for all incredibly popular. Obviously numbers are going between like 60 and 70% of the overall general public, even higher with Democratic voters. And not to mention centrist Democrats have been losing houses seats in the house. Progressives gaining the seats in the house. So where's your evidence bro? I just it's very sad. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It does seem like, I mean, he's just making things up like 75% art support. That's that's like objectively, fundamentally, verifiably untrue, yet here you are saying it so smugly and snidly that we're supposed to take you at your word. Second of all, if you've, you know, watch what this guy's doing on Twitter to his claimant, I've already been canceled by the Bernie people.

No, you actually haven't. We're talking about how cringeworthy your horrible videos are. But what he's doing is he's effectively laying in the groundwork for when he's. he ultimately loses this race, which is going to happen. I mean, this is a district that has not voted for a Democrat since 2008. It is, I know it says leans right, but it actually just got a little bit more conservative with the redistricting. The only hope for getting rid of Bobert, I think is one of her primary challengers beating her and then going on to win the general. Then you know, we focus on that person instead. But a Democrat's not going to win this district. They're not going to win.

regardless of how rude they are to progressives, it's a Republican district, let's be real about that. Yeah. Yeah, well, look, he might not be able to win the district, but he might be able to contribute to the centrist narrative that the electoral apocalypse that's coming in the midterms is somehow the fault of progressives. Yeah, he can get in a little bit of that anyway. Getting in early. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have in the first hour, but I want to make sure that people know where they can see more of both of your fabulous work. So if they want to follow the F-bombs, Faron, where can they see you? YouTube.com slash the ring of fire and YouTube.com slash fair and balanced.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Faron, and Balanced. And Francesca? Yes, on all things at Franny Fio, F-R-A-N-I-F-I-O. That's on YouTube and Twitch and on Instagram and on Twitter. Thank you, John. What a great hour. Thank you to both of you. Farron and Francesca, great to have you on. that's just the beginning. We had another awesome hour coming up. We're going to take a short break, but don't go anywhere. They'll be back after this.