The Young Turks - Michael Cohen Reveals ALL In New Interview And Rudy Giuliani Might Be The World's WORST Attorney

Episode Date: December 15, 2018

Michael Cohen gave an interview implicating Trump in EVERYTHING. Rudy Giuliani just keeps digging his client Trump into a deeper hole. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS 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. Oh, sick to drop it. All right, power, power, power panel, Jake Uger, John Iderola, Michael Shore. What's up, Epic? How are you? It's good to be here.

Good to see you. Nice to see you, too. Glad to be on the power panel. I'm just sort of thinking about the, no, I mean it even though it didn't sound like I did. The drop it. The evolution of drop it. And where it is today is interesting. So I was just taking that in, which is why I seem a little disconnected.

I would love an obsessive fan to go and do a super cut of a hundred drops. Yeah. Oh, that's what I'm not just your drops, because John dropped the other day. Don't cut that us. I mean, people who are not you have dropped. And it never, yeah, I think I agree with John. Yeah, they should do that. Every time I say drop it, it drops and my self-esteem drops.

You're crazy, dog. It just does not go well. Okay. I like that jacket, Jake. Thank you. He gets a compliment every time he wears that jacket. Is that right? I'm not saying anything.

It's a good blue. Thank you. It's unique. You know, as Greg Edwards once legendarily said, any old blue just won't do. Oh, Greg Edwards, where are you, brother? Okay, we've got to go find him in Lehigh Valley. So he's a just Democrat that did not win his primary, but was a wonderful candidate. How are you doing, Jr.?

I'm good. I'm good. I decided to go with the one jacket that still sort of fits me. Oh, okay. Oh, because he's getting too strong. Too buff. That's not what I was referring to. Yeah, but I like that you're too strong.

It's very TYT. My fit is never about my muscles growing. Yeah, other parts of our body has grown in some time. As you see from time to time on TYT Classics, which is for members only when we dissect old clips as Michael and I did for a couple of recent episodes. Okay, so look, lots of amazing things to get to in the news. obviously Donald Trump in a world of trouble. I think it's starting to swirl. I think the Toyota Bull is starting to swirl. I think he's a herd dog. Don't ask him if he's all right.

So there's not only just the legal stuff, there's Giuliani's response. And then there is the people running for the hills on the chief of staff position. There's just a ton of stuff. Meanwhile, Republicans are still trying to grab power in every way. They can will fight back against that. So many more things to get to. But I also want to tell you, There's a lot of interesting stuff, like the end of the year for a lot of people, like, oh, take it easy and they, not us, we power at the end of the year, okay? We do a power run. So we got 18 days left to the end of our membership drive.

I don't know how you guys feel about that. Some of you'll miss it and some of you'll be like, oh, thanks God, finally. No more talking about that stuff. Okay, let's keep it real as we always do. Okay. If you listen to public radio, you know how you feel about membership drive. Yeah. But you still listen.

I like to think that we make it a lot more fun and impactful. fun, interesting programs that we do, but that's what I'd like to think. So yesterday we're trying to get the 38,000, no, I'm sorry, 39,000 members because we had started at 38,700. Did we get there? Okay, that's an ambitious goal, 300 and one day. Let's find out. That's too much.

Oh, so close. Oh, so close. 18 days left, 18 members left. Okay, but we got to get to 40,000 by the end of the year. I know, I'm just talking about to the 39,000 mark. Yes, so 39,000, here we go. Let's do that. Can we do that by the end of the segment?

So there's two different ways. There's like eight different ways to do that, but let me explain three real quick. Obviously, if you want to become a member, get all these shows. Last night we did five, no, almost six hour extravaganza. What should be the progressive agenda for 2016? If you're not a member, that might be worth it alone. If you are a member, please check it out. Elizabeth Warren, Pramela Jayapal, Rokana, Alexandria Costa-Cortez, Revo, Grijalva.

The list goes on and on of the people who joined us. to give us their take on what the agenda should be, and I thought it was incredibly edifying. I took a lot out of it, so please check that out. So t.t.com slash join to become a member. I don't know if we're going to keep doing the host name thing because the leads are getting embarrassing. I mean, my lead over John is now officially a hundred. I mean, I don't want to rub it into the guy.

Am I rubbing it in? I don't think I'm rubbing it in, right? John, there's always me. I don't even have a thing, so you're always going to be me. If you support him, go to me. By the way, Pramila Jayapal, I was holding an I-24 mic at the Capitol the other day. You're not with TYT anymore? Oh, that's awesome.

Okay, correct answer, he's with both, check him out on I-24. So, but on the other hand, Anna's lead over me is getting embarrassing. How big. I keep trying to close it, I cannot close it. I had it down to like 39, I think, at my best. Now it's back up to 76. Okay, so for God's sake, t.y.com slash jank, okay. Now, we accept mail-in ballots until the 12th of January, right?

They're going to keep counting. That's right. There's early voting, there's late voting, whatever you do, t.y.com slash jank. The crazy thing is I had Ken Clippenstein look into this, and he found out that she actually hired a contractor who normally works in North Carolina in politics. That's what I figured. Seems like a sketchy figure, though. Indeed. Came over to my house to see if I had my ballot.

Okay, you could also do a gift at the time of the holidays, t.it.com slash gift, give the gift of TYT membership to someone you know. If you want to amplify our message and our voice, you can do that by giving it to members of the media and to journalism students. Right now, we talked a lot about this yesterday and John Oliver's show was in essence purchased, so he's got membership now, John Oliver, like you guys are, a lot of you guys, are TYT members. And now up on there is the Daily Show.

So that would be great to get them some Younghurst membership as well. There's also C-SPAN Washington Post. Politico called me this morning. So I don't know if they got win of the program already, but I have a question. Have you, I haven't been hearing a little bit. Have there been responses from the media people who are now members? Have people called and said thanks and acknowledged yet? So there's a thing that in the behind the scenes on the website where I can check that

and it rolls so it's, you know, it's not a perfect thing. So I just see things from time to time. So Chris Cuomo has redeemed, okay? Great. And then we also, you're giving it to allies, so somebody bought it for Alexandria Acosta Cortez. Well, yours is the most used because it goes to her and her staff and it was like, ding, redeemed, redeemed, redeemed, redeemed, redeemed, okay, which means they are actively

using it. That's great. Nice. And a couple of people on Cuomo's staff and plenty of others, Laura Ingram keeps calling. I'm not kidding. That's great. She's reached out three times since she's become a member. Is that a weird joke?

Are you sure? She's called you. Out of here. No, yeah, they've reached out to the young Turks to get people on. Anna just won't do it. Oh, okay. Okay. So anyways.

Let's add Michelle Wolf, by the way. I think she would like us. Okay. com slash Amplify to make that happen. Two last quick things. I don't take too long. We've got a lot of important stories. Next week, I just don't want you to miss it.

We've got hostmates. That's our version of newlywed game. If you're a member, you're going to love that. And on Tuesday, we're going to do something a little different. The second hour is going to be just for members. Okay. So I want you guys to hopefully understand the impact and the importance of membership. And so second hour just for members next Tuesday, December 18th.

TYT.com slash join to become a member. All right, John, let's do it. Lots of news. Broadcast purely in the nude. Anyway, okay, so. Yeah, we just lost a thousand members. Thanks a lot. Okay.

Okay, let's jump into it. The president's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, he took some time out before going to prison to do an interview with ABC News and revealed quite a bit about not only what he did under his employee with Donald Trump, but also what Donald Trump knew while it was going on. Here's the first excerpt. He's saying very clearly that he never directed you to do anything wrong. Is that true? I don't think there's anybody that believes that, first of all, nothing at the Trump organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me, as I said

in my allocution, and I said as well in the plea, he directed me to make the payments. He directed me to become involved in these matters, including the one with McDioux. Google, which was really between him and David Pecker, in order to protect him. I gave loyalty to someone who truthfully does not deserve loyalty. He was trying to hide what you were doing, correct? Correct. And he knew it was wrong? Of course.

So there's something about the combination of him talking about loyalty in that way and in that particular accent that makes me naturally not trust him. But what he is saying is important, he is saying that it was not just that, I mean the argument is that he just went out and did this. Either he didn't know it was illegal or he did it without ever cluing in Donald Trump that it was illegal. And Donald Trump just went along with it because he was a lawyer that's such a nice guy that he went out and paid off the mistresses without the president having to know anything

about the crimes that were being committed. Yeah. So the reason why that's super important is because you need intent to prove that Donald Trump did it, committed an illegal act. So if he didn't know about it, well, then you don't have intent. But if he knew about it, but did not know that it was illegal, well, that's more of an open, it's not really an open question. Fox News is trying to make it an open question.

But here, Michael Cohen is saying, did he know? Yeah, he was in the room. He directed me, personally directed me to make the payments. And did he know it was wrong? Of course, he knew it was wrong. And he's like, think about him. He ran a small operation before. He claims his multi-billion dollars, et cetera.

It's not remotely that much. But it's okay. Even if you think that, it was still as a matter of. staffing was a very small business, just a handful of people that worked in the Trump organization. And so Michael Cohen talks about he'd just bark out orders and everybody would immediately do it. So the idea that you would make a $130,000 payment and $150,000 payoff, those two different separate things, without checking with Donald Trump, who runs two-bit scams to rip people

off $5,000 at a time, inconceivable, and besides which you don't need to think it's conceivable or not. You have the witness here telling you, no, he told me very specifically to do it, and he definitely knew that it was wrong. And if you know very powerful people, they generally surround themselves with sycophants, right? And Donald Trump is about as guilty of that as anyone. And you can draw the comparison to the Nixon White House, too, because that is exactly what happened. And a lot of people find this guy, Michael Cohen, distasteful. They don't like him. They don't want to have a soft spot for him. But when you have somebody who's kind of turning state's evidence in this way, that's always going to be the type of person that's going

to be, right? I mean, John Dean, when he came out and he went against the Nixon White House in 1974, the same thing happened, right? So I think that you have to look at the body of what these people say, and they say it about powerful people, and powerful people always know what's going on. Yeah, so we're going to get to this in a second, too, but look, to Michael's point real quick, a lot of times the mob bosses go under because a hitman turned on him. A hitman might have killed 10 guys, but along with other witnesses or corroborating evidence,

you go, yeah, I don't like the hitman, but he's telling the truth about the mob boss, so I'm going to find the mob boss guilty. So you don't have to like Michael Cohn at all to see if it's true or not. And so the part we're going to get to is the corroborating evidence. Yeah. So, yeah, I think a lot of people look at him and think this is a guy that has proven that he's a liar. He still comes off as pretty much a liar. So why should anyone trust him?

And they get into it. I'll teach a line to Congress. Yes. So why should we believe you now? Because the special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them was credible and helpful. There's a substantial amount of information that they possess that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth. Yeah, just by itself, he has the access that in other situations might imply that you could trust what he's saying, but he is a demonstrated liar.

So if he just says something, and there's no corroborating evidence, it doesn't really count for much. But both the Mueller team and also the federal prosecutors work in New York, which are not directly affiliated with them, both of them say that they have other sources of information that confirm what he's saying. Yeah, so in terms of the known liar, we're really having this conversation? There's the other guy in the equation. The biggest liar any of us has ever known, Donald Trump.

So the idea that Donald Trump would go, he has no credibility. Hilarious, hilarious. Now, so before we even get to the corroboration, think about the motivations. Why, if they didn't do it, why would Michael Cohen jump up and go, I'd like to serve three years in prison, okay? And so I'm gonna turn in evidence that isn't true, I'm just gonna make things up so I can go to prison for no reason, because why, I wanna implicate Trump for what, right? It's, whereas the other guy has all the reason in the world to lie.

He's the president. If he committed this act, he doesn't want people to know, he could be impeached. So that's one point, point one. All these things add on top of another, when any of them by themselves are enough, in my opinion, to be conclusive. But finally, the most important thing is the corroborating evidence. Why did Michael Cohn flip in the first place? Because they raided his office and his home and his hotel room, and they got all the tapes.

They got all the documents. So they already had him. Why did the National Inquirer that had been supporting Donald Trump for years upon years also flipped? David Pecker is a really good friend with Donald Trump. That's why he helped make the hush payments and bury those stories. Why did he flip? Because Michael Cohen had a document explaining the deal that National Inquirer had with Donald

Trump to make these illicit payments. They already had them even without the witnesses. The witnesses are on top of the documents and the recordings. So with those two things corroborating one another, there's no question at all. Donald Trump 100% did it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's true. I want to follow on that.

And I think you sort of touched on it, Jay. When you have somebody in a witness stand who's turning evidence, who is giving, who is cooperating with the prosecution to get a better deal, it's always going to be somebody who's there because they did something wrong. And it's really important that you often discredit that person if he's a lonely person or she's a lonely person in a witness stand, right? This is a guy who's sitting in front of George Stephanopoulos telling you that the reason I'm believable is because everything points to my believability.

There's so much supporting documentation, so many reported accounts, it makes it almost unimpeachable ironic work. I want to go to one more video though, because in the interview it came up this weird reference that Donald Trump made on Twitter when talking about the sentencing to Michael Cohen's family, which seemed a bit out of place and odd, and they spoke about that. He knows the truth, I know the truth, many people know the truth. Under no circumstances do I want to embarrass the President of the United States of America. The truth is, I told the truth.

I took responsibility for my actions, and instead of him taking responsibility for his actions, what does he do? attacks my family. The only thing he can do is to tweet about my family. He said in the tweets, he repeated in an interview later on that basically he says, his claim, you're lying about him to protect your wife, to protect your father. Inaccurate. He knows the truth. I know the truth. Others know the truth. And here is the truth. The people of the United States of America, The people of the world don't believe what he's saying. The man doesn't tell the truth.

We can confirm that. Yeah, well, look, on that note, I think we've hit a tipping point. I could be wrong, it's just my sense of it, that I think even Republican voters know that Donald Trump has trouble with the truth. And so they could say, oh, the press is being mean to him, and they're the enemy of the people, and they live in their alternate reality. But they know that he slept with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, even though to this day he denies that he actually slept with him.

He says, I did pay them because if he says he didn't pay them, that's definitely criminal because it would be somebody else contributing to his campaign above the limits and him directing them to do so, right? He says, yeah, I paid them, but I paid them for nothing, because I felt like it, and it had nothing to do with the election. No one believes that. I don't care how much you're in the MAGA alternate universe, you don't believe that, okay? And so the jury, if you will, is in on Donald Trump being a massive liar.

But it was in before he became president. I know, but that was to us, Michael. I know, no, it's not just to us. I think that there's, you talk about the tipping point. I hope you're right, but I think that there were, it was not just to us. It was people who said, oh, I don't like a lot about his personality, but I like what he wants to do in Washington. So they knew that about this guy. It's like, what's the old, they, we are who, they were who they thought, we thought they were, right?

Yeah, he's like the Chicago Bears. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. He's who we thought he was. They are who they thought. Sorry, John. But that's exactly right. So I'm dubious, but hopeful that when you say tipping point, it's a tipping point. But I don't see why among his supporters.

Now, if you go to Congress, you could say, well, maybe they're going to see it now. Maybe there will be some sort of an epiphany there. Nothing shows me that that's yet happening. And that's why I think there needs to be more. Well, look, we're going to do this later in the show as well. But Chris Christie, not taking the chief of staff position, and so many others. I mean, that is arguably the most desirable position in Washington outside of the presidency. And no one's willing to take it.

No, he assigned it to Mick Mulvaney today, acting chief of staff, acting, right? Yeah, and he had to assign it to him. So the Republicans flouting him on Saudi Arabia. It's a small data point, but it's a data point. The chief of staff one is a bigger one. No, no, I think that the Republicans are looking around like when, when it's a lot. When is the shoe going to drop? And in terms of, do the Republicans in Washington know he's a liar?

The actual politicians, oh, they know for a fact. I mean, they could say anything they want on TV, but that jury came in a long time ago. You couldn't find one Republican on Capitol Hill that if you took him off the record and had a private, honest conversation with him that says, oh no, Donald Trump always tells the truth. No one believes that. Okay, last part of this that I thought to be interesting. not related to the criminal, you know, actions here.

But I'm just going to pause to note, we all understand witnesses, several witnesses and corroborating evidence that the president clearly committed a felony. Yeah. So, I mean, how could the handwriting not be on the wall? I mean, at a bare minimum, he is, I mean, his percentage chance of being impeached is, We're on the board. I'm not saying that he's definitely going to get impeached because there is no limit to the weakness of the Democratic Party.

I'm not saying he's definitely going to get convicted. But if you think that's not a possibility at this point, again, you're on a different planet. So everybody in Washington is making calculations about whether he survives. That's the conversation we're having. Now the fun last additional point, Cohen said, it's not like Trump organization where he would bark out of orders and people would blindly follow what he wanted done in the way. White House, he's saying there's a system here. He doesn't understand the system.

Now that's his personal law that's been with him for a long time. And he's saying, yeah, I work with the guy. He just doesn't understand how the American system of government works. He thinks it's like the old days. You come into the office and you go, okay, you do this, all right, and you're loyal to me, okay? And if we break a crime, we break it together and you do, and you back me up, okay, and you do this. I do executive orders.

And if I get whatever, courts, what the hell are courts, right? I told you, he's just too stupid to understand incredibly simple concepts. He's two years in. He still doesn't know how our government works. Yeah, yeah, I mean, there are governments that work that way. He seems to be a fan of them generally. The Trump organization is a government. Exactly, yeah, in some other countries.

And he tends to like their leaders wherever they might be across the world. And there's a reason why he likes them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, why don't we take our first break? When we come back, we're gonna have just a little bit more, what the actual, I guess, defense for Donald Trump is with all this new information coming out. And I wanna get a little bit into why I think as progressives, this particular area of the

ongoing multifaceted corruption investigations are particularly important. No, no, I'm telling you, look, the Giuliani defense of Trump is hilarious. It's amazing. It's that he might be the worst attorney in the history of the country. And with that, the drain, it's swirling. It's swirling. I mean, it's closer than you guys realized. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Tick, tick. We'll be right back. All right, back on the Young Turks. Let me read to you guys, a bunch of folks that participated in Amplify. Quick shoutouts. Jade Hess from California, $150. Thank you. And you're going to get an Amplified T-shirt.

They're coming in soon. Prescott from Chicago, Paul Lancaster from Iowa, Tree G from Severance, Colorado, $150, you're going to get a T-shirt. James Reed from Australia, 500. Wonderful T-shirt. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-NFTAR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

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

You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training, or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Honor roll on TYT.com

and obviously 10 memberships for journalism students. You're awesome. Jericho Anderson from Montana, 150 bucks. You're going to get a t-shirt. Okay, thank you so much. You guys are all wonderful. I'm just going to read only one comment here because we've got a lot of stuff to cover. Gabby Mereda says, I do find Michael Cohen credible, but I still don't like him.

He's only acting contrite because he got caught. He's a lot of life of criminal activity, and he's still only looking out for himself. And Gabby, I just wanted to read that for everybody, because I don't want you to get us wrong. I don't all of a sudden like Michael Cohn. We already talked about that a little bit. But I also don't believe him when he says, I have decided to come clean. No, you decided to come clean after they found all the documents showing you were guilty. So it's not like he had an awakening or an epiphany or a come to Jesus moment.

Come up. The come to Jesus moment was when Mueller came to him and said, I got you. But also his family probably went to him and said, dad, honey, son, you've got to do the right thing now and enough of this. Yeah. And plus, they probably were in some degree of trouble, right? I don't know where he hit the money. I don't think Donald Trump's reference to his family is actually that far off. It's both a threat to his family, which is a despicable part.

But people do hide money and they do sometimes give it to other family members. So when you've got that on the line too, you're like, okay, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, I meant to cooperate. Of course I'm gonna cooperate. That doesn't mean he's not telling the truth. He is telling the truth, it's just the thing. The reason he's telling the truth is because they already had enough evidence to convict him. Yeah, yeah, I don't know anybody who likes him now. He's Sean Hannity's lawyer.

Yeah. I'm fine with him going to jail, and I can go back to not having to talk about him anymore. That'll be great. In fact, you know what? I'm going to read one last one from YouTube Super Chat. Peral 77 writes in, I've been watching since 2014 from Montreal. Yes, my country has problems, but watching this circus is so much fun. I'm happy it's almost over, though.

It's Mueller time. Oh, indeed, indeed. Well, we're going to find out real soon if it's smaller time. Go Habs. of Montreal Canadians that had to sneak in there. Yeah, of course. All right, John, what's next? Okay, let's jump into it.

Rudy Giuliani definitely wants you to believe that he is not at all concerned about Donald Trump facing any potential legal problems over his involvement in a scheme to hide his affairs from voters in the months leading up to the 2016 election. But I want to be clear, not because he doesn't apparently think that Trump committed any crimes, but just because, eh, how big of a crime was it really? He says, nobody got killed, nobody got robbed. I think in two weeks they'll start with parking tickets that haven't been paid. Okay, well, that is true.

We believe that nobody got killed. Certainly people might have been robbed in some of these other crimes. So, yeah, it's not murder, that's true. But it turns out that other things are still crimes. And, you know, paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars and breaking some of the few campaign finance regulations we actually have in this country, isn't really a parking ticket violation either, though. And that's sort of a ridiculous thing for any lawyer to say, any prosecutor to say.

But in particular, Rudy Giuliani, who said that we need to weed out the tiny crimes in New York to stop the big crimes from happening. Oh, he's not concerned about the little crimes anymore, because the sort of person committing those little crimes is a little bit different with Donald Trump, huh? Well, another arguably little crime is, for example, crossing the border without papers. But apparently to them, that's, whoa, what do you mean, it's a small crime? Yeah. Well, we gotta rule of law in this country.

rip their families apart and make sure that we, you know, do all these vicious things to them. Oh, Donald Trump broke the law. I mean, look, my favorite part of the quote is, so in the beginning, as John told you, nobody got killed, nobody got robbed. He says, this was not a big crime. That is the world's worst defense. Going to a judge, if you were on trial and you said, hey, judge, look, what did I do? I didn't kill anybody, right? I didn't rob anybody.

Yeah, I sure it was a crime, but it wasn't a big crime. the judge immediately would go guilty. You just admitted it was a crime. The only way I would disagree with you is I think this is the second worst argument. I think that Hatch had a worse one when he said, you can make anything a crime these days. Well, that's an interesting conversation about sort of legal theory. But whether you can make something a crime, this is a crime. Yeah.

And the little crimes thing is really the thing that gets me about Giuliani, who really, as mayor, took up every single little crime and made huge things out of it when it affected minority New Yorkers. And that to me is the most ironic part of Giuliani saying this isn't a big crime. Yeah, but what do you think he thinks about selling loose cigarettes on the streets of New York? Oh, yeah, good point. The reason that I care about this, and I understand that, I mean, look, there's this ongoing cloud of corruption of various forms around Donald Trump, and he apparently has committed so many crimes that we have to track a lot of them.

I wish it was simpler, I wish he was a regular president, and they had one big, scandal or whatever. We can just focus on that. But it turns out he's broken a lot of laws. The reason that this one in particular that it bothers me, not so much the crime as the attempted defense by Republicans is as I alluded to in the intro, we're progressives who want to get money out of politics. We want far, far stronger campaign finance regulations.

And we know that there's people who disagree with us, wealthy, well-connected people who want to be able to buy elections. They don't want there to be any of this. And so this is to some extent, in my mind, a test case of, can we affect? I effectively invalidate in people's mind the severity of breaking the few campaign finance laws that we have. If you can hand hundreds of thousands of dollars over in the run up to an election to hide stories, effectively donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to a campaign, I mean, we really,

what is going to be left after that? Already the Dinesh D'Souza stuff has been smeared as not being a really serious crime. They want to be able to get away with this stuff. And we as progressives, if we want to get money out of politics, we can't allow it to just flow out into the public that campaign finance stuff, is it really a crime, it's not that serious, it's sort of esoteric, no, it's important, it goes to the heart of our political system. No, I still think we're underplaying it. So in the past, Giuliani has said collusion is not a crime, cementing his reputation as the worst attorney in America. Yet there are many

of statutes that are broken. You're just using a different word, right? But you cannot work with a foreign power to influence an election, there's a statute on that, there's statutes on campaign finance violations, et cetera. It's like, well, this particular word's not in the statute, but you made up that word. Mueller didn't say in any report collusion. The report hasn't even come out yet. Collusion has not been used in any indictment. You made up a word and said, well, I couldn't find it in the statutes.

So what, okay? I mean, look, they're trying to do PR, but in a court of law, they would be laughed out of the courtroom, but with handcuffs. And in another instance, Rudy Giuliani famously said, the truth isn't truth. Okay, all right. I mean, that's the world we're in now, right? But I still think out of all those, this was not a big crime, takes the cake. I mean, you should be disbarred for that.

You cannot walk into court and say, my defense of my client is, yeah, but it wasn't a big crime. You just admit it that he did it. I mean, you couldn't serve your client worse. So the most accurate thing anybody ever said about the Trump administration, and it was accidental, was Scaramucci when he said the fish wroughts from the head down. And he was referring to other people like Steve Bannon, et cetera. But man, that nails it for Trump administration.

Who would hire a clown like Rudy Giuliani? You wanna- Donald Trump would. Of course, I would never hire Rudy Giuliani. What an incompetent, imbecile. Yeah. If I hired a lawyer and he walked in the court and said, yeah, so what, he did it? But is it a big deal? I'm like, oh my God, I fire him, I fire him immediately.

In a way, Cohen's a better lawyer than Giuliani, because at least he's recognizing the seriousness of what the president did. Yeah. A little bit more clownishness before he move on, Rudy Giuliani has been mocked over what he said. And so he issued a correction that in tweet form, which does not contain a link to offensive about Donald Trump, he nailed it this time. I don't know if you saw that when he had the little period thing.

Anyway, he says, correction, I didn't say payments were not a big crime, which he did. He literally said that. He said that, literally. I have said consistently that the Daniels and McDougal payments are not crimes and tweeted a great article yesterday making that point. He did put a space there, so he almost had a mistake. If it isn't to witch hunt, why are they pursuing a non-crime? Okay, well, with that last statement, by the inverse property of Giuliani logic,

It is a crime, so by your definition, it apparently is not a witch hunt, in fact. Yes. And look, they can argue, and they have been arguing, again, in the court of public opinion, that truth isn't truth, crimes aren't crimes. Cooperating with law enforcement should be illegal. That's the thing Donald Trump said. Okay, and I get it, some percentage of the country, anywhere ranging from 25 to 40%, live in an alternate universe where logic, facts, et cetera, don't apply.

But in our courts, they don't live in an alternate universe. They live in this universe. And if you go to court and you say, yeah, I committed the crime, but truth isn't truth. The judge goes, yeah, okay, that's interesting, guilty, immediately, guilty. That's not a, it's not a hard question. You just told me you committed a crime, but you wish it wasn't a crime. Sad day for you, right? And by the way, this main thing that they keep going back to, which is, well, I mean,

even if it was a crime and he did do it. He didn't know it was illegal. Good luck, you try that and see how that turns out for you. Hey, Mr. Officer, I didn't know going 100 miles an hour was against the law. I didn't know. Okay, oh, Mr. Officer, I didn't know doing cocaine in public was illegal? I mean, that's anything more on you than me. Why didn't you tell me?

It's like with Michael Flim, where they're saying, well, he didn't know that lying to that you had to be that truthful with the FBI. How do you not know that? Even if he wasn't a lawyer and there wasn't a lawyer present present, You know that you have to tell the truth to the FBI that's illegal to lie to the FBI. And everybody knows this, don't they? I mean, it's not because I went to law school. Ignorice is not an excuse.

Of course you have to know the laws. You can't say, well, golly, gee, nobody told me I couldn't punch that guy in the face and take his wallet. I mean, my lawyer didn't, my lawyer told me it was wrong, he didn't tell me it was illegal? I guess that's on him, isn't it? Trump literally made that argument. Oh, dude, it's my lawyer's responsibility. No, it's every citizen's responsibility to not break the law.

Most of us don't even have lawyers. We don't have people walking around and saying, hey, don't rob people, don't kill people, don't rape people, right? And if you didn't know it was illegal, why did you work so hard to cover it up? I mean, that's- And lie about it for over a year. And lie about it, and lie about it, as if it didn't happen, even though it happened. And now you're saying, well, it happened, but I didn't know it was illegal. And you worked too hard to cover it up if that's the case.

You know what? That's a great point. And I hadn't thought of it that way. Why don't you just come out and go, oh, yeah, of course, I ordered. people to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal because I slept with them and I thought that's embarrassing and that'll hurt my campaign. Yeah. Like if you didn't know, why would you hide it?

Especially Donald Trump, who's the guy who doesn't hide anything, right? I mean, accidentally, he lies all the time, but he'll just blurt things out. Why don't you say it? Because you knew. The mark of a totally normal, fine, not illegal financial transaction is that you route it through a shell company. That's true. Yeah.

If you thought it was perfectly legal, why the shell company? Yeah. It's amazing. All right. Now one more hilarious excuse this time is from the Fox News folks, so let's go to that. Okay, so on Fox News they decided that Rudy Giuliani's defense of Trump wasn't quite enough where Giuliani said, dude, this was not a big crime, it's a small, shout shout crime. So Melissa Francis is going to step in and try to help Trump out.

This excuse is going to be hilarious. Let's watch. Another question that Stephanopolis missed, which I don't know, maybe half these questions were on the edit room floor because he missed some of the biggest, most obvious ones. If you knew this was illegal, did you tell the president it was illegal? And nobody's asking him that question. He said he told him it was wrong, but did he tell him it was illegal if he thought it was because he says he knew it was illegal.

When your lawyer tells you something is wrong, why do you think he told you that? It's not like it's your plumber telling you something's wrong. There you go, maybe there's something wrong with the drain. When your lawyer tells you something is wrong, it might be wrong in the law. The legal sentence. That's right, that's why he's a lawyer. You're not asking him for medical advice, you're asking him for legal advice. Maybe Cohen has a reputation as an amateur moral philosopher.

Right. Harris, Harris Faulkner, who lately has been the worst of the worst on Fox News, apparently she was trying to get an interview with Donald Trump. I was wondering why she's going over the top and out-foxing Fox, right? And it was, and then all of a sudden interview with Donald Trump pops up, I'm like, ah, I see you. But still even in the afterglow of that interview, Harris Faulkner is still covering for him in hilarious way.

So take it away. The president said he trusted him to do his wrong. When your attorney says something's wrong, are we supposed to assume then that it's illegal or that he wouldn't advise you to do it? Yes, yes, that's exactly what we're supposed to assume. I mean, my doctor told me there was something wrong that I had this giant cancerous tumor, but he didn't tell me to do anything about it. No, no, it's my oncologist told me something was wrong.

But I didn't think, I mean, the conclusion, if it's an oncologist, a cancer doctor telling you something's wrong, you assume it has, you know, that there's something. cancerously wrong with you, right? Right. But that's not, so it's not just he told you you had a tumor. It's the person, it's the gravity of the person. My lawyer told me something was wrong.

You, any, anybody knows that that means it's illegal. Yeah. But I like the last little part here. It's really small, but Melissa Francis was an accidental admission, which I found to be hilarious. Let's watch. I mean, if you think about, I have a tax lawyer,

and you ask them, is that legal? Oh, okay. Okay, note to the IRS. Okay, I've got an idea. Hear me out. Thinking outside of the box. So, yes, when your lawyer tells you not to do something and that it is wrong, even if he didn't spell out, you will go to prison for this. You might want to take note that he's giving you legal advice about the law and that perhaps you shouldn't ignore that advice.

And so in this case, Michael Cohen and Donald Trump clearly worked together to break the law and they did it knowingly, and that's why Fox News is doing this hilarious defense. Like, he knew it was wrong, did he know it was illegal? And you wonder why nobody wants to be the chief of staff. Yeah. And I just want to briefly plug on the damage report this morning. I had a reporter from ProPublica on who did a great write-up of the war to defund the IRS and how that's cut down on any sort of enforcement on corporations and the wealthy.

Far less enforcement actions, far less money brought in. It was a really interesting interview earlier today. Yeah, so you can get that on our podcasting network as well, by the way. So t.y.t.com slash podcasts. And Larry Lessig's podcast just launched, so did Nick Hanhours. Check those out, top constitutional law professor talking about money and politics. And Nick's podcast is Pitchfork Economics. But I do have one more thing here on this story.

Tape just came out of Donald Trump talking about John Edwards' case back in 2011 on television with Greta Van Cestrin. So, now, in that case, he says it's not a big deal either. So he's actually consistent on that, right? But he's clearly talking about how John Edwards broke the law. That was the context of that conversation. So when they say, well, he didn't know that it was illegal. And John Edwards was a Democrat and directed money to his mistress in the form of a hush

payment to affect the election. Same exact thing here. And so Donald Trump commenting on it, no matter what he said, as a. as an expert or a guest on that matter clearly indicates he knows it is illegal. Again, that's not a requirement. You don't have to know that murder is illegal in order to be held responsible for it, okay? But still, in this case, no matter what Fox News says, it's very clear on the tape that Donald Trump knows that it's illegal, not just wrong.

Yeah. Okay, all right, we're out of time in this segment, we got a lot more coming up, including A conservative outlet goes under. We're not supposed to have shot in Freud, but it's too much fun. And their outraged reaction, we're in, you've got to watch the story, because it's, I would argue there are some of the most immoral people we have in politics, and their need for a safe space and their cries of injustice to me were hilarious and delicious. We'll do that when we come back.

We hope you're enjoying this free clip from The Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t.t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on the Young Turks, only time to just read the names of folks who gave the Amplify. Really appreciate it, guys. John Painter from Georgia, Tom Grossman from Copenhagen, Denmark, James Abel from Waterford, Michigan,

Devin Jorgensen from Richfield, Minnesota, and Bethany Latham from St. Louis, Missouri. You're all getting T-shirts. You're all amazing. Thank you for... At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals.

And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months. for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT.

Check it out today. Tipping in helps home with progressives and also gets membership to journalism students. T-YT-com slash Amplified to do that. T-Y-T-com slash join to become a member. Let's try to get to 39,000. Well, I hope we got to. We'll talk about that a little bit later. and 40,000 by the end of the year.

Okay, so the weekly standard is a very conservative magazine. In fact, it's mainly known as a neo-conservative publication. They're the folks that led us into the Iraq War. The founders are people like John Podorts, Bill Crystal, Fred Barnes, and so these are all neocons, all warmongers, and today we celebrate its demise. It has been shut down and no longer exists. Now, I'm going to show you how irrelevant it was as well. But first, let's be amused at the reaction of one of its original co-founders, John Podorts.

He went nuts over it today. So it was owned by the Clarity Media Group, its Standard Publisher, which owns the Standard Publisher Media DC, which was publishing weekly standard. But it all just comes back to rich billionaires. And so Rupert Murdoch used to own it for a while. And then this guy, Anshutz, if I'm pronouncing that right, took it over. And he's the one that has decided to shut it down. So Pahorz goes nuts.

This is one of his many tweets on this issue. He says, the murderers are Philip Anshutz and Ryan McKibben. They could have sold a weekly standard. They refused to. Nothing like this has ever happened in my half century of experience with publishing. Okay, first of all, neo-concerted was that started the Iraq war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and arguably millions of people, talking about the murder of their beloved publication that started that war, we're going to file under irony, okay?

And second of all, I saw you guys were capitalists. I hear from people that they live like capitalists every day. The guy owns the paper, couldn't he do anything he wants with it, right? What right do you have under the capitalist system to complain, okay? And then he goes on to say, and this is my favorite part in why we're doing this story in the first place. long. If you've been watching the Young Turks for a while, we talked about the weekly standard

because it did such terrible propaganda within Washington, terrible in its consequences, but unfortunately it worked. And I told you, it's just propaganda, it never makes any money. They don't actually believe capitalism. And in his anger, Padorz accidentally admitted it. So he said, quote, to be sure it has never made money. Magazines like it never make money. That is exactly right.

It says commentary magazine editor. Yes. That's right. John Padourts runs Commentary magazine, which is a magazine like the weekly standard. They never make money. So wait, what happened to living like a capitalist every day? No, it's propaganda for the rich. That's why they finance it.

And he further clarified it. He said, within the giant corporations run by the wealthy men who started the standard and then bought at Rupert Murdoch and Ashitz, its annual losses were a rounding error akin to the budget for the catering on one of their blockbuster movie productions. In other words, I want more welfare, why wouldn't they give me more corporate welfare? So why did they lose money, knowing that they were never ever going to make money on it? Because they wanted to do marketing for their war on which they would make a lot of money. So that's how conservative media works.

On the left side, no, no, no, it's capitalism all the way, you've got to make money, You gotta, you know, and otherwise they will shut you down immediately. On the right wing, it's gobs of money for propaganda money. You don't have to make money? We're making money off the tax cuts, off the deregulation, off the wars. You're just a puppet for us. And Padorz being shocked and chagrined that he turns out to be the puppet is hilarious. Last quote from him, he says, the cessation of the standard is an intellectual and political

crime. But not a big one. Well, to that point, John, you're absolutely right. All this drama over what? The weekly standard circulation this year was 65,000 people, which would be a poor performance for one video online. You can say a young person video, you can say any video, right? And all this is over 65,000.

Why? This is the relevant part. It's not just to make fun of them, it's not just shot in Florida, okay? It is because these tiny little publications that actually have no following at all, tiny, minuscule, that never make any money, why are they there? And why do they have such an outsized influence? We talked about why they're funded in the first place. But Washington takes them seriously and amplifies them.

So you'll have giant organizations on the left that all of the Washington media will ignore. And then you'll have minuscule, microscopic organizations like the weekly standard. They'd be like, well, the weekly standard says we should go to war with Iraq. I mean, it's a brilliant point made by the weekly standard. Let's have them all over television as if they're relevant people. It's because, hey, look at that. Television also makes money for money in politics, corruption, pharmaceutical companies,

and all, everything else, and the defense contractors and the oil companies, and the list goes on and on and on. This is how corruption works. And when finally, apparently the owner had enough of losing money over this, he already He already got his tax cuts. He already got his deregulation. Maybe just mission accomplished. He already got his war, right? And then all of a sudden, John Podortz, I mean, you want to talk about a political and intellectual

crime. What you did in the Iraq war fits that description perfectly. And now you're triggered and you need a safe space and you're a precious little snowflake crying that your corporate welfare has been cut off. Oh, that's perfect irony. Such irony. irony. One thing about this, and nobody should warn this, but they are a lonely voice on the right that

is anti-Trump in terms of what they've been writing over the past year and a half, two years. And that needs to not go away, because you need that from the right as well. Yeah. And so they might open up a new publication that's also anti-Trump, so there's good commentators on the right wing, I don't mean good people, but ones with knowledge on this saying this is not A lot of Trump play, they're not just trying to suck up to Trump by killing this organization. Podorts is upset. Well, they could have sold it to someone else.

Well, if they sold to someone else, they would lose money with them. Why don't you buy it, John? Yeah, why don't you buy it? Exactly, you run a magazine. You don't want to lose that money either. They don't even believe in capitalism. It's all a ruse to get the policy that they want. What's sickening about it is that the rest of the media plays along.

I think you're being a little bit harsh. I think it's always sad to see a death, but if there is any consolation for them, it's that even though they are, you know, they're dying, their baby, the continued instability in Iraq and Afghanistan lives on long after them. Wow, that is quite a consolation price. Yeah. Okay, all right, what's nice? Okay, let's move on to more domestic news.

Scott Walker has now signed the suite of anti-democratic GOP lame duck session bills that strips power away from the governor and the attorney general. just in time for the new incoming Democrats to take those possessions. We've been talking about it quite a lot on this network over the past few weeks. We've been worried about it, especially because states like Michigan and North Carolina are making similar or have in the past years made similar anti-democratic moves once they've lost elections. He thinks we're exaggerating, though, Scott Walker, and here is his explanation.

A lot of talk in the last few weeks about legacy. And to me, as I mentioned, first and foremost, it's really important when you think about even these three laws that I just signed, these three new acts in the state statutes, it's important for people to actually read what's in them as opposed to believe all the hype and hysteria that's out there, because a lot of what's being said here and more important, a lot of what's being said nationally may actually help people with their fundraising efforts politically, but that's not the actuality of what I just signed into law. Well, look, we have actually looked into what's been going on.

We've been following the various activists in that state, including Randy Bryce, who've been trying to get national attention onto those state-level issues, and he's simply lying. They are deliberately stripping away power from both the governor and the attorney general, giving those powers to the legislature, setting up independent bodies that will take over those, so that they will continue to have control over areas that, in another circumstance, would be going to the newly elected Democrats. And one big part of this, too, is that Tony Evers, who won, who's going to be the governor, ran on a platform of taking Wisconsin out of the lawsuit on the Affordable Care Act.

And this will make sure that Wisconsin cannot withdraw from that. The people of Wisconsin elected a governor based largely on that. That was a big, big campaign, maybe the number one campaign pledge of Tony Evers. They voted for Tony Evers. He won, and now the legislature has taken that right away from it. So I'm going to prove conclusively that Walker is lying on three things. First of all, it's not just Democrats who are saying this. Former Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott McCallum, said he should veto it.

This is outrageous. It's the power grab. Second of all, Walker said this is not a power shift. Really? Well, it limits the ability of the governor to enact administrative rules. That is literally the power of the governor. That is being shifted over to the legislature. That's exactly what it is by definition.

That is one of many examples. And they also cannot, they have to check with the legislature in order to be able to do their job as Attorney General. That is a power shift. It is literally exactly what that is. One case, the state's Department of Justice Solicitor General that had launched a number of partisan lawsuits when he was in charge, he was a Republican. As he's going out, they stripped that same exact office of the power to do the same thing

that the Republican was just doing, thereby showing you clear hypocrisy, either they were wrong to do it in the first place or the wrong to strip the powers away now that the Democrats have won. And the last one is the most amazing one. One of the bills says that Evers cannot announce an incentive package to keep corporations like Kimberly Clark open in Wisconsin. He is not allowed to do that as governor. Just the day ago, Scott Walker signed that exact bill.

He announced a $28 million incentive package, not even a bill. He did it unilaterally as governor, announced a $28 million incentive package to keep open Kimberly Clark Corporation. It's a job creator and it's a job safer and it's really one of the big jobs the governor has. It's why Rick Perry has been a good governor of Texas, bringing jobs there, getting tax incentives there and he's hamstringing, they're hamstringing this governor from being able to do that. He's literally saying, I have the power to do this, and the very next day he takes away

the power of the incoming governor to do that exact same thing and says, what power shift? I don't know what you're talking about. What a monumental liar. But if all that is not enough, let's go to point number three. Republican governor, John Kasich, who was governor of Ohio until recently, ran for president, did really well. So he might have even represented the whole Republican Party if he'd won. Let's see what he has to say about it.

Of course that's what it is, it's outrageous. I mean, you lost the election, okay? When you lose, you say you lost. I mean, you don't go to try to, you can't try to reverse the election by manipulation. I'm frankly shocked at what is going on here. I mean, you talk about divisions and cynicism. So I win the election, you try to take my power away. What are you kidding?

I should correct, by the way, I said a good jobs governor, Rick Perry of Texas. He was a good jobs governor. Yeah, he was not a good governor. He was not a good governor. He was a good job governor. And John Kasich, still the governor of Ohio, is he not? Yeah, I mean, he's just not going to be in the next term. Right.

So, and he might run for president again, but that is a Republican governor, right? You know, within the same sphere going, that's crazy, I can't believe other Republicans are doing that. That's outrageous, because it is crazy, it is outrageous, it is a power grab. As usual, Scott Walker and the Republicans in Wisconsin. and total liars, and do not believe in democracy. They just don't. Okay, let's go to Bernie Sanders.

Okay. Sorry. That's good. I didn't have anything to say. Okay, no, I'm kidding. Any day now we'll be in the thick of the primary season. They start earlier and earlier, and we're right on the precipice right now. And if Bernie Sanders runs, I think it's pretty obvious that shortly thereafter, the myth

of the Bernie Bro will return. That is this idea that despite all of the evidence, Bernie Sanders has one type of supporter, and that is white males. And anything other than that, he has issues with. Doesn't really appeal to those people, doesn't care about those people. And I was disappointed to see in a recent write-up in an article in the New York Times. This was simply thrown out as a fact, either through malice or possibly laziness. Here's the section from the New York Times.

Since running an unexpectedly competitive race against Mrs. Clinton and becoming a global sensation on the political left, Mr. Sanders has exulted as the Democratic mainstream embraced central elements of his message, including his call for universal health care. But he has done little to broaden his political circle and has struggled to expand his appeal beyond his base of primarily white supporters. So that is the sort of claim that obviously there is data for. There are how many polling outfits are there in America operating on a constant basis, doing tracking polls.

And back during the primary, you can look at that information. And either he didn't or he did and didn't want to post the information, but I did it for him. I went and I plucked a couple of different polls. You can go and you can find far more. But first of all, to each of those parts of that, the white thing and the male thing. Well, in a Quinnipiac poll, women had a 50% favorability rating for Bernie Sanders, men of 46%. So the women actually liked Bernie more than the men.

The unfavorables are even, it's a larger gap there. So if anything, he's got trouble appealing to anything other than his core female demographic, actually. On the racial issue, let's go to that same Quinnipiac poll. You see there his favorability ratings for black Americans, 70%, Latinos, 55%, whites just 43%. That's an interesting factoid there that you'd probably want to include in your analysis of his racial appeal across different demographic groups. And look, if we want to throw into the mix as well, we have this next set, his favorability overall with Democrats, 76%. So the overall claim that he appeals to only one type of Democrat is somewhat.

undercut by the fact that he is a 76% favorability rating and only an 11% unfavorability rating. So where are all the huge groups of Democrats that just hate Bernie Sanders? So that's the Quinnipiac poll, but I don't want you to think that I've gone and I've found just one poll that has some sort of outlier. So let's bring up a Gallup poll. We can take a look at this as well. You can see there his support amongst white Americans, 49% favorability, non-whites, 64%.

And his unfavorability ratings for whites is more than twice as high as for non-favorability. non-whites. That is a gigantic difference there, although in a direction that completely undercuts what Jonathan Martin in the New York Times was actually saying. But you might think, well, you know, that's from September this year, and it's just another data point. Let's go to another one. We can bring this up, a Harvard-Harris poll.

And you can see there, again, women supporting him at higher rates than men, African-Americans at a gigantic percentage higher than white Americans. That's like a 40% boost over his white favorability numbers. and Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans there in the middle as well. And overall, against among Democrats, 80% overall favorability. So look, I hope that it's just, hey, I'm thinking back to the 2016 election. And I remember it being said that he had issues with those people. And I don't have time to actually look into it.

But there's going to be a lot of people trying to spread that myth in the future when he runs again, if he runs again. And all of the survey data conclusively repeatedly undercuts it. I think there's a big difference, though, and I'm going to argue this a little bit, because I don't know that these numbers support what is largely a correct argument by you, because the approval rating is different than support, where his support came from. You can have people who have an approval rating who approve of Bernie Sanders as, you know, when you go out, you say, do you approve of him or do this approve, you can approve of him and not want him to be president, not vote for him. And I think that the Sanders people knew that. And they knew that both by interviews I've done with people within that campaign, veterans of that campaign, and supporters of Bernie Sanders. And that's why there was a concentrated effort in these last couple of years, whether in

Mississippi with Mayor Lumumba or whether it was with Andrew Gillum in Florida, to get himself out there. They knew there was a deficit there. Not to say only his supports coming from whites, but I also don't think that you can use approval ratings as a barometer of where his support is coming from. And I think that's a little bit, that puts a little shakiness into the argument. No, I- I- I definitely, definitely do not agree. Political scientists would say that, though, Jack.

No, I, but what are you going to use other than approval ratings? The nonsense horse crap of the mainstream media's intuition? When you put him up against another candidate and you ask, who would you support? And then you break that down by demographic. No, I defy that as well, and I'll tell you why. I understand what you're saying, Michael, but look at their framing, they're making it seemed like Bernie Sanders, and in this article, to some degree, Elizabeth Warren, as well, are dubious candidates.

So if they did this for every candidate. No, no, no, I'm sorry, I don't read it that one. No, that's, look at this framing, okay, here, here's, in the middle, they say, both senators, though, are confronting signs that they will not enjoy an easy path to the nomination. Correct. First of all, first of all. Who has an easy path this time? That's exactly my point.

Right. No, no, no, but that's a, no, what that does is, it says, I don't like these senators. So I'm gonna say, ah, it's super hard for them to get in. If you were writing an article about Kamala Harris, would you write, she does not have an easy path to the nomination. Absolutely. Why would you say that? No, Michael, nobody has an easy path. No, Michael, that's, then why say it?

Because it's so obvious, that's my point. There's 30 people in the race. No one has an easy path. When you say that, to undermine them. When you read this article further, you read that this is about the swath of voters who supported Bernie Sanders last time. that Elizabeth Warren's candidacy would cut into that, presumably, that it would cut into, which makes the path that Bernie has and that Sanders has more difficult because they were going after the same fish in the same pond.

I do not, I'll tell you why I don't accept it, because you could take isolated facts. Like, is it a fact that no one has an easy path to the nomination? And by definition, that means Bernie Sanders does not have an easy path to nominations. Yes, that is a fact. But the question is, how do you frame that fact? If you said no one has an easy path to the nomination, so they have as good a chance as anyone, given that Bernie Sanders is polling as the best, one of the most popular politicians in the country, that would be correct framing.

It's a fact framed accurately within the context. Martin wrote an article about two candidates. No, I guarantee you, Jonathan Martin will write an article that is glowing about Kamala Harris and Corey Booker, okay. Let's see when that happens. No, no, no, but Cory Booker and Kamala Harris don't have an easy ride to the nomination either. And he will not write an article like this.

And he is wrong about the numbers. He is wrong about the numbers. But if he had said that they have their approval rating with black voters is low, that would be absurd with Bernie Sanders. It would be absurd to say that. But he didn't talk about approval rating. He's talking about something that the Sanders people acknowledge was that they had to make better inroads if they were going to run again in 2020.

No, Michael, you're 100% wrong on that. No, I'll tell you why. No, no, no, no, that's just not true. So let me explain, let me explain, no, no. And I know it's not like they're pulling it out of nowhere. I know the context of it. The context of it is he did not do well with African American voters in early states, especially South Carolina, and that really hurt his chances last time around.

So I know where the conventional wisdom is coming from, partly from that and partly from the propaganda that the Hillary Clinton people did very, very, very effectively with people like Jonathan Martin and the New York Times. Okay, but yes, it was true that he didn't do well in South Carolina. I'm not trying to lay a pejorative on Sanders. What I'm saying is that I've reported this though. For God's sake, let me finish. I will, but let me finish now.

You challenge, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm going to, but you're challenging my reporting. My reporting is saying exactly what you're saying, but they're saying that the candidates, the people who work for the candidates have said, this is where we need to do better. That's all I'm saying. No, I know, but Michael, I am acknowledging your fact and then giving it context. So he did not do well in South Carolina. Hence the campaign very rightfully says we have to address that. Any smart political campaign would say that, so your reporting is accurate.

But that does not mean that today, in 2018, two years later, with his polls being that excellent with African Americans, that you can say, he's got trouble with African American voters, he just can't get him. You said that about South Carolina in 2016, you would have been accurate. I'm not even saying that. But Jonathan Martin is saying that. He is saying that. I don't read it that way.

I don't read it that way. I'm sorry. I just don't. He said he has done little to broaden his political circle, has struggled, struggled, struggled, struggled to expand his appeal beyond his base of prime. Primarily white voters, white supporters, that is factually incorrect, and he wrote that because he, not because he actively dislikes Bernie Sanders, not because there's a conspiracy, not because of any of those things, but because he lives in a group think bubble where Bernie

Sanders is a Bernie bro, is a white guy, no, and he's not going to win. He's a tough road to the nomination. He's not one of the guys, the people, legitimate people who have a chance. So I'm going to accidentally, I don't think he did it on purpose, accidentally tell you something that isn't true in order to make that case because everyone I know believes that. I don't live in America, I live in Washington or New York where it's a power center where everyone despises Bernie Sanders. They don't think they despise him, but everything in their bones says it's not Bernie

Sanders. It's not. So just write it that he's only white people like him. When it's the opposite? My question would be, because I think that there could theoretically be some nuance, but I'm less bothered by what he's writing by than what he's not writing. Because my question is, if you come into this conversation, having covered the election, you know a bunch about all of this.

But a regular person, if they read that section, do they leave reading that section thinking that he is liked or not liked by African Americans? They're more likely, I think objectively, to leave it thinking, I guess he's probably not liked by them. Arguably, there's different ways you can measure it, I completely agree. But he could have at least said, you know, last time around he struggled with African American voters. However, here are some recent polls showing that his overall favorability is good, we'll have

to see once he starts matching up against particular candidates. You could add that context so that people come out of it with, I would say, a far more nuanced and accurate representation of his appeal, but he didn't do that. To me, this article, John, is an article about how a fascinating political dynamic happening with two people who've been closely aligned for most of their career may both be seeking the same prize and what that crossover might be. That's why I've reported on it recently, because I find it fascinating, right? And I know what the Sanders team has done and done well in the ensuing years since the primaries.

So I do think that, but so I only read this as, yes, that's true. They both have a tough road and it becomes a little bit tougher because if they were, they are both running against one another. And so, and so, and I think this, the idea of approval rating is, is different than when you have them up against each other, or you have one of them or the other up against a different candidate. But right now we don't have those polls, Michael. We don't, we know.

The only numbers we have support our thesis and completely undercut Jonathan Martin's thesis. And the last thing I'll say on this is, again, context. So if you say, hey, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they are both very progressive, and so they might take votes away from each other. That's a very logical thing to say, and I get it, and that's the initial premise of the article. But what is left unsaid is there's going to be 28 establishment Democrats. aren't they going to take votes away from each other? Well, of course they are, they're going to take more votes away from each other.

They almost have no chance of winning because of that. Those two are only competing against one another. The other guys are going to compete against 28 of them. But you didn't write that article, you didn't mention it in this article, instead you framed it Jonathan Martin as, oh, they got a tough road to the nomination, making it an implicit implication that the others are not going to have as tough a road. This is the same, but- Which is totally counterfactual.

That's an unfair expectation. I understand why you can be critical of what we were talking about before. But this is an article about two candidates. When it becomes a huge field, and we anticipate one, it'll be different. There'll be articles written about people from different parts of the country. Will Klobuchar run against Bullock, the Midwest, the Northwest, what will happen between Harris and Booker if they're going after the black vote? I mean, there are all sorts of ways that that argument is going to be had.

I don't think that's what this article was. And by the way, we already have, I mean, it has begun. CNN yesterday did this story, glowing praise of Kamala Harris, number one, based on what approval ratings, what poll against anyone else? She doesn't run for a second. With the establishment views, Kamala Harris is someone who should be exalted, and Bernie Sanders is someone who should be diminished. And what this article does, and I'm positive he didn't mean it.

He just lives in that bubble and he cannot think outside of it, and that is as failing as a journalist, and I'll be honest about that, okay? I'm sure he's a perfectly lovely guy. He doesn't mean anything, you know, conspiratorial or nefarious about it. But his assumption is Bernie Sanders is not going to win. I'm going to write an article subconsciously that diminishes him in every possible way. But when it comes to senators and power figures who are beloved in Washington, hey, hey, Watch yourself, Jonathan, you're gonna get a lot of pushback.

Your editor's gonna question you, other people are gonna question, you're gonna get blowback if you write that about Kamala Harris. Could you imagine if he wrote an article saying Kamala Harris is struggling with white voters? But wait a minute, that's not fair to Kamala Harris. I don't think that's fair to Kamala Harris. Where did you get that from? I mean, your editor would immediately ask, where the hell did you get that from? But his editor does not ask, where the hell did you get that he's struggling with

black voters? Jonathan, where's the polls? Did you look at Gallup? Did you look at Quinti P. No, the assumption is diminish him, diminish him. Yeah. And again, there's different ways that you can measure it. But the idea that's saying the best available data is the experience he had more than two years

ago in a very different political context in the context of a specific race against Hillary Clinton, that that is more relevant data than all of the polls we've had over the past two years seems absurd. I agree with you. But I'm just going to finish this with my point again about why I'm reporting it not two years ago, why this reporting happened with me six weeks ago, was because that was something that the campaign has said to me they've been working on. Why would they work on it if they didn't realize that it was something they needed to work

on? Which credit to them, that's a good thing. Bernie Sanders has some of the best political people in Washington working with him and behind the scenes for him. They saw that as something they needed to do. They made a concerted effort to do it, and that will probably pan out for them. That's probably why some of these recent numbers with approval rating are up because of what they've done.

That's exactly what I was going to say. I think we can end on agreement and reconcile all of it. They recognize it was a problem in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. That's definitely true. And everyone acknowledges it's a fact. It's not about opinions, that's a fact, okay? These polls are also a fact. So they worked to make it better.

And apparently they did because his numbers are stellar with African Americans and with women. And if you're, you know, if you didn't bother to figure that. out and you wrote it anyway, yeah, that's an obvious failing of that particular article, and they should take another look at it. His editor should look at it, and the ombudsman should look at it. And yes, we're gonna question you every time, and if that bothers you, then do a better job. And I know that that's grating on their nerves, but they assume the right wing should always

challenge us. How dare the left wing ever, ever challenging us? So Jonathan Martin, New York Times, I got news for you. We're gonna challenge you every single time, but unlike the right wing, we're not gonna to do it based on, oh, we don't like that you are reporting facts. We don't like it that you're reporting things that aren't true. We're basing it on reality, so you got that to look forward to for the next two years. So the next time you want to try to do an article on Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren,

or anyone else that diminishes them, not based on facts, yes, we will come after you again to try to make your performance better because it's obviously lacking. Young Turks will be back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.